Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 91

Kramer took a deep breath. He came away from the door and stood in front of Alexis Manion. With a complex signal he keyed the docilator shutoff, then supported the surfacing mind until it was in full control of its faculties.

The bridge door opened by itself. Walter said, "Thanks, Jordy."

"Set it up," said Kramer, and hurried away.

Manion ma.s.saged his temples and blinked. He did not attempt to remove the headpiece and his eyes were as mild and unfocused as ever. "When it's safe," he said to Walter, "find out from Jordy when Marc plans his next excursion. I'll see that the others are ready."

Because the exhaust of the electroliser unit was outside the fivemetre diameter of the little sigma-s.h.i.+eld, Tony Wayland and his fellow captives, Kalipin the Howler and Alice Greatorex, a middle-aged chemical engineer, could pa.s.s the time turning dysprosium chloride into the pure element. Outside the forcefield, the mob of Yotunag ogres gnashed their b.l.o.o.d.y tusks impotently and howled inaudible epithets.

"Eventually they'll get tired and go away," Kalipin predicted.

But he'd been saying that for nearly three hours now.

"When we miss the eighteen-hundred-hour sked, the King will send help," said Alice.

Tony gave a hollow laugh. "If the battery on this puny sigma doesn't go flat first! And with my luck-"

The timer on the electroliser pinged. Tony opened its small hatch and removed a pencil-sized cylinder of metal with a pair of forceps. Alice held out an open bottle. He slid the ingot inside, tossed a deox packet after it, and snapped on the lid.

Alice numbered the bottle and set it with the other four.

"You guys realize this is our two-hundred-fifty-eighth slug of Dy? Only fifty-five more of these little suckers and we can pack up and leave beautiful Fennoscandia and its quaint native peoples."

Outside, the devastated mining camp was dimly visible, as through a one-way mirror. A fresh group of deformed monsters came loping up from the direction of the diggings and joined their mates in whacking at the slippery surface of the force-field with granite hammer-axes.

"Persistent," Tony commented. "You think they could have finally done for Amathon and the other Tanu trapped in the tunnel?"

Kalipin screwed his illusory face into an expression of resignation. "My savage kinfolk usually stick to a job until they finish it." He emptied the dross from the electroliser and began charging it for the next batch. A faint tang of chlorine wafted about their imprisoning hemisphere before slowly diffusing out through the semipermeable field. "The feathers do resemble those on the crest of Lord Amathon's helmet. Coercer blue.

And since he was the stoutest mind among those cornered in the shaft, I fear for the worst. You might also note the fresh stains on the hammers of the newly arrived Yotunag."

"I'd rather not, actually," Tony said. He turned on the little electric furnace and sat back in his chair. Outside, flames licked up in one corner of the ruined lab shed. After a few minutes the display on the electroliser went dead. "s.h.i.+t! There goes the power line."

"Now you can be glad the sigma's on battery," Alice said comfortably.

Kalipin watched the spreading fire with apprehension. "Will we remain safe inside this shelter?"

Alice said, "Safe as in your mommie's lap, little friend. When the lab floor burns through we'll settle down a bit, that's all."

The blaze was becoming quite brisk. Some of the Yotunag hurled burning brands at the frustrating sigma bubble, to no effect.

"d.a.m.n them," Tony muttered. "They can't see us. Why the devil do they keep up the siege? For all they know, we've skipped out from under."

"They fa.r.s.ense our presence," Kalipin sighed. "The forcefield is, as you noted, a rather puny one."

Alice fingered her golden torc with fatalistic good humour.

"But quite strong enough to keep us from farshouting out." She checked the small sigma generator that sat in the middle of the cluttered lab bench. "You guys interested in knowing how much b.u.mbershoot juice we have left?"

"No," growled Tony.

"I think the fire's accelerating the drain. It's going to be one of those days, I'm afraid ... And I was really looking forward to going back to the Milieu and thumbing my nose at NAICE.

How about you, Wayland?"

