The Mad Goblin_Secrets of the Nine

by Philip José Farmer

  They went down the runway to the nearest stone steps on the right and descended to the floor of the chamber. There were a number of exits. Doc picked the middle central one, and they went down a tunnel. Smoke was pouring out of several of the entrances behind them, and Doc could hear, faintly, coughing from one. They went down the tunnel and came to a shaft which contained no ladder. Caliban, looking down it, saw ankle-deep water on the floor of the tunnel under the shaft. It was rising swiftly.

  “This is the tunnel we came up after being captured,” he said. “It should still hold Cobbs’ marks, unless Iwaldi rubbed them out. We’ll have to chance that; it’s our only hope.”

  Slowly, because he felt weak and because the movements pained him considerably, he let himself down the shaft and dropped. The impact almost made him faint. His colleagues dropped down, too, and they went toward the direction which— he hoped—was the right way. The lights along the tunnel were still on but might soon go out. However, since this system was based on one he had originated, it was possible that the lights would operate long after the tunnel was flooded.

  “Hold it a minute!” Pauncho said.

  They stopped. Seemingly from faraway came voices. But if they could be heard there, they would not be too far distant.

  “They’ve probably seen our blood by now and are trailing us,” Caliban said. “If only we could ambush some of them. They have guns and they may have first-aid kits; and they must have blacklight projectors and just possibly underwater breathing plugs.”

  “Wouldn’t Iwaldi know that and take care of that possibility?” Barney said.

  “Yes. But we know the way, and we know what kind of traps Iwaldi has sprung,” Doc said. He did not mention the probability that Iwaldi had closed off all exits.

  They went on, splashing. The water around their feet was tinged with red. Doc suddenly stopped at a corner where the tunnel ran into another. He bent over, peering, and said, “There’s Cobbs’ marks.”

  They went down the tunnel, turned right, walked ten yards, turned left, and were confronted with a stairway the top of which was a foot under water. The marking at the corner of the wall was still visible through the water. It indicated that the way led down the steps.

  “There are three levels to go before we get to the exit,” Pauncho said.

  Doc help up his hand for silence. A splashing was coming from far around the corner.

  “We can’t make it unless we have breathing plugs,” he said. “And there’s only one source for them. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  Barney walked back to the far end of the tunnel and looked around the corner. Within a minute, he jerked his head back, turned, and waved at them. Then he trotted toward them. By the time he reached them, the water was up to his calves.

  “Ten of them,” he said. “Automatic rifles and pistols. Blacklight projectors on their caps but they’re not using their goggles. It’s impossible to tell if they have breathing plugs.”

  He added, “And I smelled smoke. The napalm can’t be too far behind.”

  The invaders would not know about Cobbs’ markings, of course, so they would go on down the tunnel. They would be looking for a way out which would not force them to submerge. Doc had looked down the corridor and seen the hole in the middle of the floor. There was a shaft there which the ancient kobolds had made apparently for quick exits, as if they were human-sized mouse holes. This was the pivotal point of his attack.

  He waded down the steps until the water was up to his waist and then he swam along the wall. The bulbs along the wall guided his path and enabled Barney to see him. When Doc was opposite the shaft, Barney signaled him. Doc dived, was visible in the lights until he went under the ceiling, and then popped up in the well in the middle of the tunnel. Pauncho went down the tunnel to the end and around the corner. Doc Caliban submerged and came back up in the other tunnel. He hung on to a light bulb while Barney sat on the steps with his ear placed near the juncture of wall and steps.

  In a few seconds, Barney heard the loud splashing of the ten men. He waited until he judged that the lead man was just about to come opposite the stairway, and he slid off the stairs into the water and down alongside it. When he reached the bottom, he flattened himself against the side. Now all he could do was to hold his breath and hope that the leader would take time out for a glance into this tunnel before deciding to go on. If anybody leaned out and looked down the side of the steps, he would see Barney in the light of the closest bulb.

