IT WAS THE CHILLY gray hour just before the dawn. The first birds had begun their sporadic, tentative chirping. Great gobs of gauzy mist clung to the boughs of trees and hovered just above the ground, swirling gently.
A nearly expired fire hissed and crackled in the center of the clearing. Around that were sprawled the weary, sodden figures of the wanderers. They slumbered fretfully, twitching periodically in their predawn dreams. There was a timeless quality about them, as if they had been sleeping there for centuries, dreaming through eons, waiting to be awakened. But nothing had ever come to disturb their enchantment. Or ever would.
John Bayles, however, was not asleep. He had sat up all night, slumped against a tree, mulling his thoughts—his eyes fixed on the strangely doll-like form of Olivia Gelston asleep on her back, her torso twisted oddly, her arms and legs stiff and tense even in sleep with a kind of chary expectation.
He had not for one moment during the night taken his eyes off her. He dared not for fear she would rise again and steal off into that relentless dark, at which point he knew she would be irrecoverable.
Several times during the night Rogers had called out in his sleep. The voice had had the muffled, distant quality of a man crying out from deep within a cave. Bayles had scrambled to his feet on these occasions and hurried across the clearing to where the surveyor lay. Then the surveyor would half-rise and mumble incoherent snatches of words. His lips would twitch uselessly and he would fall back, sinking down deep into some distant twilight region, inaccessible to all but himself.
Hovering above the unconscious form, Bayles marveled at the hugeness of the man, the sheer immensity of the limbs and hands and the torso rising and falling gently like a quiet sea. It was like the figure of a sleeping giant struck in granite.
At one point it had crossed his mind with extraordinary clarity that he might slay the sleeping giant. He thought of the ease and simplicity with which such a thing might be done. A large rock, and then—. He thought about it, about the exquisite sense of release he would derive from such an action. Once, however, he had glanced up from those uneasy ruminations and found Tom Putney eyeing him fixedly, as if he had read his thoughts and was just waiting for him to move. Then Bayles would return to the place of his vigil, slumped against the tree, guarding Ollie Gelston in her stiff, exhausted sleep.
Soon it would be morning. The sun would start to rise on yet another day. The mist was beginning to thin and burn off the ground. Bayles’ eyes were red and tired from their all-night vigil. He yawned and rubbed them. Then when his hands dropped from his eyes, his gaze, blurry from rubbing, suddenly fell on the fuzzy but emphatic conformation of a stag, an immense tawny phantom with rich and awesome antlers regarding him silently from a corner of the clearing. Its ears thrust forward toward him—so still, he might have been a piece of garden statuary. In the next moment, its nostrils twitched and it took several tentative steps toward him, curious to see better the strange intruders in his domain. It lasted for perhaps a moment, until the creature snorted, wheeled, and loped off noiselessly into the forest, swallowed up forever in the swirling mist.
“John,” a voice came softly from behind him.
He turned and saw Ollie, propped on an elbow, gazing at him. In two or three strides he was across the clearing and kneeling at her side.
“How are you?” he asked.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Fine—I guess.”
He looked at her searchingly and almost believed her. Her eyes, though sleepy, seemed clear and alert. There was none of the dazed and vacant stare they had had last night. She appeared to be aware of her surroundings and aware of him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked crossly.
“No reason,” he nearly laughed. “Just good to see you again. Good morning!” He felt an unaccustomed tenderness.
“Good morning,” she replied, more puzzled than ever by his strange behavior. She nodded in the direction of the surveyor. “How is he?”
“He appears to be conscious. Aware of things around him. If only—”
“If only what?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Better get started. It’s nearly dawn.”
Garvix rolled over and looked up at them. “What time is it?” Wisps of grass clung to his hair and stuck in his unshaven beard. He had the look of a Poseidon festooned in seaweed, surfacing from the depths.
Bayles glanced at his watch, a fine Italian chronometer his father had given him. “About five.”
The words sent Garvix springing into action. In the next moment he was up and clapping his hands. A noise sounding like the sharp report of rifle fire echoed through the woods. A couple of distant crows squawked an irritated reply.
“Up, up. Everybody up!”
Jamison muttered an obscenity and turned in his sleep. Garvix began to swoop through the clearing like a rampaging horse, jostling the others into stunned and reluctant consciousness.
“Come on! Up, up! The early bird catches the worm.” The rifle reports from the palms of his hands shattered through the woods. Gladys Garvix, sprawled flat on her back, her arms outstretched, moaned at the sky: “Oh, for Chrissake.”
