HE WAS SOMEWHERE DEEP IN A DARK WELL, neck deep in blood, the stench everywhere, reaching out, clutching at anything in order to climb out. But the well was filled with monsters and unspeakable things; he reached for what felt like a limb and found that it was instead a severed arm. Tentacles oozed from the sides and tried to wrap themselves around him, and wherever they touched, it was like acid, burning his flesh and filling the claustrophobic enclosure with the added stench of burning flesh.
Bloody faces also lined the walls: familiar faces of comrades from past expeditions who’d died, often in horrible ways. Some were calling.
“Hello, Jimmy! Knew you’d get here sooner or later! Give you a hand?” And then a disembodied, bloody hand would shoot out and grab his throat and begin to squeeze . . .
A new head—Tris Lankur’s—materialized out of the ooze and opened its eyes and looked at him and said, “Sorry. Lost my head a while back. Now I lost my body, too. This provokes a fascinating quantitative problem for a rationalist, you know, particularly when one is a machine. It’s because I’ve got brains, you see.” And, with that, the top of his head popped off and the brain, which seemed both real and made of some kind of metal, began oozing out of the skull and enlarging itself until it threatened to fill the airspace remaining and choke him.
“Sweet Jesus! Have mercy on me!” he screamed, or tried to, but the blood, as thick as porridge, moved into his mouth and made him choke on the words.
Father McGuire’s voice suddenly came to him from a great distance. “I’m sorry, but Jesus isn’t in right now. However, if you leave your name and your identification number, and if you didn’t desert Him and break your word to Him, He’ll get back to you sooner or later . . . ”
“Jimmy!” It was Sister Margaret, floating there as radiant as always. She reached out her hand to him and he reached for it, but when he touched her, her body began a rapid and loathsome decay, until it was but a rotted, bloated, obscene corpse, covered by masses of living, squirming maggots that began to drop off her and onto him.
<Jimmy! Jimmy! Come out of it, Jimmy! I’ve done all that I can to minimize shock, but there are limits! You must wake up!>
“That’s all I needed,” he groaned in his horrible torture pit. “Even here I can’t get rid of her!”
<C’mon, Jimmy, you bastard! Fight it!>
“Oh, shut up, Grysta!” he moaned, but then he noticed that, when she talked to him, the horrors moved back a bit, the blood level went down.
<You jerk! You dummy! You asshole! You took a stun hit full in the chest from close range! You wake up and now or you’ll go where you already seem to think you are!>
She kept at him, cursing, cajoling, threatening, and, slowly, feeling like he was in deep ocean water and fighting his way to the surface, he finally came to consciousness.
“What . . . ?” he said aloud, still confused and disoriented, and not a little bit shaken.
<You got shot, stupid! They left the null on the trail and he nailed all of you with a heavy stun before you knew what hit you!>
“How long have I been out?”
<What do I look like? A clock? Pretty long, I think. Several minutes.>
“How do you know what happened?”
<He came up after he nailed all of you. Lankur wasn’t all the way out so he had to hit him again. I didn’t really see him, but I felt his presence and I heard him come up and heard the extra shot.>
Jimmy struggled to a sitting position and groaned. This hurt, hurt worse than he could remember ever hurting in his whole life. He was shaken, too; the visions of his delirium were still very much with him and seemed very, very real.
He went over to Molly first, not only because she was his responsibility, but because he hadn’t the slightest idea how to judge the condition of a Durquist or a cymol, so there wasn’t much he could do about them until they came around.
At first he was afraid she was dead; there seemed even less than usual in that pretty mind. But when he pulled her to a sitting position, supporting her, and kept saying her name over and over she smiled slightly and began coming around. Finally she opened her eyes, shook her head rapidly from side to side, and groaned at the sudden pain and dizziness. “Jimmy? What happened?”
“We all got shot,” he told her. “Come on! On your feet! I know just what you feel like, but the more you move around, the quicker it wears off.”
He got her up, then looked next at the Durquist. The creature was limp, and, in its environment suit, flattened by total relaxation, he looked less like a living being and more like some deflated carnival balloon.
“Durquist! Snap out of it and get in motion!” he yelled through the intercom. “Come on! Up and at ’em!”
<Just a few more minutes. Mother,> the Durquist’s mind responded.
“Mother my ass!” the telepath snapped. “I may be host to a Morgh, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be Mommie to a Durquist!”
Feeling almost back to normal except for a headache and some tingling in the extremities, Jimmy and Molly tried to raise the Durquist, and at least resulted in shaking him. Broad tentacles flexed, the eyes popped up, and the Durquist said, “I am really beginning to regret coming along on this trip.”
‘”Well, time to see if the one who talked us into it is still among the living, or whatever cymols are,” McCray responded.
“Functional,” came an eerie, emotionless voice in the intercom that caused them all to look nervously around. “Restoring biologic interface. Checklist running. Completed.”
