City Of The Living Dead

Chapter 19

Sela awoke to feel sharp pains in a good many places she hadn't expected them. She vaguely wondered if Paron's flyer had crashed and she was now pinned in the wreckage, dying. She hoped that death would come quickly. After a little while, she drifted off into darkness again, wondering if she were dying, but hardly caring.

When she awoke a second time, the pains had faded and she was aware of other things as well. Her hands and feet were tightly bound with cords. A bed of cut branches was under her. Above her she could see the branches of trees, with the sun shining through the leaves. A breeze blew over her, smelling of flowers and stagnant water and bringing the faint hum of insects with it. Suddenly there was Paron's heavy face as well, peering down into hers.

He squatted and clamped one hand around her chin to force her head toward him. The movement hurt. He saw the pain in her face and smiled. «I will hurt you far more if you do not tell me all the things I need to know. Think of that, Sela.»

He seemed to expect some reply to that statement.

Slowly she shook her head. «I cannot tell you anything.»

He slapped her hard, three times. Her eyes watered, and she tasted blood from a cut lip. She forced herself to speak calmly and coldly.

«The more you strike me, the less I will tell you. If you go on threatening me, you will learn nothing at all while I live. After I am dead, what can I tell you?»

Paron's fingers were obviously itching to slap her again, or do something even more painful. Her tone stopped him. In his eyes she could see a wild desire to inflict pain fighting against an equally powerful desire to learn all he could about his enemies.

«That is true,» he said finally. «I will not kill you. Not now, perhaps not at all. Perhaps when I have taken Mak'loh back and rule it, you can rule beside me. If you prove yourself worthy, this can be. But you cannot rule Mak'loh beside me if I do not take it back, can you?»

«I suppose not.»

«Then you have to tell me what I need to know to get it back. You have to!» The last two words were almost a scream. They made Sela shiver and nearly lose her pose of calm. She had no doubt that sooner or later Paron would torture or kill her if she didn't tell him what he wanted to know. She also had no doubt that beyond a certain point she would probably break down and tell him. Paron had done a good deal of research into the systematic infliction of pain, practicing on androids. She would be subjected to tortures that might destroy her mind before they destroyed her body, unless she betrayed Blade and Geetro.

Or until she could deceive Paron, leading him on, gaining time. Time to see what Paron might be planning to do. Time to judge her chances of escape. Time to think about putting an end to her own life before the torture began, if she could find no way of escaping.

She took a deep breath. «Paron, listen! I cannot tell you anything until I know what you want to know. Surely you are not interested in when Blade and Geetro go to relieve themselves, are you?»

He laughed, showing all his teeth, but no real amusement. «I am not. Very well. I shall tell you more.» He took a knife from his belt and bent down to cut her bonds.

Suddenly Paron whirled around, as branches rustled behind him. The head of an android appeared over the top of a bush. «Master, it begins-«

Paron whirled to face the android. One thick arm shot out and gripped the android by the collar, pulling it headfirst through the bush. As the android twisted and squalled in wordless protest, Paron's other hand thrust the knife into its throat. The android died, bubbling and gasping and spraying blood all over the little clearing and all over Paron and Sela.

It took all her self-control to keep from screaming. Paron was mad. He killed for the love of killing, and she was absolutely in his power.

At that thought she no longer felt like screaming. She felt more like vomiting, except that her stomach was too empty.

Over the next several days, Sela gradually realized that her situation was not as bad as she'd thought. She couldn't really call herself safe until Paron was dead or she was out of his reach. Paron could still kill her as easily as swatting a fly. But he no longer had the strength to do much damage to Mak'loh.

He took her everywhere in his little camp in the forest and showed her everything until she was able to measure his strength. He had a single flyer. He had fewer than two hundred soldier androids, about as many workers, and a hundred assorted robots. He had no more than twenty humans, and several of these were wounded or helpless, drooling idiots, even madder than Paron. He had little ammunition and less equipment. He had practically no food, and he was trying to feed his humans on fruits and nuts from the forest around them. The usual diet gave Sela continuous stomach cramps, but she was luckier than one man. He died screaming and vomiting blood, victim of something poisonous.

Paron was finished. It didn't matter whether he realized this or not. Nor did it matter if Sela freely told him everything she knew about Blade's plans. It would be impossible for him to do anything with that knowledge. All she had to do was to wait until Blade and Geetro led their soldiers out to clear the land of Mak'loh.

