Dreaming Jewels (19 page)

“The Judge will take care of the police. Sit down, my dear.” When she did not move, he roared at her.
“Sit down!”
She gulped and sat in the chair at the end of the long desk. He reached out and trapped her wrist, pulled it toward him. “The Judge tells me you like having your fingers cut off.”

“I don’t know what you m-mean. Let me g—”

Meanwhile Solum was on his knees beside Horty, rolling his head, slapping his cheeks. Horty submitted patiently, quite conscious. Kay screamed.

“Nice noisy carnival we have here,” smiled the Maneater. “That’s quite useless, Miss Hallowell.” He pulled a heavy pair of shears out of the drawer. She screamed again. He put them down and took up the blow-lamp, passing the flame lightly over the crystals which lay winking before him. By some fantastic stroke of luck—or perhaps some subtler thing than luck, Horty flashed a quick look through his lashes at that precise second. As the pale flame touched the jewels, he threw his head back, twisted his features—

But he did it on purpose. He felt nothing.

He looked at Zena. Her face was strained, her whole soul streaming through it, trying to tell him something…

He opened his mind to it. The Maneater saw his eyes open and hurled another of those frightful psychic impulses. Horty slammed his mind shut barely in time; part of the impulse got in and jolted him to the core.

For the first time he fully recognized his lack, his repeated failure to figure things clearly out for himself. He made a grim effort. Zena trying to tell him something. If he had just a second to receive her… but he was lost if he submitted to another such blow as the first one. There was something else, something about—
Solum!
The signaling hand on his shoulder, the hot eyes, bursting with something unsaid…

“Hit him again, Solum.” The Maneater picked up the shears. Kay screamed again.

Again Solum bent over him; again the hand pressed his shoulder secretly, urgently. Horty looked the green man full in the eyes and opened up to the message which rolled there.

ASK THE CRYSTALS. Ask the crystals how to kill one of their dream-things. Find out from the crystals.

“What are you waiting for, Solum?”

Kay screamed and screamed. Horty closed his eyes and his mind. Crystals… not the ones on the table. The—the—
all
the crystals, which lived in—in—

Solum’s hard hand landed on his neck. He let it drive him under, down and down into that lightless place full of structural, shimmering sensations. Resting in it, he drove his mind furiously about, questing. He was ignored completely, majestically. But there was no guard against him, either. What he wanted was there; he had only to understand it. He would not be helped or hindered.

He recognized now that the crystal-world was not loftier than the ordinary one. It was just—different. These self-sufficient abstracts of ego were the crystals, following their tastes, living their utterly alien existences, thinking with logic and with scales of values impossible to a human being.

He could understand some of it, untrammeled as he was with fixed ideas, though he was hammered into human mold too solidly to be able to merge himself completely with these unthinkable beings. He understood almost immediately that Monetre’s theory of the crystal-dreams was true and not-true, like the convenient theory that an atom-nucleus had planetary particles rotating about it. The theory worked in simple practice. The manufacture of living things was a function with a purpose, but that purpose could never be explained in human terms. The one thing that was borne in on Horty was the almost total unimportance, to the crystals, of this function. They did it, but it served them about as much as a man is served by his appendix. And the fate of the creatures they created mattered as little to them as does the fate of a particular molecule of CO2 exhaled by a man.

Nevertheless, the machinery by which the creation was done was there before Horty. Its purpose was beyond him, but he could grasp its operation. Studying it with his gulping, eidetic mind, he learned… things. Two things. One had to do with Junky’s eyes, and the other—It was a thing to do. It was a thing like stopping a rolling boulder by blocking it with another rolled in its path. It was a thing like lifting the brush-holder on a DC motor, like cutting the tendons at the back of the hind legs of a running horse. It was a thing done with the mind, with a tremendous effort, which said a particular
stop!
to a particular kind of life.

Understanding, he withdrew, not noticed—or ignored—by the strange egos about him. He let in the light. He emerged, and felt his first real astonishment. His neck stung from the blow of Solum’s hand, which was still rebounding. The same scream which had begun when he went under came to its gasping conclusion as he came up. Bunny still stared between the slow blink of her drugged-looking lids; Zena still crouched with the same tortured expression of concentration in her pointed face.

