by Harold Lamb
"You are correct. But that is the law of nature."
"There is no law of nature. Human progress has followed no line of development. It has been won a little at a time and lost, and found again by incalculable effort and courage. In no one spot could it have originated and spread outward."
Michal thought, these two young Asiatics, taught in different ways, are trying to reach the same truth through a language not their own—English. The force of their two minds could be felt almost physically within the room as words poured from the impassioned Daoud, while the woman listened, not believing at first but eager to understand.
The human species, Daoud insisted, did not gain wisdom as a whole. The gain was achieved by small groups, separated by accident or catastrophe from the others, and forced to adapt themselves to strange conditions. Somewhere a land bridge might have sunk into the sea, leaving such a group isolated upon an island. Within this human nucleus special characteristics developed through centuries and even millenniums of time. The group became what Darwin called an accidental variation. Cut off from their fellows, they survived by increasing not their physical force but their mental powers. Conflict with other human beings could not aid in this immeasurably slow building up of the force of the spirit.
Within these human islands progress was made, to be shared later with the main bodies. Some of the isolated people perished. Others added their mite to the spirit of man, not to his physical well-being. For some twenty-five thousand years this process of specialization had gone on, until now, to create modern man.
He was quieter now, and Jacob noticed how eagerly Anna listened, trying to memorize words, like a student having a perplexing problem explained.
"Here in Araman," Daoud explained, "we have found the culture of our ancestors—yours too. It is older than Egypt, and has survived untouched by the outer world."
"How long?" demanded the red-haired woman fiercely.
"At least seven thousand years."
"Seven——" She almost screamed. "But that would be a culture-age greatest of all. And to discover it first!" She flushed with excitement. "Ekh ma! It is more ancient many times than the lake settlement Kosloff found in the Altai!"
The effect on her was extraordinary; she trembled and seemed about to cry. Then Major Omelko stamped in from the door where he had been watching the argument with growing concern.
With head lowered, he faced Daoud. Instantly Anna grasped his arms and tried to push him back. As if calming an excited horse, she made shushing sounds, "Patisze—pat isze!"
Convinced in this fashion that she was neither hurt nor alarmed, the Cossack thrust her away impatiently. In high good humor Anna explained to Michal, "This boy says I squeal like a sow." Then she whirled on Daoud, intent again. "Can you the language decipher, Professor?"
The Kurd reflected, his dark eyes impassive. "Has not Professor Vorontzev made anything of it?"
"Vorontzev has made first category findings, but in mineralogy. Around Urmiah he found deposits of barites, molybdenum and uranium——"
When she stopped abruptly, Daoud showed no surprise.
"Daoud!" Jacob exclaimed, disturbed.
His friend had tricked the naïve woman from Tiflis. Anna, carried away by her enthusiasm and fumbling for English words, had not realized what she was admitting about Vorontzev. What if the elderly mineralogist who pottered around collecting ordinary specimens of rock had actually unearthed deposits of molybdenum and uranium?
Before the Kurd could answer, Omelko's deep voice repeated what seemed to be a jest. In the middle of the room, he had been listening to the faint caroling of the wind tower. Anna looked abashed. "The major had forgotten. We also had instructions to ask, please, Mr. Ide, if there is here in your choutar—in your dwelling place—a radio and a concealed telephone."
Catching Michal's eye, Jacob burst into laughter. "Indeed we have, Dr. Anna, but very old models." And he explained how the ancient wind harp made melody and the primitive sound passage carried voices. Eagerly the Cossack and the woman of the Caucasus examined the contrivances, chattering like squirrels. "Antiquities of the dawn period," Dr. Anna proclaimed in relief.
Like children, they were delighted at discovering a jest where they had feared to find something ominous. All Omelko's gold teeth showed. Michal caught at this camaraderie, turning impulsively to Daoud.
"Now answer Dr. Anna fairly, Daoud. She asked if you could understand the original speech of Araman." And she added swiftly, "Please!"
