Burton couldn't imagine what it was, unless it was the present one.
Good enough.
And so X had gotten his recruits, and he'd erased all his questions and the answers from the computer. Somehow, he'd done it without the Operator's knowing about it. That is, all this had happened if Spruce hadn't lied and there were indeed such things as an Operator and computer.
As of now, Burton's big problem was that X hadn't told him who he was. Which meant that very soon X would be acting, not for his recruits but against them.
Burton thought that they should get some sleep before they ventured out on the boats. All agreed, and so they laid out their heavy cloths on the floor and rolled up others for pillows. Since it was warm here, they didn't even have to cover themselves with their eskimo- suit- type garments. The hot air came from slits along the bases of the walls.
"Probably powered by nuclear energy," Frigate said. "The same goes for the lamps."
Burton wanted to set two-hour watches with two guards each.
"Why?" Tai-Peng said. "It's evident that we're the only ones around for twenty thousand miles."
"We don't know that," Burton said. "We shouldn't get careless now."
Some agreed with the Chinese, but it was finally decided that they should take no chances. Burton picked the sentinels and appointed Nur to be Gilgamesh's partner and himself as Ah Qaaq's.
The Moor wasn't likely to be taken by surprise; he had extraordinary perceptions of others' attitudes and feelings; he could often tell by subtle body language what others intended to do.
It was possible that Nur was an agent or that Gilgamesh and Ah Qaaq were in cahoots. One might pretend to sleep until his colleague who was on watch attacked his partner.
The possibilities were numerous, but Burton had to take chances. He couldn't do without sleep all the time.
What worried him mosj', though, was that X, if he was here, might take a small boat during the night and get to the tower ahead of the others. Once there, he would make sure that the entrance at the base couldn't be entered.
Burton gave de Marbot, Alice's partner for the first duty, his wristwatch. Then he lay down on his cloths, which were near the entrance to the tunnel. His loaded pistol was under his pillow. He had trouble getting to sleep, though he wasn't the only one if the sighs and mutterings he heard were any indication. It wasn't until the first two hours were almost over that he slid into an uneasy sleep. He kept starting'awake; he had nightmares, some of them recurrences for the past thirty years. God, in the garments of a late Victorian gentleman, poked him in the ribs with a heavy cane.
"You owe for the flesh. Pay up."
His eyes opened, and he looked around. Tai-Peng and Blessed Croomes were on guard now. The Chinese was talking in a soft voice to the black woman not ten feet from Burton. Then Croomes slapped his face and walked away.
Burton said, "Better luck next time, Tai-Peng," and he went back to sleep.
When Nur and Gilgamesh were on watch, Burton roused again. He slitted his eyes so that they would think he was still sleeping. Both were in one of the big boats, sitting on the raised deck by the controls. The Sumerian seemed to be telling a funny story to the Moor, if Nur's smiles meant anything. Burton didn't like their closeness. All the very strong Gilgamesh had to do was to reach out and seize Nur's throat.
The Moor, however, seemed very much at ease. Burton watched them for a while, then nodded off. When he awoke again, with a start, Nur was shaking him.
"Your watch."
Burton rose and yawned. Ah Qaaq was standing by the shelves, eating bread and stew. He gestured at Burton to join him. Burton shook his head. He didn't intend to get any closer to him than he had to. Stooping, he withdrew the pistol from under the pillow and placed it in his holster. Ah Qaaq, he noted, was also armed. There was nothing significant in this. The guards were supposed to carry their weapons.
Burton got within six feet of Ah Qaaq and told him he was going outside to urinate. The Mayan, his mouth full, nodded. He'd lost weight during the hard journey and now seemed determined to make up for it.
If he's X pretending to be a compulsive eater, Burton thought, he's certainly an excellent actor.
Burton went through the tunnel with frequent looks behind him and stops now and then to listen for footsteps. He didn't turn on his lantern until he reached the cave. The lantern, set in the mouth on the sloping floor, beamed past him. The cold fog pressed wetly. Having finished his business quickly, he went back into the cave.
Now would be a good time for Ah Qaaq to sneak up on him. But he neither saw nor heard anything except the crash of waves against the rocks some distance away. When he cautiously returned, he found Ah Qaaq sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes half closed, his head drooping.
Burton moved over to the opposite wall and leaned against it. After a while, the Mayan stood up and stretched. He signaled that he was going out to the cave. Burton nodded. Ah Qaaq, his heavy dewlap bouncing, waddled out through the tunnel. Burton decided that he'd been overly suspicious. A minute later, he thought that he hadn't been suspicious enough. What if the Mayan was X, and he had another cave nearby in which was a boat? It might be behind a narrow fissure, an opening to which Ah Qaaq could wade through the shallow water on the shelf.
Ten minutes went by, not an unreasonable time for the absence. Should he go after Ah Qaaq?
While Burton was trying to make up his mind, he saw the Mayan enter. Burton relaxed. The watch was half over, and the others would be in the more shallow phase of sleep and thus more easily awakened by noise.
Also, it would be logical for X to wait until the tower was entered. Here, he would have to deal with many. There, he would be on familiar ground.
When the six hours had passed, Burton aroused everybody. They went out to the sea in two groups according to sex and returned complaining about the cold. By then Burton and Ah Qaaq had poured water from the canteens into the cups provided by the grails and were ready to add the instant coffee which also heated the water. They drank and talked softly for a while and then ate breakfast. Some left for the sea again. Croomes insisted that it was a shame to, allow skeletons to lie unburied. She made such a fuss that Burton thought it would be better to mollify her. A delay wasn't going to make any difference anyway.
They trouped out with the bones and hurled them into the sea while Croomes said a long prayer over them. The skeleton nearest the tunnel had to be Blessed's mother, but no one mentioned this, and she would certainly have wept if she had suspected it. Burton and some of the others knew from Paheri's story that, when the Egyptians had come here, they'd found some pieces of scalp which hadn't rotted away entirely. These had held black kinky hair.
They returned and loaded up one of the thirty-person boats with their possessions and sixty cans of food. Four men picked up the big but very light craft and carried it down the tunnel to the cave. Two men and two women brought out a smaller one to be attached by a rope to the other.
When asked why the extra was needed, he replied, "Just in case."
He had no idea what the case might be. It couldn't hinder them, though, to take extra precautions.
The last to leave the chamber, he gave it a final look. It was very quiet and eerie here with the nine glowing lamps and the empty boats. Would anyone follow them? He didn't think so. This was the third expedition and the most successful, so far. Things went by threes. Then he thought of Joe Miller, who had twice fallen into the sea. Surely he wouldn't do it again?
Not unless we give him a chance, he thought.
All but Ah Qaaq and Gilgamesh got into the big boat. They pushed it into the water, climbed aboard, and began drying off their feet. Burton had studied the picture-chart in the craft until he knew what to do by heart. He stood on the raised deck behind the steering wheel and punched a button on the control panel. A light sprang out from the surface of the panel itself, a glow which enabled him to see the buttons. They had no markings, but the diagram showed the locatio
n and purpose of each.
At the same time, a bright orange outline of a cylindrical shape, the tower, sprang out on a screen just above the panel.
"We're ready," he called back. He paused, punched another button, and said, "We're off!"
"Off to see the Wizard of Oz, the Fisher King!" Frigate said. "Off to find the holy grail!"
"May it be holy," Burton said. He burst out laughing. "But if it is, what are we doing there?"
Whatever the propulsive power was – there was no trembling of the boat from propellers nor wake from a jet – the vessel moved swiftly. Its speed was controlled by a curious device, a plastic bulb attached to the rim of the wheel on the right side. By squeezing or releasing his grip, Burton could control the speed. He turned the wheel until the image of the tower moved from the right to the center of the screen. Then he slowly increased the pressure on the bulb. Presently, the boat was cutting through the waves at an angle. Spray drenched those behind him, but he would not slow down.
Now and then he looked behind him. In the dark fog he could not even see to the stern of the boat, but its passengers were huddled closely at the edge of the control deck. They looked in their shroudlike cloths like souls being ferried by Charon.
They were as silent as the dead, too.
Paheri had estimated that it had taken Akhenaten's boat about two hours to get to the tower. That was because he had been afraid to make the boat go at top speed. The sea, as reported by the Parseval radarman, was thirty miles in diameter. The tower was about ten miles in diameter. So there were only about twenty miles to go from the cave. The Pharaoh's vessel must have crawled at ten miles per hour.
The tower rapidly grew larger on the screen.
Suddenly, the image burst into flame.
They were very close to their goal.
The direction sheet indicated that now was the time to punch another button. Burton did so, and two extremely bright bow-lamps shot their beams into the mists and lit upon a vast curving dull surface.
Burton released all pressure on the bulb. The boat quickly lost speed and started drifting away. Applying power again, he swung the boat around and headed it slowly for the dim bulk. He punched another button, and he could see a big port, thick as the door in a bank vault, open in the seamless side.
Light streamed out through the O.
Burton cut off the power and turned the wheel so that the side of the boat bumped against the lower side of the open port. Hands seized the threshold and steadied the boat.
"Hallelujah!" Blessed Croomes screamed. "Momma, I'll soon be with you, sitting on the right hand of sweet Jesus!"
The others jumped. The stillness, except for the slight thudding of the boat against the metal, had been so impressive and their wonder that the way was finally open for them had been so overpowering, they felt that her cry was near sacrilege.
"Quiet!" Frigate shouted. But he laughed when he realized that no one could hear them.
"Momma, I'm coming!" Blessed shouted.
"Shut up, Croomes!" Burton said. "Or by God I'll throw you into the water! This is no place for hysterics!"
"I'm not hysterical! I'm joyous! I'm filled with the glory of the Lord!"
"Then keep it to yourself," Burton said.
Croomes told him he was bound for Hell, but she subsided.
"You may be right," Burton said. "Let me tell you though, that we're all going to the same place now. If it's Heaven, we'll be with you. If it's Hell . . ."
"Don't say that, man! That's irreverent!"
Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was a religious fanatic who managed to ignore the facts of life and also the contradictory elements in her faith. In this, she was much like his wife, Isabel, a devout Roman Catholic who had managed to believe in spiritualism at the same time. Croomes had been strong, enduring, uncomplaining, and always helpful during their struggles to reach this place except when she was trying to convert her crewmates to her religion.
Through the port he could see the gray-metaled corridor which Paheri had described. Of his companions who had collapsed near its end, there was no sight. Paheri had been too frightened to follow the others. He'd stayed in the boat. Then Akhenaten and his people fell to the floor, and the port had swung shut as silently as it had opened. Paheri had been unable to find the cave, and he had finally gone over the first of the cataracts in his boat and had awakened on some far bank of The River. But now there were no more resurrections.
Burton unbuttoned the strap on his holster.
He said, "I'll go first."
He stepped up over the threshold. Moving air warmed his face and hands. The light was shadowless, seeming to emanate from the walls, floor, and ceiling. A closed door was at the end of the corridor. The entrance port had been opened by thick gray-metal curving rods that disappeared inside a six-foot high cube of gray metal by the outer wall. The base of the cube seemed to be part of the floor. No welding or bolts held it.
Burton waited until Alice, Aphra, Nur, and de Marbot had entered. He told them not to go more than ten feet from the port. Then he called out, "You fellows bring in the small boat!"
Tai-Peng said, "Why?"
"We'll wedge it in the door. It should keep the door from swinging shut."
Alice said, "But it'll be crushed."
"I doubt it. It's made of the same substance as the grails and the tower."
"It still looks awfully fragile."
"The grails have very thin walls, and the engineers in Parolando tried to blow them up, to crush them with powerful machinery, and to dent them with triphammers. They had no effect whatsoever."
The corridor light shone on the faces of the men in the boat below. Some looked surprised; some, delighted; some, emotionless. He wasn't able to determine by their reactions who X might be.
Only Tai-Peng had questioned him, but that didn't mean anything. The fellow was always wanting to know the why.
With the help of all, the vessel was lifted up and gotten halfway through the port. It was just wide enough to stick in the middle of the O, leaving room for those outside to crawl in underneath after they'd passed in the packs and tins.
Burton backed away as they came in one by one. He held his pistol in his hand, and he told Alice to bring hers out. The others, seeing the weapons trained on them, were astonished. They were even more so when he told them to put their hands on top of their heads.
Frigate said, "You're X!"
Burton laughed like a hyena.
"No, of course not! What I'm going to do now is to root X out!"
45
* * *
Nur el-Musafir said, "you must suspect all but Alice of being X."
"No," Burton said, "some of you may be agents, and if you are, speak up. But I have seen the Ethicals in their Council, and there are only two in this group whose physiques resemble the person I think might be X!"
He waited. It became evident that if any were agents none was going to admit his or her identity.
"Very well. I'll explain. It seems obvious that X was Barry Thorn and perhaps Odysseus. Thorn and the self-proclaimed Greek were short and very muscular. Both had similar features, though Odysseus' ears stuck out and he was much darker. But these differences could be due to disguise-aids.
"The two Ethicals who resembled them were called Loga and Thanabur.
"Two of this group could be either. Or both. I believe, however, that the engineer Podebrad, who was killed on the Rex, was Thanabur. I admit that it could have been Loga. In any event, we're not going one step further until I question – most severely – two of this group."
He paused, then said, "These are Gilgamesh, the self-proclaimed king of Uruk of ancient Sumeria, and Ah Qaaq, the self-proclaimed ancient Mayan!"
Alice said in a low voice, "But Richard! If you press him too hard, he can just simply kill himself."
Burton roared, "Did you hear what she said? No? She said that all X has to do to escape is to kill himself! But I know that he isn't going
to do that! If he does, he can't carry out his plans, whatever they are! No more raising from the dead for him!
"Now . . . I've finally taken action because we are at a place where we can go no further without him. Only X knows how to cancel the gas or supersonic frequency or whatever that felled the Egyptians. And I want answers to my questions!"
"You're desperate, man!" Tom Turpin said. "What if none of us is X? You're skating on mighty thin ice."
"I'm convinced that one of you is he," Burton said. "Now . . . here is what I plan to do. If no one confesses, then* I'll knock you, Gilgamesh, and you, Ah Qaaq, out. You're my prime suspects. And while you're coming out of unconsciousness, I'll hypnotize you. I found out that Monat Grrautut, the Arcturan, and the men who claimed to be Peter Jairus Frigate and Lev Ruach had hypnotized my friend Kazz. They're not the only ones who can play at that game. I'm a master hypnotist, and if you're concealing something, I will get it out of you."
In the silence that followed, the others looked uneasily at one another.
Croomes said, "You're a wicked man, Burton! We're at the gates of Heaven, and you talk of killing us!"
"I said nothing about killing," Burton said, "though I'm prepared to do it if I must. What I want is to clear up this mystery. Some of you may be agents. I implore you to step forward and confess. You have nothing to lose and much to gain. It's too late now to attempt to hide things from us."
De Marbot said, sputtering, "But . . . but, my dear Burton! You hurt me! I am not one of these damnable agents or Ethicals! I am what I say I am, and I'll strike the man who calls me a liar!"
Nur said, "If one or both of them is guiltless, then you will have injured and insulted an innocent. It would be brutal to do so. Moreover, you'll have made an enemy of a friend. Can't you hypnotize them without violence?"
"I hate doing this as much as any of you," Burton said. "Believe me when I say that. But an Ethical would be an excellent hypnotist himself, and no doubt his powers of resistance will be very strong. I must knock these two out so that they won't have these powers, catch them when they're half-witless."