It would be hopeless to hide in the head; the she-monster could rip the door off its hinges in an instant. There remained only the pile of baggage jumbled in the stern sheets-all manner of bags and pouches and dispatch boxes and map cases, most unstrapped and scattering their contents in a jumble on the deck. He could burrow into the heap and"Tonee, are you awake?"
He froze, partially concealed behind an enormous leather annourcase. The houri came slinking along the pa.s.sage. He saw her enter, sable-skinned, crowned with the flowing mane of luscious scarlet, holding something aloft in one hand, something that shone metallic by the light of the burning city.
"I"ve brought you a wonderful present, darling-just what you needed! We"re going to have the greatest fun with my little experiment-"
She paused, frowning. "Tonee, are you going to be tiresome?"
He shrank down, tried in desperation to creep into the capacious leather box with its compartments and supportive loops, and then felt, held in a kind of open scabbard, something slender, hard, and longer than his arm. He drew it out, not believing his eyes. The monsters had carried other arms, of course, but this"Come out of there at once," she hissed, brandishing the gift angrily. Tony saw at last what it was.
A torc. But not one of silver. It was gold.
He peeked over the top of the armour-case and grinned. "Just fooling, luv!" His hands, out of sight, fumbled inexpertly. But there had been that long-ago holiday on barbarous a.s.siniboia, and these cla.s.sic pieces were all of a type, after all.
The Dreadful Skathe chuckled, pranced toward him in a parody of a nautch-dance, enticing as a black widow spider on the verge of its fatal embrace. Tony came slowly to his feet, keeping the thing pointed at the deck until the last possible moment. Then as she held the torc high and safe, he swept up the archaic Rigby .470 elephant rifle and shot her in the face.
The explosion and the fierce recoil sent him reeling. He saw the ogress fall with the rear half of her skull blown away and the bulkhead behind her suddenly turned to the colour of her hair.
The other Firvulag came roaring down the pa.s.sage, wearing his illusory guise of a limbless winged dragon with saucer-sized green eyes and fangs dripping venom. But the Rigby was a double-barrelled weapon, and Karbree died as ignominiously as the female hero had done.
Like a man still spellbound, Tony picked up the golden torc and fastened it about his neck. He said to himself, "Rowane."
And then he heard the hissing and gurgling and realized he had not got off scot-free after all. There was a price to be paid when one banged about on a pneumatic boat with a highpowered rifle-but it was, under the circ.u.mstances, reasonable enough.
CHAPTER SIX.
The protective sphere of psychocreative force carrying the King and the chemist hung poised above the foamy ma.s.s that had surged out of the subterranean storage area and partially filled the stairwell. Embedded in the goop were countless pla.s.ssheathed packages and container pods.
"Rather like a devil"s Nesselrode pudding," the chemist observed. At his silver-torc initiation, the Tanu had dubbed him Wex-Velitokal, which was only slightly less ungainly than his original name of Ethelbert Anketell Milledge-Wexler; but the exotic penchant for nicknames having come to the rescue, he was now known to one and all as Bert Candyman, and had so introduced himself to the King without the slightest trace of embarra.s.sment.
"Queen Mercy-Rosmar made this mess out of the wall insulation," Aiken said. "Her purpose was to prevent me from using any of these weapons or other contraband Milieu equipment against Nodonn and his invaders-but not to ruin the materiel beyond retrieval. She succeeded very well in the first instance.
The bubbles of that sticky foam are filled with poison gas. Any ordinary human poking around in it is an instant goner. A Tanu unshielded by creativity becomes a candidate for six weeks in Skin."
"Can you filch a sample for me and pop it into here?" Bert Candyman held out a device about the size of a pocket AV recorder, with a tiny hopper open at the top. "This will a.n.a.lyse the const.i.tuents for us in half a sec."
Aiken nodded. A small bubble materialized above the deadly suds and scooped up a portion. It oozed through the superficies of the greater sphere enveloping the two men and disappeared into the a.n.a.lyser. Bert snapped the hopper shut and studied the diminutive visual display.
"Beastly ingenious, Her Late Majesty. She simply unzipped a fairly standard polyurethane molecule. Broke up the original insulating material into its const.i.tuent tolylene diisocyanate and poly(oxypropylene)triol. She heated this foul glop and injected groundwater from the castle sumps, then diddled around a bit further with the isocyanate to generate the hydrogen cyanide gas."
"How do we get rid of it?"
"Well, a talented metapsychic creator might simply reverse the process-"
The King"s face was expressionless. "How else?
"The likeliest solvent would be acetone. Effective, and harmless to the fluorocarbon thermoplastic of the equipment wrappings. I don"t suppose you have a few thousand litres stashed away somewhere?"
