They popped into this new world in a wilderness of clinging spider strands of silk. A breeze waved banners and rolls and undulating ribbons of silk and gauze about them, flinging into their faces and eyes, coiling about their legs, sucking into their mouths. They stumbled on a softly heaving ground. The smell of jasmine filled the air and languorous shifts of spidersilk spun about them. Redfern could swear he could hear Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto thundering and roaring in the background with the sweet piano notes rippling upward and outward in time with the rolling, swaying mass of spiderstrands and ribbons surrounding them.

  He drew the Infalgon sword and slashed himself free of the strands. The others did the same with their knives. Fresh strands coiled about them at once, blowing on that scented breeze; they found they had continually to cut and strip the gossamer bindings from themselves.

  “Which way, Val?”

  Redfern found himself shouting and wondered why. The close-packed oppressiveness of the unceasing stream of blowing fibers, the shifting patterns of light and shade from the unseen sky, the sonorous beat of the music and the insidious lassitude of the perfumes must have combined to pressure him into a response pattern—and Scobie Redfern without thinking had reacted as he always did to persuasion.

  “This way. Not far…”

  They battled after Val, flinging coils and strands of multicolored ribbon aside, pulling the sticky strands from hair and faces, pushing on through what seemed an eternity. Then Val stopped, sensing. “Here… I think…”

  Redfern could sympathize with her. He had no conception of that unworldly other sense by which Porteurs could track down and position the invisible coordinates of a gateway in the worlds on both sides of that nodal point; but he could see quite clearly the difficulty of knowing where the hell you were in a crazy world like this of blowing spidersilk and stranded ribbons. He touched her arm gently and she flashed him a quick smile of gratitude.

  “Right, Val. Let’s get grouped up.” Nyllee slashed her knife around freely, parting the clinging fragments of silk with vicious slashing cuts. “This is a world like—” Apparently the world bore some resemblance to a frog’s intentines, according to Nyllee.

  They did group up and, arms around each other, awaited this transit under the composed guidance of Val.

  They had begun in the vaults of the Wizards of Senchuria’s castle and so they might, as Scobie Redfern had to rationalize out painfully for himself, enter this new world far underground and be suffocated and entombed forever before they could do anything at all. The sense of relief each time they made it safely hurt him. This time they dropped eighteen inches onto a cold tiled floor.

  Redfern opened his eyes.

  A crone gibbered at them in utter fright. Her shabby dress hung on her and her hair frizzed out like wire. She put tip skinny hands as though to ward off the devil.

  Redfern supposed they must look odd, with their scraps of spidersilk blowing about them, their fresh white robes torn from the cavern of the serpent, dirtied from the mud of the riverbank, and their weapons held in readiness, their faces grim and merciless. All that—quite apart from the unnerving fact that to this woman they had materialized out of thin air.

  They pacified her and, still believing they must be devils or messengers from Golden Ranghavitsah, she told them where the merchant-quarter of the city lay. Val smiled at her very sweetly. “Do not be afraid, for by Arlan we wish you no harm. When we return we will bring you a present, what would you most desire?”

  The crone’s features, all lines and leather, sucked in and out with pleasure, and her eyes showed she had once been a little girl. She thumped her broom down in excitement.

  “I’d like a new set of false teeth!” she declared roundly. “These danged uppers slip all over the shop, and I haven’t had a sweet nut in years!”

  To Redfern the crone’s voice came in perfectly understandable language thanks to the translator band in his hair which, so he had been told by Vivasjan, was a late model and infinitely superior to the older manually-set models. Now he burst into delighted laughter.

  They set off into the city of Narangon with a greater hope for the future than at any time since leaving Senchuria.

  “Vivasjan said the way we came was a short-cut through the dimensions,” said Nyllee, striding out. She had cut her robe off well above the knees and her strong limbs flashed freely. “He said it was too dangerous…”

  “But the long way around crossed many more dimensions.” said Val. “And there were long treks between Portals. We’d have come in a long way away from the city, from some dimension or other called Sharnavoy, I think he said.”

