Feersh explained about Phemropit. The Shemibob lost her anger at once. She said, ‘I had thought there was nothing new in this world. It is pleasant to be wrong, in this case, anyway. Now Feersh, tell me what happened to you after I allowed you to escape. And tell me also why you and these beings were foolish enough to enter my palace.’
That took a long time. For a while, the intruders stood up, since they were afraid to sit down in The Shemibob’s presence without permission. In the middle of the witch’s tale, the snake-centaur said that they could rest if they wished.
All except Sloosh and The Shemibob pulled up chairs, which had been furnished for the slaves, and seated themselves. The Shemibob walked back and forth in front of them and twice took a paper tube enclosing some sweet-smelling drug from a table and smoked it. Now and then she would interrupt the witch to question one of the others. Deyv began to feel more at ease. She was not, at least, going to destroy them, nor had she intimated that they would become her slaves.
When she had heard the story out, she paused to light up another tube.
‘So, each of you has made this incredible journey for different reasons. As for the poor devils you sent to steal my treasures, Feersh, none got here. Well, Deyv of the Red Egg of the Upside-Down House and Vana of the Green Eyes of the Yellow-Haired Tribe and Hoozisst of the ever-thieving Yawtl, I can make you new eggs. And I can teach you how to use them in ways none of your kind has ever thought of. Or, if thought of, dared to realize. But what good would they be?
‘As for you, Sloosh of the Vegetable Tribe, I could answer many of your questions. And I could make you a new prism. And I could allow you to work in my laboratory. But what good would that do?
‘You, Yawtl, could have so many treasures that you would never have to steal again. Not that that would keep you from your thievery. But what good would they do you?
‘You, witch, could have new eyes and new devices and could see the effects of your new powers. But what benefit would they be to you?
‘And you, Jowanarr, you wouldn’t have to wait for your mother to die to become an exceedingly powerful witch and start your own family. But what use would that be?’
She puffed out a cloud of sweet-smelling purple smoke, and she laughed. It was a disturbing sound, a peculiar flapping with an overtone of arrogance. It also sounded sinister.
But all that may be my imagination, Deyv thought.
‘I could just make you slaves to me. I need someone to wait upon me, but by Thrinkelshum! I need someone to talk to more! I won’t enslave you, though. I don’t have to. I will accept you as guests who are, however, not my equals. Not that that will last long.’
‘I detect an ominous note,’ Sloosh said.
‘Well you may,’ she said. The fact is that you’re prisoners here. But so am I.’
‘Ah, the invisible barrier! Then it’s not of your doing?’
‘No. However, I have only one excuse for being trapped by it. I let my slaves go before it closed entirely. Or, I should say, before it expanded. So they went, not without some fighting among themselves for various treasures. But I stayed. If I perished, it would be for a good cause.’
The Archkerri asked her what she meant by that.
‘The barrier is not of my making. It is the gateway to another universe. Or so I believe. But once it was a tight blazing phenomenon beyond the cliffs in that direction. And-’
‘So that is why we didn’t see it,’ Sloosh said. ‘It has moved. And if I understand you, it has expanded. And in doing so became attenuated. It no longer exhibits its brightness or radiates whatever it is that causes so much horror and nausea in its viewers.’
‘You’re almost one hundred per cent correct,’ The Shemibob said, staring with her leaf-green eyes at him. ‘You’re very perceptive. Except that you aren’t perceptive enough to know that I do not like being interrupted. I’m being amiable just now. There are limits to that state, though.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Sloosh said.
‘It is not always easy to obtain. But I grant it. What you may not know, Archkerri, since you’ve not had my experience, is that gateways are one-way. You may-’
‘Again, I beg your pardon,’ Sloosh said. ‘I believe that some gateways may be one-way. But: we had an experience which we did not reveal at once, since it didn’t seem germane to our story at the time.’
He told her about the shimmering off the cliff on the island and the man who had popped in and out of it.
