She was at his side, clutching at his hands. "Those little
pellets--they'll eat everything they hit. Quick! By Grock ... be quick!"
Travis had a confused glimpse of her flashing eyes, of a gaping hole
rapidly spreading along the smooth, metallic side of the ship. His legs
tensed, and he was jumping. Ahead of him the green light was bathing
the horsemen in its verdant flame. A man screamed. The scream gurgled,
died abruptly.
He landed and rolled. He came to his feet, _stil_-gun in hand. The
horsemen were just particles of lazily floating dust. Travis turned to
his ship, saw it eaten before his eyes, as though an invisible beast
were champing on it, taking huge mouthfuls.
Then the ship was gone, and he and Nuala stood alone on the grassy
knoll.
"Some surprise party," he said, and laughed harshly. "We have one
gun--which doesn't mean a thing, if Rudra is anything like you think he
is."
"Rudra? Yes, we must think of him. He may or may not know we are
here." She looked about at the windswept knoll, at the gnarled pine
trees standing straight and tall, bleak and stern. She glanced away,
toward a tier of flattish rocks. "Sometimes his horsemen take care
of--intruders. Sometimes he lets visitors--wander. Never has he let
them escape him for very long."
Something of the menace of the man beat at Travis, as though a cold
wind moaned above the pines and blew past his ear with mocking words.
_Rudra will get you if you don't watch out. Rudra has never let a
visitor escape him for very long._
He put his hands on his _stil_-gun and stroked its rounded grip. "We
can't just stay here. We'd starve to death in these wilds." His
hand indicated the windbent oaks below, the gaunt pines, the rolling
grasslands that lifted toward distant hills.
Nuala brooded at him. Her red mouth quirked, almost angrily. She
snapped, "I've been thinking! We still can surprise him if we could get
into Kovokod, the main city."
"Why not go disguised as some of his people?" Travis wondered. He
grinned, "You could be my wife--"
Nuala sniffed her contempt. She lashed at him, "I am above emotions. I
am almost pure thought. Don't distract me from my planning."
Travis chuckled, "A couple of barbarians. We'd look pretty good as
nomads, wouldn't we? Well, what do you say? What's to stop us?"
Nuala snapped, "Our features! They are too delicate, too finely formed.
Rudra hastened the evolution of his people, speeded up their ascent in
time. They are still brutish, thick of nose, of lip."
"If we had some of the celluvalin. I could do a pretty fancy job on our
faces. I've moulded life forms in clay often enough for Solar Museum."
Nuala eyed him wonderingly. "You are a young race, but you Earth-things
do come up with some good ideas. There will be medical centers on
Rudraline. If we can find one, there will be celluvalin there."
They set out under the pines, walking for the windbent oaks, side by
side.
* * * * *
For three days they moved southward. Here and there were farms,
sprawled across the land. Travis walked with his eyes on them, studying
the architecture, the terrain. Already, he told himself, he could do a
few panoramic windows for Solar--if he ever got out of this thing alive.
Once Nuala caught him by the wrist, dragged him back to the shelter of
a dwarf bush. She whispered, "A caravan. The Rudraldians are taking
their produce to market at Kovokod!"
Travis watched, fascinated. The horsemen in plain leather harness rode
with the ease of Cossacks in the saddle, far ahead of the slower-footed
pack-animals, giant sloth-like creatures in rich trappings. They
bore ornate palanquins on their backs, or pulled huge wagons by
gilded reins. In the middle of the caravan rode the nobles, draped in
cloth-of-gold, glittering with jewels.
Nuala shook his shoulder. She hissed. "We can't waste time. Quickly,
now. They are almost past--"
They scrambled unseen onto a wagon....
They found a medical station in the dawn of the fourth day. There was
a nurse inside, asleep at the table. Nuala crossed the room with long
strides, bent over her from the rear, did something to her at the base
of the skull with her fingertips. The nurse pitched forward, sprawled
along the edge of the table.
Travis scooped handsful of _celluvalin_ from an earthern jar and went
to work on his face before a mirror. With steady fingers he altered his
nose, broadened and widened it, gave it a snoutish look. He modeled
his mouth to brutish slackness. He lowered his forehead. When he was
through he was a step above the ape.
Nuala was watching him with wide eyes. She whispered, "I do not like
you--like that."
He stood over her, toweling his hands. He said, "I feel different, too.
Almost like a--beast."
She was near him, blue eyes uplifted, red mouth quivering. He put his
hands on her arms, lifted her against him. He bent and kissed her. For
a single instant she yielded to him and her mouth was a honeyed fire.
Then she thrust him away, stood panting. Her anger crackled in her
eyes, in the rise of her pointed breasts.
"You are a beast! You--"
Travis chuckled, "I just had to do it, honey. I wanted to see what it
was like."
He scooped _celluvalin_ in a hand and slapped it down on her cheek.
He worked swiftly, moulding and shaping the cell-jelly before it
hardened and adhered to her skin. By the time he was finished, her
rage was spent. He stepped back, eyed her calculatingly. He nodded.
"You look just like the nurse, now. Not a bad job, if I do ring my own
alarm-bell."
Nuala lifted the mirror and looked into it for a long moment. Once she
lifted her eyes and stared enigmatically at Travis. Then she casually
lifted a hand and undid the fastenings of her translucent gown. Calmly
she stepped from it, ignoring Travis's sudden, "Hey!"
