XXXII
THROUGH UNKNOWN WATERS
The SPOT of Life! And the subject of Dr. Holcomb's lecture, promised butnever delivered, had been announced as--The Blind SPOT!
To Watson it was fairly astounding to discover that the two--Holcomband Avec--had reached simultaneously for the curtain of the shadow. Theprofessor had said that it would be "the greatest day since Columbus."And so it had proven, did the world but know it.
"And--the Rhamda Avec never returned?" asked Chick.
"No."
"But he sent back something within three days?" Watson was thinking,of course, of the doctor who had disappeared on the day which, Jeromeoverheard the Rhamda to say, was the last of his stay.
But Geos did not reply. Why, Chick could not guess. He thought it bestnot to press the question; in good time, if he went at it carefully,he could gain his end with safety. At the moment he must not arousesuspicion. He chose another query.
"Did Avec go alone?"
"No. The Nervina went with him. Rather, she followed within a fewhours."
"Ah!"
It was out before Watson could think. The Rhamda looked up suddenly.
"Then you have seen the Nervina! You know her?"
Chick lied. It was not his intention, just at present, to tie himselfdown to anything that might prove compromising or restraining.
"The name is--familiar. Who is this Nervina?"
"She is one of the queens. I thought--My dear sir, she is one of thequeens of Thomahlia, half Kospian, half D'Hartian; of the first royalline running through from the day of the Jarados."
Chick cogitated for a moment. Then, taking an entirely new tack:
"You say the Rhamda and this Nervina, independently, solved the mysteryof the Spot of Life, I believe you call it. And that Spot leads,apparently, into the occult?"
"Apparently, if not positively. It was the wisdom of Avec, mostly. Hehad been in communication with your world by means of his own discoveryand application. It was all in line with the prophecy.
"Since he and the Nervina left, the people of the world have been in astate of ferment. For it was foretold that in the last days we wouldget in communication with the other side; that some would come and somewould go. For example, your own coming was foretold by the Jarados,almost to the hour and minute."
"Then it was fortuitous," spoke Watson. "It was NOT the wisdom andscience of Avec, in my case."
"Quite so. However, it is proof that the Rhamdas have fulfilled theirduty. We knew of the Spot of Life, all the while; it was to be closeduntil we, through the effort of our intellect and virtues, could liftourselves up to the plane of the world beyond us--your world. It couldnot be opened by ourselves alone, however. The Rhamda Avec had firstto get in touch with your side, before he could apply the laws he haddiscovered."
Somehow, Chick admired this Rhamda. Men of his type could form but onekind of priesthood: exalted, and devoted to the advance of intelligence.If Rhamda Avec were of the same sort, then he was a man to be looked upto, not to hate. As for the Jarados--Watson could not make out who hehad been; a prophet or teacher, seemingly, looming out of the past andreverenced from antiquity.
The Blind Spot became a shade less sinister. Already Watson had theTemple of the Leaf, or Bell, the Rhamdas and their philosophy, the greatamber sun, the huge birds, the musical cadence of the perfumed air, andthe counter-announcement of Rhamda Avec to weigh against the work andwords of Dr. Holcomb.
The world of the Blind Spot!
As if in reaction from the unaccustomed train of thought, Watsonsuddenly became conscious of extreme hunger. He gave an uneasy glanceround, a glance which the Rhamda Geos smilingly interpreted. At a wordthe woman left the room and returned with a crimson garment, like abath-robe. When Chick had donned it and a pair of silken slippers, Geosbade him follow.
They stepped out into the corridor.
This was formed and coloured much as the room they had quitted; and itled to another apartment, much larger--about fifty feet across--coloureda deep, cool green. Its ceiling, coved like the other, seemed made ofsome self-radiating substance from which came both light and heat. Fouror five tables, looking like ebony work, were arranged along the sidewalls. When they were seated at one of these, the Rhamda placed hisfingers on some round alna-white buttons ranged along the edge of thetable.
"In your world," he apologised, "our clumsy service would doubtlessamuse you; but it is the best we have been able to devise so far."
He pressed the button. Instantly, without the slightest sound oranything else to betray just how the thing had been accomplished,the table was covered with golden dishes, heaped with food, and twoflagon-like goblets, full to the brim with a dark, greenish liquid thatgave off an aroma almost exhilarating; not alcoholic, but something justabove that. The Rhamda, disregarding or not noticing Watson's gaspof wonder, lifted his goblet in the manner of the host in health andwelcome.
"You may drink it," he offered, "without fear. It is not liquor--if Imay use a word which I believe to be current in your world. I may addthat it is one of the best things that we shall be able to offer youwhile you are with us."
