Red Limit Freeway

Chapter 12

We were vulnerable in our immobile state. The caves were dark and warm and womblike, but I didn't want to be lulled into a false sense of security, so I was glad that the Time of Finding Deeper Levels was over. I wanted to finish the repairs and get moving.

The trip to the faln complex was on. Ragna would go along with Tivi, and both would act as interpreters and guides.

Everybody wanted to come, but I put my foot down. Then Susan stomped on my toe.

"I need to do a little shopping," she contended. "What's so hard to understand about that?"

"But what could you possibly―?"

"I left my backpack and most of my camping gear in that damn hotel. That was the third pack I've lost since this crazy business started. Clothes I don't expect to replace, but alien camping gear is as good as human."

"I really doubt we'll be doing much camping, Susan."

"Look, I'm a starhiker, albeit an unwilling one, and I want a complete starhiker kit. I need it. Besides, I haven't been shopping in a month of Sundays."

"But it's not fair to the others."

"Let her go, Jake," Roland said. "If she's left behind she'll bitch and bitch all day and we'll all be miserable."

I stiffened. "See here. Everybody's been telling me I'm the leader of this expedition. So, by God, I'm ordering you―"

She brushed by me. "Oh, shut up and let's go."

"Yes, dear." I slunk after her.

I had expected the faln to be immense structures, and they were… real big.

We were well off the Skyway on a local extension, riding in one of the Ahgirr's collectively owned vehicles, a low-slung four-seater with a clear bubble top. Endless stretches of desert rolled past. We had been chatting pleasantly but I had gradually drifted off into a reverie. I was gazing moodily into Ragna's side rearview mirror. A vehicle was following some distance back, a tiny blue-green dot almost at the road's vanishing point. I hypnotized myself for a while, watching it. Something about it rang a bell-just the color of the thing. I'd seen that exact color before… but no. The road swung away from the sun and the color changed. Just a reflection, I guessed. Just paranoia on my part. Presently, I looked away.

Susan gave a little gasp as the faln took form in the wavering veils of heat out on the plain. From a distance they had looked like mountains; now they were almost too big to be compared to anything.

I leaned forward and spoke over Ragna's shoulder. "What's the average population of those things?"

"Oh, several of millions. They were being very crowded even with respect to their immensehood."

Tivi said, "We were not meant to be living in this manner that is to say, we of our species. Yet Ahgirr are the very few of whom it may be said that they are in agreement with this statement."

"Yeah," I said, and sat back.

"My God," Susan whispered. "If they have this kind of population level on a colonized planet, and on a backwater one at that"

"Right, think of what the home world must be like."

"Look. There are more of them on the horizon. Tivi told me there were at least fifty faln complexes on this world alone."

"These people couldn't have stayed in caves," I said. "They would've been trodding on each other's faces."

"And ganging together into arcologies was the only way to keep from totally destroying the environment."

I noticed Ragna eavesdropping as he drove.

"Sorry, Ragna," I said. "Susan and I were just speculating."

He laughed. "Oh, all of what you are saying is being of indubitable truth, partly. Ahgirr have always been believing in rational control of the population. Not so of many cultures. Alas and shit."

We came to the edge of a vast parking area crammed with vehicles. Ragna swung off the road and entered it.

"Now we are being faced with the heartrending task of finding a space in which to insert this conveyance for purposes of parking therein. I heave a great sigh."

I was surprised how crowded it was. "Where do all the people come from?"

"Oh, all from over the place," Tivi said. "Many aliens too. This is being a major shopping and commercial faln."

"A shopping mall!" Susan laughed. "I haven't walked a mall in a coon's age." She turned to me. "It's in my blood, you know. I spent my childhood as a mall brat."

"Oh, you're a maller? You never told me."

"Didn't think it was anything special. There are millions of us.

"You were born in one?"

"Born and raised. South Gate Village, very near Peoria, Central Industry."

I sat back. "You know, at one time people only used to shop in those things."

"I know. Then they became arcologies, just like these. Lots of factors contributed. I can go on and on about mall history. Every mall brat learns it in school."

"I'd be very interested in hearing about it."

"Right." She gave a sarcastic grunt. "It's history. Terran history. Who needs it."

Ragna swerved to pull into an empty slot but was cut off and usurped by an electric-blue, beetle-shaped gadabout. The occupants, their purple lizard faces impassive behind darktinted ports, nodded in what seemed an apologetic manner. Sorry, but every being for himself, you know.

"Nasty slime objects!" Ragna shouted, then grumbled to himself in his own tongue.

But a little farther along, another unoccupied slot presented itself and Ragna slipped in, cackling triumphantly. "We are having luck for once, by gosh."

The faln complex was still some distance off, titantic mushroom-shaped hulks baking in the fierce desert sun. They were a striking salmon pink in color. I counted six separate structures of varying heights, all linked by a web of walkway bridges with transparent polarized canopies. Service buildings, tiny by comparison, huddled about the bases of the larger structures.

"Do we have to walk?" I asked. " Looks to be a good hike from here to the base of that nearer one."

"Ah, no," Ragna said. "We may be taking the girrna-falnnarrog, the underground conveyance below the faln. What is it called?" He tapped his blue headband. "The subway. Over there." He pointed right to a descending stairwell. It looked like a subway entrance all right.

Steps led down to a landing from which we took a descending escalator that was at least ten meters wide―sort of a moving grand staircase. Other people and a few aliens had come down with us, and we found a crowd waiting for the next train. The station was well lighted, clean, expansive, and looked spanking new.

I noticed something while we waited. Compared to their brethren, Ragna and Tivi were rather drab figures. Most Ahgirr, male and female, seemed to dress alike, favoring tight-fitting tunics of gray or brown cinched at the waist with a white sash. The other Nogon flounced around in garish, flamboyant gowns and robs, all brightly colored, elaborately designed, busy with embroidery and woven and printed patterns. Hairstyles ranged from the highly imaginative to the entirely outrageous (judging by human standards in general and mine in particular, of course). Ahgirr, it seemed, were the Plain People of their race.

