Fliers of Antares (7 page)

Memories of Inch flashed into my mind, of his insatiable hunger for squish pie, and of the taboos he held in so great honor, and of that limb of Satan, Pando, taunting poor Inch with rich, ripe juicy squish pie.

The Och squeaked and backed away.

“All out!” He shouted so loudly some of the slaves jumped and a trickle of rock slid from the overhang. “All out at once! Guard, prod ’em along, you onker!”

We scuttled out.

We did not go back to that seam again.

Although I can recall that scene in all its clarity now, at the time with the same depressing grayness of days it passed from my mind; the little flicker of the idea of escape guttered like a candle in the opened stern-lantern of a swifter of the Eye of the World.

Number 2789 harked back to the idea of escape himself, and so forced me to contemplate reality. Was not 8281 also Dray Prescot? Was I not Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy? The Lord of Strombor? Prince Majister of Vallia? Kov of this and that, and Strom of Valka? Zorcander? Was I not? No title would help me now, but a Krozair brother is never beaten until he is ceremoniously slipped into the sea over the side of his swifter — if he can be buried decently by his brothers of the Order of Krozairs of Zy instead of dying in some stinking prison or under the longswords of those Grodnim cramphs of Magdag.

Despite all the horrendous difficulties, there had to be a way of escape.

The sheer efficiency of the Hamalese would make any attempt enormously difficult.

Probably escape was impossible. I wondered about it then, and I freely admit it, if it was possible for one man, even a Krozair of Zy, to escape from the Heavenly Mines of Hamal.

But, from somewhere, I found the determination to make that attempt. I did not care how foolhardy it might be. I knew, and I believe I understood at last, that merely staying alive was not enough. My Delia, my Delia of Delphond — who so far had not been called Delia of Strombor, as she had once wished — could not pine for me longer if I was dead than if I remained in these Opaz-forsaken mines.

So the decision was taken.

I would try to escape.

Number and order and law had worn me down. If you have listened to these tapes of my life upon Kregen you will know with what a hearty zest I detest and despise petty authority exercised in heartless and evil ways, without thought for those who are weak and unable to defend themselves.

Discipline is necessary in life — sometimes it is a necessary evil — but excessive discipline is a perversion.

Law dominated the men of Hamal.

I would turn their law against them.

Number 2789 would help. There were others, almost always newly arrived slaves who retained some shred of their old spirit. The Heavenly Mines in their soul-destroying regularity broke spirits as boys break twigs in sport.

I must have a plan ready to broach to the others, and then make it work. I worked out a scheme. Simplicity. Speed and simplicity. The seizure of a flier, for we would never walk out, offered our only chance, and the fliers were always well guarded. Strength. Well, we were strong from our unceasing and strenuous labors and the coarse but filling food.

The plans tumbled into my head and always the glorious face and figure of my Delia smiled at me, and her gorgeous brown hair with those outrageous tints of gold and auburn glinting filled me with uplifting determination. I collected a few loose scraps of jagged rock, for the law proscribed a slave possessing anything that might be used as a weapon when he came off shift, and all the picks and shovels with their numbers were checked into the stores.

In the hut I lay on the earth and drew my blanket about me. I turned over to think and I saw a reddish-brown scorpion scuttle out from a crack in the rock and stare at me, his tail high.

If you have listened to these tapes I believe you may have some faint inkling of my feelings then.

In that reedy scratchy voice I had heard before on the Battlefield of the Crimson Missals, the scorpion spoke to me.

“You get onker, Prescot!”

I knew no one else could hear that voice, or mine, in reply.

“I know.”

“There is no escape from the Heavenly Mines of Hamal.”

“You may be a messenger from the Star Lords, you and the Gdoinye; but I will escape.”

The scorpion waved his tail mockingly. “The Star Lords know you, Dray Prescot; they know you are a fool, a get onker, an onker of onkers. They know many things. They know you are such a stupid onker you might succeed where noone else has succeeded before.”

“Believe it, scorpion.”

“The Star Lords have a use for you, Prescot. A use far from here in space and time.”

