“You think we will release you and then you can fight your way out of here?” Narth’s big belly rolled merrily.
“What chance would I have? You want this fixed, or don’t you?”
Narth produced an old machine pistol, an Uzi Mark XXI, Seamus guessed, from underneath his cloak. “Untie him. A single false move and I’ll empty this into your gut. Fair warning?”
“Fair warning.”
You’ll have to release the safety before you do that, but I don’t think I’ll point that out just now.
They poured some of the liquid into the generator and cranked it up. Seamus, rubbing his hands to restore a bit of circulation, listened to the sound croaking out of the speaker—mostly static and an occasional word or two of Spacegael. Why hadn’t the idjits up there picked up this unit? Too weak to be noticed?
“’Tis a powerful old machine,” he murmured.
“I think you will make it work.” Narth raised his weapon warningly.
“Give me a bit of time,” he pleaded, running his numb fingers over the machine. “’Tis terrible old altogether.”
Now, let’s see, if you bring this red lead and this black lead together and hold them long enough there’ll be a spark, maybe a big one. Then if you throw the sparking wires into that open tank of fuel, you’ll create a frigging explosion that they’ll remember for a long time around here. The hordi may have to eat you toasted.
“I think we have it here, let me see, if you tie these two lines together.” He braced himself for the current of electricity. Roast Wild Goose.
Nothing happened.
He wound the wires together. “What’s the matter with you idjits?” he demanded. “Why don’t you have the current in these wires?”
“What current?” Popilo demanded. “Kill him, Lord Narth, he is a trickster.”
The man’s eyes shone brightly, his face glowed like he’d just enjoyed sex. He’s even more off the wall than his boss. Great pair. The Lord made them and the divil matched them.
Carefully Seamus laid down the twisted wires only a few inches from the open fuel tank. I was lucky the switch wasn’t on. Now if I can find it and then jump …
“Ah, here’s the frigging switch; you have a lot to learn about such things, Lord Narth.”
He took a deep breath, flicked the switch and jumped out of the way, ducking under Narth’s gun and ramming his head toward Narth’s belly. He was assisted in the last foot of this charge by the explosion behind him.
The tent blossomed like a Yule fire at Christmas. The hordi clicked wildly, the Zylongi screamed, the mutants rumbled. Seamus O’Neill roared like a squad of Wild Geese, removed his head from Narth’s great, soft belly, picked up the machine pistol, and ducked out of a flaming hole in the tent.
He banged an Imperial Guard on the head with the butt of his gun, yanked off the man’s crimson cloak, swirled it around his shoulders, jumped on a horse, and galloped through the camp.
A squad of Narthian guards tried to stop him. Seamus raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. It would not fire.
Like Narth he had forgot the safety. His horse tumbled into the crowd of soldiers. They jabbed at him with their lances, missing by a hair’s breadth. Finally he managed to free the safety and blasted away. The guards fled in all directions, and Seamus thundered out of the camp, screaming like an infuriated banshee.
Beat them this time.
What will we do when they show up at the gates of the City and we try to fight them off with sticks?
22
The sound of a big explosion rattled the walls of the City and temporarily deprived Seamus O’Neill of his hearing. They were blowing the frigging place up! Cursing the frigging dinosaur, he had parked the battered hovercraft in the lee of the City wall in one of the less populous sections of the North Quarter of the City. It had taken an hour to bend the front end of his hovercraft into place. Now his arms and back were sore, his hands were bleeding, and he was several hours behind schedule. Zylong was already beginning its Götterdämmerung.
Every light in the City was turned on. Shouts, laughter, cries, and wild music echoed even in the North Quarter, which he had selected to reconnoiter. He heard the sounds of small explosions and the screams of women raped and raping—if anyone knew the difference anymore. Throngs of people, most of them completely naked, were milling about, containers of la-ir in their hands. They were pushing, shoving, bellowing, fighting. So this was what a full-blown orgy was like. As the Abbess had said, it was a heathenish place.
