Otherland-4-SeaofSilverLight

The trip down into the burrow had been horrible, the four of them carried like pieces of dead meat, which was clearly how the mutant web-builders already thought of them. Paul had fought back, but with his limbs tightly held had managed only to get himself dragged along sharp rocks and to earn a stinging blow on the head from a misshapen claw that was not quite either a hand or a hoof.

The only bit of good fortune was that they were not bound. The sticky cables remained as part of the web; the creatures had needed to drool some putrid-smelling fluid on their captives just to pull them free of it.

Several dozen of the monsters were in just this open part of the burrow where the captives had been thrown down, but Paul, his senses raw in the darkness, thought he could hear chattering voices down the side tunnels as well. It was not completely dark; something was burning or gleaming in one of the tunnels, letting in a bit of the light and throwing just enough definition onto their crawling captors and the nest to make Paul see how hopeless was any thought of escape.

The things were not human. He had to keep reminding himself of that, both to ease the horror and to keep the embers of hope smoldering. The spider-buffalos showed little or no organization, and were clearly used to prey that was either stunned or already dead. Other than roughly shoving T4b back when the boy had tried to scramble out of the pit, they had not bothered with any other precautions against escape. Not that more precautions seemed needed: they outnumbered Paul and his friends by ten to one or more, and were each at least as strong as a person.

Trying to decide what the things actually were, with an eye toward discovering a weakness, was little help. They were just some wild mutation of the simworld, possibly intentional—perhaps there was even a cruel joke in the way they resembled the buffalo of the American West that had been so completely and swiftly slaughtered for their hides, massacred by the thousands, skinned, and then left to rot on the plains. In any case, they were big, fast, apparently without conscience, and obviously had a tooth for human flesh. Man-bones crunched underfoot on the tunnel floors and in greater numbers here in the pit itself, becoming even more common lower down the slope toward the pit's black depths.

As if to underscore this, Paul put his hand down on something sharp. He felt around, expecting to discover another jawbone, and found instead something small, square and hard which he held up to catch the faint light. It was a rusty belt buckle, bent as though the belt itself had been torn open with great force while still fastened. Paul's stomach lurched. It was not hard to imagine these fierce, hairy creatures doing just that in their haste to make a meal of the tender flesh beneath it.

Despair swept over him like a cold rain. What could they do? Fight the monstrosities with bare hands and a belt buckle? Or take up jawbones, like Samson, to smite their enemies?

But I'm no bloody Samson, am I?

"Paul?" It was Florimel, a short distance away. "Are you there? You cried out—are you hurt?"

"Just put my hand on something." He stared up the slope at the grotesque figures moving in the half-light—probably performing the mutant equivalent of setting the table—and tried to keep the hopelessness out of his voice. "Any ideas?"

He could not see her, but he could hear her grunt of misery. "Nothing. I can barely crawl. I landed hard when we fell from the wagon."

"How are the others?"

"Martine is alive, but I think she is hurt, too—she is very quiet, talking to herself just over there. T4b . . . T4b is praying."

"Praying?" It startled him, but he could not claim to have any better ideas.

"There are so many of these monsters, and we are all so tired. I am frightened, Paul."

"I am, too."

Florimel fell into troubled silence. Paul could see no reason to make her talk. It would be one thing if they had a plan, but the situation was too bleak for peppy chats.

So it is me, then? Is it down to me to come up with something? I didn't bloody well ask to be here in this network in the first place. At least he didn't think he had—he still couldn't remember, but it would be hard to imagine: "Oh, and if you have a few spare moments, Mr. Jongleur, how about locking me up in a World War One simulation and torturing me a bit, all right?"

But why, then? He was a nobody, a museum employee, a university graduate with less power than a classroom teacher or a shop steward. If he had interfered in the raising of Jongleur's daughter, why hadn't they just fired him? If he had somehow discovered something of the Grail Project, as seemed likely, why not just kill him? Perhaps they had not wanted the irritation of arranging an accident or a suicide, but it seemed bizarre to think that people like Felix Jongleur and his associates would lavish so much attention on a nonentity.

Even if the World War One simulation had been something already built. Finch and Mullet, otherwise known as Finney and Mudd, had devoted a great deal of time to him, and had doggedly tracked him all over the Grail network. Why?

