Warlock. Part 12

'Perhaps we can go over it,' the Shaker said. 'There seems to be some four or five feet clearance from its side to the ceiling.'

Richter ordered Tuk to scale the cab and scout the way ahead, to ascertain whether or not it was worth the trouble of getting the entire party onto the tilted side of the huge vehicle. Tuk, still holding the long, tar-tipped length of kindling which served as a torch, grasped one of the great wheels, stood on another of them, and swung up. There were repairman's rails all along the train, and he had no trouble reaching the relatively level side of the canted machine. He started off, hunched over to protect bis head from the ceiling, and soon was gone from sight, the faint glow of his torch swallowed by the darkness ahead.

'How is the boy?' Richter asked.

'Still unconscious, and turning black from the ankle down. It looks bad.'

'The other?'

'Mace?'

'Yes, him. We would all be dead earlier than now if he had not been with us.'

'He will hold up, I think,' the Shaker said. He looked at the giant where he sat next to Gregor, tending the boy, though there was little that he could do. 'Though I can't be sure. I know that he would never succ.u.mb to physical exhaustion. Strain and effort mean nothing to him. But I've never seen him this emotionally weary. I had not realized, to be truthful, that he was capable of such deep feelings toward anyone.'

'We learn new things about each other on this journey,' Richter said. 'For instance, I learned that you have more stamina in your frail body than any man could sanely guess.'

The Shaker paused, thinking about that, as if it had not occurred to him how much punishment he had dealt to his frame. Then he nodded. 'And I have discovered that you are more than a flawless officer and a wise man. As with the General's woman, you are capable of indiscretions, like any man. Let me tell you, Solvon, I actualy rested far easier when I learned, that night in the mountains, that you had given the world a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child. Until then, you had seemed too perfect, too cool, too utterly collected and on top of things. I thought you were either one of our a.s.sa.s.sins, or perhaps such a rigid disciplinarian that you would be useless when we reached the city that was our goal.'

'How could my being a rigid disciplinarian affect my command in the city?' the officer asked. He had not taken umbrage at anything the magician had told him.

'We will be coming face to face with things that none of us can hope to envision, wonders stacked upon wonders. If you had no weaknesses, no human streak within you, if you were nothing but the traditionalist I thought you to be at first, you would not be able to cope with such a store of marvels. You would be unable to accept the alien and the unexplainable, and you would lead us to destruction. But inside that sh.e.l.l of serenity, old man, beats a heart like mine.'

'Ho, there!' Tuk called from the top of the train, peer ing over the edge at them.

Richter shook his head, as if to throw out the mood which had settled over him and the Shaker. 'What is it, Tuk?

The way ahead is blocked. Two cars shredded open in the crash, and huge f.l.a.n.g.es of rolled metal tore up and gouged into the ceiling. I managed, only with difficulty, to get around the first, then saw the second only ten feet further on, sealing the way even more tightly than the first.'

Then must we go back?' Richter asked.

'We cannot,' Shaker Sandow said. 'Once the fields have burned, once the ashes have cooled, they will be scouting for our bones. When they do not find them, they'll discover the foundations of the buildings, the entrance to the tunnel, and they will be upon us.'

'No need for going back,' Tuk interrupted. 'If we can get the men up here, we can enter the train through the cab. The side door here has twisted loose and could be snapped open, I believe. Once inside, we could make our way through the train, from car to cat, until we can let ourselves out at the end,'

'Good work, Tuk, you red-haired devil! You have more wits about you when there are not women about!'

Tuk chuckled and blushed while the men on the floor of the tunnel laughed aloud. Apparently, the Shaker thought, our flame-headed Tuk is known for his bedroom manner.

And suddenly, he felt a deep, stirring pang of remorse that he had not gotten to know all these men better than he had. Each had a personality, a life of his own. Each was more than a Banibaleer in the service of General Dark, each as complicated as Mace or as Gregor. To have gone through so much and to have learned so little -that seemed like the worst crime of all. But in the quiet of the city-if they could take it-perhaps he could remedy this oversight and know all those who had pa.s.sed through h.e.l.l with him.

In fifteen minutes, they were all inside the train. The men in the lead were forced to scatter the bones of the dead out of their way, for all the cars had been packed with pa.s.sengers when the crash had come, pa.s.sengers who had long ago not given up the spirit but the flesh as well. The way was not easy, for they were forced to walk on the side wall of the cars which had been crumpled against the bottom of the tunnel. When they reached the connecting doorways between the cars, they had to wrestle over the wall, defying gravity, and pull themselves through where they fell down to the 'floor' of the next compartment.

Still, in less than an hour, they had gained the final car, had swung out of that last door to the slimy stones of the damp tunnel floor. They stood in the wash of an eerie blue light which emanated from the end of the tube, a circle of it that gave view of a terminal of sorts two hundred feet farther along.

