The World Above The World

by Brian Stableford

  I had to make a violent effort not to cry out. Turning my head toward Siam-Si, I sought distraction in the direction of the mute. His eyes wide and staring, his arms stiffened in a strangely attentive pose, the Chinese still did not budge. I reached out to help him to get out and took his hand, still warm but inert—which, coming away from the steering-wheel, fell limply on to the seat. The movement was sufficient to make him lose equilibrium, and the man—who was no more than a cadaver—collapsed like a mass on the linoleum of the front seat.

  In the stupor into which this spectacle plunged me, I nevertheless retained the consciousness necessary to reply to Yella’s voice, which was calling out to me impatiently.

  “News of my father, Monsieur Bayoud?”

  “Yes, yes,” I stammered. “At least, I hope so. Be patient a little longer, I beg you; the automobile isn’t here yet.”

  Before anything else, I wanted to gain the time to make Siam-Si disappear. As I made every effort to pull him from the seat—and you know how heavy a dead body is!—I strove to find an explanation for the explanation of this arrival of two cadavers. Had the two men discovered the escape-route reserved by Goldfeller for his daughter and himself? Had there been a fight between them, and had the Gem King been able to kill one and wound the other grievously enough for him only to expire at the end of his journey?

  The truth, simpler and more terrible, suddenly appeared to me. On the mute Chinese’s right arm, attached by a sturdy pin, I perceived two letters that I made haste to grab. On the envelopes, I recognized inscriptions in Goldfeller’s handwriting. One was for his daughter; the other was addressed to me. I opened it.

  Do you know human nature better than I do, my child? What you anticipated has happened. After the brutes, the monsters of the elite, who all owe their lives to me, rebelled against me. I am playing my final game, alone against all of them, defending for as long as possible the passage that would lead the blackguards to the light and toward my daughter…the villains that I will tame again. Be patient for another quarter of an hour; send the platform back down and if you don’t see me arrive, flee. Even if Yella is still asleep, flee at top speed, as if you were being pursued. This letter is for you; the other will provide you with a pretext; give it to Yella. May it not be my last farewell to my child.

  It required the weight of two men and the hand of only one to maneuver the automobile charged with bringing you here. There’s no shortage of cadavers here; I’ve thrown one into the car. The other, charged with driving it, ought to die on reaching you, if the cordial I have given him to drink acts within the time anticipated by Rassmuss. As for those besieging me, they have no suspicion of the fate I have reserved for them. You ought to be able to see it from a long way along the route that you’re to follow. I…

  What incident had forced him to cut the letter short, in spite of his abominable presence of mind? Perhaps he alone could say. Shoving Siam-Si’s corpse into the car, on top of Kandy’s, I closed the blinds to hide them from view. Pulling the limousine outside, I activated the platform, and ran in haste to the house, where Yella was getting ready to come down, in spite of her nurse’s efforts to retain her.

  The letter from her father calmed her impatience. She opened it, scanned it with a happy expression, and read it to us.

  “My dear child, be tranquil. All is going well and I might be able to join you soon. In any case, and whatever happens, don’t worrying about me. If I can’t leave with you, as I still hope to do, I’ll join you later. One last time, though, I wanted to write to you, to give you, before our future reunion, one last sign of affection and benediction. I embrace you, my beloved daughter, with all my heart.”

  Yella lowered her head; a tear ran down her cheek and fell on to the piece of paper that she held in her trembling hand. She murmured: “Never has he written to me in such a tender manner. Dear, dear Father…he must be in danger. Oh! Something tells me that I shall never see him again.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We must obey the orders that M. Goldfeller has given us himself. We’re leaving.”

  Guided by her nurse, Yella came down to the car and, a few minutes later, we emerged from the town on the Dijon road.

  It was getting dark; the sky was slightly cloudy but clear and milky, infinitely soft. From time to time, behind us, lightning flashes lit up the landscape and it seemed to me that they were increasing in number, intensity and duration. Anxious, fearful of a storm and wanting to take stock of the state of the sky myself, I stopped and got out.

