by Larry Niven
“Not by car. Are there prilatsil in Sarash-Zillish?”
“Oh, sure, that’s how they did it.”
“Can we use prilatsil?”
“Yeah. Yeah! We won’t have to dig! Assuming the damn things still work. The subway hasn’t been maintained.”
The loner was very close now. Corbell dialed a number he remembered: two commas crossed, S reversed, hourglass on its side, crooked pi. The car sped smoothly away. Eleven Boys watched it go.
“They tracked us somehow. They’ll track us again,” Corbell said. “We’ll have some time, but not much.”
From outside it was a copy of the office building in which Mirelly-Lyra had returned Corbell’s pressure suit. In this version the elevators worked. Still following the pattern, Corbell tried the third floor.
It held. Lines of office doors, all closed.
“My name coin doesn’t open them.” Gording reported.
They kicked at a door, it was solid.
Gording asked. “Are there prilatsil not locked behind doors?”
“Yeah. On the roof. The Boys could be there by now.”
“Did you at least keep the spear blade?”
Corbell handed it over. Then it occurred to him that there might be indicators for the elevators. He slipped back into the elevator and punched all the buttons. If it stopped on every floor they’d have to check them all. He got out on the fourth floor. As he tiptoed down he heard a pattering above him like a swarm of rats.
Gording had disengaged the thread from the rocks. He had tied one end to the blade and the other to his loincloth. Now he chopped with the blade at the cloud-rug where it ran beneath an office door. “Guard the stairs,” he said.
“With what?”
Gording didn’t answer, didn’t even look up.
Corbell stood barehanded at the stairwell door. The first Boy through would kill him. He knew it. Maybe Gording would get away.
What was Gording doing?
Gording was pushing the blade under the door with his fingers.
He pulled upward on the ends of the loincloth. He heaved. Sounds forced their way between his teeth.
Now he pulled sideways toward the doorjamb.
Now he kicked at if door. It shuddered. Another kick sent it crashing inward. The blade was stronger than the door; the thread had cut the metal around the lock.
Through the office window Corbell glimpsed two Boys working under the tchiple’s motor hatch. Then he crowded into the “phone booth” with Gording. When he shut the door there was no light. He opened the door a crack, found the crooked pi and kept his finger on it as he closed the door. He pushed it four times.
Nothing obvious happened.
He opened the door and slipped out into a blackness like the inside of a stomach. He whispered, “We’ll have to bet that this is really a subway. Stay here. I’ll find the stairs and call you.”
“Good,” said Gording. Corbell slipped away.
He moved with his hand lightly brushing the wall. Once he found a cloud-rug couch by stumbling over it. He clutched at the stuff to stop his fall, and a sheet of cloud-rug ripped away in his hand. Rotted.
A sound behind him. He said, “What was that?”
Gording didn’t answer.
Corbell kept moving. He could feel Mirelly-Lyra in the dark. He kept expecting to hit the stairs, but the wall went on and on. He circled another couch and kept going. There was no sound in this place. Cloud-rug cushioned his feet and blotted up the sound of his breathing.
Stairs!
“Here,” he said, no longer whispering.
“Good,” Gording said from a foot away. Corbell jumped like a man electrocuted. “A Boy stalked you until I killed him with thread. I think it must have been the loner, from his smell.”
“This place may be dead. If the stairs—ah.” The stairs moved beneath him. Disoriented, off balance, he sat and let the stairs carry him down into the darkness.
The stairs stopped. Gording said, “What next?”
“Follow the sound of my voice. I know where the cars are; all the way in the back.” He walked with his hands in front of him. How was he going to find the right car?
He felt his way around cloud-rug couches.
He brushed a solid wall. Off course. He couldn’t hear Gording…or anything else. Were there Boys in the dark, stalking him as Gording stalked them? Was Gording already dead? Corbell was moving too fast, stumbling. Only the very oldest Boys would know the layout of this place; but they wouldn’t need to. They’d follow him by his breathing.
