He returned to his room. The sergeant was in bed, on his back and one arm over his face. Hearing Two Hawks enter, he lifted his arm and turned his head. “One of the attendants told me you had a visitor. The Ilmika broad. How come you rate?”
In a low voice, Two Hawks described his conversation. O’Brien whistled and said, “I sure hope they got a car. I just ain’t up to much exertion. And how the hell they going to get us out of the country?”
“Probably through the Black Sea and the Dardanelles. The Perkunishan fleet is operating in the Iginth, but a small boat could get through them. After that, I don’t know.”
“I’m going to need all the strength I can get. Tell you what. The food isn’t bad here, though it tastes kind of funny, the way they cook it. But I been hungry for a big thick bowl of potato soup. My mother used to make it for me all the time. Hot, thick, creamy, with onions. Mmmmm. Do you suppose you could talk the cook into putting it on the menu?”
Two Hawks sighed and looked sad. O’Brien’s look of expectancy and rapture died. He groaned and said, “Oh no. Go on now. Don’t tell me the good Irish potato...”
Two Hawks nodded. “It originated in the Andes of South America.”
O’Brien cursed. “What a hell of a world! No tobacco. No turkey for Thanksgiving. And, oh, God, no potatoes!”
Two Hawks said, “Well, you can be thankful for one thing. There’s no syphilis. But, knowing your recklessness and horniness, you better watch out for gonorrhea.”
“In my condition, that’s the least of my worries.”
O’Brien closed his eyes and in a minute was snoring. Two Hawks wanted to discuss a plan for that night, but he decided it could wait. O’Brien needed all the sleep he could get. Besides, what could the two of them do but roll the dice and see how they came up?
8
Midnight arrived with agonizing slowness. It was silent in the asylum except for a rumble of thunder from west and north. The room had only a small window placed two feet above his head. The door was thick oak, ribbed with iron, and locked on the outside. Although Doctor Tarhe gave his better patients plenty of freedom during the day, he made sure they were secure at night.
Faintly, the clang of the big clock down the hall came through the door. Two Hawks counted the strokes. Twenty-four. Midnight.
A panel in the door opened and made him start. Through half-closed eyes, he could see the light of a kerosene lamp shining through the narrow panel. He could also make out the broad-faced, big- nosed visage of Kaisehta’, an attendant, making his rounds. The panel closed; Two Hawks got out of bed. He shook O’Brien, who sat up, saying, “You don’t think I’d be sleeping at a time like this?”
Both were already fully dressed. They had nothing to do now but wait for developments. Two Hawks wished he had his weapons, the derringer and the automatic. Tarhe had told him that the secret police had kept the guns for a while, studying them, then had given them to Tarhe. The doctor kept them locked up in a big wall-safe in his study. At the time he was told about them, Two Hawks had wondered why the police did not consider the automatic as an evidence of the truth of his story. Nothing like it existed in this world. But the guns had been returned without comment to Tarhe, and Two Hawks could only deduce that the police considered the automatic to be one more testimonial to his madness. If so, they must be a singularly unimaginative group.
The two sat in silence on the edge of their beds. They did not have long to wait. There was a yell from down the hall. It was chopped off, and a moment later a clinking sound told them a key was being turned in the big padlock. A bolt shot back; the door swung open. Two Hawks stood up, not knowing whether he should expect rescue or death from a gun. Six men wearing hoods stood in the corridor. Their clothes were lower-class Hotinohsonih civilian wear. Two held six-shooters; two, single-shot rifles; two, long knives.
A thickset man spoke Hotinohsonih in a deep bass. He spoke it with a foreign accent. “Are you Two Hawks and O’Brien?”
Two Hawks nodded and said, “Give us guns. Or knives, anyway.”
“You have no need of them.”
“I have two of my guns locked in the wall-safe,” Two Hawks said. “One of them is an automatic pistol, a rapid-fire mechanism that would greatly improve the fire power of the Blodlandish. I need it for a model.”
