Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0) (33 page)

“Early man was awkward by comparison, and ill-formed, too. It needed years of breeding and the desire for beauty before man began to achieve it.”

Johnny stood up again. “You figure to do all you say, you better have at it. You ain't got much time.” He paused, looking around. “Maybe I better come with you. Maybe I better.”

Chapter 35

D
OWN THE MOUNTAINSIDE lay the collapsed ruins of what had been a mighty city, a fortress, or whatever it was. Only a chaotic mass of tumbled stone remained. Fallen columns, broken statues, ruined walls, and cavernous black openings that gaped threateningly on every side. Mike Raglan led the way, threading a path through the tangle, wary always of enemies.

Below them and far off he could see the vast black bulk of the Forbidden.

“Basalt,” Johnny said. “Volcanic rock like you see in lava-flows out west. Shaped and polished like glass. God only knows who built it, but I doubt any human did. No windows, no doors—only that gate and the small door beside it.”

“There might be one where that path ends.”

“Don't count on it.”

“Johnny? If you want in this, get back up that trail somewhere with that Sharps and be ready. When I come, I'll likely come fast.”

“How you goin' to find him? Take an army a month to search out all those passages and rooms, if what we saw back yonder was a map.”

“I've already got an idea.” Mike paused, studying the ruins scattered along the slope before him. He wondered what had destroyed the original structures. The passing of ages had done their work, but there must have been some cataclysm, some frightful disaster that brought doom to all who lived here.

“Do the people of the pueblos never come here?”

“Them? No, they don't. They pay strict mind to their own affairs. If they are curious they surely don't show it. Mostly they won't even talk of this place, but they've not seen it, either. There's nothing lives here they want, and those big lizards have killed all that lived here. Now they go afield to hunt theirselves.”

“Did you say you've killed them?”

“Time or two. They don't die easy, Raglan. They surely don't. You fight shy of them.”

Mike eased his pack on his shoulders, shifting the straps. They walked on, and Johnny explained what he had learned about what lay below, with occasional references to Kawasi's people. “Like they lived on two islands, miles apart. There's no trading going on, no traffic back and forth. Folks down below there refuse to admit there's anybody around but themselves, whilst Kawasi's people just tend to their knitting. There have been a few clashes in the past, but The Hand never lets his people know about them, and the folks on our side usually come out losers, although The Hand has never made a direct attack on the settlements. Always on small parties out cutting timber.”

From atop the pack Mike took the folded robe Tazzoc had given him and donned it; then he switched his rubber-soled shoes for moccasins like Tazzoc's. Several times during their walk he had paused to pick up bits of stone. Some he discarded, but he had been alert for what he wanted.

He found it at last, an outcropping of white chalk. At the base of the cliff he picked up a dozen fragments and put them in his pockets. Johnny watched but offered no comment.

“When I was a youngster, schools taught us mighty little, but the times were such a man just had to learn to think. There was nobody we could call on, so we just naturally solved our own problems our own way. When a different set of circumstances showed up, we just figured out how to cope. My folks made most everything they used with materials out of the woods or from hunting.

“These folks who came back over from our side, they made out. They fitted themselves into the world they found, and learned more all the time.

“If you get the idea they are like us, you'll be wrong. They are different an' they think different. Folks back to home used to talk about ‘human nature.' Ain't no such thing. What they called human nature was the way they'd been taught, and they figured everybody had the same feelin's, same reactions. Well, it ain't so. Injuns had been raised different from us an' they reacted different. Over here, folks are different.

“You take them down there, for example. I think they all hate one another. Everyone seems to be secretly tryin' to figure ways to outwit his neighbor or even his brother. Lord knows there's meanness enough in our world, but to these people meanness is a way of life.

“Not Kawasi's folks. Different as day an' night. But those down yonder—don't you trust anybody. You may think this Tazzoc is on your side. Don't you believe it. He's on his own side an' nobody else's.”

“He wants to save his Archives. He wants them to be used.”

“Maybe. I think prob'ly he does, but that won't change him none. If he can do you in, he'll do it. He will do it even if it hurts him. I seen it happen.”

What was that Erik had said? To trust nobody? Did he know, then? Had he already discovered or perceived what people he was dealing with?

“How could such a people exist?”

“You call that existence? They are dying of their own hatred, killing themselves off with their own poison.”

Johnny stopped behind a shoulder of rock where the dim trail took a sharp turn to skirt the valley below. From here the streets and alleys were plainly seen. Only a few people moved about. There seemed to be no wheeled transportation within view.

“Kawasi's folks now, they're
different
. Different from us, too. Started as a farming people and kept to it. They spend a lot of time selectin' seed. More'n we do. They see things in seed I never saw an' they discard all they don't want.

“They've learned how to use water. We waste most of the water we use on plants in the field, or did in my time. They use more plants than we do. Lots of stuff we pulled up as weeds when I was a youngster, they cultivate. All up an' down these canyons and on the mesa tops as well—they've used every bit of space. Miles of the canyon walls have been terraced for crops, an' some of them you can't even see how they got to them to plant.

“Here I am, talkin' up a storm when you got other things to think about. Trouble is, I've had nobody to talk to in a long time. I learned a bit of Kawasi's lingo but not enough.

“You be careful down there, d'you hear? I'll be yonder with my Big Fifty and ready to use it if you get out o' there.”

“I'll get out.”

Mike Raglan adjusted the turban and, without a glance backward, started down the path behind the brush. Right below was a place where he could walk into one of the narrower streets that would take him toward the Forbidden.

