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VAULT OF THE DREAMERS

“WHY DO WE PRESS ON TO THE POINT OF utter exhaustion?” Tobrush asked, unable to fathom the single-mindedness of the Mycohl leader even after reading his mind. “We must rest, or when they catch us we shall perish.”

“We should have waited in ambush for them within the stone forest,” Desreth agreed. “A threat removed is a concern no longer.”

In point of fact, even Josef was coming face to face with the realization that even he could go no longer. “We know the way is marked,” he pointed out, “and that they will have to come this way. It is of no great concern where the next battle happens, so long as we pick the place and time. Now both the others are far behind us, looking nervously at every rock and dark place. Now we can find some cover and rest.” He looked around. “Does it ever stop raining, I wonder?”

“There is a waterfall or something that sounds like it ahead,” Kalia said. “You hear it?”

They stopped and grew still, and heard now the sound of distant, steady thunder, a deep rumbling that could only be some sort of massive overflow, far larger than the one at the scene of the first battle, and that one had been fairly impressive.

“From what we’ve seen on the way, it is likely that there will be more temples and ruins at such a falls,” he said hopefully. “Perhaps it is there we’ll find our shelter and rest.”

The tremendous rumbling grew louder and louder as they approached, until it seemed to be beneath them, shaking the very ground. There was a slight rise ahead, and Kalia pointed.

“Look!” she shouted. “Smoke!”

“A volcano?” Josef mused. “It doesn’t feel like a volcano. Let’s see.”

They mounted the rise and the sight they beheld was more breathtaking than any volcano they could imagine.

The area was a huge, horseshoe-shaped basin, perhaps four or five kilometers across, and over it dumped not only the great river they had been more or less following but other rivers and streams as well, combining into a solid sheet of water falling into a pit so deep they could not see bottom. The smoke rising from it seemed to be water vapor and spray created by the falls itself, swirling around and creating an ever-moving fog in the center of the thing.

“It looks like the biggest toilet in the universe,” Kalia commented.

They just stood there for a few minutes, gaping at the sight. Finally Tobrush went over quite near the edge. “I hate to say this,” the Julki shouted over the roar of the great falls, “but these two coated rocks sticking up here seem to say we’re to jump in!”

Josef approached very near the edge, going through the two rock markers, and nervously looked at the point indicated. He stared for a moment, then made his way cautiously back up. “There’s a kind of ramp there that seems to run along the rim to the left, going in back of the falls,” he told them. “This area is made up of very hard rock, and it looks intact. It is perhaps two meters wide, and there is no depression or guardrail.”

Kalia repeated his steps, although not quite so close to the edge, then came quickly back. “I don’t like it!” she said, shouting against the roar. “It’s bound to be slippery and very wet, and we have no idea where if anywhere it goes.”

“Assuming it was our demons who built it, as might be inferred from the coating on the markers, and not the temple builders,” Tobrush said thoughtfully, “and making the possibly erroneous assumption that our two fugitive demons came this way, I must assume it can be negotiated by any or all of us. You saw the suspended ones, with those big, thick cloven hooves. If such ones with hard, flat feet and top-heavy bodies can do it, there is no reason we all cannot. Assuming, that is, that they actually went that way. If not, and there is weathering and a lack of maintenance further on, we may be in deep trouble. There is a downward angle; getting out of there might be far more difficult than getting in.”

Josef nodded. “I see no alternative but to try it, but I’m not about to attempt that without rest and sleep.” He looked around. “Well, if we can stand the noise, there’s no end of shelter here.

Built right into the rise were the most elaborate ruins yet. These looked less primitive and far less worn, perhaps because of their slight shelter by the rise or perhaps, too, because they were newer or made of much stronger rock. The complex went on in both directions as far as they could see; windows and doors carved out of the rock itself, looking at once crude and civilized.

“Let’s see if we can find one that’s reasonably dry on the inside, has two exits, and gives a view of this point,” Josef suggested. “Desreth—check out the few nearest us.”

The Corithian scuttled over and entered one of the misshapen doors, and was gone for quite some time. Getting nervous, Josef called the creature through the intercom. “Desreth?”

“I am here,” his voice responded, sounding odd and hollow. “I believe you should take a look in here if you have some light. It is not at all what one might have expected.”

They went to the doorway and entered, one at a time, switching on their helmet lights. The rumbling from the great falls became more remote and spooky inside, but what was still there gave a constant, echoing roaring sound within.

Instead of being a series of small structures carved out of the rock wall, the complex proved to be one or perhaps more huge structures with many entrances. Part of it was certainly natural; it had the look and feel of natural caverns that were, possibly, lava tubes out of this region’s ancient volcanic past, since there were no stalactites or other formations as such.

Inside, too, were ancient pits where obviously some kind of cooking or heating had been done for a common population, as well as other primitive structures. Here, too, along the stone walls and columns, was the first evidence of the people who had once lived here beyond their decaying ruins, in the shape of varicolored paintings and designs. They were at once both elaborate and crude, but they gave something of a picture of the place as it had been.

