The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

  He slipped down the shelf, gesturing his men on. Running silently, he came within a yard of a squire in green and gold; then halted and cleared his throat loudly. The squire, startled, looked back.

  “Ewyo!” he shrieked, whirling. “It’s the Mink!”

  “Come from Hell to slay you,” said Revel between his teeth, and dealt a blow with his pick that clove the gentryman from brow to breastbone. The line of men had swiveled, and now shots rang out; at such close range even their guns could not miss. Half a dozen rebels fell, screaming.

  And now the weary Revel was a brazen-throated fiend, brandishing his pick, roaring, scalping one and braining the next, destroying with fresh vigor dredged up from the pits of his free soul. For now he had a strange certainty that the gods were done, and if he died in this moment he died emancipated.

  Joy brought him strength such as he had never had. These squires, running off, loading their guns feverishly, firing, clubbing their weapons to stand and fight, what chance had they against him? He looked for Ewyo, but could not find him. Let him not be dead, he prayed. And then there was Rosk.

  Rosk, red of visage, narrow of jaw, bloody about the thin mean mouth, facing him over a thrust-out gun. Revel jumped aside, but Rosk did not fire, only following him with the musket muzzle. “Don’t bounce, Mink,” he grated. “Stand and look around you. Your men are falling faster than autumn leaves.”

  * * * *

  Revel glanced behind, and at that instant Rosk fired. It was a treacherous trick, and by poetic justice it was his last. The ancient gun, overheated by long use, could not take the overcharge of powder in the shell. It blew up, its barrel twisting into twin spirals of metal, its stock driving back into the guts of the squire, fragments of hot iron spraying his face and chest. Rosk had no time to howl, but went down like a lightning-struck birch. Revel felt the slug, or a piece of the shattered gun, burn along his cheek.

  What was one more wound atop the uncounted number he had? The Mink laughed, turning to his men.

  Of the thirty, Rack and Jerran and one other remained. Each was engaged with a squire, his two friends grappling without weapons, the miner swinging a pick against a clubbed gun. All the others were dead or dying. Ewyo must be dead somewhere in the valley, or else he had not been here at all.

  Revel hurried tiredly to the nearest combatants, let his pick go licking out over Jerran’s small shoulder, tore off half the head of the squire. Rack crowed triumphantly as he throttled his man. The miner had won his fight. They were finished.

  The four of them limped toward the hill of John’s machine.

  Then there came a pounding of hoofs on greensward behind them. Revel turned. It was a lone rider, galloping furiously down upon them. He saw, with an incredulous gasp, that it was Ewyo of Dolfya.

  “Go on,” he said urgently. “Leave me, comrades.”

  “You young fool,” barked Jerran. But he took Rack’s arm and pulled the giant forward, leaving Revel standing alone with his face toward Ewyo.

  The stallion was pulled up short, and Ewyo stared down at him. “I hoped I would get here in time,” he said.

  “You’re late. Your world is broken, Ewyo.” Revel realized as he said it that he was fatigued to the point of not giving a damn whether he lived or not. Still there was a yearning to fight this devil on horseback. “Shoot, Ewyo. I shall kill you all the same.”

  Ewyo raised his gun, hesitated, then said, “Is there only myself, then, and you, Mink, in all the world?”

  “In all the world, Ewyo.”

  “Will you give me a pick?”

  Revel started. “You are no miner. You can’t fight with a pickax.”

  “I can fight with anything I can hold.” He threw the gun on the grass. “Give me a pick,” he commanded, leaping from his nag.

  * * * *

  Revel stooped and took up the weapon of a dead man. It was a good pick, with a longer handle than the Mink’s own. He reached it out to Ewyo, holding it by the head, and the squire took it and stepped back a pace.

  “When you’re ready, Mink.”

  “Now, Ewyo.”

  They circled each other, warily watching the eyes and arms of the enemy. “Why didn’t you shoot me?” asked Revel in wonder.

  “Too unsporting,” growled the beefy squire, his pale eyes squinting with strain. “A gentleman doesn’t take advantages.”