‘So, you see, not all such phenomena are one-way.’
‘Then I was wrong. It feels good to be wrong twice in a short time after such a long time of always being right. I thought I had the mathematics of the gates worked out. I’ve spend a thousand weevrish working on it. So – anyway, it’s true that the gateway expanded. But it still has a heart, a centre, a focus, which shines as horribly as the whole thing did once. That is deep within the castle. I’ll show it to you when it is time for you to see it.
‘Meanwhile, know, my leaved friend, that our time here is short. That is, it’s short to me, though it may seem long to your short-lived colleagues. And even to you. This gateway is one-way, which means that we are receiving no water or air from outside it. My machines have been making air and sending excess heat into the gateway, and soon they will have to start manufacturing water. Eventually, the raw materials of these will run out. Then we die of oxygen-starvation!’
‘Most interesting and definitely relevant,’ Sloosh said. ’However, this gateway exhibits some features that are startling. What it is, really, is a two-way gateway within certain limits and one-way only in its centre, as you call it. I would’ve thought that when the gateway expanded, it would have swallowed up all that it now covers. Thus –’
‘It just doesn’t work that way,’ The Shemibob said grimly. ’At the moment I’m not concerned about why it acts thus. I’m only concerned about how I can use it.’
‘Most commendable. Still –’
She rolled her eyes with disgust or incomprehension or both. She said, ‘First, I must meet this Phemropit-thing.’
They left the room and went down the corridor towards the staircase. On the way Sloosh informed her that Phemropit was not really its name. That had been the Tsimmanbul’s invention. The creature had no individual name for itself. It called itself ‘I’, indicating a certain sense of individualization.
‘Then how did it know when it was being addressed or summoned?’ The Shemibob asked. ‘How could it refer to another of its kind when that one was not in sight?’
‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ Sloosh said, ‘In its environment, it never referred to anyone who wasn’t directly in line with its microwave or light-beam detectors. I don’t understand its culture, though it has tried many times to explain it to me. But you must realize that the planetoid on which it lived was rather small, perhaps not more than four hundred miles in diameter. This, with the airlessness and the extreme cold of space and the absence of surface illumination, made for a peculiar society. Peculiar to us, that is.’
‘Begging your pardon for the interruption,’ Deyv buzzed, hoping she would not be angry, ‘but it does have a name. It knows when we are addressing it as Phemropit. And it calls us by our names.’
He swallowed, then continued, ‘I’ve always heard of you as The Shemibob. Am I being insolent if I dare ask what your name is?’
She stared down at him and laughed. ‘I am The Shemibob because I am the only one on Earth. I have a personal name, but I have not used it since I landed here nor do I permit lesser beings to address me by it. Does that satisfy you, little human male?’
‘Certainly. Only-’
‘Only what?’
‘One more question, if I may. Why have you allowed the jewels to grow out of control? Eventually they will spread everywhere, and all life on land will be destroyed.’
She laughed and said, ‘Do you think I am a gardener who prunes my jewels as if they were plants or pulls them up as if they were weeds? That would be
a strange sight!’
She gave another of her flapping laughs. ‘Actually, I could check their growth. That is, I could before I became prisoner in my own castle. But when I was able to do so, I saw no reason why I should. Long before the slow growing stones cover this land with their glitter, this Earth shall be destroyed. Why, then, should I bother?’
‘Thank you, O Shemibob.’
They found the creature on the second floor in a large room. It was facing a great sphere of cut quartz that was pulsing light of different lengths. Sloosh had told it that these were random and for aesthetic purposes only, but it had not given up trying to decipher them.
‘That is why I sometimes wonder if it’s truly intelligent,’ Sloosh said. ‘But I suppose that its mind just works differently from ours.’
‘From mine, maybe,’ Hoozisst muttered. ‘The plant-man’s mind is as alien as Phemropit’s.’
The Archkerri stood in front of the creature, barring its view of the sphere, and flashed it a message with the firefly. As Phemropit turned round to face the others, The Shemibob laughed.