"I am only beginning to understand——"
"Please, Daoud."
Abruptly the Kurd opened his mind to them. "I will prove that a little can be understood, Miss Michal. Dr. Anna, I will take you to hear it spoken by the man you call the patriarch of the tribe."
"I to hear him?"
"Yes." Carefully Daoud weighed his words. "The Americans call him the Watchman; he is actually the Elder of Araman, and he holds in his mind the memories of his people—what you would term vestigial memory of a folk."
Dr. Anna nodded, pleased. She understood that.
"Remember that he knows nothing of such European terms. He is the only man alive who can speak to us in the words of the dawn era. To him the fire by night and the sun by day are symbols of light, guiding"—he sought for a word—"what the Greeks call the soul, and Jacob the spirit of man, in its conflict. Night and darkness are the symbols of defeat and death."
Anna's lips moved steadily as she memorized the words.
"For hvareno I have no translation. It means both glory and achievement—perhaps the final sovereignty of man over himself and his world."
Jacob wondered how much Paul might have taught Daoud in the days after Christmas.
Anna nodded understanding. To her glory meant the recognition of her work.
As they went out, it was dark. Vorontzev pulled his sheepskin close about his thin body; Omelko lighted a cigarette, glancing over his shoulder. Michal, looking back, saw a figure in the darkness of the portico that she recognized as Matejko's. Instinctively she drew breath to call to him to come with them, then realized that he would not join the Russians. Dr. Anna ran to fetch her notebook.
A wild surmise stirred Jacob. Could there be somehow in the Watchman's keeping an unknown talisman, an ark of the covenant, a formula that would bestow power—as Sir Clement had hoped from the first?
Michal pulled back her sleeve, peering at the hands of her watch which showed it to be nearly midnight. She said inwardly, I am dreaming this.
Sharp in the moon's light, the figures took color from the pale sky and the fire. In one instant they seemed white, in another crimson. Behind them in the crystal sky a myriad points of light gleamed. Underfoot the brightness of the snow. She had stood here watching the flames rise over Sir Clement, and she had stood here that first night, frightened, with Jacob's hand in hers. As in a dream, thinking that she had been here listening like this before, she heard Dr. Anna's pencil scratching over paper, and the quick voice of Daoud interposing, and the deep voice of the Watchman rising and falling. That voice never ceased. Once she had heard a man standing alone in the empty theater of the Acropolis in moonlight, speaking in this fashion with the ancient tongue of the Greeks, not chanting but sending forth a human voice in cadenced sound into the stillness of the night. But that had been the verses of Homer.
Barely, she caught Daoud's translating words—like the whisper of a friend sitting by her during a concert stealing through the music.
Omelko had thrown away his cigarette, Vorontzev was trying not to cough, and somewhere Jan Matejko lurked like a shadow apart from the moonlight. If only I could understand, she whispered to herself.
". . .the time of fear when the wall was built . . . those who survived in the highest valley built the wall for a refuge . . . the fear of what lay below . . . the time of the use of metals outside had begun . . . In Babylon the worship of the stars and of numbers
It's like inscriptions, she thought, where only a few words are clea
r.
The Watchman was not looking at them; he was close to the fire, looking out beyond it.
" . . . the time of strife, because of the fear . . . our young men on their horses rode down to the walls of Babylon . . . Out of the strife, darkness for a great cycle of time
. . ."
The walls of Babylon. Why, that had been the Medes and the Persians from the mountains, and Daniel prophesying, reading the writing on the wall, and foretelling the end of the Babylonian empire. As Paul had said.
" . . . those who had gone forth from the hearthland of Aryan vej into Hind, into Parsa—"
"India and Persia, Michal," Jacob exclaimed.
"—to the region of the setting sun . . . multiplied and changed"
"The emigrants."
" . . . they built walled cities and learned new arts."
Only at times could Daoud interpret the meaning of the Watchman.
" . . . who were left behind . . . fewer and fewer . . . losing their memory . . ."
