Fire in the Abyss

by Stuart Gordon

  “We have found common ground,” he said. “This is very good, for the Dance will be danced before many more years are gone, and after it, those who live will find common ground as we do now, and make a new race out of all the peoples who have lived in this Fourth World. There will be war, and then there will be peace, and the peace will be good for as long as it lasts, and many new things will grow.”

  Then Masanva smiled.

  It was a brilliant, joyous smile, there in the metal catacomb, and he reached forward and embraced Mery-Isis, who reached forward to meet him. And then, and only for a little while, but it was long enough, we looked on each other, and knew each other, and scrambled to hug and kiss and let the tears mingle. DTIs no longer, we were human beings again, and it was all worth it, no matter what happened after all this! We had found common ground, we had overcome the differences and the suits and the isolation imposed on us, and we were out of Horsfield. It was wonderful!

  But the bus went rattling and rolling on.

  “Good friends!” said Tari softly. “We must get ready now, the first stop is near, it is sad that we have to say goodbye so soon after hullo, but we must remember now what we’re about.”

  The plan was that Jud, Lucie, Clive, and Jim would roll out at the first stop, and the rest of us at the second. Somehow we organised matters. Packages of bread and meat and drink had been diverted into the laundry bags: now these and the drugs and the clothes were divided equally into two of the bags amid a sudden tension. The joy was gone, now it was practicality again—and even so the first stop took us by surprise, for suddenly the bus was gearing down. The four getting out first scrambled into position, I got a foot in the face and Jim Gage panted an apology as Jud and Herbie snapped off the flashlights. Jud rolled the door up two feet, I reached out to take the wad of cloth he thrust at me: we had agreed on this. I took it and crouched, ready to take over the door as the bus came to a stop.

  “Now! Go!” hissed Tari, and muttered something more in her own tongue that sounded like blessing as Jud, Lucie, Clive, and last of all, Jim, rolled out onto the dark road and wriggled away into the night even as the engine roared again and the bus picked up speed, so that in seconds these four were utterly disappeared, and not even time for farewells. And I have never known what happened to them.

  Yet at least we had the chance to meet each other first.

  That left Tari, Utak, Herbie, Masanva, and myself.

  I laid the wad of cloth over the locking-port and carefully drew down the door. Light came on again. We stared at each other’s wan and ghostly faces. Masanva was withdrawn into himself again. Utak’s teeth were bared, his face clenched against the cold. Herbie looked gaunt, his cheeks pale and hollow. Tari’s nostrils were flared, she was breathing deeply. Without the helmet her face seemed sharper. Yes… there was something of the fierce bird, the Hawk.

  “Listen, you guys,” said Herbie abruptly, “I’m the only Modern here… you know… I’ll do my best”

  I liked him for that, and also for the fact that he’d cast in his lot with Utak and Tari and myself—for I think we all knew that Masanva would go on his own… if we got clear. We were not yet ten minutes out of Horsfield, but surely by now they had found out?

  Our stop came. We were ready for it. Herbie took the bag and slid out first, then Tari, Utak, Masanva, and lastly myself. I left the door rolled up and wriggled after the others as the bus began to grind away into the night. We crouched at the verge of the road.

  Behind us there was still no sight or sound of pursuit.

  One passenger had been dropped. We heard tuneless whistling floating through the darkness as whoever-it-was waited. And even as the lights of the bus receded, the approaching beam of a car’s headlights speared through the bare winter branches of trees above.

  We were at a crossroads. The car approached at right-angles to the road by the side of which we waited. Herbie whispered a suggestion. We crouched, ready, as the car drew up. Then we did it.

  Four of us rushed out of the night and seized both passenger and driver before the passenger was fully into the car.

  The passenger was Ernstein. The driver was a slim dark woman, presumably his wife.

  “Oh my God!” exclaimed Ernstein when he realised who we were.

  “Never mind that!” snapped Herbie as he slung the laundry bag in the back of the car and gestured at the woman to get out and let him in behind the wheel. “Now both of you be smart and get in the back and don’t make no trouble or we’ll all be dead in a ditch pretty quick. Humf, you’ve got the gun, get in the back and keep ’em covered. Utak, if he won’t get in, push him in. That’s it. Get in the front. You too, Tari. And… hey… where’s the old man?”

