There was no sign of Annie.
The third shelter Clive approached was dark. He could see nothing within, but could hear the slow, steady breathing of a man asleep.
Were the shelters all one-man affairs? If so, then there must be at least one vacant shelter, belonging to one of the two men playing the pebble game. A vacant shelter might make a hiding place, a base of operations for himself and Finnbogg. Or—Annie might be held there!
Clive started once more across an open area.
The night was shattered by a shout in Japanese followed by a series of roars, thumps, grunts, and the sound of rending wood. The rain had almost ceased, the clouds had largely cleared, and there was enough light to see the Japanese encampment and the lagoon in its center.
With a crash the roof of a shelter literally flew into the air and clattered to the ground. The walls of the little building followed. Two uniformed Japanese ran from the lean-to, waving their arms and shouting. The massive form of Finnbogg bounced after them in close pursuit. Behind them they left a tableau illuminated by firelight from below and skylight from above.
Half-a-dozen more Japanese marines lay crumpled in a circle. Some of them moved, some of them moaned, some of them did neither. In the center of the circle, tied to a wooden chair, was a woman. Her chin was sunk on her chest but she looked up at Clive's approach and grinned at him.
"Annie!"
"Clive!"
He ran forward and tried to untie her bonds. The ropes were heavy, the knots too tightly drawn for him to open. He seized a carbine and managed to detach the bayonet from it. He attacked the knots with the razor-honed edge of the steel bayonet.
"They ran for help, Clive! They'll catch you," Annie sobbed.
"I'll face them!"
More voices rose in urgent cries, and through them the roar of the enraged Finnbogg could be heard.
"Poor Finnbogg," Annie exclaimed. "He saw me here and he went wild. Clive, what happened at our camp? Where is Horace?"
"Horace is all right. Never mind that. Here, turn your wrists a little. Good. Now, the other side." He Dent and sliced the ropes that held her feet to the legs of the chair. "You're free now!"
Approaching voices drew nearer. Torchlight flickered.
An older Japanese in officer's garb, sword in hand, led the band of marines.
Clive leaped to his feet, bayonet at the ready. Without wasting a moment or a movement, Annie seized a carbine from a felled marine and stood by Clive's side. "Whatever happens, Annie," Clive murmured. "Whatever happens!"
The officer snouted a command and the marines following him skidded to a halt. He spoke to Annie and Clive, using the Japanese language. To Clive's astonishment, Annie replied, giving her brief answer in the same language.
"What did you say?" Clive asked her.
"I told him to speak in the patois. Where I come from, everybody has to know a little Japanese, but I don't know much and I don't think you know any, do you?"
"I don't, no." A flurry of thoughts whirled through Clive's brain, things he wanted to contemplate when he had the opportunity, things that he wanted to say to Annie. But now there was no time. "We've a standoff," Clive said to the marine officer. "I suppose your men could overpower us, but it will cost them dearly. And I know very well that we will die rather than be taken."
To his relief, Annie added an affirmative. It was a game of bluff that he was playing with the Japanese officer, and with Annie's backing, the game appeared to be working.
"Put up your sword, sir," Clive went on. "You are an officer and a gentleman, I take it."
Although Clive wore a civilian outfit, there was enough in his military bearing to carry weight with the other. "I am Major Clive Folliot, on detached service from Her Majesty's Fifth Imperial Horse Guards. And who are you, sir?"
"Yoshio Takamura, s-s-senior lieutenant, Sixteenth Imperial Airborne Marines."
"Very well, sir. May I have your word that neither you nor your men will betray my trust? If so, my companion and I shall lay down our weapons and ask you and your men to do the same. I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman that we bear you no ill will and will do you no harm."
The Japanese officer barked a short phrase at his followers. They lowered their carbines to the ground, then stacked them in a pair of neat cones. Lieutenant Takamura advanced toward Clive Folliot, his sword held across his chest. He stood barely a foot from Clive, his eyes a trifle below Clive's, gazing up into Folliot's face.
Slowly the Japanese raised his sword. For a moment he held it horizontal, its razor-sharp edge toward Clive Folliot at the level of Clive's throat.
