Keith Laumer - Zone Yellow

“You mentioned a warehouse, Excellency,” I said, feeling not quite sure what that meant.

“Of course.” He indicated an open door in a corrugated-metal wall beside us. “We have only just emerged,” he explained. “You were a bit confused, but you followed me when I came out, the coast being clear. By the way,” he went on, “I know the idiom ‘the coast is clear,’ but find it most obscure. What is its derivation?”

“Is that a big issue right now, sir?” I wondered aloud, fighting the paradigm. The general actually looked a little scruffy, I noticed. He was an ugly fellow, if you tried to see him as human, which he wasn’t, so I tried to regain the rat’s-eye view I’d had for a moment, and succeeded so well that I had to move over against the wall, for security, as a surge of agoraphobia hit me. Andy and Smovia were already there, huddled against the sheet-metal door. I wanted desperately to please the general.

The feeling faded, and he was just an overgrown rat in a dowdy raincoat, standing in a deserted street, sniffing the foul air and twitching his whiskers.

“This way,” he squeaked. “Hurry!”―and started off without looking to see if anyone was following. We got ten feet before a whistle shrilled, and somebody yelled. Swft did a hard left turn into a narrow air space between age-blackened brick walls, and we followed. Our feet crunched on trash underfoot. After a few yards, the cramped alley opened into an eight-foot-square air shaft.

“Now what?” Andy expressed my thought precisely. Smovia stayed close to the wall and cautiously edged around to the far side, looking back down the alleyway.

“There are―people―there,” Smovia managed to utter. “We’re trapped!” he accused Swft, who stooped and lifted a square manhole cover.

“We must descend, quickly,” he said urgently, and started down. Ten seconds later I assisted Smovia down the last few rungs, he being burdened once again with the baby. We were now trapped in a slightly larger space than the air shaft above. Swft replaced the cover and we were in total darkness. At least there was no stench here.

“We came here,” I reminded the Ylokk, “to do a little job of world-saving. How do you intend to manage that from this coal cellar?”

“No, merely a utility space,” he corrected me offhandedly. “Kindly observe―closely.” He went to the nearest of the rough stonework walls, reached up as high as he could reach, and began to grope over the surface with his long-fingered hands. A stone nearby slid aside; at the same time a dim light sprang up, revealing a narrow crawl-space. He motioned me in impatiently.

I stood fast. “What’s all this hocus-pocus?” I wanted to know first. “Why didn’t you drop us right at our destination, whatever that is?”

“ ‘The Map Room,’ we call it,” he supplied. “Alas, our transfer method is not yet fully perfected. It lacks absolute precision with reference to the first three dimensions. Vug-wise, though, and temporally it’s quite accurate.” He broke off his speech and went headfirst into the hole without waiting for my response. I looked at Helm and Smovia. The doc gave a little shrug and started into the hole. I hauled him back, just as Helm burst out:

“Why should we trust that rat?”

“Because Doctor Smovia has the baby,” I told him, and he ducked his head and went in. That was a little pushy of him, but I let him go. Smovia handed me the baby and without waiting for permission, followed Helm. This time, burdened with the infant, I got to the opening just as his feet disappeared inside. I groped, but he was gone and so was the opening. That left me and one peacefully sleeping rat-pup, alone in a cell.

Baby began fretting again. I patted her and tried to come up with a brilliant idea. The best I could do was reflect that Swft would hardly have abandoned his precious princess for good. That gave me another idea. I took her over and put her gently inside the hole that had swallowed up Andy and the doc. It wasn’t wide enough for my shoulders. Smovia and Andy were slim fellows, so they’d gotten in easily. I knew I couldn’t make it in there; no way out for me. But Swft would be back, and before I’d grown a full beard.

I stretched out on one of the S-shaped benches as well as I could and went to sleep before I had figured out just what to do with my feet.

When I woke, I was cold, stiff, and aching in most places. Sitting up was no fun. I was dizzy, and had a pain in my stomach.

I looked around the bare room; it didn’t look any different. I went over and tried to remember just what Swft had done to open his secret passage to nowhere. I remembered he’d had a little trouble reaching the magic spot with his stubby arms. I scanned the joints in the stonework up just under the ceiling and thought I saw a slightly discolored spot. I felt over it, and the light, the source of which I couldn’t make out, dimmed. I quit messing with the wall. Things were bad enough without being in the dark. I felt a little disappointed in myself. I’d really done a swell job: I’d handled things just right. I’d gotten myself separated from my troops and locked in a cell that could become dark at any moment. That reminded me of the shaft we’d entered by. I recalled that it was near the middle of the chamber, and looked up. Apparently my recollection was wrong, because there wasn’t any panel there or elsewhere. Double swell.

Just then a door that hadn’t been there a minute ago opened beside me and Swft walked in.

“Sorry to have been delayed,” he remarked casually. He glanced at me inquiringly and asked, “Where are the other fellows―and Her Highness?” sounding more curious than worried.

“They went in the hole after you,” I told him.

“Nonsense,” he replied crisply. “It’s only…” He waved a hand in the direction of the hole. “One could hardly, ah . . . As you saw, it’s not large enough to hold two humongs, and besides that, it’s empty.”

“It held you all right,” I pointed out.

He nodded agreement; at least he’d finally gotten that gesture sorted out. “But of course, I, that is, one must know―” He broke off. “Dear me,” he continued. “I fear, my dear Colonel, that something really quite unfortunate has occurred.”

“Tell me about it,” I urged. He half sat, half coiled beside me.

“You see,” he began.

“No, I don’t.” I cut him off.

“This is a very special entryway to the Map Room,” he started again. “This room is, of course, protected by multiple entropic barriers. The entry here threads its way tortuously through a most complex suture, or pattern of sutures to be quite precise, and only those knowing the formula can negotiate it. Only one person besides myself knows the equations. Your associates, I fear, are now lost in an unreachable phase of space/time/vug. This is horrible.”

“You can save the crocodile tears,” I told him. “You seem to forget you invited me in there, and I don’t recall you whispering any secrets to me.”

“I would have, dear fellow,” he assured me. “The first key is simply the familiar quadratic equation.”

“I never did get it straight whether the 2A was under just the minus 4AC, or the square root of B squared, too.”

“No need to fret,” he told me. “We’ll be using another route.”

“What about Lieutenant Helm and Doctor Smovia?” I demanded.

“Perhaps,” he mused, “if I direct the Master Computer to analyze the disturbance-pattern in the Grid at the moment of their entry…”

“Where’s this Master Computer?” I asked him.

He said, “Follow me closely, Colonel, and I shall escort you there. It’s not far.” He went back out the door, which was still there, and I was right on his heels, wondering if I had missed something important. That didn’t comfort me, but it did make me take careful note of the route we were following, along a smooth-paneled corridor with flush ceiling lights and a crack in the stone floor. To lay a trail, I started dropping bits of the requisition form I found in my pocket. Swft went silently along, not quite stealthily, but making no uhnec-essary sounds.