Planet of Adventure Omnibus (89 page)

Reith found
his voice. “I must talk to responsible folk among you and quickly. What I have
to say is urgent-to you and to me!”

“This is
Foreverness,” came the husky voice. “Such words have no meaning.”

“You will
think differently, when you hear me.”

“Come to your
place in Foreverness. You are awaited.” Once more the creature set off. Tears
brimmed in Reith’s eyes; vast outrage rose up behind his teeth. If anything had
happened to Zap 210, they would pay, how they would pay! regardless of
consequence.

For a space
they walked and presently passed through a columned portal into a new
underground realm: a place which Reith associated with some elegant memorial garden
of old Earth.

Away and
along the gold- and silver-fringed prospect stood brooding shapes. Reith had no
opportunity for speculation. Certain shapes moved forward; he saw them to be
Pnume, and advanced to meet them. There were at least twenty; by their extreme
diffidence and unobtrusiveness Reith understood them to be of the highest
status. Facing the twenty shadows in this shadow-haunted corner of Foreverness
he could not help but wonder as to the state of his mind. Was he wholly sane?
In such surroundings orderly mental processes were inapplicable. By sheer
brutal energy he must impose his personal will-to-order upon the devious
environment of the Pnume.

He looked
around the shadowed group. “I am Adam Reith,” he said. “I am an Earthman. What
do you want of me?”

“Your
presence in Foreverness.”

“I’m here,”
said Reith, “but I intend to go. I came of my own volition; are you aware of
this?”

“You would
have come in any event.”

“Wrong. I
would not have come. You kidnapped my friend, a young woman. I came to fetch
her away and take her back to the surface.”

The Pnume, as
if by signal, all took a simultaneous slow step forward: a sinister movement,
the stuff of nightmare. “How did you expect to effect so much? This is
Foreverness.”

Reith thought
for a moment. “You Pnume have lived long on Tschai.”

“Long, long:
we are the soul of Tschai. We are the world itself.”

“Other races
live on Tschai; they are people more powerful than yourselves.”

“They come
and go: colored shadows to entertain us. We expel them as we choose.”

“You do not
fear the Dirdir?”

“They cannot
reach us. They know none of our precious secrets.”

“What if they
did?”

The dark
shapes approached another slow pace.

Reith called
out in a harsh voice: “What if the Dirdir know all your secrets: all your tunnels
and passages and pop-outs?”

“A grotesque
situation which can never be real.”

“But it can
be real. I can make it real.” Reith brought forth a folder bound in blue
leather. “Examine this.”

The Pnume
gingerly accepted the portfolio. “It is the lost master-set!”

“Wrong again,”
said Reith. “It is a copy.”

The Pnume set
up a low whimpering sound, and Reith once again thought of the night-hounds; he
had often heard just such soft calls out on the Kotan steppes.

The sad
half-whispered wails subsided. The Pnume stood in a rigid semicircle. Reith
could feel their emotion; it was almost palpable, a crazy, irresponsible
ferocity he heretofore had associated only with the Phung.

“Be calm,”
said Reith. “The danger is not imminent. The charts are hostage to my safety; you
are secure unless I do not return to the surface. In this case the charts will
be given over to the Blue Chasch and the Dirdir.”

“Intolerable.
The charts must be secured. There is no alternative.”

“That is what
I hoped you would say.” Reith looked around the half-circle. “You agree to my
conditions?”

“We have not
heard them.”

“I want the
woman whom you brought down yesterday. If she is dead, I plan to exact a
terrible penalty from you. You will long remember me; you will long curse the
name Adam Reith.”

The Pnume
stood in silence.

“Where is
she?” demanded Reith in a rasping voice.

“She is in
Foreverness, to be crystallized.”

“Is she
alive? Or is she dead?”

“She is not
yet dead.”

“Where is
she?”

“Across the
Field of Monuments, awaiting preparation.”

“You say that
she is not yet dead-but is she alive and well?”

“She lives.”

“Then you are
fortunate.”

The Pnume
surveyed him with incomprehension, and certain of the group gave near-human
shrugs.

Reith said: “Bring
her here, or let us go to her, whichever is faster.”

“Come.”

They set out
across the Field of Monuments: statues or simulacra representing folk of a
hundred various races. Reith could not avoid pausing to stare in fascination. “Who
or what are all these creatures?”

“Episodes in
the life of Tschai, which is to say, our own lives. There: the Shivvan who came
to Tschai seven million years ago. This is an early crystal, one of the oldest:
the memento of a far time. Beyond: the Gjee, who founded eight empires and were
expunged by the Fesa, who in turn fled the light of the red star Hsi. Yonder:
others who have dropped by along their way to oblivion.”

