Eluola’s leaving was to Jarvis like parting with something out of his soul. But her leaving also left him with something—the problem of finding their way. The pass she had painted out was no more than a few miles ahead and above them, and he wanted to push on, but the sun was low; and after some deliberation, he decided it would be best to camp where they were for the night.
On either side of them, mountains were piled, terrace on terrace, breathing down upon them a breath chilled by snowfields and glaciers. There was need for the warmth of a campfire following the setting of the sun.
* * * *
They had eaten and the fire had died low. Jo and Toby lay curled on the ground by the glowing embers, sleeping. Jarvis, wakeful and nervous, got up and strolled into the blackness, where the sound of his companions’ breathing was lost, and he had only glittering stars for company.
There were no moons tonight, and the gloom was intense, so that he had to feel his way among the rocks. When he could no longer see the glow of their expiring campfire, he sat on the hard stony ground, his mind filled with troubled thoughts.
The wind sighed on its way down the gorge, and the nip of it on his bare skin was exhilarating rather than chilling.
Then, in the dark, he saw a glow begin to form, that was like a phosphorescence. Ancient fears awakened in his brain; the hair stirred at the back of his neck, and he half rose, supporting himself upon his hands.
The glow clothed a man, clad in a cocoon of light, and the cocoon seemed to drift toward him across the ground, and it was as if the man within the cocoon slept. The man’s face appeared lined and old, yet it was strong with a strength Jarvis had never seen in a face before.
“Welcome among the Mighty, Jeff Jarvis,” said the man, but his mouth did not open; it was as if the words formed themselves in Jarvis’ mind.
Jarvis’ heart skipped a beat. What strange denizen of Eloraspon was this?
“I am Eamus Brock,” said the apparition. “You have reached your goal—or shall have by tomorrow mid-day. This form you see before you is a projection—I am in my tower in the City of Brock, where we shall meet face to face tomorrow.”
“You are Eamus Brock?” Jarvis muttered.
The vision smiled. “I am an old man and blind, but I am Eamus Brock, nonetheless. What did you expect—a virile, god-like being of some kind? I know what you have learned from the Eeima about the Mighty, and I can fancy what kind of figure you must have drawn in your mind of us. But we are only people—people of Earth, saved from the cataclysm that destroyed our world.”
“You are blind—yet you found me here in the dark? What kind of instruments do you have that can do that for you?”
“The Mighty need no instruments, Jeff. We see by other means than sight. I was born blind. I have never seen the sun, nor the twinkling of the myriad stars, as you have seen them. But I, in my way, know them as well as you do, for I have other senses that more than take the place of the five senses you know.”
“What are you?” Jarvis cried, the words sticking in his throat.
“A man, as I said. What I do, I learned from the Mighty of Eloraspon, from the records they left hidden in their marvelous cities. But now is no time to discuss these things. We shall have time later. I have sent a man named Dave Mitchell to meet you and guide you to the City of Brock. Tonight, he is camped just over the ridge of the pass. You will meet him as soon as you start on your way in the morning. Good night, Jeff…until tomorrow.”
There was suddenly darkness all around. The apparition had vanished. Jarvis slowly picked his way back to camp, his mind a confused jumble of thoughts.
* * * *
They met Dave Mitchell just after dawn, when they had climbed almost to the summit of the pass. He was about thirty, the same age as Jarvis, but taller and broader in the shoulders, though sparely built with sandy hair and ruddy complexion. His clothes were sturdy and practically new, and, though soiled from mountain climbing, gave him an air of natty spruceness compared to the three-quarters naked, disheveled, sun-browned and dirt-crusted appearance of Jarvis and his companions. However, there was no disapproval in the man’s look as he sized them up.
“I heard you walked it from Missouri,” he said affably.
Jarvis nodded, noticing that he wore a pistol belted to his waist.
“Handy for bagging small game,” Mitch said, noting the direction of Jarvis’ glance. “If there were any small game around here to bag.”
