Читать книгу Gardner F. Fox - Sci-Fi Boxed Set - Gardner F. Fox - Страница 9

Last night he had played for Flaith and Lunol. And when he had played, a tube in the great, glistening tower machine had cracked into a thousand different fragments.

That breaking tube might have summoned up Noorlythin from whatever hell he dwelt.

"Move in, Earther," said the officer behind him.

Kael went with Flaith, at the officer's orders, to an upholstered bench set against a panelled wall. The officer brooded at them, and they could read the raw hate that lay deep in his black eyes.

The officer said, "You ought to be rayed down here, to save the High Mor the agony of listening to your pleas for mercy. But yours is a grave offense. An offense no man or woman has ever committed before. It calls for grave punishment."

Flaith's hand trembled in Kael's big fist.

The officer said, "The High Mor commissioned me to bring you to him. I would be derelict in my duty were I to do otherwise. And I, Captain Herms Borkus, intend to commit no such infraction."

The black eyes studied them. There was curiosity swimming in their depths, mixed with the hot hate, and a grudging respect. He turned away and went forward to the control chamber. Kael could hear the clicking relays picking up the automatic transmission. The ship lifted easily, its null-gravity humming with smooth insistence.

Flaith whispered, "The harp, Kael. You'll kill him as you killed the others!"

But Kael only gestured at the sfarri that lay in the strange and distorted attitudes, or sprawled on the floor. And even as he gestured, the first of these dead sfarri stirred and sat up, looking about him. Others moved then, silently, turning at once to their duty posts, resuming their tasks as if they had never been interrupted.

"Mother of balangs!" whispered Flaith, her eyes wide and troubled under their long red lashes. "They live!"

The McCanahan was half out of his seat, his mind questing. They were dead, but now they live. Like machines, turned off and on! He thought of the cracking tube in the black tower, and the sfarri that had fallen in the square in Clonn Fell. Dimly, he began to grasp the power of the harpstring that he had lifted from his father's wrist. It smashed the tubes in the power-boxes that fed the sfarri their energy. Without that power, they were idle machines.

With the trained mind of the spacefleet officer, he saw the possibilities of such harpstring, in the form of a vibrator that would spacecast a flow of microwaves from the battle wagons of the fleet. With a series of these vibrations fanning out ahead of them, Solar Combine ships could more than hold their own with the sfarri. For at the touch of those microwaves, the sfarri that ran their spaceships would slump in their form of death.

Bitter mockery rose inside the McCanahan as he sat hunched over. He had the knowledge, but what use was it? He was being carried to an extremely painful death in the damp dungeons of the High Mor's palace.

* * * * *

Herms Borkus came toward them from the control chamber. He stared from one to the other. At last he said, "How did you do it? In Clonn Fell, we found our officers and men lying as if dead. As this ship neared the Tower of Noorlythin, my men slumped over unconscious."

Kael shrugged. "I've a powerful evil eye, friend. I cast it at those I don't like and—well, you saw the result."

Borkus said coldly, "You talk foolishly. There is no such thing as the evil eye. What is the answer?"

"Oh, now look!" began Kael, when the thought struck him. Borkus is a sfarran, yet he did not succumb to the lack of power! Kael turned the words on his tongue, and said, "I was talking sense, captain. In my family, as far back as the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages himself, one of the McCanahans has always possessed the evil eye. It's a daft thing, and I'm not understanding it myself, any too well, but it's the only explanation I can give."

Borkus looked at Flaith, but his eyes did not linger on her beauty, and showed no more emotion than a dog would show staring at a building. From Flaith, his eyes swung to Kael who could read the thought that was gripping the officer. He's wondering if he can strike at me through her. But that was the way of a man who lacked confidence in his own abilities, and Kael knew that this man before him had powers he had not yet used.

The sfarran captain shrugged and moved away. He threw back over his shoulder, "The High Mor will know how to deal with you. After all, it is his duty, not mine."

For five hours, Flaith and McCanahan huddled together on the upholstered bench in the sfarran ship. With each passing moment, the bleakness in the soul of the McCanahan grew darker and more empty.

The ship landed on the palace grounds, shuddering slightly as it dropped onto the metallic tanbark. A moment after its vanes were clamped, Flaith and the McCanahan were crossing the landing field, moving down a stone ramp that led to the dungeons.

A burly man, with black hair matted over his naked chest, clanked a ring of keys at their approach. He preceded them along the torchlit corridor until he paused at an empty cell.

