<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
<p>It was Urson who first pointed it out. "Look at the far bank," he said.</p>
<p>Across from them, they could make out an obviously man-made stone
embankment.</p>
<p>A few hundred feet further on, Iimmi sighted the spires above the trees,
still across the river from them. They could figure nothing for an
explanation, till suddenly the trees ceased on the opposite bank and the
buildings and towers of a great city broke the sky. Elevated highways
looped tower after tower, many of them broken, their ends dangling
colossaly to the streets. The docks of the city just across from them
were completely deserted.</p>
<p>It was Geo who suggested, "Perhaps Hama's temple is in there. After all,
Argo's largest temple is in Leptar's biggest city."</p>
<p>"And what city in Leptar is <i>that</i> big?" breathed Urson, awfully.</p>
<p>"How do we get across?" asked Iimmi.</p>
<p>But Snake had already started down to the water.</p>
<p>"I guess we follow him," said Geo, climbing down over the rocks.</p>
<p>Snake dove into the water. Iimmi, Geo, and Urson followed. Before he had
taken two strokes, Geo felt familiar hands suddenly grasp his body from
below. This time he did not fight, and there was a sudden sense of
speed, of sinking through consciousness.</p>
<p>Then he was bobbing up through chill water with the rising embankment of
stones to one side and the broad river to the other. He switched from
skulling into a crawl now, wondering how to scale the stones when he saw
the rusted metal ladder leading into the water. He caught hold of the
sides and pulled himself up.</p>
<p>Snake came up now, and then Urson. And, at last Iimmi joined them on the
broad ridge of concrete that walled the flowing river. Together now on
the wharf, they turned to the city.</p>
<p>Near them, piles of debris lay between two taller buildings. After a few
minutes' walk the building walls had reached canyon size. "Now, how are
you going to go about looking for the temple?" Urson asked.</p>
<p>"Maybe we can take a look from the top of one of these buildings," Geo
suggested.</p>
<p>They turned toward a random building. A slab of metal had torn away from
the wall, and stepping through, they found themselves in a huge hollow
room. Dim light came from a number of white tubes set around the wall.
Only a quarter of them were lit, and one was flickering. Hung from the
center of the room was a metal sign which read:</p>
<p class="center">NEW EDISON ELECTRIC COMPANY</p>
<p>and beneath it, in smaller letters:</p>
<p class="center">"<span class="smcap">Light Down The Ages</span>"</p>
<p>One of the huge cylinders, across the floor, was buzzing.</p>
<p>As they mounted a spiral staircase to the next floor the great room
turned about them, sinking. At last they stepped up into a dark
corridor. A red light glowed at the end which said: EXIT.</p>
<p>Doors outlined themselves along the hall in a red haze. Geo moved to one
at random and opened it. Natural light fell in on them as the others
came to see. They entered a room whose outer wall was torn away. The
floor broke off irregularly over thrusting girders.</p>
<p>"What could have happened to it?" Urson asked.</p>
<p>"See," Iimmi explained. "That roadway must have crashed into the wall
and knocked it away."</p>
<p>A twenty-foot ribbon of road veered into the room at an insane angle.
