Kickaha wondered why the amphibians were in such a hurry to leave the lake. Then he saw several hundred or so immense animals, crocodilian in shape, thrashing through the water. They were scooping up the fleeting prey.
He yelled at Anana and pointed at the monsters. She shouted back that they should slip out some air from the wings. They didn't want to land anywhere near those beasts.
With a great effort, he pulled on the shrouds. He fell ten seconds later into the water near the shore with Anana two seconds behind him. He had cut the shrouds just in time to slip out of the harness. The water closed over him, he sank, then his feet touched bottom, and he tried to push upwards with them.
They failed to obey him.
His head broke surface as he propelled himself with his fatigue-soaked arms. Anana was already swimming towards the shore, which was about thirty feet away. Her legs were not moving.
They dragged themselves onto the grass like merpeople, their legs trailing. After that was a long period of intense pain as the circulation slowly returned. When they were able, they rose and tottered towards the high ground. Long four-legged and finned creatures, their bodies covered with slime, passed them. Some snapped at them but did not try to bite. The heavier gravity, after their many months of lightness on the moon, pressed upon them. But they had to keep going. The hippopotamus-sized crocodiles were on land now.
They didn't think they could make it over the shoulder of a mountain. But they did, and then they lay down. After they'd quit panting, they closed their eyes and slept. It was too much of an effort to be concerned about crocodiles, lions, dogs, or anything that might be interested in eating them. For all they cared, the moon could fall on them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kickaha and Anana ran at a pace that they could maintain for miles and yet not be worn out. They were as naked as the day they came into the world except for the belts holding their knives and the Horn and the device strapped to her wrist. They were sweating and breathing heavily, but they knew that this time they could catch the palace-if nothing interfered.
Another person was also in pursuit of the colossus. He was riding a moosoid. Though he was a half a mile away, his tallness and red-bronze hair identified him. He had to be Red Orc.
Kickaha used some of his valuable breath. "I don't know how he got here, and I don't know what he expects to do when he catches up with the palace. He doesn't know the codewords."
"No," Anana gasped. "But maybe that man we saw will open a door for him."
So far, Orc had not looked back. This was fortunate, because, ten minutes later, a window. French door rather, swung open for him. He grabbed its sill and was helped within by two arms. The moosoid immediately stopped galloping and headed for a grove of moving plants. The door shut.
Kickaha hoped that the unknown tenant would be as helpful to them. But if Orc saw them, he'd be sure to interfere with any efforts to help.
Slowly they neared the towering building. Their bare feet pounded on the grass. Their breaths hissed in and out. Sweat stung their eyes. Their legs were gradually losing their response to their wills. They felt as if they were full of poisons which were killing the muscles. Which, in fact, they were.
To make the situation worse, the palace was heading for a mountain a mile or two away. If it began skimming up its slope, it would proceed at an undiminished speed. But the two chasing it would have to climb.
Finally, the bottom right-hand corner was within reach. They slowed down sobbing. They could keep up a kilometer an hour, a walking pace, as long as they were on a flatland. But when the structure started up the mountain, they would have to draw on reserves they didn't have.
There was a tall window at the very corner, its glass or plastic curving to include both sides. However, it was set flush to the building itself. No handholds to draw themselves up.
They forced themselves to break from a walk to a trot. The windows they passed showed a lighted corridor. The walls were of various glowing colors. Many paintings hung on them, and at intervals statues painted flesh colors stood by the doors leading to other rooms within. Then they came to several windows which were part of a large room. Furniture was arranged within it, and a huge fireplace in which a fire burned was at the extreme end.
A robot, about four feet high, dome-shaped, wheeled, was removing dust from a large table. A multi-elbowed metal arm extended a fat disc which moved over the surface of the table. Another arm moved what seemed to be a vacuum cleaner attachment over the rug behind it.
