To Die In Italbar

He sighed and lit a cigar. It tasted foul. The moisture had long before gotten to it, and it was obvious that the fungi of Cleech had nothing against nicotine. The little green mound of it that flared momentarily smelled something like sulfur.

Clay looked up at him. A glare of accusation seemed to be in order.

Instead, "Thank you, Heidel," he said, "that we may share with you in this thing," and then he smiled.

Heidel wiped the man's brow. It took him another half hour to die.

This time he did not mumble to himself during the burial, but studied the faces of the remaining four. The same expression was present. They had started out with him as though on a lark. Then the situation had changed and they had accepted it. It did not seem a matter of resignation either. There were expressions of happiness on their dark faces. Yet they all knew it, he could tell. They all knew they were going to die before Italbar.

He appreciated stories of noble sacrifices as well as any man. But futile deaths--! To do it for no reason... He knew--and they knew, he was certain--that he could have made it to Italbar alone. All along, they had done nothing but walk with him. There had been no menacing beasts to fend off; the trail had been clear enough once he had set foot upon it. It would be pleasant simply to be a geologist, as he had been on that day ...

Two died after a lunch during which they ate little. Mercifully, it was mawl fever, previously unknown on Cleech, which makes for a sudden cardiac arrest and twists the victim's face into a smile.

Both men's eyes remained open after death. Heidel closed them himself.

They set about the business again, and Heidel did not interrupt when he saw that they were digging four graves. He assisted, and afterward he waited with them. Nor did he have long to wait.

Finishing, he shouldered his pack once more and continued on his way. He did not look back, but in his mind's eye he could see the mounds he had left behind. The obvious, grisly analogy could not be suppressed. His life was the trail. The graves were symbolic of the hundreds--no, probably thousands--of dead that he had left behind. At his touch men died. His breath withered cities. Where his shadow touched sometimes nothing remained.

Yet it was within his power to undo ills. Even now he trudged uphill with this intention. For this he was often known, though the name was only H.

The day seemed to brighten, though he knew it was well into the afternoon. Seeking the answer, he saw that the trees were smaller, the gaps between their leaves greater. The sunlight fell in more places and there were even flowers-- red and purple, bearded and haloed with gold and pale yellow--drifting on the vines the breezes pushed about him. His way grew steeper, but the grasses that had snatched at his ankles were shorter now and fewer small things rushed chittering about him.

After perhaps half an hour's time, he could see farther ahead than at any previous point on his journey. For a hundred meters the way lay clear and bright. When he had traversed this distance he met with the first full gap in the living roof and saw there a huge, pale, green pool, the sky. Within ten minutes, he was walking in the open and was able to look back upon the shifting sea of boughs beneath which he had passed. A quarter mile ahead and above lay what seemed the summit of the hill he now realized himself to be climbing. Small, pale-jade clouds hung above it. Avoiding rocks, he approached.

Attaining this vantage, he was able to see what he guessed to be the final leg of his route. There was a descent of several dozen meters, an hour's walk across a fairly level valley, sloping upward at its far end, and then a steep ascent of high hill or low mountain. He rested, chewed some rations, drank water, moved on.

The crossing proved uneventful, but he cut himself a staff before he reached its end.

The air grew more chilly as he climbed the far trail, and the day began to wane. By the time he had reached the halfway mark on his ascent, he felt a certain shortness of breath and his muscles were aching from this as well as the previous days' exertions. He was able to look back over a great distance now, where treetops were like a vast plain beneath a darkening sky and a few birds circled.

He paused to rest more frequently as he neared the summit, and after a time he saw the first star of evening.

He pushed himself until he stood upon the broad ridge that was the top of this long, gray line of rocky prominence; by then, the night had come down around him. Cleech had no moons, but the great stars all shone with the brilliance of torches through crystal, and behind them the lesser stars foamed and bubbled in seeming millions. The night sky was a blue and illuminated place.

He crossed the remaining distance, following the trail with his eyes, and there were lights, lights, lights, and many dark forms that could only be houses, buildings, ground vehicles in motion. Two hours, he guessed, and he could be walking those streets, passing among the inhabitants of peaceful Italbar, stopping at some friendly i

Moving back away from the trail, he found a level place to spread his bedroll. He forced himself to eat as much as he could and to drink as much water as his stomach would hold, in preparation for what was to come.

He combed his hair and beard, relieved himself, undressed, buried his clothing and crawled into the bedroll.

He stretched his not quite six-foot frame full length, clamped his arms tightly to his sides, clenched his teeth, regarded the stars for a moment, closed his eyes.

After a time, the lines went out of his face and his jaw sagged. His head rolled toward his left shoulder. His breathing deepened, slowed, seemed to stop altogether, resumed much later, very slowly.

When he rolled his head to the right, it appeared as if his face had been shellacked, or as if a perfectly fitting mask of glass had been laid upon it. Then the perspiration ran and the droplets glittered like jewels in his beard. His face began to darken. It grew red, then purple, and his mouth opened and his tongue protruded and his breath came into him in great paroxysmic gasps, while saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

His body shuddered, and he curled himself into a ball and began to shake steadily. Twice his eyes snapped open, unseeing, closing again only slowly. He foamed at the mouth and groaned. Blood trickled from his nose and dried upon his mustache. Periodically, he mumbled. Then his body stiffened for a long while, loosened finally and was still until the next seizure.

_______________

The blue-touched mists hid his feet, billowed about him, as though he were walking through snow ten times lighter than any he had ever known. Curving lines of it twisted, drifted, broke, recombined. It was neither warm nor cold. There were no stars overhead, only a pale blue moon that hung motionless in that place of perpetual twilight. Banks of indigo roses lay to his left and there were blue rocks to his right.

Turning, beyond the rocks, he came upon the shallow flight of stairs that led upward. Narrow at first, they widened until he could no longer see their limits at either hand. He mounted, moving through blue nothingness.

He came into the garden.

There were shrubs of all shades and textures of blue, and vines that climbed what might have been walls--though they grew too densely for him to be certain--and stone benches of seeming random situation.

Wisps of mist drifted here also, slowly, seeming almost to hover. He heard birdsongs above him and from within the vines.