Special Deliverance

16

They had built up the fire to give some warmth and comfort — warmth, for the sun was going down and it was chilly inside the building. Now they sat around and talked.

“I would like to think,” said the Brigadier, “that the doors might hold the answer to what we’re looking for, but I can’t bring myself to think so.”

“It’s quite apparent to me,” said the Parson, “that they are doors to other worlds. If we essayed to enter them…”

“I’ve told you,” said the Brigadier, “that the doors are traps. Start messing around with one of them and you may find there’s no way of coming back.”

“Apparently,” Mary began, “the people who occupied this city were much concerned with other worlds. Not only do we have the doors, but there’s the graphics tank. What still can be seen in it must be another world.”

“What we don’t know,” said Sandra, “is whether they are other actual worlds or landscapes of the mind. It has occurred to me that all of it may be no more than art — perhaps from our point of view a rather unconventional art form, but we can’t pretend to know all the forms that art might take.”

“That sounds to me like utter nonsense,“ said the Brigadier. ”No artist in his right mind would force a viewer to peek through a hole to see what he had created. He’d want to hang it on a wall where everyone could see it, everyone at once.”

“You’re approaching the whole concept from a narrow viewpoint,” Sandra told him. “How are you to know what an artist wants or what medium he would choose to work in? Perhaps the peephole method might be the one way he could bring a viewer close to what he’d done. Forcing the viewer to concentrate upon the art itself, shutting him off from all outside distractions. And the moods — did you notice that each of the peepholes had a well-established mood, each one different, each one appealing to a different emotional perception? In that way alone it could be the truest form of art.”

“I still don’t think it’s art,” said the Brigadier, being stubborn. “I think they are doors to other worlds and we’d best keep away from them.”

“It seems to me we’re neglecting one thing,” said Mary. “The maps that Edward and Jurgens found. As far as I can see, none of them is a map of this place. Maybe they are maps of other places that we should know about Perhaps even maps of some of the worlds we saw through the doors. If that’s the case, there must be a way of going into them and getting back again.”

“That may well be true,” said the Brigadier, “but to do that you’d have to know how to do it, and we don’t.”

“The maps may represent other parts of this world we’re on,” said Jurgens. “We may not recognize them as such because we have seen but a small portion of this world.”

“It seems to me,” said Lansing, reaching for the maps, “that there is one that could be of this part of the world. Yes, here’s the one.” He unfolded the map and spread it out on the floor. “Look, here’s something that could be this city. A cross-hatched area that might be a conventional sign for a city, and what seems to be a road leading from it, the trail we followed. And, here, this black square could be the inn.”

The Brigadier hunched forward to study the map.

“Yes, there is something that could be the city,” he said, “and a line connecting it with another point that could be the inn. But what about the cube? There’s nothing there to represent the cube. Certainly the mapmaker would not have missed the cube.”

“Maybe the map was made before the cube was built,” said Jurgens.

“That could be true,” said Sandra. “The cube looked new to me.”

“We’ll have to ponder on it awhile longer,” said the Brigadier. “What we’re doing now is talking off the tops of our heads, saying whatever comes to mind. Maybe all of us should give further thought to the situation, then we can talk again.”

The Parson rose slowly to his feet. “I’m going for a stroll,” he said. “A breath of fresh air may serve to clear the head. Does anyone want to go along with me?” “I think I would,” said Lansing.

Outside, in the plaza, the shadows were deepening. The sun was now gone and soon night would be closing in. The jagged, broken outlines of the buildings surrounding the plaza rose dark against the sunset sky. Walking along beside the Parson, Lansing felt, for the first time, the ancient aura of the place.

The Parson must have experienced the same sensation, for he said, “This place is half as old as time and it bears down upon one. As if it is possible to feel the weight of centuries resting on one’s shoulders. Time has eroded its very stones. It is becoming one with the land on which it stands. Had you, Mr. Lansing, noticed that?”

“I think I have,” said Lansing. “There’s an unusual feel to it.”

“It is a place,” the Parson said, “where history has run down, where it has fulfilled itself and died. The city now stands as a reminder that all things of the flesh are fleeting, that history itself is no more than illusion. Such places as this are left for men to contemplate upon their failures. For this world is a failure. It seems to me it must have failed in many ways, more than other worlds.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Lansing, not knowing what else he might say.

The Parson ceased his talk and strode along, hands clasped behind his back, head held high, but turning at intervals to survey the plaza.