His heart was pounding and a feeling of uneasiness crept over him. He was a damned fool. He should go back up there and find a way out and get out. He was a fool to go into that maze, where every other door might be a trap.

The streets were empty. If anyone observed him, he did not see them. He walked steadily, adopting the gait of Tazzoc as well as he could. At the end of the street the enormous walls of the Forbidden loomed massive and black. Again his hand touched his pistol. If he went out, he would go fighting.

From long practice his was a photographic mind. He had begun when an apprentice magician in his boyhood, memorizing cards and where they fell, and he had used every device for improving his memory. Before him now was that map, and the inner rooms of the Forbidden were a maze through which he must find a way.

Were they watching him? Had he been betrayed? Before him loomed the giant wall, soaring high, then sloping back into a rounded roof. A massive gate to his left, and beside it the smaller door. He walked up to it and put his hand on the latch.

As he touched it he felt a chill. He was still a free man. He need go no farther. He could turn around and walk back and lie to them. He could say the door was locked and that he dare not demand its opening. He could say…

He would not, and he would not lie. He had come this far and he would go on, to whatever lay ahead. After all, he had never expected to live forever.

He glanced to his right. Dimly, he thought he could see the path Johnny would be watching. It led down through some wild brush and then faintly along the mountainside among the rocks. That was the way he would go if he had to escape. Not through the town, which would be a trap, but along that path.

He lifted the latch and stepped in, closing the door behind him. He was in a wide, stone-paved court, empty but for two of the Varanel who stood together some hundred and fifty feet away, near another wall. They were talking together, paying no attention to him.

Ahead of him he could see a dozen doors, and to the extreme left a narrow passage leading along one side of the main building. It was the way Tazzoc had said he should come.

Holding himself to a slow, methodical walk, he started for that place, but watched the Varanel from the corners of his eyes. They were still deep in conversation.

He walked on. It was there, not sixty feet away. He counted his steps, mouth dry. He was scared. Apprehensive, at least. Now they had stopped talking and both were looking at him.

Watching him? No, just looking—probably so used to that robe that they scarcely saw it. He was a part of the surroundings, and he must act accordingly. The slightest wrong move and he was finished.

How could he find Erik? Capture somebody and force him to tell him? But who would know? Probably less than a dozen even knew there was a prisoner, and fewer would know where he was held.

One more step and he was past the corner and into the narrow passage. The guards had gone back to talking, and he took that step, then moved from the corner into the deeper shadow of the black wall.

He was in an arcade, a row of slender pillars on his left, a blank black wall on his right. His footsteps made faint sounds as he walked. There were doors on his right, a row of them. He ignored them and walked ahead. There was the door to the Hall of the Archives.

Tazzoc had said nobody came there. Or rarely. In the past they had come, but most had forgotten there even were any archives. And they cared less. After all, they might ask themselves, what was there to learn about such a closed society?

He glanced back. No one. He took the last step and reached the faded green door. His hand went out for the latch.

A sound behind him, a word of objection, or so it sounded.

He turned sharply around. It was a small man with thick gray hair and a thin, scrawny neck. The man shook his head, gesturing him away. Then slowly, he spoke, as if feeling for words long unfamiliar. “Do not. They know you come.”

“Thank you, but I must go. A friend is a prisoner.”

The small man furrowed his brow, trying to understand, then shook his head but added, “‘Thank you' is good. Once…long time back, we speak so. No more. Nothing is
thank you
now.”

Raglan wanted him to understand. He held his wrists together as if bound. “My friend is a prisoner within. He must be freed.”

The man seemed to grasp the idea but shook his head. “No. Tohil will have him. He will be thrown upon the Tongue.”

What he meant Raglan could not imagine, yet the old man sounded friendly and he was in no position to doubt. “You speak my language?” he asked.

“I am Camha. When young I was one who learned. The Varanel had seized a man to question, a man from your side, and he gave answers to our talking. It was decided some should learn your speak to cross over. We wished things you possessed and we did not. Five were trained. Then a decision was made. No go. Stay.”

He paused, blinking his eyes slowly. “Amongst us we speak often to keep alive our learning. We have books. We read, and your land is good. We think maybe better than here. Then our books are seized and we are forbidden to speak of your world.” He looked off down the long arcade. “Once to read of great books is to taste what is never forgotten.”

“And do you not have books?”

“Only the word of The Hand. Only what is told us to read.”

“Do you know what this place is? The Hall of Archives?”

“It is forbidden. We who know of it do not speak of it. We only wish to look, to see.”

“Do you know Tazzoc?”

“I know, but do not speak. We walk afar from each other for fear.”

“The Hand has great power.”

Camha bobbed his head. “It is true.”

“We have a saying that power corrupts.”

“It does. Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.”

“You wish to go in with me? To the Hall of Archives?”

Camha shivered. “I have fear. I am an old man. My bones are weak. I have an old wife whom I love and children whom I love, although they ignore me. They fear I am tainted and I am not seen. Yet I love them still. I understand, and forgive.

“To enter there? Ah, if I could go and come! I cannot. My old woman would be alone then, and it is too late for us to be alone. I must forget the love of learning and remember she who has walked beside me this long time.”

Camha looked into Raglan's eyes. “They would destroy that, also, but love is with us still, here and there. The Hand wishes no loyalty but to him. Such rulers begin by demanding a little and end by demanding all.

“Go in, and if you escape, bring something out to share. To share with anybody, but to share. Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.”

He turned away, then stopped again. “You know what is a maze? It is a maze in there, and if the way is not known, you will surely die. It has been said, by someone, that one should keep to the left. I do not know this to be true. That, too, could be a trick, a device to lure one on in confidence, only to betray.