The place was a jungle of pipes and ducts. Here and there, faint trails of steam arose from joints and junctures. Dripping water puddled on the floor in front of the elevator. Dim yellow light came obliquely from a source to the left. Through the riot of pipes I could see branching corridors leading off at odd angles.
This wasn’t my floor. I wrenched the oversized, dull-white control knob around until vaguely familiar markings showed on the readout screen. The elevator stayed put. I fiddled with it some more, to no avail. The thing would go up again, if at all, in its own good time. I squatted, leaning my back against the metal wall of the car.
Lost again. Loster and loster.
To kill the agonizing wait I examined Susan’s strange weapon. Taking the pieces out of the box, I tried to figure a way to put them together. The largest component of the three looked like a handle-end, and I proceeded on that assumption. The smaller of the remaining two pieces appeared to be a power pack, which fit into the third, a long rod with an adjustable clamp on the end of it. Click, snap, and it was together.
Fine. Now, what the hell was it, and how did it work? Second question first. You held it by the handle and pointed. You crooked your middle finger around this little ring here, and …? Nothing. There were various circular switches on the handle, and I pressed some of them. Nothing. I broke it apart, examined the cylindrical power pack, decided it looked to be in backward, and turned it around. Putting the contraption back together, I pointed it out the door at the floor and squeezed the ring.
A tiny, bright blue discharge sputtered from the end of the rod. That was it. I fiddled with the switches and tried again. The discharge was brighter and more elongated. Further fiddling produced a weaker, shorter discharge.
And that was absolutely it. The floor was in great shape.
This was obviously not a weapon but a tool, probably a pipe cutter or scoring tool of some kind. Apparently our salesman had been extremely pissed off at us. Why hadn’t Tivi known it wasn’t a weapon? Possibly because the thing was alien manufactured and designed for non-Nogon use. It didn’t look like a typical Nogon tool; I had seen plenty of those.
I pressed switches until it didn’t discharge when I pulled on the ring. On safety. I slipped into my back pocket and stood up. I played with the control knob some more. Nothing. I paced inside the car, then tried the control again. No response. I banged. on it in annoyance. Hell, don’t break it, I told myself. I paced in a circle, giving the knob a good twist every circuit.
Some ten minutes later I decided it was never going to go up again, at least not very soon. I picked up Tivi’s cloth sack. Inside was Susan’s new torch and another thing that looked like a sewing kit.
I took the torch, dropped the sack and walked out into the pipe jungle, taking a corridor leading to the right. Just as I got far away enough not to be able to run back in time, the goddamn elevator shut its doors and took off. Maybe it had been waiting for me to leave.
I wandered for an hour, looking for a way up. No stairwell, no ladders, no more elevators. Endless passageways through thickets of pipes, ducts, cables, and conduits. The life of the faln throbbed in the darkness all around me. The Nogon had never really left their caves. Vents of steam hissed at me. Strange markings on the walls gave no clue as to where I should go, how to get out. Lost and more lost. The urge to panic was returning.
I stopped and sat on a metal canister left in the passageway, leaned back and rested my head against a warm pipe. I couldn’t see a way to the other side of this. I would wander endlessly through an eternal humming night—no one would find me, ever.
Hey, you’d better stop that, another voice told me.
