“‘First, though, is the matter of your loyalty and your aid. Are you with me?’
“‘How can I pledge my support when I do not know if you are worth supporting? For all I know, you may be Satan himself!’
“He chuckled hollowly, and he said, ‘You are the one who denied both God and the Devil. I am not the Devil or any analog to him. I am in fact on your side, on the side of deluded, suffering humanity. I can’t prove that to you. Not now. But think of this. Have my colleagues approached you? Have they done anything but bring you back from the dead for purposes they do not condescend to tell you? Have I not chosen you from many billions to help in this secret struggle? You and eleven others? Why have I honored you? I’ll tell you. Because I know that you are one of the few who can aid me. Because your wathan tells me that you will be on my side.’
“‘It is, then, predetermined?’ I said. ‘I do not believe in predeterminism.’
“‘No. There’s no such thing, except in a sense which you would not understand or would find difficult to accept.
“‘All I can tell you at the moment is that I am on your side. Without me, you and most of your kind are doomed. You must have faith in me.’
“‘But,’ I cried. ‘What can we pitiful few humans do? We are pitted against superhumans with superpowers.’
“He replied that we twelve could do nothing without a friend in court. He was that friend. We twelve must get together and journey to the North Pole, to the tower in the middle of the sea. We must get there on our own, however. He could not fly us there. He could not tell me at the moment why not.
“‘I must proceed slowly and cautiously,’ he said. ‘And you must promise not to reveal this conversation to anyone. To no one except one of the twelve I’ve picked.
“‘To do so might result in your being detected by an agent. That would mean that you would be stripped of all memory of your meetings with me. And I would be placed in even graver danger.’
“‘But how will I recognize these others?’ I said. ‘How will I get to where they are or they to me? Where are they?’
“While asking these questions, I felt awed and elated at the same time. That one of the beings who had raised us from the dead and made this world should be asking for my help! I, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who am just a human being, however great certain of my talents are. That he should pick me from many billions!
“He knew his man, knew I would not be able to resist his challenge. If I could have stood up, I’d have crossed swords with him—if swords were available—and I’d have pledged my loyalty with a toast—if wine had been handy.
“‘You’ll do as I ask?’ he said.
“‘But certainly!’ I said. ‘You have my word, and I never go back on that!’
“Jill, I won’t go into any more detail about what else he said. Except… he did say that I was to tell Sam Clemens that he should be on the lookout for a man named Richard Francis Burton. He was one of those chosen. And we were to wait for a year in Virolando for all of us to get together. If some didn’t show, then we were to go ahead. And we would be hearing from him—the Stranger—in the near future.
“He gave me directions to find Clemens, who was downRiver about ten thousand leagues. Clemens would be building a great boat made of ore from a meteorite. I knew who Clemens was though I’d died one hundred and eighty-one years before he was born. After all, was not his Earthly wife sleeping in my bed? I told him that, and he chuckled and said, ‘I know.’
“‘Is this not embarrassing for me?’ I said. ‘And especially for Livy? Would the great Clemens even admit me aboard his so grand boat in this situation?’
“‘Which is more important to you?’ he said with some degree of impatience. ‘A woman or the salvation of the world?’
“‘That would depend upon how I felt about the woman,’ I said. ‘Objectively and humanely, there is no argument. I am humane but I am not objective.’
“‘Go there and find out what happens,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this woman will prefer you.’
“‘When Cyrano is on fire with love,’ I said, ‘he does not cool off at command.’
“Then he stood up, and said, ‘I will see you,’ and he was gone. I dragged myself with my arms, my dead legs trailing uselessly, to the door, and pushed it open. There was no sign of him. The next morning, I announced to Livy that I was tired of this place. I wanted to travel, to see this brave new world. She said that she was tired of traveling. But if I went, she would go with me. So we set out. The rest you know.”
Jill felt a sense of unreality. She believed Cyrano’s story, but it nevertheless made her feel as if she were a player on a stage, the sets of which concealed something frightening. And she was also an actor who had not been given the script.
“No, I don’t know the rest. What about you and Clemens? What did he know that you didn’t? And did any of the others this Ethical had chosen show up?”
“Clemens was visited twice by the Ethical. Clemens calls him X or the Mysterious Stranger.”
Jill said, “He wrote a book once titled The Mysterious Stranger. A very sad, bitter story, overwhelmingly pessimistic. The Stranger was Lucifer.”
“He told me about it. However, he did not know much more than I did. Except that this X had somehow deflected a meteorite so that it would fall where Clemens could find it.”
“Do you realize the energy that would take?”
“It was explained to me. Anyway, Sam broke his word to the Stranger. He told Joe Miller and Lothar von Richthofen about him. He said that he could not help telling them.
“Also, there were two more. A giant red-haired savage of a man named John Johnston. And… Firebrass!”
She almost dropped her cigarette. “Firebrass! But he… !”
Cyrano nodded. “Exactly. He would seem to be one of these agents whom the Ethical mentioned but did not explain. I never saw the Ethical again, so I did not get any answers to my many questions. But I think, though I can’t be sure, that he would have been surprised to learn that Firebrass claimed to be one of the twelve. Perhaps Firebrass was an infiltrator. But that does not explain Thorn and Obrenova.”
