Darker Than You Think

by Jack Williamson

  He gestured, with the jerky stiffness of desperate tension.

  "The world must be told—if the time for the telling is not already past. So get what I'm going to tell you. Please broadcast my statement, if you can. Film a record of the evidences we brought back." His worn boot touched the wooden box. "Get it on the air and into print tonight—if you can."

  "Sure, doc." A radio announcer grinned, moving up his microphone. "That's our business. I'll make a wire recording, and rush it back to the studio—if your story is politically okay. I suppose you're going to give your angle on the Chinese situation?"

  "We saw a great deal of the war in China," Mondrick told him solemnly, "but I'm not going to talk about it. What I have to say is more important than the news of any war—because it will help you understand why wars are fought. It will explain a good deal that men have never understood, and a good many things we've been taught to deny."

  "Okay, doc." The radio man adjusted his equipment. "Shoot."

  "I'm going to tell you—"

  Mondrick coughed, and caught his breath again. Barbee heard his laborious wheezing, and saw the quick alarm on Sam Quain's drawn face. Quain offered a handkerchief and Mondrick wiped sweat off his forehead—while Barbee, hunched in his topcoat, stood shivering in the moist east wind.

  "I'm going to tell you some stunning things, gentlemen." Mondrick stumbled hoarsely on. "I'm going to tell you about a masked and secret enemy, a black clan that plots and waits unsuspected among true men—a hidden enemy, far more insidious than any of your modem fifth columns that scheme the ruin of nations. I'm going to tell you of the expected coming of a Black Messiah—the Child of Night—whose appearance among true men will be the signal for a savage and hideous and incredible rebellion."

  That weary, shattered man gasped painfully again.

  "Prepare yourselves for a jolt, gentlemen. This is a terrible thing—and you may doubt it, at first, as I did. It is really too dreadful to believe. But you'll have to accept it, as I did, when you see the unpleasant things we have brought back from those pre-human burial mounds in the Ala-shan.

  "My discoveries there—or, rather, ours—solve many enigmas." His haggard eyes moved gratefully toward the three men guarding the iron-strapped box, and he bowed a little to them. "We've found the answers to riddles that have baffled every science—and to other mysteries so obvious, so much a part of our daily lives, that most of us are never even conscious they exist "Why, gentlemen, is evil?"

  His lead-hued face was a mask of pain.

  "Have you ever sensed the malignant purpose behind misfortune? Are you ever puzzled by the world's discord, by the shadow of war abroad and the clamor of strife at home? Reading the daily news of crime, are you ever shocked and appalled at the monstrosity of man? Have some of you wondered, sometimes, at the tragic division in yourselves—at the realization that your unconscious minds hold wells of black horror?

  "Have you wondered—"

  Mondrick choked and bent. He labored to breathe again, pressing both quivering hands against his sides. An ominous blue touched his face. He coughed into a handkerchief, and mopped his face again. His voice, when he could speak again, was strained and shallow, pitched in a higher key.

  "I've no time to catalog all the dark riddles in our lives," he gasped. "But—listen!"

  Disturbed by a sense of a veiled and monstrous tension mounting, Barbee looked uneasily around him. A photographer was slipping a fresh film pack into his camera. The radio man was fussing with his tape recorder. Mechanically, the bewildered reporters were taking notes.

  April Bell, beside him, stood in a frozen pose. White with pressure, both her hands gripped the top of her snakeskin bag. Dilated, greenish black, her long eyes were staring at Mondrick's sick face, fixed with a peculiar intensity.

  Briefly, Barbee wondered about April Bell. Why did she frighten him? What was the key to her strong attraction for him—what stronger call than the flaming lure of her bright hair had overbalanced his vague alarm? How much of what Mondrick would call good was in her, and how much of evil, and what was the point of conflict?

  Unconscious of Barbee, she kept staring at Mondrick. Her pale lips moved silently. Her white hands twisted the snakeskin bag with a kind of savagery—as if it were something alive, Barbee felt uneasily, and her fingers were rending claws.

  The gasping old man seemed to win his fight for breath.