Tris Lankur suddenly sat up, then slowly got to his feet, but in a jerky, nonhuman way. In the suit, the impression of not a human being but a mechanical man was almost absolute.
“Well, I’ll be cursed!” swore the Durquist, staring. “He really is a robot!”
“I am directing biological interface manually,” said Lankur in that weird, mechanical voice. “I am functional, but direct linkage to biologically stored data not fully operable.”
“He got real problem,” Molly commented needlessly.
Jimmy couldn’t help but think of his nightmare and of the metallic, swelling brain of the pilot.
“Status reports on other units?” the cymol asked.
“We’re all right—I think,” Jimmy told him—it—whatever. “You’re the one that’s worse for wear.”
“Second shot produced some tissue damage and electrical linkage shorts,” the cymol explained. “Essential data intact, but am unable to access Terran simulation mode. Pre-cymol mode memories, habit patterns, not present.”
<Jeez! Lookit the way he moves!> Grysta commented. <He’s a real walking corpse now!>
Jimmy found the sight of the cymol stripped of his humanity to be very unsettling, but there were more pressing matters. “How functional overall are you?” he asked. “Can you make the distance? Can you fight if you have to and hit what you aim at?”
“Full control. Limits and reflexive actions impossible to predict, but no random or uncontrolled actions will occur. However, sensory and tactile feedback to brain is not functional at this time.”
“You mean you can’t feel pain?” McCray asked him.
“I mean I can feel nothing. But the biological unit appears to function as I direct.”
<Uh-oh!> Grysta commented. <Anybody bring any diapers? Otherwise he’s gonna get pretty ripe real soon!>
As usual, Jimmy ignored her. “Durquist?”
“It will have to do,” the Durquist responded. “It is particularly painful for me to see him in this condition, since I was with him for so long, but, from a practical sense, it’s far better than broken legs or puncture wounds or the like. What about our treacherous priests?”
Jimmy did a scan. “Ahead, of course. I think they made real time. Either that or we were out a lot longer than Grysta thinks we were. Still, I get the odd impression that they stopped somewhere ahead. If I were them, I’d want to get as far away from us as I could and as fast as possible.”
“Haste makes for mistakes,” the Durquist commented. “Let them stop and worry about us for a bit. Still, I would like to close and see if we can find some shelter from this interminable rain. How are you, by the way? From the angle, I’d say you got the full force of the first shot.”
“I dreamt I died and went to Hell,” the telepath said slowly. “Then I woke up and found I was already there.” He looked at the stiff, jerky body of Tris Lankur.
<You sure he’s still on our side?> Grysta asked a bit nervously.
The fact was, he wasn’t sure any more. He wasn’t sure of anything except that they were in the middle of a miserable world of gloom and constant, heavy rain, and he didn’t know why he was there or how the hell to get out.
Listening to those omnipresent shrieks and moans, though, and still with vivid memories of his dreams, he definitely decided that he didn’t want to die right now, no matter how miserable he was.
“Let’s close on them,” he said at last. “I want them to know we’re there.”
It took them less than an hour along the obsidian-encrusted black rock trail before they were very close indeed. McCray climbed almost to the edge of the trail and looked out at the great falls. Still, when Tris and Molly both made to keep walking, he stopped them. “They’re there. Waiting for us, most likely,” he warned them. “There’s no cover for us down there on the edge of the falls, either.”
The Durquist agreed. “If there is some overhang or ruins right against the side here; that’s where I’d be. Waiting for us to step out and be shot right over those falls.”
“This unit, McCray, and Durquist have two directional grenades each. Enemy does not or it would have used them in first battle,” Lankur noted.
“But Modra’s with them!” the Durquist reminded him. “We’d get her, too!”
“No logical way to recover Modra,” the cymol responded. “Probabilities of doing so under this situation very small. Modra now just makes the Mizlaplan invaders the strongest group. Logical to eliminate them all. Advantage then returns to us.”
“But that’s Modra down there! Modra!” the Durquist exclaimed, appalled. Even Jimmy McCray, the newcomer, had problems with this kind of logic.
“Getting the bastards who screwed us is one thing,” he said evenly, trying to hold his temper, “but I draw the line at the murder of one of our own.”
“Without that action, a stalemate results and the Mycohl go on unencumbered by default,” the cymol pointed out. “We cannot proceed without being ambushed by the Mizlaplanians. Mizlaplanians cannot proceed because we have a clear field of fire from this point. A stalemate is unacceptable so long as a third enemy group is involved and ahead of us. We have the means to resolve the stalemate. Not using those means violates all logic.”
“It means nothing to you that she’s one of our own, kidnapped against her will?” Jimmy pressed.
“The Exchange has approximately thirty trillion citizens. Of those, close to two point five trillion are Terrans. What is one more or less to the maintenance of order and harmony?”
“I assume that same logic applies to us,” the Durquist noted.
“Of course.”
