10

THE tunnel was a ten-foot square of mirrored blackness set into the face of a small dome of rock which thrust itself upward out of the underlying rock a short distance down the hill from the Grecian building. Between the building and the dome of rock ran a path worn down to rock and even, it seemed, worn into the very rock. There had been, at some time in the past, heavy traffic there.

Carnivore gestured at the mirrored blackness. “When it is working,” he said, “it is not black, but shiny white. You walk into it, and on second step somewhere else you are. Now you walk into it and it shove you back. You cannot approach it. There is nothing there, but the nothing shove you back.”

“But when it takes you somewhere,” asked Horton, “when it’s working, I mean, and will take you somewhere, how do you know where it is about to take you?”

“You don’t,” said Carnivore. “At one time, maybe, you say where you want to go, but not now.

That machinery over there,” he waved his arm, “that panel set beside the tunnel—it is possible, at one time, with it you could select your destination, but no one knows now how it operates. But it makes small difference, really. If you do not like the place you get to, you step back into it again and go other-where. You always, after many times, perhaps, find some place that you like. For me, I’d be happy to go anywhere from here.”

“That doesn’t sound quite right,” said Nicodemus.

“Of course it’s not,” said Horton. “The entire system must be out of kilter. No one in their right mind would build a nonselective transportation system. This way it could take you centuries to reach your destination—if you ever reached it.”

“Very good,” said Carnivore, placidly, “for being on the dodge. No one—not even self—knows where you will wind up. Maybe if pursuer sees you ducking into tunnel and ducks in after you, it may not take him to same place as you.”

“You know this, or are you just guessing?”

“Guessing, I suppose. How is one to know?”

“The entire system’s haywire,” said Nicodemus, “if it works at random. You do not travel in it.

You play a game with it, and the tunnel always wins.”

“But this one takes you nowhere,” wailed Carnivore. “I’m not picky where I go—anywhere but here. My fervent hope is that you can fix it so it takes me anywhere.”

“I would suspect,” said Horton, “that it was built millennia ago and has, for centuries, been abandoned by the ones who built it. Without proper maintenance, it has broken down.”

“But that is not the point,” protested Carnivore. “Point is, can you fix it?” Nicodemus had moved over to the panel set into the rock beside the tunnel. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t even read the instruments, if they are instruments. Some of them look like manipulative gadgets, but I can’t be sure.”

“It wouldn’t harm to try and see what happens,” Horton said. “You can’t make the situation worse.”

“But I can’t,” said Nicodemus. “I can’t even reach them. There seems to be some sort of force field. Paper thin, perhaps, I can put my fingers on the instruments, or rather I think I have my fingers on them, but there’s no contact. I don’t really touch them. I can feel them underneath my fingers, but I’m not in actual contact with them. It is as if they were coated with a slippery grease.” He held up one hand and looked closely at it. “But there’s not any grease,” he said.

“The damn thing works one way,” bawled Carnivore. “It should work two ways.”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Nicodemus shortly.

“You think you can do something with it?” asked Horton. “There’s a force field there, you said.

You could get yourself blown up. Do you know anything about force fields?” 21

“Not a thing,” said Nicodemus cheerfully. “I didn’t even know there could be such a thing. I just called it that. The term popped into my head. I don’t know what it is.” He set down the toolbox he’d been carrying and knelt to open it. He began laying out tools on the rocky path.

“You got things to fix him with,” crowed Carnivore. “Shakespeare had no tools. I have no goddamn tools, he’d say.”

“A fat lot of good they’d done him even if he had them,” said Nicodemus. “Even if you have them, you have to know how to use them.”

“And you know how?” asked Horton.

“You’re damn right I do’,” said Nicodemus. “I’m wearing this engineering transmog.”

“Engineers don’t use tools. It’s mechanics who use tools.”

“Don’t bug me,” said Nicodemus. “At the sight and feel of tools, it all falls into place.”

“I can’t bear to watch this,” said Horton. “I think that I will leave. Carnivore, you spoke of a ruined city. Lets have a look at it.”

