They’d take a chance, thought William, and make for the boats. They circled round the back of the fire, untended and burning low. The entire system of caverns had to have an opening on the ocean—perhaps beneath the honeycomb of docks and canneries that made up old Venice and were the destination of the mysterious steamer trunk, for the fire was a heap of driftwood—of the gray trunks of barkless trees; the broken, listing cabin of an old fishing boat; and the remains of weather-wrecked furniture: half an upside down table, an old stuffed chair reduced to a skeleton frame and a spiral of rusted springs. All of it, surely, couldn’t have been hauled through the sewers and pitched down the stone stairs.
The dock, no more than a collage of debris that had escaped the fires, had crumbled until it seemed to stagger and tilt into the water like a collapsing drunkard. Every third or forth board was broken and hanging, or had fallen altogether into the sea, doubtless hauled away by the water dwellers to shore up a submarine hovel. It was in the second of the three junks that they’d noticed the lamp. But in the first, William could see, burned another, low and orange. He pulled out his pocket knife, slipped his thumb lightly across the thin blade, signaled to Jim, and crept forward, ready to spring for a tethered rowboat and cut it loose at the sound of pursuit. He was as desperate as they come—not to be trifled with. Slippery as a squid, as Professor Latzarel would put it. If he was tested, he damn well wouldn’t be found wanting. Once on the water and skimming toward the stairs, he could easily outdistance the junks. He’d be halfway to safety by the time they could summon enough opium-laced thugs to man the oars. And with a bit of wit, it would be easier than that.
The first of the junks floated evenly, tied with slack line fore and aft. Close on, it was oddly and ornately carved, the bulwark wrapping round the stern in a succession of humped, gilt fish, each biting the tail of the one before it an unbroken circle around the low deck. The square sail canted obliquely across slanted bamboo, and was tattooed, again with the figure of a fish, a tri-colored koi, bent at the middle, impossibly lacy dorsal and tail fins floating over and beyond it as if buoyed up by the still waters of an aquarium.
It struck William suddenly that the sail would look startling hanging from the living room wall. Perhaps if all went well, if he were as furtive and quick as the William Hastings who’d slipped from the grasp of the mob in the sewers, he’d cut the tiling loose, roll it along its yardarm and take it along. He’d spring from the manhole on Stickley Street with the sail and Giles both. Edward’s eyes would shoot open.
Here was another window to peer through. There was a certain excitement in peeking in windows, a feeling of immediate and ruinous folly independent of whatever lay on the other side, an urge to shriek through the window and rap on the glass, leaving some shambling, terror-bitten wreck beyond, wondering at the sudden collapse of the universe.
The scene before him, however, didn’t much encourage that sort of thing. An immense aquarium, easily a thousand gallons, stretched across the wall—was the wall—of a cabin that was a wonder of carved rosewood. Lamps burned over the glass-lidded surface, copper shades casting most of the soft yellow light downward, illuminating the weedy depths of the tank in a mottled, shifting dance of shadow and light. Bursting bubbles rose from the sand in a fine rush, disturbing the surface of the aquarium, generated by clear tubing that coiled away into a Mack rubber bladder the size of a small mattress.
An old man, desperately thin and with white silky hair, sat before the aquarium, watching the creatures within as if mesmerized. He was Oriental, Chinese probably, and dressed in a silk robe. A looped earring with a dangling goldfish hung from one ear; the other ear was turned away. An opium pipe, some wooden kitchen matches, a brass coaster, and other odd debris were scattered over the top of a steamer trunk on the floor beside his chair—a steamer trunk banded with two green copper belts, each studded with an emerald fish. And before him, swimming through the bubbling waters as if searching for some lost thing—a jewel dropped from the worn prongs of an old ring or the missing key to a locked house—were a half dozen peculiar fish.
