Sign of the Labrys Page 5
She looked at me for a moment. Then she lay down on her side and pulled me down beside her. “Kiss me, Th-ham.”
Her mouth was warm and wet. For an instant, at the contact, I felt a burst of the old separative, disjunctive repulsion; after all, I had been with her for a good many minutes now. But the euph pill was potent; I went back to kissing her.
I pulled the tail of her blouse out of the waistband of her shorts and worked the garment off over her head. She was wearing nothing under it.
Her breasts were large and only a little flabby, and by now I felt an intense, feverish desire for her. She pressed up toward me, and I took due pleasure from what she offered before I went on to the black velvet shorts. I hoped she would be wearing nothing under them, too.
She helped me with the fastening, and raised up a little so I could ease the garment down over her hips. I had got the skin-tight fabric down to the crease of her thighs when she stiffened in my arms.
She made an odd sort of noise. Her eyes rolled. Then she went limp and heavy. Her mouth dropped open and I saw a thread of green slime.
I couldn’t realize at first what had happened. I called her name and shook her. Her face was flushed, and the slime had run down on her chin.
I hunted for her pulse and couldn’t find any. I put my head against her chest and listened for her heart. There was no heartbeat. She was dead.
She was dead, and I was a vector of neurolytic plague. And now what was I to do? Here was a dead woman beside me. How was I to get Out of level G? And how could I approach anyone for help without dooming him or her to death?
7
I began to realize that I was in a very odd physical state. My head ached, my hands and feet were cold, and I was recurrently nauseated; and the abrupt frustration of the feverish desire I had felt for Cindy Ann had left me weak and trembling. Yet simultaneously with these negative sensations, I felt that I was tall, tall enough to tower over most men like a giant, able to break a granite rock in pieces with my fingers; and that I had a double-sighted gaze.
Double-sighted? What on earth did I mean by that? I got into a comfortable position to consider the matter, with my knees under my chin and my arms linked around them. Cindy Ann lay on the ground beside me, with an increasing trickle of slime running down her chin.
Double-sighted… Well, if the word meant anything, I ought to be able to see… I fixed my eyes on the dead woman lying beside me.
It was an odd experience. Her flesh seemed to dissolve slowly as I looked. First I saw her ribs become visible, and then her lungs within the rib cage, with her motionless heart lying between them. My gaze went deeper, and then I saw her backbone and finally the grass under her. It was colored and realistic—not like an X-ray film; but the colors where rather dull.
I moved my eyes lower on her body, and the same thing happened. I noticed that one of her kidneys seemed definitely lower in her pelvis than the other, which might have caused her some trouble if she had lived.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The vision persisted. But it could be a hallucination, after all. I wanted to prove to myself that it wasn’t that.
I looked at the waistband of her black velvet shorts. The pillbox from which she had taken the euph pill was inside a little pocket on the right side. If I reached in and found the pillbox where my double sight perceived it, it ought to prove something.
I didn’t want to touch her. And besides, I’d seen her get the pillbox out of the pocket. I knew it was there already; and to find it in that spot wouldn’t prove anything. I needed a more objective test.
I got to my feet and looked around me. There was a tallish tree a few feet ahead of me, and I tried my double sight on it.
Seeing the bark dissolve and the tree’s woody anatomy become visible wasn’t interesting. I moved my eyes to a crotch in the tree’s trunk and was rewarded by seeing, quite hidden from my ordinary sight by the sides of the crotch, a bird’s nest slowly become visible. The nest, built down deep in the hollow, contained four naked young.
It ought to be easy enough to check up on a thing like that. I caught hold of a horizontal branch and pulled myself up to the level of the crotch. The effort was unpleasant; I might be able to break a piece of granite with my fingers, but I wasn’t able to chin myself without feeling woozy. But, before I let go of the branch and dropped back to the ground, I saw a nest with four naked, snaky-necked baby birds in it. They cheeped loudly at me.
It wasn’t a hallucination, then. But it might be an elaborate dream—or a systematized series of delusions… Nonsense. I was in a peculiar physical condition; some extremely odd things were happening in me. But I wasn’t dreaming, and I wasn’t deluded. The faculty my mind had elected to call “double sight” really existed in me. How could I use it to help myself?
I sat down on the ground again by Cindy Ann’s body to think it over. Proximity to her didn’t bother me at all. It was like sitting down by an empty packing case, or a bundle of old clothes. I suppose it was because I didn’t have any feeling of moral responsibility for her death. And then, she hadn’t had much personality when she had been alive. Not much had been withdrawn.
Ames had called Despoina’s ring a passport to get me past the guards on the lower levels. I had assumed, without even thinking about it, that when he had said “guards” he had meant “guardians.” Certainly that was what Kyra, on level F, had seemed to be. But the word “guard” has another meaning. One speaks, for example, of a chain guard on a bicycle, or of a mud guard on an automobile. Had Ames meant to employ the word in this second sense also? In that case, the “guard” on this level might be a piece of machinery that Despoina’s ring would activate—or inactivate.
There was another thing. Ames had said Despoina meant me to go to her. In that case, might there not be some cooperation to be expected from her, or from her agents? Would she not help me to get to her?
I raised the ring to my eyes and looked at it. I looked at it for what seemed a long time. I could see my hand through the ring, and the bones inside it. But that was all that happened.
At last I sighed and got to my feet. The best thing I could think of was to wander through level G looking at things and people with my double sight. I didn’t think I’d infect anyone by merely walking through the level. After all, Cindy Ann had had to be in close physical contact with me before I had infected her.
Where should I go first? To the casino? It seemed an unlikely place, somehow, to find a level “guardian.” (If I did find one, would I be able to recognize him—or her? Would my double sight be of any help to me?) I’d walk back the way Cindy Ann and I had come, to the place in the grove where I had landed on level G, and see what lay on the other side of it.
It took me five minutes or so to get back to the spot in the grove where the withered grass was. Kyra had hinted that my perception of time was disturbed, and it may have been longer. Before I left the grove entirely, I crossed a little brook that rippled pleasantly along over pebbles and sand. A brook, at this depth! They did things handsomely on level G.
Beyond the grove were random groups of dwelling houses. Each one was set among trees and shrubbery, and, while they seemed a little smaller than houses of comparable luxury would have been on the surface, they were all of good size. Now and then I saw people going in and out of them.
Nobody paid much attention to me, though one or two women eyed me speculatively. One of them even nodded and smiled, and I nodded back. Obviously, she thought she knew me. I suppose the explanation is that I have always had an ordinary, or perhaps the more accurate word would be a plastic face. When I was growing up, the other youngsters had teased me because I was so hard to locate in a group photograph. Here on level G, despite my shirt and trousers, I looked like anybody else.
I soon found that Cindy Ann’s costume had been rather conservative. Two of the women that I passed had blouses cut so low that their naked breasts were entirely exposed, and the women were by no means the youngest or the prettiest of tho
se who sauntered along the graveled walks.
No matter who I passed, man or woman, I looked at him or her with my double sight. I saw a lot of human anatomy, and might, had I been interested, have learned a lot of visceral secrets. But I saw nobody who seemed to me likely to be one of the putative “guardians.”
I passed through a heavy belt of trees and then came to a sort of shopping center. Cindy Ann had said that they didn’t use money: but people were going in and out of several shops and coming out with packages of frozen foods and what looked like wrapped-up clothing. One of the shops seemed to be a pharmacy. Nowhere did I see a salesperson or an attendant. I suppose the constructors of level G had thought its amenities too good to waste on anyone who wasn’t an “important” person. But, despite Cindy Ann’s denial, there must be a technician or two somewhere on this level, after all, if only to keep its complex machines running. There is a limit to what the best-constructed robot can do.
I didn’t enter any of the shops—I was afraid of being recognized as an outsider, since I wouldn’t know what the procedure was for getting goods. I walked as slowly as I dared, and tried to inspect everyone inside.
The “shopping center” gave place to another belt of trees, and this to more houses. As I walked along, I thought how inexhaustible the supply of goods on level G must be. Some of the people I saw must have come down here when they were children, when the danger of war had seemed so agonizingly immediate. They had grown into young men and women, the plagues had raged on the surface, and still people entered the shops and brought out parcels. They had been prepared to live underground for a quarter or half a century; the material wealth of a culture had been poured out to make them safe and happy. If they were bored, they could always take a euph pill.
And how enormous the level was! The trees could be justified, on the ground that their leaves helped keep the atmosphere breathable, and that their trunks served to hide the steel girders that supported the levels above. But a brook… private dwelling houses… a casino… and even a most realistic bathing beach—only space to spare could account for it. I had read somewhere, years ago, that excavating the levels had cost $300,000 for each cubic foot of earth removed.
Big as the level was, still it was not unlimited. Sooner or later I must come to where shrubbery and illusion gave place to the native rock.
At last I reached the edge of the second constellation of houses. There was another belt of trees, a trailing out of shrubbery and flowering plants. The path I had been following came to an end. I saw the bare gray rock before me. And close against it, small and unexpected, a house.
Small, and, if not quite dilapidated, certainly not very well kept up. The window frames needed painting, the boards of the porch seemed to sag a trifle. Probably prefabricated, I thought. The ivy vines that were growing in clay flower pots had a discouraged look. Who would be living, on level G, in a house like this?
Oh, but it was obvious. The technician Cindy Ann had said didn’t exist, and that I had been sure must be here.
Without even thinking, I walked up the two porch steps and knocked on the door.
There was a wait. I heard somebody moving inside. I knocked again. At last a woman came to the door. She did not open it very wide. Her body stayed inside, and only her face peeped out.
She was middle-aged, with a dusky skin and an intelligent, strong, impetuous face. “Who is it?” she asked warily.
I had been thinking of what to say. Now words deserted me. I held out my hand to her, so she could see Despoina’s ring.
She shot me a startled glance. “I don’t know anything about it!” she said vehemently. “I don’t know anything about it at all, no more than if I was a dog!” She slammed the door in my face.
I knocked again. For quite a long while I kept on knocking. But she did not come back.
At last I turned away. “… no more than if I was a dog.” What had she meant by that?
