Looking at the stars, however, she knew, with a sudden and fanatical certainty, that her Lady Nature would favor whatever connivances, lies and acts of violence she might be forced to employ in order to put her enclave onto the holy path again. Lady Nature loved them and did not want to see them wither and perish merely because so many of their leaders were blind fools and self-serving bureaucrats.
Merka rose from the sofa after more than an hour of spiritual self-searching and walked into the bedroom. She stood over the General, aware that she could go find a knife right now and murder him in his sleep, with no opposition. He would not even have an opportunity to scream or throw up his hands to ward off the slashing blade. But the ascendance to power had to be more gradual and more subtle than that. Besides, she would require a power base, sympathizers and assistants in the enclave government who would swear their allegiance to her and ensure her own promotion when this General — passed on. That would take weeks, most likely months, to accomplish. Meanwhile, she would have to worry most about the General's continued lust for her. When the time was ripe for assassination, she would need to be next to him, where she could strike suddenly and cover up the traces of her villainy before the news was made public. The simplest way to keep in his graces was to make him dependent on her favors.
She perfumed herself as he liked.
She stood before the mirror and brushed her luxuriant dark hair.
At the bed she pulled back the covers.
He did not wake.
With her mouth, but without words, she bent over him and awakened him to the night and to his need.
14
On the morning following their narrow escape from the Pure soldiers, Jask and Tedesco woke in the blue- green room, ate a cold breakfast that lay heavy on their stomachs, and began their trek through the jeweled sea, down corridors of dazzling color, through chambers like melting rainbows. Several times, they came to dead ends or to a narrowing of the way through which the bulky mutant could not pass, and they were forced to retrace their steps, exploring alternate passageways.
Often, they stepped from the end of a corridor into a pocket of open land where scraggly grasses grew and, sometimes, scrawny trees struggled for existence. Why the bacteria jewels, which towered for forty meters and more on all sides, had not closed in, neither Jask nor Tedesco could guess.
In these places Tedesco took compass readings and consulted his maps, chose the direction they would take when leaving the patch of land and returning to the jewels. Here, too, they performed their toilet without feeling as if they were fouling some wondrous artifact.
Shortly after noon, as they sat down in the middle of one of these clearings to rest, Jask said, “I can't go any farther today.''
“Have to,” Tedesco said. “If we don't make good time, we could be in these formations when our supplies run out. And as you've seen, there's precious little to eat around here, except an occasional plot of grass.”
As they progressed through the jeweled tunnels, Jask had carried his cloak over his arm, dressed only in the stretch-fit, neck-to-toe jumpsuit that all the Pures wore. In the clearings, where they rested, he folded the cloak under him like a pillow, to protect his bruised backside. Now, perched upon this pillow, his scrawny legs outstretched before him, he said, “I ache all over, legs and arms and back and neck. I haven't any strength to go on.”
Tedesco said nothing, but stood and used his compass, consulted his various maps, pondered things a while and finally decided on the proper direction for their departure. “Come along,” he said.
Jask did not move.
“Get up, now,” Tedesco said. And there was more than cajolery in his voice; he spoke with a tone of command.
“I really can't,'' Jask protested. “My ankles are swollen. My thighs are knotted like ropes, and my kidneys ache.”
The bruin stalked across the clearing and stood over him. “My own feet are hot and sore,” he told Jask. “But I'm not giving up here.”
“Your discomfort can't match mine,” Jask said. “You're built to take this kind of punishment, clambering through those tunnels and pacing off kilometer after kilometer.”
“You Pures, with all your holy disdain for 'tainted' genes have inbred yourselves to the point of uselessness. I see that. I understand. But I'm not letting you stay behind.”
Jask smiled bitterly.
He continued to massage his swollen legs, and he said, “Then you'll just have to carry me.”
Tedesco did not smile at all. He said. “I won't carry you my friend. I have my own rucksack to worry with.”
“Then—”
Tedesco lifted one of the prewar power rifles he had stolen from the General's men and aimed it dead center at Jask's chest. He said, “I'll kill you before I go.”
Even the bitter smile slid away from the smaller man's face as he stared up into the incredibly large barrel of the power rifle. He said, “You've no reason to kill me.”
“Yes, I have,” the bruin said. “I wouldn't want to leave you here to starve — or to get lost in the jewels and eventually go mad. One does not permit such an end for his friends. If I must leave you behind, I'll kill you and get your suffering over with quickly. Otherwise my conscience would always bother me.”
Jask shifted his gaze from the rifle barrel to the deep-set, dark eyes under the shelf of the mutant's brow, and he read the truth in those eyes. Painfully he got to his feet, picked up his cloak and said, morosely, “Lead the way.”
Tedesco led the way.
Jask wondered if Lady Nature might not exert at least a little influence in this place — for he could not imagine who else would have such a reason or power to make him suffer.
For more than an hour they climbed the steep corridors, bathed in ethereal flames that were not hot, cooled by green trees that were only illusions without real substance or shadow, crisped orange here, iced blue there. They crossed silver-black chambers where the ceilings were cathedral and the mood was sinister, and they wriggled on their bellies — Tedesco pushing his huge rucksack ahead — down brown and purple corridors barely high enough for them to squeeze through. Cresting up-sloped hallways, they found themselves stumbling down tilted floors while kaleidoscopes crackled into new forms and hues beneath their feet. They tripped and fell, often, but they got up again and went on, holding to the bright walls for support, sweat-dampened fingers slipping from handholds that had seemed safe, grasping uselessly at jeweled projections that might help to break their falls. They came to chasms that separated one arm of the tunnel from the next, looked down into meters and meters of fire, into hellish pits where animals made of light danced in maniacal glee to entertain them, puffing out of existence as new species of animals, new colors, flickered into “life” for a brief moment and were gone in their turn. Sometimes they climbed down these jagged chasms and crossed the unpolished floors where faults lay like traps, concealed by the interplay of color. Once crossed, they climbed the other side and went rapidly forward to meet the next such obstacle — not because they enjoyed the challenge, but because each one put behind them meant one less to face ahead. Other times, if the walls of the gorge were too steep to permit descent, they used ropes and hooks to construct a fragile bridge from the lip of one precipice to the other. But always they went on: Tedesco because he had to; Jask because he was afraid to stop and be shot.
Finally, after nearly two hours of this torturous routine, Jask had endured enough punishment. Weakness rose through him like dirty floodwater over the banks of a creek. He swayed as they were weaving down a steep ruby incline, lost sight of the bright walls as the perfect darkness of unconsciousness roared over him. He fell, hard, and rolled until he came up against a green-and-gold-speckled outcrop. He lay there, unmoving, as Tedesco continued to the bottom of the run, unaware of his companion's predicament.
A few minutes later, however, the bruin realized that he was alone. When he called Jask's name and received no reply, and when a telepathic probe brought him only muddled, unclear thoughts from the other man, he
