Markham didn't care. To him the rumblings ahead were an obstacle to his first true chance to learn something real, something physical, about Hell. He had heard enough conflicting tales and mad hypotheses. He wanted data.
So he carefully duck-walked through the low, thorned bushes, waiting for a sign that they could make a break ... And the world split.
To their right a vibrant line ran straight down from the clouds, white-hot and sky-searing. It was like slicing a canvas, peeling back the rustic scene and exposing beneath it the crude cardboard backing. The air. was scooped away from the scratch-line and behind was ... nothing. White void. Endlessness.
It happened in seconds-soundless, without tremor of warning. Markham watched as smoky white nothingness spilled from the cut in reality. He started to get to his feet -and noise crashed about him, swarmed over his back, hammered his ears. He whirled. To his left the trees were broken off, leveled, bare ragged stumps. Beyond them lay an open muddy field. On it masses of men and animals clashed in crazed final combat.
A glistening ebony elephant trampled bronzed warriors into the. mud, snorting and bellowing.
Arrows found targets, mortar rounds burst among clotted knots of struggling figures.
And among the hooting of victory and hopeless moans of defeat strode white blocky structures, oblivious to the chaos about them, never deviating in their slow stately glide. Beneath them an invisible weight slammed warriors to the mud and ground them into it, spattering blood in the air. Behind them, a purpling wake choked the men and woman who had survived their massive passage.
Markham spun back to the right.
The seam that split Hell widened. Milky stuff diffused from it. He felt a cold bristling at the back of his neck and knew the cascading torrent was death, and perhaps worse.
To the right, the battle roared and hooted and waxed bloody.
"Russell! Run!"
The Englishman stood transfixed. "Wait - I've seen something like this before. Give the insect a chance to -"
One of the massive blocks dimpled. A dark brown wave spread from a single point in its hard sheen. It wavered.
Markham frowned, fighting down his impulse to flee. "Is that...?"
"Yes," Russell said professorially, "the little woman. She explained to me that these 'Hoar Gods' can fend off attacks from large, slow-moving things, like man or beast. And also small, fast-moving arrows or bullets or the like.
But not a small, slow-moving creature, she said - such as herself."
"Sounds like they-have limited their response time windows."
The angular shimmering thing turned, as if wounded. The battle around it quieted. Fighters stopped, lowered spears and bulky guns to watch the gravid chalk-mountain death.
Markham waved his hand at the panorama, where only moments before there had been deep woods. "This battle, what...?"
"These things simply appear suddenly, huge armies materializing, dying, then vanishing. I've watched them from afar. And there are those levitating white objects, too," Russell said, "I've seen them before, at various foolish contests. Perhaps they seek out such events."
"Look, let's-"
The muddy field stretched far into the distance, and above the fray floated at least a dozen of the milky oblong tilings. They had been coasting among the carnage, but now as the nearest block veered from its path, crippled by the spreading brown stain, so did its companions. They converged on their wounded brother.
Markham heard-but in his mind, not his ears-the rasping voice of the wasp-woman. "I go! Am eaten! Go you!"
The split sky to his right yawned larger.
One of the effervescing white blocks began to shower the struggling ranks below with quick bursts of sprinkling, fine-grained amber light Again came the woooom and again an answering thunder roll, this time from the forest on the next hill.
"Dammit, run!"
He could see a wedge of the amber glow projecting toward them.
He took two steps and a something burst inside his head.
White.
Light.
-liquid rainbows sparkling
-booming musk melody
-impaled on shrill sharp shafts of vinegar
-granite flowers imploding
-slide and splash and wrenching fire-pain chorus
He sat down heavily amid mud and crushed, bloodstained grass.
Russell cried, "What's wrong?"
"I..." Markham did not know how to describe the sudden avalanche of blistering sensation and swarming, scattershot knowledge that had rushed through him.
"Get up!"
"I know who they are-the white things."
"Demons?"
"No. Aliens."
"Seems a fine distinction, here."
The wasp-woman had somehow done her deadly work. The radiance from the wobbling alien rippled, shifted colors-and it abruptly crashed into a phalanx of troops, throwing bodies in high arcs.
"Let's go to the right, where the thunder was," Markham yelled over the rolling din of battle.
"The wasp-woman-"
"She's gone. Shell be a dog in her next incarnation."
Russell ran after Markham, who was ducking among the trees at a steady lope, trying to avoid the slabs of amber luminescence that rained down. "How do you know that?"
"I have no idea. Those aliens projected a lot of information directly into my memory. But it's not an experience I want to repeat.'
A rank of women carrying pikes spilled pell-mell by them, shouting in some strange tongue.
"They're aliens," Markham panted, "not just from another planet, but somehow from another space-time."
"Why then these battles?"
"They're using them. For training. A sort of military exercise."
Russell ducked around a bewildered, dazed man with an antique pistol, its charge spent. "More madness."
"No, there's a point. Those white things are living creatures. They test their war games here, with human cannon fodder. They come through the edge of the time trap, visit Hell, and go back."
"To where?"
"The images..." Markham shook his head to clear it. He wanted to stop, sift through the myriad sensations be had received from one brief brush with the amber glow.
Men and women came scattering pell-mell through the forest now, trying to escape the white gliding aliens. They still carried on their mindless fighting even as they fled. A short fat woman in a toga and carrying a crude iron short-sword came at Markham and he dodged her awkward thrust. He grabbed the cuffed hilt from her and tripped her with his left foot. She squawked and cursed and Markham ran on, holding the weapon. The sword was heavy and ineptly made, but he felt better to have it.
"There's a glimmering over there," Russell called. Markham saw through the trees a curious wan blue glow and headed that way. The time trap might give off Doppler-shifted light, if his suspicions about the space-time singularity were right. Blue light would be up-shifted from some other place, maybe from the land of the Hoar Gods.
"They're here to practice on us, then?" Russell asked, panting heavily. His suit flapped with his loping stride and he had not even loosened his tie.
"I got the impression we were vermin as far as they cared. Maybe they're pest exterminators from Alpha Centauri."
"The Devil's not an anthropocentric twit. then," Russell wheezed. "Makes Him, or It, more believable. I wonder if Hell is built to a galactic scale?"
"Let's go see," Markham said, trotting down an incline toward the shifting zone ahead. "There's a dead spot over there."
"For once I agree with your empirical approach. There is so much structure to Hell, there must be a larger design. Something planned to-"