Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (37 page)

Clive knelt to undo the line attached to his ankle. The Frankenstein monster still held the other end, and methodically wound the line into a coil as Clive released it.

The engine lurched, then accelerated more smoothly, sliding effortlessly through the blackness toward the centermost of the spiraling stars. The spiral continued to revolve, but the engine had progressed so far that the outer stars in the constellation were visible more to the sides of the vehicle than above it.

Only the centermost star, its flames dazzlingly bright, lay directly overhead.

"Look, sah!"

Horace Hamilton Smythe's voice broke in on Clive's train of thought, drawing his attention away from the tantalizing stars and back to the interior of the engine compartment. Smythe was pointing at the caged Chaffri.

Something strange had happened to the cage itself. Although its bars and slats had spaces between them, there must have been some force that held the prison inviolate, else the Chaffri could have flowed between the bars and regained its freedom when it was in its fluid state. Twice the Chaffri had been imprisoned in that same makeshift prison, and twice it had raged and scuttered, changing its form and its behavior repeatedly, unable to escape.

But now the prison itself seemed to be filled with water, and the Chaffri, responding to whatever influence had given it the form of a prancing devil, had since assumed a new shape. It had the upper half of a human and the lower half of a great, scaled fish.

Had it read Clive's musings of himself as a trout being reeled in by the Frankenstein monster, and in some exotic manner transformed itself in response to that imagery? But Clive had not been thinking of a hellish demon prior to the Chaffri's earlier transformation…

With a shudder, the engine slowed again, coming very nearly to a complete halt. Again the exterior illumination of the swirling stars was extinguished, and the interior of the compartment was lighted only by the malign glare of the instrument panel.

And the Chaffri had assumed the form of the merman of legend. Fish-tailed, bearded, crowned; armed with a trident, but one of glittering gold, unlike the black weapon of Clive's former foe. The Chaffri had become the miniature of some pagan sea-deity—the Chaldean Oannes or the Philistine Dagon!

And through the murk, Clive could see a world of green currents, waving fronds, great aquatic creatures lazily swimming past the engine. He did not, however, see any mermen other than the miniature one into which the captive Chaffri had transformed itself.

But Neville Folliot must have seen something that Clive did not, for the elder brother uttered a glad cry. Raising his arms as if to embrace a long-lost beloved, he crossed the compartment in rapid strides and began to climb from it.

The monster, moving with surprising agility, seized Neville's leg and attached the line to it, just as he had to Clive's. "Don't let him go," Clive cried—but too late.

Neville Folliot plunged from the car.

Outside, in the sea-green milieu, Neville moved like a man swimming beneath the surface of the ocean. He seemed to be alone, and yet he reached and embraced an invisible lover.

Clive dashed to the window, grasped its sill, and leaned out. He plunged his face and torso into a tropical sea! Ahead of him he could see his brother, but his brother transformed into a merman himself! Neville's lower limbs had joined to form the hindmost section of a great fish, covered with scales, punctuated by graceful fins and terminating in a powerful flipper. He was wholly naked, and when his maneuvering gave Clive a fleeting glimpse of his face it seemed to have altered subtly into the face of a creature of the sea.

It was still Neville, but it was a Neville transformed.

And in Neville's arms was a creature of unsurpassed yet alien beauty. Her hair was long and waved gracefully in the currents. Her skin was white, her torso that of a perfectly formed woman of the most charming and voluptuous form. Her hips swelled gracefully into the hind-section of a great fish.

And even as Clive watched, the two forms embraced, moving sinuously, sensually, through the water.

Shocked, Clive drew back into the engine compartment.

He was perfectly dry. No drop of water adhered to his face or hair, no splash had soaked his garments. He spun and gaped at his companions, then turned back to the window. The scene had reverted to its former state. Neville was there, but he was fully human, swimming by drawing himself forward with his arms and thrusting with his legs. His sword in its scabbard hung from his waist.

