Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  The hamlet was laid out according to no humanly understandable plan; in fact, it had apparently never been laid out at all, having merely grown Topsy fashion. The little party consisting of Doody and his guard of honor stumbled through the tortuous lanes that twisted erratically among the hovels, and at last debouched unexpectedly, at least so far as the visitor was concerned, into a wide, grassless clearing in the midst of the village. This, though far from tetragonal, evidently passed for a town square.

  Doody, who had until now remained wholly unimpressed by the sights of the village, drew in his breath in sharp surprise when he saw what occupied the middle of this naked, dusty space. He had been totally unprepared for a ten-foot stockade of sharpened stakes, sunk deep into the earth, which was heaped breastwork fashion around their bases; a hundred by fifty feet, it might be, laid out in a great rectangle. It looked like a palisaded fort, formidable to the primitive tribesmen; or perhaps—Doody’s quick mind leaped over the possibilities—it was a barrier to prevent mere mortals from trespassing on sacred ground.

  He did not need to inquire. “This, O Man of the forest, is the dwelling of Kuvurna, in which he remains always, hearing our every prayer, granting such as are right, refusing such as are evil. Kuvurna knows all, sees all, hears all, smells all.”

  Before Doody could even attempt to grasp the significance of the curious final clause of the formula, having reference to Kuvurna’s olfactory prowess—phew, thought Doody, I wouldn’t care to be that sharp-scented—the chief hunter had detached himself from the escort and advanced toward a small gateway, closed by a heavy lattice of wood, which opened into the nearest face of the rampart.

  Pausing, he knelt before the gate, laid his spear carefully on the bare earth, and dropped his knife beside it, even as he had upon prostrating himself before Doody. To the mind of the American, it became plain that whoever passed with these ignorant people as a god was not exactly carefree in his high office. He was evidently irked by the possibility of assassination.

  The hunter rose and stooped to pick up a long-handled stone hammer which leaned against the stripped poles beside the entrance. Powerful muscles rippled under the brown hide of his back and shoulders as he raised it above his head and swung it in a deafening blow upon a great bronze gong which hung above the gateway. The dully musical booming echoed through the village, woke the sluggish afternoon echoes, penetrated into the secret interior of the forbidding fortress temple.

  As Doody watched narrowly for signs of the reception awaiting him, a chain rattled audibly and the lattice swung slowly inward, the person performing the office of gatekeeper remaining invisible from outside. Doody, straining, caught a glimpse of dim green shadows beyond the gate; then the seeker of admittance, with one more profound genuflection, rose, straightened his shoulders, and with the resolute caution of one goose-stepping over a parade ground cobblestoned with rotten eggs, marched into the inner courtyard. The gate swung rapidly shut behind him.

  Doody, still puzzled, turned on one of the savage warriors at his elbow. The fellow leaned heavily on his spear, his long red mane falling about a rugged, open face from which frank, undeceitful brown eyes turned questioningly toward the other.

  Again Doody felt the overpowering sensation of having seen these people—those curious, worshipful eyes, in particular—somewhere, sometime, long ago. He put the ridiculous feeling from him and inquired brusquely:

  “This Kuvurna of yours, friend. What is he like—what does he look like?”

  The hunter’s gaze was startled. “He is like you. He is like me,” he illustrated correctively. “He is a Man, and you are a Man; but I am not a Man. Because he is a Man we serve him, all of us, and give to him our best fruits and game, and make for him the drink of Men which is not permitted to us.”

  “Drink of the gods,” muttered Doody quizzically to himself, trying to absorb one statement at a time. But—he wondered—was he going batty, or were his ears wronging him? “Listen,” he said more loudly than was necessary. “If you aren’t a man, then what the devil are you?” He was quite past worrying about suspicious queries; anyway, he ought to see Kuvurna, whoever Kuvurna was, right away, and then he might get straightened out. At the moment he felt a marked sensation of floundering—

  The inquiring brown eyes were shocked at his question. “Are you not a Man, and do not Men know everything? But I am only a dog.”

