The ledge they were following circled the mound and cooled. It broadened, becoming a darkling plain on which thick, dark stalks grew, bearing long, thin leaves. Excelsia held her candle close to one, peering at it. "This looks familiar."
"Watch it, gal," Dursten warned. "It might eat you."
"No, it's harmless," she decided. The Alicorn sniffed a plant, then began eating it avidly. Excelsia clapped her hands. "Oh, I know! 'Tis flying carpet reed!"
"Why, so it is," Norton agreed, startled. "I've seen the same thing back on Earth. They strip the long fibers and weave them into magic carpets."
"Yes, that is done here, too," she said.
Squeeze.
Norton glanced at Sning. "A warning?"
Squeeze.
"Danger coming?" When Sning agreed, Norton relayed the warning to the others.
"By land or by space?" Dursten asked. It turned out to be both. "Then we better get us a ship," the spaceman decided. "You say these here weeds can fly?"
"They must first be stripped and cured," Excelsia said. "In their natural state they are too wild."
"We don't have time for that," Dursten said. "I can tame a wild ship; I'm the best durned pilot in this neck o' space. Hold your light here, gal; I'll make us a ship." He began tearing plants out of the ground.
Dursten seemed to know what he was doing. Norton and the Bemme helped him harvest the plants and weave them into a crude and shaggy mat. True to the Damsel's warning, the thing was extremely unruly. It bucked and tossed ferociously, threatening to fall apart. Finally the Bemme formed herself into an endless rope and wrapped herself about the mat, holding it together. Dursten clambered on it, braced his feet in rough-hewn stirrups the Bemme formed, and hauled on vine reins. "Yahoo!"
There was a sound ahead of them—raucous screeching, as of a flock of unruly birds. Sning gave Norton another warning squeeze. "That's it," he told the others. "The danger!"
"Well, we can stand and fight," Dursten said. "But with my blaster dead—"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Sning says fighting's no good," Norton reported. "We'd better try to avoid this threat." He asked Sning, "Can we outrun it, then?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
He glanced at the bucking carpet, not thrilled with that prospect. "Outfly it?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
What did that mean? Neither yes nor no! But the birds were coming too fast; there was no time for twenty questions. "We'd better try to outfly it!"
"Then get aboard, Nort!" Dursten cried.
Norton grabbed onto the back half of the bucking bundle of plants. Some carpet! He hauled himself up behind the spaceman and hung on gracelessly. Excelsia mounted the Alicorn. In a moment all of them were airborne except the ick. There simply was no way to carry that creature this time. "Hide, Hick!" Norton called to it, and Hick rolled away.
The menace arrived. Norton saw them in the unreliable light of Excelsia's candle—fantastic crossbreeds with the lower bodies of human beings and the upper torsos and heads of gross birds. "Pieharps?" Excelsia cried, horrified.
Norton figured it out. Human tops and bird bottoms were harpies; bird tops and human bottoms were pieharps. They looked and sounded vicious.
The pieharps were running along the ground, using their powerful legs. But when they saw their prey escaping, they spread their dark wings and launched into the air. They were big, hairy, and fast—faster in the air than either carpet or Alicorn. Sning's warning had been well advised. But Sning had also hinted that they might somehow outfly the menace—or at least, Sning had not denied the possibility.
"I'm ready to hotshot it!" Dursten cried. "Hang on, Nort, while I buzz them there birds!"
Norton hung on. There was nothing else he could do. He had never been aboard an uncured carpet before and hoped never to repeat the experience. Under the spaceman's guidance, the carpet bucked, then slued around to charge the pieharps.
The bird-men squawked and scattered, caught by surprise. "Get along, li'l dogies!" Dursten called, pursuing them. The weed-steed swooped and reared, kicking up its leaves, bashing into the posteriors of the fleeing pieharps.
Norton was amazed. The pieharps obviously had the more formidable force, but the antics of the carpet kept them disorganized. Thus, without either outflying or outfighting the bird-men, the spaceman was nullifying them.