Shuddersome memories of his escape from the trenches came back to him, made worse by the similarity to his present situation. The mud, the bodies, the shattered pieces of men and their machines lying beneath his feet. . . .

A thought sparked. Paul, who had been crouching on his heels, suddenly dropped back onto all fours and crawled down the slope, feeling with his hands. It was disgusting work. Not only were the human and animal remains more common as the slope descended, but many of them had not been completely cleaned of meat, remnants perhaps from days of great feasting when all the spider-creatures ate their fill with some left over. The bleak realization struck him that he and his friends probably represented a similar bounty—that they had been unharmed so far only because they were to be the centerpiece of some grisly festival meal.

The stench near the bottom of the pit was terrible, the ground and remains alike active with small creatures taking advantage of the web-builders' generosity. Worst of all, the farther he crawled the less light he had, and he was forced to handle every collection of remains as he looked for something which might save his life and the lives of his companions.

Clambering across the rot and muck, it was hard to put the last hours of the World War One simulation out of his mind. Ava—Avialle—had appeared to him there as well, lying in a coffin like a vampire princess. "Come to us," she had said. Was she simply speaking lines the Other had given her, as Martine guessed? Trying to bring Paul and his companions together in a sort of fairy-tale-inspired rescue mission? But why? And what was Ava's part in it? Why did she pick such strange ways to contact him?

He had been running his hands across the thing for some seconds before he realized what it was. At first he had unconsciously rejected it—if a buckle was no use, what good could be done with a rotting belt?—but as his fingers traced the length of it, coming at last to the large triangular pouch at the end, he felt his heart thump as though it might stop.

He had been hoping only for a walking stick or perhaps even a knife, something the creatures had thrown away that would even the odds a little. Now he hardly dared breathe as he pulled the pistol out of its holster. It seemed to be a revolver such as he had seen in old Western flicks. It was surprisingly heavy, but that was all he could tell about it by touch—he was no expert, and had never thought he would need to know anything about pistols, ancient or modern. Of course, not even the most paranoid of gun-obsessives had ever envisioned a situation quite like this.

Working slowly, but with a pounding sense of urgency, he carefully pulled and pushed at the cylindrical drum until it pivoted free of the barrel. He squinted, but could see nothing. A finger carefully inserted into one of the holes found an obstruction, and further examination showed that all the rest of the gun's six chambers were the same. Bullets—or mud? There was no way to tell without light and time, and Paul doubted he would get enough of either. And even if they proved to be bullets, there was still no guarantee that damp and dirt had not made them useless.

He hesitated. A part of him wanted to continue down the slope, a wild gambler's impulse suddenly activated by success. Maybe he would find enough pistols to arm the whole company. This was Dodge City, after all—many of the creature's captives must have been armed. Perhaps he would find something even more useful. It was hard to believe there would be a Gatling gun lying in the pit's muddy reaches, but there might be a shotgun. Paul actually knew how to shoot one of those, having endured several hunting weekends in Staffordshire with Niles and his family before mustering the courage to admit to himself, and then to Niles, that he never again wanted to stand on a cold moor with a group of people whose idea of a good time was to get drunk and blast small animals to shreds.

Still, he would not mind blasting the things capering above him into random particles, not at all. A shotgun would be a very satisfying, mind-easing thing to have, and he would not be placing all his hope on the performance of one gun—a pistol that could have been lying here in the dark for the simworld's equivalent of years, for all he knew. . . .

It was tempting, but he could not take the risk. He was almost fifty meters down the slope from his companions—what if the creatures snatched them now? He would have to get quite close before aiming would be anything more than a blind lottery in this near-darkness.

He turned and began laboring up the slope, cursing now when he slipped on the bones and decomposing tissue he had so actively sought on the way down. As if to confirm his worst fears, definite activity of some kind had begun on the rim of the pit: the spidery creatures were gathering, their hissing, gulping cries rising in shared excitement. Paul heard a panicky shout from Martine. He tripped and fell, too numb and frightened now even to curse his luck, and scrambled upward on all fours like an animal, struggling to keep the gun out of the dirt.

"I'm coming!" he called. "Get ready to run!"

He reached the top of the pit in time to see one of the two women—in the half-light he could not tell which—being dragged out by a cluster of hairy creatures while her two companions pulled desperately at her arms in a gallant but failing struggle to keep her. Paul pushed up beside them and found himself only a meter away from the closest of the buffalo-spiders, which turned its smashed face toward him, squinting lopsidedly at this slightly unexpected arrival. It left its fellows to the job of dragging Florimel off to be eaten and reached for Paul with hideously long arms. He lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell. Nothing happened.

