The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  "Yes? What is it, Private?"

  "The colonel said to let me go down, sir. I have experience with these holes."

  Courtenay eyed the man critically. Those shoulders were at least a meter wide. Crawling down the shaft, this man would plug it like a champagne cork in its bottle. And besides, what American could have experience with these holes? They had just been discovered.

  "No, Private—um—Bouchon. I admire your courage, but it's my job to go down."

  "No, it isn't."

  "What did you say?"

  "No, it ain't, sir."

  "And why not?"

  The man hardly flinched at this challenge from an officer.

  "You're too valuable to lose, sir. Colonel's orders, sir."

  Courtenay reflected. The man had run up from the west, yet the command post was off to the east. And the underbrush hereabouts was not so dense that he would have needed such a circuitous approach.

  "Sergeant Gibbons, get another rope." To Bouchon: "As Colonel Roberts is concerned for my safety, you'll go down with me, watch my back."

  The man did not grin or otherwise show relief but just nodded. "Yes, sir."

  In a minute the blocky Bouchon was lightened of his M-60 and bandoleers and fitted with a knife, a flashlight, and an officer's sidearm, also tucked against his spine by the webbing belt.

  "Let's go." Courtenay went down on his hands and knees again and began crawling forward.

  Within two meters of the opening, their bodies had closed out all the sunlight except for lingering flashes that came between their legs and under their chests. Courtenay found he had to use his back and shoulders as a brake against the ceiling, to relieve the stress against his wrists and palms. He had quickly tucked knife and light into his belt to free his hands. It would almost be easier, Courtenay thought, to turn around and slide backwards—almost, except that neither knew what they would be backing into.

  Crumbs of hardened dirt brushed off the tunnel's ceiling onto their backs, fell around their ears and faces, and bounced off down the steep pitch of the shaft. Those falling crumbs would announce their advance, to whomever waited down there, more surely than his earlier grenade might have. Still, there was no help for it. Without the braking action, they would be in a hopeless slide under gravity's pull, faster and faster, right into the arms of whoever might be below.

  After fifty "paces"—which Courtenay measured with his knees and judged to be half his walking pace, or about a third of a meter long—he dropped his head between his legs and addressed Bouchon behind him.

  "Let's take a break and reconnoitre."

  A heavy grunt was the only reply.

  Bracing with his hands downslope, he pulled his right leg through and jammed his boot against the opposite wall, pushing with hip and bootsole to hold himself against sliding. Bouchon followed his example. Their hot, panting breaths filled the tunnel.

  "Is the air getting cooler down here?"

  "Not yet," Bouchon said, voice low.

  "The walls are dry. Not what you'd expect this close to the delta, and almost under the paddylands."

  "Someone in the NVA's been studying civil engineering. This complex is going to be protected by drainage tunnels and ventilator shafts. Wouldn't be surprised if the outer surface here was faced with raw cement, or at least some hard clay."

  "Patted down by hand?"

  "Dug by hand, finished by hand. Heavy equipment wouldn't fit in here, would it, Lieutenant?"

  "I guess not... Well, let's get a move on."

  Twenty-five more paces, and they came to a fork: the main tunnel line they had been following leveled out; a side branch to the right continued downward at a forty-five degree angle. They took the level path, more from weariness than from any reasoned choice.

  The tunnel ran straight for a length of three meters, then stopped against a door of smooth wood. Its planks were fitted so closely together that Courtenay, poking gently, could not penetrate the gaps with the tip of his K-bar.

  He listened with an ear against the wood.

  Nothing.

  "Dead end, this way," Courtenay said quietly.

  "Or," Bouchon grunted, "some guy holding his breath and cocking his rifle real slowly—sir."

  "Right... Let's try the other way."

  They crawled back to the side tunnel, carefully paying back their guide ropes. Courtenay looked back up the way they had come, expecting to see the white disk of light from the entrance, twenty-five meters above them.

  Nothing but blackness.

