The Second Ardath Mayhar Page 6

  “This is no natural cave!” he exclaimed.

  A vast domed chamber, its seamless interior was the color of polished bone. Here there seemed to be little dust, although the place had to be ancient. As our light gleamed on the curves of walls and dome, another, more subtle light began to glow inside the stone.

  In a moment, Jo extinguished our Kindler. Then we stood agape, as opalescence began pulsing around and above us. It was like standing inside a vast seashell under a silver sun.

  Opposite the cramped entry-hole, a doorway was framed in a graceful arch carven with symbols. Two half-moon panels closed it, and we crept across that great expanse of floor to touch them, push at them, trying to open that further gateway into marvels.

  I fumbled at the door on the right, but my fingers slipped across the frictionless surface without gaining a grip on it. Beside me, Jo was doing the same.

  “It’s going to take teamwork,” he grunted, at last, and we linked elbows and pushed the widths of our bodies against the smooth panels, which moved hesitantly before us until they caught halfway and stuck there.

  I went first, and Jo followed me. A band of light from the room behind pierced the darkness beyond the opening, and there, too, light began to bloom. Now we stood in a long corridor, along which circular portholes pierced the walls on either hand. They were some meter in diameter, set about hip-high to me, which told me those for whom they were positioned might be rather small in stature.

  I bent to peer into one opening, as we moved past. It was dark inside whatever chamber might lie beyond the transparent portal. Jo flashed the Kindler, and this room, too, began to create its own illumination, very faint but quite enough to allow us to see a round space, like the inside of an egg, which formed the room.

  This light was palest violet, and it revealed a row of cylindrical shapes arranged regularly around the curve of the chamber. Sharp pain skewered my temples, and I gasped, feeling pressure inside both skull and mind.

  Jo was moaning softly, holding his head between his hands, and the Kindler went out. The violet light dwindled, too, and the pain lessened. Beneath that I felt a sort of pulse, like a weak heartbeat, and a sense of some alien presence as I backed away down the corridor toward the moon-shaped doorway.

  “Come on, Maris,” Jo muttered and went forward. I forced myself to follow him. What we found here would change the preconceptions of our kind forever, and I wanted to take part in this historical discovery.

  We did not speak again for some time. Instead, we now seemed able almost to read each other’s thoughts. Moving along that tube-like corridor, we were silent, but I could feel Jo’s tension, matching my own.

  We took brief glimpses into other round rooms as we passed, but as soon as the violet light began to glow we backed away and shut off the Kindler. One experience of that incredible pain was more than enough to make us cautious.

  The corridor was longer than we had believed. As the light advanced with us toward the farther end, we found it seeming to retreat before us. Dozens of portholes slipped past us as we moved, and when we paused to glance back, the door through which we had entered was almost lost in the dimness that moved up behind us.

  I caught my breath, but Jo touched my elbow warningly. Words here might, I knew, mean far more than we thought. I moved close beside him and together we continued toward the still invisible end of the corridor.

  The complex had evidently been driven deep into the mountain, for we walked the better part of a kilometer before we could see the end of our journey. The bone-colored tube down which we went ended in a decorated wall, on which were painted, in subtle but unfaded colors, the history of a species.

  “Look,” Jo whispered, pointing to the bottom of the curve. “That is the beginning.” I followed his finger with my gaze, and soon it was clear that the story was told in picture-symbols, spiraling counter-clockwise from the center, to cover the circular wall. Breathless with anticipation, I studied the scenes, hoping to find at least one in which the race whose work this was would be depicted. Instead, there was a recurring symbol, obviously intended to represent the dominant species while saving a great deal of detail work. Yet the symbol itself gave some clue to the nature of the beings who invented it. Shaped like a curving Y, it was supplied with an extra pair of marks, obviously arms. Its foot was formed of paired lines, so perhaps those were two-legged, four-armed beings.

  They had delved deep into the mountain—that was clearly indicated. Inventions, arts, social gatherings, even families were shown on the wall. There was too much to follow all the way through that intricate history, but when we skipped to the end of the spiral we saw that their own end had come at last. Fewer and fewer of the people were sketched there, and now that long corridor and the round rooms began to dominate. In the center a tight circle held purple cylinders ranged about its perimeter.

  Jo caught his breath. “Those look like....”

  “The things in the little rooms along the corridor,” I finished for him. “Do you suppose...?”

  “Eggs?” He sounded dubious.

  I thought hard. “Why else would they be stored in those chambers?” I asked. “There’s nobody left here, so what other reason could there be? Maybe something happened that led to their extinction, and they left those...eggs or chrysalides or whatever...to survive until it was safe again.”

  His eyes widened. “Maybe they are deep in this mountain so that only other intelligent beings can wake them with light, which would never get in here otherwise.”

  It made a certain amount of sense. When we turned back toward the entry, a pale violet glow was touching the whole way. Peeping into the small chambers, I could see that the cylinders themselves emitted that glow, as if they had in some manner come to life.