  A terrifying and grandiose spectacle nailed me to the spot. The tower of Aeria, standing out squarely against the sky for almost all of its height, dominated the countryside like a block of fire. Streaked with lightning in every direction, it loomed up in the darkness like prodigious carbuncle whose radiation, increasing by the second, was fixed in place as it passed from blue to red. Soon, the entire mass was ablaze, the cube of metal reddened to the translucency of a colossal ruby, radiating an unbearable heat as far as our position. At the same time, its summit was flaming like a torch; on top of that mountain of red-hot metal, Aeria had just caught fire.

  Overwhelmed, I could not tear my eyes away from the spectacle. I felt a hand touch my arm. Yella was interrogating me with her gaze, demanding to know the cause of the frightful phenomenon. I pulled my arm away desperately, as a sign of ignorance.

  And yet, I suspected the cause without being able to suggest it. I recalled Goldfeller’s last words. “I’ve never retreated, Bayoud, when it’s a matter of imposing my will. I’ll destroy everything, if necessary, rather than give in!”

  What revolts, what scenes of carnage, had marked the final moments of Aeria? No one knows, but it was evident, to me, that the final conflagration was the supreme effort of prideful power of Goldfeller’s death-throes. Did not that succession of lightning-bolts preceding the flameless fire denounce a formidable concentration of all the dynamic currents accumulated in the tower? Electricity, the source of the Gem-King’s power, had been chosen by him as a final resource to destroy at a stroke, by fire, the million human beings in revolt against his authority; it must at that moment be incinerating and stifling the inhabitants of Aeria imprisoned within the tower.

  A cry from Yella snatched me out of my reflections—a cry of horror, anguish ad agony.

  “Oh!”

  Her extended finger was pointing at the incandescent block, which, yielding to the devouring fire, was tottering on its base. Whoever saw that experienced a unique moment in human life. Abruptly, with its plume of flames crowning the blazing city, the colossal monument seemed to slide over the sky, collapsed in on itself, flattened, and disappeared from the horizon in an apocalyptic light.

  We could no longer see anything but the disencumbered sky, still plink with the flamboyance of the star-like entity that had just collapsed into the countryside.

  At the same time, beside me, Yella collapsed, without uttering a cry.

  I supported her with one arm, leaning over her anxiously. So pale when she was alive, now that she was dead, her cheeks were animated by the colors of life.

  Beside me, Sophie Moor sobbed without shedding any tears.

  The proud dream of the father, as it crumbled, had borne away the faint breath of the woman who had been its unwitting soul.

  André Mas: Drymea, World of Virgins

  (1923)

  I. The Awakening

  During the North African War, in 1935, at the battle of Gersons Pans, Hertha Helgar was captured in her hospital post, along with the wounded men in her care.

  She was then 23 years old. Her magnificent stature combined grace and strength. Pale and very beautiful, beneath her abundant blonde hair her clear eyes seemed to reflect, by turns, the various skies that she admired on the vast Earth. She laughed rarely and said very little, but there was intelligence resident behind her honest forehead; when she wished it, her smile was full of sweetness. In Kartha, her homeland, she volunteered for service, believing it to be her duty, although
she knew what her life was worth.

  The indomitable virgin refused herself to the bestial desire of Arnabasse, the enemy general. In an unpublished atrocity, he had her sealed in an enormous shell of the so-called telescopic type, captured by his troops. There was no limit to the projectile’s range if one multiplied the charges. In spite of the pleas of his officers and soldiers, Arnabasse ordered that the shell be fired. In an incandescent explosion, the sky swallowed his victim.

  But Hertha survived. In a ring on her finger she carried a liberating poison. She thought she would anticipate inevitable death, but she was spared. Her inert body, devoid of heartbeat and breath, but in which the spark of life subsisted nevertheless, advanced through eternal space, the empire of night and silence, year after year, toward a goal that surpassed our dreams…

  Hertha opened her eyes. A young and gentle face welcomed her first gaze. A small brown hand lifted a silvery vessel to her lips, full of a red liquid. Hertha drank. A more ardent life colored her cheeks and increased her heartbeat. She propped herself up on the large cushions and expressed her gratitude.

