Android at Arms (10 page)

“Let her be.” Yolyos caught Andas by the upper arm and pulled him out of the pool. “She knows what is best.”

Andas had to accept that as he squatted on the sandbank, using that grit to rub from his body the slimy deposit the water had left. But he kept watching the pool, wondering if he should plunge back in and try to bring her to the surface even against her will.

She arose at last without his aid, her hair in dark strings about her head and shoulders, with none of the exuberance she had shown at the jungle pool on the unknown world. She spat, raking her fingers through her hair, her face betrayed her disgust at her present state.

“You could do no better,” she said. “That I know. But never, do I believe, could you do worse, not even by intention. Where are we, and where do we go?” She looked around as if only now was she aware the ship was not standing by. “Where is the ship?”

“Back in the desert,” Andas answered. He was suddenly very tired, wanting nothing so much as to rest. “We are on our way to the Triple Towers.”

“I have been thinking.” Yolyos looked up the fast-drying river. “Are those mountains?”

Andas followed the pointing finger westward.

“A spur of the Kanghali.” At least he knew that much.

“There might be more water closer to them. A better place to camp? Or do you intend to keep on by day?”

Andas shook his head. If they were lucky, very lucky, they might come in after dark. In the day the skimmer would be sighted by any patrol. But Yolyos's suggestion made sense. Elys needed water, certainly a better supply than she had just dragged herself out of. And closer to the mountains they would find that.

“Yes.” He did not elaborate on his agreement. They climbed back into the skimmer, Elys sitting stiffly as if she hated the very liquid that had restored her to life, and then they took off along the river westward.

By the time the sun was mid-point in the east over the horizon, they had emerged into a green land where trees stood and there was more water in the river, running with some semblance of current before the heat of the waste attacked it. In the foothills they found what they wanted, a curve of open land where the river made an arc and they could set the skimmer down.

Elys was out of its confinement before either Andas or Yolyos could move. She ran straight for the water, plunging in with a cry of joy that reached them like the call of a bird. Then she was gone, and they left her to her own devices.

She returned much later to pick up the E-ration tube that was her share of their meal, the traces of her ducking in the desert pool washed away, her spirits once more high. Grasty, on the other hand, lay in the shade the skimmer offered and grunted when anyone spoke to him, refusing food but drinking avidly from the mug Andas filled at the stream edge and offered to him. Here the free running water was chill from the mountain heights and clear so that one could see the bed sand where small things scuttled around stones or hid in burrows excavated in the clay.

They slept in turns, Elys, Yolyos, and Andas sharing watches, knowing that they could not get Grasty to aid. They waited until the twilight was well advanced before they took off again.

“You have in mind some landing place?” Yolyos asked. “I think you must want one as secluded as possible.”

“The Triple Towers are built on the west bank of the Zambassi. They can be reached from Ictio only by triple bridges, one for each tower. By land, that is. On the west there is a ring of forts and outer walls. It is forbidden to fly over the royal grounds. However, if one comes in near to roof level at a point between the Koli and Kala forts, then one can set down in the section I told you of, the quarters that were once my father's. Unless there have been drastic changes in the palace, that is one of the long deserted portions with no regular inhabitants. I need only to set foot there—”

He did not continue. With Yolyos he could share the secrets of the Triple Towers. And—he might almost have also spoken of them before Elys. But Grasty he did not trust.

“What do we do?” Elys asked.

“Stay hidden. This portion of the Triple Towers is—or was—uninhabited. A man might live for a year without being found if he did not wish it.”

“But you speak of a palace—is that not so?” she questioned.

“It has been added to, built on and about, for so long that all of it has not been in use for generations. The courts facing the three bridges, the traditional ones of the Emperor, the Empress, their suites, and those granted to members of the royal clan houses, are in use and have been since they were built, nearly a thousand years ago. Some of the rest were constructed for pleasure at certain seasons of the year, deserted in between. Others housed secondary wives when it was necessary for the Emperor to keep the peace by choosing mates from each of the military clans. More arose merely because some emperor was fascinated by a new form of building and wished to have an example.

“When Asaph the Second went traveling through the Fourth Sector, he gathered artists and architects as one would pick luden berries in the river woods. He set them to work to duplicate in miniature buildings on their home worlds that had taken his fancy. And before he was assassinated, ten years after his return, at least five were finished. The others, still incomplete, were abandoned. Those are now largely shunned.

“So the Triple Towers is like a great city in itself, a city in which perhaps only three out of five wards are inhabited. If we can land where I hope, we shall have our choice of hiding places.”

“Hiding places!” Grasty cut in. “What of your big promises, Prince, to return us to our own worlds? What lies here that you must hide from or keep us concealed from? I think that you have not been frank with us if we must skulk in ruins in your own palace.”

“If an android has taken my place,” Andas pointed out, “what would it profit me—or you—to go charging in without caution. I give you all the safety I can while I make sure of what has happened in my absence.” He did not add that his main fear now was just how long that absence had been. If the term of years was what it seemed at their comparing of dates—well, it was long enough to bring about a whole change of government. Surely his grandfather would long since have died. But who wore the crown of Balkis-Candace, the cloak of Ugana fur, and carried the pointless sword of Imperial justice?

The skimmer had left the foothills. Beneath them showed the wink of lights, in clusters to mark towns, singly for farms and villas. He had the power up to full speed, knowing he must reach his goal before the first graying of the dawn sky. And in so close to the palace, there would be no safe hiding place to wait for another night.

Andas picked up several reference points and knew now he was on the right course. He began to lose altitude. There would come a moment he must choose correctly, shut off the propulsion unit of the skimmer, and swoop in all the silence possible over that one strip of wall, and he mistrusted his own judgment so that now he was tense and stiff, his hands on the controls. The light glare in the sky ahead marked both the palace and Ictio on the other side of the river. Andas could count the beading of forts along the wall.