The folk themselves were bipeds, somewhat humanoid in appearance, but with odd, reptilian faces with pushed-in noses, and on their backs were large oval shapes that at first they took to be packs of some kind but which seemed so consistent that they finally decided that the shapes were growths, perhaps part of the body.

“Vestigial remnants of a shelled ancestry,” Tobrush guessed, “like my own people. Hard to tell with all the drawings in two very flat dimensions, but it makes the most sense. The eyes are very large and bulging, and always drawn segmented into three parts, I note. One wonders what, and how, they saw. Certainly they had good color sense, even if very bad taste. Big, powerful hind legs, so they could run, shell remnant or not, and fairly fast—and from those oversized, clawed hands I would say that they did not embrace as a form of affection.”

“But what did they eat!” Josef wanted to know. “I haven’t seen a sign of anything edible yet.” He wasn’t just curious, but also thinking of just how many more days’ rations they carried.

“From the pottery remnants and the fire pits, they cooked whatever it was,” Tobrush noted. “With that face, and that jawline, I would doubt if they were meat-eaters, either.”

“Those claws look pretty good for ripping flesh,” Josef noted.

“In defense, I suppose, but I think more likely they were diggers. Tubers, roots, who can know? But the odds are they smelled out what they ate and then dug for it. The legs indicate they were built to cover a lot of ground in a hurry, yet they had settlements like this one. That in turn implies enemies from which their best defense was to outrun them.”

Josef suddenly remembered the basics of defense himself.

“Desreth—cover the entrance with the best view of the trail to the edge,” he ordered. “This is the best we’re going to do to get some sleep.”

Tobrush kept playing his light against the wall. “No eating scenes, or normal scenes of life here, but—wait a minute! Captain—I think you ought to look at this.”

Josef came back over, suddenly feeling all the weariness of the journey, but he couldn’t scold Tobrush after he saw the scene.

It was clearly the falls, in full two-dimensional glory, and all along the ledge the creatures were shown in great numbers prostrate before it. But it was in the falls, or, rather, in the mist of the falls, that the scene became eerie.

There was a shape depicted in the mist, a huge, menacing outline, of a great, broad horned head and neck rising up, almost filling the bowl.

Surrounding the scene were smaller scenes, almost frescoes, showing scenes of the creatures with horrendous devil masks, bodies garishly painted, and gruesome scenes of sacrifices performed at the edge of the falls and even, it appeared, self-mutilation. One showed the figure of a small child on its shell-like back, its mouth open as if crying out or screaming, as one of the painted and masked ones used a nasty-looking three-pronged knife-like tool and was clearly dismembering the hapless young one alive.

“Nothing we hadn’t already figured out, except now we know who and what,” Josef said at last, knowing his casual tone couldn’t mask from the telepathic Julki his own feelings at the scene. He’d seen a lot of people slaughtered in his life, some senselessly and cruelly, often in staged fights to the death for the amusement of the nobility, or sometimes enemies of the Lords purposely and slowly tortured to death in public as object lessons. The Mycohl, however, always had a genuine purpose—entertainment, revenge, enforcement of discipline—but these scenes showed an entire culture, an entire race of people, whose entire lives revolved around such things. Blood to appease the demon-gods, and what had it gotten them? Where were they now?

Tobrush read his thoughts. “It is said that in the High Temples of the Lords of Qaamil, where high priests read the Quiimish in its original and full form, that all of the dead are gathered, or collected, by the Princes of Darkness to serve them in all ways until the Great Judgment. Where does a whole culture, a whole race, a whole world go when it dies? Can a whole world die and be collected, too?”

“You expect me to sleep after that cheery drought?” Josef asked him, still staring at the reliefs.

“Of course. And so shall I. Even if this is the domain and plane of the dead, we are still alive and we cannot see them. Perhaps we can hear them, just a bit, because we are so close, but nothing more. We are here, but we are not yet collected. By getting some decent sleep and rising rested and refreshed, I fully intend to keep postponing that eventuality as much as possible.”

“You old hypocrite! You never believed in any of that!”

“I do not say I believe it now,” the Julki responded. “I merely state it as a hypothesis that fits the facts. You never believed it, either, except in the dark recesses of your unconscious mind where I cannot go, yet the idea unnerves you.”

Josef sighed and walked back over near the doorway. His light, before he turned it off, fell on Kalia, who was already asleep, neither curious nor moved by all this. She believes it, he thought. In her limited, ignorant drol mind she believed every word of it, and it didn’t bother her a bit.

She doesn’t have any problems with it, either,” Tobrush commented. “Why, considering what we know so far, she’d fit right into the Dark Domain.”