  Youth was exultant in her body now; a sea breeze brought the greeting of the open sea. The triumphant summer around her unfolded in florid expanses. The magnificent calm of the sunset stained everything red. Before her eyes, the blue sea filled the horizon and the golden sun was sinking toward the slow waves to her right. The great peace of dusk was about to envelop the world.

  Everything imposed itself on Hertha at once. In front of her was a young woman, attentive and smiling. She had a tanned complexion, under and enormous mass of dark hair, covered by a light veil retained by a silver sun. A tunic decorated with embroidered butterflies undulated over her supple body, tightened about her waist by a girdle that was silvery, like her sandals. Hertha realized that beneath a tunic with blue-tinted flowers, she was naked.

  Rapid thoughts passed through her mind. I must have fallen in the Pacific…some island…someone has been caring for me…for how many days, or perhaps months…?

  The young woman placed her hand on her breast several times, repeating: “Greena.”

  Hertha understood: it was her name.

  Then the little hand touched her arm benevolently. “Nevea! Nevea!”A childlike gaiety filled the stranger’s black eyes.

  Hertha pronounced a few words, evocative of various nations. Greena smiled, offering an opaque reply.

  Hertha turned toward the sea—and suddenly, out of that calm mass, she saw a strange star rise: a silver sun.33

  It continued to lick the waves briefly, and then they slowly fell away beneath its ascent, while the motionless Hertha felt her universe falling apart around her. Somewhere in space, an immeasurable distance away, an Earth that was hers was whirling, while she was breathing here, beneath the ironic splendor of two suns. Her knees trembled, and a wave of anguish overwhelmed her.

  Soon, however, straightening up, she stared intrepidly, as if it were her destiny itself, at the silver sun rising into the sky. How long ago had the North African War been laid to rest in the dust of dead centuries? Hertha knew what titanic distances separated the stars; even light takes years to cross them. She was alive again, simultaneously isolated by the double immensity of time and space, as much a stranger to this as-yet-mysterious world as to the Earth from which she came.

  Then Yesterday loomed up before her: but a yesterday centuries old. All those she loved had passed through the gates of Death during her long voyage. The eternal exile would end with her life, and only with her life. Terrestrial society might have been annihilated, leaving her, on her awakening, as the sole inhabitant of the globe; that would have been preferable. Even dead things have their memories and evoke pity. Our existence leaves a little of itself behind there.

  With her face in her hands, Hertha wept silently. Also silent, Greena remained beside her. When Hertha opened her fingers, though, she saw an immense pity in the friendly stranger’s eyes. The latter’s slender fingers wiped away her tears, awkwardly but gently.

  They’re unfamiliar with tears, thought the daughter of Earth.

  Greena’s hand was placed on hers. A gesture encompassed the sky, the sea, the flowering bushes. “Drymea, Drymea,” pronounced her voice. “Drymea nyrril Nevea.”

  That’s the name of their world, and it’s welcoming me, Hertha thought.

  The entire sea was shining like a mass of silver extended beneath the darkened sky. The white sun, a satellite of the golden sun, weaker and more distant, permitted a lunar crescent to tender its faint light. Another white disk rose over the waves.

  Greena took hold of Hertha’s wrist then, and led her away along the flowery pathways. Hertha was a head taller than she was.

  Then there was a marble wall, a metal door, luminous corridors and large bays. Draperies were parted. The enormous room into which Greena and the daughter of Earth entered was completely white. A cheerful rumor emanated from a group of women wearing ample, brilliantly decorated garments, with golden suns in their dark hair.

  Hertha found that she was at the foot of a flight of steps leading up to a white marble couch. The cushions on which a woman was enthroned, amid the gleam of golden and silver suns, were also white.

  The White Queen, Hertha thought—for she was clad from head to toe in the immaculate hue, without a single ornament. Suns were enlaced upon her forehead. For a moment, the brunette queen contemplated the pale stranger, while Greena made a slight indicative gesture and whispered to Hertha: “Nacrysa.”