Tom Putney shivered a little and rubbed his hands over the dying fire.
“Hullo.” Gage’s head popped up and he greeted them all collectively. “Been up long?”
“Too long.” Garvix’s palms clashed once more. Gladys winced. “Will you stop that goddamn clapping?” She was rubbing the back of her neck. “I can’t turn my head.”
“Just a stiff neck,” Gage said.
“Oh, is that what it is?” she replied sarcastically and in the next moment he felt himself flush with foolishness.
“There’s fresh tea over there on the fire,” Bayles said. “I put it up about an hour ago.”
“Tea?” Jamison blew his nose lugubriously into his foulard. “You call that vile potion of ragweed and bird droppings, tea?”
“No time for tea now,” Garvix proclaimed. “Procrastination is the thief of time.”
Gladys closed her eyes and bit her lip. She appeared to be whispering some desperate little prayer to herself.
“Any change?” Gage asked Bayles, who was crouched beside the surveyor.
“Still the same. Think he can move?”
“Course he can.” They turned and saw Garvix striding up behind them. “Hello, Albert,” he boomed, hovering over Rogers and poking him in the ribs with the toe of his shoe. “How are you, Albert?”
“I wouldn’t poke him like that,” Gage said, showing for once his irritation.
“Poke him?” Garvix thundered. “I’d like to blow a stick of dynamite under his keister. That’s what he needs. Let’s go. Let’s go.” More claps went shattering upward through the trees.
Rogers’ eyes opened and fluttered. They swung from corner to corner, his head never moving. “18 degrees south-southwest 30 minutes—12 seconds—to a—to a—”
They crowded closer. He seemed like a balloon about to expire.
“—stone marked Y—” he mumbled.
“Oh, shut up!” Gladys Garvix’s hands flew up in exasperation but the others swarmed all round the surveyor in deadly earnest, like wolves pouncing a wounded stag.
“He’s been going on like that for hours,” Bayles said.
Gage’s head was pressed against Rogers’ chest. Then he took his pulse. “He sounds stronger,” he said, frankly amazed at the old man’s constitution. “Breathing easier. Pulse stronger. He’s better I’d say. Really quite remarkable.”
“He is remarkable, isn’t he?” Sybil said, as if she in some way were responsible for Rogers’ remarkability.
“We told you that, didn’t we, Doctor?” Ollie beamed. “We said that all along about our Albert.”
Even Jamison appeared touched. “You’ve got to hand it to him. The old man’s a bit of all right.”
“It’s just that he’s not here anymore,” Gladys said, with all of her old spite, her unshakeable glumness. But even she couldn’t put a damper on their rising spirits.
“We must get him back at once,” Gage said.
Just then a shock of white hair blown by a breeze fell across Rogers’ eyes. Gage reached to push it aside. At that moment Ollie gasped and covered her mouth with a hand. Gage looked up and found her staring fixedly at some point just beneath him.
“Your hand—”
“My hand?” He hadn’t caught her meaning.
She cringed. “It’s bleeding!”
He glanced down coldly, dispassionately, as if it were the injured limb of some poor creature washed up in a hospital emergency ward.
“Oh!” he said, and laughed a little oddly. “I must have gashed it in my sleep.”
“In your sleep?” Sybil appeared skeptical. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Not at all,” he said, and that was the truth. It didn’t hurt and he certainly had no recollection of hurting it.
The wound was a small puncture, but it was deep and uncomfortably close to a vein. Small, warm, crimson domes bubbled from it with the steady frequency of his own pulse. He rose, turned abruptly, and nearly stumbled into Ollie Gelston. “Can you give me a hand?” He held the slowly spurting wound toward her.
She turned pale. “A hand?”
“Bandaging it.”
She gasped and started to shrink backward. “No—I—that sort of thing makes me ill.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Gladys said. Gage looked up and suddenly she was by his side. “Give me that canteen.”
“Good Christ,” Garvix fumed. “Another delay—”
“Oh, shut up, Leo,” she said and in the next moment she was all swift, purposeful motion, washing the wound out with water, making a cool poultice of wet leaves. Then in one deft motion she lifted her skirt and ripped from her slip the lace border along its bottom. The others watched speechless as she bound the poultice neatly with the lace.
“Your technique is impressive,” Gage said.
Garvix had been watching it all very closely. The mean little glint came suddenly into his eyes. “Gladys knows how to take care of young men. Don’t you, Glad?”
“That ought to hold,” she said, ignoring her husband. She knew she couldn’t fight him. She’d tried it often before. That way lay madness. She finished tying the bandage. Gage held it up for them all to admire. “Well,” he said cheerily, “shall we go?”
