Warlock

up in places and plunge down in others, to form seas where seas had never been and to gobble up mountains that had once stood tall. In the holocaust, some eight hundred years ago, mankind's world was not the only thing which was fractured: his society tumbled as well, shattered like a glass vase falling down a ladder, rung by rung. And then the Scopta'-mimas had gone away, satisfied in their own way, and had left mankind to struggle back from total destruction.
        
        In the few cities which survived the war even partially intact, the concept “alien” and anything even remotely associated with it became a cause for anger and righteous indignation. All those citizens who had taken advantage of the surgeons and the genetic engineers to mold themselves into the images of off-Earth races became the scapegoats for all of the fallen society's ills. It did not matter to the “normal” citizens that only one alien race had warred with man. To them, anything different than the standard human form was something set aside for derision, for the bleeding off of rage.
        
        The race-changers were murdered in their beds, executed in public hangings, thrown into pits by the tens of thousands and burned alive to the delighted howls of “normal” men.
        
        But here in this city, there were a large number of the seven-foot, white-furred race-changers. Most of them were the children of parents who had had themselves surgically altered. Because they were born to their mutation, they were stronger than their parents had been in new bodies, more sure of themselves, quicker to use the power their great hulks provided them. Everything the genetic engineers had promised their parents they would be-they were. And they fought back.
        
        More ephemeral strains of race-changers, patterning themselves after ethereal sprites and delicate other-world beings fell to the rage of the normal men. They perished in days, were sought out where they ran to hide and were mutilated horribly.
        
        But the white giants fought back viciously, unsparingly, with a glee that seemed inherent in their form. They won the partially ruined city for their own, only after bringing it to further damage. But at last they drove the surviving “normals” into the open lands to forage for themselves in the shifting crust of the earth where life could not be maintained for long. And even though they trusted to the earth to devour their enemies, the white-furred ones took the precaution of erecting the onyx force walls about the city, a permanent barrier against a well-laid plan from those who had been dispossessed.
        
        And centuries had passed.
        
        The yellow sky, swirling with dust in the high altitudes, settled slowly into green, then blue again.
        
        Birds and animals began to flourish once more, though some were different than before.
        
        The lifespan of a white-furred mutant was nearly a hundred and fifty years, but still they began to relinquish their hold upon science and information. Superstitions grew up around the eternal machinery of the city which never needed attending and which was built into the rock strata far out of sight. True knowledge began to disappear and was soon only a dim memory. Only in the last ten years had attempts been made to re-discover what they had lost.
        
        They reproduced irregularly and with some bad results so that their number was kept near thirty, plus or minus half a dozen from decade to decade. This made for a small force to unearth the knowledge of the past, but they were dedicated and made headway.
        
        Then the Oragonians had come. Berlarak's people had greeted them openly, eagerly-and that had been their gravest error. Their brothers and sisters were killed by the Oragonian marksmen, and the nine who survived that massacre were forced into the lowest level of the city by way of hidden passages. The lowest level was sealed off from the ones above it by rubble and collapsed elevator shafts, so that they knew they would not be bothered there unless the Oragonians discovered their secret way to escape. Here they had remained for some months, hoping for a chance at revenge, even as the Oragonians had swelled their complement to four hundred men within the city.
        
        “Four hundred!” Richter gasped.
        
        “And that is why we require your aid,” Berlarak