IN THE DOWAII CHAMBERS

1

THE SUN ROSE HIGH OVER THE DESOLATE LANDSCAPE, burning away the ghosts and shadows of the night. Through the landscape only a single dirt track led into more and more of the burnt orange of the southwest desert, and on it, like some desperate alien beast being chased by the rising sun, a lone pickup truck roared through the lonely land, kicking up clouds of dust and small pebbles as it went, the only sign of life for, perhaps, fifty miles. For all that those in the truck could tell, they might have been invaders of another planet, a planet as stark and dead as the moon.

But the land was not dead, merely hard. Once the same harsh hills and dry, dusty plains had held great civilizations, many of whose cliff-dwelling cities and complex road patterns remained for the aerial surveyor, then the archaeologist, and finally the tourist to discover and explore. Even now this was Indian land, although not that of the descendants of the great ones who had thrived here so many centuries before. These Indians were newcomers, interlopers here on the land in this very spot less than six hundred years, but they were no less tied to it than the vanished old ones, nor did they love it any less.

The pickup reached rocky tableland now and took an almost invisible fork in the road to the right, up into the hills of pink and bronze whose colors changed constantly with the position of the sun. Up now, into the highlands, and through a gully that even four-wheel drive found a problem, until at last they came upon a small adobe dwelling, a single room set under a cleft in the rock and shaded by it. Nearby grazed some horses, getting what they could out of the weeds that grew even here, and, a bit farther down, some burros did likewise.

The pickup pulled up almost in front of the tiny dwelling and stopped, causing almost no stir among the animals idly grazing, and the driver's door opened and a young, athletic-looking man got out, then helped a young woman out as well.

Theresa Sanchez came out of the tiny building to greet the newcomers, then stopped in the doorway and looked them over critically. They look like a designer jeans commercial, she thought sourly.

A second man got out of the truck, stretching arms, legs, and neck to flex away some of the stiffness. He didn't seem to fit with the other two, his clothes older and more worn, his stocky build and crazy-quilt reddish beard doing little to disguise his pockmarked face.

Theresa Sanchez looked them all over and wondered again what the hell they were all doing here. The driver, Mr. America-blond, blue-eyed, muscular, a bit over six feet, in tailored denim work clothes, hundred-dollar cowboy boots, and a large, perfectly formed white Stetson-was George Singer, the ambitious originator of this project. He was, she knew, twenty-six and a doctoral candidate in American archaeology. The woman with him, in a tight-fitting matched denim outfit, cowboy hat, and boots, had to be Jennifer Golden, George's current housemate and an undergrad at the same university. That left the big, ugly brute as Harry Delaney, a geographer and, at twenty-nine, also a doctoral candidate.

Despite their tans, she couldn't help but think how very-white--they all seemed.

"Welcome to the ghetto," she couldn't resist calling out to them.

Only Delaney smiled, perhaps because he was the only one to understand the comment. He had never met Theresa Sanchez before, but he knew a bit about her from George, and he couldn't help but examine her in the same way that she had looked at all of them. The woman was surprisingly small and wiry, hardly more than five feet and probably under a hundred pounds. Her skin was a deep reddish brown, almost black, her deep black hair long and secured by an Indian headband, and her faded and patched jeans and plain white T-shirt made her look not only natural here but also somehow very, very young. He could imagine her, in more traditional Indian dress, as a young girl of these hills, living as her ancestors had.

But she, too, was a bit more than she seemed, he knew. Not the fourteen she seemed but twenty-five, her Spanish name not close to her true one but one given her in Catholic mission schools, her field so complex and esoteric that she'd either be the world authority in it one day or condemned to obscurity by its very oddness. She was a philologist, but not just any sort of expert on words. George had said that there wasn't a language known that she couldn't master in six weeks or less, nor one that she couldn't become literate in within a year. She was one of those born with the special talent for the word-anybody's word. But although she'd tackled many just for interest and amusement, her interest and her passion was the myriad languages and dialects of the Amerind, many of which no one not born to them could speak. She could speak them, though-a dozen or more, in hundreds of dialects. How important she became would depend on her own aims and ambitions; it was certainly a wide-open field.

Oddly, she was as much an alien here as the other three, although only she truly understood that. She was an Apache in Navajo lands, which made her as wrong for this place as a Filipino in Manchuria. Somewhere, far back, there was common ancestry, but that was about all the sameness there was.

George looked around. "Did you fix it with the old man, Terry?"

"And a good morning to you, too," the Indian woman responded sarcastically. "The soul of tact and discretion as always, I see."

The blond man looked at her a little sourly, but shrugged it off. He looked around. "Is he here?"

She nodded. "Still inside and praying a bit. He's still not too sure he wants to go through with this."

Singer looked slightly nervous. "You mean he might back out?"

She shrugged. "Who can say? I don't think so, though."

"What's he worrying about? That we're gonna disturb his gods?"

"He has only one god, in many forms," she told him. "No, he doesn't worry about that. He's a fatalist. He's worried about us."

"Us?" Delaney put in.

She nodded. "He believes we are to become ghosts, and his conscience is troubling him. To him it's a dilemma much like whether or not to give a loaded gun to one who you suspect of being suicidal. No, check that. More like giving a stick of dynamite to people ignorant of what explosives are and how they work."

Singer sighed. "Superstition. It's always the same."

"Are you sure, George?" she responded, not taunting but with an air of real wonder in her tone. "Are you so sure of yourself and your world? These people have been here a long time, you know."

Singer just shook his head in disgust, but Delaney felt something of a chill come over him, a shadow of uncertainty. For a moment he felt closer to this Indian woman than to his two companions, for he was not so certain of things. This was the modern, computerized world they all lived in; yet, here, even in the heart of the great cities, some still feared the darkness, some still wondered when the wind whistled, and many still knocked wood for luck. Great architects whose computers spewed three-dimensional models of grand skyscrapers and who worked in mathematics and industrial design still didn't put the thirteenth floor in their glass-and-steel edifices.

They had unloaded and set up a crude camp before they saw the old man for the first time. He emerged, looking almost other-worldly himself, a wizened, burnt, wrinkled old man with snow white hair stringing down below his shoulders, wearing hand-woven decorative Indian garments of buckskin tan, although decorated with colorful if faded Navajo designs. Only his boots-incongruous US Army-issue combat boots, well-worn but still serviceable-betrayed any hint that he was even aware of the twentieth century.

Whether he could speak or understand other languages, none of them knew, but it was certain that he would speak, and answer to, only the complex and intricate Navajo language.

Theresa Sanchez-Terry, she told them-not only knew the language but could quickly match the old man's dialect as well. Delaney, who'd almost washed out by his near inability to master German and French, felt slightly inadequate.

They ate some hot dogs and apples prepared over a portable Coleman, and the old man seemed to have no trouble with the modern ways of cooking or the typically American food. He wolfed it down with relish, and a can of beer from their cooler too. Finally finished, he sat back against a rock and rolled a cigarette-the three newcomers all thought it was a joint until they smelled the smoke-and seemed content.

Harry and Terry had helped Jenny with the cookout and now helped clean up. George let them do it.

Finally they got it squared away and went and sat by the ancient Indian. It was impossible to tell how old he was, but Harry, at least, thought that it was impossible to be that old and still move.

"He's going to guide us?" he said unbelievingly. "Don't let his appearance fool you," Terry came back. "This is his land. He's strong as a bull-you oughta see him push around those burros-and healthier than you are."

"How long has he lived here?" Jenny asked in that thin, high voice of hers.

"I asked him that. He says he doesn't remember. It seems like forever. He complains a lot that he can never remember not being old and out here."

"Why's he stay, then? He could enjoy his last days in comfort if he came out of here and went down to a home," George noted.

Harry kept looking at the old man, who seemed half asleep, wondering if he understood any of this. If so, he gave no sign.

"I doubt if you'd understand the answer to that, George," Terry responded. "Lucky you decided to take up artifacts. People would confuse the hell out of you."

He smiled and looked at Jenny. "I do fairly well in that department." He sighed and turned back to Terry. "So okay. When do we go on our little trip?"

The old Indian's eyes came half open and he muttered something.

"He senses your impatience," Terry told him. "He says that's why he lives so long and you will die much quicker."

George chuckled. "If I had to live out here under these conditions to get that old, I think I'm the winner. But, as I asked before, when do we get going?"

She asked the old man and he responded.

"He says tomorrow, a little before dawn," she told him. "We'll travel until it gets too hot, then break, then take it up again in the cool of the evening."

"How far?"

She asked him. "He says many hours. Allowing for terrain and the animals, early evening the day after tomorrow."

"Ask him what it's like," Harry put in. "What're we going to see when we get there?"

She did. "He says there's nothing visible on the surface, nothing at all. He calls them chambers rather than caverns or caves, which indicates, to me at least, that they're manmade tunnels of some kind going deep into the rock."

"That squares with the old legends," George noted. "Still, I'll believe 'em when I see 'em. What kind of Indians could ever have lived here that could develop a rock-tunneling ability? Chipping houses out of hillsides, yes, and even moving stones great distances-but they have to be man-perfected natural tunnels. There are bunches of those, although not around here particularly."

She said something to the old man, possibly a rough translation of George's comments. The old man responded rather casually but at some length.

"He says that none were made by nature, as you will see, although he didn't claim they were manmade. Artificial is more correct."

"If not men, then who made 'em?"

"The Dowaii," she said. "You remember the legends."

It had begun the previous year, or perhaps much earlier, when an undergrad under Singer had stumbled onto some ancient Navajo legends and seemingly correlated them with a number of other legends from Mexican, Spanish, and pioneer sources. It was a brilliant piece of work, impossible without both luck and the computer, and when George saw it he knew that it might be some-thing big. Naturally he took full credit for it-although the undergrad was noted for his hard work in assistance-and it had led to George's grant.

A number of ancient Indian legends from many tribes were involved, although the Navajo's was the most complete and gave the most information. Still, like Noah's flood, there were other accounts, distorted and fragmentary, that bore out at least the fact that something was there. That something, if it really was there, would not only give Singer his Ph.D. but put him immediately in the forefront of his field. It was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime chance you just had to take.

After God had created the world, the legend went, and made it a true paradise, He dwelt within it and loved it so much that parts of His aspect went into all things which he loved, and they became spiritual echoes of Himself. Echoes, but also independent; managers, one might say, of the earth and its resources. Elemental spirits who not merely controlled but were the air, the sun, the trees, the grass, the animals, and all else of the perfect world.

But a perfect world needs admirers, and these sprung automatically from the spirits, or aspects, of the Great Spirit. These were a race of perfect material creatures, the Dowaii, who were, in and of themselves, the second generation of the descendants of God.

The elemental spirits, being once removed from God, were, of course, less than God, and the Dowaii, being once removed from the spirits, were lesser still, although great beyond imagining. Still, they were aware of their imperfections, and some aspired to godhood themselves. Out of their desires and their jealousy sprang the races of man, another step removed from God yet still an aspect of Him and descended from Him. God, however, was angered by the Dowaii's jealous pride and cursed them from the light of day, condemning them to the places under the earth and giving the earth to men. Those men who remained true to nature and the land, and loved it and life, would never die, but their souls would be brought to a true heaven that God Himself inhabited, a world without spiritual intermediaries. Men, then, could become at least as great as the Dowaii if their souls were as great on earth. Most men did not and died the permanent death, to return to the earth and nourish the next generation of life. But the First People, the true Human Beings who were descended from the first of the Dowaii, kept their covenant with God while the rest of mankind did not, aided by the Dowaii, who, locked in the rocks beneath the earth, cursing man and God alike, created the hatred that became evil in the minds of men.

The legend was striking in that it was not really common to any of the Amerind religions except for an obvious common origin. Although Navajo, it was not known to the majority of those proud people but only to a select few-a cult, as it were. In a sense it was almost Judeo-Christian, in that it in some ways echoed Eden, and the Fall, and the battle between Heaven and Hell, which were not very Indian concepts.

Judging from the fragments and distortions from other tribes, though, it had apparently once been widespread, crossing tribal and national boundaries as well as linguistic ones, but it had dead-ended, died out, like so many other cultist beliefs, except for a small handful out in the southwestern desert. These, like the old man, were the guardians, the watchers at the gates of Hell.