Josef sighed and nodded, then forced himself to turn to more mundane worries. “Desreth, if another team, most likely the Holy Horrors, gets here, they’re almost certain to do what we did—head for the falls and not even see this place until after. Their telepath will probably warn them of something, but if they go past and you get a clear shot, hit them. Don’t wait for us. Use your discretion but get maximum results.”

“Understood,” the Coridiian responded. “We are into the hill, so they have no way to come up behind us, and it is quite a drop for them anywhere close but here. Suspicious or not, they will have to come between us and the falls. That will be most satisfactory.”


“Manya! Captain! Wake up! Wonderful news!”

Krisha might not have been able to contain herself, but her companions, who hadn’t had the benefit of being unconscious and carried for many hours, had far different initial feelings.

Still, Gun Roh Chin managed to ask, “What is this about, Krisha?”

“Morok! He’s alive! He’s coming towards us now! Right through the stone forest!”

He stared at her blearily. “How could he get over the mountains? Are you sure you didn’t nod off and dream this?”

“Quite sure! I can hear him now!”

Manya was no more trusting of her than was the captain. “Even if he managed somehow to get over the mountains, how can he be coming here, ahead of the heathens on the other side of this place? Granting the remote possibility of a miracle cure of his leg, this place is a maze unless the path is followed exactly, and we have our own location transponders off. You know that.”

“He is being—assisted,” she responded, more calmly. “He has the Exchange empath with him to home in on us. She is under his influence.”

Gun Roh Chin sat back and sighed. He was glad to hear that the old comrade of so many past missions was all right, but he didn’t like the idea of using a foreigner for the purpose. “Very lax of them,” he muttered. “Sloppy.”

Krisha frowned. “Aren’t you happy?”

“At Morok’s coming? Yes, overjoyed. But he used his Talent to kidnap her. I can’t think of anything that would upset an Exchange exploiter team more than that. In that one act we’ve changed them from neutrals who got us out of a bad position into enemies who will never trust us or accept our word again.”

“They’re heathen!” Manya snapped. “Hence, they are incapable of making a true oath anyway. Remember that traitorous little witch who even violated the Treaty of Neutrality back on Medara? Besides, if I remember Krisha’s description of them, the two females were both empaths, so we haven’t diminished their Talents, nor did we harm her. When the Holy Father gets here, I can treat his leg with my kit and we can send her back to them.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand them like I do. True, they are mercenaries to the core, but this guild in particular has a sense of honor between each other bordering on religion. They have to—they hire out to be dropped on newly discovered worlds just to find out what kills people there. If the team does not think and act in all the important ways as almost a single organism, they have very short careers.”

This was one of the few times when he really wished Krisha could read his mind. Neither of them, and not even Morok, would believe the truth: if he had simply gone to them and asked for help, they would have given it. Exploiter teams were rather myopic in their view of others: they thought of the Arm as another team, and the Mycohl military unit as well. Their code would have required them to aid someone in distress, even a competitor, so long as it didn’t cause them harm to do so, as this surely wouldn’t But, harm their team, treat them as an enemy, and you were in for it. It would be a concept totally lost and perhaps inconceivable to these clerics, and not something Krisha could have deduced from reading their own minds, either. You had to have been among them for a while, as he had once been, long ago.

There was nothing to do about it now, though. The damage had been done. As always, pragmatism came first.

“How far away are they, and about when do you expect them to get here?” he asked the telepath.

“Hard to say exactly, but certainly within an hour or two. Remember, an empath also has to use only amplitude to locate something, but I take from their minds that they have crossed the marked path and are making much better time straight for us now.”

“What about the Exchange people?”

She shrugged. “Occasional thoughts and fragments only, but I know they are closing.”

He got up and sighed. “If there is even a chance that the Exchange people can catch them, then we must go back and get them first, before they are overrun. Come—there is no time to lose. Knowing that he is a hypno with one of theirs in his power, they will shoot him down like a wild animal if they can.”

About forty-five minutes of backtracking and Krisha said, “We are very close—but so is the Exchange. I’ve thrown up a block sufficient to cover all of us, even His Holiness, but that won’t stop them. They know he’s got to be on the trail.”

They quickened their pace, and within five more minutes came upon the Stargin and his Terran helper. He looked less than great, mostly hopping on one of those huge, clawed feet of his while holding the other up, with Modra supporting him under that arm. The High Inquisitor was wearing his instrument pack but had his environment suit tied around his body. The rain was beading and running off his oily, tiny feathers, but he still looked waterlogged.

“Blessings on you all!” he called, sounding all in.

“No time for anything, even pleasantries,” the captain responded. “Everybody, off the trail, into the forest here. Go back as far as you can, without regard for getting lost. I’m going to stay close up here, and with Krisha and the empath you’ll be able to home in precisely on my transponder, which I am activating now. Go! I’m a null—they won’t detect me.”

“But they’ll know we’re very close by my block!” the telepath reminded him.

“Close does not count And get back up here when I call you just as fast as you can. Not withstanding the Holy Father, we’ll have to stay close or they’ll figure out we’re behind them. Now—go!”

