the opened side was closing.
The pain began to abate. The bleeding had already stopped entirely and
his lungs seemed to have cleared themselves of the blood and froth in
them. Now with the ache of the wound ceasing, Dave could still feel the
venom burning in his blood, and the constriction around his throat was
still there, making it hard to breathe. He sat up, trying to free
himself. The constriction came from an arm around his neck, but he
couldn't see to whom it belonged, and there was no place to move aside
in the corner of the egg.
From inside, the walls of the egg were transparent enough for him to see
cloudy outlines of what lay beyond. He could see the ground sweeping
away beneath them from all points. A man had run up and was standing
beside the egg, beating at it. The man suddenly shot up like a fountain,
growing huge; he towered over them, until he seemed miles high and the
giant structures Dave could see were only the turned-up toes of the
man's shoes. One of those shoes was lifting, as if the man meant to step
on the egg.
They must be growing smaller again.
A voice said tightly: "We're small enough, Bork. Can you raise the wind
for us now?"
"Hold on." Bork's voice seemed sure of itself.
The egg tilted and soared. Dave was thrown sidewise and had to fight for
balance. He stared unbelievingly through the crystal shell. They rose
like a Banshee jet. There was a shaggy, monstrous colossus in the
distance, taller than the Himalayas--the man who had been beside them.
Bork grunted. "Got it! We're all right now." He chanted something in a
rapid undertone "All right, relax. That will teach them not to work
resonance magic inside a protective ring; the egg knows how we could
have got through otherwise. Lucky we were trying at the right time,
though. The Satheri must be going crazy. Wait a minute, this tires the
fingers."
The man called Bork halted the series of rapid passes he had been
making, flexing his fingers with a grimace. The spinning egg began to
drop at once, but he let out a long, keening cry, adding a slight flip
of his other arm. Outside, something like a mist drew near and swirled
around them. It looked huge to Dave, but must have been a small thing in
fact. Now they began speeding along smoothly again. The thing was
probably another sylph, strong enough to move them in their present
reduced size.
Bork pointed his finger. "There's the roc!" He leaned closer to the wall
of the tiny egg and shouted. The sylph changed direction, and began to
bob about.
It drifted gently, while Bork pulled a few sticks with runes written on
them toward him and made a hasty assembly of them. At once, there was a
feeling of growing, and the sylph began to shrink away from them. Now
they were falling swiftly, growing as they dropped. Dave felt his
stomach twist, until he saw they were heading toward a huge bird that
was cruising along under them, drawing closer. It looked like a cross
between a condor and a hawk, but its wing span must have been over three
hundred feet. It slipped under the egg, catching the falling object
deftly on a cushion-like attachment between its wings, and then struck
off briskly toward the east.
Bork snapped the side of the egg open and stepped out while the others
followed. Dave tried to crawl out, but something held him back. It
wasn't until Bork's big hand reached in to help him that he made it.
When all were out, Bork tapped the egg-shaped object and caught it as it
shrank. When it was small enough, he pocketed it.
Dave sat up again, examining himself, now that he had more room. His
clothing was a mess, spattered with drying blood, but he seemed unharmed
now. Even the burning of the venom was gone. He reached for the arm
around his neck and began breaking it free from its stranglehold.
From behind an incredulous cry broke out. Nema sprawled across him,
staring at his face and burying her head against his shoulder. "Dave!
You're not dead! You're alive!"
Dave was still amazed at that himself. But Bork snorted. "Of course he
is. Why'd we take him along with you hanging on in a faint if he were
dead? When the snetha-knife kills, it kills completely. They stay dead,
or they don't die. Sagittarian?"
She nodded, and the big man seemed to be doing some calculations in his
head.
"Yeah," he decided. "It would be. There was one second there around
midnight when all the signs were at their absolute maximum
favorableness. Someone must have said some pretty dangerous health
spells over him then." He turned to Dave, as if aware that the other was
comparatively ignorant of such matters. "Happened once before, without
this mess-up of the signs. They revived a corpse and found he was
unkillable from then on. He lasted eight thousand years, or something
like that, before he got burned trying to control a giant salamander.
They cut off his head once, but it healed before the axe was all the way
through. Woops!"
