The Past Through Tomorrow (80 page)

One Saturday morning Zeb stuck his head in my sweat box and said, “Spelling bee. Two o’clock. Bring a towel.”

I looked up from a mound of papers. “I doubt if I can make it,” I answered. “And why a towel?”

But he was gone. Maggie came through my office later to take the weekly consolidated intelligence report in to the Old Man, but I did not attempt to question her, as Maggie was all business during working hours—the perfect office sergeant. I had lunch at my desk, hoping to finish up, but knowing it was impossible. About a quarter of two I went in to get General Huxley’s signature on an item that was to go out that night by hypnoed courier and therefore had to go at once to psycho in order that the courier might be operated. He glanced at it and signed it, then said, “Sergeant Andy tells me you have a date.”

“Sergeant Andrews is mistaken,” I said stiffly. “There are still the weekly reports from Jericho, Nod, and Egypt to be gone over.”

“Place them on my desk and get out. That’s an order. I can’t have you going stale from overwork.”

I did not tell him that he had not even been to lodge himself in more than a month; I got out.

I dropped the message with Colonel Novak and hurried to where we always met near the women’s mess. Maggie was there with the other girl—a blonde named Miriam Booth who was a clerk in Quartermaster’s stores. I knew her by sight but had never spoken to her. They had our picnic lunch and Zeb arrived while I was being introduced. He was carrying, as usual, the portable flood we would use when we picked out a spot and a blanket to sit on and use as a table. “Where’s your towel?” he demanded.

“Were you serious? I forgot it.”

“Run get it. We’ll start off along Appian Way. You can catch up. Come on, kids.”

They started off, which left me with nothing but to do as I was told. After grabbing a towel from my room I dogtrotted until I had them in sight, then slowed to a walk, puffing. Desk work had ruined my wind. They heard me and waited.

We were all dressed alike, with the women in trousers and each with a safety line wrapped around the waist and torch clipped to the belt. I had gotten used to women in men’s clothes, much as I disliked it—and, after all, it is impractical and quite immodest to climb around in caves wearing skirts.

We left the lighted area by taking a turn that appeared to lead into a blind wall; instead it led into a completely concealed but easily negotiated tunnel. Zeb tied our labyrinth string and started paying it out as soon as we left permanent and marked paths, as required by the standing order; Zeb was always careful about things that mattered.

For perhaps a thousand paces we could see blazes and other indications that others had been this way before, such as a place where someone had worked a narrow squeeze wider with a sledge. Then we left the obvious path and turned into a blind wall. Zeb put down the flood and turned it on. “Sling your torches. We climb this one.”

“Where are we going?”

“A place Miriam knows about. Give me a leg up, Johnnie.”

The climb wasn’t much. I got Zeb up all right and the girls could have helped each other up, but we took them up roped, for safety’s sake. We picked up our gear and Miriam led us away, each of us using his torch.

We went down the other side and there was another passage so well hidden that it could have been missed for ten thousand years. We stopped once while Zeb tied on another ball of string. Shortly Miriam said, “Slow up, everybody. I think we’re there.”

Zeb flashed his torch around, then set up the portable flood and switched it on. He whistled. “Whew! This is all right!”

Maggie said softly, “It’s lovely.” Miriam just grinned triumphantly.

I agreed with them all. It was a perfect small domed cavern, perhaps eighty feet wide and much longer. How long, I could not tell, as it curved gently away in a gloom-filled turn. But the feature of the place was a quiet, inky-black pool that filled most of the floor. In front of us was a tiny beach of real sand that might have been laid down a million years ago for all I know.

Our voices echoed pleasantly and a little bit spookily in the chamber, being broken up and distorted by stalactites and curtains hanging from the roof. Zeb walked down to the water’s edge, squatted and tested it with his hand. “Not too cold,” he announced. “Well, the last one in is a proctor’s nark.”

I recognized the old swimming hole call, even though the last time I had heard it, as a boy, it had been “last one in is a dirty pariah.” But here I could not believe it.

Zeb was already unbuttoning his shirt. I stepped up to him quickly and said privately, “Zeb! Mixed bathing? You must be joking?”

