on the Earth before man, but the evolutionary change of gear which took place when the Underworld came into existence saw the greatest-ever increase in the rate of evolution—the biggest explosion of them all. It echoed through the ages which followed, and would echo for many more. The impact was only just beginning to die when the Euchronians, in the Heaven which they had built up above, completed their Plan.
Man—omnivorous, intelligent, at the very highest level of the biotic hierarchy—changed least of all the species in the Underworld. Even man became not one species, but several.
The greatest evolutionary boost was evident in the semi-sentient species which had cohabited with man in the concrete jungles of the age of psychosis. They had the capacity to adapt if they could make the leap to full sentience and change their physical form in order to cope with a complete reorientation of their survival strategies. Some of them made that leap. Some became extinct because their gene pools drained dry in the attempt.
At the lowest strata there was complete reorganization. Millions of years of plant evolution went to waste, and progress began again with the lowest forms—the algae and the fungi. The stratum of the primary consumers in the animal kingdom was likewise completely refurbished, but here there were already patterns of life and forms of being which were useful. The crabs of Tartarus were not the crabs of pre-historic ages, nor the moths, nor the cockroaches, nor even the multitudinous worms, but the names did as well for the new versions. There are only so many ways to design an animal, and most of the models had been ready in the prehistoric world.
The microbiotica, of course, were reorganized on the same scale as the plants and lower animals, but from the macrobiotic point of view the revision was quite invisible. There are even fewer ways to design a bacterium or a protozoan than there are to design an animal. Form and function survived despite the fact that genetic complements had to be given a complete overhaul. The bacteria had the least difficulty adapting. Bacteria always exist in extreme circumstances.
From the microbiotic point of view, the division of the world into Heaven and Hell was virtually immaterial. A trivial incident on the path of existence. As if an immortal were stung by a bee....
CHAPTER 8
Camlak did not hurry along the road to Lehr. He walked steadily, at a pace which he could sustain for many miles. He was forced to import a rather mechanical quality into both his thoughts and his actions. It was necessary to the situation. He already knew, in his heart, what he was going to see when he finally looked out over Dossal Bog, but he advanced toward that moment nevertheless. He would have to meet it.
Once he was past the hill called Stiver he left the road proper, and bore slightly southwest, taking higher ground so that he could command a good view of what was ahead of him. He did not climb to the ridges but merely moved as a hunter might, close to the road but not too close, stalking its length, tracking its curves. The stars were less dense in the roof of the world over these dried-up, coarse lands, and the light they shed was not bright, but Camlak had good eyes, and there was light enough for him to see what he needed to see.
And eventually, his assumed mechanism brought him to the climactic vision. From the slopes of the hill called Solum he could see the road as it straightened out to cross Dossal Bog. He could almost see the shadowed walls of Lehr itself in the furthest distance—or he thought he could. Perhaps it was just a suggestion of shadows—an imaginary goal to draw travelers on ever faster, until they dropped from weariness with the vision no nearer.
The women fleeing from Shairn had gone a good way down the road. They were nearly a mile away from where he stood.
The Ahrima had come down on their backs. The bundles they had carried were scattered in a ragged line for a quarter mile behind the place where they had been caught. The crowd had scattered both ways into the bog. Only a handful had died on the road. Camlak knew that the women and the children would have run into a radioactive waste, into a living fire, rather than stand and wait for the Ahrima. And the marauders would have followed them to cut them down. And come back again to join the horde.
Camlak wished the bog was one vast quicksand, to have sucked the Ahrima down after their prey. But it was not. It was only a bog. The corpses were sprawled across the dark tussocks, half-swallowed by the mud, floating on the pools of stagnant water. The Ahrima had caught their prey, had enjoyed their massacre, and had gone on. Perhaps two or three Ahriman warriors had been trapped in the bog, or knifed by the women, but only two or three. No more. How many of the Children of the Voice had escaped? How many infants had found a hiding place? More than two or three, no doubt. Twelve. Or twenty. But how many of those would survive, in the long run? The same two or three. Maybe none. Wherever they went—forward, or back, or just on the road, there would be enemies enough for all of them.
Camlak could read the whole story written in the dim scene which extended before his eyes, illumined by starlight. It was no more and no less than he had expected. He had not expected the men of Lehr to come out and try to cover the retreat. But he had had to go on to the end of the story in any case.
As he stared out from his vantage, he felt very little emotion inside himself. He did not curse, and he certainly did not cry. He merely looked, and let the looking soak into his being. He let the sight imprint itself on his memory, becoming a part of him. That was enough. There was no need for fury or mourning. The time for those was past, left behind in Stalhelm, even before the battle and the burning.
He would follow Nita, now. And when he found her....
He knew no more. The alternatives which he would find then would have to be discovered. They were not ready in his mind. No such alternatives had ever been shown to him, except in his dreams. In his dreams, they were phantoms. He did not know what it took to clothe such phantoms with reality. He would live, but he did not know how, or why. Those answers were lost, lying amid the dead like the trampled, shattered bundles the women had carried out of Stalhelm in the vain attempt to wrap up their lives and steal them away from the Ahrima.
He could see the Ahrima. He could see their fires, at least. Whether the fires were at the walls of Lehr, or still some miles away, he could not tell. Perhaps it was Lehr, or the fields of Lehr, that was burning. The light was red and blurred, a smudge in the pit of darkness which closed off the world at the limits of his visual range.
He could imagine the Ahrima as shadows within the ruddy glow, shadow-monsters with their heads encapsulated by grotesquely huge horned masks. Men taking the form of beasts, accepting the role of the beasts, prideful of their bestiality. Black shadows in the light, clothed in smoke. The masks would shine, in the flamelight. The eyes would sparkle through the eyeholes.
The Truemen, thought Camlak, would have it that the Children of the Voice are animals. They claim that we pretend to manhood, that our selves are false. But the Truemen are masked now, their eyes glittering like the eyes of the Ahrima, fugitive within the masks, hiding from the fire and the blood. A worthless attempt to save their worthless lives. Who are the fake people?
Inside himself, Camlak asked the question of his Gray Soul. He did not expect an answer.
As he turned away, content not to know the fate of Lehr and, ultimately, of Shairn—at least for the time being—he sensed a movement on the slope above him. Someone was stalking him as he had stalked the road. They had not been behind him long, but they were there now.
Ahrima!
He carried a bow and a long knife—he had left behind the axes and the Ahriman swords, which were too big for him. He put the bow across his back and drew the knife. He moved toward the sound, extending the blade before him. A shape rose from the barbweed, coming out from the hiding of a shallow recess. Empty hands spread wide.
“No,”
