Doomsday Eve Read online

  Some of the logic of the question must have penetrated to the officer's mad mind. "No. No, you wouldn't. That is, I guess you wouldn't. But you might be trying to trick me." The thought of being tricked seemed to bring all his fury to the surface. "You did it once before, you and the girl."

  "How?" Zen demanded.

  "You put us all to sleep, you and that girl? Don't tell me you didn't. I was there."

  "I was there but I didn't have a damned thing to do with it. And neither did the girl."

  "Then who did?"

  "West. He was outside with some kind of a sleep generator that operated electronically."

  Doubt came over the lieutenant's face. How was he to know if this tall, thin yankee was telling the truth. In his book, all Americans were liars. Why trust this one?

  "If you lie to me—"

  "I know. You'll shoot me. And I'll return from the other world and strangle you some night, while you sleep."

  The shot went home. Like most Asians, this officer was superstitious. Watching the reaction, Zen wondered if this man would ever again dare to go to sleep at night. The deadly dugphas, the devil souls of the departed, might strangle him in a spirit noose the instant he closed his eyes.

  On the other hand, there was Cuso. The lieutenant knew what the Asian leader would do to him. Zen could see him making up his mind that it was better to take a chance on the deadly devils that roam the darkness than on Cuso. The night devils might miss.

  "You lie!" The lieutenant lifted the rifle.

  At the same instant, Cuso and West entered. The lieutenant lowered the rifle. Hastily he approached his chief and saluted. Then, taking as few chances as possible, he prostrated himself on the floor. Reaching for Cuso's foot, he tried to place it on his neck as a token of submission.

  Cuso kicked him in the face. The Asian leader's eyes ranged the room. He saw instantly that his prisoners were missing. His eyes turned green. He kicked the lieutenant in the face again and demanded to know what had happened.

  The luckless officer broke into a stream of tight, sing-song language. Now and then he waved his hand as if to say that they had been here but had gone away. "The dugphas took them," he screamed in English.

  Cuso kicked him in the throat this time. He had no belief in night devils, he did not think they could spirit live people away, and he was not afraid of them.

  Another burst of broken, impassioned speech came from the lieutenant's lips. Listening to the sound, watching the contortions in the officer's body, Zen thought with some satisfaction that Ed and Jake were being avenged. Not that they deserved vengeance; they had gotten exactly what was coming to them.

  West remained aloof. He glanced around the room but no flicker of surprise showed on his face. Did he know what had happened here? Cuso, listening to his lieutenant, glanced once at the craggy man, a look that was pure suspicious hatred. If it had been possible, Cuso would have had West skinned alive then and there.

  Too much was at stake for that. A flayed man could not reveal his secrets. He could only die.

  Cuso left off kicking his lieutenant and trying to listen to him at the same time. He turned to West.

  "It seems that your people have—departed," he said.

  "At least, they do not seem to be here," the craggy man answered. Again his voice had the deep boom of a bell in it.

  "That is interesting," Cuso said.

  "I find it so," West answered.

  "How was it done?"

  West spread his hands in a gesture that said something, or nothing. "Perhaps it would be best to ask them."

  "You know." The words were a statement, not a question.

  "It could be," West answered.

  "Then how?" Cuso's words sounded like the snap of a bear trap closing. "I want to know how it was done. No alibis. No evasions. No excuses. Just the truth." The tone of his voice carried the threat of violence with it.

  West smiled. "Have I alibied or evaded? Did you not see everything in our center here?"

  "I saw many things. That I saw all I do not know."

  "You saw what the colonel here—" the craggy man nodded toward Zen, "—called my super radar."

  "Did you show him that?" Zen demanded.

  "Of course. I have no secrets from the great Asian. Besides, has he not promised me a commission as a marshal in the armed forces of his land?"

  The words were easily spoken but Zen knew that West was actually stalling for time. What was he waiting for? Was it the appearance again of the face that had looked from the air in the center of the room? Were the vanished people to reappear, armed with new weapons, and take the Asians prisoners?

  "To hell with his commission!" Zen shouted. "He'll never make good on his promise."

  "Shut up, both of you!" Cuso shouted. His voice was a bull bellow of sound that roared back from the walls of the gallery and was echoed from the tunnels that led outward. "You are stalling. You are trying to trick me."

  West was silent.

  "My dog here says the people vanished." Cuso kicked his lieutenant again to indicate who was meant. "Howl, dog!"

  The lieutenant obeyed. He was in such a state of mind that if Cuso had told him to die, he would probably have obeyed, as a result of terror and suggestion.

  "Do you want to howl like a dog too?" Cuso said to West.

  "Really, the possibility does not concern me," the craggy man answered. "Did you have that in mind for me?" The tone was conversational.

  "West, this is no time to go over," Zen growled.

  "I have no such intention, colonel."

  "You admitted once that what you wanted most to do was to join the bronze youth. I'm asking you—"

  "Shut up!" Cuso screamed. "The next person to open his mouth without my permission I will have shot out of hand."

  "Ah," West said.

