Undying World

CHAPTER 10

Sybelline moved the mirror in her chamber and stepped into a narrow passage behind it. She readjusted the mirror and began to follow the passage on an upward slope. After a time she climbed a circular iron stair, removing a small iron lid, similar to a manhole cover in Home Dimension, and emerged in the basement of an upper-world apartment building. She paid no attention to the maintenance sleepers scattered about in their quasi-death. She had seen them a thousand times.

The service elevator, crammed with dustbins and a sweeping sleeper, was stalled between floors. Sybelline climbed six flights of stairs and let herself into a large, well-furnished apartment. She took a deep breath and sighed. This was her rightful place, here in Morphi luxury with fine clothes, servants, jewels and all the handsome men she wanted. Here she belonged.

She went to a window and stood looking out over the endless city. The silence hung like a pall; only her own movement disturbed it. She stood there for a long time gazing out at the pallid light, at the twilight world, at the sleepers and their plastic city. She had hated the Morphi all her life and still hated them. They had condemned her to the sewers because her mother had been raped by a Gnoman. How sweet it would be to repower them and then to rule them with an iron hand, to use them, to condemn some of them to the sewers and the five mile pits. It might be done. It could be done. But not yet. The Selenes, the orbfolk, were her masters. First that yoke must be broken. The man Blade might help her in that when the time was ripe.

She went to a closet and wheeled out a machine that much resembled a television set, but it had no wiring connections. She put it in the middle of the room. Next she found a long metal pole and joined it in telescopic sections. To the end of this, she attached a small mirror. She thrust the mirror end of the pole out of the window into a beam of light from the Moon and snapped the other end of the pole into a slot on the machine. She pressed a button; a needle-thin antenna rose from the machine. On its end was a ball mike. She watched the plastic screen of the machine. Nothing.

Sybelline twisted the mirror end of the pole, adjusting it until the screen began to glow. The Selenes used their powerful searchlights for messages as well as for illumination. She stood close to the screen and the ball microphone.

The face of Onta appeared. He was a bearded, placid-looking man with a high forehead, curly gray hair and narrow eyes. Like all Selenes, his head was much too big for his body and his neck accordingly thick to support it. His voice was gruff, fiat and toneless, though this was probably due to the machine. She had never seen Onta in the flesh, nor any of the Selenes.

«Reverse,» said Onta.

Sybelline pressed a button. Now the machine was picking up her image and transmitting it along the light waves to the Moon.

«What of the stranger?» Onta stared at her from the screen.

Sybelline was most careful. Onta could read facial expressions as easily as she read Morphi script.

«I know little of him,» she said. «I have sent Norn to him to spy and sound him out, and I think I can control him when the time comes. But in the meantime Jantor has him captive and he is hard at work making babies.»

Onta stared at her. «That does not suit our purpose. We wish the Gnomen race to die out. If this stranger is fertile and produces children, he will set our planning back many years. Even worse if he makes intelligent children. How is he called, this one?»

«Blade. Just that. I have had no chance to speak with him and have only seen him once. He is a killer. He killed two of the Gnomen that day. Jantor was there and I had no opportunity to learn more. Why do you not invade, Onta, as you have been promising for so long? Then you could question the man Blade to your heart's content. I grow weary of waiting. You make promises and do not keep them and-«

Onta held up a hand. The look in his eye silenced her. Sybelline caught herself and composed her features. She was still afraid of Onta and the Selenes. Rebellion was in her heart, but it was not yet time and he must not guess it. But when she had the man Blade on her side it would be different. She promised herself that.

Onta was watching her. He was head of the Department of Brain Secrets for the Selenes, and she knew how clever and ruthless he was.

«I will tell you one thing,» said Onta, «and you had better listen and understand. Nothing must happen to this stranger Blade. Our scientists want him for study. This is of utmost importance. It takes precedence over everything. You understand?»

Sybelline kept her tone meek and calm. «I understand, Onta. I will see to it. What I do not understand is why you keep delaying the invasion. Are your promises so worthless? I have done my share, carried out my tasks, and for this I was to be made Queen of the Morphi when they are repowered. How much longer must I wait?»

Onta never smiled. Now his thin lips did move in a quirking motion. «You must learn patience, Sybelline, as we Selenes know it. We plan a thousand years ahead while you plan for a day. We will keep our promise when we are ready to keep it.»

He read her face-she could not totally disguise her rage — and added, «But I can give you some comfort. The time grows near. The time when we will have need of the Morphi power. When that time comes you will be informed, and if you carry out your duties all our promises will be kept. Until that time nothing you say or think will change anything. Adjust yourself to that. Now, to more important business. Listen well and then see to it.»

«You must get control of this man Blade. Get him away from Jantor. Stop him making children. Above all do not harm him until our scientists have examined him. I know, Sybelline, that you plot against Jantor, and I suspect that you plot against me. I advise you to carry out only the first plot-against Jantor. At once. I suggest open war.»

Sybelline sneered at the machine. «With fifty men? And they more accustomed to bed than to spear bars? Jantor would be sure to win. I would lose everything.»

