The Valley of the Flame, Henry Kuttner [ready player one ebook .TXT] 📗

set his teeth. Delirium, of course. That accounted for the senseless rambling. But that imperious dismissal was intrinsic in the man himself. Now he gathered his rags about him as if they had been ermine. He seemed to fall asleep almost instantly. From his recumbent form there breathed out a tremendous vitality that set Raft’s nerves jangling.

He turned away. A heartbeat so faint that it was imperceptible? Ridiculous. Some new disease, more likely, though its symptoms were contradictory. Pereira seemed in perfect health, and yet he obviously couldn’t be.

There might be another answer. A mutation? One of those curious, specialized human beings that appear occasionally in the race? Raft moved his mouth impatiently. He went back to check on the aviator, conscious of a queer, rustling alertness permeating the hospital, as though the coming of the two men had roused the place from sleep to wakefulness.

There was no change in da Fonseca, and Merriday was busy with stimulants. Raft grunted approval and went in search of Craddock.

Halfway down the hall he stopped at the sound of a familiar voice. The diamond-hunter’s low, smooth tones, urgent now, and commanding.

“I return this to you. I have come very far to do it,_ s’nhor.“_

And Dan Craddock replying in a stumbling whisper that held amazement and fear.

“But you weren’t there! There was nothing there, except—”

“We came later,” Pereira said. “By the sun and the waters we guessed. Then at last we had the answer.”

Raft let out his breath. A board creaked under him. Simultaneously he heard a—a sound, a susurrus of faint wind, and felt a sense of inexplicable motion.

Startled, he hurried forward. The passage lay blankly empty before him. Nothing could have left the laboratory without his knowledge. But when he stood on the threshold he faced Craddock, and Craddock alone, staring in blank, astounded paralysis at nothing.

Quickly Raft searched the room with his eyes. It was empty. The window screens were still in place, and, moreover, were so rusted that they could not be removed without considerable noise.

“Where’s Pereira?” he asked curtly.

Craddock turned to face him, jaw slack. “Who?”

“The man you were just talking to.”

“I—I—there was nobody here.”

“Yeah,” Raft said. “So I’m crazy. That wouldn’t surprise me, after what’s happened already tonight.” He noticed a booklet in Craddock’s hand, a ring-bound notebook with its leather cover moulded and discolored by age. The Welshman hastily stuffed it into his pocket. Avoiding Raft’s probing eyes, he nodded toward the microscope.

“There’s the blood. I must have bungled it somehow. It’s all wrong.” Yet he didn’t seem unduly surprised.

Raft put his eye to the lens. His lips tightened.

“So I am crazy,” he said.

“It is funny, isn’t it?” Craddock said, inadequately.

It was more than funny. It was appalling. The vascular system has certain types of blood cells floating free, of course; they have a definite form and purpose, and intruding organisms may affect them in various ways.

But this specimen on the slide showed something Raft had never seen before. The red cells were oval instead of disc-shaped, and in place of the whites there were ciliated organisms that moved with a writhing, erratic motion.

And moving fast—too fast!

“They’ve slowed down a lot since I first looked,” Craddock said. “In the beginning they were spinning so quickly I couldn’t even see them.”

“But what sort of bug would do that? It’s destroyed the phagocytes. Pereira ought to be dead, if he hasn’t a white blood cell in his body. No, there’s a mistake somewhere. We’d better run some reagent tests.”

They did, going through the routine, but found nothing. Te every test they could devise, the reaction was that of apparently normal blood. Furthermore, the writhing ciliate things seemed not to be malignant. When toxic matter was introduced the ciliates formed a barrier of their own hairy bodies, just as phagocytes should have done, but three times as effective.

A specimen slide glittered and trembled in Craddock’s mutilated hand.

“It’s an improvement,” he said. “Those bugs are better than whites.”

“But where are the whites?”

“Deus, how should I know?” Craddock’s fingers slid into the pocket where he had placed that discolored notebook. “I’m not in charge here—you are. This is your problem.”

“I wonder if it is,” Raft said slowly. “Just what was there about the—sun and the waters?”

Craddock hesitated. Then a wry, crooked smile twisted his mouth.

“They appeared quite normal to me,” he said. And, turning on his heel, was gone.

Raft stared after him. What was behind this? Craddock obviously knew Pereira. Though how that interview had been held, Raft did not know. Ventriloquism? He snorted at the thought. No, Pereira had been in the laboratory with Craddock, and then he had, seemingly, walked through solid walls.

Which meant—what?

Raft turned to the microscope again. There was no help there. In the sane, modern world of 1985 there was simply no place for such irrationalities. Incidentally, where was Pereira now?

He wasn’t in the office where Raft had left him. And as Raft hesitated on the doorway, he heard a sound that brought blood pumping into his temples. He felt as though the subtle, half-sensed hints of wrongness had suddenly exploded into action.

It was merely the faint pop-popping of exhaust, but there was no reason for the motor launch to be going out at this hour.

Raft headed for the river. He paused to seize a flashlight. There were faint shouts. Others had caught the souhd of the engine too. Merriday’s bulky form loomed on the bank.

Raft leveled the light and sent the beam flashing out into that pit of shadows. The smooth surface of the river glinted like a stream of diamonds. He swung the beam. There was the motor launch, ploughing a black furrow in the shining water as it melted away into the gloom where the flashlight’s rays could not penetrate.