He was worried about the Young Ones. If it weren’t for the damn dinosaur, he could have made it back by sunrise with their pills. Now he didn’t know how to get through to them. The wind was blowing fiercely. Perhaps his friends were protected from its effect in their cells.
He concealed himself behind a wall of a storehouse. He could not slip through the streets of the City in the hovercraft. His machine was too battered to jump over the City wall. To try it on foot would be suicide. His only hope was to use the underground highway system, which would be relatively free of people—he hoped. It seemed like everyone was outdoors enjoying the Festival breeze. Ugh.
The prison, like the Energy Building, the Central Building, the Military Center, and the Worship Plaza, was part of the “Old City” or Central Quarter. Here many of the buildings were of masonry with wood trim, and most were only four or five stories high, bordering the irrationally narrow and crooked streets of the earliest city.
The prison and police buildings stood like a solid block at the end of a small side street that wound into the Worship Plaza. Horor had led him to a door of what appeared to be an abandoned shop on that street on the night he first met the entire group of conspirators. In the floor of the shop was a trapdoor down to the unused granary that was the conspiracy headquarters. He could maneuver through the underground maze to the granary; his problem was to get from there to the prison. He would worry later about how to get through any guards that might be around.
He heard another loud explosion. Someone was using powerful charges like those stored in the headquarters of the Young Ones. So there were more rebels in the streets. Or were they still another group that had got at the powder supply within the Military Center?
The transport system would run to the storehouse, which at the moment was protecting him from sight. He discovered what appeared to be a manhole cover. A thin alloy ladder led down through a tunnel filled with cables, pipes, and various sizes of conduits. Another hatchway opened at the bottom onto the well-lighted roadways he was seeking. It was deserted. Hovercrafts were parked along the side of the tunnel in alcoves. He selected a new one with its key in the ignition. Like all such cars, it was reluctant to start. Seamus coaxed it into action with several choice words of Spacegaelic obscenity to which the machines in this dreadful heathen place seemed remarkably responsive. (The words were borrowed, as the Abbess was fond of observing, from Anglo-Saxon, since ur-Gaelic was a gentle language free of such vulgarities.) Clutching the Dev’s medical kit, within which were the magical pills, his trivial-looking Holy Grail, he turned on the lights—since the underground was now totally dark—and eased the car down the road and under a monorail structure. Now he had to find the direction to the elevator that led up to the Old City.
At one intersection he slowed for an instant, uncertain which way to turn. Three hooded characters emerged from behind a panel in the tunnel wall and threw a flat package at him. Jamming the hovercraft into fast forward, he narrowly escaped the blast. The Hooded Ones had explosive charges. That was a complication Seamus and his friends didn’t need. He pushed aside the fear that the Young Ones’ headquarters had been discovered and the charges stolen from them.
After losing his way three times, he found the old elevator. Should he go down into the granary or up into the street? He decided to check the granary first. He heard a woman’s screams. Jumping out of the car, portable light in one hand, tranquillity pills jammed into his belt, carbine in the other hand, he ran
in the direction of the sound, turning a corner to see two men savagely brutalizing a young girl. Seamus sent them scurrying down the passage with a shot from his carbine ringing over their heads.
Less in the grip of the Festival frenzy than her attackers, she was sobbing with pain and fear. She clung to Seamus in terror, her teeth chattering. As her fear receded, the spirit of the frenzy returned. Her body arched toward him lasciviously. He shoved one of the precious tranquillity pills into her mouth.
The reaction was immediate. She went limp against him for a moment and then drew back, humiliated and grateful. “Truly you are a generous god, Taran Poet.”
What was he going to do with her? He had other pressing matters to attend to. She was small and frail, with pretty little breasts and a nice ass. Too many unclad women on this planet.
“I’m not a god,” he insisted. I can’t leave her here and I can’t take her with me.