“This explains a lot about the quality of life of the bulk of people in the Exchange,” Jimmy McCray noted dryly, in the low, barely heard whisper he generally used only to talk to Grysta. “Grysta was right—you’re not on our side any more. Somehow, I don’t think you ever really were.”
“Waiting is pointless. They are sheltered, we are exposed,” the cymol commented.
“Hold, cymol—before you act!” the Durquist called icily, edging up to the man who’d once been his friend and captain.
“Yes?”
“What is the basic philosophical difference between you and your masters and the Quintara?”
“The question has no relevancy.”
“It does to me. Very much so.”
“Very well. The Guardians believe that the whole is far greater than the parts that compose it and provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The Quintara believe that the whole exists to serve themselves.”
“Then, in the smaller sense, the team, which is us, has interests that outweigh the interests of a part of it, namely Modra. Somehow, this ‘part’ sees little practical difference to himself in that attitude. I cannot allow what you propose to happen.”
“You have no vote. I act by the authority of the Guardians themselves as an officer of the Exchange. You elected to come with me; I did not order it.”
“I am not at all sure there was much of a choice,” the Durquist noted, “although, if there were, I would still have come because the team came. All of the team. Me, McCray, even Molly, and, yes, Modra. And I must wonder when you propose such a horrible violation of our codes if in fact there isn’t still some little bit of Tris Lankur in there, perhaps the bitter, hating part, rationalized by the mechanical part, that seeks not what is right, or just, but revenge. She killed you, turned you into this, and now you would take her life in exchange!”
The vacant-eyed jerky body did not respond, but instead walked just to the edge, where the path went steeply down to the bedrock below. One of the Durquist’s eyes swiveled to Jimmy McCray, who stared back at it and just nodded silently.
The cymol took instrument readings, totally ignoring the others behind him. “Range forty point two meters to the right, inside the cliff in some kind of cave or dwelling,” Lankur reported to no one in particular. He reached into his pouch and removed a small black object, which hummed to life and then emitted a high-pitched, steady, whistling tone.
The Durquist stood, a bizarre caricature of a biped, and walked up right behind the cymol. Without hesitation, the “right” tentacle swung back, then loosed itself forward, striking the cymol almost directly on his ass with such force that the man was literally propelled into the air and came down a good four meters on the bedrock below.
They could hear the yells of the Mizlaplanians below at the sudden appearance of the cymol, and Jimmy, pistol in hand, walked up and stood next to the Durquist, watching.
Lankur had landed limply, like a rag doll tossed from a window, but now, slowly, he stood up and began walking in that jerky, zombie-like way a few steps, then bent down and retrieved the small guided grenade where it had fallen.
“Shall we just shoot the bastard and have done with it?” the Durquist asked.
“No, let them do it,” Jimmy responded. “If they can’t take him out, they don’t deserve to.”
Below, in the cliff dwelling, Krisha had been idly monitoring the Exchange team but hadn’t really paid much attention, counting on her old instincts to flag anything really dangerous. The cold hatred of the Durquist had masked some of his thoughts, and, while she alerted the others and knew something was going to happen, she wasn’t quite sure what. Tris Lankur’s sudden arrival on the flat rock below was, therefore, only slightly less of a surprise to her than to the others; by the time she had sensed what was to happen from the Durquist’s mind and cried out, it had already happened.
“My God! It’s Tris!” Modra cried, and then watched, suddenly horrified, as the zombie-like motions of the animated corpse in and of itself reinforced Morok’s fanciful hypnotic scenario. An old pro with a natural fear of being around a hypno, she’d believed, but never fully accepted, the visions of her comrades being killed and their bodies possessed. Now here was the proof of it, and resolved the last doubts in her mind.
“That’s a programmable grenade he’s got!” she warned them. “It’ll blow this whole place down if he launches it!”
“Then shoot, Modra! Shoot! You’ve got the best angle!” Gun Roh Chin shouted.
She lifted her pistol but could not do it. No matter what the sight, no matter what the horror in front of her, she simply could not kill Tris. Not again.
Lethal bursts from Manya and Morok, who had a lesser angle but still a sufficient one, struck the cymol full on. There was a sudden, shattering explosion that deafened them and brought down pieces of rock upon them as the terrible sound reverberated through the ruins.
The concussion knocked Jimmy backward into Molly, and they both tumbled in a heap as a small black cloud rose from the bedrock ahead. The Durquist merely flipped back to all five points and otherwise stood his ground, then slowly rose again on two of them. Jimmy picked himself up and made certain Molly was all right, then walked back forward to where the Durquist still watched.
There was very little left. The grenade had already left Tris Lankur’s hands when the bolts struck, but as its route was in the direct line of fire they had gotten it no more than a meter from him, still in the air, and it had blown, ripping through the blue environment suit as if it were paper and then through the still all too fragile human body, spraying blood and body parts all over, even into the falls itself, as well as some luminescent yellowish fluid that must have fed the cymol part.
