Revanche, who was seeing for the first time the Messinan's work,
scrutinized with cynical elation the creature who had landed closest
to him. Awed despite himself, he saw that a fast-whirling halo hovered
perhaps a foot above the noble head. Every five seconds the luminous
ring changed color.
Even as he watched it, it changed color. From gold it dissolved into a
bloody red, and then into a gangrenous green. Next it became a bruise
purple, a witching hour black and finally shifted back to gold.
The aspect that startled Revanche most, however, was the face. The
false flesh-mask stretched over the metal skull was a grotesque
representation of the features of X as seen in the paintings of the
Spanish and Italian masters.
There was the somewhat narrow and bearded face with the "sensitive"
full-lipped mouth and the gentle nose that poised between straightness
and aquilinity. There were the same eyes--flowing and compassionate.
But on the mask those conventional features had been slightly altered,
or, as it were, "pulled." Though the lips had been cast with meekness
and love on their curves, the smile had been lengthened, and subtly
twisted until it had passed over the boundary of a smile and became a
snarl.
Whatever fearsome hand had fashioned that mask had known that a snarl
is an elongated smile, just as a smile is a modified snarl. The
hand had perceived that it was the snarl of the ape that had become
the smile of the man, perceived too that, the process of evolution
continuing, the smile of the man had passed into the ultra-tender
mouth-curving of X.
And now, that smile which was the apex of Nature's efforts, had been
remolded, recast, rehammered, and returned into a caricature of itself.
Da Vincelleo was not only a scientist, he was an artist supreme. In
that mask he had shown the people of Dafess a reflection of themselves.
And he made them see what they had done to X, how they had twisted
the face of universal love into an inverted image of their true
nature--that of self-love.
The mask was the face of X--_reductio ad absurdum_.
The gentle curve of nostrils had been expanded into derision, and an
almost savage fierceness. The glowing compassion of the eyes had become
intense with a flame so hot it made the onlookers wonder how the lashes
and brows resisted melting, and running into the cavernous eyesockets.
Yet, though fiery, the lineaments combined into a chilling sight. And
as there were thousands of the masks, they contributed to a geometrical
progression of terror.
Revanche, though he was safe, felt struck with fear and guilt that had
been instilled into him when he was a child.
At that moment an Elder who had been eyeing the nearest X, afraid to go
into the ritualistic embrace with it because of its fearsome aspect,
suddenly ran to it. He threw himself at its feet, clasped its legs, and
howled: "Mercy!"
A deep powerful voice that sounded more like the roar of a motor than
anything else answered, "Justice!"
Justice was what the Elder had prayed for all of his life. Now he got
it.
The automaton lifted the sword, and brought it down with great violence
on the Elder's chicken-skinny neck.
"Chuck!" rasped the blade.
"Bump!" replied the head.
The white-bearded ball rolled on the pavement until it stopped against
the curb. Upside down, it looked at everything from a new and possibly
revelatory viewpoint, for its expression was not only bewildered and
hurt but, for the first time, educated.
Dafess City became bedlam, pandemonium, terror on a cataclysmic scale.
The white body of the Truncated broke into fifty thousand fragments
that fled here and there, circled, whirled, zig-zagged, leaped,
crawled, bounded, darted, and lunged.
The legion of X stalked after them. They moved jerkily but swiftly.
Above all, they moved relentlessly.
When a cornered person could not get by the awesome figure, he or she
would go down on his or her knees and clasp his hands and howl, "Mercy!
Mercy!"
"Justice!" roared the immobile lips of the mask.
"Slush!" smacked the lips of the blade.
"Thud!" echoed the head.
Though many skulls rolled, a more or less objective observer, such as
Revanche, would have noticed that many more were spared.
They were unharmed for a reason, however, for always the flailing
swords forced the mob in a general direction.
They were being herded towards the Temple of the Righteous, a truncated
pyramid not far off the square and one which also housed the First
Dafess Sacred-Secular Bank and Finance Corporation. Peculiarly enough,
the latter institution had grown to such proportions that it had
crowded out the former and now occupied the center of the building. The
Dafesses had accepted what seemed to them to be the will of X and had
moved the holy section to one corner.
Through the huge marble doors the multitude was forced. They had no
place else to go, for, wherever they turned, the blazing eye and the
flashing sword headed them off.
B. T. Revanche allowed himself to be borne along with the current. Once
inside the pyramid, however, he separated himself from the crowd, and
ran down a side-passage. The main body was being forced into the open
door of the vault. He did not wish to go with them. He had persuaded Da
Vincelleo to prepare a private entrance for him.
He ran with all the speed his short legs could muster, puffing hard.
When he rounded a corner, he stopped short. His heart, which had been
pounding only moderately now suddenly went into the Walpurgisnacht
terror music of Moussorgsky's _Night on Bare Mountain_. A Bioid X was
stationed down the hall, exactly in front of the mural that concealed
the secret door!
He paused, sucked in oxygen and courage, and then walked briskly up to
the thing, confident that the electronic "interferer" he wore strapped
to his belt would neutralize it.
