Complete Short Fiction, page 110
He climbed shakily to his feet, and the strong light around him, the city, the trees, quickened his recovery. A figment, he thought then, tautly, a scene out of his memory recreated in some fashion.
But why that one? Why any? Why? Why?
He knew after a shuddering moment what he must do. He felt repelled, almost revolted; he forced himself to peer through the door. The room was empty—and that brought a relief so enormous that he gulped.
He walked swiftly into the city, and did not slow until the silence and the desertedness closed again around him, a very pall of unnatural environment. He thought finally, blankly:
It was no use letting it get him. He was here; he must face every faction of strangeness that his unseen captors had in store for him.
They weren’t friendly; that was certain. The suggestion that he be killed had come too swiftly, too easily—and death’s delay must be rooted in some ice-cold purpose that might at any second lose their abnormal interest. Whereupon the end would come.
Damn it, let it come. Force issues—anything was better than this silence.
Neelan turned abruptly into a small skyscraper, a thirty-story marble structure. The imposing door opened like the one in the first building he had entered, not into an anteroom, but directly into a room.
It was small, all metal; there was a control board and a multipurpose chair. The resemblance to his own lifeboat interior was so startling that he—accepted.
Steely cold, Neelan stood there, trying to pin down from the appearance of the ship what moment of his life, what exact event was being duplicated here.
His greater alertness stood him in good stead. The flashing arrival out of nothingness into solid existence of an exact replica of himself, clothes and all, in the control chair only jarred his mind much as a nearby explosion might, without actually shattering him.
He forced himself to stand staring, feeling the icy fingers crawling up his spine, forcing himself finally to walk over.
He expected the body to vanish as he approached. But it didn’t. He expected his hand to pass through the other version of himself. But it didn’t. The feel of the clothes was unmistakable; and the flesh of the face was warm with life as he touched it with his fingers.
The Neelan who was in the chair paid no attention, but continued to stare fixedly at the general ’stat plate.
Neelan would have had to turn partially about to follow that gaze, and now that he was concentrating on the body, his mind was a steel bar of purpose. One thing at a time, he thought relentlessly.
He braced himself. He caught his other self by the shoulders, and, bringing all his great strength into play, tried to tear the replica out of the chair.
It didn’t budge; not by a flicker of a muscle or a nerve did it show awareness. The eyes continued to stare intently at the ’stat plate; the head was slightly, stiffly bent forward. Slowly, Neelan faced in the same direction.
He sighed when he saw what was on the plate: the empress’ passionately anxious face. So that was what this scene was: a re-enactment of the Imperial Innelda’s final offer to him, without sound effects, without her vibrant voice urging him to what she considered sanity. How little she had realized the blood urgency that was driving him.
The sudden thought of Gil brought a great sadness. Poor Gilt After fifty-five days in that hell of desert and storm, there wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, much hope.
Neelan had closed his eyes in that brief anguish of thought; he opened them with a start as fine, hot sand laced against his face—opened them onto madness.
He was no longer in the control room, or in a building. There was no city. He twisted in a spasm of muscular reaction and realized that he was lying on a flat red desert under an enormous bulging sun. Far to the left, through a thick haze of dust, was another sun, much smaller, but looking almost the color of blood in that world of powdered sand.
Some men lay nearby on the sand. One of them turned weakly, a big, fine-looking man, whose lips moved. There was no sound, but curiously the man’s turning the way he did brought into Neelan’s line of vision boxes, crates, metal things. He recognized a watermaking machine, a food case and—
The rest blurred as Neelan’s glance fixed again on the man himself.
“Gil!” Neelan shrieked, “Gil, Gil, GIL!”
“Dan!” It seemed to come from far away, oh, so far away; and it was more a wisp of thought in his mind than a sound. It was a tired sigh that bridged the great night. It began again, faint, far-away but clear—and directed at Neelan: “Dan, you poor mug, where are you? Dan, how are you doing this? I don’t feel that you’re close . . . Dan, I’m a sick man, dying. We’re on a freak planet that’s going to pass close to one of the two Centauri giants. The storms will grow worse, hotter. We—Oh, God!”
The break was so sharp, it hurt like fire. It was like an overstretched elastic—giving. Countless light years rushed inexorably to fill the gap.
Just when the transformation came, Neelan wasn’t sure. His first awareness was that he was no longer lying on sand or metal. But for some reason, that was only dimly puzzling.
His mind, every cell in his being, was wrapped up in thought of Gil and of the miracle that had been wrought; somehow, these mighty captors of his had intensified the flimsy bond between himself and Gil beyond all previously conceivable limits, and made a thought connection across light centuries—an incredible, instantaneous connection. It—
Funny, it was dark, a blue-dark all around him. With a savage frown, Neelan lifted himself from his prostrate position and fell down again, as his hands went through the floor.
In astounded amazement, he saw that there was a blue haze of semidark space below him. He reared up instinctively, and this time, gasping, he realized how great was the strangeness. The metal floor was gone, and the sand—or had that been a crazy illusion of the minute of sensory oneness with Gil on his remote hell of a planet?