Eerily, the moans and shrieks and distant screams that were such a part of the background noise of this place that they’d almost been tuned out by the others, rose in volume for a while until they almost drowned out not only the rain but even the falls, before slipping back to their normal levels.
“Too bad we couldn’t get his supply kit and power pack,” Jimmy McCray said dryly, looking at the scene.
The Durquist was thinking along different lines. He was . . . remembering.
“He was a good man, once,” the star creature commented. “One of the best. He clawed himself up out of a stinking little ball of dirt where all they did was wallow in the dry mud and sands and have as many starving kids as they could before they died very young. He was wild, reckless sometimes, the taker of incredible risks because that’s how he rose to where he was, and he just never understood that everyone else wasn’t like him. I think that’s why Modra never considered bonding with him, even though she loved him. She knew that, sooner or later, he’d take one chance too many. I think she even married that other fellow mostly to make sure we didn’t go broke and that Tris wouldn’t lose his ship. Now it’s over for him.”
<Awww . . . That’s so sad . . . !> Grysta commented sympathetically.
Jimmy McCray sighed. “Well, at least she didn’t do that. Their telepath was so startled at all this she dropped her guard for a moment. Modra had a shot but couldn’t take it. Couldn’t bring herself to take it.”
“I am glad for that,” the Durquist replied. “She will never accept that his end came from his own immaturity, which was necessary for him to survive and get where he did, and not her direct action. His ego just couldn’t handle a defeat, even so personal a one.”
McCray shrugged. “Well, it leaves us a gun short, and no matter what I thought of his solution, he was right about the stalemate, and by saying that we’re not going to get Modra back any time soon, either. That quick peek I had at her shows her expertly redone by their hypno; she thinks we’re all dead and possessed by demonic spirits out to kill them all. After seeing Lankur, there, she’s got no reason to doubt it, either.”
“It does make things a bit complex,” the Durquist agreed. “Do you suppose we could offer an amnesty and another head start if they cleared the fog in Modra’s head and sent her back to us?”
“How could we know?” Jimmy asked him. “The telepath’s powerful enough to screw up my monitoring, and I sure wouldn’t trust a hypno in my sight. They certainly haven’t proven trustworthy so far, and our sentiments, no matter how genuinely transmitted, may change, leaving them in the middle.”
<Together we could break that telepath and you know it,> Grysta put in.
He wasn’t so sure about that. But what if they could? That wouldn’t get Modra back whole, and it wouldn’t break the hypno, which was his real worry.
Finally the Durquist said, “Why don’t we just offer them a straight way out? Modra is as safe with them as with us, and, so far, all our danger has been in front of us. Let them keep her for a while and go. We’ve got the power advantage, and I got the distinct impression that the hypno’s injured—that might explain the kidnapping. I wouldn’t bet very much on the chances of an injured man surviving very long if they push on, tough old veteran and hypno or not, and if the hypno goes, things suddenly become very much in our favor.”
Jimmy thought it over. “Just get rid of the roadblock again?”
“That’s about it. I shouldn’t like the thought of the Mycohl making some kind of deal with our horned friends unencumbered, then just sitting back and waiting for all of us.”
“All right—I’ll make them an offer,” Jimmy said, and sent, <We can sit it out forever or work things out now as a compromise.>
<How do you suggest we do it?> Krisha asked him.
<I’ve no love for sitting out here in the wet. I’ve had enough of it. We will backtrack for one hour. You move out and along the way, or pick some way if you haven’t decided where to go. Then we head back. No tricks, no traps, or it’s war.>
<We have an injured man. He needs more rest than he’s gotten. Much more.>
<This is not a negotiation,> Jimmy responded. <All grievances committed against us have been by you. We’ve done nothing to harm you, and, indeed, we helped you the one time you needed help. You repaid us with betrayal. We can hardly trust your word to us that you won’t shoot as we go past, now can we?>
Krisha found herself in a real dilemma. Morok was already back on the stone floor asleep, and the better for it. She’d heard the comments about him, and knew that they were counting on Morok’s death and had no interest in helping him to heal. She really needed to discuss things, but couldn’t do it openly. To do so would suddenly confuse Modra, who thought her remaining comrades were demonic beings.
<Wait a moment. I need to talk to someone,> she managed.
“I don’t think they’re going for it,” Jimmy told the Durquist. He frowned, thinking for a moment “Grysta? Do you think we could manage enough power to do what she does—at least manage to block out the Durquist as well, and Molly, too?”
<Why bother with Molly?> Grysta asked him. <There’s got to be something there before it’s worth blocking out.>
“Because Molly has ears, which is why this is even a lower voice than usual. I want a way where that telepath can’t pick up a conversation between the Durquist and me. Nor thoughts about it afterwards.”
<Hmmm . . . Yeah, I think so. But how will we know for sure if we manage it or not? With her block, I mean.>
“You leave that to me. I can feel her probes and I’ll know if she gets through.”
