The Young Unicorns Read online

  Mr. Rochester automatically turned east towards the Cathedral at 110th Street, pulling them all along with him. When they started across Amsterdam Avenue he began to bark uncontrollably, and it was all Dr. Austin could do to hold him back. They all looked up Amsterdam to the Cathedral.

  Light streamed from the Octagon, from all the windows of the nave.

  “Somebody saw my signal!” Vicky cried. “Somebody’s there!”

  Now they all began to run.

  “Rub the lamp, Rob,” the Bishop said. “Rub it and something lovely will happen.”

  “No! I don’t want to! Let me go! You hurt!”

  Dave restrained Emily. “Hold it, Em. You can’t see where you’re going and he’s dangerous.”

  “Do something, then.”

  “Wait.” Dave strained his eyes to see into the shadows. He thought he saw his father crouched near the end of a large coil of cable. Was there another figure beyond his father? He could not be sure.

  The Bishop, holding Rob’s hand in his steel talon, rubbed the little boy’s fingers over the lamp.

  Out of the shadows behind Amon Davidson emerged the huge, green-robed figure. “You called me?”

  “Yes, Hythloday. Young master Robert has summoned you.”

  “And what are your wishes, my young master? Are you able to give orders to your humble servant?”

  Rob suddenly sat up straight on the Bishop’s throne. “Yes. I have no need of you. Go away.”

  There was a pause.

  Emily could not see Rob, but she could hear the strength in his voice. She heard the breathing of the boys on either side of the Bishop, waiting to see what would happen. She heard the Bishop: “But I have need of him, Robert. You must not send him away.”

  Rob’s voice was a thin fluting. “Canon Tallis said we were beyond that kind of wishing. Genie. Go away.”

  Emily held her breath.—Don’t let him weaken. Make him be strong.

  “Are you sure, young master, my dear, that you do not wish to reconsider? I could be of great service to you.”

  Now Emily’s fingers clamped tightly on to Dave’s arm. “I know who he is!”

  But Dave was not listening. He was waiting to see what Rob would do.

  “Go!” Rob ordered.

  A genie has to play by the rules.

  He bowed and disappeared into the shadows.

  “Dave! I know who he is!” Emily repeated.

  There was a murmuring from the waiting boys.

  “Ah, do not despair, my lads!” the Bishop said. “This foolish child is not the only one who can rub the lamp.”

  The rhythmical stamping started again. “The lamp, the lamp, we want the lamp! A flight, a flight, the Bats want to fly!”

  “S! Come here!” the Bishop commanded.

  One of the boys detached himself from the group, went to the throne.

  “Rub the lamp.”

  The boy took the tarnished piece of metal into his hands.

  The genie reappeared from the shadows. “You called me?”

  “Yeah. I called you. I want a flight.”

  “Wait!” the Bishop cried in a loud voice. “Robert must fly first. G, K, get him. Robert must fly! Give Robert a flight!”

  “Come, young master,” the genie said softly.

  Emily screamed. “It’s Dr. Hyde! He’s the genie!”

  For a second the Bishop loosened his hold on Rob and the little boy slithered down from the throne, but before he could run towards Dave and Emily the two youths had grabbed him and dragged him over to the genie.

  Now at last all the pieces of the pattern fell into place for Dave. Emily was right: Hythloday and Dr. Hyde were one and the same. If Hyde used the Micro-Ray on Rob—

  Amon Davidson shoved a low black couch out from the shadows into the glare of the floodlights. The two boys held the screaming Rob down on it. The green-robed figure approached.

  “The lights,” Dave heard Emily say. “Dave! Kill the lights!”

  He flung himself towards the coil of cable where his father had been standing, scrabbled at the heavy black wiring, seeing, to his infinite relief, where the cable was plugged in. He gave a mighty yank.

  Darkness came like a clap of thunder. He stumbled through it towards Rob’s screaming, fell over the couch, over Rob, shouted “It’s Dave, Rob,” pulled the little boy up, away from the couch, away from Dr. Hyde and the milling boys shouting into the darkness.

  “Here,” Emily’s voice came urgently through the confusion. “Here.”

