Evolution

Chapter 10 of Signature

Signature

Chapter Ten

Evolution

The professor found himself studying a vast cave lit by torches spaced every ten feet. Walls were painted with smudged charcoal, depicting unfamiliar scenes of black stick figures engaged in erroneous battle. In the floor’s dead-center was a low lake, apparently composed of tar or pitch, encircled by at least a hundred skin lean-tos. Mock nativity scenes filled these half-shacks; scarecrow families, mangers of sticks and trash. Crosses were soot-painted up and down the leaning buildings’ outer walls.

Isolated on a low rock knoll stood a small, roofless, kiln-like structure surrounded by stack upon stack of charred branches. The cave’s roof above this little building must have been two feet deep with soot. There wasn’t a soul about. Abel’s and Izzy’s heads poked out the other aperture. The men all exchanged glances before ducking back inside.

“Deserted,” Amantu whispered.

Abel shook his head. “It’s where that costumed creep went, and you just know he’s pissed. It’s a trap; that’s why it’s so quiet.”

“Fortunately, this is one instance wherein lengthy discussion is obviated. We cannot retrace our steps, we must see this turn as a boon and proceed undaunted.”

After a moment Abel nodded. “Hear, hear.” He turned to Izzy.

“Too quiet!” The analyst shrank before them, licking his lips. “You’re right, Josh. No, no, I agree with Hammer! No, no, no…wait! Let’s work this out.”

Abel grabbed him by the belt and collar. “One side, Professor. I’m stuffing this little pimiento.” He shoved Izzy through headfirst, aided, perhaps a bit vindictively, by Amantu. They followed cautiously, and soon the Group were huddled behind a short screen of boulders.

“Not limestone,” Amantu panted. “Both caverns were formed through the action of seepage, but this side lacked the calcium carbonate. That lake appears to be either vented crude or a tar pit.”

“Not so.” Abel indicated a black channel beaten out of the rock, running from the little building down to the lake. “It’s rain water stained by liquefied charcoal.”

“Balls descending,” Izzy whispered. “To what end?”

As if cued, a pair of huge coiled spiders dropped from an overhead ledge, landing in the heart of the little crescent formed by the men. They sprang up screaming, revealing themselves to be naked children all but coated in lampblack--only the white masks of their faces, and the crude skeletal outlines on their torsos and limbs, were unpainted. These boys immediately began dancing about like the rudest of monkeys; pointing, shrieking, making obscene noises with their mouths. The men kept low against the wall as they retreated, but the youngsters were relentless in their hooting pursuit. Soon the Group were locked in among heaped rocks and the wall: three grown men cowed by a couple of obnoxious brats. In the distance commenced a great cry, followed by the quick thunder of running feet.

A crowd of adults appeared, calling to the hopping children in modulated hoots as they ran.

These folks were likewise painted with soot, and all showed old welt scars across their backs and limbs. Self-mutilation was a tribal theme; there were women with rat ribs plunged into cheeks and throats, men bearing their own amputated toes strung round their necks as good luck charms. One particularly unappealing gentleman boasted a pair of sharp stones crammed up his nostrils, a wife with a porcupine-like collection of bone spurs pounded through her tongue into the lower palate, and a pair of children minus lips and eyelids. All the women, according to the wont of their gender, used soot ornamentally, creating rings, crescents, and whorls around their most private areas. To the men of civilization, the result was anything but comely.

Over two dozen teenagers shoved through the gawkers. Their leader’s face was startling, unforgettable, and just as pathetic as it was frightening. The eyes were permanently raccoon-ringed from bashings, the mouth a lopsided, gummy snarl, the nose--smashed flat from the center out--a broad, mangled flap. After so much punishment, this young man had to be unimaginably tough to keep his lieutenants close and his contenders at their distance. That fiber was evinced now, as he strode right up to Amantu and stared him up and down.

The professor slowly rose to his full height. Their eyes locked.

