by Неизвестный
All the ghosts but Horatio disappeared, with the sound of mouse feet running through the autumn leaves. Horatio turned abruptly and fled away before Rod, who dashed after him.
Rod counted his running steps; after fifty, the ghost made a right-angle turn with a fine disregard for inertia and passed through a doorway. Rod made a manful attempt at the inertialess turn, and got away with only a slight skid.
The ghost's voice took on the booming echo of the cavernlike room. "This was a cavern indeed, ready-made by God, lo, many centuries before I came. Loath to begrudge His gifts, I took it for my great banquet hall." The room seethed with the voices of a thousand serpent-echos as the patriarch ghost heaved a vast sigh. "Boisterous and many were the feastings held within this great hall, Man. Beauteous the maidens and valiant the knights." His voice lifted, exulting. "Brilliant with light and music was my banquet hall in that lost day, the tales and sagas older and more vital than the singing of this latter world. Wine flushed the faces of my court, and life beat high through the veins of their temples, filling their ears with its drumming call!
"The call of life…" The spirit's voice faded; its echoes died away among the cold cavern stones, till the great hall stood silent in its enduring midnight.
Somewhere a drop of water fell, shattering the silence into a hundred echoes.
"Gone now, oMan," mourned the ghost. "Gone and dead, while threescore of the sons of my blood have ruled these marches in my stead, and come home to me here in my halls. Gone, all my bold comrades, all my willing maidens—gone, and dust beneath our feet."
Rod's shoulders tightened as though a chill wind had touched him between the shoulder blades. He tried to stand a little more lightly in the dust carpet of the old banquet hall.
"And now!" The ghost's voice hardened in sullen anger. "Now others rule these halls, a race of jackals, hyenas who blaspheme my old comrades by walking in the forms of men."
Rod's ears pricked up. "Uh, how's that again, my lord?" Somebody's stolen this hall from you?"
"Twisted, stunted men!" grated the wraith. "A race of base, ignoble cowards—and the lord of them all stands as councillor to a scion of my line, the Lord Duke Loguire!"
"Durer," Rod breathed.
"Calls he himself by that name" growled the ghost. "Then well is he named, for his heart is hard, and his soul is brittle.
"But mark you, Man," and the ghost turned his cavern eyes on Rod, and the base of Rod's scalp seemed to lift a little away from his skull, for embers burned at the backs of the specter's eyes.
"Mark you well," it intoned, stretching forth a hand, forefinger spearing at Rod, "that the hard and brittle steel will break at one strong blow of iron forged. And so may these evil parodies of humankind be broken by a man that you may call a man!"
The ghost's hand dropped. His shoulders sagged, his head bowed forward. "If," he mourned, "if any live in this dark day who may call themselves men in truth…"
Rod's eyes broke away from the ghost and wandered slowly about the great chamber. There was only blackness, close and thick. He blinked and shook his head, trying to rid himself of the feeling that the darkness was pressing against his eyeballs.
"My Lord Loguire," he began, stopped, and said again, "My Lord Loguire, I may be your lump of iron—I've been called things like that before, anyway. But if I am to break the councillors, I must know as much about them as I can. Therefore tell me: what work do they do within these halls?"
"Witchcraft," growled the ghost, "black witchcraft ! Though the manner of it I scarce could tell…"
"Well, tell me what you can," Rod prodded. "Anything you can spare will be gratefully appreciated."
"Thou speakest like the parish priest a-tithing," the ghost snorted. "Naetheless, I will tell thee what I can. Know, then, Man, that these twisted men have builded themselves a great altar here, of a shining metal, it is not steel, nor silver or gold, nor any metal that I wot of—here in the center of my hall, where once my courtiers danced!"
"Oh." Rod pursed his lips. "Uh, what worship do they make before this altar?"
"What worship?" The ghost's head lifted. "Why, I would warrant, 'tis a sacrifice of themselves; for they step within that evil artifice, and then are gone; then lo!
there they are again, and come forth whole! I can only think they must have given of their life's blood to the dark demon within that shining altar, for they come forth gaunt and shaken, Indeed," he mused, "why otherwise would they be shriveled, little men?"
