9 The Gong of Ending and Beginning
Seven hours later, Tompa and Awmit scurried through the tomblike silence of a cave, accompanied by small, furtive sounds. The pounding of Tompa’s own heart. The patter of Awmit’s feet on the uneven rocks. The dripping of water into an oblong pool.
The cave’s narrow tunnels, with weirdly graceful pink and beige rock formations, might have seemed peaceful and awe inspiring if Tompa wasn’t desperate to get a head start on her accusers. Sprinting across the uneven cave floor would be disastrous, so she willed herself to move with deliberate haste. She switched her candle to her right hand so she could brace herself against the wall as she edged past the pool. Her fingertips touched cool rock—
And suddenly the silence was shattered by a metallic roar like the cry of the world coming to an end. The bellow went on and on, echoing off the cave’s myriad surfaces, reverberating and shaking and rending, sapping Tompa’s strength, forcing her to her knees on the rocks, making her drop the candle that was her only light. She covered her ears, but the sound didn’t hurt any less. It was everywhere. In front of her, behind, pounding into her hands, her bones, her soul. The poor candle, already exhausted by the effort of fighting the gloom, let itself die rather than suffer the gruesome vibrations.
Darkness fell. But not silence. The roar echoed on and on.
Reluctantly, gradually, the echoes died away, leaving echoes slamming through the cave, growing ever more distant. Eventually there was stillness, roiled only by the memory of echoes.
Tompa’s hands shook as they covered her ears, making her head shake, too. She lowered them to her belly, where echoes still fluttered. She sank to the smooth, hard rocks, her cheek resting against a damp spot.
A tiny spray of water touched her forehead, reviving her. Her face was at the very edge of the pool. The splash from a drop of water had hit her, yet she hadn’t heard it land. Had she been deafened by the gong that she’d seen back in the main chamber of the cave, the one Awmit called the Gong of Ending and Beginning?
She’d seen the gong when they exited the train. You couldn’t miss the roach-damned thing. At least twenty feet high, the copper-green gong hung from the distant ceiling in the large, central part of the cave. Awmit had said the cave was the temple of a prehistoric goddess who was now little more than myth; the gong, a later addition to the cave, was the stuff of terror and nightmare. Shuddering, he’d pointed out a huge tree trunk poised over their train car, hanging by two ropes that angled toward the same gloomy place on the cave ceiling where the gong was anchored. A shiny red spot in the middle of the gong marked where the tree would strike when loosened.
The gong symbolized Death. In Bez-Tattin’s lifetime, its tolling had carried the souls of the dead to wherever Shons went when they died. And now, the tolling had signaled the start of her trial by combat. Her accusers were free to swarm through the maze-like cave and tear her to pieces.
“Awmit?” She heard her own voice—at least she wasn’t deaf—but the sound seemed tiny and forlorn, the only living thing in the dark silence. She rose warily and stood there, afraid to move. “Awmit?” Oh God, surely he hadn’t been carried off by the sound of the gong? “Awmit! Where are you?”
A faint scuffling sound came from ahead. “This old one prepares mournfully to face prook-nah of death. Likewise do, graceful human.”
The hopelessness weighting his voice seemed to empower the darkness. It engulfed her like a warm bath of fear, then tightened until it squeezed her skull, her chest. “I’m young,” she gasped. “I want to live. I want to see the sun.”
Awmit didn’t answer right away. “The sun? This one comprehends negatively.”
“This is like being buried alive!”
“Buried, agree profoundly. But life, death, have only a single roe-voll-atch wingtip slipped between them.”
“What the ratshit is that supposed to mean? Help me, Awmit!”
From far away but no direction in particular came a slow, rhythmic howling.
“The chant of the holy avengers,” Awmit said.
“You’re supposed to protect me. You said it was a test of your individual worth to help someone you know is innocent.”
The chant seemed to grow closer by the second, although their head start—comparatively long, Awmit had said, because of the odds against them—should provide at least half an hour before she felt the chanters’ breath on her neck. Mind-killing panic threatened to overwhelm her. Breathe. Stay calm. “I need light. I need to get out of this flickin’ cave. Awmit, help me!”
He was a long time answering. “Comprehend negatively. Continued and unyielding heartbeats loom possibly in graceful human’s thoughts?”
