Tschai - Complete Part 67

"Why did you signal us?"

"Yesterday you came to take my companion."

The Gzhindra made no remark.

"This is true, is it not?" Reith demanded.

"It is true."

"Why did you do this?"

"We hold such a commission."

"What did you do with her?"

"We delivered her to such a place as we were bid."

"Where is this place?"

"Yonder."

"You have a commission to take me?"

"Yes."

"Very well; " said Reith. "You go first. I will follow."

The Gzhindra consulted in whispers. One said: "This is not feasible. We do not care to walk with others coming at our backs."

"For once you can tolerate the sensation," said Reith. "After all, you will thereby be fulfilling your commission."

"True, if all goes well. But what if you elect to burn us with a weapon?"

"I would have done so before," said Reith. "At the moment I only want to find my companion and bring her back to the surface."

The Gzhindra surveyed him with impersonal curiosity. "Why will you not walk first?"

"I don't know where to go.""We will direct you."

Reith spoke so harshly that his voice cracked. "Go first. This is easier than carrying me in a sack."

The Gzhindra whispered to each other, moving the corners of their thin mouths without taking their eyes off Reith. Then they turned and walked slowly off across the salt flats.

Reith came after, remaining about fifty feet to the rear. They followed the faintest of trails, which at times disappeared utterly. A mile, two miles, they walked. The warehouse and the office diminished to small rectangular marks; Sivishe was a blurred gray crumble at the northern horizon.

The Gzhindra halted and turned to Reith, who thought to detect a fugitive flicker of glee. "Come closer," said one of the Gzhindra. "You must stand here with us."

Reith gingerly came forward. He brought out the energy gun which he had only just purchased, and displayed it. "This is precautionary. I do not wish to be killed, or drugged. I want to go alive down into the Shelters."

"No fear there, no fear there!" "Have no doubts on that score!" said the Gzhindra, speaking together. "Put away your gun; it is without significance."

Reith held the gun in his hand as he approached the Gzhindra.

"Closer, closer!" they urged. "Stand within the outline of the black soil."

Reith stepped on the patch of soil designated, which at once settled into the ground. The Gzhindra stood quietly, so close now that Reith could see the minute creases in the skin of their faces. If they felt alarm for his weapon they showed none.

The camouflaged elevator descended fifteen feet; the Gzhindra stepped off into a concrete-walled pa.s.sage. Looking over their shoulders they beckoned. "Hurry." They set off at a swinging trot, cloaks flapping from side to side. Reith came behind. The pa.s.sage slanted downward; running was without sensible effort. The pa.s.sage became level, then suddenly ended at a brink; beyond stretched a waterway. The Gzhindra motioned Reith down into a boat and themselves took seats. The boat slid along the surface, guided automatically along the center of the channel.

For half an hour they traveled, Reith looking dourly ahead, the Gzhindra sitting stiff and silent as carved black images.

The channel entered a larger waterway; the boat drifted up to a dock.

Reith stepped ash.o.r.e; the Gzhindra came behind, and Reith ignored the near-transparent glee with as much dignity as he could muster. They signaled him to wait; presently from the shadows a Pnumekin appeared.

The Gzhindra muttered a few words into the air, which the Pnumekin seemed to ignore, then they stepped back into their boat and slid away, with pale backward glances. Reith stood alone on the dock with thePnumekin, who now said: "Come, Adam Reith. We have been awaiting you."

Reith said, "The young woman who was brought down yesterday: where is she?"

"Come."

"Where?"

"The zuzhma kastchai wait for you."

A sensation like a draft of cold air p.r.i.c.kled the skin of Reith's back. Into his mind crept furtive little misgivings, which he tried to put aside. He had taken all precautions available to him; their effectiveness was yet to be tested.

The Pnumekin beckoned. "Come."

Reith followed, resentful and shamed. They went down a zigzag corridor walled with panes of polished black flint, accompanied by reflections and moving shadows. Reith began to feel dazed. The corridor widened into a hall of black mirrors; Reith now moved in a state of bewilderment. He followed the Pnumekin to a central column, where they slid back a portal.

"You must go onward alone, to Foreverness."

Reith looked through the portal, into a small cell lined with a substance like silver fleece. "What is this?"

"You must enter."

"Where is the young woman who was brought here yesterday?"

"Enter through the portal."

Reith spoke in anger and apprehension: "I want to talk to the Pnume. It is important that I do so."

"Step into the cell. When the portal opens, follow, follow the trace, to Foreverness."

In a state of sick fury Reith glared at the Pnumekin. The pale face looked back with fish-like detachment. Demands, threats, rose up in Reith's throat only to dwindle and die. Delay, any loss of time, might result in terrible consequences, the thought of which caused his stomach to jerk and quiver.

He stalked into the cell.

The portal closed. Down slid the cell, dropping at a rapid but controlled rate. A minute pa.s.sed. The cell halted. A portal flew open. Reith stepped forth into black glossy darkness. From his feet a trail of luminous yellow dots wound off into the gloom. Reith looked in all directions. He listened.

Nothing, no sound, no pressure of any living presence. Burdened with a sense of destiny, he set off along the trace.

The line of luminous spots swung this way and that. Reith followed them with exact.i.tude, fearing what might lie to either side. On one occasion he thought to hear a far hushed roar, as of air rising from some great depth.

