Planet of Adventure Omnibus (74 page)

She turned
back a startled glance. “The Silent Critic is close at hand. I may not run; if
he saw he would think it boisterous conduct.”

“Never mind
the decorum,” said Reith. “Find the opening as fast as possible.”

She quickened
her step, with Reith coming behind. After fifty yards he risked a glance to the
rear. No one followed.

The corridor
branched; the girl stopped short. “I think we go to the left, but I am not
sure.”

“Look at the
chart.”

With vast
distaste, she turned her back and brought the portfolio from under her cloak.
She could not bring herself to handle it and gave it to Reith as if it were
hot. He turned the pages till she said, “Stop.” While she studied the colored
lines, Reith kept his gaze to the rear. Far back, where the passage met Fer
junction, a dark shape appeared in the opening. Reith, every nerve jerking,
willed the girl to haste.

“To the left,
then at Mark Two-one-two, a blue tile. Style Twenty-four--I must consult the
legend. Here it is: four press points. Three-one-four-two.”

“Hurry,”
Reith said, through gritted teeth.

She turned a
startled look back down the passage. “
Zuzhma kastchai
!”

Reith also
looked back, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. The Pnume padded slowly
forward, but with no particular sense of purpose, or so it seemed to Reith. He
moved off along the passage and overtook the girl. As she walked she counted
the number marks at the base of the wall: “Seventy-five ... eighty ...
eighty-five ...” Reith looked back. There were now two black shapes in the
corridor; from somewhere a second Pnume had appeared. “One hundred ninety-five
... two hundred ... two hundred and five...”

The blue
tile, filmed with an antique red-purple luster, was only a foot from the floor.
The girl found press-points and touched them; the outline of a door appeared;
the door slid open.

The girl
began to shake. “It is Quality Eighteen. I should not enter.”

“The Silent
Critic is following us,” said Reith.

She gasped
and stepped into the passage. It was narrow and dim and haunted by a faintly
rancid odor Reith had come to associate with the Pnume.

The door slid
shut. The girl pushed up a shutter and put her eye to the lens of a peephole. “The
Silent Critic is coming. It suspects boisterous conduct, and wants to issue a
punishment ... No! There are two! He has summoned a Warden!” She stood rigid,
eye pressed to the peephole. Reith waited on tenterhooks. “What are they doing?”

“They look
along the corridor. They wonder why we are not in view.”

“Let’s get
moving,” said Reith. “We can’t stand here waiting.„

“The Warden
will know this passage ... If they come in...”

“Never mind
that.” Reith set out along the passage and the girl came behind him. A queer
sight they made, thought Reith, loping through the dark in the flapping black
cloaks and low-crowned hats. The girl quickly became tired and further
diminished her speed by looking over her shoulder. She gave a croak of
resignation and halted. “They have entered the passage.”

Reith looked
behind. The door stood ajar. In the gap the two Pnume were silhouetted. For an
instant they stood rigid, like queer black dolls, then they jerked into motion.
“They see us,” said the girl, and stood with her head hanging. “It will be the
pit ... Well, then, let us go to meet them in all meekness.”

“Stand
against the wall,” said Reith. “Don’t move. They must come to us. There are
only two.”

“You will be
helpless.”

Reith made no
comment. He picked up a fist-size rock which had fallen from the ceiling and
stood waiting.

“You can do
nothing,” moaned the girl. “Use meekness, placid conduct...”

The Pnume
came quickly by forward-kicking steps, the white undershot jaws twitching. Ten
feet away they halted, to contemplate the two who stood against the wall. For a
half-minute none of the group moved or made a sound. The Silent Critic slowly
raised its thin arm, to point with two bony fingers. “Go back.”

Reith made no
move. The girl stood with eyes glazed and mouth sagging.

The Pnume
spoke again, in a husky fluting voice. “Go back.”

The girl
started to stumble off along the passage; Reith made no motion.

The Pnume
watched him nonplussed. They exchanged a sibilant whisper, then the Silent
Critic spoke again. “Go.”

