The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (34 page)

Malva gestured with the weapon. "The two of you, enter the ship," she said.

Jack started walking toward the ramp. Tappy followed. The honkers remained unmoving. He did indeed feel like a fool. He should have known! Malva had never turned against the Gaol; she had been their agent throughout. She had used the pretext of her seeming wish for freedom to lull him into thinking it was safe for Tappy-- and now Tappy and the Imago were prisoner of the Gaol again. What a cunning trap; they had even saved the ship from destruction by the fungus. But if they had anticipated the raid, they might have had it fungus-proofed anyway, and pretended to be suffering the effects so as to complete the deception. It was obvious that Jack was an amateur up against professionals.

But Malva had forgotten the Imaget! Whatever the truth about it, long-range, it served him and the Imago in the short range.

He concentrated, reverting it to orient on him. As he did so, he lost his stasis; it had nullified the null, as it were. He also lost his empathy for living things.

He acted immediately. He grabbed Malva's pistol and wrenched it from her hand as he shoved her back. Then he pointed it at her. It had a trigger, so he hoped he could fire it. If it had a safety, she had probably unlocked it, since she was not the kind to bluff. "Get to safety, Tappy!" he cried.

Tappy hesitated. He knew why: she didn't want to leave him.

"It's no good," Malva said. "Robots are coming. They will obey me, not you. They will break your bones if the host of the Imago does not obey me."

"You forget that I have the pistol," Jack said. Then, more urgently: "Tappy, get out of here!"

Tappy started to walk back down the ramp. But Malva went after her. "I'll be destroyed anyway, because of my contact with the Imago, but I can secure my mission. You won't fire, because of your empathy." She brushed by Jack.

"There may be something you don't know about the Imaget," Jack said. Then he fired the pistol at her chest.

A strike of lightning came from it. It bathed Malva in sparks. Then she fell, her face a mask of astonishment.

Jack turned and charged down the ramp after Tappy. But already the robots were arriving. They were roughly humanoid, except that they had three legs, so that they didn't have to worry about balance. They moved down the ramp in pursuit.

Jack started for the ventilation shaft. But already the robots were spreading out and forming a circle to close the two of them in. Jack fired at one, and scored, but the lightning had no effect on the metal. The robots were not likely to hurt either of them, just to immobilize them and carry them into the ship, because the Imago had to be alive and Jack was still a living lever to use against Tappy. But how could the robots be avoided?

Then he saw the stump of the ghosted tree, the one that the radiator had destroyed but whose upper structure remained as a shadow outline. The honkers had warned them not to go near that shadow. But it was within the closing circle of robots, and the alternative was to be captured by the Gaol. Maybe it was death to enter it, but it was their only chance.

"The tree!" Jack said. "Into the shadow!" The two of them dived for the shadow.

Chapter 16

Light dazzled Jack as his head passed through the faint dark of the shadow-tree. It blinded him and filled his head and his body. Every one of their cells seemed to glow as if they were thermite and had caught fire. He cried out with pain and terror as he fell forward and his hands and knees struck the ground. Behind him, Tappy shrieked. He had shut his eyes, but that did not help at all in making the light less intense.

He sat up and groped around, encountering nothing until he put his hands on the ground. Since the gloves hindered his sense of touch, he took them off and put them in a back pocket of the jeans given to him by Candy. The net over his head also went there.

The ground was fairly soft, as if it had rained recently. It was covered with a short thick grass. At least, the blades felt like grass, but they were softer than that which grew on Earth.

Something moved along his cheek, a gentle tickling thing which went down his neck, then was gone. It must be the Imaget. It had been on Tappy but, for some reason, had just leaped to him. Then it had crawled down from the top of his hair to his shoulder. Now that his shirt was between the creature and his skin, he no longer felt it. Or had it jumped back to Tappy?

The Imaget, he supposed, must be as blind as he. Unless its lack of eyes protected it. Whatever its state, it was not projecting telepathically so that he could see the land around him. If, that is, mere was anything surrounding him. There might be nothing but this painful light here.