Clive's cyberclaw was tucked into the top of his trousers. He still held the bayonet. He calculated the fraction of a second it would take him to plunge it upward into the other's unprotected belly as against the moment it would take Takamura to slash Clive's equally unprotected jugular with his glistening sword.
Their eyes met, and slowly, slowly, and simultaneously, Takamura and Folliot slipped the sword and bayonet into scabbard and belt loop. Out of the corner of his eye, Clive saw Annie give a sigh of relief.
"What is your demon doing to my men?" Takamura demanded.
"Demon? Oh—Finnbogg!"
The dwarf had reappeared. He staggered toward the grouping, a mixture of blood and mud covering his squat form. He was harried by marines. He would pick them up bodily and hurl them from himself but they kept coming, jabbing him with their bayonets, chivying him from every side. It was like a noble African lion harried by a pack of hunting Afghan hounds.
"Finnbogg, it's all right," Clive called, "Annie is safe."
Lieutenant Takamura shouted a series of commands at his men.
They abandoned their attacks on Finnbogg, and the mighty dwarf dropped to the ground at Annie's feet. She ran her hand into his hair, curling the muddy locks around her fingers.
"He is no demon," Annie told the lieutenant. "He is my friend and protector. You will not harm him."
"But you are an angel," the lieutenant said. "A sacred being."
Clive stared at the man. He seemed to be sane enough, but if he and his unit had been snatched from a war and dropped into the Dungeon to fend for themselves, left here for twenty years—what strange system of beliefs might they not have evolved? Annie an angel, a sacred and supernatural being? Finnbogg a demon?
And what would they have thought of Shriek? Apparently they had not encountered the arachnoid—but they might yet do so!
"I am a woman, Lieutenant Takamura. Not an angel. A human woman."
The Japanese officer drew a long, slow breath between his teeth.
"Your Private Onishi is at our camp in the next valley," Clive said. "You were brought here from Kwajalein Atoll, were you not?"
Takamura nodded. "And you? You are British?"
"Yes."
"You were at Singapore?"
Clive shook his head.
"Rangoon?"
"Zanzibar."
"Why are you here? What happened to you?"
"We were brought here, as you were, as many others have been. Finnbogg—my demon, you call him, but he is merely another kind of man, from a world different from ours, Lieutenant Takamura—Finnbogg was brought from his world, too. We come from different worlds and from different times. You are from 1943, Private Onishi said."
"Yes."
"I am from 1868. Annie is from 1999. So you see, Lieutenant, we are all the victims of Q'oorna, all prisoners of the Dungeon. What wars are fought on Earth are no longer our wars. We cannot be enemies here. Here we are fellows, brothers."
The Japanese reached into a pocket and brought out a cloth. He wiped his face. It was a commonplace enough gesture, but to Clive Folliot it was strangely comforting, a sign of the common humanity that exceeded their differences of race and of culture, of language and of era.
Takamura gestured to his men and they brought chairs for Clive and Annie and Takamura himself. Finnbogg had settled happily on the ground and sat with h
is eyes closed, his head pressed against Annie's knee.
"I must ask you," Clive went on, "why your men attacked us. We are strangers here, castaways. We had done them no harm."
"They took you for enemies. For agents of Q'oorna. How do we know that Britain and America are not allied with Q'oorna against the empire of Japan?"
"This war of the future—I pray it will never occur. There may be some way for us to prevent it. We face an opportunity unique in history, to meet, representatives of three distinct eras, and to see the events of the world through the eyes of those different eras. But for now, facing the plight we share in the Dungeon, it is folly of the most base degree for us to fight each other!"
"You are right. You are right and my men were wrong. As their commanding officer I bear the responsibility, the shame, for their misdeeds. Please accept my apologies, Major." The lieutenant lowered his head.
Good heavens, Clive thought to himself, have I gone too far? He'd heard somewhere of the curious Japanese practice of seppuku, ritual suicide in expiation of shame. Not of guilt, a concept familiar to a son of Brittania, but of shame. The difference was subtle but very real. He didn't want to. . . .
