BURTON AND HARGREAVES, ALONG WITH THE OTHER SURVIvors, had to face the wrath of La Viro. The tall dark man with the big nose raved and ranted for an hour while he strode back and forth before the assembled “criminals.” They stood in front of the smoke-blackened temple, a huge stone structure with incongruous architecture: a Greek portico and Ionian columns with an onion-shaped roof topped by a gigantic carved stone spiral. These features were symbols in the Church of the Second Chance, but, nevertheless, Burton and others thought that the temple was ugly and ludicrous-looki.ng. Oddly enough, the bad taste of La Viro, its designer, helped them endure his tirade. He was right in much of what he said, but much else seemed foolish. However, they were dependent upon him for grails, clothes, and housing. So they did not defend themselves but got some relief from their anger by silently laughing at the hideous temple and the man who’d built it.
At last, La Viro tired of pointing out in vivid detail and imagery how stupid, callous, brutal, murderous, and selfish they were. He threw up his hands and said he was sick of the sight of them. He would retire to the sanctum in the temple and pray for the has of the Virolanders they’d killed. And also, though they didn’t deserve it, for the living and the dead culprits. He turned the survivors over to Frato Fenikso, Brother Phoenix, once.known as Hermann Goring.
Goring said, “You look like deservedly chastened children, and I hope you feel like it. But I don’t have, at this moment, anyway, much hope for you. That’s because of my anger at you. I’ll get over it, and then I’ll do my best to help you change for the better.”
He led them to the rear of the temple where he gave each of them a free grail and enough cloths to keep them warm in the coldest temperatures.
“Anything else you need or want will be up to you to get it,” Goring said. He dismissed them, but he called Burton aside.
“Have you heard that Samuel Clemens died of a heart attack?”
Burton nodded.
“Apparently, he thought that Frato Eriko still intended to settle an old score. After all he’d gone through during the battle, this was just too much, the straw that broke the camel’s back or, in his case, broke his heart.”
“I heard the story from Joe Miller this morning,” Burton said.
“Yes. Well, unless somebody does something for the titanthrop, he’s going to die of a broken heart, too. He really loved Clemens.”
Goring asked Burton if he intended to go on to the headwaters. Burton replied that he had not come this far just to quit. He was going to set out for the tower as soon as possible.
“You’ll have to build a sailboat. Certainly, Clemens’ men won’t allow you to go with them in the Post No Bills.”
“I don’t know about that,” Burton said.
“And I suppose that if they refuse, you’ll hijack the launch?”
Burton didn’t answer.
“Is there no end to your violence?”
“I didn’t say I would use force,” Burton said. “I intend to talk to Anderson about the trip as soon as possible.”
“Anderson was killed. I warn you, Burton, don’t shed any more blood here!”
“I’ll do all I can to avoid it. I don’t like it any more than you do, really. Only, I am a realist.”
The smaller launch, the After You, Gascon, had disappeared with all of its crew. No one knew what had happened to it, though some Virolando witnesses thought they’d seen it explode.
“If you really push it, you could get to the headwaters in about thirty days in the launch,” Goring said. “But the agents of the Ethicals will get there before you do.”
Burton was shocked.
“You know about them?”
“Yes. I talked to both Frigate and Miller last night^ trying to help them through their grief. I knew more than you’d think and suspected even more. Correctly, as it turned out. Neither saw any reason to keep silent about the renegade Ethical. I told La Viro, and he’s thinking hard about the whole business. It’s been a great shock to him, though it hasn’t affected his faith any.”
“What about you?”
“I see no reason to change my faith. I never thought that the people responsible for this world were angels or demons. There are, though, many puzzling things about the two stories I’ve heard. What intrigues me the most, and also upsets me the most, is the mystery of what happened to the nonhuman on Clemens’ boat, Monat I think was his name.”
Burton said, “What? I haven’t heard about that!”
Goring described what Miller had told him, and added, “And you say that his companion, the man called Frigate, also disappeared?”
“That Peter Jairus Frigate was an agent,” Burton said. “He wasn’t an exact double of the Frigate you talked to, but he resembled him closely. He may have been Frigate’s brother.”
“Perhaps when—or—if you get into the tower, you’ll find-out,” Goring said.
“I’ll find out sooner than that if I catch up with those agents in the launch,” Burton said grimly.
After some more discussion, Burton left Goring. He had not told the German what the news about Monat and the pseudo-Frigate meant. The Ethical X, the Mysterious Stranger, the renegade, had been on the Not For Hire. And he had gotten rid of Monat about eight hours after they’d boarded the vessel. Why? Because Monat would recognize him. He would have been in disguise, but Monat would have known him sooner or later. Probably sooner. So he’d had to work fast, and he had done so. How, Burton didn’t know.
X had been on Clemens’ boat.
“Had he lived through the battle? If he had, then he was among the few survivors of the Not For Hire now in this immediate area.
Perhaps. He might have left at once and gone up-River or he might have gotten to the other bank.
Burton went back after Goring and asked him if he’d heard about any survivors on the other side of the lake or any who’d gone through on the cliffpath above the strait.
“No,” Goring said. “If there had been any, they’d have been reported.”
Burton tried not to show his excitement.
Goring, however, said, smiling, “You think that X is here, don’t you? At hand but in disguise?”
“You’re deucedly clever,” Burton said. “Yes, I do, unless he’s been killed. Strubewell and Podebrad were agents, I don’t mind telling you that now, and they were killed. So perhaps X was also.”
“Did anyone see Strubewell and Podebrad die?” Goring said. “I know Joe Miller thinks Strubewell was dead because he didn’t see him get out of the pilothouse after it fell. But Strubewell could have gotten out later on. All we know about Podebrad is that he was seen no more after the vessels collided.”
“I wish they were available,” Burton said. “I’d get the truth out of them somehow. I believe, however, that they died. That you citizens haven’t seen them goes a long way to prove that. As for X, well...”
He said so-long to Goring and walked to the partly burned dock at which the Bins was tied up. It looked like a monstrous black turtle. Its high rounded hull was the shell, and the long narrow prow was part of the head sticking out. The barrel of the steam machine gun projecting from the extreme front of the prow was the turtle’s tongue; the steam gun poking out from the stern, the turtle’s tail.
Burton had been told by one of its crew that it carried a large batacitor and could hold fifteen people comfortably and twenty with some inconvenience. It could go thirty-five miles per hour against a ten-mile-per-hour current and a ten-mile-per-hour wind. It had an armory of fifteen rifles and fifteen pistols using gunpowder-filled cartridges and ten compressed air rifles and many other weapons.
Joe Miller, his enormous arm in a plaster cast, several of the crew and some survivors of the Not For Hire were standing on the dock. Having had the new captain of the Bills described to him, Burton had no difficulty picking him out. Kimon was a short burly dark man with intense hazel eyes, an ancient
Greek whose life Burton had studied in school and afterward. He’s been a great general, naval commander, and statesman, one of the main builders of the Athenian empire after the Persian wars. He was born in 505 B.C., if Burton remembered correctly.
Kimon was a conservative who had favored alliance with Sparta and so ran counter to the policies of Pericles. His father was the famous Miltiades, the victor of the battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks turned back the hordes of Xerxes. Kimon ^served during the naval battle of Salamis in which the Athenians sank two hundred enemy vessels with a loss of only forty and forever broke the Persian naval power.
In 475 Kimon drove out the pirates of Skyros and then located and brought to Athens the bones of Theseus, the legendary founder of the Attic state and killer of the Minotaur of the labyrinth of Knossos. Kimon was one of the judges who gave Sophocles first prize for tragedy in the competitions held at Dionysia in 468.
In 450 Kimon led an expedition against Cyprus, where he died during the siege of Kitium. His bones were brought back to Athens and buried there.
He certainly looked alive now and very mean, too. Kimon and a number of Clemensites were arguing loudly. Burton, acting as if he were just another Virolander, stood with those listening in.
Apparently, the argument was about which of Clemens’ people would go on up The River and also about seniority. In addition to the eleven crew members of the Bills, ten people from the Not For Hire had survived. Kimon was outranked by three of these, but he was insisting that he was the commander of the launch and anybody who went along on it would be his subordinate. Moreover, he would not allow more than eleven on the voyage, and he thought that the crew of the Bills should be these. But he was willing to take some from the motherboat if some of his crew didn’t want to go on.
After a while, Kimon and the others went inside the launch. Nevertheless, their voices came out loudly through the open ports.
The titanthrop had not gone aboard. He stood in one spot, softly talking to himself. His eyes were red, and he looked as if he’d grieved much.
Burton introduced himself.
Joe Miller, speaking in a deep kettledrum voice in English said, “Yeth, I’ve heard about you, Mithter Burton. Tham told me about you. Vhen did you get here?”
Reluctantly, Burton said, “I was on the Rex.”
“Vhat the hell vere you doing on that? You vere vone of the Ekth’th men, veren’t you?”
“Yes,” Burton said. “But I didn’t know until yesterday that some of his recruits were on the Not For Hire. Though, to tell the truth, I suspected that some would be.”
“Who told you?”
“Cyrano de Bergerac.”
Joe brightened. “Thyrano? He’th alive? I thought he died! Vhere ith he?”
“No, he was killed. But he recognized me, and he told me that Clemens and he had also been visited by the Ethical.”
