Читать книгу Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 5 - Эдвард Джордж Бульвер-Литтон, Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - Страница 18

DOWN THE ROPE OF SOUND

Kenton fought back his faintness; reached out a trembling hand, and snapped on the electrics. "Mr. John! Mr. John!"

The old servant's voice was sharp with terror; he rattled the door knob; beat against the panels.

Kenton steadied himself against the table; forced himself to speak.

"Why—Jevins—" he strove to lighten the dragging words, inject some naturalness into them—"What's the matter?"

He heard a little gasp of relief, another murmuring from the servants and then Jevins spoke again.

"I was passing and heard you cry out, sir. A dreadful cry! Are you ill?"

Desperately Kenton strove against the racking weakness; managed a laugh.

"Why, no—I fell asleep. Had a nightmare. Don't worry! Go to bed."

"Oh—it was that?"

The relief in Jevins' voice was greater, but the doubt was not altogether gone. He did not withdraw; stood there hesitating.

There was a mist before Kenton's eyes, a thin veil of crimson. His knees bent suddenly; barely he saved himself from falling. He stumbled to the couch and sank upon it. A panic impulse urged him to cry out to Jevins to bring help—to break down the door. Fast upon it came warning that he must not do this; that he must fight his battle out alone—if he were to tread the ship's deck again!

"Go, Jevins!" he cried harshly. "Hell, man—didn't I tell you I wasn't to be disturbed tonight? Get away!"

Too late he realized that never before had he spoken so to this old servant who loved him, he knew, like a son. Had he betrayed himself— crystallized Jevins' suspicions into certainty that within that room something was wrong indeed? Fear spurred his tongue.

"I'm all right!" He forced laughter into the words. "Of course, I'm all right!"

Damn that mist in front of his eyes! What was it? He passed a hand over them, brought it away wet with blood. He stared at it, stupidly.

"Oh, very well, Mr. John." There was no more doubt, nothing but affection in the voice. "But hearing you cry—"

God! Would the man never go! His eyes traveled from his hand up his arm. Crimson it was, red with blood to the shoulder. The fingers dripped.

"Only a nightmare," he interrupted quietly. "I won't sleep again until I'm done and go to bed—so run along."

"Then—good night, Mr. John."

"Good night," he answered.

Swaying he sat until the footsteps of Jevins and the others had died away. Then he tried to rise. His weakness was too great. He slid from the couch to his knees, crawled across the floor to a low cabinet, fumbled at its doors and drew down a bottle of brandy. He raised it to his lips and drank deep. The fiery stuff raced through him, gave him strength. He arose.

A sickening pang stabbed his side. He raised his hand to clutch the agony, covered it and felt trickle through his fingers a slow, warm stream!

He remembered—a sword had bitten him there—the sword of one of Klaneth's men!

Flashed before him pictures—the arrow quivering in the Viking's shield, the mace of Gigi, the staring warriors, the great net dropping over Sharane and her women, the wondering faces...

Then—this!

Again he lifted the bottle. Half way to his mouth he stopped, every muscle rigid, every nerve taut. Confronting him was a shape—a man splashed red from head to foot! He saw a strong, fierce face from which glared eyes filled with murderous menace; long tangled elf locks of black writhed round it down to the crimson-stained shoulders. From hair edge to ear down across the forehead was a wound, from which blood dripped. Bare to the waist was this man and from the nipple of his left breast to mid-side ran a red wide- mouthed slash, open to the ribs!

Gory, menacing, dreadful in its red lacquer of life, a living phantom from some pirate deck of death it glared at him.

Stop! There was something familiar about the face—the eyes! His gaze was caught by a shimmer of gold on the right arm above the elbow. It was a bracelet. And he knew that bracelet—

The bridal gift of Sharane!

Who was this man? He could not think clearly—how could he— with numbness in his brain, the red mists before his eyes, this weakness that was creeping back upon him?

Sudden rage swept through him. He swung the bottle to hurl it straight at the wild fierce face.

The left hand of the figure swung up, clutching a similar bottle—

It was he, John Kenton, reflected in the long mirror on the wall. That ensanguined, fearfully wounded, raging shape was—himself!

A clock chimed ten.

As though the slow strokes had been an exorcism, a change came over Kenton. His mind cleared, purpose and will clicked back in place. He took another deep drink of the liquor, and without another look in the mirror, without a glance toward the jeweled ship, he walked to the door.

Hand on the key he paused, considering. No, that would not do. He could not risk going out into the hallway. Jevins might still be hovering near; or some of the other servants might see him. And if he had not known himself, what would be the effect of seeing him on them?

He could not go where water was to cleanse his hurts, wash away the blood. He must do with what was here.

He turned back to the cabinet, stripping the table of its cloth as he passed. His foot struck something on the floor. The blade of Nabu lay there, no longer blue but stained as was he from tip of blade to hilt. For the moment he left it lie. He poured spirits upon the cloth, made shift to cleanse himself with them. From another cabinet he drew out his emergency medical kit. There was lint there and bandages and iodine. Stiff-lipped with the torture of its touch, he poured the latter into the great wound in his side, daubed it into the cut across his forehead. He made compresses of the lint and wound the linen tapes around brow and chest. The blood flow stopped. The fiery agony of the iodine diminished. He stepped again to the mirror and scanned himself.

