IN THE MIDDLE of the night, they came out of another house, having entered by the air shaft, and stepped past the sleepers. This house was on the street just below the emperor"s palace. From here on, there would be no internal shaft connections. Since all stairways and causeways were guarded, they could reach their goal only by climbing up on the outside for some distance. This would not be easy. For forty feet, the mountain face was purposely left smooth.
And then, while they were skulking in the shadows at the base of the wall, they came across two booted feet sticking out of a dark alcove. The feet belonged to a dead sentry; another man lay dead by him. One had been stabbed in the throat; the other, strangled with wire.
"Nimstowl has been here!" Anana whispered. "He is called the Nooser, you know."
The torches of an approaching patrol flared three hundred yards down the street. Kickaha cursed Nimstowl because he had left the bodies there. Actually, however, it would make little difference to the patrols if the sentries were dead or missing from their posts. There would be alarms.
The small gate set in the wall was unlocked. It could be locked from the outside only; Kickaha and Anana, after taking the sentries1 weapons, went through it, and ran up the steep stairway between towering smooth walls. They were wheezing and sobbing when they reached the top.
From below, shouts rose. Torches appeared in the tiny gateway, and soldiers began to climb the steps. Drums tboomed; a bugle bararared.
The two ran, not toward the palace to their right but toward a steep flight of steps to their left. At the top of the steps, silver roofs and gray iron bars gleamed, and the odor of animals, straw, old meat and fresh dung reached them.
"The royal zoo," Kickaha said. "I"ve been here."
At the far end of a long flagstone walk, something gleamed like a thread in the hem of night. It shot across the moonlight and was in shadows, out again, in again. Then it faded into the huge doorway of a colossal white building.
"Nimstowl!" Anana said. She started after him, but Kickaha pulled her back roughly. Face twisted, white as silver poured out by the moon in a hideous mold, eyes wide as an enraged owl"s, she snapped herself away from him.
"You dare to touch me, leblabbiyT*
"Any time," he said harshly. "For one thing, don"t call me leblabbiy again. I won"t just hit you. I"ll kill you. I don"t have to take that arrogance, that contempt. It"s totally based on empty, poisonous, sick egotism. Call me that again, and I"ll kill you. You aren"t superior to me in any way, you know. You are dependent on me."
"I? Dependent? On you?"
"Sure," he said. "Do you have a plan for escape? One that might work, even if it is wild?"
Her effort to control herself made her shudder. Then she forced a smile. And if he had not known the concealed fury, he would have thought it the most beautiful, charming, seductive, etc., smile he had seen in two universes.
"No! I have no plan. You are right. I am dependent on you."
"You"re realistic, anyway," he said. "Most Lords, I"ve heard, are so arrogant, they"d rather die than confess dependency or weakness of any kind."
This flexibility made her more dangerous, however. He must not forget that she was Wolffs sister. Wolff had told him that his sisters Vala and Anana were probably the two most dangerous human females alive. Even allowing for pardonable family pride, and a certain exaggeration, they probably were exceedingly dangerous.
"Stay here!" he said, and he went silently and swiftly after Nimstowl. He could not understand how the two Lords had managed to go straight here. How had they learned of the small secret gate in the temple? There could be only one way: during their brief stay in WolfTs palace, they had seen the map with its location. Anana had not been with them when that had happened, or if she had, she was keeping quiet for some reason of her own.
But if the two Lords could find out about it, why hadn"t the Black Sellers also located it, since they would have had more time? Within a minute, he had his answer. The Bellers had known of the gate and had stationed two guards outside it. But these two were dead, one knifed, one strangled, and the corner of the building was swung open and light streamed out from it. Kickaha cautiously slipped through the narrow opening and into the small chamber. There were four silver crescents set into the stone of the floor; the four that had been hanging on the wall-pegs were gone. The two Lords had used a gate to escape and had taken the other crescents with them to make sure that no one used the others.
Furious, Kickaha returned to Anana and told her the bad news.
"That way is out, but we"re not licked yet," he said.
Kickaha walked on a curving path of diorite stones set at the edges with small jewels. He stopped before a huge cage. The two birds within stood side by side and glared at Kickaha. They were ten feet high. Their heads were pale red; their beaks, pale yellow; their wings and bodies were green as the noon sky; their legs were yellow. And their eyes were scarlet shields with black bosses.
One spoke in a giant parrot"s voice. "Kickaha! What do you do here, vile trickster?"
Inside that great head was the brain of a woman abducted by Jadawin 3,200 years ago from the sh.o.r.es of the Aegean. That brain had been transplanted for J ad a win"s amus.e.m.e.nt and use in the body created in his biolab. This eagle was one of the few human-brained left. The great green eagles, all females, reproduced parthenogeneti-cally. Perhaps forty of the original five thousand still survived; the others, the millions now living, were their descendants.
