The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

His body would be lying there, covered with soft fabrics, waiting for its tenant on a couch of wine-red wood such as the Tamarizians used—or perhaps of molded copper. And Naia—the woman who had given him her life, would be watching, watching for the first stir of his returning.

  Only—I smiled—Croft had told me he could gain Palos as quickly in the consciousness as I could project myself there in my mind—so, by now, that stirring of her strong man's limbs, beneath the eyes of the fair watcher, had occurred, and once more those two were together.

  I smiled again.

  I slept after a time, as one will, drifting from continued thought upon one subject into slumber. And I woke with the thought of Croft's weird homecoming still in mind. It stayed with me more or less, too, in the succeeding days.

  Naia of Aphur! I knew her home. I could imagine her moving about it, young, vibrant, happy, alone or with Croft by her side. I could fancy her bathing in the sun-warmed waters of the private bath in the garden—the gleam of her form against the clear yellow stone of which it was constructed—until she seemed the little silver fish Croft had called her, disporting in a bowl of gold, behind the white, screening, vine-clad walls. Or I could dream of her walking about the grounds, with the giant Canor—the huge, doglike creature who was at once her pet, her companion, and guard. Then, one night something over a month after No. 27 had died and been laid away, I dreamed. I went to bed that night and fell asleep. How long I slept I do not know. But a voice disturbed by slumbers after a time.

  "Murray—Murray." I heard it, dimly at first, but insistent. It kept repeating itself over and over. "Murray—in the name of Zitu—and Azil—"

  I stiffened my attention. Zitu was God in the Tamarizian language, as I knew, and Azil was the Angel of Life—as Ga was the Virgin Mother. Ga and Azil—the mother and the life-bringer—they were the ones to whom the Tamarizian women most frequently prayed.

  "Murray—I need your advice—your counsel. Naia needs you. It's life and death, Murray. You told me you would gladly render her assistance as a physician. Murray—will you come?"

  My spirit staggered. It was most amazing, for now I knew that the speaker was Jason Croft.

  "Murray!"

  I think the lips of my sleeping material being must have moved at last. Be that as it may, I know I answered, "Yes."

  "Then—fix your mind on our home in the western mountains, visualize it, Murray, as I have described it to you. Will your conscious presence within it. I shall be waiting for you. Call up the scene and demand that our will be granted. Think of nothing else."

  Save for the directions for reaching to him, the thing was as real as a telephone message, and the assurance that the husband of your patient would be waiting your arrival at his house. Consciously, then, I sought to follow Croft's directions.

  I fastened by thought on his Aphurian home. I strove to exclude everything else from my mind. I brought up the picture of it as a thing at the end of a distant vista, down which I must pass to attain it, and—all at once that picture moved!

  I say it moved, because that is how it at first appeared. For an instant my comprehension faltered, and then I knew. I knew I had gained my purpose—that I was astrally out of my body, even though I had not known the instant when I had left it; that I was speeding with incredible rapidity toward the scene into which I had wished to be projected; that darkness was all about me, like an impenetrable wall; that I was like one in an infinite, an interminable tunnel, with the lighted picture I had conjured up at the end.

  Then that too faded, dissolved, lost its comprehensive quality, and gave place to more finite detail, and—I was in a room. But it was not strange. I knew it—recognized it instantly, thanks to Croft's previous words.

  Its walls were hung with purple hangings shot through with threads of gold. There was a shallow pool of water in its center edged round with white and golden tiles. Beside it on a pedestal of wine-red wood there stood a figure—the form of a man straining upward as if for flight, with outstretched arms and uplifted wings, translucent—formed of a substance not unlike alabaster—the shape of Azil.

  That too I recognized in a flash, and I seemed to catch my breath. At last I was on Palos! This was Azil, the Angel of Life, before me—poised by the mirror pool in the chamber of Naia of Aphur—ablaze now with the light of many incandescent bulbs in copper sconces against the walls. All this I saw, and became conscious that, as well as light, the chamber was now full of life.

