Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

But I was surprised to see a photo of Ux (still dry behind its glass) with several people in academic robes. Other pictures and mementos lay buried in the silt. I knelt and dug, extracting them one by one. Most were ruined. But a few had been preserved: a highly favorable review of a book he’d written on ancient languages; an award from an institution whose name was no longer legible, acknowledging his work on Mycenaean linear documents; a photo of Ux and an attractive dark-haired young woman, both in coveralls, and both wielding spades. (My God, could that be Chellic?)

I placed them carefully in my pouch.

And I found the snow photo: an enlarged duplicate of the one from the chess club. My hand shook as I brushed the last of the sand away from it. Reuben Uxbridge, wrapped in a blue parka, smiled out at me.

But the photos were in the wrong room. Jon Hollander had said therewas a retreat at the rear of the house, where he’d gone to play chess, and probably where Ux had really lived his life. That would be the normal place to keep such things. My heart pounded: I knew exactly what I was going to find. And I knew why Durell had tried to destroy the house.

I examined the snow photo in the uncertain light: four men and three women braving a storm. Behind them, the looping colonnade of the Admin Building was visible. Just off to the left, behind Jon Hollander’s head, lay the frozen rim of the pool that fronted on the Field Museum. And I knew one of the three women. The one in the middle, who was laughing, and who appeared to be looking almost mischievously at Uxbridge, was the woman with the spade.

I swam the length of the hall, past closed doors, past ruined cabinets, past the sand-clogged rubble of a lifetime. I’d acquired a few fish, fat spiny-finned creatures that moved with me, but darted back out of the light.I was grateful for their company.

And finally I approached a door heavier and shorter than the others I had seen. It was ajar, and I poked my lamp inside.

The interior was spacious, a hall rather than a chamber. It was a circular room, with a high ceiling, completely shrouded by curtains. I could see a desk, an overturned computer console, padded chairs (presumably the ones about which Hollander had spoken), and a square table.

The inner sanctum. I caught my breath.

Things seemed somehow less displaced in that room, as though some strange gravity gripped them. The chairs and the table were still upright, a pot which had once contained a plant retained its place on the desk, a wine cabinet still stood.

I looked at the circular wall, thinking vaguely of the one in the tower room. How many hours had Reuben Uxbridge sat here, trying to exorcise the demon that had, indeed, followed him back from that ridden world? How often had he struck down poor bureaucratic Moss, when Moss was about to save her, save them all, at whatever cost to himself?

In a sense, Chellic had been fortunate. Uxbridge had been the real victim.

And Durell.

Only Durell, desperate for money, could supply what Uxbridge needed.

I approached the curtains, rotted now, still concealing their terrible secret. And I lifted them.

In the pale glow of the lamp, the climactic struggle that Moss had described sprang to life: Chellic and the pink-eyed monstrosity, both slick with sweat, embraced, while an enraged, terrified Uxbridge, wearing a variation of the grotesque countenance I knew so well from the studio, attacked Moss. It was the instant before he reached the smaller man, when Moss was trying desperately to use the laser, when there was still time. It was the instant when Uxbridge lost his soul.

9.

I had to tell someone about it, and who more appropriate than heroic little Casmir Moss? He was reluctant at first to see me again, thinking he’d embarrassed himself, I suppose. But in the end, he agreed to meet me for lunch, and I told him the story, the part he didn’t know. When I was finished he just sat, not knowing how to respond. At last, he said simply, “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Yes, it was,” I said.

He looked at me, shocked. “You don’t know how it was. Nobody can blame him for Chellic’s death.”

“Not Chellic,” I said. “He wanted to relive that final moment. Over and over. Maybe to change it. Or maybe to punish himself by immortalizing it. I don’t know. But there was another victim.”

He looked at me, puzzled.

“Durell,” I said. “I wonder if he ever considered what he was doing to the artist—”

I saw no sign of a devil.

We’d been working on an extension of the Holy Journey subway when we ran into large blocks of concrete, stacked one atop the other, buried in the earth. The blocks weren’t supposed to be there, but they were. The extension, when finished, would cross the river south into St. Andrew’s Parish, taking substantial pressure off the bridges. They lay directly in our way. So I kept my crew drilling, and eventually we broke through. Into a large space.

I pointed my light up. The ceiling must have been more than a hundred feet.

Now the truth is I hadn’t given any thought to devils and demons until I flashed my light into the darkness and saw, first, broken columns scattered around the place, as if it had once been a temple. And then the statue.

The statue was gigantic, maybe three times as high as I was. Or it would have been had the base not been buried in earth, broken stone, and assorted debris.

“What happened here?” demanded a voice behind me. Cort Benson, my number one guy. He pushed in and immediately locked on the giant figure rising out of the earth floor. “My Lord,” he said, his voice suddenly very low. “What is that ?”

I had never seen a statue before. I’d heard of them. Knew about them. But I’d never actually seen one. Nor, I suspected, had anyone else on the work crew. It was a man. I moved a few steps closer and held up my lamp. He was dressed oddly, loose-fitting clothes from another age. Odd-looking coat or vest. Hard to tell which. The statue was sunk into the ground to a point midway between knees and hips. There was something clasped in his left hand. A rolled sheet of paper, looked like.

My crew stayed near the door. One of them called for a blessing. Another said it was devil’s work.

Elsewhere around the space, some columns were still standing. They connected to a curved wall, forming a boundary around the statue. Beyond the wall and the columns were more concrete blocks like the ones we’d had to cut through to get in.

Okay. Let me tell you straight out I never believed in evil spirits. I said prayers against them every Sunday, like everybody else, and sometimes during midweek services. But I didn’t really buy into it. You know what I mean? Although that’s easy to say, sitting in the sunlight.

But here was this thing .

The air was thick and somehow smelled of other days. I played the light against the wall. Several rows of arcane symbols were engraved in it. They were filled with dirt and clay, so it was hard to make them out. I picked at them with a crowbar, pulled some earth loose, and saw what they were: ancient English.

The language still showed up occasionally around the parish, and over in Seven Crosses, and even as far north as St. Thomas. The characters were usually engraved on chunks of rock that must once have been cornerstones and arches and front entrances and even occasionally, as here, on walls. The world was filled with rubble from the civilization that God in His wrath had brought down.

I thought about that for a minute. Wages of sin. Then I pointed the lamp up and saw a second group of characters on a narrow strip circling the ceiling.