Burton thought it would be better not to tell Miller that it was his woman who’d slain de Bergerac.
The titanthrop looked as if he were struggling with himself. Then he stopped shaking, and he smiled slightly. His giant hand shot out.
“Here. Thyake. I don’t hold it againtht you. Ve vath all thtupid. Ath Tham uthed to thay, it’th the fortuneth of var.”
Burton’s hand was enfolded, squeezed, not too hard, and then released. Burton said, “I don’t think we should talk here. Too many people around. You come with me, and I’ll introduce you to two who also know about the Ethical.”
They went to the foothill behind the temple. Here Alice and others were building huts. Burton called her, Frigate, Nur, and Aphra Behn to one side. After introducing Miller, Burton asked him to tell everything relevant he knew about X and those who’d been recruited by him. It was a long tale, interrupted by many questions, and it was not finished until long after supper. Since the huts were not completed, the five slept on the portico of the temple under piles of cloths. After breakfast, they returned to their building. By late afternoon they had two huts finished. Miller went down to the launch for a while to check on what was going on. When he returned, Burton told his story. That had to be stopped W the funeral of the casualties whose bodies had not sunk. These, which had been preserved in alcohol until the ceremony, were laid out on wooden biers. Miller wept over Sam Clemens and his cabinmate, a huge redheaded ancient Cimmerian woman. After Burton, representing the Rex, and Kimon, representing the Not For Hire, had spoken a few words about their dead comrades, La Viro gave a short but passionate speech about the uselessness of their deaths. Then the bodies were put on a huge pyre and burned to ashes.
Not until the rains came at about six in the morning were the tales of Burton and his people finished.
“I vathn’t going on up,” Miller told them. “Veil, actually, I vath going up a little vay. Vhen I found thome of my own people, I vath going to thettle down vith them. Maybe. I’m not tho thyure I’d be happy vith them now. I’ve theen too much, traveled too much, become too thivilithed to be happy vith them, maybe.
“Anyvay, I’d given up going on to the tower. It didn’t theem vorthvhile. But now I’ve met you, maybe I will go on. If I didn’t, it vould make Tham’th death, the thufferingth and the deathth of all thothe people, in vain.
“Bethideth, I vant to find out who Ekth ith. If he’th been tricking uth, me and Tham veren’t too thyure he vathn’t, I’ll tear him apart, thkin by thkin.”
“Skin by skin?” Burton said. “What does that mean?”
“It’th chutht a thayirig of my people. Do I have to ekthplain it?”
“How many of your crew also know about X?” Burton said.
“There’th the little Frenchman, Marthelin, altho known as Baron de Marbot. But Tham told him about Ekth. Tham thought he could trutht him. Then there’th that vildaththed Chinethe Tai-Peng, only hith real name ith Li Po. There’th hith black-aththed thidekick, Tom Turpin, he can really tickle the ivorieth. Ekth never recruited Tom, but Tai-Peng blabbed about it to Tom one night vhen he vath drunk, that Thelethtial thyould’ve died of thirrhothith of the liver yearth ago, tho ve thought ve’d better take him in. He’th a good man, any vay. And then there’th Ely Parker, who vathn’t recruited by Ekth either, but Tham knew him on Earth, or of him, and he told him becauthe he vath a good friend of Ulyththeth Eth. Grant and altho a general on Grant’th thtaff during the Thivil Var. He vath an engineer on the Not For Hire. He’th an American Indian, an Iroquois of the Theneca tribe. And then there’th the ancient Thumerian who callth himthelf Gilgameth.”
“Gilgamesh?” Burton said.
“That’th vhat I thaid. Tham thaid he may or may not be the king of the Thumerian thity of Uruk who lived thometime in the firtht half of the third millenium B.C. It vathn’t very likely ve’d run into anybody who knew the real Gilgameth, though you never know.
“And then there’th the ancient Mayan, Ah Qaaq. He’th awful thtrong, that ith, for a thyort-nothed perthon, he ith.”
“Ah Qaaq,” Burton said. “That’d be Mayan for fire.”
“Yeth. But he ain’t no ball of fire. He’th more like a but-terball. Fat ath a pig. But he’th very thtrong, ath I thaid. And he can thyoot a bow further than anybody I ever thaw, ekthept mythelf, naturally. Even further than thome Old Thtone Ach-. erth that vath on the boat. He’th got a muthtache tattooed on hith lip that maketh him look like a vildman from Borneo.”
“Then Kimon and the other survivors don’t know about X and the agents?” Burton said.
“If they did, I vould have thaid tho.”
Nur el-Musafir said, “It’s possible that some of them may be agents, however.”
“I’d like to talk to all of the people you mentioned,” Burton said. He paused, then said, “If all of us who know about the Ethical are to go on the Bills, then others will have to step aside. They’ll have to give up their berth on the launch. Is there much chance of that?”
“Thyure,” the titanthrop said. He looked down his enormous nose at Burton, and he smiled. His teeth were huge dull-white blocks. “Thyure. There’th a chanthe. About ath much ath an ithecube in a bonfire.”
“Then,” Burton said, “we’ll have to seize the launch. Hijack it.”
“I thought tho,” Miller said. “Vhy ith it that from the beginning ve’ve had to do tho many unethical thingth to help the Ethical?”
THERE WERE ELEVEN IN THE GROUP. OF THESE, FIVE HAD BEEN recruited directly by the renegade Ethical. These were Richard Francis Burton, Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, Tai-Peng, Gilgamesh, and Ah Qaaq. At least, they claimed to have been visited by X. Burton, however, could be sure only of himself. One or more might be agents or even Ethicals.
Joe Miller had been told about X by Samuel Clemens. Alice knew about him from Burton. Aphra Behn hadn’t been informed until yesterday, but she wanted very much to accompany them on their expedition. De Marbot had heard from Clemens about the Stranger, and he had told Behn about him. Since the Frenchman and the Englishwoman had once been lovers and were again, the others agreed that she could come with them.
Ely Parker, the Seneca, also knew about X from Clemens, and he had wished to go with them. But he’d changed his mind.
“To hell with the Ethicals and the tower and all that,” he said to Burton. “I’m going to stay here and try to raise the Not For Hire. It’s sunk in only about forty feet of water. Once it’s up and repaired, I’ll take it down-River. I’m not really interested in dying just to prove something that can’t be proved. The Ethicals don’t want us sticking our noses in their business. I think that the breakdowns came about because we interfered. Piscator may have screwed things up in the tower. And Podebrad told Sam that the people he left behind in Nova Bo-hemujo may have been responsible for the failure of the right-bank line. He said that before he left on the blimp some of his officers wanted to dig deep around a grailstone and see if they could tap into it to get a continuous source of power. He warned them not to, and before he took off he got them to promise they wouldn’t monkey around with it. He said that what might have happened was that they broke their promise and somehow broke the circuit.
“If that happened, the area around it would’ve been blown up. There’d be a hole big enough to make a new lake on the right side of The River. The explosion could’ve wiped out Nova Bohemujo on that side. That’s where the mineral deposits were, and if what Podebrad said was true, then that’s the end of the mines and the New Bohemians.
“Anyway, I just don’t like meddling around with the Eth-icals. I’m no coward. Anyone who knows me’ll tell you that. But I just don’t think it’s right to mess around with things we know nothing about.”
In addition, Burton thought, you’d like to be captain of the riverboat and live the good and high life.
“You won’t get much help from the locals,” Burton said.
He gestured at the banks and the stream, which were crowded with people in boats or getting ready to shove off.
“This area will be near-emptied within a month. La Viro is sending almost everybody down-River to restore the faith of the Chancers, to correct deviations from their theology, and to make new converts. The breakdowns have shaken the faith of many.”
“Yeah,” Parker said, his broad brown face twisted with a sardonic smile. “Yeah. La Viro himself is shaken. I understand he’s spending a lot of time on his knees praying. He doesn’t look so sure of himself now.”
Burton didn’t try to argue the Seneca into going on with him. He did wish Parker luck before walking away, though he wasn’t going to have any. The Not For Hire was going to stay where it was until the current nudged it off the ledge and it sank to the bottom, three thousand feet down.
When the Post No Bills sank or wore out, its end would be the end of the age of advanced technology on the Riverworld. What few metal tools and weapons existed would wear out. And then the Valleydwellers would be lucky if they had stone artifacts. The entire planet would be in the Wood Age.
The news about Podebrad’s story was certainly interesting. Whether or not the Nova Bohemujo had brought about the line breakdown, Podebrad had been an agent or an Ethical. Only one of them could have known where the metal deposits were in that state. Only one of them could have known that trying to tap the power of the line could result in a catastrophe.
But Podebrad, or whatever his real name was, was dead.
Burton wondered if he could have been X.
Hearing a familiar voice hail him, he stopped and turned around. Hermann Goring, thinner than before, and he’d been very thin, approached him. His broad face was grave, and his eyes were rimmed with the darkness of fatigue.
“Sinjoro Burton! Mi dezirus akompani vin.”
“You’d like to go with me? Why?”
“For the same reason that drives you. I want desperately to know what has gone wrong. I’ve always wanted to know, but I told myself that it was much more important to raise the ethical level of the kas. Now... I don’t know. Yes, I do! If we are to have faith, we must also have knowledge. I mean... faith is the only thing to cling to if you can’t know the truth. But now... now... it may be possible to know!”