Jarvis’ eyes lighted up. He had spoken so seldom lately, that words came to his lips with difficulty, and his voice was harsh when he spoke.
“Hunting has been bad for many days,” he said. He touched the boomerang in his belt. He fell into step beside Mitchell, and the party continued among the rocks.
Mitch said, “I noticed that thing. How in the world do you learn to use it?”
Jarvis showed his teeth in a grin.
“You damn near starve for about a week, then the knack comes to you!”
Mitch shook his head. “Brock told us about the Great Cliffs…oh, he kept good tabs on your progress, Brock did. We didn’t think you’d ever find a way down.”
“Good hunting up there,” Jarvis grunted. “Best country you ever saw…”
He glanced around him at the barren mountain terrain in disapproval. He darted an inquisitive look at Mitch.
“How’d you get here—on Eloraspon, I mean? Tell me about it.”
“Not the hard way—like you folks did. Brock brought me—I hired out as foreman of a construction crew.”
“To go to Eloraspon?”
“I should have known I was going to Eloraspon?”
They had been picking their way down a twisting canyon, and suddenly Mitch stopped. “Better stop a minute and pull yourselves together,” he said tersely. “As soon as we round this next bend, you’ll see it.”
“See what?”
Mitch wheeled and started off again down the stony ravine, which showed signs of coming rapidly to an end.
“The City of Brock!” he said over his shoulder.
CHAPTER 15
The ravine debouched upon a broken plain. At their backs, the twin sentinel peaks guarding the pass through which they had passed were like two teeth in a great, circular band saw stretching around the horizon. The plain was the bottom of a cup-like depression, surrounded by jagged, snow-summited mountains.
At the northern edge of the plain, a bare, conical peak dominated the landscape, silhouetted against distant snow-fields. But it was none of this grandeur of view that affected Jarvis. What stopped the breath in his throat was the City of Brock.
It was not vast in breadth, that city, but the concentration of its towers made its beauty even more striking, for they shone with every color of the rainbow, and others that seemed to flow in a changing, patternless rhythm from blood-red through rose, aquamarine, turquoise, blue and violet—living color that crawled and writhed upon the sight, enmeshing the needle-like spires, bridging them with trellis-like, curving walkways that curled from tower to tower in spirals of sensitive design.
“They say it sings,” Mitch murmured in Jarvis’ ear. “Can you hear it?”
“No,” Jarvis muttered. “I can’t hear it.”
Mitch sighed with what seemed like relief. “Only the Mags can,” he said. “You must be one of us Saps.”
“Saps?” Jarvis was curious.
“People are Saps—they are Mags—Brock and the rest of them who live in that city. The people have a village outside the gate—log houses. We can’t even enter the city.”
“Why not?”
Mitch shrugged. “Mag rule. They say it’s dangerous. We’re not so sure about that. Most of us feel they’re working on something in there they don’t want us to know about.”
“In there—in that
city? Who built it? Was it here when you came?”
Mitch shook his head. “Only Mags could build a city like that. We leveled off the ground and fixed it up for them, then they took over—built it in a single night. It took us a long time to get used to it.”
They picked their way over the rough, fissured surface of the plain, Jarvis so immersed in the scene and in the bits of information he gleaned from Mitch that he had wholly forgotten Jo and Toby, struggling along after them.
Mitch went on. “I was living in Nebraska when Brock first got in touch with me. I had a pretty good reputation as an engineer, and that’s what led him to me. He hand-picked the crew he brought here with him. Anyway I came to the camp Brock had established—in Colorado, at the foot of Pike’s Peak. None of us could learn anything—there were about a thousand of us. Some thought Brock was going to build an underground factory for producing atom-engines, and others thought maybe Brock was just the supervisor for some kind of government project—maybe another try with a moon rocket, or something like that. Anyway, we were wrong, about the moon rocket and all—Brock was right to keep his purpose from us. We wouldn’t have believed him if he had explained the whole situation in detail.
