Full Moon (28 page)

What she saw, he could not see. But he could feel the tenseness with which
she set herself against almost irresistible force that he, could not feel.
His jacket sleeve brushed her shoulder.

“Blair, don’t Please don’t! The least touch of clothing stops it!”

Her rapt expression instantly returned.

“Look! Look!”

“Look! Look!—” echoes shouted down the tunnel.

“What do you see?”

“What don’t I see! I can’t tell you! I suppose it’s four dimensions! It’s
the next world! it’s indescribable! When the moon goes beyond the gap?”

“Blair, come with me!” The mere touch of his sleeve on her shoulder
brought her back to a world of three dimensions. She looked into his eyes.
Hers pleaded. “Blair dear, do look! Then we’ll both go, or we’ll both
stay!”

“Go where?”

“Through that! Into eternity! I want you to see it! Then choose. I won’t
go unless you come with me.”

The din was a tremendous tempest of sound —weird and unintelligible
voices filled the chamber: some seemed human, but they used no words that
Blair knew. For a moment he thought he was hearing instead of seeing four
dimensions. Henrietta was in better possession of her senses than he was;
even in that state of emotion sounds did not deceive her for a second. She
spoke excitedly:

“Someone’s coming! Blair, there are only moments left! I won’t go without
you, but look—look! See! Quick, while there’s moon-light!”

Blair seized the electric torch as if it were a pistol and moved his head
to see between the columns.

Wu Tu stood there.

Tragically, in a hurricane of noise, she stumbled, exhausted, toward the
broad end of the chamber. There she stood staring between the columns, with
the Chinese girl behind her. The Chinese girl was picking her front teeth
with finger and thumb: she had evidently used them to worry loose the knots
on Wu Tu’s wrists.

She looked young again with soft, confused light blending and re-blending
on her ivory skin. Her eyes shone in that light. She said one word in Chinese
and walked straight forward. But the Chinese girl stood still and continued
to pick her teeth with her back to the wall.

Henrietta’s whispering voice was lost in din that thundered from the
passage. It exploded. It suggested heavy footsteps magnified and multiplied
by echoes. Chetusingh on the way with assistance—

Blair groped for Henrietta’s frock and threw it over her. Wu Tu’s eyes
seemed fixed on infinity. She stepped straight down into the hollow between
the columns. There she raised her arms, smiled upward through the pouring
light toward the Woman above her. She dropped her sari on the ground,
and—like a bather entering water—touched with her toe the
central, egg-shaped place that looked like pure light. Eyes could not follow
what happened then. She laughed. Instantly, where she had stood there was
nothing. Like a vanished shadow, she was not there. Her laugh survived her.
It reverberated through the chamber until the roar from the passage drowned
it.

Then, before bewilderment had time to slacken its grip on imagination, the
moon’s rim passed beyond the gap on the shoulder o£ Gaglajung. The light
waned as if turned down by someone unseen. Second by second, dim gray
luminescence faded into darkness, soot-black, until Blair could not even see
the outline of Henrietta’s face. But the din grew greater; it was like the
tramp of an invading host in ammunition boots. Henrietta was speaking, but he
could not distinguish what she said.

He was listening for the Chinese girl; she might be on the prowl in the
dark, and he did not want to be murdered. Henrietta leaned on his shoulder to
shout in his ear. Then the din ceased suddenly, as if a lid had shut tight,
although the echoes mumbled away down the tunnel. Stifling heat and darkness
blended into silence that bred terror, until a loud, gruff voice
demanded:

“Blair—where are you?”

“Are you—are you—are you—?” asked the echoes.

Three lights—an electric torch and two lanterns—suddenly shone
in the entrance. They were not reflected by columns and walls as the
moonlight had been. They were merely bright lights in darkness.

“Where are you, Blair?”

He kept the advantage of darkness, gripping his own torch. “Here, with
Henrietta Frensham. Who are you?” he answered.

There was a gruff laugh. The lights came forward. One—a screened
lantern—turned and moved toward the far wall until it framed the
Chinese girl like a cameo. She was still picking her front teeth. Blair
flashed on his own torch then and light met light in glare through which it
was impossible to see. He had an arm around Henrietta, with his back to the
wall. She saw better than he did, because of the angle of light.

“You?” she exclaimed.

Then Blair saw. “You sir?”

“Yes!” said the commissioner. “Where did you suppose I was?” He had a
secret service man beside him—numbered anonymity, who moved like a
shadow. “Where is Wu Tu?”

He was standing on the spot where Wu Tu had vanished.

“Damned if I know,” Blair answered and the echoes multiplied his words
into a roar’ like mocking laughter.

“Tell him!” urged Henrietta. The echoes tossed her words from wall to wall
until the darkness shouted: “Tell him! Tell him!”

