Liberator Of Jedd Part 13

Chapter Seventeen.

Two weeks pa.s.sed. A week of preparation and a week on the march. Blade, encapsuled in work, sleeping but two or three hours a day, was so snared by the flow of time that he forgot it. Jeddia was burned and he married the Child Princess Mitgu who, on their wedding night, proved no child after all. As dawn broke, Blade was near exhaustion and salved his conscience by admitting that a Jedd girl of ten was like a woman of thirty in Home Dimension. Mitgu had been a virgin, had bled copiously, but if she felt pain it in no way dimmed her ardor. And when she left him alone at last and he tried to sleep he was stricken with new head pains as the computer probed for him. The pains were fierce but short-lived. Lord L had missed him again.

This bright morning Blade, accompanied by Captains Gath and Kaven, had gone far ahead of the long column of trekking Jedds. They were nearing the valley mouth to the north, where the ascending terrain tunneled through a narrow gut and spread out in a broad and spreading plain. And there the way was barred by the s.h.i.+ning Gate.

Now, high on a crag, the three men stood and gazed, near blinded by the darling reflection of the sun on metal. Both Gath and Kaven were astounded and afraid at the sight. Blade was only astounded. He recognized at once that the gate, dam, wall or rampart, call it what you would, was of stainless steel. Half a mile across and some two hundred feet high, it blocked the valley mouth. There was no sign of life on or near it. Desolate, towering, brooding, it s.h.i.+mmered in the heat and mirrored the valley in itself.

Some of the desolation touched Blade and by the alchemy of time and place was turned to loneliness. It was his first leisure in weeks and now it turned sour, he sensed the beginning of an end. What the end would be he could not guess. He recognized the pattern as before, the ever upward terrain, the sense of forward progress, of wandering through the evolutionary process with eons compressed into days and weeks.

None of this could he share with his companions. No more than he could explain to them that the dam, or wall, or gate was of steel and so the Kropes who had built it must be an industrial people. There must lie, beyond that s.h.i.+ning barrier, a highly sophisticated civilization.

Gath said, "And now, Sire Blade, now that we have reached the s.h.i.+ning Gate, what?"

Kaven peered at Blade anxiously, the same question in his eyes. He was awe-stricken and afraid and trying not to show it. His sword arm, still heavily bandaged, was in a sling fas.h.i.+oned by Blade.

Blade did not answer for a moment. His eye was on another crag, a jagged, bent needle of stone that reared far overhead and, he was certain, would overlook the s.h.i.+ning barrier. After studying it for a minute he turned to them with a grim smile.

"Don't ask me riddles. You have never seen a Krope?"

Both men said they had not. No Jedd had actually ever seen a Krope. In long years past a few exploring parties had been sent up the valley to the wall. None had ever returned, No word had ever been sent. The s.h.i.+ning Gate spoke in silence. Stay clear.

Blade nodded. "They why ask me? I know as little as you Jedds. But I intend to find out" He pointed to the hook of stone outlined far over them. "From that vantage I can see over the wall."

Both Jedds gazed up, craning their necks, then said in disbelief, "It cannot be done, Sire. No man could climb that."

"I can. I will. But it will take me all day, and in the meantime here are orders. Get back to the column and see they are carried out at once."

When they had gone he made his preparations for the climb. He lay on his belly and studied the terrain for an hour, formulating and discarding various attacks on the crag. For a short period disillusionment set in, this task would make Sir Edmund Hilary, the great mountaineer, himself quail, then Blade chuckled and told himself that he had no choice. Press on. He sensed that his time in this Dimension X was growing short and he still had his job to complete. It was but half done. He had made tools, or had them made, and had explored the mountains as they trekked between the ranges. They were indeed rich in every mineral known to Home Dimension. Blade had tested samples and sealed the knowledge gained away in his memory file for Lord L to unlock and record. And yet there was more to do, he must press on and on, learning all he could, until this mission came to a natural and inevitable end. When that would be he could not know.

The sun was near to setting when at last Blade lay exhausted on the upjutting needle of rock. He had done it and had cheated Death a dozen times in the doing. Now he clung to the smooth gray surface, his fingers and toes digging into crevices, and stared out over the steel wall. With the sun behind him he could see well and clearly.

