When the next flash came, I was staring at what had been one of the walls of the tower’s cellar. A section of it had crumbled away when the building collapsed, disclosing the bed rock behind. In this rock there was a man-high opening under two lines of inscription. The light left us too swiftly for me to be able to read them, yet I thought I knew what I had seen.
“What did it say there?”
“The big line straight across,” he answered, “says: ‘Gnipa Cave — Beware of the Dog.’ The smaller one hugging the opening reads: ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’”
My knees were trembling, but I managed to hold my voice steady. “I have no hope to abandon.”
Because it is a fact, complete in its own identity, even a miserable conviction feels entitled to respect. He greeted this one with a bark of laughter.
“Liar!” he cried. “All men and devils have hope — even if it’s only the hope they will cease to be. Hope is the meanest evidence of the infinite genius for cruelty that is the hall-mark of Heaven. Imagine the devious will that can steep us in the torture of our lives while at the same time crazing us with an opiate which makes us believe that another day may bring better fortune. Nothing sensate is free from this insane affliction at any waking hour. As for you, who know yourself to be without anything that makes life supportable, you yet at this instant hope you won’t have to go into that cave.”
I didn’t need light to see that entrance. That hole in the rock might as well have been a hole in my brain it was fixed there so firmly.
“Do I have to?” Amidst all that water my mouth was dry. “Is it on the way?”
“You do, and it is.”
“But where does it go to; what’s inside it?”
“It leads to the poisoned core of creation,” Faustopheles responded, “and nothing is ever found in a worm-hole but worms and gall.”
Yielding to blind panic, I was turning to run when he gripped me above the elbow. The next instant I was being jerked through the air. When we alighted, the rain no longer beat down on me. I was in the cave.
26
Into the Pit
THE SLANTING FLOOR, steep as a woodchuck burrow, gave me no chance to brace and balk. Faustopheles still clutched me, and I stumbled downward after him until, at a level spot in the earth’s midriff, he chose to halt.
If I had tried to run from an imagined danger, fatalism stiffened my backbone when I found myself helpless to avoid the actuality. I shook off my companion’s hand.
“Keep your hooks off me,” I snarled to counterbalance the fright I had let him see. “I can make it under my own power. And if you want to show me what’s here, don’t piddle around like a man waiting for the house to buy. Let’s go, in the Devil’s name, and get it over with!”
“We will do that,” he said. Then he shouted: “Open and hold Garm in check!”
It was not until the doors swung back that I knew of their existence. There was light behind, a sort of luminous dusk. That was only the first thing I noticed; not the most startling. When my eyes stopped blinking, they discovered that the bulk in the foreground was not a mound covered with blackened grass. It was heaving, in fact it was breathing; and having decided that much, I could see we were approaching the tail end of a colossal canine-like animal. “Beware of the dog,” the inscription had advised. This one was twice the size of a bull whale.
I glanced sidewise at Faustopheles to find he was looking at me with amusement. “Don’t worry; Garm’s only loosed upon those going the other way — those trying to escape. His time hasn’t come to face around yet.”
We were giving the monster plenty of room, but I was holding myself ready to dodge if it made a sudden move. “Do you mean it’s going to be stationed so as to keep people out of here instead of holding them in?”
“No,” he said with sudden heat, “I mean that he’ll face around to go forth himself, unchained and frantic to kill and destroy.”
“My God!” I shuddered.
“There’ll be no use in calling upon your god then,” he cried. “Whoever he is, he won’t be able to save himself on the day Garm and his mates leap up to snap the stars out of the sky and curdle the milky way with the slaver of their madness.”
“But can’t they keep him chained?” I didn’t know or ask about Garm’s associates; the sight of the terrible dog alone was enough to convince me of the possibilities. “Who will let it go, and who let it be raised in the first place?”
“Who?” My guide’s face was as wildly savage as his prophecy. “Do you think corruption has no power to generate forces to avenge itself, or that they can be leashed forever? The bonds which arrogance has forged for them are daily being eaten by the acid suppurating from the rottenness of creation; and they’ll be broken, I tell you, they’ll be broken!”
We were soon passing under one of the enormous chains which restrained Garm, and I examined it. It was rusty, but it still looked reassuringly strong.
All the same I hurried a little. “Will mankind be destroyed?” I whispered.
“You can’t bear the thought, no matter how detestable you find life to be, can you?” Faustopheles laughed. “Do you think that when the seats of Heaven crumple and gods are eaten, that the homunculi they put through their tricks like trained fleas — and crack like fleas when they are tired of them — will be preserved?”
It was as he had said. The thought of the non-existence of man was more awful than the contemplation of zero. My mind could hold the idea for only a moment before the fear of madness made me drop it and kick it out of sight. I put a hand to my head, which had started to throb because of the mere instant of aberration.
“It can’t be!” I protested. “Some must be saved.”
“Oh, you’ve heard that gossip, have you?” He had used up his mirth and was intent on the problem rather than on needling me. For a few paces he walked on in silence. “They do say that two whom even the dog won’t eat will live to see a new dispensation,” he then said harshly, “but I — ”
A growl as loud as any thunder we had heard during the storm interrupted him. Glancing backward, I saw that we were far enough ahead of Garm to be in focus for the monster. His jaws, flashing teeth as tall as men, were open. There were screeches from grinding metal as he sprang to his feet and strained against his chains.