The creature's horn-plated paw struck him on the head and knocked him backward. The pistol flew from his hand into the darkness and dirt. He sank to his knees, the faint lights and deep shadows now wavering as though seen through water. The creature that had slapped at him hesitated for a moment, torn between following up the attack and going back to help its fellows secure the chosen meal. In that space of a half-dozen fluttering heartbeats Paul recovered enough of himself to crawl after the gun. He lifted it again, certain that it was all useless, steadied his hand, and yanked the trigger once more.

This time the explosion was like a bomb going off. Fire leaped from the muzzle, and simultaneously the malformed head of the creature seemed to disappear. The other creatures sprang back, shrieking like startled gulls, but he could hardly hear them for the ringing in his ears.

"Run!" Even at a shout, his own voice sounded as though it were far away, floating through cotton. "Come on!"

He grabbed at the nearest hand and tugged its owner, who turned out to be Martine, up the slope. The creatures had let go of Florimel, and now one of the inhuman shapes lurched in front of him. Paul shoved the gun into the thing's midsection and the creature bent double and flew backward as the gun detonated again. The creatures were leaping around the darkened nest in growing confusion, but Paul could only concentrate on what was just ahead of him.

Trusting that the other two were following, Paul dragged Martine toward the tunnel from which a little light washed out, praying that it was the sun. He had to duck his head as he entered the lower passage, and a surprise swipe from one of the creatures almost took his face off. Terrified, Paul squeezed the trigger, not bothering to aim. He didn't think he hit it, but the muzzle flash and the explosion of powder sent the creature squealing away down a side tunnel.

A dozen more steps and his heart sank. There was no sun. The tunnel widened into a broad space with a great fire pit in the middle, the flames surrounded by a crude ring of blackened skulls, both animal and human, and a corona of burned split bones. Several more of the monsters had backed against the wall, startled by the sudden appearance of the escaping prisoners, but they looked as though they were mustering the courage to attack.

No sun. We'll just stagger through these tunnels till they surround us or we run out of bullets. . . . The adrenalized numbness wore away a little. He realized he was already gasping for breath, that his wrist ached from the kick of the pistol. Behind him, Martine was jerking frantically at his arm.

"It's no good," he said. "Just their . . . their kitchen. No sun."

"Keep going!" She was fighting to control her voice. "You're going in the right direction. Go on!"

He could only hope she knew what she was saying. The little party hurried forward through the flaring yellow light. He waved the pistol, backing several of the creatures out of their path. One would not be bluffed, so Paul fired again. The thing fell to the floor in a hissing, writhing heap, forcing them to inch around it with their backs against the damp clay of the tunnel wall. Its guts had spilled onto the ground and the stench clawed at his nostrils.

How many bullets gone? Do I have any left?

Time became something not quite calculable as they stumbled through the nest. With every branch the tunnels seemed to get smaller and smaller. Paul began to feel horridly certain that Martine had made some miscalculation, that one or two more turnings would lead them into a tube where they would have to crawl on hands and knees, and from there into a wall of dirt where they would be trapped.

No, that was the war, he told himself. The shrilling of the enraged spider-buffalos was all around him. He felt his thoughts fragmenting. Keep your mind on what's in front of you . . . in front of you. . . .

"Go to the right!" Martine shouted. "Paul! To the right!"

He hesitated because at that moment he honestly could not think which direction was which. He felt Martine shoving him from behind and allowed himself to be guided out of the tunnel into a passage that turned sharply upward, a twisting path through cracked and broken rock.

"I see light!" he said excitedly. A circle of dim, twilight blue hovered a hundred meters above him, but this was no trick, no monster's cookfire: there were faint stars in it, real, honorable stars, as welcome as the faces of old friends. "Hurry!"

He reached back to help Martine over a stone that jutted into the passage like a crooked tooth and had a moment of panic when he could see no one behind her. Then T4b and Florimel lurched into view, made clumsy by their hurry to get out of the corridor below.

"They're coming," cried Florimel as she pulled down stones and earth, shoveling them with her hands into the tunnel opening to slow the pursuers. "Dozens of them!"

