Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (39 page)

Framing Lorena Ransome on the side opposite Amos was Philo B. Goode, the bogus American mining magnate. He wore his broad-brimmed hat, stringlike cravat, brocaded waistcoat, wide-lapelled jacket, and intricately carved boots.

A cheroot protruded from the edge of Amos Ransome's mouth. A smirk marked his countenance. One side of his coat was drawn back and his hand rested on the butt of a silver-plated Colt navy revolver. Clive Folliot could not see the grip of the revolver, but in his heart he knew that it would be of black or midnight blue polished stone set with a spiral of diamonds representing the stars of the Gennine.

"Are you the Gennine?" Clive asked.

"Smile," Philo Goode replied, "when you call me that, pardner."

"Is this the end of the Dungeon?"

"It is, Clive Folliot. There is nowhere farther to go."

"This is the true center of the swirling stars? The home of the Gennine, the ultimate rulers of the Dungeon?"

"It is the home of the Gennine."

A roaring filled Clive's ears and points of light and darkness danced before his eyes. "You are merely people. I encountered you on the
Princess Philippa
. Penny ante gamblers, sharpers, petty cheats. You cannot be the rulers of the Dungeon."

"But we are." It was Lorena Ransome who had spoken. She slipped her hand from her companion's neck and advanced toward Clive. He stared, his eyes drawn, against his will, to her bodice. He had seen women naked and half-naked on a half-dozen continents and on a dozen worlds, but never had he seen one who attracted and excited him as did Lorena Ransome.

"Stay back!"

"Clive."

"I resisted the fire-succubus!"

"An illusion. A figment of your own mind."

"I knew the Lady 'Nrrc'kth, the woman T'Nembi of Bagomoyo, females human and alien of world upon world."

"Then why fear me, Clive?" She slid her black-clad arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his own. Amos Ransome and Philo Goode dropped from his consciousness. He could think only of this woman, of Lorena Ransome. She had cast a spell upon Horace Hamilton Smythe, Clive knew, during Smythe's long-ago sojourn in wild America. Was she doing the same to him now?

He grew dizzy, felt himself falling into a state of vertigo. He could no longer identify the directions of up and down in this pearl-white world, could no longer discern the nearby from the distant. He could feel Lorena Ransome's long fingers beneath his garments, could not prevent his own hands from moving over her form.

"Good, Clive. Yes, Clive. Yes!"

A shrill voice was piping and a small weight leaped upon his back. He could feel tiny feet kicking at his neck and then a point of excruciating fire behind his ear.

Blinking and slapping at his neck, he leaped to his feet.

A miniature Baron Samedi was prancing in circles, pointing at Clive with his omnipresent cigar. "Fool, fool, fool!" the baron shrilled. "Slave to your gonads! Goat! Behold your strumpet!"

Lorena Ransome stood scowling at Clive and at Baron Samedi. She was something hideous and terrible, something hardly human. It was as if the evil in human nature had been distilled and concentrated and reconstituted into a being of pure malignity.

Something furry collided with Clive's leg and he glanced downward to see that the miniature Samedi—apparently the Chaffri, the being that had somehow survived the dissolution of the space-train, reacting to some desperate subconscious thought of Clive's—had found its way here and had changed still again. It was now a miniature Finnbogg, massive in form and substance despite its diminutive stature, caninesque in its fidelity.

Lorena was the ultimate in evil, Lilith, the night monster of the Hebrew Book of Isaiah. She pointed a shriveled finger at Clive and screeched, "I'll get you, Clive Folliot!" She raised a second finger, pointed it crookedly at Finnbogg.

"You and your little dog, too!"

The Chaffri/Samedi/Finnbogg hurled itself at the far larger Lorena Ransome. Together they tumbled to the pearl-white ground, rolling over and over. Amos Ransome entered the fray, struggling to pull the tiny Finnbogg from Lorena. The man's curses, the woman's screeches, the canine's snarls blended to make a mad cacophony.

Clive watched, petrified.

A cold drop spattered off Clive's face. It was followed by others. He looked up and saw that somehow the featureless glowing sky had been occluded by a massive array of black, roiling clouds. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled, sheets and torrents of rain swept the pearl-white earth.

With a scream and a hiss, Lorena Ransome and her attacker dissolved before Clive's horrified eyes.

