EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE DUCK

by Gahan Wilson

  A few branches later Ashman almost got his foot chopped off when a trick guillotine dropped from a slot in the ceiling, so Bone established a regular rotation of the front man in order to spread around the risk and avoid burnout, and a few branches after that we took a break because we had to reload after almost being killed by a half-dozen oversized, armed baboons which had charged out at us from the tunnel ahead. We’d finally managed to wipe them out, but it hadn’t been easy because they’d all been dressed in heavy armor which simultaneously bounced bullets and made them look like a bunch of nightmare samurai.

  So far that had been it except for the occasional trick dart zipping out from slots in the walls, unidentified somethings that skittered around the floor quickly enough to avoid the agents’ frantic stomping, and any number of new trapdoors, including a few really cute ones that waited until you put all your weight on them before they opened underneath your feet.

  ‘Where do you figure we are?’ I asked Ashman.

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Ashman. ‘Somewhere in the seventh circle of hell, right? But up there I’d say we’re around Fifth Avenue and Thirty-something Street. Unless we’ve wandered under Central Park or the East River. I know this thing is here because I’m standing in it, but how did that Mandarin of yours manage to burrow his way through all this Manhattan granite without setting off one hell of a lot of really noticeable explosions?’

  ‘Simple,’ I said. ‘He invented the first really effective laser ray back around the end of World War I. The prototype was crude, but if you know where to look there’s still a smooth piece missing from the underside of Waterloo Bridge. His present model’s only problem would be avoiding city plumbing and the Lexington Avenue subway.’

  From the look on his face I’m pretty sure Ashman was going to ask another question, but the agent currently taking the lead yelled for someone to come quick so I bustled over. When I got there I saw there’d really been no need to hurry because everything had all happened long ago.

  The agent who’d shouted was on one knee and was picking his way through something splotchy-green in his hand which, using a little imagination, I made out had once been someone’s wallet. There were three shapes on the ground, now a little less than man-sized, and they were also splotchy-green, but they required a lot less imagination on account of the skulls.

  ‘It’s White,’ the agent said, waving a plastic card he’d pulled from his wallet. ‘And those have got to be Slate and Blancher beside him. They disappeared two years ago while investigating the Broome Street explosion. We all thought sure Scarlatti’s bunch had got them.’

  ‘So we weren’t the first to find this place,’ said Ashman.

  ‘I never thought that likely,’ said Bone. ‘This maze is like a huge Venus’ flytrap. It doubtless has many other entrances for the curious to stumble into, and is probably cluttered with victims. It’s not finding the place that counts, but surviving to tell others of your adventures in it. Did we, for example, take the time to leave any report behind before we wandered in?’

  ‘No,’ said Ashman, losing a little color.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ Bone said.

  Bone studied Ashman studying the bodies, and then the two of us drifted quietly down the corridor a little.

  ‘Blast,’ Bone hissed, ‘I could kick myself! That was an inexcusably foolish thing for me to say!’

  ‘I think you spooked him pretty good,’ I whispered. ‘Congratulations on terrifying the staff.’

  ‘These fellows are brave enough,’ Bone sighed, ‘but this discovery may have lent a new reality to their present pickle. With or without my idiotic comments. Do you share my feeling we’ve moved close?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘The trap patterns fit, and he wouldn’t throw those costumed monkeys away on an unimportant area. Also, I know for sure those dead agents were dragged here to get them out of the fringes; they’d never have made it this deep on their own. This is definitely inside ground.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Bone, ‘let’s see if we can persuade our friends to carry on just a little bit farther.’

  We turned to rejoin them, but there was not a one of them in sight and all was silent except for water dripping in some side tunnel far off enough to work up a good, spooky echo. For half a second I almost believed the agents had snuck off, but then I realized that the corridor had grown two yards shorter and now turned the other way.

  ‘I’m afraid the matter’s been taken out of our hands,’ I said.

