Northwest of Earth Page 10

  “Tell me what happened.” Smith woke from his daze at the sound of her sob. “Can’t I help? Please let me try—tell me about it.”

  “My sister,” she said faintly. “It caught her in the hall—caught her before my eyes—spattered me with her blood. Oh! …”

  “It?” puzzled Smith. “What? Is there danger?” and his hand moved instinctively toward his gun.

  She caught the gesture and smiled a little scornfully through her tears.

  “It,” she said. “The—the Thing. No gun can harm it, no man can fight it—It came, and that was all.”

  “But what is it? What does it look like? Is it near?”

  “It’s everywhere. One never knows—until the mist begins to thicken and the pulse of red shows through—and then it’s too late. We do not fight it, or think of it overmuch—life would be unbearable. For it hungers and must be fed, and we who feed it strive to live as happily as we may know before the Thing comes for us. But one can never know.”

  “Where did it come from? What is it?”

  “No one knows—it has always been there—always will be … too nebulous to die or be killed—a Thing out of some alien place we couldn’t understand, I suppose—somewhere so long ago, or in some such unthinkable dimension that we will never have any knowledge of its origin. But as I say, we try not to think.”

  “If it eats flesh,” said Smith stubbornly, “it must be vulnerable—and I have my gun.”

  “Try if you like,” she shrugged. “Others have tried—and it still comes. It dwells here, we believe, if it dwells anywhere. We are—taken—more often in these halls than elsewhere. When you are weary of life you might bring your gun and wait under this roof. You may not have long to wait.”

  “I’m not ready to try the experiment just yet,” Smith grinned. “If the Thing lives here, why do you come?”

  She shrugged again, apathetically. “If we do not, it will come after us when it hungers. And we come here for—for our food.” She shot him a curious glance from under lowered lids. “You wouldn’t understand. But as you say, it’s a dangerous place. We’d best go now—you will come with me, won’t you? I shall be lonely now.” And her eyes brimmed again.

  “Of course. I’m sorry, my dear. I’ll do what I can for you—until I wake.” He grinned at the fantastic sound of this.

  “You will not wake,” she said quietly. “Better not to hope, I think. You are trapped here with the rest of us and here you must stay until you die.”

  He rose and held out his hand.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, but—well, come on.”

  She took his hand and jumped up. The orange hair, too fantastically colored for anything outside a dream, swung about her brilliantly. He saw now that she wore a single white garment, brief and belted, over the creamy brownness of her body. It was torn now, and hideously stained. She made a picture of strange and vivid loveliness, all white and gold and bloody, in the misted twilight of the gallery.

  “Where are we going?” she asked Smith. “Out there?” And he nodded toward the blueness beyond the windows.

  She drew her shoulders together in a little shudder of distaste. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Listen.” She took him by the arms and lifted a serious face to his. “If you must stay here—and you must, for there is only one way out save death, and that is a worse way even than dying—you must learn to ask no questions about the—the Temple. This is the Temple. Here it dwells. Here we—feed.

  “There are halls we know, and we keep to them. It is wiser. You saved my life when you stopped me on those stairs—no one has ever gone down into that mist and darkness, and returned. I should have known, seeing you climb them, that you were not of us … for whatever lies beyond, wherever that stairway leads—it is better not to know. It is better not to look out the windows of this place. We have learned that, too. For from the outside the Temple looks strange enough, but from the inside, looking out, one is liable to see things it is better not to see … What that blue space is, on which this gallery opens, I do not know—I have no wish to know. There are windows here opening on stranger things than this—but we turn our eyes away when we pass them. You will learn …”

  She took his hand, smiling a little.

  “Come with me, now.”

  And in silence they left the gallery opening on space and went down the hall where the blue mist floated so beautifully with its clouds of violet and green confusing the eye, and a great stillness all about.

