The Gate of Time

8

Midnight arrived with agonizing slowness. It was silent in the asylum except for a rumble of thunder from west and north. The room had only a small window placed two feet above his head. The door was thick oak, ribbed with iron, and locked on the outside. Although Doctor Tarhe gave his better patients plenty of freedom during the day, he made sure they were secure at night.

Faintly, the clang of the big clock down the hall came through the door. Two Hawks counted the strokes. Twenty-four. Midnight.

A panel in the door opened and made him start. Through half-closed eyes, he could see the light of a kerosene lamp shining through the narrow panel. He could also make out the broad-faced, big- nosed visage of Kaisehta’, an attendant, making his rounds. The panel closed; Two Hawks got out of bed. He shook O’Brien, who sat up, saying, “You don’t think I’d be sleeping at a time like this?”

Both were already fully dressed. They had nothing to do now but wait for developments. Two Hawks wished he had his weapons, the derringer and the automatic. Tarhe had told him that the secret police had kept the guns for a while, studying them, then had given them to Tarhe. The doctor kept them locked up in a big wall-safe in his study. At the time he was told about them, Two Hawks had wondered why the police did not consider the automatic as an evidence of the truth of his story. Nothing like it existed in this world. But the guns had been returned without comment to Tarhe, and Two Hawks could only deduce that the police considered the automatic to be one more testimonial to his madness. If so, they must be a singularly unimaginative group.

The two sat in silence on the edge of their beds. They did not have long to wait. There was a yell from down the hall. It was chopped off, and a moment later a clinking sound told them a key was being turned in the big padlock. A bolt shot back; the door swung open. Two Hawks stood up, not knowing whether he should expect rescue or death from a gun. Six men wearing hoods stood in the corridor. Their clothes were lower-class Hotinohsonih civilian wear. Two held six-shooters; two, single-shot rifles; two, long knives.

A thickset man spoke Hotinohsonih in a deep bass. He spoke it with a foreign accent. “Are you Two Hawks and O’Brien?”

Two Hawks nodded and said, “Give us guns. Or knives, anyway.”

“You have no need of them.”

“I have two of my guns locked in the wall-safe,” Two Hawks said. “One of them is an automatic pistol, a rapid-fire mechanism that would greatly improve the fire power of the Blodlandish. I need it for a model.”

The thickset man hesitated, then said, “It’d take too long to get it from the safe. We don’t have the time to drill and blow.”

“I know the combination,” Two Hawks said. “I’ve stood behind Doctor Tarhe and watched him enough. He’s rather absent-minded.”

“Very well. But hurry. We don’t have much time.”

Two men preceded the others down the hall. Deep Voice gestured with his pistol for the two Americans to go before him. At the end of the hall, the attendant who had cried out, Kaisehta’, lay face up on the floor. The top of his head was bloody; his eyes and mouth were open. The skin beneath the dark pigment was a bluish-grey.

“The sons of bitches didn’t have to kill him!” O’Brien said. “Poor fellow! I didn’t understand a word he ever said to me, but he could make me laugh. He was a good Joe.”

“No talking,” Deep Voice said. They went down another hall, across the dining-room and into Tarhe’s study. Two Hawks pulled up the painting that was supposed to hide the safe. By the light of a flashlight held by Deep Voice, he turned the dial, marked with the numbers of the modified Akhaivian alphabet. The door swung open, and he found his derringer and automatic in a small cardboard box.

Deep voice extended his hand for the weapons. Reluctantly, Two Hawks gave them to him. Evidently, they were as much prisoners of the Blodlandish as of their former captors.

The party left the studio and went to the main front door of the asylum. Two men with rifles stepped out on the big verandah and a minute later came back with an all-clear. Two Hawks and O’Brien, followed by the other four Blodlandish, stepped through the door. The city down below was dark except for fires here and there that had not yet been put out. The moon was behind thick dark clouds.

They started down the steps, their destination two autos. These were parked behind a shrubbery along the curve of the driveway to their left. The front ends of the cars were barely visible. Just as the two riflemen reached the ground, the flash and bang of guns came out of the shrubbery. Two Hawks pushed O’Brien hard toward the ground and then hurled himself down the steps and out in a dive.

He hit the bare dirt with a force that almost knocked the breath from him and rolled sideways. When he was in the shrubbery that grew along the base of the verandah, he stopped. More fire spurted from the small arms of the men in the bushes. The two Blodlandish who had been in front of him were on the ground at the foot of the steps. One was wounded or dead. The other fired at the Perkunishans from a prone position. Two Hawks presumed that the attackers were Perkunishans and they had come with the same idea as the Blodlandish but a little later.

A man above Two Hawks screamed. A body fell over the verandah railing just above him and crashed down on his legs. By then the other Blodlandish had scattered for cover behind posts and the railing of the verandah. A Perkunishan toppled from the bushes. The others took up a new position behind the Blodlandish cars. Lights were coming on in the house and outlining the men on the verandah. A Blodlandish slumped over the railings, his gun falling into the ground under the bushes near Two Hawks. The man with the rifle grunted and quit firing.

Two Hawks crawled to the gun that the agent had dropped. With this in his hand, he left the relative safety of the steps and bushes and snaked towards the dead or unconcious rifleman. Using the body as cover, he searched through its pockets. He found several small boxes, slid one open, and felt cylindrical shapes packed within. They were linen cartridges with brass percussion caps.

He examined the revolver with his fingers, broke it open, and filled the six chambers. Behind him, O’Brien groaned and said, “I’m hit. My arm’s numb. Oh, Christ, I’m bleeding! I’m going to die!”

“Shut up about dying,” Two Hawks said. “You sound too strong to be badly hurt.”

He rolled over and felt O’Brien’s upper left arm. His fingers came away sticky. O’Brien said, “I’m going fast. The life’s pumping out of me with every beat of my heart.”

“Quit crying,” Two Hawks said. “You just think you’re dying, maybe because you want to. It’s only a flesh wound and not very deep at that.”

“You ain’t the one who’s hit.”

Two Hawks raised his head to look over the body. Two men on the verandah and two behind the cars were still shooting. Then one—he looked like Deep Voice—turned to shoot through the window behind him at the light bulbs outlining him. There was a sound as of a fist hitting flesh, and he flew forward. He pitched on his face and was lost from Two Hawks’ view except for one foot. His revolver, however, launched from a nerveless hand, broke the window.

The survivor ran for the corner of the house. He bent over while he ran and fired at the Perkunishans. Their bullets smacked into the wooden walls. Just as he reached the corner, he sprawled out and slammed into the floor. Two Hawks supposed that, since he did not get up, he was either hit or playing possum. If he was acting, he had done a good job, since his gun had also clattered on the floor.