Sign of the Labrys Read online

  10

  A round glass paperweight lay on the desk. A disk of glass, with rounded edges, and the green of the clean blotting paper showed through it. I picked it up and looked at it. For a long time nothing happened. Then the glass clouded and I saw a scene, unclear, with many figures moving against a wintry darkness, while, raised a few feet above them, there was a red glow and a smoky flickering. For a reason I did not then understand, the picture filled me with great dread, and I dropped the paperweight with shaking fingers.

  I realized that I was thirsty. I levered myself up out of the desk chair, while the room wheeled about me and the floor seemed ready to slide out from under my feet. But I held on to the desk chair, and worked myself over to the washbasin. Here I got a paper cup from a dispenser on the wall, held it under the tap, and turned the faucet.

  Water came out in a thin, grudging stream. It had a faintly greenish tinge, as if algae grew in it. But it was water, and tasted good. I filled the cup four or five times before I threw it away.

  I looked at the bunk. Why not? Wherever I was going, it seemed to me I had got there, and I was dead tired as well as sick. I threw myself down on it.

  It was well sprung, as was appropriate for the chief executive’s bed. “Commander in chief of the army and navy… with the advice and consent…” I fell like a stone into the depths of sleep.

  I slept for a very long time. What woke me was something whose oddness may not be immediately apparent: the room was dark.

  You cannot imagine how odd it was. For days, ever since I had spent the night in the rock cleft under the labrys sign, under the double axe, I had lived in constant bright light. And now there was darkness. No wonder it had wakened me.

  I had no trouble remembering where I was. My fever had gone completely and left me clammy and shivering, filled with a cold lassitude. I didn’t want to move, and saw no reason why I should move.

  I seemed perfectly clear-headed, but I had the impression that my consciousness had become detached from my body. It was hovering in the air just at the level of my head and about two feet to the right, watching, without much interest, whatever I might or might not do. Actually, I think my mental disorientation reached its maximum about this time. I no longer had the overt hallucinations of high fever, but my mind mingled present, past, remote past, and even some premonitions of the future without recognizing any difference between them. Everything was “now.”

  What finally made me rouse myself was a faint feeling of curiosity. The room was dark now; that meant somebody must have turned the light off. Who? Why? Did I still have the ring?

  I felt my hand, and was relieved that the circlet was still there. I lay a while longer, and then decided to get up. It was then that I discovered that my feet were bound.

  Not tied to the bunk, but bound together. I felt over the ropes as well as I could in the darkness—the room was utterly black—and tried to loosen them. But they had been well tied, with the knots I was later to recognize as traditional, and I made no impression on them. I had lost my pocketknife long ago.

  I didn’t feel frightened, only curious. It seemed to me this had happened before. I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and got to my feet. Then, after orienting myself with reference to the bunk, I hopped toward the door.

  It was hard work, but possible. Again, I had the impression of familiarity. When I reached the door I opened it, and stood looking out into the corridor.

  It, too, was dark. Not as utterly dark as the office had been—I could see a faint, faint glimmering, the worn-out ghost of light, ahead.

  I clutched the door knob to support myself. I leaned outward, listening intently, and I may have heard, a long way off, a tiny scurrying. That was all.

  Where should I go now? What should I do? Surely I had come to the bottom of everything! Then came a twitch on the rope that bound my feet. A tug, a twitch. It was as if somebody had decided that at last the period of wandering was over, and I had better come straight on.

  I hesitated. The tug was repeated. I began to hop in the direction I was being pulled.

  Hopping is an exhausting method of progression. I had to keep stopping to rest. When I did that, the tug would be repeated, and I would hop on.

  I could not tell where I was going, of course. Sometimes I seemed to turn corners, and once it even seemed that I hopped back where I had been. But I had a sense of steady downward motion. The pressure in my ears told me I was going deeper. I had not come to the bottom of level H, then; it was deeper than I had thought.

  I was leaning against the wall, panting, when a darker shadow moved in front of me. It was a man, wearing a long cowled robe. The cowl was drawn over his head, hiding it. I felt an extraordinary terror at the sight.

  “The hound!” I heard myself saying faintly. And then I clapped my hand over my mouth to silence the betraying cry.

  The shadow disappeared, and once more I felt the tug.

  It was getting cold. I could feel an icy chill striking up through the soles of my feet. It was as if I hopped over a sheet of ice. Then I took an incautious hop onward, slipped on the glassy surface, and spilled forward onto my hands. As I writhed upright again, I realized that the surface over which I moved actually was ice. I had gone deep enough that I was hopping over a sort of river of ice.

  And now, trees. Darker shadows that I hopped through neatly, obedient to the tug at my feet. Once or twice I became aware that they were not trees at all, but great pillars, partly hewn and partly natural, that supported the roof. But I soon went back to thinking of them as trees again.

  It was just a little lighter now than it had been. Despite this advantage, I missed my footing again, and this time took a fall on my back. I couldn’t catch myself, and went rolling over and over, until I came to rest, winded and bruised, against one of the stone tree trunks.

  Here I lay for a considerable time. When I once stopped moving, a great lassitude invaded me. There were many monitory twitches of the rope that bound my feet, before I at last inched and jackknifed myself upright and stood again on my hobbled feet.