  The hallways led straight, as nearly as he could see, for the floating clouds veiled it, toward the great portals of the Temple. In the form of a mighty triple arch it opened out of the clouded twilight upon a shining day like no day he had ever seen on any planet. The light came from no visible source, and there was a lucid quality about it, nebulous but unmistakable, as if one were looking through the depths of a crystal, or through clear water that trembled a little now and then. It was diffused through the translucent day from a sky as shining and unfamiliar as everything else in this amazing dreamland.

  They stood under the great arch of the Temple, looking out over the shining land beyond. Afterward he could never quite remember what had made it so unutterably strange, so indefinably dreadful. There were trees, feathery masses of green and bronze above the bronze-green grass; the bright air shimmered, and through the leaves he caught the glimmer of water not far away. At first glance it seemed a perfectly normal scene—yet tiny details caught his eyes that sent ripples of coldness down his back. The grass, for instance …

  When they stepped down upon it and began to cross the meadow toward the trees beyond which water gleamed, he saw that the blades were short and soft as fur, and they seemed to cling to his companion’s bare feet as she walked. As he looked out over the meadow he saw that long waves of it, from every direction, were rippling toward them as if the wind blew from all sides at once toward the common center that was themselves. Yet no wind blew.

  “It—it’s alive,” he stammered, startled. “The grass!”

  “Yes, of course,” she said indifferently.

  And then he realized that though the feathery fronds of the trees waved now and then, gracefully together, there was no wind. And they did not sway in one direction only, but by twos and threes in many ways, dipping and rising with a secret, contained life of their own.

  When they reached the belt of woodland he looked up curiously and heard the whisper and rustle of leaves above him, bending down as if in curiosity as the two passed beneath. They never bent far enough to touch them, but a sinister air of watchfulness, of aliveness, brooded over the whole uncannily alive landscape, and the ripples of the grass followed them wherever they went.

  The lake, like that twilight in the Temple, was a sleepy blue clouded with violet and green, not like real water, for the colored blurs did not diffuse or change as it rippled.

  On the shore, a little above the water line, stood a tiny, shrine-like building of some creamy stone, its walls no more than a series of arches open to the blue, translucent day. The girl led him to the doorway and gestured within negligently.

  “I live here,” she said.

  Smith stared. It was quite empty save for two low couches with a blue coverlet thrown across each. Very classic it looked, with its whiteness and austerity, the arches opening on a vista of woodland and grass beyond.

  “Doesn’t it ever get cold?” he asked. “Where do you eat? Where are your books and food and clothes?”

  “I have some spare tunics under my couch,” she said. “That’s all. No books, no other clothing, no food. We feed at the Temple. It is never any colder or warmer than this.”

  “But what do you do?”

  “Do? Oh, swim in the lake, sleep and rest and wander through the woods. Times passes very quickly.”

  “Idyllic,” murmured Smith, “But rather tiresome, I should think.”

  “When one knows,” she said, “that the ne
xt moment may be one’s last, life is savored to the full. One stretches the hours out as long as possible. No, for us it is not tiresome.”

  “But have you no cities? Where are the other people?”

  “It is best not to collect in crowds. Somehow they seem to draw—it. We live in twos and threes—sometimes alone. We have no cities. We do nothing—what purpose in beginning anything when we know we shall not live to end it? Why even think too long of one thing? Come down to the lake.”

  She took his hand and led him across the clinging grass to the sandy brink of the water, and they sank in silence on the narrow beach. Smith looked out over the lake where vague colors misted the blue, trying not to think of the fantastic things that were happening to him. Indeed, it was hard to do much thinking, here, in the midst of the blueness and the silence, the very air dreamy about them … the cloudy water lapping the shore with tiny, soft sounds like the breathing of a sleeper. The place was heavy with the stillness and the dreamy colors, and Smith was never sure, afterward, whether in his dream he did not sleep for a while; for presently he heard a stir at his side and the girl reseated herself, clad in a fresh tunic, all the blood washed away. He could not remember her having left, but it did not trouble him.

  The light had for some time been sinking and blurring, and imperceptibly a cloudy blue twilight closed about them, seeming somehow to rise from the blurring lake, for it partook of that same dreamy blueness clouded with vague colors. Smith thought that he could be content never to rise again from that cool sand, to sit here for ever in the blurring twilight and the silence of his dream. How long he did sit there he never knew. The blue peace enfolded him utterly, until he was steeped in its misty evening colors and permeated through and through with the tranced quiet.

  The darkness had deepened until he could no longer see any more than the nearest wavelets lapping the sand. Beyond, and all about, the dream-world melted into the violet-misted blueness of the twilight. He was not aware that he had turned his head, but presently he found himself looking down on the girl beside him. She was lying on the pale sand, her hair a fan of darkness to frame the pallor of her face. In the twilight her mouth was dark too, and from the darkness under her lashes he slowly became aware that she was watching him unwinkingly.

  For a long while he sat there, gazing down, meeting the half-hooded eyes in silence. And presently, with the effortless detachment of one who moves in a dream, he bent down to meet her lifting arms. The sand was cool and sweet, and her mouth tasted faintly of blood.

  II

  There was no surprise in that land. Lucid day brightened slowly over the breathing landscape, and grass and trees stirred with wakening awareness, rather horribly in the beauty of the morning. When Smith woke, he saw the girl coming up from the lake, shaking blue water from her orange hair. Blue droplets clung to the creaminess of her skin, and she was laughing and flushed from head to foot in the glowing dawn.

  Smith sat up on his couch and pushed back the blue coverlet.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “When and what do we eat?”

  The laughter vanished from her face in a breath. She gave her hair a troubled shake and said doubtfully,

  “Hungry?”

  “Yes, starved! Didn’t you say you get your food at the Temple? Let’s go up there.”

  She sent him a sidelong, enigmatic glance from under her lashes as she turned aside.

  “Very well,” she said.

  “Anything wrong?” He reached out as she passed and pulled her to his knee, kissing the troubled mouth lightly. And again he tasted blood.

  “Oh, no.” She ruffled his hair and rose. “I’ll be ready in a moment, and then we’ll go.”

  And so again they passed the belt of woods where the trees bent down to watch, and crossed the rippling grassland. From all directions long waves of it came blowing toward them as before, and the fur-like blades clung to their feet. Smith tried not to notice. Everywhere, he was seeing this morning, an undercurrent of nameless unpleasantness ran beneath the surface of this lovely land.

  As they crossed the live grass a memory suddenly returned to him, and he said, “What did you mean, yesterday, when you said that there was a way—out—other than death?”

  She did not meet his eyes as she answered, in that troubled voice, “Worse than dying, I said. A way out we do not speak of here.”

  “But if there’s anyway at all, I must know of it,” he persisted. “Tell me.”

  She swept the orange hair like a veil between them, bending her head and saying indistinctly, “A way out you could not take. Away too costly. And—and I do not wish you to go, now …”

  “I must know,” said Smith relentlessly.

  She paused then, and stood looking up at him, her sherry-colored eyes disturbed.

  “By the way you came,” she said at last. “By virtue of the Word. But that gate is impassable.”

  “Why?”

  “It is death to pronounce the Word. Literally. I do not know it now, could not speak it if I would. But in the Temple there is one room where the Word is graven in scarlet on the wall, and its power is so great that the echoes of it ring for ever round and round that room. If one stands before the graven symbol and lets the force of it beat upon his brain he will hear, and know—and shriek the awful syllables aloud—and so die. It is a word from some tongue so alien to all our being that the spoken sound of it, echoing in the throat of a living man, is disrupting enough to rip the very fibers of the human body apart—to blast its atoms asunder, to destroy body and mind as utterly as if they had never been. And because the sound is so disruptive it somehow blasts open for an instant the door between your world and mine. But the danger is dreadful, for it may open the door to other worlds too, and let things through more terrible than we can dream of. Some say it was thus that the Thing gained access to our land eons ago. And if you are not standing exactly where the door opens, on the one spot in the room that is protected, as the center of a whirlwind is quiet, and if you do not pass instantly out of the sound of the Word, it will blast you asunder as it does the one who has pronounced it for you. So you see how impos—” Here she broke off with a little scream and glanced down in half-laughing annoyance, then took two or three little running steps and turned.

  “The grass,” she explained ruefully, pointing to her feet. The brown bareness of them was dotted with scores of tiny bloodspots. “If one stands too long in one place, barefoot, it will pierce the skin and drink—stupid of me to forget. But come.”

  Smith went on at her side, looking round with new eyes upon the lovely, pellucid land, too beautiful and frightening for anything outside a dream. All about them the hungry grass came hurrying in long, converging waves as they advanced. Were the trees, then, flesh-eating too? Cannibal trees and vampire grass—he shuddered a little and looked ahead.

  The Temple stood tall before them, a building of some nameless material as mistily blue as far-off mountains on the Earth. The mistiness did not condense or clarify as they approached, and the outlines of the place were mysteriously hard to fix in mind—he could never understand, afterward, just why. When he tried too hard to concentrate on one particular corner or tower or window it blurred before his eyes as if the focus were at fault—as if the whole strange, veiled building stood just on the borderland of another dimension.

  From the immense triple arch of the doorway, as they approached—a triple arch like nothing he had ever seen before, so irritatingly hard to focus upon that he could not be sure just wherein its difference lay—a pale blue mist issued smokily. And when they stopped within they walked into that twilight dimness he was coming to know so well.

  The great hall lay straight and veiled before them, but after a few steps the girl drew him aside and under another archway, into a long gallery through whose drifting haze he could see rows of men and women kneeling against the wall with bowed heads, as if in prayer. She led him down the line to the end, and he saw then that they knelt before small spigots curving up fro
m the wall at regular intervals. She dropped to her knees before one and, motioning him to follow, bent her head and laid her lips to the up-curved spout. Dubiously he followed her example.

  Instantly with the touch of his mouth on the nameless substance of the spigot something hot and, strangely, at once salty and sweet flowed into his mouth. There was an acridity about it that gave a curious tang, and the more he drank the more avid he became. Hauntingly delicious it was, and warmth flowed through him more strongly with every draft. Yet somewhere deep within him memory stirred unpleasantly … somewhere, somehow, he had known this hot, acrid, salty taste before, and—suddenly suspicions struck him like a bludgeon, and he jerked his lips from the spout as if it burnt. A tiny thread of scarlet trickled from the wall. He passed the back of one hand across his lips and brought it away red. He knew that odor, then.

  The girl knelt beside him with closed eyes, rapt avidity in every line of her. When he seized her shoulder she twitched away and opened protesting eyes, but did not lift her lips from the spigot. Smith gestured violently, and with one last long draft she rose and turned a half-angry face to his, but laid a finger on her reddened lips.

  He followed her in silence past the kneeling lines again. When they reached the hall outside he swung upon her and gripped her shoulders angrily.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  Her eyes slid away. She shrugged.

  “What were you expecting? We feed as we must, here. You’ll learn to drink without a qualm—if it does not come for you too soon.”

  A moment longer he stared angrily down into her evasive, strangely lovely face. Then he turned without a word and strode down the hallway through the drifting mists toward the door. He heard her bare feet pattering along behind hurriedly, but he did not look back. Not until he had come out into the glowing day and half crossed the grasslands did he relent enough to glance around. She paced at his heels with bowed head, the orange hair swinging about her face and unhappiness eloquent in every motion. The submission of her touched him suddenly, and he paused for her to catch up, smiling down half reluctantly on the bent orange head.