The Key to Irunium

IX

They experimented with Prestin.

They took delight in their work. They increased the amounts they told him to Porteur, gradually building up bulk and weight, flogging him with the impetus machine’s electric—and more than electric—shocks, urging him to greater productivity.

When he passed out for the third time and had to be revived by water and shocks, they let him go. He was dragged off by the Honshi guards, flung down on a mattress in a small airless room and left to rot, his head a pudding-basin filled with burning slops. He slept as though drugged, which he was—drugged by the backlash of his exertions. He sprawled where they left him and scarcely stirred.

He had no idea how much time had passed when he awoke. Almost at once, though, as he sat up and put a hand to his head with a foul exclamation, he was aware of his hunger, thirst and pain. His head felt as though the top had been clumsily sawn off and sewn back on by an apprentice. It reminded him of that bar of steel encircling his head in the car park area as the helicopter had plummeted toward them. He must have worked hard to Porteur himself; he had noticed nothing when he sent Fritzy to this crazy place.

Then he heard the staccato of machine gun fire.

Voices shrilled beyond the door. People screamed and he heard the vicious “Hoshoo! Hoshoo!” that told him the Honshi guards were at play with the devil.

The door crashed open, bringing a blinding burst of light. He shielded his eyes, expecting to be killed at once. Dark shapes blundered in and excited voices said, “Come on! Come on!” They jabbered in Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and un-nameable tongues, all shouting out there beyond the door.

Prestin stood up, possessed by an excitement he could grasp, thinking of the wooden kitchen chair and the impetus machine, the nodal point’s yellow circle and the heap of evil jewels. He ran outside. In the haze of gunsmoke, men and women jostled and pushed, screaming and chanting, waving scraps of Etanshi armor, singing, carousing. He was shuffled and shoved and at once became merely another scrap of humanity flung about in the tides of uncontrolled movement. This was fiesta, Mardi Gras, Revolution, the breaking of bonds and the sundering of chains. He saw dismembered Honshi guards littering the runnels, dangling from overhead fluorescent lamps, strewn everywhere.

A swarm of people rushed out of a concrete side tunnel. Most of them were half-naked; all in rags, waving weapons, shrieking, laughing—some of them—with the violence of released emotions. Before them ran two Honshi guards, their swords gone, their tall conical helmets flapping the pubics around them. One Honshi fell. The crowd poured over him like lava.

Although the crowd had guns they did not shoot at the Honshi… They waited. He saw the other crowd ahead of him, staggered back, and halted to stare about, tilting his revolting head with those wide-spaced, unblinking frog-eyes. Then the crowd closed in.

From the heaving mass a spear suddenly thrust, spiking up. At its tip waved a scrap of hair, blood red, dripping.

The crowd screamed and cheered and hooted.

Much as the scene disgusted Prestin, he couldn’t really blame them. Treat men and woman like animals and you must expect them to react like animals, even though you may claim that it is no way for Homo sapiens to behave.

You sow violence, brother, and you reap violence.

Yeah, man.

Prestin grinned suddenly. He ran forward, holding out his hands.

“I might have known the revolution wouldn’t go off by chance just as I arrived!”

Todor Dalreay, his right arm bloodied to the elbow, the sword an extension of that arm of justice, swung around.

“Bob! So they found you! Yes, we have been busy. The revolution was all laid. All I did was talk them into springing it now.”

“Is it all—?”

The hunter’s face had grown thinner, more wolf-like, but the bristly beard lifted in a laugh. “No need to worry, Bob. It’s all under control. A large number of these people are from your dimension; most are from here though. The Dargan are more than lively in revolt. Taking our whole caravan into captivity was a mistake. The Contessa—”

“Yes?”

Dalreay looked searchingly into Prestin’s eyes. His own face held a remote, strong, judgement-day look. Then, “She escaped into another dimension. Oh, they caught and killed her alter ego—”

“Alter ego? You mean a beautiful young girl with dark hair and violet eyes?”

“I know you met her, Bob. And I believe you were not betrayed by her. Yes, that is the she-devil they killed. The girls who slaved for her were too frightened but it got done. There were those who counted it an honor.”

“I can imagine,” whispered Prestin. He thought of that girl who had taken such delight in bathing her body, who had tried to seduce him into working for the Montevarchi. She was dead. But the Contessa lived on. It would, perhaps, always be like that, surmised Prestin.

“One day, the Contessa will reap her own personal harvest.” Dalreay lifted his sword as the people ebbed and flowed about them. “But there is much to be done. This place must be fumigated of Honshi and Trug alike. Then we can see about our own future, and Dargai…”

“Listen, Todor!” Preston grabbed Dalreay’s arm as the Dargan made to stride off. “A girl—you know, Fritzy Upjohn—a girl they had working here—whatever that meant. Have you or your men seen her? It’s important, Todor!”

“A girl—?”

“Think of Darna, Todor. Yes, important—a girl!”

A rolling figure, a cough, and the glug-glug of an upended wine flagon heralded the arrival of Nodger. He hiccoughed and smiled around. His sword, too, shone with blood.

