Thus concluded the evening. In the morning the young people searched the house for a lark, finding nothing but rot and desiccation. “What did you expect?” asked Vorchek. “Time cleanses the most indelible stains. We must progress before we discover. Seek the now, where ever it be, that you may learn.”
Utilizing his detector, the professor drew a bead on the subtle energy disturbance, marshaled his team and set out across the undulating plain, leaving behind, to the furtive amusement of some, the discarded, useless radio. They tramped through sear tall grass, they rested under clumps of trees, they picked their way over stones that protruded from the crumbly soil like tottering grave markers. Vorchek strode apart from the others, leaving them to their thoughts and ruminations. They spoke among themselves in halting fits, striving to intellectualize that nasty lecture concerning the remote past.
Theresa said, “A low mind, a stupid mind like that of this Mathers guy, breaks down under the stress of wonder. Facing the unknown, he sees in it only his own corruption, a mirror held to his crude self. If I absorbed a power, or if something came through it to greet me, I wouldn’t fly off the handle and eat someone. That which is vast, even if incomprehensible, must be elevating. I would rise to the occasion, not sink. I crave the chance to enter a world where I may touch the stars.”
Aaron said, “Very poetic, I’m sure, but hardly to the point. Cut out the obvious lunacy and tale-spinning, and what’s left, if anything, is a mysterious elemental force, something to be broken down into its components, sorted, rendered comprehensible. Any power may be understood, even employed, if sufficient knowledge exists. Let’s get that.”
Josh said with a laugh, “You’re both as nutty as Professor Fruitcake. We’re kicking around in the tail end of nowhere, looking for nothing. I’ll bet old Vorchek cooked up that story to bug us.”
“Why would Professor Vorchek do that?” Theresa snapped. “He’s preparing us for something, by degrees. I wish I knew what it was. He’s naturally secretive, but not usually with me. It’s never easy to guess what’s on his mind, harder than ever lately. He’s not himself, hasn’t really been since he returned from sabbatical. There’s more reserve, a coldness that he normally directs at the world. I can sense it. I’m getting some of that now. Of course, he has plenty on his mind, if there’s anything to this stuff.”
“Maybe,” said Josh, “he’s Mathers come back to eat us.” The comment broke the tension, drew cheery scorn. They laughed a lot, for a while.
They camped in the middle of the plain, by a creek bed dry except for a number of standing pools, which drew the hot hikers at a run. The water, as they merrily splashed, was cool in the shade. A small herd of animals darted away at their approach. “We can drink that if we must,” said Vorchek, after snapping a few pictures. “The creatures do. I will stick to my canteen of spring water until then.”
“Were those deer?” Theresa asked. “I didn’t catch a good look, but I thought—” Aaron cut in, “They looked a little off to me. I saw big teeth.” Josh added, “And claws instead of hooves. Those weren’t deer.”
The professor shrugged. “I would not style them common deer, certainly. Have not you noticed the strangeness of the wildlife in this region?”
The question truly raised an intriguing subject. Throughout the expedition thus far the vicinity of their march teemed, at times, with the familiar natural denizens of Arizona. They had spied, chiefly down in Wilson Canyon, deer and coyotes, birds and insects, chipmunks and even minnows where the waters lingered. Since leaving the Mathers house they had spied few animals, those being unaccountably quiet and shy, their habits (come to think of it) peculiar.
“Mutations,” Aaron declared. “This force of yours, Professor, insidiously affects them.”
“Force of mine!” Vorchek cried. “Mr. Rucobi, what a way with words you have. Nevertheless, you are surely correct. That which exists out here too long, changes. The beasts cannot participate in their change. Only man can do that. Only he can choose.”
“What are we supposed to choose?” Josh asked plaintively. No one replied.