Because the gates of Hell were two days ride from the old adobe shack.

Those few who remained faithful didn't seem to be concerned that their faith had died out long ago. It didn't matter to them, as long as their people retained the essential values-worship of God, love and respect for the land. Nor did they believe they would totally die out. Their own beliefs said that they inherited the beliefs from the Old Ones whose civilization had risen and fallen here before their people had come, and that the Old Ones had gotten it from still more ancient peoples. Some would go on.

For the Dowaii could not defy God and emerge from the rocks. They could only come here, close to the surface in the place of their ancient great cities, and remember the greatness they had lost. And they were still great and powerful beings, more powerful than men, who could lure and tempt and use men who came too near, although the pure ones, the unsullied First People, could dare them and defy them if they were pure enough in their souls.

An ordinary cult legend, yes, but there was more that led George to believe that something else might be here.

Of their great city and civilization not one trace remained on the surface, or so the legends went. But on that site, below ground, were the great chambers of the Dowaii, where their spirits were strong and their power great. The last of the Dowaii of the great city dwelt in the rocks there and spoke through the chambers, and a remnant of their past glory was kept there, great and ancient treasures and knowledge beyond men's dreams.

Many of the strong and pure of the First People had entered those chambers, some as tests of courage or manhood, some as seekers after knowledge and truth. A very few emerged to become the greatest of leaders, almost godlike themselves. The Old Ones' great civilization was built by such men, but could not be sustained when they passed on.

Many more who entered the chambers emerged mad, their humanity gone. Most who entered did not come out and were said to remain there, forever trapped in the chambers, doomed forever as spirits, their ghosts trodding the chambers, suffering the torments of the Dowaii and at the same time seeing the great treasures and knowledge that was there while being powerless to do anything about it. Doomed forever, their anguished cries could sometimes be heard in the still of the desert, which is why the Navajo cult called the place the Haunting Chambers.

If it had stopped there, that would have been it, but in modem times modem men, too, had fragmentary tales.

A patrol sent out to the place by Coronado, believing the chambers might be the hidden gates to the Seven Cities, had gone, and one had returned, the one who had not gone in but had waited with the horses. His report, dismissed even at the time, of a huffing and puffing mountain that swallowed the rest of his patrol and from which only one had emerged, frothing at the mouth and gibbering like some rabid animal, and whom the lookout had finally been forced to shoot to death, was consistent-if one knew the Dowaii legend. The Spanish story also related how the madman had emerged clutching a large shining chunk of what proved to be pure silver, although this was not discovered to be so until much later.

Other, similar stories, each tied to rich artifacts, were around almost up to the early part of the century-but also, it was said, whenever anyone returned to find the chambers, they never could locate them or vanished without a trace.

It was slim but interesting evidence to hang this little expedition on, and even though Singer had academic blessings, his grant barely paid the gas. It was Delaney's grant, for a preliminary survey of the region, that provided what little real capital there was, all of it sunk into the mules, horses, and supplies.

The key, though, had been Singer's encounter with Terry Sanchez at a professional conference on south-western Indian cultures in Phoenix. She'd been doing work on the legends of some of the Navajo people as part of an oral history project and she'd heard of the cult and the Dowaii story. More, she could talk to the right people. She didn't like George very much but was intrigued by his idea that the chambers actually represented a pre-Anasazi cave-dwelling civilization never before suspected.

It had taken two years to get this far, and it was no wonder that George Singer was impatient.

Most of the afternoon was spent unloading and checking supplies, and there was surprisingly little conversation. Except for George and Jenny, they were all virtual strangers.

It was pitch-dark in the canyon, the stars brilliant but giving little illumination and the moon not yet up. Only the reddish embers of a dying fire gave off any light, and it was precious little.

Harry Delaney had tried to sleep but couldn't yet manage it. It was the total dark, he knew, and the lack of noise of almost any sort except the occasional rustle of the animals or the sound of one of the others turning or twisting.

Those sounds, of course, were magnified all out of proportion, including, after a while, the unmistakable sounds of George and Jenny making out in the darkness. It stopped after a bit and the two seemed to lapse into sleep, but it only brought Harry more wide-awake, and eventually he got up, grabbed his cigarettes, and walked over to the other side of the fire.

He flicked his lighter to fire up his cigarette and took a few drags, then stopped still, as he saw in its flickering glow Terry Sanchez sitting against the shack, watching him. He frowned and slowly walked over near her.

"Couldn't sleep, huh?" she whispered. "Not with the, ah, sound effects?"

He chuckled. "Partly that, anyway. You?"

"I sleep more soundly out here-but less." She gestured in the dark. "You don't like our friend George very much." It wasn't a question but a statement.

"He's not very likeable," Harry replied. "I dunno. Even if he weren't an egomaniacal bastard I'd probably still hate him. Looks like a German god, doctoral candidate at twenty-six, and all the beautiful women fall all over him while all the men on the make follow in his wake. He's everything our society says a man should be. Naturally I hate his guts."

She found that amusing. "Then why are you here?"

"Oh, I follow his wake, too, I guess. It was irresistible. He needed the money to follow his little story to glory, and I had this little grant in the neighborhood. If he's right, I'll share a little of the glory. Oh, he'll have the bestseller and the talk shows, of course, but I'll have a secure little professorship with a reputation."

"And if he's wrong?"

"Then I'm no worse off for wasting a few days on this."

"Do you think he's wrong?"

He stared at her. "What do you think?"

"I think he's wrong, of course, but not in the way you think. I think there's something out there, all right. You only have to look at his evidence to suspect that, and in addition I've talked to these old hermits. They aren't spouting legend; they've been there."

He looked idly at the shack. "That bothers me, though. Why, if there is something, would they take us there? Why show us this sacred spot when the Sioux will never even tell outsiders what Crazy Horse looked like, let alone where he's buried, and your own Apaches guard the grave of Geronimo? Particularly for three whites and a native of a different tribe not exactly known as a friend of the Navajo?"

She chuckled. "That was my first thought and my first question after making friends with him. He's very opinionated about women in general, and Apache women with Spanish names in particular. The nearest I can explain it is that he and the others guard the Navajo from the Dowaii. Oddly, only if we had a Navajo here would there have been trouble. He considers the rest of us already corrupted beyond redemption and, therefore, already the Dowaii's property."

"So we're sacrificial lambs," he sighed. "I don't like the sound of that. A crazy cult out here in the middle of nowhere, leading us around on their turf. I wonder if-"

"If the disappearances are caused by them? I thought of that. I'm sure George has too. That's why we'll all be armed from sunup on, and why one of us will always stand watch after. Still, I don't fear an attack by geriatric fanatics. There's something out here, all right. Not what George expects or what you or I expect, either, but there's something. You can almost feel it."

He shivered slightly. "I think I see what you mean." He sighed. "It must be nice to be like George. I doubt if he fears much of anything."

She got up and started over to her bedroll. Abruptly she stopped and turned back to him. "That, perhaps, is why we, you and I, are more likely to survive than he."

He snuffed out his cigarette and went back to his own sleeping bag, but he didn't sleep right away. For brief, episodic moments he felt the urge to flee, to tell them in the morning that they could go with his money and without him.

Something out there ...Feel it ...

It was a hot, rough day's ride over nasty terrain. A lonely ride, too, as even the normally unflappable George seemed somehow grim, taciturn, even a bit nervous.

The dry, wilting heat didn't help matters any, with any of them, as long as you didn't count the old man. Nothing, but nothing, seemed to bother him, and even his breaks, long and short, seemed more for the benefit of the animals and his charges than himself.

Harry tried to renew hesitant contact with Terry, but she seemed as stoic and indifferent as the old man. At one of their shadeless rests, though, George took Harry aside, a bit from the rest.

"I saw you making a few moves toward Terry," he whispered very low. "Just a friendly hint to forget it."

Harry was annoyed. "What's it to you? You already got Jenny."

"You got me wrong, Harry. I'm just being friendly. She don't mean nothin' to me except the way out to the chambers. You just aren't her type, that's all."

"Oh, come off it, George," he grumbled.

"Jenny's her type, Harry. At least, that's the only one around here she'd be attracted to."

He started to open his mouth, then closed it again. Finally he said, "Damn you, George," and stalked back to the others.

He felt miserable now, although he knew that that hadn't been George's intent. George could only see other people's actions in the same way he saw those actions, and the warning was actually a friendly gesture. George would never understand, he knew. He was still back there, puzzling over why he was just cursed out for doing somebody a favor.

Hell, he'd never have gotten romantic with Terry Sanchez-not really. But George had robbed him of even the illusion, coldly bringing reality into this fantasyland where reality had no place being. George wouldn't ever understand that, never comprehend it in the least.

Damn it, George, I don't care who or what she really is, but I neither wanted to nor had to know.

It was a lonely night, with more aches and more sleep but no new conversation.

The next morning found the old man and Terry seeming anxious to push on, while the three others all felt every bone and muscle in their bodies, which all seemed bruised and misplaced. Groans, curses, and complaints became the order of the day now.

Jenny seemed to suffer the worst. This was different than riding some nicely trained horses on a ranch or bridle path, and she really wasn't cut out for this sort of thing-not that George, and particularly Harry, were, either.

At least, Harry decided, the agony took your mind off brooding.

The scenery had changed into a rocky, gray landscape with rolling hills. Far off in the distance were some peaks and even a hint of green, but they turned from that direction and went close to a red and gray hill not distinguish-able from the rest of the desolate mess. Finding a sheltered spot beneath a rock cleft, the old Indian signaled them to a halt and dismounted.

Terry talked with him at length, then came back to the rest of them. "Well, we're here," she announced.

All three looked startled and glanced around. "Here?" Harry managed.

She nodded and pointed. "That ugly hill over there, in fact."

George looked around at the landscape, a part of the region that didn't even have the beauty and color of the rest. It was an ugly, unappetizing place, one of the worst spots any of them could remember. "No wonder nobody found this place before," he said. "It's a wonder that anybody did."

Jenny turned up her pretty nose. "Smells like shit too."

Harry and George both frowned. "Sulphur," Harry noted. "I'll be damned. Doesn't look like anything volcanic was ever around here, does it?"

George shook his head. "Nope. But I don't like it all the same. Terry, your old man didn't say anything about sulphur. We might need breathing equipment if we have to go into caves filled with the stuff, and that's one thing we ain't got."

"I don't remember anything about it," she told them. "I'll ask him, though." She went back, talked to the old man, then returned. "He says the Dowaii know we are here and why we are here and are cleaning house for us-at least, that's the closest I can get. He says they'll put on a show tonight, then call for us."

George looked upset. "Two days of hell and a dead end. I'm sure as hell not going into any damned cave filled with gas."

"He says the air inside will be as sweet as we wish it to be."

"So he says." He sighed. "Well, let's bed down, anyway. At least we can make some preliminary surveys and see if there's anything worth coming back for."

The sun set as they unpacked and prepared the evening meal. Harry sat facing the mountain, digging into his beef and beans, as the land got darker and darker. Something in the back of his mind signaled that something was not right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Finally he settled back and looked up at the mountain and dropped his plate.

None of the others noticed, and he finally said, "George, we have a Geiger counter, don't we?"

George looked up, puzzled, and said, "Yeah. Sure. What-?" He turned to see where Harry was looking and froze too. The two women also turned and both gasped.

The mountain glowed. It wasn't a natural sort of glow, either, but an eerie, almost electronic image in faint, blue-white light, a matte 3-D ghost image of the mountain that seemed to become clearer as darkness became absolute.

"Well, I'll be damned!" George swore. "What the hell can cause something like that other than a Hollywood special-effects department?"

Harry had already retrieved the Geiger counter and, with the aid of a flashlight, tried to take readings. "Anything?" George asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing but normal trace radiation. My watch gives off more juice than this stuff, whatever it is. I can't figure it out."

George studied it for a moment. "Let's go .see." He went and got a flashlight, joining Harry, then looked over at Terry and Jenny. "Want to come?"

The contrast on the two women's faces was startling, at least to Harry. Jenny was just plain scared and not being very successful in trying to hide it. Terry, on the other hand, seemed fascinated almost to the point of being in some sort of mystical trance.

"George, don't go. Not now," Jenny said pleadingly.

