Part 12 (1/2)

'Perhaps we can go over it,' the Shaker said. 'There seems to be some four or five feet clearance from its side to the ceiling.'

Richter ordered Tuk to scale the cab and scout the way ahead, to ascertain whether or not it was worth the trouble of getting the entire party onto the tilted side of the huge vehicle. Tuk, still holding the long, tar-tipped length of kindling which served as a torch, grasped one of the great wheels, stood on another of them, and swung up. There were repairman's rails all along the train, and he had no trouble reaching the relatively level side of the canted machine. He started off, hunched over to protect bis head from the ceiling, and soon was gone from sight, the faint glow of his torch swallowed by the darkness ahead.

'How is the boy?' Richter asked.

'Still unconscious, and turning black from the ankle down. It looks bad.'

'The other?'

'Mace?'

'Yes, him. We would all be dead earlier than now if he had not been with us.'

'He will hold up, I think,' the Shaker said. He looked at the giant where he sat next to Gregor, tending the boy, though there was little that he could do. 'Though I can't be sure. I know that he would never succ.u.mb to physical exhaustion. Strain and effort mean nothing to him. But I've never seen him this emotionally weary. I had not realized, to be truthful, that he was capable of such deep feelings toward anyone.'

'We learn new things about each other on this journey,' Richter said. 'For instance, I learned that you have more stamina in your frail body than any man could sanely guess.'

The Shaker paused, thinking about that, as if it had not occurred to him how much punishment he had dealt to his frame. Then he nodded. 'And I have discovered that you are more than a flawless officer and a wise man. As with the General's woman, you are capable of indiscretions, like any man. Let me tell you, Solvon, I actualy rested far easier when I learned, that night in the mountains, that you had given the world a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child. Until then, you had seemed too perfect, too cool, too utterly collected and on top of things. I thought you were either one of our a.s.sa.s.sins, or perhaps such a rigid disciplinarian that you would be useless when we reached the city that was our goal.'

'How could my being a rigid disciplinarian affect my command in the city?' the officer asked. He had not taken umbrage at anything the magician had told him.

'We will be coming face to face with things that none of us can hope to envision, wonders stacked upon wonders. If you had no weaknesses, no human streak within you, if you were nothing but the traditionalist I thought you to be at first, you would not be able to cope with such a store of marvels. You would be unable to accept the alien and the unexplainable, and you would lead us to destruction. But inside that sh.e.l.l of serenity, old man, beats a heart like mine.'

'Ho, there!' Tuk called from the top of the train, peer ing over the edge at them.

Richter shook his head, as if to throw out the mood which had settled over him and the Shaker. 'What is it, Tuk?

The way ahead is blocked. Two cars shredded open in the crash, and huge f.l.a.n.g.es of rolled metal tore up and gouged into the ceiling. I managed, only with difficulty, to get around the first, then saw the second only ten feet further on, sealing the way even more tightly than the first.'

Then must we go back?' Richter asked.

'We cannot,' Shaker Sandow said. 'Once the fields have burned, once the ashes have cooled, they will be scouting for our bones. When they do not find them, they'll discover the foundations of the buildings, the entrance to the tunnel, and they will be upon us.'

'No need for going back,' Tuk interrupted. 'If we can get the men up here, we can enter the train through the cab. The side door here has twisted loose and could be snapped open, I believe. Once inside, we could make our way through the train, from car to cat, until we can let ourselves out at the end,'

'Good work, Tuk, you red-haired devil! You have more wits about you when there are not women about!'

Tuk chuckled and blushed while the men on the floor of the tunnel laughed aloud. Apparently, the Shaker thought, our flame-headed Tuk is known for his bedroom manner.

And suddenly, he felt a deep, stirring pang of remorse that he had not gotten to know all these men better than he had. Each had a personality, a life of his own. Each was more than a Banibaleer in the service of General Dark, each as complicated as Mace or as Gregor. To have gone through so much and to have learned so little -that seemed like the worst crime of all. But in the quiet of the city-if they could take it-perhaps he could remedy this oversight and know all those who had pa.s.sed through h.e.l.l with him.

