“The Monster of the Prophecy”
© 1932
by
Clark Ashton Smith
A
dismal, fog-dank afternoon was turning into a murky twilight when Theophilus
Alvor paused on Brooklyn Bridge to peer down at the dim river with a shudder of
sinister surmise. He was wondering how it would feel to cast himself into the
chill, turbid waters, and whether he could summon up the necessary courage for
an act which, he persuaded himself, was now becoming inevitable as well as
laudable. He felt that he was too weary, sick and disheartened to go on with
the evil dream of existence.
From
any human standpoint, there was doubtless abundant reason for Alvor's
depression. Young, and full of unquenched visions and desires, he had come to
Brooklyn from an up-stage village three months before, hoping to find a
publisher for his writings; but his old-fashioned classic verses, in spite (or
because) of their high imaginative fire, had been unanimously rejected both by
magazines and book-firms. Though Alvor had lived frugally and had chosen lodgings
so humble as almost to constitute the proverbial poetic garret, the small sun
of his savings was now exhausted. He was not only quite penniless, but his
clothes were so worn as to be no longer presentable in editorial offices, and
the soles of his shoes were becoming rapidly nonexistent from the tramping he
had done. He had not eaten for days, and his last meal, like the several
preceding ones, had been at the expense of his soft-hearted Irish landlady.
For
more reasons than one, Alvor would have preferred another death than that of
drowning. The foul and icy waters were not inviting from an esthetic viewpoint;
and in spite of all he had heard to the contrary, he did not believe that such
a death could be anything but disagreeable and painful. By choice he would have
selected a sovereign Oriental opiate, whose insidious slumber would have led
through a realm of gorgeous dreams to the gentle night of an ultimate oblivion;
or, failing this, a deadly poison of merciful swiftness. But such Lethean media
are not readily obtainable by a man with an empty purse.
Damning
his own lack of forethought in not reserving enough money for such an
eventuation, Alvor shuddered on the twilight bridge, and looked at the dismal
waters, and then at the no less dismal fog through which the troubled lights of
the city had begun to break. And then, through the instinctive habit of a
country-bred person who is also imaginative and beauty-seeking, he looked at
the heavens above the city to see if any stars were visible. He thought of his
recent Ode to Antares, which, unlike his earlier productions, was written in vers
libre and had a strong modernistic irony mingled with its planturous
lyricism. It had, however, proved as unsalable as the rest of his poems. Now,
with a sense of irony far more bitter than that which he had put into his ode,
he looked for the ruddy spark of Antares itself, but was unable to find it in
the sodden sky. His gaze and his thoughts returned to the river.
'There
is no need for that, my young friend,' said a voice at his elbow. Alvor was
startled not only by the words and by the clairvoyance they betrayed, but also
by something that was unanalyzably strange in the tones of the voice that
uttered them. The tones were both refined and authoritative; but in them there
was a quality which, for lack of more precise words or imagery, he could think
of only as metallic and unhuman. While his mind wrestled with swiftborn
unseizable fantasies, he turned to look at the stranger who had accosted him.
The
man was neither uncommonly nor disproportionately tall; and he was modishly
dressed, with a long overcoat and top hat. His features were not unusual, from
what could be seen of them in the dusk, except for his full-lidded and burning
eyes, like those of some nyctalopic animal. But from him there emanated a
palpable sense of things that were inconceivably strange and outre and remote —
a sense that was more patent, more insistent than any impression of mere form
and odor and sound could have been, and which was well-nigh tactual in its
intensity.
'I
repeat,' continued the man, 'that there is no necessity for you to drown
yourself in that river. A vastly different fate can be yours, if you choose...
In the meanwhile, I shall be honored and delighted if you will accompany me to
my house, which is not far away.'
In
a daze of astonishment preclusive of all analytical thought, or even of any
clear cognizance of where he was going or what was happening, Alvor followed
the stranger for several blocks in the swirling fog. Hardly knowing how he had
come there, he found himself in the library of an old house which must in its
time have had considerable pretensions to aristocratic digaity, for the
paneling, carpet and furniture were all antique and were both rare and
luxurious.
The
poet was left alone for a few minutes in the library. Then his host reappeared
and led him to a dining-room where an excellent meal for two had been brought
in from a neighboring restaurant. Alvor, who was faint with inanition, ate with
no attempt to conceal his ravening appetite, but noticed that the stranger made
scarcely even a pretense of touching his own food. With a manner preoccupied
and distrait, the man sat opposite Alvor, giving no more ostensible heed to his
guest than the ordinary courtesies of a host required.
'We
will talk now,' said the stranger, when Alvor had finished. The poet, whose
energies and mental faculties had been revived by the food, became bold enough
to survey his host with a frank attempt at appraisal. He saw a man of
indefinite age, whose lineaments and complexion were Caucasian, but whose
nationality he was unable to determine. The eyes had lost something of their
weird luminosity beneath the electric light, but nevertheless they were most
remarkable, and from them there poured a sense of unearthly knowledge and power
and strangeness not to be formulated by human thought or conveyed in human
speech. Under his scrutiny, vague, dazzling, intricate unshapable images rose
of the dim borders of the poet's mind and fell back into oblivion ere he could
envisage them Apparently without rime or reason, some lines of his Ode to
Antares returned to him, and he found that he was repeating them over and over
beneath his breath:
'Star of
strange hope, Pharos beyond our desperate mire, Lord of unscalable gulfs, Lamp
of unknowable life.'
The hopeless, half-satiric yearning for another sphere which
he had expressed in this poem, haunted his thoughts with a weird insistence.
'Of
course, you have no idea who or what I am,' said the stranger, 'though your
poetic intuitions are groping darkly toward the secret of my identity. On my
part, there is no need for me to ask you anything, since I have already learned
all that there is to learn about your life, your personality, and the dismal
predicament from which I am now able to offer you a means of escape. Your name
is Theophilus Alvor, and you are a poet whose classic style and romantic genius
are not likely to win adequate recognition in this age and land. With an
inspiration more prophetic than you dream, you have written, among other
masterpieces, a quite admirable Ode to Antares.'
'How
do you know all this?' cried Alvor.
'To
those who have the sensory apparatus with which to perceive them, thoughts are
no less audible than spoken words. I can hear your thoughts, so you will
readily understand that there is nothing surprising in my possession of more or
less knowledge concerning you.'
'But
who are you?' exclaimed Alvor. 'I have heard of people who could read the minds
of others; but I did not believe that there was any human being who actually
possessed such powers.'
'I
am not a human being,' rejoined the stranger, 'even though I have found it
convenient to don the semblance of one for a while just as you or another of
your race might wear a masquerade costume. Permit me to introduce myself: my
name, as nearly as can be conveyed in the phonetics of your world, is
Vizaphmal, and I have come from a planet of the far-off mighty sun that is
known to you as Antares. In my own world, I am a scientist, though the more
ignorant classes look upon me as a wizard. In the course of profound
experiments and researches, I have invented a device which enables me at will
to visit other planets, no matter how remote in space. I have sojourned for
varying intervals in more than one solar system; and I have found your world
and its inhabitants so quaint and curious and monstrous that I have lingered
here a little longer than I intended, because of my taste for the bizarre -a
taste which is ineradicable, though no doubt reprehensible. It is now time for
me to return: urgent duties call me, and I can not tarry. But there are reasons
why I should like to take with me to my world a member of your race; and when I
saw you on the bridge tonight, it occurred to me that you might be willing to
undertake such an adventure. You are, I believe, utterly weary of the sphere in
which you find yourself, since a little while ago you were ready to depart from
it into the unknown dimension that you call death. I can offer you something much
more agreeable and diversified than death, with a scope of sensation, a
potentiality of experience beyond anything of which you have had even the
faintest intimation in the poetic reveries looked upon as extravagant by your
fellows.'
Again
and again, while listening to this long and singular address, Alvor seemed to
catch in the tones of the voice that uttered it a supervening resonance, a
vibration of overtones beyond the compass of a mortal throat. Though perfectly
clear and correct in all details of enunciation, there was a hint of vowels and
consonants not to be found in any terrestrial alphabet. However, the logical
part of his mind refused to accept entirely these intimations of the
supermundane; and he was now seized by the idea that the man before him was
some new type of lunatic.
'Your
thought is natural enough, considering the limitations of your experience,'
observed the stranger calmly. 'However, I can easily convince you of its error
by revealing myself to you in my true shape.'
