Hell's Gate

CHAPTER 18

Victor Salsbury fought against darkness and dizziness that grappled with him, and he won. He was conscious when they cut him down. He dropped into a puddle on the floor, more anxious about the condition of his mortal shell than about who had stepped in to save his life like a saint in a storybook miracle. He was aching all over from the pounding he had received. Both his hips were bleeding thick crimson fluid that seeped through his tattered jeans. When he was finished accounting for every wound, he decided that, despite how he might feel, he would survive. His accelerating healing processes would stop the bleeding at any moment and would begin to knit the torn skin. He hated to think what he would have looked like, how far beyond the scope of his healing powers he would have been if he had not been cut down when he was. A few more pendulum swings, and he would have slipped into an unconsciousness where the last dregs of his life forces would have been drained quietly away.

The worst of his worries about his body assuaged, he thought of his rescuer.

He looked up, somehow expecting to see either the vacii or a detachment of marines. Instead, there was another gorilla-like man standing over him. He was different from the other things, though. The amount of facial hair obscuring his features was considerably less, exposing tough, brown skin creased heavily like ancient, weathered leather. His scalp itself was still liberally furred and pointed up his relationship to the savages. The features of his face were not as harsh as those of the other half-men, the forehead jutted out only half an inch instead of two inches. His nose was more completely formed with heavier cartilage deposits that gave it a roughly human quality. The mouth was smaller, more evenly lipped, and the teeth were well-cared for, as if they had been regularly brushed.

“You are from another probability?” the newcomer asked, trying to look as pleasant as he could. Despite his gorilla resemblance, he was a welcome sight compared to the heavy, vicious masks of Salsbury's tormentors.

Victor wetted his lips, said, “Yes.”

“Good! You speak English! English is a prime Tongue in this sector of worldlines, though not on this particular one. My other languages are decent, but not so polished as is my English. Do you think? Polished? English is spoken on your alternate world, then. Is it the only language?”

“No,” Salsbury said with effort. “French. Chinese. Russian. Too many of them to list.”

“Most likely. A diversity of tongues is more common. But English is dominant?”

“One of the few dominant tongues, yes. Look-”

“Oh, excuse me,” the modified gorilla said apologetically, reaching out a hairy, long-fingered hand to help Salsbury up. “I'd forgotten, in my excitement, that you've gone through a great deal.”

Vic managed to struggle to his feet. He felt horrible. Like he had been drenched with kerosene, then lit with a torch; every square inch of him burned. That wasn't half so bad as the elephant that had been chained inside his body and was trying to kick its way out.

“You see, this is the first time,” his rescuer continued excitedly, “that I have ever encountered anyone from an alternate probability. To speak with, at least.”

“Who-” Salsbury began, his tongue a moth-eaten blanket rolled up inside his mouth.

“No talk for the moment. The vacii will come in search of you. We must go to the lower levels which they do not know of.”

“Okay,” Vic said, taking a few tentative steps.

“Do you wish to be carried?” the newcomer asked.

“No.” He could see that he was still smaller than the half-men perhaps only seven feet tall, but the half-men obeyed him. “I'll make it on my own. You aren't as large as these brutes.” Then he walked five feet and collapsed.

“Much of their extra size is wasted in fat and bones,” the newcomer said. He bent over Salsbury, picked him up as if he weighed in at slightly under three pounds, and started out of the room. “We are simply more compact, but just as strong as they.”

There were others of the more refined strain of gorilla men. Salsbury noticed, his head hanging down over his rescuer's shoulder, brilliant showers of fireflies exploding on the surface of his eyes, obscuring his view of the new men. He could see, however, that they were dressed, unlike the half-men who had been torturing him. They wore high skin boots that came to their square, chiseled knees, and tight short pants of coarse material. They carried bows, quivers of arrows, and a sheathed knife each. The one who was carrying Victor had entrusted his weapons to one of his comrades. The others, however, were prepared for combat and maintained a constant, tense vigil to all sides, their weapons armed, whether for vacii or for the more daring and surly half-men, he did not know.

Then they were moving. He couldn't see anything for the hobbling and swaying of his head. All he could make out was that they were leaving the naked half-men behind and were going down, down, farther down each minute.

There was another firefly eruption in his head. Hundreds and thousands of flickering green lights. This time, he settled back and allowed them to swarm in on him as if they were hungry, blood-seeking mosquitoes. They blotted everything out and dazzled him with their brilliance. Then, strangely, the lights disappeared, and there was only a soft, murmuring bandage of nothingness about him.

