He stepped over the railing and began his descent. The well was deeper than the other one; the air in its depths was stale and dry. The golden glow lit his way for him to the bottom and thence along a low passageway with a rounded vault of a ceiling. After a long time he came to a large, brightly lit room filled with sleek gray machinery. It was much like the computer room at any large bank. Mounted on the walls were control panels, labeled in an unknown language but also clearly marked with sequential symbols:
I II III IIII IIIII IIIIII
While he studied these he became aware of a sliding, hissing sound from the corridor beyond. He thought of sturdy metal cables passing one against the other; but then into the control room slowly came a creature something like a scorpion in form, considerably greater than a man in size. Its curved tubular thorax was dark and of a waxen texture; a dense mat of brown bristles, thick as straws, sprouted on its abdomen; its many eyes were bright, alert, and malevolent. Breckenridge snatched up a steel bar that lay near his feet and tried to wield it like a lance as the monster approached. From its jaws, though, there looped a sudden lasso of newly spun silken thread that caught the end of the bar and jerked it from Breckenridge’s grasp. Then a second loop, entangling his arms and shoulders. Struggle was useless. He was caught. The creature pulled him closer. Breckenridge saw fangs, powerful palpi, a scythe of a tail in which a dripping stinger had become erect. Breckenridge writhed in the monster’s grip. He felt neither surprise nor fear; this seemed a necessary working out of some ancient foreordained pattern.
A cool, silent voice within his skull said, “Who are you?”
“Noel Breckenridge of New York City, born A.D. 1940.”
“Why do you intrude here?”
“I was summoned. If you want to know why, ask someone else.”
“Is it your purpose to awaken the sleepers?”
“Very possibly,” Breckenridge said.
“So the time has come?”
“Maybe it has,” said Breckenridge. All was still for a long moment. The monster made no hostile move. Breckenridge grew impatient. “Well, what’s the arrangement?” he said finally.
“The arrangement?”
“The terms under which I get my freedom. Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.”
The monster made no reply.
“Is that it?” Breckenridge demanded. “A riddle?”
“Do you want it to be a riddle?”
“A riddle, yes.”
There was another endless pause. Breckenridge met the beady gaze steadily. At last the voice said, “A riddle. A riddle. Very well. Tell me the answer to this. What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs in the afternoon, on three legs in the evening.”
Breckenridge repeated it. He pondered. He frowned. He coughed. Then he laughed. “A baby,” he said, “crawls on all fours. A grown man walks upright. An old man requires the assistance of a cane. Therefore the answer to your riddle is—”
He left the sentence unfinished. The gleam went out of the monster’s eyes; the silken loop binding Breckenridge dissolved; the creature began slowly and sadly to back away, withdrawing into the corridor from which it came. Its hissing, rustling sound persisted for a time, growing ever more faint.
Breckenridge turned and without hesitation pulled the switch marked I.
The aurora no longer appears in the night sky. A light rain has been falling frequently for some days, and the desert is turning green. The sleepers are awakening, millions of them, called forth from their coffins by the workings of automatic mechanisms. Breckenridge stands in the central plaza of the city, arms outspread, and the city dwellers, as they emerge from the subterranean sleeping places, make their way toward him. I am the resurrection and the life, he thinks. I am Orpheus the sweet singer. I am Homer the blind. I am Noel Breckenridge. He looks across the eons to Harry Munsey. “I was wrong,” he says. “There’s meaning everywhere, Harry. For Sam Smith as well as for Beethoven. For Noel Breckenridge as well as for Michelangelo. Dawn after dawn, simply being alive, being part of it all, part of the cosmic dance of life—that’s the meaning, Harry. Look! Look!” The sun is high now—not a cruel sun but a mild, gentle one, its heat softened by a humid haze. This is the dream-time, when all mistakes are unmade, when all things become one. The city folk surround him. They come closer. Closer yet. They reach toward him. He experiences a delicious flash of white light. The world disappears.
“JKF Airport,” he told the taxi driver. The cab zoomed away. From the front seat came the voice of the radio with today’s closing Dow Jones Industrials: 948.72, down 6.11. He reached the airport by half past five, and at seven he boarded a Pan Am flight for London. The next morning at nine, London time, he cabled his wife to say that he was well and planned to head south for the winter. Then he reported to the Air France counter for the nonstop flight to Morocco. Over the next week he cabled home from Rabat, Marrakech, and Timbuktu in Mali. The third cable said:
GUESS WHAT STOP I’M REALLY IN TIMBUKTU STOP HAVE RENTED JEEP STOP I SET OUT INTO SAHARA TOMORROW STOP AM VERY HAPPY STOP YES STOP VERY HAPPY STOP VERY VERY HAPPY STOP STOP STOP.
It was the last message he sent. The night it arrived in New York there was a spectacular celestial display, an aurora that brought thousands of people out into Central Park. There was rain in the southeastern Sahara four days later, the first recorded precipitation there in eight years and seven months. An earthquake was reported in southern Sicily, but it did little damage. Things were much quieter after that for everybody.