“Huh? I mean, yes!”
A drop of water plunged to its death in a pool of its peers. After five, then six more drops, Awmit made a sound frighteningly like the chant of the holy avengers. “Insanity. Flagrant deviation from herd-perception and experience. Sin of hubris.” He heaved another chant-like sigh. “Yet agreement-of-duty perches heavily on the lungs of this old one who dies ingloriously for a creature unfathomable.”
Tompa heard a clinking noise, followed by a shot of blessed light. It was the spark-making gizmo from the pack of food, water, candles, and other supplies the guards had given Awmit when they got off the train. The spark died, but another took its place. Awmit lit a candle. The breath-robbing darkness retreated, sulking, to the shadowy nooks of the cave. He handed her the candle. As before, he didn’t bother to take one for himself.
“Move,” he said. “Follow gingerly the draft.”
“Draft?” She turned around, but neither felt nor saw anything. “What draft?”
“That one feels negatively the draft?” He pointed toward the candle. “The candle and this one sense gently a draft rising through the cave.”
With that he picked up the bright orange pack of supplies and headed up one of the maze of tunnels. It looked too narrow for him, but his wide hips had a lot of give and he squeezed through. It was easier for Tompa, though she had to turn sideways at the narrowest spots.
The chant followed them.
When the tunnel widened and angled sharply upward, she suddenly guessed what Awmit meant about following the breeze. In abandoned skyscrapers, the elevator shafts funneled air up and out through the roof. If there was the same sort of thing here, it meant there was an exit where the air was flowing. He was trying to lead her out of the cave to the sunlight.
And none too soon. The chant sounded stronger.
Tompa followed him quickly up a step-like arrangement of rocks so she could rub his head. “Thanks.”
“Premature. The air opening exists smally, unreachably, blockedly. All possible. A skinny prospect to risk crazily this one’s last opportunity to build calmness for facing prook-nah.”
“Or worse. Death.”
“Comprehend negatively.” He peered straight up at an opening in the ceiling of the tunnel. “Nothing worsens tornado of the viscera than standing alone against the prook-nah of a powerful herd.”
She’d stood alone against prook-nah most of her life, and it had kept her alive. What happened the one time in her life she yearned to belong? The Navy—damn them all!—kicked her ass down an elevator shaft. Prook-nah was for piss-willed fools.
Awmit, she suspected, could never comprehend this—negatively or positively. So she kept her thoughts private and pulled herself through the opening in bitter silence.
Dante stopped running when the ground underfoot started writhing and moaning. Pebbles clattered down the nearby rock wall as though they, too, felt the terror that suddenly gripped him.
But the ancient terraces cut into the barren, grey hillside weren’t sliding down to bury him alive. It was the tolling of the huge gong, back in the cave. The trial-by-combat had begun.
Again the clapper struck, sending a throbbing rumble of fear from the cave’s entrance a few hundred yards back. The sound poured down the steep hill, crossed desert wastes to a bay that h
ad long ago drowned half of an empty town, skipped off the meandering stone walls that peeked above the water, then bounced back off the terraced hills on the far side of the bay. Dante’s stomach roiled.
“The subsonics are very strong, Dante Roussel.”
Krizink’s voice. Damn. Dante crouched and spun around, but couldn’t see anyone. Only when he went to the edge of the flattened terrace, where crops may have grown in the now-baked clay, did he see the Klick walking along the terrace below. Behind him were six other Klicks, tails twitching. So much for escaping the aliens.
Krizink talked as he approached, chatting as though continuing an ongoing conversation. “An instrument—bell, you call it?—of such size emits sounds too low to hear, and living beings react to these sounds with fear.”
After the train trip to the island, Dante was thoroughly sick of Krizink’s harsh voice, and thus he didn’t respond. But silence didn’t deter the garrulous Klick, who continued, “See the birds fleeing?”
Dante saw nothing. Krizink pointed with his tail at two specks flying toward the narrow, rocky entrance to the bay. Dante shaded his eyes, but could make out no details of the creatures.
He turned back to the Klick. “Gong.”
Krizink glanced at his companions, then up at Dante. “Pardon me?”
“The instrument back in the cave. It’s called a gong. And I notice that you ran away from it, too. Like cowards.”
