by Brian N Ball
The robot said in a spinsterish voice: “Miss Hassell, you must know that it is impossible for my assessment of the probabilities in your situation to be revised, especially as a Frame-Shift Factor is about to become operative.”
Liz wailed loud and long in dismay. Marvell bellowed in pain and rage. But there was no response from the robot. It showed neither interest nor sympathy. When Liz regained her self-control, she knew that there was no way of changing its decision; to do so would destroy it, for the robot had been programmed by the strange four who called themselves the Guardians. They were the sum of Horace’s religious beliefs. Apostasy was out of the question.
Frame-Shift, thought Liz. Already this was a manic world. But Frame-Shift! There was an uncomfortable prickling at the base of her skull as she thought of the immense engines below the surface of the planet; they held the barriers in place, so that each recreation on Talisker should be isolated from its neighbors. On this strange world, the Frames could shift and glide one into another: colossal forces shifted mountains, rivers and streams about as a child reshapes his clay models.
“I said it was Hell,” Marvell muttered more to himself than to the robot. “Liz!” he called, louder. “Didn’t I say Talisker was another name for Hell?”
“Monkey!” Hawk’s voice bawled out, as in answer. “Why, ye damned red monkey, here’s Sergeant Hawk! Ye’ve been minding the captain’s prisoners? Ah, welcome, ye red ape!”
“Greetings to you, Sergeant,” the robot replied.
“Ye’ve been a long time away! What took ye so long, ye ape? Did the Frogs capture ye? Or had ye deserted poor Hawk, eh? Left poor old Hawk alone to look for his Captain Devil and the lady with the wings—why, it’s been a year or more!”
Marvell saw an opportunity.
“Yes, he did desert you, Sergeant! He’s been back to Center—he brought us out here! He’s supposed to be our guide, why, he showed us the way to your valley!”
Liz could have wept. How could a man be so stupid?
Hawk considered the outburst. Liz, who had almost given up hope of persuading either the destroyed psyche or the robot to let them free, tried to mend matters.
“Horace, you don’t know the sergeant, do you? You came back with an empty head. You told us that!”
“No talking!” bellowed Hawk.
Horace’s red fur wrinkled in a smile.
“I carried out a statistical test of significance to determine the identity of this gentleman, miss. It could be no other than the sergeant.”
Liz felt tears of frustration well up. She had felt close, at one time, to a solution of the mystery of Talisker and its eerie presence: so close that a vague plan of reaching into the ruin of the Genekey had been developing in her mind. But it needed the cooperation of Marvell and the robot. She had been sure that the grotesque events she had seen in the scanners when she had caught her first sight of Talisker were somehow the work of the Alien. Those whirlwind interwoven things compounded of ghastly human shapes and weird planetary motions were the products of the mind that had conceived the Genekey: she was sure of it. Everything about Talisker had the smell of otherness about it—always, the random progression of events, the tortuous windings of the Frames, the incredible shifting seas of the Genekey ruin, and now the threat of the Frame-Shift.
And the Pit—
Liz experienced an almost physical shock of enlightenment. The Pit! In a way there was a pattern to Hawk’s ramblings and the earlier sights she had seen! To a Primitive mind, all that was strange and inexplicable— particularly if it was threatening—was the work of some malevolent agency. And the supreme worker of evil for the Primitives had his residence in a pit!
“Marvell!” she said, bright orange-flecked green eyes shining with excitement, “Hawk thinks he’s sending us into the Alien’s space! He does! Marvell, he thinks the Alien is a kind of super-devil!”
She could forgive him his crass antagonizing of Hawk, anything, so long as he realized that at last they were near the ultimate mystery of Talisker.
“No talking, ye Frog whore!” bawled Hawk, raising the butt of his musket once more.
“You were right about Hell, Marvell, it’s—”
She saw Hawk’s rage and stopped.
“—here!” she whispered as the sergeant looked about him. “The Alien’s Possibility Space—”
“I would advise silence, miss,” pointed out Horace. “The sergeant is under considerable emotional stress.”
“Be damned to your rattle!” Hawk snarled. “You too, ye befurred ape! Little enough ye did to help me Captain Devil!”
“I’m afraid there was little I could do,” said Horace politically. “I suffered a loss of memory, Sergeant, about that time.”
Hawk looked at the red robot.
“Aye, ye’ve the empty look, so ye have! There were bombs enough and the rest of the Devil’s armory ablaze with fire and rockets! Ye’d be out of your wits, ye ape! But hold still! Listen! Aaaarh!”
Hawk’s bronchitic yell echoed around the small valley as the ground shuddered.
“Dear Christ, Time-out!” whimpered Marvell, hoping for a small miracle to fillet him from a too-dangerous situation.
“Not a chance!” Liz announced. “Besides, don’t you want to find Spingarn?”
“No!”
“Ye’ll see my old captain! Mind where ye stand, monkey!” the sergeant yelled to Horace. “Have a care when Hell-Gates open!”
“Horace!” screamed Marvell, hysterical now. “Stop him! He’s found some way of destroying us completely— he’s mad, mad! Destroyed psyches can’t be allowed to influence anyone! Restrain him, Horace!”
A trickle of sand fell away from the incline above the sergeant’s stone embrasures; the trees shivered as power lanced through their roots.
“Christ, Horace!” implored Marvell.
It came so quickly that Liz did not have time to cry out. There was no sound, just a sense of cold, gliding power. The entire valley shimmered with the radiance of some kind of energy-bands that had no place in the Galaxy; Liz saw colors shot through with black crystalline fire, hanging bursts of globules of radiance that backed into one another and disappeared, it seemed, through the back of her eyes: there were irregular shapes in the glittering black-shot radiance, whorls of maze-like, snaking patterns, and they were stranger than the weird colors, for they battered at the mind to lop off all previous known concepts of time-space relationships. The only realities were those of the Alien. Liz felt that with a little effort she could lose Liz Hassell completely and swim gently into those cold and dangerous places. “I could,” she said. “Easily.”
For a second, the unreal shapes and colors vanished, for personality had invaded the space before her. The palms were back: the sands were there: and Hawk was backing away from where she and Marvell waited, bound and helpless, for what would come.
“Liz!” Marvell shrieked. “What’s happening?”
From a point beyond her field of vision, the robot said calmly: “Well, for a start, sir, Frame-Shift. It’s under way now. Apart from that—”
“Run, monkey!” Hawk bawled. “Run for your life!”
Liz saw that the Frames of Talisker were passing through the uncanny redistribution of physical events the robot had forecast; the whole planetary crust was wrinkling and cracking as immense engines chopped the ancient Frames into new patterns. She watched the stupendous sight of glaciers suddenly rearing up from the yellow sands; of mountains rising up like drunken beasts and then smashing themselves into rolling fragments as their needle tips fell away in clouds of shale! The planet’s engines, installed by the first manufacturers of the Frames, had been supplemented, however: it was not the immense physical majesty that held Liz in terrified awe. There was something much more intimidating occurring now. Frame-Shift was only part of the planet’s cycle of change.
In some eerie way, the Alien was working out its own concept of Frame-Shift.
“He’s right!” Marvell bawled. “The
madman’s right!” Liz gasped, for a great gaping hole had opened in the valley. It was black, blacker than the emptiest of empty space. And shot through with that cold, golden fire! Around the edges of the blackness shimmered force-bands, white-silver canopies of grotesque energies! “It’s Hell!” Marvell shouted wildly. “Back!” roared Hawk as Horace moved into Liz’s view. “Back, monkey—let the Frogs go down to meet the Devil! Come back, d’ye see, or ye’ll be in there too!” The great portals of the hole in space crept closer. Marvell tried to scramble away. Liz saw a trail of blood over the stones. But the man’s strength was gone. She wondered whether to try to evade the creeping majesty of that emptiness. She lay still, appalled and amazed at her decision. She felt dazed and closed her eyes.
Hawk was back. Liz knew it, for the sergeant was yelling commands at the robot. She couldn’t make out the words anymore, though they were clearly a series of orders designed to save the robot from the black-gold emptiness that lapped about her. “Horace!” Marvell managed to bawl. Liz looked, to see Horace move. The robot apparently had decided to intervene at last. She felt herself caught in a powerful grip, but the emptiness had almost claimed her.
“Leave them!” Hawk was yelling.
Liz was in some confusion about the next sequence of events; only the expression on the faces of the actors in them enabled her to understand what had happened. It seemed that Hawk was back. It seemed, too, that the robot had decided on a change of plan. Marvell, unfortunately, was both unable to help Horace or to distinguish him as a savior. Hawk was furious, blotched face screwed up in anguish; Marvell was desperate, but full of an urge to revenge himself; the robot’s features showed indecision. And then Marvell had kicked out with his heavy legs, not with much power it was true, but still they were strong enough as a propellant to knock Hawk to the ground.
“No!” yelled Hawk. “The crocodileys! The boggarts! The—aaaargh!”
“If I go, so do you!” bellowed Marvell triumphantly.
The portals advanced over all four figures even as Sergeant Hawk managed to shake off the trunk of the man pinning him down. Liz caught one last glimpse of the incredible confusion on the planetary surface: she could see for miles as the boundaries of the Frames were hurled upward in great seismic leaps. Ruins shuddered into dust, seas boiled, green places yellowed, a forest was splintered, and the sun grew blood-red as volcanoes spouted. Yet Liz caught herself trying to explain away the mad planetary convolutions even as she felt herself sliding through unearthly cold vacuums: it was all so tentative! There was such an unsureness about Talisker.
It was almost like the first time you were given a trial Plot, nothing much, say a recreation of the first submarine games on Vega II; but you didn’t quite know how to make it work because there wasn’t any point to some of the games or there didn’t seem to be any when you were a half-millennium away in time from the ancient contestants. So you were unsure, you made guesses. You were tentative, like the thing on Talisker that was moving you into what the sergeant called Hell.
Into the Possibility Space. After Spingarn.
“Boggarts!” someone bawled as the black-gold radiance ceased. “You damned whoreson poxed-up Frog, ye’ve given me to the boggarts!”
Liz looked about wildly.
The sun was half-hidden by smoky, unfamiliar clouds. There was a wild, rugged cliff above them: Marvell was foaming at the mouth in fear, trying to burst his bonds with newfound maniacal strength: Horace was a red-gold statue, unmoving. Then Liz saw the scaled thing.
She screamed too.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thirty feet high, slime dripping greenly from gray scales, two massive hind legs as wide and ponderous as trees, a body of sculpted muscle and massive bones, and, above, a head jutting out from a long neck, but the head had the attention of Hawk and Marvell and Liz. There were small eyes of no color at all and a red bag of skin around them; a snout protruding from a rock-like bulge of bone, and a wide, flat area of jaw that hung open slightly, with breath steaming out into the dry air. And teeth. Liz saw rows of bright white teeth. There were curved fangs almost as long as her arm, and small teeth like sword-points. In a terrible moment of understanding, Liz knew that the great reptile was waiting where it stood because it sensed that they would come.
“Hawk!” she screamed, breaking the spell of the moment.
The reptile was easing itself on those massive legs of bone and muscle and claw; strength pulsed through its every fiber, greed rippled across its evil mask. A long, heavy tail whipped up and down with a solid crash, raising a small cloud of red dust. It would spring. They all knew it would spring.
“Horace!” yelled Marvell. “Do something!”
The robot stood impassive, waiting.
“Boggarts!” Hawk said, aghast. “Look, the scaly monster—see, just see it!”
“You then, Hawk!” implored Marvell. “Shoot it!”
Liz looked down at the ancient weapon in Hawk’s hand; such a puny instrument with which to tackle the tons of malevolent flesh, the rank on rank of cruel teeth! At best it could do no more than scare the monster!
“Quick!” she said urgently, for the tail had hammered the rock and dust once more. The thing drooled with impatient greed. Why didn’t it charge? There was more than enough power in one short upper limb to wipe out all three humans with one blow; while those savage teeth could rip a puny human frame into shreds within seconds! Marvell babbled as the monster snorted.
