The Queen of Space, page 24
They fell flat.
Jil heard the traffic drumming again behind them, but no alarm. The leatherweed was thinner here, pushing up through breaks in the ancient pavement, and they crawled a long way through it on hands and knees before they dared stand again.
Stiff now with cold, they staggered at last into the niche. An arched recess, reaching deep into the fortress wall. The only light within it came from the green-glowing scrap of nebular sky behind them. Crouching to keep below the level of the last ragged weeds, they came at last to the doorway. The gate within it was massive metal, wide and high, weathered dull and greenish in the gloom.
It was shut.
“I told you, lass!” Habibula shrugged at her dismally. “No way in. If the fearful thing was ever open, it must have been a mortal million years ago. If the flashers ever used it now, they’d cut the leatherweed—”
“Giles, there’s the lock!” Star pointed. “Looks like the one you worked to get us into the slaver—”
“Too many mortal meters up!” He backed away, blinking at the hinged access plate high above them. “Do you take me for another blessed giant—”
“We’ll lift you, Giles.”
They lifted him.
The metal plate clattered.
He squirmed and wheezed and moaned.
“No mortal use!” he gasped at last. “All the mortal tumblers frozen with a blessed billion years of dust and rust. Fused, more likely, when the fearful shockwave passed. The thing has not been open since the giants died, and it won’t open now.
“Lass, you can’t ask a dying man—”
His wheezing changed into a croaking scream. As if abruptly lifeless, he collapsed into their arms. Staggered, they lowered him to the pavement. Jil heard boots behind them, and her stomach knotted from a nauseous bog-rot stench.
“Well, Jil.” The high, mocking whine stabbed her like a blade. “You’ve come a long way since we met, and I won’t stop you now. Never mind the rusty lock. You’re a welcome caller, and we’ll escort you in.”
37
Jil woke in the dungeon.
Twenty meters square, twenty tall, built like all the old citadel of black volcanic rock sawn into blocks as large as common rooms, it had been designed to hold something more savage than she could imagine.
The door was a grille of some age-grayed but uneroded metal, itself ten meters tall, the great square bars closely set and strong enough to stop a Legion battletank. Blue light burned through them to paint long black stripes on bare black stone.
She lay naked on the floor, numb and shuddering. Her whole body ached. Her head throbbed and her stomach churned when she tried to rise. Sinking back, she shut her eyes against the glaring light and tried to remember.
All she recalled was a broken blur.
That bog-rot reek. The voice of Rem Brendish, shrill with gloating triumph. The flash and crack of Star’s projectile gun. A brighter flash and a cruel stab of cold. Lord Archy darting beneath her, trying to soften her fall. Brendish laughing, his nasal whine calling orders.
Her stomach heaved when she recalled it.
Gasping and quivering with the effort, she sat up and hugged her icy knees against her breasts. Radiation pain exploded in her skull when she moved, a pulsing flame she couldn’t reach or quench. Teeth clenched, she fought for breath. Her nose was dripping from the cold, and she had to wipe it on her hair. She rubbed her arms when she could, slapped her shuddering body. At last, weak and reeling, she was on her feet.
Boots!
Boots on bare stone. She peered through the bars. All she saw at first was that second barrier, which was cunningly angled to hide everything beyond. The boots grated nearer. Silently, that second grille slid up. She saw a third beyond and two men.
Rem Brendish—and another.
Brendish strutting jauntily in trim-fitted purple and gold. Tight purple trousers with gold-braided seams. A long purple jacket, with a bright gold crown embroidered on the breast. Cocky mockery on his yellow-bearded rat face.
Though both looked small on the scale of the dungeon, on the human scale the other was a giant. Naked to the waist, dark hair kinked and thick on chest and arms, head and beard dyed a dingy orange-red. Crouched a little forward, great black-haired hands hanging empty, he strode first.
Behind him, Brendish was a malevolent pygmy.