With Krisha now helping Morok out, they moved quickly back into the forest and out of sight

Gun Roh Chin took a position where he could barely see the road but not be seen, or so he hoped. He tried scanning, but they were using scramblers and he got a bunch of electronic nonsense.

In just a few minutes, the Exchange team passed. It was the first time he’d actually laid eyes on them, and although the sight of the Durquist startled him a bit—he’d never seen anything quite like it before—it was the fourth member of the team that gave him his real scare. The skintight environment suits left no doubt that the remaining female not only wasn’t human—at least not quite—but that she had goat-like legs. For a moment, he thought they had a demon with them, and now he wasn’t sure just what the creature was.

And then, just before they would have gone out of sight, the group stopped, and the lithe little Terran who must be the telepath started looking around, obviously trying a scan.


Indeed, Jimmy McCray was getting very, very confused. “We should be right on top of ’em!” he insisted. “The girl is strong, the strongest I ever came across, but it’s almost like they were skulking right by in the wood, or rocks, or whatever, as it were. Durquist, watch our back!”

“I have had one eye on our back all along,” the creature responded, showing one stalked eye forward, the other back.

“Stay on scramble,” Tris Lankur warned. “I’m gonna give them a call if they’re that close.” If one of them was dumb enough to answer, they might get a fix. He hoped the Durquist didn’t also get that idea; his own mind was immune to telepathy, McCray could block his, and probably Grysta’s, and Molly didn’t have those kind of smarts, but the Durquist would be an open book.

“This is Exchange calling the Mizlaplan team,” Lankur called. “Please acknowledge.”

He waited, got no response, and tried it several more times. He sighed. “Well, they aren’t going to fall for it. All right, then, it’s one way.” He turned back to the open channel on the translator.

“This is the Exchange. You might be able to block, but you can’t hide forever or get too far from us and you know it. We demand the immediate return of our abducted member and the surrender of your team to our authority along with all weapons. In addition to violating our space, you have now committed a major crime against us.”


Gun Roh Chin sighed and pulled his energy pistol. They might be great on primitive alien worlds, but they were rank amateurs in this sort of thing. Keeping the weapon on manual, so their own defensive systems wouldn’t see a lock on and throw up deflectors, he took careful aim and fired at maximum stun.

The bolt bit them square at a distance of under thirty meters, and all of the Exchange team went down. The leader, though, fell only to his knees and then seemed to recover, the pistol coming up, the targeting system tracking the initial shot.

Chin cursed under his breath, remembering that one of them was a cymol. He aimed again, using target lock, narrowed the beam, and struck Lankur alone dead on. The figure fell back and collapsed.

The Mizlaplanian knew that Lankur’s brain and some suit control would still be active, but he’d still be effectively paralyzed. “Everyone! Quickly!” he called back to Krisha and the rest. “Move back to me. Let me move within here well ahead of them and then join on me quickly! I’ve bought us a little time, no more.”

“You shot them!” Krisha responded, amazed. “Did you really have to do that?”

“Believe me, it was the only way,” he assured her. “And we may have to do even worse later. Are you moving?”

“Yes, but—”

“No ‘buts.’ That wasn’t an opening round of negotiations the cymol was giving us, it was an ultimatum. Are you ready to surrender all of us and your weapons to an Exchange team?”

“Unthinkable!” Manya shot back, and she really spoke for all of them. As Gun Roh Chin understood, a priest would die before surrendering to a nonbeliever. Although one could eventually rationalize almost anything, that wasn’t really open to interpretation. They could cooperate, certainly, but never surrender. “And to an abomination, a machine man? The very thought is the highest heresy.”

“Well, at the very least, they would insist on us turning over the Holy Father as well as their person, and I told you what they’d do to a hypno who had already committed such an act on one of their own. These teams, out of the jurisdiction of civil authority, act by their own very austere code. Also, watch what you say and keep off the open channels. The fact that I’ve incapacitated the cymol doesn’t mean he isn’t wide awake, and remember that their suits are thought-controlled, like ours.”

He met them just out of sight of the fallen team, on the marked trail.

Krisha glanced over at Modra, who was standing almost statue-like next to Morok and herself. “What about her?

“She stays with us. Holy One, you’ll have to be creative to free her up for action, but she must remain totally and completely under your influence. We’ve lost our empath and she’s an empath, which is handy. Also, no matter how delicate she might look, if she’s one of a team like that, she’s tough and a dead shot—and she’s got far more power reserves in her suit and weapon than we have.”

“I—I really had not intended all this,” Morok commented, seeming confused by all this. “I had thought at least we would let her go back to her people.”

“With all due respect, Holiness, this is my territory,” the captain replied bluntly. “All we’d do is have five people instead of four in back of us who won’t make that kind of mistake again.”

“I—I could command her to mislead them. Delay them, trip them up.”

