Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (14 page)

"What were you doing there?" The look in Neville's eyes was intense, the pupils glowed like coals. The expression on his face was severe.

"He is one of my oldest friends, Neville. The man is on his deathbed. In no way could I withhold from him whatever small comfort my presence can provide."

"But he is allied with our enemies! You fool, Clive! How much did you tell him? How much does he know?"

"What does it matter, Neville? I told you, the man is dying. As for our enemies—your phrase, brother,
our enemies
—you act is if the Folliots were engaged in a feud, like some wild American mountaineers. You—"

"This is far worse than a feud, Clive!
War
would be a more appropriate word for it. But a war that would make the contests of Greeks against Persians, Hebrews against Philistines, Romans against Carthaginians—even our own parents' struggle against the conquerer Napoleon—all pale by comparison. We are engaged in a war of worlds, of realities, of dimensions of being so vast in scope that precedent and comparison are pointless."

"That I doubt not, brother. Not after what I have seen in the Dungeon. But your adjectives convey little meaning to me. Pray, give me some facts."

Neville lowered his brow into his hands. Looking at the top of his brother's steely gray head, Clive was struck by an unexpected pang of compassion and, yes, even of brotherly love. Neville had chivied and bullied him for decades, but his brother he was, and more than a brother, a twin. Even in the Dungeon, Neville's presence had dominated Clive's actions at times—and his absence, at others.

Now, for all that he was a vigorous man and healthy for his years, still Neville was well into his middle life, beginning to approach the long and irreversible decline of old age—while Clive was a far younger man with many more years ahead of him.

Clive reached his fingers hesitantly and touched his brother on the back of his hand.

Neville jerked away from the contact as he would have from the touch of a hand of red-hot iron. He jumped to his feet. "All right, brother. It's facts you wish, and it's facts you shall receive."

Neville crossed to his father, who had slumped in his great thronelike chair and was snoring softly. "Summon Jenkins to help Father to his bed. A nap is a good restorative for him."

Clive called the butler. Neville helped Baron Tewkesbury to his feet, embraced him briefly, and then turned him over to Jenkins. Gently leading the frail baron by the hand, the elderly servant guided his even more aged master from the library.

Neville Folliot turned to face Clive. "Follow me, brother." He raised his hand and displayed the huge, ornate key that Clive knew unlocked the door to the sealed sanctum sanctorum, the mysterious secret library of Tewkesbury Manor.

 

Clive stood gaping after his brother. "The—the key! You have the key to the sealed library, Neville?"

"Is that not self-evident?"

"But that key is supposed to be the exclusive domain of Lord Tewkesbury."

"Is it really?"

The sardonic note in Neville's voice grated on Clive, but Clive chose to ignore that and pursue his questioning. "Is that a duplicate? Or did you take the key from Father?"

"Oh, Clive, Clive, little brother… what difference does it make? I have the key. The sealed room is open. You've been so full of questions—I'll concede that you are justified in your curiosity—but come along and you shall have some answers."

He disappeared through the doorway. Clive followed.

The sealed library was utterly dark. Clive heard the scrape of a match, saw it flare into sulfurous life. Then the match flame was replaced by the warmer, gentler illumination of a lighted candle. Clive could see the face of his brother Neville sinisterly illuminated from below by the golden light of the candle.

"Please close the door behind you, and make sure that it is bolted, Clive. I do not wish others to enter this room. Ah, thank you, little brother. And beside you there, you will see a comfortable seat. If you please—"

Clive complied, sliding into the comfort of an overstuffed, leather-covered easy chair. He watched Neville take similar action, having first placed the candlestick on a convenient table. Beyond Neville the room remained in darkness. There was a flow of fresh air, and now and then, when an errant air current set the candle-flame in motion, huge shadows danced against an uncertain background.

"You seem quite familiar with this room, Neville. I take it you have been here often."

"Perhaps not so often, Clive. But I come here from time to time. As my duties require."

"What duties? I see by your shoulders and collar that you have risen in Her Majesty's service. You are no longer restricted to the Grenadier Guards, but have attained the status of a general officer."

