Piers Anthony - Sos the Rope

Perhaps it had to be taken from him. Had he been ready to give it away, he should have given it to blonde Miss Smith, knowing that she wanted it. Sola, too, had forced her love upon him and made him respond. He did not like what this,seemed to indicate about his nature, but it was better to accept it than to try to deny it.

He squeezed the bracelet gently and dropped his hand.

"Thank you, Sos," she murmured, and leaned over to kiss him on the neck.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When he woke again, he suspected that it had been a fantasy, like the oddities visible on the silent television, except that his bracelet was gone and his left wrist was pale where it had rested. This time he was gone, in another squared-off cabin, and feeling fit. Somehow he had been taken from the mountain and revived and left here, while his little friend Stupid had died. He could not guess the reason.

He got up and dressed, finding his clothing clean and whole, beside the bunk. If this were death, he thought, it was not unlike life. But that was foolishness; this was not death.

No food had been stocked, and there were no weapons upon the rack. As a matter of fact, the rack itself was absent. Sos opened the door, hoping to see familiar forest or landscape or even the base of the mountain-and found only a blank wall similar to the one he had traveled down in the vision. No vision after all, but reality.

"I'll be right with you, Sos." It wis the voice of the little girl-the tiny woman who had teased him and outmaneuvered him and finally struck him down. His throat still ached, now that he thought of it, though not obtrusively. He looked at his bare wrist again.

Well, she had claimed to know what the bracelet meant. She trotted down the hail, as small as ever, wearing a more shapely smock and smiling. Her hair, now visible, was brown and curly, and it contributed considerably to her femininity. The bracelet on her arm glittered; evidently she had polished it to make the gold return to life. He saw that it reached all the way around her wrist and over lapped slightly, while the mark it left on his own wrist left a good quarter of the circle open. Had this tiny creature actually prevailed over him?

"Feeling better, Sos?" she inquired solicitously. "I know we gave you a rough time yesterday, but the doc says a period of exercise is best to saturate the system. So I saw that you got it."

He looked uncomprehendingly at her.

"Oh, that's right-you don't understand about our world yet:" She smiled engagingly and took his arm. "You see, you were almost frozen in the snow, and we had to bring you around before permanent damage was done. Sometimes a full recovery takes weeks, but you were so healthy we gave you the energizer immediately. It's some kind of drug-I don't know much about these things-it scours out the system somehow and removes the damaged tissue. But it has to reach everywhere, the fingers and toes and things-well, I don't really understand it. But some good, strenuous calisthenics circulate it nicely. Then you sleep and the next thing you know you're better."

"I don't remember-"

"I put you to sleep, Sos. After I kissed you. It's just a matter of touching the right pressure points. I can show you, if-"

He declined hastily. She must have gotten him to the cabin room, too-or more likely had a man haul him there. Had she also undressed him and cleaned his clothing, as Sola had done so long ago? The similarities were disturbing.

"It's all right, Sos. I have your bracelet, remember? I didn't stay with you last night because I knew you'd be out for the duration, but I'll be with you from now on." She hesitated. "Unless you changed your mind?"

She was so little, more like a doll than a woman. Her concern was quite touching, but it was hard to know what to say. She was hardly half his weight. What could she know of the way of men and women?

"Oh, is that so!" she exclaimed, flashing, though he had not spoken. "Well, let's go back to your room right now and I'll show you I don't just climb ladders!"

He smiled at her vehemence. "No, keep it. I guess you know what you're doing." And he guessed he liked being chased, too.

She had guided him through right-angled corridors illuminated by overhead tubes of incandescence and on to another large room. These seemed to be no end to this odd enclosed world. He had yet to see honest daylight since coming here. "This is our cafeteria. We're just in time for mess.

There was a long counter with plates of food set upon it-thin slices of bacon, steaming oatmeal, poached eggs, sausage, toasted bread and other items he did, not recognize. Farther down he saw cups of fruit juice, milk and hot drinks, as well as assorted jellies and spreads. It was as though someone had emptied the entire larder of a hostel and spread it out for a single feast. There was more than anyone could eat.

"Silly. You just take anything you want and put it on your tray," she said. "Here." She lifted a plastic tray from a stack at the end and handed it to him. She took one herself and preceded him down the aisle, selecting plates as she moved. He followed, taking one of each.

He ran out of tray space long before the end of the counter. "Here," she said, unconcerned. "Put some on mine."

The terminus opened into an extended dining area, square tables draped with overlapping white cloths. People were seated at several, finishing their meals. Both men and women wore coveralls and smocks similar to what he had seen already, making him feel out of place though he was normally dressed. Sosa led him to a vacant table and set the array of food and beverage upon it.

"I could introduce you to everyone, but we like to keep meals more or less private. If you want company you leave the other chairs open; if you want to be left alone, tilt them up, like this." She leaned the two unused chairs forward against the sides of the table. "No one will bother us."

She viewed his array. "One thing, Sos-we don't waste anything. You eat everything you take."

He nodded. He was ravenous.

"We call this the underworld," she said as he ate, "but we don't consider ourselves criminals," She paused, but he didn't understand the allusion. "Anyway, we're all dead here. I mean, we all would have been dead if we hadn't- well, the same way you came. Climbing the mountain. I came last year. Just about every week there's someone- someone who makes it. Who doesn't turn back. So our population stays pretjy steady."

Sos looked up over a mouthful. "Some turn back?"

"Most do. They get tired, or they change their minds, or something, and they go down again."

"But no one ever returns from the mountain!"

"That's right," she said uncomfortably.

He didn't press the matter, though he filed it away for future investigation.

"So we're really dead, because none of us will ever be seen in the world again. But we aren't idle. We work very hard, all of us. As soon as we're finished eating, I'll show you."

She did. She took him on a tour of the kitchen, where sweaty cooks worked full time preparing the plates of food and helpers ran the soiled dishes and trays through a puffing cleaning machine. She showed him the offices where accounts were kept. He did not grasp the purpose of such figuring, except that it was essential in some way to keep mining, manufacturing and exporting in balance. This made sense; he remembered the computations he had had to perform when training Sol's warriors, and this underworld was a far more complex community.

She took him to the observation deck, where men watched television screens and listened to odd sounds. The pictures were not those of the ordinary sets in the cabins, however, and this attracted his immediate interest.

"This is Sos," she said to the man in charge. "He arrived forty-eight hours ago. I took him in charge."