  Naia of Aphur! She lay before me on a copper-moulded couch—and I turned my eyes upon her, her body beneath coverings of silklike fabric.

  A woman, of whom two were in attendance, wearing the blue garment embroidered with a scarlet heart above the left breast—the bade of the nursing craft, as Jason had told me—spoke to Naia in soothing accents the words of which I could not understand.

  "Murray!"

  Whirling, I beheld Jason Croft. Rather, I seemed to see two Jason Crofts, instead of one. One sat in a chair of the same wine-red wood of which the pedestal supporting Azil was formed, in the posture of a man in more than mortal slumber. One floated toward me, ghost like—a shimmering, shifting, vaporlike semblance of the other as to physical shape.

  And it was this second Croft that seemed to speak. It came over me instantly that Jason had purposely assumed the astral condition to welcome me on my arrival here.

  I had been too much occupied with my surroundings until then to give thought to my own possible appearance. But as I put out a hand in answer to his single word of greeting, I found it no more than a thin, diaphanous cloud. I was even as he was—a nebulous something. The features of his astral presence were actually haggard, marked by a suffering plainly mental, yet akin in its way to the lines that contorted Naia of Aphur's face in her present mortal woe.

  "Croft, in God's name what is the trouble?" I asked as once more a low sound of smothered anguish came from the couch behind me. He gave me at once an exact and scientific understanding of her condition. "Can she see me? Does she know I am here? Can I speak with her?" I asked.

  "She will sense your presence at least," Croft said. "I will revivify my body and draw the chair in which it is sitting close beside the couch. You will sit there, Murray, and I shall tell her you are present, watching, nerving me to my task, before I set to work. She knows I called you, Murray, and now you must help us both. Your brain must use my hands to save her. Come—what do you advise me to do, Murray?"

  I told him as soon as he had brought his almost panting response to an end. His exposition of the problem we faced had made it dreadfully plain.

  He heard me out and then nodded with set lips. The form beside me vanished. The body in the chair flung up its head and rose. It pushed the chair it had occupied quite to the side of the copper couch, and bent to speak to the woman who lay upon it.

  I followed. I sank into the seat provided. Croft straightened. Naia turned her head directly toward me. I looked for the first time into her violet-purple eyes.

  Her lips moved. Distinctly I heard her speak. "Dr. Murray—good friend of my beloved, who tells me of your presence in response to his appeal for you assistance to us—I bid you welcome to our home. Thrice welcome are you, upon whose coming depends, as he tells me also, our future happiness together, as well as the life of our child."

  She addressed me most surprisingly in English, until I bethought me that Croft had doubtless taught her the tongue, exactly as he had taught her so much else; to fly the first airplane in Palos, the control of the astral body itself.

  "I am more than happy to be here, Princess Naia, and to bid you be of good cheer, remembering that even now Azil stands close by the gateway of life, in charge of a newborn soul."

  "Azil," she whispered. "But—that new soul is so long in passing, my friend."

  I turned to Croft.

  "Come," I hurled my thought force toward him. "Let us spare her more bodily anguish than must be endured. Let us make an end."

  Of what followed I shall say no word. Su
ffice it to state that Jason Croft labored, grim of lips and pallid of feature. And then suddenly the man turned to me a face transfigured past anything I had ever pictured.

  "Murray—we win—win, man—thanks to you and—God!"

  I turned back. Croft spoke to one of the attendants. She crossed to a curtained doorway and lifted the purple drapings. There stole into the room a girl of Mazzeria—a graceful creature, for all the odd blue color of her skin. Twin braids of ruddy hair fell from her head to her waist. Her figure held all the untrammeled litheness of a panther as she advanced. Across her outstretched arms she bore a pure white cloth.

  Upon it, the child of Jason Croft and Naia of Aphur was placed.

  She wrapped the fabric about it, cradling it against her breast. She turned to Naia, smiling, sinking down beside her on her supple rounded thighs.

  Croft addressed me.

  "Maia," he said softly. "I've described her to you before if you remember, Murray. She asked that you might be permitted to attend the—the little one."

