The Two Worlds (82 page)

The loop of current dipped downward, and Thrax felt its flux of energy touching his mind. Strange sensations and a feeling of detachment swept through his being. He saw fragments of images: figures in a large hall, some seated in tiers, others standing, and a row of what looked like a tribunal of judges behind a raised bench. Then there was a flash of a completely different place, a tiny cell in which he was looking up at the ceiling. The power of the assembled monks surged around him.

"It is time! The moment has come! Arise, Thrax!" ShingenHu's voice resounded.

But suddenly everything exploded in pandemonium. From another peak outlined dimly across a deep gorge, bolts of fire curved through the darkness and burst among the rocks, causing the monks to scatter in alarm. At the same instant, winged shapes descended from above with terrible screams and slashing claws, driving them to seek cover. As the hold broke, the stream of current kinked and redirected itself toward the other peak.

A griffin swooped at Shingen-Hu and Thrax, who had been left standing alone. Shingen-Hu felled it with a lightning-dart aimed through a finger, and it fell to the ground shrieking and convulsing.

"There is another power!" Shingen-Hu cried. "See, the current is being drawn away. We cannot contest it. We are confounded!"

On the neighboring peak, Ethendor cackled gleefully. "Ha, they are undone! The current comes to us! We have it now. Rise up, Keyalo! Priests, send up your minds with him. Praise be to Vandros. Give strength now to thy servants!"

Keyalo felt powerful forces surging through him, bearing him aloft. The river of current loomed bright and pulsating before him, then everything was light.

"See, he rises up!" Ethendor exulted. "He delivers his substance to the current! He is borne into the night!"

Keyalo was pure patterns of energy, formless, unfettered. Pure being. A cosmic wind traversing a void. The void contracted, whirling and falling inward upon itself . . .

The limousine stopped in a dark, narrow street on one side of an enclosed square. There were a number of other vehicles parked nearby, several of them large and luxurious in Hunt's estimation—although his experience in judging Jevlenese standards was limited. There was little sign of life, and the few figures visible scurried through the shadows, minding their own business. Hunt and his two companions got out first, the pair of bodyguards followed, and Scirio came last. The two men up front stayed in the vehicle.

They walked a short distance along one side of the square and then turned into a walkway with weak overhead lamps and solidly constructed doorways at intervals along both sides, all closed. At the end was another alley running crossways, some stairs going up on one side, and an opening into an even dingier passageway on the other. They entered the passageway and stopped at a door whose outline Hunt could barely make out in the shadows. Somebody must have pressed a button or something, for after a few seconds a voice spoke from a concealed speaker. One of the bodyguards, a big, steely-eyed man with a gray, battleship-armor chin, whom Hunt had mentally dubbed "Dreadnought," replied. The voice said something else, and this time Scirio responded. A second or two went by, and then a spotlight came on above the door, illuminating the six figures outside. The light went out again and the door opened.

Inside, it was almost as dark as out in the passageway. And as bare. They were in what seemed to be a small foyer. It had a seat running along one wall, and a hole in the wall framing a reception desk opposite, with a door alongside. A pair of double doors led out at the rear. Scirio rapped on the door next to the desk, which was opened promptly from within. He entered, leaving Hunt, Cullen, and Murray with the two bodyguards, who lounged against the wall and stared into space. The sounds of several voices talking came through the opening above the desk.

"Did you say you knew this place?" Hunt asked Murray.

"I knew it was here—I've sent people to it. But I've never used it. I've got enough spooks in my head already. I don't need this kinda shit."

"Then why couldn't you have brought us yourself, without all the performance?" Cullen asked.

Murray shook his head. "When you come here, nobody sees anything; nobody knows who you are. You wanna know if this guy you're so anxious to find is in one of the booths? There's no way you'd get to know without the boss's say-so."

Then Scirio came back out accompanied by a man in a dark jacket, whom Hunt took to be the manager. Scirio spoke rapidly to Murray, indicating Hunt and Cullen with a nod and gesturing at the door that he had just come out of.

"Step inside," Murray interpreted.

