Undying World Part 14

Sybelline ran to the window. Blade had taken the powder cannon and was fumbling with the mechanism. Heaps of mutilated Morphi lay about the gun. Blade was training the cannon on a battalion of Morphi police about to charge in an effort to retake the gun. They had no masks and would be slaughtered.

She screamed from the high window. "No, Blade, no! It is over. Come to me, quickly. Do you hear me, man Blade, do you hear?"

Blade heard. In the sudden silence he could not help but hear. He glanced up at her and then, puzzled, at the Morphi who were vanishing from the square. They were quitting.

He waved to Sybelline. She waved back and called, "To me quickly. Before Jantor-"

Nearby a clot of Gnomen were tearing the power studs out of wounded Morphi. Blade bellowed at them. "Leave off that. No more killing. There is a truce."

One of Jantor's subchiefs raised his mask and growled at Blade. "I heard nothing of any truce."

Blade grinned at the man. "Nor I. But follow my orders nonetheless. No more killing. So be it."

Blade ran for the great foyer of the Government Building.

Sybelline was seated at the head of the long council table when Jantor burst into the chamber. There was no mistaking his hairy bulk, even in the mask, though she did not recognize any of the other Gnomen crowding in behind him. Sybelline wore her mask and kept the powder cylinder at the ready. Not that it was very helpful to her. The laughing death powder was ineffective against masks and the Gnomen all carried spear bars. All but one, a slight figure she could not identify.

Jantor stopped and raised his bar. His escort waited behind him. Sybelline raised her hand in greeting, then pushed the powder cylinder away from her to show good will.

Before she spoke, Sybelline glanced at the screen. It was dark, empty, as gray and dreary as a cataract. She was on her own. Where in the name of all fylfots was Blade? She was, for one of the few times in her life, filled with terror.

Jantor was in no hurry. He held up a hand for silence and leaned on his bar. Sybelline repressed a shudder of revulsion. He was the toad king. He thought he had won.

As Jantor opened his mouth, she cut him off. "The fight is over, Jantor. You have won-we have won. The Morphi are not fighting. I arranged this. I have been in touch with the Selenes and they have ordered the Morphi to cease fighting. They also agree that we should rule together in the city as we did in the sewers. We are to be the equals of the Morphi from this time on."

Jantor smiled and rubbed a b.l.o.o.d.y hand over his bald head. "As I recall, Sybelline, that was not such a good arrangement. Why should I share anything with you, or with the Morphi, now that I have won?"

She gazed at the screen in desperation. Why did not Onta reappear to help her? But she knew the answer without seeking far. Onta had his own plans, his own games to play.

Sybelline continued to bluff, forced herself to appear calm. "You could have done nothing without the man Blade. He is coming now. You had best not do anything without his knowledge and consent."

Jantor took a step toward her and raised his bar. "I know how much I owe to Blade and I disclaim it. Now that the Morphi have stopped fighting, I can kill Blade as easily as I am going to kill you. I am not going to share anything with you, Sybelline, even life."

Jantor raised the spear bar, the pointed end toward her, and flexed his great muscles to hurl it. Blade, flinging Gnomen aside like dolls, wrenched the bar from Jantor's grasp. "You are a fool and so am I, but I am not so easy to kill. I say-enough. We are going to talk, not kill, and there will be agreement among us and also with the Morphi-even with the Selenes. I give you my word-"

They were all watching Blade, listening. None saw the slender figure steal behind Sybelline and thrust with the short-bladed knife. Sybelline screamed. Blood gushed from her mouth.

Norn hacked at the woman three more times, viciously, carving out gouts of flesh near the desiccated power stud that had never functioned, before Blade got to her and pulled her away, struggling and screaming invective.

She clawed at Blade. "I love you, man Blade, but you are a fool. She must die-die!"

Jantor smiled and, relaxing on his retrieved spear bar, said, "For a female, she has good sense."

Sybelline toppled from the chair. Blade flung Norn from him and knelt beside her. She was dying. She spoke through blood and he thought she laughed. "All for nothing, Blade. I would have had a child by you. You sired so many-and none for me."

A voice came into the chamber like low thunder. "She is dead, as you will all be in one hundred counts if you do not listen and obey. You, called Blade, look into the screen."

Blade gently released the body and stared at the TV-like machine on the table. An image formed. A thick-necked man with a graying beard and a huge head. His voice was like restrained thunder.

The Gnomen -even Jantor-were on their knees, groveling. Blade sneered at them and at the image on the screen. "Who are you and what do you want of me?"

The image smiled. "I want you, Blade. But that later. Press the last b.u.t.ton on the right."

Blade saw the row of b.u.t.tons on the table and did so. The dome of the chamber rolled back and they all stared at the huge malignant hanging Moon. Something was falling toward the city.

With his unaided eye Blade could make it out distinctly. It was a bomb, the largest bomb he had ever seen. Falling, spinning counter-clockwise, controlled by vanes, growing larger and larger with the pa.s.sing of each count.