Norton looked up and saw Excelsia on the Alicorn, hovering above. There was blood on the animal's horn and hooves; evidently he had fought off some pieharps. But now the pieharps had forgotten about him, because of the distraction of the men on the carpet. Sning's ambiguous response was making sense.
"Hang on, pardner!" Dursten cried. What did he think Norton had been doing? Now the rug made a vertical loop. The surroundings whirled around dizzily, a universe in chaos, a dream-world.
A dream-world...
This whole adventure lacked credibility as an objective situation. Maybe convergent evolution was possible, as Satan had described it—but if the Glob and the Cloud really were flowing backward in time, what were the chances of their people matching Earth's so closely, even in slang, right at this moment? This planet of i should be either more primitive or more advanced than Earth, not just the same. Who, in his right mind, would believe in this coincidence? This frame couldn't be opposite in time flow to Earth!
But a dream world, now—made up for Norton's benefit within his own mind—that could be believed. That would require no galactic travel, no contraterrene frame, no reverse time flow or phenomenal coincidences. A dream world was so obvious—how could he have overlooked it? Satan, the Father of Lies—naturally he would use an easy lie in preference to a difficult truth to gain his nefarious designs.
But if this was a dream—why couldn't Norton simply break out of it? He had tried to will himself home at the outset and had failed. Was he drugged, so that he was locked in until the drug wore off? No, Satan could not have done that to another Incarnation. There had to be a trick of some sort, something Norton did not yet understand. This was another type of puzzle, and to solve it he had to find the key to its solution.
Sning, do you know?
Squeeze, squeeze.
In the end, the mischief of Satan had to be a greater thing than a little magic snake could compass. Sning was like a pocket calculator, very useful for spot answers, but not for the formulation of questions about the nature of ultimate reality.
Squeeze.
"Which way from here, pardner?" Dursten cried.
Norton's question, precisely! But until he found his private personal key to escape, he would have to play the game he was locked into. He gave instructions, and the galloping rug charged and disrupted another wave of pieharps. Then it lifted and swung onto course. The pieharps were now so disorganized they didn't even follow right away; possibly they thought the rug was about to loop back on them.
Too disorganized to follow—again, an analogy of his own condition. Satan was keeping him so occupied with challenges of the moment that he couldn't figure out the grand design. Obviously, Satan's finger was in this adventure, as it had been throughout; since fiction was the highest form of lie, naturally the Father of Lies was skilled at it. Challenge, adventure, humor—Norton had to admit it was a good presentation.
They zoomed on toward the next station. The wind caught up Excelsia's skirt, so that her legs flashed, still draped sidesaddle. Sex appeal, Norton added mentally to his list of fictive qualities. Everything was here—and, frustrating as it was, Norton had to admit to himself that he liked it. This sort of thing surely was a reward for Satan's minions. But Norton knew he could not afford to allow himself to remain locked in it.
The pieharps re-formed. They pounded after carpet and Alicorn, their hairy bare legs dangling. They were gaining; soon the fight would resume.
"Them birdbrains won't leave off," Dursten muttered, glancing back. "I shore wish I had a recharge on my blaster! Didn't you say there are caves in between? With stag-tites and stuff?"
"Stalactites," Norton agreed. "You can distinguish them from stalagmites mnemonically by thinking of the C in stalactite as standing for ceiling, and the G in Stalagmite as standing for ground. So the stalactite hangs from the—"
"Just tell me where they are!" the spaceman snapped. "Afore them barefoots catch us!"
He had a point. "But it's not safe to go near them in the air in this dark. Those things are solid onyx, like giant icicles—"
"It's them or the featherfaces!" Dursten cried.
Indeed, the bird-men were closing in rapidly, screaming belligerently. They were flapping in at the carpet, pecking at it. Norton tried to kick them away, but it was futile; he was too busy just hanging on.
