She looked shocked. “Then you think that … perhaps we have ended up in this place called Hell?”
“Well, until a better idea comes along—and I hope it wil!—that seems to be the conclusion … .”
There was a distant rumbling roar, the ground shivered beneath my feet. A sudden weight seemed to press down and I dropped to my knees, put my hands out to break my fall. I was heavy, suddenly very heavy; Sybil was sprawling on the ground again.
Then the strange sensation passed, as quickly as it had come, and I stood again, shakily.
“What—was that?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I never felt anything like it before. It was like, what? A gravity wave passing over us?”
“There is no such thing as a gravity wave.”
“There is now!”
She tried to smile, but shivered instead.
“Don’t,” I said. “We’re someplace strange, and it might very well be a place called Hell. But we appear to be alive—so let us get out of this cave and find out just where in Hell we are!”
She pulled away and straightened up, running her fingers through her hair. And even managed a small smile. “I bet I even look like Hell,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Our little burst of enthusiasm did not last very long. As we walked on, the air grew hotter, uncomfortably hotter. We passed around a spur of rock and found out why. We recoiled from the blast of heat and looked on aghast at the scene before us. Directly ahead ran a wide river of turgid lava. Darkened slag formed on top, cracking and breaking apart as it flowed by to reveal the glowing, turgidly liquid stone below. We retreated. Retracing our steps.
“We’ll try the opposite direction,” I said, then coughed. Sybil did not answer, just nodded in agreement. Her throat must have been as dry as mine; she would have been just as thirsty. Was there any water in this parched landscape? The answer did not bear thinking about.
Something else did not bear thinking about. Angelina. Slakey must have sent her someplace just the way he had sent us. To Heaven I hoped. I hoped even harder that it was not to this terrible planet that she had gone.
We retraced our path past the cave mouth from which we had emerged and stumbled on through a landscape of rolling gravel dunes. It was still hot, but not the ovenlike furnace that we had just left.
“A moment,” Sybil said, stopping and sitting on a wide boulder. “I’m a little tired.” I nodded and sat beside her.
“Not surprising. Whatever that paralysis web was it certainly didn’t do us any good. Physically or mentally.”
“I feel beat—and depressed. If I knew how to quit I would.”
Looking at the despair in her face, hearing the echo of exhaustion in her voice—I grew angry. This fine, strong, attractive agent should not be reduced like this by one man.
“I hate you Slakey!” I shouted. Jumping to my feet and shaking my fist at the sky. A rumble of a distant volcano was not much of an answer. I got even angrier. “You will not get away with this. We are going to get out of this place, yes we are. The air on this planet must have come from someplace, from living green plants. We’ll find them—and you cannot stop us!”
“You are wonderful, Jim,” Sybil said, standing and smoothing down her wrinkled and filthy dress. “Of course we will go on. And of course we will win.”
I nodded angry agreement. Then pointed down the valley. “That way, away from the lava and the volcanoes. It will be a lot better.”
And it was. As we walked the air became cooler. After a bit, when the valley widened out, I caught a glimpse of green far ahead. I did not want to mention it at first—but then Sybil saw it as well.
“Green,” she said firmly. “Grass or trees or something like that ahead. Or is it just wishful thinking?”
“No way! I can see it as well and it is a very cheering sight indeed. Forward!”
We almost ran as the verdant landscape opened up ahead. It was grass, knee-high, cool and slightly damp as we pushed our way through it. There were clumps of trees farther ahead, then more and more of them, almost a small forest.
“Good old chlorophyll,” I exulted. “Bottom of the food chain and from whence all life doth spring. Capturing the sun’s energy to manufacture food …”
“And water?”
“You better believe it. There has to be water somewhere around here—and we are going to find it—”
“Shhh,” she shhhsed. “Do you hear that? A sort of rustling, like dry leaves.”
I did hear it, a light crackling sound that was coming towards us from the forest. Then something small came out from under the trees and moved hesitantly into the grass.
“Well, Hello,” I said to the tiny reddish-brown form that emerged. It looked up at me with button-black eyes and squealed with fright.
The squeal was echoed by a louder and more angry squeal from the forest. There was a thunder of running hooves and a giant avenging form burst out from under the trees, snorting with massive maternal protectiveness. A good two meters from snuffling nose to twitching tail. Covered all over with protective spines now rigidly erect.
Sybil gasped with horror.
I smiled and cried out, “Sooooy, pig, pig, pig!”
“Jim—what is it?”
“One of the most endearing and lovely creatures in the galaxy, friend of my youth, companion to man. It is a—porcuswine!”
She looked at me as though she thought I was going mad.
“Endearing? Is it going to attack?”
“Not if we don’t threaten her swinelet.” The tiny creature had lost its fright when its monster dam had appeared and had nosed aside the protecting quills to find some refreshing milk.
I moved slowly, bending over to pick up a windfall branch. Beady and suspicious eyes followed my every movement.
“That’s a good girl,” I said, stepping forward and making reassuring clucking noises. She quivered a bit but held her ground. Turning her head to follow me as I approached. A drop of saliva formed on a protruding, sharp tusk, then dripped to the ground.
