“It’s better the way it is now,” I said in answer to his questioning look.
“There’s his answer and mine, too,” the giant said. “Defeat — and I know its flavor as well as anyone — is better than sterility, Faustopheles.” I was glad he had a chance to smile, for the next instant the bird must have gone to work on him once more. He groaned, and while he was still writhing Faustopheles hurried me away.
We were both silent as we left, my guide because he was disgusted with me, and I because I felt that I ought to have said more to a person punished for being my benefactor. “Is that really all he is being tortured for?” I finally asked.
“Madness should always be pegged down out of the way,” he rasped.
“But they did that other thing to him! Besides, he isn’t crazy.”
“You think not? What would you say if I told you that he acted in the full knowledge that he would be apprehended and punished?”
“He couldn’t have!” Yet as I said the words, I thought of Gawain throwing his helmet on the ground back at the green chapel. “It’s possible,” I corrected myself.
The tiny lift to my heart as I made that pronouncement must have been reflected on my face. In any case he sensed and resented it.
“Believe in the false face of nobility and the hypochondria of wrong doing if you will,” he snarled, “but they come to the same end. The same ultimate desolation snuffs them both up without changing expression. Struggles do not help; prayers and mea culpas do not help; boasts and defiance do not help, any more than protestations of good intentions or claims to achievement. There is only one stone in the burial ground of Eternity, and its inscription reads: ‘Nothing Matters.’”
He was trying to catch my eye, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see that I was down again. “That may be so,” I said, as indifferently as I could manage.
“May be! I tell you that it is so, and I will show that it is so. Where we are going now there is no vent, chink, or floor draft to admit a breath of any other conviction.”
The smoke thickened as we dropped lower; but it also became translucent to expose a sight of the conflagration which created it. When we reached that point I flinched.
“I’m not going any farther,” I told him.
“Not afoot,” Faustopheles agreed, springing to catch me under the arms as I attempted to retreat. He laughed as I wasted my strength trying to get away from him, then he leaped out into space with me. Simultaneously there was a ripping sound, and, like a parachute bursting from its casing, giant bat wings came through slits in his jacket to spread and beat the air.
We had dropped sickeningly before they caught hold. Thinking we wouldn’t make it, I shut my eyes; but when nothing happened to us, I worked up courage to look. Faustopheles was bearing me over what seemed to be a lake aflame. The smell of burning sulphur no less than the heat made me gasp so that I could not voice a protest.
Half-blinded also, I didn’t see the cliff rising from the molten surface until we had all but reached it. I thought he intended to dash me against it, but at his cry doors yielded before us. These swiftly closed to seal us in a vestibule, where Faustopheles set me down.
When I had cleared my lungs of smoke and my eyes of tears, I found myself, to my surprise, in reassuring surroundings. The entire vestibule was skillfully, if ornately, decorated, including the double doors directly before me. I examined them, then stretched my neck to make sure.
“You’re right,” Faustopheles said. “They are of gold.”
I looked at him quickly as an explanation occurred to me. “Are we through with the Pit and on the way out?”
“We are at the bottom of the Pit, and there is no way out,” he answered. “Get in front of me and walk straight ahead.”
29
A Brace of Courts
I STOPPED when I was past the doors; but Faustopheles shoved me; so I walked on, half blinded. All I could see was that we were in an immense room with towering walls. They gleamed like hot wires in the brilliant light. The only refuge for my eyes was the richly carpeted floor.
“You’ll get used to it in a few minutes,” Faustopheles said. “Hold your present course.”
I did so, taking only occasional glances at the decor. While it was too lavish for my taste, the workmanship was exquisite and the materials of breath-taking quality. Certainly nothing I saw gave me any cause for alarm. It was my nose rather which first furnished me with a warning. I walked a few more steps before I was able to recall why the smell suggested danger; and then I couldn’t believe I had isolated the right memory. It has been a long time since my nostrils had been familiar with the musk peculiar to a nest, say, of rattlers. Yet the farther I advanced, the stronger grew both the odor and the conviction that it could be nothing else.
As Faustopheles had promised, my eyes were doing better. We were approaching a long conference table of polished jade. At the far end was a throne-like chair whose upholstery was studded with jewels. The framework of the lesser chairs flanking the table was of solid crystal veined with what I took to be white gold or platinum.
The reflected light thrown by these was so strong that I thought them empty. Then I stopped short, discerning the occupant of one after the other. Hovering on a sinuous stalk of body above each of them, the throne included, was the head of a huge cobra, its eyes fixed upon me.
It would have been a hard thing to look upon in any case, but against a background of such elegance it was revolting as well as frightening. With a yell I spun to flee, but Faustopheles intercepted me.
“We arrived at an awkward moment,” he said in a tone that was meant to be soothing as well as amused. “Wait for it to pass.”
“I don’t want to!” I cried, struggling wildly. It was useless, and his own lack of panic made mine absurd. I quieted, and he released me.
“Look again,” he directed.
As it was more upsetting to have the snakes behind my back than before my face, I complied. There was now a man’s head to every chair, and while I stared the transformation was completed. Arms separated from serpentine trunks, which in turn took on human proportions. At the end handsome, richly clad persons were sitting at ease. Yet it was worse than before. Their distinguished bearing notwithstanding, they fixed upon me eyes that were still and exactly the eyes of poisonous snakes.
As I fidgeted, not knowing what to do or say, Faustopheles spoke up. “Great King and Emperor,” he said, bowing to the mighty fellow lounging on the throne, “I have brought you a new subject, one Silverlock, to share the bounties of your reign — and those other things we must share.”
“Does he belong here?” the emperor demanded in a hard, resonant voice.
“Not without some effort on my part, he does.” Faustopheles bowed again. “Those in the higher levels of the Pit still owe allegiance to some creed, but I have so worked on him that he clings to nothing but a vague spirit of rebellion. Even that isn’t out of place.”
“No. What are his talents and capacities?”
“Being a man, not many or great,” Faustopheles admitted. “But all we can capture or suborn serve our purpose.” There was a general murmur of assent, and he continued. “My thought was that we should keep him here until we can determine by observation the use to which he can best be put.”
I hadn’t interrupted, because I hadn’t been able to speak, but at that moment my voice came back to me. No matter what happened afterward, I felt nothing could be as bad as this place.
“I’m not staying here,” I announced.
Their reptilian eyes showed no emotion, though their mouths laughed. “But I’m going on to Hippocrene!” I cried, looking from them to Faustopheles. “You knew that all along.”
He was regarding me with the sly malice I had seen on his face at our original encounter, when he was disguised as a tattered cripple. Reading the expression, I knew myself trapped.
“But that was our bargain!” I protested.
“Our bargain was
that I would take you as far as I could,” he slipped it to me. “I have done so, for there is no farther place than this. Of course, you are free to turn around and go back.”
He drew a snicker with that from everybody but me. Thinking of the expanse of flames just outside the doors, I winced.
“No, it has to be forward,” I said, my voice cracking a little. “It must be possible! You told me you wouldn’t deviate a yard from the road to Hippocrene.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear from strangers,” he instructed me, “and not always from other people, either.”
He was having fun with me, but I couldn’t afford to get angry. “Look, Faustopheles,” I pleaded with him, “I’m not asking you to take any more trouble yourself. Just show me the way, and I’ll go on alone.”
“Go on to where? Do you want me to build an extension on finality for you?” He shook his head. “If you’ll think back, I warned you when you entered that there is no way out.”
“None,” the emperor seconded him. “Even the pull of gravity can help you no farther, for you are now at the bottom, here to abide, as do all abide who join us.”
Whereas I had thought myself at the end of my string before, it had not been so. The very act of moving from place to place is an anodyne, because suspended in it, in however weak solution, is the hope of moving toward betterment. But with that taken from me, I knew at last what emptiness of being was like.
I was trembling all over as I gazed around me, trying to think. In a moment I knew I would give the scream signifying that the ligaments of control and with them all resistance to Faustopheles had snapped; but I hadn’t reached that point yet.
They were watching as I sought distractedly for something suggesting a means of escape. Finally, having exhausted every other possibility, I stared back at them. It was futile to look for sympathy behind such faces; but I collected myself to try to read in them what they actually knew.
They kept my mind from theirs; but even so I suddenly knew something myself. The potency of their assembled personalities enabled my instinct to grasp what I had failed to sense in one of them alone as represented by my guide. The fact that a statement came from any mouth there was sufficient grounds for discrediting it. That truth, or what I hoped would prove a truth, stiffened me with the will to make one more counterattack.
“I don’t believe it!” I shouted. “I don’t believe there is nothing more than this!”
The grins which remained to taunt me after their laughter did not last long. They got lost in expressions of astonishment, for from somewhere there came the sound of singing.
I have known both joy and grief,
Neat or mixed together;
Cold and heat I’ve known and found
Both good drinking weather;
Light and darkness I have known,
Seldom doubting whether
Tammuz would return again
When he’d slipped his tether.
It took a mighty voice to reach clearly through those walls. It was not just any voice, either. I strained toward it, intent to make sure.
I remember gaudy days
When the year was springing:
Tammuz, Gilgamesh, and I
Clinking cups and singing,
Till Innini sauntered by,
Skimpy garment clinging
To her hips and things like that —
Tammuz left us, winging.
So we welcomed Enkidu
When he came to Erech;
He was rough as hickory bark,
Nothing of a cleric;
But his taste in wine and ale,
That was esoteric,
And he used a drinking cup
Which would strain a derrick.
It was Golias, beyond doubting. He was on the far side of the wall behind the emperor, and the growing volume of his voice showed he was coming nearer. As far as effect was concerned, he had already made his presence felt. His tone was as carefree as the words, and the impact of his jauntiness drove a hole in doom to let me breathe again. The tension which had threatened to break me eased. Nor was I the only one affected. Recovered from their astonishment, the others were glowering. The shattering of gloom was an aggravation to them in proportion as it was balm to me.
I still couldn’t locate anything that looked like a door, but Golias was plainly moving right toward us.
Khumbaba then felt our strength
In the magic cedars,
And we battled Anus bull,
Pride of Heavens breeders;
Thrice we struck, and once it fell,
Drawing wolves for feeders,
While we strode where drinking men
Called for expert leaders.
Tammuz must have joined us there,
But he’d just got wedded,
And Innini, blast the wench!
Hacked him as they bedded.
Damn such honeymoons as that!
Just the sort I’ve dreaded;
For a drinking man is spoiled
Once he is beheaded.
On the last word a panel in back of and to the right of the emperor bounced open, and Golias followed the foot that had kicked it into the room. Cool beneath the baleful glares of the owners, he finished his song while he appraised the situation.
So we waked him with a will,
Ale and tear drops pooling,
Then we drank to him for months
While the year was cooling;
But he came back with the grass:
“Death was only fooling,”
Tammuz told us. “Fill my cup;
I’m both dry and drooling.”
Golias was always as polite as circumstances permitted. He ended his recital with a bow to the emperor. The latter, however, was not mollified.
“That’s no song for this place,” he grated.
“It fits the occasion, your majesty,” Golias informed him.
“Precisely what,” Faustopheles demanded, “do you mean by that?”
Golias did not answer him. Instead he glanced at me with a twist of a smile.
“Having some trouble, Shandon?”
“Hello, Golias.” Remembering how cool I had been when I last saw him, I spoke diffidently. “They sort of won’t let me go.”
“If you hadn’t made it this far, there would have been no chance of their doing so.” Golias advanced from the doorway as he said that, and the way he did it showed me something. For all his surface casualness, he was tense and wary.
He was heading in my general direction when the emperor’s voice stopped him. “Before you go a step farther, Orpheus, state your business.”
Golias obeyed. He moistened his lips before he spoke, but when he did so his voice was steady.
“Great King and Emperor, I have come for this man, my friend.”
Not until then had I been sure that he had come solely on my account. His presence had shaken my chrysalis of despair. This knowledge struck it like lightning and shivered it.
Yet the immediate effect on my mind was to stun it, so that I did not think of thanking Golias. I was still more conscious of Faustopheles than of anybody else, and my impulse was to see how he was reacting.
Recognizing the strength of this challenge to his domination, he scowled at Golias. “You may have come for him, but you won’t get him,” he said. “And you may think yourself lucky to get hence yourself.”
I moaned as I saw that he was probably dealing in actuality. Unless Golias had brought along strong allies, the emperor’s crew had the physical power to make us stay.
“He gave himself over to me,” Faustopheles continued, “and signed it in his blood.”
“Did you, Shandon?” From the anxious way Golias looked at me, I saw that this was an important point. I checked the facts before answering.
“Something was written in my blood, right enough. But I specified that he should lead me only along the way to Hippocrene. Then he lied and brought me here.”
&nbs
p; “No,” Golias corrected me. “He lied to you if he said this was not en route. His imperial majesty’s court is one of the great way-stops.”
“It’s no way-stop for him,” Faustopheles declared. He looked at me as he spoke, and I felt my mind losing ground before the power of his eyes. “Oh, he squeaked and thrashed around like a muskrat being pulled under by a pike; but I dragged him down and down, and he knows there is nothing but hollowness, stupidity, and vileness.”
It did, indeed, seem to me, as his brain bore down on mine, that there was no sense in going farther even if it turned out to be possible. “You’d better get out if you can and think it’s worth while, Golias,” I said.
“When I’m ready. Is there anyone here,” he suddenly shouted, “such a fool as to believe that because there is good, there is no evil?”
“There is evil,” their triumphant voices called back.
“Then is anyone here,” Golias took them up, “so reckless as to claim that because there is evil, there is no good?”
They snagged their breaths on that one. There was a silence which seemed to suck up the air. Then they all spoke, as if under an irresistible compulsion.
“There is good.”
The phrase was a moan; and after it was stilled I heard a voice that could only have been that of the emperor. “I remember it,” he whispered.
Yet it was not his concession which most influenced me. I had been watching Faustopheles, and his lips had formed the words: “there is good,” too. At that moment I found myself with the power to look away from him.
Once again I was able to remember that Golias had come there for me, and all that fact stood for. Finding his eyes waiting, I spoke.
“I want to get out of here, and you can count on me now to work or fight for it. Is there a way?”
“None at all!” Faustopheles snarled. He sprang to confront Golias. “Do you think it really matters to us whether he knows there are better places? Does he think we came here by choice ourselves?” He paused for a grim laugh in which the others joined him. “But this is our place now. It contains us, blotting us up until we have no other identity. It is our only rightful condition, and will so assimilate him — no, both of you! That door by which you entered has shut forever behind you, Orpheus.”