Then the party approached the cave region. All of this was inside the castle, of course, between the walls confining the regular functions. There seemed to be an extraordinary amount of waste space here.
The Alicorn flew beside the cave entrance, hovering while Excelsia's candlelight played across it. The stalactites were there. Icicles? No, they were more like jagged teeth! The polished onyx gleamed reflectively, wet like saliva in the mouth of that orifice. Inside the cave, behind the first row, Norton could see the points of endless backup rows of them. If the C stood for ceiling, surely the T stood for teeth! Norton didn't want to fly through that!
"Yore squeeze dingus," the spaceman said as he absentmindedly clubbed a pieharp on the beak with the butt of his blaster. "Can it call out stag-mites?"
"I suppose so," Norton said, giving up on the lesson in pronunciation. "But what—?"
"Call 'em out, 'cause we're going through!" And the carpet charged the cave.
"But it takes time to get that sort of information! Sning can only—"
"Just tell me when one's dead ahead and close!"
Squeeze. "Now!" Norton cried, knowing in his heart that they would crash into a tooth and fall helplessly to the rising stalagmites below.
The carpet swerved. In the faintly flickering and distant illumination of Excelsia's candle, he saw the stalactite pass just to their left. Two pieharps, too hot in pursuit, crashed into it. They screamed and dropped out of sight, for that had been a high-speed collision. In seconds their descending screams cut off abruptly. They had struck the spires below. But many more still pursued.
Squeeze. "Another!" Norton cried. He was terrified by this suicidal flight.
The carpet swerved left—and three more pieharps were caught by the column on the right. They weren't looking where they were going; of course, the darkness made it easy to err.
"Ain't this fun?" Dursten demanded exuberantly. "I ain't flown like this since I threaded the head of a comet on a dare!" He sobered momentarily. "'Course, I did lose my ship on that one..."
That was indeed the problem on this sort of thing! But Dursten certainly was an able pilot. He swished the carpet past half a dozen columns, taking out most of the pieharps. In the dark, the bird-men were unable to maneuver as effectively as the Sning-guided carpet.
Abruptly they were at the next stage of the trip—the deep caves. These were much smaller than the prior ones, with no stalactites or stalagmites, and had many rounded tunnels that wound through the rock. It was necessary to traverse these to reach the second chamber.
The Alicorn came to land on the ledge. He had taken an easier route through the caves—the space between the points of the stalactites and stalagmites. But had Dursten done that, the pieharps would have pursued them unscathed. Norton had to admit that the spaceman had known what he was doing; he was indeed a hotshot pilot.
There was a new problem, however. The caves were large enough for all of them to walk, including the Alicorn, but not to fly. There were no impassable crevices or heated stones. But these caves were occupied. As soon as the group entered them, Excelsia's candle showed the antennae of giant insects.
They were monstrous termites, predators of the castle interstices. The ones in front were warriors, with grotesque armor and huge pincers. They scuffled along the tunnels, familiar with the labyrinth, for it was the termites that had carved out these warrens. In time they would hollow out so much of the castle that it would collapse. But that was in the future, while the problem of passage was now. How was it possible to get by?
Squeeze.
"Sning says there is a way," Norton reported. "Does that there thing know my blaster's dead?"
Squeeze. "Sning knows. Can we fight through?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Sneak through?" Dursten put in.
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Bluff through?" Excelsia asked.
Squeeze, squeeze.
"You shore that thing's got all its batteries?"
"If Sning says there's a way, there's a way."
"Well, he better tell us real soon, 'cause them termites are mighty hungry!"
Indeed, the termite warriors were nudging forward in the process of deciding that the intruders were edible. The Bemme was holding them back temporarily by forming pincers even larger than theirs, but Norton knew this would not fool them very long. Once the termites reached a firm conclusion, this would be no safe place!
"Is there something we can do to make it safe?" Norton asked, trying to cudgel his mind for the right questions.
Squeeze.
Aha! "As a group?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Damn! "One of us?"
Squeeze.
"To make it safe for all of us?"
