Again he sensed something incredibly wrong.
He was almost on top of the pickers before he saw them, so well did the colour of their skins match the hue of the brown foliage. He thought at first he had come across a company of negroes, and it was several seconds before anguished realisation told him that the blue-brown of their skins was the result of prolonged exposure to the blue, atrocious moon.
Most were nearly naked, some completely so, and they squatted on their haunches, Asiatic style, between the die-straight rows, eyes staring ahead, apparently unseeing, while their hands gathered thecepi. Everyone was in an advanced state of cepi hypnosis. Dalroi might have been wrong, but he could have sworn that among the nearer group of degraded faces he could identify at least two of the members of the fact-finding group he had started out to trace. He shrugged. There was nothing he could do for them now.
There are many ways to gather cepi. The best way is to puncture the sac before it is fully ripe, and to allow the sap therein to dry in a small, milky tear on the outside of the growing pod. Such an operation needs to be performed with care, for the un-dry liquor is barbarously addictive and induces raw hallucinations completely without the restraint of prepared cepi. It is easily absorbed through the skin.
Those who gather cepi tears with unprotected hands either die or are forced by the power of the drug to remain pickers for the rest of their short, befuddled lives. To gratify such an addiction a man willingly enters a state of slavery on a cepi field, and, since like all cepi derivatives the drug was specific, only that source could satisfy the craving.
Dalroi reconnoitred carefully. There were no guards that he could see; none would be needed, for cepi kept its own narcotic watch on pickers who attempted to default - but a line of sheds and lights on the edge of the shadow suggested an encampment where the pickers slept. Humidifier heads dotted about the rows argued that part of the cultivation process was a heavy drenching of the foliage. The two facts taken together suggested a daily routine or cycle of events. Dalroi became thoughtful.
Cepi was the kingpoint of the Failway slave empire; destroying the cepi destroyed Failway, but it would also bring death or madness to thousands dependent on Failway drugs. It would be a difficult decision to make.
"If Failway can be broken it can only be by one man who can"t be touched by force or guile, fear or pity; one man whose frenzy is such that he could bear a million murders on his conscience without snapping; a man whose terrible thirst for vengeance would lead him on where even dedicated madmen fear to tread." Cronstadt had said that to him.
And: "It had to he somebody tough and somebody who was not afraid to kill; it had to be somebody with a pa.s.sionate and relentless hatred of Failway and with a mind strong enough not to burn out under the strain ... whose innate capacity and ruthless determination ... transcended all other emotions."
"A highly intelligent gutter-rat," said Dalroi to n.o.body in particular. "That"s me!"
The sound of his voice shocked him, for he was not in the habit of talking to himself. An alert part of his mind tripped on the incident and a.n.a.lysed it. The answer was worrying. Somehow the subtle vapour from the blossoms was affecting his thinking. Knowing the soporific effect of cepi on a non-addicted person he realised that if he was to take any effective action against the field he had better start quickly. Within an hour the vapour would have robbed him of his purpose; after two hours he might not bother to leave ...
ever.
Again a voice swam in his mind. This time his own: "Failway grows like a malignant cancer ... you can"t remove such barbarous poisons ... you have to take up a knife and hack out the rotting flesh ... cauterising the wound with red-hot iron and cooling the iron with tears of pain."
"d.a.m.n!" said Dalroi. The decision was made. He looked for a point as far away from the cepi as possible, where he could do some serious destructive thinking. Outside the sphere of light from the unG.o.dly moon a vast, dark plain lurked in black bewilderment. There was no indication that mortal foot had ever travelled or explored except where the blue moon shone. Dalroi walked out into the darkness.FIFTEEN
The cepi field was of earth, declining gently to a flat, gla.s.sy surface. Obviously the soil for the field had been imported and laid over whatever composed the basic plane of the continuum. The idea of dimensionless plain intrigued Dalroi. It was another of those mathematical abstractions become reality.
He knelt and tried the surface with his hand. Not hot, not cold; gla.s.sy and flawless as far as he could tell.
As to its composition, he remembered Gormalu"s paradox: "Nothing inside, and the inverse of nothing outside it, or vice versa according to your mathematical standpoint."
