“But why,” Oliver interrupted, “did you insist on this house? Why do the others want to get it away from you?”
Kleph stared at him. He saw the tears rising again in small bright crescents that gathered above her lower lids. He saw the look of obstinacy that came upon her soft, tanned face. She shook her head.
“You must not ask me that.” She held out the steaming cup. “Here, drink and forget what I have said. I can tell you no more. No more at all.”
When he woke, for a little while he had no idea where he was. He did not remember leaving Kleph or coming to his own room. He didn’t care, just then. For he woke to a sense of overwhelming terror.
The dark was full of it. His brain rocked on waves of fear and pain. He lay motionless, too frightened to stir, some atavistic memory warning him to lie quiet until he knew from which direction the danger threatened. Reasonless panic broke over him in a tidal flow; his head ached with its violence and the dark throbbed to the same rhythms.
A knock sounded at the door. Omerie’s deep voice said, ‘Wilson! Wilson, are you awake?”
Oliver tried twice before he had breath to answer. “Y-yes-what is it?”
The knob rattled. Omerie’s dim figure groped for the light switch and the room sprang into visibility. Omerie’s face was drawn with strain, and he held one hand to his head as if it ached in rhythm with Oliver’s.
It was in that moment, before Omerie spoke again, that Oliver remembered Hollia’s warning. “Move out, young man-move out before tonight.” Wildly he wondered what threatened them all in this dark house that throbbed with the rhythms of pure terror.
Omerie in an angry voice answered the unspoken question.
“Someone has planted a subsonic in the house, Wilson. Kleph thinks you may know where it is.”
“S-subsonic?”
“Call it a gadget,” Omerie interpreted impatiently. “Probably a small metal box that-”
Oliver said, “Oh,” in a tone that must have told Omerie everything.
“Where is it?” he demanded. “Quick. Let’s get this over.”
“I don’t know.” With an effort Oliver controlled the chattering of his teeth. “Y-you mean all this-all this is just from the little box?”
“Of course. Now tell me how to find it before we all go crazy.”
Oliver got shakily out of bed, groping for his robe with nerveless hands. “I s-suppose she hid it somewhere downstairs,” he said. “S-she wasn’t gone long.”
Omerie got the story out of him in a few brief questions. He clicked his teeth in exasperation when Oliver had finished it.
“That stupid Hollia-”
“Omerie!” Kleph’s plaintive voice wailed from the hail. “Please hurry, Omerie! This is too much to stand! Oh, Omerie, please!”
Oliver stood up abruptly. Then a redoubled wave of the inexplicable pain seemed to explode in his skull at the motion, and he clutched the bedpost and reeled.
“Go find the thing yourself,” he heard himself saying dizzily. “I can’t even walk-”
Omerie’s own temper was drawn wire-tight by the pressure in the room. He seized Oliver’s shoulder and shook him, saying in a tight voice, “You let it in-now help us get it out, or-”
“It’s a gadget out of your world, not mine!” Oliver said furiously.
And then it seemed to him there was a sudden coldness and silence in the room. Even the pain and the senseless terror paused for a moment. Omerie’s pale, cold eyes fixed upon Oliver a stare so chill he could almost feel the ice in it.
“What do you know about our-world?” Omerie demanded.
Oliver did not speak a word. He did not need to; his face must have betrayed what he knew. He was beyond concealment in the stress of this night-time terror he still could not understand.
Omerie bared his white teeth and said three perfectly unintelligible words. Then he stepped to the door and snapped, “Kleph!”
Oliver could see the two women huddled together in the hall, shaking violently with involuntary waves of that strange, synthetic terror. Kila, in a luminous green gown, was rigid with control, but Kleph made no effort whatever at repression. Her downy robe had turned soft gold tonight; she shivered in it and the tears ran down her face unchecked.
“Kleph,” Omerie said in a dangerous voice, “you were euphoric again yesterday?”
Kleph darted a scared glance at Oliver and nodded guiltily.
