Undying World Part 8

Harsh laughter. The same voice said, "Who are you to ask for a parley? You who are as good as dead or in the pits. But I say this-surrender and come with us to Jantor and we will not harm you."

Blade smiled to himself and said, "I do not like the sound of your invitation. But I would have a parley with Jantor later on. Answer me this-does he know of the child Alixe?"

"He knows, and he has sworn to slice off your baby-maker and choke you with it."

Blade winced. Jantor was capable of it. He said: "Tell Jantor that I had no part in that. The slave, Sart, is guilty."

"But you protect him and you are responsible for him under law. You know all this, man Blade."

"Yes. I know. I could not prevent it. But I do not wish to speak of that now. Tell Jantor that I am after the secret of the power. I will get it. Tell him that if he bides his time-reins his anger-it will be to his advantage and to mine. I can be of great service to him and he to me. Bid him to think it out. His real danger is the Moon, not Blade, a woman and fifty bed-weakened guards. When I have the power, we can combine forces, and I will show him a way to defeat the orbfolk and take over the city for all time. Tell him that."

Another Gnoman voice spoke. "We will tell him, man Blade. But there is something Jantor bids us to tell you."

Blade gazed over the catwalk at the city roofs. Far off was another party of Gnomen hurrying toward him. He pounded once with his bar on the hatch. "Then tell me quickly. I cannot linger."

Laughter. "You see our parties, then. Surrender, man Blade. You and that wh.o.r.e Sybelline are doomed. Jantor is coming out of the sewers at last."

Blade tapped with his bar. "Jantor's message? Quickly or I go."

The second voice said: "Jantor sends word of the girl Norn. He has her and she confesses love for you. Jantor asks if you have love for her? If this is true, if you do have love for her, you would perhaps spare her what Jantor has in mind."

Blade kept an eye on the party of Gnomen. They were still distant enough for safety. "And what is that?"

He was told and Blade, hardened as he was, felt the sweat on him and his spine chill. And yet there was nothing he could do.

He rapped once again with his bar. "Tell Jantor to do as he likes. Norn is nothing to me. Tell him all I have said and that it is wiser to have me for a friend than an enemy. I go now. Later I will send word to Jantor."

Silence. The battering began again. Blade ran lightly across the roof and leaped into the chute.

CHAPTER 12.

The tube was spiral. By the time Blade had whipped around the third twist of the helix, doubling back and back again, he was sliding at over a hundred miles an hour and gaining speed with every pa.s.sing second. He lay on his back, arms trailing, and let the tube devour him. The plastic was sleek and cold. There was no sense of burn or pain as he plunged ever faster. And it was totally dark. Surely, he thought, the black of the dreaded five-mile pits could not be worse than this.

The tube was steeper now and he was into a near vertical fall around the spiral. The Gs were piling up and he began to black out. He fought to retain consciousness and made himself fix on a thought to the exclusion of everything else.

Down and down the rus.h.i.+ng slide continued and he hung on grimly to sanity and thought-what of Norn? Had he meant what he told the Gnomen? Norn loved him. So what? He owed her nothing. She was a liability, a nuisance. All true. What did he care for her? Nothing.

Blade had adapted now, he was more Gnoman than the Gnomen; he was savage and barbaric, the kill craze lurking just below his surface.

Faster and faster. The plastic screamed as he pa.s.sed. His backside heated as he approached maximum speed. If Sybelline had tricked him, he was dead. Down into nothing he sped.

Black invaded his brain. Fight it off. Think of Norn. Norn-Norn-what did he care? Nothing.

But Blade knew it wasn't true. He still retained enough of HD humanity to know that if he could save Norn he would-if he could save himself.

He was rus.h.i.+ng into terrible heat. Sweat bathed him, poured from him in rivers. He must be approaching the five-mile limit. The heat was unbearable.

He clutched the spear bar, dragging it behind him. The iron heated now, as did his body, and once the bar nearly slipped from his sweat-sodden hand. He brought the bar up and cradled it across his chest. The plastic tube held him, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him down and down into the bowels of darkness.

Then he felt the flaps. Immediately he began to slow. Plastic fingers, semi-rigid, clutched at his body, gave as he pa.s.sed, slowed him bit by bit and pa.s.sed him on to larger and more rigid fingers. The spiral straightened and the angle lessened and his falling speed dwindled. He could think again.

Down one final glissade. He saw red torches flickering in keyhole silhouette. He shot out through the final orifice and fell lightly onto thick-padded plastic mats, like a feather drifting down. He was safe.

Blade stood up, weak-legged, his bar at the ready. All he could see was a ring of torches. The heat was terrible. Sweat cascaded from him. He heard an agonized sound and was surprised to find that he was making it. He was panting for breath.

A shadow moved. It was Sart, reaching for a torch. Blade called to him, his voice harsh and echoing in this vast domed chamber that he could not yet see.