  His voice broke. His face was weary, overstrained, worn. I understood. The graceful girl was Naia's personal attendant—the Mazzerian woman, who had aided her mistress in saving Croft's life at a time when he was taken captive during the Mazzerian war. I nodded my comprehension. He bent again as though by irresistible attraction above the couch where the blue girl still was kneeling, and Naia seemed waiting his undivided attention.

  Through the half-drawn curtains of a window, light stole into the room. It shamed the incandescents in the sconces. A finger of golden glory touched the tips of the upflung wings of Azil. With a start, I realized that the night of anguish was ended—that new life had come into the house of Jason with—the dawn.

  Chapter II

  I went toward the curtains and stood looking out between them, removing so far as I could even my invisible presence from the tableau behind me.

  The attendants were moving about. I head the soft pad of their gnuppa-hide sandaled feet, the softened tones of their voices.

  "Murray." Jason was speaking to me. I sensed his touch on my arm. Again he was in astral form. "Come, while the women perform their task."

  My glance shot beyond him to where his physical body was seemingly lost in a lethargy of exhaustion, once more in the red-wood chair. I turned from it and followed Croft through the curtained doorway of the chamber, onto the balcony, along which one approached the room.

  He had described it minutely to me, but even so I marveled at it as we stood together, sensing its proportions, its brilliant yet not offensive blendings of yellow and white and red. And then I think I must have started very much as Croft himself had done the first time he beheld such a sight, as I became conscious of a man, blue as the blue girl of Mazzeria in the room behind me, wearing upon his shaven poll a single flaming tuft of red. He was a stalwart man, and he bore a skin equipped with a sprinkling-nozzle upon his back while he sprayed the beds of growing vegetation—accompanied in his occupation by a slow-stalking beast remarkably like a hound.

  Croft noted the direction of my glance and manner. "Mitlos—our majordomo, and Hupor," he said and smiled. "Zitu man, when I told you about them, the last thing I dreamed was that some day you should see them."

  "And now?"

  "And now"—he laughed in a tone of exultation—"you see not only them, but me, husband of Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and thanks to you—the father of her child."

  "Nonsense. I did nothing—what can a ghost accomplish?"

  He turned fully toward me. "I came here even as you are, Murray, and"—he waved a hand in a comprehensive gesture—"I have accomplished this, and other things beside—yet not so much that this morning—the most wonderful of all my span of existence, I have neither words nor deeds in which the assistance your presence within the last few hours gave me, may be repaid."

  "Let us not speak of payment," I said. "As it happens, Croft, my presence here was no more than the granting of an expressed wish. I've got to be getting back, Croft, or someone's likely to think that Dr. Murray is dead."

  "I know you know how I feel, old fellow. Now fix your mind on your body—and try to open its eyes."

  I was ready. I put out a hand and laid it on his shoulder. He did the same. We looked into one another's faces.

  "Some time—you'll come again," Croft told me. "And—now that we've established the astral power, I'll come to you, Murray—and when I speak you will answer. Can you see where the thing may lead to?"

  "Yes," I said. "It's big, Croft—big. But if I don't get out of here now it may lead a very important part of me to the grave. Make my adieus to Naia. Now—do what you can to help me, for I'm going to try a pretty broad jump, as such things are considered."

  I closed my eyes.

  A sound like splintering wood assailed my ears. A blended sound of voices beat upon them. "Murray—Murray—doctor!"

  There was no doubt about it. A very human voice was calling to me—a hand laid hold upon my shoulder—only it wasn't the hand Jason Croft had laid upon it in farewell. The thing bit into the flesh. It seemed trying to shake me.

  With an effort I lifted my lids and stared up into the face of a hospital orderly, strained and anxious. I was back on earth. There wasn't any doubt about it. I was on earth, in my room in the mental hospital and in bed.

  "Yes," I said; "yes."

  The man's breath actually hissed as he let it out. He stammered. "You'll excuse us, doctor, but you didn't show up and you didn't answer when we rapped—and—well—we broke in the door at last. It seemed best."

