The Ecolog, page 16
They followed the trail to an apparently blank stone wall. Briggs knocked gently on the wall. It sounded hollow. "Stand back," he warned and aimed the gun.
The rifle's last bullet blasted a hole through the thin stone sheeting large enough for Briggs to squeeze through, and though it was no longer loaded, Briggs kept the gun as he and Garbage loped down the passage beyond the hole.
The trail of fading bloody footprints led them only 30 meters or so down a narrow passageway. Beyond that point lay a darkness so dense Briggs could hardly see his own hand, let alone a bootsole-shaped smudge of red.
But, since the passage appeared to have no branches, Briggs continued stubbornly groping his way along.
Garbage whispered, "Let me go first. I know the way." Brushing past him, she took the lead.
"You know? How?"
"I was one of the special girls. We all had to learn these passages."
Very soon she was dangerously far ahead of him. He struggled to catch up.
She called over her shoulder, "Here's where another secret panel opens out into the entrance hall near the big model of the galaxy."
Suddenly Briggs saw a light appear. She had opened the panel.
"Wait," called Briggs in a hoarse whisper, but Garbage ignored him and stepped through the opening.
An instant later Briggs heard her startled exclamation, "Klain!" followed by, "Briggs! Help!"
Commodore Briggs thrust his head through the opened panel. Garbage's call for help had ruined any chance for a surprise attack.
A few paces away he saw his little comrade, her face contorted with pain. Klain had twisted her arm behind her back and was holding a knife to her throat. The Ecolog was there too; she had changed her clothes and now wore the same simple, blue tunic and black high boots as her soldiers, though she retained her jeweled mask and curved sword. Briggs noted that she also had a stinger pistol stuffed in her belt; probably his own.
"Drop the rifle," Klain commanded.
Briggs hesitated a moment and said, "I think I'll keep it."
Klain smiled. "A standoff, eh? That's fine with me. Soon the Ecolog's guard will be along to cart you back where you belong."
Garbage cried out defiantly, "You think so? The Ecolog's guard has defected! All her troops have joined us."
Klain's gaunt features grew pale. "You're lying, Garbage Girl. You must think I'm stupid if you—"
The Ecolog cut in. "She's not lying. I know her. I know her as well as I know myself. Don't you think I could tell if she was lying?" Her voice rose, harsh and bitter. "It must be true! Of course it's true! Those fops and courtesans, those toy soldiers… they all think they can rule better than me. This is their chance. Commodore Briggs is here to hold their hands, to give them courage, to promise them the stars! Of course they've turned against me!" She glared at Briggs, blue eyes fierce and full of pain behind her slanted eyeslits. "Ah, my dear Commodore, if only you and I could fight, with this planet and every thing and every person on it as the prize. That's the way it is, you know. If I die you will have to rule this world yourself. Those spineless weaklings that follow you won't be able to command the respect of the masses. And if you die, all those turncoats will trample each other in their haste to return to me. You have nobody among your followers or crewmen who can take and hold a civilization."
Briggs listened and knew she was right.
Suddenly, behind him, Briggs heard excited voices.
The Ecolog laughed. "Not today, eh Commodore? The voters are coming!" She turned to Klain. "Follow me and bring the girl."
The excited voices were getting closer.
The Ecolog broke into a run, heading for the front exit.
Klain said, "Stand where you are, Briggs. This girl's life means nothing to me. By our laws she's already dead." He moved her arm upward; she went white with pain but refused to cry out.
Briggs decided to gamble. The heavy rifle was not loaded, but Klain didn't know that. Briggs raised the gun and pointed it at Klain and Garbage. He said softly, "Her life means nothing to me, either."
Briggs was thinking of how calmly Omen had murdered Lord Mayor Mano—that poor old fool—when Mano had been a hostage, and how everyone had regarded the murder as justified and normal. Abbutututikan had strange customs, but Briggs was beginning to understand them. When Klain did not reply, Briggs added, "With this gun I can shoot you through her."
