Planet of Adventure Omnibus (75 page)

Zap 210
looked down askance. “Yes. This is a most secret way. Notice, it connects Athan
with Zaltra; otherwise one must go far around, by way of Fei’erj Node.”
Grudgingly she came closer and brought her finger to within inches of the
vellum. “This gray mark is where we want to go: to the freight-dock, at the end
of the supply arterial. By Fei’erj it would be impossible, since the route
leads through the dormitories and the metalspinning areas.”

Reith looked
wistfully at the little red circles which marked the popouts. “They seem so
close, so easy.”

“They will
certainly be guarded.”

“What is this
long black line?”

“That is the
freight canal, and is the best route away from Pagaz Zone.”

“And this
bright green spot?”

She peered
and drew a quick breath. “It is the way to Foreverness: a Class Twenty secret!”
She sat back and huddled her chin into her knees. Reith returned to the charts.
He felt her gaze and looked up to find her studying him intently. She licked
her colorless mouth. “Why are you such an important item?”

“I don’t know
why I’m an ‘item’ at all.” Though this was not precisely true.

“They want
you for Foreverness. Are you of some strange race?”

“In a way,”
said Reith. He heaved himself painfully to his feet. “Are you ready? We might
as well be going.”

She rose
without comment and they set off along the dim passage. They walked a mile and
came to a white wall with a black iron door at the center. Zap 210 put her eye
to the peep-lens. “A dray is passing ... persons are near.” She looked back at
Reith. “Hold your head down,” she said in a critical voice. “Pull the hat
lower. Walk quietly, with your feet pointed straight.” She turned back to the
peephole. Her hand went to the door-catch. She pressed, and the door opened. “Quick,
before we are seen.”

Blinking and
furtive, they entered a wide arched passage. The pegmatite walls were studded
with enormous tourmalines which, excited to fluorescence by some means unknown,
glowed pink and blue.

Zap 210 set
off along the passage; Reith followed at a discreet distance. Fifty yards ahead
a low dray loaded with sacks rolled on heavy black wheels. From somewhere
behind them came the sound of hammers tapping at metal and a scraping noise,
the source of which Reith never learned.

For ten
minutes they plodded along the corridor. On four occasions Pnumekin passed,
shadowed faces averted, thoughts exploring areas beyond Reith’s imagination.

The polished
pegmatite altered abruptly to black hornblende, polished back from veins of white
quartz which seemed to grow like veins over the black matrix, the end-product
of unknown centuries of toil. Far ahead, the passage dwindled to a minute black
half-oval, which by insensible degrees grew larger. Beyond was black vacancy.

The aperture
expanded and surrounded them; they came out on a ledge overlooking a void as
black and empty as space. Fifty yards to the right a barge, moored against the
dock, seemed to float in midair; Reith perceived the black void to be the
surface of a subterranean lake.

A half dozen
Pnumekin worked listlessly upon the dock, loading the barge with bales.

Zap 210
sidled into a pocket of shadow. Reith joined her, standing somewhat too close
for her liking; she moved a few fastidious inches away. “What now?” asked
Reith.

“Follow me
aboard the barge. Say no word to anyone.”

“No one
objects? They won’t put us off?”

The girl gave
him a blank look. “Persons ride the barges. This is how they see the far
tunnels.”

“Ah,” said
Reith, “wanderlust among the Pnumekin; they go to look at a tunnel.”

The girl gave
him another blank look.

Reith asked, “Have
you ever traveled on a barge before?”

“No.”

“How do you
know where this barge goes?”

“It goes
north, to the Areas; it can go nowhere else.” She peered through the gloom. “Follow
me, and walk with decorum.”

She set off
along the dock, eyes downcast, moving as if in a reverie. Reith waited a
moment, then went after her.

She paused
beside the barge, looked vacantly across the black void; then, as if
absentmindedly, she stepped across to the barge. She walked to the outboard
side and merged with the shadow of the bales.

