Planet of Adventure Omnibus (70 page)

“You still
haven’t told me what the Gzhindra want,” said Reith.

With vast
dignity Woudiver rose to his feet; the chain from the iron collar swung and
jangled. “You had best take up this matter with the Gzhindra themselves.”

He went to
his table and after a final cryptic glance toward Reith took up his tatting.

REITH
TWITCHED AND trembled in a nightmare. He dreamt that he lay on his usual couch
in Woudiver’s old office. The room was pervaded by a curious yellow-green glow.
Woudiver stood across the room chatting with a pair of motionless men in black
capes and broad-brimmed black hats. Reith strained to move, but his muscles
were limp. The yellow-green light waxed and waned; Woudiver was now frosted
with an uncanny silver-blue incandescence. The typical nightmare of
helplessness and futility, thought Reith. He made desperate efforts to awake
but only started a clammy sweat.

Woudiver and
the Gzhindra gazed down at him. Woudiver surprisingly wore his iron collar, but
the chain had been broken or melted a foot from his neck. He seemed complacent
and unconcerned: the Woudiver of old. The Gzhindra showed no expression other
than intentness. Their features were long, narrow and very regular; their skin,
pallid ivory, shone with the luster of silk. One carried a folded cloth; the
other stood with hands behind his back.

Woudiver
suddenly loomed enormous. He called out: “Adam Reith, Adam Reith: where is your
home?”

Reith
struggled against his impotence. A weird and desolate dream, one that he would
long remember. “The planet Earth,” he croaked. “The planet Earth.”

Woudiver’s
face expanded and contracted. “Are other Earthmen on Tschai?”

“Yes.”

The Gzhindra
jerked forward; Woudiver called in a horn-like voice: “Where? Where are the
Earthmen?”

“All men are
Earthmen.”

Woudiver
stood back, mouth drooping in saturnine disgust. “You were born on the planet
Earth.”

“Yes.”

Woudiver
floated back in triumph. He gestured largely to the Gzhindra. “A rarity, a
nonesuch!”

“We will take
him.” The Gzhindra unfolded the cloth, which Reith, to his helpless horror, saw
to be a sack. Without ceremony the Gzhindra pulled it up over his legs, tucked
him within until only his head protruded. Then, with astonishing ease, one of
the Gzhindra threw the sack over his back, while the other tossed a pouch to
Woudiver.

The dream
began to fade; the yellow-green light became spotty and blurred. The door flew
suddenly open, to reveal Traz. Woudiver jumped back in horror; Traz raised his
catapult and fired into Woudiver’s face. An astonishing gush of blood spewed
forth-green blood, and wherever droplets fell they glistened yellow ... The
dream went dim; Reith slept.

Reith awoke
in a state of extreme discomfort. His legs were cramped; a vile arsenical reek
pervaded his head. He sensed pressure and motion; groping, he felt coarse
cloth. Dismal knowledge came upon him; the dream was real; he indeed rode in a
sack. Ah, the resourceful Woudiver! Reith became weak with emotion. Woudiver
had negotiated with the Gzhindra; he had arranged that Reith be drugged,
probably through a seepage of narcotic gas. The Gzhindra were now carrying him
off to unknown places, for unknown purposes.

For a period
Reith sagged in the sack numb and sick. Woudiver, even while chained by the
neck, had worked his mischief! Reith collected the final fragments of his
dream. He had seen Woudiver with his face split apart, pumping green blood.
Woudiver had paid for his trick.

Reith found
it hard to think. The sack swung and he felt a rhythmic thud; apparently the
sack was being carried on a pole. By sheer luck he wore his clothes; the night
previously he had flung himself down on his cot fully dressed. Was it possible
that he still carried his knife? His pouch was gone; the pocket of his jacket
seemed to be empty, and he dared not grope lest he signal the fact of his
consciousness to the Gzhindra.

He pressed
his face close to the sack hoping to see through the coarse weave,
unsuccessfully. The time was yet night; he thought that they traveled uneven
terrain.

