Страница 20 из 46
His study of the map of ‘Estokwa in the library had familiarized him with the main arteries of exit. He was only a few blocks from the great highway which led east. Actually, he had known this, but he wanted to confirm the accuracy of the map.
They rounded a corner and there, at the end of the street, was the highway. Now they could hear the noise of traffic, the murmur of voices, and the creak of axles. The highway was jammed with refugees, men, women, and children carrying big bundles or pushing wheelbarrows or drawing two-wheeled carts loaded with all they could take.
The appearance of confusion was misleading. After Two Hawks had edged the car between two groups, he found that soldiers, stationed every few blocks, were directing traffic. These carried kerosene lamps or large flashlights. The first trooper did not stop their car, but Two Hawks wondered how far they would get before being asked for identity papers. Without these, they could be arrested, perhaps even shot on the spot. So, at the first chance, he swung the car back on to a sidestreet.
“We’ll have to take a chance, hope we don’t get lost,” he said. “And when we’re forced back onto the big highway, we may have to make a break for it, ram through a guard post.”
‘That’s all right,” O’Brien said, “but where are we going?”
“How’s your arm?” Two Hawks said.
O’Brien groaned and said, “I’m bleeding to death. I ain’t going to make it, lieutenant.”
“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Two Hawks said. He stopped the car and examined the wound in the brightness of a flashlight he had found in a box under the panel. As he had thought, the wound was shallow. There was still a little flow of blood, which was, however, easily stanched with a handkerchief. He bound it around the arm and resumed driving.
O’Brien’s reactions had puzzled him until recently. The sergeant had been a good soldier, very competent, cheerful, and courageous. But ever since he had realized that they were out of their native universe, he had changed. He felt as if he were going to die. And this, Two Hawks thought, came from a sense of utter dislocation. He was cut off forever from the world in which he had been born and lived. He was an alien in a place he did not understand. He was suffering from a homesickness the like of which no man had ever experienced. It was literally killing him.
Two Hawks knew how he felt, although he was sure he did not suffer to the same degree. In the first place, he had learned to live with a similar feeling on his native Earth. A child of two cultures, never wholly in phase with either and not believing fully in the values and mores of either, he, too, had been a stranger. In the second place, he was basically more flexible than O’Brien. He could survive the shock of transplantation, rally, and even thrive if things went right. But he was worried about O’Brien.
9
Two hours later, after being lost a dozen times, they came out on the main highway, the kadziiwa’ road. A half-mile away was a large number of soldiers. Even as Two Hawks watched them, they took a man from a car and marched him off to a tent at one side of the road.
“Checking for spies and deserters,” Two Hawks said. “All right; we’ll go around them.”
That was not so easy. They had to cut across a shallow creek a mile away. They drove through slowly without getting stuck only to be stopped five minutes later by a stone fence which seemed to run to both horizons. By then, dawn had come. The car paralleled the fence for a mile and a half, which finally run out. However, a dense grove of trees and a broad creek further barred them.
Two Hawks drove the vehicle into the stream, which was about thirty yards wide. They plowed ahead for ten yards with the water begi
“We’ll hoof it,” Two Hawks said. “Maybe it’s just as well the car got stuck. If we’d gone on, and the water got too deep, the boiler might’ve blown up.”
“Now you tell me! Let’s get to hell out of here!”
They traveled over the farm country paralleling the highway. Four days later, the paved portion ran out. From there on, the road was dirt.
The two ate from food stolen from the peasants. Two days passed. They had a chance to steal a car, an internal-combustion type, and they took it. They made thirty miles that day, cutting along the side of the road, blowing their horn at the refugees in their path. Then, hearing of a check station ahead, they turned on to a narrow dirt rural road. When they had run out of gas, they continued on foot.
“The nation of Itskapintik is to the north,” he told O’Brien. “The last I heard, it was neutral. We’ll cross the border and throw ourselves on whatever mercy they have.”
“I don’t like the way you said that,” O’Brien said. “What kind of people are they?”
“Basically, Indians with a lot of white genes. They speak a language belonging to the Nahuatl family, something like the Aztec speech of Mexico. They’re much like the Aztecs, in fact. They came out of Asia about the same time as the Iroquois, both pushed out by a powerful Amerind nation that later conquered half of northern Asia.
“The Itskapintik defeated another tribe, half-white, half-Amerind, that had just finished terrorizing eastern Europe. The Iskapintik slaughtered half of them and enslaved the rest.”
“They’re pretty rough, huh?”
“I got that impression. For instance, it was only fifty years ago that they quit sacrificing people at religious ceremonies. And their slaves are not only treated as sub-humans but have no chance of becoming freemen, as they do among the Hotinohsonih.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“Not really with the idea of throwing ourselves on their mercy. We’ll try to cut across the country, hide from them, travel at night. Our goal will be Tyrsland, Earth 1’s Sweden. Perkunisha has declared war against Tyrsland, but it’s not made any belligerent moves against it. If we could get there, we could arrange to be transported to Blodland. We’d be important men there; we’d really have something to live for.”
“Sweet Mother of Christ! I’d give my right eye to live in a place where they speak English.”
“I don’t want to discourage you.” Two Hawks said. “But you’d have to learn it all over again. However, it would be easier for you than Iroquoian.”
They had been cutting across the back-country, using rural roads as guides but keeping parallel with them. Only at night, when the roads were deserted, did they take to them. Even then, Two Hawks did so reluctantly. But walking on fields of wheat or meadows or through the woods slowed them down so much that they had to chance the swifter means of travel now and then. Fifteen days after leaving ‘Estokwa, they came across a main highway, going north. From the hilltop, he could see that the great river of refugees had not diminished. At this point there were no soldiers evident, so he decided that it would be safe to mingle with the traffic.
For two days they trudged along on the fringe of the column, finding that they could make better time this way. The dawn of the third day, they heard ca
The fourth day, at noon, the refugees were diverted eastward at a crossroads. Two Hawks said, “The Perkunishans must have taken the road up ahead. They’re really advancing.’