Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (32 page)

Leadership was his—must he be burdened next with greatness?

"Have a seat, Major. It's a long journey we're undertaking, and there's no need to stand."

Even as Clive complied with Horace Smythe's suggestion, he closed his eyes and concentrated his mental powers, attempting to renew his contact with George du Maurier. For a fleeting moment he felt strange tendrils of thought and personality. He might be brushing du Maurier's psychic being, or perhaps that of his own unborn brother Esmond—or someone else. How many of his acquaintances were dead? Even the Lady 'Nrrc'kth resided now in that unknown realm that lay beyond the veil of death.

When he felt a brush of icelike cold yet feathery lightness, was his mind brushing against that of the lady of emerald and diamond?

Where, in the bewildering scheme of things, was God?

He felt the car shift beneath him, and opened his eyes. The car lifted from the surface of Novum Araltum, rocking and tilting like a wooden boat pulling away from a pier.

Beneath the car, the asteroid shrank with visible speed, the forests surrounding the aerodrome rapidly swallowing the tiny open patch from which the ship had risen. The few buildings that stood at the edges of the clearing were ..visible momentarily like the houses in a miniature Christmas display, and then they were gone.

Sidi Bombay had taken the controls of the car, and Clive sat watching the Indian. He stood barefoot and nearly naked, clad only in the white turban and breech-clout he had worn when Clive and Horace found him at the inn. His dark skin, old and wizened when first Clive had encountered him in Equatoria and then stripped away and regrown as that of a young man amid the horrors of the Dungeon, glinted like fine onyx in the light of the distant sun and the still more distant stars.

Beside Sidi Bombay stood the wooden carrying case that held the caged and helpless Chaffri. As Clive stared at the creature he let his mind summon up images of the men and women—and other beings!—he had faced in his adventures.

Amazingly, the Chaffri took on the form of each one as Clive thought of him or her. For a moment it was the oily and obsequious Tippu Tib, a slave trader whose enmity Clive had gained in Zanzibar so long ago. Then it became the ruthless and treacherous N'wrbb Crrd'f, the companion and self-proclaimed consort of the lost Lady 'Nrrc'kth—into whose clutches Clive had fallen on the planet Djajj.

Then for a moment Clive's thoughts settled upon the faithful, massive, doglike dwarf Finnbogg, also a former prisoner on Djajj. In that moment the captive Chaffri seemed to turn into Finnbogg. Finnbogg in miniature, Finnbogg reduced from the size of a good-sized pony to that of a housecat, but otherwise a perfect and living Finnbogg.

Sidi Bombay turned his head and looked, startled, at the Chaffri. He reached toward the case carefully, hesitantly.

Finnbogg sprang toward Sidi Bombay's extended fingers. The dwarf carried the half-organic, half-mechanical claw weapon that he had obtained at the battle with the Ren, that terrible battle atop the black, arching bridge on faraway Q'oorna. That claw, plus a set of murderous fangs as menacing as those of the underslung-jawed bulldog, were Finnbogg's armaments.

The Indian snatched his hand back from the Chaffri's cage in the nick of time.

Teeth and claw clashed against the wooden bars that held the Chaffri, and Finnbogg fell back against the floor of its cage, shifting from shape to shape to shape with a speed that defied the eye to follow or the mind to grasp.

"It was our friend Finnbogg," Sidi Bombay gasped.

"It never was, Sidi!" Horace Smythe demurred.

"You are right, Horace Smythe. It was I who saw through the illusions of the Chaffri on Novum Araltum—only to be taken in by this puny creature's flummery. A fool I am. The merest momentary relaxation of one's alertness, of one's mental barriers, and disaster awaits!"

"But it was I who was thinking of Finnbogg," Clive half-apologized. "The creature must have been picking up my thoughts. But I thought that the images we saw of the Chaffri were mere illusions, and that only the one who provided the recollection upon which the illusion was based could see it."

Clive wondered how much time they had to pursue the question of the captive Chaffri—the use to which it might be put, the danger which it might present. "How long to reach our destination, Sidi Bombay?"

The Indian said, "We should reach our goal before long, Clive Folliot. The distance involved is very, very great. Far more of your English miles must be crossed than we three could count among us, but the car can cut across the distances rather than travel them. We will be there when we are only hours older than we were when we left Novum Araltum."

