The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

He saw Naia sink. He knew the meaning of her words, her act. And he was powerless, impotent, to do anything save watch what went on before his eyes.

  Not so Gaya, however. Nor did Robur's wife lose her head. Gaya flung her own form into the pool in a cleanly executed dive. Bela followed her mistress a moment later, her blue figure cutting the liquid surface with hardly a splash. Both women were entirely at home in the water, and by the time Gaya had reached and seized Naia, who began instantly to struggle, Bela was at her side.

  The fight below the surface was brief. Croft saw Naia open her mouth. Her bosom expanded as though she gasped. And then she relaxed, and Robur's wife and the Mazzerian maid bore her quickly upward, supporting her head between them, and swimming with her toward a submerged flight of steps by which the pool was customarily entered. Reaching it, they lifted the limp body in its trailing robe, which clung to trunk and rounded limb more like a shroud of vegetation, a crinkled kelp born of the water itself, than a garment, and staggered with it from the pool to lay it on the pavement of the court.

  "Quickly!" Gaya cried as she knelt beside it. "Seek out Jadgor's physician and command his presence." She seized Naia's form and rolled her upon her face. Placing her hands on either side of the body close to where the ribs joined the spine, she threw her weight forward on extended arms, held so for the space of a long breath, and lifted herself once more upon her own flexed thighs.

  It was a form of artificial respiration she was practising, and Croft uttered a prayer for her success in his heart. And then—he forgot temporarily her continued efforts in the wonder of something else.

  Naia of Aphur was about to die. Croft knew it as certainly as he had ever known anything in his life. Because he saw her soul come forth as he had seen Zud's astral body after he had bidden it leave its fleshy habitation on the day he awakened from his sleep. Slowly, as Gaya lifted herself and sat back, it emerged from the figure on the ground. And as wonderful as was the form of Naia, so wonderful was its astral counterpart.

  Toward the lovely floating shape he compelled his own astral form until he floated with it face to face. "Naia—Naia—thou other part of me," he thought rather than cried out to her. "Naia—my beloved—hold. Return again to thy body. Go back."

  And he knew that she received the potent vibration his own soul gave out. For slowly the head of the floating figure, the dream shape which swung and glowed like an iridescent mist in the sunlight, turned its head toward him—seemed to regard him strangely with wide open, startled eyes.

  "Naia!" He sent his appeal to her again. "Naia, it is that Jason whom you knew as Jasor who commands that you return again to your flesh. In Zitu's name, beloved."

  "Jason!" Croft felt the thought impinge against him.

  "Jason, who loves you—who claims you—who shall claim you yet."

  "What do you here?"

  "You know of my sleeps. In them my spirit leaves the body. It visits many places. Now sleeps my body in the Zitran pyramid, yet is my spirit present to watch over you and guard you. It was not Zilla called you into the pool, but your own troubled spirit, beloved. Go back into your body—in the name of the love you confessed to Gaya. Go back."

  "But—why—am I not myself?"

  "Yes, you are yourself always," he returned. "Yet this is the real you which speaks to the real me, beloved. Look beneath you, and tell me what you see."

  For a moment nothing was said… as the form beside him turned down its eyes. And then a startled response: "Gay—she bends and works beside a form—to—to which I seem in some way connected. It—Zitu! Azil! It is the form of one like myself!"

  "It is your own form, Naia, the body in which all your life you have dwelt—the beautiful habitation of your spirit—which you cast into the pool in an effort to gain rest."

  "But—I—I—" The diaphanous soul form began once more to tremble.

  "You are you—even as I am I," said Croft. "That body over which Gaya works is but the servant which has done your bidding, which, save you obey me, you condemn to death. Return to it before it is too late. I, Jason, who have met you midway between the body Azil gave you and Zilla's domain, command it. Between you and Zilla himself I stand as a barrier. Return to the form below you and give it breath."

  "How—how shall I return?"

  "Wish it," said Croft. "Wish it as I desire to hold it in my arms and claim its love and yours."

  "I—I shall return."

