Wolfhead

by Charles L. Harness

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

Dawn of a new Doomsday It was in the light of the swift star "God's-Eye" - said to have been thrown aloft by the Ancients before the Desolation - that Beatra was captured by raiders from under the Earth. Armed with only a psi-kinetic sand-sword and a Dire Wolf's eyes, Jeremy Wolfhead followed, and found a strange city ruled by the descendants of an ancient government that had escaped the Desolation - a city that was preparing to emerge and bring to Earth a second, even more horrible, Doomsday!

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 217

Sample

MY NAME IS Jeremy Wolfhead. Actually, I don’t have a wolf head. For better or worse, it is a rather ordinary head, with yellow hair and blue eyes. Grandfather used to say that even if I had the intelligence of a dire wolf, I still wouldn’t be smart enough to take over the business after he dies. (Wolfhead and Company, Restorations.)

Our family has been called Wolfhead as far back as the records go. There are two theories as to how we got the name. Firstly, perhaps one of my ancestors really had a wolf head, and became famous for it, and so started our name. If so, he was born in the days of the Desolation, when such mutations were commonplace, perhaps even a source of pride, and not a subject for dismay as they are today. The second explanation is perhaps closer to the mark. Many centuries ago one of my ancestors, a Friar named Cornhunter, prophesied that one of our family would take the head of a wolf, descend into hell, destroy a great and evil culture, and come out safe again. Traditionally our family smiled at Brother Cornhunter, and some of our wiser people thought him quite mad.

The strange psychic powers of the Friars (also called the Brothers) are now much lessened, and perhaps I am the cause of it, for better or worse. I don’t believe the loss matters much. The Brothers emerged, some two thousand years ago, to guide and succor what was left of us, and to preserve some of our crumbled civilization. They taught us how to plant, how to raise livestock, and to read and write. From them we relearned metallurgy and our simple sciences. They kept the healing arts to themselves, but the rest they taught well, and they will be remembered forever for it.

My ancestors originally lived on the banks of the great Mispi River. Three hundred years ago (so our tradition goes) one of them, Messer Fallowt Wolfhead, gathered up his wife, children, horses, and cattle, and began the trek east. He had heard (from the friars, probably) that the radiation left over from the Desolation had waned and was no longer lethal, and that the land was rich and fertile again. It took his wagons four months to make the journey, for there were no roads then, and no air machines. (It would be another two hundred years before his descendants dug the first floater out of the debris of the suburbs of ancient Freddrick and restored it.)

Having arrived at the Lantick Ocean (which quite astonished my ancestor), he scouted the shore for one hundred miles in either direction and finally selected what is now called Horseshoe Bay. This is a cliff-lined circle of water about ten miles in diameter facing squarely on the ocean. The eastern seaboard is peppered with hundreds of these giant circles, some larger, some smaller. Sometimes they seem to merge together to make one colossal pit, which is generally full of water and makes a fine lake. For example, to the southwest of us there is a very large lake having numerous scalloped edges. This very beautiful lake stands (if you will believe our teaching Friars) where the ancient city of Washton once stood.

Horseshoe Bay bites deep into the shore, and at its deepest recess, the land dips down to the water, making an excellent harbor. Most any day you can stand on the rim and watch the ships. You will see both sailing ships and the faster nuclear vessels (many restored by grandfather’s shops). The land all around the horseshoe is flat and fertile. It is watered by several streams, and rainfall is plentiful. So here my forefathers settled. Other immigrants from the west joined them. Over the years, farms became villages, some of the villages became towns, and the town at the harbor became New Bollamer.

During this time contact with other peoples in other lands, even across the great Lantick, was reestablished.

When my ancestors settled here, they were under the very reasonable impression that they were the only human beings within hundreds of miles.

I will tell you now (so that we can dispose of the matter and get on to other things), I like to hunt. My grandfather taught me when I was a boy. I kept it up when I entered Bollamer Collegia to begin my study of Excavation and Restoration. I very nearly did not graduate because I got fed up during the middle of exam week and took the floater up into the Penn Woods in search of a giant stag I had heard about. Armed only with a good hunting knife, I followed the stag south on foot for four days and four nights, with no rest for him or for me. He tried to escape me by swimming nearly a mile across a very cold lake. But I was right behind him. (I dearly love a good swim.)

Soon after we emerged from the lake the scenery began to change.

Overhead I noticed low fog clouds, sweeping eastward over the tree tops, and I heard a dull thunder, growing louder in the west. I suddenly realized where we were. This splendid animal was leading me to the Spume, where he might lose his pursuer in the ground wraiths, scentless steam, and deafening noise that accompanied this remarkable phenomenon. It was his final effort to stay alive. And indeed it was an immensely clever and desperate thing for an animal to come here, over so many miles, to engineer his final attempt at escape. As far as I was concerned, he had earned his life, and I then and there gave it back to him.