She lifted the white uniform from the prostrate nurse. Deftly she
hooked it about her and stood back. "Now the resemblance is complete.
I will be a nurse. You--my amorous Earth-thing--will be my patient. A
mental deficient. You look the part perfectly."
Travis went, "Ouch!" and followed her out into the sunlight.
Toward noon they were overtaken on the broad highway by an advance
guard of horsemen for another caravan. One of the horsemen shouted at
them. Nuala screamed back. Not understanding their language--Nuala had
always spoken spaceenglish to him--he said, "What'd they want to know?"
"If my _babuvol_ was too poor to buy me a horse," she snapped.
"_Babuvol?_"
"Husband to you, Mate. I told them you weren't my husband." She added
sweetly, "I said you were crazy, that you suffered from the delusion of
having glass toes, among other things."
Travis scowled at her as she swung along blithely. He thought of a
remark, but ignored it.
The caravan crept up to them, engulfed them. Travis stared rudely at
the sleek horses, at the handsomely wrought designs on saddle and
stirrup. He eyed the monstrous pack-sloths carefully, making sure that
he was nowhere near the flat, gigantic paws when they tromped down on
the road. He caught sudden glimpses of foodstuffs, of silver jars, of
priceless tapestries.
Once a nobleman reined in his mount and spoke to them. Nuala did not
raise her eyes but she murmured, "He is a feeble one, lordship. There
is a sickness in his mind. If you could hear him speak--"
She nudged Travis with an elbow, hissed into his ear, "Say something
for the man, idiot!"
Travis babbled, "Intry-mintry, look so sly--spaceman, spaceman, in your
eye!" from the words of a song currently popular on Mars.
The nobleman made a pitying sound with his lips, ignoring Travis's
glare. He tossed a ring to Nuala. "The protection of the Lord Railan,
nurse."
Nuala hid the ring in a pocket. Eyes straight ahead, she said to
Travis, "It was a happy thought, your passing as a lunatic. It is a
part that comes easily to you."
The ring was a talisman that hired mounts, servants. The engraved seal
on the circlet opened men's eyes, and when Nuala whispered suavely,
"The Lord Railan will pay double ..." the charm was complete. Soon they
left the caravan and went on ahead.
* * * * *
The twin towers of Kovokod were banded white and black. They dozed
in the sunlight above the walled city. Outside the walls were sloped
launching cradles for stratosphere fliers and spacers. Like toys,
pilots and passengers moved from stationhouse to ladders, crossed back
and forth. Occasionally a police flier spiralled slowly over the ramped
buildings and arched levels of the city. Travis could see tri-wheeled
vehicles speeding back and forth on the raised streets.
Nuala gestured and Travis saw a huge gate swarming with men and women
on foot, on horse, or seated luxuriously in the tri-wheelers. "We'll
mingle with the crowd. That way, and with the ring, we can get in
easily enough."
Travis gawked at the throngs. Nuala spoke occasionally, and Travis
knew she was calling attention to his mental state. She was mocking
him, but Travis added to her words by singing ribald ditties that were
famous from Earth to Centauri. He even made up one about Nuala. Only
her sudden hiss and pinch brought remembrance that she could speak any
tongue.
The guard at the gate eyed the ring and Nuala. He licked his lips at
her words and let them through. They faded into the crowds, Nuala
walking swiftly, not giving Travis a chance to stare at the straight,
many-windowed buildings, the ornate balconies, the several roads that
were like lattices linking the city together.
"We must get into one of those towers!" Nuala hissed. "They are Rudra's
laboratories. There he houses his discoveries, the rarest weapons, the
finest engines."
"Maybe the ring--?"
"Not for the towers. I know this world, from the crypt. I have spent
too many years spying on Rudra."
Travis rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully. He murmured, "I wanted
something to come to grips with. Maybe I can get you into the tower."
The tower entrance was like a halved egg, bulging out from the straight
wall of the black-and-white structure. There was no visible means of
entry. It seemed a sheer rounded oval of stone. Travis stared at it
uncertainly, walking past.
"Are you sure?" he asked Nuala. "That doesn't look like a door to me!"
"What do you know of doors?" she snapped. "It opens to vibratory
impulses. Walk close enough and it will open--and a blast of power will
turn you into smoke."
Travis fingered his jaw. "If I walk toward it and just as the thing
opens I dart aside ... it might miss me."
"A crude approach," observed Nuala, but her eyes were thoughtful.
Stung, Travis snarled, "Sometimes you accomplish more by crudeness. If
the other guy isn't expecting it."
He would not have done it, if he hadn't felt so helpless and useless
beside Nuala. He knew it was foolhardy, even as he ran, right hand
going for the _stil_-gun. In a soberer moment he would have waited,
have let her figure out the answer, as she had figured out the other
answers.
His dark hair whipped in the wind that came up the street when he slid
to a halt. The egg-shaped adit was lifting, disclosing black depths
behind it, glittering metal, a running figure.
Nuala screamed, but Travis moved before he heard her. The _stil_-gun
belched green mist into the darkness. Travis was sliding, scrambling
aside.
Light--dazzling, blinding light--shot out of the glittering metal
engine just before the green mist touched it. The light was hot.
Crouched against the wall, face turned away from its brilliance, Travis
felt the heat of it. His brow beaded with sweat. The black hairs on his
forearms stank where they crisped.