Keepers of the Secrets

by Philip José Farmer

  A grenade cracked about forty yards behind him. More screams and yells.

  Brightness dispelled some of the fog high up in the mists. (The flare was non- metallic, of course.) Doc could see for at least a hundred feet. Shadowy figures struggled at the edge of his vision, and then, when he turned his head, the flare died.

  'We could all take off and talk at my leisure,' Doc Caliban said. 'But friends of mine are out there fighting, and if we ran they'd die with the Nine. They might say that the sacrifice would be worth it. But I can't ask them, and if I could, I wouldn't. You tell me what kind of bomb it is and where we can find it. Now! Either I stop it from going off or we all die!'

  'You stupid mortal!' Cobbs screamed. 'What do you care what happens to your friends if you can live forever? Listen, I can get you the elixir! I'll give you the formula! I know you've been cut off, and that the ageing has started! And you'll die in a few years because you'll never have the elixir unless one of ... The Nine gives it to you!'

  'One of ... us?' Caliban said. 'What's your part in this, Cobbs? It's obvious you're hand in hand with Iwaldi. You were just pretending to be prisoners of Iwaldi, for some reason I can't comprehend, unless it was to infiltrate into my organisation and catch us all when you had us cold.'

  ‘Time's running out!' Cobbs said, his voice cracking. 'Would you throw away eternity, man?'

  Caliban reached out and pulled Cobbs' large nose loose. It came off with a slight tearing sound, and the rest of the pseudoskin over his face followed. When the wig came off, the Cobbs he knew looked out of the fog.

  Barbara Villiers said, ‘For God's sake, Caliban! We don't have time to play around! Get us out of here and then we'll give you whatever you want! The elixir! The map of the caves of the Nine and the traps set in it! Even some of the addresses of the Nine, though they won't go near there anymore, of course, unless they think we're all dead!'

  'For two who are just candidates, or maybe just servants, you know a great deal,' Caliban said. 'Old Iwaldi must have taken you into his deepest confidences. By the way, where is Iwaldi? He wouldn't have let you go running off while he fought a rearguard action. Not old Iwaldi. He may be a mad goblin, but he's not that mad. Unless he thinks you double-crossed him figuring to blow him up with the rest of the Nine and then you two would take over. Did you plan on carrying out his ideas, releasing the phytoplankton bomb? Or did you plan to kill him so you could stop that but still get the elixir and his wealth?'

  Cobbs bent over so he could get his face closer to Caliban's. His features were twisted with agony, and the moisture on his face seemed to be even heavier than the fog droplets could account for.

  'Get us out of here, and I'll tell you where you can lay your hands on Iwaldi!'

  'You'd betray him?'

  'Why not? He'd betray anyone if it meant saving his life!'

  Barbara Villiers' voice cracked, too. 'We can't tell you at this moment. He sent us in to do his dirty work for him. But we'll show you where you can ambush him. Just get us out of here!'

  'What kind of bomb?' Caliban said.

  'It's a heavy irradiated plastic box containing the explosive in liquid form! The dial and the time mechanism are all plastic or hard wood, too! I set it to go off in fifteen minutes! The mechanism pulls a pin out of a vial of plastic containing the gas that'll mix with the liquid and set it off! There won't be anybody living left within a half a mile radius and it'll kill many outside that area! The stone monuments of Stonehenge will be knocked down and maybe shattered! Old XauXaz's body and his coffin and the stones he set up as a temple for the sun god - himself - will be gone! Along with the rest of the Nine! Even old Anana, who said she was going to defeat death!'

  'Who's fighting the Nine out there?' Caliban said. 'Or are they blundering around fighting among them-selves? Grandrith can't be responsible for all that!'

  'I left most of my men there to hold them, keep them occupied!'

  'Double-crossing your own men, too? Well, that's to be expected, Iwaldi!’

  Trish and Barney said, 'What?'

  Villiers gasped. Cobbs' jaw dropped.

  'He can do what I can do,' Caliban said. 'He has enough control of his muscles to pull his spine and add or subtract inches to his height. I've done it plenty of times myself. It takes much practice and knowledge. But what I can do in my short lifetime, Iwaldi has had many lifetimes to learn.'

