The Jewels of Aptor Page 8

  CHAPTER VII

  It was Urson who first pointed it out. "Look at the far bank," he said.

  Across from them, they could make out an obviously man-made stoneembankment.

  A few hundred feet further on, Iimmi sighted the spires above the trees,still across the river from them. They could figure nothing for anexplanation, till suddenly the trees ceased on the opposite bank and thebuildings and towers of a great city broke the sky. Elevated highwayslooped tower after tower, many of them broken, their ends danglingcolossaly to the streets. The docks of the city just across from themwere completely deserted.

  It was Geo who suggested, "Perhaps Hama's temple is in there. After all,Argo's largest temple is in Leptar's biggest city."

  "And what city in Leptar is _that_ big?" breathed Urson, awfully.

  "How do we get across?" asked Iimmi.

  But Snake had already started down to the water.

  "I guess we follow him," said Geo, climbing down over the rocks.

  Snake dove into the water. Iimmi, Geo, and Urson followed. Before he hadtaken two strokes, Geo felt familiar hands suddenly grasp his body frombelow. This time he did not fight, and there was a sudden sense ofspeed, of sinking through consciousness.

  Then he was bobbing up through chill water with the rising embankment ofstones to one side and the broad river to the other. He switched fromskulling into a crawl now, wondering how to scale the stones when he sawthe rusted metal ladder leading into the water. He caught hold of thesides and pulled himself up.

  Snake came up now, and then Urson. And, at last Iimmi joined them on thebroad ridge of concrete that walled the flowing river. Together now onthe wharf, they turned to the city.

  Near them, piles of debris lay between two taller buildings. After a fewminutes' walk the building walls had reached canyon size. "Now, how areyou going to go about looking for the temple?" Urson asked.

  "Maybe we can take a look from the top of one of these buildings," Geosuggested.

  They turned toward a random building. A slab of metal had torn away fromthe wall, and stepping through, they found themselves in a huge hollowroom. Dim light came from a number of white tubes set around the wall.Only a quarter of them were lit, and one was flickering. Hung from thecenter of the room was a metal sign which read:

  NEW EDISON ELECTRIC COMPANY

  and beneath it, in smaller letters:

  "LIGHT DOWN THE AGES"

  One of the huge cylinders, across the floor, was buzzing.

  As they mounted a spiral staircase to the next floor the great roomturned about them, sinking. At last they stepped up into a darkcorridor. A red light glowed at the end which said: EXIT.

  Doors outlined themselves along the hall in a red haze. Geo moved to oneat random and opened it. Natural light fell in on them as the otherscame to see. They entered a room whose outer wall was torn away. Thefloor broke off irregularly over thrusting girders.

  "What could have happened to it?" Urson asked.

  "See," Iimmi explained. "That roadway must have crashed into the walland knocked it away."

  A twenty-foot ribbon of road veered into the room at an insane angle.The railing was twisted, but there were the stalks of street lightsstill intact along the edges.

  "Do you think we could climb that?" asked Geo. "It doesn't look toosteep."

  "For what?" Urson wanted to know.

  "To get some place high enough to see if there's anything that lookslike a temple."

  "Oh," said Urson in a reconciled voice.

  In general the walk was in good shape. Occasional sections of railinghad twisted away, but the road itself mounted surely between thesheering faces of the buildings on either side of them through advancingsunset.

  It branched before them and they went left. It branched again and againthey avoided the right-handed road. A sign, half the length of a threemasted ship, hung lopsidedly above them on a building to one side.

  WMTH

  THE HUB OF WORLD NEWS, COMMUNICATION, & ENTERTAINMENT

  As they rounded the corner of the building, Snake suddenly stopped andput his hand to his head.

  "What is it?" asked Geo.

  Snake took a step backward. Then he pointed to WMTH. _It ... hurts._

  "What hurts?" asked Iimmi.

  Snake pointed to the building again.

  "Is there someone in there thinking too loud?"

  _Thinking ... machine_, Snake said. _Radio ..._

  "A radio is a thinking machine and there's one in there that's hurtingyour head?" interpreted Iimmi, tentatively, and with a question mark.

  Snake nodded.

  "How come the one he showed us before didn't hurt him?" Urson wanted toknow.

