Collected fiction, p.300
Collected Fiction, page 300
Glenn stirred, muttering something. He flung out his hand questingly. I gripped his shoulder, shook him. He woke with a start.
“Sean! What the devil—” He was suddenly on his feet, staring around. “Holy sizzling cats, what happened?”
“I dunno. I was asleep,” I said wryly. “Dreaming, too.”
He looked at me. “I followed you. I yelled, but you didn’t hear. You went straight as a homing pigeon through the jungle and up toward the mountain. When I saw those ruins, I nearly shot my cakes.”
The ruins had been real, then. I asked, “Did you see any—figures?”
“No. Not a soul. Let’s get out of here. I’ve got the jitters. That gadget gives me the creeps. What is it, anyway?”
I couldn’t answer that. “A machine of some kind, I-suppose.”
“To make artificial lightning, eh? Let’s get back to the plane. The fog should be gone by now. Wish I had my camera—I’d like to have a snapshot of that ball when we turn in our report.”
The fog should be gone. But that bluish light filtering in didn’t look like sunshine. I felt an uneasy qualm.
Glenn went to the cleft and squeezed out. I heard him gasp. I followed.
This was not . . . Earth.
We felt that from the first, I think. For there was no sky. There was an immense shining vault of lambent blue, cloudless and sunless. It was not the blue of Earth’s sky. The air about us partook of that faint, soft azure, as though we walked beneath tropical water.
Cliffs colored like flame walled us in. We stood on a little knoll, staring. Those towering crags rose all around like a prison. Only in one place, directly ahead, were the perpendicular surfaces broken by a narrow slit—the mouth of a gorge, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. The canyon twisted sharply, so we could see for only a little way into it.
My hand crept to my belt. Mary Lou was still there. The sword’s rough hilt felt good against my palm. I had my gun, too, and so did Glenn, I saw.
His mouth was open. He turned slowly, and I followed his example.
We had emerged from a dome-shaped building, about twenty feet high, built atop the knoll. It was featureless, of a uniform dark tint. It blocked our vision.
I said shortly, “Come on,” and started to circle the structure. As I had hoped, the cliffs were not continuous on this side either. To left and to right they extended until they ended abruptly at the edge of a gorge, some distance away. A bridge spanned the gorge. Beyond, a low line of grayish hills stretched into the distance.
Glenn licked dry lips. “Am I crazy, too? This isn’t—”
“We don’t know what it is, or where.” I pulled out my flask. “Have a shot. It’s good for nightmares.”
He took a stiff drink, and I did the same. The liquor strengthened us. We stood staring at that incredible vista, knowing that we were on the edge of the unknown.
“No welcoming committee,” Glenn said at last.
“Yeah. That sphere—I wonder. A spaceship?”
“I’ll lay my bets on teleportation. Etheric transmission of solids. It’s just a theory—but we’re certainly not in the South Pacific.”
“We may be in another time,” I said. “I’ve read yarns about such things. It’s crazy. Sure. Only here we are. Well, no use standing here and starving to death. We didn’t blaze a back trail, so let’s go hunt up some grub.”
Glenn managed a shaky grin. “Wonder what the folks back home would say about this?”
“Send ’em a wire,” I suggested sardonically. “Come along.” I started down the slope, walking carefully. The mossy surface underfoot looked treacherous. I felt better when we had reached level ground.
We couldn’t see the gorge now, but the cliffs told us the right direction.
We kept walking. The silence was complete. There was no insect or bird life, only a distant murmuring I could not analyze. It sounded more like flame than water.
We neared the gorge. The bridge was narrow, no wider than a man’s height, and was made of some dead black substance that felt rough underfoot. It seemed neither metal nor stone. What it was I did not know.
The abyss—
Glenn gave a choked cry and lurched back, flinging his arm before his face. He looked at me, and I saw that his cheeks and forehead were a blistered, angry crimson. “My God!” he whispered. “Don’t get too close. That—that’s the pit of hell, for my money!”
“Hurt, kid?”
