This was not another room as he had expected, rather a narrow corridor boxed in by blank walls. Sander strode along with that new confidence his solving of the door code had given him. Nor was he surprised when, as he approached the far end of the way, a section of the blank expanse facing him rolled aside without any effort on his part.
Sound filtered from beyond. There was a hum, a clicking, other noises. Once more he slowed, trying to judge what he might have to face. Sander had an idea that whoever used this strange maze was not one to be easily bested or even menaced by either weapon he carried. The dart thrower and his long knife were as far removed from the things he had seen as those weapons in turn were from some unworked stone snatched up by a primitive being to do battle.
Making his decision, he fitted the thrower back into its shoulder case to step through that second portal empty-handed. An increased glare of light made him blink. Nor could he begin to understand what he saw—webbings of metal, of glass, squat bases from which those webs grew, the flashing of small lights.
Among all this there was one familiar sight. Rhin bounded toward him, giving voice to yelps that meant welcome in such a crescendo of sudden sound that spoke the koyot's vast relief at Sander's arrival.
The animal's rough tongue rasped across Sander's cheek. He himself clutched the loose hide across Rhin's shoulders. In all this strangeness the koyot was a tie with a world Sander knew well.
At that moment, once more he heard the voice out of the air. This time he could not understand even a few words of its gabble. The machines, if these rods sprouting webbing were machines, stood about the walls, leaving the center of the area free. Sander advanced into that, one hand still resting on Rhin's back. There was nothing in this place that was in the least familiar though he was forced to marvel at the workmanship of the installations.
What was their purpose? Now that he could see those lines in their entirety, he was also aware that not all of them glowed. In fact, on a few of the the heavy bases the remains of webbing lay in broken fragments. From others issued a pitch of sound that made him flinch and the koyot yelp in protest as they passed them.
But there was no sign of any living creature. Sander raised his voice to call Fanyi's name. There was no answer, save the clatter and drone of the machines.
"Who are you?" For the first time then he dared the Voice to answer. It did not reply.
With Rhin beside him, glancing quickly from right to left, half expecting a challenger to arise from behind an installation, Sander crossed the room. There was a second archway, beyond which he found quite a different scene. Here, the center of a large chamber was occupied by an oval space surrounded by two similarly curved lines of cushioned chairs. The oval itself was sunk below the surface of the floor and filled with what Sander, at first glance, thought was a remarkably still pool of water. Then he realized that this was also glass or some equally transparent material.
Leaving Rhin, the smith pushed between two of the chairs which he found to be firmly fastened in position. He stood gazing down at that dull glassy surface, dark blue in color. Sander was sure that, like the food box, it had some highly significant use. The whole arrangement of this room suggested that people had once gathered here to sit in these chairs, to look down onto that surface.
It was not a mirror, for, though he stood at its very edge, it did not reflect his image. Nor were there any of those knobs along it, which the food box had displayed. Slowly, he went from chair to chair, until he reached the one at the left-hand curve of the oval. There, for the first time, he noted a difference. This chair had very broad arms studded with buttons, each bearing some of those symbols Fanyi had called letters.
Slowly, Sander lowered himself into that seat. It was very comfortable, almost as if the chair instantly adjusted itself to his form. He studied the knobs. They had something to do with the glass surface just beyond the toes of his worn boots, he was sure. But what?
There were two rows of them on each of the wide arms, arranged for the ease of anyone resting his elbows on those supports and stretching out his hands naturally. There was only one way to learn—and that was by action. He brought the forefinger of his right hand down on the nearest button.
There came no response, to his disappointment. But it was only only one button—perhaps like so much else, it had ceased to function over the long years. He could hope that enough remained active to give him some idea of why men had gathered here to watch a dull-surfaced and non-reflective mirror.
Methodically, he pressed the next button in line with no better response. But a third gave him an amazing answer. Points of light appeared on the mirror, lines glowing like quickly running fire came to life, outlining large patches, irregular in size and shape. Sander leaned forward eagerly, tried to make some meaning of the display.
There were four—no five—large outlined shapes there. Two were united by a narrow, curved string, the other two larger shapes had a firmer junction. There were also smaller ones here and there, some near to the larger, others scattered farther away. The brilliant points of light were, in turn, strewn by no orderly method over the outlined patches.
Regretfully, though he studied it hungrily, Sander could deduce no possible meaning. He pressed the next button and the pattern flashed off. New lines moved, assembled in another quite different form. Only the bright points of light now totally vanished, and many of the outlines of the patches were blurred and weak.