  "I don't see daylight up there."

  "One of your men's probably leaning over the hole, listening for us or trying to see down here."

  "You're probably right."

  Courtenay stretched his fingers and shook his arms out, readying himself for another braking crawl down into the ground. Was Bouchon, behind him, tired? He did not seem to be slowing down. Was it really only twenty-five meters they had come? It seemed longer.

  Twenty meters further along the side branch, they came to another fork. This one was a classic "y" in the tunnel, the left branch leading down at the same forty-five degree angle, the right angling up slightly.

  "One down, one up. Which would you choose, Bouchon?"

  "Down will likely take us either to people or to groundwater. Up will lead back to the surface, eventually. What are we looking for—a fight or a way out?"

  "We're looking to see what we can see, I guess."

  "And so far we've learned—what?"

  "That whoever made these tunnels wasn't fooling around. We must be about—" He solved Pythagoras' Theorem in his head."—thirty meters below ground now. All in smooth holes without shoring or ribbing. That took a lot of spatial planning, plus a keen eye for the competency of this soil, to keep from weakening the ground. Somebody's been digging around here for a long time."

  "Years, sir."

  "You know that for a fact, do you?"

  "Good guess, sir."

  "Hmmm." Courtenay's calculations reminded him of something. "Gibbons forgot to signal before he tied on more line, didn't he? We ought to check in, just to keep him on his toes."

  Courtenay turned and gave a hard tug on his end of the rope. It slid down in a minor cascade of soil crumbs. "That's a lot of slack Gibbons is giving us," he observed. "Try yours."

  Bouchon dutifully tugged on his rope. A long loop rolled down and fell across their legs.

  "What is this?" Courtenay pulled some more, and it was all slack. He started hauling it in hand-overhand, with the rope coming faster and faster until, after fifteen meters, he felt the short end whip through his reaching fingers. The end was cut cleanly.

  Suddenly the tunnel walls moved much closer together.

  Bouchon put out his hand in the darkness and felt the end of Courtenay's rope.

  "We should withdraw, sir," he said calmly. "Now."

  Courtenay sighed and put a hand on the other's shoulder, gave him a little push. "You lead the retreat."

  They started climbing against the slope. That was harder work, especially on their knees, which kept sliding back against the loose material of their jungle trousers. The rough fabric was burning Courtenay's skin by the time Bouchon stopped dead in the tunnel. Courtenay's hands walked over his boot heels.

  "What is it?"

  "Fork up here. Three-way branching. All going up at the same angle."

  "We must have come down one and not noticed the other two as they came in from the sides."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Try your flash, see if you can detect our scuff marks, an American boot toe, anything in one of the tunnels."

  He heard the flashlight click on, saw glimmers of light past the others thick body, and heard him brushing and... snuffling?... at the tunnel floor.

  "No way to tell, Lieutenant." The flashlight snapped off.

  "Do you think we might have come down the middle? That would make sense, wouldn't it? If we'd come down
on the right or left, we'd certainly have noticed a wide open space off to one side where two tunnels came in to meet ours."

  No answer from Bouchon.

  "Well, wouldn't we?"

  "It's possible, sir. But I wouldn't want to pin your life or mine on that interpretation."

  "We have to pick one, Private. With nothing else to go on, let's take the center."

  "As you say, sir."

  Bouchon started crawling again. They continued going up for fifteen or twenty linear meters. Then the floor leveled out. Was this the level of the wooden door—where their side branch had left the main descent? Courtenay chewed on the distances, all subjective in the darkness. He was trying to convince himself that his choice was wrong and that they should turn back to the three-way branching. When the tunnel started down, he knew he had been wrong.

  "Well, Private—"

  The man disappeared in front of Courtenay. One minute his boots and knees were scuffing along the packed earth, the next he was gone. The only sound was a surprised grunt, then—two long seconds later—a heavy thud!

  "Private! Bouchon!"