The Warden
said in an almost inaudible murmur, “You are the item which escaped delivery.”

The Silent
Critic, padding forward, reached forth its arm. Reith hurled the rock with all
his strength; it struck full in the creature’s bone-white face. A crunch, and
the creature tottered back to the wall, to stand jerking and raising one leg up
and down in a most eccentric manner. The Warden, making a throaty gasping
sound, bounded forward.

Reith jumped
back, snatched off his cloak, and in an insane flourish threw it over the Pnume’s
head. For a moment the creature seemed not to notice and came forward, arms
outspread; then it began to dance and stamp. Reith moved cautiously in and
away, looking for an instant of advantage, and the two in their soundless
gyrations performed a peculiar and grotesque ballet. While the Silent Critic
watched indifferently Reith seized the Warden’s arm; it felt like an iron pipe.
The other arm swung about; two harsh finger-ends tore across Reith’s face.
Reith felt nothing. He heaved, swung the Warden into the wall. It rebounded and
moved quickly upon Reith. Reith slapped tentatively at the long pale face; it
felt cool and hard. The strength of the creature was inhuman; he must evade its
grip, which put him in something of a quandary. If he struck the creature with
his fists he would only break his hands.

Step by step
the Warden padded forward, legs bending forward. Reith threw himself to the
ground, kicked out at the creature’s feet, to topple it off balance; it fell.
Reith jumped up to evade the expected attack of the Silent Critic, but it
remained leaning gravely against the wall, viewing the battle with the
detachment of a bystander. Reith was puzzled and distracted by its attitude; as
a result the Warden seized his ankle with the toes of one foot and with an
amazing extension reached the other foot toward Reith’s neck. Reith kicked the
creature in the crotch; it was like kicking the crotch of a tree; Reith
sprained his foot. The toes gripped his neck; Reith seized the leg, twisted,
applied leverage. The Pnume was forced around on its face. Reith scrambled down
upon its back. Seizing the head, he gave it a sudden terrible jerk backward. A
bone or stiff membrane gave elastically, then snapped. The Warden thrashed here
and there in wild palpitations. By chance it gained its feet and with its head
dangling backward bounded across the tunnel. It struck the Silent Critic, who
slumped to the ground. Dead? Reith’s eyes bulged. Dead.

Reith leaned
against the wall, gasping for breath. Wherever the Pnume had touched him was a
bruise. Blood flowed down his face; his elbow was wrenched; his foot was
sprained ... but two Pnume lay dead. A little distance away the girl crouched
in a shock-induced trance. Reith stumbled forward, touched her shoulder. “I’m
alive. You’re alive.”

“Your face
bleeds!”

Reith wiped
his face with the hem of his cloak. He went to look down at the corpses.
Drawing back his lips, he searched the bodies, but found nothing to interest
him.

“I suppose we’d
better keep on going,” said Reith.

The girl
turned and set off down the tunnel. Reith followed. The Pnume corpses remained
to lie in the dimness.

The girl’s
steps began to lag. “Are you tired?” asked Reith.

His
solicitude puzzled her; she looked at him warily. “No.”

“Well, I am.
Let’s rest for a while.” He lowered himself to the floor, groaning and
complaining. After a moment’s hesitation she settled herself primly across the
passage. Reith studied her with perplexity. She had put the struggle with the
Pnume completely out of her mind, or so it seemed. Her shadowed face was
composed. Astonishing, thought Reith. Her life had come apart; her future must
seem a succession of terrifying question marks; yet here she sat, her face
blank as that of a marionette, with no apparent distress.

She spoke
softly: “Why do you look at me like that?”

“I was
thinking,” he said, “that, considering the circumstances, you appear remarkably
unconcerned.”

She made no
immediate reply. There was a heavy silence in the dim passage. Then she said, “I
float upon the current of life; how should I question where it carries me? It
would be impudent to think of preferences; existence, after all, is a privilege
given a very few.”

Reith leaned
back against the wall. “A very few? How so?”

