by Paul Park
“Where are you taking us?” asked Charity. The walls of the corridor had broadened out of sight, and the gravel underfoot had given way to coarse blocks of quarried stone. The way still led straight on, without a twist or a turn. From the burial chamber she had seen a light shining, far away. She had seen a distant light, and she had heard the sound of water lapping. Later, that sound had been obscured by the shuffling of their feet, but now she heard it again close by. In front of her, Freedom Love stopped walking and took a flashlight from his robe, while the lanterns drew off some way ahead. Outside the compass of their light, Charity could see more clearly where she stood, a triangular stone chamber perhaps fifty feet along each side, the ceiling perhaps twenty feet above her head. Near her, a stone stair was let into the wall. She guessed it led up to the surface, because some light was dribbling down it. It dribbled over rows of simple graves along the floor.
“We’ve lost her,” said Freedom Love. “She must have gone another way.”
They were in the tomb of some important bourgeois family. The cover of the grave where Charity had sat to rest was decorated with a list of modest privileges, together with some modest optimism that the dead man’s punishment would not be hard or long. Charity ran her hand over the stone. A chart of the solar system was etched into the dusty surface. The dead man’s soul had been consigned to Mega Prime.
The chamber was the terminus of an underground canal. Freedom Love climbed down into a ditch between the graves and gestured with his hands. Charity got to her feet and followed the lanterns towards the entrance of a low tunnel. There the water had receded back into the dark, leaving a scum of mud along the bottom of the ditch. But the men with the lanterns jumped down into it, and so did Charity and the stranger. They followed the lanterns into the tunnel’s mouth, where the light seemed to burn much brighter. Fifty feet along the ditch the water was around their ankles. Then the tunnel widened to the right, and they clambered up onto a stone landing, where a boat was drawn up into a stone trough.
“It took us thirteen days to find this place,” said Freedom Love. “It’s not on any of the maps. The Dogon don’t come up this far. But Sarkis remembered from his childhood, and after that we had to find the execution chamber by dead reckoning, under the pilings of the Morquar Gate. It took us three days with picks and shovels to break through. You have Gudrun Sarkis to thank—that man there.”
He pointed to the edge of the landing, to where one of the men was fussing with the boat. He was a squat, unlovely person of indeterminate age. His chest was decorated with a chain of bones and fur, and when he grinned up at Charity, she saw that his teeth were pointed, sharpened with a file.
“Why?” asked Charity.
“Human life is sacred, is it not?” replied Freedom Love vaguely. “Great Angkhdt tells us to succor those in pain. They were killing men and women for no reason—burying them alive. There were forty people in that room when we broke through. All but six of them were dead.”
“Not for no reason,” said the princess. “My family had a lot to answer for.”
“And his?” Freedom Love motioned towards the stranger, who was squatting by the water’s edge.
“He has no family.”
“An antinomial? Surely not.”
“Of a kind,” said Charity. “Not by choice. His memory was surgically removed.”
The stranger was less frightened now, though still his voice was trembling as he spoke for the first time. “I hate these stupid ropes,” he said. Again Charity was amazed by his resemblance to the prince, his childlike way of talking, the futile motion of his hands. He was pulling his hands apart, straining at the ropes, fluttering his fingers.
“I hate these ropes,” he repeated sulkily. But he shied away when Gudrun Sarkis, responding from a word from Freedom Love, drew a knife from his belt and came towards him. The stranger’s face took on an expression of slack terror, and the men around the boat started to laugh.
“Don’t torture him,” said Charity, for Sarkis was rolling up his eyes and twisting his lips in an expression of ferocity while the others laughed. “He has no memory of how a person should behave,” she said. She held out her own wrists, and at another word from the old man, Sarkis drew his knife under the knot and cut her hands apart. Then she went down to the edge of the landing to where the stranger was crouching against some fallen stones. And as she fumbled with the knotted ropes around his wrists, she tried to soothe him. She whispered to him and caressed his naked forearm in a gesture that was somewhat intimate, though he didn’t seem to be aware of that. She could not have touched him if he had not reminded her so strongly of her brother, who had been teased so cruelly when they were children.
