by Mike Resnick
“That’ll change the second they find the pods,” said Snake.
“That’s why I want to get to someplace where we can see what’s coming and defend ourselves.”
“Less talk and more walking,” said Pretorius, and they fell silent and commenced walking again.
They had proceeded another hundred meters, still in total darkness, when Pretorius spoke again. “Irish, walk along the left wall and run your hand over it while you’re walking. Pandora, do the same with the right wall. For all I know, we’re walking right past a number of rooms.”
They walked another twenty meters and then Irish whispered: “Got something!”
“A door?” whispered Pretorius back at her.
“There’s no handle.”
“Push against it,” he suggested.
She did so, and they heard a sudden creaking as the portal slowly drew back from the wall, revealing a dimly lit chamber possessing a desk and two chairs.
“Get in quick!” Pretorius whispered to the others. “We don’t know how soon the door might close.”
They all got into the room, and the door slid shut about twenty seconds later.
“Not a damned thing but the chairs and desk,” said Snake.
“True,” agreed Pretorius. He looked around the room and frowned. “And puzzling.”
“In what way?” asked Pandora.
“No dust,” he said. “Someone’s used, or at least cleaned the room recently. But there’s no computer, no alarm system, nothing to imply that the room even has a use.”
“Well, if they’ve got a cleaning robot, or the Kabori equivalent of a housemaid, there’s probably another door,” said Apollo.
“If they do, it’s well camouflaged,” said Irish.
“Each of you, take a wall and see what you can learn,” ordered Pretorius. “Proto, I can’t imagine there’ll be any trap doors or trip lines, but you’re low enough to the ground in your real form to find any, so that’s your chore.”
“And what do you do?” asked Snake.
“I check out the ceiling,” said Pretorius.
“But we’re on the top floor!” she said.
“You ever hear of an attic?” asked Pretorius. “Or a roof?”
“Okay, okay,” muttered Snake, going back to examining her section of the wall.
Pretorius pulled a chair away from the desk, stuck it in a corner that seemed a logical starting point, climbed atop it, and reached his hands up to the ceiling. It felt solid where he was, and he moved the chair a couple of feet to the left and went through the same procedure.
Just about the time everyone was sure that the only entrance or exit from the room was by the route they’d used to reach it, Irish exclaimed, “Pay dirt!”
All eyes turned to her as she tapped the door once with the flat of her hand.
Nothing happened.
“You’re wrong,” said Pandora.
She smiled. “No, I’m not. The damned door can count!”
She tapped it twice, and it slid up a couple of inches. She leaned against it and it instantly closed.
Then she tapped it three times and it slid halfway open.
“Smart goddamned door!” said Snake, walking through to the next room.
When the rest of the team had walked through, Irish followed them, then turned and tapped the door three times from the other side, and it slid shut.
They found themselves in a dimly lit corridor lined with similar doors.
“There’s got to be half a dozen spy-eyes hidden along the length of this,” whispered Pretorius. “Even if we can spot them and disable them all, we’ve told the Kabori right where we are. Let get the hell out of this area and find someplace a little less public to plan our next step.”
Apollo led the way, followed by the three women and Proto, with Pretorius bringing up the rear. They came to a cross corridor, Apollo turned to his right, and finally they came to an airlift about six feet on a side.
“What now?” asked Apollo.
“Remember where it is, but we’re not taking it yet,” answered Pretorius.
“Why not?”
“We know the damned castle can hold about half a million warriors,” replied Pretorius. “So until we’re a little more certain of what’s below us, we’ll stay up here and learn what we can before we move.”
“Good idea except for one problem,” said Irish.
“Only one?” replied Pretorius with a smile. “Okay, what is it?”
“Their defense system had to see the pods landing on the roof. Even though they were from a Kabori ship, they have to be curious as to why we haven’t contacted them yet.”
“Good point,” agreed Pretorius, “and there’s one obvious bet we’ve been missing.” He turned to Proto. “Become a Kabori, you know the military uniform, and have a burner in your hand. If anyone sees us, you’re taking us to Michkag, but since you’ve never been here before you don’t know quite what part of the castle he’s in.”
“You think anyone’ll buy that?” asked Apollo dubiously.
“Long enough for us to draw our weapons,” answered Pretorius.
Apollo frowned. “This level is maybe two miles long and one wide. Somebody has to live up here.”
Snake began sniffing the air. “I don’t know if they sleep up here,” she said, “but some of them sure as hell eat up here.”
The other began inhaling deeply.
“It’s not human food, but it’s food,” said Irish. “I want to say it’s coming from straight ahead of us, but hell, it could be coming out of any of these rooms and then wafting down the corridor.”
Pretorius turned to Proto. “Okay, back to your original size, even smaller if you can manage it. Then go down the corridor until you come to the source of the odors.”
“How far should I go if they’re not in the immediate vicinity?” asked Proto.
“For as long as it’s a straight line.”
“It’s pretty dark,” said Proto. “We’ll lose sight of each other before I’ve traveled a quarter mile.”
