The Governor stumbled into the aisle and ran. Before the door a coffin
rested on trestles. Tall candles burned at the head and foot. He did
not have to look in to know it was Mattie or that beside her was the
child she had never borne. He fell to his knees and crawled under the
coffin. The trestles lowered; he had to squirm forward flat on his
stomach to get clear of the casket. He got up and through the door,
slamming it behind him.
The lights were bright as before but the people below had all
disappeared. The fountain was dry; dust and lichen mottled the marble
figures. Beneath the railing hung tattered battle-flags, dulled,
tarnished, with great rips and tears. The floor, which he saw had been
paved with great tile slabs, was broken and humped. Pale, sickly weeds
thrust through the cracks. A sickening stench rose to make him gasp and
turn away.
He had been seeking a stairway back to the second floor. He followed
the quadrangle, came upon an unexpected hall between two rooms. At the
end of the hall a square chamber was flooded with brilliance from a
skylight. A legless man, many-chinned, frog-eyed, sat in a wheelchair.
Across his monstrous chest a row of medals glittered. "Come in, come
in," he roared jovially. "Any friend of nobody's a friend of mine."
"Can you tell me--" began the Governor.
"My boy," burst in the legless man, "if you want telling, I'm your
pigeon; if I can't tell you no one can. I've shot cassowaries and
peccarries, hunted dolphin and penguin, searched the seven seas for
albatross and Charlie Ross. Oh the yarns I could spin about sin and tin
and gin, about rounding the Horn in an August morn or lying becalmed
in the horse latitudes with a cargo of bridles and harnesses. I've
whaled off South Georgia, been jailed by Nova Zembla, failed on Easter
Island, entailed in the West Indies. I'm a rip-roarer, a snip-snorter,
a razzle-dazzle hearty-ho."
"You were a seaman?" asked the Governor politely.
"A seaman, v-d man, hard-a-lee man, a demon," sang the sailor. "Blast
and damn me, I've fathered six hundred bastards in all colors--white
don't count, naturally--from Chile to Chihili, from Timbuctoo to
Kalamazoo. Have a drink."
The Governor looked around. On a long bar were ranged dozens of
bottles, most of them empty. He picked up the nearest full one. It was
cold, green, opened, and full of beer. He put it to his lips, tilted
it, realized his throat had been dry, parched. "Thanks," he muttered,
taking it away reluctantly.
"Ah," said the cripple, "you should know the thanks I've had." He
indicated his medals carelessly. "Decorated, cited, saluted, handshook,
kissed on both cheeks. I've been thanked in Java and Ungava, in the
Hebrides and the Celebes, in Tripoli and Trincomalee, in Lombok and
Vladivostock. Have another drink."
"Thanks," repeated Lampley.
"Pleasure," responded the cripple. "Never drink alone, sleep alone, die
alone. You haven't been here before?"
Lampley was puzzled how to answer. "Yes and no," he said at last.
* * * * *
The other nodded approvingly, tossed a ball into the air and caught it.
"Caution. Many a poor sailor's been drowned dead because the captain or
the mate yessed when he should have noed. Yes-and-no's a snug berth in
a landlocked harbor."
"I only meant...."
The man had another ball in the air now. "The meaning of meaning.
Semantics--that's a pun. Think you'll get the nomination?"
"It's touch and go," confessed the Governor. "I'm hoping."
The sailor was juggling three balls. He didn't look at them, just kept
catching and tossing in rhythm. "Touch and go. Skill and chance," he
said.
"That's right," agreed Lampley, drinking again.
"Comfortable?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Always said they should have put steam heat in here."
"But it's quite warm."
"Just wait till it snows. Drifts high as the roof, drifts high as the
trees, drifts high as mountains. Buried in snow, white on top, green
under the light here. A wonder we don't smother."
"Oh no," said the Governor, recalling the igloo in the refrigerator.
"It's porous or something. The air comes through."
The juggler had seven balls and three oranges in the air. He added two
empty bottles. "Nothing comes through. The outside never knows the
inside, the inside's locked away from the outside."
"But it's always possible to break through," argued the Governor.
The juggler's arms were knotted muscles of skill. He had many bottles
in the air besides the oranges and balls. "No man knows his fellow."
"Knowing and communicating are two different things."
"Yes and no," said the juggler judiciously. "You know a woman; do
you...?"
"Yes," insisted the Governor defiantly.
Still more bottles were tossed and caught. "You think so," said the
juggler. "What happens when you fail?"
All the bottles were in play now. Deftly the juggler wriggled to
the floor and added his wheelchair. "We fail yet nothing falls: the
supremacy of perpetual motion. Try the fourth floor."