  The Asian leader started to shout an order at his soldiers to shoot the craggy man, then changed his mind as he realized that even though he had the weapons and the men, there was nothing he could gain by killing the goose that might possibly lay a golden egg. As much as he wanted to have West killed, for defying him, he knew he would have to save this pleasure until later.

  Cuso swallowed his anger. Since his rage was so great, he had to swallow several times before he got it all down, after which he looked as if he were going to choke on it.

  "Look, let's be reasonable," he urged.

  "I'm willing," Zen said.

  "You're not worth a damn to me!" Cuso shouted.

  "He is worth something to me," West interposed.

  Again the Asian swallowed. If ever he reached the explosion point, his anger was going to come out as boiling rage. "As I said, let us be reasonable and talk this over together."

  "Glad to," West agreed. "What is more reasonable than a corpse?"

  The question took Cuso aback. But only for an instant. "Come to think of it, you're right. Nothing that I have ever seen is more agreeable than a corpse, to me, that is. Are you still determined to volunteer for that position, or should I say condition?"

  "Any time," West answered. "As I told Kurt some time ago, I am rather tired of this plane of existence and I would like to see what it's like over yonder. Not that I don't already know," he added.

  "You know what it's like beyond death?" Cuso asked, curious in spite of himself.

  "Certainly," West said, in a sure tone of voice.

  Listening, Zen again had the impression that the craggy man was stalling for time again. On the other hand, he might be telling the literal truth, he might know what waited at the end of life. If so—Zen let this possibility slide hastily out of his mind. He had more to think about now than he had brain cells to use for the task.

  "Then what is it like?" Cuso asked.

  "You have heard of heaven—"

  "Yes."

  "That's where I'm going."

  As he spoke, West vanished.

  A stunned silence held the big gallery. Cuso, his mouth hanging open, stood leaning forward. On
the floor, the lieutenant dared to sit up. He even dared to speak.

  "See! That's the way they went. I couldn't stop 'em."

  Cuso shouted an order at his men.

  Zen found himself tied hand and foot. A raging maniac paced the floor beside him. Every now and then Cuso kicked him. Screaming at the top of his voice, the Asian leader invited Zen to vanish too. It did Zen no good to try to protest that he was not one of the new people and that he knew nothing of the method they had used in disappearing.

  In Cuso's mind, he was one of them.

  He was to be treated as such.

  XIII

  At first, the lighted matches under his toe nails hurt like the very devil. He had never known such pain. Then he forgot about the matches under his toe nails. They started lighting them under his fingers.

  "Where did they go?" Cuso screamed. "How did they do it?"

  Zen had long since ceased trying to say that he didn't know. Instead of speaking, he shook his head. This was all he could do. Cuso interpreted the head shake as a stubborn refusal to answer. He kicked the colonel in the face.

  At the kick, the race mind clicked in. This was the effect Zen had—as if a third person had suddenly come in on a party line. After that, the pain from the kick did not seem so important. The torture from the matches under his nails seemed to diminish also.

  Not that the contact with the race mind nullified the pain or made it any less real. Fire was still fire and torture was still the same. But neither were very important.

  Other things were.

  Zen tried to concentrate his attention on the other things. The room, the shouting Cuso, the two Asians who were holding him down while the third thrust the matches under his nails, the shivering Cal, the lieutenant who was over-eager to obey his leader's orders, all these seemed to become misty and vague. These things were real; there was no question about that. But his mind was contacting another reality which made these things different. Time began to lose its meaning.

  He wondered if he was fainting. Another question came across his thoughts, heeled over like a sailing ship moving across the wind. Was he dying?

  There was no shock with the thought. If that was the way it was, then he was more than ready.

  "You are not fainting and you are not dying," the race mind whispered to him. "Come closer to me."

  "How do I come closer to you?"

  "Let go." The voice of the race mind was like a whisper from the other side of infinity. "Let go and come to me."

  Dimly, he wondered how one let go. The answer came with the question. The words meant exactly what they said, the meaning was literal—let go.

  As he performed the action that went with the words, the big gallery, Cuso, the lieutenant, and the torturers faded away and became a part of a misty world that seemed to have no real existence. Even the pain vanished.

  "Come to me," the race mind whispered, again and again, a luring voice that drew him irresistibly.

  Abruptly, he was back in the gallery. He did not know how long he had been gone but he realized that some time must have passed, enough to allow them to set up a portable radio transmitter in the gallery. The set looked to be very powerful. A yellow-skinned operator was huddling over the controls.

  "In contact with Asian headquarters," Zen thought. He knew his thinking was correct.

  Off somewhere in the distance outside the mountain the night shuddered. He knew the meaning of the sound. A rocket ship was either landing or blasting off, probably the latter. A long line of burdened Asians was moving through the gallery.

  At the sight of their loads Zen knew what had gone into the hold of that ship. The equipment of the hidden center here. He saw parts of the super radar go past on the backs of sweating Asian soldiers, and he knew where this was going.

  At this knowledge, anguish came up in him. With West's super radar in their possession, no American secret was safe from prying Asian eyes, unless some way could be found to shield the frequencies employed.