An
indeterminate time went by, with Reith as helpless as a baby in the womb. How
many strange events the nights of old Tschai had known! And now another, with
himself a participant. He felt ashamed and demeaned; he quivered with rage. If
he could get his hands on his captors, what a vengeance he would take!

The Gzhindra
halted, and for a moment stood perfectly quiet. Then the sack was lowered to
the ground. Reith listened but heard no voices, no whispers, no footsteps. It
seemed as if he were alone. He reached to his pocket, hoping to find a knife, a
tool, an edge. He found nothing. He tested the fabric with his fingernails: the
wave was coarse and harsh, and would not rip.

An intimation
told him that the Gzhindra had returned. He lay quiet. The Gzhindra stood
nearby, and he thought that he heard whispering.

The sack
moved; it was lifted and carried. Reith began to sweat. Something was about to
happen.

The sack
swung. He dangled from a rope. He felt the sensation of descent: down, down,
down, how far he could not estimate. He halted with a jerk, to swing slowly
back and forth. From high above came the reverberation of a gong: a low
melancholy sound.

Reith kicked
and pushed. He became frantic, victim to a claustrophobic spasm. He panted and
sweated and could hardly catch his breath; this was how it felt to go crazy.
Sobbing and hissing, he took command of himself. He searched his jacket, to no
avail: no metal, no cutting edge. He clenched his mind, forced himself to
think. The gong was a signal; someone or something had been summoned. He groped
around the sack, hoping to find a break. No success. He needed metal,
sharpness, a blade, an edge! From head to toe he took stock. His belt! With
vast difficulty he pulled it loose, and used the sharp pin on the buckle to
score the fabric. He achieved a tear; thrusting and straining he ripped the
material and finally thrust forth his head and shoulders. Never in his life had
he known such exultation! If he died within the moment, at least he had
defeated the sack!

Conceivably
he might score other victories. He looked along a rude, rough cavern dimly
illuminated by a few blue-white buttons of light. The floor almost brushed the
bottom of the bag; Reith recalled the descent and final jerk with a qualm. He
heaved himself out of the sack, to stand trembling with cramp and fatigue.
Listening to dead underground silence, he thought to hear a far sound.
Something, someone, was astir.

Above him the
cavern rose in a chimney, the rope merging with the darkness. Somewhere up
there must be an opening into the outer world-but how far? In the bag he had
swung with a cycle of ten or twelve seconds, which by rough calculation gave a
figure of considerably more than a hundred feet.

Reith looked
down the cavern and listened. Someone would be coming in answer to the gong. He
looked up the rope. At the top was the outer world. He took hold of the rope,
started to climb. Up he went, into the dark, heaving and clinging: up, up, up.
The sack and the cavern became part of a lost world; he was enveloped in
darkness.

His hands
burned; his shoulders grew warm and weak; then he reached the top of the rope.
Groping, fumbling, he discovered that it passed through a slot in a metal
plate, which rested upon a pair of heavy metal beams. The plate seemed a kind
of trapdoor, which clearly could not be opened while his weight hung on the
rope ... His strength was failing. He wrapped the rope around his legs and
reached out with an arm. To one side he felt a metal shelf; it was the web of
the beam supporting the trapdoor, a foot or more wide. He rested a moment-time
was growing short, then lurched out with his leg, and tried to heave himself
across. For a sickening instant he felt himself falling. He strained
desperately; with his heart thumping he dragged himself across to the web of
the beam. Here, sick and miserable, he lay panting.

A minute
passed, hardly long enough for the rope to become still. Below four bobbing
lights approached. Reith balanced himself and heaved up at the metal plate. It
was solid and heavy; he might as well have been shoving at the mountainside.
Once again! He thrust with all his might, without the slightest effect. The
lights were below, carried by four dark shapes. Reith pressed back against the
vertical section of the beam.

