by Cave, Hugh
"No, Grayson, no! That way leads to the pits!"
He flung himself back upon the steps as the voice was smothered. Judie's voice! But as he whirled, Sarah Jules caught at his legs.
Grayson's frantic kick smashed her full in the face, and she fell back, screaming. He leaped to the carpeted floor above, stumbled, and caught himself.
"Well done, Outsider," said a voice slurred with mockery. "Dare you come the rest of the way?"
A chill touched Grayson's rigid body. The girl he loved lay in a sobbing heap across the threshold of a door which until now he had not known existed. Attired like one of the mystic creatures of his dream, in a diaphanous white web of gown that hid nothing, revealed all, she lay like an exhausted dancer, her white legs limp, white breasts faintly throbbing. She had warned him, and the Master had struck her down.
And now the gaze of the Master was on Grayson himself, dark and deadly with anger. The muscles of his huge body rippled under tunic and tight-fitting black trousers. His restless hands clutched a whip.
Grayson eyed the whip with misgiving. Fashioned of some flexible metal, it bristled with glittering spines capable of tearing a man's flesh from his body in great ragged bites!
The whip uncoiled. With the speed of light it leaped across the room, whistling its challenge. Grayson threw up his arms to protect his face: a gesture so tardy that it wrung a peal of laughter from his tormentor.
"Dance, Grayson!"
But Grayson did not dance. Inch by inch he gave ground, while the gleaming whip menaced him. Judie, pale and lovely in the gown that hid none of her exquisite beauty, watched through a mist of anguish. Sarah Jules crouched like a toad upon the pit steps. Inexorably the silver serpent drove Grayson into a corner from which there could be no escape.
He flung himself forward, risking the bite of the lash in a desperate attempt to reach his tormentor. But the metal was swifter. Coiling about him, it made rags of his clothes, laying bare his skin. He fell back and it pursued him.
Blood reddened the rags of his clothing. Sweat oiled his face. No more could he retreat. And still the Master advanced.
"This, Grayson," Nicholas taunted, "is but a sample of what awaits you in the Pit. Your bride can tell you of that, for her father was the last to die there. Like you, Grayson, Carlton Clough was an outsider. He took himself a wife. He attempted to depart to the Outside, with his wife and child. He paid, Grayson, and his wife died of madness in the caverns, seeking him. His daughter—your bride—can tell you, Grayson!"
Grayson's endurance died. Bloody beyond recognition, he sank to the floor and lay unmoving. The whip licked out once more to test him; then the Master drew closer, his gaze evil, while Sarah Jules chuckled malignantly on the stone steps and the girl Judie sobbed her heart out.
"Not dead, I think," Nicholas murmured, bending closer. "You see, Sarah, he breathes. I was very careful not to—"
Swift as light, Grayson's hand closed over the silver snake. With all his strength he reared up!
It played no favorites, that fiendish serpent! Its frightful barbs bit deep into the Master's throat, and then Grayson was on him, battering him with crimson fists. With the whip wound like a noose about his neck, Nicholas fought back. But Grayson scarce felt his blows. The sight of Judie's trembling body, the dark knowledge of what she had been through, gave Grayson a madman's strength.
The withered woman clawed at his legs, to upset him, and he sent her tumbling down the steps with a kick that silenced her. On the brink of the steps the Master tottered, striving to free his throat from the serpent's deadly embrace.
Grayson measured him. One more blow would finish him. But it was not needed. The giant toppled. The silver serpent, his own grim weapon, was the end of him. For as he fell, the tail of the whip fastened under the body of Sarah Jules, drawing taut with one grisly wrench the barbed loop that encircled the Master's throat.
Sobbing a little, Grayson took his bride in his arms, feeling the warmth of her against him, the beating of her heart beneath a soft, round breast. He put his coat about her. His mouth found hers, and for a moment nothing else mattered except the seeking velvet softness of her lips, the quivering of satin-smooth curves beneath his hot hands.
Then they fled. The ghosts of silent houses disappeared behind them. The valley slept.