Carnivore fidgeted; “But if he should need some help. Someone to hand him tools, perhaps. If he needs moral support. . .“

“I’ll need more than moral support,” said the robot. “I’ll need great chunks of luck, and some divine intervention wouldn’t hurt at all: Go and see your city.” 11

BY no stretch of the imagination was it a city. No more than a couple of dozen buildings, none of them large. They were oblong stone structures and had the look of barracks. The site lay half a mile or so from the building to which Shakespeare’s skull was fastened, and stood on a slight rise of ground above a stagnant pond. Heavy brush and a scattering of trees had grown up between the buildings. In several instances, trees encroaching against the walls or corners of a building had dislodged or shifted some of the masonry. While most of the buildings were engulfed in the heavy growth, paths wandered here and there.

“Shakespeare chopped out the paths,” said Carnivore. “He explored here and brought a few things home. Not much, only something now and then. Something that caught his fancy. He say we not disturb the dead.”

“Dead?” asked Horton.

“Well, maybe too dramatic I make it sound. The gone, then, those who went away. Although that does not sound right either. How can one disturb those who have gone away?”

“The buildings all look alike,” said Horton. “They look to me like barracks.”

“Barracks is a word I do not have.”

“A place to house a number of people.”

“House? To live in?”

“That is right. At one time a number of people lived here. A trading post, perhaps. Barracks and warehouses.”

“No one here to trade with.”

“Well, okay, then—trappers, hunters, miners. There are the emeralds Nicodemus found. This place may be packed with gem-bearing formations or gravels. Or fur-bearing animals. . .“

“No fur-bearers,” said Carnivore, positively. “Meat animals, that is all. Some low-grade predators. Nothing we must fear.”

Despite the whiteness of the stone of which the buildings had been constructed, they gave the impression of dinginess, as if the buildings were no more than shacks. At the time they had been built, it was quite apparent that a clearing had been made, for despite the trees that had crept into the erstwhile clearing, the heavier forest still stood back. But, even with the sense of dinginess, there was a feel of solidity in the structures.

“They built to last,” said Horton. “It was a permanent settlement of some sort, or intended to be permanent. It’s strange that the building you and Shakespeare used was set apart from all the others.

It could, I suppose, have been a guardhouse to keep an eye on the tunnel. Have you investigated 22

these buildings?”

“Not me,” said Carnivore. “They repel me. There is nastiness about them. Unsafeness. To enter one of them islike entering a trap. Close up on me, I would expect it, so I could not get out.

Shakespeare poked around in them, to my nervousness. He bring a few small objects out of which he was fascinated. Although, as I tell you, he disturb but little. He said it should be left for others of his kind who knew such things.”

“Archaeologists.”

“That’s the word I search for. It escape my tongue. Shakespeare said shameful thing to mess up for archaeologists. They learn much from it where he learn nothing.”

“But you said . . .“

“A few small objects only. Easy to the hand. Small, he said, to carry and perhaps of value. He say you must not spit in the eye of fortune.”

“What did Shakespeare think this place might be?”

"He had many thoughts about it. Mostly, he wonders after heavy thought, if it not be place for malefactors.”

“You mean a penal colony.”

“He did not, to my remembrance, use the word you say. But he speculate a place to keep those not wanted other-where. He figure maybe tunnel never meant to operate but one way. Never two-way, always one-way tunnel. So those sent here never could go back.”

“It makes sense,” said Horton. “Although it wouldn’t have to be. If the tunnel were abandoned in the ancient past, it would have been a long time without maintenance and would progressively have broken down. What you say about not knowing where you’re going when you enter a tunnel and two people entering it and winding up at different destinations sounds wrong, too. A haphazard transportation system is impractical. Under a condition such as that, it seems unlikely the tunnel would have been widely used. What I can’t understand is why people such as you and Shakespeare should have used the tunnels.”

“Tunnels only used,” Carnivore said blithely, “by those who do not give a damn. Only by those who have no really choice. Go to places that make no sense to go to. All planet tunnels lead to are planets you can live on. Air to breathe. Not too hot, too cold. Not kind of places that kill you dead.

But many worthless places. Many places where there is no one, maybe never been anyone.”

“The people who built the tunnels must have had a reason to go to so many planets, even to those planets you call worthless. It would be interesting to find out their reasons.”

“Only ones can tell you,” said Carnivore, “are the ones who fabricate the tunnels. They gone.

They somewhere else or nowhere at all. No one knows who they were or where to look for them.”

“But some of the tunnel worlds are inhabited. Inhabited by people, I mean.”

