CHAPTER II

Priestess Beth

What manner of men Steve Duane expected to see enter the cavernous chamber, he could not have really told. Men of a future era--for by now he was firmly convinced that it _was_ a future era in which he and his companions had roused--might differ from men of the Twentieth Century in great or in no degree. He could even conceive of looking upon members of the long-heralded race of supermen, and was fully prepared to greet such arrivals.

This presumptuous logic, based on hunch, was typical of Duane. Unorthodox, perhaps--but it was this high, swift, imaginative quality of thought which had set him apart as one of his country's ablest young chemical engineers. If hunches like these occasionally led him to error, more often they led him to success in fields where others had failed.

But this time his surmise was completely wrong. For it was no lofty-browed race of supercultured beings who stepped through the doorway. It was, instead--

"_Babes!_" choked Chuck Lafferty. "Holy cow--_dolls_!"

"Quiet!" breathed Steve swiftly. But he, too, gazed at the corps of newcomers with numb astonishment. Women they were--but _what_ women! Steve Duane was a scientist. As such he had allotted no place in his scheme of life for the weaker sex. But he knew now, in a single blinding moment, that this was only because never before had he looked upon such a woman as she who headed this group.

From the top of her dust-golden head to the soles of her doeskin sandals she was perfection. Tawny hair, shorn to shoulder-length, cascaded down over firm neck and shoulders to frame features strong with dignity and grace. Breast-cups of filigreed gold highlighted the smooth, golden sheen of her flesh. From beneath the folds of a sarong-like loincloth her long, straight limbs carried her forward in pantherine grace.

Her manner was at once imperious and oddly humble as she led the way to the dais upon which Steve and Chuck stood. Approaching them, she intoned a curious chant in a voice warm and mellow as the dimly-heard thrum of harpstrings.

With an effort, Steve wrenched his eyes away, and in a whisper warned, "Steady, Chuck! Don't move a muscle. It's dark in this corner. Hold the pose you were frozen in before we woke. They may not notice our change of position, or him. We'll play 'possum ... try to learn something about...."

Then he stopped in obedience to his own command, and held himself rigidly motionless as the tiny band drew nearer. He saw, now, that not all of the group shared the delicacy of the dust-golden Diana who led them. Only one other--and she a maid of thirteen or fourteen--wore the kirtle and peculiar amulet which he judged to be a badge of office.

The others fell into types as sharply diverse as day and night. First, waddling meekly behind the chieftain, came a huddle of pale and flabby-fleshed matrons, grossly obese of figure, flaccid of breast, vacant of eye. These moved with a slow, tantalizing undulation of hip and thigh which disgusted rather than enticed Steve.

Encircling these, tense as fighting falcons, marched the second distinctive type. No weakling billows of fat were these, but lean, hard warriors, granite-jawed, with eyes that stared straight forward in uncompromising challenge.

These Amazons wore no gold-cloth habiliments. Their breachclouts were of coarse, sweat-stained leather, and their flat, dry, masculine breasts were stifled beneath straitlaced halters, giving freedom of movement to their sword arms.

* * * * *

A third type brought up the rear. Neither masculine nor cloyingly feminine were these. They might have been dull husks of neuter gender for all the physical emotion the sight of their thick, peasant bodies aroused. Their flesh was dark with long exposure to burning sun and driving sleet, they had gnarled, calloused fingers and strong, broad wrists.

They were heavy of jowl and brow, their stringy hair was crudely hacked to the neck-line, then caught in a clubbed knot. Aprons of shoddy felt were their only garments. Their legs bulged, sturdy and asensual as limestone pediments, from beneath these grimy skirts.

This much Steve Duane saw with growing wonder. Then the band drew still nearer, and the chant of the golden Diana became audible.

At first the words meant nothing. They were part of an intoned, indistinguishable blur, signifying nothing. Then suddenly--as if one strophe of a sacred ritual had ended and another begun--the chant slowed. Halting words emerged from the meaningless drone--and it was no longer meaningless. As one mesmerized, Steve hearkened incredulously to the chant of the dust-gold maiden.

"_Osé, can you see by the Daans' surly light_--"

The American national anthem! Steve's eyes narrowed in dazed bewilderment. Francis Scott Key's immortal words--immortal indeed!--but phrased all wrong, curiously accented, broken in the wrong places! Behind him, Chuck emitted a tiny gasp, but it went unnoticed as the voice of the cantor lifted sonorously.

"--_the rockets' red glare-bombs bursting in air_--"

There it was again! The right words, or right syllables, but improperly cadenced so that the whole true meaning of the song was distorted! Holding his peace was the hardest task Steve Duane had ever undertaken. Every fretful instinct urged him to interrupt this grotesquely mangled hymn.