  He pulled on Cobbs' nose and when that would not come pulled on the skin of the face and then on the dark hair.

  'That won't do any good, you fool!' Barbara Villiers said. 'That is his own skin and hair! The old goblin you knew was the false one! The wrinkled skin and the redshot eyes and the long white hair and beard, those were the fakes! They were true enough once, but when he regained his youth -'

  'Shut up!' Iwaldi yelled.

  'We haven't got time to carry this deception out!' Villiers said. 'Besides, there's no sense in not telling him that we can have the rejuvenation elixir. He won't leave us here to die if he knows that he has to take us away to get the elixir! You should have known that, you greedy old man! It was our main card, and you've wasted too much time holding out! It may be too late because of your stupidity!'

  'You can't talk to me that way, my dear Countess Cleveland!'

  Caliban's eyebrows went up. He said, Then Barney was telling the truth, not kidding you as he thought he was, when he said you must be the Lady Castlemaine whose petticoats hanging out to dry made Pepys flip? Charles the Second's mistress, mother of his three sons? You did not die as history said, but you used makeup to look as if you were getting older and then you pretended to die and some woman died so that you could be buried, and you -'

  'Yes!' Barbara Villiers snarled. 'Yes! How many candidates have done that? Hundreds, thousands? You and Grandrith are my own descendants! My grandson had a child by a Grandrith woman; so I'm your many times great- grandmother! For the sake of us all, for the sake of eternal life for you and your friends, and for me, your ancestress, get us out of here! You will not only have eternal life but eternal youth!'

  'I appropriated your notes, after you turned against us,' Iwaldi said. 'I knew you'd been working on rejuvenation and I hired the best scientists in world to develop the elixir from the information in your notes. One did develop it, and I got rid of him in an "accident.'' In two years' time, I became a young man again! The wrinkles and the white hair and the ropy veins disappeared! But I used makeup so that the others would not know! But ... must I talk away our lives! Let's get out of here! Plenty of time for talk later!'

  The old man - now turned young man - knew that even if he was taken out of the explosion area, he was in grave danger from Caliban. But he was wily, and he had survived so many millennia by being more tricky than his contemporaries. He must have something up his sleeve besides sheer desperation.

  'It's too late!' Barbara Villiers wailed. 'We can't get away in time now!'

  'Then give me the combination!' Caliban said.

  'Why not make him do it?' Trish said.

  There was the sound of running feet nearby, a twang, a cry, and a man slid across the cold wet winter grass on his face. He stopped so close to Caliban that he could see the crossbow bolt sticking out of the back of his neck.

  'We might not even be able to find the bomb!' Caliban said. 'Quickly, Iwaldi! The combination! It does have a combination to turn it off, I hope?'

  'If I tell you, you'll kill me!' Iwaldi said. The voice of Cobbs had become the familiar deep growling voice of Iwaldi. The panic and the cracking were gone.

  'I promise to release you and Villiers,' Caliban said. 'After you give me the formulae, of course. But my word is not to be given lightly and will not be broken. I will let you two go free, give you twelve hours' headstart, after which I will try to kill you, Iwaldi. Villiers can go with you if she chooses, in which case I'll try to kill her, too. But if she wants to work with me, and I decide I can trust her, well, I don't like the idea of breaking the neck of my own grandmother several times re
moved, even if she's so distant I couldn't possibly have any of her genes.'

  'Talk our lives away!' Villiers said. 'Iwaldi, tell him the combination! Now! There isn't much time left! He doesn't even know where the bomb is! He may not even be able to get to it in time!'

  'Hey, Doc! Trish! Barney!' a deep grunting voice said somewhere in the fog. ‘Pongo! Pongo!'

  'Pongo! Pongo! You hairy ape!' Barney called out joyfully. This way!'

  The squat and monstrous form of Pauncho van Veelar appeared. He rolled toward them and then stopped. 'What the hell's going on? Cobbs! Barbara!'

  Barney capsuled what had happened, but Doc listened to Iwaldi.

  There are ten numbers on the dial,' Iwaldi said. 'You set the dial on each number from 1 to 10. Then go right to 3. Then back to 9. If you do that in time, you can make the mechanism push the pin back into the gas vial container. But you'll have to push in on the dial while you're working the combination. Push in hard! If you don't, the mechanism not only won't reinsert the pin, it'll pull the pin immediately. And you'll have to keep the pressure applied for five minutes after you have worked the combination.'

  'Why all those provisions?' Caliban said.

  'You never know when they can be used to your advantage. Now, if I could have gotten away in time, you would have set off the explosion trying to stop it. But it didn't work out that way. Also - '

  'Never mind. Later.' Doc stood up, then said, 'Pauncho, where's Grandrith?'

  'Out there. I left him to find you. Why weren't you at the long barrow?'

  'I sent Rickson to meet you.'

  'He must've been killed before he got there.'

  'Watch these two,' Doc Caliban said. 'I'm going after the bomb. Watch for Grandrith,'

  He picked up a crossbrow, fitted a bolt to the string and pulled it back to the third notch and locked it. Then he walked off into the fog while Trish said, 'Doc! I want to go with you!'

  He did not answer. He did not want to be hampered. He ran back and forth, bent over, looking at the ground between glances on all sides. No grenades had burst for several minutes, but the crack of bats and yells were still filtering through the woody dampness. And then, as the dim figure of a trilithon - two upright stones with a third laid across them - solidified out of the greyness, he saw a body with a plastic shovel beside it. There were other bodies near it, but this one was the one that Iwaldi had told him to look for. It was that of the man who had dug the hole into which the bomb had been put. A bolt from out of the fog had caught him in the right eye as he straightened up, and he had fallen across the heap of dirt.

  Caliban rolled him over and then began digging. The box was buried under a few inches of dirt, so it did not take him long to unearth it from its chalky cavity. While he was working, the greyness became luminous, as if the sun had appeared and was striving to burn the fog away. At the same time, a grenade boomed about thirty yards away, and he dived for the ground. He was up at once but heard cries from near the ruins. He faced toward the trilithon but kept on digging. Then he got down on his knees and pried out the box. It was about eleven inches square and was smooth except for the dial and the numbers around it on its top.

  He had to bend close to distinguish the numbers, which was lucky for him. A bolt whizzed over his head. Two figures, interlocked, whirled by him and were swallowed up in the greyness. One of them cried out a minute later, and then Doc heard footsteps on the wet earth. He wanted to start working the combination, because he had no idea of how much time was left before the pin would be entirely pulled out of the detonating gas container. But he could not start turning the dial unless he knew that he would not be disturbed. If he had to release the pressure, he and everybody here were done for.

  The man suddenly came out of the fog. Doc said, 'Pongo?' and the man cursed and jumped back. Doc could not afford to wait any longer; he fired at where the man had been, aiming so the bolt would hit the belly, if it hit at all.

  The gut twanged; the bolt leaped out; a thud came; a man groaned. And immediately after, Doc heard the slight squishing of feet in wet earth and the rustle of weeds. He turned, and a giant was on him, striking out at him with a baseball bat.

  Doc hurled the box at him. The man ducked but not quickly enough. He staggered as the impact sent him back, and then Doc was at him with his plastic knife in his left hand. His right arm had recovered enough for him to use it, but it was still far from having regained all its strength. The giant stepped up to him and swung with both hands on the bat, bringing it around so that it caught Doc against the side of his helmet even though he had almost ducked entirely under it. Doc saw phosphene streaks but kept on lunging, and his knife drove up. The man had dropped the club after it glanced off Doc's helmet and had put out his hands. The knife went through one; the giant roared. Doc jerked the knife out. The man brought his knee up and caught Doc in the chest. If it had hit him in the chin, it would have shattered even his massive bones. The man was wearing irradiated plastic knee guards.

  The knee hurt Doc's chest and knocked the wind out of him. But his right arm closed around the leg, and he brought the knife up between the man's legs. It tore the man's pocket and slid off the plastic groinguard and then off the plastic chain mail around his leg. The man brought both fists down against the top of Doc's helmet, half-stunning him. The man howled, because the blow had hurt his fist hand. But Doc fell backward, not knowing exactly what was going on. The dagger did not fall from his hand; many years of fighting had built in a conditional reflex so that he would have had to be entirely unconscious or dead before his hand would have relaxed. And his wind quickly came back.

  The giant charged in, roaring. Doc Caliban rolled over, not realising consciously what he was doing, and he was out of sight of the man. But a few seconds later, the giant thrust out of the fog, and seeing Doc starting to get onto his feet, cried, 'No, you don't!' and rushed him, his huge hands clasped to bring them down on top of Caliban's helmet again.

  Doc bent his legs and leaped outward as if he had been shot from a cannon in a circus. His head drove into the man's big paunch with an impact that did not help Doc regain his senses. But the breath went out of the man - who must have weighed three hundred and thirty - and he went backward. Stunned, Doc did not act as quickly as he should have, and the man, though struggling for breath, knocked the dagger from Caliban's hand with a blow of his arm against Caliban's wrist.

  Their faces were close enough that Doc could distinguish his features in the milky greyness.

  'Krotonides!' Doc said.

  He was one of the candidates, a bodyguard for old Ing. Doc had seen him a number of times at the caves during the annual ceremonies. He had endured the boastings of Krotonides that he was the strongest and fastest human in the world when it came to hand-to-hand combat and that Caliban's reputation was overrated.

  'Caliban!' Krotonides said. His dark, big-nosed, bushy-eyebrowed face hung in the fog. 'I always said I could take you!'

  Caliban's hand with fingers stiffly extended stabbed him in the eye, and Krotonides bellowed with agony. He rolled away, but as Caliban got to his feet the giant leaped out of the fog, his hands in the classical position to deliver a karate chop.

  Doc snatched off his helmet and threw it with all the force of his left arm and the body behind it. There was a thud, and Krotonides staggered, slowly rotating around and around, while dark blood gushed from his nose, which had been almost severed by the sharp edge of the helmet. Caliban moved in swiftly though not incautiously, since Krotonides was still a very dangerous man. Before he could reach him, three figures advanced through the mists, and he felt it discreet to withdraw. Besides, he had to get to the box as quickly as possible.

  Suddenly, he heard steps behind him. He whirled and then a rumbling voice said, 'Pongo! Pongo!'

  'Pongo! It's me, Doc,' Caliban said. 'Help me find that bomb before it's too late!'

  The three men had been engulfed in the fog, but they were still in the immediate neighbourhood, so Doc and Paunch
o had to keep an eye out for them. Doc hoped that none of them would toss out a grenade in their general direction.

  Pauncho suddenly cursed, and then he said, 'I fell over it, Doc! Hey, Doc! Quick! Over here!'

  Caliban found him squatting by the box with his crossbow ready. Caliban got down on his knees and put his face close to the face of the dial. I'm starting now,' he said. 'Once I get going, I can't stop. I have to hang on to this for five minutes at least. So you'll have to handle anybody that shows up. But as soon as I get the combination worked, we'll run away from here. I can hang, on to the box. We'll worry about killing the old geezers some other time.'

  He started to turn the dials, stopping them briefly on each number, starting with 1, advancing to 2 when the mechanism clicked at 1. He kept pressure on the dial, which had sunk within a recess about one-tenth of an inch deep when he had first pushed. He clicked the dial through each of the numbers, and at 10 reversed the dial quickly to 3 and then turned it back again to 9. On reaching this, he breathed deeply and then started to count. 'One thousand and one. One thousand and two. One thousand and three.'

  When he got to 'One thousand and three hundred,' he would have counted out five minutes, but he would go to one thousand and four hundred just to make sure before he let the dial push back to its level with the box.

  He stood up, holding one corner of the box with his giant hand and pressing in on the dial with the other.

  'Run, Doc!' Pauncho said. 'Here comes a whole army!'

  Caliban twisted his head. A number of dark figures were emerging from the fog. He said, 'Follow me! Don't stand and fight!' and he trotted away. He dared not run at full speed because he might stumble over a body or slip on the half-frozen mud. Behind him feet slapped as Pauncho kept on his heels. Somebody shouted and then about forty feet ahead of them, the fog opened up with an orange- bordered roar. Doc's feet slipped from under him as the blast hit, and he fell on his back. But he kept hold of the box and his pressure on the dial.