The Deadly Sky

by Doris Piserchia

  Cold red patches lay all around me, hemming me in. I stopped, waited, watched as they changed shape and went away. Far to my right a blade fell with a screech. Sound effects. The grid shuddered. I was supposed to grab hold of a girder for support. Instead I made the measuring tape as stiff as a board and used it to stay perfectly upright.

  The tilting ceased, the space ahead seemed clear. I took another step and another. The tape slipped from my grasp. My hand was soaked with perspiration. The girder under my feet was like a puddle. I didn’t dare look to my left or my right but inched forward.

  Again there came a sensation of coldness. I froze where I stood. Ahead of me something plummeted without sound down and. away, creating a breeze that fanned my cheek. Below me I saw a patch of blackness.

  Soaked with my own sweat, reeling with exhaustion, I knew that I couldn’t progress any farther. Too much had been taken out of me. I had to go back. I didn’t know I had extended the blue line ten feet.

  Chapter 8

  What time I could spare was spent out in the fresh air with Grena. The occasional sunbeams that pierced the layers of clouds to touch us were like invigorating tonics. There was a chill in this place that penetrated the body all the way to the bones where it prowled and probed and scarcely dissipated.

  “Hallistair is in love with you,” I said to her once.

  Lying deeper in my arms, she stretched out a hand so that a yellow ray struck it. “I’ve been in the library consulting life patterns. That’s what the personality profiles are, you know—what a person will want to do during his spare time, the sports one will favor, political preferences, attitudinal sketches, philosophy. Yours isn’t all that cut and dried.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re more a mystery man because your ancestors were from such diversified cultures.”

  “I shouldn’t think that would make a difference.”

  “It deepens the gene pool. You’ve even got a nomad in your line. And an astronaut.”

  “Does my profile say I like girls with yellow hair and hazel eyes?”

  “As a matter of fact it says you like them all.”

  “Liar.”

  In the game room at another time I played cards with Spencer, Davis and Will. Davis had an upset stomach and kept excusing himself to go to the bathroom.

  “Nausea,” he said. “Worst I’ve ever had.”

  “That kind doesn’t go away,” said Will. She had the audacity to wink. “It’s because the mind rebels at the thought of the body being dismembered. I lost my cookies thirty minutes before I lost my arm.”

  Davis hurried away to the bathroom so we held onto our cards. When he didn’t return, Spencer went to look for him.

  “He’s been scrapped,” he said when he came back after a considerable interval, “Packed up and gone.”

  “Lucky him,” said Will. “That’s the secret. Drink a bit and get stomach sickness. That way they can’t accuse you of cowardice.”

  Spencer’s hands shook as he took up his cards. “I expect I’m next. I’ll be sitting in a comfortable bar munching pretzels and thinking of you up here walking off years of your life.”

  Hallistair didn’t like it when I wandered into the control room to see Grena.

  “You have your own duties,” he said. “Leave others to theirs, why don’t you?”

  Ignoring him, I nodded to Shiri Karl who was handling a machine beside Grena’s.

  “Hi,” I said to Grena. “I thought maybe you could tell me some things about the blue line. I can’t seem to concentrate when I read books about it.”

  The fact was that we who walked on the weapon spread molecules of kadium with our feet on the pathway. When a walker got into trouble inside the maze his mental alarms activated a machine that redistributed the kadium particles so that they formed a force field in the shape of a tube. The walker literally rode back to safety inside the tube. The idea was similar to that of the electronic field used in Emera to push trains without tracks, but kadium was effective only with a human body. This was why drells didn’t go into the maze. They couldn’t get out again if they ran into trouble.

  The kadium tube only worked one way and that was in the opposite direction of the seeding of molecules, which meant that a walker couldn’t be carried into the weapon. He could only be brought out and then only if the safety path hadn’t been disturbed. If it was suddenly disrupted, which it sometimes was, the walker was stranded.

  No one knew what happened when the path or the area of the blue line broke up. The drells believed the parts of the weapon were not permanent or fixed, that they could be shifted. Perhaps the aliens deliberately moved the girders or a mechanical device might be built into the structure that was activated at random. Whatever, the drells never knew when a shift was imminent.

  The only times I didn’t think Mills Suttler’s or Sargoth’s defense project was insane were when I went up to the twin peaks to look at the crack in the sky. It pulsed and threatened, reminding me of what might be on the other side, of what could happen to Emera and the world if the weapon succeeded in breaking through. In my opinion just thinking about holding the sides of the crack together seemed to make it appear more narrow. I said as much to Jolanne one day.

  “You’re right,” she said. “At first that’s all we did. We sat out there on the peaks glaring at the crack and telling it to close up. That was before we even knew about the weapon. It was also before we really knew there were intelligences in there. We thought there were hordes of flying creatures and fanged monsters.”

  “There are,” I said.

  “Sure, but there are people over there, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “At least one of them is working in the complex. They came through sometime within the last two and a half decades.”

  The statement nearly bowled me over. “What! Who is it? What have you done about it?”

