The Mask of Circe

by Henry Kuttner

  The voice faltered, because now that soundless wind had swept us toward a high hill towering dimly in the golden air, and upon its height the glow that was Apollo stood waiting.

  I thought I knew the hill. I had stood on it before—or Jason had.

  This was that bare height upon Aeaea where the veil between two worlds hung thinly, where once before Apollo and Hecate had met in combat—and Jason fled.

  Running, I had heard Apollo’s terrible laughter ringing down the heights of the sky behind me. I heard it again, now. I looked through the heart of that golden blaze and saw Apollo’s Face.

  It was supernally beautiful. It was supernally horrible. My flesh crawled upon my bones again with the same sort of revulsion that many men feel, in infinitely less degree, in the presence of certain Earth-things—snakes or spiders—that mysteriously outrage some instinct deep within us all.

  Apollo was such an outrage. To the eye he was godlike, beautiful, superhumanly glorious. But something in the very soul rejected him. Something in my brain shuddered away from him, cried voicelessly that he should not be, should not exist or walk the same world as I or share the same life.

  Hecate’s voice took up her tale again in my mind. But I think I knew the secret of Apollo, intuitively, in my bones and nerves, even before she put it into words in my brain.

  “So we tried again,” she was saying. “In the halfgods we had failed. So we put aside living flesh and made Apollo.”

  I knew. Something in human flesh can guess when that which it confronts should not be alive. Some buried vanity, perhaps, that cries out against the aliveness of outrageously non-human things.

  Apollo was too beautiful to be human. Too terrible to wear flesh. I knew before Hecate put the thought in my mind. Apollo was a machine.

  “In our vanity we made our own destruction,” Hecate’s voice said sadly in the depths of my brain. “For our beautiful Apollo was no failure—and no success. Our desires, like our race, sprang from human roots. But this being we created shares no desires of ours. By the standards of our race and yours, he is not sane. Or perhaps it’s we who are insane—before the terrible sanity of the machine.

  “We made him too strong. And he destroyed us. There was a mighty battle long ago, a battle that raged for millennia, but in the end—you see. All of my kind are dead now except—Hecate. And Apollo walks among the ruins of our world.

  “Well, he must die. Before he slew the last of the gods—Hephaestus, our greatest artisan—the Fleece was woven for Apollo’s destruction. It can slay him. He knows that. But no god—no one of my race dares wear the Fleece. Death I do not fear—but death while Apollo lives would mean final defeat for all my people dreamed. I cannot die while our last deed lives on unchecked.

  “So you wear the Fleece, Son of Jason. You know what you must do.”

  Yes, I did know.

  I glanced once at Circe—the inhuman loveliness of that alabaster face, red-lipped, long, green-burning eyes meeting mine—and then I turned away from her toward Apollo.

  Chapter XV

  Music From the Sea

  Quickly, for one flashing instant I saw his Face again, beautiful as a machine is beautiful, cold, swayed by emotions I had no name for because until this moment I had never looked upon the emotion of a machine—a living machine that sees its doom approach.

  I went forward one step—two—and then the Face dissolved in a glare that was like looking straight into the heart of the sun itself. Apollo called down the ravening violence out of heaven to shield himself against me and I felt the terrible heat of it swallow me up in a bath of freezing flame.

  I smiled to myself. I knew that was a two-edged weapon—if I could endure the heat a moment longer. For I knew how to use the Fleece as Hephaestus meant it to be used—and Apollo the Machine was doomed before it.

  Hephaestus must have delved deep into the secrets of the electron and the sources of energy. Apollo, being machine, could be destroyed by a machine, and the Fleece was simply that. Apollo was not alive as flesh lives—he drew his life from the source of solar energy, tapping the sun itself for the tiniest fraction of its strength, which was still enough to consume cities in one breath if he chose to release a part of it upon mankind.

  But he drew upon the sun continuously. It poured its golden stream through him in a ceaseless torrent, the excess power dissipating harmlessly into the shining air of this superworld.

  The Fleece could seal all that power inside him. And not even Apollo could contain such a pouring flood for long. Hecate, I think, drew her own strength from some such source, which was why she dared not wear the Fleece against Apollo. Only a human could wear it, and live to cast it off again.

  As I cast it off.

  It quivered against my shoulders one last moment, the delicate ringlets of golden wire shivering all around me. Then I touched it and it clung obediently to my grasp as Hephaestus made it to cling so very many generations ago. This machine obeyed as Apollo the Machine could not and must die because of it.

  I stripped the Fleece from my shoulders—spun it out away from me in midair—sent it flying across the dazzling space I could not look into without blindness.

  Burning gold though the Fleece was, it looked black in that blaze. Without Hecate’s mist enfolding , us, I know we must both be vaporized into mist in that incredible crucible of fire which Apollo had called down from the sun itself for protection.