The bird had dipped downward, rushing toward the ground. It landed at a
hundred miles an hour and managed to stop against a small entrance to a
cave in the hillside. Except for the one patch where the bird had
lighted, they were in the middle of a dense forest.
Dave and Nema were hustled into the cave, while the others melted into
the woods, studying the skies. She clung to Dave, crying something about
how the Sons of the Egg would torture them.
"All right," he said finally. "Who are these sons of eggs? And what have
they got against me?"
"They're monsters," she told him. "They used to be the antimagic
individualists. They wanted magic used only when other means wouldn't
work. They fought against the Satheri. While magic produced their food
and made a better world for them, they hated it because they couldn't do
it for themselves. And a few renegade priests like my brother joined
them."
"Your brother?"
"She means me," Bork said. He came in to drop on his haunches and grin
at Dave. There was no sign of personal hatred in his look. "I used to be
a stooge for Sather Karf, before I got sick of it. How do you feel, Dave
Hanson?"
Dave considered it, still in wonder at the truth. "I feel good. Even the
venom they were putting in my blood doesn't seem to hurt any more."
"Fine. Means the Sather Karf must believe we killed you--he must have
the report by now. If he thinks you're dead, there's no point in his
giving chase; he knows I wouldn't let them kill Nema, even if she is a
little fool. Anyhow, he's not really such a bad old guy, Dave--not, like
some of those Satheri. Well, you figure how you'd like it if you were
just a simple man and some priest magicked her away from you--and then
sent her back with enough magic of her own to be a witch and make life
hell for you because she'd been kicked out by the priest, but he hadn't
pulled the wanting spell off her. Or anything else you wanted and
couldn't keep against magic. Sure, they fed us. They had to, after they
took away our fields and the kine, and got everyone into the habit of
taking their dole instead of earning our living in the old way. They
made slaves of us. Any man who lets another be responsible for him _is_
a slave. It's a fine world for the Satheri, if they can keep the egg
from breaking."
"What's all this egg nonsense?"
Bork shrugged. "Plain good sense. Why should there be a sky shell around
the planet? Look, there's a legend here. You should know it, since for
all I know it has some meaning for you. Long ago--or away, or
whatever--there was a world called Tharé and another called Erath. Two
worlds, separate and distinct, on their own branching time paths. They
must have been that way since the moment of creation. One was a world of
rule and law. One plus one might not always equal two, but it had to
equal something. There seems to be some similarity to your world in
that, doesn't there? The other was--well, you'd call it chaos, though it
had some laws, if they could be predicted. One plus one there
depended--or maybe there was no such thing as unity. Mass-energy wasn't
conserved. It was deserved. It was a world of anarchy, from your point
of view. It must have been a terrible place to live, I guess."
He hesitated somberly. "As terrible as this one is getting to be," he
said at last. "Anyway, there were people who lived there. There were the
two inhabited worlds in their own time lines, or probability orbits, or
whatever. You know, I suppose, how worlds of probability would separate
and diverge as time goes on? Of course. Well, these two worlds
_coalesced_."
He looked searchingly at Dave. "Do you see it? The two time lines came
together. Two opposites fused into one. Don't ask me to explain it; it
was long ago, and all I know for sure is that it happened. The two
worlds met and fused, and out of the two came this world, in what the
books call the _Dawnstruggle_. When it was over, our world was as it
has been for thousands of centuries. In fact, one result was that in
theory, neither original world could have a real past, and the fusion
was something that had been--no period of change. It's pretty
complicated."
"It sounds worse than that," Dave grumbled. "But while that might
explain the mystery of magic working here, it doesn't explain your sky."
Bork scratched his head. "No, not too well," he admitted. "I've always
had some doubts about whether or not all the worlds have a shell around
them. I don't know. But our world does, and the shell is cracking. The
Satheri don't like it; they want to stop it. We want it to happen. For
the two lines that met and fused into one have an analogue. Doesn't the
story of that fusion suggest something to you, Dave Hanson? Don't you
see it, the male principle of rule and the female principle of whim;
they join, and the egg is fertile! Two universes join, and the result is
a nucleus world surrounded by a shell, like an egg. We're a universe
egg. And when an egg hatches, you don't try to put it back together!"