“The telepath would figure it almost immediately, and if he didn’t the cymol would assume it. They’re like supercomputers inside real bodies. No, now that the damage is done, we use what we have. We need her, and she gives us an edge, and as long as she’s with us she’s a hostage. They won’t do any sort of all-out attack so long as she’s alive and in reasonable condition. How’s your leg? We won’t make any speed this way and they’ll be smelling blood when they come out of it.”

“A bad sprain. No break that I could find,” Manya told him. “I gave him a shot for the pain and another for temporary strength, but he really should not walk on it more than he absolutely must.”

“I will do what I must,” Morok assured them. “I got this far.”

“Uh—yeah,” the captain nodded. “So long as we’re moving, how did you get this far?”

“I had no choice,” the High Inquisitor replied. “I thought I could fly on this world, and I did. I removed my suit and tied it around me and then I jumped off the cliff into the river valley. It was a near thing; I came very close to dropping into the river before I caught a thermal that took me up. Not, unfortunately, high enough to go over the mountain, so I had to fly along the river until the mountains ended, praying that it was a fairly straight shot. I came in on the other side because I couldn’t hope to cross this distance. The rain was keeping me too low, and I had no idea where to go. I spotted the tree markers and landed as high on the mountain as I could and waited, hoping I’d beaten you around. Alas, I had not, and I had no real hope of following in this mess. I found a weather-polished piece of rock, which allowed me to do a little trade-secret self-hypnosis, which helped the pain. Then I waited, trying to decide what to do next, when the Exchange team came along.”

The captain nodded. “And when you saw her come out for some reason, and realized after a while she was alone, you flew down and surprised her.”

“Yes, exactly. I could not believe she was alone, but she just kept standing there, staring out. I didn’t want to do it, but I felt that I had no other choice, and her separation and exposure seemed a miracle.”

“Well, we’ll need some more miracles ahead,” Gun Roh Chin told him. “Otherwise, we shall just have to continue making it up as we go along.”

They continued on until it was clear that Morok could not continue without some more medical help. Manya’s medical kit was very limited, of course, being more of a diagnostic computer and container/mixer for various antibiotics and painkillers that would work on the races of the Arm. You had to know what you were doing, though; a simple salve that would do wonders for, say, Morok, might be caustic or even deadly to Krisha.

Using bandages and a few strips of hard plastic improvised from some of the utility pack reinforcing rods, she managed to rig a primitive splint. She wasn’t happy with it, but it was the best that she could do and she knew it. Gun Roh Chin had often reflected to himself that, were it not for the Gnoll’s competence at so many things, it might have been impossible to stand her.

“Get your suit back on full if you can,” she instructed him. “It will sense the problem and help reinforce it.”

“I will manage,” he assured her. “Now bring the girl here. If we’re to keep her, we want her as whole as we can make her.”

They brought Modra to him, and he gazed into her own eyes. “Now, listen to me,” he commanded, although in a soft voice. “In a minute or two, I am going to bring you to full and complete wakefulness. When I do, this is what you will remember: you will see a scene where you begin to walk back from your sojourn to join your comrades, only to see dark, demonic things have descended upon them. Their sight is loathsome, the spawn of demons, and your empathic Talent left no doubt that these were pure evil. Appalled and helpless, you watched as those creatures melted into and entered the bodies of your companions. You know now that they are possessed by evil and are not their own masters. They will pretend to be as they were, but you know now that they are actually now ruled by creatures and driven to deceive and kill all the others. Can you remember it?”

“Yes,” she said, gasping.

“You ran from them as they came for you,” Morok went on, “and almost literally bumped into me. You know I am a hypno, but that I used that Talent to calm you and convince you that I was not an enemy but rather one who needed help. We have now come to this point and are together, but you are the sole survivor of your group. Your undead companions come only with malice and murder on their minds for us. Because of this, you will join with us, not as one of us, but as the sole remaining representative of the Exchange, who must get back somehow and warn your people. You will decide to join us of your own will after I awaken you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” she responded.

“She has a horrid imagination,” Krisha noted. “The scene you described is, in her mind, so graphic I can barely stand to look at it myself. I think it will take. It must. I sense that the Exchange team is beginning to recover.”

“Very well,” Morok replied. “Awaken now!”

Modra awakened with a start and looked around. “You did a hypno on me!” she accused the Stargin.

“I’m sorry. You were in such a panic I had no choice,” he told her. “I also needed aid to cross the stone forest. Your erstwhile companions pursue us from behind now; the Mycohl are ahead. You are welcome to come along with us, but we are in a very bad position.”

She looked at them. Even through the helmets, she could see the others with reasonable clarity. The dark-skinned girl was a real beauty; the smaller woman looked like some witch or other fairy creature out of her childhood fairy tales, while the dark, Oriental-looking man was small but very strong looking. She was surprised that two, and maybe the gnome, too—it was hard to tell—were Terrans. It was always hard to think of people sharing your common ancestry as aliens and enemies.