"The survivors here, on the last summit——"
" . . . eating the flesh of penned cattle, taking gifts from the barbarian tribes . . . making images in metal . . ."
"Pegasus?" whispered Michal.
"Pegasus," Jacob nodded. "Ssh!"
For long moments Daoud was silent. Anna's pencil scribbled its course across paper. Her head bent, she was chewing her lip in her concentration. And Michal thought, we are all trying to understand.
At this point the Watchman's voice had changed cadence, as an orchestra changes from the rhythm of strings to the call of woodwinds, and the linguist could not follow him. Michal wondered why no one stopped him to ask a question, then realized that he would not stop.
This patriarch with majesty in his voice was not telling them anything. He was intoning a poem, an epic of his people—his Avesta or Iliad. And as they had been sung and set in words, so this unknown epic had been set in its form, to be repeated from generation to generation and memorized by minds that had never depended on the written word. Each night, while he eyed the constellations, this Watchman had been performing his task of repeating the old words. Gopal had said the keeper of the tongue. Probably he had used the very stars to aid his memory, attaching to each bright cluster some portion of his lore, and the stars in their courses had paced his silent recital. In all odds no one except the Watchman knew the whole of this epic. In his single mind the treasure was guarded.
The Watchman's voice resounded like a bell on a single word.
"The Glory," cried Daoud, "went beyond the great sea . . . the Glory that could not be held by the hands of man . . . went for a small cycle with the children of the sun . . ."
And quickly he exclaimed, "Helios the sun, the children the Hellenes—Jacob, that might be the Greeks. . .the Glory departed from Araman and appeared beyond the sea among the Greeks for a few generations." He listened. "Then followed a gathering of darkness."
Jacob thought, we are only catching fragments; if we had dictographs—if we could assemble the Sanskrit scholars of the world—if Daoud and Anna and Paul could write it all down for a year——
He touched Daoud, who nodded. "We knew this part, Jacob," he said. "It's the peril beneath the earth, told by Zarathushtra."
Into the Watchman's voice had come the clash of iron.
". . . on the surface of the earth where air merges with light, giving life . . . in the region below the earth, perpetual darkness endures . . . man forsook the light to delve into the bowels of the earth, to seek power from below . . . from the bowels of the earth he drew its liquids and fetid air . . ."
Jacob thought of the reservoirs of oil and gas formed from rock by incalculable heat.
". . . upon the surface in the beginning we had found metals soft and pale-bright, and they were shaped for beauty . . . each in a great cycle, for the age of gold, the age of silver and of red metal, soft as they . . ."
Vorontzev was dozing comfortably, close to the fire, not understanding.
". . . then by flame the metals were hardened, in the age of bronze and the age of iron. . .by flame, tools were shaped that aided, and instruments that destroyed . . . harder and enduring the metals, outlasting the men who made them . . . until the new metals forged by earth-heat, indestructible themselves except by earth-destruction, shall walk upon the face of the earth as monsters . . . immortal until the end of earth time . . . until the powers men sought in the bowels of the earth and in darkness will become the powers upon the surface of the earth and in light . . . the powers shaped by the hands of men can outlast the men . . . the darkness from below may cover the surface of the earth . . . unless men survive the metals they have wrought, life will be taken from them . . . until there comes upon the earth a new cycle of time and a new race of men seeking the light——"
Jacob heard steps behind him on the hard snow, and saw Omelko open his overcoat. At the Cossack's belt hung a heavy service revolver.
The Watchman's voice ceased abruptly.
Exasperated, Jacob peered behind him. Out of the shadow appeared the insignificant figure of Svetlov wrapped in an overcoat. At this Omelko relaxed and Anna folded up her notebook hurriedly. Vorontzov woke up at the silence.
Apparently Svetlov seemed surprised to find them all at the fire at this late hour. "Why do you meet late like this?" he observed in his halting English.