Clive gasped, then leaned forward again. Again he felt himself plunge into water, its salt stinging his eyes. His reflex, learned in boyhood swimming lessons, drew shut his mouth and held the water from his nostrils.

He blinked and saw Neville once more as merman.

But this time he was not embracing a female of his kind, but dueling with a male! His sword was changed again into a trident, and through the blue-green waters Clive could see light glinting off the razor-sharp barbs of both combatants' weapons.

Neville struck a blow at his opponent, and Clive saw a greenish fluid flow languidly from the wound.

The merman thrust at Neville, but Neville dodged and plunged his trident into his enemy. The merman's trident flashed past Neville, missing him entirely but severing the line that held him to the engine with a single clean cut.

"Neville!" Clive cried. His mouth filled with brine, and he jerked involuntarily. He was back in the engine with Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe and the Frankenstein monster. "Neville!" he called again, hurling himself toward the window. Outside the engine he could see Neville as a man, turning and struggling in the blue-green fluid.

As Neville revolved, Clive could see his face. Agony distorted his features and a stream, of bubbles rose from his lips. "I must help him! He's drowning!" Clive hurled himself toward the window but in an instant the light of brilliant stars filled the cabin.

The sea was gone.

"My brother! My brother!" Clive leaned from the engine, peering in all directions. Everything was as it had been before the engine's plunge into strange waters, save that the star directly overhead was closer than ever. Its rays bathed the engine, its coruscating colors casting strangely variegated shadows.

"We must go back! Neville will die!"

"Indeed, O Major." Sidi Bombay faced Clive solemnly. "Your brother is lost to you. To us all."

"Smythe, turn back! I command you!"

"I cannot, sah." Horace Smythe turned from the engine's controls. "There's no way I can take us back to the regions we passed through, sah."

"What do you mean, Smythe!"

Sidi Bombay placed himself between Clive Folliot and Horace Smythe. "He means, O Major, that we have passed through regions of the psyche. Hades, Poseidonis… there are many others. There is the icy wasteland populated by giant man-eating worms. There is the desert of storms. There is the Lake of Tantalus. There are Hells of every variety."

"Then let us return to that watery hell and rescue Neville!"

"It cannot be done, O Major. They are not places, nor can this engine bring you to them."

"You mean they are not real? But I experienced them—and this engine
did
bring us to them!"

"They are very real, O Major, but it was not the engine that brought us to them. It was the souls of the Folliots."

"Would I have truly died in the fiery Hell I visited? Can Neville still live in the watery one?"

"Folliots are tested, O Major, as other men and women are not. You passed your test, and are here with us still. Your brother, I regret, failed his."

"And died?" Clive looked up at Sidi Bombay with grief-filled eyes.

"Your friend du Maurier has taught you how little death means, Clive Folliot."

Clive balled his fist and struck it against his own thigh, a feeble release for the emotion he felt.

In his grinding, inhuman voice, the Frankenstein monster intoned, "Perhaps it was Neville Folliot who passed the test, little Clive—and you who failed."

Clive seized the tattered lapels of the monster's ill-fitting jacket and pulled himself to his fullest height. He still had to peer up into the monster's face. He attempted to read the expression that he saw in that corpselike visage, in the monster's great dark eyes. In their depths he saw only the tomb.

After a moment he released his grip on the black cloth and slumped back from the monster. "Perhaps you are right," he whispered. The words were bitter in his mouth.

With barely a whisper of metal on vegetation, the engine slid to a halt on the centermost sun of the spiral. Clive blinked. What had happened? The moment before, he had been conversing with Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe and the Frankenstein monster. The engine had been thrusting itself through the blackness toward the brilliant star.

And now, as if time had slipped a gear, the engine simply landed.

Clive said, "Sergeant Smythe?"

But before Smythe answered, the engine itself was gone. The metal shell, the power-plant, the glowing control panel, the chests of tools and equipment… were gone.