  Holding Rob tightly, Dave pushed towards the voice, shoving at bodies that got in his way. He heard someone fall off the edge of the subway platform, yelling.

  “Amon!” the Bishop shouted through the din. “The lights! The lights!”

  “Dave!” Emily called. “Here!”

  He was closer to her voice now. “We’re coming.”

  “Here!” she kept calling in a low voice that carried through the rising tide of the Bats’ anger and fear. “Here. Dave, here!”

  He held Rob with his left hand. With his right hand he made a shoving, hitting path through the crowd.

  “Here, Dave, here!”

  His hand touched the softness of her hair. He felt her hand reach out for his face to identify him.

  “Quick!” She grabbed at his jacket, turned and moved swiftly the few feet from where she had been standing, into the mouth of the tunnel, Dave and Rob stumbling after her.

  The boys were in a panic now, in a rage that drowned the sound of Emily’s voice. She moved her arms in wide, swimming gestures, felt walls on either side, knew they were safely in the tunnel, by her body’s memory, by chance. “Rob! Are you all right?”

  The little boy gave a sobbing hiccup in assent.

  Behind them the subway platform was an inferno of darkness and noise.

  “Light!” the Bishop was screaming. “Amon! Light! Hyde! Use the Micro-Ray!”

  Emily, still pulling Dave by the jacket, headed deeper into the tunnel.

  Twenty-One

  Mr. Rochester, on his leash, sniffed the unfamiliar odor of the Cathedral. Dr. Austin held Rob’s mitten and Emily’s scarf to the dog’s nose. “Find them, Rochester, take us to them,” he urged.

  The others stood a little back in order not to confuse the dog. The Dean, holding his wounded arm, had given Cyprian to Vicky to hold. Cyprian would have liked to play with Mr. Rochester, but Rochester was concerned only with sniffing, his nose down to the ground. Canon Tallis stood by Mrs. Austin. Suzy, between the two old men, felt herself trembling with reaction. She wondered if it had occurred to Vicky that perhaps everything might not turn out all right, that not all stories have a happy ending …

  Vicky, restraining Cyprian, was trying to restrain her imagination as well. All kinds of possibilities, some “all right,” some appalling, were whirring through her brain. Imaginary visions of funerals, happy reunions, burning cathedrals (for the Dean had told her that that had been his fear), shooting and howling mobs rushing up Morningside hill after them, her father vanquishing everybody with the Micro-Ray, Canon Tallis providing the answer to all problems, Rob all right but Emily hurt, Emily and Dave safe but Rob lost forever somewhere underground in the Cathedral—flickered kaleidoscopically through her mind. She moved closer to the Dean.

  “Ought I to have stayed with Emily?”

  “No. You did precisely the right thing. If you’d been taken, too, if you hadn’t left us your signal, we wouldn’t have any idea where anybody is now.”

  She felt better.

  Mr. Rochester sniffed around the entrance to the organ loft, then crossed the ambulatory and sniffed at the iron gates that led to the circular stairs, began pawing, whining.

  Dr. Austin tried the gate. “Can we get in?”

  The Dean fumbled with his good hand in the capacious pocket of his monk’s robe for his key ring, which was like Dave’s. His left sleeve was dark with drying blood. Dr. Austin had checked Canon Tallis’s hasty bandage and said that it would do u
ntil later. The Dean shook the keys on the ring, inserted one in the lock, opened the gate.

  Rochester went through, sniffing, then started to descend. The stairs were dark. “Let me turn on the lights.” The Dean moved to walk with Dr. Austin.

  In answer to Mrs. Austin’s unspoken question, Canon Tallis said, “We’ll all go. But give them plenty of room. We don’t want to be too close on their heels. It’ll confuse Mr. Rochester.”

  Slowly they descended, the Dean turning on lights as they went. He opened the door to the vast and cluttered shadows of the crypt.

  Cyprian, with his squat, bowed legs, found the winding stairs difficult. He snorted with discomfort. Vicky petted and encouraged him. The two old men and Suzy were behind her; she and Cyprian were slowing them down.

  “Can’t you hurry?” Suzy asked.

  “I’m trying to.”

  Cyprian wheezed anxiously.

  The others were halfway through the crypt before he had managed the last of the stairs, and he pulled to join his master.

