The Young Unicorns Read online

  Again Dave thought fleetingly of making a run for it—at this point he was quite sure that he could—and lock them in the storeroom until morning. But then what? He would have learned nothing, and he knew that A would not stop at any revenge, and once A was free Dave would not be. In any case his nose still twitched with a combination of curiosity and warning: what was his father up to? Why had the old man sent for him? Where were they going?”

  “Come on,” A said.

  B breathed heavily behind Dave. “We going to get the lamp?” he asked. “I need the lamp.”

  “Shut up,” A said.

  C shoved from behind.

  They followed A on hands and knees. B, just behind Dave, pushed at him if he slowed down for a moment; the faint light of the torch seemed far ahead of them, the dark of the tunnel deeper than the wider dark of the crypt. The tunnel went on and on, too low for them to walk upright. They seemed to be moving forever into nowhere.

  B and C were breathing audibly. “I want to rub the lamp,” B mumbled.

  “Shut up,” A said again.

  “Whyn’t we go through Phooka’s?” C asked. “This way’s longer.”

  “We was told to bring him this way.” A crawled steadily on. Dave realized with an odd feeling of relief that now there was no possible turning back.

  Then, with a grunt, A raised his light, and the tunnel opened up and they could stand upright. For a moment all they did was stretch their sore muscles. Then Dave began to look around, to try to figure out where the tunnel had led them. He sniffed. To his surprise his nostrils were being assailed not with the damp, fetid smell that had clogged their lungs in the tunnel, but with the unmistakable stench of the New York subway system.

  From somewhere above them they could hear the roar of a train, but could see no light other than that given by the dimming flashlight. Darkness still pressed on them, unrelieved. He had no idea how large the place in which they stood might be; Emily’s ability to judge sizes and distances by snapping her fingers was always an amazement to him, and he thought of it now, snapping his own fingers; the small sound was useless to his untrained ears.

  “Okay,” A said. “Hands on shoulders. Follow me. Shut up. Not a squawk. Dave—”

  “Yeah,” Dave said wearily. “I’m here. Where else?”

  They shuffled along slowly. They were in what appeared to be a dusty passage, about six feet wide, and high enough for them to walk upright. Over their heads and somewhere to their left came again the sound of a train, and the tunnel seemed to shudder to its reverberations. The air was dense and dead, as though it had lain heavily, unhealthily in the tunnel for countless years.

  Dave’s usually acute sense of direction had deserted him. When they had started from the crypt of the Cathedral he thought they were heading westward, but the tunnel had taken so many turns that he had completely lost his bearings in the city which he thought he knew like the back of his own hand, his own city which rose higher and delved deeper than any other city in the world, built on a vast, uncharted network of sewers, cable tunnels, abandoned builders’ excavations, obsolete electric systems; and here he was, beneath the city, lost somewhere in the extraordinary maze that catacombed in all directions underneath the streets, and which most people knew vaguely was there but seldom remembered. It was the kind of monkey puzzle, Dave knew, which would appeal to his father.

  He wondered if the Dean were aware of this particular tunnel: how often did Dean de Henares have reason to go into the crypt?

  The tunnel turned sharply and A switched off his torch.

  Far below, ahead of them, Dave could see light, brilliant light. They plunged down, A leading them with quickening pace. The tunnel leveled off and they emerged into what Dave realized must be an abandoned subway station. There were a number of them in the New York subway system, he knew, stations no longer needed as the traffic patterns of the great hive shifted and changed. This must have been a station built in the early days of the subway, for the walls were ornately tiled, and the ceiling was brightly patterned mosaic. The design of both wall and ceiling was marred by black flaws where tile had been dislodged, like broken teeth.

  In the center of the platform was a chair, magnificently carved and mounted on a red-carpeted dais, so that it gave the effect of a throne. On the throne sat a figure robed in scarlet and gold, cope and mitre and jeweled gloves.

  Dave stiffened in shock.