He had found the doors.
“Gording!”
Light flashed for an instant at the far end. Where had that come from? Gording called, “All right.”
Corbell waited in the dark and the quiet. Presently Gording spoke next to him—“Here!”—felt for Corbell’s hand and put something heavy in it. “I robbed the loner. Take his sword. I took his fire starter too. Where is the picture of the world?”
“Along—” Corbell guided Gording’s hand “—that wall.”
The flashlight beam revealed two polar projections with the ice caps still showing. There were no glowing lights or numbers to mark the routes.
Gording asked, “Which is our door?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Boys have our tchiple. We can’t surrender because we’ve killed the loner. The Boys may have a way to shut down the prilatsil. Do something, Corbell.”
“All right. Give me the name coin.” He took it, inserted it in the ticket window. Nothing happened.
He tried the next door. Nothing. He was beginning to panic. But the stairs had worked—
The third door let them through. The transparent door to the subway car let Gording through, closed after him, and wouldn’t open until Corbell had pulled the disk out and reinserted it. They sat down opposite each other.
“Now we sit here for awhile.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know how you can be so calm.”
“I risk less than you do. Half a Jupiter year—” he had borrowed Corbell’s phrase “—and I’ll be dead. Against this I balance dikta immortality and freedom from the Boy rule. Unless…Corbel, can we find dikta immortality where we’re going? Or will we have to make constant raids on Antarctica?”
“I know it’s in Four City. Maybe it’s in other places, too.”
“The risk is good. Shall we sleep?”
Corbell’s laugh was shaky. “Good luck.”
V
Gording woke when the door went up. The car slid into the vacuum tunnel; curved downward; straightened out; rolled right; rolled left. So far so good.
Gording, watching his face, relaxed. “I did not want to ask. Where are we going?”
“It doesn’t matter. Anywhere there’s a…picture of the world that lights up. That’ll tell us how to get to Four City.”
“A good decision,” said Gording, and he went back to sleep.
Maybe he was faking.
But his breathing was very gentle and regular.
Corbell stretched out. He wedged his ankles under a chair arm. There was no sound but Gording’s breathing.
Corbell dozed. He twitched and jerked in his sleep: running, running…When the car turned upward he came half awake, then dropped off again. But he felt it when the car slowed, and, groggy as he was, he remembered that first ride. He put his hands over his ears, turned to see Gording copy him.
The car stopped.
Doors popped open automatically. Air puffed across them, hot and wet, like boiling maple syrup in the throat. Corbell cried, “Come on!” and went through.
The great hall was a ruin. Six or seven stories of the great cube had fallen in, leaving a cross section of whatever was up there; Corbell didn’t care. He kept his breathing shallow. The scalding air was thick with a taste and smell half chemical, half mildew. Sweat sprang out in droplets all over his body.
The wall map was cracked across, and dark.
He tr
ied his credit disk in three doors before he found one that worked. Gording pulled at his arm and spoke like a man holding his breath. “Wait! Where does this go?”
“Come on.”
They entered the subway car. It didn’t help. You can die locked in a steam room, Corbell thought. He stretched out on the row of seats. “Mirelly-Lyra rigged the subway system to take anyone from the hot part of the world straight to her. We can hope she didn’t skip this terminal. Lie still and don’t try to exercise. Breathe shallow.”
He lay on his back and waited. The sweat tickled as it ran down his ribs, but he didn’t wipe at it.
Something ticked on. Air blew across him, too warm, and then cooling. Corbell sighed. “The CO2 in our breath must have triggered something,” he told himself. The air grew cool, cool.
A long time later Gording said, “I left the fire starter.”
“Damn.”
Silence then, until the door went up.
There were the usual surges, then the ride straightened out. Corbell tried to sleep again, but something was holding him back. He didn’t know what it was until Gording said, “My ears hurt.”
That was it. “The car leaks,” said Corbell. “Just a chance we had to take. Let’s hope we’ve got enough air to get to the end.”