He suddenly heard Krisha call him in his mind.
<Sorry,> she told him, <but that is no solution. After the Holy Father is rested and better, then, perhaps. Until then, it seems to me that you have no choice but to stay up there and get wet. We know you won’t mount an attack on us. Otherwise, you killed your man for nothing.>
Jimmy smiled to himself. <All right, lass. On your own head be what happens from now on. At least you saved me two hours’ futile walk.> He sighed. “Grysta—let’s try the block right now. And maintain it until we no longer need it. No lapses or we might all be dead.”
<Uh—dead? I’m not sure I like this.>
“Just do it, you little worm! You were born to sit and rot, but I was not!”
<Okay, okay. Don’t get so upset! Try it—now!>
Below, Krisha was startled to find that the blind spot where Jimmy McCray was abruptly widened, blotting out all of the Exchange team. It was so sudden and unexpected, and so powerful, she grew nervous. What had happened was simply not possible, not without supernatural aid, which is what she believed increased her own power. She felt by now that she knew McCray’s power and limits as well as any telepath knows another, and here, suddenly, was this massive surge.
She tried probing against it, attempting to break through, but it was impassive, a wall of white noise whenever she tried to read any of them. She looked over at Gun Roh Chin. “The enemy has suddenly gone dark on me! I’m not getting a thing! I don’t understand it, but I don’t like it.”
Neither did the captain, weary as he was. “Wake the others and assume fully armed stations,” he told her. “I still feel certain we have a level of safety, but I never like surprises or underestimate an enemy.”
The Durquist, too, was a bit surprised, but pleased. “No one can hear us?”
“Nobody. The trouble is, if she mounts a concerted attack against me, it might weaken, and not even I know how long I can hold this.” He stood and pointed to the falls. “Use your magnification. You see those markers there, kind of nubs but a bit shiny, leading right to the edge?”
“Yes, I see them. They look like the way to go, but it would be very comforting to know there isn’t a sheer drop there.”
“Look over at the falls itself, just a tiny corner on this side before the cascade starts. A sliver of a trail. I’m willing to bet my life on it.”
“You propose going by them? How? I’ll not collapse that roof!”
“I understand that,” McCray told him, “but I’m not talking any kill. It will, however, be as risky for them as for us, if we don’t do the figures exactly right. Fair’s fair. We’re taking most of the risk, and it’s only right that some of it be shared.”
“All right, then, what have you got in mind?”
After more than an hour, things began settling back to normal in the Mizlaplanian camp. There was only so much time you could keep yourself on the alert, particularly when the only thing that had happened to cause it was the enemy’s sudden ability to block itself out.
They still had their hostage, and considering Krisha had overheard the entire debate that had led to Lankur’s ultimate death, there was little concern that the remaining enemy above would really try and wipe them out. There was as well the knowledge that the only way through that was worth anything at all was right to those falls and down, and that area was in perfect view of their guns.
Modra Stryke had suffered not at all from seeing Lankur finally blown to pieces; instead, oddly, she felt much better, as if some load had been lifted from her shoulders. Tris was really gone; she was sorry about that, but it had been none of her doing this time. Not that it really mattered about that; the important fact was that he’d been killed in the act of trying to kill not just these people but her. If there was any clearer break with what was and with what might have been, she couldn’t conceive of it.
She was also getting to know the Mizlaplanians; enough to know that she kind of liked them as individuals, but found their value system, their beliefs, their very status disturbing. They were the most enslaved people she had ever met, yet they considered the enslavement and the totalitarian nature of their homeland to be free.
Krisha in particular bothered her; the dark beauty had just about everything a woman could want—looks, brains, capability—and here she was, a virgin priestess, celibate, bound to a monastic lifestyle except when defending the faith such as now. It seemed such a total waste.
At least they didn’t try and convert her. She got the idea that almost any way to convert was okay with these people, but that doing it by hypno power was heresy of the worst sort. There was little likelihood they could convert her, in any event; to do so with her empathic abilities would mean automatic commitment to the priesthood. She wondered how, if all the Talents were celibate, and sterilized, priests and priestesses, they didn’t run out of Talents. Discovering that most, including Morok and Manya, had been laboratory-bred from reproductive material taken from their parents at ordination, solved that mystery but didn’t make it look like a wagon she would ever want to climb aboard.
Still, it was tough being an empath in this company. They all believed; they were all absolutely convinced of the truth of their faith and that their gods sat on their shoulders and directed their moves. When they prayed, particularly together, the rapturous joy and total emotional conviction flowing through them was so overpowering it almost sucked her in in spite of it all. That kind of certainty, of genuine comfort and joy, in a place and situation like this, was damned seductive. She was aware, too, that her presence disturbed them. She was a shade of gray trapped in the midst of a group of people who saw only black and white.
