Beneath the Planet of the Apes, стр. 22

Mendez exhorted:

“Reveal that truth unto that Maker!”

The choir and the congregation sung back their song of homage:

“I reveal my Inmost Self unto my God!”

The congregation now unveiled. The rubbery masks made slithering, uncanny sounds in the stillness of the dark cathedral.

The parody of Life and Nature gleamed from a hundred bodies. Brent dared not look too long. His brain was splitting apart again.

And then all the voices raised around him and the girl as the hidden organ swelled into a final exaltation to the devotees of the Bomb Everlasting. Proud and happy voices rose in a tremendous paean of glory: “All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small . . .”

Caspay smiled in a brotherly fashion at the Negro and then favored Brent with an extension of that smile. But Brent could not in all conscience smile back at that hideous travesty of a human face. He averted his eyes, holding onto Nova’s shaking hand.

“All things wise and wonderful,” the congregation sang with deep, fervent voices.

The hooded purple head of Mendez turned up to the Bomb again, the spotlit Bomb which looked down on everything. “The good Bomb made us all,” the congregation chanted. Some three hundred mutant singers blended into an intermezzo between stanzas of the song:

“He gave us eyes to see with, and lips that we might tell How great the Bomb Almighty, who has made all things well. Amen.”

During this last Amen, Brent saw Albina jerk her weird face at him. The great beauty was a thing of the past. Brent read her message without hearing any words. Unspoken words.

“We can’t,” he said. “We aren’t wearing masks.”

She scowled. But Mendez was speaking the Benediction now:

“May the blessing of the Bomb Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Fallout descend on us all, this night, and for evermore.”

Once again he pressed a button on the bejeweled panel board. The emerald one. Even as the congregation’s Amen died away to a whisper, the spotlight slowly dimmed. The Bomb disappeared into darkness. Fins and all. It was as if it didn’t even exist. Had never existed.

Brent kept, his arms around Nova. Poor, mute Nova. A waif for all time.

About them, the horrible mutants they had known as the fat man, Caspay, Albina and the Negro, leered hideously. Colors rippled, eddied.

The cathedral throbbed with horror. And the great Unknown.

And Mendez’s chants hung in the dim nave, swirling about the high, vaulted reaches of the cathedral. Echoes of Hell and the Pit on all sides. Brent hung onto the little courage left in him.

He had to.

Or there would be no way out.

None at all.

Whatever God’s Hell and Damnation was, this had to be it.

For the first time in his life, he had been able to pinpoint the spot. Give it a location.

The Forbidden Zone was Hades, Incorporated.

And this great cathedral was its Limbo.

11.

“TAY-LOR!”

The Corridor of Busts, gleaming with its stone gallery honoring the Mendez Dynasty, glimmered like a museum in Brent’s eyes. He had been disrobed following the incredible scene in the cathedral so that now he was once more in his familiar rags. Caspay and the Negro were escorting him to some unknown destination. Or fate. Mercifully they had replaced their masks so that their marble faces of beauty were once again intact. Brent wasn’t sure he could have borne gazing too long into those skinless, horrendous travesties of the human face. Caspay was smiling, as usual; knowing the man as he now did, Brent knew it meant nothing very good.

“I trust our simple ceremony convinced you of our peaceable intentions,” Caspay murmured in his bland way.

“I found it informative,” Brent said guardedly.

“Then your cooperation has had its reward.”

“Its only reward?” Brent turned away from his contemplative study of the busts along the corridor. “When may I hope to be set free?”

Caspay’s mouth was still smiling, but not his eyes.

“You may hope whenever you please, Mr. Brent. Have pleasant dreams.” With that, he waved his hand and continued along the corridor, his green robes rustling.

“I doubt it,” Brent answered drily, watching him until he diasppeared. The Negro now placed an unwelcome hand on Brent’s elbow and guided him to a passage turning left off the corridor’s far side. Here, low ceilings and closely distanced walls suggested a catacomb complex. The area was as labyrinthine as a grotto but white-walled and sourcelessly white-lighted. There was no telling where the illumination came from. Brent squinted against the glare.

“How can we let you loose on the eve of a war, Mr. Brent?” the Negro suddenly asked, mildly almost.

Another twist in the labyrinth. Another turn. Brent said nothing.

“You know too many of our secrets,” the Negro reminded him.

He halted Brent, for the corridor or passageway had suddenly come to a dead end. A cul-de-sac terminating at a closed door that bore no lettering, no identification of any kind. The Negro prodded Brent as he touched a wall button. “Like your friend,” he muttered. The door, hinged, opened inward and Brent gaped.

It was a bare white cell, no larger than a storage closet. But within it stood a tall giant of a man. Bearded, bronzed, his great shaggy head oddly in keeping with his garments of loincloth and tatters. The Negro lolled in the doorway, grinning like an ebony idol. Brent staggered forward, his pulse racing, his heart trip-hammering. The bronzed captive in the room blinked back at the open door. At Brent. And then an enormous smile split the almost graven face into a thousand lines of joy and incredible delight.

“Brent!” the giant roared, coming forward.

“TAYLOR!”

Brent fell into his arms, pounding, clapping, babbling excitedly. Taylor clasped him in a bear hug, lifting him off his feet.

The reunion was euphoric.

At first—

The Corridor of Busts echoed with the sound of the guard’s heels. Before him, Nova had been moving like a dead woman, her eyes listless and her muscles flaccid. But now, somehow, the shout of Brent’s voice echoing the only name she had ever understood came to her, like the call of a bugle. The effect was electrifying. With a wheeling speed more animal than human, she slipped out of the guard’s grasp, biting down on his bared hand like a tigress. The guard screamed and let go. Nova broke away from him, running like a gazelle toward the echoes of Brent’s cry. And the sound of the name, Tay-lor!

Before the guard could rally in lumbering pursuit, his damaged hand already bleeding, the girl had sprinted down the corridor, turned into the passage leading to the catacomb complex and vanished from sight.

Nova ran like the wind.

The guard pounded along behind her.

Her bared feet made slapping noises along the passageway floor.

“How the hell did you get here?” Taylor demanded. They had both simmered down from the unbounded joy of meeting again and were now both of them well aware of the tall Negro still positioned in the doorway. Brent forced a smile. The white of the cell was a glare.

“I came by subway, naturally.”

“You’re two thousand years late,” Taylor replied through cracked lips. His heroic face, which would have looked so proper on a coin or medallion, had always pleased the younger man.

“Service never was much good,” Brent agreed.

“Is your commander with you?”

“He’s dead. Went blind—and blew a lung on reentry.”

Taylor sighed. “Then how . . .?”

“Nova found me.”

“She’s here?” Taylor started forward, his big shoulders flexing. “Where is she?”