Undying World Part 13

"I know. Choose them quickly."

Blade waited with Norn while it was done. The chosen men did not question the order. They filed out and up a stair that would lead them to the roof. They knew nothing of operating the lifts, now with power restored.

Jantor said, "And now what?"

"We must remain in the bas.e.m.e.nts and hack our way through the walls, heading for the Government Building. The walls are thin and no match for our bars. Begin."

"But the direction? I cannot "

"I can. Follow me." During his last moments above ground level, Blade had oriented himself. By bearing straight ahead and keeping the fronting street always to his right, they would reach the square surrounding the Government Building. How to cross the square was another matter. But he would leave that bridge until time to cross it. In a matter of seconds, Blade battered a hole through the thin plastic and stepped into the next bas.e.m.e.nt. He told Jantor, "You take the next wall, and the man after you the next, and so on. Just enough so we can pa.s.s single file. Always a fresh man at work. Hurry now. Come on, come on!"

He fell to the rear of the line with Jantor and Norn. Jantor's spirits were sinking again. "We are fools. What if we do reach Government Building? That is the first place the patrols will go after they realize what has happened."

Blade put an arm around Norn. "I am counting a great deal on that. It will take them time to realize just what has happened. I thought you wrong to destroy the council of elders, but now it may save us. The Morphi will be confused and leaderless. They have just come awake without knowing they have been asleep. Most of them will have no idea of what is happening. Some will know that there are Gnomen above-ground and they will leave it to someone else to handle. Has there ever been a Gnomen rebellion before?"

With some pride Jantor said, "I am the first who ever dared."

"Good. Chaos and confusion will work for us. The patrols are sure to go after the decoys. Will you other Gnomen, those scattered about the city, put up a fight?"

Jantor nodded gloomily. "They will die fighting, as best they can. Most of them are drunk, though, and will be no match for the patrols."

"They will still buy us time," said Blade. "Now you, Jantor, go to the fore and keep your men at it. Push them. Kill whoever slackens, as an example. Let no Morphi escape to tell the patrols where we are."

When the big Gnomen king had gone, Norn looked at Blade and whispered, "Is not this all a lie, man Blade? You do not really think we can escape and live?"

Blade met her glance. "You are right. We have no chance-unless we can find masks to guard against the powder. That would change everything."

"I know where there are masks," said Norn. "Great crates of them. Thousands of them."

Blade kissed her. "Where?"

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt of a building on the square across from the Government Building. I followed Sybelline one time and saw them. I thought nothing-"

Blade did not hear her. He seized her arm and ran to the head of the line where another wall was being pierced. Jantor plunged through the opening with a great shout. Five Morphi, surprised at a game of chance, tried to scurry off in terror. Jantor speared one and his men two more. Blade, on Jantor's heels, hurled his spear bar at the fourth. But it was the fifth and last Morphi who nearly did them in. He did not flee.

Instead he s.n.a.t.c.hed a canister from a wall rack and directed a fine spray of compressed powder at Jantor. One of the king's subchiefs leaped in time to take the spray squarely in the face.

A dozen spear bars tore the Morphi to pieces. The subchief collapsed, laughing, agony in his brown eyes. Jantor knelt, and for a moment stroked the man's head. Then he rose and lifted his bar.

"It was a gallant thing he did for me. I cannot leave him for them to find." He smashed the man's skull.

Blade picked up the canister and examined it. It was small, with no straps for carrying on the back. Instead it could be carried in one hand and operated by pressing a b.u.t.ton. There was no hose.

He held it up for all to see. "Keep on the lookout for these. And for the larger cylinders. Maybe we can turn their own weapons against them."

"They will have masks," said Jantor.

"So will we if our luck holds," Blade answered, and explained what Norn had told him.

Blade had reckoned very near. Four more walls down and he ordered a halt. He whispered to Jantor. "Absolute silence. I will go ahead with Norn and seek the masks."

With Norn slipping along behind him, Blade ascended to the first bas.e.m.e.nt, then up more stairs to a door that opened on a lobby. He cracked it open and peered out. The lobby was strewn with a mix of Morphi and Gnomen corpses. "Stay here," he told Norn. "I must pretend to be a corpse."

Blade slid out the door on his belly. He moved like a snake among the real dead to the entrance where, lying between b.l.o.o.d.y and depowered Morphi males, he could see out into the square and across to the circular Government Building. One glance was enough. There were cars and foot patrols all about the entrance and scattered about the square. Near the plastic portico was a slim barreled cannon a high tripod. Three Morphi manned it. A hose ran from four tall, connected cylinders to the breech of the cannon. Blade winced. He did not have to see the cannon in action to guess that it could cover the square with a high-pressure jet of laughing death powder. The masks! Without them there was no hope and- He heard a high wailing scream and something came plummeting down to splash in the square. Then another and another. Blade felt sick and wondered if he had gone mad? He stared at the oozing red bodies of Morphi women. They had jumped?

Another high scream and a body splashed just outside the entrance. Blade thought he could hear similar screams from all directions now. What the h.e.l.l was going on? He crawled back to where Norn waited. She had heard the screams and when he told her what he had seen she smiled.