Here? A different "dimension"? Certainly, a different world, and one that might destroy him and Tappy. The warning the honkers had given them about the shadow had been short and simple. Do not enter! That was almost all the information the honkers could give. They had no idea of what would happen if you did go through it. But they knew that the few who had ventured through it had never returned. The last one to do so had, like Jack and Tappy, used the shadow as an escape from deadly enemies. That, however, had been over a generation ago.

Jack opened his eyes briefly, then closed them again. Though it made no difference in the brightness whether or not he closed his eyelids, he could not keep them open. His reflexes were ruling him.

He called out to Tappy as he groped around for her. He could hear his own voice within his head, but it made no sound outside of it. That swelled his fright. But it subsided somewhat when his hand felt cloth and solid flesh beneath it. He ran his fingers over the cloth until he felt a shoulder. The net covering her head and shoulders had been removed. When he moved his hands down to close over hers, he found that she had also taken off her gloves.

A second later, she was embracing and kissing him. Still in their sitting position, they rocked back and forth, their arms around each other. Her face, held against the side of his cheek, was wet with tears.

He tried to tell her to take it easy, that they would be fine once they mastered their terror and confusion. Again, he could hear his voice circle around in his head without moving the air outside his lips. Nor could he hear Tappy, though he could feel her body as it was shaken by sobs. And when he released an arm to touch her lips, he could feel them moving, surely trying to talk to him.

After a while, he got to his feet and pulled her up to stand by him. He took her hand and pulled her along after him as he began walking. He did not know where he was or where he was going, but they just could not stay in one place. They would die of thirst if they did. And if there was relief from this light or somebody who could help them, they had to look-- though "look" was not the right word-- for refuge and rescue. That would be slow going since he had to slide his forward foot along and feel with its toe for drop-offs.

His face felt as if it were in sunlight. Though he was sweating, no doubt from stress, he was not too hot. The air was a mild breeze, and it slightly cooled him.

They had gone perhaps a hundred yards when he jumped, and he swore a soundless oath. Something had flicked against his cheek. It was soft and momentary, but it had felt like the end of a finger. The sensation was not caused by the Imaget moving across his face. It had been too solid to be that. The Imaget had been like lightweight velvet sliding across his skin. Also, its body had been too broad to be a fingertip.

Tappy squeezed his arm and moved so close to him that she seemed to be trying to melt her cells into his. She was no longer racked with sobs, but she was trembling. Had she felt that soft touch, too?

"For God's sake!" he said. "Whoever you are, whatever you are, speak to us!"

It was useless to speak; his words were imprisoned in his head.

He still had Malva's beamer-pistol, stuck in his belt, and the beamer-rifle, strapped to his back. But it would do no good to fire blindly. Besides, whoever had stroked his cheek probably did not intend to harm him. If the toucher did, he or she could have done so long before this. On the other hand, the person-- or thing-- might just be biding his time. For what?

It was then that he smelled a pleasant odor. Flowers? Wherever it came from, it was carried by the breeze from behind him. He turned around, sniffing, and then pulled Tappy along in the direction from which the odor seemed to come. I can't see, he thought, and I can't hear, but I can feel and smell. I'm not completely helpless.

Brave words. He was whistling in... not the dark, though this light was no better than complete blackness. If he tried to whistle, he probably wouldn't hear that.

The odor, which reminded him of tiger lilies, became stronger, He shuffled on until his leading foot suddenly felt a change in level. Carefully moving the foot, he determined that he was on the edge of a hill. Or a slight declivity. He began going down the gentle slope. After a hundred feet, he stopped. His left hand, held out at a downward angle before him, felt a stalk. He moved it around and encountered many stalks. The odor was so powerful that he knew he stood before a mass of flowers-- if the stalks had flowers.