The picture clarified. The mathematics of Failway projection had located on one side of the theoretical two-dimensional figure. On this surface Failway had set its pleasure installation walled against n.o.body knew what, and outside the wall they had established a field of cepi. Beyond that the plain stretched to ...
infinity? Unchanged ... limitless ... empty? The notion worried him.
How do you know a place is infinite until you"ve reached the edge and proved it not so? How do you know it is empty until something comes out of the darkness and proves that it is not? It is unnatural for men to live on the very edge of the unknown and not be eternally curious.
A sudden dip in the illumination behind him broke the chain of thought. The moon was growing paler and duller with the pa.s.sing seconds. He returned to the edge of the field and studied the position. The pickers had left the field, and the humidifiers were starting their saturating micro-spray. Here was a change in the cycle. Now, if ever, was the time to make his move.
The half-plan forming in his mind crystallised to completeness. Centrally in the field stood four towers which, drawing together as they ascended, supported the incredible spire on which burned the ultraviolet moon. That the structure was two miles high awed Dalroi not a bit. He was more interested in the fact that the illumination was controllable.
Searching carefully he located the cable-run to the towers, and, near the edge of the field, he found the control cabin, a small blockhouse which straddled the cable channel. Dalroi approached it warily, finally throwing a clump of earth at the metal roof. Nothing happened, so he guessed the technician responsible for dimming the moon had already left.
The door was unlocked, so he entered and closed it behind him. The cabin was warm and vibrating with the surge of power even though the moon was only at quarter intensity.
The controls were unfamiliar but a rapid a.n.a.lysis of their functions extracted a guiding principle. Much of the equipment concerned primary ignition, and this he ignored. He was not so much concerned with extinguishing the moon as with taking it to such intensity that the radiation became intolerable to the cepi.
The task could prove dangerous. A meter graduated in novemdecillions, function unspecified, made the hair rise on the back of his neck. One false move when juggling with such power could well roast him where he stood.
With taut hands, and his brow dripping with perspiration, he turned the energy up. Needles climbed scales and approached and pa.s.sed red warning limits without incident. The hum of power sang through the cabin like the tune of a thousand bees.
The light increased not in linear proportions but exponentially, rising to swift brilliance and still increasing almost as fast as the eye could adapt. The artificial moon became a sun, spilling blue fire. Searing radiation cut into the land and into the dark foliage with merciless intensity. Dalroi drew the shields as far as he could while balancing the controls, the next best thing to a prayer hovering on his lips.
The colour-shift of the radiated light told him that the delicate balance of the elements in the sun had beendestroyed. The visible light shift was towards the red end of the spectrum, and the heat rising fast as the energy entered the infra-red band.
If this was a simple drift of the radiation frequencies, the whole energy output might well enter the E.H.F.
radio band, with unpredictable consequences. If, however, the sun was spreading its emissions over a wider portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum, part of the energy would excite radiations into the X-ray and gamma-radiation bands. The control cabin had a thin lead shield but this would be no protection against concentrated hard radiation, nor had he any means of knowing when he had received a fatal dosage.
It was a risk too grave to take. He punched the power off fast, hoping that it had achieved its purpose, and waited for the brilliance to subside. He had to time his movements carefully. As soon as the terrain outside was tenable the police squads would be coming out to get him. If he stayed too long he was set fair to be cut down by the local security force; if he moved too quickly he was chancing an unknown density of hard radiation with equally deadly results. Only ... a glance at the heavily-blued monitoring window shattered his calculations with a new problem which made the others pale into insignificance. The radiation outside, far from decreasing, had grown tenfold in its brilliance. The artificial sun was going nova.
He had heard of such things from the days when artificial luminaries had been sent into orbit about the earth to eliminate night. One such device, doubtless contaminated by cosmic debris, also went nova. A large continent called Africa changed its contours overnight; but that was a long time ago and n.o.body had dared to try it since. Now the hectic plasma-furnace high above his head had started a similar reaction, consuming the very elements which strove to contain it, and continuing without need of the energy input which had brought it into life.