"It is nothing you can prevent, man Blade, nor is it important to us. The Morphi women have discovered that they have been raped by Gnomen. So they kill themselves. Some will jump, some use the little knives, some the death powder. It is their custom. Those who do not commit suicide-and there will be some-will be sent down to the sewers."

Blade knew he was hard, coa.r.s.ened by his many lives in Dimension X, but this dented him. He fought back his revulsion. "Jantor knew of this custom?"

"Of course. It is why he insisted that every Morphi woman be raped. It saves the trouble of killing them and gives pleasure to the troops. It aids in decimating the Morphi as they would decimate the Gnomen. Of course he knew. Jantor planned it so."

Blade listened to the screams, imagined those he could not hear, coming from far out over the endless city, and spoke harshly to Norn. "Crawl to the door, feigning death, be very careful. Spot the building where the masks are stored and point it out to me. Hurry!"

CHAPTER 17.

As soon as she pressed the power b.u.t.ton, Sybelline took the lift and was whisked upward at breathtaking speed. Six miles in fifteen seconds. The lift car was stabo-energized, had its own gravity, and she felt no ill effects.

Sybelline wore a mask and carried the powder cyclinder. She was risking everything. Time was short and the line thin. She must contact Onta, Chief of Brain Secrets on the Moon, to ask for instructions. Only with the aid of the Selenes could she survive; could she realize her ambition to rule. She held one high card, though. The orbfolk wanted Blade.

She rode the lift to the vestibule of the high council room. The narthex was circular, high-domed and littered with bodies of male and female Morphi. One Morphi was just cutting her own throat with a short-bladed knife as Sybelline entered the chamber. The white-haired woman knelt and asked, "Why?"

The woman mistook Sybelline for a full-blooded Morphi and laughed blood as she died. "I have been raped by the Gnomen. What else is there? How is it that you escaped?"

The woman died and Sybelline went through a corridor into the council room. So that was it. Jantor was cunning, and his revenge ironic, except that it was misdirected. The Selenes had dropped the sweet bomb that sterilized the Gnomen-not the Morphi, Jantor, like the savage he was, was striking back at anything in his way.

Sybelline wore the mask and carried the powder gun at the ready. She entered the main council room. The Gnomen had been there and left. The male elders had been torn apart with spear bars and the only woman on the council, one Ejata, lay slumped in a corner. She had a little knife in her hand.

Sybelline approached her. She felt nothing but hatred. She bent over the woman. "Why do you still live? Have you not been raped?"

Ejata was an elder, her hair nearly as white as Sybelline's own. She smiled faintly and pointed the knife at her bloodstained thighs. "Well raped. At least fifty of the beasts had me. But now I find out a strange thing... but who are you, woman?"

Sybelline kept on the mask. "Never mind that. What is so strange?"

Ejata held up the knife. "I have no courage to kill myself."

Sybelline took the knife. "You wish me to do it for you?"

"Please do."

Sybelline cut her throat.

From the square came the high hooting of patrol sirens. She ran to a window. Morphi police were setting up a powder cannon near the main entrance. Cars were converging on the square from all directions. The Morphi militia would be here in a moment to see what had happened to the council. She must hide!

But where?

Fear crawled over her slim body like sweat trickling. She needed time. If she could hide, escape the first search, it was unlikely that the Morphi would waste much time in this place. They would be busy hunting down Gnomen.

There was no place to hide. The council room was s.p.a.cious and barren, no closets or anterooms. She must join the dead.

Then she heard the whine of an ascending lift. Sybelline lay down beside the female Morphi she had just killed. She tugged up her gown, tore it and dipped the little knife in gore not her own. She stained her throat with the blood, inflicting faint cuts to aid the cheat, and took several deep breaths. She could pa.s.s for Morphi but for her green eyes. She must keep them shut and hope there was no member of the Morphi guard who would be puzzled by the presence of two females at the council.

They were in the room now... voices and footsteps... the curt commands of a captain.

"Nothing here. All dead."

"We have no government, then."

"Not your worry. The militia will form a provisional one. Half of you to the down lift at once, and the other half down the chute. We must protect the power complex at all costs. Be wary. The Gnomen are more cunning than we knew. The chute may be blocked or they may have a force in the complex. You know what to do. Go!"

"But this-the elders? Should we not-"

"Go, I said. This mess can be cleaned up later. Go."

They were gone. Sybelline waited a few minutes, then got to her feet and went to the window again. From this vantage she had a full view of the square. Across the artificial turf women were leaping from roofs and high windows. Their high screams mingled, forming the sound of a continual shrilling. Sybelline smiled. Let them kill themselves, the more the better. She had taken many women as lovers but she did not really like them. Women always caused her more trouble than men.

She went to the head of the table. The elder of elders, grave and patrician even in death, and still beautiful as were all the Morphi, sat in his chair. He had been scarcely mutilated, but for the power stud hooked from his neck.

Sybelline pushed him out of the chair and sat down. She knew just what to do. She had waited long for this moment.

