Beyond the golden stair

by Bok, Hannes, 1914-1964

  His head bent, his lips seeking hers. She averted her face. Her pensive murmur was a dash of ice water: "I wonder what you will be most like—after the Changer

  Then they went onward again, until suddenly she stopped. "An opening!''

  He looked to where her eyes were levelled, but saw nothing to support her statement.

  "Hold me tightlyl*' That, at least, was no chore. T[ will look into it. Do you but keep firm clasp on me, and if I struggle, draw me back.**

  Her head, one shoulder and an arm disappeared. Trails of her hair floated unattached to her scalp. Her voice came: *Tl»ook with mel" And she pulled him partly into the imseen fissure.

  The jimgle was replaced by soKd blackness, as if every atom of it had faded away. Mareth gripped Hibbert tightly and groped out with a foot for soUd support but foimd none. She swept her free hand high and low in search of soHdity and encountered nothing.

  "It seems sheer void,** she lamented.

  Something flashed meteorically far below—a bird of many wings, two at the base of its neck, another pair in the center of its back, and a third set just over its tail. And either it was a quixotic creature which from sheer perversity flew upside down—^for its feet were folded on the side facing them—or due to Khoire's physical peculiarities the gravity of this black region functioned in reverse.

  T distrust the place," Mareth said. TEven were there foothold, we might stray endlessly from warp to warp. Let us continue through the jungle.**

  They withdrew from the crevice and slogged onward. Lreafy hands gripped them and yielded reluctantly, only to be replaced by others. Eye stalks lowered to scan them, flapping their lashes in ghastly flirtation. There were shrubs whose twin flowers, equally suggestive of double-flute lilies and of flaring nostrils, glued themselves to the wayfarers and—judging by their suction of air—smelled themi

  They passed plants with swollen, paunchy leaves whose half-exposed tubers when inadvertently trodden upon, bm-st with hollow and nauseous pops.

  Light surged ahead in leaping crescendos like the dash of hurricane-whipped combers on a shoreline sheer as Gibralter. The jungle's spice was swept aside by the clean and exhilarant freshness of water. Hibbert and Mareth wedged past yards-wide fan-shaped leaves, spotted with iridescence hke the spread tails of peacocks, which lifted and lowered languidly as though soliciting admiration.

  The flood tide of radiance was the soxmd of a waterfall which tumbled in widening whiteness sheer from the somber heavens, the outlet of some ocean draining through one of the dimensional vagaries. At its base, the green life was crammed thickly together, as if the plants elbowed each other at the water's edge for a chance to drink.

  Mareth said: '*We seem to be nearing the jungle's edge, and the land there I know. But this is the area of greatest danger, for here the beasts lurk—^where their food is young and succulent."

  "If they're only vegetarians—^" Hibbert started, and realized that the trees were no more vegetables than sponges.

  He rubbed his aching leg. Mareth caught her streaming hair and twisted it to a knot, binding it in place with the beribboned crystal pendant from her throat. They crept onward until they came to a path of stronger brilHance than the ochreous soil which it channeled. On either side lay uprooted trees and tumbled plants, stirring imeasily. It was as if a mighty plow had passed.

  "^The mark of a Ksor, and a recent onel See, the fallen trees have not witheredl Tread lightly now!" For their footfalls made faint flashes of hght.

  Abruptly Hibbert stopped before a wall of the great leaves. He sniffed and Mareth's look was a

  question. What was that odor, so Uke a vast and decaying chrysthanthemum?

  Carlotta s perfumel

  He parted the wall of peacock leaves the barest trifle and caught a glimpse of filthy fluttering garment—unmistakably Carlotta's normal finery.

  He turned to Mareth and raised a warning finger to his hps, forgetting that for her the gesture was without significance. After a moment's breathless waiting, he turned back and spread the leaves farther.

  Scarlatti and his woman were plodding along a hundred yards ahead, and although Hibbert's leg pained him, his powers of endurance apparently exceeded the giant's, for Scarlatti could barely keep on his feet. He paused now and then as he tottered to glare accusingly at the forest hemming him in, and to wipe the back of his hand over his forehead.

  Carlotta had an arm around him to steady him. She patted him and prattled reassurances, but he might have been alone for all the heed he displayed.