  I had made not more than four hops forward when a man stepped out from behind one of the groined trunks and stood facing me.

  He had the head of a stag, with great sweeping horns—it was a mask, of course—and he was entirely naked except for a band of leather just under his right knee. His hands were held behind his back.

  “Which hand will you have?” he asked me in a deep, hoarse voice.

  “The left,” I answered unhesitatingly. It seemed to me that this had happened before, and that my response was given in accordance with a familiar rule. Indeed it was, though it was not a rule I had learned during Sam Sewell’s life.

  Silently the man in the mask tore open my shirt so that my breast was bare. Then, with a surgeon’s precision, he laid his fingers just over my heart.

  His hand was unbelievably cold. A chill came from it that reached through the walls of my chest and struck inward to my heart. It was as if he squeezed it in great icy fingers. I could feel it leap like a horse and then try bravely to keep on beating against the pressure and the cold.

  “Who are you?” I asked faintly with my scanty breath.

  “The lord of the gates of death. And life.”

  He took his hand away. I felt the blood flowing back, and my heart, still giving great leaps, began to beat in its rhythm again.

  “Now you must know the pangs.”

  As he spoke, he brought his right hand forward, and I saw he had a three-thonged scourge in it. For a moment he crossed his arms over his breast, with his hands touching his shoulders. Then he raised the whip and struck me viciously with it.

  I think I cried out. It was not the pain, but another horror, as if the blows of the scourge threatened something more vital than my body. The blows were like white fire, impalpable and spiritual. Some will know what I mean.

  I staggered under the lashing, and tried to hop forward. I could not move, and he lashed me relentlessly,
until at last I cried, “I know! I know!”

  At this he nodded. He crossed his arms once more on his breast. “Blessed be,” he said. He walked around behind one of the tree trunks, and disappeared.

  I stood shuddering, waiting for the tug on my bonds to be renewed. No impulse came, and after a while I began to hop forward again. It seemed to me that ahead there was just a faint lightening of the dark.

  Yes. It was no illusion. I hopped forward painfully, and after a while, I saw an unmistakable twinkling light.

  It happened abruptly. One moment I was still in the forest of pillars. The next I stood in a little open space. And I saw Despoina there.

  Despoina, the long-sought. It was certainly she. She stood before a rock wall heavily overgrown with the purple fungus, so that it was like a tapestry. She wore the costume of the woman in the gem.

  Her molten-copper hair hung loose over her shoulders, and the whiteness of her body was dazzling. Two candles burned at her feet, and on either side of her a lion crouched. Then one of them moved, and I saw that they were masked men. Yes, Despoina. For her I had gone deep and wandered painfully. Her ring had been my passport, her name had been my lodestar. And now that I stood before her, I felt nothing at all.

  I hopped toward her on my hobbled feet. She neither moved nor spoke. I took the ring off my hand and held it out to her. At this final moment, I felt like a man delivering a telegram.

  Her face did not change. She took the ring from me and slipped it over her finger. And suddenly, as if her action had released something frozen in me, my indifference was gone. I looked at her with fresh, astonished eyes. It was as if I had just been born, and she was the first being I had ever seen. I felt an extraordinary freshness and delight.

  The twinkling of the tapers seemed to fill the air with a tiny joyous dust of stars, a laughter of little sparks. They burned in trails of gold, through which I saw Despoina’s faintly smiling face.

  “Blessed be my feet,” I said, “that have brought me in these ways.”

  One of the lion-headed men bent forward and worked briefly at the ropes around my ankles. They fell away easily and left me standing in a circle of cord.

  “Blessed be thy feet,” Despoina responded gravely. They were the first words I had heard her speak; and her voice, soft and low, filled me with the same astonished pleasure that the scene about me did. Her eyes had begun to shine.

  “Blessed be my eyes,” I said, “that have looked on the Lady.”

  “Blessed be thy eyes.” Her voice lifted a little, in a half-caress. Once more I felt that shock of delight.

  “Blessed be my mouth, that will tas—”

  There was a deep, grinding roar from among the pillars at my left. Despoina’s head jerked round and, as I followed her gaze, I saw the distant rock walls slide in grooves, like paper screens.

  I must have been in a highly labile, precariously balanced state of consciousness. For, as I saw the solid walls moving, the real scene around me was blotted out, and I saw a great wave of fire well up.

  It burned with terrible brightness, as if sulphur had been mixed in it. There was none of the kindly, stupefying smoke, only the horrible clear fire.

  “The drugs!” I cried in anguish. “You promised! I trusted you! I went steadfast to the flames!”

  Nobody answered. I screamed again. The fire was lapping at my face, and I tried wildly to push it away from me.

  Darkness rushed down on me, and a baking heat. I fell among gold masks.

  11

  My return to awareness was entirely classical. That is, for a long time before I opened my eyes I was remotely aware of somebody who gave me water to sip, smoothed my bed, and performed other less seemly services for me. There were times when I almost roused myself, but always I slipped back into unconsciousness again.