Down, down—cut speed—slacken—slacken—

He nursed the controls inch by inch, then cut off the power entirely. They swept between the two forts, over the wall, probably with hardly a handbreadth between them and it. Were they lucky, or had their passing been sighted by a sentry? There was nothing Andas could do now about that. If they could get down before any search party was out, they still had an excellent chance of playing a successful game of hide and seek. He could, in a last extremity, take them all into the passages.

Now he still had the engine off, but he dared to snap on the hover ray. Without the buildup of engine power it would not last long, just enough to cushion their descent. A loom of pallid white—Andas cut the hover and brought the skimmer to earth.

Its tail caught with a crackle, which sounded like a roll of doom drums. The light craft overbalanced and skidded ahead on its nose. Andas slammed the protecto, and its frothy jell squirted out about their bodies, thickening instantly as it met the air. By the time they had stopped, they were encased well enough to spare them more than a few bruises.

It took Andas a moment or two to realize that they had made it. And then the memory of the crash noise set him at the hatch. Surely that must have been heard in the watch towers. They would have to get under cover and fast. He half tumbled into the open and then turned to help, pull, and urge the others after him.

The skimmer, like one of the water insects it resembled, though giant-sized, was tilted forward on its nose, its battered tail upflung, looking as if it had been met in midflight by a blow from some fan of ceremony. It had earthed just where he had planned—in the Court of Seven Draks, though whether that was its rightful name he never knew. As a small boy he had called it that because of the fearsome drak statues that crowned the pillars at one end. This was one of the unfinished building enterprises of Asaph's planning—consisting mainly now of only a smooth pavement of some treated stone that resisted the passage of time.

From here Andas knew well the way into the maze he defied any guardsmen to unravel. Of course, he had not meant to crack up the skimmer. But among all the various kinds of ill fortune that might have attended them this night, that was far less than most.

“Come on!” he urged them. “We must get away from here as quickly as we can.”

7

“Where do you take us? This is dark and smells of old evils!” Elys stood, her feet firmly planted, a little away from the opening, which was a narrow slit that Andas had just opened, thankful his memory served him so well.

“Old evils,” the girl repeated. “I do not go in there!”

Before any of them could move, she drew out of reach, flitting across the bare room into which Andas had guided them, her form alternately revealed in the moonlight through the windows and hidden in the shadows between.

“Elys!” He would have taken off after her. Yolyos caught his arm.

“Leave her to me.” The Salariki's voice was the throat rumble of a hunting feline. “I will see to her. There are other hiding places here beside your hidden ways. And the sooner you learn what rights you may have, the better. I shall watch Elys and Grasty. Return here when you can.”

Andas wanted nothing more than to do as Yolyos urged, yet he felt a responsibility for the others. And when he did not move, the Salariki gave him a push.

“Go! I swear by the Black Fangs of the Red Gorp of Spal, I shall see to them.”

With an inward sigh of relief, Andas surrendered. But before he left, he made sure that the other understood how to open the door panel. Then if danger threatened, he could, with his charges, take to the hidden ways. Andas went in, the panels slipped into place, and he was in the dark.

Always before he had carried a torch. But there had been times when, under his father's instructions, he had snapped it off and learned to advance a few steps at a time, trying to train other senses to serve him. One developed a guide sense through practice. And this part of the ruins held no unpleasant surprises.

Still he advanced with extreme caution, one hand running fingertips along the surface of the wall. Three side passages he passed, counting each in a whisper. At the fourth he turned into the new way. He should be passing now from the long deserted portion of the palace that had been erected at Asaph's orders, approaching the section in general use in his time.

In his time? How far back was that? But he must not think of that now. It could even be that while in prison their memories had been tampered with to confuse the issue should they, as they had, escape.

Far ahead he saw a very faint spot of light. Toward that Andas crept, fighting down his desire to rush heedlessly to that spy hole. He sniffed. There was a scent here now, one strong enough to battle the dank smell of the ways. Flowers?

He reached the spy hole and flattened himself to the wall to get the widest view possible of what lay beyond. It was easy to see where that scent came from. This was a bedchamber, and the floor had an overcarpeting of scented flowers and herbs fresh laid. Also the handles of several spice warmers protruded from under the bedcovers, which had been drawn up over them to contain their scented vapors.

By twisting and turning against the wall, Andas was able to get a partial view of the rest of the room's splendors. The ceiling, of which he could see only a palm's breadth, was studded with golden stars against the pale green that was Inyanga's sky tint on the fairest of days, while the floor under the herbs and flowers was a mosaic of bright color. The lower part of the wall was also a jeweled mosaic, and he focused on that. There was a line of figures in that company, all wearing dress of state. He could see four, and there was an empty space beyond the last of those as if the mural was not yet complete.

But there was no mistaking the robed and crowned man he faced the most directly. His grandfather's harshly carven features were set in the impersonal stare that was the formal “face” worn at audiences. And next to him was another—two others.

Standing on equality with the Emperor Akrama was another wearing the state diadem and robe, plainly his successor. Successor! But Akrama—dead! Andas's teeth closed painfully upon his lower lip.

If there was a new emperor—who? The face in the mosaic was familiar—he must know him—but it was not that of Anakue, Jassar, or Yuor. He could not set name to him.

A little beyond and lower than that unknown was the third portrait, this of a girl, plainly one of the Wearers of the Purple, undoubtedly a First Daughter. But her face was strange to Andas.

There was no one in the room, he could see, and he was fumbling for the release of the panel door on this side when he heard voices. The great empear shell and silver door opened, and two women, wearing the green and white of ladies of the inner chambers, backed into the room, bowing low before a third.