Logan Trilogy (8 page)

Close. Open. No problem. I would tell her to open her eyes, but I will save this for later and show her how easy it is to open and close your eyes.

Logan closed his eyes.

He would open them in a moment, in just another moment after a moment and then he would tell Jess and would open them and in a moment he would and it was so, easy to keep them closed for a moment and the wind had gone and that was strange and there was no cold and he could open them in a moment and there was no problem and he would. He would.

Logan slept.

He opened his eyes to a frieze of crystal beasts dancing in a blue fire. He blinked. The frieze wavered, became solid. Extending to the limit of his vision was a capering host of otters conjured from diamond ice. And more.

Logan sat up to an incredible tableau.

There, a fish of sequined rainbow scales caught in a zircon wave.

There, a tusked walrus with mirror-ice eyes, his body veined with blacks and purples.

There, a flight of crystal birds in a crystal sky.

Planes and projections. An intricate scrimshaw of glassed fretwork, rising in prismed tiers, shot through with light jewels: dandelion yellows, crimson lakes, cerulean blues, flashing and reflecting, illuminated by a barrel-sized lamp of carved bone which sizzled and flickered. And supporting this fragile lacework was an immense column, angling up into the vaulted roof of the ice cavern.

Logan felt bottled in the heart of a teardrop chandelier.

The room reeked of burning seal oil.

Jess lay on the floor beside him. Her eyes stirred She awakened, gasped.

"Overwhelming, isn't it?" said a fluting voice.

A creature stood before them on chromed legs. From the midpoint of his sternum to his hips he was coils and cables. One hand was a cutting tool. His head was half flesh, half metal.

"A machine!" said Jess.

"No! not machine, nor man, but a perfect fusion of the two and better than either. You see before you the consummate artist whose magnificent creativity flows from manmetal. The man conceives in hunger and passion; the metal executes with micrometric exactitude. No human sculptor could match the greatness here displayed."

So this was Box: an insane half-man living in a self-created world of fantasy. Logan wondered just how much humanity remained in him. "We were told you could help us find food."

"Dolts!" shrilled Box. "Barbarians! Are you no more than walking bellies?"

"We're human and we're hungry," snapped Logan. "Don't you eat?"

"I feed the soul, not the body. Art before hunger!"

Jessica's eyes ranged about the glittering chamber. "All of this—it is beautiful," she said softly.

Half of Box smiled. "Ah—but wait for the winds." His voice hushed. "Then my birds sing. My great walrus breathes. My palace chimes and bells. And the deep grottoes whisper my name: Box…Box…

Bahhhhhxxxsss." His voice sobbed into silence.

"Birds, fish, animals…" said Jess, with a note of wonder. "They're all here."

"Yes, all the creatures. Except Man." Box scowled. "They chase me. They want my metal. How they'd love to pry me apart and build a stove from my heart! My legs would make fine knives, fishhooks, spears. But they are blind moles who trip and stumble. I've seen their stiffening bodies on the ice.

Worthless. Ugly. Wind-warped. But now—I have found you. New ones. Fresh ones. Lovely ones.

Suitable models for my masterwork. You will pose for me!"

"If we pose, do we get food?" asked Logan.

"I have no food."

"Then why should we do it?"

"Why? Do you know how long this temple will last? Not twenty-one years, or twenty-one thousand years—but twenty-one thousand thousand years! And you'll be a part of it, the crown jewel in my collection. Ages will roll. Milleniums. And you'll be here—the two of you—eternally frozen in a lovers' embrace."

Logan turned away.

Box became apprehensive; his voice took on a wheedling tone. "What can I give you?"

"Nothing," said Logan. "We need two things, food and a way out. You have no food, and there's no way out."

"Ah, but there is," tempted Box.

"Then why are you still here? Why don't you escape?"

"And leave my white wonderland, leave the singing winds and the silence, the purity, the flowing skies…For what? For your squabble and smoke, your jamming and rushing? No. But I could. I could leave if I wished to do so."

"How?" asked Logan.

"How indeed," silked Box. "First you pose, then I tell you."

"First you tell us, then we pose."

