I claim no credit for what I did then, because it was not the result of conscious decision. Rather, it was a deep-seated reflex which had been locked up in my subconscious, unused and unsuspected, ever since some arcane process of preparation had put it there.
I stood bolt upright, threw my arms wide, and screamed in rage and defiance at the beast.
Unfortunately, whatever had planted that instinct in my brain had not reckoned with this particular lion. It didn’t turn tail and run. Instead, it did what it had always intended to do.
It took three bounding strides and leapt at my head, the claws standing out from its raking forepaws and the great jaws gaping wide, ready to seize me with those awful teeth.
Then my conscious mind wrenched control of my body back from my stupid subconscious, and told it to run like hell.
But the lion vanished in mid-air, even as I brought my arms across in a futile effort to make a defensive screen, before I could pivot on my heel and flee. The creature jumped clean out of existence, into whatever limbo of oblivion illusions must go when they die.
Helplessly, I staggered backwards, carried by the impetus of my intention to run, though there was no longer any need. I cannoned into an invisible wall a couple of metres away from the spot where I’d woken up. I hit it with my shoulder, and gave my arm a painful wrench.
My eyes told me that there was no wall there—not even a wall of glass. My eyes said that there was a grassy plain stretching away to the horizon. The only concession they would make to my aching shoulder was to suggest that there was some invisible wall of force preventing me from walking across the grassland.
I knew that my eyes were liars. I was inside Asgard, probably in some kind of chamber, and there was no plain, no sky, no sun and no lion. It was all a picture projected on the walls.
It took five minutes for me to ascertain that the room was rectangular, about four metres by three, and that there was not the slightest sign of any seam or doorway.
“Bastards!” I shouted, fairly certain that I could be seen and overheard by someone, or something—why else the illusion; and why else the lion?
I was being tested, or taunted. Someone, or something, was interested in me.
There didn’t seem to be any point in further vulgar abuse, and I was damned if I was going to start up a one-sided inquisition. There were things I wanted to find out, and there were a few sensible investigations that I could make no matter what kind of cage I was in.
I checked the places where my life-support system had been hooked into my body. The places where the drip-feeders had gone into my veins were just perceptible to the touch, but had healed completely. That implied that I had been out of my suit for some time—several days, if the evidence could be taken at face value. But I didn’t feel hungry or weak. In fact, I felt fighting fit.
I ran my fingers over all the parts of my body I could reach. I found a couple of old scars, a couple of big moles which had always been there—and a few new anomalies. The skin at the back of my neck felt as if it was pockmarked, and I had an unusually itchy scalp. But I was clean-shaven and my hair was no longer than it had been when I put the cold-suit on. I hadn’t taken anything to inhibit hair-growth, because a cold-suit is loose-fitting, so I must have had more than three days’ growth of beard when the mindscrambler hit me.
It was obvious that the interval between scrambling and unscrambling had been a long one. The peace-officers in Skychain City carry mindscramblers of a kind, but much cruder ones than the one I’d been hit with—not much more advanced than a common-or-garden stun gun. The Tetrax had illusion-booths, too, but none as sophisticated as the room that I was now trapped in. With a Tetron illusion, you could always see the joins. Willing suspension of disbelief was required. This illusion was a whole order of magnitude more plausible.
Perhaps I was, after all, in the hands of miracle-workers—men who were, if not actually like gods, at least prepared to play godlike games with those poor humanoids unlucky enough to fall into their clutches.
Whom the gods destroy, I reminded myself, they first make mad.
Well, I was mad all right; in fact, I was downright furious.
I looked around, sceptically, and the grassy plain just disappeared. I couldn’t help starting in shock, but I wasn’t entirely surprised. It was only the suddenness which had made me react. I knew by now that they could show me anything they wanted to.
What they showed me now was a room, four metres by three, with an open door to my left. The room was lit from above, the whole ceiling glowing pearly white. The walls were grey and featureless.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that this was reality; I gamble as well as the next man, and I know enough to look out for a double bluff. There were no prizes for guessing that they wanted me to go through the door. I contemplated being perverse, but decided that the room wasn’t any place that I wanted to stay. I did what I was supposed to do, and exited stage left.
I found myself in a dimly lit corridor. The door was at the end of it, so there was only one way to go, and I went. It curved, so I couldn’t see more than three metres in front of me. The light emanated from the whole surface of the ceiling; the walls remained grey and featureless. The grassy plain had been a lot less boring, but I wasn’t about to complain. Boredom I could stand; hungry predators were a distinct strain on the nerves.
Then, in front of me, I saw a T-junction. As I moved toward it, a figure emerged from the left-hand path, saw me and quickly brought up a gun which it had been holding loosely in its right hand. It was a humanoid, but it wasn’t human. It was a vormyran, or a very good imitation of one. It was a dead ringer for Amara Guur—but all vormyr are.
32
It was wearing a shirt and tight pants, but it was barefoot, like me, and might easily have been untimely ripped from a cold-suit. The gun which it leveled at me was a small needier, which could blast out tiny fragments of metal at the rate of six a second.
I stopped.
“Rousseau?” said the vormyran, uncertainly. His voice was deep and gravelly, but it sounded oddly gentle.
“It won’t work twice,” I said, with a certain subdued asperity. “I think you’re an illusion.” But I betrayed my doubts by speaking in parole, not in English. I remembered the one about the little boy who cried wolf, and then got gobbled up by the real one.
I stood very still, determined not to surrender to any wild instincts, and equally determined not to run.
He came forward, and reached up to rest the muzzle of the needier against the soft skin beneath my jaw.
“Okay,” I said, finding my mouth suddenly dry. “You’re not an illusion.”
He did have bad breath. I could feel its warmth. His eyes were big, the slit-pupils widened because of the dim light. His thin black lips were drawn back to expose his pointed teeth. His mottled skin seemed paler than when I had seen him last, on the screen in Saul Lyndrach’s apartment.
“Where are we, Mr. Rousseau?” he asked, hissing as he sounded the sibilant in my name.
“I wish I knew,” I replied, sourly. “How did they get you, Mr. Guur? You are Amara Guur, I suppose?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” he said, softly. “After all, I have the gun.”
It struck me, suddenly, that it was monumentally unfair that he should have the gun. I had woken up with nothing but my underclothes. Whoever it was that had captured us, and now was studying us with clinical detachment, had taken the trouble to give a gun to Amara Guur, and not to me. It seemed to suggest that a very peculiar set of moral priorities were at work. I was certain they were watching, but I wasn’t at all certain what they were watching for. Could it be that they wouldn’t actually allow Guur to shoot me—that they’d intervene to stop him? After all, it would surely be a terrible waste to let one of their experimental rats go down the toilet so quickly, and for no good reason.