3

Then was his head puffed up and his heart minished, an ague upon him and his very corpuscles reeking banana. Philips woke him at five; he thrashed his way reluctantly to the surface of his shame, and masked the shame in groans and grumbles, and sat on the bed rocking and keening like a crone bereaved. “This is primitive. Barbarous. Undeveloped. Waking a sick man at five in the morning.”

“Take a shower,” Philips said. “I will order breakfast.”

“Coffee. Just coffee. Forgive me. This is terrible.”

“New lands, new drinks,” Philips said. “A shower. Brush your teeth.”

“Yes.”

“It was that brandy,” Philips said. “We drank two bottles.”

“And you drank almost none.”

Philips smiled faintly. “And I drank almost none. I rarely drink much. When I do, you will know it. I fight and shout, and the next day I lie dying all day long. No one has a monopoly on mistakes, as I believe you stated last night.”

Morrison noticed, squinting and blinking, that the whites of Philips’s eyes were clear, and seemed to remember that they had been clear after that first morning. “Had you been drinking the night before I got here?”

“Yes. And then up at three to do my duty.”

“God.” Morrison shuddered, truly: his body quivered. “Sorry. If you felt anything like this you must have hated me.”

Philips made no answer.

“Did I insult Goray?”

“No,” Philips said shortly. “Goray likes you.”

“Then he is a man of great tolerance and easy affections. I was shouting at one point.”

“You were shouting at several points. Shouting is normal and natural, and better than brawling.”

“Brawling.” Morrison winced. Worse than a tourist. “All right. Ready in a minute. But drive carefully, please. I am not a well man.”

“You will be well. As soon as we are out of the city.”

He meant more than that: it was an incantation, a prophecy, and his low voice and grave face were the voice and face of a pagan priest, who had talked with the sun and the river.

He had built a good road, poor dead Van Alstyne: left that much behind him, not the ordinary tropical rut, and it would endure. His immortality, as the bridge might be Morrison’s. Beneath them was hard rolled rock, and broken stone, and a layer of crushed rock and stone, and then red earth, clayey and cohesive so that the dust behind them was a thin pink plume and not a gassy billow. Every fifty meters a narrow slash ran obliquely from the gutter to a sump in the brush. That seemed a nicety, and Morrison questioned it. “The rains are of an extraordinary violence,” Philips insisted.

The jungle, close on either hand, skimmed by at fifty miles an hour. Morrison searched and peered, for what mysteries he could not have said: snakes perhaps, or savages, a sign of flesh or habitation. But there was nothing, only the green that so close was not even lush: beneath the canopy of palm and broadleaf were no tangled lianas or profusion of fronds, only some dry and dusty vines and stunted shrubs, and great hollows of shade. He had expected underbrush, thick and wild and steaming, wild pigs, lizards, monkeys. Later there were slashes in the jungle and he did see a hut, but no smoke, no motion. Only the shadowed green, and the brass-bright sun in a dazzling blue sky, and the road Roman-red, and nothing alive but themselves and the carrion crows. The colors pulsed, and he shut his eyes against them.

“Nothing,” Philips said. “But later there will be farms here. Timbering. Stores. Taverns.”

“Taverns. Faugh.”

“Feeling better?”

“A little.”

“We need those farms,” Philips said. “Goray was saying last night that it was impossible to starve to death here, with the mangoes and cassava and coconuts and so forth. But it is possible to be undernourished with a full belly. We need cattle, and along here will be ranches too. We want to bring in zebus from the Portagee side.”

“Must we talk about food?”

“Yes,” Philips said amiably. “When I was in mission school the white children laughed and played all day long; but even before the noonday meal the black children were played out. Exhausted. When you see the men working very slowly, remember that they have had little protein in all their lives.”

“I will. How did you get to mission school?”

“I was an orphan, from God knows where, and was arrested at seven for pilferage. I was stealing eggs from the father’s chickens. He took pity on me and let me stay, and taught me letters. He was unctuous and I hated him. It took me twenty years to learn gratitude.”

“Where was that?”

“On the coast, where there is a breeze and where the Europeans live.”

“Oh. What are zebus?”

“Brahman cattle, you call them. All we have now are scrub cattle.”