The vast plain stretched out to infinity. Here and there it was dotted by small houses, also seemingly made of steel, and beyond the houses he saw row on row on row of what looked like huge factory buildings. Yet there were no chimneys, no smoke. And nothing moved. No sound came. It was like an industrial town deserted, a wasteland barren of people, lacking any slightest human touch.

Yet near the s.h.i.+ning barrier itself there was movement Near one end of the wall, closest to Blade, was a large structure built of the same metal as the gate. Through its doors the figures constantly came and went. Blade frowned. If they were men, and they moved and looked like men, they were the strangest he had ever seen. They were made of metal and they glistened in the last rays of sunlight f ailing over the great wall.

Blade frowned and considered. Then he had it, given the hint by the very faint awkwardness of articulation. These Kropes, if they were Kropes, moved with an arthritic stiffness.

Robots!

Blade studied the figures for a long time, checking and doublechecking, then accepted it as fact. He was up against robots. Mechanical and electronic men.

That meant a central control. Blade took the risk of standing on his crag and, shading his eyes with a hand, sought to find again what he in one fleeting second thought he had seen. Something floating in the clouds far away over the plain.

He did see it. Saw it for a microsecond before the low clouds closed in again. The very tip of a tower, the spire of a tall building far away, the upthrust lance of a skysc.r.a.per that took his breath away. Then it was gone, wrapped in moist clouds, but not before he had made a rapid triangulation and worked it out in his head. He slipped down to his rock again and did the computation over and did not believe himself. And yet he had seen it.

The tower he had seen must be twice as high, plus a little, as the Empire State Building!

Central control.

He shook off his awe and turned to tactics, to practical things. And was in luck. Within five minutes he had located a possible way around the steel barrier. The Kropes were careless, or their control inefficient, for at the end of the wall nearest Blade, where the wall ab.u.t.ted on the sheer cliffside of the valley, erosion had taken a minute toll. But it was enough. Centuries of rain and wind had so eaten away the living rock that a narrow and shallow trench had been dredged between the end of the wall and the cliff. One resolute man might worm and squeeze his way through. Blade marked it well and began his descent, thankful for the moon that would rise soon. It would take Mm nearly all night to get down from his perch.

It lacked two hours of dawn when he rejoined the Jedds. The orders he had given Gath and Kaven had been carried out to the letter. The main body of the column had camped far back in the valley, protected by its twisting and turning course, and out of sight of the s.h.i.+ning Gate.

Kaven and Gath, along with Captains Crofta and Holferne, met Blade a mile north of the camp as had been arranged. They were accompanied by a few Jedd soldiers carrying torches. Blade fell into step with the captains.

"Put out all torches before we round the next bend," he told Crofta. "For there we will be in sight of the wall."

When Crofta had left to execute the order, Blade looked at Gath. "All is done as I wished?"

"It has been done, Sire. Not without difficulty. We had to kill several of the Api before the others would obey."

"That is no matter. And Nizra? The Wise One? How is he taking it?"

Kaven laughed. "In silence, Sire. He sits in his iron cage, with that huge melon head of his sunken low, and will say not a word."

Blade smiled. "I can understand that. You have not allowed him to be tormented?"

Gath shook his head. "No, Sire, though it has not been easy. I have had to station a guard around his cage to keep the people from stoning him and poking sharp sticks into his cage."

For a moment Blade made no comment, then he said, "Let us go and have a look, then. It will be dawn soon."

The little party halted at the next bend of the valley. False dawn tossed pearly shadows on the cliffs to their left as they sought concealment among the rocks and boulders littering the valley floor. Blade kept Gath and Kaven with him.

From their vantage they could look straight down the valley to the s.h.i.+ning Wall. Just in front of them was a narrow cut, and beyond it the valley floor ran fairly level to the wall. Crofta's engineers had erected a fence of sharpened iron stakes across the cut and beyond this, between it and the wall itself, were half the Api captives. They milled about in confusion or sat in groups and chittered in their high feminine voices. Nearest the wall, in a small iron cage so constructed as to be carried on poles, sat the Wise One, Nizra. In the faint light Blade could make out, barely, the slumped figure of the former High Minister, the great head sunken forward on the scrawny chest. The Api, for reasons of their own, stayed well away from the cage.

