To Conquer Chaos by John Brunner Page B

find?”
    “I’m convinced that people are still living in the barrenland!” the Duke snapped. “Think it out, Yan! We’ve learned from clues dropped by Granny Jassy that part at least of the barrenland was created deliberately, to serve as a quarantine area around some source of danger in the middle—correct?”
    Yanderman shrugged and nodded.
    “In that case, we don’t have to think of the barrenland as a natural desert with no resources at all. We’ve established that there are streams flowing out from it, which are drinkable when they emerge, so we’ll manage for water—our worst single problem. Fuel—well, this isn’t a long march, is it? A slow one, certainly, but it’s summer! And consider this, too.” He leaned on the corner of his big table.
    “We know beyond doubt that the things from the barrenland are coming in smaller numbers than they used to. I’m sure this isn’t accident. If they were spawning and breeding in the barrenland, you’d expect them to multiply! No, I suspect that there are people living in the middle of the barrenland: a party of volunteers—or their descendants, by now—charged with preventing the things ’ access.” Again he swiped at the annoying fly, missing it the third time. “And the diminishing plague of things here at Lagwich is a measure of their relative success.”
    His eyes blazed at Yanderman, who moved uncomfortably on his chair. Foolish or not, it was a grand design to re-establish contact with such heroes. And hearing Duke Paul speak of it was enough, surely, to convert the most cautious audience. Maybe it could be done. It would certainly be magnificently audacious to try it …
    The Duke’s hand flashed through the air and closed this time around the fly, squashing it. He glanced down at his palm before wiping off the messy remains, and in that pose he stiffened. Yanderman looked at his handsome profile, and likewise froze.
    After a moment, he said, “Sir …” His voice sounded peculiarly cracked and squeaky.
    “Yes?” The Duke didn’t look up.
    “Sir, there’s a patch of green among your hair!” Yanderman leapt to his feet and came close. “It looks like the mould which was on Ampier!”
    The Duke nodded and held out his hand with the fly on it. Yanderman tore his eyes away from the deadly fuzz he had seen on his chiefs head and examined the insect. On its hairy legs, quite distinctly visible, was more of the same green mould.
    Two and two came together in Yanderman’s mind. The fly had circled the Duke’s night-couch—on which Ampier had been laid! He strode over to it and whipped aside the cushions.
    There, perhaps where a drop of Ampier’s blood had fallen: there, where at night the Duke’s head rested, was a smear of the alien greenness, concealed to the casual glance by seeming to form part of the pattern on a multi-coloured blanket, but now blazing out at Yanderman so fiercely he felt its shape imprinted on his very brain, like a branding-iron.
    “Bring me a medic,” the Duke said after a small eternity. “And—Yan! Tell nobody else! Do you understand? Tell nobody else!”

XI

    “Of course I believe you, even if no one else does!” Idris insisted. But a little imp of doubt rode snickering on the words, and Conrad’s heart sank.
    “No, you don’t,” he said. “You think this is just another of my stories. I’ve told you so many tales you think I can’t keep my life and my dreams apart any longer.”
    In her eyes he could read that his guess was correct, but he had no chance to hear her confirm or deny it, for at that moment the kitchen door of the house, which she had been holding ajar while speaking to him, was snatched fully open.
    “Idris!” Her mother’s bony-knuckled hand fell on the girl’s shoulder and pulled her back. “If I’d known you were talking to Conrad I wouldn’t have let you come to the door!”
    Past the woman’s acid face Conrad saw the interior of the kitchen. There was a man standing there,