Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  He retrieved his pith helmet from his own tent and started out. Plowing awkwardly through the burning sand, he headed for the top of the hill, that led, he knew with bitter irony, to just another hill. But still he had to keep on. There was something inside of him, as strong as life itself, which would drive him on until . . .

  NEAL KIRBY had given himself thirty-six hours of life. Now, he realized vaguely, as he lurched forward, he was twelve hours past that limit already. Living on borrowed time so to speak. His face was matted with sand-clogged beard and his red-rimmed eyes were like hot points of fire in the blackness of his face.

  For two days he had staggered through the blinding heat of the desert without food, without water. He had passed the limits of human endurance, but still he lurched on, some inner voice lashing him forward when his flagging body would quit.

  He fell often. Sometimes he lay stretched on the burning sands for minutes before he could crawl back to his feet and stagger on again.

  It was almost noon, now, and the sun seemed to be hanging suspended in the sky about a hundred feet above his aching head. He could actually feel the weight of the heat settling on him like a dense, smothering pall. Overhead soaring vultures were converging on his stumbling figure in ever narrowing circles.

  Staggering over the top of a hill Neal saw the first sight to relieve the deadly monotony of the desert. Just what it was he couldn’t tell, but it looked like a bundle of rags thrown together in a pile at the foot of the slight rise. With a strange flickering hope burning in his breast, Neal made a pathetic effort to run. He fell and slid most of the way, but at the foot of the hill he regained his feet and staggered on. Suddenly from the cluttered dark bundles which he had seen there arose a small cloud of birds, their hideously flapping wings carrying them away from this one other thing on the desert that lived beside themselves.

  Neal stopped short, almost gagging. He was close enough to recognize the bundles now as three human forms. Numbly he approached them. Sprawled on the sand with bullet holes in their heads, were the three native guides who had accompanied Zaraf into the desert. Neal stared at them for seconds in dumb silence. Zaraf’s treachery had not ended with deserting him in the desert. Here was mute testimony of that.

  In spite of everything Neal felt a vicious satisfaction course through him. The bodies of the native guides were unmistakable signposts telling him that he was at least on the right track. The canteens of the native guides were empty so he staggered on again, somehow strengthened by the realization that he couldn’t be many hours behind Jane and Zaraf.

  An hour later he fell. He was on top of another hill overlooking a broad, sloping valley, identical to the other interminable valleys he had crossed, except that this one seemed longer and wider than most of the others. For a half-hour he lay on his stomach trying to find the will and the strength to go on. He heard a faint whirr above and turned weakly just as a huge cadaverous vulture was settling on him. With a hoarse croak of fright the bird veered off and glided down into the valley. Neal hoisted himself painfully to his knees and drew his gun. Why he was so bent on killing the bird he couldn’t have told himself. He rested the revolver on his forearm and sighted carefully. The bird was gliding into the valley soaring within six feet of the ground when Neal fired.

  HE missed. The bird flapped great wings and climbed into the sky to resume his endless circling. But a strange reverberating echo had started across the valley. It magnified the report of the pistol a dozen times until it seemed as if mighty hammers were drumming maddeningly on the ground. Neal listened wonderingly.

  Suddenly he noticed a peculiar distortion of the heat waves that were dancing in front of his eyes. Their gossamer lightness and fantastically odd shapes were dissolving and reassorting themselves before his eyes. It was as if all the light waves and heat waves of the valley were broken to bits by the crescendoing clamor of the echoes which were booming across the valley.

  The entire atmosphere of the valley, he noticed, was vibrating visibly. Crazy lances of light shot into the sky and the distorted refractions of sun and heat waves merged together into what looked like solid blocks of light. In the center of the valley there appeared a shining shaft of pure white light that was growing wider by the second.

  Neal climbed shakily to his feet, stunned.

  The shaft continued to widen and he saw then that it was not composed of light, but some material that looked like white marble.

