by Van Powell
Chapter 15 IN THE LAMASERY
If the urging of the jeweler and of Doctor Ryder seemed like sacrificingRoger, they assured him that it was not so.
The lama, they declared, was interested in anything seeming to be occultor mystifying or a use of hidden forces. His attitude was not menacing.Rather, it seemed friendly.
And he was a lama from the very temple they sought!
"What a break!" Tip, whose companionship the man readily agreed to, asTip carried the portable battery, compact five-tube set, telephoneinstrument and spare B. battery, spoke under his breath.
"This will coagulate everything, make it easy," he added.
Roger, somewhat excited at the prospect of going into strangeadventures, being "on his own," nodded.
The man's attitude was respectful and friendly. The bandits stayedaround the camp, but the interpreter said that if the youth satisfiedhis companion of his abilities, it might free them, might even help themto reach their objective.
The lama had evidently been at a village not very far away: they hadonly to walk to that, and then, with much show of veneration for thelama, their holy man or priest, the villagers furnished ponies.
Roger, mounted and riding beside his friendly captor, with Tip and hisapparatus on another pony and on a led carrier-animal, noted the tinyprayer-wheels by the ascending roadside, saw the other lamas they metwith their prayer-wheels and prayer-papers, observed the reverentattitude of the peasants herding cattle or grazing sheep, and felt arenewed confidence in the outcome.
The lama could not converse with him, but the universal language of lookand gesture served very well between them.
In due course, after riding up steeper and steeper paths, into thecraggy, ravine-and-cliff torn mountains, they came to a great, dreary,uninviting stone monastery wherein the lamas stayed, studying, prayingand conducting the strange rites of their religion.
"If you ask me," muttered Tip, scanning the looming pile of stone, "Weare a long way from the lab. What's all them little windmills for?"
"Prayer-wheels," Roger told him. "They say their prayers with them."
"Well if you think I'm going to end up by spinning one of themwhirligigs, you're wrong. Tell this bird I'm incontrovertible."
"You're what?"
"Incontrovertible. I won't change my religion."
"Not convert-ible. I see. Still the same old Tip, far though you are, asyou say, from Grover's dark-room. But they seem to look up to this manwho brought us. He's sort of bossy, too, and they mind."
They were made as comfortable as the rude conditions of the cold, harshlife the lamas led would allow.
Roger was glad that Tip was not separated from him. They were both givenone cell, a gloomy, but not prison-like cell that looked out through itsnarrow window over a vast, tumbled, fissure-creased series of crags andravines, cliffs and snow-covered peaks.
It was as though the Creator of the world had flung this wild mass ofrock helter-skelter, in a long backbone, to hold the world together.
Simple, not too palatable food was ungrudgingly served, and theirconductor visited them several times to see that they needed nothing hecould offer.
The radio-telephone, answered by Doctor Ryder, reassured them. Thebandits had been sent away by abrupt orders from another lama. Not a canof food or a bit of apparatus had been disturbed or taken.
The communicating sets worked well, and things were not so bad.
The gaunt, silent, stern-faced lamas served them without comment orobjection; and Tip and Roger were allowed to roam at will through mostof the corridors, rooms, cells and even were permitted to attend thechanting devotions of the men in a huge chapel-like place. But that,they were certain, was not the "temple" because there was no Buddha ofthe stature they expected, or with a spare Eye either missing orreplaced by an imitation.
But nothing advanced. Nothing happened. Days dragged by.
The explanation came when their captor, or host, brought them into asort of general community room, where he presented them before a verysedate and reserved and cold-visaged old man. Roger, however, did notfeel any fear, because the man's eyes seemed to hold some deep,broad-minded tolerance. He looked kindly.
To their amazement he addressed Roger in halting, but clear English.
"You come far."
"Yes, sir," Tip spoke first.
"You come for what?"
Tip hesitated.
Roger came forward.
"This man and I are with a scientific expedition."
"Have you secured permission to enter our land?"
"I suppose so," Roger, himself, was not too certain about the details ofthat official permit that Doctor Ryder said he had gotten.
"You understand something of science?"
Roger admitted it, not boastfully.
Their things were all brought in.
"Show me, and tell me."
Roger, trying to use short words and simple explanations, demonstratedthe radio-telephone, and its purpose of distant communication.
He did not want to explain the tiny camera, and put it into the casewith the spare battery, pretending that it was part of the apparatustherein. The watching chief lama and the venerable visitor gave nospecial attention to it and Roger was glad. He had it in case they gotnear the temple and he could try to discover, from its pictures, laterenlarged, how the secret way into the edifice, if one existed, wasmanipulated.
Contriving to "raise" his other friends, by the set, Roger allowed thelama and the other to hear the reply to his guarded declaration thatthey were being well nourished, made much of, and so on.
When the men seemed satisfied and the paraphernalia of radio wasremoved, the gentleman at the head of the lamas considered Roger and Tipthoughtfully.
"Indeed great progress has been made in your America," he said, toRoger, while the lama sat silent. "Even you, not more than thirteen,surely, accomplish what would be wizardry to our own peasants--and yetthis Forbidden Land holds locked in her bosom the destinies oftomorrow's science, and knowledge of forces that your America does notdream of. It is a strange old world."
"Yes, sir," Roger agreed, not knowing how else to respond, then:
"How do you come to know our language, sir?"
"Your own sacred Book tells of the--is it not the Tower of Babel?"
"Yes, sir."
"And is there not the word that prophets, as fire descended upon theirheads, spoke 'with many tongues'?"
"Yes, sir----"
"We, in Tibet, have methods for reproducing many miracles--as they wouldseem to you, for all of your scientific wisdom. Let me show you."
As though understanding what was to come, the lama approached, and underthe steady gaze of the other, seemed to assume a trance-like fixednessof expression. Standing, his body was still rigid, but he did not swayor totter or fall.
Presently, as Roger and Tip watched, knowing it might be hypnotism, butstill marveling at the produced result, they heard:
"I am in a great laboratory." And the man used perfect English, not evenslightly inflected as had been that of the other, "There is an officewith a pair of desks. At one, a woman typewrites. At the other, GroverBrown interviews his staff, and tells what Roger has sent him by theMorse code and which he 'picked up' on four stages of radio-frequencyand three audio."
It was almost weird, uncanny. Of course, there might be such a thing asmind-reading--but----
"In the chemical division, a man, Zendt, experiments with tissue, and anew--to him--process for causing a medicinal reaction by the applicationof Ellison's sun-lamp.
"But here--Roger fails to tell completely of his mechanism. He forgetsto explain the tiny camera with which he hopes to discover a secret wayinto our temple----"
If Roger's face was controlled in time, perhaps Tip's was not.
The older man smiled, a little wryly.
"That will do." He clapped his hands sharply. The lama, with a somewhatdazed look, fl
exed his muscles and stumbling to a seat, collapsed on it.Magic? Trickery? Roger had no time to decide.
"If you are so anxious to learn our secrets of the temple," remarked theold man, "you shall have them. Indeed, you shall even hear----"
Roger grew tense as he paused and then finished:
"The Voice of Doom! Come!"