Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle by Richard Lupoff Page A

and Clive swept her into his arms, whirling her in a joyous circle. "Annie, my darling girl! My dear great-great-granddaughter Annie!"
    "Put me down, Clive. Grandpa!" She used the term rarely, preferring to remain on a given-name basis. Her time was one of informality, and besides, in real age Clive was but a dozen years older than she, although through the twisted chronology of the Dungeon she was in truth his descendant, born some 144 years later than he.
    "The joy I feel!" Clive exclaimed. "At first I feared that you were lost forever on the eighth level of the Dungeon. Lost forever—or worse! And then, when I stood upon the polar ice floe and saw the sun glinting off the wings of the aeroplane in which you escaped from the Japanese… There is so much I yearn to ask you, my darling Annie! But for now, all that matters is that you are unharmed. You have not been… ?"
    "No, I am well—as you can see, Clive." She curtsied before him. "And don't you look splendid in your scarlet tunic and clean-shaved cheeks!"
    Although her attitude was still that of a woman prepared to make her way in the twenty-first century, she had been done up as a proper young lady of the nineteenth. Her hair was arranged in a crown of braids that coiled around her white forehead. Her face was modestly made up. Her gown was of a light color and material, cut modestly across the bosom and tightly at the waist. She was a contrast of one sort against the two harlots who had cozened up to Clive in the drinking den, of another against the severe Madame Mesmer in her high-necked, long-skirted outfit.
    "Annie! You must tell me everything, everything that has happened."
    "That will take a long time, Clive."
    "But first—what is this car? What is this all about? How did you get back to England, to 1896? This is 1896, is it not? I saw du Maurier. I last saw him as a vigorous man of fifty. Now he is old. He says he is dying. He says I have been away for twenty-eight years."
    "It is indeed 1896, Clive. Sit now, or you'll be knocked over!" The pulsation of the car's engine had increased in force and frequency, and Clive and Annie indeed had barely time to seat themselves, cozily side by side, before the car slid forward, pressing them against the padded back of their couchlike seat.
    The car accelerated until Clive calculated that it was proceeding at a high rate of speed. It moved through a nearly featureless tunnel. Now and then a lighted panel cast a dim glow through the gloom. Now and then Clive caught sight of a branch or side passage curving away from their own. Where these branches led, he had no idea save for the wild conjecture that they were connected to different levels or sectors of the Dungeon.
    For that matter, he had no idea where the car was bearing them. They were alone in it, and neither he nor Annie did anything to control its progress or its course. There were no visible controls to be seen.
    "My dear child, Annie—" Clive began.
    Before he could continue, Annie said, "Clive, tell me—do you still have Neville's journal?"
    Clive patted his tunic, investigating its pockets for the precious volume. "I fear not," he said. "When I was translated to London, I—" He paused to gather his thoughts, then began again. "On the eighth level—you remember that some of us were reduced in size to Lilliputian proportions, others enlarged to Brobdingnagian."
    "How could I forget!"
    "Fortunately, well before I was transported to the ninth level—or back here to Earths—perhaps they are the same—I had regained my normal stature."
    She nodded, encouraging him to continue.
    "I found myself on the arctic ice cap, along with Chang Guafe. It was just before I found him that you flew over in the Nakajima."
    She made no comment on the aeroplane. Instead she inquired only about Chang Guafe. "And he, Clive?"
    "He is there on the sea-bottom, as best I can surmise. What will become of him, I know not."
    "And