He stepped into the dark of the blown wall and, after a moment, called to G'fand. He had found a metal beam, set free of its foundations by the collapse. They set to work manoeuvring it through the gap in the wall and setting it down in the Corridor. Then they pushed it across the diameter of the pit, found that it was long enough to reach the floor on the other side. He stood on it, bounced slightly, testing it.

  He went first. It was narrow, barely seven centimetres wide, but it was twisted very little, so that the surface was fairly smooth and even.

  The pit blossomed before him, lurid orange light twisting in the darkness like a bloated ser­pent, alive and deadly, far, far below. Swinging in short arcs, light receding and approaching, forming patterns. And vertigo lapped at the edges of his vision, waves forming. After that he did not look into the depths, but concentrated on his booted feet as they inched along the beam. One step at a time. Centimetre by centimetre, arms outstretched for balance. And at last he was across.

  He turned and beckoned to G'fand, who stepped up on the beam and moved out over the pit.

  Ronin called to him: 'Concentrate on your movement; feel your feet against the metal. That's right, one at a time. Slowly now. Careful, feel your balance. There. Now.'

  G'fand was almost halfway across when his back foot slipped as he put his weight on it and he lurched to one side, over the yawning pit. He fell. And reached up desperately, in reflex, one hand hitting the beam, the fingers finding purchase. He swung dizzyingly in short arcs, his other hand scrabbling to find the beam.

  Ronin first thought of pushing himself out on his stomach to get to him, but he did not trust the beam to hold them both and there was no time to find out. 'G'fand,' he called, 'let your legs hang, do not move them, you must stop the swing. All right, now reach up. No, to the left. Yes, more; now stretch.'

  G'fand now gripped the beam with both hands, and hung like a vertical bar, arms stretched above him. He looked at Ronin. Hair was in his eyes and he shook his head in an attempt to free his vision, and his slippery hands skidded on the metal. He caught himself just in time.

  'Easy, easy,' said Ronin. 'Listen to me, G'fand, and do exactly as I tell you. Put one hand in front of the other. Look up, not down.' The strain showed on the Scholar's face. 'Good. Now again. Think of only the next movement. One at a time. Good. Again.' He spoke to him in a steady stream and in this way G'fand made his painful way across the remaining length of the beam, until, reaching out, Ronin was at last able to pull him up from the edge of the abyss. G'fand's body shook and he turned away from Ronin and was violently sick.

  And now dark smoke and choking fumes rose in thin swirling clouds from the Level below. And now the fitful glow appeared brighter through the gaping rent. And now they heard the muffled pounding of running feet, and under it a dry, crackling sound, abnormally distinct and clear on the close air.

  Ronin, crouched along one slimy wall, dragged G'fand along the Corridor, well clear of the rubble surrounding the hole. He pulled him off the floor and said, gently, very close to his face, breathing the sour smell, 'I am sorry but we must move on -at once.'

  G'fand wiped his mouth and nodded. 'Yes, yes,' he whispered. 'I am all right.' They moved on as swiftly as they could.

  Presently they encountered "the first people either of them had seen on this Level. They were all dead. Bodies were strewn about the Corridor as if hurled through the air by some titanic force. They lay burned - some so badly that they could not make out their features - maimed and broken, amid viscous puddles of dark seeping blood. G'fand stared wide-eyed. 'By the Chill! What has happened here?'

  Ronin said nothing, and they plunged on into the murk of the curving Corridor, away and away, over the stinking mounds of the bodies. No Bladesmen here, and Ronin knew that he had been right; they were far Downshaft, among the Workers.

  He paused as a small indistinct shape fled from out of a doorway, running at full speed into him. He grabbed hold, almost losing his balance, and looked down to see a small girl struggling in his arms. He picked her up and looked closely at her, the first sign of life they had encountered on this Level. She had thin pinched features visible inter­mittently beneath long lank hair whipping about as she writhed against his grip. She was sobbing, and through her tears Ronin saw that her eyes held a measure of torment that startled him.

  'Are you hurt?' he asked, but she would not or could not answer.

  G'fand touched Ronin and pointed ahead. A figure had reeled out of the doorway from which the girl had run. A tall gaunt woman with short hair and a hungry mouth and dull eyes. She saw them.