"Our world—"
Sander swung around, his hand already reaching for the hilt of his long knife. He did not need Rhin's growls to alert him, though for a moment he wondered why the koyot had not given earlier warning. This voice had not come, disembodied, out of the air. Those two words had been spoken by a man, a man who hobbled forward, watching Sander as warily as the smith eyed him.
The stranger was not an attractive sight. Once tall, he was now stoop-shouldered and bow-backed. His overthin arms and legs were emphasized, as was his swollen belly, by the fact that he wore a gray garment made to cling tightly. His head was covered with stiff, whitish bristle, as if the dome of his skull had been first shaven and then allowed to sprout hair again for an inch or so. A long upper lip carried a thin thatch of the same wiry growth, but his seamed face was otherwise free of beard. What skin showed—only his face and knobby-fingered hands—was so pale a color as to resemble that of the White Ones, yet it also had a grayish cast.
In one hand he held a tube that Sander believed was a weapon. He kept it carefully pointed at the smith in spite of trembling in his hands so severe that at times he had to strengthen one hand's grip with the aid of the other. And for any armament that might match the surroundings of this place, the smith already had a hearty respect.
"Our world," the apparition in gray said for the second time, and then coughed rackingly.
Sander heard a whine from Rhin and glanced in the direction of the koyot. The animal, whom he had seen charge even a herd bull and keep that formidable beast busy until the riders of the Mob could rope it, was crouching to the floor as if he had been beaten. And at the sight of that Sander's temper flared.
"What have you done to Rhin!"
The stranger grinned. "The animal has learned a lesson. I am Maxim—no beast shall show teeth to me. Be warned, boy, be warned! I have"—he made a gesture to embrace perhaps more than the room they were now in—"such powers at my command as you poor barbarians outside cannot even dream of! I am Maxim, of the Chosen Ones. There were those who foresaw, who prepared—We, we alone saved all that was known to man! We alone!" His voice scaled up thinly with a note in it that brought another whine out of Rhin and disturbed Sander. The smith thought that the line between sanity and madness already had been crossed by this twisted man.
"Yes, yes!" the other continued. "We preserved, we endured, we are the only intelligence, the only civilization left. Barbarian—look well at me—I am Maxim! There is here"—with one knotty finger he tapped the front of his head—"more knowledge than you could hope to gain in two of your limited life times. You think to steal that now? There is no way—it is locked here." Again finger thumped forehead. "You cannot even understand what you lack—so reduced is your species. You are not human as were the Before Men—!"
His babble grew more and more strident. Sander had only to look at Rhin to realize that this madman had formidable weapons, and he did not doubt that the other was equally ready to turn them on anyone or thing he might encounter. What had happened to Fanyi and the fishers? This must be the storage place she had sought, of that Sander was sure. But had she met this Maxim and paid for it? As his anger had been aroused by the sight of Rhin cowed by this mockery of a true man, so it was heightened by a mental picture of Fanyi perhaps meeting death at his hands.
"What want you?" Maxim demanded now. "What have you come to ask of Maxim? Ways of killing? I can show you such as will melt your mind with horror. We knew them, yes, we knew them all! There are diseases one can sow among the unknowing, so that they die like poisoned insects. We can keep alive a man's body to serve us, but destroy his will, even his thinking mind. We can blast a city from the earth by pressing a single button. We are masters. This place, it is of our planning, for we knew that some must be saved, that our civilization must live. And it was preserved, and we did live—"
His voice trailed into silence, the animation faded from his unhealthy face. For a moment he looked lost and empty as if he himself had been the victim of one of the mind-destroying weapons he had described.
"We live," he repeated. "We live longer than any man has done before. And after us our children live—How old do you think I am, barbarian?" he demanded.
Sander refused to make a guess that might be wrong, one that would arouse the ill will of this mad creature.
"Each people," he chose his words cautiously, "has its own norm of life span. I cannot tell yours."
"Of course not!" The man's head wobbled in a nod. "I am one of the Children. I have lived near two hundred of the years by which men used to reckon."
Which might even be true, Sander decided. How many more of these inheritors of what seemed the worst of the Before Men's knowledge still existed?
"Near two hundred years," Maxim repeated. "I was wise, you see. I knew better than to risk my life going out into the dead world, mixing with the barbarians. I told them they were doing wrong. Lang, I told Lang what would happen." He laughed. "And I was right. Barbarian, do you know how Lang died? Of a pain in his belly—of something that a minor operation would have cured. She told me that—she who said she was Lang's daughter. Of course she lied. No one of us would mate with a barbarian. She lied, but I could not deal with her for her lies because she had Lang's own transmitter.