  Doc had submerged also and swam the few feet necessary to get to the bottom of the well. Here he placed one hand on the ceiling next to the lip of the shaft and waited. He hoped the bleeding would slow down enough so the men would not notice that the waters were reddened. And he hoped the enemy would not loiter in that corridor. Normally, he could hold his breath for fifteen minutes if he hyperventilated for thirty minutes (the official world’s record was 13 minutes, 42.5 seconds). But he had no time to hyperventilate and he was too weakened to hold his breath for much more than two minutes.

  Fortunately the lighting was such that the men above cast their shadows over the well as they passed on its right. He counted ten and swam up with all his strength as the last shadow passed. He came out of the shaft without making any noise and pulled himself with one fluid motion onto the floor. The water was then a foot and a half high and the splashing made by the men drowned out any noise he made. He stood up and quickly approached the rear man whose eyes were straight ahead. He hit him in the back of the neck and caught the rifle as it fell. By then Barney was coming down the hall behind him, and he threw the rifle to him and then waded up and knocked out the next man.

  He did not fire at once. He waited until the lead man got to the corner and he saw Pauncho’s long thick arm reach out and grab the rifle and pluck it out of the man’s hands. The stock of the rifle, reversed, caught the man under the chin, and he went down.

  Doc called, “Freeze!”

  Pauncho stuck the barrel of the rifle around the corner and said, “Don’t move!”

  The shock held the others in its grip long enough for them to see that they could only die if they tried to resist. They dropped their rifles into the water and put their hands, slowly, behind their necks.

  Pauncho stepped out from the corner and said, “You there!” indicating the man now at the head of the line. “Drop your belt! Slowly! Then get the nose plugs of this guy!” He tilted his head to indicate the man he had knocked out. This one lay face down on the floor, covered entirely by the water. He had drowned, but he would have drowned in any event, since Pauncho was taking his breathers away from him. Three men had to be sacrificed. The survivors could consider themselves lucky that they had had the right positions in the line.

  While Barney kept the rifle on the men, Doc felt through the pockets of the two men he had knocked out, who had also drowned. He came up with the plugs and handed two to Barney. The enemy were dropping their belts, which held knives and pistols and bullets, into the water. At Pauncho’s command, they completely undressed.

  One of the men carried a medical kit. Doc opened this and popped hemenerogen tablets into his mouth. Barney swallowed some, and one man carried some to Pauncho and then returned to his place in line. There were also ointments and some pseudoprotein dressings which Doc and Pauncho applied while Barney held his rifle on the prisoners. Both immediately felt better though far from being in one hundred percent good health.

  While they were doing this, the water had risen three inches.

  Doc Caliban explained to the prisoners what they would have to do if they wanted to survive. They did not like the idea, but a gush of smoke and a steady rise in the air temperature convinced them that they had no other choice.

  Caliban removed the ammunition from the rifles and gave one to each man. They went back to the entranceway and down the steps, shivering at the coldness of the water. The only clothing they wore were the blacklight projectors and the goggles around their necks in case they came to dark tunn
els. Their captors wore only belts with sheathed knives, and they carried rifles.

  The three stayed behind the seven men, who moved through the water, swimming with one hand while they held the rifles against their bellies and at right angles to the longitudinal axis of their bodies. This made for slow swimming, but it also made for safe swimming, as they found out. On the last level down, a section of the wall slid out, displacing much water as the first four men went by. Three of the rifles caught as they were supposed to do; the fourth was dropped as the man swam away in a panic. The movement of the block had been impeded by the water and the displacement of the water had warned the defenders.

  There was no other incident. They reached the chamber where they had entered. By then, they were all so numb that they could hardly feel anything with their hands. Their strength was spurting out swiftly.

  Doc Caliban had told his colleagues what to expect while they were getting ready to ambush the enemy. He gestured at them to make ready, and they swam to him and clung to the pipe protruding from the wall. He hoped that the massive wall of stone would slide back; the pressure of the water was immense against it. It was true that Iwaldi and his party had probably gone through this way. But they would have done so when the pressure was much less.

