Keepers of the Secrets

by Philip José Farmer

  Far below came a splash, then another splash. And then it was not so far below, and he plunged into icy water.

  He went down deep, but his fall had been perhaps fifty feet, enough to kill a man if he struck the water at the wrong angle. His hard heavy boots took the major part of the energy of the impact. Even so, he was half-stunned. But he had secured the cap with the blacklight device onto his head by holding it with one hand, and he switched that on. Then he slipped his goggles down onto his eyes, sliding it over the skin to keep the water out, and held tightly with the other. As he rose toward the surface, he removed two plugs from a vest pocket and slipped these into his nose. He began breathing through them immediately. They strained oxygen from the water quite efficiently, and he breathed the carbon dioxide out through his mouth.

  There was no light down here, and he would have been blind if it had not been for his black-light projector and goggles. Even so, the water seemed to have a suspension of plant growth or perhaps of dirt and he could not see far. But he did make out Pauncho's form and when he had swum near enough for Pauncho to see him, Pauncho gestured outward. Doc swam even closer and could then make out Barney's shadowy figure. In a moment, Barney had swum close.

  Both had retained their caps with the projector and their goggles, and they had also inserted into their nostrils the filters. But the icy water was rapidly numbing them.

  Doc reached into another pocket and removed an object the size and shape of a boy's marble. He popped it into his mouth, chewed on it, and then swallowed it. A minute later, he began to feel warm. The sense of disorientation that had started to slip through him disappeared. The pill not only provided a source of energy the output of which was proportionate to the demand for warmth, but it fought shock.

  He reached the surface but could not stick his head into the air. The water at this point boiled into the ceiling of rock. He and his two colleagues could only stay under and let themselves be taken away by the powerful current. There was no use fighting against it. Even Doc Caliban's massive muscles, anchored to a skeleton almost twice as thick as a normal human being's, could not have made progress against that force.

  For approximately five minutes, as registered by the hands of his wristwatch, they were swept between stone walls that came closer and closer. This narrowing of the channel also increased the power of the current. They sped by walls of granite worn smooth by other rocks tumbled along in the past by the river. They kept hold of each other's hand so they would not be separated, and they went around and around as if they were on a dancing streamer around a maypole. But then they began to get cold again, and they had to swallow another energon.

  He had one pill left apiece. After the effect of that was gone, their chance for survival was small. Unless - At that moment he heard a roar, and suddenly the water was boiling. A sharp ridge of stone passed a few inches below his drawn- up legs, then he was sliding on an apron of slick rock and then he was half in the air, half in the water, falling and turning over and over. Pauncho's hand was torn from his; a second later, he struck something. His ribs hurt so much that he could not repress a gasp, and water choked him.

  When he awoke, he was lying on a muddy bank and was cold, cold, cold.

  He sat up and began coughing. A shape appeared out of the darkness. He got to his feet as swiftly as he could but with agonising slowness. A voice rumbled, 'It's me, Doc. Take it easy.'

  He felt his head. His projector was still here. But his goggles were gone. Then his eyes became more adjusted to the dark and he saw that he was on a mud bank that sloped gently for several yards and then rose at ninety degrees for about forty feet. The sky was paler up there. The side of a mountain hung over them on the opposite side; the less precipitous slope was on the other side.

  'Where's Barney?' he said.

  Pauncho grunted like a sick hog and said, 'He's trying to find a way out of here. You all right, Doc?'

  Caliban felt his side. 'I think I cracked some ribs. I won't know until I get back to Gramzdorf.'

  'I thought you were a goner. I saw you slam into that boulder at the bottom of the falls.'

  Doc could hear the muted roar of the cataract to his left. They must have gone quite a distance downstream before making this bank.

  He swallowed another energon. When he started to feel warm again, he said, 'Let's go after Barney.'

  They walked into a side street of the little village of Gramzdorf just before dawn. They were no longer cold and wet and dirty and hungry. But they went silently and stealthily and studied the outside of the inn, at which they were guests, for a long time before entering.

