They needed no urging. The moment the last one came in, The Shemibob said the code word. The lift dropped, much faster than the last time. It stopped with such force that it brought most of them to their knees. They tumbled out without climbing over anybody – the doorway was very large – and they raced down the hall. Phemropit was going its full speed, which still left it fifty feet behind the others.
When they reached the burning wavering expanding-contracting gateway, The Shemibob hesitated only a second. With a scream that was intended to help her overcome her fear, she disappeared through the brightness.
Sloosh, his leaves shaking, followed her.
The humans and the Yawtl were frozen. While they were trying to pump up their courage, and not sure they could do it, the stone-metal creature rolled on through. It had never said anything about the effect of the gateway on it. Perhaps it did not share its companions’ terror and nausea. Whatever its reaction, it went on as if it lacked any emotion whatsoever.
Down the hall behind them something crashed. Ahead and underfoot was a quaking. It was then that Deyv realized that the entire castle might be squeezed, ground into powder and sucked through the gateway. If they were to keep ahead of the many tons of ground material, they must get through at once. He also noticed that the air was becoming very hot. The machine that sent excess heat through the gateway could no longer cope with the burden. The friction of compression would soon make the air so hot that they would burn up in it. And the great heat would undoubtedly fry them.
Vana shouted, ‘Deyv! Hoozisst! Help me get Aejip through! She won’t go by herself!’
That was far easier ordered than carried out. The cat was crouched, teeth bared, claws out, snarling, almost out of her mind with fear. When Vana approached her, holding her hand out, trying to speak soothingly, she had to leap back to avoid the cat’s fangs.
More blocks tore loose from the cement that had held them firm for countless generations of humankind. The stone floor was buckling, and a blast of hot air ripped the sweat from their skins. Dust blew in, choking them, making their eyes smart.
Hoozisst screamed even louder than The Shemibob had. His arm over his eyes, he leaped through the shining.
Deyv cursed him for being a coward. Now only he and Vana were left to handle the cat. He stopped and picked up Jum’s struggling howling eleven and a half stone and hurled the dog through the gateway. Then he picked up his tomahawk from the floor, where he’d dropped it, and ran at the cat.
Aejip reared up, claws flashing out at him. Deyv struck her hard alongside the head with the flat of his weapon. He suffered deep gashes along his left arm, but the cat dropped, stunned. Another blow, lighter than the first, knocked her out completely. He hoisted the limp body up by the front. Vana grabbed the rear legs.
Deyv said, ‘One, two, three,’ and at the third swing, they tossed Aejip through.
A huge block of stone crashed twenty feet away. Deyv picked up his tomahawk and leaped through the abomination. He was so scared of being smashed that he felt no terror or sickness. He landed in a place lit up by a ray from Phemropit. Before he could recover, he was knocked sprawling by Vana.
When he got up, he began slapping Aejip on the face to make her recover her wits. This was not a remedy recommended to anyone, sane or insane, but he was past caring about consequences. After a few hard blows with the palm of his hand, the cat opened her green eyes. Deyv backed away. She rose unsteadily to her paws. Instead of attacking him, she crouched as if she were withdrawing into herself, occupied with mysterious feline thoughts.
Deyv looked round. They were in a tunnel cut through solid grey-red rock. The floor was covered with a foot of water, some severed wooden poles were floating on its surface, and it was rising perceptibly. Ahead was the narrowing, not wide enough for the giant members of the group. The Shemibob and Sloosh, though they had entered first, were now behind Phemropit. Evidently, they had climbed back over Phemropit, squeezing between it and the ceiling.
Phemropit was now shooting its most powerful ray, cutting along the walls. When it sliced off a section, it swivelled slightly to one side and cut off another. The slices fell down, forming a growing barrier. How was Phemropit to get over that? There was no way that the others could pick up and toss the pieces behind it.
It was hot in the tunnel. This was due not just to the hot air coming in from the squeezed castle. The stone being cut by the creature was also giving off heat.