Kickaha increased his pace. Anana kept up with him. He wanted to get to the front before the palace began the ascent. The front would be only a foot from the slope, but, since the building would maintain a horizontal attitude, the rest would be too far from the ground for them to reach it.
Just as the forepart reached the bottom of the mountain, the two attained their objective. But now they had to climb.
None of the windows they had passed had revealed any living being within.
They ran around the corner, which was just like the rear one. And here they saw their first hope for getting a hold. Halfway along the front was a large balcony. No doubt Urthona had installed it so that he could step out into the fresh air and enjoy the view. But it would not be a means of access. Not unless the stranger within the palace had carelessly left it unlocked. That wasn't likely, but at least they could stop running.
Almost, they didn't make it. The upward movement of the building, combined with their running in front of it, resulted in an angled travel up the slope. But they kept up with it, though once Kickaha stumbled. He grabbed the edge of the bottom, clung, was dragged, then released his hold, rolled furiously, got ahead, and was seized by the wrist by Anana and yanked forward and upward. She fell backward, but somehow they got up and resumed their race without allowing the palace to pass over them.
Then they had grabbed the edge of the balcony and swung themselves up and over it. For a long time they lay on the cool metallic floor and gasped as if each breath of air was the last in the world. When they were breathing normally, they sat up and looked around. Two French doors gave entrance to an enormous room, though not for them. Kickaha pushed in on the knobless doors without success. There didn't seem to be any handles on the inside. Doubtless, they opened to a pushbutton or a codeword.
Hoping that there were no sensors to give alarm, Kickaha banged hard with the butt of his knife on the transparent material. The stuff did not crack or shatter. He hadn't expected it to.
"Well, at least we're riding," he said. He looked up at the balcony above theirs. It was at least twenty feet higher, thus, out of reach.
"We're stuck. How ironic. We finally make it, and all we can do is starve to death just outside the door."
They were exhausted and suffering from intense thirst. But they could not just leave the long-desired place. Yet, what else could they do?
He looked up again, this time at dark clouds forming.
"It should be raining soon. We can drink, anyway. What do you say we rest here tonight? Morning may bring an idea."
Anana agreed that that was the best thing to do. Two hours later, the downpour began, continuing uninterruptedly for several hours. Their thirst was quenched, but they felt like near-drowned puppies by the time it was over. They were cold, shivering, wet. By nightfall they'd dried off, however and they slept wrapped in each other's arms.
By noon the next day their bellies were growling like starving lions in a cage outside which was a pile of steaks. Kickaha said, "We'll have to go hunting, Anana, before we get too weak. We can always run this down again, though I hate to think of it. If we could make a rope with a grapnel, we might be able to get up to that balcony above us. Perhaps the door there isn't locked. Why should it be?"
"It will be locked because Urthona wouldn't take any chances," she said. "Anyway, by the time we could make a rope, the palace would be far ahead of us. We might even lose track of it."
"You're right," he said. He turned t
o the door and beat on it with his fists. Inside was a huge room with a large fountain in its center. A marble triton blew water from the horn at its lips.
He stiffened, and said, "Oh, oh! Don't move, Anana! Here comes someone!"
Anana froze. She was standing to one side, out of view of anyone in the room.
"It's Red Orc! He's seen me! It's too late for me to duck! Get over the side of the balcony! There're ornamentations you can hang onto! I don't know what he's going to do to me, but if he comes out here, you might be able to catch him unaware. I'll have to be the sacrificial goat!"
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her slide over the railing and disappear. He stayed where he was, looking steadily at her uncle. Orc was dressed in a splendid outfit of some sparkling material, the calf-length pants very tight, the boots scarlet and with upturned toes, the jacket double-breasted and with flaring sleeves, the shirt ruffled and encrusted with jewels on the broad wing-tipped collar.
He was smiling, and he held a wicked-looking beamer in one hand.
He stopped for a moment just inside the doors. He moved to each side to get a full view of the balcony. His hand moved to the wall, apparently pressing a button. The doors slid straight upward into the wall.