“You talked too much.” It was a complete indictment in one sentence. “You know the rules, Kleph. You will not be allowed to travel again if anyone reports this to the authorities.”
Kleph’s lovely creamy face creased suddenly into impenitent dimples.
“I know it was wrong. I am very sorry-but you will not stop me if Cenbe says no.”
Klia flung out her arms in a gesture of helpless anger. Omerie shrugged. “In this case, as it happens, no great harm is done,” he said, giving Oliver an unfathomable glance. “But it might have been serious. Next time perhaps it will be. I must have a talk with Cenbe.”
“We must find the subsonic first of all,” Klia reminded them, shivering. “If Kleph is afraid to help, she can go out for a while. I confess I am very sick of Kleph’s company just now.”
“We could give up the house!” Kleph cried wildly. “Let Hollia have it! How can you stand this long enough to hunt-”
“Give up the house?” Klia echoed. “You must be mad! With all our invitations out?”
“There will be no need for that,” Omerie said. “We can find it if we all hunt. You feel able to help?” He looked at Oliver.
With an effort Oliver controlled his own senseless panic as the waves of it swept through the room. “Yes,” he said. “But what about me? What are you going to do?”
“That should be obvious,” Omerie said, his pale eyes in the dark face regarding Oliver impassively. “Keep you in the house until we go. We can certainly do no less. You understand that. And there is no reason for us to do more, as it happens. Silence is all we promised when we signed our travel papers.”
“But-” Oliver groped for the fallacy in that reasoning. It was no use. He could not think clearly. Panic surged insanely through his mind from the very air around him. “All right,” he said. “Let’s hunt.”
It was dawn before they found the box, tucked inside the ripped seam of a sofa cushion. Omerie took it upstairs without a word. Five minutes later the pressure in the air abruptly dropped and peace fell blissfully upon the house.
“They will try again,” Omerie said to Oliver at the door of the back bedroom. “We must watch for that. As for you, I must see that you remain in the house until Friday. For your own comfort, I advise you to let me know if Hollia offers any further tricks. I confess I am not quite sure how to enforce your staying indoors. I could use methods that would make you very uncomfortable. I would prefer to accept your word on it.”
Oliver hesitated. The relaxing of pressure upon his brain had left him exhausted and stupid, and he was not at all sure what to say.
Omerie went on after a moment. “It was partly our fault for not insuring that we had the house to ourselves,” he said. “Living here with us, you could scarcely help suspecting. Shall we say that in return for your promise, I reimburse you in part for losing the sale price on this house?”
Oliver thought that over. It would pacify Sue a little. And it meant only two days indoors. Besides, what good would escaping do? What could he say to outsiders that would not lead him straight to a padded cell?
“All right,” he said wearily. “I promise.”
By Friday morning there was still no sign from Hollia. Sue telephoned at noon. Oliver knew the crackle of her voice over the wire when Kleph took the call. Even the crackle sounded hysterical; Sue saw her bargain slipping hopelessly through her grasping little fingers.
Kleph’s voice was soothing. “I am sorry,” she said many times, in the intervals when the voice paused. “I am truly sorry. Believe me, you will find it does not matter. I kno
w. . . I am sorry-”
She turned from the phone at last. “The girl says Hollia has given up,” she told the others.
“Not Hollia,” Klia said firmly.
Omerie shrugged. “We have very little time left. If she intends anything more, it will be tonight. We must watch for it.”
“Oh, not tonight!” Kieph’s voice was horrified. “Not even Hollia would do that!”
“Hollia, my dear, in her own way is quite as unscrupulous as you are,” Omerie told her with a smile.
“But-would she spoil things for us just because she can’t be here?”
“What do you think?” Klia demanded.
Oliver ceased to listen. There was no making sense out of their talk, but he knew that by tonight whatever the secret was must surely come into the open at last. He was willing to wait and see.
