The Angry Whispering Globe
: The Moon PoolOur way led along a winding path between banked masses of softly
radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred
with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from
the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their
threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail and gorgeously
flamboyant.
The path we trod was an exquisite mosaic--pastel greens and pi
a soft grey base, garlands of nimbused forms like the flaming rose of
the Rosicrucians held in the mouths of the flying serpents. A smaller
pavilion arose before us, single-storied, front wide open.
Upon its threshold Rador paused, bowed deeply, and motioned us within.
The chamber we entered was large, closed on two sides by screens of
grey; at the back gay, concealing curtains. The low table of blue
stone, dressed with fine white cloths, stretched at one side flanked
by the cushioned divans.
At the left was a high tripod bearing one of the rosy globes we had
seen in the house of Yolara; at the head of the table a smaller globe
similar to the whispering one. Rador pressed upon its base, and two
other screens slid into place across the entrance, shutting in the
room.
He clapped his hands; the curtains parted, and two girls came through
them. Tall and willow lithe, their bluish-black hair falling in
ringlets just below their white shoulders, their clear eyes of
forget-me-not blue, and skins of extraordinary fineness and
purity--they were singularly attractive. Each was clad in an extremely
scanty bodice of silken blue, girdled above a kirtle that came barely
to their very pretty knees.
"Food and drink," ordered Rador.
They dropped back through the curtains.
"Do you like them?" he asked us.
"Some chickens!" said Larry. "They delight the heart," he translated
for Rador.
The green dwarf's next remark made me gasp.
"They are yours," he said.
Before I could question him further upon this extraordinary statement
the pair re-entered, bearing a great platter on which were small
loaves, strange fruits, and three immense flagons of rock crystal--two
filled with a slightly sparkling yellow liquid and the third with a
purplish drink. I became acutely sensible that it had been hours since
I had either eaten or drunk. The yellow flagons were set before Larry
and me, the purple at Rador's hand.
The girls, at his signal, again withdrew. I raised my glass to my
lips and took a deep draft. The taste was unfamiliar but delightful.
Almost at once my fatigue disappeared. I realized a clarity of mind,
an interesting exhilaration and sense of irresponsibility, of freedom
from care, that were oddly enjoyable. Larry became immediately his old
gay self.
The green dwarf regarded us whimsically, sipping from his great flagon
of rock crystal.
"Much do I desire to know of that world you came from," he said at
last--"through the rocks," he added, slyly.
"And much do we desire to know of this world of yours, O Rador," I
answered.
Should I ask him of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin?
Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, to
wait. And once more I obeyed.
"Let us learn, then, from each other." The dwarf was laughing. "And
first--are all above like you--drawn out"--he made an expressive
gesture--"and are there many of you?"
"There are--" I hesitated, and at last spoke the Polynesian that means
tens upon tens multiplied indefinitely--"there are as many as the
drops of water in the lake we saw from the ledge where you found us,"
I continued; "many as the leaves on the trees without. And they are
all like us--varyingly."
He considered skeptically, I could see, my remark upon our numbers.
"In Muria," he said at last, "the men are like me or like Lugur. Our
women are as you see them--like Yolara or those two who served you."
He hesitated. "And there is a third; but only one."
Larry leaned forward eagerly.
"Brown-haired with glints of ruddy bronze, golden-eyed, and lovely as
a dream, with long, slender, beautiful hands?" he cried.
"Where saw you her?" interrupted the dwarf, starting to his feet.
"Saw her?" Larry recovered himself. "Nay, Rador, perhaps, I only
dreamed that there was such a woman."
"See to it, then, that you tell not your dream to Yolara," said the
dwarf grimly. "For her I meant and her you have pictured is Lakla, the
hand-maiden to the Silent Ones, and neither Yolara nor Lugur, nay, nor
the Shining One, love her overmuch, stranger."
"Does she dwell here?" Larry's face was alight.
The dwarf hesitated, glanced about him anxiously.
"Nay," he answered, "ask me no more of her." He was silent for a
space. "And what do you who are as leaves or drops of water do in that
world of yours?" he said, plainly bent on turning the subject.
