Warriors Of Latan

Chapter 23

Blade quickly lost track of time as they moved in this leapfrog fashion deeper into the darkness of the Idol's cave. As they moved, Crystal laid out a fine leather thong dyed white, marking their path back to the outside world. She carried only three hundred feet of it. If Cheeky's estimate of the distance to the Idol was badly off, they'd face an interesting choice: abandon the search or risk going on into the darkness beyond the end of the thong.

They groped their way through the cave, their hands feeling what their eyes couldn't see in the flickering light of the torches. It seemed to Blade that the walls and ceiling of the cave had been untouched by anything but dripping water and stagnant air since before man existed. The slimy dark rock around them seemed to be closing in on them, narrowing down until it was only a little higher than Blade and barely wide enough for him and Crystal to stand side by side. Blade noticed that the thong was about half gone.

(«Is this-the way you remember?»)

(«Oh, yes,» said Cheeky blithely. «We do not have far to go. «)

Now the tunnel was sloping downhill and beginning to curve slightly to the left. Cheeky started yeeping excitedly. Blade signaled to Crystal to come up close behind him, handed her the other torch, and drew his knife. It would be a more useful weapon at close quarters than either spear or bow.

«If we are attacked,» he said over his shoulder, «grab Cheeky and run! No point in both of us getting killed. «

There was no sound from Crystal except a small defiant snort. She obviously had her own opinion about abandoning Blade, but there was no time to argue. Twenty feet more and the tunnel opened up to a larger cave.

«Raise those torches high,» Blade said, and stepped forward.

In the center of the chamber was a pile of black stones and ashes, the remains of a fire. Behind that was an altar of mountain stone roughly mortared together. On the altar lay the Idol. It gleamed metallically, and there was something oddly familiar about the shape…

Blade's feet carried him halfway across the cave before he realized what the Idol was. The moment of recognition brought him to a stop so sharply that he swayed, and both Cheeky and Crystal cried out in alarm and reached for him. He waved them to silence and stared intently at the Idol, trying to convince his brain that his eyes were telling the truth.

On the altar lay an UZI submachine gun, a perfectly ordinary piece of Home Dimension weaponry. There was one forty-round magazine in the gun, and three more magazines of 9mm rounds arranged in a little tripod to one side.

Somebody in Home Dimension must have traveled into this land of Latin-who? and how long ago? No one could recall precisely how long the Idol had been in Uchendi hands before the Rutari stole it eighty years ago, but it had to be at least a century. So this UZI had been in Latan for nearly two hundred years.

Or at least two hundred years as this Dimension measured time. Blade knew that didn't necessarily mean much-the Project had discovered some time ago that time in one Dimension wasn't always related to time in any other. On his second trip to Kaldak, Blade found that his daughter, who hadn't been born when he left the first time, was now about thirty years old! Also, he'd once left a Dimension where he was about to be burned at the stake and then returned only second later, after weeks in another Dimension. Project Dimension X might tell them some very important things about the nature of time. The only problem was, once again, knowing what questions to ask.

A more immediate problem was examining this UZI: UZIs were found all over the world, and this one might well have been stripped of any markings telling where it originated. But if he could just get it back Home and have J's weapons experts go over it-and he'd better keep that thought to himself…

He stepped up to the altar and picked up the Idol. The UZI hadn't been stripped of its markings; it had a serial number and some ordnance department's markings on it in the usual places. Blade raised the UZI to get a closer look-and this time it seemed as if the chamber and even reality itself were swaying around him.

The UZI bore the markings of the Ordnance Corps of the Imperial and Royal Army of Englor.

Englor. The alternate England fighting against the Red Flames of Russland. Their army used UZIs-one of the many bizarre parallels between Englor's Dimension and Home Dimension. This was a UZI that had somehow made its way from Englor's Dimension to the Dimension of the tribal warriors of Latan.

At least Blade found that explanation more agreeable than the idea that he'd gone completely mad and the UZI, the cave of the Idol, and God knows what else was an elaborate hallucination. He did not want to wake up strapped to a bed in the mental ward of a secret hospital. He'd been through that before with the Ngaa, and once was too often.

Some of the other men from Home Dimension who'd tried traveling into Dimension X were still in such wards. They'd be there for life, too, their hold on any reality snapped forever by exposure to an alternate one.

No, he would act on the assumption that he was really holding an Englor army-issue UZI submachine gun, and consider how it could have got here. It seemed to Blade that there were three ways.

Latan could be on the same alternate Earth as Englor, Russland, Gallia, and so on.

Latan could be on another planet in the same Dimension as Englor, which had developed spaceflight and reached it.

Englor had discovered the Dimension X secret on its own and had left the gun in Latan. This last possibility — that Englor had discovered inter-Dimension travel-was the most unpleasant. It also seemed to Blade the most likely.

If the Englorians were on the same planet, it was possible that they should not have come to Latan again some time in the last two hundred years. Or it was impossible unless there'd been a war large enough to destroy civilization and leave remote parts of the planet isolated. That didn't seem likely. Such a war would certainly have affected the whole planet violently enough for there to be legends about it. Blade hadn't heard anything of the kind.

An interplanetary expedition also seemed unlikely. There were no legends of the Idol Makers coming out of the sky. One day they hadn't been there, the next day they had. After a while another day came when they were simply gone, leaving the Idol behind.

No, Englor had discovered Dimension X and sent at least one full-scale expedition into it. (Never mind whether there was more than one Englor. That way lay madness.) The Englorians had left the gun here, the inhabitants of Latan had found it, and they had made it into an Idol. That seemed the best explanation for everything Blade had seen here. He remembered with uneasy clarity Lord Leighton's words about the Dimension X secret probably not really being much of a secret anymore.

And if Englor discovered inter-Dimensional travel at least two centuries ago, what had they done with it since then? Except that it might not be two centuries to Englor's Dimension; it might be only a few years.

There were too bloody many questions running around loose for Blade's peace of mind. He decided to start reducing them as fast as he could. Step one was to pick up the Idol and the magazines and stow them away in his pack. Step two was to get back outside.

Step three was to get out of Rutari territory as fast as possible. Blade knew he just might find a few answers by exploring these caves, but it was likely that somebody would notice the missing sentries, draw the appropriate conclusions, and make more trouble than he and Crystal and Cheeky could handle.

Blade scooped the magazines into his pack and picked up the gun. The UZI's plastic sling was cracked and yellow with age and spotted with mold. Blade unhooked it and left it on the altar, making a mental note to make a new sling out of some of the leather thong once they were out of the cave. A sling would leave both hands free for a useable weapon like his bow and arrow. He couldn't imagine that the UZI was still useable, and even if it wasn't a piece of junk, the ammunition would have deteriorated hopelessly.

Blade grabbed Crystal and said, «We have the Idol. Let us take it to its lawful home among your people before the Rutari come.»

Crystal nodded and found the leather thong. They followed the thong back to the entrance of the cave. Outside they delayed their leaving just long enough for Blade to find a deep crevice in the side of the valley. He dropped the two dead sentries and all their gear down the crevice. It was now getting toward the rainy season in this part of the mountains; one good storm would wash away any bloodstains. If it looked as if the sentries had vanished by magic, it might sow fear among the Rutari and delay their pursuit, giving the Uchendi more time to prepare for the attack.

With Cheeky on Blade's back, he and Eye of Crystal walked hand and hand into the mist as the valley of the Idol vanished behind them.