  But at last I got my eyes open and kept them open. The room was only dimly lighted, but I could see someone sitting in a chair against the wall. I asked the classical question. “Where am I?” I said.

  The woman got up and came over to my bedside. “Well,” she said, “so you’ve come to at last. You certainly took your time about it.”

  It was Kyra. And even with my still blurry vision I could see that she looked tired and worn.

  “Where am I?” I asked again.

  “On level F. In my rooms.”

  “Have I been here long?”

  “About ten days. You’ve been a handful. Heavy, too.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions. You’re still weak. Go on back to sleep, and I’ll go in the room next door and do some sleeping on my own hook.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue. I know what’s best for you.” She gave me a severe look and walked away. I heard the door close.

  Something in her roughness and lack of courtesy made me feel remarkably secure. I managed a faint chuckle. I rolled over on my side and slid into deep, restful sleep.

  I was awakened, a long time later, by Kyra touching my shoulder. “Suppertime,” she said. She looked much more rested than she had before.

  She slipped an arm under my shoulders, raised me up, and deftly punched the pillows into a back rest. Then she brought a tray with a dish of food on it. “Shall I help you eat?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I can manage a fork.”

  “Okay.” She sat down opposite me and began her own meal.

  What she had brought me was a dish of the purple fungus, stewed with beef cubes and dehydrated onions. It was not what I would have thought of as invalid food, but it tasted good. I emptied the dish and could have eaten more.

  “Kyra, you’re a good cook,” I said when I had finished.

  She smiled. “Thanks. I thought you’d like it. That’s one of the signs.” She removed the tray.

  “Signs of what? Kyra, how did I get here? The last thing I knew, I was on level H.”

  “I brought you,” she answered. She fingered her lower lip indecisively. “You might as well know, I suppose,” she said. “The FBY raided H—actually it’s I—and took Despoina prisoner.”

  “What? How did they get there?”

  “I wish I hadn’t told you.” She pulled the pillows out from under my head and laid me back on them. “Go back to sleep,” she told me. “You need more rest.”

  “Do you expect me to go back to sleep after you tell me a thing like that?”

  “Yes,” she replied sharply, “I do. I’ll tell you more about it when you wake up again. Things are pretty much all right, you know.”

  “But Despoina—”

  “They won’t hurt her. Go to sleep.”

  Once more I slept. Kyra had turned out the light when she left, and the room was pleasantly dark. Once I heard a rustle and a scratching in the hall that half wakened me, but I soon was asleep again.

  I was already awake when she came in to wash my face and, as she expressed it, service me. “I want to know what happened,” I said as soon as I was cleaned up.

  “Breakfast first, breakfast first,” she said crossly. “I scrambled up some dehydrated eggs.”

  After I had eaten—the eggs were very tasty—and she had taken the dishes away, I said, “Now tell me what happened. How did the FBY get down there? When I saw the rock walls moving, just before I blacked out—was that the FBY making the raid?”

  “I expect so. I don’t know anything about the rock walls. But the FBY followed you down to where Despoina was.”

  “Followed me down? How could that be? Did you help them?”

  She turned a dull, angry red. “You’re the biggest fool I ever knew in my life,” she said bitterly. “Help them? Of course I didn’t. They tied me up and kept a gun on me. I was lucky they didn’t try a little torture to make me tell.”

  “I beg your pardon. But how did they find the way down? I didn’t leave any trail.”

  “Yes, you did. They have a sensing device—it’s something like a manometer—that picks up the chang
es in pressure a human being leaves where he’s been. People shed molecules into the air all the time.”

  “And they used that?”

  “Yes. It takes them a long time to use it, though. They snuffled about on F for half a day before they finally found the autoclave.”

  “I don’t see how they could get through the autoclave without the processing you gave me.”

  She grinned wryly. “One of them didn’t. He made an awful mess. Going through the autoclave didn’t do any of them any good… Would you like to get up a while? I could make your bed.”

  “All right.”

  She put her arm under my shoulders and helped me to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. She draped a blanket around me for covering. “I haven’t any robe large enough for you to get into,” she said. “Hold onto my arm and I’ll walk you over to the chair.”

  I did as she bade me. As I felt her slight body bear up firmly under my weight, I was stricken by a sort of shame. I outweighed this small girl by at least seventy pounds. And yet she had somehow got me back from level H, taken me to her own quarters, cared for all my wants, mentionable or not, for ten days.

  “Kyra, you’re a good girl,” I said.

  She turned bright pink. “Oh…” she said. “It’s okay.”

  I squeezed her hand. After a moment, she returned the squeeze.

  She went to work on the bed. As I watched her, I asked, “How did you get me away from the FBY?”

  “I paid a price,” she answered briefly.

  It came to me abruptly that she was lying. I don’t know why I was so sure of it. Kyra was honest, basically, but she wasn’t a transparent person or especially easy to read. But I was sure she hadn’t bribed the FBY to let me go. A price had been paid, certainly. But to whom?

  “How much of the stuff I saw as I went through the levels was real?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know what you saw,” she replied, tucking in the sheets.

  “Well…” I told her what had happened on level G. “The dog, for instance. Did he really have a double brain? Or was that illusory?”