Keepers of the Secrets

by Philip José Farmer

  'What do you think of that?'

  The prisoners continued to stare without expression.

  'You can pretend to be unconcerned!' he shouted.

  'But you are naked, and I can see your hearts thumping! A long goodnight to you, mortals!'

  He spat and walked away, two men preceding him, the others trailing.

  Pauncho broke the long silence. 'Maybe the invaders will take pity on us.'

  'Yeah,' Barney said. They might shoot us. At that, they'd be doing us a favour.'

  Pauncho looked at Doc and said, 'I didn't know we were related. That makes me several cuts superior to this proletarian peasant, heh, Doc? I got the blood of English nobility in my veins, right? And the blood of ancient Viking sea kings. And what's more, the blood of men and women that were once gods and goddesses to the common herd, lowly swine like Barney. Say, Doc, what about that hero stuff? Who do you think were those ancient Germanic heroes he was talking about?'

  'I don't know. Maybe the men whose exploits formed the basis of the Volsunga and Nibelungenlied epics. Or maybe the man or men who were the originals of the Beowulf stories. I'm more concerned about his descendants, three in particular.'

  Pauncho's small eyes widened. ‘Three?'

  'Yes. That man's descendants have to include most of the present populace of north Europe or anybody descended from north Europeans and probably from south Europeans, and many Africans and Asiatics, too. Figure it out mathematically, if you ever get a chance.'

  Barney haw-hawed but quit when the grizzly, roaring, hurled himself against the bars.

  Doc said, 'Iwaldi didn't say whether or not pressure has to be maintained on that door. We can't afford to take a chance, so one man should keep pulling on it.'

  'If I had a pocket, I'd pull out a coin and we could flip it to see who's the lucky guy,' Pauncho said. 'But I'll be magnanimous, Barney. I'll handle the door while you help Doc with the bear.'

  Pauncho's voice was steady and he was grinning, but his reddish skin had turned pale.

  'No,' Caliban said firmly. 'We'd be stupid to reduce our strength by one-third. We either put the grizzly out of commission and then open the door - provided Iwaldi wasn't lying to us - or we don't make it at all.'

  'Well, Barney, you always said you might be skinny but you could lick your weight in wildcats,' Pauncho said. 'Here's your chance to prove it.'

  'I said cats not bears,' Barney replied. 'Anyway, the three of us total about seven hundred and seventy so that gives the grizzly an edge of three hundred and fifty pounds. And he's got teeth and claws a hell of a lot sharper than ours.'

  ‘Tell me something I don't know,' Pauncho said. 'Like how're we going to take him?'

  He pressed his blobbish nose against a bar and stared at the grizzly. It was pacing back and forth, its head low and swinging, the brownish silver-tipped fur beautiful but the beauty lost on the watcher. There was fat under that loose glossy hide but there were also giant bones and the strength of two gorillas.

  'I want you two to hang back in here until I give the word to join me,' Doc Caliban said. 'I'm going to make him chase me until he gets tired.'

  Barney and Pauncho looked at the cell, forty feet square, and they said, at the same time, 'Chase you?'

  'It's worth a try,' Caliban said. For him, that was equivalent to a long speech by Hector urging the discouraged Trojans to venture out against the Achaeans again.

  He pulled back on the door and slipped through. The grizzly bellowed and whirled around, glared at Caliban, and then charged. It went so swiftly that it was a blur to Pauncho and Barney.

  But the reddish-brown golden-tinted skin and dark auburn metallic-looking hair of Doc Caliban was a blur, too. He sprang to one side just before the grizzly was on him, ran at the wall, and bounced off it like a handball.

  The grizzly rammed head-on into the bars with a crash that shook the bars and quivered the iron floor under the feet of the two men. But the enormous and clumsy-looking beast recovered swiftly, whirled, and was after Caliban, who had sped to the corner where the wall and the outside barred wall met. Again, he leaped to one side, and again the beast crashed with wall-quivering impact.

  'If that grizzly's smart, and he doesn't look dumb,' Barney said, 'he'll be watching for Doc's sidewise manoeuvre.'

  'Yeah, but his thinking processes may be overwhelmed by the aggression stimulation,' Pauncho said. 'It may make him all fury and no brains at all.'