Only Krizink reacted, giving one of his wheezing laughs. The pregnant Klick—Dante guessed it was the one with a rounded belly and a drooping, sombrero-like sunhat—didn’t understand English, but what of the others? It might be useful to know. He stared at the Klicks’ faces in turn. The only response he got was that two of them rapidly opened and shut their mouths while flicking their narrow, purple tongues. Figuring this was a Klick rudeness, he raised his index and little fingers, then shoved his hand toward the two of them in turn.
“No call for obscene gestures, my dear man.” Krizink pointed behind Dante with his tail. “Especially when you’re on camera, being broadcast to the entire planet.”
Dante turned and, over the crest of the hillside, saw a winged dirigible colored the same dull, dusty blue as the sky. At first it seemed large, but after a second he realized that his mind had tricked him. The balloon was only a few yards long. At the bottom was a box sporting a pair of tiny propellers and, presumably, a camera. As though it had noticed them, the dirigible began moving toward the confrontation between human and Klicks.
Krizink turned to the camera and raised one elbow to shoulder height—which Dante vaguely remembered as a Klick greeting, sort of like a human waving to a camera. “Wonderful piece of low-technology robotics, don’t you think?”
The camera paused forty feet away, hovering at the level of a human head. Then it edged sideways until it was directly over the stone retaining wall that separated Dante’s terrace from that of the Klicks—apparently positioning itself for a better view.
“Even the Shon-Wod-Zee can manufacture and maintain them,” Krizink continued. “But it’s our design, of course.”
Dante picked up a fist-sized stone from the top of the retaining wall. He stared at Krizink, then hurled the stone toward the robotic camera. It hit the balloon part of the dirigible with a thud. The camera wobbled backwards, swaying drunkenly.
“Not very civilized of you, Dante Roussel.”
The camera stopped wobbling and turned, photographing the scene from a safer distance.
“I don’t like you, Major Krizink.”
“But I like you.” Krizink tilted his head. “I have spent years studying your people, and now that I’ve finally met one of you, you don’t disappoint. Not all alien species are admirable, you know. The local natives leap to mind. Compared to them, human truculence is as refreshing as waving one’s tail in a stove on a frosty morning. Yet now that the bell has sounded—you called it a gonk, I believe—we are unfortunately at war. I must do anything necessary to keep you from helping Tompa Lee.” He went utterly still, even the tip of his tail. “Anything necessary, Dante Roussel. My apologies in advance. Even if I find it necessary to kill you, it doesn’t mean I dislike you.”
From the nearby mouth of the cave came a rhythmic chant. It started softly but grew, as though hundreds of Shons were joining the cry. A shiver writhed down Dante’s spine. He couldn’t stand here chatting while a horde of Shons searched for Tompa Lee in the cave. When he came outside, he’d hoped to lose his Kalikiniki shadows, avoid the noise of the gong, then go back in and after that . . .
Well, after that he’d have improvised. Now he was cut off from the cave and any chance of helping Tompa Lee. His slow brain had once again made him stupid and ineffectual. Perhaps it would be better to provoke the Klicks and die quickly.
“That is the chant of the avengers,” Krizink said. “It indicates that the Shon-Wod-Zee accusers have melded sufficiently to begin acting as one. It’s impressive, in a way, seeing hundreds of creatures act as though they have but one small brain amongst them.”
“No.”
“It’s not impressive?”
He couldn’t give up. Tompa Lee might never know he tried to help, but he would know. How could he help her? He glanced around, but the bizarre landscape gave him no clues at all.
“Fleeing from the hideous blast of the instrument,” Krizink said, “must be a natural human reaction. I wonder what other natural human reactions you can teach me. For example, can you guess whether Tompa Lee will try to elude her pursuers, surrender in fear, or find a defensible position and make a stand?”
Dante stared at the Klick, thinking. Tompa Lee would probably try to get out of the cave and into the light. That had been his first reaction when Krizink informed him that the monstrous gong would soon be struck. If she used the same exit he had, these Klicks would slaughter her.
No, that was wrong; Krizink had said something about leaving Tompa for the Shons, and killing her themselves only if necessary. But still, if she exited the cave they’d certainly hold her until the Shons arrived, so he needed to get the Klicks away from here. It wasn’t much, but his mind was incapable of better. He turned and ran toward the dirigible.
“Stop!”
