Hornets and Others

One of the electric lanterns began to dim so they lit the other, but this too faded, victim of a fragile bulb. They went on by torchlight.

Abruptly, the steps ended and their pathway ahead widened. Minnow saw that it was brighter around them, despite the weaker light of the torches.

'There's something up ahead,' she said unnecessarily.

Skull didn't acknowledge, but only walked on.

The five things were on them without warning. There was a shriek, and the torches were knocked aside by furiously flapping wings, leaving them all in a weird orange glow like sickly twilight.

'Run ahead!' cried Skull, and they followed.

The things—like huge hummingbirds with rotating metallic heads—followed them into a small amphitheater. This was the source of the light. It looked like a storage area or hexagonal locker: two of the walls were lined with storage bins and dusty metal cages, most of them empty. Tools and what looked like discarded uniforms jutted out of others.

The hummingbirds forced them into a corner. They hung back a moment. Then, with frightening slowness, they began to move forward. Each had a finely honed set of whirring blades where its beak should be.

'What the hell are they?' Minnow asked, pressing her back against the metal cabinet behind her. Her muscles tensed.

'I don't know precisely,' Skull answered. 'Some sort of guard device, probably the only one still working. Maybe they're just outlaw machines.' He gestured at all of them. 'Spread out and wait for my signal. I should be able to draw them back away from you, and when I do, you run for the doorway behind us and move on.'

'What about you?' Minnow asked.

'I'll catch up.' He waved an arm. 'Go!'

Minnow hesitated, then moved quickly off to one side as she saw, with amazement, Skull leap straight at the hummingbirds. His jump was graceful, the gazelle-like arc of a ballet dancer—and in mid-leap he suddenly dropped to all fours. The hummingbirds seemed startled, and then, after hesitating a moment, fixed all their attention on Skull. Their wings dipped down, along with their deadly beaks; but by then Skull had rolled lithely off to the left and regained his footing, standing on his toes and bobbing lightly from side to side.

Minnow stood transfixed in the doorway by his movement, and only when he shouted angrily did she duck back to the corridor where the others were waiting. They had managed to get out without any serious injuries, though Copper had sustained a large welt from bashing into a storage bin.

They stopped halfway down the corridor, and waited. Ten minutes went by, and Minnow was just getting restless enough to start back toward the storage room when Skull appeared.

'Are you all right?' She couldn't keep the note of concern out of her voice.

He nodded curtly. 'Let's move.'

Goat started to open his mouth but the look Skull turned on him made him stop.

'I said let's go.'

Another hour and a half of forward and downward progress and they halted again. They were back in the same sort of tunnel they had started in; had passed two more storage areas, each larger than the last and both empty of hummingbirds or any other surprises.

'How much time left?' Minnow asked hollowly.

She already knew the answer.

'Twenty minutes,' Copper said in a dull voice.

There was silence, and then Skull spoke.

'I suggest we keep pushing,' he said simply.

No one moved.

A sudden chill went through Minnow. Down here, a mile or so below the surface, it struck her like a hammerblow that she knew nothing about this man. He wore a mask, and sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and danced with a frightful grace she had never seen before—and that was all she knew about him. In twenty minutes the horrible dance would start again, as it did every dawning, and they would be trapped in a Skinner box on the word of someone they had trusted—she had trusted—for no other reason than that she had wanted someone to trust.

'You knew we wouldn't make it,' she said in a whisper.

The twin caves where his eyes should be seemed to glow amber, then reverted back to dark tombs.

'Yes,' he said.

Minnow threw herself at him, but in mid-stride her arms flew uncontrollably up over her head and she stopped and pirouetted. Her arms, her legs, were not her own anymore. A deep pulsing began in the earth around her, in the air, in her head and bones, and before she knew what was happening she found herself in an insane waltz. The beat had begun once more. She threw a quick, painful glance at Copper, cursing him silently for miscalculating the time by nearly a half-hour, but the thought of condemnation vacated her mind when she saw that he was throwing himself against the wall, arms whirling like a helicopter, and shouting with each collision. His face was bloodied.

The waltz continued, and she found herself with a quick succession of partners—Cave, Skull, Goat—who was trying, she saw, to pull at the trigger of a weapon he must have picked up in one of the storage bins they had passed. The fleeting conviction went through her that he was more desperate than she had thought, and that if the beat had not started when it did she might be dead anyway now, probably along with Skull. Another change of partners and she saw that Goat's weapon had been forced from his grip and that he was now slapping his hands together in time, faster than seemed humanly possible.

The waltz changed to a tarantella, and then to a Celtic jig. After that there were a thousand other variations. The one lasting image in all this madness was that of Skull, his graceful, aquiline body flashing past her nearly every time she was whirled about. He became an anchor in her storm, and his grinning skull mask was the one image that burned itself into her mind as the hours danced away...

She awoke propped in a corner, arms akimbo, legs collapsed under her like so much lead. For a long time she could not move. She didn't know what time it was; there was near-darkness, and at first she thought she could be outside, or in some abandoned building. But then the sour stench of the underground tunnel reached past her nostrils and she remembered what had happened.

With a groan she struggled to a kneeling position, and then, using the wall for leverage, heaved herself up onto her feet. She nearly went down again, feeling momentary pressure on one of her ankles, but suddenly there was an arm there, holding her up.

'Can you stand?'

It was Skull.

'I think so. Yes. It's not twisted like I thought. Just asleep.'

She closed her eyes until the swimming stopped in them, and then took a deep breath and faced him.

'The others?'

'Dead.' It was a simple statement of fact, but Minnow detected a note of something else—pity? sadness?— behind it.

'All of them?'

'All. Three died during the dance. The one named Goat then killed another one and then Copper tried to stop him and was killed trying to get his weapon away.' He paused. 'I took care of Goat.'

Was there revulsion in his voice? Awe?

Skull said, 'He was going to kill you where you slept.'

'God,' Minnow said, taking a shuddering breath. Skull stood silently next to her, becoming conscious of his supporting arm on her and gradually releasing it. For a moment Minnow was sorry it was gone, and then she wasn't.

'Now what?'

'We continue.'

There was a blank certainty in his voice.

'So we can be killed the next time we get caught by the beat?'

'No. This time we make it to the center.'