"What’s wrong?" ("Nothing, except the energy dampers are more powerful than I expected. We may not even get near Kali.")
"Oh, we’ll get there, all right."
Dalt gunned his craft to top speed again as he dropped the keel to a half meter above the stone steps. Spears and arrows clattered ineffectively off the hull and enclosed cabin but the guards held their ground until Dalt was almost upon them. Then they broke formation. The quick dove for the sides and most escaped unharmed. The slower ones were hurled in all directions by the prow of the onrushing craft.
Then darkness.
At Pard’s prompting, Dalt’s pupils dilated immediately to full aperture and details were suddenly visible in the dimly lit corridor. The historical frescoes Pard had seen on his previous visit blurred by on either side. Ahead, the corridor funneled down to a low narrow archway.
"I don’t think I can make that," Dalt said.
("I don’t think so, either. But you can probably use it to hamper pursuit a bit.")
"I was thinking the same thing." He abruptly slowed the craft and let it glide into the opening until both sides crunched against stone. "That oughta do it."
The side hatch was flush against the side of the arch, so he broke pressure by lowering the forward windshield. Cool, damp, musty air filtered into the cabin, carrying a tang of salt and a touch of mildew.
He fed the first round from the canister into the sawed-off Ibizan and climbed out onto the deck. As he slid to the floor, something clattered against the hull close by and an instant later he felt an impact and a grating pain in the right side of his back. Spinning on his heel, he sensed something whiz over his head as he flipped the Ibizan to auto and fired a short burst in an arc.
Four Kalians in a doorway to his right were spun and thrown around by the ferocious spray of shot, then lay still.
What hit me? The pain was gone from his back.
("An arrow. It glanced off the eighth rib on the right and is now imbedded in the intercostal muscle. A poor shot – hit you on an angle and didn’t make it through the pleura. I’ve put a sensory block on the area.")
Good. Which way now?
("Through that doorway. And hurry!")
As Dalt crossed the threshold into a small chamber, another arrow caught him in the left thigh. Again, he opened up the Ibizan and sprayed the room. He took a few of his own ricocheting pellets in the chest, but the seven Kalians lying in wait for him had taken most of them.
("Keep going!") Dalt detected more than a trace of urgency in the directive.
He managed to run, although his left leg dragged somewhat due to the arrow’s mechanical impediment of muscle action. But he felt no pain from this wound either. As he left the bloody anteroom and entered another corridor, his vision suddenly blurred and his equilibrium wavered.
What was that?
("The same knockout punch that separated us on Clutch. Only this time I was ready for it. Now the going gets tough – the lady has decided to step in.")
Dalt started to run forward again but glanced down and found himself at the edge of a yawning pit. Something large and hungry thrashed and splashed in the inky darkness below.
"Where’d that come from?" he whispered hoarsely.
("From Kali’s mind. It’s not real – keep going.")
("Positive… I think.")
Oh, great! Dalt gritted his teeth and began to run. To his immense relief, his feet struck solid ground, even though he seemed to be running on air.
White tentacles, slime-coated and as thick as his thighs, sprang out from the walls and reached for him. He halted again.
Same thing?
("I hope so. You’re only seeing a small fraction of what I’m seeing. I’m screening most of it. And so far she’s only toying with us. I’ll bet she’s holding back until–”)
A spear scaled off the wall to his right, forestalling further discussion. As Dalt turned with the Ibizan at the ready, an arrow plunged into the fleshy fossa below his left clavicle. The guards from the entrance to the temple had found a way around the flitter and were now charging down the corridor in pursuit. With a flash that lit up the area and a roar that was deafening in those narrow confines, the Ibizan scythed through the onrushing ranks, leaving many dead and the rest disabled, but not before Dalt had taken another arrow below the right costal margin. Fluid that looked to be a mixture of green, yellow, and red began to drip along the shaft.
How many of these things can I take? I’m beginning to look like a Neekan spine worm!