Dalroi hastily brought the shutter over the window. The door was already shut fast but the light outside was so intense that the mere scatter rebounding from the crevices between the door and the frame flooded the interior with a level of radiation which hurt his eyes. An examination of the walls and roof of the cabin showed him that the structure offered but meagre protection, being merely to shield the technicians while the sun was being first run up to criticality. No provision had been made for this sort of catastrophe; indeed, it was doubtful if any sort of protection was possible.
He wondered idly how long the tower would last in the face of the heat which was still building rapidly. A rough calculation a.s.sured him that most of it would vaporise when the hyper-critical stage was reached.
At about that time also the lead shielding of the cabin would be falling in silvery driblets soon to be followed by the molten steel of the framework. The point was hypothetical. Dalroi figured he would be dead and dry long before the metals came to pouring point.
The temperature rose mercilessly. Already the walls were too hot to touch and the ventilators were admitting a smoke-laden fug which told of the fire ravaging the cepi in the field. Dalroi shut the ventilator tight. Though he badly needed the air-change he had to avoid the stupefying cepi fumes for as long as possible. Only as a last resort would he welcome its release from pain.
Dull thunder rocked the structure and knocked him on to the floor. A rising, continuous scream, like the voice of a thousand rocket jets, savaged his ears. Everything vibrated as though caught in the teeth of a mighty, rocking storm.
That is it! thought Dalroi.
Something coming: a million banshees swooping down; ten million express trains driving down a vertical shaft; a hundred million intercontinental rockets converging on the same point at thesame instant. Upheaval: fire spitting, earth shattering, winding, clawing, driving, universe-shaking cataclysm ... the terrible removal from disorientation to something worse and back again with soul-twisting transition. Time lapse! Time relapse! Time collapse!
"Die!" said the living fire.
"Hate!" said Dalroi. "Hate!"
CONCEPTION! DECEPTION!.
TRANSCRIPTION! ABSTRACTION!.
HATE! HATE! HATE!.
Bruising shock; boulder upon boulder; shoulder twisted; knee where backbone used to be. Flesh afire, forehead flaming, eyes incandescent.
He could smell his flesh scorching as he struggled to his feet only to find his shoes were burning. Suddenly the light was gone. A swift shift from yellow into red, and he was standing in a helpless darkness that snored like a giant. He fought the shutter from the window, ignoring the blistering heat of the metal. Dying radiation sauntered in.
The sun had disappeared. Before him, far across the wasted field was a young volcano whose slopes concealed the wanton pit which the sun had burned for itself in falling. Somewhere far below, the sun still lived and spewed gouts of red-hot porridge into the loud and dying air. The crisis was over. Only when he noticed the ruined instruments under his hand did Dalroi realise that he had no right to be alive.
He moved. The door was buckled beyond repair but he crashed it savagely and the weakened metal buckled and broke. The terrain outside was a fantasy painted in red and black. The cepi was charred black ash, brittle charcoal traceries which fell constantly with minute rhyming tinkles on to the brick-faced soil. The only light was the blood-red radiance from the pit, deepening and dying even as he ran out into the darkness. It was a grotesque shadow-play, a macabre pictorial comment on a contemporary scene of destruction.
Ombudsman Rhodes looked up as the girl entered. "Your name is Zdenka?"
The girl frowned at the hospital dress in which she had been attired. "What business is it of yours what my name is?"
"It"s my job to ask questions about people in trouble. One of my a.s.sistants pulled you out of the river.
You were so stiff with drugs he didn"t know whether to call an ambulance or a hea.r.s.e. That sounds like trouble to me. Have you anything you"d like to add to the story."
"Go to h.e.l.l!"
"Soon," said the Ombudsman patiently, "but first I have a few questions. Your ident.i.ty tablet lists you as working for Ivan Dalroi. I"d have thought a girl could get into enough trouble around town without a.s.sociating with someone like him."
"Dalroi"s all right," said Zdenka. "It"s just that he goes out and looks for trouble before it comes round looking for him."
"He seems to have found enough this time," said Rhodes critically. "If we"re going to get him out of it I need every sc.r.a.p of information I can get.""What happened to him?"
"He bulldozed a sizable piece out of the side of Failway Terminal by diverting an express into the unloading bay, and was last seen heading into Failway, purpose unknown."