“What does La Viro think of this?”
“We’ve quarreled, something I thought I’d never do. He insists that I go with him down-River. He intends to travel to the mouth of The River, even if it takes him three hundred years, preaching all the way. He wants to restore the faith of • the people...”
“How does he know that it needs restoring?” Burton said.
“He knows what’s been happening downstream for as far as a hundred thousand miles. What’s happening there must also be happening elsewhere. Besides, didn’t you notice that there’s been much doubt, much falling away from the Church, while you were traveling on the boat?”
“I noticed some but didn’t think much about it,” Burton said. “It’s to be expected, you know.”
“Yes. Even some of the Virolanders have been troubled, and they have the presence of La Viro himself to strengthen them. However, I believe that the best course is to get into the tower and determine exactly what has happened. That will insure that the Church is right, and when that happens, all of the people will have no doubt and all will come to the Church.”
“On the other hand,” Burton drawled, “what you find there may blow your religion to bits.”
Goring shuddered and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “Yes, I know. But my faith is so strong that I am willing to chance it.”
“My middle name is Francis,” Burton said, grinning. “So I’ll be frank with you. I don’t like you. I never have. You’ve changed character, true. But I can’t forgive what you did to me and my friends. It’s a case of forgiving but not forgetting. Though I suppose that fundamentally the two are the same.”
Goring waved his hands imploringly.
“That is the burden I must carry. I deserve it, and I won’t be able to put it down until every person who knows my evil deeds has truly forgiven me. But that is not the issue now. What is, is that I can be of great help. I am quick and strong and very determined and not unintelligent. Also...”
“Also, you’re a Second Chancer, a pacifist,” Burton said. “What use would you be if we have to fight?”
Goring said, fiercely, “I won’t compromise my principles! I will not shed the blood of another human! But I doubt very much that you’ll have to fight. The area upstream is thinly populated and becoming thinner every day. Haven’t you seen the many boats coming through the strait? The news is out that the Virolanders are leaving. The people up-River are deserting their cold land to settle down here.”
“There may well be a fight,” Burton said. “If we catch up with those agents, we’ll try to make them talk. And when we get into the tower.. .who knows what we’ll find there? We may have to battle for our lives.”
“Will you take me?”
“No. That’s final! I don’t care to discuss this anymore. Ever!”
He strode away while Goring roared, “If you won’t take me, I’ll go alone!”
Burton glanced back then. The man’s face was red, and he was shaking his fist. Burton smiled. Even the ethically advanced bishops of the Church could get angry.
When Burton looked back orice more, he saw Goring walking swiftly toward the temple, his face set. Evidently, he was on his way to tell La Viro that he was not obeying his orders to go down-River.
That night, the eleven, headed by Burton, overpowered the guards on the Post No Bills. They came up from The Riverside, having swum silently to the railing, and boarded the port side. Two of the guards ^were sitting on the starboard railing and talking. These were grabbed from behind, and their noses and mouths were gripped until they passed out from lack of air. At the same time, Joe Miller entered the launch from the bankside. After a few words with the remaining sentinel, he seized him and carried him struggling to the bow and cast him into the water.
“Jethuth!” he called out to the yelling guard. “I hate to do thith, Thmith, but I got a higher duty! Give my regretth to Kimon!”
After the guards had been thrown off, Burton’s group carried aboard their grails and other possessions and some long ropes and tools which had been brought up by divers from the Not For Hire. Aphra Behn turned on the electricity. As soon as the last of the supplies had been thrown onto the deck and the tie lines loosed, she took the boat away. It was shortly going at its top speed while behind them torches flared and men and women yelled.
It was not until the launch had gotten through the strait that Burton felt they had really begun the next-to-last stage of the long, long journey.
Burton thought briefly about X. According to Cyrano’s story of X’s visit to him, X had told him to relay to the recruits that they should wait a year for X at Virolando. Burton didn’t want to do this and neither did his colleagues. They were going on now.
Traveling against the shoreline current at thirty miles per hour and only stopping for two hours each day, the Post No Bills averaged 660 miles every twenty-four hours. When they had to abandon the boat, they still had some distance to go, the most difficult part of the journey. Before that, they’d have to stop and catch fish to smoke and make acorn bread and collect bamboo tips. These would not be all they’d have to eat, though. They carried twenty “free grails” some of which they’d owned and some of which they’d stolen. They planned to fill these before getting to the final grailstone in order to have extra provisions. The food which would decay swiftly would be kept in the launch’s refrigerator or dragged behind in a cask in the cold water.
As they went north, The Valley became broader. Apparently the Ethicals had made it wider so that it might receive more of the weak sunlight. The temperature was tolerable during the day, which was longer than those in the regions behind them, reaching as high as sixty-two Fahrenheit. But it would get ever colder the farther north they went. The fogs lasted longer, too.
Goring had been right about the scarcity of people. There were only approximately a hundred per square mile. This number was being cut down daily, as the many boats going down-River showed.
Joe Miller, standing in the bow, looked longingly at the titanthrops they passed. When the launch landed for recharging, he went ashore to talk to any he could find. The conversations were in Esperanto, since none knew his native tongue.
“Jutht ath veil,” Joe said. “I’ve forgotten motht of it anyvay. Jethuth H. Chritht! Ain’t I ever going to find my parentth and my friends, my own tribethpeople?”
Fortunately, the titanthrops were amiable. They were by now far outnumbered by the “pygmies,” and most of them had been converted to the Chancer faith. Burton and Joe tried to recruit some, but failed. The giants wanted nothing to do with the beings in the tower.
“They all dread the far north,” Burton said. “You must have shared their fear. Why did you go with the Egyptians?”
Joe swelled his gorillalike chest. “I’m braver than thothe otherth. Thmarter, too. Though, to tell the truth, I came near thyitting down my leg vhen I thaw the tower. But any man vould. You jutht vait until you thee it.”
The tenth day, they stopped for a shore leave of several days. The locals were a few titanthrops with a majority of Scandinavians, ancient, medieval, and modern. Among them were, however, people from any different times and places. The men who had no cabinmates immediately started looking for overnight stands. Burton walked around inquiring if anybody had seen the men and women who’d been forced to abandon the launch from the Rex. There were plenty, and all said that these had gone up-River in boats, all of them stolen.
“Have any others come along/who’ve said they were on the Not For Hire?” Burton said. “That’s the giant metal riverboat like the Rex, propelled by paddlewheels and driven by electric motors.”
“No, I’ve not seen or heard of anybody like that.”
Burton didn’t expect that the deserters would advertise their identity.
Nor would the agents who’d left Clemens’ vessel before the battle be any more open.
However, getting descriptions of those who had gone northward during the past few weeks, he recognized those who’d fled the Rex. De Marbot, who was also questioning, recognized from the descriptions all who’d deserted the Not For Hire.
“We’ll catch up with them soon,” Burton said.
“If we’re lucky,” the Frenchman said. “We may pass them at night. Or they might get word of our coming and hide while we go by.”
“In any event, we’ll get there first.”
Twenty days passed. By then the agents from both boats had to have been behind them. Though Burton stopped the launch every twenty miles to question the locals, he could find none of those he sought.
In the interim, he watched his crew. Only two matched the short massive physique and facial features of the Ethicals Than-abur and Loga. The man who called himself Gilgamesh, and the man who called himself Ah Qaaq. But both were very dark and had dark brown eyes. Gilgamesh had curly, almost kinky, hair. Ah Qaaq had a slight epicanthic fold which made him look as if he had some recent Mongolian ancestors. Each spoke his supposed native language fluently. Unlike the agent Spruce, who had claimed to be a twentieth-century Englishman and whose very slight foreign accent had betrayed him to Burton, these two lacked any trace of such. Burton didn’t know Sumerian or ancient Mayan well, but he knew enough to recognize a non-Sumerian or non-Mayan pronunciation and intonation.
That only meant that one of the two, possibly both, had completely mastered the tongues. Or it meant that both were innocent and what they claimed to be.
Twenty-two days after he’d passed through the strait in an area where there weren’t more than fifty people to a grailstone, Burton was approached by a tall skinny woman with big eyes and a big mouth. Her white teeth shone in the black African face.
She spoke in Esperanto affected heavily by a backwoods Georgia accent. Her name was Blessed Croomes, and she wanted to go on the boat as far as it would go. Then she’d go on foot to the headwaters.
“That’s where my mother Agatha Croomes went. I’m looking for her. I think she must have found the Lord and is now living at His right hand, waiting for me! Hallelujah!”
IT WAS DIFFICULT TO STOP HER FLOW OF TALK, BUT BURTON finally said, loudly and sternly, that she had to answer his questions.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll listen to the wise. Are you wise?”
“Wise enough,” he said, “and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you’re not stupid. Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born and what were you on Earth?”
Blessed told him that she was born a slave in Georgia in 1734 in the house of her master. Come early, caught her mother in the kitchen while she was helping prepare the evening meal. She’d been raised as a house slave and baptized into the faith of her father and mother. After her father had died, her mother had become a preacher. She was a very devout and very strong woman who scared her flock, though they also loved her. Her mother had died in 1783 and she in 1821. But both had been resurrected near the same grailstone.
“Of course, she wasn’t an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old momma a young woman. That didn’t make no difference to her, though. She was as holy and righteous and filled with the spirit as when she’d lived on Earth. Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she converted them, and then they got in trouble...”
