Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (24 page)

Victoria was yet monarch of the island realm and its far-flung empire. England was secure, her people prosperous and happy, and quite unworried about Chaffri or Ren or Gennine, traitors menacing her from within and invaders threatening her from without. England was powerful and serene.

Only those few who knew the secrets of the Dungeon knew how fragile was that power, how deceptive that serenity.

It would be easy for Clive Folliot to part with Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. He could announce himself to British society as the long-lost African explorer, returned at last to his motherland. He would have to find a way to appear older than he did now, so that the discrepancy between his physical condition and his putative age might not arouse embarrassing questions. If the problems of reemergence grew too great, he could emigrate to Canada or Australia or some other of Her Majesty's distant possessions, and make a new life for himself.

But he would know all the while that England was in peril. Not merely England, but all of the Empire—all of the Earth—and even more! At any hour, at any moment, some agent of the Dungeon might strike. No—he could not escape his responsibility. He could not escape his opportunity.

"What lies behind all of our experiences in the Dungeon?" he asked his companions. And without waiting for a reply, he answered his own question: "The spiral of stars!"

Horace Smythe nodded. "You're right on that score, sah!"

"And if we were to travel to the heart of the spiral of stars—what do you think we would find there?"

"I don't know, sah," Smythe replied.

"It has never been done, Clive Folliot," Sidi Bombay added.

"I am not surprised to hear that," Clive said. "We have spent our energies in combat with henchmen. Divide and rule, that has been the policy of the enemy. And he has succeeded. He has set us at each other's throats, fighting, killing, imprisoning, and torturing one another. Every act of cruelty has created enmity and hatred and a desire for revenge. So it has ever been. Hittites against Egyptians, Hebrews against Philistines, Romans against Christians. The Spanish against the Incas—ah, there was one of the noblest of Man's endeavors, set upon, betrayed, and destroyed by greedy despoilers acting in the name of God! How many sins have been committed in the name of God!"

Clive shook his head. "Roundheads against Royalists here in England, the Union against the Confederacy in America. Wellington against Napoleon in our parents' day, Hannibal against Scipio in our ancestors', and doubtless there will be war, war, war in our descendants' day as well."

"So it has always been, Major. Ever since Cain slew Abel!"

"But why, Sergeant,
why
?"

"It's human nature, sah. Warfare and killing—it fits in with Mr. Darwin's theories of evolution. When nations battle, the strong and the clever survive. The weak and the stupid perish. It's cruel, sah, that I will admit, but it strengthens and purifies the breed."

"I cannot agree," Sidi Bombay interrupted.

"But I've seen you fight, Sidi! At my side, and at the risk of your own life for the savin' of mine! I'm grateful as an Englishman can be, Sidi, but your actions go against your words."

"I have fought when it was needful, my friend Horace, but such has not been my choice. And as for the notion that the weak and the stupid perish while the strong and the clever survive…" The Indian shook his head sadly.

"Well, what d'yer mean, Sidi?"

"Who goes to war, friend Horace. Betwixt two brothers—I make no reference to yourself and Neville Folliot, friend Clive—if one is powerful, courageous, active, whilst his sibling is a weakling and a coward, I ask you, Horace, which will go to war? Which is the more likely to die?"

"Well—but—but—" Smythe sputtered.

"The courageous brother will go to war, and in all likelihood he will lose his life. While the cowardly brother, remaining at home, will survive and marry and father children. Thus, according to your famous Monk Mendel and your Mr. Darwin as well, the race will grow weak and cowardly as the strong and the courageous are weeded out. Not the other way around, Horace. Oh, no, not the other way around."

Clive nodded in agreement. "What you suggest then, Sidi Bombay, is that war does not strengthen and purify the species, but serves rather to weaken and degrade it."

"Precisely, friend Clive."

"I won't quarrel," Horace Hamilton Smythe said. "You're a devilishly clever fellow, Sidi. Sometimes I think you missed your calling—you should have been a barrister!"

"Oh, no! As Dick the butcher said in your great Shakespeare's play, 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.' No, a barrister I would not be, Horace."

