The Big Time by Fritz Leiber Read Free Book Online Page B

Moon, is the sovereign Deity.
    —Graves
    CRETE CIRCA 1300 B.C.
    Kaby pushed back at Sid some seconds of bread and olives, and, when he raised his bushy eyebrows, gave him a curt nod that meant she knew what she was doing. She stood up and sort of took a position. AB the talk quieted down fast, even Bruce’s and Lili’s. Kaby’s face and voice weren’t strained now, but they weren’t relaxed either.
    “Woe to Spider! Woe to Cretan! Heavy is the news I bring you. Bear it bravely, like strong women. When we got the gun unlimbered, I heard seaweed fry and crackle. We three leaped behind the rock wall, saw our gun grow white as sunlight in a heat-ray of the Serpents!
    Natch, we feared we were outnumbered and I called upon my Caller.”
    I don’t know how she does it, but she does—in English too. That is, when she figures she’s got something important to report, and maybe she needs a little time to get ready.
    Beau claims that all the ancients fit their thoughts into measured lines as naturally as we pick a word that will do, but I’m not sure how good the Vicksburg language department is.
    Though why I should wonder about things like that when I’ve got Kaby spouting the stuff right in front of me, I don’t know.
    “But I didn’t die there, kiddos. I still hoped to hurt the Greek ships, maybe with the
    Snake’s own heat gun. So I quick tried to outflank them. My two comrades crawled beside me—they are males, but they have courage. Soon we spied the ambushsetters. They were
    Snakes and they were many, filthily disguised as Cretans.”
    There was an indignant murmur at this, for our cutthroat Change War has its code, the Soldiers tell me. Being an Entertainer, I don’t have to say what I think.
    “They had seen us when we saw them,” Kaby swept on, “and they loosed a killing volley. Heatand knife-rays struck about us in a storm of wind and fire, and the Lunan lost a feeler, fighting for Crete’s Triple Goddess. So we dodged behind a sand bill, steered our flight back toward the water. It was awful, what we saw there; Crete’s brave ships all sunk or sinking, blue sky sullied by their death-smoke. Once again the Greeks had licked us!—aided by the filthy Serpents.
    “Round our wrecks, their black ships scurried, like black beetles, filth their diet, yet this day they dine on heroes. On the quiet sun-lit beach there, I could feel a Change Gale blowing, working changes deep inside me, aches and pains that were a stranger’s. Half my memories were doubled, half my lifeline crooked and twisted, three new moles upon my swordhand. Goddess, Goddess, Tripple Goddess—”
    Her voice wavered and Sid reached out a hand, but she straightened her back.
    “Triple Goddess, give me courage to tell everything that happened. We ran down into the water, hoping to escape by diving. We had hardly gotten under when the heat-rays hit above us, turning all the cool green surface to a roaring white inferno. But as I believe I told
     
    you, I was calling on my Caller, and a Door now opened to us, deep below the deadly steam—
    clouds. We dived in like frightened minnows and a lot of water with us.”
    Off Chicago’s Gold Coast, Dave once gave me a lesson in skindiving and, remembering it, I got a flash of Kaby’s Door in the dark depths.
    “For a moment all was chaos. Then the Door slammed shut behind us. We’d been picked up in time’s nick by—an Express Room of our Spiders!—sloshing two feet deep in water, much more cramped for space than this Place. It was manned by a magician, an old coot named BensonCarter. He dispelled the water quickly and reported on his Caller. We’d got dry, were feeling human, Illy here had shed his swimsuit, when we looked at the
    Maintainer. It was glowing, changing, melting! And when BensonCarter touched it, he fell backward—death was in him. Then the Void began to darken, narrow, shrink and close around us, so I called upon my Caller—without wasting time, let me tell you!
    “We