“You’re wandering again, Burton said. “That’s enough of your background. Why do you want to go with me?”
“Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird.”
“But why do you want to go to the end of The River?”
“I would have told you if you hadn’t interrupted me, man. You see, my mother being here didn’t shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of us, because we were sinners on Earth. Some worse than others. This was really Heaven, the outskirts of it anyway. What sweet Jesus wanted was that the real believers should go up The River, the sweet Jordan, and find Him at the end. He was up there, waiting to embrace those who truly believed, those who’d go to the trouble of seeking Him out. So she went.
“She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn’t sure anyway that she knew what she was talking about. I didn’t tell her that. It would’ve been like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway, it wasn’t just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet man, and he wouldn’t go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were. So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.
“But things went bad with me and my old man. He started chasing other women, and I got to thinking that maybe this was judgment on me for not obeying my momma. Maybe she was right, maybe Jesus was waiting for the truly faithful. Besides, I really missed my momma even if we do go around and around like wildcats sometimes. So I lived with another man for a while, but he wasn’t any better than the first. Then, one night while I was praying, I saw a vision. It was Jesus Himself, sitting on His diamond and pearl throne with the angels singing back of Him, all in a blaze of glorious light. He told me to quit sinning and to follow my mother’s footsteps and I’d get to Heaven.
“So I went. And here I am. It’s been many years, brother, and I’ve suffered like one of God’s own martyrs. I’ve gotten bone-weary and flesh-sick, but here I am! Last night I prayed again, and I saw my mother, only for a second, and she told me to come with you. She said you weren’t a good man but you weren’t bad either. You were in between. But I would be the one to bring you to the light, save you, and we’d go together to Kingdom Come and sweet Jesus would wrap His arms around us and welcome us to the glory throne. Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah, sister!” Burton said. He was always willing to throw himself into the form of a religion while laughing at its spirit.
“It’s a long long trip yet, brother. My back hurts from paddling my canoe against the current, and I hear that it’s foggy and cold most of the way from now on and not a living soul to be seen. It’ll be very lonely there. That’s why I’d like to go with you and your friends.”
Burton thought, Why not?
“There’s room for just one more,” he said. “However, we don’t take pacifists since we may have to fight. We don’t want any deadweight.”
“Don’t you worry about me, brother. I can fight like an avenging angel of the Lord for you, if you’re on the side of good.”
She put her few possessions on the boat a few minutes later. Tom Turpin, the black piano player, was happy to see her at first. Then he found out she’d taken a vow of chastity.
“She’s crazy, Captain,” he told Burton. “Why’d you take her on? She’s got that good-looking body and she’ll drive me crazy her not letting me touch her.”
“Perhaps she’ll talk you into taking the vow, too,” Burton said, and he laughed.
Turpin didn’t think that was funny.
When the boat pulled out after a four-day, not a two-day, leave as planned, Blessed sang a hymn, then she shouted, “You needed me, brother Burton, to complete your number. You were only eleven and now you’re twelve! Twelve’s a good, a holy number. The apostles of Jesus were twelve!”
“Yaas,” Burton said softly. “And one of them was Judas.”
He looked at Ah Qaaq, the ancient Mayan warrior, a pocket-sized Hercules gone to pot. He seldom offered to start a conversation, though he would talk fluently if he was cornered. Nor did he draw back if someone touched him. According to Joe Miller, X, when visiting Clemens, had not wanted to be touched, had, in fact, acted as if Clemens were some sort of leper. Clemens had thought that X, though soliciting the help of the Valleydwellers, felt that he was morally superior and that if one touched him he was somehow fouled.
Neither Ah Qaaq nor Gilgamesh acted as if they must keep others at a proper distance. In fact, the Sumerian insisted on being very close when conversing, almost nose to nose. And he touched the other speaker frequently as if he had to have flesh contact also.
That insistence on closeness could be overcompensation, though. The Ethical might have found out that his recruits had noted his dislike for near proximity and was forcing himself to get close.
Long ago, the agent, Spruce, had said that he and his colleagues loathed violence, that doing it made them feel degraded. But if that were so, they had certainly learned to be violent without showing any repulsion. The agents on both boats had fought as well as the others. And X, as Odysseus and Barry Thorn, had killed enough to satisfy Jack the Ripper.
Possibly, X’s avoidance of touch had nothing to do with a personal feeling. It might be that a touch by another human being could leave some sort of psychic print. Perhaps psychic wasn’t the right word. The wathans, the auras that all sentient beings radiated, according to X, might take a sort of fingerprint. And this might last for some time. If so, then X would not be able to return to the tower until the “print” had vanished. His colleagues would see it and wonder how he’d gotten it.
Was that speculation too bizarre? All X had to tell his questioners was that he’d been on a mission and had been touched by a Valleydweller.
Ah! But what if X was not supposed to have been in The Valley? What if he had an alibi for his absences but it didn’t include a visit to The Valley? Then he could not explain satisfactorily why his wathan bore a stranger’s print.
This speculation, though, required that an agent’s or Ethical’s prints be different from those of resurrectees and instantly recognizable as such.
Burton shook his head. Sometimes, he got almost dizzy •trying to think through these mysteries.
Deciding to abandon the wandering of the mental maze, he went to talk to Gilgamesh. Though the fellow disclaimed any of the adventures attributed to the mythical king of Uruk, he liked to boast of his unrecorded exploits. His black eyes would twinkle, and he would smile when he told his wild tales-. He was like the American frontiersmen, like Mark Twain, he exaggerated to an incredible extent. He knew his listener knew he was lying, but he didn’t care. It was all in fun.
The days passed, and the air became colder. The mists hung more heavily, refusing to dissipate until about eleven in the morning. They stopped more frequently to smoke the fish they caught by trolling and to make more acorn bread. Despite the thin sunshine, the grass and the trees were as green as their southern counterparts.
Then the day came when they arrived at the end of the line. There were no more grailstones.
From the north, borne by the cold wind, came a faint rumbling.
They stood on the forward deck, listening to the ominous growling. The now ever-present twilight and the mists seemed to press upon them. Above the soaring black mountain walls the sky was bright, though not nearly as bright as in the southern climes.
Joe broke their silence.
“That noithe ith the firtht cataract ve’ll come to. It’th big ath hell, but it’th only a fart in a vindthtorm compared to the one that cometh from the cave. But ve got a long hard vay to go before ve get to that.”
They were robed and hooded in heavy clothes and looked like ghosts in the thin fog. Cold moisture collected on their faces and hands.
Burton gave orders, and the Post No Bills was tied to the base of the grailstone. They began unloading, finishing in an hour. After they had set all their grails on the stone, they waited for it to discharge. An hour passed, the stone erupted; the echoes were a long time stopping.
“Eat hearty,” Burton said. “This will be our last warm meal.”
“Maybe our last supper, too,” Aphra Behn said, but she laughed.
“Thith plathe lookth like purgatory,” Joe Miller said. “It ain’t tho bad. Vait until you get to hell.”
“I’ve been there and back many times,” Burton said.
They made a big fire of dried wood they’d been carrying in the boat and sat with their backs to the base of the stone while it warmed them. Joe Miller told some of his titanthrop jokes, mostly about the traveling trader and the bear hunter’s wife and two daughters. Nut related some of his Sufi tales, designed to teach people to think differently, but light and amusing. Burton told some stories from the Thousand and One Nights. Alice told some paradoxical tales which Dr. Dodgson had made up for her when she was eight years old. Then Blessed Croomes got them to singing hymns, but she became angry when Burton inserted slightly off-color lines.
All in all, it was fun, and they went to bed feeling cheerier. The booze also helped to raise their spirits.
When they arose, they ate breakfast over another fire. Then they loaded up with their heavy burdens and started off. Before the stone and the boat disappeared in the mists, Burton turned for a last look. There were his final links with the world he’d known, though not always loved, so long. Would he ever see a boat, a grailstone again? Would he soon never see anything?
He heard Joe’s lion-thunderish voice, and he turned away.
“Holy thmoke! Look at what I got to carry! I got three timeth ath much ath the retht of you. My name ain’t Thamthon, you know.”
Turpin laughed and said, “You’re a white nigger with a big nose.”
“I ain’t no nigger,” Joe said. “I’m a packhorthe, a beatht of burden.”
“Vhat’th the differenthe?” Turpin said, and he ran laughing as Joe swung a gigantic fist at him. The towering backpack unbalanced him, and he fell flat on his face.
Laughter rose up and bounced off the canyon walls.
“I’ll wager that’s the first time the mountains have made merry,” Burton said.
After a little while though, they became silent, and they trudged onward looking like lost souls in a circle of the Inferno.
They soon came to the first cataract, the little one, Joe Miller said. It was so broad that they couldn’t see the other end, but it had to be ten times the width of Victoria Falls. At least, it seemed so. It fell from the mists above in a roar that made conversation impossible even if they shouted in each others’ ears.
The titanthrop led the way. They climbed upward past the waterfall, spray now and then falling over them. Their progress was slow but not overly perilous. When they had gotten to perhaps two hundred feet up, they stopped on a broad ledge. Here they let down their burdens while Joe climbed on up. After an hour, the end of a long rope fell through the fog like a dead snake. They tied the packs, two at a time, to the rope, and Joe pulled them bumping and swinging into the mists. When all the packs were on top of the plateau, they worked their way carefully up the cliff. At the top they resumed their burdens and walked on, stopping frequently for rests.
