Message From the Eocene

by Margaret St. Clair

  "Also, I don't much like being blackmailed. We're being blackmailed into helping what's-his-name get his precious book back from the side of Mt. Dore. Why doesn't he get his book back himself, if he wants it so much?"

  Denise refrained from saying that somebody who had been dead an unknown number of years could hardly be expected to undertake mining operations. She had an unreasonable sense of guilt for what was happening, as if the shapes in the mine, and the communication from Tharg, had somehow been her fault.

  "Did you tell Miron what you're blasting for?" she asked after a moment.

  "No. I didn't dare. It's too implausible."

  "... Perhaps the book will turn out to be valuable," she offered feebly.

  "It's possible, I suppose," he admitted. "I'm no bibliophile. But I shouldn't think there'd be much left of a book after we got through blasting for it.

  "—Goubu, I think that charge is a little too heavy. All set? Now!"

  He pressed the switch. Clods of earth and pieces of vegetable debris began to rain down on the roof of the cab. Denise wondered how many shots they would have to make before they got down to the book. Her PES had not remained at the point of harmonious integration with the rest of her personality that it had reached when she had first drunk Goubu's tisane, but it was considerably more reliable than it had formerly been. She had an impression of a book, or something like a book, clearly enough. But she could not tell what it looked like or in what sort of rock it was.

  The day progressed. At noon she and Pierre had sandwiches and a glass of wine. By four thirty, when Pierre sent the men home (he had a prudent dislike of paying overtime), they were about fifteen meters down.

  Goubu came up to the couple as they were leaving. "M'sieu and Madame Houdan," he said, "could my wife and I sleep in your house tonight? We do not need a bed, only a flat place where we can lay our sleeping mats."

  "Why—I suppose so," Pierre replied. He was frowning a little. "But why do you want to sleep in our house?"

  "We do not think it is safe in the village," the burly man replied. "There are all sorts of bizarre stories going about—for example that M'sieu and Madame mean to blow up the whole island. The people in my village were friendly to me when they thought I could make Madame stop the shapes in the mine. Most of us work in the mine. But they do not understand this blasting in the side of a hill."

  "And you think it's not safe for you in the village tonight?'

  "We fear not. Mandoué went to her own village today to be safe. But she does not want to stay even there at night."

  Pierre opened the door of the cab. "Get in," he said. "Where's your wife?"

  "At her village. M'sieu goes through it on his way home. He can pick her up then. We will not be any trouble at all, M'sieu. You will not even know we are there."

  The Melanesian couple were as unobtrusive as Goubu had said they would be. Denise woke once in the night, thinking she heard voices outside the bedroom window, but the noise was not repeated, and she fell asleep quickly again.

  The blasting at the mountain started early next day. About nine o'clock Pierre told his wife he thought they were getting into a layer of granite. "Miserable stuff," he said sourly. "On the other hand, we probably won't have to case the sides, so I suppose it comes out about the same in the end—Dieu! What was that?"

  The customary boom of the blast had been followed by a long, roaring rush. It sounded as if the mountain were falling down on them, but when Denise looked around her, startled, the superficial outline was undisturbed. Goubu came running up, breathless and pleased.

  "Come quick and look!" he panted. "You will be surprised, M'sieu Pierre!"

  Denise scrambled out of the truck and she and her husband went running toward the excavation, now grown pretty wide. "The bottom has fallen out!" Goubu said. "Be careful, Madame!"

  Denise leaned over and looked down. As Goubu said, the bottom had fallen out of the funnel-shaped hole, and tons of rock and loose stuff had gone thundering down to an unknown depth below. There was only blackness. Denise could see no limiting floor at all.

  "Was anybody in the hole?" she asked.

  "No," Pierre answered. "I would never have allowed it in this sort of blasting."

  "But what is it?"

  "I don't know. I'm going down to see. Goubu, bring the longest of the rope ladders."

  Goubu fetched the ladder from one of the trucks, and Pierre anchored it solidly with two steel spikes driven into the undisturbed rock. He stuck a geologist's hammer in his belt, pinned a miner's lamp to his cap, and prepared to descend.

  "Be careful, mon ami," Denise said.

  "Bien sûr. Goubu, keep an eye on the ladder. If we're lucky, this may save us quite a lot of work." He started down.

  Denise watched his body dwindle. The lamp on his cap made a receding spot of light. He must have reached bottom, for she saw the tiny light stay motionless for an instant, and them move off to the right. Then it disappeared.

  She waited. The workers were gathered in a knot near the ladder, watching too. Goubu would not let anyone near the edge of the excavation, for fear of starting a slide. There was no sound from below.

  At last Denise thought she saw the tiny light bobbing about in the blackness. She strained her eyes. Was she imagining it? But in a moment it began unmistakably to ascend. Pierre was coming up.

  It seemed to take him a long time. He stopped once to rest. When he got near enough for her to see the expression on his face, she perceived that it was a smile.

  Goubu held out a hand to help him over the edge. "Well, M'sieu?" he said.

  "It's a cavern," Pierre announced. "Huge thing—goes off I don't know how far under the mountain, and has a roof like a cathedral. But it seems to be solid enough except in the one spot where our blasts have weakened it. I chipped around a good bit, and I don't think there's any need to do any timbering.

  "Now, Denise, do your stuff. See if you can tell us where the book we're hunting is. Is it in the cavern, or do we have to go blasting for it on below?"

  Denise opened her mouth to say weakly that she was sorry, she really didn't know exactly, she really couldn't be quite sure. What she said was, "It's in a sort of sink hole in the floor of the cavern, under a layer of, of bones and artifacts."

  "You're positive?"

  "Yes. I can see it. But it isn't shaped like a book."

  "Will we have to blast to get it out?"

  "No, it's down less than a couple of meters. You'll need a pick and shovel, that's all."

  "Good. Can you tell me from here where the sink hole is?"

  "Oui. I mean, non. I can see it all right, but I can't tell you the directions. I think I'll have to go down."

  Pierre frowned. "It's quite a climb, cherie," he said.

  "I know. I hate the idea. But I don't think I can tell you from here."

  "Very well. I'll go down first to steady the ladder for you. I'd like to rest a moment, though." He sank down on the ground, pulled a package of Gaulois from his shirt pocket, and got out a mangy cigarette from it. "Denise?"

  "No, thank you—Here comes Goubu."

  The big man's face was serious. "I think M'sieu and Madame should hurry," he said. "The Viets are getting restless. They say ..."

  "What do they say, M'sieu Goubu?" Denise asked.

  "That Madame is hunting a sorcerer's book, a book of death spells to kill men. I told them to be quiet, but ... They might try to do harm."

  "I didn't realize they were so superstitious," Pierre commented, blowing out the acrid smoke from his Gaulois.

  "It is not altogether superstition, M'sieu," Goubu said shrewdly. "They distrust Madame partly because she is French and partly because she is a manager's wife.

  "Madame is a witch. Could she not call up a spirit for us, perhaps the spirit who wants us to find a book for him? That would frighten the Viets."

  "I'm not that kind of a witch," Denise said, laughing. "Besides, if we frighten them, it will only increase their determination to pu
t us hors de combat."

  "Madame may be right. But is there nothing to be done? The tone of their talk alarms me."

  "I'll get rid of them," Pierre said. He got up, stamped out his cigarette, and walked to the knot of men.

  "Dinh, take the camionette and drive back to the mine," he told one of the Viets who was leaning against the side of the truck. "Have the men give their cards to the timekeeper in the gatehouse. I won't be needing any of you any more today."

  "All the men?" answered Dinh, without moving.

  "Yes, all. The timekeeper will give them their checks." And then, when Dinh still did not move, Pierre said sharply, "This is an order. Get going. Do you want me to have you fired for cause?"

  "Ok," Dinh said. Slowly the truck was backed around, while Pierre looked on. The men got in. Slowly it started down the makeshift track.

  Pierre watched until the truck was hidden by underbrush. When he came back to his wife, he said, "Well, they seem to have gone. We'll wait a little while. They might turn back."