Phemropit rumbled ahead, its nose pointing up as it climbed up the pile of thin rock sheets. Its ray shot out and, as it moved on and up, the ceiling scraping its back, it removed more stone from above. It backed and then it charged ahead, its ray cutting through the rubble. It was in its native element now, mining, enlarging a shaft. It needed no instructions.
Dust poured through the gateway. Deyv turned to look behind him, expecting to be hit with terror and nausea again. But this side of the gateway was dark. If it were not expanding and contracting, he might have thought it was just a round discolouration on the wall.
Vana had her arms around Aejip’s neck and was talking to her in a low voice. Jum looked as dazed as the cat, but he was standing up beside the wall. Deyv went forward. He yelled to make himself heard above the roar coming through the gateway.
‘We can’t stay here long! Either the heat or the dust will get us soon!’
‘Obviously,’ the Archkerri said.
He was doing the only thing that he could be doing. Standing, waiting for Phemropit to complete its work, conserving his energy. The Shemibob turned the upper half of her body round and gave Deyv a smile she must have thought encouraging. The sharp white teeth, however, made her look as if she would like to bite someone.
Deyv shouted, ‘I could get by and go ahead. I could see what’s ahead of us.’
The Shemibob screamed, ‘No! Phemropit would have to stop cutting. We can’t spare a second!’
She held in her hand a cylinder which could project pulses of light. This artifact was to be used to communicate with Phemropit. She had given others to the whole party, but they had forgotten to bring theirs. Sloosh had neglected also to bring his cage of fireflies. The Shemibob was the only one who could signal to Phemropit.
The heat and deafening noise increased. Those behind the stone-metal thing crowded closer behind it. The dust was so thick that they could scarcely see a foot around them. All began coughing, Sloosh’s huge mouth under the leaves making noises like a lion with a sore throat.
Suddenly, Phemropit backed. Its companions had to retreat hurriedly to avoid being run over. The air from behind Deyv felt as if it were giving him a first-degree burn. The dust poured over him like the spray from a waterfall. The only one he could see, Jum, looked like a grey statue.
Then a great half-leaved hand reached out, groping, felt his face, lowered, traced his neck, shoulder and arm. It closed around his hand and pulled him forward. Deyv turned and felt behind him, and he had Vana’s hand.
In a loud voice interrupted by racking coughs, he asked her where Aejip was.
‘She’s with me!’ Vana shouted, and she went into a frenzy of coughing.
They moved rapidly after that, The Shemibob with her hand on Phemropit’s rear, Sloosh behind her, all in a chain held together by touch. Deyv hoped they would come to no more narrowings, but he did not have much confidence. He had never felt such a sense of inevitable doom, not even when he had been tied to the post to question Phemropit.
They were moving swiftly forward now, but the heat and the dust were not lessening. The ground-up castle was shooting through the gateway; little pieces of stone spattered on Deyv’s back. Now and then he jumped with pain as a larger piece struck him. Then the tunnel began to curve. Though the heat and dust were still strong, the fragments ceased to stab him.
Who had made this tunnel? Or was it natural? He had questioned The Shemibob about the coincidence of a tunnel being in just the right place for entry. If the gateway had been a little to one side either way, there would have b
een only solid rock beyond it.
She had replied that she could not calculate the mathematics of inter-universal physics. She did not have the data needed for that. But she speculated that gateways, for some reason, tended to be located in ‘weak’ spots. By this she meant that there were places in both universes where air or water existed on each side of the ‘walls’ of the contiguous universes. It was to these that the gateways were attracted.
But she could be wrong.
‘It’s a good thing that the entrances don’t exist above the atmosphere,’ she’d said. ‘Otherwise, the side of the gateway that impinges on a planet with air might suck this air out into the cold empty space of the other world.
‘This might eventually happen. There’s no telling when the ever-increasing density of matter might shift the gateways to such a location. In which case; life on Earth will die even more quickly than I’ve thought.’
Deyv had thought that she was even less comforting than Sloosh, and that took some doing.
