The Black Tower

by Phlip Jose Farmer

  Clive put his hand on the other's shoulder. "All right, Sergeant Smythe. That's past, and I think you acted—well, perhaps unwisely, but not dishonorably, with regard to the duel. As for the lady, what's past cannot be recalled."

  He signaled to User Annie and to Finnbogg. "Let us get moving." Once they were again under way, Clive said, "One more question, Sergeant. What were their names—the gentleman and the lady in this incident?"

  "I'll never forget them, sah. They were a mining millionaire, a Mr. Philo Goode. He'd made his fortune from a gem mine in Missouri. Remarkable, sah. They turn up diamonds and emeralds and rubies, all within a single site, Mr. Goode said. And the lady was his sister. I mentioned that before, sah, didn't I? She was a widow lady. Her name was Lorena Ransome. Her husband was a preacher, a missionary, killed by fierce Apaches in the Wild West. The Reverend Amos Ransome, that was his name, sah."

  Horace Hamilton Smythe heaved a heavy sigh.

  "Ah, she was a beautiful one, Major. You can't imagine what a beautiful one."

  "Yes, I can, Sergeant. Believe me, I can."

  "Please, sah, don't rub it in so."

  "I'm not rubbing it in, Sergeant! Don't tell me you have forgotten the trio of crooked gamblers who so nearly took me, aboard the Empress Philippa."

  "No, sah. Of course not."

  "But think, man! They were the same trio! You never killed Philo Goode! His death was faked— heaven knows why! And Amos Ransome is not dead, nor is Lorena Ransome his widow. They traveled on board Empress Philippa as brother and sister, pretending not even to know Goode!"

  "I—I—when you say it, sah, it all makes sense. Of course." Smythe's face had the expression of a poleaxed steer.

  "But you didn't connect the incidents on the John C. Calhoun and the Empress Philippa? You recognized the trio as cardsharpers but you didn't connect them with the cardsharpers who had taken you in America? How can that be, Sergeant Smythe? They must have done something to your brain."

  "I don't know, sah. I can't understand it. It doesn't make any sense at all, sah. No sense at all."

  Smythe trudged ahead, his shoulders slumped. "I don't suppose, sah," he started to say after they'd gone the better part of a mile.

  Folliot said, "Yes?"

  "Well, I'm just trying to remember, sah. There we were, beside the river. The widow was there, Mrs. Ransome."

  "Yes, Sergeant. If that's who she really was."

  "And the seconds and witnesses. They take dueling very seriously in New Orleans, sah. There was quite an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen present. Seconds and witnesses and referees. Mr. Goode arranged all of that, since I didn't know anyone in New Orleans, you see, Major Folliot."

  "Yes, Smythe. I quite understand. What is it that you are trying to tell me, man?"

  "Well, sah, it was like this. I can remember the scene clearly. Very, very clearly. Up to a particular moment. The moment when Mrs. Ransome handed me the pistol. There was even a judge there, presiding over the event."

  A wind had come up, a cold wind that bore moisture with it. Clive wondered if it ever rained on Q'oorna. It must, to maintain the vegetation and the wildlife they had observed. It must rain—or snow! He shuddered.

  "The judge," Sergeant Smythe was saying, "took both the pistols. I handed him mine, and the other he took from Mr. Goode's dead hand, Major Folliot. After they were checked he returned them to Mrs. Ransome. She handed one of them to me. She said that she would keep one, and that I was to keep the other."

  He shivered visibly. It might have been the cold wind that made him do so, or the memory of the events he was describing.

  "She said—Major, I can remember it dear as my mother's face, sah—she said, 'You must look at this, Mr. Smythe.' I wasn't using my military rank in America, you see, Major. She said, 'You must look at this.' And she held the revolver so the grip was right before my eyes. I hadn't noticed the stars in the grip before that. Maybe they were there all along but I never saw them before."

  A more violent shudder swept his frame.

  "I don't know what happened, sah. I looked, as Mrs. Ransome asked me to. And—I don't know what happened, sah. Ever since then, I think I'm all right. I feel myself, I can do everything I could ever do, Major. But—sometimes I don't know why I do the things I do. Sometimes—I don't understand myself, Major."

  He paused, then he said, "Maybe that's why I didn't connect the John C. Calhoun and the Empress

  Philippa. Or the people. The people. I don't know, sah. What do you think, sah?"

