The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

  "How did this happen?" Urson asked.

  "When we were back doing our tightrope act on those damn girders," explained Iimmi, "our bodies were in the shadow of the girders and the rays only got to our arms. I've got something you'll be interested in too, Geo."

  "Just tell me where the hell we are," Urson said.

  "We're in a monastery sacred to Argo," Iimmi told him. "It's across the river from the City of New Hope, which is where we were."

  "That name sounds familiar; in the …" began Urson. Snake gave him a quick glance, and he stopped, and then frowned.

  "We knew of your presence in the City of New Hope," explained the blind Priestess, "and we found you by the riverside after you swam across. You managed to cling to life long enough for us to get you back to the monastery and apply what art we could to sooth the burns from the deadly fire."

  Geo suddenly saw that there was no jewel around Iimmi's neck either. He could almost feel the hands ripping it from his neck in the water. Iimmi must have made the same discovery, because his pale hand raised to his own chest.

  The Priestess beckoned and started down another hall, and again they followed. They arrived at an even larger room, this one set with white marble benches and long white tables. "This is the main dining room of the monastery," their guide explained. "One table has been set up for you. You will not eat with the other priestesses, of course."

  "Why not?" asked Iimmi.

  Surprise flowed across the blind face. "You are men," she told them, matter of factly. Then she led them to a table where wine, meat, and bowls piled with strange fruit were placed. As they sat down, she disappeared once more.

  Geo reached for a knife. For a moment there was silence at the table as the nub of the arm jutted over food. "I guess I just have to learn," he said after the pause.

  Halfway through the meal, Urson said, "What about the jewels? Did the Priestess take them from you?"

  "They came off in the water," said Iimmi.

  Geo nodded corroboration.

  "Well, now we really have a problem," said Urson. "Here we are, at a temple of Argo's where we could return the jewels and maybe even get back to the Priestess on the ship, and out of the silly mess, and the jewels are gone."

  "I guess that also means our river friends are working for Hama," said Geo.

  "Well," Iimmi said, "Hama's got his jewel then, and we're out of the way. Perhaps he delivered us into Argo's hands as a reward for bringing them this far?"

  "Since we would have died anyway," said Geo, "I guess he was doing us a favor."

  "And you know what that means," Iimmi said, looking at Snake now.

  "Huh?" asked Urson. Then he said, "Oh, let the boy speak for himself. All right, Four Arms, are you or are you not a spy for Hama?"

  A pained expression came over Snake's face, and he shook his head not in denial but bewilderment. Suddenly he got up from the table, and ran from the room. Urson looked at the others. "Now don't tell me I hurt his feelings by asking."

  "You didn't," said Iimmi, "but I may have. I keep on forgetting that he can read minds."

  "What do you mean?" Urson asked.

  "Just when you asked him that, a lot of things came together in my mind that would be pretty vicious for him if any of it were true."

  "Huh?" asked Urson.

  "I think I know what you mean," said Geo.

  "I still—"

  "It means that he is a spy," explained Iimmi, "and among other things, he was probably lying about the radio back at the city. And that cost Geo his arm."

  "Why the—" began Urson, and then looked down the hall where Snake had disappeared.

  They didn't eat much more. When they got up, Urson felt sleepy and was shown back to his room.

  "May I show my friend what you showed me?" Iimmi asked the Priestess when she returned. "He is also a student of rituals."

  "Of course you may," smiled the Priestess.

  A door opened and they entered another room similar to the one in which Geo had awakened. As she was about to leave, Iimmi asked, "Wait. Can you tell us how to leave the room ourselves?"

  "Why would you want to leave?" she asked.

  "For exercise," offered Geo, "and to observe the working of the monastery. Believe us, we are true students of Argo's religion."

  "Simply press the wall with your hand, level at your waist, and the door will open. But you must not wander about the monastery. Rites which are not for your eyes are being carried out. Not for your eyes," she repeated. "Strange, this is a phrase that has never left our language. Suddenly, confronted by people who can see, it makes me feel somehow …" she paused. "Well, that is how to leave the room."