Briggs aimed directly at the girl's stomach and slowly began to squeeze the trigger. Garbage smiled faintly, as if to say, At last you're learning.
"Wait!" called out Klain. He released the girl and threw down his knife. Garbage ran to Briggs's side. Briggs handed her the gun, saying, "Keep him covered until the others get here." He could hear the voice of Mike Phillips in the distance and shouted, "This way, Mike!"
"Yes, sir," answered the distant voice.
Briggs left Klain and Garbage and ran toward the front exit. The Ecolog was not in sight, but she couldn't have gone far.
As he burst out into the courtyard, the sky was glowing with the first predawn light. Ahead of him the great bulk of the dirigible loomed.
But something was wrong!
The dirigible was in motion!
Someone had released the mooring cables and set it free. The faint breeze of early morning was enough to set it drifting silently toward the palace walls.
The propellers began to turn; their swish-swishing almost instantly became a roar of awesome power.
The airship began to rise.
CHAPTER 9
Trailing cables dangled from the bottom of the dirigible; Briggs remembered how expertly the airship crew had swung on them. One of the cables, Briggs noticed, was actually dragging on the ground.
He ran harder, head down like a charging bull, toward the trailing cable; his face was brick red, his breath came in strangled gasps. He felt dizzy, sick and old, but kept running anyway. The cable! Where was the cable? His vision blurred.
Then suddenly it was there, in sharp focus and so near he could almost grasp it. He leaped, caught it, felt himself jerked off his feet and pulled along the ground; then without warning, he was pulled violently upward, swinging toward the palace wall in a deadly arc that threatened to dash him against the stone.
He dragged himself upward on the cable.
The wall passed beneath him, so close he brushed it with his left heel. He reached the forward end of his swing and began to glide back like a living, kicking pendulum.
The outer wall of the palace passed below him, followed by a cliff, a sheer drop of at least half a kilometer. He was swinging in long, lazy ellipses now, the wind whipping his blue tunic, the thunder of the propellers deafening him. The cable was gnarled, not very slippery, but his fingers were already weakening, already beginning to ache. When he was younger, when he was rested, when he hadn't been out too long in the sun, he could have climbed this cable easily. But now it was torture.
The floor of the valley was far away. He could see a light fog down there in the shadow of the mountain, between the two ranges, and perhaps a glint of light on water… a river. There were trees, oh so distant. And jagged rocks.
Hand over hand, he began to climb the cable, slowly, painfully.
The dirigible began to descend. Abbutututikan was left behind, a white blob on the mountaintop, higher than Briggs. A lower mountain passed slowly below. The city of Arbre came into view but, except for a scattering of lights, was almost invisible in the shadow of the mountains.
Briggs climbed. His breath came in white puffs in the thin cold air. Maybe that's why I'm so weak, he thought. The air's too thin at this altitude.
Still he climbed.
His efforts had somehow started him rotating. He turned and turned, as if on an unstoppable spinning top. A terrible vertigo was growing in him. He was beginning to sweat; his hands were becoming slippery. The sky, as it rotated around him, was becoming steadily brighter.
He went on climbing. What else could he do?
He glanced up, and to his surprise saw that he was only a meter or so from the open deck at the rear of the gondola. He redoubled his efforts. But his hands began to slip, and he slid down a meter before he could stop himself.
Now blood was on his hands as well as sweat.
He began to climb again, more slowly and carefully.
This time he reached the edge of the deck, checked his spinning and hung there a moment gathering strength. Then, with one last mighty effort, he reached up, clutched one of the cold metal rods that served as part of the deck's inadequate guardrail and dragged himself, centimeter by agonizing centimeter, on board.
He rolled rather than crawled across the deck, coming to rest against the wall of the lounge. There he lay, panting and resting, waiting for his sickness and dizziness to pass, waiting for the Ecolog to come and kill him while he was helpless.
She did not come. She must not know he was here.
