by Джеффри Лорд
He fell in behind the little group and kept pace with them, matching his stride and manner to the guards’, all the way to the elevator. They all got in and the door closed behind them, then the lift sank silently into the depths. In the two minutes it took the elevator to drop down to the slave level, neither the guards nor the slaves took any further notice of Blade. As long as he possessed enough of the outward signs of being a guard not to trigger any of their conditioned warnings, he was apparently going to be safe-at least until he went into action. And then the rapidly spreading chaos should hopefully leave the slow, conditioned wits of the guards laboring along far in the rear.
The elevator stopped and the door whispered open. The four slaves trotted dutifully out, the guards now flanking them, Blade following behind. They turned left, toward the slave quarters; Blade turned right, toward the head of the shaft.
He was not entirely certain what he could do to get the Menel to notice him and come up into the stronghold. Dropping in on them-literally-by going down the shaft would be nothing but a swift way of committing suicide, he suspected. They almost certainly would have warning systems or sentries at the bottom, and if anything unexpected came down it, they would probably cut the gravity control off and let it drop. No doubt there were also barriers against bombs, gas, etc.-so if the problem had involved physically attacking them it would have been almost insoluble, apart from the fact that he wanted to inflict as little damage as possible in the process of calling himself to their attention.
However, annoying them, like a mosquito whining around a man’s head until he tries to swat it, might prove simpler. From his pouch Blade pulled out one of the Ice Master’s ultrasonic grenades, microminiaturized generators used in herding the Ice Dragons. Then he pulled out a timing device, also lifted from the laboratory storage shelves. Hooked to the grenade, it would delay the firing for as much as twenty minutes, long enough for the grenade to sink well down the shaft before giving off a two hundred-decibel blast of ultrasonic sound. That, Blade was fairly certain, would register on any detectors or warning systems likely to be down there, possibly wreck them, and certainly alert or alarm any Menel sentries. Since the sound grenade was a device the Menel themselves had given the Ice Master, they would be more than likely to demand an accounting for such an unorthodox, not to say hostile, use of it.
He wired the timer to the firing mechanism of the grenade and strode over to the head of the shaft, hefting the grenade in his hand. It was no larger than a small pear, but weighed more than four pounds. He reached the edge of the shaft-and halted in mid-stride.
Unmistakably there was a current of air rising up the shaft-he could see dust particles soaring upward, glinting in the light-and unmistakably that rising current also bore with ever-increasing strength the damp, moldy odor Blade had noticed previously clinging to the rim of the pit. For a moment he froze in place, nearly paralyzed with surprise-and not quite able to suppress a little fear-then sprang backward; looking for a place of concealment.
As he did so the lights began to blink on and off in a well-defined pattern-three long blinks, three short blinks, two long blinks, two short blinks, then start the cycle over again. A high-pitched whine that wavered uncertainly for a moment, then settled down to a regular undulation, started hammering at his ears.
Two guards came out of the corridor that led to the slave quarters. Blade started, spun ready to strike, then stared as he saw them slow, stop, and finally stand motionless as statues, their arms at their sides and their eyes staring vacantly into space. Of course! The Ice Master wanted to keep the existence of the Menel a secret from his servants and slaves, so part of the conditioning was designed to put them into a trance whenever the lights and sirens that signaled the approach of the Menel went into action. And Blade was certain that the updraft and odor from the shaft could mean nothing else but the approach of the Menel. He found himself sweating as he contemplated being the first human being to face a non-human intelligence. It was nearly tragic that this contact was bound to be somewhat hostile-but what choice did he have for the moment, other than abandoning the human population of this planet?
