A movement to the right caught his eye. Down a narrow path came five dark shapes, low to the ground, scuttling. The disk must have had an eye on the other side, too; must have seen the approaching shapes, for it reversed direction.
Then the shapes were close enough for Dalt to make out details: They had normal human heads and torsos, but all resemblance to humanity as Dalt knew it ended there. Each had dark skin and eight legs – four to a side – which were articulated spider-style. But it was the naked hunger-fury in their blank, idiotic faces as they swarmed up to the window and attacked the disk that made Dalt leap backwards and slam against the far wall of the corridor.
An instinctual response. Intellectually he knew he was safe. Emotionally...that was another matter.
Then came a further horror. After the spider gang had peeled the disk from the wall and was carrying it away to wherever it was they lived, Dalt saw its other side. He could make out only a few details, but even in the dim light a fleeting glance showed beyond a doubt the features of a human face.
Jon's eyes snapped to him. He had seen it, too.
"This is how they must live? Why was this done to them? Why must this be?"
Dalt arched himself away from the wall and approached the tery. He had developed a genuine affection for this innocent in beast form. Jon could not comprehend the corruption of spirit that could occur when one human found he had absolute control over the existence of another. Neither could Dalt, but he knew more of human history than the tery.
He put his hand on the tery's shoulder as they resumed their trek.
"Jon, my friend, none of this must be. This is a hideous fabrication, a product of the worst in us. It doesn't have to be, but it is. Nothing that can happen to us by chance is anywhere near as awful as what we somehow manage to do to each other by design."
" ‘We?’ " Jon said. "Who is ‘we?’ I would never do this."
"I was speaking of all humanity in general – and like it or not, that includes you, my friend."
"But I am not a ‘we' for this," Jon rumbled in his deep voice. "I would like to be a ‘we’ with you and Rab and Komak and Adriel, but no…I am not a ‘we’ in this. Never."
The note of finality in Jon's tone made Dalt decide not to pursue the matter any further. They walked on in silence.
The door was unmistakable when they came upon it. The windowed wall of the corridor had been one long, uninterrupted, seamless transparency. After following the curving passage along an arc of approximately forty degrees, they saw the window terminate at what appeared to be a huge steel column, perhaps three meters across, reaching from floor to ceiling. The window continued its course on the far side of the column.
Dalt he inspected the smooth metallic surface.
"This has to be it."
He found a recess large enough to admit four fingers; he inserted them and pulled.
Nothing.
He scanned the door again and found three small disks at eye level.
"The code – I forgot."
He reached into a pouch in his belt and pulled out a slip of paper. The combination was: Clear, 1-3-1-3-2-3-1-2.
"Clear? How do you clear?"
The transcript had never said. It gave the combination sequence, but never explained how to clear the circuit.
Playing a hunch, Dalt pressed all three disks at once and was rewarded by a soft glow within each. He tapped in the sequence. When he put his fingers into the notch and pulled this time, a panel swung out on silent hinges, revealing a small chamber. The ceiling began to glow as they stepped inside.
Before them was another door, a narrow one, secured by four steel bars, each as thick around as a man's thigh. Dalt noticed a wheel on the wall to his left and began to turn it. The bars moved. The first and third bars began to withdraw to the right, the second and fourth to the left.
Dalt stopped turning when the bars had moved half their distance.
"All right," he said. "We know we can get you in. Do we want to?"
Jon cocked his head questioningly.
"I mean," Dalt said, "can you make it? Is there really a decent chance of your getting to the cache and back again through that...that nightmare in there?"
He was having second thoughts about this plan. He had never thought it would be easy, but the Hole had turned out to be a more awesome obstacle than he had ever imagined. So he was offering Jon a way out, and hoping he'd take it.
For despite all Jon's strength and cunning, Dalt seriously doubted he could last very long in there.
"I must go."
"No, you mustn't anything. You..." He paused briefly as his throat tightened. "I don't want you to die, Jon."
He meant it. He sensed something in this misshapen young man that he wanted to preserve and keep near. He didn't know whether to label it innocence or nobility or a combination of both. But it was good and it was alive and he didn't want to see it torn to pieces in the Hole.
Jon tried to smile – it was a practiced grimace that did not come naturally to his face.
"I will not die."
"You may. You may very well die in there. So think hard before deciding."
"There is nothing to decide, Tlad. I am the only one who can go. A human – I mean, one who looks like a human – cannot. Only a tery has a chance of sneaking through. So I must go. There is no one else."
"No! We can find another way. Mekk won't be able to get through there, either. He'll never reach the cache. The Talents can hide in the forests and grow and maybe wait this out. You don't have to die for them!"
"I will not die. I will save them, and then they will have to recognize me as a human. They will have to accord me the honor of thinking of me as a man."
So that's it, Dalt thought.
This was Jon the tery's trial by combat into the human race.
"That's not necessary, Jon. You –"
"I am going, Tlad." Again, that note of finality. "Tell me what to find."
"If you go at all, you're going to have to go twice," Dalt said, then waited for the expected effect.