Clive turned from Sidi Bombay and Horace Hamilton Smythe. Outside the car's transparent walls, the darkness of the sky was pierced by the brilliance of uncounted remote stars, each blazing with its own frozen fire.

Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Clive turned to see Horace Hamilton Smythe. "It's a splendid sight, innit, sah?"

"You've been here before, Horace?"

"You were lost in the Dungeon a long time, sah. Sidi Bombay and I—and a good many others who have enlisted in the cause, sah—yes, Major, I've been here before."

Clive shook his head. "Understand, Sergeant Smythe, I was not in the Dungeon for the entire twenty-eight years. Far from it. The space-train that I boarded on Earth's polar region brought me across the years as well as the miles. It brought me and Henry Frankenstein's monster—and where is the monster now, I wish I knew. But you've been to many places, I suppose, Horace. Places unknown to me."

"Yes, sah. But I'm sure the Major has been to as many, and as strange."

"Perhaps, Horace. Perhaps."

Sidi Bombay reached to nudge Horace Smythe. The Indian pointed to an instrument mounted beneath the front window of the car. Smythe peered past Sidi Bombay and grunted his understanding. To Clive Folliot he said, "Best hold on tight, sah. This is the hard part."

Clive had no time to ask for clarification. Sidi Bombay pressed a lever, the ship lurched, and Clive Folliot found himself holding on for dear life.

It was like taking the famous coaster ride at Brighton. The car surged forward. Clive felt as if his intestines had been left behind. The distant stars, fixed though they were, seemed to move toward the car, accelerating by the moment. Their colors blurred and shifted as if every point of light in the firmament had been drenched in freshly shed blood.

The Chaffri behind its wooden bars launched itself into a paroxysm of terror and rage, racing around its cage, changing its form by the moment from beast to insect to indescribable monstrosity, screaming what might have been curses in a language resembling none that Clive Folliot had ever heard.

Then with a final surge and a jolt that produced an almost audible snap, the stars that surrounded the little glass car winked out of existence.

Clive felt as if he were floating, weightless, in the car. He held on to a brass rod, peering through the glass, trying to see what had happened. The car's mad acceleration had ceased, or at least it appeared to have done so. The star-scattered blackness that had surrounded the ship was no longer to be seen. Nothing was to be seen through the glass.

For all that Clive could perceive, the car might have been plunged into a sea of gray, featureless sludge. Above and below, ahead and behind, all were the same.

The Chaffri had collapsed on the bottom of its cage and lay there motionless!—as far as Clive could perceive, lifeless. It had lost all form and had the appearance of a gray mass of undifferentiated protoplasm. As Clive watched, the blob stirred feebly. Apparently, all it could do was quiver.

"Is this all? Sidi Bombay, Horace, is this all?"

"No, Clive Folliot. Now we wait,"

"For what? For how long?"

"Forever, Clive Folliot, and for no time at all."

Clive squinted into the gray nothingness. Forever and for no time at all—what did that mean? He looked at Sidi Bombay, looked at Horace Hamilton Smythe. Were they the vigorous specimens of young middle years with whom he had left Novum Araltum?

For a moment, Sidi Bombay appeared an infant.

For a breath, Horace Smythe appeared a feeble oldster.

Clive blinked.

No, it was Horace who was a child, bald and toothless, and Sidi Bombay who was an ancient, bald and toothless.

Clive raised his hand before his eyes. Was his skin smooth and chubby and unmarked, the hand of a baby? Was it papery dry and bloodless, the age-marked skin of a gaffer?

He blinked.

Outside the car the gray sludge was receding, organizing itself into a coherent form.

The grayness was flattening, hardening into a discernible surface. It extended in all directions, lying far beneath the car. Above the glass panes was blackness again, but this was not the star-sprinkled blackness that Clive Folliot had seen when the car was speeding away from Novum Araltum in vain hope of overtaking the Muntor Eshverud's Chaffri ship. This was an absolute and unbroken blackness, a blackness that might only be imagined by a collier trapped deep beneath the surface of the deepest coal pit in Wales.

Then slowly, so slowly and insidiously that Clive could not be certain of the moment it was first visible to him, there appeared high overhead the swirling, spinning, mesmeric pattern that he had seen so often before. The spiral of stars!

