"Or to die," said Brett.
"Look at them," Dhuva breathed. "Hundreds ... thousands ..."
"The whole population, it looks like. The Gels must have whisked them
down here one by one."
"But why?"
"For interfering with the scenes. But that doesn't matter now. What
matters is getting out. Come on. I see tunnels on the other side."
They crossed the broad floor, around them the white bones, the rustle of
rats. They reached the far side of the cave, picked a six-foot tunnel
which trended upward, a trickle of water seeping out of the dark mouth.
They started up the slope.
* * *
"We have to have a weapon against the Gels," said Brett.
"Why? I don't want to fight them." Dhuva's voice was thin, frightened.
"I want to get away from here ... even back to Wavly. I'd rather face
the Duke."
"This was a real town, once," said Brett. "The Gels have taken it over,
hollowed out the buildings, mined the earth under it, killed off the
people, and put imitation people in their place. And nobody ever knew. I
met a man who's lived here all his life. He doesn't know. But we know
... and we have to do something about it."
"It's not our business. I've had enough. I want to get away."
"The Gels must stay down below, somewhere in that maze of tunnels. For
some reason they try to keep up appearances ... but only for the people
who belong here. They play out scenes for the fat man, wherever he goes.
And he never goes anywhere he isn't expected to."
"We'll get over the wall somehow," said Dhuva. "We may starve, crossing
the dry fields, but that's better than this."
They emerged from the tunnel into a coal bin, crossed to a sagging door,
found themselves in a boiler room. Stairs led up to sunlight. In the
street, in the shadow of tall buildings, a boxy sedan was parked at the
curb. Brett went to it, tried the door. It opened. Keys dangled from the
ignition switch. He slid into the dusty seat. Behind him there was a
hoarse scream. Brett looked up. Through the streaked windshield he saw a
mighty Gel rear up before Dhuva, who crouched back against the blackened
brick front of the building.
"Don't move, Dhuva!" Brett shouted. Dhuva stood frozen, flattened
against the wall. The Gel towered, its surface rippling.
Brett eased from the seat. He stood on the pavement, fifteen feet from
the Gel. The rank Gel odor came in waves from the creature. Beyond it he
could see Dhuva's white terrified face.
[Illustration]
Silently Brett turned the latch of the old-fashioned auto hood, raised
it. The copper fuel line curved down from the firewall to a glass
sediment cup. The knurled retaining screw turned easily; the cup dropped
into Brett's hand. Gasoline ran down in an amber stream. Brett pulled
off his damp coat, wadded it, jammed it under the flow. Over his
shoulder he saw Dhuva, still rigid--and the Gel, hovering, uncertain.
The coat was saturated with gasoline now. Brett fumbled a match box from
his pocket. Wet. He threw the sodden container aside. The battery caught
his eye, clamped in a rusted frame under the hood. He jerked the pistol
from its holster, used it to short the terminals. Tiny blue sparks
jumped. He jammed the coat near, rasped the gun against the soft lead
poles. With a whoosh! the coat caught; yellow flames leaped,
soot-rimmed. Brett snatched at a sleeve, whirled the coat high. The
great Gel, attracted by the sudden motion, rushed at him. He flung the
blazing garment over the monster, leaped aside.
The creature went mad. It slumped, lashed itself against the pavement.
The burning coat was thrown clear. The Gel threw itself across the
pavement, into the gutter, sending a splatter of filthy water over
Brett. From the corner of his eye, Brett saw Dhuva seize the burning
coat, hurl it into the pooled gasoline in the gutter. Fire leaped twenty
feet high; in its center the great Gel bucked and writhed. The ancient
car shuddered as the frantic monster struck it. Black smoke boiled up;
an unbelievable stench came to Brett's nostrils. He backed, coughing.
Flames roared around the front of the car. Paint blistered and burned. A
tire burst. In a final frenzy, the Gel whipped clear, lay, a great
blackened shape of melting rubber, twitching, then still.
* * *
"They've tunneled under everything," Brett said. "They've cut through
power lines and water lines, concrete, steel, earth; they've left the
shell, shored up with spidery-looking trusswork. Somehow they've kept
water and power flowing to wherever they needed it--"
"I don't care about your theories," Dhuva said; "I only want to get
away."