Later, he came awake to find his rescuer holding his head up and rubbing the crushed petals of a rich purple flower beneath his nose. The odor made him gag, but it did bring him awake as was planned. He shook his head to make the stranger take the smelling salts away, then leaned back and realized he was in a chair! It was a well made piece of furniture, comfortable with cushions of dark fabric, and seemed to be stuffed with feathers or fur of some sort. This was the first sign of the artifacts of moderately civilized people, aside from the weapons and clothes he had already noticed in his groggy state. These people were more than slightly advanced above the naked half-men who had been trying to kill him.

“Perhaps I should have let you sleep,” the rescuer said, looking down on Salsbury with concern. “But this is a very important thing. I think, perhaps, it is our chance. We must make use of it as swiftly as possible. But if you feel like you must rest-”

“I'm okay,” Salsbury said.

“Good.” The creature smiled at others nearby, giving Victor a moment to survey the room. It was still a cave. They were farther down in the earth than before, for the walls were more solid, more of a piece, and there were no loose rocks. Despite the fact it was a cave, it was a relactively pleasant place. It was kept scrupulously clean. One of the walls was decorated with a mural that showed that artistic concepts here were modern, enlightened, far beyond all other cave art. Another wall was carved with shelves which held other pieces of work, mostly stone and wood sculpture, though one held a thatched strawpiece resembling a kneeling woman. Salsbury saw at once that the women of these half-men-or nine-tenths men- were closer his own idea of femininity than those of the naked half-men had been. Finally, he took in the fact that there were three other creatures seated in the room, all on chairs, some drinking out of wooden tumblers, others just biding their time.

“I'm Moog,” his rescuer said, turning back to him. “You are?”

“Vic.”

“It is a new name for me.”

“Victor is the full name.”

“Oh, yes! Some of the creatures of other probability lines in this area do shorten their names for convenience. Though I never fully understood why they weren't given the short names to begin with.”

“Could I have some water?” Salsbury asked, his words like stones rolling up the incline of his throat.

“I have something better,” Moog said. He went off for a moment, returned with a wooden mug.

Salsbury remembered the half-men's gruel. “Water would be fine.”

“Just try this.”

“I-”

“Please.”

Salsbury took the mug and sipped the fluid gingerly. It was not repulsive as he had feared. It was cool, smooth, sweet, much like apple cider, tangy but not alcoholic. He downed it in a few gulps and asked Moog to bring him more. This he sipped while he tried to fathom the events of the last few hours.

“There are many things I have to ask,” Moog said. “Perhaps the best way would be for you to tell us your story. That would be quicker, and nothing would be missed.”

“I don't know,” Victor said guardedly.

“We only wish to help. I think you badly need assistance. Am I wrong?”

“You are not wrong.”

“Begin, then. We are listening.”

Victor wondered if he should tell them the whole thing. Indeed, he did need help, and he could hardly expect them to give it unless they knew the story. He perceived that they were as sharp as he was, with IQ's every bit as high, though their civilization had not progressed as far as that on the Earthline he had come from. If he tried to hold out on them, they would reciprocate when it was his turn to ask questions. And it would help a great deal to know how Moog came to speak English, how he knew of the probability lines, why he was risking vacii anger by hiding Salsbury from them. He decided to be open. He told them the entire story.

When he was finished, Moog turned to the others and recounted Salsbury's tale in their tongue. There were questions, some of them which Moog relayed to Victor, others which he answered himself. In the end, the others were satisfied, and there was an air of excitement that was almost tangible.

“Now your story,” he said to Moog.

“Not half so interesting as yours.”

“Tell it anyway.”

Moog nodded and began.

The vacii had begun their invasion of Earth over a hundred years ago. It had lasted less than six hours. Some half-men had attacked the first vacii party and were summarily destroyed. The vacii moved in, took over, and had been established ever since. Recently, within the last thirty years, the vacii had discovered the presence of the first whole men in the half-man society. These were creatures like Moog who were born with softer features, higher foreheads, and IQ's ranging from a hundred-and-ten to a hundred-and-forty. At first, the half-men destroyed these more human children at birth, for they regarded them as freaks or visitations of the demons. But the vacii had started attending every birth and studiously rescued those babies and took them away.

One of the first of such new creatures was Moog. The vacii raised him in a strictly controlled environment. Their actions were not so much generous as more in the line of scientific curiosity. They had not spared him death from any idealistic philosophy about the value of intelligent life. The vacii had no such philosophies. They had rescued Moog and others like him solely for experimental purposes.

They taught him as much as they could about his world, and found that his IQ was one of the higher ones. He became a challenge for them. By the time he had reached his late teens, they had introduced him to as much technical information as he could accept. He was taught about the vacii culture, and he recognized it for the cold, emotionless thing it was, and despised it; he was a creature of emotions himself. They moved on, introducing him to the theory of probability lines, taking him on tours of some of the other worlds, teaching him languages. (A vacii linguist requisitioned him for an experiment in determining the verbal abilities of the newly intelligent species he represented.) He had learned English in this manner.

When he reached the age of twenty-four, six years ago, Moog was privy to a great many facets of vacii life. Because of this, he learned the eventual fate of vacii experimental animals. Two things might happen. One: the vacii might allow the test animal to live a natural lifespan if only to determine exactly what it could accomplish in that time. Two: they might terminate the experiment and perform an autopsy. This was enough to decide Moog's future for him. He could not stay in the starship. In addition to the constant fear he might be slated for dissection, there was the increasingly harsh nature of the regular vacii tests. “Survival experiments,” the vacii called them. They consisted of placing Moog in a particularly hostile position and then observing him saving himself. Although the aliens were undoubtedly obtaining much valuable data on the survival abilities of his species, Moog decided the pain he was enduring wasn't worth it. Since no experimental animal had tried to escape before, his plans met with little hitch. He broke free, along with two cohorts, and had remained free ever since.

He and his companions had not been idle in their freedom. They managed, in two raids on the vacii complex, to free forty-six other intelligent Earthmen of their hairy breed. However, they were never inside the ship, for that was now beyond their reach. The third raid was anticipated, and the vacii killed eleven of their number, while they were unable to free any more of their brethren. With their thirty-eight, they went into the deepest caves in the mountain and hid from the lizardmen. Slowly, they established contact with the half-men above them- the naked, savage type-and began rescuing children of their own breed before the vacii got to them, rewarding the half-men with trinkets for not slaughtering them. A great number of the half-men's pregnant women were secreted away until it could be learned whether their child was savage or intelligent. If intelligent, Moog's group kept it and raised it. They began breeding some of their own. Now, in six years, their number stood at eighty-nine and was climbing faster and faster every month.

Yet the vacii remained a thorn in their side. Fully half a dozen babies a month were abducted into the vacii ship for experimental purposes. Moog and the others were anxious to free them, anxious to somehow defeat and drive off the vacii. But, of course, the vacii had guns. The Earthmen here had bows and arrows. Moog knew how metal could be smelted, how machinery of limited complexity could be built. But, having to live in utter secrecy, unable to go out of the caves in daylight, the Earthmen were restricted from achieving the level of social order they knew they could create.

“But you have a gun,” Moog said.

“Be careful!” Victor shouted as the hairy man picked up his gas pellet pistol.

“Do not worry. We are not as stupid as those whose hands you first fell into. I've heard what the gun does from the half-men. And I can figure it out, almost. But would you mind explaining?”

Salsbury didn't mind.

“May I fire it at that rock?” Moog asked.

Salsbury shrugged. “Go on.”

He fired. The pellet sank only an inch into the boulder before exploding. Chips of stone flew in all directions, and a fine gray powder hung in the air. “Would this work on metal?” Moog asked.

“Yes. Only it will take more shots. If the metal is thick, that is. The pellet will only sink a fraction of an inch into dense material before exploding.”

“It can require as many shots as you have,” Moog said. “Just so we get inside.”

“Inside?” Salsbury thought he was beginning to lose track of the conversation.

“Inside the vacii ship,” Moog said, smiling, his wide mouth full of glittering teeth.

“But what good will that do us?” Victor wanted to know, suddenly coming forward on his chair. It sounded foolish, half-baked, unrealistic. The vacii outnumbered them. The aliens had weapons far superior to anything the men here could possess or hope to obtain. Yet, somehow, he had the feeling that Moog already considered these things and was speaking rationally, with something definite and workable in mind.

“I know the inside of the vacii starship by heart,” Moog said. “I lived in it for twenty-four years, except when they took me on field experiments. I used that time to memorize every foot of the place in the event such information would ever come in handy. It has. I know, for instance, exactly where the ship armory is.”

“But-”

“If you will help us with your pellet gun,” Moog said, grinning even wider so that it seemed his head would split open, “I think we will solve several problems simultaneously. We will be rid of the vacii at last and free to raise all the newborn children in an enlightened atmosphere, in a society where they will not have to hide by day and move at night only with fear. And you will get a chance to return to the woman you call Lynda. That should be enough for you. And perhaps we will even destroy the vacii installations across all the probability lines.”

The others looked anxious, as if, despite the language barrier, they knew what Moog was saying.

“But,” the hairy man finished, “you must understand that you will not have a promise of return to your probability. Only a chance. A chance and nothing more.”

“That's a hundred percent more than I had an hour ago,” Salsbury said.

Moog chuckled, slapped his arm, and translated his acceptance to the others.

There was a brief but enthusiastic cheer.