  Pierre filled in the interval by throwing a pick and shovel down into the cavern (they landed with a faint, distant crash), and putting a miner's hat, complete with lamp, on Denise's head. "Can your PES pick up the camionette?" he asked the girl when he had finished these preparations.

  "... I think it's still going down hill. It's about two-thirds of the way down."

  "Good. We'd better be getting started. I'll go down first so that my weight will steady the ladder for you. Goubu, please stay near where I've got the ladder anchored."

  He let himself down on the first rung of the ladder. When he was down a couple of meters, he told Denise to start after him, and she, after locating the first rung with one foot, cautiously began the descent.

  She did not enjoy it. The tubular metal rungs of the ladder gave little purchase to her feet, and she found she was holding the sides of the ladder so tightly that she had to will each time to make her hands unclasp. Pierre, below her, was descending quietly and gently to avoid making the ladder shake; she found that if they alternated steps it was better than if they moved at the same time. Still, the bottom seemed a long way down. Ninety-eight odd meters—yes, it was a long way.

  Pierre, stepping off the ladder onto the heap of debris, held out his arms for her and lifted her down. "Here we are. What do you think of it?" he said.

  "I can't see much," she answered. Both their voices had an echoing, hollow sound. "I didn't realize it would be so big."

  "Yes, a river used to run through here once. See the crystals on the walls?" He tilted the lamp in his cap, and a corruscating glint on a remote wall answered him. "Well. Where do you think our book is?"

  "I'll have to walk around a bit. It's not under this loose stuff that fell in with the last blast, anyway."

  She began to move about. Pierre picked up the tools he had thrown down, and at a discreet distance followed her.

  She came to the edge of the debris that had fallen in from above, hesitated, and then jumped down onto the cavern floor. It was level enough, except for occasional big rocks. She went to the right, left, right again. At last she said, "It's not here. I think it's on the other side of the loose heap."

  Pierre gave her his hand and she clambered up, walked across the heap, and scrambled down on the other side. She paused. Pierre, trailing her, thought she almost seemed to be sniffing the air. Then she walked straight ahead for almost fifty meters, turned left at an obtuse angle, and stopped. "It's here," she said. She indicated a spot in front of her feet.

  "It doesn't look like a sink hole," he said slowly.

  "It is, though. Try the pick."

  "Very well." He swung the pick a couple of times. "Why, it's loose," he said in surprise.

  "It gets harder a little farther down."

  Pierre adjusted the lamp in his cap and began to work steadily with the pick. After three or four minutes he reached for the shovel and tossed the material he had loosened to one side. "I think I see bones," he said after a little while. "Do they belong to your friend, the one that wants the book?"

  "No, he was much earlier."

  Pierre swung the pick with a steady thunk, thunk. He was getting down about three-quarters of a meter now. The material in the sink hole was hardening. "Seems to be mainly bones," he remarked, shoveling them out of the way, "petrified and concreted into a sort of cake." Pierre, no paleontologist, had no idea of the value and interest of the osseous bits he was handling so unceremoniously.

  The hole was getting too deep for him to work in it from above. He had to get down in it, and this slowed his rate of progress. "Is it much farther, Denise?" he asked as he stopped for a moment to rest.

  "Not much. About half a meter. Pierre, I'm getting excited."

  "So am I." He grinned at her, and once more began to work. "What does the book look like?" he asked between thuds of the pick.

  "Like a small Rugby football, but less pointed on the ends. You needn't worry about hurting it. It's in an impervious case."

  "All right." He was working more and more rapidly.

  Denise was trembling violently, partly with nervous excitement, partly because the air of the cavern, now that she was no longer moving about, was noticeably cold. The light on her hat made a gyrating shaft against the darkness. Without looking up from his work, her husband said, "Take it easy, ma belle. If it's here, we'll find it. If it's not, we won't."

  "Oh, it's there, all right. I think—"

  "Ah!" Pierre let out his breath with an explosive sound. "Denise, is this it?" He held the shovel up over the edge to her.