With the encroachment of evening, the four grouped about the campfire, Vorchek mused, “I, for one, chose well my party of eager colleagues. Friends, I confess to covertly eavesdropping on your stimulating discussion of this afternoon. I enjoyed what I heard. Such differing reactions to the same stimuli! Miss Delaney, the shallow might accuse you of verging on New Age hokum, yet I appreciate your desire to embrace that which is the totality of being, to find greatness beyond yourself and the limitations of this world. That constitutes a natural avenue of personal exploration. Mr. Rucobi, your skeptical, inquiring mind demands an underlying logic and order to all things, something which, I dare say, you rarely attain in your daily affairs. It is appropriate that you question, that you demand answers. Mr. Fentz—”
“Doesn’t care to have his leg pulled,” interrupted that one, “especially pulled right off.”
“I intended to say, young man, that you are earthy, basic; meat and bone and fundamental in life. You do not pester your brain with these clever, rarefied notions, which do not fill your belly or gratify your senses. Quite a threesome you all are, running the gamut of thought and emotion, covering the human spectrum in its entirety. Oh, I could not have picked better.”
“We thank you for the compliments, Professor,” said Theresa, “if that’s what they are. It sounds more like you’re praising your own wisdom.”
“If you do not pat me on the back, then I must.”
In the morning, just as a tinge of crimson illumined the east, they awoke to the most amazing development. Afterward Aaron and the girl argued as to who heard it first. It was a noise, a weird, whining buzzing or vibrant humming, that rose, mounted, exploded into a choking pall of stunning sound. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from within and without, blasting, shrieking remorselessly beyond the ears into the mind. Theresa crawled from her tent, leaped up and gasped, “What is it? What’s happening, Professor?” He emerged behind her, stood silently scanning the murky horizon. Aaron came running, screaming, “I’m losing my mind! What is that God awful noise? What’s causing it?”
It came on, great roaring waves of sound, and Theresa and Aaron thrashed and circled oddly, as if drowning in an unseen sea. Vorchek spoke not, but moved quickly to his instrument, activated it, toyed with dials and buttons. Now Josh sluggishly joined the trio, coming without haste or sign of distress, save that his sleepy countenance exhibited sure signs of annoyance and aggrieved curiosity. “What are you all carrying on about?” he shouted. What’s the big deal?”
“Can’t you hear it?” moaned Theresa. He replied simply, with no show of concern whatsoever, “Hear what? Your song and dance routine woke me up.” Aaron growled harshly, as with enormous effort, “Scrape the wax out of your ears, punk, and listen.”
The noise shut off like a thunderclap. The two suffering youths dropped as if exhausted. Theresa lit a cigarette, Aaron quite improperly ordered Josh to fetch his canteen. The professor jumped about with maniacal rhythm, fussing with his machine, observing his fellows, dashing up the slope from the creek bank into the sparse trees at the top of the rise. Josh sullenly returned with the water, tossed it down by his companion. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“Not much point,” said Theresa dryly, “since you’re obviously hard of hearing.”
“Deaf as a post,” Aaron said hotly, around a gulp from his canteen.
“Be not hard on the lad,” cautioned Vorchek, emerging into their midst. He beamed a sunny smile, stroked his beard with a satisfied air. “All is well, everybody in one piece, I take it? Before I say anything, tell me, each of you, what you experienced.”
They did. Vorchek nodded knowingly, announced, “The pieces begin to fit as ordained. The pattern holds. Come with me up the mound, while I speak.”
From the little rise he gestured through the trees at the western horizon, where a low line of dark hills could be seen, one tria
ngular peak rising slightly above the rest. “The emanation,” he said, “came straight from that notable hill. We should reach it this afternoon. We are so far within the zone that we have been spotted. It calls to us.”
“I don’t get any of this,” Josh grumbled.
The other two young people asked, “What emanation? What’s calling?”
Said the professor, “We received an enormously strong, directional transmission of energy flow, one initiated for our benefit. The vortex activates, if you will, to a greater extent than we must deem, in lieu of a better term, normal. Those beyond the gate reach out to us. We shall proceed, that we may introduce ourselves.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of a gate,” Aaron said, “or of anyone on its other side. The data don’t support your inference, Professor.”