  Doody felt faint, and somewhere a wholly primitive and probably unjustifiable fear crawled out of hiding and started up his back, beginning at his lowest spinal ganglion and squirming toward the base of his skull, to raise the short hairs there and pour ice water down his back with demoniac abandon. Abruptly everything around him seemed far away, alien, and unreal. The motionless, patiently waiting village hunters around him, the crowds which were timidly gathering against invisible barriers of apprehension in the freakish bystreets—the seeming women who stood watching the scene stolidly with babies parked on their ample hips, the seemingly human children who sprawled out into the square, noisily seeking new worlds to conquer in the making of mud pies—all were like creatures of an uncanny dream. For Doody knew now where he had seen those great appealing brown eyes, that particular quality of straight red-brown hair. Certainly he bad known these people before. He had hunted with them, talked to their uncomprehending ears when he held their silky heads between his knees, on many an occasion in the past when they had gone on four feet instead of two—

  It was only for the moment that the primitive fear held the fort in the region of Doody’s medulla oblongata. Then he gave a snort of disgust and forced it back down into the realm of suppressed instincts, where it belonged. The statement which the creature who regarded him so worriedly had just made might be almost incredible, but it was not necessarily terrifying. The sense of strangeness persisted, though, as his conscious mind checked off one little-remembered item after another—tiny earmarks, unnoticed at the time, of the veiled unhuman.

  Doody realized that his silence was growing awkward. He made himself speak again to the being that was not a man:

  “Er—what does Kuvurna want of me?”

  The warrior’s gaze was that of a puzzled dog. “Does not a Man wish to speak to a Man? It is not for us to know what they will say.” He paused, then added eagerly, “Perhaps now we will have two Men to rule over our village.”

  “If you think that, my boy,” commented Doody in the private recesses of his own mind, “you don’t know your men.” He was framing a reply suitable for the other’s ears, when its necessity was obviated by the return of the messenger who had vanished into Kuvurna’s stronghold.

  It was the sudden hushing of the subdued crowd murmur that caused Doody to wheel and behold the dogman who had entered emerge from the gate and stride swiftly toward the visitor and the hunting pack which had brought him, standing in an isolated huddle halfway between the edge of the wide, sundrenched square and the high, bare palisade of Kuvurna’s temple.

  The silence was funereal by the time he reached the group. He knelt in the dust before Doody, and announced, his head bowed, but his voice raised to reach the breathlessly waiting hundreds about the southern side of the square:

  “Kuvurna will see the Man of the forest!”

  “This is well—for Kuvurna,” replied Doody, in a voice that rang cold and just as clear. The silence was fractured by a swift, awed chorus of gasps which wheezed into an overwhelmed hush as Doody, tall, straight and impressive, stalked unattended toward the postern gate of Kuvurna’s citadel.

  Doody remarks that brass has carried him through many a narrow place in his career in which lead would only have totally wrecked his chances. He had a hunch—which grew stronger as he advanced on that ominous gateway—that bullets were no good here. So he was banking on a good front, plus, of course, the emergency getaway of the time machine in case things went cataclysmically wrong.

  Before the gate he stopped and bent quickly to lift the long-handled stone hammer; twice and three times he swun
g it thunderously against the heavy lattice, shaking it almost from its wrought-bronze hinges. Then he tossed the implement scornfully aside and folded his arms in lofty disdain, controlling his breathing, however, with some effort. Swinging that Thor’s hammer was no man’s picnic.

  After a scandalized pause the barrier wobbled slowly out of his way, and Doody. head up, marched in.

  Inside, he halted for a moment only to orient himself, and to be impressed, after a fashion, under his assumed hauteur, by the fortress temple of the dogmen’s god. In the shadows of the high palisade squatted a long, low building of hewn stone, built like an arsenal or fort, with the grim, high, narrow window slits of a medieval jail. The door was set far back behind a shadowed archway, from which the interior gloom seemed to spill almost into the sunlit outdoors, down the massive stone steps that ascended to the portal.

