by Earl
Val Marmax nodded with a faint smile. “That same ill-fated land of twelve thousand years ago, Earthtime!”
CARVER tried to rationalize. He could accept offhand the one-time existence of Atlantis, though in Earth history it had always been a fable. But must he accept Val Marmax’s statement at face-value? An impulsive laugh that he couldn’t control shook him.
“You’re not twelve thousand years old,” he objected. “You mean you’re a descendant of that race.”
“No, I am an original Atlantide,” asserted the scientist. “Proxides, at the gate, is a Greek from the time of Alexander, 330 B.C. There are people in Shorraine from all times and periods, from the days of Atlantis to the present.”
“Remember, Barry,” came Tyson’s voice, “I told you people do not age in Shorraine!”
Tyson, of course, was an example himself, Carver reflected, though he hadn’t followed through the reasoning before. He had simply taken it for granted that some miraculous scientific process, like a Fountain of Youth, kept him young and would do so for a limited time. But this survival of Val Marmax, through centuries, was a different matter. It was immortality!
Carver forced himself to be calm. “Is there no such thing as death here?” he asked quietly.
“Only by violence, and occasionally by disease. Never by what is known on Earth as old-age.” The scientist went on. “Our science has conquered most disease, which is really a death by violence, through the attack of germs. Actual violent death, however, we cannot control. If that Tyrannosaurus outside the gates had caught you, one snap of his jaws would have ended your life as certainly as on Earth.”
“But old-age!” remonstrated Carver. “How do you escape that?”
“We are in a different time-world than that of Earth,” responded the Atlantide. “It is hard to explain, in terms of your orthodox modern science. In a sense, time does not pass here in Shorraine’s world. Or, rather, call it biological time. Old-age is a wearing down of the body-machine, measured by biological time. And biological time stands still here. There is no simpler explanation.”
Carver’s eyes rested on Helene. “What of your children? Good Lord, if death is so rare, how have you kept the population from choking itself by sheer pressure of numbers?”
Helene looked back at him queerly, sadly, Carver noticed and he suspected the answer. The stunning thought occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a single child, in three days!
“There are no children in Shorraine!” Val Marmax was looking at the floor now. “There can be none. Birth and growth are processes dependent on biological time, again. We have no senile old dotards, ready for the grave. But neither have we children to grow up at our sides. That has been the price of immortality in Shorraine!”
Carver broke a strained, depressed silence. He sensed that Val Marmax, and perhaps all the others of Shorraine, would willingly exchange this immortality for normal life.
“The pathway back to Earth is closed, as I know,” he said. “But have you tried, with your science, to open the way?”
Infinite weariness suddenly came over the Atlantide’s face.
“I have tried, and many others, for these thousands of years. It seemed impossible. The Spot can be simply negotiated, from Earth to Shorraine. But the return is barred as though Earth were in the remotest galaxy. And therein lies the whole story of Shorraine.”
HE settled himself back. His eyes faded as though he were plumbing the depths of time with his vision.
“The world of Shorr—which in our tongue means ‘mirage’—lies in a different universe than that of Earth. There are different stars and different dimensions. The two do not conflict, though they lie wrapped in one another. They are in different time-sectors. And as your Einstein has shown, partly, two things can exist in the same space, at separate times.”
He waved a hand of dismissal. “Having studied the problem for so long, I could show you the formulae.
But they are too involved for ordinary discussion.”
Carver nodded. “Skip it,” he said. He realised that the riddle of Shorraine was something Earth science s rigid dogmatism hadn’t made allowance for.
The Atlantide resumed.
“Shorr, however, does have contact with Earth, at the Spot. To give an analogy. it is something like a two-dimensional flat world touching a three-dimensional globe. They would contact at one point. Thus, since time began, there has been this path from Earth to this world—one-way.