"I am Onta," said the image on the screen. "I speak only to you, Blade. A thirty count has pa.s.sed. I can stop the bomb any time before a hundred. Speak. I can hear you."

Blade felt himself losing his cool. He was frightened. "What do you want of me?"

"Only you," said Onta. "We Selenes want to talk to you, examine you. You will not be harmed. We ask only that you submit to various tests."

"If I agree you will stop the bomb?"

"I will. There is a fifty count now. This is not a honey bomb. That was a mistake. This is an acid fire bomb. It will destroy everything and everyone, now and forever into infinity and eternity."

"Stop it!" yelled Blade. "I will do just as you wish."

Jantor was groveling at Blade's feet, his hairy arms about Blade's knees, s...o...b..ring something in such terror that Blade could not make out the words. He kicked the Gnomen king away from him and yelled at the image. "I said I agree. I promise. Stop the bomb!"

"A forty count," said Onta relentlessly. He was deliberately prolonging the anguish. "I hope it is a good bargain, Blade. I hope you are worth it. We Selenes are weary of the Morphi and the Gnomen and I, for one, would just as well let the bomb fall. But I have superiors who think otherwise. A twenty-five count now, I think."

Blade began to feel ashamed of his panic. His nerves were going, almost gone, but he must hold on. His head was full of pain. The computer was reaching, but it was not yet time. The pain was not severe enough. The computer could not save him.

Blade shook his fist at the face on the screen. He let flow a string of profanity that would have made Lord Leighton, himself skilled in the art of foul-mouthing, turn a deep red.

Blade got angry. "I have agreed. I have no more to say."

Onta was laughing and near choked as he said, "A fifteen count and I stop the bomb."

Blade looked up. The great breast-shaped bomb, with elongated nipple and vanes, lingered in the milk sky, hovering. Blade felt that he could have reached out and touched it. Roughly speaking, he thought, it was about the size of Big Ben. It was absurd, fantastic. But it had stopped.

He was bone weary now. He looked at the screen. "What must I do?"

"Go to the roof and wait. You will find a pad there near the chute. A magnacar will come for you. It will arrive in a count of five. You will enter it and lie p.r.o.ne. Do nothing else."

"I agree."

"Go now."

Norn cried out and clutched at him. Blade told Jantor to seize her. The Gnomen watched in silence as he climbed a short ladder through the open dome and went to the pad near the chute. He gazed up and around him. There was nothing but the enormous bomb now partially blocking the view of that thing he had always feared and distrusted since landing in this Dimension X-the Moon.

The magnacar was there. It was the size of a large coffin with a transparent bottom. The top whined open and a mechanical voice said, "Enter and lie p.r.o.ne. Touch nothing."

Blade obeyed, thinking that the Selenes must have mastered the secret of magnetic fields. The car had no motor or engine of any sort. If the car moved he was not aware of it. There was no sense of motion. All the same he was aware of pa.s.sing the bomb.

He was p.r.o.ne and staring down through the transparent bottom when he saw it. The bomb struck the city. Onta had lied to him. Onta had intended all along to destroy the city. The Selenes were weary of the Morphi and the Gnomen. Blade was more than a little weary himself, of everything.

Below him was a fire such as he had never dreamed could exist. The air itself was aflame. The flame resolved itself into lava that flowed thick and sluggish and destroying, covering and obliterating the city as a hundred gallons of paint would cover and obscure a child's desk globe in HD.

It was over-forever over for the Gnomen and the Morphi... or was it? The thought ticked in his brain and he clung to it. If the women pregnant by him had gone deep enough...

CHAPTER 18.

The parallelism was so exact in so many ways, and so grotesquely different in so many others, that Blade withdrew into his sh.e.l.l and made no attempt to probe or understand the Selenes. In any case the head pains were getting steadily worse. The computer would take him back soon, if he survived.

He knew only one thing-the crystal had ceased to function the moment he landed on the Selene Moon.

He did not see Onta. He saw n.o.body but a medium-sized, mediocre-appearing person who introduced himself as Zampa. The magnacar had deposited him in a s.p.a.cious, sterile docking area lined with white tile. Blade decided it was a laboratory.

Zampa wore a neat gray business suit with a thin black tie and stiff attached collar, patent leather pumps and thin dark socks. He appeared middle aged with a lined face, graying hair and the pocks of a bad case of long ago acne. He extended his hand and Blade, not caring one way or the other, shook it, finding it moist and plumpish.

"Welcome to Selena," said Zampa. "We were worried about you. You must have had some terrible times down there."

There were two easy chairs in a corner of the lab. Blade sank into one, Zampa into the other. He was offered no refreshment or a bath or any change of costume.

Zampa did offer what might have been an apology. "We wish to examine you, to, conduct the first series of tests, while you are in your, er, shall we say primitive state. Do you mind?"

"Would it matter if I did?"

Zampa smiled. "Not in the least."

Blade stared at the man who called himself Zampa. His eyes were the only thing remarkable about him. They were pink and green-a pink dot and concentric rings of green, forming a bull's-eye. Other than that he might have been any slightly weary London businessman. Blade wondered if such were the case? Was it all a computer joke with Lord Leighton made up as Zampa? To h.e.l.l with it. He was too exhausted to speculate.