He started again as running feet sounded behind him, and he spun around to see no less than six guards storming down the flight of stairs that led to the level of the Heart. These guards did not have the entranced, sleepwalkers’ air of the other two; on the contrary, they seemed twice as alert and lively as usual. They moved purposefully toward the head of the shaft and formed a ring around it, their spears forming a protective circle of steel points. These were the Menel-conditioned guards, no doubt, their duty being to guard the Menel during their visits to the stronghold-with or without the Ice Master’s knowledge and consent. And if these were guards from the Heart squads, did this mean that preserving the Heart was important to the Menel as well as to the Ice Master? Would the damage or destruction of the Heart damage the Menel as well as destroying the Ice Master? His mind was racing so busily over this possibility that for a moment he forgot what was coming up the shaft. He had barely time to duck behind a projecting cabinet before the two Menel reached the top of the shaft and wobbled their way out onto the floor.
The initial impression on Blade was that of two giant stalks of asparagus with four lobster claws apiece. It was a moment before he could begin sorting out details into a more detailed picture. As far as he could see, the two Menel were identical in size, coloring, and form, with no visible sense or sex organs and no clothing except a broad mesh belt around their-well, call them «necks»-with a silver disc set in the front of it. Both were just over nine feet tall and a foot and a half in diameter, the «stalks» tapering toward the «tip» end to a point only a couple of inches thick. They maneuvered themselves across the floor by a snail-like pulsing of a broad suction disk at their base, to the accompaniment of a stomach-turning sucking noise, and balanced themselves with two of the four arms. The other two were kept tightly folded against their bodies.
All four arms were double-jointed, nearly eight feet long at full extension, with spiky nobs at the joints. They ended in foot-long lobster-like claws with sharp edges and even sharper points. Just above the claws on each arm was a pair of two-foot tentacles, now tightly curled, but presumably the Menels’ equivalent of fingers. If the claws were as formidable as they looked, Blade could understand why the Menel carried no weapons when visiting humans who carried nothing more than swords or spears. They did not appear particularly fast-moving, but with those long arms, did they need to be?
The Menel were making their stately if noisy way toward the stairs, and Blade realized that they were heading up to the Heart level, where they would have even more of their conditioned guards to protect them. He would have to make his move now. He waited until the Menel were almost at the foot of the stairs, with three guards already ahead of them on the first flight, then he darted across the open space to where the two regular guards still stood motionless. He ducked behind one of them, snatched his spear from his hand, and without stepping into view threw it full force at the center one of the three guards escorting the Menel from the rear.
His throw was accurate; the spear drove straight through the surprised guard’s chest and came out through his back so far that its point almost nicked one of the Menel. The guard clutched at the shaft, eyes widening, then toppled as his two companions brought their spears up to the ready and looked wildly about for the attacker. In the few seconds it took them to focus on the two motionless guards, Blade dropped to the floor and rolled away into a corner, watching for the next move. He had just risen to a watchful crouch when the Menels’ guards saw that one of the two no longer carried his spear, drew the hoped-for conclusion, and threw theirs. The spears thudded into the guard, toppling him off his feet and stabbing deeply not only into his body but into his conditioning. He let out a nightmare scream that echoed through the dim corridors, and that scream somehow galvanized his companion into life.
Blade saw the man stir, raise his spear, then look ab
out him and see the Menel. And then he also screamed, drawing his sword and hurling himself forward at the two remaining Menel guards so fast they barely had a chance to draw their swords before he was on them, slashing with his sword, stabbing with his spear, and shrieking like a madman. The Menel lurched around, unfolding all four arms to full extension. One of the guards from up on the stairs tried to get past them and join in the fight, tripped over one of the outstretched arms, and crashed down on to the floor at the feet of the attacking guard, who chopped down with his sword and took the man’s head off with a single stroke. A split-second later one of the two Menel guards got home to the attacker’s thigh; he staggered and began to go down. And then the rear Menel reached down with two arms, their claws opened to the widest, and closed both pincers on the man’s chest. The air went out of him in a horrible bubbling scream, and Blade heard bones crunching as the pincers met.