He
made the gesture of one who throws off a garment. Alvor was blinded by an
insufferable blaze of light, whose white glare, emanating in huge beams from an
orb-like center, filled the entire room and seemed to pass illimitably beyond
through dissolving walls. When his eyes became accustomed to the light, he saw
before him a being who had no conceivable likeness to his host. This being was
more than seven feet in height, and had no less than five intricately jointed
arms and three legs that were equally elaborate. His head, on a long, swan-like
neck, was equipped not only with visual, auditory, nasal and oral organs of un-
familiar types, but had several appendages whose use was not readily to be
determined. His three eyes, obliquely set and with oval pupils, rayed forth a
green phosphorescence; the mouth, or what appeared to be such, was very small
and had the lines of a downward-curving crescent; the nose was rudimentary,
though with finely wrought nostrils; in lieu of eyebrows, he had a triple
series of semicircular markings on his forehead, each of a different hue; and
above his intellectually shapen head, above the tiny drooping ears with their
complex lobes, there towered a gorgeous comb of crimson, not dissimilar in form
to the crest on the helmet of a Grecian warrior. The head, the limbs and the
whole body were mottled with interchanging lunes and moons of opalescent
colors, never the same for a moment in their unresting flux and reflux.
Alvor
had the sensation of standing on the rim of prodigious gulfs, on a new earth
beneath new heavens; and the vistas of illimitable horizons, fraught with the
multitudinous terror and manifold beauty of an imagery no human eye had ever
seen, hovered and wavered and flashed upon him with the same unstable
fluorescence as the lunar variegations of the body at which he stared with such
stupefaction. Then, in a little while, the strange light seemed to withdraw
upon itself, retracting all its beams to a common center, and faded in a whirl
of darkness. When this darkness had cleared away, he saw once more the form of
his host, in conventional garb, with a slight ironic smile about his lips.
'Do
you believe me now?' Vizaphmal queried.
'Yes,
I believe you.'
'Are
you willing to accept my offer?'
'I
accept it.' A thousand questions were forming in Alvor's mind, but he dared not
ask them. Divining these questions, the stranger spoke as follows:
'You
wonder how it is possible for me to assume a human shape. I assure you, it is
merely a matter of taking thought. My mental images are infinitely clearer and
stronger than those of any earth-being, and by conceiving myself as a man, I
can appear to you and your fellows as such.
'You
wonder also as to the modus operandi of my arrival on earth. This I shall now
show and explain to you, if you will follow me.'
He
led the way to an upper story of the old mansion. Here in a sort of attic,
beneath a large skylight in the southward-sloping roof, there stood a curious
mechanism, wrought of a dark metal which Alvor could not identify. It was a
tall, complicated framework with many transverse bars and two stout upright
rods terminating at each end in a single heavy disk. These disks seemed to form
the main portions of the top and bottom.
'Put
your hand between the bars,' commanded Alvor's host.
Alvor
tried to obey this command, but his fingers met with an adamantine obstruction,
and he realized that the intervals of the bars were filled with an unknown
material clearer than glass or crystal.
'You
behold here,' said Vizaphmal, 'an invention which, I flatter myself, is quite
unique anywhere this side of the galactic suns. The disks at top and bottom are
a vibratory device with a twofold use; and no other material than that of which
they are wrought would have the same properties, the same achievable rates of
vibrations. When you and I have locked ourselves within the framework, as we
shall do anon, a few revolutions of the lower disk will have the effect of
isolating us from our present environment, and we shall find ourselves in the
midst of what is known to you as space, or ether. The vibrations of the upper
disk, which we shall then employ, are of such potency as to annihilate space
itself in any direction desired. Space, like everything. else in the atomic
universe, is subject to laws of integration and dissolution. It was merely a
matter of finding the vibrational power that would affect this dissolution;
and, by untiring research, by ceaseless experimentation, I located and isolated
the rare metallic elements which, in a state of union, are capable of this
power.'
While
the poet was pondering all he had seen and heard, Vizaphmal touched a tiny
knob, and one side of the framework swung open. He then turned off the electric
light in the garret, and simultaneously with its extinction, a ruddy glow
filled the interior of the machine, serving to illumine all the parts, but
leaving the room around it in darkness. Standing beside his invention,
Vizaphmal looked at the skylight, and Alvor followed his gaze. The fog had
cleared away and many stars were out, induding the red gleam of Antares, now
high in the south. The stranger was evidently making certain preliminary
calculations, for he moved the machine a little after peering at the star, and
adjusted a number of fine wires in the interior, as if he were tuning some
stringed instrument.
At
last he turned to Alvor.
Everything
is now in readiness,' he announced. 'If you are still prepared to accompany me,
we will take our departure.'
Alvor
was conscious of an unexpected coolness and fortitude as he answered: 'I am at
your service.' The unparalleled occurrences and disclosures of the evening, the
wellnigh undreamable prospect of a plunge across untold immensitude, such as no
man had been privileged to dare before, had really benumbed his imagination,
and he was unable at the moment to conceive the true awesomeness of what he had
undertaken.
Vizaphmal
indicated the place where Alvor was to stand in the machine. The poet entered,
and assumed a position between one of the upright rods and the side, opposite
Vizaphmal. He found that a layer of the transparent material was interposed
between his feet and the large disk inwhich the rods were based. No sooner had
he stationed himself, than, with a celerity and an utter silence that were
uncanny, the framework closed upon itself with hermetic tightness, till the
jointure where it had happened was no longer detectable.
'We
are now in a sealed compartment,' explained the Antarean, 'into which nothing
can penetrate. Both the dark metal and the crystalline are substances that
refuse the passage of heat and cold, of air and ether, or of any known cosmic
ray, with the one exception of light itself, which is admitted by the clear
metal.'
When
he ceased, Alvor realized that they were walled about with an insulating
silence utter and absolute as that of some intersidereal void. The traffic in
the streets without, the rumbling and roaring and jarring of the great city, so
loud a minute before, might have been a million miles away in some other world
for all that he could hear or feel of its vibration.
In
the red glow that pervaded the machine, emanating from a source he could not
discover, the poet gazed at his companion. Vizaphmal had now resumed his
Antarean form, as if all necessity for a human disguise were at an end, and he
towered above Alvor, glorious with intermerging zones of fluctuant colors,
where hues the poet had not seen in any spectrum were simultaneous or
intermittent with flaming blues and coruscating emeralds and amethysts and
fulgurant and vermilions and saffrons. Lifting one of his five arms, which
terminated in two finger-like appendages with many joints all capable of
bending in any direction, the Antarean touched a thin wire that was stretched
overhead between the two rods. He plucked at this wire like a musician at a
lute-string, and from it there emanated a single clear note higher in pitch
than anything Alvor had ever heard. Its sheer unearthly acuity caused a shudder
of anguish to run through the poet, and he could scarcely have borne a
prolongation of the sound, which, however, ceased in a moment and was followed
by a much more endurable humming and singing noise which seemed to arise at his
feet. Looking down, he saw that the large disk at the bottom of the medial rods
had begun to revolve. This revolution was slow at first, but rapidly increased
in its rate, till he could no longer see the movement; and the singing sound
became agonizingly sweet and high till it pierced his senses like a knife.
Vizaphmal
touched a second wire, and the revolution of the disk was brought abruptly to
an end. Alvor felt an unspeakable relief at the cessation of the torturing
music.
'We
are now in etheric space,' the Antarean declared. 'Look out, if you so desire.'
Alvor
peered through the interstices of the dark metal, and saw around and above and
below them the unlimited blackness of cosmic night and the teeming of
uncountable trillions of stars. He had a sensation of frightful and deadly
vertigo, and staggered like a drunken man as he tried to keep himself from
falling against the side of the machine.
Vizaphmal plucked at a third wire, but this time Alvor was not aware of any sound. Something that was like an electric shock, and also like the crushing impact of a heavy blow, descended upon his head and shook him to the soles of his feet. Then he felt as if his tissues were being stabbed by innumerable needles of fire, and then that he was being torn apart in a thousand fragments, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, vein by vein, and nerve by nerve, on some invisible rack. He swooned and fell huddled in a corner of the machine, but his unconsciousness was not altogether complete. He seemed to be drowning beneath an infinite sea of darkness, beneath the accumulation of shoreless gulfs, and above this sea, so far away that he lost it again and again, there thrilled a supernal melody, sweet as the singing of sirens or the fabled music of the spheres, together with an insupportable dissonance like the shattering of all the battlements of time. He thought that all his nerves had been elongated to an immense distance, where the outlying parts of himself were being tortured in the oubliettes of fantastic inquisitions by the use of instruments of percussion, diabolically vibrant, that were somehow identified with certain of his own body-cells. Once he thought that he saw Vizaphmal standing a million leagues remote on the shore of an alien planet, with a sky of soaring many-colored flame behind him and the night of all the universe rippling gently at his feet like a submissive ocean. Then he lost the vision, and the intervals of the far unearthly music became more prolonged, and at last he could not hear it at all, nor could he feel any longer the torturing of his remote nerve-ends. The gulf deepened above him, and he sank through eons of darkness and emptiness to the very nadir of oblivion.
