The Fugitive Worlds (35 page)

The lens shattered!
Released from his mental and physical
paralysis, Toller was reborn into a world of tumult. Dozens of
black-clad and ragged-edged Dussarran figures were running across the floor of the dome towards the enclosure. A woman
was screaming. The aliens Toller had been crushing behind
the panel were now free and were staggering towards their leader. Other aliens who had been clustered behind Zunnu
nun were fleeing through the exit to unknown parts of the
building.

Come with us!
A Dussarran appeared at Toller's side and
tugged his arm. We
are your friends!

Toller shook himself free of the grey-fingered hand. The alien seemed no different from any of those he had already encountered, except that the ubiquitous piecemeal costume
dangling around his spindly form featured a few diamond-
shapes of drab green.

"Friends?" Toller made as if to thrust the newcomer away,
then—accepting urgent telepathic guidance—realized the
alien was one of a group which had recalled him to his own
existence with no time to spare. The choice was not a difficult
one in any case—stay and face the quietly invincible Director
Zunnunun, or seize the unexpected offer of salvation.

"Baten!" Toller saw that Steenameert was staring at him
with concern. "We have to trust these people!"

Steenameert nodded, as did some of the women behind
him. The entire group of humans began to run in the company
of their alien rescuers, but their escape route was being
blocked by other Dussarrans who were spilling through the
dome's multiple entrances. The opposing forces converged
and the scene quickly became chaotic as black-clad bodies
locked with each other in all the grotesqueries of spontaneous
physical combat.

Toller's perception of the scene underwent rapid shifts as
he saw that the Dussarrans' idea of hand-to-hand struggle
was to throw themselves at each other, lock arms and legs
with opponents and bring them to the ground. Once that had
happened they lay in ineffectual pairs, like copulating insects,
each cancelling the other's contribution to the battle. The
advantage from the humans' point of view was that no
weapons were being used—the aliens fought like angry chil
dren, and although hostile enough were manifestly lacking
in the ability to incapacitate an enemy. Toller was comforted
when he realized that he and his new allies would not be
annihilated in a few bloody seconds; but then the negative
aspect of the situation came to him. The struggle was too democratic, too much like casting votes. In this style of combat the numerically superior force was bound to win.

Again longing for his sword, Toller turned on one of the
group of unfriendly aliens who were closing on him with
arms outspread. Toiler clubbed him to the ground with one
diagonal blow of his fist, and then—with murder in his heart

—drove his heel down on the alien's neck, while at the same
time hurling away two more attackers.

The feeling of living firmness crunching into inert mush
told him immediately that the Dussarran was dead, but
a more dramatic confirmation came from the surrounding
melee. The mass of black-ragged aliens—friend and foe alike
—underwent a convulsive spasm as though some powerful unseen force had torn through them. Their various pairings
were dissolved and the air was filled with wordless keenings
of anguish. All at once Toller and the other humans were
the only mobile and concerted force on the bizarre battle
ground.

"What happened?" Jerene shouted, her round face and
clear eyes beaconing at Toller from the confusion.

"The scarecrows all suffer when one of their number dies near at hand," Toller replied, remembering what Divivvidiv had told him about the strange telepathic backlash which accompanied the death of a Dussarran. "The trouble is that those who are favorably disposed to us are not spared. Get
them on their feet and keep them moving—otherwise we are
lost."

The other six Kolcorronians responded at once, snatching suitably emblazoned aliens to their feet and urging them to
run. They had to be dragged or pushed for some yards
before their limbs began to pick up the motive rhythms. The
ill-sorted band passed through an archway, entered a corridor and continued their awkward progress towards double-leafed
doors at its far end. Other Dussarrans, shown to be friendly
by their green-dappled clothing, were waiting at the door
and making urgent beckoning signals.

My name is Greturk.
The alien that Toller was propelling
forwards looked up at him and his silent words were charged
with fear and loathing.
You deliberately ended a life! You
behaved like a Vadavak! Have you no feelings?

"Yes—I have a powerful feeling that I want to get out of
this place."

That is not what I meant.