Paul could not make his way up the steep tunnel with only one hand free; he shoved the pistol into the pocket of his torn, muddied coveralls and began to climb, stopping every few meters to reach back and help Martine. The sounds of pursuit were growing louder. As Paul felt the first breath of outside air wafting down the tunnel onto his face, Florimel shouted that the creatures were forcing their way into the passage below.

Paul reached the top of the hole and dragged himself out, gasping in his first breath of clean air in hours. He had only moments to look around as he helped Martine and the others out, but what he saw did not encourage him. They were in the middle of a stony mountainside almost bare of vegetation, a thousand meters above a valley floor already drowned in evening shadow. The top of the rocky ridge was much closer, but only after a terrible climb across jagged stones and loose scree. . . .

"We have to go down," he gasped as he and Martine dragged Florimel over the lip of the hole. Behind her T4b was muttering in terror and dismay, and almost knocked the older woman down the steep slope to certain death in his hurry to get out of the tunnel.

"Right behind me," T4b gasped. "Grabbin' my legs, them."

"Let's go," Paul said. "Maybe they won't follow us across open ground."

He didn't really believe it himself, and the hope proved futile by the time they had slipped and skidded a dozen meters from the tunnel. A horde of the spider-buffalos spilled out of the hole onto the hillside. They gulped and jabbered excitedly, peering around nearsightedly until one of them saw Paul and the others, then the whole bristling crowd of them came boiling down the slope like termites out of a split log.

Paul drew the pistol and aimed it at their pursuers. The jerk of the gun's detonation knocked him off-balance so that he stumbled into T4b and almost sent them both tumbling down the mountainside, but although the closest of the creatures recoiled from the shot, halting the pursuing pack for a moment of milling confusion, none of them fell.

Paul turned and hastened downhill behind his companions. He was fairly certain he had no bullets left, and carrying the gun in his hand was a terrible risk to balance, but the thought of facing a rush of those hairy things with only his bare hands was too much. If it wouldn't shoot, he would use it as a hammer.

I'll smash a few of those ugly faces back in the other direction before they get me. Even in his own head, the words sounded like the most pathetic and useless sort of bravado.

Martine was in front now, but at the rear of the line Paul could barely muster time to wonder about the wisdom of letting a blind woman lead them. The footing was terrible, loose stones and shallow soil everywhere: he could only pray Martine's strange gifts would make her a better guide across such terrain than others might be. As it was, every hurried step threatened to start an avalanche: Paul alternated between clinging to T4b's shoulders for balance and supporting the teenager in turn when patches of loose stones turned into little rockslides below T4b's feet. Florimel was clearly in pain and could move only slowly, but they could better accommodate her pace in their downward scramble than if they had been fleeing across even ground. Even so, Martine had to stop every few steps and help the German woman onto the next relatively stable spot.

Paul did not dare lake his eyes off the slope in front of him until a sudden squealing from their pursuers, a shrilling chorus that sounded something like panic, made him turn back. Several of the monsters, scuttling too quickly across a section of scree already loosened by the passage of Paul and his companions, had started a slide. As Paul watched, the rocky earth crumbled away beneath them and they went hissing and shrieking down the mountain, freefalling in a hail of loose stones and dirt. For a moment Paul felt something like hope, but only a few had fallen, and although the rest had to stop and clamber uphill to make their way around the deadly section, it was the briefest of delays.

The sun had now disappeared between the horns of the stark mountain range on the far side of the river basin. Cold shadows climbed up out of the canyon. Paul could almost feel his heart freezing inside his chest.

We'll never make it. We'll die here in this idiot, backwater world. . . .

A horrid wet barking noise, very close, stopped him in his tracks. He whirled to see two of the creatures crouching on a promontory just above him, twisted mouths open and drooling with excitement. They had found a faster way along the mountainside and had outflanked him from above.

The nearest leaned out over the edge of the rock shelf, long legs drawn up beside its head like some hairy midnight cricket. Paul only had time to let out a little shout of surprise and dismay before the thing unfolded itself in a powerful spring.

To his complete astonishment the beast missed him, even seemed to jolt and change direction in midair. It landed heavily at his feet, limp as a flour sack, and skidded a few meters down the slope to lie unmoving below him. The second monster leaped just as the crack of the gunshot that had killed the first reached Paul's ears.