The stretcher was brought down last, and everyone turned for the few feet remaining in this long and tiring journey. No one could know what might lie ahead but at least it would be a form of sanctuary from the land which had taken such a heavy toll of their numbers.

'Commander!' Tuk called. 'There by the light, along the side of the tunnel!'

Even as he spoke, the half dozen apelike creatures stepped into the open. They were more than seven feet tall, coated in a stringy hair which looked blue in that strange light. Their eyes were green, like new leaves, and they sparkled in the gloom as if there were candles behind them, set inside the mammoth skulls.

Every man drew his dagger, and the archers moved quickly to string their bows and to draw arrows forth from the meager quivers they had brought with them.

Tuk went down, gurgling, and stopped making noise altogether.

There had not been a sound.

And now, the Shaker could see, there were other men lying on the floor, motionless.

Ahead, the creatures were holding long, vicious-looking guns, and were slowly fanning the barrels across the group.

Richter crashed to the floor, groaned, sighed, chuckled absurdly, and was gone.

'Shaker! Quickly!' It was Mace, trying to whisk the magician up in one arm while he used the other to hold young Gregor. 'To the train again, where they-'

He got a strange look on his face. He reached to his chest and plucked out what seemed to be an overlarge needle which had penetrated his clothes and had p.r.i.c.ked no more than half an inch into his skin. He held the needle up to the light where it glinted, looked at it curiously. His large eyes blinked, and he was asleep on his feet. He fell against the Shaker, knocked the old man to the floor and followed him down.

Sandow managed to extricate himself from the tangle of legs and started to stand.

Around him, every other Banibaleer was on the floor. Dead? Dead. Somehow, he didn't think creatures like those apes would play any but the most serious of games.

Something grunted in surprise behind him, and he whirled to see one of the brutish creatures no more than ten feet away. It had seen everyone down and obviously expected everyone to stay there. It raised the weapon it carried, pulled the trigger.

Up close, like this, Sandow could hear what little noise the gun made. It was like air hissing between a man's teeth in the sign of anger.

Nothing more.

Then he was bitten by half a dozen needles, and he went down on the floor with his comrades where darkness took him to its bosom!

22.

The eldest of the white-furred creatures was named Berlarak, and he sat now in a chair too small for him, holding a gla.s.s too ridiculously tiny to have been designed for his hands. He was attempting to make Shaker Sandow and Commander Richter feel more at ease. His voice was too thundering, too powerful, too gruff to set a man totally at peace, however. And the sight of that wizened, large-mouthed face peering from the fringe of white fur that encircled it-a human face and yet not a human face-contributed to a sense of unreality and of danger. Danger lay in anything one could not be sure of, and even the Shaker-more eager than most to accept the unknown-did not feel at ease with the towering apelike men.

'It was necessary that we shoot you first and question later,' the creature said. 'We could not know for certain whether or not you were with those who command the levels above this one.'

'I a.s.sure you that we aren't-' Commander Richter began.

Berlarak held up a huge hand for silence. 'As I have said, we know exactly what your intentions were. We know who each of you is and everything that has happened to you on your way here.'

'The scanner which you mentioned-it told you all of this?' Sandow asked. Only now was he beginning to a.s.similate what few things the white creature had told him in the first moments of his revival.

'Yes,' Berlarak said. 'It told us everything that we wished to know about you and your men. Rather like your own power, Shaker. Except that it must be attached to the skull in order to work, whereas your own powers can work at a distance.'

'And it was from these scanners that you learned how to speak our language?' Shaker Sandow asked.

'We had learned that earlier,' Berlarak said. He frowned, and the expression was truly frightening on that face. 'We learned it from one of the first Oragonians we captured some weeks ago. We speak the same tongue ourselves, though with different inflections, with a handful of words you do not have, without some words you have acquired, but essentially the same. From that captured Oragonian, we made a sleep-teach tape on the scanners and learned the types of inflections which you people from beyond the mountains employ.'

They were sitting in a small, wood-paneled room whose walls were lined with what appeared to be books bound in plastic, though the Shaker could not be certain if they were books at all. There was an odd chair in the far right corner of the chamber with a hovering cap of machinery whose purpose was unfathomable. On the desk behind which Berlarak sat, there were dozens of studs and b.u.t.tons. They had already witnessed that, when Berlarak threw the topmost of the blue toggles, he could talk to others of his kind stationed in other rooms of this lowest level of the city. Wonders stacked on wonders, just as the Shaker had predicted.