  Doc had resumed his disguise of Mr. Sigurdsson, the old Norwegian tourist, and Barney was wearing a false red beard and red wig in his guise as a Mr. Benjamin. Pauncho wore contact lenses to change the colour of his grey-blue eyes; he had a huge blue-black beard and his hat was jammed down to hide his enormous supraorbital ridges and his slanting forehead.

  At this time of the year, when most of the snows were melted, there were few tourists. The locals, who stayed inside the village to work at the inns and the ski slides and associated businesses in winter, had retreated to their farm-houses. The clerk on duty in the lobby was asleep on his stool. The three walked past him and took the stairs to the third floor, the top floor. Doc inserted the slender tube of his see-around-a-corner and twisted it to inspect the front room from one wall to the next. Then he stuck another tube through the keyhole and pressed a bulb, pulled it out, and reinserted the saac, as he called it.

  A little box attached to the opposite wall was flashing an orange light. That meant that it had photo-graphed no one entering the room, and that, presumably, it was safe to enter.

  Barney, who had been at the end of the hall and looking out of the window, signalled Doc. When Doc got there, he saw two figures coming down a side street: Carlos Cobbs and Barbara Villiers.

  Doc Caliban was gone like a rabbit scared by a coyote. Though six feet seven and weighing more than three hundred, he moved as swiftly and as lightly as a tiger. He was down the hall, down the steps, and out onto the lobby just as the couple entered. His timing was precise. The two had no chance to get away if they had wanted to do so. Doc had considered not revealing himself so that he could watch the couple when they thought they were safe. But his own great size and difficulty of disguise for Pauncho van Veelar would also make it easy for the two to recognise them. Besides, he wanted information now, and he did not feel that the waiting game was the one to play at this time.

  So he spoke to them in his own voice as they approached.

  The jaws of both dropped, and their eyes were wide. But both recovered swiftly. Cobbs did not try to smile, but Barbara managed a brilliant and lovely smile. ‘I’m so glad!' she said, advancing with her arms open. 'So glad! And so overwhelmed! I thought you were dead! You dropped into that awful hole and were gone! But the others? Are they ... ?'

  'All right,' Doc said. 'Would you mind coming to my room? There are some things we have to establish.'

  'Why not in the morning?' Cobbs said. 'We're very tired. With good reason, as you know.'

  'I would think your curiosity would be too great for you to think of sleep,' Doc Caliban replied. 'You must have seen some things that you would have thought could not exist. And Iwaldi. Didn't - '

  'Oh, yes, darling!' Barbara Villiers said, placing a lovely white hand on Cobb's arm. 'He's absolutely right! Besides, why is he disguised as an old man? I'm dying to find out! There must be some tremendous mystery here! I couldn't sleep thinking about that! I don't think I could sleep anyway, not with that mad goblin on the loose yet!'

  Doc said, 'The mad goblin. A good description indeed of Iwaldi. Will you go with me?' and he turned as if he fully expected that they could do nothing else.

  They followed him up but stopped short when they saw Pauncho and Barney standing before the door. Cobb said, 'Who - ?' and then, 'Very good disguises those! But those long arms and that nose and mouth! No, I think I'd recogn
ise him anywhere no matter what!'

  Doc unlocked the door and let the others through and then locked the door and secured a little box against the upper part of the door with a disc. Barney had turned off the mechanism that was flashing a light and was removing the film.

  Pauncho said, 'What about a drink to warm us up and give us courage to face the morning sun? I thought I'd never see it again.'

  All took some brandy except for Doc, who never drank alcohol unless a disguise required it.

  Pauncho lit up a long green, Cuban cigar and said, 'Doc, the floor is yours.'

  He added, 'And the furniture, too, if you so desire.'

  Barney groaned. Cobbs and Villiers sat down before Doc could ask them to.

  Doc said, 'Did you two have any trouble getting out?'

  'No,' Cobbs replied. 'We just walked out the front way. Everything was clear.'

  The titian-haired woman shuddered and said, 'All those bodies ...'

  'You didn't tell the police here,' Doc said. 'Obviously you didn't have enough time; you got here so fast.'

  Cobbs said they had come straight down the mountain path to the inn. They did not know what was going on and they did not care to know. Their brief interviews with Iwaldi had scared them. The ancient dwarf - the 'mad goblin' - had impressed them deeply. He seemed to be evil incarnate, and they were convinced that even if they had escaped him they would not be safe until they got to England.

  'Just what were you digging for?' Doc said.

  'Some years ago, when we were here on vacation, we heard about a shepherd who had discovered a stone with some strange markings on it. We investigated and found a rock with inscribed runic signs, made by some Germanic speaker by the name of, by a curious coincidence, Iwaldi. Probably the runes were incised between 600 A.D. and 800 A.D. We sniffed around that area and found a site of a small village. So, every now and then, we dig around here during our vacation. We're on sabbatical leave just now.'

  Doc made a mental note to check on their stories.

  He could understand their fear. But what they had seen in the labyrinthal tunnels would establish them among the world's greatest archaeologists if they were to reveal their discovery. All they had to do was to get the police up there, and Iwaldi would have to run for cover.

  On the other hand, they may have reasoned, quite correctly, that Iwaldi had enormous influence and could abort any attempt by the police to get into his castle.

  Doc asked a few more questions. Cobbs said that the helicopters which had landed the invaders had left by the time they reached the castle's front door. But he was convinced that some of the invaders had gotten out alive. Apparently, the invaders must have split up, and the second party had survived. He thought so because he had seen the glow of cigarettes far below them on the mountainside path. It was true that the smokers could have been extremely early hikers or maybe forest rangers, but he doubted it.

  'I'm asking you to stay here for a while. For today, anyway,' Doc said. 'If any of those invaders are now in the village, you could identify them for me.'

  'And what would you do to them?' Cobbs asked.

  Doc did not answer. He looked at the young English-man with all the intensity of his peculiar brass-shot grey-green eyes. Cobbs returned his stare with one just as unabashed though not as intense. Doc had been a practitioner of hypnosis for years and had been able to disturb many a man to the point of hysteria just by looking at him. But Cobbs was a tough and cool character.

  Barbara Villiers, who looked devastatingly beautiful despite staying up all night, said, ‘I’ll stay if you think it'll help you any.'

  'Babs!' Cobbs said reproachfully. 'You might at least consider my feelings in this matter. After all, we are engaged! And we agreed that I am the head of the family!'

  'There isn't any family yet!'

  'Fabulous!' Pauncho said, grinning like a hungry monkey at her.

  Cobbs sneered at Pauncho and said, 'Discretion directs me to get out of here now! But I don't want you to think I'm a coward, and if my fiancee insists on behaving foolishly, then I'll stay too. But only long enough to look over the guests here and ascertain if we can identify any as the men we saw in the castle.'

  Barney had opened his mouth to say something, then he thought better of it. He looked as if he would explode if he did not get to ask Doc Caliban something at once.

  Doc, guessing what he wanted to say, turned away from the couple and winked at Barney. Barney went into the bathroom. Doc said, 'If you'll feel safer, you can sleep here in our beds. We'll make do on the sofa or the floor.'

  'I would prefer we do that,' Cobbs said. To return to our own rooms now would be stupid. Of course, we have to go there to pack, but we can do that later.'

  Doc suddenly spoke to the two in a somewhat musical speech, low-pitched and with many glottal stops and fricatives.

  The two only looked startled. Doc spoke in English. 'Your profession hasn't taken you into the Central American jungles, then?'

  'No,' Cobbs said. 'What was that for?'