  — 10 —

  AFTER MAKING A SINCERE but completely unsuccessful attempt to figure out how to put the wall back where it had been before it had cut us off from the others, Bone and I decided to head down the tunnel from which the apes had charged us because we suspected the wall had closed down for the specific purpose of sealing that way off from our group.

  We moved along in prescribed Mandarin-tunnel style, sliding our feet carefully before us, and keeping our eyes and ears open for various signs and hints the two of us had learned to look for through the years, and while we wished the agents well, it did feel kind of good to be back on our own again.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Bone, pointing with his cane to a leggy green thing crouching in a niche, ‘a Cuban tree spider! I haven’t seen one of those since that business in the Devon manor.’

  ‘I bet I get it dead center on the first shot,’ I said.

  Bone waved his hand airily.

  ‘A waste of ammunition,’ he said. ‘I always found the creatures highly overrated.’

  That didn’t stop me from keeping my eye on it as we passed by, and I also gave my full attention to a wall scythe that took some pretty fancy jamming, and then there was a six-foot-high, nasty-looking sort of gray beehive which I sneaked up on and plugged shut with my coat before any of the things I heard buzzing and bumping around inside had a chance to get out.

  We came to the first Y-shaped fork—all the others had been Ts—and I was looking back and forth from the one branch to the other, trying to decide which one to take, when it dawned on me that Bone’s gaze was glued firmly on the prow of the wall which divided the two of them.

  ‘You have an idea?’ I asked.

  ‘More of an instinct,’ he said. ‘Prerational.’

  ‘Your Japanese philosopher Dogen.’

  ‘Just so,’ he said and, hooking the handle of his cane in the crook of his arm, he reached out and pressed a stone in the wall. His eyes brightened, and he grinned.

  ‘I’m right!’ he hissed, pressing another stone, and then another.

  ‘You feel them giving?’ I asked.

  ‘I do,’ he said, ‘and I know, Weston, in my heart, in my very bones, that the combination is the exact same one he used in that Peking palace.’

  ‘The one based on Hexagram Sixty-two of the I Ching,’ I said. ‘“The Small Get By.” Why it’s his favorite I’ll never know.’

  ‘That very one,’ he said, with a grunt and a sigh and various other noises because he was stooping down and pressing the last stone in the series.

  Then he straightened and struck a pose of triumph beside me as, with a soft, steady rumble, the corner rose up smoothly into the ceiling and we found ourselves looking through a narrow opening into the start of a corkscrew stone stairway.

  ‘A very pretty little victory,’ said Bone.

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘You haven’t lost the knack.’

  I took the lead, pointing my gun around the turns, and though all the climbing was pretty hard on Bone and though we had to stop a couple of times for him to recover his breath and get his limbs in order, he never grumbled. About two stories up we reached the entrance to what seemed to be a kind of guardroom with weird, mean-looking weapons in neat rows on racks and a collection of metal halters hanging from chains mounted along one wall.

  ‘It smells like a badly run zoo,’ I said. ‘My guess is those apes were quartered here.’

  ‘They made it obvious in that encounter they were a good deal more intellig
ent than your run-of-the-mill simian,’ said Bone. ‘I suspected he’d altered their cranial structures, but I wasn’t sure because of those helmets.’

  Next was what seemed to be an elegant sort of waiting room, complete with posh Louis the Somethingth couches any prominent ambassador would be proud to cool his heels on. There was a small door at either side, but we opted for a huge, multipaneled double door straight ahead, and it led us directly into a room which had to be the fulfillment of every world dictator’s secret dream. It was the totally successful execution of the kind of high-style bullyboy décor they’ve all tried to rise to at the peaks of their various Reichs and regimes, but never quite pulled off.

  The first thing that caught your eye was an enormous, idealized portrait of the Mandarin hanging over a kind of executive golden throne which squatted regally in back of what had to be the biggest top-management desk ever made to order.

  ‘I kind of miss that full-length statue of himself he had set up in the Schloss,’ I said, after a pause, ‘but, all in all, I think it’s his best effort yet.’

  ‘It is hard to believe a man so formidable willingly stoops to such pathetic vulgarity,’ said Bone. ‘I shall never understand how an intellect as extraordinary as his is content to play with such toys.’

  He prodded the dragons in the carpet before him carefully with his cane as he advanced, and eventually rounded the desk.

  ‘He certainly is a creature of habit,’ he said. ‘Ah, this is no doubt the apparatus with which he worked his little games on poor Greyer’s CLAMP, and I see he has installed the traditional control panel at the rear of his desk. I’ll wager the center button performs its usual function.’

  ‘Opens the trap to which the visitor’s chair is bolted, and tilts him right into the pit beneath?’

  ‘Exactly. Full of crocodiles.’

  ‘Sometimes cobras,’ I said. ‘Once even a regular lions’ den.’

  ‘I’m not even going to bother to try it and find out.’ Bone blinked and looked at me. ‘Of course you’ve noticed.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s gone. That means we’d better get the hell out of here, and quick, before he blows it all up, or burns it down, or whichever.’

  ‘I’ve been going on the assumption he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to destroy it before giving us a chance to look around a bit and admire all its glories,’ said Bone, ‘but you’re right. We must be careful not to give him the satisfaction of eradicating us along with his latest earthly paradise.’

  ‘Do you want to try those two doors behind the desk first, or those out in the waiting room?’

  ‘The ones in here, I think,’ said Bone. ‘Since it would be totally out of character for him to reserve a prize exit for his visitors. This one a mere lunge from the desk, perhaps?’

  I compared each with the other, but couldn’t see much to choose between them; they seemed to be the sort of matched doors you’d expect to come across in any gaudy throne room. I walked over to the door Bone had indicated, pressed my back to the wall beside it, then leaned over and shot my hand out and back quick as a snake opening the thing because, of course, I expected a giant vat of acid or a brace of rockets, but after about a half minute of nothing happening I leaned over and peered in.

  ‘A closet,’ I said, reaching in and holding out a broad, gold-embroidered sleeve, ‘containing royal robes.’

  Bone edged around from its other side, then poked his cane in and pushed over some of the finery to make a little tunnel to the back. There was nothing behind it but a wall.

  ‘Very well,’ said Bone, ‘let us try the other one. Do you smell any gas? Any smoke? Any excess ozone?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, and we took our positions around the new door.

  ‘You just flick the knob this time,’ said Bone, ‘and I’ll pull it open with my cane.’

  We did it that way and a good thing, too, because the whole door shot straight out into the air, hinges and all, flew across the room, and smashed against the opposite wall. Then, roaring out from the hole that was left, rolling on spiky treads which chewed up the carpet entirely and raised hell with the parquet underneath, came a small, mean tank topped by a firing rapid-fire cannon mounted on a swivel and backed up by two other smaller cannons firing alternately from its right and left front.

  I’ll confess that all this to-do, together with its instant total destruction of the opposite wall, struck me as very impressive, but it didn’t seem to cut much mustard with Bone because he started to stroll calmly by its side, like someone taking his dog for a quiet walk along a country road, and then, after giving its bottom parts a long, judicious squint, I saw him aim his cane like a sword and, with perfect timing, dart it neatly past some mean-looking gears and thrust it firmly and carefully into the tank tread’s works. Then, and only then, did he behave as if he were faced with something more than ordinarily dangerous by hopping aside as quickly as a rabbit ducking a fox.

  The tank made a funny, chewing noise which got worse, turned in a sharp lurch to the right, then jammed to a total halt facing the Mandarin’s portrait, and proceeded to pulverize that work of art and the wall behind it into a drifting cloud of colorful canvas fragments and gilded wood chips until a brief series of metal hiccups announced it had run out of bullets to waste.

  ‘Really,’ said Bone. ‘By now I’d have thought he would have given up on attempts to develop that ridiculous device. Perhaps it’s the pet project of some underling.’

  ‘I know you never fail to dismantle the damn thing like a kid’s toy,’ I said, ‘but it always startles the hell out of me, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s some kind of a phobia. Maybe it’s just the noise.’

  We checked the cubby it had rolled out of, just in case, but it was only a storage bin for spare parts and ammo, so we were halfway toward the outer room when I held up a hand.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Do you hear it?’

  Bone leaned forward, tilted his head a little, and squinched up his eyes, producing a cascade of wrinkles on either cheek.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do. A sort of rushing noise, faint and far away.’

  That got us moving a little faster on checking out the exits in the waiting room, but they were both a waste of time, each in their own little ways. The one on the left was a dead end because it was a butler’s pantry, all stocked and ready to serve magnums of champagne and silver trays of petits fours to kings and suchlike waiting for an audience with the Mandarin, and while the one on the right had once no doubt been a perfectly acceptable hallway, leading gracefully up and out to sunny streets, it was now also a dead end because someone had done careful things to it with explosives so that after a few yards it turned into wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling concrete rubble.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ said Bone, with a sigh. ‘We may have to grope our way out through the tunnels, after all.’

  Crossing through the apes’ armory, the sound we’d heard only faintly before was now easily identifiable.

  ‘Water,’ I said. ‘And lots of it.’

  I opened the door to the corkscrew stairway, shouted, ‘Get back, quick!’ slammed it shut as hard and fast as I could, and started stamping as flat and dead as possible a number of things which had managed to crawl in onto the floor.

  ‘What in heaven’s name?’ asked Bone.

  ‘I’m grateful I only had a glimpse,’ I said, leaning hard against the door. ‘The bastard’s flooding the place, all right, and the whole menagerie of monsters he’s stocked it with are coming up those stairs like a subway crowd at rush hour!’

  Something bumped against the door and something else scratched at it hard, meaning business. Further down two animals were roaring large roars at each other, starting up what sounded like a really serious battle, probably because they were too big to let each other by.

  ‘The steps are covered with crawling things, all sizes,’ I said. ‘Bugs, snakes, something that looks like it’s all pincers, something else like a big fried egg with an eye in its yo
lk, and there’s a bunch of one kind of thing flapping in the air with stingers, and another bunch like bats, only they’re trailing long, red hair.’

  Bone looked at me.

  ‘I take it that’s merely for starters,’ he said.

  ‘You take it right,’ I said.

  The clawing and digging at the door had increased steadily along with the squalling and scuffling on the stairs, but it was suddenly all drowned out and silenced by an enormous, echoing howl of rage.

  ‘What could that be?’ asked Bone, touching his lips with his fingers, and I saw he’d gone paper-pale.

  ‘All the other things shut up,’ I whispered. ‘They’re as scared as we are.’

  Then, even worse than that howl, the two huge roarers began screaming high-pitched screams because, obviously, the howler had started tearing them apart.

  Bone and I moved as fast as we could across that armory and there was an awful moment when the door to the waiting room stuck and I thought it might be a trap, but it wasn’t and we managed to scuttle and stumble our way back to the throne room and we shut and locked every door behind us and piled heavy heaps of stuff in front of every one of them.

  We did our best to keep calm—ordinarily we’re pretty good at it—trying to find secret panels in the wall, traps in the floor or ceiling, any way out, but we heard the door from the corkscrew stairway crash open, and then we heard the door leading to the waiting room crash open after that, and just as something with huge things to do it with started pounding on the big double door to the throne room and making it bulge in with each pounding, we saw water working its way through the crack under the door and over the dragons on the carpet, starting as a seep and building quickly to a smooth pouring.

  First we looked at each other, second we looked once again around the walls, and then Bone made a fist and banged it into the palm of his other hand.