  She ran unsteadily towards them. She screamed, 'What are you doing to her?' She rushed down the Corridor at them. The child cringed and screamed as the woman reached out one long clawlike hand, dirty, the nails broken far down their length. The child clung to Ronin with a strange desperation. Then the woman took her.

  She raised her right hand, brandishing a long curved blade, crusty with dried blood. 'Animals! You're not content with me, you take her too - '

  'She ran into - ' Ronin began, but the woman was not listening.

  'Taking her off to some dark room, were you? Get away!' she screamed, and whirled, pulling the girl behind her back along the Corridor, disappear­ing through the doorway from which they both had emerged. Ronin still felt the clutch of the girl, felt from far away his lost sister's arms around him.

  He began to run, calling, 'Come on!' over his shoulder, and heard G'fand coming after him. Bursting through the doorway.

  Dim and smoky. Rooms much smaller than Upshaft. Three rooms to a quarters, two or three families. The rooms were a shambles. Broken furniture, shards of pottery, ripped fabric, the floor slippery-sticky with an indistinguishable amalgam of liquids. Nothing moved here and they went on into the second.

  Ronin saw an arm protruding from a pile of refuse. He drew his blade and uncovered the body. It was a Worker, thick chest and arms, squat. By his outstretched hand was a heavy lever, ripped from a Machine, obviously used as a club. He turned the body. The Worker's chest was a pulpy mass and there was so much blood that they could not count the number of times he had been stabbed.

  'Frost!' he muttered. 'Have they all gone mad?'

  G'fand turned his head away.

  They moved into the last room. A lamp burned, hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly so that shadows moved and perspective was shattered.

  The woman knelt on a bed at the rear wall. A washstand had been knocked over. The woman grasped the sobbing girl in one hand, and with the other arm, the hand still gripping the blade so hard that the knuckles were white, she held a limp figure to her. Her eyes were wide and staring blankly. A thin line of spittle drooled from a corner of her mouth. They paused just inside the doorway.

  'Fiends!' she cried. 'One more step an' you'll get what your friend out there got!'

  G'fand stared at her and choked. 'You did that?'

  She laughed, a throaty, chilling sound, and her eyes rolled madly in their sockets. The girl strug­gled to get free. 'Aye, that. Surprised, are ya, well so was he!' Her eyes wavered and dropped for an instant to the head of the small figure she was cradling.

  'See,' she wailed. 'Look upon your work! Fiends' work!' And she turned the limp figure, and they saw a thin young boy, perhaps somewhat older than the girl, same dark pinched features. 'See how you have defiled my son! See how you have taken his life!' Her voice rose, and quickly she clutched the boy back to her. Strength seemed to flood into her then, and she drew herself up defiantly. 'You'll get no satisfaction here! Not this time!'

  Too late Ronin realized that she had spied his drawn sword. Too late he divined her intent. She pulled the girl to her, the child's eyes round and staring, a high keening coming from her open mouth, and as Ronin leapt she drew the long curving blade across the girl's trembling throat. A gout of blood erupted and the keening became a thick gurgle, and she twisted the body behind her so that he fell atop her.

  But the blade was now behind him, out of his line of vision. He dropped his sword to free his hands. He twisted to find the knife before it found him.

  He was aware of her arm moving swiftly and then he felt her convulse violently under him, arched and stiffened. A smile came to her face at the same time the trickle of blood did. He looked down to see the knife plunged hilt deep into her side. He tried to withdraw it, but her fist, locked in a death grip, would not give up the hilt. A kind of relief suffused her face. Then he felt a spreading wetness, hot and sickening.

  He backed off the bed on his knees. A sudden dizziness threatened to overwhelm him. Reflexively, he retrieved his sword. G'fand moved to the edge of the bed. 'What - ?' But Ronin waved him wordlessly away. 'Out!' he managed to gasp.

  'But

  'Out!' he bellowed. And they stumbled through the reeking rooms out into the Corridor, raced along its curving length.

  They almost overran the familiar bulge of a Lift's doors, and heaving them apart they pitched inside, closing the doors behind them.

  In warm darkness they sat, panting, and listened to the soft silence as their pulses slowed and breath­ing returned to normal. It seemed like a long time.

