The Well of The Worlds

VI

They had been sitting silent for about ten minutes, exchanging occasional looks of dislike, when a curious humming sound began to be heard from a corner of the cell opposite to the door by which they had entered. Both turned to look. Low down in the corner a square of the wall about three feet across had begun to shimmer violently. As they watched, the surface of the square became translucent, showed for a moment or two a complex hexagonal crystalline pattern, and then broke up entirely into a pale green vapor which puffed outward into the cell with a burst of quick heat that brought sweat to their foreheads.

The heat dissipated rapidly. The air was hazy with green vapor, and the square in the wall stood open and empty. Like the dry-ice of solid carbon dioxide, the molecules of the substance making up the wall had apparently been moved to evaporate abruptly without the need of melting into liquid form. The wall had altered in form but not in substance, and the vapor which had in its solid condition been impermeable now hung like a green fog in the air, leaving an exit open.

A supercilious, glass-crowned Isier head now appeared through the opening and regarded them with complete objectivity, as a human might glance into a chicken-coop and observe the inmates. Even that god-like brow, however, was sweating beneath the crown. The heat which had vaporized the wall must have been considerable.

The large, half-lidded eyes of the Isier considered Sawyer coldly, moved to Alper, summed him up in a glance and apparently decided that he was the man the Isier had come to find, for without entering the cell any farther, the demigod brought a long non-human hand into sight and tossed into Alper’s lap a package about ten inches square. It was black, and it shimmered dazzlingly.

Before anyone could move or speak the Isier head withdrew, supercilious to the last. For an instant the opening in the wall stood empty. Then a gust of intense cold soughed through it into the cell. All the molecules of the green vapor, which had been rioting energetically in the heat, now obeyed the laws of their kind by condensing with a rapidity unknown upon Earth. In the blink of an eye the vapor had been sucked backward into the emptiness whence it had come, the air was clear again and the wall unbroken.

Alper touched the package on his knee gingerly. He gave Sawyer a suspicious glance. The package solved his problem at this point by collapsing suddenly from its solidly compact cube into a limp, unfolding bundle of shimmering black cloth, so totally black that the eye could not fix upon it, but slid repeatedly away for lack of anything to focus on. The bundle had been wrapped, apparently, not in a confining paper or carton, but in a little cubical force-field of its own. When this unique wrapping let go, something like a cloak of remarkable volume for the original size of the bundle spilled over Alper’s knees and onto the floor. Out of its unfolding center a little cone of white paper popped with a brisk snap, and unfolded itself noisily, lying flat.

Alper took it up by its extreme corners. There was writing on the white surface. Alper’s eyes moved rapidly down the lines. Then a look of triumph lighted his face. He laughed in a sudden bark of elation and glanced up at Sawyer, his hand moving in the same instant to his pocket.

Thunder and lightning. Down between the lobes of his brain Sawyer felt jagged sheets of blindness flashing. His own blood-beat, amplified to a volume of noise like the crash of doom, blanked out everything before him.

But this time, he was ready for it. Almost ready—as ready as any man could be for the crack of Thor’s hammer on his bare brain. He saw Alper’s hand move. He read aright the expression on Alper’s face in the instant before the motion started. And the decision which had been crystallizing in his mind ever since the last time Alper had used the transceiver took over his muscles and his nerves without any need for further thought.

Before the thunder split his skull apart he was off the floor; he was in mid-air when the lightning struck. And Alper’s attention was partially distracted by the message in his hand and the mystifying cascade of blackness across his knees. If it was a half-unconscious man who struck him in that long leap across the cell, it was still a heavy and a desperate man.

The impact knocked Alper sidewise. He flung up both startled hands to fend Sawyer off, and with the release of contact in his pocket, the thunder ceased abruptly in Sawyer’s head.

It was no fault of Sawyer’s that he did not kill the man. He meant to. As Alper struggled up to meet the attack Sawyer knocked him sidewise with an edge-of-the-hand blow meant for the side of Alper’s neck. Luckily for Alper it struck him across the cheek-bone instead as he rose. Sawyer’s other hand sank into his belly, doubling him forward, and Sawyer’s lifted knee smashed him squarely in the face.

Sawyer bent over the writhing body on the floor, hand lifted for the sidewise crack across the base of the brain that would certainly finish him. And then caution returned in a faint glimmer of warning. If Alper died, would the transceiver explode in his own head?