  His use of the pronoun arrested my attention. I made another effort and sat up. The orderly had fallen back from my bedside as he spoke, and beyond him I saw a nurse—a woman—not blue-robed like those I had seen in Naia or Aphur's apartments, but crisply gowned in white—and back of her the door of my own chamber, sagging open with a broken lock.

  "It's all right, Hansen," I made answer. "I must have been pretty sound asleep. What time is it?"

  "Ten-thirty," said the nurse, consulting a watch on her wrist. "You're sure you feel all right, doctor?"

  "Perfectly," I nodded. "If you'll withdraw, I'll get up."

  She left the room and Hansen followed. I rose and began to dress. Outside a brilliant sunlight was visible through my windows. It showed me familiar objects. The Palosian landscape had faded. It had been after ten when Jason had come to me, to, as it were, speed a parting guest, and now it was half after ten, and I was back on Earth. Well, he had told me the gulf could be bridged by the spirit in a flash.

  A month passed and a little more, approximately such a span of time as they called a Zitran on Palos, where the year was a trifle longer than ours, though divided in similar fashion into twelve periods. I had about settled back into acceptance of a completely corporeal routine, and then…

  "Murray—Murray," a voice whispered to me in my slumber.

  It roused me. I sat up.

  "Murray—get out of that cloud, and let's talk."

  Suddenly I was intensely awake, and I saw—the nebulous from of Jason, seated against the metal rail at the foot of my bed.

  "That's better. How would you like to take another trip to Palos?"

  He smiled as he said it, and I answered in similar fashion. "If I can make the round trip a little quicker I wouldn't mind it. What's wrong up there now?"

  "Nothing's wrong up there. Everything's all right."

  His expression quickened. "But what happened?"

  I told him, and he nodded. "Well, this will be different as you'll get back before morning. Murray, both Naia and I want very much that you should be present in so far as you can, two nights from now, at the christening of our son.

  "Of course," he said, "you'll see without being seen, but—after it's over—Naia wants to meet you astrally at least. Will you come?"

  Naia wanted to meet me. After the thing was over and the others were gone, we three would meet as Croft and I were meeting now and establish a personal rela
tion.

  "Will I?" I exclaimed. "Well, rather."

  I locked myself in my room and stretched myself out on my bed the second night.

  I lay there and fixed my mind on the home of Lakkon in Himyra—the great red city of Aphur, where Croft had said the ceremony would occur. I pictured it even as I had pictured Jason's home in the mountains, its splendid court paved with the purest of rock-crystal—and—I was there.

  Light, color. They were all around me. The flawless crystal of the floor caught the radiance from the lights above them in a million facets, broke it into a myriad flashing pinpoints of refraction until the whole, vast court seemed paved with a shimmering iridescent carpet. White was the balcony about it, and the pillars on which it was supported, and the gleaming bits of sculpture between. And the shrubs, the banks and hedges of vegetation, in the unpaved beds of the court were green, save that they were blooming, loaded down with colorful flowers everywhere.

  Tables a-glitter with gold and glass stretched down the central portion of the sparkling pavement in the form of three sides of a rectangle, with a purple-draped dais at the closed end. Guests thronged the vast apartment, seated on chairs of wine-red wood or reclining on couches interspersed among the beds of flowering vegetation. Nodding plumes of every hue and shade graced the heads of the women. Of every grade of richness were their jewel-embroidered robes.

  Men and women, they were like birds of brilliant plumage, and as the lights struck down upon them, save for the gleam of the bared arms and shoulders of the women, the glint of their fair limbs through the intricate slashings of their leg-casings and sandals of softest leathers, the rose tint of their knees, they blazed. A babble of voices—the rhythm of music from concealed harps, was in the room. I indulged in a single comprehensive glance and looked about for my hosts.

  But I did not find them anywhere among their guests. A trumpet blared with a softened tongue. I became aware of a page in purple garments, standing with the instrument at his lips, on the topmost tread of one of the flight of yellow stairs.

  The thrum of the hidden harps quickened. The assembled company rose. They stood and faced the stairway where, now, something in the nature of a ceremonial procession showed.