by Anthology
Indeed it wasn't liquor. Watson took a sip; and he made a mental note that if all things in the Thomahlia were on a par with this, then he certainly was in a world far above his own. For the one sip was enough to send a thrill through his veins, a thrill not unlike the ecstasy of supreme music—a sparkling exuberance, leaving the mind clear and scintillating, glorified to the quick thinking of genius.
Later Watson experienced no reaction such as would have come from drinking alcohol or any other drug.
It was the strangest meal ever eaten by Watson. The food was very savoury, and perfectly cooked and served. Only one dish reminded him of meat.
"You have meats?" he asked. "This looks like flesh."
Geos shook his head. "No. Do you have flesh to eat, on the other side? We make all our food."
MAKE food. Watson thought best simply to answer the question:
"As I remember it, Rhamda Geos, we had a sort of meat called beef- -the flesh of certain animals."
The Rhamda was intensely interested. "Are they large? Some interpret the Jarados to that effect. Tell me, are they like this?" And he pulled a silver whistle from his pocket and, placing it to his lips, blew two short, shrill notes.
Immediately a peculiar patter sounded down the corridor; a ka- tuck, ka-tuck, ka-tuck, not unlike galloping hoof-beats. Before Watson could do any surmising a little bundle of shining black, rounded the entrance to the room and ran up to them. Geos picked it up.
It was a horse. A horse, beautifully formed, perfect as an Arab, and not more than nine inches high!
Now, Chick had been in the Blind Spot, conscious, but a short while. He knew that he was in the precise position that Rhamda Avec had occupied that morning on the ferry-boat. Chick recalled the pictures of the Lilliputian deer and the miniature kittens; yet he was immensely surprised.
The little fellow began to neigh, a tiny, ridiculous sound as compared with the blast of a normal-sized horse, and began to paw for the edge of the table.
"What does he want?"
"A drink. They will do anything for it." Geos pressed a button, and in a moment he had another goblet. This he held before the little stallion, who thrust his head in above his nostrils and drank as greedily as a Percheron weighing a ton. Watson stroked his sides; the mane was like spun silk, he felt the legs symmetrical, perfectly shaped, not as large above the fetlocks as an ordinary pencil.
"Are they all of this size?"
"Yes; all of them. Why do you ask?"
"Because"—seeing no harm in telling this—"as I remember them, a horse on the other side would make a thousand of this one. People ride them."
The Rhamda nodded.
"So it is told in the books of Jarados. We had such beasts, once, ourselves. We would have them still, but for the brutality and stupidity of our ancestors. It is the one great sin of the Thomahlia. Once we had animals, great and small, and all the blessings of Nature; we had horses and, I think, what you call beef; a thousand other creatures that were food and help and companions to man. And for the good they had done our ancestors destroyed them!"
"Why?"
"It was neglect, unthinking and selfish. A time came when our civilisation made it possible to live without other creatures. When machinery came into vogue we put aside the animals as useless; those we had no further use for we denied the right to reproduce. The game of the forest was hunted down with powerful weapons of destruction; all went, in a century or two; everything that could be killed. And with them went the age of our highest art, that age of domesticated animals.
"Our greatest paintings, our noblest sculpture, came from that age; all the priceless relics that we call classic. And in its stead we had the mechanical age. Man likewise became a mechanism, emotionless, with no taste for Nature. Meat was made synthetically, and so was milk."
"You don't mean to say they did not preserve cows for the sake of their milk?"
"No; that kind of milk became old-fashioned; men regarded it as unsanitary, fit only for the calves. What they wanted was something chemically pure; they waged war on bacteria, microbes, and Nature in general; a cow was merely a relic whose product was always an uncertainty. With no reason for the meat and no use for the milk, our vegetarians and our purists gradually eliminated them altogether. It was a strange age; utilitarian, scientific, selfish; it was then headed straight for destruction."
