But the legends survived. Now they drew explorers eastward across the plain, seeking out the substance of the legends. Two years ago the first explorers of the people reached the distant cities. But at almost the same time, so did the Looters.

Who were the Looters, and where did they come from? They seemed to come from nowhere and to go back there when they had finished their deadly work. One woman said she had seen their war machines appear out of thin air, with a terrible sound and a blast of air that knocked her down. But she went mad afterwards. Did Mazda think she spoke the truth?

Blade couldn't say for certain. But he could wonder. Teleportation? Possibly. Or possibly-possibly even interdimensional travel. Had the Looters discovered it on their own?

There was no evidence at all that the Looters were even living creatures. No one in Tharn had ever seen anything except the terrible machines.

"Or at least n.o.body has seen a living Looter and lived to tell about it."

"Have any tried?"

"Quite a few of our bravest young men and women have tried. None have succeeded, nor have any come back from the attempts." Krimon's face was grim at the memory.

But the machines were there, and in terrible strength. There were the war machines, like the one Blade had captured. All of them had the fear-making sound, the mindnumbing light, and the deadly purple ray. There were also the tentacles, to tear captives limb from limb-or kill them in ways far slower and more agonizing.

"That means there must be living creatures inside the war machines at least some of the time," said Blade. "Only living creatures take pleasure from the pain they can inflict on other living creatures. Machines do not have that bad habit."

Krimon was able to describe for Blade the effects of the purple ray. Blade concluded that the ray somehow burst every blood vessel in a victim's body. The victim dropped on the spot, dead almost before he hit the ground.

Unfortunately Krimon's account didn't tell Blade anything about his own theory that the machines could distinguish living from nonliving matter. He decided against raising the question now. Why get the poor neuter's hopes up before giving the theory the thorough testing it would need anyway?

The Looter war machines were bad enough. But there were also the great boxlike machines that fired the rockets. The rockets were sometimes used as weapons, but not often. Mostly the big machines used a destructive red ray.

"Could it possibly be that the Looters do not have very many of the rockets?" asked Blade.

Krimon shrugged. "I do not know. I do not think anyone else does either." It was obvious to Blade that the neuter had never considered the possibility of the Looters having any weaknesses at all. Morale in Tharn seemed to be down lower than a snake's belly. He was going to have some work to do there.

However, being a G.o.d was a real a.s.set when it came to getting people to believe in you.

There were the big box machines. They seemed to be in command. There were other kinds of boxlike machines that carried cutting rays, or large metal claws that scooped things up. Finally there were machines that were nothing more than enormous platforms, the size of a village square, with a small cabin in one corner. They carried away the machinery, the stone, the metalwork that the Looters stripped from the cities they attacked.

The Looters had started far to the east of the city where Blade saw them at work. So far they had destroyed five Tharnian cities.

"When the Looters have finished taking from a city everything they can use, they destroy it the way the release of the power destroyed Urcit. A terrible ball of flame rises up, and then a great cloud of smoke soars into the sky, spreading out at the top."

The mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion. It was hardly surprising that the Looters had the atomic bomb, considering everything else they had.

"And they are moving toward the settled lands of Tharn, Mazda. They know of our existence. Sooner or later they will fly all the way to the settled lands. Their rays will strike, people will die horribly in the metal arms, and then the ball of flame will sweep away what is left. We cannot prevent their coming, and we cannot survive it either."

Definitely morale in Tharn was down. With good reason, Blade had to admit. To have the Looters come tramping along, murderous, destructive, and utterly mysterious, just when things had started to improve for the people-it would have been demoralizing to any people.

Most of the knowledge that would have helped fight the Looters had been gone for centuries even before Blade arrived. After the destruction of Urcit, the surviving neuters were too busy learning what they needed to save the survivors to have time for anything else.

It looked as if the job of organizing Tharn for battle against the Looters was going to be largely in the hands of Richard Blade.

His hands and his son's, he reminded himself. He was not only father to the people, but father to their King. He had found strange allies in stranger dimensions, but he had never dreamed that he would find one sprung from his own loins.

