Part 5

They crowded around us—old men, loosely robed, and with flowing white hair, seamed, sooth, hairless faces, stern, but kindly, and eyes very bright and intelligent.

They crowded around us, at first timid, then friendly, talking together excitedly in a strange, liquid tongue.

Dr. Weatherby tried to greet them and to shake hands. They understood neither his words, nor the gesture. But in a moment they comprehended. And shook hands, all of them with each of us, very solemnly.

The room had oval openings for windows; light was outside but it seemed rather dim. Presently one of the men tried to herd us along the wall of the room.

“No!” said Dr. Weatherby. “Don’t go! We must stay in the vehicle!”

But when we turned toward it the men resisted us with a sudden stubborn force.

“Don’t!” I shouted. “Jim, stop that! We’d better go with them.” The old men seemed to have gone into a sudden panic of violence. They were pushing, shoving us. They obviously had little strength, but the commotion would draw others from outside.

We yielded, and they herded us down the long room. A panel slid aside. We crossed a long, narrow viaduct, a metallic bridge with high parapet sides. We seemed to be a hundred feet in the air.

I caught a vista of low-roofed buildings: verdure—giant flowers on the roofs, streets down there, and off in the distance a line of hills.

The air was soft and pleasant. Overhead was a blue sky, with gay white masses of clouds. There seemed to be no sun. The light was stronger than twilight, but flat, shadowless.

At the opposite end of the viaduct the ground seemed rising like a hill. A small mound-shaped building was there: a house with a convex roof which had a leveled platform on one end, a platform banked with vivid flowers.

It seemed a two-storied building, built of smooth, dull-gray blocks. Balconies girdled it. There were windows, and a large, lower doorway, with a broad flight of circular stairs leading up the hill to it.

Our viaduct led us into the second floor of the house. We entered on a large room, an oval, two-storied room so that we found ourselves up on a sort of second-story platform, midway from floor to ceiling.

Low couches were here, a row of them with sliding panels of what might have been paper dividing them. The platform, this second story, was some thirty feet, broadly oval. It had a low, encircling railing; a spiral staircase led downward to the main floor of the apartment.

I saw furniture down there of strange, unnatural design, a metallic floor splashed with vivid mosaic pattern, a large gray frame, ornately carved, with a great number of long strips stretched across it, strings of different length. It seemed not unlike an enormous harp lying horizontal.

Narrow windows, draped with dark gauze, were up near the ceiling. They admitted a dim light. This whole interior was dim, cool and silent. A peace, a restfulness pervaded it. And our captors—if captors they were—seemed more like proud hosts. They were all smiling.

But when they left a moment later, I fancied that they barred the door after them.

“Well,” said Jim. “I can’t say but that this is very nice. Let’s look things over and then go to bed. I’m tired out, I can tell you that. Say, Dolores, it just occurred to me—these fellows can’t understand a word we say. But you were thinking thoughts to them a while ago, and you understood each other. Why don’t you try that now?”

It had occurred to me also. Why had these people understood Dolores’ thoughts, when her words were incomprehensible? Were thoughts, then, the universal language? Tiny vibrations which each human brain amplified, transformed into its own version of what we call words? It seemed so.

Dolores was clinging closely to Alice’s hand. In these unfamiliar surroundings she was at a loss to move alone.

“I did,” she answered Jim. “I tried . . . but there was so much noise. They could not hear me.”

“Try now,” said Dr. Weatherby.

“I will. I am.” She stood motionless, hands to her forehead.

There was a long silence. Then she said, “I think . . . yes, someone thought to me, _The Man of Language will come to you_.”

“Is that all, Dolores?”

“Yes. That’s all. It’s gone.”

“The Man of Language!” Jim exclaimed. “An interpreter! Dolores, what about that young man and girl who were in distress? They were out here, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know. I never get their thoughts now.”

“Try.”

“I have tried. They may get mine. I can’t say. But they never answer.”

They brought us food, meals at intervals, strange food which now I shall not attempt to describe. But we found it palatable; soon we grew to like it.

Then a man came, whom afterward we learned to call the Man of Language. He wore a single garment, a queerly flaring robe, beneath which his naked legs showed.

His face was smooth, hairless. But the hair on his head was luxuriant. His head, upon a stringy neck, was large, with a queer distended look, and with veins bulging upon his forehead.

Yet withal, he was not grotesque. A dignity sat upon him. His dark eyes were extraordinarily brilliant and restless. His smile of thin, pale lips was kindly, friendly. He shook hands with each of us. But he did not speak at first. He sat among us, with those restless eyes regarding, observing our every detail.

We soon found he knew no word of our language. He had come to learn it, to have us teach it to him. We were made aware, later, that all these people, compared to ourselves, had memories extraordinarily retentive. But this man, he called himself Ren, was even for them, exceptional. His vocation was to learn, and to remember.

