Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (7 page)

This was no Roman orgy, nor Red Indian pow-wow, no Himalayan mountain peak nor Mississippi riverboat nor Turkish seraglio. Nor was it a world of exotic landscapes and alien habitants, for Clive knew now that the Earth was only one of a huge, perhaps infinite, number of habitable and inhabited planets.

The room was lined with dark panels, perhaps of dark-stained beechwood or even darker mahogany. The ceiling was a high one, almost lost in shadow, although he could fell that curlicues and pediments served as decoration. Tall windows reached from near the floor to very near the ceiling, but so little light penetrated them, thanks to the heavy drapes with which they were covered, that Clive could not tell whether it was daytime or night beyond the tightly sealed glass.

The room was lined with crammed bookcases. Near the shrouded window stood a massive desk of wood so dark it appeared black. The drawers were mounted with well-polished brasswork. The top of the desk was covered with sheets of paper, most of them written upon in a neat, careful hand, others bearing skillfully executed sketches. Several pens lay scattered on the documents.

The room's only illumination was provided by an oil-lamp, its wick turned low so that the golden flame cast tall, flickering shadows where it was not turned back, as by the metalwork on the heavy desk, in the form of fiery reflections.

Clive turned from the desk. Against the opposite wall, beneath a large dark canvas mounted in an ornate gilt frame, stood a huge four-poster bed. What a difference from the sleeping accommodations Clive had utilized since reaching the Dungeon: a skimpy cot, a pile of fetid rags, a leafy crotch high in a tree—wherever Fate placed him, and whenever opportunity presented itself for rest, there he rested. There had been a few comfortable beds, as well. Most he had occupied alone. Others… A memory of pale skin, emerald eyes, and exotic, green-tinted hair arose. Clive blinked the recollection away, his eyes stinging with sudden tears. He drew his awareness back to the present.

An elderly figure lay propped in the bed. Thin wisps of gray-white hair surmounted his nearly bald head. Mutton-chop whiskers of the same pale color marked his cheeks, which were themselves of a papery dryness and pallor: This apparition of death lifted a white-gowned arm and pointed a trembling finger at Clive.

"It is he!" The voice was weak and quavered, but the words were clear enough. The thin face turned to one side, and again the old man said, "It is he!"

Clive followed the direction of the oldster's glance. For the first time he became aware of the second figure in the room, a tall, slender woman shrouded in a gown of midnight blackness from neck to shoe. As Clive studied her he realized that her hair, although drawn severely into a bun behind her neck, was lengthy and rich and of a glossy black that shone in the dim lamplight like the brasswork on the desk. Her figure, although slim, was graceful and in other circumstances might even prove voluptuous.

Her dress, he realized, was not all of black, but was trimmed with panels of a purple that approached magenta in shade.

And her face—Seldom had he looked into so compelling, so exotic, and yet so human a face! Perhaps—and he cast his mind back over the innumerable females he had encountered on Earth and in the Dungeon—perhaps only the breathtakingly beautiful, exotic woman Nrrc'kth could be compared to this woman.

"Calm yourself, Mr. du Maurier. I see him. But—
who
is he?" Her voice was cool, smooth, with a contralto deepness that set something to vibrating at the very core of Clive's being.

"It is Clive Folliot—or his son, for he appears twenty years younger than Folliot ought to be!"

"I am Clive Folliot, yes sir. But you have the advantage of me, sir."

"I am your friend du Maurier. George du Maurier. You must know me, Folliot."

Clive took a few hesitant steps across the room. He half-expected freezing brine to drip from his soaked clothing, but he looked down at himself and realized that he was dry. And instead of the tattered rags he had last worn in Chang Guafe's jerry-built iceboat, he was outfitted in a proper uniform of Her Majesty's Fifth Imperial Horse Guards—crimson tunic, glittering brass accoutrements, dark blue trousers trimmed with cloth-of-gold, polished leather boots.

He peered into the old man's face. Yes, it was George du Maurier. But this was a George du Maurier ravaged by the passage of time, and possibly by other factors of which Clive Folliot knew little if anything. The George du Maurier whom Clive had last seen in London was a vigorous man of fifty, a cartoonist of accomplishment, a musician of at least semi-professional attainments, a student of the occult and the esoteric, and an aspiring novelist.