"We're just going to the edge of the thing," he explained patiently. "I'm not about to go mountain climbing in the dark."

Terry said nothing, just stood there staring, and the two men realized that she wasn't about to join them. They turned and both started walking toward the strange display.

Suddenly the old man cried out, "No!"

Both men froze and turned. It was the first intelligible word they'd heard him utter.

"Hold on, Pop, we'll be back," George told him, and they set out again over the rocks toward the oddly glowing site. No one tried to stop them or accompany them.

It was only about fifty rough yards to the start of the display, and they approached it cautiously but quickly. It looked different this close, though.

"It's not glowing," Harry noted. "It's very slightly above the rock. See?"

George peered at it in nervous curiosity. "I'll be damned. It's-it's like electricity."

"It is electricity," the other man noted. "It's an electrical web or grid of some sort that makes a kind of holographic picture of the mountain. Where's the energy come from? And how is it kept in this form?"

"I don't know. I never saw anything like it that wasn't faked," George responded. "What the hell have we discovered here?"

"I'm going to toss these wirecutters at it," Harry said tensely. "Let's see what happens." He removed them from his belt kit and lightly tossed them at the nearest part of the display.

The wirecutters hit the current and seemed to stop, frozen there just above the ground, enveloped and trapped in the energy field. They remained suspended there, not quite striking the ground, and began to glow white.

"Let's get back," Harry suggested, and George didn't argue.

They'd barely returned to the clearing when there was a rumble as if from deep within the ground, and at the top of the hill a bright, glowing sparkle of golden light grew. It, too, was some sort of energy field, they knew, growing to a height of several feet and sparkling like the Fourth of July.

From other points on the mountain other fields rose, all the same shimmering sparkle, but one was blue, another red, another green-all the colors of the rainbow and more.

They all stood there watching it, even the old man, for some time, perhaps an hour or more.

"Well, at least we know how the earlier people found the place," George noted.

"George, this isn't what we bargained for at all," Harry noted. "Listen-feel it in the ground? A rumbling. Not like a volcano or an earthquake. More steady."

George nodded, unable to avert his eyes for long from the display. "Like-like some giant turbine or some-thing. Like some great machine gearing up."

"That's it exactly. Don't you see, George? That's what it is. Some kind of machine. That turbine or whatever deep below us is producing the energy for that display."

"It can't be. The stories go back centuries. It'd be impossible for anybody earlier than the past twenty or thirty years to build such a machine, never mind why. Unless ..."

"Unless the Dowaii were not of this earth," George finished.

The display, but not the glow, subsided after ninety minutes or so. Harry turned to Terry, who was still standing, staring at the place. "You okay?" he asked, concerned.

For a moment he was afraid she was beyond hearing him, but finally she took a deep breath, sighed, and turned to look at him. "Listen! Can't you hear them?"'

He stared in puzzlement, then tried to listen. Presently he heard what she meant. There was a sound, very faint, very distant, somewhere down deep from within that mountain. A sound that seemed to be a crowd of people, all talking at the same time.

"The machine's noise," George pronounced. "At least now we can see why the old man talked about ghosts there. It does almost sound like people. The easy part of the legend is solved, anyway. Just imagine primitive man coming across this-even as primitive as the last century. It'd make a believer out of you in an instant. Maybe drive you nuts. The force field, or whatever it is, might well account for the disappearances."

Harry sniffed the air. "Smell it? Ozone."

"Beats the hell out of sulphur," George, the pragmatist forever, responded. "Well, now we know how leg-ends are made. Unfortunately, we don't know who or what made 'em. One thing's for sure, though: We got the find not just of the century but maybe the greatest find of all times."

"Huh?"

"It's pretty clear that, centuries ago-maybe a lot longer than that-somebody who was pretty damned smart stuck a machine here that was so well made and so well supplied with power sources, probably geothermal, that it's still working. That means an infinitely self-repairing device too." He frowned. "I wonder what the hell it does?"

"It's the extension of that I don't like," Harry responded. "Not just self-repairing. It knows we're here, George. It knows."

"Aw, c'mon. Don't shit in your pants at the unknown."

"I'm a little scared, I admit that, but that's not what I mean. If it did this every night, it'd have been spotted a long time ago. This place has been photographed to death. The whole damned world has, through satellites, day and night, and in the infrared, X-ray, you name it. And if they'd spotted anything, they'd have been here a long time before us. Uh-uh. The old man's right. This baby turned itself on just for us. It knows we're here, George. It knows."

George didn't like that. "Maybe, then, it's defending itself."

2

Nobody got much sleep that night, but there was a limit to how long you could watch even such an eerie phenomenon without discovering that your basic needs hadn't changed. The old man, of course, slept just fine; he'd been through this before.

Still, with the sun barely above the horizon and the sky only a dull, pale blue, there was movement. Harry felt himself being pushed and awoke almost at once. He was barely asleep, anyway. It was George, and Harry's expression turned from sleepiness to concern when he saw the other man's face.

"What's the matter?"

"It's Jenny-she's gone!"

"Jenny?" Harry was up in a moment. "Any sign of where she went?"

"Yeah. No horses or burros missing. Even if she was panicked out of her gourd, she'd take a horse. And there are a few tracks."

Harry turned toward the mountain, which looked as ugly and undistinguished as it had at first sight. "There? Hell, she'd never-"

"I know, I know. But she did. Either that or some of the old boy's buddies came along and got her."

"Let's get Terry," Harry suggested, but it was needless. The Indian woman had heard their not-so-whispered conversation and was already up and approaching them. The old man seemed to be sleeping through it.

"What's the matter?" she asked, and they told her quickly. She looked over at the mountain with a mixture of fear and concern, yet she didn't seem surprised.

"I've felt its pull myself since last night," she told them. "Haven't you? All night I lay there and I swore I could hear voices in many languages, all calling my name-my Apache name as well. There was a tremendous pull and I had trouble resisting it."

George shook his head wonderingly. "Damn! That's all right for you and your mysticism, but-hell, Jenny? Not a brain in her head and scared to death of her own shadow. You saw her last night. She wouldn't go near that thing for a million bucks and a lifetime Hollywood contract."

Terry looked at the tracks. "Nevertheless, that's what she appears to have done. It couldn't have been too long ago; I don't think I slept more than a few minutes, and all of that in the last hour."

Both men nodded. "Looks like we're gonna find out a bit more than we bargained for last night," George grumbled, sounding slightly nervous. "I hope that thing's inactive in the daylight."

They grabbed a canteen and a couple of Danish from the supplies, and checked their guns. They wasted no time.

"Ready?" George asked, and they nodded. "Hey, what about the old boy?"

Terry looked back at the sleeping form. "He'll know," she said mysteriously. "Don't worry. Let's see if we can get her."

The rocky ground wasn't good for tracks, but it was clear that she had gone to the mountain. Any lingering doubts ended at the point where the glow had begun the night before. George looked down and again shook his head in wonder. "Jenny's boots-and socks too," he muttered. "What the hell? Barefoot on this shit?"

Harry stared at the footwear, not sitting as if removed but tossed, as if discarded, and felt a queer feeling in his stomach and the hairs on his neck tickle. Don't go, something inside him pleaded. Chicken out! Go back and wait for them! He looked up at the usually impassive Terry Sanchez and saw, unmistakably, some of the same feelings inside her. She gave him a glance that told him it was true, and in that glance was also the knowledge they both shared that they would ignore those feelings in spite of themselves.

George bent down and picked up something, handing it to Harry. He looked at it critically. It was his wirecutters, looking none the worse for wear. He sniffed them, but there was no odd smell or sign of burn marks or anything else, either.

There was a small sound and a few tiny rocks moved. They all jumped and looked up, and George, at least, relaxed. "Lizard," he told them, sounding very relieved. "Well, if he can live in a place like this, we shouldn't be electrocuted." With that he set foot on the mountain and began walking up.

It wasn't really a tall hill-no more than eight hundred feet or so-and while this side wasn't exactly smooth, it was mostly sandstone and gave easy footholds.

The other two followed. "Where are you heading?" Harry called to him.

"Just up here a bit," George responded. "When I saw the lizard I spotted something else." He was at the spot in a minute or two and stopped again, looking down. They caught up and saw what he'd seen.

"Jesus! Her jeans!" George breathed. "Has she gone out of her mind?"

Terry looked up at him and scowled. "That would be the explanation running through your mind."

"Got a better one?"

"Maybe. Let's go on with it."

He looked around. "Which way?"

"Up," she replied. "The easiest way."

It wasn't a hard trail to follow. A bit more than halfway up they discovered all her clothing. Unless she'd changed, there was no doubt that Jenny Golden was now somewhere on or in the mountain stark naked.

George kicked at Jenny's bra. "This would be the last of it. So now where do we go?"

"I think I know," Harry managed, his voice sounding as frail as his stomach felt. "Remember our display last night? The fountains of sparkles?"

They nodded.

"Well, unless I miss my guess, the opening for the blue one should be only a little over and maybe ten feet farther." He stared at the barren landscape. "Yup. There it is."

They went up to it with little difficulty and stood around it, looking at it. It was by no stretch of the imagination a cave, but rather an opening in the rock layers barely large enough for one person to enter. Harry removed his pack and set it down, removing lantern-style flashlights and mining caps with small headlamps. The others did the same, and quickly they had what they needed-what they thought they might need-to explore a subterranean remain. They quickly donned the gear, including gloves, and Harry looked at the other two. "Well? Who's the hero?"

George stared nervously back at him, and Harry caught the expression.

Put up or shut up, Big George, he thought a little smugly. The time for big talk is past.

"Okay," the blond man said at last, resigned to it. "I'll go in first. If everything's okay, Terry, you should be second, with Harry bringing up the rear."

Harry saw Terry's impulse to let George off the hook and prayed she wouldn't do it. She didn't.

George fixed the rope to his harness and looked nervously at the coil. "How much we got?"

"A hundred feet. Don't worry about it," Harry told him. "If you need more than that, then she's dead and beyond saving. If you need it much at all, in fact."

That sobered them.

George spent a little time checking and rechecking everything, although it was pretty much show, a bid for time to get up his nerve. Finally, though, he swallowed hard, went to the hole, and examined it. "No odors, sulphur or anything else," he noted. "Looks natural." He sat down and cautiously put himself into the hole, feet first. He kicked a bit. "Seems like a sloping ramp. Feels smooth, so keep a grip on that rope."

"Don't worry," Harry assured him.

Cautiously George slid into the hole in the hillside. Terry stood at the mouth, listening, as Harry played out the rope.

"Smooth rock and a gentle slope," George called back. "Funny-looks more like limestone, although the surrounding rock is sandstone for sure. Considering how it spouts, probably something akin to geyserite. Stuff from deep down. Wonder how far?"

"Any sign of Jenny?" Terry called to him.

"Nope. Funny, though. Should be getting cooler, I'd think, but it's not. The rock's warm, but not hot."

That concerned them all. The geyserite implied volcanism beneath, and also intermittent steam eruptions, which might have been what they had seen the night before. Some form of them, anyway.

George was about twenty-five feet in now and called up, "I'll be damned!"

"What did you find?" Terry called back.

"Handholds! This thing starts down and there's handholds of some kind of metal. No rust or anything. They look machined. It's wider down here now. Let me turn ... Yep! It's a long tube going down at about a sixty-degree angle, and it's got both handholds and metal steps. Damn! Those steps look like they're naturally imbedded in the sandstone. That's ridiculous, of course."

"Wait there!" Terry called. "I'm coming down!" She turned to Harry. "Secure the rope and I'll just use it as a guide. Whatever we're going into, somebody built it."

He nodded. "When you get down, send George down the hole and wait for me. I'll rig the rope so I can free it and pull it after. We might need it, and there's no way we're going to get packs in there."

She nodded and was soon into the hole and out of sight. Harry fixed the rope, then waited for her call.

When it came, he started in himself, barely fitting through the opening.

George was both right and wrong on the geyserite, he decided. If it were really the product of the steam eruptions, it would cover all sides of the cave, but it didn't-only the floor. The substance was similar, but he doubted it was there from natural causes.

Once alongside Terry, Harry freed the rope and reeled it in as she descended.

