26.
Gregor did not kill anyone.
That, the Shaker thought, is at least one consolation from this entire affair. Gregor has killed no one.
Their own level of the city was secured within twenty minutes of their noisy exit through the ventilation grill and the vibra-rifle destruction of the first four Oragonian soldiers. They caught the last six men as unaware as they had caught the first nine, and they were all thankfull for the ease with which they had attained their goal.
The upper floors raged with battle for more than two hours as the war party met with stronger Oragonian opposition than they had antic.i.p.ated. Or perhaps Berlarak had antic.i.p.ated everything but had glossed it over to be certain the Darklanders would help with the task of driving the enemy from the city. Now and then, there were explosions above which shook the walls even down here, made hairline cracks in the plaster directly below the impact area. Twice, they thought they heard the cries of wounded men echoing down the escalator treads from farther up, though they could not be certain.
Karstanul called them an hour after their own floor had been secured to warn them that a detachment of Oragonians was fleeing down the escalators (the elevators had been shut off from the police headquarters command board) and would soon be upon them if they were not stopped by other squads along the way. But fortunately, they never reached the sixth level.
And then the call came through on the radio, announcing victory. The city had been taken from the invaders, with the help of the super-science of a long-dead society, and had been restored to the mutants. Not long after that, Berlarak, Richter, and all but a mop-up detachment returned to the police complex where One Squad went to wait celebration, or whatever was to come after the short-lived battle.
"We did not have to kill all of them," Berlarak said. "Though I would not have been against such a slaughter. I well remember what they did to our kind."
There was an arrow wound in his left shoulder, and crimson had dribbled down the white fur of that arm in an intricate and rather lovely pattern. He showed no sign that he was bothered by the torn flesh and waved that arm around to amplify his conversation as freely as he used the other.
"Some escaped?" Shaker Sandow asked.
"Aye," Richter affirmed. "About fifty of the devils reached aircraft and scooted out of the city toward the west. They"ll be spilling their tales to Jerry Matabain this evening-if not before then, with the help of those infernal radios of theirs. Another fifty escaped by foot, toward the stand of pines to the north of the city. They"ll expect to wait salvation when the Oragonians send a counter-force to recapture this place. But I do believe they still underestimate our firing power, even though they"ve had a taste of it. We won"t be routed easily now, I say!"
"Not easily," Berlarak agreed.
"And what of us now?" Shaker Sandow asked. "What can we do about the Darklands? That was your purpose in coming here, Commander."
"True. And I haven"t forgotten it. I have mentioned the matter to Berlarak, requesting any aid he can give us in mounting aircraft and other vehicles with the weapons we have used in this battle just pa.s.sed. But he says he believes that he can deal us a device more potent than any fleet of aircraft."
"And what is that?" Shaker Sandow asked, turning to the giant, white-furred mutant. He had the curious feeling of talking to a snowman built by Perdune children. It was the first such thought he had had, in all the hours he had been around the mutants. Perhaps, he mused, my mind finds the burdens growing lighter and is responding. We have accomplished so much in these last days that there is now even time for amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I would rather show you than tell you," Berlarak said, "It will have more effect that way."
"Show us, then," Sandow said.
"We must go down again," Berlarak said. "There are installations beneath the city, reachable only by stairs."
Mace, Gregor, Crowler, Richter and Shaker Sandow followed the shuffling mutant through various chambers of the police complex, until they came to a room that appeared to be no more than a storage chamber for reports and directives. There were tape-retaining banks along the walls and shelves of plastic spools that would speak of ancient robberies and murders. Along the far wall, there was a row of filing cabinets, great heavy things which appeared to be bolted in place. Berlarak opened the topmost drawer of the cabinet farthest to the left reached far inside, as if searching for something. He found it, twisted it. The far right cabinet rose four feet into the air, giving view of a black portal in the floor and steps beyond.
Berlarak led the way down the secret pa.s.sage, urging them to mind their steps as the way got slippery with a film of water mist and lichens which grew from the stones. There was the smell of wet earth and of water, a large quant.i.ty of water somewhere near at hand. There were little round lights set into the rugged ceiling at intervals of ten feet, but they had grown so dim with age that they did little to illuminate the way. They could see each other and a short distance ahead, but little more.