Alvor's
return to consciousness was even more slow and gradual than his descent into
Lethe had been. Still lying at the bottom of a shoreless and boundless night,
he became aware of an unidentifiable odor with which in some way the sense of
ardent warmth was associated. This odor changed incessantly, as if it were
composed of many diverse ingredients, each of which predominated in turn.
Myrrh-like and mystic in the beginning as the of an antique altar, it assumed
the heavy languor of unimaginable flowers, the sharp sting of vaporizing
chemicals unknown to science, the smell of exotic water and exotic earth, and
then a medley of other elements that conveyed no suggestion of anything
whatever, except of evolutionary realms and rages that were beyond all human
experience or calculation. For a while he lived and was awake only in his
sensory response to this potpourri of odors; then the awareness of his own
corporeal being came back to him through tactual sensations of an unusual
order, which he did not at first recognize as being within himself, but which
seemed to be those of a foreign entity in some other dimension, with whom he
was connected across unbridgeable gulfs by a nexus of gossamer tenuity. This
entity, he thought, was reclining on a material of great softness, into which
he sank with a supreme and leaden indolence and a feeling of sheer bodily
weight that held him utterly motionless. Then, floating along the ebon cycles
of the void, this being came with ineffable slowness toward Alvor, and at last,
by no perceptible transition, by no breach of physical logic or mental
congruity, was incorporate with him. Then a tiny light, like a star burning all
alone in the center of infinitude, began to dawn far off; and it drew nearer
and nearer and grew larger and larger till it turned the black void to a
dazzling luminescence, to a many-tinted glory that smote full upon Alvor.
He
found that he was lying with wide-open eyes on a huge couch, in a sort of
pavilion consisting of a low and elliptical dome supported on double rows of
diagonally fluted pillars. He was quite naked, though a sheet of some thin and
pale yellow fabric had been thrown across his lower limbs. He saw at a glance,
even though his brain centers were still half benumbed as by the action of some
opiate, that this fabric was not the product of any terrestrial loom. Beneath
his body, the couch was covered with gray and purple stuffs, but whether they
were made of feathers, fur or cloth he was quite uncertain, for they suggested
all three of these materials. They were very thick and resilient, and accounted
for the sense of extreme softness underneath him that marked his return from
the swoon. The couch itself stood higher above the floor than an ordinary bed,
and was also longer, and in his half-narcotized condition this troubled Alvor
even more than other aspects of his situation which were far less normal and
explicable.
Amazement
grew upon him as he looked about with reviving faculties, for all that he saw
and smelt and touched was totally foreign and unaccountable. The floor of the
pavilion was wrought in a geometric marquetry of ovals, rhomboids and
equilaterals, in white, black and yellow metals that no earthly mine had ever
disclosed; and the pillars were of the same three metals, regularly
alternating. The dome alone was entirely of yellow. Not far from the couch,
there stood on a squat tripod a dark and widemouthed vessel from which poured
an opalescent vapor. Someone standing behind it, invisible through the cloud of
gorgeous fumes, was fanning the vapor toward Alvor. He recognized it as the
source of the myrh-like odor that had first troubled his reanimating senses. It
was quite agreeable but was borne away from him again and again by gusts of hot
wind which brought into the pavilion a mixture of perfumes that were both sweet
and acrid and were altogether novel. Looking between the pillars, he saw the
monstrous heads of towering blossoms with pagoda-like tiers of sultry, sullen
petals, and beyond them a terraced landscape of low hills of mauve and nacarat
soil, extending toward a horizon incredibly remote, till they rose and rose
against the heavens. Above all this was a whitish sky, filled with a blinding
radiation of intense light from a sun that was now hidden by the dome. Alvor's
eyes began to ache, the odors disturbed and oppressed him, and he was possessed
by a terrible dubiety and perplexity, amid which he remembered vaguely his
meeting with Vizaphmal, and the events preceding his swoon. He was unbearably
nervous, and for some time all his ideas and sensations took on the painful
disorder and irrational fears of incipient delirium.
A
figure stepped from behind the veering vapors and approached the couch. It was
Vizaphmal, who bore in one of his five hands the large thin circular fan of
bluish metal he had been using. He was holding in another hand a tubular cup,
half full of an erubescent liquid.
'Drink
this,' he ordered, as he put the cup to Alvor's lips. The liquid was so bitter
and fiery that Alvor could swallow it only in sips, between periods of gasping
and coughing. But once he had gotten it down, his brain cleared with celerity
and all his sensations were soon comparatively normal.
'Where
am I?' he asked. His voice sounded very strange and unfamiliar to him, and its
effect bordered upon ventriloquism — which, as he afterward learned, was due to
certain peculiarities of the atmospheric medium.
'You
are on my country estate, in Ulphalor, a kingdom which occupies the whole
northern hemisphere of Satabbor, the inmost planet of Sanarda, that sun which
is called Antares in your world. You have been unconscious for three of our
days, a result which I anticipated, knowing the profound shock your nervous
system would receive from the experience through which you have passed.
However, I do not think you will suffer any permanent illness or inconvenience;
and I have just now administered, to you a sovereign drug which will aid in the
adjustment of your nerves and your corporeal functions to the novel conditions
under which you are to live henceforward. I employed the opalescent vapor to
arouse you from your swoon, when I deemed that it had become safe and wise to
do this. The vapor is produced by the burning of an aromatic seaweed, and is
magisterial in its restorative effect.'
Alvor
tried to grasp the full meaning of this information, but his brain was still
unable to receive anything more than a m êlange of impressions that were
totally new and obscure and outlandish. As he pondered the words of Vizaphmal,
he saw that rays of bright light had fallen between the columns and were
creeping across the floor. Then the rim of a vast ember-colored sun descended
below the rim of the dome and he felt an overwhelming, but somehow not
insupportable, warmth. His eyes no longer ached, not even in the direct beams
of this luminary; nor did the perfumes irritate him, as they had done for a
while.
'I
think,' said Vizaphmal, 'that you may now arise. It is afternoon, and there is
much for you to learn, and much to be done.'
Alvor
threw off the thin covering of yellow cloth, and sat up, with his legs hanging
over the edge of the couch.
'But
my clothing?' he queried. 'You will need none in our climate. No one has ever
worn anything of the sort in Satabbor.'
Alvor
digested this idea, and though he was slightly disconcerted, he made up his
mind that he would accustom himself to whatever should be required of him.
Anyway, the lack of his usual habiliments was far from disagreeable in the dry,
sultry air of this new world.
He
slid from the couch to the floor, which was nearly five feet below him, and
took several steps. He was not weak or dizzy, as he had half expected, but all
his movements were characterized by the same sense of extreme bodily weight of
which he had been dimly aware while still in a semi-conscious condition.
'The
world in which you now dwell is somewhat larger than your own,' explained
Vizaphmal, 'and the force of gravity is proportionately greater. Your weight
has been increased by no less than a third; but I think you will soon become
habituated to this, as well as to the other novelties of your situation.'
Motioning
the poet to follow him, he led the way through that portion of the pavilion
which had been behind Alvor's head as he lay on the couch. A spiral bridge of
ascending stairs ran from this pavilion to a much larger pile where numerous
wings and annexes of the same aerial architecture of domes and columns flared
from a central edifice with a circular wall and many thin spires. Below the
bridge, about the pavilion, and around the whole edifice above, were gardens of
trees and flowers that caused Alvor to recall the things he had seen during his
one experiment with hashish. The foliation of the trees was either very fine
and hair-like, or else it consisted of huge, semi-globular and discoid forms
depending from horizontal branches and suggesting a novel union of fruit and
leaf. Almost all colors, even green, were shown in the bark and foliage of
these trees. The flowers were mainly similar to those Alvor had seen from the
pavilion, but there were others of a short, puffy-stemmed variety, with no
trace of leaves, and with malignant purpleblack heads full of crimson mouths,
which swayed a little even when there was no wind. There were oval pools and meandering
streams of a dark water with irisated glints all through this garden, which,
with the columnar edifice, occupied the middle of a small plateau.
