With a Tangled Skein (42 page)

She shot out of the chamber. She was on a high mountain, on a steep slope, accelerating. Below her were diverging tracks in the snow, marked by thin columns of fire. One track led to a towering ski jump, another to a broad and ice-covered lake.

She skewed into the third track, which seemed to be a slalom: a twisting path between the firepoles. She was no slalom expert, but this seemed a better bet than the others.

She passed the first pole and made a wide turn around it, almost losing her balance. She was way out of form and she lacked the lithe muscles of youth. Who ever heard of a middle-aged woman doing the slalom?

She overcorrected and brushed by the second pole, touching it. There was a sizzle as it burned her elbow; her clothing caught fire, and the pain was sharp. She brought her other hand about to slap out the flame-and the ski pole whirled around, upsetting her balance, and she spun out of control on the skis. She went right through a firepole; this time her face smarted from the burn, and her hair caught fire.

She flung aside the ski poles and dived into the snow, trying to douse her blazing head. The skis twisted sidewise, and her dive became a preposterous belly flop. The snow was hard, almost like ice dusted by a powdery layer. Now she was sliding on her stomach down the slope, completely out of control. One leg was twisted; she felt the pain shooting along it.

Then she was rolling, her skis tearing free along with one shoe, leaving the foot bare. The slope steepened, then became a dropoff. She fell-

Into the lake. The ice cracked, and she plunged under it, immersed in the shockingly cold water. She tried to swim up to the surface, but she had drifted under the unbroken section of the ice and banged her head on it from below. She inhaled to scream-and sucked in water.

Her consciousness was fading, but she focused on one thing; the threads. She clutched out a thread and flung it as well as she could.

Suddenly she was moving upward. She passed through the ice without breaking it and landed on her feet on the surface. She had managed to avoid drowning, thanks to the magic.

She looked about her. The ice supported her weight, in this region. To the side was a single ski that had followed her down; the other seemed to be lost in the snow of the slope. One ski pole floated in the open water where she had broken through. Her bare foot was freezing. She was here in spirit only, but only her intellect knew the difference; she felt every bit of it. Now she had the proof that those who suffered in Hell really did suffer!

She looked at her collection of threads. It had shrunk significantly. She had destroyed herself several times over, in the course of that spill! She was well behind on the running score now.

She limped across the ice, coughing out what remained of the water she had tried to breathe. She picked up the lone ski and found it was the wrong one; it was for the left foot, while her right foot needed the shoe. Of course her right foot was the wrenched one, so skiing on it might be awkward anyway. But she used the ski as a clumsy pole to brace against, and started dragging herself up the nearest slope that could be navigated. She would have to go the long way around, to get above the dropoff and find the other ski with her shoe, and it wasn't going to be pleasant, but she had no choice.

She slogged up. Her bare foot hurt in the snow, but soon it became numb-which was no good sign. She tried to hurry, but her left leg also had been wrenched, it was now apparent, and haste was impossible. To make things worse, a wind was coming up, cutting cruelly through her inadequate clothing.

She was never going to make it this way! She sighed, and fumbled out another thread. She flung it up at the top of the dropoff, and followed it up. She had just saved herself perhaps half an hour of slogging-but lost yet another thread.

A white figure loomed before her. It was a snowman! "Damn it!" she swore. She swung the ski at the monster.

It passed right through without resistance. Niobe spun around and fell to the ground, a victim of her own inertia, An illusion!

She picked herself up and plowed on until she came to the slide-marks of her own descent. These she followed up until she spied the other ski, with her shoe attached. She hurried toward it-and dropped into an illusion-covered hole.

It was only an ice-pocket, but it cost her two threads. She got out and proceeded on to the ski, where she detached her shoe, dumped out the snow, and put it on. The stocking was gone. It hardly mattered; her whole leg now felt like a dead stick.

Where to, now? She had to find her way out of this frozen mess!

