by C. L. Moore
And then suddenly, terrifyingly, Alan knew what it was she could see. There was a mysterious kinship indeed between her and the Alien. He could see nothing, but he felt invisible pressure about them all. A presence, intangible as the wind, filling the moonlit dark as it had filled the Tunisian valley by the ship. Something that watched from the great black heights—watched, but with no human eyes.
Karen said, "She's not afraid any more. Notice that?"
Alan looked down. The girl was not searching the haunted heights of the citadel any more; she was searching Alan's face instead, and all the terror had vanished from those exquisitely frail features. It was as if that alien being of the dark had breathed a word to her, and all terror had vanished. Something, somehow, connected her with this monstrous citadel and the Alien.
"Ye feel it, too, eh?" Sir Colin's voice was a burring hush, his accent strong.
"Feel what?"
"Danger, laddie. Danger. This isn't our own time. Human motives are certain to have altered—perhaps a great deal. The two and two of the human equation don't equal four any more. And—" He hesitated. "We no longer have any gauge to know what's human and what is not."
Mike Smith was staring coldly at the girl. "She's human enough to eat food, anyway. It's our job to find out what and where she gets it."
It was curious, thought Alan, that the girl who so certainly shared an indefinable affinity with the Alien did not make them shudder, too.
Now, she laid two hands like exquisite carvings in ivory upon Alan's chest, and gently pushed herself free. He let her go half doubtfully, but she did not move more than a pace or two away, then stood waiting, a luminous query in her eyes.
On an impulse Alan tapped his chest and pronounced his own name clearly, in the immemorial pantomime of the stranger laying a foundation for common speech. The girl's face lighted up as if a lamp had been lit to glow through the delicate flesh. Alan was to learn very well that extravagant glow of interest when something touched a responding facet of her mind.
"A-lahn?" She imitated the gesture. "Evaya," she said, her voice like a tinkling silver bell.
Mike Smith said impatiently. "Tell her we're hungry." The girl glanced at him uneasily, and when Sir Colin muttered agreement she stepped back a pace, her gossamer robe wavering up about her. Alan was the only man there she did not seem to fear a little.
With surprising lack of success, he tried to show her by gestures that they wanted food. Later, he would learn why food and drink meant so little to this strange dweller in a dying world. Now, he was merely puzzled. Finally, at random, he pointed away across the plain. She must have come from somewhere ... There was no response on Evaya's face. He tried again, until a glow of understanding lighted suddenly behind her delicate features, and she nodded, the pale hair lifting to her motion.
"Carcasilla," she said, in that thin, trilling voice.
"Which means exactly nothing," Karen remarked.
Evaya gave her a glance of dislike. She had been almost pointedly ignoring the warm, bronze beauty of the other girl.
Sir Colin shook his head.
"Maybe the place she came from."
"Not the citadel?"
"I think not. She was going toward it when we saw her, remember."
"Why?"
The Scotsman rubbed his beard. "I don't know that, of course. I don't like it. Superficially, this girl seems harmless enough. But I have a strong feeling the citadel is not. And she seems to—to share a sort of affinity with it. See?"
Evaya's eyes had followed the lifted gaze of the others, but she seemed to feel none of their aversion to the monstrous structure. Her eyes held awe—perhaps worship. But Alan sensed, for a brief, shuddering second, a feeling of unseen eyes watching coldly.
Perhaps Karen sensed it, too. "Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here."
With careful sign-language, Alan tried to tell Evaya what they wanted. She still hesitated, looking up at the unresponding heights. But presently she turned away and beckoned to Alan, setting off in the direction from which she had come. By her look she did not greatly care if the others followed or not.
"Fair enough," Sir Colin muttered, swinging into step beside Alan.
-
THEY plodded on again in the pale moonlight of this empty world, through monotonous waist-high mists. The dead lands around them slid by unchanging. Once they heard, far away, the faint thunder they had noticed before, and the ground trembled slightly underfoot. Evaya ignored it.