  The third time, Doc startled his aides by suddenly running at the bear just after it had started its charge. Events happened so swiftly that they looked as if they were being run by a speeded-up projector. The bronze blur and the brownish silver-tipped blur met. But Doc had leaped up and levelled out, and his legs shot out. His bare feet struck the grizzly on the nose and the sides of the head. The two bulks stopped. Doc fell backward but rolled and landed on his side and then was up and away. The bear, roaring, shook his head, while blood flowed from his nostrils, and launched himself at Caliban. The man did not quite succeed in escaping untouched. Claws, backed by a great paw swinging with strength enough to remove a man's head, barely nicked the back of his right leg. The skin came off in a wide band across the back of his calf, and blood ran down his leg.

  Caliban spun and ran straight into the bear. The grizzly heaved himself up, coming up off all fours like a killer whale bursting from the sea's surface, and opened his front legs to receive the foolhardy human.

  Doc Caliban went on in as if he had lost his desire to live.

  Pauncho and Barney cried out, 'Doc!' and Pauncho yanked at the door to pull it back. He and Barney would go out there now; surely this was the time.

  But Doc had planted a blow with his huge fist with all the power of his left arm and his back and legs. The arm sank into the fur of the animal's belly, into the fat, and into the muscle.

  The grizzly went, 'Oof,' and it fell backwards.

  Doc Caliban leaped back, then, but even as it fell the grizzly's left paw raked the top of Caliban's head, and blood gushed out from a torn scalp.

  Doc was momentarily blinded. He turned and ran, judging the distance to the wall by memory, stopped there three paces away, and turned. He wiped away the blood from his eyes, but more flowed down.

  The grizzly had gotten to all fours and stood for a minute while it sucked in air. Its belly heaved, and its tongue dangled far out.

  Then it charged, more slowly than it had before but still fast enough to have kept pace with many Olympic dashers.

  Doc waited until it was very close and then, putting his feet against the wall behind as a springboard, dived under the beast.

  It was completely taken by surprise by this manoeuvre. It whirled around but Caliban had gone between its legs, come up behind it, and was on its back. He seized its ears as it reared up on its hind legs and whirled around and around as if it could catch the man clinging to its back.

  Pauncho and Barney, knowing that it would roll over in a minute and crush Caliban, went through the door. Yelling, their hands waving, they charged the bear. It roared and batted at them as it kept on dancing with its partner in his strange position on its back. They danced, too, around the perimeter described by its long claws. Once, the tip of a claw caught the end of Barney's long slender nose, and blood squirted out. A second later, he slipped in the blood which had spilled on the floor from Caliban's wounds and the nose of the bear. The grizzly was so close that it could have dropped on all fours and covered him, but it whirled away.

  Doc's hand stabbed out and plucked the hemisphere from its head.

  Pauncho lifted up Barney, who was half-stunned when the back of his head had hit the metal floor. Then Pauncho, looking something like a bear with the mange, charged the grizzly. He came diving in just as the animal was half-turned away, and his three hundred and twenty pounds slammed into the side of the bear's right leg.

  The grizzly toppled over on its side, which was just what Caliban did not want. But he hung on to the ears and then bent his body back, h
is muscles cracking with the effort, and tore the ears of the grizzly off with a sound like the ripping of a sail under an overwhelming wind.

  The beast bellowed so loudly that it half-deafened the three men. It spun around, and its jaws clamped down on Caliban's leg as he was trying to crawl away through a pool of blood.

  Doc, instead of continuing to try to get away, twisted around and brought both fists down hard on the grizzly's skull. And then he hammered the big wet bloody nose with his fists.

  The twisting around resulted in great pain and more loss of blood. It was so painful, he felt faint. The grizzly, if it had been able to seize him then, might have finished him in a few seconds.

  But Pauncho, roaring, landed up in the air and came down with both feet on the back of the grizzly's massive neck. The impact of those feet, driven by those two extremely powerful legs, stunned the creature, even if only for a very short time. Its jaws opened enough for Doc to pull his leg loose. He rolled away but without his customary speed. Barney, imitating Pauncho's example, leaped into the air and came down on the bear's back. He did not have the weight nor the strength of his partner, but he did the bear some damage.