"Where is Sybelline?"

"Here." She called from darkness and another torch sparked. "There is a ladder just before you. Guide on my torch."

The plastic mats were piled thirty feet high. Blade found the edge and the ladder. He looked down and saw her uplifted face. He climbed down. He felt weak and giddy. The deadly heat was the enemy.

Sybelline handed him a torch and lit it from her own. She watched him gravely, her green eyes sparkling, her full mouth set in a smile he could not fathom.

"Follow, Blade," she said.

Sart was lighting torches, far across an open s.p.a.ce. Blade called to him. "Leave off that. Come to me."

Sybelline shrugged. "He is of no use. He will understand nothing."

"No matter. I want him under my eye."

They waited for Sart. Blade scuffed at the floor with his toe. It was artificial turf, plastic, as would be the great dome in which they stood. He could not see the sides or the top. A thought occurred to him.

"How come you to find torches at hand and to light them?"

"An ancient way-firesticks struck together. When the power is on the air is bright. This is not so in the sewers and the Gnomen have used firesticks for longer than I know."

Blade watched her. In the glow of the torches she looked much younger, almost desirable. Her flesh was firm and pink, unlined. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrust at him. Her snowy hair took on a blue sheen. Sybelline saw him watching her and her smile was an invitation.

He bellowed to break the spell. "Sart! Another minute and I come after you."

"I am here, master."

Sart emerged from the shadow, holding his torch high. He was not sweating. Neither was the woman. Blade, salt water pouring from him, grimaced. "You do not suffer from heat?"

Both of them stared at his sweat-bathed visage. "Heat?" Blade cursed. "Never mind. Get on with it, Sybelline. Sart, stay close to me."

She led the way. They walked across a great smooth plain of plastic turf. She was following white glowing lines that made corridors.

The slave glanced about fearfully. "I do not like this place, master."

Sybelline laughed. "So long as the power is off you have nothing to fear. The mole rats are afraid of us and anyway they do not come this high except in time of famine."

Blade wiped sweat. "Mole rats? Tell me of this."

Those Gnomen had told him of the fate in store for Norn-to be flung into a pit of mole rats.

Sybelline stopped abruptly. She pointed her torch at something. "I will not have to tell you. They grow bolder than I thought. See yonder? It is a sleeper technician and the mole rats have been at him."

Sart whimpered. Blade cuffed him, but he was careful not to strike his wound. "You will be a man or I will not treat you as one. A sleeper cannot hurt you."

"Not this sleeper," said the woman. "This one will never harm anyone." Her voice quavered as if some of Sart's terror had pa.s.sed to her. It was the first time Blade had seen weakness in her. He stepped forward to have a look at the thing.

It had been a Morphi sleeper. It had worn a white plastic coverall. This was torn and ripped and within it was all that remained of the sleeper. Something had fed on it. The face was gone, one of the arms, and the viscera had been hollowed out. One look was enough for Blade. He went back to Sybelline.

"You said the mole rats did not come this high. Yet that sleeper is eaten away. What is the truth of it? Are there likely to be others around?"

She had regained some of her composure and courage. She met his gaze without flinching. "I spoke truth as I knew it, but the power has been off for so long. They have become bold. And it may be a time of famine for them. How can I know? In ordinary times they never venture this high."

Sart whimpered again. "Let us go, master. I would rather face Jantor without a bar or go to the pits than be eaten by mole rats."

"Be quiet. Sybelline, lead on"

They began to walk again. As they went, Blade bade her describe what he could not see-simply to describe, not to place events in a framework of time. He could not fathom the Morphi or Gnomen concept of time and did not try. They could not explain and he could not understand. To try would be a waste of the very time that baffled him. For all he knew Sybelline was a thousand years old, HD time, or only ten. The Gnomen spoke of years, but what did they mean?

He listened intently, trying to relate Sybelline's words to his own concepts.

They had walked a mile across the plastic turf before he began to grasp it. The dome over them was a mile high. The power complex was some five miles square. When the power was on, all was brightly lit by air lights. The air was circulated and freshened automatically, and neither the Gnomen nor Morphi were affected by heat.

The ultimate source of power, Sybelline explained, when it was crushed and milled to talc.u.m powder smoothness, was common rock mined below the five level. After processing it was called ditramonium. A single large boulder, after treatment, furnished power for eleven Morphi days. Blade despaired at calculating that.

By now excitement was burning in him. This was it. Power from ordinary rocks. If he could wrest that secret from this Dimension X, take it back with him, hand it over to the HD scientists, then the Project was a success beyond even Lord L's wildest dreams. And perhaps that it would be the end of the experiments. Never again would he have to go through the computer.

