The House that Stood Still

by A. E. van Vogt

  As they were making love, she whispered, “Remember, all my bruises are healed. I don’t have to be handled like a crate of eggs that might break.”

  Stephens was irked. “Why don’t you play the woman’s role instead of giving orders? I’m sure you know you’re being well taken care of.”

  She was silent; then: “You are an expert,” she admitted. “You must have a lot of experience.”

  “Not so much as I would like,” said Stephens. “I’m tremendously glad you came along when you did.”

  “I hope you remain glad.”

  She spoke in such an unusual tone, her manner suddenly serious, that he thought, “She’s letting me make love to her because she needs desperately for me to stay around.” It was not a new thought, actually, but it suddenly seemed more real than it had earlier. He found himself wondering if her evaluation of him was correct. Would he have helped her if there had not been the back of his mind the memory of their first affair, and the expectation that maybe that delightful lightning would strike him again? It was pleasant to realize he didn’t have to make such a dismal choice.

  Later, she said, “Don’t get dressed. Just wear this dressing gown.”

  She herself slipped into a light blue negligee that revealed more of her figure than it concealed. Back at the bar, as she poured a dark brown drink into two glasses, she said, “You mean to tell me that no other woman in Almirante has discovered you—that I’ve got you all to myself?”

  That wasn’t quite true, but it was true as of this moment. There had been a married woman who had left her husband and children, when she discovered that her husband had an occasional mistress. She became Stephens’ love affair shortly after he moved to Almirante. She was very secretive about their relationship, and, while they made love, talked incessantly of her family. Two weeks before Christmas, she told Stephens tearfully that her husband wanted her back, and that she could no longer stand being away from the children. Precipitantly, she ran home. He had the feeling that she had not once during the months of their relationship been really aware of him as a lover.

  Stephens said, “No other woman in Almirante has made this discovery.” He felt certain he could make that statement honestly.

  Mistra picked up one of the two glasses, and set it in front of him.

  “Try this,” she said. “You’ve probably never tasted it before.”

  Stephens sat down on a stool and examined the drink cautiously. It looked like badly discolored water.

  “What is it?”

  “Try it.”

  It was as if he had put a lighted match to his mouth. The fire ran down his throat, and he could feel it burning in his esophagus. He set the glass down, gasping. He felt as if his head were smoking. Tears started from his eyes.

  He sat there, ashamed of himself. Allison Stephens, who had gulped his share of liquor, nearly knocked out by one drink. He blinked the wetness from his eyes, and saw that the girl was sipping her drink, and watching him with amusement.

  ‘’Don’t give up,” she said, encouragingly. “The taste is like classical music. It wears better.” She smiled. “Better than any other liquor, I mean.”

  Stephens took another drink. The fiery effect was still there, undiminished. But this time he did not choke or cry. When it was down, he looked at the young woman.

  “I repeat,” he said, “what is it?”

  “Octli.”

  Stephens must have looked blank.

  “An old Mayan drink,” Mistra explained. ‘This, of course, is a special version of my own.”

  The reference to Mayan took Stephens’ mind back to the books she had in her library. He took another drink, felt blurred again, and then said slowly, “What’s all this about? Who are these people who were whipping you?”

  “Oh—” She shrugged. “Members of a club.”

  “What kind of a club?”

  “The most exclusive club in the world,” she said, and laughed softly.

  “What are the requirements?” Stephens was persistent, though he already had the feeling that she was making fun of him.

  “You have to be immortal,” said Mistra. She laughed again. Her eyes gleamed with a green brightness. Her face was alive and warm with life and excitement.

  Stephens scowled. It was evident he would not get a satisfactory answer from her without himself coming more into the open. “Look,” he said flatly, “What about those books in there? What is the secret of the Grand House?”

  For a long time Mistra gazed at him steadily. Her color was a little high, and her eyes abnormally bright. At last she said: “I thought I heard you in the library. Just how much did you read?”

  “Nothing, just now.” Stephens told her about the books he had taken from Tezlacodanal’s apartment. She nodded, a thoughtful expression in her eyes, then:

  “Those pages,” she said, “were missing from my copies also, when I got them.”

  “And the crossed out words?”

  She nodded. They drank in silence for a minute, while Stephens had the impression she intended to say more. She did.

  “I happen,” she said, “to know the names that were blacked out. They are all names that were taken by our little—” She laughed and looked at him questioningly, then finished—“cult.”

  Stephens nodded slowly. He was finding it hard to think. “So that’s it,” he said finally. His voice sounded thick.

  “That’s it.”

  He saw that she was refilling his glass. He watched her with an owlish intensity until she finished, then took a drink.

  “What the hell,” he said vaguely, “is the matter with California? Nutty cults everywhere you look.” Anger surged through him. “This so-called early Mexican civilization,” he said. “If ever there was a people that lost its soul, they were it.”

