Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (8 page)

"I was but drawing a simile, Major Folliot." She smiled at him.

"Time is not water, nor is its flow the flow of a stream. There are no time-rapids, time-falls, time-lakes, or time-tides. Your images are affecting, but ultimately they are false. Totally, absolutely false."

He started to raise his hands toward her shoulders, but a glance from her great eyes and a curl to the corner of her mouth dissuaded him. He turned away and stood with his back to her, clasping his elbows in his palms, gazing contemplatively at the wan figure propped against its pillows.

"Leave aside your theories of time. What matters is this. For as long as I traveled through the Dungeon—and its levels and regions, its denizens and its perils are far beyond the power of word to convey or imagination to picture—I attempted to communicate with George du Maurier."

He took the frail, wrinkled hand that lay on the coverlet and held the fingers sadly in his own.

"Many times I thought—I just thought—that I reached him. There was a feeling, a prickling beneath my scalp, a whispering in my mind, that led me to think that he heard my mental message and was sending one of his own in response."

He whirled to face her again.

"But I was never certain of that. What I received in return for my messages was never more than the vaguest of suggestions of contact. Then, mere hours ago—or at least, so it seemed to me—du Maurier spoke quite clearly. Hah!"

He crossed the room to a stone-faced hearth where the makings of a fire had been arranged but never ignited. He looked around for flint and steel, found instead a tall box of long-stemmed sulfur matches, and without obtaining permission of either du Maurier or Madame Mesmer, set the kindling straws alight. Even as he watched, the flame spread from straws to twigs, from twigs to heavier slivers, and thence to the substantial logs that lay upon a heavy iron grate.

"There is in the Dungeon a wondrous thing, a kind of train that moves not on tracks as does a railroad train, but on whatever course it chooses. It runs upon land, upon water, even in the sky. And its cars are not mere coaches filled with seats and travelers. Each coach represents a different period or locale in time or space. Once before I visited this train, and had a surprising experience in a Roman bath. That was long ago and far away from here."

He looked at Clarissa Mesmer, and saw that she was following his words with fascination and eagerness.

"Today I entered that train again, entered a car wondering where I would find myself, in what era and what nation. The last that I would have guessed would have been George du Maurier's private bedchamber!"

He stood with head bowed, studying the polished tips of his boots. "I could leave here, I suppose."

He crossed the room and drew aside the heavy curtain with one hand, peering through the tall window into the London street. It was indeed night—full dark had fallen upon the city, and the street outside, deserted except by a dank-appearing fog, was illuminated only by the points of gaslamps and a few shade-covered windows in other houses, windows that glowed orange behind their translucent shades.

"I could leave here and find my family's country seat, or return to my Guards unit. I could search for my sweetheart, Miss Leighton—although by now, damn it, she would be old enough to be my mother!
Damn
! Pardon me, Madame Mesmer. I could raise an expedition and return to the Sudd, seek out the point of transition to the Dungeon, and attempt to rescue my fellows."

"Or?" Clarissa Mesmer prompted.

"Or?" Clive Folliot echoed.

"Or what? It is clear that you do not intend to leave here. Not through the doorway like an ordinary visitor. No, Major Folliot. Grant me that much, as a judge of human nature. I do not know your intentions, but they are not to walk from this house into the London night. What, then, are they?"

"As yet, Madame," Clive replied, "I do not know."

 

After a while there came a rustling from the bed.

Clive Folliot and Clarissa Mesmer raced to the edge of the four-poster.

"I slept," du Maurier's papery whisper announced. "Each time I close my eyes, I wonder if it will be the last. Do I cross the line that separates life from death? Do I face, at last, the final and greatest of all mysteries? Or do I merely lapse for a time into the realm of dreams, to return after a while and live a bit longer in this material world of ours?"

"You merely slept," Clive Folliot told him. "We are here, old friend. There is nothing you need to fear."

"Fear?" The old man's eyes brightened as he spoke the word. He turned his face and looked at the fire now burning on the hearth. He smiled approvingly. "Of course there is nothing to fear. Death may be many things, but fearsome it is not. Life is fearsome. Life hold threats and anguishes without number, but death is the least fearsome thing there is."