“What about him?” Freddy said, indicating Rogers.
“What about him?” Garvix asked.
“Can he travel?”
“I think so,” Gage said. “If we take it slow and give him enough time out for rests.”
“He’ll never make it,” Putney said.
“I’ll stay with him,” Gladys said. “When you get back send someone out for us with a stretcher.”
“That’s very generous of you, Mrs. Garvix,” Gage said. “But I don’t think it would be wise.”
“Why not?” she snapped, so vindictively that he felt himself blush.
“Why not?” he thought to himself. Couldn’t she see why not? Well, if she couldn’t, he wasn’t going to tell her—say right out with all the rest to hear that if they left her behind with the surveyor it would be extremely unlikely that they’d ever be able to find the spot again—that is, provided they ever got home themselves. If she couldn’t see that, well—
“It simply wouldn’t be practical,” he said irritably, “and besides, we can’t afford to let him lie out here that long.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna do all the carryin’ this time,” Putney said. His voice had developed a nasty, insolent whine.
“No one ever asked you to,” Gage said, unable to conceal his irritation. “That was your own idea—remember?”
“Quite right,” Jamison said. “You had to make a big hero of yourself. Well, you see now what comes of being a such big goddamned hero.” He laughed spitefully, enjoying this little attack on Putney. Sybil’s attentions toward the boy had not gone entirely unnoticed by him.
Putney looked around at all of them with something of the quality of a cornered animal.
“Well,” Gage said again after a moment. “Which way?”
“Straight due west,” Garvix said. “The sun directly on our backs.”
“We’ve been going straight due west for the last two days,” Bayles said.
“Three,” Freddy added scornfully.
“Only two, dear,” Sybil corrected him.
He looked at her suspiciously, like a man who suspects he’s been shortchanged by a cabdriver in a foreign land. “Well, it seems like three,” he said, crossly. “At any rate,” he went on, checking his wristwatch, “I’ve got a golf date this afternoon. You think I’ll be on time?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Garvix said. “We’ll be in by noon.”
Gage was feeling a deep and ever-widening rift growing within himself. Now he found himself making a conscious and deliberate effort to keep his voice from quavering. “We’ve been going due west right along,” he said as reasonably as he could. “Anyone have any different ideas?” He stared hopefully around at them. He kept clinging to the idea that the problem could be settled by some kind of quorum; reasonable people sharing ideas in an atmosphere of utter and unfaltering reasonableness—a majority rule kind of thing. But all he met with was a frigid silence; a stunned, almost hostile disbelief that they’d even been consulted. Gage sighed and turned back to Garvix. “Still your show. Due west it is.”
Garvix clapped his hands thunderously. “All right, boys and girls, saddle up!”
In the next moment they were all rising like a chorus before its conductor—tottering to their feet, groaning, muttering their displeasure. Jackets were buttoned, sweaters drawn on, canteens slung over shoulders, and the ashes of the fire covered over.
“Who’ll take him?” Garvix said, pointing to Rogers.
Putney hung back.
“Freddy will,” said Sybil instantly.
Jamison seemed startled. “I’m—I’m afraid—I’m not quite up to it this morning.” He grinned sickishly at the others.
“I will—” Gage’s and Bayles’ voices collided, but Bayles was there first, hoisting the surveyor up and propping him in a position against both his hip and shoulder. “I’ll go first,” he said to Gage, “and you spell me.”
“All right,” Garvix boomed, straining at the leash like a lead pack dog. “Let’s get the show on the road.”
“Wait,” Jamison cried.
Garvix glared at him. “What in hell for?”
Jamison looked suddenly stricken. He wheeled abruptly and thrashed off into the underbrush.
“All right,” Garvix said. “You might as well all have your pee call right now.” He gazed round at them with icy disdain. “There’ll be no stopping for a while.”
But no one else budged. They stood there sullen, wordless, and slightly intimidated—waiting for Jamison to return. When he finally did, about ten minutes later, he looked queasy. His face was puffy and white as raw dough.
“Come on, keep up, keep up!” Garvix’s voice soared high above the trees. “Keep up, you’re dragging all over the place.”
It was true. Once again the wanderers were strung out through the forest, broken up into little planets orbiting at different distances around a single sun. They’d been out a little over an hour. Freddy and Gladys walked together, not speaking. He was pale and haggard. The once resplendently rakish foulard now dangled at his throat like a tattered flag. And the sole of his shoe which had separated from its bottom flapped indecorously like a seal flipper as he walked. Suddenly he winced and clutched his stomach where the ulcer was gnawing quietly at his entrails. Gladys could see the pain on his face. “Does it hurt much?”