“Is so if definition of people is a very broad one and not too fussy. On many tunnel planets, trouble can come fast. Last one I was on, next to this, trouble comes not only fast, but big.” They had been walking slowly down the paths that wound among the buildings. Ahead of them the heavy underbrush closed in to obliterate the path. The path ended just beyond a door that opened into one of the structures.

“I’m going in,” said Horton. “If you don’t want to, wait outside for me.”

“I’ll wait,” said Carnivore. “Inside of them makes a crawling on my spine, a jumping in my belly.”

The inside of the place was dark. There was a dampness and a mustiness in the air and a chill that struck to the bone. Tensed, Horton felt the urge to leave, to duck back into sunlight once again.

There was an alienness here that could be felt, but not defined—the feeling of being in a place where he had no right to be, a sense of intruding on something that should be kept darkly hidden.

Consciously planting his feet firmly, he stayed, although he felt the beginning of shivers up and down his back. Gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and he could make out shapes.

Against the wall to his right stood what could be nothing else but a wooden cupboard. It was rickety with age. Horton had the feeling that if it were bumped, it would come tumbling down. The doors were held dosed by wooden buttons. Beside the cupboard stood a wooden four-legged bench with 23

great cracks running across its top. On the bench stood a piece of pottery—a water jug, perhaps, with a triangular piece broken from the rim. On the opposite end stood what looked like a vase. It certainly wasn’t pottery. It looked like glass, but the layer of fine dust that covered everything made it impossible to tell with any surety. And beside the bench stood what had to be a chair. There were four legs, a seat, a slanted back. Hanging on one of the uprights of the back was a piece of fabric that could have been a hat. On the floor in front of the chair lay what seemed to be a plate—an oval of ceramic whiteness, and upon the plate, a bone.

Something, Horton told himself, had sat in the chair— how many years ago?—with a plate upon its lap, eating a joint of meat, perhaps holding the joint in its hands, or whatever served it for hands, chewing off the bone, with the water jug close at hand, although perhaps not water, but a jug of wine. And having finished with the joint, or eaten all it wanted of it, had placed the plate upon the floor, perhaps, as it did so, settling back and patting the fullness of its belly with some satisfaction.

Putting the plate with the joint upon it down upon the floor, but then never coming back to pick up the plate. With no one ever coming back to pick up the plate.

He stood in fascination, staring at the bench, the chair, the plate. Some of the alienness seemed to have gone away, for here was a set piece snatched out of the past of a people who, whatever may have been their shape, held some of the elements of a common humanity that might extend throughout the universe. A midnight snack, perhaps—and what had happened once the midnight snack were eaten?

The chair to sit in, the bench to hold the jug, the plate to hold the joint—and the vase, what about the vase? It consisted of a globular body, a long neck, and a broad base for sitting. More like a bottle than a vase, he thought.

He stepped forward and reached out for it and as he reached brushed against the hat, if it were a hat, that hung upon the chair. At his touch, the hat disintegrated. It disappeared in a small puff of dust that floated in the air.

His hand grasped the vase or bottle and he lifted it and saw that the globular body of it was incised with pictures and symbols. Holding it by the neck, he brought it close up to his face so that he could see the decorations.

A strange creature stood within an enclosure that had a peaked roof with a little ball on top the roof. It looked for all the world, he thought, as if the creature stood inside a kitchen canister that might be used for storing tea. And the creature—was it humanoid or simply an animal standing on two sticklike hind legs? It had only one arm and it bore a heavy tail which extended at an upward angle to its upright body. The head was a blob, but extending upward and outward from it were six straight lines; three to the left, two to the right and one extending straight upward.

Twirling the bottle (or the vase?), other etchings came into view—horizontal lines formed within two lines, one above the other and seemingly attached to one another by vertical lines. Buildings, he wondered, with the vertical lines representing pillars supporting the roof? There were many squiggles and lopsided ovals and some irregular markings in short rows that could have been words in an unknown language. And what could have been a tower, from the top of which emerged three figures that had the look of foxes snatched from some old legend out of Earth.

From the path outside, Carnivore was calling to him, “Horton, all goes well with you?”

“Very well,” said Horton.

“I apprehensive for you,” said Carnivore. “Please, will you not come out? You make me nervous staying.”