  Queen Nacrysa seemed to be tall and beautiful, in the splendor of her prime. Her face radiated authority, but her eyes were capable of softening. Thus Hertha saw them, seated at her feet. The Queen stared at her face for some time. Everything was mingled in her gaze: pity, interest, curiosity, reflection. The blonde virgin sensed that she was in the hands of a powerful sovereign, but she was not afraid. For Nacrysa, the weight of whose power oppressed thought, recalled something of the best of Earth.

  Two young women approached and fixed a veil with a silver sun on Hertha’s hair. The queen seemed to give an order. An enormous metal door slid aside in the wall. Nacrysa’s people went in like a wave. For hours, Hertha watch the strange humanity pass by at her feet. “Nevea. Nevea.” The murmur ran from everyone’s lips. Eventually, before the Queen, they covered their eyes momentarily with their hands: a gesture of respect.

  An immense attention was fixed upon Hertha: women with serene faces, which seemed unfamiliar with everything that creases, hollows out and erodes the faces of our world—passion, fatigue, anxiety, grief; virgins34 with cheerful, insouciant smiles; girls with large eyes filled with the joy of a new curiosity. Abundant dark hair helmeted their tanned faces; tunics in pastel shades mingled; sandals incessantly trod the thick carpet. Black-eyed people, they passed by in thousands, and tens of thousands.

  Sometimes, Hertha turned toward the Queen, with a mute interrogation. The sovereign’s gaze seemed to say: “Don’t be afraid. My people are satisfied with the sight of you, stranger.” Then, finally, the ranks thinned out, and the doors closed again.

  There were at least two hundred thousand of them, Hertha thought, but are the men of this land not curious…or…—the rapid thought made her shiver—am I in the hands of an illimitable despot with an immense harem?

  She looked at the Queen. It scarcely seemed, given the authority written in her face, that she could sense anything above her head but the heavens.

  Nacrysa gave an order. Greena then led Hertha through the palace. They emerged on to a gigantic terrace. There was a garden, a clear basin, polychromatic statues. At one extremity, the gaze plunged over a city and its harbor, where floating gardens, ships with large sails and cargo barges were lined up in hundreds, and then the vast sea, extending for leagues. The Royal Park around the Palace and the terraces of large edifices were directly below Hertha’s viewpoint; there was no higher one than that of the birds.

  The blue horizon followed, more distant than the city, extending as far
as gentle hills.

  “Nirvanir,” said Greena.

  Nirvanir, city with a thousand gardens, you are so beautiful that there is only one attitude before you: gratitude to the God that permitted your birth. Beautiful, the location between the enormous sea and the blue hills beneath the sky, darkened or clear, depending on the suns; beautiful, the vast river unrolling its mirror between your marble quays; beautiful, the rose color of luminous edifices on the crown of the thousand gardens; beautiful also, your women, of spring and autumn, because for them as for your flowers, there is no winter on Drymea. And you extend placidly, far from the cruelties that torment our world.

  Gazing at Nirvanir, Hertha thought that her immense voyage would not be in vain. She brought to Drymea the wherewithal to pay her debt, for a mutual confidence had arisen between her and the other humankind. She arrived with flame in hand, but not to destroy. Her own relatives would have instructed her to serve without weakness, honoring their memory by useful action, not sterile regret. Know, desire, dare and keep silent, ordered antique wisdom.

  The enigma of this world posed itself to Hertha. Who, apart from the Queen, reigned in Nirvanir? What truth was behind those smiling veils?

  In a summer-house on the terrace Hertha found all her worldly wealth: her watch, pen, check-book, slicing knife, a pocket Gospel—a gift from her sister Mary, her sister of the other Earth!—and a Memorandum, of the point that humankind had reach on her departure, facts and figures, carried in her jacket pocket: a possible protection against a shell-burst. That summary of her world seemed marvelous here.

  Then Greena took Hertha down into the Palace. There were statues and paintings along the walls. Another enormous room, where the portraits of Queens were displayed—60 of them, pale and endiademed, with unique power in their faces. The features of Nacrysa were repeated therein. Then, in another room, the books of Drymea, the thousand designs, with brief hieroglyphic characters, in which its science and beauty are contained. Page after page passed before Hertha’s eyes. Countries, women, animals, work and play, joys and duties; everything that this world might know was proven for Hertha in its written memory.