The thickset man hesitated, then said, “It’d take too long to get it from the safe. We don’t have the time to drill and blow.”
“I know the combination,” Two Hawks said. “I’ve stood behind Doctor Tarhe and watched him enough. He’s rather absent-minded.”
“Very well. But hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Two men preceded the others down the hall. Deep Voice gestured with his pistol for the two Americans to go before him. At the end of the hall, the attendant who had cried out, Kaisehta’, lay face up on the floor. The top of his head was bloody; his eyes and mouth were open. The skin beneath the dark pigment was a bluish-grey.
“The sons of bitches didn’t have to kill him!” O’Brien said. “Poor fellow! I didn’t understand a word he ever said to me, but he could make me laugh. He was a good Joe.”
“No talking,” Deep Voice said. They went down another hall, across the dining-room and into Tarhe’s study. Two Hawks pulled up the painting that was supposed to hide the safe. By the light of a flashlight held by Deep Voice, he turned the dial, marked with the numbers of the modified Akhaivian alphabet. The door swung open, and he found his derringer and automatic in a small cardboard box.
Deep voice extended his hand for the weapons. Reluctantly, Two Hawks gave them to him. Evidently, they were as much prisoners of the Blodlandish as of their former captors.
The party left the studio and went to the main front door of the asylum. Two men with rifles stepped out on the big verandah and a minute later came back with an all-clear. Two Hawks and O’Brien, followed by the other four Blodlandish, stepped through the door. The city down below was dark except for fires here and there that had not yet been put out. The moon was behind thick dark clouds.
They started down the steps, their destination two autos. These were parked behind a shrubbery along the curve of the driveway to their left. The front ends of the cars were barely visible. Just as the two riflemen reached the ground, the flash and bang of guns came out of the shrubbery. Two Hawks pushed O’Brien hard toward the ground and then hurled himself down the steps and out in a dive.
He hit the bare dirt with a force that almost knocked the breath from him and rolled sideways. When he was in the shrubbery that grew along the base of the verandah, he stopped. More fire spurted from the small arms of the men in the bushes. The two Blodlandish who had been in front of him were on the ground at the foot of the steps. One was wounded or dead. The other fired at the Perkunishans from a prone position. Two Hawks presumed that the attackers were Perkunishans and they had come with the same idea as the Blodlandish but a little later.
A man above Two Hawks screamed. A body fell over the verandah railing just above him and crashed down on his legs. By then the other Blodlandish had scattered for cover behind posts and the railing of the verandah. A Perkunishan toppled from the bushes. The others took up a new position behind the Blodlandish cars. Lights were coming on in the house and outlining the men on the verandah. A Blodlandish slumped over the railings, his gun falling into the ground under the bushes near Two Hawks. The man with the rifle grunted and quit firing.
Two Hawks crawled to the gun that the agent had dropped. With this in his hand, he left the relative safety of the steps and bushes and snaked towards the dead or unconcious rifleman. Using the body as cover, he searched through its pockets. He found several small boxes, slid one open, and felt cylindrical shapes packed within. They were linen cartridges with brass percussion caps.
He examined the revolver with his fingers, broke it open, and filled the six chambers. Behind him, O’Brien groaned and said, “I’m hit. My arm’s numb. Oh, Christ, I’m bleeding! I’m going to die!”
&nb
sp; “Shut up about dying,” Two Hawks said. “You sound too strong to be badly hurt.”
He rolled over and felt O’Brien’s upper left arm. His fingers came away sticky. O’Brien said, “I’m going fast. The life’s pumping out of me with every beat of my heart.”
“Quit crying,” Two Hawks said. “You just think you’re dying, maybe because you want to. It’s only a flesh wound and not very deep at that.”
“You ain’t the one who’s hit.”
Two Hawks raised his head to look over the body. Two men on the verandah and two behind the cars were still shooting. Then one—he looked like Deep Voice—turned to shoot through the window behind him at the light bulbs outlining him. There was a sound as of a fist hitting flesh, and he flew forward. He pitched on his face and was lost from Two Hawks’ view except for one foot. His revolver, however, launched from a nerveless hand, broke the window.