"My privilege to serve crown and country, Clive."

"Then you must spend most of your time inspecting units."

"Good staff work, brother, associates carefully selected and properly trained, and a commander may come and go at will. Fortunately, for I fear that I am gone from my command a great deal of the time."

"I doubt it not."

"Still, I am a man of patriotic impulse. I have had several audiences with Her Majesty, Clive. I take great pride in that."

"Your loyalty is not to this sceptered isle, Neville."

"Put it this way, brother. A man may love both his mother and his wife. May love each, truly and loyally. Yet these are different loves and different loyalties."

"Very well, Neville. If Britain is your mother, who is your wife?"

"A greater power than any empire of this little Earth, Clive."

Clive shook his head sadly. "The Ren, Neville, or the Chaffri? Does it even matter? Who are the true masters of the Dungeon? Beings alien, heartless, and cruel. Your loyalties are to them, then? To these abductors, tyrants, murderers? Your loyalty to them shames you, brother. It shames me and all of our blood."

Illuminated only by candlelight, Neville's face was hard to read. Yet Clive thought he saw the flash of anger in his brother's eyes.

"You know not whereof you speak, little brother! You think you have seen the Dungeon, and having seen the Dungeon you think you have seen all that is terrible and strange in this universe. But listen to me, brother. I tell you that you have seen only the smallest sampling of the Dungeon. You are like a man who spends an hour on the beach at Dar es Salaam and thinks he knows all of Africa. Believe me in this—I know whereof I speak! You have barely sampled the perils and the horrors that the Dungeon contains. And the Dungeon is but a tiny microcosm, the tiniest sample of the perils and the horrors of this universe!"

His eyes reflected the candlelight, brighter and hotter than the flame they gave back. "I know whereof I speak, Clive. In this thing if in nothing else, you must believe me."

"My question, then, that you so adroitly avoided when I started to ask you it."

"What question is that?"

"In the Dungeon—on Q'oorna—I encountered a monstrosity almost beyond description in its horror. It was crossing a bridge of midnight obsidian across the abyss near the City of the Tower."

Neville nodded. "Ah, yes—I remember it well."

"The monster was equipped with tentacles, feelers, claws, mouths, fangs—every appurtenance imaginable, with which to horrify and then dismember its prey."

Behind Neville, in the darkness of this sealed library in the safety of Tewkesbury Manor, still Clive could see the monster, looming and dripping its horrendous exudations. He could almost see Sidi Bombay scrambling up the monster's flank, disappearing into its clusters of waving tentacles like a South Sea islander scrambling up the trunk of a wind-angled coconut palm, disappearing into its waving fronds.

"We fought that monstrosity, fought it to the very limit and end of our resources. Fought it—well, not to victory, but at least to a stalemate, so that at last it tumbled from the bridge and disappeared into the blackness beneath that span, the blackness of the abyss."

"Yes, Clive, yes. But you said you had a question."

"When that monster went tumbling, I was able to catch a glimpse, first of its underside, and then of its crown."

Clive's brow was coated with perspiration and his hands twitched in subconscious reenactment of the titanic battle. "Its underside was a horror all its own. A transparent membrane held sealed a compartment in which miniature replicas of the monster floated. I took these to be its young."

Neville nodded, the movement of his head making his shadow dance menacingly. "You are correct."

"Among those young," Clive continued, "I saw other creatures, victims I assume of the monster, engulfed by the parent and held as food for the horrid spawn."

"Correct again, brother."

"But most horrifying of all, as the monster tumbled from the bridge, I saw revealed upon its peak a giant replica of a human face. Of your face, Neville! And as it fell from view, that face spoke to me. It cursed me. It cursed me, Neville—with your face, and in your voice."

Neville Folliot hid his face in his well-groomed hands. "Your memory serves you truly, Clive. The creature did have my face and it did curse you there on Q'oorna. I can say only that the creature was not I, for all that it looked like me and sounded like me. It had my face, or an image thereof at any rate. It even had my recollections, my mind or part of my mind, for a time. But it was not I, nor I it. I will not apologize, for it was by no will of mine that that event took place. No. I did not and would not do such a thing. As brothers we have had our differences, Clive—any pair of siblings will have their differences—but I would not treat my brother in the manner you describe."

