The Graveyard Game (33 page)

Thanks. I have a zapper too. We get dressed again and sneak out, head straight up Avalon Canyon, and you can look for your secret whatever it is all night if you want. As long as we’re back in our beds by morning when transmission resumes, nobody will ever know we were up there
.

“Yes,” Lewis said aloud. “Let’s do that. Fresh air and exercise, that’s what I need. What a Facilitator you are!”

“Just fulfilling my program,” Joseph said, grinning. He looked at Lewis’s untouched tofu waffle. “You going to finish that?”

“Be my guest,” said Lewis, pushing it across the table to him. “Let’s go as soon as you’ve finished, shall we?”

“Mm,” Joseph agreed, mouth full.

It was a bright and hopeful morning, if a rather silent one. In all the terraced restaurants, trays of breakfast were being sent back by disgruntled merrymakers, to be replaced by trays bearing tomato drinks festooned with celery or chaste bottles of mineral water. Even Laurel and Hardy looked a little green around the gills as Joseph and Lewis passed them, though they tipped their derbies gallantly.

At Sumner Avenue the two real immortals turned right and walked in the direction of the interior, through the residential district with its high narrow Victorian houses, and beyond, where they entered Avalon Canyon Road. Once they had passed through the maze
of screening pepper trees, they got their first clear view of the long valley that ran back into the interior.

It was surprisingly wild-looking. Great sleek mountains faced one another, ignoring the emerald-green golf course that climbed their lower slopes. The road ran up the right-hand side of the valley, between stone walls that blazed with flowering vines, and a double row of palm trees spread vast fanned crowns over most of its length. Looking up at them, Lewis caught his breath. He remembered Edward and Mendoza walking together here, under these enormous palms. These were the trees in his dream.

“Nice golf course,” said Joseph pleasantly.
What’s wrong?

Look at this green valley. Joseph, I think the agricultural station was here. This had to have been Mendoza’s prison
.

You have some psychic hunch about this, huh?

Call it what you like. She was here
.

A hundred and fifty thousand years ago, maybe
.

Lewis exhaled sharply. “Yes, this
is
a nice golf course. Let’s see more of it, shall we?”

They walked on, and the valley was quiet in the sunlight, and the mountains watched them.

Tell me something, Lewis. We didn’t really come here because you had some kind of vision or dream. You turned up some hard evidence about whatever it is we’re looking for, didn’t you?

Yes. What do you think I am, a complete fool?

Lewis, I wish to God I knew what you are
.

Lewis set his chin and marched stubbornly on, so that Joseph had to hurry after him, passing in and out of the shadows cast by the great palms.

In less than an hour they came to the head of the valley, which narrowed gradually beyond the golf course until the road was running up its center, through a green twilight cast by great old mahogany trees that grew down the flanks of the mountains on either side. Here a pair of ornate gateposts rose, supporting between them
a wrought-iron arch bearing the words
THE WILLIAM K. WRIGLEY MEMORIAL GARDEN AND LIBRARY
.

They looked through the arch. There was an open area like an amphitheater, full of sunlight and air, and the paved road gave way to a raked gravel one branching off into neat beds of endemic plants. Looming above the garden, backed into the mountain beyond, was a stone tower seven stories tall, reached by sweeping staircases to the right and left that converged on a terrace at its base.

Joseph and Lewis walked up through the botanical garden, half expecting a familiar figure to rise from her work and look in their direction. Nothing moved but a raven, which swooped down to land on the path and cocked a bright inquisitive eye at them. It did not speak. At the monument they took the left staircase, ascending through figured bronze doors, climbing to the central courtyard with its patterned tile walls, its friezes of pink-and-green stone carved with birds and sea creatures.

It was a tomb fit for a Moorish emperor, not for a chewing gum magnate. His family had thought so too, because they’d had his body removed shortly after his death and reinterred in some sensible little American cemetery on the eastern seaboard. And so the tomb here stood empty, in all its lonely and absurd grandeur, until a certain Kronos Diversified Stock Company offered to excavate the heart of the mountain behind it and put in a library worthy of ancient Alexandria.