So far Blade had done more in less time and with less risk to the Menel themselves than he had dreamed possible. But he knew he couldn’t stop yet; the situation would have to be pushed to a pitched battle and the Menel themselves more seriously endangered than they had been so far. Crouching low, he moved out onto the floor to the body of the first guard killed, picked up the man’s truncheon, then sprang forward, covering the space to the foot of the stairs in a single tiger-like bound.
The Menel saw him first; whatever they used in place of eyes could apparently see better in this dim light than the guards could. Two arms snaked toward him past the two rear guards; he raised the truncheon and smashed it down hard on the left pincer, then ducked back as the two guards whirled around and sent their swords whistling toward his head. There was not room enough for both of them to make a full swing; the two blades crashed into each other with ‘an ear-splitting clang and one flew clear out of its owner’s hand. Blade thrust the disarmed man through the chest before he could recover, parried a cut from the other, and slashed him in the leg. The Menel now lunged out with three arms together, emitting a staccato banging noise from the disk at its throat that sounded like somebody pounding on an iron pipe, and tried to move down a step for a better reach. It hit a blood-covered patch of stone, lost suction, lost its balance, and fell head toward Blade with a squashy thump. For a moment it was completely at Blade’s mercy, half-stunned, two of its arms caught beneath its body, its comrade unable to reach across it to get at Blade and the other guards blocked by the other Menel.
Blade let that moment pass. As he saw the Menel approach, as he saw it totter and overbalance, he reached a fixed and final decision. Insofar as possible, he would never kill one of the Menel, And he would certainly not kill this one. He would not even injure it if he could avoid it.
And he could avoid it. Flourishing the sword back and forth in an air-tearing blur, he lashed out with it at one of the claws, felt the blade rasp across a bony substance as hard as steel and no more vulnerable. With his left hand he brought the truncheon up over his head, whipped it down straight at the creature’s «neck»-just above the silver disk-with all the strength in his body-and then with muscle-wrenching precision brought it to a dead stop in mid-air an inch from the Menel’s skin.
That «I could have killed you but I won’t» gesture nearly cost Blade his own life during the extra seconds it required. The other Menel lunged at Blade, nearly losing its own balance but almost closing one pincer on his left arm. He sprang back from the fallen Menel, slipping as he did so on the bloodsmeared stones and landing full-length on his back. The other Menel could not reach him, but the remaining guards could; he saw spears raised and rolled desperately to one side as two of them smacked into the stone where he had been lying and went skittering off into a corner. Two of the guards charged down, swords swinging, but by now he was up on his knees and parried one slash with the truncheon, then jabbed the man in the stomach with the tip, while at the same time his sword whistled out and chopped the second man’s left leg off at the knee. He screamed and went down, while Blade sprang up in time to meet the remaining guard in a clanging flurry of blows.
This man was much the best swordsman Blade had met all night, a maddening thing to encounter just when delay might be particularly fatal. He found himself taking risks he would never have thought of at other times, and once had the other’s point whistle past his throat by a hairsbreadth, so close he could feel the whuff of disturbed air on his skin. The second Menel made no effort to intervene, concentrating instead on helping its comrade up. The two seemed to be conversing earnestly, the conversation sounding like a whole conclave of plumbers hard at work.
If the other man had not been functioning under a conditioning that slowed him just a fraction, he might have fatally delayed Blade. As it was, Blade got in a slash that beat the other’s guard down and sank deep into his neck just as an uproar of shouting and pounding feet from above drowned out the pipe-banging sound of the Menel as a dozen more guards from the Heart detachment swarmed down the stairs.
Blade was sprinting down the corridor before his latest victim had hit the floor. A dozen guards, even a dozen slowed by their Menel conditioning, would be disastrously too many to fight. It was time to get away from the shaft head and try adding to the chaos by action somewhere else.
He did not stop running until he had gone well out of sight and almost out of sound of the guards. He was heading for the secondary elevator, to take it up to the floor of the Girls. There was a separate room there, where the regular guards took the Girls for Pleasure. If there were any guards there now, he could kill them and expect that it would be blamed on the Heart guards, the only ones not conditioned to go into a trance during the passage of the Menel. The Girls would not be in any danger, since they would also be in a trance and would not recognize him.