“Not much,” Jamison replied bitterly. “Like a rat chewing at your spleen, that’s all.” He was white as a sheet and puffing.
“Want to stop?”
They’d already had to stop several times for him that morning while he’d go thrashing off and disappear into the brush to relieve himself. Sick as he was, he was mortified at the thought of asking them to stop again. He signaled her to keep walking.
“You take it well, Glad,” he went on as the short, jabbing spasms increased. “Damn it, you take it like a trooper. Damned if I could—or would. His bullying and his foul mouth—” He spat vehemently. “And these others with their condescending looks—”
“I don’t give a goddamn for their condescending looks.” She glowered past him at a wraithlike vision of Sybil moving up ahead. Freddy saw her too, and guessed her thought.
“Sybil with her bloody European education,” he ranted. “I’d like to stuff a sock down her throat when she starts that stuff.”
They both laughed and for an instant they felt close to one another.
“And that Ollie,” he went on, venting spleen exuberantly. “That shriveled virgin with a look as though everything and everybody was a stench in the nostrils of propriety.” He spat again. “What a lot of crap. I tell you, Glad—I swear it—I take my hat off to you. None of them are fit to clean your boots!”
“Oh, cut it—”
“I mean it. You’re just too modest to take any credit. But I mean it all the same.”
“Fine,” she said. “Fine.” She felt her irritation with him growing. “Just cut it now.”
The irritation perplexed him. He thought he’d been flattering her. That she’d be pleased by what he said. But it only seemed as if he was making things worse. At a loss for words, he spat again. “God, my mouth tastes awful. Oh for some toothpaste and shaving cream and hot water!” he said mournfully. In the next moment he clutched his stomach and had to thrash off into the brush again.
Gladys signaled the others to halt and once more they all gathered there in the woods waiting for Jamison to reappear. This time when he finally did stagger out of the brush, sick and mortified by all those silent, accusatory glances, Garvix could no longer contain his impatience. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Yes, dear,” Sybil said. “What is it?”
“If you must know I have a case of the shits.”
Sybil made a face of repugnance. “Freddy!”
“One royal case,” he went on, in no mood for the amenities. “And it’s from those bloody Jew artichokes of yours or whatever you call them. I’ll be lucky if my ulcer doesn’t hemorrhage as a result of all this.”
“Never mind all that now,” Garvix bawled. “Let’s get going!”
Jamison took his place begrudgingly in line and in the next moment the weary little file of wanderers lurched forward—the square, stolid, indefatigable figure of Garvix at their head, the white phantom sun of early morning at their backs.
“Very good, that’s it. Fine, fine,” Gage said. He was struggling up a small incline with Rogers in tow. The surveyor had a stranglehold around the doctor’s neck, and the two figures, thrashing uphill, had a vaguely comical appearance. “Fine, Mr. Rogers. That’s just fine. We’ll have you home soon.”
Bayles had surrendered the surveyor to Gage nearly three-quarters of an hour ago. Now the effort was beginning to tell on the doctor. His legs and back ached. His face was ashen. He panted heavily. Icy pockets of sweat had broken out all over his body. “Good!” he heard himself saying to Rogers as if from great distances. “Very good. Just a little further now.”
“18 degrees—south-southwest,” Rogers gasped through parched lips. “30 min—12 sec—” The words trailed off in a bubble of spittle. He’d barely finished the sentence when he appeared to lapse into unconsciousness again. His legs were now almost entirely useless. They could support no weight and the great girth of the man buckled and sagged earthward, dragging Gage down with him.
They lay in a heap, embracing each other, panting fitfully like winded hounds. In order to get moving again, Gage had to drag the great torso while the legs, like molten wax, trailed uselessly behind.
“Watch your head!” Gage warned the inert, lifeless flesh. He lifted an overhanging branch and hauled Rogers beneath it. “That’s it. Very good. Just a little further. You’re doing just fine.” He had to cajole him, pleading for each step.
Rogers stirred for a moment like a waking man. His eyes rolled skyward. “7 angels—7 plagues—7 vials 7 lambs—10 horns—”
Something in the eyes alarmed Gage. He had seen that sort of thing often enough before in his lifetime. Still, whenever he saw eyes roll upward in that fashion, the pupils going into eclipse behind the lids, it never failed to give him a sickish feeling.