They were quiet then, as the sun climbed higher. In the solitude Morrison grew anxious—not quite fear, yet not much different—but then the disquiet was laid by the heat, by a lazy abandon, by the shifting colors and the rush of the road. This desolation was at worst neutral. The spirits, if any, would emerge by night, and by then he would have company and a lamp and—the thought was just tolerable now—a drink. And there was beauty here. Nature in masses was always beautiful: seas and forests, glaciers, fields of snow, deserts, cloud-bursts, hurricanes. Man in masses was never beautiful, and he remembered for a moment, but only for a moment, the shrill, writhing northern city he had left, and the gray winter he had survived, with snow that was slush even before it touched the asphalt. Remote now; more remote with every mile. Time and space annihilated. What no longer exists has never existed. Here and now only. He slumped lower and shut his eyes again, and sniffed at the warm wind. Soon he was asleep.

He awoke parched and sweating and saw that the road was no longer flat. They were rising slowly, and the jungle had thinned. Far ahead were patches of treeless upland dotted with white. To the east, the blue flash of a stream. He found the canteen and drank, and offered it to Philips, who also drank. “How long did I sleep?”

“Half an hour.”

Morrison concentrated on the white dots. They were probably boulders. There was a good warmth in his chest and along his shoulders, and he could feel the strength in his arms. Philips had good arms. They were black and hairless. Morrison’s were fair and freckled with a curly crop of fine reddish hair.

“Put on a hat now,” Philips said. “We make our own wind and it is deceptive. The sun is dangerous.”

Morrison fished the jockey cap from his hip pocket. Bright purple, silky in the sun. Of all colors he liked best purples and oranges. A newspaper had once told him that a preference for orange indicated a cheerful personality. A preference for purple indicated a melancholy personality. On the same page were astrological revelations, and he learned that this was a good time to take the wife on a voyage of pleasure. It was the day of his first divorce. Final decree. Joanne. Eminent lover recalls early transports. God!

He wondered again what life this country bred, and when he would see it. This upland was not a plateau but a range of low hills, not even hills, gentle scallops one after another so that the road had no need to curve but rose gently with them. The palms and broadleaf had thinned at the road’s edge, and wild patches of tawny grass, short and bristly, grew there like sideburns. The sky was lighter but still dazzling, a painter’s yellow sky. In one clearing he saw a white dot much closer, and it was not a boulder but a termites’ hill, pale gray, papery, like a wasps’ nest four feet high and crested. There were hundreds of them.

Still they rose, and soon the road curved gently, and curved again, and again and again in a soothing alternation. Before them were green hills, with nests of purple shade, and reddish outcroppings, and soon they were rising again. Then he saw the carrion crows, fifteen or twenty of them, high and circling, remote and patient. He had missed them. They were good company.

At first he saw only one man, just this side of a bend. For three hours he had seen no human being: this was the first. The man was still, leaning on a tamp. He was tall, black, thin, barefoot, in a pair of tattered pants, and weary; he raised the tamp in salute, as if witnessing man’s bondage to tools and to work, as if he ate nor slept nor loved, lived nor died, but only tamped. As they rumbled by, Philips waved, and the man waved back, and Morrison saw that he had lost one eye.

Then Philips pressed the horn, one long blast, and they were home, sweeping around the last bend. The crew was startled into a Greek immobility, and stood like a frieze in the spanking sunlight: the digger, the chopper, the sifter, the tamper, the pounder, the roller, shovel and basket, pick and barrow, tall men and round, clothed men and naked, hats and caps and one beret and one scarlet fez.

Then they moved, downed tools and swarmed toward the car, and Morrison saw the roadbed beyond them, the wide swath through trees and grass, still rising pale and dusty, steeper here; and closer he saw three small trailers and a steamshovel and a steamroller and a back-hoe, all off the road and in the shade, and three ancient trucks powdered and gray. And a donkey and chickens and a grinning brown dog. And a blue butterfly darting.

He stepped out of the Land-Rover and stretched beneath the molten sun, and was happier than he had ever been before.

“This is Ramesh,” Philips said. “Mister Bernard Morrison.”

Ramesh was surely sixty, slight and wiry, barefoot. His khaki shirt was fresh and carefully buttoned, which marked him, Morrison supposed, as foreman. That, and the great silvery wrist-watch with its complication of dials and sweeps. Ramesh had a large nose and large ears, sleepy liquid brown eyes and long black hair salted gray. He was a shade less dark than Philips. Palms together, he bowed, and then held forth his right hand. “Mister Morrison,” he said softly. “Welcome to the works. I hope you have approved of the road.” His voice was like his eyes, deep and liquid and sleepy.