The railing was twisted, but there were the stalks of street lights
still intact along the edges.</p>
<p>"Do you think we could climb that?" asked Geo. "It doesn't look too
steep."</p>
<p>"For what?" Urson wanted to know.</p>
<p>"To get some place high enough to see if there's anything that looks
like a temple."</p>
<p>"Oh," said Urson in a reconciled voice.</p>
<p>In general the walk was in good shape. Occasional sections of railing
had twisted away, but the road itself mounted surely between the
sheering faces of the buildings on either side of them through advancing
sunset.</p>
<p>It branched before them and they went left. It branched again and again
they avoided the right-handed road. A sign, half the length of a three
masted ship, hung lopsidedly above them on a building to one side.</p>
<p class="center">WMTH</p>
<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Hub Of World News, Communication, & Entertainment</span></p>
<p>As they rounded the corner of the building, Snake suddenly stopped and
put his hand to his head.</p>
<p>"What is it?" asked Geo.</p>
<p>Snake took a step backward. Then he pointed to WMTH. <i>It ... hurts.</i></p>
<p>"What hurts?" asked Iimmi.</p>
<p>Snake pointed to the building again.</p>
<p>"Is there someone in there thinking too loud?"</p>
<p><i>Thinking ... machine</i>, Snake said. <i>Radio ...</i></p>
<p>"A radio is a thinking machine and there's one in there that's hurting
your head?" interpreted Iimmi, tentatively, and with a question mark.</p>
<p>Snake nodded.</p>
<p>"How come the one he showed us before didn't hurt him?" Urson wanted to
know.</p>
<p>Iimmi looked up at the imposing housing of WMTH. "Maybe this one's a lot
bigger."</p>
<p>"Look," Geo said to Snake, "you stay here, and if we see anything, we'll
come back and report, all right?"</p>
<p>"Maybe it stops later on," Urson said, "and if he ran forward, he could
get out the other side. It may just stop after a hundred feet or so."</p>
<p>"Why so anxious?" asked Iimmi.</p>
<p>"The jewels," said Urson. "Who's going to get us out of trouble if we
should meet up with anything else?"</p>
<p>They were silent then. Their shadows faded over the pavement as the
yellow tinge in the sky turned blue. "I guess it's up to Snake," Geo
said. "Do you think you can make it?"</p>
<p>Snake paused for a moment, then shook his head.</p>
<p>"Well," Geo said to the others, "come on then."</p>
<p>Around them was a sudden click, and lights flickered all along the edges
of the road.</p>
<p>"Come on," Geo said again, and once more they started, passing the
lights which wheeled double and triple shadows about them over the road
and the opposite railing. When they reached the next turn off that led
to a still higher ramp, Geo looked back. Snake's miniature figure sat on
the edge of the road's railing, his feet on the lower rung, one pair of
arms folded, one pair of elbows on his knees. The light above him.</p>
<p>"Keep track of the turns," said Geo.</p>
<p>"I'm keeping," Iimmi assured him.</p>
<p>"By the time we get to the top of whatever we're trying to get to the
top of," rumbled Urson, "we won't be able to see anything. It'll be too
dark."</p>
<p>"Then let's hurry," Geo admonished.</p>
<p>Sunset stained one side of the towers copper while blue shadows hugged
the other. By way of a plastic-domed stairway, they mounted another
eighty feet to a broader highway where they could look down on the band
of lights which was the one they had just left. They were beginning to
clear the roofs of the lower buildings now.</p>
<p>On this road fewer lights were working. They were just about to enter a
dark section when a figure appeared in silhouette at the other end.</p>
<p>They stopped, but the figure was suddenly gone. A little farther, Geo
suddenly halted and said, "There!"</p>
<p>Two hundred feet ahead of them, what may have been a naked woman rose
from the ground, and began to walk backwards until she disappeared into
the next dark length of road.</p>
<p>"Do you think she was running away from us?" Iimmi asked.</p>
<p>Urson reached out and touched Iimmi's jewel. "I wish we have some more
light around here."</p>
<p>"Yeah," Iimmi agreed. They continued.</p>
<p>The skeleton lay at the twilight edge of the next stretch of functioning
lights. The rib cage marked sharp lines on the pavement with shadow from
the lamps' glare.</p>
<p>"Do we turn back now?" Urson asked.</p>
<p>"A skeleton can't hurt you," Iimmi said.</p>