The commissioner came closer—spoke in a lower voice: “Where’s
Frensham?”

Blair turned his torch on the heap of clothing. The commissioner stooped
and examined it:

“That all? Dead? Then where’s his body?”

“Damned if I know.” Blair spoke to Henrietta: “He said, in Bombay, you’re
his god-child, so he believes what you say. You tell him!”

“Tell him!” the echoes cannonaded, until they died away in a whisper clown
the tunnel. “Tell him—tell him—”

“Wu Tu went out of the world,” said Henrietta. “You can see her sari; and
here are father’s clothes. They saw into another world and walked straight
in.”

The commissioner said nothing.

She continued: “The ancients, who set the Woman where she stands, went
that way. Blair and I saw it. I saw what Wu Tu saw. Blair didn’t.”

The commissioner stroked his stubbled chin.

“No,” he said. “Blair wouldn’t.” He faced Blair. “Stick to that. You hear
me? We can’t have a tale like this told: India’d be a madhouse.”

“How could one tell? What could one say?” asked Henrietta. “Now you know
why I told nothing.”

“There’s been fighting, one can say that,” the commissioner answered. “I
passed Taron Ling’s, Zaman Ali’s and two other bodies. Chetusingh says all
Zaman Ali’s men are dead. That shuts their mouths. Frensham died by accident;
we’ve found his clothes, so that’s that. Who killed Wu Tu?”

Blair laughed. “You did!”

“You did—you did—!” said the echoes.

“I did—! followed and tried to overtake her. Kill her? What the hell
do you mean?”

“You made a noise like the end of the world,” Blair answered. “It scared
her into the next one. She walked straight ahead into it to escape you!”

“Can she come back? That’s the problem!” The commissioner stroked his chin
again.

“Well, if she does, she’ll wish she hadn’t. She and Frensham are missing.
I shall certify them dead on circumstantial evidence. You and I entered a
cavern and found articles of their clothing. Stick to that. You understand
me? Silence, barring a full report for File FF; you write and initial that;
I’ll sign it. The Bat-Brahmin won’t talk. Who else might?”

He turned his searchlight on the Chinese girl. At the far end of the
chamber, in a pool of lantern light, she smiled serenely with her back to the
wall. She was chewing something. Chetusingh was whispering to her.

Blair felt the pain in his bandaged hand.

“Bite, yes.” he said. “Talk, no. But she’s good with a dagger. Barring
luck, she’d have killed me three times over.”

The commissioner’s face was invisible in the dark, but his grin could be
felt, heard; it was part of his voice: “Think so? She’d have had to answer to
Chetusingh. He owns her. He’d kill her if she killed you. He swears you’re
the only officer he cares to work with, because he knows what you’ll do. He
and that girl between them substituted alcohol for Wu Tu’s special drug. Did
she stick you with it?”

Blair bridled. He spoke abruptly: “Why wasn’t I told? “

“Told—told—told—” the echoes rumbled back and forth. The
commissioner lowered his voice:

“It you’d entirely trusted Chetusingh you’d have shown it and aroused Wu
Tu’s suspicion. Chetusingh agreed with me, there was no way to worm this
secret out of Henrietta but by using you and letting Wu Tu force the issue.
We were hard on your heels.”

The shadowy anonymity, with Wu Tu’s sari on his arm. came and gathered up
Frensham’s effects by the light of the commissioner’s torch. He had left his
lantern in the entrance: With his arms full, he returned toward it.
Chetusingh picked up both lanterns; the Chinese girl followed him. and they
two led the way down the tunnel. The commissioner flashed his light in
Henrietta’s face, then in Blair’s:

“You’re dead beat, both of you. Can you climb to the cave where the
cistern is? I’ve blankets, a spot of whiskey and some grub in a haversack.
Sleep a bit, and then both of you tell me all about it. When I’ve seen this
place by daylight, you, Chetusingh and two more men will get cement and seal
up the wall that leads out of that burned crypt. After that we’ll plug
Ganesha’s image tight to the wall and break the rollers somehow. Then we’ll
see if that gap can be reached from outside.”

“It can’t,” said Henrietta. “I’ve tried. It can’t even be seen.”

“Well, we’ll look. Come along. Lean on me if you’re tired. Blair, this
can’t be told. We’ve got to keep it secret. As soon as you’re rested, you and
Chetusingh go straight for Dur-i-Duran Singh of Nagu Kulu. He knows too much.
If he doesn’t talk, he’ll be trying to get in here. I depend on you to scotch
him. Now let’s hurry.”

“Hurry! Hurry!” said the echoes.

“Come on.”

“Come on! Come on!” They pursued titanic echoes into darkness, toward a
world in which three dimensions make trouble enough.

“Let’s pray—” said the commissioner.

“Let’s pray— let’s pray—”

“We can keep this secret!”

“Secret!— Secret!—”