Undying World

CHAPTER 16

The sirens were like none Blade had ever heard-a continuous, high-pitched hooting. He caught a glimpse of cars speeding past. Each car contained six Morphi. They wore arm brassards and snouty gas masks; each had a cylinder strapped to his back and carried a nozzled hose at the ready.

Norn pressed against Blade, clinging to his arm. Jantor was just behind. They were in an alley, some dozen buildings from the square and the Hall of Entertainment, and by some miracle they had not been spotted.

«Those masks?» asked Blade. «Why do they wear them?»

Jantor grimly explained about the laughing death powder.

«Come on,» Blade commanded. «Hurry and go quietly. Down to the sub-1 basements. Go before me, Norn. Quickly.»

Jantor began to reveal a fatalistic side. «It is hopeless. We cannot fight them on even terms. They have powder cannon as well and will set them up on every corner. As soon as they organize, we are doomed. I say to stand and kill as many as possible before we die.»

Blade called a halt. They were in a sub-1 basement, a large area evidently used for storage. Three Morphi workers, just coming awake, were slashed to bits by spear bars. Blade made a fast count. Just over a hundred of Jantor's guard.

«My people are dispersed all over the city,» Jantor continued. «I have no communication with them. They will all be hunted down.»

Blade became angry. «You have a choice,» he said curtly. «Go and give yourself up, or listen to me and obey. I tell you it is not hopeless.»

Jantor leaned on his bar and scowled around at his men. «What say you?»

To a man they shouted, «We obey you, Jantor.»

Jantor nodded at Blade. «And I, for this time, will obey you. Very well, how do you propose to get us out of this?»

Blade beckoned him to one side. «Some must be sacrificed. You choose them, say thirty men. They must go up and over the roofs, expose themselves, and draw the patrols away from the Government Building. Be sure they understand that-away from the Government Building.»

Jantor nodded. «They will all die.»

«I know. Choose them quickly.»

Blade waited with Norn while it was done. The chosen men did not question the order. They filed out and up a stair that would lead them to the roof. They knew nothing of operating the lifts, now with power restored.

Jantor said, «And now what?»

«We must remain in the basements and hack our way through the walls, heading for the Government Building. The walls are thin and no match for our bars. Begin.»

«But the direction? I cannot «

«I can. Follow me.» During his last moments above ground level, Blade had oriented himself. By bearing straight ahead and keeping the fronting street always to his right, they would reach the square surrounding the Government Building. How to cross the square was another matter. But he would leave that bridge until time to cross it. In a matter of seconds, Blade battered a hole through the thin plastic and stepped into the next basement. He told Jantor, «You take the next wall, and the man after you the next, and so on. Just enough so we can pass single file. Always a fresh man at work. Hurry now. Come on, come on!»

He fell to the rear of the line with Jantor and Norn. Jantor's spirits were sinking again. «We are fools. What if we do reach Government Building? That is the first place the patrols will go after they realize what has happened.»

Blade put an arm around Norn. «I am counting a great deal on that. It will take them time to realize just what has happened. I thought you wrong to destroy the council of elders, but now it may save us. The Morphi will be confused and leaderless. They have just come awake without knowing they have been asleep. Most of them will have no idea of what is happening. Some will know that there are Gnomen above-ground and they will leave it to someone else to handle. Has there ever been a Gnomen rebellion before?»

With some pride Jantor said, «I am the first who ever dared.»

«Good. Chaos and confusion will work for us. The patrols are sure to go after the decoys. Will you other Gnomen, those scattered about the city, put up a fight?»

Jantor nodded gloomily. «They will die fighting, as best they can. Most of them are drunk, though, and will be no match for the patrols.»

«They will still buy us time,» said Blade. «Now you, Jantor, go to the fore and keep your men at it. Push them. Kill whoever slackens, as an example. Let no Morphi escape to tell the patrols where we are.»