Right. But I had been worn down. Every man has his breaking point. I was tired of this. Tired of it. I wanted to sleep, get into another dream. I didn’t like this one. Whirclickbeep … whirclickbeep, something sounded behind me. Whirclickbeep … whirclickbeep. I was lost in a forest of sounds again. Lost in a cave again. The same cycles were repeating incessantly. Over and over, over and over. Run, chase, run, chase… lost, lost, lost…
… The road is never-ending. I run along it into the night; footsteps echoing from the vast nothingness that slowly envelopes me, that slowly closes me within its dark maw. I run into the throat of the night. Eternal night. Even the stars are gone, winked out, choked out by the miasmal nonbeing that clouds the universe ahead. All that remains is the road, my feet slapping against it: Hard metal, it drains the strength from my legs, but I must go on, I must run. That is the only thing left, the only thing I have. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep throwing one leg out, then the other, jogging on, loping on. The things behind will never catch me if only I can keep running. I must. The light behind fades, my own shadow on the road ahead blends with the darkness. I am alone. Running, running … I can’t feel my legs. My body is gone. I am pure movement, forward movement without cause, without purpose, but with an inevitable destination. I am in a dark tunnel, rushing forward, my speed increasing, momentum building. I accelerate into the starless dark trailing slipstreams of blackness. Time winds down and stops while I gain speed. I plunge headlong through eternity, aiming for a nodal point where all lines of force, all threads of being converge. I fall. I gravitate toward the center, toward the knot in the middle of space, the beginning of time. I slide along a web woven of the stuff of night, all lines leading to its heart. I plummet. But as I approach, as I am about to reach my resting point … Sudden light! Blinding explosion of light! The wavefront overtakes me, I dissolve into purest energy, I am swept away by overwhelming force …
I jerked awake and fell off the barrel to the hard, warm floor.
Sitting up, I waited until my heartbeat slowed, then stood. I had dozed off—or maybe I had had a recurrence of my hallucinating. I was bone tired. Sure, I had only fallen asleep. Time to get moving. Sit here and they’ll never find you. Okay.
I walked forward again a few steps and stopped abruptly. Something tall was standing in the shadows farther down the passageway.
I slowly took Susan’s torch from my back pocket. My nonBoojum again, I thought. Will I never be rid of the thing or will it follow me for the rest of my life?
I played the beam of the torch on it and my heart dropped into my stomach.
“Grrreetings, Jake-frrriend. We have found you at last.” A nightmare in gray-green chitin, fully two and a half meters tall, the Reticulan took a step forward. I assumed it was Twrrrll, the one who had always spoken to me. His zoom-lens eyes rotated slightly to get me in better focus. The complex apparatus of his mouth worked in and out, up and down in a rapid and silent sewing-machine motion. His body was thin, his sevendigited hands and feet huge. Jutting out from a long narrow face, the eyes were dead, containing nothing, no emotion, no palpable presence. A thin spike of a genital organ hung from his lower abdomen. He wore no clothing except for a harness of leatherlike material wrapping his torso. He carried a large pouch hung by a strap from his shoulder. Something was in it.
Twrrrll and his hunting companions had followed me all the way from Terran Maze. They had been teamed with Corey Wilkes. Ostensibly, Wilkes had been paying them off in return for safe passage through Reticulan Maze, the only way back to Terran Maze from the Outworlds. But I suspected that the Reticulans had wanted the Roadmap, too. It would open up new hunting grounds to them, provide fresh honorable game. Their home world and Skyway planets had been hunted out long ago. I also suspected that they had just about given up hope of getting the map. Too many hounds after one fox. The only thing that drove them now was the hunt. For members of a Reticulan Snatchgang, bagging the quarry and dispatching it in a horrific ceremony of vivisection was the overriding concern.
I took a deep breath. At least the danger, the thing to be feared, had taken on a physical form. I had been chased and now I was caught. And now I would deal with the situation.
“So you’ve found me,” I said. “What’s your intention?”
“Ourr intention is to give you
an honorrable death, Jake frrriend. It is ourrr obligation. You are the Sacrrred Quarrry, the honorrrable game. You must die well, and we shall see that you do.”
“Thanks, I was really worried about that.”
“You werre?” The question seemed genuine. “Then rrrest assurrred.”
I pointed to the pouch hanging from his shoulders. Something big was in it. “Got your lunch in there?” I asked.
“Lunch?” He looked down. “I see. No, the game was not honorable. I did not eat it.”
He reached into the pouch and drew out Tivi’s severed head, dangling it by its beautiful yellow-white hair.
The shock left me nauseous and stunned. It was murder so casual, so unthinking that anger was almost impossible. Instead a huge void opened up in me, an emotional emptiness, a helplessness. The meaning of events past and present drained away, leaving only a chilling perception of the blind malignity of the universe.
“Why?” was all I had the breath to say.
“It was…” the alien answered, somewhat at a loss to explain, and somewhat, I thought, apologetic. “It was necessary.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said.
