Masters of the Maze (14 page)

After a short while Nate said, “Okay. Let’s talk.”

“We engaged those lawyers for you,” Major Flint said, immediately, with a puff of cheap tobacco smoke. “You didn’t help matters much by vanishing again like that, but I expect that won’t matter. There’s a lot more money behind us than that county has ever seen in its entire history. So, forget about that.

“You’ve caused us a bit of trouble, you know, but I’m prepared to believe it was entirely inadvertent, so we’ll forget about that, too. I’ve been impressed by the fact that you’ve consistently displayed a quick mind and a quick body. Those are always excellent qualities, no matter what the occasion, but they show up particularly well under circumstances which have been known to set weaker minds and bodies completely off balance. We haven’t come looking for you because you represent a menace to us, though. We’re here because you represent an asset. A quick-witted young man in first-rate physical and mental shape, one who has had military training and learned discipline, and one who knows something of what this whole wonderful apparatus is all about — just the sort of person we can’t have too many of. I know quite a bit about you, Gordon, although you don’t as yet know much of anything about me. You want adventure. There’s all the adventure anyone could want, waiting for you. You need money. There’s already so much of it behind us that I’m a little bit afraid to tell you just how much. And it’s hardly possible to conceive how much more is waiting, just to be earned, Gordon. Just to be earned.

“Don’t think in terms of common men and common money, Gordon. No. Think in terms of Cortez. Pizzaro. Bonaparte … Although he did fail, in the end. We won’t No … We won’t fail.”

Certainly he seemed supremely confident, supremely calm, standing there on the hillside in that alien world. A chill little wind seemed to play up and down Nate’s spine as he looked at him and thought of all the implications.
We
, the man had said, and said again, and again. Not just himself and his younger sidesman, obviously.

“We won’t, because, for one thing, some of us have been waiting too long to allow ourselves to fail. And because there’s too much at stake for all of us for any of us to falter. Great rewards, Gordon, follow great services.
Or ought to —
” Flint’s eyes flashed and his right cheek twitched a bit, just a bit, as if he were thinking of great services which had not been rewarded … his own, perhaps … “I can’t think of any greater service, can you? — than saving our country and our race from otherwise certain destruction?”

Nate blinked. He decided not to try to answer what was, obviously, a rhetorical question. He jerked his head back toward the cave.

“What’s in there?” he asked.

“
Things
, Gordon. Creatures. Talking dogs. But useful, Gordon. I can tell you that only a fool destroys useful things merely because he doesn’t like them.”

Somewhere, far down and faraway, a note like that of a great gong sounded and resounded, faint but clear. The three men glanced in its direction, then glanced back. “But … what
are
they?”

Jack Pace muttered an obscenity which was probably intended as a definition as well. Nicholas Flint ignored him. “They’re called Chulpex. I don’t know where the word came from, in its present form; it’s been around a long time, though. I think it’s an approximation of their name for themselves in their own language. They don’t really know how to speak ours, you know — probably you don’t know, it’s true, though — they just seem to. Somehow. That’s one of the things that is going to make them so useful: each one is a ready-made interpreter. And as for their numbers,” here the Major chuckled and for the first time he smiled; he fingered his mustache with one finger. “ — why, Gordon, the swarming masses of Asia aren’t fit to be mentioned in the same breath.”

The day had begun to cool, but it still had quite a way to go before being over. Again and again the great and distant gong sounded its deep and melancholy note. It was announcing, though none of the three there up in the hills knew it, the death of Far-ven-Sul in honored combat against the Great Red Fish. No songs would be made about his fight and daring and death, though, unlike any of those which preceded it. He had struck no clever blows, made no clever maneuvers, no brave strokes. He had just died, floundering, bewildered, suddenly at the end screaming in terror. It was scarcely to be understood, another and stupefying, final item in the mystery of how he had come to be the chosen one at all. For he had seemed so confident! True, it was unknown to any of them where he had trained or where he could have trained; it was not his year or turn thereabouts. They had wondered about it, but all took it for granted that he must have trained
somewhere
… somewhere unknown to any of them.

No … None of them understood. Except, perhaps, the woman Tas-tir-Hella. And she, white-faced and wide-eyed in her room, would tell no one. Only the reports of his death and all of that about it, convinced her that all she knew was neither illusion nor hallucination.