Carefully, he clipped Alper on the jaw. And once again. He paused, watching, making sure that Alper was unconscious. Then with rough hands he turned the man over and reached into that fatal coat pocket from which the thunder in his brain had been triggered. He found a small flat case the size of a wristwatch. Very cautiously he put a featherweight of pressure on it. An ominous humming sounded in his head as his own blood and breath roared loud in the cavities of his skull.

He leaned forward, releasing his finger’s pressure. His ear was close to the coat pocket.

“Alper,” he said softly. “Alper?”

From the little case, a thin voice that was his own echoed the name. So it was a radio receiver, too. Alper had not lied about that. The multi-purpose transceiver on his own head was also a microphone that could betray him to Alper no matter how far away he might go.

He drew a deep breath and pulled the case out of Alper’s pocket. It came easily. It was not attached by any visible or tangible cord. But as it left the damping influence of Alper’s body-field the low humming began again, and the farther it was removed the louder the humming grew. Sawyer stepped back two paces and the humming became low thunder. He shook his head violently and stepped back another pace.

Then he leaped blindly for Alper’s body and thrust the case back into the pocket it had come from. The violence in his head ceased as softly as if it had never been.

So he was in a complete dilemma. He could not endure the coercion of the transceiver any longer, and he could not endure the only means of stopping it. He flexed his hand eagerly and looked down at the helpless form of his tormenter, whom he dared not kill, for fear of splitting his own brain apart.

Alper had said there was a shut-off switch in the control case. He had added that Houdini couldn’t locate it and only a differential analyzer could find the combination. Sawyer gingerly reached into Alper’s pocket again and drew out the flat metal case.

Perhaps the secret of the shut-off switch’s camouflage was in its simplicity. Or perhaps that was the one point on which Alper had lied, Sawyer thought—perhaps there was no shut-off switch. He studied the case carefully. Even with all the time in the world, he wondered if he would be able to locate the switch and find the combination—if it existed.

Ten minutes later, convinced of failure, he put the case back in Alper’s pocket and turned to the note that had touched off Alper’s attack on him.

It rustled crisply between his fingers. It was smooth and white, and the writing upon it was ordinary English in a curiously looping hand, traced as if by fingers that had not learned English script until lately. It was, however, perfectly coherent.

“Alper: I will save you if I can. I need your help. I want the Firebird you stole. You want to live. We can make a fair trade if you do exactly as I tell you. Here is a black cloak such as the Temple’s servants wear on private errands for the Goddess. Within limits it should make you moderately invisible after dark. You can open the wall by pressing one of the studs along the hem of the cloak against any spot that glows when the stud approaches it. Let go of the stud as soon as it adheres or you will burn your fingers. When the hood covers your head you will hear a humming signal that will guide you to me if you keep it constant as you walk. Stay in the shadows, speak to no one and answer no questions. You don’t need to, for you will be wearing the Goddess’s robe.”

The last paragraph was underlined heavily. “I can do nothing for you unless this is kept secret. Make sure that the man with you is dead before you go. The Firebird will give you enough energy to kill him. But open the Firebird only when you and the other Earthman are alone, or it will be taken from you by the Isier guards; and do not leave it open longer than is necessary to gain the energy you need.”

The signature at the end of this businesslike message was simply, “Nethe.”

Sawyer looked down at Alper and with a strong effort controlled the new impulse to kill him. He stopped and shook out the cloak. The thing was light and fine and of a smoothness and blackness so complete that even held this close he could not persuade his gaze to focus clearly on it.

He had no idea what lay outside or what Nethe’s real plans were, but anything seemed preferable to helplessness and captivity here. The only drawback was that no matter where he went or how successful he might be in winning his way to comparative freedom, he would have won nothing worth having if Alper could split his skull wide open whenever the whim seized him.

Sawyer shook his head again, hard, quite sure that there was an answer in it if he could only shake the right idea into place. And perhaps the shake did it. For in another moment he suddenly laughed, dropped the cloak, and stooped to roll Alper over, freeing his pockets. He found the golden Firebird device in the third pocket he tried.

With Alper’s own pen he wrote a note on the back of Nethe’s paper:

“Thanks for the cloak and the Firebird. I wish I could have killed you. I know my life depends on yours. I’m now putting you in a position where yours depends on mine—it’s safer for me than depending on any truces you make. Use the transceiver on me once more and you’ll never know what became of the Firebird. Let me alone and if my plan succeeds I’ll come back for you. This is the only bargain I can offer. Take it or leave it. But I warn you. If you touch the transceiver’s control again, you’ll never touch the Firebird. You have enough energy from it now to last you until we meet again. Whether you get any more depends on me. Remember that before you use the transceiver.”

There was no need to sign the note. Sawyer wrapped it around the control case in Alper’s pocket. Then he shook out the cloak, tossed it about his shoulders, pulled the hood over his head and ran the hem of the cloth through his fingers until he found a row of small, detachable studs.

The wall through which the Isier had come and gone glowed in one spot when the stud approached it. Sawyer touched stud to glow, felt it cling, and jumped back as fast as he could. The wall shimmered with crystalline patterns, the heat burst from it, the pale green vapor formed again and the air-pressure in the cell heightened as the wall grew volatile and the low gateway opened.

Through the haze of solid substance made gaseous enough to pass, Sawyer crawled rapidly. The Firebird in his pocket made a spot of faint, tingling warmth at his side. He had a moment’s regret that he had not opened the little, golden miracle to allow the flood of rejuvenating energy to pour through him—Nethe’s message had implied that the Firebird gave out no energy unless it was opened. He felt tired and hungry and thirsty, but these matters were not important, compared to the real problem. He had a job to do, and he did not quite know how to go about it.

Ahead glimmered light, and the drifting haze of rain.

Rain in long, slanting sheets fell sparkling along the streets in the light from curtained windows. It drummed on the hood Sawyer had drawn over his head, ran in cold streams from his shoulders, sometimes half drowned out the steady buzz that hummed in his ears to summon him to Nethe. He went slowly through the nearly deserted streets, keeping himself oriented by the humming noise that sounded from two small studs sewn into the hood in the vicinity of his ears.

He kept to byways when he could. He had suspended disbelief, because he had to. Obviously he was walking the streets of a city upon a world that could not be his own. The very existence of the Isier proved that. How very unlike his own planet it was he had not yet learned, but he knew enough to go warily.

The Isier seemed to have some command over a technological system. At least, they recognized the conductivity of copper, as in the Temple curtain, for a force which had behaved like electricity. And the vaporization of the cell wall was another trick behind which you would expect a whole recognizable technology to lie. The pressure of stud to wall had clearly excited very rapid molecular activity to the end result of producing heat enough for vaporization. How the reverse action was triggered remained obscure, but condensation certainly stopped the molecules dead in their tracks and restored the former state of matter in the wall.

Still, you couldn’t prove anything by the fact that they understood certain chemical and physical properties of matter. Societies may have some touching points in common and yet be totally unintelligible to each other on many levels. Perhaps in each, at sunset, fires would be lighted, meals cooked, lamps would burn, dogs would bark and women would call children in out of a sudden shower. But you could not, by these things alone, guess what values moved the people of an unfamiliar world.

Anyhow, Sawyer thought, somewhere among these wet rooftops was an old man’s house where Klai was at this moment probably sitting beside a fire, retelling her dreamlike experiences in a dream-world called Earth.

The humming in his ears hesitated suddenly and then seemed to shift direction. Sawyer turned his head from side to side, puzzled, in an attempt to orient himself by the sound. After a moment he turned at right angles to his original course. Nethe was on the move too, it seemed.

Where was he really going? Violently he wished for the ability to speak the local language. If he could get to Klai and Grandpa, half his problem would be solved. But he could wander forever before sheer chance took him where he wanted to go, and in the meantime Nethe or one of the other Isier would be certain to seize him.

If he didn’t turn up at Nethe’s rendezvous within a reasonable time, she would probably come to find out why. It seemed at least possible that she could trace him through this cloak as readily as he could trace her. And if he discarded it his only disguise was gone.

But he had something of immense potential value to Nethe—the Firebird. It seemed to Sawyer that the best bet might be to find a hiding place for the Firebird and then meet Nethe, keeping a safe distance from her—he had great respect for the strength in that tornado-like body—and bargain for whatever seemed most desirable. Information, for example, about how the Firebird could be made to open the Gateway back to Earth.

You couldn’t plan too far ahead under circumstances like these. There was too much that was totally unknown. It was always possible that Nethe might lean out of the next window he passed, knock him over the head and loot his unconscious body. All he could do was go warily, watch the shadows, and trust that providence would defend the right. Providence in this world seemed to be most unfairly on the side of wrong, though that was a matter of viewpoint.

The key was the Firebird. He didn’t dare keep it on him or hide it.

If only Nethe would stay still, he thought irritably, pausing again as the humming veered erratically in his hood. He waited in the wet, deserted street, under a lighted window behind which a baby was crying drearily, until Nethe seemed to halt again and send out the summons more steadily. From beyond a door a dog burst into hysterical yaps as Sawyer passed and scratched in a fury against the lower panels.

As it happened, the same shrill dog gave him his first clue that he was perhaps being followed. The dog subsided after he had passed, only to burst into sudden fresh hysteria when Sawyer was a hundred feet away. He stepped into the deepest shadow he could find and looked back suspiciously. But the shadows gave shelter to his follower too, if he had one, and he saw only the empty street, heard only the furious, muffled yappings and the assault of scratching nails upon a door.

He went on after awhile, because there seemed no alternative. At least, he himself was totally invisible as long as he stayed in the shadows. He kept a careful watch behind him after that.

The faceted thing that linked him to Alper was grotesquely like a third ear laid flat against his very thoughts. What ever he said to Nethe, when he met her, he would be saying to Alper too if Alper chose to listen. And whatever Nethe said, Alper would hear. They could make no bargain in which Alper was not a partner. Always supposing, of course, that Alper let him live, once be awoke and found Sawyer and the Firebird gone. But that was an occupational risk Swayer could not avoid. He could only ignore it, and wait.

Nethe’s summons came steadily for about fifteen minutes from the same direction, and Sawyer walked fast, keeping an alert watch, hoping this time to come within earshot of her before she shot off on another erratic flight.

Journey’s end came very suddenly.

The signal hummed strong and clear. Sawyer turned a corner and stopped so suddenly his feet skidded on the wet street. He drew back into a doorway and peered out, cursing Nethe silently. For before him a broad, lighted thoroughfare led up to and ended abruptly at a great fortified gate. High stone walls stretched left and right from it. This was clearly the very edge of the city, and for the first time Sawyer realized it was a city that expected trouble from outside.

The gate was high, and closed with enormous iron doors. On the wall-top Khom guards leaned, keeping an intent watch outward, toward some invisible source of danger in the night. Other guards, Khom in metal-studded tunics and carrying what were probably weapons but looked more like tubas, patrolled the gate.

One of the Isier, looming like a god above the short humans, was exchanging words loftily with a Khom officer. There was a great deal of orderly activity, and Sawyer’s uneasiness increased. For the summons in his ears seemed to come from directly beyond the gate, from out there in the dark.

Were the Isier searching for Nethe too? What would happen if Sawyer stepped boldly out and handed the Firebird over to this supercilious godling? What, on the other hand, would happen to him if he went blindly in answer to Nethe’s summons? He struggled with ambivalent confusion for a while. But if he surrendered now, he would be at the mercy of the unknown. Nethe’s reactions at least he could predict to some slight degree. Cautiously he withdrew down the alley. What he wanted now was an unguarded stretch of this wall.

He found it at the end of a quiet alley, got over the wall by way of a handy shed roof, and came down lightly upon wet grass in darkness on the other side. He seemed to be standing in open country, for he could make out rolling treetops, lashed by rain, and a very faint line where sky and land met between two clumps of trees.

A pinpoint of light flashed and went out again near the trees.

“Here I am,” Nethe’s voice said impatiently. “Come on. Hurry! Straight toward me and you’re all right.”

Cautiously, taking his time, Sawyer set out toward the light. Wet grass was slippery underfoot. The robe he wore was waterproof, but trickles of rain beat in his face under the edges of the hood and wind whipped its folds around his wet legs. He could make out only a dim, pale blur of a face under the trees. Between the tossing branches a brighter luminescence glowed faintly, as if a large body of water stretched away from a nearby shore, gathering all the light in the sky to its reflecting surface.

When he was about twenty feet away, Nethe said, “Wait,” and was silent for a moment while he stood there with the wind whipping the cloak around his legs and the rain streaming in his face.

Then Nethe laughed, a soft, low, triumphant sound.

“All right,” she said. “Run!”

Something about that laugh, and the tone she spoke in, rang a warning bell far back in Sawyer’s mind. He moved forward obediently, but he did not run. He felt a strange sort of tingling caution all over his body, as if the nerve-endings in his skin were desperately alert to catch the first hint of a danger he suspected but could not identify. For some senseless reason he found himself counting his strides as he moved rapidly forward toward the trees.

Seven long steps thudded softly on grass and solid ground. The eighth came down on empty space and he pitched forward into nothingness. Above him the low laugh sounded again, gloating with triumph, and footsteps drummed rapidly on turf as Nethe hurried forward to watch him fall.