But the greatest mystery to this point was the strange serial display that he had seen twice, in its differing forms. Prior to the waterspout the stars had turned to exploding fireworks. On the plain outside the encampment they had held a patch of the heavens in darkness when all the rest was light, and had gone into their hypnotic whirl before fading from visibility.
What had happened?
It was almost as if a piece of the firmament had been ripped away, permitting Clive to peer into another realm, another sky. It was as if, for those brief periods, he had stood upon the surface not of the Earth or of any of the sun's familiar worlds, but upon the surfaces of two alien planets circling two alien suns. Suns where the cosmos behaved in a manner unguessed at and undreamed of by the wildest of the imaginers of Earth.
He had tried to discuss the phenomenon with Father O'Hara. But the old priest, otherwise so affable and outgoing, had frozen entirely and refused to admit any knowledge of the subject.
And Sidi Bombay—the man had proved as invaluable an aide as he had promised, and Clive had thanked Horace Hamilton Smythe for engaging him. But the black man, too, had acted oddly when Clive Folliot asked about the remarkable aerial display, and had pretended an ignorance that could not have been authentic.
As they approached the Sudd, the hard African soil began to grow softer and more moist, and to support vegetation far more lush than it had at higher and drier elevations.
At night, after assuring that the camp was secured and the animals watered and fed, the three leaders of the expedition assembled for dinner. Clive Folliot, Horace Hamilton Smythe, and Sidi Bombay sat with their light service set before them on a folding table. Hot meat, rough bread, and native beer were their standard fare. It was not unlike a military encampment, with the three of them comprising an officers' mess—although Clive wondered how his commanding officer, Brigadier Leicester, would have reacted to the sight of a major of Her Majesty's Horse Guards dining with a noncommissioned officer and a civilian associate in black skin and ragged turban!
They had managed a crude map, and at the end of the repast, the tattered page illuminated by a flickering oil lantern, they studied it together.
They had passed between two bodies of water, Lake Kyoga to their east and the far larger Luta Nzige to the west. Gondokoro lay directly ahead, and it was from this point that Neville Folliot had headed northward into the Sudd, never again to be seen.
With the little information they had, the three planned the path of their party to Gondokoro and beyond. Gone was Clive's interest in continuing the search for the fabled source of the Nile. Not that he had ever felt a great desire to trace the historic waterway. He was becoming ever more obsessed with the need to unravel his brother's fate. Other aspects of his journey might be of interest to Maurice Carstairs and Carstairs's readers, but Clive was turning from an explorer into a manhunter!
Days later they passed through Gondokoro. The native bearers had led Clive to expect a thriving village, even a small city, but instead they found only the pitiful remnants of a town depleted by slavers and left, days earlier, in flames.
Cold judgment told Clive that he must keep his men with him, but he could not abandon the few, pitiful survivors of the attack to fend for themselves. More of the bearers left the party to assist the aged, the feeble, and helpless to make their way from Gondokoro back to Bagomoyo.
Folliot's depleted band reached the edge of the Sudd itself the better part of a week after leaving the ruins of Gondokoro.
Sidi Bombay had slipped away from camp before dawn the previous day, and Folliot, distressed, had sought information about the deserter from Horace Hamilton Smythe.
"He's your man, Sergeant!" Clive was furious. Sore feet, insect stings, and sunburned skin did nothing to help Folliot's temper. "He's your man, and now he'd done a runout on us! What's it all about, I want to know!"
Smythe smiled ingratiatingly. "I wouldn't worry none about old Sidi Bombay, Major! He hasn't deserted, no sah! He's off on an errand, is old Sidi."
Clive felt himself reddening. The sun was up and its rays cast a red-gold glow onto everything they struck, but Folliot's redness was not that of dawn. "An errand? What kind of errand? You hired the man without my permission, now you allow him to leave camp on some mysterious errand, also without my permission? Where's the man got to, and what is he doing?"
