R.W. V - Gods of Riverworld

  "Yes," Burton said, "but the thing about the Computer is that whoever gets ahead of the other with his command can forestall the other. I told it not to show her where ours are."

  "She'll know that when the Computer doesn't show them to her," Li Po said. "That'll make her very cautious."

  "She would be anyway," Burton said. "Pete, go burn off Gull's sealant. Tell him what's happened, give him a beamer. We need everyone we can get."

  Frigate looked reluctant to leave, but he did so at once.

  "We can't stay in this place," Burton said. "She can't seal up the door as long as it's open, but she could set up something — a robot machine that would automatically beam us the moment we stuck our heads through the doorway, for instance — so we won't stay here."

  The orange light had stopped at a shaft, VC-A3-2.

  "That leads up our corridor," Burton said. "We haven't much time."

  He got up from the console chair and went through the doorway leading to the bedroom corridor. Frigate had just finished melting off the sealant and was waiting for the smoke to clear away. The door to Gull's room had swung open. Burton shouted, "Tell him to hold his breath and get right out here!"

  The others went to their bedrooms and got their weapons and extra powerpacks. Burton watched the screen while the others were busy. When they were all in the main room, he told them what they must do. Gull was confused and did not know all that had happened, since Frigate had only had time to give him a few facts. Nevertheless, he nodded when Burton rapid-fired instructions at him, and he ran off.

  All left the apartment then, and Burton had the Computer close the door. The apartment was halfway on the corridor between two lift shafts. Star Spoon was by the fourth-floor entrance to the shaft to their right as they left their place. They sped down the corridor toward the shaft, Alice dropping behind them to enter an apartment on the right side. She would station herself in the darkened area by the door, which would be left half-open. From there she could cover the shaft entrance, about four hundred and fifty feet away.

  The four men separated when they came to the cross-corridor. The lift shaft was in the center of the cross-corridor, and there were deep bays at each corner to permit traffic of big machines. The shaft could be entered from four sides. Li Po and Gull went to the right down the cross-corridor and took positions behind partly closed doors about a hundred feet from the shaft. Burton continued down the corridor and entered a room that was about a hundred feet from the shaft. Frigate was to go to the left at the intersection and take a station behind a door about two hundred feet from the shaft.

  When Star Spoon left the shaft at this level, she would be the target of cross-fire from five beamers.

  Burton's room was dark except for the glow of the computer console screen. He watched the orange light, waiting for it to move into the shaft and ascend toward the third level.

  "She's certainly taking her time," he muttered. What was she doing? Trying to imagine all the possible traps? Or had she lost her nerve?

  Very early that morning, Burton had taken one hundred pounds of plastic explosive from the e-m converter. Using his flying chair to elevate himself to the tops of seven lift shafts and along the sides, working furiously, he had pressed the explosive around the entrances of the nearest shafts. He had not applied the plastic to the bottom of the entrances because Star Spoon would probably see it before exiting. By the time she had left the shaft, even if she saw the plastic on the sides, she would be too late to escape. Proximity fuses would set off the explosive.

  These might be useless, since she might take a distant shaft. But if she passed close to a mined opening, she still might set off one.

  He looked down the corridor and through the opening of the shaft. Then he glanced back at the screen. Ah! The orange light was ascending the lines indicating the shaft near which they waited.

  He crouched by the door. A few seconds later, a transparent vehicle, in the center of which Star Spoon sat, rose into full view. It halted, suspended in the shaft, allowing him to see it in all its details. It was much like the armored chair that he had fashioned except that there were more heavy beamers than in his.

  He could only see her back until she turned her head to give him a half-profile. She was expressionless.

  The armor would resist for a while the ray of a beamer on full-power. Only if the ray could be kept on one spot could it penetrate the armor. And Star Spoon would keep her vehicle moving.

  What was discouraging was that, if she was killed, she would be resurrected elsewhere in the tower. Any victory by her enemies was only a half-victory for them and a temporary setback for her. Yet they had to keep fighting and hope that they would catch her before she could kill herself or be killed. Or that her record- spheres would be found out and, eventually, she would be in the same situation they were. The next death would be the final death.

  Burton had expected her to appear in an armored vehicle, and he hoped that its armor would absorb just enough of the explosive shock to knock her out. That was why he had lined each entrance with only 3.75 pounds of the explosive. As it was, he was not sure that he did not have more than he needed for his purpose.

  He said, "Go on! Go on! What're you waiting for?"

  The moment the vehicle moved from the center of the shaft toward the opening, he would step back, and, pressing his fingertips into his ears, would stand by the wall out of the way of the direct shock waves. So would the others.

  At last, Star Spoon made up her mind. She had looked down the corridor straight ahead and seen that all the doors to the apartment suites were open but one. She would know that the door was Burton's, and she would, he hoped, believe that all five were holed up in it. Her survey of the corridor at right angles to the one straight ahead had shown her that all the doors on both sides were open. That was as it was almost everywhere in the tower.

  Satisfied that she was headed toward the exit, Burton backed away a few feet from the door. Then he lost consciousness; he never heard the explosion.

