Land Beyond the Map

“But this is different. And another thing. Colla looks remarkably cool for a man who’s been here all those years—”

“Allan warned me about that. To each of them here it seems they’ve stayed, oh, a week or a fortnight or so. Time has no meaning here as we found out.”

“But Colla’s kid—”

“He’ll be delighted with what’s waiting for him when we get home.”

Crane glanced at her, at her tough, beautiful face, her white dress and leather jacket, and looked away. He said: “We’ll get back home, Polly. We’ll get home.”

They followed the others out into a high glass-walled gallery atop the blue and ocher structure. The sun cast down a vast semi-circular shadow of the bowl above them. Crane could look out over the sagging roofs of the city, past the chimneys, most cold now, over the checkered rows of workshops and foundries, out across the girdling white walls and into the Map Country — no — the Unmapped Country.

A glint of vermilion caught his eye among a fold of green and as he watched a Warden rolled out from the shadow of trees and started directly for the walls. Other specks of vermilion broke into view, a cordon, enveloping the city, all headed in like ladybirds crawling up the spokes of a wheel.

A foot behind his right ear a soft, patient, infinitely tired voice said: “So Trangor begins his last move. And it is a winning move for we cannot stop him. Alas, that our high* dreams should end thus.”

Slowly, stiffly, his whole body rigid, Crane pivoted. He looked back and he saw his first Loti.

Polly had been right. They were people — oh, not quite like human beings from the Earth that had born Crane; but any sentient being with two eyes and a nose and mouth in a face lined with the years, calm and serene and yet shadowed with sorrow, a face that could belong to the wise grandfather of a centenarian monk from forbidden Tibet, was people.

It was as if he were sitting enthroned in a wonderful chair. The back arched up and over his head to form the support for a flexible mask that Crane guessed could be pulled down to cover his face. The arms were wide and broad, studded with a multiplicity of controls. The lower front curved up and concealed his legs. The whole chair rose from and was formed from a shell, its convex side a subtle curve, doming down against the floor. The smooth metal shone. The Loti sat in his great chair and the chair rested in its saucer of gleaming metal. The whole construction hovered three feet above the floor, silent and unmoving.

Polly said: “Hullo, Varnat. Don’t give up hope yet. Mister Crane has joined us — and he has a rifle—”

“Thank you, my child, for your wise attempt to comfort us. But what do the Loti know of rifles, or weapons of murder and maiming? If we were given to remorse we would rue the day Trangor set foot aboard our ship for our high venture among the stars. But it is too late for that now.”

“What bothers me,” Gould put in, “is McArdle’s strong-arm stuff. He doesn’t know how weak the Loti are now; he’ll come busting in here with his tanks and rupture the wall’s defenses. He sent you in first to draw their fire, skipper. He anticipated you’d be taken up by the Loti almost as soon as you’d set foot inside — why weren’t you, anyway?”

Varnat answered, his purple-lidded eyes heavy with weariness. “Crane possesses the Amullieh — or enough of it to prevent our transporting him. Trangor for all his wickedness was a master craftsman.”

“I have abhorred violence,” Crane said softly. “But it has been forced upon me again. If McArdle comes into my sights I shall shoot—”

“Trangor no longer understands.” Varnat waved a pencil thin hand towards the horizon.

“When he left us all that land was calm, cultivated, ready to accept the gracious villas we would build for our children and give to them the new life and new world we had planned. Now, look!”

Crane took his eyes away quickly. The ground beyond the immediate circle around the city heaved like a stew, gouting and roiling, hideous.

He looked again at the Loti. Withered and old Varnat appeared; but he recalled old Liam and guessed that disappointment and the burning out of a dream had ravaged the Loti past endurance.

Sorrow for him welled up — and then the building shuddered again.

“He is burrowing in,” Varnat said calmly. But his hands played across those confusing controls with nervous vagueness.

“From the face screen above Varnat’s face a golden light issued. Like a genie from a bottle it grew, wavering upright and growing until it parted from its source. Crane stared fascinated as a lozenge of living light soared out and over the wall, swooped away towards the distant trees. Varnat pulled the face mask down over his eyes and sat, entranced.

“So that’s how they do it,” Crane whispered.