The Jewels of Aptor Part 18

A twenty-foot ribbon of road veered into the room at an insane angle.

The railing was twisted, but there were the stalks of street lights still intact along the edges.

"Do you think we could climb that?" asked Geo. "It doesn't look too steep."

"For what?" Urson wanted to know.

"To get some place high enough to see if there's anything that looks like a temple."

"Oh," said Urson in a reconciled voice.

In general the walk was in good shape. Occasional sections of railing had twisted away, but the road itself mounted surely between the sheering faces of the buildings on either side of them through advancing sunset.

It branched before them and they went left. It branched again and again they avoided the right-handed road. A sign, half the length of a three masted s.h.i.+p, hung lopsidedly above them on a building to one side.

WMTH

THE HUB OF WORLD NEWS, COMMUNICATION, & ENTERTAINMENT

As they rounded the corner of the building, Snake suddenly stopped and put his hand to his head.

"What is it?" asked Geo.

Snake took a step backward. Then he pointed to WMTH. _It ... hurts._

"What hurts?" asked Iimmi.

Snake pointed to the building again.

"Is there someone in there thinking too loud?"

_Thinking ... machine_, Snake said. _Radio ..._

"A radio is a thinking machine and there's one in there that's hurting your head?" interpreted Iimmi, tentatively, and with a question mark.

Snake nodded.

"How come the one he showed us before didn't hurt him?" Urson wanted to know.

Iimmi looked up at the imposing housing of WMTH. "Maybe this one's a lot bigger."

"Look," Geo said to Snake, "you stay here, and if we see anything, we'll come back and report, all right?"

"Maybe it stops later on," Urson said, "and if he ran forward, he could get out the other side. It may just stop after a hundred feet or so."

"Why so anxious?" asked Iimmi.

"The jewels," said Urson. "Who's going to get us out of trouble if we should meet up with anything else?"

They were silent then. Their shadows faded over the pavement as the yellow tinge in the sky turned blue. "I guess it's up to Snake," Geo said. "Do you think you can make it?"

Snake paused for a moment, then shook his head.

"Well," Geo said to the others, "come on then."

Around them was a sudden click, and lights flickered all along the edges of the road.

"Come on," Geo said again, and once more they started, pa.s.sing the lights which wheeled double and triple shadows about them over the road and the opposite railing. When they reached the next turn off that led to a still higher ramp, Geo looked back. Snake's miniature figure sat on the edge of the road's railing, his feet on the lower rung, one pair of arms folded, one pair of elbows on his knees. The light above him.

"Keep track of the turns," said Geo.

"I'm keeping," Iimmi a.s.sured him.

"By the time we get to the top of whatever we're trying to get to the top of," rumbled Urson, "we won't be able to see anything. It'll be too dark."

"Then let's hurry," Geo admonished.

Sunset stained one side of the towers copper while blue shadows hugged the other. By way of a plastic-domed stairway, they mounted another eighty feet to a broader highway where they could look down on the band of lights which was the one they had just left. They were beginning to clear the roofs of the lower buildings now.

On this road fewer lights were working. They were just about to enter a dark section when a figure appeared in silhouette at the other end.

They stopped, but the figure was suddenly gone. A little farther, Geo suddenly halted and said, "There!"

Two hundred feet ahead of them, what may have been a naked woman rose from the ground, and began to walk backwards until she disappeared into the next dark length of road.

"Do you think she was running away from us?" Iimmi asked.

Urson reached out and touched Iimmi's jewel. "I wish we have some more light around here."

"Yeah," Iimmi agreed. They continued.

The skeleton lay at the twilight edge of the next stretch of functioning lights. The rib cage marked sharp lines on the pavement with shadow from the lamps' glare.

"Do we turn back now?" Urson asked.

"A skeleton can't hurt you," Iimmi said.

"But what about the live one we saw?" countered Urson.

"... and here she comes now," Geo whispered in a cynical stage voice.

In fact two figures approached them through the shadow. As Urson, Geo and Iimmi moved closer, one stopped, and then the other a few steps before the first. Then they dropped. Geo couldn't tell if they fell, or lay down quickly on the roadway. But they seemed to have disappeared.

"Go on?" asked Urson.

"Go on," said Geo.

Pause. "Go on," from Geo.

Two more skeletons lay on the road where the figures had disappeared a minute before. "They don't seem dangerous," Geo said. "But what do they do? Die every time they see us?"