"There isn't any fourth floor," said Lampley.
"That's right. Try it."
* * * * *
Still juggling the balls, oranges, bottles and chair, the legless man
threw himself into the air and joined the circle of whirling objects.
The Governor left, went through the passageway again to the quadrangle
and looked over the railing. The fountain was gone. Goats nibbled at
young trees growing through the obscured tiles. A man rode a pony
listlessly and disappeared out of sight. A yellow wildcat prowled
around, pausing to hiss menacingly at the goats. Lampley walked past
closed doors, found himself in front of the elevator. He hadn't seen
it--then it was there.
"Down," announced the clerk.
"I don't want ..." began Lampley doubtfully.
"Going down," repeated the clerk firmly. "There's no up from here."
"How do all these people live?" asked the Governor. "The soldiers, the
women, the schoolmaster, the juggler?"
The clerk shrugged. "No differently than anyone else. Osmosis.
Symbiosis. Ventriloquism. Saprophytism. Necrophilism. The usual ways."
"Imagination? Illusion? Hallucination? Mirage?"
"We are what we are," said the clerk. "Can you say as much? Going down."
"I want to know," persisted Lampley.
"Don't we all? What's the use?"
The Governor temporized. "Will you let me off at my floor?"
"Do you know which it is?"
The Governor could not answer. He moved away from the elevator. There
was a hole in the carpet going deep into the floor. In the hole was
a heap of pennies, new-minted, bright coppery orange. He picked up a
handful and sifted them through his fingers. None of them seemed to be
dated, all had an eagle on one side and a scale on the other. A lump
of untreated metal, hedgehog sharp, pricked his flesh. He dropped the
pennies and put his hand to his mouth to suck the wound.
"Going down," the clerk called warningly.
Lampley said, "I only want--"
The clerk slapped his knee, doubling with laughter. He did a little
dance, his hands holding his abdomen. "Only!" he screamed between gusts
of mirth. "Only! That's all. He only wants."
With what dignity he had left the Governor entered the elevator. The
clerk, abruptly sober-faced, straightened up and shut the door. The
openwork of the cage was now interwoven with rattan in which trailing
fronds of greenery were stuck. Birds of somber hue--gray, black, slate,
dark blue--climbed with silent intensity over the basketry, hung beak
down from the roof, pecked quietly at the green. "Down."
* * * * *
Lampley held his breath, sucked in his stomach. But there was no sudden
drop. The elevator glided with dignity past the second floor, the dim
lobby without acceleration, into the dark depths. He strained his
eyes for the first sign of light, of the tiled walls. Only the subtle
sensations of descent told him they were not stopped, rigid, just below
the first floor.
The clerk said, "The teacher has a list of all those who cheated."
"It must be long."
"It's not as long as the guilty think, nor as short as the innocent
believe."
"A youthful indiscretion," said the Governor lightly.
"The piano-smasher knows all about false references."
"Everyone does it," said the Governor. "You have to, to get a job."
"The juggler has suffered from the effects of kicked-back commissions."
"The custom is old. Who was I to change it?"
"The people in the concourse voted to send a man to the legislature who
promised to do certain things."
"Campaign oratory," said the Governor.
"The girl--"
"Stop," ordered the Governor. "Are you taking it on yourself to punish
sins?"
"Ah," said the clerk. "You think absolution should be automatic,
instant and painless?"
Lampley thought, if I had a heavy wrench or a knife or a gun I could
kill him and no one would know. His fingers tingled, his knees ached.
He tried to speak casually, to stop any further words the clerk might
utter. As he sought for some innocuous topic he saw the walls lighten,
recognized the yellowed tiles.
The clerk bent over the control lever as though in prayer, the birds
were all still and unmoving. Passing the shining white tiles Lampley
strained to catch the faint sound of the pianos. He could not be
sure he heard it, still less that he hadn't. The walls of the shaft
gradually became a pale green, deepening into skyblue so natural they
seemed to expand outward.
Smoothly the elevator tilted at an angle just steep enough to force
him to put one foot on the side of the cage in order to stay upright.
The clerk, clinging to the lever, had no trouble. They slid down
the incline at moderate speed. The tiled walls fell away; they were
traveling on a sort of funicular diagonally through the floors of
a vast department store. Counters of chinaware were set parallel
and perpendicular, the cups and dishes cunningly tilted to catch
the light: experimental, modern, conventional, traditional, all the
familiar patterns including sets and sets of blue willowware. Some of
the pieces were so curiously shaped it was impossible to guess their
use: platters with humps in their centers, cups pierced with holes,
plates shaped like partly open bivalves, cones, spheres and pyramids
with handles but no apparent openings.