“Did Johnston or Firebrass add anything to your knowledge?”
“Of the Ethical? No, Johnston was visited only once. Firebrass, of course, was not one of the twelve chosen. I doubt that the Ethical knew he was an agent. How could he unless he himself had been disguised and in our midst? Which perhaps he may have been. But if he knew that Firebrass was an agent, he had reasons not to tell us.
“What worries me, among many things, is that the Ethical hasn’t visited us again.”
Jill sat upright.
“Could Piscator be an agent?”
Cyrano stopped walking, lifted his shoulders and eyebrows, and spread out his extended palms upward.
“Unless he returns, we may never know.”
“Purposes, cross-purposes, counter-cross-purposes. Wheels within wheels within wheels,” Jill said. “Mâyâ lowers seven veils of illusion between us and them.”
“What? Oh, you are referring to the Hindu concept of illusion.”
“I don’t think Piscator was an agent. If he had been, he wouldn’t have said anything to me about his suspicions that something dark and secret was going on.”
A knocking on the door startled them.
“Captain! Greeson here, head of Search Group Three. All areas in this section except for the chart room have been searched. We can come back later.”
Jill, rising, said, “Come on in.”
To Cyrano she said, “I’ll talk with you later. There’s so much to puzzle out, so many questions.”
“I doubt I’ll have any answers.”
Three twenty-four-hour periods had passed.
The dead had been buried at sea, their cloth-wrapped bodies resembling Egyptian mummies as they were tilted outward through an aperture. As Jill stood in the klieg-lit fog and watched the corpses slide, one by one, through the arch at the base of the wall,
she calculated the time of their fall. It was not callousness which made her indulge in the mental exercise. It was habit, and it was also a barrier against the horror of death.
Death was for real now; the hope of resurrection in this world was gone. Death seemed even more all-present and always threatening in this place with its cold, wet winds and dark, swirling clouds. She only had to walk a few paces into the mists, and she would be out of sight and sound of all living beings and their works. She could not see her feet or the metal on which she walked.
If she went to an aperture and stuck her head out, she could not even hear the cold, dead sea crashing against the tower. It was too far away. Everything was too far away, even if it was only a few meters distant.
It was truly a wasteland. She would be glad when she could leave it.
So far, Piscator had not come back. She did not think it likely that he would. Under no circumstances would he willingly have stayed so long in the tower. Either he was dead, hurt badly, or held prisoner. In any event, those on the outside could do nothing for him, and the proposed seven-day wait now seemed far too long. Therefore, Jill had announced to the crew that the airship would leave at the end of a five-day period.
They received the news with evident relief. Like her, their nerves were pulled tightly, overtightly, on a rack. So much so that she had been forced to change the four hours of guard duty at the dome to two. Some of the guards were hallucinating, seeing ghostly forms in the fog, hearing voices coming from the corridor. One man had even fired at what he thought was a huge form running at him from the mists.
The first search of the ship had found no bombs or transmitters. Fearing that the crew might not have covered every square centimeter, and also wanting to keep them busy, she ordered another search. This one was extended to the outside surface of the dirigible, too. Men went to the top and prowled the walkway, shining their lamps alongside it. Others swept their lights across the exteriors of the tail structures.
No bombs were located.
Jill was not relieved. If Thorn had planned from the beginning to hide explosives, he could have placed some inside a gas cell. If he had, he had thwarted them, since there was no way they could get into the cells without releasing the irreplaceable hydrogen. It was true he’d need a transmitter, but that was a small object. It could even be disguised as something else.
This thought set off a third search in which every small mechanical or electrical device aboard was inspected to make sure that it was indeed what it appeared to be. All were what they were supposed to be, but the idea that there could be a disguised transmitter added to the general nervousness.
Of course, as long as Thorn was kept inside the sick bay, he could not get to a hidden transmitter. A lock had been installed on the door to sick bay, and there were always two guards on the inside and two outside.
Jill talked to Cyrano about another problem.
“Sam’s going to be bloody furious when he hears that he can’t do anything if he ever does get here. There’s no way he can get to the top of the tower from the surface of the sea. And if he did achieve the impossible, he still could do nothing to get in.
“It’s possible that one or more of his crew might be able to enter the tower, if he could get to the top. But even then, what guarantee is there what happened to Piscator wouldn’t happen to them?”
“Whatever that is,” Cyrano said gloomily. He had been almost as fond of the Japanese as he was of Firebrass.
“Did Firebrass tell you, too, about the laser hidden on the Mark Twain?”
Cyrano came alive. “Aha! What a stupid man I am! The laser! Yes, Firebrass told me about it, of course. Would he tell you and not me? I should hope to kiss a pig under its tail he would not!”
“Well, it’s possible that this metal might resist even a laser beam. But we won’t know unless we try it, will we?”
The Frenchman swiftly lapsed into gloom.
“But what do we do about the fuel situation? We cannot fly to Clemens’ boat and get the laser and return here and then get back to Parolando or the boat. We do not have enough oil for that.”