“Somebody makes these things happen,” said Theresa. Aaron would have bickered over the issue, started to do so, until Vorchek weighed in:
“I derive my views from the testimony associated with the Mathers case and others from the historic period—there are others, though none quite so dramatic—as well as the remarkably coherent tales drawn from Indian legend. Do not treat such as proof, Mr. Rucobi, yet keep them in mind as we near our goal. According to the Yavapai, who recount myths descended from prehistoric tribes who came before them, the vortex represents an opening in our world, a passageway through the firmament from heaven or—depending on the mood of the particular myth—a tunnel driven through the underworld from hell. They claim that the gods, variously celestial beings or demonic entities, dwell on the other side, encroaching into our sphere of existence when they wish to communicate with men. Contact is chancy, avenues of discourse open to some, closed to others, with consequent difficulties of interpretation. You and Miss Delaney heard, as did I; Mr. Fentz felt nothing. Mr. Mathers, it is plain, also heard. Among the aborigines the wisest elders, the medicine men, conversed with their immaterial masters. That they say, and as a matter of formal logic I am willing to allow the possibility. There is, of course, only one way to advance from supposition to knowing. We go on, we face what beckons at the end of the journey.”
As they marched over the plain Theresa’s eagerness grew. Breathlessly she said, “I’d like to meet God on a lonely hilltop, learn from Him what everything’s really about.” Aaron politely chided her for her illogical leap of faith. “If there’s anything at all to this, we’ll find beings a lot like us, intelligence rather than deity. Call them aliens.” Josh’s concerns were more immediate and practical. “All I get out of this is sore feet. I hate these boots.” Indeed, he limped, as his disposition soured.
“What puzzles me for the moment,” Aaron wondered aloud, “is why Professor Vorchek didn’t go all the way his first time out. He possessed the means, the knowledge, the desire. The only thing different this time is that he’s got us in tow, and we haven’t really contributed yet.”
Theresa said, “Take it from me, he’s got a secret. I know him that much. There’s something he isn’t telling.”
The miles passed swiftly. Over the wild but still fairly level landscape the hikers progressed easily, with the sun at their backs, the clumped peaks of the snowy San Franciscos standing far to the north like a sentinel of that outer world from which they felt wholly disconnected. Once a jet soared high and far away to the south, a curious sight in that isolated realm, fleeting and unique.
By the time the sun approached the zenith the hill loomed before them, densely forested with pines mixed with firs and junipers. The party lunched at the edge of the silent prairie. Then Vorchek led his wards without hesitation onto a trail of sorts, no more than an animal path. Some living things had worn it, and shadowy bulks were spied dashing off into the close underbrush, perhaps—judging from their sounds—pausing to watch from deeper concealment.
So they came to the clearing in the woods. It was not much of one, a little space still cloaked in the gloom of the overhanging branches of large cottonwoods and sycamores and the rough, loamy embankment of the hillside that rose to the west, but that flat expanse of sparse grass cut by a trickling brook enticed the travelers to rest with its shade and coolness. “This is the end of the trail,” said Vorchek. Someone else had thought so too, for a blackened stone fire ring lay in a spot by the thin stream, which lacked any vegetation. “Here we make our final camp,” he said.
“This fire doesn’t date to pioneer days,” said Theresa. “It looks quite recent.”
“Somebody has been here before us,” observed Aaron.
“The professor’s been here,” Josh said. His young companions made to sneer, until Vorchek made an amazing admission.
“Yes, it is true. I did reach this point in my previous venture. That fire was mine, for three days.” The statement brought on a storm of questions. “Why didn’t you say so? Why keep that secret? Why make mystery, when we have enough already?”
Vorchek replied, in general, “Ever do I operate according to method. I attained my goal, achieved my opening, in those earlier days. I already know most of what I can know. In a real sense this is your adventure, not mine. Now you shall be opened to the truth. First, the tedious preliminaries: set up camp, take in nourishment.”