The girl
became uneasy; her white fingers twisted. “How it goes on the
ghaun
I
don’t know; perhaps you do things differently. In the Shelters
[xxiii]
the
mother-women spawn twelve times and no more than half, sometimes less-survive
...” She continued in a voice of didactic reflection: “I have heard that all
the women of the
ghaun
are motherwomen. Is this true? I can’t believe
it. If each spawned twelve times, and even if six went to the pit, the
ghaun
would boil with living flesh. It seems unreasonable.” She added, as a possibly
disconnected afterthought, “I am glad that I will never be a mother-woman.”

Again Reith
was puzzled. “How can you be sure? You’re young yet.”

The girl’s
face twitched with what might have been embarrassment. “Can’t you see? Do I
look to be a mother-woman?”

“I don’t know
what your mother-women look like.”

“They bulge
at the chest and hips. Aren’t
ghian
mothers the same? Some say the Pnume
decide who will be mother-women and take them to the creche. There they lie in
the dark and spawn.”

“Alone?”

“They and the
other mothers.”

“What of the
fathers?”

“No need for
fathers. In the Shelters all is secure; protection is not needed.”

Reith began
to entertain an old suspicion. “On the surface,” he said, “affairs go somewhat
differently.”

She leaned
forward, and her face displayed as much animation as Reith had yet noticed. “I
have always wondered about life on the
ghaun
. Who chooses the
mother-women? Where do they spawn?”

Reith evaded
the question. “It’s a complicated situation. In due course I suppose you’ll
learn something about it, if you live long enough. Meanwhile, I am Adam Reith.
What is your name?”

“‘Name’? I am
a female.”

“Yes, but
what is your personal name?”

The girl
considered. “On the invoices persons are listed by group, area and zone. My
group is Zith, of Athan Area, in the Pagaz Zone; my ranking is 210.”

“Zith Athan
Pagaz, 210. Zap 210. It’s not much of a name. Still, it suits you.”

At Reith’s
jocularity the girl looked blank. “Tell me how the Gzhindra live.”

“I saw them
standing out on the wastelands. They pumped narcotic gas into the room where I
slept. I woke up in a sack. They lowered me into a shaft. That’s all I know of
the Gzhindra. There must be better ways to live.”

Zap 210, as
Reith now thought of her, evinced disapproval. “They are persons, after all,
and not wild things.”

Reith had no
comment to make. Her innocence was so vast that any information whatever could
only cause her shock and confusion. “You’ll find many kinds of people on the
surface.”

“It is very
strange,” the girl said in a vague soft voice. “Suddenly all is changed.” She
sat looking off into the darkness. “The others will wonder where I have gone.
Someone will do my work.”

“What was
your work?”

“I instructed
children in decorum.”

“What of your
spare time?”

“I grew
crystals in the new East Fourth Range.”

“Do you talk
with your friends?”

“Sometimes,
in the dormitory.”

“Do you have
friends among the men?”

Under the
shadow of the hat the black eyebrows rose in displeasure. “It’s boisterous to
talk to men.”

“Sitting here
with me is boisterous?”

She said
nothing. The idea probably had not yet occurred to her, thought Reith; now she
considered herself a fallen woman. “On the surface,” he said, “life goes
differently, and sometimes becomes very boisterous indeed. Assuming that we
survive to reach the surface.”

He brought
out the blue portfolio. As if by reflex Zap 210 drew herself back. Reith paid
no heed. Squinting through the dim light he studied the tangle of colored
lines. He put his finger down, somewhat tentatively. “Here, it seems to me, is
where we are now.” No response from Zap 210. Reith, aching, nervous and
exhausted, started to reprimand her for disinterest, then caught his tongue.
She was not here of her own volition, he reminded himself; she deserved neither
reprimands nor resentment; by his actions he had made himself responsible for
her. Reith gave a grunt of annoyance. He drew a deep breath and said in his
most polite voice, “If I recall correctly, this passage leads over here” he
pointed-”and comes out into this pink avenue. Am I right?”