Lankar of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #6
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Lankar of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
...in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar's plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world's edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet - the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves...
“Aye … aye!” crowed Glypto excitedly. “That be the secret all right!” Admiration shone in his glistening eyes, dawning comprehension on his homely face. “The yellow dogs of Kuur are mind-magicians, able by mystic power to read, and, aye, to influence the thoughts of other men … .”
“Ah! I see it now. Precisely, sir!” Dr. Abziz broke in, his high-pitched voice excited. “We are already aware that these Mind Wizards can in fact project their own thoughts and ideas into the minds of others; they did this with the Empress Zamara of Tharkol, we know, causing her to see, or to think she was seeing, miraculous visitations of the Lords of Gordrimator.* With their amazing powers over the human mind, it should be no great trick for them to impose a permanent illusion over this opening, convincing the eye of everyone who stands here that he is looking at a wall of solid rock, when actually there is an opening cut in the stone, invisible to him because it is covered by the illusion. Ingeniops! Remarkable!”
I’m afraid I giggled again.
“What is it now, my dear Prince?” demanded Abziz testily, bending a cool glance of reproof at me for my unseemly levity.
I grinned, unable to resist.
“In other words, they have `a mysterious power to cloud the minds of men,’ is that it? Sorry―excuse me―you people aren’t likely to have heard of The Shadow either… “
Glypto paid no heed to this exchange, which of course was incomprehensible to him. He was studying the seemingly solid wall of pitted gray stone with a narrowed eye.
“I wonder why the illusion did not blind your brute to the presence of the opening, as it did yourself?” Abziz mused, rubbing his jaw.
“Probably it did,” I offered. “But the illusion was designed for eyesight alone, and the thought-picture projected into our brains was aimed at the vision centers of the brain only. There wasn’t much point in the Kuurians trying to make the opening smell like solid rock, because human beings have a very feeble sense of smell. Bozo, like all his kind, has an extremely sensitive nose, and a sense of smell that makes ours look vestigial by comparison. I assume the othodes of Thanator must have a highly developed sense of smell, just as dogs do on my native world, because, like earthly dogs, which they very much resemble, your people use them for hunting. And it is by the sense of smell, you know, that a hunting dog―or an othode―follows a trail.”
“In other words,” Abziz puffed, “the wall may have looked right to the creature but it certainly didn’t smell right.”
“Yes, that’s it, exactly! He probably smelled the presence of the Mind Wizards, or their cook-fires, or their refuse, or something like that―where his eyes told him there was nothing. So he went to investigate … .”
“Well, then, me .dear friends,” said Glypto, rubbing his hands together briskly. “There be only one thing to do now!”
“And what might that be?” inquired Dr. Abziz, warily.
“Aye, we’ll just have to see for ourselves what the dear beast discovered behind this barrier of illusion,” he decided.
Whereupon, waving one hand in a cocky salute, and grinning at us, the little Tharkolian strutted forwardwalking directly into the wall of rock before him
And vanished.
I shivered slightly, as if a cold wind blew about me.
Repetition of a miracle, I found, does not diminish its impact upon the nervous system. At least not upon a system as nervous as mine … .
We stood there on the dismal gray beach, the fat, scarlet little Soraban savant and I, feeling suddenly abandoned and lonely. Dr. Abziz wet his lips nervously, a strained expression tightening about his eyes. And it occurred to me then that the verbal rivalry between these two was more in the nature of a game they both enjoyed, than it was a matter of the tormentor and the tormented. For Abziz was worried by Glypto’s disappearance―too worried to bother trying to hide it.
“Impudent little rascal,” he sniffed, scowling in a most unconvincing manner. “Always swaggering about like an overgrown adolescent! Well, someday he’ll poke his huge nose into more trouble than he bargained for … oh, what can be keeping the villain!―does the idiot think to frighten us by lingering beyond the portal―?”
I was gathering my courage, about to attempt Glypto’s feat―although without the air of devil-may-care jauntiness, which would have been well beyond my acting abilities at that moment!―when suddenly the little thief reappeared. Part of him, that is.
A grinning head appeared as if by magic, halfway up the wall of illusion. It was Glypto thrusting his head through the barrier, looking for all the world like a beheaded malefactor, his severed pate stuck up on a spike as a warning to other criminals. Dr. Abziz stiffened and gasped at the grisly apparition, which winked and grimaced at us.
“Glypto, what―?”
“Come on―come on!” the bodiless head snorted gleefully. “Step right through yonder wall―there be nothin’ there, nothin’ at all, you know―come! We are wasting time.”
“What about… did you find Bozo?” I blurted.
He chuckled.
“Did I find Bozo?” he repeated, rolling his eyes comically. “Did I find Bozo! Just step in here, yer lordship, and feast yer eyes upon the havoc the dear, faithful beast has wrought―”
And with that enigmatic phrase, Glypto withdrew his head to the other side of the barrier of illusion.
I stepped forward, hesitating just a little, poking at the wall gingerly. I discovered that it is more difficult than you might think to deliberately walk into a wall, even into one you know isn’t really there. As I approached the barrier, my eyes only an inch or two away from what seemed to be a solid surface of rock, I marveled at the realistic detail of the illusion. For I could see the very grain and texture of the imaginary stone, cracked and pitted, upper edges of protuberances littered with granules of frock dust, just as if it was real and solid.
Then, taking a deep breath, I stepped forward into the wall of mirage, and walked through the Gates of Kuur into an unknown world.
Book IV
JANDAR, OF CALLISTO
Chapter 16
DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE
The moment I stepped into the wall I entered a zone of utter darkness. The transition was so abrupt as to be startling. One moment I stood in a barren vale illuminated by dull, gray light―the next moment the wall swung up before my nose, expanding into sharp detail―and then I found myself in a region of intense and absolute gloom.
For one giddy moment I became completely disoriented. I had forgotten from which direction I had come, and in which direction I had been heading. Just for an instant panic seized me at the frightful thought of how easily one could become lost in this zone of darkness, to wander forever in a blind world of unseen terrors … .
Then my groping fingers brushed the inner surface of the portal and the world rightened itself about me. I took another step forward and light glowed about me. Now I found myself at the mouth of a narrow tunnel, cut through the solid rock, and illuminated by a vague, sourceless glow. Beneath my boots the floor slanted sharply downwards; ahead, the tunnel angled steeply off to my right.
I walked forward, turned the corner, and found that. the tunnel widened beyond this point into a sort of square antechamber, hewn from the solid rock―an antechamber with three occupants.
The first of these was Glypto himself; the spry little Tharkolian capered nimbly, chortling with wicked glee at the sight which lay before us. .
Stark dead in a pool of spreading crimson lay the body of a man whom I had never seen before. He was small, even dwarfish, clad in clinging gray robes of some material like jersey. He was bald as an egg, his skin a vile, oily yellow, and his eyes―which were open and staring glassily into nothingness―were black and cold and oblique, slightly slanted. Near one limp hand lay a curious instrument shaped like some sort of pistol fashioned from a bright, silvery metal, with a muzzle which widened like the mouth of a funnel.