Computers. It came to him like a lightning flash in his brain that Sybelline was at this very moment talking about computers. Thousands of them. Giant machines banked around the dome, silent now, but ready to hum into action when the power was restored-power that was somehow-and this was beyond his comprehension, sent through the air itself with no wires or cables. He struggled to bring the concept clear in his mind, to grasp what Sybelline was telling him. The power was in the air, everywhere. Every Morphi, from the moment of birth, picked up the power, was connected to it by means of the power stud in his neck. The technique was simple enough once you accepted the a priori fact of the power itself. It was nothing more than an old-fas.h.i.+oned trolley car taking its power from an electrically charged wire, except that there were no wires.

"How much farther?" Blade asked.

Sybelline waved her torch ahead. "Just there. A hundred paces or so."

Sart touched Blade's arm. "Something is following us. I think mole rats."

Blade and Sybelline spun around and held their torches high. Sart got behind them and made terrified sounds. Sybelline said, "He is right. See them-over there."

Blade saw them. More than a score of eyes winked red-yellow out of the gloom.

"They are blind," said Sybelline. "They have eyes that are open and s.h.i.+ne, but they cannot see. I saw a dead mole rat once and heard a Morphi expert explain it. I do not wish to see another one."

The eyes crept closer. Blade hefted his bar. "Like it or not," he told her, "you are going to see one, if they will take the bait."

She peered at him. "Bait?"

"Me."

As he strode back toward the glowing eyes, torch in one hand-held high-his spear bar ready in the other, a theory leaked into his brain. A hunch, call it, but he knew he was right. He was drenched with sweat. His smell was strange and enticing to these creatures. That was why they were bold, why they followed. The mole rats were after him.

The glittering eyes fled. If they could not see, their hearing and smell more than compensated.

One pair of eyes did not run. They moved toward Blade, baleful and terror-gleaming, all the more frightening because they were dead eyes and still sparked hate and hunger at the big man. Blade caught a whiff of charnel odor and heard the creature sounds-a gobbling sound that screamed along his spine. The thing leaped.

For once Blade's courage nearly failed. He was a ma.s.s of terrified sweat. He longed to flee, but dared not. He lunged with the sharp end of his spear bar and met the creature head on.

The mole rat reared, and slapped at the bar with huge spade paws. Blade nearly lost the bar. He dropped the torch between himself and the mole rat and the thing charged over the flame. It did not fear fire. Blade used two hands and thrust with all his strength. Fangs grated on the bar and the smell of the rat overwhelmed Blade. He fell back a step.

The rat charged again. Blade knelt and took the charge with his bar, much as he had killed the Gnomen, and the mole rat impaled itself. It did not die quickly or easily. It thrashed around on the bar, spurting gouts of black, foul-smelling blood, and Blade had an urge to vomit. He let go of the bar and stepped away, watching the death throes of the mole rat, keeping an eye out for new danger. He picked up the torch.

When the mole rat was dead he went close. The thing was as big as a wolfhound, with a long scaly tail and the body and snout of an enormous rat. The spade paws were those of a mole, the talons gleaming four inches long. The thing had a double set of shark-like teeth. Blade pulled out the bar and kicked the animal. It gave a last convulsive death shudder.

He wanted to drag it back with him but could not bring himself to touch it. It was loathsome and probably poisonous. The truth was that his nerves were screaming and he was still afraid of the thing, dead or not.

Sybelline called to him. "Leave it, Blade. The others will feed on it. That is how they live, by feeding on their old and dead."

Blade was glad of the excuse to walk away. He went back to join Sart and the woman. Sart stared at the blood on Blade's spear bar and made the sign of the fylfot on his bald head. When his eyes met Blade's they were filled with awe and admiration.

"I have never seen the like of that, master. Even Jantor would not walk into a nest of mole rats."

Sybelline nodded. "It is true. Even the Morphi fear them, though they killed many with poison and trapped some for examination."

"Let us get on," said Blade.

"Just over there," she said.

They approached what seemed to Blade to be a block house or bunker, not large, made of st.u.r.dy plastic blocks. Sybelline confirmed his guess that it was squarely in the center of the dome complex.

He examined the entrance with his torch. From the darkness behind them came gobbling sounds as the dead mole rat was devoured.

Blade looked at Sybelline and nodded at the entrance. "There will be sleepers in there?"

"Yes. Technicians on duty. It was dangerous duty and they were triple paid."

Blade smiled. "How do you know all this?" He had guessed, but he wanted to hear her say it.

She did not lie. "I know because it was I who turned off the power. You must know that."

"How did you gain admission and why did they trust you?"

It was her turn to smile. "There are as many fools among the Morphi as among the Gnomen, for all their brains. I used my body, what else? It was easier because it was forbidden-Morphi are forbidden to cohabit with Gnomen on penalty of death storage. Knowing the risk, they were all the more eager. Come, I will show you the very table on which I lay."

Blade turned to Sart. "Stay here on guard."

Sart quivered. "But the mole rats, master. If they- Blade threatened him with a ma.s.sive fist. "Take your choice. My anger or the possibility of mole rats. One is certain, the other not."