"I don't know, sah. And I beg to express a disagreement with the major, but I didn't give Sidi Bombay permission to leave the camp. He's his own man, is Sidi. Has been as long as I've known him, which is a very long time I must admit. Sidi don't ask permission. He don't need no by-your-leave, sah. He comes an' goes as he pleases."
"A free spirit, eh? I'm surprised he hasn't been stood against a wall and shot by now, or maybe strung up to a good tall tree."
"No, sah. Nobody's better try that with Mr. Bombay, sah. Sidi's got too many friends. He's done too many good turns for too many important people, all the way from the Congo to the Mekong. Sidi's a legend and nobody dares cross him, sah. Nobody." Clive snorted. "Well, get hold of M'Gambi, and get the camp struck and the party moving. And when we reach the water there"—he pointed ahead, toward the great swamp that lay ahead, covered this early in the day by a blue-gray miasma—"we'll need to see about some sort of pontoon or raft arrangement."
Horace Hamilton Smythe grinned behind his hand and did not quite render a military salute—Folliot had opposed that idea—before facing smartly about and pacing away to perform his duties.
Birds screamed overhead and unseen reptiles slithered through the tall grass at water's edge.
Clive examined his boots and found them coated with mud almost to the knees. Even as he stood on a bit of what appeared to be solid ground, surrounded by tussocks of tough, sawblade grass, he realized that he was sinking slowly into muck. He pulled his feet clear and replanted them. The earth seemed dry and solid enough, but within seconds Clive realized that he was sinking in once again.
The morning mist had burned off the Sudd, and for a few hours the party had moved in bright daylight. But by midafternoon a new bank of odoriferous moisture had risen from the earth and mud and water that made up this part of the Sudd. Tall reeds poked from the assortment of moist grasses. There were little splashes, hisses, and less frequent screeches and roars.
The Sudd was alive, and Clive Folliot was beginning to fear that it was malevolent. He looked around and realized with a chilling start that he was alone.
"Sergeant Smythe!"
"Right here, sah!" The man appeared like an apparition from a bank of drifting fog.
"Sergeant Smythe, I'm afraid that we've committed a miscalculation of serious degree. Here we are. I doubt that the horses or mules can go any farther in this stuff."
He pulled one boot out of the muck and kicked a gob of semiliquid matter off it before setting it down and repeating the operation with the other boot.
"I've even certain doubts about the men. Have you sounded out M'Gambi on the question? Will our bearers stay loyal, or will they turn away from us now? I've heard a good deal of grumbling since leaving Gondokoro. They're afraid of slavers, and now they're afraid of the Sudd as well, it would seem.
"Can't blame them," Smythe replied. He imitated Clive's procedure in clearing his boots and resetting them onto drier land. "Ever wonder where you'd wind up if you just kept sinking into this stuff, Major? Almost quicksand, it is. If you just let yourself sink, maybe put on one of those new diving suits that German bloke invented, and sink and sink into the stuff . . . where d'you think you'd wind up, sah?" Before Clive could respond, a shadowy figure became visible through the mist. It was tall and gaunt and shrouded in white, and seemed to glide rather than to walk.
Clive grasped Smythe's khaki-clad shoulder and pointed. "Look at that!" he exclaimed. "It—can it be—is it a ghost?"
The form glided nearer. The mist parted. The black and cheerful visage of Sidi Bombay, surmounted as ever by his ragged turban and clad in his shroudlike white rob
e, assumed full clarity. He stood like Charon in the stern of a narrow barge. The barge drew only a few inches of water, and Sidi Bombay poled through the shallow swamp, using his long staff as if he were moving peacefully on the surface of the Thames.
As silently as a ghost, Sidi Bombay raised one thin arm, pointed a bony finger at Clive Folliot, and gestured him to enter the barge.
Simultaneously, Horace Hamilton Smythe removed Clive's hand from his shoulder, took Clive by the elbow, and half-guided, half-propelled him forward.
As he moved toward the barge, Clive noticed for the first time a small discoloration on the back of Smythe's hand. It was a pattern of dots, as if Smythe had been tattooed like a sailor. The dots were arranged in a roughly circular pattern that reminded Clive of the weirdly circling stars he had seen in the morning sky. As Clive stared in amazement, the stars shifted, swirled, spun, until they were a blur against the sunburned brown of Smythe's flesh.
