We walked along the tunnel until we came to just before the spot where it opened up into the concrete cavern that held the false paradise. I motioned for my friend to lay the Master down.
He half put him and half dropped him, so that Below leaned back against the wall in a sitting position. I kneeled down and began smacking the Master lightly to try to revive him. It was a good thing he had been weakened by the poison of the fruit, otherwise he might have already escaped from us by use of his magic.
After a few slaps to the face and my shaking his shoulders, he began to come around. As soon as I saw his eyes open, I popped off the lid to the first cup of shudder, tilted his head back, and poured the liquid down his throat. He took half of it before I stopped, fearing I would choke him. When I tried to follow with the second half of the cup, he had by then reached full consciousness and spit it out all over me.
"You'll never get away with this, Cley. My men are right around the corner. All I have to do is scream, and they will come running," he said, gasping for breath.
"The minute you make a noise, my friend here is going to put his boot in your mouth," I told him. "If you want to live, you'll start drinking. There's a lot of shudder to down before we continue."
"Sorry, my doctors have prohibited it," he said and laughed. He closed his lips tightly and would not open them.
Calloo looked placidly down on the scene, whirring and chunking. I suppose he grasped part of what was going on, because he lifted his leg and kicked Below in the stomach. It wasn't as powerful a blow as he could have delivered, but it was enough to get the Master's jaw to unhinge and leave me an opening for the shudder. I poured down two more cups before he fought me off again. Calloo came at him with the boot, and we repeated the procedure. Finally, he grudgingly acquiesced and took the last few cups without fighting.
When I was done force-feeding him, he asked. ' 'What is your plan, to drown me with shudder and leave me in this tunnel?"
"No," I said, "I need you to hatch an egg for me." With this, I told Calloo to lift him to his feet, which the miner did with the ease of a bear lifting its cub.
"Ingenious," Below said to me.
"Do you think it will work?" I asked him.
"I'm afraid you won't find out, since you and this hulking wreck will be burnt to a cinder within minutes," he said.
"Feel free to have a headache anytime,'' I said.
Calloo kept his hand squeezed tightly around the back of Below's neck as we walked the remaining few yards to where the tunnel entered the chamber. I peered out of the shadows and saw the soldiers, four of them standing guard around the base of the sphere. The false paradise again filled me with wonder as I gazed upon it.
I wished I had thought to bring the rifles of the soldiers from the Earth Worm. We needed to get closer to the sphere without the guards interfering. "How did you make that sun?" I whispered to Below.
He began to give me an answer, but his words trailed off into a real cry of pain. I first thought that Calloo was squeezing his neck too hard, but I soon saw that the shudder was having the desired effect. At the same time, I could see the soldiers had heard and were coming to investigate. I was paralyzed with fear from the uncanny sense that this had all happened before.
"There goes the Ministry of the Treasury," groaned Below.
I felt a tremor run through the tunnel, accompanied by the very distant sound of an explosion. A moment later, chunks of rock blasted off the wall a few yards behind us. The force of the shock almost knocked me into the river again. As soon as I had my bearings, I looked out and saw the soldiers had stopped advancing for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Over here," yelled Below.
They heard his voice and instantly began advancing again.
I readied myself to spring out of the shadows at them. I didn't know what good that would do, but I thought in the confusion I might be able to subdue at least one of them. I was praying that Calloo still had a few more rounds of fight in him.
When I looked back, I saw that the Master was again grimacing with pain. He brought his hands up and clutched his head. "Not my palace," he croaked. We felt another tremor, heard another explosion, and a moment later out in the cavern the floor erupted and geysers of rock and steam shot straight up. It wasn't enough to kill the soldiers, but it was more than enough to scare them. They fled in the opposite direction, abandoning their posts and disappearing around the other side of the sphere as pieces of the cavern ceiling gave way and showered down.
As soon as they were out of sight, I motioned to Calloo to bring Below. We made our way across the uneven concrete floor, wending around the craters and watching for falling debris. Two more blasts occurred before we drew close to the base of the wondrous structure. The Master was drifting in and out of consciousness as the place came apart around us. The crystal sphere rippled in the explosions like a real soap bubble, but I saw no sign of its cracking.
Inside the paradise, I could see Ea and Aria, looking out at us. She held the baby, and they were waving to me. "Bring him closer," I yelled to Calloo. My intention was to mash his face right up against the shell of crystal. I ran ahead and motioned for the prisoners to move away. As I ran toward them, I saw a flash of bright light reflected. I turned in time to see Calloo detonate and burst with a deafening bang, the parts of him flying out behind the Master. Gears, springs, rotors, flesh spread out across the cavern like confetti in a high wind. Below fell forward, unharmed.
I rushed to him before he could get away and lifted him to his feet. My adrenaline was pumping wildly, and I had unusual strength. I forced him over to the crystal wall and shoved his face against it. Three more explosions blasted out of him, again furiously rippling the bubble but not cracking it. The last one I could tell had diminished strength, and I feared that the enzymatic effect I had induced with the shudder was wearing off.
Ea and Aria were watching me from inside the paradise. As I held onto Below's quivering body, trying to stay on my feet in the face of the aftershocks, I noticed that the Traveler looked very weak. This was my last, best chance, and it wasn't going to work. I had decided to simply kill Below and be done with him, when I noticed Aria hand the baby over to her companion, step up close to the boundary and touch it as if begging me not to give up.
The Master came awake then and began struggling with me to free himself. He had gotten some of his strength back and was able to turn and wrap his fingers around my throat. I did the same to him, and we were locked in that position. As he applied pressure, I let go with one hand and punched him in the side of the head. This slackened his grip, but not for long. I was about to deliver another blow, when to my astonishment, small geysers of flame shot from his ears and a thick smoke issued from his open mouth. What I feared most, his magic, was reclaiming some of its potency. Now I could not think of killling him, it was all I could do to simply hold on so he would not escape.
Clutching tightly on one side to his shirt collar and on the other his jacket lapel, I steeled myself against his trickery. The smoke cleared and his face melted and transformed into that of a saber-toothed cat. His hands became snakes that twined more completely around my throat. Small dark birds flew from the sleeves of his jacket, their fluttering wings blinding me for seconds at a time.
"You are already dead, Cley," he said in the deep voice of the creature he had become.
"It is all an illusion," I repeated in my mind, but I was losing the strength in my neck muscles as the twin serpents applied greater pressure. No air was passing into my lungs, and I was growing light-headed. I could feel my grip on his clothing quickly weakening.