He shook his head and set his thoughts in order. "Well, Krimon, I have listened as I promised. You have made many things clear. I now say that we must fly to the house of King Rikard, as fast as the machine can take us. We must stop the Looters soon. Who knows what machines and what knowledge they are taking from you in the cities they loot? And those who fear that they will someday soon march upon the people are correct. Beings like the Looters will kill and destroy for the sheer love of killing and destroying, unless they are stopped. For all their science they are like the Pethcines of the Lesser War."

"But this machine-"

"This machine is now a terrible weapon for us against its masters. We shall take it to King Rikard, and I and the wisest of the people shall study it. We shall find how it may be destroyed. And then we shall march out against the Looters, and destroy the machines one by one until there are no more of them and Tharn is saved."

Krimon looked impressed. Blade realized he must have made the road ahead sound easy. He sighed.

He very much wished it were as easy as he had made it sound.

Chapter 12.

As soon as they finished breakfast, Blade lifted the machine into the air and headed west. Krimon turned pale as he saw the ground drop away beneath them. His prominent knuckles stood out as his hands clenched into fists. But he said nothing, and slowly relaxed as he saw that the war machine would neither fall down nor explode nor run away with them into the empty sky.

Blade stayed low. He had no idea how much of the machine's power supply he had used up. He didn't want to plunge hundreds of feet to the ground if the lift-field suddenly died.

The plain rolled past beneath them, mile after mile of gra.s.s and scrawny shrubs and gentle swells and depressions in the ground. Two hours after starting out Blade saw a herd of wild horses on the horizon. When he was certain that there were no Tharnians anywhere around, he sent the machine sweeping in toward the herd. It was an unpleasant job, but it had to be done. He had to test out the purple ray's effects on a live target and see them with his own eyes. Yet he could not reasonably ask the people to sacrifice any of their animals.

The horses began to scatter as the machine swept toward them. Blade activated the controls for the purple ray, but did not unlock and swing the turret. From the air and against a moving target it was easier to aim the whole machine. He sighted in on one young stallion running a little apart from the herd, and held him in the cross-hairs as Krimon watched, pale and wide-eyed.

Two hundred feet. A hundred and fifty. A hundred. Get in close-beam weapons dissipate energy at long ranges. Fifty feet away, and right behind the poor beast. Blade swallowed, and pressed the firing b.u.t.ton.

The whole inside of the machine filled with a purple glare. Krimon let out a yell of fright, started so violently that he nearly fell to the floor, and clapped both hands over his eyes. Blade watched the purple ray leap out and envelop the horse. Then it was his turn to let out a yell.

He had made a perfect shot. But the horse was still alive, still on its feet, still galloping like the wind. For all the harm Blade had done the horse, he might as well have hit it with a ping-pong ball!

"Krimon!" he snapped. "Watch what happens when I shoot at the horse this time!"

The neuter forced himself to watch the screen as Blade swung the machine in a wide circle around the horse and swooped to the attack a second time. Again purple light and purple death struck out. Again the horse galloped across the plain without even breaking stride.

Krimon's eyes widened until they seemed to fill his entire face.

"What-that-it cannot be!" he stammered.

"But it looks like it is," said Blade shortly. "We'll try a third time. If that d.a.m.ned horse keeps running after that "

It did.

Krimon shook his head. "Never has the purple ray failed to bring death wherever it strikes. Mazda, have you-done something-to alter this machine?"

Blade shook his head. "I don't yet know enough about this machine and its weapons to try." Perhaps it wasn't wise for a G.o.d to admit that he didn't know everything. But the people would find out sooner or later that on some things Mazda was as much in the dark as they were.

Blade went on. "I wanted to see with my own eyes how the purple ray killed. But it did not kill. This surprised me. I would like to know why."

"So, I think, would the people," said Krimon. His voice still shook slightly, but there was a wry grin on his thin face that told Blade the neuter had recovered his nerve. Blade headed the machine west again. When he had it back to the desired course and speed he turned to Krimon.

