Inside Outside Part 9

"And don't you start getting hysterical," said Cull. "No, I'm not hurt. Not seriously, anyway, although the demon did scratch my ribs pretty badly. Most of the blood is his. And be careful if you go to the other end. There's a lot of his blood floating around or smeared on the sides."

"Why don't you get rid of him?" said Phyllis.

"Because I -- we -- can use him. Or part of him, anyway. Before he came along, we were trapped inside the cylinder. We had no mobility. Now, well, you'll see."

He made the two get out of their loops, and he snugged the body tightly inside Phyllis' wire. "You two get out on the tree and bring back as much manna as you can carry. We won't use our stockpile; we'll keep that for our storehouse. I want the stuff from outside to mop up the mess I'm going to make."

He studied the body. The demon was about his own height, which he thought he remembered as being about six feet. The body was human enough except for the enormous and warted genitals, which many demons seemed to have only to affront humankind with their obscenity. The skin was slate colored; the nails on hands and feet were so long and sharp they could have been defined as claws. The wings were batlike, leathery looking. They extended from his shoulderbones and were, as Cull had noted, useless when this world had gravity. The face was human enough, too, except for the tigerish canines and the nose. This was flat, smudged, with the nostrils parallel with the face. His ears were those of a wolf's; the head was bald and had a crest of bone running from brow to rear.

He looked at Phyllis and Fyodor. Hesitantly, they were advancing on the tree toward the spaghetti-like ma.s.ses of manna clinging wetly to the branches of the rocktree. By the time they returned, he should be fairly far along on his work.

The knife had a keen edge, but it would dull quickly enough once he got to work. The most im-portant things would have to be dealt with first. Then, if the knife became too dull, he could aban-don completion of this project.

The skin of the wings cut easily enough; its attachment to the back of the demon was soon freed.

But the wing-bones joined to the shoulder-bones were another matter. Moreover, the muscles of the back were very hard and there were many more than there would have been in a human being. These muscles seemed to have been specialized for moving the wings. Once he sawed through the wing-muscles, he found that he would have to break the wing-bones at their jointure with the shoulder-bones. And the only tool he had was his knife.

"Come back!" he called to Fyodor and Phyllis. Slowly, they crawled along the tree and into the cylinder. There, they stared at what he had done.

"If he could use those wings to fly, so can I," said Cull. "Now, you two brace yourselves against the sides of the tunnel on each side of him. Hold him down; keep him from moving while I work on the bones."

Phyllis could not bring herself to touch the demon. Only harsh words from Cull and a threat to push her out into s.p.a.ce made her cooperate. While the two kept the corpse from moving as much as they were able, Cull seized the right wing-bone close to its union with the shoulder-bone. He began working it back and forth with the intention of breaking it off. After a few minutes, he quit. He was panting with the effort; sweat, mingled with blood, coated his body. There was one thing about the sweat, though. It did not run down into his eyes because of the lack of gravity. It did, however, collect in beads on his body and face. From time to time, he brushed his hand across his face, collected the perspiration, and flicked it out of the cylinder mouth.

"Rub me with the manna," he said, panting, to the other two. "It'll soak up the blood and sweat.

Then, throw it away. I have to get cleaned up, or I'll smell like a slaughterhouse."

After they had mopped him, he resumed work. This time, he tried to wrench the wing-bone a few inches above the juncture where it was thinner. There was a snap, and the bone was broken. Then, though he hated to do so because it would rob the knife of its keenness, he sawed at the break. The bone resisted but flakes of grey powder appeared around the knife. He stopped from time to time to brush away the bone dust; it flew away from his hand and drifted outward. Some of it went up Fyodor's nose; he sneezed and blew part of the dust back into Cull's face. Cull also sneezed and then cursed Fyodor and told him to blow the stuff outward, not toward him.

Finally, thinking he had weakened the bone enough, he quit sawing and began working the wing back and forth. Suddenly, it came loose.

In another fifteen minutes, he had also freed the left wing-bone. But he was tired and breathing heavily, and he had to be mopped off again.

"I had intended to do a thorough dissection," he said. "I wanted to use his legbones as spear-shafts; cut out his canines and mount them on the ends of the thighbone. They'd have made weapons. Maybe not very good weapons, but they'd still be better than nothing."

"You've got the wings," said Phyllis. "Isn't that enough? Let's get rid of him."

Surprisingly, Fyodor wanted to continue. "No use quitting now," he said. "I'll spell you. First, the canines."