She nodded. “I guess I have no choice,” she told them. “I’ve never met the Mycohl, but I know that their religion has demons as good guys, and I’ve met a pair of demons and seen their work. But no more hypno jobs on me! I’m nobody’s plaything, understand?”

“I give you my solemn word as a priest that I will do nothing at all to change the way you are right now,” Morok said slyly.

Gun Roh Chin suppressed a grin. “I am Captain Chin, the non-cleric of the group,” he told her. “The pretty one over there is Krisha, our telepath and security officer. This is Manya, of the Gnoll, one of our many other races, and our science and medical officer. Our leader with the commanding way about him is Morok. And I think we’d better let all the other pleasantries go for now, since we need to open up some distance and find some kind of fortified shelter ahead where there will be more than one way out this time. I fear we may well have to battle your old comrades.”

She fought back tears. “That’s all right. They aren’t—my team—any more.”

Chin switched to private one-on-one with the other Mizlaplanians for a moment. “We must protect you, Holy One,” he noted. “Without you to keep renewing this, we’ll be enemies again a day or two later.”

“Then find me a way to rest this leg,” Morok responded.

Enlarged by one, they pressed on, now out of the stone forest, toward the distance, where other enemies awaited.


“How far away, Tobrush?” Josef asked the telepath.

“Hard to tell, that telepath’s so strong. I can’t understand why, if she could have blocked them all at any time, she didn’t block them back on the entry world. In any case, they are certainly no more than an hour behind now. They’ve done a good job of catching up to us. Odd, too—the block’s very good all around, but I swear that there are more of them than there were. I have a definite sense of a fifth presence that doesn’t quite belong and which the telepath still hasn’t fully compensated for. The language, the thought pattern, is different than the others.”

“You think the Exchange teamed up with the Mizzles?” Kalia asked. “We could take ’em all out from this position!”

Oddly, it was Desreth who doubted. “We have spied on Exchange exploiter teams before. They are often loaded with almost anything they can imagine they might need, including thought-programmable mobile explosives. Tobrush, did you not also say that one of them was a cyborg of some sort?”

“Yes, they call them cymols. Unreadable as Corithians, but I got the information from the minds of the others.”

“Captain, it was I who first suggested we take them out,” Desreth noted. “Now I recommend that we do not. Just one of those explosives, directed in here, would bring this whole place down upon us, and even if we got them all in one volley, this cyborg could still direct fire into here. If it were just the Mizlaplan, then it would make sense to remain and finish it, but we should know much more about where the Exchange loyalties now lie before taking them all on. You have all had sleep, food, and water. It is best we go now if we are going down that falls trail. If they are so close, it is almost inevitable that they will camp here as we did. A sure lead is certainly worth more than the possibility of being outgunned and buried alive.”

Josef sighed. “All right. I hate to abandon such a perfect position, and the fight has to continue at some point, but I agree with you for now. We’ve got the lead—we should keep it.”

“Oh, not again!” Kalia sulked. “Must we always run from fights unless the enemy agrees to lie down and submit to execution?”

“In this case, I’m with you in my desire to have done with it,” Josef told her, “but this isn’t just a personal thing. This is duty now.”

“Shit! We’re most likely gonna die anyway! Why not chance it here?”

“Because,” Tobrush put in, “then we’d never really know what this was all about. I am prepared to die if need be—my oath commands it—but not unless it need be, and certainly not without some answers.”

Josef nodded, to himself rather than to Tobrush. That was really about the size of things. “Whatever those ancient people worshiped was connected to these falls, and the pit at the bottom,” he said. “I have no intention of dying at the top of it, like they did. Let’s go!”

The trail cut into the side of the falls was steeper than it looked, but there were also previously unnoticed handholds, a bit high up but usable, at least to Josef and Kalia, and to Desreth as well if the Corithian wanted to shoot a tentacle to them.

By the time they were at the falls itself they were already more than twenty meters below the rim; entering the falls from the side, they went through a curtain of water and then were behind the great volume of water, damp but reasonably dry.

“I gotta admit, this is weird,” Kalia commented. “We’re outta the rain ’cause the roof’s all water!”

“Look at the trail and handholds!” Tobrush called to them. They all looked, and, slowly, eerily, the trail and holds were softly glowing.

“Did we turn on the lights or are we expected?” Josef wondered aloud.

“Whatever, it’s a little late to back out now,” she noted.

“I wonder if this can be seen from the rim?” Tobrush put in. “I was thinking of the effect it would have on a very primitive people to see ribbons of glowing light rising from below through the falls. If you also had some bright light, or perhaps even fire, it would impress the hell out of them.”

“Or into them,” Josef shot back. “At least this shows we’re on the right trail, as it were. If something or somebody came up this way often enough to warrant a lighting system, they had to come from somewhere.

“Hey! It looks like we’re comin’ to the end up there!” Kalia pointed. “And we’re not even out from under the whole falls!”

