"Sure you can," Hindarf said. "Put on the goggles and start breathing through the mouthpiece."
"Now?" Forry said.
"Now."
Forry did so, and at the first breath he felt more energetic than at any time in his life since she had been a child. The air filled his whole body with a strength and a joie de vivre that made him want to sing. This was impossible, of course, with the piece in his mouth.
Hindarf said, "We may have a hard fight ahead. The vaporized drug in the breathing system will charge our bodies. The effect is intense but short-lived."
They walked up the road, their flippers slop-slopping. They looked like Venusians, Forry thought, what with the frog feet, the slick black skins of the suits, the humped air tanks, the goggles, and the big mouthpieces. Some even carried tridents or fishing spears. The rain fell heavily on them, and everything was dark and wet, as if they were under the clouds on the nightside of the second planet from the sun.
Before they came to the turn of the road that would have placed them in view of those in the house, they started to climb the hillside. This was steep and muddy, and they could only get up by grabbing bushes and pulling themselves up. He appreciated the suit now, since it kept him from getting wet and muddy. The weight of the tank seemed negligible, so strong did he feel. His heart was chugging along at its accustomed pace, which meant that the extra demand for energy was being taken care of by the drug in the air system.
After slipping and sliding and hanging on to the bushes, they crawled out onto the top of the hill. Another hill to their right hid them from view of those in the house, although Forry did not understand how they could be seen in the dark.
Hindarf led them around the larger hill and up to a high brick wall. This was topped by a barbed wire fence about three feet high. Several Tocs unfolded a ladder, a stile, really, and put it over the wall and the wire fence. Hindarf cautioned everybody not to touch the wires, which were charged with high voltage. One by one, they crawled up the stile and over the wall and down to the other side.
They were in an orchard which seemed to run several hundreds of yards north and south from where they stood and an indeterminate distance west. The stile was taken down, telescoped, and placed under some bushes. Hindarf led them through the trees until they came to another slope. This rose steeply to a low brick wall. There was a flight of steps made of some stone which glowed red and black in the light that Hindarf and others flashed on it.
Forry had been upset by their careless use of this light, but Hindarf assured him that it was a form, of black light. Forry could see it simply because his goggles had a specially prepared glass. Hindarf doubted that the Ogs had anything which could detect this form of illumination.
When they got to the top of the steps, they could see the black bulk of the house about fifty yards away. It was dark except for a slit of light. They went on and then were at the end of a long swimming pool. This was brimming over, flooding the cement walks, the patio, the yard, and running down the steps up which they had just climbed.
Hindarf gave Forry his instructions again and then went down into the pool via the, steel ladder. The man assigned to watch Forry led him into the pool. For a moment, everything was black, and he had no idea which was up or down, north or south. Then a light flooded the area around him, and he could see his guide just ahead of him, holding the lamp. Hindarf's flippers were visible just ahead of the globe of illumination.
They swam the 100-feet-long pool underwater as near the floor as they could get. Forry caught glimpses of strange figures painted on the cement floor. Griffins, werewolves metamorphosing from men to beasts, a legless dragon, a penis-beaked flipper-winged rooster, a devilfish with a shaven cunt for a mouth, a malignant-faced crab being ridden by a nude woman with fish heads for breasts, and something huge and shadowy and all the more sinister for being so amorphous.
Then they were at the deep end of the pool, and Hindarf and his guide were removing a plate from the wall. It looked like any other section of the wall, but it was thin and wide and its removal exposed a large dark hole. Hindarf swam into it, the guide followed, and Forry, after a moment's hesitation, and knowing that the honor of Earth depended upon him, swam through the hole. The tunnel had been dug out of the earth, of course, but it was walled up with many small plates screwed together. He wondered how long the Tocs had been working on this. It must have taken them years, because their time would be limited to the early hours of morning before the sun came up.