Along the
avenues the group moved. The monuments were black, fringed with luminous gold
and silver: creatures quadruped, triped, biped; with heads, cerebral bags,
nerve-nets; with eyes, optical bands, flexible sensors, prisms. Here towered a
massive bulk with a heavy cranium; it brandished a seven-foot sword. The
creature Reith saw to be a Green Chasch bull. Nearby a Blue Chasch chastened a
group of crouching Old Chasch, while three Chaschmen glowered from the side.
Beyond were Dirdir and Dirdirmen, attended by two men and two women of a race
Reith failed to recognize. To the side a single Wankh, alone and austere,
surveyed a gang of toiling men. Beyond these groups, except for a single empty
pedestal, the avenue led away, down a black slope to a slow black river, the
surface marked by drifting silver swirls. Beside the river stood a cage of
silver bars; huddled in the cage was Zap 210. She watched the group approach
with an impassive face. She saw Reith; her face crumpled into opposed emotions;
grief and joy, relief and dismay. She had been stripped of her surface clothes;
she wore only a white shift.

Reith took
pains to control his voice; still he spoke thickly. “What have you done to her?”

“She has been
treated with Liquid One. It invigorates and tones, and opens the passages for
Liquid Two.”

“Bring her
forth.”

Zap 210
emerged from the cage. Reith took her hand, stroked her head. “You are safe. We’re
going back to the surface.” He stood for a few minutes quietly waiting while
she wept in relief and nervous exhaustion on his shoulder.

The Pnume
came close. One said: “The return of all charts is demanded.”

Reith managed
a thick laugh. “Not yet. I have other demands to make of you-but elsewhere. Let
us leave this place. Foreverness oppresses me.”

In a hall of
polished gray marble Reith faced the Pnume Elders. “I am a man; I am disturbed
to see men of my own kind living the unnatural lives of Pnumekin. You must
breed no more human children, and the children now underground must be
transferred to the surface and there maintained until they are able to fend for
themselves.”

“But this
means the end of the Pnumekin!”

“So it does,
and why not? Your race is seven million years old or more. Only in the last
twenty or thirty thousand years have you had Pnumekin to serve you. Their loss
will be no great hardship.”

“If we
agree-what of the charts?”

“I will
destroy all but a very few copies. None will be delivered to your enemies.”

“This is
unsatisfactory! We would then live in constant dread!”

“I can’t
worry as to this. I must retain control over you, to guarantee that my demands
have been met. In due course I may return all the charts to you-sometime in the
future.”

The Pnume
muttered disconsolately together a few moments. One said in a flat whisper: “Your
demands will be met.”

“In this
case, conduct us back to the Sivishe salt flats.”

At sunset the
salt flats were quiet. Carina 4269 hung in a smoky haze behind the palisades,
glinting upon the Dirdir towers. Reith and Zap 210 approached the old
warehouse. From the office came Anacho’s spare form. He stepped forward to meet
them. “The sky-car is here. There is nothing to keep us.”

“Let’s hurry
then. I can’t believe that we’re free.”

The sky-car
lifted from behind the warehouse and swept north. Anacho asked: “Where do we
go?”

“To the Kotan
steppes, south of where you and I first met.”

All night
they flew, over the barren center of Kislovan, then over the First Sea and the
Kotan marshlands.

At dawn they
drifted over the edge of the Steppes while Reith studied the landscape below.
They crossed a forest; Reith pointed to a clearing. “There: where I came down
to Tschai. The Emblem camp lay to the east. There, by that grove of
feather-bush: there we buried Onmale. Drop down there.”

The sky-car
landed. Reith alighted and walked slowly toward the woods. He saw the glint of
metal. Traz came forth. He stood quietly as Reith approached. “I knew that you
would come.”

Traz had
changed. He had become a man: something more than a man. On his shoulder he
wore a medallion of metal, stone and wood. Reith said: “You dug up the emblem.”

“Yes. It
called to me. Wherever I walked upon the steppe I heard voices, all the voices
of all the Omnale chieftains, calling to be taken up from the dark. I brought
forth the emblem; the voices are now silent.”

“And the
ship?”

“It is ready.
Four of the technicians are here. One stayed at Sivishe, two lost heart and set
off across the steppes for Hedaijha.”

“The sooner
we depart the better. When we’re actually out in space I’ll believe that we’ve
escaped.”

“We are
ready.”

Anacho, Traz
and Zap 210 entered the spaceship. Reith took a last look around the sky. He
bent, touched the soil of Tschai, crumbled a handful of mold between his
fingers. Then he too entered the unlovely hulk. The port was closed and sealed.
The generators hummed. The ship lifted toward the sky. The face of Tschai
receded; the planet exhibited rotundity, became a graybrown ball, and presently
was gone.

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