Sandcats of Rhyl (10 page)

Nightwind strode off down the hillside into the city. In spite of what he told the other two, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was blasphemous to speak in a normal tone in this city. As if in a library, he instinctively kept his voice low. No echoes sounded. His tread was silent, the golden ribbon on which he walked drinking the sound. The buildings surrounding him were so spectacular he quickly lost the sense of presence, of not being alone with his two human companions. Awe overrode his caution, and he played the part of tourist to the hilt.

There was so much around him it was difficult knowing where to look first. The buildings were constructed of precious stones, of that he was certain. The gleam couldn’t be reproduced in anything less than sapphire or ruby or diamond. The street was soft under his feet but appeared even more like gold close up than it had from a distance. The light permeating the cavern was subdued, tasteful. Everything about the city indicated a high level of artistic achievement in the builders.

The flying buttresses arching to the ruler-straight walls of Devil’s Fang supported buildings of impossible height and grace. The spires simply couldn’t rise so high with such elegance, yet they did. The materials were cut through with oval openings, sharp razorlike cuts, a variety of different shaped perforations serving no purpose except decoration that Nightwind could discern.

Letting Heuser and Richards wander down the winding street, he entered a building constructed from the finest of blue sapphire. Inside, it was difficult to determine the purpose of the structure. An office, perhaps, or a personal dwelling. The furniture was low, sturdy and obviously not designed for a human frame. Nightwind lightly touched one couchlike piece of furniture and noticed something which had been nagging at his mind since entering the city. There was no dust on any of the furniture. The streets were clean, tidy — and dust free. The air inside was clear and pure with just a hint of humidity. Pulling away his filter, he inhaled deeply. The air was as fresh and cool as any gently blowing across a mountain meadow on agentler world. Through some process not immediately apparent, the entire hollowed center of Devil’s Fang was air-conditioned.

And the more he saw of the city, the more certain he was that Devil’s Fang was artificial. What race could manufacture an entire mountain to house a city stolen from a fairy tale?

Hearing Richards shout, he drew his needlegun in a blur of motion and sprinted for the door. The man was standing in the center of the street, his hands filled with gems of all descriptions. Richards dropped all but one. This he held high over his head. “Look! It’s glowing! We’re rich! RICH!”

Nightwind holstered his pistol and leaned back against the cool wall of the sapphire building. Heuser was a few steps away, lost in sheer awe of the majesty of the city. And the glowing jewel cast an eerie light over Richards.

Nightwind knew why Dr. Alfen had called this find utterly beyond belief.

It was.

The Watcher sensed the delicate probe into his mind. The feathery tendril became electric. The sandcat followed the sharply defined thought until the humans’ aircar was in sight. A hole had been cruelly gouged in the wall of the Ancient Place, and the last of the humans was vanishing into that black well.

The sandcat was uneasy. It had failed at the duty given it by the Old Ones. Humans were entering the Ancient Place, the one spot absolutely forbidden them, or any alien, by custom established by the Rulers eons ago. What was worse, the Watcher was unable to pinpoint the source of telepathic emanation intruding on its mind. No human could generate such a powerful, concise thought. They were producers of white noise, mental static. This was definite thought; it was telepathy at the very limits of detection.

But that was unimportant. The Old Ones would be able to deal with a telepath. The human invasion of the Ancient Place was desecration not to be endured. A powerful thought hurled through space, was received, was acted upon.

The Watcher’s mental warning alerted others. The humans would be dealt with inside. The sandcat gracefully padded back to find the other mechanism containing the remaining three humans. The duty of the Watcher could not be ignored. That so many of the humans bothered entering the desert at this time was something of a puzzle, but like all else, it was a puzzle to be solved by the Old Ones. The sandcat’s duty was to watch, to warn.

It watched.

The mental message flashed through the Guardian’s mind. The walls had been breached by humans. This time there would be no quarter. The Guardian mistakenly allowed a few of the humans to escape when last they skirted around the Ancient Place. Now they entered the forbidden city. This time none would leave.