  Presently Ronin heard G'fand stir.

  'I have that trapped feeling again, as if the walls are closing in on me. The Freehold is dying, it's all coming apart.' He shifted. 'How far Downshaft are we?'

  Ronin stood and moved his fingers over the Lift's control panel. He pressed a sphere and the doors opened, closed again. 'According to the Lift, the seventy-first Level. Perhaps we can take it all the way to the ninety-fifth.'

  'Is that all you can think of,' G'fand said accus­ingly, 'after all we have witnessed. The Lower Levels are going - the Workers murdering one another - total madness!'

  There was no response from Ronin. 'By the Chill, you are like ice,' G'fand said bitterly. 'Noth­ing affects you! We have just seen things that have

  wrenched my stomach. What flows through your veins? Surely not blood!'

  Ronin looked down at him, his colourless eyes barely discernible, and said, 'You are free, as you always were, to return Upshaft, to attempt even to reach the surface.'

  G'fand put his head down and would not meet Ronin's gaze. Their harsh breathing was all that could be heard for a while.

  When he was certain that G'fand would stay, he punched the sphere marked 'ninety-five'. It glowed and they commenced to sink rapidly and smoothly Downshaft. G'fand stood up. The Lift hummed. Ronin drew his dagger. The Lift sighed to a halt. The doors opened soundlessly.

  He had assumed that since no Lift they had been in went as far as the ninety-ninth Level, they would be obliged to take a Stairwell the rest of the way. He saw now that he had been mistaken.

  There was no Corridor. They stood instead upon a metal-grillwork scaffold arcing away from them on either side until it was lost to view in the haze.

  Space. Where the inner wall of the Corridor should have been was enormous space. Ronin had never seen so much open space. G'fand stared with his mouth partly open.

  They moved slowly to the low metal railing that ran around the inner edge of the scaffolding. And looked down.

  Immense geometric shapes, some simple, others extremely complex, all stupefying in size, studded

  the vast gallery below them. And now Ronin knew why the Lifts descended only as far as the ninety-fifth Level. They were peering down into an area four Levels high. Perhaps the sides of the gallery themselves were Machines. The life of the Freehold, he thought. Without these we die.

  A deep humming filled the air, permeating it so that it seemed to flutter before their eyes. Soft blue haze hung in the air, trembling minutely. Light came from an unidentifiable source, lost some­where above them. It was very warm, and a sharp, pungent smell, not at all disagreeable, floated on the air. Over the droning of the Machines they could just make out, now and then, the faint chatter of voices. Oddly, the sound heartened them.

  They began to walk along the scaffold and at length they came upon a square opening cut into the outer edge abutting the sheer wall. Ronin looked down. A vertical ladder stretched away into the haze. It appeared clear. They descended, Ronin holding the dagger in his mouth, teeth locked on the hilt. As they went, they passed other scaffolds at regular intervals. They were deserted. He counted seven before they reached the floor of the gallery.

  The thrumming was more insistent here, seep­ing up through the soles of their boots into their legs. The close air smelled of artificial heat and what Ronin knew to be lubricant. He had smelled it enough on Neers. The Machines rose all about them, a lush humid forest, strange and compelling. The light was dimmer, the blue haze thicker.

  Off to their left, three Neers stood debating, their voices smeared by the background sounds. The air hung like sheets.

  They hunkered down by the purring side of a Machine, aware of its warmth, and Ronin unfolded the crude map the Magic Man had drawn for him. G'fand ate several mouthfuls of food while Ronin studied the piece of fabric.

  The trouble was that the map had been drawn assuming that they had come to the ninety-ninth Level via the designated Lift, the one that had failed. Although he knew in which direction they had gone on the seventy-first Level, he had only a rough idea of the distance they had travelled before coming upon the second Lift. The map covered very little of the geography of the ninety-ninth Level. He would have to estimate the difference in their position, a dangerous but necessary action.

  G'fand, still chewing, wiped a greasy hand across his mouth and rubbed it on his breeches. He swallowed. 'Do you know where we have to go?'

  Ronin pointed away from the group of gesticu­lating Neers. 'This way. No noise.'

