The Tree of Life Page 6

sound that filled hisentire consciousness with its throbbing, driving out all other thoughtsand realizations, until he was no more than a shell that vibrated inanswer to the calling.

  For it was a calling. No one could listen to that intolerable sweetnesswithout knowing the necessity to seek its source. Remotely in the backof his mind Smith remembered the tree-folk's warning, "When Thag calls,you must answer." Not consciously did he recall it, for all hisconsciousness was answering the siren humming in the air, and, scarcelyrealizing that he moved, he had turned toward the source of thatcalling, stumbling blindly over the flowery sward with no thought in hismusic-brimmed mind but the need to answer that lovely, power-vibrantsummoning.

  Past him as he went on moved other shapes, little and dark-skinned andecstatic, gripped like himself in the hypnotic melody. The tree-folk hadforgotten even their inbred fear at Thag's calling, and walked boldlythrough the open twilight, lost in the wonder of the song.

  Smith went on with the rest, deaf and blind to the land around him,alive to one thing only, that summons from the siren tune.Unrealizingly, he retraced the course of his frenzied flight, past thetrees and bushes he had blundered through, down the slope that led tothe Tree's hollow, through the thinning of the underbrush to the veryedge of the last line of foliage which marked the valley's rim.

  * * * * *

  By now the calling was so unbearably intense, so intolerably sweet thatsomehow in its very strength it set free a part of his dazed mind as itpassed the limits of audible things and soared into ecstasies which nosenses bound. And though it gripped him ever closer in its magic, a sanepart of his brain was waking into realization. For the first time alarmcame back into his mind, and by slow degrees the world returned abouthim. He stared stupidly at the grass moving by under his pacing feet. Helifted a dragging head and saw that the trees no longer rose about him,that a twilit clearing stretched away on all sides toward the forest rimwhich circled it, that the music was singing from some source so nearthat--that----

  The Tree! Terror leaped within him like a wild thing. The Tree,quivering with unbearable clarity in the thick, dim air, writhed abovehim, blossoms blazing with bloody radiance and every branch vibrant andundulant to the tune of that unholy song. Then he was aware of thelovely, luminous whiteness of the priestess swaying forward under theswaying limbs, her hair rippling back from the loveliness of her as shemoved.

  Choked and frenzied with unreasoning terror, he mustered every effortthat was in him to turn, to run again like a mad-man out of thatdreadful hollow, to hide himself under the weight of all space from themenace of the Tree. And all the while he fought, all the while panicdrummed like mad in his brain, his relentless body plodded on straighttoward the hideous loveliness of that siren singer towering above him.From the first he had felt subconsciously that it was Thag who called,and now, in the very center of that ocean of vibrant power, he knew.Gripped in the music's magic, he went on.

  All over the clearing other hypnotized victims were advancing slowly,with mechanical steps and wide, frantic eyes as the tree-folk camehelplessly to their god's calling. He watched a group of little, duskysacrifices pace step by step nearer to the Tree's vibrant branches. Thepriestess came forward to meet them with outstretched arms. He saw hertake the foremost gently by the hands. Unbelieving, hypnotized withhorrified incredulity, he watched her lead the rigid little creatureforward under the fabulous Tree whose limbs yearned downward like hungrysnakes, the great flowers glowing with avid color.

  "The priestess led the rigid little creature forwardunder the fabulous tree."]

  He saw the branches twist out and lengthen toward the sacrifice,quivering with eagerness. Then with a tiger's leap they darted, and thevictim was swept out of the priestess' guiding hands up into thebranches that darted round like tangled snakes in a clot that hid himfor an instant from view. Smith heard a high, shuddering wail ripple outfrom that knot of struggling branches, a dreadful cry that held such aninfinity of purest horror and understanding that he could not butbelieve that Thag's victims in the moment of their doom must learn thesecret of his horror. After that one frightful cry came silence. In aninstant the limbs fell apart again from emptiness. The little savage hadmelted like smoke among their writhing, too quickly to have beendevoured, more as if he had been snatched into another dimension in theinstant the hungry limbs hid him. Flame-tipped, avid, they were dippingnow toward another victim as the priestess paced serenely forward.

  * * * * *

  And still Smith's rebellious feet were carrying him on, nearer andnearer the writhing peril that towered over his head. The music shrilledlike pain. Now he was so close that he could see the hungryflower-mouths in terrible detail as they faced round toward him. Thelimbs quivered and poised like cobras, reached out with a snakishlengthening, down inexorably toward his shuddering helplessness. Thepriestess was turning her calm white face toward his.

  * * * * *

  Those arcs and changing curves of the branches as they neared weresketching lines of pure horror whose meaning he still could notunderstand, save that they deepened in dreadfulness as he neared. Forthe last time that urgent wonder burned up in his mind why--_why_ sosimple a thing as this fabulous Tree should be infused with anindwelling terror strong enough to send his innermost soul frantic withrevulsion. For the last time--because in that trembling instant as hewaited for their touch, as the music brimmed up with unbearable,brain-wrenching intensity, in that one last moment before theflower-mouths seized him--he saw. He understood.

  * * * * *

  With eyes opened at last by the instant's ultimate horror, he saw thereal Thag. Dimly he knew that until now the thing had been so frightfulthat his eyes had refused to register its existence, his brain toacknowledge the possibility of such dreadfulness. It had literally beentoo terrible to see, though his instinct knew the presence of infinitehorror. But now, in the grip of that mad, hypnotic song, in the instantbefore unbearable terror enfolded him, his eyes opened to full sight,and he saw.

  That Tree was only Thag's outline, sketched three-dimensionally upon thetwilight. Its dreadfully curving branches had been no more than Thag'sbarest contours, yet even they had made his very soul sick withintuitive revulsion. But now, seeing the true horror, his mind was toonumb to do more than register its presence: Thag, hovering monstrouslybetween earth and heaven, billowing and surging up there in thetranslucent twilight, tethered to the ground by the Tree's bending stemand reaching ravenously after the hypnotized fodder that his callingbrought helpless into his clutches. One by one he snatched them up, oneby one absorbed them into the great, unseeable horror of his being.That, then, was the reason why they vanished so instantaneously, suckedinto the concealing folds of a thing too dreadful for normal eyes tosee.

  The priestess was pacing forward. Above her the branches arched andleaned. Caught in a timeless paralysis of horror, Smith stared upwardinto the enormous bulk of Thag while the music hummed intolerably in hisshrinking brain--Thag, the monstrous thing from darkness, called up byIllar in those long-forgotten times when Mars was a green planet.Foolishly his brain wandered among the ramifications of what hadhappened so long ago that time itself had forgotten, refusing torecognize the fate that was upon himself. He knew a tingle of respectfor the ages-dead wizard who had dared command a being like this to hisservices--this vast, blind, hovering thing, ravenous for human flesh,indistinguishable even now save in those terrible outlines that sentpanic leaping through him with every motion of the Tree's fearfulsymmetry.

  * * * * *

  All this flashed through his dazed mind in the one blinding instant ofunderstanding. Then the priestess' luminous whiteness swam up before hishypnotized stare. Her hands were upon him, gently guiding his mechanicalfootsteps, very gently leading him forward into--into----

  * * * * *

  The writhing branches struck dow
nward, straight for his face. And in oneflashing leap the moment's infinite horror galvanized him out of hisparalysis. Why, he could not have said. It is not given to many men toknow the ultimate essentials of all horror, concentrated into onefundamental unit. To most men it would have had that same paralyzingeffect up to the very instant of destruction. But in Smith there musthave been a bed-rock of subtle violence, an unyielding, inflexiblevehemence upon which the structure of his whole life was reared. Few menhave it. And when that ultimate intensity of terror struck the basicflint of him, reaching down through mind and soul into the deepestdepths of his being, it struck a spark from that inflexible barbarianburied at the roots of him which had force enough to shock him out ofhis stupor.

  * * * * *

  In the instant of release his hand swept like an unloosed spring, of itsown volition, straight for the butt of his power-gun. He was dragging itfree as