  When he came to, his smitten senses not yet fully recovered, he was coughing on the burning fumes pouring around him. He sat up, his back against the wall, and tried to get up but failed. His strength had gone for a walk and his wits had scattered like picnickers before the sudden appearance of a bear. When he did manage to get up, he staggered across the room, the air of which was getting somewhat clearer as the air-conditioning sucked the smoke away. The screen still glowed, showing the orange ball down the corridor around the corner. He dimly realized that this was where Li Po and Gull were stationed.

  At least, he knew who he was and where he and the others were. His movements were slow, though.

  "Got to get out there, get her," he said. His lips had moved with the thoughts, but he could not hear his own voice any more than he could hear the voices of himself and Isabel, his Earthly wife, from the past- display on the wall near the door.

  By the time he had reached the door, he could think clearly enough to know that something had gone wrong. The explosion had been far more violent than it should have been. Could he have miscalculated so much, or had something unforeseen happened?

  He looked around the side of the doorway, realized then that he had dropped the beamer, went back to retrieve it, and returned to the doorway. The smoke was a thin veil now. He could see the far-strewn pieces of the vehicle on the floor. The sphere had been made of some shatterable material. The explosive lining the opening nearest Burton had gone off. Probably, a piece of the machine shot through this opening had activated the fuse. The additional explosion had doubled the effect of the shock waves, but even that was not near enough to account for the violence that had knocked him out.

  The vehicle must have contained a large amount of explosives, and this had gone off when Burton's trap had erupted. Or perhaps it was a coincidence that the explosives in the vehicle had gone off just as the vehicle cleared the entrance shaft.

  The thing operating the vehicle had been an android, t
he exact duplicate of Star Spoon, who had sent it ahead as a sacrifice.

  Burton's head still hurt. His thoughts had been climbing a steep hill, struggling to get to the top, where they could re-form and become a potent force. Most of them had gotten up the hill, but they were not yet organized enough. Why had the past- display accompanied the false woman and not the real one?

  Slowly, it came to him that she must have sent the android out first. And the idiot Computer, identifying her as the real Star Spoon, had sent the past-display along by her side. Then the real woman had emerged from her hiding place . . . she must have muffled her features in a hood or masked them . . . and she had come up an unmined shaft.

  There she was, coming around the corner of the intersection from the corridor where Li Po and Gull were stationed. She was, as he had expected, inside a spherical armored flying machine, the duplicate of the android's. If she had been masked, she was not now. Unlike the android, her face was expressive, set in a demon's smile except for the lips, which moved as she talked to herself.

  The machine came to the middle of the corridor just past the walls of the shaft — he could see through its openings — and it stopped, then made a quarter-turn so that she faced down the corridor. What had happened to Li Po and Gull? Were they still groggy from the explosion? Or had they foolishly attacked her as she passed them? He had no way of knowing; he would have been deaf to any cries.

  The machine, moving six feet above the floor, came to the one closed door. It stopped and turned. A barrel slid out from the box beneath the seat, went through a hole in the sphere, and shot out a violet liquid. His mental processes were still sluggish; he should have recognized the fluid at once as the sealant. She was entombing the people that she believed were in the suite. Or, if she was not sure they were in there, she had to carry out this operation anyway.

  He saw Alice's dark head stick out from the half-open door. She ducked back after a very quick look. Star Spoon, intent on moving the vehicle along the sides of the door of Burton's suite, had not seen her.

  He could distinguish a glowing patch on the wall beside Star Spoon. That had to be the display of her memory. The Computer, after the android had disappeared in the explosion, had switched the display to accompany the real woman. Now that she was closing in for the kill, she did not care if they knew where she was. Perhaps she wanted them to know so that they would venture out to attack her.

  Li Po, a beamer in his hand, stepped out into Burton's sight. Seeing the woman, he stepped back. He was fortunate that Star Spoon had not noticed him or his past-display, which would have appeared on the wall of the bay opposite him.

  A small TV set was mounted on her left. She would be in communication with the Computer and would be using it to find out if the five were loose, and, if they were, to track them down.

  By now, the violet liquid had hardened over the door and the wall area around it. He expected her to turn the machine down, but she did not. Instead, she started to repeat the sealing process. Evidently, she wanted the door to be doubly unmovable.

  He had a minute, perhaps two minutes, before she began searching. He strode to the e-m converter and gave instructions to the Computer. He was not worried that Star Spoon would be listening in or be able to learn anything of his activities or location at this moment. He had long ago told the Computer that it was not to reveal anything about himself or his companions to her. She could scan all the rooms in the tower, and she would not be shown this room. However, the refusal of the Computer to scan would give her negative knowledge. If he was not in the rooms scanned, then he must be in one of the other rooms.

  He opened the converter, stooped, and picked up with one hand a gray doughy mass, 3.75 pounds of the plastic explosive. After carrying this to the doorway and putting it on the floor, he went back to the converter. He shut its door; two seconds later, he opened it. The proximity fuse lay on its floor. Going back to the doorway, he inserted the long, thin metal rod protruding from the small metal box into the center of the mass.