  "Remember, gentlemen," he wheezed laboriously, "this is no whim of the moment. I first suspected the frightful facts thirty years ago—when a shocking incident made me see that all the work of Freud, with his revealing new psychology of the unconscious, was merely a penetrating description of the minds and behavior of men, not really an explanation of the evil we see.

  "I was then a practicing psychiatrist, out at Glenn-haven. I gave up my medical career—because the truth I suspected made a mockery of all I had been taught and a cruel sham out of my efforts to aid the mentally ill. Unfortunately, I quarreled rather bitterly with old Dr. Glenn—father of the Glenn who heads Glennhaven now—because of that unfortunate incident.

  "I turned to other fields—looking for evidence to disprove the thing I feared. It didn't exist. I studied abroad, and finally accepted a faculty position at Clarendon University. I tried to master anthropology, archeology, ethnology—every science bearing on the actual nature of mankind. Item by item, my research turned up facts to confirm the most dreadful thing a man has ever feared."

  The sick man stooped and sobbed for breath again.

  "For years," he whispered painfully, "I tried to work alone. You will presently understand just what that meant—and how extremely difficult it was for me to find aid. I even allowed my dear wife to help me, because she already shared my secret. She lost her eyes— and proved by her great sacrifice that all our fears were well founded.

  "But I did, at last, find men whom I could trust." Mondrick's pallid face briefly tried to smile. His hollowed eyes glanced once more at the hard, taut faces of Sam Quain and Nick Spivak and Rex Chittum, warm with a deep affection. "And I trained them to share—"

  The old man's voice sobbed and stopped. He bent double, livid-faced, laboring to breathe. Sam Quain held him to keep him from falling until that hard paroxysm ended.

  "Forgive me, gentlemen—I'm subject to these attacks." His voice seemed fainter; he daubed weakly with the handkerchief at his sweat-drenched face. "Bear with me, please," he gasped. "I'll try to hurry on— through all this background that you must have—if you're to understand."

  Sam Quain whispered something, and he nodded heavily.

  "We had a theory," his shallow voice rasped hastily, as if racing with time. "We wanted proof—to warn and arm true mankind. The evidence we needed could exist only in the ashes of the past. Ten years ago I gave up my chair at the University to search the old cradles of the human and semihuman races—to find that convincing proof.

  "You can guess a few of the difficulties and the perils we had to face—I've no time to list them. The Torgod Mongols raided our camps. We almost perished of thirst, and we all but froze to death. Then the war drove us out—just when we had located the first pre-human sites."

  He toiled to breathe again.

  "It used to appear that those dark huntsmen already knew that we suspected them and were trying to cut us down before we could expose them. The State Department didn't want us to go back. The Chinese government tried to keep us out. The Reds held us as spies— until we convinced them we were after something bigger than military information. Man and nature stood against us.

  "But these are tough boys with me!"

  The old man bent, heaving to another paroxysm.

  "And we found what we were after," he whispered triumphantly. "Found it—and brought it safely home, from those prehuman sites." Once again his boot touched the green wooden box that his three companions guarded. "We brought it back—and here it is."

  Once again he straightened, struggling to breathe, painfully searching the fac
es before him. Barbee met his dull, haggard eyes for an instant and saw in them the stark conflict of dreadful urgency and deadly fear. He understood that long preamble. He knew that Mondrick wanted desperately to speak—to blurt the bald facts out—and knew that a sick dread of disbelief restrained him.

  "Gentlemen, don't condemn me yet," he croaked laboriously. "Please forgive me, if all these precautions appear unnecessary. You'll understand them when you know. And now that you're somewhat prepared, I must speak the rest abruptly. I must break the news, before I'm stopped."

  His blotched face twitched and shivered.

  "For there is danger, gentlemen. Every one of you— every person who hears this news—is himself in deadly danger. Yet I beg you to listen ... for I still hope ... by spreading the truth ... too far for them to kill enough to stamp it out entirely ... to defeat those secret clansmen."

  Mondrick fought for breath again, doubled and shuddering.

  "It was a hundred thousand years ago—"

  He strangled. His own frantic hands came up to his throat, as if he strove to open a way for his breath. A bubbling sound rattled in his throat. His contorted face and clawing hands turned a cyanotic blue. He swayed to his knees, sagging in Sam Quain's arms, gagging on words he couldn't speak.