“You must trry,” Twrrrll said. “Otherrrwise you would do me no honorrr.”
The Reticulan replaced the head into the bag, then drew forth a knife with a curving black blade and a jade-green hilt. He strode forward.
I turned and ran, stopped short when I saw another Reticulan coming down the passageway. I ducked into the maze of pipes. I crawled, vaulted, and sidled my way through until I broke into another passageway. And met another of Twrrll’s companions. I ran from him, found a doorway opening onto a corridor and turned into it. The corridor went about ten meters and debouched into a chamber clogged with more machinery and pipes.
There was no way out.
I looked around for a weapon. In a pile of debris in front of the far wall I found a narrow plastic pipe. I hefted it. It had mass, at least, and would have to do.
Two Reticulans carrying ceremonial knives were walking calmly down the corridor. Twrrll turned into the doorway behind them.
I picked a spot on the floor that would give me maneuvering room and stood my ground.
“So,” Twrrll said when they all stood in front of me. “We shall begin the consummation of this affairr.”
The alien on the left went into a crouch and advanced, sweeping the black-bladed dagger in wide arcs before him. He tried to circle but I swung the pipe a few times and thwarted him. I shifted to the right, feinted a broad cut and tried a jab to his face. He ducked neatly, counterthrusting at my legs. I jumped and backed off.
He tried circling again, this time ducking my swings and slashing at my arms, and though a Reticulan’s reach is long, he missed. But he successfully circled me. My back was to his companions, but they made no move toward me. Just to be sure, I backed myself against the far wall so that my present opponent was to the right and the rest to the left. The alien glided forward, surprising me by his lightness of foot. He stopped just out of pipe’s reach and danced from side to side, leaning in and out of range, inviting a try for a knockout swing, which he would block, then move inside. I countered that tactic by not giving in to the temptation. Instead, I kept jabbing to keep him at a distance, waiting for his move. It came soon enough.
His left hand flicked out, grabbing the end of the pipe. He rushed in, bringing the knife-wielding right up in a thrust to my groin. I jumped to the left, spun around, bringing my arms over my head and twisting the pipe from his grasp, then rushed around him and delivered a solid thwack to the back of his head as he passed. The alien went crashing into the pile of debris, banging his face against the hard masonry of the wall. He was down for only a second, though, and I halted my follow-up. Pivoting on double-jointed knees, he swung around with knife low, ready to spring to his feet as I attacked. Seeing that I had stopped, he slowly got up.
My heart sank. That blow to the head would have iced any human and nine out of ten aliens. I backed into my original position. Twrrll and the other one were still blocking the door.
The alien rushed again, coming under the pipe as I swung at his knife hand. The knife came within a decimeter of my eyes. I slashed back to the right and smacked his thin right forearm. The knife went skittering across the floor. He ran to get it and I rushed him, hitting him across the back. He fell prostrate. As he tried getting up I stepped on the bony, segmented ridge that ran up his back, jumped over his head, wheeled around and bashed his skull with all my might. I bashed it again. The alien raised his head and started to rise, coming to his knees. I hit him again and again. Cracks opened up along the chitinous shell of his skull, leaking a pale pink fluid. Again I brought the pipe down. A flap of skull detached itself and fell to the side, exposing a bright pink mass of brain tissue. I thumped the pipe down repeatedly, smashing the brain into pulp, pink sprays of mist shooting out as each blow landed.
The alien stayed on his knees. He brought one leg slowly up. I hit him again, and as he raised his head I smashed his face with a vicious crosswise blow. One eye broke off and clattered to the floor like a broken piece of a camera. He fell on his side. I kicked his face and sent him keeling over backwards. He rolled over and I followed up with blows to the spine and back of the head. He got to his knees and began to rise.
I kept hitting him. And hitting him. He fell, tried to rise again. My arms were tired, each blow less forceful than the last. But his head was coming apart, half his brain now exposed and turned to pink mush. Spongy fragments of it clung to the end of the pipe. I swung and swung and swung again.
“Stay down!” I was yelling. “Bastard!” I screamed it with each blow. “Bastard!” The pipe fell again. “Bastard!” Again. “Bastard son of a bitch!”
He rose to his knees again.