“As a result, creatures of Earth blundered through the Spot, into this dimension. All other conditions, save time, being strangely alike, they lived. In the dim past, millions of years ago, the great reptiles came through, during their era of predominance. The Sahara, in those remote times, was not a desert, but a rich, prolific hotbed of life, and by the laws of numbers alone, though the Spot is so small, many dinosaurs entered. In my idler moments I have soared over the dark lands and catalogued Triceratops, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Trachodon, etc. They, too, were unable to die of age, but their numbers have been depleted by their mutual depredations. The Tyrannosaurus you saw is the only one I’ve known of in fifty years. He may well be the last of his species in Shorr.”
Carver heaved a sigh. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. And in a less crazy pattern than had at first seemed possible.
“Eventually,” continued Val Marmax, “man came on the scene. Perhaps, through a period of fifty thousand years, all the sub-species of near-man wandered in. Before the dawn of true man, the Neanderthalers particularly entered the Spot. Terrified, bewildered by the new world, they did not venture far from the Spot, and established a cave community exactly on the site of later Shorraine. They managed to eke out a living by hunting.
“We found them here when we came—we of Atlantis.”
The scientist’s voice became tense, vibrant.
“Fifteen thousand years ago Atlantis and Mu achieved a cultured, scientific civilization that lasted for three thousand years. Then came catastrophe, as your fables relate. The seas rose, the lands split, and the fires of the underneath erupted. Atlantis and Mu were doomed—”
Something of the terror and agony of that long ago disaster shone from the speaker’s eyes. Carver felt sympathy.
“Some of the scientists of Atlantis knew of the Spot, knew that it led to a livable world, as they could faintly see in ‘mirages.’ While there was yet time, we gathered as many of our people as we could, led them into Shorr. Better a chance for survival in an unknown world than certain death on torn, twisted Earth. Some few of Mu, from half way around the world, were also saved. Queen Elsha—was queen of that great land in the Pacific.”
CARVER started a little, thinking of his visit with Queen Elsha and her strange conversation.
Val Marmax sighed.
“Thus we began life anew. With our science, we founded the city of Shorraine—Mirage City—on the site of the Neanderthal cave-home. The few surviving Neanderthalers we trained as our servants. Life was not unpleasant in Shorr, but we soon longed to return. Particularly when we knew at the immortality that denied us children. Then we found—that we could not return!”
The furrows in the scientist’s brow—sharpened by twelve thousand years of life and thought—grew deep.
“Though we prided ourselves as being the masters of nature and all its mysteries, we could not solve the problem of the Spot. Life went on. In the past twelve thousand years, others have wandered into the Spot, from later times than ours. When the Egyptian empire flowered, thousands of them came to Shorraine. Later, men from all lands—Sumerians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Arabs, and the European adventurers. Not in great numbers, of course. Only by chance, sometimes only one a year. Since the days of Egypt, when the Sahara became a death-trap, only doomed men whose half-maddened minds saw the mirage of Shorraine as possible rescue, have stumbled in, as with yourself.”
“Are all the mirages of the Sahara,” asked Carver curiously, “caused by Shorraine?”
&nbs
p; Val Marmax nodded. “All mirages, so-called, are reflections of our city, from different angles. Or views of the rest of Shorr. Earth eyes have dressed them with many fanciful details, but they would have noticed, by comparison, that it was one and the same general scene each time.”
“And that,” mused Carver, “explains one of the oldest of historical phenomena.”
He looked at the Atlantide’s studied face. It was hard to believe that this man had lived three hundred lifetimes. That the city was filled with other people whose lives had gone past the Biblical three-score and ten.
Carver was suddenly appalled. “Plow have you filled the time?” he whispered. “All those centuries and centuries—”
“We have managed to occupy ourselves.” smiled Val Marmax. His smile was mirthless. “The repairs and running of our machinery, beautifying our city, and the pursuit of hobbies. Earth history has particularly absorbed us, collectively. Each new visitant to Shorraine, when he had become settled in the new life, was set to work writing down all he knew of his times. We have written records that would be priceless to Earth—detailed accounts of early history lost to your times. Another popular avocation has been to learn different languages. Almost every person in Shorraine can speak fluently in dozens of languages. It takes time—but Ishtu knows, we have enough of that.”
