In the Moons of Borea, Page 2

  'I'm taking a chance that you'll perhaps think me a madman, my friend certainly it will be a test of your credulity — but in any case. I'll tell you what I think the clock really is. It is a gateway on all space and time, a vessel capable of journeying to the very corners of existence and beyond. That's my belief. One day learn all there is to know about the thing. When I do . . .' And Crow had paused to shrug and smile, adding: 'But that is all in the future. At the moment .I may rightly compare myself to an ape attempting to fathom the splitting of the atom!'

  Yes; Crow had called the clock a gateway on all space and time, a bridge between worlds — between universes!

  Silberhutte stared out across the forest roof where the clock had disappeared, and suddenly he was taut as a bowstring, incredible hope springing up in him, flaring bright where he had believed hope to have all but faded away. Could that thing in the sky — that coffin-shape so briefly glimpsed — could it possibly . . . ?

  `What is it Lord?' Kota'na asked, his voice low, hushed. The Keeper of the Bears was worried. He had never seen the Warlord stirred by such emotions before. Silberhutte's gaze burned - like a great hound straining at the leash, he seemed to lean toward the forest - and his fists had tightened into huge knots which he held half-raised before him.

  Again Kota'na spoke: Was it some terrible toy of the Wind-Walker, Lord?'

  `No, I don't think so.' And the great white Warlord suddenly relaxed, took a deep breath, turned to grasp Kota'na's shoulders. 'Bear-brother, I want you to come with me, you and two others and a bear. Quick as you can, choose the other men now. We get under way at once. The rest can break camp and head for home with all speed.'

  `But — where are we going, Lord?'

  `Into the forest,' Silberhutte answered at once. 'Where else? If that flying thing is what I think, it is — by God! — bear-brother, if only it is!' He gave a great cry and threw his arms wide.

  `Yes, Lord?' prompted Kota'na. 'What then?'

  `Then?' and Silberhutte's eyes were deep as the spaces between stars. 'Then, Kota'na, the Motherworld may not be as far away as I thought.'

  De Marigny set the clock down in a glade beside a pool. There was a curious absence of vegetation about that pool, and if he had been more observant, he might have noticed, as his vessel slowly descended and came to rest, a peculiar bluish withdrawal of something or things into the water. Before leaving the safety of the clock, he scanned the forest around him: no slightest thing moved, no birds called. That, too, might have warned him — did in fact caution him to a degree — but what could there possibly be to fear? He would only leave the clock for a few moments, and it would never be more than a pace or two away.

  His reasons for coming down here, at a fair distance from the encampment of primitives he had viewed from on high, were threefold. One: he wanted the humanoid natives of this world to have time to think about what they had seen, to assimilate the fact that the clock had done them no harm, before taking a closer look at them or trying to contact them. Two: following what felt like a thousand attempts to leave this alien time dimension into which he had erroneously entered, he was feeling fatigued. All of his efforts to leave had failed miserably, highlighting his inadequate beginner's grasp of the clock's refinements; now he wanted to rest both mind and body before trying yet again. And three: the pool had looked inviting and refreshing, the glade peaceful and quiet, and the forest itself had seemed to offer green walls of protection, looking for all the world like the familiar forests of Earth.

  Only now, stepping out through the clock's open frontal panel, did de Marigny become aware of the odd texture of the soil in the glade, its unnatural feel, crumbly and lifeless. A dozen or so paces took him to the water's edge where he went down on one knee, failing to note as he did so that the glade seemed to grow quieter still. Not a ripple disturbed the surface of that pool, and yet it failed to mirror the man who kneeled at its rim. He paused — his hand poised ready to dip, inches above the surface of water which carried an odd bluish tinge — and the quiet deepened tangibly. Now he felt it: the tension in the air, the sensation of a trap ready to spring shut!

  He threw himself back and away from the pool, sprawling in the crumbling soil, scrambling frantically away from water which was suddenly alive with awful activity. The surface frothed and parted and lumpish blue shapes slithered over de Marigny's booted feet, fastening to his legs through the thin material of his trousers. Half-lizard, half-leech, eight inches long and shaped like flatworms or bloated tadpoles, there, were thousands of the blue-veined creatures.

