Pulp Fiction | The Ghost Riders Affair (July 1966) (6 page)

"Nerve gas," Solo said. "It's what they use on all their victims." He glanced about. "This place is probably under surveillance. For the time being, we better act like the rest of these people."

Illya shook his head.

"I've had enough of being a zombie," he said. "I've got a better idea. Let's get out of here."

Solo laughed suddenly, feeling better. He clapped Illya on the shoulder, nodding.

"I'll buy that, partner," he said.

Illya glanced around one more time, shuddering involuntarily.

"I've seen enough," he said. "Let's travel."

Solo nodded, leading the way between the rows of people crouched in staring silence.

"Here's a pretty big prize," he said across his shoulder to Illya. He paused beside the immobile philanthropist.

"Harrison Howell!" Illya said. "We better take him along."

Solo nodded, then bent closer, checked Howell's eyes, his pulse. "Better not try it. Not now. It's no good; he's under too deep, and I'm out of antidote."

Illya gazed into the unseeing eyes of the billionaire. "Sorry, fellow." He jerked his gaze up. "How do we get out of here? This is as depressing as a visit to my relatives."

Solo grinned. "Right. I've seen more animation at chess tourneys." He gestured across the wide cavern. "They brought me in through that door over there. Let's see if we can open it."

He ran ahead of Illya to the litter on which he'd been borne into this chamber. He drew up, frowning. Both litters were empty. Mabel Finnish was gone.

"What's wrong, Napoleon?" Illya said. "Lost something?"

Solo exhaled. "I hope so."

They drew up, staring helplessly at the single door in the chamber wall—it appeared to be solid rock in solid rock.

"Must be a button or lever somewhere," Solo said.

Illya was already running his hands along the door edges, the framing. He shook his head. "Nothing on our side, I'm afraid."

"But they did open this door from inside when they left me in here. Maybe a foot lever."

Illya stared about the stone floor, the rock wall. He shook his head. "I see nothing." He struck the door with the side of his fist in frustration.

Almost magically the door glided open. Illya's mouth parted in astonishment, but then closed again when he saw the three stout, dun-clad men and the guns in their arms.

Illya sighed, glance at Solo. "I wanted out, but this wasn't exactly the escape plan I had in mind."

FIVE

The armed men prodded Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo ahead of them along the narrow walkways that paralleled all the gleaming tracks through the labyrinth of tunnels.

Trains raced past, crowded with men and material. There was a furious sense of activity everywhere in the brilliantly illumined caverns.

One of the guards jabbed a gun into Illya's back. Illya and Solo paused. The guard did not speak but jerked his head along a smaller, white-tiled corridor.

The atmosphere cooled in this seemingly endless corridor. It was quieter; there was none of the fevered activity of the tunnels.

Finally, they reached a bright green door before which stood two green-clad guards.

The green door slid into the stone wall; the guards stepped back, standing at attention. The dun-clad soldiers ordered Solo and Illya through the door, but did not follow.

The green door closed behind them and they were alone in a green-hued grotto. They saw that this place, like all other chambers, tunnels, caverns and corridors, was lighted by the endless fluorescent tubing, but the softer hue came from the green walls.

Across the far wall was three-foot thick, green tinted glass. Without speaking, Solo and Illya walked toward it. Strong light filtered through the glass from beyond.

They paused, seeing that beyond the glass wall, a rushing river swirled, alive with odd mud-colored fish and marine life.

"Blind," Illya whispered. "They don't even have eyes. We must be miles below ground—"

"Interested in marine life, gentlemen?"

A subdued voice spoke from behind them. They wheeled around in time to see a ten-foot door in a third wall closing. For an instant they glimpsed suites of incomparable luxury, all done in restful hues of pale blue, violet, tan.

Then the doors closed and they concentrated upon their host, a most remarkable looking man.

He was unforgettable.

One saw first that he'd been many years underground, and that the life had altered him, almost faster than he could force himself to adapt.

