moles on short powerful arms,fish people with finned legs and arms, their hands engaged in catchinggreat fish and placing them in nets, a nightmare of weird half-humanshapes that gradually brought to me a message that I could not accept.
If that rock painting was telling a true story and not some allegoricalfantasy--these people who had built this place had been a race who knewthe secrets of life so intimately they could manipulate the unborn childinto shapes intended to give it powers and physical attributes fittingit for amphibious life, for the underground boring life of a mole, forthe tending of flocks in the goat-legged men--the whole gamut of thesemonstrous diversions from the normal human seemed to medesigned--purposely--to build a race which, like ants, has a shapefitted to its trade.
I threw off the illusion of a deformed past race the wall art gave me,and passed on to examine the crystalline pillar on the dais. I stood along time, before the dais, drinking in the beauty of the form lockedwithin the prisoning glass.
No human, no earth woman--she was different from anything I had evereven imagined.
Female, vaguely human in form she was, with an unearthly beauty; butfour-armed, with a forehead that went up and up and ended in a singletall horn, as on the fabled unicorn.
Her eyes were closed, if she had eyes beneath the heavy purple-veinedlids, so like the petals of some night-flower, pungent with perfume.
Naked the figure was, except for a belt of what looked iron chain aroundthe waist, black and corroded with time, holding her with a great boltand link to the side of that crystalline prison.
Her hair, black as night, was pressed tight to the skull by the pressureof the crystal, which must have been poured about her in a molten orliquid state.
As I stood there agaze at the strangeness and wonder of her, a voice atmy shoulder made me whirl in surprise. A soft, silky familiar voice:
"Do you find the dead Goddess so fascinating, stranger from the world ofmen?"
It was the girl of the forest, no longer in hunting garb, but dressed inTurkish trousers, vest and slippers with upturned toes. Jewels glitteredabout her waist and neck and arms, her wrists jangled with heavybangles, in her ears two great pendants swayed--her eyelids weredarkened and her lips reddened. She was a ravishing houri of the harem,and I gasped a little at the change.
"Have you put on such clothes for my benefit?" I asked, for I reallythought perhaps she had.
She frowned and stamped her foot in sudden anger.
"I come here to save you from what has happened to your friends, and youinsult me. Don't you want to live? Do you want to become what they aregoing to become?" She pointed to the bodies of Jake and Noldi andPolter.
I turned where she pointed, to see a thing that very nearly made mescream out in revulsion.
I shuddered, shrank back; for several creatures were bending over thethree, lifting them, bearing them away.
It was the strange, revolting difference from men in them that caused myfear. Once they may have been men, their far-off ancestors, perhaps--orin some other more recent way their bodies had been transformed, madeover into creatures not human, not beast, not ghoul. What they were wasnot thinkable or acceptable by me. I turned my face away, shuddering.
They were men such as the wall-paintings pictured, something that hadbeen made from the main stock of mankind, changed unthinkably into acreature who bore his tools of his trade in his own bone and flesh.Mole-men, men with short heavy arms and wide-clawed hands, made fordigging through hard earth. They bore my friends away on theirhairy-naked shoulders, and I stood too shocked to say a word. Threemole-men, accompanied by three tall, pale-white figures, figuresinexpressibly alien--even through the heavy white robes--that moved withan odd hopping step that no human limb could manage, turned theirpaper-white, long, expressionless faces toward me for an instant, thenwere gone, on the trail of the mole-man. Beneath those robes must havebeen a body as attenuated as a skeleton, as different as an insect'sfrom man's. Within those odd egg-shaped heads must have been a mind asalien to mine as an ant's mind.
"Why do your people take my companions?" I managed, when I had regainedmy composure.
"They are not my people; they are of the enemies of the Dead Goddess."The girl gestured to the figure in the crystal pillar. "My people haveno time for them, but neither have we power over them. They go theirway, and we go ours. Once, long ago, it was different, but time hasmade us a people divided."
"What will become of the three men?"