Strange, Grayson mused, that here in this ancient, evil place he had found himself a wife, a girl more beautiful in body and spirit than any he had met in his own so-called civilization. Joy filled his heart, despite the agonies inflicted by the silver whip. "You are sure of the way, darling?" he muttered.
"Almost," she said, "I found it before. I can reach the place where Sarah Jules trapped me. If you know the way from there..
Grayson nodded. How many hours ago was that? Centuries, it seemed! Time meant nothing here. "How does it feel to be Mrs. Grayson?" he asked, holding her hand.
"I love it." She smiled shyly. "That is—I think I will, darling."
"What he said about your father—is it true?"
"Yes, Grayson."
"But your father can't be dead! Indirectly it was he who sent me to this place!"
"That I do not understand," she said."He died in the Pit, many years ago."
Grayson was too weary to let it trouble him. He saved his strength for walking, for now they were through the valley and climbing. It would be a long, difficult climb.
Twice he stopped to rest, sinking wearily into the snow. His legs had grown numb with cold, and he felt the loss of so much blood. Back in the Master's house, in a red pool on the floor, lay the strength he now so sorely needed.
It was during one of these rest periods, while he lay with his head cradled on Judie's warm lap, her body warming his, that he heard the first sounds of pursuit. The wind brought them—faint, far-off echoes of shouting in the valley below.
Grayson sat up with a start. "They're after us!"
With Judie's help he struggled on. But now she almost had to carry him. Time and again he stumbled. The snow stung his wounds. The wind iced his blood.
Audible now without intermission were the sounds of pursuit, steadily creeping closer. Looking back, Grayson saw lights in the windy dark below. High out of the valley they had climbed, but steeper still loomed the ascent ahead.
"This," Judie gasped at his side, "is where I was turned back before. I know not the way from here. Only Sarah Jules has ever gone the whole way Outside!"
The lights were gaining. Grayson stumbled on. He fell and crawled, with Judie's low, pleading voice beating against the mass of pain that was his mind. At last he could stand no more.
"Go on without me," he muttered. "Alone, you'll have a chance."
Judie's tears wet his face as she shook her head. "If it's a trail they follow," she cried, "then a trail I'll give them! I'll lead them away from you!"
"No!"
She knelt beside him, looking deep into his eyes as though in one brief fragment of time she sought to etch the image of him on her memory forever. Sobbing, she parted her coat and drew his face against her, and clung to him. The warmth of her was a delicious drug. The satin sweetness of her skin was a caress. Her lips found his, desperately, and her slender body was a flame against his own.
"Try to go on," she whispered. "If I lose them, I will find you. If not there will be another day, my darling." From her wrist she slipped a bracelet, a chain of gold which Grayson had last seen in the caverns, when it linked the two of them as man and wife. It closed over his own wrist, and she was gone.
Too weak to cry out, he saw her speeding down the darkness, obliterating their prints as she went. Then she fled from the path and vanished.
Grayson dragged himself on. The shouts of the pursuers died into a silence that reared behind him like a barrier. The cold crept through him. Only the dim hope that his bride might escape, and somehow return to him, kept him going.
How long he crawled he did not know. When he collapsed at last, he continued to crawl through a nightmare, pursu
ed by shadows that gave him no rest.
He thought at first, when he waked, that the face above him was her face, but it had no answering smile for him and was quickly replaced by a man's.
"Grayson, by God! You're out of it at last!"
Grayson stared about him—at the bed, the hospital room, the nurses. "How long?" he muttered. "How long have I been here?"
"Days. You've had a tough time of it, old man. Chap who picked you up was a farmer out clearing the road after the storm. He got my name from papers in your wallet, and notified me. Your car was found in a shed not far from where you keeled over."
Grayson reared on his elbows, his eyes burning with a strange fever. "What shed, Ted? Where?"
"Back of an old store, on the road from Appalachia. That is, it used to be a store. Been abandoned for years, I'd say."
A frown crossed Grayson's gaunt face. "Abandoned?"
