Sign of the Labrys Page 6

  Dekker looked from me to the water and back to me again. Oh, that was it. I was supposed to throw the stick in the water. He’d retrieve it. But what a waste of time! And a nuisance, too, since every time I bent over I was unpleasantly giddy. With no enthusiasm at all, I threw the stick in the water for him.

  It landed beyond the edge of the gentle surf and floated quietly, bobbing up and down a little. He dashed in after it, swam out to where it was, and returned it to my feet. He was dripping wet and, as I bent over to pick up the stick, he shook salt water all over me.

  He was as brainless as a spaniel. I threw the stick once more, resolved that this should be the last time.

  It landed ten feet or so from where I had thrown it before. Dekker looked toward it and then squatted down on his haunches.

  “Go on,” I said. “Bring it here.”

  He made no move to retrieve it, but his eyes turned from the stick to me, and back again.

  “Get it, old boy,” I ordered again. “Go after it.” Deliberately he got up, turned around, and sat down with his back to me, so he could see the water.

  The action had so much of purpose in it that, despite my current low estimation of Dekker’s intelligence, I looked out over the water to where he seemed to want me to look.

  The stick I had thrown was bobbing up and down in the water, but it also had another motion. It was moving strongly and steadily to the right.

  Was there a current there? Was that what the dog had wanted me to see?

  I watched intently, while the dog squatted near me. The stick reached a certain point in its rightward motion and then began to move straight out, away from the beach. Faster and faster it moved. Then, when it seemed to be perhaps a hundred and fifty feet out, it disappeared. I couldn’t tell whether I had merely lost sight of it, or whether it had actually gone.

  Gone? Gone where? Cindy Ann had said nobody swam out further than fifty or sixty feet, though the water looked as if it extended for miles. Where was there for the stick to go? Presumably the beach was an extremely large saltwater swimming pool, with cunningly contrived machinery that kept the waves coming in, and even, at certain times, caused high or low tides. But it did not seem that machinery to do that would cause the effect of outward suction I had seen. What had become of the stick?

  Dekker looked up at me. When he saw he had my attention, he ran along the beach, hunted, and returned with another stick. It seemed he wanted me to throw this one into the water, too.

  Obligingly, I threw, trying to make it land where the other stick had landed. Once more the sequence of motion was repeated—to the right, and then the rapid motion away from the beach. And, again, at a certain point the stick disappeared.

  I tried to use my double sight to see through the water, to find if there was any machinery that would account for the motion I had observed. After a few feet, though, my special sight was not much more use than ordinary vision was. I had an impression of turbulence, of greenish water falling. That was all.

  My game with the dog had tired me. Sweat was trickling along my face and dripping off the point of my chin. I was as wet with sweat as if I had been in a bath, and yet my body felt hotter than ever.

  I sat down in the sand to think. Dekker lay down beside me quietly, his head on my knee… What had made the sticks move like that?

  No. That wasn’t the real question. The question was why Dekker had wanted me to notice it.

  Had he only been playing? Perhaps; and yet his actions seemed too purposeful. There was some reason why he wanted me to witness the outward motion and the final disappearance of the sticks.

  He had been lying quietly beside me. Now he stood up and put his nose under my outstretched hand and snuggled his head under it.

  I thought at first he wanted me to fondle him, and I rubbed his big red-brown head absently behind the ears. But that wasn’t it; he walked out from under my hand and stood as if he were thinking. Then he took my wrist gently between his big jaws and came close to me, so my arm had to bend at the elbow. He put his paws up on my thighs and held my hand in front of my face.

  I looked at my hand. An ordinary hand, except that it was so hot. But on the finger—Despoina’s ring. That was what he had wanted me to see.

  Suddenly I understood. The place where the sticks had disappeared was the exit from level G. The dog had been showing me how to get out of it.

  “Dekker…” I said.