"It's bound to work, Dhuva. I need your help."
"No."
"Then I'll have to try alone." He turned away.
"Wait," Dhuva called. He came up to Brett. "I owe you a life; you saved
mine. I can't let you down now. But if this doesn't work ... or if you
can't find what you want--"
"Then we'll go."
Together they turned down a side street, walking rapidly. At the next
corner Brett pointed.
"There's one!" They crossed to the service station at a run. Brett tried
the door. Locked. He kicked at it, splintered the wood around the lock.
He glanced around inside. "No good," he called. "Try the next building.
I'll check the one behind."
He crossed the wide drive, battered in a door, looked in at a floor
covered with wood shavings. It ended ten feet from the door. Brett went
to the edge, looked down. Diagonally, forty feet away, the underground
fifty-thousand-gallon storage tank which supplied the gasoline pumps of
the station perched, isolated, on a column of striated clay, ribbed
with chitinous Gel buttresses. The truncated feed lines ended six feet
from the tank. From Brett's position, it was impossible to say whether
the ends were plugged.
Across the dark cavern a square of light appeared. Dhuva stood in a
doorway looking toward Brett.
"Over here, Dhuva!" Brett uncoiled his rope, arranged a slip-noose. He
measured the distance with his eye, tossed the loop. It slapped the top
of the tank, caught on a massive fitting. He smashed the glass from a
window, tied the end of the rope to the center post. Dhuva arrived,
watched as Brett went to the edge, hooked his legs over the rope, and
started across to the tank.
It was an easy crossing. Brett's feet clanged against the tank. He
straddled the six-foot cylinder, worked his way to the end, then
clambered down to the two two-inch feed lines. He tested their
resilience, then lay flat, eased out on them. There were plugs of hard
waxy material in the cut ends of the pipes. Brett poked at them with the
pistol. Chunks loosened and fell. He worked for fifteen minutes before
the first trickle came. Two minutes later, two thick streams of gasoline
were pouring down into the darkness.
* * *
Brett and Dhuva piled sticks, scraps of paper, shavings, and lumps of
coal around a core of gasoline-soaked rags. Directly above the heaped
tinder a taut rope stretched from the window post to a child's wagon,
the steel bed of which contained a second heap of combustibles. The
wagon hung half over the ragged edge of the floor.
"It should take about fifteen minutes for the fire to burn through the
rope," Brett said. "Then the wagon will fall and dump the hot coals in
the gasoline. By then it will have spread all over the surface and
flowed down side tunnels into other parts of the cavern system."
"But it may not get them all."
"It will get some of them. It's the best we can do right now. You get
the fire going in the wagon; I'll start this one up."
Dhuva sniffed the air. "That fluid," he said. "We know it in Wavly as
phlogistoneum. The wealthy use it for cooking."
"We'll use it to cook Gels." Brett struck a match. The fire leaped up,
smoking. Dhuva watched, struck his match awkwardly, started his blaze.
They stood for a moment watching. The nylon curled and blackened,
melting in the heat.
"We'd better get moving," Brett said. "It doesn't look as though it will
last fifteen minutes."
They stepped out into the street. Behind them wisps of smoke curled from
the door. Dhuva seized Brett's arm. "Look!"
Half a block away the fat man in the panama hat strode toward them at
the head of a group of men in grey flannel. "That's him!" the fat man
shouted, "the one I told you about. I knew the scoundrel would be back!"
He slowed, eyeing Brett and Dhuva warily.
"You'd better get away from here, fast!" Brett called. "There'll be an
explosion in a few minutes--"
"Smoke!" the fat man yelped. "Fire! They've set fire to the city! There
it is! pouring out of the window ... and the door!" He started forward.
Brett yanked the pistol from the holster, thumbed back the hammer.
"Stop right there!" he barked. "For your own good I'm telling you to
run. I don't care about that crowd of golems you've collected, but I'd
hate to see a real human get hurt--even a cowardly one like you."
"These are honest citizens," the fat man gasped, standing, staring at
the gun. "You won't get away with this. We all know you. You'll be dealt
with ..."
"We're going now. And you're going too."
