J. F. Bone, page 14
“Now comes the problem. Do they write us off as dead, or do they collect their bottles and realize we’re alive?”
I shrugged.
“And what do we do? Run back the way we came, which is what they might expect, or should we do something clever?”
“And more dangerous,” I added.
“There isn’t much choice,” Riker said. “This is their country, and it’s their game. They’ll look for us, of course, but the big thing is the loot from the van. Just to make a guess, they’ll bivouac now—which they should have done an hour ago, and tonight they’ll send out a party to look for us while the main body heads for wherever they’re planning to go.”
“So what do we do?”
“We burrow through this brush to the outside,” Riker said. “Then we head in the same direction they’re going, only faster. And when we come to a cross canal we take it. Presently we climb out of the canal and head back towards Bluestone.”
“And that will fool them?” My voice was heavy with disbelief. “Why don’t we get out of this canyon and up on top right away. We could make better time across the desert and we’re closer to Bluestone.”
“Two reasons,” Riker said. “First, there probably won’t be a roadway to the top until we hit a cross canal and second, that’s exactly the thing they’ll expect us to do if there is a roadway nearby, and finally, we’d be visible for miles. I’m not going to point out the obvious facts that we have no canteens, that the upper surface is hot as a furnace, that a Mark VII can project two thousand meters with accuracy, and that your respirator won’t run forever without a rest. You know those things already.”
“But you did point them out,” I said, “and I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m glad you admit it,” Riker said. “We’ll do better as a team than as individuals, but I’m not going topside, team or no team. That’s suicide.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And we’re going to have trouble enough getting through this undergrowth,” Riker said, “without worrying about what we’ll do afterwards. No let’s get to work. We have some skin to lose.”
* * *
CHAPTER XV
« ^ »
Riker was right. We expended several minutes and quite a few square centimeters of skin inching our way through that jungle until we came to an old ryk tunnel where the brush was bent aside. Through this we moved with relative ease.
Late that afternoon I caught a flicker of movement about two kilometers behind us. I called Riker’s attention to it and he nodded grimly.
“Natives,” he said. “Probably the same ones who took us yesterday. I’d bet on it. I’ve been watching them for the past half hour, and they’re not closing in. They’re staying just beyond the range of a Mark VII.”
“Hmm, not good,” I said.
“Not good at all,” he agreed. “Our luck in running out.”
We went on, openly, at a good pace. My respirator purred comfortably as it concentrated air for my lungs. Behind us, the natives were having a bad time since they had to move from cover to cover.
“We’re going to have to get water this evening sometime,” Riker said, “and until the plants change their metabolism, this is going to be dangerous. The gorrons will be alert now until there’s an appreciable rise in carbon dioxide levels.”
“I don’t want any part of them again,” I said.
“Yet if we wait until it’s really safe, it’ll be black dark and our pursuers will be on top of us.”
“Then what’ll we do?”
“There’s only one thing we can do. We’ll have to ambush the natives. If we can hurt and confuse them, they’ll stop and think it over which will give us time to put a safer distance between us and them.”
“That’ll be great if it can be done.”
“Oh, it can be done all right. First we start running—but not too far. We pick a spot up ahead, preferably where a cross canyon cuts in. Then we run for it. They can’t see us, and they won’t know we’ve turned the corner—unless.” His eyes raked out back trail. “Give me that Mark VII,” he said.
I handed the Kelly over, watching curiously as he flopped belly down on the ground behind a slight roll in the terrain and aimed carefully down the backtrail. Then suddenly he rolled and slammed two bolts at the canal rim. Sand exploded, boiled and melted where he had lain. A flat explosion came from the cliff as a brown-robed figure flung its arms in the air and plunged fluttering from the three hundred meter escarpment. A few seconds later a wild howl of rage and dismay came faintly from behind. Riker grinned. “Well—that takes care of their lookout.” He handed the Mark VII back to me.
I stood looking at him, open-mouthed. I’ve seen some shooting in my life, but that was phenomenal. I pressed the Mark VII back at him. “Give me the Four,” I said, “and you keep the Seven. A man who can shoot like that needs a big gun. I couldn’t do a quarter as well.”
“Aw, I had him spotted and he was a sitting target. Anyone coulda done it.”
“Not me,” I said.
“Okay, if you feel that way, I’ll trade,” Riker said happily. “Now let’s get going with that ambush.”
It worked fairly well. We nicked two of them, killed one, and the other three ran.
“Seven men—a whole squad,” Riker said. “Guess they want us worse than I thought.”
“One of them had a Model S communicator strapped to his arm,” I said. “I saw it.”
“Agh!” Riker said. “You know what that means?”
“No.”
“There’ll be a whole tribe on our necks by morning.”
“Maybe,” I said as I turned into the side canyon and started walking up it.
“Hey! Where ya going?” Riker asked.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “The tunnel we were in came out in one of these side canyons. Maybe there’s another.”
There was. It wasn’t used and was plugged with a screen of brush which I cut with the needle aperture of the blaster.
Riker’s face lighted. “I get it,” he said. “Camouflage the opening after we go in.”