  The water boiled with them, these things whose appetites had stripped the glade of life. De Marigny tore them bloodily from lacerated limbs, kicked frantically back from the pool toward the clock where it stood behind him, gasped for air as shock and horror gripped him. The farther he struggled from the pool, the less certainly they slithered after him; but their lidless red eyes regarded him evilly and their razor mouths gaped hungrily. Finally he stripped the last of them from his legs, scrabbled upright, and turned to the clock — only to stumble into the arms of an apparition out of his wildest nightmares!

  Wolf-headed and terrible the figure stood, arms encircling him, staring from wild wolf eyes into his own fear-taut features. Now he saw that the figure was human and only dressed in the trappings of an animal, and that others similarly adorned surrounded the clock and gazed impassively at him. They were like Red Indians out of old Earth, and the eyes that stared from wolf heads were anything but friendly.

  De Marigny mustered his strength to twist under and out of the bronze vice that held him and made a dive for the clock's open, greenly lit panel — only to be met in midair by the flat of a tomahawk that hurled him into a black pit of oblivion ..

  De Marigny's return to consciousness was slow and painful. His eyes felt full of ground glass behind closed and swollen lids. He barely stifled a cry of anguish when he tried to open them, then abandoned the attempt for the time being and concentrated instead on regaining a measure of orientation. This was far from easy for there was a roaring in his ears that came and went in regular pulses, bringing red-peaked waves of pain and surging nausea. As his mind began to clear, he tried to think, to remember where he was and what had happened, but even that small effort seemed to splash acid around inside his skull.

  Very slowly the red burning died away, was replaced by an awareness of a sickly chill creeping into muscles and bones already cramped and stiff. He forced back the bile that rose suddenly in his throat and tried to lick parched lips, but his tongue met only sand, dry and tasteless. His teeth were full of the stuff; he gagged on it. Rolling his head weakly, dizzily to one side and freeing his mouth, he spat out grit and blood and what felt like a tooth, then fought to fill his lungs with air. One nostril was full of sand, the other sticky and warm with blood.

  Anger surged up in de Marigny — at the stupidity of this dazed, slothful body which would not obey his commands --- at his dull mind because it refused to answer his questions. Where the hell was he? What had happened to him? He seemed to be lying facedown in coarse-grained sand or loose soil —

  Then, in a series of vivid mental pictures, memory flooded back. Scenes flashed before his mind's eye: of the glade in the forest and the pool of leech-things; of the barbaric, wolf-headed warriors standing in a ring about the time-clock.

  The time-clock!

  If anything had happened to —

  He gritted his teeth, lifted his head to shake it free of sand, then bit his lip and fought off the fresh waves of pain his actions brought. He blinked and was glad of the stinging tears that welled up to wash his eyes, even though he was blinded by the light that they admitted. It had a weak light, this strange world, true, but painful for all that and filled with a thousand bilious fireball flashes.

  Nausea returned immediately, forcing him to close his eyes again. The scene he had so briefly gazed out upon — of a greenly shaded background above a sandy expanse faded quickly from his tortured retinas, was replac
ed by a dull red throbbing that brought a groan of pain and despair from battered lips. Plainly he had suffered a brutal beating and kicking even after being knocked unconscious.

  He wondered if there were something wrong with his limbs; while they gave him no great pain, still he could not move them. Could it be his attackers had crippled him? Again he tried to move and finally discovered the truth: his wrists were bound behind his back, and his feet were tied at the ankles. His neck, too, must be in a noose of some sort; he had felt it tighten when he shook his head. Grimly he considered his position. Having tired of their sport with his unconscious body, his tormentors had obviously staked him out — but for what purpose?

  Then de Marigny thought again of the hideous pool-things and the way the slimy colouring of their internal juices had given the pool its unnatural bluish tinge, and suddenly he found himself wondering if —

  He forced his eyes open again, slowly this time, to let them grow accustomed to the light, and gradually the scene before him took shape. He lay in something of a shallow depression with his chin buried in coarse sand, the soil of the silent forest glade. Beyond his immediate horizon was a more distant one of shaded greens, the forest wall at the far side of the pool. De Marigny shuddered, and not at all because of the cramped chill steadily creeping into his bones.