Panic struck like a physical blow because—instead of the floor, there was a fine crisscross of wires like the rigging in the ships that sailed the seas of Earth in olden days, like the web of some nightmare-sized spider, like—
His thought paused in awful contemplation. A monstrous chill spread down his spine—Like a spider’s web.
It was.
In one frantic jerk of tortured muscles, Neelan whipped over onto his back, and lay there like a collapsed sack. The city was gone, and the brilliant sky. In its place—
Unearthly, dark, dark-blue world, and webs—miles and miles of webs. They reared up toward the remote ceiling, invisible in that dimness. They spread out in all directions, fading into the seminight like things of some hideous nether world; and mercifully they were not inhabited at first.
He had time to brace his brain for the most terrible shock that its highly trained structure would ever have to face. He had time to grasp that this was the real interior of the ship, and that there must be inhabitants.
Far above him, there was suddenly a flicker of movement. Neelan lay rigid and cold, becoming colder with each passing second. Spiders—So, a bunch of bloated spiders were Nature’s prize package, the supreme intelligence of the ages, rulers of the universe.
The thought seemed to sag in his mind a very long time. He grew aware finally that a faint light was being played over him from some hidden source, and then—
A thunderbolt of mind vibrations rocked every cell in his brain, and sent intense repercussions roaring down along his nerves. In a moment, his whole body was swaying like a tree in a strong wind to that mighty chorus:
“—examination negative . . . No physical connection—”
“But the tensions were augmentable by energy. The connection was contrived with his brother across xxx?!! distance.”
“—no physical connection!” Coldly.
“I was merely expressing amazement, mighty xx—!! (meaningless name). Here is undoubtedly a phenomenon closely related to the strange emotional behavior of this race. Let us ask him—”
“MAN!”
Neelan’s brain, already straining under the buckling weight of those enormous thoughts, cringed before that direct and monstrous wave.
“Yes?”
He spoke aloud. His voice made a feeble sound against the blue-dark vastness, and was swallowed instantly by the silence.
“MAN, WHY DO YOU WISH TO RESCUE YOUR BROTHER?”
Neelan shrank from the roar, shrank hard back against the web. Blankness came; and for a moment the question seemed the most meaningless he had ever heard; then—
Why rescue Gil, he thought in stark puzzlement. Why, because Gil and he had been pals as youngsters, because . . . because—damn it all, because Gil was his brother and—
Before he could so much as begin to explain the ultrasimple elements of human nature involved, the titanic thunder raged down again at his mind:
“MAN, WHY DID YOU REFUSE THE TREASURE THE FEMALE OFFERED? MAN, WHY DID YOU BEAR THE TORTURE WHEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TO YOUR ADVANTAGE TO YIELD?”
Neelan shook himself dazedly, but in spite of the tattered state of his mind, a great light was beginning to streak through. These spiders were trying to understand man’s emotional nature without having themselves a capacity for emotion.
He felt an abrupt and enormous pity. There was no other word to describe that surge of sensation. For here were blind things asking to have color explained to them, stone-deaf creatures being given a definition of sound. The principle was overwhelmingly the same.
His pity transformed into contempt, a vast and stinging contempt. He recognized it for what it was: the kind of contempt that man from time immemorial has felt for lesser creatures.
These poor, brain-heavy botches of Nature, what a drab existence must be theirs in that bleak and terrible mental realm where they had their consciousnesses. They—
Above him, the monstrous clamor of thought cut across his personal thought with a mind-shattering violence. This time it was not directed at him, but the very first blast stunned Neelan with its import:
“—REGRETTABLE THAT HIS BROTHER DIED, BREAKING THE CONNECTION—”
“—THAT NEED BE NO DETERRENT. WE ARE ON THE RIGHT TRACK. A MAJOR OPERATION IS IN ORDER—”
“X—XX?!X PROCEED—AT ONCE.”
The funny thing was, Neelan needed no thought. Gil dead—operation—His mind jumped all the in-between gaps straight to action.
His hand flashed up to the pencil gun the empress had given him to kill Greer. He jerked the tiny weapon hard against the side of his head. The two explosions made one, drawn-out, shattering sound.
XV.
The ruins consisted of a break-through into a main corridor of the palace, and of gaping energy holes along the corridor itself where the fighting had taken place.
Beside her, Prince del Curtin said anxiously, “Hadn’t you better get some sleep, your majesty? It’s after four. And, as the Weapon Makers have not answered our repeated calls, there is nothing more that can be done tonight about your husb . . . about Captain Hedrock.”
She waved him away, vaguely. There was a thought in her mind, a thought so sharp that it seemed to have physical qualities; so painful that every moment it existed was a bit of hell:
She must get him back; no matter what their sacrifice, she must have Hedrock back.
Strange, she thought finally, how she who had been so cold and steely and calculating, so almost inhumanly imperial—strange how in the ultimate issue she should prove to be just like all women. As if the first shock of committing herself to one man literally changed the chemistry of her body.
When Hedrock had been announced at eight o’clock the night before, her mind was already made up. She thought of her decision as intellectual, product of the need for an Isher heir.
