The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  “You are currently outnumbered eight to three,” the Librarian announced calmly. “Timash, if you were to strike directly to your left, now—yes, excellent. You are currently outnumbered seven to three.”

  Nevertheless, it was as pretty a scrum as I have ever experienced. Our enemies might be few, but they appeared to have as many limbs as an octopus; I might grapple with one and hold both of his arms, only to feel another wrap around my waist. Their skin was smooth and slick, and that they possessed claws was borne to me repeatedly, but they never employed their teeth, and as Timash had said, they seemed to be more interested in the capture than the kill—but as I was no more inclined to let them drag me off to their den than I was to be eaten on the spot, I had no such reservations.

  I had lost my stave and had only my hands and feet. I felt one jump on my back, and I flung myself backward until I hit a wall. Its grip loosened and I did it again, all the while wrestling and kicking the one in front of me. When the one on my back fell away, I spun and slammed the other into the same wall, following up with a hard shoulder. I felt bones crack beneath my opponent’s skin and he fell to the floor.

  As he did, he kicked out with one leg, by some chance hitting me on the side of the knee. I lost my balance and fell, my head slamming into the wall. I knew nothing more.

  I awoke to find the Librarian standing over me, his expression uncharacteristically worried.

  “Before you try to move,” he said, “you are suffering from a concussion. You need to return to The Dark Lady for medical intervention at once.”

  My head was a pounding block of pain, I felt like throwing up, and when I gingerly—not gingerly enough!—touched the side of my skull, my fingertips came away wet. If anything, it felt as if the Librarian had under-diagnosed my condition. Getting my voice under control took effort.

  “Timash and Sanja?” I knew the answer; had they been here, they would have helped me.

  “Both taken away, unconscious. You have been unconscious yourself for four minutes.”

  “Four minutes? I can still find them,” I insisted, and I raised myself up with every intention of doing so. The spinning inside my head had other ideas.

  “Your attackers believed you were dead, Charles. Even if you could track them, you are in no shape to fight.”

  I felt my resolve leak away. The Librarian never called me by my proper name. Matters must be bleak indeed.

  I might have lain there for another four minutes, or another hour; I had no way of telling time, nor even of differentiating waking from unconsciousness. At last I was able to gain my feet, although if it had not been for the support of the very wall that had struck me down, I could not have stayed upright.

  The Librarian waited patiently. At last he said, “I can lead you back along the path to the outer door, and from there to the ship.”

  And so he did. I do not believe that I was awake for the entire journey, but somehow I kept my feet moving. It was a complete surprise to look up and see the lights of The Dark Lady above my head. I was unable even to call for help. Around the far side, I found a gravity pallet. Collapsing gratefully onto it, I pushed the control that would raise it onto the deck level.

  “Help…” I croaked. I dragged myself off of the pallet.

  No one answered. No one ran to my aid.

  Sudden dread gave me the strength to look up and around.

  I saw no one. The Dark Lady was deserted.

  Chapter 20

  On the Hunt

  The first time I was aboard The Dark Lady, I had reason to become familiar with the wonderful modern medicine known as a plasm bandage, although thankfully not from personal need. This gelatinous substance was more akin to a Jell-o mold than a Band-aid, and I had my suspicions that it was alive. But I had seen it bring a man back from a near-death injury, and I had no doubt that I needed one now. Fortunately, the first time we had re-boarded Maire had not relied on my twenty-year-old memories and insisted I re-familiarize myself with all of the Lady’s emergency equipment and supplies, so that even in my weakness and dizziness, I could find the bandages. As soon as one was in place, it sealed itself to my skin. I immediately passed out on the floor.

  According to the Librarian, I woke up twelve hours later. Apart from being cramped and my arm having fallen asleep where I laid on it, I felt better than I had in weeks. Once I had shaken myself awake, I set off on an exhaustive search of the ship.

  I found no one, but nor did I find any evidence of violence. There was no blood, no scorch marks from beam weapons, no overturned furniture. It was as though I were walking the decks of the Mary Celeste.

  The crew had not left of its own volition; so much was obvious. Maire would never have deserted the ship, even to search for me; she would have left a skeleton crew behind—and here there was not even a note? It was inconceivable. And yet, there was no evidence of forced evacuation, either. The Librarian confirmed that, to his knowledge, no weapon existed which could so completely wipe any trace of human beings and bring no harm to the ship. This was comforting to a point, but since he and I had been away for almost two decades, and the black ship which had forced us to land here was outside of our experience, the development of such a weapon was not out of the question. There was a perceptible chance that everyone from The Dark Lady was dead, except for Timash, Sanja, and me.

  Well, me, at least.

  I stood at the edge of the ship’s deck and stared toward the opening of the dome, where the sunlight slanted in until it was cut off by the same force that absorbed light and sound and telepathic waves. (Oddly, it was not cold in the dome.) For a moment a wave of loneliness and grief washed over me, threatening to pull me under. What could I do, alone and lost in the darkness? I could not pilot the ship—perhaps the Librarian could—not that I had anywhere to go in any event. I pondered waiting here in hopes that whatever fate had befallen the crew might return for me—and insanely, I wondered what would happen to the Librarian if it did.