  Courtenay snapped on his flashlight and inspected the tunnel floor ahead of himself. A round, black hole a meter across stretched from wall to wall. He bent over the hole and shone his light down into it. A short vertical shaft opened quickly onto a large space. At the extreme dispersion of his beam, he could see a green jungle boot. He followed the tied-off trouser leg up until it bent back at an odd angle. Farther up was the blocky torso.

  "Bouchon!"

  "Here, Lieutenant. Best not to shout. I'm in some type of room, with a table or platform of some kind under me."

  "Can you stand up?"

  "Not on this leg."

  "We have my rope. I could let it down to you, but there's nothing to tie it onto. Can you see anything we could brace across this hole? A chair leg? A piece of firewood? Anything?"

  Bouchon's own flashlight came on and swept once around the space. Looking down the shaft, Courtenay could only see the narrow end of his beam, not what it might be focusing on.

  "Nothing like that, sir."

  "If you'll roll aside, out of the way, I can drop down and help you."

  "It would make more sense, sir, if you would go back to the branching place, try one of the other tunnels, and get to the surface."

  "Nonsense, I can't leave you."

  "Not much choice, Lieutenant. Even if you found a board to brace with and came down to tie the rope around me, you'd never haul me back up through that shaft. Not enough room for leverage or maneuvering."

  "I'll come down and together we'll find a way out from the level that room is on."

  "We could wander for months down here, sir."

  "You're just guessing."

  "A good guess."

  "Roll aside. I'm coming through."

  Before the private could debate him further, Courtenay swung his legs around, put his boots through the hole, and slid his ass over the edge.

  He heard Bouchon gasp and thrust himself aside before Courtenay could land on top of him. The table or whatever it was splintered under the impact of his bootsoles.

  "Damn it, sir!"

  Courtenay shone his flashlight around the open space.

  Pale green walls, rumpled and folded like cloth. With bright glints that might be—buttons. And pale, slow-moving fishlike objects that were—hands. Hands grasping rifle stocks and knife handles. More glints, two by two, were eyes that focused on the two Americans.

  With a gasp, Bouchon levered himself up on his good leg to cover his lieutenant's back. Courtenay ventured a glance over his shoulder. The man was standing like a wrestler, arms wide and one knee bent, the other braced sideways. Bouchon's K-bar had evidently disappeared in the fall, but in his hand was a deadly stiletto with a tapering triangular blade. He held it with the jeweled butt down and to the outside, the knife's tip raised and questing.

  Courtenay shifted his own K-bar to the left hand and drew his service automatic in his right.

  "You wouldn't leave me out of a fight, would you, Private?"

  "The Lord knows I tried, sir."

  Courtenay's first shot was loud in the enclosed space.

  The volley of return fire was louder.

  * * *

  It was near the end of Gurden's second set, about quarter to two in the morning, that the man started hanging near his shoulder, treading water and watching Tom's hands on the keyboard. By this time the activity in the pool had cooled off and the drinks were flowing more smoothly.

  The man didn't seem to be drinking.

  "Is that hard to do?" he asked, after about five minutes of watching.

  "What?" Gurden said over his shoulder, still playing.

  "Play with your hands strapped down like that."

  "I've got to strap them. Otherwise they'd float to the surface. I would be pushing down against buoyancy, instead of falling with gravity. That throws your timing off."

  "How do you hit the high and the low notes?"

  "The straps slide back and forth under the keyboard. See?"

  "Oh, yeah. But you couldn't reach around and, say, scratch your ass, could you?"

  Gurden laughed. "Not likely."

  "Good."

  The knife point pricked him just above the right kidney. It went deep enough, it felt like, to draw blood.

  "How did you get a weapon in here?"

  "Who says I have a weapon."

  "What's that in my back?"

  "A sliver of glass. A lot of your glasses get broken, and the stuff piles up on the bottom in the deep end. You people should be more careful. Someday a customer is going to cut himself."

  "Or the piano player."