  Light fell on the resplendent figure, not from the long-dead and broken ceiling lights, but from floodlights that had been plugged in to a series of cables which lay in snakelike coils on the station floor. The light struck the figure’s face—a bishop?—so that he looked extraordinarily like a monkey. Dave swallowed. A trick of light? A primate is …

  B pushed Dave forward. Just behind the throne, slightly in the shadows, stood a wizened figure in the blue overalls of a Cathedral maintenance man: It was Amon Davidson, Dave’s father.

  “We’re here,” A remarked unnecesarily.

  The figure on the throne raised the scarlet hand. “Yes. I see. Thank you.” There was no mistaking the deep, unutterably beautiful voice of the Bishop, Norbert Fall.

  Amon Davidson came to his son, took him by the arm, and shoved him in the direction of the throne. “My son: Josiah Davidson.”

  “Yes, Amon. Thank you.”

  Dave was too startled to make even the smallest courtesy of greeting. One thing he had shared in common with all the boys in the choir was complete admiration for their bishop, and although he had seldom seen Bishop Fall since his chorister days, the admiration remained. To see the august personage of the primate seated on a throne set up in an abandoned spur of the subway system was so incongruous that he began to think that he was not awake, that this was part of a dream. It was certainly far more incredible than Emily’s rubbing a lamp and calling up a genie.

  Seven

  Bishop Fall moved on his throne so that the shadows no longer distorted his features. He ceased to look simian, like a costumed monkey. The familiar, dignified face was raised to the light; the longish hair, once red, now streaked with white so that it shone with a delicate, rosy aura, gleamed under the golden mitre. The thin, compassionate lips smiled.

  “Davidson,” he said.

  Dave licked cold lips, tried to say, “Sir …” but no sound came.

  “Are you surprised to see me here, my son?” the Bishop asked.

  Dave, still mute, nodded.

  “Have you forgotten that the first Christians gathered together in the catacombs? I must meet here with my little band because we are in danger. The whole city is in danger of rebellion and sedition.” He turned from Dave to the shadows at the far end of the subway platform, called out, “Hythloday!”

  Out of the shadows emerged an emormous figure in flowing dusky green robes and with a pale blue turban. He carried a tarnished and dented lamp which he placed in the Bishop’s lap.

  If Dave were dreaming, then he was dreaming part of Emily and Rob and Suzy’s dream, too. He had rubbed no lamp, but there was no mistaking the genie, or the fact that the lamp, which looked, as Rob had described it, like a gravy boat, lay on the Bishop’s brilliant vestments.

  “A seat for Davidson, please,” the Bishop said, and the genie returned to the shadows and procured a purple velvet stool, which he set down near the throne.

  “Sit down, Davidson.” The Bishop addressed Dave by his surname as though he were still the young chorister who was leader of Decani, the boys on the Dean’s side of the choir, who sang antiphonally with the choristers of Cantoris on the opposite side. The two groups, Decani and Cantoris, played against each other in sports, vied academically, often considered each other mortal enemies, yet were united in the services of the Cathedral. What would they think of seeing their bishop here?

  The Bishop continued, “I asked Amon—your father—to have you brought here to me tonight because I want to talk to you.”

  Still Dave, appalled, outraged, could only nod.

  Ag
ain came the compassionate smile. “No, my son. You are not dreaming. This is real; it is very real. It is perhaps the only reality, as the catacombs were the repository for truth in the crumbling folly of Rome. You find it strange?”

  Now Dave managed a “Yes, sir.”

  “And yet how much stranger are the things that go on about us all the time! It is winter, now, and we are living in its chill peace. But have you forgotten the riots and rebellion that tore our streets this past summer, and indeed for many summers past?”

  “No, sir,” Dave said. “I haven’t forgotten.” His own last summer with the Alphabats, they had joined the gangs running through the shocked streets, looting and throwing broken bottles. The reasonless violence had revolted Dave and brought him to his senses, and he had spent the remainder of the long, hot weeks alone, sick at stomach and heart, in the almost unbearable closeness of his basement room. It had been his final break with the gang. He was not likely to forget.