Hunt and Cullen followed the manager back through, while Murray and Scirio waited just inside the door. It was a small office, with another man sitting in an easy chair in a corner, and several screens above a console by one wall. The manager sat down at the console and brought a picture up on one of the screens. It showed people sitting at tables and in seats set in alcoves, others at a bar, mostly alone, but several in pairs and one small group talking. The lighting was evidently quite low, for Hunt could tell from the quality that the image was being enhanced.

"See if you can spot him anywhere there," Murray said.

Hunt studied the picture carefully, then shook his head. The manager operated a control on the console to single out each of the men present in turn for a close-up view. Then he shifted the view to bring different people into the field and repeated the process. Baumer wasn't there.

The manager said something in Jevlenese, and Scirio answered. "They're going to try the booths," Murray supplied.

Another screen activated to show the figure of a woman reposing in a Thurien-style neurocoupling recliner situated in a small booth. The manager flipped to the next, which showed a man with a white beard. "No," Hunt said. The next two tries were men again, negative, then another woman. Hunt ceased responding after the first half dozen or so, allowing the manager to simply step on through the list at his own pace, dwelling for a second or two when the subject was a man, and passing straight on to the next in the case of a woman.

They must have been somewhere up in the twenties when Hunt suddenly craned forward, beckoned Cullen closer with a finger, and exclaimed, "That's him!"

The manager zoomed to a close-up of the face, but there was already no doubt about it. The figure in the coupler was Hans Baumer.

"How do we get him out?" Cullen asked. The manager was already saying something to Scirio.

"They'll go get him, and we leave, okay?" Murray said. "We forget where we got him from." Hunt nodded. Illicit couplers into jevex weren't his concern. The manager called toward a room at the back, from which another man emerged, wearing a dark suit. The man in the easy chair got up, and the three of them went out into the foyer, their footsteps heading in the direction of the double doors at the rear. A moment later they appeared on the first screen, crossing the room containing the people and the bar.

In one of the booths off the corridors beyond, Baumer's eyes opened suddenly. But the person looking out through those eyes was no longer completely Hans Baumer.

The cell! Keyalo was inside the cell that he had glimpsed in the current. He sat up. A tomb! Sudden panic tore through him. Ethendor had lied. Keyalo had been consigned to a tomb. A living corpse interred to placate the underworld god. He looked about fearfully. Strange shapes, magical objects . . . Movement felt wrong, as if space itself had changed. An appendage of his body passed before him. Soft, squelchy, misshapen. He had been imprisoned in the corpse of a monster.

He had a voice, harsh and grating, and screamed out loud in dismay and terror as the full magnitude of the deception engulfed him. The altar on which he lay was soft and yielding. He leapt up and staggered against the wall as the sensations of unfamiliar movement and balance escaped his control. He staggered back, tearing at the altar with his puny claws, but without effect. He raged around the walls, beating them and screaming. Then a panel opened and black-clad demons appeared. Keyalo backed into a corner. The demons jabbered at him in a strange tongue. He raised a hand and directed a bolt toward them with all his power . . . but with no effect. His power had been taken. He screamed, howled, and raged as he realized how he had been cheated. The demons assailed him.

In the office Hunt and Cullen were on their feet, watching it all on the screen. "What the hell's happening?" Hunt demanded. Murray showed his hands helplessly and shook his head.

Two more men came out of the back room and launched into a rapid exchange with Scirio, all of them sounding terse and excited. "Looks as if the kraut's having some kinda fit in there," Murray said.

"Then let's get him out," Cullen snapped, turning toward the door.

Scirio held up a hand and said something in a sharp voice. "Not this way," Murray told them. "There's a back door. They don't want him upsetting the whole house."

Hunt and Cullen went with the others out through the foyer and the doors at the rear into the bar area that had appeared on the screen. They crossed at a smart pace, attracting curious looks, and went through another door into one of several corridors lined by doors on both sides. As they rounded a corner they met the manager and the two who had gone with him manhandling Baumer the other way, struggling, kicking, and emitting muffled screams behind the hand clamped across his mouth.