The four
below moved slowly in eerie silence, like creatures underwater. They went to
examine the sack and found it empty. Reith could hear whispers and mutters.
They looked all around, the lights blinking and flickering. By some kind of
mutual impulse all stared up. Reith pressed himself flat against the metal and
hid the pallid blotch of his face. The glow of the lights played past him, upon
the trapdoor, which he saw to be locked by four twist-latches controlled from
above. The lights, veering away, searched the sides of the shaft. The folk below
stood in puzzled consultation. After a final inspection of the cavern, a last
flicker of light up the shaft, they returned the way they had come, flashing
their lights from side to side.

Reith huddled
high in the dark, wondering whether he might not still be dreaming. But the sad
desolate circumstances were real enough. He was trapped. He could not raise the
door above him; it might not be opened again for weeks. Unthinkable to crouch
bat-like, waiting. For better or worse, Reith made up his mind. He looked down
the passage; the lights, bobbing will-o’-the-wisps, were already far and dim.
He slid down the rope and set off in pursuit, running with long gliding steps.
He had a single notion, a desperate hope rather than a plan: to isolate one of
the dark figures and somehow force him to lead the way to the surface. Above
burned the first of the dim blue buttons, casting a glow dimmer than moonlight,
but sufficient to show a way winding between rock buttresses advancing
alternately from either side.

Reith presently
caught up with the four, who moved slowly, investigating the passage to either
side in a hesitant, perplexed fashion. Reith began to feel an insane
exhilaration, as if he were already dead and invulnerable. He thought to pick
up a pebble and toss it at the dark figures ... Hysteria! The notion instantly
sobered him. If he wanted to survive he must take a grip on himself.

The four
moved with uneasy deliberation, whispering and muttering among themselves.
Dodging from one pocket of shadow to another Reith approached as closely as he
dared, to be ready in case one should detach himself. Except for a fleeting
glimpse in the dungeons at Pera, he had never seen a Pnume. These, from what
Reith could observe of their posture and gait, seemed human.

The passage
opened into a cavern with almost purposeful roughnessor perhaps the rudeness
concealed a delicacy beyond Reith’s understanding, as in the case of a shoulder
of quartz thrusting forth to display a coruscation of pyrite crystals.

The area
seemed to be a junction, a node, a place of importance, with three other
passages leading away. An area at the center had been floored with smooth stone
slabs; light somewhat stronger than that in the cavern issued from luminous
grains in the overhead rock.

A fifth individual
stood to the side; like the others he wore a black cloak and wide-brimmed black
hat. Reith, flat as a cockroach, slid forward into a pocket of dense shadow
close by the chamber. The fifth individual was also a Pnumekin; Reith could see
his long visage, dismal, white and bleak. For an interval he took no notice of
the first four and they appeared not to see him, a curious ritual of mutual
disregard which aroused Reith’s interest.

Gradually the
five seemed to wander together, none looking directly at the others.

There came a
hushed murmur of voices. Reith strained to listen. They spoke the universal
tongue of Tschai; so much he could understand from the intonations. The four
reported the circumstances attendant upon finding the empty sack; the fifth, an
official or monitor, made the smallest possible indication of dismay. It seemed
that restraint, unobtrusiveness, delicacy of allusion were key aspects of
sub-Tschai existence.

They wandered
across the chamber and into the cavern close by Reith, who pressed himself
against the wall. The group halted not ten feet distant, and Reith could now
hear the conversation.

One spoke in
a careful, even voice: “... Delivery. This is not known; nothing was found.”

Another said:
“The passage was empty. If defalcation occurred before the bag was lowered,
here would be an explanation.”

“Imprecision,”
said the monitor. “The bag would not then have been lowered.”

“Imprecision
exists in either case. The passage was clear and empty.”

“He must
still be there,” said the tunnel monitor; “he cannot be anywhere else.”

“Unless a
secret adit enters the passage, of which he knows.”

The monitor
stood straight, arms at his sides. “The presence of such an adit is not known
to me. The explanation is remotely conceivable. You must make a new and
absolutely thorough search; I will inquire as to the possibility of such a
secret adit.”