Then he spoke again. “We must watch the Brigadier closely. The man is raving mad, but mad in such a reasonable, human way that it requires some discernment to come upon his madness. He’s opinionated and stubborn. There is no reasoning with him. He can be wrong in more ways than any man I have ever met. It is because he has a military mind. Have you ever noticed that all military men are very narrow-minded?”

“In my time,” said Lansing, “I have known few military men.”

“Well, they are,” the Parson said. “In their minds there’s but one way to do a thing. Their minds are cerebral rule books and they live according to their book. They wear invisible blinders that will let them see neither left nor right, but only straight ahead. I think the two of us should keep close watch on the Brigadier. If we don’t, he’ll lead us into trouble. That’s the nub of the trouble, actually. He must be the leader. He has a phobia about leading. Certainly you have noticed that.”

“Yes, I have,” said Lansing. “If you recall, I spoke to him about it.”

“So you did,” the Parson said. “He reminds me, in a way, of a neighbor I once had. The neighbor lived across the street from me and just down the street dwelled a devil. It was a nice neighborhood and you’d never expect to find a devil living there, but there was. I think few other people recognized him, but I did and I suspect that the neighbor that I speak of did as well, although we never talked about it. But the point I want to make is that the neighbor, even recognizing the devil for what he was, which I am sure he did, was neighborly with the devil. He’d say good morning to him when he met him on the street and would even stop and chat with him. I am certain there was nothing sinister in what they said to one another. They simply stopped to pass the time of day. But wouldn’t you have thought that, knowing who the devil was, my neighbor would not have associated with him? If I had mentioned the matter to this neighbor, indicating my belief that he should not associate with a known devil — which I never did, of course — he would, I am sure, have informed me that he was a tolerant man, that he held no prejudice against Jews or black people or Papists or any other different sorts of people and that, having no bias against these, he could not be biased against the devil that lived on the selfsame street.

“It seems to me that in the universe there must be moral law, that there are things that are right and others that are wrong and that it is incumbent upon each of us to distinguish between right and wrong. If we are to be a moral people, we must know these distinctions. And I am not talking about the narrowness of religious views, which I must admit oftentimes are narrow, but about the whole spectrum of our human conduct. While I would not agree with it, I am well aware that certain people hold the opinion that a man may be virtuous even though he subscribes to no religion. I do not agree with this because it seems to me that a man needs the bulwark of his faith, his own personal, affirmed faith, to stand foursquare for the right, or what he perceives to be the right.”

The Parson stopped and turned about to stand face to face with Lansing. “I talk in this wise,” he said, “but it may be from pure habit and for no other reason. At home, in my turnip patch and in that white house fronting on a sedate green street, sedate despite the devil down the block, I knew my mind. I could be as positive and as self-assertive and self-righteous as any other man. In my small parish church, also sedate and white, exactly like my house, I could stand up and recite for my parishioners the right and wrong of any matter, no matter how important or how trivial it might be. But now I don’t know. Now some of that solid self-assurance has been stripped from me. I was sure before; I am sure no longer.”

He stopped talking and looked owlishly at Lansing. “I don’t know why I’m saying this to you,” he said. “You, of all people. Do you know why I am saying this to you?”

“I can’t imagine why you should,” said Lansing. “But if you want to talk at me, I’m quite content to listen. If it helps you any, I’ll be glad to listen.”

“Don’t you feel it, too? The abandonment?”

“I can’t say I have,” said Lansing.

“The emptiness!” cried the Parson. “The nothingness! This horrible place, this equivalent of Hell! That is what I have always said, that is what I’ve told my people — that Hell is not a catalogue of tortures nor of misery, but an absence, a losing, a lostness, the end of love and faith, of a man’s respect of self, of the strength of belief—”

Lansing shouted at him, “Man, pull yourself together! You can’t let this place get to you. Don’t you think that all of us—”

The Parson threw up his hands toward Heaven and cried out in a bellowing voice, “My God, why have you abandoned me? Why, oh, Lord—”

From the hills above the city another bellowing voice, another anguished cry was raised in answer to him. The anguished cry had in it a loneliness that caught at the heart with icy hands, a loneness and a lostness that made the blood run cold. It bayed and sobbed and wept across the city that had been deserted for millennia. It rang against the cruelty of the sky that looked down upon the city. It was a cry such as might be made by a thing without a soul.