The train was a beauty, levitating along the track on magnetic impellers. Bullet shaped, gleaming white with pink trim, it whooshed into the station and slid along the platform, coming to a smooth stop. Doors hissed open, and the crowd began to board. We entered a nearby car and ensconced ourselves in comfortably overstuffed seats.

I asked Ragna, "If you can get from faln to faln in these things, why does anybody drive?"

"These are people who are not living in faln. No, they are living outside and waiting to be permitted to live in faln. There is no room for them."

"Oh, so there are some who live out on the land besides you people," Susan remarked.

"Yes, many," Tivi answered, "but they do not wish to be living there. Residential privileges in the faln are being passed from parents to children. Privileges may be bought and sold, but there-is being great competition for them. Many legal fights and also violence resulting. Oh, my."

"Funny, we didn't see any small communities off the road," I said.

"Oh, few have been built on this planet. It is desert, phooey on it. They are coming here from planets which are more hospitable. This commercial faln is being usually less congested than others. More parking, too."

Susan and I looked at each other.

The train started forward, gaining speed in a smooth, powerful surge, then shot into a tunnel.

"It's always somehow disconcerting," Susan told me, "when you realize that alien cultures are just as complex and screwed up as ours."

"Yeah. Must have been all that fiction that was written in the twentieth century. You know, superbeings in silver spaceships saving the collective butt of mankind-that sort of thing."

"Must've been. Of course, I haven't read much of anything that far back."

"Ideas like that tend to stick in the mass mind," I said.

"That's me all over," Susan lamented.

I clucked. "You have a habit of putting yourself down did you know that?"

"Just one of many bad habits," she said, "which is why I'm down on myself so much. Ipso facto, Q.E.D., and all that."

"That's quite a hole you've dug for yourself."

"Got a shovel?"

I kissed her on the cheek instead and put my arm around her. Ragna and Tivi smiled appreciatively at us. Weren't we cute.

Some of the Nogon were staring at us. Most of the aliens weren't. Ragna had said that word of our arrival on the planet had been spreading and that there was great interest in us. It looked more like a detached kind of curiosity, to me. I couldn't imagine the general public getting worked up over the discovery of yet another alien race, no matter how interesting.

We passed through three stations, each progressively more congested, before reaching the end of the line, by which time the train was packed with passengers standing elbow to pincer. The train slid to a smooth stop and we joined the crush to get out.

The next hour or so was a succession of visual, aural, and perceptual wonders. Susan and I walked goggle-eyed through a series of spaces that defied description. The scale was immense. It was a shopping mall, yes; it was also a vast strange carnival with attractions at every turn―here, street musicians and acrobats, there, some sort of sporting event, here, an orchestra pouring out ear-splitting cacophony… and everywhere all kinds of activity that anyone would have a hard time describing. There were festivals within festivals, there were celebrations and ceremonies; there were public meetings with people up on platforms shouting at one another―politicians? Or a debating society? Maybe it was drama. There were sideshows and circuses, pageants and exhibitions, shows and displays. There were flea markets and bazaars, agoras and exchanges. There were stalls, booths, rialtos, and fairs, with hawkers, wholesalers, vendors, jobbers, and every other variety of merchant in attendance. You could buy anything at any price. You could eat, drink, smoke, inject, or otherwise assimilate everything imaginable into your body, if you so chose. You could purchase hardware, software, kitchenware, and underwear. There were trade fairs of strange machinery, appliances, and unidentifiable gadgets and gizmos. Salespeople demonstrated, prospective customers looked on. Huge video screens ran endless commercials extolling the virtues of myriad products. There were presentations, parades, dog-and-pony shows, and every sort of inducement.

And all of this took place in a nexus of interpenetrating spaces whose complexity was overwhelming. There were levels upon levels, series of staggered terraces, promenades and balconies, all connected by webs of suspended bridges, cascades of spiraling ramps and stairways, escalators, open-shaft elevators, and other conveyances. Walls and floors were variously colored in soft pastels and metallic tints. Surfaces of shiny blue metal formed ceilings and curtainwalls, stairwells and platforms. There were hanging gardens, miniature forests, waterfalls, small game preserves, lakelets, parkets, and playgrounds. Hanging mobile sculptures wheeled above, towering alien monuments rose from the floors. And everywhere there was activity, action, color, movement, and sound.

And noise.

"Plenty loud, eh?" Ragna said.

"What?" Susan answered. "Oh, Jake, it's all so familiar yet so utterly strange. I can't get over it."

"What I find strange is all this chaos contained within a controlled environment."

"Maybe this is how they keep from feeling confined."

"Hard to realize we're indoors. Where's all this light coming from?"

"I'd swear that's sky up there," Susan said, pointing to the distant roof.

"They must pump in sunlight through a series of mirrors," I guessed.

"This is being true," Ragna said. "Quite a neat trick, but it is also being much too damnably bright in here."

Neither of our guides had bothered to take down their protective hoods and both still wore wraparound sunglasses. I wondered if their aversion to sunlight was more psychological than physical. The other Nogon seemed to be at home, though I did notice some wearing wide-brimmed hats and some with dark glasses.

"What do we do first?" Susan asked. "Where do we go?"

"You said that you were being desirous of equipment by which one lives in the wilderness, making camp and suchlike," Tivi said.

Susan laughed. "Well, I'm not exactly desirous of the stuff, but―" She put a hand on Tivi's sloping shoulder. "I'm sorry: Yes, I'd like to buy camping gear. A backpack, maybe, if I can find one that fits my all-too-human frame. And a good flashlight… and, um, I'll need an all-climate survival suit―hell, I'll never find one that fits me. Forget that."

"On the contrary," Tivi said, "they are having makers of clothing here who can possibly be accommodating you."

"Really? Designer fashions, huh?"

"Pardon?"

"You've convinced me. I'd really like some new clothes…

"Oh, wait." Susan turned to me. "We really should go get that electronic stuff you need first. Right?"

"Nah, go ahead and have fun. We've got a little time."

"Oh, good." She suddenly frowned. "Rats."

