The Black Tower

by Phlip Jose Farmer

  Then the head appeared, a head fully twelve feet in height and four to five feet in width.

  It had dark hair the color of Clive's and a military officer's sun-darkened skin the color of Clive's. The eyebrows and mustache resembled his also, but the mustache had been trimmed in a different style.

  The lips were drawn back in a snarl to show teeth as large as rugby balls. The eyes were wide with terror and with rage. The mouth opened to speak, but before a sound emerged the face was gone.

  It was a face that Clive recognized.

  The great monstrosity tumbled over the basalt edge of the arching bridge. As it disappeared into the mist and the depths of the chasm it turned slowly, end over end. Its great voice roared with a timbre Clive found all too familiar.

  "Clive Folliot," it boomed and echoed. "Damn you, Clive Folliot! Damn you to the nethermost pits of hell! Damn you to spend eternity in the Dungeon!"

  Behind Clive and Annie the bridge creaked and shuddered. Ahead of them it did the same. Cracks appeared in its surface.

  Annie's hand was inside her bodice. She turned off the Baalbec A-9. "Exit program," she shouted at Clive. "Log off! Crash system!" She grasped his hand and started to run.

  It took him no time to realize that she was right. The bridge was crumbling, its delicate structure fatally damaged by the impact of the monstrosity's tons of mass. The only hope for the survivors of the encounter was to reach the other end of the bridge before it crumbled altogether into the crevasse.

  Time and again they slipped in the greasy excretions that the monstrosity had left behind. In a while they gave up trying to rise and run, and simply slid along, like tobogganers on a slope, shifting their weight as best they could to keep to the center of the roadway and avoid its dangerous edges.

  They came to Finnbogg, contentedly swallowing the last of a cluster of the creature's tentacles that he had chewed away. He saw them whiz toward him, decided that their form of locomotion was fun, and joined them.

  Almost at the end of the bridge, they came across Horace Hamilton Smythe. He had been thrown there by the first great convulsion that had swept the creature when it was prodded by Annie's electrofield.

  There was no sign of Sidi Bombay.

  "I'll pray for his soul," Clive mumbled.

  "Wun't advise that, sah," Smythe amended. He sat up, then let the others help him to his feet.

  Clive snapped alert. "Just because the fellow had black skin, Sergeant Smythe, and worshipped in a funny kind of building not a proper church, doesn't mean he was not a child of God all the same."

  "Don't doubt a word, sah, not a word. Still wun't pray for Sidi Bombay's soul yet, no sah. I've seen Sidi Bombay through more perils than this. I'd wager a pay packet we haven't seen the last of Sidi Bombay, sah, not by a long shot."

  "I'll take your bet, then, Sergeant." Clive Folliot grinned. "And for once in my life I hope I lose my bet!"

  "Sidi Bombay's a good chap, Major." Smythe bobbed his head up and down.

  "But whom did he serve, Smythe?" Clive's momentary giddiness at their escape was fading now, replaced by more serious thoughts. "It was he who brought us into this terrible place. He appeared so conveniently with that barge as we entered the Sudd. And since then—well, I don't mean to lend credence to the legend of the inscrutable Oriental, Sergeant, but I'd give a pretty penny to know what Sidi Bombay was really up to.'

  Smythe rubbed the back of his head. "I don't rightly know what to say, Major. But I'd trust old Sidi with my life, I would. I've done so often enough, over the years, and he's never let me down. I do expect we'll see him again, sah. And when we do, I 'spect old Sidi will acquit himself as nobly as ever he has."

  To set up their camp they had found a relatively sheltered spot and settled in. There were no tents, there was no bedding, there were no real implements.

  The terrain on this side of the chasm was more varied than in the region around the city of Q'oorna. It was a region of rolling hills, grassy slopes, and wooded vales. Everything was black, as had been the case since their arrival on the planet. Clive found that his body was beginning to demand nourishment and sleep again. To this point it had run on its own resources, thanks to some mechanism developed, perhaps, in ancient times when primitive men had had to exert themselves for long periods without food or rest.

  Finnbogg had proved invaluable to the party. With his immense strength and stamina he had carried the others when they were too weary to walk. It was a sight like that of an ant carrying a breadcrumb many times its own size.

