by Don Wilcox
What did it mean? How could one become a victim of an evil power that he had never seen; that he couldn’t understand?
“The Evil Scravvzek,” they had said, “can burst through the shell of the earth and raise new mountains around it. If you live in a land far away, it can come there too.”
Buni had nodded vigorously to this statement, but Sue had been too practical-minded to swallow it. She wanted to know why the Evil Scravvzek was so well known here, and not known in other parts of the world, if this were the case. Why didn’t it raise a mountain in the middle of a World Series baseball game, or upset the lawn in front of the state capital while the legislators were sleeping inside?
They shook their head to these questions, which involved things much less real to them than the Scravvzek.
“It haunts this region above all others because here there is the gigantic eye. All conditions are favorable here to bring the whole world into view.”
“The whole world?” Again Sue had been as skeptical as a radio listener in the presence of a commercial.
“Everyone can be seen here,” one old native had declared. “If you find the Evil Scravvzek, follow him and you will find the mirrors of the world. And there, before your eyes, will be all of your sleeping legislators and your players at the baseball game.”
Sue gulped. There was something stupendous in the promise of such a view, though she thought to herself that it was a poor bargain, to come all the way to Africa to look in on the state legislators taking a nap.
All of this was worth thinking over however, now that she was getting closer to the land of the evil power. But it was hardly worth worrying over. Nothing seemed worth too much worry, as long as the mountain air was exhilarating and the friendly little Buni flashed an eager smile at her and led her along by the hand.
They were entering a deep crevice, where the old trail had apparently been walled in by a new growth of mountains—already she was taking it on faith that the mountains had changed since Allan Burgess’ previous visit to this place. This must have been the very trail upon which that tragedy of eighty men had occurred.
Now the crevice was closed over. The dark tunnels were before her, branching off like narrow fingers. Buni counted, looked on the floor for a little heap of stones which he had once set up to mark his way, and then chose a course confidently.
For the next hour they moved along cautiously through the semidarkness, feeling their way along the walls.
“Mountains are moving,” Buni once remarked. He left the thought hanging in the air without any explanation. For several minutes she wondered what he meant.
Then as she was passing her hands along the dark wall, she felt the very surfaces of the cool rock spreading under her fingers. And later, when blades of light shot through to illuminate a few steps of their progress, she caught sight of a rising arch. The pillar-like formations were twisting and growing, and the very substance of the mountain could be seen yawning and spreading into something wider and deeper.
“Mountains are moving,” Buni repeated casually, and he led the way on into the limitless hollow spaces.
At last the mountains appeared to have quieted. The low, distant echoes of far away thunder had come and gone. The tunnels widened. They passed through strangely lighted chambers, brilliant with glowing rocks. Ahead was a curiously shaped formation—several gnarled stalagmites clustered together like the fingers of an old man’s hand.
Beyond this, they came into a wide room with a red stone floor.
“This is where I was,” Buni said, now growing excited over the familiar sights. “Here I left Koo-Jop. Come on. We go careful.”
Sue followed him for a few steps and then stopped short. There was someone—a man-a bleary-eyed man—looking at them. At first sight, he was tucked comfortably in a rounded niche in the wall. But their presence caused him to move clumsily to his feet. There were signs of drunkenness in his motions and still more convincing evidence in his voice.
He yelled at them. “Who’s there? Who are you?”
“Don’t answer,” Buni whispered. “Come. We go past.”
They tried to slip by unobtrusively, as if going about their own business. But that wasn’t the man’s idea. He pounded across the way on unsteady feet.
He roared. “Come here. You gotta report to me. Who the devil are you?”
They stopped. He came toward them slowly and Sue saw that his bleary eyes were feasting upon her. He smeared his whiskers with his puffy brown hand and made a pretense of smoothing his hair. He was a rough looking character. Sue tried, to decide whether his soiled costume was meant to be some sort of uniform. Evidently he fancied himself to be a guard.