She decided that the slalom remained her best chance. She tracked over to it and tramped down its slope. She no longer had any trouble keeping the course; what were impossibly tight turns at speed on skis were quite simple on foot. If she had been smart, she would have gotten off the skis at the outset and walked down. She was not on show for skiing here; she just wanted to cover the course. The whole ski-setup was probably a diversion; she had allowed Satan to dictate the mode of play, and naturally this had led to disaster.

She paused to warm herself at a firepole, but it was an illusion. How fiendishly clever: the early poles were real, so that they had burned her, while some key later ones were illusion; probably she could have skied down the course successfully if she had known which firepoles to ignore. This one blocked the direct course, so that the skier had to make a wide and dangerous turn to avoid it.

She went to the next pole, which was real, and came close to it. But it wasn't effective as a heater; the fire was too hot up close, and inadequate at a distance. She needed a warm ambience, not a sharply defined line-source. She dragged herself on along the track.

There was a termination station at the foot of the mountain. A ski lift was there, but it didn't go up the slope she had descended. Evidently it led to the next aspect of the maze.

She was too cold and tired to debate the merits properly. She climbed into the seat. It was comfortable; it was a blessing to get off her feet. She buckled the safety harness. Imagine that: a concern for safety in Hell! The thing began to move. It hoisted itself into the air, hanging below its line, and proceeded slowly across the terrain.

Now she counted her remaining threads. There were just twenty. Sixty-eight threads she had lost in that fiasco! That seemed an impossible number-but Mars would not have let her be cheated. Probably some had fallen out of her pocket during her slide down the mountain, and some had been washed away by the water. How would she ever catch up now?

But she reminded herself that she didn't have to catch up; she just had to make it through the maze. If she used her mind henceforth, she could still do it. She had to believe that.

How much more of the maze remained? She didn't know. But whatever it was, she would negotiate it.

She reached down to chafe her cold leg. Some sensation was returning. That was good and bad; good because it indicated recovery, bad because it hurt. But that would pass; she had been tromped to death, as it were, by the headfoot monster, but had recovered immediately. It seemed it took longer to recover from sixty-eight threads worth of mischief than from two threads worth. But she would recover.

The lift entered a tunnel. Light flared-and she saw she was in a kind of factory. The chairs of the lift moved among robots that used tools to adjust things. Obviously if she were in the correct spot, she would get adjusted- and that would not be at all comfortable. She had to find a clear route through.

The line overhead divided. She shifted her weight to the right, and the seat took the right line. She could control her travel, to some extent.

What she evidently could not do was pause in her progress. The seat kept moving forward at its measured pace. That provided her inadequate time to decide. The thing would not go backward, which meant she was committed to whatever decision she made. She could not change her mind and withdraw. She might already have made the wrong choice!

A robot loomed ahead. It had a roughly humanoid headbox and a pair of articulated metal arms. One terminated in a giant pincers, the other in a sharp knife. Evidently the robot was intended to hold and slice, trimming off excess material from the subject. If she was the subject, she could lose some flesh. Unless the robot was illusion.

She flung a thread at it. The thread struck the robot and vaporized. The robot remained. So much for that faint hope.

Niobe hastily unbuckled her belt and jumped out of the chair. She fell to the floor of the foot-pedestal of the robot. Vapor wafted up; that fall had cost her another thread. This was an ongoing disaster! She was sure she couldn't proceed through the maze unless she rode the lift-and this was the wrong line.

But she didn't want to depend on chance at all. She had to figure out the pattern, as she had in the maze-andmonster section. Then she could get through with minimal losses.

She stood and looked at the towering robot. How could she analyze this pattern? She couldn't even see it from below-and she perceived no way to get above it. Not for a weak middle-aged woman.