Tai-Peng related stories of his adventures in his native land and got them to laughing. They came to another cataract and quit laughing. They scaled the cliff beside it, and then decided to call it a day. Joe poured some grain alcohol over wood— a frightful waste of good booze, he said—and they had a fire. Four days later, they were out of wood. But the last of the “small” cataracts was behind them.
After walking for an hour over a stone-strewn gently sloping-upward tableland, they came to the foot of another cliff.
“Thith ith it,” Joe said excitedly. “Thithe ith the plathe vhere ve found a rope made out of clothth. It vath left by Ekth.”
Burton cast his lamp beam upward. The first ten feet was rough. From there on up, for as far as he could see, which wasn’t far, there was a smooth-as-ice verticality.
“Where’s the rope?”
“Damn it, it vath here!”
They went out in two parties, each going in opposite directions along the base of the cliff. Their electric lamps were beamed ahead of them, and they traced their fingers along the stone. But each returned without finding the rope.
“Thon of a bitch! Vhat happened?”
“I’d say that the other Ethicals found it and removed it,” Burton said.
After some talk, they decided to spend the night at the base of the cliff. They ate vegetables which the grails had provided and dried fish and bread. They were already sick of their diet, but they didn’t complain. At least, the liquor warmed them up. But that would be gone in a few days.
“I brought along a few bottleth of beer,” Joe said. “Ve can have one last party vith them.”
Burton grimaced. He disliked beer.
In the morning the two groups went out along the base again. Burton was with the one that went eastward or what he thought was that way. It was difficult to tell direction in this misty twilight. They came to the bottom of the huge cataract. There was no way for them to, get across to the other side.
When they got back, Burton spoke to Joe.
“Was the rope on the left or right side of The River?”
Joe, illumined in the beam of a lamp, said, “Thith thide.”
“It seems to me that X might have left another rope on the right side. After all, he wouldn’t know if his henchmen would come up the right or left side.”
“Veil, it theemth to me that ve came up the left thide. But it’th been tho many yearth. Hell, I can’t be thyure!”
The little big-nosed dark Moor, Nur el-Nlusafir, said, “Unless we can get to the other side—and it doesn’t seem possible—the question is irrelevant. I went westward, and I think that I may be able to get up to the plateau.”
After breakfast, the entire group walked five miles or so to the corner of the mountain and the cliff walls. These met at an approximately 36-degree angle as if they were the walls of a very badly built room. Nur tied a very slender rope around his waist.
“Joe says that it’s about a thousand feet up to the plateau. That’s his estimate based on his memory of its height, and at that time Joe didn’t know the English system of measurement. It might be less than he remembers. Let’s hope so.”
“If you get too tired, come back down,” Joe said. “I don’t vant you to fall.”
“Then stand back so I won’t strike you,” Nur said, smiling. “It would hurt my conscience if I hit you and both of us died. Though I think that you wouldn’t be injured any more than if an eagle defecated on you.”
“It vould hurt me a lot,” Joe said. “Eagleth and their crap vere taboo to my people.”
“Think of me as a sparrow.”
Nur went to the angle and braced himself, his back against one wall and his feet against the other. He slowly worked his way up the angle, holding his feet against one wall, the left foot extended a few inches more than the right. When his footing was secure, he slid his back upward as far as he could before losing his bracing. Then he would slide one foot up until his knee was almost to his chin. Keeping the one foot against the wall, he would slowly work the other up. Then he would slide his back up, and repeat the same maneuvers.
It wasn’t long before he disappeared into the fog. Those below could tell his progress by the rate at which the slim rope was pulled up. It was very slow.
Alice said, “He’ll have to have tremendous endurance to get to the top. And if he doesn’t find a place to tie his rope to so he can haul up another, he might as well come back down.”
“Let’s hope the cliff isn’t that high,” Aphra Behn said.
“Or that the corner doesn’t widen out,” Ah Qaaq said.
When Burton’s wristwatch indicated that Nur had been up for twenty-eight minutes, they heard him shout.
“Good luck! There’s a ledge here! Large enough for two people to stand on, if you don’t count Joe! And there’s a projection I can tie the rope to!”
Burton looked at the titanthrop.
“Evidently the cliff isn’t glass smooth.”
“Yeah. Veil, I mutht have gone up on the right thide of The River, Dick. That’th thmooth all the way up. At leatht, the part I vent up on vath ath thlick ath a cat’th athth.”
The Ethicals hadn’t bothered to make the cliff unscalable all the way. They’d made the lower part smooth but had left the upper part, invisible in the fog, in its original state.
Had X been responsible for that decision?
Had he also arranged it so that the corner here, and perhaps the corner across The River, was angled so that a small light person could use his back and legs to get up the angles?
It was very probable.
If he had done so, then he’d planned on arranging this angle before it had been formed. This was no natural formation. The Ethicals had designed and built these mountains with whatever vast machines they had used.
Nur called down for them to fasten a heavier rope to the end of the light one. They did so, and presently he called down that the second rope was secured.
Burton hauled himself up on it, bracing his feet against the cliff, his body extended almost at right angles to it. He was panting and his arms hurt by the time he reached the ledge. Nur, surprisingly strong for such a skinny little man, helped him get up onto the ledge.
Then they hauled up the backpacks.
Nur looked up through the fog.
“The face is rough,” he said. “It looks like I could climb up on the projections if I used the pitons.”
He removed a hammer and some pitons from the pack. The latter were steel wedges which he would drive into the surface of the rock wall. Some of them contained holes through which a rope could be passed.
Nur disappeared into the mists. Burton heard his hammer now and then. After a while, the Moor called down for Burton to come on up. Nur was on another ledge.
“Actually, the surface is so irregular that we might be able to climb just using our hands. But we won’t!”
By then Alice had climbed the rope up to the projection on which Burton stood. Burton kissed her and went on up after Nur.
Ten hours later, the entire group sat on top of the cliff. After they’d recovered, they walked on looking for a place to shelter them from the wind. They found none until they had traversed at least three miles. Here they came, as Joe said they would, to the base of another cliff. To their left The River, some miles away now, roared as it hurtled over the lip of the falls.
Joe played the beam of his lamp along the rock. ‘
“Damme! If I did go up along the right side of The River, then ve’re thcrewed. The tunnel ith on that thide, and ve can’t get across The River!”
“If the Ethicals found X’s rope and removed it, then they must have found the tunnel,” Burton said.
They were too tired to search for the fissure which would be the gate to the tunnel. They walked along until they came to an overhang. Joe used some of his few remaining sticks to make a small fire, and they ate supper. The fire went out quickly. They piled heavy cloths on the rock floor and more over them and slept while The River thundered.
In the morning, while they were eating dried fish, pemmican, and bread, Nur said, “As Dick’s pointed out, X wouldn’t know which side his recruits would come up. So he must have left two ropes. Therefore, he must have made two tunnels. We should find one on this side.”
Burton opened his mouth to say that that tunnel, if it existed, would also have been plugged. Nur held up his hand to forestall him.
“Yes, I know. But if the plug is thin, we can locate it, and we have the tools to dig through it.”
One search party hadn’t gone more than twenty feet from the camp when it found the plug. It was a few feet inside a fissure broad enough for even Joe to enter.
Great heat had been applied to melt the round plug into the surrounding quartz.
“Hot dog!” Joe said. “Thimmety tham! Maybe ve got a chanthe after all!”
“Perhaps,” de Marbot said. “But what if the entire tunnel is plugged up?”
“Then we try the corner. If X was smart enough, he1 would’ve figured out that the tunnels might be found. So he would have arranged for a climbable angle here just as he did at the other place.”
Burton scanned the face of the cliff while his lamp poked a bright hole through the fog. Ten feet from the base, the rock was wrinkled and fissured. But it abruptly became as smooth as a mirror from there to as far as he could see.
Joe swung his hammer against the plug. Burton, his ear close to the rock, said, “It’s hollow!”
“Jutht great,” Joe said. He removed several tungsten-steel alloy chisels from his backpack and began hammering. When he’d cut out enough of the quartz to make six holes, he and Burton inserted plastic explosive into them. Burton would have liked to daub clay over the plastic, but there wasn’t any.
He stuck the ends of wires into the plastic and retreated along the face of the cliff, rolling out the wires. When the group was far enough away, he pressed one wire of his small battery against another. The explosions deafened them, and pieces of quartz flew out.
“Veil,” Joe said, “at least my burden’ll be lighter now. I von’t have to carry thothe canth of plathtik and the battery anymore. That’th the end of them.”
They went back into the fissure. Burton shot his light across it. The holes made by Joe had been enlarged. Several of them were big enough for him to see the tunnel beyond it.
He said, “We’ve got about twelve hours more work, Joe.”
“Oh, thyit! Veil, here goeth nothing.”
Shortly after breakfast, the titanthrop hacked out the last piece of rock, and the plug fell out.
“Now cometh the hard part,” Joe said, wiping the sweat off his face and his grotesquely long nose.
The tunnel was just large enough for Joe to crawl up it, but his shoulders would rub against the sides and his head against the ceiling unless he lowered it. It went at an approximately 45-degree angle upward.