"Christ," Hunt breathed, shaking his head in bewilderment. "It looks as if he's flipped. What do we do now?"

"That machine must have scrambled his head," Cullen said, staring numbly.

Hunt stepped forward and peered into Baumer's face as he was brought to a halt. It was wild and flushed, the eyes bulging maniacally.

"Gina?" Hunt shouted desperately. "Can you understand me? It's important.
Do-you-know-where-Gina-is?
"

How, Keyalo didn't know, but this demon's speech was intelligible to him—although the name the demon had uttered meant nothing. He jerked his head back and tore his mouth away from the paw gagging him. "Unhand me, demons of the underworld who dwell in these tunnels of darkness! I shall not be enslaved by thy falsehoods, but swear allegiance to the true god of the spiral whom I renounced. For this is his punishment visited upon me! Oh woe! Now do I see the errors of—" A straight right to the jaw from Dreadnought put him out, and he fell limp in the arms supporting him. Scirio blasted a stream of invective at Murray.

"Get him out of here," Murray interpreted, although it was hardly necessary. "Compliments to the Ganymeans. If they stick around, he hopes they'll remember their friends."

Hunt and Cullen each took one of Baumer's arms and bore him along a side passage to where one of the staff was already unbolting a door. They came out into a rear yard, and two of the staff took them to the nearest street, where a cab called from the office picked them up a few minutes later.

"Now what?" Hunt asked, when he had collected his wits together again.

"Shit, I don't know. Another one for the rubber room, I guess," Cullen replied.

"I'll tell you something else," Murray said. He motioned with a thumb in the direction they had come from. "This wasn't the first time it's happened. Those guys back there have seen it before. Maybe that's another reason they don't like publicity."

They dropped Murray off, then continued on to PAC with their still-unconscious charge. But when they finally arrived back at the UNSA labs, they found that the whole episode had been unnecessary. Gina had walked back in while they were gone, still in one piece and looking as well as ever.

Hunt stood with his back to one of the benches in the UNSA labs, his hands loosely gripping the edge on either side of him. Gina sat at the worktable in the middle of the room, chewing a chicken sandwich from the store of good, tasty, Earth-style food that Duncan had accumulated. The one visible effect on Gina after her disappearance was that she was hungry. Sandy was sitting across from her, listening and saying strangely little.

"Okay, let's go over the main points again," Hunt said. "You set out from PAC and saw some of the surrounding parts of Shiban center."

Gina nodded. "A kind of introductory tourist walkaround."

"You didn't have any set agenda?"

"No. It was just to help me get my bearings . . . and to get to know each other a little better, I guess."

Hunt threw a doubtful glance at Del Cullen, who was leaning with his shoulder against an equipment cabinet, his arms folded. "Weren't you supposed to be meeting some people from these Jevlenese historical societies, or something like that?" Cullen queried.

Gina shook her head firmly. "That was going to be the day after."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. You must have got the dates mixed."

Hunt frowned as he listened. That was not the way he remembered it, either. "Do you remember the names of any of these people?" Cullen asked, obviously with a view to checking it out. "Or the organizations they were with, maybe?"

"No, I'm afraid not. Baumer had it all in his head. There didn't seem any reason for me to go writing it all down at the time."

Cullen nodded, letting it go at that. They weren't going to get anything out of Baumer now.

"Okay," Hunt said. "Then what?"

"We went through a kind of street market, underneath some huge, curving shapes going up into the sky—as if they were part of something from way back that never got finished. It was full of junk, old clothes, secondhand stuff, that kind of thing. Seemed to be a freakout place for the local dropout culture."

"Kinchabira. I know the place," Cullen interjected, nodding.

"Baumer blamed it all on Thurien lack of discipline and control. He seemed to think a good dose of Nazism would work wonders." Gina nibbled another piece of her sandwich and took a sip of coffee—real. "Then there was a deposit company that seemed to be turning itself into a bank. He didn't approve of that, either."

"And we're quite sure that his motivation wasn't simply the obvious?" Hunt asked. "I mean, here's this guy, stuck out here on his own for a long time. Pretty girl from home shows up . . ."