The Maneater hurled his bolt. Horty turned it aside, and now he laughed.

Pierre Monetre rose, his face blackening with rage. Kay’s wrist slipped out of his hand. Kay bounded for the door; Armand Bluett blocked her. She cowered away, across to Zena’s corner, and slumped down, sobbing.

Horty knew what to do, now; he had learned a thing. He tested it with his mind, and knew immediately that it was not a thing which could be done casually. It meant a gathering of mental powers, a shaping of the mass of them, an aiming, a triggering. He turned his mind in on itself and began to work.

“You shouldn’t have laughed at me,” said the Maneater hoarsely. He raked in the two jewels and dropped them into a metal ash tray. He picked up the blow-lamp, meticulously adjusting the flame.

Horty worked. And still, a part of his mind was not occupied with the task. You can kill crystal-creatures, it said. The Maneater, yes, but—this is a big thing you are going to do. It may kill others… what others? Moppet? The two-headed snake? Gogol?
Solum?

Solum, ugly, mute, imprisoned Solum, who had, at the last moment, turned against the Maneater and had helped him. He had carried Zena’s message, and it was his own death warrant.

He looked up at the green man, who was backing away, his flaring eyes still anxiously filled with the message, not knowing that Horty had read it and acted upon it seconds before. Poor, trapped, injured creature…

But it was Zena’s message. Zena had always been his arbiter and guide. The fact that it was hers meant that she had considered the cost and had decided accordingly. Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps Solum could, in some unfathomable way, enjoy a peace that life had never yielded him.

The strange force mounted within him, his polymorphic metabolism draining itself into the arsenal of his mind. He felt the drugged strength drain out of his hands, out of the calves of his legs.

“Does this tickle?” snarled the Maneater. He swept the flame over the winking jewels. Horty sat rigidly, waiting, knowing that now this mounting pressure was out of his control, and that it would release itself when it reached its critical pressure. He kept his gaze fixed on the purpling, furious face.

“I wonder,” said the Maneater, “which crystal builds which part, when two of them go at it.” He lowered the flame like a scalpel, stroking it back and across one of the crystals. “Does that—”

Then it came. Even Horty was unprepared for it. It burst from him, the thing he had understood from the crystals. There was no sound. There was a monstrous flare of blue light, but it was inside his head; when it had passed he was quite blind. He heard a throttled cry, the fall of a body. Slowly, then, knees, hip, head, another body. Then he gave himself up to pain, for his mind, inside, was like a field after a wind-driven brush fire, raw and burnt and smoking, speckled with hot and dying flames.

Blackness crept over it slowly, with here and there a stubborn luminous pain. His vision began to clear. He lay back, drained.

Solum had tumbled to the floor by his side. Kay Hallowell sat against the wall with her hands over her face. Zena leaned against her, her eyes closed. Bunny still sat on the floor, staring, weaving very slightly. Near the door, Armand Bluett was stretched out. Horty thought, the fool passes out like a corseted Victorian. He looked at the desk.

Pale and shaken, but erect, the Maneater stood. He said, “You seem to have made a mistake.”

Horty simply stared at him dully. The Maneater said, “I would think that, with your talents, you would know the difference between a crystalline and a human being.”

I never thought to look,
he cried silently.
Will I ever learn to doubt? Zena always did my doubting for me!

“You disappoint me. I always have the same trouble. My average is pretty high, though. I can spot ’em about eight times out of ten. I will admit, though, that
that
was a surprise to me.” He tossed a casual thumb at Armand Bluett. “Oh well. Another heart case on the Fair Grounds. A dead crystalline looks just the same as a dead human. Unless you know what to look for.” With one of those alarming changes of voice, he said,
“You tried to kill me…
” He wandered over to Horty’s chair and looked down at Solum. “I’ll have to learn to get along without old Solum. Nuisance. He was very useful.” He kicked the long body idly, and suddenly swung around and landed a stinging slap on Horty’s mouth. “You’ll do twice what he did, and like it!” he shouted. “You’ll jump when I so much as whisper!” He rubbed his hands.

“Oh-h-h…”

It was Kay. She had moved slightly. Zena’s head had thumped down into her lap. She was chafing the little wrists.

