He could recall only fragmentary scraps. Paititi, where some of the natives were dwarfs and some were giants, some had their feet turned backwards, and other had legs like birds. The usual legendary yarns.
Nobody had ever found Paititi.
Raft got the torch out of his pack. The path had been sinking deeper and deeper below ground level. Now, a few yards ahead, the black depths of a tunnel loomed. The tube was plunging underground. It was impossible to keep one’s footing on that breakneck slant, and Raft advanced very cautiously, wondering how Pereira and Craddock had managed it.
The light stabbed out. There was nothing to see but the compressed earth walling him in. The tunnel angled down steeply. Too steeply. Raft realized abruptly that he had gone too far. Something had tricked him, a shifting of balance, a—a warping of gravity, it seemed. For, he realized unmistakably, an unknown force was keeping him upright as a fly keeps its footing on perpendicular walls.
For an instant giddiness made his head swim. This ramp was not perpendicular, of course, but he had no suction cups on his feet. Nevertheless he maintained his balance on a slope of at least forty-five degrees.
Pure energy, he thought. Walls of force!
He went on down, though now he had no way of telling whether he was climbing or descending. Only logic showed that, since it was dark, he was probably going deep into the earth.
Then, after a long time, came a sudden change. Light glowed curiously from around a curve ahead. Dim light, more like a darkness alive with twisting, coiling refractions. Raft went on warily.
It was water.
It went over and around the tunnel in a smooth, swift, glassy current, foam-marbled, perfectly silent, gleaming in the beam of the torch.
Raft thought, The Children of Israel went upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them.
Still another miracle occurred on a journey beginning to be laden with miracles. Haft’s jaw set a bit harder. He went ahead, vaguely hoping that what had happened to the Egyptians wouldn’t happen to him. If that wall should break, it would be unfortunate.
The wall did not break. He went forward into a long period of blackness, broken only by the light beam. He was, he realized, very far down now. For all he knew he might be descending a completely perpendicular path, the warped gravity of the tunnel making such a fantastic descent possible.
A FAINT glow warned him to switch off the light. Darkness closed in, but it did not last for long. His eyes adjusted themselves to a dim violet glow that seemed to come from all sides, above, below, everywhere. Vertigo made Raft’s head spin sickeningly.
Far, far below him, but at an impossible angle, seen slantingly through the transparent floor, was the jagged curve of an immense cavern.
In a moment more logic asserted itself and the vertigo grew even worse, for Raft saw now that it was he himself who stood at that incredible angle, not the apparently tilted cave. It was bathed in faint violet light. The walls were crags, the roof, high above, dripped with stalactites that glittered wanly in the dimness.
The cave was narrow and curved right and left out of sight. The tunnel swept down in a dizzying arc and vanished into a spot of darkness in a distant wall. Raft knew that he should be totally unable to keep his footing on that tremendous slide. But as he advanced gingerly on the invisible flooring, it seemed the cavern and not himself was defying gravity.
Far down in the violet darkness something moved. Something alive. Raft could not see it clearly. Beyond it was another motion, and up among the crags of the walls, still more motion. The high, narrow, violently tilted cavern was coming alive all around him with those moving shadows which converged upon him as he stood frozen there in midair.
Devils of Paititi!
Biologically they were impossible. He could see only their outlines, but there were shadows that looked like wings—and great talons—and—and other things. No two of them were alike. The logic of anatomy had gone wrong, somehow, and Raft’s mouth felt dry and sour.
They had seen him, obviously. They were moving sluggishly toward him, with a slowness more disturbing than any speed—as if they knew they could afford to take their time.
A shudder shook Raft. Though he knew that Pereira and Craddock had come this way, suddenly his footing did not seem so secure on that airy bridge. He had the sensation of toppling on the brink of a pit thronging with monsters from pure nightmare. If there were a break in this tunnel of glass, disaster would overwhelm him.
Biological sports, he told himself, and went on.