Captain Chin was different, or at least he seemed so. The only one who was, really. She would have guessed his primary occupation without having to be told it; commercial skippers tended to have the same sort of look and manner no matter what the race or nationality. He radiated the power that only those in command feel; Tris had once had that kind of feel to him, too.
And he was worldly. Over there, far from everyone else, leaning on the crude cutout of a window and looking out at the rain, the glow from his second cigar attested to that. He alone had been outside the Mizlaplan before, to both Mycohl and the Exchange. Only the fact that he was a null, unreadable except by the most basic of observations, kept the real Gun Roh Chin something of a cipher. She felt certain he was totally loyal to his system and these people, yet she wasn’t at all certain he believed any of it.
She went over to him, seeking some kind of comfort in the dark, no matter how different he might have been.
“I can’t understand why they don’t use the other grenades,” she said, looking out. “We’re wide open here.”
“I think they can’t program them properly,” he responded slickly, glad he’d had a little time to think of that one. “That’s why the one had to expose himself. I think we’re safe here. It’s when we have to move that we have real problems.”
“I know the others think that this is part of a real Hell, where the sinners of the universe are sent. Do you believe that?”
Chin shrugged, but he was thankful to be off the subject of questions he had to lie about. “Manya, and I believe Krish, now, believe it. Morok does, too, deep down, but he would prefer not to.”
“And you?”
“What did your people think?” he asked, sidestepping the question.
“Only Jimmy McCray, our telepath, thought that way. He was a very strange little man, too new to the crew for me to really get to know him the way I knew all the others. He was raised totally within one of the ancient religions of Old Earth, and had pretty much a tragic life, I think, and never really shook it.”
“McCray,” the captain repeated. “English? No. Irish?”
She was surprised. “That’s what he said his background was. They have a couple of worlds of their own, preserving very much their old culture, very pastoral, I’m told—and very dull.”
“You wouldn’t like a little pastoral dullness right now?”
She smiled. “Maybe right now. My own upbringing was a little pastoral itself, and I hated it. I was the youngest of eleven kids, and the only one who wanted out of that life.”
Gun Roh Chin chuckled. “Eleven! That is one thing we Terrans do with expertness. My own ancient culture was never very good at fighting. It kept losing wars to conqueror after conqueror. But we retained our culture and we retained our own belief in the superiority of that culture, and we bred and we bred and we intermarried with all the conquerors and, with infinite patience, one day there weren’t any conquerors any more. Just us and a few added freshenings of the genetic pool. Now all Terrans, no matter where their part of humanity wound up and under what rule, have become my people. Not physically, but in the most basic sense. We can’t interbreed with all those other races, of course, but we can outbreed them. We are already the largest single race in any of the Three Empires. Did you know that?”
“No,” she admitted. “I hadn’t realized that.”
“Just look at the ones here. For your Exchange, there is you, this McCray, and the late Captain Lankur. Here, it’s Krish and myself, and then there is the Mycohl captain and the woman with him. That’s almost half of everyone who got here. You see what I mean? Give us a few more centuries and we will be the majority of everyone in all three empires. Now, in spite of we few here, the bulk of Terrans are coolies—sorry, an ancient term. The bottom of the ladder, socially and politically. We grow the food, we haul, we do the other races’ laundry. One day, those races who now see us as little more than a faceless sea of workers will have to deal with a weight of numbers too great to ignore or suppress.”
“You sound like a revolutionary,” she noted. “Is that what you are behind your mysterious wall?”
“Not in the usual sense of the word. What threat am I? Or you? I merely state facts. It isn’t really something all of us planned, you know, but you have to look at the competition. Manya’s people have an amazing camouflage ability that helped protect them and raise them above all the others on their planet. Morok’s people can fly. Savin’s people were arboreal night dwellers who could be still as death for ages and had uncanny balance and even more uncanny eyes. We’re about the weakest, softest, least able people to ever climb to the top of the ladder. We’re no smarter than they are, even collectively, yet our sheer lack of attributes and our vulnerability has bred a race of survivors. Given enough time, we’re the most insidious threat to all the other races ever born. I fear that when that finally becomes obvious to others, there will be pogroms in the Mycohl and Exchange to trim us back to size.”
“But not in the Mizlaplan?”
He shook his head. “No, not in my region. It’s the religion, you see. It puts everybody on an absolutely equal footing. Among my people, we are simply a class, a state of incarnation, and to the Holy Ones who bring the Word and keep the faith there’s no difference between a Terran and a six-legged, silicon-based, ammonia-breathing Jabuk, so we’ll not be barred from ordination or command or high office.”
“Still, you never feel stultified? Closed in by the rigid system?”
“Not really. You have to know the history of my people to fully understand that, though. The thing is, I’ve seen all three systems. They all work, but only ours works with no master races, no rich and poor, no major social tensions. Practicality says that there are only three possible systems right now—perhaps four if we count these demons, and we can see their idea of society in the crude paintings on these very walls. I consider the alternatives, and I am content.”