He didn't look like a fanatic, Dave told himself. Crazy or not, he took
this business of the hatching egg seriously. But you could never be sure
about anyone who joined a cult. "What is your egg going to hatch into?"
he asked.
The big man shrugged. "Does an egg know it is going to become a hen--or
maybe a fish? We can't possibly tell, of course."
Dave considered it. "Don't you even have a guess?"
Bork answered shortly, "No." He looked worried, Dave thought, and
guessed that even the fanatics were not quite sure they _wanted_ to be
hatched. Bork shrugged again.
"An egg has got to hatch," he said. "That's all there is to it. We
prophesied this, oh, two hundred years ago. The Satheri laughed. Now
they've stopped laughing, but they want to stop it. What happens to a
chick when it is stopped from hatching? Does it go on being a chick, or
does it die? It dies, of course. And we don't want to die. No, Dave
Hanson, we don't know what happens next--but we do know that we must go
through with it. I have nothing against you personally--but I can't let
you stop us. That's why we tried to kill you. If I could, I'd kill you
now, with the snetha-knife so they couldn't revive you."
Dave said reasonably, "You can't expect me to like it, you know. The
Satheri, at least, saved my life--" He stopped in confusion. Bork was
staring at him in hilarious incredulousness that broke into roars of
laughter.
"You mean ... Dave Hanson, do you believe everything they tell you?
Don't you know that the Satheri arranged to kill you first? They needed
a favorable death conjunction to bring you back to life; they got it--by
arranging an accident!"
Nema cried out in protest. "That's a lie!"
"Of course," Bork said mildly. "You always were on their side, little
sister. You were also usually a darned nuisance, fond as I was of you.
Come here."
He caught her and yanked a single hair out of her head. She screamed and
tried to claw him, then fought for the hair. Bork was immovable. He held
her off easily with one hand while the fingers of the other danced in
the air. He spoke what seemed to be a name, though it bore no
resemblance to Nema. She quieted, trembling.
"You'll find a broom near the entrance, little sister. Take it and go
back, to forget that Dave Hanson lives. You saw him die and were
dragged off with us and his body. You escaped before we reached our
hideaway. By the knot I tie in your true hair and by your secret name,
this I command."
She blinked slowly and looked around as Bork burned the knotted hair.
Her eyes swept past Bork and Dave without seeing them and centered on
the broom one man held out to her, without appearing to see him, either.
She seized the broom. A sob came to her throat. "The devil! The renegade
devil! He didn't have to kill Dave! He didn't--"
Her voice died away as she ran toward the clearing. Dave made no
protest. He suspected Bork was putting the spell on her for her own
good, and he agreed that she was better out of all this.
"Now where were we?" Bork asked. "Oh, yes, I was trying to convert you
and knowing I'd failed already. Of course, I don't know that they killed
you first--but those are their methods. Take it from me, I know. I was
the youngest Ser ever to be accepted for training as a Sather. They
wanted you, so they got you."
Dave considered it. It seemed as likely as anything else. "Why me?" he
asked.
"Because you can put back the sky. At least, the Satheri think so, and I
must admit that in some ways they are smarter than we."
Dave started to protest, but Bork cut him off.
"I know all about your big secret. You're not the engineer, whose true
name was longer. We know all that. Our pools are closer to perfection
than theirs, not being contaminated by city air, and we see more. But
there is a cycle of confirmation; if prophecy indicates a thing will
happen, it will happen--though not always as expected. The prophecy
fulfills itself, rather than being fulfilled. Then there are the words
on the monument--a monument meant for your uncle, but carrying your true
name, because his friends felt the short form sounded better. It was
something of a coincidence that they had the wrong true name. But
prophecy is always strongest when based on coincidence--that is a prime
rule. And those words coupled with our revelations prophesy that
_you_--not your uncle--can do the impossible. So what are we going to do
with you?"
Bork's attitude was reassuring, somehow. It was nearer his own than any
Dave had heard on this world. And the kidnapping was beginning to look
like a relief. The Sons of the Egg had gotten him off the hook with
Sather Karf. He grinned and stretched back. "If I'm unkillable, Bork,
what can you do?"
