by Don Wilcox
And so one after the other of us came back from Professor Peterson’s little curtain lecture, and gradually the whole atmosphere of the whole party changed.
“We must stop for a toast,” I said, lifting my glass. “It is the rarest of privileges to drink to a queen, and I’m sure we all agree that she is the world’s most beautiful.”
We drank and applauded, and Professor Peterson said that now it was time for us to bow. So we all bowed.
“When my friends bow to me,” said Veeva, glowing with pleasure, “I sing them this little song.”
She sang a funny little melody with words we couldn’t understand. Then she laughed and we got up and, after Professor Peterson had seated her most courteously, we all sat again.
It was working! She was responding so beautifully that we realized she must be someone of great importance.
We ceased to bombard her with our rapid-fire questions that had made her take refuge in evasion. And she was beginning to talk to us of her own free will.
Unfortunately Lady Lucille appeared at the door in time to spoil everything.
Professor Peterson did his best to draw a curtain over the early scene of near-violence.
“We take pleasure, Queen Veeva,” the professor bowed low to the girl, “in presenting to you Lady Lucille Lorruth.”
Veeva smiled and responded with sparkling interest. “I’m very pleased, Lady Lucille. Is the term Lady not a title of distinction?”
Lady Lorruth answered coldly, “It’s a title of nobility.”
The reply was blunt and hard as an iceberg. At no time would Lady Lucille say, Your Majesty, or offer any of the symbols of obeisance which we were applying.
“Whatever your line of nobility may be,” Veeva smiled, “I am happy to recognize it.”
My native England is one of the oldest nations in the world,” said Lady Lucille proudly. “There is nothing in the North American hemisphere to approach it for age or importance.”
“This is news to me,” said Veeva. And she was growing serious. “Are you talking in terms of hundreds of centuries or thousands?”
Lady Lucille shrugged and turned to the captain. “What does she mean hundreds of centuries? Our time can be counted in terms of sixty centuries.”
“Yes, of course,” the captain said, eager to reinforce Lady Lucille on what he considered to be a sure point of knowledge. “Two thousand years takes us back to the time of Christ. Four thousand more takes us to the beginning of time. All this counts up to—ah—er—about sixty centuries I believe.”
The curiosity in Veeva’s eyes was a picture. She looked from one to the other of use as if to say, “Do all of you agree? Is this your conception of time?”
But her answer was highly polite. “My highest respect to you, and to your subjects, Lady Lucille. Your modern outlook upon this world is most refreshing.”
The captain was ready to change the subject. “About those furs—”
“Oh, yes, those furs,” said Veeva. “You all seem to be very much agitated. What is the difficulty?”
“I want my furs,” said Lady Lucille. “My husband came here five years ago. He came for furs, but he didn’t get back with them. They’re here in this land, and I want them.”
“Five years ago?” Veeva reflected.
“It seems but yesterday. I think I can lead you to the cache where the treasure has been deposited.”
“Good,” Lady Lucille snapped. “We’ll go at once.”
“But the way is perilous. I’m sorry that I can’t carry more than one or two extra passengers on my tiger. I advise you to stay with the ship, Lady Lucille.”
Lady Lucille didn’t take kindly to the suggestion.
“How far is it?” the captain asked.
“Do we have to cross those mountains?”
“The trail winds through a valley,” said Veeva. “But why be afraid? I’ll only lead you.”
There was a long tense silence. Bitter suspicions in Lady Lucille’s eyes were feasting upon the girl.
“Would you take me?” Lady Lucille asked.
Veeva smiled. “Could you endure crossing the dangerous glacier? Could you—”
“I see through you,” Lady Lucille broke in angrily. “You’re coaxing me to go so you can hurl me off a cliff.”
“Was I coaxing you?” Veeva laughed.
“You know I would never get back alive. You want to steal what is mine.”
Veeva’s laughter subsided with a flush of embarrassment. Her eyes blazed with a will to fight but she held her temper. There was a hint of mockery in her fierce smile.
“Such talk! Are you truly a lady of nobility?”
“Where did you get those furs you’re wearing?” Lady Lucille screeched. “I think you’re a thief! My husband left me some special red fox—” And on and on she raved.
Veeva was bewildered that we should all sit there in helpless silence as if used to hearing such talk. She couldn’t understand whether this was a game or some misunderstanding. Smiling, she refused to take it as a brutal insult, for had we not been treating her to honors?
“Do you indulge your nobility in these fancies as a sport? . . . I must be going.”
Many of us instantly pleaded for her to stay. We tried to apologize for our Lady Lucille’s conduct. The conference turned into pandemonium. Everyone was talking.
While we tried to straighten matters out, some of us were playing our own personal games, trying to gain a word of favor from Veeva.
But the insults had been clinched by now, and they could not be undone. Veeva walked briskly to the door.
She turned and quieted us with a stinging speech.
“I have had enough of your silly nobility. It carries no weight with me. Your race is too young and raw to have any pride. My own race is as old as these mountains. I have been the queen for thousands of years. I can’t be annoyed by a little passing rudeness. So soon you will all be gone!”
