“I’ve been like this for quite some time,” Kincaid responded. “When this happened, they couldn’t do what they can do now. The best that could be managed was to apply synthetic skin over my exposed parts so I looked normal, and as long as I got an occasional tuneup, well, I continued to look the same. To steal that ship and make my getaway from Josich’s hideout, though, I had to go through a hideous external atmosphere outside the biodomes there, and it burned most of the synthetics away. Since then, we’ve been working too hard on this business for me to take the time to get it all back again.” He looked up and around with his metallic skull and eerie humanlike eyes on biomechanical stalks. “I don’t think it makes any difference here, either.”
“Well, what do we do now?”
Kincaid shrugged and got to his feet. “That looks like a walkway up there. If we can move him gently, he’ll at least be on a flat and possibly insulated surface. He’s in no shape to be moved any more than that, though.”
“Maybe we should just leave him here. It could be a million light-years to the next hospital.”
“No!” both the women said at once, looking threateningly at the other two. “We cannot abandon the Master.”
“Well, somebody’s going to have to,” Kincaid pointed out. “If he doesn’t get help, he’s going to die, and at any time. Why don’t you move him up there to where he’s comfortable, and then one of you can accompany one or both of us while we look for help. There is no logical alternative.”
They both froze for a moment, then Beta said, “Very well. We will move him.”
It was a very slow and cautious move, but it wasn’t hard, and Jules Wallinchky soon lay comatose on a soft, rubbery, but flat surface that seemed to go on and on.
Ari looked forward and back along it. “Huh! Looks almost like a stock moving walkway, doesn’t it? About, oh, twice the width of one of those doors in the city.”
“Very observant. There might be hope for you yet. Well, come, we should be off, I think.”
“But which way?” the younger man asked.
Kincaid thought about it. “If this is a moving walkway, then it’s the first real artifact of the Ancient Ones we know about that’s not a hollow structure. If everything else works, even their transport system, then maybe this does, too.” He examined the side wall carefully. “There! See? It’s kind of a panel, just beyond the break where we walked in. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to move the lump, here. Let’s see… They were bigger than us, but they had certain basics in common, like doors and roads. So, whether they had hands or tentacles or whatever, figure that would be best as a simple pressure plate.”
Alpha, listening to this, went over and pressed the area. Nothing happened.
“Any more bright ideas, Captain?” An asked him.
“Yes—you press it, son. She’s got machine hands and arms, and mine are almost as bad.”
Ari saw what he meant, stepped around the body of Jules Wallinchky and put his hand on the plate.
The walkway began moving, slowly but steadily, carrying them all along.
Ari Martinez brightened. “How about that!” He shook his head in wonder. “They could wish for anything they needed, teleport all over, and yet they needed walkways?”
“Maybe they didn’t want to get too soft,” Kincaid guessed. “Maybe we got them, or this place, wrong.”
The moving walkway slowed, and then stopped at a junction between two belts where it had to change direction. It was clear why: the next belt was running in the opposite direction, and someone or something was riding it. Something short and furry.
“That’s a Geldorian!” Kincaid exclaimed. “What the hell?”
The Geldorian, for its part, had been leaning on the rail and moving along when it spotted them, and particularly the figure of Kincaid, and stiffened. Abruptly, the belt stopped, and it was just a couple of meters from the others. It looked at them all and said, “Where the hell am I? Who or what is that?” He was referring to Kincaid. Then, regarding the unconscious Wallinchky: “And is the bastard dead or just hopefully in great eternal pain?”
“Tann Nakitt? What are you doing here?” Ari asked him.
“All I know is, I was watching your light show from inside the house, and this stream of energy came up the road and I woke up down there. When nobody sent out the welcome party, I figured this thing out and set off. I don’t suppose any of you have any food or drink, do you? And by the way, what’s wrong with him?” He gestured toward the comatose man.
“Heart attack, we think, or possibly stroke. Same difference. He’s dying,” Kincaid told him. “I’m Jeremiah Kincaid, by the way, without my usual makeup.”
“Kincaid! Good grief! It’s a City of Modar reunion! Still, I have to say that I liked you better when you were just scary looking.”
“How far have you come?” Kincaid asked him.
“Far enough. Hard to say, but it’s about three segments, a good kilometer or so. From the smell and look, it seemed like the other way was going to quickly reach water, and the last thing I wanted was to ride into drowning. Gravity also gets a little heavier down there, and it’s lighter here. You notice that? Each segment’s different.”
“This is the only one we tried, but—water, you say? Not now. Not yet.” Kincaid sighed. “Then we should start off in the opposite direction, I think. I suspect it’s some vast circle, but who knows how long and how far? Come! Step onto this one and we’ll see if it goes back.”
Oddly enough, it did, which surprised them until Kincaid noted, “Well, each segment runs whichever way will take the folks on it to the other end. What happens when you get folks on the same belt at opposite ends I have no idea.”
They reached the next segment, about where they’d come in, and realized that Wallinchky would have to be moved at each junction point, even if slightly. His color was ashen and his breathing labored. It was clear that he didn’t have long.
“In any part of the Realm, he’d have instant and total help and be up and around in a short period of time,” Kincaid mused, looking at him. “In older times, before that kind of response, they used to teach people what to do in emergencies like this. Isn’t it odd that the more advanced we’ve become, the more ignorant we’ve become? Could any of us plow a field, live off the land, even know how to safely build a fire or hunt game? Without our machines and data banks, we’re pretty damned helpless. Masters of the universe! We who don’t know how to piss outdoors!”
Tann Nakitt looked around at the vast chamber around them. “Maybe that happened to them, huh? Maybe they had a problem. Solar storm or something, disrupted their mental links to their magical computers and all that power. Ever think that maybe they were so advanced that when they were cut off they died? That they’d become one with their machines? Neat thought, isn’t it? And, by the way, I have both hunted and fished and I can make a fire by rubbing two androids together. Still, I wish I had a drink.”
“We’ve got the stuff in our suits, but that’s not easy to transfer,” Kincaid responded. “It’s best we find the exit.”
“I’ll go,” Ari volunteered. “Better than sitting here on deathwatch.”
“No!” Alpha said sharply. “You will remain here with Beta and the Master. You are wholly organic and therefore have the potential to do things Beta herself cannot if need be.”