The big man grinned back. "Flow rock around you up to your nose and toss
you into a lake. You'd live there--but you'd always be drowning and
you'd find it slightly unpleasant for the next few thousand years! It's
not as bad as being turned into a mangrove with your soul intact, but it
would last longer. And don't think the Satheri can't pull a lot worse
than that. They have your name--everyone has your secret name here--and
parts of you."
The conversation was suddenly less pleasant. Dave thought it over. "I
could stay here and join your group. I might as well, since I can't
really help the Satheri anyhow."
"They'd spot your aura eventually. They'll be checking around here for
us for a while. Of course, we might do something about it, if you really
converted. But I don't think you would, if you knew more." Bork got up
and headed for the entrance. "I wasn't going to let you see the
risings, but now maybe I will. If you still want to join, it might be
worked. Otherwise, I'll think of something else."
Dave followed the man out into the clearing. A few men were just
planning to leave, and they looked at Dave suspiciously, but made no
protest. One, whom Dave recognized as the leader with the snetha-knife,
scowled.
"The risings are almost due, Bork," he said.
Bork nodded. "I know, Malok. I've decided to let Dave Hanson watch.
Dave, this is our leader here, Res Malok."
Dave felt no strong love for his would-be murderer, and it seemed to be
mutual. But no protest was lodged. Apparently Bork was their top
conjurer, and privileged. They crossed the clearing and went through the
woods toward another, smaller one. Here a group of some fifty men were
watching the sky, obviously waiting. Others stood around, watching them
and avoiding looking up. Almost directly overhead, there was a rent
place where the strange absence of color or feature indicated a hole in
the dome over them. As it drew nearer true vertical, a chanting began
among the men with up-turned faces. Their hands went upwards, fingers
spread and curled into an unnatural position. Then they stood waiting.
"I don't like it," Bork whispered to Dave. "This is one of the reasons
we're growing too weak to fight the Satheri."
"What's wrong with a ceremony of worship, if you must worship your
eggshell?" Dave asked.
"You'll see. That was all it was once--just worship. But now for weeks,
things are changing. They think it's a sign of favor, but I don't know.
There, watch!"
The hole in the sky was directly overhead now, and the moaning had
risen in pitch. Across the little clearing, Malok began backing quietly
away, carefully not looking upwards. Nobody but Dave seemed to notice
his absence. There was a louder moan.
One of the men in the clearing began to rise upwards slowly. His body
was rigid as it lifted a foot, ten feet, then a hundred above the
ground. Now it picked up speed, and rushed upwards. Another began to
rise, and another. In seconds, more than half of those who had waited
were screaming upwards toward the hole in the sky. They disappeared in
the distance.
Those who had merely stood by and those who had worshipped waited a few
seconds more, but no more rose. The men sighed and began moving out of
the clearing. Dave arose to follow, but Bork gestured for him to wait.
"Sometimes--" he said.
They were alone now. Still Bork waited, staring upwards. Then Dave saw
something in the sky. A speck appeared and came hurtling down. In
seconds, it was the body of one of the men who had risen. Dave felt his
stomach tighten and braced himself. There was no slowing as the body
fell. It landed in the center of the clearing, without losing speed, but
with less noise than he had expected.
When they reached the shattered body, there could be no question of its
being dead.
Bork's face was solemn. "If you're thinking of joining, you'd better
know the worst. You're too easily shocked to make a good convert unless
you're prepared. The risings have been going on for some time. Malok
swears it proves we are right. But I've seen five other bodies come down
like this. What does it mean? Are they stillborn? We don't know. Shall
I revive him for you?"
Dave felt sick as he stared at the ghastly terror on the face of the
corpse. The last thing he wanted to see was its revival, but his
curiosity about the secret in the sky could not be denied. He nodded.
Bork drew a set of phials and implements in miniature size from under
his robe. "This is routine," he said. He snapped his fingers and
produced a small flame over the heart of the corpse. Into that he began
dusting powders, mixing them with something that looked like blood.
Finally he called a name and a command. There was a sharp explosion, a
hissing, and Bork's voice calling.
The dead man flowed together and was whole. He stood up woodenly, with
his face frozen. "Who calls?" he asked in an uninflected, hollow voice.