  As we returned to our village, we puzzled over what we had seen, the result of our light on the things in the cavern, and we came to a conclusion. In coming into that place we seemed to have set into motion a process of some kind. When we presented out conclusions, our leaders agreed, though they would allow no further exploration of the cavern and its contents.

  “The thing is done,” Marcus told the gathered group. “Unwittingly, for good or for ill, something has happened that we cannot change or stop without perhaps destroying the mountain itself. That might set off other and even more disturbing reactions, for a people who could create the things shown in the tapes Josiah and Maris brought back with them could surely place safeguards to protect the site.”

  We think often about the mountain that looms on the horizon. What will emerge from those eggs? Or will something else, some creation of those four-armed people, come forth instead?

  We don’t know how long it will take them to mature. Jo and I work hard so our sleep won’t be filled with nightmares about the thing we may have caused. There’s nothing we can do except worry.

  Yet from time to time, we also dream, and we wake with aching heads, as if something squeezes our brains while we sleep. When the aliens come out of their cavern, we are convinced, they will know all about us. But what will they do to or with or because of us?

  * * * *

  The foregoing account was found in a metal box among the remaining artifacts of the incomers. Because of the mental connection formed between our kinds when the first pair visited the hatchery, we learned their ways of communication, allowing us to understand their writings. This is useful, as their role in completing the Hatching proved to be fatal for their kind.

  Now their small encampment lies silent, overgrown by the vigorous plants they nurtured and grazed by the unusual animals they bred. We have not disturbed the desiccated bodies that lie in their houses, some alone, some paired, for that would be disrespectful toward those who were the instruments of our reawakening.

  The sight of their shattered skulls makes us sad, but for their kind the life force of our eggs moved into their brains and began to grow. W
hen the time came, our young broke forth, leaving the hosts lifeless.

  Three times has our kind sunk into the sleep of death, leaving our eggs waiting in the hatchery. Three times have races arrived from beyond our sun to bring us back to life, and each time they have left behind interesting and valuable gifts from their home worlds.

  It is unfortunate that no matter how the violet force reaches into their minds, the result is always the same. To save us they must die. Yet we live and will do so for millennia, for the long swing of our sun around its path through our galaxy will not reach the fatal radiation point again for many lifetimes of our species.

  So we add our notations to those of our saviors, hoping that our actions are pleasing to the gods who continue to save the Releeyah from extinction. May this continue to occur, until our sun dies and our world turns to dust.

  OLD MAN, BAD SCENE

  Something rather similar to this happened in my own area, some time ago, though I cannot know if the old man had such a chance to avenge himself. Yet this is a place where the most unlikely things do manage to come about.

  I was never any angel; I have to admit that. I spent my teen years getting into mischief—nothing mean or wicked, but sometimes pretty troublesome to my “victims.”

  Putting the superintendent’s antique jalopy on top of the high school gymnasium was more work than anything I ever did since, but the look on his big red face was worth all the effort. As none of us senior boys could stand the old goat, he had no way to pick which six of us did the deed, so he punished us all. Not one of us got to play in the last few games of the football season.

  As far as I knew at the time, nobody resented that, and nobody turned me in, though most knew I had to be the one who got the deed organized and pushed it through.

  Turned out, though, that one of them held it against me for the next sixty years. Of course, he and I were never really friends, and through the years we seemed to get on opposite sides of politics and business and quite a few other things. Still, I never thought any sane man would hold that big a grudge against somebody who never actually damaged him at all. If I was in any condition to get back at him, I would, but, being dead now, I can’t say that is an option.

  I know what you are wondering: if I’m dead, how can I be telling this to you?

  Damned if I know. I seem to be stuck here for now. But I was alive and if not well, at least able to survive when somebody knocked on our door, shoved my wife down, and showed me a warrant for my arrest—on a misdemeanor warrant issued ten years ago. I knew my friend Judge Packer had tended to that for me, but there it was, and they grabbed me up from my wheelchair and dragged me out to the deputy’s car. They crammed me into the back, hurting my bad back a lot, and drove me the fifteen miles into Templeton.

  By the time we got to the jail, I was hurting and mad in about equal parts. I tried to ask what was going on, but nobody would answer a question or even seem to see me as they carried me down the corridor and threw me into a cell. I mean THREW me, and when I hit the floor everybody could hear my hipbone crack. I must have passed out for a while, because when I came to I was in an ambulance. They admitted me to the county hospital and put me in a room. I came and went while a couple of doctors examined me, and they X-rayed me, twisting my leg until I screamed. When they put me back into my room I died. That was no biggie, actually. In fact it was a great relief, because I quit hurting.

  Say what they will, I saw no white light or tunnel or anything except my own body—I seemed to be sort of floating above it. After a good long while a nurse came bustling in with the blood pressure thing. She touched me, took my nonexistent pulse, and left. When she came back there were two doctors and another nurse with her, and they seemed to do their best to revive me, but I was gone and intended to stay that way. My mind seemed clearer than it had been in years, and I could see that my death while in custody would make a godawful stink, and surely would bring down hell on whoever had set this in motion. I wondered how they’d cover it up, for knowing Templeton and its loose interpretation of any law there was, I felt certain they would try their damndest to hide what had happened. So even if I had been invited to heaven in that sweet chariot in the song, I would have turned down the ride. I wanted to see what they did with me. And it seemed okay with whoever or whatever was overseeing me in my present situation.