It was Buni who answered his question. “We Bunjojops.”
“Huh? Bunjojops, are you?
“Let us go,” Buni said. “We see Koo-Jop.”
“You don’t look like no Bunjojops to me. Not you, anyway,” he pointed at Sue. “You look t’me like a sweetheart. A nice, perty sweetheart, come to see me, I betcha. Huh? Whatcha say?”
“I’m an American,” Sue Carson said. She smiled a little through her tight lips. She didn’t mean to be delayed by any drunken bum who mistook himself for a guard. If this was a sample of the human beings who inhabited this realm, she wasn’t impressed. “Who is in charge here, please?”
“I am, by gorr. My name is Gallagher. They call me General Snoozey—I mean General Gallagher. That’s what they call me. You kin call me General. Say, yer a perty neat gal, by damn. They ain’t nothin’ like you down here. I reckon we’ve forgot about all the perty gals, or we wouldn’t stay down here.”
“Why do you stay down here?” Sue asked, wondering how she could make her exit gracefully.
“Why th’ hell do we? Now there’s a question. Whatcha say you and me an’ yer kid get outa here. I kin pack up my things you an’ me an’ yer kid—is that brown boy yer kid?”
“He’s my friend,” Sue said, clutching Buni’s hand.
“Oh, so that’s it. Who’s sweetheart are you? Anybody’s? Huh? Anybody’s? You ain’t seen no one since you come down here, have you? I seen ya first. I’m claimin’ ya right this minute. C’mere, li’l sweetheart, an’ le’s have a li’l kiss an’ be friends. Howzabout it?”
“You keep it in mind,” Sue said, “I’ve got to go now. You just go back to your post and I’ll go this way.”
She had no idea which way, but she gave an urgent squeeze to Buni’s fingers, and he took the hint and led her on.
Gallagher came after them.
Sue whispered. “Walk fast, Buni. Don’t run.”
They took the first dodge, but the turn placed them in the open. Buni glanced back. “Drop!” he snapped and almost jerked her off her feet. She dropped to the floor. A knife whizzed over and clanged to the floor several feet ahead of them.
Buni went for the knife like a dart. Sue, scrambling to her feet, saw him go into action. He scooped up the knife and came marching back, his eyes blazing.
“Go back!” he yelled at Gallagher. “Go back! I whack you! Go back!”
Gallagher’s advance slowed to an uncertain tread and he gradually began to back away. He bumped into the corner of the pillar of stone, and at the touch he jumped like a drunken kangaroo. Buni kept advancing on him, jabbing at him with the knife.
“Gimme my knife,” Gallagher whined, backing away again.
“You leave lady alone,” Buni said dangerously.
“Hell, I’ll leave her alone. How’d I know but what she—” the drunken man was making a disorderly retreat, and he was angered to lose his game and his prize. He mumbled that he wanted his knife.
But Buni knew a good thing when he saw it, and the knife wasn’t safe in Gallagher’s hands.
Gallagher retreated almost to his bench. Sue motioned to Buni to come on. It occurred to her that there might be other weapons at the bench.
Buni came on the skip and the jump, swinging his knife gayly. For the present they had gotten past Gallagher saf
ely.
They wandered around the corridors of stone, seeking the new directions that might lead them to the Bunjojop tribe. Sue wondered whether Allan and Jimmy had found their way through these same passages many hours before.
It was a stroke of good fortune that came to them in their first hour of searching.
“Bunjojop voices!” Buni declared.
He had stopped abruptly. Now he put his ears to the stone wall. Then he tried the floor. Then the wall again.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Sue said.
“Bunjojop voices go like this,” Buni said, and he waved his lithe hand like waves of water. “I hear them. Up and down. Bunjojop chant.”
Then he looked at her with a very serious expression.
“What’s the matter, Buni?”
“Maybe death chant,” he said.
She tried to talk him out of it. She hadn’t heard a thing. But evidently he was on the trail of something. He moved from one side of the corridor to another, and presently he said, “I hear again. We go this way.”