He began with simple objects: eyes, nose, and mouth. Hands, a table, a bed. As though he were a child, we pointed out our eyes, and named them; one eye, two eyes, a finger, two, three, four fingers.

It seemed like a game. When we told him once, it was never forgotten. But it was a game which to us, even under such conditions, soon became irksome. We were impatient. There was so much we wanted to know. And though we never tried to leave this building in which we were housed, it was obvious we were virtual prisoners.

Ren came after every time of sleep. He stayed hours; his patience, his persistence were inexhaustable. We took turns with him, each of us for an hour or two at a time. Occasionally Dolores would try to make something clear by thinking it. It helped. But he did not like it. It was necessary for him virtually to go into a trance before he could receive Dolores’ thoughts.

Gradually Ren was talking to us, broken sentences at first, then with a flow surprisingly voluble. He used queerly precise phrases, occasionally a sentence inverted; and with a strange accent of pronunciation indescribable.

We had tried to question him when first he could talk. But he avoided telling us anything we wanted to know, save that once, at Dr. Weatherby’s insistence, he assured us that our vehicle was safe. And that the small fragment of rock beneath the microscope—that tiny gray speck which held our universes, our earth—was under guard so that no harm could come to it.

This was a city, the capital, the head city of a nation. Its people had lived here on this globe since the dawn of their history, ascended from the beasts which even now roamed the air, the caves, forests, and the sea.

Ren smiled at us. “You too,” he said. “I can realize you are of an origin the same.”

He did indeed think we were of a human type very primitive. The men of science who had seen us coming out of infinite smallness beneath their microscope, had remarked on it.

The small protuberance in the corner of our eyes, the remains of the beasts’ third eyelid, the shape of our heads, our almost pointed ears—I noticed that his own were very nearly circular—our harsh voices, our thick, stocky, muscular bodies were indications that they remarked on.

We discussed it. But Jim interrupted. “How did your men of science know that we were coming out of that piece of gray rock?”

It had been partly by chance. The fragment of rock had been a portion of the interior wall of a room wherein scientific experiments were being made. Ren used our words, “Experiments in physics and chemistry.”

One of the scientists had found himself receiving strange thought-waves. Ren described them. They were Dolores’ thoughts. The scientist traced them with measuring instruments to the wall of the room, but could be no more exact than that.

Then, later, from a tiny protuberance of the wall, a glow was observed. It proved to be a sudden radio-activity; this protuberance of gray stone had become radiant. Electrons were streaming off from it. The scientists chipped it off the huge block of stone of which it was so small a part, and put it under a microscope. It was violently radio-active. And from it they observed a stream of red.

“Our Beta ray,” Dr. Weatherby exclaimed. “Our voyage, the disturbance we set up made the substance give off its electrons.”

“Yes,” nodded Ren. “They think so. They examined it beneath the lens, and after a little while they saw you.”

Alice said, “My sister was getting thoughts from here.” She told him about the mysterious young man and girl, threatened by some unknown danger, a strange cliff, the young couple at bay upon a ledge, the valley beneath them filled with a nameless horror.

* * * * *

Ren’s face clouded. “Yes. We have had thoughts from them. But now the thoughts have stopped. Those two are the children of our ruler. You would call him our king? They are the young prince and his sister, the princess.

“A year ago they both disappeared. A year, that is ten times daylight and darkness. We did not know why they went, or where. Run away, or perhaps stolen from us, for our king is very old and of health quite bad. Soon the prince will be king.

“But they disappeared. There is a very . . . a horrible savage people in the forests beyond the great caves. You spoke it truly, my lady Alice. They are a nameless horror; we do not often speak of things like that. We fear our prince and princess may be there.

“And here at home there is a growing trouble as well. Our women, the young girls particularly, are very restless and aggrieved. They do not like their lot in life. Some already are in rebellion.

“On the great island is a colony of virgins, where no man may go. We thought . . . we hope that perhaps the virgins had stolen our prince and princess, to hold them as hostages that we may be forced to yield to the virgins’ cause.”

“The prince and the princess stolen,” Jim exclaimed, “and you’ve done nothing about it?”

Ren smiled gently. “We have done a great deal, but to no purpose has it been as yet. We got the prince’s thoughts. He was asking us for help. But he would not say what threatened, and he could not say where he was, for he did not know. And then the thoughts suddenly stopped.

“Oh yes, we have searched. The island of the virgins was invaded. But the virgins—indeed no woman of our nation—will admit knowing anything of our prince. We have organized an army. All the nearer forests have been searched. And now we are getting ready to invade the caves. But it is not easy to get men for our army. That nameless horror—”

His voice held an intonation almost gruesome. He changed the subject abruptly.