Willingly, Cull gave him the knife and watched while Fyodor cut into the gums around the roots of the two teeth. After these were exposed, Fyodor wiggled them until he loosened them. Then, he used the knife again to dig into the bony sockets. Finally, after much panting and frequent rests, he had two long, sharp, and slightly curved fangs in his hand.

Phyllis, muttering, "I can't take it anymore," left her post and went to the middle of the tunnel.

Here, she turned her back to them and stretched out, floating, her arm over her eyes.

Cull watched her leave. He growled, "By G.o.d, I'm captain of this ship. . ."

Fyodor said, "True, true, my friend. But a cap-tain has due regard for the health and welfare of his crew. Phyllis, you might say, is seasick."

"I suppose I can't blame her," said Cull. He narrowed his eyes. "You aren't smirking, are you?"

"No, no, heaven forbid," said Fyodor, bob-bing his head up and down. "Why should I mock you?"

"Maybe I was being a little ridiculous com-paring myself to a captain of a ship," said Cull. "Some ship! An open-ended cylinder drifting through air with no rudder to guide her or sails to propel her! Some crew! A half-mad Christ-loving feeble excuse for a man and a frigid weak-bellied spineless social climber! And a hypocrite, just as much a social climber as whorish Phyllis! A bootlicker, anyway!"

Fyodor raised his bushy eyebrows. "Ah, then you know your faults? Better still, you admit them to yourself and to others! You have made a step forward, my friend. A vast, a league-devouring step.

One step closer, my friend."

"Closer to what?" said Cull, staring angrily at Fyodor. "To my death? So I know myself! So what! Do I know one bit more about why I'm here or what thishere is? h.e.l.l, no! Or where I'm going, if there is such a thing as life after death?''

"But you do know, you do know," said Fyodor in a shrill voice. "You lived on Earth and you died. You doubted, really, that you'd live after your death. Yet, you are here! Doesn't that prove to you that there is a great design? That you're part of it, even if only a small cog? That you're an immortal cog?"

"I'd rather be dead than live as I have lived here, "said Cull.

"No, you wouldn't. Not really. Are things here any worse than they were on Earth? I say no!

And there is always hope. Hope!"

"Of what? You can't get any answers to your questions here any more than you could on Earth."

He fell silent. Fyodor scratched his bald head and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Cull, then looked away.

"Let's get this thighbone cut," said Cull.

It took them another hour. They cut the flesh away from the lower legs and cast the hunks out of the cylinder mouth. The gobbets and strips flew out and continued straight until they were out of sight.

But there were pieces that they missed and beads of blood, all floating around them like a swarm of flies.

Then, suddenly, these drifted away, taken by a wind that had sprung up.

Cull quit sc.r.a.ping the naked bone and looked outward. He could see nothing except the jetsam and flotsam: rocktrees, a huge building in the distance, a coil of manna, bodies or parts of bodies of men and women. All turning over and over.

What about the wind? It was not much of a wind, yet it helped. It dried off the sweat; it took away the carbon dioxide that otherwise tended to collect around their heads. And, now that he thought about it, it was strange that they had no wind at all before. The cylinder was, presumably, moving, so that its progress through the at-mosphere should have made a slight wind. Though not detectable, some wind must have existed. Otherwise, the carbon dioxide they breathed out would have collected in the cylinder, and they would have been asphyxiated long ago.

That current of air, however, had not been distinguishable. This one was. So what caused the breeze to become stronger? A temperature dif-ferential must be taking place somewhere in the sphere.

Of course! The same thing that had made it before. Only now, the thin wall of the sphere was naked to the air; it had no thick layer of rock and dirt over it. Therefore, warm moisture-laden air, on coming into contact with the s.p.a.ce-cold wall, must be giving up its water-vapor content. Ice would be forming on the inner walls of the sphere. The air next to it would condense into a high-pressure area.

He was not sure of his meteorology. Would winds caused by the high-pressure colder air move toward the center of the sphere and thus push floating objects toward the sun? Or would the warmer air expand to fill the volume left empty by the condensing cold air and thus bear floating ob-jects toward the wall?

Cull resumed work. Together, the two men freed the thighbones from the pelvis and the knees.

They now had two thighbones to be used as clubs and also tibiae and fibulae. These would have to be sc.r.a.ped clean, a task which, at the moment, neither could face.

"O.K.," said Cull. "Phyllis wanted us to give the old heave-ho to the body. Let's do it."

Without waiting for Fyodor to help, he loosened the wire loop around the corpse's waist. He pulled it out toward him and then turned the body so he could place both hands on its back. Bracing his feet against the rocktree branch, he shoved. The demon, rolling because the push had not been equally shared by both of Cull's hands, slid through the air away from the cylinder. Almost, it was caught by a projecting branch of the tree. But it missed by a skin's thickness and continued. Within a few minutes the turning corpse had dwindled to a doll-size.