  “Davidson,” the Bishop said, “what is to come, unless we can find means to prevent it, will make the riots of past summers a child’s game. We must—I must—see that this does not happen. It is my responsibility, as Bishop, to care for my city.” He sighed, deeply. “My son, my son. We live in such a time of tumult and torment that we must find our stability within us, and share it, if need be, deep underground, as we are doing now. There are things which I must do, Davidson, which only I can do, which are perhaps as revolutionary as the revolution I seek to prevent.”

  This was the voice, the winning, generous voice that Dave had heard from the marble pulpit in the Cathedral when he was a chorister. The choirboys who sang in the Cathedral services also had to listen, or at least appear to listen, to sermons. They knew exactly how long the Bishop would preach, or the Dean, or any member of the Cathedral Chapter. They could accurately, if cruelly, mimic all of them. But could they envision the Bishop here? In an abandoned subway station? No! Dave thought. No! Things aren’t so bad that he has to be here; they can’t be that bad. I’d have known.

  But would he?

  The Bishop raised his hand to insure Dave’s complete attention. The light flashed against his ring. “Davidson. Do you know why I have sent for you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Can you imagine the holocaust if there is open rebellion in our city?”

  “Yes, Bishop.”

  The Bishop raised his arms to indicate the area around him. “The church may once more have to go underground. There have been murders in Cathedrals before.”

  Dave asked, “Sir, does the Dean know about—about all this?”

  “Not yet. It would not be safe for him to know. He walks too freely about the city, in and out of tenements where there is always danger that he may be held and questioned. What he does not know he cannot tell, even under torture. If he does not know of this extension of the Cathedral then its future is that much more assured. I love the Dean of my Cathedral, that big-boned peasant with a heart too wide for his own good, and so I must try to protect him as long as possible.”

  Under the scarlet gloves the Bishop’s delicate, narrow wrists were in contrast to the Dean’s big hands, usually ungloved; the Bishop’s pale, ascetic face in contrast to the Dean’s darker skin and joyful smile. They had a reputation for being close friends, the Dean and the Bishop, of working well and easily together. It was, perhaps, an attraction of opposites.

  “Davidson,” the Bishop said, “you are often in the house of the head of classics at Columbia, the house of Mr. Theotocopoulos’s blind child prodigy?”

  Dave did not, for some reason, like hearing Emily described thus, even by the Bishop. “I read her schoolwork to her.”

  “Above her lives a family called Austin?”

  “Yes, Bishop.”

  “In the same apartment where once lived two Oriental doctors named Shasti and Shen-shu?”

  Here came the interest in Dr. Austin and Shasti and Shen-shu again: why? “Yes, Bishop.”

  “Davidson, it is perhaps known that when I have a problem which I find difficulty in solving, I turn to a jigsaw puzzle both for relaxation and for help in concentration?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Amon, your father, has made me some of my most beautiful and intricate puzzles. But hark, Davidson, to what confronts me now: I have in my hand, as it were, pieces of a puzzle, but I have not as yet been able to arrange them so that they fit together and form a picture. It is my hope that you will be able to help me.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Yes. Because it has been brought to my attention that you may have access to information I cannot get in any other way. Now, my son, I am going to tell you the pieces of the puzzle that must be assembled to form the picture that will show me what I must do to save the city from the madness that can so easily destroy it. But first: Hythloday!”

  The genie came forward from the shadows again, carrying a golden book upon a green velvet cushion.

  “Now, Davidson,” the Bishop said, “I must swear you to secrecy. You must place your hand on this Bible and give me your solemn vow that you will not tell anyone where you have been tonight, or what you have heard.”

  Dave looked over his shoulder at the three boys on the subway platform behind him.

  “Yes?” the Bishop asked.

  Dave had his most stubborn, closed-in expression. “Sir, I don’t know where you got them from, but I don’t trust them.”

  The Bishop smiled at him in approval. “And rightly. And you are right to tell me this. Your father brought them to me as errand boys, and I have means to see that they do not talk and that they do not harm you as long as you remain faithful. Hythloday.”

  The genie held the Bible on its cushion out towards the boy.