“Don’t waste your time,” said the Maneater, casually. “She’s dead.”

Horty’s fingertips, especially the growing stubs on his left hand, began to tingle.
She’s dead. She’s dead.

At his desk, the Maneater picked up one of the crystals and tossed it, glancing at Zena. “Lovely little thing. Treacherous snake, of course, but pretty. I’d like to know where the crystal that made her got its model. As nice a job as you’ll find anywhere.” He rubbed his hands together. “Not a patch on what we’ll have from now on, hey, Horty?” He sat down, fondling the crystal. “Relax, boy, relax. That was one hell of a blast. I’d like to learn a trick like that. Think I could?… Maybe I’ll leave it to you, at that. Seems to be quite a drain on you.”

Horty tensed muscles without moving. Strength was seeping back into his exhausted frame. Not that it would do him much good. The drug would hold him if he were twice his normal strength.

She’s dead. She’s dead.
When he said that, he meant Zena. Zena had wanted to be a real live normal human being… well, all strange people do, but Zena especially, because she wasn’t human, not at all. That was why she’d never let him read her mind. She didn’t want anyone to know. She wanted so
much
to be human. But she’d known. She must have known when she sent him the message through Solum. She knew it would kill her too. She was—more of a human being than any woman born.

I’ll move now,
he thought.

“You’ll sit there without food or water until you rot,” the Maneater said pleasantly, “or at least until you weaken enough to let me into that stubborn head of yours so I can blast out any silly ideas you may have about being your own master. You belong to
me
—three times over.” He handled the two crystals lovingly. “Stay where you are!” he snarled, whirling on Kay Hallowell, who had begun to rise. Startled and broken, she sank down again. Monetre rose, went and stood over her. “Now, what to do with you. Hm.”

Horty closed his eyes, and with all his mounting energy, he thought. What was the drug Monetre had used? One of the ’ocaines, surely—benzocaine, monocaine… He was conscious of approaching vertigo, the first hint of nausea. Which drug would yield just this effect, then demonstrate just this much toxicity? In the back of his mind, he saw the riffling pages of a drug dictionary.

Think!

A dozen drugs could have this effect. But Monetre would certainly choose one that would do all he wanted—and he wanted more than immobility. He wanted psychic stimulation with it.

Got it!
The old standby—cocaine hydrochloride. Antidote… epinephrine.

Now I’ve got to be a pharmacy, he thought grimly. Epinephrine…

Adrenalin! Close enough—and very easy to supply under the circumstances. He had only to open his eyes and look at the Maneater. His lips curled. The vertigo faded. His heart began to thump. He controlled it. He could feel his body going into a forced-draft condition. His feet began to tingle almost unbearably.

“You could be a heart failure case too,” the Maneater was saying pensively to Kay. “A little
curare…
no. The Judge is enough for one day.”

Watching Monetre’s back, Horty flexed his hands, pressed his elbows against his sides until his pectoral muscles crackled. He tried to rise, tried again. He all but collapsed, and then freedom and hate combined to accelerate the return of strength to his body. He rose, clenching his hands, trying not to breathe noisily.

“Well, we’ll dispose of you in some way,” said the Maneater, returning to his desk, talking over his shoulder at the frightened girl. “And soon—
uh!”
He found himself face to face with Horty.

The Maneater’s hand crept out and closed around the jewels. “Don’t come one small half-inch nearer,” he rasped, “or I’ll smash these. You’ll slump together like a bag of rotten potatoes. Don’t move, now.”

“Is Zena really dead?”

“As a doornail, son. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it was so quick, I mean. She deserved a more artistic treatment.
Don’t move!”
He held the crystals together in one hand, like walnuts about to be cracked. “Better go back and sit down where it’s comfortable.” Their eyes met, held. Once, twice, the Maneater sent Horty his barbed hate. Horty did not flinch. “Wonderful defense,” said the Maneater admiringly. “Now go and
sit
down!” His fingers tightened on the crystals.

Horty said, “I know a way to kill humans too.” He came forward.

The Maneater scuttled back. Horty rounded the desk and came on. “You asked for it!” panted the Maneater. He closed his bony hand. There was a faint, tinkling crackle.