“He’s just making noise. They won’t let him bother you, as long as you’re not trying to dodge the Pit,” Faustopheles said.
His chance of comforting me was slight at best, but at that moment Garm gave out with a full-throated bay. The hot, stinking breath of it knocked me flat — but not for long. If ever a man bounced, I did, and when my feet were under me again, they really moved me. Off to the left the rock yielded a narrow passage. I picked it out and made for it as instinctively as a mouse makes for a crack in the woodwork.
“Stop it, you fool; he’s not coming after you! Wait, I say!” Fast though I was running, Faustopheles caught me. He had recovered from his sombre mood and grinned at me as I shamefacedly caught my breath. “If he was free, you could no more evade him than a scuttling bug can save itself from being stepped on. However, you were at least going in the right direction. Our way lies through that passage; but I feel it my duty to warn you that the region beyond is no place for headless-chicken running.”
“Aw, quit being so damned full of wisdom,” I retorted. “You’re right; of course, you’re right. I know reason and resignation are one and the same; but I’m going to forget it every time I’m threatened with doom, so get used to the idea.”
“I’ve been used to it for a long time,” he said with one of his odd changes of pace.
Not sure whether he was talking about himself or me, I didn’t answer. We had reached the passageway, and I saw that it led to steps cut in the rock. Spiraling downward and out of sight, they were worn by the usage of years — centuries, perhaps. Faustopheles led the way, and in the full knowledge that retreat was impossible, I began the descent.
The stairs
were broad and cut at an easy grade. My guide negotiated them swiftly, and I crowded after him, unable to conceive what I would next see. In the withdrawn state of my mind it was difficult to judge depth and distance, but we must have left thousands of steps behind us when we came to a landing. At this point Faustopheles halted.
“One of the few windows to the universe,” he said, as casually as if he were showing a stranger a good view of Lake Michigan. “Have a look.”
With the words he stepped from between me and the opening to which he referred. It was an embrasure three to four feet square cut through the rock. I glanced out without being able to see anything. Then, bracing myself on the sill, I poked my head forth and peered down.
Whatever the elements were up to at the spot where we had entered the earth, there was no darkness here, nor were there clouds or any other impediment to the vision. That air was as clear as distilled water, and I could see nothing. I examined the emptiness above, straight ahead, and to my left and right before I gazed down again. My sight went so far in a vain quest for a resting place that my eyes felt like they were being drawn out of my head. Next my body felt as if it was being sucked into the quicksands of space. Shakily I drew back.
“There’s nothing down there!” I exclaimed, looking at Faustopheles as if it were all his fault. That I could see nothing in other directions didn’t disturb me; but I was unnerved to find emptiness below, so it was of this fault that I complained. “An airplane flies over something, even if it’s only a cloud or the rump side of a rainbow, but one couldn’t find that much here. It — it just falls away.”
“Forever and endlessly,” he agreed. “It’s the Void, you know.”
I didn’t know, but I calmed enough to want to confront this challenge to my reason. “The what?”
“The Void,” he repeated, half broodingly and half in enjoyment of the shock he had given me. “You ought to become acquainted with it, being akin to it. Containing everything, it is the fosterer of all matter.”
“Oh,” I sniffed, “if you want to take the line that because air is around everything, it contains everything, why, have an analogy on me. When the wind blows right the city of Chicago is contained in the stench of the stockyards.”
He disdained to answer in kind. “This isn’t air, though the seeds of air are in it. You say it holds nothing?”
There was an appalling lack of color about what he called the Void. “Hold anything!” I derided him. “It doesn’t hold so much as a sliver of a sunbeam, let alone a fleck of dust.”
“Nothing so big,” he informed me, leaning on the sill as if he was considering visible objects. “Yet in it are suspended infinitesimal particles of all things. I said ‘suspended,’ but that is wrong. The first beginnings of matter drop through it faster than the imagination can span distance.”
I hesitated before I felt convinced that I had run across something familiar. “Do you mean atoms?”
He twisted his head around at me, smiling sarcastically. “Why, as you heard, in my simple way I call them the first beginnings; but if you’re on such familiar terms with them, use your influence to make some of them put in an appearance.”
“You’re the one who believes they’re there.”
“Put out your hand, and I’ll show you why.” I hugged the side of the embrasure and refrained from looking down. Yet, having learned that it was useless, I didn’t struggle when he thrust my hand out, palm up. “Hold it there and watch,” he ordered.
For a while I was conscious of nothing. Then I felt something like the beat of very fine rain drops. Somewhat later I made out a couple of motes scarcely less colorless than the Void itself.
“Stopped in flight by something solid, the first beginnings get together like monkeys,” Faustopheles commented. “That’s when they become visible. It’s too early to see what you’ve got; but the nature of the result will be determined by the first element to get on the field in any quantity. They only pair and congregate with their own kind.”