This his colleagues did, laboring mechanically under the dim sunlight filtered through the rustling leaves of the stream-side trees, lost in dreamy reverie, or furiously calculating, or glumly brooding. Theresa purified water from the brook. They ate silently, nervously, no one very hungry, least of all Vorchek, who toyed with his bland meal, saying nothing, yet surveying at whiles the faces of his fellows, as if striving to read their inner thoughts from subtle indications of expression. Then he slung the old Minolta camera around his neck, hefted the tripod and said, “Come, it is your time. I grant you the first taste of the true unknown, the source of the vortex. It is not far.”
He turned, strode under the embankment pierced by the stream, circled to a more level slope, went up. The youths followed, in wonder and concern, still intrigued by his assured progress into the forested murk. They did not climb far. Once they crossed the stream, an easy hop, and the trees pressed close like a retarding barrier, and they pressed through onto a surface of stony dirt. There the sound returned, akin to that which had assailed them from afar, only this time modulated and pitched to a lower frequency, less damaging to the brain, more a soothing call, a noise that beckoned weirdly. Vorchek glanced back with a grin but did not slow nor pause in his step. One thing remained the same: Josh again heard nothing, could only shake his head at the curious antics and statements of his companions.
The sound died down, without wholly dwindling away, keeping with those who heard as a beguiling whisper. They emerged onto another, smaller flat space, came abruptly to an earthen cliff studded with boulders, framed by tall, ancient conifers. From this gaped the large, cylindrical mouth of an inky black cave. Not a single photon of lighted penetrated its interior, into which a tall man could have walked upright. It looked a round door of darkness.
“This is the source,” Vorchek declared. He quickly set up his Minolta apparatus. “Think not to explain the vortex in geological or otherwise material terms. It lies within the cave because it was placed there, in a pre-human era, by the cunning of cosmic wisdom. This I tell you is true, for I know. Gaze within, and absorb truth.”
The professor stood aside that his people might see. Spooked and fascinated, they gazed, Theresa and Aaron lulled by the faint sound that reached their minds now as a kind of music. They could not see anything in there but the ebony darkness. No, there was something to see, for all of them, suggestions of light, alternating patterns arising from the fathomless void. A ghostly radiance formed, began to swirl about itself in languid spiraling form. The hazy shape turned slowly, hypnotically, brightened.
The radiance gleamed, flashed for the fraction of a second, a dazzling instant. The dark entrance seemed to expand, or the surrounding trappings of nature to recede or draw back; regardless, all vision was encompassed by t
hat swelling circle of night and its luminous vista. Then the luminosity faded, diminished to pure darkness once more... and very definite shapes stepped forth from the blackness.
Josh screamed like an animal caught in the slicing jaws of a steel trap, screamed unintelligibly and fled precipitately into the engulfing forest. Theresa gasped in shock, Aaron choked out a feeble “My God,” and they stumbled backwards, scrambled frantically and rushed away, retaining sufficient presence of mind to hold to their previous route and make for camp. What had been seen creeping towards them from the cave certainly shook them, though they would have experienced grave difficulties in describing the cause of their mental anguish. Those forms had appeared, three of them—one for each of the youths, it could be said—forms entirely unrelated to anything in the familiar world, or in the realm of nightmare. Something in their basic features and outlines might suggest the human: one could speak of arms and legs, of indeterminate number; a trunk, however disjointed and hatefully sculpted; some semblance of a head, with eyes, if one chose to call such those bulbous black globes, and jaws, that worked and twitched in insane directions. One could go that far by way of description, but no farther, for the totality transcended the limited comprehension of parts.
Theresa and Aaron had recovered, adequately, their strength of fiber to wonder and worry, once they reached the clearing camp, about the professor’s fate. They feared for his safety, dreaded the results of his questing mind under such stimuli, discussed with monumental reservations going back for him. They need not have plagued themselves. Vorchek presently reappeared, carrying his gear, sauntering down the slope and out of the trees with a disturbing air of weariness. A shaft of late afternoon sun caught his impassive face. Come to think of it, he looked more disappointed than tired. Indeed, he said to them, coming up close, “Your reactions sadden me. I offer you the ultimate secrets, and you respond with panic, fleeing like stupid children. Have I brought you here in vain?”
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