Hell's Gate

CHAPTER 16

While the gorilla-thing with the slimy yellow teeth held Victor up for approval like a matron shopper inspecting a piece of meat, another one of the beasts came into view behind the first. It shuffled up to Salsbury, its heavy feet making surprisingly little noise, and stared, blinking its four-pound corrugated eyelids over its sunken, black eyes. It ran a thick pink tongue over its own rotting teeth, as if it enjoyed the taste of its own halitosis. It was fully as large as the first, a good eight and a half feet tall, even though slightly stooped and hunch-backed. Its long arms did not drag on the ground, but they were long enough so that it didn't have to bend to scratch its feet.

The second gorilla made a hooing and hawing sound in Salsbury's face which made no sense to the man, though he could discern patterns to the speech. The smell that came from its mouth was bad enough to derail a train and corrode the locomotive into a pile of worthless scrap. He tried not to breathe until he saw the thing inhaling, then sucked in air before his atmosphere could be contaminated again.

As the two Tarzan movie rejects hooted at each other, he began to understand what a butterfly must feel like when picked up to be examined for the beauty of its wings. He didn't like the feeling one bit. If they were planning to rip him up and divide him for supper, he wished to hell they would get on with it. But they continued to stare where he dangled from the first beast's mitt. When he could take it no longer, he released a horrendous scream and began flailing at the same time, remembering from his judo combat knowledge that a good scream will often frighten the opponent bad enough to throw him off balance, as well as having a therapeutic effect on the screamer.

The gorilla holding him was not impressed by such tactics, however. Perhaps it knew judo too, he thought. It only snorted and batted at him with its free paw. The blow rattled his brains back and forth from side to side of his skull, left his teeth trembling in their sockets. He decided to just hang there and be an exhibit no matter how nerve-wracking that might be. It was safer.

A few minutes later, tired of examining him, the gorilla dropped him. The ground came up hard, but it was a welcome relief from the scrutiny he had just undergone. He came to his knees, spat out a little blood that was leaking from the gums around half the teeth in his mouth, grabbed handfuls of rocks to pull himself erect. While he was going through that tedious process, the two heavies stood and watched, blinking huge eyelids and showing fat, wet tongues now and again. They looked like two boys watching a housefly crawl about after they had torn off its wings.

Vic called them a string of foul names.

They didn't react.

As the world settled down and ceased the slightly nauseating wobble that had made the trees and rocks move around him in jerky circles, Salsbury looked for a way out of there. To his right, the path led down into the new valley. But he had a strong suspicion his brute friends had come that way, and he did not relish the opportunity to meet more of their kind. That left the path he had taken to get here. He could double back on it, perhaps leave it and pass the vacii search party coming up. He started back that way, walking backwards, smiling, trying to look nonchalant but not knowing what expression these creatures would take nonchalance for. The gorillas watched him stupidly, blinking their lids and yawning. When he was thirty feet away, he turned and ran.

It looked good. They might have brute strength, but he was the one with the brains, the cleverness. He could outwit them every time now that he had gotten a head start. He was thinking all sorts of glorious thoughts like that when one of the monsters went leaping past him, covering three times the ground Salsbury could manage in a single stride. Fifty feet along the path, it stopped and turned to face him, grinning so that its broad yellow teeth gleamed in the thin moonlight.

Salsbury turned and started back, came face to face with the second beast. It was grinning too.

He turned, jumped from the path into the ferns and rocks, ran a short distance and stopped to look back. The first gorilla was loping easily after him.

He felt like a mouse in cats' territory.

Desperately, he looked around for something to use as a weapon, wishing he had managed to recover his gun from the clearing before making his break. The bombs in the rucksack were useless, because he couldn't detonate them, and because a nuclear explosion would mean his death as well as theirs. A fist fight was out of the question. One blow to the jaw or chest of those monstrosities, and he would shatter every bone in his hand. He bent over and found some two and three pound rocks. He hefted one in each hand, threw them. One bounced off the beast's chest, the other off its shoulder.

It came on, oblivious of his attack.