  "I don't know what to think, Sergeant. Either you were the victim of a plot and of powers that stagger the imagination—or you are a dissembler of monumental proportions!"

  "A dissembler, sah? I beg the major's pardon!"

  "Aboard Empress Philippa—and since, now that I think of it—you showed evidence of being a master of disguise, Smythe. Mandarin, Arab—you could put the West End's Finest thespians to shame. And you did recognize the Goode-Ransome combine for what they were, when you penetrated their scheme in the Empress's salon."

  Smythe looked baffled.

  "Now you tell me this wild tale," Folliot went on, "about Mississippi steamboat gamblers and seduction and dueling in New Orleans. You weave a yarn about the pistol, and you hint—at least you hint—that you must have been the subject of some sort of mesmeric spell cast by Miss Ransome. Or Mrs. Ransome. Whichever is her true identity. You tell this wild tale and you expect me to . . . to ..."

  He stopped because he had simply run out of words. Sergeant Smythe had been his mentor when he was a green lieutenant, had been his companion in war and peace. Clive knew that Smythe had more than once saved his very life!

  And yet it appeared that Smythe was playing a secret and sinister game. A game in which the stakes were nothing less than life itself.

  And Clive Folliot might yet be the loser of that game!

  CHAPTER 18

  The Pool of Hades

  They rounded the hill believing that they knew what would come next. They had Annie's map; they had followed it for days and it had proved accurate.

  Then they learned better.

  The map had indicated a low region. It appeared to be narrow, punctuated by swamps. To Clive it suggested a replay of the Sudd in Equatoria, but Horace Hamilton Smythe pointed out that the swampy area here was far smaller than the Bahr-el-Zeraf. By picking their way carefully, they could get through.

  "I'm not convinced," Clive demurred. "Possibly we three can pick our way to the other side." There was no need for him to specify that he meant himself and Sergeant Smythe and User Annie. "But what about—"

  He indicated Finnbogg with a movement of his head.

  "Pity, sah. Hate to lose the beast, but if it must be. ..."

  "Beast?" Folliot was enraged. "He's no beast. He—"

  "He's a doggy, sah. I'm as fond of the fellow as you are. Poor Sidi Bombay might not care so much for him, but I think he's a splendid old hound. Still, a man's a man and an animal is something different. You don't believe that Darwin chap, sah, I hope. We're all just a bunch of bloody beasts, that's what he's got to say. Can't accept that, I hope!"

  "Oh, never mind Darwin! I'm talking about Finnbogg. I'll admit that he's rather like a dog. But we're rather like apes, Sergeant Smythe, in case you'd never noticed. We have the same number and arrangement of limbs, our other organs and features are pretty much alike. But that doesn't mean that a man's the same as a chimpanzee. And just because Finnbogg is rather like a dog doesn't mean that he is one."

  Smythe backed down. Perhaps he still felt chagrined at his story of the John C. Calhoun. Or perhaps he was merely deferring to Folliot's rank. At any rate ... "No, sah. But we've still got to get through this little swamp."

  They had Annie's map spread before them. Clive Folliot picked it up and folded it into a pocket of his khaki jacket. "Let's move on, then," he called.

  That was when they rounded the hill. The swamp spread before them, as the map had indicated. It didn't look too bad
. There were pools. There were marshy areas that might be quicksand and that would require great care. There were grassy tussocks and trees rising from the swamp with moss hanging from them and the Q'oornan equivalent of other earthly parasites—creepers, vines, and dead-black orchids.

  "Does the major think we'll encounter any wildlife, sah?" Smythe peered ahead.

  Before Folliot could answer, the water erupted in the center of the largest pool. The liquid spouted upward like a geyser, showering outward for hundreds of feet in all directions. The travelers were spattered. The water was startlingly warm, almost hot. It stank to high heaven. Wherever it touched the skin it left a scummy residue that itched and burned even after it was wiped away.

  And with the spattering of black fluid came a shower of creatures ranging in scale from the size of a shilling coin to that of a giant swamp rat.

  Folliot called to User Annie to switch on her protective field, but it was too late for that. The creatures were swarming over her and over all the rest of them.

