Part 6 (2/2)
SURVIVE! HATE! SURVIVE!.
It coursed through his veins, a vaporising mercurial pressure.
ACTION! REACTION! ACTION! REACTION! ACT!.
Faster. Faster. Aurical, ventrical artery, vein, nerve, nose, knee. It pounded in his ears like a drop-hammer forging some cosmological crankshaft.
TOOTH! NAIL! WILL! SPITE! HATE! FIGHT!.
He was lost, drowned in the furious frenzy, engulfed in the widening tide of naked vengeance, floundering in the hideous incandescent sea whose pulse was the terrible will to live.
ACTION! REACTION! ACTION! REACTION!.
His body convulsed on the web, and the web pulsed and whimpered in response. He refused to die! He seized the power and mastered it. He was G.o.d, no, not G.o.d - Nemesis perhaps. He was bitter scorn, fighting fury, terrible revenge, irresistible force, absolute crus.h.i.+ng evil. He was Dalroi! He had the power to smash the universe.
HATE! HATE! HATE!.
He took hold of the web in solemn fury and burst the strands asunder. He tore loose the mocking nucleus and hurled the discus far over the seething plain. With a surge of superhuman malice he gathered the broken ends of the heavy strands and pulled, distorting the alien geometry, twisting the configuration of the once-stable dimension into something which teetered on the brink of self-destruction. Then he rose up, and by sheer indomitable force, he smashed the dimension back into the miniscule quanta of energy from which all things are made.
Transfinity shuddered. Strange new nebulae leaped into existence, and others paled and wereextinguished. Like the ripple of a depth-charge in a lake, the eddying tide of disturbance spread outward from the centre, carrying a wash that was felt even at the furthest ends of infinity and rebounded in complex criss-cross patterns of subtle rise and fall among the strange continua.
And through the flotsam of discontinued strata there floated the body of a man cursing in curious colours and complex harmonies; a thing of power, dreadful yet afraid of the strange new galleries of knowledge which had opened in his mind.
Somebody destroyed the Consedo International bank. There were several theories as to how this was achieved, but none one hundredth as ingenious as the fact. Consedo, subsidiary of Failway Holdings, was not the sort of place that one destroyed out of hand. But then, this was no ordinary disaster.
The thunder split the heavy darkness of the old town with a bruising shock that shattered windows for a two-mile radius and crumpled a street of slum houses on the river's bank. The steel and molybdenum caves of Consedo had tried to contain a star. The blinding blast of energy, which originated in a private safe-deposit box far down in the grim, grey vaults, opened the skysc.r.a.per building from top to bottom like a hatchet through a toothpaste tube. Thousands upon thousands of tons of the finest ferro-concrete shattered and peeled in banana-like submission to fall in a calamitous avalanche across the neighbouring streets and buildings.
But that was only the beginning. Deep under the earth the terrible fire still raged. A mere nutsh.e.l.l of star-stuff, its heat was more than sufficient to turn the alloy-steel jungle into sparkling rivulets of molten metal. The night sky flared with reflected light as girders and crumbling masonry spattered into the h.e.l.lish pool. The deep vaults were linked under the road and under the foundations of neighbouring buildings, and these too began to crumble and smoke and finally collapse. Down came walls and pavements, pillars, shop-fronts, cars and roofs in a grinding cascade of steel, wood, gla.s.s and concrete, intermixed with crackling fire; all sliding with tantalising slowness into the widening h.e.l.l-pit which once was Consedo.
On the edge of the uproar the fire and rescue teams stood in impotent horror watching the crumbling wastes with a helplessness as psychological as it was actual. Nothing like this had ever occurred before.
The shattered gla.s.s had torn the curtains into shreds and ploughed great furrows across the desk top.
The gaunt oak panels were peppered with gla.s.sy spines, and the tri-di murals had imploded to reveal their shattered mysteries. As he rose from the floor, handkerchief blood-red through stopping the cut above his eyes, Cronstadt's face was ashen not so much from his narrow escape as from the implications of the angry blow-hole seven blocks away.
”G.o.d! What was that?” he asked.
His companion was still absorbing the shock and moved to the shattered window frames to stare stupidly at the enigmatic chaos. There were no lights, for the power had died with the first shattering blast, but the flicker and flare of the ruins of what minutes ago had seemed indestructible lit the room with a radiance like a foretaste of h.e.l.l. For several minutes then neither spoke, not trusting their voices to conceal the hysteria.
”Dalroi?” asked Cronstadt, at last voicing the unspoken question.
”Dalroi's dead,” said Hildebrand. ”They fired him into transfinity, unprotected. Of all the possible methods of execution, they used the only one which stood any chance of success.”