Onta's tones were cold. «That is your affair. You are half Morphi and have the intelligence of whole Morphi blood. If you cannot outwit and defeat a Gnoman of the sewers then you deserve to lose.»

Sybelline nearly lost her temper. «There are times when intelligence cannot stand up to brute force. If you would only send a small party to help me.»

«No,» said Onta, «not yet. We are not yet ready. You must handle it yourself. Farewell, Sybelline. Keep in touch at the regular times. And remember, above all things it is important that this stranger Blade not be harmed. Our top scientists have some very interesting theories about him, some of which I do not believe in, but they must have their chance to examine him. Keep it in mind. Goodbye.»

His image faded from the screen. Sybelline, raging within, wheeled the machine back into the closet and stored away the mirror and telescopic shaft. She was trembling with frustration. Always the same. Promises that were never kept. While she grew old and wasted her life in the sewers.

She went into the kitchen and had a drink of the Morphi sweet, canned liquid. She chose a can with a cryptic symbol stamped on it. It meant intoxicant, but Sybelline did not care. She very seldom drank the stuff, but what better time than now. She would not go back to the sewers immediately. She would stay up here in the Morphi world, surrounded by the sleepers, drink and let her fantasies take over. For a little time, at least, she would be Queen. And she knew about the pills, to be found in most medicine cabinets, that would clear her head and relieve her sickness like magic.

Sybelline drank deeply. She finished two cans of the drink and started on another. She went to lie on a sofa and gaze out the window at the lambent gray light. Far over the city she could just make out the Government Building, where the city fathers slept. What would they do, she wondered, if she were to turn on the power, then confront them and ask for her reward? Sybelline shook her head. She knew. They would either send her to the pits or back to the sewers to labor, or they might even kill her. This latter was only a slim possibility, for the Morphi rarely executed anyone. They did not have to.

She frowned. If she reactivated the Morphi, she would be betraying the Selenes and would have to answer for it. That would not be so bad if she could force the Morphi to fight for her. But how to do that?

By utter and absolute control of the power. With that threat held over them, she could make the Morphi do anything. She wondered if Jantor had the brains to think along similar lines. But how to accomplish it? The sheer physical problems were insurmountable. Who could she trust so much? Wilf? He was a sullen weakling-she never knew what was in his mind. She did not think he would betray her, but was he capable?

Norn would not do. She was only a pretty Gnomen, now crazed for sex with the man Blade. Love, she called it. Nor would any of her fifty guardsmen fit the task-they were good only to bed her and to report her every move to Jantor.

Sybelline had another can of the intoxicant and began to cry softly. At the same time she was suddenly overcome with sexual desire. She longed for Wilf, for any of her young guardsmen, even for the girl Norn or the man Blade. Why, oh why, was she so cheated of everything? Her fine brain, her body and her long life all wasted.

Suddenly she heard the fierce clamor of arms in the street below. A Gnoman voice screamed in death agony. There were harsh curses and the incessant beat of metal on metal.

Sybelline heard a shout, a stentorian bellow that could only come from Blade.

«Hurry, Sart. Help me pick it up. Heave, man. Heave!»

Sybelline ran to the window. To her left was one of the sewer kiosks. It had been knocked over, torn apart. Scattered around the ruins were four Gnomen bodies, some of them still twitching. Blade and his slave, Sart, were both covered with blood. They were in the act of heaving the great sewer lid back into its seating. Blade was still bellowing, his massive sinews shining with blood, his neck muscles bulging as he urged the slave to a final terrible effort.

A Gnoman guard was halfway out of the sewer opening. He swiped viciously with the hooked end of his bar. Blade leaped to escape the blow.

Blade let out a tremendous cry. «Now!»

They flung the sewer lid back into place. It pinched the Gnoman in half, his dying scream muted as the upper half of his body rolled away from the lower trunk, the hands and arms still alive.

Sybelline watched, frozen in mingled horror, excitement and an already beginning hope. This could be her chance. Blade had come to her. She must decide now, this instant, whether or not to commit herself.

Blade pointed to the building from which Sybelline watched. He shouted and gave Sart a shove and they were running toward it. Sybelline turned from the window and left the apartment, running to meet Blade. The intoxicant had made her unsteady and she fell several times. When she glanced down the stairwell from the second floor she saw them battered and bloody, resting on their spear bars, gasping for breath. Blade was examining a raw wound in the chest of his slave.

Sybelline shouted down the stairwell. «Blade.»

The big man looked up. He was covered with sweat and blood; wounded in half-a-dozen places. Even his coarse black beard was matted with blood. But it was his eyes-cold, fierce eyes peering from that dreadful visage-that both frightened and inspired Sybelline. They were bleak eyes and at the same time they flamed with the madness of battle. They stared up at her-alert, murderous and calculating-and Sybelline knew she had to go all the way. No retreat now.

«Up here,» she said. «Quickly.»

Blade nodded and gave Sart a little push. They began to climb the stairs, keeping the bloody spear bars at the ready.