Android at Arms (15 page)

“But you have been there?”

“Once, with my father. There is a passage that reaches the inner corner of the old barracks—running to the commander's quarters. We stood in a window there and looked down on the courtyard where the prince vanished. A storm must have struck part of the enclosing wall, for stones were scattered inward, and we could see little of the pavement.”

“And what explanation did they have, these people who watched your prince disappear and heard him call?”

“The ignorant spoke of night demons and sorcery. The Emperor had all the scientists called in. There was only one explanation my father thought made sense—that perhaps there was another world, one on another plane of existence, and that at intervals there was a break between that world and this, so a man might be caught. Since then I have listened to off-world travelers, and I have heard of such. Alternate time streams are spoken of, layers of worlds in which history has taken some different turn. These, they say, may exist in bands side by side, so a man knowing how to go from one to another may travel, not backward in time, nor forward, but across it.”

“A most intriguing suggestion. But since that emperor closed it off, no one has gone exploring there?”

“No. That is why we will be safe there. If we do not reappear for a while, they may even think we are caught in that invisible trap.”

“Always supposing we are not! But it is within the court itself that this tricky piece of ground exists. And if we stay away from that we are safe?”

“Yes.” Good common sense. Andas's spirits began to rise. It was true that they might shelter on the edge of danger and yet avoid it. He remembered how the empty rooms of the barracks had spread before him on that other visit. And there was even a small garden beyond, which had been attached to the commander's quarters. There was a spring-fed pool there. Water—they would have water—and there could even be fruit growing wild—

He quickened pace, but there was still a difficult journey ahead. In the first place, they must pass a dangerous portion of the ways running near to his old living quarters, for only from there could he take direction to the Place of No Return. Time dragged as they made that careful circuit. When he reached a stone-walled cell into which fed four passages, Yolyos suddenly tapped him on the shoulder. The Salariki's lips were very close to Andas's ear as he whispered in a hiss.

“Someone is here. There is a stink—” His broad head swung back and forth, his nostrils wide, sucking in the dank air. “There!” With a foreclaw he indicated the passage to his left.

“Can you tell how far away?” Andas murmured. That passage soon became a flight of steps leading to a garden house where his father had enjoyed the night blooms of the qixita.

“It is not too strong.”

They could hope then, Andas believed, that the ambush had not been set within the passage, but rather where an unsuspecting fugitive might emerge into the room above. But he did not have to brave such a meeting. He was oriented enough now to find his way. He pointed to the opening directly ahead.

Not that this way was easy. The passage dropped deeper, at such a sharp angle that they soon had to clutch at small stones set in the walls to provide steadying handholds. When they reached the foot of that incline, they were walking again underwater, as the thick trickles on the walls told them. The passage narrowed, running now beside a conduit from which the lake above drained in rainy season. And there was a slime deposit where things that had never seen the light of day crawled and bred, while from it arose a vile odor.

Andas heard a coughing grunt from his companion and thought how much worse must be the torment for the sensitive nose of the alien. But at least their way led them along above that ooze and did not run beside it for long.

Three steps up and they were in another corridor surprisingly dry. This had one wall that was a series of bars chiseled out of the stone, with narrow slits between.

“What is that place beyond?”

“A wine cellar, or used to be—when the Crystal Pavilion was the home of the Empress dowagers. We are lucky, for all this section lies close to the old north gate.”

“A wine cellar. A pity that we cannot sample some of what is stored there. I am carrying a dry throat.”

“There is a garden with a spring at the old barracks,” Andas promised, though he spoke with more assurance than he felt. There could be many changes with the years, and he still flinched from thinking how many years had passed since he last walked this way, though, by his own reckoning, it was not more than ten. Yet Abena had told him it was forty-five. Could she have spoken the truth?

They climbed again, Andas counting steps. Once more they were in runways with peepholes, so there might once have been reason to spy on the inhabitants here.

“Where are we going?” demanded Yolyos as they began a second climb.

“To the roof. We must reach the upper ways now. The tunnel underground is closed.”

That was the one danger spot if they had guards with anti-grav belts on duty aloft. But there was no other way the fugitives would go.

10

They emerged on a very narrow walk of stone much bespattered by generations of bird droppings, where some spindly plants had taken root in small crevices. Their doorway had been set in the wall of a chimney, and they must walk this ledge to the end, then scramble down to the eaves, from which they could swing across to the next roof, Andas hoped.

He had lost all reckoning of day and night since he had been in the wall ways. It was now early evening. There were still sun banners in the sky at his back, giving enough light for this difficult maneuver.

Something crunched under his sandals, and he glanced down at a pile of splintered bird bones. There was no marking in the green wash of moss and plants to suggest that anything save winged creatures had come this way, but he hurried along at the best speed possible, the Salariki following effortlessly.

They slid down to the eaves, Andas expecting at any moment to be sighted by some guardsman on patrol duty aloft. That they had escaped this long seemed to him unbelievable, though it could be that the false emperor, knowing what Andas carried, was wary enough to lay nets closer to their goal. Should the key be lost, the result would be black for the empire.

It was when they reached the eaves that Andas knew desperation. When he had made this crossing before, his father had carried devices he had worked out for safety during his strange explorations. They had shot a magnetic dart across and rigged a line to which they had snapped safety belts before they took the leap. He had nothing and must depend upon his own muscles.

“We go there?” Yolyos pointed to the slightly lower roof.

“If we can make it.” Andas admitted his fear. “I only went this way once, and then we used tackle.”

The Salariki crouched, drawing his legs under him in a position that looked almost awkward. Then he took off with speed and precision, leaving Andas gasping, to land gracefully on the roof ahead.