But it was wiser, reason warned him, to just listen. Listen and learn more. The girl had lifted her head now, and was looking directly at him. A mist of reflected candlelight enmeshed her hair with a halo of golden glory. And there was radiance in her eyes, too; a bright, high burning, with which was somehow strangely mingled desperation and--hope! Liquid fire flamed in her throbbing voice.

"_Osé, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land, O, Thou Free? Or Thy_ hoam, _O, Thou Brave_?"

The last note of the chant dwindled into silence. A strange, strained, watchful hush settled over the little band of women as if they were waiting for--for what? Steve Duane did not know. A manifestation of some sort? Quite possibly. It was perfectly obvious by now that to these women, for some obscure reason, he and his companions were objects of worship. The glass-encased dais upon which they stood was an altar--a shrine!

But--Lord! If this were so, for how many countless decades or centuries had they been immured here? What mighty evolutionary or sociological force had wrought these physical changes upon one-time fair and lovely womankind? And--where were the _men_ of this day?

* * * * *

As if in answer to his unvoiced query, was presented the next act of this weird tableau. The circle of obese matrons parted, disgorging from their midst one whom, in the wan light, Steve had not noticed before. A tiny, withered parody of a man with painted lips and cheeks, _kohl_-blackened lashes, elaborately ringletted hair tumbling shoulder-deep to a white samite frock.

As this futile creature was loosed, terror glittered in his beady eyes; he emitted a small, high-pitched bleat and strove to break from his guards. But the warrior women, grim and adamant as stone, formed a phalanx about him, a barricade of hard flesh which stood unyielding before the panic thrusts of his soft, white fists.

Then it was the dust-gold maiden turned to the young neophyte, accepted from her an object which gleamed evilly in the sallow light; then it was the voices of the loose-fleshed matrons rose in mournful keening; then it was that two of the apron-girt women stepped forward to seize the struggling male in oaken grip, tearing the samite frock from his body, baring his soft, hairless chest to the knife.

And then it was that Steve Duane horribly understood the meaning of this ritual. Chuck Lafferty got it, too. His voice exploded in Steve's ear.

"Hell's flaming fire, Steve, they're sacrificing the little guy--_to us_!"

* * * * *

But Duane had already recognized the finale to which the drama was moving, and was already in motion. He raced to the transparent barrier.

"Stop!" he cried. "Stop--!"

There was no way of knowing whether or not his words were audible to those outside. True, the glass dome of their prison was cracked, but even so the curved surface might mute all sounds. But communication is not a matter of sound-waves alone; action has a tongue. Steve lifted his arm--as he had seen the golden priestess raise hers a moment before--in the universal symbol for cessation.

His gesture saved the doomed man's life. The raised blade stayed ... then clattered to the floor from the dust-gold maiden's nerveless fingers. Heads turned, and faces hard and soft adopted one expression of awed terror. Voices rose in a bedlam of confusion; then, as one, the women tumbled to their knees!

Cringing, they cowered there prostrate. But one had the courage to raise her eyes again: the leader. On her brow was a furrow of perplexity as if she were trying to recollect some once-heard, half-forgotten instruction. Then her visage lighted; her voice lifted in clarion call.

"Jain! The Slumberers have awakened--at last! The Day of Freedom dawns! To the Sacred Wheel, swiftly!"

A flame of joy burst in the eyes of one of the grim-faced warrior women; her lean flanks tensed as, leaping to her feet, she hurried across the chamber to a huge, metal wheel on the farther wall. Sweat sprang from her forehead, her sinews knotted in cords as she tugged at this device. It held fast. Again she wrenched its spokes, white lines of strain upon her jaw. This time red flakes of rust showered to the floor, the wheel groaned protest at being thus rudely roused from an age of disuse--and slowly turned!

As it did so, Steve was conscious of a draft of cool air about his ankles, his knees, his thighs. Looking sharply he saw that the nether rim of the glass prison was separating from the edge of the dais; the whole structure hoisted upward like the gigantic bell it was.

Slowly as it had started, the movement stopped. And Steve and Chuck--along with the wide-eyed von Rath, whom the fresh air had revived, and who had now lurched to his feet--stood face to face with their worshippers!

Now the leader dropped to one knee; in a voice which even determination could not steady quavered:

"Hail, O Slumberers! _Aie_, look with mercy upon us, Thy children, for lo! we have tarried and kept the faith, even as was ordained!"

Chuck stared at the speaker.

"Hey, what makes here? A revival meeting? How come this 'faith and ordained' chatter?"

The German was equally taken aback. So much so that for the moment he quite forgot the neo-paganistic pretensions of his creed, and relapsed into the speech-habits of one-time Christian Germany.