The second spider-buffalo sprang only a little way down-slope to land just above him, and had time to rear up on its legs and snatch at him before something went past Paul's ear like the crack of a whip and punched into its matted chest, drenching him in an explosion of blood.

Whoever was firing now shifted aim onto the large crowd of spider-buffalos farther up the slope. Bullets pinged off of stones and sent up gouts of dirt, but an almost equal number struck their targets; within seconds a half-dozen of the creatures were tumbling down the hill while the rest let out bubbling shrieks of dismay, eyes rolling with terror.

"Get down!" Paul scrambled forward and yanked T4b to earth, then huddled facedown while shots winnowed their pursuers. He could turn his head to one side just far enough to see Florimel's back where she lay nearby; Paul could only hope she had not been hit, and that Martine was safe on the other side of her.

The chase and almost inevitable capture of a meal had now turned into a spider-buffalo's worst nightmare. The rest of them scrambled back up the slope in a disorderly rout, leaving their dead and wounded scattered on the mountainside, some of the carcasses still bouncing from the impact of stray bullets. If Paul had not been so tired and terrified that he could barely remember his own name, he would have let out a bellow of triumph.

A few shots followed the survivors until they disappeared into the shadows of the rocks far above, then the mountainside was silent.

"What. . . ?" Florimel rasped. "Who. . . ?"

Paul waited, but there was no shout of warning or welcome. He sat up and cautiously looked around, trying to guess where the shots had come from, but could see nothing but the darkening mountain. "I don't know. I just hope they're on our side. . . ."

"There," Martine said, pointing.

Two hundred meters down the hillside, near a jumble of boulders that looked very precariously perched, a light was moving. Someone was waving a lantern, signaling to them. It was just a small thing, a wavering gleam still faint in the last rays of the sun, but at the moment Paul thought it looked like a glimpse of heaven.

The person who held the lantern was small, face almost hidden by a scarf and hat pulled low, and the long billowing coat also seemed too large for the slight frame, but Paul was still surprised when the stranger spoke in a woman's dear voice.

"You can just stop there," she drawled. "There are a few guns pointing at you, so unless you think you can outrun a bullet better than those things that were chasing you, I suggest you tell us your business."

"Business?" Florimel was so tired her temper was as raw as her voice. "Business? Running for our lives from those monsters. They were going to eat us!"

"It's true," Paul said. "And we're grateful you drove them off." He tried to think of something else to say; he was so exhausted he thought he might collapse any moment. "Just don't shoot at us. Do you want us to reach for the sky?" It was about the only thing he could remember from netshow westerns.

The woman took a few steps toward them, holding up the lantern which was now the main source of light on the mountainside. "Just hold your water for a minute while I get a look at you." She peered at Paul and his companions, then turned and called over her shoulder, "They look like real folk. More or less."

Somebody shouted something from behind the boulders that Paul could not make out, but apparently it was agreement; the woman with the lantern waved them forward.

"Just don't do anything too fast or tricky," she said as Paul and the others staggered down the slope toward her. "The boys have had a long day, but they'd be willing to kill a few more if they had to."

"Bitch talk that fenfen," T4b muttered sourly. "Don't like it, me."

"I heard that." The woman's voice had gone cold. A pale hand appeared from the voluminous sleeve, the small gun pointed right at T4b. "I don't need Billy and Titus to deal with you, boy—I'll put you down myself."

"Jesus!" Paul said. "He didn't mean it! He's just a stupid kid. Apologize, Javier."

"Sayee lo, you! Do what. . . ?"

Martine grabbed his arm and yanked. "Apologize, you idiot."

T4b stared at the muzzle of the derringer for a moment, then cast his eyes down. "Sorry. All tired, me. Those things tried to kill us, seen?"

The woman snorted. "Just watch your mouth. I may not be a lady myself, but we got a few in there who are, not to mention some young ones."

"We're sorry," Paul told her. "We thought we were all going to die down in that nest."

The woman's eyebrows rose. "You got out of one of them nests?" she said. "Well, that's something. My man will be pretty interested to hear about that, if it's true."

Paul heard T4b's intake of breath and turned a stifling glance on him. "It is true. But we wouldn't have made it without your help."

"Tell it to Billy and Titus when you go in," she said, gesturing to a space between two standing boulders. "They did most of the shooting."

Paul ducked his head and stepped through into the flicker of flames in a dark place—for a moment it was so much like the nest that he could not help fearing some terrible trick.