"Keep off the golden-eyed girl, Larry," I interjected. "Wait till we
find out why she's tabu."
"Love and battle, strive and accomplish and die; or fail and die,"
answered Larry--to Rador--giving me a quick nod of acquiescence to my
warning in English.
"In that at least your world and mine differ little," said the dwarf.
"How great is this world of yours, Rador?" I spoke.
He considered me gravely.
"How great indeed I do not know," he said frankly at last. "The land
where we dwell with the Shining One stretches along the white waters
for--" He used a phrase of which I could make nothing. "Beyond this
city of the Shining One and on the hither shores of the white waters
dwell the mayia ladala--the common ones." He took a deep draft from
his flagon. "There are, first, the fair-haired ones, the children of
the ancient rulers," he continued. "There are, second, we the
soldiers; and last, the mayia ladala, who dig and till and weave and
toil and give our rulers and us their daughters, and dance with the
Shining One!" he added.
"Who rules?" I asked.
"The fair-haired, under the Council of Nine, who are under Yolara, the
Priestess and Lugur, the Voice," he answered, "who are in turn beneath
the Shining One!" There was a ring of bitter satire in the last.
"And those three who were judged?"--this from Larry.
"They were of the mayia ladala," he replied, "like those two I gave
you. But they grow restless. They do not like to dance with the
Shining One--the blasphemers!" He raised his voice in a sudden great
shout of mocking laughter.
In his words I caught a fleeting picture of the race--an ancient,
luxurious, close-bred oligarchy clustered about some mysterious deity;
a soldier class that supported them; and underneath all the toiling,
oppressed hordes.
"And is that all?" asked Larry.
"No," he answered. "There is the Sea of Crimson where--"
Without warning the globe beside us sent out a vicious note, Rador
turned toward it, his face paling. Its surface crawled with
whisperings--angry, peremptory!
"I hear!" he croaked, gripping the table. "I obey!"
He turned to us a face devoid for once of its malice.
"Ask me no more questions, strangers," he said. "And now, if you are
done, I will show you where you may sleep and bathe."
He arose abruptly. We followed him through the hangings, passed
through a corridor and into another smaller chamber, roofless, the
sides walled with screens of dark grey. Two cushioned couches were
there and a curtained door leading into an open, outer enclosure in
which a fountain played within a wide pool.
"Your bath," said Rador. He dropped the curtain and came back into
the room. He touched a carved flower at one side. There was a tiny
sighing from overhead and instantly across the top spread a veil of
blackness, impenetrable to light but certainly not to air, for through
it pulsed little breaths of the garden fragrances. The room filled
with a cool twilight, refreshing, sleep-inducing. The green dwarf
pointed to the couches.
"Sleep!" he said. "Sleep and fear nothing. My men are on guard
outside." He came closer to us, the old mocking gaiety sparkling in
his eyes.
"But I spoke too quickly," he whispered. "Whether it is because the
Afyo Maie fears their tongues--or--" he laughed at Larry. "The maids
are not yours!" Still laughing he vanished through the curtains of the
room of the fountain before I could ask him the meaning of his curious
gift, its withdrawal, and his most enigmatic closing remarks.
"Back in the great old days of Ireland," thus Larry breaking into my
thoughts raptly, the brogue thick, "there was Cairill mac
Cairill--Cairill Swiftspear. An' Cairill wronged Keevan of Emhain
Abhlach, of the blood of Angus of the great people when he was
sleeping in the likeness of a pale reed. Then Keevan put this penance
on Cairill--that for a year Cairill should wear his body in Emhain
Abhlach, which is the Land of Faery and for that year Keevan should
wear the body of Cairill. And it was done.
"In that year Cairill met Emar of the Birds that are one white, one
red, and one black--and they loved, and from that love sprang Ailill
their son. And when Ailill was born he took a reed flute and first he
played slumber on Cairill, and then he played old age so that Cairill
grew white and withered; then Ailill played again and Cairill became a
shadow--then a shadow of a shadow--then a breath; and the breath went
out upon the wind!" He shivered. "Like the old gnome," he whispered,
"that they called Songar of the Lower Waters!"
