“He certainly would. Do you know him?”
Gideon nodded. “Sorry to say I do. That’s a long story, though; but you can consider yourself a lucky man. You’re still alive.”
I absorbed that thoughtfully. My fingers and toes were beginning to feel as though they might some day be of use to me again. I tried standing up; I was wobbly as a jellyfish in a riptide, but I made it. I flexed my leg muscles and my fingers. I would ache for quite a while, I knew, but nothing appeared to be broken.
I was, of course, sopping wet. Gideon and I realized it at the same moment. He said, “Slip out of those things, friend, and I’ll make a little fire. As long as you aren’t going to drown for a while yet, we might as well keep you from getting pneumonia.” He broke a few loose boards over his knee, teepeed them over an ancient, crumpled newssheet and lit the structure. It burned smokily in the damp air; but in a moment the fire itself drove the dampness out of its fuel and the flames shot high. Gideon hung my clothes near the fire, and I moved close to its warmth. He began rattling odds and ends of gear. “Long as I’ve got a fire, we might as well have a cup of tea. It’ll do us both good.” He put water on to boil and sat back on his haunches comfortably enough. He must have noticed the curiosity in my eyes, because he chuckled.
“Wondering what you’ve got yourself into, aren’t you?” he asked. “I suppose the old homestead looks pretty peculiar to someone like you.”
I said, “Well, I admit I was a little curious.”
Gideon nodded. “It’s a living,” he said easily. “All manner of things come down the drains. Thetis is pretty far underwater, you know. The pressure is a mite terrific; water seeps in through the rock itself. So they have to keep pumping; and as long as they’re pumping the water out anyhow, they use the drains for disposing of all sorts of objects. Some are pretty worthless. Others are just curiosities—like, for instance, yourself.” He grinned at me. “But every once in a while something comes by that I can sell. So I fish it out and lay it aside, and when I’ve got enough to make the trip worth while I head on up to the living levels, and try my hand at peddling. I usually get enough to stock in food and tea and such other necessities… And then I come back home to Kelly’s Kingdom.”
“Kelly’s Kingdom?” I repeated. “Any relation to the Kelly we were talking about?”
Gideon shrugged. “They called the sub-levels Kelly’s Kingdom thirty years ago,” he said. “The Kelly you’re acquainted with probably wasn’t born then. I have an idea he named himself after the place instead of vice-versa.” He looked at me pointedly. “Names, after all, are a person’s own business. For instance, I picked my own. And, again, you no doubt have a name, but since you don’t choose to mention it, no gentlemen would seek to embarrass you by—”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Gideon,” I interrupted apologetically. “James Eden is my name.”
The grin was gone from his face as though it had never been.
“What?” he demanded.
I blinked at him. “James Eden,” I repeated. “I—I’m Stewart Eden’s nephew…perhaps you know of him.”
He stood up and stared down at me, his face a mask. “James Eden,” he said, and that was all he said for a long moment.
He reached down with a long arm, grasped my hand, yanked me to my feet. I came up almost belligerently, almost expecting a fight; his expression was unreadable.
But his handclasp on mine was powerful and warm. “Jim,” he said, “I worked for Stewart for nine years. I’d be working for him now if he were alive—and if he’d have me. Your uncle Stewart saved my life twice, so I reckon you’re even with me for this last one, and I owe you one to boot…”
They were the first friendly words I had heard spoken since I left Bob Eskow in New York, so long before. I almost disgraced myself, the Academy that had cast me out, my Uncle Stewart and the whole sub-sea life. I almost blubbered.
But then the water was boiling and Gideon made us tea. While we were sipping the first steam-hot gulps he told me what he could about my uncle Stewart. Gideon himself had been a bottom-walker—one of those rugged individualists who puts on deep-sea armor and wades through the sludge and ooze under steep miles of pressure. He’d mined for Uncle Stewart in the Mountains of Darkness, drilled test borings for him in the oil prospects, searched side by side with him for pearl shell and precious pearls themselves in the Kadang beds. When Uncle Stewart sold out his other holdings to concentrate on Marine Mines Ltd., Gideon had refused other jobs; he’d come down to Kelly’s Kingdom, to swamp the sewers, to be ready to go back to Uncle Stewart the minute Stewart needed him.
But Gideon knew little of Marine Mines; I asked him eagerly, but he told me no more than Hallam Sperry already had said.
Since Uncle Stewart’s death, Gideon had been trying to make plans—and failing; everything he wanted to do was founded on going back to work for my uncle. On the spot I offered him a job—duties unspecified, salary whatever he thought I should pay him, as long as my money held out. On the spot, he took it—and laughed at the idea of being paid a salary. “You’re talking just like your uncle,” he grumbled. “Offered to work for him for nothing; he wouldn’t let me. You keep us both eating and out of trouble with the law for vagrancy, and that’s all the salary I want till we get things straightened out.”
I was exhausted; and I could no longer stay awake. Gideon threw blankets together on the platform for me, and I fell asleep.
But when I slept, it was in the full knowledge that at last I had met a friend and comrade. Almost I blessed Kelly for tossing me in the drain!
When we woke, Gideon made us more tea and rustled up food. My clothes were dry but far from neat; Kelly’s comrades had looted my pockets, but missed the currency in the compartment behind my Academy belt-buckle. So Gideon and I went shopping.
By the time we were dressed fit for travel, it was night again. The Troyon lights of the sub-sea cities mark neither day nor night; but human beings need sleep, and so the cities keep to the time zones of the world above. On the off chance that I might catch Faulkner in, I called the lawyer’s office; but there was no answer. Gideon and I spent the evening seeing the sights of Thetis. A pleasurable, relaxing experience it was. I felt at peace with the world when finally we turned in—not in Gideon’s submarine cave of the drain-pipes, but in a modest, clean, comfortable lodging house he recommended.
It was the last time I felt at peace with the world for some time…
The next morning I went direct to Faulkner’s office.
I took the inevitable elevator to Level Nine. Once more I climbed the long, dark stair; once more I entered the room.
The plug-ugly behind the desk was awake this time; he sat reading a newssheet, his feet as before plumped on the desk.
When he saw me his eyes widened incredulously and his jaw dropped. He peered silently at me, unbelievingly; then he recovered himself. “You,” he grumbled. But his expression was as strained as that of a man who has seen a ghost.
“Yes, me,” I said. “Is Mr. Faulkner in now?”
He glowered at me. His Neanderthal brain was obviously trying to reach a difficult decision. He grunted, and said: “I’ll go see.”
He lifted his gross body with astonishing vigor, rolled across the room and vanished through a door with Faulkner’s name on it. I stood waiting for long minutes; then he came back and snarled, “Go on in.”
The room I entered was a little larger than the Neanderthal’s, but dark and low-ceilinged. The walls were lined with rows of ancient books, the leather of their bindings cracking and peeling; the air was musty, dusty, redolent of dry rot.
Beneath the one dim Troyon tube, Faulkner sat staring coldly at me. He was a nondescript human—medium tall, medium thin, medium sallow and wrinkled, medium elderly. His black suit was rather worn for a successful attorney’s; it was also not very clean. His eyes were hard behind thick-lensed eyeglasses.