"We digress!" Clive broke in. The others acted as if they were ashamed of themselves. "Intellectual discourse. Mr. Darwin, Monk Mendel, Shakespeare—all have their place, but I fear that London life has made you both soft and passive. You intellectualize, quarreling like a pair of Hebrews over their Talmud, when you should act!"

Horace, stung, returned, "An' what has it done for you, sah?"

"I have not lived a London life, my friends. Not these past years. It is life in the Dungeon that has shaped me. That has made me hard, that has turned me, all against my will and my innate nature, into a man of action!"

He pounded fist into palm, stalking angrily.

"It is the Gennine who stand behind the Chaffri and the Ren alike. It is the Gennine, from all that we have been able to learn, who created the Dungeon. It is the Gennine, acting through Chaffri and Ren and doubtless through other forces and agents down through the ages, on the Earth and on Djajj and on the worlds of Chang Guafe and Finnbogg and Shriek and on what other worlds we know not and about which we can hardly even guess, who have fostered suffering and conquest and war."

He stood with his back to the others, gathering his thoughts. When he was ready, he turned once more to face them both.

"It is the Gennine who are responsible for the death of the Lady 'Nrrc'kth, who have worked unspeakable changes upon my brother and father, who have done I know not what to my own dearest great-great-granddaughter Annabelle."

Horace Hamilton Smythe and Sidi Bombay looked at each other. They exchanged low, grumbling words.

"It is the Gennine whom we must confront, my friends." Clive spoke with passion. "And their home, I believe, lies at the center of the spiraling stars. Somehow we must get there. If we must walk, Horace, Sidi, we will get there!"

 

"We can get there, Major, sah," Sergeant Smythe said. "And we won't have ter walk, neither."

"How, Sergeant?"

"The Major is familiar with the space-train, I know, sah."

"All too familiar. The monster created by Dr. Frankenstein is still aboard it, as far as I know. And we all saw it during its visit to the polar sea."

"Yes, sah, we did indeed. Well, that is as it may be, but there's more than one such train. There's a lot of 'em, connecting this and that point in the universe, sah. They don't just go everywhere, you see, sah. 'Tisn't like walkin' about in a clear field, you see. Even though the train don't use tracks like a steam railway, it's still a lot like one. It can only go on certain paths. There's obstacles and forces, like reefs and currents that stop a ship from goin' just anywhere."

"Yes, I understand, Sergeant Smythe."

"But there's also little cars that can run, well, like dinghies, y'see, Major. Small boats, as it were, that can go where a great ocean liner could never go."

"I believe I traveled in one such when I went to Tewkesbury."

"Like as not yer did, sah. They runs 'em, sometimes, on actual railway tracks. But that's just for convenience, sah. They can go pretty near anywhere. I reckon there's places the little cars can't go, either, but they can go a lot more places than the great trains can!"

"And they can travel through time as well as space?"

"Oh, yes, sah."

"There is a young man in Zurich, but recently arrived there from Pavia in order to attend the technical institute," Sidi Bombay put in. "Little more than a boy, Major, but a great mind already, whose thoughts will someday change the world. This boy believes that time and space are but aspects of the same essence. If we can travel in one, then why can we not travel in the other?"

"I've no quarrel with that—considering that I have come back to an England a quarter-century after leaving it, yet having lived but three or four years whilst away! Have we one of these little cars?"

"Sah—we have!"

They made their way from the hidden room, along a passageway and onto a platform similar to that beneath the saloon where Clive had previously seen Philo B. Goode and—seemingly—Horace Smythe.

"Is this corridor connected to others of its sort?" Clive asked.

"Yes, sah."

"The platform, the tracks where Annabelle and I boarded a car—whence we traveled to Tewkesbury?"

Again, Horace agreed.

"I don't understand, then. The Chaffri, the Ren, the organization that you men represent—"

"The Universal Neighborhood Improvement Association, Major Folliot," Sidi Bombay said.

"They all use the same tracks? The same system of transportation? And yet they are mortal foes?"

"Stranger things have happened, Major Folliot. Enemies who trade in wartime, rivals who conduct business at the same time that they strive for each other's destruction."