Ten minutes further along the dark tunnel he came to a fork of the way, the first one he had encountered. There was no clue as to which way he should turn. At random Raft took the right-hand branch, and this time luck was with him.
The ending of the tunnel was an anticlimax. He saw the circle of light long before he reached it. It was a deep, clear radiance which seemed to block the passage. Another force-wall, Raft thought, like the substance of the tube itself. But it was different in that it reflected light, or glowed with a cool brilliance of its own.
He touched the smooth glossy surface of it. Nothing. Simply light made tangible. Light that was, he saw, growing paler as he watched.
Shadows and shapes appeared in the cloudy whiteness, ghostly and strange. A wavering outline darkened and altered. It was man-shaped, and Raft’s gun slipped easily into his hand. Beyond the figure were other dim traceries, tall columns, and what seemed to be a stream.
The light faded and was gone. With a whispering murmur the barrier dissolved.
The stream became a staircase, dropping steeply away from Raft’s feet to the floor of an immense hall empty save for the columns, huger than the Karnak pillars, that marched in diminishing rows into the distance. Empty, save for these, and for the girl who stood facing him, ten feet down the stairway, very lovely, and—with something subtly wrong about her round, soft face.
She moved her hands quickly. Behind Raft a whisper sang softly. He looked back, in time to see the barrier of the light spring into being across the tunnel’s mouth.
The road back was closed.
CHAPTER IV
Janissa
SHE was as he remembered her from that brief glimpse in da Fonseca’s lens. There was a prim, gay touch of wickedness about her small mouth. The shadowed eyes were aquamarine, given a subtle slant by the darkness about them. Her hair was—was tiger-striped.
Honey-yellow and dim gold, it was a cloud about her head, so fine that it seemed to fade off into invisibility.
Her garments, blue and gold, clung so closely to her slim body that they seemed like a second skin. At her waist was a wide belt, and now she thrust something into a pocket of it as she smiled at Raft.
With that smile her face changed. It was infinitely appealing, completely tender and welcoming. Her voice, when Raft heard it, was as he expected. A rippling murmur, with that same familiar haunting undertone he had caught in Pereira’s voice.
The language was unknown to him, though. Seeing this, the girl switched to stumbling Portuguese, and then, shrugging her slim shoulders, tried an Indio dialect that Raft knew, though he had never heard it spoken in quite this way.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said. “If I guided you this far, do you think I’ll let anything harm you now? Though once I was afraid, when you hesitated at the fork of the road. But you took the right turning.”
Raft had holstered his gun, but his hand still lingered on its cool, reassuring metal. In the same dialect he answered her.
“You guided me here?”
“Of course. Parror does not know; he was too busy getting enough to eat outside.” She chuckled. “He hated that. He’s a good hunter, but burning meat over open flames—ugh! Parror is not as complacent as you may have thought.”
“Parror?” Raft said, “Would that be Pereira?”
“Yes. Now come with me, Brian Raft. You see that I know your name. But there’s much that I do not know, and you must tell me those th
ings.”
“No,” Raft said. He hadn’t moved from his position at the top of the staircase. “If you know so much, you know why I came here. Where’s Dan Craddock?”
“Oh, he’s awake now.” She took a tiny lens from her belt and swung it idly. “Parror gave me back my mirror when he returned, since it was no longer needed to keep Craddock controlled. So I was able to see you coming through the jungle. You had looked into my mirror, and after that I could see you. Which was lucky for you, or you’d never have been able to open the gateway to Paititi.”
“Take me to Craddock,” Raft commanded, feeling very unsure of himself, and therefore acting very sure. “Now.”
“All right.” The girl’s hand touched Raft’s arm, urging him down the steps. As they descended the enormous columns seemed to rise above them, the vastness of the huge hall becoming more and more apparent.
“You haven’t asked me my name,” the low voice said.
“What is it?”
“Janissa,” she told him. “And this is Paititi. But you must have known that.”