Kickaha answered in Mycenaean Greek. "De-wiwanira! And what are you doing in this cage? I thought you were Podarge"s pet, not the emperor"s."
Dewiwanira screamed and bit at the bars. Kick- aha, who was standing too close, jumped back, but he laughed.
"That"s right, you dumb bird! Bring them running so they can keep you from escaping!"
The other eagle said, "Escape?"
Kickaha answered quickly. "Yes. Escape. Agree to help us get out of Talanac, and we will get you out of the cage. But say yea or nay now! We have little time!"
"Podarge ordered us to kill you and Jadawin-Wolff!" Dewiwanira said.
"You can try later," he said. "But if you don"t give me your word to help us, you"ll die in the cage. Do you want to fly again, to see your friends again?"
Torches were on the steps to the palace and the zoological gardens. Kickaha said, "Yes? No?"
"Yes!" Dewiwanira said. "By the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Podarge, yes!"
Anana stepped out from the shadows to a.s.sist him. Not until then did the eagles see her face clearly. They jumped and flapped their wings and croaked, "Podarge!"
Kickaha did not tell them that she was Jadawin-Wolffs sister. He said, "Podarge"s face had a model."
He ran to the storehouse, thankful that he had taken the trouble to inspect it during his tour with the emperor, and he returned with several lengths of rope. He then jumped into a pit set in stone and leaned heavily upon an iron level. Steel skreaked and the door to the cage swung open.
Anana stood guard with bow and arrow ready. Dewiwanira hunched through the door first and stood still while Kickaha tied each end of a rope to a leg. Antiope, the other eagle, left the cage and submitted to a rope being tied to her legs.
Kickaha told the others what he hoped they could do. Then, as soldiers ran into the gardens, the two huge birds hopped to the edge of the low rampart which enclosed the zoo. This was not their normal method of progress when on the ground; usually they strode. Now, only by spreading their wings to make their descent easier, could they avoid injury to their legs.
Kickaha got in between the legs of Dewiwanira, sat down with the rope under his b.u.t.tocks, gripped each leg above the huge talons, and shouted, "Ready, Anana? All right, Dewiwanira! Fly!"
Both eagles bounded into the air several feet, even though weighted by the humans. Their wings beat ponderously. Kickaha felt the rope dig into his flesh. He was jerked up and forward; the rampart dropped from under him. The green-silver-spattered, torchflame-sparked, angling walls and streets of the city of Talanac were below him but rushing up frighteningly.
Far below, at least three thousand feet, the river at the foot of the mountain ran with black and tossed silver.
Then the mountain was sliding by perilously close. The eagles could support a relatively large weight, since their muscles were far stronger than those of an eagle of Earth, but they could not flap their wings swiftly enough to lift a human adult. The best they could do was to slow the rate of descent.
And so they paralleled the walls, pounding their wings frantically when they came to an outthrust of street, moved agonizingly slowly outward, or so it seemed to Kickaha, shot over the street and seemed to hurtle down again, the white or brown or red or gray or black or striped jade face of the mountain too too close, then they were rowing furiously to go outward once more.
The two humans had to draw their legs up during most of the whistling, booming, full-of-heart-stopping-crashes-just-ahead ride.
Twice they were scratched, raked, and beaten by the branches of trees as they were hauled through the upper parts. Once the eagles had to bank sharply to avoid slamming into a high framework of wood, built on top of a house for some reason. Then the eagles lost some distance between them and the mountain wall, and the two were b.u.mped with loss of skin and some blood along brown and black jade which, fortunately, was smooth. Ornamental projections would have broken their bones or gashed them deeply.
Then the lowest level, the Street of Rejected Sacrifices, so named for some reason Kickaha had never found out, was behind them. They missed the jade fence on the outer edge of the street by a little more than an inch. Kickaha was so sure that he would be caught and torn on the points that he actually felt the pain.
They dropped toward the river at a steep angle.
The river was a mile wide at this place. On the sh.o.r.e opposite were docks and ships, and outside them, other ships at anchor. Most of these were long two-decked galleys with high p.o.o.p decks and one or two square-rigged masts.
Kickaha saw this in two flashes, and then, as the eagles sank toward the gray and black dappled surface, he did that which he had arranged with Anana. Confident that the eagles would try to kill them as soon as they were out of danger of being caught inside the city, he had told Anana to release her hold and drop into the river at the first chance.
The river was still fifty feet below when De-wiwanira made her first attempt with her beak. Fortunately for her intended prey, she couldn"t bend enough to seize or tear him. The huge yellow beak slashed eight inches above his head.
"Let go!" she screamed then. "You"ll pull me into the water! I"ll drown!"
Kickaha was tempted to do just that. He was afraid, however, that the obvious would occur to her. If she could sustain alt.i.tude enough while Antiope dropped so that her head was even with Kickaha, Antiope could then use her beak on him. And then the two birds could reverse position and get to Anana.
He threw himself backward, turned over, twice straightened out, and entered the water cleanly, head-down. He came up just in time to see the end of Anana"s dive. They were about 250 yards from the nearest of five anch.o.r.ed galleys. A mile and a half down the river, torches moved toward them; beneath them, helmets threw off splinters of fire and oars rose and dipped.
The eagles were across the river now and climbing, black against the moonlight.
Kickaha called to Anana, and they swam toward the nearest boat. His clothes and the knives pulled at him, so he shed the clothes and dropped the larger knife into the depths. Anana did the same. Kickaha did not like losing the garments or the knife, but the experiences of the last forty-eight hours and the shortage of food had drained his energy.
They reached the boat finally and clung to the anchor chain while they sucked in air, unable to control the loud sobbing. No one appeared to investigate on the decks of the ship. If there was a watchman, he was sleeping.
The patrol boat was coming swiftly in their direction. Kickaha did not think, however, that he and Anana could be seen yet. He told her what they must do. Having caught up with his breathing, he dived down and under the hull. He turned when he thought he was halfway across and swam along the longitudinal axis toward the rear. Every few strokes, he felt upward. He came up under the overhanging p.o.o.p with no success. Anana, who had explored the bottom of the front half, met him at the anchor chain. She reported failure, too.
He panted as he talked. "There"s a good chance none of these five boats have secret chambers for the smugglers. In fact, we could go through a hundred and perhaps find nothing. Meanwhile, that patrol is getting closer."
"Perhaps we should try the land route," she said.
"Only if we can"t find the hidden chambers," he said. "On land, we haven"t much chance."
He swam around the boat to the next one and there repeated his search along the keel. This boat and a third proved to have solid bottoms. By then, though he could not see it, Kickaha knew that the patrol boat was getting close.
Suddenly, from the other side of the boat, something like an elephant gun seemed to explode. There was a second boom, and then the screams of eagles and men.
Though he could see nothing, he knew what had happened: the green eagles had returned to kill Kickaha. Not seeing, they had decided to take revenge on the nearest humans for their long cap- tivity. So they had plunged out of the night sky onto the men in the boat. The booms had been their wings suddenly opening to check their fall. Now, they must be in the boat and tearing with beak and talon.
There were splashes. More screams. Then silence.
A sound of triumph, like an elephant"s bugling, then a flapping of giant wings. Kickaha and Anana dived under the fourth boat, and they combined hiding from the eagles with their search.
Kickaha, coming up under the p.o.o.p, heard the wings but could not see the birds. He waited in the shadow of the p.o.o.p until he saw them rising out and away from the next boat. They could be giving up their hunt for him or they could be intending to plunge down out of the skies again. Anana was not in sight. She was gone so long that Kickaha knew she had either found what they were looking for or had drowned. Or had taken off by herself.
He swam along under the forepart of the boat, and presently his hand went past the lip of a well cut from the keel. He rose, opening his eyes, and saw a glimmer of darkest gray above. Then he was through the surface and in a square chamber lit by a small lamp. He blinked and saw Anana on all fours, knife in hand, staring down at him from a shelf. The shelf was two feet above the water and ran entirely around the chamber.
Beside her knife hand was the black hair of a man. Kickaha came up onto the shelf. The man was a Tishquetmoac, and he was sleeping soundly.
Anana smiled and said, "He was sleeping when I came out of the water. A good thing, too, because he could have speared me before I knew what was going on. So I hit him in the neck to make sure he continued sleeping."
The shelf went in about four feet and was bare except for some furs, blankets, a barrel with the cartograph for gin on it, and some wooden metal-bound caskets that contained food-he hoped. The bareness meant that the smuggled goods had been removed, so there wouldn"t be any influx of swimmers to take the contraband.
The smoke from the lamp rose toward a number of small holes in the ceiling and upper wall. Kickaha, placing his cheek near some of them, felt a slight movement of air. He was sure that the light could not be seen, by anyone on the deck immediately above, but he would have to make sure.
He said to Anana, "There are any number of boats equipped with these chambers. Sometimes the captains know about them; sometimes they don"t."
He pointed at the man, "We"ll question him later." He tied the man"s ankles and turned him over to bind his hands behind him. Then, though he wanted to lie down and sleep, he went back into the water. He came up near the anchor chain, which he climbed. His prowlings on the galley revealed no watchmen, and he got a good idea of the construction of the ship. Moreover, he found some sticks of dried meat and biscuits wrapped in waterproof intestines. There were no eagles in sight, and the patrol boat had drifted so far away that he could not see bodies-if there were any-in it.
When he returned to the chamber, he found the man conscious.
Petotoc said that he was hiding there because he was wanted by the police-he would not say what the charge was. He did not know about the invasion. It was evident that he did not believe Kicka-ha"s story.
Kickaha spoke to the woman. "We must have been seen by enough people so that the search for us in the city will be off. They"ll be looking for us in the old city, the farms, the countryside, and they"ll be searching every boat, too. Then, when they can"t find us, they may let normal life resume. And this boat may set out for wherever it"s going."
Kickaha asked Petotoc where he could get enough food to last the three of them for a month. Anana"s eyes opened, and she said, "Live a month in this damp, stinking hole?"
"If you want to live at all," Kickaha said. "I sincerely hope we won"t be here that long, but I like to have reserves for an emergency."
"I"ll go mad," she said.
"How old are you?" he said. "About ten thousand, at least, right? And you haven"t learned the proper mental att.i.tudes to get through situations like this in all that time?"
"I never expected to be in such a situation," she snarled.
Kickaha smiled. "Something new after ten millennia, huh? You should be happy to be free of boredom."
Unexpectedly, she laughed. She said, "I am tired and edgy. But you are right. It is better to be scared to death than to be bored to death. And what has happened ..."
She spread her palms out to indicate speech-lessness.
Kickaha, acting on Petotoc"s information, went topside again. He lowered a small boat, rowed ash.o.r.e, and broke into a small warehouse. He filled the boat with food and rowed back to the ship. Here he tied the rowboat to the anchor and then swam under to get Anana. The many dives and swims, hampered by carrying food in nets, wore them out even more. By the end of their labors, they were so tired they could barely pull themselves up onto the shelf in the chamber. Kickaha let the rowboat loose so it could drift away, and then he made his final dive.
Snaking with cold and exhaustion, he wanted desperately to sleep, but he did not dare leave the smuggler unguarded. Anana suggested that they solve that problem by killing Petotoc. The prisoner was listening, but he did not understand, since they were talking in the speech of the Lords. He did see her draw her finger across her throat though, and then he knew what they were discussing. He turned pale under his dark pigment.
"I won"t do that unless it"s necessary," Kickaha said. "Besides, even if he"s .dead, we still have to keep a guard. What if other smugglers come in? We can"t be caught sleeping. Clatatol and her bunch were able to resist the temptation of the reward-although I"m not sure they could have held out much longer-but others may not be so n.o.ble."
He took first watch and only kept awake by dipping water and throwing it in his face, by talking to Petotoc, by pacing savagely back and forth on the shelf. When he thought two hours had pa.s.sed, he roused her with slaps and water. After getting her promise that she would not succ.u.mb to sleep, he closed his eyes. This happened twice more, and then he was awakened the third time. But now he was not to stand guard.
She had placed her hand over his mouth and was whispering into his ear. "Be quiet! You were snoring! There are men aboard."
He lay for a long while listening to the thumps of feet, the shouts and talking, the banging and knocking as cargo was moved about and bulkheads and decks were knocked on to check for hollow compartments.
After ! ,200 seconds, each of which Kickaha had silently counted off, the search party moved on. Again, he and Anana tried to overtake their lost sleep in turns.
VII.
WHEN THE TIME came that they both felt refreshed enough to stay awake at the same time, he asked her how she had gotten into this situation.
"The Black Sellers," she said. She held up her right hand. A ring with a deep black metal band and a large dark-green jewel was on the middle finger.
"I gave the smugglers all my jewels except this," she said. "I refused to part with that; I said I"d have to be killed first. For a moment, I thought they would kill me for it.
"Let me see, how to begin? The Black Bellers were originally an artificial form of life created by the Lord scientists about ten thousand years ago. The scientists created the Bellers during their quest for a true immortality.
"A Beller is bell-shaped, black, of indestructible material. Even if one were attached to a hydrogen bomb, the Beller would survive the fission. Or a Beller could be shot into the heart of a star, and it would go unscathed for a billion years.
"Now, the scientists had originally constructed the Beller so that it was purely automatic. It had no mind of its own; it was a device only. When placed on a man"s head, it detected the man"s skin poten- tial and automatically extruded two extremely thin but rigid needles. These bored through the skull and into the brain.
"Through the needles, the Beller could discharge the contents of a man"s mind, that is, it could uncoil the chains of giant protein molecules composing memory. And it could dissociate the complex neural patterns of the conscious and unconscious mind."