  She stepped out, and the door closed behind her.

  "Here," said Iimmi, "this is what I wanted to show you." On his bed were a pile of books, old, but legible. Geo flipped through a few pages. Suddenly he looked up at Iimmi.

  "Hey, what are they doing with printed books?"

  "Question number one," said Iimmi. "Now, for question number two. Look here." He reached over Geo's shoulder and hastened him to one page.

  "Why it's the …" began Geo.

  "You're darn right it is," said Iimmi.

  HYMN TO THE GODDESS ARGO

  Forked in the eye of the bright ash there the heart of Argo broke and the hand of the goddess would dash through the head of flame, and the smoke.

  Burn the grain speck in the hand and batter the stars with singing. Hail the height of a man, and also the height of a woman.

  The eyes have imprisoned a vision, the ash-tree dribbles with blood. Thrust from the gates of the prison, smear the yew-tree with mud.

  "That must be the full version of the poem I found the missing stanza to back in the library at Leptar."

  "As I was saying," said Iimmi, "Question number two: what is the relation between the rituals of Hama and the old rituals of Argo. Apparently this particular branch of the religion of the Goddess underwent no purge. And no one at Olcse Olwnh was supposed to know about them."

  "I wonder why?" Geo asked.

  "That is question number three."

  "How did you get a hold of them?"

  "Well," said Iimmi, "I sort of suspected they might be here. So I just asked for them. And I think I've got some answers to those questions."

  "Fine. Go ahead."

  "We'll start from three, go back to one, and then on to two. Nice and orderly," said Iimmi. "Why wasn't anybody supposed to know about the rituals? Simply because they were so similar to the rituals of Hama. You remember some of the others we found in the abandoned temple? If you don't, you can refresh your memory right here. The two sets of rituals run almost parallel, except for a name changed here, a color switched from black to white, a switch in the vegetative symbolism. I guess what happened was that when Hama's forces invaded Leptar five hundred years ago, it didn't take Leptar long to find out the similarity. From the looks of the City of New Hope, I think it's safe to assume that at one time or another, say five hundred years ago, Aptor's civilization was far higher than Leptar's, and probably wouldn't have had too hard a time beating her in an invasion. So when Leptar captured the first jewel, and somehow did manage to repel Aptor, the priests of Leptar assumed that the safest way to avoid infiltration by Hama and Aptor again would be to make the rituals of the two as different as possible from the ones of their enemy, Hama.

  "The ghouls, the bats, they parallel the stories I've heard other sailors tell too closely to be accidents. How many people do you think have been shipwrecked on Aptor and gotten far enough into the place to see what we've seen, and then gotten off again to tell about it?"

  "I can think of two," said Geo.

  "Huh?" said Iimmi.

  "Snake and Jordde," answered Geo. "Remember that Argo said there had been spies from Aptor before. And Jordde is definitely one, and I guess so is Snake."

  "True enough," said Iimmi. "I guess that fits into Rule Number One." He got up from the bed. "Come on. Let's take a walk. I want to
see some sunlight." They went to the wall. Geo pressed it and a triangular panel slipped back.

  When they had rounded four or five turns of hallway, Geo said, "I hope you can remember where we've been."

  "I've got a more or less perfect memory for directions," Iimmi said.

  Suddenly the passage opened onto steps, and they were looking out upon a huge, unrelieved white chamber. Down a set of thirty marble steps priestesses filed below them in rows, their heads fixed blindly forward.

  At the far end was a raised dais with a mammoth statue of a kneeling woman, sculptured of the same effulgent, agate material. "Where do these women come from?" whispered Geo. "And where do they keep the men?"

  Iimmi shrugged.

  Suddenly, the figure of the blind Priestess was beside them.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," Iimmi said, sensing her disapproval of their presence, "we didn't mean to be disrespectful, but we are creatures who are used to natural day and night. We are used to fresh air, green things. This underground whiteness is oppressive to us and makes us restless. Is there any way that you could show us a way into the open?"