Dante kept running. Ahead of him, the terraces narrowed as the hill became steeper, forming a sheer cliff above him.
Behind him, Krizink shouted orders in his native tongue. Dante glanced back. Two of the Klicks had gone to hands and knees as steps so others could climb to Dante’s terrace. Two more were running toward him on the lower terrace, gaining ground quickly. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. He ran harder, feeling sluggish because of the three-percent-higher gravity on this world. The Klicks didn’t seem bothered even though their home world had nearly ten percent less gravity even than earth.
Dante rounded a bend and cursed. His terrace ended abruptly in a rough, rocky cliff. A hundred feet more and he was trapped. He stopped.
“It is hopeless, Dante Roussel.” Krizink was loping rapidly toward him, head forward and tail streaming behind. “Surrender!”
Dante searched the cliff for handholds. It was climbable, but he wouldn’t be able to ascend quickly enough to escape the grasp of the Kalikinikis. He went to the edge of the terrace. Two Klicks already waited below, flicking their tongues at him. The dirigible floated between him and them, over his head, ready to film his death. The box hanging from its bottom had metal bumpers on all sides. Reacting rather than thinking, Dante hurried to the cliff side of his terrace. Krizink’s footsteps approached. Dante pushed off from the cliff, dashing at top speed toward the lip of the terrace. He leaped just as Krizink’s fingers brushed his arm.
Jumping through the air, he strained toward the dirigible. His aim was thrown off by the higher gravity, but one hand caught a bumper, clutched it. The dirigible plummeted, but had enough buoyancy to keep him from crashing into the outstretched arms of one of the Klicks. Hanging by one hand, Dante raised his legs, hoping to clear the lizard. He wouldn’t m
ake it. He kicked with both feet and felt a satisfying crunch.
Then he was thirty feet off the ground. Hitting the Klick had pushed the dirigible higher into the air. Dante clawed with his free hand for the bumper on the other side of the camera box. It was a stretch but he made it, and immediately felt more secure.
“Come back, Dante Roussel!”
That ridiculous order made him laugh out loud.
The dirigible wasn’t big enough to keep him airborne, but it at least slowed his fall. Good thing, too, because momentum was carrying him away from the hillside, which dropped off so steeply that he was ever-farther from the ground. The dirigible’s propellers whirred frantically as the robotic device struggled to remain aloft. Although Dante’s weight kept it from gaining altitude, after a moment it managed to glide instead of plummet.
That was good and bad. The farther he got from the hillside, the more of a head start he had if Krizink pursued him—but could he hold on until the dirigible reached the bottom of the hill? The bumper had square corners that bit into his flesh. He shifted carefully to a more comfortable position.
With nothing left to do but hold on, he began to enjoy himself in a strange, light-headed way. Below him now were the crumbled ruins of the ancient Shon city. Hot air whistled past his ears as he flew through the alien sky. No human being had ever seen these sights, ever dived on a robot camera like this. Dante gave a cry of unfettered exhilaration.
He shifted his weight, trying to steer away from a windowless brick wall several stories high. There was no good place to land, but slamming into that wall was the worst possibility.
But it was no good. He couldn’t go around the wall, and though the dirigible would get over the top, he wouldn’t. The wall loomed larger, larger. Trying to time things just right, he raised his legs toward the wall. When they touched the wall he walked up it and, at the very top, he thrust upward. The dirigible rose enough that his bottom just brushed the top of the wall.
He couldn’t hold on much longer. There! A bit of open dirt, populated by a pack of ferret-like creatures tearing flesh from a smaller creature. They turned and ran. As he let go and dropped eight feet to the spongy ground, he gave another shout of joy and triumph.
“I feel it, Awmit. I feel the draft.” Two side tunnels joined theirs in a room-like widening of the cave, each tunnel adding to the river of wind. “Does that mean we’re close to getting out of the cave?”
Awmit’s wrinkled ankles were level with her head as he scaled the steep rocks at the end of the room. He paused for a moment. “This one sees prayerfully a lesser darkness. Opening awaits near, graceful human.”
She clambered up the slope after him. Dear God. They were going to make it to the sunlight.
A hand seized Tompa’s ankle.
Startled, she dropped the candle. For a wild moment, shadows leaped grotesquely as the candle fell and sputtered. Then the cave went black.