Part 7 (1/2)

'Zito,' Richeter said, 'if he does not surrender his dagger to me in the next ten seconds, put an arrow in him.'

Crowler blanched, drew his knife and placed it in Richter's open palm.

The commander examined it briskly and returned it to the squat non-com. 'I'm sorry, Crowler. But we have a clue to the killer, and we aren't trusting anyone. And you were acting mighty suspicious there.'

Crowler sheathed the dagger. 'Only because I thought maybe you-maybe all of you were the killers!'

'Call the next man,' Richter said.

Gregor did the commander's bidding again and again, ushering one potential killer after another through the slit in the canvas where the ritual of the knife examination was repeated.

His name was Cartier, and he had been the last man on that seven-man team which had met with disaster on the first day of their climb. The commander had said that only a madman would have tried to kill the six men above him on a climbing situation like that. Cartier was not a madman, but he was not merely a man, either.

'May I see your dagger?' Richter asked, p.r.o.nouncing the words in a monotone by this time. Of the forty men who had been waiting on the windward side of the canvas, thirty-two had already been checked. By this time, Richter operated almost like an automaton. In all of them, despair had replaced tension. It was possible, of course, that the killer waited in those last eight to be checked, but doubtful. Instead, it seemed more likely- considering the craftiness of their adversaries-that he had somehow managed to slip by them. This despair was also evident in the commander's tone.

'My dagger?' Cartier asked. As with all the others, he did not know what would be asked him until the words had been spoken.

'Yes,' Richter said.

But Cartier made no move for it.

'That's an order,' Richter said.

'How am I to know that you're not all-'

'Zito,' the commander said. To Cartier, he said: 'If you do not surrender your dagger now, Zito will place an arrow in you to make certain you offer no resistance to Mace there.'

Cartier looked about himself, at Mace and at the Coedone who stared back at him with a coolly murderous look that belied the strength in the dark hands that held the bow and arrow. He seemed like a cornered rat, and he hissed between his teeth.

Richter stepped backward. 'You have nothing to fear if you aren't the killer. Just hand over your knife-'

In the instant, Cartier had the dagger in his hand and had leaped for the commander, snarling like some mad dog, his face expressionless but for the twisted sneer of his lips.

Zito's arrow tw.a.n.ged. It caught the a.s.sa.s.sin in the neck and sent him sprawling at Richter's feet, blood pumping out over the virgin white of the snow, spreading around the gagging, twisting corpse like a burial shroud.

Richter bent to the corpse, went to touch it, then drew back suddenly as snaking lengths of glistening wire rose through the clothes of the man. They waved in the breeze like the seeking lengths of cobras, bending toward the body warmth of the men close by, growing longer, dancing, singing in the slight breeze that washed them.

'What is this?' the Shaker asked, moving in to look. Behind him, the other men moved in as well, staring with fascination at the corpse that was not just a corpse.

'Be careful there!' Mace said, drawing the Shaker back. 'I think those wires would spear your flesh and make you into another of whatever this Cartier was.'

A murmur of agreement went through the ranks of the Banibaleers who looked on.

Mace kicked the body over with his booted foot, danced backward as the swaying wire tendrils grasped at his leather footwear and sought to breach it in its quest for flesh.

Wires sprouted from the front of the dead Cartier, just as they did from the back, thousands of them. He seemed to be a man covered with a wind-stirred mat of coppery fur.

His eyes were pulped and gone. Wires rose out of them.

His nostrils spewed forth curling lengths of s.h.i.+mmering metal which grew toward his lips like tiny streams of oddly colored blood.

In his mouth: copper.

His lips split open, and pieces of machinery, little tubes and gears, spilled out and down his chin.

Bits of gla.s.s glistened inside his throat which hung open to their view.

'Demons,' someone whispered.

'No,' the Shaker said, almost absent-mindedly. 'This is something from the Blank, a lost invention.'

'But I knew Cartier since childhood!' someone protested.

'And Oragonian spies reached him and used the science from gone days, from the Blank, and made him into whatever he is here.'

Cartier's face split open.

Desperately, the living machinery within him attempted to find another host.

There was no more blood.

The wires began to tangle with each other, snarled, weaved one another, collapsed, fizzing, dying!

Smoke rose from the corpse, as if the machinery had used his blood for oil and was now grating against itself without lubrication.

There was an angry noise as of bees swarming, then a strangled, ugly screech from Cartier's shattered throat as the inhuman machine tried to use his voicebox for some unknown purpose. Then the wires stopped moving and the smoke rose in a gush and the thing that had possessed him was finally dead beyond recall.

They stood for a while, watching the smoke blow away from the corpse, listening to the howl of the wind, unable to cope with what they had seen.

At last, it was Richter who turned the mood to one of determination. That is the sort of thing Oragonia would bring to bear upon the Darklands. If Jerry Matabain had his demonic way, your loved ones, your wives and children would be as those a.s.sa.s.sins which have stalked us: creations without souls, things more machine than man, with love and emotions gone from them and nothing but obedience to Jerry Matabain as their life's motivation!'

'No!' someone called, furious at such a thought. And it had worked, this call to patriotism and to love of family, to fear that lies in all men-fear of losing their individuality. Other men began grumbling, angry at the treachery set loose among them and dedicated, as never before, to reaching the east and the stores of Blank era machinery waiting there.

'But,' Richter said, 'we are not yet free of this curse. There is another such creature loose among us. Does anyone here remember who Cartier spent his time with? Did he have a buddy, a companion he seemed to share secrets with?'

The men talked among themselves, turned curious faces on each other, and in a few moments, the word came from several places at once, then was repeated everywhere: 'Zito-Zito-Zito. Zito. Zito. Zito. Yes, it was Zito. It was Zito he was with!'

The Coedone Gypsy stood where he had been, the bow in his hand. There had been but one arrow, and that was now embedded in the corpse of what had been Cartier.