Clive reached to grasp Horace Hamilton Smythe's sleeve.

"I see it, sah. No need to ask me if I do, Major."

"But what does it mean, Horace? We saw it in Equatoria, it was blazoned on the grip of that revolver you once carried, I saw it again at Earth's polar ice cap!"

From beyond Horace Smythe, Sidi Bombay said, "It is the Sign of the Ordolite, Clive Folliot. It is the home of the Gennine."

"Then it is our goal! Our goal at last!"

"It is indeed."

"Can the car carry us there?"

"It can, Clive Folliot."

"Then take us there, Sidi Bombay! Take us there, and our long struggle shall end in triumph at last!"

Clive caught Sidi Bombay and Horace Smythe exchanging glances again, but before he could demand an explanation, the world went spinning.

Clive's ears were smitten by a horrendous crash. Shards' of shattered glass flew in every direction. Clive's clothing was shredded and his skin pierced or slashed in a hundred places. It was a miracle that neither he nor either of his companions was mortally wounded.

The car was spinning insanely, the gray surface and the black sky with its spiraling stars whirling vertiginously, first the plain above and the sky beneath the car, then the other way about.

Clive clutched at a metal bar but it came loose in his hand. As the car went end over end he tumbled with limbs akimbo. He felt himself collide with the bare flesh that must belong to Sidi Bombay. Metal rods and clumps of wooden furnishing and cloth upholstery torn loose by the impact tumbled and bounced crazily.

There was a shriek of triumph and Clive turned to see that the wooden cage that had held the Chaffri prisoner had been shattered, squashed flat by a piece of flying machinery. The Chaffri itself, reduced to little more than a puddle of grayish mud, formed its protoplasm into a perfect globe. It bounded once from a fragment of broken glass, assumed the form of a horrendous winged reptile, and launched itself from the car, flying through the unknown medium as fast as its flapping wings could carry it.

For a moment the car partially stabilized. Clive could see Sidi Bombay struggling frantically with what remained of the little craft's controls, and the machine responded—in part.

Sidi Bombay was unable to restore the car's level path, much less direct it upward again as he would need to do to reach the spiral of stars. But at least he managed to stop its dizzying tumble and achieve a precarious, wobbling descent toward the gray plain.

Long black lines became visible, dividing the plain into what seemed ah endless pattern of parallel strips. Far beneath the car Clive could see the cause of the disastrous impact: it was the train that he had seen both in Q'oorna and at the Earth's pole—the train that traveled not along a pair of hand-laid tracks but through the labyrinthine maze of time and space.

The train had apparently descended from above the car. Perhaps deliberately, perhaps inadvertently, its engineer had rammed the glass car.

Now the train was descending ahead of the car. Folliot could see that the train was badly damaged, too. Not as badly damaged, to be sure, as was the car. But the crumpled metal and broken glass that could be seen on the train gave evidence that it had not emerged unscathed from its recent encounter.

"It's going to land beneath us," Clive cried out.

"Do you wish me to avoid it, Clive Folliot? I can bring us to rest some distance from it, and there we can make our plans."

Clive took quick assessment of the progress of the train and of their own. It would be less than a minute before they came to rest. "No, Sidi Bombay. We shall have to confront those rascals. We might as well do so at once."

Sidi Bombay cast a glance at Clive, behind his naked shoulder. "As you wish, Clive Folliot. You are our leader."

It was impossible for Clive to determine whether the Indian's speech contained a tincture of irony. He chose to remain silent.

"Best batten down, sah," the faithful Horace Hamilton Smythe reminded him. "This 'un may be a rough landing."

With Sidi Bombay still engaged at the controls, the other men cleared as much of the wreckage and debris as they could from the interior of the car. As he contemplated the remnants of the erstwhile Chaffri cage, Smythe sighed. "We almost had us one that time, di'n we, sah? We surely almost did!"

"Save the wreckage of the cage, Horace," Clive urged.

"But, why, sah?"

"I don't know. It may be useful."

The car bounced from the gray plain, bounded into the air and struck again, slid in a skewing, curving course, and rocked to a halt. Clive peered at the already stationary space-train and calculated the distance between the craft as less than that of a cricket pitch.