Clearly, he was almost blind. His eyes appeared monstrous, magnified behind thick lenses in black-rimmed frames. He'd been a big man, but he seemed to have slumped inward and his body had become pear-shaped. His legs were round like watermelons and he moved languidly.

Any movement appeared to exert him beyond endurance, and he breathed loudly with every step, gasping for breath. He wore green coveralls, zippered tightly, and sheep-lined slippers upon feet far too small for his round form.

When he spoke it was with this same gasping effort, a few words, then a fight for breath. But he help himself as erect as possible. Clearly he was a man of consequence, and knew it.

"You must be our leader," Illya said.

The huge man rolled forward slowly, agonizingly, peering at them through near-sighted eyes which gave him the look of a mole.

"I am the master here," he said, voice rasping.

"We're flattered, I'm sure," Solo said. "But to what do we owe your august attention?"

The round man paused a few feet from them. He drew a deep breath, spoke slowly, gaspingly: "You were watched on television, gentlemen, in the chamber—and unless you get ideas which must prove fatal to you, you are being watched at this moment by my men.

"It never occurred to us we weren't," Solo said, bowing slightly.

"You should have thought of this when you were in the chambers, Mr. Solo. We take the people from that chamber, Mr. Solo, and we make good citizens of them, in our own good time. We—would have done as much for you—and Mr. Kuryakin—if we had not monitored your attempt to escape."

"And now you're angry at us," Illya said in irony.

The stout man nodded, gasping as he spoke: "We have learned who you are. I am afraid this means you must die… Too bad, too. When I first glimpsed you, I had hopes of including such fine young men as you are—in my plans for the brilliant new existence I envision for the world."

"Oh?" Illya said. "Sort of your own version of the Great Society?"

"A greater society," said the gasping voice, a note of pride vibrating it.

"I can't be very impressed by what I've seen," Solo said, needling the rotund man.

The round head nodded. "Perhaps this is because you have not seen enough. Isn't a little knowledge always a dangerous thing, Mr. Solo?"

"Maybe," Solo said. "But I don't think you're doing people any favors by turning them into half-blind moles, like the ones I've seen, or the zombies in that chamber over there."

The man waved a stout arm languidly. "Temporary, Mr. Solo. I assure you, it's all only temporary."

"I'm sure of that."

"I detect your sarcasm, sir. But if you could have been allowed to stay here awhile, you would have been impressed—despite yourself."

The rotund man held his breath a moment, then waved his arm toward the lighting tubes. "Look at our lights! We've lighted the core of the earth! Continuous tubing atom-generated power. Have the bungling scientists on the earth's surface accomplished any such miracle? No. But the scientists I brought here were able to do it, because I set them to that one task until it was completed."

Illya stared at him. "Do you really think men will lead better lives in a world like this?"

"Ah, no. We shall return to the earth's surface when we are ready—soon now."

Solo stared at the green-clad mole-round man. Like every power-mad being, he was an egomaniac—whether this was cause or result, Solo had never been able to determine. But it had been true since time began, from Alexander, through Attila, Hitler and every mad creature lusting to control his fellow beings and enslave them.

"Ready to take over, are you?" he said.

The stout man smiled. "At last. We have made alliances with surface-forces—we are ready to strike and nothing can stop us."

"
THRUSH
, no doubt, is your upperworld alliance?" Solo suggested.

The green-clad shoulders lifted slightly. "I don't mind admitting to you that
THRUSH
has aims sympathetic and parallel to our own."

Illya bust out, "Who are you, that you'd believe an international conspiracy like
THRUSH
could mean well for anyone except themselves?"

The round face pulled into a smile. "Perhaps
THRUSH
stands to lose—when other powers on the earth's surface lose.
THRUSH
has been most cooperative. I'm sure they will continue to be, until we no longer have any use for them."

Solo laughed suddenly. "Wonderful. It should be great when the jackals turn on each other."

"I'm afraid you don't understand, Mr. Solo. There will be no jackals—to quote your estimate of
THRUSH
—remaining above ground. That day will come soon. Don't you understand? I have atomic power down here. For every peaceful use—look at the huge stone doors in solid rock walls that glide open with the ease unheard of before.