  Either the two had sHpped fortuitously out of the silver-scarlet reaches of the Glamors, or had watched Mareth's departure from it and emulated her super-physical maneuvers. At any rate, here they were not far from Mareth and Hibbert, and certainly not in the pink of condition.

  The giant lurched up to the aziu-e shaft of a tree more feathered than leafed and braced himself against it. He pulled the frail viewing-web from his shirt and mopped his face with it, his stertorous breaths showing as fluffs of flame.

  Carlotta's labored smile of understanding annoyed him, although it was a mark in her favor that she could smnmon the smile at all. She was obviously as travel-worn as he. Childishly he slapped at her, but

  the eflFort seemed too much, and he gripped the tree's bole for support. His swarthy not-quite-handsome face contorted as though he were about to burst in tears. He did not replace the web in his shirt but crumpled it savagely and threw it among the greenery as if it no longer meant anything to him—^and Hibbert knew that the giant was sick indeed.

  Carlotta stepped back, gaunt and nervous, clasping and unclasping her hands and turning now and again from her anxious contemplation of Scarlatti to scan her sm-roundings. At last she snatched up the discarded web and ran with it down to the waters edge. It would not absorb water and she flung it aside. She ripped away a piece of her skirt and soaked it, then went hurrying back to Scarlatti.

  She sponged his face, and as if the cold touch of the water were the stimulus he had needed, the giant went mad! He whirled around to face some imagined terror, jerked his gun from his belt and fired haphazardly at nothingi The shots streaked like httle lightniQgs, their cleavage of air the bright trails of tracer bullets. Carlotta shrieked a swirl of color and sprang to tear the gun from him.

  Before she could touch him, he had folded abruptly at the waist as if his spine had snapped. He fell face downward under the blue plumes of the spreading tree and lay twitching.

  Carlotta dropped to her knees beside him and tugged on his great weight. Moaniag, she managed to roll him over. At sight of his blanched face, she must have imagined that he had fainted. She dragged his head on her lap.

  "FrankI Frank, loverl" Hibbert heard her call.

  Again her eyes roved the fantastic forest as if appealing to its hinted humanity to come to her help.

  And as if they understood her silent plea, the trees responded. The blue plumes overhead fluttered as if afraid and straining to wing away; the eye-stems craned goggling; the spires of mouth-flowers murmured ripples of motley tints; the arms of the cacti whipped viciously.

  Before Hibbert could withdraw and let the screening leaves spring back into place, Carlotta saw him. She waved frantically, screaming. Beyond her, the trees with the flattened hands minricked her waving.

  Hibbert started forward, but Mareth held him back. She was beautiful, and he loved her, yes. But now he interpreted that beauty as elfin and alien. She was a porcelain princess of green-gem eyes and gold-thread hair, and as appropriately inhimian and imf eeling.

  *^Mareth, I can t stand by. Scarlatti's sick, and I've got to help him. Wait here, and don't worry. I'll get the gun, and I won t let him harm you.'*

  **How strange you people arel He has been harsh to you and siurely would slay you, were you in his way. Yet you would go to himi Think you that on regaining his strength he will appreciate your assistance? He will treat you as badly as ever before!'*

  T knowl" He pulled, but the slender hands held fas
t.

  Her eyes were the green of imfathomable seas. "And knowing, still would aid him? But why?"

  "It's hard to explain, but—^there's no real harm in him. He liked to play God with me, but still there's no real evil in him. He just doesn't realize what he's doing, that's all—^he's a sick mani"

  "Sick—inside and out. This is a fit place for him." She held tightly to Hibbert. "And if I forbid you to go to him?"

  "Let me go!" He scuffled with her. "If you're afraid

  for yourself, you're hidden. You can get away if something happens to me/'

  And now her eyes were all-human in her goddess face. She said: *1 but tested youl And if in your land there are men like Burks and yourself, then I renounce all allegiance to Dweil. Go to him, gol But you cannot help him. It is no illness which he suflFers but—^the Change!"