“It hurts. Can I do anything?”
Hey, Gording had never been in an airplane! Corbell said, “Work your jaws.” He demonstrated. His ears popped.
The car slowed. It had come sooner than Corbell had expected; but they were both panting, and Gording was uneasy. Corbell felt guilty satisfaction. It took a lot of unknown danger to disturb Gording.
He covered his ears with his hands and opened his jaws wide, and waited for Gording to do the same. His skin was clammy. He was unbearably tense.
The doors popped open. The air that slapped across them was only warm. Through the door he saw lights dim at the back, cloud-rug humping into couches. He reached for the loner’s broad-bladed scimitar.
Motion flickered in the gate. Corbell’s brain flashed: Mirelly-Lyra! Too soon! He pulled the car door shut as something darted through the gate. He had what she wanted—they could negotiate.
It was Krayhayft! The gray-haired Boy stopped short. He looked at them through the glass.
He raised the fire starter.
Gording threw himself back toward the inadequate protection of the toilet. Corbell sensed it; but he himself was frozen.
Krayhayft fired past him. Light blazed behind Corbel, and he smelled chemical smoke as part of the couch burned. Krayhayft shouted, “Come out. Or I’ll burn off your feet.”
Corbel’s hand was still on the door. But…“I can’t do it. You’d chop down the Tree of Life.”
For an instant Krayhayft was puzzled. Then, “That’s not what we want. We only want to know where it is. Corbel, suppose a disaster wiped out most of the dikta, and the only survivors were half a dozen old ones? We could keep them young and breeding.”
“Meanwhile they never get a smell of it.”
Flame burst from the rug beside Corbell’s right foot. Krayhayft said, “We need your pressure-suit helmet too. Speaking of disasters—” Krayhayft stopped. His face changed.
Corbell had never seen that look on any Boy. It frightened him. Guilt and remorse and fear. Krayhayft moaned, the sound faint through the glass. His eyes darted left and right, seeking…escape?
He found it. Brighter than human, he found it at once, and used it. Krayhayft raised the fire starter to his head and fired. Flame burst from that side of his head, then from the other. Krayhayft fell, and kicked spasmodically, and lay still.
Corbell spared himself one flicking glance back. Gording was still hidden, crouched behind the toilet door.
Then Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar stepped through the gate. Shapeless robe, white touched with iridescence, and a withered face within: The bright eyes fixed on him, and then the cane.
“Mirelly-Lyra! It’s me!”
The shock almost killed her. He hoped she would faint. She recovered; she gestured peremptorily with the cane. Come out!
He reached for the scimitar. She gave him just a touch of what had killed Krayhayft. Moaning, he came through.
She spoke gibberish. An old man’s voice translated: “You found it. Where is it?”
“Give me the cane and I’ll tell you.”
Her answer was a wave of guilt and mental agony. Corbell waded through it, hands outstretched for her throat. She backed away. Corbell moaned and came on. Suddenly she turned something on the cane’s handle.
Sleep dragged him down toward the cloud-rug. Sleep and red rage warred in him. He was on his knees, but he waded toward her, two steps, three…
Musty smell.
Soft stuff cradling his cheek.
Mirelly-Lyra was in one of the shapeless couches.
Corbell got his arms under him and lifted himself out of the cloud-rug. He pulled himself toward her. She tried to cringe back without moving. Terrified.
“I caught her from behind,” said Gording. He was seated facing her, holding the silver cane.
The old woman spoke rapidly. An old man’s voice translated, “You don’t dare kill me. I have something you want.”
Corbell got to his feet with some effort. “The pressure-suit helmet,” he said. “Give it to me or I’ll let you live…as you are.”
Her mouth compressed. “Immortality first.”
“How many settings are there on that cane?”
“Five. Two that kill. Others might kill me. Can you find the helmet then?”
“Probably.” Corbell smiled; he saw by her face that he was right. “But so what? I’ll make you young. Then I’ll kill you if I don’t get what I want.” He changed to Boyish. “Hold the cane ready. But I think she won’t try to escape now. We’re going to get dikta immortality.”