“I have. The men must have worked well.”

“Yes. It took almost two years.” His tone was judicious, as though he were considering for the first time the quality of his men’s work. “Mister Van Alstyne left them to me, you see. We lost only one. He fell off the lorry on a Saturday night, going to the capital, and broke his head. They work well because the job here is a good one to have. There are many unemployed, as you know.”

“Yes.”

“That is because the big city attracts so many, but we have no money for capital expenditures, for great projects. Yet no one now wishes to farm. Only my own people, who are more industrious than most. The sense of exile, you understand. In the big city there is not sufficient work, and most of the newcomers become a burden to their relatives, who cannot turn them away. We have great troubles, as you know.”

“Mister Morrison needs rest,” Philips said lightly. “I think you can tell him later about our history and geography and economics.”

“Yes, yes. You must forgive me.” They walked toward the trailers. The crew had been shown their new boss, and nodded and waved now and melted into the shade. The man in the scarlet fez, a giant, stood longer than the others and stared at Morrison.

“Where do they sleep?”

Ramesh waved carelessly. “Back under the trees we have hammocks. Also the cooking truck. Are you hungry?”

“No. Thirsty.”

“Ah, yes. Here we are. This is your home and office, Mister Morrison.”

At first he could see nothing; after the glare of the road his home-and-office was a lightless cave. Then he made out a bed, cabinets, a hinged desk-top. “Fine. Hot, though.”

“Yes,” Philips said. “An oven, I am afraid.”

“Damn and blahst,” Ramesh said in obvious excitement. “Wait,” and left them.

“I hope I can sleep in this thing. Let’s get out.”

“Yes. By noontime the temperature will rise to about one hundred and ten degrees.”

Morrison grimaced. “Is there a stream?”

“A quarter-mile off. Down that slope.”

“Good. We can wallow.”

“Yes. We all do. Um: I have a suggestion.” Philips scratched his head, smiling, promising mischief.

“Make it.”

“Would you like a bottle of beer?”

“Yes.”

“Four hours ago you took the pledge.”

“Beer is medicine. Where do you keep it?”

“Well, we have a generator. So we have a small fridge.”

Ramesh scuttled up. “Here you are, sir. Welcome.” He handed Morrison a broad straw fan with a three-inch fringe of whiskers. Horsehair. “The fan will cool you. The hairs are to whisk flies. Welcome, welcome.” He stepped back and made a leg like the Lord Mayor of London.

“The flies can be bad,” Philips said. “We call them lion flies. They raise great welts that itch fiercely. We also have insect repellent.”

“Do they …” Morrison hesitated, and then met his eye: “Do they bother everybody?”

“They bother all men alike,” Philips said coldly.

Ramesh seemed puzzled.

“Time for a beer,” Morrison said.

“Two a day, only,” Philips said.

“All men alike?”

“No,” Philips said flatly. “Officers only.”

Morrison smiled at him, and Philips looked away.

When the sun was high and cruel, the crew surrendered. They came in a slow snickering hubbub and stacked their tools, and drifted into the dark woods, their voices velvety. The dog, the donkey, and several chickens shared torpid peace in one patch of shade; the chickens twitched uneasily, staring out at the ring of brightness. Morrison yawned and stretched. “Why don’t these animals go to the water?”

“Because they are fed here,” Philips said. “No need to have them dunging along the banks. The dogs and donkey go by themselves to drink, and always come back to this spot. What the chickens do I am not sure. They seem to be teetotalers.”

“Do they lay eggs?”

“Of course. One egg per man every third day. Small eggs.”

“And nothing comes to kill them.” He was fighting to keep awake.

“Not so far. Not here. Back in the lowlands we kept no chickens because there are mongooses. Chiefly in the sugar cane but also in the bush. But not here.”

“Mongooses.” That pleased him. “What about snakes? And what about the big cats?”

Philips dismissed his exotic fantasies. “No. Here and there a viper, more afraid of you than you are of him. Though they can kill. Constrictors taste like chicken, by the way. And back where the forest and the savanna meet there are a few cats. They eat the wild pigs and the dwarf deer. But here it is too open. They are not like those haughty African lions you read about; no, these are something else. They live in pairs and not in prides. They are mangy and sullen and keep to themselves. At any rate they never come here. And see who is lecturing on the fauna.” With a droll face. “Former egg-thief. Now professional man and city-dweller.”