But when he got up to it his suppressed doubt and suspicion were
translated into action. The flame-eyed X lifted its sword, and lashed
out at him.
"You have been chosen!" the frozen lips roared.
The keen tip missed by a spiderweb taking Revanche's Adam's apple out
in one neat chunk.
Appalled, the financier turned and fled.
While he ran, he turned his head and shrilled back, "You are making a
mistake!" It was a futile thing to scream out, for the plastiskin ears
were deaf to meaning, if not to noise.
Revanche's hand fumbled on the interferer's switch, and clicked it back
and forth. It seemed to be working; it was warm and humming. What then
was the matter?
He cursed Da Vincelleo for a strictly third-rate artisan--a bungler,
botcher, and bonehead.
Suddenly he was running down another empty corridor, his hard soles
bouncing echoes off the faraway walls. _Slap! Slap! Puff! Wheeze!_
There was an open window at the distant end of the hall. If only he
could make that...!
Again he stopped short. Half hidden in the shadows stood an X on
guard. It turned its head, and tiger-bright eyes flamed.
Revanche choked off a scream, and whirled. He expected to see the other
destroyer behind him, but it was not in sight. When he reached the
junction of the two corridors, he saw it standing there, sword held out
before it in satiric salute.
There was but one way for Revanche to go--straight back to the bank's
vault.
For the first time he realized that he himself, B. T. Revanche, was
being herded!
He spun around again to face the oncoming terrors. Frantically, his
fingers flicked the switch.
"Stop! Stop! I am your master! I am Revanche! I own you!"
"You are the chosen!" they bellowed.
He whirled, and began running again.
* * * * *
When he reached the vault, he found the X's lined up in a double row,
like the guards at a royal reception. They stood facing each other with
eyes blazing at eyes, swords held straight out before them and legs
widespread above gleaming shoes of brass.
Revanche did not stop but sped down between the guard of honor as if
he were afraid they would all begin chopping at once. He had a vision
of tiny fragments of meat swimming in a pool of blood, like protozoa
jerking in a drop of water beneath a microscope.
When he came to the huge steel door of the vault, he stopped and looked
within. The floor immediately before him had raised up to form a wall.
Beneath it was a round hole that acted as the entrance to a large,
metallic, and greasy tube.
Down that funnel had slid the entire population, screaming, wailing,
weeping, clutching at one another for support, striking out in a burst
of maniacal fury.
Down they had gone notwithstanding, with a gnashing of teeth and
tongues, and frantic clawings at the smooth and slippery sides in a
desperate attempt to keep from hurtling to the doom they knew awaited
them.
How well they knew it! This tube was exactly that which had been
foretold in the Celestial Blueprint as the passageway for the heathen
when they fell headlong to Rejectus!
Revanche had planned to slip down his private stairway to the little
balcony that would overlook the other end of the tube. There he would
have watched the doomed spilling out in a white and frenzied flood.
There he would have lapped up revenge as a placated Greek ghost would
have lapped blood at a Trojan hecatomb.
Instead, trembling, and bursting with terror, he turned and faced the
X's. "You haven't got me yet!" he screamed at them.
He kicked the little wheel, that closed the vault from the inside. Once
the two-hundred-ton door clanged shut, it could not be opened as long
as the inside wheel remained locked in place. It was an anti-robbery
device that he was well aware of, having in his youth once planned to
plunder the bank in order to get a start in business.
The huge door swung shut swiftly.
Revanche shook his fist at the onrushing horde, then jerked around,
and leaped into the tube. The thunder of brass shoes filled the vault
walls. Just before he slid out of view Revanche twisted his head for
one last look.
A Bioid was leaping through the air in a desperate endeavor to
sacrifice itself by stopping the door with its hard and almost
indestructible eternalloy body.
The financier did not see whether or not the Bioid made it, for he
dropped abruptly into blackness.
V
Normally, he would have shot down the smooth funnel, inclined at
thirty-five degrees, at a terrific speed. But he had not become the
most resourceful financier of the solar system for nothing. No wizard
in an emergency, he yet liked to be prepared.
So it was that he flicked the switch of the anti-grav unit around his
waist, and quickly slowed to a half-speed. He had wanted to wear a
full power machine, but it would have been too bulky to conceal beneath
the loose folds of his garments. He had to be content with a moderate
rate of descent.
After twenty seconds of sliding, he slipped out of the mouth of the
funnel. It was as he had hoped. His checked speed enabled him to drop
onto a granite ledge beneath the opening. Even so, he fell close to the
very edge. A little more velocity, and he would have gone completely
over.
Shuddering, he clutched the rim of rock until he'd regained some of his
composure. After a while, he inched forward until his head hung over
the lip of the precipice, and he could gaze downward into the abyss.
