Part 56 (2/2)
Dr. Nameless put a sausage finger to his lips. ”It's symbolic,” he said. The figures in black overwhelmed the old men, trampling the olive branches. The goats bleated.
The virgins ripped off their gowns and grabbed megaphones. ”Now!” shrilled Dr. Nameless. He was hysterical with school pride. ”Give 'em the ax,” the megaphones implored.
The crowd took up the chant. ”Give 'em the ax, the ax, the ax! Give 'em the ax, the ax, the ax!”
Claude closed his eyes. He had never been what you might call the queasy type, but-- The figures in black had given the old men the ax.
”I do believe,” Claude said to his escorts, ”that I would like to be shown to my room.”
While the candle flames fluttered and the dank wind banged against the shutters, Claude abandoned his pose of innocence. He a.s.sumed Command.
”Cleve,” he snapped, ”there will be no sleep this night. Do you hear the tap-taptapping? Do you hear the Noise?”
Cleve twirled the ta.s.sels on the robe. ”What Noise, Smada? Many are the freshman who have imagined what you call a tap-tap-tapping. From the bas.e.m.e.nt vaults, so the tale is told . . .”
Claude had no time to waste. He boxed Cleve one on the ear. ”Now do you hear it?”
”I hear it, I hear it!” Cleve admitted. ”But I like it where we are, in our cozy room. Observe the elegant chamber pots--”
”Thunder mugs be d.a.m.ned!” Claude barked. ”Fire the tapers, unleash the hounds!”
”We have no pigs,” Cleve quavered. ”We have no dogs.”
”Not tapirs, tapers!” Torches! Don't they teach you anything in this place?”
”I know much,” Cleve insisted. ”You will see.”
”Come, then! To the catacombs!”
Down the winding, moss-covered steps they went. Their shadows danced behind them, mournful arabesques . . .
That infernal tap-tap-tapping. It beat a tattoo in Claude's brain. He would get to the bottom of this. And when he did--.
They pa.s.sed the bent-backed man who tended the furnaces. His name was lettered on his coveralls: Bram Stoker.
With torches guttering, they swept by a beautiful scientist and his mad daughter. Some barbarous experiment was in progress.
They burst through a ma.s.sive creaking door, older than time, and there it was.
Seated at a heavy desk enclosed in a scarlet pentagram was a bearded man. He was tap-tap-tapping on a toy typer. The echoes in the cavernous vault magnified the Noise.
”Kapital!” the bearded man chorted. ”Kapital!”
”Your name?” Claude demanded imperiously.
”I belong to the family of Marx,” the man said with some asperity. ”Not one of those pitiful louts whose given names terminate with a vowel, but--”
”Karl,” stated Claude knowingly.
”The same,” Karl Marx admitted proudly. ”Whoever _you_ may be, I implore you not to touch that edifice.” He gestured toward a precariously tilted structure that was bent over his desk. The thing seemed to be constructed of triangular slices of Italian cuisine. On top of it rested a balding head that fairly reeked of formaldehyde. ”If it should collapse and come into contact with the pentagram, there will be h.e.l.l to pay.”
”What is it?” Claude asked despite himself.
”It is the famous Lenin Tower of Pizza,” Karl Marx explained. ”A monument to my works.”
”Balderdash,” Claude commented.”The word of an exploiter,” Marx snorted. ”The propertied cla.s.ses are smug in their layers of lard. What do the downtrodden peasants know? I am the only one to divine the formula that will save them from their misery. By unleasing the plague of fantasy in the pitiless halls of the money changers, I have driven a wedge--”
”I did not come here,” Claude said shortly, ”to savor the rehashed fragments of a dreary lecture.”
It was not simply that sociology bored him. The instant that Marx had opened his beard-stuffed mouth, Claude had realized that this was not the quarry he sought. To reach the true source of trouble, he must dig deeper.
Much deeper.
With Claude, to think was to act.
Grabbing Cleve's shrouded arm, he delivered a stout kick to the Lenin Tower with his right sneaker.
As the Tower fell, Marx screamed and clutched his toy typer to his bosom. The bowels of the Earth rumbled. Tongues of flame spat up from below. There was a distinct odor of brimstone, not unpleasant . . .
Holding tightly to Cleve, Claude leaped into the pentagram. While chaos sparked around him, he had a sensation of falling.
”Down, please,” Claude murmured.
Claude found himself shoving a considerable boulder up an immense hill.
Momentarily curious, and ignoring the fearful means of Cleve, Claude turned companionably to a fellow worker. ”Tedious business,” he observed. ”How far to the top?”
The wretch could barely get enough room to speak. It was very crowded on the mountain. The heated rock was slippery with sweat.
”There is no top,” the doomed soul lamented. ”There is no bottom.”
Claude was not without pity but he had never admired a quitter. He summoned a fork-tailed fiend. ”There has been a slight miscalculation,” he informed him.
”That's what they all say,” the fiend said mildly.
”My companion and I,” Claude went on, undaunted, ”wish to be taken to Mr. Big.”
The fiend shrugged. ”Why not? We have an eternity before us. Go, come, stay. It is all the same to me.”
”Get some starch in your ridgepole,” Claude chided him. ”It is not, I a.s.sure you, all the same to me. If you are a true fiend--a fiend in need, so to speak--you will transport us to Mr. Big.”
”n.o.body hurries here, lad,” the fiend said. ”Time, we have. However, who am Ito add to your torment? In the final a.n.a.lysis, it can be neither better nor worse.”
Sensing a growing impatience on Claude's part, the fiend escorted them to Mr. Big at something a tad faster than a snail's pace. The fiend then withdrew. He could wait. He could wait a long, long time.
Claude faced Mr. Big at last. Finally, an adversary worthy of his skills! ”I am Claude Adams,” he announced, ”and this is my friend. Not fiend. Friend.” The Devil had no horns. He was a short, fas.h.i.+onably-dressed man with thick gla.s.ses. He was quite busy. ”Call me Tony,” he said in a friendly, somewhat husky voice. ”Be with you in a moment. Time! There is never enough time, even here.”
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