  It coughed and then got to its feet slowly. Blood was running from its nose, from the places where the ears had been, and its eyes were crossed. It stood for a minute, looking at Doc Caliban, who was now crawling away, leaving a red trail.

  Pauncho came up from behind the grizzly and kicked him beneath the tail with his right foot. The bear was turned into a maniac again by the kick. It whirled so swiftly that it caught Pauncho by surprise. He tried to run away, but it charged and grabbed him with both its front paws. Pauncho went down screaming under the bear.

  Barney, yelling, leaped upon the huge shaggy back and, his legs clamped around the body, dug his thumbs into the eyes. The grizzly, bellowing, released Pauncho and reared up on its hind legs and then fell back, apparently by design, to crush Barney.

  Barney fell off and rolled away but not before a paw, batting blindly, scraped his left leg from the top of the thigh to the knee. His blood mingled with Caliban's and the bear's on the floor.

  Barney was slight compared to Caliban or van Veelar, but he had a wiry strength that had surprised many a large man who had tackled him. His hands were slender, even delicate looking, but he could double a steel poker. And his hands were strong enough to have dug into the sockets of the skull and popped out the bear's eyes. These were now hanging from the nerve cables on its cheeks.

  It was blind, but it could smell, though not efficiently because of the damage to its nose; and it could hear, though not efficiently, because of the pain from the tearing off of its ears. But it located Caliban and went after him, ignoring the others. Doc, hearing the warning cries, turned and got to his feet, though not without difficulty and not without gritting his teeth to suppress a groan.

  The bear charged straight into him. Doc reached out and jerked the eyes loose and cast them on the floor and then, as he went down under the beast, rammed his arm all the way into the bear's mouth. It choked, and its paws tore at his back, and then it backed away swiftly. Its jaws opened, to get rid of the object that was strangling it, and Doc's hand came out, closed on the huge wet tongue. The slipperiness almost balked him, but he managed to keep his grip. Only one other man in the world could have done what he did.

  When the tongue came out by the roots, the grizzly shot blood all over Caliban and the wall of the room. And then it turned and charged blindly across the floor until it rammed its head into the bars of the inner door. It collapsed there, wailing until blood choked it and it died.

  But Doc Caliban had lost much skin and his back muscles were so torn up they were causing him intense pain.

  Doc sat up and waved Barney's helping hand away. 'Open the door!' he said. 'We have to get out of here!'

  Pauncho was there before Barney. He pulled the sliding door back and said, 'No five minute wait.'

  Doc Caliban tried to get to his feet, but he slipped twice. Barney, standing by his side, made no move to help him because he did not think that Doc would like it. It was Doc who always helped others; he never needed anybody else.

  Doc wiped the blood from his forehead, looked at Barney with the yellow-flecked verdigris eyes, and said, 'You too weak to assist me?'

  'Hell, no, Doc, glad to do it!'

  Barney leaned down and let Doc put a massive arm around his shoulder and then he straightened up. Doc came up slowly but not with the full weight of his three hundred plus pounds on Barney's slim shoulder.

  'Now I'm up, I can make it by myself,' Doc said. Then he clamped his teeth and pressed his lips together.

  'I think I hear something!' Pauncho said. 'Yeah! And I smell something! Smoke! Hey, there's somebody down that way!'

  He pointed to the left.

  ‘The invaders,' Doc said. 'Anana's men. Driven here by the flowing napalm, I suppose. We'd better go the other way. Barney, check on Cobbs and Villiers. I don't think they're still here, but ...'

  When Barney returned he said, 'Not there. And there's nothing we can use for a weapon. I didn't see our stuff either. You'd think Iwaldi wouldn't have bothered to hide it, since he didn't figure we'd even get out of the cell.'

  'He knew it wasn't impossible for us to get out,' Caliban replied. 'But he must have figured we'd never get out of the cave even if we somehow got past the bear.'

