In fact, now seemed the best time. This neuter was weakly armed and comparatively feeble. He was also likely to know more of what had happened and was happening in Tharn. Blade looked at the neuter again.

The neuter had been growing increasingly uneasy as Blade stood silent and motionless thinking over his next move. Now he called out almost plaintively, "How is it that you know all those things? You are no neuter, for you have a Lordsman's body-or a Pethcine's. Yet you cannot be either, for you are too large for a Pethcine and all the Lordsmen were slain in the great battle with the Pethcines. Other than the Pethcines, the only being who had such as a Lords. man had-" He stopped and his mouth fell open as if there was a heavy weight attached to his lower jaw. His eyes widened until it seemed that the eyeb.a.l.l.s were going to fall out of their sockets and drop to the ground.

"Yes," said Blade, nodding. "I am Mazda, HE WHO CAME TO THEY. I came once and did much in Tharn. Now I have come again." He tried to keep his voice low, soothing, and as calm as if he was buying pipe tobacco in a store. He had to fight down the urge to shout "I am Mazda!" until it went rolling away across the plains on the wind.

The neuter raised one skinny, shaking hand and pointed a finger at Blade. His mouth closed enough so that he could get out a few halting words.

"You-Mazda-once again in Tharn-you-"

Then the neuter pa.s.sed out and fell flat on his face in the gra.s.s. Blade stepped over to him with a weary sigh. People in all sorts of dimensions had all sorts of reactions to him. But this was the first time he had ever made his first contact pa.s.s out cold.

Blade easily picked up the neuter and carried him into the machine. Then he poured water on the neuter until he woke up, spluttering and snorting in surprise and indignation.

He nearly pa.s.sed out again when he realized he was inside one of the deadly Looter war machines. But he quickly realized that there could be no danger to him from this. The machine was obviously under the control of Mazda, so it was no longer dangerous to the people. Unless Mazda was returning as an ally of the Looters? The neuter unmistakably turned pale at the thought, and his lips trembled as he asked Blade.

"You do not return as an ally of the Looters, do you?"

"I do not," said Blade indignantly. "Their ways are evil and destructive." Presumably the Looters were the people whose machines had been demolishing the abandoned city.

"They are," said the neuter. He struggled into a sitting position, but apparently thought better of trying to stand up. "I would make all slave-face in the old way, Mazda. But I hope you will pardon me if I do not. I am not the youngest of the surviving neuters, and this has been a day of shocks and surprises for me."

Blade laughed. "I can well believe it," he said. "What is your name, by the way? I do not think I remember you."

"I am-I was-Krimon, Neuter of the 11th Level. I served in the baby plants. We would have seen little of each other when you were in Tharn the first time. Even if you had seen me, I would not expect Mazda to remember one neuter after so many years have pa.s.sed. Though Mazda's body seems not to have aged, yet even he can keep only so much in his memory."

The phrase "so many years" struck a jarring note in Blade's ears. Admittedly his first trip to Tharn had been back in the early days of Project Dimension X. But the whole project had only been running for a few years, not "many." Unless the year they had adopted in Tharn was much shorter than Home Dimension's?

"Much has happened to me since I left Tharn, as I told you," said Blade. "But Tharn has been much in my mind during that time." Blade had many years ago become an expert at telling lies-or at least half-truths-with a straight face. "Tell me, Krimon, what has happened in Tharn during those many years? I would know it, and know it before we travel on to meet any more of the people."

With an obvious effort Krimon gathered his scattered and befuddled wits and nodded. "I am honored that Mazda asks me. But I wonder if I am the best to tell him. My work was in the House of Bearing, and it was hard work that left me small time to concern myself with other things. I was never high among the ranks of those who fought the Lesser War or reared your son or-"

"My-son?" Krimon looked blankly at him. Blade realized that he had let out a wordless croak. He swallowed hard and tried again. This time the words came out clearly enough so that Krimon understood them. His face looked slightly less blank as he asked, "You did not know that the Maiduke woman Zulekia was carrying your son when you departed from among us?"

"Yes--I knew. But-I did not know what would happen to it-or her. I knew life would be hard for them both, so I did not want to go away. But-"

"We understand. Zulekia did, and so does your son. He will be happy to welcome you to Tharn."

"He-he is important there?" Blade realized that he was asking his question in a very unG.o.dlike way. He sounded more like a village idiot than a G.o.d. But he simply could not force his brain to absorb so many stunning facts at one time. He was facing a situation that he not only had never faced before, but had never in his wildest dreams imagined that he could face.