For two days excitement had been building up in the house and the three who shared it with him. Even the servants felt it and were nervous and unsure of themselves. Oliver had given up asking questions- it only embarrassed his tenants-and watched.
All the chairs in the house were collected in the three front bedrooms. The furniture was rearranged to make room for them, and dozens of covered cups had been set out on trays. Oliver recognized Kieph’s rose-quartz set among the rest. No steam rose from the thin crescent-openings, but the cups were full. Oliver lifted one and felt a heavy liquid move within it, like something half-solid, sluggishly.
Guests were obviously expected, but the regular dinner hour of nine came and went, and no one had yet arrived. Dinner was finished; the servants went home. The Sanciscos went to their rooms to dress, amid a feeling of mounting tension.
Oliver stepped out on the porch after dinner, trying in vain to guess what it was that had wrought such a pitch of expectancy in the house. There was a quarter moon swimming in haze on the horizon, but the stars which had made every night of May thus far a dazzling translucency, were very dim tonight. Clouds had begun to gather at sundown, and the undimmed weather of the whole month seemed ready to break at last.
Behind Oliver the door opened a little, and closed. He caught Kleph’s fragrance before he turned, and a faint whiff of the fragrance of the euphoriac she was much too fond of drinking. She came to his side and slipped a hand into his, looking up into his face in the darkness.
“Oliver,” she said very softly. “Promise me one thing. Promise me not to leave the house tonight.”
“I’ve already promised that,” he said a little irritably.
“I know. But tonight-I have a very particular reason for wanting you indoors tonight.” She leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment, and despite himself his irritation softened. He had not seen Kleph alone since that last night of her revelations; he supposed he never would be alone with her again for more than a few minutes at a time. But he knew he would not forget those two bewildering evenings. He knew too, now, that she was very weak and foolish-but she was still Kleph and he had held her in his arms, and was not likely ever to forget it.
“You might be-hurt-if you went out tonight,” she was saying in a muffled voice. “I know it will not matter, in the end, but-remember you promised, Oliver.”
She was gone again, and the door had closed behind her, before he could voice the futile questions in his mind.
The guests began to arrive just before midnight. From the head of the stairs Oliver saw them coming in by twos and threes, and was astonished at how many of these people from the future must have gathered here in the past weeks. He could see quite clearly now how they differed from the norm of his own period. Their physical elegance was what one noticed first-perfect grooming, meticulous manners, meticulously controlled voices. But because they were all idle, all, in a way, sensation-hunters, there was a certain shrillness underlying their voices, especially when heard all together. Petulance and self-indulgence showed beneath the good manners. And tonight, an all-pervasive excitement.
By one o’clock everyone had gathered in the front rooms. The teacups had begun to steam, apparently of themselves, around midnight, and the house was full of the faint, thin fragrance that induced a sort of euphoria all through the rooms, breathed in with the perfume of the tea.
It made Oliver feel light and drowsy. He was determined to sit up as long as the others did, but he must have dozed off in his own room, by the window, an unopened book in his lap.
For when it happened he was not sure for a few minutes whether or not it was a dream.
The vast, incredible crash was louder than sound. He felt the whole house shake under him, felt rather than heard the timbers grind upon one another like broken bones, while he was still in the borderland of sleep. When he woke fully he was on the floor among the shattered fragments of the window.
How long or short a time he had lain there he did not know. The world was still stunned with that tremendous noise, or his ears still deaf from it, for there was no sound anywhere.
He was halfway down the hail toward the front rooms when sound began to return from outside. It was a low, indescribable rumble at first, prickled with countless tiny distant screams. Oliver’s eardrums ached from the terrible impact of the vast unheard noise, but the numbness was wearing off and he heard before he saw it the first voices of the stricken city.
The door to Kleph’s room resisted him for a moment. The house had settled a little from the violence of the-the explosion?-and the frame was out of line. When he got the door open he could only stand blinking stupidly into the darkness within. All the lights were out, but there was a breathless sort of whispering going on in many voices.
