by James Axler
‘Your people, and those from Memphis, will soon be through the maze. They have no real chance against my Nightcrawlers, but I have a notion that it wouldn’t be the first time that your compatriots have been in such a position and emerged triumphant. I cannot take chances. Not for my people. I do not have the right to take such a chance. I must begin the ceremony now.’
Odyssey lit cones of incense and began to chant in a language that Doc recognized as a bastard mix of old Greek, Latin and English. He circled the altar, anointing Krysty with oils.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Where did she go?’
Lemur’s tone was questioning and fearful. His wife had seemingly vanished after taking flight. He, Jak and Mark had arrived at a dead end, after following the trail of yarn she had left in her flight. Jak had to hand it to her: she’d been a lot faster, and a lot less noisy than he would have reckoned, and it had been difficult to track her movements, especially as he had to keep the other two men in sight. Thankfully, she had inadvertently left this trail, which now seemed to vanish beneath the stone wall in front of them.
‘She cannot simply have walked through a stone wall,’ Mark said in a puzzled voice, placing his hands on the stone slab as though he would find it was less substantial than it seemed.
‘Mebbe not.’ Jak shrugged. ‘Look like, though.’ He joined Mark at the face of the slab, probing at the solid stone similarly to the sec chief. ‘Must be mechanism, trigger open.’
‘Just as there must have been to cut it off,’ Mark mused. ‘But would that have been this side, or on the other?’
‘They move these?’ Jak asked.
Lemur answered for them. ‘That is what we told you, and that is how it is. To insure that the labyrinth has no set pattern, and so cannot be easily solved by those who enter, the walls are capable of realignments to change the pattern of the passages.’
‘Lot words to say yes,’ Jak mumbled.
Mark suppressed a grin, saying, ‘Are you, perhaps, thinking that if the slabs are adjustable, there must be triggers to set them off from all sides?’
Jak looked at him. ‘How else work all time?’
The two men set to searching across the surface of the slab and down the walls on each side. There was no need for further explanations, although Lemur, as he stood holding the flash on them, may have wished for one.
‘Clean,’ Jak said as they both finished. ‘Mebbe step trigger?’
Mark assented. ‘Not sure how we could miss that on the way through, but—’
Jak shook his head. ‘Only work once from side when down, but if can find it, then can lever up, reverse action…mebbe.’
‘But what if—’
‘No point what-if,’ Jak warned the sec chief, indicating the watching Lemur.
Mark knew that he was right and could have bitten his tongue for speaking without thought. If the wall was part of a trap, then there was no telling if Cyran was alive on the far side. It wasn’t something that they wanted the Memphis leader to consider.
The two men sank to their knees, indicating that Lemur train the beam on the hard-packed and stony soil surface. Backing up, covering every inch of the ground with painstaking care, they had backtracked by five feet before Mark held up a hand.
‘Jak, I think I’ve found it.’
The albino youth crawled over to where Mark was smoothing the dirt covering from what seemed, at first glance, to be nothing more than a patch of bare ground. However, as he took a closer look, he could see the outline of a hexagonal shape imprinted in the dirt. Faint lines appeared where the finer particles of dust fell down the slight gap between the step trigger and the surrounding earth.
‘That’s it, all right,’ Mark whispered, ‘but how are we supposed to release it?’
‘Pressure make drop, so pressure bring back up,’ Jak said simply, palming one of his leaf-bladed knives so smoothly that Mark was taken aback by the glint of the blade suddenly appearing in Jak’s fist. Without further comment, the albino youth slid the blade down the slight gap and began to work at the step and the earth around. If he could just loosen it enough to gain some purchase on the buried sides of the step, then he may be able to lever it up.
It was a slow process—too slow for his liking, but he had little option but to continue. To leave Cyran behind, or to trust to her finding her own way out by blind luck, was something that couldn’t be contemplated. So he continued to work at the soil, wearing it away so that he could lever the blade down, try to make it bite into the stone of the step, perhaps even underneath, and lever it up.
Jak cursed suddenly and jumped back in surprise as the mechanism gave and his knife slipped. The blade flew up as though from a spring, the tension released as the stone step parted company with the mechanism beneath, spinning out of its hole and across the ground.
The albino beckoned Lemur to bring the flash closer, and as the beam spread down into the gap in the ground, he was able to see the locked spring mechanism. The stone step had been a covering, and had been easier to pry loose that he thought. But it still hadn’t released the mechanism. At least now he could actually see what was going on down there: the trigger locked into a wheel-and-cog system that drove the slab pivots. For all these mechanisms to work however the walls were arranged, the dead soil had to be littered with a tiny tunnel system.
No matter now. He could see how it worked, and the gap left by the broken step was large enough for him to get his hand down. Squeezing in up to the wrist, his supple fingers were soon able to release the spring. He cursed again as the mechanism cut his hand on release, but he was rewarded for this by the sound of the slab beginning to move.
Quickly starting to bind his hand, he rose to his feet to join Lemur and Mark, and was greeted by the sight of Cyran, huddled against another dead end, ten yards in front of them, the ball of yarn at her feet.