He held the weapon steady, aiming at Kickaha's chest.
"Where's Anana?"
"She's dead," Kickaha said.
Orc smiled and pulled the trigger. Kickaha was knocked back across the balcony, driven hard into the railing. He lay half-sitting, more than half-stunned. Vaguely, he was aware of Orc stepping out onto the balcony and looking over the railing. The red-haired man leaned over it and said, "Come on up, Anana. I'm on to your game. But throw your knife away."
A moment later she came slowly over the railing. Orc backed up into the doorway, the beamer directed at her. She looked at Kickaha and said, "Is he dead?"
"No, the beamer's set for low-grade stun. I saw you two last night after the alarm went off. Your leblabbiy stud was foolish enough to hammer on the door. The sensors are very sensitive."
Anana said, "So you just watched us. You wanted to know what we'd try?"
Orc smiled again. "Yes, I knew you could do nothing. But I enjoyed watching you trying to figure out something."
He looked at the Horn strapped around her shoulder.
"I've finally got it. I can get out of here now."
He pressed the trigger, and Anana fell back against the railing. Kickaha's senses were by then almost full recovered, though he felt weak. But if Orc got within reach of his hands...
The Lord wasn't going to do that. He stepped back, said something, and two robots came through the doorway. At first glance they looked like living human beings. But the dead eyes and the movements, not as graceful as beings of animal origin, showed that metal or plastic lay beneath the seeming skin. One removed Kickaha's knife and threw it over the balcony railing. The other unstrapped the multiuse device from Anana's wrist. Both got hold of the ankles of the two and dragged them inside. To one side stood a large hemisphere of thick criss-crossed wires on a platform with six wheels. The robot picked up Anana and shoved her through a small doorway in the cage. The second did the same to Kickaha. The door was shut, and the two were captives inside what looked like a huge mousetrap.
Orc bent down and reached under the cage. When he straightened up, he said, "I've just turned on the voltage. Don't touch the wires. You won't be killed, but you'll be knocked out."
He told the humanoid robots and the cage to follow him. Carrying the Horn which he had removed from Anana's shoulder, he strode through the room toward a high-ceilinged wide corridor.
Kickaha crawled to Anana. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be in a minute," she said. "I don't have much strength just now. And I got a headache."
"Me, too," he said. "Well, at least we're inside."
"Never say die, eh? Sometimes your optimism... well, never mind. What do you suppose happened to the man who let Orc in?"
"If he's still alive, he's regretting his kind deed. He can't be a Lord. If he was, he'd not have let himself be taken."
Kickaha called out to Orc, asking him who the stranger was. Orc didn't reply. He stopped at the end of the corridor, which branched off into two others. He said something in a low voice to the wall, a codeword, and a section of wall moved back a little and then slid inside a hollow. Revealed was a room about twenty feet by twenty feet, an elevator.
Orc pressed a button on a panel. The elevator shot swiftly upward. When it stopped, the lighted symbol showed that it was on the fortieth floor. Orc pressed two more buttons and took hold of a small lever. The elevator moved out into a very wide corridor and glided down it. Orc turned the lever, the elevator swiveled around a corner and went down another corridor for about two hundred feet. It stopped, its open front against a door.
Orc removed a little black book from a pocket, opened it, consulted a page, said something that sounded like gibberish, and the door opened. He replaced the book and stood to one side as the cage rolled into a large room. It stopped in the exact center.
Orc spoke some more gibberish. Mechanisms mounted on the walls at a height of ten feet from the floor extended metal arms. At the end of each was a beamer. There were two on each wall, and all pointed at the cage. Above the weapons were small round screens. Undoubtedly, video eyes.
Orc said, "I've heard you boast that there isn't a prison or a trap that can hold you, Kickaha. I don't think you'll ever make that boast again."
"Do you mind telling us what you intend to do with us?" Anana said in a bored voice.
