They had thought that the only video-audio transmissions inside the worlds were made through the computer sets inside the private worlds, these being connected through cables to the floors of the worlds. But the Snark, the unknown, had found a way to break this communication and video-audio barrier. Selected areas of the world’s wall had been made into screens, and Burton and his companions saw the deluge as a flying bird would see it. They watched as the waters of the fountains and the river and the marshes and lake were replaced by the amber liquid. Which, the Computer told them in answer to Burton’s question, was bourbon.
“Bourbon?” Burton said, and he asked the Computer to repeat the statement.
It was bourbon.
The inlets for the various water sources had poured in the liquor under great pressure. The fountains had soared up until they almost touched the top of the Brobdingnagian chamber, and the river and lakes and marshes had spewed forth the swift raging floor of whiskey.
“No doubt, it was the best bourbon,” Burton muttered.
The citizens of Turpinville had been panicked, but, after a few minutes, they had taken every means of transportation to the exit. They had fought each other for the hundred available flying chairs, hitting, knifing and shooting. Those left behind had fought for the automobiles, motorcycles, and horses and buggies. They had jammed into the railroad train and climbed on top of the cars. Those in the chairs had gotten swiftly to the exit, only to find that they could not open the door. The people f on foot and in the ground vehicles were drowned before they reached the exit.
If they had not panicked, they could have made flying chairs in the e-m converters and flown to the exit. Where they would have discovered that their efforts were in vain.
Though the liquor poured out swiftly, it had an enormous volume to fill, and the surface of the fluid body was only one-fourth of the way up the walls. The people in the chairs had taken them to the ceiling, but they had been overcome by the fumes or died from lack of oxygen. Some of them might still be alive; they would not last long. Though the flood had ceased to rise, it did not have to do so to complete its work.
“What a way to die!” Burton said.
He looked at the pale set faces. “I suppose we might as well try Netley’s world.”
The same thing had happened there, except that the liquor was gin. The best, of course.
Burton anticipated that those who had died in both worlds would be denied resurrection by the Computer, and he was right.
The gypsies had been traveling in a corridor leading to the well of the wathans—perhaps they meant to sightsee it—when a big wheeled robot had come upon them and pierced them with beamer rays. Ten minutes later, robots had cleaned up the blood and carried the bodies off to be turned to ashes in converters.
“That leaves six of us alive,” Burton said. “Seven if the Snark is counted. But …”
“But what?” Alice said after a long silence.
He did not reply. He was thinking that the killer could have done away with them much more easily if he—or she—had flooded Alice’s world.’ Why the different means? Was it for grisly amusement, using the exotic androids against them, the charming creatures of two fantasy books for children suddenly turned into bloodthirsty monsters?
It seemed more probable that the killer had made an exception in Alice’s world because he or she had been one of the guests. And that guest had perhaps wished to see that his or her enemies, people he or she must have hated .deeply, would be slain most bloodily.
And that guest had made arrangements by programming the androids to spare him or her.
He knew Alice, Peter Frigate, and Li Po too well to suspect them. That left only two. William Gull, who claimed to be a changed and deeply religious man, but had once murdered five -women. And Star Spoon, who, however, had no motive—as far as he knew.
Yet Gull had not been in the tower long enough to learn how to operate the Computer with the skill, no, the ingenuity, that the killer needed.
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