An uneasy prickle began at the base of Rod's skull and worked its way down his neck to spread out across his shoulders. "I must see this artifice, my lord." He fumbled at his dagger. "Let us have some light!"
"Nay!" The shriek tore at Rod's eardrums. The ghost pulsed, shrinking and growing, its outline wavering, like a candle-flame.
"Would you destroy me, Man, and send me screaming to a darker realm than this?"
Rod massaged the back of his neck, trying to loosen the muscles that had cramped themselves together at the ghost's shriek. "Forgive me, Lord Loguire; I had forgotten, My torch will rest darkened; but you must, then, lead me to this strange altar, that I may see it with my hands."
"Would you worship there, then?" The hollow eyes deepened ominously.
"No, my lord; but I would know this thing, that I may Bring it down in the fullness of time."
The ghost was silent a moment; then it nodded gravely, and glided ahead. "Come."
Rod stumbled forward, hands outstretched, in the ghost's wake, till his palms came up against something hard and cold.
"Beware, Man," rumbled the ghost, "for here lie dark powers."
Hand over hand, Rod felt his way slowly along the metal, glinting softly in the ghost's faint luminescence. Then his right hand fell on nothingness. He groped, found it was a corner, wished the ghost gave off just a little more light, and groped until he had located the outline of a door, or rather a doorway, seven feet high by three wide.
"What lies within, my lord?" he whispered.
"It is a coffin," the ghost moaned; "a metal coffin without a lid, standing on end, and you have found its open side."
Rod wondered what would happen if he stepped into the cubicle; but for some strange reason, he lacked the experimental urge of the true scientist.
He groped across the doorway. A circle pressed into his palm, a circle protruding slightly from the face of the metal block.
Running his fingers over the area to the right of the doorway, he discovered a full array of circles, oblongs, and buttons. The area within their outlines was smoother and less cold than the metal around them— glass, he-decided, or plastic. He had found a control panel.
"MyLordLoguire," he called softly, "come here to me now, I beg of you, for I must have light."
The ghost drifted up beside him; and, by the light of its cold radiance, Rod made out a set of meters, a vernier dial, and a set of color-coded buttons.
The ghost's voice was gentle, almost sympathetic. "Why do you tremble, Man?"
"It's cold," Rod snapped. "Milord Loguire, I'm afraid I have to agree with your opinion of this monstrosity. I don't know what it is, but it ain't pretty."
The ghost rumbled agreement. "And that which is evil to look upon must be doubly so in its action."
"Well, I'm not so sure about that as a basic principle," Rod demurred, "but it might apply in this case. Milord, pay no heed to my mumblings in the next small while; I must, ah, recite an incantation against the malice of this, ah, engine."
He switched to the patois of the galactic deckhand while the ghost scowled in perplexity. "Fess, you there?"
"Yes, Rod."
"Have you been listening in?"
"Certainly, Rod."
"Um. Well, then, uh, this thing's a hunk of metal, rectangular, about, uh, twenty feet long by, say, ten high, and maybe ten wide. Got a little cubicle cut into the front, just about the size of a coffin."
"Appropriate," the robot murmured.
"No kibitzing on the
job, please. It's white metal with a dull finish, and colder than hell, right now, anyway. Set of controls next to the cubicle—a long strip-meter with a scale and a slider."
"How is the scale calibrated, Rod?"
"Looks like logarithms, Fess. Arabic numerals. The zero's about three-quarters of the way from left end. Left side of the scale is marked to ten thousand. The right-hand side goes up to, uh, 2,385. Sound like anything you've heard of?"
There was a pause; then the robot answered, "Filed for analysis. Proceed with the description."
Rod ground his teeth; apparently the huge gizmo was as much of an unknown to Fess as it was to himself.
"There's adial with aknob in the middle of it, just to the right of the strip-meter. Reference point at the top, twelve o'clock, negative number to the left, positive to the right. At least, I assume they're numbers. The thing just to the right of the reference point looks something like a French curve, or maybe a paranoid sine wave. Then there's a shape like an upside-down pear. Then there's a pair of circles with a line lying across them.