Their eyes were like green glass. And there was something wrong with their expression. It was a combination of sadness and terror that wasn’t a consequence of the peculiarity of nature. With an abrupt mental lurch that constricted his throat, William saw that one of the fish—all of the fish—had what appeared to be fleshy little appendages, fingers, five of them, at the ends of their pectoral fins, and just the faint trace of a nose protruding above their toothed mouths. It wasn’t the foolish trunk nose of a tang or the flat pig nose of a puffer; it was human—clearly so—a vestigial nose and fingers that turned the beasts into something more than fish, into the haunting, impossible offspring of Reginald Peach. The man in the chair was Han Koi.
Chapter 19
William signaled to Jim again, crept along the dock, and severed the two lines that moored the junk. The bow swung round into the slow current as the boat eased away. With any luck, Han Koi and his finny menagerie would be bumping into the rocks on the far side of the cavern before he was aware of being adrift. William and Jim moved off along the dock.
The second junk contained Giles Peach. It was as simple as that. He was apparently unattended—something that William had ambiguous feelings about. Although it would obviously make it easier to spirit him away unseen, it meant, quite clearly, that his remaining aboard the junk was at least partly—largely, perhaps—voluntary. He sat in a wooden chair reading a magazine. A heap of books lay on the floor roundabout. William recognized the covers of Burroughs’ Pellucidar books and the Heritage Press printing of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was the magazine in Giles’ hand, however, that struck William most forcibly—a copy of the recent Analogy William’s Analog. Giles peered intently at the page from a distance of two or three inches, out of excitement, it seemed, rather than near-sightedness, for every couple of moments he paused to jot notes into the margins and onto a stack of paper napkins.
He hadn’t changed so awfully much. William didn’t know what, exactly, he had expected. He half feared that Giles would have become something like the thing in the steamer trunk, that he’d shared the fate of Reginald Peach, perhaps with a bit of help from Han Koi and Hilario Frosticos. But there hadn’t been that sort of apparent change—just a vague sensation, a watery electrical charge in the air, that suggested a kinship, perhaps literally, between Giles Peach and the melancholy inhabitants of Han Koi’s aquaria.
William tapped on the edge of the cabin window and hissed. Giles lurched upright, stuffing his magazine between the cushion and the arm of his chair, a look of wild fear in his eyes. His head swiveled toward the door, since he assumed, obviously, that someone approached—an ally, William would have assumed. William tapped again. Giles jerked around toward the window, grasped the shade of his reading lamp, and directed the light in William’s direction, his eyes widening in surprise to see both William and Jim peering in at him out of the darkness.
Gill stammered, looking quickly again at the door. Whether he intended to shout, run, or barricade himself in was, for a split second, unclear. But after that second of confusion, he simply sat still, befuddled. William could detect, he was sure of it, faint lines of hope curling the edges of his mouth and eyes.
“Is there anyone else aboard?” William whispered.
Giles shook his head.
William debated the usefulness of cutting loose the third junk, which, from its dark, silent demeanor, appeared to be empty. He decided against it. Haste was the word, now that they’d found Giles. The two of them slipped aboard, treading as lightly as possible, looking back over their shoulder toward where the vast driftwood fire burned on its little rocky hill.
Han Koi’s boat had floated twenty or thirty yards from shore, but seemed to be lying still in the water. William was suddenly struck with regret at having cut it loose. If the junk were docked, there was the bare possibility that he and Jim would remain unseen, even if the old man decided to take a
stroll ashore. But now, unless the boat drifted safely away … William and Jim hurried into the cabin.
Jim nodded at Giles, as if not knowing entirely what to say. Giles nodded back and grinned, embarrassed, perhaps, to be found under such peculiar conditions.
“We’ve missed you,” said William. “Getting on well?”
Giles shrugged.
“Your mother is a bit worried.”
Giles shrugged again guiltily.
“Work going along?’
Giles nodded. William crossed to the window on the dock side and closed the shutters. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Time was passing. He caught sight of a copy of The ABC’s of Relativity lying on the floor amid the other books. “Been reading about relativity?” asked William. “What do you think of this?”
“Well,” said Giles. “I remembered Mr. Squires recommending it that night at the Newtonians. So I bought it. But there are certain problems with it.”
“Ah,” said Edward. “Problems?”