  Turning his head carefully to the left, he saw a stretched leather thong that reached out from his neck to where it was tied to a peg driven deep into the soil. He was similarly tied down to the right. Since he could not move his legs at the- knees, they too must be tethered. He struggled briefly, uselessly, then slowly and methodically began cursing himself for a fool. To have been so utterly careless, so criminally stupid as to get himself into a mess like this. It was unthinkable!

  Disgusted with himself and with his predicament, he nevertheless attempted to analyse his desperate mistake. He believed he knew how it had come about.

  His adventures in Earth's dreamworld — the terrible threats and dangers he had faced and conquered there, until it had seemed he must be almost indestructible — had lulled him into a state of false security. How could he have come through so much only to fall prey in the end to the primitives of some nameless planet on the rim of reality?

  What angered the Earthman more than anything else was the fact that he was wearing the cloak brought back by Titus Crow from Elysia, an antigravity device which allowed the wearer to soar aloft as effortlessly as any bird. He was sure that in the dreamworld his reactions would have been instinctive: to reach for and activate the buttons in his harness that would have lifted him instantly to safety. But here in this strange new world . . . things had simply seemed to move too fast for him.

  If only he might free one hand and reach the controls of his he had no doubt that —

  Any further thoughts of escape were aborted, driven from his mind the instant that he caught sight of a pulsating, blue-veined leech-thing that suddenly came slithering over the rim of the hollow in which he lay. It saw him at once, tiny red eyes fixing upon him hungrily, jellyfish body throbbing as the creature slid and slithered down the slight declivity toward his face.

  Frozen in horror, de Marigny could only think: `My face — my eyes!' But even as the pulsating leech reared up in front of him, inches away, and even as a dozen or so more of the awful things appeared almost simultaneously over the lip of the hollow, still he could not avert his gaze. Hypnotized and immobilized by his unthinkable situation, by the fate about to descend upon him, de Marigny could only watch and wait for it to happen, and -

  - The earth shuddered beneath him as a leather-booted foot came down on top of the menacing leech-thing in the moment that it made to strike for his face. Its juices splashed him as it was ground into the moistureless soil.

  A second later and the silver blade of a wicked picklike

  weapon flashed down once, twice, and the thongs that tethered de Marigny's neck were severed. He felt cold metal touch his wrists and his hands were free, his legs too. Another second and - amazing sight! - a snarling, coughing mountain of white fur, a bear almost eleven feet tall, shambled swiftly into view, stomping the now retreating leech-things and shaking the ground with its massive weight.

  Then, before the astounded Earthman could even muster his thoughts to consider these miraculous developments, he was hauled gently but irresistibly to his feet. Left to stand on his own, weak and bloody as he was, de Marigny might well have fallen, but steely arms supported him and keenly intelligent eyes stared into his own first in concern, then in recognition.

  He stared back — stared even harder — then gasped and shook his head in dizzy disbelief. Finally he managed to mumble: 'Hank? Hank Silberhutte? I don't — '

  'Neither do I, Henri,' the Texan interrupted, 'but I'm glad to see you anyway.'

  'The feeling,' de Marigny wholeheartedly, bone wearily agreed, 'is mutual, Hank, to say the very least!'

  He gazed then at Silberhutte's brawny companions —two bronze-skinned Indians and an olive Eskimo — and at the monster bear which stamped and roared now at the edge of the pool. 'But where in all the corners of space and time are we?' -

  Knowing that the newcomer to Borea was suffering from shock, Silberhutte carefully released him, nodding in satisfaction as de Marigny staggered a little but somehow managed to stay on his feet. 'We're on Borea, Henri, one of the worlds of an alien universe. I've been here some time now, since Ithaqua brought me here. And you . . well, I saw your arrival. So Crow was right about that old clock of his, eh?' The effect of Silberhutte's words on the other man was immediate and electric.

  'The clock?' de Marigny's jaw dropped and the colour drained from his face. 'The time-clock!' He whirled about, staggering wildly, his eyes frantically searching the glade for his fantastic machine.