"That"s Dalroi!" Zdenka said. "He was all set to tear the place apart."
"One man?"
"Dalroi"s not one man. He"s a kilo of fissile uranium with a grudge against everybody who doesn"t see life the way he sees it. Failway enticed his girlfriend away, and he means to make somebody sweat because of it."
"As an individual, he can only do so much damage before he falls."
"Then you don"t know Dalroi. Dalroi"s fights are a well-known local phenomena. When he gets in a tight corner he goes mad. I don"t think he knows it himself, but n.o.body can touch him, and ... "
"And?" asked Rhodes.
"I don"t know," Zdenka said. "I"ve seen it but I don"t believe it. Somehow he - jumps. One second he"s being threatened with a gun and the next second he"s holding it. You can"t see him go. His reaction speed is fantastic"
"That agrees with my own information," said the Ombudsman. "How much more do you know about what"s going on?"
"Not much. Dalroi was working for the Cronstadt committee, but he never takes anybody"s word as gospel. He wanted to know more about the committee itself. I located an ex-journalist named Harry Dever and took him to the cabin at Pa.s.sfields for an interview with Dalroi. Somebody attacked us at the cabin and Harry Dever was shot. I think they must have used a hypo-gun on me because the next thing I remember was awakening on the river bank with your a.s.sistant trying to persuade me back to life."
"And you remember nothing of what happened to you between the time you were at the cabin and when we found you?"
"Nothing, why?"
"You"d been treated with a very full measure of a somewhat exotic truth drug normally available only to police laboratories. Somebody very much wanted some information out of you and didn"t much care if he killed you to obtain it. When he"d got what he wanted he dropped you in the river. You were lucky ...
The drugs slowed your metabolism else you"d have died from exposure even though you didn"t drown.
You were never intended to come out of the river alive. Have you any idea who did that to you?"
"I - I can"t remember anything. It"s all a blank."
"Very well," said Rhodes, "but try. There"s an unseen war going on which could break out into the most b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre of the century. What it"s all about I can only guess, but Dalroi"s in the middle of it somewhere and if he isn"t dead already then it"s only a matter of time. Failway against Dalroi is the sort of odds which makes my blood run cold, and I"m not even sure the situation is as simple as that. If you can remember anything at all which might help you"ve got to let me know."
"Just before Dever and I were attacked he started to talk about Gormalu.""Anything else?"
"Dever said the Black Knights were looking for Dalroi - asking questions."
"Yes," said the Ombudsman quietly. "I rather imagine they would be. There"s a loose a.s.sociation between the Cronstadt committee and the Black Knights, but they make strained and unhappy bedfellows. It will be interesting to see what happens to Democracy when the bonds of expediency break down. It will be even more interesting when they learn they"ve been fighting the wrong battle. Between them they have conspired to put Dalroi precisely where his opponents most wish him to be. In the name of Humanity I"ve got to help Dalroi in any way I can. That"s why I still think you can help me."
"So help me, I"ve told you all I know."
"I don"t think you have. You"ve omitted one person from the story - somebody who could be vital. I"m familiar with the tactics of Failway and of the Black Knights, and it was neither of their teams who attacked you at Pa.s.sfields, else I scarcely think you"d be alive to tell the tale. Neither of them have need to use rivers to dispose of unwanted bodies. I can only conclude, therefore, that the attacker was a friend of Dalroi"s - and that raises the question of what he wanted from you. Tell me Zdenka, why did you kill Harry Dever - and who was it caught you in the act?"
Her outraged reaction was stillborn, nullified by the Ombudsman"s swift horror at something behind her at the door. He reached for the gun at his knee, but the plate gla.s.s of the door shattered and a gas sh.e.l.l cracked against the wooden desktop before he could complete the action. As the vapour fanned out the paralysis was instantaneous. He stiffened and fell, his features locked in outraged amazement and his eyes fixed gla.s.sily on the black masks and cowls of the intruders.
SIXTEEN.
Dalroi made it back to the great wall while there was still enough light to give him bearings. He turned away from the door through which he had come and headed into the darkness. Shortly he ran down the earth ramp and on to the gla.s.sy basic strata. The light failed completely and only the occasional touch of his fingers on the concrete gave him his bearings.