  Amon Davidson spoke from the shadows. “Put your hand on it. Do as he says.”

  Dave placed his hand on the book.

  “Now,” the Bishop said, “say after me: I swear to reveal nothing that I see or hear tonight.” Dave hesitated. The Bishop smiled gently. “Do you, perhaps, feel strange or disloyal because you have seen and are about to hear things that I have not yet seen fit to reveal to my Dean? We understand this. But it is his very position of power that makes him vulnerable. You see, Davidson, at this point in your life you are nobody and you wield no power, so you are in no danger. And therefore you can help me as my dearly loved Dean cannot. Swear.”

  “I swear,” Dave said. The genie pressed the Bible against his palm. “I won’t tell anything. Not to anyone.”

  “Thank you,” the Bishop said.

  The genie returned to darkness.

  “The pieces of the puzzle are these: a gang known as the Alphabats—yes, I am aware of the connection of these three boys with this group; I am in control of the situation. As I was saying: the Alphabats; their mysterious leader; the two Oriental doctors now in Liverpool; the country doctor, rather simple, who nevertheless has a touch of genius in the lab; the blind girl; the doctor who heads the lab where Austin works.” He paused. “I know where and how some of the pieces fit, but not all. I want you to add, if you can, to my knowledge.”

  “What I do know,” Dave again glanced briefly behind him, “is that the Alphabats are a bad thing. I ran with them. I know.”

  “But perhaps a bad thing may be changed to a good thing?”

  “Not the Bats.” Dave was definite.

  “And Dr. Austin?”

  “He’s a good man, sir.”

  “Why have he and his family taken over Emily Gregory?”

  “Taken her over, Bishop? They’re the best thing that ever happened to her.”

  “She’s a tender, delicate little thing, is she not?”

  “Emily? She’s about as delicate as a steel trap.”

  “And the Austins care for her?”

  “Yes, sir. And they love her.”

  “She loves them?”

  “Yes, Bishop.”

  “And you see them frequently?”

  “Well, yes, of course.” />
  “You know, then, something of Dr. Austin’s habits?”

  “I suppose so. Something. It’s Emily I work with. The Austins are very kind to me.”

  The Bishop leaned forward on his throne. “Tell me. Does Austin do all his work in the hospital lab?”

  “Well: no, sir.”

  “Where, then?”

  “At home. In his study.”

  “Where Shasti and Shen-shu worked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, you see! Or do you see, Davidson?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “If they all work at home, instead of at the lab, then perhaps they are hiding something? If so, what? And for what reason?”

  Dave shifted his position slightly on the stool. These questions had occurred to him. What had been so important in Dr. Shasti’s and Dr. Shen-shu’s study in the Gregory house that someone, searching for it, would brutally attack a ten-year-old girl? And why, now, did Dr. Austin come home early from the hospital on so many afternoons and shut himself up in that same study? And why did all of this concern both the Bishop, and the Dean of the Cathedral?

  The Bishop’s voice was suddenly crisp. “Davidson, Dr. Austin holds the means to control the Alphabats and every other disruptive band in the city.”

  “Does he control them?” Dave asked. At this point he felt that nothing would surprise him.

  “In fact: no. Like many brilliant men of science he is also stupid. He does not know how to apply what he has discovered.”

  “Sir,” Dave said, “the Dean—”

  Again the Bishop anticipated him. “Yes. I know that the Dean, too, is carrying on investigations. If he should ever ask you, I know that you will help him in every way that you can, remembering only the things which you may not tell him or anybody else until you are released from your vow. It is with my full permission that he has invited the English canon to help him. Austin holds the key; we both know this.” Again the Bishop sighed, deeply, wearily. He spoke in so low a voice that Dave had to lean forward on the stool and strain to hear the words. “The Dean wants to protect me, but he underestimates my strength. There is a misuse of power going on in high places, Davidson. The innocent are drawn into war in heaven because they do not understand what freedom is, nor what will give them happiness.” He held out his arms in an all-embracing gesture. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” His head drooped forward. There was a long silence.