The stranger had promised her the love of Far-ven-Sul if she would bring him to him. He had promised Far-ven-Sul the death of the great merfather if Far-ven-Sul would show him caves which no one else knew of. It did not fit together; it fit together too well; it had happened; it was not to be believed. Vaguely, in the agony of grief, Tas-tir-Hella made up her mind to return at once to her Centrum and ask her Healer to arrange an amnesia for her.

• • •

“Those damn Gooks,” Major Flint said, almost benignly amused, “they think that they are going to outnumber
us
— eh, Jack?”

Jack tossed his head and snickered.

Nate said, “But … won’t it be kind of
crowded
?”

A slight trace of annoyance passed over the major’s face like a small cloud swiftly flying over the face of the sun, was succeeded by the same self-assured expression as before … perhaps even a bit intensified. “Only temporarily. And not even everywhere,” he said.

“There’s a bunch of little creeps there in the cave, you know.” Nate Gordon told him. “As for the two big ones … I don’t know …” He described what had happened.

Pace pursed his lips distastefully. Major Flint gave a little bit of a shrug. “We’ll go in there and see after a while. They are, after all, so different from us that there’s not much we can do but see. As for the one that Jackson had the argument with, why, as near as I can make out, that one was a deserter. So it doesn’t matter about him. And as for the Jackson one, hmm, in a way that one was of much more importance. It was a contact. But contacts should be easy to make, now that we’ve got the Darkglen entrance and all its arms.”

He paused. “I can tell you about that. Of course. I must. For one thing, Gordon, although old Bellamy had considered making you his heir, that was all that he’d done, you know — considered it. There was a draft will drawn up. No more. There’s no telling if he would have ever signed it. Anyway, that wouldn’t have been anything you’d have been content to stick with, I’m sure. The money was all tied up in trusts intended, I suppose, to last forever. The actual income didn’t amount to a hill of beans, comparatively speaking; just enough to maintain the house and keep a man alive in it Nothing that would appeal to any young and normal man. Do you know, I don’t believe he’d even ever had a woman up there!

“But his death was an accident. Too bad, but that’s done with.

“A wasted life. An easy, idle, dry, withered-up, withering kind of a life. Imagine someone dedicating himself to sitting on top of a gold mine, never intending to so much as wash a pan of it for color! Well, that was Bellamy.”

Nate cleared his throat. “He — uh — he wasn’t the only one was he?”

“The only
what
?”

They examined each closely, appraisingly. This time Nate shrugged. “Watcher,” he said.

The great gong sounded once more. Its echoes died away into silence. There were no more sounds from it.

“Why … No. Of course not.”

“But the others are all trying to keep the Chulpex
out.
Your bunch is trying to get them
in.
”

Annoyance, now, did not leave Major Flint’s face. “That is what I have been trying to tell you,” he said. “The others are fulfilling a role which is purely negative. The human race is stumbling down a steep hill. ‘The Bomb!’ My God, Gordon! We won’t need any
bomb
to polish us off — the way inferior and defective genes are being allowed — ‘
allowed
’? —
encouraged
! — to proliferate. Water seeks its own level, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t only water. We’re interfering with that essential process, Gordon. And unless something is done,
now! Quick!
we are all of us going to perish. Nature meant the human race to be
pure,
Gordon. Strong. Clean. Every man was to be capable of fending for himself and his family. The fit survived. The unfit vanished, taking their damaged and damaging qualities from the bloodstream.

“Nature made this nation, I mean
our
nation, Gordon — meant it to rule, made it to rule. It was heading the right way, expanding on all sides … and then …” His voice dropped. “Something went wrong. First there was that fool, Banning. Not an American, of course not, though plenty of Americans were fool enough to follow him — Waksman, Salk, I don’t count them, they were Jews. Insulin. Wonder drugs. Vaccine. Relief. Welfare. Subsidies. And taxes, taxes, taxes. Communism, socialism, democracy, anarchy — flourishing on all sides. Some little nigger nation like Zamboanga or whatever in the Hell its name is, six miles long and two miles wide, comes into independent existence, and immediately it’s got a
vote,
Gordon! A — damned — vote! In that cursed U.N. It has one vote and the United States of America has one vote!