The chairs were drawn around the broad front windows so that everyone could see out; the air swam with the fragrance of euphoria. There was light enough here from outside for Oliver to see that a few onlookers still had their hands to their ears, but all were craning eagerly forward to see.
Through a dreamlike haze Oliver saw the city spread out with impossible distinctness below the window. He knew quite well that a row of houses across the street blocked the view-yet he was looking over the city now, and he could see it in a limitless panorama from here to the horizon. The houses between had vanished.
On the far skyline fire was already a solid mass, painting the low clouds crimson. That sulphurous light reflecting back from the sky upon the city made clear the rows upon rows of flattened houses with flame beginning to lick up among them, and farther out the formless rubble of what had been houses a few minutes ago and was now nothing at all.
The city had begun to be vocal. The noise of the flames rose loudest, but you could hear a rumble of human voices like the beat of surf a long way off, and staccato noises of screaming made a sort of pattern that came and went continuously through the web of sound. Threading it in undulating waves the shrieks of sirens knit the web together into a terrible symphony that had, in its way, a strange, inhuman beauty.
Briefly through Oliver’s stunned incredulity went the memory of that other symphony Kleph had played there one day, another catastrophe retold in terms of music and moving shapes.
He said hoarsely, “Kleph-”
The tableau by the window broke. Every head turned, and Oliver saw the faces of strangers staring at him, some few in embarrassment avoiding his eyes, but most seeking them out with that avid, inhuman curiosity which is common to a type in all crowds at accident scenes. But these people were here by design, audience at a vast disaster timed almost for their coming.
Kleph got up unsteadily, her velvet dinner gown tripping her as she rose. She set down a cup and swayed a little as she came toward the door, saying, “Oliver . . . Oliver-” in a sweet, uncertain voice. She was drunk, he saw, and wrought up by the catastrophe to a pitch of stimulation in which she was not very sure what she was doing.
Oliver heard himself saying in a thin voice not his own, “W-what was it, Kleph? What happened? What-” But happened seemed so inadequate a word for the incredible panorama below that he had to choke back hysterical laughter
upon the struggling questions, and broke off entirely, trying to control the shaking that had seized his body.
Kleph made an unsteady stoop and seized a steaming cup. She came to him, swaying, holding it out-her panacea for all ills.
“Here, drink it, Oliver-we are all quite safe here, quite safe.” She thrust the cup to his lips and he gulped automatically, grateful for the fumes that began their slow, coiling surcease in his brain with the first swallow.
“It was a meteor,” Kleph was saying. “Quite a small meteor, really. We are perfectly safe here. This house was never touched.”
Out of some cell of the unconscious Oliver heard himself saying incoherently, “Sue? Is Sue-” he could not finish.
Kleph thrust the cup at him again. “I think she may be safe-for awhile. Please, Oliver-forget about all that and drink.”
“But you knew!” Realization of that came belatedly to his stunned brain. “You could have given warning, or-”
“How could we change the past?” Kleph asked. “We knew-but could we stop the meteor? Or warn the city? Before we come we must give our word never to interfere-”
Their voices had risen imperceptibly to be audible above the rising volume of sound from below. The city was roaring now, with flames and cries and the crash of failing buildings. Light in the room turned lurid and pulsed upon the walls and ceiling in red light and redder dark.
Downstairs a door slammed. Someone laughed. It was high, hoarse, angry laughter. Then from the crowd in the room someone gasped and there was a chorus of dismayed cries. Oliver tried to focus upon the window and the terrible panorama beyond, and found he could not.
It took several seconds of determined blinking to prove that more than his own vision was at fault. Kleph whimpered softly and moved against him. His arms closed about her automatically, and he was grateful for the warm, solid flesh against him. This much at least he could touch and be sure of, though everything else that was happening might be a dream. Her perfume and the heady perfume of the tea rose together in his head, and for an instant, holding her in this embrace that must certainly be the last time he ever held her, he did not care that something had gone terribly wrong with the very air of the room.
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