Beyond the golden stair

by Bok, Hannes, 1914-1964

strike. He rammed into the giant, pushing him ofiF balance. Scarlatti staggered, instinctively clawed out for a handhold, and dropped Mareth, which was exactly what Hibbert had hoped for. Now she was free to dart into one of those secret doorways and thence to safetyl

  He only wished that one of those doors might be handy. What Scarlatti and Carlotta would certainly do to him if she escaped did not matter, so long as Mareth went free.

  But an unsuspected element intervened. Mareth rolled from the giant in a spin of flamehke whipping draperies, and as Scarlatti regained his equilibrium, tatters of dense silver mist swept down from everywhere as if whisked by warring gusts. In thick and ragged ciutains which shimmered like knitted moonbeams, they congealed and crystallized into suspended jagged splinters, like the shards of many mirrors hanging stationary and reflecting colorful fragments of their surroundings and of themselves. For a second, Hibbert imagined that he had dropped into an amusement park's mirrored fun house.

  The silvery streaks intervened as the giant raced to recapture Mareth. Momentarily blinded, he skidded to a stop and struck out at the bewildering glassy sheets. At his movement they swung into new angles, and Scarlatti struck his own twinl

  It was a complete and perfect image of himself, but in his surprise he did not recognize it. Likely he imagined it one of Patur's men-at-arms come to Mareth's rescue. He leaped back from it, his gun spitting, and similarly it leaped back from him, shooting even as he I Both figures hovered, each awaiting the other to fall.

  The giant grasped the situation and skulked forward, groping forth to finger that phantom self. It

  approached him with hand reaching to his own. Upon Hibbert flashed remembrance of the "fetch" or ghostly double of the Scots, whose visitation portends death. That this image might be a fetch were pretty dubious, but certainly little more peculiar than mist which solidified into mirrors.

  But the mist had not reached the limits of its talents, for beyond the two amazed Scarlattis not one but a dozen Mareths were struggling to arise. Twelve of them, and which were spectral, which flesh? A trio of Hibbert's Ukenesses sprang into existence between himself and Carlotta, who was also becoming overwhelmed by dupHcations of herself.

  Where but scant seconds ago had been foiu: people now were scores of theml

  Carlotta walked up to one of her mirrored selves, and in echo of the motion, all of her coimterparts moved forward, but since the mist-mirrors hung at every angle, the many figures did not move in the same direction. They colhded against those other apparitions of Scarlatti, Mareth, and Hibbert, and even as they were not purely and simply mist, neither were they reflections—for the bmnping images reacted to the collisions in numerous ways. They stepped back with poHte bows, or jostled one or the other rudely aside; they crouched at defense like wary pugilists, and again they paused for the soundless simiUtude of a friendly chat!

  All over the scarlet distances, other ribbands of the puzzling silvery stuff formed into fiuther copied images which behaved with a vitaUty all their own, and certainly not in character with the forms they represented! The fewscore repHcas had multipHed to a multitudel

  There were tens of Carlotta dancing hand in hand, heptads of Hibberts lined in siagle file and trampiQg

  a prisoners' march, and scores of Scarlattis engaged in gladiatorial fisticuflFs and wrestling matches—sometimes merely among themselves, again with Hibbert and anon with Carlotta. Among the teeming facsimiles and often joining their carnival antics, moved countless Marethsl

  One of them glided up to Hibbert and touched him. She was cold and insubstantial. Was the silvery vapor but a mist after all and this experience only a highly speciahsed mirage? Or was it a gas that stimulated hallucinations?

  He looked into eyes which were Mareth's in shape and color, but certainly not in their wanton invitation. She snapped the threads binding her, lifted cool weightless hands, stroked his face, and puckered her lips for his Idssl Phantom though she might be, he enjoyed it.

  Then she laughed without soimd nor light and struck him playfully, the feather touch of a wet mothl

  He plowed into her, never dreaming that he had realized the dreams of lovers throughout the ages, to fuse with the beloved. He turned and looked after her. She had sauntered to a Scarlatti and was amorously stroking his hair. And whether they were hallucinations or not, Hibbert blazed with jealousy as the giant and the girl embraced and lingeringly Idssedl

  This had gone more than far enough. Hibbert was grateful to the timely intervention, though he was sure that it could have been a Httle more decorous. "MarethI'' he shouted, but in the middle of a second shout he snapped his mouth shut. If she answered, he might place the real among the ghostly, but so could Scarlatti!