Alan was growing tired. A faint throbbing in one arm had begun to annoy him, and glancing down, he realized with an almost vertiginous sense of time-lapse that the graze of a Nazi bullet still traced its unhealed furrow across his forearm. Nazis and bullets were dust on the face of the forgetful planet, but in the stasis of the ship even that wound had remained fresh, unchanging.
Sir Colin's deep voice interrupted the thought. "This girl," the Scotchman said. "She's no savage, Drake. You've noticed that? Obviously she's the product of some highly developed culture. Almost a forced culture. Unnaturally perfect."
"Unnaturally?"
"She's too fragile. It's abnormal. I think her environment must be completely shielded from any sort of danger. It may be—"
"Carcasilla!" cried Evaya's ringing silver voice. "Carcasilla!" And she pointed ahead.
Alan saw that what he had taken for some time past to be the reflection of moonlight on a polished rock was no reflection at all. A glowing disc, twenty feet high, slanted along the slope of a low hillock a little way ahead.
A disc? It was moonlight, or the moon itself, tropic-large, glowing with a lambent yellow radiance in the dust, like an immense flat jewel.
Evaya walked lightly to the softly shining moon, stood silhouetted against it, waiting for the rest to follow her. And as she stood there in bold outline, the mist of her garments only a shadow around her, Alan realized suddenly that fragile though she might be, Evaya was no child. He knew a moment of curious jealousy as the smooth long limbs of an Artemis stood black against the moon-disc before them all, round and delicate with more than human perfection. All her lines were the lovely ones of the huntress goddess, and the moon behind her should have been crescent, not full.
Evaya stepped straight into the shining moon and vanished.
"A door!" Alan's voice was strained.
"Do you think we'd better follow?" Karen asked in an undertone. "I don't quite trust that girl."
Mike laughed, his strong white teeth showing. "I'm hungry and thirsty. Also—" He slapped his holster, and stepped forward confidently, pressing against the shining portal. And—it did not yield.
He turned back a face of frowning bewilderment. "It's solid, Sir Colin—"
Alan and the Scotsman followed Karen to the threshold. The barrier seemed intangible, yet their hands slid along the disc of light as though it were glass. Alan thought briefly that the thing was like the substance of the citadel—materialized light, as that had been solid darkness. Had the same hands created them both?
"The girl went through it easily enough." Sir Colin was gnawing his lip, scowling. "Curious. It may be a barrier to keep out enemies—but why did she lead us here, if she meant to lock us out?"
"Maybe she didn't know we couldn't follow," Alan said, and—before anyone could answer, Evaya stepped back through the barrier. Her eyes searched them, puzzled. She beckoned. Alan pointed to the shining wall; then, despairing of explanations, pressed himself futilely against the strange barricade. Understanding lighted magically, as always, behind Evaya's ivory face. She nodded at them confidently, and slipped like a shadow into the moon-disc.
"It's no barrier to her, obviously," Sir Colin grunted. "Remember what I said—that she may not be quite human, as we know the word?"
"She's human enough to understand what's wrong," Alan snapped, curiously on the defensive for Evaya's sake. "She won't—"
He paused, startled. A sound had come out of the darkness behind them. A sound? No ... A call in the brai
n, echoing from the desert they had crossed. All of them heard it; all of them turned to stare back the way they had come. It was utterly silent there, the starlight shining on low mists, dimmer now that the moon was gone. Nothing moved.
And yet there was—something—out there. Something that summoned.
Alan knew the feeling. It was coming—coming across the plain on their tracks, coming like a dark cloud he could sense without seeing. The Presence of the Tunisian valley, of the space ship, of the citadel. Each time nearer, stronger ... this time—demanding. He could sense it sweeping forward over the dust of their tracks like some monstrous, shapeless beast snuffing at their footsteps, nearing, nearing ...
And it summoned. Something deep within Alan drew him out, away from the others. But revulsion held him motionless. His brain seemed to move inside his skull at the urge of that unseen Presence coming through the darkness. The cold starlight revealed nothing. He heard Sir Colin breathing hard, heard Mike curse. A figure moved past him—Karen. He caught her arm.
