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...
Then the tallest of the three put a metal tube in his mouth and blew a piercing note. A huge naked man, a gigantic Hercules, muscled like a weight lifter, lumbered ponderously into the room. His skin was dead white, his closecropped hair lank and colorless, his heavy face slack and witless. He turned dull, incurious eyes upon us and in obedience to a shrill command from the leader of the three, bent and picked up Glypto and Abziz. They dangled limply. He tossed them over his massive shoulders and shuffled off back into the secret entrance, from which a second naked slave emerged a moment later to pick me up. This second man had skin the incredible tomato puree red of a Perushtarian, such as Glypto or Dr. Abziz. His pate was hairless and he was as naked as the zombielike white man, but not as heroically built. He picked me up and held me cradled in his forearms without visible effort. It was as if I were a rag doll. Then he shuffled into the black entrance, followed by the Mind Wizards.
The immense slab closed behind us. For a moment we were in total darkness; then a weird gray light bloomed from the dwarves behind us. I could not see what made the light, but as my bearer shuffled about a sharp turn in the passage I caught a glimpse of the tallest dwarf, the leader, who was immediately behind me. A shimmering and vaporous globe of luminosity floated above his right shoulder, wobbling insubstantially, like a soap bubble, exuding the leprous, dirty light.
We were borne into another chamber where several more of the vacant-eyed nude colossi sat along a stone bench against the wall, neither moving nor speaking. They were for all the world like so many robots awaiting the turn of a switch to activate them. Also in this room a yellow dwarf sat in an oddly-carved chair, doing something with glass tubes filled with brilliant colored light. He exchanged a few words with those who had captured us, then touched a knob on the low stand beside his chair, opening another rocky slablike door.
We were brought into a room outfitted like a laboratory in a movie about mad scientists. Fluids seethed and bubbled through coiling glass tubes, or simmered in fat-bellied flasks over glowing crystals that served as Bunsen burners. Long metal tables were crowded with complicated apparatus―metal cabinets faced with illuminated dials and studded with what looked like huge, old-fashioned vacuum tubes with red-hot filaments inside them. Whirling copper wheels spun in grooved blocks of milky glass; noisily spitting fierce orange sparks. I expected to see Bela Lugosi or Peter Coshing in a white smock come popping out of the adjoining room at any moment.
Instead there came into view a yellow dwarf, incredibly old, riding a few inches off the ground in a sleek metal car shaped like an ultramodern chair. The chair hummed, floating above the floor as if on an air cushion. The zombies set us down on long metal tables under luminous milky, spheres and the dwarf in the floating chair came over to peer down at us, one by one, with cold, deadly, cunning eyes.
He was the most horribly old human being I had ever seen, his sallow visage a gaunt skull on which the dry, withered skin hung in a thousand wrinkles. With a thrill of horror I saw he was plugged into the chair in several places: a coppery wire came from the back of the chair and entered into his heart through the dull gray robes that hung loosely upon his diminutive, dwarfish frame. From either side of his torso, just below the ribs, two rubbery, transparent tubes snaked away to either side, vanishing into the innards of the chair. One tube carried into his body a sluggish scarlet trickle of what looked to me like human blood thickened with some sugary sediment like glucose; the other tube carried out of his body a vile dribble of oily, yellow brown waste.
The sight was sickening. And suddenly I was horribly, horribly afraid. Afraid I would never get out of here; afraid I would never see my wife again, or my dogs, my books, my home … .
“Is it another of the sky-ships, then?” the old, old man asked in a high, thin voice.
“No, Yanthu,” the leader of the dwarves said in obsequious tones. “At least we do not think so. These are not Shondakorians.”
“Perushtarians, those two; this one … I don’t know. Odd color, the pigmentation of the iris; gray or blue gray. Notice the epidermis, Chune, the light, fair tint, pinkish bronze; bit of tan there, but the normal coloring very fair. A Zanadarian half-breed, I wonder? Pity the zoroon vapor renders telepathic probe difficult. Well, once the effects are counteracted, subject the captive to full depth probe. If there is another race on Thanator, we’d better know of it. Hand me the counteractive, slave!”
Another one of the naked zombies, this one an inhumanly tall, gaunt golden-skinned being with shaven pate-redhaired as a Shondakorian from the stubble-lumbered into view, clumsily picked up a cottony pad prickly with needlelike spines on the under surface, dipped it in a metal tray, and pressed it against the side of my neck. I felt a stinging cold wetness, but the sensation was oddly remote and detached from my immediate senses, like the memory of a touch. Whatever the anesthetic vapor was, it affected the nerves themselves; this may have explained why it was impossible to subject us to telepathic questioning until the effects of the gas had worn off.
My unfortunate companions were similarly treated and carried away. I did not see them again, for one of the naked zombies carried me through a warren of dark cells, finally depositing me on a stone bench. A metal door slammed shut, a lock clicked, and I was alone.
A tingle spread through my body, the return of sensation.
A tall man, younger than I, strikingly handsome, with a superbly lithe and sinewy physique, came over to where I lay and said something in a low voice, helping me to sit up. I could not see him very well in the darkness of the cell, but his words were comforting. He held a bowl to my lips, letting cold, fresh water trickle into my partially open mouth. I swallowed automatically: obviously, the zoroon vapor did not affect the involuntary functions of the body.
After a bit I found I could move and speak again, although clumsily, with numbness in my extremities and the beginning of a champion headache. My cellmate settled my limbs more comfortably and when he stepped back his face suddenly entered into a gleam of light that came from some source above my head. By this momentary light I caught a close-up glimpse of his features, which were unknown to me. Or were they? That fair, tanned skin, those piercing blue eyes, that shock of raw yellow hair
“Do you feel better now, friend?” he asked me in Thanatorian.
“Yes … much better,” I mumbled with stiff lips. Then, with excitement bubbling up within me, and a strange wild joy, I looked up at him and said, in English
“Captain Jonathan Andrew Dark, I presume?”
Chapter 17
MASTERS OF THE MIND
He began to answer me in Thanatorian, then started violently, realizing that I had addressed him in English.
“Great heavens!” he exclaimed in that language, “But―who are you?”
I told him my name, at which he exclaimed again, peering closely at my features through the dimness.
“But―this is amazing! Why, man―I’ve read your books!”
“I know,” I said, laughing. “Gary Hoyt told me all about it.”
That made him exclaim again.
“How do you know Gary Hoyt? And how did you get here?”
“There’s an awful lot to explain,” I said. “Before I begin―could I have some more of that water? I’ve got a cracking headache from inhaling that gas, and I feel pretty rotten … .”
“Of course, Mr. Carter! Forgive me for being such a lousy host―but you really set me back on my heels,” he admitted ruefully. “You’re about the last person in the world―in two worlds, come to think of it―I expected to run into in this place. Here: drink this; the aches and pains will go away.―You’ve been to Shondakor, I guess? My wife―?”