“No! It’s a switchback!” Josef responded. “Now we go back the way we came and down more.”

“If this thing goes down to the bottom, we had all better check flotation gear,” Tobrush noted worriedly. “There had better be an ‘exit’ sign there before we reach the water level!”

“Hmmm . . . Let’s not worry about that unless we have to,” Josef said, thinking about just how long it was back and just how exposed they’d be coming back up. “What happens if we run into more demons like that first pair?”

“They are the demigods, the creators of us and our worlds,” Kalia argued. “We should free them and worship them and they will be the powers to slay all our enemies!”

“If we could make a deal, I might agree with you on that, too,” Josef admitted. “Unfortunately, I think we’re considered no better than toys or pets to them. That’s the impression I got, anyway. Anybody in this group want to be some other life form’s pet or plaything? Particularly you, Kalia. I’d mink that going back to being somebody’s slave, if you were lucky, would be the last thing you’d want.”

“But this is different! They are gods!”

“Which means that they have more power and knowledge than we have,” Tobrush put in. “Why were you originally a plaything of the rich and powerful on your home world? Same thing, isn’t it? The only thing you’d do is add somebody higher up to the top of the ruling heap; you would still remain on the bottom.”

That stopped her. “I—I had never thought of it like that before,” she admitted.

“The big problem,” the telepath continued, “is their mental power. They had me cold back there—it took Robakuk to get me out of there. We don’t have Robakuk any more.”

Josef thought about that. “Desreth, Kalia, I’m going to give you both an order that is not to be countermanded under any conditions. If Tobrush moves to free a demon, kill him.”

“Now, wait a minute!” the Julki exclaimed.

“Sorry, Tobrush. If they can beat you and take you over, we haven’t any choice. If they know that any of us will absolutely do it, and with Desreth you won’t even have the advantage of warning, they might try dealing instead, or at least keep you free. It’s the only insurance I know.” 

“Um—thank you, I think. If I come up with a more palatable alternative, I shall assuredly give it to you at once, though. Still, I would count on nothing for certain in this place. Sooner or later, even if this works, we are going to meet one not imprisoned or contained. I had the very strong impression that, freed of all constraint, their mental powers are almost godlike. I should certainly love to know who imprisoned them, and how.”

“Yeah,” Josef sighed. “And if they’re still around, do we want to meet them, either? Uh-uh.”

They stopped at the next switchback, the fourth. It was difficult to say just how far their descent had been, but their best estimate was that they were now better than a kilometer below the surface and very close to where the water struck bottom, throwing up the massive spray and mist. That, however, wasn’t the problem.

The path simply ended. No switchback, nothing. It just seemed to end, about ten meters above the water.

‘Wow what do we do?” Kalia asked, staring at the dead end.

“Scan the end of the trail,” Desreth suggested. “I believe you will find the results quite interesting.”

Josef turned all of his instrumentation on. The helmet now became a screen, with the entire forward area electronically scanned and analyzed. There were no surprises except right where the path ended; there the thing simply refused to lock, but showed a massive, irregular burst of energy.

Analysis was refused for insufficient data.

He switched the screen off and fed the information to the others. “Ideas, anybody?”

“I hardly think that the demons would like living in that paradise above surrounded by all those primitives,” Tobrush said carefully. “If they were only here now and again, they wouldn’t want any of the most daring, curious, or fanatical going where they weren’t wanted.”

“You think it’s an illusion, then?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Unfortunately, I can think of only one way to find out for certain. Any volunteers?”

Desreth went right to the edge. “I shall see if I can place an extension into the area and tell if anything is truly there without going over.” A slender tendril oozed out of the body as if it were made of liquid encased in some metallic plastic and reached forward. The end of the tentacle vanished in midair.

“I am at the limit of my extension,” the Corithian told them. “There is no sensation or measurable difference, but the humidity is down to only a fraction of what it was. Measurements indicate an artificial, enclosed place.”

“Never mind the weather report,” Tobrush said irritatedly. “Is there a floor!

“I believe so. My confidence factor is sufficient for me to try it.” And, without a word, the Corithian scuttled forward and vanished completely.

“Well? Where is it? Why doesn’t it come back?” Kalia wanted to know.

“I have no idea,” Josef responded, “but feel free to find out for yourself. As for me, I’m willing to put it to the test myself. Weapons at the ready.” He sucked in his breath, then let it out slowly. “I’ve never walked over a cliff before.”

“Bullshit!” she responded. “There’s nobody in there of the natural world, and what good are guns against them?” And, with that, she stepped off and into the nothing ahead of him. Keeping his own pistol out, he followed her. Tobrush, suddenly alone, rushed after them almost without thinking, and only as the Julki went over the edge into nothingness did it suddenly think, “What am I doing?”

There was no time for a lengthy panic, however, by any of them. They were all standing there, together, on a very solid floor, trying to take in what they now saw before them.

