If I had foreseen ill will, I was correct, but it was not aimed toward me. Rather the Vulsteen took the blame for the death, and in the breens’ words I heard an echo of my earlier sentiments: that these our slavers were cowards, living through the deaths of others the lives that they could no longer feel for themselves. I heard the words of these man-made predators, and looking at their claws and teeth I wondered if my plan was so very clever after all. My sympathies were hardly with the Vulsteen—I have always despised those who force their will upon others—but with Timash, and Marella and Harros: If I unleashed this force of nature and used it to topple our captors, would we be pulled down as well?
The ceremony was short, befitting a people who had never been meant to know humanity, let alone been allowed to experience it freely. When it was over, I went to Uncle Sam and told him what I had planned: Several breen would form a pyramid against the wall of the pit. The others could climb over them out of the pit. There were no guards; I was astonished that no one had thought of it before.
He turned me down.
“It will not work,” he mumbled, turning away from me. I looked to the others around him for help, but none would meet my gaze.
“There’s nothing above for us,” one said morosely. “At least here we are alive.”
“And as far as they were concerned, that was the end of it.”
“They weren’t even willing to try?” Timash’s youthful world view could conceive of no more bewildering possibility.
“Maybe we could do it ourselves?” Harros suggested. “The walls are about twenty feet high; between the four of us we could get that high.”
“I don’t know.” I hesitated. “None of us has ever done this before, and if we don’t get it right the first time, somebody could get hurt.”
“Hurt?” Harros echoed. “As opposed to what?”
His point was well taken. “All right. Timash, you’re on the bottom, then Harros, then me. Marella, how are you at climbing?”
“Terrible.” Marella had listened intently throughout, but now she slumped down and turned her face to the wall. “Uncle Sam’s right. It’ll never work.” She picked at the dirt with her finger. “And even if we get to the top and get out of here, the bloodbats’ll be on us before we get two blocks—if the thunder lizards don’t eat us first.”
A chill ran through me. In prison, despair passes from person to person like a disease: If it could infect Marella, how long did the rest of us have?
I took her face in my hands as I would a child. She did not resist my touch.
“Marella,” I said. “Remember how we found you. You were alone, fighting for your life in a room full of Vulsteen. You weren’t afraid, you were angry. What has changed? This is our chance! You aren’t alone anymore.”
There was no response, not even an angry shrug or a declaration of her right to be left alone. My words washed over her and fell away like waves from a rock.
“Let me try,” Harros suggested. “We’ve been—spending a lot of time together.” He hunched down next to the girl, speaking in whispers. After several moments he stood again with a deep sigh. “That’s not the same woman we met a few days ago,” he stated with certainty. “That’s not even the same woman who went into the arena with us.”
“What do you mean?” Timash demanded.
“He means the Vulsteen have been using their ray on us,” I guessed.
Harros nodded. “That’s why the breen have never tried to break out before. It’s on all the time. It keeps them in line, except when they’re in the arena. Then the effects are reversed for the show.”
“So why aren’t we affected?”
“Marella is a woman,” I pointed out. “Their emotions are more easily manipulated than ours.”
Harros stared at me. “What century are you from? But the question is, can we get out of here without her help? If we can find a rope, we could come back and rescue her whether she likes it or not.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said. “We can’t leave the breen here to be enslaved—and the next poor devil who wanders in here will be thrown to the same fate.”
Harros stared at me in astonishment. “We’re not even out of the pit and you want to overthrow the Vulsteen and free the slaves? Let’s get ourselves free and get out of here.”
My face was getting hot and I was on the verge of doing something which might have jeopardized all our chances for freedom when Timash placed a leathery hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve got a solution. It’s going to take all of us to climb out of the pit. After that, each man is on his own. I’m sticking with Keryl. If you want to take Marella out and try to fight your way past the thunder lizards alone, be my guest. But if we can help the breen, then I’m willing to bet they’ll help us. And if it doesn’t work, we’re no worse off than we are right now.”
There is something about a reasonable compromise, which, when suggested by a full-grown gorilla, is well-nigh irresistible.
As our escape was problematical if we could not first leave the pit, we resolved to find out just how difficult that would prove. To this end, Timash stationed himself next to the wall. With our help, Harros hoisted himself onto Timash’s broad shoulders. That part was easily enough accomplished, but the next was not.
We soon discovered that climbing a ladder composed entirely of other men is even less simple than anticipated. Merely gaining Timash’s shoulders required a helping hand, and once there I had precious little to hold onto, never mind finding placement for my feet: Timash made no secret of his preference that I not use his head for a stepping stone. After I shed my boots and tried climbing in my bare feet (at his suggestion), I found purchase more readily, but had we not chosen a spot in the marshy, debris-cluttered end of the pit for our trials, they would have ended far sooner with much less happy results. Timash might have been the one holding up the weight, but it was I who took the tumbles.