I knew the Spume only by reputation. This was my first actual confrontation, and I was eager to see it. In moments I was at the top of the hill and looking over at the colossus. I could see and hear the whole thing.

The Spume crater had been built up over the course of centuries as a drenched and mottled cone of jumbled rocks, a hundred yards across from lip to lip. A column of steam roared two miles skyward out of this crater. For a circle a mile around, there were only a couple of trees, and these were dead. The area was grief stricken, desolate.

Only the Spume was alive.

As I stood there, entranced, a great rock broke off from the crater edge and fell into the steam column. It must have been half as large as our stable; yet it was hurled up and out again immediately, and it crashed a thousand yards away from me on the other side of the crater. Despite the distance, I felt the earth shake beneath my feet.

But all of this was simply the framework, the physical setting, as it were, for the mighty thing that was taking place there, continuously, hour by hour, day by day, and century by century. My neck arched back as, with unbelieving eyes, I followed the steam column upward. When the steam finally ceased to rise any higher, the top layer began to float eastward with the prevailing wind. And then, far at the top of that magnificent plume, the steam began to change, mostly, I think, on account of the cold. (For it was mid-January.) The steam first condensed to water droplets. Some of these fell as rain, within the barren annihilated area. Some water droplets were exposed longer to the cold, and these fell as sleet and hail. Some joined together to make ice stones big enough to break a man’s skull. I jumped as a fist-sized ball of ice fell almost at my feet. Getting my head broken would be a silly way to end a great hunt, so I retreated a hundred yards up the hill. There I saw another remarkable thing. Off to my right was a strange white mountain, which I judged to be made entirely of snow. Some of the steam was changing to snow, and it was falling from great heights and with great whispering hisses, to make a long, dune-shaped drift, perhaps half a mile high and a mile wide, and stretching out eastward for miles and miles, over the forest, at the beck of the west wind.

While I was standing spellbound I noticed movement below. The great stag skirted the deadly bombardment of ice, circled the deafening steam column, and disappeared on the other side. Three dire wolves were running close behind him. He would probably die deaf, and the wolves might never hear properly again. What a sorry end to four days and nights on the trail! I held my hands over my head, closed my eyes to slits, and, keeping a safe distance from the Spume, ran in a great circle to follow them.

There on the other side of the vapor pillar, I found them. The antlered king had been pulled down by the wolves, who were even now, amid steam, sleet, noise, and snowfall, eating him alive. One wolf lifted his head in my direction, snarled, and started for me. Fortunately there was a great dead tree nearby. I shinnied up that trunk inches ahead of clicking teeth. As I climbed I cursed my decision to bring a knife instead of a rifle. But even with a rifle, it would have been stupid to try to sneak away with night about to fall, because, although I could not see the wolves, they could see me very well indeed. And I will now explain why this is so.

The Brothers tell us that during the centuries of the Desolation, immense clouds of dust covered the skies, blotting out the sun, giving an eternal night. Certain strange plants and animals developed that could cope better with the darkness. The dire wolf was one. It can “see” in total blackness by means of infra-red sensors in its ocular cavities. So for nocturnal operations these animals had a tremendous advantage over a mere human being.

A final observation. From the crotch of branches where I spent the night, I had to dislodge the rib cage of some strange vertebrate, long ago picked clean by crows and buzzards. How it had got up into the tree I could not then imagine. (I learned only much later.) And so I spent an uncomfortable night, shivering, and pondering the awesome power of the Spume and the contrary nature of dire wolves.

The next week I was back at the collegia. Grandfather had to finance a chair of Nuclear Engine Rebuilding, and then they let me graduate.

Afterwards, when I was working in Grandfather’s shops, I often thought about that gorgeous prince of antlers. He stood over seven feet at the shoulder. I am only five feet ten inches, and a mere fraction of his weight, yet I persisted. I do not know anyone who has run down a giant stag. As long as he had to get eaten, I would rather we did it, and not the wolves. So, in a way, I was sorry I could not get him home into our food locker. Not that Grandfather likes venison. But he buys it when the hunters bring it around. And you will find heads of giant stags in his trophy room at the lodge. He shot them all himself, when he was a young man. But he can no longer take the time, he claims, especially since he has to give my work such careful supervision and make sure he catches all my mistakes. As otherwise (he says) my visi sets seem to turn into radios and my atom engines run backward. Actually, I was not all that bad, but I did tend to think about hunting a lot, even when I should have been finishing a restoration.

At this point perhaps I should explain what happened to my parents.

They are dead.