The old man took Clive's hand in his two. "There is nothing to fear beyond the veil—that much I know."

"How did you reach me?" Clive asked. "Did you bring me here, or did I come by some other agency?"

"Give credit to Madame Mesmer," the old man said. "By her methods I was able to concentrate my psychic forces upon reaching you. And, behold, first clear communication, then you are translated from that other time and place—wherever they may be—and here! A marvel, Folliot, a marvel!"

"How much do you know of my adventures in the Dungeon, old friend?"

"Enough. At first, of course, your dispatches reached home. Carstairs was delighted. His rag scored one beat after another. Even your sketches, Folliot, became quite a rage. You'll pardon me if I mention that they're somewhat faulty in technique. But then, you are an amateur, are you not? It would be unfair to demand professional skill of an amateur."

"But those were all sent before we entered the Sudd," Clive demurred. "Once Smythe and Sidi Bombay and I were in the swamp, and once we passed through the heart of ruby to enter the Dungeon, I was able to send back no reports."

"That I realize." The old man hoisted himself higher against the piled pillows. Even though the room had not been cold when Clive arrived, there had been a dank quality to the air. The fire he had lighted on the hearth was doing much to alleviate that condition, and du Maurier seemed to draw strength from the flickering flames and the lighter air.

Du Maurier crooked a skeletal finger at Clarissa Mesmer. "Come closer, my dear. You have provided the means for this joyous reunion. You deserve to participate in it."

The tall woman knelt beside du Maurier's bed. The old man held Clive's hand in one of his, took Clarissa's in the other, then drew them together so the three were linked. Clive felt the energy of the three of them flow together. Clearly, Madame Mesmer felt the same exchange. She shot a glance at Clive and their eyes locked and held. Even George du Maurier, sinking slowly toward his death, was temporarily buoyed by the strength he drew from the others.

Clive turned his face toward du Maurier. "Once we had entered the Dungeon, when I was no longer able to send dispatches… how much of my mental emanation were you able to receive?"

"In a way, Folliot, I was able to receive everything. The mind is a subtle and complex organ. Madame Mesmer's ancestor gave his life to its study, and only began to scratch the surface. When you tried to send me messages, they penetrated the barriers that separate our world from the Dungeon. But you must realize, Folliot—the events that you experienced, compressed into, let us say, two years—these events were spread for me over a span of twenty-eight years."

He released Clive's and Clarissa's hands and dropped his own to the coverlet. "May I have a cup of tea and brandy, please? Will you ring for a servant, Madame Mesmer?"

Clarissa rose to her feet. As she stood over him, Clive detected the scent of her, a subtle essence. It penetrated to his core.

"Let us avoid the presence of servants, Mr. du Maurier. I know my way about your establishment. I shall fetch tea and brandy myself."

She swept from the room.

Du Maurier gestured to Clive, who bent close to the old man's face.

"Be careful of her, Folliot."

Clive drew back, astonished. "She is your personal aide, is she not? You attribute to her wondrous powers."

"Those she has."

"But then—?"

"It is neither her powers nor her works that I suspect. It is her motives. Her intentions."

"What do you know of her?"

"I summoned her from the Continent."

"And she came."

"Ah—but not directly. After arriving from the Continent, Madame Mesmer first paid a visit in the countryside."

The old man dropped his voice to a whisper. Already he had been speaking so softly that Clive had to lean over the bed, but now du Maurier looked fearfully about, assuring himself that no one overheard their conversation. "Before coming to see me," he explained, "she visited Tewkesbury."

"Tewkesbury!"

"Yes."

"But… that is my ancestral home. It was the home of my childhood. It is the Barony of Tewkesbury that my brother, Neville, will inherit if he lives and returns from the Dungeon—and that I will inherit if Neville dies."

"All of that I know, Folliot."

"And in Tewkesbury… what did Madame Mesmer do?"

"I know only that she visited Tewkesbury Manor. That, when there, she saw your father the baron, and—"

"Are you certain?" Clive interrupted. "I thought I saw the baron in the Dungeon, but then it appeared that it was not truly he, but an amazing simulacrum of him."