  Revel laughed. It was too ridiculous a statement to merit an answer. He made a feint, Ewyo parried skillfully. Then the squire brought his pick down in a looping arc. His reach was as long as Revel’s, and the pick gave him an advantage. Revel jumped back, slashed sideways and missed. They circled.

  “The gods will win out,” grunted Ewyo.

  “Their day is done. We are aided by the Ancient Kingdom.”

  “Superstition! Things have always been as they are.”

  Slash, hack, parry and retreat. “Not as they are now, Squire Ewyo.”

  Ewyo dropped his guard, Revel came in to gut him. Too late he saw the trick, and Ewyo’s pick sliced across his shin, a shallow cut that nicked the bone. He jabbed with the flat of the blade, struck Ewyo in the chest, and jerking his pick sidewise and back, tore velvet coat and satin weskit and drew blood. Ewyo cried out.

  Revel summoned his strength and began a series of flashing swings, which Ewyo parried frantically, backing across the grass. Blood spurted from cheek and hand as the rebel’s deadly weapon glinted dully in blurred movement before the squire’s eyes.

  Then the squire rallied, and his power being greater than Revel’s now, if his skill were less, he drove the Mink back in turn.

  There came a blow that turned the pick in Revel’s hands, sending its point down to the side; Revel recovered, but the squire threw up his arm and brought down his blade with such force that the off-balance Mink could not turn it wholly. It sliced over his ribs, drove through the flesh of his hip.

  Pain so hideous as to make him dizzy and ill knifed the Mink. In that moment he knew if he did not make one superb effort he was done. Conquering agony, he swung up the pick before Ewyo could recover from the vicious downswing. With a noise like a rock hurled into a rotten melon, the pick tore through cloth and flesh to lodge in Ewyo’s belly, half its head buried in the screaming squire.

  Ewyo tore it from the Mink’s hands as he fell, and writhed about it, curled like a stricken serpent.

  The Mink dropped to one knee beside him, head bowed with nausea and relief. “You were a brave man, you bastard.”

  Ewyo, strong in his fashion as Revel in his, stiffened his body so that he could look straight up at his killer. “Not—especially brave,” he ground out. “You see—Mink—I had no—ammunition—for the gun....”

  His pale eyes filmed over, and Revel staggered off, leaving him for the crows and worms of the valley.

  * * * *

  When he had come, dragging himself like a wounded stag up the rock shelf, they stared at him in silence for a long minute. Lady Nirea at last said, “But you are dying, Revel!”

  “Not for a good many years,” he grinned.

  Jerran said, “Aye, cut him a thousand times and he’ll make fresh blood from that valiant heart!”

  John called, “Look there, Mink!” Down the dawn wind rode half a dozen golden orbs, high enough to be out of reach of their picks, low enough to observe them. Revel gritted, “Blast ‘em!”

  “You can always shoot later, son. Let’s hear what they want.”

  Reluctantly Revel waved a crimsoned hand to stop his gunmen. The globes halted a few feet above the machine. Fingers of thought pried into the Mink’s head, and automatically up went his screen.

  Then the cerebral prying ceased. John murmured, “They’re talking to me.”

  Revel watched the silent exchange of thoughts. What if the obscene things got hold of John’s mind. Anxiously he scanned the strong face for signs of fading will. At last he could stand it no longer, and was about to order a volley, when John said, “I think that’s it, Mink.”

  �
�What happened?” they all asked eagerly.

  “The things parleyed. They see they can’t get close enough to smash the machine—that last explosion was a desperate try at crashing a saucer with a bomb ready to trip, and it didn’t work—so they want to talk. I gave ‘em a skinful.” He chuckled. “Told ’em there were men of my time wakening all over the world, with machines to defeat them totally; they know whom they’re dealing with now, and they’re going to talk it over. Mink, that’s the end of the gods, with luck! They won’t face a force of twenty-first century scientists. They haven’t got it, they just haven’t got it.”

  “But they’ll discover that you lied,” said Nirea. “They’ll get the thrower, sooner or later, and then we’re at their mercy again.”