Jon remained impassive. "Then I shall go twice. But tell me why. I was to find the cache and bring back sufficient weapons for the Talents to – "
"There will be no weapons for the Talents," Dalt said. "I fear the weapons will harm the psi-folk as much as they'll help them. The arms in the cache will give them too much power; they may even lead to the rise of another type of Mekk...a worse type...one with the Talent."
A nightmare scenario had been running through his brain. He saw the Talents overthrowing Mekk with their new-found energy weapons; he saw them executing Mekk's troopers and the True Shape priests. All well and good, all to be expected. But then he saw them eliminating all followers of the True Shape religion as well as all supporters of the Extermination Decree. And after that, all those who hadn't actively opposed the decree. And on and on until only Talents remained.
"You do not trust Rab?" Jon said.
"Rab is a good man. But I don't know if his character – or anybody else's – can withstand the corrosive effect of absolute power. And even if he proves to be a match for it, he will not be the only leader the Talents ever have. The cache must be destroyed."
Jon made no comment; he merely locked his eyes with Dalt's.
"Do you trust me?" Dalt asked finally.
"I would be dead if not for you."
"That doesn't mean I'm right and that doesn't mean you should trust me. It only means I – "
"I trust you," Jon said softly, his voice echoing in the tiny chamber.
"Good," Dalt said in a low voice. "Because I trust you, too. I believe in you."
In the dust on the floor of the chamber he drew a picture of the explosive device he wanted Jon to procure from the cache: ovoid in shape, small enough to fit comfortably in the tery's hand, and powerful enough to set off a chain reaction among the other weapons hidden there. From the inventory described in Dalt's transcript, enough explosive power was stored in the cache to make a
shambles of Mekk's fortress above, permanently ending his petty empire of fear.
The device had a timer that could be set only by hand –no capacity for detonation by remote control, unfortunately – and the procedure was too complex for someone who had never handled a timer before. That was why the tery would have to make two trips: The first to bring it back to Dalt for the time-setting; the second to return it to the cache.
"And the Hole dwellers? What happens to them?" Jon asked.
"This entire cavern will collapse. Their misery will be over, along with Mekk's rule."
The tery considered this in silence.
"I think that's for the best," Dalt said. "Don't you?"
"Can we decide this for them?"
The question rattled Dalt for a moment. He had not expected his ethics to be questioned by a forest-dwelling savage like Jon.
But then, why not? Jon killed, but only in defense or out of hunger. And he killed one to one, looking his victims in the eyes. Why wouldn't he question the killing of thousands of creatures who were locked away and posed no threat to him?
Why didn't I question it? Dalt thought, uneasily.
"Jon, if you can see another way, tell me."
"I trust you, Tlad."
That seemed to be enough for Jon, but those four words were dead weight on Dalt's shoulders.
Dalt then showed him how to work the combination studs. Jon would find an identical set on the door to the cache. He drilled him until he had the sequence firmly committed to memory.
After a final run through of the description of the device and the combination, Dalt leaned back.
"That's all I can do for you. A door identical to this outer one here is imbedded in a wall of rock adjacent to the central pool. Head straight out from here and you should find it. And keep moving!"
He turned the wheel until he’d fully retracted the bars on the inner door, then he stepped out to the window to make sure all was clear. Returning to the chamber he grasped Jon's huge right hand in his own.
"Good luck, brother."
Jon growled something unintelligible, then together they pulled the door open. Dank, sour, fetid air poured over them as the tery leaped through and began to run. Dalt pushed the door closed and turned the wheel until the bars just overlapped the edge of the door – just enough to keep some Hole dweller from lumbering through by accident, but not enough to cause any significant delay when Jon returned.
Then he went to the window and watched. And waited.
-XXIII-
The stench.
Jon hadn't been prepared for the stench.
It struck him like a blow. The odors of rotting flesh, stale urine, and fresh feces assaulted his acutely perceptive olfactory senses as soon as the door opened. But above all was the unmistakable scent of kill-or-be-killed tension. It saturated the air, permeated the walls.
He moved straight out from the door and entered a winding passage that curved left, then right. The palm of his right hand was sweaty where it gripped his hunting club.
Jon was frightened. He had disguised his fear when talking to Tlad – had almost hidden it from himself, then – but now it came screaming to the surface. He was trembling, ready to strike out at or jump away from anything that moved or came near him.
This was not the forest. The rules here were all different, as unique as they were deadly. The softly glowing rock walls on either side of him were pocked from floor to ceiling with burrows and recesses. Any mad, frenzied creature of any shape, imaginable or otherwise, could be lurking within, ready to pounce, ready to maim or kill without provocation.
He maintained his pace at a wary trot, first upright, then bent, using his left arm as an extra leg, eyes continually moving left, right, above, and behind. So far, no sign of Hole dwellers. There were dark things pulled back tight into the burrows around him, he knew – things that might rush and leap upon him were he smaller and less sure-footed.
The passage widened ahead and forked left and right. His innate sense of direction led him to the right, but as he started down the new path, he heard a cacophony of scraping feet, growls of rage and grunts of pain from around the bend not far ahead of him. And it was moving closer.