They passed a millinery department where women were trying on feathered
helmets, fur busbies, brass-and-leather shakos, woolen balaclavas,
wide-brimmed straws, tight-fitting caps of interwoven fresh flowers.
Lampley saw they were all using long hatpins, jamming them recklessly
through the headgear under consideration. The discarded hats were not
put back in stock but thrown into large wastebaskets.
* * * * *
The spaces between floors were open, revealing the heavy steel girders
with which they were braced. Through the openings in the girders
lean dogs chased scurrying rats, snakes twined themselves, bats
hung upside-down, land-crabs scuttled, stopping only to turn their
eye-stalks balefully toward the elevator.
[Illustration: Governor Lampley continued to drop further and further
into an abyss of gnawing terror.]
On another floor lined with mirrors that shot their dazzle into his
eyes like a volley of arrows, more women pulled and tugged girdles
over obstinate hips with concentrated effort, bending reverently over
unfolded brassieres to match the arbitrary cups against overflowing
breasts, holding up corsets which coldly mocked. Breech-clouted boys
waved huge fans, stirring the piles of garments on the tables.
The elevator continued downward. Shoppers strolled by book counters
with untempted glances, heading for the infants' wear to examine tiny
shirts, diapers, kimonos, blankets, fingering the embroidery, pursing
lips, smiling, shaking their heads. They stood abstractedly before
bright prints, sat stiffly on padded chairs, thumped mattresses,
fiddled with gifts and notions.
On a lower floor overhead lights glared down on roulette tables,
card games where the players squinted suspiciously over their hands,
blankets on which dice-throwers were shooting craps. The walls were
covered with posters: LAMPLEY FOR SUPERVISOR; A VOTE FOR LAMPLEY IS
A VOTE FOR YOU! The Governor was puzzled; he had never run for that
office.
The walls closed in again, the elevator tilted further, so that the
Governor was sitting on the side of the cage. It picked up speed now,
whizzing along, rounding banked curves, allowing momentary glimpses of
open spaces like railroad stations. "How far are you going?" Lampley
asked.
"Not far," said the clerk, coming out of his lethargy. "We're almost
there."
"Where?"
"There. Where else?"
They rounded another curve and shot down a grade. A bird near the
Governor ruffled its feathers sleepily. "I just want to get back."
"Who doesn't?" demanded the clerk harshly.
The walls of the shaft--it was a tunnel now--were transparent. There
was water pressing against them, a powerful stream, judging by the
exertions of the fish swimming against it. They ran a long way through
the river--Lampley was sure it was a river from occasional sight of a
far-off, muddy bank--and then the glass walls showed only earth, with
the roots of trees reaching down and piling up, baffled, against them.
* * * * *
The walls became opaque, then vanished. They were running down the side
of a mountain covered with patches of snow. In places the snow was
piled in great drifts, carved by winds into tortured peaks; elsewhere
it lay in thin ruffled streaks and ovals. Out of these shallow patches
dark bushes sprang bearing red and yellow fruit. The bare spaces
between the snow were of moist, eroded earth where small brown plants
grew spikil.
The Governor could not see the sky nor the roof of the cavern--if they
were in some sort of cavern--only the ridges and spurs of the mountain
slope. There were scars on the rugged ground as from landslides, great
bites where the drop was sheer and jagged rocks stood out like drifting
teeth, but none of the slips could have been recent for the mounds at
their feet were firm-looking and grassy. They rounded still another
curve and the elevator slowed to a stop.
The clerk, who had clung protectively to the controls, straightened up
and looked inquiringly over his shoulder. Lampley stared back at him.
"All out," said the clerk, waving his hands. The birds fluttered, cawed
and shrieked, flying through the open door with an angry whir of wings.
They wheeled in uncertain circles and then made off in small, separate
flights. "All out," he repeated.
"I don't want to get out," said Lampley. "There's nothing for me here."
"Are you sure?" asked the clerk.
"I...." Lampley paused, uncertain.
"You see?" demanded the clerk triumphantly.
Resigned, the Governor made his way out. The clerk smiled at him, not
unfriendly, and Lampley almost begged him not to leave, not to abandon
him but to take him back. If the right words came to his tongue, if the
earnest feeling projected them into sound, he was sure he would not be
deserted. Then the elevator started slowly backing, gathering speed
as it went, running silently, shrinking in size until it was merely a
small speck on the side of the slope. Only the terminal bumpers and
the greasy track on which it had run remained.