Dannto wheehahoed and slapped the table so the dishes and ware rattled.
Candleman dropped his spoon and glared at Leif. A flush crawled up from the high neck of his uniform.
“Your thoughts do not seem to be as pure as a lamechian’s should be,” he said.
Dannto chuckled. He turned to Leif. “Jake’s a little oldfashioned.”
“If being oldfashioned means rigidly and undeviatingly following the teachings of Sigmen, real be his name, then I plead guilty,” said Candleman.
“Well, such remarks as Leif just made aren’t specifically forbidden,” replied Dannto, his smile disappearing into the fat on his face. “However, you may be right.”
Candleman raised his eyebrows slightly and said, “I feel that I’ve failed because, so far, I’ve gotten no clue as to who Jacques Cuze is or the extent of his organization. But I think that when he made this attack upon Mrs. Dannto, he made a serious mistake. Why? Because she was riding in an auto-taxi, remotely controlled, and the crash came about through mechanical breakdown or through deliberate manipulations at Central-control. When we find out who’s responsible, we’ll have a lead to this mysterious Frenchman.”
“Auto-taxi?” said Dannto, frowning. “That’s funny, since she has a car and chauffeur of her own. The chauffeur is one of your men, Candleman. Why should she be in a taxi? Where was she going?”
“That is what I’d like to know. I can’t ask Mrs. Dannto because Dr. Barker refused me admission. And then put her to sleep for twelve hours.”
“I hope you’re not doubting my professional ability,” said Leif. His expression told plainly that it made no difference to him.
“Oh, no,” said the Uzzite with a quick glance at Dannto. “I realize that Mrs. Dannto’s health comes before anything.”
“What about her escort?” asked Leif.
“He was called on the QB by an unknown person. While he was talking, Mrs. Dannto left the back way and got into a cruising auto-taxi.”
“What do the machine’s records show as to her destination?”
“Nothing. They were demolished in the crash. The taxi, as near as we can determine, left the road and crashed through a bridge railing. It fell thirty feet. However, Mrs. Dannto gave three different destinations during her ride. Each time she arrived, she directed the machine to another. Evidently, she was working up to her final stop by stages in an attempt at shaking off any tracker, or with the idea of jumping out and taking another taxi while the first proceeded on its way.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” demanded the Archurielite in a loud voice. “You’re accusing my wife of conspiracy!”
“Not at all. Her behavior was mysterious, yes, but she will undoubtedly be able to explain it—as soon as she comes out of her sedation,” he added.
“But that’s not all. One of my men, who appeared at the scene of the crash shortly after it happened, told me that a little girl was run over by the taxi just before it broke the rail. My man thought she was dead, because her skull was smashed, and so he concentrated on getting Mrs. Dannto out of the taxi. When the ambulance came, he directed them to Mrs. Dannto first.”
Leif said, “I suppose he had recognized her!”
“Yes, why?”
“And he didn’t know the little girl?”
“No, what are you getting at?”
“Nothing important.”
He was aware of Candleman’s speculative stare and guessed that the Uzzite was making a mental note to ask a selfdoc just what Leif meant. Also, whether it represented a deviation from Leif’s recorded behavior pattern.
“When my man returned to the bridge,” continued the Uzzite, “the girl was no longer there. And the ambulance men had not picked her up. Naturally, he looked around, and he saw her being carried away by two men accompanied by two women. He called after them. They disappeared around a corner. He chased them into a subway and saw them stop behind a pillar. But when he got there, he could find no sign of them.
“He continued down the tunnel, for there was only one way they could go. At the end of the tunnel he met another of my men. This fellow swore that nobody had come through while he was there, and he’d been there for at least half an hour.
“Naturally, the latter is now being questioned. It’s obvious that he must be an accomplice.”
“Accomplice of what?” asked Leif.
Candleman shrugged shoulders thin as a coathanger.
“I don’t know. But I strongly suspect they are followers of Jacques Cuze. There was a big J.C. scratched into the cement wall close by.”
“You can find those in many places in Paris,” said Leif.
Candleman’s eyes sparked like a grindstone sharpening knives in the dark.
“I am fully aware of that. But I promise you that before the year is up, Jacques Cuze will be dead or in H.”
“Why would they carry the girl off?” asked Dannto. “She couldn’t get the medical care underground that she could here.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Candleman, glancing at the doctor. Leif did not condescend to reply.
“If she’d been brought here, there’d have been an investigation. And her parents would have been exposed. They preferred to let her die rather than take that chance. Anyway, she was probably dead.”
“I’m surprised, Jake,” said Dannto, “that you would admit that an unrealist had snatched away one of their own members from under the nose of the Uzzites.”
“If there is one thing I pride myself on—one completely realist attitude—it is honesty,” said Candleman. For the first time at dinner his voice bore expression. “I try to conceal nothing, in accordance with the teachings of Sigmen, real be his name, through all time.”
Something that had been hidden away in Leif’s brain, far down and in the darkness, suddenly began to make sense.
He leaned forward and said, “Candleman, what did these four people look like?”
The Uzzite blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Did they look—foreign? Or strange?”
“Why do you ask?”
Leif leaned back. “You answer me first.”
“Shib. He said they were very blond and their faces seemed out of proportion. The noses had huge flaring nostrils but were high-arched. Their lips were thick. He couldn’t see the color of their eyes, of course, being too far off, but the girl had very light blue eyes.”
“Ah, yes,” said Leif non-committally. So it was the four who’d tried to detain him this morning!
“Yes, what?” asked Candleman.
“Well, if there really are Frenchmen living underground today—if this Cuze isn’t entirely legendary—then they would look different from the modem Parisian, who is a descendant of Icelanders. Of course, there is a certain amount of French blood in him. Not all the French perished during the Apocalyptan Plague. The descendants of the survivors, however, were conquered and absorbed by the invading Icelanders a century later.”
“Perhaps,” said Candleman, “they did look different.
I don’t know. I’ve never seen a picture of a pre-Apocalyptic Parisian.”
“Do you know anything of the French language?”
“No, I’m an Uzzite. If I want specialized knowledge, I go to a specialist.
“Let me tell you,” continued Candleman, leaning forward, moving his thin hard lips like two lobster claws, “that Jacques Cuze is no legend or myth. He lives in the vast underground network of abandoned subways and the even deeper ancient sewers of Paris. From his hidden headquarters he directs his organization. Occasionally, I’m sure, he makes appearances above ground.
“I’ve hunted for him from time to time. A thousand men have been pulled from their regular duties and sent below with hound and light and gun. We’ve sealed off mile on mile of tunnel and filled them full of gas. And killed nothing but rats.”
“Isn’t it ridiculous to suppose that Frenchmen would live centuries in those holes, keep up their populations, retain their lan
guage and their hopes of regaining their country?” asked Leif.
“It may look that way,” replied Candleman. “But the living presence of Jacques Cuze refutes your argument.”
“When did you first learn of him?”
“Several years ago we captured a Cold War Corpsman from March. Before he could bite down on the poison tooth most of them carry, one of my men shot his jaw off. When he recovered consciousness, he couldn’t talk. No tongue.
“But he could write. We asked him for a confession. After a reasonable amount of resistance against questions, he agreed to write one out. He did so in March phonetics, which at once justified my suspicions that he might be a Marcher. But he only wrote two words, and then stopped. He kept pointing at them; I finally found out he wanted them pronounced. What it meant, I didn’t know, but I called in a linguistics joat. He took one look, seemed puzzled, and then pronounced, aloud, the two words.
“The next I knew, I was in a hospital bed. A splinter of the prisoner’s skullbone was stuck in my temple; I’d been very lucky not to have been killed at once by it.
“Later, I pieced together various reports and found out what had happened. The fellow had not only carried poison in a tooth; he had had implanted under his skull a small but powerful bomb. And this could be set off by uttering these syllables.
“He’d tricked us. His head had blown apart and killed the three men closest to him, including the linguistics man. It had also destroyed the paper.
“Fortunately, I have a very good memory. You have to in my profession, you know. I remembered the fatal words had been Jacques Cuze. You’ll note I pronounce it according to the Icelandic; you never know when the man you’re talking to may be a Marcher, and both of you will go up in one blast.
“It was after that that I began to tie up the ubiquitous J. C. with this Jacques Cuze. And then I found a paper in one of the deserted rooms in the sewers. This was brief, but it was in French. I had it translated by a linguistic joat. It was propaganda against the Haijac Union and a plea for the return of the country to those people to whom it rightfully belonged—and it named Jacques Cuze as the leader of the diehard Frenchmen, living like rats under Paris.”
Dannto laughed nervously.
Candleman said, “Deride me if you want to. But I think that J. C. has launched these attacks on Mrs. Dannto. And I’m convinced that your life is in danger unless he’s captured.”
Chapter 11
Dannto LISTENED TO Candleman’s revelations, then put his hand over his mouth to cover a belch before he replied, “It’s a pleasure to be imperiled if, in so doing, I may advance the Sturch and prepare for the temporal arrival of the Forerunner.”
He paused a moment to munch upon a sandwich of antpaste and then said, “There is, of course, a certain amount of speculation among us Urielites about the meaning of the word ‘temporal.’
“Some of us think that it may not necessarily mean the physical appearance of Sigmen, real be his name, upon this earthly scene. Temporal might possibly have an esoteric meaning. It might mean his appearance in some other sense. As far as that goes, he himself did not use the word ‘appearance’ in his Time and the World Line. Instead, if I remember correctly, he wrote ‘arrival’. That, you’ll have to concede, can mean many things besides appearance.
“It might be intended that we should take Sigmen’s voyagings in time, not as chronological, but as allegorical voyagings. Thus, these people who are getting hysterical about the Timestop, and the literal reappearance of Isaac Sigmen, may be disappointed when Timestop does come.
“The truth might be that Timestop means that the Haijac Union and its Sturch may triumph over all the nations of earth, that we may conquer them, destroy their false religions and states, and set up the true Sturch. Thus, in that sense, it might be said that Sigmen has returned and that time has stopped. It would, you see, because then true stasis would arrive. There would be no more of this eternal change that is the mark of the other nations’ barbarism and bestiality.”
Candleman had been shifting uneasily. When Dannto paused, he broke in.
“ Abba, I am faithful enough to you and to the Sturch you represent. There may be no doubt of that. Therefore, it hurts me to hear you speak words that border on unreal thinking. This allegorical interpretation of the Forerunner’s works was once a thing that would never have come to the lips of a Jack. If it had, he would have ended up in H.
“No, don’t get angry. It’s true. But now, during the last twenty years or so, we literalists have seen with increasing alarm that more and more Urielites are speaking of esoteric meanings, hinting that perhaps things may not exactly be as described. I want to make it plain, right here and now, that I, and other literalists, do not like to hear such talk. It seems to us to smack of unreality. It is a sign of the degeneration of the times. It is, in fact, exactly what the Forerunner predicted. He said there would be strange doctrines and people trying to twist his words. He said to beware of them. He said such thinking would result in degenerate morals, in people turning away from reality.
“And he is right. For in the past few years we’ve seen the resurrection of dancing, of women wearing immodest clothes, of lipstick and rouge, of the discarding of street veils for women. I see all these things, and I’m sick to my stomach.”
“It doesn’t seem to have affected your appetite,” said Dannto dryly.
He spoke easily, seemingly unaffected by the Uzzite’s tirade. Leif was surprised he hadn’t flared out, for his words were a direct criticism of Halla Dannto. He himself, he thought, should protest, for Ava also was being scourged. But he decided that a silent contempt would hurt the man worse.
“The issue,” said Dannto, “is not at all as clear as you make it. Sigmen, real be his name, was rather ambiguous in his statements as to the manner of his Timestop. I suggest you read the Works again with that thought in mind. You’ll find that both litcralists and allegorists have good arguments, and both can quote chapter and verse and extra-scriptural authorities to support their contentions.
“I say there is only one way to tell. Wait and see. I am certain, however, that unflinching adherence to the Sturch is the way to be sure of being rewarded on Timestop. Whatever the manner of the Forerunner’s arrival, he will repay his real believers for their faith.”
“Reality be his and mine,” murmured Candleman with bowed head. Then, lifting it suddenly and glaring about, he said, “But there are many people who are determined to make pseudo-futures real. The Israelites and Marchers, of course; Jacques Cuze is another; and there is, I believe, still a fourth. For instance, once, during an undercity hunt, we found a crypt full of bodies. Chiseled in the stone was a single figure, a fish. It wasn’t until then that we connected this fish with others that had been reported on the walls of the surface city.”
“What does the fish represent?” asked Dannto.
Leif was interested, too. It was the first time he’d heard of them.
“I’ll tell you,” said Candleman somewhat smugly. “It’s my theory that Jacques Cuze...”
“Oh, no, here we go again,” murmured Dannto, so low that only Leif heard him.
.. is the religious leader of the few Christians left in Europe, all of whom are underground. The head of the Holy Timbuktu Church in Africa has promised Cuze that if he succeeds in his rebellion, he’ll restore the ancient French religion there, perhaps move to Paris and make it his capital. Of course, such a cause and such a promise are hopeless, but Cuze and the Timbuktuians are unrealistic and think as such.”
Leif blinked. This was new to him.
“On what facts do you base your theory?” he asked.
“On what is obvious,” retorted Candleman with an irritated wave of his bony hand. “There can be no other interpretation.
“The Bantus, being Christians, still use Greek and Latin rootwords for their scientific and theological writings. The Greek word for fish is Ichthyos. The first two letters are iota and chi; I and X. These, I’ve been told by a
linguistics expert, are the closest rendering to the Roman alphabet-letters of J. and C. I and X equal J and C, which are Jacques Cuze’s initials. I stands for loannos, which is Greek for John. X stands for chusis, the Hellenic word for stream. Stream recalls fish, naturally, and also stands for the underground, as chusis, by a stretch of meaning, may also be understood as a subterranean river.
“It’s that simple. Fish stands for IX. loannos Chusis; John Stream; Jacques Cuze. Thus the fish symbol is the link between the underground French patriot and the Timbuktuian church.”
Leif was caught between laughter and admiration for • the ability of the human mind to rationalize.
“My,” marveled Dannto, “all this going on, and the only reason I found out was that Halla became a victim of these people. Perhaps. Tell me, Jake, what about the church to whom the majority of the Africans belong? The Primitives? After all, the Holy Timbuktu members reside in a comparatively small state; they don’t have nearly the power or facilities for underground work that the Primitives do.”
Candleman held his palms up.
“I don’t really know. All I learned was from a one-hour talk with a linguistic joat, one of these jack-of-all-trades.
I’ve not had time to study as I should. My days and nights are taken up with an immense amount of administration work and my hunt for Cuze.”
“You can tell the difference if you meet them,” said Leif. “The Timbuktuians will fight; the Primitives are absolute pacifists.”
“I know they are,” said Candleman. “They make a continent ready for plucking. If the Izzies didn’t stand between them and us, we could have, overnight, two-thirds of Africa. Once the Israeli Republics are overcome —and I’m confident that the return of Sigmen will see that—we’ll just have to walk into the country south of the Sahara Sea to take it over.”
“Passive resistance will take its toll,” said Leif.