Doomsman - the Theif of Thoth

by Harlan Ellison

  There was none.

  Day had come and gone. The evening had set in, and

  Juanito had fed both himself and Elena from the meager

  copter stores in the tiny kitchenette backship. But still no

  solution came to him. There was something wrong here.

  It was apparent he was now fighting a different enemy.

  He had escaped AmericaState-at least temporarily-and

  though he still wondered what weapon they would employ to force him to assasinate his own father, he knew he had a new adversary,

  Eskalyo. Don Eskalyo, and the men of Cuidad Rosario. For until they knew who he was, and were willing to

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  accept him, they would try to destroy him. If they found

  out about him. If they knew he wanted in.

  Juanito had a feeling Elena Dympna knew something

  he did not Something important. Something like Eskalyo's knowing they were there, and that Juanita was coming down. For he had already decided. If diving was the only way to get down, then dive he would.

  Again, he had a feeling. The feeling he would not have

  to attempt a sixteen hundred fathom dive. They would

  find him. That was what he knew.

  So he tied her in the locker backship, and took the

  copter down to fifteen feet above the chopping aqua surface of the Pacific. It was dark down there. Dark and bid,.

  den.

  He turned his skintite's heat control higher than even it

  had been in Alaska. Then he unpalmed the lock, and

  threw down the ladder. It plopped onto the water with a

  smacking sound, and floated there, rising and falling in

  rhythm to the beat of the waves.

  Then he 'rose high on his toes, thrust forward with all

  the power of his legs, and dove cleanly for the ocean.

  He struck true and slid down without effort or sensation of having hit water. In a few moments the water had closed over him so completely that the darkness of blindness enveloped him.

  It was colder than he had imagined. Colder than the

  grave, and he hoped that if Eskalyo patrolled these waters-as Elena's attitude led him to suspect-the patrol would find him quickly. He went down.

  The layers of darkness came up to meet him, and, like

  veils of thinness in the mist, parted only to be replaced by

  more and thicker veils. ·

  His breath was short now. He reversed his kick, and

  shot toward the surface. The skintite was keeping the

  worst of the cold from him, but he had no gloves and the

  skintite's cowl could only keep off so much chill from his

  head and face. He broke surface like a dolphin, splashed

  twice to allow his lungs time for filling, and surface �ove

  under.

  He continued diving for three hours, then climbed the

  ladder to rest.

  It was a short rest, and though when he lay down on

  DOOMS MAN

  the contour couch his eyes closed instantly, the time sense

  in his mind brought him to full and sharp wakefuln�ss a

  mere hour and twenty minutes later.

  He took the deep dive again.

  It was approaching evening. What little warmth the air

  had held now was gone when he surfaced. However, the

  water was a few degrees warmer. The darkness was now

  not only below, but above, and when he surfaced his

  mind found no release from the nightmare world beneath

  the waves; he was forced to live in it, both with air and

  without. Once, he thought he had already broken the surface, and let his breath out. The water rushed into his lungs, and he came to the top choking, gasping, visions of

  tarantulas in his eyes.

  Then, after the second three-hour diving period, and

  the short rest, his search came to an end. He had not

  found Don Eskalyo.

  But Eskalyo found him.

  They came up from below, a blue aura surrounding

  them. Three of them. Muscled even through the

  plasteel-cloth suits to such an extent that Juanito could

  see the ripple and surge of their bodies clearly. They

  wore flippers on their feet and soft bubblelike helmets

  covered their heads. Powerpaks were strapped to their

  backs, and each one carried a spear gun of a design Juanito had never encountered in the Armaments Oasses at the School. He could see their faces through the bubbles,

  for the blue glow that surrounded them cast light out into

  the surrounding darkness. Their hands were covered by

  insulated gloves with spike tips at the finger end. The

  breather apparatus, attached to the powerpak, sent out

  streamers of bubbles behind them as they shot up from

  under Juanita's feet. They came on like sharks, and circled him warily.

  This was their element.

  From moment to moment their heads inclined at different angles, their feet turned in and out, their legs were crossed and opened and moved rhythmically, their

  spike-tipped hands waved almost in ballet femininity.

  They were speaking to one another; signaling to each

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  other; planning underwater strategy; their movements were

  their semaphore.

  And they came around and around, circling like the

  sharks they so resembled in their black suits.

  Juanito's lungs cried for air.

  With a reverse scissor, Juanito flailed backward out of

  their decreasing circle, and he sent himself up toward the

  surface. Their element? It was, and he had no choice but

  to get them into his area, if he expected to see Eskalyo,

  and not be drowned out here.

  He struggled toward the surface, and even as he saw

  the plastoid of the ladder floating above him, lying on the

  watertop, a shzzzzz sounded behind him and one of the

  spears sheared past, trailing its stream of bubbles and the

  thin wire cord that would be rewound to reel in the missile.

  He arched forward, kicking frantically, and made the

  surface an instant before the three patroling guards shot

  up around him. In an instant he was up the ladder, and

  scrambling for the cab of the copter.

  They floated below him, blue fog in the darkness, for a

  handful of seconds, then there were three distinct

  splashes, and they were gone, back to wherever they had

  come from.

  Juanito pulled himself over the sill of the lock, and

  went to the small stack of towels he had prepared for his

  returns from diving; they were not precisely towels, nor

  even roughly :>o. They were wiper clothettes, used to sop

  extra lubricant from the rotor and jet tubes. But they

  were thick, and served the purpose more than well

  enough.

  He dried himself carefully, set the skintite's dryer to

  quick dry, and pulled the cowl from his head. Then he

  sat down to think.

  He heard her kicking in the locker, and remembered it

  had been a good nine hours since she had eaten. It didn't

  matter; he made no move to release her.

  Thoughts tumbled all about Juanito Montoya. There

  were several things he knew now:

  First, Eskalyo was somewhere below, in a city beneath

  the ocean. But sixteen hundred fathoms was not three

  hundred fathoms, and if men had come up from down

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  there, on patrol, they must have had some way of

  �ualizing the press
ure.

  Second, if such a system of equalizers existed, as they

  must, he could not logically expect to use that system

  without being discovered.

  Third, if they knew he was here-sonorad more than

  likely-and had sent men up to find out who it was diving so suspiciously above their city, they must be concerned about being discovered.

  Fourth, if that were the case, then they would have

  more adequate defenses set up below. He could not expect to get through those defenses alive.

  There was a fifth, but the fifth was a blank.

  The solution lay in joining, not fighting. He had to get

  one of those suit-and-bubble affairs, and go with a patrol,

  back to the deeps. He had to capture a deepsman.

  They remained in the water, and could disappear at a

  moment's notice, merely by submerging. Then too, they

  had the spear guns.

  Yet . . .

  He had School training. What would the Subterfuge

  instructor have recommended? Juanito pondered long,

  and to no avail. His eyes lit on the hump of the plastoid

  ladder, hanging over the edge of the lock.

  A picture formed in his mind. He congratulated himself; it was a complete picture, a brilliant picture, it solved the problem neatly. In a short time, he knew he

  would be before his father.

  If nothing went wrong.

  When the next patrol came up, six hours later, they

  hung close under the surface and watched the bobbing

  movement of the ladder above them. Finally, one of them

  swam off to the north, and surfaced. He was behind the

  copter, but he could see the ladder hanging down clearly.

  The man they had come after was hanging from the

  ladder.

  He was upside-down, his foot tangled in the cording of

  the ladder, held rigidly in place while one leg flopped

  over free, and his arms hung down the length of the ladder, almost to the water line. He was three-quarters of

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  the way down the ladder, and strangely, he looked • • •

  dead.

  The deepsman sank beneath the waves and swam

  quickly to his companions.

  A flick of his hand: he seems to be dead.

  An inclination of the head: what are you talking

  about?

  A swirling of arm about body: he's hanging upsidedown from the ladder, and there's a knife wound in his throat. I could see it from where I was.

  Much movement. Lefs see.

  They broke to the top, and looked above them. The

  man from the copter was certainly dead. He was hanging

  there, blood stained down his throat, making the front of

  his dark skintite even darker. His arms hung loose, and

  his entire body swayed with the random movement of the

  ladder. His leg hung off the side, flopped back, and the

  tangled leg had been caught only by chance. That was

  apparent from the look of the entanglement. Someone

  had slashed the man's throat.

  "I'm going up," the first deepsman, the one who had

  first gone up to observe, said. Now that they were free of

  the water, they spoke aloud. The other two nodded.

  "Cover me," he said sharply.

  They waggled their spear guns at him.

  He slung his own spear gun over his shoulder and

  grabbed for a rung of the ladder. He started to climb

  hand over hand, warily watching the copter for other occupants. The man on the ladder was not quite dead, he could see that from here. But not long before dead, for

  the blood still flowed

  .

  yet slowly . . . pulsing as

  •

  •

  though he were unconscious.

  The deepsman was halfway up the ladder then, and

  staring beyond the man on the ladder. No danger there,

  but he might have friends. His two partners below,

  watched carefully, speaking to each other softly. They

  both knew their spear guns were not accurate in air.

  The deepsman was starting to climb past the dying

  man up there, ready to search the copter . . .

  The man was not dead!