“All right,” said Horton, “since it makes you nervous.” He turned about and went out the door, still carrying the bottle.

“You find a receptacle of interest,” said Carnivore, eyeing it with some misgiving.

“Yes, look here.” Horton lifted the bottle, turning it slowly. “Representations of some sort of life, although I’m hard put to tell exactly what they are:”

“Shakespeare found a couple similar. With markings on them also, but not exact as yours. He also puzzled hard over what they were.”

“They could be representations of the people who lived here.” 24

“Shakespeare said the same, but qualified his saying to their being only myths of people who were here. He explain that myths are racial rememberings, things that memory, often faulty, says happened in the past.” He fidgeted nervously. “Leave us return,” he said. “My belly growls for nourishment.”

“And so does mine,” said Horton.

“I have meat. Killed only yesterday. You will join me at my meat?”

“Most gladly,” Horton said. “I have rations, but not as good as meat.”

“Meat is not as yet too high,” said Carnivore. “But I kill again tomorrow. Like meat on the fresh side. Eat it high only in emergency. I suppose you subject your meat to fire, same as Shakespeare did.”

“Yes, I like it cooked.”

“Dry wood there is in plenty for the fire. Stacked outside the house and waiting for the blaze.

Have a hearth for fire out front. I suppose you saw it.”

“Yes, I saw the hearth.”

“The other. Does he eat meat as well?”

“He does not eat at all.”

“Unbelievable,” said Carnivore. “How does he keep his strength?”

“He has what you call a battery. It supplies him food of a different sort.”

“You think this Nicodemus not fix tunnel right away? Back there, you seem to be saying that.”

“I think it might take a while,” said Horton. “He has no idea what it is about and neither of us can help him.”

They went back along the winding path they’d followed. “What is that smell?” asked Horton.

“Like something dead, or worse.”

“It is the pond,” said Carnivore. “The pond you must have noticed.”

“I saw it coming in.”

“It smell most obnoxiously,” said Carnivore. “Shakespeare call it Stinking Pond.” 12

HORTON squatted before the fire, superintending the cut of meat roasting over the coals.

Carnivore sat across the fire from him, tearing with his teeth at the slab of raw meat he held. Blood smeared his muzzle and ran down his face.

“You do not mind?” he asked. “My stomach aches exceedingly for filling.”

“Not at all,” said Horton. “Mine will be just a minute more.” The sun of late afternoon was warm against his back. The heat of the fire beat against his face and he found himself exulting in the comfort of the camp. The fire was placed directly in front of the snow-white building, with Shakespeare’s skull grinning down upon them. Heard in the silence was the gurgle of the stream that ran below the spring.

“Once we are done,” said Carnivore, “I show to you the possessions of the Shakespeare. I have them all neatly bagged. You have interest in them?”

“Yes, of course,” said Horton.

“In many ways,” said Carnivore, “the Shakespeare was an aggravating human, although I like him dearly. I never really knew if he liked me or not - although I think he did. We got along together.

We work very well together. We talk a lot together. We tell each other many things. But I never can erase the feeling he was laughing at me, although why he should I do not understand. Do you find me funny, Horton?”

“Not in the least,” said Horton. “You must have imagined.”

“Can you tell me what goddamn means? The Shakespeare always using it and I fall into habit with him. But I never knew what it means. I ask him what is it and he would not tell. He only laugh at me, deep inside himself.”

“It has no real meaning. Ordinarily, I mean. It is used for emphasis, with no real import of meaning. It is a saying only. Most people do not use it habitually. Only some of them. Others use it sparingly and only under emotional provocation.”

 

25

“It means nothing then. Only way of speaking.”

“That is right,” said Horton.

“When I talk of magic, he call it goddamn foolishness. It does not mean, then, any special kind of foolishness.”

“No, he just meant foolishness.”

“You think magic foolishness?”

“I am not prepared to say. I guess I’ve never thought too much about it. I would suggest that magic lightly used might be foolishness. Perhaps magic is something no one understands. Do you have faith in magic? Do you practice magic?”

“My people have great magic through the years. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I say to the Shakespeare let us put our magic together, maybe it will work to open up the tunnel. Shakespeare then say magic goddamn foolishness. He said that he had none. He said no such thing as magic.”

