“This is the fourth,” Turnbull told him. The big man shook his head. “No side tunnels.”
“And the tunnels run in straight lines?”
“As near as damn.”
“Impossible!” Varre grinned, but it wasn’t a natural grin. He looked sick.
“What?” Anderson stepped forward. “Did you say impossible, Jean-Pierre? How do you mean?”
Varre shrugged listlessly. “Obviously there is no mathematician amongst you,” he answered. “No geometrician!” They looked at each other blankly and Varre sighed. “Try drawing it,” he said. “In your minds or in the dust. With four tunnels to each junction-it will function perfectly—like a simple system of squares, for example—but not with five. If there are five radiating tunnels, then one of them either stops short every time, or it must cross another tunnel!”
“Murphy’s law!” Gill gasped, looking like he could kick himself. “We tried every tunnel but the last one—which was probably the right one.”
“What do you mean, the right one?” Turnbull frowned.
Gill nodded, indicating Varre. “He designed the thing—however unconsciously—and he’s also provided the clue. If the fifth tunnel in each set doesn’t join up with any other, then where does it go to?”
“It rises through an incline, perhaps?” said Angela. “To the surface?”
“Or … it stops short,” said Varre ominously. “A dead end. It’s my world, remember? And you know what I am … .”
Alarmed, Gill went to him. “Jean-Pierre, don’t talk like that. Don’t even think like that!”
Varre looked at him and grinned again, vacantly. Or perhaps not vacantly. There was something sick but at the same time very sly about him. He scratched absentmindedly at his scarred thigh where his trouser leg had been torn away. “Gill,” he said, “Spencer—we’ve always known, haven’t we, you and I?”
“Known what?” Gill tried to fathom the man’s mind.
“About the House of Doors.” The other shrugged. “Aided by your talent, you could feel it all around us, and oppressed by my phobia, so could I. We’ve always known. We have that in common, at least.”
Gill nodded. “That and the fact that we’ve been through hell together—all of us. And that we’re now trapped in your nightmare. Oh yes, we have several things in common.”
Varre also nodded, and narrowed his eyes. He seemed to come to some decision or other, licked his lips and began to blink rapidly. He looked at the others where they watched him curiously, backed nervously away from them. “Gill,” he said, his voice suddenly urgent, “Spencer, I need to talk to you … in private!”
Turnbull stepped forward and out of the side of his mouth said, “Spencer, this bloke is trouble. He’s better off asleep. And we’ll be better off, too.” He made a grab for Varre, who avoided him and darted into a tunnel.
Gill caught Turnbull’s arm. “No,” he said sharply. “First let’s see what he has to say. He’s already given us a few things to think about, so now let’s find out if there are any more.” He went to the mouth of the tunnel and saw Varre’s silhouette crouching there a little way along it. “Jean-Pierre?”
“I need to talk to you, Spencer,” the little Frenchman said again. “But in private. In here …”
Gill joined him and they moved out of earshot of the others in the main cave. “Spencer,” said Varre in a whisper, “I forgive you for putting me to sleep. I can see that it was necessary. And while I was out I seem to have compensated somewhat.” He looked shudderingly about at the tunnel’s confines. “My phobia is active, obviously, but at the moment it’s at least controllable. While I was asleep, though, I dreamed … strange dreams.”
“Oh?” Gill waited.
“Spencer,” Varre continued in a little while, “what do you know of the legend of the werewolf?” There was that in his voice which made the short hairs rise at the back of Gill’s neck.
“I know it’s just that,” he answered. “A legend, a myth. There are no such creatures. What we saw in Clayborne’s world was of his own mind. You shouldn’t worry about things like that.” And to himself: Maybe Jack Turnbull was right and we’d all be a lot better off if you were still asleep, Jean-Pierre.
“But … that awful thing bit me!” the Frenchman insisted. “It bit me in Clayborne’s world, and its weight pushed me through the door.” He felt his thigh. “The wound has almost healed now—which would normally be impossible in itself—and yet I have this feeling that … that …”
“Jean-Pierre.” Gill tried to stay calm, started to make his way back along the tunnel to where the others were waiting. “You really mustn’t dwell on such things. Not in this place.” He didn’t like to take his eyes off Varre, but he couldn’t very well back along the tunnel. That would be as good as admitting that the Frenchman’s worst fears were real. And so he looked at him one last time, at his yellow eyes in the gloom of the place, then deliberately turned his back and paced away from him. But in his pocket, Gill kept his right hand firmly clenched on the silver rod of alien metal. “Better come out now,” he said. “Time is wasting.”
“You’re right, of course,” Varre answered. And Gill heard the pad of the Frenchman’s feet as he began to follow him. A moment later and they stepped back into the junction cave; Gill began to breathe again; his nerves quit jumping and his pounding heart slowed into something like its normal rhythm.
“Spencer,” said Angela, taking Gill’s elbow. “We’ve been talking about what Jean-Pierre said. And it looks like he’s right. These tunnel mouths are not equidistant. Four of them go off at right angles, making the grid of squares that he mentioned. But the fifth falls between two of the others. If you look at those three tunnel mouths there you’ll see what I mean: the one in the middle is the one we want—and it’s the one we didn’t try in the first cave.”
“It might be the one we want.” Gill gave her his attention. “Look, I don’t want to put you down, but there’s really only one correct solution to any maze. If each and every junction has one possible escape route, we could end up trying out an awful lot of them before we discover the one that will lead us to the surface—before David’s lighter runs out of fuel! But I agree: we have to start somewhere, and it might as well be with this odd-tunnel-out as with any other.”
“I’ll try it,” said Turnbull. “The rest of you stay put. I’ll go faster on my own.” He disappeared into the tunnel mouth.
They waited for him, and looking from face to face Gill could see how the strain was working on them. Angela was dirty, a mass of bruises from her falls and scratches from the rust; despite the fact that the maze wasn’t really cold, still she shivered persistently. Anderson was haggard; his grey face twitched and his lips trembled. Bannerman was … simply Bannerman. His blank, leaden eyes hid a great many secrets, Gill was sure, and distracted one’s concentration from his actual expression. But in fact Bannerman had never had much of an expression of any sort. And Varre—
The little Frenchman was back in the column of hazy light that shone down from on high. Head tilted, he stared directly up the shaft, perhaps longing to be able to climb it, longing for the freedom of the surface. Poor bastard, Gill thought. He’s living out his nightmare, stuck like a fly in the molasses of his mind.
“Jean-Pierre,” said Angela, “you shouldn’t stare into the sun like that. Even indirectly, it can damage your eyes.”
He glanced at her, and the way he tilted his eyebrows made his eyes seem slightly slanted. He smiled a queer, lopsided smile. “Sunlight?” he said. “But what makes you think it’s sunlight, my dear? Oh no, no—not sunlight.” He stepped from the shaft of light into a haze of floating dust motes, and for the first time Gill noticed the length of his jaws, the way he seemed to crouch down a little—like an animal at bay—into himself.
“Not sunlight?” she repeated him wonderingly.
“Moonlight!” said Varre. “Most certainly the light of the full moon …”
Oh my God! thought Gill—but
at that precise moment Turnbull came scrambling out of the tunnel. He was obviously badly shaken; he turned to look at the tunnel mouth, backed away from it, gulped audibly and tried to speak.
“Jack?” Gill prompted him.
Turnbull found his voice. “Fifty paces and the tunnel slopes, all right—but downwards! A few more paces and it plummets. I got the hell out before it tipped me to blazes! Also, it narrowed down a lot. Even coming back I got the feeling that … that …” He stared wide-eyed at the tunnel mouth, then whirled and stared at the other tunnel mouths. And: “Spencer,” he gulped, “for Christ’s sake tell me I’m seeing things, will you?”
Gill looked, as did the others, but what they saw only confirmed Turnbull’s horror. With wild, anxious, inarticulate cries, they all rushed to the mouths of the tunnels and touched them, grasped and strained at them, attempted uselessly to reverse the monstrous, inexplicable process taking place. But they couldn’t.
The five tunnel mouths were visibly smaller. They had been something like five feet in diameter—but now they were only a little more than four!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“It’s that crazy bastard!” Turnbull yelled, pointing accusingly at Varre. “Spencer, you should have let me deal with him.”
He’s right, Gill thought, but would it have made any difference? In any case, it was too late to “deal with him” now. The House of Doors was reacting to the Frenchman’s fears, magnifying them out of all proportion. Gill knew it was too late, but the fact had obviously escaped Turnbull. The big man leaped for Varre—only to pull up short and fall back.
Varre had gone into a crouch. Long-snouted, lean-bodied, slant-eyed, he fell to all fours and backed towards a tunnel. His features seemed to melt and flow. His clothes slackened around him and he stepped out of them. Yellow eyes burned and a yellow tongue lolled, and Varre was no longer a man. The great wolf bunched its muscles.
Gill swept Angela behind him, tried to shut everyone’s cries of shock and terror out of his mind. He brought into view the silver cylinder and let his machine instinct take over. The weapon whirred in his hand, glinting where it reflected the yellow light from the shaft. “Jean-Pierre,” he said, “if you can understand me at all, then understand that this will kill you. It’s not a silver bullet, no, but it will slice you up as small as mincemeat. Don’t make me do it.” He swung the weapon in an arc before him, slicing left to right, and the wolf backed into the tunnel mouth directly behind it. In another moment it had turned tail and fled. Its howl, long drawn out, ;.reverberated back to them in the laden, constricting air.
“Bannerman,” Gill growled, turning now to the “blind” man. “Varre’s not responsible for any of this; you are.”
Turnbull herded Angela and Anderson to Gill’s rear, and Gill held out his weapon towards Bannerman where he stood with his back to the curving wall. For a moment the man’s face remained impassive, but then he smiled. It was a smile utterly devoid of human emotion. “You’re a clever man, Gill,” he said, “but only a man. And as you seem to be aware, I am something quite different and entirely superior.” ply
“The tunnels,” Anderson babbled from behind Gill. “They’re down to three feet in diameter. The whole cave is that much smaller!”
“Bannerman,” said Gill, “this was once your weapon. You know better than anyone what it can do. Now you have a choice: get us out of here or I use it on you.” He crowded Bannerman, thrust out the whirring weapon like a knife towards him.
“Fool,” said Bannerman, with neither malice nor emotion, making it a simple statement of fact. “You don’t need me to get you out. Did you think the House of Doors would make it that easy for you? Did you think that this was the end of the game? When you finally break, Gill, that’s the end of the game—but not yet for a while, not yet. Just how long it will take depends entirely upon you—and upon the others, of course. As for myself, it’s time I left you to your own devices.”
Gill lunged at him. Bannerman’s eyes came alive, glowed like coals; his breath whooshed like a great bellows; he floated up off the floor, drifted towards the vertical shaft directly overhead.
At first astonished, finally Gill sprang forward, made a flying leap upwards with his weapon hand outstretched. The weapon struck Bannerman’s right thigh halfway between hip and knee, slicing the entire leg from his body as if it were papier-mache! The severed limb thumped heavily, soggily down between the four still entirely human beings, slopping its juices and rolling a little on the floor. And Bannerman screamed.
It was a sound formed in a man’s throat but having origin in an alien mind. A hideous thing to hear, it grated like chalk on a blackboard, like a shovel in cold ashes. Bannerman floated on high, screaming still as he passed out through the ever-narrowing shaft and was gone. A pattering of liquid droplets, some of them blood, fell from the yellow haze.
“Shit! Oh, shit!” Anderson was on the point of fainting. “The bloody walls are closing in!”
“Spencer, hold me!” Angela clung to Gill. He put away his alien weapon and crushed her to him.
But Turnbull was still thinking, still actively seeking an answer, a way out. “Gill,” he shouted as the walls continued to close on them. “Bannerman said it wouldn’t be finished until we had broken. So for fuck’s sake don’t break now!”
They heard a pitiful mewling, looked towards the tunnel down which Varre had disappeared. He was in there, one scrabbling paw extended, slavering wolf’s muzzle framed in a nine-inch tube of rock. The horror of his situation got through to Gill: the fact that his nightmare from Earth—from birth, probably—was crushing him here in an alien world.
“Oh, Christ!” Gill cried. He knew he must make a quick end of it for Varre. He snatched the weapon from his pocket, took two swift paces to the wall and tube where the wolf was being pulped. But even as he got down on his knees the hole closed. Gill saw it happen: solid rock, a wall of the stuff, sealing itself like a pebble dropped in fine wet concrete. It closed with a sound like a fat child crunching a large apple, or ripe bladders of seaweed bursting underfoot, and the extended paw was nipped off and fell to the floor.
Gill straightened up and was pushed back as the wall advanced. He stood with Angela, Anderson and Turnbull, back-to-back, and the gap between their faces and the curving, tightening wall was only fifteen inches. Gill looked at the whirring weapon in his hand, then at the blank wall, and said, “Fuck you!”
He sliced with the weapon, carving at the wall as if in a last desperate bid to dig his way out. And that was the answer!
It was similar to putting the like poles of a pair of magnets together: they opposed each other, wouldn’t interact, held each other at bay. The whirring weapon was like a catalyst—it signalled a change—and the synthesizer, waiting, put the change into immediate effect. Where there had been a tightly curving wall, a tube of rock closing on the four, now there were—
“Doors!” Anderson’s voice was a sandpapered croak. Somehow, through all of this, he’d managed to hold on to his lighter and keep its flame steady.
“Four of them!” said Turnbull as the flame of Anderson’s lighter flickered and sank to the merest spark.
“But they’re still closing in!” Angela cried as finally the flame expired.
Shaped like coffins, like the carved lids of sarcophagi, the square of stone doors squeezed the four together like stripes of toothpaste in a tube. The House of Doors gave them no choice, no chance to make up their own minds. Each had his or her own door, all four of which opened simultaneously to snatch them through …
Gill heard a distant, insistent whining. Mechanical or animal he couldn’t for the moment say. It was accompanied by a wet slapping sound and the feel of soft leather moistly applied to his face. In the back of his mind, as the whining grew louder and clearer, Gill wondered how long he’d been out. Then … he realized he was now awake, remembered what had happened, snatched himself back from whoever it was was doing whatever to his face.
The back of his
head came into sharp, cracking contact with something hard and metallic, something which clanged and shed flakes of rust. And almost before Gill had opened his eyes he knew where he was and understood how he came to be here. “Barney!” he gasped as the dog backed away from him, yelping and furiously wagging its stump of a tail.
And then Gill looked all around at the interior of the iron cave and the junk heaped everywhere, and shook his head in despair. Where to go from here (was there anywhere to go?) and what to do next? Obviously the House of Doors had returned him to his personal nightmare, the world of mad machines. And Angela, Turnbull, Anderson—what of them?
They (no, she, tor if he had to admit it, Angela was the only one who had really come to mean anything to him) she, then, was separated from him now by entire universes. Or by a world, two worlds, at the very least. And was one of them, he wondered, the world of her worst nightmares of violation? He prayed that it wasn’t, for her sake. And then he put it out of his mind. He had to, for now he must worry about himself. He must survive if he was to help anyone else survive. He must survive, if only for the sake of revenge, a chance to balance the score.
Bannerman, he told himself bitterly then, whoever or whatever you are, you’ve a lot to answer for. And if there’s any justice at all, I’m the one you’ll answer to!
He made to struggle to his feet and put down his hand on something soft, wet and fleshy. He hissed and jerked his hand back, and scrambled away from the thing he’d inadvertently touched. It was Bannerman’s amputated leg, lying there amidst the junk where it had come through Gill’s door with him. And beside it, Varre’s forepaw. Except that the latter was now a perfectly normal human wrist and hand again.
Gill grimaced. He forced himself to handle Bannerman’s leg, to prop it up so that he could examine the severed cross section. If Bannerman was an alien machine, some sort of robot, then it really ought to show. Something should show, for he had screamed when Gill cut him. Gill’s weapon had sliced his flesh as well as imitation or synthetic flesh. Gill looked: he saw skin and red, sliced flesh, fat and sinew, veins and arteries—but no bone! Where the bone should be was now a tube of metal, indenting when he touched it but always returning to its original cylindrical shape as soon as he released the pressure. Alien metal. And inside the cylinder—