“Could you be so generous as to give me one more of those pills?” she begged. “I would take it to my mate, perhaps we could survive this Festival. I love him very much” She put out her hand timidly. The plea in her eyes tore Seamus’s heart in two. He wanted no godlike power of life and death over this pretty child and her mate. He gave her a second pill. “Who are you?” he asked gently.
“I am Meena, Lord O’Neill.” She bowed her head respectfully. “I am responsible for the small shop just above. I came to make sure the shop was locked before the Festival started. My mate is not yet back from the fields.”
“Meena,” O’Neill exclaimed, “you are a godsend! Do you know the underground area around here? Is there a way I can get into the prison without the guards seeing me?”
She was confused at the urgency of this great Taran’s question. “I have lived here all my life; when I was a child I used to play in the old granary below.” She hesitated fearfully, then looked at O’Neill with adoration. “I know a way. Come with me. We used to go into the basement of the prison when we felt very brave and were looking for adventure.”
His brain filed a new bit of information. Zylongi children actually sought adventure. A good sign for the future of the survivors of a shattered culture—if there were any survivors.
Meena led him to a narrow opening in the passage wall—an old ventilation outlet, perhaps. Moving the beam of his light in front of them, Seamus followed her down a narrow, dank corridor that was not made for tall Tarans. Despite his light, they both had to feel their way along the walls. “That ladder,” Meena whispered to him when they came to the end of the passage, “leads into the prison. You must shove hard against the hatch, but it will not be difficult for one of your strength.”
O’Neill nodded. “Thank you, Meena.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “Now go home to wait for your mate and stay indoors with him until this is over. I hope he is a good man to deserve someone as brave as you.”
She grabbed his hand and kissed it. “Thank you for giving us life, Lord O’Neill. He is a good man. Save our people.” She scurried back down the corridor. Seamus watched the dust-covered brown body disappear in shadows illuminated only slightly by the low-power light at his belt. Again the terrible sweet wrenching of tenderness.
She had called him “Lord O’Neill.” There’d be no more of that.
The grimy old corridor rocked with a tremendous explosion. Someone had blasted the jail. Seamus was shoved against the old stone wall, his head bounced into the metal pole of the ladder. For a few precious minutes, he wasn’t sure who he was or what was happening.
Then, with terrible slowness it seemed, his senses returned. He climbed awkwardly up the ladder and shoved at the hatch on the top. It did not budge.
He took a deep breath and shoved again. Still no movement.
Then there was another ear-shattering, mind-twisting explosion, very near. The ladder rocked and swayed. Seamus hung on for dear life. As soon as the reverberation ceased, he pushed at the hatch. It opened. There was a cacophony of screams, shouts, shots. He was in a smoke-filled hallway filled with running hordi. Had Popilo attacked? No, they were domesticated hordi. Seamus slipped unnoticed into a smaller passageway as a throng of screaming Zylongi, filled with the spirit of the frenzy, surged by. They wore the red robes that, Sammy had told him, marked those who were to be sacrificed at the climax of the Festival, to be helped along on their journey to the god. Either intentionally or not, the Hooded Ones’ explosion had freed them to join the mad mobs in the streets.
There were no guards in sight. They must have been swept along by the escaping prisoners or run off, maddened themselves, into the wildness of the Festival’s destruction spreading through the City. Frantically searching up and down the corridors of the various levels of the old prison, he feared he would never find his Young Ones. Dear God in heaven, help me to find my woman. And my child.
Finally, when he was about to leave the prison to look for her somewhere else—where he did not know—he heard a muffled roar at the end of one corridor, the sound coming from behind a great door with a huge bar holding it shut. Maybe it’s themselves.
He threw up the bar and looked in on a scene of pure horror.
The Young Ones were far gone. They were like a pack of caged dogs, their faces contorted with rage, their mouths pulled back in snarls, their teeth bared, their mouths dripping saliva, their limbs twisted into grotesque shapes, their hands clenched for battle. Some were fighting one another, others were pounding their heads against the wall, others were lying on the floor groaning.