“You’re dead, you son of a bitch, dead!” I gathered all my strength into one breath, straddled his body and crashed the pipe down on his skull once again. A fine pink mist shot up, and a thick gush of foamy pink fluid flowed out of the hole in his skull.
But he started to get up again.
I screamed in frustration and backed away to get my breath. Waiting until he got to one knee and brought his head up, I stepped in to deliver a smashing blow to the back of the neck.
Like a snake striking, his huge left hand shot out and caught the end of the pipe in a grip of iron. I tugged but couldn’t get it free. As he came to his feet he grasped it with the other hand. I kept tugging and twisting to no avail. He raised his end of the pipe, slid his right hand down its length to about the midpoint and applied pressure to the farther end. The pipe groaned and began to bend. I lost my grip on it and backed off. He twisted it into a half-pretzel and flung it away, striding toward me. I backpedaled until I came up against a red hot duct. I yelled and jumped forward, bringing my hand around to my back where I had been singed. In doing so, I discovered Susan’s strange nonweapon still in my back pocket. I drew it out. The alien lunged and wrapped one huge hand around my neck, one around my head. He squeezed. I jabbed the tool into his face, poking the lone eye with it. I kicked him, smashing my boot into his genital area. He wasn’t soft there. He wasn’t soft anywhere. He squeezed tighter and tighter. My head felt as if it were about to crack. The smell of turpentine and almonds invaded my nostrils, overpowering me. I choked, struggled for breath, bringing the tool up to poke at the horny shell of his face. He squeezed tighter, the one eye still working and rotating lazily for focus. I drew one last breath before my windpipe closed.
I was passing out. I brought the tool up before my eyes, thumbed what I hoped were the right switches and reached out, catching his narrow bony neck in the C-shaped clamp at the end of the the thing. I jerked on the trigger ring and a brilliant flash blossomed in my eyes.
The Reticulan’s head fell off, thumping to my feet.
But he didn’t let go. Tugging on the alien’s wrist, I reached out and applied the tool to his upper arm. A small, furious blue flame like a welding arc cut th
rough chitin and flesh. I rotated the tool; scoring a circular cut. The arm detached, and I yanked it away from my neck and dropped it. The grip on my head loosened. I brought my forearm up against the alien’s wrist and got free.
I stepped away and looked as the body took three steps backward, tottered for a moment, then toppled over. Even as it lay there, the legs still worked in spastic walking motions and the remaining arm twitched convulsively. Mesmerized, I watched. Presently, the legs stopped working and began to quiver.
I turned my eyes to the two remaining Reticulans, who had been observing impassively the whole while.
Then I collapsed to my knees, breath coming in wracking sobs. A coughing fit overcame me. If Twrrrll and his buddy had wanted to make their move then they would have had me. But they stood there watching.
“Splendid, Jake-frrriend,” Twrrrll said. “Most beautiful. If my brotherrr could speak, he would thank you for a consummately honorrable death. You have ourrr thanks as well.”
“Happy—” I tried to answer, but another bout of coughing interrupted me. When I was finished I gasped, “Happy to oblige.” The second Reticulan stepped forward, then stopped. Twrrrll reached into his pouch and withdrew something, handed it to his brother-in-the-hunt.
The alien shook the thing and it unfurled. It was a diaphanous net made of tightly-woven green thread. He advanced slowly toward me, dagger in left hand, net in the other.
I took a deep breath. “Hell,” I said. I got up.
The second Reticulan advanced cautiously, holding the net out and tracing patterns in the air with the dagger. I grasped the cutting tool with both hands and went forward to meet him. As I did, I felt the tingling flow of adrenaline signaling that my body was on emergency power. My second wind.
The alien lunged, slashing low at my legs as he passed. I jumped out of the way. He circled, made another pass, this time feinting with the dagger and throwing the net. I backed off, waiting for the real attack. He took his time. He began patrolling a wide perimeter, trying to back me into the near corner of the room. I let him do it for a while, then I rushed to attack, broke off and ran to the middle of the floor. Twrrrll wasn’t more than three meters from me. I saw my chance and turned on him.
Red Limit Freeway Page 17
