smelled it for so long. A cool breeze came to him.
He rounded a bend and saw the mouth of the cave a short distance ahead. He hurried, wondering what would be waiting for him out there.
He came out into bright day. He walked out from the base of the cliff and looked up. He was at the foot of the castle’s citadel. He could not see the castle, which he found strange. Perhaps if he got out a little farther.
The plain was bare, empty, nothing but dried grass and rock.
Wait! Wasn’t the camp of the besiegers out here somewhere? Perhaps on the other side of the promontory. No, he was sure it was this side.
He lifted his eyes heavenward. “Speak, O Great Holy Voice! Speak to thy servant!”
He searched the skies. There was something up there, circling, some great black shape. A bird? No. It was descending, growing bigger.
Presently he saw what it was. He did not completely understand what it was, but he knew the thing sought him, and he knew he had been betrayed.
His heart gave out before he reached the cave.
The beast spoke.
“Yes.”
“You have no choice. Only I can make you whole again.”
“You know you can’t. The fragment is only a metaphor. You are nothing but metaphor.”
“I wonder. Or are you merely our reflection?”
“Enough of that nonsense. I offer you a proposition. You have no choice. Perhaps one day you will gain your freedom again. It is not impossible. You are immortal, are you not? One day Man, your enemy, will be gone, and the world will be yours once more.”
“Perhaps. But time will tell. And time you have aplenty.”
“I’m glad you had fun. Now you must rest.”
“Of course. You will feel weaker.”
“I shall. Come closer.”
The sky darkened as the huge form bore down. Parts of the beast became indistinct. Multicolored flashes broke out along its vast bulk. A strong wind suddenly rose, whipping dust about the citadel.
“Doubtless not. Be quiet.”
Whirling clouds appeared, at their center a growing vortex of blackness.
“You would not last long in your present incomplete state. And you know it.”
There was a sound not unlike a sigh, and very like a fierce gale.
The clouds rotated faster, and the vortex grew.
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
The world imploded into blackness.
He couldn’t find a sign. Coming to the mouth of the ramp he had driven down, he looked up, saw it was a long way to walk, dangerous, too, and decided there must be a stairwell, better yet, an elevator around somewhere.
He searched in vain. He did find a featureless corridor which met another at a T. To his right the way was dark, so he turned left, turned again at an L, and found himself back in the sepulchral silence of the garage again. Sighing, he retraced his steps, passed the intersection of the first corridor and continued on into the darkness. Feeling his way, he went about thirty paces until he bumped into a wall. The passageway turned to the right, still unlighted, and continued interminably.
Another turn, and there was light up ahead.
He saw the dark stone masonry, the jewel-torch, and wondered where the hell he was. He stopped. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of facing another useless interview for a job he really didn’t want. Why not face it? He was unemployable, at least as far as white-collar jobs went. So what was wrong with blue-collar occupations? This sudden impulse to drop back in, to “get a job and settle down,” was just a response to pressure from his parents. Wasn’t it? Knee-jerk bourgeois security-seeking.
Well, to hell with USX, and to hell with getting a “good job.” He’d tend bar, open a bookstore, go to Europe … something. To hell with everything.
He looked down the hall at the strange discontinuity. He took a step forward …
It was an ordinary California day, bright sun, blue sky, haze, smog, and Linda was tired of it.
She was tired of everything. She didn’t think she could get through another day.
She had tried calling her sister, but Sharon was at a rehabilitation nurses’ convention in Denver. Linda didn’t feel like bothering her. She had always been able to talk to Sharon, but what exactly was the point now?
Still, she couldn’t think of suicide. It would kill Mother, and she couldn’t stomach the thought of lying there in the casket with all the old biddies in the family talking in whispers about her. And the gossip.
Ugh.
Maybe she was just afraid of dying. She was afraid of everything else. Afraid of living. But she did have a death wish — wasn’t that what the pills were all about? Maybe she should go back to popping pills. That way, death would come and she wouldn’t have to act, to make a decision …
She was disgusted with herself.
She got up from the bed and went to the closet. She really should get out of this filthy T-shirt. Look at all this laundry lying here. She should get up off her butt and get down to the Laundromat —
Her closet had gotten a lot bigger. She wondered who had torn out the rear wall. And what was out there? It looked like the inside of a church, or a castle or something …
Kwip paced his cell, contemplating the life of a thief. His life. A good life? No. The only one he could have led? Mayhap not. He wondered, as he had always wondered, if he could have been anything else. If only he were not such an accomplished thief! But to what station in life could he have hoped to rise, he a low-born guttersnipe, an orphan, an unwanted child? He had found it necessary to steal in order to survive. There had been no other course to follow. Perhaps in a better world — ah, but there were no other worlds, were there?
Kwip turned about and beheld the doorway.
When the ice bridge collapsed, Snowclaw had thought he was going to die, but now that he had time to assess the situation, he was sure he was going to. He was never going to be able to climb out of this crevasse, no one was anywhere near, and that was that. He’d stay here till he froze or starved. He’d probably starve first.
He was hungry already. He hated the thought of starving to death. Really hated it. He’d much rather freeze to death, but he knew there was no chance of that this time of year. He’d just get miserably cold. He growled and pounded his huge fist against the wall of ice at his back.
Right. There was no other choice. He’d use his claws and open up an artery, and that would be that. He flexed the muscles of his left hand. Bone-white claws extruded from the ends of his fingers.
He turned his head to the left, noticing that the ledge extended quite some way into the dark crevasse.