The dark lightened, almost imperceptibly, to a glow from some unseen source. Without warning he came to a brink; he stood at the edge of adarkling landscape, a place of objects faintly outlined in gold and silver luminosity. At his feet a flight of stone steps led down; Reith descended, step after step.

He reached the bottom and halted in an uncontrollable pang of terror; in front of him stood a Pnume.

Reith pulled together the elements of his will. He said in as firm a voice as he could muster: "I am Adam Reith. I have come here for the young woman, my companion, whom you took away yesterday. Bring her here immediately."

From the shape came the husky Pnume whisper: "You are Adam Reith?"

"Yes. Where is the woman?"

"You came here from Earth?"

"What of the woman? Tell me!"

"Why did you come to Old Tschai?"

A roar of desperation rose in Reith's throat. "Answer my question!"

The dark shape slid quietly away. Reith stood a moment, undecided whether to stand or follow.

The gold and silver luminosities seemed to become brighter; or perhaps Reith had begun to cast order upon the seemingly unrelated shapes. He began to see outlines and tracts, paG.o.da-like frameworks, a range of columns. Beyond appeared silhouettes with gold and silver fringes, as yet unstructured by his mind.

The Pnume stalked slowly away. Reith's frustration reached an intensity where he felt almost faint; then he experienced a rage which sent him bounding after the Pnume. He seized the harsh shoulder-element and jerked; to his utter astonishment the Pnume dropped as if falling over backward, the arms swinging down to serve as forelegs. It stood ventral surface upmost, head swiveling strangely down and over, so that the Pnume took on the aspect of a night-hound. While Reith gaped in awe and embarra.s.sment the Pnume flipped itself upright, to regard Reith with chilling disfavour.

Reith found his voice. "I must talk to responsible folk among you and quickly. What I have to say is urgent-to you and to me!"

"This is Foreverness," came the husky voice. "Such words have no meaning."

"You will think differently, when you hear me."

"Come to your place in Foreverness. You are awaited." Once more the creature set off. Tears brimmed in Reith's eyes; vast outrage rose up behind his teeth. If anything had happened to Zap 210, they would pay, how they would pay! regardless of consequence.

For a s.p.a.ce they walked and presently pa.s.sed through a columned portal into a new underground realm: a place which Reith a.s.sociated with some elegant memorial garden of old Earth.Away and along the gold- and silver-fringed prospect stood brooding shapes. Reith had no opportunity for speculation. Certain shapes moved forward; he saw them to be Pnume, and advanced to meet them. There were at least twenty; by their extreme diffidence and un.o.btrusiveness Reith understood them to be of the highest status. Facing the twenty shadows in this shadow-haunted corner of Foreverness he could not help but wonder as to the state of his mind. Was he wholly sane? In such surroundings orderly mental processes were inapplicable. By sheer brutal energy he must impose his personal will-to-order upon the devious environment of the Pnume.

He looked around the shadowed group. "I am Adam Reith," he said. "I am an Earthman. What do you want of me?"

"Your presence in Foreverness."

"I'm here," said Reith, "but I intend to go. I came of my own volition; are you aware of this?"

"You would have come in any event."

"Wrong. I would not have come. You kidnapped my friend, a young woman. I came to fetch her away and take her back to the surface."

The Pnume, as if by signal, all took a simultaneous slow step forward: a sinister movement, the stuff of nightmare. "How did you expect to effect so much? This is Foreverness."

Reith thought for a moment. "You Pnume have lived long on Tschai."

"Long, long: we are the soul of Tschai. We are the world itself."

"Other races live on Tschai; they are people more powerful than yourselves."

"They come and go: colored shadows to entertain us. We expel them as we choose."

"You do not fear the Dirdir?"

"They cannot reach us. They know none of our precious secrets."

"What if they did?"

The dark shapes approached another slow pace.

Reith called out in a harsh voice: "What if the Dirdir know all your secrets: all your tunnels and pa.s.sages and pop-outs?"

"A grotesque situation which can never be real."

"But it can be real. I can make it real." Reith brought forth a folder bound in blue leather. "Examine this."

The Pnume gingerly accepted the portfolio. "It is the lost master-set!"

"Wrong again," said Reith. "It is a copy."

The Pnume set up a low whimpering sound, and Reith once again thought of the night-hounds; he had often heard just such soft calls out on the Kotan steppes.The sad half-whispered wails subsided. The Pnume stood in a rigid semicircle. Reith could feel their emotion; it was almost palpable, a crazy, irresponsible ferocity he heretofore had a.s.sociated only with the Phung.

"Be calm," said Reith. "The danger is not imminent. The charts are hostage to my safety; you are secure unless I do not return to the surface.

In this case the charts will be given over to the Blue Chasch and the Dirdir."

"Intolerable. The charts must be secured. There is no alternative."

"That is what I hoped you would say." Reith looked around the half- circle. "You agree to my conditions?"

"We have not heard them."

"I want the woman whom you brought down yesterday. If she is dead, I plan to exact a terrible penalty from you. You will long remember me; you will long curse the name Adam Reith."

The Pnume stood in silence.

"Where is she?" demanded Reith in a rasping voice.

"She is in Foreverness, to be crystallized."

"Is she alive? Or is she dead?"