"Why am I called? I have no soul."
"We call," Bork answered. "Tell us what you saw at the hole in the sky."
A scream tore from the throat of the thing, and its hands came up to its
eyes, tearing at them. Its mouth worked soundlessly, and breath sucked
in. Then a single word came out.
"Faces!"
It fell onto the grass, distorted in death again. Bork shuddered.
"The others were the same," he said. "And he can't be revived again.
Even the strongest spell can't bring back his soul. That is gone,
somehow."
Dave shivered. "And knowing that, you'd still fight against repairing
the sky?"
"Hatching is probably always horrible from inside the shell," Bork
answered. "Do you still want to join us? No, I thought not. Well, then,
let's go back. We might as well try to eat something while I think
about what to do with you."
Malok and most of the others were gone when they reached the cave again.
Bork fell to work with some scraps of food, cursing the configurations
of the planets as his spell refused to work. Then suddenly the scraps
became a mass of sour-smelling stuff. Bork made a face as he tasted it,
but he ate it in silence. Dave couldn't force himself to put it in his
mouth, though he was hungry by then.
He considered, and then snapped his fingers. "Abracadabra," he cried. He
swore as something wet and slimy that looked like seaweed plopped into
his hand. The next time he got a limp fish that had been dead far too
long. But the third try worked better. This time, a whole bunch of
bananas appeared. They were a little riper than he liked, but some of
them were edible enough. He handed some to the other man, who quickly
abandoned his own creation.
Bork was thoughtful as he ate. Finally he grimaced. "New magic!" he
said. "Maybe that's the secret of the prophecy. I thought you knew no
magic."
"I didn't," Dave admitted. He was still tingling inside himself at this
confirmation of his earlier discovery. It was unpredictable magic, but
apparently bore some vague relationship to what he was wishing for.
"So the lake's out," Bork decided. "With unknown powers at your command,
you might escape in time. Well, that settles it. There's one place where
nobody will look for you or listen to you. You'll be nothing but another
among millions, and that's probably the best hiding place for you. With
the overseers they have, you couldn't even turn yourself back to the
Satheri, though I'll admit I'm hoping you don't want them to find you."
"And I was beginning to think you liked me," Dave commented bitterly.
Bork grinned. "I do, Dave Hanson. That's why I'm picking the easiest
place to hide you I can think of. It will be hell, but anything else
would be worse. Better strip and put this cloth on."
The thing he held out was little more than a rag, apparently torn from
one of the robes. "Come on, strip, or I'll burn off your clothes with a
salamander. There, that's better. Now wrap the cloth around your waist
and let it hang down in front. It'll be easier on you if you don't
attract much attention. The sky seems to indicate the planets favor
teleportation now. Be quick before I change my mind and think of
something worse!"
Dave didn't see what he did this time, but there was a puff of flame in
front of his eyes.
The next second, he stood manacled in a long line of men loaded with
heavy stones. Over their backs fell the cutting lashes of a whip. Far
ahead was a partially finished pyramid. Dave was obviously one of the
building slaves.
VI
Sunrise glared harshly over the desert. It was already hot enough to
send heat waves dancing over the sand as Hanson wakened under the bite
of a lash. The overseers were shouting and kicking the slaves awake.
Overhead the marred sky shone in crazy quilt patterns.
Hanson stood up, taking the final bite of the whip without flinching. He
glanced down at his body, noticing that it had somehow developed a
healthy deep tan during the few hours of murderous labor the day before.
He wasn't particularly surprised. Something in his mind seemed also to
have developed a "tan" that let him face the bite of chance without
flinching. He'd stopped wondering and now accepted; he meant to get away
from here at the first chance and he was somehow sure he could.
It was made easier by the boundless strength of his new body. He showed
no signs of buckling under physical work that would have killed him on
his own world.
Not all the slaves got up. Two beside him didn't move at all. Sleeping
through that brutal awakening seemed impossible. When Hanson looked
closer, he saw that they weren't asleep; they were dead.
The overseer raged back along the line and saw them. He must be one of
those conjured into existence here from the real Egypt of the past. He
might have no soul, but a lifetime of being an overseer had given him
habits that replaced the need for what had been a pretty slim soul to
begin with.