  They slipped from Machine to Machine, the bulky shapes looming out of the haze to offer transitory shelter. He took them on a zigzag course out across the floor of the gallery.

  Rapidly the walls receded from their view, and G'fand, glancing up, fancied they were adrift in an ephemeral, forbidding world. He felt an odd dis­comfort without the security of walls about him.

  They had covered almost a kilometre and had begun to sweat profusely in the damp heat, when Ronin brought them to a halt. In the shadow of a squat Machine they stood very still and listened to the voices just ahead of them.

  'This is leading nowhere.'

  'Don't I know it! We've been here for over a Spell. Are you certain you checked the generator in Block Twelve?'

  'Checked and rechecked. If there is any connec­tion it is beyond me.'

  'Beyond all of us, I am afraid.'

  There came the sounds of metal against metal, a light scraping, and then a sigh.

  'I don't know. What if we tried the second Level with all the power on?'

  'Um, it might work at that. Just make sure - '

  The conversation receded as they crept away. Following their short detour around the Neers, they resumed their oblique course across the gallery.

  The huge circular Machine stood at the end of a broad area, wider than most of the spaces between the hulking shapes. They dared not approach it directly for fear of being detected either by Neers or by daggam.

  They moved cautiously along a narrow aisle parallel to the one leading to the Machine. The heat increased and they had to will themselves not to pant. They were obliged to stop twice to let Security patrols pass them on perpendicular but intersecting routes. Each time Ronin waited long minutes after they had passed before proceeding. Once they almost ran into the back of a daggam who stepped out into their aisle, and they shrank back into the shadows, waiting breathlessly until he moved away.

  Crouching low, they made their way, skirting the Machine, until, having seen it from all sides, Ronin judged the way to be clear. Once more he consulted the map, to be certain that they approached it from the right direction. They moved towards it.

  It cast its own long shadow, the promise of a haven, a towering structure of incomprehensible function, wider at the bottom than the top, all sharp angles and crenellations. Lights flashed along its summit, smoky in the haze. It seemed to be vibrationless.

  They paused in the meagre shadow of a small Machine, about to make the final approach. Ronin held them there. It did not feel right. They sweated.

  Three daggam converged on the Machine that was their goal. Their conversation dissipated on the active air. Presently, they split up, went out of his sight. Still he waited-

  A black cloud bloomed to their left, the way they had come. A crash filled the air and they felt the floor tremble slightly beneath them. They heard the sound of running feet. They ventured a look. The cloud had ballooned out, staining the haze. Lemon flame licked below it.

  'What happened?' G'fand whispered.

  Ronin smiled thinly. 'I believe the two Neers we passed knew less about that Machine than they thought.' He saw daggam running towards the fire, and touched G'fand.

  They dashed across the open area and into the shadow of the towering Machine marked on the Magic Man's map. Ronin put a palm flat against the metal side. It was still. Perhaps it was the structure's quiescence that had led Korabb to begin her clandestine exploration. They moved along the side.

  It did not look like an entrance but then it did not look like much of anything save a wall of metal. There was a wheel to turn, it was that simple. Ronin turned it withershins as far as it would go. A disc approximately a metre and a half wide was now raised from the surface of the Machine. They grasped the right edge of the ellipse and pulled. An opening yawned before them.

  Without hesitation Ronin stepped in; G'fand followed. As soon as they were across the thresh­old, the oval closed of its own accord.

  They were in impenetrable blackness.

  A vertiginous sense of space, echoing minutely. Silence, almost. A damp rich smell. Far away, a sound: persistent but so very distant that it was indefinable: a kind of seething.

  G'fand fumbled out his tinder box, and lit a torch he produced from his belt.

  An oval tunnel danced before them, black with age. Underfoot the floor sloped gently down­ward. They went down into the dark and pres­ently they began to feel a chill breeze on their faces and G'fand was obliged to protect the now-whipping flame from extinguishing. Beads of moisture clung to the walls and fairly soon they encountered cones of what appeared to be ice growing down out of the ceiling. Some were mottled grey but others contained streaks of orange and light green, magenta and deep blue. They became more numerous until Ronin and G'fand had the discomforting sensation of being turned upside down, as if they were walking on the ceiling instead of on the floor.

 

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