City Of The Living Dead

Chapter 13

One of the workers was moving down the corridor with a box in its hands as Blade came out of the room. It stopped and said, «What will please the Master?»

It seemed the workers would take him for a Master, now that he had a Master's clothes on. Good. Apparently a Master could go anywhere-unless he ran into a mad soldier and all he had to do was give orders.

«I wish you to take me to the top of this building,» he said. «I will be pleased to walk about in it.»

The worker was silent for a moment. Then it said, «That is Physical.» The emphasis it placed on the word implied the capital letter.

Blade sensed he'd done something that wasn't part of the android's notions of a Master's behavior. But he wasn't going to sit on his arse simply to keep these damned androids happy

«I will be pleased to walk about in the building,» he repeated. «Your orders are to please the Masters.»

The android nodded slowly. «This is a House of Peace. Does the Master wish assistance with the Inward Eye?»

«No, I do not wish assistance. I wish to walk about in the building.»

«That is Physical,» said the android again.

Blade was tempted to ask why something being Physical was so important but decided against it. That might reveal a degree of ignorance sufficient to make even a worker android suspicious.

He shook his bead. «It will not be pleasing to the Master if you do not obey. Is this clearly understood? If you do not take me where I want to go, you will be unreliable.»

The last word did the same thing to the worker as it had done to the soldiers on the city wall. The android stiffened and quivered all over. «The Master will be pleased,» it said unsteadily.

«Good,» said Blade. «Lead the way.» He pointed with the rifle. The android turned and headed down the corridor. Blade followed it to the far end and through a low archway. Beyond was a large, square room with a railed, circular metal platform in the middle. The android went over to the platform and beckoned Blade up onto it. He looked up and saw a circular shaft slightly larger than the platform rising up into the darkness above it. Then the android gripped a section of the railing and twisted it. The platform shot straight up from the floor and into the shaft with a faint humming sound.

Blade gripped the railing and watched the walls of the shaft flow past. At intervals they shot through large, square rooms like the one on the ground floor, so fast that it was impossible for Blade to see what was in them. Apparently the android was taking Blade's wish to go up to the top of the building as a literal order.

Several minutes later Blade finally saw the sheen of a metal ceiling above him. It grew rapidly larger, until he could make out patterns of metal ribs. Then the platform soared up out of the shaft, lurched sideways, and thudded down on the floor, nearly knocking Blade off his feet.

Blade stepped off the platform and looked around. His first impression was that he'd wandered into the middle of a high-society orgy. On a low dais piled with rugs and pillows, a couple was making love. A red-haired woman lay naked on a mat on the floor, while an android wearing only blue shorts straddled her buttocks and back, massaging her steadily and expertly. Three other people-two men and a woman-stood chest deep in a large glass tub. Two androids were scrubbing them with sponges on long handles, while a third played a hose over them. Blade caught a heavy scent of perfume from the water.

That was just a start. The room was more than sixty feet on a side and not only clean, but luxuriously furnished and well maintained. There were about forty human beings in it, and more than a hundred androids at work bathing them, massaging them, serving them food and drink, even carrying them about in small sedan chairs of light metal and plastic. It was not an orgy-only one couple was making love-or any sort of party that Blade could imagine.

He sniffed the air carefully for drugs but could detect none. Yet all the people were dull-eyed and languid in their movements, as oblivious to his presence as if he'd been another of the androids. Something certainly had their attention fogged and confused, even if it weren't drugs.

As Blade finished his tour of the room, the redhead who'd been getting the massage turned over and looked at him. She lay with her chin in one hand, obviously trying to decide whether to invite him to join her. Finally, she shook her head. «No,» she said in a sleepy voice, «no, I have taken it only through the Inward Eye. It would be too Physical to change the way now.» She rolled back over on her stomach and seemed to drift off to sleep.

There was that «Inward Eye» again, whatever it was. Mystery was piling itself on mystery. Apparently the Inward Eye could be a sex substitute, but so could a great many other things. The redhead hadn't told Blade very much!

Then he realized, with a mild shock, that even if the woman had beckoned to him, he wouldn't have gone. Not that she wasn't attractive. In fact, she was breathtakingly beautiful-long-limbed, exquisitely curved, with great green eyes, that flaming head of red hair, full lips, everything she needed.

In fact, she was too beautiful, too perfect. She was like one of those fashion models turned by make-up, diet, and exercise into an Image of Beauty rather than a living woman. Blade had never cared for that sort of woman in Home Dimension, and this woman was even worse.