"Your son is King in Tharn," said Krimon simply. "Certain neuters who knew much of the legends of ancient Tharn said that was the proper t.i.tle for a man who ruled. Also, the Pethcines already used it. It was easier to get them to accept your son's rule when he bore a t.i.tle they knew. But it was not truly easy even then. The Lesser War was a b.l.o.o.d.y affair. Fortunately your son was a man by then, a mighty warrior. His vengeance upon the Outlaw Pethcines for his mother's death was terrible. They will not-"

Blade held up a hand. "Wait a minute." He wanted to shout it out, but didn't. "Zulekia is dead? And my son old enough to be a warrior? How-?"

"Yes, Zulekia, Beloved of Mazda, is dead. She was slain in the Lesser War by the Outlaw Pethcines. A long-delayed vengeance for the Great War. But they gained nothing by it. In fact even more of them died than would otherwise have been the case. Your son-"

"My son," said Blade. The idea of his son seemed the only fixed point in a world that was whirling faster and faster around him, threatening at every moment to explode into a thousand fragments. "How old is my son?"

"I do not know how time is reckoned in the worlds where you have traveled," said Krimon. "Our wisest neuters-" He broke off hastily as he saw Blade's face turn dark with impatience. "Your son has wives of his own now, and they have borne him children old enough to run and ride and begin training in weapons."

Blade nodded, keeping his self-control with a considerable effort. "Krimon, how do you measure time in Tharn? Is the chronos still used, or-?"

"Oh no," said the neuter. "It is sometimes cold and wet, at other times hot and dry. We now measure time by a complete cycle of these particular times. Your son-I think he has now lived through twenty-five of these cycles. In fact, I know that for certain, because I was one of those present to watch over his birth, though I have been kept aside from him since. But when it came time for the child of Mazda to be born, none who had knowledge that might keep it and the mother alive were excluded. I-"

"Krimon," said Blade quietly. "I would ask you to be silent. If you go on babbling like this, I will pick you up with my own two hands and bounce you off the walls of this cabin until you are quiet."

Krimon showed no sign of fear. Instead he smiled. "Mazda, it is your right to do with me as you choose. But may I ask you not to kill me until after I have eaten some food? It has been a long time since I last ate. I would like to die on a full stomach if I have the choice."

Blade laughed. He was beginning to like Krimon. The neuter might have been only of the 11th Level, but it was obvious that surviving twenty-five years of hard living had sharpened his wits considerably. He wondered what it had done for the others who had survived. Then he thought of his son, his son who ruled in Tharn, and for a moment he could not think of the others.

His son. His son, King in Tharn. The words kept repeating themselves in his mind, over and over, going around and around like the spinning wheels of a car stuck in the mud.

With a great effort he dragged his mind back to reality and looked at Krimon. Suddenly he realized that he also was ferociously hungry. It had been a long day for him, too.

"I think that is an excellent idea, Krimon. I will get us both food and water." Blade rose and went over to the storage compartments.

Chapter 10.

The emergency rations in the storage compartments were obviously intended for people with raging appet.i.tes, robust digestions, and no taste buds at all. For the moment Blade didn't mind. But he couldn't say that he looked forward to the possibility of having to eat this food for several days or weeks. Obviously, neither did Krimon.

However, Blade's mind was not that much on the food. As they ate, Krimon told of what had happened in Tharn over the past twenty-five years. It was a fascinating and occasionally terrifying tale.

"There were sadly few of Tharn left alive when the smoke of Urcit cleared away," said the neuter. "But more than half the people lived; as did more of the Maidukes and bearer maidens than one could have hoped for. But the Lordsmen were all dead-by your plan, I think?"

Blade nodded.

"I thought so. There was also a terrible toll among the neuters. Much knowledge died with them. But at least a few of each level and each skill escaped."

"What about the ceboids?"

"Between the battle and the explosion, all but a handful perished. That handful fled eastward, and we have not seen them since. That was fortunate, as otherwise they would have bred and become so numerous that without the magveils we would have sooner or later faced a terrible war with them."

Blade suspected that Krimon was leaving out a few gory details of what had happened to the ceboids, but did not raise the point. There had never been much love lost between the neuters and the ceboids they ordered about. Besides, Krimon was probably right. The ceboids had been highly fertile but only marginally intelligent.

Blade hoped that the ceboids had not been exterminated, but had managed to flee and flourish. But he also hoped that they had fled a long way and were flourishing somewhere far from Tharn and the people.

Eventually a count of the survivors was made. There were a great many women of the various cla.s.ses, more than two thousand in all. Most of them were in or approaching their best child-bearing years.

There was an obvious problem facing Tharn. The people would have to produce as many children as possible in as short a time as possible, particularly male children.

But who was to sow the seed for this desperately needed crop of children?

The neuters could advise, teach, do a thousand and one jobs. The younger ones could fight if necessary. But not the wisest of them could beget a single child. Tharn needed men. The dialogue went like this: Well, there were the Pethcine survivors, but- Why "but"? They are men, aren't they?

Yes, but- Are there any other men left?

Perhaps elsewhere on the plateau, in- Can you promise that we shall find them before all our women are too old to bear children? If we cannot, then there will be nothing but death for our whole people.

But the Pethcines are barbarians!

They are men.

They are savage warriors. We have just fought a terrible war to keep them out of Tharn. Now you ask that they be let in!

That was the old Tharn. It is gone, and nothing can bring it back. We must consider only what is needed to build a new Tharn. What is most needed now is men. The Pethcines are men.

And so the argument ran, on and on and on. Eventually common sense carried the day. The Pethcines might be as horrible as their worst enemies said they were. Their only a.s.sets might be their p.e.n.i.ses and their sperm. But they did have those, and that brought an end to the discussion.

There turned out to be fewer problems than even the optimists had antic.i.p.ated. Several hundred stunned Pethcine stragglers had been rounded up after the battle. A good many of them were still alive. Offered the opportunity to stay that way in return for stud services, most of them accepted.

Several hundred more Pethcines were rounded up in raids down into the Gorge. This produced more breeding stock. It also left the surviving Pethcines aware that Tharn still stood, however shakily, and could strike at her enemies.

The grand total of Pethcine males gathered together was close to five hundred. By and large they settled in and settled down peacefully. Their own people were broken and without a future. In Tharn they could become the ancestors of a new, strong, proud people, and have great pleasure doing it. The women of Tharn were far more beautiful than their own. It also helped that the average woman of Tharn was a head taller and every bit as strong as the average Pethcine male. Wife-beaters got short shrift, rapists got even shorter shrift, and those offenders who survived seldom repeated their offenses.

Ensuring the supply of babies was the first problem that had to be solved, but far from the last. Food (other than mani), shelter, domestic animals, weapons-all had to be found or made. Arrangements had to be made for bearing and raising the hoped-for swarms of babies. The list went on and on.

There were hard grim years in Tharn, too many of them. But the new people survived. Occasionally they survived by the skin of their teeth, as when the newly discovered grain crop failed and nearly half the year's babies starved to death because there was no milk for them, either human or animal. But they survived, and that was enough of a miracle for Blade.

"What is a miracle?" asked Krimon.

"Something-something that it seems really couldn't have happened, when you think it over," said Blade, smiling.

Krimon nodded. "That is a good way of saying it. But the people live, there is no doubt of that."

"They are all-'the people'-now?"

"Yes. It seemed the best name, when we had all become one and few could even remember what they were before the coming of Mazda."

"You were wise."

Much of the mating and child-rearing had been communal at first, to save as much labor as possible for building, farming, herding, fighting, and everything else that had to be done. Over time, some women came to prefer to bear the children of one man rather than another. A man came to prefer seeing his children born to some women more than to others. As the struggle for survival became less desperate, families of one man and three or four women slowly emerged. One woman would care for the half-dozen children while the others worked.

It was not polygamy, for the man was far from supreme. It was not really anything for which there was a handy name. But that was not important. The important thing was that it worked.

There was also Zulekia, Beloved of Mazda, and her son. There was no doubt that the child was Mazda's. Too many people knew of Mazda's coi with his Beloved. From the moment when it was known that she was carrying Blade's child, Zulekia was a woman set apart.

She had the best of care and feeding when her time came.

She alone of all the women was exempted from bearing any more children. She had fulfilled her destiny in bearing the child of Mazda. She was much in demand to honor other women's birthings with her presence, but that was all.

The son was called Rikard, and he was so strong and healthy that he might have survived and flourished even without all the care he had. But it was accepted from the first that when he reached manhood he would be King in Tharn, for who would dare to give orders to the son of Mazda?

It was also obvious that he would have his choice of any and all the women of the people. There was no woman who would turn down a chance to bear a child descended from Mazda and his Beloved.

Rikard's oldest children were just past their second birthday when the Lesser War came upon Tharn.