  No, he must roam from girl to girl as had the prince in the folk tale who sought his true love among a sorcerer's facsimile daughters, recognizing her at last

  by the distinctive light of love in her eyes. Which reminded him that Mareth did not love him. At least not yet.

  Well, he had one advantage over the harassed prince. He could ascertain the proper Mareth by her warm substantiality.

  He wandered miserably around, plodding through the damp dream-folk, but there were himdreds of them and every one was on the move like himself, and those whom he had met already he was likely to encoimter anew. The mirror-torture of the Gobi lamas was meanest mischief compared to thisi And still from the scarlet infinitudes fresh mists came raining downl

  He thumped against a Carlotta who was all too solid. She buflFeted his cheek casually, not expecting to make contact. Then she braced herself, congealed by surprise.

  "You're reall'* she screamed, clawing at him. He slipped back among the wraiths. *Trank, lover, I found him—HibbertI But he's got awayl"

  "Well, hang onto him next time!" the giant bellowed from somewhere. ^'Stay where you are! Im coming overl"

  Hibbert hastily angled away from the shout, and now he was afraid that these mists, so capriciously arrived, might just as capriciously depart, leaving Mareth and himself iu the giant's hands. Or it might be that his next step would plunge him through one of the unknown doorways, launching him with wired hands into God only knew what kiad of labyrinth— and alonel

  He halted uncertainly. A Mareth drifted up to him. She whispered: "Hold stiUI It is II"

  ''Marethl" he breathed. "What's happened?''

  "Quietl These are merely the Glamors, semi-intelligent forces native to Khoire. Too weak to retain

  substance, they drift about mimickmg the people they encounter, and like idiots they are sportive and malicious.'*

  From not far the giant's voice lifted. "Carlottal Yell again so I can steer to youl**

  Mareth turned her back to Hibbert, her bound hands gripping his belt, and not a second too soon, for as she swayed sidewise in that cryptic motion of crossing the distances, Scarlatti brudied them both and stopped v^th a grunt.

  Swift as the flip of a fish-tail the scarlet atmosphere and the moiling myriads of apparitions blinked out in darkness.

  Hibbert and Mareth thudded lightly into a landscape of shadows. There were light and colors around them, but faint almost to extinction, muddy and diseased. Even the ground which hitherto had been bright, was dark, and its hue was a poisonous decaying brown only in the least degree removed from the vacant blackness of the sky.

  For a moment, Hibbert thought that Mareth and he had popped into a darkling cavern from whose low ceiling hung enormous bats, their leathery wings unfurled and trailing down to the floor.

  Mareth's fingers loosened from his belt. She moved a little away from Hibbert, and asked herself: "I know not this dreary placel Where are we?**

  With sinking voice, she answered herself:

  *Tlie forestsi The home of the sick and the dement-edl Great Ones of Khoire, help us nowl''

  "Whatisit,Marethr

  "We are lost in the Jimgles of Madnessl**

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Jungles of Madness

  Hibbert's eyes grew con
ditioned to the dying light The drooping shapes were not the sagging winged bats that he had fancied. They were prodigious leaves, some of them ten feet across and more tiian twice that in length. They bent from bloated and twisted boughs on trunks blistered with gnarl and like sickly hmnan limbs frozen in torture. From all sides and above, they hung draped in a silent assembly of watching, waiting presences, their upward ranks merging into the nighted sky.

  The plants which Hibbert had seen in Patur's pictures had all been as bright as though veined with flame, but these were vesseled with shadowsl Mareth shone against them like the haloed Circe, daughter of the sun.