Actually, of course, she had never thought of anyone but Hedrock as the father. In the first audience she had granted him six months before, he had coolly announced that he had come to the palace for the sole purpose of marrying her. That amused, then angered, then enraged her, but it put him in the special category as the only man who had ever asked for her hand.
The psychology involved had always been plain; and she sometimes felt acutely the unfairness of the situation for other men who might have the ambition or desire. Court etiquette forbade that they mention the subject. The tradition was that she must ask. She never had.
In the final issue she had thought only of the man who had actually proposed; and, at eight o’clock he had come in response to her urgent call and agreed instantly to an immediate marriage.
The ceremony had been simple but public—public in that she took her vows before the telestat, so that all the world might see her and hear her words.
Hedrock had not appeared on the telestat. His name was not mentioned. He was referred to as “the distinguished officer who has won her majesty’s esteem.” He was a consort only, and as such must remain in the background.
Only the Ishers mattered. The men and women they married remained private persons. That was the law; and she had never thought there was anything wrong with it. She didn’t now, but for nearly five hours she had been wife; and during those hours her mind and metabolism adjusted. The thoughts that came had no relation to any she had ever had before.
Curious thoughts about how she must now bear the chosen man’s children, and mother them, and of how the palace must be transformed spiritually so that children could live there.
Nearly five hours; and then she told him of her appointment to meet Edward Gonish; and went off with the memory of the odd expression in his eyes—and now this ruin, and the gathering realization that Hedrock was gone, snatched irresistibly from the heart of her empire by her old enemies.
She grew aware that someone, the court chancellor, was recounting a list of precautions that had been taken to prevent leakage of the news that the palace had been attacked.
No reports had been permitted to be broadcast; every witness was being sworn to silence under strict penalties. By dawn, the repair work would be completed without trace, and thereafter any story that did come out would seem a barefaced rumor, to be laughed at, and ridiculed.
It had been, she realized, fast, effective suppression, immensely important. The prestige of the House of Isher might have been dealt a damaging blow. But the very success of the censorship made it all remote, secondary. There would be rewards and honors to dole out, but the only thing that mattered now was—
She must get him back.
Slowly, she emerged from her dark mood. Her party, she saw with a vague surprise, was clear now of the muttering repair machines, and was moving along the wrecked corridor.
Her mind withdrew further from itself; grew more intent on her surroundings. She thought: the important thing was to find out what had happened, then act.
Frowning from her new purpose, she examined the mutilated walls of the hallway. Her green eyes flashed. She said with a semblance of her old sardonicism:
“From the slant of the ray burns, our side seems to have done all the damage, except for the initial breach in the main wall.”
One of the officers nodded grimly:
“They were after Captain Hedrock only. They used a peculiar paralyzing ray that toppled our soldiers over like ninepins. The men are still recovering with no harmful effects visible, much as General Grail did after Captain Hedrock seemed to cause him to die from heart failure at lunch the other day.”
“But what happened?” she demanded sharply. “Bring me someone who saw everything? Was Captain Hedrock asleep when the attack came?”
“No—” The officer spoke cautiously. “No, your majesty, he was down in the tombs.”
“Where?”
The soldier looked unhappy. “Your majesty, as soon as you and your party left the palace, Captain Hed . . . your consor—”
She said impatiently, “Call him Prince Hedrock, please.”
“Thank you, majesty. Prince Hedrock went down in the tombs to one of the old storerooms, removed part of one wall—”
“He what? But go on!”
“Yes, your majesty. Naturally, in view of his new position, our guards gave him every assistance in removing the section of metal wall and transporting it to the elevators, and up to this corridor.”
“Naturally.”
“The soldiers who reported to me said the wall section was weightless but it offered some quality of innate resistance to movement. It was about two feet wide and six and a half feet long; and when Cap . . . Prince Hedrock stepped through it and vanished, and then came back, it—”
“When he what? Colonel, what are you talking about?”
The officer bowed. “I regret my confusion, your majesty. I did not see all of this, but I have pieced together varied accounts of my mind of course persists in regarding as more important what I myself saw. I actually saw him enter the detached wall shield, disappear, and return a minute later.”
For a moment, the empress stood there, her mind almost a blank. There was consciousness in her that she would get the story eventually, but right now it seemed beyond her reach, buried deep in a muddle of phrases that had no meaning in themselves.
Captain Hedrock had gone to the tombs deep below the palace, removed a section of wall and—and then what?
She put the question incisively; and the colonel said, “And then, majesty, he brought it up to the palace proper and stood waiting.”
“This was before the attack?”
The officer shook his head. “During it. He was still in the tombs when the wall was breached by the concentrated fire of the Weapon Shop warships. I warned him personally in my capacity as chief of the palace guards of what was happening. The warning only made him speed his return to the surface, where he was captured.”
Briefly again, she felt helpless. It wasn’t that the description wasn’t clear enough. It was simply that it made no sense.
Hedrock must have known something was going to happen, because he had gone purposefully down into the tombs immediately after her own departure to meet Edward Gonish. That part was all right. It seemed to indicate a plan.
