(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  It had been a brief walk from the space-globe. Lee had seen what seemed a little village stretching off among the trees. There had been people crowding to see the strangers--men, women and children, in simple crude peasant garb--brief garments that revealed their pink-white bodies. They babbled with strange unintelligible words, crowding forward until the robed men from the globe shoved them away.

  It was a pastoral, peaceful scene--a little country-side drowsing in the warm rosy twilight. Out by the river there were fields where men stood at their simple agricultural implements--stood at rest, staring curiously at the commotion in the village.

  And still Lee's captors would say nothing, merely drew them forward, into this room. Then all of them left, save one. He had doffed his robe now. He was an old man, with long grey-white hair to the base of his neck. He stood smiling. His voice, with the English words queerly pronounced, was gentle, but with a firm finality of command.

  "My name is Arkoh," he said. "I am to see that you are made comfortable. This house is yours. There are several rooms, so that you may do in them as you wish."

  "Thank you," Lee said. "But you can certainly understand--I have asked many questions and never had any answers. If you wish to talk to me alone--"

  "That will come presently. There is no reason for you to be worried--"

  "We're not worried," Franklin burst out. "We're fed up with this highhanded stuff. You'll answer questions now. What I demand to know is why--"

  "Take it easy," Lee warned.

  Franklin had jumped to his feet. He flung off Lee's hand. "Don't make me laugh. I know you're one of them--everything about you is a fake. You got us into this--"

  "So? You would bring strife here from your Earth?" Arkoh's voice cut in, like a knife-blade cleaving through Franklin's bluster. "That is not permissible. Please do not make it necessary that there should be violence here." He stood motionless. But before his gaze Franklin relaxed into an incoherent muttering.

  "Thank you," Arkoh said. "I shall send you the food." He turned and left the room.

  * * * * *

  Vivian collapsed into a chair. She was trembling. "Well--my Gawd--what is all this? Lee--that old man with his gentle voice--he looked like if you crossed him you'd be dead. Not that he'd hurt you--it would be--would be something else--"

  "You talk like an ass," Franklin said. "You've gone crazy--and I don't blame you--this damned weird thing. For all that old man's smooth talk, we're just prisoners here. Look outside that window--"

  It was a little garden, drowsing in the twilight. A man stood watching the window. And as Lee went to the lattice, he could see others, like guards outside.

  The man who brought their simple food was a stalwart fellow in a draped garment of brown plaited fibre. His black hair hung thick about his ears. He laid out the food in silence.

  "What's your name?" Franklin demanded.

  "I am Groff."

  "And you won't talk either, I suppose? Look here, I can make it worth your while to talk."

  "Everyone has all he needs here. There is nothing that you need give us."

  "Isn't there? You just give me a chance and I'll show you. No one has all he needs--or all he wants."

  Groff did not answer. But as he finished placing the food, and left the room, it seemed to Lee that he shot a queer look back at Franklin. A look so utterly incongruous that it was startling. Franklin saw it and chuckled.

  "Well, at least there's one person here who's not so damn weird that it gives you the creeps."

  "You don't know what you're talking about," Lee said. With sudden impulse he lowered his voice. "Franklin, listen--there are a few things that perhaps I can tell you. Things that I can guess--that Vivian senses--"

  "I don't want to hear your explanation. It would be just a lot of damn lies anyway."

  "All right. Perhaps it would. We'll soon know, I imagine."

  "Let's eat," Vivian said. "I'm hungry, even if I am scared."

  To Lee it seemed that the weird mystery here was crowding upon them. As though, here in this dim room, momentous things were waiting to reveal themselves. A strange emotion was upon Lee Anthony. A sort of tense eagerness. Certainly it was not fear. Certainly it seemed impossible that there could be anything here of which he should be afraid. Again his mind went back to old Anna Green and what she had told him of his grandfather. How far away--how long ago that had been.... And yet, was Anna Green far away now? Something of her had seemed always to be with him on that long, weird voyage, from the infinite smallness and pettiness of Earth to this realm out beyond the stars. And more than ever now, somehow Lee seemed aware of her presence here in this quiet room. Occultism? He had always told himself that surely he was no mystic. A practical fellow, who could understand science when it was taught him, but certainly never could give credence to mysticism. The dead are dead, and the living are alive; and between them is a gulf--an abyss of nothingness.

