Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere (20 page)

"Well, I’m outta here," called out Agent Martin with a wave. "Off to work. And listen, boys, I’m sorry about all this—I have sons of my own. But I tell ya, the world’s a tough place. Anyway, see you around." He pulled open the door, then paused and chuckled. "Right. I dunno
why
I said that."

"Are you two all right?" asked Jahan.

"We haven’t been mistreated," was Tom’s reply. "
Will
we be, Your Highness?"

Jahan glared fiercely at his mother. "You are in the hands of murderers. The spirit of my father looks down upon you now, Mother."

"It seems they intend us to fight, my cousin and I," said Crown Prince Vusungira to Tom and Bud. "A duel. After all the terrible things they did to alter the line of succession, they have begun to dispute their decision."

"Mere bickering. A common kind of family argument, as often develops between husband and wife," commented Aju. "
Ro vish’n
, I finally consented to have my son bypassed in light of certain promises made to me by Glaudiunda, promises of personal benefit that he seems unwilling to honor now that the deed is done. Might not my own son offer his mother more respect after all? And yet His Majesty persists in making arguments in favor of you, Vusungira."

"This is how they decide it, Tom—by ‘arm wrestling’!" pronounced Jahan bitterly. "No hard feelings between them, eh? The
Devi
Lords will choose!"

"One will die," stated Glaudiunda. "And one shall be King when in my time I am carried to Chogyal."

"These sons of yours are decent men—how
that
happened, I don’t know," Tom called out. "With all respect, Your Majesties, you’re
lunatics
if you think either one will fall in with your drug-smuggling enterprise, or consent to cover up your murder of King Gopal."

"That is for a future day," was the King’s curt pronouncement. "One of our sons must surely become
Nej’h
. It is the will of Lord Buddha and mighty Chogyal."

Tom and Bud were pulled aside, away from what was evidently the stage for dueling. They stood in the middle of the viewing platform and were separately handcuffed.

The King addressed the Princes. "You are to fight one another in a duel of swords, to the death. Yet if each of you are ‘hands’, your Queen and I will be ‘arms’. What sin there may be will be a shared one." He gestured and the guards separated the young men, leading them to opposed sides of the stage area, each beneath one of the machines. Tom could see buttons and joystick-type controls on the two thrones, which the royals commenced to manipulate. As the machines hissed and rumbled, the girder-thick arms swung downward, and the princes were forced into a kind of framework harness that encircled their hips and midsection but left their arms and upper torso free to move. They were lifted up, their legs dangling below, unsupported.

"You are now in the claws of the trickster, royal sons," declared Glaudiunda stonily. "Your Queen and I have made a game of it, and as we say of such games, it is Yamantaka who will decide who shall win—and who shall die!"

"Fight well, Jahan," called Queen Aju. "Honor me. A bet is riding on the outcome. And so your uncle and I, to make for better sport and thus invoke the
devi
of chance, have made one further preparation."

Jahan and Vusungira cried out, rearing back in shock as twin beams of intense light speared out from the stone eyes of Yamantaka, hitting each full on the face!

"The trick of the trickster, my boys," stated Glaudiunda. "You are to fight one another
blind
."

"YOU’VE
blinded
them?" Tom cried in outrage. "What will that prove?"

"It is our tradition in Vishnapur to let great matters ride upon the turns of the game," replied the King. "Neither player has the advantage—I speak now of Aju and myself—as both our tokens are equally affected by this induced blindness. We two will bring them near to one another and move them about in quest for some advantage; we test our own skill to discover which of us is favored by the
devis
—by Chogyal and Yamantaka, by Lord Buddha himself."

"Are you concerned that this blindness may wear off too quickly?" Queen Aju inquired of Tom and Bud mockingly. "They are not merely dazzled by the light. Those who made a study of the human brain, to help us refine the yorb derivative to make it saleable, discovered that when the eye is exposed to certain rhythms of fluctuation and subtle mixtures of hue, there is something—did they not call it the ‘photic response,’ my dear?—which shocks certain of the nerve centers into a suppression of normal activity. Thus, a deep blindness, lasting perhaps a quarter of an hour."