'And now you know our circ.u.mstances,' Sandow said. 'But you have us at an unfair advantage.' He sipped his purple liquor and watched the white-rimmed face, not certain whether he would trust every word that Berlarak told him. The great creature obviously lumped all men from beyond the mountains into one category, whether they were from Oragonia or from the Darklands. Perhaps Berlarak considered them unutterably primitive and looked upon them more with scorn and disdain than with hatred. Either way, though, caution would be the best route to follow.

Berlarak considered for a moment before he spoke. 'I can see that it will only antagonize you to leave you in the dark. And since we wish your cooperation in things that I will mention later, it is best that I tell you all I can. In places, that will not be much, for even we are somewhat ignorant of what transpired during the Blank, as you call it.'

'Undoubtedly,' Richter said, 'you know more than we. Your land still contains traces and even cities from that period of time.'

'Sometimes,' Berlarak said, 'artifacts only tend to confuse the archaeologist further.'

He filled both of their gla.s.ses again, poured himself another draught of purple liquor as well, and settled into his tale.

'More than eight hundred years ago,' the creature began, 'mankind had traveled into s.p.a.ce. He had reached out into a thousand star systems and had settled colonies upon four hundred worlds. He traveled faster than the speed of light itself, and made these journeys in little more than hours.'

Commander Richter made a show of disbelief and looked at the Shaker to see if the old magician had been taken in by the tale or whether he realized the folly behind such claims. But the Shaker seemed perfectly willing to accept even the particulars of what Berlarak had told them. 'Remember,' he told Richter, 'that our only hope of victory in all of this is to keep an open mind. That little bit of the traditionalist in you-which I warned you about before-has finally come to the surface and is refusing to accept the wonders that, intellectually, you know must be true.'

'I didn't ask for a personality probe,' Richter said, just a little peeved. He turned to Berlarak. 'Go on, then. Tell us more.' Though he seemed to want to learn all the white-furred creature could tell them, he was still reluctant to concede that men could speed between the suns in so short a s.p.a.ce of time.

Berlarak's story was one of fantasies that had an underlying grit of truth which made itself heard and soon had both listeners convinced of what he told them, even if they often accepted his tales with a degree of doubt and reserve at first. He spoke of experiments to defy gravity that were coming to fruit just before the fall of civilization. He said that the surgery of the day had been able to replace a heart with a manufactured heart if the real one should give out, that plastic livers could replace flesh ones, that a leg which had been severed could be regenerated in a few weeks.

Gla.s.ses were filled again.

And were quickly drained.

And Berlarak went on: The world before the Blank, from what Berlarak's people had re-discovered, was a place where nearly anything was possible. If parents did not wish to give birth to their children, surrogate wombs were available to handle the uncomfortable period of pregnancy. For those who appreciated the beauty of the many alien races mankind had encountered in the universe, and for those who were also somewhat giddy and sated with the pleasures of the planets, there were surgical and genetic engineering chambers where they could have their outward appearance altered to resemble some creature they had seen and admired-and where they could also have their germ plasm radiated and engineered so that their children would be human beings in mind only. Berlarak's people theorized that they were the descendants of one of these cults of race-changers. Their parents had survived the collapse of society and had produced offspring which had survived in the shattered city.

'But with all these miracles within their fingertips,' the Shaker said, 'why couldn't they have prevented the destruction of their world? What was it that happened- that not even these G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses could manipulate to their pleasure and well-being?' He was not being skeptical of what old Berlarak had told them. He believed all of that implicitly now. His tone, instead, was one of anguish at the thought of what mankind had come to after such heights of glory.

According to Berlarak, war had erupted between man and an alien race known as Scopta'-mima on a world that humans called Cramer's Camp and which the Scopta'-mima called something else again, something unp.r.o.nounceable. It raged from one of the four hundred settled planets to another, until it reached Earth herself. The Scopta'-mimas fought with energy weapons that mankind could not even vaguely understand, and in the end the aliens had applied some fantastic lever to the crust of the earth, causing it to shift, to leap up in places and plunge down in others, to form seas where seas had never been and to gobble up mountains that had once stood tall. In the holocaust, some eight hundred years ago, mankind's world was not the only thing which was fractured: his society tumbled as well, shattered like a gla.s.s vase falling down a ladder, rung by rung. And then the Scopta'-mimas had gone away, satisfied in their own way, and had left mankind to struggle back from total destruction.

In the few cities which survived the war even partially intact, the concept 'alien' and anything even remotely a.s.sociated with it became a cause for anger and righteous indignation. All those citizens who had taken advantage of the surgeons and the genetic engineers to mold themselves into the images of off-Earth races became the scapegoats for all of the fallen society's ills. It did not matter to the 'normal' citizens that only one alien race had warred with man. To them, anything different than the standard human form was something set aside for derision, for the bleeding off of rage.