“Not a bit of it.” He searched my face. “Why not? What’s the matter with you, boy? Afraid someone will make you do penance? They won’t, you know. That’s all over with.”

“But—”

“But what?”

I could not answer. The only way I could make the words come out would have been in the terms we had been taught in the Church, and I knew that Zeb would laugh at me—in front of the women. Probably they would laugh, too, since they had known and I hadn’t. “But Zeb,” I insisted, “I
can’t
. You didn’t tell me…and I don’t even have a bathing outfit.”

“Neither do I. Didn’t you ever go in raw as a kid—and get paddled for it?” He turned away without waiting for me to answer this enormity and said, “Are you frail vessels waiting on something?”

“Just for you two to finish your debate,” Maggie answered, coming closer. “Zeb, I think Mimi and I will use the other side of that boulder. All right?”

“Okay. But wait a second. No diving, you both understand. And a safety man on the bank at all times—John and I will take turns.”

“Pooh!” said Miriam. “I dove the last time I was here.”

“You weren’t with me, that’s sure. No diving—or I’ll warm your pants where they are tightest.”

She shrugged. “All right, Colonel Crosspatch. Come on, Mag.” They went on past us and around a boulder half as big as a house. Miriam stopped, looked right at me, and waggled a finger. “No peeking, now!” I blushed to my ears.

They disappeared and we heard no more of them, except for giggles. I said hurriedly, “Look. You do as you please—and on your own head be it. But I’m not going in. I’ll sit here on the bank and be safety man.”

“Suit yourself. I was going to match you for first duty, but nobody is twisting your arm. Pay out a line, though, and have it ready for heaving. Not that we’ll need it; both the girls are strong swimmers.”

I said desperately, “Zeb, I’m sure the General would forbid swimming in these underground pools.”

“That’s why we didn’t mention it. ‘Never worry the CO. unnecessarily’—standing orders in Joshua’s Army, circa 1400
B.C.
” He went right on peeling off his clothes.

I don’t know why Miriam warned me not to peek—not that I would!—for when she was undressed she came straight out from behind that boulder, not toward us but toward the water. But the flood light was full on her and she even turned toward us for an instant, then shouted, “Come on, Maggie! Zeb is going to be last if you hurry.”

I did not want to look and I could not take my eyes off her. I had never seen anything remotely resembling the sight she was in my life—and only once a picture, one in the possession of a boy in my parish school and on that occasion I had gotten only a glimpse and then had promptly reported him.

But I could not stop looking, burning with shame as I was.

Zeb beat Maggie into the water—I don’t think she cared. He went into the water quickly, almost breaking his own injunction against diving. Sort of a surface dive I would call it, running into the water and then breaking into a racing start. His powerful crawl was soon overtaking Miriam, who had started to swim toward the far end.

Then Maggie came out from behind the boulder and went into the water. She did not make a major evolution of it, the way Miriam had, but simply walked quickly and with quiet grace into the water. When she was waist deep, she let herself sink forward and struck out in a strong breast stroke, then shifted to a crawl and followed the others, whom I could hear but hardly see in the distance.

Again I could not take my eyes away if my eternal soul had depended on it. What is it about the body of a human woman that makes it the most terribly beautiful sight on earth? Is it, as some claim, simply a necessary instinct to make sure that we comply with God’s will and replenish the earth? Or is it some stranger, more wonderful thing?

I found myself quoting: “How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!

“This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.”

Then I broke off, ashamed, remembering that the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s was a chaste and holy allegory having nothing to do with such things.

I sat down on the sand and tried to compose my soul. After a while I felt better and my heart stopped pounding so hard. When they all came swimming back with Zeb in the lead, racing Miriam, I even managed to throw them a smile. It no longer seemed quite so terrible and as long as they stayed in the water the women were not shockingly exposed. Perhaps evil was truly in the eye of the beholder—in which case the idea was to keep it out of mine.

Zeb called out, “Ready to be relieved?”

I answered firmly, “No. Go ahead and have your fun.”