He shook his head as though he cast a dream from him. Then, all
alert--
"But that was in Iceland ages agone. And there's nothing like that
here, Doc!" He laughed. "It doesn't scare me one little bit, old boy.
The pretty devil lady's got the wrong slant. When you've had a pal
standing beside you one moment--full of life, and joy, and power, and
potentialities, telling what he's going to do to make the world hum
when he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pep
of life, Doc--and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh--a
piece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy and
power and all the rest of it"--his face twitched--"well, old man, in
the face of that mystery a disappearing act such as the devil lady
treated us to doesn't make much of a dent. Not on me. But by the
brogans of Brian Boru--if we could have had some of that stuff to turn
on during the war--oh, boy!"
He was silent, evidently contemplating the idea with vast pleasure.
And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O'Keefe vanished,
I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his
leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael--but only within the
limits of Ireland.
In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his
mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any
peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind
that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of
all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.
"Some stuff!" Deepest admiration was in his voice. "If we'd only had
it when the war was on--imagine half a dozen of us scooting over the
enemy batteries and the gunners underneath all at once beginning to
shake themselves to pieces! Wow!" His tone was rapturous.
"It's easy enough to explain, Larry," I said. "The effect, that
is--for what the green ray is made of I don't know, of course. But
what it does, clearly, is stimulate atomic vibration to such a pitch
that the cohesion between the particles of matter is broken and the
body flies to bits--just as a fly-wheel does when its speed gets so
great that the particles of which it is made can't hold together."
"Shake themselves to pieces is right, then!" he exclaimed.
"Absolutely right," I nodded. "Everything in Nature vibrates. And
all matter--whether man or beast or stone or metal or vegetable--is
made up of vibrating molecules, which are made up of vibrating atoms
which are made up of truly infinitely small particles of electricity
called electrons, and electrons, the base of all matter, are
themselves perhaps only a vibration of the mysterious ether.
"If a magnifying glass of sufficient size and strength could be placed
over us we could see ourselves as sieves--our space lattice, as it is
called. And all that is necessary to break down the lattice, to shake
us into nothingness, is some agent that will set our atoms vibrating
at such a rate that at last they escape the unseen cords and fly off.
"The green ray of Yolara is such an agent. It set up in the dwarf
that incredibly rapid rhythm that you saw and--shook him not to
atoms--but to electrons!"
"They had a gun on the West Front--a seventy-five," said O'Keefe,
"that broke the eardrums of everybody who fired it, no matter what
protection they used. It looked like all the other seventy-fives--but
there was something about its sound that did it. They had to recast
it."
"It's practically the same thing," I replied. "By some freak its
vibratory qualities had that effect. The deep whistle of the sunken
Lusitania would, for instance, make the Singer Building shake to its
foundations; while the Olympic did not affect the Singer at all but
made the Woolworth shiver all through. In each case they stimulated
the atomic vibration of the particular building--"
I paused, aware all at once of an intense drowsiness. O'Keefe,
yawning, reached down to unfasten his puttees.
"Lord, I'm sleepy!" he exclaimed. "Can't understand it--what you
say--most--interesting--Lord!" he yawned again; straightened. "What
made Reddy take such a shine to the Russian?" he asked.
"Thanaroa," I answered, fighting to keep my eyes open.
"What?"
"When Lugur spoke that name I saw Marakinoff signal him. Thanaroa is,
I suspect, the original form of the name of Tangaroa, the greatest god
of the Polynesians. There's a secret cult to him in the islands.
Marakinoff may belong to it--he knows it anyway. Lugur recognized the
signal and despite his surprise answered it."
"So he gave him the high sign, eh?" mused Larry. "How could they both
know it?"
"The cult is a very ancient one. Undoubtedly it had its origin in the
dim beginnings before these people migrated here," I replied. "It's a
link--one--of the few links between up there and the lost past--"
"Trouble then," mumbled Larry. "Hell brewing! I smell it--Say, Doc,
is this sleepiness natural? Wonder where my--gas mask--is--" he
added, half incoherently.
