Special Deliverance

15

They sat around the fire, taking it easy after breakfast.

“We’ve explored this floor and the four floors above it,” said the Brigadier, “and all we’ve found is the graphics tank and the statuary. All the rooms are as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Not a stick of furniture in them. Absolutely nothing left. What happened? Was it an orderly withdrawal, the city’s residents moving elsewhere, taking all they owned? Or was the city looted, piece by piece? If so, who looted it? Did bands of people like us break up the furniture for firewood? That could be, for bands like ours probably have been visiting here for a long time, maybe for thousands of years. They could burn the furniture, of course, but what about the rest of it — the pots and pans, the dishes, the ceramics, the clothing, the books, the paintings, the carpeting, all the other possessions that must have been housed here? Maybe carried off as souvenirs, although I rather doubt that. It’s not only here in the administration building, but everywhere we’ve looked. Even what appears to be private residences are bare.”

“The city was a failure,” said the Parson. “It was a godless city and it failed.”

“It failed, I think,” said Sandra, “because it had no heart. Except for the small group of statuary we found, there is no sign of art. A heartless, insensitive people who found no room for art.”

“When they left,” said the Brigadier, “they might have taken their art with them. Or others, coming later, could have taken it.”

“Maybe this city was never meant to be permanent,” said Mary. “It may never have been anything but a camping place. A place to stay while they waited for something to occur, an event they expected to occur…”

“If that’s the case,” said the Brigadier, “they built exceedingly well. I’ve never heard of a camp built so solidly of stone. Another thing that puzzles me is that it had no defense of any sort. In a place like this, built so long ago, you’d expect a defensive wall. There are a few low walls here and there, outlining the perimeter of the city, but they are not continuous and not defense effective.”

“We’re running down hallucinations,” said the Parson. “We have found nothing so far to enlighten us on why we’re here. We found nothing at the cube and we’ve found nothing here.”

“Perhaps none of us has looked deeply enough,” said Jurgens.

“I doubt there is anything to find,” the Parson said. “I think we’re here at the irresponsible whim—”

“I cannot believe that,” said the Brigadier. “For every action there is cause. In the universe there cannot be haphazard action.”

“Are you sure of that?” the Parson asked.

“It stands to reason that that should be the case. You give up too easily, Parson. I’m not giving up. I’m going to rake this city clean before I quit the search. There is still the basement level in this building, and we’ll have a look at that. If we find nothing there, we’ll have further looks at selected targets.”

“How can you be so sure that the answer’s here?” asked Lansing. “There must be other places on this world.”

“Because this city is the logical place. A city, one city, is the center of any civilization, the pivot point of what is going on. Where you find a concentration of people and of installations, that’s where you’ll find the answer.”

“In which case,” said Jurgens, “we should be up and looking.”

“Jurgens, you are right,” said the Brigadier. “We’ll go down and scout the basement area, and if we find nothing there — by the way, I’m fairly sure we won’t — then we’ll take a hard look at the situation and decide what next to do.”

“All of us had better carry torches,” Sandra cautioned. “It’ll be dark down there. The rest of the building is dark enough; down in the basement, it’ll be really dark.”

The Parson led the way down the broad flight of stairs. When they reached the bottom of them, they instinctively huddled together, staring out into the blackness, flicking their flashlight beams here and there, revealing corridors and gaping doorways.

“Let’s split up,” said the Brigadier, taking charge, “and scatter out a bit. We’ll cover more ground that way. If anyone finds anything, sing out. We’ll split up by twos. Lansing, you and Jurgens take the left-hand corridor; Mary and the Parson, the central one; Sandra and I will take the right-hand. Each team use only one flashlight. We have to save the batteries. We’ll all meet back here.” The Brigadier, from the way he said it, apparently expected to be back soon.

No one questioned the Brigadier. All of them had gotten used to his taking charge. They started out, down the corridors he had assigned them.

Jurgens and Lansing came upon the maps in the fourth room they visited. It would have been easy to have left without seeing them. The basement was a depressing place. Dust lay everywhere. As they walked, it puffed up from their feet, rising to hang in the air. It had a dry, musty smell. Getting In his nose, it made Lansing sneeze. They had looked over the fourth room and, like all the other rooms, it had been quite empty. As they were heading for the doorway, preparatory to going to the next room, Jurgens made a final sweep with the flashlight around the floor.

“A moment,” he said. “Is there something over there on the floor?”

Lansing looked. In the circle of light he could see an indistinct, shadowed lumpiness.

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, anxious to be done with this whole business of the basement. “Just an irregularity in the floor.”

Jurgens humped forward on his crutch. “Let’s be sure,” he said.

Lansing watched as Jurgens hitched his way toward the lump. The robot, balancing unsteadily, reached out with the crutch to poke at the lump. Under the probing the lump moved and turned over. A whiteness emerged out of the dust-covered grayness.

“We’ve got something,” Jurgens said. “Looks like paper. Maybe a book.”

Lansing came quickly to the robot’s side, knelt and tried to wipe the dust from what Jurgens had found. It was a messy and not too successful attempt. He picked up the lump and shook it. Dust billowed into the air, choking him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Find a better place to look at it.”

“You haven’t got it all,” said Jurgens. “There’s another one over there. A couple of feet to the right.”

Lansing reached out and picked it up.

“That’s all?” he asked.

“I think so. I don’t see any more.”

Quickly they retreated into the corridor.

“Hold the light close,” said Lansing. “Let’s see what we have.”

Closer examination revealed four folded sheets — either paper or plastic. Under the coating of dust, it was hard to determine exactly what they had. Lansing thrust three of the sheets into a jacket pocket, unfolded the other. There were a number of folds, which were stiff and resisted separation. Finally the last fold came free and Lansing held out a single sheet. Jurgens shone the light upon it.

“A map,” he said.

“Maybe of this place,” said Lansing.

“Perhaps. We need a closer look. Where there is more light.”

There were lines and strange markings and beside some of the markings strings of connected symbols that could be place names.

“The Brigadier said to sing out if we found anything.”

“This can wait,” said Lansing. “Let’s finish with the rest of the rooms.”

“But it could be important.”

“It’ll be just as important an hour from now as it is now.”

They continued the search and found nothing. All the dusty rooms were empty.

Halfway down the corridor on their way back to the stairway, they heard the distant, booming shouting.

“Someone has found something,” said Jurgens.

“Yes, I suppose so. But where?”

The shouting, hollow in the empty expanse of the basement, bounced and reverberated. It seemed to come from everywhere.

Hurrying down the corridor, they came to the foot of the stairs. There still was no possibility of determining from which direction the shouting might be coming. There were times when it sounded as if it were coming from the corridor they had just quitted.

Far down the right-hand corridor, a bouncing light glimmered.

“That’s the Brigadier and Sandra,” said Jurgens. “So it must be the Parson and Mary who found something.”

Before they could take more than a few steps, the Brigadier was upon them.

“You’re here,” he panted. “It must be the Parson who is bellowing. We couldn’t tell where it came from.”

Together the four of them charged down the central corridor. At its far end they burst into a room far larger than any Jurgens and Lansing had found.

“You can stop the caterwauling now,” called the Brigadier. “We’re here. What is all the noise about?”

“We found doors,” the Parson yelled.

“Well, hell, so did we,” bawled the Brigadier. “All of us found doors.”

“If you’ll quiet down for a minute,” the Parson said, “we’ll show you what we have. Different kinds of doors.”

Lansing, drawing up near Mary, saw along the extent of the rear wall of the room a row of circular lights — not the blinding light of a flashlight nor the dancing red light of a fire, but the softer hue of sunlight. The lights all stood about head-high from the floor.

Mary gripped his right arm with both her hands.

“Edward,” she said, her voice shaking, “we’ve found other worlds.”

“Other worlds?” he repeated, stupidly.

“There are doors,” she said, “and peepholes through the doors. Look through the peepholes and you see the world.”

She urged him forward and, not quite comprehending, he went along with her until they stood in front of one of the circles of light. “Look,” she said, enthralled. “Look and see. That’s my favorite world. I like it best of all.”

Lansing moved closer and looked through the peephole.

“I call it the apple-blossom world,” she said. “The bluebird world.”

And he saw.

The world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle place with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now he saw that the grass was dotted with the pale blue and soft yellow of many blooming flowers. The yellow flowers looked like daffodils nodding in a breeze. The blue flowers, not so tall, half hidden in the grass, stared out at him like so many frightened eyes. On a distant hilltop stood a grove of small pink trees, covered and obscured by the astonishing pinkness of their blossoms.

“Crabapple trees,” said Mary. “Crabapples bear pink blossoms.”

The world had a sense of freshness, as if it might be only minutes old — washed clean by a careful springtime rain, dried and scrubbed by a solicitous breeze, burnished to its brightness by the rays of a gentle sun. There was no more to it than the green meadow spangled by its million flowers, the brook that sparkled through the meadow and the pink of the apple trees standing on the hill. It was an uncomplicated place, a very simple place. But what it had was quite enough, Lansing told himself; it had all it needed.

He turned from the peephole to look at Mary.

“It is lovely,” he said.

