The Moon Pool Read online

  CHAPTER XV

  The Angry, Whispering Globe

  Our way led along a winding path between banked masses of softlyradiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starredwith fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging fromthe branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along theirthreads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail and gorgeouslyflamboyant.

  The path we trod was an exquisite mosaic--pastel greens and pinks upona soft grey base, garlands of nimbused forms like the flaming rose ofthe Rosicrucians held in the mouths of the flying serpents. A smallerpavilion arose before us, single-storied, front wide open.

  Upon its threshold Rador paused, bowed deeply, and motioned us within.The chamber we entered was large, closed on two sides by screens ofgrey; at the back gay, concealing curtains. The low table of bluestone, dressed with fine white cloths, stretched at one side flankedby the cushioned divans.

  At the left was a high tripod bearing one of the rosy globes we hadseen in the house of Yolara; at the head of the table a smaller globesimilar to the whispering one. Rador pressed upon its base, and twoother screens slid into place across the entrance, shutting in theroom.

  He clapped his hands; the curtains parted, and two girls came throughthem. Tall and willow lithe, their bluish-black hair falling inringlets just below their white shoulders, their clear eyes offorget-me-not blue, and skins of extraordinary fineness andpurity--they were singularly attractive. Each was clad in an extremelyscanty bodice of silken blue, girdled above a kirtle that came barelyto their very pretty knees.

  "Food and drink," ordered Rador.

  They dropped back through the curtains.

  "Do you like them?" he asked us.

  "Some chickens!" said Larry. "They delight the heart," he translatedfor Rador.

  The green dwarf's next remark made me gasp.

  "They are yours," he said.

  Before I could question him further upon this extraordinary statementthe pair re-entered, bearing a great platter on which were smallloaves, strange fruits, and three immense flagons of rock crystal--twofilled with a slightly sparkling yellow liquid and the third with apurplish drink. I became acutely sensible that it had been hours sinceI had either eaten or drunk. The yellow flagons were set before Larryand me, the purple at Rador's hand.

  The girls, at his signal, again withdrew. I raised my glass to mylips and took a deep draft. The taste was unfamiliar but delightful.

  Almost at once my fatigue disappeared. I realized a clarity of mind,an interesting exhilaration and sense of irresponsibility, of freedomfrom care, that were oddly enjoyable. Larry became immediately his oldgay self.

  The green dwarf regarded us whimsically, sipping from his great flagonof rock crystal.

  "Much do I desire to know of that world you came from," he said atlast--"through the rocks," he added, slyly.

  "And much do we desire to know of this world of yours, O Rador," Ianswered.

  Should I ask him of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin?Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, towait. And once more I obeyed.

  "Let us learn, then, from each other." The dwarf was laughing. "Andfirst--are all above like you--drawn out"--he made an expressivegesture--"and are there many of you?"

  "There are--" I hesitated, and at last spoke the Polynesian that meanstens upon tens multiplied indefinitely--"there are as many as thedrops of water in the lake we saw from the ledge where you found us,"I continued; "many as the leaves on the trees without. And they areall like us--varyingly."

  He considered skeptically, I could see, my remark upon our numbers.

  "In Muria," he said at last, "the men are like me or like Lugur. Ourwomen are as you see them--like Yolara or those two who served you."He hesitated. "And there is a third; but only one."

  Larry leaned forward eagerly.

  "Brown-haired with glints of ruddy bronze, golden-eyed, and lovely asa dream, with long, slender, beautiful hands?" he cried.

  "Where saw you _her_?" interrupted the dwarf, starting to his feet.

  "Saw her?" Larry recovered himself. "Nay, Rador, perhaps, I onlydreamed that there was such a woman."

  "See to it, then, that you tell not your dream to Yolara," said thedwarf grimly. "For her I meant and her you have pictured is Lakla, thehand-maiden to the Silent Ones, and neither Yolara nor Lugur, nay, northe Shining One, love her overmuch, stranger."

  "Does she dwell here?" Larry's face was alight.

  The dwarf hesitated, glanced about him anxiously.

  "Nay," he answered, "ask me no more of her." He was silent for aspace. "And what do you who are as leaves or drops of water do in thatworld of yours?" he said, plainly bent on turning the subject.

  "Keep off the golden-eyed girl, Larry," I interjected. "Wait till wefind out why she's tabu."

  "Love and battle, strive and accomplish and die; or fail and die,"answered Larry--to Rador--giving me a quick nod of acquiescence to mywarning in English.

  "In that at least your world and mine differ little," said the dwarf.

  "How great is this world of yours, Rador?" I spoke.

  He considered me gravely.

  "How great indeed I do not know," he said frankly at last. "The landwhere we dwell with the Shining One stretches along the white watersfor--" He used a phrase of which I could make nothing. "Beyond thiscity of the Shining One and on the hither shores of the white watersdwell the mayia ladala--the common ones." He took a deep draft fromhis flagon. "There are, first, the fair-haired ones, the children ofthe ancient rulers," he continued. "There are, second, we thesoldiers; and last, the mayia ladala, who dig and till and weave andtoil and give our rulers and us their daughters, and dance with theShining One!" he added.