  Such shielding might work for laboratories, but there was no way to shield troop movements and take-offs and landings. These would be as public as an advertisement.

  His face was wet. He could not understand this until another bucket of water hit him. An Asian bent over him, saw that his eyes were open, and grunted with satisfaction. They started again on his fingers.

  The radio operator called to Cuso, giving him a message. Zen could not understand the language but the Asian leader was both startled and elated. He shouted at the men carrying loads to work faster.

  "Not much time left. Big bomb coming."

  "What bomb?" Zen thought. With the question came the answer. Warned by Cuso that their preparations were probably known, the Asians had decided to launch their super bomb immediately. Turmoil came up inside Zen at this knowledge.

  Real pain came from his finger tips as the torturers began operations again.

  "Do you want to die?" the race mind whispered in his thoughts.

  Although he couldn't contact it, the race field could reach him. "You have suffered all that is required. You have met the law. You may join me, if you wish."

  "I—" Zen shut off his thinking. This was fantasy, the product of torture and nearing dissolution. His own imagination was tricking him, he thought.

  "This is not your imagination," the answer came. "This is what you call the race mind."

  "But—"

  "How do you know? You don't. At this point, you have to accept me on faith." The thinking flowing smoothly into his mind went into silence, then came again, stronger than before. "Do you want to die? You have earned the right."

  "No," Zen answered. He screamed the words again. "No. No!"

  "The path before you will be difficult."

  "I don't care how difficult it is. There's work to be done!" Again he shouted the words.

  "Very well. It is your choice. You may remain among the living for as long as your strength may last." The voice whispering in his mind went into silence.

  Kurt continued screaming. Pain raced through his consciousness again. As he came awake he realized that he was screaming at the torturer to stop.

  He also realized that the Asian had stopped. There was a sound in the gallery. Filling the air, it seemed to emerge from the very walls of the mountain itself.

  The note of a violin!

  High and sweet and compelling, the sound came from nowhere. Every atom in the solid stone walls seemed to pick it up and to rebroadcast it. The molecules of the air seemed to dance in resonance with it.

  Simultaneously, about ten feet above the floor, the face appeared again.

  The lieutenant's rifle blasted at it. He fired shot after shot at point blank range. Red-hot slugs howled from the walls of the big gallery in a cacophony of death.

  The face smiled at the lieutenant. The lips moved. "Keep shooting, old fellow," the lips seemed to say.

  The officer emptied his gun. In a desperate burst of fear, he threw it at the mocking face.

  The weapon passed through the face without harming it.

  "You fool! That's a projection, not a real person!" Cuso shouted. He grabbed the officer by the shoulder and spun him backward to the floor. "Who are you?" he demanded of the face.

  It smiled at him.

  Zen repressed the impulse to shout. He knew what was going to happen next.

  "I said, Who are you?" Cuso shouted again.

  The crash of something in the gallery jerked his attention away. Twisting his head around, he saw that one of the soldiers engaged in carrying the loot of this cavern out to the plane waiting to hurry it to Asia, had collapsed on the floor.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Cuso would have had the man summarily executed. But with that face smiling at him out of nothing, these circumstances were not ordinary.

  Zen, knowing what was going to happen, forgot the pain of his burned fingers and toes. He could feel it creeping over him in waves. This time he did not resist it: He let his eyes close.

&
nbsp; When he opened them, the torturer was snoring beside him. Every Asian in the big gallery was sound asleep.

  People were crowding around him. The new people. In a sweeping glance, he recognized every person he had met here, except Nedra, and he did not see her at first because she was busy bandaging his hands. West was smiling down at him with an expression that was somehow grandfatherly. But back of West's smile was perturbation.

  Zen started to get to his feet and discovered they had not as yet removed the ropes from his legs. As one did this, Nedra clucked reprovingly at him and tried to tell him that he was wounded. He said this did not matter. Faces were here that he did not recognize. This did not matter either.

  "You did this?" he said to West.

  "Yes. I designed and built the equipment. Others were operating it in this instance." West had something else on his mind.

  "Thanks," Zen said. "Why didn't you take me with you when you went—wherever it was you went?"

  "We couldn't," West answered. "You haven't had the training."

  "Why did you come back?"

  "To rescue you. Kurt—" West had something that he wanted to say.

  "Nedra, will you stop fussing with me? I'm all right."

  "But your poor hands and feet."

  "I don't even feel them. I won't have them to feel at all unless action is taken. Don't you understand. Somewhere in Asia they're getting ready to launch a super bomb. Or maybe it's already on its way."

  "I didn't know," the girl said. "The big one?"

  "Yes."

  A flicker of pain crossed her face and she shook her head. "I always wondered what it would be like to live on a mud flat. I wonder if we will be oysters, or eels. Or maybe crabs."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Zen demanded.

  "After the bomb goes off," the girl said.

  "What then?"

  "The race mind will have to start over again," she explained. Her manner indicated that she was explaining something that she clearly understood. She seemed to wonder why he did not understand it. "Maybe we will be turtles? That will be funny! A turtle that can remember when it was a man! That's the way it will be. Except—"

  "I know all about that."