  I laughed, a short, weak bleat soon lost. Here I was, a thousand miles from another human being, a million years from everything I had ever known… Even in the trenches of France there was the company of my fellow soldiers, cold and wet and miserably pessimistic we might have been, but we were cold and miserable together. At least here the sun was shining through the opening on the sandy earth…

  …where long irregular scuffles cast shadows in the morning light.

  I nearly jumped over the side of the ship in my excitement. Instead I ran for a computer slate, a highly-technical mystery that Maire had once shown me could be used like a telescope to bring distant objects closer—and to photograph, analyze, and likely utilize a thousand other processes, but at this moment the only property I could manipulate was exactly the one I needed. I trained it on the opening, zoomed in, and yes! The thin sand had been churned and a few spots showed definite footprints. Someone had been through that doorway, and I had no need to question who.

  Within fifteen minutes I was loaded with as much gear and weaponry as I could easily carry and hot on the trail of my friends.

  At first I spent nearly as much time scanning the sky as the ground, for I had no idea if the black ship was still lurking just past the nearest dome. Eventually I concentrated on my task. Not only had I not seen any sign of the enemy, but my view was constricted by the tall domes. It was like attempting to watch the sky while walking through midtown Manhattan; the bit you could see really told you nothing. So I gave it up. If anyone came after me, there were the gaping doorways of darkened buildings all about, and I knew firsthand what a nightmare it would be to try to hunt me therein.

  How old these buildings were I could not guess, but my curiosity dwelled even more on the life their inhabitants had lived. The ground was uniformly hard and sandy, with barely a shrub or a weed to be seen. The domes were randomly placed, some shoulder-to-shoulder, some widely spaced as if broad boulevards had passed between. But nowhere did I see any indication that these streets had once hosted parks, or
meeting places, or even boasted lines of trees for shade or scenery. The city seemed unique only in its uniformity. Had it not been for the tracks I followed, I could easily believe I was travelling in circles, if indeed I was making any progress at all. Even the air seemed to tread lightly here. These tracks could have been a day old or a year, because it felt as though the wind itself had been banished.

  I pursued the trail through the day, eating as I walked. I had heard no sound but my feet and my breath since leaving The Dark Lady. Where there were no plants, there were no animals—except, I realized with a start, whatever they were we had fought in the tunnels. Nothing could live in such a desert as I was crossing; it made Sanja’s home seem comfortable and inviting. And yet something did. I had the wounds to prove it. But no animal would live where it could not thrive, so that left only one alternative, the one animal that molds its environment to its own purposes: Man.

  The original inhabitants of this city were still here. They knew the environment. They knew the territory. They hated strangers. And I was a stranger. They attacked in the dark, and night was falling.

  I had planned to take refuge in the nearest dome when the light failed me. Now I had cause to wonder if that was the wisest course.

  I gave myself a mental shake. When I was a student, I was a man of thought. Promising thoughts, one or two of my professors had admitted. But when I became a soldier I learned all too quickly that protracted introspection on the battlefield comes at a fatal cost. I had put away my erudition and traded it for a dashing initiative that my superiors had more than once branded as a “reckless abandon,” albeit a reckless abandon that had caused more damage to the enemy than to my own person. And so it was here. I had plunged into this mission because I could see no alternative. I would sleep in a dome tonight because to sleep outside was an even more chancy prospect. My best hope was to sleep lightly and with a gun to hand.

  And when the hour did arrive that I could progress no further, that was the prescription I followed. Nevertheless, I positioned myself near the doorway with the idea that I would have an escape route should danger approach from inside the dome, and should anything arrive from outside, it would be silhouetted in the moonlight. This strategem proved invaluable, albeit not in a manner that I could ever have expected.

  The thing which awakened me was difficult to define; my sleep-addled brain was slow to recognize the murmurings of a part of itself that had lain dormant almost my entire life. In other words, it was several seconds before I comprehended the telepathic “noise” which had roused me from slumber. I stiffened. Someone was nearby, outside, his thoughts trickling through the opening to me. They were quite indistinct; had I rested any further away I doubt I would have noticed them at all.

  When one is operating in enemy territory, every man is perforce an enemy, which is why I rose with the greatest of caution and moved forward at a snail’s pace. Given the light-absorbing properties of my habitation, I knew I could stand fully square with the doorway without fear of detection, so long as I remained a few yards back from the entrance. And well that I did!

  A cadre of lizard-men was stealthily making its way directly toward me.

  Chapter 21

  The Enemy of My Enemy

  They traveled upright, the same as I, but something in their manner suggested creeping, and although they appeared to be swathed in thick cloths, they made no noise that I would have detected were I not watching them directly. That I was their ultimate target, and they an ambush party sent to secure me, I could not doubt, but now that I knew of their presence, they could be my salvation instead.