She followed him. Down through a half-formed archway. She agreed that she could hear echoes of voices too.
Buni stopped, looking around, wondering which way to go next.
“I read Boy Scouts,” he said. “They wet thumb.” He went through the motions of finding which way the wind was coming from.
“That’s for wind direction,” Sue laughed. “It doesn’t help on sound.”
He licked his finger and touched his ear. Then turned his head this way and that. “Maybe it help.”
Sue laughed at him. His antics were a stall, she guessed. He was not quite stymied as long as he could make a game out of his troubles.
“I hear best this way,” he said. And he proceeded to lead her into a dead end path. She was trying to keep a mental picture of the path they had taken, and privately guessed that they would wind up by getting themselves thoroughly lost.
But luck was with them. On another try, they found a channel that brought the up-and-down voices closer and closer.
It was the Bunjojop chant, Buni declared anxiously. This time he didn’t say death chant, much to her relief. It was a prayer, he said.
They found a break in the floor of their chosen passage. They looked down through at the lighted chamber below them. The weird green light filtered up to them, and the flash of joy in Burri’s eyes was something wonderful to see.
“My tribe,” he” whispered to her. “They wait for me. They pray for me. Hear?”
The curious chant from hundreds of native African voices was unlike anything Sue had ever heard before. They were praying in music—praying to a tribal god for the safe deliverance of Buni, and there was a plaintive, pleading quality in their low, whispery voices.
“They pray for me,” Buni said. “I go to them.”
“There couldn’t be a better time,” Sue said.
“I come through this floor,” Buni said.
He sifted a little dust through the” opening, and then a few small stones, trying to attract the attention of the assemblage.
“Koo-Jop!” he called down. “Koo-o-Joppp!” He added some native words to his call and ended them with, “Buni!”
Sue, bending close, beside him, couldn’t get much of the picture, for the opening wasn’t large enough for two heads to peek through. Nevertheless, she saw a few of the dark figures beneath the green light, craning to look up at the ceiling a few feet above them, and suddenly they began to shout, “Buni! Buni!”
A few moments of work were required before Buni could rejoin them. He battered at the opening with a stone until it flaked and cracked into something large enough to accommodate his body. Then he lowered himself halfway through it.
He held tight, looking back at Sue. Below him the tribe was yelling joyfully for him to drop. They were ready to catch him.
“You come?” he said to Sue.
“I’ll wait here until you’ve had time to explain about me. I’ll be right here when you’re ready for me.”
The boy smiled and dropped through.
Sue listened to their expressions of joy. The tribal gods would take new strength from this event, she thought. If the tribal prayers could be answered right on the spot, the gods deserved to prosper.
But as she listened and watched, she could see that all was not pure and unadulterated happiness in the reunion. They were telling Buni something that made him frown. His happiness vanished, and he looked from one to another of the group, evidently sharing the story of some tragedy.
It was more than Sue could hope to understand. Koo-Jop was talking low, trying to give comfort to certain ones who were now weeping softly. Again they began the low chant with the up-and-down melody which Buni’s sharp ears had caught earlier. The death chant. Sue rose and turned—
The light that filtered through these winding tunnels was too dim for her to be sure at first that she was seeing the form of a man moving toward her. She shook her head, rubbed her eyes, gazed. Yes, it was the form of a man.
In another moment she would have heard his blundering footsteps. It was Gallagher. He had followed. He was coming on stealthily. His saggy head turned at every dark corner as if he expected Buni to leap out at him.
But now he saw her. An unholy light flared from his eyes. He gave a low, grating laugh. He steadied his steps. He was only ten good strides away from her.
A panic seized her. Worse than the panics she had known when microphones had been placed in front of her and she was told to say something quick. It was time to do something quick. Like the fox with too many tricks, she was caught for an instant by indecision.
She might try to climb through the opening in the floor, and drop in on the tribe below. Or would she get stuck on the way down?