And he went on to relate how men began to lose the power of emotion; there were no dependent beasts to leaven his nature with the salt of kindness; he thought only of his own aggrandisement. He became like his machine, a fine thing of perfectly correlated parts, but with no higher nature, no soul, no feeling; he was less than a brute. The animals disappeared one by one, passing through the channel of death, into the world beyond the Spot of Life, leaving behind only these tiny survivors, playthings, kept in existence longer than all others because of a mere fad.
"Does your spiritism include animals as well as men?"
"Naturally; everything that is endowed with life."
"I see. Let me ask you: why didn't the Rhamdas interfere and put a stop to this wanton sacrilege against Nature?"
The Rhamda smiled. "You forget," replied he, "that these events belong far in the past. At that time the Rhamdas were not. It was even before the coming of the Jarados."
Watson asked no more questions for a while. He wanted to think. How could this man Rhamda Geos, if indeed he were a man, accept him, Watson, as a spirit? Solid flesh was not exactly in line with his idea of the unearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. The doctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body, his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of his superior's wisdom, should accept Watson in the same way.
And then, the Jarados: at every moment his name had cropped up. Who was he? So far he had heard no word that might be construed as a clue. The great point, just now, was that the Rhamda Geos accepted him as a spirit, as the fact and substance promised by Avec. But—where was the doctor?
Chick ventured this question:
"My coming was foretold by the Rhamda Avec, I understand. Is this in accord with the words of the Jarados?"
The Rhamda looked up expectantly and spoke with evident anxiety.
"Can you tell me anything about the Jarados?"
"Let us forgo that," side-stepped Watson. "Possibly I can tell you much that you would like to know. What I want to know is, just how well prepared you are to receive me?"
"Then you come from the Jarados!"
"Perhaps."
"What do you know about him?"
"This: someone should have preceded me! The fact and the substance-you were to have it inside three days! It has been several hundred times the space allotted! Is it not so?"
The Rhamda's eyes were pin-pointed with eagerness.
"Then it IS true! You are from the Jarados! You know the great Rhamda Avec—you have seen him!"
"I have," declared Watson.
"In the other world? You can remember?"
"Yes," again committing himself. "I have seen Avec—in another world. But tell me, before we go on I would have an answer to my question: did anyone precede me?"
"No."
Watson was nonplussed, but he concealed the fact.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite, my dear sir. The Spot of Life was watched continually from the moment the Rhamda left us."
"You mean, he and the Nervina?"
"Quite so; she followed him after an interval of a few hours."
"I know. But you say that no one came out ahead of me. Who was it that guarded this—this Spot of Life? The Rhamdas?"
"They and the Bars."
"Ah! And who are the Bars?"
"The military priesthood. They are the Mahovisal, and of the Temple of the Bell. They are led by the great Bar Senestro."
"And there were times when these Bars, led by this Senestro, held guard over the Spot of Life?" To this Geos nodded; and Watson went on: "And who is this great Senes
tro?"
"He is the chief of the Bars, and a prince of D'Hartia. He is the affianced of the two queens, the Aradna and the Nervina."
"The TWO of them?"
Whereupon Watson learned something rather peculiar. It seemed that the princes of D'Hartia had always married the queens. This Senestro had had a brother, but he died. And in such an event it was the iron custom that the surviving brother marry both queens. It had happened only once before in all history; but the precedent was unbreakable.
"Then, there is nothing against it?"
"Nothing; except, perhaps the prophecy of the Jarados. We now know—the whole world knows—that we are fast approaching the Day of Life."
"Of course; the Day of Life." Watson decided upon another chance shot. "It has to do with the marriage of the two queens!"
"You DO know!" cried the Rhamda joyously. "Tell me!"
"No; it is I who am asking the questions."
Watson's mind was working like lightning. Whether it was the influence of the strange drink, or the equally strange influence of ordinary inspiration, he was never more self-assured in his life. It seemed a day for taking long chances.
"Tell me," he inquired, "what has the Day of Life to do with the two queens and their betrothal?"
