A Trace of Memory. Keith Laumer
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be a god among the Indians. I wondered where he came from, and what it was he was looking for, and what kept him going in spite of the hell that showed in the spare lines of the journal he kept. If, I reminded myself, he had ever existed....
Foster was poring over the book. “Look,” I said. “Let’s get back to earth. We have things to think about, plans to make. The fairy tales can wait until later.”
“What do you suggest?” Foster said. “That we forget the things you’ve told me, and the things we’ve read here, discard the journal, and abandon the attempt to find the answers?”
“No,” I said. “I’m no sorehead. Sure, there’s some things here that somebody ought to look into—some day. But right now what I want is the cops off my neck. And I’ve been thinking. I’ll dictate a letter; you write it—your lawyers know your handwriting. Tell them you were on the thin edge of a nervous breakdown—that’s why all the artillery around your house—and you made up your mind suddenly to get away from it all. Tell them you don’t want to be bothered, that’s why you’re travelling incognito, and that the northern mobster that came to see you was just stupid, not a killer. That ought to at least cool off the cops—”
Foster looked thoughtful. “That’s an excellent suggestion,” he said. “Then we need merely to arrange for passage to England, and proceed with the investigation.”
“You don’t get the idea,” I said. “You can arrange things by mail so we get our hands on that dough of yours—”
“Any such attempt would merely bring the police down on us,” Foster said. “You’ve already pointed out the unwisdom of attempting to pass myself off as—myself.”
“There ought to be a way....” I said.
“We have only one avenue of inquiry,” Foster said. “We have no choice but to explore it. We’ll take passage on a ship to England—”
“What’ll we use for money—and papers? It would cost hundreds. Unless—” I added, “—we worked our way. But that’s no good. We’d still need passports—plus union cards and seamen’s tickets.”
“Your friend,” Foster said. “The one who prepares passports. Can’t he produce the other papers as well?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. But it will cost us.”
“I’m sure we can find a way to pay,” Foster said. “Will you see him—early in the morning?”
I looked around the blowsy room. Hot night air stirred a geranium wilting in a tin can on the window sill. An odor of bad cooking and worse plumbing floated up from the street.
“At least,” I said, “it would mean getting out of here.”
Chapter V
It was almost sundown when Foster and I pushed through the door to the saloon bar at the Ancient Sinner and found a corner table. I watched Foster spread out his maps and papers. Behind us there was a murmur of conversation and the thump of darts against a board.
“When are you going to give up and admit we’re wasting our time?” I said. “Two weeks of tramping over the same ground, and we end up in the same place.”
“We’ve hardly begun our investigation,” Foster said mildly.
“You keep saying that,” I said. “But if there ever was anything in that rock-pile, it’s long gone. The archaeologists have been digging over the site for years, and they haven’t come up with anything.”
“They don’t know what to look for,” Foster said. “They were searching for indications of religious significance, human sacrifice—that sort of thing.”
“We don’t know what we’re looking for either,” I said. “Unless you think maybe we’ll meet the Hunters hiding under a loose stone.”
“You say that sardonically,” Foster said. “But I don’t consider it impossible.”
“I know,” I said. “You’ve convinced yourself that the Hunters were after us back at Mayport when we ran off like a pair of idiots.”
“From what you’ve told me of the circumstances—” Foster began.
“I know; you don’t consider it impossible. That’s the trouble with you; you don’t consider anything impossible. It would make life a lot easier for me if you’d let me rule out a few items—like leprechauns who hang out at Stonehenge.”
Foster looked at me, half-smiling. It had only been a few weeks since he woke up from a nap looking like a senior class president who hadn’t made up his mind whether to be a preacher or a movie star, but he had already lost that mild, innocent air. He learned fast, and day by day I had seen his old personality reemerge and—in spite of my attempts to hold onto the ascendency—dominate our partnership.
“It’s a failing of your culture,” Foster said, “that hypothesis becomes dogma almost overnight. You’re too close to your Neolithic, when the blind acceptance of tribal lore had survival value. Having learned to evoke the fire god from sticks, by rote, you tend to extend the principle to all ‘established facts.’”
“Here’s an established fact for you,” I said. “We’ve got fifteen pounds left—that’s about forty dollars. It’s time we figure out where to go from here, before somebody starts checking up on those phoney papers of ours.”
Foster shook his head. “I’m not satisfied that we’ve exhausted the possibilities here. I’ve been studying the geometric relationships between the various structures; I have some ideas I want to check. I think it might be a good idea to go out at night, when we can work without the usual crowd of tourists observing every move.”
I groaned. “My dogs are killing me,” I said. “Let’s hope you’ll come up with something better—or at least different.”
“We’ll have a bite to eat here, and wait until dark to start out,” Foster said.
The publican brought us plates of cold meat and potato salad. I worked on a thin but durable slice of ham and thought about all the people, somewhere, who were sitting down now to gracious meals in the glitter of crystal and silver. I’d had too many greasy French fries in too many cheap dives the last few years. I could feel them all now, burning in my stomach. I was getting farther from my island all the time—And it was nobody’s fault but mine.
“The Ancient Sinner,” I said. “That’s me.”
Foster looked up. “Curious names these old pubs have,” he said. “I suppose in some cases the origins are lost in antiquity.”
“Why don’t they think up something cheery,” I said. “Like ‘The Paradise Bar and Grill’ or ‘The Happy Hour Cafe’. Did you notice the sign hanging outside?”
“No.”
“A picture of a skeleton. He’s holding one hand up like a Yankee evangelist prophesying doom. You can see it through the window there.”
Foster turned and looked out at the weathered sign creaking in the evening wind. He looked at it for a long time. When he turned back, there was a strange look around his eyes.
“What’s the matter—?” I started.
Foster ignored me, waved to the proprietor, a short fat country man. He came over to the table, wiping his hands on his apron.
“A very interesting old building,” Foster said. “We’ve been admiring it. When was it built?”
“Well, sir,” the publican said, “This here house is a many a hundred year old. It were built by the monks, they say, from the monastery what used to stand nearby here. It were tore down by the King’s men, Henry, that was, what time he drove the papists out.”
“That would be Henry the Eighth, I suppose?”
“Aye, it