It was possible, however, that this tunnel had been built by the Ogs as an escape route. The Tocs, having discovered it, were taking advantage of it.
He did not know how long they swam through the tunnel. It seemed like a long time. It led downward, or at least he got that impression. Then they were popping up in a chamber illuminated by a bright arc light hanging from a chain set into the cement ceiling. A ladder gave access to a platform at the end of which hung row on row of suits. Shelves held many goggles and air tanks.
His second speculation was correct. This had been made by the Ogs for escape. But then, wouldn't they have set up guards or alarms?
Hindarf explained that they could go no farther in that direction. The door in the end of the chamber was locked and triggered to alarms. So, they would go through another tunnel, which they had dug and walled themselves.
They dived again and Forry plunged to the bottom of the tunnel. He saw Hindarf go through a hole which was so narrow, that, the air tank on his back scraped against the plates. The tunnel curved rapidly and took them at a course that he estimated would bring them about even with the ending of the Og tunnel but about forty feet westward.
He came up in another chamber, much smaller than the first. There was a raft made of wood and inflatable pontoons. It was near the wall, which held a ladder that ran to the ceiling, twelve feet up.
Hindarf pulled Forry onto the raft. A man handed Hindarf a paper in a sealed package. He opened it and took out the paper and spread it out. Under the lights they had brought, with the only sound the slight splashing of the men and heavy breathing, they studied the plates which constituted the ceiling of this chamber. The plates were being removed by two men standing on the ladder.
There was a great boom from above them.
The shock was sudden and savage. The platform rose into the air above the water and the men on it went with it. Dirt fell in on all sides, striking the men and sending up gouts of water and chunking into the raft, which was tilting to one side and then to the other.
But the walls did not fall in, though the plates were bellied out or buckled and broken here and there. The booming noise had come and gone, like an overhead explosion. All was quiet except for the loud slap-slap of the seesawing water against the sides of the pit and the groaning of the platform moving up and down.
Hindarf was the first to break the silence. He said, "That was either an earthquake or the house is starting to slide. In either case, we go ahead as planned. We'll be out of this place and into the house in a few seconds."
The two men on the ladder had clung to it as it had threatened to topple over. Now they went to work and removed plates to make a wide opening above them.
Forry wondered why they worked so slowly. He felt like clawing the plates out and anything else that stood between him and the open air. But he managed to subdue the panic. After all, as he had already told himself, he was upholding the honor of Earth.
Hindarf climbed the ladder and began to chip away at the dirt with a small pick. Forry moved to one side to avoid the falling matter, which came down in big chunks. His guide, pointing at the diagram, said, "We are directly below the floor of the room where Childe should be held."
"How did you get hold of the diagram?" Forry said.
"From the city archives. The Ogs thought that they had removed all of the plans of the house, which was built long ago. But there was one plan which had been misfiled. We paid for a very expensive research, but it was worth it."
; "Why do you think Childe is in the room above?"
"The Ogs have field important prisoners there before, both Toc and Earthling. We could be wrong, but even so we'll be inside the house."
Hindarf quit scraping away the dirt and was listening through a device, one end of which was placed against the stone. Then he put the device in a pocket of his suit and began to work on the stone with a drill. Forry listened carefully but could hear no sound from it. His guide told him that it used supersonic waves.
The removal of several blocks of stone took some time. Hindarf and another man stood side by side on the narrow ladder and eased the block down between them, and this was passed slowly between men standing together on the ladder.
Then Hindarf listened again. He looked puzzled as he put the device away.
"There's a strange swishing and splashing noise," he whispered.
He took the large square of metal which a man handed him and screwed it to the underside of the floor. A wire led from one side of the metal square to a small black metal box held by a man on the raft.
Everybody except Hindarf got off the ladder and stood to one side. Hindarf nodded to the man holding the box, who pressed a button on its top.
The metal square and the section of floor within it fell down past Hindarf.