He tossed six other stones before it was on top of him. It batted his last missile out of his hands, struck a blow alongside his head that sent him sprawling.

Victor started to get up, doggedly plotting more resistance, clutching at rocks to throw even as he used his hands to support himself. But before he was even properly on his feet, the jumbo slapped him again with a back of the hand blow across the seat of his pants and sent him crashing forward onto the ground again.

He laid still for a while, then got his feet under him, stood, feeling like a man three hundred and ten years old, turned in time to collect another paw in the chest that sent him down hard. Furious, he grabbed a rock, rolled, and threw it with all his strength. It bounced off the massive skull with a loud and hollow tok, but didn't fell the ogre. In fact, the thing didn't even stop grinning. It just waited until he was on his feet once more, then shoved him backwards so that he plopped hard on his behind.

At last, he got the point. He wasn't supposed to try to get away or to fight back. As long as he attempted either of these, he was a target for their blows, nothing more. He sat still and did not reach for anything to throw. A few minutes later, the gorilla nodded its head appreciatively, satisfied Salsbury had learned his lesson.

The other beast came up beside Salsbury's self-appointed keeper. They grumbled back and forth in low, guttural voices. When they made their mysterious decision, the keeper lifted Salsbury, slung the man beneath its hairy arm as if he were a babe, and loped back the path, back to the clearing where the other gorilla collected the gas pellet gun. Then, moving with a swift, jarring steadiness, they went down the trail into the new valley, where the trees once again grew thick over their heads, the floor beneath them smoother and less cluttered.

Half an hour later, they came out of the trees into a clearing before an impressive face of sheer rock that formed an unscalable wall of this side of the valley. Far overhead, the moon was half-hidden by the thrusting cliff top which looked, in silhouette, like a broken tooth. There was a fire going at the base of the wall, the flames spitting four feet or more into the cool night air. In the orange-red glow of the fire, Salsbury could see the gorilla settlement strung out along the cliff and built up the side of it, utilizing the caves as well as crude mud and wood buildings constructed to use the cliff as their fourth wall. He raised his appraisal of the gorillas. They were not merely beasts, but in the first intriguing stages of civilization. In this time line, perhaps man had not developed intelligence, while creatures of this sort had. Not much intelligence. And of a distinctly ugly hostile nature.

Then he was impressed with a thought that seemed absurd yet realistic, and surveyed his captors again. He had been calling them gorillas because, in the darkness and from the manner in which they acted and moved, that was the most appropriate comparison he could make. Now in the light of the campfire, he could see that he had been wrong; these were not men, surely, but neither were they apes. They did not, after all, have truly simian features. Their faces were broad, heavy, with none of the typical monkey sharpness. As he looked at them, he fancied there really were more human genes in them than animal. They were most likely a freak of evolution. In his world, his probability, they had not come along. Or, if they had, their line of intelligence was defeated by Cro-Magnon man, and they had become extinct. Here, they were going to flourish one day, possibly even reach the point of a highly technical civilization.

Salsbury's keeper dropped him in front of the fire with the same brutish carelessness he had used earlier. He called out to a sentry located ten feet above the ground in a dark nook of stone. The guard came down in a single leap that would have shattered a man's ankles, bounded to them and jabbered with the two with Salsbury. He took his turn staring at the man, prodding him with stubby fingers, breathing in his face and pitting his skin (or so it seemed to Salsbury) with his halitosis. When he was finished, he grunted some more with the other two. Then the keeper picked Victor up again, and they continued their hairy, smelly odyssey.

He had the passing thought that, if this were an odyssey, it was proceeding all wrong. The hero was not winning.

With Salsbury firmly under his arm, the gorilla swung onto the cliff and began going up, using only its toes and free hand, hooking those blunt fingers over stones so sharp they should have jammed through his palm and out the back of his hand. The climb was totally impossible. That was quite evident. They continued up. Sixty feet off the ground, with Salsbury's head hanging down and pounding with an overflow of blood, they swung into the mouth of a cave where a smaller fire burned, just a few tongues of flames and a pile of hot coals which seemed as much ceremonial as practical.

