Wildeblood's Empire

by Brian Stableford

  If I wanted to hide something, it was just the kind of place I’d pick. Heaven only knew how many other nasty surprises there were waiting for wanderers in the labyrinth, and maybe the staircase I’d picked, guided in my decision by the message, was the only one which gave you even a sporting chance of getting to the proper entrance intact.

  There had been no mention of any such considerable cave system on this island in James Wildeblood’s survey report. And yet he must have found it while he was a member of that team. What, I wondered, had he found in it that had made him keep quiet about it? Or had it been merely one more piece in a jigsaw-puzzle plan that would end with his owning a world?

  I reached the bottom of the rock staircase. Here the cleft widened again, and there was a triangular apron of rock about seven feet from the apex, where I stood, to the base, which was a ledge.

  Cautiously, I moved forward to the edge, and knelt down. I could feel the coldness of the stone through my trouser legs. I peered over the lip of the ledge, but could see no bottom in the Stygian darkness. All that I did find was a pair of steel pegs driven deep into the rim and plugged with some kind of cement. Dangling from the pegs was a rope ladder, doubled up so that the bottom was looped around the top rung. The rope was tough—and new. By no stretch of the imagination had it been hanging there since James Wildeblood’s pioneer explorations. This route into the underworld was still in use.

  I unhooked the bottom of the ladder from the top and let it fall away into the abyss. Why, I wondered, was it secured thus instead of simply left dangling? The answer that immediately occurred to me wasn’t one I liked much.

  There is no way that a man can safely descend a rope ladder clutching a candle-tray in one hand and a quarterstaff in the other. So the staff had to go. I left it on the ledge, and gingerly eased myself over the rim of the pit, clutching one of the pegs in my left hand and holding the candle in my right. I could have put out the candle and used both arms but that would have left me to go down in total darkness, and there was no way I could face the terrible prospect of getting to the bottom and then finding that I couldn’t light a match. I hadn’t all that much faith in the matches, which—unlike the rope of the ladder—hadn’t been recently renewed.

  The first few rungs were bad, while I extended myself fully on the ladder. Then I could find some kind of a rhythmic procedure, lowering the grip of each limb in turn. I thought it would be easier all the way to the bottom, but I had reckoned without the architecture of this particular cavern. Only the first ten or twelve feet of the ladder lay against the face of the rock, which was slanted from the vertical by four or five degrees in my favor. After that the slant changed and the remainder of the ladder hung absolutely plumb as the nearby wall retreated into the gloom.

  I was becalmed in a limitless void of black, clammy emptiness, in which only the twin ropes and the frail wooden spars connecting them had any meaningful existence. All that prevented me from falling into what might—so far as I could know—be a bottomless abyss was a foothold and the deathlike grip of my left hand. Every time I had to move that hand I wrapped my right arm round the rope, deliberately tangling myself in case a foot should slip. And every time I executed that complex winding maneuver, the candle guttered....

  I tried telling myself how lucky I was that I had a candle instead of a flashlight. The candle would warn me of foul air, by going out....

  Somehow, I didn’t manage to reassure myself.

  It quickly became agonizing for me to reach down with the leading foot, to unlock my hand or arm. The pain was not physical but psychological, and no less painful for that. I cursed myself for idly unlooping the bottom of the ladder and letting it fall, without hauling the whole thing up to count the rungs. And I cursed James Wildeblood for his vicious secrets. I no longer wondered at the fact that no one had ever penetrated his clandestine operations. If this were the only route, then the wonder was that Philip was actually afraid that someone might discover it. We all know that familiarity breeds contempt, but if Philip and Zarnecki were so familiar with this procedure that they could nip up and down the near-vertical corridor twice a week then they had my profoundest admiration. It seemed to me while I descended that ladder that I had found a species of hell.

  And then came the moment of utter horror, when I reached for another rung and found that it wasn’t there. I groped with the toe of my boot for something where the rung ought to have been—five or six inches beneath the last, but found nothing. A little higher I discovered the dangling loop of rope. The ladder was finished. Logically, I could drop safely to the ground.

  But who trusts logic in such a situation? I remembered the pitfall, and the rope-ladder suddenly seemed to me nothing more than more sophisticated kind of trap—a lure, inviting the curious to a nasty-minded doom. It dawned on my frightened mind that this was probably the whole intention of Wildeblood’s coded message: it was all bait to bring fools into a labyrinth from which there was no conceivable release. The whole thing had been the cruelest of cruel jokes....

  How far dared I reach with my trailing foot?

  I wanted to let go and jump. I wanted desperately to be able to persuade myself to let go and jump. But my fears just would not find the arguments convincing, and I couldn’t blame them. Trust in terror, I thought, because it is the most faithful of all our guardians.

  My hand, which had seemed for so many moments to have a miraculous capacity to freeze itself to the rope, lock on with a superhuman tenacity, gradually began to slip.

  Fearfully, I wound my right arm around again, and let my left hand down. My searching foot descended a few inches more. There was nothing. I had to repeat the whole sequence, letting it down again, feeling all the while that the floor must be there, and if it was not, then....

  My boot touched the bottom.