"Altogether understandable, Lieutenant. Think no more of it. There was no real harm done, anyway."
"And your—Annie?" Takamura said. "She forgives us also?"
"I do." Annie smiled. She raised her hand and rubbed her head, a puzzled frown replacing the smile on her face.
"Then let us toast. A small pleasure we have managed to reproduce here in the Dungeon." Takamura barked a command at his men. In the string of syllables Clive managed to decipher only the word saki.
"The little stream that flows through our valley," Takamura continued, "we have been able to dam its path and create a rice paddy. We were fortunate when we arrived here to cultivate new growth from the rice in our supplies. And we have learned to make saki."
They drank, they sang, they exchanged stories of military life in the British Empire in the nineteenth century and in the Japanese Empire in the twentieth. Clive felt the fumes of the saki rising from his belly to his head. He was warm and relaxed and he saw brown hands in tan uniform shirts reach and pour more saki. He drank, and the taste of the saki was pleasant and the feeling that it produced in him was pleasant. He felt his eyelids growing heavy, his head growing heavy, and even as he sank into warm, comfortable unconsciousness, he realized that if Takamura chose to betray him in the night, he was as good as dead.
CHAPTER 24
Nakajima Type 97
Clive awakened with the remnants of strange dreams whirling in his brain and the clubs of a thousand Equatorian bushbeaters pounding in his forehead. He blinked and flame seared his eyeballs. He shook his head and an African boa constrictor tightened its coils and crushed his skull to jelly.
He pushed himself upright, struggling against the worst morning-after of his life. He had never been much for heavy drinking, and the nausea and pain he felt reminded him of the wisdom of that policy— and the folly of his deviation from it.
He peered blearily around. There was mighty Finnbogg, the blood and the mud of last night dried on his body. Fleetingly Clive wondered how the multiplicity of miniature suns that illuminated this inverted world could yield to the darkness of night. That was a problem he would ponder another time.
The dwarf was sound asleep, and his snores were as remarkable as everything else about him. Clive reached toward Finnbogg and shook him by the shoulder.
Finnbogg opened a bloodshot eye and moaned.
Clive took a momentary satisfaction in the knowledge that Finnbogg's species was prone to both the human foible of drunkenness and the penalty that followed in its wake.
The dwarf shut his eye and gave the appearance of attempting to burrow into the earth itself, but
Clive persisted and finally Finnbogg sat up, rubbed his face, and stretched.
Senior Lieutenant Yoshio Takamura was nowhere to be seen.
More alarming, Annie had disappeared as well.
Had she partaken of saki along with her male companions? Clive tried to remember. Yes, he was certain that she had. But had she accepted a few token sips of the hot wine out of politeness, or had she imbibed as much as Folliot and Finnbogg, with similar or even more disastrous results?
Had the wine been drugged?
Had the entire party been staged by Takamura for some elusive, ulterior purpose?
From outside the wreckage of the shed came the distinctive creak and clatter of the Japanese pedal cart. Ignoring the lightning bolts that crashed inside his skull, Clive staggered to his feet and out of the wrecked shelter.
The day was bright, the sky blue. The circling suns glowed overhead. Life appeared to have returned to normal in New Kwajalein Atoll—as close to normal as life could be, in this unique setting. The pedal cart was at the far end of the village, a pair of uniformed Japanese propelling it at a good clip. Shading his eyes against the glaring sun, Clive could make out the form of Lieutenant Takamura seated in the rear of the cart, and beside him—Annie!
Clive ran toward the cart. It was moving faster than his wobbly legs could carry him. One of the pedalers seemed to control the direction of the cart. He swung it toward the stream that fed the lagoon in the center of the atoll, and the cart splashed across the shallow water, running onto the opposite bank with hardly a loss of speed.
Clive ran after it. Behind him he heard Finnbogg whining and moaning, his breath loud in the quiet morning air.
The cart turned again and headed toward the gleaming silvery machine, the Nakajima. The cart halted and the two pedalers handed Lieutenant Takamura and Annie down to the ground.