That second barrier dropped silently behind them. They came on across the basalt vault toward her cell. The inner grille lifted. They marched inside. With surprising soundless speed, the great gray bars slid back to lock them in with her.
Naked, she faced them.
“Jil Gyrel.” Brendish murmured her name, smiling a little, his bold eyes consuming her. “An odd thing, babe.” He chuckled. “I’d just been thinking of you. Recalling the rebel waif you were on that occasion so long ago in the Quasar Club when your impulsive grandfather threw his wine glass at me. Dreaming of the long-legged doll you bloomed into on Alpha III. Reliving my delight when I saw you on the Purple Empress. Of course you were untouchable then, but things are different now.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“One thing, babe.” His shrill tone turned mockingly disdainful. “Though things between us won’t be all that formal, I must ask for a certain respect. I’m proud to say the masters have allowed me to assume the title of your dear stepfather since his unfortunate termination. Under their supreme authority, I am now Emperor of Men. You will be required to recognize my new status. You will address me properly. As sir. Or, more formally, as Your Interstellar Eminence.”
“I see—sir!” She couldn’t help the shudder in her voice. “Shon Macham—is he dead?”
“His master matured—I suppose you noticed his physical condition on the Purple Empress. Control was interrupted at a most unlucky moment. Just when we were coming into landing orbit here.
“Free long enough, he got to the pilot. A stupid oaf named Greb.” His quick little eyes swept her body again, bright with malicious anticipation. “Together, they put the ship on a collision course toward a big munitions center the masters had built down on the coast. Wrecked the controls before we could stop them.
“Doing his best to send me down with the ship, but I conned the pilot.” Brendish grinned in elation with himself, yellowed teeth flashing through the straggling beard. “He thought your poor mother was human. We got him to put her and me off in a life pod before he went down with Macharn and his craft.”
“So my mother’s safe?”
“If you want to call it safe.” He grinned wider. “She’s a host, of course. Or would you say hostess? My own consort since Macham was terminated.” His narrow nostrils twitched. “If I could take her stink!”
Quivering, she made herself stand fast.
“Sir—” Her whisper was a broken rasp. “Where are the men—the men with me?”
“Well secured.” With a self-pleased grimace, he gestured at the basaltic walls and the great gray bars. “Pve just come from a visit with old Habibula.
“A rare character!”
Brendish chuckled happily.
“Amazing, how bitter he was when I crooned the chorus of my ballad about him. His chief claim to fame in our time, but he still has to learn a decent gratitude.”
Again he came closer, until he could have reached her. His avid hands rose slowly. Filthy hands, the nails black and broken.
She felt her body trembling, but she refused to cower back.
“So, doll baby!” His grin grew hungrier, and she quivered from the sardonic mockery in his whine. “Here we are among the masters. I’m totally delighted with your arrival, and I have their permission to make you an offer you’d be stupid to refuse.
“For all their powers, they’re poor company. I’m not even sure they should be called intelligent. Not, at least, in any sense that we can understand. I believe they originated here in the nebula, in some condensing gas cloud. The adults can still live in space, feeding on energies that would be fatal to anything organic.
“Don’t ask about the old ones. Such questions often get unpleasant answers. Most of them don’t hang around after metamorphosis. Go back to space, I understand. Back to their ancestral plasma. Anyhow, babe, that’s what you’ll need to know. Except—”
His filthy finger prodded her left breast.
“Except one thing, babe. A point you’d better keep in mind. Every one of them is fertile—though they have nothing we would understand as sex. Any one of them, young or adult, can reproduce itself at any time. Whenever a suitable organic creature is available.”
Grinning wide, he licked his lips.
“Baby doll, you’re available!”
In spite of herself, she cringed from his yellow teeth and his sadistic voice and his prodding black-nailed finger.
His avid stare dwelt on her.
“Babe, here it is. I’m offering you your darling mother’s place. That’s a high one. I’m Emperor, remember. A place I’ve earned because I understood the masters and agreed to play their game. Played it pretty shrewdly.”
He chuckled, prodding harder.
“A fact you must admit, even if you can’t quite admire me. I made them see they needed me. Because of that mental gap between themselves and men. Even though they think through human brains, their thought processes are often hard to follow. Early on, they ran into communication problems.
“I made them see they had to have an untouched human agent.”
“You—” She recoiled in spite of herself. “You knew what they were?”
“Early on.” He grinned at the giant. “Back before you were born.”
“And joined them?” She blinked in stunned disbelief. “Spied for them?”
“I sized them up. Picked them to win.”
“Helped them?”
“Babe, we made a bargain. I explained human ways, advised them on strategy, found how to pull the fangs of old Habibula.” He nodded at the giant. “I doubt you’ll ever learn to like the odor, but at least I’ve found them honest. Maybe too naive to lie. And they’ve promised me a lot.
“Including you, baby doll!”
Chilled and quivering, she shook her head.
“Think about it, babe!” His dirty finger pinched her nipple. “Consort to the Emperor. You’ll get imported food, not the synthetics they make for the masses. The service of all the hosts you need—if you can stand the stink. Whatever luxuries you care to ask for. Your last chance, babe, for life.”
“Life?” she breathed. “I’d rather die.”
“Not an option, babe.” His broken yellow teeth gleamed through a yellow-bearded grimace. “When you know what the real options are, I think you’ll say yes. I hope you do. Because your little mother has got too much like a walking skeleton to fit my taste, and you smell better.
“But if you really must refuse—”
“Baby doll, meet my free-styler friend Mad Bull Marbok.”
Shambling one step toward him, the giant uttered an animal grunt.
“A professional name, of course.” He beckoned the giant back toward her. “My own coinage. I’d always admired his style in the pit. When I came to terms with the masters, I arranged to have them give him a special implant. One ordered neither to damage his magnificent physique nor impair his fighting skills.
“So here’s your option, babe.
“You can become my loving consort, with special privileges very few human beings will be allowed to enjoy. Or—the Bull.” His rat eyes leered. “I’ve seen him in the pit with yawara masters, and they never delayed him long.
“I must warn you, too, that he has a master in him.
“A somewhat better weapon than your yawara tricks. What you get from him will be more than human sperm.” His hard fingers tweaked her nipple. “Babe, he’ll plant a new master in you—under orders to make you mine.
“You’ll smile, babe!”
He snickered in her face.
“You’ll smile and squirm and do your best to please me. If I can stand the stink.” He grimaced at the giant and grinned expectantly at her. “So how about it?”
She stepped a little back, dropping into a yawara crouch.
“Not quite yet.” He waved to check the crouching giant. “I want to offer one more inducement. Your two friends. Star and old Habibula. When I spoke to them, they showed a keen concern for you. If you happen to care as much for them, consider this last concession. I can’t preserve their lives—even as Emperor, I must respect certain limits. However, as a fitting gift to my adoring consort, I can promise them a quick and painless termination.
“So how now, baby doll?”
Afterward, Jil wondered.
She loved Kynan Star. Even for old Habibula she had found a deep affection. Yet, in that dark instant, she took no time to weigh the threat to them.
Reeling with illness from the ache in her brain and the stench of the giant, already tortured far beyond any limits of logic or pity, she slid away from his avid eagerness and his cruel fingers on her nipple.
She crouched to face the crouching giant. Loosed by a hiss from Brendish, he was stalking her, staring eyes and crimson nostrils wide, hairy hands grasping.
Almost before she knew it, her body was flowing into the mode of the quaking plain. Head down, she twisted. His clutching arms went safely past her, but his nude torso felt like iron when her shoulder reached it.
Jarred and numbly aching from the impact, she sprawled on the bare basalt.
The giant was falling on her.
Rolling aside took all her will and too much time. She felt his fingers on her ankle, a steel trap closing. Nerved with stark desperation, she coiled back on him in the mode of the striking snake, chopping for his throat.
Too cold, too slow.
He countered with his great head butting. All she struck was his heavy-haired skull. Paralyzing pain came up her arm. Flung off balance, limp and ill, she saw his hobnailed boot flying into her face.
The form of the sinking sand. Her mind heard Kita Kano’s quavering command, but her numb limbs were deaf. The boot grazed her chin, the shock of it blinding. Her slow body folded, and she could not escape the falling giant.
The impact of his black-haired torso crushed her against the cold basalt. He lay gasping on her. His evil breath was overwhelming nausea, and her own breath was gone. She felt his knotted arm around her neck, saw stiff fingers jabbing for her eyes.
“Don’t you love him, baby doll?”
A great wave of crimson pain had broken in her skull, clouding everything. Yet she caught a fainter voice, calling through the drumming dimness. Old Kita Kano’s, breathing out of her memory to name the modes she needed. The mode of the snapping twig, the mode of the rising wind, the mode of the stabbing blade. She heard the names, but she found no force to make the moves.
“Won’t you love your own baby master, growing in your precious flesh and sucking up your blood? While it eats you, think of me, baby doll!”
That far mockery touched some unsuspected trigger. Her body acted, almost without her will. The mode of the snapping twig broke the arm around her neck. The mode of the rising wind flung the heavy torso from her. The mode of the stabbing blade reached its lethal target.
The giant’s breath rattled out, a long-drawn snore. A fouler cloud filled the air as his bladder and bowels let go. When she could, she rolled away and reeled to her feet. Flesh crawling, she recoiled from his unmoving mass.
Dead. But—his master?
The silent parasite was surely still alive, maybe more deadly than ever. She backed farther, blankly staring. Could its evil seed somehow reach her yet? Could the creature itself somehow leap from a dead host to a living one? Ill and shivering, she didn’t even want to know.
Groping for nerve, she turned to face Brendish. He was gone. She heard the far-off thudding of his boots and saw the gray-barred gates sliding down behind him to lock her in again.
She gasped and ran.
The first barrier was half shut before she reached it. The second grazed her head. The third was too far down, a ruthless metal jaw smashing down against hard black rock. With too little time, she dived into the mode of the flying arrow.
Her head slid through the closing crack. Cold metal scraping her ribs and her hips, she doubled into the mode of the rolling ball to pull her feet farther. The grille crashed down. The floor quivered under it.
She lay there, drained of oxygen, gasping air too thin to fill her lungs, drenched and shivering from a nervous sweat. Without strength or will, she didn’t even wonder whether her numb limbs had been caught between those closing jaws.
Something was pounding. Her own rapid heart? It kept fading, and at last she knew it had been Brendish’s retreating feet. The great metal gate lay cold against her hip, but it let her roll away. She reeled unsteadily upright.
In stifling midnight.
The blue glare filtering through the bars made a pool of light around her on the wide stone floor. Black stone loomed ahead and around the gate behind her, walling a broad tunnel that reached off into the dark. Far away along it, she found another tiny island of light. Beyond that, yet another.
Lighted cells?
Kynan and Habibula perhaps locked in them? Stiffly, weak and reeling, she limped down that immense and endless-seeming corridor toward the flecks of light. When she stopped to hold her breath and listen, the footfalls were gone. Brendish with them. She staggered on as fast as she could drive herself.
He would be back.
Not, however, with the gigantic free-styler. A spark of elation flickered within her, and then a solemn sense that was almost regret. She had killed. Killed a man. Since her first falls on the yawara mats, she had wondered if she could kill. Knowing now, she shook off that brief compunction.
She limped faster, trying to think. Brendish would be armed when he returned. Escorted, no doubt, by armed flasher slaves. Nude and weaponless, lost among these unknown dungeons, what could she hope to do?