  He set the fuse by voice and looked around the door again. He said, "Oh, my God!" Star Spoon had somehow determined that Alice was in her room, perhaps with a heat-and-sound detector. Alice had done the only thing she could do, closed the door with a codeword. And Star Spoon was sealing it.

  Burton jumped out from behind the door, aimed the beamer, and saw the ray, a bright scarlet rod with a diameter of one-fourth of an inch, leap from the bulb at the end of his weapon to the side of the transparent sphere. If the ray could have pierced the shield, it would have gone through Star Spoon's head near her left ear. Instead, the armor glowed at the point, and she saw it at once. She moved a control on the board by her right hand. The vehicle, rotating, moved away from the door, stopped, and shot toward Burton.

  36

  * * *

  He turned and ran close to the wall, hoping that the second door would block him from her view. If he could avoid being hit, if she came by the door just as the explosive went off, if he could get inside the next door before it did . . . He wanted to look behind him to calculate the velocity of her vehicle. She might have accelerated to the point where she would pass the trap before it exploded. But he could not afford to glance behind because it would slow him, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

  He grabbed the edge of the door and swung himself around it so vigorously that he banged his left shoulder on the doorway and was spun halfway around. Two scarlet rays shot past the door. Probably, other rays had hit the door. No matter, he thought. I'm in. Another shock wave knocked him down, but this one had far less impact than the first.

  He got up, praying, and, clinging to the edges of the door, looked around it. Since there was not much smoke, he could clearly see the vehicle against the wall opposite the doorway where the charge had been placed. The explosion had thrust it across the corridor and slammed it against the wall. Star Spoon was unconscious. Burton watched as the car resumed its original speed, grating against the metal wall, and collided with the wall at the next intersection. There it stuck.

  Li Po and Frigate, beamers ready, ran around the corners and up to Burton. "I boobytrapped her," he said. "But we have to get her out before she comes to."

  "Where's Alice and Gull?" Frigate said.

  "No time for that," Burton said. "Pete, have the hypodermic syringe ready. Po, you come with me."

  Frigate removed the syringe from the case attached to his belt. While Burton held his beamer ray steady on one point of the armor, the Chinese ran to the nearest room to order from the converter a ladder and two stepladders to use to climb up to the car. Burton wanted to take her alive, but he hoped that, if she showed signs of rousing, the hole would have been burned through the shell so that he could put a hole through her body.

  However, Li Po returned quickly, and they burned off the hatch locks while she lay unmoving. Burton crawled in, took the syringe from Frigate, blew the drug into her arm, and used the controls to ease the vehicle to the floor. They carried her into the nearest room, placed her on a bed, stripped her, searched her clothes, and then put her in the converter so that the Computer could probe her neural system. It reported that her brain was too complex to be an android's.

  "I'd say we have her," Burton said. "Only . . . what if she's anticipated this possibility and ordered the Computer to make a false report? She'll be alive somewhere in this labyrinth."

  "I don't believe that she would consider that possibility," Li Po said. "She must have believed that she was invulnerable in her armored vehicle. You have to take some things on faith."

  "No, I don't."

  Though he thought that Li Po was right, he intended to search the tower thoroughly. Not until then would he be at ease about her.

  Leaving Frigate to watch the woman, Burton and Li Po burned off the sealant over Alice's door. Though not hysterical, she needed a long drink to quiet her nerves. She had thought that she might be imprisoned in the room forever or at least for a time that would have see
med forever.

  On the way back to the room where Star Spoon was, they saw Gull's body lying face up on the floor of the corridor. Li Po explained that Gull had been caught by a ray from the vehicle as Star Spoon was pursuing Burton.

  "He must have left the room just as I dived into mine," Li Po said. "I don't know why he did it. He told me just before we took our stations that he could not use his beamer. It was all right to kill the androids because they were not human beings, but he could not fight Star Spoon."

  "He should have said so at once and stayed with Alice," Burton said.

  "I think that he probably went out into the corridor to plead with Star Spoon," Li Po said. "He was as crazy as she."

  After conferring, they decided that it would be cruel to lock Star Spoon up in a room with the hope of curing her insanity. Questioning the Computer, they learned that the cryogenic techniques of the Ethicals far surpassed those of Earth. She could be frozen instantaneously without tissue damage, and so she was. Star Spoon would wait in her casket until the Gardenworlders arrived.

  After a day of rest, they began the search. The first room they went to was the one she had left when she set out to finish them off. The Computer would not directly give them the location, but it immediately yielded the records of the passage of the orange light on the diagrams. Entrance to the room on the one hundred and sixteenth level — the Ethicals counted the stories from the top instead of the bottom — was easy. Star Spoon had not closed the door, because she had thought that only she would be alive when her mission was accomplished.

  They went cautiously into a very large room with halls running off it in two directions. There were five rooms off each hall, all but one with closed doors, which would not open at Burton's request. Though he could not get into them, he could see into them by simply asking the Computer for screen vision. And he wished that he had not been so curious.