“I think so, too,” said the Parson. For the first time since he had met the man, Lansing saw that the corners of his mouth were not turned down. His eternally anxious, puzzled face was serene.

“Some of the others,” he said, shuddering. “Some of the others, but this one…”

Lansing turned his attention to the door in which the peephole was located and saw that it was somewhat larger than the average door and made of what appeared to be heavy metal. Its hinges were designed to be opened outward, into the other world, and secured against inadvertent opening by heavy metal lugs that dogged it solidly in place. The lugs were held by substantial bolts set into the wall.

“This is only one of the worlds,” he said. “What are the others like?”

“Not like this one,” Mary said. “Go and look at them.”

Lansing looked through the next peephole. It opened on an arctic scene — a vast snowfleld, the veil of a raging blizzard. Through momentary breaks in the blizzard could be seen the cruel shimmer of a towering glacier. Although no cold reached him, Lansing shivered. There was no sign of any kind of life; nothing moved except the blowing snow.

The third peephole showed a barren, rocky surface partially obscured by a knee-high drift of blowing sand. The small bits of gravel on the surface seemed to have a life of their own. They rolled and scurried, urged on by the force of the wind that drove the sand. There was nothing to be seen but foreground; no middle distance or horizon. The blowing sand blotted out any depth of perception in a yellow haze.

“Yes, see,” said Mary, who had moved along with him.

The next peephole was a ravening place of vicious life, a watery jungle world in which swam and crept and waddled a tangle of seething killers. For a moment Lansing was unable to separate the components of the life, getting only the impression of frantic motion. Then, bit by bit, he began to differentiate what he saw — the eaters and the eaten, the contention and the striving, the hunger and the hiding. The life forms were like nothing he had even seen before — contorted bodies, enormous maws, lashing appendages, flashing fangs, striking claws, glittering eyes.

He turned away, sick at heart, stomach heaving. He wiped his face, as if to wipe away the hatred and abhorrence.

“I couldn’t look,” said Mary. “I only caught a glimpse.”

Lansing felt himself shrinking in upon himself, trying to get small enough to hide, goosepimples rising on him.

“Forget it,” Mary said. “Wipe it out. It’s my fault. I should have warned you.”

“How about the rest of them? Anything as bad as this?”

“No, this is the worst,” said Mary.

“Will you look at this,” said the Brigadier. “I never saw the like.”

He stepped aside so that Lansing could look through the peephole. The terrain was jagged, not a single level surface, and it took a few seconds before Lansing could make out the reason. Then he saw that the entire surface of the place, if it actually had a surface, was covered by waist-high pyramids, their bases neatly fit together. There was no way of telling whether the recurring pyramids were the actual surface or whether some busybody, for whatever reason, had set the pyramids in place. Each pyramid rose to a sharp point. Any intruder, attempting to make its way through the maze, would run an excellent chance of becoming impaled.

“I must say,” said the Brigadier, “that’s the neatest abatis I have ever seen. Even heavy armor would have some difficulty getting through it.”

“Do you think that’s what it is?” asked Mary. “A fortification?”

“It could be,” said the Brigadier, “but I see no logic for it. There is no strongpoint I see that it might be guarding.”

That was true. The field of pyramids was all that could be seen. They continued to the horizon and there was nothing else.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” said Lansing, “what it really is.”

The Parson said, behind them, “There’s a way to know. Unbolt the lugs and open the door and walk out into…”

“No,” the Brigadier insisted, positively, “that’s the one thing we can’t take a chance on doing. Those doors could be traps. Open one of them and take one step beyond the threshold and you may find there’s no longer any door, that you’ve stepped into the world with no way to get back.”

“You have no trust in anything,” said the Parson. “You call everything a trap.”

“It is my military training,” said the Brigadier, “and it stands me in good stead. It has saved me from a lot of foolish moves.”

“There’s just one more,” Mary told Lansing, “and it’s the saddest thing. Don’t ask me why it’s sad. It just is, that’s all.”

It was sad. Face pressed against the peephole, he saw the deep darkness of a woodland glen. The trees that grew along the hillside that shut in the glen were angular and crooked — deformed trees that gave the impression of very aged men hobbling, for there was no movement, no wind to stir the trees. And that, thought Lansing, might be a part of the sadness, forever being frozen in an agony of motion. Deeply embedded, mossy boulders loomed among the trees, and down in the bottom of the deep ravine, Lansing knew, there would be running water, but it would not run with a happy sound. Yet he could not pin down the sadness of the scene — depressing, yes, it was a depressing place, but why should it be so sad?

He turned away and looked at Mary. She shook her head at him. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I have no idea.”