Raft shook his head.
“You may know a lot about the outside world, but it’s a one-way circuit. The only place I’d ever heard of Paititi was in a legend.”
“We have our legends too.”
They were at the foot of the stairs. Janissa guided him across the hall and through an arched opening into a mosaic-walled passage.
There were symbols on those walls, but they struck a note entirely strange to Raft. Once or twice he noticed pictures, but the figures in them seemed to have no resemblance to either Janissa or Pereira—Parror. He had no time to observe closely.
The girl led him into a smaller hall, up a stairway, and at last into a round room whose walls were softly padded with velvet, cushioned and quilted in patterns like flowers. The floor was padded, too. The whole room was like a great pillowed sofa.
HE HAD a moment to take it all in—the cushiony room, its strangeness and luxury, and the rich, deep colors of the velvet. He saw at one end of the room an oval door of some semi-translucent substance opening upon dim light, and in another wall was an archway, broad and low, which looked out upon moving trees.
There was something rather startling about the trees, but he had no time to look closely. He caught the fragrance of a breeze, though, smelling of flowers and damp jungle lushness where the sun seldom shines, and realized that he had come out at last upon the surface of the earth somewhere, after the long journey underground.
“Sit down and rest,” Janissa said. “You’ve come far.”
Raft shook his head.
“You said you were taking me to Craddock. Well?”
“I cannot do that yet. Parr or is with him.”
“Good.” Raft touched his gun. Janissa merely smiled.
“In Parror’s castle—in this land where he has power—you think that will help you?”
“I think so. If it won’t, there are other ways.” He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against a cushioned wall. “I don’t know what kind of superman Parror may be, but I’ll bet he can’t dodge a bullet.”
“A bullet? Oh, I see. You are both right and wrong. Your weapon would have been useless against Parror outside, but in Paititi he is more vulnerable.”
Raft stared at the strange, lovely, disturbingly different face upturned to him.
“Meaning what?”
“Parror does not know that you are here. So—”
“But Parror does know,” said a very soft, smooth voice. Raft whirled, surprise heightening his pulse and making his breath catch. Parror!
He had come soundlessly through the oval door, and Raft realized, with some distantly logical corner of his mind, that Parror must have been much farther ahead than he had thought, for the man had had time to bathe and change from his ragged garments. The black beard was trimmed to no more than a velvety shadow outlining the heavy, but curiously delicate chin.
The garments he wore were thick, soft, gleaming like dull satin, and fitting so perfectly they might have been literally painted upon his body. He was fingering an odd weapon like a silver whip that hung from the broad jeweled belt he wore.
Raft felt suddenly very unsure of himself. This was too different a meeting from the one he had been anticipating. For this was not the jungle. There was, very definitely, something about Parror that made Raft’s skin crawl. Wrong—wrong—a racial wrongness he could not define. He had felt it about Janissa, but not with the violence he felt now.
Arrogance clothed Parror like a garment. He was in his own environment. He was regally confident. Raft had an uncomfortable realization of his own awkwardness and crudity and, from the mockery in the velvety black eyes, he knew that Parror shared the thought.
Parror lifted his lip in a fastidious smile. “You were not needed here,” he said, in the Indio dialect. “But perhaps, after all I can find a use for you. Yes, I think I can.”
“We may, Parror,” Janissa murmured, and for an instant unsheathed swords seemed to flash between the two.
“Listen, Pereira or whatever you call yourself, we’re going to have a talk,” Raft said angrily. “Now. It’ll be fast talking, too.”
“It will?” Parror murmured, and moved the silver whip jingling in his hand.
“Where’s Craddock? What did you do to him?”
“I did nothing. I showed him a certain mirror. Through it he saw—well, I do not know what he saw. But he was tranced.”
“Wake him up. Take me to him.”
“He is awake now.”