  As the super-race in its efforts had created its own doom, so Apollo the Machine created his when he called forth that terrible fire. And so, I think, does every living thing, even though it may live by grace of energy from the sun itself, like Apollo.

  The Fleece struck and clung. For an unthinkable instant the full violence of that tiny sun-fraction upon which he drew poured down into the beautiful machine that had been a god. Poured down—and built within him an unspilling pool of power.

  Apollo for that moment was a vessel that held the sun itself, and in such fire as that, nothing could endure for longer than the flash of a second.

  How can I say what happened then? How can I describe in any human tongue how it was Apollo died?

  I remember Circe’s lovely pale face close to mine for one spinning instant, the deep red lips parted on a cry I could not hear. I remember how the hill we stood on seemed to vanish from underfoot and the sky above us turn to flame.

  And then I was floundering in salt water…

  I was alone, and misty gray waves tossed me over and over, strangling, helpless. I went down twice, far down. I felt naked without the power the Fleece had poured into me, and weak as a child with the reaction from that tremendous battle.

  But just as I thought I could fight no more against the engulfing waves, I heard a whispering, bubbling rush very near me, and something lifted me up—a great wave, or perhaps inhuman hands.

  I could breathe again, and beneath me was a solid deck that rose and fell with the motion of the water.

  Music sang in my ears. I heard the creak of oars and the whine of cordage in the wind, and the slap of water against a familiar prow.

  With an almost intolerable effort I lifted myself on one arm. Ghostly in the gray mist I saw the Argonauts bending to their oars, and heard the lyre of Orpheus singing in the fog.

  I could not remember even falling back upon the deck after that. I remember nothing at all—nothing at all…

  The campfire had died hours ago. Mist was creeping down through the pines, and when Seward’s voice paused, the only sound was the soft washing of the sea.

  Talbot said softly, “And then?”

  “And then—I was lying on a beach, and it was night,” Seward said. “There were lights in the distance. Somehow I got that far before I passed out again. I was in a little town on the Oregon coast.” He shrugged. “It could have been hallucination. How I got from this spot down to Oregon overnight I can’t understand. A plane could do it, but why the devil—No, I’m not skeptical any more.
I know it wasn’t hallucination.”

  Talbot said, “Well, we’ve gone far enough into the sciences to realize how little we know. Everything that you tell about is theoretically possible, I suppose—super-race and all. All but the Argo.”

  Seward nodded. “And yet,” he said, “the odd thing is that Argo is the one thing I’m surest of. It’s more real to me than Hecate or Aeaea, or even—Cyane.”

  Talbot said gently, “Cyane?”

  Seward shook himself with an impatient motion. “It isn’t over,” he said. “Cyane—Circe—one woman or two, I don’t know. But there was a promise at the start of it all, and the promise wasn’t kept. So I can’t rest. I can’t settle down to anything in this world. I know it isn’t over yet, you see. Unless Hecate died, too.

  “Well, an adventure like that happens only once to a man. Or—if he had two lives—then perhaps twice. I don’t know. I know it wasn’t hallucination. I know I’m not insane because I remember it so clearly. And I know Hecate will fulfill her promise, some day, some day…”

  He shrugged and rose. “I’ve talked enough. It’ll be dawn soon. I’m tired.”

  Talbot lay sleepless for a long time, staring up at the stars among the pine tops and thinking. He thought of Jason and of Jay Seward, and of the origins of names and men. Argo, plowing the misty seas, warden of those waters that lap nameless shores. “Warden of the seas"—Sea-ward—Jay Seward—

  He slept.

  The faint echo of music woke him just before dawn. It was very black here among the trees. And he was alone. He felt that uncannily in the blackness as he sat up, ears straining for another echo of the distant music. It came. Talbot got up and took a step toward the echoing sound.

  It came from the water. He walked slowly down the slope, past Seward’s empty sleeping bag, listening and watching the dark for signs of another moving figure that answered, too, to distant music.

  Far ahead of him he thought he heard a splashing above the ceaseless lap of waves on the shore. It was too distant to be sure. Talbot broke into a run and this time he called:

  “Seward! Seward, where are you?”

  Only silence and the sea replied.

  He ran until the sand of the water’s edge slowed his footsteps, and the waves rolled in where he halted to stare out across the dark water. Something moved there—a dim shape, long and slender, lying upon the water like—a ship? He never knew. The fog closed in too fast, and only the sea spoke.

  Then a ripple of wordless music floated back along the wind, and Talbot shouted once more, for the last time: “Jason! Jason!”

  There was no answering cry. The shadow in the mists glided away and was itself only mist. Talbot stood silent, watching, listening for an answer that would never come. The gray fog closed down, billow upon billow, and there was nothing left but darkness and the slow, soft sound of the moving sea.

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