"You can't kill us all," the fat man said. He licked his lips. "We won't
let you destroy our city."
* * *
As the fat man turned to exhort his followers Brett fired, once twice,
three times. Three golems fell on their faces. The fat man whirled.
"Devil!" he shrieked. "A killer is abroad!" He charged, mouth open.
Brett ducked aside, tripped the fat man. He fell heavily, slamming his
face against the pavement. The golems surged forward. Brett and Dhuva
slammed punches to the sternum, took clumsy blows on the shoulder, back,
chest. Golems fell. Brett ducked a wild swing, toppled his attacker,
turned to see Dhuva deal with the last of the dummies. The fat man sat
in the street, dabbing at his bleeding nose, the panama still in place.
"Get up," Brett commanded. "There's no time left."
"You've killed them. Killed them all ..." The fat man got to his feet,
then turned suddenly and plunged for the door from which a cloud of
smoke poured. Brett hauled him back. He and Dhuva started off, dragging
the struggling man between them. They had gone a block when their
prisoner, with a sudden frantic jerk, freed himself, set off at a run
for the fire.
"Let him go!" Dhuva cried. "It's too late to go back!"
The fat man leaped fallen golems, wrestled with the door, disappeared
into the smoke. Brett and Dhuva sprinted for the corner. As they
rounded it a tremendous blast shook the street. The pavement before them
quivered, opened in a wide crack. A ten-foot section dropped from view.
They skirted the gaping hole, dashed for safety as the facades along the
street cracked, fell in clouds of dust. The street trembled under a
second explosion. Cracks opened, dust rising in puffs from the long
wavering lines. Masonry collapsed around them. They put their heads down
and ran.
* * * * *
Winded, Brett and Dhuva walked through the empty streets of the city.
Behind them, smoke blackened the sky. Embers floated down around them.
The odor of burning Gel was carried on the wind. The late sun shone on
the blank pavement. A lone golem in a tasseled fez, left over from the
morning's parade, leaned stiffly against a lamp post, eyes blank. Empty
cars sat in driveways. TV antennae stood forlornly against the sunset.
"That place looks lived-in," said Brett, indicating an open apartment
window with a curtain billowing above a potted geranium. "I'll take a
look."
He came back shaking his head. "They were all in the TV room. They
looked so natural at first; I mean, they didn't look up or anything when
I walked in. I turned the set off. The electricity is still working
anyway. Wonder how long it will last?"
They turned down a residential street. Underfoot the pavement trembled
at a distant blast. They skirted a crack, kept going. Occasional golems
stood in awkward poses or lay across sidewalks. One, clad in black,
tilted awkwardly in a gothic entry of fretted stone work. "I guess there
won't be any church this Sunday," said Brett.
He halted before a brown brick apartment house. An untended hose welled
on a patch of sickly lawn. Brett went to the door, stood listening, then
went in. Across the room the still figure of a woman sat in a rocker. A
curl stirred on her smooth forehead. A flicker of expression seemed to
cross the lined face. Brett started forward. "Don't be afraid. You can
come with us--"
He stopped. A flapping window-shade cast restless shadows on the still
golem features on which dust was already settling. Brett turned away,
shaking his head.
"All of them," he said. "It's as though they were snipped out of paper.
When the Gels died their dummies died with them."
"Why?" said Dhuva. "What does it all mean?"
"Mean?" said Brett. He shook his head, started off again along the
street. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just the way things are."
* * *
Brett sat in a deserted Cadillac, tuning the radio.
"... anybody hear me?" said a plaintive voice from the speaker. "This is
Ab Gullorian, at the Twin Spires. Looks like I'm the only one left
alive. Can anybody hear me?"
Brett tuned. "... been asking the wrong questions ... looking for the
Final Fact. Now these are strange matters, brothers. But if a flower
blooms, what man shall ask why? What lore do we seek in a symphony...?"
He twisted the knob again. "... Kansas City. Not more than half a dozen
of us. And the dead! Piled all over the place. But it's a funny thing:
Doc Potter started to do an autopsy--"
Brett turned the knob. "... CQ, CQ, CQ. This is Hollip Quate, calling
CQ, CQ. There's been a disaster here at Port Wanderlust. We need--"
"Take Jesus into your hearts," another station urged.