Indeed it wasn't liquor. Watson took a sip; and he made a mental notethat if all things in the Thomahlia were on a par with this, then hecertainly was in a world far above his own. For the one sip was enoughto send a thrill through his veins, a thrill not unlike the ecstasyof supreme music--a sparkling exuberance, leaving the mind clear andscintillating, glorified to the quick thinking of genius.
Later Watson experienced no reaction such as would have come fromdrinking alcohol or any other drug.
It was the strangest meal ever eaten by Watson. The food was verysavoury, and perfectly cooked and served. Only one dish reminded him ofmeat.
"You have meats?" he asked. "This looks like flesh."
Geos shook his head. "No. Do you have flesh to eat, on the other side?We make all our food."
MAKE food. Watson thought best simply to answer the question:
"As I remember it, Rhamda Geos, we had a sort of meat called beef--theflesh of certain animals."
The Rhamda was intensely interested. "Are they large? Some interpret theJarados to that effect. Tell me, are they like this?" And he pulled asilver whistle from his pocket and, placing it to his lips, blew twoshort, shrill notes.
Immediately a peculiar patter sounded down the corridor; a ka-tuck,ka-tuck, ka-tuck, not unlike galloping hoof-beats. Before Watson coulddo any surmising a little bundle of shining black, rounded the entranceto the room and ran up to them. Geos picked it up.
It was a horse. A horse, beautifully formed, perfect as an Arab, and notmore than nine inches high!
Now, Chick had been in the Blind Spot, conscious, but a short while. Heknew that he was in the precise position that Rhamda Avec had occupiedthat morning on the ferry-boat. Chick recalled the pictures of theLilliputian deer and the miniature kittens; yet he was immenselysurprised.
The little fellow began to neigh, a tiny, ridiculous sound as comparedwith the blast of a normal-sized horse, and began to paw for the edge ofthe table.
"What does he want?"
"A drink. They will do anything for it." Geos pressed a button, and ina moment he had another goblet. This he held before the little stallion,who thrust his head in above his nostrils and drank as greedily as aPercheron weighing a ton. Watson stroked his sides; the mane was likespun silk, he felt the legs symmetrical, perfectly shaped, not as largeabove the fetlocks as an ordinary pencil.
"Are they all of this size?"
"Yes; all of them. Why do you ask?"
"Because"--seeing no harm in telling this--"as I remember them, a horseon the other side would make a thousand of this one. People ride them."
The Rhamda nodded.
"So it is told in the books of Jarados. We had such beasts, once,ourselves. We would have them still, but for the brutality and stupidityof our ancestors. It is the one great sin of the Thomahlia. Once we hadanimals, great and small, and all the bles
sings of Nature; we had horsesand, I think, what you call beef; a thousand other creatures that werefood and help and companions to man. And for the good they had done ourancestors destroyed them!"
"Why?"
"It was neglect, unthinking and selfish. A time came when ourcivilisation made it possible to live without other creatures. Whenmachinery came into vogue we put aside the animals as useless; those wehad no further use for we denied the right to reproduce. The game of theforest was hunted down with powerful weapons of destruction; all went,in a century or two; everything that could be killed. And with them wentthe age of our highest art, that age of domesticated animals.
"Our greatest paintings, our noblest sculpture, came from that age; allthe priceless relics that we call classic. And in its stead we had themechanical age. Man likewise became a mechanism, emotionless, with notaste for Nature. Meat was made synthetically, and so was milk."
"You don't mean to say they did not preserve cows for the sake of theirmilk?"
"No; that kind of milk became old-fashioned; men regarded it asunsanitary, fit only for the calves. What they wanted was somethingchemically pure; they waged war on bacteria, microbes, and Naturein general; a cow was merely a relic whose product was always anuncertainty. With no reason for the meat and no use for the milk, ourvegetarians and our purists gradually eliminated them altogether. Itwas a strange age; utilitarian, scientific, selfish; it was then headedstraight for destruction."
And he went on to relate how men began to lose the power of emotion;there were no dependent beasts to leaven his nature with the salt ofkindness; he thought only of his own aggrandisement. He became like hismachine, a fine thing of perfectly correlated parts, but with no highernature, no soul, no feeling; he was less than a brute. The animalsdisappeared one by one, passing through the channel of death, into theworld beyond the Spot of Life, leaving behind only these tiny survivors,playthings, kept in existence longer than all others because of a merefad.
"Does your spiritism include animals as well as men?"
"Naturally; everything that is endowed with life."
"I see. Let me ask you: why didn't the Rhamdas interfere and put a stopto this wanton sacrilege against Nature?"