The sandcat summoned a force sufficient to deal with three humans. A steady stream of the beasts flowed like quicksilver into tunnels barely large enough to accommodate their massive, powerfully muscled bodies. Inside the glowing cavern, the Guardian paused. A thought of singular intensity prodded at the corners of its mind. No human had displayed intelligence before; there was no reason to suspect any ever would.

Yet a thought hovered like a sandfly at the boundaries of the Guardian’s mind, flitting back and forth, teasing, tantalizing. The sandcat pushed it aside. It was a minor annoyance, one the Old Ones might find of interest. A Guardian was entrusted with a duty not to be shirked because of mere curiosity, a happening not easily explained.

The sandcat crouched down on a precipice overlooking the city of the Rulers. The three humans could be seen, tiny black dots moving along golden pavement. The Guardian’s duty was crystal clear.

The invading humans must die.

“I CAN SEE THE HOLE they blasted in the rock,” said Slayton, his eye pressing firmly against the rim of his telescopic sight. “I couldn’t tell what kind of explosive they were using, but it worked like a charm. All three of them went into the hole. Where they’re going, I don’t know, but this looks like the payoff.”

“Did they blast a tunnel or was it more like they were entering a chamber?” asked Steorra.

Slayton rolled over and looked up at her. The girl still naively thought he and Dhal were going to rescue her father’s discovery for her. It wouldn’t hurt to string her along a little more. Then, he and Dhal would simply remove her from the game — but not until they had a little fun with her. She was too pretty simply to waste.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I can’t tell from here. The way they scrambled in, they might have been going into a chamber. Maybe a mine shaft?” He could detect no trace of emotion in the woman. He continued to probe for information. “It might be they were looking for something in the rubble.”

“I doubt it.”

Slayton glanced over at Dhal. The man was fingering the blaster holstered at his waist. Slayton shook his head slightly. Dhal’s disgusted look made Slayton smirk. As long as the other knew who was in command, they’d get along fine. If Dhal slipped — or turned his back — things might become more permanent. Slayton didn’t kid himself that the other felt any bonds of friendship or loyalty. It was a brutal world, and only the strong survived.

So far, Lane Slayton proved himself the stronger by surviving. At any cost. “Let’s go after them. We won’t learn anything sitting out here begging for sunstroke. And those damned panthers bother me.”

“Sandcats,” corrected Dhal. “They’re probably not even remotely related to panthers. Besides, those cats are black, I think. These blend in with the sand like they were transparent.”

“Since when did you get to be the expert on native wildlife?”

“Since you didn’t seem interested, Slayton. You should have paid more attention to a lot of things. Maybe the aircar wouldn’t be in such bad shape if you had — ”

“Stop it!” cried Steorra. “Don’t you
ever
stop fighting? You’re getting on my nerves. And I wish you hadn’t shot at that sandcat, if that’s what they call them here.”

“Why not? The damn thing was stalking us. Who knows what it eats out here? Like as not, it considered us dinner on the hoof.”

“Never mind,” Steorra said tiredly. “I want to stop them before those … those thieves can steal anything.”

Slayton stood, brushed off sand and bowed deeply from the waist. The filter over his face hid the leer on his lips. How stupid this woman was! She didn’t even realize that the others were as good as dead. As soon as they reached their aircar, it would easily be put out of commission. A disconnected part hidden away and the aircar would never fly again. Just insurance against anything going awry.

Slayton tossed the blasterifle to Dhal, saying, “Put it away. We won’t be needing it for a while yet.”

He drove with reckless skill over the dunes and killed the engines when he glided up beside Richards’ aircar. He irised open the door and inclined his head toward the other machine. Dhal quickly slipped out to disable the aircar.

Slayton said to Steorra, “I think we can safely follow them. What worries me more is getting shot by accident. Are you any good with that gun you’re carrying?”

Her hand moved a few millimeters closer to the small-bore blaster she carried. “No,” she admitted, “I’m not very good with it. It … it was my father’s. I don’t know exactly how accurate I could be with it.”

Slayton gave it an expert look. The compact blaster was well used, powerful. It would blast in a wide-beam dispersion that could take out a half-dozen targets at ten meters. It was no toy.