  That’s when three of us realised that Masanva had gone. While we had rushed the car, the Dancer had slipped away into the night, following his own direction. Tari knew. And gradually, as I got gingerly into the back of the strange machine, I realised that I had known as well. And Utak and Herbie, for none of us spoke of it further.

  “Okay,” said Herbie, checking the controls. “Shift-stick. Gears. Brakes. Lights. Good. I think I can handle this. Now, let’s see if they make ’em like they used to!”

  Apparently they did, for with a mighty jerk and clashing of gears he started us off again, with Tari and Utak beside him as perplexed as fish out of water, and myself hardly less so. I felt very unsure of myself as I waved the gun menacingly at our two terrified captives.

  “Who are they? Norman, who are they?”

  “Oh my God!” Ernstein repeated, in numb misery.

  I introduced myself and the others as courteously as my shivering allowed, and apologised for the inconvenience.

  “You fools!” Ernstein whispered hoarsely. “You’ll die without…”

  “Shut… mouth!” Utak demanded, a nervous angry tremor in his voice as he swung round. “You hear, Modern? Be… quiet!”

  Ernstein heard. He and his wife were silent as Herbie clashed through the gears again and threw us from one side of the road to the other as the back-lights of the bus loomed in front. We went past it at such dizzy speed that I felt sick. I saw more lights ahead, hard bright globes in the night, but did not realise they were the lights of a town. Nor did I understand the orange glow in the sky to the west. But I did understand the meaning of the hideous wailing that started up suddenly through the night behind us. My fingers tightened reflexively at this evidence that our escape was discovered, and accidentally I fired the gun. It made a tremendous noise in the enclosed space. Luckily nobody was hurt or killed, for the bullet went through the roof, and Herbie, though from the shock of it he swerved almost off the road into a huge lit-up sign that said EXXON, recovered control amid the general confusion and shrieking of Utak, Ernstein, and Ernstein’s wife, and started cursing me as he drove us rapidly through a small town without the slightest diminishment of speed. Red lights loomed before us, and other cars, but Herbie only drove faster, swerving wildly amid horrible sounds of mechanical screeching on every side. Dazed by this introduction to the U.S.A., I looked back and saw faces staring, someone running, and two cars which had apparently crashed into each other in our wake. Ernstein’s wife was sobbing, Utak was shouting, I was mumbling about the cunning man, and only Tari was silent, for Ernstein was muttering “Oh my God… oh my God… oh my God!” over and over again, while Herbie wouldn’t stop cursing me, calling me Humf-this and Humf-that, until I could take no more and roared to him TO STOP CALLING ME HUMF! “Okay, Humf!” he snapped back. “You want to get out? It’s an awful long walk back to the sixteenth century. Just don’t shoot that thing off in here again! I thought you had guns in your time.”

  “WHO ARE THESE LUNATICS?” wailed Ernstein’s wife. “NORMAN, ARE THEY SOMETHING… TO DO WITH YOUR WORK?”

  It was not in fact very droll, though I represent it as such. It was insane. Ernstein wouldn’t speak to his wife, though I could feel him shivering too, and next thing I knew, we were rushing up a curling concrete ramp
that took us high in the air at dizzy speed to a vast roadway past another huge lit-up sign at our point of entry. The sign said: US84—WEST. I was stupefied by the size of this road, and at the speed we were traveling, and Utak gasped too, while by the lights over the road I could see the tight line of Tari’s jaw: she hadn’t spoken a word since we’d left the bus, though she seemed in better control of herself than any of the rest of us. As for Herbie, he appeared to be enjoying himself, for he chuckled, and smacked his lips, and leaned forward over the steering wheel. “Hey, this must be one of them freeways I heard about!” he shouted appreciatively as he swerved past two cars and a truck in a manoeuvre that made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach yet again. “Beats any roads I ever saw. Guess now we’ll really see what this pile of junk can do! Hey, Ernstein, this thing’s real easy to drive! What the fuck is it anyway? Ford? Chrysler? A European job?”

  “Herbie,” said Ernstein carefully, “you’re doing… ninety-seven mph, and…”

  “I asked you who the fuck makes it!” screamed Herbie.

