Ice Dragon

As the door slid shut behind them with a boom and a thump, lights flashed on in a blue-white glare that almost dazzled Blade. Before his eyes had recovered, he felt the floor under him starting to sink downward. In a moment the walls of a square shaft twenty feet on a side were flowing upward past him.

The walls of the shaft and the slab of flooring that had suddenly become a downward-bound elevator seemed to be made of the same homogeneous dead-black material, so dead and so black and so without variation that looking at it was like looking into a bottomless, lightless well. There was no sound of machinery as they sank, no variation in the speed of the elevator, only a silent and steady downward progress for what Blade estimated to be about three hundred feet.

The elevator stopped sinking, and a moment after that vertical walls sank into slots in the floor on all four sides, and they were in the middle of a large circular chamber through whose ceiling they had dropped. The chamber was about a hundred feet in diameter, floored and walled in pastel reds and yellows, and unfurnished, though not uninhabited. Decidedly not uninhabited.

More guards, for one thing, some of them walking beats around the square platform on which the slab had landed, others standing guard at four large arches that led off into corridors, winding off into the distance at the four compass points. The guards wore only close-fitting silver shorts like swimming trunks, black boots, and the same three weapons as the guards accompanying Blade and Leyndt.

There were others who were obviously slaves. Some of them were male, dressed only in the silver trunks, with heavy brass-colored metal rings clamped around their left ankles. Their heads, unlike those of the guards, were shaved, and their skulls apparently varnished or waxed with something that glistened a sullen orange under the yellowish lights of the chamber.

Others of the slaves were female, also dressed only in trunks, bare-footed, their hair uniformly worn in a ponytail that sometimes reached down to the small of their backs. The male slaves, Blade noted, shuffled about as though drugged, with careful plodding steps and a listless air, while the women moved more naturally, yet not without apprehension in the glances they continuously threw about the chamber.

He had no time for speculation on the reasons for this difference or on anything else, because the Ice Master sprang down from the platform and barked an order. Instantly the little group broke up, the four guards carrying the two bodies disappearing down one corridor, the two with Blade leading him off to a second, and four more guards springing up onto the slab, lifting Leyndt off her feet, and departing down still a third passage at a run. Leyndt was silent, either too numbed by the events of the last half-hour to resist, or consciously deciding that it would be futile to do so.

Blade himself, after seeing what Pnarr's resistance had produced, was very much determined to stay calm, stay alive, and carry out his mission of finding out as much as possible about the Ice Master and his allies. He took it for granted now that the aliens existed; even if so much of what he had seen had not been from a technology far beyond that of the Graduki, the sheer size of the base would have been far beyond any local ability to establish here in the polar wastes.

So he let his guards lead him down the corridor, into a smaller one that branched off to the right, and to the far end of that one. A door showed in a recess in the wall; one of the guards slapped a white disc on the wall beside the door, and it slid open. The two guards cut Blade's bonds and pushed him forward. He staggered forward into the room, almost falling to his knees, as the door whispered shut behind him.

If the room was a cell, the Ice Master obviously believed in treating at least some of his prisoners well. The room was nearly forty feet across and twice as high as Blade. Walls and ceiling were a checkerboard of pastel colors, blues and greens predominating, while underfoot spread a thick soft dark maroon rug. Rug? Blade reached down and felt the fibers curling around his toes. They felt more like the tendrils of some sort of plant. A living rug-more biological engineering? Possibly. He resumed his examination of the room.

One corner was fitted out as a living area-a platform for sleeping, covered with cushions and quilts, other cushions for sitting on, a row of shelves, a folding table. Another corner was fitted out as a bath, with a tall golden-mesh screen that presumably hid a toilet, a similarly gilded basin, and an enormous sunken tub not much smaller than a swimming pool. The rest of the room was empty. It would on the whole have made the most sybaritic London jetsetter run to his interior decorator, insisting that it be duplicated at all costs.

He went over to the wall and laid his hand against it. He felt a gentle warmth radiating from it, instead of the chill that he had unconsciously expected, since he knew he must be well down inside the ice or the chill rock below it, and more than the warmth-a gentle throbbing like the slow beating of an incredibly large and distant heart. He put his ear against the wall, trying to hear the sound more clearly and learn something about the nature of the source. He still had his ear against the wall when the door slid open and the Ice Master walked in.

He had taken off his surface clothing and wore a dark red coverall that was stretched tight over his broad chest and around his thick limbs. His feet and head were bare, and he wore on one side of his belt one of the curved swords and on the other side a small black box that looked like a pocket calculator or a radio. His head was almost entirely bald, except for a fringe of gray-flecked brown hair ending just above his ears, and all in all he looked almost more like the chief of a tribe of savages than Nilando did. Blade smiled at the thought.

The Ice Master returned the smile with a note of smugness that did nothing to put Blade at his ease. Then he took a few steps into the room and sat down on the floor. Blade noticed the Ice Master carefully kept between him and the door. Deciding that nothing was to be gained by remaining standing, he also sat down, but at a safe distance. He was not going to give the Ice Master the impression of any trust or friendliness-not now at any rate.

The Ice Master put both large hands on his knees and inclined his head in a ceremoniously slow nod. Then he spoke. His voice was higher-pitched than Blade would have naturally associated with such a large man, and his words came out slowly, calmly, and with the confidence of a man who knows he is in command of the situation and will remain that way.

«I was hoping you would make the flight north. You and Doctor Leyndt. The pilot was not so valuable, but it would have been interesting to see how he reacted to the conditioning. Although I have usually had to destroy violent ones like that in the past. I would not have destroyed the guard, except that he acted beyond his orders. That showed his conditioning was faulty. Even if I were willing to overlook it, the Menel would not be. They are very concerned about their own safety, the Menel are. But perhaps when one lives two thousand years, to be cut off at the age of, let us say, five hundred means a great loss. I do not know.»

Blade recognized the ploy. The Ice Master was hoping to establish his dominance by talking of things about which Blade knew nothing, but which were certain to arouse his interest. Having aroused that interest, he could increase the domination by throwing Blade bits of explanation, like throwing bones to a yelping dog. It was a comparatively basic interrogation technique, and for a moment Blade felt almost disappointed. Was this the best the fabled Ice Master, ruler of the snowy wastes, creator (or at least manager) of the Ice Dragons, and presumed ally of beings from beyond space (no doubt these were the Menel) could manage? Then he hastily reined in his complacency. The Ice Master was probably just exploring. It would be unwise to assume there was nothing more in his arsenal.