“N-no. But it was close. Take it easy!” He gripped my wrist. I said, “Okay,” and edged forward, till I could peer down into the gulf.
Far down I caught a glimpse of light that was supernally brilliant—more vivid than light could be. It moved in trickling currents, like water. A blast of searing energy sent me back, coughing and choking. Glenn said, “I told you to be careful, you damn fool.”
“Yeah. I’m okay. It’s some radiation—”
“Deadly. Plenty deadly. We’re stymied.”
I said, “No,” and nodded toward the bridge. “I was out on that a few steps and didn’t get hurt. It’s probably made of some substance that blocks the rays, or whatever they are.”
“Radiant energy. Or something.” Before Glenn could stop me, I walked out on the bridge. I felt nothing unpleasant. But to left and to right the air shook with silent, terrible motion as the radiations from below rushed upward. The dim whispering grew louder. Curious, I thought, that the voice of death should be so soft.
Glenn followed me. “You crazy nut! How’d you know this bridge is safe?”
“I tried it. Besides, nobody’d build a bridge unless they intended to use it. Let’s see what’s at the other end.”
It was a dizzying walk, for the span was at least three hundred feet long, but we made it finally. We sat down for a moment or two on the soft moss of the farther bank, a little weak with reaction. The unchanging, unearthly blueness hung over us like an immense canopy of filtered light.
“No,” I said. “This isn’t the South Pacific, Glenn. Unfortunately. If it was, we might dig up some breadfruit. And I’m thirsty.”
“We can’t drink that, anyhow.” He shivered and looked back toward the gorge. “I’ve got the leaping creepies. Maybe we’re dead, huh?”
“But not buried. I’m hungry—food and water is the first thing on the program.”
SO WE went over the low ridge, and there, spread before us, was a rolling, forested countryside that vanished in hazy distances. A well-worn path lay ahead. I looked for signs of feet, but there were winds in this world, and I could find no prints in the grayish dust.
And we went on, though not for long. Presently the forest thinned, and we stood on the edge of a clearing. A castle was there, built of stone or metal—I could not make out which—and the style of architecture struck a half-familiar note. It was neither Grecian nor Roman nor Norman, but the principle of the arch was known to the builders, I saw. A castle, without the harsh crudity of Earthly fortresses, molded and refined till the basic grimness had been altered into something lovely and deceptively fragile.
“This is it, I guess,” Glenn said. “Do we send in our cards?”
I patted my automatic. “Here’s our reference. Maybe nobody’s home; there’s no sign of life.”
We walked across the clearing to where gates yawned ajar in the castle’s wall. We entered, finding ourselves in a courtyard, bare and deserted. Then a—a man came out of a door somewhere, and he was not—human.
We stopped dead. The creature was man-shaped, but his skin—he wore a loincloth, nothing more—was a dull grayish hue, and his head and body were totally hairless. He had two pairs of arms, and his legs ended in pads, like an elephant’s. His face was—well, inhuman. The features were regular enough, but his eyes had no soul behind them.
He saw us, ignored us. I felt a chill crawl through me. The—being—walked past us and vanished into an archway.
Glenn said in a sick voice, “We’ll need our references.”
I didn’t answer. I followed the creature, Glenn at my heels. We went through a short corridor, brushed aside a curtain, and came out in a hall. I had an impression of intricately patterned walls, of a bluish, ghostly dimness, and of two figures seated at a table in the distance.
Two figures—human! A man and a woman. They saw us and sprang up, staring.
Man and woman—no. God and goddess!
The man was a giant, taller than I, his hair a bright silver mane above a beautiful, strong, leonine face. He wore a formfitting garment of some bright fabric. His eyes were blue flames, blazing now with incredulous delight.
The woman—
I cannot, now, bring myself to describe Aedis. She was supernally lovely. She was dark. Her glance was the striking of a lance. She wore a garment molded of the night, and she was a goddess.
I felt the world stop around me, in that moment when I first saw Aedis of Dyan. . . .
She gave the man a swift glance and looked again at us—ragged, grimy, stained with the dark red of dried blood from our scratches. In the background the inhuman, gray-skinned being moved, placing a covered dish on the table before the two.