Blade looked around the room again, and with a further shock realized something he hadn't clearly noticed before. Every woman and every man in the room had that same quality of unnatural beauty, health, and personal perfection. The more clearly he realized this, the less plausible it seemed.

The android who'd escorted him was standing by the platform. Beyond the platform another corridor opened off the room. Blade could see lighted doorways on either side. He headed off down the corridor, determined to explore further.

He found himself moving through an even stranger world than the big room. All the rooms here were also spotlessly clean and beautifully kept, with a decadent display of cushions and tapestries, jewels and polished metal, weird abstract sculptures, and still more weird and abstract paintings, carved and inlaid furniture.

In the center of every room was an enormous bed. About half of these beds were empty, although some had androids busily at work on them. The others were occupied, always by a single person who was apparently sound asleep.

All of these sleepers wore metal mesh helmets on their heads, with solid, heavy bands around their temples. All wore black masks over their eyes. Otherwise they were completely naked.

Beside the bed of each sleeper stood a large, polished, black metal box mounted on four wheels. Wires led from it to the metal helmets. On top were a control panel and a series of slots. Two androids stood beside each box, apparently keeping a close watch on it and on the sleeper.

Although they seemed to be sound asleep, the people in the beds also seemed to be having some rather interesting dreams. Several were kicking furiously or churning their legs in running movements. Blade saw two men with erections and one woman writhing in the grip of orgasm.

At last Blade felt he'd seen enough on this floor. He led the android back to the platform and motioned toward the shaft. The platform lurched into the air, then dropped through the hole in the floor.

Blade examined eight different floors in the building before deciding there was no point in going on. With minor variations, each floor was the same. A large room at one end, with a corridor leading off it. On each floor sixty to a hundred of the private rooms and sixty to a hundred people. About half the people asleep and wired into the black boxes, the other half in the large room being tended by the androids or (very rarely) talking or making love to each other. Always a small army of blue-clad worker androids-at least two for every human being. Always the languid movements and the blank stares, the apathetic manner, and the inhuman perfection of the human bodies.

Blade realized that he had not only seen enough, he couldn't really stand seeing any more for the moment. The people of this city seemed to grow more weird and incomprehensible the more he learned about them! They were not dead, but they hardly seemed to be doing much he could call living.

He'd walked into a city of the living dead, and his first impulse was to walk right back out of it again. Still, there was too great a mystery here to leave behind, not to mention too much that might be worth bringing back to Home Dimension.

There might even be a chance to help these people-if they weren't past wanting help, or even realizing that they might need it.

Blade didn't realize until he started back down how long he'd taken in his exploration of the building. Through a window he could see dawn creeping across the city. If the woman hadn't been discovered and released by the workers, she might have suffocated. At the very least, she'd be trying to scream her head off. When the android let him off the platform at the bottom of the shaft, Blade practically sprinted down the corridor to the room where he'd left the woman.

She was still there, alive, and quietly asleep rather than unconscious or hysterical. She'd certainly done her best to get free-her wrists were raw from the chafing of the rope. Seeing that she wasn't going to get free though, she'd settled down to regain her strength.

This woman was formidably cool-headed and competent-dangerously so, if she remained an enemy. It wouldn't be enough just to interrogate her. He'd have to win her over, as a friend or an ally. Otherwise he'd have to kill her outright, keep her a prisoner, or spend the rest of his time in the city of the living dead trying to look in all directions at once. Blade didn't like any of these alternatives.

Blade ordered two of the workers to bring him a meal, for two Masters. When the meal came, he set the woman's tray aside and emptied his own. The food and cooking were superb-better than Blade had eaten in most expensive Home Dimension restaurants. There people obviously had settled their priorities a long time ago. Never mind if the gardens ran to wilderness or the soldiers ran amuck-as long as the baths were hot and the steaks were rare, all was right with the world.

Yet how did this explain the woman he'd taken prisoner, so skilled and deadly that it had nearly been the other way around? She certainly had not achieved her skill through a lifetime of sybaritic self-indulgence and being waited on hand and foot by androids!

Blade looked at the woman and realized that she was awake and looking at him. He smiled. «The androids have brought a meal for you. If I untie you so that you can eat, will you promise not to call out?»

Their eyes met, and she nodded slowly. Blade guessed he could trust her, but decided to make sure. He sent the serving androids out into the corridor, then closed the door and dragged the table and several chairs in front of it. That would delay the woman in getting out or the androids in getting in. Only then did he take off the woman's gag and untie her wrists. He left her ankles bound and sat in a chair between the bed and the door with his rifle across his lap while she ate.