The race-changers were murdered in their beds, executed in public hangings, thrown into pits by the tens of thousands and burned alive to the delighted howls of 'normal' men.

But here in this city, there were a large number of the seven-foot, white-furred race-changers. Most of them were the children of parents who had had themselves surgically altered. Because they were born to their mutation, they were stronger than their parents had been in new bodies, more sure of themselves, quicker to use the power their great hulks provided them. Everything the genetic engineers had promised their parents they would be-they were. And they fought back.

More ephemeral strains of race-changers, patterning themselves after ethereal sprites and delicate other-world beings fell to the rage of the normal men. They perished in days, were sought out where they ran to hide and were mutilated horribly.

But the white giants fought back viciously, unsparingly, with a glee that seemed inherent in their form. They won the partially ruined city for their own, only after bringing it to further damage. But at last they drove the surviving 'normals' into the open lands to forage for themselves in the shifting crust of the earth where life could not be maintained for long. And even though they trusted to the earth to devour their enemies, the white-furred ones took the precaution of erecting the onyx force walls about the city, a permanent barrier against a well-laid plan from those who had been dispossessed.

And centuries had pa.s.sed.

The yellow sky, swirling with dust in the high alt.i.tudes, settled slowly into green, then blue again.

Birds and animals began to flourish once more, though some were different than before.

The lifespan of a white-furred mutant was nearly a hundred and fifty years, but still they began to relinquish their hold upon science and information. Superst.i.tions grew up around the eternal machinery of the city which never needed attending and which was built into the rock strata far out of sight. True knowledge began to disappear and was soon only a dim memory. Only in the last ten years had attempts been made to re-discover what they had lost.

They reproduced irregularly and with some bad results so that their number was kept near thirty, plus or minus half a dozen from decade to decade. This made for a small force to unearth the knowledge of the past, but they were dedicated and made headway.

Then the Oragonians had come. Berlarak's people had greeted them openly, eagerly-and that had been their gravest error. Their brothers and sisters were killed by the Oragonian marksmen, and the nine who survived that ma.s.sacre were forced into the lowest level of the city by way of hidden pa.s.sages. The lowest level was sealed off from the ones above it by rubble and collapsed elevator shafts, so that they knew they would not be bothered there unless the Oragonians discovered their secret way to escape. Here they had remained for some months, hoping for a chance at revenge, even as the Oragonians had swelled their complement to four hundred men within the city.

'Four hundred!' Richter gasped.

'And that is why we require your aid,' Berlarak said.

'But you seem confused,' Richter said. 'You see, there are but thirty-one of us, and five of our number are wounded and useless to such a cause!'

'As I have told you,' Berlarak said, 'your wounded will be cured by the autodocs we have taken them to.'

'Even so,' Richter argued, 'your people and ours together only equal forty-but a tenth of the forces above us. Forces which now know a good deal about the city and its weaponry.'

'But not enough,' Berlarak said, smiling. Even the smile was frightening on that face. It approached being a leer. 'They know all the superficial things: the aircraft, the guns. But there are far greater weapons in this city than they know of or have even begun to notice. Remember, my people have had ten years to pry through these corridors and vaults, on every level of the city. The upper floors all are larger than this one. A thousand times more power and weaponry lies above us than even you see down here.'

'I don't know,' Richter said hesitantly.

'I think I favor going in with them,' Shaker Sandow said.

'That is wise,' Berlarak said.

'Here's what I propose,' Richter said, leaning forward in his chair. 'A detachment of my men returns to Darklands and takes word of our find to General Dark. A regiment of some thousand or two thousand men return and help us take the city. Then, we would outnumber the Dragomans.'

'And then your people would be slaughtered,' Berlarak said. 'They would have spies among them. And aircraft from the city would destroy them before they reached the black walls. Meanwhile, the Oragonians grow more familiar with the city and might, by then, discover some of the greater weapons awaiting their hands.'

Richter twisted his hands together, shook his head. 'It's just that so many of my men have died. There were a hundred and two of us that left the capital days ago. And now there are but twenty-eight Almost three fourths of them dead.'

'I see what you want,' Berlarak said. 'And I understand it. I will take the decision out of your hands by delivering the last piece of information I have been holding for such an eventuality as this. When I have told you what I know, you will join my people in my plan for reoccupation of the upper levels, and because you will have no choice, the decision will rest easier on you.' He looked from one of the Darklanders to the other, as if to gauge if they were prepared for what he was about to say. 'Your only hope is to take the city swiftly, within the day. The Oragonians, we know, have declared war on your homeland and have taken fully half of your territory inside of four days.'

23.

'You're lying!' Commander Richter shouted, leaping to his feet as if he had sat upon a nail, his face a furious shade of red, his fists balled at his sides.