"Look at our lighting. All atomic-powered. And I have atomic warheads. They are ready for use. No, Mr. Solo, when we strike at the earth-surface cities, only those beings lucky enough to be down here with us will survive. And when the earth's crust is safe for human inhabitance again, we shall rise up there—with the magnificent kind of society the earth should have!"

Solo whispered it. "So you've been choosing your people carefully—people you mean to save for your new existence? People like Harrison Howell?"

"Him among others. A man like Howell will mean a great deal in the new order. And so will the others we have chosen. I must say we have acted cleverly. Some were reported dead—by heart attack, by drowning, by lost planes, accident, lost at sea. We wanted them; we brought them down here, one way or another."

"Who are you?" Illya said again, gazing at the gasping man.

"Haven't you guessed?" the man inquired, breathing heavily. "Who else could have found this world, made it ready?"

"I've guessed," Solo said. "But I can't believe it."

"Ah, you know me, then, Mr. Solo?"

"Leonard Finnish," Solo said, shaking his head. "The UCLA geology professor. But you're not the sort of man the world has been mourning for the past five years."

The doughy, gray face flushed. "Those people! What do they know? They laughed at me five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Another foolish professor, too stupid to come in out of the rain! Well, we shall see now if I was right. I tried to tell them about the world inside the belly of the earth. They wouldn't listen! They laughed!"

Solo sighed. "They should have listened."

Leonard Finnish laughed. He sucked in agonizing breaths. "Yes, Mr. Solo, they should have listened. Oh, they listened as long as I talked only the stupid, elementary geology facts they wanted to hear—the inner crusts of the earth. They were so please when I proved to them the age of the very areas of the earth by the difference in those layers.

"But I was no longer interested in the Basement Complex and its relatively short span of a half-billion years in the making, or the deposits of the Paleozoic Era. There was no long any excitement in fumbling around Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous formations. I knew as long as fifteen years ago that there was an inner world undreamed of by your less imaginative geologists."

"And so you set out to find it," Illya said. "Only—I remember now. You were lost in a geologist expedition, five years ago, in Death Valley."

The face pulling in a doughy smile. "Ah, yes. Death Valley. The key. This was the key! Far below the surface of Death Valley, I found what I have been seeking—one of those incredible, prehistoric river beds, long dry, forgotten for eons, but linked with other huge chasms. I had to follow it. And that's why I disappeared. That's why I am here now, finally, with secrets of the inner earth that will make me master of the world."

"You proved all your theories, Professor?" Solo prodded.

Exhausted from the exertion of talking, the stout man settled into a reclining leather chair, and lay for some moments, breathing from small oxygen flasks.

"We are many billions of years inside the earth's crust, gentlemen. Difficult even for a body that's anxious to adapt, to learn to live in such an alien atmosphere… But to answer your question, Mr. Solo. Yes, I proved all my theories beyond my most frantic dreams. Rib-like valleys and huge river beds, dwarfing anything known on the surface today; unbelievable subterranean freeways to every part of the western hemisphere.

"Perhaps a wall to blown away here, another there; but the links existed, I had only to find them, open them, and then lace them with railings—a few hours from Chicago to New Orleans, from San Francisco across to New York."

"And once you had them—there was only one use for those underground freeways—move fast and secretly, transporting anything you wished, including atomic destruction," Solo said.

Finnish smiled. "You simplify it, but that's the main idea.
THRUSH
was pleased to aid me in recruiting labor through Mexico, nuclear components through Canada, and the best scientific minds. At first we could take trains only car by car, an engine here, another there. But our atomic—powered elevators have made anything possible!"

Finnish swung out his leaden arm to an oblong table beside his chair. He took up one of the dozens of palm-sized rectangles that Illya and Solo now saw were placed on every table in the room—for instant use by a near sighted man.

Finnish pressed the button on the instrument.

At once a door slid open in a wall and a stout-bodied servant appeared there. He entered, bowing before Finnish.

Solo grinned: "Things were never like this at UCLA, eh, Professor?"