Below, seemingly a thousand feet down, though he knew the distance must
be an illusion fabricated by Da Vincelleo, was a lake of molten lava
rising in great billows, then sinking into deep valleys, and releasing
gigantic bubbles that rose and burst, and loosed a stench of sulfur
that almost suffocated him. Smoke spiralled up past his head, and
collected against the roof far above. The heat that ascended was strong
enough to crisp his face if he had looked long into it.
Nowhere was there a sign of Dafess's inhabitants. All had been
dissolved in the roaring sea of lava, in the hell that had been
prophesied for all their enemies.
Quailing, Revanche looked to left and right along the narrow ledge for
an avenue of escape. There was none. Both ends tapered off into the
rock.
Straight across, perhaps a hundred feet away, was the balcony from
which he had hoped to see the show. If he had the guts, he thought,
he could step up his anti-grav past the danger point and, almost
weightless for a second, could leap to the balcony.
If the pack didn't burn out while he was in midair. If he didn't
misgauge and miss the balcony ... if the hellish blast from below
didn't crisp him before he completed the jump ... if....
* * * * *
He stood up, and by the glow thrown up from the bright ocean, he peered
up the slide. Another _if_. What if he could brace his legs against the
sides of the _O_, and painfully work his way back up?
At that moment a figure shot out of the shadows of the tunnel, a figure
that approached at express-train speed and quickly loomed larger and
larger. Its blood-colored halo, the mask with the snarl of tenderness,
the furnace-door eyes, and the dripping sword--all could be made out in
frightening detail.
Like the lost soul he believed he was, Revanche screamed and dropped
flat to the ledge, crushing his snipped nose into the granite. He
moaned, and waited for the clang of armor and the final whistle of the
blade through the air before it thudded into his neck.
Above him something dark and monstrous shot out of the _O_ and roared
by.
Whoosh!
It missed the ledge by many feet, and fell into the lava ocean.
A train of shadows flickered over Revanche. The air was disturbed by
the constant passage of flying elephantine bodies.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
One by one, like living shells exploded out of a circus cannon, they
projectiled over their intended prey. By the thousands they meteored
over him, eyeballs matching the glare of the lava below, swords
automatically slashing out even as they spun and turned over and over,
and splashed into the liquid rock.
Whish! Brrr! Whoosh! Splash!
Suddenly--silence.
Slowly, Revanche rose. He could not believe it. He looked over the
ledge. Only the bare and boiling sea. He turned and glanced up the
tube. Silence and shadows, and the gleaming greasy symbol for zero.
Understanding melted the glacier on his brain. He broke into a wild
dance, wept tears for gladness, whistled three times, and shouted,
"I've won! Revanche has won! And I've beat them!"
_Clippety-clop! Clippety-clop!_
The unbelievable ring of iron horseshoes jumped out of the tube's mouth.
Revanche froze in a pirouette, stood poised, then seemed to collapse
into a strange loose creature that shambled over to the funnel and
leaned backward to look up, like a dazed and stiffnecked Neanderthal.
The liquid film of joy glazed over his mind again, grew white and cold
and lumpy.
A mount and its rider were coming out of the darkness and into the
brimstone glare. The horse was a nightmare black, its eyeballs burning
tiger-yellow bright. It stretched back cruel and foaming lips, and
revealed teeth sharp enough to rend him.
A ghost horse, it cried for blood while its magnetic shoes clung
briefly to the metal floor before lifting again.
_Clippety-clop_ rang its hooves.
Then it stopped and hung its head down over the tube's lip and fixed
Revanche with one demon's eye while its rider dismounted. It remained
in that attitude, and did not move even when its master dropped gently
onto the ledge to face Revanche.
The financier felt his bulging eyes threaten to leave his head, like
balloons tugging at their moorings.
His eyes understood before his brain did.
They took in a face that was a compound of two persons, a masterly
paradox of features and traits: compassionate and merciless, sensitive
and coarse, loving and hating. It was a hybrid of X, and of _himself_.
It was not that contradictory face that told him so much, that
explained why his interferer had failed to work, even why he had been
"herded," and was now facing this fantastic and vengeful creation.
It was something else that told him that not only Dafess City but he,
Revanche, had been the victim of a Caligulan sense of humor, the butt
of the most colossal practical joke the Messinan had ever played.
That something else he had been too shocked to think about. Why had
the Bioids, who carried full-power anti-gravs within their bodies,
fallen over the ledge? It was because Da Vincelleo had deliberately
destroyed them to raise his hopes. And then had brought out this--this
thing--this _joke_! Not satisfied to make Revanche squirm, he had
wanted him to sweat blood.
The creature that was drawing a saber from its scabbard, was dressed in
a uniform now long dead, but easily recognizable because it had been
resurrected recently in many of the romantic historical novels that
enjoyed a Solarwide vogue.
It wore the rugged active-service boots, the dun-colored trousers, and
the stiff abbreviated jacket of a twentieth century foot soldier of
officer caste. It was singing softly from a rigid mouth.
"Death to the enemy."
It was plain whom the enemy was to be.
Revanche fell to his knees.
"Mercy!"
Its saber lifted. The immobile lips roared.
"Justice!"