“If there’s any shooting at either end, the other will see the lights,” answered Pretorius. “Now go before they stumble over the pods and come looking for us.”
Proto, all near-shapeless eighteen inches of him, began making his way slowly down the corridor.
“What do you think?” whispered Snake. “It can’t be this deserted.”
“Of course not,” answered Pretorius. “Even if they’re out on a raid, or in a serious battle, you don’t leave your headquarters totally empty. You leave a big enough force behind to take care of business.”
“I agree,” said Apollo. “I’m just worried about what happens to that little bastard if he finds someone. He can’t even hold a weapon.”
“He can turn into you, me, or Michkag in a tenth of a second,” replied Pretorius. “He doesn’t need to hold a weapon. Hell, he is a weapon.”
Suddenly, as he reached the limit of their visible range, Proto assumed the image of a human again, turned to face them, and waved them over.
“Little bastard found something after all!” said Apollo, striding forward enthusiastically.
The five Men reached Proto in about half a minute.
“What’s up?” asked Apollo.
“There’s some kind of room to my right, your left,” whispered Proto. “I heard voices, and then I heard a door slide shut. Not here—this one’s always been closed—but another one within the room.”
“You see an outline anywhere on the wall here?” asked Pretorius.
“No,” answered Apollo and Snake together.
Pretorius turned back to Proto. “You sure you haven’t heard any voices or any noise since the other door closed?”
“None.”
“Okay,” said Pretorius. “We’ll assume that there’s a maximum of one Kabori in the room. If he’s military he’ll be armed, but he’ll have no reason to have his burner in his hand or on a table or desk if we enter fast enough.”
“If we have to. If we can overpower him without drawing any attention, I’ll want to question him. But one scream and we’re given away and probably pinpointed.”
“How do you want to break in?” asked Apollo. “I could probably bust a hole through the door just bumping up against it half a dozen times, but that hardly keeps us a secret.”
“I know,” said Pretorius. “Okay, Pandora and Irish, pull your burners out, and on my count of three, fire at the most likely spot for a lock, one of you on each side. Apollo, on three you and I hurl ourselves against the door.”
“What about me?” asked Snake.
“If the door gives too easily,” said Pretorius, “Apollo and I are probably both going to land on the floor. If we do, kill the bastard before he can kill us.”
Snake smiled. “Suddenly I like your plan a lot better!”
“Somehow I knew you would,” said Pretorius. He and Apollo stood as far from the portal as they could. “Ready?” he said softly. “One . . . two . . . three!”
Pandora and Irish began firing while Pretorius and Apollo rammed their shoulders into the door, which gave way with a crunching sound. They fell to the floor atop it, at the feet of a Kabori in military garb, who had a screecher in his hand. Before he could aim and fire, Snake fired her burner at his head, and he fell to the floor atop Apollo, his body twitching slightly for a few seconds and then becoming absolutely still in death.
Pretorius got to his feet and shoved the body off of Apollo. “Everyone all right?”
“Yeah,” said Apollo, echoed by Snake, Irish, and Pandora.
“Where the hell is Proto?” asked Pretorius.
“I’m here,” came the answer, as Proto, now in his human guise again, entered the room. “That was terrifying.”
“Not really,” said Snake. “We had all the angles covered, unless there were half a dozen of the bastards in there.”
“My only defense is the art of illusion,” replied Proto. “If I can’t fool an enemy, I’m gone. A five-year-old human child can kill me if I can’t frighten him into thinking twice about it.”
“Okay,” agreed Snake. “It was terrifying. Get used to it. There’s probably half a million more of these bastards between us and Michkag.”
“I know,” said Proto glumly.
Pretorius was kneeling beside the body, examining its uniform.
“Well, he’s not an officer,” he announced. “That makes it less likely that anyone’s going to come looking for him. Anyone see anything in here—papers, communicators, anything?”
“No,” was the answer.
“There’s no bed, so it clearly wasn’t his quarters. And there aren’t any spy devices, so he’s not looking for intruders. I wonder what the hell he was doing up here?”
“There’s always the obvious,” said Snake.
“Obvious?” asked Irish.
“Waiting for a lady Kabori. Or another male, depending on his preference.”
“I think that’s reaching,” said Pretorius. “But just in case you’re right, there’s a possibility that his bedmate hasn’t shown up yet, so let’s get the hell out of here before she or he does.”
“Not the way we came?” said Pandora.
“No, let’s use the door that everyone uses and see where the hell it takes us.”
And with that, Pretorius lightly touched the door on the far side of the room, which receded far enough to allow his party to pass through.
“I’d hide the body, but I don’t know where, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to carry it for the next fifteen or twenty minutes looking for a suitable place to dump it,” he said. “Besides, once they find the pods they’ll know we’re here anyway.”
“They may think it’s just more Kaboris,” said Proto.
Pretorius shook his head. “Not a chance. Visitors to Michkag’s headquarters would make their presence known before they got shot.”
Proto looked as upset as a six-foot image of a man could look, and fell silent.
“Lot of light up ahead,” noted Apollo. “More than we’d get from the door of a well-lit room being open.”
