Black invaded his brain. Fight it off. Think of Norn. Norn-Norn-what did he care? Nothing.
But Blade knew it wasn't true. He still retained enough of HD humanity to know that if he could save Norn he would-if he could save himself.
He was rushing into terrible heat. Sweat bathed him, poured from him in rivers. He must be approaching the five-mile limit. The heat was unbearable.
He clutched the spear bar, dragging it behind him. The iron heated now, as did his body, and once the bar nearly slipped from his sweat-sodden hand. He brought the bar up and cradled it across his chest. The plastic tube held him, screwing him down and down into the bowels of darkness.
Then he felt the flaps. Immediately he began to slow. Plastic fingers, semi-rigid, clutched at his body, gave as he passed, slowed him bit by bit and passed him on to larger and more rigid fingers. The spiral straightened and the angle lessened and his falling speed dwindled. He could think again.
Down one final glissade. He saw red torches flickering in keyhole silhouette. He shot out through the final orifice and fell lightly onto thick-padded plastic mats, like a feather drifting down. He was safe.
Blade stood up, weak-legged, his bar at the ready. All he could see was a ring of torches. The heat was terrible. Sweat cascaded from him. He heard an agonized sound and was surprised to find that he was making it. He was panting for breath.
A shadow moved. It was Sart, reaching for a torch. Blade called to him, his voice harsh and echoing in this vast domed chamber that he could not yet see.
«Where is Sybelline?»
«Here.» She called from darkness and another torch sparked. «There is a ladder just before you. Guide on my torch.»
The plastic mats were piled thirty feet high. Blade found the edge and the ladder. He looked down and saw her uplifted face. He climbed down. He felt weak and giddy. The deadly heat was the enemy.
Sybelline handed him a torch and lit it from her own. She watched him gravely, her green eyes sparkling, her full mouth set in a smile he could not fathom.
«Follow, Blade,» she said.
Sart was lighting torches, far across an open space. Blade called to him. «Leave off that. Come to me.»
Sybelline shrugged. «He is of no use. He will understand nothing.»
«No matter. I want him under my eye.»
They waited for Sart. Blade scuffed at the floor with his toe. It was artificial turf, plastic, as would be the great dome in which they stood. He could not see the sides or the top. A thought occurred to him.
«How come you to find torches at hand and to light them?»
«An ancient way-firesticks struck together. When the power is on the air is bright. This is not so in the sewers and the Gnomen have used firesticks for longer than I know.»
Blade watched her. In the glow of the torches she looked much younger, almost desirable. Her flesh was firm and pink, unlined. Her breasts thrust at him. Her snowy hair took on a blue sheen. Sybelline saw him watching her and her smile was an invitation.
He bellowed to break the spell. «Sart! Another minute and I come after you.»
«I am here, master.»
Sart emerged from the shadow, holding his torch high. He was not sweating. Neither was the woman. Blade, salt water pouring from him, grimaced. «You do not suffer from heat?»
Both of them stared at his sweat-bathed visage. «Heat?» Blade cursed. «Never mind. Get on with it, Sybelline. Sart, stay close to me.»
She led the way. They walked across a great smooth plain of plastic turf. She was following white glowing lines that made corridors.
The slave glanced about fearfully. «I do not like this place, master.»
Sybelline laughed. «So long as the power is off you have nothing to fear. The mole rats are afraid of us and anyway they do not come this high except in time of famine.»
Blade wiped sweat. «Mole rats? Tell me of this.»
Those Gnomen had told him of the fate in store for Norn-to be flung into a pit of mole rats.
Sybelline stopped abruptly. She pointed her torch at something. «I will not have to tell you. They grow bolder than I thought. See yonder? It is a sleeper technician and the mole rats have been at him.»
Sart whimpered. Blade cuffed him, but he was careful not to strike his wound. «You will be a man or I will not treat you as one. A sleeper cannot hurt you.»
«Not this sleeper,» said the woman. «This one will never harm anyone.» Her voice quavered as if some of Sart's terror had passed to her. It was the first time Blade had seen weakness in her. He stepped forward to have a look at the thing.
It had been a Morphi sleeper. It had worn a white plastic coverall. This was torn and ripped and within it was all that remained of the sleeper. Something had fed on it. The face was gone, one of the arms, and the viscera had been hollowed out. One look was enough for Blade. He went back to Sybelline.
«You said the mole rats did not come this high. Yet that sleeper is eaten away. What is the truth of it? Are there likely to be others around?»
She had regained some of her composure and courage. She met his gaze without flinching. «I spoke truth as I knew it, but the power has been off for so long. They have become bold. And it may be a time of famine for them. How can I know? In ordinary times they never venture this high.»
Sart whimpered again. «Let us go, master. I would rather face Jantor without a bar or go to the pits than be eaten by mole rats.»
«Be quiet. Sybelline, lead on»
They began to walk again. As they went, Blade bade her describe what he could not see-simply to describe, not to place events in a framework of time. He could not fathom the Morphi or Gnomen concept of time and did not try. They could not explain and he could not understand. To try would be a waste of the very time that baffled him. For all he knew Sybelline was a thousand years old, HD time, or only ten. The Gnomen spoke of years, but what did they mean?
He listened intently, trying to relate Sybelline's words to his own concepts.
They had walked a mile across the plastic turf before he began to grasp it. The dome over them was a mile high. The power complex was some five miles square. When the power was on, all was brightly lit by air lights. The air was circulated and freshened automatically, and neither the Gnomen nor Morphi were affected by heat.
The ultimate source of power, Sybelline explained, when it was crushed and milled to talcum powder smoothness, was common rock mined below the five level. After processing it was called ditramonium. A single large boulder, after treatment, furnished power for eleven Morphi days. Blade despaired at calculating that.
By now excitement was burning in him. This was it. Power from ordinary rocks. If he could wrest that secret from this Dimension X, take it back with him, hand it over to the HD scientists, then the Project was a success beyond even Lord L's wildest dreams. And perhaps that it would be the end of the experiments. Never again would he have to go through the computer.
Computers. It came to him like a lightning flash in his brain that Sybelline was at this very moment talking about computers. Thousands of them. Giant machines banked around the dome, silent now, but ready to hum into action when the power was restored-power that was somehow-and this was beyond his comprehension, sent through the air itself with no wires or cables. He struggled to bring the concept clear in his mind, to grasp what Sybelline was telling him. The power was in the air, everywhere. Every Morphi, from the moment of birth, picked up the power, was connected to it by means of the power stud in his neck. The technique was simple enough once you accepted the a priori fact of the power itself. It was nothing more than an old-fashioned trolley car taking its power from an electrically charged wire, except that there were no wires.