The last one is a question mark lying on its side; then there's infinity in the six o'clock position. Left-hand side is the same way, only all the symbols are marked with a negative sign."
The robot hummed for a moment; Rod recognized the tune: "SempreLibera" fromLa Traviata. Fess was enjoying himself.
"Filed for analysis and reference, Rod. Proceed with description."
"You don't recognize 'em either, huh?"
"They are totally without precedence in the discipline of mathematics, Rod. But if there is any logic to their derivation, I will decipher them. Proceed."
"Well, there're seven buttons set flush with the surface, in a row just under the strip-meter, color-coded. Colors are—uh—hey, it's the spectrum!"
"So I feared," the robot murmured. "Use of the spectrum in color-coding would indicate arbitrary assignation of values. There is no anomaly in the color sequence?"
"Well, the paint's iridescent…"
"Not quite what I meant by anomaly. Well, it is filed. Proceed."
"Nothing. That's all."
"All? Only three controls?"
"That's all."
The robot was silent a moment.
"What do you make of it, Fess?"
"Well…"the robot's voice was hestitant. "The control system appears to be designed for the layman, Rod…"
"Why? Because it's so simple?"
"Precisely. Beyond that, there is insufficient data for—"
"Oh, make a guess, damn it! Make a wild guess!"
"Rod, guesswork is not within the capabilities of a cybernetic mechanism, involving as it does an exercise of the intuitive—"
"So extrapolate from available data, already!"
He heard La Traviata, as it might have been sung by a wistful audio generator; thenFess said, "The irregularity of the figure 2,385 would seem to indicate the number of a year, Rod, due to its juxtaposition with the figure ten thousand."
"Uh, how's that again?"
"The figure ten thousand," Fess lectured, "has many probable referents, one of which is the period of recorded human history."
"Now, wait a minute,Fess. Written history doesn't go back beyond 2000 B.C.; even I know that."
"And a miracle it is, Rod, considering your resistance to instruction from your earliest ages."
"All right, all right! I was a bad little boy who didn't do his homework! I'm sorry! I repent! Just get on with the extrapolation, will ya?"
He heard the burring of serially closing relays that always reminded him of a chuckle; then Fess said, "Human history prior to the development of written language may be said to have been recorded in the legends and mythology of the vocal tradition, in works such as The Epic of Gilgamesh. The period included by such works may be estimated as having begun nearly four thousand years B.C. This figure, added to the present date, gives us the figure 9,432, which is a sufficiently close approximation to the figure ten thousand to be included as a referent."
"Hmm." Rod gnawed his upper lip. "Well, when you look at it that way, I suppose 2,385 could be a date. But what does that mean?"
"Why, the inference is obvious, Rod."
"So I'm a microcephalic idiot. Spell it out."
The robot hesitated. "Theaccuracy of the inference has a very low probability rating…"
"I asked for guesswork, didn't I? Come on, out with it."
"The artifact, Rod, would by this theory be a vehicle for chronical travel."
Rod stared at the strip-meter. "You mean it's a time machine?"
The slider was shoved all the way to the right, resting over the figure 2,385.
"Rod, you must bear in mind that the theory's probability index—"
"A time machine!" Rod's brain whirled. "Then the little bastards came out of the future!"
"Rod, I have cautioned you before about your tendency to accord an unproved hypothesis the weight of a conviction."
Rod gave his head a quick shake. "Oh, don't worry, Fess. It's just a guess, probably wrong. I'm keeping that in mind."
He turned away from the control panel, eyes glowing. "A time machine! Whaddaya know!"
He became aware of the faint glow to his left again. Horatio Loguire towered over him, brooding.
"What witchcraft is it, Man?"
Rod frowned, turning back toward the machine. "Strange, my lord, both dark and strange. I have some knowledge of the various, ah, magics; but this is one with which I have no acquaintance."
"What then will you do?"
Rod scowled at the floor, looked up with' a bleak smile. "Sleep. And ponder what I have seen."
"And when will you destroy this plaything of Satan?"
"When I am sure," murmured Rod, turning back to look at the machine again; "sure that this is the plague, and not the cure, of this benighted world."