Ever so gradually, the young man raised his fist until it was hovering halfway between them, made a right angle of his wrist, and swiveled the fist like a cobra’s head. Never had Amantu imagined knuckles so scarred.

The professor instinctively closed his eyes an instant before the young man pulled back the fist and punched himself in the nose just as hard as he could.

Amantu’s eyes popped open. Though that smashed-in face was gushing blood, the expression hadn’t changed a line. To their right, a trio of youngsters responded with an all-out slugfest.

“Off it!” the bleeding young man spewed. The little ruffians immediately broke up.

He turned back, holding Amantu’s eyes like the fiercer of strays.

“Could you do that?” He socked himself in the face again. The nose-flap surrendered a spurt and trickle. He hit himself repeatedly, with mounting ferocity. “How about that? And that? And that?”

The crowd went nuts. Men slapped and gouged themselves with mindless machismo, women shook their stuff hysterically. A young man ripped out a clump of hair, another viciously twisted an ear that had become, through years of abuse, a shapeless string of hanging taffy.

“Smite him!” called a voice in the rear.

The chant began. “Smite him, smite him, smite him.”

“Off it!” the leader sobbed. He punched himself furiously, until the professor bellowed:

“Cease!”

Everybody froze.

Amantu squared himself. “What is your name, lad?”

The young man spat blood between them. “It’s Sampsun. After the baddest cat in the Book.” He rocked back and forth aggressively. “My boys call me Sammy. But to the likes of you, it’s Sampsun.”

“Well, Sammy, I too have a nickname, earned from more humbled students than I care to enumerate. They call me ‘Old Iron Hand.’ But behind my back, mind you, always behind my back. Now, rather than demonstrate this sobriquet’s origin, I shall acquiesce to you, sir, and without further confrontation. I hereby deem you the ‘badder cat’ of we two. And, if it will abet mollification, I will go so far as to admit you are the toughest man I have ever known.”

The human monkeys screamed, and a moment later were both dancing maniacally. The crowd turned.

Without breaking his stare, Sampsun sprayed a mouthful of blood on Amantu’s chin and breast.

“Then slap on a clean toga, Senator. Because here comes the man.”

“Sir--”

“Slew you, buddy!”

The professor squirmed. “The correct tense would indicate the transitive verb, ‘slay’.”

“Yeah? Well, slew you anyway!”

The crowd parted.

It was easy to see what made the tribe’s leader their top dog.

He approached with a forced regal slowness, his haughty head held high, vacillating, like a man on stilts, on intricately whittled stalactite crutches. Children swept him a serpentine path while an entourage of women gingerly walked his terribly bowed legs. The Group members gasped with horror and disbelief as he neared, instinctively crossing their knees.

The chief had earned his office by fitting, at some time during his superhuman ascent, a calcite sculpture designed to relentlessly strangle his gonads, now swollen to the size of grapefruits. The tenderness of these organs made unassisted locomotion impossible, made his trembly legs buckle and bounce, made his bleary eyes flicker. But nothing could quash this man’s spirit. Upon reaching the Group he pushed himself upright, his eyes running over the quailing trespassers with the contempt of a born superior.

“So they sent us women, did they? And a foppish phalanx at that.” The chief pivoted man to man, flashes raging in his pupils at each contact of crutch on ground. He clicked to a halt before Amantu, fascinated by the stranger’s ebony flesh and vivid attire.

Sampsun, following his boss’s every move, spooned right up behind the professor and locked arms. The chief pressed his white mask forward until he and Amantu were nose to nose.

“What land,” he whispered loudly, “produceth a man so dark? Or is it just your black nature? Could it be you’re the demon his Self? Well, then? What do they call you?”

Amantu looked the chief right in his swimming eyes. “I, sir, am known as the Hammer.”

The chief looked around, laughing lustily. He hoisted one of his sculpted crutches and shook it in Amantu’s face. “Now that, sir, is a hammer!”