“Do you keep arms here?” The men had scattered down many faint tracks through the forest; they followed along. Hammocks hung limp among the trees. The beer had lulled Morrison and last night was remote. The crowded city and the foolish arguments were remote. Philips and he stepped slowly; even in shadow the heat was thick and sticky.

“A couple of rifles and a revolver. So far not used. I suppose a cat might come. An old one, an outcast.”

“I thought you might hunt your own meat.” A tangle of roots thick as your arm. Then a clearing of dry yellow grass crackling underfoot, and the sun like a hammer.

“No. If something came along I suppose we would shoot it. But nothing comes along. Animals do not like men. And we have no time to go chasing them.”

There was the water, a friendly and easygoing river, light green with scales of gold. Dappled and spangled, purling and licking. Twenty feet wide, and gliding sixty or seventy feet from one bend to another. Its banks were overgrown by heavy brush, leafy and dense like stunted alders, shady. In a copse on the near bank stood a half-ton truck, and beside it a grill about six feet square. “You burn wood.”

Philips laughed, short, scornful: “No. Gas. From a tank on the lorry there. All very civilized. But at midday we eat cold meat and biscuits. The stream is clean, by the way. Potable. Go downstream to relieve yourself.”

Which some of the men were doing. Most were sitting along the banks waist-deep. Some were naked, some in shorts. There was the one in his red fez, a huge man and wearing only the fez. Morrison trailed after Philips to the cold grill and took up a tin mess kit. Ramesh bowed like a head waiter and indicated a small vat. Morrison spooned cold lamb and took biscuits from a tall can. Sweat ran down his arms. “Breakfast is the best,” Ramesh fluttered. “Hot meat and good coffee, made by me, the best, and sometimes cold tomatoes from a tin. In a week you will hate the food. Oh yes. If not sooner. We all do.” Cheerfully.

Philips and Morrison sat upon the ground. Ramesh joined them and was silent. They were in shade but the air was like wool. Breathing was not easy, and the food was dry and tasteless. Morrison went to the stream and drank from cupped hands. The men were lined beneath the banks now like a guard of honor, dull of eye and inert, save a few cleaning their kits with mud. A very young fellow collected the kits and carried them to the truck, making many trips and glancing skittishly at Morrison as he passed. “That is Jacob,” Ramesh said softly. Jacob wore khaki shorts and a cloth cap like the homespun caps of India. He was black, and gleamed. He waited at the truck, and when the three men had eaten he took their kits. Philips led Morrison to the stream and they stripped and stepped into the cool water, and then to a small cove where half a dozen fat rocks, stippled gray and white, broke the surface. There they sat, and leaned back against the rocks, and were cool and sleepy. The stream lapped at Morrison’s belly. High above, the carrion crows planed, and the sun flashed off their white faces. “No one talks,” Morrison said.

“About what?” Philips spoke lazily and wanted no answer. Morrison rolled forward, went under, and swam a few strokes.

“Lord Greystoke,” Philips said.

“Who?”

“Tarzan.”

Morrison laughed and sat back. A blue butterfly, and then another, piercing, luminescent blue, skittered along the glinting waters. Morrison drank again; the water was sweet, and warm to the mouth, but a blessing on the skin.

After a time he was restless. “I’m going on up.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. Look around. Guard the trucks.”

Philips smiled sleepily. “There is no one. For miles and miles.”

“It’s too new. I can’t sit still.”

“All right. While I think of it, if you are ever lost, move east. Sooner or later you will find this stream.”

“It’s only a quarter of a mile.”

“Now or later,” Philips said.

Morrison’s kingdom. A harsh, bare, flat, dusty roadbed, and the slopes beyond, and the rash of termite hills. Patches of dry, leafy forest, black and silver and a haze of dark green. Three trailers, six trucks in all, the bulldozer, the roller. The machinery was clean and well greased. Drums of petrol. Three days, and he thought of it as petrol. Lookoe joe oilie nanda watra. Spark plugs. Filters. Dynamite. The generator, silent on a caisson; wires. Power. A surveyor’s rod.

A junkyard. Plus men, equaled miles of road. Where nothing had been.