“He’d better be,” Raft said coldly, his eye on Parror’s whip and his fingers touching a cool gun-butt. “You killed da Fonseca with this same funny business, didn’t you?”
“Killed him? The mirror is mine. I lent it to him and took it back.”
“Yours?” Janissa breathed.
PARROR ignored her. “What happened after that is no concern of mine. I had no further use for da Fonseca. And his tongue might have been a danger.”
Sudden rage flooded Raft. The bearded man’s arrogance, his indifference, even the subtle wrongness he could not put a name too made all the tension of the past three weeks crystallize into a hot fury. A bullet was not enough. Raft wanted to use his hands.
“You bicho!” he snarled. “If Craddock dies I’ll break your filthy neck. Take me to him!”
He lunged forward and seized Parror’s shoulder, feeling a savage delight in coming to grips with the man at last. He knew judo. He was well-muscled and agile. But he did not expect Parror to—explode.
It was as if the handsome bearded face vanished and a demon glared out through the flesh and bone of the features. In that instant of utter, inhuman rage Raft saw the lips flatten away from Parror’s teeth in a tigerish snarl, and he hissed shockingly as he struggled to tear free. Raft felt the smooth surge of muscles, and the power in them was shocking too, out of all proportion to that sleek, long-limbed slenderness. There was a moment of straining conflict.
Behind him, above the roaring in his ears, Raft heard Janissa’s voice.
“Brian! Let him go—quick!”
The desperate urgency of her tone made Raft respond.
Shaken, a little dazed by his own anger and by the sudden, explosive violence it had roused, he released Parror. He felt oddly dazzled. He had never seen any human being, sane or mad, in the grip of a fury as sudden or as demoniac as Parror’s.
There was another thing, too. The closeness of the grip had revealed a new, totally unexpected feature. Under the muscular arch of Parror’s chest Raft had felt a steady throbbing that was unmistakable.
And yet—back in the base hospital—the man had had no heartbeat!
Parror drew back, shook himself, relaxed into an imperturbable dignity. Miraculously, the insane fury was gone as suddenly as it had been roused.
“You must not touch those of our race in such a way, Brian,” Janissa said softly. “If you must kill, then kill. But not maul.”
R
aft’s own voice sounded strange to him.
“What is your race?” he asked, and his questioning gaze moved from the girl’s demure face to the man’s enigmatic dark eyes.
Parror said nothing. He only smiled, a long, slow, infinitely proud smile. And Raft read the answer. He had been seeing it more and more clearly every moment that passed, in every smooth, flowing motion of his body, even in his insane, inhuman fury at being touched. Inhuman indeed. Raft remembered what Parror had said in the hospital.
“I passed your ancestors, chattering and scratching themselves in the trees. And I passed my ancestors, too.”
Yes, Raft knew now that he had passed them in the jungle unseeing, many times. They had gone silently by in the underbrush, on great padding feet, the shadows of the forest gliding across the shadowy markings of their bodies. He had heard their roaring in the dark, and seen their lambent eyes in the firelight.
Yes, he thought he knew, now, what race Parror’s was. And Janissa’s.
Not human. They came from a different stock. As a physician who had done biological and anthropological work, Raft knew that the incredible thing was not theoretically impossible. Evolution is not rigid. It is an accident that had made man the dominant, intelligent race, Accident, and the specialization of opposing thumbs.
Our ancestors were simian, arboreal, using those flexible hands to build the foundations of civilization. But in a different setup, the ruling race might have descended from dogs or reptiles or cats.
Cats.
It struck Raft suddenly, and he was shocked by the realization, that of all animals there is, except for the rodents who do not use it, only one which shows signs of developing an opposing thumb. The domestic cat does occasionally have an extra toe on each forefoot. An opposing toe.
The owner names it Mittens or Boxer and thinks no more about the matter. But given a little flexibility in that extra member, and given time and a favorable environment, such as this secret world of Paititi he did not yet know, what miracles might now develop!
Collected Fiction Page 490