<p>"But what about the live one we saw?" countered Urson.</p>
<p>"... and here she comes now," Geo whispered in a cynical stage voice.</p>
<p>In fact two figures approached them through the shadow. As Urson, Geo
and Iimmi moved closer, one stopped, and then the other a few steps
before the first. Then they dropped. Geo couldn't tell if they fell, or
lay down quickly on the roadway. But they seemed to have disappeared.</p>
<p>"Go on?" asked Urson.</p>
<p>"Go on," said Geo.</p>
<p>Pause. "Go on," from Geo.</p>
<p>Two more skeletons lay on the road where the figures had disappeared a
minute before. "They don't seem dangerous," Geo said. "But what do they
do? Die every time they see us?"</p>
<p>"Hey," Iimmi said. "What's that? Listen."</p>
<p>It was a sickly liquid sound, like mud dropping into itself. Something
was falling from the sky. No, not the sky, but from the roadway that
crossed fifty feet above them. Looking down again, they saw that a blob
of something was growing on the pavement ten feet from them.</p>
<p>"Come on," Geo said, and they skirted the mess dripping from above them,
and continued up the road, passing four more skeletons. The sound behind
them turned into a wet sloshing. Turning, they saw it emerge into the
light—shapeless and jelly-green under the white flare. Impaling its
membrane on the skeletons, the mass flowed around them, faster, covering
them, molding to them. There was a final surge, a shrinking, and its
shapelessness contracted into limbs, a head, feet. The naked man-thing
pushed itself to its knees and then stood straight, the flesh by now
opaque. Eye sockets caved into the face. A mouth ripped apart on the
skull, and the chest began to move with a wet steamy sound in irregular
gasps.</p>
<p>It began to walk toward them, raising its hands from its sides. Then,
behind it in the darkness, they saw more coming.</p>
<p>"<i>Damn</i>," said Urson. "What do they...?"</p>
<p>"One, or both, of two things," Iimmi answered, backing away. "More meat,
or more bones."</p>
<p>"Whoops," Geo said. "Look back there!"</p>
<p>They whirled and saw seven more figures standing quietly behind them,
while the ones in front advanced.</p>
<p>A covered flight of stairs had its entrance nearby, leading to the next
level of highway. They ducked into it and fled up the steps. Geo glanced
back once; one of the forms had reached the entrance and had started to
climb. He was also, he realized, high enough to get some idea of the
city, which stretched, beyond the transparent covering of the steps,
away in a web of lighted roadways, rising, looping, descending. Two
glows caught him: one, beyond the river, a red haze that flickered
behind the trees and was reflected on the water itself. The other was
within the city itself, orange white, nested among the buildings.</p>
<p>He turned back up the steps. A gurgling sound neared them as they
reached the top entrance. Geo had only gotten half clear of the entrance
when he yelled, "Yikes," and then, "Duck!"</p>
<p>They slipped from the doorway and nearly fell, avoiding a mass of jelly
the size of a two-story house which flopped against the entrance. They
edged by its pulsing, transparent sides. The lamp light pierced into it
a yard, and once a skull swirled toward the surface and then sank again.</p>
<p>Suddenly it sucked away from the entrance and shivered ponderously
toward them. Something was happening at the front. Figures, three or
four of them, were detaching themselves from the mother mass and
preceding it.</p>
<p>They turned and ran along the road, plunging suddenly into an extended
darkened section. A moment later there was a glow in front of them and
suddenly Urson yelled, "Watch it!"</p>
<p>Abruptly the road sheered off in front of them; they halted, and then
approached the edge slowly. The surface of the road tore away and the
girders descended, webbing toward the ruined stump of a building from
which the orange-white glow rose. The glow came from the heart of the
edifice. "What do you think it is?" asked Geo.</p>
<p>"I don't know," said Iimmi.</p>
<p>They looked, and in the shadow, numberless figures were marching after
them. Suddenly the figures fell to the ground, and flesh rolled forward
from bone, congealed, and rose quiveringly into the edge of the light.</p>
<p>Iimmi started out first on the skeletal, twisted structure that
descended to the glowing pit. "You're crazy," Geo said. The thing
flopped forward another yard with a sick sound. "Hurry up," Geo added.