Finally Harros suggested that Timash stand a bit away from the wall, allowing the two of them to lean in, partly resting their weight on the wall and giving me a more gradual climb. What we lost in height we gained in stability, and it was not long before I was relatively steady atop Harros’ shoulders.
I was also a good three feet short of the top.
I reported my situation, and heard Timash groan.
“Come down then. You guys are gonna break me.”
I started to obey, glancing down to check my landing, when something caught my eye. Just about waist level there was a crack in the wall. Crouching, I bade my companions hold on a bit longer.
“If I can get my baton in there, I can use it as a step. From there I should be able to reach the top.” It was slow going, every moment stretched by the knowledge of what Harros and Timash were going through, holding me up. The blunt end of the rod made a poor pick, so I extended the sword. It was even more clumsy, but at least it boasted a point.
“Can we stop for a while?” Timash pleaded. “You guys are crushing me.”
“Almost there,” I hissed, and I was not lying. Digging frantically I cleared a narrow space that I thought would serve. Retracting the sword I jabbed the baton home, holding on with both hands while I tested its hold.
That hold was all that saved me when my living ladder suddenly vanished and I found myself dangling fifteen feet above the floor!
Chapter 31
Battle in the Control Room
I sensed more than heard the Vulsteen stop short of the edge of the pit only inches above my head. The strain of sudden weight tore at my shoulders, but I bit back my hiss at the burning pain and concentrated on keeping my body pressed against the wall. If he saw me, there would be nothing I could do to prevent his summoning aid and confiscating my baton by force. His foot scraped the ground as he stepped closer.
Suddenly he cried out and backed away. I couldn’t see what had startled him; I could only presume he had spied me hanging there and was calling for help—but after his initial outcry, nothing. After a few momen
ts, I felt Harros rising up beneath me, his shoulders finding their way under my feet and relieving the awful strain.
“What happened?”
“He was about to see you. Timash threw a handful of garbage in his face.”
“And it was sticky garbage, too,” floated up a comment from far below. Timash sounded a bit put out by the sacrifices demanded by his own quick-thinking action. I had a feeling that I had not heard the last of this.
Taking the path of Isaac Newton, I was able to reach the lip of the pit by standing on the shoulders of giants (and my baton). I stretched out on the edge and reached down for it. Harros was trying to hoist himself up to use it as I had.
“It won’t work,” I warned him urgently. “There’s nothing else for you to hang on to.”
“I can do it,” he panted. “I know I can.”
“It won’t work,” I repeated. “Timash might do it, but you can’t lift him. Give it to me—that Vulsteen might return at any moment!”
“Give him the baton!” Timash growled, and caught between a rock and a hard place, Harros pulled the baton out of the wall and stretched until it touched my outstretched fingers. I grasped it and climbed to my feet.
The corridor was deserted for the moment; as soon as I was far enough from the pit I reached into my pocket and withdrew the Library.
“It is good to see you again, sir,” the Librarian said as he materialized beside me.
“You, too,” I answered, and as I said it I realized it was more than simply an automatic response. The Librarian had been programmed to resemble men I had known, and I could not help but like him.
“You realize, of course, that if you deactivate the emotional sequencer, the breen may revert back to their natural state. In that case, Timash, Harros, and Marella will have no chance.”
“I know. But if they were going to revert without help, the Vulsteen wouldn’t have wasted the energy preparing them to fight in the arena.”
The Librarian nodded. “Still, they are a fractious species, and the wrong word could set them off. Even if you are correct, it would be a mistake to leave the others in a confined space with them for long.”
“Exactly. So—do you know where the control room is for the machine in the slave pit?”
“No, I do not. But I noticed when they brought you back from the arena, they used a different route than when they took you there. And each time the path was unnecessarily torturous. I have extrapolated a more direct route that lies between the two you took. It may be that only one control room directs both the arena and the slave pit emotion projectors…”
“And if that’s the case, it’s probably smack between the two.” The Librarian was a dear man, but sometimes he took the longer route himself. “Which tunnel?” He indicated his best guess, and I followed it. To avoid being seen, he vanished, leaving me alone once more. I drew my sword and hugged the wall.
The guard gave it away. I had covered more than half of the distance I estimated lay between the pit and the arena, seeing no one—I had fortuitously chosen a Vulsteen sleep period; most were in their chambers—when I chanced upon a man standing before a door some way ahead. Casual loiterers being rare in these tunnels, I marked him as a sentry.
The Vulsteen would have done better to leave well enough alone; had they never posted a guard, I would have tried the door, been stopped by the lock, and moved on. But his presence was a lighted signpost.
Men without emotions make very poor sentries: They lack fear, nervousness, caution…all emotions that would have caused a normal man, upon being confronted with an unknown person in a restricted area in a forbidden city, to call for assistance. Having none of those survival factors, this sentry did not, even when the Librarian suddenly appeared in the corridor, and refused to advance when so ordered. So the guard left his post to intercept the intruder.
Eventually he returned—at which point I left him lying senseless in the control room, after letting myself in with the key he so thoughtfully provided. The Vulsteen's lack of experience in security matters was about to cost them dearly.