  The thunderous drumming of the echo culminated in one great crash that seemed mighty enough to shatter the heavens. Then silence settled oppressively over the valley.

  The white shaft of marble was widening swiftly now, as if some vast invisible curtain was being drawn back in front of it. Neal watched in fascination as a mighty structure of marble appeared before his eyes, filling the entire valley and almost piercing the clouds with its majestic peak of glittering white. It was formed in the shape of a pyramid, alabaster white, incredibly huge.

  The silence was complete now and the fantastic distortions of the atmosphere had ceased. The valley was quiet and tranquil as when he first saw it. Everything was the same except for the appearance of the magnificent white pyramid towering into the heavens.

  Neal sagged to his knees. If it was a mirage, it was the most impressive and authentic he’d ever heard of. He was still looking at the gigantic pyramid when he saw the orange bolt of flame flash from its base. It seemed a whip of flame with a large ball of some brightly burning matter attached to it. When he saw that it was heading for him he tried to run, as a man runs from the unknown, but it was too late. Something caressed the back of his head like a hot breath and he stumbled onto his face. The next instant a smothering blanket of blackness settled over him and everything faded out abruptly.

  WHEN Neal came to he was lying on a narrow cot in a small room.

  There were no windows that he could see, only one small opening that might be a door. He struggled to a sitting position on the cot. The first thing he realized was that he wasn’t thirsty. His lips were still cracked and tender, but he knew from their feel that water had passed over them. His hand touched his matted three-day beard experimentally, and his eyes traveled in mild disgust over his dirty, ragged breeches and scuffed boots.

  He leaned back and wondered where he was. Thinking accurately was a difficult proposition. His conscious memory was that of a fantastic white pyramid which had materialized before him on the desert. Before that he had been close on the trail of Max Zaraf and Jane Manners. That thought jolted him.

  He climbed to his feet and looked around. The walls were of a peculiar porous material and they seemed to be the source of the pale, glareless illumination that flooded the tiny room. There was no furniture other than the narrow cot, and the small door was locked in some manner from the outside. The problem of getting out, he decided, was not going to be easy.

  He sank back onto the cot despairingly. All he could do was wait. An hour passed before he heard a clicking on the outside of the door. Then it swung inward. Neal saw a highly polished boot, white whipcord breeches, and then the tall, gaunt figure of Max Zaraf filled the narrow doorway. His freshly shaven features were touched with a mocking smile and his cold eyes gleamed with sardonic amusement.

  “This is a pleasure I hadn’t counted on,” he said, smiling.

  For a stunned instant Neal was too dazed to speak. Even in his astonishment, however, one thing was obvious. Zaraf was in the saddle now or he wouldn’t be so completely cool and nonchalant. Every instinct in his body urged him to hurl himself at Zaraf’s relaxed figure and throttle the life from the man, but a bump of common sense warned him to proceed cautiously and wait for an opportunity.

  “I don’t imagine you had counted on seeing me again,” he said as easily as he could. “Most men stranded in the desert die there.”

  “But you didn’t,” Zaraf smiled. “How persistent of you.”

  “I had something to live for,” Neal answered quietly.

  Zaraf shrug
ged.

  “The past is dead,” he said, still smiling. “Since you lived through the desert I might give you the chance to continue living. However, that is up to you. If you are willing to do as I say, it can be arranged. If not,” he spread his hands in an expressive gesture, “your gallant fight through the desert will be of no avail.”

  “It is my great pleasure,” Neal said recklessly, “to tell you to go to hell. If I had nine lives I’d sacrifice ’em all before I’d lower myself to bargain with a treacherous, rotten snake like you.” Zaraf continued to smile, but two hot flags of color fluttered in his cheeks.

