The Digging Leviathan (32 page)

He hadn’t changed so awfully much. William didn’t know what, exactly, he had expected. He half feared that Giles would have become something like the thing in the steamer trunk, that he’d shared the fate of Reginald Peach, perhaps with a bit of help from Han Koi and Hilario Frosticos. But
there hadn’t been that sort of apparent change—just a vague sensation, a watery electrical charge in the air, that suggested a kinship, perhaps literally, between Giles Peach and the melancholy inhabitants of Han Koi’s aquaria.

William tapped on the edge of the cabin window and hissed. Giles lurched upright, stuffing his magazine between the cushion and the arm of his chair, a look of wild fear in his eyes. His head swiveled toward the door, since he assumed, obviously, that someone approached—an ally, William would have assumed. William tapped again. Giles jerked around toward the window, grasped the shade of his reading lamp, and directed the light in William’s direction, his eyes widening in surprise to see both William and Jim peering in at him out of the darkness.

Gill stammered, looking quickly again at the door. Whether he intended to shout, run, or barricade himself in was, for a split second, unclear. But after that second of confusion, he simply sat still, befuddled. William could detect, he was sure of it, faint lines of hope curling the edges of his mouth and eyes.

“Is there anyone else aboard?” William whispered.

Giles shook his head.

William debated the usefulness of cutting loose the third junk, which, from its dark, silent demeanor, appeared to be empty. He decided against it. Haste was the word, now that they’d found Giles. The two of them slipped aboard, treading as lightly as possible, looking back over their shoulder toward where the vast driftwood fire burned on its little rocky hill.

Han Koi’s boat had floated twenty or thirty yards from shore, but seemed to be lying still in the water. William was suddenly struck with regret at having cut it loose. If the junk were docked, there was the bare possibility that he and Jim would remain unseen, even if the old man decided to take a stroll ashore. But now, unless the boat drifted safely away … William and Jim hurried into the cabin.

Jim nodded at Giles, as if not knowing entirely what to say. Giles nodded back and grinned, embarrassed, perhaps, to be found under such peculiar conditions.

“We’ve missed you,” said William. “Getting on well?”

Giles shrugged.

“Your mother is a bit worried.”

Giles shrugged again guiltily.

“Work going along?’

Giles nodded. William crossed to the window on the dock side and closed the shutters. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Time was passing. He caught sight of a copy of
The ABC’s of Relativity
lying on the floor amid the other books. “Been reading about relativity?” asked William. “What do you think of this?”

“Well,” said Giles. “I remembered Mr. Squires recommending it that night at the Newtonians. So I bought it. But there are certain problems with it.”

“Ah,” said Edward. “Problems?”

“Yes. I’ve built an anti-gravity unit, you know, that works on the principle of sky tides. The idea came to me while I was reading the book. I thought about building it into a bicycle as a present for Mr. Squires whose car was broken down that night, but then things happened, and …” Giles trailed off into silence.

William, listening for threatening sounds, wasn’t about to let the conversation slacken. “You’ve read my own relativity story in
Analog
?” William motioned toward the chair with his head.

“Yes, sir,” said Giles, brightening. “It was very impressive. Convincing too. I’m sure they’ve only begun to understand physics. Your story will turn things around. That’s why I’ve been working on the digger for Mr. Pinion. I’m certain we can get to the Earth’s core. Think of what we’ll find there …” And once again Giles fell silent, thinking of what he’d find there.

‘That’s rather why we’ve come,” said William. He looked at Jim, and Jim nodded. “I think there’s a problem with your plan to use anti-matter. I understand the need to dispose of dirt and debris, but what in the world are you going to do with the energy? Have you read P. A.M. Dirac?”

“Yes.”

‘Then you know the danger of shuffling matter And antimatter together as if they were playing cards. There’s a theory I favor that postulates an entire anti-matter universe at the far end of our own—all the anti-matter particles that came out of the big bang. There’s a mirror-image Earth there. All of us, battling the same demons. But we’ve got our clothes on inside out. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” said Giles, “but …”

“But that’s where they
must
be,” said William. “There can
be no other explanation. Anti-stars, anti-planets, anti-hamburgers, anti-Pinions.” William grinned at Giles. “But you can’t just stir it up in a soup along with matter. You suspect that, don’t you? Your father does. We’ve spoken to him. He sees trouble—a cataclysm. Creatures from Pellucidar are beginning to flee. Are you aware of that? And the communist Chinese have reported desperate anxieties in laboratory pigs. They blame it on CIA weather manipulation, but I think it’s something else.”