"I thought that the machine would not strike down living creatures who carried nothing that was not once also living because it had orders not to. But I begin to wonder if the purple ray cannot strike down such a living creature even when the machine has orders to fire. We must learn more about this."

"We certainly must," said Krimon briskly. "This is a weakness of the Looters. Until now we in Tharn did not believe they had any weaknesses. We would have laughed at anyone who told us we might be wrong. But now Mazda has shown us that our enemy has a weakness. We can learn ways to take advantage of that weakness and fight the Looters. With Mazda to show us the way-"

Blade shook his head. "Though I am Mazda, I cannot show you the whole way. You must discover much of it for yourselves. All that is learned the people must remember. If I die"-Krimon shuddered--"or must go away again before my work is done, the fight against the Looters must go on until victory."

"It shall be done as Mazda wishes," said Krimon solemnly.

Blade knew it would be. In this dimension people would willingly follow his orders. But however willing the people might be, could he give the right orders? Could he teach them everything they needed to know-particularly when he didn't know half of it himself?

They spotted their first herdsmen of the people just before noon. Blade made no effort to follow either the herd or the herdsmen as they scattered wildly in all directions.

Krimon smiled thinly. "They will be very surprised when they ride into the villages and learn that the machine was carrying Mazda."

"They will," said Blade. Provided, he thought, this machine carries us as far as we want to go. If it ran out of power suddenly, they wouldn't be able to test out the machine's weaknesses and demonstrate them to the people. Also, the two of them would be practically defenseless. They might not live long enough to tell anyone that here was Mazda, returned to Tharn after a whole generation!

Less than half an hour later they pa.s.sed to the north of a small village, sprawling along the bank of a small stream tinged dark red.

Krimon's eyes noted on the screen the village's streets suddenly exploding into activity as people and animals ran in all directions. His mouth hardened into a thin line.

"It will take days to calm the people after this," he said with a sigh.

"Would you rather have them panic-stricken now, or dead when the Looters move in sooner or later?"

"Put that way, there is no choice," said Krimon wearily. He was silent for a moment, then pointed. "The New City of the People, where King Rikard has his house, is off that way." His hand pointed roughly north-northwest.

"How far is it?"

"Three days on horseback from Red Water, the village we just pa.s.sed."

"At this speed we should be there in less than two hours."

They pa.s.sed over more herds. Then they pa.s.sed over villages surrounded by checkerboard fields of growing crops. Then larger villages, with smoke spiraling up from shops and forges, and roads winding away toward the horizon. Each time they saw the people explode into frantic activity as they saw the Looter machine bearing down on them. Each time they were past and gone too fast to see what happened. Krimon's face grew more strained each time. It was obvious that he was fighting a battle inside himself.

Then suddenly the horizon turned gray white with mountains of billowing clouds. Krimon sat up straighter.

"Clouds over the Gorge, Mazda." With a finger that trembled slightly, he pointed at the screens. "There-on the Plain of War. That is where we built the New City of the People."

Blade had already seen the little cl.u.s.ter of buildings inside its earthen wall, and the machine was curving toward it as Krimon spoke. Blade could not keep his mouth from growing dry with excitement, or sweat from breaking out on his forehead. In a few minutes he would step forth among people who knew him. Even more important, he would step forth as Mazda, the G.o.dlike being who had for better or worse made these people what they were now. And above all, he would see his son.

Blade brought the war machine down so low that a thrown rock or even a high-flying chicken could have hit it. He slowed until they were moving barely faster than a strong man could walk. On the screens he noticed that some of the people who had dashed off in panic at first were slowing down and stopping to look back. This was a Looter machine, but it was behaving like none they had ever seen or heard of! Curiosity was beginning to compete with their fear.

The New City of the People hardly deserved its grand name. It was only another village, larger than any Blade had seen so far, but holding at most five hundred to a thousand people. It was surrounded by a sod and gravel wall about eight feet high. Two more cross-walls divided its interior into three sections.