“It may work,” I said as I pulled the cut mat aside, set the aperture on wide, and blew a four-foot circle of smoking ruin through the dead growth behind the screen. We went in and pulled the mat behind us. “Now let’s get moving,” I said, as I faced the darkness.
“Down that?” Riker asked. “It’s probably blocked. The usable tunnels are used.”
“It’s no worse than being outside,” I said, “and I figure it’s about time to test that luck you’ve been complaining about. To me the luck’s been good. Now let’s find out how it really is.”
Riker produced a hand torch. “Good thing I took this from that native you killed,” he said. “We’ll need it now.” I nodded. I hadn’t thought of a torch, but Riker had. Somehow it made me feel inadequate.
With the light casting a fan of brilliance in front of us, we walked rapidly along the level floor. A few minutes from the opening, we came to a rockfall. It didn’t completely block the tunnel, so we negotiated it and pushed on. Riker’s expression in the reflected torchlight was dubious and grim, but he came along.
Actually, we didn’t have much choice. We never would have survived the night if we had stayed outside, and here we might. At worst our enemies could only come from two directions, and probably only from one if they were good enough to track us through the tunnel entrance. The chances were about even that the end of the tunnel down which we were travelling opened to the outside and that it wasn’t used because of the rockfall. I hoped that there were no more or if there were none of them made a complete block. So we passed three in the next half hour of walking; two of them weren’t bad, but the third we had to dig through. The tunnel wasn’t impassable but the rockfalls made it unsafe. To us, unsafe was a minor matter.
“Better than I thought,” Riker murmured, “Maybe we’ll make it yet. I figured this tunnel would be completely blocked.”
“Wonder what they used these things for?” I said.
Riker shrugged. “Nobody knows. You can’t figure anything about the Shambra. They weren’t human, and they didn’t think like we do.”
“They’d have to. After all, civilization is built on fundamental truths.”
“Based on whose laws?”
“Universal laws.”
“By whose definition? Interpreted by whom? Applied by whom?”
“Men, humanoids, other intelligent races,” I said
“What I say still goes. Who does the major thinking for the Confederacy? Who runs the labs? Who are the directors? I’ll tell you. They’re men for the most part, and humanoids—or others trained by men—for the rest. Now the Shambra never knew men and were never corrupted by man’s success. So they went in their own direction and with their own laws. So—what are these tunnels for? Who knows.”
I wasn’t too impressed. Riker was mouthing the same stuff I’d heard before. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. But it was an excuse to avoid rational consideration of the Shambra artefacts. Somehow it seemed to me that everyone wanted to avoid thinking about the Shambra. Was it because they were greater than men, more intelligent, more intellectual, more civilized? Was it because the legends gave them the appearance of the Egyptian god Anubis, who weighed the souls of the dead? Or was it because of mankind’s guilt complex? And were the Old Race the descendents of the Shambra or were they pets? I shrugged. I was at it again. I had no right to criticize Riker for speculating about the Shambra. I was just as bad.
We walked for hours. We were hungry, but we had no problem with water. There are seeps every few kilometers, and the air inside was cool and moist. We were close to the polar regions. Bluestone is right on the edge of the frost line and we had travelled perhaps eighty or ninety kilometers since we were taken from our wrecked truck. I was hungry and tired. I suppose Riker was too. But we couldn’t have everything, and maybe we’d find something edible later.
I stopped. Ahead, the tunnel glowed red. “Hey—what’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Riker said.
We moved forward cautiously. Was it radioactive? The red glow was cold. My pocket counter didn’t click. It was just a redness that came from a ring of metal passing around the circumference of the tunnel. Beyond it was a circular room with several other tunnel mouths radiating from it. The ones nearest us were dark and one of the ones beyond glowed a lambent blue.
We halted in the intersection and looked around us.
“That was a feeder,” Riker said gesturing down our backtail. “I’m going on the theory that red means the same to the Shambra as it does to us—danger,” Riker said, “and that no color means that things are out of order and that blue means go ahead.”
“So we go through the blue door?”
Riker nodded. “That’s right. It’s going about the same way we’ve been travelling.”
“The other tunnels could take us to another canal.”
“That’s a good way to get lost. We should get back to the Phargan Canal if we can. This far north the canals connect with each other and enter the polar catchbasin. We could be under the south shore of the basin.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “We can’t have travelled that far. But one direction is as good as another, so let’s go forward.”
Riker nodded, walked across the intersection, stepped through the blue glow—and vanished!
And then, he stepped out of the frame.”
“Well,” he said, “let’s go.”
“Where have you been?” I demanded.
“On the other side. There’s transportation waiting for us.” Riker grinned. “The Shambra had a highly developed technological civilization. I told you about the Legends. This is a Doorway to Distance. The only thing that surprised me is that it still works. I’ve always thought these tunnels were highways. Now I’m sure of it.”
“And what’s this?” I pointed at the glowing blue frame.
“Merely a signal,” Riker said, “that this tunnel is ready for passengers. Come on. Our chariot awaits—let’s see where it goes.”