"Annie is a fair hand with a buffalo gun herself," someone said beside him. Paul turned, startled. "Shoots better than she dances, anyway. Don't let her tell you different." The man who had spoken had long, fair hair and a face freckled with dirt that Paul realized only later was gunpowder. Several other people stood behind him, hanging back in the shadows where the firelight did not quite reach.

"That is Billy Dixon," the woman said as she and the rest of Paul's friends filed in. The cavern knifed far into the hillside but was screened on the open end by an ancient tumble of boulders. Paul could see these survivors had picked their fortification well—only a few chinks between the great stones let in any sight of the evening sky. "Billy might be the best hand alive with a Sharps gun—even my man would allow that was true."

Dixon, who had a long straggling blond mustache and the beginnings of a serious beard covering his broad face, showed a smile but said nothing.

"And my name is Annie Ladue," she said, unwinding the scarf. She was attractive, or should have been, with a sharp chin and big, heavy-lidded eyes, but her teeth were bad and one cheek was marked with a long horizontal scar. "If you behave, we'll get along well. Titus." she called over her shoulder, "what's going on out there?"

"Nothing," a deep voice said. "No sign of nary a one of those devils, 'cept the dead ones." A tall black man with a very long rifle swung himself down from a higher spot among the rocks—a look-out post of sorts, Paul guessed. He landed beside them with a thump.

"And this is Titus, who perforated that jackalo what was jumping down to give you a haircut and shave you wouldn't have forgotten, mister," Annie said.

Paul stuck out his hand. "Thank you. Thank you all."

After a moment's hesitation, Titus took it. "You would have done it for me, too, wouldn't you? Ain't no question of skin when something like that is coming after someone."

For a moment Paul was puzzled, then remembered that this was supposed to be nineteenth-century America, where things like racial differences still meant a lot. "Absolutely," he said. "Except I don't ever want to shoot a gun again."

Billy Dixon gave a little snort of amusement and wandered off toward the depths of the cave. The other inhabitants were coming forward now. As Annie Ladue had said, many of them were women with children. In fact, except for a couple of old fellows who hobbled up to look the newcomers over and congratulate the shooters, Billy and Titus appeared to be the only young men in the cavern.

"I'm glad you enjoyed the show, Henry," Annie told one old man notable for what looked to Paul like complete and utter toothlessness, "because you can go pick up the Springfield and stand first watch. It oughta be cool now, and mind you don't bang that barrel on any rocks." She turned to Paul and the others. "This way we stand a chance of getting some good out of him before he gets into the liquor."

The ancient laughed and went off to get the gun. Annie seemed to be one of the leaders, if not the leader. Paul was intrigued, but it was not enough to overcome his weariness. The adrenaline had worn off and strength was running out of him like air from a punctured tire.

"Do you folks want something to eat?" Annie asked. "There's not much, but there is some beans and hardtack, which is sure better than nothing."

"I think we just want to sit down somewhere," Paul said.

"Lie down," Martine quietly amended him. "I need sleep."

"Then you all better come over here and bunk down in what we call the shooting blind," their hostess said. "That way we can keep the young ones away—if you try to lie down back where everyone else is at, the little rats will be all over you." She led them up a narrow makeshift path through the tumble of stones that screened the front of the cave until they reached the flat top of a boulder several meters across. A few animal skins scattered across it—Paul guessed they were buffalo hides—made it look quite inviting; At one edge the old man she had called Henry sat staring out through a crevice between two large stones, a long rifle propped beside him.

"These people need to get some rest," Annie told him. "Which means that if I hear you bothering them, you'll answer to me. So keep your no-tooth mouth shut."

"I'll be quiet as the grave," he said, eyes wide with mock fear.

"Which is where you'll end up if you cross me," Annie said as she departed.

"You all lie down," Henry told them. "I'm keeping an eye out, and I see better than I chew." He chortled.

"Oh, God," Florimel said as she slumped heavily onto the nearest buffalo hide. "A damned comedian."

Paul didn't care about that or anything else. Even as he lay back he could feel sleep dragging at him, swallowing him as if the very stone beneath him had become liquid and he was sliding downward, downward into its depths.

He woke up with a throbbing head, a dry mouth, and a light but firm pressure against his ribs. The man named Titus was standing over him, high-boned African features betraying nothing.