  Mr. Rochester sniffed at some broken statuary.

  “What is it, Rochester? What is it, old boy?” Dr. Austin asked him. “Find Rob. Find Emily. Rochester, come on.”

  The dog took an inordinately long time over a broken stone gargoyle, then moved on through the storeroom to the boiler-room door. The Dean unlocked it. His arm was paining him badly and sweat broke out in cold beads on his face.

  Mr. Rochester pushed through the door. For a moment he stopped by one of the boilers, sniffing a large batteried lamp that had been left there. The Dean bent and picked it up. Sniffing excitedly, Rochester led them to the empty storeroom. Dr. Austin reached out to turn on a hanging lightbulb.

  The stone to the tunnel was ajar. At the opening Mr. Rochester stopped and whined, then broke into barking. He looked at Dr. Austin, wagged his tail, looked at the dark hole to the tunnel, barked again, then sat down purposefully.

  “Daddy!” Vicky cried. “That’s the way Rochester sat on the dock at Grandfather’s when Rob stowed away on the Sister Anne and we thought he was lost!”

  “Is Rob there?” Dr. Austin asked the dog. “Rochester. Is Rob there?”

  Mr. Rochester, sitting at the mouth of the tunnel, barked again. He made no attempt to go in, simply sat as though his duty were now done until Rob returned. Dr. Austin pulled at the leash to move him so that he himself could peer into the darkness, but Mr. Rochester refused to budge. Dr. Austin dropped the leash and, getting down on his hands and knees beside the dog, peered into the tunnel. All he could see was darkness.

  Now the others began pressing into the little stone storeroom.

  “Get back,” the Doctor said sharply. “There’s nothing to see. It’s some kind of tunnel. Dean de Henares, what do you know about this?”

  “Nothing,” the Dean said. “To my knowledge this has been only a storeroom off the boiler room. Let me see.” He crouched down beside Dr. Austin.

  “What’ll we do?” Suzy asked. “Mother, Daddy, what’ll we do?”

  Mrs. Austin had moved into an icy calm. She put her arm around her daughter. “We’ll wait here. If Rochester thinks the children are there, and if he isn’t going after them, if what he is doing is waiting, then that’s what we must do.”

  Canon Tallis said, “You’re right, Mrs. Austin. For any one of us to go blundering in there in the darkness with no idea of where that tunnel leads would be folly.”

  “Nevertheless,” Dr. Austin stood up, “I’m going. Give me the lantern.”

  His wife tried to restrain him. “Wally, you can’t see where you’re going—you can’t—”

  “That’s why I want the lantern.”

  “But Rochester didn’t go in! He came this far and stopped. Rochester always knows when to wait.”

  “I’m not taking advice from a dog.”

  Tallis moved to stand beside him. “I think I would if I were you.”

  “Not when my children are in danger.”

  Tallis sighed, spoke quietly. “Very well, Doctor. But the tunnel may branch off in several directions. If there’s any question, don’t go on. You don’t know what you may be blundering into.”

  Dr. Austin nodded, not promising anything, reached for the lantern, then plunged into the unknown darkness of the tunnel.

  In the silence that followed, they were startled when Mr. Theo said, “I’m going to the organ.”

  “Theo—” Canon Tallis started.

  “For Emily,” Mr. Theo cut him off. “If she’s anywhere, trying to get out, and she doesn’t know where she is, if she hears the organ it will guide her.”

  “Go with him,” Canon Tallis said to the Rabbi.

  “I am perfectly all right by myself.”

  “Yes, Theo, but I want Rabbi Levy with you, anyhow. If anything happens, if you see anything—”

  “I will play the Zephaniah trumpet solo if I need you,” Mr. Theo said. “If I see something, but it doesn’t seem to me to be dangerous, I will play that Händel diddlio you’re so fond of. Meanwhile I’ll play Emily’s fugue. If things get out of hand I’ll simply make noise. Come, Rabbi.”

  The two old men moved slowly out of the dank storeroom into the warmth of the boiler room.

  “Theo!” the Dean called. “Take Cyprian!” He took the leash from Vicky and went after the old men. “Take care of them, Cyprian,” he said.