  "That's the idea."

  "So, what do you want? Kill me here? Kill me somewhere else?"

  "I want you to come with me. Quietly. Like were old friends. Believe that I can hurt you badly with this piece of glass, or with my bare hands if necessary."

  "I believe you."

  "Switch off now."

  Gurden played the tune down to its closing bars, skipped the coda, and rushed the finale. No one in the pool noticed how he had chopped up the song. When he turned off the Clavonica, Tiffany looked up from the curved side of the bar.

  Tom smiled at her and made a polite yawn.

  She looked around and nodded.

  He slipped his hands out from under the restraining straps.

  The knife point dug a half-centimeter deeper, definitely probing the gap in his spareribs.

  Gurden shelved any ideas about physical violence.

  "We'll have to get my clothes, back at the room."

  "I have some that will fit you, in the changing lounge."

  "How thoughtful."

  Clothes provided by his captor would certainly be free of the little necessities Tom Gurden had begun carrying in the last few weeks: two yards of braided picture wire, a sailmaker's needle, a fragment of razorblade, a chip of bone to mount it. This sort of trash would not upset a security metal detector, nor go totally unexplained in a mans pockets. Yet with these pieces he could work any number of practical miracles. It gave a man confidence just to fill his pockets with the stuff.

  Gurden climbed out of the pool first. He briefly considered a backward kick centered on the man's hairline. How ready would his opponent be for such a move? Tom's mind was suddenly filled, however, with the image of a glass shard slicing his calf from ankle to kneecap. How far could he run on a ripped leg?

  Would Tiffany or Belinda help him? Exhausted as they were from a night's work? And five meters away through the shallow yet resistant water?

  The man could carry Tom Gurden out of there in a hammer lock, and no one in the pool would raise an eyebrow. Tom himself had seen the same thing happen to various women all night long, and he had not interfered.

  He went quietly.

  In the changing lounge, the man still held his gla
ss knife, motioned with it to a locker that had a key in it.

  The clothes inside, complete down to underwear, were casual yet well made: good wool in the slacks and socks, real linen for the shirt, a tie of what looked to be authentic silk, shoes made of leather—an anachronism that even the Italians had not practiced in forty years. There were no synthetics in the locker.

  He also found a heavy towel—real cotton terry—to scrape the silicon grease off. His captor had thought this through carefully.

  Captors, he corrected, when two more men walked into the lounge and, instead of showing surprise at one customer threatening another, waited alertly nearby.

  Gurden rubbed himself as clean as he could and put on the clothes. They fit him perfectly, down to the exact width of the shoes.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Down to the landing stage. We have a boat waiting."

  "Aren't you going to blindfold me or anything?"

  "There is no need."

  That was bad. You blindfolded a man whom you planned to release, so that he could not later identify you or your hideaway. If you did not blindfold him, you did not expect to have to deal with that "later."

  Outside, bobbing beside the stage was a turbine boat, the kind smugglers still used occasionally. The hull was about fifteen meters long overall and five wide, but it was only about half a meter thick—except along the centerline, where the aluminum skin rose to a cowling around the gullet of a jet engine. On either side of the engine tunnel were two long cockpits—just seating spaces actually, about as roomy as a jet fighter's. The one on the right had the controls.

  The two strangers clambered across the engine to that side; Tom and his original captor stepped down into the bare cockpit. The arrangement made sense: even if he overpowered the man with the knife, he would still have to climb over the engine tunnel to take control of the boat. At 100 kilometers an hour, thudding over the wavetops, the smooth fiberglass skin would be too slick to hold onto. Gurden would be swept back along it, cut by the steel edge of the stabilizer fin, tossed by the jetwash, and broken on the water's surface, which at that speed would resound like concrete.

  Why would he not simply throw himself overboard while the craft was moving slowly? The answer to that came when his captor pushed Gurden into the forward seat and fastened the safety harness around him. The quick-release buckles had been replaced with padlocks.