  The giant was shuddering. He groaned, drawing his knees upward and dragging his head from Car-lotta's lap. She forgot Hibbert and bent over him. He was flexing his legs as if seeking to draw his knees to his chin. His sallow whiteness warmed and paled again. His legs dropped heavily. Now he arched his back, the flaming breath siffling through his gritted teeth; he beat his fists on the ground—and behind him the leafy hands clenched and struck the soil, and from the tall stalks of blood-red mouth laughter floated in opalescent banners I

  Carlotta tried to lift his head. He would have shoved her away but his nerveless hands dropped even as he tried to raise them. On the tree above and on those beyond, the azure plumes and verdant leaves aped him and sagged limp.

  Tm comingi" Hibbert called, sprinting toward Carlotta. Behind him came Mareth. But even as they raced, the giant rolled back on his stomach, his fingers laxly pawing the ground and streaking it brighter wherever they scratched. He humped himself up—it might have been his huddled position which made him seem smaller than Carlotta. But no, he had shrivelled and was shrinking stilll

  His skin wrinkled hke crepe, the sweat gushing from it, then tautened to clothe a considerably diminished frame. His wet garments sagged on him, and

  now he was smaller than Hibbert! Carlotta loomed huge beside him.

  His legs dwindled, and in kicking them spasmodically, he flung off shoes grown many sizes too large for him, his socks flapping like loose bags. Carlotta heaved him upright. The wide circle of his belt slid down from his tiny hips, and his tenthke shirt hung clear to his shins.

  Hibbert stopped, dead still, as if crashing against a wall of glass. Dead still, and something nameless dying inside him, and hopeless horror rising in its place. Mareth halted beside him tranquilly, one of her long hands taking him by the arm, but he could not feel it.

  *T)o something, somebodyl'' Carlotta babbled. *Do somethingl AngthingI''

  *lt is the Change. What is done, he does himself,'' Mareth said gently.

  And as if the forest's madness had been shocked for the moment to sanity by what Scarlatti had become, it left off its malicious raillery and was motionless, rigid, even apprehensively still.

  Scarlatti was no more the swaggering, blustering giant—^he was a malignant dwarf! His hands were small and helpless as an infant's yet bony and ciured like claws. His head was so large that his frail neck could not support its weight and it lolled aslant. His brow had crept down over his eyes as if like wet clay the flesh and bone had been thiunbed askew by a sneering sculptor. His eyes were almost hidden by the beetling bulge as he glared wildly from their comers.

  He seized his head with those tiny talons to raise it that he might stare without strain, and saw the size and shape of those handsl

  He opened his long-toothed twisted mouth in a gape of horror. He ripped up his shirt to scan his misshapen legs and the deformed stumps of his feet. He knew himself for a monster, and shook his lolling head, refusing to beheve!

  At sight of his face, Carlotta had screamed and leaped up, had thrown her hands over her eyes and run from him. Now Scarlatti waved futilely after her, his voice the discordant call of a crow.

  "Carlottal What's happened! Carlottal" He tottered shakily after her.

  Carlotta ran straight for Hibbert and Mareth, shrieking ripples of fire. She flung herself on Mareth and hung sobbing against her. "It happened like you saidl He changedl He ain't my man no more! He's somebody else!"

  And as though somehow certain that she had been the victim of deviHsh sleight-of-hand, she turned toward the azure tree, calling: "Frank, lover! Frank!'^

  "Carlotta!" The dwarf, his head held up in his hands, hobbled awkwardly in tiny steps—^baleful-eyed.

  Carlotta could not face him. She babbled to Mareth: "Don't leave him Hke that! Change him back! Make him his old self again!" She gnawed her hands, her eyes wide and imseeing. "For the love of God, change him, or I'll flip my Kd—I can't stand it!"

  And shivering as if a mainspring had snapped inside her, she reeled from Mareth and threw back her head and screamed—despair so keen that it almost soimded like joy!

  The expectant forest was rustling uneasily and miu*-miuing in a faint fog of radiance, as a copse stirs under the first gusts of approaching storm. What were those leaping Hghts so far beyond Scarlatti and the

  walling trees—rhythmic, like signal flashes, and near-ing with every blink?

  The trees were straining away from them as if blown far aslant by a blast indeed, but the air was oppressively still. Tightly, the eye stalks closed their lids as if shutting out visions of horror. The flat green hands clutched the mouth spires as if uprooting themselves from the soil and the gnawing of worms therein. The peacock fans snapped into slim folded sticks, hiding their tempting splendors—^from what?