“Gone?” Lady Lucille echoed. “Gone?” She repeated it over and over like a crazy parrot caught by a single word.
“In three or four centuries,” said Veeva, “you may have more reason for pride. If so, come back to me again—or send your great-grandchildren. I will still be here, riding these icy mountains.”
We stood there gaping. No one knew what to say.
Veeva herself gave us our cue.
“Bow to me, if any of you are still my friends . . . Bow to the Queen of the Ice.”
I bowed and the deepest of reverence was in my gesture. I do not know how many of the others bowed. When my eyes lifted I saw Veeva riding away in a flurry of snow.
CHAPTER XV
A Valley Under a Roof
“I’ll follow her,” said Shorty.
Within the next half hour as many as a dozen of us left the ship and started the uncertain trek across the field of ice.
We started together. But soon we had split into several groups, and some of the slower ones turned back.
Shorty and Professor Peterson and I managed to keep pace with Gandl, who had agreed to lead us part way.
It was a darkened world, but there was a bright glow from the stars, and the white snow had left a good trail. Our course led in a wide semicircle back to the south.
“That looks like the same valley we saw from another direction—Steve and I,” said Professor Peterson. “I can see some of the same ice-mounds.”
His eyes were better than mine. Even with his telescope I had difficulty spotting that row of ice domes. Our panorama took in a wide semicircular valley with black patches of mountains showing through the vast humps of blue snow.
The trail was fresher with each hour of travel, until at last we knew that Veeva must be riding only a short distance ahead of us.
We were tempted to call. But we remembered, and plowed on in comparative silence.
At last we overtook her.
She was waiting at the entrance of a deep crevasse. As soon as we were close enough for her to identify us she cried h
er greetings. But the remark she addressed to Gandl was brief and mysterious.
“You? . . . I’m surprised.”
We followed in her wake and found ourselves descending between vertical walls about five feet apart. The footing was perilous. Little stream of water slid over the smooth blue ice. The canyon rose high above us. Its depth was hard to gauge. I remember looking up and guessing that we were two hundred feet beneath the tops of the walls.
This fissure must have been formed by a very sudden break in the backbone of ice many years ago. The walls showed signs of much weathering. Countless footmarks of the tiger were embedded in the irregular floor upon which we were traveling.
This was delightful. After these many weeks of looking down on fields of ice, this was like a new world. My eyes were seeing colors that they had forgotten, streaks of purple mingled with the straight hard surfaces of blue which rose in frozen sheets on either side of us.
Sometimes we could hear trickling waterfalls or low roar of rivers beneath the glaciers. And Veeva would pause to tell us of the vastness of these wonders we could not see, as if she knew them all.
I lost all sense of direction, almost all sense of time. We stopped occasionally for food and rest. This journey must have taken two days or more. We were still descending.
“And you are still coming, Gandl?”
Veeva would say each time she waited for us to catch up.
“I am very much with you, still,” Gandl might answer. Or perhaps he would only nod and look intently at her, with the bright fire blazing in his eyes.
At length our tunnel widened into a sort of reception room. There were signs of habitation here. The floor had been backed with stones in somewhat regular formation. Light somehow reflected down through the irregular icy formations overhead.
They were like massive chandeliers. They added to our sense of wonderment. But they were deadly peril. As we proceeded along this wide reception room a freak crash would thunder against our ears. Then we would see through the blue reflections that one of these mammoth icicles had fallen. Our hearts beat faster. Death threatened our every step.
An hour later our way came upon steps hewn in the stone. There must have been thousands of them.
At this point Veeva’s tiger wanted to run and she had trouble holding him back.
Shorty had almost passed out from fatigue. He was given the privilege of riding. How I envied him. The professor was following along back of me.
Abruptly he called to Veeva. “What happened to Gandl?”
We all turned and our eyes tried to penetrate the gloomy blue darkness. Far back, high on the steps we could make out the figure of Gandl. He had stopped and was settling himself in a comfortable position against the stone wall.
We called to him and urged him to come on. What was the matter? Was he exhausted?
At this suggestion his laugh echoed mysteriously-down through the narrow pass.
Veeva said, “He doesn’t want to come. Leave him alone.”
We proceeded on our journey. But I felt uneasy, going ahead without Gandl. And Veeva kept looking back through the long narrow stairway until our way leveled off and turned in a new direction.
Now that the footing was solid I trudged along almost unconsciously. I think I fell asleep while walking.
Awakening, I was aware that Shorty and Veeva were still carrying on a conversation in low tones, barely audible above the swish of our footsteps.
Shorty was observing the bright-colored stones, imagining there were all sorts of precious gems in this unexplored region. Then I seemed to fall asleep again and came to consciousness only when the sounds of other voices seeped in upon my hearing.
Everything was so utterly dark. I could hardly believe that I was not in the midst of some grotesque dream. But my sore feet were still pounding along over a hard path of ice or stone, and my aching muscles were no dream.
