Chapter 4

The two-hundred pound señorita with the wart on her upper lip put a pot of black Cuban coffee and a pitcher of salted milk down beside the two chipped cups, leered at me in a way that might have been appealing thirty years before, and waddled back to the kitchen. I poured a cup, gulped half of it, and shuddered. In the street outside the cafe a guitar cried Estrellita.

“Okay, Foster,” I said. “Here’s what I’ve got: The first half of the book is in pot-hooks--I can’t read that. But this middle section: the part coded in regular letters--it’s actually encrypted English. It’s a sort of résumé of what happened.” I picked up the sheets of paper on which I had transcribed my deciphering of the coded section of the book, using the key that had been micro-engraved in the fake scratch on the back cover.

I read:

_For the first time, I am afraid. My attempt to construct the
communicator called down the Hunters upon me. I made such a shield
as I could contrive, and sought their nesting place._
_I came there and it was in that place that I knew of old, and it
was no hive, but a pit in the ground, built by men of the Two
Worlds. And I would have come into it, but the Hunters swarmed in
their multitudes. I fought them and killed many, but at last I fled
away. I came to the western shore, and there I hired bold sailors
and a poor craft, and set forth._

_In forty-nine days we came to shore in this wilderness, and there
were men as from the dawn of time, and I fought them, and when they
had learned fear, I lived among them in peace, and the Hunters have
not found this place. Now it may be that my saga ends here, but I
will do what I am able._

_The Change may soon come upon me; I must prepare for the stranger
who will come after me. All that he must know is in these pages.
And say I to him:_

_Have patience, for the time of this race draws close. Venture not
again on the Eastern continent, but wait, for soon the Northern
sailors must come in numbers into this wilderness. Seek out their
cleverest metal-workers, and when it may be, devise a shield, and
only then return to the pit of the Hunters. It lies in the plain,
50/10,000 parts of the girth of this(?) to the west of the Great
Chalk Face, and 1470 parts north from the median line, as I reckon.
The stones mark it well with the sign of the Two Worlds._

I looked across at Foster. “It goes on then with a blow-by-blow account of dealings with aborigines. He was trying to get them civilized in a hurry. They figured he was a god and he set them to work building roads and cutting stone and learning mathematics and so on. He was doing all he could to set things up so this stranger who was to follow him would know the score, and carry on the good work.”

Foster’s eyes were on my face. “What is the nature of the Change he speaks of?”

“He never says--but I suppose he’s talking about death,” I said. “I don’t know where the stranger is supposed to come from.”

“Listen to me, Legion,” Foster said. There was a hint of the old anxious look in his eyes. “I think I know what the Change was. I think he knew he would forget--”

“You’ve got amnesia on the brain, old buddy,” I said.

“--and the stranger is--himself. A man without a memory.”

I sat frowning at Foster. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Go on.”

“And he says that all that the stranger needs to know is there--in the book.”

“Not in the part I decoded,” I said. “He describes how they’re coming along with the road-building job, and how the new mine panned out--but there’s nothing about what the Hunters are, or what had gone on before he tangled with them the first time.”

“It must be there, Legion; but in the first section, the part written in alien symbols.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But why the hell didn’t he give us a key to that part?”

“I think he assumed that the stranger--himself--would remember the old writing,” Foster said. “How could he know that it would be forgotten with the rest?”

“Your guess is as good as any,” I said. “Maybe better; you know how it feels to lose your memory.”

“But we’ve learned a few things,” Foster said. “The pit of the Hunters--we have the location.”

“If you call this ‘ten thousand parts to the west of chalk face’ a location,” I said.

“We know more than that,” Foster said. “He mentions a plain; and it must lie on a continent to the east--”

“If you assume that he sailed from Europe to America, then the continent to the east would be Europe,” I said. “But maybe he went from Africa to South America, or--”

“The mention of Northern sailors--that suggests the Vikings--”

“You seem to know a little history, Foster,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of odd facts tucked away.”

“We need maps,” Foster said. “We’ll look for a plain near the sea--”

“Not necessarily.”

“--and with a formation called a chalk face to the east.”

“What’s this ‘median line’ business?” I said. “And the bit about ten thousand parts of something?”

“I don’t know. But we must have maps.”

“I bought some this afternoon,” I said. “I also got a dime-store globe. I figured we might need them. Let’s get out of this and back to the room, where we can spread out. I know it’s a grim prospect, but...” I got to my feet, dropped some coins on the oilcloth-covered table, and led the way out.

It was a short half block to the flea trap we called home. We kept out of it as much as we could, holding our long daily conferences across the street at the Novedades. The roaches scurried as we passed up the dark stairway to our not much brighter room. I crossed to the bureau and opened a drawer.

“The globe,” Foster said, taking it in his hands. “I wonder if perhaps he meant a ten-thousandth part of the circumference of the earth?”

“What would he know about--”

“Disregard the anachronistic aspect of it,” Foster said. “The man who wrote the book knew many things. We’ll have to start with some assumptions. Let’s make the obvious ones: that we’re looking for a plain on the west coast of Europe, lying--” He pulled a chair up to the scabrous table and riffled through to one of my scribbled sheets: “50/10,000s of the circumference of the earth--that would be about 125 miles--west of a chalk formation, and 3675 miles north of a median line...”