"What?

"Now I feel guilty that the others didn't get to come along."

I nodded, looking around. "Yeah, they are missing some sights. But I thought they'd be safer in the caves."

"You were right. We shouldn't take chances."

"Good rationalization."

"Creep. Let's go."

"May I be suggesting," Ragna said, "that we may be having perhaps a parting of the ways at this point, Tivi going with Jake and I myself escorting and otherwise leading Susan?"

I said, "Let me get the feel of this place first. It's big, and if we get separated―"

"There is little need for the fear you are feeling, Jake. Unfortunately, Ahgirr are very familiar, with this den of iniquity and other foul doings, being that they are coming here to purchase many necessary essentials which are, rats, unpurchasable elsewhere."

"Well, I'd rather tag along with Suzie first. Then we'll see."

Ragna made circles with his forefingers and elongated thumbs, throwing his arms out. We had come to interpret this as a shrugging gesture, though it had other meanings. "As you are wishing, so shall we be tagging."

We set out into the tumult.

We went down several levels and walked through a parklet. Children played there, running about and screeching just like children do all over the universe. There were lots of imaginative objects there to climb and swing from, monkey bars and that sort of thing. Parents seated at benches looked on. Susan was right in that everything was familiar in a way―but every object, every aspect of the design of this area and all the rest was totally nonhuman. Everything said alien.

Something odd was transpiring on the other side of the park. A crowd of Nogon was gathered in the middle of a large expanse of green tile floor. Everyone was jumping up and down, facing in the direction of a platform upon which were displayed a variety of nutty looking objects. Household wares, maybe. Maybe objets d'art; who knows? As they jumped, the participants threw small balls of various colors into the air and caught them. As we passed, I asked Ragna what was going on.

"This is of much difficulty to be explaining," he said, tapping his headband.

"Oh. Is it an auction?"

"Auction." He brought his hands up to reposition the headband. "Auction. No. It is in the nature of being a protest."

"Protest? What are they protesting?"

"Again, this is of much difficulty."

"Right."

Language barriers are one thing, cultural and conceptual ones quite another.

We entered another commercial area. The merchants here seemed of a distinct ethnic group, wearing their cornsilk hair in braids tied off with bright ribbons and floral bows. Their costumes were much more molest. Susan stopped to look at some pottery. Some items were quite attractive, though hard to identify.

Ragna was chuckling. "It is being centuries since these people are living in anything but faln, yet they construct their traditional objects and sell them quite speedily. Making much money into the bargain, too."

"Indians selling beads and blankets," I said.

"You will be pardoning me?"

"Well, it's difficult to explain."

Susan managed to blow fifteen minutes deciding what she wasn't going to buy.

"Susan."'

"Sorry, right. Let's go."

Next up was a sunken arena where a sporting event was being held. The game looked like a cross between rugby and motorcycle racing. If that sounds confusing… well, you'd have to see it. We stopped briefly to watch, but I didn't bother to ask Ragna to supply play-by-play commentary.

We went on. After taking a path through a small forested area, we came out into another marketplace, this one bigger and offering all sorts of products―furniture, vehicles, foodstuffs, clothing, you name it. It took about ten minutes for Tivi to find the stall of a merchant who could possibly fit Susan. It was an alien, a slender little yellow-furred biped who looked somewhat feline.

After conferring with the merchant, Tivi told us, "Yes, it has seen your species before. It can be accommodating your physique in the style of your choosing. But it says its merchandise is of so poor a quality that you would hardly be wanting to waste your money or your time."

I said, "Ask it… er, him or whatever―ask where he saw creatures like us."

She did. "It says it has traveled to many planets and has seen many creatures-your kind to be sure, but it is fearing that your ire will be aroused when it is telling you that the exact location of this sighting is not being remembered."

"Was it recently?"

The alien made apologetic gestures.

"It is saying also that this memory is not fixed with respect to a time element. It craves a thousand forgivenesses and begs that you not kill it."

"Well, tell him he's safe for now. He was probably fibbing about seeing humans. Just wanted our business."

Tivi went on as the alien continued mewling: "It still is insisting that you could not possibly be interested in the worthless articles of apparel that it is dealing in. In matter of fact, it is willing to be paying person or persons to take the junk off his hands."

"Tell him he doesn't have to go through Nogon dickering rituals with us," I said.

"As long as I am interpreting for you," Tivi answered, "it will be afraid not to be doing this dickering and ritualizing."

"What's his name?" Susan asked.

"It protests that an obviously high-born female such as yourself, one who no doubt is in possession of uncountable husbands and slaves, would not be interested in inquiring as to the name of so low-born and abject a creature as we see before us." As an aside, Tivi added, "I am thinking it is also a female―and also that this is being part of her own type of dickering and ritualizing."

"Tell her that I'd be interested in buying everything she has, and would be willing to pay her handsomely for the privilege," Susan instructed.

"Again she is protesting that such a wondrously beautiful creature such as yourself would be ill-served by―"

This went on at some length, and I got bored. To kill some time, Ragna took me on a little tour of the area. We watched what he told me was an actual auction, but strangely enough, it looked more like a protest meeting. After that we browsed through a fast-food section. Some of the stuff looked edible, even good, but I knew that, while I wouldn't be poisoned, I'd get sick as a pup if I had any. We had found that we couldn't eat Nogon food, even though its peptide configurations weren't too far divergent from Terran ones.

By the time we got back, Susan was out of the fitting booth.

"My survival suit'll be ready in an hour or two," Susan said. "I even got to design it myself. Custom tailored-how about that!"

"Good. Now let's―"

"Oh, look over here," Susan said, walking off.

We followed her over to a stall offering a wide variety of weaponry.

"Guns." Susan curled her lip in distaste. "I'm going to buy one."

"Whatever for?" I asked.

"Everybody else is armed to the teeth. Even John's carrying a gun now. Hell, with all the trouble we've been running into, I'd be foolish not to be packing some kind of shooting iron."

"I think we have enough to go around, Suzie."

"No, I want something that doesn't kill."