“I don’t think I could ever accept your system,” she told him honestly. “I’ve never been in the Mycohl but I’ve heard about their system and it’s pretty ugly overall. In the Exchange, if you’re good enough, you can go all the way.”
He nodded. “Unfortunately, very few are good enough. For the bulk of people in the Exchange, life at the bottom is as bad as life as a Mycohlian drol; most of the worlds are left to neglect or bled to death by the kings of transport and trade. An evolutionary monarchy is no more just for the masses than a hereditary one.”
She sighed. “Maybe, but—”
At that moment there was a shrill, screaming sound, and then a tremendous explosion not far outside their dwelling rocked the place, knocking them down and causing a lot of rock to fall from the ceiling all around them.
“What—?” Krisha and the others seemed to cry at once, and just as they regained their footing a second explosion rocked them and knocked them down again.
Modra, certain that the demon forces were now coming to get them, had her pistol out and struggled to the window to fire at anything out there that moved, but there was at that moment yet another explosion, knocking her back again and shaking so much loose inside the cliff dwelling that parts of it threatened collapse.
Finally, with the third major explosion, it was over, and they struggled to the front, all awake now, and peered out through the black smoke.
“They are making for the trail!” Manya shouted. “They are trying to pass us by, leave us here!”
Chin and Krisha ducked out their respective doors and fired a few wide volleys into the smoke, apparently hitting nothing. The smoke was beginning to clear now, and for a brief moment they saw the head of someone, possibly Molly, vanish below the rim of the falls.
“They have passed us!” Chin shouted. “To the rim! We might be able to knock them off that path before they get under the falls and we lose them!”
Modra was confused. “Why would they want to pass us? What is going on here?”
Morok, moving slowly, came up beside her. “Obviously they have decided that we are no longer a threat, child; perhaps our killing of one of them caused them to pause and reflect. At any rate, they now run towards their dark masters.” His eyes seemed to shine right through her even in the darkness. “That is the answer,” he said flatly.
Krisha and the captain had gotten about halfway to the rim of the falls when they heard another whistling sound. Both immediately started reversing themselves and, seeing they weren’t going to make it, flattened against the rock. The bomb exploded just over the point where the trail met the rim, knocking some of the rock into the chasm below.
“Captain! Are you all right?”
“Yes, Krisha, I have survived as usual, except for the bruises I will have hitting this rock so hard and fast.”
“How many of those bombs do they have, anyway?”’ she asked, getting to her feet.
“Ouch! Judging from Modra’s pack, I’d say they’ve shot their load,” he assured her, then, suddenly, he stopped and smacked his right fist into his left palm. “How stupid of me! Of course!”
“What?”
“Modra! She’s still got her two! We can blow them off that wall even if they are behind the falls!”
She sighed. “No, Captain. Let them go.”
“What? But they’re wide open right now!”
“Captain—Morok, too, has thought of this. He thought of it when the cymol tried his attack on us. We could have killed them with Modra’s bombs at that time. They were as vulnerable up there as we were inside.”
“But—”
“Captain, they are not something one can use without a bit of training, and they require an Exchange suit to program. Are we murderers? Can we retain any moral superiority if we, by hypno powers, cause Modra to murder her own people? Particularly since, as their telepath pointed out to me, we, not they, violated our word?”
“Um. I see what you mean.” He sighed. “All right, then, I suppose we deserve this, in a sense. But I have the oddest feeling we’re in some sort of race, and we’re losing.”
“Funny. Their telepath said the same thing. The Quintara Marathon, he called it.”
Chin gave a dry chuckle, calming down. “The Quintara Marathon. As good a name as any. But, the fact remains, if we’re in some sort of race, we started off first, well in the lead in this run to who knows where. Now we’re third. About the only way we can do any worse is to go backwards.”
She nodded, well aware of that herself. “I guess we’d better get back and see what the Holy Father decides to do now. Much of this is dependent on his condition.”
“You go ahead,” he told her. “I’m going to risk a peek over the side, now that I’m fairly certain that there are no more big bangs coming. I want to see what sort of damage they did to that trail head. If they blew several meters off, then the matter is academic unless someone brought along a ladder or a rope.”
He walked over, still very cautious, then took a look. It wasn’t great—for the first two meters it was going to be pretty hairy going, with only a small part of the trail width present.
Still, they weren’t marooned—not yet, anyway. He put his instruments on and tried to find them, finally locating the group well down in the chasm, far behind the falls, and barely out of range.
He walked slowly back toward the cliff dwelling, only now starting to feel those coming bruises, and found them huddled together.
“You cannot go, Holiness!” Manya was saying firmly. “You need at least a full sleep and could use far more! Your body needs time to repair itself!”