"I know! You were talking about the reflux." Toller
pushed the alien harder to emphasize his words. "You had
better understand that I would quite happily break a
thousand
Dussarran necks to obtain my goal—so prepare yourself for
a few more refluxes if we are attacked again."

The chances of a new attack grew less, however, as the group reached the double door and were ushered through it
by urgent hands. Livid alien faces danced around Toller,
advancing and receding in the confusion, as he escaped from
the confines of the corridor into a night which was shot
through with artificial light. In part the light came from the
facades of rectangular buildings, but there seemed to be free-floating blocks of radiance and a profusion of vari
colored rays among which drifted vivid lines of intense red
and yellow.

Toller had no time to fathom the exotic scene, because an egg-shaped vehicle—a larger version of the one which had
earlier transported Steenameert and him to the dome—was waiting only a few paces away. He had the impression that
its lower surface was not quite touching the ground. Its
circular entrance revealed a dim-lit interior from which other
Dussarrans beckoned. Toller halted by the entrance and
helped cram his own people plus some of their alien rescuers
into the vehicle. At the innermost end of the corridor more
aliens were appearing, their mobility almost fully restored,
and were running towards him like flapping black birds
striving to take to the air.

Toller had no fear of pursuers who could be laid low by
the death of only one of their number, but he was hounded
by a conviction that Zunnunun was too resourceful to remain
off balance for long, that other enemy forces were being
ranged against him at that very moment. He threw himself
into the oval vehicle, adding to the press of bodies inside,
and the entrance flowed out of existence behind him. There
came a giddy shifting of weight which signaled that the

vehicle was moving and silently becoming airborne. It came to him that he had not seen a pilot or anything like a station from which a pilot could operate, and the eerie thought occurred that the Dussarran craft could control its own movements.

He was straining to see about him, trying to verify the idea, when he realized that Vantara was quite close by in the airless compression of alien and human forms. Her face was pale, distraught and immobile—rather like a tragic mask of the real woman—and, although her eyes were turned in his direction, he was not sure that she was looking at him. Feeling oddly self-conscious, he tried to produce a reassuring smile.

"Take heart, Vantara," he said in a directed whisper, "I vow to you that no matter what befalls us I will be at your side."

There followed an odd and timeless moment in which her gaze hunted over his face, and then—to Toller it was like a perfect sunrise—she answered his smile. "Toller, my dear Toller! I'm sorry if I have not been—"

Do not speak!
Greturk, the alien at Toller's side, cut in with an urgent telepathic warning.
Do not think about what is happening
—
otherwise we will be easily followed. Try to forget who and what you are. Try to believe that you are
nothing more than bubbles of air rising in a huge cauldron of
boiling water
. . .
going this way and that way . .
.
swirling and spiraling in unpredictable paths. . . .

Toller nodded and closed his eyes. He was a bubble rising in a huge cauldron . . . going this way and that. . . following a dangerous and unpredictable path. . . .

Toller had become so deeply absorbed in the mental discipline, the negation of coherent thought, that he was scarcely aware of the vehicle coming to a halt. At one moment he was jammed upright, barely able to move because of the pressure of human and alien bodies; and at the next he was
staggering slightly in a comparatively generous amount of
floor space and Dussarrans were vanishing through the circu
lar exit which had appeared in the vehicle's side. He was receiving no structured telepathic communications, but his
head was filled with a pulsing urgency. The very air seemed
tremulous, agitated by a pervasive sense of panic.

You must disembark quickly.
The silent message came
from Greturk, the only alien to have remained inside the
egg-shaped craft.
There is very little time to spare.

"What is going on here?" Jerene put in before Toller could
voice the same question.

Greturk's black lips twitched.
We are in the midst of a civil
conflict
—
a war you might call it
—
the first in many thousands
of years.

"A civil war!" Toller said. "In that case why are you so
concerned about a few outsiders like us?"

This will come as a surprise
—
but you and the rest of
your kind are at the center of the controversy which divides
Dussarran society.

Toller blinked down at the alien. "I don't understand."

I
know that the Decisioner responsible for the Xa project
has explained to you the basic reasons for our presence in this
part of the galaxy. How much of that information have you
retained?

⁴
There was something about Ropes," Toller replied,
frowning. "An explosion which will destroy dozens of
galaxies. ..."