The miniature prison holding the captive Chaffri seemed to fade like mist dissolving in sunlight. The Chaffri itself hopped up and down, changing its appearance by the moment. It was an arachnoid alien like Shriek… a shape-changing cyborg like Chang Guafe… a creature of cold beauty like the Lady 'Nrrc'kth… a Japanese Imperial Marine… a canine-descended dwarf like Finnbogg…

At the sight of the last, Clive was overcome by emotion. Of all his companions in his incredible trek, his perilous adventure—of all his fellows in peril and wonder—there was none more faithful than the loving, humorous, courageous doglike creature. Watching the chameleonic Chaffri cavort like a miniature Finnbogg, Clive could hear the gruff voice roaring out "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,"

"I Pagliacco,"

"The Little Brown Church,"

"Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground,"

"Babylon Is Falling."

With a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye, Clive looked at his companions.

The Frankenstein monster slowly faded from sight, followed by Horace Hamilton Smythe and finally by Sidi Bombay. Even as the Indian disappeared, Clive thought that he perceived a smile on Sidi Bombay's face. A smile of understanding and acceptance.

Clive called their names, ran to the places where each of them had stood. There was no sign of their presence. He tried to reach them by the same psychic means that had brought him in touch with George du Maurier so many times, and with his unborn brother Esmond so few.

There was nothing.

Not the suggestion of an echo of a whisper.

Nothing.

Clive raised his face to survey his new surroundings.

 

He had expected the surface of a star to be fiery hot. Though the stars appeared as tiny points of light, twinkling icy crystals, when seen from afar, still Clive had studied enough of natural philosophy to know that each distant star was a sun like the Earth's. A huge ball of burning, glowing gas. But this was not the case.

He found himself standing knee-deep in a mist that flowed to the random influence of unseen breezes; It was almost like being once more in the Sudd, the great Equatorian swamp through which he had traveled so long ago. There, with Horace Hamilton Smythe and Sidi Bombay, he had entered a gemlike boulder the size of a house, and found himself embarked upon his adventure in the Dungeon.

Now, although his boots remained dry and the footing they afforded seemed solid, the prospect was that of a mist-ridden bog.

Dead-gray trees lifted their boles and their skeletal, reaching limbs into the gray air. The smell was stale, like that of a centuries-desiccated tomb rather than a damp swamp. There was a remote sound suggestive of trickling water, but no apparent source.

If this was truly a star, then light should emanate from it, and in fact such was the case. A subtle glow was diffused through the drifting mist, a glow which appeared to come from the solid surface beneath the mist rather than from the vapor itself.

The sky was a darker gray, punctuated by the light of the other stars of the familiar spiral.

A low moaning startled Clive Folliot. He peered around in search of its source until he realized that it was merely the soft wind passing through the naked branches of the trees around him.

He tried calling the names of his erstwhile companions, but received in reply only faint echoes of his own voice, muffled by the mist that rose around him.

Should I walk, or should I remain here
? he pondered. There was no apparent advantage to any one location as against another. The place in which he found himself might be as good—or as bad—as any to which he could walk.

But he decided that if he was to meet his fate in this strangely desolated locale, he would rather do so by traveling to meet that fate than by waiting passively for it to come to him.

There was no way of telling north from south, east from west. But he still did not wish to travelin circles, so he sighted on two trees and began walking from one to the other. Before reaching the second tree, he aligned himself with a third so as to maintain a straight line of progress. In this manner he traversed from tree to tree, moving steadily toward a goal unknown.

When he started walking, the land had seemed flat, although beneath the mist it was hard to tell unless he happened to step into a hole or inadvertently to kick a rise of earth. But now rises and dips in the landscape became more pronounced.

In some pockets, mist had accumulated to heights greater than Clive's. In other places, where the land rose, peaks erupted above the level of the mist.

The first pocket through which he walked contained an accumulation of mist far taller than Clive. As his chin dropped beneath the surface he gasped and clamped his mouth shut like a bather striding away from a sloping beach. He found that he could breathe the mist, and that he could see through it for a short distance. When he breathed it he found that it had a distinct flavor, not unpleasant, but one suggestive of untold antiquity.