Sheer terror hit me then, for if the Star Lords banished me back to Earth, as they could (as they could!), I might never be returned to Kregen beneath Antares. I started up, sweating, prepared to defy the Star Lords and all their superhuman power once again.

But the scorpion was growing, was glowing now with that damnable blue radiance, was bloating into a gigantic blue shape that filled the hut and burst the rock walls and so engulfed the night sky and all the stars and tumbled me headlong into that radiant blue confusion.

The Star Lords blunder

Often and often had I cursed that I was merely a puppet, a mere hank of hair and blood and bone, dangling on the strings so callously pulled by the Savanti and the Star Lords. Well, that might be true, in its own way. But as you know I had been developing ways and means of circumventing the Star Lords. Oh, yes, they could still hurl me back four hundred light-years to the planet of my birth, perhaps never again to summon me to Kregen. They could forever sunder me from Delia, the only woman in two worlds that means anything to me — and I say that in due deference and love for all the other women who have been and are my friends. But this construction of artifices had more than once before kept me on Kregen. The Star Lords could be manipulated.

But this time the transition came with blinding suddenness. I yelled out, once again, in my own old intemperate bellow: “I will not return to Earth!
I will stay on Kregen!”

I swear I heard a ghostly chuckle, and a voice that was in all probability in my head and not gusting from the blue radiance surrounding me, as I thought, say: “You get onker, Prescot! You would stay on Kregen even in the Heavenly Mines!”

“I would escape even where they say escape is impossible!”

“Maybe you would, Prescot, you wild leem. Maybe you would. But there is work under your hands, work for the Everoinye. And, Dray Prescot, you fail at your peril!”

I opened my eyes and the blue radiance fell away.

Above me blazed the twin Suns of Scorpio.

And — the red sun preceded the green across the sky!

Immediately I knew I was caught once more in a time loop cast by the Star Lords. Once again I had been thrown into the past. I could take great comfort from that, for my Delia was not waiting for me now in trembling apprehension, and whatever I had to do here — wherever here was — could be done and I might then rejoin my beloved and she would not have spent a single extra day in sorrow over my fate. Also, I knew, and the knowledge brought a shivery feeling of insecurity over me, that somewhere on the face of Kregen, I, Dray Prescot, was at this very minute fighting or drinking, slave or free, struggling on or living it up in luxury. At this very minute somewhere over the horizon a Dray Prescot that was me was walking and talking, fighting, and, perhaps, loving, and I own I found it all most weird, to be sure.

Then — why then the obvious thought occurred. If I was back to certain times past, there might be
two
Dray Prescots battling on the surface of Kregen!

In Valka I had been thrown into a time loop.

I could be in the Hostile Territories right now, fighting on in our long journey with Seg, Thelda, and glorious Delia at my side; and at the same time I could be in Valka, fighting to free my island from the aragorn — and, at the same time, here I was, naked and weaponless as usual, ready to undertake some great new task.

I shivered a little at the power of the Star Lords.

I, Dray Prescot, who called them onkers and rasts and cramphs!

From my experiences in the Heavenly Mines I had emerged in reasonable condition, completely hairless, for the Hamalians with their rigid adherence to the rules shaved the slaves once a sennight, and without the brands on chest and back. I had to acknowledge that forethought to the Star Lords, although as I knew my dip in the Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph of Aphrasöe as well as giving me a thousand years of life and phenomenal powers of recuperation also enabled my skin to slough off brand marks. Sometimes, as when I had been a hauler for the Emperor’s barges, that had not been too comfortable an attribute.

Unlike most of my previous transitions to various unfriendly locations of Kregen, this time I had not landed slap bang in the midst of danger, action, and headlong adventure.

Around the Heavenly Mines stretched the Barrens, a deadly waste of desert and near-desert. All food had had to be imported. I stood up slowly, taking stock of my situation. Around me now extended broad fields, heavy with corn, with brilliant flowers blooming in the hedgerows alongside narrow lanes. A house or two showed red-tiled gables, and smoke drifted lazily from tall twisted chimneys. A flock of birds — ordinary Earth-like birds — swooped and squawked about a clump of trees remarkably like elms. Had the two brilliant suns of Antares not blazed down from the sky above I might have thought myself back at home, in a rich and golden autumn with all the goodness of the harvest to be gathered in.