In fifteen minutes, they were all inside the train. The men in the lead were forced to scatter the bones of the dead out of their way, for all the cars had been packed with pa.s.sengers when the crash had come, pa.s.sengers who had long ago not given up the spirit but the flesh as well. The way was not easy, for they were forced to walk on the side wall of the cars which had been crumpled against the bottom of the tunnel. When they reached the connecting doorways between the cars, they had to wrestle over the wall, defying gravity, and pull themselves through where they fell down to the 'floor' of the next compartment.

Still, in less than an hour, they had gained the final car, had swung out of that last door to the slimy stones of the damp tunnel floor. They stood in the wash of an eerie blue light which emanated from the end of the tube, a circle of it that gave view of a terminal of sorts two hundred feet farther along.

The stretcher was brought down last, and everyone turned for the few feet remaining in this long and tiring journey. No one could know what might lie ahead but at least it would be a form of sanctuary from the land which had taken such a heavy toll of their numbers.

'Commander!' Tuk called. 'There by the light, along the side of the tunnel!'

Even as he spoke, the half dozen apelike creatures stepped into the open. They were more than seven feet tall, coated in a stringy hair which looked blue in that strange light. Their eyes were green, like new leaves, and they sparkled in the gloom as if there were candles behind them, set inside the mammoth skulls.

Every man drew his dagger, and the archers moved quickly to string their bows and to draw arrows forth from the meager quivers they had brought with them.

Tuk went down, gurgling, and stopped making noise altogether.

There had not been a sound.

And now, the Shaker could see, there were other men lying on the floor, motionless.

Ahead, the creatures were holding long, vicious-looking guns, and were slowly fanning the barrels across the group.

Richter crashed to the floor, groaned, sighed, chuckled absurdly, and was gone.

'Shaker! Quickly!' It was Mace, trying to whisk the magician up in one arm while he used the other to hold young Gregor. 'To the train again, where they-'

He got a strange look on his face. He reached to his chest and plucked out what seemed to be an overlarge needle which had penetrated his clothes and had p.r.i.c.ked no more than half an inch into his skin. He held the needle up to the light where it glinted, looked at it curiously. His large eyes blinked, and he was asleep on his feet. He fell against the Shaker, knocked the old man to the floor and followed him down.

Sandow managed to extricate himself from the tangle of legs and started to stand.

Around him, every other Banibaleer was on the floor. Dead? Dead. Somehow, he didn't think creatures like those apes would play any but the most serious of games.

Something grunted in surprise behind him, and he whirled to see one of the brutish creatures no more than ten feet away. It had seen everyone down and obviously expected everyone to stay there. It raised the weapon it carried, pulled the trigger.

Up close, like this, Sandow could hear what little noise the gun made. It was like air hissing between a man's teeth in the sign of anger.

Nothing more.

Then he was bitten by half a dozen needles, and he went down on the floor with his comrades where darkness took him to its bosom!

22.

The eldest of the white-furred creatures was named Berlarak, and he sat now in a chair too small for him, holding a gla.s.s too ridiculously tiny to have been designed for his hands. He was attempting to make Shaker Sandow and Commander Richter feel more at ease. His voice was too thundering, too powerful, too gruff to set a man totally at peace, however. And the sight of that wizened, large-mouthed face peering from the fringe of white fur that encircled it-a human face and yet not a human face-contributed to a sense of unreality and of danger. Danger lay in anything one could not be sure of, and even the Shaker-more eager than most to accept the unknown-did not feel at ease with the towering apelike men.

'It was necessary that we shoot you first and question later,' the creature said. 'We could not know for certain whether or not you were with those who command the levels above this one.'

'I a.s.sure you that we aren't-' Commander Richter began.

Berlarak held up a huge hand for silence. 'As I have said, we know exactly what your intentions were. We know who each of you is and everything that has happened to you on your way here.'

'The scanner which you mentioned-it told you all of this?' Sandow asked. Only now was he beginning to a.s.similate what few things the white creature had told him in the first moments of his revival.