It occurred to me, with the sense of a wasted opportunity, that I had not used my double sight on her. But perhaps there had been nothing to see anyway.
I started walking again. For a while I kept close to the rock wall. The going was not easy, because of the piles of loose rubble and the knee-high, slanting steel supporting members I had to detour around. But it seemed to me that here, close to the edge of the excavation, was a logical place for the exit from G to the next level below to be.
I found nothing. I was getting tired, and had just about decided to abandon my tour of the periphery of G for the center, where walking would be easier, when I saw before me a flash of familiar color. I got up to it, and it was what I had thought it was. A patch of the purple fungus was growing there.
I don’t know why, but I felt heartened. For one thing, the sight of the fungus made me realize I was hungry. I fished my knife from my pocket and cut off a handful of the crisp, succulent fronds. I chewed them slowly, leaning against the rough face of the raw rock, and they tasted good. They were the first thing I had had to eat in a long time—actually, as I realized later, the first thing in several days. I washed the fungus down with a drink, from my flask, of the sulphurous water I had got on level F.
As I corked the flask, I thought of Kyra. Her playing with the knife came into my mind, and I wondered what she had meant by it. Then I started out along the rock wall once more.
Still nothing. One heap of rock rubble looked exactly like another. I kept on stubbornly, but at last I realized I was too tired to walk much longer. I decided to head back to the center of G, to see if I could find a place to rest.
When I think of G now, it is always in terms of endless walking. I was tired, so tired I could hardly put one foot in front of the other, and my awareness of my surroundings grew hazier and hazier.
At last I stopped. I was in another of the groves of trees, somewhere, I thought, not far from the casino and the little beach. This was as good a place as any to rest. I didn’t think anybody would find me here, unless a pair of lovers stumbled on me by accident. Anyhow, I had to have rest.
I threw myself down on the grass. I promised myself that after I had slept for a while I would resume the hunt for the exit… After I had slept.
I was asleep almost as soon as I lay down. My dreams slid into a deep unconsciousness, a profound and gratifying oblivion. I sank to the bottom of a sea of welcome nothingness.
At last I began to come to the surface again. Something was rubbing against my cheek, and I moved to avoid it. Still it kept on, gentle and persistent.
After a long time, I opened my eyes. I was still unwilling to awake, but I had begun to be curious. What was it that returned, over and over again, to rubbing my cheek?
I blinked, yawned, and then I laughed. A big reddish-brown setter, glossy-coated and handsome, was standing over me. Even while I lay there, the dog’s red tongue came out again and licked insistently at my cheek.
8
He was wearing a collar. His name was engraved on it—Dekker, it was. I thought it an odd name for a dog.
I sat fondling him and smiling, it was so long since I had seen a dog. I pulled his silky ears and he wagged his tail amiably.
He sat down facing me, grinning, his red tongue lapping out. Wobblingly, I got to my feet. My nap had unquestionably done me good—I felt stronger and steadier, and my headache had gone. At the same time, the physical changes in me had progressed further than before. The skin of my whole body felt glowingly warm, and unless I held my head perfectly still objects around me rotated dizzyingly. The mere exertion of getting to my feet had left me drenched with sweat.
Dekker, sitting before me, gave a faint whine. For the first time I looked at him with my double sight,
His body, so far as I could tell, was a perfectly normal canine body. It would have done for an illustration in a textbook called “The Anatomy of the Dog.” But his head seemed different. It was harder to see into, and when I did get through the opacity of the bone I was puzzled. I couldn’t make sense of what I saw.
Double sight, and double brain? Yes. Above the normal mammalian two hemispheres, he had another smaller structure, one-lobed and deeply convoluted. It was not a tumor or any diseased creation; it was a double brain.
I drew an astonished breath. Was a dog, then, the guardian of the exit from this level? I knew that I was in an abnormal physical condition; perhaps my coming up with such an idea indicated only how abnormal my condition was.
Dekker had stopped grinning while I looked at him. Now he stood up, shook himself briskly, and started trotting away from me. After he had gone a few feet he stopped and looked over his shoulder at me. He gave a short bark. Plainly, he wanted me to follow him.
He led me to the beach. It was still dotted with bathers; the “sun” was as high as ever. Turning now and then to be sure I was following him, he galloped across the sand until he found a stick, a length of dried branch. He raced back with it in his mouth, and dropped it at my feet. He wanted me to play with him.
For a moment I had a painfully let-down feeling. A dog, who might or might not have something wrong with his head, wanted to have a game of stick-throwing with an amiable stranger. Was this why he had awakened me, and insisted I follow him to the beach? So I would throw a stick for him?
Standing over the stick, he barked peremptorily. Well, it wouldn’t do any harm to play with a dog. Creakily I picked up the stick and tossed it.
He galloped off after it enthusiastically, scattering sand over one or two of the sunbathers. One girl rolled over on her stomach, away from him. They all seemed to know him and find nothing unusual in his playing a game of stick.
Twice more I threw the stick for him and he returned it. The fourth time, when I bent over to pick it up, he growled at me.
I straightened up, feeling annoyed. I had only been playing with the animal because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And now I got growled at for my pains.