Fire in the Abyss

by Stuart Gordon

  “About four and a half thousand million years,” he said.

  The cunning man! The Power not of Christ! Lies! Lies! “Suppose this is true,” said I as carelessly as I could, “then what of this man from seven thousand years ago: Is he rude and barbarian? Or like a Titan of the Golden Age when Saturn ruled?”

  Norman Ernstein had humility and a good humour. I regret we had to treat him as we did when we got away.

  “I feel like a child in his presence,” he admitted soberly. “When he looks at me I feel that he sees right through me.”

  Escape? No, it was still faraway, not at all in my mind, as yet conceived of only by two of us… and this was the first I heard about Masanva the Dancer and Nefertari Mery-Isis. And though Ernstein’s talk had me horrified and perplexed, when he told me of these ancient folk I thought briefly, for the first time since I’d come through Vulcan, of Golden Ships… of potential wonders and discoveries that need not all be completely hellish.

  Such treacherous thinking I crushed, telling myself I did not really believe that other DTIs existed at all. Yet it was soon after this that Tari first made her presence known, most subtly; and that I met other DTIs. And I thank God that every society has its blind spots… for there are more ways to shake hands than with the hands alone.

  15. Humf Takes a Dip in the Ancient Nile

  Tari’s first communication was accidental. I thought it a sure sign I had gone mad. It came at night, some weeks after my arrival. The serious work had begun. I lay exhausted in bed after a long day of interrogation on speech-pattems in the sixteenth century. Ernstein and a linguist called Rogers had been at me all day with their nonsense, giving me passages from Shakespeare to read aloud, first in Devon dialect, then in polite courtly accent, then in the accents of folk from different parts. Next I’d had to read translations of these same passages in Latin, French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. They said I was enormously aiding their knowledge of the evolution of language. The passage I had to read most often came from that Scottish tragedy the name of which, I’m told, actors never mention:

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

  To the last syllable of recorded time…

  I thought this a joke in very poor taste, but they said it was nothing of the sort. They had me repeat it endlessly, tape-recording my every variation until they were satisfied, and by the time they were finished with me I wished myself dumb, to be spared such lunacy.

  Weeks later I learned I was lucky to be treated so lightly.

  When Tari’s soundless shriek of outrage burst in my mind as I lay in bed that night, I had no idea what it was.

  It shocked me bolt upright and wide awake.

  It was an explosion in the head; a soundless shriek, a bright burst of blinding blue light; a sensation of vicious wounding that left me aching and afraid and unable to sleep.

  It had similar effect on others too, including some of the surgeons. They had begun to drill a hole in her skull in order to slip an electrode into the left temporal lobe of her brain. They meant to stimulate her memory and language skills, so she could learn American English quickly and tell them everything they wanted to know about ancient Egypt. They had thought her drugged unconscious, believing that her very slow brain waves meant she was unaware of what they did.

  “I gave them no excuse to try that again!” she told me much later. “When I knew what they wanted, then by Sothis I learned their tongue quickly! I told them they don’t have to invade the human temple to grab this gold of the mind without asking. I had elements of the tongue already, so when they attacked me I screamed in my mind and awoke, and said, “DO NOT DO THAT!” Hah! It gave them white faces! They could not understand. They think their sort of understanding is the only sort. They call dream-travel superstition! They know nothing of Isis! Some of them were struck by my howl, but would not face it, and called it an aberration! You and Herbie and some others were struck too, and howled back, though you didn’t know you did. Later I dream-walked with the Dancer and we agreed we could start the Circle without risk of them knowing it or spying on it—for how could they spy on what they refused to believe in? So, we began it!”

  Three nights after that fearful howl I lay dizzy and sick after a drug-treatment meant “to boost the efficacy of the Interferon program.” I could not sleep; I felt so blackly hopeless that for the first time in my life (save after Vulcan when I drifted in the sea) I considered the sin of suicide. The room was almost dark, with one dim bulb glowing from the ceiling, and a voice murmured from a grid in the wall—a voice so soft I could barely hear it: it crept in like a feather tickling the mind, as it did every night before I slept and (as I came to realise) during my sleep as well. “…and in 1969 the Apollo space program put the first men on the moon…” it was murmuring, “and in 1981, after successful unmanned American expeditions to the planets, the Space Shuttle Columbia was…”

  Poison? A rope? A knife? None of these were available. I floated in deadly fantasy of self-loathing. What point in fighting for an existence like this? Damned already, why persist? Midnight forever. No more dawns. No more sunrise. No more joys, adventures, tears or laughter, love and sport and mad flood of battle. No more Golden Ships. No more dreams, no more…

  Golden Ships?