He waited in silence and near-darkness as her light quickly vanished below. Soon there was no sound at all, and when he shouted down, only his echoes returned. Again the feeling of panic seized him. What if things weren't all right down there? What if whatever had seized hold of Jenny had also now gotten them?

He shined his light on the ladder. It was an impossibility and he knew it, as if someone millions of years before had positioned the metal steps and then waited for the sedimentary rock-which, of course, was only laid underwater-to compact over them, leaving the perfect staircase.

Sighing, he descended into the dark.

It was easy-almost as easy as climbing down a fire escape. He found that George hadn't exaggerated the heat, though. If anything, it was hotter inside than out, but incredibly it also was terribly, terribly humid.

He descended until he felt he would just keep going down forever, but finally he reached bottom.

The cavern-no, tube-in which he found himself was oval-shaped but quite large, perhaps twelve feet across by eight feet high, and seemed perfectly manufactured out of the same smooth rock as the floor above. More interesting, it glowed with some sort of greenish internal light. Not enough to make the place bright, but enough to see by, that was for sure. He kept his miner's cap on but switched off his flashlight, then looked around. There was no sign of the other two.

Again the fear gripped him, along with the eerie silence, and this time he turned toward the stairway that led back.

The stairway wasn't there. The hole wasn't there. In back and in front of him was only the same green-glowing chamber.

He felt a stab of sheer,panic and looked around for the rope and other gear-and did not see it. It's got me! My God! It's got me!

He felt like throwing up but did not. Instead he looked in both directions, decided on the one he'd been facing, and started walking.

What were these eerie chambers? He couldn't help wondering. Were they the exhausts of some millennia-lost spaceship? Or, perhaps, corridors within that ship, or some ancient extraterrestrial colony? If the latter, what would they be like, who made their tunnels like this in shape and texture?

He walked through the sameness of the chambers, and he finally ceased to fear or wonder or analyze. All those things seemed to flow out of him, leaving him almost empty, a shell, a lonely wanderer of subterranean alien corridors conscious only of the need to move, to walk forward. That and of the heat.

Faintly he struggled, but his resistance grew weaker and weaker as he walked. And as he walked he became aware of others, too, walking with him, under a heat that no longer came from within but from above, from a warm sun in a cloudless sky, one that he could not yet see or comprehend.

He was born.

His parents called him Little Wolf because he was born with so much hair on his head, and he grew up a curious and intelligent child in the world of the People. Unlike the subhumans who roamed the plains, the People lived in semipermanence beside the shore of a great lake on the edge of a beautiful forest. The men hunted and fished, while the women bore and reared the children, maintained the village, and in season, when the priest said all the signs were right, planted and tended some crops, mostly maize but occasionally nice vegetables as well.

In his thirteenth year manhood came upon him, quite unlike what Little Wolf expected it to be but that which he'd anticipated and prayed for all the same, and thus, the following spring, he entered the teaching circles of the warriors and learned the basics of survival-the use of the bow, the science of the spear, the patience needed to capture deer and birds and other creatures, and also some of the arts of war. Of the codes of war he needed no instruction: Those were a part of the culture of the People from the time of his birth and were as much taken for granted as the air, trees, and water.

By late spring he was accompanying the men into the forests on hunts, and out on the lake in canoes to use the coarse skin and bark nets made by the women to catch the silvery fish. He was neither the best nor the worst of the candidates for manhood, and, finally, he brought down a young doe with his bow and handmade flint arrows, and passed the final preliminary. The ceremonies of manhood were solemn and took several days, but in the end he was anointed, his head was shaved, and he was branded painfully on the face and chest and hands by the priest with the signs of manhood of his people and did not flinch or hold back and was, therefore, proclaimed a man.

He enjoyed his new status and took particularly well to the hunt, showing an ability to go for days without food far from home in search of community meat. Because of this he chose his man's name as approved by the elders of his tribe, that of Runs-Far-Needs-Nothing, a name he was very proud of.

In the fall the elders met with all the new men and brought forth the new women, those whom the gods had shown by the sign of blood were now women. Runs-Far-Needs-Nothing took then one whom he'd known from childhood, a small, lithe, attractive woman who accepted him as well and whom he gave the woman's name Shines-Like-the-Sun, a name approved by her parents and the elders and by she herself.

His early years had been remarkably peaceful, with little commerce and no major conflicts with the subhumans, although an occasional one of these strange ones would come to bargain for food or passage rights, and there would be occasional contests between the men, which the People usually won-which was good, since losing such a contest to a subhuman would bring such shame that suicide would usually be called for.

It wasn't until his seventeenth fall, however, that any real trouble appeared. The spring rains had not come in their usual numbers, and the snows of the previous winter had been light, insufficient to fill many of the smaller creeks that fed the lake. Through some irrigation a substandard crop had been raised, even with the lake many hands below its normal level, and the People knew they would survive the drought with what they had and the ministrations of the high priest. After all, game was plentiful, as the dryness drove more and more animals closer to the lake's precious water, but they had little to spare.

Shines-Like-the-Sun, meanwhile, was again with child, having already borne a son and a daughter to him, and they were content.

One day, though, still in the heat of early fall, a sub-human arrived looking grimmer than usual. The game had fled the northern plains, he told them, where in some places the land was scorched as by fire and baked harder than the hardest rock, while rivers that had always run pure and clean and deep as long as his people could remember were hard-caked mud. Without the game and waters of the lake, his people could not hope to survive to the spring, and he wished permission for his people to establish their own camp on the far side of the lake.

This was much debated by the elders, who finally consulted all the adults of the People, and what they concluded was grim news indeed. Such a large group as the subhumans would tremendously deplete the game around the lake, and as those others knew none of the skills of net-fishing and looked down upon farming as inferior work, the burden on the wild edible vegetables and fruits and the game would be tremendous, possibly too great for the lake to stand. Worse, as nomads, the subhumans had no sense of conservation, worrying not a bit about whether such a place as this land would still bring what was needed a year or more hence. They would trade game and hides for fish and grain, of course, but in this case it would be the People's own game and hides. In effect the subhumans would be taking half the limited wealth of the People, then trading it for some of the remaining wealth while making the land poor. While charity would be a virtue, it would only lead to such insults as that, with the People becoming poorer and weaker by far. Therefore, they recommended that permission to settle the nomads be denied.

This, of course, would leave the subhumans with no choice. Rather than move another week or more to the south, only to face the same situation or worse, they would fight, and they were a barbarous lot, without honor or mercy.

The People were as one to fight nonetheless, and the men went to prepare for battle. The subhuman emissary was notified and took the news well, as if he expected it-which he probably did. When he departed, several warriors discreetly shadowed him back to his people's encampment and set up a watch.

At dawn two days later the subhumans moved-not on the People's village, but to the place opposite on the lake where they had originally wished to go. Clearly they had realized that they could not launch a surprise attack on the village and had chosen instead to establish their own camp and dare the People to evict them.

The subhumans were a rough warrior race, but their idea of war was pretty basic and without real tactics. They expected to hold crude earthworks built in a single day to shield their tents, and they expected hand-to-hand overland attack or perhaps a seige. They had left their backs open to the water.

The People would attack, from both sides, but in a coordinated manner. The added factor would be a waterborne attack after the dual attack overland drained the enemy's manpower away from the rear. Almost two dozen canoes filled with the best would attack then.

Runs-Far-Needs-Nothing was one of those who would attack overland. He and most of the others felt no real fear or concern for the battle. After all, were these not subhuman barbarians? Besides, tales and legends of battles were a part of his growing up, and they were romantic adventures. He and his fellows welcomed the chance to show their superiority, their skills and cunning, and perhaps add to the legends.

The subhumans were caught somewhat off-guard, because they expected a dawn attack and it was well past midday when the People launched their drive. There was good reason for this: The sun was across the lake, causing near-blinding reflections and therefore masking the lakeside attackers and their canoes, a trick remembered from one of those legendary battle tales.

At first it went gloriously, with bowmen shooting hails of arrows into the subhuman encampment from both sides, then spearmen moving forward under arrows' cover. The battle was fierce, and the subhumans were brave and skilled fighters, but they were clearly outnumbered.

Still, the young warriors of the People learned that war was not romantic. Blood flowed, innards were spilled, and close friends of a lifetime lay lifeless around them. Still they pressed on, knowing they were winning and that the canoes would soon land to finish off the rest who were even now falling back.

But inexperience was costly, and the People paid dearly for it as the woods erupted on all sides with almost as many of the enemy as they had faced. It placed the People's warriors between an enemy sandwich and both confused and demoralized them. Caught in cross-fire, they fell in great numbers, while the added warriors of the enemy allowed those in the village to split off and defend the beach against the incoming canoes. Most of the brave warriors of the People died without ever realizing that they had been tricked very simply by an old, tough, experienced foe who knew his emissary would be followed back to camp and a count made of his men. A foe who had shown less than half his true numbers to those scouts while the others were already moving to positions across the lake.

Runs-Far-Needs-Nothing understood none of this, but he knew now that his people had lost, and he felt fear both for himself and for his wife and children, a fear that turned to a fierce hatred of this enemy. He never even saw the one who killed him, an experienced man of eighteen ...

Harry awoke slowly in the corridor and for a moment didn't know who or where he was. Two languages ran in his brain, two cultures, two totally different sets of references, and he could not come to terms with where he was or what he was. It came back, almost with a rush, but it seemed almost unreal and so very long ago. Even as he recounted his identity to himself over and over, and knew as he became more and more himself once again that he had had some sort of chamber-induced hallucination, he still marveled at his white skin and hairy body, a body that seemed wrong for him.

It was some time before he was suddenly aware that he was not alone. A small sound, a movement in the greenish-tinged oval cave, caused him to whirl and come face-to-face with Jenny Golden.

For a moment they just stared at each other, saying nothing. She looked as if in shock, somewhat vacant and, somehow, older than he remembered her. The eyes, he decided. It was the eyes. He wondered idly if he looked much the same.

After a few moments of looking at one another, he grew somehow alarmed that she was not aware of him, or at least of who he was. She seemed to sense this apprehension.

"How did you die?" she asked in a hollow, vacant tone.

"In a battle," he responded, his voice sounding thick and strange in his ears. He was conscious of a slight difficulty in shaping the words, as one ancient language coexisted with a modern one. The same effect was noticeable in her voice. "I'm not too clear on the particulars."

"I died in childbirth," she told him, that tone still there and still somewhat frightening. "Giving birth to my ninth child."

3

He had been sleeping. How long he didn't know, but it was a deep, dreamless sleep, and when he awoke he knew immediately who and where he was with an almost astonishing clarity of mind. Abruptly he remembered Jenny and for a moment was afraid that she'd be gone again like some will-o'-the-wisp, leaving him alone and confused. He was relieved to see that she was still there and looking a bit calmer and saner than she'd seemed the first time. Still, when she turned to look at him, she seemed much older, somehow, than he'd remembered, and her eyes still seemed to reflect some inner pain.

He sat up, stretched, and nodded to her. "How long was I asleep?"

She shrugged. "A long time. Who can say in here?"

"I'm sorry for passing out on you so abruptly."

Again a shrug. "I did the same thing. You come back kinda dizzy and not really knowing who you are, then you conk out, and when you wake up-well, I don't know."

He nodded sympathetically. "You've changed, Jenny. You've-well, I'm not sure how to put it. Grown up."

"Aged, you mean. Or maybe you're right. Anyway, I know who I am now and all that, but I also have the memories of that other life, just as real, but I'm in control, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah. The same way. Any sign of the others?"

"Not yet. I really was beginning to think that I'd never see any of you again, when you popped up." Her voice seemed to soften, then crack, and tears formed in her eyes. "Thank God you showed up."

He went over to her and just took her hand, squeezing it lightly to reassure her and tell her he understood.

And when she'd cried it out, she wanted to talk about it. He let her take her own time.

"You know, I always us'ta have these fantasies," she said. "I dunno-we're all supposed to be liberated, you know? And I like the freedom and all, but I'd still fantasize. Submission. Bondage. You know, like I was a slave girl in some sultan's empire. Like that, you know. I mean, I never really wanted that; it was just a fun thing, for masturbating, that sort of shit."

"You mean this thing gave you your fantasy?"

"Sort of. It was way far back, I'm pretty sure. An Oriental tribe, somewhere in Asia. Nobody was too clear on geography, you understand."