  “Oh my God,” muttered Ernstein, casting a fearful glance at me and the gun, which now I held pointed to the floor. And it was his wife who answered Herbie, her voice fearful, but unexpectedly angry and determined.

  “Toyota. It’s Japanese. And you don’t have to shout!”

  “Japanese? The fucking Japanese make cars? What in hell are you talking about? The Japanese never made nothing!”

  “Herbie!” said Mery-Isis in a sudden sharp voice. “Be in control of yourself! Please!” And the dim front-seat shape of her turned to Ernstein’s wife. “Woman, you must be amazed by this. You must think we are mad. I think your husband has told you nothing about his work or who we are. I assume that he is your husband? My name is Tari, as my friend Humfrey told you. What is your name, please?”

  “Sandra!” said Ernstein’s wife with an angry sigh, and would say not another word to Mery-Isis, but turned instead on Ernstein, and started to relieve her feelings by scolding him, accusing him of telling her nothing, threatening him with divorce if they got out of this alive, telling him (and us) exactly what sort of no-good excuse for a man he was, and refusing to believe a word of the truthful explanation about us that he reluctantly told her.

  So we escaped Horsfield and roared into the night, into the United States of America.

  Part the Third

  23. In Which Humf Grows Very Thin

  Soon I’ll be gone from this place too.

  It’s well into April now. Yesterday I thought to celebrate my birthday and this reliving of the leaving of Horsfield with some rest and play. So I brought ill-luck on myself, by twice making use of that device, the telephone. The fiendish thing! Its disembodied voices make me tremble; I like to see folk when I speak to them!

  Yet bodily needs denied my intellectual judgment. Hesitantly I called the pub in Brynafan and spoke to the girl at the bar who gave me the eye when I was in there a week ago. Her name is Grace. She said she would call back, and did. We mumbled for a minute or so, then she mentioned she had the evening off. I asked her here for supper. She said Yes, then No, then Yes, then No, but finally agreed to come, and to bring some supplies that I needed.

  She arrived after dark in a battered old car. We got down to it quick, without misunderstanding or false modesty, and pleasured each other well. Afterwards she was regretful that she had to go.

  “Keep quiet about this!” she insisted. I watched her, happily sad as she covered up her voluptuous form. “I’m glad I came, but I can’t risk it again. Folk talk about me as it is, and about you too.” She eyed me boldly. “You’re a puzzle, and no mistake, with all your scars, and your talk of war… I just don’t know”

  I’d spun her my usual yarn of leaving Britain twenty years ago as a mercenary soldier, to end up a drifter in America before coming back. Of the last two years I told more-or-less the truth, about the Lorry People, and how I was shot in York, and what I’m doing here.

  “You don’t believe a word I’ve said, do you?” I demanded.

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe, does it?” She shrugged. “It’s no business of mine. But why won’t you let me see what you’ve been writing?”

  “I don’t want anyone to read it until it’s done.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Soon. Very soon.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “I have no idea,” I told her truthfully.

  “Well, you’re an odd one,” she said, putting on her coat, and then added, with apparent inconsequence: “The Lorry People are up the road in Betws-y-Coed. About sixty of Jhem, with trucks and carts and caravans and big motorbikes, putting the fear of God in folk, though all they’re doing is waiting.”

  I couldn’t hide my interest.

  “What are they waiting for?”

  “Joe Thomas who knows them says they’ll go on to Liverpool to join folk behind the barricades if the troops are sent in again—the riots, you know. Says they’re talking of civil war.”

  When she went away she left me thinking hard. I decided to call Michael. He hasn’t been in touch, and the month is almost up. So I got myself into the first of two bad surprises. I called York, but the phone was answered by Michael’s married son, John, who usually stays in London. His voice turned ugly when he realised who it was:

  “You, is it? Listen, Sir Humphrey Fraud or whoever you are, we don’t want to hear from you ever again! My father’s in the hospital because of all the strain you’ve caused him, and…”

  “What?” I was greatly shocked. “But what happ…”

  “None of your business! Well, I suppose it is. He lost his job, and his heart… he… he needs rest! Don’t you dare bother him again! Understand? We want you out of that house and out of our lives! NOW!”

  Then SLAM went the phone.