Carver saw now, though he had taken it for granted before, why everyone is Shorraine seemed to know English thoroughly. They had studied it over the radio, as they had studied all other modern languages. They had probably spoken it longer than Carver himself! Like that Greek, Proxides, who had been born a thousand years before the rudiments of the modern English language had been set down! Everything in Shorraine was topsy-turvy. It was all queer, queer!
“I suppose it’s been interesting in a way,” remarked Carver. “Living on and on, learning many more things than normal humans ever have a chance to. But which would you rather have—this life or life on Earth?”
THE visage of Val Marmax suddenly unmasked itself as an incredibly old, senile, wearied face behind its ageless lines.
“Earth!” he said instantly, his eyes glowing. “We would welcome release from this deathless prison. I have lived twelve thousand years in Shorraine. I would exchange it for 12 years of Earth life. Life is a meaningless Purgatory here. Immortality is ashes. Twelve years back on Earth would be fuller, richer, grander—” He stopped, helpless to express himself. “You will find out, Barry Carver, when you have watched the slow years parade by endlessly, endlessly—”
“I don’t intend to find out,” said Carver rebelliously. “There must be a way out of the Spot.”
Val Marmax’s sigh came from his soul.
“I have chanted those same words for twelve thousand years,” he said. He became suddenly fierce, scornful. “For twelve thousand years I’ve tried—and my science has failed. And you say childishly it can be achieved, as though it were a tent-flap one could toss aside!”
Carver took the rebuke in silence. Beside him, Tom Tyson stirred. “If there only were a way!” he murmured. “I’ve only been here twenty-four years. But I’d take a day on Earth for another twenty-four. Even an hour, in a dogfight against enemy planes, knowing I couldn’t escape them!”
The war! Carver had almost forgotten about it. He jumped up and began pacing. “It’s all so ironic!” he complained in a mutter. “You people would gladly go back to Earth, and Earth could use your great science. Your atomic-energy process, wireless power transmission, chemical food, robot machinery. And your marvellous antigravity ships and beam-weapon, in the war! If we had your help, we would win!”
Val Marmax nodded. “I have thought of that myself. I have followed your war, by radio reports. What puny guns and methods you have! I could rout an army with ten of my ships!”
Carver whirled.
“Suppose the Spot were open!” he demanded. “And you could go out. You would have to choose a side. Which side?” He almost held his breath, waiting for an answer.
“That would be up to the Council,” returned the Atlantide non-commitally. “Five of my fellow Atlantides rule Shorraine, but they would call a Council for a decision. The Council would consist of one member from each kind of race, time and nation. The Five have ruled wisely that way, through the voice of the people.”
“Democracy!” cried Carver happily. “You have it here yourself. They would vote to help the Allied Democracies!”
“Perhaps so.” Val Marmax’s eyes were dull. “But foolish talk. It will never come to pass. Are you still thinking of conquering the Spot, Barry Carver, when I have failed in twelve thousand years?”
Carver felt the crushing force of that statement. His eager thought of Shorraine’s help in the war evaporated, leaving bitterness. He felt Helene’s eyes on him and looked at her. She had hope! She seemed to be telling him she believed in him, believed he could do something, against all reason.
Carver’s pulses stirred. He faced the Atlantide.
“Just what is the Spot?” he asked. “Why is it so impregnable?”
VAL MARMAX spoke dejectedly.
“It’s a time-warp, in brief. Passing through from the Earth side, all electrons within the countless atoms reverse their spin, which throws them into the new time dimension. But to force the electrons back to their original motion, seems impossible. It involves attaining a high potential. I have tried the titanic powers of atomic-energy, without avail. It is an irreversible equation, apparently, of time—”
“Magnetism!” interjected Carver, thoughtfully.
“What?” asked the Atlantide.
