The Greatest Tales of Lost Worlds & Alternative Universes. Филип Дик
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muttered Larry. “Nominated for a citizen of Ireland when we get out of this, one Rador of —”
The Shadow trembled — shuddered into nothingness; the obelisked outposts that had held it framed a ribbon of roadway, high banked with verdure, vanishing in green distances.
And then from the portal sped a shriek, a death cry! It cut through the silence of the ebon pit like a whimpering arrow. Before it had died, down the stairways came pouring the guards. Those at the threshold raised their swords and peered within. Abruptly Rador was between them. One dropped his hilt and gripped him — the green dwarf’s poniard flashed and was buried in his throat. Down upon Rador’s head swept the second blade. A flame leaped from O’Keefe’s hand and the sword seemed to fling itself from its wielder’s grasp — another flash and the soldier crumpled. Rador threw himself into the shell, darted to the high seat — and straight between the pillars of the Shadow we flew!
There came a crackling, a darkness of vast wings flinging down upon us. The corial’s flight was checked as by a giant’s hand. The shell swerved sickeningly; there was an oddly metallic splintering; it quivered; shot ahead. Dizzily I picked myself up and looked behind.
The Shadow had fallen — but too late, a bare instant too late. And shrinking as we fled from it, still it seemed to strain like some fettered Afrit from Eblis, throbbing with wrath, seeking with every malign power it possessed to break its bonds and pursue. Not until long after were we to know that it had been the dying hand of Serku, groping out of oblivion, that had cast it after us as a fowler upon an escaping bird.
“Snappy work, Rador!” It was Larry speaking. “But they cut the end off your bus all right!”
A full quarter of the hindward whorl was gone, sliced off cleanly. Rador noted it with anxious eyes.
“That is bad,” he said, “but not too bad perhaps. All depends upon how closely Lugur and his men can follow us.”
He raised a hand to O’Keefe in salute.
“But to you, Larree, I owe my life — not even the Keth could have been as swift to save me as that death flame of yours — friend!”
The Irishman waved an airy hand.
“Serku”— the green dwarf drew from his girdle the bloodstained poniard —“Serku I was forced to slay. Even as he raised the Shadow the globe gave the alarm. Lugur follows with twice ten times ten of his best —” He hesitated. “Though we have escaped the Shadow it has taken toll of our swiftness. May we reach the Portal before it closes upon Lakla — but if we do not —” He paused again. “Well — I know a way — but it is not one I am gay to follow — no!”
He snapped open the aperture that held the ball flaming within the dark crystal; peered at it anxiously. I crept to the torn end of the corial. The edges were crumbling, disintegrated. They powdered in my fingers like dust. Mystified still, I crept back where Larry, sheer happiness pouring from him, was whistling softly and polishing up his automatic. His gaze fell upon Olaf’s grim, sad face and softened.
“Buck up, Olaf!” he said. “We’ve got a good fighting chance. Once we link up with Lakla and her crowd I’m betting that we get your wife — never doubt it! The baby —” he hesitated awkwardly. The Norseman’s eyes filled; he stretched a hand to the O’Keefe.
“The Yndling — she is of the de Dode,” he half whispered, “of the blessed dead. For her I have no fear and for her vengeance will be given me. Ja! But my Helma — she is of the dead-alive — like those we saw whirling like leaves in the light of the Shining Devil — and I would that she too were of de Dode — and at rest. I do not know how to fight the Shining Devil — no!”
His bitter despair welled up in his voice.
“Olaf,” Larry’s voice was gentle. “We’ll come out on top — I know it. Remember one thing. All this stuff that seems so strange and — and, well, sort of supernatural, is just a lot of tricks we’re not hep to as yet. Why, Olaf, suppose you took a Fijian when the war was on and set him suddenly down in London with autos rushing past, sirens blowing, Archies popping, a dozen enemy planes dropping bombs, and the searchlights shooting all over the sky — wouldn’t he think he was among thirty-third degree devils in some exclusive circle of hell? Sure he would! And yet everything he saw would be natural — just as natural as all this is, once we get the answer to it. Not that we’re Fijians, of course, but the principle is the same.”
The Norseman considered this; nodded gravely.
“Ja!” he answered at last. “And at least we can fight. That is why I have turned to Thor of the battles, Ja! And ONE have I hope in for mine Helma — the white maiden. Since I have turned to the old gods it has been made clear to me that I shall slay Lugur and that the Heks, the evil witch Yolara, shall also die. But I would talk with the white maiden.”
“All right,” said Larry, “but just don’t be afraid of what you don’t understand. There’s another thing”— he hesitated, nervously —“there’s another thing that may startle you a bit when we meet up with Lakla — her — er — frogs!”
“Like the frog-woman we saw on the wall?” asked Olaf.
“Yes,” went on Larry, rapidly. “It’s this way — I figure that the frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they’re a bit different too. Well, Lakla’s got a lot of ’em trained. Carry spears and clubs and all that junk — just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that, Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets — armadillos and snakes and rabbits, kangaroos and elephants and tigers.”
Remembering how the frog-woman had stuck in Larry’s mind from the outset, I wondered whether all this was not more to convince himself than Olaf.
“Why, I remember a nice girl in Paris who had four pet pythons —” he went on.
But I listened no more, for now I was sure of my surmise. The road had begun to thrust itself through high-flung, sharply pinnacled masses and rounded outcroppings of rock on which clung patches of the amber moss.
The trees had utterly vanished, and studding the moss-carpeted plains were only clumps of a willowy shrub from which hung, like grapes, clusters of white waxen blooms. The light too had changed; gone were the dancing, sparkling atoms and the silver had faded to a soft, almost ashen greyness. Ahead of us marched a rampart of coppery cliffs rising, like all these mountainous walls we had seen, into the immensities of haze. Something long drifting in my subconsciousness turned to startled realization. The speed of the shell was slackening! The aperture containing the ionizing mechanism was still open; I glanced within, The whirling ball of fire was not dimmed, but its coruscations, instead of pouring down through the cylinder, swirled and eddied and shot back as though trying to re-enter their source. Rador nodded grimly.
“The Shadow takes its toll,” he said.
We topped a rise — Larry gripped my arm.
“Look!” he cried, and pointed. Far, far behind us, so far that the road was but a glistening thread, a score of shining points came speeding.
“Lugur and his men,” said Rador.
“Can’t you step on her?” asked Larry.
“Step on her?” repeated the green dwarf, puzzled.
“Give her more speed; push her,” explained O’Keefe.
Rador looked about him. The coppery ramparts were close, not more than three or four miles distant; in front of us the plain lifted in a long rolling swell, and up this the corial essayed to go — with a terrifying lessening of speed. Faintly behind us came shootings, and we knew that Lugur drew close. Nor anywhere was there sign of Lakla nor her frogmen.
Now we were half-way to the crest; the shell barely crawled and from beneath it came a faint hissing; it quivered, and I knew that its base was no longer held above the glassy surface but rested