"Christopher, John - Tripods 03 - The Pool of Fire 2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher Barbara)

Now, at last, all was ready; with preparations made and only requiring to be translated into action. I checked Crest's girths for the tenth time. The others shook hands with me, and withdrew. I was very lonely as I watched them go. Now there was the waiting again, familiar yet unfamiliar. This time it was more crucial, and this time I was alone.

I felt it first: the earth beneath us vibrating to the distant stamp of the huge metal feet. Another, and another-a steady succession of them, each more audible than the one before. I had Crest's head pointed in the direction of the pitfall, with my own head twisted around to the right, watching for the Tripod. It came, a monstrous leg breaking the line of the hill, followed by the hemisphere. I shivered, and felt Crest shiver, as well. I did my best to pat him back into calm. I was on the alert for any deviation from the course the Tripod had now followed on two occasions. If it did not move toward me, I must move toward it. I hoped I would not have to. It would take me farther away from the pitfall and mean also that I had to turn to lead it there, both procedures which would make the enterprise that much more perilous.

Its course changed. It did not break step, but one of the legs swung around. I wasted no more time, but touched my heels to Crest's sides. He shot off, and the chase was on.

I wanted to look back, to see how my pursuer was closing on me, but dared not; every scrap of energy had to go into the gallop. I could tell, though, by the shortening of the intervals between footfalls, that the Tripod was increasing speed. Landmarks familiar from my practice runs fell away on either side. Ahead there was the coast, the sea dark gray but capped with white from a freshening wind. The wind blew in my face, and I felt an absurd resentment against it for slowing, even by a fraction of a fraction of a second, my flight. I passed a thornbush I knew, a rock shaped like a cottage loaf. No more than a quarter of a mile to go . . . And as I framed the thought, I heard the whistling of steel through the air, the sound of the tentacle swishing down toward me.

I made a guess, and urged Crest to the right. I thought I had got away with it this time-that the tentacle would miss-then felt Crest shudder violently with the shock of being hit by the metal flail. It must have caught him on the hindquarters, just behind the saddle. He swayed and collapsed. I managed to get my feet out of the stirrups and went forward over his head as he fell. I hit the ground rolling, scrambled to my feel, and ran.

At every instant I expected to be plucked up into the air. But the Master controlling the Tripod was more immediately concerned with Crest. I saw him, as I glanced quickly back, lifted, struggling feebly, and brought within closer view of the green ports at the bottom of the hemisphere. I dared not pay any more attention to him, but ran on. A couple of hundred yards only . . . If the Tripod concentrated on Crest long enough, I was there.

I risked glancing back again just in time to see my poor horse dropped, from a height of sixty feet, to land in a broken heap on the ground; and to see the Tripod begin to move again in a new pursuit. I could run no faster than I was running already. The metal feet thudded after me, the edge of the pitfall seemed to get no nearer. For the last fifty yards I thought I was finished, that the tentacle was on the point of reaching for me. I think perhaps the Master was playing with me, like a great steel cat with a scurrying mouse. That was what Beanpole suggested afterward. All I knew then was that my legs were aching, my lungs, it seemed, on the point of bursting. I became aware, as I reached the pitfall, of a new hazard. I had learned the trail across from horseback height and things were different to a running man: the change in perspective was utterly confusing. At the last moment, I recognized a certain stone and made for it. I was on the causeway. But I still had to get across, and the Tripod had to follow me.

I knew that it had done so-that I had succeeded in my task-when, in place of the stamp of a foot on solid ground, I heard a ripping, tearing noise behind me, and at the same time felt the surface beneath my feet change and collapse. I grabbed wildly at a length of branch which had been knitted into the camouflaged surface of the pit. It came away, and I was falling again. I seized another branch, of thorn this time, and it held longer, lacerating my hands as I gripped it. While I was suspended like this the sky darkened above me. The pit's surface had given way beneath the foremost leg of the Tripod, with the second leg in midair. Off balance, it was plunging forward, the hemisphere swinging helplessly across and down. Looking up, I saw it pass me and a moment later heard the shock of its impact with the solid ground on the far side of the pit. I myself was hanging halfway up the pit, at grave risk of falling the rest of the way. No one, I knew, was going to come to my assistance: they all had more important work to do. I set myself to collect my scattered senses and to climb, slowly and gingerly, up the network of reeds and branches on which I was suspended.