"We were programmed from the first so there would be no quarrels among us. We were such a small number then—and it might be that we would be sealed here in this complex for generations. So there must be no quarrels, no misunderstandings. All of us had the transmitters for our own protection. You see, barbarian, how everything was arranged? How there could be no trouble we were not equipped to handle?
"And the children. Like Lang, they had their transmitters from birth. It was all so carefully thought out. The Big Brain in the sealed chamber—it knew everything. It knows everything. It has not made any contact for a time now. There is no need, of course. I, Maxim, I know all that is necessary."
"This girl who told you of Lang's death"—Sander had no doubt there was a reference to Fanyi—"where is she now?"
Maxim laughed. "She lied to me, you know. No one must lie to Maxim. I can see a man's thoughts if I wish. I can see your thoughts, barbarian! When she came, I knew there would be others. I used the—" He stopped again and eyed Sander warily. "I brought you here, barbarian. It was amusing, very amusing. There were the old testing rooms, and it was of interest to see you working your way through. She did not have to do that—not with Lang's transmitter. But you showed a certain cunning, not human, but amusing, you know. I had to have you here. The rest of your kind—they want my treasures—but they can be stopped. Since you came through my barriers, I knew I must get you all the way to be safe."
"I am here," Sander pointed out. "But the girl—what did you do with her?"
"Do with her?" The laugh degenerated into a giggle. "Why, I did nothing, nothing at all. There was no need to. The Big Brain has its own defenses. I listened to her, pointed her in the right direction, and let her go. There was no need at all for me to concern myself farther. She was even grateful to me. I—" That same tinge of bewilderment crossed his pouched and flabby face. "There was something about her. But, no, no barbarian can have any trait that Maxim cannot master! To control beasts—that I can do too. See how this mangy creature of yours fears me. Now the problem is—how to make you useful. You have no transmitter, so, of course, you can be mastered."
"But I have!" Why he claimed that, Sander did not know. But he was certain that he must make some move of his own to face up to this caricature of a man.
"You cannot!" The man's tone was petulant as that of a stubborn child. "Lang was the last to go forth. He left me, in spite of what I told him over and over, he left me! He was stupid, really. Being the youngest of the children, the breeding must have worn thin in his generation. And Lang had only one transmitter. They do not last long—not more than fifty years or so. Then they have to be recharged. So yours, if you do have one, is inoperable. It would be that of Robar perhaps. And he went longer ago than Lang. Do not try to trick me, barbarian! Remember, I am Maxim and the knowledge of the Before Time is all mine!"
"I will show you." Carefully Sander reached for the front of his outer coat. He saw that tube in the other's hand center on him, but he had to take this chance. He brought out the band of woven wire.
Maxim cackled. "That is no transmitter, barbarian! You are indeed no more intelligent than this beast. A transmitter! You do not even know what the word means. She did not know. She thought it magic—magic such as the superstitious savage plays with! And now you show me a mass of wire and call it a transmitter!"
Daring to provoke some action from Maxim, Sander again fitted the band around his head. Perhaps it would serve his purpose now if this survivor of the Before Men judged him as he had judged Fanyi—childlike and superstitious.
"It is cold iron," he said solemnly. "And I am one of those who fashion iron, so that it obeys me." He began the smith's chant.
A flicker of faint interest answered him. "That—that is a formula," Maxim observed. "But it is not right, you know. This is the way it should be." His voice took on something of a Rememberer's twang as he recited words. "Now that is the right of it. So you hoard scraps of the old learning after all, do you, barbarian? But what is cold iron? That expression has no meaning whatsoever! And—I have wasted enough time. Come, you!"
He pressed one of the spots along the side of his tube. Instantly Sander swung partly forward, pulled by the same compulsion that had brought him here. But his hands tightened on the arms of the chair.
Iron—cold iron. His smith's belief in the Old Knowledge—belittled as it had been by Maxim—that was the only weapon he had left.
He concentrated on holding to the chair, setting his teeth against the pain of the iron heating about his forehead. No—no—and NO!
Maxim's face contracted, flushed. His mouth fell open, showing his pale tongue and teeth that were worn and yellow.
"You will come!" he screeched.
Sander clung to the chair arms. The misery of that struggle within him was fast approaching a level where he could no longer bear it, he would have to surrender. And if he did, then he would be lost. He did not know why he was sure of that, only that he was.