This creature, this sorry specimen that lay propped against pillows, swaddled and warmed like an infant—this could hardly be his friend du Maurier.

"What year did you say it was, du Maurier?"

"It is of our gracious monarch's happy reign the fifty-seventh year, and of Our Lord, the one thousand eight hundred ninety-sixth."

"1896!"

"Did I not tell you that?"

"When?"

"When last we spoke. You seemed to be sailing in a very strange boat, in the company of two even stranger companions."

"Yes," Clive acknowledged almost inaudibly. His head felt light. "Yes, I remember. But I thought it was a hallucination, a fantasy, a delirium."

"It was none of those, Folliot. It was real."

"And is this real?" His gesture encompassed the room and its occupants. "Is this woman real?"

"On my deathbed, my manners desert me, Folliot. Doctor, may I present Major Clive Folliot, of Her Majesty's Fifth Imperial Horse Guards, and one of my oldest and dearest friends. Folliot, may I present Madame Clarissa Mesmer, great-granddaughter of the famed Doctor Anton Mesmer. And a doctor in her own right, I may add."

"Major." She extended her ungloved hand.

"Madame Mesmer." Clive took the hand in his own and bowed over it. Her skin was soft and smooth, cool at the first instant of contact but revealing a warmth within moments that caused Clive to raise his eyes to her own. "Is it Madame, then? You are a married woman?"

She withdrew her hand. "I have taken the title to discourage gossips—and the unwelcome advances of aggressive males." Clive pulled a breath deep into his lungs. There was a detectable—and exciting—scent in the air around Madame Mesmer.

The woman resumed. "Mr. du Maurier has spoken of you often, Major. In fact, it might be said that I stand beside Mr. du Maurier's deathbed at Mr. du Maurier's own behest, but on your account."

She spoke with an indefinable accent. Clive tried to place it—German? Hungarian? He had heard of Anton Mesmer, and held him in low regard. Mesmer had been a German, studying and working for much of his life in Austria. But there were mysteries in his life, periods unknown to history. Where had he spent those years?

"Always the ladies' man, Folliot." The feeble du Maurier managed a papery laugh. "Cat got your tongue?"

"You both speak of deathbeds," Clive blurted. "Is there no hope for your recovery, du Maurier, nothing at all that can be done?"

The old man pushed himself higher against his pillows. Madame Mesmer reached for his age-raddled arm and assisted him. Du Maurier said, "The leeches have had at me, Folliot. I've enriched half of Harley Street by now, and the other half would come panting to my door if I permitted them, each to poke and prescribe and carry away my treasure, but I've had enough of their kind. Enough and more. I am dying, but I have no fear of death. No! Death is the last of life's great mysteries. Greater than finding the sources of the Nile, greater than exploring the center of the atom, greater even than traveling to Mars or Jupiter or the planets of another star. And I am eager to unravel this final mystery."

He lay back against his pillows, catching his breath, gathering his strength.

"I'd have been gone by now, Folliot, but I wanted to see you once more before I go. And Madame Mesmer has helped me to pass the final barrier to perfect psychic communication. Communication—and more—for are you not here, drawn across the leagues of space and the pages of time and the unfathomable twists of dimension? This is my triumph, Folliot!"

The old may lay back against his pillows, his eyes drooping shut, his nearly toothless jaw sagging.

"Is he—has he?" Clive leaned forward to peer beneath the bed-curtains.

"No. He lives yet." Madame Mesmer had laid her fingers on the old man's wrist, then nodded affirmatively as his pulse made itself clear to her. "He has yet some strength. The end is drawing upon him, but it is not yet imminent."

Clive looked around himself, found a chair, and drew it close to du Maurier's bed. To Madame Mesmer he said, "Will you… ?"

She shook her head and walked a short distance away. Clive seated himself. Madame Mesmer had remained sufficiently nearby to continue the conversation.

She looked at Clive, raising her eyebrows inquisitively. "You have really been drawn to this place from far away?"

"From the polar sea, Madame. And I seem to have got an attentive grooming and a complete change of costume into the bargain."

"An interesting epiphenomenon. But of significance—you say that you were drawn here from another year as well."