Much cheering and rib-nudging.

The professor must have flinched, for the crowd pressed in keenly.

“Who sent you?” the chief demanded.

“Sir, we were abducted into this place. We have no quarrel with you or your people. Grant us our freedom and we will exit with grace. You will have our undying gratitude.”

“Grace!” The man shook with umbrage. “Grace!” He grabbed a crutch by the shaft and, incredibly, slammed it straight up between his legs. The chief let go with a scream that tore through every male within earshot. He hit the ground like a bomb. In a conditioned response, all the men and boys dropped and rolled about shrieking, their hands tucked between their knees.

Even as the Group doubled over, the tribesmen leaped back up cheering.

“Enough,” Izzy moaned, stamping a foot. “Oh, Mercies! Enough already!”

The chief’s women lifted him into the cradle of their arms. He hung there, a squid in a net, sweat pouring off his face. Finally his eyes rolled back up. He grasped a crutch and aimed it for his nethers.

“No!” the Group bleated, withering in advance.

“Anything!” cried Abel. “Anything! Yes, we’re ‘demons’! Yes, we’re spies! Only--no more!”

The crutch rose an inch.

“Sir,” Amantu began, “I implore you--” He was cut off by another scream from the chief: the second upward thrust was already underway. This time, however, the man was too spent to complete the deed, and found himself propped with his arms dangling, the crutch supporting his listing torso.

Now the Group were the hysterical howlers, and the tribesmen the anxious observers. The chief’s women threw themselves into a swooning dance while Sammy, beside himself, frantically punched himself in the face and, for good measure, attacked the recoiling face of each Group member in turn. The chief appeared to take heart in the mindless violence, raising himself an inch with each smack of fist into flesh. At last he squealed, “Messiah!” grabbed the shaft with both hands, and delivered himself the wallop of his career. The whole crowd dropped as one, every male rolling about in the fetal position while wailing wretchedly.

In a choreographed response, the women reversed their collapse, drawing themselves upright in a complicated counterclockwise ballet that culminated in a group cruciform stance, hands holding hands, eyes raised beatifically.

“Off it all!”

The women froze, the males wobbled to their feet. Sammy bent to whisper in the chief’s ear, tilted his head for the reply, and shot back up, his expression triumphant.

“The Bathsmith!”

“John!” the people all chanted deliriously. “John! John! John-John!”

Sammy thereupon launched himself on the released Group, his fists flying. But one man on three is a minor assault; Amantu and Abel, using Izzy for a shield, easily knocked him back.

Now the spiders ran up to the rock knoll, screaming all the way. They blew in through the little structure’s hide flap and blew back out, joyously dancing round a tar-colored child balancing a long sputtering torch, and a very tall, very thin, very bald man in his forties.

Unlike the rest of the tribe, John was daubed black head to toe. Only his raving eyes showed white. In his gangly fingers rocked a massive tome constructed entirely of human parchment, so heavy with lampblack it puffed as he strode. This would be the fabulous Black Book, its skin pages meticulously sewn, char-painted, and scribed in urine only made visible through the heat of the Sacred Torch.

John stormed out onto a little projecting bank of the lake. There he stood with the Book raised high in both hands, impaling the Group with his furious eyes. After an agonizing two minutes he plunged the Book to knee-level with finality.

“On it!” Sammy exulted, and ran off to join John while the tribe’s males bullied the Group toward a small shallow cove.

“Mind your hands!” Abel barked, beginning to crack.

“You shut your face!” hissed a nineteen year-old, slapping him twice on the ear. The younger boys reacted excitedly, one chewing on Izzy’s leg as the doctor was dragged along wailing.

Amantu’s left wrist was jammed up between his shoulder blades. “Desist!”

“Rot in Hades,” a youngster replied.

“Where?” Abel gasped, fighting the dark fingers.

“You know where!” claimed another, striking him directly on the tailbone. The Group were hauled kicking and cursing into the murky pool.