  “I came here to offer you a chance for your life. You could have helped me here but that is not to be. For your information we are approximately five hundred feet underground right now. We are in the lost city which Professor Manners discovered. It was never actually a lost city, but rather a hidden city. A strange race of people have developed here, many of them childishly simple in many ways. It is to be my privilege to teach them the benefits of commercialization. You might have helped me and done very well for yourself. It was only an accident that you discovered the secret of the pyramid, but it is an accident which might have been profitable to you.” He smiled blandly down at Neal. “Many of the charmingly simple people love pageantry and drama so I’ll have to devise a spectacular manner in which to usher you into the Great Beyond.”

  “Where is Jane?” Neal asked suddenly.

  “Ahh,” Zaraf smiled. “That worries you, does it? Well Jane is not too happy, but I have strong hopes that under my persuasive technique I can make her learn to enjoy the existence I’ve planned for her.”

  As he finished speaking he bowed slightly and stepped through the door. It closed immediately behind him.

  NEAL paced the narrow room nervously for the next hour. The realization that Jane was near him, possibly within a few hundred feet of him, was maddening. Maddening too, was the realization that she was in Zaraf’s hands, helpless. Another hour, as nearly as he could judge, had passed when he heard the faint click of the lock. He paused and watched the door carefully. It swung inward, an inch at a time, until it stood open.

  Neal doubled his fists and spread his legs. If a chance to smash his way out of this cell presented itself he was going to grab it.

  Seconds later a young girl stepped cautiously into the room. Her skin was a pallid white in color and her large eyes were twin mirrors of fright. She was small and her thin body was trembling under the loose white garment she wore. Her hair was long, and would have been considered beautiful, were it not so dull and lustreless.

  Neal unclenched his fists slowly. He had been prepared for just about anything, but this peculiar looking, frightened girl stopped him completely. Her eyes were on his now, and she seemed trying desperately to make him understand something. Finally she held her fingers over her mouth and Neal gathered that she wanted him to keep silent.

  Then she reached out and took his hand in her own and pointed through the doorway with her other hand. Her meaning was clear enough to Neal. She wanted him to follow her, but why? Neal didn’t stop to argue the question with himself. It might be a trap, but it wasn’t likely that they would go to such elaborate lengths to lure him from the cell. Anyway it was better than doing nothing. He decided to follow the girl.

  “Lead on, sister,” he whispered. “If you’re on the level, God bless you.”

  The girl led him into the corridor that flanked the room in which he had been confined. Looking about he could tell nothing about where he was or where he was going. The walls were blue, and of the same porous composition that constituted the walls of the room he had just left. The corridor stretched ahead endlessly and Neal noticed that every six feet or so a door was built into the wall, identical with the one that led to the room which he had just left. The ceiling was high and vaulted, but was without ornamentation of any sort.

  The girl crept softly ahead of him, glancing frequently back to see that he was still following. In another hundred feet they turned at right angles and followed another corridor. For fifteen or twenty minutes they continued, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine passages that interlaced each other at odd angles. Finally the girl stopped at a door, that seemed to Neal identical to the hundreds of others they had passed, and pressed her ear against its surface.

  After a silent interval she opened the door cautiously and motioned for Neal to go in. Neal hesitated an instant. If there was anything phoney about the set-up this was where the pay-off would be. With a mental shrug he stepped over the threshold and into the room.

  “Neal, darling!” a wonderfully familiar voice cried.

  “JANE!” Neal whispered unbelievingly. For an instant he stood rooted to the spot, too amazed to move. This had been the farthest thing from his thoughts. She was standing at the opposite side of the room, and in her eyes was relief and joy that made his heart pound faster. She was wearing a loose flowing gown of white and it gave her blonde beauty an almost ethereal quality.

  Recovering he crossed to her, took her hands in his.

  “Honey,” he said fervently, “you’re the most welcome sight I’ve seen in all my life. Are you all right? Has that swine done anything to you?”

  “I’m all right,” she said breathlessly. “I heard that you had been brought here and the little girl who is my attendant was willing to take a message to you. Finally she thought she could bring you here easier. She’s watching in the hall now so we have a few minutes to talk.”