Sobbing, head held between his hands, the Parson started running toward the camp. He went at a long-legged, frantic, bounding gallop. At times he staggered and seemed about to fall, but each time he caught himself to remain erect and continued running.

Lansing, with no hope of catching him, loped earnestly after him. At the edge of his mind was a tiny thankfulness that there was no chance of catching him. Once caught, what could one do with him?

And all the time the monstrous wailing from the hills beat against the sky. Up there something horrible was crying out its heart. Lansing felt the awful coldness of its pain gripping at his chest, as if a great fist had grabbed him and was slowly squeezing. He gasped, not with his running, but from the cold fist that had him in its clutch.

The Parson reached the front of the building and went pounding up the stairs. Running after him, Lansing halted just outside the firelit circle. The Parson was huddled on the floor, close by the fire, his legs pulled up tight against his body, his head bent forward to meet his knees, his arms wrapped about himself, assuming a fetal position as protection against the world.

The Brigadier was kneeling beside him, while the others stood off and watched in horror. At the sound of Lansing’s footsteps, the Brigadier looked up, then rose from his place beside the Parson.

“What happened out there?” asked the Brigadier in a thunderous voice. “Lansing, what did you do to him?”

“You heard the wailing?”

“Yes, we wondered what it was.”

“He was frightened by the wailing. He put his hands up to his ears and ran.”

“Pure funk?”

“I think pure funk. He’s been in a bad way for some time. He talked out there with me, terribly disjointed talk that had little logic in it. I tried to quiet him down, but he threw up his hands and cried out that God had abandoned him.”

“Incredible,” said the Brigadier.

Sandra, who had taken the place beside the Parson that the Brigadier had left, rose to her feet and put her hands up to her face. “He’s rigid,” she said. “He’s all tied up in knots. What can we do for him?”

“Leave him alone,” said the Brigadier. “He’ll come around all by himself. If not, there’s nothing we can do.”

“A good stiff drink might do him no harm,” suggested Lansing.

“How do we give it to him? I’ll give you odds his teeth are clenched. You’d have to break his jaw to get it down him. Later on, perhaps.”

“How horrible for this to happen to him,” Sandra said.

“He’s been working up to it,” said the Brigadier, “ever since we started.”

“Do you think he can pull out of it?” asked Mary.

“I’ve seen cases such as his,” said the Brigadier, “in combat situations. Sometimes they come out of it; other times they don’t.”

“We should try to keep him warm,” said Mary. “Has anyone a blanket?”

“I have two of them,” said Jurgens. “I brought them in case of an emergency.”

The Brigadier pulled Lansing to one side. “That wailing from the hills, was it fairly bad? We heard it in here, of course, but it was muffled.”

“It was fairly bad,” said Lansing.

“But you stood up under it?”

“Well, yes. But I wasn’t under an emotional strain. He was. He’s been under it some time. He had just finished telling me how God had abandoned him when that thing up there cut loose.”

“Funk,” said the Brigadier, disgusted. “Shameless, unadulterated funk.”

“The man couldn’t help it. He lost control.”

“A big, loud-mouthed religious bully,” the Brigadier said, “who finally got cut down to size.”

Mary said, angrily, “You sound as if you’re glad it happened.”

“Well, not that,” said the Brigadier, “not that at all. But faintly disgusted. Now we have two cripples to haul along with us.”

“Why don’t you just line them up and shoot them?” Lansing asked. “Oh, pardon me, I keep forgetting. You haven’t a gun.”

“The thing that none of you understands,” said the Brigadier, “is that on a venture such as ours, toughness is the key. You must be tough to make it.”

“You’re tough enough,” said Sandra, “to make up for all the rest of us.”

“You do not like me,” said the Brigadier, “and that’s all right with me. No one ever likes a tough commanding officer.”

“It just happens,” Mary told him, “that you’re not our commanding officer. All of us could get along most handsomely without you.”

“I think it’s time,” said Lansing, “that we all knock it off. I’ve said some harsh things of you, Brigadier, and meant every word I said. But I’m willing to withdraw them if you will forget them. If we keep on squabbling like this, the venture, as you call it, will come to no good end.”

“Admirable,” said the Brigadier. “Spoken like a man. Lansing, I am glad you are on my side.”

“I don’t believe I’m on your side,” said Lansing, “but I’m willing to do my best to get along with you.”

“Listen,” said Sandra. “Be quiet, all of you, and listen. I think the wailing’s stopped.”

They were quiet and listened, and it had.