When the big Gnomen king had gone, Norn looked at Blade and whispered, «Is not this all a lie, man Blade? You do not really think we can escape and live?»

Blade met her glance. «You are right. We have no chance-unless we can find masks to guard against the powder. That would change everything.»

«I know where there are masks,» said Norn. «Great crates of them. Thousands of them.»

Blade kissed her. «Where?»

«In the basement of a building on the square across from the Government Building. I followed Sybelline one time and saw them. I thought nothing-«

Blade did not hear her. He seized her arm and ran to the head of the line where another wall was being pierced. Jantor plunged through the opening with a great shout. Five Morphi, surprised at a game of chance, tried to scurry off in terror. Jantor speared one and his men two more. Blade, on Jantor's heels, hurled his spear bar at the fourth. But it was the fifth and last Morphi who nearly did them in. He did not flee.

Instead he snatched a canister from a wall rack and directed a fine spray of compressed powder at Jantor. One of the king's subchiefs leaped in time to take the spray squarely in the face.

A dozen spear bars tore the Morphi to pieces. The subchief collapsed, laughing, agony in his brown eyes. Jantor knelt, and for a moment stroked the man's head. Then he rose and lifted his bar.

«It was a gallant thing he did for me. I cannot leave him for them to find.» He smashed the man's skull.

Blade picked up the canister and examined it. It was small, with no straps for carrying on the back. Instead it could be carried in one hand and operated by pressing a button. There was no hose.

He held it up for all to see. «Keep on the lookout for these. And for the larger cylinders. Maybe we can turn their own weapons against them.»

«They will have masks,» said Jantor.

«So will we if our luck holds,» Blade answered, and explained what Norn had told him.

Blade had reckoned very near. Four more walls down and he ordered a halt. He whispered to Jantor. «Absolute silence. I will go ahead with Norn and seek the masks.»

With Norn slipping along behind him, Blade ascended to the first basement, then up more stairs to a door that opened on a lobby. He cracked it open and peered out. The lobby was strewn with a mix of Morphi and Gnomen corpses. «Stay here,» he told Norn. «I must pretend to be a corpse.»

Blade slid out the door on his belly. He moved like a snake among the real dead to the entrance where, lying between bloody and depowered Morphi males, he could see out into the square and across to the circular Government Building. One glance was enough. There were cars and foot patrols all about the entrance and scattered about the square. Near the plastic portico was a slim barreled cannon a high tripod. Three Morphi manned it. A hose ran from four tall, connected cylinders to the breech of the cannon. Blade winced. He did not have to see the cannon in action to guess that it could cover the square with a high-pressure jet of laughing death powder. The masks! Without them there was no hope and-

He heard a high wailing scream and something came plummeting down to splash in the square. Then another and another. Blade felt sick and wondered if he had gone mad? He stared at the oozing red bodies of Morphi women. They had jumped?

Another high scream and a body splashed just outside the entrance. Blade thought he could hear similar screams from all directions now. What the hell was going on? He crawled back to where Norn waited. She had heard the screams and when he told her what he had seen she smiled.

«It is nothing you can prevent, man Blade, nor is it important to us. The Morphi women have discovered that they have been raped by Gnomen. So they kill themselves. Some will jump, some use the little knives, some the death powder. It is their custom. Those who do not commit suicide-and there will be some-will be sent down to the sewers.»

Blade knew he was hard, coarsened by his many lives in Dimension X, but this dented him. He fought back his revulsion. «Jantor knew of this custom?»

«Of course. It is why he insisted that every Morphi woman be raped. It saves the trouble of killing them and gives pleasure to the troops. It aids in decimating the Morphi as they would decimate the Gnomen. Of course he knew. Jantor planned it so.»

Blade listened to the screams, imagined those he could not hear, coming from far out over the endless city, and spoke harshly to Norn. «Crawl to the door, feigning death, be very careful. Spot the building where the masks are stored and point it out to me. Hurry!»