He walked out upon the crushed rock; then slower, as the heat bore him down; then stood, bathed in gold. Alone. Above him the sun, and below him his own road. The silence of noon.

A king. A silly man in a silly purple hat.

First man back was the big fellow with the red fez. By then Morrison was sitting sensibly in the doorway of his trailer, and fanning. Shorts and sandals and a fan, and the flies be damned. Welts. The big man came quietly up one of the faint tracks, and the first Morrison knew of him was a barrel voice intoning, “Hello, new boss.”

Morrison stilled the fan. “Hello. What are you called?”

“Tall Boy,” he said. He was that. Six feet six inches and an eighth of a ton. An open and amiable face, roundish, and the fez sitting cocky and scarlet.

“They call me Morrison.”

Tall Boy nodded as though this was important information. It might be just that. In some parts of the world names were of the first importance.

“What work do you do?”

Tall Boy squatted on his heels. “I move the earth.”

He could have, too. Archimedes: give me a Tall Boy tall enough.

“Any machine you have, I can run.” It rolled out of him like poetry: an-y mah-shin you-hov I-con rawn.

“Then you’re the craneman.”

“Oh yes. I run the cranes too.”

“I heard you were the best craneman in the country.”

A grin. “You heard that.”

“Yes.”

“That is true. I know where you heard that, and it is true.”

“Good. You know we will have a new crane. The biggest and best. Fifty tons, and with a boom that we can run out about a hundred and fifty feet.”

“Ah.” He gleamed.

“With a full-circle swing. And it can lift thirty-three thousand pounds if it has to.”

“Ooo.” Moon-eyed.

“You and I and Philips will get to know it before we put it to work. It costs a hundred thousand dollars, and it’s all yours.”

“Lord Jesus,” he said. He was a big man and the crane was right for him. A jockey could operate it, but Tall Boy and the crane would be a love affair. He seemed to speak with great solemnity, but perhaps it was only the deep voice. “I saw a picture of the bridge. Philips told me about the work.”

“Good.”

They were silent for a time. Tall Boy was noticing Morrison: the flabby belly and the pale freckled skin.

“Boss,” he said.

“What?”

“How come Philips is not boss?”

“You don’t like me?”

“Oh nothing like that. But Philips did all this job with Mister Van. A good road.” Tall Boy pouted and cocked his head like a black pigeon.

“I’m older,” Morrison said. “I’ve done much more of this work.”

“Many bridges?”

“No. No bridges.”

“Well then.”

“There are many men in the company,” Morrison said, “and millions of dollars to spend. There is more to a bridge than just the building. So Philips is your boss if you want. But I have to be Philips’s boss. In ten years Philips can be top man. You understand. Your own prime minister wants me here.” He was not sure of that but it sounded imposing.

“All right.” Tall Boy squatted, huge and black and worried.

“No. Tell me: do you understand?” Morrison was suddenly gloomy with the importance of this.

“Yes. You are the boss of the company. Philips is the boss of the work and Ramesh is the boss of the men. I boss the machines.”

“Good. And don’t talk about this. You shouldn’t have talked to me about it. You make me think that Philips is unhappy and wants to be boss.”

“Well,” he said.

“Don’t talk about it again, you hear?”

“I hear.”

Other voices: the men returning.

“Philips is a good man. The best. Only young. Everything in time.”

“All right.”

“And the important thing is the bridge.”

“Yes.”

Philips was ambling toward them. Ramesh too. “Tall Boy,” Ramesh called.

“Ho,” he said.

“Back to the road.”

Philips watched him go. “That is a good man.”

“Yes.” Morrison plunged ahead, not sure that he should, but helpless. “He wishes you were boss here.”

“He is a simple fellow,” Philips said.

“Do you wish it too?”

Ramesh stood wide-eyed, avid.

“No,” Philips said easily. “When Van Alstyne died, the men assumed that I was crown prince. I am sorry if Tall Boy has made you nervous. That is the truth.”

“Good. What’s his real name?”

“I have no idea. Ramesh?”

Ramesh shook his head. “Just Tall Boy. Only Tall Boy. His friends call him Tallie.”

Morrison grunted.

Philips showed puzzlement.

Morrison sighed. “In my country, you see, it would be disrespectful.”

“Oh yes.” Philips had it now. “As with waiters and porters and such. Well, that way we do not care for it either. But when it is a man’s name. You worry too much.”

