Norman Spinrad

The individual trees were themselves of venerable age, their rough-barked trunks carved by nature into rich gar-goyle shapes, and topped with luxuriant dark green foli-age. They were spaced in stately, almost measured, intervals so that men might walk with relative ease through the groves while shielded from the sun in heavy, deep shadows. The undergrowth was primarily fems, low bushes, and patches of grass, along with mushrooms and other fungi. There was none of the crowding and purplish cancerous profusion of obscenely mutated tangle that choked the scattered patches of Borgravian radiation jungle, and made such places dire and unpenetrable sinkholes, wherein roamed beasts the very sight of which was enough to sour a strong man's stomach.

The trees of the Emerald Wood were genotypically pure; this forest had somehow survived the Time of Fire virtually untouched, the soil uncontanunated. The age of the forest was unknown; it was far older than Heldon itself, conceivably it had existed in this form even prior to the emergence of the true human genotype. Old wives'

tales had it that the human race had been bom in this forest.

49

This might be mere superstition, but it was fact that here, in the Emerald Wood, small bands of true men had huddled after the Fire, and slain whatever mutants were foolish enough to wander into the forest, and had finally been unified by Stal Held into the Kingdom of Heldon.

Generation by generation, the Helder had slowly expanded out of the forest, purifying the surrounding lowlands of mutation, until Heldon reached borders similar to those of modem times. Here too, Sigmark IV, last of the Helder kings, had fled during the Civil War, retreating as if by instinct into the ancestral heartland, where, legend had it, he had hidden the Great Truncheon of Held against the day when a pure specimen of the royal pedigree might once again wield the legendary weapon and reclaim the throne. Then Sigmark IV, his court, and the royal pedigree had disappeared into the mists of history.

Yes, the Emerald Wood was filled with legends that stretched back beyond the Fire and occupied a special place in the history and soul of Heldon. Feric felt an unabashed awe in this place. The glory of the past was palpable all around him in the legends of the Wood, in the glorious and sometimes somber history that had played itself out here, and in the very fact of the forest itself—an island of woodland that had passed uncontaminated through the Fire, that had spread its purity through the centuries over what was now Heldon, that was living promise that one day the forces of genetic purity would regain the whole world.

"Magnificent, is it not?" Bogel whispered.

Feric could only nod silently as the roadsteamer continued on into the depths of the lordly forest.

Not long after the sun had passed its zenith, the hostess broke out a lunch of black bread, cold sausage, and beer.

The roadsteamer was deep in the Wood now; the road wound through low, rolling, heavily wooded hills, where rabbit and an occasional deer could be observed as the passengers lunched. Feric glanced from time to time at his fellow passengers as he ate, though thus far no word had passed between them. Apparently, it was not the custom on Helder roadsteamers for strangers to force their atten-tions on each other—a welcome contrast to the boistrous and squalid hubbub on Borgravian transport.

The Helder on the^ steamer seemed a typical and, for the most part, robust group of true men. There was a 50

sturdy peasant family in their holiday best—cheery garments of white and red and yellow and blue, plain, but absolutely spotless. Several merchants wore richer if more solemn garb, two of them apparently traveling with their wives. There were in addition all sorts of respectable-looking men and women whose business could not be discerned. All in all, it was an altogether civilized and cultured-looking group, a by-no-means-exceptional cross section of the folk of Heldon, and a tribute, therefore, to the genetic nobility of the populace as a whole.

All seemed to draw spiritual enrichment from the deeply shadowed landscape through which the steamer passed; voices were hushed, even solemn, eyes did not long stray from the grand vistas available through the roadsteamer windows. The overwhelming presence of so much uncontaminated primeval life, the glorious history in which the Wood was steeped, produced what might be fairly called a mystical atmosphere. One would have to be a mutant of the lowest sort or a soulless Dom not to feel the spell of this place.

"I feel a great strength emanating from these woodlands, Bogel," Feric said quietly. "Here I experience a direct organic connection with the glory of our racial history. I can almost hear the voice of my genes singing the sagas of the ancestral past."