“Would you like to rest a bit?” Gage gasped. He wondered if he’d said it more to Rogers or himself. Or if Rogers even heard him.
“Harpers harping with their harps—” the surveyor moaned dreamily.
“I think this is a good time for a break,” Gage said to him, but it didn’t matter for the surveyor was once again unconscious. The dead weight of him bore down cruelly on Gage’s neck.
“Halloa!” his strangled voice cried out to the others. “Halloa!”
Garvix’s voice came booming back down the hill at him. “Hello.”
“We’re stopping for a rest,” Gage shouted. His heart was pounding in his chest when he laid Rogers down beneath a tree. Instantly he groped for the pulse and at once felt distinct and unmistakable fibrillation. They had to stop now. To his practical mind it was only a matter of time.
Once again the yellowish eyes fluttered faintly. “Mystery—Babylon the Great—Mother of Harlots—”
There was a crash of underbrush and suddenly Garvix was there. “Whose decision was it to call a rest?”
“Mine,” Gage said. He was lying on his back panting heavily. “He’s very tired.”
“You mean you’re very tired.”
“Have it your way—I can’t deny that. At any rate, we both can’t go on. If you’re so damned eager to, why don’t you lug him a while?”
“What do you mean—can’t go on?”
“I mean he’s close to the end now.”
The truculence wavered in Garvix’s face and for the most fleeting moment, Gage was certain he’d caught the glimpse of a smile. In the next moment it had all passed and he was uncertain of what he’d seen. Garvix was now standing almost astride the surveyor. He looked a bit like a lion hunter with his trophy.
Bayles and Ollie appeared, followed by Sybil Jamison and Tom Putney. A few moments later Gladys and Freddy straggled up from somewhere behind them.
“Ah,” Freddy said. “Here you all are.”
“How is he?” Bayles asked, his face full of anxious concern.
“He needs rest.” Gage said.
“He does look piqued, poor dear,” Sybil said, and made a little clucking sound of impatience. “How much longer do you think it will be before he snaps out of it and puts an end to all this?”
“Any time now,” Garvix said. “Look at the color in his cheeks.”
“He does look better, doesn’t he?” Ollie looked hopefully at Gage. “Doesn’t he, Doctor?”
Gage was about to say what was on his mind. But then he felt Garvix’s eyes boring into him.
“I don’t know,” he said instead, and turned violently away.
Sybil looked around forlornly. “Haven’t we passed through here before?”
“When?” Bayles asked.
“A day ago,” Sybil said. “Two days ago. I don’t know.”
“It all looks the same to me,” said Gladys.
Garvix unbuckled his canteen and flung himself down beside Rogers. “God, I’m hungry.”
“I’d eat just about anything,” Tom Putney said.
The mere mention of food turned Freddy Jamison a little green. “I’ll not put another of those bloody artichokes in my mouth.” He glowered at Sybil.
“You’ve got to eat to keep your strength up, dear,” she cooed at him assuagingly, as if she were pacifying a lunatic. “And, of course, there’s your ulcer.”
“Oh, fuck my ulcer.” Jamison’s face went a beetish red. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. Do you hear?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Anyway it’s not my ulcer I’m worried about,” he went on scorchingly. “It’s my bloody bowels you’ve murdered.”
Garvix pounded his fist into his palm and stared down at Rogers reproachfully. “I’ve gotta get something into my gut,” he muttered and pounded his fist again.
The sharp, high crack of flesh on flesh jolted Ollie out of some distant, dreamy recollection. “Peter the Hermit wandered in the forest for years, didn’t he?” she asked. “Existing on grubs and berries.”
“What’s a grub?” said Gladys. The word alone had made her queasy.
“Beetle larvae,” Gage said.
“Ugh!” Gladys’ mouth curled with revulsion.
Garvix was prowling restively about. Suddenly he came to an abrupt halt. His eye had fastened on something in a tree—a bright flash of rust on a field of green. He crouched so as to get a better view of whatever it was he saw. Then, in the next moment, unnoticed by the others, he was moving stealthily toward it.
Freddy Jamison lay sprawled on his back talking wistfully at the sky. “Last night I dreamed I was in a little Corsican restaurant I knew back in the forties. I was eating cold duck and quaffing icy goblets of Suova.”
Sybil sighed and gazed sorrowfully down at her empty hands.
“There was a little Sardinian girl,” Freddy rattled on, full of nostalgia, “waiting on me hand and foot. Big black eyes she had. The size of muscat grapes—”
“Oh, God, must you?” Gladys said. “I’m really very hungry.”