  He had dropped my wrist and was watching me motionlessly. He scarcely seemed to breathe. Through his skull I could see the strange second brain above his normal canine brain.

  “Dekker, is that the way out of this level? Where the sticks moved out?”

  Dogs don’t nod their heads; he gave a short, decisive bark.

  It sounded exactly like “Yes.” Still I hesitated. I am only a moderately good swimmer, and even if what Dekker seemed to be telling me actually was the case, I was afraid the outward current might sweep me into some machinery I would have trouble coping with. I didn’t suppose there was an actual flow of water from this level into the one below, so that I would only have to let myself be swept along with it. Dekker sighed, the impatient sigh of a dog who has been waiting a long time for his master to be done reading and go for a walk with him. Then he caught my trouser leg by the cuff and gave me a tug in the direction of the water.

  I laughed and stood up. Yes, he had been patient. “Okay, boy,” I said. “I’ll get going.”

  We walked over the sand together and out into the water. It can’t have been very usual for people to go in swimming fully dressed, but nobody on the beach paid any attention to me. Probably they thought I was drunk, if they thought about it at all. Their curiosity seemed to have atrophied along with the rest of their personalities.

  When I got out far enough I started swimming, and Dekker swam along beside me. I think the water would have felt good, if I had not been so feverish. As it was, it seemed chillingly cold.

  We swam out together for what seemed a long way. I was interested to find that even at this distance from the beach the illusion of unlimited space continued, though I could see that there was some sort of wall ahead.

  Suddenly Dekker, who was on my left, turned and swam against me, so I was forced to the right. “Is this the place, old fellow?” I asked. He managed a muffled bark.

  I swam in the direction he had pushed me. After a little while I found a gentle current toward the right, and realized I was moving just as the sticks had done. I was glad of the current, since my arms had grown exceedingly tired.

  Dekker did not go with me. He stayed where he had been when he pushed me, paddling a little and looking toward me.

  I waved my hand toward him; he was so human that it seemed only natural to say good-bye. Then the current changed direction and set in much more strongly. I knew I was being borne straight on out.

  Toward what? The rock wall was near now. The illusion of space had vanished. I could see the paint on the wall and the layers and puffs of gauze in front of it.

  Abruptly I was borne down. Half-consciously I must have been expecting this, and I did not fight against it. It would have done me no good if I had; the downward pull was irresistible. It was as if a giant hand had taken hold of my legs.

  The wave closed over my head. I was in a green, rushing world. There was a roaring in my ears. Down and down and down.

  Ahead of me I saw a spot of light.

  9

  “Horse, horse and hattock!” I cried. “And away!” I threw my leg over the pole with the curiously carved end, neighed like a horse, and began to prance and cavort around the smoke-streaked blaze of the bonfire. The others mounted too, and followed. Nearer and nearer to the fire we went, spiraling inward, until at last I plucked the pole from between my legs, balanced an instant, and leaped straight over the fire.

  I felt the heat as I went over, and then the cool rush of the night air. There was a shout of approval, and the others began shooting over the flames, flying like birds, the
girls no less bravely than the men. They gave the old cries as they went, long and thrilling, and I thought, “The wheat will grow tall this year.”

  I straddled my pole again and went dancing off, unwinding the spiral. But the light of the fire was too bright; even as I moved away from it, it seemed to get brighter, and I felt frightened. Frightened? In the happy night, around our leaping sun-fire? But my heart was thudding, and the fire grew brighter.

  The light was pitiless, a stony glare that defeated the kindly shadows. I tried to hide my head from it under the crook of my elbow, to burrow through the rock back into darkness. In vain. It struck through my eyelids insistently. I was impaled on the hard light.

  At last I opened my eyes. The light was not the hard glare it had seemed in my dream, but bright enough, and absolutely shadowless. It was the illumination of the operating room.