Wait, and in the meantime stay alive. She was slow and cautious in answering Paron, asking him three questions for every one he asked her. She wanted to be absolutely sure of giving him everything he needed, or so she told him. Actually, she suspected that he might kill or torture her for his own amusement when he thought she'd told him everything. So she would take as long as possible.

Fortunately for Sela, Paron seemed as interested in talking as in listening. He told wild tales of what he would do to his enemies when he ruled in Mak'loh. He told even wilder tales of the invincible secret weapons he would develop when he had the factories of Mak'loh at his command again. He even spoke of his dream of launching a war against all the other Cities of Peace.

«It is certain that we cannot trust them, if they produce men like Blade. Where there is one man like him, there may be thousands. They will certainly try to destroy us. The only way we can prevent this is to destroy them first. Mak'loh must rule for a thousand years before it is safe. I shall rule Mak'loh, and you shall help me!»

At times it was almost impossible for Sela to listen to Paron's ravings with a straight face. Paron had a better imagination than anyone who had ever made up an Inward Eye tape! But then, all the Inward Eye tapes had been made by people who hadn't lost their wits.

If Paron had been talking about anything that he had some hope of doing, Sela would have listened more carefully. Any knowledge of the enemy's plans would be useful to Blade and Geetro. Since Paron was making no more sense than the birds or the squirrels, she didn't think Blade and Geetro would be at all interested.

Sela quickly realized that escaping would not be as easy as she'd hoped, in spite of the pitifully small size of Paron's army. For several days he would not even let her out of his private camp. The walls of the camp were eight feet high, built of solid logs and topped with thorn branches. It was patrolled both inside and outside by armed androids.

When Paron finally did let her out into the forest, he either went with her himself or sent a guard of at least six armed androids. To be sure, the androids knew she was a Master. They would not kill her-but they would certainly stun her on the spot for any attempt to escape, then turn her over to Paron. What he would do then, she didn't care to think about, and still less cared to risk.

If Blade and Geetro were to find the camp unfortunately, that wasn't likely. The forest would make the camp almost invisible from the air, and it would take a long time to search the city's land tree by tree.

It was a race between Paron's madness, her own escape, and Blade's searching parties. Who would win?

The water of the stream was dark, but clean and cold. Sela swam up and down as far as the android guards would allow her, letting the water clean the dirt off her body and for the moment clean the worries out of her mind. It was two weeks since she'd been captured, and she was no closer to a way to escape than the day she'd arrived. So far Paron seemed to have no desire to kill her. He'd killed several androids and raped one woman when she complained of the wretched food, but he hadn't laid a finger on Sela. How long would her luck hold?

She turned over on her back and swam upstream with slow, steady strokes. On the bank two androids gazed down at her. She found this bothered her and was surprised to feel that way. Before Blade came, she had never worried about being naked in the presence of androids. Now she felt she would like to do almost anything herself rather than have androids underfoot all the time to wait on her. She wondered how many other people in Mak'loh might be feeling the same way. «The city of the living dead,» Blade had called Mak'loh. Well, perhaps the dead were coming back to real life.

She laughed softly. Then the branches on the bank between the two androids parted, and her laugh died as three men sprang out into the open. They seemed to explode out of the bushes, and the sunlight blazed from the swords in their hands. Two swung at the androids on either side of them. One android's head flew off its shoulders, the other's face opened in a great ragged gash.

The other four androids of Sela's escort were on the other bank of the stream. They raised their rifles as the third attacker raised a long metal tube. The rifles flared white, and the tube gushed orange flame and dirty white smoke. One of the androids fell over backward, hands clutched to his stomach. Two of the three swordsmen fell, struck down by the rifle fire. The third sprang back into the bushes as suddenly as he'd appeared.

Sela reached up onto the bank and snatched up a rifle dropped by one of the maimed androids. Before the surviving androids realized what she was doing, she shot all three of them. Two sprawled on the bank; the third fell with a splash into the stream. Sela grabbed a root with one hand and heaved herself out of the water.

Without bothering to dress, she plunged into the bushes, ignoring the branches that lashed across her bare skin. She knew who those swordsmen were. From Blade's description, she recognized them as the soldiers of the Warland ruler, the Shoba.

She knew who they were. How had they entered Mak'loh? The question screamed itself in her mind, and she wanted to scream it out loud. She forced herself to keep silent. She had to get away from the Shoba's men and bring warning of their attack to the city. That meant getting to Paron's flyer. If she failed….