“I suspect,” said Horton, “that he spoke from prejudice. You can’t condemn something you know nothing of.”

“Yes,” said Carnivore, “the Shakespeare would do a thing like that. Although I think he lied to me. I think he used his magic. He had a thing that he called book, he said it Shakespeare book. It could talk to him. What is that but magic?”

“We call it reading,” Horton said.

“He held the book and it talked to him. Then he talked to it. He makes little marks upon it with a special stick he have. I ask him what he do and he grunt at me. He was always grunting at me.

Grunt meant leave him be, do not pester him.”

“You have this book of his?”

“I’ll show it to you later.”

The steak was done, and Horton fell to eating.

“This is good,” he said. “What kind of animal?”

“Not too big,” said Carnivore. “Not hard to kill. Does not try to fight. Get away is all. But toothsome. Many animals for meat, but this one most tasty of them all.” Nicodemus came stumping up the path, toolbox clutched in hand. He sat down beside Horton.

“Before you ask,” he said, “I haven’t got it fixed.”

“But progress made?” asked Carnivore.

“I don’t know,” said Nicodemus. “I think I know how I may be able to get the force field disconnected, although I can’t be sure. It is worth at least a try. Mostly I’ve been trying to figure out what’s behind that force field. I drew all sorts of sketches and I tried some diagramming to gain an understanding of what it’s all about. I have some ideas there, as well, but it all goes for nothing if I can’t get the force shield off. And I may be wrong, of course, about everything.”

“Not discouraged though?”

“No, I’ll keep on trying.”

“That is good,” said Carnivore.

He swallowed the last hunk of his dripping gob of meat.

“I go down to spring,” he said, “and wash my face. I am sloppy eater. You wish I wait for you?”

“No,” said Horton. “I’ll go down a little later. I still have eaten only half the steak.”

“You excuse me, please,” said Carnivore, getting to his feet. The other two sat watching him as he went loping down the trail.

“How did it go?” asked Nicodemus.

Horton shrugged. “There’s a deserted village of sorts just east of here. Stone buildings overgrown with brush. No one’s been there for centuries, from the looks of it. Nothing to show why they might have been here, or why they might have left. Carnivore says Shakespeare thinks it may have been a penal colony. If so, a neat way of doing it. With the tunnel inoperative, there’d be no need to fret about escapes.”

“Does Carnivore know what kind of people?”

“He doesn’t know. I don’t think he cares. He has no real curiosity. The here and now is all that interests him. Besides, he’s afraid of it. The past seems to terrify him. My guess is they were 26

humanoids—not necessarily people as we think of them. I went into one of the buildings and found some kind of bottle. Thought it was a vase at first, but I guess it is a bottle.” He reached down beside him and handed the bottle to Nicodemus. The robot turned it over and over in his hands.

“Crude,” he said. “The pictures may be only approximately representational. Hard to tell what they represent. Some of this stuff looks like writing.”

• Horton nodded. “All true, but it means they had some idea of art. That could argue a culture on the move.”

“Not good enough,” said Nicodemus, “to account for the sophisticated technology of the tunnels.”

“I didn’t mean to imply these were the people who built the tunnels.”

“Has Carnivore said anything further about joining us when we leave?”

“No. Apparently he is confident you can fix the tunnel.”

“Perhaps it’s best not to tell him, but I’m not. I never saw such a mess as that control panel.” Carnivore came waddling up the path.

“All clean now,” he said. “I see you’re finished. How did you like the meat?”

“It was excellent,” said Horton.

“Tomorrow we’ll have fresh meat.”

“We’ll bury the meat left over while you are on the hunt,” said Horton.

“No need to bury it. Dump it in the pond. Holding nose most securely in process of doing it.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing with it?”

“Sure,” said Carnivore. “Easy way to do it. Something in the pond that eats it up. Probably glad I throw it meat.”

“You ever see this thing that eats the meat?”

“No, but meat is gone. Meat floats in water. Meat thrown in pond never floats. Must be eaten.”

“Maybe your meat is what makes the pond stink.”

“Not so,” said Carnivore. “Always stink like that. Even before the throwing of the meat. The Shakespeare here before me and he was throwing of no meat. Yet he said it stinks from the time he come.”

“Stagnant water can smell pretty bad,” said Horton, “but I never smelled it this bad.”