  Borne on a subtle inner tide, they came stealing into my darkness so quietly that I did not even realise the dissolving of my wish to die until it was gone… and I saw them! The Golden Ships! Skimming a diamond sea in vast, silent, majestic array! And I was alive again, vision restored! With vision we can do anything! Without it we hate, we destroy, we bang our heads against the walls of the world, we work to make money, we can create nothing at all!

  Yes! She radiated an optimism. She pressed nothing forcibly. I had no sense of another will involved in such profound and sudden uplifting of the spirit… until the next night, after another bad day, when I felt the subtle tide come again, and gladly let it in.

  This night it was different.

  I sensed the Golden Ships… and something else behind them.

  For the briefest instant I saw a woman’s face. She looked very intently at me. She had black hair, a copper face, deep dark eyes. Behind her I sensed desert, river, burning sky. I grew fearful, and the image faded. But… then came such a flood of sunny warmth that immediately I was ashamed of my fear. It felt as if a happy child wanted to play with me—and I a man afraid of a child?

  I relaxed, and let the face and the landscape return.

  In a sort of precisely detailed waking dream I entered that landscape. I seemed to stand in the shade of a strange fronded tree near a small baked-earth house, facing the smiling woman, and saw that she was young, perhaps no more than seventeen. She was slim, lithe, not tall, barefoot, wearing a simple white linen dress from neck to knees that left her arms also bare. Raven hair cut square across her brow fell to her shoulders, framing a coppery face with broad cheekbones, straight nose, a wide mouth. Her eyes held humour and gravity and the light of intelligence. When I smiled back at her she reached into a woven basket at her feet and from it gave me several small round sticky fruits, indicating the tree to tell me the fruits came from it. She ate, I ate, I found them good—they were dates, as I found later. She indicated the little house; somehow I knew it was where she grew up, with her brothers and sisters. Then her gaze travelled farther. I looked out over green growing fields to arid sandy hilltops that wrinkled the horizon. Then I looked down and saw the River! Down below us it flowed, brown and mighty and broad, swollen in fertile flood! And up above blazed the sun in a sky so bright it hurt!

  She pointed, laughing, at the river, then began running down the dusty hill, past the irrigations, to the riverside rushes. I paused, then followed. I,felt strong and young. At river’s edge she stopped an instant to peel off her dress, then dived into the shallows. I was but seconds behind, and all sadness dissolved as I hit the water with a great S-P-L-A-S-H… then it all bubbled away, qu
ite radiant, and I was Sir Humfrey again, in my dark room, with the sleep-talk whispering information about the Gross National Product.

  I slept well that night. In the morning they said it must be the drugs, but I kept quiet, and later learned other DTIs had done likewise. The day was bearable, and that night, between waking and sleep, the strange tide came bubbling into me again.

  This time we were going downriver in a large galley of antique design. It had a single bank of oars both sides and the square sail was furled. Many people of every sort were crowded in it, and goats and sheep, and somebody’s chickens squawking about, and jars and parcels and baggage. Great urns and bales were roped down aft. There was laughing and chattering in language I did not understand, but this did not matter at all, for I saw every evidence, as we carried on so gently downstream beneath the hot sun, of a great and prosperous civilisation. And soon we came past a beautiful city which had many temples and large buildings. I saw a procession coming along a waterfront street, with priests and plumed horses and happy dancers. They were all coming to greet a beautiful barge that we passed as it slid towards the quay. It was slender, this barge, and rich with carved wood; jewelled ornaments gleamed on rich purple cloths; there were carved golden rams at prow and at stern, and a crowned golden falcon atop a golden sanctuary amidships. It was a Golden Ship indeed! The passengers on our ship and the crowds onshore were all cheering with excitement, and dancing, and pointing to the regal pair, the man and woman, who stood in the poop of that remarkable vessel.