The area was enormous; only with the aid of their suit magnification could they see the other side of the great circular concourse, and their instruments refused to consistently calculate its true size. The highly polished floor reflected their features, and within it ran ribbons of gold that shone like bright lights, creating elaborate geometrical patterns.

The room, or chamber, more properly, had walls composed of similar panels, about two meters across by three high, each also outlined by the golden light and each also embossed with a singular pattern which appeared much like a golden five-pointed star whose points were connected by straight lines, then also circled point to point.

Josef looked up, and saw that the panels seemed to rise as far as the eye could see.

In the center was an entire series of demon station entrances, maybe hundreds of them, one next to the other, angled up to the floor level.

Tobrush was so relieved to be anywhere that it took a few minutes before the telepath grew both curious enough and confident enough to move around. It was the empathic Kalia, however, who voiced the Julki’s comments before the words could rise and form in its own mouth.

“They’re all here,” she breathed. “Demons . . . Hundreds, maybe thousands of them . . . One behind each and every one of those doors . . . ”

Josef suddenly felt all the hair on his body tingle. “Those panels are doors!

“Evidently,” Tobrush responded. “I doubt if there’s a back way out of them.”

“How can you stand it in here if they’re all in there?” the leader asked, both curious and nervous.

“They’re not like the others. Or, rather, I think they are like the others, only not awakened to consciousness.”

“They’re not aware of us, then?”

“In a sense, yes. But they believe that we are dreams. After all this, I suspect they have a hard time telling the difference.”

“Where’s Desreth?” Josef asked, frowning.

“Here,” the Corithian replied from far over toward the stations. “I could not return. Look around and tell me how you arrived.”

Josef turned and saw only more of the same panels and symbols. There seemed no door, no way in or out except through the center stations; no break at all in the wall.

“As you can see, failing another coming through while I took bearings, I had no way of knowing where the portal is.”

Josef nodded and peered nervously around. Thousands of them!

“I suggest that, no matter how tempting it is to explore this place, we move through rather quickly,” Tobrush said, at least as nervous as Josef. “I have the most uncomfortable feeling that some of them are arriving at decisions on what is reality and what is not.”

“Yeah,” he responded dryly. “But which one? Are we at the center now? Is this the main station where they go to their other worlds, or is there more? And, if more, which of those maybe couple of hundred stations do we use?”

“I have the distinct feeling that this is nowhere near bottom,” the Julki told him. “The picture I seem to get is of a race numbering as many as the stars themselves. These are—please, let us find or choose some way out! The more I probe, the more aware they become!”

“All right. Desreth? Any ideas?”

“Not yet, but let us walk around. There might be some hint,” the Corithian said..

Tobrush was so torn between the collection of information and fear of the creatures that it was impossible for the telepath to stop talking.

“These—none of them—are even very high up or very important,” the Julki told them. “To this race, these folk who seem to have powers approaching godhood, are little more than drols. Low-class workers. This is a mere work team! Laborers, no more!”

That got Josef. “Laborers? A work team? All these of this power? Then . . . what are the higher classes? Their masters?”

“I cannot say. The, concepts, the visions, are beyond me. I can only tell you that they are . . . still further on.”

“Anything on which one of these damned stations to take?”

“I get the impression that it doesn’t matter. The rule seems constant. So long as we go left out of any straightaway, we . . . descend, as it were.”

“Descend? Towards what? Where?”

“I cannot tell you. The holograms are really confusing. It could be a city, or a great castle, or a central control room, or any one of a hundred other things. It might be all of them. Not that the stations don’t go different places—they do. But there’s some sort of differences in authority, perhaps clans or bosses or some sort of hierarchical system, that governs them. The only thing clear is that to descend towards the core you go left out of any station. To go anywhere else, you go right.”

Josef sighed. “Then, even without any trail, we just pick one and it’s the right one?”

“That is the impression I get.”

He sighed. “Well, at least it’ll take the pressure off our backs. The odds of either of the other teams picking the one we do is slim to none.”

“That is some compensation,” the Julki agreed. “At least until we get to where all leftward paths lead. So, please, pick one. They are growing more and more aware, and I have no idea how much longer I can hold out. I keep getting the same thought.”

“What thought?”

“ ‘Our time is almost upon us again.’ ”

Josef halted before one of the crystal-like openings. “Here. It’s as good a choice as any, with no other clues.”

“Fine with me,” Tobrush agreed. “I notice that even Kalia is having second thoughts about freeing this mob. Still, I at least can understand now why those two free demons didn’t break out their companions.”

“Huh? Why?”

“They want to make sure that they are the ones, the only ones, to get credit for freeing the boss.”

Josef shivered, and looked at the others. “Any objections to this one?”

“It is sufficiently random,” Desreth commented. “There is no clue as to which is which in any event.”

“Okay—through and now! And remember my orders on freeing any station managers!”

One by one, they entered the station and were gone from the holding place. And, all around it, the vast horde sighed and drifted back to their strange, endless dreams.



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