  Iimmi looked up at the imposing housing of WMTH. "Maybe this one's a lotbigger."

  "Look," Geo said to Snake, "you stay here, and if we see anything, we'llcome back and report, all right?"

  "Maybe it stops later on," Urson said, "and if he ran forward, he couldget out the other side. It may just stop after a hundred feet or so."

  "Why so anxious?" asked Iimmi.

  "The jewels," said Urson. "Who's going to get us out of trouble if weshould meet up with anything else?"

  They were silent then. Their shadows faded over the pavement as theyellow tinge in the sky turned blue. "I guess it's up to Snake," Geosaid. "Do you think you can make it?"

  Snake paused for a moment, then shook his head.

  "Well," Geo said to the others, "come on then."

  Around them was a sudden click, and lights flickered all along the edgesof the road.

  "Come on," Geo said again, and once more they started, passing thelights which wheeled double and triple shadows about them over the roadand the opposite railing. When they reached the next turn off that ledto a still higher ramp, Geo looked back. Snake's miniature figure sat onthe edge of the road's railing, his feet on the lower rung, one pair ofarms folded, one pair of elbows on his knees. The light above him.

  "Keep track of the turns," said Geo.

  "I'm keeping," Iimmi assured him.

  "By the time we get to the top of whatever we're trying to get to thetop of," rumbled Urson, "we won't be able to see anything. It'll be toodark."

  "Then let's hurry," Geo admonished.

  Sunset stained one side of the towers copper while blue shadows huggedthe other. By way of a plastic-domed stairway, they mounted anothereighty feet to a broader highway where they could look down on the bandof lights which was the one they had just left. They were beginning toclear the roofs of the lower buildings now.

  On this road fewer lights were working. They were just about to enter adark section when a figure appeared in silhouette at the other end.

  They stopped, but the figure was suddenly gone. A little farther, Geosuddenly halted and said, "There!"

  Two hundred feet ahead of them, what may have been a naked woman rosefrom the ground, and began to walk backwards until she disappeared intothe next dark length of road.

  "Do you think she was running away from us?" Iimmi asked.

  Urson reached out and touched Iimmi's jewel. "I wish we have some morelight around here."

  "Yeah," Iimmi agreed. They continued.

  The skeleton lay at the twilight edge of the next stretch of functioninglights. The rib cage marked sharp lines on the pavement with shadow fromthe lamps' glare.

  "Do we turn back now?" Urson asked.

  "A skeleton can't hurt you," Iimmi said.

  "But what about the live one we saw?" countered Urson.

  "... and here she comes now," Geo whispered in a cynical stage voice.

  In fact two figures approached them through the shadow. As Urson, Geoand Iimmi moved closer, one stopped, and then the other a few stepsbefore the first. Then they dropped. Geo couldn't tell if they fell, orlay down quickly on the roadway. But they seemed to have disappeared.

  "Go on?" asked Urson.

  "Go on," said Geo.

  Pause. "Go on," from Geo.

&
nbsp; Two more skeletons lay on the road where the figures had disappeared aminute before. "They don't seem dangerous," Geo said. "But what do theydo? Die every time they see us?"

  "Hey," Iimmi said. "What's that? Listen."

  It was a sickly liquid sound, like mud dropping into itself. Somethingwas falling from the sky. No, not the sky, but from the roadway thatcrossed fifty feet above them. Looking down again, they saw that a blobof something was growing on the pavement ten feet from them.

  "Come on," Geo said, and they skirted the mess dripping from above them,and continued up the road, passing four more skeletons. The sound behindthem turned into a wet sloshing. Turning, they saw it emerge into thelight--shapeless and jelly-green under the white flare. Impaling itsmembrane on the skeletons, the mass flowed around them, faster, coveringthem, molding to them. There was a final surge, a shrinking, and itsshapelessness contracted into limbs, a head, feet. The naked man-thingpushed itself to its knees and then stood straight, the flesh by nowopaque. Eye sockets caved into the face. A mouth ripped apart on theskull, and the chest began to move with a wet steamy sound in irregulargasps.

  It began to walk toward them, raising its hands from its sides. Then,behind it in the darkness, they saw more coming.

  "_Damn_," said Urson. "What do they...?"