As
Alvor followed his guide along the bridge, a perspective of hills and plains
all marked out in geometric diamonds and squares and triangles, with a large
lake or inland sea in their midst, was revealed momently. Far in the distance,
more than a hundred leagues away, were the gleaming domes and towers of some
baroque city, toward which the enormous orb of the sun was now declining. When
he looked at this sun and saw the whole extent of its diameter for the first
time, he felt an overpowering thrill of imaginative awe and wonder and
exultation at the thought that it was identical with the red star to which he
had addressed in another world the half-lyric, half-ironic lines of his ode.
At
the end of the spiral bridge, they came to a second and more spacious pavilion,
in which stood a high table with many seats attached to it by means of curving
rods. Table and chairs were of the same material, a light, grayish metal. As
they entered this pavilion, two strange beings appeared and bowed before
Vizaphmal. They resembled the scientist in their organic structure, but were
not so tall and their coloring was very drab and dark, with no hint of
opalescence. By certain bizarre indications Alvor surmised that the two beings
were of different sexes.
'You
are right,' said Vizaphmal, reading his thoughts. 'These persons are a male and
female of the two inferior sexes called Abbars, who constitute the workers, as
well as the breeders, of our world. There are two superior sexes, who are
sterile, and who form the intellectual, esthetic and ruling classes, to whom I
belong. We call ourselves the Alphads. The Abbars are more numerous, but we
hold them in close subjection; and even though they are our parents as well as
our slaves, the ideas of filial piety which prevail in your world would be
regarded as truly singular by us. We supervise their breeding, so that the due
proportion of Abbars and Alphads may be maintained, and the character of the
progeny is determined by the injection of certain serums at the time of
conceiving. We ourselves, though sterile, are capable of what you call love,
and our amorous delights are more complex than yours in their nature.'
He
now turned and addressed the two Abbars. The phonetic forms and combinations
that issued from his lips were unbelievably different from those of the
scholarly English in which he had spoken to Alvor. There were strange gutturals
and linguals and oddly prolonged vowels which Alvor, for all his subsequent
attempts to learn the language, could never quite approximate and which argued
a basic divergence in the structure of the vocal organs of Vizaphmal from that
of his own.
Bowing
till their heads almost touched the floor, the two Abbars disappeared among the
columns in a wing of the building and soon returned, carrying long trays on
which were unknown foods and beverages in utensils of unearthly forms.
'Be
seated,' said Vizaphmal. The meal that followed was far from unpleasant, and
the foodstuffs were quite palatable, though Alvor was not sure whether they
were meats or vegetables. He learned that they were really both, for his host
explained that they were the prepared fruits of plants which were half animal
in their cellular composition and characteristics. These plants grew wild, and
were hunted with the same care that would be required in hunting dangerous
beasts, on account of their mobile branches and the poisonous darts with which
they were armed. The two beverages were a pale, colorless wine with an acrid
flavor, made from a root, and a dusky, sweetish liquid, the natural water of
this world. Alvor noticed that the water had a saline after-taste.
'The
time has now come,' announced Vizaphmal at the end of the meal, 'to explain
frankly the reason why I have brought you here. We will now adjourn to that
portion of my home which you would term a laboratory, or work-shop, and which
also includes my library.'
They
passed through several pavilions and winding colonnades, and reached the
circular wall at the core of the edifice. Here a high narrow door, engraved
with heteroclitic ciphers, gave admission to a huge room without windows, lit
by a yellow glow whose cause was not ascertainable.
'The
walls and ceiling are lined with a radio-active substance, said Vizaphmal,
'which affords this illumination. The vibrations of this substance are also
highly stimulating to the processes of thought.'
Alvor
looked about him at the room, which was filled with alembics and cupels and
retorts and sundry other scientific mechanisms, all of unfamiliar types and
materials. He could not even surmise their use. Beyond them, in a corner, he
saw the apparatus of intersecting bars, with the two heavy disks, in which he
and Vizaphmal had made their passage through etheric space. Around the walls
there were a number of deep shelves, laden with great rolls like the volumes of
the ancients.
Vizaphnal
selected one of these rolls, and started to unfurl it. It was four feet wide,
was gray in color, and was closely written with many columns of dark violet and
maroon characters that ran horizontally instead of up and down.
'It
will be necessary,' said Vizaphmal, 'to tell you a few facts regarding the
history, religion and intellectual temper of our world, before I read to you
the singular prophecy contained in one of the columns of this ancient
chronicle.
'We
are a very old people, and the beginnings, or even the first maturity of our
civilization, antedate the appearance of the lowliest forms of life on your
earth. Religious sentiment and the veneration of the past have always been
dominant factors among us, and have shaped our history to an amazing extent.
Even today, the whole mass of the Abbars and the majority of the Alphads are
immersed in superstition, and the veriest details of quotidian life are
regulated by sacerdotal law. A few scientists and thinkers, like myself, are
above all such puerilities; but, strictly between you and me, the Alphads, for all
their superior and highly aristocratic traits, are mainly the victims of
arrested development in this regard. They have cultivated the epicurean and
esthetic side of life to a high degree, they are accomplished artists,
sybarites and able administrators or politicians; but, intellectually, they
have not freed themselves from the chains of a sterile pantheism and an all too
prolific priesthood.
'Several
cycles ago, in what might be called an early period of our history, the worship
of all our sundry deities was at its height. There was at this time a veritable
eruption, a universal plague of prophets; who termed themselves the voices of
the gods, even as similarly-minded persons have done in your world. Each of
these prophets made his own especial job-lot of predictions, often quite
minutely worked out and elaborate, and sometimes far from lacking in
imaginative quality. A number of these prophecies have since been fulfilled to
the letter, which, as you may well surmise, has helped enormously in confirming
the hold of religion. However, between ourselves, I suspect that their
fulfillment has had behind it more or less of a shrewd instrumentality,
supplied by those who could profit therefrom in one way or another.
'There
was one vates, Abbolechiolor by name, who was even more fertile-minded and
long-winded than his fellows. I shall now translate to you, from the volumen I
have just unrolled, a prediction that he made in the year 299 of the cycle of
Sargholoth, the third of the seven epochs into which our known history has been
subdivided. It runs thus:
'When,
for the second time following this prediction, the two outmost moons of
Satabbor shall be simultaneously darkened in a total eclipse by the third and
innermost moon, and when the dim night of this occultation shall have worn away
in the dawn, a mighty wizard shall appear in the city of Sarpoulom, before the
palace of the kings of Ulphalor, accompanied by a most unique and unheard-of
monster with two arms, two legs, two eyes and a white skin. And he that then
rules in Ulphalor shall be deposed ere noon of this day, the wizard shall be
enthroned in his place, to reign as long as the white monster shall abide with
him.' Vizaphmal paused, as if to give Alvor a chance to cogitate the matters
that had been presented to him. Then, while his three eyes assumed a look of
quizzical sharpness and shrewdness, he continued:
'Since
the promulgation of this prophecy, there has already been one total edipse of
our two outer moons by the inner one. And, according to all the calculations of
our astronomers, in which I can find no possible flaw, a second similar eclipse
is now about to take place — in fact, it is due this very night. If
Abbolechiolor was truly inspired, tomorrow morn is the time when the prophecy
will be fulfilled. However, I decided some while ago that its fuulfilment
should not be left to chance; and one of my purposes in designing the mechanism
with which I visited your world, was to find a monster who would meet the
specifications of Abbolechiolor. No creature of this anomalous kind has ever
been known, or even fabled, to exist in Satabbor; and I made a thorough search
of many remote and outlying planets without being able to obtain what I
required. In some of these worlds there were monsters of very uncommon types,
with an almost unlimited number of visual organs and limbs; but the variety to
which you belong, with only two eyes, two arms and two legs, must indeed be
rare throughout the infra-galactic universe, since I have not discovered it in
any other planet than your own.