  Her eyes, watching him, were as bright as jewels. Her face, however, seemed blurred, as if it were a little out of focus. Stephens went on grimly:

  “Of all the bloodthirsty civilizations, the ancient Mexicans really took the cake. Towards the end, more than fifty thousand religious human sacrifices a year were offered to as filthy a crew of gods and goddesses as ever were spawned by the imagination of ignorant men. Bloody devils! Loathsome, diseased minds! Scum of the earth.”

  He saw that his second glass was finished. He climbed unsteadily to his feet, hanging onto the bar. He said: “Let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about you. And no more drinks, please. If I take another sip, I’ll be drunk.”

  He walked towards her, and took her in his arms. She offered no resistance to his kiss, and after a moment she actually responded. They stood embraced, kissing, for nearly a minute. Then he released her and stepped back. He said in a shaky voice:

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

  He saw that she was watching him again, expectantly. It seemed to be an invitation. Once more, the embrace was long, and her response all that he could ask for.

  But when he stepped away, he staggered, and the room spun. Stephens steadied himself with one hand on the bar, and said accusingly, “I’m drunk!”

  “The word is doped,” she said.

  Somehow, he was in the center of the room, swaying, peering at her through the strange dimness that was closing in around him.

  “I’ve drugged you,” Mistra said. . Stephens took an awkward step toward her—and saw the floor coming up to meet him. Crash! The shock of the fall momentarily sobered him.

  “But why? What’s—”

  That was not the last thing he remembered; but it was the last thing he remembered with any clearness.

  VIII

  Stephens woke up with sunlight in his eyes. He lay for a long moment staring foggily at the ceiling of a strange room, and then abruptly he realized where he was. He climbed out of bed, and hesitated, remembering. Slowly, he relaxed. He was alive. Whatever her reason for drugging him, it was not dangerous.

  His clothes were lying on a chair. He dressed hurriedly, and then pe
ered out of the door of his bedroom. As he had already recalled, there was another bedroom a few yards along the corridor. He tiptoed to it, found the door open, and looked in.

  He stood for several seconds staring in at the unawakened Mistra. Her face in repose was amazingly youthful. Under other circumstances, he might have decided that she was younger than he had originally believed. At least five or six years younger. Twenty-four rather than thirty.

  But there was a memory in him that she had been restless during the long night and that he had heard her plainly. He couldn’t recall whether he had been in the room with her, or in the adjoining room. But several times she had cried out, and many times she had talked of the Grand House.

  Most of what she had said had been confused. But, some of it he remembered vividly.

  It must have burned into his mind as fiercely as the octli had seared his throat. He felt shaken by the recollection, and he was about to back away out of sight when he grew aware that her eyes had opened and that she was watching him.

  Watching him. Stephens retreated a little, automatically. Her eyes were changed, sunken, bright. He remembered the strange, gleaming light in them just before he had become too sleepy to remember anything. This was the same.

  Suddenly, he knew her age was more than 25, more than 30. He remembered her mention of immortality. “The house that is old,” she had said in the dark of the night, in a tense excitement as if hidden layers of her life had unfolded with surging violence and shown her a deadly vision. “The house that is old, old.”

  Standing there, Stephens realized finally and beyond doubt the secret of the Grand House.

  And felt a chill like death, as he saw that she knew he knew. Her lips were parted now. She half rose in the bed, as if to get closer to him. The covers seemed to melt from around her body. Her eyes were pools of flame in the light of the sun pouring through the window. The muscles of her face looked as hard as the stone features of a sculptor’s eidolon, and her body was briefly unbeautiful, so tense it was, so completely rigid.

  All in one instant her fierce reaction ended. Her body grew visibly lax. She sank into the bed. She smiled, and said lazily: “What’s this! Going to sneak out on me?”

  The spell was broken. Stephens seemed to rise up from a great depth of fantastical imaginings to a consciousness that he was embarrassed. This young woman was too naturalistic for him.

  “No,” he said. “I’m going to shave.”

  It was important now to Stephens to get away from her. There was reality in shaving.

  “You’ll find shaving equipment,” said Mistra, “in the main bathroom down the hall.”

  In the middle of shaving he remembered suddenly: “Why, this is Christmas Day.”

  But the thought could not hold his interest long. His mind slipped back to Mistra. There was no sound now from her. The whole apartment was quiet, except for his own breathing. In that silence, the thoughts began once more to assume proportions.

  He wondered if such an idea, once it got into a man’s mind, could ever be forced out again. He finished dressing, and headed for the library.

  “What I need,” he thought, “is to read those books through.”

  The History of the Grand House was not in its proper place on the shelf. It was, he discovered after a quick search, not on any of the shelves. Also missing were The Beginnings of Almirante and Tanequila the Bold.

  Stephens stepped back, astounded. It seemed incredible that she would have hidden the books. He was still standing there when he heard her shower go on.

  Mistra was up.

  Stephens walked through the living room and along the hallway that led to her bedroom. Sunlight was pouring through all the east and south windows, and in that brightness the thought mists that had derived from the night could not maintain themselves. He began to feel foolish. The fantasy of immortality faded. But at the same time there were things he wanted to know.

  The bedroom door was open. Stephens knocked, loud enough to soothe his conscience but not loud enough for Mistra to hear above the noise of the running water. Inside, the sound of the shower was thunderous, and he saw that the bathroom door was also open. A mist of steam poured lazily from it.

  The rustling of the water ended. There followed a padding of bare feet. Then a pause. Then Mistra, enwrapped in a voluminous robe, whistling softly under her breath, came out of the bathroom. She looked at him with thoughtful, blinking eyes, but she said nothing. She seated herself before a massive vanity, and began to fix her hair.

  Stephens waited. The eerie feeling that he had experienced earlier in her presence was returning, not so strong now, nor so blurred, but more personal.

  She was, he decided, a beautiful woman in the sense that beauty derived from good looks, maturity, and confidence. Her blonde hair, her brilliant green eyes, her lean and shapely face made her look at once youthful and intelligent. Her skin was a clear tan and there were bone lines in her face that gave her a Continental appearance. He doubted if her female ancestors had chosen their mates within a narrowly defined racial limit. There was adventurous blood in this woman, and it probably went back a long way.

  He realized that his thoughts had carried him far from his purpose in coming to the bedroom. He grew tense. He began, “During the night you seemed worried about where the marble of the Grand House was quarried. Does anybody know?”

  He could see her face in the mirror, the intent look on it. The eyes of her image shifted, and stared at him with an unhurried speculation. He was just beginning to think she didn’t intend to answer when she said: “So I had some more octli nightmares, did I?” She laughed suddenly, and still laughing added, “I suppose I really ought to give up drinking the stuff.”

  Stephens noted that her laughter was not that of a person who was amused, and that she had not answered his question. He waited until she stopped laughing, then:

  “About those quarries—”

  He was cut off.

  “How should I know?” she said. “The damned place is more than a thousand years old.”

  Stephens persisted, “I gather from the first paragraph of the book on the Grand House that no one knows who built it, but still there must be clues as to where the stone came from.”

  He saw that the eyes of Mistra’s image in the mirror were looking at him, and that she was smiling ironically. She said, “People no longer amaze me when they react the way you’re doing. Here you are with most of the clues. You don’t seem concerned about my drugging you. I can see from your face and I guess from your questions that my explanations seem reasonable to you. And yet, you continue to fight.”

  Stephens had been leaning forward, unconsciously straining for her reply. Now, he drew back into his chair, feeling foolish. Here was a cult that practiced an old, bloodthirsty religion. Its members lived under the names of people long dead. It was an esoteric group, amoral and possibly criminal. Almost without being aware of it, he had let himself be drawn into the unnatural atmosphere until, for nearly half an hour, his mind had believed the impossible.

  He said slowly, “Why did you drug me?”

  Her answer came without hesitation: “I disoriented you, to see if I could learn something.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She shrugged. “I also wanted to find out if you might be the person the others fear you are.”

  It took Stephens a moment to make the proper association. He said in astonishment, “Who do they think I am?”

  She turned and stared at him. “Haven’t you realized?” She sounded amazed. She paused as if undecided, then said quietly, “Somebody built the Grand House. Who? That’s been a great worry all these years.”

  The explanation disappointed Stephens. It was the madness again, and he was no longer interested.

  Mistra said, “If you are the—builder—you managed to conceal it from me. However, it won’t hurt if the others continue to worry about you.”

  That startled him. Because—madness or not—one man had
already been killed. Why shouldn’t Allison Stephens be eliminated also, if they considered him dangerous? Murdered because some madman thought he was a thousand years old. He said uneasily, “Who killed John Ford, the caretaker? It is related, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head, and said earnestly, “No member of the group is responsible. Our mind reader has checked all fifty-three of us.”

  “Fifty-three!” Stephens spoke involuntarily. He hadn’t expected such exact information.

  Mistra seemed not to hear. “It appears to be a common murder.” She paused. “Perhaps it’ll come in useful to my purposes; I don’t know yet.”

  Her purposes! The reference teased Stephens. This was what he wanted to know. He leaned toward her, not seriously expecting a reply, and asked the question: “What is —your purpose?”

  There was a long silence. Her image-face in the mirror was thoughtful. Finally, slowly, she reached down, opened a drawer, and took out a single sheet. Without looking at him, she said, “This is an ultimatum that I am shortly going to deliver by radio to the government of Lorillia. The time limit indicated will apply to the day the message is broadcast. The reference to Mars is for psychological reasons. I want to put enough doubt into their minds to insure that they will evacuate the factories I name. But listen!”

  She read slowly and in a clear, firm voice:

  “To the workers in the atomic project known as ‘Blackout’—in exactly two hours your entire plant will be razed by torrents of energy from a spaceship. This attack has been authorized by the people of the planet Mars in the full knowledge that your leaders are planning a surprise atomic assault on the United States of America.

  “Go home quickly. Do not let anyone stop you from being out of your factories at twelve noon. There is no defense.

  “Atomic war will not be permitted on Earth!”

  She looked up, and said matter-of-factly, “I may change the time, but the rest will stand. What do you think of it?”