  As the deepsman climbed over him, he arched his back

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  rigidly� came up� grabbed the ladder below the deepsman�s feet with one han� and from the palm of the other hand-concealed till now-a vibro-blade slid into view.

  The man on the ladder drove the blade into the spine ol.

  the deepsman, and the bubble-headed man screamed

  shrilly, collapsing, and nearly tumbling free of the ladder.

  As the two other patrollers watched, unable to fire for

  a second, so shocked by the suddenness of what had transpired, the man on the ladder rose full length, and grabbed the now dead deepsman as he fell past. The copter shivered as the weight thumped across the other man's arm, and then they were steadied.

  The two deepsmen below yelled their vengeance, and

  fired almost simultaneously. The bolts shusssssed past tho

  climbing man as he hauled his burden into the copter.

  Juanito dumped the body into the lock, and the copter

  flailed away into the sky . . . while the deepsmen

  watched. They pressed the reel-in studs on their weapons,

  and the bolts came slewing through the water, back to

  lock position in the muzzles of the spear guns.

  The deepsmen looked at each other for a long moment,

  and one of them said, in thick Spanish, "He was a good

  fellow."

  The other did not reply.

  They both submerged.

  The Pacific was cold and dark and actively still.

  While above, things were happening.

  The copter swirled down from the low-scudding clouds

  and dropped toward the water. Juanito Montoya was now

  clad in a shark-black suit, breather apparatus, a propellant unit and head bubble. His spear gun was loaded and cocked. He waited.

  As the copter settled, the sun's rays began to cross with

  great trepidation the broken, pyramided surface of the

  ocean. Soft sounds came from the water, were met by the

  shrill and harsh sounds of the ship's rotors, jets, creakings, and were frightened into background persistence.

  The ship settled to within ten feet of the Pacific, and a

  black shape exploded from the lock. The shape arched

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  out over the deep azure sea, and then struck bard, in an

  instant-gone.

  Juanito Montoya dove, and dove. There was no sense

  to it, he could see that now: there was a darkness in his

  eyes and forcing all matter in his brain to the sides, hiding, crouching from the darkness that had unbidden come timidly at first then with the bravado of the conqueror to

  live in his skull. Why Eskalyo? To what end? Freedo:rn?

  He did not believe in it for the people of AmericaState

  any more than the Seekers or the Probesmen or any of

  the others did; it was a hard world godammit, and there

  was no quarter to even take or get, because it just did not

  exist!

  So strike.

  Strike up and slash deep!

  So why seek out Eskalyo?

  No reason. But he was diving. He was going. The drive

  was there and he would do it. Tb� Pampas had b�n so

  sweet, so fine, so quiet sometimes. Diving!

  What would be say? Could he? Inside the bubble, he

  was crying. Stop it! God damn your stinking tea
rs, stop/

  Cry • • •

  A school of some vague fish hurled past in the darkness just beyond his blue glow. In the copter, a naked man lay on the deck, hardly any blood at all dried on

  him. There bad been an even, straight slit cut in the tight

  diving suit, below the ribs, just at the right side of the spinal column. Juanito had mended it carefully, It was cold down there and dark.

  That was the worst.

  Not the great lumbering something that bore over him,

  causing him to fight the current as it swam by, leaving

  him with a nameless dread of that great thing . . . not

  that

  not the sharp-toothed things that lived and fast­

  •

  •

  .

  ed then feasted then whirled back to the deeps for darker

  thoughts

  . not that

  and not even the s.chools and

  •

  .

  '

  .

  c•

  groups and herds and crowds and couples that went by

  him, going up, coming down, detouring past as his blue

  lantern winked down and down and down toward Ciudad

  Rosario.

  There was a surging oneness to it all now. A lightheaded allness and a-what?-a R�wness that told noth-

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  ing, yet spoke the secrets of the music of th� bottomless

  eternity that was all his, now his, his alone, in his heart so

  sweet for the first time in his life I'm coming fat�rl

  of him and all of it.

  Oh, stop it!

  There was one world for him. A world of death at the

  helm, and life and goodness and hatred and dependence

  and violence as its crew members, with hope its supercargo, Dame Hope, all in white and sparkling with the colors of the universe so sweet like the taste of guava jelly and

  tiny blades of clear mint in the mouth when it was fresh

  in the day. All that Dame Hope, you offer, and I spit on

  your beautiful face so the froth runs down your chin, because you don't know can't know could never ever not ever know that you are riding death's ship, like the Hying

  Dutchman, doomed forever so God doesn't even pity you,

  doomed to ride that ship till it turns to dust motes and

  goes away.

  So that-

  He saw the first of the pressurizing units.