Chapter 7: Runaways

Day after day, week after week they labored, growing thin and haggard while the men's beards grew long and matted, while their clothes moldered and fell from their gaunt bodies. Phil fought a never ending battle against the compulsions that held them, fought to collect the scraps of knowledge that had leaked into his brain along with the new language.

"We've got to do something," he whispered to Luana one night as they huddled close together, sharing the feeble warmth of their naked bodies against the dampness. "We can't go on like this much longer."

"There are no more Gods," Rowlf moaned. "Now, we too shall die."

"If The Gods are dead," Harg snarled from where he and Audrey rested curled up together, "Why should we want to live?"

"We're not dead yet!" Phil retorted hotly. "If we could only make it back to where we came through, we might have a chance. There were machines down there, in the tunnels under the hill. They might... might help us to... to leave," he finished weakly.

"Nyaah, you can't say it either," Audrey taunted spitefully. "Our big, bold hero. You're no better than the rest of us. A slave to a bunch of misshapen lizards."

"Shut up!" Phil clenched his fists, trying to keep from throttling her. "If we stay here, we die. Who's willing to make a try at... at leaving?" In spite of himself, he winced at the pain of saying these words.

"Me!" Luana shot back. "I'm going with... Ooh! My head! I don't care. Take hold of my hand and make me go with you!"

"That's it!" Charley sat up abruptly from where he lay with his head pillowed on Rowlf's chest. "Don't ask us. Tell us what to do, and we'll have to do it! Tell us in their language!"

Almost blind from the pain that raged through his skull, Phil herded them into the night. No guards were out. None of the KaKree would have believed that their slaves were capable of... of escaping. There! He'd said it, if only in the privacy of his own mind! Drawing on the alien memories that Shesheck had accidentally planted in his brain, Phil prodded and bullied his friends through the jungle, careless of what monsters might lay in wait. Their naked bodies scratched and bleeding, the wolves' fur matted with mud and slime, they were a sorry looking crew in the crimson light of dawn as they toiled up the slope of one last hill.

"Faster!" Phil croaked the command in the KaKree language as the orange sun burned through the fog, his throat raw from shouting the alien words. Behind them a shrill hooting echoed faintly, burning at their frayed nerves like the devil's hunting horn. His friends faltered, the insidious call tugging at them.

"Move, damn it!" Phil snarled the command, boosting Audrey's bare and muddy rump over a boulder, slapping at it with the flat of his hand to keep her moving.

"Keep your filthy paws off of me," she shrilled wearily, but she kept moving.

"Harg, see that she keeps up. Rowlf, how's Charley doing?"

"I'll make it," Charley answered for himself, one hand clenched in Rowlf's thick fur. "Jes' don't let them devils call us back to them."

"That's the way," Phil encouraged. "Keep talking so you can't hear them."

They toiled upward, snarling nonsense words at each other as a means of shutting their ears to the honking cries that came ever closer, ever louder. The clouds thinned, and for the first time on this planet they could see the sun. Shafts of orange light stirred ever louder cries from behind them, harsher and more frantic. Phil tried to drown them out but even he found his feet dragging, his head nearly splitting from the pain of resisting.

"Come on," Luana cried from on up the hill. "We're almost there!"

"Move, you miserable wrecks," Phil roared joyfully, hope springing anew. "Come on, come on, up the hill with you. We'll beat them yet. Harg, keep Audrey moving. Attaboy, drag her by the hair if you have to! Rowlf, Charley, keep plugging. That's the way. Now, down into that hole. Anything from the old days, they kinda keep away from. Not quite a taboo, but almost. No! Don't stop! Keep moving, damn it! Don't listen!"

He shouted at them, screamed at them, cursed them as they wavered, drowning out the commands of their pursuers. One by one he forced them down through the hole into the corridor below. Backing clumsily after them, he tugged and scraped at the dirt and rocks with his bare hands.

"Come back, slaves!" The shrill cry dragged at him, slowing his movements, but he forced himself to ignore the words and the pain they brought. "Come back. You can't escape!"

The shrilling cry tore at his brain one last time. He spun down into darkness as the hole collapsed around him, still clawing feebly at the jagged rocks, hanging onto one last shred of purpose that wouldn't let him quit.

"It's all right, Darling." Luana's soft fingers soothed his aching head as it lay in her lap. "The hole's blocked, but I'm afraid it won't hold for very long."

"Boy, what a head!" He groaned as he tried to sit up, then essayed a feeble grin up at her concerned face. "At least the adventurous life does have some compensations. How long was I out?"