Gage removed several black spongy buttons from the bottom of his pocket. They were covered with lint. “Here,” he said, holding them out before her. “Try these.”
He offered them to her just that way, palms extended outward, lint and all still intact. The sudden flourish made her step back a pace. But in the next moment she came forward, approaching the buttons warily as if they were alive and wriggling.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Licorice,” he said, an idiotically boyish grin on his face. “Found them in the bottom of my pocket this morning.”
They all crowded forward, pressing round him with an almost reverential hush, gazing at the half-dozen or so graying licorice buttons as if they were rare, priceless gems.
“I love licorice,” Gladys said. She was nearly ecstatic as she put one in her mouth.
Freddy stared suspiciously down at Gage’s palm. “Are they all right?”
“They’re fine,” Gage said. “I’ve eaten two already.”
Freddy cocked an eyebrow at him. “You have?”
“Yes—anything wrong with that?”
Jamison flushed red. “There damned well is. How do we know it’s only two you’ve eaten? For all we know you’ve eaten a dozen already.”
“For God’s sake, Freddy,” Sybil snapped. “It’s his licorice.”
“I don’t care,” Jamison went on petulantly. “In times like these everything should be shared equally.”
“Oh, ye gods!” Gladys thumped her forehead with the palm of her hand. Bayles started his low, mournful laughing.
Garvix came to a crouching halt beneath a tree and gazed intently up at something moving in the branches above him. He stood there poised and immobile like a figure struck in a frieze. Then, ever so slowly, he knelt down and without ever taking his eyes from the object in the branches overhead, his groping hands fastened on a rock.
“I wonder what ever did happen to that little Sardinian girl?” Jamison rambled on. He chewed his licorice button morosely.
Garvix started to circle slowly about the tree, his eyes riveted upward with an awful fixity. He was stalking something.
“We always used to look at each other,” Freddy chattered on. “But we never spoke. I always wanted to. But she was a waitress and—”
Suddenly Garvix’s arm rose and came down in almost the same instant. It was like a trap springing. Gage saw it, a gray blur out of the corner of his eye.
“Got him!” Garvix screamed. “I got him!” He went thrashing off into the underbrush, his shrill, exuberant screams ringing out through the forest all around them.
“What did he get?” Sybil was immediately unnerved. “What’s he talking about?”
“He knocked something out of the tree,” Tom said.
“I saw it fall,” said Gage.
“Where?” Freddy started up.
“Over there.” Tom pointed at the figure of Garvix stooped over something.
“Oh, my God!” Sybil gasped.
In the next moment Garvix was hurtling toward them through the trees, his shrill, maniacal cries preceding him. He broke suddenly through the edge of the clearing and stood there regarding them. Triumph glistened in his eyes and something dangled at his hip.
“Dinner!” he cried, almost rhapsodic, and danced a little jig around the clearing. Suddenly he started toward them, holding out before himself, by its tail, the still live, twitching body of a red squirrel.
Sybil’s hands flew to her mouth. She started to shrink backward. “Take it away!” she said, her eyes transfixed on the awful twitching thing.
“Did you have to?” Bayles said piteously. “Was it necessary?”
“I’m hungry,” Garvix replied. “And if I’m going to keep my strength up, I’ve got to eat.”
“It was sitting on a branch bothering no one,” Bayles continued. “Enjoying the day.”
“Sorry about its day ending that way,” Garvix said, a mirthful glint in his eye. “S’fate, you know—we all have to face it.”
The squirrel, which had only been stunned by the rock, started to chatter and thrash piteously at his hip.
“Let it go!” Sybil said.
Garvix laughed. “The hell I will. I’m gonna cook it and eat it.” There was a moment of stunned silence. Jamison turned a sickish green. “You’re not—you’re not going to cook it here?”
“Of course I’m gonna cook it here. Where else would I cook it?” Garvix laughed and gazed around at them, a look of astonishment on his face. “Look—I’m not ashamed of anything. I’m not a criminal—not a monster. I’m hungry!”
Tom stared fascinated at the throbbing, peeping thing at Garvix’s hip. “She’s a nice plump one.”
“Get it out of here!” Sybil said, her voice shrill with sudden panic. She reached for the animal. Garvix yanked it behind his back.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Get it out of here!” she cried. “Get it out of here!” She kept moving irresistibly toward him, unable to avert her gaze from the hapless little creature.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Garvix laughed, turning with her so that his body stood squarely between her and the squirrel. “I’ll eat your portion.”
Tom cackled gleefully. “Look at it wriggle!”