“Yes. I’ve built an anti-gravity unit, you know, that works on the principle of sky tides. The idea came to me while I was reading the book. I thought about building it into a bicycle as a present for Mr. Squires whose car was broken down that night, but then things happened, and …” Giles trailed off into silence.
William, listening for threatening sounds, wasn’t about to let the conversation slacken. “You’ve read my own relativity story in Analog?” William motioned toward the chair with his head.
“Yes, sir,” said Giles, brightening. “It was very impressive. Convincing too. I’m sure they’ve only begun to understand physics. Your story will turn things around. That’s why I’ve been working on the digger for Mr. Pinion. I’m certain we can get to the Earth’s core. Think of what we’ll find there …” And once again Giles fell silent, thinking of what he’d find there.
‘That’s rather why we’ve come,” said William. He looked at Jim, and Jim nodded. “I think there’s a problem with your plan to use anti-matter. I understand the need to dispose of dirt and debris, but what in the world are you going to do with the energy? Have you read P. A.M. Dirac?”
“Yes.”
‘Then you know the danger of shuffling matter And antimatter together as if they were playing cards. There’s a theory I favor that postulates an entire anti-matter universe at the far end of our own—all the anti-matter particles that came out of the big bang. There’s a mirror-image Earth there. All of us, battling the same demons. But we’ve got our clothes on inside out. Do you follow me?”
“Yes,” said Giles, “but …”
“But that’s where they must be,” said William. “There can be no other explanation. Anti-stars, anti-planets, anti-hamburgers, anti-Pinions.” William grinned at Giles. “But you can’t just stir it up in a soup along with matter. You suspect that, don’t you? Your father does. We’ve spoken to him. He sees trouble—a cataclysm. Creatures from Pellucidar are beginning to flee. Are you aware of that? And the communist Chinese have reported desperate anxieties in laboratory pigs. They blame it on CIA weather manipulation, but I think it’s something else.”
“I don’t anticipate a problem any longer,” said Giles. “I obviously couldn’t put the anti-matter into a container, since the container itself would be converted. But there’s such a thing as a magnetic bottle …”
“Yes,” said William, “I’ve read about it.”
“So I built one. I found a bag full of magnets from old cars—it was in the same junk store we were in the day of the wind,” he said, looking at Jim. “I built a polarity reversal bottle.” Giles poked around in a desk drawer for a moment, hauling out a line drawing of something that looked like a rectilinear amphora. Equations peppered the drawing along with arrows and spirals and little, hastily drawn graphs.
William inspected it. It might work. There were parts of it that he couldn’t fathom, equations that meant nothing at all to him. He supposed that Squires could make them out. But Squires wasn’t there. He was a half mile above them in his house on Rexroth Road. And if the three of them weren’t headed in that general direction fairly quickly themselves, there would quite likely be trouble. William was determined not to leave without Giles. But if they had to, if staying too long meant giving Jim up to Frosticos or Han Koi, then they’d flee instead. They’d all rest easier, though, knowing that Giles’ magnetic bottle would do the trick.
It would be a dirty shame if Pinion beat them to the center of the Earth, but their pride could take the blow. It was the blow to the Earth that concerned them. And if Giles had that threat ironed out. … There was something in William that didn’t trust the whole idea of the magnetic bottle. It was sound scientifically. He was sure of that. But there was something else. Instinct? That was it. Civilization theory. Pigs couldn’t be argued with. They had a nose for impending doom. And the dream—the death of Giles Peach. What of that? He didn’t require accuracy of dreams, but it had had an unmistakably premonitory ring to it that sounded in the same key of fear that had inhabited the voice of Basil Peach.
“It won’t work,” said William, grasping at straws.
Giles was silent. He sensed it too.
There was a noise from outside, like the scrape of something along the bulwark. Silence followed. Jim looked out through a crack in the slats of the shutters. Nothing moved. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Giles. “Come on.”
Giles sat staring.
“Powers is having a sale. Burroughs’ novels are twenty-five cents each with every fifth one free.”
“Really?” asked William.
‘That’s right. It just started today. I saw the ad in the window of the store.”