"Oh."

"Something that'll stop an enemy but not hurt him. I don't believe in killing."

"That might be a tall order, but let's see."

The merchant was a Nogon, and we found that the extent to which the alien had engaged in ritualizing and dickering had been a mere nod to local custom. Done properly, complete with nuances and byplay, the real thing could take hours. By being brusque almost to the point of insult, Tivi cut it down to twenty minutes. Meantime, Ragna went off to buy Susan a torch and some other camping gear. By the time he returned, the merchant had sold Susan a box containing three components which supposedly fit together. The sale of completely functional weapons inside the faln was illegal.

"They are scanning all the time for operative armaments," Ragna told me.

The sale complete, our merchant growled something and stepped behind a curtain. He didn't come out again.

"What was that all about?" I asked Tivi.

"He is saying that such a show of crass materialism and greed has been making him sick, at which point he will be expelling the contents of his gastric sac."

"Oh." I turned and yelled, "Sorry!"

"I wonder if this thing works," Susan said, examining the contents of the box.

"I wonder what it does," I said. "Wouldn't look like a gun, no matter how you'd put the parts together. What did the salesman say?"

"Who knows. Tivi?"

"He was saying that this particular weapon would not be killing one's opponent. However, he was not saying in exactitude what in matter of fact it would be doing."

"That's what came out of all that conversation?" I wanted to know.

"Much was being spoken," Tivi said, "but little was being said."

"Is it that these articles are to your satisfaction?" Ragna asked, displaying the various oddments he had bought for Susan―torch, mess kit, toilet articles, some sort of bedroll, other stuff, all of which were Nogon-made but eminently adaptable to human use.

"Oh, they're fine. Thank you so much, Ragna. Here, let me pay you."

"We may be settling monetary business dealings later, you are welcome."

I said, "We can't thank you enough for exchanging our gold for currency."

Hokar had let slip that gold prices had taken a dive recently. Apparently, the economy of the Nogon maze was booming.

"You are to think nothing of it, Jake, friend of mine. These things are not spoken of, not much."

"Here, Jake," Susan said, dumping a load of parcels on me. "Now, let me check back at the dressmaker's and we'll―"

"Look," I said, "I'm going to take Tivi and get those parts. You go get your outfit and we'll meet you here in an hour."

"Okay. Let's divvy up these things. You take that and that, I'll take this thing… don't they give out shopping bags in this place?"

"You may be needing this?" Tivi was unfolding a gray cloth sack which she had brought out from under her cape.

Susan shook her head. "And we didn't even think to bring a bag or something." She stuffed the small sack, but the gun box wouldn't fit. "This bulky thing. Maybe if we took the stuff out of the box. Ragna?"

"No, let me take it," I said. "Maybe I can find out what kind of weapon it is."

"But you'll have the parts to carry."

"I have two of these," Tivi said, producing another sack.

"Tivi, darling, you're indispensable."

"I am thanking you for not dispensing with me."

We finally split up.

Tivi led me across the mall and up a ramp to a mezzanine. From there we took a connecting corridor and came out onto a curving balcony at least fifteen stories above a vast central floor alive with commerce and every- other sort of activity. We walked along the balcony until it swung out over the floor and became a ramp leading down to platform. There were bunches of transparent tubes shooting up from the floor, and inside the tubes were platforms moving up and down. These were elevators, certainly, but I couldn't figure out how they worked. We ran into a crush of shoppers well before we reached the boarding platform.

"Too much crowd," Tivi said. "We should be going back this way."

We walked back up the ramp and onto the balcony, then through another connecting corridor, coming out into a smaller open area that was a disconcerting architectural jumble. Nogon ideas of interior design were perceptually disorienting. Walkways made odd angles as they shot overhead without visible support. Ramps spiraled dizzily, walls bulged and sucked in, staircases obtruded into overhead spaces. Control, I thought. Control is what arcologies are all about-but what's all this madness? Maybe arcologies were just about containment.

Tivi led me into a side corridor. We stopped by a pair of doors set into the wall.

"These freight-lifting mechanisms are not being in so much use," she maintained.

It looked like a conventional elevator, but when we got it going, it went up diagonally for a while, stopped for a moment, then continued vertically. In all, we went up about twenty stories.

These upper levels seemed devoted to non-consumer items and were a little quieter, but not much. "Auctions" were being held here, too, complete with the pushing and shoving I had observed below. There were stores here, of a sort, though you couldn't tell where one ended and one began. We found an area stacked with crates of what Tivi said were electronics parts. The store was full of shoppers, but there wasn't the crush there was below.

"I will be going to fetch a sales individual. Be waiting here, please."

"Right."

Tivi left and I examined some of the stuff. I could see now that my coming along had been unnecessary. I had thought that my experience with alien technologies back in the known mazes would have helped. No chance. This junk looked like dried fruit to me. Boxes and boxes of dried fruit. Looked good, too; handy for long trips when you can't stop to eat.

Damn, I was tired. I sat on a box of delicious-looking Nogon technology and took a deep breath. Mall fatigue? Hell. Getting old.

I spent the next few minutes thinking about nothing in particular. Memories of the last four weeks were a jumble. Running and hiding, capture and escape, over and over again. Nothing made sense. The universe was a senseless machine, grinding away to no purpose. I was caught in its gears.

I digested that for a while. A faint feeling of nausea was the result.

Where was Tivi?

I got up and walked around the store looking for her. She was nowhere in sight. I went back out into the mall, walked one way, then turned around and walked back. I searched the store again, checked out the neighboring store areas. No Tivi.

I waited another minute, then jogged as far as I could down the mall without getting lost. I huffed back, threading through the crowds, then ran in the other direction, searched, came back. She was gone.

In desperation, I searched the store once again, sat down, waited, got up and paced, sat back down, waited.

The next ten minutes were miserable. If I went looking for her, I'd surely get lost. I couldn't ask anybody. I knew only a few words of Ahgirr, nothing of the mainstream Nogon languages. I could only wait. And wait.

Ten minutes more. Fifteen.

Helpless. Helpless.