Gording looked dubious.
Corbell wasn’t about to trust the Norn in a “phone booth.” They wedged themselves into a tchiple with Mirelly-Lyra between, for a cramped ride through Four City. As the car swerved and darted through glass and concrete rubble, Corbell wondered. Should he have forced the helmet from her first?
Yes. But he couldn’t wait that long. He had to know.
They unfolded themselves out of the car. Gording said, “I might have known it would be a hospital.”
“Did your hospital have a…guarded place on the third floor?”
“No.”
Mirelly-Lyra was looking up at the glass-mosaic face. “But I searched this place!”
“You were desperate, too,” Corbell said smugly. “You just weren’t desperate in the right way.” He led the way up the stairs. Dust puffed beneath their feet. At the third floor he found two sets of footprints to remind him of his panic flight through these halls. He glanced back; but Mirelly-Lyra seemed docile enough, and Gording was behind her with the cane.
He turned into the hallway…and was lost. “Mirelly-Lyra, where are the ‘phone booths’?”
“To your left at the next corner.”
They found the line of prilatsil. A moment to orient himself: There was the corner where he’d been hiding when the Norn came to hunt him down. He led off…and here was the vault door, open.
Gording said, “They guarded their immortality well.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Corbell pointed to the skeletons and the hole smashed high up in the wall. “But not well enough. We’re lucky they didn’t use it and then wreck it. Maybe they thought they’d be back in fifty years.”
Gording looked around at the guard emplacements, the empty shelves, the computer console, the pair of “phone booths.” “Where is it, if they didn’t destroy it? Not through the prilatsil, unless the destination was equally well guarded.”
“Through the prilatsil. Give me the cane first.”
Would Gording balk? He didn’t; he handed Corbell the weapon, then stepped forward to study the pair of glass booths. Only one had a door. He stepped inside.
Mirelly-Lyra snarl
ed something. The box translated: “Are you mocking me?”
Corbell waved the cane under her nose. “Suppose I am?”
She came at him with her fingernails. He didn’t bother with the trigger. He rapped her on the head with the cane, twice, before she backed out of range.
Gording had found the button on the post. He pushed it.
Corbell shouted, “Heeeyaa!” The other booth danced with drifting dust motes.
Gording opened the door and said, “Nothing happened.”
“Not quite true,” said Corbel. To Mirelly-Lyra he said, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can trust me or not.” Gloat, gloat, he mocked himself, and was a little ashamed. But he’d fought for this!
She swallowed whatever words were on her tongue. She was truly desperate. As she entered the booth Corbell caught Gording’s eye and pointed to the booth with no door.
The dust floating in the booth suddenly thickened. Gording smiled and said, “Ah.”
The Norn had caught it too, but she didn’t understand…and Corbell was bubbling with it. “Inert molecules from your cells! Chemical medicines won’t reach that stuff, but the ‘phone booth’ does. It takes just those dead molecules and does the instant-elsewhere trick with them. Just the stuff that builds up over ninety years of life. See it now?”
“I don’t feel any different,” she said uncertainly.
“You should. I did. It was like I’d caught my second wind. Of course I was moving at a dead run. It’s nothing obvious. What did you expect? In a couple of days you’ll find dark roots in your hair.”
“Red,” she said. “Fiery red.”
“Where’s the helmet?”
She smiled. She still looked like an old woman; but was there something malicious in that smile?
CHAPTER NINE:
Peerssa for the State
I
The cat-tail sprang from the desk as they entered Mirelly-Lyra’s office. Its grey-and-white face watched them mistrustfully from the safety of a ceiling light fixture.
Corbel’s pressure suit sat limp in one of the guest chairs. Gording and Mirelly-Lyra watched him detach the helmet and set it on his head. He cleared his throat and said, “This is Corbell for himself calling Peerssa for the State. Come in, Peerssa.”