  Something that looked like a toad easily eight inches long hopped onto Clive's shoulder and dug in with its toes. Each of its digits was tipped with a claw, and where the claws pierced his skin it felt like an array of red-hot dinner forks.

  A formless blob looking like something Meinheer Leeuwenhoek might have observed through his microscope had fastened itself onto Horace Hamilton Smythe's face. At first it was a mere black splotch resembling an inkblot, but Smythe began to scream and wipe at it, trying desperately to clean it away, only to have it grow and spread until it threatened to cover his nostrils and mouth and smother him.

  Finnbogg was swarmed by a brigade of insectlike creatures, scorpions and wasps and grubs and leeches and other beings of every type and description in uncounted hordes. The muscular Finnbogg rolled on the black earth, crushing his tormentors by the hundred—but they continued their attack by the thousand.

  Folliot and his companions still had the cybroid claws they had taken from the flying beast. Clive used his claw to rip the toad off his shoulder and hurl it away from him, but a thing like a monstrous hellgrammite coursed up his body. He reached for it, opened his mouth to shout. The thing moved like lightning. Clive clamped his teeth shut, grasped the insect with one hand, and hacked at it with his claw. It loosened its grip on him and he flung it away.

  He gagged, bent double, and retched. He had nipped off the head and forequarters of the hellgrammite, but the remaining part of the creature had continued to struggle, sending lances of fiery pain through Clive's tongue and lips. The contents of his stomach came up and splattered the ground, the partial insect still squirming feebly in the steaming mess.

  A black snake reared and wove its hooded head a foot from Folliot's face. Its tongue flickered. It looked like the deadly Egyptian cobra, its black eyes reflecting the pale nebulae and stars that glittered above it.

  "Crash system! Crash system! Catastrophic error!" It was User Annie's voice. Clive was frozen, facing the cobra. He knew enough of such creatures to realize that its mobility was limited, its movements not very rapid. But at this close range the cobra need merely permit itself to fall forward—that was the way the hooded vipers struck—and Clive would receive a lethal dose of venom.

  Annie did not use her cybroid claw. Instead she raised her hand and pointed her finger at the cobra and it shrank away, slithering back toward the swamp. A thing like a giant leech had fastened itself to the back of her hand and Clive ripped it away and threw it as far as he could. Annie swept her finger over his body, dislodging half-a-dozen things that had got inside his garments without his even knowing it. Wherever her finger pointed, Clive felt a tracery of fire, but even this he could accept, knowing that the attacking beasts could not.

  Annie gave the same treatment to Horace Hamilton Smythe.

  The three of them ran to Finnbogg. The massive creature was still rolling on the ground, writhing and tearing at himself. Folliot and Smythe held him as Annie ran her finger over his body, dislodging one horror after another.

  "What about you?" Folliot shouted at Annie. "Can you use that thing on yourself?"

  She seemed to understand. "Electrofield power depleted. User exclusion mode. Manual intervention required!"

  Even as she shouted the words she was stripping off her clothing. She did not hesitate at any point. Even before she was totally nude, Clive Folliot and Horace Hamilton Smythe were plucking hideous monstrosities from her flesh.

  The whole thing was over in moments. Annie drew a ring in the earth, enclosing the four of them. Somehow her Baalbec A-9 left a charge on the ground. None of the horrors that had erupted—were still erupting—from the pool crossed the line.

  In the battle to free themselves from the horrors that splattered them, the travelers had ignored the geyser that had produced them. Now they could see that it was still spouting its foul spew into the air, and that not only stinking black water but a steady stream of the hideous beings were scattering from the eruption.

  When the geyser finally stopped its flow, the ground was covered with a living carpet of crawling, hopping, chirruping abominations. They crept upon one another, battled and killed and devoured one another, mated in a mad frenzy.

  Only the ring created by Annie's Baalbec A-9 protected the four.

  Clive estimated that the geyser spouted for only a quarter of an hour, and the orgy of feasting and mating and death went on for less than an hour. Then the creatures lapsed into lassitude. Sluggishly they began dragging themselves back into the swamp.

  Like a living organism, the very earth seemed to move downward, downward. It was really the collective motion of tens of thousands of abominations, but they had the appearance of a single horror, and they entered the pool with a continuous, disgusting, surging sound, like that of a horrid beast sucking out the guts of a helpless victim.