This situation, then, was like no other that had confronted me on arrival on Kregen.

I could see at once the dangers here, the difficulties. Perhaps, if the truth was told, more danger for me existed in this apparently peaceful scene than in the damned Heavenly Mines of Hamal.

Did I tread the soil of Havilfar? Had I been taken back to Vallia, or to Turismond? Segesthes, perhaps? Or, a continent I had touched only at the tip of Erthyrdrin, Loh? The thought crossed my mind that I might have been deposited in one of the remaining three continents; but I had no information of value on them, and no one of the people of this grouping knew much of them; they were foreign and strange beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women.

A mirvoller flew out from the trees and passed across the sky and, without having to think, I took cover in a hedge. The mirvol flew effortlessly, and I caught the wink of weapons from its rider. The flyer passed out of sight.

As far as I knew mirvols were found only in Havilfar. So I felt reasonably sure I was still in Havilfar. If this was a game the Star Lords were playing with me, I knew only too well it was a deadly game, and failure would result in death or a fate worse than death, if you will pardon the expression, in my return to Earth.

Perhaps, the treacherous whisper crossed my mind, perhaps I was still in the rock hut of the Heavenly Mines, and I had imagined I had seen and spoken with the scorpion, and all this was pure hallucination.

A quoffa cart rumbled along the road, and the apim sitting in the front with a straw in his mouth and a wide hat pulled low over his forehead looked real enough. Naked as I was, I must accost him. He wore a shirt and trousers, a fashion quite often seen on Kregen, and I would face some quizzing, I felt sure. But it had to be done.

The white dust of the road puffed under the six pads of the quoffa, and his huge, patient, wise old face cheered me as I stepped out. This was a crossroads. A tall tree stood in one corner of the cross, and a blackened
thing
hung from a branch, chained and gruesome. I perked up. Directly across the angle of the road stood an inn, whose white walls and red roof leaned lazily against the sunlight, the windows winking in the sun. A table and a bench stood outside. I fancied I might find information there, if I could not stand a drink and a piece of vosk pie.

The red roof of the inn was new, for the tiles were unpitted and still full of color, but the far end gable roof showed older tiles, darkened and cracked here and there.

This was a mystery, this whole occurrence, so unlike anything that had happened before. The peacefulness of the scene, the calmness of the surroundings, even the
thing
in the gibbet to indicate that law was upheld and troubles past, all drew together to make me believe that
something
strange was happening.

I stepped out and opened my mouth to shout to the apim in the quoffa cart — and a blue radiance swept about me and a violent wind seemed to whirl me head over heels. I was still standing upright and on the same spot, but my impressions whirled chaotically. I saw the quoffa cart spin around, the tree bend and sway, the fields ripple and run as though a great and silent wind scored them flat.

I struggled to draw breath in that glowing azure radiance.

I gasped.

The quoffa cart had gone. The tree had changed, for its foliage was now of early season, and not of autumn. And the inn! Its roof was now old all over, darkened cracked tiles where before had been new tiles. The fields had shrunk, for instead of ripe and golden grain they now showed the beginning shoots of new garden growths.

The Star Lords sent their blue radiance about me and I felt myself falling; I thought in my terror that I had failed to accomplish what I had been sent here to do. And I knew the Everoinye would punish failure with instant dismissal. I was on my way back to Earth!

“No!” I screamed out. This was not fair! This was to set a task without clue, without sign, without hope.

Then I could scream no more. For the solid ground returned once more under my feet, the old inn, the new shoots in the fields, the burgeoning tree, all flashed again before my eyes.

But now there was a change, a drastic change.

The inn was on fire. Flames shot from the roof, cracking and tumbling the tiles away as beams fell. The windows glowed with the violence of the fire within. All about me rose that horrid screeching of men locked in mortal combat.