Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0) (23 page)

Well, that had been a start. He chuckled. What a fool he had been! He had believed he was enlisting the support of an old cowhand who would like to make an extra dollar helping a friend. And he was about to offer a deal for a few dollars to one of the wealthiest men in the state!

Fortunately, he had not embarrassed himself by making his offer. Nevertheless, Volkmeer was the man he needed.

He returned to the motel, gathered together what he would need, and put it in the car. Then he drove down to the café and parked the car where he could see it.

Gallagher was not around, so he ate alone, watching the street and thinking. He would drive to the mesa, look around, and hope for a meeting with Tazzoc. He would wait most of forty-eight hours and then he would drive out to meet Eden Foster.

When he left his car at the closest point to the ruin and let Chief out for a run, he saw nothing of Volkmeer. He had been hoping the man would be there, just for company. It was still bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky when he reached the ruin.

Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He went to the kiva and looked in. It was like any other he had seen—just a little better preserved, that was all. He shied from the window, but looked at it anyway.

Just a window, looking no different than any other. The trouble was, it
was
different!

He went back, picking up wood as he went, although there was little around. He broke some dead branches from a piñon, picked up a couple of pieces of cedar lying among the rocks at the mesa's edge. Seeing several good pieces farther down, he climbed down to get them, and when he looked up, Tazzoc was there.

“I wait for you,” Tazzoc said. His tone was wistful. “We know so little. Our world is isolate. To the west is desert.”

“It has been explored?”

“Oh, no! It is forbidden. What lies beyond we do not know. The Hand says we are all. There is no more. To ask questions is not good, but we see old ruins, and some of us wonder.

“It is spoken that we live today, and we live tomorrow. What is past is finished and we do not look back.” He paused. “I am Keeper of Archives, once important. Now forgotten. I fear to speak or they might be destroyed.” His voice lowered and he looked from one side to the other as if fearing to be overheard. “I am forgotten, too, but I wish to
know
! I study our Archives, and so many questions arise! There is no one to whom I can talk, I—”

“You can talk to me, but are there no others? None like yourself, who wish to know? And to remember?”

“No doubt there are but they fear to speak. The Hand has listeners everywhere.”

He sat down on a slab of rock. “When I am gone there will be no other.” He looked up at Raglan. “Always there has been a son, but I have no son. The doors will be closed, the Archives forgotten.”

“We should have them. Such a record is priceless.”

The sun was warm on the rocks where they sat. “I think this is true, what you say. We who have been Keepers, we believe it is so.”

Tazzoc closed his eyes for a moment. “It is wonderful, your sun. So bright, so warm.”

“Yours is not so bright?”

“Oh, no! Not bright at all! Our sky is not what you say…clear?”

“About the Archives? Does no one come there? No one at all?”

“It is rare thing. Long ago many come—that was when The Voice spoke.”

“The Voice?”

“It was what you call oracle. A voice that spoke what was to be, and we stood silent to hear. The Voice ruled, The Voice foretold, and The Hand did what The Voice said. Then The Voice became unclear, and The Hand would explain what The Voice intended. After a while The Voice ceased to speak and we had only The Hand.”

“You say people used to come when The Voice spoke. Was there a connection between The Voice and the Archives?”

“The place of the Archives was what you call temple. A place in which to pray.” Tazzoc paused, looking around at him. “All men need moments of silence. All men need to pray, if it is only to speak to themselves in the silence, to formulate their desires, and to say to themselves what they wish to be. Some of our people believed in the old gods, some did not, but all needed to pray.”

That made sense. The earliest writing known had been in temples where an account was kept of tithes paid or gifts to the gods. It had been so in Ur of the Chaldees, in Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre.

So in Tazzoc's world The Voice had been displaced by The Hand? A coup? Or had The Voice simply died out? Something of the same kind had happened to the Delphic Oracle in Ancient Greece, and there might be a pattern to such things.

“Those Archives of yours? Do you have any idea of their range? The number of years covered?”

“Oh, yes! I cannot claim to know them, but it is a part of our first training to know something of their origin. The first writing was on clay. These first tablets were lists of tenths paid to the temple. It continued after a number of years with added symbols, indicating that one who was behind in payments would pay later. Then there were lists of what belonged to the temple and where it was stored.

“Then a man made a plea of being assessed too much, and told of his land and his house and what he possessed and what he could pay. In this way the words increased. The language grew.

“The Archives are vast. Thousands of clay tablets and engravings on stone. Then there were many shelves of thin sheets of wood, used instead of clay, which was no longer practical.

“Long ago twelve were numbered to care for the Archives, of which my family were directors. One by one they died or were taken away until I am alone. I come and go, a shadow they scarcely see.”

“Does anyone ever try to enter the Forbidden area?”

“Who would wish to? It is feared. Those who belong there go. No others consider it.”

Yet if he could get in? Could he find Erik?

Suddenly he remembered the golden map the old man had copied, and he had that copy. Was the Forbidden area included?

“In your Archives,” he said carefully, “is there a plan of the area?”

“Oh, yes. Our ancient leaders planned everything with great care. There is a shelf with nothing but plans, designs of each building, each room. Except for the Death Doors.”

“The
what
?”

“You see, it is a Forbidden place. Each knows where he must go, but he knows nothing else. Only The Hand knows all. Hence, the door you might open could be a trap, and there are many such, throughout the area.”

“A trap? How?”

“Each room is dark when the door is opened. Not until the door closes do the lights go on, so if you try to enter a place you do not belong, you are trapped.

“When the door closes, lights go on, but in the traps there are no lights, and there is no air. He who enters the wrong door is caught in a room with no chance of escape. Such rooms permit no sound to be heard outside.”