  "There is not," returned the blind Priestess quietly and motioned them to follow her from the chamber. "Besides, night is coming on and you are not creatures who relish darkness."

  "The night air and the quiet of evening is refreshing to us," countered Iimmi.

  "What do you know of the night," answered the priestess with faint cynicism in her low voice. Now they reached the chapel where the friends had first met after their rescue.

  "What can you tell us about the Dark God Hama?" Geo asked.

  The blind Priestess shrugged, and sat down on one of the benches. "There is little to say. Today he is a fiction, he does not exist. There is only Argo, the One White Goddess."

  "But we've heard—" Geo began.

  "You were at his abandoned temple," said the Priestess. "You saw yourselves. That is all that is left of Hama. Ghouls prey on the dust of his dead saints. Perhaps, somewhere behind the burning mountain a few of his disciples are left. But Hama is dead in Aptor. You have seen the remains of his city, the City of New Hope. You have also been the first ones to go in and return in nearly five hundred years."

  "Is that how long the city has been in ruin?" asked Geo.

  "It is."

  "What can you tell us about the city?" Iimmi said.

  The Priestess sighed again. "There was a time," she began, "generations ago, when Hama was a high God in Aptor. He had many temples, monasteries, and convents devoted to him. We had few. Except for these religious sanctuaries, the land was barbaric, wild, uninhabitable for the most part. There had once been cities in Aptor, but these had been destroyed even earlier by the Great Fire. All that we had was a fantastic record of an unbelievable time before the rain of flame of tremendous power, vast science, and a towering, though degenerate, civilization. These records were extensive, and entirely housed within the monasteries. Outside the monasteries, there was only chaos, where half the children were born dead, and the other half deformed. And with the monstrous races that sprang up over the island now as a reminder to us, we declared that the magic contained in these chronicles was evil, and must never be released to the world again. But the priests of Hama, decided to use the information in these chronicles, spread it to the people, and declared they would not commit the same mistakes that had brought the Great Fire. They opened the books, and the City of New Hope grew on the far shore of the river. They made giant machines that flew through the air. They constructed immense boats which could sink into the sea and emerge hundreds of miles away in another harbor in another land. They even harnessed for beneficial use the fire metal, uranium, which had brought such terror to the world before and had brought down the flames."

  "But they made the same mistake as the people before the Great Fire made?" suggested Iimmi.

  "Not exactly," said the Priestess. "That is, they were not so stupid as to misuse the fire metal which ravaged the world so harshly before. History is cyclic, not repetitive. A new power was discovered that dwarfed the significance of the fire metal. It could do all that the fire metal could do, and more efficiently: destroy cities, or warm chilly huts in winter; but, it could also work on men's minds. They say, that before the Great Fire, men wandered the streets of the cities terrified that flames would descend on them any moment and destroy them. They panicked, bought flimsy useless contraptions to guard themselves from the fire. Geo, Iimmi, have you any idea how terrifying it would be to know that while walking the streets, at any moment, your mind might be snatched from you, raped, violated, and left broken in your own skull?

  "Only three of these instruments were constructed. But the moment their existence was made known by a few fantastic demonstrations, the City of New Hope began the swerve down the arc of its own self-destruction. It lasted for a year, and ended with the broken wreck you escaped from last night. During that year invasions were launched on the backward nations across the sea with whom months before there had been friendly trade. Civil wars broke out and internal struggles caused the invasions to fall back to the homeland. The instruments were hopelessly lost, but not before the bird machines had even dropped bombs on the City of New Hope itself. The house of the fire metal was broken open to release its death once more. For a hundred years after the end, say our records, the city flamed with light from the destroyed power house. During the first hundred years more and more of our number were born blind because of the sinking fire in the city. At last we moved underground, but it was too late." She rose from her seat. "And so you see, Hama destroyed himself. Today, loyal to Argo, are all the beasts of the air, of the land … and of the water."