"Want to get your friends up and come on," he said, giving Paul another gentle shove with his boot toe. "The rest of 'em have come back and the boss man wants to talk to you."

"Boss man?" Paul asked muzzily. "Come back from where?"

"Hunting." Titus leaned against the boulders while he waited for the foursome to rouse themselves. "You don't think we eat those be-damned jackalos, do you?"

Following the tall, lanky Titus, Paul was reminded of his sojourn in the imaginary Ice Age, the excitement that had prevailed at the hunters' return. There was a great deal of activity all across the wide cavern, and several fires were burning where only one had been lit when he and his companions had first arrived—perhaps to make it easier to see what was happening outside the stronghold.

"What time is it?" Paul asked.

"Don't know exactly, but it's morning," Titus told him. "You all slept like you needed it."

"We did."

Titus led them into a second large cavern, the one into which Paul guessed the other inhabitants had withdrawn the night before. Now it was just as busy as the outer chamber, full of the smell of cooking meat, and the smoke was even thicker. Paul was surprised to see three men with long knives dismembering the carcass of a good-sized calf. "They've been out hunting cows?"

"Better we get 'em than leave 'em to the jackalos and the devil-men," Titus said.

"Devil-men?" asked Florimel. "What are those?"

Titus did not reply, but stopped and gestured with his chin toward the calf butchers. "Go on. He's been asking about you."

Paul and the others took a few steps forward. A broad-shouldered, well-built man with a thick mustache and a dusty plug hat rose from his crouch with the casual ease of a lion coming up out of the grass.

"I'd offer my hand," he said, "but as you can see I'm bloody up to the elbows. Nevertheless, you're welcome here. My name is Masterson, but my friends and a few of my more informal enemies call me Bat."

"Bat Masterson?" Paul stared despite himself. It should not be a shock to run into simulacra of famous people, not in this artificial universe, but it was still a surprise when it happened.

"Heard of me, have you? That'll teach me to spend time with newspapermen."

"Most of what's written about him is lies," Annie Ladue said as she climbed to her feet beside him. Paul realized that he had again mistaken her for a man. She gave her paramour an affectionate pat on the rump. "But to be fair, only about half the lies are Bat's."

"Sit down and work, woman," he said. "We've got a half a hundred mouths to feed, which means we'd better be cutting pretty close to the bone." He turned his attention back to Paul and the others, looking them up and down, his interest obviously piqued by the coveralls they had inherited back in Kunohara's bugworld. "So what are you folk? Circus performers? Traveling players? You'd find an eager audience here. The little ones are getting a mite fretful in here after all these days."

"No, we're not . . . performers." Paul had to suppress a bemused smile. If this were a netflick, they'd probably have to pretend they were. What kind of bizarre act could they cobble up between them? See the Amazing Lost Man! Marvel at the World's Most Sullen Teenager! "We're just ordinary people, although we come from a long way away. We were passing through and got lost, then those . . . things attacked us."

Once again, the system's ability to absorb anomalies moved them smoothly past an impediment; their odd garments were not mentioned again. "I heard about that," Bat said. "I heard you fought your way out, too—which, if the ladies will pardon my language, is pretty damn impressive. How did you manage?"

"I . . . I found a gun," Paul said, pulling it carefully out of his pocket. "It had enough cartridges in it for us to shoot our way out, but just barely. We would have been killed if your people hadn't been there."

"We have a lot of trouble with that nest so close," said Bat casually, but his gaze had not left Paul's pistol. "But this is the best place to defend for miles, so we chose the lesser of two evils."

"How did you wind up in this situation. . . ?" Paul began.

"I hate to interrupt," Bat said, "and you may take this amiss, but I hope not. Would you extend me the courtesy of letting me have a look at that shooting iron of yours?"

Paul paused for a moment, confused by the strange tension in Masterson's tone.

"Don't," said T4b in a too-loud whisper, then grunted as Florimel stepped hard on his foot.

"Of course." Paul proffered it butt-first, but Masterson would not take it until he had found a handkerchief in his vest pocket so he could hold it without smearing blood on it. He lifted it up to catch light leaking in from a high chink in the cavern wall.

"You say you found this in the nest?" His voice was casual, but there was still something in it that made Paul nervous.

"I swear. In the muck, down with all the bones of animals and . . . and people. It was in a holster."