She had to use her mind, because her body was inadequate. She sat at the base of the robot and pondered, while the seats of the lift trundled on over her head. Assume that she had to ride the lift to get through and that her options were limited once she was on her way. She could not fathom the overall pattern, so would have to guess. Could she win through? She had lost what little faith she had in luck, here in Hell. What about guile? Satan was the master of guile; could he fall victim to his own technique? He had done so in the Luna-Orb matter, yet-

Then she had it. If this failed-well, she probably would have lost anyway. If this succeeded, she might win through.

She tossed a thread toward the robot's shoulder, and in a moment she was there, clinging to her precarious perch. She took hold of the robot's head and yanked. The covering came off; it was a cup-shaped cap with apertures for the eye lenses. Underneath were the gears used to rotate the head on the neck. She didn't bother with them; all she needed was the helmet. And maybe an arm.

She set the helmet-cap on her own head. It reeked of oil and fit quite loosely, but she was able to see out of the lens apertures. She grabbed for an arm.

The robot felt the contact, or perhaps the pressure on the extremity. The gears spun in the head, and the lenses swiveled to cover the arm. Then the hinge-elbow flexed, and the arm folded back on itself.

She grabbed it and pulled. It froze in place, and did not move. All of her strength could not budge it.

So much for that. She would have to settle for the helmet. She hoped it would suffice.

She watched the seats of the lift as they passed. When a suitable one approached, she threw a thread at it and followed the thread onto the seat. Quickly she settled herself and fastened the belt.

The robot reached for her. "Uh-uh!" she exclaimed, I facing it with her eye-slits. Her voice reverberated in her helmet. "I'm a testing robot. Clank-clank!"

The robot hesitated, its head-gears spinning as its gaze followed the motion of her seat, almost as if the gears were brains in operation. By the time the machine made up its mind, she was beyond it.

The line diverged again. She picked her course, and moved on to the next robot. "Clank! Clank!" she cried again in the helmet. Again the robot hesitated, its program not quite covering this, and again she got through. It was working!

Unfortunately for her, this line was not the correct one;

it dead-ended. It terminated in a station that went nowhere. The seats turned over, folded up, and followed in a line leading back to the other side of the factory; no way to ride farther. But nearby a line seemed to be going somewhere. She used a thread to reach it-and passed through it, crashing on the floor. It was an illusion!

She had to use yet another thread to reach another line. This one was real-but it too dead-ended.

She kept trying. At- last she made it to a line that went somewhere. A robot reached for her; she warned it off- and it kept coming. It had not been deceived by the helmet, and she had no time to scramble free! She screamed as the pincers took hold of her-and passed through her body harmlessly. It was another illusion!

That meant she was back on track. She rode this line to the true terminus: a walk that led out of the factory. She removed her helmet and surveyed her situation. Her frozen leg had thawed and was serviceable, but she had only five threads left. She didn't know how far she still had to go, or how many illusions remained. But she was sure that, one way or another, she was near the end.

-16- ANSWERS

Outside the factory was another hall. She walked cautiously along it, alert for tricks. There seemed to be none. Soon she came to an intersection with a hall at right angles. In the center, mounted on a base, was a fancy plaque. She approached this and looked at it. It said: WELCOME TO THE FINAL SERIES OF CHALLENGES. THREADS REMAINING: 5. ILLUSIONS REMAINING: 10.

She considered this. Was it genuine, or a trick by Satan? Certainly it had her threads correctly listed; if the illusions were also correct, then she was much closer than she had supposed. She could still win this contest!

But it could be a plant, intended to deceive her. Should she use a thread on it to verify its accuracy? No, that would be foolish. If it was a lie, it should be a complete lie-and obviously it wasn't. Better just to assume it was correct and make sure she wasted no more threads. She would count off the remaining illusions, because, once that total reached zero, she would know she had won. But she would not trust it too far, because, if the plaque were a lie, it could cause her to think she had eliminated the last illusion when she had not-and that last illusion could wipe her out. But probably Mars would not have allowed Satan to volunteer false information, because there should, after all, be a distinction between illusion and outright lying.