Suddenly, the dust cloud thinned, and the heat cooled a little. Phemropit emitted a fan-shaped ray of light. The Shemibob turned a rheostat on her device, and its light was added to that of the stone-metal creature. They were in an immense cavern. Stalagmites and stalactites glittered with many colours and hues. The ceiling shone as if speckled with mica. The air, however, was dead and heavy.
They went ahead over the irregular floor, changing direction once to avoid an abyss. The water on the floor was still about six inches deep. They splashed it on themselves to wash off the dust, and they drank deeply to quench a thirst they had been too occupied to notice until then.
Deyv saw the top of a skull projecting from the water. It was the remains of one of the animals sent through by The Shemibob.
Feeling weak, Deyv sat down on a cool lump of rock.
Vana said, ‘You’re bleeding badly.’
She called Sloosh, who had nothing to offer except advice that Deyv direct his cells to speed up the healing process. The Shemibob, overhearing them, opened her huge bag and pulled out a large jar of ointment. She smeared the purple stuff over the gashes, and the bleeding stopped a minute afterwards.
‘Here. Eat this,’ she said, handing him a small cube wrapped in a thin silvery tissue. It had an unfamiliar but very delicious taste. He devoured it, and he felt better in a short time. She passed out cubes to the others, whose strength returned quickly.
‘I packed things which I thought we might need in case of a hasty flight,’ she said. ‘I’d intended to tell you to do the same, but I decided to put it off until after sleep-time. I hope that teaches me a lesson.’
They went on until they came to the far wall of the cavern. Though they went up and down its length, they could find no exit of any sort. There was a very small crevice through which water was trickling. It was this that was slowly flooding the hollow.
The noise, dust and heat were now pushing from the mouth of the tunnel. Faint clouds of dust like the outriders of a ghost horde advanced towards them.
The snake-centaur took a small device out of her bag and placed it against the wall near the trickle. Its round face glowed with strange figures. She studied them for a minute, then moved the device along the wall in both directions and at different levels.
When she returned to the trickle, she said, ‘There’s only five feet of rock between us and water at this point. I don’t know how far under water we are. It makes no difference to what we have to do.’
She described her plan, and they agreed that it was the best one. Though it was desperate, it might – it had to – succeed. Sloosh expanded the vessel and opened its door. The Shemibob glued the tip of its nose to Phemropit’s rear with a piece of cloth from the bag.
‘The cloth won’t tear, but I don’t know whether or not the glue will hold. Once it sets, it could hold two boards together though a thousand men pulled on each one. But we don’t know what forces will be brought to bear on it. When the water comes gushing in, it may sweep up Phemropit and smash it against the rear of the cave. Or turn it upside down. Or… well, we shall see.’
She explained to the creature what it was to do. It answered that it fully understood. But if the plan did not work, it wanted everybody to understand that its experiences with them had been most educational and gratifying. Though of a weird quality.
By then it was evident that they had no more time to talk. Clouds of dust enveloped them. A river of packed dust was flowing from the tunnel. Its heat spread out, making them sweat from more than fear.
Vana, however, the most sentimental of the crew, ran in front of Phemropit with the light-device. She said a ‘goodbye’ to it and then patted it on its nose. It could not feel her hand, of course, but it may have felt some emotion. Then Vana ran back through the dust, coughing, and Deyv pulled her inside. The room was crowded now, The Shemibob’s body filling a quarter of it. Sloosh shut the door. The lights were already on; the air system was working.
They did not speak, though they gave little gasps or muted cries or, from Sloosh, occasional short buzz-ejaculations. Outside, Phemropit was moving horizontally from side to side to cut a wide but thin hole through the rock. This took some time because of the thickness of the wall. It would also be an increased drain on its energy supply.
They knew it had finished that stage of the work when they felt the vessel moving backward. The water would be spraying out in a powerful sheet, although its force would not, or should not, be enough to move Phemropit backward. It was backing towards a rise in the floor. Once its angle was changed, it would start cutting above the slit first made. Then it would move forward so that its nose would dip down. This would be done very slowly. The rock wall had to be thoroughly cut through vertically until that slit met the horizontal.