  “I didn’t lie, girl. All over this hemisphere there are caves like the one I came from, with scientists held in suspension, plenty of machines from our time, and knowledge that will bring your world out of these Dark Ages into another Renaissance! I have the locations in the papers that were interred in the casket under me, and we’ll send parties out today to find ‘em. This is a new world dawning this morning.” He leaned over and kissed her enthusiastically, and Revel, who would have split another man down the brisket for that, did not mind at all. “Your globes are done, Mink. The gentry and the priests will be easy prey. You can probably scare them into surrender after last night.”

  Jerran said, “Here be men on horses, Mink.” Revel turned and saw a great cavalcade of stallioned men sweep down the valley, and in a moment of great joy saw that they were all ruckers, carrying dead gods on pikes and singing the Ballad of the Mink as they came.

  The Lady Nirea was in his arms, kissing his lips that were caked with three kinds of blood; and Revel the Mink forgot the pain in his torn body, the utter weariness of brain and muscle, and everything else except what was good and sweet and wonderful.

  * * * *

  Three months had passed, and the leaders of the successful rebellion of Earth were sitting in a drinking-house (legal now) downing toasts to various people and events. Revel and his wife Nirea sat at the head of the board, and down the sides ranged their friends and lieutenants: the giant Rack and the tiny Jerran, Dawvys and a dozen others, with John Klapham at the foot.

  “To the end of the globes,” said John, his tongue a trifle thick by now. “By gad, you brew potent stuff in these times! To the gods’ finish!”

  They drank that standing, roaring it out gleefully.

  Revel said, “It was a sight to see, that—thousands upon thousands of buttons, all sweeping into the sky and vanishing into dots and then nothing ... and here’s to the gentry they took with ‘em!”

  “How many went?” asked Nirea, though she knew as well as he.

  “Seven thousand and four hundred and ten, squires and their ladies, electing to travel out of the world for promised power in another!” Revel grinned wolfishly. “And here’s to the priests who weren’t allowed to go, and so have become miners and know what it is to sweat!”

  Rack stood up, looming gigantic above them. “Here’s to the men awakening now all over this country—the men of the Ancient Kingdom!”

  “And the things they can teach us,” added Jerran.

  “And a toast to the most important of those things—the art of tobacco growing!” shouted John gaily.

  They sat down after that, and Revel said to John affectionately, “If it hadn’t been for you, friend, we’d still be ruckers and worse. You gave us a new world.”

  “Rot. I gave you a technical skill—you furnished the brains, brawn and motivating force, a legend come to life. I was only one more weapon in your hand.”

  Lady Nirea touched the Mink’s arm tenderly. “We’ll all be weapons in your hands now, Revel. Tools to make a civilization again—to make the last verse of the old song come true.”

  “Let’s sing it,” said Dawvys, a little in his cups by now. “Let’s all sing it loud.”

  “The gods have flown beyond the sky,

  The priests toil underground;

  The gentry’s curse is lifted free,

  And all our foes are downed....

  “Now over all the Mink he reigns,

  And gone are rank and caste;

  The ruck is lifted from the mire—

  And we are free at last!”

  * * * *

  They finished the rousing song and looked expectantly at the Mink; but he had borne back Lady Nirea on the bench and was kissing her with enormous warmth, so that even a prophetic song, written about him ages before he was born, could not tear loose from him the only chains that would ever bind him again—the wrought-steel, invisible, shatter-proof shackles of Nirea’s love.

  THE ENORMOUS ROOM

  BY H. L. GOLD & ROBERT KREPPS

  Originally published in Amazing Stories, Oct.-Nov. 1953.

  CHAPTER 1

  The roller coaster’s string of cars, looking shopworn in their flaky blue and orange paint, crept toward the top of the incline, the ratcheted lift chain clanking with weary patience. In the front seat, a young couple held hands and prepared to scream. Two cars back, a heavy, round-shouldered, black-mustached man with a swarthy skin clenched his hands on the rail before him. A thin blond fellow with a briefcase on his lap glanced back and down at the receding platform, as though trying to spot a friend he had left behind. Behind him was a Negro youth, sitting relaxed with one lean foot on the seat; he looked as bored as someone who’d taken a thousand coaster rides in a summer and expected to take ten thousand more.