  “We don’t know who it is. The tunnel shields were turned about one night when they shouldn’t have been. They were set for normal entry into the weapon from this end. In the morning they were set for exit. Nobody on our side had touched the controls. Someone came in.”

  “Or something?”

  “No, someone who could pass among us.”

  We had a spy in our midst. An alien was living with us. “You think it’s one of the children,” I said, alarmed by my remark. “One of the three who showed up here as infants.”

  “Keep it to yourself. You asked and I answered honestly.”

  “Test them! Surely if one of them is from the dark dimension you can find out.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Falloway and his charts! A little blood, a microscope. If a person isn’t human, it will show up.”

  Jolanne shook her glittering head. “What do you think a gene is? An I.D. card? The aliens are enough like us to pass among us. We’ve at least one on this side. That’s all I can tell you.”

  I went away thinking of Hallistair. Certainly we had full-grown men who were five feet tall or less but they weren’t all that common. But he was all too human. An alien wouldn’t love one of us and Hallistair loved Grena, I knew. That let him out and left only two. Shiri and Grena.

  Naturally the drells had thought of all this long ago, which meant I could learn more by searching through records than by speculation. I went straight to the library.

  It was a dead end, or very nearly. I learned little more than I already knew. Grena, Hallistair and Shiri Karl arrived or appeared on Timbrini at much the same time, within a few hours of one another, all less than four years old, none capable of explaining how he or she got there. They hadn’t been seen alighting from jinga, though right away they showed an ability to ride the birds. There were always missing children somewhere in Emera, it housing some five million souls, so it wasn’t too odd that the families of the three couldn’t be located.

  The only strange thing about any of it was that the drells were convinced that someone had come throu
gh from the dark side at about the same time the three made their presence known. Could all of them have come through? Could all three be aliens? I didn’t think so. It might be possible for one child to wander about the complex for a while without being spotted, but no more.

  As I walked down a dim corridor toward the control room I wondered why the aliens would want to send a small child over. Did people grow up knowing they were either human or something else? Didn’t they need to be taught who and what they were?

  Every Friday afternoon new recruits had a try at walking through the tunnel. Today it was Grena’s turn. I hadn’t known that Hallistair and Shiri would also make their first attempt, so it was with interest that I took a seat in the room to observe.

  No one went into the tunnel but the recruit. We observers watched a television screen that blanked out most of the warping effects in the crossover area.

  I was confident that Grena would fail utterly, otherwise she must face the possibility of mutilation which seemed fantastic and out of the question to me. Some people were destined to remain safe, whole and pedestrian, and then there were the rest of us.

  Hallistair took his cue from Sargoth who stood beside the entrance into the big metal tunnel. Hesitantly he walked inside where he stared pensively at the other end.

  I had seen this same scene many times so I knew exactly what was to happen. If Hallistair could sense the presence of the crossover, he would disappear halfway down the course.

  He didn’t. He walked from one end of the tunnel and back again with a frown on his face. For the first time since I had met him, he looked frustrated and not on top of the situation. His normally sleek black hair was tousled, perspiration glistened on his upper lip, his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Knowing he had failed, he walked past Sargoth into the control room.

  “Nothing,” he said in disgust. “A faint shimmering in front of me, but that was all I saw or felt.”

  “Maybe next time,” said the drell.

  “Yes, I’d like to try again.”

  To my dismay Grena did much better. For a moment or two I was horrified that she would disappear before my eyes. She practically strutted down the tunnel, for which I could have beaten her, unafraid, almost brazenly. Just before she arrived at the actual crossover she hesitated. Her body seemed to be drawn forward, appeared to lose substance. I was about to yell at Sargoth to warn her back when her figure solidified. She walked to the end of the course before returning with a disappointed expression.

  “That was close,” Sargoth said to her. “I know you felt something.”

  “A drowning sensation. As if I were about to step off the deep end.”

  “A few more trials should spark your potential. Meanwhile, I want you to ponder upon those minutes that you were in there. Don’t feel bad. Nobody gets through the first time.”

  Grena turned to stare at me seated in the back of the room. “He did.”

  “Except for him,” said Sargoth. “He’s a wild card.”

  The next recruit was Shiri Karl and her performance was a great deal like Grena’s. A few more tries should see her executing the crossover.

  I was angry with Grena for having tried so hard and told her so when we met outside.

  “You aren’t the only one around here with a backbone,” she said.

  “How can you kiss me and accuse me of ulterior motives?”

  With a sigh she said, “I’m terrified at the idea of crossing over. I want to live. I want to be like Davis and get scrapped as unfit or too risky. I want to develop a blazing death wish so Sargoth will get rid of me.”

  We sat together in the sun.

  “And you want to do what you can to help save the world;” I said. “You want to prove to yourself that you aren’t a coward. Those are all the wrong reasons.”

  “Tell me the right ones.”

  “You’ve got to hate the weapon. More than you’ve ever hated anything. It has to be alive in your mind, a ravening beast longing to rip you to pieces. Your defense is your mind with all your senses keen.”

  She looked at me with swirling eyes the color of honey. “What about the people on the dark side?”