“Please get it out of here,” Sybil pleaded. She was nearly beside herself—dangerously close to a desperate act. Even Garvix sensed it. The animal twitched violently and in the next moment his arm swung out scythelike and he’d slammed its head hard against the trunk of a tree.
The piteous bleating halted instantly. Silence flooded the place while they watched in horror the final spasm of the creature. A thin trickle of blood oozed at its nostrils. It was dead. But its eyes remained open, staring, as if it had met its end head on, fully conscious.
Sybil made a little gurgling sound and slumped to her knees. There was an expression of pure hatred on Gladys’ face. When she at last spoke to Garvix it was in a voice of fearful quiet. “Now will you take that goddamned rat somewhere out in the woods and eat it.”
The quiet, portentous calm in her voice momentarily rattled him. For an instant he seemed puzzled. “Where?” he asked, wanting suddenly to oblige.
“Anywhere. Just out of here.”
He gazed round at the others, crestfallen. “Doesn’t anyone want any?”
There was a silence as they all stared at the pathetic creature dangling head-down in his hand.
“I’d sure like some,” Tom said after a moment.
Garvix’s face lit up. “Well, you come and get it then, boy. You and I will have us a right proper little stew.”
He threw his arm gratefully around Putney’s shoulder, then glanced back at the others. “The hell with them,” he said; then he roared one of those shattering guffaws, half-joy, half-defiance, out at the forest, and together, arm-in-arm, they marched off.
When they’d gone, silence descended on the place. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of Sybil, slumped over and sobbing wearily into her handkerchief.
After a moment Bayles rose and crossed to her. He laid a hand gently on her shoulder. She looked up at him, her face streaked with mud and tears. “We’re not going to get out of this, are we?” she said softly. “We’re just going to wander endlessly in circles. Going round and round.”
“Of course we’re going to get out of it,” Gage said. Gladys wheeled round and stared at him. “Let’s get out of here, now!”
“Out of here?” Sybil asked. “How?”
“Just go.”
“But where?”
“Anywhere!” Gladys went on excitedly. “Let’s get away from them.” She thrust her thumb in the direction in which Garvix and Putney had disappeared.
“You mean—just leave them?” Ollie asked.
Gladys nodded frantically, a faint trace of a smile on her lips. “Why not? Put as much distance between them and us as we can.” She turned to Gage appealingly. “It’s our only chance.”
He regarded her silently.
“Don’t you see it?” she went on a little hopelessly, trying to make him see what she saw. “We can still save ourselves. But only if we leave them.”
Ollie gasped as if some unpardonable blasphemy had been uttered.
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Gage said in his earnest, reasonable way.
“Why can’t we?” she snapped. But just as he was about to reply, Rogers mumbled something. They gazed down at him, suddenly recalling he was there. Gage smiled faintly. Rogers had reminded them that he was there too—still a factor to be reckoned with—one of the reasons they couldn’t simply scurry off.
Gage’s face brightened. “I have a good feeling we’re not very far from home now. That we’ll turn a bend and see a house.” He smiled round at them with sudden enthusiasm. “That’s the way it is when you’re lost, you know. You’re never really quite as lost as you think you are.”
“Why don’t you quit?” Gladys glared at him.
“Quit what?” Gage seemed stunned. He was like a man who’d just been slapped.
“Talking to us as if we were children.”
“Children?” He wasn’t sure he’d understood her.
“Yes,” she snapped. “We’re not children.” Although at that moment she had the look of a child—tiny, petulant, stamping her foot, soiled and messed from too much play. Her slip where she’d torn it that morning to make bandages dangled raggedly at her knees.
“I never said you were children,” Gage protested.
“But that’s what you’ve been thinking all along,” she raged on. “You act that way.”
“He damned well does,” Jamison agreed. “Right from the start he did—with his bloody solemn, pompous lecturing. Water and food and all that crap.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Gage protested.
“You do act that way,” Gladys persisted. “And goddammit, I’m sick of it. I can just hear you spouting that cheerful muck to your terminal cases. ‘It’s very grave, but I’ve seen some miraculous examples of spontaneous remissions.’” She said it in tones of almost comical solemnity.
Their eyes met and Gage stared at her quietly. “That’s true,” he said at last with weary patience, for every bone in his body ached him. “I used to tell them that. Why not? It gave them hope. And it made me feel good to give them hope. Hope’s very important, therapeutically, Mrs. Garvix. Cure is almost impossible without some element of it present.”