  The forest feared those nearing Hghts which brightened with every flickerl

  Hibbert had no opportunity to consider the jimgle's fears. The giant had turned and had teetered back to where his outsize trousers and the fallen gun were lying. Hibbert, still paralysed by dismay, disgust, and sorrowing pity, did not realize the little man's intentions tmtil too late to check them.

  The pistol was too heavy for a dwarf with such hapless hands. Scarlatti gripped it with both of them, heaved backward, and managed to lift it. He came scudding toward Hibbert and the women, his head jogging on his breast, the black coals of his eyes straining wickedly upward.

  It might have been in his mind to threaten them with the weapon, bargaining for the restoration of his former shape in retima for their lives. Or now that the Change had been so dreadfully verified, and for-seeing his hmnihation and helplessness in time to come, he might have been piuposing revenge, and perhaps in addition to their murders, his own suicide.

  It was then that Hibbert threw off the spell which had tranced him and rushed for the pygmy as swiftly as his lamed and throbbing leg would allow. It was then that the straining trees wrenched apart as if

  dearing a lane among themselves for the passage of some titanic Jagganath. And it was then that Carlotta changed Scarlatti's purpose by screaming:

  "Mareth, change him backl Til get his gun—^he's too Uttle to stop mel 111 give you the mask and the screenl You can have them, you can do anything you want to me—only change him backl"

  And even as Hibbert raced toward him, even as the flashing li^ts flared dazzlingly near—a thousand feet away, now but three hundred—the dwarf swerved full on Carlotta, steadying the gun's wobbling in his weak grip. Laboredly, his forked tongue gripped between his crooked teeth from the stress of effort, he worked to pull the trigger. At the same time, Hibbert was shouting he did not know what to deflect the dwarfs attention and was hobbling to throw himself in the gun s way to shield Carlotta.

  And also at the same time a monstrous boxmding thing came crashing down the lane among the trees, just behind the pimy figure.

  The Ksorl It was aU that Mareth had described it, and morel

  It was a gigantic lizard all of eighty feet from the homy toes of its many legs up to the humps of its multiple shoulders, and scaled with plates of green weathered bronze larger than shingles. Its head was more a bird's than
an alhgator s, the rows of poniard teeth Hke moldering ivory.

  And as Hibbert threw himself aside to protect Carlotta, it lifted that head in a roar like a volcanic firebursti The Hght from Scarlatti's shot was lost in the glare of that beUow. Hibbert's leap had carried him into the gun's path too late. Carlotta spun back as if stricken by a cyclone gust.

  And while the gun dropped from the pygmy's

  hands, while Hibbert tripped and sprawled, the Ksor's head lowered. It shot forth a thin brown whip of a tongue straight toward Scarlatti—^the tongue of a frog hcldng at a flyl

  The dwarf had heard the behemoth's roar and seen its explosive hght He was turning and struggling to lift his lolling head as he swerved, to see what had come up behind him. The lashing tongue curled around him, flipping him from the ground and into the scarlet abyss of the jaws!

  Carlotta threw her hands up from the red stain in her side.

  "Frankl** She ran forward as the jaws clamped together with a rush of fetid wiud. And as she ran, reaching blindly toward the vanished Scarlatti, as Hibbert scrambled up to intercept her in this madness —^the Change fell upon her so quickly that the eyes scarcely caught iti

  She melted as she ran, like a manikin of yellowed wax thrust too close to a flame. The rivuleting drops sank into the ground, shrinking her in mid-step. Her neck lengthened; her arms and legs thinned; her sldn deepened in color. Her clothing fell away as she tumbled down on hands which struck earth as slender paws. She had become something not quite yet very like a black and hairless dogi

  A woimded hoimd, blood forking along her lean ribs I She yelped, eluding Hibbert's reach for her— and indeed, his gestmre was halted in its making, begun to hold back a woman and arrested at the sight of the thing which she had become, so sudden had been the Changel

  Straight for the Ksor the black beast sprang, its teeth bared in a snarl—an ant attacking an elephantl Hibbert scrambled back toward Mareth. She came fluttering to meet him and caught his hand The