“What are we waiting for?” she asked aloud. “Why are you all just standing around?”
Freedom Love was consulting his wristwatch. “We are waiting for the wind,” he said. In fact, the men had let the boat into the water, and they had pulled erect a flimsy mast.
“There is no wind down here,” said Charity, but at that moment there was a booming noise above their heads and a grinding of harsh gears. Immediately, the dead air around them seemed to move a little, and the lanterns flickered in their chimneys.
“Five-seventeen,” commented Freedom Love. “Every afternoon they open up the garbage doors below Saint Morquar’s Square, where the river runs underground. When the doors are open, there is a draft over this pool.”
Charity looked down into the water. It stretched away into the dark, as perfect as a sheet of steel. The light upon its smooth black surface seemed less an effect of shadow and reflection than of paint, as if the semicircle of lamplight were just painted on. When finally, after a moment, a pattern of ripples spread across the surface of the pool, it was like the swirl left by some unseen brush. Charity could see no hint of three dimensions, until Gudrun Sarkis pulled the boat against the stones and leaped aboard. Then thick black waves smacked up against its wooden sides as the vessel found its equilibrium, jostling the lamplight into a million shapeless dots.
As Gudrun Sarkis raised the sail, the rest of the men jumped down. They gathered up the lanterns and suspended them from poles in the bow and stern. Freedom Love reached out his hand to help Charity aboard, but she hung back. The stranger was still frightened. His eyes were shining, and he was tugging on her sleeve.
“Where are you taking us?” asked Charity again.
For the first time, Freedom Love evinced some irritation. “Come quick,” he said. “The doors only stay open thirty minutes. Do you want us to leave you in the dark?”
“Where are you taking us?” demanded Princess Charity.
“To safety. Come. Great Angkhdt tells us that we must trust each other.”
The sail flapped lethargically over to one side. It was a narrow triangle of red cloth, ragged and much patched. But the wind was gathering strength, and soon the boat started to draw away from the stone bank. Gudrun Sarkis leaned on his paddle to keep it in close, but still Charity hesitated. It was not until the last possible moment that the stranger jumped aboard, and Charity stepped after him.
“That is good,” said Freedom Love as the boat heeled away. It was a wide, shallow craft, sluggish and unresponsive, but it rocked as the stranger stumbled forward and sat down in the bilge. The four tribesmen sat on benches with paddles on their knees, while Freedom Love moved aft to take the steering oar. Charity sat at his feet as the boat moved out over the water, and she was listening to him sing under his breath. After a few false starts the melody came clear, and then the words:
What can I do to make you trust me?
Is it not enough to give you pleasure
Six times out of seven?
He had to be singing from the Song of Angkhdt, Charity decided. In Charn, before the revolution, it had been a criminal offense to duplicate the rhythm of a verse of holy scripture, even in casual conversation. Nor had it been the fashion for at least a generation to set the words to music.
“You talk about
religion in a new way,” she said aloud, finally, after the song had drifted down to nothing. “What did you say before? ‘Great Angkhdt tells us to help those in pain.’ I never heard of that before.”
“It is from an old translation,” replied Freedom Love, staring straight ahead over the bow. “Soon these verses will be common knowledge, now that it is spring.”
“What do you mean?”
The old man rubbed his head, and waited a while before speaking. “The word of God is like a living thing,” he said at last. “It has its seasons underground.”
All around them the water stretched away into the dark. From time to time the wind seemed to shift direction, so that the sail flapped and rattled overhead. But still the boat moved slowly on as Freedom Love tugged upon the oar. “Winter is a barren time,” he said. “If people turn for comfort to these phallic images, is it any wonder? When the Earth is sterile for a man’s entire life, is it any wonder that he makes a cult out of fertility? That is his need, and in winter, the Song of Angkhdt adapts to it. The subtler verses are all stripped away. Our God becomes a phallic monster, deformed, inhuman, cruel, but with a supernatural vitality, a potency that covers all the Earth. It fills the sky. His sperm is in the rain.”