Looking up, he spotted a ledge within reach above his head. He pulled himself up and lay flat on his belly with only his eyes and his forehead exposed. The noises grew louder, and then the source staggered around the bend in the passage.
At first he thought it was a huge, dark, nodular creature with multiple human heads and uncountable black spindly arms waving frantically in all directions. But as it moved closer, Jon realized that it was a gang of the spider like teries he and Tlad had seen earlier – perhaps the same gang, perhaps a new one – attacking another larger creature en masse.
The lone victim suddenly reared up on its hind legs and threw off four or five of its attackers, but an equal number remained attached. Jon saw that this creature was taller than he, and vaguely human in form, although grotesquely out of proportion. Its round, bald head was affixed to its body without benefit of a neck; its shoulders were massive, as were its arms which reached nearly to the ground when it raised itself erect.
From the shoulders the body tapered sharply to a narrow pelvis and ludicrously short, stubby legs.
Jon also saw what the spider gang was after: not the creature itself, but the three small wriggling children clinging to its underbelly. That and its four flattened breasts labeled it a female.
And a female to be reckoned with! Her hugely muscled arms swatted fiercely at the members of the spider gang, keeping them away from her young as she struggled to reach shelter. She was holding her own until two of the spider-men attached themselves to her shoulders and started clawing at her eyes.
This last happened as the group passed below Jon's perch. He knew it would be much to his advantage to let them all move on by and finish their battle further down the passage. But something in that misshapen mother's fierce, selfless defense of her equally misshapen brood touched him. He had to intervene.
Just this once, he promised himself.
He leaned over the edge of the ledge and swung his club at the nearest spider-man on her back, putting all of his arm and a good deal of his back behind the blow. The club cracked across the middle of the creature's spine and it went spinning to the floor where it lay screeching incoherently and kicking – but only the two forward legs were kicking. The second spider-thing looked up at Jon with unfocused fury in the imbecilic eyes of its human face, then launched itself upward with a howl. There was no revenge motive in its action, only hunger at the sight of what appeared to be a vulnerable prey.
The howl caught the attention of the other gang members and for an instant they withdrew from their attack on the mother and her young. She did not hesitate to take advantage of it: a huge arm lashed out and grabbed one of the spider-things by two of its legs, then lifted it and smashed it against the floor again and again until the two limbs were torn free of their sockets and the rest of the pulpy body skidded across the floor to land against a wall and lay still.
Jon stopped watching to deal with the second spider-thing. Its leap had brought it to the ledge and from there it lunged directly at Jon's face. He battered at it before it could reach him. Four wild bone-breaking swings of his club knocked the creature from the ledge. The rest of the gang looked on its three fallen members and fled back the way they had come.
The mother went over to the creature with the injured spine and halted its screeching with two crushing blows to the head. She then checked the body of the one that had fallen from the ledge. Satisfied that none would ever bother her again, she backed up to where she could get a look at Jon.
Standing erect, she stared at him, as if her dull mind were trying to comprehend why he had helped her. Jon wasn't so sure himself, and now wondered if it had been a foolish gesture. She had him trapped here on this ledge and could easily reach up with those long arms and grab him.
They watched each oth
er.
She still clutched the two legs she had ripped from one of the spider-things. The three little monstrosities clinging to her abdomen began to wriggle and squeal. Without taking her eyes from Jon, she put the bloody end of one of the legs up to her wide mouth and nibbled off a piece of raw flesh. She chewed rapidly without swallowing, then took small bits of the masticated meat from her mouth and fed them to her young. With an abrupt motion, she stepped closer to Jon's ledge and held up the untasted leg to him.
Suppressing a retch, he leaped to the ground and fled down the passage.
These were once human? he asked himself when his stomach had settled and he had slowed from a run to a jog. Or are they still human despite what they've become?
And where does Jon the tery fit in?
No answers came.
He arrived at the central pool, a stagnant body of water fed by a slow underground spring. Something on the far side lapped briefly at the pristine smoothness of the water's surface, then scuttled away.
It was dark in this region. Perhaps the excess moisture had a deteriorative effect on the phosphorescence. Whatever the cause, it made finding the door Tlad had described more difficult.
Jon began scouting the water's edge, looking for a rock wall with a door in it. He found it almost by accident – had he not been dragging his left hand against the rock as he searched he would have passed without noticing it. But his fingers felt a long vertical groove and he stopped to inspect.
The notched handle was there. So were the three studs.
Water rippled behind him. He turned and saw nothing at first other than a bubbling disturbance at the center of the otherwise flawless surface. Another ripple and he spotted something floating on – no, rising from the pool. He could not make out the shape and did not care to. Whatever it was, it did not wish him well – not here in the Hole.
Brushing off the studs, he quickly tapped in the code: 1-3-1-3-2-3-1-2,then grabbed for the notch. The door stayed firm. He tried the code again and still no result.
A glance over his shoulder showed something monstrously huge rising from the pool, looming over him. He tried the sequence again but the door wouldn't budge. He was frantically beating his fist against it when Tlad's words came back to him: