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Then you are to stop him from trying to harm me.
"The other beings in this palace are my
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enemies, and you are to attack and kill any as soon as you see one or more than one. First, though, you
will take this cube, after I have spoken a message into it, and you will let the other taloses hear it. It will
tell them to attack and kill my enemies. Do you understand fully?"
The talos saluted, indicating that he comprehended. Kickaha spoke into the cube, set it to repeat the
message a thousand times, and gave it to the talos. The armored thing saluted again, turned, and marched
off.
Kickaha said, "They carry out orders superbly, but the last one to get their ear is their master. Wolff
knew this, but he didn't want to change their setup. He said that this characteristic might actually work out
to his advantage someday, and it wasn't likely that any invader would know about it."
Kickaha next told Do Shuptarp how to handle a beamer if he should get his hands on one, then they set
out for the armory of the palace. To get to it, they had to cross one entire floor of this wing and then
descend six stories. Kickaha took the staircases, since the Sellers would be using the elevators.
Do Shuptarp was awed at the grandeur of the palace. The great size of the rooms and their furnishings,
each containing treasure enough to have bought all the kingdoms in Dracheland, reduced him to a
gasping, slavering, creeping creature. He wanted to stop so he could look and feel and, perhaps, fill his
pockets. Then he became cowed, because the absolute quiet and the richness made him feel as if he
were in an extremely sacred place.
"We could wander for days and never meet another soul," he said.
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Kickaha said,' 'We could if I didn't know where I was going." He wondered how effective the fellow
would be. He was probably a first-rate warrior under normal circumstances. His handling of himself in the
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water-filled chamber proved that he was courageous and adaptable. But to be in the palace of the Lord
was for him as frightening, as numinous an experience, as it would be for a terrestrial Christian to be
transported to the City of God and to discover that devils had taken over.
Near the foot of the staircase, Kickaha smelled melted metal and plastic and burned protoplasm.
Cautiously, he stuck his head around the corner. About a hundred feet down the hall, a talos lay
sprawled on its front. An armored arm, burned off at the shoulder by a beamer, lay nearby.
Two Black Sellers, or so Kickaha presumed they were from the caskets attached to their backs by
harnesses, lay dead. Their necks were twisted almost completely around. ,Two Sellers, each holding a
hand-beamer, were talking excitedly. One held what was left of the black cube in his hand. Kickaha
grinned on seeing it. It had been damaged by the beamer and so must have stopped its relay. Thus, the
Sellers would not know why the talos had attacked them or what the message was in the cube.
"Twenty-nine down. Twenty-one to go," Kickaha said. He withdrew his head.
"They'll be on their guard now," he muttered. "The armory would've been unguarded, probably, if this
hadn't happened. But now that they know something's stalking upwind, they'll guard it for sure. Well,
we'll try another way. It could be dangerous, but then what isn't? Let's go back up the stairs."
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He led Do Shuptarp to a room on the sixth story. This was about six hundred feet long and three
hundred feet wide and contained stuffed animals, and some stuffed sentients, from many universes. They
passed a transparent cube in which was embedded, like a dragonfly in amber, a creature that seemed to
be half-insect, half-man. It had antennae and huge but quite human eyes, a narrow waist, skinny legs
covered with a pinkish fuzz, four skinny arms, a great humped back, and four butterfly-like wings
radiating from the hump.
Despite the urgency of action, Do Shuptarp stopped to look at the strangeling. Kickaha said, "That
exhibit is ten thousand years old. That kwiswas, coleopter-man, is the product of Anana's biolabs, or so I
was told, anyway. The Lord of this world made a raid on his sister's world and secured some specimens
for his museum. This kwiswas, I understand, was Anana's lover at that time, but you can't believe
everything you hear, especially if one Lord is telling it about another. And all that, of course, was some
time ago."
The monstrously large eyes had been staring through the thick plastic for ten millennia, five thousand
years before civilization had set in on Earth. Though Kickaha had seen it before, he still felt an awe, an
uneasiness, and insignificance before it. How strongly and cleverly had this creature fought to preserve its
life, just as Kickaha was now fighting for his? Perhaps as vigorously and wildly. And then it had died, as
he must, too, and it had been stuffed and set up to observe with unseeing eyes the struggles of others.
AH passed . . .
He shook his head and blinked his eyes. To philosophize was fine, if you did so under appro-
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priate circumstances. These were not appropriate. Besides, so death came to all, even to those who
avoided it as ingeniously and powerfully as he! So what? One extra minute of life was worth scrapping
for, provided that the minutes that had gone before had been worthy minutes.
"I wonder what this thing's story was?" Do Shuptarp muttered.
"Our story will come to a similar end if we don't get a move on," Kickaha said.
At the end wall of the room, he twisted a projection that looked as fixed as the rest of the decorations.
He turned the projection to the right 160 degrees, then to the left left 160, and then spun it completely
around twice to the right. A section of wall slid back, Kickaha breathed out tension of uncertainty. He
had not been sure that he remembered the proper code. The possibility was strong that a wrong
manipulation would have resulted in anything from a cloud of poisonous gas or vapor to a beam which
would cut him in half.
He pulled in Do Shuptarp after him. The Teutoniac started to protest. Then he began to scream as both
fell down a lightless shaft. Kickaha clapped his hand over Do Shuptarp's mouth and said, "Quiet! We
won't be hurt!"
The wind of their descent snatched his words away. Do Shuptarp continued to struggle, but he subsided
when they began to slow down in their fall. Presently, they seemed to be motionless. The walls suddenly
lit up, and they could see that they were falling slowly. The shaft a few feet above them and a few feet
below them was dark. The light accompanied them as they descended. Then they were at the bottom of
the shaft. There was no
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dust, although the darkness above the silence felt as if the place had not seen a living creature for
hundreds of years.
Angrily, the Teutoniac said, "I may have heart failure yet."
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