“Well, I cannot stay here behind—not again,” he responded. “I had to leave you once, but now there is no chance of my catching you at a later date. We can all use many hours of sleep, Manya, but I refuse to believe that a mere few more hours will do what two weeks in a hospital would. If we wait here much longer, even the trail will be cold. We might as well not be here—and only the gods themselves know how far ahead the cursed Mycohl are by now, looking for the best deal from the demonic horde. If we do not go now, then why are we here at all? Why did Savin die? No, we go—providing, that is, that the captain tells us it is still possible.”
“It’s possible, Holiness, but it won’t be easy the first six or seven meters. And with that leg . . . ”
“I will remove my suit again, and pass it down to someone who makes it to solid footing,” the Stargin replied. “Then I will do what I did before and fly to the safer part of the trail, where I can then reclaim my suit and join the rest of you. Overall, I am probably safer on that ledge than any of you.”
Krisha suddenly gasped, and all attention turned to her.
“What is the matter, child?” Morok asked. “I assure you that—”
“No, no, Holy Father!” she responded. “I just now lost them! Completely lost them. I get no sense of anyone else on this entire world except for us. No blocks, no shields, no probes, nothing. They’re gone.”
Gun Roh Chin sighed. “Well, maybe that means that we are finally going to get out of this damnable rain.”
It had not been easy, but having had the Exchange team precede them down a trail with no detours, it wasn’t as difficult for the Mizlaplanian group to accept the fact that what looked like the end of the trail was some kind of trick. Still, none of them stepped through the portal without a little heart palpitation and a case of nerves.
The great hall of the demons gave them pause and did nothing for the nerves. Once she’d established that none of the Exchange team remained in the area, Krisha decided to waste no concentration and personal energy on shielding the whole group. Still, it was impossible not to get much the same data as the other telepaths had from the assembled and stored demonic horde.
Modra stared at the design on each of the door panels. “McCray was right,” she commented. “Pentagrams.”
“Huh? What’s that?” the captain asked.
“That symbol. I don’t know what the circle means, but the five-pointed star with the tips connected with straight lines is a pentagram, or so Jimmy McCray said. An ancient symbol that was supposed to keep demons in, or out, depending on where you were. And these gold light strips in the floor—I can’t make out the design, but I’ll bet it’s not just ornamental. They thought that the geometric shapes somehow proved to be barriers to the demons. Some of the old ruins we passed through early on had them.”
“Demonic geometry,” Chin commented, shaking his head in wonder. “Another rule to file away. And maybe some measure of protection if we can remember at least the one shape.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Krisha urged. “I feel like they’re all going to wake up and start in on us any minute.”
Morok nodded. “She’s right. If these designs are some sort of geometric means of imprisonment, then we’re breaking them every time we stand in one or cross a line. I have heard of such things. They are taught to exorcists of the Inquisition. Let us get out of here.”
Modra nodded, feeling it, too, and also feeling that forbidding, almost overwhelming sense of pure evil coming from all around her. Still, she stared at all the possible exits in the center. “Which one?” she asked them.
Gun Roh Chin smiled and pointed down. “Somebody didn’t wipe their feet and tracked up this nice, clean floor,” he said.
It was brightly polished, except in one area, where there were clear impressions of treads from boots formed by residue picked up on the trail.
He led, and they followed. It wasn’t a consistent trail, but enough people had been through here that there were enough. “That one,” he told them, pointing. “If we want to keep chasing them, that is.”
“We are chasing the Mycohl,” Manya reminded him. “We want to catch them, not avoid them.”
“Well, it’s a good bet that everybody went through this one,” Chin noted. “I don’t see any other trail so well scuffed up.”
“Let’s go, then,” Krisha urged. “They are beginning to wake up, and they all seem to be thinking the same thing. They’re saying, ‘It’s almost time. It’s almost our time again.’ ” She shivered.
“Maybe this one will be a desert,” Modra suggested hopefully, and they stepped through.
The pattern was the same as for all the other stations, including the demonic pair in the center chamber.
<Welcome,> they said to Krisha. <You are not the first to pass this way.>
<And none of the others freed you, I notice,> she came back, bracing herself for their assault.
It didn’t come. Instead, they said, <It is of no importance. It is almost our time again, when we shall rule and reign.>
“Something is different,” she told the others. “They don’t care if they are freed or not. They act like they expect to be free without strings or deals almost any moment.”
“I think I like that less than an attack,” Morok commented. “I just can’t say why.”
Gun Roh Chin nodded. “I have the feeling that we’re missing something important. Something we don’t know, something, perhaps, we can’t know, but I get the oddest feeling that someone, something, is laughing behind our backs.”
“Well, if they don’t mind us going on, I don’t see why we should linger,” Morok said.
<Go. We shall remember you when our time comes, and it will come soon.>
Krisha shivered and almost beat the others out.
They approached the other side of the gate with relief that, at least, they were finally out of that terrible, drenched, dead world.
They stepped out, and were all but overcome by the sudden stench of sulfur and brimstone.