  My God! I thought. Poor man. If it’s true. He did sound tired when we last talked, and it would explain why I haven’t heard from him. Heart-attack? What should I do? I sat with many thoughts buzzing. I have almost no money, and if my association with Michael is to end so abruptly, then what am I doing here, writing all this? I should be out on the road already. But it’s hard to abandon a task once begun. I decided I must finish all this, and get it at least to the alternative address we agreed upon. I did give my word!

  Then the second surprise was sprung. As I thought on all this, a car drove up. I thought it was Grace back for something she’d forgotten. But no. There was a hammering on the kitchen door. Before I could speak a word, the door flew open, and in stumped Griffith’s hostile son with two surly-looking friends.

  “So you’ve been having fun with our amazing Grace!” he declared with pugnacious sarcasm as I stood up. “It won’t do, boyo!”

  “My friend, I…”

  “Be quiet, now! Saw her drive past our house. Time we had a little talk, like. When will you be moving on?”

  The way these things happen! I restrained myself.

  “When I’ve done my work,” I said, facing him.

  One of his friends started forward with a brandished fist.

  “You’ll go right now, or else!”

  “Hold back, Tom,” said Griffith’s son, then to me again: “How soon are you going to be done?”

  “A week,” I said flatly, holding his eye until he nodded.

  “Right. A week it is. We’ll be back to see you out. And you leave that girl alone or we’ll break your legs. Okay, boys.”

  Very well! Very well! So I’m a fool. Now I’ve got six days to lay the ghosts that remain. I was furious for a while after they left last night, but soon cooled down, and at midnight t walked up to the pagan stone. There’s a finger of fate in all this: I must shed my husks and start out again. It was a clear starry night, very beautiful. I talked with Tari’s ghost again, like the madman I probably am, and sensed the Hawk hovering like a shadow against the heavens. These are potent times, all know it, and yes, soon I’ll take up the reins again, as she said I would.
/>   Humf isn’t finished, not by a long chalk! My mind grows clear, now that I sift through these memories.

  So, to complete this task:

  Thanks to Seven, and to Herbie’s driving, we got away.

  Between midnight and dawn of that Christmas Day he drove us from Horsfield to the shores of Lake Ontario. We used sideroads for the most part once beyond the city of Scranton, myself navigating with the aid of flashlight and maps in the car. Twice we stopped for gas from self-service machines, Herbie operating the pump and paying with money taken from Norman Ernstein while I held the gun on our captives. Utak and Tari wore hats to hide their baldness, and Herbie had a wool cap pulled over his head.

  It was a strange and monstrous night. Towns and cities glowed in the dark like vast vague orange mushrooms: several times police cars wailed past us, Herbie having been persuaded to slow down to the legal speed. At first we couldn’t understand why we weren’t stopped. Both Herbie and I wanted to be rid of this machine as fast as possible, for surely by now it was known that Norman and Sandra Ernstein weren’t at home, and as a matter of routine security the number of their car would be known to the Institute authorities? We argued this, but Tari insisted: “No! The Hawk protects us! He brought us this machine, we must use it to the utmost!” When we still argued, she said she intuited that the Institute files had a different type and number of car registered in Ernstein’s name. At this Ernstein gasped, and in a low voice admitted to his wife that he’d forgotten to “update” his file with regard to this fine new car they’d recently bought.

  So, Seven was certainly with us, yet we knew we must not push it. We were exhausted, and had to find somewhere to lie low. Crossing over into Canada was considered, but that presented too many unknowns, so we abandoned the idea. Also we knew that we could not let Norman and Sandra Ernstein go. They knew it too.

  It was just as dawn rose, bleak and grey, that we reached Lake Ontario, passing through the tiny town of Albion, between Rochester and Niagara Falls. We explored small lakeside roads and, before day was fully upon us, found and broke into a locked-up summerhouse hid invisibly near the shore in a wood of willow-scrub, alder, and wind-twisted pine. There was farmland about: the nearest occupied building was about a mile away, and once again it was Tari’s intuition that helped us, for it was she who saw the narrow track and persuaded Herbie to try it. As for Herbie, what he had done that night was prodigious, but his work wasn’t yet over: he had to gather up his will and courage again and go alone in the car, taking all the money the Ernsteins had (about a hundred dollars, as I recall), to a nearby town (but not the nearest) where he successfully bought the food we needed, then returned to us safely and unseen.