If she failed, the Shoba's men might swarm across the land of Mak'loh and arrive at the city's wall before anyone knew they were coming. What would happen then, she asked herself? She remembered what Blade had said once about the soldiers of the Shoba.

«If they come to Mak'loh, they will be deadly enemies. We have stronger weapons, but theirs are not weak. They are also brave men, and far more skilled in many kinds of fighting than our people or even the soldier androids. A battle against the Shoba could be Mak'loh's last battle.»

Sela remembered that the weapons of the Shoba's men could not hit a moving target as well as the shock rifles of Mak'loh. So she ran as fast as the bushes and the ground underfoot would let her, although her legs and feet began to ooze blood from thorn scratches and sharp roots.

She plunged between two trees and came out into a small clearing. Three worker androids were running across it. Two of the Shoba's men were on their heels, waving swords that already dripped with silver-tinged android blood.

Sela let the androids pass and fired at the first swordsman. He went down in midstride, sliding several yards on his face. Before she could aim at the second man, he swung his sword. It caught her rifle with savage force, knocking it out of her tingling hands. The swordsman raised his weapon, ready to take her head off or lay her stomach open. Then he realized that he faced an unarmed, naked, lovely woman. Lust flared in his eyes, and the sword wavered for a moment.

That was all the time Sela needed. She closed and leaped high, driving one foot in past the man's sword to smash into his chest. The metal rings of his armor bruised and gouged her foot, but the man went down. Sela landed, whirled, and stamped her other foot down on the man's upturned face. He screamed and clawed at his smashed nose and teeth. Sela snatched up her rifle and darted across the clearing into cover again.

Sometimes running, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling on her belly like an animal, Sela crossed the camp area toward the flyer. There were soldiers of the Shoba all over the place. Many of them were dead or dying, but far too many were alive and on the prowl. However they had crossed the Wall, they had done so in force, and they had certainly won their first battle.

There was no doubt of that. All the androids Sela found were dead or crippled. Their armored vests would keep an arrow or a musket ball from penetrating, but not from knocking them down. Once they were down, the Shoba's men would close in firing at the android's heads, hacking or thrusting at their arms and legs. Sela found several androids dying slowly in whimpering agony and used nerve pinches to give them a silent and merciful death.

She saw other ugly sights too and had to slip by without doing anything about them. A man pinned to a large tree by knives driven through his hands, while the soldiers shot at him with arrows. A woman spread-eagled naked on the grass, while a soldier hammered himself into her and thirty more waited their turn. Sela's stomach churned at the thought of this sort of thing happening in every street of Mak'loh.

The last body Sela found before reaching the flyer was Paron himself. Mad as he was, he'd died fighting. Six of the Shoba's men lay dead around him, and his hands were locked tight on the throat of a seventh. His body a mass of gashes and bullet holes where it didn't bristle with arrows.

Paron was dead and the last danger to Mak'loh from him gone forever. In his place, a new and far worse danger had sprung up. Paron would at least have preserved much of the city's knowledge and therefore much of its future. The Shoba's soldiers would only kill, loot, and destroy.

The flyer lay on the near side of a wide clearing. Sela peered through the trees and sighed with relief. There were none of the Shoba's men in sight, and the machine itself appeared to be completely intact. Perhaps the enemy hadn't come this far. She ran forward, out into the clearing.

As she did, several enemy soldiers emerged from the trees on the far side of the clearing. Sela leaped for the flyer, at the same time aiming her rifle. The soldiers grabbed arrows, and both sides let fly at the same time.

Sela's aim was good, but the range was too great for the beam of her rifle. The white fire crackled out of existence, well short of the unharmed soldiers. She screamed in frustration, then screamed in pain as one of the plunging arrows sliced into her thigh. She dropped the rifle, heaved herself into the seat of the flyer, and started the fans. More arrows whistled down about her, but this time all of them missed. Before the archers could fire a third time, the flyer was lifting off the grass. It shot straight up, hitting an overhanging branch so hard that Sela nearly lost control. Then she was climbing up and away.

She kept climbing until she was certain that nothing from the ground could hit her. She climbed even farther, until she could see the towers of Mak'loh in the distance. She firmly put out of her mind the arrow in her thigh, the pain it was causing, and everything else except reaching those towers. Then she set course for the city, as fast as the flyer would go.