At the first touch of wetness the professor threw off his handlers.

“Listen, you people! You are deluded. There is no plague; you are not carriers. We have all been bamboozled.” A hand slapped him across the face.

Amantu froze. It took every ounce of self-control to feign calm, and to say reasonably, “You are not responsible for your lives or behaviour. Leave this world. Follow us back into the light.”

Abel took a faceful of black water. “It’s no use, Hammer. You’re only provoking them. Reason, in a madhouse, is insanity.”

The youngsters took delight in tormenting Izzy; pinching and slapping his legs and buttocks whenever they could get their hands on him. When he fell in the ooze they immediately hauled him to his feet. “Josh is right!” the little psychoanalyst gagged. “So everybody just shut up and let this thing play itself out.”

Abel and Amantu paused, shoulder-to-shoulder, waist-deep and surrounded.

It was an odd experience to look into two dozen flesh masks, each revealing, in the intricate application of lampblack, a distinct and perfectly flawed human personality. One teenager shied before giving Abel a particularly nasty look. “What are you staring at, pretty boy? See something you like?” His buddies laughed nervously.

Amantu and Abel exchanged glances. Picking up on the vibe, Izzy joined them in a closer study of the savage circle.

Many of the younger adults had decorated over-zealously around the lips and eyes, and practically all the teens bore similarly-shaped blotches on their upper right foreheads. Vanity, gang affiliation, marginal effeminacy…disdain remade the Group’s expressions. The ring clenched and fidgeted. Under the hard light of intellectual censure for the very first time, some of those tough eyes began to slink away.

The Group put their backs together and rose out of the water like men.

A hard command from Sammy preceded a sudden splashing and a couple of slaps. Two teens broke the ring to admit the Bathsmith and his best boy.

John towered over the circle. Only his rolling eyeballs and gnashing teeth were not covered with soot; even the lids and lips were blackened. His boy, up to his neck in murk, awkwardly balanced the heavy Book on his nose, using his palms to support the opened halves. For a moment it looked as though the weight of the thing would submerge him, but he bravely straightened and goggled at his master over the Black Book’s rim.

At a signal from Sammy, the anxiously waiting monkeys came tumbling and shrieking down the grade, one behind the other, passing the flaming Torch back and forth as they changed positions. Upon reaching the water, the ritual became a scrabbling struggle for possession, quickly broken up by a couple of hard smacks from John. Sammy seized the torch and moved it to and fro while the Bathsmith tore at the Book’s heavy skin leaves, looking for commandments that dealt specifically with intellectuals. Finding none, he slammed the Black Book shut and raised his left hand high before dashing it across the filthy water.

“Chris!” he cried. Abel and Izzy hacked as they were fouled by spray. A second later John’s right hand splashed Amantu. “Cross!”

Now a terrible silence enveloped the circle. With great drama, John gradually raised his arms in tandem, his eyes popping in his skull. The instant his fingertips touched, he brought both hands down hard on the water. “Double-Cross!”

Roaring with approval, the human ring leapt on their prisoners’ backs, shoved them down and held them down. Any man managing to break surface was immediately swarmed and pressed back under. This wasn’t some kind of ritualistic punishment; it was serious business. The Group were being drowned. The more they thrashed and kicked, the more determinedly their executioners piled on.

When again they were brought into the air, they were barely aware of the fists in their hair, and of the voices of Micah and Malachi above them.

The professor lurched along the bank, vomiting black ooze from his mouth and nostrils. Micah held down his head until the spasms had passed, then shook him by a handful of robe. He yanked up both the Hammer’s and Izzy’s heads, smashed their skulls together, and pushed his lips down right between their ears.

“You’re a bushel more trouble than you’re worth, Senators! And I, for one, am filthy sick, and stinking tired, of chasey-chasing you all over the place! You got me?

“Now, I told you you’re going to see the Possle, and, damn you all to Hades and back, you’re going to see the Possle!”