Aiken laughed bitterly. "There"s probably a gadget buried down there that would make as much as we need in five minutes-if we could only identify it. But the Queen destroyed the inventory-control computer, so it"s all one big high-tech grab bag now. I probably wouldn"t know an acetone cooker from a robot bartender if you set the two pods in front of me."
"Ah. Well! We can make acetone from scratch, too, of course.
Not particularly difficult. Hardly on a par with my last project-perfecting a pickling process that would yield a pecan flavour in the walnuts we utilize in the brandied b.u.t.tercream chocolates-"
Aiken blinked. The chemist broke off his genial digression as though a bullwhip had been snapped in front of his face.
"You make pryoligenous acid from hog-fuel-hardwood chips, that is. Treat it with quicklime. Your stonemasons should have plenty of that on hand. Then distill the slurry to make calcium acetate. A modic.u.m of further heating yields the acetone by fractional distillation. A straightforward industrial operation."
The two of them were wafting upward. "How long to make what we"ll need?" Aiken asked. Their feet touched stone and the sphere of mental force flattened as it pushed the invisible gas away from the tightly closed door.
"Give me carte blanche on supplies and personnel, and I"ll have the solvent ready in three weeks. The actual decontamination operation may take longer unless you have protective clothing with oxygen apparatus for the workers. The acetone wash will remove the foam, but there"s still the cyanide to contend with."
The small man in the golden leather storm-suit and the chemist dressed in the elegant turquoise robes of the Greater Guild emerged into the safe atmosphere of the castle"s grand foyer. The door to the deadly storage area clanged shut.
"You"re not thinking like a metapsychic, Candyman," the King chided, "but that"s not surprising, since your own talents run more to the intellectual than the physical." They walked rapidly down a corridor, and Aiken continued. "You will have at your service-and I mean, prepared to do whatever dirty work this dirty job requires-a cadre of very special a.s.sistants.
They"ll use their mindpower to build your apparatus, to prepare the raw materials, to expedite things in whatever manner you command. They"ll protect themselves mentally while they swab down the contaminated stuff-pod by pod, package by package-so you needn"t worry about safety gear. They can protect you as well as themselves. What"s more, they"ll work without sleeping for a week. It"s easy, if you"re a Tanu stalwart."
Aiken opened the door to a small antechamber. Several dozen Tanu wearing knightly mufti waited there. As the King entered they rose and placed right hands to their golden torcs in the gesture of fealty. Their protective mental barriers were down.
All of them were either creators or psychokinetics, and their status was such that the human chemist stepped back, overawed, and would have abased himself in the customary manner of silver-torcs if the King had not subliminally restrained him.
A slight smile twitched at the King"s lips as he made introductions. "Here are Kuhal Earthshaker and Celadeyr of Afaliah and certain of their followers. They"ll be your princ.i.p.al helpers on the job, but you can have as many others in addition as you might require."
Bert Candyman could only nod wordlessly as the former High Table members and the other n.o.ble Tanu made humble mental obeisance to him. And then the King seemed to look into his soul with devouring black eyes, and the torc at his throat wanned and changedand by the mind-whispers of the exotics Bert knew that it had become free gold.
Aiken said, "You have seven days to produce that solvent and decontaminate the Milieu weapons and other materiel. Work as though the fate of the Many-Coloured Land depended upon you."
"Does it?" the shaken chemist asked, and the perplexed Tanu minds seemed to echo the question, and ready scores of others.
But those hot eyes held a warning, and the Tanu hesitated, and a moment later the King was gone.
AIKEN: Ochal! How goes it?
OCHAL THE HARPER: Well enough, High King. We of the vanguard are just crossing the River Galegaar, and we"ll reach the Calamosk shortly. There we will remount for the final sprint.
We should arrive in Afaliah less than ten hours from now.
AIKEN: Kaleidoscopic. Your advance party should get there handily before the North Americans ... But here"s the bad news. They had a stiff tailwind on the New Sea yesterday, and Morna-Ia farsighted Hagen"s ATVs approaching the Neck of Aven just before midnight.
OCHAL: Tana"s teeth, what rotten luck! The supply wagons and the bulk of our forces can"t get to Afaliah until more than forty hours after us. If the futuristic vehicles of the North Americans make a dash for the city up the Old Aven Road, we"re for it!
AIKEN: Quite possibly. I don"t think we can trust Cloud Remillard to honour her promise-not if she"s backed up by her brother and his bunch, armed to the teeth with Milieu weapons.
She says this crew of junior rebels has no ambition to take over the Many-Coloured Land, but there"s no way I can get the truth of it until I brain-ream the lot of them in person.