“Our king, very shortly now he will want to see you. He feels, perhaps, you can aid us. You men, of strength, and these two young women—they might perhaps be of assistance in dealing with our virgins. But you will have to be examined, your minds gauged, so we may know if your oath of allegiance is honorable.”

“By the infernal, mine will be!” Jim exclaimed. “I’ll go with your army to the caves, nameless horror, or not.”

* * * * *

Jim, with Ren, later joined me. And then Dr. Weatherby approached. “Where are the girls?” he asked.

They were in another part of the building. I noticed Dr. Weatherby gazing downstairs with a furtive air, as though he had come here to join us, knowing the girls were not here, and not wanting them around.

Jim was saying, “You think, Ren, that tomorrow—I mean after our next sleep—that the king will want to see us?”

“Yes,” answered Ren. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

“When we’ve taken the oath,” Jim added, “they’ll let us out of here, won’t they. If we’re going to join your army.”

Dr. Weatherby sat down among us. He said to Ren, “You spoke of your king being in ill-health. Do you have much sickness, much disease, here?”

“No,” replied the old man. “Our climate is healthy. Our people have always been so. There is very little—”

“I mean . . . perhaps you have doctors, men of medicine, who are quite skillful?”

“Yes. There are such. In the past they have been very learned. The records of our history—”

“And surgeons, perhaps, very skillful surgeons?” Dr. Weatherby was leaning forward; his hands, locked in his lap, were trembling.

Ren said abruptly, “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . my granddaughter, Dolores, she is blind.”

The man nodded gravely. “That is so. It is very sorrowful. I have seen others here. It is a terrible affliction.”

“But your surgeons, Ren. I have dared hope that she might be cured.”

There was a moment of breathless silence. A pity for Dr. Weatherby swept me. Ren would shake his head: he would say, “No, she cannot.”

But he said, “Why, it could of course be done.”

“There is the question of an eye available.”

“You mean you wonder about a transfer. It is strange, but even though we are so different,” Ren said, “our eyes are identical in structure.”

Dr. Weatherby went into further details concerning the complications of Dolores’ blindness, but Ren shrugged away its import. “It can be done,” he repeated. “And there is a man who will give us the missing link. Loro, a criminal who must die. He is repentant now. At his trials he pleaded that he might live long enough to expiate his crimes.

“Loro will volunteer. I know it.”

VII THE SACRIFICE

“Are you sure she will see when they take the bandages off?”

“I think she will, Alice. They say she will.”

“But we don’t know. I wish she’d awaken. We can take the bandage off then, can’t we?”

“Yes. Dr. Weatherby will do it.”

Alice tip-toed across the room and back. “She’s still asleep. I wish she’d awaken. Will it have to be as dim as this in here?”

“Yes, I think so. Dimmer, maybe. They’re afraid of the first light for her.”

The intricate, deeply involved operation had evidently created a widespread interest throughout the city. Surgeons had come, examined Dolores, held innumerable conferences, examined Loro, whose eyes, as they had suspected, could be used with perfect satisfaction. They anticipated there would be no difficulties. This was their decision after their final conference: they were capable of giving sight to Dolores.

We had not yet been out for our audience with the king. Nothing more had been said concerning it; the operation had become all-absorbing to everyone. The city quite obviously was in an excitement over it, an excitement only surpassed by our own publicly unexplained presence.

They had taken little Dolores up to our roof-top, where, from below, a curious throng gazed up at her. And then taken Loro. I heard the wild cheering.

I had wondered why they would not take one eye only, that each might see. But they had told me that it was impossible. In this instance, a lone one transplanted could not survive. There were technical, deeply medical reasons for this. I did not pry into these.

Then they brought Dolores back. Her eyes were bandaged.

Hours passed. The healing fluid they said was very swift. When Dolores awoke we could remove the bandages. Alice and I sat together.

Dr. Weatherby entered with Jim. Behind them, lingering near the doorway, was the chief surgeon who had performed the operation. He said softly, “You can awaken her. A little less light. Then you can take the bandages off.”

We awakened her gently. She sat up weakly, in bewilderment. “Oh, the bandage, yes, I remember now. They told me it was over. I was all right. And then I went to sleep.”

We gathered around her. A flat gray twilight was in the room. Dolores sat in the bed. Her long, dark tresses fell forward over her white shoulders.

My breath came fast. To see the light, form, color, the world, for the first time!

Very slowly, gently, Dr. Weatherby unwound the bandages. They dropped from his trembling hands to the bed.

“Now, Dolores, open your eyes, just a little.”

The dark lashes on her cheeks fluttered up, and closed instantly against the light. She could see!

Her eyes opened again, timidly, fearfully. But they stayed open, glorious dark eyes, luminous, eyes that were seeing! Eyes with light in them.