The air between him and Maxim was aglow. Sander held on to the chair so fiercely his grip deadened all feeling in his fingers. His head was afire. He must—
A tawny shape arched through the air, paws thudding home on Maxim's hunched shoulders. The thin man was slammed down and back against the pavement to lie still with Rhin's forepaws planted on him and the koyot's muzzle aiming for the old man's throat.
As the tube spiraled out of Maxim's grip, the intolerable pressure on Sander winked out. He managed to croak out an order to Rhin not to kill. He could not allow the koyot to savage the other in cold blood. After all the man was mad and he was old. And what was most important now was to find Fanyi and warn her. Into what kind of trap Maxim had sent the girl, Sander could not guess. But he suspected that the end of it was death in one form or other.
He used part of his rope to bind Maxim. Then he raised the skinny body to put it into one of the chairs, again making fast more binding.
Finished, Sander turned to Rhin:
"Find Fanyi!" he ordered.
The koyot still faced the unconscious Maxim, growls rippling from his throat as if he had no other wish than to make an end to him. Sander came over, slapped the animal's shoulder and reached up to tug at an ear.
"Fanyi!" he repeated.
Even in this place the girl's scent must lie somewhere, and Rhin was the best tracker he had ever known. With a last threatening growl, the koyot looked from Maxim to Sander. He whined and nudged at the smith's shoulder. The animal's puzzlement was clear to read. Rhin saw no reason to leave Maxim alive; his reasoning was sensible. But at the same time Sander could not bring himself to kill the now helpless man or to let Rhin do it for him.
One might kill in defense of his own life or to protect those he had some kinship with. He would confront the amphibians, as he had, or the White Ones and feel no qualms as he watched his darts go home. That abomination they had faced in the forest glade, or the monster on the once-island—those were such horrors as aroused Sander's deepest fear. But it was not in him to put an end to this flaccid being roped into the chair, held in place only by the bonds Sander himself had set.
Sander stooped and picked up the rod Maxim had dropped. There were five dots along its side. But he had no idea what forces it controlled nor any desire to experiment with it. What was important now was time, to find Fanyi before she blundered into full disaster.
"Fanyi!" For the third time Sander repeated her name, waving Rhin away from their captive.
The koyot barked once and came. He rounded the oval and seats and kept straight ahead, Sander trotting at a brisk pace to match his guide's. Rhin moved with such purpose Sander believed the koyot knew exactly which way they must go. Perhaps the animal had even witnessed the girl being set on her way by the malicious, ancient guardian of this place.
Sander could not accept that Maxim was the only inhabitant of this hideaway. Though the other had mentioned only two names, both of the men now dead, that did not mean that all the colony meant to outlast the Dark Times had entirely vanished. Nor was the smith sure, after witnessing the confrontation between Rhin and Maxim at their first meeting, that the koyot would give him any alarm. It was only because Maxim had been so intent on taking Sander that Rhin had had a chance to rebel.
They threaded a way through rooms and halls opening one into another. Some were filled with installations, some were plainly meant for living, with divans and various pieces of oddly shaped and massive furniture.
Sander paused once when he came to another chamber where a food machine sat. This was larger than the one that had occupied the room to the forepart of this maze, with more numerous rows of buttons. Sander used his fingertips confidently and produced more rounds, wafers, and cups of water, not only to feed Rhin and himself, but to carry as extra rations in his food bag and water bottle. How a machine could produce food apparently from nothing was a mystery, but the results were tasty, not only for man but for koyot also. And Sander was more satisfied in results and less interested in means at the moment.
Rhin pattered on until they passed from a last grouping of rooms into another long hall, one with the same smooth walling and bars of dim light, though here all those were lit. The air remained fresh, with a faint current now and then. Sander continued to marvel at all the knowledge that must have lain behind the building and equipping of this refuge.
Sometime he would like to return once more to that room with the pool of glass and see the strange outlines that could be summoned to appear there. If Maxim had been right that the second series of pictures showed their world as it now was, then the earlier series must have been the world of the Before Days.
Sander carried with him a memory of the vast changes in those lines. But if the alteration had been so great, then how had this particular series of burrows managed to survive practically intact. He could understand that the inhabitants, once they had survived the worst of the world-wide changes, had their own methods of protecting themselves against the looting of any wandering band that approached their outer gate. But he could not conceive of a protection strong enough to stand against the fury of earthquakes, volcanoes, and disrupted seas.
This hall seemed to continue forever. Now and again Rhin dropped nose to the floor, followed by one of his small yelps. They were on their way, the right way—to where?