Keeper, as Victor had come to think of the creature, hooted into the blackness and started back the tunnel, moving more cautiously here because he had to bend some to keep from cracking that magnificent skull against the stumps of broken stalactites. Before they had gone a dozen feet, another light appeared farther back in answer to Keeper's call. In the burgeoning glow, Salsbury saw another half-man lighting a pile of twigs and logs with the end of a torch that, obviously, was always kept lit.

They moved out of the entrance passageway into the heart of the cave-a room fully thirty-five feet wide and fifty long-where ten more half-men were sitting and lying on piles of grass and leaves. The creatures were in various stages of alertness, and they seemed, as a lot, to be in a grumpy mood after being so rudely wakened. They hooted and snarled at Keeper, threw handsful of bedding materials at him. But when they caught sight of Salsbury, they came to sitting positions, their heavy-lidded eyes wide with interest, their paws wiping sleep matter away so they could get a better look.

Victor was the curiosity, the find of the week… of the century, perhaps. They could not have much in the way of entertainments in such a beginning society. Salsbury was the equivalent of a circus. If they could have built a zoo, he would have been their star attraction and advertised for miles around. And when he died? Why, they would stuff his body and mount it to be stashed in the equivalent of the ape men's Smithsonian. He knew now how a freak must feel; how it must be to be radically different; not just different in color or the slant of one's eyes which is, alone, enough for some men to stare twice, but so different that the mind boggles a little to contemplate your existence.

Their minds were boggling.

He was deposited on a stone ledge two feet off the floor to one side of the cave. There was no sense in making a try for the entrance to the cave, for the freedom of the night. If Keeper did not pounce on him before he was a third of the way to fresh air, another of the half-men would. He sat and endured the bad breath and prodding. They chattered and jabbered, hooted and yelped at him, then waited expectantly, as if they thought he might reply. He spoke a bit in English, but this did not satisfy them. They only frowned, which was a truly frightening and awesome expression to behold on those craggy faces, and began muttering among themselves again. He imagined they thought him too stupid to speak intelligently.

Some minutes later, female half-men entered the room, their great sagging breasts matted with a softer coating of hair than that which adorned the chests of their huskier menfolk. They moved with a refined gracefulness which Salsbury had glimpsed in the males, bearing bowls of a steaming gray-green gruel. These monsters, he knew, would require large quantities of food to sustain their mammoth bodies and to allow them the speed and versatility of movement they enjoyed. They now were ready to eat

After everyone was served, a white-haired half-man who seemed to be in charge of the group grunted something to the most firm-breasted female. She looked as if she was about to disagree or refuse him, then thought better of it. Timidly, as if she were frightened near to death of Salsbury, she edged up to the ledge where he rested and placed a bowl of gruel in front of him, then skittered nervously out of the cavern into an adjoining room, much to the delight of the men who guffawed and chortled like a bunch of schoolboys planning deviltry of the first order.

Victor had not eaten since that half sandwich hours before entering the portal between probabilities, for he had been too nervous. Since then, he had been put through quite a bit and was nearly physically exhausted. Yet he could not bring himself to eat the soupy mixture that had been placed before him. It was the color of polluted water and swimming within it were bits of dark, stringy meat of questionable origin. The smell that rolled off the surface of the stuff was reminiscent of spoiled meat, rotting vegetables, and stale corn soup. He gagged, shoved it aside, and looked back to the rest of the assemblage.

Keeper and the others were eating heartily and talking animatedly among themselves like women at a card party. The only difference was that these gossipers did not smell of perfumed soaps and bath powders. And they lacked the table manners those matrons would have shown.

The women were called, and everyone had a second bowl of the slop except Salsbury who only wished they would remove his first uneaten portion. Some of the women smiled toothy yellow smiles, and he suspected they were being complimented on their culinary finesse. “The firm-breasted half-woman who had gingerly offered him a bowl of gruel took it away, looking at him strangely, as if she could not fathom why an inferior creature like him would not go for civilized food.