  Croft thrilled at the victory he had won. "Yet hold!" He stayed her as slowly she began to sink closer to the form beneath them. "Again shall you leave it if I call you—leave it as now—to meet me as now you meet me, and return. Now go, beloved. See with what a frenzy of hopeful endeavor Gaya works."

  From beside him that figure as fair as the play of sunlight through the prism of a fine mist vanished.

  Into his ears there stabbed the cry of a physical voice, upraised in triumph. It was Gaya speaking. "She lives! Thanks be to Zitu, she lives!"

  She bent and lifted the body, which rewarded her efforts with a gasping breath, and laid it on one of the red wood couches, caught up one of the tiny glasses of wine from the table, and forced its contents into Naia's mouth.

  Naia gasped. Her throat contracted sharply. She swallowed. Some of the waxen pallor went out of throat and cheeks. Bela appeared running, with the physician behind her. He hurried to the couch and dropped his fingers to the patient's pulse.

  And now came Robur across the court toward the group beneath the yellow awning. He reached it and slipped his arm about Gaya's shaking shoulders, placing himself at her side.

  "She—she cried on Zilla and cast herself into the pool," she half spoke, half sobbed. "Beloved, she—she was dead to al seeming—but—I cried on Zitu, and worked above her, and now—she lives."

  The physician bowed. "The Princess Gaya has in truth done a most admirable piece of work."

  Naia's lips moved. "Jason," she whispered, "I—I have obeyed."

  "Hai!" Robur started. "What said she?"

  "She dreams, doubtless," the physician made answer.

  Naia opened her eyes. They stared up blankly at the yellow canopy overhead.

  Gaya bent above her.

  "Gaya!" she cried. "Oh, Gaya, I—I dreamt that I—had died. I—"

  And suddenly she broke—broke utterly—and clung fast to the form of the woman beside her, shaken by a storm of sobs.

  From the blended group Robur turned to Bela and the physician. "This is forgotten as though it had not been, man of healing," his voice came thickly. "By you and by Bela, it is as if it were not. I myself shall see that it reaches Lakkon's ears." He reached into a purse at his belt and extracted some pieces of silver, extending them to the doctor. "Your fee. What needs she else?"

  "Rest—quiet for perhaps a sun, no more." The physician accepted his payment with a second bow of respect.

  "See to it." Robur turned to Bela. "Go—and return with women to bear her to her apartment without delay."

  Then, as Bela ran once more from the court, he approached Naia and his wife.

  "Peace, Naia, my cousin," he said gently, yet with a narrowing of the eyes. "Know you not that Robur is friend to you and—Jason?" He paused for the barest space before the final word. "You say that you dreamed, my cousin," Robur went on. "Praise be to Zitu, it was but a dream. Yet"—and now he watched her very closely—"in waking you spoke Jason's name."

  "He—he sent me back," Naia of Aphur faltered. "In—in my dream I met him, and he showed me my body, with Gaya working beside it, and compelled me o return. It—was all—very strange."

  "Zitu!" Robur started. "A—strange dream indeed, my cousin," he said. To Croft it appeared that without fully understanding, his friend half suspected the truth.

  Bela and three other Mazzerian women now reappeared. They lifted the couch upon which Naia was lying, and bore it from the court into the palace and to a sumptuous apartment on the second floor. A copper couch, studded with amber jewels, stood ready to receive the patient. Plain
ly, it was a room designed for women, since in the ceter of the floor was one of the mirrorlike pools of shallow water, close to which stood a pedestal of silver, bearing the figure of Azil with extended wings.

  By a strange chance, as Naia was borne in, one of the Mazzerians struck against the beautifully carved figure. It tottered, swayed drunkenly on its standard, and fell into the pool.

  Naia cried out at the sight, and covered her eyes.

  Robur sprang forward and lifted the statue, setting it back on its base. "Fear not!" he exclaimed. "It is wholly uninjured and a good augury, my cousin. Life fell into the pool, and life comes forth unmarred."

  Naia's eyes met his. "You are quick to read signs, my cousin. Perchance—you are right."