"Arthur Folliot, Baron Tewkesbury, has not been out of England in all the years you were away. If you saw a man who purported to be him, you were surely dealing with an imposter of some kind."

"Then I must go to Tewkesbury! My father, for all his shortcomings, is yet the holder of the title of baron and is head of our family. He is entitled to a report on the search for his heir." Clive hesitated, struck by another thought.

"But if it is really 1896, du Maurier, the baron is twenty-eight years older than when last I saw him. He will be…"He permitted himself to lapse into silence.

"Yes." Du Maurier smiled. "He will be an old man, like me. Growing old has indeed been somewhat of a burden to me, Folliot. Don't be afraid to say it. Don't be afraid to acknowledge it. I assure you, I vastly prefer growing old to the only alternative I know of."

He waited patiently, smiling his indulgence while Clive unraveled the circuitous logic of his statement.

"Not only is Baron Tewkesbury in residence at Tewkesbury Manor, I have reason to believe that he is being attended by your brother, who arrived recently in company of a missionary priest, a Father O'Hara."

"Father O'Hara!"

The words had barely escaped Clive's lips when the door to du Maurier's chamber swung open and Clarissa Mesmer stepped through.

"Silence," du Maurier whispered to Clive. He pushed himself upright once again and reached toward the woman. "You are too kind, Madame," the old man said.

"I would be of what service as I am able, Mr. du Maurier." She carried an ornate silver tray to the massive desk across the room. On the tray were cups and saucers, a steaming silver pot of tea, and a crystal decanter. As she prepared du Maurier's cup, she said, "Mr. Folliot, may I offer you refreshment?"

Clive declined the offer.

Clarissa Mesmer carried a cup of gold-trimmed china to du Maurier's bed. Whatever else had befallen him in twenty-eight years, Clive thought, George du Maurier had surely prospered in things material.

But his friend and mentor's words had put new worries into Clive's mind. New worries, and a new sense of urgency.

He must return to the Dungeon and see about Annie, Horace, Sidi Bombay, and the rest. But what was it that du Maurier had said about Neville Folliot's being back in England? And Father O'Hara!

Obviously, the transition from the mundane world to the Dungeon was one that could be made in either direction. Clive had known that—or at least suspected it—since his early days on Q'oorna. There he had visited a town that bore an astonishing resemblance to a bucolic English village. And there, in the home of the elderly mayor and his wife, he had seen a wedding portrait that showed not only the happy couple but the officiating clergyman as well.

And that clergyman, also younger by many years but unmistakable nevertheless, was Timothy F. X. O'Hara. The same Father O'Hara whom Clive had encountered in the East African village of Bagomoyo!

To this point, O'Hara was the only individual whom Clive had been certain—or almost certain—to be capable of traveling between the Dungeon and the surface of the Earth. Clive didn't even know where the Dungeon was. For a time he had thought of it as a series of spheres similar to the pre-Copernican notion of spheres surrounding the Earth and carrying upon their transparent surfaces the moon, planets, and distant stars.

Only the Dungeon was a series of spheres that lay
beneath
the surface of the Earth. As one penetrated each, one approached closer and closer to the ultimate center of the Dungeon—which might or might not coexist with the geological center of the Earth.

That was a theory that Clive had entertained. But later experience had caused him to doubt its validity. It was comfortingly graspable to the mundane mind. But, alas, the more Clive experienced of the Dungeon, the less was he able to maintain his belief in that notion.

Q'oorna itself had proven, in due course, to be a planet comparable to the Earth. But it was one that existed on the very edge of being, a rogue world whose rotation brought it to face the vast sea of astral objects known to nineteenth century man for half Q'oorna's diurnal cycle. And for the other half, Q'oorna faced an unplumbable blackness wherein only the enigmatic spiral of stars offered any relief at all.

And if Q'oorna was truly a planet at the edge of all being, then what of the other levels of the Dungeon, worlds of jungle and desert, of rolling sea and granite peak? And what of the ultimate level of the Dungeon, the ninth level? Was it truly the Earth itself? Was the whole terrifying geometry of the Dungeon but a loop that returned after its wild coursings to its own point of origin?