  “What’s this all about?” Neal asked. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in the city my father discovered,” she answered. “It’s underground. A whole tribe of people—offshoots of some highly cultivated desert group—built it as a retreat against their more savage neighbors centuries ago. Here they have progressed amazingly well along certain lines, in electricity for instance, but in other fields they are childishly ignorant.

  “Zaraf knew my father years ago and knew that he made this discovery. So his offer to help me was because he wanted access to this city for purposes of exploitation. We arrived here just a few days ahead of you, but fortunately for Zaraf, an evil element of the natives has been planning a revolution against the established ruling system. Being an opportunist Zaraf jumped right in with the revolters and helped them overthrow their ruler.”

  “And that makes him ace-high with the new management,” Neal said reflectively.

  Jane nodded.

  “He told me all his plans the day after he kidnaped me and left you stranded in the desert. He was sure you were out of the picture forever. He intends to work himself into a position of power, regiment these natives, sell their produce and electrical equipment to the highest bidders. He must be stopped, Neal, he must. These natives are, for the most part, simple and kindly, but they’re easily influenced by white people because they worshipped my father. He was very kind and good to them during the years he stayed here, and Zaraf is trading on that.”

  “Our big job,” Neal said, “is to get out of here as fast as we can. Do you have any idea of the size of this place? Or where we are now in relation to the nearest exit?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “I’m completely lost,” she confessed. “I know, however, that we are in one of the larger sleeping sections now. Everyone is up at the throne hall at this time to hear the new instructions from the new ruler. His name is Horjak. That’s why it was safe to bring you here through the halls. All the rooms are deserted now. Most of the natives here aren’t sympathetic with the new regime, but they are helpless because they have no leader or weapons.”

  Neal started to speak but a shrill terrified shriek from beyond the door interrupted him. It was followed instantly by a loud banging on the panels.

  Neal heard a harsh voice snapping commands and he knew that Zaraf was outside.

  JANE was clinging to his arm desperately.

  “You’ve got to get out of here, darling,” she cried.

  This was the grim t
ruth, Neal admitted, but there was no other exit from the room. He disengaged Jane’s frantic grip on his arm and shoved her into a corner, just as the door crashed inword.

  Three small, but heavily muscled men, with the same pallid expression and lusterless hair of the young native girl, spilled into the room. They wore crimson tunics that dropped to the middle of their thighs and sandals with soft spongy soles. They sprang at Neal with a concerted ferocity that amazed him. The first soldier went down under a sledge hammer right hook that carried all of Neal’s heavy shoulder behind it. But before he could swing again the other two grabbed his arms. More of the crimson-tuniced guards poured into the room and the struggle was over. Panting, he was dragged from the room into the corridor to face the coldy sneering presence of Max Zaraf.

  “I gave you your chance,” Zaraf snapped. “You refused it. Now you can accept your alternate choice.” He motioned imperiously to the guards. “To the throne room. Quickly!”

  Before the guards could move to obey his order Jane rushed into the corridor and blocked their path with outstretched hands.

  “You can’t do this,” she cried to Zaraf. “I won’t let you.”

  Zaraf smiled at her, cynically.

  “Since you are so perturbed as to his fate,” he said silkily, “I think it would be interesting if you would witness the execution yourself. There’s nothing like the presence of a lovely woman to inspire a man to die a hero’s death.” He nodded to two of the guards. “Take her along.”

  The husky, crimson-tuniced guards sprang to obey, and after a brief, unequal struggle, the girl was carried away after Neal.

  THE throne room was a vast hall lined with tier upon tier of seats extending up to the highest reaches of the amphitheater. In the center of the throne room a huge unadorned dias was erected and on it sprawled a corpulent figure with an overly large head and dense stupid features.

  Neal saw all this in one quick glance as he was shoved through a lower tier aisle and led to the large oval enclosure that faced the throne. The entire hall was brilliantly illuminated by the same sort of indirect lighting he had noticed before. Standing next to the figure on the throne was Max Zaraf, a gloating smile of anticipation on his face.