Doorways in the Sand Read online

  It turned and raced along the wall then. Too fast, it seemed, to be able to stop when it reached the corner.

  Nor did it.

  I did not think it would make it, but I had underestimated its strength.

  The lights came on just as it sprang into the air, and I had a full view of the black cat shape, sailing, forelimbs extended, far out beyond the edge of the building. Then descending, dropping from view—no nine lives to fool with either, I felt sure—followed by a soft impact, a scratching, a clicking.

  Racing forward, I saw that it had made it across. It was onto the skeleton of the building that stood beside the hall, onto it and already retreating across a girder.

  I did not break my stride.

  I had taken an easier way across that night I had last visited the roof, but there was no time for such luxury now—at least, that was how I had rationalized it after the fact. Actually, I suppose, those impetuous spinal nerves should have the credit this time, too. Or the blame.

  I estimated the jump automatically as I approached, leaped from what my body told me was precisely the proper spot, cleared the guard wall, kept my eyes on my target and my arms ready.

  I always worry about my shins on something like this. One bad bash to them and the pain could be sufficient to break the chain of necessary actions. And a close bit of coordination was required here—another bad feature. An ideal climbing situation involves one key action at a time. Two can still be okay. Too much to coordinate, though, and you get into the foolish risk area. At any other time this one would be foolish. I seldom jump for handholds. If there is an alternative save, I may. But that is about all. I’m not one for the all-or-nothing feat. However . . .

  My feet struck the girder with a jolt I felt in my wisdom teeth. My left arm hooked about the upright I-beam beside which I had landed, things of which Torquemada would have approved occurring within my shoulder. I fell forward then but was simultaneously swung leftward as I lost my footing, thrusting my right arm across and around to catch hold of the same upright. Then I drew myself back onto the girder, caught my balance and held it. I released my hold on the upright as I sighted my quarry.

  It was heading for the platformed section where the workmen kept their things in barrels and tarp-covered heaps. I started for that place myself, running along girders, plotting the shortest route, ducking and sidestepping where necessary.

  It saw me coming. It mounted a heap, a crate, sprang to the floor above. I took hold of a strut and the side of a beam, swung myself up, found purchase for my left foot at the head of the strut, raised myself, caught hold of the girder overhead, pulled myself up.

  As I came to my feet, I saw it vanishing over the edge of the platform on the next floor above. I repeated my climb.

  It was nowhere in sight. I could only assume that it had continued on upward. I followed.

  Three floors above that I glimpsed it again. It had paused to peer down at me from a narrow width of planking that served as an elevator landing for workmen. The light from below and behind caught its eyes once more.

  Then movement!

  I clung to my support and raised an arm to shield my head. But this proved unnecessary.

  The clatter and the bouncing, pinging, ringing that spilled from the bucket of bolts or rivets it had pushed over the edge came to me, passed by me, echoed on down to the ground, where it ended/ended/finally ended.

  I saved the breath I might have used on curses for purposes of climbing and resumed my vertical trek once more as soon as the air was clear. A cold wind began to tug at me as I went. Glancing back and down, I saw figures on the still-illuminated rooftop next door, looking upward. How much they could see I was not certain.

  By the time I reached the place from which the flak had fallen, the subject of my pursuit was two floors higher and apparently catching its breath. It was easier for me to see now, as the platforms had dwindled down to a precious few bits of planking and we were coming into a realm of hard, straight lines and cold, clean angles as classic and spare as a theorem out of Euclid.

  The winds pushed and pulled with a bit more force as I mounted higher, slowly surrendering their randomness and growing constant. Starting at my fingertips and entering into the rest of me came a sense of the slight arrhythmic swaying that possessed the structure. The sleep sounds of the city grew indistinguishable in terms of isolated noises. It was a snoring, then a humming and finally the winds ate it and digested it. The stars and the moon traced the geometry through which we maneuvered and all the surfaces were dry, which is really about all that a night climber can ask for.

  I kept on after it, up. Up. Up the two levels that separated us. Then one more.

  It stood one level above me then, glaring down. There were no more stories. This was as high as things had gotten. And so it waited.

  I paused and glared back.

  “Ready to call it quits?” I shouted. “Or do we play it out all the way?”

  There was no answer. No movement either. It just stood there and watched me.

  I ran my hand upward along the beam that rose beside me.

  My quarry grew smaller. It had crouched, bunched up, tensed itself. As if to spring . . .

  Damn it! I would be at a disadvantage for several moments when I reached that level. My head exposed, my arms and hands occupied as I drew myself up.

  Yet, it would be taking quite a chance itself, springing at me, up there, bringing itself into range.

  “I think you are bluffing,” I said. “I’m coming up.”

  I tightened my grip on the upright.

  A thought came into my mind then, of the sort that seldom entered there: What if you fall?

  I hesitated—it was such a novel notion—an idea one simply does not entertain. Of course I was aware that it could occur. It had happened to me a number of times, with varying results. It is not the sort of thing one dwells on to the point of preoccupation, however.

  Still, it is a long way down. Do you ever wonder what your final thought will be, just before the lights go out?

  I suppose that everyone has, at some time or other, for a moment or so. It is hardly worth prolonged cerebration, however, and would probably be classifiable as a symptom of something that ought to be sacrificed on the smudgy altar of mental health. But . . .

  Look down. How far? How great a distance? What does it feel like to fall? Is there a tingling in your wrists, hands, feet, ankles?

  Of course. But again—

  Vertigo! It swept over me. Wave upon wave. A thing I had never before experienced with such intensity.

  Simultaneously, I realized the unnatural source of my discomfort. It would require a superfluity of naïveté not to.

  My furry little enemy was broadcasting the sensation, trying to create an acrophobic attitude, succeeding.

  But some things must go beyond the physical, the somatopsychic. At least, those small shreds of mysticism which make up the only religion I know kept insisting it wasn’t all that simple to turn love into hate, passion to fear, to overcome the will of a lifetime with the irrationality of a moment.

  I beat my fist against the beam, I gnawed at my lip. I was scared. Me. Fred Cassidy. Scared to climb it.

  Falling, falling . . . Not the drifting of a leaf or a stray bit of paper, but the plummeting of a heavy body . . . The only interference, perhaps, the bars of our cage. . . A bloody print here, there . . . That is the only statement you may record on your passage down . . . As from the trees where your not-so-distant ancestors clung, fearfully—

  I saw it then. It had just given me what I needed, what I had been groping for while trying to bear the assault: an object outside myself on which I could focus my attention fully. It had allowed a patronizing attitude toward the whole human race to slip through just then. Sibla had irritated me with a touch of the same sentiment back at Merimee’s place. It was all that I needed.

  I allowed myself to get mad as hell. I encouraged it, stoked it.

  “All right,” I
said. “Those same ancestors used to poke things like you off limbs just for laughs—to watch you spit and fall, to see whether you always landed on your feet. It’s an old game. Hasn’t been played properly in ages. I am about to revive it, in the name of my fathers. Behold the riant anthropoid, beware its crooked thumbs!”

  I seized the beam and pulled myself up.

  It backed up, paused, advanced, paused again. I felt a growing elation at its indecisiveness, a sense of triumph over the halting of the bombing of my mind. When I reached its level I ducked my head low and thrust both hands up onto the girder far enough apart so that whichever got clawed the other would still be sufficient for support.

  It made as if to attack, apparently thought better of it, then turned and ran.

  I pulled myself up. I stood.

  I watched it scamper away, not halting until it was on the opposite side of the square of steel we held. Then I moved to the nearest corner and it moved to the farthest corner. I started up the next side. It started down the opposite side. I halted. It halted. We stared at each other.

  “Okay,” I said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. “With a stalemate you lose, you know. Those folks below aren’t just sitting on their hands. They’re calling for assistance. Every route down will be covered before long. I’m betting someone will be by soon in a chopper, too—with a mercy gun with infrared sights. I have always understood it to be a little better thing to surrender than to resist arrest when you are in trouble. I am a bona fide representative of both my country’s State Department and the United Nations. Choose whichever one you prefer. I—”

  Very well, the thought came into my mind. I will surrender to you in your capacity as a State Department employee.

  It immediately moved to the next corner, turned there and advanced along that side at a steady pace. I turned back, moving toward the corner I had recently quit. It reached that point before I did, however, turned and continued on toward me.

  “Hold it right there,” I said, “and consider yourself in custody.”

  Instead, it bounded forward and sprang toward me, my mind instantly filling with something which, when supplied with words, came through, roughly, as It is

  My hand had shot forward just as it was springing, and for want of any other weapon I had flipped my cigarette into its face.

  It twisted and slapped at it just before its feet left the girder. I tried to drop back and go into a crouch at the same time, raising my arms for balance, for protection.

  It hit me, but not in the throat or heart. It struck against my left shoulder, clawing wildly, raking my left arm and side. And then it fell.

  An instant of thoughts and actions inseparable: Regain my balance, save the nasty little thing—for whatever it knew—right arm crossbody, weight shift to left foot, left hand dipping, hooking, seizing—don’t overcompensate!—comes now the jerk, the tugging, the pull—

  I had it! I had hold of it by the tail! But—

  A brief resistance, a sudden ripping, a new shifting of moment . . .

  I held only a black, stiff, artificial tail, shreds of some rubbery costume material still attached. I caught a glimpse of the small, dark form as it passed through the area of greater illumination below. I don’t believe that it landed on its feet.

  TIME.

  More fragments, pieces, bits . . . Time.

  Epiphany in Black & Light, Scenario in Green, Gold, Purple & Gray . . .

  There is a man. He is climbing in the dusky daysend air, climbing the high Tower of Cheslerei in a place called Ardel beside a sea with a name he cannot quite pronounce as yet. The sea is as dark as the juice of grapes, bubbling a Chianti and chiaroscuro fermentation of the light of distant stars and the bent rays of Canis Vibesper, its own primary, now but slightly beneath the horizon, rousing another continent, pursued by the breezes that depart the inland fields to weave their courses among the interconnected balconies, towers, walls and walkways of the city, bearing the smells of the warm land toward its older, colder companion . . .

  Climbing from hold to green stone on the seaward side of the structure, he has contrived to race with the last of the day as it flees upward, tilts, prepares to jump. In the antic light of evening the top of the Tower of Cheslerei is the last spot touched by the day gold before its departure from the capitol. He has given himself the time from the beginning of sunset to race the final light from bottom to top, to be on hand to take the night as it comes into the last place.

  He is racing with shadows now, his own already diffuse about him, his hands darting like fish above the darkness. In the great high places above him the night continues with the minting of stars. Through atmosphere’s crystal mask, he glimpses their englossment as he goes. He is panting now, and the spot of gold has diminished. The shadows begin to pass him as he mounts.

  But it lingers, that tiny touch of gold on the green. Thinking, perhaps, of another place of green and gold, he moves even faster, pacing his shadow, gaining on it. The light fades for an instant, returns for another.

  During that instant, he catches hold of the parapet and heaves himself upward, like a swimmer departing the water.

  He draws himself up and stands, turning his head toward the sea, toward the light. Yes . . .

  He catches the final fleck of gold that it tosses. For a moment only he stares after it.

  He seats himself then on the stone and regards the night’s other thousands, as he had never seen them before. For a long while, he watches . . .

  I know him well, of course.

  Portrait of Boy & Dog Romping on the Beach, Tick-Tock and Tempest Past, Fragment—

  “Fetch, boy! Fetch!”

  “Damn it, Ragma! Learn to throw a frisbee properly if you want to play! I’m getting tired of going after it!”

  He chuckled. I recovered it and sailed it back. He caught it and threw it, to lose it again in the bushes upshore.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I quit. It’s hopeless. You catch fine, but you throw lousy.”

  I turned and headed back toward the water. A few moments later I heard a scuffing noise and he was at my side.

  “We have a game somewhat like that back home,” he said. “I was never very good at it there either.”

  We watched the waves foam in, green to gray, crowding and frothing as they ran.

  “Give me a cigarette,” Ragma said.

  I did, taking one myself also.

  “If I tell you what I know you want to know, I will be breaking security,” he said.

  I said nothing. I had already guessed as much.

  “But I am going to tell you anyhow,” he went on. “Not details. Just the general picture. I am going to exercise my discretion. It is really pretty much an open secret, and now that your people are beginning to travel to other worlds and entertain visitors from them, you will hear about it sooner or later anyway. I would rather you heard it from a friend. It is a factor you should have in mind to make a better decision on the proposition you have been offered. I think we owe you that much.”

  “My Cheshire cat . . .” I began.

  “Was a Whillowhim,” he said, “a representative of one of the most powerful cultures in the galaxy. Competition among the various peoples who make up the total of civilization has always been keen in terms of trade and the exploitation of new worlds. There are great cultures and massive power blocs, and then there are—developing worlds, shall we say?—such as your own, newly arrived at the threshold of the big world. One day your people will probably have membership in our Council, with the right to a voice and a vote. What sort of strength do you think you will wield?”

  “Not a whole big hell of a lot,” I said.

  “And what does one do under such circumstances?”

  “Seek alliances, make deals. Look for someone else with common problems and interests.”

  “You might ally yourself with one of the big power blocs. They would do handsome things for your people in return for your support.”

  “
There would seem a danger of becoming a puppet. Of losing a lot on something like that.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not so simple a thing to foresee. On the other paw, you might throw in with the other smaller groups whose situations are, as you said, similar to you own. There are dangers in that, too, of course, but then the choices are never really this clear-cut. Do you begin to see what I am getting at, though?”

  “Possibly. Are there many . . . developing worlds . . . such as my own?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There is quite a crop of them. New ones keep turning up all the time. A good thing, too—for everybody. We need that diversity—all those viewpoints and unique approaches to the problems life serves up wherever it occurs.”

  “Am I safe in assuming that a significant number of the younger ones stick together on major issues?”

  “You are safe in assuming that.”

  “Is there a sufficient number to really swing much weight?”

  “It is beginning to get to that point.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Yes. Some of the older, more entrenched powers would not mind limiting their force. Curtailing their number is one way to go about it.”

  “If we had messed up badly with the artifacts, would it have kept us out permanently?”

  “Permanently, no. You exist. You are sufficiently developed. You would have to be recognized sooner or later, even if you were blackballed initially. Still, it would be a mark against you, and it would necessarily be later for you then. It would delay things for a long while.”

  “Did you suspect the Whillowhim all along?”

  “I suspected one of the major powers. There have been a number of incidents of this sort—which is why we keep an eye on beginners. In your case, it was easy for them—finding a ready-made situation that might be exploited. Actually, though, I guessed wrong as to who was behind it. I did not really know until that night at the hall when Speicus got his message across and you pursued the Whillowhim. Not that it matters now. If we presented our findings to them and requested an explanation—which we will not do—the Whillowhim would of course simply reply that their agent was not their agent but a private individual of unbalanced nature acting without sanction, and they would regret the inconvenience he had caused. No. Their awareness of failure will be sufficient. We’ve scotched them here. They know that we are on the job and that you are alert—as your officials now are. I doubt that you will ever be faced with anything this overt in the future.”