  From the ground and the trees rose a sickly fragrance, sour and stifling. Mareth sniffed it and coughed. ^'But we cannot stay herel The disease is conta-giousl"*

  Hibbert said: Tf we go back, we'll run into Scar-lattL""

  "It were best,** Mareth decided, "that we leave this spot promptly. Your friend was close to us, back

  among tbe Glamors. If he saw my motion of leaving and can imitate it, we may find him beside usP

  Hibbert struggled with his fetters and winced as they cut him afresh. Mareth said: '*Time later for us to free oiu: hands. Now we must hastenl'*

  She shoxddered through the crackling leaves, her bright hair sireaming in golden summons. A himi permeated the jimgle, that thinning drone which Hibbert had heard on the bridge of Burks* tower and on the desert—^the sonancy of his own world's sinking sun.

  He trailed Mareth's shine. The crisp leaves rattled and scraped his face, and in their grudging slide athwart his sldn they suggested the leathern hands of feeble old giants striving from the brink of death to capture one last victim.

  A red spark like the glowing end of a cigarette skinuned from beyond a leaf, alighted on his arm, and dinmied to darkness—a mosquito from the world below, its glow but the whir of its wingsl

  "Mareth!** Hibert called, '^please wait! Fm afraid of stumbling into one of the dimensional faults and losing you.**

  Her panic had subsided and she halted. Worriedly, she said: "Could I but find one of those faults, we would slip quickly through it and from this lair of terror.''

  ''Why can t you find one?''

  TNone ventures here save students of psychology equipped to resist the emanations from the trees. Little is known of entrances and exits."

  She moved so that they stood back to back, and her shackled hands plucked at the wires securing his wrists.

  **Now we are far enough away from where we entered to risk this. We will need oiu* handsl All these

  trees were once man and beast, but their stricken minds could not maintain the bodies with which they were bom, and they became what we see here. The Higher Powers transported them away from the settled areas to Hve if they could or die. And imthinkable things feed on theml*'

  She had loosened Hibbert's fetters somewhat. He strained on them, but only cracked the blood-clots with pain like the bite of iodine. He bit his Hp, and asked:

  "Can t we find our way out of here without resorting to the dimensional doors?^

  ^TTes, if we can find our way to where the plants bum brightly, lusty with life. ITiese dark ones aroimd us are old, drooping, and dying. They have been here long. But the yoimg plants will mark the fringe of the forest, being newly placed there by the Higher Ones.'*

  His wires feU away. He stretched, shook off the drops of blood snaking down his wrists, turned, and made short work of Mareth's bonds.

  He inquired: "Arent some of those beasts you mentioned apt to stumble through the openings and into the streets of yoiu: cities? I don't ask why your people don t kill them, since I know killing is against yoiur law.''

  ^'It may be that they lack the intelligence to take advantage of the flaws, and it may also be that they cannot see them. Or it may be that their great size prevents their squeezing through the flaws. Too, it may be that the flaws any may have found have been but openings to dangers greater stilll"

  She was rubbing her wrists. Her skin looked tender enough, but nevertheless it was not so badly cut as was Hibbert's.

  ""Greater dangers or not,'* she said, ^"should we find

  any of the flaws, we will peer into them at least. I would much rather confront the unknown than a Ksor, and these woods abound with them. Ksors,** she explained to his lifted brows, "are Hke the alligators of your swamplands below, but as enormous in comparison as are moimtains to grains of sand.**

  He rather doubted thatl

  "And swiftr* she itahcized. "Swift almost as the pellets of your friend's weaponi**

  "Stop calling Scarlatti my friend. I wasn't in his company by choice. And while you're about it, tell me—^why did you save me?"

  Her green eyes were inscrutable. He said: "When I knocked you loose from Scarlatti, it was because I hoped you'd get the chance to shp through one of those doors. Why didn't you get away as quickly as possible? Why did you wait to help me?"

  "For one thing, because the doorways are not scattered as thickly as you seem to think, and even though free, I had to seek one. Your sacrifice might have been all in vain had the Glamors not chanced to pass. And when I found the doorway, I could not abandon youl You are not like him. You would have saved me at great cost to yourselfl I think that in your case the Change will be all for the betterl And something within me whispered that—"

  She faltered and looked away, her voice diminishing to silence. Abruptly, she pushed forward through the curtaining leaves, but not before he had glimpsed her change in color.

  He raced the few steps she had taken and caught hold of her. She rested lighdy against him.

  "MarethI" he breathed. "What was it that whispered within you, and what did it say?"

  Her color deepened. She did not recoil from his

  hands slipping around her in timid, imcertain embrace, but she would not look up at him. Barely, he heard her.

  *! think it was my heart which whispered . . . and it said that... no longer I pity youl"

  But as he deciphered her implication with a gasp of gladness, she drifted out of his hold, ^'Whatever I feel for you—^let it rest for the presentl We must keep alert!''

  She peered back whence they had come. **Has your friend—^has Scarlatti managed to follow with the woman? Or have they discovered another way and taken it—and to what place? Or do they still seek each other among the Glamors' mimicry?"

  She took Hibbert's hand. **Hold to me, lest one of us slip away unawares!"

  They went onward. The sky was lightening by scarcely perceptible degrees. Detail by detail, the jimgle became distinct, and the sharper it grew, the more Hibbert realized Mareth's cause for perturbation. Everywhere, it was aUve with movement, not the normal swaying of branches in a breeze-trodden wood of his own world, but rather as if the varicose branches were like hands curling and unclenching, especially those nearest Mareth and himself.

  Nor did he rehsh the shapes of the plants and the trees. If as Mareth had said these growing things once had been men and beasts, they had retained but Kttle of their former characteristics—^in most cases merely a single feature.

  There were snaky vines which stirred sluggishly like sleeping pythons, their leaves lifting and lowering torpidly like plying fins, and cacti from whose hedgehog-quilled bodies quested long-thomed tentacles— feebly and blindly, the fumblings of sickly squids.

  The leaves which had clung to him so lingeringly were fingered like flattened hands, and their toudi was more unpleasant than the physical feel of slime. They trembled as if with neurotic emotion, and their caresses made him feel soiled and psychically im-clean. His sldn lumped with a creeping chill, and he hurried to precede Mareth from then on, striking the leaves from her path that she might not suffer their fondling. They jerked back from his blows.

  A hvid green glow bleached the air ahead, and he sniffed an unpleasantly pervasive stench. Fetid, miasmatic, it reminded him of the reek of a sweltering zoo.

  Tall stalks and slim ones suddenly sagged down as if bowed by the weight of the big
eyelike balls which tipped them. Truly diey were eyes, their cahces their lashes.

  ''Get away, you peeping Toms!"* he muttered, striking up at them. And it might have been that before assmning this shape, they had been exactly what he now called them, people who had Hved vicariously, gratifying the lust of the eye and thus condemned to this purgatorial semblance.

  In which case, what then of those others—^the thorny cacti, the stroking hands, the serpentine vines? What of these enormous spires which he and Mareth were passing at this minute, whose flowers might almost be exaggerated snapdragons, save that their pursed petals were a httle too similar in shape to human mouths, and their scarlet flush too aldn to the vital tinge of blood!

  They were rocking, the blooms of one stem meeting and striving to hold to those of another. 'TCiss plants," he decided. 'Trobably people who never thought of a thing but making conquests.''

  He was a bit astray on that premise, however, for soon he came upon growths whose contours made him bum with startled, indignant blushes. Hastily he drew Mareth along! It was positively no place for her, escorted or not!

  The air burned a brighter green and the groimd warmed with amber luminescence. Nourished by the glowing soil, the plants and trees grew taller and straighter, their sap no longer shadows but throbbing light. The putrid odor changed to one of spice.

  How long and far they had traveled, he could not guess. His lame leg was aching, and Mareth was beginning to stumble. She paused to rest, leaning lightly against him, nor minded the clasp of his arms about her waist. A wisp of her sim-flame hair smoothed his cheek.

  ^'In my world,'' he said, ''we have a form of infatuation known as love at first sight which generally becomes disgust after second sight. But love of any kind is pretty imcertain, because one can be acquainted with people for years yet never really know them. But here, where you know a person completely the minute you meet him, I should imagine that love at first sight really happens, and I mean the word in its true sense. I loved you the moment I saw you, Mareth.'*