Abruptly he stepped to the altar, stretching out his bare hands to warm them. At this simple gesture the aspect of the group changed. Vorontzev coughed heavily in his chest, and Omelko went over to whisper to Anna. The moon, low in the sky, lighted only the form of the Watchman who had gone to the parapet. He looked like an old man in tribal dress, who had chanted a poem significant only to his failing memory.
Anna said very loud that she thanked them for notes on the folklore. Without a word Daoud went off.
Taking Jacob's arm, Michal walked back with him down the plaza.
"I wonder," she whispered, "if the prophets spoke like that."
If Jacob had been asleep, he might not have heard the shots an hour later; if he had been fully awake, he would have known what they were instantly. As it was, lying in a half coma before daylight, he was roused by a drumbeat of shots. Cursing the acoustics of the room which brought far-off sounds near, he listened, and then realized that he had heard a burst—five or more sharp cracks—from an automatic weapon. Then there had been an echo of two deeper explosions.
The only automatic on the summit belonged to Matejko. As quickly as he could he put on his shoes and sheepskin coat. Michal, who waked so easily, had slept through the faint explosions.
Outside the sky was almost dark. After a moment he could make out objects against the gray of the snow underfoot; but nothing moved.
Cautiously he called Matejko's name, and had no answer. Making his way across the plaza, he called again. The village street was silent. As he was going on toward the Lion Gate, he heard a faint movement. Brush stirred, and two shadows moved across a patch of snow.
Jacob did not call again. Matejko would have been alone. Unarmed himself, it was useless to wander around in this obscurity. Returning to the house, he stirred up the fire and waited for day-light.
When it was full light and people appeared in the street below, he explored the plaza. Matejko was not in the house he had occupied alone since Vasstan's departure, nor was he to be found elsewhere. The Polish colonel had been on the summit alone in the early hours of the morning; now he had disappeared. When Jacob searched for him along the wall, he noticed the two Russians still waiting at the gate with their rifles.
For the first time Jacob felt a sense of helplessness. There was no one he could talk to except Daoud, and Daoud did not care to talk beyond saying that the Polish colonel might have shot himself. But if so, Matejko could hardly have fired a full clip of cartridges. Besides, no trace of him remained.
Not until Father Hyacinth appeared late in the afternoon did Jacob learn anything more. Jan Matejko was dead. Obviously ti
red, the priest explained that he had repeated the prayers for the dead over Matejko's grave near the bell tower below. The Russian workmen had made a suitable grave.
The body, Father Hyacinth understood, had been crushed by a fall from the height. More than that he did not know. No, he had not asked if there had been bullet wounds in the body. "But assuredly the unfortunate soldier fell."
Unless the grave were dug up, nothing more than that could be known for certain. What Jacob had heard in the night was no clear indication of what had happened. The first burst must have come from Matejko's pistol, and two shots that might have been from rifles had mingled with it. . . .Carefully Jacob examined the surface of the snow inside the ruined wall on both sides of the gate.
In reward, he found a half-dozen empty cartridge shells, of a caliber that might have fitted the Pole's pistol. They were scattered, half buried in the snow where a criss-cross of tracks made a confused pattern—as if several men had stamped around deliberately to obscure the traces on the ground. There were no bloodstains visible. On the far side of the wall the descent was almost sheer. Jacob visualized the moody Pole wandering sleepless in the darkness and encountering of a sudden the two armed guards—firing at them in desperation or anger. Had he emptied his pistol and jumped from the wall? Had the two wounded him, and then thrown him down? There were no witnesses to testify as to that.
At the plaza he found Father Hyacinth waiting for him. Without explanation, the priest informed him, "After this morning no one may descend without a permit such as this."
And he showed Jacob a slip of cardboard on which a few words had been inscribed in Russian.
Michal had insisted on sorting out the belongings of the dead officer, although she had no notion where they might be sent. Except for his identification papers, with British countersign, and a creased photograph of his home in Lwow, she found nothing.
"Not even a watch or cigarette case, Jacob," she said miserably. "There's a ribbon that must belong to some decoration, but the medal isn't here. He must have sold all those things."