  "What about the—the three instruments?" Geo asked. "What happened to them?"

  The blind Priestess turned to him. "Your guess," she said, smiling, "is as good as mine." She turned again and glided softly from the room.

  When she left, Iimmi said, "Something is fishy."

  "But what is it?" said Geo.

  "Well, for one thing," said Iimmi, "we know there is a Hama. From the dream I would say that it's just about the size and organization of this place."

  "Just how big is this place anyway?" Geo asked.

  "Want to do some more exploring?"

  "Sure," he answered. "Do you think she does know about Hama but was just pretending?"

  "Could be," said Iimmi. They started off down another corridor. "That bit about going into men's minds with the jewels," Iimmi went on. "It gives me the creeps."

  "It's a creepy thing to watch," said Geo. "Argo used it on Snake the first time we saw her. It just turns you into an automaton."

  "Then it really is our jewels she was talking about."

  Stairs cut a white tunnel into the wall before them, and they mounted upward, coming finally to another corridor. They turned down it and for the first time saw recognizable doors in the wall. "Hey," said Iimmi, "maybe one of these goes outside."

  "Fine," said Geo. "This place is beginning to get me." He pushed open a door and stepped in. Except for the flowing white walls, it duplicated in miniature the basement of the New Edison building. Twin dynamos whirred and the walls were laced with pipes.

  "Nothing in here," said Iimmi.

  They tried a door across the hall now. In this one sat a white porcelain table and floor to ceiling cases of glittering instruments. "I bet this is the room your arm came off in," Iimmi said.

  "Probably," replied Geo.

  They came out and continued even farther. In the next room the glow was dimmer, and there was dust on the walls. Iimmi ran his finger over it and looked at the gray crescent left on the bleached flesh.

  Two huge screens leaned out from the face of a metal machine. A few dials and a glass meter hung beneath each two yard rounded-rectangle of opaque glass. In front of each was a stand which held something like a set of binoculars and what looked like a pair of ear muffs.

  "I bet this place hasn't been used since before these girls went blind,"
said Geo.

  "It looks it," Iimmi said. He stepped up to one of the screens, the one with the fewer dials on it, and turned a switch.

  "What did you do that for?" Geo asked.

  "Why not?" said Iimmi. Suddenly a flickering of colored lights ran over the screen, swellings of blue, green, shiny scarlets. They blinked. "That's the first color I've seen since I've been here," Iimmi said. The colors grayed, dimmed, congealed into forms, and in a moment they were looking at a bare white room in which stood two barefoot young men. One was a dark Negro with pale hands. The other had an unruly shock of black hair and only one arm.

  "Hey," gestured Iimmi, and the figure on the screen gestured too. "That's us." He walked forward and the corresponding figure advanced on the screen. He flicked a dial and the figures exploded into colors and then focused again. "What's that?" asked Iimmi.

  In a room stood three of the blind women. On one wall was a smaller screen similar to the one in their own room. The women, of course, were oblivious to the picture on it, but it was the picture on the screen that had stopped Geo. It was a face. A man's face.

  One of the women had on an ear muff apparatus and was talking into a small metal rod which she carried with her as she paced.

  "But the picture! Don't you recognize him?" demanded Geo.

  "It's Jordde!" exclaimed Iimmi. "They must have gotten in contact with our ship and are arranging to send us back."

  "I wish I could hear what they're saying," said Geo.

  Iimmi looked around and then picked up the metal ear muffs from the stand in front of the screen. "That's what she seems to be listening through," said Iimmi, referring to the Priestess in the picture. "Try them. Go on." He helped Geo fit them over his ears. "Hear anything?"

  Geo listened.

  "Yes, of course," the Priestess was saying.

  "She is set upon staying in the harbor for three more days, to wait out the week," reported Jordde. "I am sure she will not remain any longer. She is still bewildered by me, and the men have become uneasy and may well mutiny if she stays longer."

  "We will dispose of the prisoners this evening. There is no chance of their returning," stated the Priestess.