Android at Arms (27 page)

Somewhere in the mount the Salariki had found a small bag of spices, which he kept at hand, sniffing it often. But now he let that drop so it dangled from the cord that bound it to his wrist, and he put out both his hands, claws sheathed, so Andas laid his own in them.

Delicately the claw on each forefinger extended and dug into Andas's brown flesh until a drop of blood showed.

“Lady,” said the Salariki then, “since this, my brother, has no nature-given claws to mark me, do you take the knife at your belt and do to my hands as I have done to his.”

Shara did so without question, using the point of her belt knife as delicately as Yolyos had his claws.

When drops of blood showed on his hands also, still holding Andas's hands, he raised them to his lips and touched tongue tip to the blood. Then Andas followed his example in a twin gesture that brought Yolyos's blood to his own mouth.

“Blood to blood,” said the alien. “We are clan kin now, brother. Go content that I shall stand where protection is needed for your first lady.”

So it was that with the salt-sweet taste of Yolyos's blood still on his tongue, Andas pulled on the heavy helmet of the suit and allowed the tech to fasten it. And then he clumped in the thick boots to the skimmer, taking his place in the rear by the harness that would lower him as close to his goal as the craft could get.

As they neared the site of the ruins, Andas was appalled by the task of identification here. All those towers and buildings that should have served as landmarks had been leveled, toppled, or had disappeared in craters. The skimmer circled as the pilot waited for Andas's choice of landing site. In this awkward suit he could not climb far among the debris below. He would have to be put down only a short distance away from his goal. But where was the temple?

Then he was able to trace what he thought was the Gate of Nine Victories. He waved the pilot eastward. There he saw the broken pillars of what could only be the colonnade of the temple terrace. Andas signaled, hooking the descent line to the belt already buckled about him. The hatch in the belly of the skimmer opened as the machine went on hover, and Andas clambered through.

The lowering cord played out slowly and evenly, and it continued to reel on as, twisting and turning, he descended to what had once been the entrance to the temple. As he went, Andas studied what lay below, trying to locate the points of reference he needed. The closer he approached, the more the temple showed its hurts. Walls had collapsed, but there seemed to be open spaces enough to enter.

His boots touched pavement, and he moved his gloved fingers to free the belt hooks. Then the line snaked speedily aloft, to descend again, this time weighted with the one other thing he had taken from the mount, a blaster. With that he hoped to open any blocked way.

From ground level the mounded mass of the temple was almost threatening. If it had been congealed with the fire of the blast, he could never have made the attempt to enter. But now he started toward a promising opening.

Luckily he did not have to penetrate the main part, but rather work north to the other end of the terrace. There was the Emperor's Gate through which even he would have passed on only two occasions in his life, when he went for his crowning and when the urn of his ashes on a cart, which would run of its own volition, would pass after his death ceremony.

The barrier of carved metal was a crumble of broken bits. Andas used the blaster with care, cutting a passage until he stood on the block he sought, where the Emperor's death carriage would halt for a long moment coming and going. There was no chance in this welter of ruin to hunt for the spring that would release what lay beneath. He applied the blaster on half voltage, cutting around the block. Then putting aside the tool, he used a bar of twisted metal to lever out the freed stone.

Below was a dark opening into which he flashed his torch. Steps showed, seemingly uninjured in spite of the wreckage above. But his suit was too bulky to pass through the hole. He used the blaster again to nibble around the edges and enlarge the space. Then he started down.

There were ten steps, steeper than those of a normal stair. The whir of his radiation counter was a constant buzz, but he tried to forget that warning. There was no way he could help it, so he must not let it alarm him into carelessness. The freeing of the blocked passage was only the beginning.

There was a passage leading on from the foot of the stairs, running in toward the heart of the temple. What he sought had been placed directly below the throne whereon the Emperor sat at all state services.

Andas's torch showed him only blank walls of stone, nothing to suggest the importance of this crypt. Now—a door. But before him was only another blank wall putting an end to the way. He had expected this. Now, if only—

Andas ran his tongue across his lips. He raised his gloved hand but did not quite touch the com. It had been adjusted as well as the tech could do it. He could not alter it any.

He spoke. The words were very old, in a language he did not understand. He doubted if any, even like Kelemake, who had made a study of the ancient records, could translate them. Nor did he know their meaning, only that they must be intoned slowly, with pauses between their groupings, in this place.

There was no answer. No door opened—the wall did not fall. He tried a second time, sure that he gave the right accents in the proper places, without result.

It must be the com at fault. That probably distorted some tonal quality that was of major importance. He would have to unhelm to recite the words properly or fail. But with the radiation counter buzzing—unhelm here?

When there is only one answer you accept it—or retreat. And he had come too far; this was too important to retreat. Nor could he ruthlessly burn through the wall. It was provided with safeguards against that. What he sought would be destroyed at the first alarm.

Andas placed the blaster against the wall, and his gloved hands loosened the face plate of his helmet. The air was dead, with an acrid, burning smell that filled his nose. Yet he could not hold his breath and recite at the same time. He spoke the formula for the third time and knew that this must be his last try.

He closed the plate of the helmet, coughing. Then, the wall split down the center, the halves slipping back into the corridor. It had worked!

He was still coughing as he faced, a couple of paces farther on, a grill of metal that glistened in his torchlight as if it had been recently polished. The center of that grill was worked into a design he knew, the legendary “lion”—a fabulous beast sacred to the Emperor. The open mouth of the creature was his keyhole.

Now, would the key from one world fit the lock of another? This was no time to lose confidence. It slid in easily enough.