"It is your western science that taught us this," noted the King. "But we produce the rays of light in an artistic manner,
q’yim
?—to honor Yamantaka and his eyes, which see all things as they truly are."

Jahan and Vusungira had been shouting in Vishnapurian, protesting or calling for mercy, but it was no use. Cut-and-thrust swords of Vishnapur design, called
zagkas
, were pressed into their hands and attached to gauntlets about their wrists. They were lifted higher and brought closer by the mechanical arms.

"Commence the duel," Glaudiunda commanded. "Strike wide, thrust fiercely, in all directions. You do not know where your foe may lie. Now!—or we will dispatch both of you ungrateful children, and these foreigners with you."

A horrifying struggle of steel now began. The two princes shouted in their own language, a constant clamor of voices and metal, as Their Majesties maneuvered them in great swoops and small twists. Vusungira’s blind slashes drew first blood, a gash on Jahan’s shoulder, but the next wound was his. They had at each other like blind wasps yoked by a string.

Yet as the minutes passed, it became clear that, somehow, no serious damage was being inflicted. The slashes were bloody but glancing. Finally the royals called a halt, separating the princes as their blood dripped across the chamber floor.

"They will soon be too weak to continue," observed Aju.

"I now comprehend your strategy, royal sons," the King declared angrily. "You cannot see, but by your shouting you alert one another to your positions. Bah! Disrespect! Shall we deprive you of speech as well? For we can do so."

The two princes were released and their wounds were treated, as the King and Queen conferred in whispers.

"Can you see yet, guys?" asked Bud.

"A little," Jahan replied.

"Now I can see what I have inflicted upon you, cousin," muttered Vusungira. "Better for me to have died."

"Not acceptable," called out Glaudiunda. "Should either of you, as they say, throw the fight, four will not see the sun ever again. And yet," he went on thoughtfully, "to cheat without being obvious is so easy and so tempting."

"Your father often cheats at cards, Vusungira," noted the Queen. "My dear Gopal was a fool, but he was never a cheat."

His Majesty said something to the guards, and the two Princes were led from the chamber, along with Bud. "We wish to speak to you in private, young Master Swift," said the King. "What might you think of all this? That we are bad parents? Monsters?"

"I won’t tell you what I think," grated the young inventor.

"No? But we hoped for some advice from your logical mind," Aju said. "How shall we continue our game? Which son shall be Crown Prince?"

"Ah!—an idea!" exclaimed Glaudiunda sarcastically. "Let us decide the matter by elimination. We shall first have Tom Swift duel your Jahan, dearest Aju. Should you dispatch Jahan to the mountaintop, Tom, we shall allow you and your friend Bud to live, and Vusungira shall remain Crown Prince. If not, Vusungira and Jahan shall resume their duel, after the small matter of removing the bodies of you two American intruders. But—what of this matter of voices, the use of hearing to cheat death?"

Aju mockingly pretended to have been struck by a solution. "Why, Sacred Husband!—let us do what we should have been clever enough to have done from the start. Let us use the lights of Yamantaka to deprive them of
hearing
as well as sight!"

Jahan reentered, and he and Tom were strapped into place. Tom squeezed his eyelids shut, but it was useless. Once again, in a flash, the blazing eyes of Yamantaka deprived them of their senses! His heart pounding, Tom found himself floating helpless in a black, silent world, resigned to serving as the remote-controlled pawn of the royal couple.

But on the far side of the silence, Glaudiunda was speaking to Jahan in Vishnapur’s language. "What a miracle, nephew—you can still see and hear! For we adjusted the light so it would not affect you this time."

Jahan looked down at Aju. "What deviltry is this, Mother?"

She smiled affectionately. "Oh my child, have you forgotten that Lord Yamantaka is called ‘the trickster’? We have decided upon a small game before resuming the greater one." She mounted her throne and operated her set of controls, lowering and releasing her son. "In the other chamber, this ‘Bud Barclay’ person is being told that it shall be
he
who will come in and fight you. We will remove his sight and hearing in the other room, by the small unit—Yamantaka will not object, I trust!—and then he shall be fastened into the claw-arm
in your place
. The two Americans will not know it, but they will be fighting
one another
to the death—deaf and blind!"