  So, on we went down that busy broad river, past the never-ending irrigations, until I saw, on the western bank, standing stark and clear and haloed against the setting sun, the three great pyramids.

  Khem! The Two Lands! Egypt!

  I felt shock that cleared my head, and turned to my guide, and found her changed! She looked older by some ten to fifteen years, her face grown sharper, with a greater clarity.

  She put a finger to her lips and smiled.

  Then the tide bubbled away again.

  For some time I was unclear that these images originated beyond me. I was not even sure that other DTIs existed. I had met none, they were abstract to me, like space travel and New York City. Yes, I recalled Ernstein’s talk of the Egyptian woman… but the truth is I did not want to think too hard about it. Thought of ancient Egypt conjured up images of matters of which I could hardly approve. I had read some of Herodotus, and once Doctor Dee loaned me De Mysteriis Egyptorum by Nostradamus… but such stuff made me most uneasy, I considering it all to do with black lore, or at least unchristian. In my time those mummies were brought into Europe ground up as medicine, or to mix with paint, some artists believing that mummy-powder would stop their paint cracking on the canvas; and then as now there was much belief in the strange powers of those ancient magicians.

  Thus at first I preferred not to think too much about the source of these gently alarming pictures in my mind. And, as it turned out, for a while I forgot them… for life became active again…

  One bright morning, the sun shining through the east-facing window, after white-suits had brought the usual breakfast of orange juice, toast and jelly, and three pancakes saturated with Old Log Cabin maple syrup, Norman Ernstein entered carrying a suit. He told me the time had come to meet some other DTIs. He seemed cheerfully convinced I’d be delighted. I was not so sure, but I had to admit to curiosity, so I clambered into the monstrous garment and followed him out.

  Through the double doors we went, and along an echoing bleak corridor to a door at the end. Unlocking this door, he led me down four zigzag flights of stairs to a cold stone lobby with a steel door at one end. Beside this, in a sort of kiosk, a black man in blue uniform sat in front of a board which had many switches and rows of holes, some containing plugs connected by coloured wires to plugs in other holes. “That’s a telephone switchboard,” Ernstein said through his suit as we went outside. “I’ll explain later.”

  Then I stood under the sky, staring.

  Standing about on the hard black paving between our door and the library-chapel were a number of suited figures, in couples or in diffident groups. Each couple, like Ernstein and I, consisted of a DTI and an Institute staff-member. It was immediately clear which were which: every DTI was shaven bald and wore a red jumpsuit under transparent immunity-suit with air-container on the back.

  I eyed them all most uncertainly.

  “Come along, Sir Humphrey!” Ernstein took me by the elbow. “I want you to meet some people we hope you’re going to like.”

  I didn’t know it, but these introductions had been carefully assessed by computer, human common-sense being thought insufficient to avoid faux pas between strangers of so many different ages, races, cultures, colours, and religious beliefs. It had all been worked out most mathematically. Thus on this first day I met only Christian Europeans of the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. This was a sensible approach to a difficult situation—yet, as Ernstein propelled me out to my first meeting, I found the sky more interesting… or, at least, so I pretended, even to myself.

  It was near the end of March. The clouds were high, fast, their bellies fleecy white, but their grey edges ragged and windblown. All about us the harsh high Institute walls, yet up there was the spring sky, and a bird swooping free on the wind, and I wished…

  “Sir Humphrey!” Ernstein interrupted my nervous abstraction. “I want you to meet a fellow-countryman. He’s not quite of your time; in fact he’s quite recent, from 1948, but we think you’ll both find a lot in common… Sir Humphrey, I’d like you to meet Air-Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, who fought for England in the Second World War!”

  So my gaze was torn from the clouds to Sir Arthur even as a similar introduction was given him by his Modern squire about myself.

  Coningham regarded me calmly through the faceplate of his suit. He was a short, stocky, grizzled man of middleage. “Gilbert, eh?” He extended a gloved hand and we shook, gingerly on my part. “Read about you in school, old chap. Raleigh’s older brother and all that. Went to Newfoundland, didn’t you? Glad to meet you, old chap!”

