Nightmare journey

worship him?”
    “As much as you have for Lady Nature.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Books.”
    “Not recountings of old myths, but books ancient enough to give you a firsthand picture?”
    Tedesco said, “Yes, old enough.”
    “They were serious?”
    “They were.”
    Jask looked toward the crab.
    It kicked, dying.
    “Then they were wrong,” Jask said.
    Tedesco seemed interested. “How so?”
    “Can't you see?”
    “Tell me.”
    Jask shrugged. “It seems evident to me that this creature was not meant to be worshipped, but loathed.”
    The six, spine-covered legs of the overturned crab kicked more feebly, like the legs of a lazy cyclist.
    “You think that-” Tedesco began.
    Jask interrupted him, nodded toward the defeated beast and said, “You can't possibly say that such a thing was part of Lady Nature's plan.”
    “No.”
    Jask pointed at the beast. “That thing is a perversion of Nature, a random mutation without ecological function.” He shuddered and said, “I esped its mind before you came down. It's terribly vicious, blindly violent.”
    Tedesco began to laugh, his rifle slipping away from the dying crab. He hugged himself, tears of mirth rolling from the corners of his eyes, down his dark cheeks, to get caught like crystal pieces in his thick beard.
    “What's the matter?” Jask inquired, perplexed.
    Tedesco turned, unable to answer him, and he started up the winding stairs, leaning against the metal wall.
    “I don't see anything funny,” Jask said.
    That only set the bruin laughing harder than ever, and they had to stop while he bent over, holding his furry belly and cackling like a lunatic.
    Jask decided it was best not to say anything further. He was angry at Tedesco for taking the whole affair so lightly, but he did not want to lose his temper.
    Two-thirds of the way up the stairs, Tedesco turned and said, “What did you imagine that beast was?”
    “Their god,” Jask said, without hesitation.
    “Jesus?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought as much!” the bruin roared. He started up the stairs again, chuckling in a more restrained manner now.
    Jask thought his companion's behavior was juvenile, though he did not say so. He did not feel like complaining about anything after such a narrow escape from the pagan god.
    17
    AN hour before noon on the sixteenth day after they had departed from the meadow, Jask and Tedesco encountered three espers who had been waiting for them for more than a week. Climbing the major footpath through the Ashtokoman Hills, which marked the end of the Chen Valley Blight, only an hour or two from civilized lands, they rounded a bend and saw the brightly painted gypsy wagon, the horse grazing peacefully by the side of the road, and the three strangers who had anticipated their arrival.
    Welcome, the trio radiated in unison. We mean to be friends.
    In the thirteen days since they had killed the giant crab, Jask and Tedesco had come across many unusual creatures, many a dangerous surprise. They had fought off, three different times, marauding bands of man-sized lizards that could walk on their hind feet for short distances in imitation of mutated human beings; one of these impersonators had nearly gotten close enough to gut Tedesco with its razor-edged claws before they understood that it was not an intelligent being, but a vicious predator. They were fortunate to escape the ubiquitous arms of a quick-flowing ameboid creature fully as large as a house, which trapped them in the shattered walls and blind alleyways of a crumbling village where no one had lived since the Last War. At night they were set upon repeatedly by perambulating plants that could spin webs of entrapment as cleverly as any spider. But neither of them could have been more surprised when the three mutated human espers approached them along the dusty footpath, smiling.
    We came to warn you, they 'pathed.
    “Of what?” Tedesco inquired.
    News of your escape from the Highlands of Caul was radioed across the Blight to the Pures of Potest-Amon Enclave. You were not expected to survive the journey. But on the off chance that you might, patrols were established on the higher hills, just outside the Blight. Pures wait for you, assisted in their vigil by other men who fear espers as much as their so-holy brothers.
    “Who are you three?” Jask asked. He supposed they were trustworthy, because they were as much outcasts as he and Tedesco, yet he did not want to give his allegiance too easily.
    Each of the strangers 'pathed something about itself. Indeed, in