Turn to the left—it opened! The lock was the same. At his push the grill swung in, and he shuffled on. There was a pedestal in the very center and on it a box. This also showed a keyhole, but Andas did not wait to try his key. He had plucked that out of the grill and fastened it to his belt. Now he slid his hands under the box and lifted it.

He had expected it to be heavy, but it was lighter than the blaster, and he could carry it easily under one arm as he turned to retrace his way, making the best speed he could.

Though he no longer coughed, his throat was dry and his eyes smarted. Whether he had taken such a dose of radiation as would doom him, he dared not think. He must take what he had found to those who might be able to use it, even if he brought his own death with it.

Up the steps he went, back into the open where the skimmer had dropped him. Though it was very hard, encased in such armor, to tilt his head back, Andas managed it far enough to see the skimmer on hover. He raised his arm in signal.

The ascent rope came tumbling down. Andas pitched the blaster from him. He needed that no longer. Still holding the box close, he made fast the hoist cord and gave the signal to rise.

The hoist jerked as it took the strain of his weight. He was hauled up, hoping that the pilot had taken the precautions in which they had drilled him, erecting a force screen between him and his passenger. No one would dare to approach Andas now until they had used every method of decontamination. But he had done it. He had their greatest weapon now in his two hands!

18

Having gone through the most rigid decontamination processes the medico and techs of the mercenaries could devise, Andas sat alone before the box. He thought only of what must be done now, rather than of the results of the tests they had forced on him. He had known that his quest might well be fatal, though it is hard for any man to face directly the fact of death, of ending all that he knows, feels, is—They had told him the truth, that the tests had showed a higher degree of radiation than the body could survive.

So, he had made his payment in advance. What he bought must be worth it. Andas inserted the key and turned it.

Surprisingly, though it must have been locked for centuries of time, the lid arose easily. And in the interior, bedded down in a thick layer of spongy material, were two things, one a roll of what seemed to be thin leather, the other a length of metal links, the metal dark and dull, studded with small bosses in no decorative pattern. He drew that out and straightened it to full length on the table. Disappointment choked him.

Indifferently he took up the roll, slipped off the ring that kept it tight, and flattened it out. The inner side was printed with signs and drawings, meaningless to him at first.

To have bought so little with his life! Then the promises of legends were worthless. Perhaps they had never intended to do more than to give a prop to the emperors, a confidence in knowing that if the worst came, there awaited a way out. And they were expected to find their own solutions first, not to fall back upon this deception.

Yet all the precautions—would such have been taken to preserve a fake? Yes, if the fact that it was a fake was never to be unmasked, that the belief in it was its only power.

Andas looked down at the script he could not read, at the diagrams that blurred as he stared at them. Unless—

It was a moment or two before, sunk in his despair and disappointment, Andas realized that he was able to read a word here and there. Those long hours with Kelemake, when the archivist had been so immersed in his own studies that, needing a sounding board, he had expounded them to a boy, were paying off. Intently Andas shaped the archaic symbols with his lips and traced diagrams by fingertip. There was much he did not understand, but enough—perhaps just enough—that he could!

He drew the length of metal links to him and let it slip through his fingers as if counting them. But what he quested for were those bosses that had a meaning. An hour later he leaned back in his chair. Around his waist those links made a belt. He had done what he could without fully understanding the preparations. But the old tale had not failed him.

There was only one reason for life left, to carry what he held—or rather take what he now was—to the Valley of Bones and there fight the last battle, which would decide the fate of the empire one way or the other.

Andas came out of the room. Shara sat on a stool against the wall. Beyond her Yolyos lounged, inspecting the inner workings of one of the hand weapons from the mount. They turned to him, but he raised his hand to warn them off. How deadly he himself might be now was a matter of some concern. There was that in their faces which warmed him, even through the ice that had encased him since he had heard those test readings.

“No. I have now what may be the salvation of the empire,” he said hurriedly. How long did he have before the final illness began? “You have the skimmer ready?”

“Andas.” Shara spoke only his name and reached out her hand to him.

“No,” he repeated. “This thing was laid to me. He gave his life to begin it and bound upon me the oath to finish it.”

He looked then to Yolyos. “It has been good,” he said simply. “I never had a brother, nor anyone save my father whom I could trust. It has been good to know such a one, even for a short time.”

Yolyos nodded. “It has been good,” he answered, his voice a low purr. “Go, brother, knowing that one stands to do here what must be done.”

At his orders they cleared the short hall between the room and the outer courtyard where the skimmer waited—the craft already contaminated by his flight to the temple. But there was the garrison drawn up, and, as he went, for the first time in his life he heard the full-throat roar of those hailing him as the Emperor.

“Lion, Pride of Balkis-Candace, Lord of Spears—hail!”

Andas dared not look either right or left to see those who shouted, knowing that pride alone would help him to finish that march with dignity. Somehow he reached the hatch of the skimmer and climbed into the pilot's seat. Still he could not allow himself to look back. He touched the rise and was above them in a leap, the force of which made him breathless for an instant. Then the flier was on course, heading toward the last battle of all.

Andas had only one guide to the Valley of Bones (save the general directions he had been able to piece together from old accounts), and that was the ring, for it was united, he was sure, to the source of its power. He had it wired to the control board of the skimmer and watched it for any variation in the set.

His course was not a straight one after he topped the mountains, but a zigzag to pick up a trail for the ring. And before midday it had proven to be a guide, for the dull set glowed, took on rippling life, and grew the brighter as he flew on in the direction it indicated.

There were more heights ahead, the sere spur range of the Ualloga, once a chain of volcanoes making a blazing girdle for the continent. Their broken cones now were sided by such cliffs as not even the wild cam sheep knew, a riven and waterless land that repelled man and animal alike. In his own Inyanga the range had seldom been penetrated and many of the peaks never explored.