One fine morning (and fresh from the wedding bed, for he had married my mother but the week before) my father set off jauntily in his little floater, Wolfhead, with the avowed purpose of exploring the sea caves along the coast. He sailed out over the bay, with my mother waving to him merrily, and he disappeared around the cliffs, and neither he nor Wolfhead was ever seen again. My mother died in childbirth, partly from an infection following my entry into the world and partly because she could not accept the fact that my father was dead. And so my grandfather took over my upbringing.

I MET BEATRA at the Winter Ball. The orchestra was still tuning up, and the actual dancing had not yet begun. Floaters were still arriving. Most of the men were in the wineroom. The upstairs dressing room was full of ladies. And that is where the action started.

I well remember. I had just entered the lobby, and was in the act of handing my greatcoat to the footman, when the Lady Mary Weaver burst out upon the upstairs landing, shrieking and waving her arms. I was first to cross the dance floor and to bound up the stairs to her rescue.

“In there!” She did not need to point. Girls, ladies, dames, females of all ages and in various stages of finery were pouring out of the room.

“What is it?” I demanded.

But not one of them would answer me. They were too terrified to speak.

Evidently a dangerous animal had crawled up the guttering, broken into the window, and even now was preparing to come forth and attack these helpless creatures! Perhaps a giant carcajou, teeth bared and slavering, was even now slinking toward the door!

I had no weapon. I turned to the men by me. “An electro? A knife? Anything?”

They shook their heads.

There was an empty suit of armor at the top of the stairs. The empty metal glove held a great pikestaff. I wrenched it away and strode to the door.

“Careful, man,” cried voices behind me.

I held the staff high like a spear and leaped inside. There was a flash of movement to my right. I very nearly hurled the staff. And then when I saw what caused the movement, I felt faint.

It was a girl. A very beautiful girl. She was standing before a mirror, and she had been in the simple act of pulling her slip down over her body. I caught a glimpse of bare thighs, of thinly concealed legs and belly.

I looked around the room quickly. There was no beast. There was nothing.

The stained glass window was open by half an inch. “Did it go back down the gutter?” I asked, without looking at her.

“No, milord, it didn’t go back down the gutter.” She was now struggling to pull her gown down over her head. “I need help.”

“But … the animal…?”

“It is under the wardrobe cabinet.”

The cabinet sat barely an inch off the floor. Now I understood. I dropped the halberd and went over to help her. “A mouse?”

“A mouse. Now, you must pull down, on both sides, and then there are certain catches and buttons.”

I did everything just the way she instructed. I felt her soft flesh through the folds of cloth. Not that I was trying to. I smelled her perfume, a light, delicate thing, like wild cherry pollen in early morning.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror from all angles. “Now, about our little visitor. I shall pass the handle of your staff under the wardrobe, and when Sir Grayfur runs out, you must slap your kerchief down over him.”

“Couldn’t I just jump on him?”

“Certainly not!” Without a backward glance, she walked over to the wardrobe with the heavy staff.

She had made it sound easy. But it wasn’t. It took several tries, because the little creature zigzagged quite a bit. But finally I had him wrapped in my best blue kerchief.

I looked at her. “What now?”

“Drop him out the window.”

I objected. “The fall won’t kill him. It is barely twenty feet, and there is six inches of soft snow on the ground.”

“Exactly.”

And so I did.

“Now give me your kerchief.” She took it to the backroom and washed it out. “You can pick it up some time …”

Oh, she was beautiful! I said, “Since you are now adequately rescued, may I have the first dance?”

“I would be honored, O mighty hunter.” She curtsied deep, then took my arm. We walked through the throng at the doorway, leaving the halberd on the floor, and let them make their wildest surmises.

Six weeks later Beatra and I were married and living at Horseshoe Manor.

WE HAD BEEN married a matter of days, when we both took a notion to arise very early on a certain morning in an attempt to view a strange phenomenon known as the “gods-eye.” This was a brilliant, starlike pinpoint of light, visible best early in the morning or in late evening, which arced briefly across the sky and then vanished.

The tiny bell sounded. I was already nearly awake, and I reached over and turned off the alarm. I looked briefly at the illuminated numbers on the chron: 5:30.

It was totally dark, and I could not make out Beatra’s form under the furs beside me. But she was there. Ah, she was there …

In the dark I heard the great hound scramble to his feet. “Not a sound, Goro,” I whispered. “Be a good fellow, and in a moment we will all go for a walk.” I heard a muffled whine and the swish of the tail wagging.

I eased out of bed, found my sandals and robe, and shuffled over to the massive shuttered windows. They groaned as I pulled them back. I peered through the iron gratings and beyond the cliff to the water. Horseshoe Bay reflected the stars like a mirror. The sky was clear. No moon. No clouds. I stared hard toward the northeast. Not. . .