Tony was unloading the electroliser, replacing the dysprosium salts in their canister. He said dully, "I hoped to live here in peace with my wife. She's in Nionel."

"Tough," Alice said. "Whoops-the floor's starting to go.

Hang on to the equipment."

The flames stretched high and the broken walls of the lab building crashed all around them. As the conflagration dwindled they had a clear view of the camp compound. The shuttle aircraft that had landed shortly before the Yotunag onslaught was a smouldering ruin. A few mutant bodies lay about, but there was, ominously, no sign of human or Tanu remains.

Alice cuddled the small sigma generator solicitously while Tony braced the electric furnace and Kalipin saw to the safety of the bottled dysprosium. The lab bench bucked as the floor subsided. Small tools and the chloride canister went flying. The chairs fell over and a taboret dumped. The monsters outside, sensing the disturbance, capered and yawped and smote the crumbling floorboards with their hammers to accelerate the process of disintegration; but the sigma held, and eventually those inside stood on a stabilized wooden cutout, surrounded by smoking debris.

"Fire doesn't seem to bother the ghoulies much," Alice remarked to Kalipin.

The Howler shrugged. "Their feet are tougher than horn, and it's said they commonly use wildfire to harry game here in the northern wastes. The Yotunag are the most terrible of our mutant brethren. Not even the Howlers of the Bohemian mountains are so cruel and intractable. These creatures laughed to scorn my Master Sugoll's invitation to join him at Nionel, and they even dared to devour certain Ingatherers who attempted to pa.s.s through their territory on the way south from the Amber Lakes. Oh-Yotunag are rotten through and through! No doubt about it. And as crafty as they are ferocious, as the stealth of their attack today proves. It's not easy for Howlers to go invisible, you know."

"Why the h.e.l.l couldn't they leave us alone?" Tony whined.

"We weren't doing any harm."

Kalipin held up the handful of gla.s.s vials with the dysprosium.

"We were taking something from the earth. A commodity useless to them, it's true, but one that was nevertheless their property. Ilmary and Koblerin the Knocker and I tried to explain to the man Trevarthen that we should pay for the stolen minerals with gemstones valued by the Yotunag. But he refused to listen, even when John-Henry and Stosh were ambushed and killed.

His response, and that of King Aiken-Lugonn, was to mount more grey-torc guards with Milieu weapons around the camp.

Well-we saw what happened as a result of Trevarthen's bad judgment."

"He's past caring now," Tony said, "along with all the rest of them caught outside the sigma."

Alice studied the display on the force-field generator. "And so will we all be-in about ten minutes, rough reckoning."

The monsters raged, circling amidst the smoke. There were forty or fifty of them, waving bronze-bladed spears and hammeraxes with stone heads the size of bed pillows. Great glee was manifested when a squad of brutes laden with bulging leather bags came shuffling over from the area of the diggings. The bags, emptied on the ground, proved to be full of roasted refreshments for the battle-company. The Yotunag fell to with a will, from time to time flinging bones or other grisly leftovers at the sigma bubble. Tony and Alice turned green and Kalipin settled down to recommend his soul to Teah's mercy.

Then Alice exclaimed, "Hey-look over there!"

They saw blue-white flashes beyond the sh.e.l.l of the primary refining shed. Two large trolls came rus.h.i.+ng pell-mell around the ruins, only to be downed by dazzling blasts that left them incinerated skeletons.

"Sweet s.h.i.+t," Tony said. "There's somebody back there with a Bosch 414 or some other heavy-duty blaster! Don't tell me the Marines have landed-"

The besieging monsters all went charging off in the direction of the renewed hostilities. Numbers of them went invisible. They were met by a fusillade that nearly blinded the sigma captives in spite of the screening effect of the dynamic field.

"See how our rescuer shoots even the invisible Foe!" Kalipin cried. "Thanks be to the G.o.ddess!"

It was true. Once the visible ogres had been zapped, the hidden marksman set to work potting unseen targets. Inside of five minutes the yard between the wrecked lab and the refining shed was thick with calcined exotic bones and blackened metal accoutrements.