After a long time, the vessel moved back again, then forward. Slowly, it turned as Phemropit turned, its beam slicing through the rock above, making another horizontal slit. And after what was by no means an eternity, though it had some of its aspects, the vessel went through another series of manoeuvres.
‘Phemropit will have to be far enough back to avoid being struck when the cut-out section is propelled inward,’ The Shemibob said. ‘It said it comprehended that. Even so, the water may hurl the section back far enough to hit Phemropit. Or slide over it to strike our vessel. Then we’ll see if the glue is strong enough.’
The vessel suddenly shot backward. Its passengers were shot with bruising force against the far wall. For some time, there was no motion after that. Since the hull was soundproof, they could not hear the roar outside. But they could imagine that and the rapidly rising water also. Phemropit had to wait until the cavern was completely flooded before it would be able to advance through the hole. As it was, its treads were probably moving forward at their fastest speed just to avoid being pushed backward.
More of the delicious cubes were passed round. Another near-eternity, in an emotional sense, crawled by. Then they felt the vessel move forward. The floor went up and down, roughly at times. By slight tendencies of their bodies to lean this way or that, they knew that they were changing direction horizontally, sometimes, vertically.
‘I think,’ Sloosh said, ‘that the wall of the cavern was probably part of a mountain. How deep it was, there’s no telling. But if it rises above the water to make an island, and the island has beaches, we might make it. Provided, of course, that Phemropit doesn’t go in the wrong direction. And that there are inclines up which it can go. If they’re too steep… well, this sweetmeat is a new experience to me. What is its chemical make-up, O Shebibob?’
Deyv groaned. Where Phemropit went, they had to go. How could it determine which way to go, inland or out to sea?
After a while it became evident that they were generally travelling up. Now and then Phemropit was forced to go down or even to backtrack. Once, they did not move for a long time. Their animated locomotive was sitting, considering some obstacle. Deyv could imagine it, its light ray piercing through the darkness of
the depth. Or was there light above from the bright sky? Or had Phemropit just given up?
Then they resumed, and they yelled and grabbed one another as the vessel rolled slowly to one side. It righted after a while, but Deyv wondered what would happen if it turned completely over. Nothing, he concluded, except that they would be sitting on the ceiling. What if Phemropit was on the edge of a steep cliff and it gave way beneath the creature? It and its trailer would drop into the abyss. And there might be no way to get out of it.
They came to a slope up which Phemropit slowly went, slipped back some distance, went back up again, slipped, tried again, slid back, then all of a sudden travelled steadily upward. Shortly after this, the passengers felt as if they were on the surface of the water. Surely it was waves that were bobbing the floor up and down?
Then they were moving forward on a very gentle slope. Then all motion stopped. They waited, tense, sweating, wondering if they were indeed on a beach.
‘This is the blind spot, the weak place, in my plan,’ The Shemibob said. ‘I had no time to think of a signal Phemropit could give. I’m not sure that any could’ve been arranged. How will we know when we’re safe? If we open the door, and we’re fooled by our sensations, not to mention our hopes, we’ll be inundated. Drowned.’
The vessel began turning on a short radius. It went round and round.
‘What in Khokhundru is it doing?’ Hoozisst said. ‘Has it gone crazy? It’s like a dog chasing its own tail.’
Sloosh and The Shemibob looked at each other. The latter smiled and her flapping laughter rang out.
‘It’s signalling us! It’s turning the vessel on its horizontal axis. It’s trying to tell us to come on out!’
‘I don’t know,’ the Yawtl said. ‘If you’re wrong…’
For an answer, Sloosh opened the door. Light and air flooded in. Whooping, shedding tears, they tumbled out onto warm and comforting sand. Beyond the beach was a jungle and beyond that the cone of a tall mountain.
Deyv looked at the sky of a new world.
The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 49