"More of the Pethcines survived than we thought," said Krimon. "They fled deeper into the Gorge and bred sons who grew to be warriors filled with a desire for vengeance. They did not hope to conquer us this time. But they did hope to destroy us, and they did not care if they all died in doing so."

"They must have been terrible enemies."

"They were. And-though it shames me to remember it-many of us had doubts about those Pethcine men we had taken to be the fathers of the new people. Where would their loyalties lie? We could not help wondering."

But those who had once been Pethcines were now of the people. They could not turn against their children and the women who were the mothers of those children. They marched out against the attackers. From that moment there was truly one people in Tharn, and the attackers didn't have a chance.

"It was soon clear that we would win, and we did not care to do more than drive the enemy back into the Gorge. But then their raiders struck deep into Tharn, and among our dead was Zulekia, your Beloved."

Gentle Zulekia, dead in war with the Pethcines. The fate she had once escaped had finally caught up with her. "May she rest in peace," said Blade, half to himself.

"After that we did not willingly leave a Pethcine alive," said Krimon. "We drove them from the plateau. We marched down into the Gorge and rooted them out of every cave and valley there, like a farmer rooting out weeds from his grainfields. What we could not kill we brought home. What we could not bring home we burned where it was, or threw it off high cliffs. If there are enough Pethcines left to make a good drinking party, it is not our fault. We have explored through the Gorge and out to a quarter of a year's travel beyond it without finding any of them."

"I see," said Blade. It was not a pretty story, but he couldn't see any reason to mourn for the Pethcines. They had tried to destroy the best hope for human civilization in this dimension, and instead they had been destroyed. It was rough but undeniable justice.

"The Lesser War made us truly one people, and Rikard the Son of Mazda became King at the time of the harvest that year. We moved forward swiftly from that time, with good crops, the children growing up and beginning to have children of their own and do much work, and so on. Among the children the men and women began to pair off and raise their families and work their fields. Until two years ago it seemed that the worst was over. But then-came-the Looters." Krimon's head wobbled on his skinny neck and sank down on his chest.

"What about the Looters?" asked Blade sharply. Krimon was silent. Blade reached over and shook the neuter. His eyes flickered open briefly, then closed again. Then he toppled over on one side with a thud. A moment later Blade heard a rasping snore. Krimon was sound asleep!

Well, it was hard to blame him. It had been a long and eventful day for the neuter, who was no longer young. Blade nodded, fought back an enormous yawn, and realized that the day's events had taken a good deal out of him too. Perhaps sleep was the best thing for both of them. He wished he could set some kind of alarm, but he wasn't sure how to do it. If the Looters came- The Looters could wait until tomorrow. Blade laid his head down on the floor and was asleep in less than a minute.

Chapter 11.

Blade had left the screens on when he fell asleep, and the first golden blaze of the sun creeping over the horizon woke him. A drink of water cleared his head, and he awoke the sleeping Krimon. The neuter awoke very slowly, with many mutterings and yelps of pain as aching muscles complained.

Blade was cheerfully unsympathetic. "Come on, my friend. We have another long day ahead of us. Breakfast first, and while we eat you will tell me of the Looters. Then we fly west until we come to the new homes of the people."

Krimon looked uneasy at the last idea. "That-it will spread fear among the farms and villages, Mazda. They will not know that it is Mazda in the machine. They will see only the Looter war machine and fear it. Is that the way you wish to come again to Tharn?"

"I was planning to fly directly to my son's home if the machine will carry us that far. How far is that?"

"At least five days on a fast horse."

That worked out to at least two hundred and fifty miles. "Krimon, that is much too far to walk if we want to get there soon. But I will listen to what you say of the Looters, and say nothing. If when you are through I am satisfied that I should indeed not come to Tharn in the Looter machine, we will get out and start walking. But I am very stubborn, as you have no doubt heard."

"Indeed, it is always said of Mazda that he had a will harder than the hardest jewels. Very well, I will tell you what we know of the Looters."

Urcit had been the last city of Tharn, the one where everyone had retreated by the time Blade arrived. But it was not always the only one. Scattered across the vast plain stretching half a year's ride toward the east were a score or more of other cities.

But even with the power, the magveils that controlled the weather and let the mani grow could not be spread over more than a tiny fraction of the great plain. Urcit was the fairest of all the cities of Tharn, and the soil around it the most fertile. There was plenty of room and plenty of mani there for the dwindling remnants of a once-proud people. So they retreated to Urcit and the other cities drifted off into the realms of legend. Even Sutha, the wise First Neuter who had been Blade's princ.i.p.al ally, had not considered them important enough to mention.