Reith
imitated her demeanor. The Pnumekin on the dock, immersed in their private
thoughts, paid him no heed. Reith stepped aboard the barge and then could not
control the acceleration of his pace as he slipped into the shade of the cargo.

Zap 210,
tense as wire, peered at the dock-workers. Gradually she relaxed. “They are
disconsolate; otherwise they would have noticed. Do the
ghian
always
lurch and lope when they move about?”

“I wouldn’t
be surprised,” said Reith. “But no harm done. Next time-” He stopped short. At
the far end of the dock stood a dark shape. It stirred, came slowly toward the
barge, and entered the zone of illumination. “Pnume,” whispered Reith. Zap 210
stood soundless.

The creature
padded forward, oblivious to the dock-workers, who never so much as glanced
aside. It stepped softly along the dock, and halted near the barge.

“It saw us,”
whispered the girl.

Reith stood
heavy-hearted, bruises aching, legs and arms nerveless and dull. He could not
survive another fight. In a husky whisper he asked, “Can you swim?”

A horrified
gasp and a glance across the black void. “No!”

Reith
searched for a weapon: a club, a hook, a rope; he found nothing.

The Pnume
passed beyond the range of vision. A moment later they felt the barge tremble
under its weight.

“Take off
your cloak,” said Reith. He slipped out of his own and, wrapping up the
portfolio, shoved both into a crevice of the cargo. Zap 210 stood motionless.

“Take off your
cloak!”

She began to
whimper. Reith clapped his hand over her mouth. “Quiet!” He pulled the neck
laces and, touching her fragile chin, found it trembling. He jerked off her
cloak, put it with his own. She stood half-crouching in a knee-length shift.
Reith, for all the urgency of the moment, resisted an insane desire to laugh at
the thin adolescent figure under the black hat. “Listen,” he said hoarsely. “I
can tell you only once. I am going over the side. You must follow immediately.
Put your hands on my shoulders. Hold your head from the water. Above all, do
not splash or flounder. You will be safe.”

Not waiting
for her acknowledgment, he lowered himself over the side of the barge. The
frigid water rose up his body like a ring of icy fire. Zap 210 hesitated only
for an instant, then went over the side, probably only because she feared the
Pnume more than the wet void. She gasped when her legs hit the water. “Quiet!”
hissed Reith. Her hands went to his shoulders; she lowered herself into the
water, and in a panic threw her arms around his neck. “Easy!” whispered Reith. “Keep
your face down.” He drifted in under the gunwale, and gripped a bracket. Unless
someone or something peered over the side of the barge, they were virtually
invisible.

A half-minute
passed. Reith’s legs began to grow numb. Zap 210 clung to his back, chin at his
ear; he could hear her teeth chattering. Her thin body pressed against him,
trapping warm pockets of water which pulsed away when one or the other moved.
Once, as a boy, Reith had rescued a drowning cat; like Zap 210 it had clung to
him with desperate urgency, arousing in Reith a peculiarly intense pang of
protectiveness. The bodies, both frightened and wet, projected the same
elemental craving for life ... Silence, darkness, cold. The two in the water
listened ... Along the deck of the barge came a quiet sound: the click of horny
toes. It stopped, cautiously started, then stopped once more, directly
overhead. Looking up, Reith saw toes gripping the edge of the gunwale. He took
one of Zap 210’s hands, guided it to the bracket, then the other. Once free, he
turned to face outward from the barge.

Unctuous
ripples moved away from him; lenses of quince-colored light formed and
vanished.

The toes over
Reith’s head clicked on the gunwale. They shifted their position. Reith, lips
drawn away from his teeth in a ghastly grimace, lunged up with his right arm.
He caught a thin hard ankle, pulled. The Pnume croaked in dismal consternation.
It teetered forward and for a moment leaned at an incredible angle, almost
horizontal, supported only by the grip of its toes. Then it fell into the
water.

Zap 210
clutched at Reith. “Don’t let it touch you; it will pull you apart.”

“Can it swim?”