“Well …” His voice sighed away. “That won’t last much longer. Fortunately, things are going to be changed mighty soon. We’ve all of time and space to draw on, you know that, and we are going to
use
all of time and space to set things right. And when they are once set to right here, I don’t mean
here
, damn it! in this gum-ball planet of wherever it is — when things are set to rights in our own country, our own world and time, why, then, Gordon, then …”

Pace must have set up his weapon in a flash, for all Nate saw was the swift movement, then he saw the piece jerk up, jump back as it fired. Automatically, he dived for the shelter of the cliff where it overhung the cave. Flint fired twice. And something came spinning through the air and fell with an infinitely ugly sound on the loose shale beneath their feet. It slid down and forward, crackling, dusty, then came to a stop.

Nate heard Pace say, “There’s more of them — ” Nate looked at the face staring blindly upward. He did not know which of them it was, but he knew it was one of Et-dir-Mor’s grandsons.

He dashed out from his shelter. “Cover me, Major — Jack!” he yelled. “I know the way up behind them!”

He did not look to see if they were doing as he asked, but the fact of his not getting a bullet in his back seemed to say that they were. Or maybe he’d just caught them off guard. He zig-zagged, running low, between rock and tree and rock. He was out of sight now. He still kept low, but there was no more shale underfoot to crackle and disclose his progress, so he curved around and away. And away …

Maybe he would be able to find Et-dir-Mor yet. Maybe not. Or another of his people. Maybe not that, either. At any rate, he had lied when he said that he knew “the way up behind them.” He didn’t know it at all, didn’t even know if there was such a way at all.

He had, after all, never been there. But he had kept his eyes open, wide open, well open, and he was pretty confident that he knew the way to where he had been. He headed there.

Once, twice, three times, after a while, he looked back. Once, and twice, he saw nothing, saw no one. The third time he saw three figures. The two ahead and together would be Flint and Pace. The third, by the odd gait of it, would be the thing which was masquerading as a man named Jackson.

He, Nate, still had a fine, good lead on them. With any kind of luck, he should reach the waterfall well before they did.

• • •

Darius Chauncey sounded off with a long string of prime, choice Union Army oaths, gliding off at the end into Minoan, Mycenaean, Philistine and Phoenician. “Hell Fire!” he said at last, comparatively tamely — and glared at Nate with a measure of resentment. “I knowed there’d be trouble if I let you in here, into my nice, peaceful pretty-place.”

Nice, peaceful, pretty, it certainly was there; the courtyard divided between sunlight and shade, a huge old fig tree in the center of it, vines like pythons crawling up around the sides of the great pillars. The woman who had spread the table with bread and fish and honey and oil and olives and fresh-roasted meat and fruits had seated herself on a stone bench and played softly on a three-stringed instrument. A naked child leaned against her and listened. It occurred to the guest that Darius Chauncey, instead of being the large-scale, freestyle lecher he had given himself out to be, might instead have become quite domesticated. He thought he’d work on those lines to start.

“Well, for one thing …
cum-raid
… I didn’t make the trouble. You take my word for the rest of it, take my word for that. And for another thing …
cum-raid …
how much longer do you think it’s going to go right on being a ‘nice, peaceful pretty-place,’ if those lunatics get away with what they’re after? The fact that they intend to take over my world in a way which would make Vicksburg seem like a temperance picnic, this may not be any hair off
your
balls: granted. It wouldn’t even affect — maybe — your own old world if you ever decided to go back to it.

“But, oh, Brother Chauncey, use your head! It isn’t true that access to any gate in the Maze means access to the whole Maze, no. Because some of the ways are blocked up one way or another. But can’t you just imagine what would happen if the Chulpex succeed in bypassing the way they’ve got to go until now? If they get access to an arm of the Maze which has no Watchers? It would be like a game of checkers, and who’d make the moves and jump the men and sweep the board clean? Right! I don’t have to tell you about them, that they are not human in anything but intelligence, that there are more of them than we could count if we spent our lives at it, that — You
know
this! Isn’t that why you’re a Watcher? Let them get enough of their numbers through, anywhere, and then they can spread out in all directions.