They reached the floor after descending more than a hundred feet into the bowels of the earth. It was a rock shelf, cut from the substrata of the land and polished in some unknown fashion to make it safe for human work and for the traffic of small vehicles which sat about at various places, unused for centuries, given over to fungus and rust in this deep place. In one of the little vehicles, large enough to hold four men, there were three skeletons, as if going to some meeting of demons and ghosts. They walked past these to a length of steps which terminated, after a dozen risers, at the edge of an underground lake. The water stretched a hundred yards across before the ragged stone cave wall ended it. The ceiling of the cave was only twenty feet high, dipping lower at some points on the flat surface of the water.
"Just a little further along here," Berlarak a.s.sured them.
They followed him, walking on the lowest step beside the water, rounded a bend in the cavern, and saw the thing wallowing in the lake, just alongside the steps, as if it were waiting for them.
It was fully four hundred feet in length and ninety feet wide, too large to fit the other way across the lake. It was like some immense cigar with a neck which thrust up from the very center of its rounded, gray body. Yet the neck was not tipped with a head. Instead, there were thrusting things like wires and an entire exoskeleton of impossible purpose. In the end nearest them, down near the water line but not now under it, there were two eyes. This, then, must be the head. But there was no maw and no breathing apparatus. Only two amber eyes, each four feet in diameter, deep and somehow melancholy as they focused on the men.
"A dragon!" Crowler gasped, taking a step backward and almost crashing into the lake.
He had voiced the fears of every man there, save Berlarak. If Berlarak could be said to be a man. No one wished to venture closer to such an awesome creature, even if it did remain perfectly still as if frightened of them and preparing to flee-or maybe pounce.
"Not a dragon," Berlarak corrected.
"What else lies in the water, of such huge dimensions, waiting-"
"A submarine does," Berlarak said, cutting Sergeant Crowler short. "A submarine."
"What is that?" Crowler asked, looking at the dragon in a new light.
"I know," the Shaker said. "I have read of them in archaic texts. But if there was anything that I would yet consider mythical-even after I"ve seen the truth of many wonders-it is such a machine. Does it work?"
"Indeed it does!" Berlarak confirmed. He then proceeded to tell the other Darklanders exactly what the marvelous machine could do. He was stopped often by questions and once or twice by scoffing disbelievers who wished to challenge a point or two. But in very little time, he had convinced them. Indeed, there was not much room to argue when the behemoth waited in the lake.
"But why is it here?" Richter asked, examining the hull more closely now, even daring to touch it and feel that it was cold metal and not skin.
"We supposed certain city officials, or perhaps a wealthy merchant guild, maintained the ship to escape from the city lest the Scopta"-mimas someday carry their war to Earth herself-as they did."
Richter frowned. "And why didn"t they make use of it, then?"
"You saw the bones," Berlarak said. "There were more of those in the submarine when we found it; we threw them out. We speculate that foul play was involved. In those days, we believe, there were as many petty intrigues within the dying human culture as there were battles in the exterior war, the confrontation with the aliens. Guild against guild, race against race, age against age, religious group turned upon religious group. Something of that nature led to the nefarious plots here beneath the city-with the result that neither group of plotters lived to escape."
Richter turned to Shaker Sandow and his sons. "Your purposes were not the same as mine, sorcerer. You have had your mind settled: the main piece of knowledge has been delivered to you. You will be happy here with this treasurehouse of ancient wisdom. I will not hold it against you if you do not accompany us this last way. There really is no need."
"Oh, but there is!" Sandow said. "There is a need! It is not your need, nor the need of the Darklands, but my own desire. I have never sailed in a submarine, though I have long been fascinated with them. Aircraft fly like birds, but that does not excite me like this. True, fish have been swimming beneath the surface of the seas ever since man has known water. But this goes faster than the fish. And deeper than most all of them. In this, there will be much to see. In an airplane, there is only air to survey. I don"t intend to turn my back upon the most fascinating wonder yet!"
"But can we learn to operate it?" Growler asked.
"Sleep-teach tapes will show you the way. It is mostly self-controlled and needs little guidance anyway. We have prepared the minimal tapes for ourselves, but you may have first chance at the dragon."
Richter nodded. "Let"s hurry, then. The Darklands is already half gobbled by the hungry mouths of Jerry Matabain."
27.
Thirty-six hours after they put out from the city, they found themselves nearing the homeland of their enemy!