But just as it vanished the light caught one full gleam upon a face—Pereira’s face, laughing back across his shoulder, white teeth glittering in the velvety beard. Triumph was arrogant in his laughter, the elation Raft had sensed before.

There was someone with him; Raft found it impossible to make out who that someone was. The Indies were running along the cleared bank, and a couple of them had put out in a canoa, but that wouldn’t help. Raft drew the pistol he always carried in the jungle. The thought of sending a bullet after that arrogant, laughing face was very pleasant.

“No, Brian!” Merriday said, and pulled down his arm.

“But he’s getting away with our boat!”

“Dan Craddock’s with him,” Merriday said. “Didn’t you see?”

The pop-popping of the motor was fainter now, dying into the dim murmur of the Jutahy drums. Raft stood motionless, feeling bewildered and helpless.

“Nothing we can do till morning, anyway,” he said presently. “Let’s go back inside.”

Then a voice he did not know jabbered something in Portuguese.

“He has gone back to his own land—and he has taken something with him.”

Raft flashed the light up into the face of the aviator, da Fonseca, his flyer’s cap gripped in one hand as he fumbled at his throat, groping, searching. The pupils of his eyes were no longer tiny. They were huge.

“Taken what?” Merriday said.

“My soul,” da Fonseca said quite simply.

There was a moment of stillness. And in that pause da Fonseca’s words fell with nightmare clarity.

“I had it in a little mirror around my neck. He put it there. It gave him the power to—to—” The thin, breathless voice faded.

“To do what?” Raft asked.

“To make men slaves,” the aviator whispered. “As he did with the doutor.”

Craddock! Raft had a sudden insane relief that the Welshman had not, then, gone off willingly with Pereira, in some mysterious unfathomed partnership. Then he was furious with himself for instantly accepting such a fantastic explanation from a man so obviously mad.

Yet it was an explanation. There seemed to be no other.

“Let me down,” da Fonseca said, stirring against the hands that held him upright. “Without my soul I cannot stay here long.”

“Carry him inside,” Raft said. “Bill, get a hypo. Adrenalin.”

Da Fonseca had collapsed completely by the time he was laid gently on a cot. His heart had stopped. Merriday came running with a syringe.

He had put on a long needle, guessing Raft’s intention.

Raft made the injection directly into the heart muscle. Then he waited, stethoscope ready. He was conscious of something—different. Something changed.

Abruptly he knew what it was. The drums. They were louder, shouting, triumphant. Their beat was like the throbbing of a monster heart—of the jungle’s heart, dark and immense.

Da Fonseca responded. Raft heard the soft pounding through the instrument, and those heartbeats were timed exactly to the rhythm of the Jutahy drums. His lids lifted slowly. His voice was hollow, chanting.

“He goes back now—and the gate of Doirada opens to his coming—He goes back—to the sleeping Flame. By the unseen road, where the devils of Paititi watch at the gate of Doirada….”

Louder roared the drums. Louder beat da Fonseca’s heart. His voice grew stronger.

“The sun was wrong. And the river was slow—too slow. There was a devil there, under the ice. It was—was—”

He tore again at his throat, gasping for breath. His eyes held madness.

“Curupuri!” he screamed, and the drums crashed an echo.

And were still.

There was silence, blank and empty. As though at a signal, the Jutahy drums had stopped.

Da Fonseca fell back like a dead man on the cot. Raft, sweat cold on his skin, leaned forward, searching with his stethoscope at the bared chest.

He heard nothing.

Then, far out in the jungle, a drum muttered once and was still.

Da Fonseca’s dead heart stirred with it.

And fell silent.

CHAPTER III. GATE TO PAITITI

WITH FIVE INDIOS Dr. Brian Raft went up the Jutahy after Craddock and Pereira. He went with his lips thinned grimly, and a deep doubt in his mind. Merriday he left at the base hospital, to wind up the experiment and send the records back to the Institute.

“You can’t go alone,” Merriday had said. “You’re crazy, Brian.”

Raft nodded.

“Maybe. But we worked with Dan for nearly a year, and he’s a white man. As for Pereira, sometimes I’m not entirely sure that he was a—man.”

Stolid Merriday blinked.

“Oh, but that’s nonsense.”

“I told you what happened. He had no heartbeat. His temperature was crazy. And the way he walked through the laboratory wall wasn’t strictly normal, was it?”

“Da Fonseca said some queer things before he died, too. You’re not starting to believe them, are you?”

“No,” Raft said. “Not yet. Not without a devil of a lot of proof. Just the same, I wish I’d got a chance at that notebook of Craddock’s. Pereira said he was returning it. And that stuff about the sun and the river being too slow. Two people mentioned that, you know; da Fonseca and Pereira. Moreover, Dan seemed to understand what it meant.”

“More than I do,” Merriday grunted. “It’s dangerous for you to go up-river alone.”

“I’ve got a hunch Craddock went up-river, a long time ago. What he found there is a mystery.” Raft shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know, Bill. Anyway, they didn’t have much fuel aboard, and I think I can catch up with them.”

“I wish you’d let me go with you.”

But Raft wouldn’t agree to that. In the end, he went out alone, the Indies paddling the big canoa untiringly up against the current. He had supplies—what he could get hastily together—and guns and ammunition. The natives helped him find Pereira’s track. For, all too soon, the diamond-hunter left the river.

“Two men walking,” Luiz said, eyeing the underbrush.

Walking. That meant either that Craddock