The cell was unlocked, and the McCanahan thrust inside. And then a sobbing Flaith was dragged away from him, in the grip of one of the burly man's hairy paws.

Kael McCanahan was a spaceman, and spacemen are generally, without quite being aware of it, excellent philosophers. He tested the bars of the cell, found them to be formed of Mollystil, and went over to the cot, where he lay on his back, staring at the blank ceiling. Within five minutes he was asleep.

He woke to the touch of a soft hand on his chest, to find a woman bent above him, her limpid brown eyes soft with pity. A tumble of yellow hair framed her oval face.

"I bring you food and drink, lord. You will need your strength for what lies ahead."

Kael laughed harshly. "Better to be weak and near death when the High Mor begins his tortures."

She moved closer. She was fragrant with some Senn perfume, and the little she wore—a red silk thing twisted about her loins, with a slavegirl's golden chains about her throat—showed her body to be exquisite, even in the half-light of the cell. The McCanahan read the pity in her eyes, and began to take interest.

"Sometimes, those live the longest who have no false pride," she told him.

"You give me hope. Were you sent to do that?"

There was reproach in her eyes, and she started to draw away. The McCanahan caught her slim wrist and held her.

"Who sent you with your tempting offers?"

She pouted at him. "No man sent me. I am Slyss, the slave girl from Aakkan." She rubbed her wrist when he released her, unconsciously posing for his eyes.

The McCanahan said, "Tell me more!"

But she shrugged a white shoulder and went to stand by the cell bars while he ate. When he was done, she took his tray and wooden bowl and mug, and walked off with them, unlocking the cell door with a key that hung from her wrist, attached to a thick metal manacle.

Her hips wriggled as she went, and she threw a glance at him over her shoulder. Her voice was music as she carolled a farewell.

She left the McCanahan with a fever of impatience in him. He strode back and forth in his cell. His hands tested the Mollystil bars a hundred times. He told himself that the Senn did not love the sfarri overmuch, that the Senn, being descended from animal ancestors, had no common ground with a race of robot men. He asked himself where in this pile of giant masonry Herms Borkus had hidden Flaith. If he could get away, if he could use this yellow-haired slave girl to unbar these cell doors for him, he would find Flaith and flee.

Flee?

Where on all Senorech was there sanctuary for Kael McCanahan?

The slave girl told him when next she brought his food. This time, he was awake and restless, and her soft, quick tread was like music to his ears.

* * * * *

She came close to him, with only the width of the little tray between his chest and her breasts that stirred gently to her quickened breathing. Her brown eyes were full of gentle pity as they studied his haggard face and sunken eyes.

"Lord, you were never meant for prison bars! If only you would trust me, I know a way that leads from the palace."

"Trust you, Slyss? I'd love you for a chance at freedom."

Again she preened, smiling as he wolfed the food. "Only for that?"

His eyes studied her. She was a lovely thing, slim and gently rounded. Beside the flame-haired Flaith she was a cooling breeze, but he knew many men who would have walked through the fires of Nanakar for an hour in her arms.

"Not only for that," he told her. "You're a sight to send a man's blood to pounding in his veins. You don't look like a slave girl. You're much too beautiful."

Her laughter was soft, pleased. She came and sat beside him, so that her hip and thigh were warm on his. She carried perfume in the yellow hair that dripped on her shoulders. It was rare perfume, and the McCanahan thought that if her mistress knew about it, that creamy back would be striped with red whipwelts.

"There are men of the Senn who hate the sfarri," she whispered close to his ear. "Rumors have come to them that you possess some strange weapon, some magic means of killing the hated sfarri."

The McCanahan swallowed the cheap wine that had been chilled in a coil of refrigerated stil. He nodded. "I know a way."

It was on his lips to say more when his sidewise glance surprised a momentary gleam in the gentle brown eyes. He needed no psychiatrist to read that triumph for him, even though it was quickly veiled behind her curving lashes. Now why should a slave girl of the palace know that feeling because of what I said? he asked himself.

The McCanahan put his arm about the girl, drew her in against him. With his lips buried in the yellow mass of her hair, he whispered, "It ought to be worth a lot to the Senn to get that knowledge! With such a weapon they need never fear the sfarri again. They could cast them out! Even seek alliance with the Solar Combine!"

It was his last words that tensed the muscles across her soft back. Instantly, the muscles were relaxed, and she melted closer against him, her soft lips moving across his face to find his lips.

The McCanahan kissed her. Why not? But he was warned, and only a fool disregards a warning. And Kael McCanahan, as he drank from the scented lips of Slyss the slave girl, was even then congratulating himself that no McCanahan was ever a cursed gossoon.