A solid column of water roared through the opening. It knocked Hindarf off the ladder, struck the small platform, sprayed out over the raft, and swept those standing on the platform into the well or onto the raft.
Forry Ackerman was one of those swept off.
* * *
CHAPTER 41
Pao said, "Your wife died three months ago."
"You killed her!" Childe raged. "You killed her! Did you torture her before you killed her?"
"No," Pao said. "We did not want to hurt her, because we meant to bring her to you when you were ready for us. But she died."
"How?"
"It was an accident. Vivienne and Plugger and your wife were forming a triangle. Plugger was stimulating Vivienne with his tongue in her mouth, your wife was being stimulated with Plugger's cock in her mouth, and Vivienne and your wife had their cunts almost touching each other, face to face as it were. Gilles was up your wife's cunt or alternating between her cunt and her asshole, I believe."
"I can believe that Sybil might engage in some daisy chains," Childe said. "But I can't believe that she'd let Vivienne even get near her. That snake-thing would horrify her."
"When Plugger is charging you, you get excited enough to do a lot of things you wouldn't otherwise do," Pao said. "I have no reason to lie to you. The truth is that Gilles was driven out of his mind--he doesn't have much, anyway, just a piece of brain tissue in that little skull, he doesn't even know his own name and his talking is automatic and unintelligible even to him...Anyway, he went out of his head, too stimulated by Plugger, I suppose, and bit your wife's rectum. He tore out some blood vessels, and she bled to death. She kept moving and responding to Plugger's electric discharges even after she died, which was why neither Plugger nor Vivienne knew what was going on."
Childe felt sick. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his head bent. Pao stood silently.
After a few minutes, Childe looked up at Pao. The man's face was smooth and expressionless. His yellow skin, thin-lipped down-drooping mouth, thin curved nose, high cheekbones, slanting black eyes, and black hair with its widow's peak made him look like a smooth-shaven Fu Manchu. Yet the man--the Og, rather--must be very anxious behind that glossy sinister face. He could not use the usual methods to force cooperation from Childe. Even the worst of tortures could not extract the power for Grailing or star voyaging from a Captain. Under pain, the Captain was incapable of performing his duties.
Childe thought of Vivienne, Plugger, Gilles de Rais, and the creature that had metamorphosed itself to look like Sybil. What was its name? Brueghel?
O'Brien had left. Had he gone out to kill Breughel?
Pao swallowed and said, "What can I do to make this up to you?"
What he meant was, "What kind of revenge do you wish?" And he was thinking, must be thinking, that Childe would hold him responsible for Sybil's death.
Childe said, "I only require that the snake-thing be killed."
Pao looked relieved, but he said, "Vivienne will die, too!"
Childe bit his lip. The revenge he was planning did not involve killing anybody except the snake-thing, and that thing could not be called an entity. Not a sentient entity, anyway. He wanted the thing killed, but he wanted Vivienne alive to appreciate what had happened to her and the other Ogs.
"Bring Vivienne in," he said.
Pao left and a few minutes later returned with Vivienne behind him. O'Brien and several others also entered.
"I need a butcher's cleaver and bandages and ointment and morphine," Childe said.
Vivienne turned pale. She alone seemed to grasp what he intended to do.
"Oh, yes, and bring a wooden stool and a pair of long pliers," he said.
Trembling, Vivienne sat down in a chair.
"Stand up and take your clothes off," Childe said
She rose and slowly removed her clothing.
"Now you can sit down there," he said.
O'Brien returned with the tools ordered.
Childe said, "I saw the film where you bit off Colben's cock with your false iron teeth. So don't plead with me."
"I am not pleading," she said. "However, it was not I who bit his cock off."
"I won't argue. You are capable of doing it; you probably have done that, and far worse, to others."
He wished that she would weep and beg. But she was very dignified and very brave. What else could you expect from the woman who had once been Joan of Arc?
"Hold on to her," he said to the others.
