I was hoping that a similar doubt would corrode his strength just enough for my purposes. But there was nothing in the expression on his savagely handsome face or in those peculiar eyes or in the gracefully massive muscles to indicate that doubt was turning his bronze into lead.

By then, our peters were crossed like swords.

And I was beginning to feel the slow up-build of an orgasm.

My aberrant condition was going to betray me. Kill me.

No matter how I fought it, I would be subject to a certain amount of transport and involuntary contraction of muscle and loss of force.

Caliban did not know what was happening, but he knew that something was occurring in me. He smiled thinly and said, “I am stronger than you, you filthy ape!”

I could feel the slight tremors in his belly and a slight jerking in his penis.

His eyes widened, and he said, “What the hell!”

He was beginning to feel the same sensations as I!

It was a question of who would ejaculate first, and I thought that it would be me.

I was about to release him, if possible, and throw myself backward and away. If I did it quickly enough, and he was seized in an orgasm, I might be able to keep away from him until we were both over the spurtings, and we could then resume the fight on equal terms.

He bit his lip and said, “God! What’s going on?”

I tensed for my effort to break that metalled grip.

A voice bellowed in English, “Stop! In the name of the Nine!”

22

The granite slab covering the entrance to the caverns had slid into a recess. Nine people stood on the apron of rock near the other end of the bridge. Eight were of the Nine. The tall long-bearded old man with the black patch over one eye was missing. The ninth person was a tall Negro dressed in the blue

Roman toga-like robes of the Speaker for the Nine. He held a wooden staff, nine feet high, on top of which was carved a crux ansata. A third of the length down was a carved representation of the symbol which the Finns call hannunvaakuna.

He shouted at us again so loudly that the mountain returned an echo. “No more fighting! Come to me, and I will give you the order of the day!”

Caliban backed away from me until I could not reach him. He would not turn away until I said, “It’s over. For now.”

His penis was beginning to shrink and to drop. Mine stayed erect for a much longer time. In fact, for a minute, I thought I was going to have the orgasm.

The eight of the Nine were dressed in differently colored robes with hoods. Their faces were hidden, and they turned away and were gone before I reached the ledge. This was the first time I had ever seen more than three at a time. During the many years I had served the Nine, I had seen all of them. But it had always been three one year, another trio the next year, a third trio the following year, and then, the fourth year, the cycle began anew.

I could not imagine why the old man whom we addressed as XauXaz was not present. I did not ask.

The Nine discouraged questions.

The Negro in blue was the majordomo, the Speaker for the Nine. He would serve for three months of the year and then go. I had been Speaker several years ago and my wife two years after that.

He said, “Peace between you two until the Nine say war. Follow me.”

We halted in the first cave, where he went through the ritual of getting us through the guards. These were five men and five women, naked as everybody except the Nine and the Speaker, but armed with automatic rifles. Behind them were heavy-caliber machine guns, flame-throwers, a whippet tank, and a

Bofors cannon. They were serving their four-hour duty, as did everyone who came through this entrance.

A woman took a sample of blood from our thumbs and disappeared into a wooden booth. She came out a moment later and handed two small cards to the Speaker. From a pocket in his robe he took two cards and matched them with the others. Then he handed all four to her and said, “Follow me!”

The next cavern, unlike the first, was not lit with batteries of lamps on the walls and overhead fluorescent cylinders. It was dark, and we progressed through it by placing our hands on the shoulders of the man before us. Since I had been the Speaker, I knew that he was following a narrow beam of sound transmitted through a small device in one ear. If he strayed to one side or the other, the sound would die out. I did not doubt that all sorts of scanning devices were studying us.

In the next cavern, which was empty, and was really a trap for any invader who got this far—the ceiling would fall on them and then the floor would drop out—I studied the Speaker. He was a tall, wellbuilt, handsome Negro with a light-brown skin. He looked as if he were thirty.

Suddenly, I knew why he seemed so familiar. He was a New Yorker, a millionaire who had recently disappeared after the explosion of his yacht in Long Island Sound. Several people had been brought in for questioning, but no one had been arrested. The newspaper articles said he was 60 years old but looked remarkably younger. He was supposed by the more superstitious in New York City to be using voodoo to prolong his youth. The black militants had accused him of being an Uncle Tom and of refusing to use any of his fortune to help his people. Furthermore, a million dollars was missing from his bank account.

It was easy to understand the explosion and the disappearance, now I had seen him here. He was getting to the age when questioning and astonishment about his youthful looks would increase geometrically in proportion with the passage of time. He could use makeup to seem older, but that had its annoyances and limitations. The Nine had ordered that he “die.” He could start a new identity elsewhere after he had served his three months as the Speaker.

I wondered if the Nine were thinking of the same thing for me. I could not go on forever with my present identity. Only the fact that I spent so much of my time away from civilization, and my passion for obscurity, had prevented an order from the Nine. Even so, when I went to England or elsewhere, I whitened my black hair and wrinkled my face.

I suspected that Caliban was in my position. Rivers and Simmons had mentioned briefly that “Doc”

had not been able to entirely hide his name and qualities from the world. A writer of pulps had somehow learned something of his strange rearing and training, his extraordinary, perhaps unique, qualities and abilities, and something of the hidden place where he rehabilitated criminals. The writer had used Caliban as the basis for a character, under another name, of course, in a series of wild science-fictional adventures, most of which were the result of his imagination. But there had been some fact in them. Apparently, the two old men had figured prominently in these adventures but also under different names.