They walked together to the Nakajima, and Lieutenant Takamura courteously assisted Annie to climb onto one of the metallic projections that extended from the sides of the machine like the wings of a swooping bird.
Annie acted as if she had seen such contraptions before. Well, probably she had. To Clive the Nakajima was new and puzzling, but if it was a tool of war to the Japanese of 1943, then it would be a commonplace if not a virtual antique by the time Annie's world of 1999 came into being.
Annie slid the glass canopy of the Nakajima to the rear and climbed into the seat of the machine. Clive could see her moving to adjust the Baalbec A-9 beneath her blouse. The gesture made him wonder why she had not used the device the previous day. Even if the initial attack by the marines had caught her unprepared and the first blow she received had rendered her unconscious, she could have used the electrofield once she recovered herself.
But this was not the time for idle speculation. He shouted and waved after Annie, but she was too far from him to hear his shouts, and her position in the Nakajima prevented her from seeing his frantic gestures.
A whine arose from the machine, followed by a coughing sound, a snarl (all as if the Nakajima were a living thing), and finally a steady, throbbing hum. The silvery screw on the front of the Nakajima glinted in the sunlight as it began to whirl.
The machine was functioning—but how could that be? Onishi and Takamura both had said that the Japanese were long since devoid of ammunition for their weapons and fuel for their machine.
Somehow, Annie must be powering the Nakajima with her Baalbec A-9. Clive knew that the Baalbec drew its power from Annie's body—what a strain it must be, what a use of her physical reserves, to power that shining machine!
Life returned to Clive's legs—and apparently to Finnbogg's as well. They ran to the edge of the stream and forded it where the pedal cart had crossed. The water was cold and fresh. Clive and Finnbogg both fell more than once in their haste, but they struggled to their feet and continued.
They emerged on the far bank of the stream and began to run toward the Nakajima. Now Finnbogg's mighty muscles came into play and he outdistanced Clive in short order.
The Nakajima was rolling forward on three wheels like a child's wheeled plaything. Finnbogg raced past the stationary pedal cart, past the two marines, past Lie
utenant Takamura. He very nearly caught up to the slowly moving Nakajima, but the machine accelerated just as Finnbogg dived for its nearest projection. His mighty hands, still dripping from the stream, slipped off its silvery polished skin and he crashed to the ground with a quivering jolt.
Clive caught sight of Annie, her hair whipped by the breeze created by the Nakajima's forward movement. The sun glinted on her flowing hair, on the glass of the open canopy, on the polished surfaces and silvery screw that pulled the Nakajima forward.
Then the machine lifted from the earth itself like a graceful sea bird rising from the surface of a pond. It rose into the air, shrank in perspective as it drew away from Clive, then curved away in a gentle swoop above the nearest hillside. Now the machine's aerial course drew it back toward the lagoon until it grew once more, the sun gleaming on its metal skin.
Was that truly Annie whom Clive perceived in the Nakajima's open canopy? Was she so close that he was able to see her wave, see her smile? Did she wave and smile at him—or at Finnbogg—or at her erstwhile captors?
The Nakajima shrank again, rising and glinting in the bright sun, climbing over the rows of hills that surrounded New Kwajalein Atoll. Soon it was a mere speck against the sky, glinting once and once again, and then it was gone.
Clive stood as one stunned. A groan from Finnbogg returned him to his surroundings.
He walked forthrightly to Lieutenant Takamura. The Japanese officer's uniform, though patched and thin, was spotless and was borne with precision and pride. A military scabbard depended from Takamura's belt, and from it protruded the pommel of his officer's sword.
"Major Folliot," Takamura snapped. He raised his hand in a brisk salute.
"Lieutenant." Clive felt a twinge as he returned the gesture; he had thought of himself in civilian terms, as an explorer and temporary journalist, since leaving the Horse Guards in England and beginning his journeys. Somehow he managed to summon a remnant of military punctilio.
"The Sacred is gone from us," Takamura said.
"Miss Annie. An ordinary girl, Lieutenant."
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