'I
am sure that you now conceive the project I have long nurtured. You and I will
appear at dawn in Sarpoulom, the capital of ulphalor, whose domes and towers
you saw this afternoon far off on the plain. Because of the celebrated prophecy,
and the publicly known calculations regarding the imminence of a second
two-fold eclipse, a great crowd will doubtless be gathered before the palace of
the kings to await whatever shall occur. Akkiel, the present king, is by no
means popular, and your advent in company with me, who am widely famed as a
wizard, will be the signal for his dethronement. I shall then be ruler in his
place, even as Abbolechiolor has so thoughtfully predicted. The holding of
supreme temporal power in Ulphalor is not undesirable, even for one who is wise
and learned and above most of the vanities of life, as I am. When this honor
has devolved upon my unworthy shoulders, I shall be able to offer you, as a
reward for your miraculous aid, an existence of rare and sybaritic luxury, of
rich and varied sensation, such as you can hardly have imagined. It is true, no
doubt, that you will be doomed to a certain loneliness among us: you will
always be looked upon as a monster, a portentous anomaly; but such, I believe
was your lot in the world where I found you and where you were about to cast
yourself into a most unpleasant river. There, as you have learned, all poets
are regarded as no less anomalous than double-headed snakes or five-legged
calves.'
Alvor
had listened to this speech in manifold and ever-increasing amazement. Toward
the end, when there was no longer any doubt concerning Vizaphmal's intention,
he felt the sting of a bitter and curious irony at the thought of the role he
was destined to play. However, he could do no less than admit the cogency of
Vizaphmal's final argument.
'I
trust,' said Vizaphmal, 'that I have not injured your feelings by my frankness,
or by the position in which I am about to place you.'
'Oh,
no, not at all,' Alvor hastened to assure him.
'In
that case, we shall soon begin our journey to Sarpoulom, which will take all
night. Of course, we could make the trip in the flash of an instant with my
space-annihilator, or in a few minutes with one of the air-machines that have
long been employed among us. But I intend to use a very old-fashioned mode of
conveyance for the occasion, so that we will arrive in the proper style, at the
proper time, and also that you may enjoy our scenery and view the double
eclipse at leisure.'
When
they emerged from the windowless room, the colonnades and pavilions without
were full of a rosy light, though the sun was still an hour above the horizon.
This, Alvor learned, was the usual prelude of a Satabborian sunset. He and
Vizaphmal watched while the whole landscape before them became steeped in the
ruddy glow, which deepened through shades of cinaabar and ruby to a rich garnet
by the time Aatares had begun to sink from sight. When the huge orb had
disappeared, the intervening lands took on a fiery amethyst, and tall auroral flames
of a hundred hues shot upward to the zenith from the sunken sun. Alvor was
spellbound by the glory of the spectacle.
Turning
from this magnificent display at an unfamiliar sound, he saw that a singular
vehicle had been brought by the Abbars to the steps of the pavilion in which
they stood. It was more like a chariot than anything else, and was drawn by
three animals undreamt of in human fable or heraldry. These animals were black
and hairless, their bodies were extremely long, each of them had eight legs and
a forked tail, and their whole aspect, including their flat, venomous,
triangular heads, was uncomfortably serpentine. A series of green and scarlet
wattles hung from their throats and bellies, and semi-translucent membranes,
erigible at will, were attached to their sides.
'You
behold,' Vizaphmal informed Alvor, 'the traditional conveyance that has been
used since time immemorial by all orthodox wizards in Ulphalor. These creatures
are called orpods, and they are among the swiftest of our mammalian serpents.'
He
and Alvor seated themselves in the vehicle. Then the three orpods, who had no
reins in their complicated harness, started off at a word of command on a
spiral road that ran from Vizaphmal's home to the plain beneath. As they went,
they erected the membranes at their sides and soon attained an amazing speed.
Now,
for the first time, Alvor saw the three moons of Satabbor, which had risen
opposite the afterglow. They were all large, especially the innermost one, a
perceptible warmth was shed by their pink rays, and their combined illumination
was nearly as clear and bright as that of a terrestrial day.
The
land through wbich Vizaphmal and the poet now passed was uninhabited, in spite
of its nearness to Sarpoulom, and they met no one. Alvor learned that the
terraces he had seen upon awaking were not the work of intelligent beings, as
he had thought, but were a natural formation of the hills. Vizaphmal had chosen
this location for his home because of the solitude and privacy, so desirable
for the scientific experiments to which he had devoted himself.
After
they had traversed many leagues, they began to pass occasional houses, or a
like structure to that of Vizaphmal's. Then the road meandered along the rim of
cultivated fields, which Alvor recognized as the source of the geometric
divisions he had seen from afar during the day. He was told that these fields
were given mainly to the growing of root-vegetables, of a gigantic truffle, and
a kind of succulent cactus, which formed the chief foods of the Abbars. The
Alphads ate by choice only the meat of animals and the fruits of wild,
half-animal plants, such as those with which Alvor had been served.
By
midnight the three moons had drawn very close together and the second moon had
begun to occlude the outermost. Then the inner moon came slowly across the
others, till in an hour's time the eclipse was complete. The diminution of
light was very marked, and the whole effect was now similar to that of a
moonlit night on earth.
'It
will be morning in a little more than two hours,' said Vizaphmal, 'since our
nights are extremely short at this time of year. The eclipse will be over
before then. But there is no need for us to hurry.'
He
spoke to the orpods, who folded their membranes and settled to a sort of trot.
Sarpoulom
was now visible in the heart of the plain, and its outlines were rendered more
distinct as the two hidden moons began to draw forth from the adumbration of
the other. When to this triple light the ruby rays of earliest morn were
addedd, the city loomed upon the travelers with fantastic many-storied piles of
that same open type of metal architecture which the home of Vizaphmal had
displayed. This architecture, Alvor found, was general throughout the land,
though an older type with closed walls was occasionally to be met with, and was
used altogether in the building of prisons and the inquisitions maintained by
the priesthood of the various deities.
It
was an incredible vision that Alvor saw — a vision of high domes upborne on
slender elongated columns, tier above tier, of airy colonnades and bridges and
hanging gardens loftier than Babylon or than Babel, all tinged by the
ever-changing red that accompanied and followed the Satabborian dawn, even as
it had preceded the sunset. Into this vision, along streets that were paven
with the same metal as that of the buildings, Alvor and Vizaphmal were drawn by
the three orpods.
The
poet was overcome by the sense of an unimaginably old and alien and diverse
life which descended upon him from these buildings. He was surprised to find
that the streets were nearly deserted and that little sign of activity was
manifest anywhere. A few Abbars, now and then, scuttled away in alleys or
entrances at the approach of the orpods, and two beings of a coloration similar
to that of Vizaphmal, one of whom Alvor took to be a female, issued from a
colonnade and stood staring at the travelers in evident stupefaction.
When
they had followed a sort of winding avenue for more than a mile, Alvor saw
between and above the edifices in front of them the domes and upper tiers of a
building that surpassed all the others in its extent.
'You
now behold the palace of the kings of Ulphalor,' his companion told him.
In
a little while they emerged upon a great square that surrounded the palace.
This square was crowded with the people of the city, who, as Vizaphmal had
surmised, were all gathered to await the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of the
prophecy of Abbolechiolor. The open galleries and arcades of the huge edifice,
which rose to a height of ten stories, were also laden with watching figures.
Abbars were the most plentiful element in his throng, but there were also
multitudes of the gayly colored Alphads among them.
At
sight of Alvor and his companion, a perceptible movement, a sort of communal
shuddering which soon grew convulsive, ran through the whole assemblage in the
square and along the galleries of the edifice above. Loud cries of a peculiar
shrillness and harshness arose, there was a strident sound of beaten metal in
the heart of the palace, like the gongs of an alarm, and mysterious lights
glowed out and were extinguished in the higher stories. Clangors of unknown
machines, the moan and roar and shriek of strange instruments, were audible
above the clamor of the crowd, which grew more tumultuous and agitated in its
motion. A way was opened for the car drawn by the three orpods, and Vizaphmal
and Alvor soon reached the entrance of the palace.
There
was an unreality about it all to Alvor, and the discomfiture he had felt in drawing
upon himself the weird phosphoric gaze of ten thousand eyes, all of whom were
now intent with a fearsome uncanny curiosity on every detail of his physique,
was like the discomfiture of some absurd and terrible dream. The movement of
the crowd had ceased, while the car was passing along the unhuman lane that had
been made for it, and there was an interval of silence. Then, once more, there
were babble and debate, and cries that had the accent of martial orders or
summonses were caught up and repeated. The throng began to move, with a new and
more concentric swirling, and the foremost ranks of Abbars and Alphads swelled
like a dark and tinted wave into the colonnades of the palace. They climbed the
pillars with a dreadful swift agility to the stories above, they thronged the
courts and pavilions and arcades, and though a weak resistaace was appareatly
put up by those within, there was nothing that could stem them.
Through
all this clangor and clamor and tumult. Vizaphmal stood in the car with an
impertubable mien beside the poet. Soon a number of Alphads, evidently a
delegation, issued from the palace and made obeisance to the wizard, whom they
addressed in humble and supplicative tones.
'A
revolution has been precipitated by our advent, explained Vizaphmal, 'and
Akkiel the king has fled. The chamberlains of the court and the high priests of
all our local deities are now offering me the throne of Ulphalor. Thus the
prophecy is being fulfilled to the letter. You must agree with me that the
great Abbolechiolor was happily inspired.
The
ceremony of Vizaphmal's enthronement was held almost immediately, in a huge
hall at the core of the palace, open like all the rest of the structure, and
with columns of colossal size. The throne was a great globe of azure metal,
with a seat hollowed out near the top, accessible by means of a serpentine
flight of stairs. Alvor, at an order issued by the wizard, was allowed to stand
at the base of this globe with some of the Alphads.
The
enthronement itself was quite simple. The wizard mounted the stairs, amid the
silence of a multitude that had thronged the hall, and seated himself in the
hollow of the great globe. Then a very tall and distinguished-looking Alphad
also climbed the steps, carrying a heavy rod, one half of which was green, and
the other a swart, sullen crimson, and placed this rod in the hands of
Vizaphmal. Later, Alvor learned that the crimson end of this rod could emit a
death-dealing ray, and the green a vibration that cured almost all the kinds of
illness to which the Satabborians were subject. Thus it was more than
symbolical of the twofold power of life and death with which the king had been
invested.
The
ceremony was now at an end, and the gathering quickly dispersed. Alvor, at the
command of Vizaphmal, was installed in a suite of open apartments on the third
story of the palace, at the end of many labyrinthine stairs. A dozen Abbars,
who were made his personal retainers, soon came in, each carrying a different
food or drink. The foods were beyond belief in their strangeness, for they
induded the eggs of a moth-like insect large as a plover, and the apples of a
fungoid tree that grew in the craters of dead volcanoes. They were served in
ewers of a white and shining mineral, upborne on legs of fantastic length, and
wrought with a cunning artistry. Likewise he was given, in shallow bowls, a
liquor made from the blood-like juice of living plants, and a wine in which the
narcotic pollen of some night-blooming flower had been dissolved.
The
days and weeks that now followed were, for the poet, an experience beyond the
visionary resources of any terrestrial drug. Step by step, he was initiated, as
much as possible for one so radically alien, into the complexities and
singularities of life in a new world. Gradually his nerves and his mind, by the
aid of the erubescent liquid which Vizaphmal continued to administer to him at
intervals, became habituated to the strong light and heat, the intense
radiative properties of a soil and atmosphere with unearthly chemical constituents,
the strange foods and beverages, and the people themselves with their queer
anatomy and queerer customs. Tutors were engaged to teach him the language,
and, in spite of the difficulties presented by certain unmanageable consonants,
certain weird ululative vowels, he learned enough of it to make his simpler
ideas and wants understood.
He
saw Vizaphmal every day, and the new king seemed to cherish a real gratitude
toward him for his indispensable aid in the fulfilment of the prophecy.
Vizaphmal took pains to instruct him in regard to all that it was necessary to
know, and kept him well-informed as to the progress of public events in
Ulphalor. He was told, among other things, that no news had been heard
concerning the whereabouts of Akkiel, the late ruler. Also, Vizaphmal had
reason to be aware of more or less opposition toward himself on the part of the
various priesthoods, who, in spite of his life-long discretion, had some how
learned of his free-thinking propensities.
For
all the attention, kindness and service that he received, and the unique luxury
with which he was surrounded, Alvor felt that these people, even as the wizard
had forewarned him, looked upon him merely as a kind of unnatural curiosity or
anomaly. He was no less monstrous to them than they were to him, and the gulf
created by the laws of a diverse biology, by an alien trend of evolution,
seemed impossible to bridge in any manner. He was questioned by many of them,
and, in especial, by more than one delegation of noted scientists, who desired
to know as much as he could tell them about himself. But the queries were so
patronizing, so rude and narrow-minded and scornful and smug, that he was soon
wont to feign a total ignorance of the language on such occasions. Indeed,
there was a gulf; and he was rendered even more acutely conscious of it
whenever he met any of the female Abbars or Alphads of the court, who eyed him
with disdainful inquisitiveness, and among whom a sort of tittering usually
arose when he passed. His naked members, so limited in number, were obviously
as great a source of astonishment to them as their own somewhat intricate and
puzzling charms were to him. All of them were quite nude; indeed, nothing, not
even a string of jewels or a single gem, was ever worn by any of the
Satabborians. The female Alphads, like the males, were extremely tall and were
gorgeous with epidermic hues that would have outdone the plumage of any
peacock; and their anatomical structure was most peculiar... Alvor began to
feel the loneliness of which Vizaphmal had spoken, and he was overcome at times
by a great nostalgia for his own world, by a planetary homesickness. He became
atrociously nervous, even if not actually ill.
While
he was still in this condition, Vizaphmal took him on a tour of Ulphalor that
had become necessary for political reasons. More or less incredulity concerning
the real existence of such a monstrosity as Alvor had been expressed by the
folk of outlying provinces, of the polar realms and the antipodes, and the new
ruler felt that a visual demonstration of the two-armed, two-legged and
two-eyed phenomenon would be far from inadvisable, to establish beyond dispute
the legitimacy of his own claim to the throne. In the course of this tour, they
visited many unique cities, and the rural and urban centers of industries
peculiar to Satabbor; and Alvor saw the mines from which the countless minerals
and metals used in Ulphalor were extracted by the toil of millions of Abbars.
These metals were found in a pure state, and were of inexhaustible extent. Also
he saw the huge oceans, which, with certain inland seas and lakes that were fed
from underground sources, formed the sole water-supply of the ageing planet,
where no rain had even been rumored to fall for centuries. The sea-water, after
undergoing a treatment that purged it of a number of undesirable elements, was
carried all through the land by a system of conduits. Moreover, he saw the
marshlands at the north pole, with their vicious tangle of animate vegetation,
into which no one had even tried to penetrate.
They
met many outland peoples in the course of this tour; but the general
characteristics were the same throughout Ulphdor, except in one or two races of
the lowest aborigines, among whom there were no Alphads. Everywhere the poet was
eyed with the same cruel and ignorant curiosity that had been shown in
Sarpoulom. However, he became gradually inured to this, and the varying
spectades of bizarre interest and the unheard-of scenes that he saw daily,
helped to divert him a little from his nostalgia for the lost earth.
When
he and Vizaphmal returned to Sarpoulom, after an absence of many weeks, they
found that much discontent. and revolutionary sentiment had been sown among the
multitude by the hierarchies of the Satabborian gods and goddesses,
particularly by the priesthood of Cunthamosi, the Cosmic Mother, a female deity
in high favor among the two reproductive sexes, from whom the lower ranks of
her hierophants were recruited. Cunthamosi was worshipped as the source of all
things; her maternal organs were believed to have given birth to the sun, the
moon, the world, the stars, the planets and even the meteors which often fell
in Satabbor. But it was argued by her priests that such a monstrosity as Alvor
could not possibly have issued from her womb, and that therefore his very
existence was a kind of blasphemy, and that the rule of the heretic mizard, Vizaphmal,
based on the advent of this abnormality, was likewise a flagrant insult to the
Cosmic Mother. They did not deny the apparently miraculous fulfilment of the
prophecy of Abbolechiolor, but it was maintained that this fulfillment was no
assurance of the perpetuity of Vizaphmal's reign, and no proof that his reign
was countenanced by any of the gods.
'I
can not conceal from you,' said Vizaphmal to Alvor, that the position in which
we both stand is now slightly parlous. I intend to bring the space-annihilator
from my country home to the court, since it is not impossible that I may have
need of it, and that some foreign sphere will soon become more salubrious for
me than my native one.'
However,
it would seem that this able scientist, alert wizard and competent king had not
grasped the full imminence of the danger that threatened his reign; or else he
spoke, as was sometimes his wont, with sardonic moderation. He showed no
further concern, beyond setting a strong guard about Alvor to attend him at all
times, lest an attempt should be made to kidnap the poet in consideration of
the last clause of the prophecy.
Three
days after the return to Sarpoulom, while Alvor was standing in one of his
private balconies looking out over the roofs of the town, with his guards
chattering idly in the rooms behind, he saw that the streets were dark with a
horde of people, mainly Abbars, who were streaming silently toward the palace.
A few Alphads, distinguishable even at a distance by their gaudy hues, were at
the head of this throng. Alarmed at the spectacle, and remembering what the
king had told him, he went to find Vizaphmal and climbed the eternal tortuous
series of complicated stairs that led to the king's personal suite. Others
among the inmates of the court had seen the advancing crowd, and there were
agitation, terror and frantic hurry everywhere. Mounting the last flight of
steps to the king's threshold, Alvor was astounded to find that many of the
Abbars, who had gained ingress from the other side of the palace and had scaled
the successive rows of columns and stairs with ape-like celerity, were already
pouring into the room. Vizaphmal himself was standing before the open framework
of the space-annihilator, which had now been installed beside his couch. The
rod of royal investiture was in his hand, and he was levelling the crimson head
at the formost of the invading Abbars. As this creature leapt toward him,
waving an atrocious weapon lined by a score of hooked blades, Vizaphmal
tightened his hold on the rod, thus pressing a secret spring, and a thin
rose-colored ray of light was emitted from the end, causing the Abbar to
crumple and fall. Others, in nowise deterred, ran forward to succeed him, and
the king turned his lethal beam upon them with the calm air of one who is
conducting a scientific experiment, till the floor was piled with dead Abbars.
Still others took their place, and some began to cast their hooked weapons at
the king. None of these touched him, but he seemed to weary of the sport, and
stepping within the framework, he closed it upon himself. A moment more, and
then there was a roar as of a thousand thunders, and the mechanism and Vizaphmal
were no longer to be seen. Never, at any future time, was the poet to learn
what had become of him, nor in what stranger world than Satabbor he was now
indulging his scientific fancies and curiosities.
Alvor
had no time to feel, as he might conceivably have done, that he had been basely
deserted by the king. All the nether and upper stories of the great edifice
were now a-swarm with the invading crowd, who were no longer silent, but were
uttering shrill, ferocious cries as they bore down the opposition of the
courtiers and slaves. The whole place was inundated by an ever-mounting sea, in
which there were now myriads of Alphads as well as of Abbars; and no escape was
possible. In a few instants, Alvor himself was seized by a group of the Abbars,
who seemed to have been enraged rather than terrified or discomforted by the
vanishing of Vizaphmal. He recognized them as priests of Cunthamosi by an odd
oval and vertical marking of red pigments on their swart bodies. They bound him
viciously with cords made from the intestines of a dragon-like animal, and
carried him away from the palace, along streets that were lined by a staring
and glibbering mob, to a building on the southern outskirts of Sarpoulom, which
Vizaphmal had once pointed out to him as the Inquisition of the Cosmic Mother.
This
edifice, unlike most of the buildings in Sarpoulom, was walled on all sides and
was constructed entirely of enormous gray bricks, made from the local soil, and
bigger and harder than blocks of granite. In a long five-sided chamber
illumined only by narrow slits in the roof, Alvor found himself arraigned
before a jury of the priests, presided over by a swollen and pontifical-looking
Alphad, the Grand Inquisitor.
The
place was filled with ingenious and grotesque implements of torture, and the
very walls were hung to the ceiling with contrivances that would have put
Torquemada to shame. Some of them were very small, and were designed for the
treatment of special and separate nerves; and others were intended to harrow
the entire epidermic area of the body at a single twist of their screw-like
mechanism.
Alvor
could understand little of the charges being preferred against him, but
gathered that they were the same, or included the same, of which Vizaphmal had
spoken — to wit, that he, Alvor, was a monstrosity that could never have been
conceived or brought forth by Cunthamosi, and whose very existence, past,
present and future, was a dire affront to this divinity. The entire scene — the
dark and lurid room with its array of hellish instruments, the diabolic faces
of the inquisitors, and the high unhuman drone of their voices as they intoned
the charges and brought judgment against Alvor — was laden with a horror beyond
the horror of dreams.
Presently
the Grand Inquisitor focussed the malign gleam of his three unblinking orbs
upon the poet, and began to pronounce an interminable sentence, pausing a
little at quite regular intervals which seemed to mark the clauses of the
punishment that was to be inflicted. These clauses were well-nigh innumerable,
but Alvor could comprehend almost nothing of what was said; and doubtless it
was as well that, he did not comprehend.
When
the voice of the swollen Alphad had ceased, the poet was led away through
endless corridors and down a stairway that seemed to descend into the bowels of
Satabbor. These corridors, and also the stairway, were luminous with
self-emitted light that resembled the phosphorescence of decaying matter in
tombs and catacombs. As Alvor went downward with his guards, who were all
Abbars of the lowest type, he could hear somewhere in sealed unknowable, vaults
the moan and shriek of beings who endured the ordeals imposed by the
inquisitors of Cunthamosi.
They
came to the final step of the stairway, where, in a vast vault, an abyss whose
bottom was not discernible yawned in the center of the floor. On its edge there
stood a fantastic sort of windlass on which was wound an immense coil of
blackish rope.
The
end of this rope was now tied about Alvor's ankles, and he was lowered head
downward into the gulf by the inquisitors. The sides were not luminous like
those of the stairway, and he could see nothing. But, as he descended into the
gulf, the terrible discomfort of his position was increased by sensations of an
ulterior origin. He felt that he was passing through a kind of hairy material
with numberless filaments that clung to his head and body and limbs like minute
tentacles, and whose contact gave rise to an immediate itching. The substance
impeded him more and more, till at last he was held immovably suspended as in a
net, and all the while the separate hairs seemed to be biting into his flesh
with a million microscopic teeth, till the initial itching was followed by a
burning and a deep convulsive throbbing more exquisitely painful than the flames
of an auto da fe. The poet learned long afterward that the material into which
he had been lowered was a subterranean organism, half vegetable, half animal,
which grew from the side of the gulf, with long mobile feelers that were
extremely poisonous to the touch. But at the time, not the least of the horrors
he underwent was the uncertainty as to its precise nature.
After
he had hung for quite a while in this agonizing web, and had become almost
unconscious from the pain and the unnatural position, Alvor felt that he was
being drawn upward. A thousand of the fine thread-like tentacles clung to him
and his whole body was encircled with a mesh of insufferable pangs as he broke
loose from them. He swooned with the intensity of this pain, and when he recovered,
he was lying on the floor at the edge of the gulf, and one of the priests was
prodding him with a many-pointed weapon.
Alvor
gazed for a moment at the cruel visages of his tormenters, in the luminous glow
from the sides of the vault, and wondered dimly what infernal torture was next
to follow, in the carrying-out of the interminable sentence that had been
pronounced. He surmised, of course, that the one he had just undergone was mild
in comparison to the many that would succeed it. But he never knew, for at that
instant there came a crashing sound like the fall and shattering of the
universe; the walls, the floor and the stairway rocked to and fro in a
veritable convulsion, and the vault above was riven in sunder, letting through
a rain of fragments of all sizes, some of which struck several of the
inquisitors and swept them into the gulf. Others of the priests leapt over the
edge in their terror, and the two who remained were in no condition to continue
their official duties. Both of them were lying beside Alvor with broken heads
from which, in lieu of blood, there issued a glutinous light-green liquid.
Alvor
could not imagine what had happened, but knew only that he himself was unhurt,
as far as the results of the cataclysm were concerned. His mental state was not
one to admit of scientific surmise: he was sick and dizzy from the ordeal he
had suffered, and his whole body was swollen, was blood-red and violently
burning from the touch of the organisms in the gulf. He had, however, enough
strength and presence of mind to grope with his bound hands for the weapon that
had been dropped by one of the inquisitors. By much patience, by untiring
ingenuity, he was able to cut the thongs about his wrists and ankles on the
sharp blade of one of the five points.
Carrying
this weapon, which he knew that he might need, he began the ascent of the
subterranean stairway. The steps were half blocked by fallen masses of stone,
and some of the landings and stairs, as well as the sides of the wall, were
cloven with enormous rents; and his egress was by no means an easy matter. When
he reached the top, he found that the whole ediflce was a pile of shattered
walls, with a great pit in its center from which a cloud of vapors issued. An
immense meteor had fallen, and had struck the Inquisition of the Cosmic Mother.
Alvor
was in no condition to appreciate the irony of this event, but at least he was
able to comprehend his chance of freedom. The only inquisitors now visible were
lying with squashed bodies whose heads or feet protruded from beneath the large
squares of overthrown brick, and Alvor lost no time in quitting the vicinity.
It
was now night, and only one of the three moons had arisen. Alvor struck off
through the level arid country to the south of Sarpoulom, where no one dwelt,
with the idea of crossing the boundaries of Ulphalor into one of the
independent kingdoms that lay below the equator. He remembered Vizaphmal
telling him once that the people of these kingdoms were more enlightened and
less priest-ridden than those of Ulphalor.
All
night he wandered, in a sort of daze that was at times delirium. The pain of
his swollen limbs increased, and he grew feverish. The moonlit plain seemed to
shift and waver before him, but was interminable as the landscape of a
hashish-dream. Presently the other two moons arose, and in the overtaxed
condition of his mind and nerves, he was never quite sure as to their actual
number. Usually, there appeared to be more than three, and this troubled him
prodigiously. He tried to resolve the problem for hours, as he staggered on,
and at last a little before dawn, he became altogether delirious.
He
was unable afterward to recall anything about his subsequent journey. Something
impelled him to go on even when his thews were dead and his brain an utter
blank: he knew nothing of the waste and terrible lands through which he roamed
in the hour-long ruby-red of morn and beneath a furnace-like sun; nor did he
know when he crossed the equator at sunset and entered Omanorion, the realm of
the empress Ambiala, still carrying in his hand the five-pointed weapon of one
of the dead inquisitors.
It
was night when Alvor awoke, but he had no means of surmising that it was not
the same night in which he had fled from the Inquisition of the Cosmic Mother;
and that many Satabborian days had gone by since he had fallen totally
exhausted and unconscious within the boundary-line of Omanorion. The warm, rosy
beams of the three moons were full in his face, but he could not know whether
they were ascending or declining. Anyhow, he was lying on a very comfortable
couch that was not quite so disconcertingly long and high as the one upon which
he had first awakened in Ulphalor. He was in an open pavilion, and this
pavilion was also a bower of multitudinous blossoms which leaned toward him
with faces that were both grotesque and weirdly beautiful, from vines that had
scaled the columns, or from the many curious metal pots that stood upon the
floor. The air that he breathed was a medley of perfumes more exotic than
frangipani; they were extravagantly sweet and spicy, but somehow he did not
find them oppressive. Rather, they served to augment the deep, delightful
languor of all his sensations.
As
he opened his eyes and turned a little on the couch, a female Alphad, not so
tall as those of Ulphalor and really quite of his own stature, came out from
behind the flowerpots and addressed him. Her language was not that of the
Ulphalorians, it was softer and less utterly unhuman, and though he could not
understand a word, he was immediately aware of a sympathetic note or undertone
which, so far, he had never heard on the lips of anyone in this world, not even
Vizaphmal.
He
replied in the language of Ulphalor, and found that he was understood. He and
the female Alphad now carried on as much of a conversation as Alvor's
linguistic abilities would permit. He learned that he was talking to the
empress Ambiala, the sole and supreme ruler of Omanorion, a quite extensive
realm contiguous to Ulphalor. She told him that some of her servitors, while
out hunting the wild, ferocious, half-animal fruits of the region, had found
him lying unconscious near a thicket of the deadly plants that bore these
fruits, and had brought him to her palace in Lompior, the chief city of
Omanorion. There, while he still lay in a week-long stupor, he had been treated
with medicaments that had now almost cured the painful swellings resultant from
his plunge among the hair-like organisms in the Inquisition.
With
genuine courtesy, the empress forbore to question the poet regarding himself,
nor did she express any surprise at his anatomical peculiarities. However, her
whole manner gave evidence of an eager and even fascinated interest, for she
did not take her eyes away from him at any time. He was a little embarrassed by
her intent scrutiny, and to cover this embarrassment, as well as to afford her
the explanations due to so kind a hostess, he tried to tell her as much as he
could of his own history and adventures. It was doubtful if she understood more
than half of what he said, but even this half obviously lent him an
increasingly portentous attraction in her eyes. All of her three orbs grew
round with wonder at the tale related by this fantastic Ulysses, and whenever
he stopped she would beg him to go on. The garnet and ruby and cinnabar
gradations of the dawn found Alvor still talking and the empress Ambiala still
listening.
In
the full light of Antares, Alvor saw that his hostess was, from a Satabborian
viewpoint, a really beautiful and exquisite creature. The iridescence of her coloring
was very soft and subtle, her arms and legs, though of the usual number, were
all voluptuously rounded, and the features of her face were capable of a wide
range of expression. Her usual look, however, was one of a sad and wistful
yearning. This look Alvor came to understand, when, with a growing knowledge of
her language, he learned that she too was a poet, that she had always been
troubled by vague desires for the exotic and the far-off, and that she was
thoroughly bored with everything in Omanorion, and especially with the male
Alphads of that region, none of whom could rightfully boast of having been her
lover even for a day. Alvor's biological difference from these males was
evidently the secret of his initial fascination for her.
The
poet's life in the palace of Ambiala, where he found that he was looked upon as
a permanent guest, was from the beginning much more agreeable than his
existence in Ulphalor had been. For one thing, there was Ambiala herself, who
impressed him as being infinitely more intelligent than the females of
Sarpoulom, and whose attitude was so thoughtful and sympathetic and admiring,
in contra-distinction to the attitude of those aforesaid females. Also, the
servitors of the palace and the people of Lompior, though they doubtless
regarded Alvor as a quite singular sort of being, were at least more tolerant
than the Ulphalorians; and he met with no manner of rudeness among them at any
time. Moreover, if there were any priesthoods in Omanorion, they were not of
the uncompromising type he had met north of the equator, and it would seem that
nothing was to be feared from them. No one ever spoke of religion to Alvor in
this ideal realm, and somehow he never actually learned whether or not
Omanorion possessed any gods or goddesses. Remembering his ordeal in the
Inquisition of the Cosmic Mother, he was quite willing not to broach the
subject, anyway.
Alvor
made rapid progress in the language of Omanorion, since the empress herself was
his teacher. He soon learned more and more about her ideas and tastes, about
her romantic love for the triple moonlight, and the odd flowers that she
cultivated with so much care and so much delectation. These blossoms were rare
anywhere in Satabbor: some of them were anemones that came from the tops of almost
inaccessible mountains many leagues in height, and others were forms
inconceivably more bizarre than orchids, mainly from terrific jungles near the
southern pole. He was soon privileged to hear her play on a certain musical
instrument of the country, in which were combined the characters of the flute
and the lute. And at last, one day, when he knew enough of the tongue to
appreciate a few of its subtleties, she read to him from a scroll of vegetable
vellum one of her poems, an ode to a star known as Atana by the people of
Omanorion. This ode was truly exquisite, was replete with poetic fancies of a
high order, and expressed a half-ironic yearning, sadly conscious of its own
impossibility, for the ultra-sidereal realms of Atana. Ending, she added:
'I
have always loved Atana, because it is so little and so far away.'
On
questioning her, Alvor learned to his overwhelming amazement, that Atana was
identical with a minute star called Arot in Ulphalor, which Vizaphmal had once
pointed out to him as the sun of his own earth. This star was visible only in
the rare interlunar dark, and it was considered a test of good eyesight to see
it even then.
When
the poet had communicated this bit of astronomical information to Ambiala, that
the star Atana was his own native sun, and had also told her of his Ode to
Antares, a most affecting scene occurred, for the empress encircled him with
her five arms and cried out:
'Do
you not feel, as I do, that we were destined for each other?'
Though
he was a little discomposed by Ambiala's display of affection, Alvor could do
no less than assent. The two beings, so dissimilar in external ways, were
absolutely overcome by the rapport revealed in this comparing of poetic notes;
and a real understanding, rare even with persons of the same evolutionary type,
was established between them henceforward. Also, Alvor soon developed a new
appreciation of the outward charms of Ambiala, which, to tell the truth, had
not altogether inveigled him theretofore. He reflected that after all her five
arms and three legs and three eyes were merely a superabundance of anatomical
features upon which human love was wont to set a by no means lowly value. As
for her opalescent coloring, it was, he thought, much more lovely than the
agglomeration of outlandish hues with which the human female figure had been
adorned in many modernistic paintings.
When
it became known in Lompior that Alvor was the lover of Ambiala, no surprise or
censure was expressed by any one. Doubtless the people, especially the male
Alphads who had vainly wooed the empress, thought that her tastes were queer,
not to say eccentric. But anyway, no comment was made: it was her own amour
after all, and no one else could carry it on for her. It would seem, from this,
that the people of Omanorion had mastered the ultra-civilized art of minding
their own business.
END.
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