The Rhamda throttled his eagerness. "It is one of the obscure points of the prophecy. There are some scholars who hold that such a problem as this presages the coming of the end and the advent of the chosen. But others oppose this interpretation, for reasons purely material: for if the Bar Senestro should marry both queens it would make him the sole ruler of the Thomahlia. Only once before have we had a single ruler; for centuries upon centuries we have had two queens; one of the D'Hartians, and the other of the Kospians, enthroned here in the Mahovisal."
Watson would have liked to learn far more. But the time seemed one for action on his part; bold action, and positive.
"Rhamda Geos—I do not know what is your version of the prophecy. But you are positive that no one preceded me out of the Spot?"
"I am. Why do you persist?"
"Because"—speaking slowly and with the greatest care—"because there was one greater than I, who came before me!"
The Rhamda rose excitedly to his feet, and then sank back into his chair again. In his eyes was nothing save eagerness, wonder and respect. He leaned forward.
"Who was it? Who was he?"
Watson's voice was steady as stone.
"The great Jarados himself!"
XXXIII
A LONG WAY FROM SHORE
Once more Watson had taken the kind of chance he preferred—a slender one. He took the chance that these people, however occult and advanced they might be, were still human enough to build their prophecy out of an old foundation. If he were right, then the person of the Jarados would be inviolable. If the professor were prisoner, held somewhere in secret, and it got noised about that he was the true prophet returned—it would not only give Holcomb immense prestige, but at the same time render the position of his captors untenable.
Chick needed no great discernment to see that he had touched a vital spot. The philosophy of the Rhamdas was firmly bound up with spiritism; they had gone far in science, and had passed out of mere belief into the deeper, finer understanding that went behind the shadow for proof. Certainly Watson inwardly rejoiced to see Rhamda Geos incredulous, his keen face whitening like that of one who has just heard sacrilege uttered—to see Geos rise in his place, grip the table tightly, and hear him exclaim:
"The Jarados! Did you say—the Jarados? He has come amongst us, and we have not known? You are perfectly sure of this?"
"I am," stated Watson, and met the other's keen scrutiny without flinching.
Would the game work? At least it promised action; and now that he had the old feeling of himself he was anxious to get under way. Any feeling of fear was gone now. He calmly nodded his head.
"Yes, it is so. But sit down. I have still a bit more to tell you."
The Rhamda resumed his seat. Clearly, his reverence had been greatly augmented in the past few seconds. From that time on there was a marked difference in his manner; and his speech, when he addressed Chick, contained the expression "my lord"—an expression that Watson found it easy enough to become accustomed to.
"Did you doubt, Rhamda Geos, that I came from the Jarados?"
"We did not doubt. We were certain."
"I see. You were not expecting the Jarados."
"Not yet, my lord. The coming of the Jarados shall be close to the Day of the Judgment. But it could not be so soon; there were to be signs and portents. We were to solve the problem first; we were to know the reason of the shadow and the why of the spirit. The wisdom of the Rhamda Avec told that the day approaches; he had opened the Spot of Life and gone through it; but he had NOT sent the fact and the substance." Watson smiled. There was just enough superstition, it seemed, beneath all the Rhamda's wisdom to make him tractable. However, Chick asked:
"Tell me: as a learned man, as a Rhamda, do you believe in the prophecy implicitly?"
"Yes, my lord. I am a spiritist; and if spiritism is truth, then the Jarados was genuine, and his prophecy is true. After all, my lord, it is not a case of legend, but of history. The Jarados came at a time of high civilisation, when men would see and understand him; he gave us his teaching in records, and imposed his laws upon the Thomahlia. Then he departed—through the Spot of Life."
And the Rhamda Geos went on to say that the teachings of the Jarados had been moral as well as intellectual. Moreover, after he had formulated his laws, he wrote out his judgment.
"What was that?"