"Yes. Whatever possessed you to invade this neck of the woods anyway?"
"Your telegram."
"Telegram? I didn't send you any telegram."
"But you did. In my clothes—you'll find it somewhere—"
"Everything that was in your pockets is right here. No telegram, Grayson."
"A man named Crlton Clough," Grayson began, his voice shaken with sudden doubt. "You wired that he—"
"Who?"
But Grayson's gaze had fallen on the little pile of his possessions that lay on the table. Weakly he reached toward it, drawn by something that gleamed yellowy in the room's dim light.
"Who?" the man beside the bed asked again. "Carlton Who?"
"It doesn't matter," Grayson whispered. Gone from his voice was the shadow of doubt that had made it so nearly inaudible. In his eyes again flowed that strange ecstatic fever. In his hand lay a golden chain, the bridal link placed upon his wrist by the beautiful girl he loved.
He stared at it, seeing again the glorious beauty of her slim white body, feeling again, ecstatically, the sweet, thrilling warmth of her.
"Wait for me, darling," he whispered. "Wait for me, Judie! I'm coming!"
Many Happy Returns
The house was an old one on an old road, miles from anywhere, but the freshly painted sign by its driveway—TOURISTS' REST—was as reassuring as a cleric's smile of welcome.
"Let's," Grace Martin said, squeezing her husband's hand. "There's no telling what we might find!"
Their car was already bulging with antiques collected in six states, but Tom Martin didn't care. He had just acquired his M.A., a teaching job at a highly regarded prep school, and a beautiful bride. "Done," he agreed without hesitation.
The warped and weathered door creaked open as they wriggled from the car. A man as old as they had expected, with a crown of white hair glowing in the dusk, limped down the rickety steps to greet them. An equally old woman, doll-dainty, smiled and nodded in the doorway.
It was the woman who escorted the newlyweds to their upstairs room. "Our name is Wiggin," she said, "but please call me Anna. And when you've freshened up, do come down for tea."
Grace Martin became enthusiastic about the massive four-poster bed while her husband irreverently bounced on it and pronounced it comfortable. They "freshened up" by lamplight and went downstairs to a dim parlor filled with antiques and the smell of age.
Anna Wiggin poured tea into fine old cups, and her husband Jasper, in reply to Grace Martin's question, said in a cracked voice, "No, we do not collect antiques. Not really. We have just acquired these things as we needed them."
"You are only just married, you two," Anna said with her smile. "I can always tell."
"Five days," Grace admitted.
"You are very young," Jasper said.
"Not so young. I'm twenty-two. Tom is twenty-four."
The old man moved his head up and down as if to say he had made a guess and the guess was correct. He did not say how old he and Anna were. He did remark, "I am a little older than my wife, also," then sipped his tea and added, "You must tell Anna your birthdays. She will read your futures."
"By our birthdays?" Grace Martin said.
"Oh, yes."
"How can you do that, Mrs. Wiggin?"
"I can do it." The doll-woman leaned closer, nodding and nodding. "When were you born, my dear?"
"May eleventh."
"It won't work, you know," Tom Martin said with a grin. "She—" Then puzzled by the old woman's expression, he was silent.
Jasper rose from his chair and placed his hands on his wife's frail shoulders.
Though all but transparent in the lamplight, the hands were strong and longfingered. "Now, Anna," he said softly, "do not be excited."
Grace Martin sent a half-frightened glance at her husband and said, "Is there something special about that date?"
"It is Anna's birthday also."
"Oh, how nice! We are special, then, aren't we?"
"Don't go putting on airs," Tom Martin chided. "You're forgetting—"
"Now, darling, don't spoil it."
"I will get some more tea," the old man said. "Fresh cups, too. We must have a toast."
The others were joking about the birthday when he returned from the kitchen with a tray. Placing four full cups on the table, he sat down again. The lamplight splashed his shadow on a wall as he raised a hand and said, "To the day that gave us two such lovely ladies."
They laughed and drank.