With Urson in the middle, they started out along the twenty-inch wide
girder. Lit from beneath, their bodies were in the shadow of the girder.
Only their outstretched arms burned in the pale orange light as they
balanced themselves.</p>
<p>Before them, faintly legible on the broken building into which they were
descending was the sign: ATOMIC ENERGY FOR THE BETTERMENT OF MAN</p>
<p>It was flanked by two purple trefoils. The beam twisted sideways, and
then dropped. Iimmi made the turn, dropped to his knees and hands, and
then started to let himself down the four feet to the next small section
of concrete. Once he saw something, let out a low whistle, but continued
to lower himself to the straightened girder. Urson made the turn next,
while Geo knelt in front of him. When Urson saw what Iimmi had seen, his
hand shot to Geo's chest and grabbed the jewel. Geo took his wrist.
"That won't help us now," he said.</p>
<p>Urson expelled a breath, and then continued down, slowly. Quickly Geo
turned to drop now.</p>
<p>The entire beam structure over which they had just come was coated with
a trembling thickness of the stuff. Globs dripped from the steel shafts,
glowing in the light from below, quivering, smoking, splashing off into
the darkness. Here and there something half human would rise either to
look around or to pull the collective mass further on, but then it would
fall back and dissolve. It bulged forward, smoking now, bits of it
shriveling off and falling away. Geo was about to descend, but suddenly
he called, "Wait a minute." The others stayed still.</p>
<p>It wasn't making progress. It rolled to a certain point in the pale,
sherbert-colored light, globbed up, smoked, and fell away. And smoked.
And dripped.</p>
<p>"Can't it get any farther?" Urson asked.</p>
<p>"It doesn't look it," said Geo.</p>
<p>A skeleton stood up, flesh-covered in the orange light. It tottered, its
surface steaming, and then fell with a sucking noise, down into the
hundreds of feet of shadow. Geo was holding tight onto the girder in
front of him.</p>
<p>The pale light fell cleanly over his hand, wrist, and midway up his
forearm.</p>
<p>What happened now made him squeeze until sweat came: the entire
Gargantuan mass, which had only extended tentacles till now, pulsed to
the edge of the jagged road, draped itself over the web of girders, and
flung itself forward on the spindly metal threads. It careened toward
them, and the three jerked themselves back.</p>
<p>Then it stopped, quivering. It boiled, it burned, it writhed, sinking,
smoking through the spaces in the naked girder work. It tried to crawl
backwards. Human figures leaped from its mass toward the edge of the
road, missed, and plummetted like smoking bullets. It hurled a great
pseudopod back toward the safety of the road; it fell short, flopped
downward, and the whole mass shook beneath the smoke that rose from it.
It pulled free of the support, tentacles sliding across steel, whipping
into the air. Then it dropped into the shadows, breaking into a half
dozen pieces before they lost sight of it below.</p>
<p>Geo released his hand. "My arm hurts," he said, shaking it.</p>
<p>They climbed up to the road again, carefully. "Any ideas what happened?"