He reached the elevator shaft, punched the call button, waited for the indicator light to gleam on. It did so, the door opened-and two guards and a Girl tumbled out, falling rigidly to the floor and lying there motionless. Blade pulled the Girl gently aside before neatly slicing the throats of the two frozen men. Killing helpless victims was a stomach-turning business for him, but he found the guards sufficiently revolting for it to be just possible now.
The elevator shot upward and let him out on the floor of the Girls. He sprinted through the halls, heading for the Pleasure room, slapped its door-opener, and darted inside.
The room was as depressing as the rest of the living quarters of the Ice Master’s underlings, with the stone-hard floor on which the Guards were conditioned to take their pleasure. There were two Girls on the floor, one of them Lora herself, and four Guards, three standing (one frozen in the act of unbuckling his trunks) and one lying flat on the floor, where the conditioning had dropped him just as he rolled off Lora. Blade stepped into the room, hauled the two Girls out into the corridor by their feet (no time to be chivalrous or elegant now), then went back into the room, sword ready. As he did so, the lights began flashing in the same pattern that had frozen the guards down below and the same undulating whine filled the air. Blade pulled himself to a stop, spun around, and plunged out the door, just as the main elevator opened its door to disgorge four of the Heart guards, with swords drawn.
The Girls were already staggering to their feet and tottering away down the corridor. Blade yelled at the top of his lungs, «In there!» and the Heart guards stopped in their tracks, looked at him, then at one another. and followed his pointing finger-straight into the Pleasure room. They charged the four newly un-frozen guards and hacked one of them to the floor before he could raise his weapons. Two others jumped back into a corner and drew sword and truncheon, while the one on the floor rolled aside from under the stamping feet of the newcomers, caught one of them by the belt, and slammed him down on the floor. The man was struggling to rise when Blade sprang back into the room and drove his sword point-first through both men at once. They jerked wildly, gurgled, and lay still.
Simultaneously one of the men in the corner and one of the attackers got blows home on each other, top
pled to the floor, and reached out for each other with clawing hands. Blade stepped over them as they rolled in their blood on the floor, struggling to get a grip on each other’s throat, thrashing and growling like animals. He reached the two surviving attackers just as one of them went down from a belly-slash by the remaining man in the corner, then thrust the remaining attacker through from behind. The corner survivor had just enough time to raise a bloodsmeared face to stare at Blade with the beginning of gratitude in his eyes when Blade’s sword whistled down and sheared off his head.
Then Blade was on the move again, as fast as his now flagging muscles would push him along. He dashed to the secondary elevator, leaped in, pushed the button for his home level, and sagged to the floor to savor a moment’s rest and relief. Now he had to get back to his chamber undetected, and wash the blood and sweat off himself before the Ice Master thought to check the chamber. If the Ice Master found it empty, he would find it hard not to draw the right conclusion. And if he drew that conclusion, Blade had no illusions that his value as an ally would make the Ice Master spare him. In fact, it would become absolutely vital for the Ice Master to get rid of Blade, to prove to the Menel his continued good faith and innocence.
The door opened and Blade slipped out into the corridor, flattening himself against the wall at every sound. He had more than a hundred feet to go, the longest hundred feet he had ever traveled in his life. He had spent less time and effort on more than one occasion crossing a frontier strip sown with mines and guarded by barbed wire, searchlights, and machine gun nests. Halfway along he found a small waste chute, and took the chance to strip off the bloodsmeared trunks and boots and send them on their way down to destruction. But he held on to the sword-held on to it so tightly that his knuckles were paste-white by the time he finally slipped unseen and unmolested into his room. The sword went down the chute there in an instant, and in another instant he was squatting in the tub, not minding the coolness of the water this time as it flowed over him, washing away the blood, the sweat, and at least some of the strain.