But I am getting ahead of my story. I heard from Judith about two weeks later—a pleasant enough note but with the juice pressed out of it through rephrasing. I meant to answer her at once but actually delayed a week—it was so pesky hard to know what to say. I could not possibly tell her any news except that 1 was well and busy. If I had told her I loved her three times in one letter some idiot in cryptography would have examined it for “pattern” and rejected it completely when he failed to find one.
The mail went to Mexico through a long tunnel, partly artificial but mostly natural, which led right under the international border. A little electric railroad of the sort used in mines ran through this tunnel and carried not only my daily headaches in the way of official mail but also a great deal of freight to supply our fair-sized town. There were a dozen other entrances to G.H.Q. on the Arizona side of the border, but I never knew where any of them were—it was not my pidgin. The whole area overlay a deep layer of Paleozoic limestone and it may well be honeycombed from California to Texas. The area known as G.H.Q. had been in use for more than twenty years as a hideout for refugee brethren. Nobody knew the extent of the caverns we were in; we simply lighted and used what we needed. It was a favorite sport of us troglodytes-permanent residents were “trogs;” transients were “bats” because they flew by night—we trogs liked to go on “spelling bees', picnics which included a little amateur speleology in the unexplored parts.
It was permitted by regulations, but just barely and subject to stringent safety precautions, for you could break a leg awfully easily in those holes. But the General permitted it because it was necessary; we had only such recreations as we could make ourselves and some of us had not seen daylight in years.
Zeb and Maggie and I went on a number of such outings when I could get away. Maggie always brought another woman along. I protested at first but she pointed out to me that it was necessary in order to avoid gossip . . . mutual chaperonage. She assured me that she was certain that Judith would not mind, under the circumstances. It was a different girl each time and it seemed to work out that Zeb always paid a lot of attention to the other girl while I talked with Maggie. I had thought once that Maggie and Zeb would marry, but now I began to wonder. They seemed to suit each other like ham and eggs, but Maggie did not seem jealous and I can only describe Zeb, in honesty, as shameless-that is, if he thought Maggie would care.
One Saturday morning Zeb stuck his head in my sweat box and said, “spelling bee. Two o’clock. Bring a towel.”
I looked up from a mound of papers. “I doubt if I can make it,” I answered. “And why a towel?”
But he was gone. Maggie came through my office later to take the weekly consolidated intelligence report in to the Old Man, but I did not attempt to question her, as Maggie was all business during working hours—the perfect office sergeant. I had lunch at my desk, hoping to finish up, but knowing it was impossible. About a quarter of two I went in to get General Huxley’s signature on an item that was to go out that night by hypnoed courier and therefore had to go at once to psycho in order that the courier might be operated. He glanced at it and signed it, then said, “sergeant Andy tells me you have a date.”
“Sergeant Andrews is mistaken,” I said stiffly. “There are still the weekly reports from Jericho, Nod, and Egypt to be gone over.”
“Place them on my desk and get out. That’s an order. I can’t have you going stale from overwork.”
I did not tell him that he had not even been to lodge himself in more than a month; I got out.
I dropped the message with Colonel Novak and hurried to where we always met near the women’s mess. Maggie was there with the other girl—a blonde named Miriam Booth who was a clerk in Quartermaster’s store. I knew her by sight but had never spoken to her. They had our picnic lunch and Zeb arrived while I was being introduced. He was carrying, as usual, the portable flood we would use when we picked out a spot and a blanket to sit on and use as a table. “Where’s yours towel?” he demanded.
“Were you serious? I forgot it.”
“Run get it. We’ll start off along Appian Way. You can catch up. Come on, kids.”
They started off, which left me with nothing but to do as I was told. After grabbing a towel from my room I dogtrotted until I had them in sight, then slowed to a walk, puffing. Desk work had ruined my wind. They heard me and waited.
We were all dressed alike, with the women in trousers and each with a safety line wrapped around the waist and torch clipped to the belt. I had gotten used to women in men’s clothes, much as I disliked it—and, after all, it is impractical and quite immodest to climb around in caves wearing skirts.
We left the lighted area by taking a turn that appeared to lead into a blind wall; instead it led into a completely concealed but easily negotiated tunnel. Zeb tied our labyrinth string and started paying it out as soon as we left permanent and marked paths, as required by the standing order; Zeb was always careful about things that mattered.
For perhaps a thousand paces we could see blazes and other indications that others had been this way before, such as a place where someone had worked a narrow squeeze wider with a sledge. Then we left the obvious path and turned into a blind wall. Zeb put down the flood and turned it on. “sling your torches. We climb this one.”
“Where are we going?”
“A place Miriam knows about. Give me a leg up, Johnnie.” The climb wasn’t much. I got Zeb up all right and the girls could have helped each other up, but we took them up roped, for safety’s sake. We picked up our gear and Miriam led us away, each of us using his torch.
We went down the other side and there was another passage so well hidden that it could have been missed for ten thousand years. We stopped once while Zeb tied on another ball of string. Shortly Miriam said, “slow up, everybody. I think we’re there.”
Zeb flashed his torch around, then set up the portable flood and switched it on. He whistled. “Whew! This is all right!”
Maggie said softly, “It’s lovely.” Miriam just grinned triumphantly.
I agreed with them all. It was a perfect small domed cavern, perhaps eighty feet wide and much longer. How long, I could not tell, as it curved gently away in a gloom-filled turn. But the feature of the place was a quiet, inky-black pool that filled most of the floor. In front of us was a tiny beach of real sand that might have been laid down a million years ago for all I know.
Our voice echoed pleasantly and a little bit spookily in the chamber, being broken up and distorted by stalactites and curtains hanging from the roof. Zeb walked down to the water’s edge, squatted and tested it with his hand. “Not too cold,” he announced. “Well, the last one in is a proctor’s nark.”
I recognized the old swimming hole call, even though the last time I had heard it, as a boy, it had been “last one in is a dirty pariah. But here I could not believe it.
Zeb was already unbuttoning his shirt. I stepped up to him quickly and said privately, “Zeb! Mixed bathing? You must be joking?”
“Not a bit of it.” He searched my face. “Why not? What’s the matter with you, boy? Afraid someone will make you do penance? They won’t, you know. That’s all over with.”
“But—”
“But what?”
I could not answer. The only way I could make the words come out would have been in the terms we had been taught in the Church, and I knew that Zeb would laugh at me—in front of the women. Probably they would laugh, too, since they had known and I hadn’t. “But Zeb,” I insisted, “I can’t. You didn’t tell me . . . and I don’t even have a bathing outfit.”
“Neither do I. Didn’t you ever go in raw as a kid—and get paddled for it?” He turned away without waiting for me to answer this enormity and said, “Are you frail vessels waiting on something?”