Dizzy, Clive stepped into the barge. He sank to his heels. The sound of water lapping against the barge's rough-hewn wooden hull, and the suck and slap of Sidi Bombay's knobkerry as he poled the barge stern- first away from the shore, were all that Clive could hear.
They were surrounded by fog and mist. The distant cry of unidentified creatures of the swamp penetrated to Clive's ears. He felt rather than saw Sidi Bombay swing the barge about and begin to pole it deeper into the mysterious Sudd.
THREE
WHAT WORLD
IS THIS?
CHAPTER 11
The Ruby Heart
The bearers who had carried Clive's supplies all the way from Bagomoyo were left behind. There was no need to worry about them, and if the truth be known Clive Folliot had little thought to give to them.
What had happened? What secret did Horace Hamilton Smythe and Sidi Bombay share? For how long had the abduction of Clive Folliot—and no other term could fairly be applied to the event—been planned?
Surely there had to be a connection between the mysterious symbol tattooed on Smythe's hand and the stellar formation that Clive had observed, but what in heaven's name could it be?
Clive demanded an explanation of Smythe.
The reply was a shake of the head.
Folliot persisted.
"I'm sorry, sah," Smythe apologized. "It's as much a mystery to me as it is to the major. Surely there was no way those bearers could have followed us, though. P'raps old Sidi Bombay knows what he's doin', sah. In fact, I'm sure he does. Sidi's never let me down before, sah, and I'm sure he won't let us down this time."
Clive's brow was clammy. The Sudd was hot but the mist was strangely chilled, and droplets precipitated on his skin. He removed his pith helmet, wiped his face with a bandanna, then slipped the cloth back into a pocket of his khaki trousers.
Smythe wore clothing similar to Clive's, but for headgear instead of a pith helmet he wore a leather-visored military cap, sans insignia. A belt of cloth webbing cinched Smythe's bush jacket, and a holster hung from his hip.
Clive dipped one hand into the water alongside the hull of the barge.
"I wouldn't do that, sah."
Clive looked into Horace Hamilton Smythe's eyes. "Why not, Sergeant?"
"Not safe, sah. Please, sah!"
A rush. A splash. Clive jerked his hand out of the water in time to avoid serious damage, but a row of razor-sharp teeth scraped across his knuckles, leaving a pattern of zigzag lines. Blood seeped from the scratches. Clive pulled the bandanna from his pocket and wrapped it around his hand.
"I'm sorry, sah."
"What—what was it?" Clive stared in the direction the thing had moved, but it was long gone, even its wake hidden in the slowly drifting mist. He had caught a single glimpse of something colored a metallic blue, its body smooth, its movements sinuous and graceful, that moved away with astonishing speed.
"Please, sah. Don't put your hand in the water again, sah. The major was very, very lucky." Smythe raised his eyes to gaze into the mist. Then he lowered them to look at Clive. "Good many dangerous critters in the water hereabouts, Major. Not so many flying ones. Wouldn't hurt to keep an eye out nevertheless, but there ain't so many flying ones as there are swimmers."
Clive looked about himself. "You've been in the Sudd before, Smythe?"
"No, sah. I've heard about it, is all. A dangerous place. That's all, sah."
The mist was thick and chilly and damp. The water was black and nearly opaque, and as to what creatures lurked in its blackness Clive was reluctant to speculate. There was no single source of light, no sun or moon to suggest the time of day or night. The mist itself glowed with a luminescence, and particles of it glimmered like dust motes dancing in a beam of sunlight.
Now and again a creature would splash in the black water.
Less frequently the flapping of great leathery wings would be heard overhead, and Clive would peer upward to see a shadowy form, vague and dark and menacing, circle and dip and then rise again and disappear into the shimmering mist.