He nodded. "I've only an educated guess as to where I was too."

"Well, anyway, it was a nomad tribe, picking up and moving from valley to valley and across big mountains and deserts. They were a rough, tough group, too, and they didn't think much of women. They treated us like slaves, like property. Some of 'em got so mad when they got daughters they killed them. Just little babies. We cooked, we cleaned, we took down and put up the tents and fucked whenever the men got in the mood, and we got beat when we did it wrong or too slow or even if the man had problems. And we bore babies. God! Did we have babies!"

She fell silent, and he waited for a while to make sure she was finished. Finally he said, "Well, I wasn't nearly as bad off, even though I was just about as primitive." He described his life and realized with some surprise that he was almost nostalgic about it and them. "The big trouble was how naive they were," he told her, and, in so doing, told himself. "They were too peaceful and too inexperienced for what they faced-a group much like your tribe. Somewhere there I think there's a lesson in both our other lives but I can't put my finger on it yet if it is there. I got, I think, a clue, though, as to what we were put through and why." He sighed. "If only we could link up with the others! If their experiences bear out the idea, maybe I can get a handle on what we're facing in here."

"Well, I'm not going looking for them," she responded. "Look, I was sleeping at the camp when suddenly I kinda half woke up and knew I was walking someplace. I thought I was dreaming. It was just like some kinda magnet, you know, pulling me into the mountain. I do remember crawling along a dark tube, then going down some stairs, then along this tunnel-and that's it."

He nodded. "We followed you when we discovered you were missing and wound up doing the same thing. I was the last in. Until I got to this tunnel area, though, I had a clear head, and I was on the watch, but it got me anyway."

"But-why me? Why did it call me?"

"There could be a number of reasons," he told her, preferring not to contrast her intellect with the others', "but I suspect it's some kind of hypnotic process."

"You mean I got hypnotized when I was watching the colored lights?"

He nodded. "That's about it. Some people are more hypnotizable than others. It hooked you then and used that hook to draw you to it, giving you some kind of subliminal instructions."

She looked around and seemed to shiver slightly. "But who? Why?"

"I'm not sure it's a who. I doubt it. I'm pretty sure it's just a machine. An incredible, impossible, near-magical machine, but a machine all the same. It's nothing I know, but I just sort of feel it."

"A machine? But who built it? And why?"

"I'm not sure yet. I need more information."

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Are we-did we-live lives of people it trapped in here? Will we just go through all of 'em until we die of starvation or something?"

He thought about it. "I doubt it. First of all, neither you nor I were ever near this place in our other lives.

Second, I doubt if any people like you describe-physically, anyway-were ever anywhere near New Mexico. No, my people might have been: there was something very Amerind about them. But not yours. As for dying of starvation, do you feel hungry?"

She thought about it, a curious expression on her face, as if she'd never thought about it before. "No. Not at all."

"Neither do I. And my hair and beard are about the same length as they were, and your shaved legs are still smooth, so we probably haven't really been here long at all. Either that, or time has no meaning for us here in the literal sense. I'm not sure. I was hungry when I came in, and you should have been too." He considered that further. "Look, you've been here, subjectively, a long time. Have you had to take a crap? Or even a piss?"

"No, come to think of it."

"Then we're in some sort of stasis-limbo, whatever. The machine is taking care of us. I'm not sure we're exactly in time at all."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"There were machined metal steps imbedded in the stone. Now, that's impossible. It took millions of years to lay that sediment, one grain at a time, so laying them as the rock was formed is impossible. But that's exactly the way they looked."

"So how's that possible?"

"It isn't. The only way I can figure it was that this whole gadget was sort of slowly phased into our existence so it became possible."

"But you just said that'd be real slow."

"Smart girl. But not if you're thinking the unthinkable, as I am. I think this thing was sent back in time."

"But that's ridiculous!"

"It sure is. But so is this machine and what it did to us."

She shook her head in wonder and disbelief. "But who sent it, then? And why?"

"Somebody in the far future, that's for sure. Some civilization that knows a lot more than we do. No, check that. Think about this, maybe: a future civilization that knows more science than anybody ever dreamed. A civilization that can build a machine like this and make it do what it does."

"But what kind of creatures are they?"

"People. Like us, maybe. Or close enough to us for-Hey! That's it! At least, it'll do until a better explanation comes along."

"What?"

"Okay, now suppose there's a war or something. The big one. The whole world gets wiped, but somehow some people survive. Build it up again, bigger and better than it was, maybe. Explore all the mysteries we would have if we hadn't been zapped. They know everything-except their own history and culture, all traces of which have been wiped out. So they have this project. They send back this machine and maybe a lot of remote machines connected to it. Put 'em all over. Start as far back as they can date any human remains and start there. Let the machines randomly record people's lives and cultures. A scientific sample, so to speak."

"But if they can travel in time, why not just come back and see for themselves?"

"Maybe they can't. I keep thinking of those steps in the stone. If you have to take millions of years just to phase in something-millions here, not to them-it might not work with people. Besides, if these people were from the year 20,000 or something, you realize the time involved? You'll never have enough time to look at, analyze, and know a million years of human history, particularly if you know so little to begin with. No, this would be the logical way."

"But look at the lives we had!" she protested. "They weren't important. Not really. No great people, great civilizations, nothing like that."

"No, and the odds would be against them ever really coming up with a great person, although I'm sure they've recorded many of the civilizations through the lives of people who lived in them. Ordinary people. Like us. The kind of information that tells you the important stuff-what people and culture were really like in different places at different periods in human history. Yeah, that's got to be it. We've gotten ourselves trapped in somebody's grand anthropology experiment."

He ran down after that, feeling slightly exhausted but also somehow excited. He refused to consider that he'd made wild stretches of logic and imagination based on few hard facts, but, still, he was certain he'd gotten it right. He wondered idly if he hadn't picked at least the basics from the machine itself to which he and Jenny were so obviously tied.

She, too, was silent for a bit, and he realized that his own ideas were a bit too much for her to swallow or accept all at once. He sympathized with her. She didn't really belong here, he thought idly. Maybe as a subject for the machine, but not here, trapped inside of it. His own reaction was curiously different. Understanding it, as he thought he did, made all the difference. To lose yourself in time, to live the lives of others through the ages while never aging yourself. . .

"Harry?"

“Harry!”

"Yes?"

"Why us? Why suck us into it?"

He thought a moment. "Well, if I'm right and it's sent back by people-our descendants-and it's just a dumb machine, the world's grandest tape recorder, it might just figure we're part of the folks who built the thing. It struck a chord somewhere in you and drew you to it, probably just to make sure you knew it was there. Who knows? People and cultures change a lot. Who knows how those future people think? Or what their lives are like? Anyway, it thinks we're the ones who it's working for, and it's playing the recordings for us."

She looked stricken by the thought. "My God! That means it'll keep playing the things for us. Hundreds of lives. Thousands. And we don't know how to switch it off or even tell it what to do!"

He saw her horror at the prospect he found so inviting and sat back, trying to think of some way to console her. Finally he found it.

"Look, remember the stories and legends about the chambers? Some never did come back, true-but some did ! Some became great leaders and wise men."

"And some-most-went crazy," she noted.

He sighed. "Yeah," he acknowledged under his breath. "But think about it. Those who got out got out, if you see what I mean. They-smart, wise, or crazy-figured out the way out. And all of 'em were more ignorant, more primitive, than we. Cowboys and miners, Indians of the old culture, people like that. People who could never have understood what they were in. If they could figure it out, maybe we can too. It's got to be something simple, something basic. I wish we knew more about the ones that made it. Some common factor."

She looked at him strangely but with something akin to hope in her haunted eyes. "You know, I think maybe you can figure it out if anybody can." It was a statement tinged with admiration, and he felt slightly embarrassed by it.

"I wish we could find the others," he said, trying to change the subject. "The more heads the better." He got up and looked both ways in the oval cavern. "Now, which way did we come in?"

"From there," she told him, pointing behind him. "But you're not thinking of going on! It'll happen again!" There was an undertone of terror, almost hysteria, in her voice at that prospect.

"We've got to," he told her. "It's the only natural thing to do. Otherwise we'll just sit here forever."

"Harry-don't leave me!" It was a plea.

"Come with me. We'll do it together."

She got up hesitantly and looked nervously down the long, seemingly endless corridor. "Harry, I'm afraid. I-I can't. I just can't!"

"Jenny, I think the ones that just sat stayed. Either stayed or went nuts from just sitting endlessly."

She went up to him, trembling slightly. On impulse he reached out to her, drew her to him, and just hugged her close for a while. The act, one of compassion, nonetheless turned him on, a fact he could scarcely conceal from her.

She didn't mind. She needed it, needed somebody, a fact he soon recognized, and allowed it to happen. With an inner shock and surprise he realized that he needed it too.

It went with a degree of passion and intensity neither had ever really felt before, and it bonded them, at least for that moment, closer to one another than either had ever been to another sexual partner before.

And when it was finished they just lay there, caressing, saying nothing for quite a long time. Finally she said, "I think I'm ready now, Harry. I think I can go on."

He got up slowly, then helped her to her feet. "Let's take a walk," he said gently, and they began walking, his hand in hers, down the corridor.

They were approaching another time chamber, but even as they were aware of the fact, it became impossible to break free of it. They were sucked in and enveloped by it before they could even think of backing out.

He was born, the fourth son of a fisherman, and, as such, grew up in his father's trade. There was no question of where or when he was or what he was this time. He took his religion and religious training seriously, and was proud at his bar mitzvah, proud of his Jewish heritage and sincere in his belief that he was of God's Chosen People. Did not David, the greatest of Hebrew kings, rule in Jerusalem, and was not Israel growing under his leadership into one of the great civilizations of the world? Never was life, or destiny, or God's will, more certain to a man and his people than in that time.

And he prospered, having his own boat and making his own living by his seventeenth birthday. Although his marriage was properly arranged, there had never been any real question as to whom it would be. The beautiful Naomi, daughter of the fisherman Joshua, the son of Benjamin; he had known and loved her all his life. It was a natural marriage and a happy one, and she bore him three sons and two daughters, whom they raised and loved.

Things were hardly perfect. There always seemed to be wars and threats of wars, but somehow they never directly came to the village and the fishers. They grieved at news of Israel's losses and rejoiced and celebrated at news of ultimate victories, but it seemed, for the most part, far away and not quite connected to their lives. Some of the young men went off to wars, it was true, and some did not return, and there were occasional large masses of soldiers in and around, but they were always on their way from here to there. And Amnon, son of Jesse, lived seventy-three years and then died, and his wife of most of those years followed shortly after.

And when they had slept awhile in the corridors, they awoke once more.

"You don't look as frightened this time," Harry noted. She smiled. "It was better this time. Much better. Civilized."

"Me, too," he responded. "Kind of dull, but interesting. And even though I lived a long time and died of old age in bed, making my life as Amnon longer by far than Harry Delaney's, I can handle it better."

"What!"

"I said I can handle it better."

"No, no! Who were you?"

"Amnon. A Galilean fisherman in the time of King David."

She almost leaped at him excitedly. "But I was Naomi! Your Naomi!"

His jaw dropped. "Well, I'll be damned!"

She grabbed him and kissed him. "This is great! We had one together!"

He hugged her, then sat back down again. "Well, I'll be damned," he repeated. So they took more than one sample in a given place. At least one male and one female. Did they, in fact, take an entire group sample? The whole tribe in the earlier case, or the whole village in the last one?

"That's much better!" she continued to enthuse, life coining back into her spirit. "It means we don't have to be alone anymore!"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not," he responded cautiously. "We'll have to see." But he had to agree that it was a satisfying possibility.

She hesitated a moment at his comment. "Please, Harry. Don't spoil it. Not when I have hope."

He smiled and squeezed her hand. "Okay, I won't. In fact, it seems something important was learned, but I cannot put my finger on it yet. Another piece of the puzzle." He looked at her. "You know, your moves, your gestures, even your speech, is more Naomi than Jenny."

"And yours," she responded. "So, you see, you are stuck with me. I have been your wife and the mother of your children. You know what that-" She broke off suddenly with a gasp.

"What's the matter?"

"Turn around."