  Slowly, User Annie bent and picked up her garments. She trembled as she donned them, and Folliot gallantly held her arm to steady her. Sergeant Smythe suggested that she keep her electrofield turned on at all times, but Annie shook her head. For once she spoke comprehensibly. "Baalbec A-nine uses my power." She pressed a thumb against the soft flesh over her heart. "No battery pack on A-nine. No external power source." She smiled ruefully. "Baalbec uses only Annie's power. Not so strong. Not so strong."

  She was clearly exhausted, and close to shedding those tears that come to the emotionally and physically spent.

  User Annie sank to her haunches and held her hand over her eyes. "Heepers!" she muttered. "Cuffin romchies, tubehead gig, unable crunch these cuffin numbers."

  Clive knelt before her.

  She looked into his face, tears falling at last from her eyes. "System overload, User Folliot. System cuffin overload. Circuits cuffin sizzled, user." She threw herself into his arms and butted his shoulder like a cat, weeping onto his jacket.

  Once the ground was clear—which did not take long—they determined to press on. They had no idea how often the geyser erupted. It might be years between events, or mere minutes. They did not wish to remain there to find out. Nor did they wish to try to cross the swamp.

  "Other ways off Q'oorna," Finnbogg volunteered. "Lots more of Dungeon than Q'oorna."

  The others gazed at one another. If only they could understand one another fully, their chances of escape, or at least of survival, would be enhanced. But only Clive and Horace Hamilton Smythe could speak to each other with full comprehension. User Annie lapsed into and out of her strange futuristic jargon, and Finnbogg with his doggy eagerness to please had only the vocabulary one would expect of a bright canine.

  They were marching southward, paralleling the edge of the swamp and tracing the foot of the row of hills they had penetrated.

  "How else can we leave Q'oorna, Finnbogg?" Clive asked.

  "Oh, big water mountain. Oh, yes, big water mountain, get off Q'oorna, Folliot. Oh, yes."

  Clive turned to Horace Hamilton Smythe. "What do you think he means by that? Big water mountain. Think h
e means a glacier?"

  Smythe asked Finnbogg, "You mean ice?" Finnbogg only looked puzzled.

  "Ice. Blimey! Look fella, ice is like water, only, ah, it's very cold, eh? When water gets cold enough it became hard. Hard like diamonds. Glass. Lord help me! Water rocks, eh, Finnbogg?"

  Finnbogg nodded his massive head vigorously. "Hard, yes. Water like rocks. Yes. No. Not way out. Ice? Eh, Smythe, hard water ice, hey? Good! Good, good, good. No. Not hard. Not ice. Big mountain water like, ah"—he jerked a pawlike hand toward the now distant swamp—"water mountain up. Bad water mountain up. Good water mountain down." He gestured vigorously, jumping up and down so that the very earth shook beneath his feet. "Water down! Water mountain down!"

  "Jove!" Folliot exclaimed. "He's talking about a waterfall, Smythe! He's saying we can get out of here by passing through a waterfall!"

  He imitated the motion of a waterfall with his hands.

  Finnbogg said, "Yes, yes. Out of Q'oorna, water mountain down. Yes. More ways, too, Folliot. Many ways out of Q'oorna. Way of sky on ground. Oh, stars, clouds, black sky, white shining, get away from Q'oorna. Or heart of stone. Yes, like hard water rock and red heart shining. And house. House on"—he made parallel motions with his hands, upending them and sliding them through the air parallel to the ground—"on knives. Yes, Smythe. Yes, Folliot. Like house on knives. House move, knives stay, go out of Q'oorna. Out, yes, good, see boypups, girlpups, sire and dam. See Finnbogg home, good, yes, go." Smythe said, "That sky-on-ground business doesn't ring any bells, but the rock with red heart shining—"

  "Yes!" Clive interrupted. "That's a perfect description of the way we came through the Bahr-el-Zeraf! And the moving house on knives, did you get that, Smythe?"

  "I'm not sure, sah, that I did."

  "I'm not sure either," Folliot replied. "But I'd bet my monthly pay packet that good brother Finnbogg, in his own doggy way, was describing a railroad." Smythe looked puzzled. Then he looked thoughtful. Then his face was split by a happy grin. "I think the major is absolutely right, I do! Yes, sah! A house that moves on knives. Two long blades, the rails. Can there be a railroad here on Q'oorna?"