"They will become workmen of one kind or another. Everyone works, in_their_ life-way. But it is not _our_ way! They guard our land from suchintruders; we let them. It is an ancient pact we have with them."
"Why did they not seize me, I am an intruder as much as the others?"
"Because I signed to them to let you stay. You did not see,whatever-your-name-is...."
"Call me Carlin Keele, Carl for short. What is your name, and what isyour race, and why are you so different from people as I know them?"
"My name is Nokomee, as I told you before. You are still confused fromthe magic that led you here. I have saved you once, and _now we areeven_; my debt to you is paid. You will never see your friends again,and if you do, you will be sorry that you saw them, for they will havebecome beasts of burden. Now go, before it is too late. This is not yourkind of country."
Something in her eyes, something in the sharp peremptory tone she used,told me the truth.
"You don't really want me to go, Nokomee. I don't want to go. Manythings make me want to stay--your beauty is not the least attraction. Icould learn so much that my people do not know, that yours seem toknow."
"I would not want my beauty to lead you to your death." Nokomee did notsmile, she only looked at me, and I saw there a deep loneliness, atender need for companionship and sympathy that had never been filled inher life. She looked at me, and her lower lip trembled a little, hereyes suddenly averted from mine.
"Nokomee, there is so much we would have to tell each other, you of yourlife, and I of the great country of which you have never heard. Wouldyou not like to see the great cities of my country?"
She shook her head, turned on me with sudden fierce words:
"When you came and struck down that hideous cross-eyed man, my heartwent out to you in gratitude. Go, while my heart remains soft, it is notso often that the heart of a _Zerv_ is soft toward any outlander. Go, Icannot protect you from this place."
"I will stay," I said.
"Stubborn fool!" She stamped her foot prettily, imperiously, vexed at myrefusal to go out of that weird place the way I had entered. "Stay then,but do not expect me to keep off the slaves of the Goddess. This placecan be most evil to those who do not know what it is, nor why it issecret."
She turned, walked behind the great dais of the crystal sarcophagus, andI followed just in time to see her disappear behind a hanging curtain ofleather. I hastened after, my hand on my gun, for I had no wish to beleft alone where I had seen my three companions stricken down with noenemy in sight.
Behind the curtain a passage led, along the passage were several doors.She sped past these lightly, almost running. I followed, she must haveheard me, but she did not look back. The doors along the passage werecurtained. Through the gaps of the curtain I could see they were emptyof life. The curtains were rotted as if long unused, dirty and blotchedwith mould staining the leather.
Though she had spoken to me in Korean, and I had answered in the sametongue, I knew she was no native, for she spoke it differently, perhapsno better than myself. I was no judge; what she used may have been adialect different from that I had heard previously.
I followed as she emerged from the long tunnel into the blaze ofsunlight. She stood for a moment letting her eyes adjust to the glare. Istumbled to her side, half-blinded, stood looking down at the scenewhich seemed to engross her.
Gradually it came clear, like a television screen coming into perfecttune--the immense inner valley that the mountain of cloud-like snowenclosed. In the center of the encircled valley a lak
e shimmered blue asthe sky, and about that lake was a city.
My eyes refused, at first, to accept what they were seeing. My mindrebelled, but after a minute of staring and making sure--I gasped.
Alien to this earth it was, but beautiful! Towers, and round-baseddwellings braced together in one single unit of structural strength, adesigned whole such as our architects dream of and never achieve. Walledwith white marble, the city was a fortress, but a lovely fortress. Yetthere was a coldness, an angularity, that told me these Zervs, asNokomee had called her race, lacked true sympathy for life forms, lackedemotion as we know it in art. Yet it was beautiful, if repellent becauseso alien, so pure in design, so lacking in the sympathetic understandingof man's nature. This was a city no earthman could ever call home. Itlacked something. There were no dogs, no strolling women or runningchildren, it lay silent and waiting--for what?
Nokomee waved a hand.
"Titanis, our first earth colony. But it is no longer ours. The Schreeshave taken it from us. That is why it is silent."