He turned and was suddenly frozen. Facing them now was a very dazed-looking Theresa Sanchez. She took a couple of hesitant steps toward them, mouth open, then collapsed.

They rushed to her, but she was out cold. "It's like you the first time," Jenny told him. "We'll just have to wait for her to wake up."

He nodded and went over and sat back down. "Well, at least now there's only George to find."

4

Terry was as happy to see them as they were to find her. "I thought we were separated forever," she said to them.

"Well, at least we know it's not a maze to get lost in," Harry noted.

Terry looked puzzled. "Look, I'm a linguist, but you'll have to speak English or Spanish, I think. Anything but that."

Harry and Jenny looked at each other. He concentrated, realizing suddenly that he had been neither speaking nor thinking totally in English since coming back for the second time. It was an easy transition to make, but not one he'd have realized on his own.

"Sorry. Didn't realize what we were doing. What did it sound like to you?" he asked Terry.

"Some form of Hebrew," she told him, coming and sitting facing the other two. "I heard you two talking as I was waking up. Funny kind of unintelligible accents laced with English words here and there. You still have something of an accent."

"A fine thing for a Delaney," he noted humorously.

"Well, I was Jewish to begin with," Jenny noted, "so it's not so radical. Still, I never knew much Hebrew or anything else before. I guess we just carried it over."

"Carried it over?"

Harry nodded and explained the connected past lives of the two of them. In the course of it he also told Terry of his suspicions as to the nature and purpose of the machine.

She nodded and took it all in. "You went further than me, but that was pretty much my line of thinking too. How many lives have you two lived so far?"

"Two each, one together," Jenny told her.

Terry sat back looking at them. "That fits. Same here. I guess it's one life per chamber." She chuckled. "Looking and listening to you two made me wonder what George would think. Things have sure changed."

"Yeah," Harry responded, for the first time wondering about George in other than compatriotic terms. He was beginning to like this bond he had with Jenny, and, thinking of George's attitudes and Jenny's past attachment to him, he felt a twinge of insecurity at the thought of the big man returning now. He tried to put it from his mind. "Tell us of your lives-if you want to."

Terry nodded. "Sure. The more information the merrier, I suppose, if we're ever to figure a way out of here." The attitude she had and the way she said it carried a subtle hint to Harry, at least, that Terry didn't really want to leave. It made him reflect that he'd thought the same thing at one point, but now he wasn't so sure. In a place that never changed, suspended in time, personal changes seemed incredibly accelerated.

Terry's own experiences had followed the pattern. The first time she'd been born into a southeastern African matriarchy, a tribal society organized around a cult of priestesses, although in many ways the mirror was the same as with most primitive groups. The men hunted and soldiered; the women made the political and social decisions as well as supervised and worked the farms. Their world view had been strictly limited, without knowledge of any save their own dark race and little understanding of the world beyond their villages. The religion was animist and marked by many dances, festivals, and animal sacrifices, but it was, on the whole, quite civilized in its limited way. In many ways it reminded her of her own native Amerindian cultures of the Southwest. She'd been a priestess of the lower ranks, a somebody but not a big somebody, in charge of allocating the communal food supply, and she'd felt content. The only wrinkle in the whole thing was the severe lack of medical care and understanding, which caused many, if not most, of the tribe to be afflicted early with various diseases, and she had died in what she guessed to be her twenties, of infection, in a land where very few lived much beyond that.

She had awakened in the tunnel, finally analyzed her situation as much as she could, and then decided, like they had, to press on in hopes of finding the key to the place. In her second life she'd been born in a small village in the Alps in the tenth century A.D. and had become a Catholic nun in an order forever sequestered in the convent from the outside world. She described little of the routine of her very long life there, but indicated that it was terribly uncomfortable by modern standards and yet, somehow, happy and fulfilling to her.

When she'd finished, Harry considered the additional information carefully. In all three cases, he realized, the first life had been primitive, tribal, prehistoric, and yet somehow keyed to all three of them. He realized, perhaps for the first time, that the peaceful, romantic primitivism of his own first life had been through his late teen years, anyway, a romantic vision he himself had had. A deep concern for nature and the land, living in harmony and balance with it-the Rousseauan model. And if the reality hadn't quite matched the dream, well, that was the way with dreams.

Jenny had been given her sexual fantasy, and in this case the dream and reality had clashed with a vengeance, but that was always the way with dreams. Terry, an Indian, which set her apart-particularly in the white society of the modern Southwest-on her own, too brilliant to accept or live long in the reservation's primitiveness, yet unable to be fully accepted outside of it. Apart, too, from her native culture in particular, by her alleged lesbianism, which made her an outsider in modern culture and an object of hatred and scorn in her traditional one. Her first life had been a primitive matriarchy-again, not the dream, but it fit the facts.

And their second lives. Jenny and he together in a civilized pastoral setting; Terry a nun in a convent. Again it fit. And it made the leap he needed to understand the machine's strange system.

"Look, I'm analyzing all this," he told them, "and whether you like it or not, we got what our subconscious wanted at the time. It picked the stored life record to fit the individual. And that means it's not random at all." Quickly he explained to Terry his theories about how the machine recognized them as its possible builders. She nodded and listened seriously, although it was clear she didn't really like the idea that her two past lives had come from her own wishes.

"You see?" he continued. "It's not random. If it were, we'd all have had primitive, prehistoric lives the second time. History is only six thousand years old, while man is more than a million years old. The odds say that a random sample would put us ninety-nine percent of the time in prehistory. Don't you see the implications?"

Jenny just stared at him, but Terry nodded thoughtfully. "We are working the machine, then," she said, not really liking some of the implications of that. "It's waiting for instructions on what we want to study. Since we didn't give it any orders, it probed our minds and gave us what it thought we wanted."

"That's about it," he agreed. "And that means we could control the next life by conscious direction-within the limits of those pasts the machine's got stored and from what times and places."

Terry whistled. "It would be an interesting experiment. Conscious direction of the machine. We ought to try it. If we can do that, we might be able to figure it out completely."

Jenny groaned. "You mean another life?"

"Perhaps several," Terry agreed. "Don't you see that Harry's right? Even some of the primitive people of the past figured a way out. We are possibly the first people here who can take it a step further-who understand what kind of machine we are dealing with and can actually gain control of it!"

"But what sort of life would we choose?" Jenny pressed them. "Is there enough here to handle all three of us together?"

"I dunno," Harry responded, thinking hard. "We know that it takes at least two readings from each era. It might take an entire tribe, or village, or whatever. There's really only one way to know."

"But we must agree as totally as possible on what we want," Terry cautioned. "We must all wish for the same things."

Harry sighed. "Okay, so let's see. We want the three of us to be together, at least in the same place at the same time. I, for one, want some civilization as well."

"And one where women have some freedom and mobility," Terry put in. "No offense, but I don't want to be a harem girl."

He nodded thoughtfully in agreement. "The big trouble is we don't know how comprehensive all this is. Are the gaps centuries apart, or do they take random samples from a specific age and place? Now, if I were putting together a project like this, I'd want random samples from as many cultures as possible at the same period in history, then advance the time frame for the new sample. That may mean dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different people and cultures for every given time. And the gaps, at least until the modern area of the Industrial Revolution, still wouldn't be more than a few centuries apart, to measure changes."

"So we need something fitting our requirements that existed for several hundred years culturally," Terry noted. "And one that fits our requirements."

He looked at both the women. "Any ideas?"

Jenny just shook her head, but Terry mulled it over and had an answer. "How about Alexandrian Egypt?" she suggested. "Sometime in the first couple of centuries A.D."

He stared at her. "Women weren't much thought of then," he noted.

She nodded. "I know. But I'm willing to take the risk just to see it."

He thought it over. "I'm willing if Jenny is. But let's be more specific if we use it. Let's assume that the machine catalogs a large sample from a specific place. If so, it might be possible to tell it not only where and when you want to be but who-in a rough sense."

Terry frowned. "Who?"

"Yeah. We want to be freeborns, not slaves. We want to be literate. If we're going, I'd love to get a crack at that great library."

Jenny looked at both of them quizzically. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"It was a great civilization," Terry told her, "mostly devoted to accumulating knowledge, which they kept in this huge library. The great minds of a great age were all there. They discovered the steam engine, and that the earth was round, and geometry, and lots more."

"How long ago did you say this was?"

"In the first centuries A.D.," she told her.

"Well, if they were so smart, how come it took us so long?"

"There was finally a revolution," Harry told her sadly. "They burned the library and destroyed the civilization.

Only a fraction of the books survived, those that were copied by hand and sent elsewhere, to Greece and to Timbuktu. But it was a great, lively civilization while it lasted."

Jenny looked at the two of them. "And we'll be together?"

"If we can pull it off," Harry replied. "And remember, another big if is that the civilization's in this machine's memory banks. We don't know."

"Then it's a risk."

He nodded. "But one we have to take. Will you try it with us?"

She looked first at one, then at the other. Finally she said, "You're going anyway, aren't you?"

He squeezed her hand. "We have to."

"Then what choice have I got?"

They went in together, consistent in their wishes, but they emerged again on the far side of the next chamber in staggered form. Harry was first, then Terry, with Jenny a bit behind.

And when they awoke after their deep sleeps, they found George waiting for them.

5

The shock of seeing George almost overcame their desire to share their experiences. They had all changed-grown older and more experienced-and it showed in their faces and manner and gestures. George, though, seemed to have changed very little from the last time they'd seen him so very, very long ago.

"Well, one big happy family again." He beamed, his voice betraying the curious accents of his own lives as theirs now did. "I'm really glad to see you."

He took Harry's hand and shook it vigorously and then tried to kiss Jenny, but she shied away from him and looked at him as if he were a total stranger. It clearly bothered him.

But first things came first. Harry looked at Terry with some concern, because while she joined in, she seemed somehow hesitant, badly shaken. It was time to compare notes, then add George's data.

"Terry, you made it to Alexandria?"

She nodded. "I was Hypatia."

Both Harry and Jenny gasped. "Hypatia!" he breathed. "I'll be damned. So they have some great ones in this memory bank."

She nodded. "It was a tremendous mind and will. It was an incredible honor to relive her life. She fought with all she had to save the library from the mobs, although she failed."

Both understood why she was so shaken. Hypatia, beautiful and proud, the last director of the Alexandria Library, had been cornered by a Christian mob and flayed alive. She looked at the others, knew they understood, and simply said, "You?"

"We met a few times. I was Claudius Arillius, aide to the governor-general."

She nodded. "I remember him. Intelligent but officious. Jenny?"

"I-I was Portia, your secretary at the library. I killed myself shortly after the mob overran the library."

Terry reached out and hugged Jenny. "You did what you could." She stopped suddenly. "What are we saying? We weren't those people. We merely relived their lives."

Harry nodded. "You find yourself getting used to it, too, huh? It becomes easier and easier to take and come out of, I think. Not that the experiences are any less intense, but somehow I have a clearer idea of my real self-old Harry here-than I did. It's Harry reliving a life rather than Harry living a new life."

They all nodded and turned to George, who seemed a little miffed that he'd been excluded up to now.

They sat down in a small circle and talked.

"I get the idea from what you folks were saying that you all wound up in the same place at the same time," George noted curiously.

Harry nodded. "And deliberately, George. We ordered it. We called it up and it was delivered."

George's mouth dropped. "Well, I'll be damned! You figured out how to work the thing! That's great! Hell, the potential for this place is limitless! It's the ultimate Disneyland and research center put together. You know, the Navajos are scared shitless of this place anyway, and it's near public land. With some finagling and a lot of politics, I bet we could own or control this thing. It's worth millions!"

They all stared at him in wonder. Finally Terry said, "George, is that all this means to you? A new money-making deal?"

"Well, ah, no, of course not. But somebody's gonna control this sooner or later and make a bundle. It might as well be us."

"First we have to figure out how to get out of here," Harry noted.

George's enthusiasm waned slightly. "Well, yeah, there's that. But hell, now that we know how to work it, it's inevitable we'll find the way out."

"We know," Jenny muttered sourly. "Already it's `we.' "

George gave her an icy stare but decided not to respond. Instead he changed back to his favorite subject-himself. Which was just what Harry, at least, wanted to hear.