This Joseph and Lewis learned from a brass plate set beside the door of the elevator that would have taken them down into the library, had it not been locked. The plate further informed them that actual physical visits to the library were by appointment only, on certain days of the week, to persons with the proper academic credentials.

“Well, that’s a sign of the times, I must say,” remarked Lewis in disappointment.
The Company again. Good lord, there are probably books I acquired for them in there
.

Joseph shrugged. “Who reads anymore?”
It’s very Company, though, isn’t it? Collect a huge mass of something really valuable, put it in an unbelievably safe place where the monkeys can’t get at it, and sit on it. Nice piece of design. Bet it’s safe from electromagnetic pulses and anything else that could happen
.

“What a pity.” Lewis put his hands in his pockets and strolled out into the courtyard, looking down the right-hand staircase. “There appears to be a trailhead over there. Do you suppose we could follow it to the other side of the island?”

They could and did, up a steep switchback grade. It brought them, after an hour’s steady labor, to the top of the coastal ridge. The view was well worth the climb: sea in all directions dotted with white sails, the long valley opening out to their right with the little white town at its end. To their left, wild canyons descended to the windward shore, beyond a fence posted with the sign
NO ADMITTANCE. ENDEMIC SPECIES PRESERVE
.

Somewhere down there
, transmitted Lewis, staring.

You think so?
Joseph pretended to shade his eyes with his hand, scanning intently. He turned this way and that, recording, interpreting, analyzing.
I don’t find anything, Lewis. And that’s good. I’m picking up definite Company signals off at the other end of the island, and some from the library below; but nothing in this quarter. It’s called Silver Canyon on the maps
.

I don’t read any trails going in or out, either
.

You’re sure this is the place?

Joseph, I know it. Standing here, I can almost hear her voice
.

Not as bad as I thought. Just a few square miles of wilderness nobody cares about. No alarms, no security techs. I hope you brought working clothes?

Naturally
.

And you’re not going to die of disappointment if we don’t find anything?

We’ll find something, Joseph
.

Tonight, then
. Joseph yawned and stretched. “Some view, huh? I could use a sandwich right about now. Want to head back down?”

Back in town, the very picture of relaxed vacationers, they spent an enjoyable afternoon idling. They ate lunch at one of the terraced restaurants, and played several games of miniature golf on a course set up as an English-style formal garden complete with maze and marjoram knots. They took several tours, including the noted glass-bottomed boat ride. They dressed formally for an early dinner and went to the Avalon Ballroom to hear swing music played by a Benny Goodman reenactor with his reenactor band. Charlie Chaplin wandered over to their table and attempted a conversation in mime. They tipped him, and he went away.

As they walked back to the Hotel Saint Catherine, Joseph lurched a little on the stair and bumped into Lewis. Lewis felt something slipped into the pocket of his dinner jacket.

That’s the signal killer?

That’s yours. I’ve been playing around with a model Latif designed. It looks like a class ring. Slip it on. When you’re back in your room, go through the whole business of getting undressed, getting into bed, turning off the light, closing your eyes; then activate the ring by turning the bezel mount to the left. It’s good for ten hours. Then get up and put your work clothes on. I’ll meet you in the hall
.

I feel like James Bond
.

Cool, huh?

There was nothing remarkable about two gentlemen in formal dinner dress going to their rooms at ten o’clock in the evening. There was nothing remarkable about their reemergence twenty minutes later, dressed in simple exercise suits of dark-gray cotton fleece and dark running shoes. A certain amount of daily exercise was mandated by law in the twenty-third century, and many people preferred to jog in the cool of the evening.