Jak furrowed his brow. There appeared to be no trap in the boxed enclosure. Mebbe the space was so small that the intent was to leave the trespasser to slowly suffocate as they used all the air? That seemed to be too subtle, not bloodthirsty enough. It seemed that Odyssey liked to make certain of a chill.
None of these thoughts went through Lemur’s mind. He was just overjoyed to see his wife again. With a cry of joy he pushed past Jak and Mark, running toward where she hunkered down.
No, there had to be another trap, Jak was sure of it. And it had to be darts or a blade. Without a thought he set off after the Memphis chief, knowing that whatever happened he would have just fractions of a second in which to make a difference.
Lemur ran flat-footed, slowly. It was easy for Jak to gain on him, to be on his heels, to catch just a sense of something wrong. It was a dull click, perhaps; a footfall that looked awkward, mebbe. Whatever it was, it told Jak that the Memphis chief had inadvertently triggered a trap of some kind. To try to pull him back would have meant altering balance for both of them, wasting precious time. There was only one course of action. Jak sprang off his toes, launching himself into the small of Lemur’s back, powering the man forward and down, momentum lifting them both from the ground before they thudded down again.
Jak had been right about the trap. Darts flew out of concealed holes in the slab to their right, an expellation of air like a sigh signaling their release. As Jak’s flight carried himself and Lemur past the flight of the weapons, it was a matter of the time it took to take one breath that prevented the albino taking the full force of the darts in his body. As it was, two of them plucked at his heavy combat boots as his feet passed their path, the sharpened points embedding themselves in the heel and sole of his left boot, the force of their impact knocking his legs to one side so that he landed awkwardly, feeling his ribs jar, his elbows and skull cannon against the man underneath him. The impact made his head reverberate, cutting out the sound of the darts clattering against the far wall before falling harmlessly to the ground.
Mark rushed up to them, saying something that Jak couldn’t quite take in as he shook his
head to clear it. Then it dawned on him that the sec chief was thanking him for saving Lemur.
‘Okay, okay, cut crap and move,’ Jak said dismissively, waving the sec chief away as he climbed unsteadily to his feet, then pausing to pull the darts from his boot. As he did, he watched the others. Mark was making a great play of seeing if his leader was all right. As he should. Lemur, for his part, was a little dazed, but his relief at seeing his wife alive took away all thoughts of his own brush with danger.
Cyran was the hardest to understand. Perhaps it was the shock, but she seemed distant from everything, as though she couldn’t understand what had happened. She seemed oblivious to almost everything going on around her, and almost dismissive of her husband’s release. Instead, she merely looked disoriented.
Mebbe it was just shock; even so, Jak couldn’t work out how, short of blind luck, she had managed to avoid triggering the trap.
It was something that nagged at the back of his brain, tugging insistently. Like why she had just taken flight. He shook his head. There was no time to worry about that now. They had lost valuable time and ground. It was imperative they start trying to get out of this labyrinth; try to rendezvous with the others. That was assuming, of course, that anyone else managed to get out of here alive.
STRATEGY. THAT WAS THE KEY. If any of the four teams were to make it through the labyrinth, let alone all of them, then there had to be a plan. Mildred’s idea of using the yarn to mark their path had been simple. Those who were forging a clear path could mark for those that came after. And if you should take a wrong turn and need to backtrack, the yarn would enable you to retrace your steps without risking the possibility of taking another wrong turn upon another, compounding your confusion.
For confusion was one of the most powerful weapons the labyrinth had in its armory. There may have been weapons, traps and wild animals lying in wait for those who tried to get through, but the worst thing of all would be to wander endlessly, unable to find a way that led to the outside world, until you either bought the farm from exhaustion, or you were so disoriented that you blundered into traps for which you were initially alert.
The truth was that no one in Memphis had been able to even tell the companions if there was only the one entrance and exit to the maze. The way in from the inside was similar in every description, yet it seemed that different escapees had approached the maze from different sectors of the ville. As for exits, the only thing that could be agreed upon was that there was only one exit in the wall. When questioned further, those who offered an opinion couldn’t say for sure whether they had emerged into the same sector of woodlands as their fellows.
With no time to recce the area, Ryan and J.B. had thought it best to assume that there may be an entrance and exit built into each of the four sides of the maze. This would give the planners of the maze a much greater option in rebuilding and realigning the interior. If they so wished, they could leave only one, or all four, or any combination in-between, open.
If this was the case, then the four teams wanted to insure, as much as possible, that they would be able to make their way through the labyrinth and emerge together at the same spot. To be split up and break surface at different areas would be disastrous.
This was another reason for the use of the yarn. It was perhaps too simple: easy to break the line, to get it tangled or confused. But short of time and short of inspiration, it was the best they could do. If they all followed each other’s trails, then wherever they ended up, at least it would be in the same place, and they could take the mission from there.
Strategy: so simple to plan, so simple to discuss when you were standing around a table. It was, however, something that was far from simple when you were in the middle of a dark, fetid pesthole, unsure as to which way was forward and which was back, not knowing which was left or right in relation to your intended destination, and where the other groups had reached.