“Wrap clothth around your kneeth and handth,” Joe said. “Othervithe, you’re going to rub them bloody. You’ll probably do tho anyvay.”
Frigate, Alice, Behn, and Croomes returned just then with canteens refilled at The River. Joe half-emptied his.
“Now,” he said, “ve thyould vait avhile until everybody’th taken a good healthy thyit. Vhen I vath vith thothe Egyptianths, ve neglected that precauthyon. Halfvay up, I couldn’t thtand it no longer, tho I emptied my bowelth.”
He laughed thunderously.
“You thyould have heard thothe nothelethth little fellowth cuthth! They carried on thomething terrible. They vath hopping mad with no room to hop! Haw, haw!”
He wiped the tears from his eyes. “Jethuth! Did they thmell bad vhen they finally crawled out! Then they got even madder when they had to vath themthelveth off in The River. That vater’th ath cold ath a velldigger’th athth, ath Tham uthed to thay.”
More tears flowed as he thought about Clemens. He snuffled, and he wiped off his proboscis on his sleeve.
Joe hadn’t exaggerated the hardships. The tunnel was at least one mile long, every inch forward was an inch upward, and the air became increasingly thinner, though it howled through the shaft, and they had to drag their very heavy packs behind them. Moreover, for all they knew, the other end might have been plugged also. If it were, they would have to return to the base of the cliff.
Their joy at finding that the tunnel wasn’t sealed renewed their strength for a while. However, the palms of their hands, their fingers, their knees, and their toes were skinned, bleeding, and hurting. They were unable to walk steadily for some time.
The wind was stronger and colder here despite its thinness. Joe sucked the oxygen-scarce air into his great lungs.
“Vone good thing about it. Ve only need one drink, and ve’re loaded out of our thkullth.”
They would have liked to make camp there, but the place was too exposed.
“Cheer up,” Burton said. “Joe says that it’s only .a ten-mile walk to the next cataract.”
“The latht vone, the biggetht. You think the otherth vere noithy. Vait until you hear thith vone.”
Burton strapped on his pack and staggered on, his knees feeling as if they’d rusted. Joe came close behind him. Fortunately, the tableland was comparatively level and free of rock rubble. However, Burton had only the tremendous thunder of the falls to guide him through the fog. When the sound became stronger, he veered back to the left. When it was weaker, he went back to the right. Nevertheless, he was probably making a fifteen-mile hike out of a ten-miler.
All had to stop often because of the lack of oxygen and to make sure that no one straggled. Every fourth person in the line kept his lamp on until Burton stopped and swore.
“Vhat’th the matter?”
“We’re not thinking straight in this air,” Burton said, gasping. “We only need one light. We’re wasting electricity. We can use a rope for all to hang onto.”
With the line tied around his waist and the others grasping it, they went on into the cold grayness.
But after a while they were too weak to go a step more. Despite the wind, they lay down on and under cloths and tried to sleep. Burton awoke from a nightmare and turned his light on his watch. They’d been here ten hours.
He got them up, and they ate more than the rationing schedule allowed for. An hour later, the blackish face of a rock wall loomed out of the mists. They were at the foot of another obstacle.
JOE MILLER HADN’T COMPLAINED MUCH THOUGH HE HAD groaned softly for the last half of the hike. He was ten feet tall and weighed eight hundred pounds and was as strong as any ten of Homo sapiens put together. But his giantism had disadvantages. One was mat he suffered from fallen arches. Sam often called him the Great Flatfoot, and with very good reason. It hurt Joe to walk much, and when he was resting his feet still often hurt.
“Tham alvayth thaid that if it hadn’t been for our feet, ve vould’ve conquered the world,” Joe said. He was rubbing his right foot. “He claimed that it vath our broken-down dogth that made uth ekthinct. He may have been right.”
It was obvious that the titanthrop needed at least two days of rest and therapy. While Burton and Nur, amateur but efficient podiatrists, worked on Joe, the others went out in two parties. They came back several hours later.
Tai-Peng, the leader of one, said, “I couldn’t find the place Joe told us about.”
Ah Qaaq, the other leader, said, “We found it. At least, it looks as if we could climb up there. It’s very near the falls, though.”
“In fact, it’s so close,” Alice said, “that it can’t be seen until you’re almost on it. It’ll be dreadfully dangerous though. Very slippery with the spray.
Joe groaned, and said, “Now I remember! It vath the right thide that ve vent up on. The Egyptianth vent on it becauthe the left vath unlucky. Thith path mutht be one Ekth plathed here in cathe...”
“I wouldn’t call it a path,” the Mayan said.
“Veil, if it’th like the other plathe, it can be climbed.”
It was, and it could be.
Seven days later, they were on top of the mountain. Snow and ice had made the dangers even greater than anticipated, and the air enfeebled them. Nevertheless, they had struggled up to another plateau. The River was far below, covered by fog.
After a few miles, they descended on a far easier slope. The air was thicker at the bottom and warmer, though still cold. They advanced through an ever-increasing and ever-louder wind until they came to another mountain.
“No uthe even thinking about climbing thith vone. Ve’re lucky, though. The big cave of the vindth thyould be to our right a few mileth. Veil, maybe not tho lucky. You’ll thee vhen ve get there. But that can vait avhile. I got to retht my thon-of-a-bitching feet again.”
The River poured out in a vast and thick stream to descend swiftly down a gentle slope. The roar of water and wind was deafening, Jbut at least it was warmer here. Joe, the veteran of the passage through the cave, led the way. A rope was tied to his waist and tied to the wrists of the others.
Warned by Joe to hang on tight, they went around the corner into the Brobdingnagian hole. Alice slipped and fell off the ledge and was pulled, shrieking, back up. Then Nur, even smaller than she, was blown off, but he too was hauled to safety.
The torches of the Egyptians had been extinguished by the wind when Joe had led them through the bellowing cave. Now, he could see, though not very far. Also, he shouted back to Burton, this ledge was broader than the one on the right.
“Boy, ve’d have been thyit out of luck if the Ethicalth had melted down the ledgeth! I guethth they thought that no vone vould ever get thith far after they took the ropeth avay and plugged the tunnel!”
Burton only heard part of what Joe said but filled in the rest.
They had to stop twice to eat and sleep. Meanwhile, The River gradually dropped away and finally disappeared. Burton, curious to know how deep it was, sacrificed a spare lamp. He counted seconds as its beam turned over and over and became a thread of light before it plunged into the blackness. It had fallen at least three thousand feet.
At last, the grayness that heralded the end of the cave appeared. They came out into the open air, misty but brighter. Above them was a sky which blazed with a multitide of giant stars and gas sheets. The thin cloud closed around them but didn’t block their view of the mountain wall to their right. They were almost on the lip of the abyss at the bottom of which The River ran.
“Ve’re on the wrong thide here,” Joe said. “Ahead, on thith thide, a mountain blockth uth. If ve could only get acrothth to the right thide. But then maybe the Ethical left a vay for uth on thith thide.”
“I doubt it,” Burton said. “If he did, we’d have to circle completely around the inner wall of the mountains ringing the sea to get to the cave at the bottom. Unless...”
“Unlethth vhat?”
“Unless X made two caves and put boats there, too.”
Nur said, “One rough ledge they might overlook. But two?”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Tell you yhat. The two thideth of The Valley here get very clothe at the top. The vallth mutht arch over, lean out. There’th only about tventy feet betveen the edgeth at the top. Here. Let me thyow you.”
He walked slowly ahead and after about sixty feet stopped.
His beam, added to theirs, clearly showed the other side of the gap.
“God Almighty!” Aphra said. “The Ethical surely didn’t expect us to jump across it?”
“The other Ethicals wouldn’t think anybody would dare it,” Nur said. “But I think X expected us to, yes. I mean, he knew that at least one, maybe more, of any party that got this far would be able to leap across. After all, he picked some very athletic people. Then that person or persons would tie a rope to a rock, and the rest would go over on it.”
Burton knew that he couldn’t jump that far. He might get close, but close wasn’t good enough.
Joe was stronger than two Hercules melded, but he was far too heavy. Ah Qaaq and Gilgamesh were also very strong but too squat and heavy. Good long jumpers weren’t built like them. Turpin was tall but too muscular. Nur was very light and had a surprising wiry strength, but he was too short. The two white women and de Marbot were also too short and weren’t good jumpers. That left Frigate, Croomes, and Tai-Peng.
The American knew what Burton was thinking. His face was pale. He was even better at long jumping then he’d been on Earth and had once leaped there to an unofficial distance of twenty-five feet during a practice jump but a wind had been behind his back. His normal distance was about twenty-two feet on Earth and twenty-three here. Nor had he ever jumped under such bad conditions.
“We should have brought along Jesse Owens,” he said faintly.
“Hallelujah!” Croomes shrieked, startling the others. “Hallelujah! The Lord saw fit to make me a great jumper! I’m one of His chosen! He saw to it that I could leap like a goat and dance like King David for His glory! And now He gives me a chance to jump over the pit of Hell! Thank you, Lord!”
Burton moved close to Frigate and said, softly, “Are you going to allow a woman to jump first? Show you up?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Frigate said. He shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I let her go first? The problem here is not one of sex but of ability.”
“You’re scared!”
“You bet I am. Anybody but a psychotic would be.”