  “What’s this all about?” Mrs. Austin suddenly demanded of the two churchmen.

  Canon Tallis answered, “The day Emily was attacked, papers were stolen that contained almost all of the formulae essential to the control of the Micro-Ray. The most difficult equation of all, the key equation, was not found. My guess is that whoever attacked Emily gave the papers to Hyde and he thought he had enough information so he could make the Micro-Ray himself.”

  “Why?”

  “Power,” Tallis answered simply. “It would give him complete power over people. If you can control a person’s brain, he’s yours.”

  “Dear God,” Mrs. Austin whispered. “Rob—”

  “What was Hyde missing?” interrupted the Dean, leaning for support against the stone wall.

  “The equation that would have told him how to cut without burning. How, for instance, to reach deep into the brain without touching the outer layers, and then to control the brain center without destroying it.”—The pleasure dome, he thought. This was one of the most malign perversions of knowledge he had encountered.

  From high above them they could hear the roar of the organ. At first, so strange were the Cathedral acoustics, it was only a mass of sound; then the sound separated itself into melody, into point and counterpoint. The tremendous sound rolled the length of the nave and descended to them.

  Vicky felt her skin prickling, first from the dreadful implications of Canon Tallis’s words; then from the power of the music pulsing through granite and marble, flowing through the building like blood through its veins; and then because this would be a signal as visible to Emily as the burning candles had been to Canon Tallis and the Dean. If Emily could hear the music, no matter where she was, it would guide her back to safety.

  Canon Tallis excused himself abruptly and pushed past the Dean out of the storeroom, strode across the boiler room and into the crypt.

  “Where are you going?” the Dean asked.

  “Be right back,” the Canon called as he disappeared.

  Dr. Austin returned.

  “The tunnel branched …” he said in defeat.

  Mr. Rochester whined.

  They heard steps coming down the stairs, walking rapidly toward the storeroom.

  Twenty-Two

  Emily moved through the tunnel. Dave and Rob were slowing her down, and she was afraid the drag of Dave’s hand on her shoulder would interfere with her body’s tenuous memory of the trip to the subway station. She stopped, quivering with listening, with feeling through every pore for direction.

  Far behind them they could hear the shouting of the boys, inchoate noises of rage
, confusion, terror. She thought she heard the word, “Fire!” Ahead of them everything was soundless. But she could feel that the tunnel was widening. Then she heard the guiding roar of a subway train.

  She stopped until the roar had gone by them, above, to their right; listened; sniffed; snapped her fingers; listened again.

  “Can’t you hurry?” Dave asked.

  “Shut up. I am. There’s a turn here. I have to think which way.”

  In the darkness Rob could sense her indecision. Behind them the shouting of the Bats increased.

  Dave said, “I think one turn leads up into the junk shop. Try not to take that, Em. That’s the tunnel the Bats use.”

  She stood there, listening.

  Rob began to cry, a terrified, almost animal wail.

  Dave said, sternly, calmly, “Rob, you’ve been very brave. You’ve been great. You mustn’t let us down now. Rob, I’m counting on you. Hold my hand, but don’t pull. You can do it, Rob. I trust you.”

  The little boy’s wails dwindled to controlled sobs, then to sniffling. Dave’s voice was tangible strength, assurance. Dave’s hand was a promise of safety and love.

  “Okay,” Emily said, with sudden decision. “This way. Come on.” She moved on again. Dave’s hand on her shoulder seemed to be an insufferable weight. “Don’t press down so hard!”

  He tried to lighten his hold. He could feel her shoulder wriggling beneath his fingers, first as though simply to dislodge him, then in a rhythmical movement as though she were feeling ahead of her with her hands, trying to see through the darkness with her fingertips.

  “Do you have to hold on?” she asked impatiently.

  “Emily,” he said, “when I am leading you, you have to hold on to me.”

  She didn’t answer. Her shoulder continued its rhythmic movement. Her feet shuffled steadily along. He could hear her breathing.

  She stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” Dave asked.

  “The tunnel divides again here. Wait. I’m trying to remember which way.”

  Had she taken the correct turn before? Or was she leading them into Phooka’s Antiques, into the stronghold of the Bats?