  Denise bent over to look. There, incongruously presented among a shovelful of petrified- bone fragments, like a pearl in a singularly unprepossessing oyster, was the dark brown ellipsoid Tharg had carried in his pouch so long ago.

  "Yes, that's it," she said in a soft voice.

  Pierre grinned up at her. He dumped the contents of the shovel at her feet, and prepared to jump out of the hole. "I don't mind telling you, cherie, that there were times when I doubted its existence. But here it is. A triumph for you PES."

  Denise's lips parted. She looked past him toward the opening in the roof of the cavern through which a column of light fell from the outside world. "Duck!" she cried.

  She fell on her face as she spoke. She had seen describing a long curve against the light, a small round object fly through the opening. "It's a bomb!"

  Then there was a flash and a roar, and a stunning blast which threw her to the ground. The sound filled the cavern for long seconds, echoing and re-echoing, seeming to feed upon itself. Denise was vaguely aware of falling rocks, and the thick smell of dust in the air.

  When she was able to sit up a few minutes later, she felt completely disoriented. Neither she nor Pierre had been damaged physically; the home-made bomb had shaken a portion of the cavern roof loose, so there was now a barrier between them and the rope ladder leading up. But the shock of the explosion had jarred her psychologically; her PES had come unstuck from the rest of her personality and was flapping about aimlessly. She was in several places and times at once, and none of them were particularly agreeable.

  Pierre had his arms around her and was talking to her anxiously. She could not, however, rouse herself from her stupor until a voice on the other side of the rock-fall made itself heard. "M'sieu! Madame! Are you badly hurt?"

  -

  Chapter Eleven

  Goubu had shoveled a space clear at the top of the rock fall and was calling softly down to them.

  "I'm all right," Pierre answered in the same cautious tone. "I don't know about Denise."

  Denise tried to lick her lips. Her mouth and tongue felt paralyzed. "Safe and sound," she got out at last.

  "Bien. Goubu, is the hole big enough for us to get through?"

  "No, but I can try to enlarge it. But be very careful, M'sieu Pierre. I think the roof is on the point of coming down."

  "Yes." He put his arm around Denise and started to lead her toward the rock slide.
She hung back. "The book," she said softly, "don't forget the book."

  Pierre drew in his breath. He picked up the ellipsoid from the cavern floor. Denise took it from him and put it in the bosom of her blouse, where it made an incongruous single-breasted bulge. Then they started cautiously up the loose slope of the rock fall.

  Pierre, as he afterward admitted, was sweating with anxiety, but Denise herself felt detached and safe. She heard the faint scrape of Goubu's shovel as he worked at enlarging the hole, and then the smaller noises as he resorted to his bare hands for greater delicacy. Now and then a rock would roll past her down the slope.

  "You first, cherie," Pierre whispered when they reached the top.

  "No, you. You and Goubu are stronger, and could pull me through if I got stuck. I'll pass the book to you after you're on the other side."

  Pierre nodded. He lay down carefully on the uneven surface, his arms above his head, and began to wriggle gently through the opening Goubu had made. Denise was still in an abnormal state of detachment, and she watched his slow progress without anxiety.

  His feet disappeared. After a moment she heard him whisper, "Pass the book through to me."

  Denise obeyed. She felt the ellipsoid taken from her grasp. "Arms above your head, cherie," he whispered. "Wriggle, don't wrench."

  "All right."

  She got well into the hole before her composure deserted her. She had always had a horror of close places, and now, as she felt the sagging roof of the cavern scraping the small of her back, she had a wild desire to cry out.

  She bit down hard on her lower lip. Pierre was saying something, she couldn't tell what. Was it he, or somebody else, who was saying, "Your right shoulder ... now ... press down with your thighs ..."?

  Dimly she wondered why she was having so much more trouble than Pierre in getting through. Her hips were the great obstacle. Pierre and Goubu were pulling on her arms. "Press down with your thighs," the unlocated voice came again. "Just a little more. You're almost through. Your left hip ... There!"