They had departed the subterranean vaults of the city at three on the afternoon following the defeat of the Oragonians. They had slept in shifts so that some of them would always be free to continue with launching preparations. A large quant.i.ty of hand guns and ammunition had been loaded aboard to make certain that the Darklanders had more than bows and arrows with which to repel the Oragonian armies. The dragon could, after all, only do so much from its sea-locked battlefield. As for food, the submarine contained a food generation plant which sucked fish and seaweed from the water, broke the sludge to its component molecules, sifted for basic protein and vitamins, rejected what was not required. Little cubes of compressed edibles were delivered to hungry men, highly nutritious if tasteless. This they augmented with ancient canned goods still wholesome enough for consumption, though they did not waste much time on preparing the larder; the Banibaleers were accustomed to stale bread and beef jerky and did not need a fancy table. Seven fresh water storage ballast tanks were filled, and then all was in a state of readiness at last.
They bade the mutants a temporary farewell.
They dipped into the water of the subterranean lake.
And they were gone.
It was necessary to handle all the steerage on their own cognizance, for the computerized auto-pilot that had been built into the submarine was set to guide by a map of a world that was no longer accurate. The continents were far different than once they had been. There were new seas and new rivers, and many of the old ways had been sealed shut as if they had never existed at all. The builders of the dragon had originally intended the escape route to run beneath the Cloud Range by means of a subterranean river which fed from this lake, then into the Shatoga River, from there into a fjord at the bottom of the Banibals, far south and on into the Pacific Ocean (which was now called the Salamanthe Sea). But the Cloud Range had not even existed then. And the Banibals had been smaller and less extensive. Such a route now ceased to exist. Instead, the Darklanders found a water pa.s.sage from the lake to the Great Inland Sea where the Salamanthe Islanders had once or twice ventured a short distance along the coast. From there, they pa.s.sed through Bortello Straits into the Northern Sea which eventually flowed into the Salamanthe. Striking south, they eventually reached the coast of Oragonia, moving faster than any of the strange fish they viewed along the way. They handled the huge vessel with ease, the sleep-teach tapes having made sub-surface sailors of them in a short time.
From the moment they had boarded the vessel, Shaker Sandow had been prowling from one end of her to the other. He slept little, unable to rest easily in such a wonder-packed machine. He spent time before the amber portals, looking out upon the sea bottom, watching octopodial creatures half as large as their ship, smaller fish, great kelp beds waving as if in a breeze.
Thirty-six hours after their departure, at three o"clock in the morning, he was busy playing with the garbage disposal unit in the small galley where foods other than the protein cubes were prepared. The disposal unit seemed to sum up the richness of the science of the ancient men who had constructed the dragon. To think that such an ingenius and complicated device had been built for such a mundane problem as trash acc.u.mulation was more than a little awe-inspiring.
Four feet above deck level in the galley, against the outside bulkhead, stood a bronze pipe ten or twelve inches in diameter, with a heavy, hinged lid and screw clamps to keep the weighty cover in position. Because the dragon had been meant to remain underwater for months at a time, this had taken the place of nighttime disposal dumps made when the vessel surfaced. The bronze tube went to the bottom of the submarine. On the lower end, there was a heavy water-tight hatch much like the one in the galley, with inter-connecting controls that made it impossible for both to be open at the same time-and thus flood the ship. The garbage, then, was placed in tough plastic sacks and weighted with stones which were kept for this purpose only. The galley hatch was closed after a few sacks of trash, and the stuff was pumped out under pressure, then the outer door closed again. It was necessary to weight the bags to keep them from floating to the surface and thus give clue to the position of the dragon.
A bag full of nothing but stones had been forced out the tube, and the Shaker was watching the red and green safety lights above the disposal unit with childlike intensity, when Tuk appeared in the doorway.
"Ah, there you are, Shaker!" the red-haired youth said swinging through the open hatch.
"Here I am," Sandow affirmed. "And there are you And do you make a habit of stealing quietly through the corridors trying to scare the wits out of tired old men?"
Tuk smiled. "Aye, that I do. If the tired old men are too frisky yet to hie themselves to bed."
"I have been to bed," Sandow said. "And I find it unappealing."
"That"s because you don"t take the proper company with you," Tuk said, grinning.
"Aye, and what would I do with the proper company if I had her longside me "neath the sheets? I have long since lost my vitality."
Tuk laughed, then grew more serious as he seemed to remember what he had come for. "The commander sent me with a message, and when I could not find you in your bed, I began a search of the ship."
"Message?"
"We are off the coast of Oragonia at a point some three miles from the harbor of their capital, Blackmouse. The harbor lanterns are visible, but little else."
"I suppose the war resumes for us," Sandow said.
"Aye, Shaker, it does."
"Let us go then and watch the dragon spit its fire."
They left the galley and the marvelous garbage disposal for the fore quarters of the long ship.
Richter and Crowler and Mace and Gregor, plus half a dozen other Darklanders were waiting on the guidance deck, before the two amber windows of the vessel. They were riding on the surface, the windows just above the slopping darkness of the sea. All lights in the main cabin had been extinguished so that they did not present a display for anyone who might be watching from the docks. The only illumination came from the pulsing scopes of the instruments, the lightly glowing panels of dials and gauges. These threw their features into dark blue bas relief and gave them all an other-worldly color that reminded the Shaker, for a brief moment, of the way they had looked in the jeweled forest in the east.
"And now what?" the Shaker asked, peering through the viewports toward the dock lights of the enemy capital.
"At first," Richter said, "I had intended to use sh.e.l.ls upon the town. Not nuclears. Pray that we can avoid those no matter what transpires. But now I do not believe that sh.e.l.ling the city is necessary either. There on the slopes above the town lies the Matabain castle."
There were a few lights there, barely enough to outline the thrusting towers and the hard, high walls of the mad emperor"s domain. It seemed so distant and unreal that they might have been fighting a war of the imagination. It was suddenly obvious to the Shaker why the more civilized men of earlier eras had dealt so heavily in war. Long-distance wars, from submarines and aircraft and rocketships, was impersonal or seemed to be. The killer did not think of himself as the killer-but merely as a technician, a cog in the great wheel of things.
"And you plan to sh.e.l.l Matabain"s castle in hopes the armies will flounder without him. But remember that another man will a.s.sume the tiller of state. One man is not responsible for a nation"s policy."
"More than the castle," Richter said. He turned and looked back to the land. "Up there on the slopes, laid out as nice as you please, are fifty aircraft and many other land vehicles. Perhaps the largest part of the enemy a.r.s.enal lies before us."
Sandow strained. "I see nothing," he said at last "Is this wishful thinking that guides you?"
Richter turned and handed the Shaker a pair of heavy, enormous binoculars. "Look upon it with those and see if you do not note what I have told you, friend. Luck indeed has turned upon us."
The Shaker raised the gla.s.ses to his eyes, grunted his surprise. Through some magic mechanism in the instrument, night was driven away and everything seemed as brightly lighted as if the sun shone. He had to remove the binoculars for a moment to check whether this was perhaps the case. But stars were there in blackness, no sun. He looked again, saw the aircraft banked along the slope beneath the towering castle walls. There were lumbering trucks and other ground vehicles, a wide a.s.sortment of weapons of war, there for the plucking.
"It will not be all his supply," Sandow said.
"Of course," Richter agreed. "We know that aircraft and ground vehicles now work in the lower colonies of the Darklands. So this is not all, but some, a good many, a large blow to them."
"You speak as if you"ve heard more word about the way the Darklands fare in all this."
"An hour ago," Richter said, "we intercepted radio reports between the castle and aircraft to the south in our home counties. It is said that only Far Walk, Lingomabbo, Jenningsly and Summerdown are still under the reign of General Dark. All other twenty-seven counties have succ.u.mbed to the Oragonian forces. There are reports of slave camps in the fallen colonies, of women pressed to service as prost.i.tutes. General Dark and his wives now reside in Summerdown, by the fjord, with nowhere to go if the last perimeters of their defenses fall. Jerry Matabain has ordered the General executed immediately upon capture, his body to be returned to Blackmouse for a public disembowlment and burning."
"They are not playing games, then."
"No games."
"Then let us move swiftly," Shaker Sandow said. "Every hour may mean life or death to our master."
Richter turned to Crowler who was manning the armament station. "Have you got the range, Sergeant?"
"Radar identifies it: three and a quarter miles, sir."
"Very well. To protect the citizens in the buildings immediately downslope from the castle, we"ll use implosion missiles. That should reduce flying debris considerably."
"Aye, sir!"
"Fire three rounds when ready," Richter directed.
Everyone but Crowler turned to the amber viewports.
There was a slight whoofing noise a bit aft and above them. Air was sheared apart above the submarine, and thin white vapor marked the trail of the first rocket for a hundred feet before darkness swallowed even that. The hissing came twice again in close succession, presenting two more wispy white tentacles that terminated in blackness.
They waited.
Time seemed to slow, almost as it had in the city when the Shaker had realized that he must kill in order to save young Gregor from that harsh burden of guilt The night remained black.
The night remained quiet Then it turned white and red and made sounds like a herd of stampeding cattle running across the membrane of a huge drum.