  It was there. Cold stone.

  I would not immediately trust it. I tested it with my legs as far as I could stretch myself...testing firmness and extent. I could not accept its solidity without suspicion and confirmation.

  But rock it was, and an expanse of rock quite large enough for any human purpose.

  I let myself down to it, and let the faint light of the candle illuminate it for me. There was a wall curving away into darkness, and a crevice. There were water marks there—sinuous colored curves etched into the face. It was damp, but there was no trace of running water now. I followed the wall, intending to stick close by it. I didn’t want to wander off into some vast pitted amphitheatre. I held the candle up high, to follow the track left by the water, and then caught my breath.

  I can’t describe now the feelings which overwhelmed me then as I saw what I saw. There was anger, disgust, a terrible sense of my own stupidity. Up there was an electric cable. And dangling from it, secured in a cage of wire mesh, was an electric bulb. Without doubt the whole dangerous way was discreetly wired. When generators had been built to supply the house they had not neglected its most vital extension. Of course not.

  If only, back on that triangular ledge, I had held my candle up to the ceiling, instead of down to reach into the perilous darkness, I would probably have seen the switch.

  Mentally, I cancelled the admiration I’d found for Zarnecki and Philip. They didn’t deserve it. The way I had come ceased to be anywhere near as frightening once I realized that it could be lighted.

  On the other hand, I remembered, when James Wildeblood had first come this way there had been no steep spikes supporting a rope ladder, no steps cut into that narrow slit.

  I continued to follow, not the wall, but the cable. It had to be going where I wanted to go.

  There was still a slope to the tunnel, which carried me downwards still. Out of the darkness another wall loomed, drawing in on me. I wondered, briefly, what might have happened had I followed the other wall—the one without the cable. I felt relief that I had, in fact, seen the thing when I did.

  I passed through a globular grotto with three modes of egress, but had no difficulty sel
ecting my way. I had to crouch at one point, and several times I had to be careful lest I slip on the damp stone, which was pitted with rivulets where water habitually ran. I prayed that it would not start to rain heavily up above.

  But then the runnel arced away into a drain set beside the path, and finally disappeared into a yawning hole while the passage flattened out somewhat.

  And twenty feet or so into this dry, horizontal passage I found a brick wall, into which was set a heavy wooden door, reinforced by iron strips. The door must have been assembled here long, long ago...and the bricks let down in panniers, with mortar and tools.

  That was a lot of trouble to go to for no particular reason. I knew I’d reached my destination. I inspected the door closely. It had a lock, but the key was hanging on a nail driven into the wood close to it. There was also a single heavy bolt, centrally placed and presently closed.

  All of this perturbed me somewhat. I remembered the rope ladder, drawn up and looped to the supports. Now a lock with a key on a nail, and a bolt shot home on this side of the door. All three of these were precautions...not for the purpose of keeping unwelcome visitors and trespassers out, but for the purpose of keeping someone—or something—very definitely in.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Slowly, and as quietly as was humanly possible, I drew back the bolt. Then I turned the key in the lock. It wasn’t stiff.

  The door opened toward me, and at first I opened it only a crack in order to peer around it. But I could see nothing—it was pitch dark on the other side except for a mere line of light that seemed to be very distant. I pulled it wide open and went through, candle held high.

  It was something of an anti-climax.

  I was in a closed section of tunnel—a kind of ante-room. The apparent great distance of the line of light had been an optical illusion caused by the lack of reference points. It was, in fact, shining under another door that was only four or five paces away. The closed section was filled with sacks and barrels, piled on either side with only a narrow corridor running between them.

  One of the barrels was open, and I checked its contents. It contained a coarse substance, gray-green in color, with something of the texture of sand. It was like soft gravel to the touch. It was dried plankton.

  Is this, I wondered, the source of the drug? It seemed too simple.

  I looked for another empty container, and located a second topless barrel. But this one contained cabbages. I also located a sack full of turnips.

  We were now a long way underground, but it wasn’t as cold as I might have expected. It was rather more than a couple of degrees above freezing, but probably cold enough for this food to keep some time without spoiling. But what was it for?

  The other door hadn’t a lock or a bolt. I only had to pull the handle to draw it open.

  And this time, when I peered through the thin crack, it wasn’t into darkness that I looked, but into the dull illumination of low-efficiency electric lights. They were not near enough or bright enough to dazzle, and they were not adequate to show every corner of the great vaulted chamber where they hung. They sat among stalactites, throwing startling shadows that made the roof of the cave into an amazing forest of glowing stone daggers and crisscrossing black stripes.

  The cave was enormous...as large in capacity as the hall wherein James Wildeblood had gathered the relics of his collection of Poseidoniana. The ceiling formed a great dome, pocketed here and there but basically hemispherical. The floor was also concave, like a bowl, with three ledges let into it and a sector cut out at the lowest level which was filled with water. There was a flat black slit extending about twenty degrees of arc—nearly fifty feet—at the far side of the cave where the water extended its surface out of the chamber and into what must be a whole system of natural sewers and conduits. Here were the sea caves of Wildeblood’s island, a network extending over a hundred square miles, in all likelihood. How much of it was accessible from here was anyone’s guess. One thing I was sure of, though, was that its connections with the sea were all underwater. For all practical human purposes, this had to be the only way in. As I looked around the great dome, I saw other tunnels and slits—perhaps a dozen in all—let into this central pocket. Some of them, at least, would be the highways of this inner world. Secured to the concave ledge at the water’s edge were three small wooden boats, draped with assorted net and tackle. The waterways, too, were navigable thoroughfares.

  Beside me, on the platform which allowed access to the door, were small boxes filled with bags—each bag about the size of a fist. Spilled here or smeared there were traces of a white powder I didn’t need to taste in order to identify.

  On the second level, below the platform, there was a positive maze of apparatus—iron and glass, like the laboratory of an alchemist as imagined by a Gothic writer of long ago. It was bizarre and makeshift, but as I looked at it I could see beyond the superficial ludicrous abundance of tubes and clamps to the reality of its functioning. Almost at a glance, I understood. It was a processing plant, for dehydration, separation, distillation. This great vault was warmer than it had any right to be, so far down in the bowels of the island. The reason now was clear—strategically arranged beneath the device was a system of coils for electrical heating.

  This was where the drug was made, all right.

  But I didn’t immediately wonder about its source, because there was something else which caught and held my attention absolutely, forming within me a slow, cold core of horror and realization.

  I saw the people who made it.

  Working the apparatus were three men—or, to be strictly accurate, three human beings, for two were female. They might have been any age between fifteen and fifty. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell because their hair was white, their faces were white, their flesh was tight around their skul1bone. They were dressed in gray tunics and trousers, not ragged but old.

  They didn’t even look up.

  I pulled back the door until it bumped on the sack of turnips, and pushed myself through it to stand on the platform of stone, looking down at them. They knew I was there, but they just went on with what they were doing, refusing to look at me or acknowledge my existence. They worked on steadily and patiently, as if there were nothing else in the universe but their perennial task.

  Secrets that people are particularly anxious to keep, I thought, are often nastier than you imagine.

  I had known that Philip’s secret would be the making of the drug. But I hadn’t sat down to work out all the implications. A secret place, that had to be kept secret. Had I imagined that Philip and Zarnecki did the work with their own fair hands? Or that Elkanah and the other servants worked by day in the house and by night on their secret project? I’d known, in my mind, that the production of enough drug to supply a colony wasn’t a back yard operation. It needed people, supplies, power. But it had never occurred to me that Wildeblood had a little colony within a colony...slaves, toiling away in a little private underworld...or private hell.

  There had to be more than three. Thirty, maybe...or even more. The rest were elsewhere in the world of tunnels—living, working. The whole operation was down here. It had to be. Everything, from the harvest to the product. Whatever the source of the drug was, it had to be down here in the caves and canals. The whole life of this little prisoner community, with skins dead white because they had never been exposed to the sun, was given over to the production of the power and the wealth of the Wildeblood dynasty.

  I jumped down from the platform of stone, and moved toward the three people silently tendering their monstrous machine. I touched the man on the shoulder, and he turned to look at me. There was an expression in his eyes of infinite patience. The eyes had once been brown—or had been intended by his genes to be brown. Now they were orange, with a hint of green, faded toward the pink of albinism but not quite getting there. They were bright eyes.

  “Can you talk?” I said. It was an idiotic question. Why should they be dumb?

  “Yes
,” he said. He showed no surprise at the question.

  He saw me. He wasn’t blind. The electric lights were enough to preserve his sight. He stared into my face, uncaring, waiting. I dropped my hand, and let him turn back. Unasked was the question: How long have you been here?

  I already knew the answer.

  All my life.

  All of countless lives. No one ever left here. Perhaps new blood was periodically introduced, to supplement the birth rate. But they would be brought as children, to grow accustomed to the life and to know of nothing else.

  I searched for other questions, but I had lost them all. I just couldn’t speak.

  I walked toward the water’s edge, toward the boats. But then something did remind itself to me, and I turned aside. I went to the hoppers that stood at one end of the apparatus—the end where the raw material had to be put in. I looked inside the barrels which held the supply, ready for the distillation to begin.

  And I saw a translucent gel, organized into thick branching strands, moist and limp. Within the gel were embedded thousands of black dots, each one the size of a thumbnail but perfectly round.

  There was no mistaking it.

  It was spawn. The spawn of the whaleys, deposited here in underground caves, in the dark world where the seafaring predators would not go. A small measure of parental care...eggs laid where they would be as safe as it was possible to make them.

  But safe no longer. After millions of years of evolution, chance had thrown up a century of Wildeblood’s empire. A new kind of depredation. I knew then what the boats and nets were for, and where the rest of the white people must be.

  The breeding season had begun. They were gathering in the harvest.

  The gel was provided not merely as a matrix for the embryos but also as their initial food supply. Millions of tiny hatchlings would live the first weeks of their lives here, growing a little before their vast migration back across the ocean bed to join the herds in the open sea. By nature’s calculation one in ten thousand might survive to reach the herd. The rest would provide food for the many hunters of the inshore waters. That, at least, had been the plan.