“One morning, Brock ordered us to load all the trucks and halftracks, get aboard and drive up to the top of Pike’s Peak. For two days, the trucks shuttled up and down, carrying people, gear and supplies. Then there we were—all crowded on top and hanging onto the sides—and it was cold, even if it was July.
“Well, a lot of us didn’t like it.” He laughed brittlely. “We went to Brock with our grievance. He was living up there in a great, big modern trailer. We told him what we thought of the situation; then he told us. He told us the world was about to be destroyed and that he had saved us. That he was going to take us to a new world, where we could start all over again. He talked on and on, and the more he talked, the more disgusted we became. Most of the men had their families along, and it was miserable for them up there, believe me. Here we had come from all over the U.S., lured by the promise of high-paying jobs, only to find we’d hooked up with what we thought was some kind of a crank. A real nut, believe me!
“We’d have walked off the mountain then, except we knew it would take days to get all that stuff down again; so we told Brock that next morning we’d start taking the things back down the mountain, and when we got all his stuff down again, we were quitting—every last one of us.
“I thought at the time he was awful calm about it. He agreed quite readily that we were free to do just that in the morning, and he was sorry he had put us to so much trouble. He was just lulling us, of course. Because, in the morning, there wasn’t any Earth for us to go back down to.
“The Disaster struck that night, as you very well can remember. The mountain jumped like all the volcanoes in Hell were erupting. There was a hurricane of wind, and the rain slashed down, and the sky was lit with a continual flashing of lightning. The mountain rocked and heaved like it was alive. People were screaming, trucks and gear were tumbling down the side of the mountain—then over all that racket, we heard Brock’s voice on the P.A. system. He told us to hang on and pray, it would only last a few minutes. Certainly, in a few minutes it was over, and there was only the rain and the lightning and the thunder, that lasted the rest of the night.
“The next morning, we walked down the mountain and found ourselves on Eloraspon.”
“You don’t mean you walked down Pike’s Peak and found yourself here—just like that?” Jarvis put in.
Mitch nodded. “Yes, we did. Just as I said.” He speared a lean finger northward. “See that molehill behind the City of Brock?”
Jarvis’ glance swung to the bare, low peak he had noticed earlier, at whose foot rose the spires of the City of Brock.
“That’s all that’s left of Pike’s Peak,” Mitch said.
CHAPTER 16
Mitch’s calm announcement was a shock to Jarvis. That insignificant upthrust from the plain was mighty Pike’s Peak? It was a mountain that had not been there before the earthquakes, Eluola had said. Then, like the midwestern town where Jarvis’ adventure had begun, the tip of Pike’s Peak had also been thrust into the domain of Eloraspon and left there. And where was the Earth?
He puzzled over these questions with Jo after Mitch had left them in the cabin which had been assigned to them. There were many cabins like this one—rude huts, mostly, built of logs that had been chain-sawed in the distant mountains and trucked here by half-track.
There was a community kitchen with a large dining room where the population ate in shifts, a combination church and community hall, and several warehouse buildings where supplies were stored. This comprised the “village”, and Jarvis had ample opportunity to look it over.
He had left Jo and Toby at the cabin, and, returning, he found Jo alone, resting.
He said, “A real luxury to be able to stretch out on a bed, isn’t it?”
“I’m really more tired than I ought to be,” she confessed.
“Happy?” he asked.
She knew to what he referred. She nodded. “Very happy, Jeff.”
“You’re not afraid any more?”
Her look clouded momentarily, then cleared; and she smiled.
“No—truthfully, Jeff, I’m not afraid any more!”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” he grinned playfully, “but I’m glad you feel that way.”
“It’s being tired that makes me feel happy and unafraid.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“Do I have to draw you a picture?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over her and kissed her, his thoughts mainly still on the iridescent city of Brock.