The Rhamda smiled. "You forget," replied he, "that these events belongfar in the past. At that time the Rhamdas were not. It was even beforethe coming of the Jarados."
Watson asked no more questions for a while. He wanted to think. Howcould this man Rhamda Geos, if indeed he were a man, accept him, Watson,as a spirit? Solid flesh was not exactly in line with his idea of theunearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. Thedoctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body,his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of hissuperior's wisdom, should accept Watson in the same way.
And then, the Jarados: at every moment his name had cropped up. Who washe? So far he had heard no word that might be construed as a clue.The great point, just now, was that the Rhamda Geos accepted him as aspirit, as the fact and substance promised by Avec. But--where was thedoctor?
Chick ventured this question:
"My coming was foretold by the Rhamda Avec, I understand. Is this inaccord with the words of the Jarados?"
The Rhamda looked up expectantly and spoke with evident anxiety.
"Can you tell me anything about the Jarados?"
"Let us forgo that," side-stepped Watson. "Possibly I can tell youmuch that you would like to know. What I want to know is, just how wellprepared you are to receive me?"
"Then you come from the Jarados!"
"Perhaps."
"What do you know about him?"
"This: someone should have preceded me! The fact and the substance-youwere to have it inside three days! It has been several hundred times thespace allotted! Is it not so?"
The Rhamda's eyes were pin-pointed with eagerness.
"Then it IS true! You are from the Jarados! You know the great RhamdaAvec--you have seen him!"
"I have," declared Watson.
"In the other world? You can remember?"
"Yes," again committing himself. "I have seen Avec--in another world.But tell me, before we go on I would have an answer to my question: didanyone precede me?"
"No."
Watson was nonplussed, but he concealed the fact.
"Are you sure?"
"Quite, my dear sir. The Spot of Life was watched continually from themoment the Rhamda left us."
"You mean, he and the Nervina?"
"Quite so; she followed him after an interval of a few hours."
"I know. But you say that no one came out ahead of me. Who was it thatguarded this--this Spot of Life? The Rhamdas?"
"They and the Bars."
"Ah! And who are the Bars?"
"The military priesthood. They are the Mahovisal, and of the Temple ofthe Bell. They are led by the great Bar Senestro."
"And there were times when these Bars, led by this Senestro, held guardover the Spot of Life?" To this Geos nodded; and Watson went on: "Andwho is this great Senestro?"
"He is the chief of the Bars, and a prince of D'Hartia. He is theaffianced of the two queens, the Aradna and the Nervina."
"The TWO of them?"
Whereupon Watson learned something rather peculiar. It seemed that theprinces of D'Hartia had always married the queens. This Senestro had hada brother, but he died. And in such an event it was the iron customthat the surviving brother marry both queens. It had happened only oncebefore in all history; but the precedent was unbreakable.
"Then, there is nothing against it?"
"Nothing; except, perhaps the prophecy of the Jarados. We now know--thewhole world knows--that we are fast approaching the Day of Life."
"Of course; the Day of Life." Watson decided upon another chance shot."It has to do with the marriage of the two queens!"
"You DO know!" cried the Rhamda joyously. "Tell me!"
"No; it is I who am asking the questions."
Watson's mind was working like lightning. Whether it was the influenceof the strange drink, or the equally strange influence of ordinaryinspiration, he was never more self-assured in his life. It seemed a dayfor taking long chances.
"Tell me," he inquired, "what has the Day of Life to do with the twoqueens and their betrothal?"
The Rhamda throttled his eagerness. "It is one of the obscure points ofthe prophecy. There are some scholars who hold that such a problem asthis presages the coming of the end and the advent of the chosen. Butothers oppose this interpretation, for reasons purely material: for ifthe Bar Senestro should marry both queens it would make him the soleruler of the Thomahlia. Only once before have we had a single ruler; forcenturies upon centuries we have had two queens; one of the D'Hartians,and the other of the Kospians, enthroned here in the Mahovisal."
Watson would have liked to learn far more. But the time seemed one foraction on his part; bold action, and positive.
"Rhamda Geos--I do not know what is your version of the prophecy. Butyou are positive that no one preceded me out of the Spot?"
"I am. Why do you persist?"
"Because"--speaking slowly and with the greatest care--"because therewas one greater than I, who came before me!"
The Rhamda rose excitedly to his feet, and then sank back into his chairagain. In his eyes was nothing save eagerness, wonder and respect. Heleaned forward.
"Who was it? Who was he?"
Watson's voice was steady as stone.
"The great Jarados himself!"
The Blind Spot Page 34