‘I’ll give you a better thing to pulse light with than that insect.’
Introductions were made, after which The Shemibob, quickly learning how to operate the firefly, asked Phemropit many questions. When she had finished, she said, ‘I may have a use for this thing. Let’s go down now and see the heart of the gateway.’
They went into what seemed to be a room smaller than most. It turned out to be a lift. It dropped swiftly into the depths, six open doorways and hallways beyond them flashing past. It slowed down and stopped gently at the seventh doorway. The Shemibob led them down a well-lit hall, turned a corner, and did not stop until she was halfway down the next corridor.
About twenty feet beyond, half in the wall, half sticking out, was the dreaded brightness. Again, Deyv felt his knees weaken and his stomach turn.
‘Familiarity with it has only slightly thinned my horror,’ The Shemibob said. ‘But I have made myself get near enough to it to experiment. Watch, if you can.’
She took one of a score of long wooden poles leaning against the far wall. Deyv watched her out of a corner of one eye, his hand shading it to darken the brightness. He wanted to run away, but his experience with the other phenomenon had shown him that he could endure the sight of it, if he did not look at it too long. Turning his head away now and then eased his nausea somewhat.
The Shemibob went up to the blazing expanding-contracting thing, her eyes fully upon it. She stuck the pole into it and then moved up to it, her face only a few inches away. Deyv thought that she must be brave indeed. But then she was The Shemibob.
The pole had gone almost completely into the brightness.
She said, ‘Now I’m probing around in it. I can feel what seems to be walls. They’re hard. Atleast, they stop the end of the pole abruptly. It seems to be a tunnel of some sort, because I can feel the floor and the ceiling.
‘Notice that the bright disc is at an angle in the wall here. You can’t see that part which disappears into it. But I can thrust the pole past the edge of the wall. It goes into that other world beyond the wall. The far side of the tunnel, if it is one, is there. I get the impression that there is shallow water on the floor of the tunnel. But I have no way of determining that. The gateway conducts nothing at all. No vibrations, no solids, nothing.’
She pulled back on the pole. Only that part which had not penetrated the brightness remained. The rest was within the gateway.
Sloosh said, ‘Does that mean that anyone who tried to go through would be severed?’
‘Only if he tried to back out,’ she said. ‘I’ve used animals in various tests. Those which I put entirely in stay alive. I’ve tied ropes to them, and I’ve felt them tugging at the ropes. When I release the ropes, the ropes are dragged in all the way. Those animals that I’ve partially put in and then tried to pull back were severed in half.’
‘Very strange,’ Sloosh said. ‘But facts are facts, even if we don’t know what or why they are. What’s kept you from going through yourself?’
‘I’ve used longer poles. The tunnel begins to narrow about ten feet in. Is that just a temporary narrowing or does it expand again? As it is, the tunnel is not wide enough for me to turn round in. Is it a dead-end? Is it near the surface of that other Earth or is it deep? What is the temperature in the tunnel? Is the air in it breathable? And so on.’
The Archkerri closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, he said, ‘Do you have some system of communication at a distance? If you do, someone could go through, and he could tell you what it’s like there.’
–Yes, I have means for talking at a distance. And I’ve put a machine through which could report to me. But as I said, neither light nor vibration nor a flow of shenrem comes through.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Sloosh said. ‘Stupid of me to ask that. But I had to.’
‘Probing with a pole works because I can estimate how far the obstructions are that stop the pole.’
‘What’s a shenrem?’ Deyv asked.
‘Invisible-to-the-naked-eye energy particles that can be made to flow in different directions along a conductor. They can be modulated to indicate certain things, such as a degree of temperature, or to show pictures. I’ll explain it to you some time.’
Sloosh said, ‘The focus is big enough to allow Phemropit to enter. And it could cut away the narrow part of the tunnel. But I doubt it: would volunteer.’
‘Ask it.’
