by Keith Laumer
combustibles. Thewagon hung half over the ragged edge of the floor.
"It should take about fifteen minutes for the fire to burn through therope," Brett said. "Then the wagon will fall and dump the hot coals inthe gasoline. By then it will have spread all over the surface andflowed down side tunnels into other parts of the cavern system."
"But it may not get them all."
"It will get some of them. It's the best we can do right now. You getthe fire going in the wagon; I'll start this one up."
Dhuva sniffed the air. "That fluid," he said. "We know it in Wavly asphlogistoneum. The wealthy use it for cooking."
"We'll use it to cook Gels." Brett struck a match. The fire leaped up,smoking. Dhuva watched, struck his match awkwardly, started his blaze.They stood for a moment watching. The nylon curled and blackened,melting in the heat.
"We'd better get moving," Brett said. "It doesn't look as though it willlast fifteen minutes."
They stepped out into the street. Behind them wisps of smoke curled fromthe door. Dhuva seized Brett's arm. "Look!"
Half a block away the fat man in the panama hat strode toward them atthe head of a group of men in grey flannel. "That's him!" the fat manshouted, "the one I told you about. I knew the scoundrel would be back!"He slowed, eyeing Brett and Dhuva warily.
"You'd better get away from here, fast!" Brett called. "There'll be anexplosion in a few minutes--"
"Smoke!" the fat man yelped. "Fire! They've set fire to the city! Thereit is! pouring out of the window ... and the door!" He started forward.Brett yanked the pistol from the holster, thumbed back the hammer.
"Stop right there!" he barked. "For your own good I'm telling you torun. I don't care about that crowd of golems you've collected, but I'dhate to see a real human get hurt--even a cowardly one like you."
"These are honest citizens," the fat man gasped, standing, staring atthe gun. "You won't get away with this. We all know you. You'll be dealtwith ..."
"We're going now. And you're going too."
"You can't kill us all," the fat man said. He licked his lips. "We won'tlet you destroy our city."
* * *
As the fat man turned to exhort his followers Brett fired, once twice,three times. Three golems fell on their faces. The fat man whirled.
"Devil!" he shrieked. "A killer is abroad!" He charged, mouth open.Brett ducked aside, tripped the fat man. He fell heavily, slamming hisface against the pavement. The golems surged forward. Brett and Dhuvaslammed punches to the sternum, took clumsy blows on the shoulder, back,chest. Golems fell. Brett ducked a wild swing, toppled his attacker,turned to see Dhuva deal with the last of the dummies. The fat man satin the street, dabbing at his bleeding nose, the panama still in place.
"Get up," Brett commanded. "There's no time left."
"You've killed them. Killed them all ..." The fat man got to his feet,then turned suddenly and plunged for the door from which a cloud ofsmoke poured. Brett hauled him back. He and Dhuva started off, draggingthe struggling man between them. They had gone a block when theirprisoner, with a sudden frantic jerk, freed himself, set off at a runfor the fire.
"Let him go!" Dhuva cried. "It's too late to go back!"
The fat man leaped fallen golems, wrestled with the door, disappearedinto the smoke. Brett and Dhuva sprinted for the corner. As theyrounded it a tremendous blast shook the street. The pavement before themquivered, opened in a wide crack. A ten-foot section dropped from view.They skirted the gaping hole, dashed for safety as the facades along thestreet cracked, fell in clouds of dust. The street trembled under asecond explosion. Cracks opened, dust rising in puffs from the longwavering lines. Masonry collapsed around them. They put their heads downand ran.
* * * * *
Winded, Brett and Dhuva walked through the empty streets of the city.Behind them, smoke blackened the sky. Embers floated down around them.The odor of burning Gel was carried on the wind. The late sun shone onthe blank pavement. A lone golem in a tasseled fez, left over from themorning's parade, leaned stiffly against a lamp post, eyes blank. Emptycars sat in driveways. TV antennae stood forlornly against the sunset.
"That place looks lived-in," said Brett, indicating an open apartmentwindow with a curtain billowing above a potted geranium. "I'll take alook."
He came back shaking his head. "They were all in the TV room. Theylooked so natural at first; I mean, they didn't look up or anything whenI walked in. I turned the set off. The electricity is still workinganyway. Wonder how long it will last?"
They turned down a residential street. Underfoot the pavement trembledat a distant blast. They skirted a crack, kept going. Occasional golemsstood in awkward poses or lay across sidewalks. One, clad in black,tilted awkwardly in a gothic entry of fretted stone work. "I guess therewon't be any church this Sunday," said Brett.
He halted before a brown brick apartment house. An untended hose welledon a patch of sickly lawn. Brett went to the door, stood listening, thenwent in. Across the room the still figure of a woman sat in a rocker. Acurl stirred on her smooth forehead. A flicker of expression seemed tocross the lined face. Brett started forward. "Don't be afraid. You cancome with us--"
He stopped. A flapping window-shade cast restless shadows on the stillgolem features on which dust was already settling. Brett turned away,shaking his head.
"All of them," he said. "It's as though they were snipped out of paper.When the Gels died their dummies died with them."
"Why?" said Dhuva. "What does it all mean?"