I did not understand. There were plodding lines of people, disciplined,carrying burdens, no bigger than ants at this distance. There was anominous horror about the quiet beauty of the place. It was somehow likea beautiful woman lying just slain. Yet I could see no wounds of war, noreason for the feeling that I had, like the sudden shrinking one mighthave at sight of the stump of a man's arm just amputated.
I looked into Nokomee's face, and there were tears in her eyes. My heartsank. I felt a vast sympathy for her sorrow, though I could notunderstand.
"We planned so much with our new freedom here in your wilderness. Thencame the raiders, to freeze our Queen in her sleep, to drive us intoyour forests, to make of us that remained mindless slaves and maimedhorrors. I cannot bear it, stranger. I cannot...."
She turned and wept, her head on my chest. I patted her head, feelingentirely incompetent to console her for what injuries I could notimagine.
"What raiders, Nokomee? Tell me. Perhaps there is a way I can help. Whoknows?"
"We are so few now, who were so many and so strong--and every day fewer.There is no hope. Do not try to wake it in me. It would be madness."
"Tell me. Perhaps that alone would help you."
"How can I tell you the long history of my home world, the immortalwisdom of our Queen, the strange science her immortal family gave her,of how we fought to protect her from our own tyrants and at last fledinto space with her? How can I tell you of what she is? How could youunderstand the ages of struggle on our own world that reduced her kindto but a dozen, and left our kind, the mortals, at the mercy of theSchrees? You ask, but it is impossible for you to believe things you donot know about."
"Perhaps if I told you of my people and their life, you would understandthat I could understand what you think is impossible for me. I am notignorant as the others of earth people you have met. And my nation isnumerous, the greatest of this earth."
"Our ways are too strange to you. But I will try. You need not try totell me of your people; we examined your earth carefully before we chosethis valley for our retreat. Here we built and raised the force wall tokeep out inquiring interlopers like yourself who might bring the powersof your nation in ignorant war against us. But from our home world theSchrees were sent on our trail, and they found us. They were too many.Our only hope was in safe hiding, and they found us out. We did not knowthey could find us, or we would never have built. We thought pursuit hadlong been abandoned, but they are driven by single-minded hate, not bylogic. It has been a lifetime of wandering they have followed us. It hasbeen all my lifetime, making this home here, thinking ourselvessafe--and then they came and destroyed all our work."
As she talked, she had quieted. We had resumed walking along the ledgeof the mountainside. Suddenly from ahead a man leaped out, his strangeweapon trained on my breast. I stood, not daring to move, while Nokomeeshouted a string of shrill alien syllables at him. He thrust the weaponback in his belt, and fell in behind us as we passed. I could not helpstaring at him, and at the thing he had pointed at me.
It was a tapering tube about a foot long, triggered on the thumb sidewith a projecting stud, with a hand-grip shaped with finger grooves. Iknew it was a weapon with a long history of development behind it by thesimplicity of the lines, the entire efficiency of its appearance. Thesmall end was a half-inch, perhaps, in bore, the big end perhaps threeinches or less. He handled it as though it weighed but a trifle. I didnot ask what it was.
The man himself was no taller than Nokomee, though much more solidlybuilt, with thick, slightly bowed legs and heavy black brows on bulgingbone structure, his eyes deep-set beneath. His ears, like Nokomee's,were high and too small to be natural. His teeth were larger than normalon earth, and the incisors smaller and more pointed, the canines heavierand longer. There was a point to his chin, heavy-angled and thick-bonedas it was, it was not an earthman's chin. His neck was long, more suppleand active, he kept moving his head in an unnatural watchfulness like awild animal's. I wondered what other differences, small in themselves,but adding up to complete strangeness of aspect, I would find in time.
"That is Holaf," murmured Nokomee in Korean to me. "He is a chief amongus now, since the fall of our strength. He is good, but young and alwaystoo impetuous. He needs long experience, and it looks as if he would getit, now."
"You have more than one leader?" I asked.