“So send Proto to see what it is,” said Snake.
Pretorius shook his head. “He’s in no emotional condition to go there alone. Besides, if there’s any talk going on, we’ve only got one Kabori speaker.” He turned to Apollo. “Get as close as you can without being seen, and then just hold still and listen for a few minutes and let us know what they’re talking about.”
“Piece of cake,” said Apollo confidently, walking silently down the corridor toward the light.
“Looks like it’s a big room that a bunch of corridors all lead to,” said Irish. “Remember, we’ve been walking inward from where we left the pods, even when we changed corridors.”
Apollo began approaching the room, while his companions all stood and silently watched him. When he’d gotten to an area just beyond the lights he dropped to one knee and listened, while watching to make sure no one was about to enter the corridor where they were all standing.
He remained there for almost five minutes, then carefully, silently made his way back to his companions.
“Well?” whispered Pretorius.
“Ever hear of a race called the Quall?” asked Apollo.
“No.”
“Well, you never will again,” said Apollo. “Evidently one of Michkag’s elite regiments just wiped out their whole planet, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Doesn’t sound much like celebrating,” said Snake. “No yelling, no laughing. At least, I assume none. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t carry down the corridor to us.”
“Not that big a world,” answered Apollo. “And they lost one of their top officers. No one’s sure yet what killed him.”
“You mean he might have been shot by a Kabori?” asked Pandora.
Apollo shook his head. “No, but he may have stepped on some planted Kabori explosives or been too damned close to a bomb that was dropped on some of the Quall army.”
“Are they going to be there much longer?” asked Pretorius. “I don’t want us to spend the whole night out in the open in this damned corridor.”
Apollo shrugged. “I don’t think so . . . but I couldn’t get close enough to take a look and see just how much drinkin’ stuff they’ve got left.”
“Okay,” said Pretorius. “At least this corridor has real doors, not like the one we had to burn and bash our way through. Let’s start trying them. If anyone’s in a room and not ready to shoot, we’ll take him prisoner and find out where the hell Michkag’s quarters are.”
“You think we can walk right up to him once you know?” said Snake sardonically.
“No, of course not,” said Pretorius. “But even you would get tired of fighting your way into and out of five or ten thousand wrong rooms.”
“True,” she admitted. “Okay, let’s go beat the info out of someone.”
“Let’s find someone who doesn’t require killing first,” said Apollo, starting back down the corridor.
“Wait!” whispered Pretorius.
“You can yell,” said Apollo. “We can’t hear them from here, so they almost certainly can’t hear us.”
“I’m not worried about them,” said Pretorius. “It’s whoever might be behind these doors,” he concluded, indicating the closest doors on both sides of the corridor.
“Damn!” said Apollo, frowning. “They’ve been so quiet I forgot about them.” He paused. “Okay, what did you stop me for?”
“I don’t want you to go first.”
“Why the hell not?” he said. “If we have to break a door or some bones, I’m the biggest.”
“And if we walk into a room and someone’s got a burner trained on us, you’re the one guy we can’t spare,” said Pretorius. “At least, not until we get another Kabori speaker on our side.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted Apollo.
“I know,” said
Pretorius. He turned to Snake. “You go first.”
“Right,” she said, burner in hand, as she began walking down the corridor.
She tested the first three doors they came to, and each opened onto an empty, and seemingly unused, room.
The fourth door was locked.
“Well?” she said. “Clearly this one’s not empty. Bust it in or hope he sleeps the rest of the night through?”
“Neither,” said Pretorius. “Apollo, come over here.”
“Yeah?” said Apollo, walking over. “You want me to bust it open?”
“No,” said Pretorius. “We don’t need another broken door and another dead Kabori.”
“Then what . . . ?”
“You speak the language. Use it.”
Pretorius knocked on the door with the handle of his screecher. A moment later a voice responded. Apollo replied, they exchanged two more sentences, and then the door slid open and they found themselves facing a Kabori. He was armed, his weapons were in their holsters, and Pretorius and Apollo threw him onto his back and disarmed him before he could make use of them.
The rest of the team entered the room, and Irish touched the control that closed the door.
“He wants to know what we want,” said Apollo.
“Tell him we’re old friends of Michkag’s,” answered Pretorius. “We want to see him, we have vital information for him, but since he’s at war with the Democracy we felt we couldn’t approach the planet and the castle directly.”
Apollo passed the message on, listened to the reply, and then turned to Pretorius. “He’s not buying it.”
“Big surprise,” said Pretorius. “Tell him he leaves this room as our guide and ally, or he never leaves this room again.”
Apollo spoke, the Kabori spoke, and Apollo turned to Pretorius with the strangest expression on his face.
“Well?” said Pretorius.
“He doesn’t want to be a traitor to his leader, and he doesn’t want us to kill him, so he’s proposed a third course of action.”
“What is it?”
“He’ll give us a detailed map of the castle,” said Apollo, “and while he doesn’t know Michkag’s exact location, he knows which section he lives in when he’s not off fighting wars.”