The dead body of Chronos sprawled against the inside of the door, his skull cracked open like an egg. When they saw O’Neill, the Young Ones came slinking toward him, panting and growling, reaching out for him in a kind of mindless appeal. He thrust his carbine at them, they dropped back.
Marjetta stumbled toward him, agony on her contorted face. “Quickly, O’Neill, quickly,” she entreated him.
He shoved a pill into her mouth, then brutally pushed her aside to poke the carbine at a young revolutionary who was coming at him with violence in his eye.
“Nice way to treat your woman after a long separation,” she mumbled, a shadow of the old crinkly grin reappearing. “Give me some of your precious Holy Grail.”
You save the woman’s life, and she turns around and starts giving orders. It could be a long, long life, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill.
Together they began to administer the medication to their friends, O’Neill pushing them one by one into a corner with a gun, and Margie shoving the pills into their mouths. The effect continued to be almost instantaneous. That should mean something, only he didn’t know what.
“How come you were not as bad as the others?” he asked as they backed a screaming Retha into the corner.
“More release of sexual energies,” she whispered back. Laughing aloud, she said, “Come now, Retha, it is all right now. You are not disgraced. Help us with the others.”
The tiny officer shook her head, trying to clear from it the last traces of the frenzy. “Chronos killed himself, Lord O’Neill,” she mumbled. “He hit his head against the wall.”
He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he did the next best thing. “You call me ‘Lord’ once more, woman, and I’ll take you back in the desert and leave you there.”
Tranquillizing the Young Ones went slowly at first, but soon the team was “defrenzied.” Many of the young revolutionaries were ashamed. They had lost face with the Taran. “We have never been this bad before. The wind is much worse than it has ever been—even inside these walls it transforms us.”
The prison itself was silent now. There was a continuing roar of explosions outside. They were hopelessly behind schedule. They had to get back down into the bowels of the City, collect their carbines, and begin the attack on the Military Center. Somewhere in the building, Sammy might still be alive; he would search as they went down back into the corridor leading to the granary. If he could not find her, she would have to wait until the MC was seized. Guilt swirled through him as he saw her son
and future daughter-in-law among his band of rebels. Did they know what had happened? No time to ask. All the decisions were tough ones now; the prime objective had to be the Military Center.
More time was consumed in the slow descent from the jail to the revolutionary command post. O’Neill sent Marjetta and Yens ahead with instructions on the route. He brought up the rear himself, searching in vain for Sammy.
When they got to the arms cache, he found the Young Ones had captured two Zylongi—Meena and the tallest Zylongi he had ever seen. “These two people say they want to join us,” said Yens.
O’Neill gripped the young man’s hand. “We take our allies wherever we can find them. Meena’s mate is as brave as she.”
“We will follow you to the death, Lord O’Neill,” he said simply.
O’Neill winced. More of that “Lord” stuff.
“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll stay alive to take care of your wife and the children she’s going to give you. Do you hear me? I want no martyrs.”
“Yes, Lord O’Neill.”
“I want to give him many children.”
“Good enough for him. Now promise that you’ll both be careful.”
They nodded solemnly. God knows what meaning they read into that gesture.
Armed with carbines, spears, and explosive charges, the Young Ones and their Taran leader climbed back to the surface of the City, but the City was already in a shambles. O’Neill left the main force on the landing just below the surface and went up to scout the situation before launching the long overdue attack. Leaving Margie in command, he and Retha went ahead into the crooked side street. Their first step took them into an inferno. Fires danced all around, some of them great leaping conflagrations soaring high up into the night sky, others tiny spurts of flame seeping out of door panels. Though the street onto which they had emerged was deserted, they could hear cries from the plaza at the end of it.
“You trust a mission to a coward, Lord O’Neill?” asked Retha with a touch of sarcasm as they rushed down the street.
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