asked Iimmi.</p>
<p>"What ever it was, I'm glad it did," said Urson.</p>
<p>Something clattered before them in the darkness.</p>
<p>"What was that?" asked Urson, stopping.</p>
<p>"My foot hit something," Geo said.</p>
<p>"What was it?" asked Urson.</p>
<p>"Never mind," said Geo. "Come on."</p>
<p>Fifteen minutes brought them to the stairway that went to the lower
highway. Iimmi's memory proved good, and for an hour they went quickly,
Iimmi making no hesitation it turnings.</p>
<p>"God," Geo said, rubbing his forearm with his other hand. "I must have
pulled hell out of it back there. It hurts like the devil."</p>
<p>Urson looked at his hand and rubbed them together.</p>
<p>"My hands feel sort of funny too," Iimmi said. "Like they've been
wind-burned."</p>
<p>"Wind-burned nothing," said Geo. "This hurts."</p>
<p>Twenty minutes later, Iimmi said, "Well, this should be about it."</p>
<p>"Hey," said Urson. "There's Snake." As they ran forward, now, the boy
jumped off the rail, grabbed their shoulders, and grinned. Then he began
to tug them forward.</p>
<p>"You lucky little so and so," said Urson. "I wish you'd been with us."</p>
<p>"He probably was, in spirit, if not in body," Geo laughed.</p>
<p>Snake nodded.</p>
<p>"What are you pulling for?" Urson asked. "Say, if you're going to get
headaches like that, you'd better teach us what to do with them beads
there." He pointed to the jewel at Iimmi's and Geo's necks.</p>
<p>Snake nodded and tugged forward again.</p>
<p>"He wants us to hurry," Geo said. "We better get going."</p>
<p>The road finally tore completely away, and four feet below them, over
the twisted rail, was the mouth of a street that led into the
waterfront. Snake, Iimmi and then Urson vaulted over. Urson shook his
hands painfully when he landed.</p>
<p>"Give me a hand, will you?" Geo asked. "My arm is really shot." Urson
helped his friend over.</p>
<p>Almost as though it had been in wait, thick liquid gurgling sounded
behind them. Like a wounded thing it emerged from behind the broken
highway, bulging up into the light which shone on the ripples in its
shriveled membrane.</p>
<p>"Run it!" bawled Urson, and they took off down the street. In the
moonlight, the ruined piers spread along the waterfront to either side
of them, some even slanting into the silvered water.</p>
<p>Turning once, they saw it bloat the entrance of the street, fill it, and
then pour across the broken stones, slipping across the rubble of the
smashed wharf.</p>
<p>When Geo hit water, he was aware of two things immediately as the hands
reached for his body. First, the thong was yanked from around his neck.
Second, pain seared his arm as if the bones and ligaments were suddenly
replaced by white-hot cords of steel, and every vein and capillary had
become part of a webbing of red fire.</p>
<p>It was a long time before consciousness. Once he was lifted. And when he
opened his eyes, the white moon was moving incredibly fast above him
toward the dark shapes of leaves. Was he being carried? And his arm
hurt. There was more drowsy half consciousness, and once a great deal of
pain. When he opened his mouth to scream, however, darkness flowed in,
swathed his tongue, and he swallowed the darkness down into his body and
into his head, and called it sleep—</p>
<hr style="width: 45%;" />
<p><i>A spool of copper wire unrolled over the black tile floor. Scoop
it up quick. Damn, let me get out of here. I run past the black
columns, glimpsing the cavernous room, and the black statue at the
other end, huge, and rising into shadows. Men in dark robes are
walking around. (Not only could they see, this time; they could
hear the thinking.) Just don't feel up to praying this afternoon. I
am before the door, and above it, a black disk with three white
eyes on it. Through the door, up black stone steps. Wonder if
anyone will be up there now. Just my luck I'll find the Old Man
himself. Another door with a black circle above it. Push it open
slowly, cool on my hands. A man is standing inside, looking into a
large screen of glass. Figures moving on it. Can't make them out,
he's in the way. Oh, there's another one.</i></p>
<p><i>"I don't know whether to call it success or failure," one says.</i></p>
<p><i>"The jewels are ... safe or lost?"</i></p>
<p><i>"What do you call it?" the first one asks. "I don't know any
more." He sighs. "I don't think I've taken my eyes off this thing
for more than two hours since they got to the beach. Every mile
they've come closer has made my blood run colder."</i></p>
<p><i>"What do we report to Hama Incarnate?"</i></p>
<p><i>"It would be silly to say anything now. We just don't know."</i></p>
<p><i>"Well," says the other, "at least we can do something with the
City of New Hope since they got rid of that super-amoeba."</i></p>
<p><i>"Are you sure they really got it?"</i></p>
<p><i>"After the burning it received over that naked atom pile? It was
all it could do to get to the waterfront. It's just about fried up
and blown away already."</i></p>
<p><i>"And how safe would you call them?" the other asks.</i></p>
<p><i>"Right now? I wouldn't call them anything."</i></p>
<p><i>Something glitters on the table by the door. Yes, there it is. In
the pile of strange equipment is a U-shaped scrap of metal. Just
what I need. Hot damn, adhesive tape too. Quick, there, before they
see. Fine. Now, let the door close, real slow. Ooops. It clicked.