The truth of the matter was that now they were in the labyrinth, it was proving harder than any had imagined to follow the trails of yarn, to keep at least a semblance of contact with each other. The yarns knotted, got pulled tight and broken; they were dropped, kicked to one side where flash beams couldn’t catch them under layers of freshly turned dirt; sometimes they went off into conflicting passages where the latter had occurred and the sec team had mistakenly taken the wrong route.
It had reached a point where all four teams were now acting almost independently of one another. And yet, in some sense, the system had worked well enough to keep them on track. J.B.’s innate sense of direction and Jak’s ability to sniff out danger and direction like a hunting dog had enabled these two teams to keep on track, despite the delay engendered by Cyran bolting from her fellows. Mildred had been careful to insure that Mithos had payed out his line with care, so that even if they lost the trail of the others, they wouldn’t double back on themselves. And Ryan had used a sense of direction mixed with the care to insure his line was laid to keep his own track sound.
They were moving toward their target. What would be beyond the exit was one thing: what was certain was that they would be able to tackle it as a whole unit.
J.B. SNIFFED THE AIR experimentally.
‘Dark night, I think we’re almost at the end,’ he said softly.
‘I can but hope,’ Demis said, at his elbow. ‘I know I, for one, will be glad to escape this hellhole, but that will be nothing compared to the relief of our fellows. Too much longer in here and I fear that their nerves will crack.’
J.B. looked back over his shoulder at the two young sec men who comprised the other half of the team. They were following on his heels, assiduously sticking to their task with care. But it was easy to see, even in the dulled and refracted beam of the flash that Demis was now carrying in front of them and playing on the walls, that their faces were taut with tension, grim lines etched on faces that were far too young to show such concern.
All the more reason to reach the open: J.B. pressed ahead to the next junction. Even before he reached it, he knew the adjacent passage to theirs led to the outside. Some ambient light bled through and onto the soil in front of the gaping maw. The air was fresher and carried the hint of a breeze.
‘Okay, we’re nearly there,’ he said, turning to the men at his rear. ‘Triple red. I know you want out of here more than I do, but we need to recce to see what’s on the outside.’
The two sec men nodded, their set expressions unchanging.
‘Want me to take a look?’ Demis asked the Armorer.
J.B. shook his head. ‘Should be me. I’m head of this unit, and one of the privileges of that is getting to take all the risk.’
Demis’s mouth quirked into a wry grin. ‘The responsibility of leadership, eh? Sometimes it’s just as well to be a humble foot soldier.’
‘Tell me about it,’ J.B. replied, indicating that the party should halt. ‘Looks like we’re the first to get here. Let’s hope we’re not the only ones. Meantime, I’m going to risk a look around the entry. Stay here.’
The Armorer shrugged the mini-Uzi from his shoulder and set it to fire short bursts. It would enable him to cover himself should he be fired on, but he hoped that wouldn’t be the case. The last thing they needed was to get this far and then be pinned down at their only point of exit…short of finding another way around the labyrinth.
J.B. edged toward the corner of the exit passage. He knew that there would be a stretch of dead earth between the portal and the first buildings of Atlantis. Noman’s-land. Would he be able to see anything across the distance? He was sure that there would be Nightcrawler teams posted opposite any exit, waiting for them. A lone face in an exposed portal would be easy meat. The problem was how to recce the outside without alerting any observers of his presence.
He reached the point of no return. Still in shadow, he could see the opposite wall of the exit tunnel. Angling his head, it became clear that the tunnel was about ten yards long, ending in a stone portal much the same as the one through
which they had entered the labyrinth.
J.B. decided a little experiment would be in order. Taking the fedora from his head, and giving it a little wistful look before acting, he threw it into the open passage. He was half expecting a barrage of blasterfire to greet its appearance.
There was nothing. That could mean that whoever was mounting guard had a steady nerve and wouldn’t fire on impulse or it could mean that the entrance wasn’t as closely watched as he thought.
In truth, it told him nothing. It did, though, give him the incentive and reinforce his resolve to step out and recce.
As he edged around the corner, feeling the sweat stream down his brow and dapple his chest and back, sticking his shirt to him, he was aware of the pulse pounding in his throat—suddenly dry, as opposed to his now slick skin—and thumping in his chest; it felt as though his heart would break through his rib cage before he had a chance to recce.
Psyched-up and ready for just about anything they could throw at him, J.B. stepped into the light, the mini-Uzi in front of him, ready to lay down covering fire. Ahead of him, the corridor seemed to stretch for miles instead of the few yards that it was in actuality. Every step seemed to take him backward, partly because he perceived no progress, and partly because he was perpetually ready to throw himself toward the dark passages to his rear.
Yet nothing happened. As he got closer to the portal leading out into the wasteland, the angle of his view increased to take in a greater section of the ville in front of him.
Eventually, he stood in the portal, to one side, shoulder resting against the right-hand wall, the blaster still poised, but his vision taken up by the oddity that lay beyond.
If the companions had considered the haphazard design of Memphis bizarre, then the layout of Atlantis was beyond this. It was like nothing the Armorer had ever seen before, and for a second he was transfixed. For Atlantis took the strangest parts of Memphis and discarded those elements that had been familiar to the outsiders.