Guinea pigs, Blade thought. They were expendable. He had a moment of pity for the brute Api, who had only followed orders, and no pity at all for Nizra. By his orders Ooma had been raped, tortured and flung into the charnel pit.

The light grew steadily. Soon they would know. Blade, watching Nizra intently, saw the big head come erect as the man gazed around. Nizra knew what was happening and why he was there. He also knew he was being watched. As a first ray of sunlight lanced into the valley and splotched golden on the cliff walls, the Wise One lifted his puny fist and shook it at Blade and the other watchers. He knew. He was defiant to the last.

Full dawn. Broad daylight and nothing happened. Blade frowned and stared at the glistening steel wall that dammed the end of the valley. Could he have been so wrong about the danger? It had been a hundred years or more since the last Jedd exploring party had been this way. Things could have changed and, It was over before Blade and his party could see what really happened. A huge ball of blinding white light, shaming the sun, rolled out from the steel wall and burst over the Api and the iron cage. It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. For a moment the morning air was tainted with the harsh acridity of scorched flesh, then even that was gone.

Everything was gone. Nizra, the iron cage, the Api, all had vanished. Not even bones remained. There was, where they had lived but a second before, just the faintest trace of scorching, of burnt earth, nothing else. Blade nodded to himself and drew farther back into concealment. Some sort of ray. Disintegration ray. Control, somewhere beyond the steel wall, probably in the tower Blade had spotted, was not asleep.

And now Blade knew. Knew what he must do. Alone.

Gath and Kaven, at his side, were stricken with fear and awe. He did not blame them. They were the bravest of the Jedds, but this thing they had just seen was too much for them to cope with. Blade smiled at them and smote Gath on a shoulder.

"It will be all right. I will see to it. Now give the order to turn back. Quietly, and stay out of sight of the wall."

The journey back to the Jedd camp was a somber one. Little was said. Blade, his mind crowded with plans, stalked on ahead and the captains, sensing his mood, left him alone.

He did not go at once to the tent where Mitgu waited. Instead he sent for servants and was barbered and washed and arrayed in fresh clothes. When at last he entered the royal tent, the little Empress, for Mitgu was now Jeddock and Blade her Regent, was anxiously awaiting him. With her first words Blade knew that the servants' grapevine had been at work. He never ceased to marvel at its efficiency. Anything he did, or had done to him, was known immediately among the people. Sometimes before he had even had a chance to weigh and judge the matter.

Mitgu, her naked golden body gleaming beneath a near-transparent coverlet, stretched her arms to him and laughed in relief. "Sire, Sire! You have come to me. I, I feared. I have been told an awful tale of, "

He stood tall beside her pallet, looking down at this miniature beauty, his child-wife, with a half frown and half smile. "Put it out of your mind, Empress. Servants lie, and when they cannot think of a lie they make one up."

She put a small hand on his brawny leg. "Do not call me Empress when we are alone! You promised. I am Mitgu. Your wife, Sire, who adores you. And do not belittle my servants." She laughed again. "They are stupid and lack imagination to invent the tale I have heard. Is Nizra really dead? Gone and nothing left, not even a corpse?"

Blade nodded. "That is true."

She nodded in satisfaction. "Then it is not all bad, this thing I hear. We are rid of Nizra, he cannot plot against us now."

Blade sat down beside her on the pallet. "That also is true. Now enough, do not concern yourself with these matters. It is my province and I will deal with it. And I did not come here to discuss such affairs."

Mitgu showed her little white teeth behind a scarlet mouth. "Then why did you come, Sire?"

"For this." Blade caught her to him and kissed her. Her slim arms wound around his neck and her lips opened beneath his and her tongue flickered into his mouth. In that moment he thought of Ooma, they were much alike in their loveplay, and he was glad when the urgency of his desire took over and banished the shade of the dead girl.

In a very few moments the tiny Empress also was caught up in the toils of pa.s.sion. She was, like all Jedd women, highly flammable. She pulled Blade down with amazing strength and sprawled atop him, dwarfed by his size, but pressing every inch of her tender golden flesh against his. Blade teetered on the brink of pleasure. Mitgu caressed and manipulated him intimately, not speaking but uttering little sounds of satisfaction as she kissed his body. She suckled him briefly but near to bursting point, then leaped astride him and impaled herself with a loud groan of pleasure. Blade dared not move lest he end it too soon. Mitgu rode him down the course with a delightful frenzy and when at last it was beyond bearing they both shuddered and cried aloud in cataclysmic o.r.g.a.s.m. Then Mitgu, as was her custom, gave him one moist kiss and fell off to sleep.