When she'd finished, Blade untied the knife he'd been using as a bayonet. With the knife in his belt, he sat down on the foot of the bed. He had no intention of laying a finger on the woman again, except in self-defense. He was not yet ready to let her know this.

Blade suspected the woman was of the Authority-the government or police of this city. He also suspected that it had been a long time since even the Authority had come face to face with a civilized person from outside the city. Blade was the unknown, and the unknown always had the ability to sow terror or at least uncertainty in the toughest and best-trained people.

«My name is Richard Blade,» be began. «I come from England. I have traveled far and entered this city of yours in peace. I have not found-«

The woman frowned and held up a hand. It was a long-fingered, graceful hand, in spite of the distinctive calluses from many years of unarmed-combat training. «England. What was it called, when it was a City of Peace?»

«I do not know that our land has ever been called anything but England,» said Blade. «Certainly there are no records that give another name.»

«You do not even remember that you were a City of Peace?»

«As I said, we have nothing left that tells us so.» Blade pretended to frown in concentration. «Some say there was once a mighty city called Rome, which ruled all the world and then disappeared. But most among the people of England consider this a tale to amuse children, no more.»

The woman shook her head, and her voice held a note of sadness, «It has been a long time since the Cities of Peace ceased to talk to one another. Perhaps it has been long enough even for what you say to have happened. Certainly you are the first to enter Mak'loh from another City in the lifetime of anyone in the Authority, and some of us are no longer young.»

«That is not impossible,» said Blade. «Certainly it is only quite recently that England has been sending out explorers such as myself to enter the other Cities of Peace. Mak'loh is the first one I have entered, and I had a long journey to reach it.» Apparently she assumed that any civilized man in this Dimension had to be from another «City of Peace.» Perhaps she was unable to conceive of any alternative. This was certainly a weakness, but it was a weakness very much to Blade's advantage for the moment.

«You came across the Warlands?» the woman said. She pointed at Blade's sword and knife as she spoke. Blade assumed she meant the lands outside the Wall.

«I did. That is why I brought those weapons you see. They are not as powerful as those of a City's Authority, but they do not attract so much attention from the Warlanders. And they are powerful enough, if one knows how to use them.»

He put down the knife so that he was between it and the woman. Then he made his expression as severe as he could and spoke in a clipped, hard voice.

«You call this a City of Peace. Yet I crossed the Warlands without shedding a drop of my blood. Only when I entered Mak'loh was I in real danger.» In brisk sentences Blade told the tale of his adventures in this Dimension. He left out nothing, including Twana and the encounters with the Shoba's men. He merely implied that all of these things had happened after he'd reached Mak'loh with an exploring party.

As he talked, Blade noticed the woman's face turning pale and her breath coming more quickly. As he told of his encounter with the androids on the city wall, she shivered. When he told her of how he'd walked freely through this House of Peace and seen all that went on there, she put her hands over her face.

«I could have slain every man and woman in this building between sunset and dawn,» Blade finished. «I did not, because I call them my brothers and sisters. Would the men of the Shoba be so kind, if they passed the Wall?»

The woman's voice came out muffled by her hands. «Blade-are you of the Authority, in England?»

«No. I am sent out by the Authority, as are the other explorers.» To increase the pressure on the woman, he added, «I am no more than a common fighting man of England. It was a great honor for me to be chosen by the Authority, for there are many thousands of fighting men and women as skilled as I am.»

«Th-th-thousands, like you?» the woman said, her voice starting to break. Blade nodded. «I'm surprised that you c-c-call us brothers and sisters. We-«and at that point her voice failed her completely. She turned over, buried her head in the pillows, and wept.

Blade said nothing but quietly moved closer to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She didn't seem to notice it. Finally she wiped her eyes and rolled over, her hands clasped behind her head. Blade carefully kept his eyes off the slim white throat and the firm breasts thrusting up beneath the black coverall.

«I see Mak'loh has few secrets left from England,» she said wearily. «The only way we could change the situation would be to kill you. You did not kill us, when you could have easily done so and perhaps thought we deserved it.» There was a note of bleak despair in her voice. «So we will not kill you.»

«Thank you,» said Blade. He would have said it sarcastically, except for the genuine emotion in the woman's voice. Something about the situation of her city moved her deeply.

«Yet in England you seem to have forgotten where you came from,» she went on. «So you will not understand Mak'loh until I tell you how the Cities of Peace came to be. Then perhaps we can understand each other better.»

Blade smiled. «By all means, tell me.» He'd be more than happy to sit and listen while the woman revealed all the secrets of Mak'loh, this city of the living dead.