Prince Jahan watched in resignation and horror as Bud, blinded, was led in and fastened in place. In a moment he was dangling in midair five feet from his best friend. A violent shake warned both of them to begin slashing the air!

The eerieness made the horror of the situation macabre. They could feel themselves moving, the angles of their bodies, dizzying swerves and accelerations and the stretch of their muscles. Tom gasped as a slice of pain crossed his leg!
What do I do? What
can
I do?
his young mind churned.
I can’t kill Prince Jahan! But if I don’t try—!

With his leading senses gone, time became uncertain. He had no idea how long the nightmare exertion continued, or whether his halfhearted, random slashing had met flesh. But then the nightmare changed. It seemed that he was being swung about wildly. And then there was a floor beneath him, and arms supporting him. "What’s happening?" he choked out, not sure whether he had actually spoken aloud.

Perhaps he fainted. Abruptly he found that he could see and hear, and that faces looked down upon him. "H-Harlan! General Utrong’j!"

Tom was lying on the floor of the chamber, which was swarming with Utrong’j’s forces. "Coming around, hmm?" said Ames gently. "That machine of theirs is really something, boss. To answer your next question, Bud’s all right."

"Did they do something to him?"

"Just a little. Like you, he had some unexpected run-ins with a blade."

"H-he did?—what about Jahan?"

"Both princes are fine. As for the King and Queen, they are now in... meditative seclusion."

"They are dethroned and subject to our laws," barked the General angrily. "I head the government for the moment, but soon Vusungira shall have the ancient crown. Perhaps he will choose to share it with his cousin." The man leaned down and spoke quietly to Tom. "Phudrim confessed, and we have seen the videotape of His Sacred Majesty Gopal. Glaudiunda’s associates, the purveyors of the yorb derivative, are being tracked down and taken into custody—indeed, we just picked up the FBI man, Martin, in Chullagar, for a disturbance of the peace. He had indulged himself too much in the pleasures of the yorb drug."

Exhausted as he was, Tom retained his curiosity. "But how did you come to be here? Harlan, you knew we were scouting out the lamasery, but I wouldn’t think you’d know anything was wrong until we didn’t show up at the palace."

Ames grinned. "Maybe it was divine intervention. Or—a bit of detective work on my part. I’ve been spending some time looking for an individual who I thought might well be the key to all this.

"When you described the videotaped scene to me, you mentioned a detail that I later thought about with more attention—the fact that King Gopal made a gesture from his bed to end the taping. I had vaguely assumed that he had used a camera with a timer, but no, he obviously had a confidant assisting him. Who? I finally determined that it must have been a man who served as his personal religious advisor, a monk from this lamasery. I contacted him yesterday through an intermediary; an hour ago, he contacted me. It seems he’s a pretty savvy guy, and well aware of the intrigues and corruption in Glaudiunda’s government, even beyond the murder of Gopal. He and some other monks have secretly been monitoring the activities in this closed-off portion, and he told me that you had been captured and that something weird and deadly was going on. When the troops arrived, he showed us how to get in."

"Good grief, I’ll have to thank him!" Tom declared.

"I’ll introduce you. His name is Brother Voo."

Tom wheezed a laugh. "We’ve met!"

Many more details emerged over the ensuing weeks, revealed by General Utrong’j and the new monarch, King Vusungira. The yorb derivative had first been distilled by scientists in the employ of Asian drug lords. In its initial unrefined form, a very fine powder, it induced the berserker effect when inhaled. In this form it was smuggled to its many destinations, where further processing made it saleable, a potent hallucinogen and stimulant which was, lucratively, highly addictive.

Initial distillation took place over the border, in China. A hidden military base, supposedly devoted to weapons research, had come under the sway of corrupt army officers in search of expanded horizons. They had engineered an elaborate system of underground conduits and pumps which allowed them to take in algae-laden water from The Gift of Chogyal as their source of yorb, returning waste products to the lake that had promoted overgrowth and were themselves toxic.

"Okay, pal," Bud had said when Tom related the account. "So that base was a manufacturing plant, and the lamasery was the distribution center. What about the space lightning?"