  Robur had indeed seen to the heart of the episode, for when he and Gaya left the apartment he reminded her of how Jason's spirit had been there when this happened. And when he met Lakkon and told him of the entire episode, adding that Magur would not agree to Naia's becoming Gayana, the love that the elder man bore his daughter drove out all other feelings. They were reconciled and Robur and Gaya greeted Naia's assurance that it would be well with her now. Jason would find a way…

  Chapter Eight

  Followed now for Croft the weirdest wooing mortal ever dreamed, a sort of astral courtship, wherein what might perhaps be best described as the sublimated essence of Naia's being—that astral shell containing her conscious spirit, met and communed with his.

  To the man this period became a strange source of encouragement mixed with intervals of an ineffable delight. And the fact that to Naia herself, the hours so spent seemed as dreams rather than a thing of actual occurrence, disturbed him not in the least. He was content to let the truth develop in her soul by degrees, until it should at last be known as truth.

  On the night following her arrival home, he visited her first, purposely choosing a late hour, since he wished her to be asleep and preferred to have his own action unknown just then, in the Zitran pyramid.

  And as he hoped, when he stole into her apartments, making ingress through an open window, he found her indeed asleep. And then he let the cry of his spirit steal forth.

  "Naia! It is Jason calling. Naia, my beloved—appear!"

  "Jason—I hear!"

  Like a wraith of dreams, it seemed that she stood before him—a form, a figure pure as a blade of silver, emitting a faint auric play of blue and gold.

  "Beloved." Croft stretched forth a dim hand.

  It floated toward him.

  "Come," he said again, and caught her hand in his, and led her out through the window, where he had entered, under the moon and the stars.

  Out, out he led her. They were free as the winds on which it seemed they rode. Like a sheet of molten silver the pool in the garden lay beneath them. About them and beyond them spread the wide panorama of the wooded mountains, marked here and there by the bone-white windings of the road. Beneath them swam the wide expanse of the desert. Far off to the east and south, in a ruddy glow, the fire urns of Himyra flared.

  Croft turned his face to that of the shape beside him, and found it the face of a sleeper who sees visions, and knew that though the soul of Naia obeyed him, it was still asleep. "Art afraid?"

  "Nay, Jason, I am not afraid."

  "Thy father—would see him?"

  "Aye." Naia smiled.

  "Behold then!" said Croft, and willed himself toward Himyra, still keeping his companion's hand.

  The city glowed beneath them, its fire urns burning up and down the Na in double ranks. The place was white before them. Then—Lakkon lay stretched in slumber on a couch.

  "My father!" Naia left Croft's side and seemed to hover all blue and white and gold above him, until as though subconsciously he felt her presence, Lakkon's lips moved and he muttered: "Naia," in his sleep.

  "Come," said Croft again, and led her back, since he did not deem it well to risk too long a first excursion.

  "Return now to your body as before," he directed when they stood beside it. "Yet remember this when you wake."

  "You—are—really Jason?"

  "Aye."

  "And—your body?"

  "Lies in the Zitran pyramid as yours lies here before you. Return into yours, beloved, and I return to mine."

  "Aye," she assented. "I return, but-I shall remember—the moonlight—Himyra—my father—and you."

  She ceased and suddenly Croft found himself alone. Yet Croft was satisfied if not content, and he felt assured as he willed himself back to Zitra that when she waked in the morning she would recall this first experience as a vivid dream at least.

  Indeed as the days went by his major trouble was to curb his own impatience in setting her astral consciousness awake, in refraining from an attempt to progress too fast. Hence, as a sort of brake to his own desire to return too frequently to her, he took up the instruction of Zud, initiating the amazed old man more and more into the mysteries of what he, in his own experience, had proved to be the truth.

  Once more, however, he visited Naia, before the elections were held, choosing an afternoon when Zud was engaged in temple duties. And that day they wandered far over valley and hill, flitting above wooded slopes, loitering sometimes in sun-filled hollows, where flowers of tropic brilliance nodded in the grasses or flaunted their beauty from swaying trailing vines. And from there to the higher places, up, up, hand in hand, to where the eternal snows lay gripped in the clutches of dark peaks and crags.

  "It—was here I sent for snows to chill the wines for the banquet to Kyphallos, the time he came from Cathur, by Jadgor's plan," she said.

