The Dark Side (6 page)

“I’d like to sleep on that,” he said cautiously. “Do you mind if I defer judgment for the night? I haven’t had any sleep for thirty-six hours, and I’ll just pass out, if I don’t get some.”

“All right,” Bell said. “You think it over. With The Enemy out of the way it might be easier to find your Avatars, too, you know. Nothing ever works right while he’s in power.”

When Hugh awoke his brain did not function properly for quite a few seconds. The bed had had fleas in it, and the changeless brilliancy of the “daylight” had kept him awake a long time despite his exhaustion. The sight of the black-clad figure seated on the nearby stool did not register at first.

“Good mornin”,” he said muzzily. Then, “You!”

“Me,” the man in the top hat replied ungrammatically. “I had to wait for the two Princes to get out of the house before I could see you. I’ve been looking for you.”

“
You’ve
been looking for
me
,” Hugh repeated angrily, sitting up in bed. He noticed with only faint surprise that the wall of the room was plainly visible through the visitant’s shirt bosom. “Well, you’ll have to solidify a minute if you’re going to do me any good. I’m supposed to touch you.”

“Not yet. When you do, this image will vanish, and I’ve got a few things to talk to you about before that happens. I got bounced back two hundred years in time past on account of a fool mistake you made, and I’m as anxious to see you straightened out as you are yourself.” He hiccuped convulsively. “Luckily I’m a book collector with a special bent towards Cruikshank. I had sense enough to consult Dr. Lee while I was behind the times, and found out where you were. Do you know?”

“Where am I? Why, I’m Outside.”

“Use your noggin. How much does ‘Outside’ mean to you, anyhow?”

“Very little,” Hugh agreed. “Well, the only other place I know where people go that make mistakes is—awk! Now, wait a minute! Don’t tell me—”

The figure nodded solemnly. “Now you’ve got it. You should have guessed that when the Princes told you their boss was called the Old One. You’ve already had clue after clue that they’re forbidden to conceal from you; that no one dies here; that all the world’s magicians come here eventually; that making money—remember the saying about the root of all evil?—is the town’s principal industry; and so on.”

“Well, well.” Hugh scratched his head. “Hugh Tracy, Ph.D., F.R.A.S., spending a season in Hell just like Rimbaud or some other crazy poet. The fall season at that. How Evelyn would love this. But it’s not quite as I would have pictured it.”

“Why should it have been?”

Hugh could think of no answer. “Who’s Yero, then? He’s called The Enemy.”

“He’s their enemy, sure enough. I don’t know exactly who he is, but he’s someone in authority, and his job is to see the Purgatory candidates get a chance to straighten things out for themselves. Naturally the Fallen buck him as much as possible; and part of the trick is to disguise the place somewhat, to keep its nature hidden from the transportees—the potential damned—and lure them into doing something that will keep them here for good. That bed you’re in, for instance, is probably a pool of flaming brimstone or something of the sort.”

Hugh bounded out hastily.

“Yero establishes himself in the fortress of Dis, which is what that pile of chromium junk is, up on the hill, after you get behind the disguise. Each time he comes, he makes a tour through the town, showing himself to each newcomer in a form which will mean the most to that person. The important thing is that few people take kindly to being corrected in the fundamental kinds of mistakes that bring them here, so that nine times out of ten Yero’s appearance to you makes you hate him.”

“Hmm,” Hugh said. “I begin to catch on, around the edges, as it were. To me he looked like a man I’d started out to murder a few days ago.”

“You’re on the track. Examine your motives, use your head, son, and don’t let the Princes trick you into anything.” The pellucid shape steadied and grew real and solid by degrees; the man in the top hat rose and walked toward the bed. “Above all—don’t hate Yero.”

His outstretched hand touched Hugh’s sleeve, and he vanished on the instant with a sharp hiccup.

There was no one in the house, and nothing to eat but a halfconsumed and repellent-looking pudding left over from the “night” before, which he finished for lack of anything else rather than out of any attraction the suety object had as a breakfast dish. Then he left the house in search of the other Avatar.