Sybelline gazed at a row of b.u.t.tons set into the table. She pressed one of them. A panel slid back and a screen, smilar to the one in her apartment, slid out and up. She pressed another b.u.t.ton. A rod with a mirror end shot out from the end of the table and at the same time a window opened. The rod pushed out into the beam of a searchlight. She twiddled an adjustment dial. The image of Onta appeared on the screen.

The Chief of Brain Secrets looked the same-ma.s.sive head and thick neck, the neat graying hair and beard-but his words were sarcastic and his smile ironic. He plucked at his beard with well-kempt fingers.

"Reverse," he ordered.

She pressed the b.u.t.ton.

Onta said, "I see you have realized one ambition. You are in the chair of power, if not the seat."

She dared as she had not dared before. "This is no time for subtlety, Onta. Action is needed, at once. You are aware of what is happening down here?"

Onta actually smiled. "Of course I know. I approve. Let them destroy each other."

Sybelline scowled into the machine. "If they do that, whom do I rule?"

"You still cherish that dream?"

"I do. And you promised me, Onta."

Onta hooded his eyes. His smile was not pleasant. "So I did, Sybelline. And you promised me Blade-unharmed. Instead you have turned on the Morphi power and started a ma.s.sacre. The man Blade is sure to be slain. He is no good to us dead. All promises are void."

"I could not wait, Onta. I dared not. And Blade may not be dead. He is cunning and a great warrior. But you must know all this. You Selenes know everything."

"Not quite," confessed Onta. "Even we cannot see into bas.e.m.e.nts. Your man Blade has gone underground. I think not the sewers, but somewhere."

A thought struck her. "He may come here, Onta. He knows of this place. I may keep my word yet. Can you help me?"

His face was cruel. "Why should I? You are nothing to me."

"For the man Blade, then? If I can save him for you?"

Onta nodded. "To that I agree. Produce Blade for me, unharmed and fit to be examined by our scientists, and the deal is on again. The moment I am sure of Blade, I will stop the fighting and make you Queen."

"You promise to enforce this?"

Onta smiled into his beard. "I promise. The more easily because I do not think you can do it, Sybelline. I think you have lost. You might be wise to destroy yourself as the Morphi women are doing. I know that rape holds no terrors for you, but there are other things worse."

From the square outside there came a sudden clamor. Shouts and the brutal clash of arms, bellowing and screaming, the sibilant hiss of the powder cannon as it fired-shutt-shuttt-shutt "There is fighting in the square," said Sybelline.

Onta nodded on the screen. "I see it." It was the sound of Blade's voice, raised above the din, that sent Sybelline scurrying to the window again. Behind her Onta's voice said, "He risks everything. Save him. Get him atop the building and I will send a car. The moment he is safe you are Queen."

Sybelline gazed at the battle in the square. Blade and some fifty Gnomen, all wearing masks, were fighting their way toward the powder cannon. The big man's voice, magnified by the speaker in the mask, roared metallically over the melee.

"Jantor-take twenty men and fight into the building. I will take the cannon. Seize the council chamber and look for Sybelline."

Sybelline gazed, both enraptured and aghast, as Blade fought with the spear bar. Morphi bodies went down and were trampled. Blade had formed his small contingent into a moving square and they slashed through the disorganized Morphi like mole rats through flesh. With the masks they were more than a match for the beautiful people.

She spoke without looking at the screen. "Blade is winning. Soon he will have the powder cannon and command the square."

Onta said, "I know. I also know what is in his mind. He will try to make peace. Between the Gnomen and the Morphi, between you and Jantor. But did you hear? If Jantor gets to you first he will kill you. He will not share the rule with you."

She turned back to the screen. Onta was watching her with a cruel smile. "What can I do, Onta? Jantor is on his way up here."

Onta smiled again. "You really need me, don't you? Do you swear absolute obedience? no more treachery?"

Sybelline fell to her knees, just as she had before Blade. "I do, I do."

Onta nodded. "Very well. I will trust you this last time. Make the polyphone ready."

She pressed one of the b.u.t.tons. A microphone with a thimble size head rose from the table.

"Move it to the screen."

Sybelline pressed another b.u.t.ton. The mike swept around in a semicircular groove until it faced Onta's image. Sybelline heard lifts whining upward-who had shown Jantor how to use them?-and screamed at Onta, "Hurry! Jantor will be here in seconds."

Onta nodded and smiled. His voice was sinister. "You have a powder cyclinder. Defend yourself. Keep your mask on. I will impose my will on the Morphi, but you must handle the Gnomen and Jantor and Blade. Ready? Close to the polyphone, then."

Onta took over her mind and voice. She spoke and it was his voice, not hers that went over the polyphone and into the power surge and into every Morphi brain. Brains conditioned to obey. Onta's voice, through Sybelline, was transcoded into thought and all Morphi in the endless city received it simultaneously.

Cease fighting. Keep to your homes. The police and militia will disband. You have nothing to fear from the Gnomen. Act on these orders at once. There will be instant and terrible punishment for all who disobey.