Yolyos turned to look back, his mouth a little open so that his pointed side fangs were visible in the fading light. Fading light—Andas knew he must go now, that he could not take that leap in the dark.

“Come on!” There was impatience in Yolyos's hissed call, as if he believed that leap of no importance and could not see why his companion hesitated.

Trying to summon all his self-confidence, Andas went as far back on the cramped take-off point as he could. Before he dared have any second thoughts, he jumped.

Hands shot out, claws ripped into his coveralls, and he had only an instant or two to realize that, but for the alertness of Yolyos, he could have missed his goal. Then the other drew him to safety. He crouched beside the Salariki, shaking so that he could not immediately move on.

“Where now?” Yolyos gave him no respite. Andas realized later that the Salariki had been wise in that.

He steadied himself with a hand against the parapet of the roof and tried to forget the swimming sickness in his head, to concentrate on half-remembered landmarks. They were standing on the roof of the Tower of Alikias. Here were no inner ways; they must use the regular stairway and seek the ground floor before they could return to the dark warren.

They found the trap door. It took some anxious moments to force it up. Time had settled dust about it like a corking. And by the time they were on the narrow stair within, the evening had closed into night. Andas had stopped shaking, fastening his mind on what lay before and not behind. He was sure that they had, for the moment perhaps, baffled or outrun the hunters.

Even if he and the Emperor shared a common knowledge of the hidden ways, the other was still no thought reader and could not be sure in which direction Andas would head. In fact, their present path was so far away from the ultimate goal of the temple that it might not be suspected. He hoped that the false Andas and those obeying his orders would believe that their quarry would head at the fastest possible speed for the temple. It was there that they would be setting up the most intricate of their traps.

But the longer they had to do that, the less favorable Andas's chances became. Yet his tired brain saw no other plan possible.

He
was
tired, fatigue weighting him down with a thick smothering—just at a time when he needed to be thinking sharply, his reflexes acute. If they could reach the walled-off place, then he could rest. He said so, and Yolyos answered, his voice a purring murmur through the dark.

“True, we are not made of metal like robots. And if we are androids, it would seem that we are also heir to the ills of our prototypes.”

The air in the tower smelled of dust and faintly of animals—as if some of the long-empty rooms had been used as lairs. But they did not explore any of the chambers on the levels they passed, using the limited beams of the torch to bring them into the section just below the surface of the ground outside, where once more Andas's memory found the door to the other ways.

He set the fastest pace he could maintain, needing to find refuge where he could rest, drink, perhaps find something to ease his aching stomach. This passage ran straight, with no branching ways, until they came again to one of those very narrow stairs and started to climb. It was short, taking them up past perhaps two floors. Then Andas inserted his fingers in certain slots, having first blown the dust from them, and pulled. They stepped at last into what had been the private chambers of the guard commander in the days of the old north gate.

The windows still had protective panes, so grimed by years of neglect that one could see them only as a very vague light against the velvet dark. There were sliding inner shutters, and though the runs of these were badly rusted, they beat and hammered until they got the windows covered. Only then did Andas switch the torch on the high beam and look around.

Against one wall stood the frame of a bed, so massive that it had probably been deemed too much to be moved. Their own footprints patterned the floor, together with the tracks of small creatures that had roamed the deserted barracks at will. There was nothing else.

“You mentioned water—” Yolyos said.

“There was a garden.” Andas turned his head to the west wall as if he could see through it. “When we were here last, there was a spring there. There might even be a loquat vine in fruit. They live for years without tending.”

“I would suggest we test the existence of both—now.”

But Andas felt a reluctance to leave this shuttered room now that he had gained it. It was as if outside the walls of this one place waited all the menaces he had fled. Only the needs of his body drove him to battle that vague sensation of brooding danger.

Below the quarters of the commander stretched halls and rooms stripped now of everything that might suggest they had once harbored companies of guards. Passing these, they came out into a space between the barracks and the inner gate—to be assaulted, not by the stale, dusty air of the deserted building, but by a wave of almost overpowering fragrance, where a vine, grown wild and assertive beyond all resistance from its fellows, had run thick cables across the ground, bushes, and intervening trees, throttling them into dead skeletons fit only to support its vicious luxuriance.

Great white flowers burst in clusters along its stems, almost as if their growth was as explosive as blaster fire. And the ground was deep with rotting layers from past bloomings. Loquat indeed. Andas stared. He had never seen such a wild stand of the vine.

Beneath the clusters of flowers now in bloom hung the fruit of earlier blooming, smaller than the globes he had known, as if the strength here had gone more to flower than fruit. But it was ripe and ready for eating. They could eat, but however could they batter their way through that netting of leaf and stem to find water? He had no idea in which direction to search, and he doubted if they could get well in without jungle knives to clear a path.

“Water? I will find it!” Yolyos had been drawing deep lungfuls of the scent, as if the odor, well nigh too powerful for Andas, was as much a restorative for him as the food and drink they sought.

“That way—” He was so confident as he went that Andas followed him without question.

The Salariki did not rip and tear at the vines as Andas would have done. Rather he spread and pushed with gentleness, as if he handled something he would not harm, turning many times to hold open a space for his companion to squeeze through. It might be that he disliked the thought of breaking a path more brutally.

They had lost sight of the barracks, so deep was that growing curtain, when they at last found the spring. Once it had been piped in to feed a pond, but that bowl had long ago been broken by the roots of the vine, so that now the water gathered in a few shallow cups, trickled from one to another, and formed a stream beyond.

The water was good—how good Andas did not realize until he plunged his hands into one of the depressions again and again, bringing them cupped and dripping to his parched mouth. He had tasted wine from the Emperor's finest stock in the old days that could not compare with this.