“If you don’t mind, either leave it behind or let me have it. I like to think the people behind me are top-notch marksmen. If you aren’t sure how good you are, I don’t want you behind me. And I doubt if you want to go in first.” Slayton gave her an appraising look. In spite of her features being hidden by the filter, he knew she was going to give in to his demands.

“Well, all right. I’ll leave the blaster here if you think you won’t be needing an extra — untrained — gun.”

“I couldn’t advise you any other way,” Slayton said.

And he wouldn’t. When the time came to eliminate Steorra, he didn’t want her shooting back. Even amateurs sometimes got in lucky shots. He stayed alive by stacking the deck whenever possible.

“Ready to go, Lane,” called Dhal. He lifted his hand in the highsign indicating the other aircar was out of commission. Slayton nodded, reached under the control panel and began fumbling for the computer interface. It was a plug-in modular unit and allowed the computer to directly control the aircar. With it removed, the computer was useless. He pulled the small box out and put it into his pack.

“What are you doing?” asked Steorra. “What was that you took out from the control panel?”

“Insurance, my dear, insurance. Now let’s get moving. I want to see what this fine discovery of your father’s is.” His gentle reminder of their mission took her mind off the ramifications of damage to the interface unit — or Slayton’s control as long as he possessed the vital component.

“Very well.”

They climbed out of the aircar. Slayton and Dhal strained to manually crank shut the door. Without the computer interface, none of the automatic equipment worked. Once shut, Dhal snarled, “Don’t get any fancy ideas, Lane. You got the unit — and I’ve got the other one from Nightwind’s aircar. Do we read each other?”

Slayton looked into the cold eyes and smiled. “You do me a disservice, Dhal. Would I doublecross you? We don’t know for certain if there’s anything worth the trouble up there yet.”

Dhal snorted and stalked off. He made his way up the pile of rubble with the grace of a gazelle on the veldt. Steorra had to pick her footholds more carefully but managed. Slayton cursed as he saw how easy the other two made the climb appear. He felt as if he had both feet in buckets of eposy resin. He slipped and fell numerous times, once preventing a tumble all the way down the hill only by virtue of strong fingers gripping a rock outcropping.

He struggled to the tunnel blasted into the side of the mountain. He turned and looked back over the landscape. The desert stretched to the far horizon, clearer than he remembered seeing it before. Three tall pillars of dust bobbed and danced, hurricane force winds whipping dust up to flesh-cutting speeds. Other than the dust devils, all he saw was sand and heat shimmer. The coolness of the tunnel beckoned to him. It felt as if an air-conditioning unit was running full blast at the other end.

Slayton dropped to his hands and knees and crawled along the shaft. He could barely make out Sierra’s outline ahead of him, silhouetted by the faint light trickling back from Dhal’s lantern.

Sensing a vast space around him, Slayton rose slowly. His eyes adjusted to the faint illumination, and he saw the city. Slayton had thought he’d seen everything. Now he knew he was wrong. The funny-shaped alien he’d killed on Stryann IV babbled about cities of pure crystal. Slayton had personally seen the glory of Dubhe II. But nothing prepared him for the immensity of this. A city of precious gems.

He tried to say something, anything, and failed. His voice was caught in his throat by the breathtaking panorama stretching out before him. The high vault of the hallowed-out mountain allowed the buildings to soar so high he lost sight of their tops. The gleam of the precious gems instantly told him this was the find of the century. There was wealth of empires locked up inside Devil’s Fang.

And it was all his. Or it would be soon.

He edged closer to Dhal and whispered, “Looks like enough for both of us, huh?”

“Yeah.” Dhal stared out over the city, entranced by the same vision of wealth.

“We don’t really need the girl much longer. Do you want to remove her, or should I do the honors?”

Slayton kept his glittering, icy cold eyes fixed on Steorra. The woman was as hypnotized by the glory of the city as Dhal.

“Let’s wait awhile. Maybe she can show us where all the good stuff is. Even though it’s … it’s
fabulous,
the place gives me the creepies.” Dhal’s body shivered as if with cold.

Slayton laughed mirthlessly. “It’s just the air-conditioning turned up too high. But you’re right. Let’s give her a chance to show us around this little town.”