("A lot more. But not too many more like that last one. It pierced the hepatic duct and you’re losing bile. Blood, too. I can’t do too much to control the bleeding from the venous sinusoids in the liver. But we’ll be all right as long as no arrows lodge in any of the larger joints or sever a major motor axon bundle, either of which would severely hamper mobility. The one under your clavicle was a close call; just missed the brachial plexus. Another centimeter higher and you’d have lost the use of your…”)
The words seemed to fade out.
"Pard?" Dalt said.
(“…run!") The thought was strained, taut. ("She’s hitting us with everything now… .")Fade out again. Then, ("I’ll tell you where to turn!")
Dalt ran with all the speed he could muster, limping with his left leg and studiously trying to avoid contact between the narrow walls and the shafts protruding from his body. The corridor became a maze with turns every few meters. At each intersection he would hear a faint ("left") or ("right") in his mind. And as minutes passed, the voice became progressively weaker until it was barely distinguishable among his own thoughts.
("Please hurry!") Pard urged faintly.
Dalt realized that he must be taking a terrible beating – in twelve hundred years Pard had never said "please."
("Two more left turns and you’re there… don’t hesitate… start firing as soon as you make the last turn… .")
Dalt nodded in the murk and double-checked the automatic setting, fully intending to do just that. But when the moment came, when he made the final turn, he hesitated for a heartbeat, just long enough to see what he would be shooting at.
She lay there, propped up on cushions and smiling at him. El. Somehow it didn’t seem at all incongruous that she should be there. Her death nearly a millennium ago had all been a bad dream. But he had awakened now and this was Tolive, not some insane planet on the far side of the galaxy.
He stepped toward her and was about to let the Ibizan slip from his fingers when every neuron in his body was jolted with a single message:
"Fire!"
His finger tightened on the trigger reflexively and El exploded in a shower of red.
Suddenly back in reality, he held the roaring, swerving, bucking weapon on target until the feed canister was empty.
The echoes faded, and finally, silence.
Not too much was left of Kali. Dalt only glanced at the remains, turned, and retched. As he gasped for air and wiped clammy beads of sweat from his upper lip, he asked Pard, No chance of regeneration, is there?
No answer.
"Pard?" he called aloud, and underwent an alarming instant of déjà vu. But this time he knew Pard was still there – an indefinable sense signaled his presence. Pard, injured, weakened, scarred, had retreated to a far corner of Dalt’s brain. But he was still there.
Without daring a backward glance, he tucked the Ibizan into the crook of his right arm, its barrel aligned with the arrow protruding from his liver, and reentered the maze. He was concerned at first with finding his way out, until he noticed drops of a familiar muddy fluid on the floor in the dim light. He had left a trail of blood and bile as it oozed from his liver, along the arrow shaft and onto the floor.
With only a few wrong turns, he managed to extricate himself from the maze and limp back to the flitter. There he was confronted with another problem.
A large group of Kali’s guards stood clustered around the craft. Dalt’s immediate reaction was to shift the Ibizan a
nd reach for the trigger. A gesture as futile as it was unnecessary: the weapon was empty, and at sight of him, the guards threw down their arms and prostrated themselves face down on the ground before him.
They know she’s dead, he thought. Somehow, they know. He hesitated only a moment, then stepped gingerly between the worshipers and their dead brethren who had attacked him earlier.
He had a difficult moment entering the flitter when the arrows protruding from the front and back of his chest caught on the window opening. The problem was resolved when he snapped off the shaft of the arrow under the clavicle a handsbreadth away from his skin.
Situating himself again at the console, he first replaced the empty feeder canister with a fresh one – just in case – and activated the instruments before him. The vid screen to his right immediately lit up with the sergeant’s face. Dalt made a quick adjustment of the transmitting lens to limit focus to his face.
"Healer!" the sergeant exclaimed with obvious relief. "You’re all right?"