Now come on, look innocent, in case they come out. I hope the Old
Man isn't watching. Guess they're not coming. And down the stairs
again, the black stone walls moving past. Out another door, into
the garden, dark flowers, purple, deep red, some with blue in them,
and big stone urns. Some priests are coming down the path. Ooops
again, there's old Dunderhead. He'll want me inside praying. Duck
down behind that urn. Here we go. What'll I do if he catches me?
Really sir, I have nothing under my choir robe. Peek out.</i></p>
<p><i>Very, very small sigh of relief, now. Can't afford to be too loud
around here. They're gone. Let's examine the loot. The black stone
urn has one handle above. It's about eight feet tall. One, two,
three: jump, and ... hold ... on ... and ... pull. And try to get
to the top. There we go. Cold stone between my toes. And over the
edge, where it's filled with dirt. Pant. Pant. Pant.</i></p>
<p><i>Should be just over here, if I remember right. Dig, dig, dig. Damp
earth feels good in your hands. Ow! my finger. There it is. A brown
paper bag under granules of black earth. Lift it out. Is it all
there? Open it up, peer in. Down at the bottom, beyond the folds of
the edges where the top had been twisted tightly together, are the
tiny scraps of copper, a few long pieces of dark metal, a piece of
board, some brads. To this my grubby little hand adds the spool of
copper wire and the U-shaped scrap of metal. Now, slip it into my
robe and—once you get up here, how the hell do you get down? I
always forget. Turn around, climb over the edge, like this, and let
yourself down. Damn, my robe's caught on the handle.</i></p>
<p><i>And drop.</i></p>
<p><i>Skinned my shin again. Some day I'll learn.</i></p>
<p><i>Now let's see if we can figure this thing out. Gotta crouch down
and get to work. Here we go. Open the bag, and turn the contents
out in the lap of the dark-colored robe, grubby hands poking.</i></p>
<p><i>The U-shaped metal, the copper wire, fine. Hold the end of the
wire to the metal, and maneuver the spool around the end of the
wire to the metal, and maneuver the spool around the end of the
rod. Around. And around. And around. Here we go round the mulberry
bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. Here we go round the
mulberry bush; I'll have me a coil by the morning.</i></p>
<p><i>Suddenly a harsh voice in the distance: "And what do you think
you're doing?"</i></p>
<p><i>Dunderhead rides again. "Nothing, sir," as metal and scraps and
wires fly frantically into the paper bag.</i></p>
<p><i>The voice: "All novices under twenty must report to afternoon
services without fail!"</i></p>
<p><i>"Yes, sir. Coming right along, sir." Paper bag jammed equally
frantically into the folds of my robe. Not a moment's peace. Not a
moment's! Through the garden with lowered eyes, past a dour-looking
priest with a small paunch. There are mirrors along the vestibule,
huge slabs of glass that rise thirty feet, reflecting the blue and
yellow light back and forth from the colored windows of the temple.
In the mirror I see pass: a dour-looking priest, proceeded by a
smaller figure with short red hair and a spray of freckles over a
flattish nose. And as we pass into prayer, there is the maddening,
almost inaudible jingling of metal scraps, muffled by the dark
robe.</i></p>
<hr style="width: 45%;" />
<p>Geo woke up, and almost everything was white.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />