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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
--T. S. Eliot
Once inside the brooding darkness of the fortress--and finding the entrance had been
disturbingly easier than he had expected--there was no way to go but down. The wet, black stones of
the switchback stairways led inexorably downward into the bowels of the structure, clearly far
beneath the level of the pancreatic sea. The stairs were steep, and each step had been worn into
smooth curves by the pressure of feet that had descended this way since the dawn of memory. It was
dark, but not so dark that Talbot could not see his way. There was no light, however. He did not care
to think about how that could be.
When he came to the deepest part of the structure, having passed no rooms or chambers or
openings along the way, he saw a doorway across an enormous hall, set into the far wall. He stepped
off the last of the stairs, and walked to the door. It was built of crossed iron bars, as black and moist
as the stones of the bastion. Through the interstices he saw something pale and still in a far corner of
what could have been a cell.
There was no lock on the door.
It swung open at his touch.
Whoever lived in this cell had never tried to open the door; or had tried and decided not to
leave.
He moved into deeper darkness.
A long time of silence passed, and finally he stooped to help her to her feet. It was like lifting
a sack of dead flowers, brittle and surrounded by dead air incapable of holding even the memory of
fragrance.
He took her in his arms and carried her.
“Close your eyes against the light, Martha,” he said, and started back up the long stairway to
the golden sky.
Lawrence Talbot sat up on the operating table. He opened his eyes and looked at Victor. He
smiled a peculiarly gentle smile. For the first time since they had been friends, Victor saw all
torment cleansed from Talbot’s face.
“It went well,” he said. Talbot nodded.
They grinned at each other.
“How’re your cryonic facilities?” Talbot asked. Victor’s brows drew down in bemusement.
“You want me to freeze you? I thought you’d want something more permanent...say, in silver.”
“Not necessary.”
Talbot looked around. He saw her standing against the far wall by one of the grasers. She
looked back at him with open fear. He slid off the table, wrapping the sheet upon which he had
rested around himself, a makeshift toga. It gave him a patrician look.
He went to her and looked down into her ancient face. “Nadja,” he said, softly. After a long
moment she looked up at him. He smiled and for an instant she was a girl again. She averted her
gaze. He took her hand, and she came with him, to the table, to Victor.
“I’d be deeply grateful for a running account, Larry,” the physicist said. So Talbot told him;
all of it.
“My mother, Nadja, Martha Nelson, they’re all the same,” Talbot said, when he came to the
end, “all wasted lives.”