  In the last car, a tall broad man put his elbows on the backboard and stared at the sky without any particular expression on his lined face.

  The chain carried its load to the peak and relinquished it to the force of gravity. The riders had a glimpse of the sprawling amusement park spread out below them like a collection of gaudy toys on the floor of a playroom; then the coaster was roaring and thundering down into the hollow of the first big dip.

  Everyone but the Negro boy and the tall man yelled. These two looked detached—without emotion—as though they wouldn’t have cared if the train of cars went off the tracks.

  The cars didn’t go off the tracks. The people did.

  The orange-blue rolling stock hit the bottom, slammed around a turn and shot upward again, the wind of its passage whistling boisterously. But by then there were none to hear the wind, to feel the gust of it in watered eyes or open shouting mouths. The cars were empty.

  * * * *

  “Is this what happens to everybody who takes a ride on the coaster?” asked a bewildered voice with a slight Mexican accent. “Santos,” it continued, “to think I have waited so many years for this!”

  “What is it?” said a woman. “Was there an accident? Where are we?”

  “I don’t know, dear. Maybe we jumped the tracks. But it certainly doesn’t look like a hospital.”

  John Summersby opened his eyes. The last voice had told the truth: the room didn’t look like a hospital. It didn’t look like anything that he could think of offhand.

  It was about living-room size, with flat yellow walls and a gray ceiling. There was a quantity of musty-smelling straw on the floor. Four tree trunks from which the branches had been lopped were planted solidly in that floor, which felt hard and a little warm on Summersby’s back. Near the roof was a round silver rod, running from wall to wall; over in a corner was a large shallow box filled with something, he saw as he slowly stood up, that might have been sand. An old automobile tire lay in the straw nearby, and a green bird-bath sort of thing held water that splashed from a tiny fountain in its center. Five other people, four men and a woman, were standing or sitting on the floor.

  “If it was a hospital, we’d be hurt,” said a thin yellow-haired man with a briefcase under one arm. “I’m all right. Feel as good as I ever did.”

  Several men prodded themselves experimentally, and one began to take his own pulse. Summersby stretched and blinked his eyes; they felt gummy, as though he’d been
asleep a long time, but his mouth wasn’t cottony, so he figured the blacked-out interval must have been fairly short.

  “Where’s the door?” asked the woman.

  Everyone stared around the room except Summersby, who went to the fountain, scooped up a palmful of water, and drank it. It was rather warm, with no chemical taste.

  “There isn’t any door,” said a Negro boy. “Hey, there isn’t a door at all!”

  “There must be a door,” said the heavy man with the accent.

  Several of them ran to the walls. “Here’s something,” said the blond man, pushing with his fingertips. “Looks like a sliding panel, but it won’t budge. We never came in through anything that small, anyway.” He looked over at Summersby. “You didn’t, at least. I guess they could have slid me through it.”

  “They?” said the woman in a piercing voice. “Who are they?”

  “Yes,” said the heavy man, looking at the blond man accusingly, “who put us here?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said the blond man. He looked at a watch, held it to his ear, and Summersby saw him actually go pale, as at a terrible shock. “My God,” he gasped, “what day is this?”

  “Tuesday,” said the Negro.

  “That’s right. We got on the coaster about eleven Tuesday morning. It’s three o’clock Thursday!” His voice was flat and astonished as he held up the watch. “Two days,” he said, winding it. “This thing’s almost run down.”

  “How do you know it’s Thursday?” asked Summersby.

  “This is a chronograph, High-pockets,” said the blond man.

  “Calvin, we’ve been kidnapped!” the woman said shrilly, clutching at a man who must be her husband or boy friend.

  “No, no, dear. How could they do it on a roller coaster?”

  “Maria y José!” said the Mexican. “Then for two days that idiot relief man has had charge of my chili stand! It’ll go to hell!”

  “Our things at the hotel,” the woman said, “all my new clothes and the marriage license.”

  “They’ll be all right, dear.”

  “And where’s my bag?”