  They had settled on a location for their camp some miles from the end of the bridge. Despite their soreness and weariness, none of them wanted to remain anywhere near the site of the horror they had experienced. Finnbogg had left Annie and Smythe and Clive Folliot and tramped willingly away. He returned with brushwood for a fire and with berries and a few wild vegetables that he urged them, in his doggish, enthusiastic way, to sample.

  While they tested the food reluctantly—coal-black berries and apples and potatoes, or rough analogues of those foods, were difficult to accept—the dwarfish Finnbogg built a fire of twigs and branches. He started the fire by using the ancient method of rubbing twigs together, an operation that would have tried the patience of any of the others, but which he pursued stolidly until he had succeeded.

  The fire burned with a pure white flame. Thin smoke rose above the circle of branches. Clive knew that they should plot their strategy, combine their poor knowledge and limited intelligence and decide what to do now that they had lost Sidi Bombay—and now that they themselves were apparently lost in this strange world.

  But he was too weary, and the food had settled comfortingly in his belly, and User Annie was humming some melody from her own era a hundred and more years in Clive's future. Oddly, it was a familiar tune, a melody by one of the Italian composers of the eighteenth century.

  Clive smiled. Perhaps something decent and worthwhile had persisted in the world, despite every effort by men to demean and destroy the good.

  He lay back, and Annie lay beside him.

  He had neither paper nor pen with him, so he composed a story for Maurice Carstairs in his mind. Perhaps if he thought it through vividly enough, the telepathic emanations would reach George du Maurier, and du Maurier would transcribe them for Carstairs's paper. Folliot laughed at the thought, and felt Annie stir at the sound. She had fallen asleep leaning against him, and he could feel her breath, soft and warm, on the side of his neck.

  Special and exclusive to the readers of The Recorder and Dispatch. Dateline Q'oorna. Your correspondent this day encountered a creature at least a hundred feet in height, equipped with tentacles and feelers, with a transparent window in its underside and a piteous sight within. The creature had the face of your correspondent's elder brother and it spoke with a human voice amplified ten thousand fold.

  He rehearsed the details of the battle in his mind, conjuring up an image of the great creature that might be reproduced on the front page of The Recorder and Dispatch. That would sell copies by the wagonload. And when Clive returned to England and wrote his book, he would outshine Burton and Darwin and the rest of them combined!

  Somehow the pleasant prospect of best-sellerdom, with its attendant invitations to the lecture tour and the wealth that must inevitably accompany such success, became mixed with a repetition of the monstrosity's last words:

  "Damn you, Clive Folliot! Damn you to the nethermost pits of hell! Damn you to spend eternity in the Dungeon!"

  His brother. His own brother, Neville Folliot. They had never been close, had never even been friends. But what could Clive have done to evoke such hatred in his only sibling?

  And—how had Neville become transformed into the hideous giant who had tumbled from the bridge? Had Neville been the giant? It had Neville's face, it spoke with Neville's voice, and it addressed him, Clive, by name.

  But ... was it Neville?

  Sweet dreams turned into nightmares that ended only with the arriva
l of Q'oorna's pallid and depressing dawn.

  Finnbogg managed to catch a string of fish in the stream. It was startling to see the dead-black creatures. Sergeant Smythe took charge of building up their campfire, and they roasted the fish on sticks. To take a first taste of the still-steaming black meat was a challenge, but the texture and flavor were excellent and they made a satisfying meal of Finnbogg's catch.

  Then they had to decide on their plan of action. There was no turning back to the City of Q'oorna— the chasm they had crossed was bottomless, and the bridge was gone.

  They could wander the countryside or they could make permanent camp where they had already made a temporary one. But there was no point to either of those courses of action.

  They could set out for a goal—possibly one of the cities they had seen rising from the black landscape when they had stood atop the arching bridge. That course alone promised to bring them out of Q'oorna—or bring them an understanding of what they were doing in this black world.