"You see, my dear," the old man said to his wife, "it never fails."
"What never fails?" Tom Martin asked.
"Only yesterday Anna was saying we would have to leave this house and find another. So few travelers use this old road any more. And even with many guests we sometimes wait years, of course."
"Wait for what?" Tom said.
"They have to have the same birthday, you see."
Tom nodded solemnly. It was past the old folks' bedtime, he supposed. When you were that old, a break with custom could make the mind a bit fuzzy. "Well, of course—" He started to rise. Grace and he had had a long day too, more than three hundred miles of driving.
"Wait, please," Jasper Wiggin said. "It is only fair that you understand."
With a tolerant smile Tom sank down again.
"There is a mathematical master plan, you see," the old man said. "Each day so many people are born, so many die. The plan insures a balance."
"Really?" Tom suppressed a yawn.
"I can simplify it for you, I think, if you will pay close attention. Each date—that is to say, each eleventh of May or ninth of June or sixth of December and so forth—is a compartment in time. Now suppose a thousand people are born today, to take their place with all the thousands born on this date in previous years. If the plan were perfect, all those born today would live exactly a year longer than those born one year ago, and so on. You follow me?"
"Uh-huh," Tom said sleepily.
"But the plan is not perfect. There is a thinning out through sickness and accidents—there has been from the beginning—and as a consequence, some of those born today will die before the expiration date, and others will live beyond it to maintain the balance."
"Sure," Tom mumbled.
"Each time compartment in each of the time zones is controlled this way. Life moves according to mathematics, just as the stars do."
"Remarkable," Tom said. Across the table his wife Grace was practically asleep. "What about the normal increase in population?"
"Oh, that's accounted for. So are wars, plagues, and things of that sort. If we had more time, I could make it all quite clear."
"You discovered this yourself, Mr. Wiggin?"
"Oh, no. There was a man from Europe staying with us one summer—a mathematical genius named Marek Dziok. Not in this house, of course; we have moved many times since then. Dziok had an accident—he was very old, and one night he fell down the stairs, poor man—but before he died, he took us into his confidence."
"I see."
"You don't believe me?" Jasper Wiggin said. "Dziok was writing a book�
�a philosophy based on his mathematics. He never finished it. But I have the manuscript . . ." He left his chair and limped to a bookcase, from which he lifted out a thin, paper-bound sheaf of papers. "Perhaps you would like—but no, you won't have time." Shaking his head, he put the sheaf of pages back.
"I guess I'd better take my wife to bed," Tom Martin said. "She's asleep."
"Yes, it works faster on women."
"What works faster?"
"The powder."
"You mean you put something—" Staring at his wife, Tom placed his hands flat on the table and pushed himself erect. It required enormous effort. "You mean—"
"You haven't been listening, have you?" the old man complained sadly. "And I've tried so hard to explain. Your wife and mine share the same time compartment, don't you see? You know yourself by now that Anna and I are much older than people get to be naturally. There's only the one way to do it."
"By—by killing off—"
"Precisely."
"And you think you're going to kill Grace?"
"It's been nineteen years since the last one for Anna," the old man sighed. "Hasn't it, dear?"
The doll-woman nodded, "Jasper has been luckier. He had one eight years ago."
"You're crazy!" Tom Martin shouted. "Both of you, you're crazy! Grace, wake up! We're getting out of here!" But when he leaned across the table to shake his wife awake, his legs went limp. He collapsed onto his chair. His head fell on his hands.
After a moment he was able with terrible concentration to bring the faces of Jasper and Anna Wiggin into focus again. There was something he had to remember—something he or they had said earlier, or he should have said but hadn't...
"It won't hurt, you know," the old man was saying sympathetically. "You'll both be asleep."
"Both . . . both . . ."
"Oh, yes. We'll have to kill you too, of course. Otherwise, you'd tell."
"Wait," Tom whispered. The room was filling with shadows now. "Wait. . ."
"But it won't be a waste, your dying. Somebody in your compartment will benefit, you know. Somebody with your birthday."