  They went down the runway to the nearest stone steps on the right and descended to the floor of the chamber. There were a number of exits. Doc picked the middle central one, and they went down a tunnel. Smoke was pouring out of several of the entrances behind them, and Doc could hear, faintly, coughing from one. They went down the tunnel and came to a shaft which contained no ladder. Caliban, looking down it, saw ankle-deep water on the floor of the tunnel under the shaft. It was rising swiftly.

  'This is the tunnel we came up after being captured,' he said. 'It should still hold Cobbs' marks, unless Iwaldi rubbed them out. We'll have to chance that; it's our only hope.'

  Slowly, because he felt weak and because the movements pained him considerably, he let himself down the shaft and dropped. The impact almost made him faint. His colleagues dropped down, too, and they went toward the direction which - he hoped - was the right way. The lights along the tunnel were still on but might soon go out. However, since this system was based on one he had originated, it was possible that the lights would operate long after the tunnel was flooded.

  'Hold it a minute!' Pauncho said.

  They stopped. Seemingly from faraway came voices. But if they could be heard there, they would not be too far distant.

  'They've probably seen our blood by now and are trailing us,' Caliban said. 'If only we could ambush some of them. They have guns and they may have first- aid kits; and they must have blacklight projectors and just possibly underwater breathing plugs.'

  'Wouldn't Iwaldi know that and take care of that possibility?' Barney said.

  'Yes. But we know the way, and we know what kind of traps Iwaldi has sprung,' Doc said. He did not mention the probability that Iwaldi had closed off all exits.

  They went on, splashing. The water around their feet was tinged with red. Doc suddenly stopped at a corner where the tunnel ran into another. He bent over, peering, and said, ‘There's Cobbs' marks.'

  They went down the tunnel, turned right, walked ten yards, turned left, and were confronted with a stairway the top of which was a foot under water. The marking at the corner of the wall was still visible through the water. It indicated that the way led down the steps.

  There are three levels to go before we get to the exit,' Pauncho said.

  Doc help up his hand for silence. A splashing was coming from far around the corner.

  'We can't make it unless we have breathing plugs,' he said. 'And there's only one source for them. Here's what we'll do.'

  Barney walked back to the far end of the tunnel and looked around the corner. Within a minute, he jerked his head back, turned, and wav
ed at them. Then he trotted toward them. By the time he reached them, the water was up to his calves.

  ‘Ten of them,' he said. 'Automatic rifles and pistols. Blacklight projectors on their caps but they're not using their goggles. It's impossible to tell if they have breathing plugs.'

  He added, 'And I smelled smoke. The napalm can't be too far behind.'

  The invaders would not know about Cobb's markings, of course, so they would go on down the tunnel. They would be looking for a way out which would not force them to submerge. Doc had looked down the corridor and seen the hole in the middle of the floor. There was a shaft there which the ancient kobolds had made apparently for quick exits, as if they were human-sized mouse holes. This was the pivotal point of his attack.

  He waded down the steps until the water was up to his waist and then he swam along the wall. The bulbs along the wall guided his path and enabled Barney to see him. When Doc was opposite the shaft, Barney signalled him. Doc dived, was visible in the lights until he went under the ceiling, and then popped up in the well in the middle of the tunnel. Pauncho went down the tunnel to the end and around the corner. Doc Caliban submerged and came back up in the other tunnel. He hung on to a light bulb while Barney sat on the steps with his ear placed near the juncture of wall and steps.

  In a few seconds, Barney heard the loud splashing of the ten men. He waited until he judged that the lead man was just about to come opposite the stairway, and he slid off the stairs into the water and down alongside it. When he reached the bottom, he flattened himself against the side. Now all he could do was to hold his breath and hope that the leader would take time out for a glance into this tunnel before deciding to go on. If anybody leaned out and looked down the side of the steps, he would see Barney in the light of the closest bulb.

  Doc had submerged also and swam the few feet necessary to get to the bottom of the well. Here he placed one hand on the ceiling next to the lip of the shaft and waited. He hoped the bleeding would slow down enough so the men would not notice that the waters were reddened. And he hoped the enemy would not loiter in that corridor. Normally, he could hold his breath for fifteen minutes if he hyperventilated for thirty minutes (the official world's record was 13 minutes, 42.5 seconds). But he had no time to hyperventilate and he was too weakened to hold his breath for much more than two minutes.