  “Sir,” I said, “you are an Englishman?”

  “As English as old oak. Damn bad show, this. These suits.” He shook his bald head disapprovingly. “Always thought the Yanks were funny johnnies. Too dashed frantic. Told ’em if I survived Rommel and the desert and that blasted Patton in 1942 then I can breathe their air now without this damn suit. But they won’t listen.”

  I liked Sir Arthur immediately; he was a man of honour, and we spent much time talking together during the coming months. He had survived the Second World War only to be snatched by Vulcan in January 1948, being the only survivor of an airliner, the Star Tiger, that came crashing through the vortex. He told me of the war and I thought I understood… until later in Circle I experienced an air-battle through his eyes and memory.

  The computer’s next choice was less fortunate. I was faced with a thin, sour individual squired by my old acquaintance Frank Lubick, who seemed embarrassed to see me. This person was Howell Rees, a Methodist parson from Brecon in Wales, taken from 1763. He asked my religion immediately. When he heard I was Church of England he set his jaw, glowered, and announced: “I cannot speak with this man!”

  “You are as bigoted as the Enthusiasts of my day!” I snapped, “and I have no wish to speak with you either!”

  Lubick and Ernstein conferred, then Lubick took me aside. “Mr. Gilbert, don’t take it personally,” he said, “Howell refuses to talk to anyone who isn’t Methodist, and we don’t have any other Methodists here.” And he shrugged helplessly.

  “Then why does he talk to you? You’re a Mormon!”

  Forgetting he wore a suit, Lubick tried to rub his chin. “Well, uh, I’ve given him to understand he has a chance of converting me if he talks to me.”

  Next I met a burly Dutch merchant, Philius Van Roornevink, waylaid by Vulcan while returning to. Holland from New Amsterdam in 1666. He told me immediately (with a roguish smi
le) that England and Holland had been at war; and that the Dutch fleet had sailed unopposed up the Thames and sacked our fleet. I started arguing, but Ernstein reminded him that the English had got their own back soon after his own departure, turning New Amsterdam into New York.

  Ernstein was worried as he led me to my next introduction—a tall, proud-looking man who eyed me frostily as we approached. “Sir Humphrey, please restrain your nationalistic ardour! We’re doing our best to find compatible people for you, but…”—he gestured helplessly—“…since at one time or another everyone’s been at war with everyone else, we’ll get nowhere if you let emotion get the better with you all the time! Now…”—he glanced at the man we approached—“…I want you to meet a man who was an explorer like you, in America—but there’s one slight problem: he doesn’t speak English, and as you speak Spanish, then perhaps…”

  “Spanish?” I stopped dead. “I’ll not speak with a…”

  “Good God, man, England and Spain haven’t been at war for…”

  “To me it is but three months since I was at war with Spain!” I told him furiously. “What shall I do? Grow wings and fly? Love my enemies at a single moment’s notice? Very well! Master! I am but a silly slave, and you are my Master! Command me, Master!”

  “I am NOT your master! Sir Humphrey, you must…”

  “You are a Jew, and you told me about the Nazis!” I snapped. “As a Jew, would you happily speak German to a Nazi?”

  “SIR HUMPHREY, I APOLOGISE, GODDAMMIT!”

  “Then lead me to this man! Lead me! I’ll speak to him in his language, and clutch him to my bosom if you’ll have it so, Master!”

  Yes, and so I met Señor Bernardino de Oveido de Azurara. He had been taken from 1547, before England and Spain were actively at war, so that he did not feel as badly about me as at first I did about him. But it was difficult. I nodded stiffly at the man, noting that he looked too much like that dog Mendoza for my liking, and as soon as we spoke I found him quite as arrogant as… well, as I was, I suppose. Yet I reined my feelings the best I could, and fortunately so. Ernstein was right: we had much in common. Azurara had marched north from Mexico in 1540 with Coronado, seeking the fabled golden cities of Cibola. He had much of interest to say. Yet he was a European coloniser, like myself, and later in Circle caused a crisis with all his boastful talk of conquering the New World and bringing the savages to Christ. Utak and others of Indio blood would not tolerate it: the resulting split caused Masanva to intervene.