“I didn’t realize you were an artist, child. Draw away.”
“Jeff…” She hesitated.
“Hmmmm?”
“Jeff, I’m going to have a baby!”
Words came out of him explosively. “The hell you are!”
“Your baby, Jeff!”
“Mine? Good grief!” He ran a shaking hand through his hair, then suddenly grinned and seized her up off the bed into the grip of his wiry arms.
“Are you happy about it, Jeff?” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
“Happy?” he caroled. “Delirious, kid! When’s it going to be? Think it will be a boy?”
She laughed. “One question at a time, boy! These things take time, you know. But I can’t promise it will be a boy. What would you think if it were a girl?”
“I’d think hallelujah,” he chortled hugging her. “Of course, if it’s a boy, there’s an awful lot I could teach him…”
“That you couldn’t teach a girl?”
He realized abruptly that she was serious, that she was worried whether she would bear him the man-child he wanted. He shook her gently and playfully. “Just don’t you worry about that. So if it’s a girl, I’ll teach her—think a girl can learn to throw a boomerang?”
Her smile was shy and proud.
“With you to teach her!”
Mitch called at the cabin. There was a strange look on his face.
“Do you know John Daniels?” he asked.
“A big colored fellow?”
Mitch nodded. “Lawyer from Joplin, Missouri. He’s at the city gate—asked me to fetch you.” There was a peculiar look in the engineer’s expression.
“We met briefly in the wilderness,” Jarvis explained. “But he couldn’t be here already. He was on his way north when I saw him, and we came as directly westward as possible. How in the world did he get here so fast?”
Mitch shrugged. “Daniels is one of the Mags. You’re supposed to go with him and see Eamus Brock—that means you’re a Mag, too.”
“I? Oh, no, Mitch! See here. I talked with a projection o
f Eamus Brock last night, on the other side of the pass, but I don’t know anything about this Mag business.”
“You and the boy,” Mitch insisted stubbornly. “Brock called the boy in an hour ago. And now he’s asking for you. Only a Mag can enter the city and live—that’s what they tell us. Come along. I’ll take you to Daniels.”
Jarvis went with him, after saying goodbye to Jo. Her eyes followed him as he went out of the cabin. So he was a Mag, Jarvis thought. And Toby was a Mag. What was a Mag? What he and Toby were—telepaths! It was convincingly clear just now. And Jo? She was not a Mag. She had not demonstrated the telepathic ability he and Toby had—and Eluola had said she was different from them—had called him Jarvis of the Mighty. So what, then, was so mighty about the Mighty?
He turned on Mitch. “I’ve got a feeling the Mags aren’t very well liked out here, Mitch. What’s the story? You’re acting differently toward me now than you did this morning.”
Mitch shrugged, shamefaced. “Nothing personal, Jeff. Maybe we Saps just owe the Mags a lot and resent it. Or maybe we resent being segregated—into our little ghetto, or colored district, as it were. Though there’s nothing racial about the Mags—there’s all races among them, as there are among us. But the Mags are different from us, in a way I don’t understand—and that makes you different from us. Just before the City of Brock was completed, I saw a dog chase a cat, and the cat ran into the city area. I refused to believe what I saw—there was just a puff of light, and the cat vanished utterly. Of course, that brought all the Mags on the run, and we received a solemn warning then and there never to trespass or…”
“Or what?”
“Or the same thing would happen to us. Brock told us that as we are safe in our environment, the Mags are safe in theirs. But the Mag environment is not compatible with the Sap physical make-up. Oh, I didn’t dig half what he said—but I know enough to keep out of the City of Brock!”
Jarvis felt a thin worm of fear crawl along his sinews. Mitch was so earnestly sincere, he knew that the engineer told the truth. But he, himself, was only human, he reasoned. What were these Mags, then, if not supermen who required a different kind of environment than earthly beings? Then what would happen to him when he trespassed on that alien environment?
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 64