"No! Don't—"
She turned a white, drained face toward him.
Rainbow light sprang out from behind them. It glowed cloudily across the plain, their shadows standing long and dark across it. But it showed nothing more.
"The door—she's opened it," Mike said in a harsh, choked voice. "Come on, for God's sake!"
-
ALAN turned, pulling Karen with him. It was like turning one's back on darkness where devils lurked. His spine crawled with the certainty of something deadly coming swiftly nearer. The great moon-disc was no longer flat now, as he faced it, but the open end of a long and glowing corridor of light. Sir Colin lurched through after Mike; then Alan and Karen stumbled in. Alan looked back just as the golden veil of the doorway swept down to blot out the desert. In that instant he thought he saw something vague and shadowy moving forward through the mist. Like a stalking beast along their tracks in the dust. Something dark in the moving fog-wreaths ...
Alan put out his hand to touch the golden veil, and found the same glass-smooth barrier that had barred them from entering, stretched now across the doorway they had just passed.
Karen said shakily, "Do you think it can get in?"
Sir Colin, his voice unsteady, but his scientist's brain keen in spite of it, said in the thick Scots of emotional strain, "I—I dinna think so, lassie. Else it wouldna ha' tried so hard to—to capture us before we passed the barrier."
Mike Smith's laugh was harsh. "Capture us? What gives you that idea?"
Alan said nothing. His eyes were impassive slits under the full lids, his mouth tight. There was no use in pretending any more about one thing—the Presence was no figment of remembered dreams. It was real enough to be deadly, and it had followed them, with what unimaginable purpose he could only guess. But not, he thought—capture. Mike's primitive instinct was right. Mike knew death when it came snuffing at his heels.
"A-lahn?" It was Evaya's voice, beyond them. Alan looked over Mike's shoulder and saw the girl's exquisite gossamer-veiled figure in the full light of the strange golden corridor. But she was not looking at them now. Her eyes were on the closed barrier through which they had come, and her face was the face of one listening. For one quite horrible moment Alan guessed that the dark thing which had swept along their tracks in the desert was calling her through the barrier of solid light. Undoubtedly there had been some evanescent communion between her and the Presence at the citadel; was it speaking again here?
She was lovelier than ever, here in the full golden light, more flawlessly perfect, with the exquisite, inhuman perfection of a flower or a figurine. She had a flower's coloring, rose and ivory white, with deep violet eyes. Here in the light her hair was a pale shade between gold and silver, and with a curious sort of iridescence when she turned her head.
She was turning it now, as if some faint call had reached her through the closed door. But it must have been very faint, because she shrugged a little and smiled up at Alan, pointing along the corridor ahead.
"Carcasilla," she said, with pride in her voice. "Carcasilla—vyenne!"
The great golden passage swept up before them in a glowing arc whose farther end they could not see. Evaya gestured again and started up that glowing, iridescent incline.
As they advanced along the curved floor of the tunnel, Alan realized that this corridor had never been designed for human feet to travel. It was a tube, its curved floor smooth and unworn by passing feet. And its upward slant grew steeper. Human builders would have put steps here, or a ramp. Now they were clinging to the floor and walls with flattened palms, slipping between paces.
Even for Evaya, progress was difficult. She smiled back now and then when her own sure feet slipped a little on the steeply climbing, hollowed floor.
Alan had been keeping a wary lookout behind them as they slipped and stumbled along the tube. But no darkness was following, no voiceless summons echoed in his brain. The Presence, the Alien—whatever it had been—must temporarily at least have been stopped by the moon-disc of solid light which had dropped behind them.
After what seemed to Alan a long time, the tube abruptly leveled, and Evaya stepped aside, smiling. "Carcasilla!" she said proudly.