By the time I reached the scene, things were well underway. There was no external seal on the compartment which was used to transport human beings, as we had been transported from the Games field to the City, and the circular door had, in fact, fallen open with the shock. Fritz guided the team with the metal-cutting machine into that cabin, and they got to work on the inner door. They wore masks, in protection against the green air which eddied out as they cut their way through. It seemed a long time to those waiting outside, but in reality it was only a matter of minutes before they were in and tackling the dazed Masters. Fritz confirmed that one of them was definitely alive, and they pulled the mask that had been prepared over his head and tightened it around his middle. I watched as they heaved him out. A cart had been drawn up beside the fallen hemisphere, and on it there was the huge crate-made of wood but sealed with a sort of tar which would keep the green air in and our own out -which was to take him. He was pulled and pushed and at last dropped in, a grotesque figure with his three short stumpy legs, long tapering conical body, three eyes and three tentacles, and that repulsive green reptilian skin I remembered with such vivid horror. The top dropped down on the crate and more men went to work at sealing it. A pipe leading from one corner was blocked temporarily; once on the boat it would be utilized to change his stale air for fresh. Then the word was given to the men on the horse teams, and the horses pulled away, dragging the cart and its cargo toward the beach.

The rest of us cleared our traces, as far as possible, from the scene. The Masters, when they came on the broken Tripod, could no longer doubt that they were facing organized opposition-it was not a casual haphazard thing such as our destruction of the Tripod on the way to the White Mountains had been-but even though this amounted to a declaration of war, there was no point in leaving unnecessary clues behind. I should have liked to do something about burying Crest, but there was no time for that. In case the trick might serve a second time, we sponged the green dye off his body and left him there. I walked apart from the others as we came away, not wanting them to see the tears that were in my eyes.

The cart was hauled out through the waves, over a firm sandy bottom, until the water lapped against the chests of the horses. The fishing boat, which had come inshore, was shallow enough in draft to get alongside, and there the crate with our prisoner was winched on board. Seeing the smoothness of the operation I was more than ever amazed and impressed by the planning that had gone into it all. The horses were unharnessed from the cart and led ashore; from there they were scattered north and south in pairs, one ridden, one led. The rest of us heaved our wet shivering bodies over the gunwales. One thing remained to be done. A line had been fastened to the cart and, as the boat stood off, it rolled behind us till the waves closed over it. When that happened the line was cut and the boat, released from this burden, seemed to lift out of the gray waters. On shore, the horses had disappeared. All that was left was the shattered wreck of the Tripod, with a faint green mist blowing away from the mutilated hemisphere. The remaining Masters inside were certainly dead by now. What really mattered was that the jammer had worked. The Tripod lay there, crumpled and alone; there was no sign of any others coming to its help.

Our course was south. With the wind stiff and blowing only from a few points north of west, progress was slow, involving a fair amount of tackling. All available hands bent to this, and gradually the distance from our embarkation point increased. There was a headland which we needed to clear; we rounded it with painful sluggishness, wallowing in the tide, which had just begun to turn.

But now the shore was very distant, the Tripod no more than a dot on the horizon. They brought up mulled ale for us from the galley, to warm our chilled bones.

4) A Little Drink for Ruki

Julius arranged a general reshuffle once we were back at the castle. Many of those who had taken part in the capture of the Master were detailed for duties elsewhere, and Julius himself left two or three days later. The immediate crisis was over, the examination and study of our captive would take long weeks or months, and there were a dozen other strands, or more, which needed his attention and supervision. I had thought that Fritz and I might be sent away also, but this was not so. We were kept as guards. The prospect of relative inactivity was one I viewed with mixed feelings. On the one hand I could see that it might well prove boring after a time; on the other, I was not sorry to be having a rest. A long and exhausting year lay behind us.

It was also pleasant to be in fairly continuous contact with Beanpole, who was one of the examining group. Fritz and I knew each other very well by now, and got on very well, but I had missed Beanpole's more inventive and curious mind. He did not say so himself, but I knew he was viewed with a good deal of respect by the other scientists, all a great deal older than he was. He never showed the least sign of conceit over this, but he never did over anything. He was too interested in what was going to happen next to bother about himself.