  “They don’t count. They don’t even exist. Only the weapon is real.”

  “What do you watch out for in there? Besides everything, I mean.”

  “Cold, red fog, but that means nothing. I just don’t like it.”

  Hallistair came out of the building to find us.

  “Send him away,” I said to Grena in a low voice.

  “He gets lonely.”

  “Will he accompany us on our honeymoon?”

  She didn’t smile. “I’m trying to convince him that he shouldn’t dislike Shiri. She’s crazy for him.”

  “She’s just crazy.”

  Later in the day I heard that Spencer was in the hospital and hurried over.

  “Not me,” he said, sitting up in bed. “Don’t worry, not me. All I did was get sick and faint.” He pointed at another bed. “When she came out with her other hand gone I fell over like a dead tree.”

  Will lay across the aisle in a deep sleep. The arm that had been whole when we played cards that morning was short and ended in a brief bandage. I knew Colsan didn’t believe in overdoing the wrappings. Besides, the little tubes that he fastened to blood vessels and nerve endings required no covering. I estimated that Will had lost her arm halfway to the elbow.

  “Why don’t they send me home?” said Spencer in a low voice. “My baptism in blood is going to be the biggest fiasco they’ve ever seen up here.”

  “Cut it out,” I said.

  “I’m not fit!”

  “None of us is. They shouldn’t be sending people in there.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Colsan came in to release him. “Take it easy. See a rousing film. Get drunk. Sleep.”

  Spencer got up from the bed gingerly, as if he had been wounded. He hadn’t been eating lately and had lost weight, Several times he had gone into the weapon without extending the blue line.

  “Thanks for the advice,” he said. He dressed and without looking at Will again he accompanied me out.

  We picked up two more card players, men named Conray and Leece. They were both young, both healthy and fond of their bodies. They planned to keep them intact.

  “Deal and don’t talk,” said Conray. “One thing I hate is commiserating.”

  We played until it was my turn to be interrogated by Sargoth. He always did that before he sent us to assault the weapon.

  I had added ten feet to the blue line during my last trip and he wanted to know how I had accomplished it. He hadn’t known about cold red fog, never having sensed it himself in his days of weapon-assaulting. How did I know it meant nothing? Also, no one else had ever reported hearing blades drop inside.

  “Think, Ashlin,” he said in the soft voice I had learned to trust. I didn’t trust it now. It was only a box that broadcast whatever he wished while his true feelings were disguised in glass and wire.

  “Talk,” he said. “Speak your mind. There are memories of your trips locked away and we want to hear them. Everything goes on tape so we can refer to them again and again.”

  I didn’t know anymore, had nothing further to say. Besides, why did he bother? Wasn’t I just a wild card? That meant I was unpredictable and unreliable, didn’t it? It meant extra. Expendable.

  “Let me alone,” I said. “Let me go and do what you planned for years for me to do.”

  He turned and walked away to the monitoring machines.

  Suddenly overcome with thirst and a hatred of the weapon, I went out into the hall to the nearest water cooler. The lights were dim and to my surprise Hallistair sat alone on one of the couches. He held something on the end of a string which he kept winding around his finger. Ignoring him, I helped myself to a long drink. As I headed back where I had come from, he spoke to me.

  “Be careful that you don’t break your stupid head in
the maze today.”

  I was so unprepared for the remark that I stopped dead in my tracks. He had more than his share of nerve, unless he had a weapon concealed on his person, which I didn’t really suppose.

  “You’ll learn,” he said coolly. He rested easily on the couch with his head tilted up as he regarded me with scorn and something more severe. “Grena will go with me when the time comes. You’ll see.”

  “Go where?”

  “Away. There’s no need for you to try and take her away from me. You can’t do it in a million years. At least not permanently.”

  I looked about but the hall was still empty. There was no one nearby to encourage or support him. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Flexing your country muscles? Don’t bother. You don’t scare me. But if you continue to annoy me, you’re going to lose more than you bargain for.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He didn’t answer. Shaking my head, I left him and walked on.

  “Stay away from Grena,” he said to my back in a low, venomous voice.

  I stopped to consider whether or not I ought to take the time to tell him what I thought of him. I decided against it. It wouldn’t do for me to lose my temper with him, which had abruptly become easy to do. I continued walking and ended up in my favorite place of horror, betwixt shifting images and howling mania. The weapon awaited me.

  Chapter 9

  I found myself looking for floating body parts; a ghoulish vocation but one that had occupied my thoughts of late. After all, the maze had been lopping off limbs for centuries, which meant that the pieces ought to be somewhere about.

  They were not and I surmised that they had fallen below the weapon into whatever space lurked there. About me was gray fog, far ahead was red mist, beneath me was a slippery girder marked with a blue line; my safety path from which I dared not digress.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t wish to tell Sargoth of my feelings or experiences in here, but what was there to tell? I was both hot and cold, arrogant and scared, misty-eyed and alert. I wondered if the weapon could be a live animal with a hunger for human flesh. Perhaps the girders merely felt like metal.