"The center part holds the House of the King," said Krimon, pointing. "He-you're not going to land right in the King's yard?"

"Why not?"

The war machine floated in over the walls so low that the sentries on top had to jump for their lives to keep from being knocked off. Blade slipped in over the sod roof of the King's House, stopped in midair directly above the center of the courtyard, and settled down with a thump on the ground.

Several spears and a dozen or so arrows promptly flew at the machine and bounced off with clangs and clatters. Krimon gasped.

"They are shooting at us, Mazda."

"Of course they're shooting at us!" said Blade. "All at once we're an easy target. They're thinking that perhaps if they get their shots in first, they can-"

"But we're friendly!"

"I know it. You know it. But they don't know it yet. To them we're just another Looter machine, and it takes real guts for them to do what they're doing. Let's sit quiet and wait. Sooner or later they'll realize we're different."

Krimon sighed. "Mazda has spoken." His tone of voice indicated he rather wished Mazda hadn't.

An occasional spear or arrow banged off the machine's armor at intervals for about five more minutes. Blade spent the time getting himself a drink of water and watching the screens. He decided against putting on any clothes. Mazda had come naked the first time; he would return naked.

Time pa.s.sed. One by one people reappeared. As cautiously as mice, they peered out of the windows and doors, crept out to lurk behind bales of grain, flattened themselves on the roof. Blade noticed that in front of the King's House was a pile of teksin blocks, and on top of the pile a short flagpole with a banner. The banner was dark green, and bore a flaming sword in gold-the huge Pethcine sword Blade had carried in the Great War and taken back to England with him.

Finally Blade stood up and went to the hatch. "Krimon, I think we've got our audience. Will you follow me and speak for me?"

Krimon bowed and replied formally. "I will speak for Mazda."

"Good." Blade pressed the b.u.t.ton to open the hatch. The heavy steel disk swung open. He clambered through the opening onto the rear platform, then drew himself up to his full height. Krimon followed him.

A buzz of voices rose as Blade appeared on the platform. It rose higher as Krimon appeared. Then the neuter took a deep breath and somehow managed to come out with a full shout, a shout that echoed around the courtyard.

"Behold, oh people. Behold-Mazda has returned to us!"

Silence fell as suddenly and completely as if all the watchers had dropped dead on the spot. Blade raised both hands over his head and turned from left to right through a half-circle, letting everyone get a good look at him. The silence continued.

Then brief whispers sounded off to the right. After them came soft, slow footsteps. In one of the low, dark doorways a woman appeared. She was tall and gray-haired, and still had a good deal of what must have once been great beauty. She carried a long teksin knife in one hand. Blade recognized it as one of the knives used to hamstring the horses of the Pethcine chariots in the Great War.

The woman approached Blade, knife held in front of her with the grip of an experienced knife-fighter. She moved slowly and carefully, her eyes roaming searchingly up and down Blade's body.

"You call this one Mazda, Krimon?" she said.

"I am Mazda," said Blade. He spoke quietly. Any raising of his voice might seem like bl.u.s.tering and arouse more suspicion.

The woman brought the point of the knife close to Blade's genitals. Her wide gray eyes met his, watching for a reaction. Blade stared back, keeping his face more expressionless and calmer than he felt inside.

"It seems he is no neuter with false manhood pasted on," said the woman at last.

"Did ever a neuter grow as he has?" said Krimon coolly, with a gesture that took in all of Blade's ma.s.sive physique.

"Did ever friend of the people appear in a Looter war machine?" asked the woman.

"Is Mazda bound by what common men may or may not do?" replied Krimon. He was beginning to sound annoyed.

Blade kept his mouth shut and his face still expressionless. He was beginning to feel exactly the same way as the neuter. But Krimon had told him that he might find the people not quite ready to fall down and worship someone stepping out of a Looter machine. He should-he would-keep calm, until those who watched from the shadows made up their own minds. Even for those who had seen him the first time in Tharn it had been twenty-five years. Memories fade.

"He is not so bound," said the woman grudgingly.