“I killed that snake Enrico,” he said flatly. “But his brother Cino escaped into the Big Green. So that’s him finished, too.”

“Bad cess to him,” growled Dalreay, fingering his beard. He waved his sword and shouted and men moved purposefully. “We ought to check for this girl of Bob’s—”

“That fool Cino.” Nodger wiped his mouth and drank deeply, the wine dribbing again down his chin. “He sought to bargain with us. Grabbed a girl and tried to use her to shield him. Of course, we didn’t listen. Enrico made a showing of it; but his footwork was so bad that even an old bones like me could make mincemeat out of him. But Cino, now—”

“Girl,” said Prestin. He knew. It had to be. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? That was the way Cino’s mind worked—if one could dignify his animal reactions by the name of mind. “Cino,” said Prestin dully, “has Fritzy. He must have. She’s the only girl he could bargain with. Really.”

“I am sorry, Bob—” Dalreay looked genuinely pained. “But if he has gone into the Cabbage Patch—”

“Cyrus would know,” said one of Dalreay’s men who must have been in the place a long time. All about them now in the open spaces, the tunnels, and, probably, clear up the elevators through the Sorba trees, the men and women of two worlds caroused and chased Honshi. The Trugs they would shoot down at a distance. On Freedom Day no one wanted to take a silly chance and miss all the fun by getting killed.

“Get Cyrus here,” shouted Dalreay. “Whoever he is,” he added.

“Let’s find a quieter nook,” said Nodger. “I feel the strongest desire to sit down and rest these weary old bones.” He belched most artistically.

His Falstaffian act had thinned out as soon as the fighting had begun: he hadn’t pretended to fight; he fought.

They found a cubicle room looking out onto the area where the big growth began, walled from the city by yards of thick concrete. Men and women reported to Dalreay, who with his own elders and other leaders began to sort out problems. Dalreay, after all, was not King Clinton.

Cyrus was found, brought out and thrust down on trembling knees. He tried to make a joke until someone kicked him.

“Yes, yes,” he babbled when the problem had been presented to him. “I know what he will do and where he will go. Enrico, too—”

“Enrico,” said Nodger around a chicken bone he had picked up somewhere, “was last seen wearing six inches of steel in his guts. Very becoming.”

Cyrus smiled weakly and turned even more green.

“Was he the one telling you to use the impetus machine, Cyrus, at the nodal point?” Prestin demanded.

“No! Oh, no! I do not know who that was. Some say he is the Contessa’s son, some her lover. He could be anything at all, for all I know.” Cyrus shook. “We never saw him.”

“Since you know where Cino will go, Cyrus,” Dalreay told him, inspecting the edge of his sword with extreme care, “you will not only tell us. You will take us.”

Cyrus quaked. “No! No! I cannot go into the Growth! Think of me… It is impossible—”

“If Cino can go, we can go and so can you! Get ready.”

Prestin glanced at Dalreay. More than ever now, he realized that Dalreay’s pose of beaten savage had been just that—a pose, a clever ruse to minimize attention. There must have been correspondence between the slaves and the free men, although Prestin couldn’t guess how it was done. Now Dalreay talked of going into the Cabbage Patch, and he wasn’t shaking all over. Then Prestin looked more closely and was immensely cheered—and, paradoxically, more scared. For he saw that although Dalreay was just as frightened of the rain forest, he now felt obligations to Prestin and was prepared to fulfill them.

Urging Cyrus on, they went up in the elevator to the top of a Sorba tree. From its flat roof where a helicopter stood waiting, they surveyed the Big Green. With them had come an Italian helicopter pilot, a tough, swarthy man with a cheerful smile and the marks of the manacles still on his wrists. They all looked out over the green carpet of the main mass of foliage while they listened to Cyrus.

“The Contessa must have her alter egos ready. Cino knew that; he thought he could bargain with them. You killed one, but this Upjohn girl, with others, was in reserve. She—”

Horrified, Prestin blurted out, “What do you mean? Fritzy an alter ego? Explain yourself, man!”

“I cannot! No one can!” Cyrus cringed from an expected blow. “There are dark stories. Tales of necromancy. I do not understand. But the Contessa is ages old, and yet she can appear as a young woman. I do not know how!”

“If Cino took a helicopter, we can find him.” Prestin looked at the pilot. “Are you game, Pietro?”

“And willing to find that devil. I owe him a score.”

They loaded the helicopter with weapons and a hamper of provisions—opened at once by Prestin—and they took off. Besides Pietro, Prestin and Dalreay, Cyrus and Nodger were aboard.

The machine whirred up and over the great forest.

“He will make for the northern end. There are rescue facilities there.” Cyrus had accepted his fate by then.

“Rescue facilities?”

“Caches of food in case anyone was forced down. He could live there until the Contessa comes for him. That is one reason he took an alter ego for her. Without one of those mysterious beings, she would be unable to travel the dimensions.”

“Just find the devil,” said Dalreay grimly. “Forget all the mystical nonsense. My sword will settle that problem.”

But Prestin, thinking of the Montevarchi, was not so sure.