“It must be a magnetic phenomena,” Carver related his experiment with the compass, when passing through the Spot.
“Magnetism—compass? What are those?” Val Marmax looked puzzled.
Carver stared, his thoughts whirling. Could it be possible that this master scientist knew nothing of magnetism?
“How do you generate electricity?” he demanded.
“By conversion of disrupted atoms into pure energy.”
“You don’t use a generator—an armature, copper wire, magnetic field?”
The Atlantide shook his head, still puzzled.
“Good God!” exploded Carver. A blinding light seared his mind. “Too much science, that’s your trouble!” he hissed. “You’ve been playing around with your anti-gravity, atomic-energy and what-not, without realizing there are such simple things as magnetic fields, rotating coils, and plain ordinary two-plus-two! I’ll bet the key to the Spot is so simple, you’ll cry like a baby when you find it!”
Val Marmax rose in red-faced anger, glaring at the younger man. For a moment he stood thus, haughty, proud, wrathful, in a pose that might have been a picture of a long-distant past, when he and his fellows were lords of civilization. But suddenly he relaxed.
“This magnetism,” he asked. “What is it?”
Barry Carver launched into an explanation, and halting though it was, he knew he had put the idea across. An utterly dumbfounded look had frozen on the Atlantide’s face.
“Ishtu!” he gasped. “That’s it! The vital clue. At my fingertips all the time. If the polarity is reversed, the electrons must spin the other way—”
Radiant with hope, the four looked at one another.
Then suddenly, Carver felt a queer sensation. Something dark and shadowy seemed to be in the room. It hovered over him and darted down suddenly. He felt strangely light-headed, and something was prodding in his mind, like a mental gimlet. It burned, agonizingly, as though his brain were on fire.
Instinctively, he brushed at the shadowy thing around his head, trying to knock it away. His hand felt nothing save a tingling—and the burning, torturing, probing feeling continued.
The other three had been staring at him, frightened.
“Don’t think!” barked Val Marmax. “Make your mind a blank. Carver, you’re in danger—think of nothing, nothing—”
While he spoke, he ran toward the wall where a row of gleaming switch
es lay. Carver, bewildered and half-panicky, tried to obey, tried to make his mind a blank. He pictured sheep jumping over a fence. One sheep—two sheep—three sheep—He noticed the burning in his brain lessening.
And then suddenly it vanished altogether. He was free. Val Marmax had thrown a switch, followed by a deep humming sound that seemed to fill the room with an intangible force. The black shadow rose to the roof, and vanished, with a soundless scream.
HELENE was in Carver’s arms, then, clinging to him wordlessly. He looked down in her face and saw horror. There was something else in Shorraine, or Shorr, than these other mysteries. He disengaged her gently.
“What was it?” he asked, frowning at the dull ache that remained in his head.
“The demon-people!” Helene murmured.
The demon-people—the city beyond Shorraine—vague snatches of things he had heard failed to dove-tail in Carver’s mind. He looked quizzically at the scientist.
“I haven’t told you the full story of Shorr,” confessed Val Marmax. “Shorr, of course, is a separate world from Earth. It has its own—creatures. We of Shorraine are outlanders, invaders, in that sense. The higher life-forms have achieved civilization—of a sort. Their largest city is just fifty miles away.”
“What are they like?” Carver queried.
He saw the quick looks of loathing in their faces. “They aren’t—human in form,” answered the Atlantide. He seemed reluctant to continue the topic.
“You mean this shadow-thing was one of them?”
“No. They have definite form. But they have a strange science, tangent to ours. They are able to project astral forms. One of them, the shadow-thing, was sent here to probe your mind—to read it!”
“For what?” Carver was astonished.
Val Marmax shook his head. “I don’t know. But I suspect it was to find out what you knew of magnetism. You see, they too have a Spot, connecting with Earth! I didn’t mention it before, but Shorr and Earth impinge at two points, according to their axis of rotation. We built Shorraine around the one, but the demon-people kept control of the other.”