"It's too bad I had to kill him," said Cull.

"Why?" said Fyodor sharply. He was at once alert, his neck muscles quivering and making his head shake.

"Don't get so upset because you don't know what's going on. Have a little patience. Let me get the thing out of my mouth before you start quaking. I would rather have made him a prisoner, but I wasn't in any position to do so. But the next demon we get hold of -- if we ever do -- we'll take alive. And we'll force the truth from him if we have to cut it out of his brains -- literally."

"What makes you think they know the truth?" said Fyodor.

"If they don't, they'll die trying to tell it to us."

They cleaned themselves off as best they could and threw away some more dirtied manna. Cull studied the problem of attaching the severed wings to himself. He stepped out onto the rocktree with an ankle held by a loop of wire. The other end of the wire was bent around the branch within the cylinder.

Moving carefully so that he would not accidentally let loose of the wings, he tried one on for size.

"It'll be O.K.," he said to Fyodor. "We can make holes in the skin next to the wing-bones. We'll loop wire through them, and I can fit my arms into the loops. The lower ends of the wings can be held by wires fastened around my thighs. But we'll have to do something to keep the wings from folding at the joints."

He stood for a moment, gazing absently into the abyss. Then, "We'll have to split the fibia.

Straighten out the wings at the joints and place the slivers on both sides of the joints. Then wire the two slivers together around the wing-bone. That should keep the wings stiff."

He returned to the cylinder. There, by kinking lengths of the wire back and forth and sawing at the weakened bends, he succeeded in cutting off pieces. The fibias did not split as easily as he thought they would. Only after much cursing, sweating, and persistence in bearing down on the flint knife, he did accomplish his task. Then, he had to whittle away until he had four pieces short enough and rounded enough at the ends. Finally, he had what he needed. This time, when he went out upon the rocktree, he stayed until he was finished.

The faces of Phyllis and Fyodor were ap-prehensive. "If you can't fly with those," said Phyllis, "we'll lose you. We'll never see you again."

"I didn't think you really cared," said Cull. "Or is it that you're worried about losing a provider and defender?"

Phyllis shrugged. Cull, looking at her, wondered why he had once thought he would sell his soul to have her in his bed.

He fastened the wings to a branch, pulled him-self back into the cylinder, and then slid into the big loop.

"I'm too worn out to try flying," he said. "I've got to get some sleep. But you two take turns guarding. We don't want any more flying demons taking us unaware."

He dropped off immediately. When he awoke, he saw that both of his companions were up.

They were sitting on the branch, held to it by wire, their legs suspended over the abyss. Apparently, they had gotten over some of their fear of the emp-tiness.

Phyllis, seeing him turn his head, smiled and said, "Good morning! You feel better?"

"I had a dream of Earth," he said. "Rather, I dreamed I was asleep on Earth and was dreaming. It was a dream within a dream. An old dream. You know, everybody has it one time or another, sometimes, often. I dreamed I could fly just by flapping my arms. It was wonderful. I've never felt so free, so glorious. So. . . superhuman."

"I'm glad," said Phyllis. "If I had to fly with those wings when I woke up, I'd dream that other dream that's not so nice. You know, the one where you fall and fall and scream and scream. . ."

"Maybe it's a good omen, your having that dream and not the one Phyllis speaks of," said Fyodor.

"Yes," said Phyllis, "that's it. A good omen."

Cull grunted and gave them a sour look. He smacked his lips and said, "I got a bad taste in my mouth. I feel crummy. I must look crummy. And I stink. Just like you two stink. I wish, you wouldn't be upwind to me."

Phyllis began crying. She said, "Aren't things bad enough without you picking on me? I try to be nice, to say good morning to you. And you. . . you're just an old grouch."

"Phyllis," he said, "you're a mess. You ought to see yourself. Your hair's dirty and matted. Your face is streaked, half-clean, half-dirt. And your body's grimy. Look at your belly, your legs. You can see for yourself."

"What do you expect?" she said angrily. "You look like a b.u.m yourself. What's wrong with you, anyway?"

"Perhaps," said Fyodor, "he's scared about what he's going to do. The flying, I mean. You can't blame him, Phyllis. My teeth chatter just to think about him jumping into the void. G.o.d knows what a state I'd be in if I had to do it."

"Is that it?" said Phyllis. "You don't really hate me? You're just nervous?"