It was one of the few times in my life when the notion of panicking didn't seem unattractive. Panic, at least, was action and maybe a release, while sitting there was unbearable torture.

The sheer immensity of the distance between here and home struck like a hammer blow. I was lost-doubly, triply lost. I had blundered through not one, but two potluck portals, and now, inside that maze-within-a-maze, I had found yet another labyrinth to contain me.

I stood up. All right, enough of that crap.

This place was big, but not infinitely so. I would walls and walk and walk and sooner or later Susan and Ragna would find me. They'd send out word, alert the security forces. I was easy enough to spot.

But if something had happened to Tivi, could Susan and Ragna be safe?

I was sure I could find that freight elevator. I did.

There were no buttons to press. Tivi had fiddled with a single knob until the desired level designation had shown on the readout screen: No help to me. I tried remembering what symbol had been on the screen when we entered. Couldn't. Okay. Then it was a matter of fiddling with the damn knob, going along for the ride until this contraption went down at least twenty stories. I fiddled, and the thing went.

Sideways.

Then it stopped and the doors slid open. A few Nogon waiting nearby made motions to enter, saw me, and backed off. The doors closed. Nothing happened.

I spun the knob. The elevator went straight up. I spun the knob the other way. The elevator stopped, groaned, went down diagonally to the right. I kept worrying the control and the thing kept changing direction, going nowhere. Exasperated, I twisted the knob until a likely set of runes showed on the readout. I left it there.

The contraption dropped like a rock. Which was fine, except that I couldn't stop it. I must have given it some priority command. Okay, the hell with it, I'd just go along for the ride.

It was a long ride, straight down. And down. And farther down still. The bargain basement-sale items, hardware, carpet remnants-the Seventh Circle of Hell.

Finally the elevator slowed, sighed softly, and stopped. The doors opened. I peered out.

Compared to the ceaseless roar of the mall, there was silence here. Out of the semidarkness, the quietly efficient whir and hum of machinery came to my ears. It was a world all to its own. Pipes gurgled, motors thrummed and throbbed, fans whined. The strangled scream of a turbine came from my right. But quietly, quietly.

The place was a jungle of pipes and ducts. Here and there, faint trails of steam arose from joints and junctures. Dripping water puddled on the floor in front of the elevator. Dim yellow light came obliquely from a source to the left. Through the riot of pipes I could see branching corridors leading off at odd angles.

This wasn't my floor. I wrenched the oversized, dull-white control knob around until vaguely familiar markings showed on the readout screen. The elevator stayed put. I fiddled with it some more, to no avail. The thing would go up again, if at all, in its own good time. I squatted, leaning my back against the metal wall of the car.

Lost again. Loster and loster.

To kill the agonizing wait I examined Susan's strange weapon. Taking the pieces out of the box, I tried to figure a way to put them together. The largest component of the three looked like a handle-end, and I proceeded on that assumption. The smaller of the remaining two pieces appeared to be a power pack, which fit into the third, a long rod with an adjustable clamp on the end of it. Click, snap, and it was together.

Fine. Now, what the hell was it, and how did it work? Second question first. You held it by the handle and pointed. You crooked your middle finger around this little ring here, and…? Nothing. There were various circular switches on the handle, and I pressed some of them. Nothing. I broke it apart, examined the cylindrical power pack, decided it looked to be in backward, and turned it around. Putting the contraption back together, I pointed it out the door at the floor and squeezed the ring.

A tiny, bright blue discharge sputtered from the end of the rod. That was it. I fiddled with the switches and tried again. The discharge was brighter and more elongated. Further fiddling produced a weaker, shorter discharge.

And that was absolutely it.

The floor was in great shape.

This was obviously not a weapon but a tool, probably a pipe cutter or scoring tool of some kind. Apparently our salesman had been extremely pissed off at us. Why hadn't Tivi known it wasn't a weapon? Possibly because the thing was alien manufactured and designed for non-Nogon use. It didn't look like a typical Nogon tool; I had seen plenty of those.

I pressed switches until it didn't discharge when I pullet on the ring. On safety. I slipped into my back pocket and stood up. I played with the control knob some more. Nothing. I paced inside the car, then tried the control again. No response. I banged on it in annoyance. Hell, don't break it, I told myself, I paced in a circle, giving the knob a good twist every circuit,

Some ten minutes later I decided it was never going to go up again, at least not very soon. I picked up Tivi's cloth sack. Inside was Susan's new torch and another thing that looked like a sewing kit.

I took the torch, dropped the sack and walked out into the pipe jungle, taking a corridor leading to the right. Just as I got far away enough not to be able to run back in time, the goddamn elevator shut its doors and took off. Maybe it had been waiting for me to leave.

I wandered for an hour, looking for a way up. No stairwell, no ladders, no more elevators. Endless passageways through thickets of pipes, ducts, cables, and conduits. The life of the faln throbbed in the darkness all around me. The Nogon had never really left their caves. Vents of steam hissed at me. Strange markings on the walls gave no clue as to where I should go, how to get out. Lost and more lost. The urge to panic was returning.

I stopped and sat on a metal canister left in the passageway, leaned back and rested my head against a warm pipe. I couldn't see a way to the other side of this. I would wander endlessly through an eternal humming night-no one would find.me, ever.

Hey, you'd better stop that, another voice told me.