Bat sighed. "I'd almost rather you were lying. This is Ben Thompson's gun, and a better man and a better shot would be hard to name. I haven't seen him since all hell broke loose, but I was hopeful he was still alive out there somewhere, maybe at one of the other camps up on the ridgetop. But if you found it in the bottom of one of them godforsaken nests. . . ." He shook his head. "Dead is the only way Ben would be to let someone take his iron off him." He offered the gun back to Paul. "It's yours by right of spoils, I guess."

"To tell the truth," Paul said, "I've hardly ever fired a pistol before this and I'll be happy if I never fire one again. If it belonged to a friend of yours, you keep it."

One of Bat Masterson's dark eyebrows crept upward. "I'd like to think you might get your pacifistic wish, sir, but it doesn't seem likely. We'll run out of bullets long before we run out of trouble."

"What kind of trouble is this?" demanded Florimel. She had been impatiently quiet for too long. "Why are there mountains? We've never heard of anything like that. And what are these monsters?"

"More importantly," said Martine, "how do we get into Dodge City? Can we reach it from here?"

Paul was puzzled by her question for a moment, until he remembered what she had said about finding the gate that could lead into Egypt.

Masterson, Annie, and Titus were far more surprised than Paul, and regarded her with something like astonishment, although Bat, when he spoke, was almost courtly. "My dear lady, no offense, but where in creation have you greenhorns come from? Get into Dodge City? You might as well ask to be let into Hell's own saloon bar! You'd be better off stripping yourself naked—begging your pardon for the crudeness—and running into the nearest Comanche camp screaming 'All Indians are liars and fools!' "

Titus snickered. "That's a good one."

Annie was less amused. "They just don't know, Bat. They're from somewhere else, that's all. We should find out, though, because maybe that somewhere else is a better place to be than here."

Bat smiled. "The lady has more sense than I do, and more manners. Perhaps we should share information. . . ." Before he could finish his sentence, long-haired Billy Dixon appeared. "Prisoner's cutting up somethin' fierce," he announced.

"Damn. Maybe you could lend a hand here, Billy—I've been a bit distracted."

Bat offered him the knife, but Dixon plucked one out of a sheath on his leg so quickly that it seemed to jump into his hand from thin air. "Got my own."

"If you just come and set your eyes on the little charmer we brought back with us," Bat said, beckoning to Paul and the rest, "it will save me a fair piece of explaining." He led them toward the back of the cavern, well away from the fire. A few more hard-faced men looked up at their approach; Paul guessed they were the ones who had accompanied Masterson on his hunting trip.

"These fellows came down on us the day after the earth started moving," Bat said. "There was so much dust in the air we didn't even see them until they were almost on top of us. Then someone came riding down past the Long Branch screaming that a Cheyenne war party was coming up fast. We got all the women and children and old folks into the church, rest of us saddled up and got our guns. Didn't do us much good. For one thing, these aren't any Cheyenne like I've ever seen. . . ." He stopped. "I hear he's getting twitchy, Dave," he said as one of the men stood up.

The man, lean and with most of the bottom half of his face hidden by an immense whiskbroom mustache, shrugged. "I say ventilate him. He won't tell us nothin' but his name—at least I think it's his name. Keeps saying, 'Me Dread,' over and over. . . ."

"Oh great God!" said Florimel, staggering a step backward. "How can this be?"

"Bastard shot me!" snarled T4b.

"It is Dread," Martine whispered. She had gone deathly pale. "Although he no longer wears Quan Li's body, I could not be mistaken."

Paul stared at his companions, then at the slender, nearly naked man in a breechclout lying on the ground before them, bound tightly hand and foot, covered in bruises and dried blood. The prisoner looked up at them with no sign of recognition. His teeth were bared in a grin of exertion as he writhed in his bonds like a snake. His dark skin and Asian eyes gave him a little of the American Indian look, but Paul could not doubt Martine's senses. He had never met the much-feared Dread, but he had heard more man enough: despite the prisoner's obvious helplessness, he took a step back as well.

The prisoner laughed at Paul's retreat. "Hah! Me kill you all."

Bat Masterson crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, if you folks dislike this one so much, you might want to reconsider your travel plans. You see, this fellow's got himself about a thousand identical cousins, and right now they're all having themselves a hell of a wingding on Front Street down in Dodge."

CHAPTER 2OThompson's Iron

CHAPTER 2O
Thompson's Iron