Box hesitated. Gears seemed to click in him. He moved his metal hand in a gesture of surrender. "I suppose I must trust you," he said.

Will he do it? Logan wondered. Can he do it? Can he really provide an escape route?

Box put his hand to the metal of his head and closed his human eye. He spoke of visions: "I am a humming in blackness. Far away. I am ten billion, billion neurons in a mighty brain. A brain of steel…

I am the force that rules the maze."

The Thinker! It tied in; being half machine, Box was, in a very real sense, part of the great machine brain.

"Above me—a great warrior astride the world. A sweep of black mountain below, great birds on my

granite shoulders, a vastness beneath me. I am part of Tashunca-uitco."

Crazy Horse!

"I am brother to the Thinker," went on Box. "I know its circuits and its ways. I share its great wisdom. I can thread the force field labyrinth. I can leave Hell…"

And he told them the way.

Box opened his eye, advanced. "Now, you shall keep your bargain."

"How do you want us?" asked Logan.

"Nude," said the Box.

"Take off your clothes," Logan told Jess, beginning to strip off his own.

The girl looked at him.

"It'll be all right," he assured her.

Jess pushed back the cowl of her parka and began to unknot the leather ties. She dropped the rank fur at her feet. Averting her eyes from Logan, she touched the magnetic closure on her blouse. It opened under her fingers and she removed the blouse, then quickly peeled away the clear cosmetic supports from her full breasts. Her skirt was added to the clothing on the fur-rich floor. She unzipped her shoes and stepped out of them.

"Enchanting," said Box.

He waved them to a dais covered with deep white polar furs. "Up there," he said.

"Shall we—just stand?" asked Jess. "Or should we…"

"Take her in your arms," Box said.

Logan looked at Jessica. Lamplight played along the creamed curves and valleys of her body. Her skin was glowing ivory in the light of the flame.

"Stop wasting my time," Box said. He stood poised at a tall monolith of sparkling ice.

Logan took the girl clumsily into his arms.

"No, no, no," complained Box. "With emotion. With feeling. She is your love, your life." To the girl, he said, "Mold yourself to his strong body. Look into his eyes."

Jess looked into Logan's eyes.

He felt the sweet warmth of her, the nearness of her. Breasts pressing him, legs touching him, arms holding him. He felt a slow surge of passion, but more than passion: a rapture, a tenderness, and a wild, sweet sadness he'd never known.

"Superb!" said Box.

His metal hand began to buzz. He brought it forward to shiver the ice into blue patterns. He worked furiously, with incredible speed. In a shower of tinkling shards and ice splinters, the two figures began to emerge from the block. Magically, forming, shaping…

Logan held Jess. This, too, was a house of glass—but how different from the frantic, empty pursuit of sensation in the houses of the city. There was a reality here, a meaning. Forget everything else; forget the twisted man-thing carving the ice; forget the Hell-huddle of convicts; forget Francis and Ballard and the maze and Sanctuary. But let this moment last. Jess…Jess…"Done!" piped Box. "Behold!" He stepped back.

Logan reluctantly released the girl.

They faced themselves.

In stunningly wrought ice figures, shimmering with life, the artist had captured the form, the mood, the emotion of his models. The endless moment was there. Love. Passion. Beauty. All there.

Logan forced the image from his mind. They had to move, to dress, to make their escape. No time for love. Or passion. Or beauty. No time.

He turned to reach for his clothing.

And did not anticipate the ripping blow that snuffed out the world.

The world was reborn in a voice that said, "Torture is also a fine art and I am its master. Your death; my lady, shall be exquisite."

Logan swam up through fog and froth to full awakening.

He was in an ice cage, behind ice bars. Directly in front of the cage Jess was spread-eagled and helpless, pinned, naked, to a tilted slab. Her body was trembling with chill. Facing her was a steeply inclined slideway. Balanced delicately on the high lip of the slide was a massive ten-ton ice block. An oil flame ate steadily at one end of the great block. Water dripped into white fur.

With each passing second, as more of the ice melted, the end of the block lightened, tipping the remainder. Already the mass was inching over in a continuous grinding crunch, pulled by the slow force of gravity. When enough of it had turned to water the huge block would tip into the slideway and begin its ponderous rush toward Jess. It would bear down with all of its tonnage, like a giant sledge, and the vulnerable body of the girl would be caught between the ice faces as they smashed together.