The plant-man did so. He then said, ‘Phemropit doesn’t see any reason why it should. I don’t blame it. What good would it do, anyway, unless we followed it in?’
‘I have to make up my mind sometime,’ The Shemibob said. ‘When the air gives out, I can either be asphyxiated here or enter the gateway. There is no choice, of course, not to an intelligent person.’
They returned to the ground floor. Deyv felt depressed, and from the expressions and the silence of the others, they did, too. Despite what The Shemibob had said, he felt that he would rather choke to death than go through that abomination.
Six sleep-times passed. During this time, Deyv learned more of the owner’s past life. She had come from a world which revolved around a star, so far away that his mind could not imagine the distance. Her star was about to go nova, and her people, though they had great powers, could not move their planet far enough away to escape the all-ravening fury of the exploding star. So she had left with many of her kind in a spaceship. By the time she had come to Earth, only she was alive. The others had died – while looking for a habitable world; from accidents, hostile beasts and sentients; from suicide; from radiation.
Deyv felt even gloomier. Life was so fragile. Even the great Shemibobs were vulnerable. And when she finally died, though she had lived out many many generations of humans, she would be just as dead as they. That did not console him at all.
He was lying in bed and thinking these dark thoughts when Vana came through the doorway. He sat up.
‘What’s wrong?’
She lay down by him.
‘Our time is limited,’ she said softly. ‘We’ll soon be dead. We’ve wasted too much time because we couldn’t stand the idea of making love to an eggless. But that doesn’t mean anything now. I’ve been waiting for you to come to me and tell me what I’ve just told you. You didn’t, so I killed my pride, and I’ve come to you.’
Deyv took her in his arms, saying, ‘I’ve thought of this. But I was afraid you’d reject me.’
‘Is this rejection?’ she said, and she began kissing him.
A moment later, they rolled apart, their hearts beating hard, staring at each other, grey beneath their pigment.
‘What in Thriknil is that?’ Deyv asked.
That was a loud rumbling noise, a crashing of many heavy objects, a shaking of the bed, and screams from down the hall.
Jum and Aejip bounded into the room, the dog howling, the cat screeching.
‘It’s an earthquake!’ Vana cried.
‘It can’t be,’ Deyv shouted. ‘Things outside the barrier can’t affect the castle!’
The Yawtl, his eyes wide, ran into the room.
‘Come with me!’ he screamed. ‘The Shemibob says we must go through the gateway!’
Deyv shot out of bed.
‘Why?’
‘She says the barrier is contracting! It’ll crush the castle and everybody in it!’
36
Though frightened. Deyv stayed cool enough to put on his breechclout, fasten his sword belt and grab his tomahawk. Vana ran out of the room, presumably to get her kilt and weapons. Deyv went into the corridor and almost collided with the Yawtl, who had dashed out of his room. His eyes were wild, and he was naked. But he wore the Emerald and he clutched his spear, sword and tomahawk.
He shouted something to Deyv. His voice was overridden, however, by the rumbling, groaning and crashing. Down the hall a cloud of dust spewed round the corner as a wall gave way. A gigantic block of stone toppled and blocked the corridor halfway.
Sloosh, the witch, and her daughter came running, Jowanarr pulling Feersh by one hand. A moment later, Vana dashed from her room, holding her possessions. The cat was close behind her.
‘Down to the gateway!’ Sloosh buzzed loudly in Deyv’s ear.
Deyv did not need the order, but he was reluctant to go. It seemed – almost – better to stay and be smashed under the ceiling than to face that horror.
Sloosh, who was holding the cube under one arm and the axe in one hand, buzzed something else. It was drowned as the wall at the far end of the corridor roared downward and inward.
They all ran then. When they reached the lift, they found The Shemibob, carrying a large leather bag, and Phemropit waiting for them inside it.
‘Hurry! Hurry!’ she screamed. ‘If the shaft falls in, we’re trapped!’
The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 48