“Martian books?” Giles asked, visibly brightening.
“Heaps. He just bought a collection from somewhere, that’s what he said. They were still in boxes. There’s no telling what all he had.”
Giles looked around himself furtively. “Will you sign this?” he asked William, hauling out the Analog.
“Of course.” William beamed at him. “I don’t have a pen, though.” He tapped his pants pockets. “You and I could accomplish a bit, you know.”
Giles turned red, embarrassed at the praise, and handed across a pen.
“What we need for the diving bell is an oxygenator-propulsion combination. I’ve got some ideas, actually, having to do with a Hieronymous machine. Are you familiar with it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Giles.’ ‘I saw a picture of one in an old issue of Astounding, a Psionic Machine-Type 1.I always wanted to build one.”
“Well, here’s your chance. And another thing—absolute gyro. For stabilization. Do you have any ideas there?”
“Easy,” said Giles. “I’ve already built something like that for the digger. We can do it this afternoon, but we’ve got to get to the Sprouse Reitz on Colorado before they close. That’s where I buy most of my parts.” He checked his watch.
“After Powers’,” said William, smiling.
There was another noise, nearer the shutters now. William motioned Jim into a corner, crept across, and slowly opened one shutter. Darkness met him across the dirty glass. He rubbed circuitously on it with the side of his hand, cleaning a little oval and squinting through it, deciphering the gloom. His heart raced strangely, as if in certain knowledge that something lurked out in the hypnotic darkness—something his eyes couldn’t yet perceive.
Then, in a slice of a moment that seemed to William to resemble the staccato, stroboscope unreeling of an ancient motion picture, there materialized before him a white, smiling face, swerving into sudden clarity beyond the window, leering in. A hand rose beside it. Fingers wiggled in satiric greeting like four fleshy little worms, reminding him of the unholy appendages on the strange fish of Han Koi. The face belonged to a satisfied Hilario Frosticos.
William was frozen in terror, gasping for short breaths, utterly unable to summon up any of the courage he’d possessed not fifteen minutes earlier. A scream gagged him, then ripped from his
throat, a single shriek, cut off into a gurgle as he staggered back into the cabin, smashing across the books on the floor and past a terrified Giles Peach to collapse in a heap.
Jim, reacting only to the instinctive terror of a sudden face at a dark window, hurled a book at it, catching the grinning, self-satisfied doctor full in the face. There was a curse of rage followed by silence. Giles sat stone-faced. Staring. William didn’t move. It seemed unlikely to Jim that the two of them were waiting for anything. They were simply swallowed up by fear.
Jim pushed at the desk, shoving it across the door, then heaved at a stack of bookcases, sweeping books out of them onto the floor until he could lever the top case onto the desk. The second followed. He shoved books back into them for weight, conscious as he did so of an omnipresent heaviness in the air. He labored for breath, watching the window out of the corner of his eye for the sign of meddling. He felt wet all over. Not clammy from the muggy air of the cavern, but wet, as if he’d just crawled out of the sea or as if the air around him were itself congealing into seawater. The last of the bookcases rested on the desk. Jim picked up a handful of books, dropping half of them, realizing that since he’d been at it, no one had made any effort to get past his barrier, and hearing at the same time the click and snap of a door opening behind him—a panel in the carved rosewood of the wall. Dr. Frosticos bent through it, smiling malignly. In his hand was a syringe.
William gripped the arms of his chair and sat petrified, utterly unable to respond. Giles seemed asleep, although his eyes were wide open, staring at something none of the rest of them could see. Then, strangely, inexplicably, a fish, pecking at debris on the floor, swam past Jim’s foot. The floor itself, when Jim stared at it in surprise, seemed insubstantial and grainy, as if it were decomposed, or rather as if it weren’t wood at all, but grains of dark sand on an ocean bottom. A tendril of kelp dragged across Jim’s face, waving on a current of heavy, wet air that washed past, then fell momentarily slack before surging back past him in a rush of bubbles, sand, bits of seaweed, and grinning, startled fish.
The Digging Leviathan Page 25