  "One, or both, of two things," Iimmi answered, backing away. "More meat,or more bones."

  "Whoops," Geo said. "Look back there!"

  They whirled and saw seven more figures standing quietly behind them,while the ones in front advanced.

  A covered flight of stairs had its entrance nearby, leading to the nextlevel of highway. They ducked into it and fled up the steps. Geo glancedback once; one of the forms had reached the entrance and had started toclimb. He was also, he realized, high enough to get some idea of thecity, which stretched, beyond the transparent covering of the steps,away in a web of lighted roadways, rising, looping, descending. Twoglows caught him: one, beyond the river, a red haze that flickeredbehind the trees and was reflected on the water itself. The other waswithin the city itself, orange white, nested among the buildings.

  He turned back up the steps. A gurgling sound neared them as theyreached the top entrance. Geo had only gotten half clear of the entrancewhen he yelled, "Yikes," and then, "Duck!"

  They slipped from the doorway and nearly fell, avoiding a mass of jellythe size of a two-story house which flopped against the entrance. Theyedged by its pulsing, transparent sides. The lamp light pierced into ita yard, and once a skull swirled toward the surface and then sank again.

  Suddenly it sucked away from the entrance and shivered ponderouslytoward them. Something was happening at the front. Figures, three orfour of them, were detaching themselves from the mother mass andpreceding it.

  They turned and ran along the road, plunging suddenly into an extendeddarkened section. A moment later there was a glow in front of them andsuddenly Urson yelled, "Watch it!"

  Abruptly the road sheered off in front of them; they halted, and thenapproached the edge slowly. The surface of the road tore away and thegirders descended, webbing toward the ruined stump of a building fromwhich the orange-white glow rose. The glow came from the heart of theedifice. "What do you think it is?" asked Geo.

  "I don't know," said Iimmi.

  They looked, and in the shadow, numberless figures were marching afterthem. Suddenly the figures fell to the ground, and flesh rolled forwardfrom bone, congealed, and rose quiveringly into the edge of the light.

  Iimmi started out first on the skeletal, twisted structure thatdescended to the glowing pit. "You're crazy," Geo said. The thingflopped forward another yard with a sick sound. "Hurry up," Geo added.With Urson in the middle, they started out along the twenty-inch widegirder. Lit from beneath, their bodies were in the shadow of the girder.Only their outstretched arms burned in the pale orange light as theybalanced themselves.

  Before them, faintly legible on the broken building into which they weredescending was the sign: ATOMIC ENERGY FOR THE BETTERMENT OF MAN

  It was flanked by two purple trefoils. The beam twisted sideways, andthen dropped. Iimmi made the turn, dropped to his knees and hands, andthen started to let himself down the four feet to the next small sectionof concrete. Once he saw something, let out a low whistle, but continuedto lower himself to the straightened girder. Urson made the turn next,while Geo knelt in front of him. When Urson saw what Iimmi had seen, hishand shot to Geo's chest and grabbed the jewel. Geo took his wrist."That won't help us now," he said.

  Urson expelled a breath, and then continued down, slowly. Quickly Geoturned to drop now.

  The entire beam structure over which they had just come was coated witha trembling thickness of the stuff. Globs dripped from the steel shafts,glowing in the light from below, quivering, smoking, splashing off intothe darkness. Here and there something half human would rise either tolook around or to pull the collective mass further on, but then it wouldfall back and dissolve. It bulged forward, smoking now, bits of itshriveling off and falling away. Geo was about to descend, but suddenlyhe called, "Wait a minute." The others stayed still.

  It wasn't making progress. It rolled to a certain point in the pale,sherbert-colored light, globbed up, smoked, and fell away. And smoked.And dripped.

  "Can't it get any farther?" Urson asked.

  "It doesn't look it," said Geo.

  A skeleton stood up, flesh-covered in the orange light. It tottered, itssurface steaming, and then fell with a sucking noise, down into thehundreds of feet of shadow. Geo was holding tight onto the girder infront of him.

  The pale light fell cleanly over his hand, wrist, and midway up hisforearm.

  What happened now made him squeeze until sweat came: the entireGargantuan mass, which had only extended tentacles till now, pulsed tothe edge of the jagged road, draped itself over the web of girders, andflung itself forward on the spindly metal threads. It careened towardthem, and the three jerked themselves back.