  I tried to sit up. For the first time it came to me that my disease—there was no other word for it—my disease had progressed to the point where not only my perceptions were unreliable, but my thoughts about my perceptions were untrustworthy too. Well, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I was lying on a little rise with my back to the rock wall and the intense shadowless light all about me. The rock ceiling was low, and the space before me was not very big, say twenty by twenty feet. There was a rectangular doorway in the rock at the end of it.

  I propped myself up on one arm. The movement made the scene swing around me, and I saw clouds coming out of it. When I held my head still, the clouds—dark blue-gray, and puffy—went back into the rock.

  I looked down at myself. I was still wearing paper shirt and trousers, but my shoes had disappeared. My clothing was dry, except for the hems of my trousers. They were still a little wet.

  What had happened to my shoes? How had I got here? I remembered swimming toward the spot of light, reaching it, and seeming to be borne abruptly upward. I had swum for dear life in a rushing confusion of waters, snatching a breath when the wild cross-threshing would allow me, and swallowing a lot of water. Then I had been washed up—or down; by then I had been buffeted about until I had lost all sense of direction—on a hard wooden surface.

  It had been almost dark; I had felt about with my hands. I had seemed to be in some sort of cage. Then the cage had begun to descend.

  What had happened after that? I couldn’t remember. I might have gone to sleep. I had a dim recollection of having been catapulted out of the cage at some point, and landing on a surface of springy balsam boughs. That might have been a dream. But there was nothing in what I could remember to account for the loss of my shoes.

  I tried to get to my feet. Lord, how ill I felt! My bones ached as if they were breaking, and my chest felt as if it were a hollow that had been scooped through to my backbone. My skin felt red-hot. My double sight had gone completely. Indeed, it was an effort for me to hold the objects around me in any sort of focus. If I relaxed, they blurred and swam.

  For a moment I lay back on the unyielding rock. If I just stayed here, what would happen? But I hadn’t made my way down through the levels to lie on bare rock while fever consumed me. I had come down to find—

  I managed to get my hand up before my eyes and look at it. Yes, the ring was still there.

  Without any warning I began to shiver violently. I shook so hard my teeth clicked together and my legs jerked wildly on the rock. Then the fit passed and my skin began to burn again.

  I got my flask out and unstoppered it. The water inside was warm and sulphurous, but I emptied the flask. After I had drunk I felt a little better; sweat broke out and cooled my skin, and for a moment I was almost comfortable. My flashlight and knife were gone.

  I got to my knees, and then into a half-erect crouch. At the foot of the little rise there was a map of the world, carte du monde, mappamondo, karte der welt, with the countries marked on it in brilliant colors. I knew that if I wanted to go anywhere, from Angola to Paphlagonia, all I had to do was to put my foot on the spot. The kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof. Or was that something I had read in a book?

  I got to the bottom of the little slope, and there was nothing there but a few spots and patches, natural discolorations of the rock. I stumbled toward the doorway, and a man came out of the rock and stood in front of me. There was a flame thrower in his hands.

  He was dressed in a dark gray, shiny cloth that clung to his thighs and chest in great folds. His face was hidden by a dark gray mask with a pendant chin cloth. I saw him with extraordinary sharpness, but as if I were looking at him through the wrong end of an opera glass.

  I held up my hand so he could see Despoina’s ring. He nodded, lowered the flame thrower, and wheeled back into the rock.

  I got through the rectangular doorway. Here, in a narrow space like a hallway, there were five doorways side by side, all facing me. Which one should I enter? While I stood hesitating, five men came out of the rock and leveled flame throwers at me. “Which way shall I go?” I asked, but they did not answer. They stepped forward menacingly, and I had to show them the ring to make them go back in the rock.

  Then I was free to go forward, but which door should I choose? “The cuckoo’s nest!” I cried, and stumbled through the middle door.

  Here for a moment it seemed dark, and then I realized it was as light as anywhere else. Walls and floor were suffused with the same constant, wearisome, shadowless light.