He let her go after a while. She was a pleasant little thing, but she was no Flaith. He said, "Suppose I agree to trade my weapon for freedom from the High Mor? How do I know the Senn can guarantee my liberty?"

"I have the keys," she whispered. "Tonight I will come for you, to lead you through the dungeons, to the vaults below the dungeons, where the sea seeps in through solid rocks. No sfarran ever walks down there. It is a dead, damp place. But the Senn go there to hide from the sfarri. It is the one safe place on all Senorech. Slyss will take you there."

He lingered over her lips, close by the unlocked cell door, to bind their bargain. But when she was gone, he took to pacing his cell, his brows drawn together. She wants more than the body of Kael McCanahan, that one, he told himself. The weapon I possess, and me! Or am I playing the buffoon in thinking she was fond of me? He went back over their meetings and discovered to his chagrin that each of her moves seemed calculated. Like a sfarran! Cold, careful! Even her kisses lacked the fire such a woman should bring to them!

As the sun sank below the hills above Akkalan, the McCanahan rested. He was fresh when Slyss came to him on her bare feet, her key grating silently into the cell lock. "Slib, the jailer, lies drugged with wine," she told him. "He won't stop us."

She went quickly along the cell corridor ahead of him. At an intersection in the rock walls she slipped to the right, into dark shadows. He heard the rough grate of metal, and a section of the floor was rising and falling, as a balanced slab of rock fell back to expose a number of handhewn stone ledges that served as steps.

Slyss went first. The McCanahan came after her, and at her whispered bidding, tilted the stone slab back into place. An instant before it fell, as his eyes were still above the floor level, he saw a man standing in the cell corridor, grinning at him.

The McCanahan almost cried out to Slyss.

The man in the cell corridor was burly, with black hair matted over his chest. He jangled a ring of keys at his side. It was Slib, the jailer, and his little eyes were clear and evil.

No man who lay drugged with wine ever boasted eyes like that! The only thing that troubled Kael was whether Slyss knew the jailer was awake and watching. If she knew, then he was being led into a trap, like a steer to the axing. If she did not know, then she was taking herself unwittingly into that same trap.

The McCanahan kicked off his buskins and walked with bare feet after the girl, along the cool damp floor of the sea vaults. In olden days, the primal men of Senorech had made their coves in these vaults to escape the ravening monsters of the dawn era. Here and there, in the light of the torches along the wall, he could see piles of white, bleached bones.

They walked for more minutes before he heard the faint rasp of metal touching rock.

Slyss was whirling, crying out.

From the shadows, men came leaping. As he plunged sideways, Kael noted that they were hardfaced Senn warriors. There was not a sfarran among them.

The McCanahan used his fist like a club, bringing its balled weight down in a full arm stroke, hitting the nearest man at the side of his neck, and driving him sideways into his companions. Before the man's falling club touched the floor, Kael held it, bringing it upward in a ceilingwise blow into the middle of the next man's belly.

Kael McCanahan had fought in the port taverns of Marsopolis and Dunverick. He had traded fists with Deneban dockwallopers and Karrvan stevedores. He knew every trick in the creeds of a dozen fighting races.

He used them all in the sea vaults below Akkalan. He used the club like a sword, driving it hard into a Senn's face. He hit backwards with it. He used an overhand, downward stroke, that drove the inches-long spikes that studded its knob, deep into a man's braincase.

It is no easy matter for ten men to cage one man. Not in dimly lighted pits, with that one man an explosive cyclone of fists and bashing club. Ten men keep getting in the way of each other. And Kael McCanahan was there to make each mistake a costly one.

He cut his opponents down to five in those first few minutes. Then he was at the wall, ripping loose the olisene-drenched torch, hurling it in their faces, to splatter in thick little globs of burning chemicals.

With their screams of pain ringing in the sudden darkness, the McCanahan slid forward into the blacker shadows. Out of sight he ran.

He found a tunnel that sliced at an angle into the main vault. He went along it, his bare feet making no sound.

He discovered another converging corridor and raced along that. Inside ten minutes, he lost himself in the labyrinthine vaults.

He came to a halt in the blackness, lungs gulping at cool air that was faintly spiced with seasalt. He listened, but heard no sound. When his heart ceased to thud so heavily against his ribs, he moved again. But now he went more cautiously, with the club before him like an overlong arm, probing the darkness.

He felt the cool updraft of air, just as his feet went out from under him.