by Douglas Hill
At last, one of the guards leaned slightly forward, and gave a small start of surprise.
As the guard stepped forward, Keill closed his eyes to slits, let his mouth sag open, and gave a low, strangled moan. The guard leaned over, and his eyes widened as he looked at the small dials on the side of the body-shackle. Instantly he turned, with a muffled aside to the others, and hurried from the room.
Keill lay still, while the twin agonies gained in strength – the cruel compression of his flesh, the searing heat at his back. The body-shackle's now white-hot power source was only minutes from burning out, balked finally by Keill's uncrushable bones.
But the door was flung open and Festinn entered, followed by the nervous guard.
'...must be a malfunction,' the guard was saying. 'He has not moved, yet the shackle is crushing him, and seems to be overheating.'
Festinn bent close to Keill, who was lying as if half-dead, his controlled breathing almost undetectable. 'He may be attempting suicide,' Festinn snapped. 'Death before dishonour – just what a legionary might do. But he will not escape The One so easily. Raise him.'
Hands grasped Keill, lifting him roughly from the floor, and Festinn reached to open the invisible seam of the shackle. At once the agony receded from Keill's body. The relief to his bruised flesh was almost overpowering, but Keill ignored it as he had ignored the pain. He saw, through his slitted eyes, that Festinn was examining the shackle closely, with the guard who had gone to fetch him. Two of the other guards were supporting Keill on his feet, while he let his body sag as a dead weight. And the fourth guard stood by uneasily, his rifle barrel drooping.
The bruising of the flesh on his chest and arms did not slow Keill down. Without warning the two guards holding him were flung savagely, effortlessly aside, and Keill was leaping at Festinn.
The assassin's own speed was exceptional. He dropped the shackle, and one hand flashed to the gun at his belt. But he had no chance to fire it. Keill grasped and spun him, in a painful, one-handed restraining hold, while his other hand clamped on to Festinn's gun and wrenched it away. Using Festinn as a shield, Keill backed towards the door.
'How expendable do your men think you are, Festinn?' he snarled.
The answer came at once, as the two guards still standing swung their rifles up. But they had no chance to use them. The lethal beam of Keill's gun scythed across their chests.
As they collapsed, their tunics ablaze, Keill caught a movement on the edge of his vision. One of the guards he had hurled aside lay motionless, but the other had recovered his senses, and his rifle. In the instant before it fired, Keill flung Festinn towards it.
The beam bit deep into the assassin's shoulder. And then the two bodies collided, tumbling to the floor in a painful heap, as Keill sprang for the door.
His route lay clearly mapped in his mind, as he sprinted along the moving walkways in the corridors, Festinn's gun ready in his hand. Ahead of him the walkways were still deserted, and so he could spare part of his attention when Glr's voice spoke to him.
Keill, I do not wish to distract you. But you are in grave danger.
'You don't have to tell me,'Keill said, and began a quick outline of what had been happening.
There is a greater danger than The One,Glr interrupted, her voice sombre. From the centre of that building I have sensed emanations that are more frightening than anything I have encountered in this galaxy.
Keill slowed his headlong rush, puzzled. 'Some kind of telepath?'
Not precisely,Glr said. If it is a mind, I cannot penetrate it. Nor do I wish to. It is extremely powerful, and extremely evil.
Keill was disturbed by her tone as much as her words. It was unlike Glr to be so troubled – there was no lack of courage within that small being.
'I'll go and have a look —' he began.
No!The word was almost a scream. Stay away from it! Get out of that building!
'I will, soon,'Keill said soothingly. 'But I didn't come here to hide from things.'
Glr might have continued to argue. But she sensed, in the same instant that Keill did, that he had something else to occupy his attention.
From a door along the passage ahead, an armed Golvician soldier was emerging.
CHAPTER FIVE
The soldier made the mistake of freezing with shock, as he saw Keill hurtling towards him. Before he could begin to reach for his weapon, the rigid fingers of Keill's left hand had sunk deep into the soldier's belly – and as he doubled over with an explosive grunt of pain, a hard fist thudded into the bone behind his ear.
Warily Keill peered into the room the soldier had come from, and gratefully saw that it was empty. He dragged the soldier in, swiftly stripped the long green tunic and heavy helmet from the. limp form and pulled them on over his own uniform, indifferent to the poor fit. At least the belt had a clip for the energy handgun, so that he could ignore the more unwieldy rifle that the soldier had carried.
He paused for a moment, studying the inert form of the soldier. This one, like some of the other Golvicians he had seen, wore one of the thin, pale cords around his head. If it is a badge of rank, Keill thought, should I take it? He tugged at it briefly, but it was tightly fastened – yet with no visible clip or opening.
In the end, knowing he had no time to waste, he abandoned it. He turned to the door and walked calmly, unhurriedly away along the still-deserted corridor. Until someone looks closely at my face, he thought, I might get away with this.
In fact he was confident that the disguise could have taken him safely out of the building. But instead he changed course. Despite the seriousness of Glr's warning, he needed to know what it was that could stir such fear in his little companion.
There were a few other people in the corridors now, as he approached the building's centre, and he readied himself for instant action if it was needed. But the others moved past indifferently, preoccupied with their own business. Once a full squad of soldiers charged past him, in the opposite direction, but Keill had turned away slightly so that they saw only a green-uniformed back. They rushed on, ignoring him.
On their way to the guardroom, Keill guessed. The alarm must be out by now.
Even so, he continued to move on, rising several levels on the broad ramps. Soon his unerring sense of direction told him that he had reached the central area of the huge rambling complex. And there he began to find that many of the corridors seemed to be leading inwards, towards one section, like the radiating spokes of a wheel. At the ends of all of these corridors there were solid doors, guarded by at least two soldiers.
When he had been balked in this way for the fourth time, he made up his mind. The risk was no greater than if he remained at large in the corridors, where every Golvician soldier would soon be searching for him. Calmly he moved along one of the corridors, towards the heavy doors.
The two guards had obviously not yet heard that an escaped prisoner was at large. They seemed bored and indifferent, barely sparing him a glance as he drew near. But when he did not pause, when his hand reached out towards the doors, their rifles snapped up.
'You know you're not allowed—' one of them began.
He did not finish the sentence – partly because the shock of seeing Keill's non-Golvician face had only just reached his awareness, and partly because in the same moment all his awareness was cut off.
Keill chopped down with measured power at the sides of both guards' necks, just at the junction of helmet and high collar. The guards folded as if their legs had suddenly developed extra joints, and Keill pushed at once through the heavy doors.
Beyond them there was a small, deserted space that led to another set of doors. And these were of thick, multi-layered metal, immensely strong, and tightly locked.
Keill drew his gun. No point now in going backwards, he thought.
The beam from his gun bit hungrily into the narrow seam between the doors. Metal flared and melted under the onslaught, and in a few moments the blazing energy had done its work. The door
s sagged open, and Keill slipped through, gun ready.
He found himself on a metal gantry, a narrow platform with a low railing on one side. The gantry ran round the outer perimeter of a broad, deep space – like an enormous open shaft, extending downwards at least two levels, and upwards the same distance.
But Keill was barely aware of those details, nor of the glittering incomprehensible machinery that jutted here and there from the shaft's gleaming metal walls.
His stunned gaze was fixed instead on what the shaft contained.
It floated below the gantry where he stood, near the base of the shaft, supported by an almost invisible force field. It was ovoid in shape, about three times the size of a human body. And it was multi-coloured, its hue changing constantly with the dazzling, luminous flow of energy that bathed its surface.
And from that surface, reaching upwards almost the full height of the shaft, seeming to fill all of its breadth, was a myriad of slender, almost colourless tendrils – hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, the thickness of light cords. They were in ceaseless motion, writhing, coiling, flailing, entwining, as if blindly groping through the air for some unseen prey.
Automatically Keill drew back from the edge of the gantry as some of the pale tendrils swept in his direction. And the unexpectedness of the sight, the mystery and alienness of it. had their effect even on his honed alertness.
So he had no warning when a giant golden arm closed around his throat in a crushing grip, and a golden metal hand clamped immovably on to his gun, jerking it from his grasp.
At once Keill searched for leverage for a throw that would break the grip. And he might have succeeded, despite the frightening strength of the huge metal body. But the golden giant flung him away, towards the edge of the gantry, raising the energy gun.
'Be still, Randor,' the hollow voice of The One said. 'You have trespassed where only I may enter, but I will make you welcome. You have achieved the final goal of your long search. Relish the achievement while you may.'
The words resounded within Keill's mind. Achieved my goal? Can that mean what it seems to mean?
Again a twisting cluster of tendrils swung towards him from the thing in the shaft. As he moved aside, the giant's hollow laughter rang out.
'Do not draw away, Randor. Here is what you wished to find. Here is the object of your quest.
Step forward, Randor – and meet the Master.'
Keill felt as if his heart had stopped, as if his body had turned to frozen stone. 'This... this thing ...
is the Warlord?'
'No, legionary.'
The reply came not from The One but from above Keill's head. He looked up, and saw that into the wall of the shaft a deep, spacious alcove had been constructed. He could not see who or what was within the alcove, but the voice had sounded like many people speaking in uncannily perfect unison.
'No, Keill Randor,' the unseen voice repeated. 'That is not the Warlord. I am.'
---
His mind whirling with shock, Keill climbed a spiral metal staircase, urged on by The One's gun. When he emerged, within the wide chamber contained in the alcove, shock piled upon shock. He was facing twenty-four Golvicians, of both sexes and various ages, wearing plain robes. They sat in heavy, mechanised chairs, their bodies thin, huddled, withered. And Keill saw that the chairs were life-support extensions, attached to a bulky console at the centre of a circle formed by the chairs, to keep the wasted bodies alive.
But also from the console rose twenty-four thick, smooth cables, like heavy power leads.
Which in a way they were, Keill guessed with sudden horror. Despite their greater thickness, the cables bore a clear resemblance to the tendrils that rose from the thing in the shaft.
And the cables reached out from the console to twine their ends round the heads of the twenty-four seated people.