He went to Blessed Croomes, though, and questioned her about her record. She said that she hadn’t done much jumping on Earth, but, when she was living in a state called Wendisha, she had made twenty-two feet a number of times.
“How did you know it was that?” Frigate said. “We had an exact system of measurement on the Rex, but very few places would have such.”
“What we did,” Croomes said, “was guess what a foot was, It looked pretty close to me. Anyway, I know that I can do it! The Lord will buoy me up on the wings of my faith, and I will skip over it like one of His sweet gazelles!”
“Yeah, and you’ll fall short, too, and smash your brains out against the edge of the gap,” Frigate said.
“Why don’t we mark out a distance?” Nur said. “Then you three can practice-jump, and we’ll see who’s the best.”
“On this hard rock? We heed a sand pit!”
Croomes said that they should throw a lantern over to the other side to provide a marker. Frigate cast one attached to a rope, so that it lit near the edge, rolled back, then stopped on its side several inches from the dropoff. Its beam pointed at them over the black abysm.
He pulled it back with the rope and threw it again. This time it rolled, but by whipping the rope he got it to an upright position and the light shone at right angles to them.
“Okay, so it can be done,” Frigate said. “But I’ll pull it back now. Nobody can jump until he’s had a good night’s sleep. Anyway, I’m too tired now to try it.”
“Let’s line up the run path with lanterns,” Blessed said. “I’d like to get a good idea of how it’ll look.”
They did so, and Frigate and Croomes paced to where they would start their run, if they did. The marker for the leap was a lantern a few inches from the edge.
“It has to be a one-time thing,” Frigate said. “We’ll really have to warm up first. This cold air.... On the other hand, the air is thinner and offers less resistance. That probably helped that black jumper—what’s his name? such is fame—make that fabulous twenty-seven feet and four and a half inches in the Olympics at Mexico City. But, back to the first hand, we haven’t really gotten acclimated yet to the high altitude. And .we’re sure as hell not in training.”
Burton had said nothing to Tai-Peng since he wished to give him a chance to volunteer. The Chinese had been watching the procedure. Now he strode up to Burton and said, “I am a mighty jumper! I’m also sadly out of practice! But I will not allow a woman to be braver than I! I will make the first jump!”
His green eyes shone in the lantern beam.
Burton asked him what distance he’d cleared.
“More than that!” Tai-Peng said, pointing at the gap.
Frigate had been throwing pieces of paper up in the air to test the wind. He came up to Burton then, saying, “It blows on our left side and so it’ll carry us a little to the right. But the mountain blocks most of it. I’d say it’s a six- or seven-miles-an-hour wind.”
“Thanks,” Burton said. He kept his gaze on the Chinese. Tai-Peng was very good in athletics but not as good as he claimed to be. No one was that good. However, it was his life he was risking, and no one had asked him to do so.
Frigate spoke up loudly.
“Look! I’m really the most experienced jumper! So I should be the one to do it! And I will!”
“You’ve gotten over your fear?”
“Hell, no! What it is... I don’t have the guts to let someone else do it. You’d all think I was a coward, and if you didn’t, I would.”
He turned to Nur.
“I failed to act rationally and logically. I failed you.”
Nur smiled grimly at his disciple.
“You didn’t fail me. You failed yourself. However, there are so many aspects to consider... anyway, you should be the one to jump.”
The little Moor went up to the titanthrop and raised his head under Joe’s vast nose.
“It may not be necessary for anyone to jump. Joe, do you think that I weigh as much as your pack?”
Joe frowned, and he picked up Nur with one hand under his buttocks. He held him out at arm’s length and said, “Not by a long thyot.”
When Nur was back on the ground, he said, “Do you think you could throw your pack across to the other side?”
Joe fingered his receding chin. “Veil, maybe. Thay, I thee vhat you’re getting at! Vhy don’t I try it? It von’t make no differenth if the pack’th over, there and ve’re over here. Ve got to get acrothth anyvay.”
He lifted the enormous pack above his head, walked to the edge, looked once, swung the pack twice, and heaved it. It fell a foot beyond the other edge.
Nur said, “I thought so. Joe, you throw me across now.”
The titanthrop picked up the Moor with one hand against the little man’s chest and one under his buttocks. Then he swung him back and forth, saying, “Vone, two, three!”
Nur arced across the abyss, landed on his feet a yard beyond the lip, and rolled. When he got up, he danced with joy.
Joe then cast Nur’s lantern at the end of a rope. Nur caught it though he staggered back a little.
Nur came back out of the fog a few minutes later.
“I found a big boulder to tie the rope to, but I can’t move it by myself! We’ll need about five strong men!”
“Over you go!” Joe said, and he swung Burton back and forth. Though Burton wanted to shout that he was much heavier than Nur, he refrained. The gap looked twice as broad as it had up to that moment. Then he was shot up and outward while Joe yelled, “Vatch your athth, Dick!” and his laughter bellowed. The many-thousands-feet abyss was beneath him for a frightening second, and then Burton struck on his feet and was propelled forward. He rolled, but even so the rock thumped him hard.
A moment later, his pack followed. Joe then threw all the packs across, and he lifted Frigate and hurled him on over.
One by one, they followed until Ah Qaaq and Joe were the only ones left. Shouting, “Tho long, fatty!” the titanthrop hurled the May an. He hit closer to the edge than anyone but had a foot to spare.
“Now vhat?” Joe yelled.
Burton said, “There’s a big boulder that must weigh almost as much as you, Joe. Go roll it up here, and then tie the end of the rope around it.”
“That’th half a mile back,” Joe said. “Vhy didn’t you all thtay here and help me before you vent over?”
“Didn’t want you to be too tired from moving the rock to throw us across.”
“Jethuth H. Chritht! I do all the hard vork.”
He disappeared with his lantern into the fog.
Some of them were bruised, and with torn skin, but all were able to do their share. They followed Nur to the boulder and, after a long rest, they began rolling it over the flat stone surface of the plateau. It wasn’t easy since the rock was irregularly shaped and probably weighed more than all of them together.
Rests were frequent because of the thin air. They finally got it near the edge and then collapsed for a while.
A minute later, Joe rolled the boulder from the mists.
“I vath hoping I could beat you runtth to it,” he shouted. “I vould’ve, too, if my boulder had been ath near am yourth.” He sat down to pant.
Blessed Croomes complained that she had been cheated out of the chance to jump and so demonstrate her faith in the Lord.
“Nobody stopped you,” Frigate said. “Although, to tell the truth, I was disappointed, too. The only thing that kept me back was that, if I did miss, the group would be just that much weaker. Maybe I’ll try it anyway just to show I can do it.”
He looked at Tai-Peng, and they both burst out laughing.
“You ain’t fooling me none,” Croomes said in English. “You two men was skeered to do what a woman wasn’t afraid to do.”
“That’s the difference between you and us,” Frigate said. “We’re not crazy.”
When they all were restored, they tied the ends of the long heavy rope around the boulders and chocked them with smaller stones. Joe let himself down over the edge backward, grabbed the sagging rope, and hand-over-handed across it. His friends seized the rope to insure that the boulder wasn’t moved by his enormous weight, though it wasn’t necessary. When he got quickly to the edge, some left the rope and helped him get up over the edge.
“Boy, I hope I never have to do that again!” he gasped. “I never told you guyth before, but vhen I get on a real high plathe, I alvayth have an urge to jump off.”
GETTING TO THE LEDGE THAT LED ALONG THE MOUNTAINSIDE to the sea took them ten hours. .
“Thith ith narrow enough now, but vhen ve get to the plathe vhere thothe two Egyptianth fell, man, that’th thomething!”
Several thousand feet below was a mass of clouds. They spent eight hours sleeping and continued after they’d had their monotonous breakfast. Though the Egyptians had crawled along this trail, the group faced the rock and edged along, their fingers gripping the holes and small outthrusts of the rock.
The air became somewhat warmer. Here the water still had heat to give up after its long wandering through the arctic regions and its passage through the polar sea.
The ledge was safely traversed: They went on another plateau and came to where, as Joe had said, they would be near the sea. He walked painfully to the edge of the mountain and pointed his lantern beam down on still another ledge.
It began about six feet below the edge of the cliff, was about two feet wide, and continued downward with the same breadth until it was lost in the thin clouds. It sloped at a 45-degree angle to the horizon or would have if there had been one.
“We’ll have to abandon some stuff and make our packs smaller,” Burton said. “Ther£ isn’t enough room for them otherwise.”
“Yeah, I know. Vhat vorrieth me ith that the Ethicalth might’ve cut the ledge in half, Jethuth, Dick! Vhat if they found the cave down there?”
“Then we’ll have to trust to the inflatable kayak you’re carrying to get two of us to the tower. I’ve mentioned that before.”
“Yeah, I know. But that ain’t going to keep me from talking about it. It helpth relieve my tenthyon.”
The sun never came above the top of the circling mountains. Despite this, there was a twilight illumination.
“I fell off the ledge before I got too far,” Joe said. “Tho I don’t know how far the path—thome path!—goeth. It may take a whole day, maybe more, to get to the bottom.”
“Tom Mix said that Paheri, the Egyptian, told him that they had to stop once and eat before they got to the bottom,” Burton said. “That doesn’t mean much, though. The journey was fatiguing, and so they’d get hungry sooner than they usually would.”