Pao and O'Brien pulled her legs apart. They were beautiful, perfect legs, with flawless white skin. The bush on the mound of Venus was thick and auburn. She probably had the most attractive pussy that he had ever seen. There was no hint of the horror that lived coiled inside it.
Childe felt like ordering one of the men to take the next step, but if he had the guts to order this, then he felt obliged to have the guts to do it himself.
Carefully, he inserted the pliers. Vivienne started and began quivering, but she did not cry out.
He pushed the pliers in and felt around. His original intention to close the jaws of the pliers around the head now seemed foolish. He could not get them open enough, and that thing was too active. But he could drive it out, and he did.
Its wet, black-haired and black-bearded head shot out past the pliers handles. Its tiny mouth was open, exposing the sharp teeth. Its forked tongue flickered at him.
With his left hand, he caught it behind the head. He pulled it out slowly as it writhed and then placed the head and a part of the body on the stool.
Pao sucked in his breath. Apparently, up to that moment, he had expected Childe to yank the thing out by its uterine roots and so disconnect the parts of Vivienne again.
Childe said, "Hand me that cleaver."
Vivienne watched him take the chopper. She did not blink.
"Inject the proper amount of morphine in her," Childe said to O'Brien. "You do know how to do it, don't you?"
"I do," O'Brien said. "So, you've recognized me. Did I ever treat you? No. Anyway, morphine will do no good. She is resistant to it."
"I don't want to inflict physical pain on her," Childe said. "As little as possible, anyway. What kind of anesthetic do you have? I do want her to see this. She is not to be unconscious."
"Never mind that!" Vivienne said. "Get it over with! I want to feel the parting in its fullest!"
He did not ask her what she meant by that. He looked down at the snake-thing, which twisted and hissed. Then he raised the cleaver and brought it down hard across the flexible spine.
Blood spurted out across the room. The head rolled off the stool and fell on the floor. Pao picked it up and put it beside the still bleeding trun
k. The head moved its mouth several times, and its eyes glared up at Childe as if wishing him evil even after its death. Then the eyes glazed, and the lips ceased to work.
Vivienne had turned gray. Her eyelids were open, but her eyes had rolled up to expose only the whites.
O'Brien smeared an ointment over the amputation. The blood quit flowing entirely. Probably, that ointment was not known to Earth doctors nor used by O'Brien in his Beverly Hills practice.
O'Brien bandaged up the body, and Vivienne was carried out on the chair. The snake body dangled down and scraped against the floor until one of the men coiled it up in her lap.
Two women came in and began to clean up the mess. Pao said, "What shall we do with the head?"
"Put it down the garbage disposal."
Pao said, "Very well. Will you be ready for the ceremony tonight?"
"I'll try," Childe said. "Of course, Breughel emptied me."
"Breughel maintains that you asked him to go to bed with you," Pao said.
"I would think that his duty would have been to find some excuse for putting me off. He knew that I should be full again for tonight."
"That is true, but the temptation is very great. And you did ask for what you got. However, if you require it, Breughel will be killed."
"Let him live," Childe said. "Now, if you don't mind, I would like privacy. Complete privacy. Turn off everything, except the intercom, of course. Don't bring me anything to eat until I ask for it. I want to meditate and possibly to sleep later on."
"As you wish," Pao said.
Childe sat on a chair for a while. He had considered doing what the Ogs wished, up to a point. He had intended to land them on some other planet. Maroon them. They would find themselves on a world which could support life but would offer them little except hardship. And he would go on.
Pao had explained some of the results of the Grailing, and he knew that during the voyaging ceremony he would be able to scan through a part of the cosmos. He did not know how he could do this, but he had been assured by Pao that it was open to him. The implication was that he could go on to any world he was able to see during the ceremony. The idea scared him now, and he had been frank enough to tell Pao that. Pao had replied that he would not be scared during the ceremony because the power would make him courageous.
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