The clock struck the half hour.

Half past ten! What had it been when he had clutched the golden chains of the ship—had summoned the ship and been lifted by those chains out of the room and into the mysterious world in which it sailed?

Just nine o'clock!

Only an hour and a half ago! Yet during that time in that other and timeless world he had been slave and conqueror, had fought great fights, had won both ship and the woman who had mocked him, had become—what now he was!

And all this in less than two short hours!

He walked over to the ship, picking up the sword as he went. He wiped the hilt clean of blood, the blade he did not touch. He drained the bottle before he dared drop his eyes.

He looked first on Sharane's cabin. There were gaps in the little blossoming trees. The door was down, flung broken on the deck. The casements of the window were shattered. Upon the roof's edge a row of doves perched, heads a-droop, mourning.

From the oar ports four sweeps instead of seven dipped on each side. And in the pit were no longer the eight and twenty rowers. Only ten were left, two to each of the stroke oars, one each to the other.

On the starboard side of the hull were gashes and deep dents—the marks of the bireme's combing of that ship of Ishtar now sailing somewhere on that unknown world from which he had been whirled.

And at the tiller bar a manikin stood—a toy steering the toy ship. A toy man, long haired, fair haired. At his feet sat two other toys; one with shining, hairless head, and apelike arms; the other red bearded, agate eyed, a shining scimitar across his knees.

Longing shook him, heartache, such homesickness as some human soul might feel marooned upon alien star on outskirts of space.

"Gigi!" he groaned. "Sigurd! Zubran! Bring me back to you!"

He bent over the three, touching them with tender fingers, breathing on them, as though to give them warmth of life. Long he paused over Gigi— instinctively he felt that in the Ninevite more than the others dwelt the power to help. Sigurd was strong, the Persian subtle—but in the dwarf-legged giant ran tide of earth gods in earth's shouting youth; archaic, filled with unknown power long lost to man.

"Gigi!" he whispered, face close—and again and again— "Gigi! Hear me! Gigi!"

Did the manikin move?

Breaking his passion of concentration came a cry. Newsboys shouting some foolish happening of importance on this foolish world on which he was cast away! It broke the threads, shattered the fragile links that he had felt forming between himself and the manikin. Cursing, he straightened. His sight dimmed; he fell. Effort had told upon him; the treacherous weakness crept back. He dragged himself to the cabinet, knocked the head off a second bottle, let half of it pour down his throat.

The whipped blood sang in his ears; strength flowed through him. He snapped off the lights. A ray from the street came through the heavy curtains, outlining the three toy figures. Once more Kenton gathered himself for a mighty effort of will.

"Gigi! It is I! Calling you! Gigi! Answer me! Gigi!" The manikin stirred, its body trembled, its head raised! Far, far away, thin and cold as tip of frost lance upon glass, ghostly and unreal, coming from immeasurable distances, he heard Gigi's voice.

"Wolf I hear you! Wolf! Where are you?"

His mind clung to that thread of sound as though it were a line flung to him over vast abysses.

"Wolf—come to us!" The voice was stronger. "Gigi! Gigi! Help me to you!"

The two voices—that far flung, thin, cold one and his own met and clung and knit. They stretched over that gulf which lay between where he stood and the unknown dimension in which sailed the ship.

Now the little figure no longer squatted! It was upright! Louder rang Gigi's voice:

"Wolf! Come to us! We hear you! Come to us!" Then as though it chanted words of power:

"Sharane! Sharane! Sharane!"

Under the lash of the loved name his will now streamed fiercely.

"Gigi! Gigi! Keep calling!"

He was no longer conscious of his room. He saw the ship far, far beneath him. He was but a point of life floating high above it, yearning to it and calling, calling to Gigi to help him. The strand of sound that linked them strained and shook like a cobweb thread. But it held and ever drew him down.

And now the ship was growing. It was misty, nebulous; but steadily it grew and steadily Kenton dropped down that rope of sound to meet it. Strengthening the two voices came other sounds weaving themselves within their threads —the chanting of Sigurd, the calling of Zubran, the thrumming of the fingers of the wind on the harp-strings of the ship's stays, the murmuring litany of the breaking waves telling their beads of foam.

Ever more real grew the ship. Striking through its substance came the wavering image of his room. It seemed to struggle against the ship, to strive to cover it. But the ship beat it back, crying out to him with the voices of his comrades and the voices of wind and sea in one.

"Wolf! We feel you near! Come to us—Sharane! Sharane! Sharane!"

The phantom outlines leaped into being; they enclosed him.

The arms of Gigi reached out to him, gripped him, plucked him out of space!

And as they gripped, he heard a chaotic whirling, a roaring as of another world spinning from under him and lashed by mighty winds.

He stood again upon the ship.

He was clasped tight to Gigi's hairy chest. Sigurd's hands were on his shoulders. Zubran was clasping and patting Kenton's own hands clutching Gigi's back, singing in his joy strange intricate Persian curses.

"Wolf!" roared Gigi, tears filling the furrows of his wrinkled face. "Where did you go? In the name of all the gods—where have you been?"

"Never mind!" sobbed Kenton. "Never mind where I've been, Gigi! I'm back! Oh, thank God, I'm back!"