  "That couldn't be!" Barbee caught Quain's shocked whisper. "No—there are no cats here!"

  Blinking, Barbee shot a bewildered glance at April Bell. She stood stiffly motionless, staring at the gasping explorer. Dilated in the gloom, her eyes were strange and black. White as her white fur, her fixed face held no expression. Both her hands clutched her snakeskin bag, twisting savagely.

  But where was any cat?

  The bag was closed now, and he saw nothing of her happy black kitten. Anyhow, why should the stricken man be gasping anything about a cat? Shivering to the cold east wind, Barbee peered back at Mondrick.

  Sam Quain and Nick Spivak had laid the struggling man on his back. Quain ripped off his own khaki shirt and folded it under Mondrick's head for a pillow. But Rex Chittum, Barbee noticed, stayed beside that heavy wooden box, his roving eyes warily alert—as if its contents were more important than the old explorer's last agony.

  For Mondrick was dying. His wild hands fought for air again and fell. His mottled face turned lax and lividly pale. He kicked convulsively and lay still again. As surely as if the garroter's iron collar were being screwed down against his throat, he was strangling to death.

  "Back!" Sam Quain shouted. "He's dying for air."

  A flashbulb detonated blindingly. Policemen pushed back the news photographers, crowding nearer for a better shot. Somebody shouted for the crash truck, but Mondrick had already ceased to move.

  "Marck!"

  Barbee heard that piercing scream. He saw Mondrick's blind wife dart away from that guarded group by the terminal building, the huge dog beside her, running as surely as if she could see again. One of the officers tried to stop her and fell back from the dog's silent snarl. She reached the fallen man and knelt to dwell upon his splotched face and lax hands with her desperately searching fingers. Light shone cold on her silver rings and bracelets and burned in the tears streaming from the empty scars under her dark lenses.

  "Marck, my poor blind darling!" Barbee heard her stricken whisper. "Why didn't you let me come with Turk to guard you? Couldn't you see them closing in?"

  CHAPTER THREE

  The White Jade Wolf

  The man sprawled dead on the taxiway didn't answer that bitter whisper, and the huddled blind woman made no other sound. With a shaken gesture, Barbee beckoned the other newsmen back. His throat hurt and something cold had touched his spine. Silently, he turned to Sam Quain.

  Quain's blue eyes were staring vacantly at the man on the ground. Beneath a thin undershirt, his goose-pimpled flesh was shuddering. He didn't seem aware of the clamoring reporters, and at first he made no sign when Barbee stripped off his own topcoat to fling around him.

  "Thanks, Will," he murmured emptily at last. "I suppose it's cold."

  He caught his breath, and turned to the newsmen.

  "There's a story for you, gentlemen," he said quietly, his dry voice oddly flat and slow. "The death of Dr. Lamarck Mondrick, noted anthropologist and explorer. Be sure you get the spelling right—he was always particular about the c in Lamarck."

  Barbee snatched at his taut arm.

  "What killed him, Sam?"

  "Natural causes, the coroner will say." His voice stayed flat and dull, but Barbee felt him stiffen. "He has had that asthma, you know, for a great many years. He told me out there in the Ala-shan that he knew he was suffering from a valvular heart disease—and knew it before we ever started. Our expedition was no picnic, you know. Not for a sick man, at his age. We're all pretty tired. When this attack struck, I guess his old pump just couldn't take the strain."

  Barbee glanced at the still form on the ground and the woman in black sobbing silently.

  "Tell me, Sam—what was Dr. Mondrick trying to say?"

  Sam Quain swallowed hard. His blue eyes fled from Barbee's face into the cold gloom, and came back again. He shrugged in the borrowed topcoat, and it seemed to Barbee that he tried to shake off the horror that hung like a dark garment on him.

  "Nothing," he muttered hoarsely. "Nothing, really."

  "Huh, Quain?" rapped a hard voice over Barbee's shoulder. "You can't give us any runaround now."

  Sam Quain gulped again, hesitant and visibly ill.