They opened very wide. Surprised, wondering!

“I see! I see!” There were no words to express her emotion. Just surprise and awe surging in her voice, stamped on her face. “I see! Jim, is that you, Jim? Why, that’s Jim I see!” Her hand went to her eyes as though to clear a blurring vision. “That . . . must be Jim. Come here, Jim. I want to see you closer.”

He fell on his knees beside the bed, and her hands went to his shoulders, his face, his hair.

“Jim, it _is_ you! It looks like you!”

* * * * *

“When do you suppose this king will see us, Len?” Jim asked. “How is Loro?”

“Oh, you weren’t here when Ren told us. More to it than he said, of course but that’s none of our business and we’re not going to make it our business. It was the end for Loro. It must have been planned that way.”

“I surmised as much. It’s pretty tough. At least he carried out his last wish and was able to make atonement for his crime by giving Dolores her sight. Now to our problem: I wish the king would see us. What did Ren say about that?”

I understood that our audience would be at any time. Ren was to let us know. Dolores had again fallen asleep. From where Jim and I sat I could see her bed, with Dr. Weatherby sitting there beside her.

Jim said, “When we once see the king and get out of here, things will look different. Why’s the old doc sitting there so long? He acted queer to me, Len. Did you see his face when he knew that Dolores was cured?”

I never answered the question. We heard a sound from in there, a choking cry, and saw Dr. Weatherby with a hand clutching his throat.

“Len, what the infernal—”

We rushed in. Dr. Weatherby sat looking at us. He had torn the collar of his robe with convulsive fingers. He stared at us. His hands were groping for the sides of his chair. “Len! I can’t . . . can’t get up!”

Before we could reach him, his great head sagged to the high hunched shoulders. He twitched a little, then slumped inert.

I swung on Jim. “Go pound on the door! Tell them to let you out! Get Ren! Tell Ren to bring a doctor, someone to help us!”

“He’s . . . dead?”

“No! Unconscious. He may be dying. Get help.”

* * * * *

They believed that Dr. Weatherby was dying. He lay in a room off our main apartment now, still unconscious, lying with closed eyes, motionless save for the tiny stirring of his breath.

It was, by earthly standards of day and night, now late afternoon, a soft, pale daylight. After another time of sleep the long night would be upon us.

They could not say how long Dr. Weatherby would live. There seemed nothing to do for him. The shock of his joy over Dolores, the let-down of the tension under which he had been laboring, had brought a collapse.

In hushed tones, with the awe of death upon us, we sat talking. We were on the upper half-story of the apartment off which the small bedrooms opened. I heard the sound of the door downstairs, and heard Ren’s voice. “How is he?”

I leaned over the balcony. “There is no change. Come up, Ren.”

He mounted the incline stairs. With him was a young girl. He introduced her gravely.

“The daughter of my uncle, who now is dead. She is named Sonya; she is very proud that she has learned from me your language. Hold out your hand, child. They shake it for the greeting, you see?”

I took the girl’s extended hand. She was the first woman we had seen of this new realm, and I regarded her curiously. She seemed of an age before full maturity, a small girl, small as Dolores, slim, almost fragile of body, garbed in a single short garment from neck to knees.

It was a sort of smock, of soft dull-red pleats, gathered with a girdle at the waist, high at the neck, with long, tight-fitting sleeves to the wrist. Over it was a long cloak of a heavier material which she discarded upon entering.

Her legs were bare. On her feet were leather sandals. Her hair was long and black as jet. Parted in the middle, it partially covered her ears, was caught by a thong at the back of her neck; and its long tresses, hanging nearly to her waist, were bound by a ribbonlike cord.

Her face was oval with expressive dark eyes and long black lashes. Sensuous lips, I thought, but a mouth and chin that bespoke a firm character. A beautiful young girl, intelligent, perhaps beyond most of her race. And that she was modish was plain to be seen.

Her coat had a jaunty cut to it, a lining of delicate fabric and contrasting color. Her smock was very tight at the throat, shoulders and sleeves, and tight across the bust to mould her youthful breast.

It fell not quite to her knees and flared with a stiffly circular bottom. Her face carried the stamp of youth and health.

She discarded her cloak and stopped to remove the skin sandals from her feet. Upon her left leg, just above the knee, was clasped a broad, white metal band.

“I am glad to know the strangers.” Her glance went to the room where Dr. Weatherby was lying. “But I intrude at a very sad time for you.”

She and Ren sat quietly down among us. Ren said,

“Our king, too, is ill. A very old man.” He shook his head dubiously.

“Oh,” said Jim. “Well, then we—”

Sonya seemed to take the thought from him. “I have already told my cousin,” she said quickly, “that you must swear your allegiance to the king at once. We need you. You men look very strong, very masterful.”