"_Gott im Himmel!_" he exclaimed. "_Vas--?_"

* * * * *

Only Steve Duane had the acuteness to comprehend the lofty place to which he and his companions had been elevated, and the quickness of mind to take advantage of it. Aside, he whispered hurriedly, "Don't you get it? We are their gods--or the symbols of their gods! Quiet, now!" And to the girl, in a gravely commanding voice:

"Rise, O Priestess!" he said. "The Slumberers hear, and are merciful. Is there one in command here?"

The priestess rose with slowly returning assurance.

"Not _here_, O Wise One; but elsewhere in Fautnox sits the Mother in everlasting wisdom."

_The Mother_, thought Steve swiftly. _Then his surmise as to the sociological organization of this race had not been wrong. It was a matriarchy, divided into groups of warriors, workers, and--what else could the flabby-fleshed ones be but breeders? That accounted for the sole male being a pampered, bedizened pet._

_But--"Fautnox"? Doubt clouded his eyes; he bit his lip. Then his trusted ally, hunch, came to his rescue. Why, of course! A concrete, subterranean chamber of massive size. A wild wealth of gold used lavishly, almost negligently, by a civilization obviously semi-barbaric. A language which owned English as its parent, but was changed by untold ages of misuse and elision. Fautnox was--Fort Knox, Kentucky!_[1]

[Footnote 1: Fort Knox, Kentucky, in addition to being an army post is, in 1942, a bastioned repository wherein is stored seventy-five percent of the entire world's gold.--Ed.]

The next words of the priestess brought verification of his guess. Humbly she said, yet proudly, too:

"Come, O Slumberers! Let Thy handmaiden, Beth, lead Thee to the Mother of the Tucki Clan."

She made a sign of obeisance, whirled, issued orders to those who followed her. Instantly the kneeling ones rose. The warriors formed an avenue before the dais; metal _clanged!_ on metal as a score of bright blades whipped from scabbards.

Chuck Lafferty started. "Now, wait a minute, Steve! I don't like them swords, _nohow_! You sure this Mardi Gras is on the level?"

"Positive!" asserted Duane. "Keep your tongue still and follow me. The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand. You, von Rath--come along! And don't forget, I don't need much of an excuse to slug you. So watch out!"

Thus marched the trio of "Slumberers," surrounded by a triumphant band, upward from the cavern through the strong, bastioned corridors of a citadel which had once served as the repository for a mighty nation's riches, to meet the Mother.

In one expectation, Steve Duane was disappointed.

He considered it a foregone conclusion their journey would take them to the surface, into sunshine or moonlight as the case might be. But though they rose several levels, they never left the subterranean depths. News of their awakening, spreading swiftly and mysteriously as only tidings of evil or great joy can spread, had somehow gone before them; clansfolk poured from everywhere to crowd the passageways through which they traveled.

* * * * *

In vain were drawn the warriors' swords, futile were the commands of the soldier-captain, Jain. The crowd pressed forward, screaming wild paeans of joy, to look upon, to touch the garments of their demigods. Had there been a rigid caste system in this community, it was forgotten now. Laborers and breeders stood shoulder to shoulder, weeping openly with joy. Here a towering warrior lifted a spindling male that he might see, above the heads of the throng, the Deliverers. There an awed worker stood with gaping mouth in the midst of a bevy of shrill-piping breeders, a dirty blot against their immaculate whiteness.

It was with relief, and barely with whole skins, that the small procession wound its way finally through a guarded door into the sanctuary of the Mother's _hoam_.

There was nothing pretentious about the chamber. It was just another room, barren as any they had passed through, simply furnished with the scant necessities of life. But two things served to differentiate it from other dwelling-places: the tremendous heap of parchment rolls overflowing from loose racks in one corner--and the woman who rose to greet them as they entered.

For her, Steve Duane could conceive no other feeling than one of instant affection. A ruler she was, a tyrant she might be, but there was goodness, honor and truth in the gaze she bent upon them, gentleness in her voice as she spoke.

"Then it is true!" she breathed. "You _have_ wakened, and after all these long and weary years, I have lived to see the ancient prophecies fulfilled. Now am I, Mother Maatha of the Tucki Clan, content to die. For at last you have come to free us, as was promised--"

Her white head bent, her soft eyes filled with tears of happiness, and she stretched forth a lean, tremulous hand. Steve moved forward, took it between his own.

"Yes, Mother," he said gently, "we have come. But I do not understand. You speak of freedom as if it were a lost thing. Who holds you captive? Not--" A sudden fear struck him--"not the Nazis?"

The old woman shook her head.

"The word you use is strange to me, O Wise One. But surely, you, who are All-Wise and Eternal, know that all Earth lies crushed beneath the heel of the vandals from Daan?"