In return for our various losses we had one gain, and a gain that for my part I could have well done without. This was Ulf, the erstwhile skipper of the Erlkonig, the barge that had been intended to take Fritz and Beanpole and me down the great river to the Games. He had been forced to leave the barge because of sickness, and Julius had appointed him as guard commander at the castle. This meant, of course, that Fritz and I were directly under his authority.

He remembered us both very well, and acted on the memories. As far as Fritz was concerned, this was all very fine. On the Erlkonig, as in everything else, he had obeyed orders punctiliously and without question, and been content to leave anything outside the allotted task to his superiors. Beanpole and I had been the offenders, first in persuading his assistant to let us off the barge to look for him and then, in my case, in getting myself into a brawl with the townspeople which landed me in trouble, and in Beanpole's case in disobeying him and coming to rescue me. The barge had sailed without us, and we had been forced to make our way downriver to the Games.

Beanpole did not fall under Ulf's jurisdiction, and I think Ulf was rather in awe of him, as belonging to the wise men, the scientists. My case was quite different. There was no glamour attaching to me, he was my superior officer. The fact that, despite being left behind, we had got to the Games in time, that I had won there and, with Fritz, gone on into the City and in due course come back with information, did not mollify him. If anything, it made things worse. Luck (as he saw it) was no substitute for discipline; indeed, its enemy. My example might encourage others into similar follies. Insubordination was something which needed to be borne down on, and he was the man to do the bearing down.

I recognized the bitterness but did not, at first, take it seriously. He was just, I thought, working out his resentment over my ( admittedly) thoughtless behavior during our previous contact. I decided to stick it out cheerfully, and give no cause for complaint this time. Only gradually did it penetrate to me that his dislike was really deeply rooted, and that nothing I could do now was likely to change it. It was not until later that I realized how complex a man he was; nor that in attacking me he was fighting a weakness, and instability, which was part of his own nature. All I knew was that the more courteously and promptly and efficiently I obeyed instructions, the more tongue-lashings and extra duties I got. It is small wonder that within weeks I was loathing him almost as much as I had loathed my Master in the City.

His physical appearance and habits did nothing to help. His barrel-chested squatness, his thick lips and squashed nose, the mat of black hair showing through the button holes of his shirt-all these repelled me. He was the noisiest consumer of soups and stews that I had ever encountered. And his trick of continually hawking and spitting was made worse, not better, by the fact that these days he did not spit on the floor but into a red-and-white spotted handkerchief which he carried around in his sleeve. I did not know then that much of the red was his own blood, that he was a dying man. I am not sure that knowing would have made all that much difference, either. He rode me continuously, and my control of my temper wore thinner day by day.

Fritz was a great help, both in calming me down and in taking things on himself where possible. So was Beanpole, with whom I talked a lot during off-duty times. And I had another source of interest, to take my mind off things to some extent. This was our prisoner, the Master: Ruki.

He came through what must have been a harrowing and painful experience very well. The room which had been made ready for him was one of the castle dungeons, and Fritz and I attended him there, entering through an air lock and wearing face masks when we were inside. It was a big room, more then twenty feet square, much of it hewn out of solid rock. On the basis of our reports, the scientists had done everything possible to make him comfortable, even to sinking a circular hole in the floor which could be filled with warm water for him to soak in. I do not think it was, by the time we got it there in buckets, as hot as he would have liked, and it was not renewed often enough to meet the longing all the Masters had for continually soaking their lizardlike skins; but it was better than nothing. Much the same applied to the food, which had been worked out, like the air, on the basis of a few small samples Fritz had managed to bring out of the City.

Ruki was in a mild state of shock for the first couple of days, and then went into what I recognized as the Sickness, the Curse of the Skloodzi, my old Master had called it. Brown patches appeared on the green of his skin, his tentacles quivered all the time, and he himself was apathetic, not responding to stimuli. We had no way of treating him, not even the gas bubbles which the Masters in the City used to alleviate pain or discomfort, and he just had to get over it as best he could. Fortunately, he did so. I went into his cell a week after he had been taken and found him back to a healthy shade of green and showing a distinct interest in food.

Earlier, he had made no response to questions in any of the human languages we tried. He still did not do so, and we began to wonder, despondently, whether we had picked on one of the few Masters without such knowledge.