"Mean?" said Brett. He shook his head, started off again along thestreet. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just the way things are."
* * *
Brett sat in a deserted Cadillac, tuning the radio.
"... anybody hear me?" said a plaintive voice from the speaker. "This isAb Gullorian, at the Twin Spires. Looks like I'm the only one leftalive. Can anybody hear me?"
Brett tuned. "... been asking the wrong questions ... looking for theFinal Fact. Now these are strange matters, brothers. But if a flowerblooms, what man shall ask why? What lore do we seek in a symphony...?"
He twisted the knob again. "... Kansas City. Not more than half a dozenof us. And the dead! Piled all over the place. But it's a funny thing:Doc Potter started to do an autopsy--"
Brett turned the knob. "... CQ, CQ, CQ. This is Hollip Quate, callingCQ, CQ. There's been a disaster here at Port Wanderlust. We need--"
"Take Jesus into your hearts," another station urged.
"... to base," the radio said faintly, with much crackling. "LunarObservatory to base. Come in, Lunar Control. This is Commander McVee ofthe Lunar Detachment, sole survivor--"
"... hello, Hollip Quate? Hollip Quate? This is Kansas City calling.Say, where did you say you were calling from...?"
"It looks as though both of us had a lot of mistaken ideas about theworld outside," said Brett. "Most of these stations sound as though theymight as well be coming from Mars."
"I don't understand where the voices come from," Dhuva said. "But allthe places they name are strange to me ... except the Twin Spires."
"I've heard of Kansas City," Brett said, "but none of the other ones."
The ground trembled. A low rumble rolled. "Another one," Brett said. Heswitched off the radio, tried the starter. It groaned, turned over. Theengine caught, sputtered, then ran smoothly.
"Get in, Dhuva. We might as well ride. Which way do we go to get out ofthis place?"
"The wall lies in that direction," said Dhuva. "But I don't know about agate."
"We'll worry about that when we get to it," said Brett. "This wholeplace is going to collapse before long. We really started something. Isuppose other underground storage tanks caught--and gas lines, too."
A building ahead cracked, fell in a heap of pulverized plaster. The carbucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover poppedup, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned thecar. It leaped over rubble, roared al
ong the littered pavement. Brettlooked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them the street ended.Smoke and dust rose from the immense pit.
"We just missed it that time!" he called. "How far to the wall?"
"Not far! Turn here ..."
Brett rounded the corner with a shrieking of tires. Ahead the grey wallrose up, blank, featureless.
"This is a dead end!" Brett shouted.
"We'd better get out and run for it--"
"No time! I'm going to ram the wall! Maybe I can knock a hole in it."
* * *
Dhuva crouched; teeth gritted, Brett held the accelerator to the floor,roared straight toward the wall. The heavy car shot across the last fewyards, struck--
And burst through a curtain of canvas into a field of dry stalks.
Brett steered the car in a wide curve to halt and look back. A blackenedpanama hat floated down, settled among the stalks. Smoke poured up in adense cloud from behind the canvas wall. A fetid stench pervaded theair.
"That finishes that, I guess," Brett said.
"I don't know. Look there."
Brett turned. Far across the dry field columns of smoke rose from theground.
"The whole thing's undermined," Brett said. "How far does it go?"
"No telling. But we'd better be off. Perhaps we can get beyond the edgeof it. Not that it matters. We're all that's left ..."
"You sound like the fat man," Brett said. "But why should we be sosurprised to find out the truth? After all, we never saw it before. Allwe knew--or thought we knew--was what they told us. The moon, the otherside of the world, a distant city ... or even the next town. How do wereally know what's there ... unless we go and see for ourselves? Does agoldfish in his bowl know what the ocean is like?"
"Where did they come from, those Gels? How much of the world have theyundermined? What about Wavly? Is it a golem country too? The Duke ...and all the people I knew?"
"I don't know, Dhuva. I've been wondering about the people in Casperton.Like Doc Welch. I used to see him in the street with his little blackbag. I always thought it was full of pills and scalpels; but maybe itreally had zebra's tails and toad's eyes in it. Maybe he's really amagician on his way to cast spells against demons. Maybe the people Iused to see hurrying to catch the bus every morning weren't really goingto the office. Maybe they go down into caves and chip away at thefoundations of things. Maybe they go up on rooftops and put onrainbow-colored robes and fly away. I used to pass by a bank inCasperton: a big grey stone building with little curtains over thebottom half of the windows. I never go in there. I don't have anythingto do in a bank. I've always thought it was full of bankers, banking ...Now I don't know. It could be anything ..."
"That's why I'm afraid," Dhuva said. "It could be anything."
"Things aren't really any different than they were," said Brett, "...except that now we know." He turned the big car out across the fieldtoward Casperton.
"I don't know what we'll find when we get back. Aunt Haicey, Pretty-Lee... But there's only one way to find out."
The moon rose as the car bumped westward, raising a trail of dustagainst the luminous sky of evening.
THE END
"The body shifted, rotating stiffly, then tilted upright.
"The sun struck through the amber shape that flowed down to form itselfinto the crested wave."
see IT COULD BE ANYTHING
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ January 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