"I left London in 1868. I have been traveling—to Zanzibar, then to the African mainland at Equatoria, and from there to other places whose locale I cannot even describe."

"And you were gone for how long, Major Folliot?"

"Du Maurier claims, twenty-eight years."

"But you look very young to have been away so long."

"To me it seems a matter of… I cannot be certain, but, I would think, some months. At the most, a very few years. Two or three years. Four at the most."

"Surely not twenty-eight."

"Surely not."

Madame Mesmer clasped her hands in the small of her back and paced the room like a man. After a while she returned to du Maurier's bedside. She bent solicitously to study the man, then rose again. "He is asleep. His strength has a limit. But the end, although it is rushing upon him, is not here yet."

She turned to face Clive.

"I suppose you wonder at my role in this little drama, Major."

"Indeed!"

"You have heard of my illustrious ancestor, perhaps. The great Franz Anton Mesmer."

"I have heard of the great charlatan, Anton Mesmer. Forgive me, madame, for speaking bluntly. But I believe it more honorable to speak truthfully, even at the price of giving offense to one whom I would not wish to offend, than it would be to dissemble."

Color flared in her graceful cheeks, and the flame of the oil lamp seemed to flare briefly in its reflection. Her eyes were very dark. Perhaps, in the dim illumination of the sickroom, the irises had opened, creating a darker appearance than would normally have been the case.

"My ancestor, Major, was pilloried by the envious and the ignorant. But his theories of animal magnetism and his experiments in its control—in what has come to be known as
Mesmerism
—have never been disputed. Not once. On the contrary, experimenters on every continent have duplicated Anton Mesmer's work, and without exception their results have sustained his beliefs. The time will come when he is recognized as one of the truly great figures of human history!"

"I do not wish to quarrel, Madame. Perhaps you will kindly come to your point."

"My point, Major, is that the discrepancy in time as experienced by Mr. du Maurier and by yourself is subject to several explanations. One is that you did, indeed, live only a few years while Mr. du Maurier lived for twenty-eight. This other reality which you experienced, this…
Dungeon
, may exist in lockstep with the Earth. In that case—"

She had resumed her restless pacing again, her hands clasped, as before, in the small of her back. As she passed between him and the oil lamp, Clive could not but notice the flicker of lamplight upon her graceful bosom. 'He suppressed a sharp intake of breath and concentrated on her words.

"In that case," she repeated, "your 1870, let us say—the
Dungeons
1870—exists side by side with the Earth's 1870. You lived but, let us say, two years. You reached the year 1870, at which point you were snatched up by George du Maurier's psychic force and carried twenty-six years into your future. Your future. Our present. The year 1896."

"A pretty fancy," Clive rejoined. He rose from his chair and stood facing her. "Travel through time. Thus might one journey to observe the building of the pyramids, the parting of the Red Sea, the landing upon Mount Ararat, even the Crucifixion of the Savior—"

"—or one might fly in the opposite direction and observe the slow evolution of our descendants, at least according to the theories of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace. The slowing of the Earth's rotation, the dimming of the sun to a dull red globe." She had picked up Clive's narrative in midstride and continued it without missing a beat.

"But you said there were more explanations than one," Clive said, taking up the thread. He had advanced toward the woman and stood now, facing her, noting that her unusual height, in contrast to his own middling dimensions, brought their faces to a level. The warmth which the lamplight imparted to her olive skin and great black eyes made his pulse roar in his ears.

"Suppose," she said, smiling, "that the rate of time is not absolute and universal. Suppose that the stream of time flows more rapidly in one sector of Creation than in another."

"Absurd." Clive frowned.

"But a stream of water may flow very rapidly in one region, where it rolls down a steep declivity or pours from a cliff. Did you never see the great falls in East Africa?"

"I did, Madame."

"So! And yet that same stream might slow its course where it moves slowly across a plain. It might pause to form a lake. It might even, in case of a tidal estuary, hesitate at the edge of the sea, advancing timidly when the tide flows outward, returning to visit when the tide returns."

"A very pretty set of images, Madame. I congratulate you upon your poetic attainments. But what has this to do with the Dungeon, and with du Maurier and with me?"