"Fine," Dalt replied. "How are things over there?"
The sergeant grinned. "It was rough going for a while – couple of the flitters took a beating and one’s down. But just when things were starting to look really bad, the opposition folded… just threw down their weapons and went into fits on the beach… ignored us completely. Some of them dove into the ocean and started swimming toward the island. The rest are just moping aimlessly along the water’s edge."
"Everything’s secure, then?"
The flitter’s engine was humming now. He pulled the guide stick into reverse and upped the power. The craft vibrated as it tried to disengage from the doorway. With a grating screech, the flitter came free and caromed off the port wall before Dalt could throttle down and stabilize. The corridor was too narrow here to make a full turn, so he resigned himself to gliding part of the way out in reverse.
The sergeant said something but Dalt missed it and asked him to repeat.
"I said, there’s a couple of my men burned but they should do all right if we get back."
With his head turned over his left shoulder and two fingers on the guide stick, Dalt was concentrating fully on piloting the flitter in reverse. It was not until he reached the point where the corridor widened to its fullest expanse that the "if" broke through.
"What do you mean, ‘if’?" he asked, throwing the gears into neutral and hitting the button that would automatically guide the flitter in a 180-degree turn on its own axis.
"The gate or passage or warp or whatever you want to call it – it’s closed," he replied. "How’re we going to get home?"
Dalt felt a tightness in his throat but put on a brave face. "Just sit tight till I get there. Out."
"Right," the sergeant said, instantly reassured. He was convinced The Healer could do anything. "Out." The vid plate went black.
Dalt put the problem of crossing the sixty thousand light-years that separated his little group from the rest of humanity out of his mind and concentrated on the patch of light ahead of him. The return had been too easy so far. He could not help but expect some sort of reprisal, and his head pivoted continuously as he gained momentum toward the end of the corridor and daylight.
But no countermove was in the offing. As Dalt shot from the darkness into the open air, he saw the steps leading to the temple entrance blanketed with prostrate Kalians. Most eyes stayed earthward, but here and there a head was raised as he soared over the crowd and headed for the mainland. He could not read individual expressions but read a terrible sense of loss in their postures and movements. The ones who looked after him seemed to be saying, You’ve killed our godhead and now disdain to take her place, leaving us with nothing.
Dalt felt sudden pity for the Kalians. Their entire culture had been twisted, corrupted, and debased by a single being. And now that being was no more. Utter chaos would follow. But from the rubble would rise a new, broader-based society, hopefully with a more benign god, or perhaps no god. Anything would be an improvement.
("Perhaps,") said a familiar voice, ("their new god will be Kalianoid with a white patch of hair and a golden hand. And minstrels will sing of how he crossed the void, shrugged off their arrows and spears, and went on to overpower the all-powerful, to slay She-Who-Could-Not-Die.")
Gained your strength back, I see.
("Not quite. I may never fully recover from that ordeal. All debts are paid, I hope, because I will never risk my existence like that again.")
I sincerely hope such a situation will never arise again. And yes, all debts are paid in full.
("Good. And if you awaken in the middle of the night now and again with the sound of horrified screaming in your brain, don’t worry. It’ll be me remembering what I’ve just been through.")
That bad, eh?
("I’m amazed we survived – and that’s all I’ll say on the matter.")
Details of the coast were coming into view now, and below, Dalt spotted an occasional Kalian swimming desperately for the island.
You know about the warp generator? Dalt asked.
("Yes. As I told you before, Kali activated it psionically. She’s dead now so it’s logical it should cease to function. I think I can activate it briefly. So call the sergeant and have him get his men into the air – we’ll have to make this quick.")
Dalt did so, and found four of the five flitters, each overloaded with men from the disabled craft, hovering over the shore.
("Here goes,") Pard said. ("I can only hope that there was some sort of lock on the settings, because I haven’t the faintest idea how to direct the passage. We could end up in the middle of a sun or somewhere off the galactic rim.")