"We have three chiefs left to us, who rule their families--their clans.We have but one real leader. He is an old wise man left us by goodfortune. He is our lone scientist. The chiefs of the clans listen to theleader, but they argue. Things look bad for us all."
"You are too few to reconquer the city?"
"Too few, yes. And time plays against us, for with the coming of theships from our home planet--that I should call that tyrant's nesthome!--there will be even more of the Schrees, then. We are a lostpeople now. There is no hope, eventually we will be hunted down as youearthmen will be hunted down, like animals. Made into slaves--and worsethan slaves. You will learn what I mean when next you see your threefriends."
It was too much for me. I asked:
"Why don't you leave this place, and go on to another?"
"On your little world? It is not big enough to hide ourselves from them.And we have lost our ships, we cannot get others."
"You think that they mean to conquer our whole planet?"
"In time they will do so. Not yet, but when they are many, they willspread, slaughter all who fight them, and enslave all who do not. Theyare very terrible creatures, not men at all, you know."
"Not like you and I?"
"Not at all. You will see, soon. Hurry, it is late, and we have councilto attend."
There was a deep passion in her words, quick and sharp and strange onher lips as they were, a passion of anger and hopeless effort thatsomehow roused me into desire to help her and these strange people ofhers. Too, if what she said was true, these raiders who had despoiledher people would in time engulf the world with a war of conquest, evenif they were less able to defeat us than she estimated. I resolved tomake the most of this opportunity to learn the worst of this hiddenthreat to men everywhere. I felt a kinship with Nokomee and her friend,silent and alert beside me, and I realized it could well be that I hadin my hands the future of mankind, and that it behooved me not to let itfall through carelessness.
Lapsed now into silence, we reached the end of the trail along theledge. We came out upon a broad shelf, with several cave mouths openingalong its cliff-side. Gathered here in the twilight were some two-scoremen and women, bearing weapons; some the short powerful bow I had seenin Nokomee's hands; others weapons like Holaf's tapered tube; stillothers bearing small, round metal shields embossed with weird designsthat meant nothing to me. Squatted here, without fire, they fell silentat our approach, eyeing me with curiosity and the beginnings of anger atmy intrusion. Nokomee began to talk swiftly in that rattling,high-pitched tongue of theirs. I squatted down on my heels, took out mypipe, lit it. At
the flare of my match Holaf struck it from my hand. Irealized it had been a blunder, even a spark might attract attention totheir presence on the hillside. Still, the incident told me Nokomee hadnot been lying to me.
Holaf pointed at the city far below, now glowing here and there withlights, and at the match on the ground. Then he motioned to a cavemouth, and I followed him. Inside there was a fire burning, furs strewnabout the floor, metal urns and even mirrors hung on the rough stonewalls. I sat on a rude wooden bench of newly-hewed wood, lit my pipeagain without interference. But I was sorry to miss that conferenceoutside in the open air. I wanted to hear, even if I could notunderstand. Holaf still remained by my side, and his hand did not leavethe oddly-carved butt of the tapered tube-gun.
I sat there, feeling very much alone, with Holaf watching me somberly,the only light a flickering amber from the fire. I started to my feet asa musically pitched, almost singing voice questioned Holaf in theirtongue. I looked about for the source, then saw her moving toward me inthe half-light, and I stepped back in a kind of awe and embarrassment,for this was new.
She was as tall as myself, shaped with slender Amazonian strength, butcurved and soft and subtly aware of her feminine allure, stronglyinterested and pleased at the awe and pleasure in my face. Her, rounded,fully adult body was sketched over with a web of silkily gleaming blacknet, light and unsubstantial as a dream, clinging and wholly revealing.Her eyes were dark-lidded and wide-set, her brow high and proud, andabout her neck hung a web of emeralds set in a golden mesh of yieldinglinks.
She came on, moving on shoes like Japanese water shoes, completelymystifying as to how she balanced on the stilt-like soles. Stepping thusin little balancing steps like a dancer, she moved very close, peeringinto my eyes,