She might try to run on into the deeper shadows. There was no telling how far this rambling trail might go before it struck a dead end. She spied Buni’s knife. He had laid it aside while working at the floor. She had never tried wielding a weapon of that sort. She’d make an awkward mess of it if she tried something desperate.
“Sweetheart!” Gallagher’s voice boomed. “Ran away from me, didn’t you. C’mere, sweetheart.”
He was eight paces away. It was time to do something.”
“I’m coming,” she sang out sweetly, and picked up the knife.
CHAPTER XXVII
Allan and Jimmy made tracks toward the wide room with the red stone floor. The mountains had ceased to groan and yawn, and now most of the population of this region had declared an hour of rest.
Allan’s plan concerned the glidewalk that Jimmy had once ridden. Jimmy’s reported view of many strange things including the first glimpse of the transformed Pakkerman was enough to convince Allan that the region to the east (as he called it) deserved to be explored.
But first, there was a little food packed away along with the parachutes in the Red Room, and Allan had been repeating, for several minutes, the comforting slogan, “Food and rest first. Other things can wait.”
They were hungry as a pair of bears after a long winter. They were careful to slip around Gallagher’s nest on tiptoes, to avoid waking him. Jimmy’s stubbed toe gave him tiptoeing trouble, and Allan decided that a little first aid and a few hours off his feet were what Jimmy needed.
They polished off their food without even making a dent in their hunger. But before they ventured forth again they dropped into sleep and enjoyed an hour or two of oblivion.
Jimmy wakened Allan. Allan roused out of his parachute comforter and wanted to know what was the matter. Wasn’t that toe bandage comfortable, or were the stalagmite springs in his bed too solid?
“I hear voices,” Jimmy said. “Didn’t you hear ‘em?”
“Didn’t hear a thing.”
“Musta been in my dream, but I thought I heard Yippee.” Jimmy looked sad. “Why’d I have to wake up?”
“Why don’t you let me have some of those dreams?” Allan said. Then growing wider awake he listened. He had notice
d before that Jimmy’s good ears missed nothing. Maybe he had heard Yippee. “Come on, let’s go down and pay our respects to Gallagher. I’m still hungry and he may have some food tucked away that we need for our desert.”
“He’ll have some bad liquor, or I’ll miss my guess,” said Jimmy.
“Then he probably neglects his good food. We’ll see.”
Gallagher wasn’t there.
They looked around. They had seen him half asleep at his usual post when they passed before. But he was gone now.
“You go back and finish your rest;” Allan said. “I’m going to look around a little.”
Jimmy admitted that he could use another hour’s sleep, but he was tantalized by the thought that Yippee might have found her way into this region. It seemed unlikely; yet if it had happened, she could easily get lost and no one would ever know. Allan agreed that it would be an awful thing if she should happen to be whisked away on the glide-walk, which went—where?
“Tell you what I’ll do,” Jimmy said. ·I’ll bed down over at the glidewalk entrance where you lost me that time. You take your time, an’ I’ll pamper my stubbed toe an’ get some more, sleep. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Alone, Allan hastily explored the area around Gallagher’s nest. Within a few minutes he discovered some footsteps that looked interesting. Tracks of small bare feet. And with them the tracks of a small flat-heeled shoe such as Sue Carson had worn.
The thin layer of rock dust that had settled in a few places since the uproar of the Scravvzek was enough to show the prints as clearly, as chalk marks. This was a recent trail. It was the trail of Sue Carson and Buni!
He followed away from the Red Room, and occasionally he was disturbed by the trail of certain Gallagher-like steps that crossed Sue’s path. Something in the leaps and bounds of Buni’s tracks locked highly suspicious. There had been action here.
He pounded along the trail as rapidly as he could go. Occasionally through dark passages he stopped and used the flare from his cigarette lighter to make sure he was right. Within a few minutes he was stopped by the sound of a familiar call.