The man said something in a low voice, and the creature slipped noiselessly away.
I heard Glenn’s soft whisper, “I’ll follow your lead. The dame—she looks like trouble.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. I took a pace forward, hand lifted in the peace gesture. The man came around the table and walked toward me. Swinging from his belt, I saw, was a great hammer, its head red as blood.
He, too, lifted his hand and paused, eyes searching mine. He asked a question in a tongue not entirely alien. I searched my memory. Then I had it. Erse—ancient Erse, though with a difference in accent and pronunciation that made the words unrecognizable.
Well, the O’Mara knew his forefathers’ tongue! I spoke slowly, carefully, giving him greeting.
He swung back toward the woman, roaring a phrase I could not catch. There was triumph in his tone. Then back to me—
He flung me questions, staccato, so fast I could not understand. I shook my head and he spoke more slowly, piecing out the words with gestures. After a moment he gripped my arm and drew me to the table, forcing me down on a bench beside the woman. I beckoned to Glenn, and he came to join us.
There was food on the board—unfamiliar, but recognizable. I pointed to it, asked a question. The man seized a haunch of meat and forced it into my hands. “Eat!” he said—and I understood. “Eat!”
WE ATE like wolves. The man kept talking, and gradually his tricks of dialect became clearer to me. He spoke Erse, or an Erse-root, and once I had mastered the difference in accent, it was much easier to follow him. Satiated at last, I leaned back, draining a cup of hot, spicy liquor.
I sought for words. “It is hard to speak. The old tongue is—changed.”
“It is still spoken in Lleu-Atlan?”
He repeated it before I understood. “Lleu-Atlan?”
The woman said, “Let him tell his story. It has been long and long. Empires fall. Only in Dyan is there no change.”
Most of the words I could make out. The others I guessed. But the old phrases came back to me with increasing ease. Glenn watched wonderingly. I nodded at him, said, “Take it easy. I’m finding out—”
“Tell me,” the man said. “I am Lar, guardian. This woman is Aedis. She also guards. Now who are you, and how did you come to Dyan?”
I told him. He interrupted from time to time, questioning me carefully, giving me words when I could find none. When I had finished, he thrust a filled cup toward me.
“Drink! I drink with you! Aedis—”
She lifted her goblet. “So. But—he? This man called Glenn? He is not of the old blood.”
Lar looked at me. “He does not speak our tongue? He did not hear the summons? Well—he came with you, and is safe. So drink.”
And we drank together, for the first and the last time. Over the rim of the cup Aedis’s eyes sought mine.
Aedis—Aedis of Dyan! Goddess indeed! I dare not think of you now. I dare not remember. But—I loved you from the first moment I saw you in that dim blue-lit hall, wearing the night like a gown, guarding a gateway that you thought would never open.
Lar rose, laughing down at me. “Tell him, Aedis. I have no time. In Lleu-Dyan the people prepare to march to the Cleft, and I must tell them that this time there will be no return. Yet—” He bent toward me, staring. “Take him to the Cleft when the storm bursts from the rock. His powers are still latent. Let him stand in that which gives life—”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Aedis will explain. Look you, now—” His giant figure flashed away so swiftly I could not follow him with my eyes. I heard Glenn gasp in amazed wonder. Before I could turn, Lar was back, gripping a stone block between his great hands.
“Look you, now—”
He crumbled the stone between his fingers! Trickles of dust slipped to the floor; shards of rock flew. Glenn said, “Sean! The guy’s doing that with his hands!” He knelt suddenly and picked up a fragment, tested it, and gulped. “It’s no fake, either.”
Lar laughed. “When you have stood in the Cleft’s storm, you, too, will awake. As yet you stir in your sleep—but later, you will have such power as I have. And Aedis! And all those who dwell in Dyan!”
Aedis said, “The other?” She nodded toward Glenn.
Lar sobered. “He is not of our blood. He may not visit the Cleft.”
The giant turned to me again, his grip clamping like iron on my shoulder. “We shall meet again, brother.”