"You're going to starve," he said. "You won't die of thirst since you'll be given enough water to keep you going. At the end of a certain time-which I won't tell you-whether you're still alive or not, the beamers will blow you apart.
"Even if, inconceivably, you could get out of the cage and dodge the beamers, you can't get out of here. There's only one exit, the door you came through. You can't open that unless you know the codeword."
Anana opened her mouth, her expression making it obvious that she was going to appeal. It closed; her expression faded. No matter how desperate the situation, she was not going to humiliate herself if it would be for nothing. But she'd had a moment of weakness.
Kickaha said, "At least you could satisfy our curiosity. Who was the man who let you in? What happened to him?"
Orc grimaced. "He got away from me. I got hold of a beamer and was going to make him my prisoner. But he dived through a trapdoor I hadn't known existed. I suppose by now he's gated to another world. At least, the sensors don't indicate his presence."
Kickaha grinned, and said, "Thank you. But who was he?"
"He claimed to be an Earthman. He spoke English, but it was a quaint sort. It sounded to me like eighteenth-century English. He never told me his name. He began to ramble on and on, told me he'd been trapped here for some time when he gated from Vala's world to get away from her. It had taken him some time to find out how to activate a gate to another universe without being killed. He was just about to do so when he saw me galloping up. He decided to let me in because I didn't look like a native of this world.
"I think he was half-crazy."
"He must have been completely insane to trust you, a Lord," Anana said. "Did he say anything about having seen Kickaha, McKay, and myself. He passed over us when we were on the moon."
Orc's eyebrows rose. "You were on the moon? And you survived its fall? No, he said nothing about you. That doesn't mean he wasn't interested or wouldn't have gotten around eventually to telling me about you."
He paused, smiled, and said, "Oh, I almost forgot! If you get hungry enough, one of you can eat the other."
Kickaha and Anana could not hide their shock. Orc broke into laughter then. When he stopped bellowing, he removed a knife from the sheath at his belt. It was about six inches long and looked as if it were made of gold. He shoved it through the wires, where it lay at Anana's feet.
"You'll need a cutting utensil,
of course, to carve steaks and chops and so forth. That'll do the job, but don't think for one moment you can use it to short out the wires. It's nonconductive."
Kickaha said, fiercely, "If it wasn't for Anana I'd think all you Lords were totally unreformable, fit only to be killed on sight. But there's one thing I'm sure about. You haven't a spark of decency in you. You're absolutely unhuman."
"If you mean I in no way have the nature of a leblabbiy you're right."
Anana picked up the knife and fingered the side, which felt grainy, though its surface was steel-smooth.
"We don't have to starve to death," she said. "We can always kill ourselves first."
Orc shrugged. "That's up to you."
He said something to the humanoid robots, and they followed him through the doorway into the elevator. He turned and waved farewell as the door slid out from the wall recesses.
"Maybe that Englishman is still here," Kickaha said. "He might get us free. Meanwhile, give me the knife."
Anana had anticipated him, however. She was sawing away at a wire where it disappeared into the floor. After working away for ten minutes, she put the blade down.
"Not a scratch. The wire metal is much harder than the knife's."
"Naturally. But we had to try. Well, there's no use putting it off until we're too weak even to slice flesh. Which one of us shall it be?"
Shocked, she turned to look at him. He was grinning.
"Oh, you! Must you joke about even this?"
She saw a section of the cage floor beyond him move upward. He turned at her exclamation. A cube was protruding several inches. The top was rising on one side, though no hinges or bolts were in evidence. Within it was a pool of water.
They drank quickly, since they didn't know how long the cube would remain. Two minutes later, the top closed, and the box sank back flush with the floor.
It reappeared, filled with water, about every three hours. No cup was provided, so they had to get down on their hands and knees and suck it up with their mouths, like animals. Every four hours, the box came up empty. Evidently, they were to excrete in it then. When the box appeared the next time, it was evident that it had not been completely cleaned out.
The Lavalite World Page 20