  Now he found himself wondering. Were all those people on Earth who claimed to feel the presence of dead loved ones near them? Were those people just straining their fancy--just comforting themselves with what they wished to believe? Or was the scoffer himself the fool? And if that could be so, on Earth, why could not this strange realm be of such a quality that an awareness of those who have passed from life would be the normal thing? Who shall say that the mysteries of life and death are unscientific? Was it not rather that they embraced those gaps of science not yet understood? Mysteries which, if only we could understand them, would be mysteries no longer?

  Lee had left the table and again was standing at the latticed window, beyond which the drowsing little garden lay silent, and empty now. The guard who had been out here had moved further away; his figure was a blob near a flowered thicket at the house corner. And suddenly Lee was aware of another figure. There was a little splashing fountain near the garden's center--a rill of water which came down a little embankment and splashed into a pool where the rose light shimmered on the ripples.

  The figure was sitting at the edge of the pool--a slim young girl in a brief dress like a drape upon her. She sat, half reclining on the bank by the shimmering water, with her long hair flowing down over her shoulders and a lock of it trailing in the pool. For a moment he thought that she was gazing into the water. Then as the light which tinted her graceful form seemed to intensify, he saw that she was staring at him.

  It seemed as though both of them, for that moment, were breathless with a strange emotion awakened in them by the sight of each other. And then slowly the girl rose to her feet. Still gazing at Lee, she came slowly forward with her hair dangling, framing her small oval face. The glow in the night-air tinted her features. It was a face of girlhood, almost mature--a face with wonderment on it now.

  He knew that he was smiling; then, a few feet from the window she stopped and said shyly:

  "You are Lee Anthony?"

  "Yes."

  "I am Aura. When you have finished eating, I am to take you to him."

  "To him?"

  "Yes. The One of Our Guidance. He bade me bring you." Her soft voice was musical; to her, quite obviously, the English was a foreign tongue.

  "I'm ready," Lee said. "I'm finished."

  One of her slim bare arms went up with a gesture. From the corner of the little house the guard there turned, came inside. Lee turned to the room. The guard entered. "You are to come," he said.

  "So we just stay here, prisoners," Franklin muttered. He and Vivian were blankly staring as Lee was led away.

  * * * * *

  Then in a moment he was alone beside the girl who had come for him. Silently they walked out into the glowing twilight, along a little woodland path with the staring people and the rustic, nestling dwellings blurring in the distance behind them. A little line of wooded hills lay ahead. The sky was like a dark vault--empty. The pastel light on the ground seemed inherent to the trees and the rocks; it streamed out like a faint radiation from everywhere. And then, as Lee gazed up into the abyss of the h
eavens, suddenly it seemed as though very faintly he could make out a tiny patch of stars. Just one small cluster, high overhead.

  "The Universe you came from," Aura said.

  "Yes." The crown of her tresses as she walked beside him was at his shoulder. He gazed down at her. "To whom are you taking me? It seems that I could guess--"

  "I was told not to talk of that."

  "Well, all right. Is it far?"

  "No. A little walk--just to that nearest hill."

  Again they were silent. "My Earth," he said presently, "do you know much about it?"

  "A little. I have been told."

  "It seems so far away to me now."

  She gazed up at him. She was smiling. "Is it? To me it seems quite close." She gestured. "Just up there. It seemed far to you, I suppose--that was because you were so small, for so long, coming here."

  Like a man the size of an ant, trying to walk ten miles. Of course, it would be a monstrous trip. But if that man were steadily to grow larger, as he progressed he would cover the distance very quickly.

  "Well," Lee said, "I suppose I can understand that. You were born here, Aura?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "Your world here--what is it like?"