Interested in spite of myself, I kneeled so I could support my arm on the sill. The specks grew rapidly more numerous, but I don’t want to give the impression that they stayed in my hand. Rather they performed dizzy maneuvers above it in the manner of gnats hovering over a pool of swamp water. They danced up and down and in and out, frequently colliding and bouncing free of each other again. Some, I noticed, were bumped clear of the throng. Falling outside the barrier of my hand, these vanished.
Meanwhile some of the motes were getting larger. Eventually one of them attained such comparative bulk that it grew sluggish, then settled in my palm. From then on the character of the maneuvers changed. In place of being like the war dance of gnats the action resembled the swarming of bees. The weeding out process still went on, but those which survived it flew in an increasingly denser whorl whose focal point was the grain of stuff in my hand. In time they had all merged to form a unit.
“If you live long enough, you see all there is.” I spoke casually to conceal the awe I felt. While doing so, I examined the tiny accretion in my hand, which lay as inertly as if none of its parts had ever moved. “You wouldn’t think that all those high jinks would go into the making of a lump of clay.”
“Don’t be scornful of it,” Faustopheles warned me. “The seeds of your own being were once adrift in that same impersonal matrix. Yes, and those of your god or gods, too.”
“Possibly,” I conceded, “except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Because he sounded so challenging, I took the more pleasure in making him give ground. “Life,” I said, tossing the pellet of clay away and wiggling my fingers for emphasis. “It’s one formula that isn’t in the chemistry book.”
“You haven’t studied the right text. I wasn’t satisfied until I did.” He seemed to be remembering something he hated to when he made that remark, but in a moment he came out of it. “Wait a second,” he said briskly, seating himself on the sill in a way I would never have dared to do, “and I’ll see if I still have the touch.”
I hadn’t noticed what long fingers he had until he moved those of one hand through the Void, occasionally brushing the other four with his thumb. “I’ve got a couple of the right sort of first beginnings,” he soon announced. “It won’t be anything fancy, but we’ll get something out of them.”
The same kind of creative gyrations that had taken place over my palm then took place above his. The result was not inspiring in itself, but it was stunning to me. The microscopic sub-grub he submitted for my inspection was undoubtedly alive.
“So with this worm, and so with you,” he said. “Gaze into the Void and call it mother.”
“But that’s an animal!” I protested. “You can’t compare its life with that of a man.”
“Can’t I? I suppose you will say that other creatures have merely a spark of vitality, while man has a soul, hand forged by deity, which can be slipped in and out of him like a knife with its sheath.”
“Well,” I said, embarrassed and troubled, “I don’t know that I believe in a soul exactly.”
“But you like to think that there’s something so precious about you that the cosmos can’t spare it. You know your body won’t survive, but something tells you that your own private unit of life will be pickled in Time by the cherishing power that made it.” He nudged the Void with his elbow. “This is your creator. Find love and warmth in it if you can, for in the end you’re going back to it.”
I looked backward up the steps leading cheerlessly to my past, then out at the bleakness which stood for the future. Whether he takes the trouble to reason about it or not, or whether he wants to believe in it or not, it is the nature of man to think there’s a chance of escaping oblivion. The denial of that chance did not stir my emotions, however. I merely felt like someone, already destitute, who discovers there’s something else for him to lose.
“That’s all there is to it?” I said quietly.
“Every bit of it.” He stirred the little g
rub in his right hand with a finger of the left. “If you want to claim that the life in you is a soul, salute your spiritual equal here; for the animating impulse which sets you both in meaningless motion is one and the same.”
My shrug was honest evidence of the way I felt. “Why tell me about it?”
“Why! Because once you understand that man is no pet of uncaring divinity, you can appreciate the absurdity of men’s moral pretensions. How they love them and strut beneath the burden! Even those who lay claim to skepticism where deity is concerned — they often more earnestly than the rest, as though to make up for it — will ask whether man is living up to his responsibilities and will soberly use such phrases as ‘the destiny of man.’”
With a snap of his forefinger he launched the grub into space. Thinking of that endless fall, I couldn’t help wincing. He saw that and grinned.
“There’s your destiny of man, and your responsibility is neither more nor less than that of the Void, which made you and will redistribute your dead particles, alike with fish-eyed indifference.”
Not because I disbelieved him, but because he was enjoying himself where I could not, I glowered at him. “Is this what you brought me in the cave to see?”
“Only incidentally. You had to comprehend that humanity was created soulless before you could savor the irony of people whose chief affliction is the belief that they are spiritual beings.” As abruptly as if I had been causing the delay rather than he, he grasped my arm once more. “It’s time to see the citizenry of the Pit.”
The countless stairs were the stairs of a jail; but in the grim fashion of prison architecture they offered security. Not so much could be said of the path at their foot. Without preamble it dipped over the rim and down the inside of a vast cylinder.
To envisage something of my unhappiness, it is necessary to envisage descending into a volcano by means of a trail carved sparingly from the stone lining. Ahead all I could see was that the path coiled downward until it disappeared in smoke. From somewhere below there arose a confusion of noises. Some I was unable to identify, while others sounded like human shrieks and shouts.
Silverlock (Prologue Books) Page 35