“There, there,” I murmured. “Little Jimmy doesn’t hurt porcuswine. Little Jimmy loves porcuswine.”
Reaching down I brushed a handful of quills slowly aside between her ears, reached out and prodded with the end of the branch, then rubbed it strongly through the thick bristles.
Her eyes were half-closed as she burbled contentedly.
“Porcuswine just love to be scratched behind the ears—they can’t reach the spot themselves.”
“How do you know about these terrible creatures?”
“Terrible? Never! Companions to mankind in his quest to the stars. You should read your galactic history more closely. Read about the strange beasts and deadly creatures that were waiting for the first settlers. Monsters that could eat a cow in a single bite. They learned fear from the faithful porcuswine, let me tell you. An artificial genetic mutation between giant pigs and deadly porcupine. Tusks and hooves to attack, spines to defend. Loyal, faithful and destructive when needs be.”
“Good pork chops too?”
“Indeed—but we don’t speak about that in their presence. I was raised on a farm and let me tell you, my only friends were our herd of porcuswine. Ahh, here’s the boar now!”
I shouted joyous greeting to the immense and deadly form that lumbered out of the forest. He glared at me with red and swiney eyes. Grunted aloud with pleasure as the end of my stick scratched and scratched at his hide. I grunted with the effort—and pleasure as well.
“Where did they come from?” Sybil asked.
“The forest,” I said scratching away.
“That’s not what I mean. What kind of a place is this with volcanoes, lava flows, gravity waves—and these creatures?”
“A planet that had to have been settled by mankind. We’ll find out soon enough. But first let us follow the pigpaths into the forest and find some water. Drink first, cogitate later.”
“Agreed,” she said leading the way. I followed he
r and our newfound porcine friends followed me. Grunting expectantly for more delicious scratching attention. We lost them only when the path led through a clearing surrounded by storoak trees. The boar slammed his tusks into the trunk of one heavy-laden tree and shook it mercilessly. Acorns as big as my head rained down and the little family munched on them happily.
We emerged from the forest into a water meadow that had been stirred up muddily by sharp hooves. It bordered a small lake. The far side was shielded in mist that obscured any details. We left the muddy path and found a shelf of rock that led to the water. Sat at the water’s edge and drank cupped handfuls of the clear and cool water until we had drunk our fill.
“Find a few dry sticks, rub them together and it could be pork for dinner,” Sybil said, smacking her lips.
“Never! They’re friends.” My stomach rumbled enticingly. “Well maybe later, much later. And only if we can’t find another source of food. I think a little exploring is in order. This is—or was—a settled world. Mankind took the mutated porcuswine and storoak to the stars. There should be farms here.”
“I wouldn’t even know what one looked like. I was a city girl, or rather a small-town girl. Food was something that you bought in the shop. My mother and father—everyone there—worked at teleconferencing or programming or computing or whatever. No factories, no pollution, that sort of thing was confined to the distant robot construction sites. Our town was just low and ordinary, just a lot of landscaped buildings and green parks. Utterly and totally boring.”
I squinted across the lake where the mist appeared to be clearing. I pointed.
“Like that place over there?”
CHAPTER 6
“WHAT PLACE?” SHE ASKED, STANDING and shielding her eyes with her hand. I pointed in silence.
“Seen one, you’ve seen them all,” she muttered, frowning. “They must be factory-produced, stamped out like cereal packages. Fold the thing and glue it and plop it down, hook up the electricity and it starts to work. I couldn’t even bear to go to school in Hometown—that is really what it was really called, would you believe it? I graduated first place in my kiddy class, got a scholarship, went away to school and never came back. Knocked around a bit, got involved with police work, liked it. Then I was recruited by the Special Corps and the rest is history.”
“Do you want to take a look at this hometown?”
“No, I do not.”
“It might be fun—and there should be food there. Unless you want a pork roast so badly that you want to kill a porcuswine with your bare hands?”
“No jokes, please. We’ll take a look.”
It was not a large lake and the walk was a short one. Sybil, who had started out in good spirits, grew quieter and quieter as we approached the low buildings. She finally stopped.
“No,” she said firmly.
“No, what?”
“No it’s not a place I really want to visit. They all look exactly alike, I told you, central design, central manufacture. Plug the thing in and watch it go to work. I hated my childhood.”
“Didn’t we all? But the porcuswine, they were the best part of it. Probably the only part that I remember with any feeling. Now let’s go see if we can find a McSwineys and get a sandwich in this bijou townlet.”
There was nothing moving in the streets or the buildings ahead. A single road came out of the hamlet and ended abruptly in the grass. There was a billboard sign of some kind beside it, but it was end on and we couldn’t read it until we got closer. We walked at an angle as we approached so we could see what it said. Sybil stopped suddenly and clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were closed.
“Read it,” she said.
“I did.”
“What does it say?”
“Just a coincidence …”
Her eyes snapped open and she bit out the words. “Do you believe that? What does it say?”
“It reads, in serifed uppercase red letters on a white foreground, it reads …”
“‘Welcome to Hometown.’ Are we mad or is this whole planet mad?”