“And now?” asked Charity.
“And now the world is changing. Our faith is changing, too. But as always, the change is very difficult, because men and women are always ready to die for what they think is true. It makes it hard for them to let go of the old ways. There has been violence and bloodshed, and there will be more. But you are young enough. You’ll live to see the Earth become a garden. Your children will know verses of the Song that you have never heard. And even the crudest of the verses now, you will find that they have changed. The crudest and the most obscene—you will find they are about love.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Charity. “I mean, what happens now? There has been a change of government in Charn.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “It was to be expected,” he replied. “There were some grave abuses. Spring is the time for atheistic governments. But the people are still with us in their hearts.”
“I’m not sure. When they brought the great brass statue of Immortal Angkhdt down from the temple into Durbar Square, ten thousand people stood in line for seven hours in the rain, just to file past and spit on it.”
Again the old man shrugged. “But that too is a kind of worship. It goes deeper than that. You will see. Every week dozens come down from the streets to hear me preach. They risk their lives to bring us food. How do you think we live?”
The boat was moving faster now. It had reached some kind of current; the water was turbid up ahead, and the boat was carried by its own momentum as the sail lolled and flapped. “I hadn’t asked myself,” said Charity. “Who are these men?”
“They are a tribal people called the Dogon. They have lived down here for generations. I am a newcomer by contrast. A refugee. I was censured by the bishop’s council, four, almost five months ago. I was condemned for heresy, but I escaped. These men are my converts.”
They were entering a channel where the current flowed more rapidly. The lanterns on the stern and forward poles swung wildly back and forth. All was in darkness beyond their flickering reach, and out of that darkness came a constant roaring sound. The wind was stronger now, and damp and hard to breathe. Charity’s hair was slick with moisture, and there were beads of water on her clothes.
“They call themselves the Dogon,” continued Freedom Love. “They speak another language, far more ancient than our own. And until I came, they had no inkling of the truth—they fished in these lakes and ate the roasted carcasses. They worshiped pagan gods.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Seventeen. At least there are many tribes down here. The labyrinth stretches for fifty miles. But not all tribes are so receptive to the truth. These are the first. They are my children. I have taught them to grow mushrooms in the lower crypts.”
Charity was asking questions to keep herself from thinking how Freedom Love could steer his boat through total darkness underneath the earth. But there must have been something in her face, for he laughed as he pushed upon his oar, and the boat scudded out into the roughest current. “I put my faith in God,” he said. “Besides, look there.”
He pointed up ahead to where some greenish lights were shining in a row. At first they were very small, and seemed to jiggle in the darkness like a row of dots along the inside of her eyelid as Charity turned her head. She raised her hand to block out the glare from the forward lantern, and then she saw them clearly, thirteen pinpricks in a line, growing all the time as she rushed towards them. After a few minutes she could see that they, too, were lanterns, strung out along the width of the vast cavern.
“It is the Morquar Dam,” said Freedom Love.
The current was gentler now, and in the gathering light, Charity could see the water breaking apart into a series of small whirlpools, losing its momentum, turning back upon itself. In front of her the lights were strung along the top of a white barricade. She could see the pumping station and the weir.
Freedom Love turned the boat in a wide, slow semicircle, and the current brought them around close to the dam. Charity could hear the rushing of the water through the sluice. Up ahead the current was slowly wheeling back upon itself, turning back out into the darkness behind them. But Freedom Love was keeping the boat along the barricade, which rose a dozen feet above their heads. There was no wind in the sail, but the Dogon had taken up their paddles. They pulled the boat into a stagnant stretch of water below the east end of the dam, where Charity could see for the first time the rock walls of the cavern, and even its ceiling far above. The water around them was full of dust and bits of wood.
