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Barbara Villiers said, "For God's sake, Caliban! We don't have time to play around! Get us out of here and then we'll give you whatever you want! The elixir! The map of the caves of the Nine and the traps set in it! Even some of the addresses of the Nine, though they won't go near there anymore, of course, unless they think we're all dead!"
"For two who are just candidates, or maybe just servants, you know a great deal," Caliban said. "Old Iwaldi must have taken you into his deepest confidences. By the way, where is Iwaldi? He wouldn't have let you go ru
Cobbs bent over so he could get his face closer to Caliban's. His features were twisted with agony, and the moisture on his face seemed to be even heavier than the fog droplets could account for.
"Get us out of here, and I'll tell you where you can lay your hands on Iwaldi!"
"You'd betray him?"
"Why not? He'd betray anyone if it meant saving his life!"
"Where is he?"
Barbara Villiers' voice cracked, too. "We can't tell you at this moment. He sent us in to do his dirty work for him. But we'll show you where you can ambush him. Just get us out of here!
"What kind of bomb?" Caliban said.
"It's a heavy irradiated plastic box containing the explosive in liquid form! The dial and the time mechanism are all plastic or hard wood, too! I set it to go off in fifteen minutes! The mechanism pulls a pin out of a vial of plastic containing the gas that'll mix with the liquid and set it off! There won't be anybody living left within a half a mile radius and it'll kill many outside that area! The stone monuments of Stonehenge will be knocked down and maybe shattered! Old XauXaz's body and his coffin and the stones he set up as a temple for the sun god—himself— will be gone! Along with the rest of the Nine! Even old Anana, who said she was going to defeat death!"
"Who's fighting the Nine out there?" Caliban said. "Or are they blundering around fighting among themselves? Grandrith can't be responsible for all that!"
"I left most of my men there to hold them, keep them occupied!"
"Doublecrossing your own men, too? Well, that's to be expected, Iwaldi!"
Trish and Barney said, "What?"
Villiers gasped. Cobbs' jaw dropped.
"He can do what I can do," Caliban said. "He has enough control of his muscles to pull his spine and add or subtract inches to his height. I've done it plenty of times myself. It takes much practice and knowledge. But what I can do in my short lifetime, Iwaldi has had many lifetimes to learn."
He pulled on Cobbs' nose and when that would not come pulled on the skin of the face and then on the dark hair.
"That won't do any good, you fool! Barbara Villiers said. "That is his own skin and hair! The old goblin you knew was the false one! The wrinkled skin and the redshot eyes and the long white hair and beard, those were the fakes! They were true enough once, but when he regained his youth—"
"Shut up! " Iwaldi yelled.
"We haven't got time to carry this deception out!" Villiers said. "Besides, there's no sense in not telling him that we can have the rejuvenation elixir. He won't leave us here to die if he knows that he has to take us away to get the elixir! You should have known that, you greedy old man! It was our main card, and you've wasted too much time holding out! It may be too late because of your stupidity! "
"You can't talk to me that way, my dear Countess Cleveland!"
Caliban's eyebrows went up. He said, "Then Barney was telling the truth, not kidding you as he thought he was, when he said you must be the Lady Castlemaine whose petticoats hanging out to dry made Pepys flip? Charles the Second's mistress, mother of his three sons? You did not die as history said, but you used makeup to look as if you were getting older and then you pretended to die and some woman died so that you could be buried, and you—"
"Yes!" Barbara Villiers snarled. "Yes! How many candidates have done that? Hundreds, thousands? You and Grandrith are my own descendents! My grandson had a child by a Grandrith woman; so I'm your many times great-grandmother! For the sake of us all, for the sake of eternal life for you and your friends, and for me, your ancestress, get us out of here! You will not only have eternal life but eternal youth!"
"I appropriated your notes, after you turned against us, Iwaldi said. "I knew you'd been working on rejuvenation and I hired the best scientists in the world to develop the elixir from the information in your notes. One did develop it, and I got rid of him in an ‘accident.’ In two years' time, I became a young man again! The wrinkles and the white hair and the ropy veins disappeared! But I used makeup so that the others would not know! But ... must I talk away our lives! Let's get out of here! Plenty of time for talk later! "
The old man—now turned young man—knew that even if he was taken out of the explosion area, he was in grave danger from Caliban. But he was wily, and he had survived so many mille
"It's too late!' Barbara Villiers wailed. "We can't get away in time now!"
"Then give me the combination!" Caliban said.
"Why not make him do it?" Trish said.
There was the sound of ru
"I promise to release you and Villiers," Caliban said. "After you give me the formulae, of course. But my word is not to be given lightly and will not be broken. I will let you two go free, give you twelve hours' headstart, after which I will try to kill you, Iwaldi. Villiers can go with you if she chooses, in which case I'll try to kill her, too. But if she wants to work with me, and I decide I can trust her, well, I don't like the idea of breaking the neck of my own grandmother several times removed, even if she's so distant I couldn't possibly have any of her genes."
"Talk our lives away!" Villiers said. "Iwaldi, tell him the combination! Now! There isn't much time left! He doesn't even know where the bomb is! He may not even be able to get to it in time!" "Hey, Doc! Trish! Barney!" a deep grunting voice said somewhere in the fog. "Pongo. Pongo!"
“Pongo! Pongo! You hairy ape!" Barney called out joyfully. "This way! "
The squat and monstrous form of Pauncho van Veelar appeared. He rolled toward them and then stopped. "What the hell's going on? Cobbs! Barbara!"
Barney capsuled what had happened, but Doc listened to Iwaldi.
"There are ten numbers on the dial," Iwaldi said. "You set the dial on each number from 1 to
10. Then go right to 3. Then back to 9. If you do that in time, you can make the mechanism push the pin back into the gas vial container. But you'll have to push in on the dial while you're working the combination. Push in hard! If you don't, the mechanism not only won't reinsert the pin, it'll pull the pin immediately. And you'll have to keep the pressure applied for five minutes after you have worked the combination." "Why all those provisions?" Caliban said.