Right. But I had been worn down. Every man has his breaking point. I was tired of this. Tired of it. I wanted to sleep, get into another dream. I didn't like this one. Whirclickbeep… whirclickbeep, something sounded behind me. Whirclickbeep… whirclickbeep. I was lost in a forest of sounds again. Lost in a cave again. The same cycles were repeating incessantly. Over and over, over and over. Run, chase, run, chase… lost, lost, lost…

… The road is never-ending. I run along it into the night, footsteps echoing from the vast nothingness that slowly envelopes me, that slowly closes me within its dark maw. I run into the throat of the night. Eternal night. Even the stars are gone, winked out, choked out by the miasmal nonbeing that clouds the universe ahead. All that remains is the road, my feet slapping against it. Hard metal, it drains the strength from my legs, but I must go on, I must run. That is the only thing left, the only thing I have. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep throwing one leg out, then the other, jogging on, loping on. The things behind will never catch me if only I can keep running. I must. The light behind fades, my own shadow on the road ahead blends with the darkness. I am alone. Running, running… I can't feel my legs. My body is gone. I am pure movement, forward movement without cause, without purpose, but with an inevitable destination. I am in a dark tunnel, rushing forward, my speed increasing, momentum — building. I accelerate into the starless dark trailing slipstreams of blackness. Time winds down and stops while I gain speed. I plunge headlong through eternity, aiming for a nodal point where all lines of force, all threads of being converge. I fall. I gravitate toward the center, toward the knot in the middle of space, the beginning of time. I slide along a web woven of the stuff of night, all lines leading to its heart. I plummet. But as I approach, as I am about to reach my resting point… Sudden tight! Blinding explosion of light! The wavefront overtakes me, I dissolve into purest energy, I am swept away by overwhelming force…

I jerked awake and fell off the barrel to the hard, warm floor.

Sitting up, I waited until my heartbeat slowed, then stood. I had dozed off-or maybe I had had a recurrence of my hallucinating. I was bone tired. Sure, I had only fallen asleep. Time to get moving. Sit here and they'll never find you. Okay.

I walked forward again a few steps and stopped abruptly.

Something tall was standing in the shadows farther down the passageway.

I slowly took Susan's torch from my back pocket. My nonBoojum again, I thought. Will I never be rid of the thing of will it follow me for the rest of my life?

I played the beam of the torch on it and my heart dropped into my stomach.

"Grrreetings, Jake-frrriend. We have found you at last."

A nightmare in gray-green chitin, fully two and a half meters tall, the Reticulan took a step forward. I assumed it was Twrrrll, the one who had always spoken to me. His zoom-lens eyes rotated slightly to get me in better focus. The complex apparatus of his mouth worked in and out, up and down in a rapid and silent sewing-machine motion. His body was thin, his seven-digited hands and feet huge. Jutting out from a long narrow face, the eyes were dead, containing nothing, no emotion, no palpable presence. A thin spike of a genital organ hung from his lower abdomen. He wore no clothing except for a harness of leatherlike material wrapping his torso. He carried a large pouch hung by a strap from his shoulder. Something was in it.

Twrrrll and his hunting companions had followed me all the way from Terran Maze. They had been teamed with Corey Wilkes. Ostensibly, Wilkes had been paying them off in return for safe passage through Reticulan Maze, the only way back to Terran Maze from the Outworlds. But I suspected that the Reticulans had wanted the Roadmap, too. It would open up new hunting grounds to them, provide fresh honorable game. Their home world and Skyway planets had been hunted out long ago. I also suspected that they had just about given up hope of getting the map. Too many hounds after one fox. The only thing that drove them now was the hunt. For members of a Reticulan Snatchgang, bagging the quarry and dispatching it in a horrific ceremony of vivisection was the overriding concern.

I took a deep breath. At least the danger, the thing to be feared, had taken on a physical form. I had been chased and now I was caught. And now I would deal with the situation.

"So you've found me," I said. "What's your intention?"

"Ourrr intention is to give you an honourrrable death, Jakefrrriend. It is ourrr obligation. You are the Sacrrred Quarrry, the honorrrable game. You must die well, and we shall see that you do."

"Thanks, I was really worried about that."

"You were?" The question seemed genuine. "Then rrrest assurrred."

I pointed to the pouch hanging from his shoulders. Something big was in it. "Got your lunch in there?" I asked.

"Lunch?" He looked down. "I see. No, the game was not honorrrable. I did not eat it."

He reached into the pouch and drew out Tivi's severed head, dangling it by its beautiful yellow-white hair.

The shock left me nauseous and stunned. It was murder so casual, so unthinking that anger was almost impossible. Instead a huge void opened up in me, an emotional emptiness, a helplessness. The meaning of events past and present drained away, leaving only a chilling perception of the blind malignity of the universe.

"Why?" was all I had the breath to say.

"It was…" the alien answered, somewhat at a loss to explain, and somewhat, I thought, apologetic. "It was necessarrry."

"I'll kill you," I said.

"You must trrry," Twrrrll said. "Otherrrwise you would do me no honorrr."

The Reticulan replaced the head into the bag, then drew forth a knife with a curving black blade and a jade-green hilt. He strode forward.

I turned and ran, stopped short when I saw another Reticulan coming down the passageway. I ducked into the maze of pipes. I crawled, vaulted, and sidled my way through until I broke into another passageway. And met another of Twrrrll's companions. I ran from him, found a doorway opening onto a corridor and turned into it. The corridor went about ten meters and debouched into a chamber clogged with more machinery and pipes.

There was no way out.

I looked around for a weapon. In a pile of debris in front of the far wall I found a narrow plastic pipe. I hefted it. It had mass, at least, and would have to do.

Two Reticulans carrying ceremonial knives were walking calmly down the corridor. Twrrrll turned into the doorway behind them.

I picked a spot on the floor that would give me maneuvering room and stood my ground.

"So," TwrrrIl said when they all stood in front of me. "We shall begin the consummation of this affairrr."

The alien on the left went into a crouch and advanced, sweeping the black-bladed dagger in wide arcs before him. He tried to circle but I swung the pipe a few times and thwarted him. I shifted to the right, feinted a broad cut and tried a jab to his face. He ducked neatly, counterthrusting at my legs. I jumped and backed off.

He tried circling again, this time ducking my swings and slashing at my arms, and though a Reticulan's reach is long, he missed. But he successfully circled me. My back was to his companions, but they made no move toward me. Just to be sure, I backed myself against the far wall so that my present opponent was to the right and the rest to the left. The alien glided forward, surprising me by his lightness of foot. He stopped just out of pipe's reach and danced from side to side, leaning in and out of range, inviting a try for a knockout swing, which he would block, then move inside. I countered that tactic by not giving in to the temptation. Instead, I kept jabbing to keep him at a distance, waiting for his move. It came soon enough.

His left hand flicked out, grabbing the end of the pipe. He rushed in, bringing the knife-wielding right up in a thrust to my groin. I jumped to the left, spun around, bringing my arms over my head and twisting the pipe from his grasp, then rushed around him and delivered a solid thwack to the back of his head as he passed. The alien went crashing into the pile of debris, banging his face against the hard masonry of the wall. He was down for only a second, though, and I halted my followup. Pivoting on double-jointed knees, he swung around with knife low, ready to spring to his feet as I attacked. Seeing that I had stopped, he slowly got up.

My heart sank. That blow to the head would have iced any human and nine out of ten aliens. I backed into my original position. Twrrrll and the other one were still blocking the door.

The alien rushed again, coming under the pipe as I swung at his knife hand. The knife came within a decimeter of my eyes. I slashed back to the right and smacked his thin right forearm. The knife went skittering across the floor. He ran to get it and I rushed him, hitting him across the back. He fell prostrate. As he tried getting up I stepped on the bony, segmented ridge that ran up his back, jumped over his head, wheeled around and bashed his skull with all my might. I bashed it again. The alien raised his head and started to rise, coming to his knees. I hit him again and again. Cracks opened up along the chitinous shell of his skull, leaking a pale pink fluid. Again I brought the pipe down. A flap of skull detached itself and fell to the side, exposing a bright pink mass of brain tissue. I thumped the pipe down repeatedly, smashing the brain into pulp, pink sprays of mist shooting out as each blow landed. The alien stayed on his knees. He brought one leg slowly up. I hit him again, and as he raised his head I smashed his face with a vicious crosswise blow. One eye broke off and clattered to the floor like a broken piece of a camera. He fell on his side. I kicked his face and sent him keeling over backwards. He rolled over and I followed up with blows to the spine and back of the head. He got to his knees and began to rise.

I kept hitting him. And hitting him. He fell, tried to rise again. My arms were tired, each blow less forceful than the last. But his head was coming apart, half his brain now exposed and turned to pink mush. Spongy fragments of it clung to the end of the pipe. I swung and swung and swung again.

"Stay down!" I was yelling. "Bastard!" I screamed it with each blow. "Bastard!" The pipe fell again. "Bastard!" Again. "Bastard son of a bitch!"

He rose to his knees again.

"You're dead, you son of a bitch, dead!" I gathered all my strength into one breath, straddled his body and crashed the pipe down on his skull once again. A fine pink mist shot up, and a thick gush of foamy pink fluid flowed out of the hole in his skull.

But he started to get up again.

I screamed in frustration and backed away to get my breath. Waiting until he got to one knee and brought his head up, I stepped in to deliver a smashing blow to the back of the neck.

Like a snake sag, his huge left hand shot out and caught the end of the pipe in a grip of iron. I tugged but couldn't get it free. As he came to his feet he grasped it with the other hand. I kept tugging and twisting to no avail. He raised his end of the pipe, slid his right hand down its length to about the midpoint and applied pressure to the farther end. The pipe groaned and began to bend. I lost my grip on it and backed off. He twisted it into a half-pretzel and flung it away, striding toward me. I backed until I came up against a red hot duct. I yelled and jumped forward, bringing my hand around to my back where I had been singed. In doing so, I discovered Susan's strange nonweapon still in my back pocket. I drew it out. The alien lunged and wrapped one huge hand around my neck, one around my head. He squeezed. I jabbed the tool into his face, poking the lone eye with it. I kicked him, smashing my boot into his genital area. He wasn't soft there. He wasn't soft anywhere. He squeezed tighter and tighter. My head felt as if it were about to crack. The smell of turpentine and almonds invaded my nostrils, overpowering me. I choked, struggled for breath, bringing the tool up to poke at the horny shell of his face. He squeezed tighter, the one eye still working and rotating lazily for focus. I drew one last breath before my windpipe closed. I was passing out. I brought the tool up before my eyes, thumbed what I hoped were the right switches and reached out, catching his narrow bony neck in the C-shaped clamp at the end of the thing. I jerked on the trigger ring and a brilliant flash blossomed in my eyes. The Reticulan's head fell off, thumping to my feet.

But he didn't let go. Tugging on the alien's wrist, I reached out and applied the tool to his upper arm. A small, furious blue flame like a welding arc cut through chitin and flesh. I rotated the tool, scoring a circular cut. The arm detached, and I yanked it away from my neck and dropped it. The grip on my head loosened. I brought my forearm up against the alien's wrist and got free.

I stepped away and looked as the body took three steps backward, tottered for a moment, then toppled over. Even as it lay there, the legs still worked in spastic walking motions and the remaining arm twitched convulsively. Mesmerized, I watched. Presently, the legs stopped working and began to quiver.

I turned my eyes to the two remaining Reticulans, who had been observing impassively the whole while.

Then I collapsed to my knees, breath coming in wracking sobs. A coughing fit overcame me. If Twrrrll and his buddy had wanted to make their move then they would have had me. But they stood there watching.

"Splendid, Jake-frrriend," Twrrrll said. "Most beautiful. If my brotherrr could speak, he would thank you for a consummately honourable death. You have ourrr thanks as well."

"Happy―" I tried to answer, but another bout of coughing interrupted me. When I was finished I gasped, "Happy to oblige."

The second Reticulan stepped forward, then stopped. Twrrrll reached into his pouch and withdrew something, handed it to his brother-in-the-hunt.

The alien shook the thing and it unfurled. It was a diaphanous net made of tightly-woven green thread. He advanced slowly toward me, dagger in left hand, net in the other.

I took a deep breath. "Hell," I said.

I got up.

The second Reticulan advanced cautiously, holding the net out and tracing patterns in the air with the dagger. I grasped the cutting tool with both hands and went forward to meet him. As I did, I felt the tingling flow of adrenaline signaling that my body was on emergency power. My second wind.

The alien lunged, slashing low at my legs as he passed. I jumped out of the way. He circled, made another pass, this time feinting with the dagger and throwing the net. I backed off, waiting for the real attack. He took his time. He began patrolling a wide perimeter, trying to back me into the near corner of the room. I let him do it for a while, then I rushed to attack, broke off and ran to the middle of the floor. Twrrrll wasn't more than three meters from me. I saw my chance and turned on him. 'that pouch of his was roomy. He was training a small handweapon on me. It could have been a dart-thrower-which would have passed unnoticed by the scanners upstairs.

"I have no wish to use this dishonorrrable device on you, Jake-frrriend," Twrrrll told me. "But I will do so if you act dishonorrrably."

I backed away toward the other wall. The second Reticulan crossed the room and began patrolling a wide section of floor. He would eventually corner me and make me vulnerable to the net if I did not attack. But as I would have to close with him to do any damage he'd surely net me that way, too. I needed a second weapon. I sidled away toward the pile of junk against the far wall, glancing over every few steps to see if a likely object was available. I saw a long piece of light structural metal, probably aluminum, bent in the middle and jagged at one end. I sidestepped to the right and picked it up. The alien eyed me impassively as always, but I thought I detected a slight change of posture reflecting a rethinking of his strategy.

I thought a bit, too. I realized that most of the first Reticulan's attacks as well as those of my present opponent had been directed at nonvital parts of my body. With a shudder I realized why. The object had been to wound me, saving me for the final honor of the vivisection table. And that had been my advantage. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have won the first round.

And there was plenty of doubt about my winning this one unless I could put that advantage to good use.

I continued sidestepping to the right as he backed me closer to the far corner. I let him approach, turning slightly to begin backstepping, took two steps toward the corner, then sprang forward suddenly off one foot. He cocked the net hand back, ready to throw, but saw the jagged end of the aluminum rod coming up to snag it, and held back. I closed with him, swiping at his face and chest with the cutting tool. I backed him off for a few steps. Then he stooped under and tried a slashing cut at my upper thigh. I barely avoided it and swung at his forearm, triggering the cutting tool but missing him. The end of the tool left a brilliant trail in the semidarkness.

He backstepped twice, then lunged, feinted with the dagger, took three steps to my left and snapped the net like a whip at my legs, the end of it wrapping neatly around my left calf. I whirled away to unwind myself, but not before he yanked and jerked me off my feet. I fell on my side and rolled, losing a grip on the aluminum rod. I pivoted on my knees to find it, reached for it, but by that time he was above me. The damp, sticky shroud of the net enveloped me. With a life of its own it contracted instantly, covering me like warm taffy. I struggled and tried to rise, pushing out with my arms and stretching the fabric of the net. It turned resilient and pulled back, contracting like a muscle. I felt a burning pain at the back of my knee, yelled, and collapsed. I flopped over and strained to get the cutting tool away from my face. Triggering it, I slashed at the net, made a small hole and poked my arm through. I brought the tool up to the alien's face. He was bending over me inserting the knifeblade carefully through the webbing in order surgically to cut the tendons of my legs. He ducked the tool, grabbing my forearm near the elbow, his grip monstrously strong. I twisted my arm and swung the end of the tool in wicked little swipes at his face, the tool-end flaring brightly. I grabbed a handful of net and yanked. His knife made a long slit in the fabric. I got my left leg out and kicked up, driving my heel into his eyes. He fell back, trying to keep a grip on my arm, but I twisted away, reached over, and, with the tool sputtering and burning, described a long curving line along the length of his torso. I rolled away, got to my knees and hacked at the netting. My other leg came free and I rose, gathering the sticky mass of the net about me as I ran to the other side of the room.

It took some doing, but I got free. My hands, face, and clothes were covered with stickum. The alien was lying supine but slowly started to rise. I rushed back, but he was on his knees by the time I got to him. I waded in, swinging the flaring end of the tool at his face. He struggled to his feet, one hand pressed to the carbonized gash in the chitin of his thorax and abdomen. Frothy pink fluid leaked from the wound. He fended off the tool with the knife, poking at my wrist and forearm. I backed him into the far corner, hacking at him, the tool-end flaming continuously. He bumped into a cylindrical machine component, stepped to the left, banged his crown against an overhead pipe, and bent his head. I swung for his neck, missed, and nicked a vertical tube to my left. The tube sputtered and hissed. I backed away―just in time―as a stream of hot yellow liquid spurted from it, shooting across the room in a low arc. The alien used the interruption to get out of the piping and lope toward the front of the room. I ducked under the stream of stuff, feeling stray drops of it land burningly on my back, and went after him. I caught him good across the back, opening up another seared-edged wound. He stopped, whirled, and slashed blindly at me. I ducked and came up with the tool, inscribing another gash along his torso that cut across the first wound, curved around, and intersected it again. I backed away, got my weight on one foot, and sprang at him again. The alien was doubled over in pain. I rushed at him, tried to get his neck in the guiding clamp. He ducked out and knocked the tool aside with his forearm. I swung low and nicked his right thigh, stepped away from his quick swipe at my face, went in again, and made a crosswise incision in his chest. The chitin of his torso cracked open and fell away in jagged pieces. Inside was a conglomeration of mechanical-looking organs that began spilling out into the Reticulan's hands. Things that looked like clear plastic tubing wriggled out, severed ends leaking rosy ichor. A mass of orange gelatinous goo oozed forth along with a writhing charm-bracelet of odd polyhedral organs. Pink froth puddled on the floor. I brought the tool down and struck his crossed arms. The mass of his insides fell with a splat to the floor. He dropped the black-bladed knife.

I took him apart. First the arms. Then one leg. He toppled over and I methodically cut him into pieces like the overgrown lobster that he was. It took several minutes.

When I was done, I looked up to find the room filling with smoke. The far side of the room was in flames and steaming liquid covered the floor.

I looked toward the door. Twrrrll was coming toward me, knife in hand. I ran into a cloud of smoke and fumes, covering my nose and mouth, and sweeping ahead with the flaming cutting tool. I circled blindly, ran into a wall, felt my way along it, found the doorway, and ran through.