  "That Kyphallos to whom Jadgor would have wed you?"

  She nodded. "Except that I was saved from marriage to a profligate and traitor by"—she paused and appeared to hesitate and went on in a way less certain—"by Jasor of Nodhur."

  "Jasor of Nodhur has gone to Zitu," Croft corrected quickly. "You were saved from that fate by me, after Jasor's body became the servant of my spirit, as is your body the servant of your spirit, and changed it to my purpose, made it mine, because your spirit had called me to you as today I called you to me."

  "Yet I knew you not then as Jason, but as Jasor," Naia faltered. "How then could I call your spirit?"

  "Nay," said Croft, "you knew me not, yet felt you never in those days a yearning for someone you had as yet seen never—felt you not yourself already to answer that someone's call, as a woman ripened must answer to her lover?"

  "Aye," said his companion slowly. "Ga the eternal spoke to me more than once in such fashion, yet none came to sound the call I should answer until Jasor of Nodhur appeared. Were it your spirit in Jasor's body, you know how the call was answered afterward."

  "Am I not like him?"

  "Aye," she confessed. "And when I am with you, it seems that you are he—that you call me to you in spirit, even as he called in the flesh. Yet when I return to the body beside which even now Maia stands watch, all is confusion when I wake."

  "Were you to remember then that in or out of the flesh, it is the spirit calls to the spirit, it were perchance more plain."

  "Love then is of the spirit only?" She looked into his eyes.

  "Yes." Croft nodded. "Love is of the spirit—passion alone of the flesh. Know you not then that it was love called me to you from the Earth?"

  "Earth?" she repeated. "Aye—Gaya told me somewhat concerning that."

  "Come then," said Croft, determining of sudden impulse on a demonstration and seized her by the hand.

  Up, up he carried her across the void. The landscape dwindled swiftly away beneath them. Its details faded, became but a sun-smeared blur until Palos whirled on its mighty ball, bedded in a mass of woolly cloud. Up, up. Croft glanced at his companion and found her face wide-eyed. Up, up, as she floated beside him, her slender shape in the void of darkness beyond the atmosphere of Palos beginning to flash and glow with its contained fire. For Croft had willed himself to that one of the moons on which he had first come down from his dar
ing journey from the Earth. And now it swung above them. Together they swam toward it, and came to it finding its barren and lifeless crags and plains aglare in the light of Sirius, partly steeped in impenetrable gloom. Across the lighted region Croft led Naia swiftly. They passed from the light.

  "Look!" he cried, and pointed to the void of the eternal heavens beyond them, where sparkled the pin-points of a million worlds. "Behold, Palos!" He directed her vision to where the planet rolled, its clouds now turned into what seemed golden fire. "We stand now on one of the moons that light your world at night, beloved. We gaze at your world from its moon, as from Earth we gaze at a star—as we gaze at Earth as a star from here. By the will of the spirit have we come. By the spirit's will shall we return."

  And on his words it was as though Palos rose to meet them, and once more they were back on the crags beside the snows.

  "Zitu, may this be permitted?"

  "Much," said Croft in answer, "may be permitted to the spirit which seeks truth and dares."

  And after that they wandered on, finding a good-sized stream leaping down the side of the mountain not far from Naia's home. Croft seized upon its presence with acclaim. A glance had told him that here was power he could harness to perfect his scheme for generating artificial light, and he sought to explain it to his companion, outlining how by the construction of a series of giant penstocks he would divert the plunging water against wheels to use its force in turning other wheels.

  She listened closely and suddenly she laughed. "Now are you as Jasor!" she exclaimed. "It was so he talked concerning his devices before the Zollarian war against which he planned."

  "Always have I been as I am now," Jason told her. "Even as Naia of Aphur has always been the same."

  "Always?"

  "Aye, always, and ever will be," he answered, "until Jason and Naia shall be one."

  She quivered. Her astral body glowed. Its fires leaped and flamed before him, white and purple and gold. "Come," he said again, "come," and led her south along the western mountains, exploring them, pointing out their beauties as they passed along.