On the polar-covered dais Box sat, his chromed legs folded beneath him. "Beg me," he crooned "I can still save your life."

Jess remained silent, her eyes glazed with fright.

Logan threw himself at the bars. They held. Embedded in one of them, midway up, he saw the curved darkness of a small fish, frozen there.

His glance swept the cell. His shirt had been thrown in one corner. Hurriedly he scooped it up and wound it three times around his right hand.

Box was still urging the girl to beg for her life.

The block tipped further.

Logan faced the imperfection in the cell bar, stiffening his fingers into a slight curve, bunching the pad of muscle in the heel of his hand. He assumed the Omnite stance.

Now.

He summoned tension into his body, feeling it gather along the backs of his legs; he felt his spine arch as the muscles pumped full of blood. He concentrated on the hand. He was only a band. He took several deep breaths, let his attention widen to include a spot in space three inches beyond the bar. He

would hit that spot.

He blanked out the cell bar that was between the spot and his hand. It didn't exist; there was no cell bar. He tensed. Energy sang into the arm that slashed the rigid hand at the spot in the air.

A splintering crack. The bar exploded. Logan squeezed through the opening.

He scooped up one of Jessica's shoes and leaped onto the slideway. Ignoring the poised juggernaut at his back, he attacked the ice shackles that held the girl's wrists and feet. Four quick hammer blows and she was free.

Jess screamed. A great rumble at the tip of the slide. The block was loosed. Logan pushed her ahead of him, diving from the slideway just as the awesome masses mated in demolition. Ice dust powdered the air.

An angry buzz of metal. Logan swung around to see Box coming at him.

"Grab your clothes and get out!" he yelled to Jess—and she obeyed him.

Box hurtled in, his half-face contorted with rage and frustration. Logan ducked under the sweep of his cutting hand, which ripped into the room's central pillar. The buzzing metal cut deeply into the column before Box could free it.

Logan fell back, calculating. The love statue: he and Jess in a perfect world, forever locked in sweet embrace. He would have to destroy it, destroy himself. Logan wedged his shoulder against his ice thigh and pushed. The statue tilted, rocked, and toppled into the weakened pillar.

A crack fissured the vault.

Logan ran.

Birds showered from a crystal sky. Otters squealed and splintered. The walrus reared. Box died with one maniacal metal cry.

In that single cataclysmic death, the ice creatures cracked and clattered, mirror-smashed in a fractured tumble of shelves and ledges and crystal lace, disintegrated in shimmering waves as the great palace pulled itself down in a blue ruin.

Logan did precisely as Box had instructed. Leading Jess, he was threading the force field labyrinth.

Wind chopped and cut at them on the open plain.

To Logan the spot seemed identical with the storm-swept terrain that surrounded it. Ice flurries whipped about them as they moved: two steps forward, a step to the right…It was hopeless; Box had lied.

They took three paces in a weaving pattern Angled right, then left. Three more steps forward, one back.

Magic!

They were out—standing on the warm platform.

Hell was gone.

They discarded the filthy pelts.

"Can you get a mazecar?" asked Jess.

"The Gun first," said Logan. He recovered it from a niche in the side of the platform, checked it. Five charges left: tangler, vapor, ripper, needler and homer.

Logan pried open the back of the callbox and began to shift the terminals.

A car came humming.

"Where now?" the girl asked him.

"To the Black Hills of the Dakotas," he said. "Ballard knows how to control the maze. He directs these cars as he needs them. If we want to find him we go to the source. We go to the Thinker."

Chapter 6

He is a violence, contained.

He sits in front of the board.

He has not eaten.

He has not slept.

Technicians avoid him, say nothing to him.

His eyes suddenly flash to the board. Brightness there. One of the scanners has registered the presence of a runner.

Location: South Dakota, the Black Hills.

He feels elation.

The hunt resumes.

EARLY MORNING…

When Crazy Horse Mountain was dedicated, the great mass of granite became the site of a monumental project which was to consume half a century. An Indian warrior, 563 feet high and 641