  Then it stopped, quivering. It boiled, it burned, it writhed, sinking,smoking through the spaces in the naked girder work. It tried to crawlbackwards. Human figures leaped from its mass toward the edge of theroad, missed, and plummetted like smoking bullets. It hurled a greatpseudopod back toward the safety of the road; it fell short, floppeddownward, and the whole mass shook beneath the smoke that rose from it.It pulled free of the support, tentacles sliding across steel, whippinginto the air. Then it dropped into the shadows, breaking into a halfdozen pieces before they lost sight of it below.

  Geo released his hand. "My arm hurts," he said, shaking it.

  They climbed up to the road again, carefully. "Any ideas what happened?"asked Iimmi.

  "What ever it was, I'm glad it did," said Urson.

  Something clattered before them in the darkness.

  "What was that?" asked Urson, stopping.

  "My foot hit something," Geo said.

  "What was it?" asked Urson.

  "Never mind," said Geo. "Come on."

  Fifteen minutes brought them to the stairway that went to the lowerhighway. Iimmi's memory proved good, and for an hour they went quickly,Iimmi making no hesitation it turnings.

  "God," Geo said, rubbing his forearm with his other hand. "I must havepulled hell out of it back there. It hurts like the devil."

  Urson looked at his hand and rubbed them together.

  "My hands feel sort of funny too," Iimmi said. "Like they've beenwind-burned."

  "Wind-burned nothing," said Geo. "This hurts."

  Twenty minutes later, Iimmi said, "Well, this should be about it."

  "Hey," said Urson. "There's Snake." As they ran forward, now, the boyjumped off the rail, grabbed their shoulders, and grinned. Then he beganto tug them forward.

  "You lucky little so and so," said Urson. "I wish you'd been with us."

  "He probably was, in spirit, if not in body," Geo laughed.

  Snake nodded.

  "What are you pulling for?" Urson asked. "Say, if you're going to getheadaches li
ke that, you'd better teach us what to do with them beadsthere." He pointed to the jewel at Iimmi's and Geo's necks.

  Snake nodded and tugged forward again.

  "He wants us to hurry," Geo said. "We better get going."

  The road finally tore completely away, and four feet below them, overthe twisted rail, was the mouth of a street that led into thewaterfront. Snake, Iimmi and then Urson vaulted over. Urson shook hishands painfully when he landed.

  "Give me a hand, will you?" Geo asked. "My arm is really shot." Ursonhelped his friend over.

  Almost as though it had been in wait, thick liquid gurgling soundedbehind them. Like a wounded thing it emerged from behind the brokenhighway, bulging up into the light which shone on the ripples in itsshriveled membrane.

  "Run it!" bawled Urson, and they took off down the street. In themoonlight, the ruined piers spread along the waterfront to either sideof them, some even slanting into the silvered water.

  Turning once, they saw it bloat the entrance of the street, fill it, andthen pour across the broken stones, slipping across the rubble of thesmashed wharf.

  When Geo hit water, he was aware of two things immediately as the handsreached for his body. First, the thong was yanked from around his neck.Second, pain seared his arm as if the bones and ligaments were suddenlyreplaced by white-hot cords of steel, and every vein and capillary hadbecome part of a webbing of red fire.

  It was a long time before consciousness. Once he was lifted. And when heopened his eyes, the white moon was moving incredibly fast above himtoward the dark shapes of leaves. Was he being carried? And his armhurt. There was more drowsy half consciousness, and once a great deal ofpain. When he opened his mouth to scream, however, darkness flowed in,swathed his tongue, and he swallowed the darkness down into his body andinto his head, and called it sleep--

  * * * * *

  _A spool of copper wire unrolled over the black tile floor. Scoop it upquick. Damn, let me get out of here. I run past the black columns,glimpsing the cavernous room, and the black statue at the other end,huge, and rising into shadows. Men in dark robes are walking around.(Not only could they see, this time; they could hear the thinking.) Justdon't feel up to praying this afternoon. I am before the door, and aboveit, a black disk with three white eyes on it. Through the door, up blackstone steps. Wonder if anyone will be up there now. Just my luck I'llfind the Old Man himself. Another door with a black circle above it.Push it open slowly, cool on my hands. A man is standing inside, lookinginto a large screen of glass. Figures moving on it. Can't make them out,he's in the way. Oh, there's another one._