They found a shallow cave. Joe, with the help of the others, rolled a big boulder to partially block the entrance and keep the wind out. They retreated to it to eat their meal. Two lamps kept the hollow bright, but they weren’t enough to cheer them. What they needed was a fire, the ancient shifting brightness and crackling warmth which had cheered their Old Stone Age ancestors and every generation since.
Tai-Peng was the only one in high spirits. He told them stories of his antics and those of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cups, the companions of his old age, and cracked many a Chinese joke. Though the latter couldn’t adequately be translated through Esperanto, they were good enough to cause some, and especially Joe Miller, to shout with laughter and pound their thighs. Then Tai-Peng composed some on-the-spot poems and concluded by brandishing his sword at the tower somewhere ahead of them.
“Soon we will be in the fortress of the Big Grail! Let those who’ve meddled with our lives beware! We will conquer them though they be demons! Old Kung Fu Tze warned us that humans must not concern themselves with spirits, but I was never one to pay attention to that old man! I listen to no man! I follow my own spirit! I am Tai-Peng, and I know no superior!”
He howled, “Watch out, you things that hide and skulk and refuse to face us! Watch out! Tai-Peng comes! Burton comes! Joe Miller comes!”
And so on.
“Ve thyould fathe him our vay,” Joe whispered to Burton. “Ve thyure could uthe all that hot air.”
Burton was watching Gilgamesh and Ah Qaaq. They reacted just like the others, laughing and clapping Tai-Peng on. But that could be just good acting by one or both. He was worried. When they got to the cave—if they did—he would have to do something about them. Even if they were innocent, he would have to try to determine if one of them, or both, was X. Either of them could be Loga. Either of them could be Thanabur.
How could he do it?
And what—if anything—was one, or both, plotting?
He ran a scenario through his mind. When they started down the trail, he’d arrange it so that Joe Miller would be in the lead. He’d be second. Ah Qaaq and Gilgamesh would be in the rear. He didn’t want them to be the first to get to the cave— if it was still there and not plugged up.
The Mayan and the Sumerian—if they were such—would come in last, and they’d be disarmed as they entered the cave. They carried long knives and .69-caliber plastic-bullet revolvers. Joe and de Marbot would see that they were relieved of them. He would warn Nur and Frigate about the deed, but he wouldn’t have them in on it. He still wasn’t sure about the American or the Moor. His experience with the agent, the pseudo-Peter Jairus Frigate, had made him very wary of the real Frigate, if he was indeed the original. Nur seemed to be what he claimed he was, but Burton trusted no one. Even the titanthrop might be an agent. Why not? He was intelligent and capable despite his grotesque size and facial features.
Burton had to trust someone, though. There were two, himself, and, after so many years of intimacy, Alice. The others— ah, the others! He’d have to watch them closely but his instincts, whatever that much-abused term meant, and it probably didn’t mean much, told him that all but two were what they said they were.
With their much-reduced packs, Joe still carrying the largest, they let themselves down on the last ledge. Moving sidewise on the toes and front of their feet, their arms extended parallel to their shoulders most of the time, they held on to whatever grip they could find, it wasn’t long before they came around the curve of the mountain, perhaps two hours, though it seemed like a very long time. Then Joe stopped, and he turned his head.’
“Qviet, everyone. You might be able to hear the thound of the thea beating againtht the bathe of the mountainth.”
They listened intently, but only Burton, Nur, and Tai-Peng heard the waves against the rock and that might have been their imagination.
When they came around the shoulder, however, they could see the relatively bright heavens and, looming faintly in the upper regions, the hulk of the mountains that ringed the sea on the far side.
Of the tower, there was no indication, not even a dim bulk. Yet it was in the center of the sea according to Joe’s own story and the reports from the airship Parseval.
Joe called, “Here’th vhere I came acrothth a grail thomebody left. Here’th vhere I thaw a thudden blathe of light vhen the Ethical’th aircraft came down to the top of the tower. And here’th vhere I thtumbled over the grail and fell to my death.”
He paused.
“It ain’t here now.”
“What?”
“The grail.”
“The Ethicals must’ve removed it.”
“I hope not,” Joe said. “If they did, then they knew that people could get here, and they vould’ve trathed the ledge down to the bottom and found the cave. Let’th hope that thomebody elthe came along and removed it. Maybe the Egyptianth did after I fell.”
They moved on the seemingly thread-thin wet-slippery footing. The mists became thicker then, and Burton couldn’t see more than twenty feet ahead with the aid of his lantern, which he had to lift from his belt hook when he wanted more visibility.
Presently, Joe stopped.
“What’s the matter?” Burton said.
“Thyit! The ledge ninth out. Vait a minute. Lookth—and feelth—like it’th been melted down here. Yeah! It hath! The Ethicalth’ve cut the ledge out right here! Now vhat do ve do?”
“Can you see how far the melt goes?”
“Yeth. It lookth like it thtopth about forty feet from here. Might ath veil be a mile, though.”
“How far up or down does the melt go?”
A minute passed.
“For ath far ath I can reach. Vait a minute. I’ll thyine my light.”
A few seconds passed.
“There’th thome fiththyureth about four feet above my fingertipth.”
Burton removed his pack and got down on his hands and knees. Nur, who’d been just behind, crawled slowly over him. Joe and the Moor did a circus-acrobat balancing act while Nur climbed to the titanthrop’s shoulders. Presently, Nur said, “It looks as if there are some fissures on a straight line. Enough for our pitons.”
Nur continued standing on the titanthrop’s shoulders. Burton handed the steel wedges and a hammer to Joe, who passed them on to the Moor. While Joe held Nur’s legs firmly, Nur’s hammer drove in two wedges. Burton sent up the end of a rope, thin but heavy enough, to Nur. He passed this through the eyes of the wedges and secured the end at the most remote piton.
The Moor got down onto the ledge by Joe’s side where Burton held him from falling off while he put on a harness much like that which parachutists wear. These were made of fish leather and metal and had been part of the launch’s stores. On the webbing on the chest were buckles to each of which strong plastic ribbons were attached. At the end of each was secured a small metal device containing a wheel.
Nur climbed back up on Joe. When he stood up on the titanthrop’s broad shoulders, he passed one jaw of the wheeled device around the horizontal rope held through the eyes of the pitons. He snapped the device together and locked the jaws with a lever. Now he could slide along the rope attached to, the cliff face. When he got to the first piton, he locked the left-hand wheeled block to the part of the rope beyond the first piton. Then he unhinged the first block and slid along to the second piton.
Bracing his feet against the cliff wall, he leaned outward, supported by the ribbons, and began hammering the third piton into a fissure. This was hard labor and required many rests. The others needed food, but they were too concerned about Nur to have any appetite.
It took five hours for Nur, working patiently, hammering at the pitons, to reach the area above the ledge where it resumed. By then he was too exhausted to drive in another piton. He dropped down along the face of the cliff to the projection. Burton went next, climbing up on the giant’s back to his shoulders, no undangerous feat. Without Joe’s height and strength, the entire party would have been stopped at this point with no alternative except to go back. They would have starved then, since they did not have enough rations for the return trip.
Burton moved along the cliff face as Nur had and presently was at the other ledge. Nur caught and steadied Burton as he released the block and slid down with his hands extended to slow down his descent by their friction. Fortunately, the ledge here was broader than on the other side of the melt.
Those on that side had another problem. That was getting the heavy packs across. There seemed nothing else to do but to get rid of all except the most essential items. Unpacking was difficult, though, because of the very small space for footing. They helped each other, one clinging with a hand to a roughness in the wall while he or she reached over and opened the pack on the back of his neighbor. The items had to come out one by one and be dropped into the sea or placed on the ledge for repacking.
Everything went except the knives, firearms, the ammunition, some long heavy cloths, some rations, and the canteens. Part of those were placed in their grails. Alice and Aphra, the lightest, were to bring over what was left in Burton’s and Nur’s packs in their own.
Joe called across the abyss and asked if he should leave the inflatable kayak behind. Burton said that it shouldn’t be discarded. But since Joe weighed so much, it’d be best to have de Marbot carry it in his pack. The contents of the Frenchman’s pack should be parceled out between Croomes’ and Tai-Peng’s.
Burton didn’t want the titanthrop to bring across anything but himself. So far, the pitons had given no indication of coming loose. But he didn’t know what eight hundred pounds would do to them.
One by one, the others came until only Ah Qaaq and Joe Miller were left. When the Mayan made the passage, he used his hammer to drive each wedge in more securely.
Joe reached down gingerly and picked up his huge canteen. He emptied it and placed it back on the ledge. He shouted, “I vant to get acrothth fatht! Tho I ain’t going to bother vith my hamethth! I’ll thving over, hand over hand.”
He leaped up and grabbed the rope by the first piton.
He moved swiftly, his long arms reaching out, grabbing the rope ahead of him and then sliding the other along. He used his knees to brace himself so he could lean outward.
Halfway across, a piton skreeked as it pulled out from its hole.
Joe was motionless for a moment. Then he extended a long arm to the rope on the side nearest him from the next piton.
The loosened piton came free with another screech. Joe dropped down, clinging to the rope, and swung like an almost-stopped pendulum.
“Hang on, Joe!” Burton said.
Then he screamed with the rest of the party as the second wedge tore loose and the others followed.
Bellowing, shrouded in white cloths, Joe Miller dropped for the second time into the dark sea.