They stepped out of the tube upon a platform that jutted from the face of a cliff. At their feet, a ramp ran steeply down; to left and right the platform circled out around the rock walls in a spiderweb gallery, as far as Alan could see. It was a curious gallery with a tilted rail around it. Automatically the four from the world's youth moved forward to lean upon the rail and look.
Before them lay the blue-lit vista of a vast cavern. And in the cavern—a city.
Such a city as mankind had never visualized even in dreams. It was like—yes, like Evaya herself, delicate and fragile as some artifice, with a beauty heartbreaking in its sheer perfection. It was not a city as mankind understands them. It was a garden in stone and crystal; it was a dream in three dimensions—it was anything but a city built by man.
And it was—silent.
The whole cavern was one vast violet dream where no gravity prevailed, no rain ever fell, no sun shone, no winds blew. Someone's dream had crystallized into glass and marble bubbles and great loops of avenues hanging upon empty air to fill the blue hollow of the cavern. But it had been no human dream.
Following the others down the ramp reluctantly, Alan saw a further confirmation of that suspicion. For the balcony rail was pitched at a strange angle, and set at an awkward height from the floor, yet obviously it was meant to lean upon. The gallery, like the tube that led to it, had not been designed for any human creature. Something else had dreamed the dream of Carcasilla; something else had planned and built it; something else had set this gallery around the cavern so that it might lean its unimaginable body against it and brood over the beauty of its handiwork.
-
THEY stood at the edge of a swimming abyss. Here, there were no floating islands of buildings overhead, no roofs below. Only the mirrored pavement. But springing out from the foot of the ramp, there climbed a long, easy spiral of ascending steps, down which pale water seemed to flow, breaking in a series of scalloping ripples at their feet, and fading into the blue-green pavement they had been walking. Obviously it could not be water, but the illusion was so perfect they drew back from the lapping ripples instinctively.
All Carcasilla defied gravity, but this was the most outrageous defiance they had yet seen. The broad, graceful curve of the waterfalling steps swept out and around over sheer space, unsupported, made four diminishing turns and ended at the base of a floating tower which apparently had no other support than the coil of flying steps.
And the tower was a tower of water. Its vague, slim, gothic outlines were veiled in pale torrents that fell as straight as rain down over the hidden walls and went gushing away along the steps. The place looked aloof and withdrawn from the rest of the brightly blooming buildings.
Evaya set her foot upon the first step, and smiled back across h
er shoulder, nodding toward the raining tower above. "Flande," she said.
Dubiously, they followed her up the spiral, at first watching their feet incredulously as they found themselves walking dryshod upon the waterfall whose torrent slid away untouched beneath their soles. But when they had mounted a few steps, they found it unwise to look down. Their heads spun as they walked upon sliding water over an abyss.
The tower of rain should have roared with its falling torrents. But there was no sound as the illusory water swept downward before them, near enough to touch. And no door opened anywhere.
While the four newcomers stood gaping up, for the moment too engrossed to speak, Evaya stepped forward confidently and laid her exquisite small hands flat against the rain. They should have vanished to the delicate wrists, with water foaming around them. But the illusion evidently dwelt beneath the surface of the tower, for the rain slipped away unhindered beneath her palms.
Unhindered? After a moment the torrents began to sway apart, like curtains withdrawing. A slit was widening and widening in the wall.
"Flande ..." Evaya said, a little breathlessly.
The opening, wide now, stopped expanding. Within it were rainbow mists like sunlight caught in the spray of a waterfall. They began to dissipate, and faintly through them Alan glimpsed a face, gigantic as a god's. But it was no godly face. It was very human. And it was asleep ...
Youth was here upon these quiet features, but not a youth like Evaya's, warm and confident and glowing with inner radiance. This was a timeless youth, graven as if in marble, and as meaningless as youth upon the face of a statue a thousand years old.
As they stood silent, the closed lids rose slowly. And very old, very wise eyes looked into Alan's, coldly, as if through the clouded memories of a thousand years. The lips moved, just a trifle.
"Evaya—" said a deep, resonant, passionless voice. "Evaya—va esten da s'ero."