'What...' Keill fought the sickness that rose in his throat. 'What are you? What is it?'
'Tell him, Altern.' The twenty-four mouths moved perfectly, eerily together, as if their owners were mechanical dolls all working on the same circuit. The single voice that emerged was soft, even mild.
'It will be interesting to assess his reaction.'
The One inclined his golden head. 'Master.' And with an evil pleasure, he replied to Keill's question.
The thing in the shaft, he said, had been named Arachnis. It was the ultimate achievement of Golvician technology. It was partly organic, but also partly pure energy – supplied by the luminous flow of power that washed over it from the energised walls of the shaft. Arachnis was not truly alive, nor did it have a mind. In a way it was like a huge, complex, artificial version of the ganglia in the human brain.
But its function was to unite human minds – and, in some cases, to enlarge their capability.
The Twenty-four, continued The One, were its creators, the greatest geniuses of Golvic. At first, Arachnis had been much smaller. But even then, at the beginning, when the Twenty-four had placed the heavier tendrils on their heads, it had done what it had been created for. It had united the Twenty-four into a single supermind.
And that supermind had been growing more powerful as Arachnis, fed by the energies of the shaft, had grown larger. Now the Twenty-four formed the supreme intelligence of the galaxy, said The One. And they had recognised their destiny – to rule over all the Inhabited Worlds.
So they had devised their plan, which meant spreading the destruction of war through a host of carefully selected planets. The plan had also meant the erasure of enemies, The One added with a gloating laugh – including the Legions of Moros.
'And Arachnis serves the Master in another way,' The One went on. 'It provides him with a mental link, through which he can now reach across vast distances, even into space, to control his servants.'
'Servants?' Keill asked hoarsely, hardly able to believe the appalling tale he was hearing.
'Slaves, if you prefer,' The One replied blandly.
The terrible account went on. Some served the Twenty-four willingly, Keill heard, like The One and all the Deathwing. So they were merely guided by their Master's orders, relayed through The One.
But others needed to be coerced and controlled. And so they had their minds overcome by the Arachnis link – a fragment of tendril, round their heads.
'Once the initial link is made,' The One said, 'the rest of the tendril can be withdrawn. Yet the connection remains – over almost any distance. And those in the link are powerless, no longer able to control their own being. They can perform no actions, think no thoughts, other than as the Master directs.'
The grey lips twisted in a brutal smile. 'And if the tendril fragment is removed from their heads, their minds seldom survive. They become no more than empty, mindless shells.'
Keill's fists clenched. Even his control could barely hold back the storming rage and hatred that had begun to seethe within him in the face of the madness, the cruelty, the sheer stark evil, that had been spawned by the twenty-four seated figures before him.
The One continued, picturing the day to come when the reach of the Arachnis link would extend the Master's power across the galaxy. By then the Master's plan would be Rearing its climax, in the final holocaust of galactic war. But Keill scarcely heard the words. He was concentrating on regaining his control, building his combat readiness.
He seemed to be standing half-slumped, as if overcome by what he had learned. The One, arrogantly confident as ever, was not even looking directly at him, as he concluded his blood-chilling story.
And Keill exploded into a hurtling leap.
The leap ended with the hammering impact of his boot into The One's golden midriff. As the metal giant staggered back, Keill found his balance and swung round to the Twenty-four.
Inexplicably, they were smiling. Inexplicably, as he regained his feet, The One was laughing.
And Keill, about to leap again, felt as if he had stepped into the clinging, gossamer strands of a giant spiderweb.
He tried to
fling himself away, in frantic desperation. But the web-like tendrils of Arachnis clung, entangling him as he fought. And then, besides the hundred-fold grip on his body, he felt a feather-light touch on his brow.
As black despair swept over him like a tidal wave he heard in his mind, remote and fading, Glr's wild scream of terror.
Then silence and darkness descended. And that which had been Keill Randor had ceased to be.
PART TWO
SLAVE OF ARACHNIS
CHAPTER SIX
It was awareness, but without comprehension.
It was perception, but without reaction.
Sight, hearing, all the senses were unimpaired, so that information poured as it always had into the brain. But the mind that inhabited the brain was unable to assess, understand or use the flow of data.
The flow by-passed the mind, funnelling directly to those who controlled the brain.
In the same way, messages flowed from the brain, along the nervous system, and the body responded as smoothly and efficiently as ever. But the messages originated from a different source, also by-passing the mind that lived within the brain.
The human mind may always remain something of a mystery. It is said that mind cannot perceive itself entirely, and so can never study itself properly. But human minds are aware of themselves. It is that self-awareness which sets humans apart from beasts, for a beast is said to have no sense of 'I'.
What, though, if barriers are erected within the mind, by some outside force? What if the input of information, the output of governing messages, are rechannelled? What if the inner self, the sense of 'I', is walled off, in a terrible void of isolation that does not seem to differ from the depths of total insanity?
The self, the 'I', will struggle feebly for a while. But, in most cases, it lacks the resources to function in a void. It has been cut off from too many of its necessary connections with the mind – its own