The propellers roared on. Dawn had fully broken now, and the sun was bright, making him squint.
When he recovered, he rose to his feet, drew his claymore and cautiously entered the lounge.
No one was there.
Crouching, expecting an ambush, he started toward the forward end of the ship.
There was nobody in the games room, nobody in the dining hall, nobody in the galley. He entered the passenger area, began opening compartment doors, one at a time. All vacant.
He entered the cargo hold. The cargo hold was empty, without so much as a packing case to be seen. He retraced his steps, searched the lower passenger area. No one.
He was sure now. She must be in the pilot's compartment, at the controls, totally unaware that Briggs was on the ship.
He carefully opened the door to the radio room, made sure it was deserted and crept forward to the cockpit.
But it, too, was empty. A tiny red light indicated the ship was under control of the automatic pilot.
"Damn!" muttered Briggs. The Ecolog, it seemed, was not on the ship at all. She had set a trap, and he had fallen into it.
But never mind. With a little luck he could learn the controls and return to Abbutututikan. He sheathed his sword and sat in the pilot's seat.
Suddenly, the red light went out, along with every other light on the instrument panel. Dumbfounded, Briggs stared at the dead panel as the propellers slowed to a swish-swish, before stopping altogether.
In the terrible silence Briggs looked around nervously.
Was the Ecolog here after all? Had she turned off the power from some place of concealment he'd missed? Or had she programed the ship to do this?
He glanced through the windows. The airship was coasting. It would probably continue to coast for hours, gradually losing altitude, until it settled… where? In the desert of course. There was nothing but desert to be seen down there, flat featureless desert, except for a small cloud of dust.
A pack of ngaas?
The ship creaked and groaned as the nose dropped slightly, but otherwise the only sound was the faint rushing of the wind. She was not on the ship, he decided. Why would she risk a crash landing in the desert if she was on the ship?
He glanced at the copilot's seat and froze.
There lay the stinger pistol, its ammunition clip removed. He sprang up, shouting, "You are on the ship! Where are you? Show yourself!"
From somewhere beyond the radio room he heard a peal of playful, triumphant contralto laughter.
He still did not know where the Ecolog was, but he did know where she'd been. He'd found a small rectangular panel open above the cargo compartment. It led into the gasbag. Of course! The gasbag was not one big bag of helium, but many little bags with plenty of hiding places between them, places where there was no helium. Places where, no doubt, there were power switches.
Now she was somewhere in the gondola. Her laughter had seemed to come from somewhere aft.
He left the cargo compartment and started toward the rear.
He heard running footsteps; then silence again. Yes, she was back there all right. He realized she could easily have killed him, shot him in the back with the stinger pistol, but that was not her way. What she wanted, as she'd said plainly enough, was a duel to the death with the entire civilization of the planet as the prize.
So be it, thought Abraham Briggs. If only he wasn't so tired…
Motionless, he listened; then he shambled aft, stopped and listened again. Was that a suppressed giggle? He couldn't be certain. Where did it come from?
He entered a hallway between two walls lined with doors that lead into passenger compartments. Although he'd already searched them once, she'd since moved. She could be behind any one of these silent closed doors, waiting for him.
"Must you play these silly games?" he shouted.
There was no answer.
He continued his search, checking each compartment again. All were deserted. He was weary, weary unto death. He wanted to shout, "I surrender!" A dozen times the words came to his lips, but he did not say them.
Slowly, carefully, he entered the dining hall.
"You said you wanted a duel," he shouted. "I'll give you a duel."
Silence.
Cautiously, he moved into the room, claymore at the ready.
Suddenly, without warning, he felt a sharp pain in his rear and spun around to face his attacker.
The Ecolog leaped back from her hiding place behind the serving counter. A few drops of blood were on the point of her curve-bladed, jewel-hilted scimitar.
"Touché!" she cried gleefully. "This is the second time I could have killed you."
"And the last," answered Briggs angrily, rubbing his backside. "En garde!"