  I was in a long corridor. I made my way along it, stopping now and then to lean against the wall and rest. Once while I was resting a toad popped out of a hole and looked at me. When he saw my ring, “Pass that by!” he said.

  Now a great bank of guns swung toward me. The mouths were open, ready to belch out shells. I wondered how there was room in the corridor for all that width. I knew that even if I lay on my belly, the shells would reach me. I saw my spine lying exposed, like the backbone of a sardine. But I held up Despoina’s ring, and the guns slid by.

  Later, I wondered how much of this had been real. Men do not step out of solid rock, of course, and the bank of guns had been too wide for the corridor. But level H had been designed as the last redoubt for what was considered, at the time it was built, the most precious life in the country. It is reasonable to think that it did, in fact, conceal much elaborate weaponry. The people I ask about this either do not know, or will not say.

  The rock corridor kept turning corners. Twice more I was confronted with five doors, and each time I had to make my choice.

  Then abruptly the rock floor gave way under my feet and I fell down a flight of steps. Here it ought to have been dark, but it was, like everywhere else here, mercilessly light. No matter how tightly I shut my eyes I could still see the shadowless light.

  My ears felt odd. It seemed I had suddenly gone much more deeply into the earth. I was thirsty, but the water in my flask was all gone. Also, I felt a little hunger. But it was not reasonable to think that the purple fungus would grow on rock that was so bathed in light. I never did find any of it.

  There were black moments, of course. Sometimes I would feel the blood draining from my eyes, and darkness covering me. Or I would move forward and find I had stumbled on in a mist of semi-consciousness. These times were not unwelcome to me; they were a refuge from too much light. But always the light beat against my eyes until I took up the burden of shadowless noon again.

  I don’t know how long I wandered. Later, from the evidence, I think it must have been for at least two days. Much of the time I retraced my steps and followed the bends of the labyrinth. There was nothing direct or steady in my progress. But at last I came to a door.

  A door, not a doorway. As I lurched toward it an arc of steel blades sprang into being around it, crossed like plaited thorns, aimed at my chest.

  It expanded out toward me, menace flashing from the bright tips of the blades. A mazy crown, a warlike blossoming. Who gathered the flowers, and who wove such a wreath? I backed away from it, stumbling into the walls of the corridor and backing aw
ay again. The arc of steel followed me, until at last the blades grew misty and dissolved.

  I stood rocking on my feet and shaking my head. I ought to have shown it the ring. At last I took a tentative step forward. Somebody threw a hand grenade at me.

  I am inclined to think the grenade was real. It exploded with a deafening sound in the enclosed space, made louder by the rocky floor and walls—much too loud a sound to have been an auditory hallucination. Also, the rocky chips it threw up cut my arms and chest, and I found the cuts on them afterward. Yes, the grenade was real. It did not kill me because I was so far back in the corridor.

  I had thrown up my arms to protect my face when I saw the grenade coming. As the sound of the explosion died away, and the rock dust settled, I lurched forward, my clenched fist held in front of me. That was so the ring on it could be seen.

  I reached the door. Nothing happened. I turned the door knob, and went in.

  It might have been booby-trapped, but it wasn’t. I had enough normal caution left to be worried. But nothing happened.

  I was in a small room, an office, with a big desk bearing a battery of telephones, a built-in bunk, and a washbasin at the side. There was an American flag over the desk, but it had come loose at one corner and sagged over itself. The edges of the flag were tattered. In the space it had once covered somebody had drawn, on the bare rock, the sign of the double axe.

  I picked up one of the telephones. I heard a sort of buzzing, but I think it was illusory. Nobody was at the other end, nobody ever would be. None of the bells of the telephones would ever ring.

  I sat down in the desk chair. The light in the office was a normal light, not the pitiless glare that lit the rest of level H. For a moment my mind steadied, and I realized where I was.

  This was the holy of holies, the heart of level H. I had come to the innermost spot. And there was nothing there.