The room was entirely filled with machinery vital to the Vulsteen—or so the Librarian told me as I was about to place the library sphere into one of the universal access indentations on the control panel for the air ducting system. He directed me to another panel, plain but for four blinking blue lights and an access indentation, across the room. I reached for it…
Concomitant with the disadvantages of totally emotionless guards is the advantage that when they awaken, they do not let loose with outraged screams that alert the intruder who previously rendered them unconscious that such a state of affairs no longer exists. In other words, when the guard I had knocked out woke up, he smartly slapped the Library from my hand before I could place it in the interface.
Perhaps he was still groggy, in that he did not simply club me over the head and take possession of both saboteur and sabotage equipment at the same time. But even so, I barely scrambled out of his way across the slick floor before he flung his net and nearly entangled my still-numbed hand.
I had been holding the Library with my right hand, the same with which I usually held my sword, but for that moment I had transferred the sword to my left hand, and now it was with that hand that I was forced to defend myself. I moved in close to seize his net with my aching right hand and use my sword as a long knife, but he flicked the net at my eyes and blinded me for a second. I thrust regardless, and he swept my blade out of the way with his club, but at least I delayed his charge until my vision returned.
The Library had rolled into a corner beyond anyone’s reach. We circled the room in silence. I could not reach the control bank, and he could not summon help lest I carry out what I had come to do.
My breath was coming short and fast; time was on his side, and the moment one of his fellows happened upon us, I was finished. He knew it, but where a normal man might have smiled at my predicament, or given some sign of his nervousness, the Vulsteen’s face was an expressionless mask. No excitement pulsed through his veins; no fear made his heart pump harder. I looked at his skeletal visage and wasted limbs and all I saw was a breathing mechanical man.
And then, with the seeming rashness that had more than once saved me, I jumped back, my fingers dancing on the invisible control buttons of my sword hilt. Had I consciously thought about it, I could not have effected my weapon’s metamorphosis before my foe was upon me, but my hands had a life of their own and I was holding a stout staff in place of my sharp blade before he could close with me.
I charged into him, my staff pitched straight out like a lance. He tangled it in his net, drawing it to the side and rendering me helpless—until I let go the staff, its weight dragging his net aside. He tried to bring his club to bear and I seized it in one hand before he could summon up any momentum. In a mob against lone Thorans, the Vulsteen were dangerous predators; one on one against me, he had the strength of a palsy victim. I wrenched his club from his grip as I would from an unruly child. True to his nature, he showed no emotion whatsoever right up to the moment I slammed his face into the wall.
Moving quickly, I gathered up the Library from the corner where it lay.
“Are you all right?”
“You needn’t worry about me,” the little sphere whispered pedantically. “I am thoroughly laced with plastimetallic alloys and I have no moving parts. Place me in the access pit directly to your left.”
I did so without any fear that my actions would be interrupted a second time. As far as I could tell, nothing happened. Then the Library spoke again.
“I have isolated the subprogram that controls the emotion sequencer. I can turn it off at any time, but I would advise you to remove your friends from the pit first.”
“Can you change the settings? Perhaps we can use the Vulsteen’s machine against them.”
“I’m sorry, no. I am basically an advanced database. In light of your situation, the main Library programmed some—additional—capabilities, but that
one is beyond me. I can turn the machine on and off, but I have not the analytical superroutines necessary to change its pre-set parameters.”
I hesitated, calculating how long it might take to find a rope, return to the pit, and haul my friends out—assuming that I ran into no further Vulsteen on the way. I instructed the Library to give me ten minutes’ grace, then deactivate the machine. I was well on my way back to Timash and the others when I realized that I might not have a chance to return to the control room.
Without the Library I was trapped in this century, but without my friends I would be unworthy of living in any event. I take pride in the knowledge that I hesitated hardly a moment before continuing on toward the pit—notwithstanding that my heart was racing back to the control room to retrieve my only guide to my slim chance of returning home.
Whither the Vulsteen might keep a rope or a ladder I knew not, but common sense dictated that they did not carry them around, and common sense, it seemed, had survived the past million years. Taking a stout cord from its hanger out of reach of the pit, I quickly lowered it.
Harros was the first to try and his weight nearly pulled me back in and dashed all our plans.
“There’s nothing here to lash the rope to,” I reported hastily. “Marella is the lightest; send her up and she can help me hold on while you climb up.”
“She won’t go,” Timash hissed back. “She’s still under their influence.”
“Well, she won’t be for long—and neither will the breen. I fixed the machine to turn itself off in a few minutes, and then it’s going to get crowded down there.”
Timash’s eyes got very wide. “You turned off the machine?”
“In a few minutes. I—”
Timash waited to hear no more. Backing up, he took a running start, leaped straight into the wall, and started clambering up without my help. Within seconds his paws appeared at the edge and he scrambled upright next to me.
The Stolen Future Box Set Page 22