“Senecas and redwoods.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He rose, and tossed the fan into the trailer. “I’m going up to the gorge.”

“Good.” Philips beamed. “I will show you the way.”

“No. Not the first time. I want to see it alone. Just tell me.”

Philips shrugged, turning away. “Follow the roadbed.”

He was offended. Ramesh was still wide-eyed. To hell with both of them. And Tall Boy too. It’s my bridge.

He slithered and crunched over the shiny, fist-sized rock. Soon the grass at the road’s edge invited easier walking. It was coarse and tough. After a mile or so it became denser and deeper, and he heard an echo of Philips, “here and there a viper,” and moved back onto the roadbed. Which then became a simple track, rising with the land. Still the trees were sparse, still the sun merciless, but before him was a new terrain, purple and gold and black, with hills and hollows, and far off to his left—he was marching south, so that would be east—a range of real mountains. And still the road rose.

On that hour’s journey he never looked back.

In the end he followed the track through a last grove of stunted upland broadleafs, and paused once, weary, grateful for the shade. In the silence he heard a woodpecker—never saw it—and the rattle took him back thirty years. He was a boy again, and a country boy too, and the sweat on his round face matted a fine down. He was lost in the woods, and happy. Jacknife in his pocket and all things still to come.

The canopy of leaves was tightly woven, passing no blue and no sun. He stood on the musty forest floor in a cave of feeble greens and grays among black roots and trunks. Behind him a light crackle; he turned to peer, as if stalking beasts padded in shadow. Nothing. The spirit of the place. The souls of lions and vipers, but no bodies; only yellow eyes, lidded, winking behind tree-trunks.

A small boy, and all things still to come. Chirr. Kee-kee-kee. A flash of yellow, high in the leaves.

All sad things. He moved along, through school and war and wives and work, and his round face grew long, and the fine down thickened and bristled, and the clear eyes veined slowly red. He came out of the grove through a forlorn hope of gallant red blossoms. They were low to the ground and huddled against the sunlight.

He stood small in a great bowl of yellowed grasses, dwarfed by the dappled hills and the raw blue sky. It was a cracked bowl, and the crack was his gorge, a hundred steps on. The gorge emerged from steep hills to the east, dirty yellow hills with a blush of reddish brown, and black rocks nippling up; beyond those hills were the mountains he could no longer see. But to the west the hills sloped away, and were a rich green, and stopped his breath: a million miles of rolling green, hill and forest, palm and broadleaf forever and a hair of blue, a river, another; the sun westering now but still sovereign, blinding, and the green beneath endless, flashing bright, shadowed dim.

Alone. Oh, he was alone.

His saucer was a small flat circle, a resting-place in the colossal east-west fall. Across the gorge a low hill rose like a barrier, a hogback furred by scrubby brush and dwarf trees; what lay beyond it he could not see.

With the sun hot on his cheek he stepped meticulously to the lip of the gorge. The gorge was deep and dark; far below a black stream swirled and eddied, white rills foaming off black boulders. He stepped back and imagined his bridge, gleaming white.

He was streaming sweat and frightened.

He found the bridge of vines, off to the west. The vines were brown-black, three inches thick, wrapped about with tough grasses and layers of leaf, and anchored to a spur of rock. The bridge hung limp against his wall of the gorge. From a gnarled tree on the far lip hung a single vine, down in a slack bow and across to his own side many feet below. The bridge itself, or what he could see of it, looked skimpy, and not a bridge that any man would want to cross every day. He knelt. Far below the water leapt and boiled and beckoned. That was a long way down, and cool and dark. Down there in the spume and the glistening rock. Devils seethed there. If he were a savage he would call it the home of the devils. Unless the cool and the dark were much prized. Heaven might here be cool and moist and dark.

He stood up to dust his knees, and saw a man.

The man stood beside a dense tangle of brush halfway up the hogback across from Morrison. He was lean, and very black, naked and erect. He held a spear, and stared foolishly.

Morrison too stared foolishly.

For many seconds they stood staring. Morrison raised his right hand.

The man raised his spear.

Morrison held forth both hands, empty. The man only stared. Morrison pointed down at the bridge then, and made a lifting motion.

The man stood changeless.

Morrison looked down at the bridge of vines, and beyond to the home of the devils. He felt fear, and stepped back from the lip of the gorge. When he looked up, the man was gone.