  "Spill it, Quain!" demanded the radio reporter. "You can't tell us all that build-up was just for nothing."

  But Sam Quain nodded his sun-bleached head, seeming to make up his mind.

  "Nothing worth big headlines, I'm afraid." Pity touched and softened the horror lingering on his square-jawed face. "Dr. Mondrick had been ill for some time, you see, and I'm afraid his splendid mind had lost its old acuity. Nobody can question the accuracy and originality of his work, but we had tried to restrain him from this rather melodramatic manner of making it public."

  "You mean," the radio man snarled indignantly, "that all this talk about your discoveries in Mongolia is just a crazy gag?"

  "On the contrary," Sam Quain assured him, "Dr. Mondrick's work is both sound and important. His theories, and the evidences we have gathered to support them, are worth the attention of every professional scientist in the anthropological fields."

  Sam Quain kept his haunted eyes away from the old man's body and the silent woman. His taut, dry voice was carefully calm.

  "Dr. Mondrick's discoveries are quite important," he insisted flatly. "The rest of us tried to persuade him, however, to make the announcement in the usual way— in a formal paper, presented before some recognized scientific body. And that, since this tragedy, is what we shall doubtless do in time."

  "But the old man kept hinting about some danger," rapped a photographer. "About somebody that didn't want him to talk. And then he conked off, right in the middle of what he had to say. That's pretty damn funny. You aren't just possibly frightened out, Quain?"

  Sam Quain gulped nervously.

  "Naturally, we're upset," he admitted huskily. "But where's any tangible proof that Dr. Mondrick had any enemy here?" His own haggard eyes peered away into the thick dusk, narrowing as if to hunted fear. "There's none," he insisted. "Dr. Mondrick's death at this moment can be nothing more than a tragic coincidence. Perhaps it was less. The fatal attack was doubtless brought on by his own excitement."

  "But what about his 'Child of Night'?" the radio reporter broke in. "His 'Black Messiah'?"

  Sam Quain's bleak face tried to smile.

  "Dr. Mondrick read detective stories. His Child of Night, I believe, is merely a figure of speech—a personification of human ignorance, perhaps. He was given to figurative language, and he wanted to make his announcement dramatic."

  Sam Quain nodded toward the wooden box.

  "There lies your story, gentlemen. I'm afraid Dr. Mondrick chose an unfortunate publicity device. After all, the theor
y of human evolution is no longer frontpage news. Every known detail of the origin of mankind is extremely important to such a specialist as Dr. Mondrick, but it doesn't interest the man in the street —unless it's dramatized."

  "Hell!" The radio man turned away. "That old buzzard sure took me for a ride." An ambulance drew up beside the plane, and he watched the blind woman bidding her husband a final farewell. Barbee was glad she couldn't see the flashbulbs flickering.

  "What are your plans now, Mr. Quain?" demanded a hawk-faced man in black—a science reporter, as Barbee knew him, for one of the press associations. "When are you going to give us the rest of this interrupted announcement?"

  "Not soon." Sam Quain patiently turned his head for a photographer and blinked at the cruel flashbulbs. "We all felt, you see, that Dr. Mondrick was speaking prematurely. I think all my associates in the Foundation will agree with me that the objects we brought back from the Ala-shan must be studied carefully in our own laboratory, along with all Dr. Mondrick's notes and papers, before we have any statement for the public. In due time, the Foundation will publish a monograph to present his work. That may take a year. Perhaps two."

  Somebody in the impatient group made an impolite sound through his lips.

  "We've got a story, anyhow." The science reporter grinned at him cheerfully. "If that's the way you want it, we'll use what we have. I can see the tabloid heads already—'Prehistoric Curse Clips Grave Robber.'"

  "Print what you like." Sam Quain peered around him in the windy gloom, and Barbee could see his veiled unease. "But we have no further statement now —except that I want to offer our apologies, on behalf of the Foundation, for this tragic anticlimax. I do hope you will be generous in anything you write about Dr. Mondrick. He was truly great—if sometimes a trifle eccentric. His work, when fully published, will place him securely among the honored few of the humane sciences, along with Freud and Darwin."