From the house above the sluicegate, the keeper of the lock was peering down at them. She was a tiny, ancient woman, with white hair braided down her back. Freedom Love called up to her in a language he seemed to speak only indifferently, for he could only manage a few words. But the woman said nothing. There was no expression on her face either; she just leaned on the railing of the dam and stared down at them. The Dogon were pulling down the sail.
In the bottom of the boat the stranger looked up anxiously. “What’s happening?” he asked, but Charity shook her head. She was looking at the woman, studying her colorless, enormous eyes, wondering how many generations of living underground it took to develop eyes like that. The Dogon didn’t have them. They were a dark-skinned race.
The woman held up five colorless fingers, and Freedom Love threw her a coin. It was a wide, copper penny, and he flicked it with his thumb so that it turned over in the air. The woman caught it overhand and rubbed it between her fingers before thrusting it away into the bosom of her dress. Then she bent over the wheel, straining with her skinny arms until the sluicegate opened up.
The dam was made of concrete, but the doors were wooden and elaborately carved, and painted with scenes from the life of the Beloved Angkhdt. Once on his journey through the universe, the Prophet had come to a planet where there was no light. The only light in all that world came from the Prophet’s mouth when he spoke the word of God.
The door into the Morquar lock was painted to represent this episode in the immortal life. The outer panels were all decorated with barren landscapes and frozen cityscapes, painted black so as to be invisible. But the Prophet’s open mouth was on the central panel, golden red behind a fence of canine teeth. And when the gate split open, Charity could see that the inside of the lock was painted red.
“Ah, God,” she murmured, as the Dogon pulled them inside. The air was dank and close, and an oily foam covered the top of the water. Behind them, the doors churned closed, leaving them in a small red room.
“The lock is four hundred feet high,” said Freedom Love, as the water started to suck away beneath them. The sides of the shaft were painted from top to bottom, circles of orange and red. They seemed to glow brighter as the bo
at descended. Something in the paint reacted with the lantern light, a phosphorescent sheen mixing with the orange of the Prophet’s throat. But as the air got worse, the lanterns flickered low, so that the color was lost. Soon all that remained was the gleam of the phosphorescence on the dripping walls. “It’s from the rain,” said Freedom Love. “It drains into the river lower down.”
After many minutes the lock let them out into a small pool at the bottom of the dam. Behind them the great white wall stretched out of sight, out of reach of their lanterns, while in front all was in darkness. Around the boat, bubbles rose and broke constantly on the surface of the pool, filling the air with a noise like crackling fire.
The boat swung sharply around. The Dogon dug their paddles deep into the water. The stranger was sitting in the bilge, staring back at the dam with a look of empty wonder. His mouth hung open, and there were beads of sweat along his upper lip. “D-do people live down here?” he asked. Freedom Love pushed on the steering oar. He was looking for the channel down out of the pool, and he slid the boat into a gap between low banks of fitted stone. It was only a few feet wider than the boat. The Dogon scraped their paddles along the channel’s sides, yet still they made swift time, moving as if haste were important.
“In ancient times,” said Freedom Love, “there was a period of seven years when the weather was far harsher than it is even today. Winter and summer, the extremes of temperature were much harsher. It is a periodic fluctuation; the last time was many years ago, and at that time, it is recorded, half the population of the city lived underground. Even more, at certain times of year. Half a million people lived down here. Rich people, mostly. They had tunnels dug as far as Caladon.”
He pulled his flashlight from the breast of his robe and shined it up above their heads. “Look,” he said. “Look there.” The lanterns in the boat had guttered low, and the beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness where they could not follow. It illuminated the ceiling of the tunnel they had entered and played among the carvings and the painted figures with their eyes of mirrored glass. “The dam fed an electric generator,” said Freedom Love. “This tunnel was once called the Prince’s Walk.”