Loguire's eyebrows drew together as his scowl deepened. He seemed almost to swell, looming taller and wider, dwarfing the man before him. Rod had the insane feeling that an ancient locomotive was roaring down on him.
The voice was distant thunder. "I charge you, then, with the exorcising of this demon altar and the rending of its ragtag priests."
The old boy, Rod decided, had definitely slipped a cog.
The ghost's sword flashed out of its scabbard; involuntarily, Rod fell back into defense stance. Then he straightened, cursing himself; a spectral sword could scarcely hurt him.
The sword floated before him, point downward, a glittering cruciform ghost-light.
"Swear now upon the hilt of this my sword, that you shall not rest until you have purged this land of corruption in the seats of power, that you shall exorcise this dark altar and all its minions, and more: that you shall never till you die desert this Isle of Gramarye in the hour of its peril."
Awe slacked Rod's jaw; he stared wide-eyed at the sudden power and majesty of the ghost. An alien, formless dread crept into his belly. The hairs at the nape of his neck lifted with a chill of nameless apprehension.
He shrank back. "My lord, this scarce is necessary. I love the Isle of Gramarye; I would never—"
"Lay your hand upon this hilt and swear!" The words were terse and stern.
Rod fairly cowered, well aware that the oath would bind him to the planet for life. "My lord, are you asking me to take a loyalty oath? I am insulted that you should doubt my—"
"Swear!" the ghost thundered. "Swear! Swear!"
"Art there, old mole?" Rod muttered under his breath, but it didn't work; he had never felt less funny.
He stared at the glowing hilt and the stern face beyond it, fascinated. Almost against his will, he took one step forward, then another; he watched his hand as it closed itself around the hilt. His palm felt nothing within it, no pressure of solid metal; but the air within his fist was so cold it paralyzed the knuckles.
"Now swear to me and mine!" Horatio rumbled.
"Oh, well, Rod thought, it's only words. Besides, I'm an agnostic, aren't I?
>
"I… swear," he said reluctantly, fairly forcing out the words. Then inspiration glimmered in his brain, and he added easily, "And I further swear that I will not rest until the Queen and all her subjects with one voice shall rule again."
He took his hand from the sword, rather pleased with himself. That additional clause gave him a clear track to the goal of his mission, whether or not Horatio counted democracy among the perils of Gramarye.
The ghost frowned. "Strange," he grumbled, "a most strange oath. Yet from the heart, I cannot doubt, and binding to you."
Of course, Rod admitted to himself, the oath still bound him to Gramarye; but he would bridge that gulf when he came to it.
The sword glided back to its scabbard. The ghost turned away, his voice trailing over his shoulder. "Follow now, and I shall show you to the halls within these halls."
Rod followed until they came to the wall. The ghost pointed a long, bony finger. "Grope until you find a stone that yields to your hand."
Rod reached for the stone the ghost pointed to, and pushed, leaning all his weight against it. The stone groaned and grudgingly gave way, sliding back into the wall. As it fell back, a door ground open with the protest of hinges that were long overdue for an oil break. Cold, dank air fanned Rod's cheek.
"Leave me now," said the ghost, tall and regal beside him, "and go to your duty. Yet remember, Man, your oath; and be assured that if ever you should lay it aside, the first Duke Loguire shall ever stand beside your bed until at last you yield to fear."
"Definitely a comforting thought," Rod mused. He groped his way down the moss-grown steps, humming "You'll Never Walk Alone."
This time, the door to the loft was open, and Tom's deep earthquake snores echoed in the rocky chamber.
Rod paused in the doorway, chewing at his lip. He went back into the hall, pulled a torch from its bracket, and thrust it ahead of him into the room, peering in cautiously, just to be sure there was no one trying to rearouse Tom with a paternity suit in mind.
The wavering light of the torch disclosed the stocky peasant's slumbering form, his cape thrown over his body from the rib cage down. One ursine arm was curled comfortably about the soft, rounded body of a blonde, covered (or uncovered) to the same degree by the cape. Her small, firm breasts were pressed against Tom's side; her head rested on his shoulder, long hair flung in a glorious disarray over her shoulders. One sun-browned arm was flung possessively across the big man's beer-keg chest.
