“But, My Lord, that would mean war.”
Ankar Moor’s eyes blazed hatred and Polna’s face looked grim, but Sarnoff was too alarmed to care. Zirpola turned calmly to face him.
“So? What if it does?”
Sarnoff quailed before his stare but tried to ignore it. He felt it was important that he protest.
“But Triton is in the Federation, My Lord, and they have outlawed war.”
Zirpola was quiet, almost conciliatory.
“And we, my dear Sarnoff, are not within the Federation. And why not? Because Triton and the other Cities have kept us out. They mean to deprive us of fuel and let us die so that we may be overrun by the Mutants. That is why I need the Death Machines, that is why I must fight. Do you understand?”
Sarnoff did not understand. He knew that Zirpola had deliberately kept the City outside the Federation, but good sense was beginning to reassert itself and he realised that it would be unwise for him to argue further—perhaps he had gone too far already.
“I understand, Lord.”
Zirpola nodded, apparently satisfied.
“You should be very proud, Sarnoff, you have served us by doing a magnificent job. Believe me, your contribution will not go unrewarded when we have triumphed. I expect you to start work assembling the other machines right away and that they will be as successful as the first.”
He bowed in a necessary show of humility.
“Yes, My Lord. You need have no fears. It will be done as you ask.”
“Thank you.”
Zirpola turned on his heel and, pulling his cloak round him, he began to stride back to the door, beckoning to both Polna and Ankar Moor to follow him. They fell in beside him and he halted immediately as some afterthought seemed to occur to him. He turned again.
“Just one thing?”
“Yes, My Lord?” Sarnoff was thoroughly frightened now.
“In leaving to you the work of assembly, I give you authorisation to draw as many men as you will need from the security pool to carry it out. None of the civilians must know about these machines until we are ready.”
“None shall be told from these lips, My Lord.”
“Good.” Zirpola nodded, then something else seemed to occur to him.
“I am sorry to have deprived you of one of your close assistants. I will of course see that his family receive the appropriate medals and commendations. He was not crucially important, he could be spared by you, couldn’t he?”
Sarnoff thrust aside his real feelings. He felt he had already made enough mistakes for one day.
“He could be spared easily enough, My Lord. As a matter of fact, he was a frightful bore.”
“Then I have done you a service. Good day.”
Zirpola turned away again. A moment later, Polna was closing the door on the three of them. The noise of it echoed and re-echoed round the chamber.
Only after a moment of silence was Sarnoff galvanised into life. He found his remaining assistant trembling at his side.
“We must get to work on our preparations right away.”
“But what about Peterson?”
Sarnoff shrugged. There was really nothing he could do. The man had been scattered into atoms. For their own good, both men should now put the memory out of their minds. Sarnoff mouthed the usual formula, which he did not believe and which he knew the other man would not.
“He died for the greater glory of the City of Helix and our Lord and Master, the Lord Zirpola. There is no greater cause in which to die. Now give me that damned inventory and get back to your work. We have been charged with a great task and time is short.”
The man hurried away and Sarnoff sat down to rest. He felt nauseous at what he had just done, but a man must survive.
The Lord Zirpola and Ankar Moor emerged into the corridor from the machine shop and waited for Polna to close and lock the outer door. Then, and only then, did they speak. It was Ankar Moor who broke the silence.
“You would reward that man—that Sarnoff—who seeks to question you and your plans. I would kill him for his impertinence.”
Zirpola chuckled.
“So you would. You are too impetuous. I told Sarnoff he would receive his just reward when the battle was over and by then we will have no further need of him.”
“So death will be his reward.”
“Precisely.”
Ankar Moor chuckled as they started their return journey along the corridor. The light once more hurt Zirpola’s eyes but he was less bothered than pleased that, while they had been with Sarnoff, the main power had been switched on again.
“And when can we move?”
Ankar Moor hesitated only for a moment.
“For the first phase? In just a few days, once Sarnoff has assembled enough machines for the task.”
Zirpola gave out his humourless laugh.
“And then you hope your machines will give your men the capability of capturing some of the Guides. I must say, you have greater faith in their powers than I do. You are a vain man, Ankar Moor.”
Had it not been for the mask, the ruler of Helix could have seen the livid red marks of anger that welled up on the remains of Ankar Moor’s destroyed face, but the man’s voice was soft when he replied. He was practiced at masking his arrogance and anger.
“I intend that Polna and I will train and supervise a group ourselves. Also, we will supervise the capture.”
Zirpola nodded.
“That would seem a good plan. After all, it is said you know the ways of the Guides, therefore you should be able to think ahead of them in a fight.”
The big man did not reply. His ancestry was something about which he had never spoken, not even to Zirpola. Normally the latter respected his silence and never referred to it. Today seemed an exception.
If he thought that Zirpola fell silent for that reason, he was much mistaken. The Lord of Helix felt the pain coming over his head again in crashing waves and he longed to get back to his private quarters in the highest part of the City, so that he would be alone to seek relief from the torture that assailed him.