The survivor ran for the corner of the house. He bent over while he ran and fired at the Perkunishans. Their bullets smacked into the wooden walls. Just as he reached the corner, he sprawled out and slammed into the floor. Two Hawks supposed that, since he did not get up, he was either hit or playing possum. If he was acting, he had done a good job, since his gun had also clattered on the floor.
“Two Perkunishans left—that I know of,” Two Hawks whispered to O’Brien. “And they must have orders to take us dead or alive. Maybe they don’t care which, otherwise they’d not have cut loose at us in the dark.”
He looked over the body again. He could see no men. They were probably crouching behind the cars, reloading their revolvers and discussing a plan of attack. They could not safely presume that everybody was dead or incapacitated. They would have to come out from behind the cars.
Nor would they have much time to check. There was much noise in the house, voices shouting questions, a patient screaming, and the sound of feet running back and forth. They would have tried to phone the police, but the wires would have been cut.
Nevertheless, the gunfire could attract the police patrols on the streets in the city below. They could soon be coming up the winding hill, and, if they did, the Perkunishans would find their car blocked. Unless, that is, they had left their vehicle below and had come up on foot.
Two Hawks waited patiently, his revolver cocked. O’Brien groaned, and Two Hawks told him to shut up. He removed the long knife from the scabbard of the fallen rifleman. With one hand, he hefted it and tested its balance. It would make a good throwing knife and would give him a fair chance to demonstrate how effective his hundreds of hours of practice had been.
The Perkunishans had decided to proceed cautiously. One ran out from behind the car and toward the protection of the corner of the verandah. Two Hawks let him go. It was too difficult in the dark and at this distance to make sure of a hit with the revolver. Besides, if he refrained from firing, he might convince them they had nothing to fear.
Slowly, he rolled over away from the body and swiveled around to face the shrubbery at the other curve of the drive. As he had suspected, the second agent had gone through the bushes to approach the other end of the verandah. Two Hawks heard a twig cracking during a brief cessation of noise from the house. He crawled back to O’Brien and into the bushes at the base of the verandah. His back was soaked with the sweat of fear, and his skin felt as if it were bristling.
When he reached the point where the verandah abruptly curved to go along the side of the house, he stopped. He waited and then, as he had hoped, the Perkunishan dashed from the bushes toward the shrubbery behind which he crouched. Two Hawks shifted the knife to his right hand and the gun to his left. He arose, and, just as the man crashed into the bush, Two Hawks thrust the point of the knife into his throat.
The agent burbled and fell to his knees. Two Hawks pulled the knife out, stepping to one side to avoid the spurt of blood. The man fell over on his side.
The other Perkunishan called out. Two Hawks spoke softly in the only Perkunishan phrases he knew, deliberately making them indistinct. Satisfied with this, the other agent left the corner of the verandah. Two Hawks stepped out from the bushes and walked confidently toward him. In the darkness, the Perkunishan would not be able to recognize his silhouette until he got close, or so Two Hawks hoped. The agent, however, must have been able to see well enough by the light from the windows of the house. He shouted and fired. His shout gave Two Hawks enough warning to throw himself to one side and into the bushes. The bullet screamed by. There was the sound of shoes on the crushed stone. Two Hawks, looking out, saw him disappear around the car. He leaped up, heedless of noise, and ran across the driveway into the tall shrubbery. When he was several yards from the vehicle, he slowed down and walked silently.
A dim bulk was moving soundlessly except for the crunching of wooden wheels on the broken stones. For a minute, Two Hawks thought that the car was being pushed. Then the absurdity of such an act became apparent, and he knew the car was steam-operated. He ran forward. Again, he traded weapons with his hands, placing the knife in his right. Why waste a bullet he might need later? Besides, if he should miss, the Perkunishan would have no lance of flame from a gun muzzle to show him where his enemy was.