Philo B. Goode drew his nickel-plated navy Colt. "I'd planned a more elaborate end for you than this, Folliot. You are the Master of the Ordolite, don't you know?"

"I am he, Philo Goode. Consider the meaning of that, and conduct yourself accordingly."

"You survived more challenges than I thought you would. More than I thought you
could
." He ground his teeth audibly, then gave himself a shake. "Sometimes the simplest means is the best." He raised the Colt and pointed it directly at Clive's face.

Clive thought of the Mandarin who had saved his life repeatedly.. The Mandarin who seemed to possess supernormal, even supernatural, powers. The Mandarin who had proved to be none other than Clive's old friend and onetime batman Horace Hamilton Smythe.

He could see the tightness on Goode's face, the infinitesimal tightening of his finger on the Colt's trigger. Through some oddity of light and direction he caught a glimpse of the revolver's grip—polished stone of midnight blue picked with a spiral of glittering diamonds that swirled madly even as he stared, transfixed.

He could hear the soft click of the moving trigger, the slow explosion of the powder. A flare of red flame and gray smoke poured from the muzzle of the Colt, and from it emerged the solid lead ball, whirling as it flew across the space that separated Philo B. Goode from Clive Folliot.

The Master of the Ordolite slowed the passage of time until the bullet was barely moving. Clive smiled. So slowly that each muscular rearrangement was individually visible, Philo Goode reflected a grimace of bafflement and rage.

Clive parted his lips in an expression of benevolence, opened his teeth a fraction of an inch, closed them again upon the flying bullet. He permitted its velocity to spin him a full 360 degrees.

He faced Philo Goode once again and spat.

The bullet flew toward Goode, smashed his ribs, tore his heart to shreds. Blood spattered and rained on the still-wet ground. He toppled backward, the Colt flying from his hand.

Clive caught the whirling weapon and shoved it into his waistband. He faced the .sole figure who remained with him: Timothy Francis Xavier O'Hara, priest.

"Ye did mightily well, lad." O'Hara nodded, his broad scalp showing pinkly against its thin fringe of white hair. "But what d'ye plan to do now? Ye don't think ye're goin' t' shoot me with that great cannon, do ye?" O'Hara pointed at the Colt.

Clive shook his head. "I didn't come here to shoot anyone, Father."

"Forget the Father business. I dumped that long ago!"

"What is this place?"

"The home of the Gennine."

"Who are the Gennine?"

"I am the last of the Gennine. We're an ancient race, Clive Folliot. Long, long ago we realized that we were dying out. We did everything we could to save ourselves—to no avail. So we created the Dungeon to amuse ourselves. To while away the time."

"It was all… for your
amusement
?"

"Yes."

"And now?"

"Now I'm all that's left—and I shall go, as well. You're the only one who reached this place, Clive. You should be proud. How many millions have entered the Dungeon—some who died fighting, some who settled down and made a new life for themselves there, some few who escaped and returned to their own worlds. Oh, very, very few of those. But there were some who did, yes."

He shook his gleaming head. "But now you've made it to the home of the Gennine."

"Are you human?"

"Eh?" O'Hara had raised his hand to his chin, dropped his gaze to his feet in abstracted concentration.

"I said, are you human? Or are you something else? I've seen shape-changers enough in this mad adventure."

O'Hara shook his head as if he could hardly comprehend the question. Somewhere the distant buzzing sound had grown louder, and Clive looked up to see the sun glinting on his great-great-granddaughter Annie's Nakajima 97. The aeroplane was close now, dipping toward the ground, its propeller whirling, its wheels reaching to touch the earth.

"I don't know, lad. Human, not human? What am I now?" He raised a hand to his eyes and looked at it. Clive thought the puzzlement in O'Hara's face was real. "I can't remember. I just can't remember. How was it that God made me?"

"God?" Clive exclaimed. "I thought you'd renounced your priesthood."

The Nakajima was closer, its engine's sound louder. How could O'Hara not hear it?

"I was a weak priest, Clive. Not God's fault. Mine. I wish I could hear a voice call me Father once more, and know that I was worthy of the name. That it was not a mockery or a rebuke to me. Oh, how I wish for that!"

A shudder wracked his body. "Not you, Folliot. Don't you call me Father again. You know me too well for that. The things I've done—the cruelties I've done—I and all the Gennine! Was I human at the outset? If only I could be forgiven. Not by God, but by one whom I've wronged. By one being who suffered at my hands." He studied his hands, holding them both before his eyes. Clive Folliot saw tears in those eyes.

"I forgive you," Clive said.

Timothy F. X. O'Hara smiled. "Thank you, Folliot. Thank you." He crumpled to the pearl-white ground and lay still.

Clive Folliot stood alone, staring into the sky. The spiral of stars, which had lured him and guided his destiny for so long, now revolved about him. He had become its center.

A chill ran down his spine and left him trembling. It was a chill provoked not by cold air, but by the reaction to his position. From the role of cadet son to a minor country house, he had risen above all others. The title of Baron Tewkesbury would pass through Neville's line rather than his own, but that was the most trivial of concerns.

He was more than a baron, more than an emperor. He was the Master of the Ordolite.

A soft wind caressed his cheek, whispered in his ear. Or perhaps it was a voice. Or a chorus of voices. Did he hear the disembodied tones of George du Maurier? Of his two brothers, one unborn and the second now gone across the shadowy line that separates the living from the dead? Did he hear the voice of the Lady 'Nrrc'kth, and that of her brother N'wrbb Crrd'f? Did he hear the voices of the . women he had loved in his life, and of his other companions, allies and foes alike, in his quest through the Dungeon?

He thought he heard other voices, too—Father O'Hara and Madame Mesmer and spidery Shriek and Chang Guafe and gruff hearty Finnbogg. Tomàs Folliot and Baron Samedi and the Imperial Japanese Marines he had encountered at New Kwajalein: Lieutenant Takamura and Lieutenant Yamura, Sergeant Fushida and Private Onishi. The passengers and officers he had known aboard
Empress Philippa
, the partners in the sinister Ransome/Goode/O'Hara scheme and the officials of the Universal Neighborhood Improvement Association. The Sultan of Zanzibar and the men and women he had encountered during his time in Equatoria.

The gentle breeze became a raging cyclone, the whispering voice a roaring chorus of men and women, alien creatures and artificial monsters.

The Ren.

The Chaffri.

And the Gennine.

He was the Master of the Ordolite.

A single voice emerged from the cacophonous roar. "Clive, what will you do now?" It was the voice of George du Maurier. "You are the most powerful of men. Perhaps the most powerful being in the universe."

"I am not God," Clive said.

"Still…"

"I don't know, du Maurier. I have striven so long. Now that my strife is completed, may I not rest for a while? The Buddhists of India, upon reaching a certain age, renounce their belongings, their occupations, even their families. They shave their heads, don saffron robes, and wander the land, their only other possession a begging bowl from which to eat brown rice."

"Does that appeal to you, Folliot?"

"I knew a farmer once, du Maurier. A fine fellow. Perhaps, if I live many years, I might become like him."

"Then there are no more worlds to conquer, no more challenges to meet?"

"Glory has lost its charm, du Maurier."

"Are there then no more wrongs to right?"

Clive nodded. "Someday, perhaps. But for now, I am weary, my friend. Weary."

Du Maurier made no comment in parting. The chorus faded, the voices stilled.

But there was another sound, a faint buzzing that had grown louder and louder even as Clive Folliot turned to follow the course of the machine that was its source.

The Nakajima 97 touched its wheels to the glowing ground. The sound of its engine ceased as Annabelle Leigh cut the ignition. The aeroplane rolled to a stop.

Annie climbed from the cockpit and ran to Clive Folliot's side. She took his two hands in her own.

"I've come to take you home, Grandfather."

Clive looked into Annie's face and wept.

 

 

 

The following drawings are from Major Clive Folliot's private sketchbook, which was mysteriously left on the doorstep of
The London Illustrated Recorder and Dispatch
, the newspaper that provided financing for his expedition. There was no explanation accompanying the parcel, save for an enigmatic inscription in the hand of Major Folliot himself.

"Our revels," as the bard said, "now are ended." My friend Du Maurier's hand is no longer available to improve my poor efforts, but I have his model and his advice to guide me. Let these last portraits be my farewell to a great and dramatic phase of my life.

The fires of vengeance have burned themselves out. Was my adventure a success? I have achieved a glory beyond my dreams, but at the cost of dear Annabella, and of my own brother's life. More than anything else, I am weary now, and shall rest until I am needed again.