Only once did such a shadow come close to the barge, and Clive saw Sidi Bombay freeze into petrified immobility at its approach. The creature had a long head marked by dark, glittering eyes and a bony jaw that opened to reveal rows of teeth that caught the light of the luminous mist and threw it back as a gas lamp through a London fog. The wings were wide and featherless, of a dark brown color. The formation of bones was clear through the creature's skin, and claws marked the forward peaks of the bone structure.
As the creature swooped past the barge it uttered a strange cry, a cry unlike any that Clive had ever heard before and one that caused a cold chill to creep along his spine and a shudder to pass through his limbs.
Now objects began to appear through the mist, rising from the surface of the water. Tall tree trunks rose, and from them gaunt branches stretched like accusing fingers. Moss hung from the limbs like the sleeves of monks' robes, and astonishing orchids bloomed in the moss; while huge spiders—the cousins, perhaps, of the monster that Clive had slain on the beach near the River Wami—scuttled up and down strands of moss, their eyes glowing malevolently through the pale mist.
Jagged rocks rose, and the huge spiders scampered across their faces, glaring after the barge, their fangs working, their legs swaying and bending as if to an invisible and intangible current of air.
A scream echoed from somewhere afar.
Another sound, closer in distance and yet more alien in spirit, was heard. It might almost have been a chuckle, and Clive breathed a silent prayer that if it was indeed a chuckle, it was that of a hyena and nothing worse.
At first the rocks rising from the water were gray and jagged, like mounds of granite, and the water through which the barge moved was still and motionless. Then the rocks changed. They were taller, more massive, more varied in color. There was a suggestion of form and plan to them. Clive wondered if they could be remnants of some ancient civilization, the monuments of a race that had disappeared from the Earth before Pharaoh raised the very pyramids of Egypt!
The water through which they moved began to swirl and foam.
The pitch and volume of animal sounds increased— screeches, roars, screams . . . the splashing of fins unseen through the black water, the flapping of wings hidden by thickly swirling mist, the scrape of claws or mandibles.
If the carven rocks were survivors of a nation that had lived and died uncounted centuries before, the creatures of the swamp might be the survivors of ancient species that had disappeared from all the rest of the Earth millions of years ago!
They passed a crystal-like rock as large as a brougham, as clear as a carven blue diamond. Within the crystal a light the color of a blood ruby pulsed, as if a giant heart were beating. A creature crouched upon the rock, something like a spined lizard with huge, facetted, insectile eyes. Its limbs were abnormally long for such a beast, as long, in proportion to its size, as those of a plains baboon.
The creature launched itself with a frightful cry.
Horace Hamilton
Smythe and Sidi Bombay reacted simultaneously.
Sidi Bombay shifted his position, attempting to fend off the thing's attack with his staff. In the same moment Horace Hamilton Smythe drew a large revolver from his holster. He fired a single shot at the attacking creature.
The report of the firearm echoed through the Sudd, returning again and again to the men in the barge. The creature splashed into the water and swam away at astonishing speed, stroking with its apelike arms and screaming its rage.
In the moment of the creature's attack, Sidi Bombay had been distracted from guiding the barge. The craft had turned toward the crystallike rock. Just before the prow struck, Clive shouted a warning. He realized that it was too late to avoid a crash, and in the same instant realized that there would be no crash. The rock revolved, revealing an opening.
The barge penetrated the pulsing fight, the beating heart of the crystal.
Thud! The heart pulsed, the barge entered its crimson glow. Clive felt himself bathed in the color. No, he was more than bathed in it. He was penetrated, suffused, absorbed in the ruby pulsation.
And then the barge emerged into another realm.
A strange state of calm came over Clive. He felt isolated from everything that had happened, isolated even from himself. He felt as an automaton might feel, could such a mechanism have consciousness, aware of his own thoughts and actions and words and yet divorced from them.
He laid his hand on Sergeant Smythe's wrist. "Let me see that," Clive commanded. Smythe held out the revolver for Clive's inspection.
It was long-barreled, plated with nickel—if not with silver. The barrel was covered with ornate engravings, and the hilt was decorated with polished black stone. Black obsidian or midnight-blue onyx, Clive could not tell.