  He turned the valve. The screaking of the stone against stone was shrill in the water. It hurt their ears. But the wall was moving slowly to the right, and then they felt the current as the water began to spurt out of the opening. The current became stronger as the opening widened. Doc clung to the valve until, seeing that the exit was now broad enough, he tapped the others on the shoulders. He let loose and was swept toward the opening, scraped against the edge of the still-moving wall, and was shot out into the mountainside. Pauncho and Barney were close behind him.

  The others had become momentarily jammed in the opening when it was only two feet wide. Then, as the wall withdrew, one went out and the others had followed. Since they had not come in this way, they did not know what to expect. They went out across the ledge and were carried over the edge and down the mountainside. This was not so steep that they were in a free fall, but the slope was rough with rocks where it was not muddy.

  Caliban and his friends straightened themselves out, letting the current shoot them across the stone ledge and on down the incline. They became their own toboggans, though not without loss of more skin on their backs. The pseudoprotein that Doc had spread over his back was torn loose again, and the agony of his back would have been worse if he had not been so anaesthetized by the icy water.

  They managed to stop themselves by grabbing hold of bushes about forty feet down the slope. Though the water struck them hard, they held on, half-drowned and almost completely frozen. Then, frighteningly, they began to slide on down even though they kept their grips on the branches. The earth had become loosened under the pressure of the water and was now moving.

  Below them came yells as their seven predecessors saw the large mass sludging above them. These men had managed to stand up, even though the water was up to their knees and threatening to knock them down and roll them for another bruising, banging slide. Now, seeing what looked like the beginning of an avalanche, they tried to run away. Their feet slid out, and they were carried away by the water and the loose mud under them.

  They did not, however, go far. About forty feet further, a ledge stopped them, and they managed to grab bushes. A moment later, they screamed as the cliff of mud and rocks and bushes bearing Caliban and his aides flowed around them and then began to cover them up.

  Suddenly, the flow of water became a trickle. The wall of stone had shut, and the water was penned up in the mountain again.

  The seven, half-buried, struggled to pull themselves free. Caliban and his colleagues, shivering with the cold and with repugnance, took out their knives and did what had to be done. They could not afford to let the Nine know that they were here and that they had gotten free.

  Just before dawn three men, covered with dried mud and nothing else, walked into the side door. Nobody saw them, which was fortunate, because the police would have been called. The three found themselves locked out, but the biggest rammed the heel of his bare foot against the door, and it flew inward with a crash. They entered, showered, shaved, ordered food sent up, dressed, and the apish-looking man went down to pay the bill. The clerk was surprised that his ugly guest no longer wore a moustache, and he noted several other lost characteristics. But he said nothing except the customary pleasantries.

  The three drove off with Barney, in the back seat, operating the shortwave set.

  “Trish says that Lady Grandrith has disappeared,” Barney said. “She tried to phone her, didn’t get an answer, and went over to see for herself if anything was wrong. She saw two suspicious-looking characters hanging around and went in the back way. A guy tried to knife her on the second floor; she broke his arm and stuck his own knife in his ribs; but he got away. Clio wasn’t in her room. She hadn’t packed; so if she took off it was in a hurry. Trish’ll keep trying to get into contact with her.”

  Doc Caliban took the microphone and said, “Trish! We’ll let you know, in the usual way, when we’ve arrived. But you send a message to Grandrith. Tell him to come to Salisbury by way of Bournemouth. Make the arrangements; we’ll have somebody meet him if he can make it. Tell him the Nine will be at Stonehenge. If he can get there, he should do so by all means. The end of the world may come if Iwaldi isn’t stopped.”

  Trish had a husky voice that sent delicious chills up a man’s spine. “O.K., Doc. I gave my love to Barney. Tell that big ape Pauncho I love him—like a sister. Please hurry. It’s so lonely, especially since Clio disappeared. We didn’t see each other, but we did have phone conversations now and then.”