"Only a minute or two. You brought down a bunch of rocks with you when we pulled you in by your heels, but they were mostly little ones and we got you loose all right. Those awful lizards can't get at us for a while, but we can't get away, either."

"You got us into this, you blockhead," Audrey shrilled from out of the semi-darkness. "Now let's see you get us out and back home. This is all your fault!"

"Be quie', woman," Harg snarled. "Wha' we do nex'?"

"Pile up more rocks between us and the outside. Charley and Luana and I'll work at that while the rest of you check this place out. Audrey, you can take a look at that room at the end of the corridor where the machines are, see if anything in there still works, or can be used as a weapon. Rowlf, you and Harg hunt for doors or windows, any way to get out of here or that the KaKree could use to get in."

There was pitifully little debris to pile up in their pursuers' way, and already they could hear faint sounds of digging above them.

"I can't get into that room," Audrey called. "It's blocked off solid. What else can I do to help?"

"Go see what Harg and Rowlf are doing. Look for pieces of metal, anything we could dig with. Come on, we've done all we can here. Let's take another look at that end room, see what we can find."

The roof of the corridor had sagged and crumbled here as though pressed down by a heavy weight. They tried to dig their way into the room that gave them such tantalizing glimpses of still-gleaming machines, but they made little progress. Phil was casting worried glances at the frail barrier they had erected behind them when Harg's shrill yelp brought them running. He was scratching at a section of wall in one of the rooms, Audrey trying to help him with her bare hands.

"What is it?" Charley's voice was shrill with tension. "What didja find?"

"Damp, cool air," Harg answered. "From behind here."

Behind a crumbling facing that might once have been plastic was a corroded metal panel. Phil's bare heel crumpled it enough for his fingers to grip an edge. He tore it loose, revealing a dark hole that exhaled a gust of air that smelled of ancient mold.

"It's a stairway," Luana exclaimed, edging cautiously closer. "Do you see any loose roots?"

"No roots." Harg thrust his head into the opening. "Walk sof'."

"Hey, you're not getting me into that hole," Audrey protested. "No way!"

A rumbling, sliding crash from out in the corridor interrupted her, and they heard once more the triumphant hoots of the tribe of KaKree. Before Audrey could react, Phil hustled her through the dark opening and down the stairs.

"Hurry up!" He hissed orders at them in KaKree speech, giving them no choice but to obey. They scrambled down the awkwardly spaced steps, ignoring the scrabbling of tiny claws as small scaled things darted from their path.

"This way!" Harg led them through an arched opening in one wall, turning aside from the stairway with its awkwardly placed steps. "Down there is only smell of water."

Only a faint glimmer of bluish light showed where an occasional deep-probing root had found a crevice to follow in its search for water. They went almost blindly most of the time, following dusty tunnels, climbing up and down short flights of steps, detouring around places where the ceilings had collapsed through the ages. Behind them the nerve-tearing hoots grew fainter and fainter, until at last they were lost in dusty silence.

"Where are we?" Phil ventured the question when at last Harg stopped to rest. "Where are you leading us?"

"I do no' know," was Harg's blunt answer. "Jus' try to hide. Can always follow our smell back if we wan' to."

"No thanks. We might just as well keep going until we either find a way out or stumble onto something we can use."

Rowlf moved forward, delicately testing the air, and Harg seemed glad to let him take over. Phil noted with a trace of amusement that Audrey kept close to Harg's side, seeming to take comfort in the young wolf's massive strength. Luana stayed just as close to his side, one hand resting lightly on his arm, and Charley brought up the rear as they threaded their way through the tangled underground web of passages. They drank from infrequent pools of water, twice hacking loose sections of glowing root to feed their bellies when pangs of hunger could no longer be denied.

"What are these here tunnels?" Charley asked during one of the rest stops that were growing more frequent as their muscles tired. "And how come they're still in this good condition after ten or twenty thousand years?"

"Service tunnels under the city, I'd guess." Phil pointed out corroded fastenings where something had stretched along one wall. "They probably connected all of the buildings. As for their condition, I've got a feeling that the flaring of their sun wasn't all that long ago. Maybe only a few hundred years. This wet a climate; it doesn't make sense that things would have lasted too much longer than that."

"Then why haven't we found a way to get into these other buildings?" Audrey's voice was a subdued whimper, her fingers twisting nervously where they were locked in Harg's thick mane. "These tunnels just keep going on forever."

"We are going slowly upward," Rowlf told her. "There have been doorways, stairs leading up, but so far all have been blocked. I follow a trace of moving air, i' will come ou' somewhere."

"You have the keener nose, my brother," Harg rumbled. "I canno' be sure of the scen', i' is so fain'."

"Then it must really be faint," Audrey whispered half to herself, and Harg lolled out his tongue in a pleased canine grin.

"Here is a way tha' is no' blocked," Rowlf announced an immeasurable time later. Stumbling with fatigue, the little band crept cautiously forward. Rotting doors crumbled at their touch, and they found themselves in a gloomy basement. A few beams of reddish light lanced down from tiny windows set somewhere high above them, revealing the crumbling remains of dust shrouded bales and boxes in tumbled disarray.

"Nothing here but a lot of old rotten papers what falls apart in your fingers," Charley reported, raising a choking cloud of dust with his explorations. "Let's see if we can find a way outa here."

"This way," Harg called. "More stairs."

If there had ever been a railing, it had long since rotted away. They climbed in single file, pressing close to the rough stone wall. At the top was another, sturdier door, but here too time had taken its toll. A couple of kicks, and Phil and Charley soon had it open.

"Watch it!" Phil caught Charley's arm as the door swung open, hauling him back when he would have lurched through the opening.

"Yikes! It's more of them damned roots, and all of them waving around loose. Now what're we gonna do?"

The question was well put. The whole area in front of the door, the whole floor of the building was a waving mass of groping roots that twisted and squirmed, reaching out for anything that moved.

"Stay back," Phil warned. "We'll have to find another way out of here."

"Too late," Harg snarled with quiet ferocity. "I hear the KaKree!"

They swung around, standing utterly still for a long moment. Faintly through the still air came a shrill hoot that seemed to echo and re-echo from the cellar walls. Whether by scent, sight or some other means, the reptilian monsters were on their trail again.

"There's no place for us to go," Luana breathed, instinctively moving closer to Phil's side.

"Here, lemme clear us a path!" Charley grabbed a length of splintered wood from the shattered door. Swinging it in both hands, he waded into the forest of pallid tendrils. For a few yards he did all right, tendrils curling back or crushing under his two-handed blows. "See, here's how ya... Whoops!"

The improvised club flew from his hands as he missed a swing, and with a startled squawk he went down flat on his back. Curling tentacles hid him from sight, and for an instant all was still.

"Come on," Phil shouted. "We've got to get him out of there!"

"No, wait!" Harg stopped him, thrusting bodily in front of him to stop his rush. "Look there!"

With almost comically frantic haste the bluish tendrils were uncurling and writhing away from Charley's struggling body. He rose to his feet, beating the last of the roots away from his bare legs.

"Hey, lookit," he chortled. "They don't like my taste. Come on, the rest of you, before they change their minds."

They moved forward warily, ready to beat off the grasping roots, but it wasn't necessary. When a reaching tendril did curl around a bare ankle it would only cling for a moment before dropping limply away.

"Whatcha think makes them do that," Charley wondered.

"Must be our taste, just like you guessed," Phil answered. "It isn't just the salt from our sweat, or they'd grab the wolves. Hey, there's a stairway up to the next floor. Let's see what's up there."

"But, the KaKree," Rowlf argued. "They'll have us cornered."

"We'll have to take that chance. Look over there, the front of the building's all caved in. There's no way out through there."

"Can't we go any faster," Audrey complained. "Those awful lizards will be here any minute."

"These things will only let us go about so fast," Phil answered. "Anyway, these roots are thinning out as we get closer to the stairs." He pushed forward, batting away a couple of tendrils that hadn't gotten the message, and started up the stairs. "Okay, now. You can hurry all you like."

They trotted up the stairs, Rowlf and Charley in the lead, and had almost reached the top when a chorus of hissing shrieks told them that they had been spotted.

"Come back, slaves!" The shrill scream tore at them, and it was all Phil could do to ignore it and keep his friends moving. Their forward progress had almost completely halted when the screamed commands broke off in hissing yells of pain and fear.

"The roots grabbed them," Harg exulted. "Run, before they ge' loose!"

"This way, " Rowlf called. "Here is a way ou'."

A high-arched window opened onto a balcony, and at its end a ruined arch of cracked and crumbling stone stretched across space to the remains of another building.

"Come on," Phil urged. "Let's get across before they fight their way free. They'll never be able to cross this thing, they're too big and heavy."

"Watch out for loose stones," Charley warned. "We may not make it, either, if we don't watch out. This thing looks like it's about ready to collapse out from under us."

Driven by the faint echoes of strife from the building's lower floor, they crawled laboriously across the bridge. Originally a broad walk in keeping with the size of its builders, time and weather and quakes had all taken their toll. Little or nothing was left of the level top, and it was all they could do to keep their footing as they scrambled across.