  In the sand he saw a deep indentation where the clock had stood; leading from it, twin tracks cut deep grooves in the gritty soil, terminating where they entered the abrupt shade of the forest. Beyond, a trail of crushed leaves and grasses led away into the undergrowth. Again de Marigny whirled, once more facing Silberhutte and his polyglot companions.

  'No, no!' he cried, shaking his head in denial. 'I've got to get the clock back. I '

  But finally he had exerted his already overtaxed body and mind beyond their limits. Bright lights flashed inside his head as, with unspoken protests still whispering on his lips, he reeled and toppled. Already unconscious, he was not to know how easily Silberhutte caught him up in massive arms to bear him out of the glade and away from the pool of the leech-things.

  3 The Pursuit

  De Marigny dreamed of ice stars and planets, all frozen in galactic glaciers that flowed out of deepest infinities of lost dimensions. The Hounds of Tindalos chased him along corridors of ice between razor-sharp cliffs that reached blue-rimmed needles high overhead. Without warning an avalanche of huge, jagged ice splinters crashed down upon him, cracking the time-clock open like a nutshell and spilling him out onto the ice. The Hounds were on him at once, black rags of death whose lusting, ethereal feelers found and held him fast. He fought madly to escape them, but -

  -- He threw his arms wide and awakened with a cry of horror, only to find himself held down by Silberhutte's huge, strangely cold hands. The Texan held him until his body relaxed, only then allowing him to fall back into a deep warm bank of furs. De Marigny felt the furs move against him and saw that his head rested against a forepaw as big as a real pillow. The warmth he felt was the body heat of Silberhutte's vast bear! He instinctively drew away from the creature where it reclined beside him on the forest's floor.

  `You were cold,' Silberhutte explained from where he kneeled beside him. 'Morda was the only one who could warm you. Kota'na has rubbed you with the body grease he uses. Morda won't harm you — he thinks you're the bear keeper's little brother!' The grin quickly faded from the Texan's face as he asked: 'How do you feel now, Henri? The wolf-warriors gave you a pretty rough time.'

  'Wolf-warriors? Yes, they certainly did,'
the other slowly answered, tut I feel better now.' He licked his lips and frowned at an unfamiliar but not unpleasant taste.

  'Kota'na got a little soup down you and some of his tea,' Silberhutte explained. 'The tea is good; it would straighten out a corkscrew!'

  `My head still feels a bit loose,' de Marigny answered, but apart from that . . . I expect I'll live.' He stood up unaided and the great bear's paw closed possessively around him. He carefully extricated himself as Kota'na approached and ordered the bear up onto its feet.

  `Morda,' Silberhutte informed, 'is not normally very gentle with anyone. He's trained for the fight. It seems you've found a firm friend there, Henri.'

  Staring after the towering creature as Kota'na led it away, de Marigny answered, 'I would hate to be his enemy!'

  He took hold of the Texan's arm. 'Hank, I have to get after the time-clock. It's my one way out of here. All explanations, everything I would like to know — questions you must surely be wanting to ask me — will have to wait. The time-clock is — '

  — All important, Henri?' Silberhutte finished it for him. `Yes, I know. To me, too. I'm as much a prisoner here on Borea as you are, and I've been here that much longer.'

  `Then I'll be on my way now, at once.'

  `Now? On your own?' Without malice Silberhutte laughed. 'You don't seem to understand, Henri. There isn't any way you can get the clock back on your own. Even if you could, they'll be miles away by now.'

  `Do you think so? Dragging the time-clock behind them? Why, the thing must weigh a ton, Hank! They'd need to be superhuman.'

  `You didn't see their wolves, then?'

  `I saw their wolf masks but behind them they were only men.'

  `Oh, yes, the wolf-warriors are men, Henri. lthaqua's people, the Children of the Wind. But I was talking about their wolves: creatures big as ponies --- bred as mounts, as beasts of burden - and some bred to kill! We found the party's tracks, and there were wolves with them, big brutes, too. They'd easily pull that clock of yours. Yes, and there are other reasons why we can't simply, go chasing after them. Ithaqua is due back on Borea at any time now, and when he returns we must all be safely back in the plateau.'