  “We’ll be there soon. So long,” Doc said, and handed the microphone back to Barney.

  “That’s the first time I ever heard Trish complain,” Barney said. “The tension is really getting her down. But then she’s been through so much for so long. Ever since that nut that thought he was Tarzan kidnapped her. Things have been coming one after the other, like bad news was an endless snake, a Midgard serpent.”

  Barney put on a fake beard and thick glasses and took over the driving while Pauncho and Caliban crouched down on the floor after covering themselves with blankets. Barney drove through Karlskopf slowly. If there were any agents of the Nine here, they would see only a hairy-faced old man who looked as if he taught philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. Moreover, the license plates on the Benz had been changed, so that if the agents knew the old number, they would see at a glance that this could not be Caliban’s car.

  Once out of Karlskopf, the two got up off the floor. Barney kept on driving, headed toward Kieselsfuss, a small town which had an airstrip nearby.

  The following day, three men met near Charing Cross station. Each had come in on a separate airliner, twenty minutes apart. Each was disguised. They took the taxi to Marylebone Borough, went past the building where Clio Cloamby, Lady Grandrith, had a room, and stopped outside another building six blocks away. They were confident that they had not been tailed. They removed their suitcases and went into the building. After the taxi had left, they came out, walked two blocks, flagged down another taxi, and drove off to an apartment on Portobello Road. They were admitted by the doorman, who had been told to expect them, went up the elevator to the third floor, and knocked on Trish’s door. She opened it and was in Doc’s arms and kissing him, though complaining about the bristly salt-and-pepper moustache he was wearing.

  “I don’t have one,” Pauncho said. “Here, give us a kiss.”

  “Both of you?” Trish said, turning and grabbing Pauncho around the neck.

  “Yeah, I’m man enough to make two,” Pauncho said.

  “Two gorillas, maybe,” Barney said. “Kiss me first, Trish. I come in second to no Pan satyrus. And speaking of pans, did you ever see an uglier one?”

  “You two remind me so much of your fathers!” Tri
sh said. She hugged and kissed them both and a few tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s almost like having them back again!”

  Barney and Pauncho did not look too pleased, though they knew that Trish meant nothing derogatory. Also, it was still difficult for them to realize that Patricia Wilde, though she looked a fresh twenty-five, had been born in 1911 and that their fathers had courted her.

  Doc and the others began to remove their disguises. In a short time, they would put on others, and Trish would become a blue-eyed ash blonde, concealing her bronzish yellow-flecked eyes and deep metallic auburn hair, so much like her cousin’s.

  “Well, at least you don’t have to conceal that superb build!” Pauncho said, as she put on a Kelly green miniskirt. “And them legs! Whoo! Whoo!” He blew her a kiss. “I’m sure glad you didn’t inherit the Grandrith muscles!”

  “I did,” she said. “But their quality, not their quantity, as you well know, you big orangutan. Just don’t ever get fresh with me again, unless I tell you you can.”

  Barney grinned when Pauncho blushed. Pauncho had been high on something—vodka, which he loved on the rocks or rum-soaked pot, which he also loved, or maybe both—when he had lost his inhibitions about Trish and tried to make love to her. Trish had been in a bad mood that night—she and Doc had had an argument—and she had thrown Pauncho’s three hundred and twenty pounds over her back and halfway across the room. Pauncho had acted as Krazy Kat does when Ignatz Mouse brains her with a brick, that is, as if violence and pain expressed deepest love. He had come back for more and gotten it, this time knocking plaster off the wall with his head as he sailed through the air for a short distance.

  “Don’t look so sheepish,” Trish said. “You know I love you,” and she slapped him on the back. Pauncho leaped into the air, bellowing with pain. Barney laughed so hard he fell on the floor. Doc had taken off his shirt and undershirt, revealing the patches of pseudoprotein on his back and chest. He smiled slightly and said, “Take it easy when you touch us, Trish.”