So nobody noticed the two gentlemen as they pounded dutifully along Casino Way and then Crescent Avenue, or as they turned up Sumner. When they neared Avalon Canyon Road, an observer might have found it curious that they were increasing their speed, inasmuch as they were now going uphill. But all the golfers of the day were long since sprawled in front of entertainment centers with drinks in their hands, so there was no observer. Which was a good thing, because just past the pitch-and-putt greens the two gentlemen, shifting into hyperfunction, accelerated into blurs and vanished up the canyon, on the dark road under the white stars.

Where do we start?

Good question
. Joseph looked down from the spine of the island, regarding the impenetrable dark mass of trees. He switched to infrared, and it lit up for him. Ordering a topographical analysis, he saw the whole landscape behind his eyes, neatly lined and graded. Beside him, Lewis was doing the same thing.

Let’s start with the nearest ridge and work our way along it, scanning downhill as we go
, said Joseph.

Good thinking. We’re looking for caves and electromagnetic anomalies that would suggest old excavation
.

That’s what I thought
.

They jumped the fence and moved out together, silent in the gigantic silence of that night. Not a bird called, the crickets had fallen still, no wind moved in the trees. Even the surf washing the rocks far below made no perceptible sound.

Here’s something
. Lewis transmitted.

Joseph whirled to scan. He found the anomaly and analyzed; moved in a little closer for greater detail.
Old mine adit, probably.

How old is it, do you think?

We’ll see
.

They worked their way down the hill slowly and found the adit, half collapsed and masked by bushes, invisible to mortal eyes even by daylight. Joseph extended his scan, detected the remains of wooden
supports, analyzed the extent of their decay.
I’d have to say 1890s, plus or minus a decade. That doesn’t fit, though, does it?

No. What we’re looking for should be much older. Something prior to 1492
.

You think your mystery is from a pre-Columbian civilization?

It might be
.

Wow. Okay, let’s move on
.

They went back up the hill and continued along its crest. They found evidence of three more adits, all dating from the same era, then traces of grading that might have been a road for pack horses, also from the late nineteenth century. There were a number of spot anomalies where holes had been. The holes might have been dug for buried treasure or camp latrines, or might have been the work of extraordinarily busy ground squirrels. When they came to the end of one ridge, they made their way down and up the side of the next and began again. Two hours went by in this way, yielding no caves and nothing else of interest.

In the third hour they entered a region west of their starting point, where even the ground squirrels had never chosen to burrow. Lewis was silent and withdrawn, and Joseph ran a diagnostic on himself for malfunction. It didn’t seem possible they’d found a place where
nothing
had ever disturbed the soil.

Then, abruptly, it showed up on both their internal screens at once: an anomaly bigger than any they had seen yet, undoubtedly a cave. There was something else, too.

What the hell is that?
Joseph stopped in his tracks.

Is that old aircraft wreckage? And there’s . . . some kind of masking wave. It’s cloaking most of an acre. To hide the wreckage from discovery, or is this one of your bunkers, Joseph?

No
. Joseph was staring hard at the anomaly.
I know where all the bunkers are, and there are none on this island
.

There aren’t?

I can tell you one thing for certain: the masking isn’t being generated by any Company technology. That’s one weird frequency.
There’s a cave there, all right. I don’t know what the wreck is, though. And I’m not picking up any life signs, are you?

No
.

But I think there’s a dead mortal
.

Edward. It must be Edward
. Lewis started for the anomaly at a run.

Joseph stood gaping a moment before he ran after him
Come back here. Are you nuts? Was this what you dragged us up here after? A goddam dead Englishman?

I thought—Nennius implied
—

They skidded to a stop just short of the anomaly. Lewis stared down, white-faced, at the old wreckage: a small Beecraft of the kind that had been popular just before antigravity was patented. Its stubby wings and fuselage had smashed on impact, but the cockpit was intact. A skull grinned through the windshield at Lewis, an ordinary mortal skull, nothing remarkable about its shape.

When did you talk to Nennius?
said Joseph, seizing Lewis by the arm.

Last year. He told me about Edward, he said his disappearance might have been connected with a cave up here
. Lewis had begun to shake.