  “You were the one to take most of the risks, Val,” said Tony. He had grown more and more silent of late, as Nyllee had blossomed. Redfern guessed the youngster was vicariously enjoying the thrill of experiencing the birth of a new personality.

  They walked along avenues of low, wide houses with yellow roofs and white walls and red doorways, in which a few windows, all heavily barred, clearly indicated the patio-like, inward-looking culture of these people. The sun shone; but not as warmly here as in Senchuria. People passed them and gave them, for all their outre appearance, not a second glance. Plenty of transport filled the streets, horses and weird polka-dotted animals, electric cars on fat pneumatic wheels, skimmers, hovercraft. The jumble of cultures mingled differently here from the way in Senchuria. A sense of aliveness and vibrancy filled the wide streets and plazas with a thrill of purpose.

  “At the sign of the crossbow in Cutler Street,” said Redfern, remembering the address Vivasjan had given them. Cutler Street was easy to find, two blocks along after they asked the way, and the house at the sign of the crossbow was halfway down the street, a large yellow-roofed white building of three stories, blank-walled, frowning, yet their goal.

  The crossbow, heavily gilded, swung over the door.

  Their ring produced a man conspicuous for a paunch and a beard, who let them into an anteroom. There they waited until sent for. Redfern, for one, felt like a bank clerk awaiting the president’s summons, and did not like the sensation.

  When at last they were attended to, the men who spoke to them—led by a hard-faced individual in crimson velvet whose demeanor and gold chains left no doubt at all in anyone’s mind that he considered himself a cut above everyone else—explained the reasons for their treatment. They had not reached Narangon through an accredited Portal. They had scared an old woman by not coming the right way. There were dues to pay, customs, travel expenses…

  Redfern thought they must be joking.

  The Narangon mediator, a bureaucrat called Narumble the Fourth, pointed out acidly that joking and business did not mix. At once Redfern knew the bureaucrat could be beaten: no fool ever said a more foolish thing.

  The Narangonese were accustomed to trading through the dimensions. Many dimensions were kept private from them—the property of other peoples, the trading areas staked out for other great races, like Slikitter, Porvone, Zamash—but the Narangonese were a great race, too.

  “Like the Infalgon?” asked Redfern disarmingly.

  He could have dropped a stink bomb in the room.

  Val picked up the danger signals first and, hurriedly smoothing over the imminent explosion, explained their mission here. When Narumble the Fourth learned they wished to barter for weapons in order to fight the Infalgon his manner changed. At once he became the businessman with a sale on his hands that pleased him personally, like a Carthaginian selling an elephant to a mercenary with eyes on Rome.

  “Those zlinka-offal attacked Senchuria, you say? They are the foulest form of life we know of, debased, uncouth, diseased, leprous—” Narumble the Fourth checked himself, his face patchy with color, his chins quivering, his body shaking with anger and loathing. “Only the Porvone are worse than the Infalgon!”

  Redfern showed the fat man his sword. “We smacked down a horde of flying zombies. You give us the weapons and we’ll finish the job.” That had always been a good line.

  “Give?” said Narumble the Fourth, taken aback. “We can only supply against payment.” He glanced at the trophied sword with a shudder.

  Now, Redfern was uneasily aware, came the tricky bit.

  “We need what is called a Paraquatic Negative Coherer—”

  “A P.N.C.! Impossible! They are reserved for the forces of Narangon alone.”

  “So we’ve heard. But we need a Paneco, and we need one bad. The Infalgon war machines are even now, at this minute, on the spot where we stand, advancing on Senchuria!”

  The Narangonese glanced around them with stupid little smiles, for all their interdimensional sangfroid shaken to realize just what was going on—right here and now—beyond those invisible walls.

  “We hear, too,” went on Redfern, letting a little of the old iron creep into his voice, “that you’ve always wanted something from Senchuria. Well, now…” He let it hang.

  Narumble the Fourth began to tremble. His eagerness became an obscene thing. “You mean the… the rejuvenation process? You would exchange that for a Paneco?”

  “Both you and Senchuria have been trading for years, both directly and through intermediaries. Now Senchuria needs your aid and what has hitherto been refused is now available. We need four Panecos. What do you say?”

  “This is big—important—City council—consultations—I shall have to inform the all-highest—” Narumble bumbled on.

  “Hurry it up. There isn’t much time. Oh, and while you’re at it you could suggest your government send in its own army to help fight the Infalgon.”

  Narumble, hurrying out, threw him an indignant, an aloof, glance. “We provide the fighting necessaries,” he said, as though the matter were self-obvious. He went out.

  “Strange, though,” said Redfern. “I mean, who lives in the other dimensions all around them is more important to these people than who lives a few hundred miles away on the same planet. Instead of geographical distribution and exploration, you have interdimensional contacts and trade… and war.”

  “I wish they’d hurry,” said Tony. Nyllee shushed him.

  When at last Narumble returned he brought others higher in the hierarchy than himself, stern official-faced men who wanted to be provided with full briefs before they would commit themselves to the all-highest. Redfern explained he had all the details necessary in the packs to begin construction of a hall of rejuvenation; but he added, warningly, “The packs are booby-trapped. Until we get the four Panecons, you don’t get the Senchurian process.”

  Another wait, and this time the waiting began to get to Redfern. Already Tony was walking up and down, frazzled and distraught, and pettishly impatient with Nyllee’s stolid comfort.

  “What are they playing at?” he exclaimed. “Gait—Gait’s back there in Senchuria. He could be dead now, done for. For the sweet sake of Arlan, hurry up!” he shouted viciously at the unresponsive walls.

  “I’m surprised you still care about Gait—” Redfern began when Val hushed him. She leaned across.

  “Tony doesn’t really understand about Gait. Let him keep his illusions, Scobie… please?”

  Redfern thought of that door closing in the tower, with Val pushed out, and he nodded grimly. “Let Tony. But I’m going to have a word with Gait when we get back.”

  At last Narumble and the higher executives were back, this time with even higher executives in the hierarchy who trembled beneath furred capes and golden chains. The all-highest had agreed. He was getting on: if he could be made young again, what might he achieve! All the old men in the room cackled in self-congratulatory sympathy. Narumble looked at Val’s lissome figure with a forgotten fire. Redfern laughed and plunged into details.

  The Senchurian packs were passed over and the details revealed. Everything for construction was there, meticulous and comprehensive. The four Paraquatic Negative Coherers were handed across in exchange. Redfern picked one up.

  “Is this it?” he asked dubiously.

  The thing looked just like a child’s plastic water pistol, with a few authentic-looking gadgets on the side. He swung it about and the old men, no doubt thinking of the joys of rejuvenation ahead, skipped out of the way of the muzzle.

  “Don’t touch the trigger!” yelped Narumble the Fourth. Redfern could have betted he was totting up what Narumble number he could reach.

  “Naturally.”

  The Paneco worked by turning the binding energy of the target in upon itself and de-cohering the molecules. No power levels were required in the projector itself since it used the very power in the target. So simple, so precise, so deadly—Redfern felt a dark subterranean thrill of the power he held in his hands worm its way through his mind.

  “Well, that’s it, then,” he said, the relief sharp in him.

  “Refreshments… you appear to need them…” Narumble the Fourth narumbled away. The dimension-travelers would accept only a few flat crunchy cakes and a goblet of dry wine apiece. They were anxious to return to Senchuria, desperate to return, conscious of their responsibility and the distance, not geographically but interdimensionally, separating them.

  “Look,” Redfern said, and swallowed the last crumb, “can’t you lend us some sort of transport to get us across the space separating the Gates on the next dimension down? I’m not too sure…” He glanced at Val.

  She shook her head. “There isn’t time to go the long way around. We’ll go back the way we came.”