A plume of flame billowed on a far horizon and the sun was outshone. What kind of place was this? Now Liz knew what Hawk had meant! This was a kind of hell.
“Stand away!” Liz heard the sergeant say. “There’s no help in leaden bullets—not with boggarts!”
The mouth opened wide.
Sound exploded in a huge rushing roar as the monster challenged them; all around her, Liz could feel the vibrations of the heavy dry air. She could see Hawk reaching into the knapsack on his back—strange that she had not noticed the white canvas before!—and with a steady hand too; in a few seconds a cylinder of metal was smoking in his hands as tinder and flint made a small center of red flame: a waxen taper flared and sputtered.
“Dear Christ, Time-out?” whispered Marvell.
Great muscles stirred. The ground heaved, and fifteen tons of reptilian hate and blood-lust advanced in a curious fast waddling sprint. Liz watched, fascinated, as the taper suddenly spurted black smoke.
“Down!” roared Hawk unnecessarily to the two bound figures who lay beside the robot.
Liz remembered the routine instructions for such dangers. There were Shockwaves and drills to cope with them. The best she could do was to open her mouth and shout. She hoped the monster could be stopped, but she was sure it could not. The great clawed feet smashed rock and rubble aside.
Hawk threw.
The cylinder tumbled end over end, sparks floating away in its crazy parabola; the monster’s eyes caught its flight, Liz was sure. It did not check its rush. She could see that the scales were drying fast in the heat; it must have a mud pool nearby, she thought. It would be full of bones.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” bawled Hawk, throwing himself to the ground. His hands were over his ears.
Liz closed her eyes, feeling the ground shake. The immense reptile was a dozen strides away. Had the flaring cylinder bounced off its massive bony head? Had a claw reached out and crushed the sparks? Was the canister of expansion powder now lying in the dust of this primitive world? She felt sweat flooding from every pore.
The explosion was a swift battering sullen roar, a suppressed boom of noise as if it had taken place in a confined space.
“Huzzah! A boggart done for!” bawled Hawk. “Horace!” he yelled, his voice changing key. “See, the monster’s a goner! Look—”
Liz looked, Hawk’s instruction compelling attention.
She saw the huge trunk, the immense hind legs, the two shorter forearms and the snake-like neck: but the head was different. She knew the
reason for the relative quietness of the little bomb’s explosion. The lower part of the reptile’s jaw had been blown away. And there had been more damage. Great splinters of bone hung from the vast cranium. The eyes were blind, the nose-holes too large.
But the thing was not dead.
It stood bewildered, dying. Blood rushed out in a furious stream, jetting in every direction. The red jets caught the hazy sunlight, looking like a shower of rubies. And it was attempting a roar of fright and rage. The claws of the forearm clenched. The terrible head pointed in every direction as the body shifted. It sought revenge!
Hearing had not gone in the vicious bombing.
With amazing grace for such a huge animal so badly wounded, it was turning toward Hawk. Liz knew why his voice had changed key, from a note of triumph to one of terror. It paused, blindly peering to a spot to the left of the little group. It moved.
Terror, pity, revulsion filled Liz’s mind. She knew why Time-outers called for a respite. Even though the monster’s terrible anguish moved her to a deep spasm of pity, the green coils of its tail and the gray scales of its body brought about sensations of complete and undying revulsion; a deep, ancient race-memory from an earlier kind of life gripped her. Overriding the revulsion and the pity, though, was fear. She was enclosed in fear. It stifled her.
And she could not scream.
To call out was to invite the monster closer; yet, had she been able to draw breath to call out, she would have done so. The relief of having the fear ended, even though it meant death, would have made her cry out. But breath would not come, and the monster trod within three yards of her head and passed by. She opened her eyes once more, not realizing that she had closed them, and saw Hawk. Impossibly brave, he had another canister in his hand. But the tinder was gone, blown away by the furious breathing of the reptile as it passed.
Marvel’s eyes were shut tight, Liz saw. He was muttering a prayer or a curse in a low intense voice. The vast reptile’s shadow covered him for a moment. And then it was gone. Liz jerked her body around so that she could see what was happening.