But I myself was struggling desperately against the drugged slumber
pressing down upon me.
"Lakla!" I heard O'Keefe murmur. "Lakla of the golden eyes--no
Eilidh--the Fair!" He made an immense effort, half raised himself,
grinned faintly.
"Thought this was paradise when I first saw it, Doc," he sighed. "But
I know now, if it is, No-Man's Land was the greatest place on earth
for a honeymoon. They--they've got us, Doc--" He sank back. "Good
luck, old boy, wherever you're going." His hand waved feebly.
"Glad--knew--you. Hope--see--you--'gain--"
His voice trailed into silence. Fighting, fighting with every fibre
of brain and nerve against the sleep, I felt myself being steadily
overcome. Yet before oblivion rushed down upon me I seemed to see upon
the grey-screened wall nearest the Irishman an oval of rosy light
begin to glow; watched, as my falling lids inexorably fell, a
flame-tipped shadow waver on it; thicken; condense--and there looking
down upon Larry, her eyes great golden stars in which intensest
curiosity and shy tenderness struggled, sweet mouth half smiling, was
the girl of the Moon Pool's Chamber, the girl whom the green dwarf had
named--Lakla: the vision Larry had invoked before that sleep which I
could no longer deny had claimed him--
Closer she came--closer---the eyes were over us.
Then oblivion indeed!
More
-
Spadevil
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It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse. But I must give the events in their proper sequence. After his outbreak at the I. P. H. Convention, the Bishop, being a gentle soul, had yielded to the friendly pressure brought to bea... The Bishop's Vision
"The Bishop is out of hand," Ernest wrote me. "He is clear up in the air. Tonight he is going to begin putting to rights this very miserable world of ours. He is going to deliver his message. He has told me so, and I cannot dissuade him. To-night ... The Black Blow
"Oh, Ronnie, darling," Myra asked, in a pitiful voice that went to my heart. "What can it mean? I--I--I can't see--anything at all." "It's the sun, darling; it will be all right in a minute or two. There, lie in my arms, dear, and close your poo... The Black Pirates Of Barsoom
"What is it?" I asked of the girl. For answer she pointed to the sky. I looked, and there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flitting hither and thither high over temple, court, and garden. Almost immediately flashes of light broke from these ... The Black Raider
For a stunned moment they were helpless as they struggled to pick themselves up. The stable airlock deck was suddenly no longer stable ... it was lurching back and forth like a rowboat on a heavy sea, and they grabbed the shock-bars along the bulk... The Black River
The portion of the terrestrial globe which is covered by water is estimated at upwards of eighty millions of acres. This fluid mass comprises two billions two hundred and fifty millions of cubic miles, forming a spherical body of a diameter of sixt... The Blue Disease
Next day the first news of the Sarakoff-Harden bacillus appeared in a small paragraph in an evening paper, and immediately I saw it, I hurried back to the house in Harley Street where Sarakoff was writing a record of our researches. "Listen to ... The Boise Acts
But what of the super-ship? What happened after that inertialess, that terribly destructive take-off? Doctor Frederick Rodebush sat at the control panel of Triplanetary's newly reconstructed space-ship, his hands grasping the gleaming, ebonite ... The Bowels Of The Comet
The whole night was spent in speculating, with gloomy forebodings, upon the chances of the future. The temperature of the hall, now entirely exposed to the outer air, was rapidly falling, and would quickly become unendurable. Far too intense was t... The Brat Gigantic
I. The giant child was ugly--the Vicar would insist. "He always had been ugly--as all excessive things must be." The Vicar's views had carried him out of sight of just judgment in this matter. The child was much subjected to snapshots even in t... The Bread Of Affliction
Two miles from the keep was a cave that Constans had discovered on one of his hunting-trips, and which, boylike, he had proceeded to fit up with some rude furniture for lodging and cooking, little dreaming that he should ever stand in actual need ... The British Barbarians
I The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of the drama was Philip Christy. He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of o... The Building Of The Moon Pool
She paused, running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in the stamping out of the tendency to depart ... The Building Of The Sphere
I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of the sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed to come to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for tea, and on the way he fell humming....