"If the Major will just climb aboard, sah." Smythe opened a door for Clive, in the side of a car similar to the one Clive had previously shared with Annabelle Leigh.

"Are we likely to be attacked?" Clive asked.

"Were you before, sah?"

Clive recounted the battle he and Annie had survived en route to Tewkesbury.

"They are everywhere," Sidi Bombay said.

"The Major is quite sure," Smythe queried, "quite sure that the bodies of the soldiers faded from existence? They didn't remain behind, they weren't carried away by their comrades? They dissolved before the Major's eyes?"

"Precisely."

"And the survivors, sah—you say they climbed an invisible stairway and disappeared into the sky?"

"As nearly as their actions can be described, Sergeant Smythe, that is exactly what they did. I can assure you that the sight was an uncanny one—an uncanny one to my eye, even after all the strange events I experienced in the Dungeon!"

"Strange indeed. What do you make of it, Sidi?"

"I know of but one explanation. Ordolite ghosters. Does the Major know of ordolite ghosters?"

"A bit, Sidi Bombay. I learned of them on the eighth level of the Dungeon."

"Then you are aware, Major Folliot, that these ghosters are not precisely
ghosts
in the sense that our Earthly superstitions define ghosts. They are projections, phantom beings. They are simulacra of a sort, and yet not quite living simulacra. They are… material essences."

"So they are."

"Does the Major know the power needed to give ordolite ghosters their being?"

"The blood of a Folliot, willingly given."

"Yes. And which Folliot would willing give his blood to the Chaffri—or the Ren—for the creation of ordolite ghosters?"

"Willingly, Sidi Bombay, I would say that no Folliot would do that. Not even my brother Neville."

"Perhaps the word
willingly
is not precisely correct, Major. If a loved one were threatened, a Folliot or any man might yield voluntarily that which he would never give, under normal circumstances."

"Then you are suggesting that the troopers that Annabelle and I encountered were ordolite ghosters, powered by Folliot blood."

"When the blood is given, the donor dies. This is the way that ordolite machines work, Major. Not some of the blood, but
all
of it must be given. Still, once the donor has died, he may be restored. That is up to the operators—Chaffri or Ren."

"Still," Clive countered, "the secrets of life and death are matters not to be tampered with lightly. Once dead, if the Folliot is restored to life by mechanical means, is he truly alive? Can the divine spark be resummoned once it has departed, or is the Folliot restored merely to the appearance of life? Is he once again a man cast in the image of God, or is he what the inhabitants of the island of Hayti call a
zombie
?" Clive shuddered.

Sidi Bombay lifted his shoulders in a curiously arresting gesture. "Who can say, Clive Folliot? Unless one experiences this strange phenomenon, this death and restoration to life, how can one know? And further, this is the great paradox of the ordolite process. The blood, once given, can be used to power great numbers of ordolite ghosters."

"I supppose, then," Clive said, "the same Folliot might be impelled to yield up his blood and his life time after time. Whole armies of ordolite ghosters could be created."

"So they might, sah," Horace Smythe said. "So they might. And yet, if the sacrificed Folliot were restored as a zombie rather than a true man, might his blood be ruined for this use? Eh, Sidi Bombay?" He smiled, turning to the Indian. "Another nice conundrum for you, ain't it?"

Clive shuddered. He had delayed them long enough with his questioning. He climbed into the car, followed by Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. Sergeant Smythe slid the transparent-paneled door shut. The three men were seated on a cushioned lounge. It was, Clive noted, almost identical to the one in the other car. He wondered if this lounge, too, held a cache of weapons.

Guided by the steady hand of Sidi Bombay, the car slid away from its platform and hissed softly into a black-walled tunnel. Specks of light flashed by, as small as atoms and as brilliant as flares. Illuminated patches moved past them in a blur, so rapidly and so puzzlingly that it was impossible to determine whether they were blobs of luminosity mere inches away or nebular formations of stars millions of miles from Earth.

The car swooped dizzyingly from side to side, and rose and dipped without warning, setting Clive's stomach into gyrations. Clive peered through the glasslike walls of the car, trying to discern features within the tunnel. From time to time it seemed that the track divided, and Clive could see passages leading off in incomprehensible directions.