Blade rested for a few moments, then left the pallet without rousing her. His head pained him slightly and he knew the signs. Lord L was searching again with the computer. He stool for a moment at the tent flap, looking back at the slumbering naked figure of his Golden Princess. He knew he would never see her again. After one last look he left the tent.

He went straight to his command tent and summoned all the captains into council. Then, with Gath at his right hand and Kaven at his left, he said what had to be said, told them what was to be. The council lasted for more than three hours and it was a sober and chastened group of captains that shook Blade's hand as they filed out. Only Gath remained, on Blade's request.

When they were alone Gath said at once, "I will go with you into the land of the Kropes, Sire. I have served you well and it is my right."

Blade went back to sit behind the field desk he had made. He pointed to a stool. Gath moved his swordbelt for comfort and sat down, scowling at his Sire.

"You will obey orders," Blade told him. "It is true that you have served me well. None better. So do not spoil it now. I have great need of you, Gath. As the little Empress will have when I am gone. I, "

Gath would have interrupted, but Blade hurried on. "It may be that I will return. I cannot know the truth of this. But I do not think so, and if I am right the Jedds, and most of all the Empress Mitgu, will need your wisdom and strength. You heard how I spoke to the council just now, you saw them all agree to follow you in my absence. You will be Regent, Gath, and of this moment you must begin to think like one."

The captain glowered and toyed with his swordhilt. "I would go with you, Sire. Let Kaven be Regent, or Crofta. Or Bucelus or Chardu or Holferne. Why must I be chosen?"

His temper flared for a moment and Blade leaned across the desk. "Because I say so! Because, d.a.m.n it, I, "

Blade broke off and got himself under control. He smiled. "This is no time for friends to argue, Gath. Listen tome: "One man, and one man only, has a chance to live beyond the s.h.i.+ning Gate. I am that man. I know that, Gath, and cannot explain how I know because there is no time. And even if I wasted a year in the explaining you would still not understand, "

"Am I so stupid, then?" Gath muttered and would not look at Blade.

"Not stupid," Blade soothed, "but you are a Jedd. And I am of another world, another place and another time. I tell you this now, at last, in all truth." Blade raised his right hand and closed his great fist. "In a sense, Gath, and for this purpose, I am the avatar!"

He thought that Gath shrunk a little away from him, but the blue eyes met his own with a steady gaze. After a moment Gath inclined his head.

"I will accept that, Sire. You are the avatar and it is not for me to question. I will obey you in all things, as best I can."

With that he drew his sword and laid it on the desk with the point toward his own heart. Blade did likewise. Gath placed his hand where the swords joined and Blade laid his hand atop it.

"I charge you," Blade said, "with the care of the Empress Mitgu. My wife. Not until I return, if I do, are you free of this charge. And if J do not return you must serve as Regent as long as she wishes it. In time, if the events serve and all goes well, it may be that she will take you for husband."

Gath looked shocked.

Blade chuckled. "It is not beyond belief, my friend. As you will see. And now enough of this, you know what to do?"

"I do, Sire."

Blade leaned back in his chair. "Repeat it to me then."

Gath told it off by rote. "If in two days you have not come back to us I am to drive the remaining Api to the s.h.i.+ning Gate and see what happens. If they are destroyed as before I know that you have failed, that you have been slain or made captive by the Kropes, and I am to turn about and lead the Jedds back down the valley. I am to go as far south as possible, beyond the ruins of Jeddia, and found a new city among the ancient temples left there by my forefathers. I am to advise and aid the little Empress in ruling the Jedds."

Blade nodded. "And if the Api are not destroyed? If the ball of flame does not destroy them?"

"I will know that you have succeeded and I will lead my people beyond the s.h.i.+ning wall, through the narrow pa.s.sage of which you spoke, or find a way to open the gate, and so the Jedds will claim the land of the Kropes and live there and, in time, or so you say, Sire, we will come to know all the secrets of these Kropes."

It was well enough. Blade gave a few final orders and then took his leave of Gath. He felt suddenly very tired and much in need of sleep. And the pains in his head, though minor, were persistent.