  In the midst of the debate Clive Folliot confronted Horace Hamilton Smythe. This questioning was long overdue, but until now there had been no opportunity to conduct it. They had been engaged in one absorbing activity or another, whether in the flat- bottomed boat crossing the Bahr-el-Zeraf, finding the casket of Neville Folliot, creeping down the Cliff of the Face, exploring the deserted City of Q'oorna, or crossing the bridge with Finnbogg. There had been a partial exchange on the subject of Sidi Bombay's disappearance, but Clive was by no means satisfied.

  The time had come for deeper probing.

  "You're part of this," Clive accused. "You and Sidi Bombay both, I suspect. But you have to be part of it, Smythe."

  "Part of what, sah?" Smythe's expression was ingenuous.

  "You're in with the Q'oornans. The priest in Bagomoyo probably was as well, now that I think of it. They are responsible for whatever it is that happened to Neville. They kidnapped me and they seem to have kidnapped Miss Annie here from the future itself."

  He gestured toward Annie. She sat on the ground, listening intently to the dialogue. How much of it did she comprehend? Any at all? Clive wondered. Beyond her, Finnbogg lay stretched on the ground. Annie ran her fingernails through his hair. The dwarfish, doglike being sighed contentedly.

  "They brought Finnbogg here, too, poor creature. And heaven knows how many others. The tempoids, the extroids, the cybroids that we saw imprisoned in the Dungeon. How many nations do they come from? How many worlds? How many eras?"

  "You think I can answer all that, sah?" Sergeant Smythe grinned beneath his bushy mustache. "I'm a plain quartermaster, sah. A glorified supplies clerk, a military greengrocer. I don't know nothing about different worlds and cyber-whatevers and tempo-whodoyoucallems, sah. The major flatters me too much."

  Clive half-expected Horace Hamilton Smythe to stand up and knock the bottle from a pipe and wrap a scarf around his face and head into the English night. It was the kind of performance he'd have given in a friendly pub after a long night over a series of pints of beer and a few tasty scones.

  The black sky with its smears of milky nebulae and sparkling points of stars, the campfire that burned brightly, added to the illusion that they were in some setting far more prosaic than Q'oorna.

  Smythe was so matter-of-fact, so perfect an example of the good, solid, steady Englishman, that Clive was nearly lulled into accepting his denials. But there was simply too much evidence to the contrary. There were simply too many unexplained aspects of Smythe's behavior.

  "All right," Clive said. "You deny that you were the piano-playing mandarin aboard Empress Philippa? That you posed as an Arab guardsman at the palace of the sultan of Zanzibar?"

  Smythe hesitated too long before he gave an answer.

  "Your silence convicts you," Folliot accused. He pointed a finger angrily at Smythe.

  "Well now, sah. It ain't exactly that I have to deny all that, sah," Smythe finally responded. "But I don't exactly admit it, neither."

  "Oh, come along, man! We've known each other too long and too well for this sort of gaming. Own up, and let's lay our cards on the table. I've been totally open from the outset as to why I'm here. But you've never so much as given a reason."

  Smythe was squirming now. In all the years Clive had known him, he'd never seen the sergeant so nonplussed. He decided that this was the moment to strike.

  "We'll put that all aside for now," Clive stated. "I'll not forget it, and a time will come for accounting. Rest assured of that, Sergeant. But for now, I'll drop the subject if you will just answer me one question. Answer openly, honestly, fully. Will you do that, Sergeant, and then we'll be on our way? Will you do it?"

  The Smythe whom Clive Folliot thought he knew so well would have answered with a straightforward yes or no. But this Sergeant Smythe said, "Depends on the question, sah. It really does. Whyn't you try me, sah?"

  Folliot almost spat the words. "What is the meaning of the spiral formation of stars that I saw on the grip of your revolver?"

  CHAPTER 17

  A Ride on a Riverboat

  Horace Hamilton Smythe laughed and rose to his feet. He took the few steps that brought him to the campfire and set himself to kicking it out. "Lord love you, Major Folliot! I never 'spected you were so wrought up over that. Bless me, let's get on our way, and I'll tell you the story as we march."

  He shook his head in bemusement. " 'Pon my word, if that's the only thing botherin' the major, he's a lucky man indeed!"

  "Local grid bearing due east," User Annie suddenly said.