They did. His hand, sliding up a stalk, found the head. It was sunflower size, had nine big petals and a soft spongy center. Beneath the surface was a slight pulselike throbbing. Groping around, he found others like it. Then he let loose of them as something long and soft, too narrow to be the Imaget, slithered across the back of his hand. An insect? A caterpillarlike creature?

Though he had been startled by it, he was, in one sense, reassured. A world that had flowers and insects could not be entirely alien to him. And his sense of hearing was not completely gone. The rattling of the stalks as he moved them was clear.

He spoke again, hoping that his voice would project beyond his head.

"Tappy! Can you hear me?"

She could not do so. The question fluttered around inside his brain and could not escape.

He patted her shoulder, then took his hand from her and slapped his hands together. He jumped; his heart jumped. The clap was as loud as if it had been made on Earth. There was nothing wrong with his ears except that he could not hear his voice or Tappy's.

The echo of the hand-slapping had just died away when he jumped again.

A voice spoke from an unknown distance. It cried out, "Help! Help!" And then the woman-- it was indeed an adult female's voice-- began sobbing.

Jack shivered from a cold not caused by the breeze.

"My God!" he said, though no sound issued from his lips.

His panic, which had dwindled somewhat, roared back. He felt strange, strange, strange! This could not be!

The woman who had cried out and was now weeping was Malva!

It was her voice. No doubt about that.

But Malva was dead!

He reached out, touched Tappy, and took her hand. It felt clammy. She must have recognized the voice of the recently slain woman. He wished he could soothe her or, at least, talk to her. Then he turned to his right, his left side brushing against the flowers, his right shoulder brushing against her. After some seconds of slow progress, he could no longer detect the flowers except for the lessening odor behind him. Then he stopped. Malva was no longer crying out, but he could faintly hear other voices. They became stronger as he led Tappy toward them. But he halted once more. Silence had gripped his head again. It seemed to be squeezing him.

I can't take much more of this, he thought. And Tappy must be as close as I am to screaming with the pain of the brightness and a fear that tears the mind apart. A screaming only we can hear inside us. If this lasts much longer, I'll start running, stumbling around in the light that blinds, falling down, letting loose of Tappy, losing her because I'm so terrified I can only think of myself and of escaping this pain. But there is no escape.

Other voices, weak and distant at first, then stronger and closer, were brought by the breeze blowing against their backs. He stopped. Let them come to him. It was pointless to keep moving. They were going to die no matter where they were.

Then, an undercurrent to the approaching voices, the sound of running water came to him. That was followed by the splash of feet in the stream and, suddenly, more voices. He waited, though for what he did not know. Certainly, the voices did not seem hostile. They were low and murmurous. Again, he trembled. Soft ringers had brushed against his cheek. He felt Tappy become rigid as if she, too, had been touched.

Once more, he quivered, and his heart beat harder. Two hands had seized his face. Now they were running the tips over his face. Before they had withdrawn, he became bold enough to reach out and do the same thing to the person who was tracing his lineaments. The skin was almost as velvety as a baby's, and the bones below them were fine. It had to be a woman's. Then she spoke-- he could feel her breath issuing from her mouth onto one hand-- and she said, "Son."

"Mother!" Jack said.

He almost fainted.

It was not only her voice that told him that she was indeed his long-dead mother. His fingers, moving over her face, had evoked an artist's image. It would, if he painted it, be a portrait of her. But she was now a young woman. When she had died, she had been middle-aged, close to being old. She had borne him when she was forty-eight, her time of fertility almost gone. The wrinkles and the sags he was so familiar with had disappeared.

A whisper came to him. Someone must be speaking very softly to Tappy because she had suddenly begun shaking far more violently than before. He could not hear her reply, of course, any more than she would have heard him say, "Mother!" But she must have tried to utter something.

Things went swiftly after that. Hands turned them around so that they faced the direction from which they had come. They were pushed along, past the clusters of flowers, went up a long slope, were on level ground, and then began a long march. Jack was so numb with shock that he could not resist them. What sense was there in doing so, anyway? Yet... yet... he had met his dead mother; he could not speak to her; he was being sent away.