When everyone was finished, and when Salsbury had become a rather accepted phenomena, the other half-man who had been with Keeper produced the gas pellet pistol and held it aloft for the assembly to inspect. There were a number of startled grunts, and Victor received several stares of re-evaluation. The only place they would have seen something that well machined would have been down the mountainside in the vacii settlement. Surely the vacii had come among them-though perhaps the aliens would not have bothered experimenting on such a raggedy, moronic group as this-and would have left reminders of their superiority by demonstrating their weaponry a few times.

“Put that down!” Salsbury shouted.

They looked at him stupidly.

“You'll kill each other!” That was not really such a bad prospect, but they might also kill him in the process.

The white-haired half-man took the gun from the other's paw and turned it over and over, fascinated with the knobs, lines of design. He was intelligent enough to see just how it was meant to be held, though his own fingers were too large to grasp it as delicately as was intended. His fingers brushed the trigger, fired a pellet into the chest of the half-man who had brought the gun into the caves in the first place.

The creature's chest seemed to expand as if it were a balloon being blown up by a giant with fantastic lung capacity. Then it burst outward, showering gore on those seated nearby. The half-man looked down curiously at its ruined body, grunted something the others of its kind didn't even seem to understand, turned and stared at Salsbury with swiftly glazing eyes, then slumped forward- dead.

The chief dropped the gun, hooting insanely, and danced to his feet, much more agile than he appeared. He was in a fury, waving his arms about, chanting over the fallen body. When he was finished, the corpse had not moved even a fraction of an inch as all of them seemed to expect it might. Keeper reached out and rolled his friend over. Together the half-men inspected the gaping hole that revealed their ex-comrade's innards. Then, almost as one organism, they turned to stare at Salsbury where he sat on the ledge.

Salsbury felt like stone.

He knew they were thinking of breaking him down into gravel any moment now.

He stood, nervously watching them.

They were a tableau, frozen on different ends of the room. In their eyes, Salsbury was the bad guy, they were the good guys. After all, he was the odd fellow. He was the one who had brought evil magic into their snug little haven when they had been asleep dreaming half-men dreams of half-women. His gun, his evil magic, had killed their buddy. It made no difference to them that their own stupidity was involved.

Before any of them could move, Salsbury jumped from the ledge, hit the cave floor running, and burst through the archway into the room from which the half-women had brought the soup earlier.

The women were still there, squatted about the room chittering to one another, their fingers messy with gruel, the hair around their mouths matted with revolting streaks of wet food. When Salsbury broke in on them, the four of them screamed and darted into a corner, huddling together, their eyes wide under the deep shelves of their heavy foreheads. He spotted another tunnel leading away from this chamber and started across the room toward it. He would have to pass within a few feet of the women, and he didn't like to think what would happen if one of them built up enough courage to swat at him. Baring his teeth and building his voice into a stentorian roar, he shouted: “Aarrrggghhh!” at the top of his lungs.

The half-women screamed and tried to crawl on top of one another. While they were thus engaged, trying to press farther into the corner, he went through the archway into the new tunnel and ran as fast as his weary legs would carry him. It would not be fast enough, he knew, for he could remember with what ease Keeper had loped past him in the forest.

In time with his fears, the white-haired chief and the rest of the pack entered the tunnel a hundred feet behind. Salsbury put on speed, then saw that he was running into more trouble instead of away from it. Ahead, in the cavern into which this passage fed, a lamp was lit and glowed cheery red. In that glow, he could see other half-men coming awake, roused by his pursuers who were screeching and hooting furiously.

He stopped-though every nerve in his body screamed to him to move-and searched the walls which were shot through with small, dead-end caves. One of these looked deeper than the rest; at least he could not see the back of it. Besides, it was only wide enough to admit a man. The gorilla-like morons would have a devil of a time trying to come in after him.