With some queasy feelings, I stepped through the glow and into an airlock. It had to be an airlock. Nothing else would have interlock doors that were obviously airtight. The second door opened into a cabin lined with odd-shaped seats that were obviously designed for something larger than us. We sat down and a white light bearing a symbol that looked like two linked diamonds lit on the wall in front of us. In front of our seat a blue light glowed. Riker reached out a finger and touched it. A gentle motion followed his action. We were pushed back into our seats, then after awhile we were pulled out of them. There was a gentle bump and the white light went out. The whole sequence of events had taken about thirty minutes.
“All right, what was that?” I asked.
“You just had a ride. Maybe a long one.”
“Great—where are we?”
“Damned if I know. We could be at the North Pole or the South Pole or anywhere between. Anyway, wherever we are, we’re at the end of the line.”
“Well, let’s see,” I said. We left the car and passed through another blue lighted gateway and into a huge circular room lined with openings. Some glowed blue, others red, and still others were dark. I counted them. There were twenty.
“How many north-south canals?” I asked Riker as an idea struck me.
“Forty,” Riker said, “but I think each one of these doorways is related to a canal system. We’re probably at the north pole of Arthe somewhere under the ice cap. And just for your information, the north pole is something over a thousand kilometers north of Bluestone.”
“That last step was a big one,” I said.
“Oh we were probably safe enough. The Shambra were great engineers.”
“Now let’s get oriented before we go any farther.” It wasn’t hard to do. Each door frame bore a glyph above it and the one we left had two interlocking diamonds. It was easy enough to remember if you didn’t confuse it with the interlocking squares, ovals and triangles above the doors.
“Where do we go now?” I asked.
“Anywhere but here. Some of these doorways are apparently operational. Up the ramp might be best.” He pointed at a helical ramp winding around a metal column in the center of the room.
We ran up the ramp and had hardly reached the next level before natives began to pour out of one of the doorways.
Riker swore softly and began running up the ramp. I followed. He left the ramp at the next level, ran down a radiating corridor and turned off at the first cross corridor and stopped.
“What’s the rush?” I asked. “They didn’t see us.”
“I don’t want them to see us. I’ve just figured out where we are. We’d be cold meat if they caught us now. They might not even wait to kill us.”
“Why?”
“We’re in their holy-holy. This is the North Temple. It’s gotta be. No one believes it exists except those idiots who think the Shambra Legends tell literal truth.” He grinned at me.
“I think I’m becoming a believer,” I said.
“Well, right now we’re out of the griddle,” Riker said, “but we’re still in the fire. This isn’t a safe place for Confeds.”
“Is any place outside a dome safe?”
“I guess not, but this place is worse than most. It’s the home of the Shambra, the place of the Gods. There’s a dozen titles for it. It and the South Temple were the seats of the Shambra power.”
“You think there’s another place like this at the South Pole?”
Riker shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. The Legends speak of two Houses of Power. Look at the canals, the ruins of the cities, everything balances. So if there’s a North Temple, there’s probably a South one.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
Riker gave me a glance of mingled anger and frustration. “I don’t know why you won’t accept this with an open mind. It’s all here in front of you.”
I shrugged. “It still doesn’t prove that the Shambra are anything more than aborigines.”
“Who cares?” he asked. “They lived. They had power. And they were infinitely more advanced than the Old Race, and probably more advanced than us. Just consider the Song of the Power.”
I did. It made me shiver to think of it. I remembered the rhythm, the chorus and the thin clear voice of the Chanter weaving a spell of words and sounds that made the short hairs at the back of my neck quiver. The Power! Power to cleave mountains, to drive glass-lined tunnels ruler straight through rock and soil, power to melt cities into slag, power to change a world!
The Shambra had it once. So did the Old Race, if the Legends were true. The natives still held a belief in it with all its potential for harm and good. The Power was god to these half-civilized regressives!
“I’ve considered it,” I said. “I’m not nearly as skeptical as I was. I also feel that we’d better get the hell out of here. I don’t like this place.”
“You state the obvious,” Riker said, “but how do we get out when the doorways are rilled with natives coming in?”
“We find a place that’s safe, and wait until the activity dies down, then we go.”
“Fine—now where’s a safe place?”
I shrugged. “The only way to find is to look.”
Riker laughed. “You’re right, of course,” he admitted, “but I think we’re going to have trouble. This area is probably crawling with natives.”
“The place is big,” I said. “And in something this size there ought to be a few holes where men can hide.”
“Okay—lead on,” Riker said. “We’re on borrowed time, anyway.”
I went away from the ramp down one of the corridors.
It went a long way. It started as a fairly wide passageway that ran ruler straight through the rock. Like the tunnels, it was smooth-walled and glassy, but unlike them, it was dimly lighted by plaques in the wall similar to our cold tubes. It felt different. There was something about it that left me vaguely uneasy. Perhaps it was the frequent sills and lintels crossing the passageway like so many doorless door frames. Perhaps it was because there were no cross-passages or doorways. Perhaps it was because the tunnel was too high in proportion to its width, or too straight, or too dark, but whatever the reason, I wasn’t happy about being inside it.