  She gazed up at him as though surprised. "You have seen it. It is just a simple little place. We have not so many people here in the village, and about that many more--those who live in the hills close around here."

  "You mean that's all? Just this village? Just a few thousand people?"

  "Oh there are others, of course. Other groups--like ours, I guess--out in the forests--everywhere in all the forests, maybe." Her gesture toward the distant, glowing, wooded horizons was vague. "We have never tried to find out. Why should we? Wherever they are, they have all that they need or want. So have we."

  The thing was so utterly simple. He pondered it. "And you--you're very happy here?"

  Her wide eyes were childlike. "Why yes. Of course. Why not? Why should not everyone be happy?"

  "Well," he said, "there are things--"

  "Yes. I have heard of them. Things on your Earth--which the humans create for themselves--but that is very silly. We do not have them here."

  Surely he could think of no retort to such childlike faith. Her faith. How horribly criminal it would be to destroy it. A priceless thing--human happiness to be created out of the faith that it was the normal thing. He realized that his heart was pounding, as though now things which had been dormant within him all his life were coming out--clamoring now for recognition.

  And then, out of another silence he murmured, "Aura--you're taking me to my grandfather, aren't you? He came here from Earth--and then he sent back there to get me?"

  "Yes," she admitted. "So you know it? But I was instructed to--"

  "All right. We won't talk of it. And he's told you about me?"

  "Yes," she agreed shyly. She caught her breath as she added, "I have been--waiting for you--a long time." Shyly she gazed up at him. The night-breeze had blown her hair partly over her face. Her hand brushed it away so that her gaze met his. "I hoped you would be, well, like you are," she added.

  "Oh," he said awkwardly. "Well--thanks."

  "And you," she murmured out of another little silence, "you--I hope I haven't disappointed you. I am the way you want--like you wished--"

  What a weird thing to say! He smiled. "Not ever having heard of you, Aura, I can't exactly say that I--"

  * * * * *

  He checked himself. Was she what he had wished? Why yes--surely he had been thinking of her--in his dreams, all his life vaguely picturing something like this for Lee Anthony....

  "I guess I have been thinking of you," he agreed. "No, you haven't disappointed me, Aura. You--you are--"

  He could find no words to say it. "We are almost there," she said. "He will be very happy to have you come. He is a very good man, Lee. The one, we think, of the most goodness--and wiseness, to guide us all--"

  The path had led them up a rocky defile, with gnarled little trees growing between the crags. Ahead, the hillside rose up in a broken, rocky cliff. There was a door, like a small tunnel entrance. A woman in a long white robe was by the door.

  "He is here," Aura said. "Young Anthony."

  "You go in."

  Silently they passed her. The tunnel entrance glowed with the pastel radiance from the rocks. The radiance was a soft blob of color ahead of them.

  "You will find that he cannot move now," Aura whispered. "You will sit by his bed. And talk softly."

  "You mean--he's ill?"

  "Well--what you would call paralysis. He cannot move. Only his lips--his eyes. He will be gone from us soon, so that then he can only be unseen. A Visitor--"

  Her whisper trailed off. Lee's heart was pounding, seeming to thump in his throat as Aura led him silently forward. It was a draped, cave-like little room. Breathless, Lee stared at a couch--a thin old figure lying there--a frail man with white hair that framed his wrinkled face. It was a face that was smiling, its sunken, burning eyes glowing with a new intensity. The lips moved; a faint old voice murmured:

  "And you--you are Lee?"

  "Yes--grandfather--"

  He went slowly forward and sat on the bedside.

  CHAPTER IV

  Mad Giant

  To Lee, after a moment, his grandfather seemed not awe-inspiring, but just a frail old man, paralyzed into almost complete immobility, lying here almost pathetically happy to have his grandson at last with him. An old man, with nothing of the mystic about him--an old man who had been--unknown to the savants of his Earth--perhaps the greatest scientist among them. Quietly, with pride welling in him, Lee held the wasted, numbed hand of his grandfather and listened....