The trio reached the elevator bank in silence and travelled up in the express elevator, using the over-rider that would not allow any other official to stop it on an intermediate level while the Lord of Helix was riding in it. Only officials were allowed to use the elevators these days. It was a way of conserving power, as well as a useful way in which the Enforcers might control the civilian population of Helix to better effect than formerly.
The lift doors opened and deposited him outside the door of his office and private quarters. The two men got out of the elevator with him, but he turned to them quickly, willing himself to remain upright, his brow clear of any indication of the pain he felt.
“Both of you have much work to accomplish. I will summon you to confer later, Ankar Moor.”
A moment of hesitation at this abrupt dismissal, then the two men bowed and returned to the elevator. Dizziness was making their master’s head spin, but he controlled the feeling until he had got inside his own door and it had slid shut and locked behind him.
Only then did he give way to his feelings, falling to his knees with an animal cry of pain, before lying flat and pressing his raging forehead against the cold marble floor in an effort to find relief.
In a few minutes the pain had receded and he raised himself up again to go on wobbling legs to the big chair behind his desk. There was still much to do, much planning and calculation, now that the assembly of the first of the Death Machines had placed in his hand the key he needed to accomplish his ambition: the conquest of the world.
CHAPTER TWO
Day was coming again to the devastated face of the earth. The dark and ever-changing shapes of the mountains, dunes and plateaux were slowly turned from black to a ravishing kaleidoscope of golds and browns by the first rays of the rising sun. It moved up into a pale sky that gradually darkened to a bright blue like a great fireball rising over a ravished landscape.
&n
bsp; High above, a few wisps of cloud from some polluted sea straggled across the lightening sky, but they were soon burned away by the heat of the sun so that nothing stood between the great orb and the land it would bake hard and dusty until evening. The sun was hardly up over the horizon before the baking began.
Even so, it was not a heat that promoted stillness. Here and there little eddies of sand were thrown up by the whispers of gentle wind that passed across the surface of the barren land.
Floating too, on that wind, came the faintest of sounds, the sound of two metal objects slapping together, a sound that told of some human movement in the distance. It was a sound that would not be picked up by the normal human ear, but to the man who rode straightbacked across the plateau towards the defile that led down to the plain below, it came as loudly as if the maker of it had been in sight—and it was a sound that meant danger to him. A sound that meant, in spite of the desolation and emptiness all around him, he was not alone.
Cautiously, Kaz Oshay reined in the magnificent grey stallion on which he rode and which men said was one with its master, sitting quite still on its back for a moment as he tried to locate the direction and source of the sound. He delved into his full memory to detect where and when, if ever, he had heard it before.
Even among the Range Guides, the name of Kaz Oshay, son of Oshay, was one that was respected and revered. In this band of loners, these warriors apart, riding proud in a wild land, he seemed more apart, purer by lack of contact with even his fellow Guides. A self-reliant man, a special one even amongst the positive Mutants that made up his kind, the descendants of the brave Commando Rangers of so long ago. A dangerous man.
He located the sound very quickly. It came from ahead and out of sight. From somewhere in the ravine towards which he was making, the defile that led to the plain below.
Men were moving down there and the slap of metal against metal meant that they were armed. Perhaps they were there innocently, but perhaps they were planning to lie in wait for him. If so, then their carelessness had condemned them to death.
Now his horse too heard the sound and whinnied softly as if in alarm, worried by its strangeness. He leaned forward and put a gentle hand on the creature’s muzzle to calm it and, trustful of its master, it became silent.
In the rocks above the ravine floor, the three Obedience Enforcers whom Kaz Oshay had heard moved slowly forward, seeking good and hidden positions, each of them grasping a strangely-shaped dart gun in one hand. The spare darts were enclosed in leather pouches that hung from their belts and these also held their anti-matter blasters. The darts slapping together as they moved forward was the faint sound that the Guide had heard, a noise hardly noticeable even to the men themselves. Each man was dressed in the skin-fitting dark uniform that distinguished the Enforcers, though without the flashes that were on Polna’s arm. Each man also had a hood-like helmet over his head for protection both from attack and from the deepening heat of the sun.
The men reached a satisfactory position and the sounds ceased, but Kaz Oshay remained, for the moment, quite still. He knew that he had heard the sound of weapons, but his tactics would depend a great deal on whether his ambushers were men or Mutants. His great horse reared suddenly and snorted, the scent of strange life brought suddenly to his nostrils by a change in the limpid breeze.
Kaz Oshay was wearing a garment that was usual among the Guides, similar to the old jallaba worn in the deserts in the days long before the great catastrophe. Now he pulled the hood up over his wild mane of hair so it covered his proud, lean face and, careful to look casual, as if he had no clue of the impending ambush, he scanned the bleak sandstone cliffs to his left. But there seemed to be nothing, no one waiting for him above the gully.
He spoke softly to himself in the well-remembered words from the rules of the code by which the Guides lived:
“Surprise is a double-edged sword.”
As he spoke, his hand went down to touch the handle of his Whistler, concealed under the jallaba, as if wishing himself luck in the fight for which his mind was now preparing him. That too was part of the code; never run from a fight; never hide from your enemies.