I rubbed my eyes. My sight adjusted to the strange dark light, not like any I had ever experienced before. It was iridescence that glowed from the very walls and the floor, from every promontory of stone.
This was no longer darkness. But it was utterly unlike sunlight. As I became used to it the effect was highly pleasing. The dim rocks took on a variety of colors—some of them shadowy, others scintillating against black backgrounds.
Shorty and the professor were silent.
They were also drinking in the fairyland beauty of the passing scene.
What attracted me most was a long row of black dots running horizontally along the wall. The design was very simple. Once, when we came close enough to this continuous border, I rubbed my gloved hand along to discover that it was made up of a series of gouges which had been cut into the living stone.
The murmur of distant voices grew louder. At length I began to see the shadows of many people in the distance. I whispered to Peterson.
“Where are we? What does it mean?”
“A lost world!” the professor whispered. “Some runaway branch of humanity that has hidden itself away.”
“There must be hundreds of them.”
“Or thousands!”
It was like nothing anyone had ever dreamed—a colony of human beings could be living deep under a glacier.
I wished for Steve Pound. What would he have thought? Perhaps his hardheaded outlook, his commonsense knowledge would have been insulted.
But I was eager, now, for all my eyes could take in. Even though my mind tried to reject it.
Rivers ran along beside our path. Occasionally we saw plots of what appeared to be gardens. We could smell fresh green plant life and the brilliance of the plants were like emeralds.
We saw small four-wheeled wagons being pushed into little branch caverns that must have been mines.
We passed a group of workmen who were sitting in a circle eating from metal dishes. They were wearing light garments of furs. Their leaders wore special ornaments, including a Viking helmet and bracelets that might have gifts from some old Norsemen.
These people must have been well adjusted to the coolness of their climate. Many of them were not wearing gloves. They were going about their work casually; to them this was obviously the normal manner of living.
A group of girls, crossing our trail ahead of us, stopped to bow to Queen Veeva—nd they were happy and proud in doing so.
But our appearance caused great interest and curiosity among all these people. As we passed on, they broke into excited jabbering in a language we could not understand.
Veeva dropped a few explanations along the way.
“Your manner of talking is comparatively new to us down here,” she said. “Many of my people have not had the chance to study it. But I, the Queen, must know all languages. So must the Firemakers. Otherwise, how would we know how to deal with our prisoners?”
“Prisoners?” Shorty gulped, turning chalk-white.
Veeva smiled proudly. “Only with this most indispensable tool, language, was I able to deal properly with your friend Lord Lorruth when he and his party trespassed on my hunting ground.”
“Then he’s here?” I blurted. “He’s your prisoner?”
“For life,” said Veeva merrily.
“Wouldn’t you like to join him?”
CHAPTER XVI
Cells for Enemies
“These people you see,” Veeva continued, “are preparing to harvest these crops. Ever since our nation took refuge in the caverns under the ice we have managed to cultivate a goodly quantity of grains and vegetables. From the streams we get our meat, and also from the ice fields high over our heads.”
Beyond a high triangular doorway we saw a tall gaunt man, clad in ornamental furs, walking along in a manner of great importance. He was being attended by six boys. He would send any of them on errands to make stone marks on a mound of ice at the foot of the wall. They would come and go at his beck and call.
Then he would stop and instruct them. His language was this same conglomeration of sounds that didn’t fit into an
y foreign tongue I had ever heard. Suddenly, be veered into English and I caught his words, and we paused to listen. He was too intent on his task to notice us.
“Hear me, boys,” he said. “This is the new code of our enemies. If you would walk from our world into theirs they would greet you with words like these. Do you understand me?”
Some of the boys understood, others asked to have the words repeated. The tall man went over his statements carefully.
“You see,” he said, “our enemy knows that we have learned some of their codes, so they must change their style of talk. They do this so they can confuse us. But if we know their new code we will understand their plans to kill us.”
At this point Veeva called out to the tall dignitary. “Hello there, could the enemy spies understand you if they were listening?”
The tall man jerked about in great surprise. Our presence disconcerted him. His mouth moved nervously and his black broom-straw beard waggled, but for a moment he couldn’t speak—in our code or any other. He struggled to recover himself and took a few steps toward Veeva.
“Our beloved Queen!” He bowed low and the six boys surrounding him followed his example.
“Arise, Firemaker,” .Veeva said, The tall man came to his feet. The boys remained in a kneeling position.
“We welcome you. If I had known you were coming, a celebration would have been ready.”
The tall man bowed again. Then he and the boys arose.
“Conduct me to the Red Room,” said Veeva.
“You will not first go to the King?”
“I think not, Firemaker,” said Veeva. “Is he still sleeping?”
“Of course,” the Firemaker replied.
“If you have been up among the mountains and skies, you should know whether he will go on sleeping. Is the sun shining yet?”
“No,” said Veeva.
“Just as I thought,” said the Firemaker. “The enemies have not departed, so the king will go on sleeping.”
Veeva agreed with this, apparently, although she seemed unworried by this mysterious enemy.
Shorty interrupted to ask what kind of people these enemies were and where they came from.