The light was bright and cheerful as always, but he felt chilly all the same. Discovering where he was had destroyed all of his amusement in the town’s crazy construction, and taken the warmth out of his bones. He eyed the passers-by uneasily, wondering as each one approached him whether he was seeing someone like himself, a soul in eternal torment, or an emissary of the Fallen whose real form was ambiguous.

For the rest of the morning he roamed the streets in search of a likely-looking figure, but finally he had to admit that his wanderings were fruitless. He sat down on a doorstep to think it out.

His Avatars were the “symbols of his error”; they were night-prowlers, obviously, because he had been one himself, gun in hand. The error itself was something to do with Jeremy Wright and Evelyn—not the impending murder, because it had not been committed, but some other error. The man in the top hat had been chosen, perhaps, because he had conceived of Wright as a cavalier, a suave home-breaker, or something of the sort; dinner clothes made a pointed symbol of such a notion. Of what else, specifically,had he suspected Jeremy? Tom-catting!

He groaned and dropped his head in his hands, remembering the cat he had seen in conjunction with his first sight of the man in dinner clothes. How was he to find one ragged alley-cat in a town where there were doubtless hundreds? Cats did not wear period costumes. He couldn’t go around touching cats until something happened!

He heard a sniffing sound and a thin mournful whine at his side. He looked down.

“Go ’way,” he said. “I want a cat, not a mongrel pooch.”

The puppy, recoiling at the unfriendly tone, dropped its tail and began to sidle away from him, and gloomily he watched it go. Brown dog?—Brown cat?—Brown dog! An inspiration!

“Here, Fleet,” he essayed. The puppy burst into a frenzy of tail-wagging and came back, with that peculiar angled trot only dogs out of all the four-footed beasts seem to affect. Hugh patted its head, and it whined and licked his hand.

“There, there,” he said. “You’re lost, I know. So am I. If your name is Fleet, we’ll both be home shortly. It darn well better be Fleet.”

Hugh considered the animal speculatively. It certainly seemed to respond to the name; but then, it was only a puppy, and might just as easily respond to any friendly noise. Grimly he sat and waited. In about an hour the dog began to get restless, and Hugh carted it across the street to a shop and bought it some meat, leaving in payment a letter from a colleague which the shopkeeper seemed to think was full of cantrips, charms of some kind. Then he resumed his vigil.

It was approximately four o’clock by his personal time-keeping system when he finally heard the sound he had been listening for, but not daring to expect—the voice of the red-headed urchin, calling his dog’s name in incredibly weary tones. In a moment the boy appeared, his face tear-streaked, his feet stumbling, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep. The stick was still pulling him, and the conical cap, by a miracle, still rested askew on his head. The rod lunged forward eagerly as soon as it pointed toward Hugh, and the boy stopped by the doorstep, the divining rod pointing in quivering triumph squarely at the puppy. The boy sat down in the street and began to bawl.

“Now, now,” said Hugh. “You’ve found your dog. Don’t cry. What’s the matter?”

“I haven’t had any sleep or any food,” the boy snuffled. “I couldn’t let go, and the dog could move faster than I could, so I’ve been pulled all over the city, and I’ll bet it’s all the Old One’s fault, too—” His voice rose rapidly and Hugh tried to calm him down, a little abstractedly, for in the reference to the Old One, Hugh had recognised the boy’s real nature, and knew him for an ally. Wait till I tell Evelyn, he told himself, that I’ve seen an Archangel and one of the Cherubim face to face, and hatched plots with the Fallen!

“I saw your dog, and figured probably you’d be along.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. I guess I’d have spent the rest of eternity chasing him if you hadn’t held him until I could catch up with him.” He looked angrily at the forked stick, which now lay inert and innocuous on the cobbled pavement. “I used the wrong spell, and it had to smell people. No wonder we could never get close enough to Fleet for him to hear me!”

“Do you think you could make the rod work again?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Only I never would.”

“I want to use it. Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind. It’s my uncle’s, but I can always cut another one. Only it won’t work without the hat, and I took that from my uncle too. He’s an Authority,” the urchin added proudly. Hugh thought of Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice and grinned.

“How come you didn’t shake your head and knock it off when you got tired?”

“Oh, the hat only starts it. After that it goes by itself. I just didn’t want to lose my uncle’s hat, that’s all.”

“Good for you. Then suppose I borrow the hat for just a minute, and you grab it when the stick starts. I want to find a cat.”

The boy shook his head doubtfully. “I wouldn’t want to do it myself, but it’s your business. What kind of cat? I have to make up a spell.”

Hugh anticipated some difficulty in explaining what it was he wanted, but to his relief the boy had already recognised him as a transportee and understood at once.

“All right. Put the hat on. Pick up the stick like I had it. That’s it, one fork in each hand. Now then:

“Seeker of souls, lost boys and girls,

Of objects and of wells,

Find his gate between the worlds

Before the curfew knells;

Find the cat who should reside

In the mortal world Inside.”

The divining rod started forward with a terrific jerk, and Hugh plunged after it. The boy ran alongside him and snatched off the magician’s cap. “Thanks,” Hugh shouted. “You’re welcome,” the boy called after him. “Good luck, sir, and thank you for holding my dog.” Then the stick hauled Hugh around a corner, and the dog-owner was gone; but in Hugh’s mind there remained a split-second glimpse of a strange smile, mischievous, kindly, and agelessly wise.

The cherub had not specified in his incantation which sense the rod was to use, and so it had chosen the quickest one—intuition, or supersensory-perception, or sixth-sense—Hugh had heard it called many things, but until he held the ends of the fork he had never quite comprehended what it was.

The stick drew him faster. His toes seemed barely to touch the hard cobbles. Almost it seemed as if he were about to fly. Yet, somehow, there was no wind in his face, nor any real sensation of speed. All about him was a breathless quiet, an intent hush of light through which he soared. The houses and shops of the town sped by him, blurred and sadly unreal. The outlines danced waveringly in a haze of heat.

The town was changing.

Fear lodged a prickly lump in his larynx. The facades were going down as he came closer to his own world. He knew that before long the conventional disguises of the town would be melted, and Hell would begin to show through. Startled faces turned to watch him as he passed, and their features were not as they should be. Once he was sure he had confronted Bell and Martin for an instant.

A cry, distant and wild, went up behind him. It had been Bell—or was it—Belial? Other feet were running beside his own; shortly there were other cries, and then a gathering roar and tumult of voices; the street began to throb dully with the stampeding feet of a great mob. The rod yanked him down an alleyway. The thunder followed.

In the unreal spaces of the public square the other entrances were already black with blurred figures howling down upon him. The stick did not falter, but rushed headlong toward the castle. His hands sweated profusely on the fork, and his feet skimmed the earth in great impossible bounds. The gates of the fortress swept toward him. There were shadowy guards there, but they were looking through him at the mob behind; the next instant he was passing them.

The mists of unreality became thick, translucent. Everything around him was a vague reddish opalescence through which the sounds of the herd rioted, seemingly from every direction. Suddenly he was sure he was surrounded; but the rod arrowed forward regardless, and he had to follow.

At last the light began to coalesce, and in a moment he saw floating before him a shining crystal globe, over which floated the illuminated faces of his wife—and—Yero, The Enemy. This was the crucial instant, and he remembered the simulacrum’s advice: “Don’t hate Yero.”

Indeed, he could not. He had nearly forgotten whom it was that Yero resembled, so great was his desire for escape, and his fear of the tumult behind him.

The light grew, and by it, the table upon which the crystal rested, and the bodies belonging to the two illuminated heads, became slowly visible. There was a cat there, too; he saw the outline become sharp as he catapulted on through the dimness. He tried to slow down as he approached the table. The rod, this time, did not resist. The two heads regarded him with slow surprise. The cat began to rise and bristle.

The shouting died.

“Hugh!”

He was in Jeremy Wright’s apartment, a splintered door behind him, his heels digging into the carpet to halt his headlong charge. In his outstretched hand was, not a warped divining rod, but a gun.

“Hugh!” his wife cried again. “You found out! But—”

The table was still there, and the crystal. The cat and the castle were gone. But Jeremy Wright was still dressed in the robes of an astrologer. He
was
an astrologer.

“I’m sorry, darling, honestly—I knew you hated it, but—after all, breaking in this way! And—a gun! After all, even if you do think it’s humbug—”