  Doc spoke to Pauncho, who listened intently and asked him to repeat several words. He and Barney had only recently learned the speech of the People of the Blue, a dialect of the 'red skinned Athenians of Central America,' and they were a long way from being as fluent in it as their fathers had been. Pauncho nodded and left the room for the lobby downstairs.

  Cobbs said, 'Look here! I don't like this mysterious conversation. If you have anything to say, speak English, man! We're not under suspicion, you know!'

  'You're not innocent until proved guilty,' Doc said. 'Not in this affair. Everybody is suspect. You are not being detained by force, however. I must insist that you understand that. You may leave at any time you wish.'

  Doc removed his jacket and his vest. Barbara Villiers stared and then said, 'I thought you looked awfully fat in the body, yet your face wasn't fat at all. And your friends looked incongruously bulky, too. Good heavens! You must be carrying enough weight in those vests to sink a battleship!'

  Doc did not reply.

  Cobbs and Villiers went into the large bedroom where he sprawled out on Doc's bed and she on Barney's. Barney came out of the bathroom and spoke softly in the speech of the People of the Blue.

  'I sent out a message to Grandrith. His wife answered. She said he'd taken off for Africa a few hours before. She also said she might have to leave her rooms and go hide out in another place. She noticed a couple of suspicious characters hanging around in the street below. She said they might not be interested in her, but she's taking no chances.'

  'You told her about the events of the past few hours?'

  'Everything. She said she'd pass it on to Grandrith when she got a chance. He's supposed to send her another message as soon as he's ready to leave the plane on the coast of Gabon.' There, near the place where he had been born, Grandrith would proceed on foot through the belt of rain forest stretching over a good part of central Africa. He would live off the plants and the animals native to the land, killing them with arrows or his knife. He would avoid all human habitations; he would go like a shadow, like the demon of the forest as so many natives called him. Some used the name that an American writer had given him after accidentally finding out about him. On foot and almost naked, he would go faster than any human should through the silent closed-canopied, twilit rain forest where the only humans are the pygmies and where the pathetically few hairy and long-canined hominids, those beastmen of native legend, not long ago roamed.

  Grandrith's wife, Clio, was staying in a slums district of London where she was operating a short-wave radio.

  Caliban's cousin, Patricia Wilde, was also in London. She was on the trail of old Anana, the woman who headed the Nine. She believed that Anana lived at least part of the year in a town house in a wealthy residential district, and she was investigating a number of houses there. Caliban did not think she would have any luck, but at least it would keep her busy, and she did have a sharp nose for clues; she would have made an excellent
private eye.

  The phone rang. Doc was across the room like a bronze shark and had picked up the receiver before the second ring. Pauncho, speaking mainly in the language of the Blue People, said, 'I checked out their registration here, Doc, after greasing the desk clerk's palm. Cobbs and the redhead have been registered here for a week. But the clerk says they aren't round much. I just saw two guys that looked pretty mean to me, like they could take care of themselves and others, too, if they were paid enough. They've been registered here for a week. They're Germans, Heinrich Zelner and Wilhelm Gafustimm. Zelner moves slow and careful, as if he's hurting. They're in room 215. You want - ?'

  Caliban asked for a detailed description. Zelner could have been one of the men he saw when he had looked into the room where the invaders were. He might have been wounded during the fighting.

  'I'll be right down,' he said. 'Meet you outside their room.'

  He checked the pockets of his vest, which had dried out very quickly after he'd come out of the Toll River. He was short of anaesthetic gas bombs, so he went into the bathroom and pulled a section of the wall aside. The short-wave radio and their supplies were stored here. Pauncho had cut out a piece of the wall and made a receptacle in less than fifteen minutes after they had moved in. His work on concealing the new door had been so skilful it would be doubtful that anyone would ever know about it until the inn was torn down.

  The grenades were actually little plastic balls which shattered easily on impact. Their surface held a little nipple which could be squeezed off and a slender tube could be inserted into the hole created. Doc also took several of the tubes. Cobbs and Villiers seemed to be sleeping. The woman was heart-achingly beautiful.