"An exhortation, my lord, that we were to give proof of our appreciation of intelligence. We were to use it, and to prove ourselves worthy of it by lifting ourselves up to the level of the Spot of Life. In other words, the spot would be opened when, and only when, we had learned the secrets of the occult, and—had opened the Spot ourselves!"
Watson thought he understood partly. He asked:
"And that is why you doubt me?"
"You, my lord? Not so! You were found in the Temple of the Bell and Leaf; not on the Spot itself, to be sure, but on the floor of the temple. You were, both in your person and in your dress, of another world; you had been promised by the Rhamda Avec; and, in a sense, you were a part of the prophecy. We accepted you!"
"But I speak your language. Account for that, Geos."
"It need not be accounted for, my lord. We accept it as fact. The affinity of spirit would not be bound by the limitation of artificial speech. That you should talk the Thomahlia language is no more strange than that Rhamda Avec, when he passed into your world, should speak your tongue."
"We call our language English," supplied Watson. "It is the tongue of the Jarados and of myself."
"Tell me of the Jarados, my lord!" with renewed eagerness. "In the other world—what is he?"
It was Chick's opportunity. By telling the simple truth about Dr. Holcomb he would enhance himself in the eyes of Rhamda Geas.
"In the other world—we call it America—the Jaradas is a Rhamda much like yourself, the head and chief of many Rhamdas sitting in a great institution devoted to intelligence. It is called the University of California."
"And this California; what is it, my lord?"
"A name," returned Chick. "Immediately on the other side of the Spot is a region called California."
"The promised land, my lord!"
"The promised land indeed. There are some who call it paradise, even there." And for good measure he proceeded to tell much of his own land, of the woods, the rivers, the cities, animals, mountains, the sky, the moon, and the sun. When he came to the sun he explained that no man dared to look at it continuously with the bare eyes. Its great heat and splendour astounded Geos.
Concerning himself he nonchalantly stated that he was the fiance of Holcomb's daughter; that is, son-in-law-to-be of the prophet Jarados; that he was sort of Junior Rhamda. He declared that he had come from
the occult Rhamdas, through the other side of the Spot, in search of the Jarados who had gone before. As to his blankness up to now, and his perplexity—he was but a Junior; and the Spot had naturally benumbed his senses. Even now, he apologised, it was difficult to know and to recall everything clearly.
Through it all the Rhamda Geos Listened in something like awe. He was hearing of wonders never before guessed in the Thomahlia. As the prospective son-in-law of the Jarados, Watson automatically lifted himself to a supreme height, so great that, could he only hold himself up to it, he would have a prestige second only to that of the prophet himself.
All of a sudden he thought of a question. It gripped him with dread, the dread of the unknown. The question was one of TIME. "How long have I been here, Rhamda Geos?"
"Over eleven months, by our system of reckoning. You were found on the floor of the temple three hundred and fifty-seven days ago; you were in a lifeless condition; you must have been there some hours, my lord, before we discovered you."
"Eleven months!" It had seemed but that many minutes. "And I was unconscious—"
"All the time, my lord. Had we caught you immediately upon your coming, we could have brought you around within three days, but in the circumstances it was impossible to restore you before we did. You have been under the care of the greatest specialists in all Thomahlia."
Geos himself had been one of these. "The council of Rhamdas went into special session, my lord, immediately after your materialisation, and has been sitting almost continually since. And now that you are revived, they are waiting in person for you to show yourself.
"They accept you. They do not know who you are, my lord; none of us has guessed even a part of the truth. The entire council awaits!"
But Chick wanted more. Besides, he looked at his clothing.
"I would have my own garments, Geos; also, whatever else was found on my person."
For Watson was thinking of a small but powerful pistol, an automatic, that he had carried on the night when he fell through the Blind Spot. This question of materiality was still a puzzle; if he himself had survived there was a chance that the firearm had done the same. It might and it might not preclude the occult. Anyway, he treasured the thought of that automatic; with it in his possession he would not be bare-handed in case of emergency.