“Okay.” He turned like a dolphin and started back the other way. Miriam followed him. Maggie came in to where it was shallow, rested her finger tips on the bottom, and held facing me, with just her head and her ivory shoulders out of the inky water, while her waist-length mane of hair floated around her.

“Poor John,” she said softly. “I’ll come out and spell you.”

“Oh, no, really!”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“All right.” She turned, flipped herself over, and started after the others. For one ghostly, magic instant she was partly out of the water.

Maggie came back to my end of the cavern about ten minutes later. “I’m cold,” she said briefly, climbed out and strode quickly to the protection of the boulder. Somehow she was not naked, but merely unclothed, like Mother Eve. There is a difference—Miriam had been naked.

With Maggie out of the water and neither one of us speaking I noticed for the first time that there was no other sound. Now there is nothing so quiet as a cave; anywhere else at all there is noise, but the complete zero decibel which obtains underground if one holds still and says nothing is very different.

The point is that I should have been able to hear Zeb and Miriam swimming. Swimming need not be noisy but it can’t be as quiet as a cave. I sat up suddenly and started forward—then stopped with equal suddenness as I did not want to invade Maggie’s dressing room, which another dozen steps would have accomplished.

But I was really worried and did not know what to do. Throw a line? Where? Peel down and search for them? If necessary. I called out softly, “Maggie!”

“What is it, John?”

“Maggie, I’m worried.”

She came at once from behind the rock. She had already pulled on her trousers, but held her towel so that it covered her from the waist up; I had the impression she had been drying her hair. “Why, John?”

“Keep very quiet and listen.”

She did so. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s just it. We should. I could hear you all swimming even when you were down at the far end, out of my sight. Now there isn’t a sound, not a splash. Do you suppose they possibly could both have hit their heads on the bottom at the same time?”

“Oh. Stop worrying, John. They’re all right.”

“But I
am
worried.”

“They’re just resting, I’m sure. There is another little beach down there, about half as big as this. That’s where they are. I climbed up on it with them, then I came back. I was cold.”

I made up my mind, realizing that I had let my modesty hold me back from my plain duty. “Turn your back. No, go behind the boulder—I want to undress.”

“What? I tell you it’s not necessary.” She did not budge.

I opened my mouth to shout. Before I got it out Maggie had a hand over my mouth, which caused her towel to be disarranged and flustered us both. “Oh, heavens!” she said sharply. “Keep your big mouth shut.” She turned suddenly and flipped the towel; when she turned back she had it about her like a stole, covering her front well enough, I suppose, without the need to hold it.

“John Lyle, come here and sit down. Sit down by me.” She sat on the sand and patted the place by her—and such was the firmness with which she spoke that I did as I was told.

“By me,” she insisted. “Come closer. I don’t want to shout.” I inched gingerly closer until my sleeve brushed her bare arm. “That’s better,” she agreed, keeping her voice low so that it did not resound around the cavern. “Now listen to me. There are two people down there, of their own free will. They are entirely safe—I saw them. And they are both excellent swimmers. The thing for you to do, John Lyle, is to mind your own business and restrain that nasty itch to interfere.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you.” Truthfully, I was afraid I did.

“Oh, goodness me! See here, does Miriam mean anything to you?”

“Why, no, not especially.”

“I should think not, since you haven’t addressed six words to her since we started out. Very well, then—since you have no cause to be jealous, if two people choose to be alone, why should you stick your nose in? Understand me now?”

“Uh, I guess so.”

“Then just be quiet.”

I was quiet. She didn’t move. I was acutely aware of her nakedness—for now she was naked, though covered—and I hoped that she was not aware that I was aware. Besides that I was acutely aware of being almost a participant in—well, I don’t know what. I told myself angrily that I had no right to assume the worst, like a morals proctor.

Presently I said, “Maggie…”

“Yes, John?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Why not, John? Not that it is really needful.”

“Uh, you don’t seem to give a hoot that Zeb is down there, with Miriam—alone.”

“Should I give a hoot?”

Confound the woman! She was deliberately misunderstanding me. “Well…look, somehow I had gotten the impression that you and Zeb—I mean…well, I suppose I sort of expected that you two meant to get married, when you could.”