  Allowing myself a little bit of self-congratulation on pulling the wool over their eyes, I retreated a few steps further into darkness. At some point they would have to unveil a light and I did not want them to see me, even accidentally. But when they had exhausted their search, they would return whence they had come, and I could follow them to their den even as they had somehow tracked me to mine. That they might not be allied with the creatures who had kidnapped my wife and the crew of The Dark Lady was an alternative I refused to contemplate.

  They entered the dome, moving just beyond the light even to where I had been standing a few moments earlier, but then to my astonishment, they halted, there in the dark. They stood together, still quite visible to me against the doorway but invisible to anyone outside, except for one who remained near the door. It was the same trick I had intended to play upon them. I was dumbfounded. Had they miscalculated, believing that I had not yet reached this point? Were they lying in wait for me?

  “I don’t like these domes,” one said, and through the magic of telepathy I was able to comprehend his complaint without difficulty. “Somebody talk to me so I know you’re there.”

  “That’s how these places were designed,” another answered, and I was surprised to note that their entire conversation appeared telepathic, unlike the mental/verbal communications used by Thorans and the Nuum. “The dampening field was supposed to protect the humans from us.”

  “That didn’t work out so well in the end, did it?” asked a third.

  “I still don’t understand,” the first one said. Even his thoughts were petulant. “How do we know he’s going to be here?”

  “We don’t,” another answered. “But if he’s looking for more of the humans, he has to pass by this point.”

  “And how do we know he’s looking for humans?” the first asked. “The only ones who weren’t on the ship we caught in the walls.” I saw him used one claw to massage his other arm. “Believe me, I know. That shaggy one was the strongest human I ever met.”

  Timash! He could be speaking of no one else. I had to restrain myself from charging them in the dark, and I was more thankful than ever that no Thoran or Nuum had ever been able to perceive even a hint of my mental emanations unless I meant them to. From the lizard-men’s lack of reactions to my sudden emotional outburst, this limitation obviously extended to them, as well.

  “He’ll be looking for them, all right. We planted a rumor where it would be sure to get back to him. And then we put watchers on his followers, watchers who were just clumsy enough to be noticed. As far as he knows, he’s the only one we weren’t watching, which means he has to come alone.”

  “And when he disappears…”

  “Exactly. Once we drag his body in here, nobody will ever find it.”

  So that was their mission! They weren’t a hunting party, they were assassins, bent on silencing someone who believed that not all of The Dark Lady’s crew had been captured by the lizard-men in front of me. But did that mean that the enemy of my enemies was my friend?

  Whether further speculation would have yielded a meaningful result was mooted by a sudden excitement in the assassins’ ranks. The watcher at the door—for this was plainly his task—scurried back; their quarry was approaching.

  I was a bit taller than the lizard-men, and so I could faintly see a form moving outside, and as soon as it vanished from my sight, the lizard-men surged forward, still as quiet as a hard wind—until they reached the outside when they raised a veritable hellstorm of the most hideous hissing and spitting as I had ever witnessed.

  I rushed for the entrance, wondering if I would see the death-blow struck, still of two minds as to what I should do—and halted in amazement.

  The assassins, five in number, had spread in a semi-circle around their lone prey, a lizard like themselves. They were all swathed neck to claw in a shiny silver material, but their long tails were bare. The newcomer carried a short sword in either claw, twisting and waving them slowly in a deliberate cadence. The others were similarly armed with swords and wicked knives. That they respected their victim was obvious in their slow approach.

  Suddenly he flung his tail sideways and used its momentum to pivot him toward the furthest assailant on his right, exposing his back for an instant but effectively reducing his immediate opponents to one. The swords flashed together, and an assassin’s head flew through the air. Instantl
y he was back on guard, retreating to try to put a dome behind him, but the others saw his strategy and ran to outflank him. He was now surrounded on the cardinal points, and as fast as he was, I doubted his trick would work a second time.

  At least, not as long as he was outnumbered four-to-one!

  I had the stave fully extended in my hands the instant I cleared the doorway and I imitated the lizard-men with a bellow of my own as I bore down on the nearest. All of them spun about at the advent of this screaming animal that leaped from nowhere—a fatal hesitation for my target, for I brought my staff around with all my might in an arc that ended at his skull. He dropped dead before he could register the attack.

  As effective as it was, however, it left me hopelessly unbalanced, and I might have paid dearly but for the lone lizard’s instantly seizing on his enemies’ confusion, and a third assassin fell trying to decide which threat to meet first. The melee became with a pair of one-on-one duels which demonstrated the difficulty of fighting a swordsman with a staff. My longer reach prevented his killing me, but his more nimble weapons provided an effective defense. I had hesitated to draw my pistol earlier because of the crowded field, and I was given no opportunity to do so now.

  We pushed each other back and forth for several moments, and just as I saw an opening I might exploit, the lizard I had saved stepped in behind my foe and ran him through. We faced each other over the body of our fallen foe, hopeful but wary, neither willing to put down his weapon.