"Bari! Oh, beloved, don't you--can't you see me?"
Dimly, then, I saw the tall white beauty of Dondara Keradin. I saw Dona
Carridan, my own beloved wife--she who had died the night our son was
born. They were one. One ghostly shadow that had risen out of the great
diamond that Malgarth had tossed out upon the dark mirror!
"Dona--" My tortured throat could make no sound, but my red lips tried
to frame the syllables. "Can you--kill--Malgarth?"
The white phantom of her hand touched my arm. Somehow it seemed to
ease a little the agony of those constricting coils. Or, perhaps, I
questioned fleetingly, was that but the mercy of death, this woman no
more than delirium?
Her white lips were speaking. I think they made no sound--I think my
numbing senses were beyond hearing sound. But her words, in that dear
musical voice I knew so well, came clear to my brain.
"We can, Bari," the white ghost said. "For I still keep the weapon
that you gave me--and now there is surely no other way, but to use it.
Perhaps you have forgotten the secret, Bari. But you have the strength
to use it, preserved a million years against this hour!"
I tried to make some final struggle against the white, binding
tentacles of the robot. But my body was a stiffly leaden thing. Even
the pain was gone. I could not move.
"I can't, Dona," I tried to say. "My strength is all squeezed out--"
The black mist was crowding upon me again. Now that the sharp pressure
of agony was gone from throat and chest and limbs, a merciful darkness
beckoned. Oblivion was a warm, soothing pool. It would heal all my
injuries, cradle me forever.
"_Bari_--"
That soft familiar voice called to me urgently. It was a golden line
that sought to draw me from that sea of soothing darkness. I clung to
it. Dimly, I could once more see that white and lovely wraith floating
above the shimmer of the diamond.
"Come, Bari!"
* * * * *
The phantom took my hand, drew my arm out of the silver loops.
"Your body is about to die, I know," she said. "But it has vital power
enough for this last task. For the secret you gave me can aid us.
Follow me!"
Her hand was suddenly cool and real in mine. She tugged again, and I
stepped toward her, out of those metal coils--as easily as if they had
turned to smoke.
I could see again! The dark-gleaming mirror beneath; the white robots
sprawled upon it; the lax, twisted forms of Verel and Kel. I could see
the woman beside me--the dark wealth of her red-glinting hair, the wide
violet eyes of Dona and Dondara.
"We must hasten, Bari," she urged anxiously. "Or he will drop your body
and the Stone into the mirror. Not even the power you gave me can reach
him from outside the universe!"
We turned toward Malgarth, towering in the red gloom beyond that ebon
film. His giant body swayed back in grotesque triumph, and the vast
blue masses of his compound eyes were fixed upon something behind us.
Suddenly, queerly, as the hand of the woman tightened on mine, I was
no longer Barry Horn. I was the Bari Horn that the legend had made me.
All the knowledge that had gone into the building of Malgarth was a
reservoir that I could tap.
Before me, strangely, just as I had seen it in that crystal-domed
laboratory, was the brain of Malgarth. Black, vast, deeply convoluted,
floating in a transparent tank. I saw the little pale spot upon its
blackness. I knew the structural weakness in the synthetic brain, that
I, Bari Horn, had been laboring to correct--and, at the urging of
Dondara Keradin, had left uncorrected.
"Hurry!" she whispered beside me. "He believes that you are dead. He is
reaching to drop us into the mirror!"
Fantastically, then, we were climbing into the mass of Malgarth. The
body of the robot was a hundred-foot tower, crowded with all that
compact mechanism that had made him master of the Galaxy. Passing
through barriers of metal as if they had been but shadows, we came up
at last to the robot's brain.
It had grown with the ages. Bathed in a huge, armored vat of purple
liquid, fed by throbbing pumps, it was immense and black and deeply
cleft. But still its shape was the same. And still there was that tiny,
livid spot.