“I don’t anticipate a problem any longer,” said Giles. “I obviously couldn’t put the anti-matter into a container, since the container itself would be converted. But there’s such a thing as a magnetic bottle …”

“Yes,” said William, “I’ve read about it.”

“So I built one. I found a bag full of magnets from old cars—it was in the same junk store we were in the day of the wind,” he said, looking at Jim. “I built a polarity reversal bottle.” Giles poked around in a desk drawer for a moment, hauling out a line drawing of something that looked like a rectilinear amphora. Equations peppered the drawing along with arrows and spirals and little, hastily drawn graphs.

William inspected it. It might work. There were parts of it that he couldn’t fathom, equations that meant nothing at all to him. He supposed that Squires could make them out. But Squires wasn’t there. He was a half mile above them in his house on Rexroth Road. And if the three of them weren’t headed in that general direction fairly quickly themselves, there would quite likely be trouble. William was determined not to leave without Giles. But if they had to, if staying too long meant giving Jim up to Frosticos or Han Koi, then they’d flee instead. They’d all rest easier, though, knowing that Giles’ magnetic bottle would do the trick.

It would be a dirty shame if Pinion beat them to the center of the Earth, but their pride could take the blow. It was the blow to the Earth that concerned them. And if Giles had that threat ironed out. … There was something in William that didn’t trust the whole idea of the magnetic bottle. It was sound scientifically. He was sure of that. But there was something else. Instinct? That was it. Civilization theory. Pigs couldn’t be argued with. They had a nose for impending doom. And the dream—the death of Giles Peach. What of that? He didn’t require accuracy of dreams, but it had had an unmistakably
premonitory ring to it that sounded in the same key of fear that had inhabited the voice of Basil Peach.

“It won’t work,” said William, grasping at straws.

Giles was silent. He sensed it too.

There was a noise from outside, like the scrape of something along the bulwark. Silence followed. Jim looked out through a crack in the slats of the shutters. Nothing moved. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Giles. “Come on.”

Giles sat staring.

“Powers is having a sale. Burroughs’ novels are twenty-five cents each with every fifth one free.”

“Really?” asked William.

‘That’s right. It just started today. I saw the ad in the window of the store.”

“Martian books?” Giles asked, visibly brightening.

“Heaps. He just bought a collection from somewhere, that’s what he said. They were still in boxes. There’s no telling what all he had.”

Giles looked around himself furtively. “Will you sign this?” he asked William, hauling out the
Analog.

“Of course.” William beamed at him. “I don’t have a pen, though.” He tapped his pants pockets. “You and I could accomplish a bit, you know.”

Giles turned red, embarrassed at the praise, and handed across a pen.

“What we need for the diving bell is an oxygenator-propulsion combination. I’ve got some ideas, actually, having to do with a Hieronymous machine. Are you familiar with it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Giles.’ ‘I saw a picture of one in an old issue of
Astounding
, a Psionic Machine-Type 1.I always wanted to build one.”

“Well, here’s your chance. And another thing—absolute gyro. For stabilization. Do you have any ideas there?”

“Easy,” said Giles. “I’ve already built something like that for the digger. We can do it this afternoon, but we’ve got to get to the Sprouse Reitz on Colorado before they close. That’s where I buy most of my parts.” He checked his watch.

“After Powers’,” said William, smiling.

There was another noise, nearer the shutters now. William motioned Jim into a corner, crept across, and slowly opened one shutter. Darkness met him across the dirty glass. He rubbed circuitously on it with the side of his hand, cleaning a
little oval and squinting through it, deciphering the gloom. His heart raced strangely, as if in certain knowledge that something lurked out in the hypnotic darkness—something his eyes couldn’t yet perceive.

Then, in a slice of a moment that seemed to William to resemble the staccato, stroboscope unreeling of an ancient motion picture, there materialized before him a white, smiling face, swerving into sudden clarity beyond the window, leering in. A hand rose beside it. Fingers wiggled in satiric greeting like four fleshy little worms, reminding him of the unholy appendages on the strange fish of Han Koi. The face belonged to a satisfied Hilario Frosticos.

William was frozen in terror, gasping for short breaths, utterly unable to summon up any of the courage he’d possessed not fifteen minutes earlier. A scream gagged him, then ripped from his throat, a single shriek, cut off into a gurgle as he staggered back into the cabin, smashing across the books on the floor and past a terrified Giles Peach to collapse in a heap.

Jim, reacting only to the instinctive terror of a sudden face at a dark window, hurled a book at it, catching the grinning, self-satisfied doctor full in the face. There was a curse of rage followed by silence. Giles sat stone-faced. Staring. William didn’t move. It seemed unlikely to Jim that the two of them were waiting for anything. They were simply swallowed up by fear.

Jim pushed at the desk, shoving it across the door, then heaved at a stack of bookcases, sweeping books out of them onto the floor until he could lever the top case onto the desk. The second followed. He shoved books back into them for weight, conscious as he did so of an omnipresent heaviness in the air. He labored for breath, watching the window out of the corner of his eye for the sign of meddling. He felt wet all over. Not clammy from the muggy air of the cavern, but wet, as if he’d just crawled out of the sea or as if the air around him were itself congealing into seawater. The last of the bookcases rested on the desk. Jim picked up a handful of books, dropping half of them, realizing that since he’d been at it, no one had made any effort to get past his barrier, and hearing at the same time the click and snap of a door opening behind him—a panel in the carved rosewood of the wall. Dr. Frosticos bent through it, smiling malignly. In his hand was a syringe.

William gripped the arms of his chair and sat petrified,
utterly unable to respond. Giles seemed asleep, although his eyes were wide open, staring at something none of the rest of them could see. Then, strangely, inexplicably, a fish, pecking at debris on the floor, swam past Jim’s foot. The floor itself, when Jim stared at it in surprise, seemed insubstantial and grainy, as if it were decomposed, or rather as if it weren’t wood at all, but grains of dark sand on an ocean bottom. A tendril of kelp dragged across Jim’s face, waving on a current of heavy, wet air that washed past, then fell momentarily slack before surging back past him in a rush of bubbles, sand, bits of seaweed, and grinning, startled fish.

A cacophony of questions and contrary impressions flooded in on him with the sudden wave of seawater. Had they capsized? Sunk? He fought for a breath of air. Dr. Frosticos banged upside down on the ceiling, his syringe floating off to be swallowed up by a balloonlike puffer that swelled immediately into a spiny orb, whirring away with little flurries of its tiny caudal fin to disappear into one of the bookcases.

There was a terrible battering and howling as the ship listed to port. A groaning surrounded them. There was the sharp snap of ropes, and the junk lurched and heaved on the surface of a suddenly wild sea. The door burst outward; the window disintegrated into sand-size particles, and with a sliding rush as the boat was tossed to and fro, the lot of them tumbled against the wall, then halfway to the door, then back again into the wall. Giles Peach floated along peacefully, resisting the strengthening urge with little sculling motions of his arms and webbed hands. Frosticos was the first to slide through the door.

He flopped over onto his side, hands grasping and flailing, and held onto the door frame, seeming to pull the entire junk farther to port, as if it clung to the side of an enormous vertical wave. Bookcases toppled from the desk, washing past him. The floor seemed to open beneath his face, as if the turmoil had broken through the thin crust of the ocean bottom and into the tunnel of some sand-dwelling creature. A claw poked out. Two claws. A weedy crab the size of a clenched fist, blood red and with white eyes on stalks, a creature almost more spider than crab, hoisted itself from the hole, followed by another and another and another. They crawled onto the head and face of the clutching doctor, nipping off little shreds of skin. His mouth opened in a bubbling scream and the first of the crabs darted in. Frosticos jerked like a hooked fish, loosed his hold,
and was swept out into the darkness, followed by surging water, wriggling fish and waterweeds. …

Jim was aware sometime later that he was on deck. A tearing wind banged at the painted sail. His father sat with his back against the mast, staring in disbelief. Overhead was a wild dance of thunder and lightning and flooding rain, an incredible monsoon that swept them along through the darkness. A second junk, the drifting boat of Han Koi, tossed on incredible seas, rising on the face of a swell, toppling at the crest, and running down the backside, its mast snapped, its cabin broken in.