He should have been ready, but he wasn't. Nobody could be ready for the sudden onslaught of perfectly executed lunges, digs, slashes and feints she now rained upon him, driving him steadily back through the room; chairs and tables were overturned in the haste of his awkward retreat. She was small and light, but awesomely quick; by contrast, he was a lumbering gorilla, barely able to fend off her blows.
Effortlessly, she cut him in the cheek, in the arm, in the leg, humming softly to herself some tune Briggs had never heard before but now would never forget.
He tried to stop her, at least slow her, but it was useless. She continued to drive him backward, never allowing him to find his balance, to dig in.
For an instant he thought he would have his back to the wall; but no, he found a doorway behind him and retreated through it. Was it luck or had she steered him to it? Was she herding him as a dog herds sheep?
He passed through the games room, the lounge, out the rear door onto the windy deck, always retreating. Suddenly she broke off and jumped back. For a moment the duel ceased.
"Where will you go now?" she asked softly.
Briggs knew without looking that nothing was behind him but a narrow metal guardrail and beyond that, emptiness. He sucked in great gulps of air, then admitted candidly, "I don't know."
"I know," said the Ecolog. "En garde!"
Briggs attacked first this time. She parried with a hit to the flat of his blade, easily sidestepping the cut, her blue eyes gleaming with delight. As Briggs recovered, she flashed the scimitar under his nose, forcing him to jump back, then followed up with a series of circular sweeping attacks as Briggs retreated, trying to use his longer blade and arm to hold her off.
Almost at the rail, he stop-thrusted to her head. She ducked under his sword, crouching with her left hand on the deck, and slashed at his belly, tearing through his tunic and leaving a painful gash. He brought his sword down but she rolled out of the way like an acrobat, landing on her feet in a low crouch.
Briggs followed through on his stroke, bringing the claymore around for another hit, but she sprang lightly back out of danger.
And the claymore swung down and struck the deck in front of her!
With a triumphant cry, she kicked the claymore from his hand, and as it scudded across the deck, she brought her blade swishing down for the final blow. In his move to avoid the slash, Briggs lost his balance and landed on his back.
Almost by reflex he raised his feet and caught her in the stomach. Her own momentum carried her into the air, her weight on his booted feet. He gave a little kick and she passed over him and struck the guardrail with a heavy crash and a cry of pain.
Her platinum mask fell off and bounced away.
As he tried to reach for her, she was rolling under the guardrail. He saw her face.
It was the face of the girl he called Garbage.
He clutched at her, in an attempt to save her, but she had already slipped over the edge.
As she fell she looked up into his eyes, completely unafraid, and he saw on her lips a faint, ironic smile.
He lay on his stomach on the deck and watched her until she finally hit the ground.
CHAPTER 10
'The planet is yours," said Captain Klain stiffly. "You have won it fairly, according to the terms set down by the Ecolog herself." His voice shook slightly, the only outward sign of the violent conflicting emotions Commodore Briggs knew must be raging inside the man.
"Thank you," said Briggs inadequately. He wished he could say more, wished he could find a way to make Klain his friend, but after all that had happened, it would be a long time before such a friendship was possible. "Thank you," he repeated.
Briggs and Klain shook hands formally, without warmth.
It was noon in Abbutututikan. The sun was bright but the air was cool. A breeze was blowing, making work more difficult for the troops who were tying down the dirigible. Briggs had found the switch that turned on the power from the ship's nuclear pile and, after a few false starts, had piloted the airship home.
It was not a large group that stood there in the palace courtyard: Briggs, Klain, Lieutenant Phillips, the soldier Myron Marks, and the girl called Garbage. It was not a noisy group either. Nobody was cheering. Nobody was applauding. Even for Briggs and Phillips the death of the Ecolog left a curious vacuum, a painful sense of loss.
Briggs looked down at the gleaming metal object in his hands: the mask of the Ecolog. Its many-colored jewels sparkled in the sunlight no less brightly than they had sparkled when the Ecolog was alive.