"... to base," the radio said faintly, with much crackling. "Lunar
Observatory to base. Come in, Lunar Control. This is Commander McVee of
the Lunar Detachment, sole survivor--"
"... hello, Hollip Quate? Hollip Quate? This is Kansas City calling.
Say, where did you say you were calling from...?"
"It looks as though both of us had a lot of mistaken ideas about the
world outside," said Brett. "Most of these stations sound as though they
might as well be coming from Mars."
"I don't understand where the voices come from," Dhuva said. "But all
the places they name are strange to me ... except the Twin Spires."
"I've heard of Kansas City," Brett said, "but none of the other ones."
The ground trembled. A low rumble rolled. "Another one," Brett said. He
switched off the radio, tried the starter. It groaned, turned over. The
engine caught, sputtered, then ran smoothly.
"Get in, Dhuva. We might as well ride. Which way do we go to get out of
this place?"
"The wall lies in that direction," said Dhuva. "But I don't know about a
gate."
"We'll worry about that when we get to it," said Brett. "This whole
place is going to collapse before long. We really started something. I
suppose other underground storage tanks caught--and gas lines, too."
A building ahead cracked, fell in a heap of pulverized plaster. The car
bucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover popped
up, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned the
car. It leaped over rubble, roared along the littered pavement. Brett
looked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them the street ended.
Smoke and dust rose from the immense pit.
"We just missed it that time!" he called. "How far to the wall?"
"Not far! Turn here ..."
Brett rounded the corner with a shrieking of tires. Ahead the grey wall
rose up, blank, featureless.
"This is a dead end!" Brett shouted.
"We'd better get out and run for it--"
"No time! I'm going to ram the wall! Maybe I can knock a hole in it."
* * *
Dhuva crouched; teeth gritted, Brett held the accelerator to the floor,
roared straight toward the wall. The heavy car shot across the last few
yards, struck--
And burst through a curtain of canvas into a field of dry stalks.
Brett steered the car in a wide curve to halt and look back. A blackened
panama hat floated down, settled among the stalks. Smoke poured up in a
dense cloud from behind the canvas wall. A fetid stench pervaded the
air.
"That finishes that, I guess," Brett said.
"I don't know. Look there."
Brett turned. Far across the dry field columns of smoke rose from the
ground.
"The whole thing's undermined," Brett said. "How far does it go?"
"No telling. But we'd better be off. Perhaps we can get beyond the edge
of it. Not that it matters. We're all that's left ..."
"You sound like the fat man," Brett said. "But why should we be so
surprised to find out the truth? After all, we never saw it before. All
we knew--or thought we knew--was what they told us. The moon, the other
side of the world, a distant city ... or even the next town. How do we
really know what's there ... unless we go and see for ourselves? Does a
goldfish in his bowl know what the ocean is like?"
"Where did they come from, those Gels? How much of the world have they
undermined? What about Wavly? Is it a golem country too? The Duke ...
and all the people I knew?"
"I don't know, Dhuva. I've been wondering about the people in Casperton.
Like Doc Welch. I used to see him in the street with his little black
bag. I always thought it was full of pills and scalpels; but maybe it
really had zebra's tails and toad's eyes in it. Maybe he's really a
magician on his way to cast spells against demons. Maybe the people I
used to see hurrying to catch the bus every morning weren't really going
to the office. Maybe they go down into caves and chip away at the
foundations of things. Maybe they go up on rooftops and put on
rainbow-colored robes and fly away. I used to pass by a bank in
Casperton: a big grey stone building with little curtains over the
bottom half of the windows. I never go in there. I don't have anything
to do in a bank. I've always thought it was full of bankers, banking ...
Now I don't know. It could be anything ..."
"That's why I'm afraid," Dhuva said. "It could be anything."
"Things aren't really any different than they were," said Brett, "...
except that now we know." He turned the big car out across the field
toward Casperton.
"I don't know what we'll find when we get back. Aunt Haicey, Pretty-Lee
... But there's only one way to find out."
The moon rose as the car bumped westward, raising a trail of dust
against the luminous sky of evening.