He didn't know what good it would do to gain a temporary respite. Did he really think dying of thirst or starving was any better than being torn apart by the local savages? You're damned right he did! Because he could imagine how slow a process the half-men would make of his death. Savages enjoyed torturing their enemies. He did not want to be their plaything. He crawled into the opening and wriggled into the cave to a place where it widened out enough for him to turn around. Just then, the chiefs face appeared at the opening, glaring in at him.

Salsbury backed up another foot, then settled down to see what would happen. The chief reached in with a long, filthy arm and groped for him, but the creature's fingers were a good five feet short of their target. Salsbury breathed a sigh of relief that he felt fully in every cell of his being. The chief withdrew his arm, mumbled with the others for a time. Several more of them took their chance, but none of them was long-armed enough.

Fifteen minutes passed without any action.

That was just enough time to give Salsbury a chance to calm down and consider the direness of his predicament. Seventy-six worldlines away from Lynda… Stranded miles from the vacii ship which held his only chance of return… Trapped in a cave just out of reach of a horde of gabbling, lame-brained monkeymen… If he had been a betting man, he would not have placed more than twenty cents on his chances of living out the night. Or even the next hour, for that matter.

Soon the half-men were back. They had put their meager IQ's together and devised a plan. There was a rattling and scraping sound, a dimming of the light as the chief blocked the entrance again. Then something jabbed Salsbury hard on the shoulder, retreated, came back again, skinning the side of his face. They had cut a long stick, had sharpened the end, and were poking him with it in hopes of killing him, or wounding him sufficiently to make him crawl out where they could reach him.

He took two more jabs, the last of which broke the skin on his shoulder, then reached out and grasped the stick, thrust it backwards with all his might. He caught the chief off guard. The other end of the pole slipped through his paws and rammed him solidly in the chest. He heard the beast make a whuffing sound and suck in new breath. The stick was withdrawn and not used again.

But they were working their fevered little minds overtime to come up with something, and for a few terrible moments, it seemed as if they had hit upon a good idea. One of them brought a torch to the mouth of the cave and held it inside. A thin column of smoke was carried back to him. Another half-man collected a pile of grass and leaves, stacked that in the entrance and lit it. The ensuing smoke almost smothered Salsbury. It roiled by in blue-white clouds, thick as London fog. It clogged his nostrils, burned the back of his throat, and made his eyes water helplessly.

He was almost prepared to crawl forward and admit defeat when various little facts connected in the depths of his brain to mean something important. One: the smoke was being drawn toward the back of the cave, swirling past him. This meant his cave had to have an outlet of some sort to cause the draft. Two: even if the outlet was not large enough to crawl out of, it would provide, perhaps, a pocket of air to breath that was less smoky than that here. Instead of going forward to Keeper and Chief and the others, he turned around once more and worked with the smoke, seeking the outlet it had already found.

For long moments, he crawled with closed eyes to avoid getting them more inflamed than they already were.

His mouth tasted like the bottom of an ashtray.

It was a bad journey. At places, the walls of the narrow tunnel grew even tighter, pressed in more insistently. And, invariably, at these places, the walls were more jagged so that flesh was gouged out of his shoulders, hips and arms. The walls and floor became damp, and he crept through cold water that made him shiver uncontrollably. And there was always the smoke, just thick enough to keep him gasping and choking, but not so thick as to smother him altogether. His eyes were swollen, and tears were streaming down his face.

He came to what he thought was a dead end.

He felt around to all sides.

It was a dead end.

He beat his hands against the stone in front of him, cursing like a madman half crazed with heat prostration. Then he ceased acting like an imbecile long enough to let his skin pick up a hint of a draft. He felt around overhead, discovered that the tunnel went straight up for four feet, then broke to the left with a horizontal floor again. He squirmed up and through the bend, flopped onto the floor above and tried to catch his breath.

All he caught was a hefty lungful of smoke. He gagged, forced himself to crawl on. Slowly, the air began to improve. At last, he could take deeper breaths without coughing, and his chest had stopped its painful throbbing. Ahead, there was a dim circle of light. He made for it at a rapid crawl, pushed himself through, and fell full length onto a half-man who was waiting for him, a wide grin on its twisted face.