  For the dog folk, with primitive tools and muscular power alone, the structure must represent long, back-breaking labor, which likewise must be employed in maintaining the garden which filled the inner court; in contrast to the dusty square outside, ivy clambered over the rough walls of the temple, roses tumbled about the stone stairway, and verdant, resilient grass underfoot defied the blazing power of the summer sun whose hot rays slanted over the jagged palisade. The water which brought forth all this greenery from the stubborn soil must be carried little by little, day after day, by the sweating slaves of the ruler.

  None of the priesthood which is maintained by every god of means was in evidence, but Doody had that jittery, watched feeling, as of intent eyes fixed on the back of his neck. So strong was the sensation that he almost peered about the garden in search of concealed observers; but that would be to abandon his pose of nonchalance. He hesitated only momentarily, then advanced firmly to ascend toward the inset doorway.

  The portal within the rough-hewn arch was massive and oaken, banded with strips of ornate bronzework. It stood a little ajar, opening on cool darkness within. It creaked only a little as Doody thrust it farther aside and slipped cautiously into the black interior—a hand in his coat pocket tense on the switch of his time machine, ready to snap it shut instantly if danger loomed near. He did not imagine that the fear-inspired reverence for the human overlord was all illusion on the part of the dogmen.

  Inside the temple, to Doody’s light-accustomed eyes, it seemed dark as the inside of a shark. He stumbled, banging his shins painfully against something that toppled with a most shocking crash; he thought that a rasping chuckle from the darkness mingled with the echoes, and became immobile, his eyes slowly beginning to adjust to the Stygian gloom which was unrelieved by the high, close-shuttered windows. Doody can see in the dark almost as well as a Negro; but it was only with great difficulty that he discerned vague, looming shapes in the obscurity, and thought he saw a flitting figure that could have been a man.

  Then a voice came out of the shadows, a thick, greasy voice. “Make a light, Shahlnoo,” it said heavily. “Let us see this one who calls himself Man.”

  A small flame flared suddenly in the darkness, illuminated dimly the interior of the temple—a flame of burning tinder, apparently, in the hand of a black figure which applied it quickly to a teakettle-shaped oil lamp, like those used by the ancient Greeks. The lamp blazed up with a smoky light, and the shadowy forms resolved themselves.

  Doody first saw the aged, shriveled little dogman, clad in a single dirty garment that left his skinny figure almost naked, who crouched beside the pedestal of the lamp. Then his eyes flicked rapidly about the interior of the temple, taking in the barbaric luxury displayed in all its furnishings. Great ornamental urns stood about the drapery-hung walls, and it was one of these which Doody had overturned in the dark; even now the light struggled feebly against the deep shades of the folded draperies. The chamber was like a somber courtroom of the Inquisition, or like some dim-lit crypt out of the tales of Poe—the product of a morbidly dismal imagination, utterly at variance with the healthy, outdoor cheerfulness of the dogman.

  At the other end of the long room the little wizened priest passed with noiseless tread from right to left to light another lamp. The illumination in the funereal chamber brightened, and for the first time Doody saw the fat man who lay in gross ease upon a draped and cushioned couch against the farther wall.

  Kuvurna was fat, fat with the disgusting obesity of a long life of overfeeding and inaction. His piggish eyes peered out from between rolls of flesh that threatened to swamp them; his cheeks were blubbery, his chins multifarious. His face was that of the last of a long line of degenerate French Louises. His body was massive, effeminate in its corpulence.

  The dog priest spoke, in a voice dry and cracked as a dead stick.

  “Do not move, stranger. The lightning of Kuvurna strikes down whom he wishes to destroy!”

  Doody stood obediently motionless, but his eyes were busy. There might be a portable atomic-blast rifle concealed among those curtains over the man-god’s divan. Those weapons had been built to last forever; some might have endured nine thousand years and remained in the hands of this last decadent scion of a fallen humanity, enabling him to reinforce man’s age-old lordship over the dog.

  “My lightning,” drooled Kuvurna lovingly, his plump fingers fumbling among the bed clothing while his small eyes blinked at the light, “Be careful, impostor, or it will slay you!”