“It may not be really water,” said Carnivore. “It is thicker than water. Runs like water, looks like water, but not as thin as water. Shakespeare called it soup.” Long shadows, extending from the stand of trees to the west, had crept across the camp. Carnivore cocked his head, squinting at the sun.

“The god-hour is almost here,” he said. “Leave us go inside. Beneath a stout stone roof it is not too bad. Not like in the open. Still feel it, but stone filters out the worst.” The interior of the Shakespeare house was simple. The floor was paved with slabs of stone. There was no ceiling; the single room was open to the roof. In the center of the room stood a large stone table and around the room ran a chair-high ledge of stone.

Carnivore gestured at it. “For sitting and for sleeping. Also place to put things.” The ledge in the rear of the room was crowded with jars and vases, weird pieces of what seemed to be small statuary, and other pieces for which, at first glance, there seemed to be no name.

“From the city,” said Carnivore. “Objects that Shakespeare brought back from the city. Curious, perhaps, but of value slight.”

A misshapen candle stood on one end of the table, stuck to the stone by its own drippings. “It gives the light,” said Carnivore. “Shakespeare fashioned it of fat of the meat I killed so he could use it to pore over book—sometimes it talking to him, sometimes, with his magic stick, he talking back to it…”

“This was the book,” asked Horton, “that you told me I could see.”

“Most certainly,” said Carnivore. “You may, perhaps, explain it to me. Tell me what it is. I ask the Shakespeare many times but the explanation that he gave me was no really explanation. I sit and eat my heart out to know and he would never tell. But tell me one thing, please. Why did he need a light to talk with book?”

 

27

“It’s called reading,” Horton said. “The book talks by the marks upon it. You must have light to see the marks. For it to talk, the marks must be plainly seen.” Carnivore shook his head. “Strange goings-on,” he said. “You humans are strange business. The Shakespeare strange. He always laughing at me. Not outside laughter, inside laughter. I like him, but he laugh. He makes laughter so he be better than I am. He laugh most secretly, but he lets me know he laughs.”

He strode to a corner and picked up a bag fashioned out of an animal skin. He hoisted it in one fist and shook it and a dry rustling and scraping came out of it.

“His bones!” he shouted. “He laughs now only with his bones. Even the bones still laugh. Listen and you hear them.”

He shook the bag viciously. “Do you not hear the laughter?” The god-hour struck.

It still was a monstrous thing. Despite the thick stone walls and the ceiling, its force was not greatly diminished. Once again, Horton found himself seized and laid bare and open, to be explored and this time, it seemed, more than explored, but absorbed as well, so that it seemed, even as he struggled to remain himself, he became one with whatever it was that had seized upon him. He felt the fusing with it, the becoming part of it and when he knew there was no way to fight against the fusing, tried despite his humiliation at being made a part of something else to do some probing of his own and thus find out what it was he was being made a part of. For an instant he thought he knew; for a single, fleeting instant, the thing that he had been absorbed by, the thing that he had become, seemed to reach out to take in the universe, everything that ever had been, or was, or would be, showing it to him, showing him the logic, or the non-logic, the purpose, the reason and the goal. But in that instant of knowing, his human mind rebelled against the implication of the knowing, aghast and outraged that there could be such a thing as this, that the showing of the universe and the understanding of it might be possible. His mind and body wilted, preferring not to know.

How long it lasted he had no way of gauging. He hung limply in the grasp of it and it seemed to absorb not only him but his sense of time as well—as if it could manipulate time in its own fashion and for its own purposes, and he had a fleeting thought that if it could do this, there might be nothing that could stand against it, since time was the most elusive factor in the universe.

Finally it was over, and Horton was surprised to find himself crouched upon the floor, his arms up to cover his head. He felt Nicodemus lifting him, putting him on his feet and holding him erect. In anger at his helplessness, he struck the robot’s hands away and staggered to the great stone table, clutching at it desperately.

“It was bad again,” said Nicodemus.

Horton shook his head, trying to clear his brain. “Bad,” he said. “As bad as it was before. And you?”

“The same as before,” said Nicodemus. “A glancing mental blow was all. It works its will more harshly upon a biologic brain.”

Through a fog, Horton heard Carnivore declaiming. “Something up there,” he was saying, “seems interested in us.”