“Neither.” I sat down and pulled a blade of grass free, chewed on it. “Something is happening here. Just what we have yet to discover.”
“And we are going to discover what by sitting on our chunks and chewing grass.”
She was angry now—which was much better than being frightened or depressed. I smiled sweetly and patted the grass beside me. “To action, then. You sit and chew the grass while I scout out the scene. Sit!”
She sat. Because of the force of my personality—or because she was still tired. I climbed to my feet creakily and wearily and strolled forward into Hometown.
Found out everything I needed to know in a very short time and went back to join her sitting and chewing.
“Strangest thing I have ever seen,” I said.
“Jim—don’t torture me!”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to—just trying to come to grips with this particular reality. Firstly, the town is empty. No people, dogs, cars, kids. Anything. One of the reasons that it is empty is that everything seems to be in one lump. As though it was made that way. The doorhandles don’t turn and the doors themselves appear to be part of the wall. The same with the windows. And you can’t look in. Or rather it looks like you’re looking in but what is inside is really in the glass of the window. And nothing really seems right or complete. It is more like an idea of Hometown instead of being Hometown itself.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea of what you are talking about.”
“Don’t worry! I’m not so sure myself. I’m just trying to pick my way through a number of very strange occurrences. We arrived here in a sort of a cave. With volcanoes and lava streams and no grass or anything else.” I glanced up at the bloated red sun and pointed. “At least the sun is the same. So we went for a walk and found green grass and porcuswine, the porcuswine of my youth.”
“And the Hometown of mine. It has to mean something …”
“It does!” I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth in a brain-cudgeling pace. “Slakey knew where he was sending us and it wasn’t to Heaven he said. So he must have been here before. Not quite Heaven, that’s what he said. Maybe he thought he was sending us to Hell. And the spot where we arrived was very Hellish what with the red creature, the volcanoes and lava and everything. Could it have been Hellish because he expected it to be? Because this Hell is his idea of Hell?”
“You lead, Jim—but I just can’t follow you.”
“I don’t blame you, because the idea is too preposterous. We know that someplace named Heaven exists someplace, somewhere. If there is one place there could be others. This is one of the others. With certain unusual properties.”
“Like what?”
“Like you see what you expect to see. Let us say this planet or whatever it is was a place that was just a possibility of a place—until Slakey arrived. Then it became the place he was expecting to find. Maybe the red sun got him thinking about Hell. And the more he thought the more Hellish it became. Makes good sense.”
“It certainly does not! That’s about the most flakey theory I have ever heard.”
“You bet it is—and more than that. Absolutely impossible. But we are here, aren’t we?”
“Living in another man’s Hell?”
“Yes. We did that when we first came here. But we didn’t like it and wanted to leave it. I remember thinking that the barren, volcanic world was just about the opposite of the one where I grew up … .”
It was my turn to wonder if this whole thing wasn’t just institutionalized madness. But Sybil was more practical.
“All right then—let us say that was what happened. We arrived in this Hellish place because Slakey had come here first and everything—what can we say—lived up to his devilish expectations. We didn’t like it and you wished very strongly we weren’t there but in a place with a better climate. You got very angry about that, which may have helped shaped
what we wanted to see. Then we walked on and came to it. We drank, but we were still hungry. Rather I was, so much so I must have thought of my earliest gustatory delights. Which just happened to be in Hometown. Given that all this is true—what do we do next?”
“The only thing that we can do. Go back to Hell.”
“Why?”
“Because that is where we came in—and where we must be if we want to get out. Slakey is the only one that knows how to pass between these places. And another thing …” My voice was suddenly grim.
“What, Jim? What is it?”
“Just the sobering thought that Angelina may have been sent to this place before we were dispatched. If so, we won’t find her in my youth or your youth. She would have to be in Slakey’s particular Hell.”
“Right,” she said, standing and brushing the grass from her dress. “If we are thirsty we can always find our way back here. If we are hungry—”
“Please save that thought for awhile. One step at a time.”
“Of course. Shall we go?”
We retraced our steps back through the field and into the forest. A distant, happy grunting cheered me up a good deal. As long as there were porcuswine in existence this galaxy would not be that bad a place. Out of the trees and across the field of grass. That grew sparser and shorter until it disappeared. Volcanic soil again and more than a whiff of sulfur about. The mounds were getting higher as we walked and we labored to climb an even higher one. When we reached the summit we had a clear view of a smoking volcano. It appeared to be the first of very many. And behind it the red sun, which was hovering just above the horizon.
The dunes ended in foothills of cracked and crumbled stone. Red of course. The cleft of a small canyon cut into them and we went that way. A lot easier than climbing another hill. We both heard the scratching sound at the same time; we stopped.
“Wait here,” I whispered. “I’ll see what it is.”
“I go with you, diGriz. We are in this together—all the way.”
She was right of course. I nodded and touched my finger to my lips. We went on, as slowly and silently as we could. The scratching grew louder—then stopped. We stopped as well. There was a slurping wet sound from close by, then the scratching started again. We crept forward and looked.
The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell Page 6