  Mentally, Doody placed Kuvurna as a low-grade imbecile, perhaps even an idiot. A rank odor hung in the air; Doody sniffed, and wrinkled his nose disgustedly at its familiarity. If ever he had smelled cheap corn whiskey, he smelled it now. Drink of the gods!

  No doubt the priesthood controlled the alcohol supply and consequently Kuvurna. But the god’s life was precious above all else, since without him the priests could not continue to impose on their credulous and loyal fellow villages. Hence the fortresslike temple inclosure, the elaborate precautions and taboos.

  “Kuvurna,” remarked Doody loudly, “you are a great, swollen mass of corruption, and no Man worth the name!”

  The deity winked stupidly; his blubbery face registered no expression. He heaved in vague displeasure at his visitor’s frankness, though he was apparently incapable of rising. Doody felt a wave of revulsion in which he despised himself for being a man. If this was what civilization had done for the human race, thank God for barbarism, for blackest savagery!

  The little priest was answering for his lord. “That is sacrilege, blasphemy,” he spat in a voice like the snarl of an angry hound. “You are no Man or you would not speak thus of another Man.”

  Kuvurna reared angrily, like a great, unwieldy sea lion, among his gloomy cushions. His skin, under the flickering yellow light, was an unhealthy, pasty white which had seen too little of the sun; his eyes were muddy and befuddledly vicious.

  “He is no Man,” he repeated, his thick fingers twitching. Doody rose stealthily to the balls of his feet; he knew that, on guard, he could beat the degenerate’s slow reflexes ten times out of ten. All the while, though, another part of his mind was struggling to piece out the answer to the wider question; but it was like arranging a tough puzzle with the key piece, elsewhere. “He is no Man, but a lying dog; and for his lie he must be put to death!”

  “Just a moment,” said Doody, and was surprised at the suave smoothness of his own voice. “Has it occurred to you that the entire canine populace, now milling about outside your palisade, believes that I am a Man? They will require explanations, in all probability, if I fail to emerge after going in so bravely.”

  That made no difference to Kuvurna, armored in invulnerable stupidity. But the shrewd mind of the little priest was clearly disturbed. He turned with nervous haste to address his so-called “master”:

  “O Man of the village, he speaks the truth. The Pack believes his lie: and, having been once convinced, they will not readily disbelieve. What shall be done?” Then, almost without pause, as Kuvurna mumbled to himself, making the words register on the surface of the stagnant pool that was his mind: “I
f the master will hear his slave, I would suggest that the case of this impostor be tried according to the customs of the Pack; and, if he be proved what he is, let him be incontinently put to death. Thus will the law and the Pack be satisfied.”

  It sounded somewhat fishy to Doody; but Kuvurna seemed to find the solution gorgeously simple—as needs it must be for his dim mentality to grasp it. At least, he nodded his well-nigh hairless, oversized head, and continued to nod it in dreamy affirmation for some little time. But the priest turned swiftly on Doody, his face hideous with triumph:

  “Do you hear, O dog who calls himself a Man? You are to be tried by the council and your abominable lie made plain. Tremble, then, and howl supplication to the spirits of your ancestors, for pardon that you ever denied them!” His tone was ferocious, a canine snarl. Doody found time to wonder what the fellow’s background was; he had seen dogs before who had been kicked into viciousness.

  Abruptly, no doubt at some prearranged signal, from behind the dark hangings which masked the stone walls emerged a dozen of the dogmen, spears thrusting menacingly as they surrounded Doody. The latter made no resistance, save to shake himself once as horny hands grasped insistently at his arms; his life seemed safe enough for the nonce. He went with them quietly, out through the creaking temple door and through the arch into suddenly blinding sunlight.

  The high priest followed to stand at the summit of the stair and glare down at Doody and his guard—so different, this, from the innocently adoring escort of hunters who had led him out of the forest—with baleful eyes; the eyes of any priest who beholds a rival to the god that is his very bread and butter.