“No,” she
said through chattering teeth. “It is heavy; it will sink.”

Reith said, “Climb
up on my back, take hold of the gunwale, pull yourself aboard the barge.”

Gingerly she
swung behind him. Her feet pushed against his back; she stood on his shoulder,
then clambered aboard the barge. Reith laboriously heaved himself up after her
to lie on the deck, totally spent.

Presently he
gained his feet, to peer toward the dock. The Pnumekin worked as before.

Reith moved
back into the shadows. Zap 210 had not moved. The shift clung to her
underdeveloped body. She was not ungraceful, reflected Reith.

She noticed
his attention and huddled back against the cargo.

“Take off
your undergown and put on your cloak,” Reith suggested. “You’ll be warmer.”

She stared at
him miserably. Reith pulled off his own sodden garments. In horror almost as
intense as she had shown toward the Pnume, she jerked herself around. Reith
found the energy for a sour grin. With her back turned she draped the cloak
over her shoulders and by some means unknown divested herself of her
undergarments.

The barge
vibrated, lurched. Reith looked past the cargo to see the dock receding. It
became an oasis of light in the heavy blackness. Far ahead showed a wan blue
glimmer toward which the barge silently moved.

They were
underway. Behind lay Pagaz Zone and the way to Foreverness. Ahead was darkness
and the Northern Areas.

THE BARGE
CARRIED a crew of two, who kept to the apron at the bow of the barge. Here was
a small pantry, a cook-bench, an island of dim yellow illumination. There
seemed to be at least two other passengers aboard, perhaps as many as three or
four, who were even less obtrusive than the crew, and manifested themselves
only at the pantry and the cook-bench. The food seemed to be free to the use of
all. Zap 210 would not allow Reith to go forward for food. When the pantry and
cook-bench were not in use Zap 210 procured food for both: cakes of pilgrim-pod
meal, candied plum-shaped objects which might have been fruit or possibly
leech-like insects, bars of meat-paste, sweet and salty wafers of a delicate
crisp white substance which Zap 210 considered a delicacy, but which left an
unpleasant aftertaste in Reith’s mouth.

Time passed:
how long Reith had no way of knowing. The lake became a river which in turn
became an underground canal fifty or sixty feet wide. The barge moved without a
sound, propelled, so Reith guessed, by electric fields cycling along the keel.
Ahead gleamed a dim blue light serving as a fix for the barge’s steering
sensor; when one blue light passed overhead, another always shone far ahead. At
long intervals the barge passed lonesome little piers and docks, with passages
leading away into unknown fastnesses.

Reith ate and
slept; how many times he lost count. His cosmos was the barge, the dark, the
unseen water, the presence of Zap 210. With nothing but time and boredom, Reith
set himself to the task of exploring her personality. Zap 210, on her part,
treated Reith with suspicion, as if begrudging even the intimacy of
conversation: a skittishness and prim reserve peculiar in a person who, to the
best of his knowledge, had not even a distorted understanding of ordinary
sexual processes. Primordial instinct at work, Reith surmised. But how in good
conscience could he turn her loose on the surface in such a condition of
innocence? On the other hand the prospect of explaining human biology to Zap
210 was not a comfortable one.

Zap 210
herself never seemed to become bored with the passage of time; she slept or sat
looking off into the darkness as if she watched passing vistas of great fascination.
Vexed with her self-sufficiency, Reith would occasionally join her, taking no
notice of her slight shift of fastidious withdrawal. Conversation with Zap 210
was never exhilarating. She had unalterable preconceptions regarding the
surface: she feared the sky, the wind, the space of the horizons, the pale
brown sunlight. Her anticipations were melancholy: she foresaw death under the
club of a yelling barbarian. Reith tried to modify her views but encountered
distrust.

“Do you think
that we are ignorant of the surface?” she asked in calm scorn. “The
zuzhma
kastchai
know more than anyone; they know everything. Knowledge is their
existence. They are the brain-life of Tschai; Tschai is body and bones to the
zuzhma
kastchai
.”