Tazzoc's eyes held a sort of triumphant glow. “A mistake means death. No one comes to look. No one cares. There are dozens of such rooms, so few guards are needed, and even if you were suspected of being an interloper, rarely would anyone interfere. Soon you will enter a wrong door.”

“How large are these cubicles? These rooms?”

“Who knows? No one has ever come out to tell of them.”

“No one has ever escaped?”

“How is it possible? The walls are stone, many feet in thickness. When there is no air, one dies.”

“Does no one ever make a mistake?”

“Who cares? And who would know?” Tazzoc smiled. “No one has ever complained.”

“The area must be large?”

“Many of what you call acres. There may be ten such rooms. More likely there are fifty. Perhaps no one remembers.”

“Are there such rooms in your place of the Archives?”

Tazzoc shrugged. “There are doors I do not open. Who knows? The Hand does not care for those who blunder, or who try to go where they are not wanted. From the earliest time we are told not to open doors that are strange to us.”

How, in such a maze, was he to find Erik Hokart? Yet where he was held, others must have been kept before him, so someone would know.

The old man Mike had met in Flagstaff so many years ago had found gold—found it in some apparently abandoned place. “I would be interested”—he spoke slowly so that Tazzoc could follow—“in a history of your people. From what you say, yours is a small country, rigidly ruled. Apparently your people do not know of those who fled to another part of your country—”

“This could not be.”

“I have met a girl from such a group. She is a descendant of He Who Had Magic.”

Tazzoc shook his head doubtfully. “It is a wild tale. It would not be permitted. Besides”—he shrugged—“where would they go? How would they live?”

“There are no places in the mountains? Or the desert?”

“No one ever goes there. These are fearsome places.”

“Have you no records in your Archives of travel to such places in the long ago?”

Tazzoc was uncomfortable. He peered uneasily around. “There were tales, wild tales told by irresponsible people. They are not believed. There is a section of the Archives…It was forbidden to look there.”

“And you have not? Your father did not, nor your grandfather?”

Tazzoc was uneasy. “There was said to be another place of Archives, forbidden to us. Some said it was only a tale, that such a place did not exist. It was a place for The Voice when long ago people had to go to its temple, a journey of many days. Then The Voice came closer and lived in the Forbidden area. A pilgrimage was no longer needed.”

A temple where The Voice had been, an ancient place for archives, now abandoned. Could that be the place? Certainly, such a place would not have been casually built. Might there not be another opening there? A permanent one?

The old cowboy from Flagstaff might have gotten through near such a place and found the gold, and a way he could use at certain times.

“Tazzoc, I must come to your world. I must help my friend escape. If he does not, others will come and your world will end. Men of great power desire his return, and if they do not find him soon, they will be searching these hills. I have told this to the woman, Eden Foster.

“If there is violence, your precious Archives may be destroyed. I do not wish that, nor do you. If you could help me, we could save them, possibly even bring them back to our world where they would not gather dust but would be studied.”

Tazzoc was silent for a long time. Finally, he shook his head. “I do not know. I wish the Archives saved, but to free your friend? It is impossible. Nobody would dare such a thing, and you are but one man.…”

“One man can often succeed where many would fail. You see,” Mike added, “our scholars would like to know what happened to what we call the Anasazi after their return to your world. They seemed a good people, a people who were progressing toward something important. In your Archives there would be records, perhaps, of what they did and what they thought. This is important to us. The Anasazi had learned much of building and were learning more. They had become skillful farmers within the bounds of what was possible for them. No doubt, had they not been attacked by nomadic Indians they would have survived the drought and expanded their irrigated areas. They would have expanded their trade, also, and exchanged ideas and farming methods with the Maya.”

Tazzoc got to his feet. “I have been too long away. Much as I wish it, I cannot help. I know nothing, and I speak with few. If questions were asked I would be seized and questioned.”

He paused. “This much I can do. I can bring a cloak such as this, and shoes such as mine. I can show you the portal through which I go, and the route I take. The rest is up to you.”

When Tazzoc had gone, Raglan sat alone, thinking. So, then. He was going. It was no longer a vague idea, no longer something about which to think. It was up to him now.

But what of Erik? What was
he
doing? Mike could not believe he was not thinking, contriving, planning. What materials could he find? What subterfuge could he employ? Would he try to escape? To communicate?

He'd told Mike that as a boy he had made a crystal wireless set. Could he do it now? Would radio waves cross the divide between the two worlds? What was he doing over there? Or was he doing anything? Was it possible for him to help Mike, or himself?

Above all, what did they
know
? What science did they have? What were the weapons the Varanel carried? What was their range?

His life depended on the answers to his questions. His life, and who knew how many others'? What were they thinking of, beyond that veil? What evil awaited him?

Chapter 25

M
IKE RAGLAN DECIDED that if he were Erik, and a prisoner of those who had no reason to keep him alive, his first thought would be escape. If immediate escape seemed out of the question, he would try to convince his captors he was worth more alive than dead.

The authority to whom he must appeal would be The Hand, but if he could not be reached, then the Varanel.

From what Kawasi and Tazzoc had said, a watch was kept on everyone. How this was done he did not know, but Erik's knowledge was electronics, so if he could convince them he could build equipment useful to them, he might be kept alive. He might also gain access to equipment useful in an attempt to escape or communicate. But what if they already possessed methods superior to any he knew?

After all, our world had progressed along certain well-trodden paths of inquiry, but were they the only ones? Our thinking had been channeled into courses assumed to be the only avenues of communication, but what if there were others of which we knew nothing?

Suppose their methodology was entirely different? The Newtonian conception of physics, for example, has been completely upset by Einstein, first, and then by the quantum theory. Nor will this be the end. Of one thing only can we be sure: What is today accepted as truth will tomorrow prove to be only amusing.