George followed the pattern and provided ultimate confirmation. In his first life he was in a prehistoric setting in the steppes of Russia north of the Fertile Crescent, a warrior race that sacked and looted other tribal groups throughout a wide area. He was one of those warriors, with seven wives captured in raids to serve him.

A distilled, basic George Singer fantasy.

He was in somewhat the same position in a far different time and place in the second, with the first ancient invasion of Korea by Japan. He got great delight out of telling the tales of that invasion, in which he was a samurai with the Japanese invasion forces.

In this last one he'd been a Moslem politician in Jerusalem during the siege of the Third Crusade.

All three were pretty consistent with what they knew of his mind, although Harry, for one, couldn't imagine George actually fighting or risking himself for honor or religion. Still, it hadn't been George but somebody else, somebody long dead who lived only here, in the memory banks of the Dowaii Chambers.

During the hours that passed, a great deal of data was exchanged, a great deal of speculation was made, and they searched for the key to the exit. There were also quiet periods, though, and those were the most trouble. It was plain that George was upset at Jenny's closeness to Harry. It was a combination of pride and egotism, not love or even lust. Women just didn't walk out on George. He walked out on them. And for an ugly brute like Harry Delaney, yet. In the end he resorted to making several overtures to Jenny, all of which were rebuffed, and even a few outright passes, which were put down even more strongly. This outraged him, and at one point he grabbed her angrily, only to have Harry coldly intervene. This startled George even more: Harry showing such bravery and threatening him? Still, the last thing he wanted was a fight over a mere girl, and he backed off, pride and ego wounded all the more.

At one point they roughly measured the distance between chambers as about a hundred and fifty meters. A long distance, and one that they could use as a sort of safety zone. After the showdown over Jenny, Harry and she kept well back in the tunnel, separating themselves from George unless it was time for a business talk.

Terry, whose contempt for George had been evident from the start, was nonetheless glad to be out of this argument. Her life as the brilliant Hypatia had affected her more than she was willing to admit, and she needed periods alone, just to think and get herself together. At one such time she was at the other end of the tunnel from Harry and Jenny-and away from George, who was sulking-just sitting and reflecting on her own feelings at this point. She loved the idea of this place now, of experiencing the lives and ages of mankind in a way no known social scientist ever could, but she realized George was right in a sense. The Dowaii Chambers needed the full range of modern science and the best minds in history, archaeology, anthropology, and related fields. Disneyland or a tool of research, George had said, and again he was right in ways he didn't really mean or understand.

If she bent to her impulses and remained inside, perhaps spending an eternity living those great and not-so-great lives stored here, then the Dowaii Chambers would be Disneyland-her Disneyland. Or, in a sense, her opium. Hooked forever in vicarious experience but contributing nothing.

They had to get out, she knew. Get out and bring the others back. The chambers were the greatest find in the history of mankind, and deserved to be used and shared-as, perhaps, its builders had intended.

Who were they? she wondered. Some future people like Harry imagined, or, perhaps, people from some long-dead civilization or even from the stars who left this great machine either as a recording mechanism for themselves or someday to show mankind the secrets it had lost.

What if that was true? What if our very creators had placed this here, not for mankind but as some sort of evaluative tool? Was this, perhaps, God's record of mankind? Was this the record that would be read out on Judgment Day?

The spiritual questions haunted her most, for she'd been raised a devout Catholic and truly believed, and those patrons of the early Church, led by Cyril-one day to be a saint-had flayed her alive and stormed and burned the greatest of scientific knowledge and culture. Anti-intellectual cretins running amok with power and torturing and murdering all those who would not totally agree and support their beliefs, all in the name of God and the holy Catholic Church.

Holy Mary, Mother of God ...

"Hello."

She looked up and saw George standing there. He squatted down beside her. "You look lonely," he said.

"Not in the way you mean," she responded sourly.

"No, no. I really want to help," he said sincerely. "What's the problem? If a bunch of old Indians and conquistadores can get out of here, we sure can."

"I have never doubted it," she told him. "Just go away. You wouldn't understand."

"Try me. I'm not as dense as you think."

She looked at him seriously. "You have only lost your girl friend. I have lost my god."

He stared at her a moment in amazement, and then he started to laugh. It was a laugh of true amusement, not loud or overwhelming or cruel in tone, but it was terribly cruel to her.

"Don't you laugh at me, Singer," she spat. "Get out. Just get the hell away and leave me alone!"

His face grew suddenly grim and serious. "You know what your problem really is? You need somebody to fuck your brains out. I can cure you, Terry."

He grabbed her, and she stood with him and screamed, "Get your filthy hands off me, Singer!"

"C'mon. Try it. I got the cure to both our problems." He started to force her down onto the tunnel floor, but her knee came up and caught him in the groin. He let go and almost doubled over in pain, but the respite was short-lived. It had not been a serious blow and his anger masked his pain.

She tried to get around him, to get back to reinforcements, but he blocked her, a madness in his expression now not so much from the lust he felt but from his anger at being both scorned and kicked.

"I'll show you, you bitch!"

"Harry!" she screamed. "Jenny!"

He lunged at her and she moved back, toward the chamber not so very far away. Without any kind of measurement tools they were only approximating where the effects of the chamber might begin, and George ran after and caught her somewhere in the nebulous zone.

"Damn you, Singer!" she screamed. "I wish you could be on the receiving end of this! I wish you could know what I'm feeling!"

His grip on her, so tight that it was blocking circulation, seemed to loosen, then go slack, as the chambers caught him in their grip.

Grappling with him, Terry vaguely heard the calls from Jenny and Harry in the distance, but they, and even George, seemed to fade away into nothingness .. .

Terry Sanchez was born in southeastern Arizona in the shadows of the hills of her ancestors. She had a brother slightly older than she, but her mother died in bringing forth a third, stillborn, daughter. In a modern city, in white culture, it would have been easy to see that the woman bore tremendous marks and bruises that certainly contributed to her death, but here, with one doctor for several thousand square miles and him a very busy one not overly concerned with Indians or Mexicans, it went unnoticed. Terry was only four at the time, and her memories of her mother were quite dim, mostly a haunting vision of a gentle, suffering face full of pain.

The source of that pain was a father who, in other circumstances, might not have been a bad man at all. Ill-educated, raised on the legends of his grandfathers, with never a steady job or income, he had become hardened, bitter, and tremendously frustrated. He was an inward-looking, brooding sort of man who took to drink whenever depression hit him, which was often. He had some hopes for his son, who was intelligent and ambitious, but when Terry was only ten her brother, playing, fell into an abandoned and not very well-sealed septic tank and died before anyone could get him out.

Her father had no feeling that women could amount to anything more than sexual partners and babymakers, so the death of his beloved son increased his bitterness and his drinking and he took it out on Terry, both in beatings when she did anything he perceived as wrong and, occasionally, sexually. This brutalization came to the attention of an aunt, her mother's sister, who lived far away but made regular trips through to see all her relatives, and the aunt knew immediately what the situation was. She pulled a number of strings with the government agents, some of whom were idealistic young people who were shocked at some of the conditions they found, and also found an ally in the Catholic priest who served the entire desert area.

Although all expected her father to react violently, he was ashamed of himself-at least, he was ashamed that it had all come out-and did nothing to block the authorities from removing Terry and placing her in a Catholic home for young Indians, mostly orphans, near Wilcox. The nuns instilled in her a sense of something and someplace better, opened up the world to her, and encouraged and developed her talent for picking up other languages. They had hopes that she would become a missionary nun, of course, and she took the first steps toward entering the order when she became eligible for some state minority scholarships to the University of Arizona. Despite protestations that one didn't exclude the other, she put off joining the order and taking final vows and went off to university life.

It was still not easy. The conservative, mostly white university staff and student body had their own prejudices, but she was willing to face them. More important were some of the younger, more radical although small organizations on campus. She found herself very good at the women's center, counseling on rape, battered women, and other such subjects, and soon found herself the darling of the minority white, upper-middle-class "radical liberals" as they were called. The anthropology department, too, found her fascinating and useful, with her gift for languages nobody else could fully master, particularly southwestern Indian tongues totally unrelated to anything in her own background. Several different life objectives emerged from this, including an eventual major project to record and preserve the oral history of the hundreds of Indian tribes of the Southwest.

It was also during this period that she discovered, or at least admitted to herself, that she preferred the company of other women to that of men. Intellectually she knew that, unlike many other women who felt that way, at least obviously, her own childhood was mostly responsible, but she accepted it with little real guilt. Men just seemed too brutish, not gentle enough, and that was that. But it added another cross to bear in ultraconservative Arizona, and she found herself pulled between more tolerant San Francisco and the place where her life's work was. The only guilt she felt was that she knew she did not have the strength to become a nun; she needed the intimacy of sex or to have it available.

So she kept herself very unobtrusive, gave up most of her radical and liberal associations-many of whose politics caused too great a conflict with her Catholicism-and contented herself with one intimate roommate, her work, and constant field trips for the great project. A project that eventually brought her to George's own project and the Dowaii Chambers.

Thus did Terry Sanchez again enter the strange mountain, and again live three other lives, and again stand in the tunnel, fending off George's advances. And thus did George know Terry Sanchez more intimately than any had ever known another, for he had lived her life through the chambers ...

George Singer had been born to money, but he'd been an only child, spoiled rotten by parents who would give the kid a twenty every time he just wanted a hug, and whose childhood and early teens were very lonely times, only partly due to the fact that he was tremendously fat and highly unattractive. He learned early on that girls said they wanted a friend but always went to bed with the macho types, and that the only reliable women were those you bought. It was a cynical, unhappy early time for the boy who had everything.

Finally he got sick and tired of it. He entered a series of classes to build his muscles while going on a stringent diet, a program that frustration had led him to. It took him three years, until he was twenty, to get where he wanted, but the physical change in him was enormous. Out of the ugly, flabby mass he'd always been emerged a handsome, muscular man. But it was the same man in-side.

He had no trouble with women now, but he knew them for the shams they were., As he had watched them going for the muscles and the phony lines before, he knew that he'd spent all that time remaking himself into that image he'd always seen succeed-and it did.

Money was freedom and the only thing that mattered. He was lazy about scholarship, although by no means dumb, but he always found a way to buy a paper or a research project that would do, and his ability to bullshit his way convincingly through exams by giving the professors exactly what fed their pet ideas made his college career an astounding success. He spent his sports time in weight lifting and wrestling, not popular sports but ones that continued to give him the physique that everybody admired and women drooled over.

His gifted cynicism made him a top-notch con man in academia, and he exploited everything and everybody that came along. He felt no guilt, no remorse: Those were the same people who had turned their backs on him when he had needed them. He knew full well that the world ran on how you were perceived by those who counted, and money and fame greased the wheels.

He wanted the Ph.D. because Dr. before your name impressed the hell out of people, and he chose the social sciences because it was the easiest group of real academics to con. When his assistant put him on to the Dowaii Chambers, he knew at once that it meant not only a doctorate but tremendous fame within and, if spectacular enough, even outside the field. If it was really spectacular enough . . . The George Singer National Monument. Not bad, not bad ... And if Carl Sagan could parlay something like astronomy into big-buck show biz, it was time somebody did it with anthropology. The Dowaii by George Singer, Ph.D.-a Book-of-the-Month Club Special Dividend.

He had dreams and ambitions, did George Singer. And he'd put it all together, like the producer of a play, not even using his own field for the grants but that twerp Delaney's; so Delaney would get his little project done, and Singer would get Dowaii, alone, exclusively. The dyke with the missionary spirit would be easy to handle.

And so, again, to the chambers, and so, again, into the mountain, and so, again, through three lives that confirmed his own view of the world and how it worked, people and power, and women.

But this time Terry Sanchez had lived it all with him.

Harry examined the two sleeping forms with some concern. Jenny just watched, shaking her head, a disgusted expression on her face. Finally she said, "Harry, what kind of thing would the machine do to them? I mean, my God, they went into the chamber during a rape!"

He got up and shrugged. "I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. If you'll help me, I think we ought to pick up Terry and put her over there a bit, so they don't wake up side by side, if you know what I mean."

"Getcha," Jenny agreed, and they moved her about ten feet along the tunnel, then positioned themselves between the two sleeping forms.

They waited a fairly long time, not talking much, anxiously wondering which of the two would wake up first, and were startled when both seemed to come around at the same time.