Dalt said only, "Do it!" and pressurized the cabin.
Nothing happened for a while, then a gray disk appeared. It expanded gradually, evenly, and as soon as its diameter appeared sufficient to accommodate a flitter, Dalt threw the stick forward and plunged into the unknown.
VII
THEY SEEMED TO DRIFT in the two-dimensional grayness interminably. Then, as if passing through a curtain, they were in real space, in daylight, on Fed Central. And what appeared to be the entire Federation Defense Force clogged the alley before them and the air above them in full battle readiness. More lethal weaponry was crammed into that little alley than contained on many an entire planet. And all trained on Dalt.
Ever so gently, he guided his flitter to ground between incinerated Kalian bodies and sat quietly, waiting for the following craft to do the same. When the last came through, the vortex collapsed upon itself and disappeared.
("That’s the end of that!") Pard said with relief. ("Unless the Kalian race develops another psi freak who can learn to operate it, the warp passage will never open again.")
Good. By the time we run into them again – a few millennia hence, no doubt – they should be quite a bit more tractable.
With the closing of the passage, the marksmen in the other craft opened all the hatches and tumbled out to the pavement. At the sight of their comrades, the battle-ready troops around them lowered their weapons and pandemonium broke out. The flitters were suddenly surrounded by cheering, waving soldiers.
Ros Petrical seemed to appear out of nowhere, riding a small, open grav platform. The milling troops made way for him as he landed beside Dalt’s flitter.
Dalt opened the hatch and came out to meet him. His effect on the crowd was immediate. As his head appeared and the snowy patch of hair was recognized, a loud cheer arose; but when his body came into view, the cheer choked and died. There followed dead silence broken only by occasional murmurs of alarm.
"Pardon my appearance," Dalt said, glancing at the bloody shafts protruding from his body and tucking the Ibizan under his arm, "but I ran into a little resistance."
Petrical swallowed hard. "You really are The Healer!" he muttered.
"You mean to say you had your doubts?" Dalt asked with a wry smile as he stepped onto the platform.
Petrical shot the platform above the silent crowd. "
Frankly, yes. I’ve always thought there was a chain of Healers… but I guess you’re the real thing."
"Guess so. Where’re we going?"
"Well, I had planned to take you to the Council session; they’re waiting to hear from you in person." He glanced at the arrows. "But that can wait. I’m taking you to the infirmary."
Dalt laid a hand on his arm. "To the Council. I’m quite all right. After all," he said, quoting a line that was centuries old, " ‘What kind of a healer would The Healer be if he couldn’t heal himself?’ "
Petrical shook his head in bafflement and banked toward the General Council hall.
A sequence of events similar to that which had occurred in the alley was repeated in the Council hall. The delegates and representatives had received word that The Healer’s mission had been successful and that he was on his way to address them personally. Many of the men and women in the chamber were members of The Healer cult and started cheering and chanting before he appeared. As in the alley, a great shout went up at first sight of him on the high dais, but this was instantly snuffed out when it became obvious that he was mortally wounded. But Dalt waved and smiled to reassure them and then the uproar resumed with renewed intensity.
Between horrified glances at Dalt’s punctured body, the elderly president pro tem of the Council was trying to bring order to the meeting and was being completely ignored. The delegates and reps were in the aisles, shouting, waving, and hugging one another. Dalt spotted Lenda standing quietly amid the Clutch delegation. Their eyes met and Dalt nodded his congratulations. The nod was returned with a smile.
After a few minutes of the tumult, Dalt began to grow impatient. Switching the Ibizan to the single-shot mode, he handed it to the president pro tem.
"Use this as a gavel."
The old man took it with a knowing grin and aimed the weapon at the high ceiling. He let off four rounds in rapid succession. The acoustic material above absorbed the end-over-end shot with ease but was less successful in handling the accompanying roar. The crowd quieted abruptly.