“I don’t want hope,” she went on fretfully. “I want truth. I want facts and figures. I want to know how long a body can survive without adequate nourishment. I want to know how long a body can endure exposure to cold and damp nights. I want to know how long it will be. And when it comes I want to know if it will be painful or if I will go quietly off to sleep like a child.”
Gage gazed at her helplessly. “I suppose I could give you the statistical data,” he said at last. “But—”
Rogers suddenly sat bolt upright as if struck by lightning. His eyes were open and staring, filled with a blinding clarity. “7 heads are 7 mountains—Alleluia—Salvation—Lake of Fire—No more death—The Bride—The Lamb’s Wife—12 gates—12 angels—12 tribes—12 Apostles—Behold the Tabernacle—” His hoarse voice rang out through the clearing.
Then they were all flowing toward him from different directions like tiny streams converging into a torrential cascade. But already Rogers had slumped backward, the earth rushing up to take him. Once again he slipped away from them into unconsciousness.
They hovered round him for a while, wringing hands and shuffling feet, listening to the heavy, raspy breathing. Then slowly, one by one, they slunk off, each to some private, solitary corner, and waited.
Bayles, however, remained with the surveyor, staring at him, a rapt and oddly searching expression on his face, as if he were trying to unravel some puzzle that had existed between himself and the old man for many years. As if he were searching for a key that would unlock a door through which he would instantly walk.
After a time Bayles too rose and limped stiffly to a far corner of that place. Then they were all silting in a wide, sprawling circle waiting for Garvix and Putney to return from their feast; waiting, they supposed, to resume their trek home.
Heavy black clouds scudded overhead. Shortly it started to drizzle. Thick, warm drops like spurting arterial blood began to pelt slowly downward. Gradually that increased in frequency and soon they were in the midst of a driving, torrential downpour. But it was a pleasant rain, warm, refreshing, and curiously renewing. They sat there in it, unmoving, uncaring, like oxen drowsing in their yokes.
The moment it started to come down with some force, Sybil rose and hurried to the surveyor. Her thin tubular body leaned into the sheets of rain. Several times her footing slipped in the black, oozy mud. At last, when she reached him, she knelt quickly down and threw her jacket over his chest.
It was then she saw his eyes open, regarding her quietly. For a moment she thought she saw in them a kind of unutterable pity.
“Harpers—Angels—Lakes of Fire—” he murmured and his eyes closed.
“Albert—” She leaned toward him.
“18 sou’—sou’west—30 min—12 sec—”
Water spilled into his eyes and coursed in rivulets down the deep trenches running from his cheeks into his chin. She tried to shield him with her body.
“Jacinth—Chrysolite—Chrysoprasus—”
“Albert—tell me. Tell me what I need to hear.”
He murmured something. She put her ear close to his mouth so she could hear him better above the drone of pelting rain.
“What I’ve wanted to hear for so long—”
“Chrysolite—Sardonyx—”
His eyes fluttered open once again and he was staring into the rain. She took his face between her hands and tenderly pressed the huge wreath of wet, gray, matted hair back from his eyes.
“Tell me that,” she said, “and I promise I’ll never be afraid again.”
The rain lashed down at them in driving sheets. Still Sybil went on, ruthlessly, totally oblivious of the rain. “Say it. Say ‘I am your father.’ Say it and I swear to you I’ll never tell another living soul. Say it, dear—please—I’ve always known it but if you’d just say it now, it would please me so. It’ll be our secret and I’ll die here gladly.”
“Emerald, Sardonyx—Sardius—18 South—30—12—”
She was scarcely aware she was crying. “If you can’t say it, just nod your head yes and I’ll understand. Go ahead, Albert,” she pleaded. “Please, dear. Say it. Say ‘I am your father.’”
“Chrysolite—beryl—topaz—” His voice suddenly mounted in tenor, the words accelerating on his lips. He tried to rise. She struggled to hold him down, and they wallowed there in the mud in a fierce and funny embrace.
“Jacinth—Chrysolite—Chrysoprasus—” he bellowed.
Bayles reached them first. He’d only meant to pry them apart but in doing so got himself enmeshed.
“18 south—southwest—30—12—to a stone marked Y.” Rogers was half up on one knee with Bayles and Sybil coiled round his neck like serpents.
Gage came sloshing at them across the clearing, pushing the rain back with a slow sweep of his elbow.
“No candle—forever and ever—18 south—30-12.”
Garvix and Putney suddenly barged through the underbrush. Then they were all up, streaming through the rain toward the three struggling figures.
“Sardonyx—Sardius—Chrysoprasus—”
“Help!” Sybil screamed.
“Jacinth—Amethyst—I come quickly.”