  One of Narumble’s colleagues said: “In Sharnavoy you’d have a very long Griff flight, then you’d go through into a dimension called Ohio, then there would be a long auto journey to another part of that dimension called Manhattan, then you could go on through three or four more to Senchuria.”

  Redfern felt the walls spin around him. He felt a hot flush over his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. A roaring crashed in his ears.

  Earth!

  He could step straight from this place and all the horrors facing him into a place where they’d take him to Ohio.

  He could take Val—she’d have to go to Porteur them—

  Of course he couldn’t go, for she wouldn’t go. She would quote Arlan at him, and the Wizards, and he’d nod and agree, and they’d go back. But Earth—Earth…

  Redfern decided not to say anything. He had made the decision, and he would lumber himself with regrets, not Val or Tony or Nyllee.

  He thrust the super-scientific gadget into its holster and hung it on his belt.

  The other three copied his actions. The cakes had filled a cranny and the wine, in astringently tautening his throat, had warmed him, braced him. He glanced fondly at’ Val. Nyllee was patting the Paneco in its holster with the loving attention a mother gives to a newborn babe. Tony was staring with a half smile at Nyllee.

  Well, good companions, these. They’d get through. They’d have to, for the sake not only of Senchuria and Gait and the others; but for the sake of Val and Tony’s peace of mind.

  They stepped out of the room into a commotion of people milling about. Noise came nearer, and a few people ran on, looking back over their shoulders at the source of the rumpus.

  An inexplicable, almost fey tremor of alarm touched Redfern.

  A crowd of officials and flunkies wheeled over the tiles toward them, avoiding fern-like plants in globular pots, scampering over the pavement, all heading toward the four dimension-travelers and the bureaucrats with them.

  A voice lifted strongly, a crystalline chiming voice of absolute authority with an undercurrent of sweetness which added a shuddery thrill of menace.

  “You surely don’t believe for one moment they’ve brought the Senchurian rejuvenation process, do you? You are a pack of dodderers! Anyway, there are many such processes; I will not have these weapons given to the Wizards!” Her voice sharpened arrogantly. “I can give you more than you ask for: a genuine elixir of life!”

  A man’s voice whined and rumbled in protest.

  The unseen woman beat down all opposition mercilessly.

  “You value my trade! It is my wish that the Wizards of Senchuria be destroyed, them and their city! I care nothing for the Infalgon—but I want the Wizards destroyed!”

  Her words struck Redfern like ice shards piercing his heart.

  “You know me and you know my powers! Send these boobies packing—without the weapons. I wish to see the Wizards utterly destroyed, smashed, broken, and all their friends with them!”

  XII

  Val clutched Redfern’s arm as the scurrying crowd parted and the woman stepped out, proud and alone.

  Tall and regal and icily domineering, she stood in a sheer white gown that fell from gathers at her throat over her pointed breasts to a froth of feathers around her feet. Dark hair had been coiffed high and interlaced with many gems so that it sparkled and coruscated with light. Her blue-tinted eyelids and long dark lashes, kohled and shining, revealed pitiless blue eyes. Her small rosebud mouth, over-small and over-sweet, a cupid’s bow of malice, puckered with distaste.

  “Are these the creatures?”

  “Yes, milady, these are the traders from Senchuria.”

  Redfern could feel her glance lingering on him like the touch of a spider’s web. He drew himself up.

  A jeweled bracelet encircled her left wrist and now the long glittering chain attached to it chingled with movement and a creature stepped from her side into full view. The chain was attached to a metal band encircling the thing’s neck and Redfern had to puzzle for a moment to understand what manner of creature this was. Then he saw and revulsion flooded him.

  The thing at the end of the chain was a man; but a tiny manikin, with an immense knobbled head on which a blue velvet cap perched ridiculously. The cap’s feather was broken at the tip. The little manikin was clad in dark red velvet with a white raff against which the metal band stood out starkly.

  The chain chingled as the dwarfed man moved.

  “Quiet, Soloman!” She jerked the chain cruelly.

 

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