As Blade sprawled on his cot he told a servant. "You will awaken me the moment the sun goes down."

He slept.

Chapter Eighteen.

Blade was traveling light. For weapons he had only his short iron sword and a dagger. He carried neither food nor water. He waited for an hour after full darkness, then made his way through the narrow winze that had eroded past the end of the steel wall. The way was tortuous and he was sc.r.a.ped and bleeding from a dozen minor abrasions when he emerged on the Krope side of the wall. He sought safety in the shadows at the foot of the cliff and took a breather and his bearings. And knew at once that something was wrong, or, from his viewpoint, right.

Except for the shadows where he now lurked, the great wall was lighted clear across the valley. He could see no fixtures, no light standards, nothing physical, yet the light was there. A misty soft radiance lacking any glare, yet showing up every detail. Blade smiled a bit grimly. Transmission of power without wires. They were working on it now back in Home Dimension.

He studied the large metal building. It was well lit, but now stood in silence and with no movement of any sort. No sound, no sign of life, only the eerie, brooding loneliness. Blade began to understand. He waited another ten minutes, then stalked into the light, his outward mien bold enough and his spine cold. If the ball of fire rolled now, if he had guessed wrong, Silence. Nothing. Blade approached the metal house and peered through a window. They were in there, the robots, and they were motionless, frozen, caught in strange att.i.tudes when the power had failed.

Failed? Or had it been cut off deliberately? Blade thought it must be the latter. He had just bet his life on it. He was awaited.

There was a full moon. It s.h.i.+mmered up over the horizon, a great golden orb in a cloudless sky, and against it Blade saw the gleaming spear of the high-rearing tower he had glimpsed from the crag. He began walking toward it.

He trudged in a silence and a desolation he had never known before; not for a little time did he come to realize that the aching solitude was as much in his own heart as in the forsaken landscape. He thought of his dead Ooma and willed himself not to think of her. The golden image of Mitgu leaped to his mind and that he also banished. His head pained and he began to sweat copiously. On and on he stalked, past the soundless factories and the empty homes, though he could see robot figures motionless in them both, and at last he came to where the land moved away toward the horizon in an endless belt of slow motion.

Blade halted and wiped his face and neck. He was drowning in sweat. His vision was fuzzy. He stared at the moving earth, then laughed harshly at himself. It was a moving walk, a level escalator six feet wide, moving toward the s.h.i.+ning tower over which the full moon now hung like a yellow lantern.

He did not step on the moving walk at once. New pain lanced his head and he doubled up with another pain in his belly. Sweat cascaded down his big body. When the gut pain had gone, Blade straightened and, with his fingers, explored his groin and armpits. They were there, the soft swell, the beginning mushy lumps. Buboes. He had mistaken the headaches! It was not the computer searching for him.

Blade had the plague.

His nostrils tickled and he put a finger to his nose. It came away slightly stained with blood. The Yellow Death.

For one moment he knew terror as he had never known it before. Fear scourged him until his knees trembled and he could not breathe; and his throat and chest were stuffed with a noisome mist that choked him. For that instant he was a beaten man, then he breathed deep, stared at the tower and stepped on the moving sidewalk. He was not yet dead and there remained a task to complete. And there was, for him, a trifle of hope. Hope the Jedds could not know. Blade had a chance. A bare chance.

As soon as he stepped on the walk it speeded up. Now it carried him toward the looming tower at a great rate. He was right. He was awaited.

It was a quarter of an hour before he reached the foot of the tower. As he rode toward it Blade studied it with appreciation and awe. It was of the same s.h.i.+ning metal as the wall across the valley, but here mere utilitarianism had been forsaken for beauty. As an aesthetic concept it had the just-rightness of perfection, in that Blade could not have imagined it any different. It stair-stepped up in ma.s.sive beauty and was lost in small, moist clouds newly formed about the spire. The tower was, he reflected, very nearly a mile high.

The moving walk slowed and stopped opposite a tall arched entrance. Blade left the walk and went into the tower, past robot guards and attendants, past men and women and children, all robots, all frozen into workaday att.i.tudes. There could have been no warning, Blade thought. These robots had been cut off in the midst of life. And yet they were not dead in the real sense. They waited.