The handle of the clear diamond-bladed sword felt good to the touch. It was shaped as the ancient Samurai swords of the Japanese warriors had been in earlier days, only slightly wider and sharper, light as a feather yet harder than steel, made from the fused carbon that had been left in the wake of the nuclear holocaust that had enveloped the Earth all those centuries before.
Only the Guides had such weapons. Only the Guides had the power to learn the skills needed to wield such weapons, with the great high-pitched scream they made as they slashed through the air.
Each moment of his stillness was bringing more information to Kaz Oshay, information that could be useful to him in the fight that was to come. Now sounds that came from other directions told him that, in spite of the fact that he could not see them, the three men below him were not the only ones who were laying in wait. It was promising to be a day of great challenge.
He was strong as any three Statemen, more agile than any man could possibly be, faster of reflex, with the speed and reactions of a startled animal, able to see as far as the great eagles themselves, to smell and hear much better than any animal that had ever wandered across the face of the earth.
Very tall and almost wand-like in his slimness, he was also incredibly hard, even for a Guide, a sullen and angry member of his kind, more fiercely dedicated to his independence than any other Guide had ever been.
A rugged individual, a supreme loner amongst loners, he nevertheless lived entirely in honour of the code of the Guides; following completely their personal system of ethics and guiding mythology and philosophy, which stress, for those who have the secret, the virtues of self-control, humility, responsibility and self-reliance.
Like all the Guides, he had first learnt the philosophy and had become steeped in it at his mother’s knee, and now he lived almost entirely in the wilds, having little need to come into contact with other Guides or Statemen as he travelled his nomadic lonely path.
The only time he had dealings with the outside world was in warding off attacks by wandering bands of the Mutants or when, very rarely, he agreed to act as a guard and guide for one of the caravans of traders travelling from one great domed City to another across the surface of the wilderness.
But there was something even more special and apart about Kaz Oshay, something else that separated him from the others of his kind. For them, danger was a duty to be borne, but to Kaz Oshay danger was a passion to be revelled in, a trait that was not entirely in keeping with the virtue of humility that the code had taught him.
Completely prepared to die for his faith and his teachings, he was absolutely without fear.
To his right, bluffs led to a higher plateau than the one on which he now stood and he reined in to glance as casually in that direction as he had to the left.
This time his caution was rewarded. He caught a glimpse of light from high up on the bluffs, as something metallic was reflected by the sun. A moment later it was gone but the flash had been enough to tell him that he was being watched from there.
High up on the bluff’s, Ankar Moor, realising that the glass had reflected the light, lowered his special field binoculars and allowed himself the luxury of a short curse. He knew that the instant’s carelessness had been enough, that the Guide below him would have spotted the signal. Over his head and mask he was wearing a helmet similar to that of his men, which, combined with the mask, made him feel hot and uncomfortable under the broiling sun. Still, he could not remove it for the moment, for, attached to it by a thin wire, were special headphones and a microphone that hung before his mouth slit. As he saw the Guide starting to move forward, he whispered into the communicator:
“Be still. Do not move. He is coming. When he enters the canyon do not go to him, let him come to you.”
He waited until he had heard the confirmation of his orders
back over the headphones, then raised the field glasses again and peered down to the mouth of the ravine. As he did so, Kaz Oshay began to move forward and was soon entering his line of sight. He watched until the Guide had disappeared out of sight and was well on his way to the trap that had been laid for him. From now on, Ankar Moor would only be able to see a part of the ravine and would not be able to direct operations entirely. He could only pray that his men would be fast and proficient. If they were not, it would mean death for them.
On the plain below was hidden his trump card—four men on Death Machines. He hoped he would not need to use them, but they were there just in case.
Kaz Oshay moved with infinite slowness, deeper and deeper into the ravine, aware of what lay in wait for him and that his progress had been spied out from above. In his mind floated the words of the code:
“If there are many, put your feet on the ground. Be ever more sure and manoeuvreable.”
As he remembered this, he thought for a moment of his mother who had taught the words to him and wondered for a moment where she was now. But he put the thought out of his mind quickly. He was a man now and he was his own master.
It was not yet quite time to leave his mount, but that moment would come quite soon. He could do so only when he was not being observed by the man up on the bluffs. He had pinpointed his position and knew just when that moment would come.
Ahead of him now was an overhanging point of rock. Beyond it, he knew that he would be out of sight. If he left his horse there and let it go on he would be able to catch up with it again upon the open plain. Till then, he would be on his own. He had worked out, too, that it was men who waited for him. No Mutants would have had the power or brains to organise an ambush of this kind.
He reached the overhanging point of rock and, the instant he had passed beneath it, slipped from the back of the great grey stallion. For a moment the animal stood still, whinnying, confused and frightened by the sudden departure of his master and unsure whether to move or stand still. Kaz Oshay gave him a hard slap on the rump which made him move forward, down the defile and around a large rock slide that would lead through the narrower part of the ravine where the men would be lying in ambush.
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