Clive Folliot considered, then said, "I cannot accept an apology not tendered. Therefore let it suffice that I understand your explanation, and will consider the matter closed."

"Good!" A faint smile creased Neville's face. "Now—what else do you wish to ask?"

"Who are the Ren, Neville? How did you become involved with them? Is Father aware of your affiliation?"

"Clive, I will endeavor to satisfy you. But to understand this, you must have prior knowledge. Prior knowledge of the universe around you. When we were younger, I attended Sandhurst and received an education in military science and engineering. That education—plus my service in Her Majesty's campaigns—served to make me a hard-headed, practical man. I can look at a revolver, at a fortification—or at a distant star—and see it and attempt to comprehend it in practical, realistic terms."

He shook his head, then continued. "You attended Cambridge, Clive. Your studies were in the realm of art, literature, music, and philosophy. Remember our debates, when we were home from university for the holidays, Clive? Remember how Father would ask us to report on our learning, and I would discuss campaigns and fortifications and lines of supply—and you would speak of Homer and of Virgil, of Spenser and Marlowe and Michelangelo and Mozart?"

"I remember all too well, Neville."

"I remind you not for purposes of disparagement, but because you may simply not comprehend what I am about to tell you, brother. But try to accept what I say."

"Pray, proceed."

"You know that the Greeks believed that the fixed stars in the sky were suns like our own, only incredibly distant from the Earth. And that they believed that the moving planets were worlds not unlike our own. Hence even the strange fable—"

"That I know better than you, Neville. Lucian's
True History
with its populated Sun and Moon and Venus, its intelligent cabbages and its ship that sailed through the void between worlds."

"Indeed, Clive! Well, I tell you that the
True History
contained more truth than its author may have realized. Not that the sun and moon are populated. But that there are other populated worlds, more than we puny humans can imagine, more than we can count, more than we can even comprehend. The number of stars is so huge as to defy calculation, and among those uncountable stars are scattered uncountable worlds, and on those uncountable worlds there swell uncountable races of men. Of men, and of manlike but unhuman species. And of species so utterly unlike us that the monster you saw with my face would be as familiar as a tabby cat by comparison."

"A tale I am more prepared to accept after my journeys and my travail in the Dungeon than I was before, Neville. I will posit the truth of all you have said. Where do the Ren and the Chaffri fit in? And, still, what is your connection with them? And what is the Dungeon? What is the
purpose
of the Dungeon, Neville?"

"You would have guessed that the Ren and the Chaffri are but two of the uncounted races scattered through our universe who—at least in a poetic sense, to adopt your mode of discourse, Clive—inhabit the stars. These races are endlessly varied. Some of them are more primitive than the naked bushmen of our Earth's remotest regions. Others are so advanced as to make a Faraday or a Herschel look like children splashing in puddles and wondering at the worms they dislodge from the mud."

"The Ren, then, are such a star-race?"

Neville nodded.

"I am not as surprised to hear that as you might think, brother. In the Dungeon I encountered beings from many worlds. The faithful doglike Finnbogg, the spidery Shriek, and Chang Guafe, strangest of all."

"There are those who are not so strange, too."

"Indeed. The Lady 'Nrrc'kth and her false consort N'wrbb Crrd'f. I might have loved the Lady 'Nrrc'kth. Her beauty was exotic—her skin a white as pale as freshly fallen snow, her long hair and deep eyes the green of a forest rising through that snow. In all my travels I never encountered one to compare with the Lady 'Nrrc'kth."

"And where is she now, brother?"

"Dead," Clive whispered. "Fallen in the course of a peril-ridden descent from one level of the Dungeon to another. For that alone, Neville, I despise the Ren. If they are the masters of the Dungeon, then they are responsible for the Lady 'Nrrc'kth's demise. I will never forgive them for that, Neville!"