He was careful. If he lost contact with the wall there was a reasonable certainty that he could wander forever on the black plain and never find anything but darkness and the black, flat floor. He was playing a hunch that somewhere on the perimeter of Failway Two there was another door, one at which he would not be expected. Against him were the facts that there need not be another door, and even if there was he could easily miss it with his fingertips.
He remembered the infra-red goggles in his pocket and snapped them on. Very, very faintly the wall stood out in contrast to the gla.s.sy plain and enabled him to speed his progress. He stopped abruptly when he saw the light.
It was no ordinary light, but a form of dark-lamp with a pencil beam. Approaching cautiously he saw the chain of reflectors on rafts some fifty yards out, a typical beam-trap for those who walked in the darkness.
From this he knew both that there was a door close by and that he was probably expected. The goggles enabled him to pa.s.s the beam trap without springing the alarm, and the door was easily opened. He entered, half expecting a more malicious trap, but found none. Apparently, complete reliance was placed on the alarm, and this he had avoided.
He found himself in a tunnel built through the great outer wall of Failway Two. It was similar to the firstthrough which he had pa.s.sed to find the field of cepi. At the other end was a hall corresponding to the one where the giant generators had been, but this one was concerned with building. Prefabricated palaces and panoramas, constructed with amazing imagination and realism, stood awaiting the craftsmen"s final touch. Everything from furniture down to the daintiest bowl was here a.s.sembled and matched for atmosphere and authenticity before being introduced into the pleasure world beyond. This was the property department of Failway Two.
The scale of the project was staggering. Fully a whole new town of oriental wonder being a.s.sembled in a way no Prince of Orient could possibly have imagined. At this moment the lights were low and n.o.body was about, as if there was a lull between working shifts. Dalroi moved swiftly between flights of marble steps and gilded minarets towards where he judged the pleasure-ground to be.
Another door, and he was back in the world of make-believe, a furtive figure slinking in the corner of bazaar and alley in the dim twilight of a mock-oriental evening. The shock of Gormalu"s unofficial night seemed to have been forgotten by the throng in the plazas. The cafes, dancing rooms and temples of love, were doing good business. Outwardly everything was running as normal but the tenseness in the Failway staff betrayed the scent of manhunt. Dalroi realised he needed a disguise if he was to remain long undetected.
A lone figure in a deserted alley gave him an idea. He closed swiftly and struck once, dragging the limp figure into a doorway. Before he could begin the exchange of clothes there was a yell from somewhere overhead, some witness to the a.s.sault. Briefly a siren sounded an alarm and men came running. Dalroi cursed and decided to get out fast. He headed up the alley away from the running feet, skidded round a corner and scattered a row of bystanders, adding to the rising confusion.
He had turned into a main thoroughfare, and the pavements were crowded. He plunged through crowds of amazed pleasure seekers, scattering them like skittles by the sheer force of his powerful shoulders. At the next intersection he nearly fell into a trap. Security men had been alerted and waited with drawn guns.
He saw them in time to dive into an open door and up a flight of stairs to a balcony. The balcony ran round to the back of the house and from there he leaped down through ornamental trellis entwined with creeper and decorated with lanterns, stumbled through a luminescent fishpond and was away over the walls like a breath of wind.
Only luck had saved him from the first screaming bullets, but it was stamina and desperation which enabled him to clear the closing mantrap. The walks were suddenly alive with running men. Whether or not they knew his ident.i.ty, Failway was taking no chances. The bullets were intended to kill and no surrender was offered or made possible. Dalroi escaped the only way he knew; by running further, faster and over obstacles more daunting than his pursuers dared a.s.say. Soon he cleared the more thickly populated zone and broke into the quieter, more select and even more exotic areas which lay beyond.
In a silent street where the scents of luxury were so strong they held almost a life of their own, he paused to regain his breath and to a.n.a.lyse the situation. Time was running out on him. Shrill whistles told of the hunters not very far behind, gathering reinforcements with the pa.s.sing minutes. By this time the whole area would be surrounded and the net would be closing remorselessly. Only a radical rethinking of his tactics could save him.