”I know,” said Cronstadt, ”but what if even we have underrated Dalroi's potential. Suppose not even that could kill him?””I don't want to think about it. Transfinite s.p.a.ce is a h.e.l.l to end all h.e.l.ls. a.s.suming that physical survival was possible, which it isn't, the psychological impact alone would burn out the brain. Even if he survived, there still isn't any way back.”
”We can't be sure,” said Cronstadt. ”Surely the return of Dalroi is less improbable than the chances of Consedo breaking into an unprovoked chain-reaction? In one fabulous micro-second Failway has lost perhaps one tenth of its hold on the commercial world. That is a coincidence which can't be overlooked.”
Hildebrand gripped the sill with such pressure that white showed through the flesh of his knuckles.
”You're right, of course. But in this way ... Lord! ... what did he use? Consedo fell like a pack of playing cards and burns like a Roman-candle. A piece of the sun in a paper bag would have the same effect.”
There was a knock on the door. Cronstadt opened it with difficulty, kicking the misplaced jamb savagely to release the reluctant wood.
”Parcel for you, Mr. Cronstadt. Delivered by special messenger.”
Cronstadt took the parcel from the watchman, with a frown. Wrapped in the paper was a case of wood.
It was very cold to the touch. Inside a thick layer of thermal insulating fibre cradled a small black orb. He examined it curiously, without touching it, puzzled by the wrongness in the way the sphere accepted light and absorbed it complete without reflection. It absorbed heat, too, and wisps of cool vapour from the air formed inside the open box.
”What the devil?” asked Cronstadt.
Hildebrand looked up, his eyes suddenly filled with hideous comprehension.
”Run!” he said. ”Run for your b.l.o.o.d.y life!”
Cronstadt did not wait for explanations, fear scrabbled with grasping fingers at the back of his skull, and controlled panic threw his feet down known corridors to the nearest emergency exit. Suddenly he too had divined the purpose of the uninvited parcel and he had a rough idea of the nature of the gift and its potency. They were fortunate. They were two blocks away when the headquarters of the Cronstadt Steel Corporation split wide and joined Consedo as a second flaming warning of the vengeful power that walked the land in anger. Dalroi was certainly back.
For a few minutes the two men stood sweating on the roadside, unable to speak. Around them confusion seethed and boiled as the fire and rescue teams redeployed their inadequate equipment and found new locations from which to stare stupidly at the new holocaust which had struck out of the night. Police strove to cordon-off roads and alleys in the area to stem the tides of the curious, who, twice shaken from their beds, flocked to the area in excited crowds. Where the tall towers of Cronstadt Steel had been, a new waste of boiling slag was rising.
”Fiends in h.e.l.l!” Cronstadt said. ”We should have expected something like this. When you twist the Devil's tail ... ”
Hildebrand was watching the surging crowd uneasily.
”Let's get out of here. I think we're being watched.”
”Dalroi?”
”Not Dalroi. Somebody else.”They began to walk. Dark figures, moving out of the leaping shadows, purposefully closed in. In the comparative darkness of a canyon, where tall commercial buildings raked the red-flushed sky, the net closed down. With dark hoods, shadowed faces, incredible precision and timing, the Black Knights pounced.
ELEVEN.
The night was wild and black as pitch. A strong wind sweeping up-river in driving gusts beat the rain against the signal cabin like buckets of grape-shot, and the tide of water sweeping the windows made direct observation impossible. The Yard-master at Failway goods-yard was having a bad night. Goods traffic pouring into the hungry maw of Failway was steadily increasing. Several special-goods had already been diverted into sidings to await clearance of the sheds, and an intolerable line of empty wagons was waiting the return of one of the seven diesels working the yard. With visibility at times down to twenty yards, the stage was all set for chaos.
Failway yard had long since outgrown its original s.p.a.ce allocation and now sprawled crazy sections and branches back across the busy main lines where the great expresses touched two-hundred on the iron road to the sea. It was difficult enough to marshal the busy and complex yard with good visibility; this particular night, with the squalling rain and the wind howling like a hundred banshees, the Yard-master could scarcely detect an engine whistle or see the nearer signals. He was forced to rely on repeaters and the illuminated track-circuit diagram which included only the older sections of the yard. The situation was rapidly slipping beyond him.
The pressures applied by Failway to get more goods and a faster turnaround had forced the Failway authorities to throw overboard the elements of good practice and inst.i.tute many hasty improvisations which were not interlocked to the main system. The Yard-master was sweating, not from the cold humidity, but from the anxiety-stress of the work he was trying to perform; painfully aware that the crawling traces of coloured light across his board represented in actuality the lives of men and the fate of hundreds of tons of moving steel and goods drawn by the tall diesels across a sea of dark and mud.
The empty wagons were still piling up below the hump, and there was danger of a complete stoppage unless they were cleared immediately. At midnight he opened up the radio and called the nearest diesel shunter.
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