Страница 21 из 53
Grim nods of agreement; the sergeants with guns pointed, the captain taking a firm grip on the machine.
“Here goes…”
I touched the switch.
And everything happened at once.
The machine burst into life, lights flickering in quick patterns. With a terrible shriek someone appeared next to me, seized me and pulled me off balance. I grabbed him with my free hand….
We were going. Going someplace, somewhere, the sensations that weren’t sensations again. Going.
All I was aware of was my heart thudding louder and louder in an empty silence. Fear? Why not? Back to Hell? Or Heaven… White light, strong, warmer air. And the tinkling, clanking, crash of broken glass.
I was on the ground, sharpness under my back, with a fat and older version of Slakey stumbling away from me. The temporal inhibitor was still in my hand.
“Got you, Slakey,” I called out, pointed and pressed the switch.
He ran on, stopped and turned, swaying dizzily, laughing.
“That weapon, whatever it is, won’t work here. No imported machine will. You fool, haven’t you learned that yet?”
I was learning, but very slowly. And my punctured legs hurt. I put the inoperable TI against the broken crystal on the ground, used it to push against the sharp shards as I stood up. I pulled a sliver of glass from my leg and watched blood stain the fabric.
“We’re not in Hell,” I said, looking around me. “Is this your Heaven?”
It might very well have been because it was incredible. I gaped, very much in awe. But not so much that I didn’t keep Fat Slakey inside my field of vision. What I saw was like, well, like nothing I had ever seen or imagined before. A world of transparent beauty, crystalline, exuberant, colored and transparent and rising up around me. Shrubbery of glass, analogs of trees and leaves, transparent and veined, reaching out on all sides.
But not where I was standing I realized. Here it was all broken shards, a circular area of destruction. Broken and fragmented.
“No, not Heaven,” Slakey said. “Where then?”
When he did not answer I took a step towards him and he raised his hands.
“Stop there! No closer. If you stay where you are I’ll answer your question. Agreed?”
“For the moment.” I was making no promises. But I knew so little that anything that kept him talking would be of help. “If not Heaven then where are we?”
“Another place. I don’t come here often. It is of little or no use. Whimsically I used to call it Silicon Valley. Now—I call it Glass, just Glass.”
“You’re Professor Slakey. And perhaps you might also be the one who runs the operation we just left—Baron Krummung.”
“If you like.” Surly, looking around. I took a tentative step which got his attention. “No!”
“I’m not moving, relax. And tell me what this is all about..
“I tell you nothing.”
“Not even about yourself in Hell?”
He slumped when I said that. “A tragic mistake. I won’t make that kind of mistake again. I can’t leave of course, too long in Hell. Too long. Certain death if I left now.”
“The gun? Why the gun?”
“Why? What a stupid question. To live of course, to eat. The colmicon contains little or no nutrition. A slow death that way. A gun to hunt with, a gun for a hunter.”
It was a sickening thought, for there was only one other food source in Hell. I was in the company of a madman—and I understood so little of what was happening. But he was talking and I had kept the important question aside, spoke it now as casually as I could.
“That woman on Lussuoso. Where did you send her?”
“That woman?” He laughed, a laugh devoid of humor.
“Come now, diGriz, do I look that stupid? Your wife? Your Angellna—and you call her That Woman.”
He saw the expression on my face, turned and ran. Down a path of broken crystal through the magic forest. And I was right behind him and gaining.
But he knew where he was going. Ru
I was very much alone. Stranded on an alien planet in an alien universe. And not for the first time. I tried to cheer myself up with the thought that I had been in Hell and had come back.
“You’ll do it again, Jim. You always win. You’re the original good guy and good guys always win.”
Thus cheered, I looked around. The crystal forest glinted in the sunlight; nothing moved in the warm silence. The path of broken shards led away from the clearing. Where it went to I had no idea. I walked slowly down the path beneath the glass foliage. It turned and skirted the edge of the cliff now. There was water below, stretching away to the horizon. Off to the left, in the direction the path led, there were some offshore islands. Above me crystalline branches reached out over the water; waves were breaking over the rocks below. There was scud on the water, foam roiling and surging.
I stopped. Slakey was gone and I was very much alone. This was not a very nice thought and I rejected it. It would just be a matter of time, that’s all. Captain Grissle and his marines would have the machine disco
What next? Alone in this crystalline universe was very alone indeed. I smiled at the thought and started to laugh. At what? Nothing was fu
“Oxygen—lots of it,” I said aloud to reassure myself.
There was no reason at all that the atmosphere on this alien planet should match the atmospheres of the terraformed and settled planets. Quite the opposite, if anything. Slakey was obviously seeking out and visiting worlds where humans could live and breathe. I held my breath for a bit, then breathed shallowly. The oxygen high died away and I looked around at the glass forest—with the trampled path through it. The path that now led along the cliff edge. Should—I really follow it? I was not used to indecision, so was undecided about it.
But it really was decision time. My trip to Hell had proven that there was a cartographic coordination between leaving and arriving positions when flitting between universes. Sybil and I had arrived in that cave—and gone back from it. So should I go back to the place where I had arrived? Or try to find out more about Glass?
“The answer to that one is obvious, diGriz,” I said to myself. I believed in taking advice from someone very intelligent whom I trusted. “Sit on your chunk and wait to be rescued. And quietly die of thirst and/or starvation. Get moving and find out more about this place. For openers—is that ocean fresh water or is it loaded with chemicals? Or is the liquid really water? Go forth and investigate.”
I went. Along the glass—sharded path. Happy that the soles of my shoes were made of seringera, an elastic compound that is supposed to be as strong as steel. It had better be.
The crystalline trees were higher along the coast, with meadowlike areas of bluish grass between them. I came around a bend in the path and in the middle of the next meadow was the statue of a glass animal.
Up to this point I had just accepted the presence of crystalline growths. Too much bad happened since I arrived here to question the landscape. I did not query their existence; they just were. Maybe natural mineral structures, or perhaps some living creature like coral had secreted them.
Or had all of this been made by some incredible artist? The orange and yellow little creature in the field certainly was a work of art. Glassy fur covered it, each hair separate and clear. The open mouth had two rows of tiny and precisely formed teeth. I looked beneath the tree next to it and jumped back.
An animal, twice as big as I was, stood poised to jump. Unmoving. I relaxed. Admired the knifelike teeth with their serrated edges; giant claws stretched out from each foot. Glass grass crunched underfoot when I walked closer to it. Looked up and admired the artistic construction. The thing’s eyes were on a level with mine and were certainly most realistically formed.