A titan—he strode from the hall, silver head arrogantly lifted.
CHAPTER THREE
Cauldron of Hell
AFTER that there was nothing to do but wait. Within a certain period of time, Aedis said, Lar would return.
It was impossible for me to understand the time system of this strange world. There was no sun. The unchanging blue haze above, never darkened into night. There were, Aedis explained, certain temporal cycles or pulses which she could sense, but which I could not. There was so much that I did not understand!
One thing I came to know, and soon. There was antipathy between Aedis and Glenn. He feared and hated her, I think, and she felt for him a sort of scorn. Later I realized why.
“She isn’t human,” Glenn said, when we were alone. “Neither is the man. There’s something wrong about them both, Sean.”
“I don’t see it.”
He shivered. “Don’t you? You remind me of them a bit yourself, rather—but you’re a human being! They aren’t.”
“Well, they’re treating us all right,” I said practically, sitting down on a mound of cushions. “A private suite that looks swankier than the Astor. Got a cigarette? I’m out.”
Glenn extended a crumpled pack. “Hope they have tobacco here. Where are we, anyway? Did they say?”
“No—at least, I don’t remember enough Erse to get all Aedis said. We’re in a place called Dyan, I gathered, and Lar went off to the main city—Lleu-Dyan.”
“How come they speak Erse?”
“I don’t know.” Smoke trickled slowly between my lips. “We may be anywhere in time or space. I’ll find out—give me a chance to talk to Aedis.”
“You can have her,” Glenn said, nervously tugging at his chin. “I don’t like this place or the people in it. The sooner we get out, the better.”
“If we can get out.”
“Maybe Aedis will tell you how. God, I’m sleepy. That drink was doped.”
It might have been, but I doubted it. We were still fagged out. It wasn’t long before we were asleep. . . .
I was aroused by a light hand on my brow. I looked up to see Aedis kneeling beside me. She held a finger to her lips, nodded toward Glenn, and beckoned me to the door. I got up quietly, conscious of a queer, heightening excitement.
She led me up a stairway to the roof of a tower, where cushions were heaped. A gray-skinned being like a man stood there waiting. Aedis spoke a word or two, and the creature hurried off.
“Your companion sleeps,” she said, relaxing on the cushions. “That is well. He need not intrude. Sit beside me, and we will talk. Of my world and yours, and certain mysteries that should be made clear to you.”
Beneath us the rolling, forested country stretched away into misty horizons. In one direction great cliffs towered; I could make out the gulf, and a thin band that was the bridge spanning it.
“First, Sean O’Mara, first we must drink together. Here is the Ghar with wine.”
The gray-skinned being had returned, bearing an ewer and cups. He poured honey-colored liquor. I felt my spine crawl as I looked at him—it.
“The Ghar? What manner of creature is this—Ghar?”
Aedis sipped the wine, leaning back amid the cushions. Her unbound hair lay like clouds of midnight about her.
“A slave, a servant. They were made.”
“Made?”
“Aye. For a long time we have known how to mold living flesh to our needs. The—the basic stuff of flesh—”
“Protoplasm?” Aedis did not know the word. I tried to explain.
“Yes, that is it. We shape the flesh as it grows. We know the mysteries of life—and have known them since the days of Lleu-Atlan.”
“Where was that? And When?”
She shrugged. “Oh, very long ago. It is written in the records. Our forefathers came from Lleu-Atlan, in your own world. It was an island continent in a sea—”
Atlantis, I thought. The Hesperides, the Isles of the Blessed, far westward from the Irish cliffs. Atlantis!
“It was long ago—that I know. But we ruled then. We were very great and very wise. You see—” She hesitated. “I do not know if I can explain this—but there are two kinds of men. The Dojin—who are only a little better than the Ghar—and the people of my race, like Lar. Your companion is a Dojin.”
Resentment stirred within me. “Glenn probably has a better mind than I have.” Aedis laughed at that, very sweetly. “He is Dojin. And so were all the men of Earth, once on a time. Then there were mutations. Yes. A new race sprang into being. Giants—but sleeping giants.”