Squeeze.
A warrior termite marched up more aggressively. The Bemme was balking the ones on the left, but this one was on the right. The Alicorn moved to intercept it, but it was obvious that, when the overt hostilities commenced, the termites would overwhelm them by sheer numbers. "Get a wiggle on, Nort!" Dursten murmured.
"Which one of us?" Norton asked Sning. "Me?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Dursten?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Excelsia?"
Squeeze.
The Damsel's head turned quickly. "Oh, I can not fight such monsters, sirrah!" she protested, her candle wavering. "I am but a helpless feminine creature!"
Exactly. What was Sning thinking of? "Some magic she can do? Maybe a conjuration?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
This was baffling. "The way she looks?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
A third termite warrior was advancing between the ones blocked by the Bemme and the Alicorn, coming disconcertingly close. Dursten stood before it, pointing his blaster. This did make the insect pause—but for how long?
"Something about her?" Norton asked.
Squeeze.
"Something specific?"
Squeeze.
"Uh, can you show me? Hot-cold?"
Squeeze.
Norton walked quickly to Excelsia, who stood with her delicate knuckles in her mouth, nervously watching the closest termite. He pointed his finger at her pert nose. Sning did not comment. He pointed to her heaving bosom. No reaction. Then he tried her purse—and that was it.
In a moment they were sorting through the items in her purse. She had the usual assortment of inconsequentials. The object turned out to be a little bottle of perfume.
"Perfume?" Norton asked blankly.
Squeeze, Sning replied patiently.
"You mean it destroys monsters, like holy water?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Repels termites?"
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Well, then, what good is it?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Excelsia's lips quirked. "It be good for wearing, belike." She opened the bottle and dabbed some behind her ears.
The nearest termite paused. It seemed confused.
Dursten snorted. "That there thing's sniffing the bottle!"
"The smell!" Norton cried. "It pacifies termites?"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
"Well, it does something to them! Should we all put it on?"
Squeeze.
So they all dab
bed perfume on themselves and on the Alicorn, and the termites did not attack. They walked on through the warrens, and the termites ignored them.
"I get it!" Dursten said. "The smell o' the hive! We've got the dang smell o' the hive!"
It seemed that Excelsia's perfume was precisely that flavor, or had it as a component. The termites were odor oriented, and now regarded the intruders as other termites.
They arrived at the second chamber. This one was easy to enter; it had glass facing and resembled an executive office, the kind that allowed the boss to keep an eye on every employee without stirring from his desk.
Of course, the employees could also see in. Excelsia's candle showed the interior clearly. There were four alcoves—but all were empty.
"An empty room?" Norton asked, dismayed.
"The jokers musta skedaddled when they heard us coming," Dursten said disgustedly.
"But the only way out is through the termite warren," Norton said. "We should have seen them."
"Unless this is another magic levitator," Excelsia suggested.
Levitator? Oh—elevator. "If so, maybe we can use it to follow them."
They all entered and looked around. There seemed to be no control buttons, and the floor of the glassed-in chamber was that of termite-hewn rock. It did not seem to be an elevator.
Dursten poked around the first alcove. "Shore coulda been somebody standing here once," he said. "See, his footprints are right here." He stepped into the alcove, planting his space boots where indicated.
Abruptly, he stiffened. His breathing stopped, and his face was frozen in an expression of mild surprise. He had become a statue.
"It's a trap!" Norton exclaimed, horrified.
Squeeze, squeeze.
"Not a trap? But look at him! He's petrified!"
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
"Sning says there's something about this," Norton said to Excelsia, who was, of course, biting her knuckles in mute helplessness.
He went to stand before the petrified spaceman. "Can you hear me, Dursten?"
Dursten came alive again. "I ain't exactly him any more," he said. "You want my advice, sport?"
Norton hesitated. Had the spaceman become the exhibit? If so, care was essential. "I'm not sure. How competent is your advice?"
Incarnations of Immortality Page 64
