Part 4 (1/2)

To Lee it felt uncanny to sit trapped and blindfolded in this ”Black Maria” of a car while unseen rays and cameras went over him. He could hear a faint noise of steps, and m.u.f.fled voices.

”Who are they?” he asked.

”Oh, that's only some boys from Intelligence or whatnot; that's nothing, that isn't The Brain. It will be all over in a moment--see--there we go again. Now we're entering the Labyrinth.”

”The Labyrinth?”

Reticent as he had been in the beginning, the chauffeur now seemed to like Lee; he was proud to explain. ”Queer, isn't it? They've got the d.a.m.nedest names for things down here. Take them from anatomy, I understand. The Labyrinth is supposed to be inside the ear; it leads inside in a roundabout way; it's the same here, it's a tunnel--see--down we go.”

The soft swoosh of the gas-turbine turned into a m.u.f.fled roar. The car accelerated at a terrific rate and from the way it swayed and dived it was clear that the tunnel spiralled downwards in steep serpentines. Lee gripped the holding straps; his every nerve was on edge and those edges were sharpened by the ominous fact that all the instruments on the dashboard had stopped functioning so that he couldn't even read the speed.

As if to make things still worse, the chauffeur had abandoned his post altogether. Stretching his legs across the front seat he reclined as if enjoying his easy chair at home by the fire place.

”It beats a roller coaster, doesn't it?” the chauffeur said. ”Got me scared the first few times before I found out it was safe. Nothing to worry about, never you fear.”

With his stomach throttling his throat, Lee asked, ”How deep are we going underground?”

”That we are not supposed to know; that's why all the instruments are cut off. The other day I had a pa.s.senger, one of those weathermen, a professor. He laughed when I told him I didn't know how deep it was. Got a little doodad out of his pocket; aneroid barometer, or something, he said it was. But he got a surprise; in the first place the thing didn't work, so he said the whole tunnel was probably pressurized. In the second place he never got where he wanted to go. They stopped the car at the next control and shot him right back whence he came.”

”But why?”

The chauffeur looked mysterious. ”Seems The Brain doesn't like people with doodads in their pockets even if they mean no harm. The Brain is most particular about such things; maybe somehow it peers into this car this moment, maybe it records every word we say. How do we know?” He shrugged his shoulders. ”Not that I give a d.a.m.n. I've got nothing to conceal. The hours are right and the pay's right; that's good enough for me.”

Lee experienced an old, familiar sensation: that creepy feeling one got on jungle patrol, knowing that there were j.a.p snipers up in the trees, invisible with the devilish green on their faces and uniforms.

”Strange,” he thought, ”that in the very center of civilization one should feel as haunted as in the jungle h.e.l.l.”

Then, just as he began to wonder whether the dizzy spiralling plunge as if in the belly of a shark would ever end, the tunnel levelled. Now the car shot straight as a bullet and just as fast it seemed.

As his stomach returned to something like normal position, the feeling of oppression changed into one of flying through s.p.a.ce, of being dynamically at rest. Again just as the duration of this dynamic flight evoked the feel of infinity, the motion changed. So fast did it recede that the momentum of his body almost hurled Lee from the back seat into the front.

Doors snapped open and as Lee staggered out somewhat benumbed in limb and head, his eyes grew big as they met the most unexpected sight. The car rested on the concrete ap.r.o.n of what appeared to be a super-duper bus terminal plus service station and streamlined restaurant. Beyond this elevated terrace yawned a vaulted dome, excavated from the solid rock and at least twice the size of St. Peter's giant cupola. Its walls were covered with murals. Both huge and beautiful they depicted the history of the human race, Man's evolution. From where he stood they started out with scenes of primeval huntings of the mammoth, went on to fire making, fire adoration, then to the primitive crafts and from there through the stages of science evolution and technology until they ended on Lee's right hand side with an awesome scene from the Bikini test. The gorgeous mushroom cloud of the atomic explosion looked alive and threatening like those Djinni once banned by Solomon.

But then, all these murals looked more alive than any work of art Lee had ever seen and he discovered that this was due to a new technique which had been added and commingled with one of the oldest.

The pictures were built up from myriad layers of Painted Desert sands and these were made translucent or illuminated by what Lee thought must be phosphoric salts turned radiant under the stimulants of hidden lights. Whatever it was, the esoteric beauty of this jewel-like luminosity surpa.s.sed even that of the stained gla.s.s windows in the great cathedrals of France.

”Pretty isn't it? The chauffeur's words came as an anticlimax to what Lee felt. ”That fellow over there in the middle; he's supposed to have it all thought out.” He pointed to a collossal bronze statue which towered in the center of the cupola to a height of better than a hundred feet.

Raising his eyes to the head of this giant, Lee discovered that the figure was that of ”The Thinker” by Rodin though it was cast in proportion its creator would not have deemed possible.

Completely overwhelmed and overawed by the grandeur of it all, Lee barely managed to stammer, ”What--what is this place; what is it called?”

”It's kind of an a.s.sembly hall; the staff of The Brain have meetings over here at times. Besides it's sort of a Grand Central; transportation starts here at times throughout the Brain. But listen, they are already paging you.”

Out of nowhere as it seemed there came a brisk, pleasant female voice.

”Dr. Lee, calling Dr. Semper F. Lee from Canberra University, please answer Dr. Lee.”