Over the northern sections now, they could see great arms and branches of the forest and a river the size of three Amazons. And they saw Cino’s helicopter settling onto the golf-ball-like head of a Sorba tree. At once they went full-bore for it.

They landed with a swirl alongside Cino’s ‘copter on the flat roof of a tree house. Prestin snatched up an automatic rifle and leaped out of the machine. He felt icy cold and yet burning with heat; he couldn’t remember having felt like this before. It wasn’t even that he loved Fritzy—if anything he was more attracted to Margie—but he felt that Cino had it coming to him, and he wanted to be there personally.

They plunged down the staircase. This tree house looked very much like the others. A girl’s scream, abruptly cut off, bounced up. Prestin went clattering down, followed by Dalreay and Pietro. Nodger took his own time.

They trampled down into an open railed-in space where they halted suddenly, weapons raised but useless. Their faces paled as the meaning of the tableau hit them.

Cino lay on the floor with a parachute pack half ripped off his back. Fritzy crouched near him dressed in the remains of a glamorous flame-colored negligee. A Trug held her arms, pinioning them, and one of its clawed feet pressed Cino down savagely.

Cino was demented by fear, and kept babbling something in his own language. Prestin could not understand it, but Nodger leered. “He’s got it at last,” the oldster said. Prestin lifted his rifle. He aimed it at the Trug.

“Careful,” warned Pietro. “You have to hit those things square the first time. You don’t get second chances.”

“You’ll hit the girl!” warned Dalreay.

“Fritzy!” called Prestin. “Keep still. As soon as I fire, get down flat. Got it?”

She saw him. “I’ve got it, alf. Aim straight, that’s all.”

Prestin held his arms as loosely as he could to aim the rifle, but the shaking worried him. He gripped his teeth together and blinked, trying to steady the picture down. Sunlight bounced in harshly. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He aimed for the Trug’s throat, intending to catch the area of head and chest in the spread.

His finger touched the trigger—and the Trug bellowed madly and charged.

Prestin fired and then the automatic rifle was knocked from his hands like a peashooter from a child. He fell heavily sideways and hit the floor. The Trug was screaming like a herd of bull elephants gone rogue. He heard Dalreay shout, and heard the staccato of rifle fire. He flung himself at Fritzy who surged up to meet him and they collided. They slid together to the brink of the drop next to Cino. His wide, crazy face leered at them, but with none of the vicious, cynical cruelty of the old Cino; he drooled. Prestin saw the drop coming up and grabbed for a handhold, catching the parachute harness.

Fritzy was clinging to his legs now. Through the haze he could see the Trug flailing madly and knocking Nodger headlong. Pietro fired in a brown cloud of gunsmoke. Dalreay held his sword up, ready to dart in if he got the opportunity…

Fritzy gasped, “So it’s you! You came to this mad world, too!”

“Yes—I’ll tell you all about it later—right now I’ve got to get in there and kill that Trug.”

“This is where I was,” Fritzy said, still holding onto Prestin with a drowning grip. She was nowhere near as calm as she appeared, “Cino brought me back here—where I landed after falling out of the airplane. He was not a nice person.”

“You’re—you’re all right, Fritzy?”

“Of course. The Contessa looked after me. She wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” She laughed shrilly and then gulped it off. “Violet was killed. I saw it. Poor Violet.”

“Let go, Fritzy—the Trug—”

Pietro had fired away all his magazine. The Trug waved its clawed talons, the deep and terrifying scarlet of its eyes twisting in its head, its whole frame instilled with primal life energy. Dalreay shouted high and laughing and strong and moved in with his sword…

Prestin saw all that. He also saw the parachute harness slide off Cino’s lax frame, saw the floor unroll away from him, felt it scrape past his chest. He made a futile grab at a railing, and then he and Fritzy were falling freely into the rain forest.

The tree house receded above him. Below, the green canopy jumped clear.

Fritzy hung on to his legs and her scream echoed a long descending shrill down the airlanes.

He had to get them out of this, somehow, for they couldn’t live without protection in the Cabbage Patch. He shouted as he felt that steel band pressing in around his head, like a bacon slicer threatening to trepan.

Above him stretched blue sky and a few clouds. Below him lay a smiling land with the environs of Rome to the south.

So he pulled the rip cord.

“What do we say when we get down, alf ?”

He laughed. He laughed helplessly, hanging on to the chute as Fritzy hung on to him. He didn’t care what they said. The police might ask searching questions, but publicity stunts came in all sizes these days. Anyway, Dave Macklin and Margie were there to help. He looked forward to seeing them again. He felt, somehow, that they were alive and well and waiting for him.

And, he felt with passionate sincerity, so was Todor Dalreay still alive, bloody sword uplifted with the Trug dead at his feet. People like Macklin, Alec, Dalreay and Nodger were not easily disposed of. Free men usually made more of a mouthful than Borgia-type autocrats like The Contessa di Montevarchi could swallow.

He didn’t care if she waited for him below in person.

The sun shone and there was Fritzy and there was Margie. And there was Rome.

Life in this one dimension promised to be pretty lively.

A Porteur?

Never heard of it.