"You mean you care if I hate you?" he said. "I thought you only cared about the feelings of whoever happened to be First Telephoner?"

She turned her face away from him. Snorting with derision, he propelled himself in zigzag fashion down the cylinder to the other end. Here he twisted himself until he was upright and facing the outside and no longer moving. While relieving himself, he congratulated himself that this act used pressure. Thus, the water shot away, and there was no problem of disposal. Moreover, the reaction drove him back toward the middle of the cylinder, away from the exit and the abyss.

Cull removed some of the stockpile of manna and cleaned himself off with that and threw it out.

He returned to the others, who were silent.

"Too bad that what puts me in a good humor makes you two mad," he said. "I think I'd better use the extra wire and fix up a safety fence at the other end like we have here."

This completed, he went out upon the rocktree and ate his breakfast. The manna was now going from its meat-phase into its sauce-form. Soon, it would turn into water, and the wind would blow it off the branches. He wished he had some sort of container to store the stuff. The manna which was piled up in the center of the cylinder, once it had become water, would also be taken away by the wind. If only he had some means of tanning, he would have flayed the demon and used the skin for waterbags. Perhaps, he should have done it anyway. Turned inside out ... no, he didn't have anything with which to sew the edges of the skin together. Still, the stomach of the demon would have made a natural bag. Too late now to think of that.

For some time, an object had been coming toward him. Minute at first, it was now big enough to disclose its ident.i.ty. It was one of the hundreds of thousands of buildings that had been carved out of a t.i.tanic boulder. He could see the dark rows that must be windows and doors. It was turning over and over. Presently, it would be very close to the cylinder. Perhaps the two might be on a collision course.

Phyllis and Fyodor returned and came out on the rocktree to eat with him. He pointed out the building to them and told them his predictions.

"Maybe we could jump to it when it comes close enough," said Phyllis.

"Maybe," he said. "On the other hand, there may be occupants we wouldn't care to meet. No, I think I'd better fly over to it."

"And what happens if the cylinder pa.s.ses by it while you're in the building?" said Fyodor. "Do you think you can flap those wings fast enough to catchup with us?"

Cull said, slowly, "I might be able to. I don't know how fast the cylinder is going. The building's coming up swiftly. You have to figure its path, too. No, if we're going to stick together, we'd better go together. Or else all stay here."

He looked at the building again and said, "I don't think we're going to collide. We'll pa.s.s close to it, above it or below it, depending on the frame of reference of some hypothetical observer."

"We'll have to take off some time before our paths cross," said Phyllis. "If we wait until the building gets close, it may be going so fast it'll outrun us. And we might not be able to get back to the cylinder, either."

"Are you willing to trust yourself to me and my wings?" said Cull. "Remember, I'll be trying to learn how to handle the wings for the first time. It'll be a solo without any previous lessons. Come to think of it," he added, and he chuckled hollowly, "it won't really be a solo. I'll have pa.s.sengers."

While he was talking, he had bent a length of wire around his waist. After fastening it in front, he made two loops on the sides. In one he stuck the flint knife and squeezed the wire to hold it tightly. He did the same to the other loop but in-serted the demon's thighbone in it. Around his ankle he fastened another wire. This had a free length of about two feet. At its end, he formed another loop.

"You make an ankle-loop, too," he said to Fyodor. And he began to put on the wings. When he was sure that all preparations were complete, he gave a very slight push with his foot against the rocktree. He rose, and Fyodor gripped the wire around Cull's ankle with one hand. Fyodor fell free of the rocktree; Phyllis had one hand grasping the wire around his ankle.

Cull looked along the axis of his body to make sure that everybody had a firm hold and was properly strung out in train fashion. Then, he began flapping the wings. Knowing that if he held the plane of the wings at right angles to his body and moved them up and down he would only go up and down with each respective movement, he tilted the wings at an angle. Now, he was sure, he was making forward progress; he could feel the wings scooping the air and pushing it behind him. But it was tiring work even if he and his pa.s.sengers were weightless; resistance of air meant more than he had thought it would. Moreover, he did not always get the angle of the wings right. They had a tendency to turn against his control.

Within a few minutes, he saw that he was not going at a good enough pace. The building would pa.s.s him by, leave him behind. And, glancing over his shoulder as he brought the wing down, he saw that he had little chance to return to the cylinder.

He tried to keep up the pace, to raise and lower his arms as fast as possible, to rotate them so that the angle of attack of the wings would be correct. He was breathing heavily and sweating profusely.

For a moment, as panic struck, he thought of abandoning Fyodor and Phyllis. Released from the additional air resistance of their bodies, he might be able to increase his speed enough. . .