  Phineas Anthony, the scientist. After many years of research, spending his own private fortune, he had evolved the secret of size-change--solved the intricate problems of anti-gravitational spaceflight; and combining the two, had produced that little vehicle.

  A man of science; and perhaps more than that. As old Anna Green had said, perhaps he was a man inspired--a man, following his dreams, his convictions, convinced that somewhere in God's great creation of things that are, there must be an existence freed of those things by which Man himself so often makes human life a tortured hell.

  "And Something led me here, Lee," the gentle old voice was saying. "Perhaps not such a coincidence. On this great Inner Surface of gentle light and gentle warmth--with Nature offering nothing against which one must strive--there must be many groups of simple people like these. They have no thought of evil--there is nothing--no one, to teach it to them. If I had not landed here, I think I would have found much the same thing almost anywhere else on the Inner Surface."

  "The Inner Surface? I don't understand, grandfather."

  A conception--a reality here--that was numbing in its vastness. This was the concave, inner surface, doubtless deep within the atom of some material substance. A little empty Space here, surrounded by solidity.

  "And that--" Lee murmured, "then that little space is our Inter-Stellar abyss?"

  "Yes. Of course. The stars, as we call them--from here you could call them tiny particles--like electrons whirling. All of them in this little void. With good eyesight, you can sometimes see them there--"

  "I did."

  And to this viewpoint which Lee had now--so gigantic, compared to Earth--all the Inter-Stellar universe was a void here of what old Anthony considered would be perhaps eight or ten thousand miles. A void, to Lee now, was itself of no greater volume than the Earth had been to him before!

  Silently he pondered it. This Inner Surface--not much bigger, to him now, than the surface of the Earth is to its humans.... Suddenly he felt small--infinitely tiny. Out here beyond the stars, he was only within the atom of something larger, a human, partly on his way--emerging--outward--

  * * * * *

  It gave him a new vague conception. As though now, because he was partly emerged, the all-wise Creator was giving him a new insig
ht. Surely in this simple form of existence humans were totally unaware of what evil could be. Was not this a higher form of life than down there on his tiny Earth?

  The conception numbed him with awe....

  "You see, Lee, I have been looking forward to having you become a man--to having you here," old Anthony was saying. As he lay, so utterly motionless, only his voice, his face, his eyes, seemed alive. It was an amazingly expressive old face, radiant, transfigured. "I shall not be here long. You see? And when I have--gone on--when I can only come back here as a Visitor--like Anna Green, you have been aware of her, Lee?"

  "Yes, grandfather. Yes, I think I have."

  "The awareness is more acute, here, than it was back on Earth. A very comforting thing, Lee. I was saying--I want you here. These people, so simple--you might almost think them childlike--they need someone to guide them. The one who did that--just as I came, was dying. Maybe--maybe that is what led me here. So now I need you."

  It welled in Lee with an awe, and a feeling suddenly of humbleness--and of his own inadequacy, so that he murmured,

  "But grandfather--I would do my best--but surely--"

  "I think it will be given you--the ability--and I've been thinking, Lee, if only some time it might be possible to show them on Earth--"

  Lee had been aware that he and old Anthony were alone here. When Lee entered, Aura had at once withdrawn. Now, interrupting his grandfather's faint, gentle voice there was a commotion outside the underground apartment. The sound of women's startled cries, and Aura's voice.

  Then Aura burst in, breathless, pale, with her hair flying and on her face and in her eyes a terror so incongruous that Lee's heart went cold.

  He gasped, "Aura! Aura, what is it?"

  "This terrible thing--that man who came with you--that man, Franklin--he talked with Groff. Some evil spell to put upon Groff--it could only have been that--"

  Lee seized her. "What do you mean? Talk slower. Groff? The man who served us that meal--"

  "Yes, Groff. And two of the men who were to guard there. What that man said to them--did to them--and when old Arkoh found it out he opposed them--" Her voice was drab with stark horror--so new an emotion that it must have confused her, so that now she just stood trembling.