  My poor old body lay there for about two hours, and I had to admit that I was even uglier dead than I had been alive. I guess the medics were making some pretty desperate calls to the sheriff’s office, and the sheriff was making some even more desperate calls to whoever it was who started this. Also to others, as I learned while following the gurney down the hall and into a van from the local funeral home. So they were going to let my family’s own mortician handle me. That surprised me.

  I learned better, though. No sooner did they get me to the funeral home than another van showed up, sporting the logo of Finch’s from Mount Arum. That was about thirty miles from Templeton. I had a bad feeling that my wife and my uncles and cousins weren’t going to know even that I was dead until it was too late to track me down. Sure enough, they got me to Mount Arum and transferred my body to still another hearse, this one from Soledad. Got there and put me in one from Raskin.

  And on the way we made a little detour to a crematorium, where I was reduced to a cardboard box full of ashes. This was tossed into a dumpster outside Raskin, and that was that. End of Buddy Norton, businessman, concerned citizen, and one-time prankster, but it didn’t set me free to go wherever I was supposed to go.

  I was still no angel. I found myself compelled to stay with this until I found out who did it and why. I couldn’t recall doing anything so nasty and painful that it would make me such an enemy. And now I realized that I could do things I hadn’t been able to do for years—and some of them I never would have dreamed might be done.

  So I stuck with the driver of the hearse that had delivered me to the crematorium and later dumped me like a bag of garbage. Not that it bothered me—I was done with that mess, free of its aches and demands and glad of it. But I had a compelling need to find out, and it was the men who were involved who might lead me to the one who started it all.

  I had no clue as to what I needed to do next. No guide, no white light, no road map, no nothing. Still, I’d lived almost eighty years in Templeton County, much of that time involved in business or politics or both. I remembered it all, and even more that somehow I had forgotten when I got old. Now it all came back, clear and cold and even beginning to be understandable. In a sort of lightning flash, that long-ago night when we hoisted that ancient Ford to the gym roof appeared before my eyes. I was the only surviving member of the team that did the deed, but there had been eleven more who had been denied the chance to play in the three historic games that won Templeton the state football championship, because of what we had done.

  Chance Moore died in Korea. Elton Fitzgerald drowned in the big lake on a fishing trip. Got drunk and fell overboard. Chuck Dennis had a heart attack and died on the golf course. Those I remembered because I had known them well. Of the other eight, only two had been in touch with me through the years. Which one had held a grudge all this time?

  I stuck with the driver of the hearse as he drove back to the funeral home in Raskin and went into the office. His trip report book lay on the front seat, and I tried my best to look inside it, but my fingers slipped right through the cover and pages without disturbing them at all. After a while he came out to get the book, and I drifted along like an invisible mist as he went into a big office and set the trip book onto a desk. I was right there at her shoulder when the young woman opened it to post the charges for the trip.

  There was a call recorded from the Soledad Funeral Home authorizing the pickup from their van. The expenses and cremation were charged to...the Templeton, Texas, Sheriff’s Department. That gave me valuable information, though I had suspected as much all the time. S
till, I had no idea how long I would be allowed to hang around, and I was bound and determined to see this through, if possible. I knew I had to get back to Templeton—then I realized that there was no way I could do that unless I had the ability to just...shift myself there.

  I thought hard about where I needed to be. It was early morning by now. If I were inside the sheriff’s personal office that might be a useful time to overhear people talking about any very secret activities they’d been up to, so I concentrated on being right there in that two-by-four office, waiting for the sheriff to get there. And then I was there, sort of hanging over the biggest filing cabinet. The big clock on the wall showed 6:47. Sheriff Hogue should be coming in soon, for he bragged about being at work by seven every weekday morning. I wished I knew something about haunting people, because I’d have loved to give that son-of-a-bitch a heart attack. Whoever had set this nasty business in motion had worked through the law, and it was the sheriff who’d sent those deputies out to drag me into jail...and my death.

  He got there by seven-fifteen, bringing a big cup of hot coffee and a box of doughnuts. I would have given my eye teeth, if I’d had any left in this condition, for a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Then I realized that I wasn’t a bit hungry or thirsty or achy or cold or hot. Okay, I could accept that pretty happily. What I could not accept was never finding out who’d set me up to die. So I settled myself in to listen. After yesterday’s activities, surely he would call or be called by the one who instigated my murder.

  When the phone rang, I came alert. But it was just his wife wanting to tell him she was going to see her mother. Then it was a deputy asking for information about a case. For an hour there was nothing to interest me. But when the clock clicked onto eight-thirty he looked up, checked the time by his watch, and picked up the phone. The private one, not the one connecting him to the dispatcher. I misted down and settled around his neck. He shivered but didn’t seem to know why, as he touched the numbers on the dial. Those numbers went into my memory, wherever that was stored, indelibly.