  _"I don't know whether to call it success or failure," one says._

  _"The jewels are ... safe or lost?"_

  _"What do you call it?" the first one asks. "I don't know any more." Hesighs. "I don't think I've taken my eyes off this thing for more thantwo hours since they got to the beach. Every mile they've come closerhas made my blood run colder."_

  _"What do we report to Hama Incarnate?"_

  _"It would be silly to say anything now. We just don't know."_

  _"Well," says the other, "at least we can do something with the City ofNew Hope since they got rid of that super-amoeba."_

  _"Are you sure they really got it?"_

  _"After the burning it received over that naked atom pile? It was all itcould do to get to the waterfront. It's just about fried up and blownaway already."_

  _"And how safe would you call them?" the other asks._

  _"Right now? I wouldn't call them anything."_

  _Something glitters on the table by the door. Yes, there it is. In thepile of strange equipment is a U-shaped scrap of metal. Just what Ineed. Hot damn, adhesive tape too. Quick, there, before they see. Fine.Now, let the door close, real slow. Ooops. It clicked. Now come on, lookinnocent, in case they come out. I hope the Old Man isn't watching.Guess they're not coming. And down the stairs again, the black stonewalls moving past. Out another door, into the garden, dark flowers,purple, deep red, some with blue in them, and big stone urns. Somepriests are coming down the path. Ooops again, there's old Dunderhead.He'll want me inside praying. Duck down behind that urn. Here we go.What'll I do if he catches me? Really sir, I have nothing under my choirrobe. Peek out._

  _Very, very small sigh of relief, now. Can't afford to be too loudaround here. They're gone. Let's examine the loot. The black stone urnhas one handle above. It's about eight feet tall. One, two, three: jump,and ... hold ... on ... and ... pull. And try to get to the top. Therewe go. Cold stone between my toes. And over the edge, where it's filledwith dirt. Pant. Pant. Pant._

  _Should be just over here, if I remember right. Dig, dig, dig. Dampearth feels good in your hands. Ow! my finger. There it is. A brownpaper bag under granules of black earth. Lift it out. Is it all there?Open it up, peer in. Down at the bottom, beyond the folds of the edgeswhere the top had been twisted tightly together, are the tiny scraps ofcopper, a few long pieces of dark metal, a piece of board, some brads.To this my grubby little hand adds the spool of copper wire and theU-shaped scrap of metal. Now, slip it into my robe and--once you get uphere, how the hell do you get down? I always forget. Turn around, climbover the edge, like this, and let yourself down. Damn, my robe's caughton the handle._

  _And drop._

  _Skinned my shin again. Some day I'll learn._

  _Now let's see if we can figure this thing out. Gotta crouch down andget to work. Here we go. Open the bag, and turn the contents out in thelap of the dark-colored robe, grubby hands poking._

  _The U-shaped metal, the copper wire, fine. Hold the end of the wire tothe metal, and maneuver the spool around the end of the wire to themetal, and maneuver the spool around the end of the rod. Around. Andaround. And around. Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberrybush, the mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush; I'll haveme a coil by the morning._

  _Suddenly a harsh voice in the distance: "And what do you think you'redoing?"_

  _Dunderhead rides again. "Nothing, sir," as metal and scraps and wiresfly frantically into the paper bag._

  _The voice: "All novices under twenty must report to afternoon serviceswithout fail!"_

  _"Yes, sir. Coming right along, sir." Paper bag jammed equallyfrantically into the folds of my robe. Not a moment's peace. Not amoment's! Through the garden with lowered eyes, past a dour-lookingpriest with a small paunch. There are mirrors along the vestibule, hugeslabs of glass that rise thirty feet, reflecting the blue and yellowlight back and forth from the colored windows of the temple. In themirror I see pass: a dour-looking priest, proceeded by a smaller figurewith short red hair and a spray of freckles over a flattish nose. And aswe pass into prayer, there is the maddening, almost inaudible jinglingof metal scraps, muffled by the dark robe._

  * * * * *

  Geo woke up, and almost everything was white.