on and on, as far as he could see, and beyond them, flittering fairy bridges rose into the air and arched into the distance. And the buildings towered over everything. He forced himself to look down, and it made him dizzy. The building he was in was so high that it would have projected through the clouds if there had been any clouds.
Broom backed away from the window and let the curtain close. He’d had all of that he could take for right now. The inside of the building, his immediate surroundings, looked almost homey after seeing that monstrous, endless city outside.
He skirted the table with its still-humming machine and walked toward the door that led to the other room. A picture hanging on a nearby wall caught his eye, and he stopped. It was a portrait of a man in unfamiliar, outlandish clothing, but Broom had seen odder clothing in his travels. But the thing that had stopped him was the amazing reality of the picture. It was almost as if there were a mirror there, reflecting the face of a man who stood invisibly before it.
It wasn’t, of course; it was only a painting. But the lifelike, somber eyes of the man were focused directly on him. Broom decided he didn’t like the effect at all, and hurried into the next room.
There were several rows of the bulky tables in here, each with its own chair. Broom’s footsteps sounded loud in the room, the echoes rebounding from the walls. He stopped and looked down. This floor wasn’t covered with the soft carpeting; it had a square, mosaic pattern, as though it might be composed of tile of some kind. And yet, though it was harder than the carpet it had a kind of queer resiliency of its own.
The room itself was larger than the one he had just quitted, and not as well lit. For the first time, he thought of the possibility that there might be someone else here besides himself. He looked around, wishing that he had a weapon of some kind. Even a knife would have made him feel better.
But there had been no chance of that, of course. Prisoners of war are hardly allowed to carry weapons with them, so none had been available.
He wondered what sort of men lived in this fantastic city. So far, he had seen no one. The streets below had been filled with moving vehicles of some kind, but it had been difficult to tell whether there had been anyone walking down there from this height.
Contarini had said that it would be…how had he said it? “Like sleeping for hundreds of years and waking up in a strange world.”
Well, it was that, all right.
Did anyone know he was here? He had the uneasy feeling that hidden, unseen eyes were watching his every move, and yet he could detect nothing. There was no sound except the faint humming from the device in the room behind him, and a deeper, almost inaudible, rushing, rumbling sound that seemed to come from far below.
His wish for a weapon came back, stronger than before. The very fact that he had seen no one set his nerves on edge even more than the sight of a known enemy would have done.
He was suddenly no longer interested in his surroundings. He felt trapped in this strange, silent room. He could see a light shining through a door at the far end of the room—perhaps it was a way out. He walked toward it, trying to keep his footsteps as silent as possible as he moved.
The door had a pane of translucent glass in it, and there were more of the unreadable characters on it. He wished fervently that he could decipher them; they might tell him where he was.
Carefully, he grasped the handle of the door, twisted it, and pulled. And, careful as he had been, the door swung inward with surprising rapidity. It was a great deal thinner and lighter than he had supposed.
He looked down at it, wondering if there were any way the door could be locked. There was a tiny vertical slit set in a small metal panel in the door, but it was much too tiny to be a keyhole. Still—
It didn’t matter. If necessary, he could smash the glass to get through the door. He stepped out into what was obviously a hallway beyond the door.
* * * *
The hallway stretched away to either side, lined with doors similar to the one he had just come through. How did a man get out of this place, anyway? The door behind him was pressing against his hand with a patient insistence, as though it wanted to close itself. He almost let it close, but, at the last second, he changed his mind.
Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t, he thought to himself.
He went back into the office and looked around for something to prop the door open. He found a small, beautifully formed porcelain dish on one of the desks, picked it up, and went back to the door. The dish held the door open an inch or so. That was good enough. If someone locked the door, he could still smash in the glass if he wanted to, but the absence of the dish when he returned would tell him that he was not alone in this mysterious place.
He started down the hallway to his right, checking the doors as he went. They were all locked. He knew that he could break into any of them, but he had a feeling that he would find no exit through any of them. They all looked as though they concealed more of the big rooms.
None of them had any lights behind them. Only the one door that he had come through showed the telltale glow from the other side. Why?
He had the terrible feeling that he had been drawn across time to this place for a purpose, and yet he could think of no rational reason for believing so.
He stopped as another memory came back. He remembered being in the stone-walled dungeon, with its smelly straw beds, lit only by the faint shaft of sunlight that came from the barred window high overhead.
Contarini, the short, wiry little Italian who was in the next cell, looked at him through the narrow opening. “I still think it can be done, my friend. It is the mind and the mind alone that sees the flow of time. The body experiences, but does not see. Only the soul is capable of knowing eternity.”
Broom outranked the little Italian, but prison can make brothers of all men. “You think it’s possible then, to get out of a place like this, simply by thinking about it?”
Contarini nodded. “Why not? Did not the saints do so? And what was that? Contemplation of the Eternal, my comrade; contemplation of the Eternal.”
Broom held back a grin. “Then why, my Venetian friend, have you not left this place long since?”
“I try,” Contarini had said simply, “but I cannot do it. You wish to know why? It is because I am afraid.”
“Afraid?” Broom raised an eyebrow. He had seen Contarini on the battlefield, dealing death in hand-to-hand combat, and the Italian hadn’t impressed him as a coward.
“Yes,” said the Venetian. “Afraid. Oh, I am not afraid of men. I fight. Some day, I may die—will die. This does not frighten me, death. I am not afraid of what men may do to me.” He stopped and frowned. “But, of this, I have a great fear. Only a saint can handle such things, and I am no saint.”
“I hope, my dear Contarini,” Broom said dryly, “that you are not under the impression that I am a saint.”
“No, perhaps not,” Contarini said. “Perhaps not. But you are braver than I. I am not afraid of any man living. But you are afraid of neither the living nor the dead, nor of man nor devil—which is a great deal more than I can say for myself. Besides, there is the blood of kings in your veins. And has not a king protection that even a man of noble blood such as myself does not have? I think so.
“Oh, I have no doubt that you could do it, if you but would. And then, perhaps, when you are free, you would free me—for teaching you all I know to accomplish this. My fear holds me chained here, but you have no chains of fear.”
Broom had thought that over for a moment, then grinned. “All right, my friend; I’ll try it. What’s your first lesson?”
The memory faded from Broom’s mind. Had he really moved through some segment of Eternity to reach this…this place? Had he—
He felt a chill run through him. What was he doing here? How could he have taken it all so calmly. Afraid of man or devil, no—but