He burst out of the shrubbery just alongside the car. The driver sat on the right side, since traffic went on the left lane in this country. But the left window was down and so offered no obstacle. The knife struck true, going through the open window and into the side of the neck of the driver. The driver slumped forward. Two Hawks run around in front of the car, which continued its slow backing up.
He jerked the door open, reached in, and pulled the corpse out by its arm. He did not have time to retrieve his knife. Once in the driver’s seat, he frantically tried to locate the proper controls. Fortunately, he had seen illustrations of operating apparatus of steamers in Tarhe’s library and had studied them for just such an occasion.
Two short sticks on a horizontal table projecting from the instrument panel regulated direction and speed. The left one moved right or left to steer. The right one, when pushed forward, resulted in forward acceleration. Before discovering this, Two Hawks had stopped the car with the foot pedal on the floor, although it protested at the strain between brakes and engine. Two Hawks placed the speed stick in neutral, pushed it forward, learned that the car went forward, and then pulled the stick toward him. The vehicle went backward.
He drove the car forward and around the curve. With an almost inaudible chuff of steam escaping and wheels crunching on the stones, the car moved up to where O’Brien lay. Two Hawks stopped it and then tried to determine which knobs on the panel controlled the lights. The first one he turned operated the single windshield wiper, placed in the center of the shield. To do its job, it had to describe an 180 degree arc. Two Hawks thought that Hotinohsonih cars had a long way to go before they could compete with those of his Earth.
But he was happy that he had at least this much.
He turned another knob. A small panel light and the two front head lights, set on top of the fenders, came on. These were not very powerful, but they were good enough for his purposes. The beams lit up the front of the asylum, the bodies on the verandah and the bodies on the steps and on the driveway. He yelled at O’Brien, who rose slowly and walked to the car.
“You’re doing all right, lieutenant,” he said in a low voice. “But where do we go from here?”
Two Hawks did not answer. He was studying the indicators on the panel. These were glass cylinders set in the middle of the instrument panel. There were six, illuminated by lights behind them. Each had a lighted symbol above it, the symbols being derived from the ideographic writing the Hotinohsonih had used before abandoning it for the Greek alphabet. At various levels, a pale red fluid was rising in each tube, across which were white gradations. The tubes apparently indicated the level of water supply, temperature of steam, amount of fuel, the speed, the battery condition, and the mileage. Two Hawks knew what the degree marks were supposed to mean, but since the Hotinohsonih
had a peculiar measuring system, he had trouble converting them into English units.
The water and fuel indicators showed full. As for the speed, he would judge by the seat of his pants. He waited until O’Brien got into the seat beside him, then started down the steep and winding road that led to the city below. Behind them, men emboldened by the absence of gunfire, burst out of the house. At that moment, the moon broke clear of the clouds. He turned off his lights and drove more swiftly by the illumination of the moon. On reaching the bottom of the hill, he stopped the car and got out to look at a street sign. The fact that there was one there showed that he was near a main highway, since very few streets had signs. In the residential districts, a stranger either had to have a map or ask questions if he wanted to find his way around.
His study of the map of ‘Estokwa in the library had familiarized him with the main arteries of exit. He was only a few blocks from the great highway which led east. Actually, he had known this, but he wanted to confirm the accuracy of the map.
They rounded a corner and there, at the end of the street, was the highway. Now they could hear the noise of traffic, the murmur of voices, and the creak of axles. The highway was jammed with refugees, men, women, and children carrying big bundles or pushing wheelbarrows or drawing two-wheeled carts loaded with all they could take.
The appearance of confusion was misleading. After Two Hawks had edged the car between two groups, he found that soldiers, stationed every few blocks, were directing traffic. These carried kerosene lamps or large flashlights. The first trooper did not stop their car, but Two Hawks wondered how far they would get before being asked for identity papers. Without these, they could be arrested, perhaps even shot on the spot. So, at the first chance, he swung the car back on to a sidestreet.
“We’ll have to take a chance, hope we don’t get lost,” he said. “And when we’re forced back onto the big highway, we may have to make a break for it, ram through a guard post.”
The Gate of Time Page 8