Blade said: "You did not keep your promise. You dropped the bomb."

Zampa leaned toward him. "Onta made the promise, not I. Not that it matters. I would have done the same. A promise is only words and words are only meaningful when they serve one's own purpose. It was time to find a final solution to the Morphi and Gnomen problem and we have done so. But for your presence down there-and how we did fear for you, Blade-we would have done so much sooner. You have caused us a great deal of worry, you know. We dared not invade for fear you would act wrong-headedly-fight on their side and be killed."

Blade nodded. "I would have, too."

"Umm-so we feared. And we dared not drop the bomb until we had you safely away from there. You see our dilemma?"

"I can see," said Blade calmly, "that you Selenes are a bunch of liars. If I had to make a choice I would prefer the Gnomen or the Morphi to you people." For the first time he noticed the only way in which this Zampa resembled Onta-the head was too big and the neck too thick.

Zampa smiled and took a little red book from a breast pocket of his well-cut jacket. "Liar? Ummm, yes, here it is. One of our people who was sent into another dimension and got back safely-the only one so far, I am afraid-he mentions the words lie and liar in his report."

There was no help for it. Despite his fatigue, his bone weariness, his many wounds and his very real lack of interest, Blade came alert. He had to. Lord L would expect it. And he still had a job to do-if it could be done.

He watched Zampa. "You have sent a man into another dimension?"

"I said so, did I not? Only one has come back thus far, which leaves, I am afraid, some hundred odd roaming around out there whom we will never recover."

How many in his own Home Dimension? Blade could not help grinning. This was going to startle old Lord L.

Zampa was very patient. He tapped well-kempt fingers on his knee. "What do you call the dimension from which you come?"

"Home Dimension. HD."

Zampa studied his book again. "That would correspond to our S Dimension, I suppose. How are you sent and recovered?"

Blade explained as best he could. Zampa listened without interruption, then crooked a finger and said, "Follow me, please."

He might have been in the Tower computer complex but for the silence. Millions of tiny lights winked and blinked but there was not the faintest hum. Zampa led Blade into an inner chamber and pointed to a square pad of shiny material that might have been linoleum but for a metallic glisten. There was no chair, no wires or electrodes or consoles.

Zampa pointed to the pad. "We stand our subject on that and attune power to him by what our experts call sympathetic surge."

Blade asked, "You are not a scientist?"

Zampa laughed heartily. "Dear me, no. I am what we call a friendly relations officer. I have been trained to make you like and trust me, Blade."

Blade scowled. "I've got news for you, friend. You've got one h.e.l.l of a job ahead of you."

Zampa thumbed through his red book and put it away at last. He looked at Blade. "Some of those words I do not have listed. But do I take the meaning correctly-that I will not succeed in my job?"

"Could be," said Blade, and he smiled coldly.

Zampa's smile was warm. "But you are wrong. I am very good at my work. Let us get back to our chairs and be comfortable."

Just then a head pain struck Blade. He laughed to conceal it. He said, "Maybe you are at that, Zampa, and part of your job must be to keep me happy and cooperative?"

"It is indeed."

"Then tell me about the ditramonium. How did the Morphi make it out of ordinary rock and how was the power transmitted without wires?"

Zampa looked at the red book. "Wires-wires? I do not have that word either. But no matter. Of course I will tell you about the ditramonium-even I am scientist enough for that."

Blade did not quite believe him. "You will tell me?"

Zampa shrugged. "Why not? Ditramonium is no longer important to us. For perhaps, say, a vigintillion of counts, or as some reckon it, 1000 novemdecillions, the stuff called ditramonium was necessary to us. It was our source of power as it was to the Morphis. We, as a matter of fact, invented the Morphi and powered them with our ditramonium. A wrong and costly experiment, I am afraid. There must be, I think, fools in every dimension.

"However-and after I have satisfied your curiosity in this, Blade, I will expect you to start answering questions -we began to run short of rock. No rock, no ditramonium. Which is why Onta and his people conspired to shut off the power down there, to conserve the rock against our own needs. I do not know just how Onta did it and I do not want to know-he is not a person to my taste. But of course we all know that such things must be done."

"How well I know." Blade was grim.

"Yes, I suppose so. But let me get on. Our scientists were all working like mad on an alternate source of power, a subst.i.tute for ditramonium, and not many counts ago they found it. You see, then? Our new power is far better than ditramonium and much less troublesome and expensive to produce."

Blade nodded. "So you did not need the city nor the Morphi, and certainly not the Gnomen?"

Zampa made a wiping gesture with his hand. "Need them? Of course not. The Morphi were a failed experiment and the Gnomen were animals, not as interesting, really, as the mole rats in their deep sewers. Forget them, Blade. They are now extinct."

Blade said nothing. He let his facial expression say nothing. No use warning Zampa if, as just might be, the few Gnomen women and their guards had gone deep enough to escape the fire. They would live and have his babies. Suddenly, and Blade could not quite understand it, he very much wanted this to be true.