"Hmmm ... That's never happened before," Harry noted. "You take Terry and, God help me, I'll take George."

But their concerns were needless. George awoke looking puzzled and somewhat upset, but without any signs of violence or rancor. Terry looked around, then over at George, and had the most extreme look of pity on her face Jenny had ever seen. George saw her and had a little of that same look, although it was more puzzlement than anything else.

Finally Jenny couldn't stand it any longer. "What happened?" she asked Terry.

"We-I lived his life!" she managed, her voice sounding a little dry and raspy. "I was George!"

Harry looked at George. "You too?"

George nodded and looked over at Terry. "I-I didn't know. Please-you got to forgive me. At least that."

Terry looked back at him. "You know I will," she responded gently. "Maybe-just maybe-something good came out of these chambers."

Harry and Jenny looked at the two of them, and Harry shook his head slowly. "Maybe it did at that. Certainly we've all changed. You two learned a little about life and maybe grew up a bit. Passive, insecure little Jenny here has enough self-confidence and fight now to go out and conquer the world."

Jenny smiled and stared at him a bit. "But you haven't, Harry. Not really."

He chuckled slightly. "Oh, yes I have, but in a different way. Somewhere back there in the chambers I lost my self-pity. Envy died, too, back there someplace. It's a little complicated, but take my word for it." He looked around at the other three. "But now I think it's time to get the hell out of the Dowaii Chambers."

Terry and George both started and stared at him. Finally George said, "You know how?"

He nodded. "As we thought, it's damned simple. Jenny and I came here, to where you emerged, without undergoing another life. It was simple, really. When we heard Terry yell we came running, but I saw it getting you and stopped her and myself. You know, it was the first time I could see the process in action, and it was fascinating."

"The two of you just started shimmering, then glowing," Jenny put in. "You turned all sparkly and golden, then seemed to vanish-but the chamber was lit up for the first time."

"It's a relatively small cavity," Harry went on. "It took the two glowing forms and seemed to suspend you there, in the middle. Tiny little sparkles, rivulets of energy, coursed all around you two. I realized that, somehow, you were both totally connected to the core memory of the machine at that point and that it would set you down when finished on the other side. My only concern was the amount of time it might take, but it took only a few minutes at most. The thing cut off, you were transported to the other side, and the chamber's light died as you stood there."

"Now we had the problem of getting to you," Jenny continued. "And Harry decided we'd take an extra chance."

He nodded. "I reasoned that if we were in direct connection to the machine at that point, it was a two-way communication. It was reading what we wanted and giving it to us. So, after briefing Jenny, we stepped into the chamber with the absolute instruction that we were simply following the two `researchers' and did not wish any more data input at this time."

"The effect was amazing," Jenny added. "We started to feel woozy, you know, like we always do, but we just kept telling it to do nothing but let us pass. And it did! We got a little dizzy as it took us up, floated us through the chamber, and deposited us on this side-but that was all!"

"So you mean we just tell it we want to go to the exit?" Terry said unbelievingly.

"Well, not quite as simple as that," Harry replied. "I suspect that those earlier escapees had an advantage over us in that they thought they were in the grips of some supernatural phenomenon. The Indians, remember, sometimes used this as a test of leadership, if we can believe the old man. They entered expecting a mystical experience-and they got it. And when they were finished, they said, basically, `Thank you, spirits. I've learned what I came to learn,’ and they were shown the exit. The conquistador, too, would have some kind of religious experience. Most likely he got what his forces were looking for-a life in an ancient culture, possibly the Anasazi, which would pass for Cibola in his mind. At any rate he, too, thanked his god for showing him the true way to the pagan riches, and that was good enough."

"You forget the prospector, though. He came out crazy-and with a chunk of silver," George reminded him. Harry nodded. "I can't explain the silver. Not yet.

But it's what the old boy came to get, and he got it. But I think timing is crucial. It isn't enough to want to get out, either, or we'd all have been booted a long time ago. The machine was built to serve and please, not just to exist. You've got to be in direct contact with it-in one of the chambers-when you make your wish, and you have to make it in terms the machine understands. You have to tell it you got the information you were looking for."

George's mouth was open. Terry, however, seemed a little nervous. "It seems to me you're making a lot of guesses on mighty little information. Remember, there were lots of people who never came out."

"You're right on both counts," he agreed. "But I've been right so far, and our experience in getting over here confirms much of it. But it's not so amazing when you start from the viewpoint that this is, in fact, a machine, and machines are built by people-or somebody-to do things for the builders. And one of those things is provide a way to leave the machine. It sucked us in because it wanted to serve us. If it thinks it has, it'll show us the exit. I'm willing to bet my own body on it."

The other three looked at him nervously. "So who goes first and proves or disproves the theory?" George finally asked.

Harry chuckled. "It doesn't matter. Sure, I'll go first, but you'll never know, will you?"

"If you get dropped on the other side a few minutes later we'll know," George retorted. "Okay, hero. Give it a try. And if you vanish, maybe we'll get up the nerve."

They walked to the perceived safety point in the tunnel. Harry peered into the nebulous greenish glow ahead a bit nervously. "I wonder how many chambers there are?" he mused. "And why they built so many?" He turned back to the others. "Okay, the thing to remember when you go in is to tell it that you have learned all you came to learn or completed your research-anything like that-and that you are now ready to leave. Do it before it really grabs hold, but don't get so nervous you muff it. Clear?"

They nodded.

He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, turned to face the chamber, and said "Here goes" under his breath. He walked forward, slowly but confidently, until he felt the machine making contact, taking hold of him.

"I have completed my research at this time and learned what I wanted to know," he said aloud, almost forcing the words as the effect really took hold. "I wish to leave now, and thank you very much."

The other three watched as the chamber came alive, glowing and pulsating, and saw Harry's form change into that sparkling energy they'd described. The machine took the glowing, sparkling form and floated it out to the center of the chamber, but, instead of suspending it there, bathed it in a deep orange glow; then, abruptly, there was a flash, and the form that was Harry was gone. The chamber quickly lowered its volume and tone, faded, and became again just an apparent part of the green-glowing tunnel.

They stared at it for several minutes, dumbstruck. Finally Jenny said, "Well, he didn't come out the other side."

"He didn't come out at all," George said nervously. "It was as if the thing fried him-just vaporized him in some sort of laser."

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Jenny told them. "I don't really care anymore. Anything's better than spending an eternity in this place."

"No!" George almost shouted. "You'll be killed-like him!"

"So what?" she snapped, and stepped into the chamber.

6

"There's Terry!" Jenny shouted excitedly.

"Thank God!" Harry sighed. "I was beginning to give up hope."

Terry looked around, shielding her eyes against the bright sunlight, then heard them call and came down. She was carrying a bundle-her clothes, they knew, which, like Harry's, had been scattered along the entry tunnel.

She saw them and came over to them, hugging and kissing them both.

"Hmmm . . . Harry's got his pants back on, but not you, Jen!" She laughed.

Jenny returned the laugh a little nervously. "Mine were spread all over the outside of the mountain, remember? So far I've found a bra and one boot. I don't know where Harry threw the rest of them. But I have some spares in camp-if it's still there."

Harry looked down the mountainside. "You know it is. You can see it from here. Looks like the old man's cooking something."

Terry put on her clothes, sitting on a rocky outcrop. "Feels funny to be wearing them. I wonder how long we were actually in there? I'm dying to ask the old man."

"Well, I hope he's not easily shocked," Jenny laughed. "I'm going to go strolling down there any minute now."

"Let him eat his heart out," Terry laughed.

Harry grew suddenly serious. "Where's George?"

Terry froze for a moment, then said, "I don't think he's coming. He tried to stop me; that's what took me so long. He thinks we all got atomized in there-that we're all dead."

"You of all people know him better than anybody," Harry responded. "You really think he won't be coming out?"

She shook her head slowly. "He's scared to death, Harry. The fear of death, of ending his rise and dreams of glory, is tremendous in him, and he has no faith to sustain him, nothing within or without himself. The whole world revolved around George-to George, that is."

"But he went in," Harry pointed out. "He's got some guts."

"That's true," she acknowledged, "but remember, he was very literal in his view of the world back then. He was in control. And as long as he was in control, he'd climb a mountain or go into a cave. But here he's not in control. He's in a place where there's no way to guarantee the risk. No equipment to test. No strength. Nobody to pay or con. All alone, with nothing whatsoever to support him, he just won't be able to do it. Face it, Harry, he's trapped himself in there forever. Unless you or Jenny want to go back and get him."

The other two looked at each other. Finally Jenny said, "Poor George. Well, Harry, you said time didn't matter in there. For the first time I feel absolutely starved."

"Me, too," Harry agreed. "And perhaps you're right. I do plan to go back in there someday soon, now that I know exactly how to work it. Back with all sorts of sophisticated backup. I suspect, though, that we'll not be permitted anything inside except our bodies. The clothing was forcibly removed, remember; maybe it fouls up the chambers' fancy electronic systems. There's a matter-to-energy-to-matter conversion involved each trip. But I don't think I'm up to it again right now. I'd have to go through at least one more life to complete the programming of the machine and get out again."

"He trapped himself," Jenny pointed out.

"Don't we all," Terry responded.

They had been gone less than two hours, it turned out.

They waited for George for three days and nights, until, one night, the mountain vented again, putting on another of its dazzling displays.

"It's cleaning itself," Jenny said enigmatically. "Good-bye, Georgie."

The old man assured them that he would arrange for a watch in the area by him and some of his comrades. If George emerged, they would make sure he got back. They left a small cache of supplies, a note to that effect, and a flare pistol, and departed after that.

There was a sense of unreality to the world, they found. They had lived more subjective time in other times, other lands, other bodies, than in this one, and they would carry those others with them, inside them, as part of them, as long as they lived.

Harry slid behind the wheel of the pickup and started it up.

"Harry?" "Yeah, Jenny?"

"How do we know this is real? I mean, if Terry and George could live each other's lives, how do we know this isn't a new project of the machine?"

He laughed. "We don't. And we won't-until the day after we die. Let's put it this way, though: If it's all coming out of our minds, then all three of us are gonna have tremendous lives, aren't we?"

They all laughed as he backed up the pickup, turned it around, and headed back out across the haunted desert.

The old Indian watched them go, watched the dust cloud until they and all signs of them were out of sight. He turned, tended first to the burros, then the extra supplies, and, only when satisfied, went into his small adobe hut.

It was a simple one-room enclosure, primitive in the extreme, but across the far wall was hung a stunning Navajo blanket. Slowly, lovingly, he took it down to reveal only the bare walls, and carefully folded it and put i1 on his humble cot.

He turned again to the wall and began to speak in a language none had heard-none would hear-not for more than a thousand years.

The wall glowed a familiar greenish alabaster.

"The imprints for the latter half of the century numbered twenty by current history have been taken," he reported in that strange, alien-sounding tongue. "Three subjects emerged and were allowed to proceed. A fourth remained inside the Recorder and has been integrated into the memory banks with his fourth translation. He will serve as a control on the other three, who are now linked to the Recorder. Through them I will select the samples for this recording. I am taking samples at a more rapid rate now, as we are so close to the Holocaust. I have cut the intervals now to just twenty years and may adjust things further as the Holocaust draws nearer. When it appears imminent, I will attempt to coordinate with my counterparts a single full-phase world recording for analysis. Current subjects have the potential to live up to the critical period. Report completed."

The wall faded back to its adobe self, and he carefully rehung the Navajo blanket.

It had been a long task, this project, and there were longer times still. And he and his brothers, who manned the Recorders and remotes all over the world, as they had for the last million years, would continue to do their duty and wait. After all that time, what was another mere thousand years?

He wished the three well. He liked them and admired particularly their ability to solve the riddle of the machine rationally, the first he had encountered who were able to understand and appreciate it. They would never see him again, of course. He had arranged that during the translation back out. They would return, of course, and hunt and puzzle, but they would never again find this particular spot-which could be moved or concealed at will-and the machine itself would arrange for slight differences to keep them from ever finding it again. A simple energy-matter conversion, and a subtle one.

He wished the task completed, of course, and understood its importance fully. But he was content to wait, wait until those who had sent him came once again to their glory, and would read his reports.

He and his brother guardians were not programmed to feel loneliness.