  Clive thought—not for the first time—that she lived on a different plane from the rest of them. Her thoughts were not their thoughts. And her perceptions of their surroundings must, in some utterly incomprehensible way, differ vastly from their own.

  "Will that bring us to one of the cities we saw?" Clive asked her. "Preferably the nearest of them?" Annie looked into his face, and for a fleeting instant it was as if Annabella Leighton were looking into his face. A wave of unbearable melancholia swept over Clive. He turned violently away from the woman. Annie said, "Pozzi. Firm. Double tiff, User Clive."

  "How do you know that?"

  Annie reached inside her bodice and made the familiar motion that Clive knew involved her Baalbec A-9. She knelt on the black ground and pointed a long, slim finger at a smooth patch.

  A map appeared on the ground, its lines glowing brightly. Annie pointed to the brightest spot on the map and announced, "Absolute address user file " She laughed.

  The sound wrenched at Folliot's heart. It was so much like the laughter of Miss Leighton. So much . . .

  "Can your electrofield make maps anywhere, Miss Annie?"

  Folliot was dropping into the mode of address he would have used in proper English society.

  "Nega tiff. Baalbec A-nine alt function, topographic scan and visual readout, user."

  Clive did not even pretend to comprehend that. His face must have conveyed his bafflement, for Annie offered a further explanation—a rarity for her.

  "Will try nontech argot." She wrinkled her forehead in concentration. "Okay, I can make a map. Right on, bitchin' bad map. We ain't lost, we're right here, it's Mommy and Daddy got lost. You comprende usted, honcho?"

  Clive did understand this much: User Annie's hidden machine could produce a map of the region of Q'oorna where they found themselves. What they would find when they reached the nearest city might - be their doom as well as their salvation. It might be a new mystery as easily as the solution of the puzzles they already faced.

  For better or for worse, they could choose their path. To an extent, at least, they could control their own destiny. " 'Men at some times,' " he quoted Cassius, " 'are masters of their fates.' " And Clive Folliot and Horace Hamilton Smythe and User Annie and squat, massive Finnbogg might make this such a time!

  They set out together.

  Clive studied the sky. "I wonder," he muttered, "is the North Star visible from Q'oorna? Since we shall never see true daylight
here, we need some guide. Unless—Miss Annie—Baalbec A-nine can serve as a compass."

  "Compass," Annie repeated. Her face clouded in concentration. "Ah, grid orientation indicator. Tiff, tiff."

  But did she mean pozzi tiff or nega tiff} Clive wondered.

  She ran to the nearest stand of vegetation and returned with a broad, dead-black leaf in her hand. She held it carefully while she pointed her finger at it. The grid map she had shown them on the ground near the campfire appeared on the leaf. She held her finger above it for a while, then reached into her bodice to turn off Baalbec A-9.

  The map remained on the leaf, white lines not so much imprinted on the black surface as glowing from within it. The glowing spot that represented the party of travelers—perhaps, Clive speculated, Baalbec A-9 itself—pulsed at them like a beating heart.

  User Annie presented the map to Sergeant Smythe. Possibly she realized that he was a military man with long experience in maps and cross-country tracking. Certainly Clive Folliot was a rank amateur, and Annie herself with her urban background would be unaccustomed to traveling in the wild.

  Finnbogg seemed cheerful today. He alternately plodded along beside the others or trotted off to investigate some intriguing scent or sound that they did not even detect. His canine nature was apparently becoming dominant over the human side of his being. Perhaps the two alternated, or perhaps it was the exposure to the countryside that was bringing about the change.

  The dwarfish creature had taken a particular liking to User Annie. He would run to her side, nuzzle her with his heavy face and terrible fangs until she scratched his bristly skull. Then he would wriggle with pleasure and run off.

  It was hard to tell the time, but after they had marched for an estimated two hours, Clive called a rest. They were in a clear area, the land relatively flat, a row of soft, wooded hills to their right, a level plain to their left.

  Finnbogg sat on his heels, again as much doglike as manlike. He gazed at the sky, his bulldog face a melancholy mask. User Annie sat beside him, her arm around his heavily muscled shoulders.