“We’ll get the laser from Sam and then go to Parolando and make some more oil and then come back here.”
“That will take much time. But it is the only thing to do. However, what if that hardheaded Clemens does not let us use the laser?”
“I don’t see how he could refuse us,” Jill said slowly. “That is the only means we have for getting into the tower.”
“Ah, yes, true. But you are saying that logic will sway Clemens. He is human, which means that he is by no means always logical. But we will see.”
Jill was so on fire with this idea that she saw no reason in waiting for Piscator any longer. If he were hurt or held prisoner by some mechanical device or by living beings, he wasn’t going to be gotten free without the laser.
First, though, Thorn had to be questioned. After ordering Coppename to wait until she had returned, she walked down to sick bay with Cyrano. Thorn was sitting up in bed. His right leg was enclosed by a shackle attached to a chain, the other end of which was locked to the frame of the bed.
He said nothing as they entered, and Jill was also silent for a moment as she studied him. His thick jaw was locked; his chin, even more outthrust; his dark-blue eyes, half-lidded. He looked as stubborn as Lucifer himself.
She said, “Do you want to tell us what this is all about?”
Thorn did not reply.
She had made sure that he was to be left ignorant of the crash of the helicopter until she told him.
“We know that you set off that bomb. You murdered Firebrass and Obrenova, everybody on the chopper.”
Thorn’s eyes opened fully, but his expression did not change. Or was that a slight smile at the corners of his lips?
“You’re guilty of premeditated murder. I can have you shot, and I may do it. Unless you tell me everything.”
She waited. He glared steadily at her.
“We know about the little spheres on the forebrains of Firebrass and Obrenova.”
That had pierced him, had struck something sensitive. His skin paled, and he grimaced.
“Is there a sphere on your brain?”
He groaned, and he said, “I was x-rayed. Do you think Firebrass would have taken me along if there had been one?”
“I don’t know,” Jill said. “He accepted Obrenova. Why would he have accepted her and rejected you?”
Thorn merely shook his head.
“Look. If it’s necessary, I’ll order that Graves remove the top of your skull and take a look at your brain.”
“That would be a waste of time,” he said. “I don’t have any such thing inside me.”
“I think you’re lying. What is the purpose of that sphere?”
Silence.
“You do know, don’t you?”
Cyrano said, “Where were you headed for when you stole the helicopter?”
Thorn bit his lip, then said, “I presume that you didn’t get into the tower?”
Jill hesitated. Should she tell him about Piscator? Would that give him some sort of advantage? She could not imagine what it could be, but then she did not know the location of any piece in this jigsaw puzzle.
She said, “One man did get into it.”
Thorn quivered, and he became even paler.
“One? Who was that?”
“I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
Thorn’s deep chest rose, and he let out air slowly.
“I won’t say another word about this until we get to the Mark Twain. I’ll talk to Sam Clemens. Until then, not a word. You can open my skull, if you will. But that would be cruel, and it might kill me, and it would be totally unnecessary.”
Jill motioned to Cyrano to come with her into the next room. When they were out of Thorn’s sight, she said, “Is there an X-ray machine aboard the Mark Twain?”
Cyrano shrugged and said, “I do not remember. But we can det
ermine that as soon as we get into radio contact with the boat.”
They returned to the foot of Thorn’s bed. He stared at them for a minute. A struggle was obviously taking place in him. Finally, as if he hated himself for having to ask, he said, “Did that man come back?”
“What does that mean to you?”
Thorn looked as if he’d like to say something. Instead, he smiled.
“Very well,” Jill said. “We are going to the boat. I’ll talk to you when we get there, unless you change your mind before then.”
The checkout tests of the equipment consumed an hour. The ropes were cast off and drawn into the dirigible. The guards and the rope handlers came aboard. With Cyrano in the pilot’s seat, the Parseval rose, its propellers swiveled upward to give it additional lift. Water ballast was discharged to compensate for the loss of the valved-off hydrogen. The updraft around the tower lifted the ship higher than was desired, and so Cyrano sent it back down, headed toward the great hole through which they entered.
Jill stood at the windscreen and stared into the fog.
“So long, Piscator,” she murmured. “We’ll be back.”
The wind hurled the vessel through the hole, spitting it out, as Cyrano said, as if it were a rotten piece of meat from the mouth of a giant. Or, he added, as if it were a baby overeager to be born, shot out from the womb of a mother who couldn’t wait to get rid of her nine-months’ burden.
The Frenchman sometimes overstrained his metaphors and similes.
The clear air and the bright sun and the green vegetation made them feel like bursting into song. Cyrano, grinning, said, “If I were not on duty, I would dance! I do not contemplate returning to that dismal place with any pleasure.”
Aukuso had begun transmitting the ship’s call letters as soon as it had gained a high altitude. Not until an hour had passed, however, did he report that he had made contact with the Mark Twain.
Jill started to report to Sam Clemens, but he interrupted her with a furious description of de Greystock’s treacherous attack. She was shocked, but she became impatient with his overlong, overdetailed narrative. His boat was not badly damaged; her account was the important thing.
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