  "Who rules?" I asked.

  "The fair-haired, under the Council of Nine, who are under Yolara, thePriestess and Lugur, the Voice," he answered, "who are in turn beneaththe Shining One!" There was a ring of bitter satire in the last.

  "And those three who were judged?"--this from Larry.

  "They were of the mayia ladala," he replied, "like those two I gaveyou. But they grow restless. They do not like to dance with theShining One--the blasphemers!" He raised his voice in a sudden greatshout of mocking laughter.

  In his words I caught a fleeting picture of the race--an ancient,luxurious, close-bred oligarchy clustered about some mysterious deity;a soldier class that supported them; and underneath all the toiling,oppressed hordes.

  "And is that all?" asked Larry.

  "No," he answered. "There is the Sea of Crimson where--"

  Without warning the globe beside us sent out a vicious note, Radorturned toward it, his face paling. Its surface crawled withwhisperings--angry, peremptory!

  "I hear!" he croaked, gripping the table. "I obey!"

  He turned to us a face devoid for once of its malice.

  "Ask me no more questions, strangers," he said. "And now, if you aredone, I will show you where you may sleep and bathe."

  He arose abruptly. We followed him through the hangings, passedthrough a corridor and into another smaller chamber, roofless, thesides walled with screens of dark grey. Two cushioned couches werethere and a curtained door leading into an open, outer enclosure inwhich a fountain played within a wide pool.

  "Your bath," said Rador. He dropped the curtain and came back intothe room. He touched a carved flower at one side. There was a tinysighing from overhead and instantly across the top spread a veil ofblackness, impenetrable to light but certainly not to air, for throughit pulsed little breaths of the garden fragrances. The room filledwith a cool twilight, refreshing, sleep-inducing. The green dwarfpointed to the couches.

  "Sleep!" he said. "Sleep and fear nothing. My men are on guardoutside." He came closer to us, the old mocking gaiety sparkling inhis eyes.

  "But I spoke too quickly," he whispered. "Whether it is because theAfyo Maie fears their tongues--or--" he laughed at Larry. "The maidsare _not_ yours!" Still l
aughing he vanished through the curtains of theroom of the fountain before I could ask him the meaning of his curiousgift, its withdrawal, and his most enigmatic closing remarks.

  "Back in the great old days of Ireland," thus Larry breaking into mythoughts raptly, the brogue thick, "there was Cairill macCairill--Cairill Swiftspear. An' Cairill wronged Keevan of EmhainAbhlach, of the blood of Angus of the great people when he wassleeping in the likeness of a pale reed. Then Keevan put this penanceon Cairill--that for a year Cairill should wear his body in EmhainAbhlach, which is the Land of Faery and for that year Keevan shouldwear the body of Cairill. And it was done.

  "In that year Cairill met Emar of the Birds that are one white, onered, and one black--and they loved, and from that love sprang Aililltheir son. And when Ailill was born he took a reed flute and first heplayed slumber on Cairill, and then he played old age so that Cairillgrew white and withered; then Ailill played again and Cairill became ashadow--then a shadow of a shadow--then a breath; and the breath wentout upon the wind!" He shivered. "Like the old gnome," he whispered,"that they called Songar of the Lower Waters!"

  He shook his head as though he cast a dream from him. Then, allalert--

  "But that was in Iceland ages agone. And there's nothing like thathere, Doc!" He laughed. "It doesn't scare me one little bit, old boy.The pretty devil lady's got the wrong slant. When you've had a palstanding beside you one moment--full of life, and joy, and power, andpotentialities, telling what he's going to do to make the world humwhen he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pepof life, Doc--and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh--apiece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy andpower and all the rest of it"--his face twitched--"well, old man, inthe face of _that_ mystery a disappearing act such as the devil ladytreated us to doesn't make much of a dent. Not on me. But by thebrogans of Brian Boru--if we could have had some of that stuff to turnon during the war--oh, boy!"

  He was silent, evidently contemplating the idea with vast pleasure.And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O'Keefe vanished,I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, hisleprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael--but only within thelimits of Ireland.

  In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, hismysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with anyperil or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mindthat was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean ofall cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.

  "Some stuff!" Deepest admiration was in his voice. "If we'd only hadit when the war was on--imagine half a dozen of us scooting over theenemy batteries and the gunners underneath all at once beginning toshake themselves to pieces! Wow!" His tone was rapturous.

  "It's easy enough to explain, Larry," I said. "The effect, thatis--for what the green ray is made of I don't know, of course. Butwhat it does, clearly, is stimulate atomic vibration to such a pitchthat the cohesion between the particles of matter is broken and thebody flies to bits--just as a fly-wheel does when its speed gets sogreat that the particles of which _it_ is made can't hold together."

  "Shake themselves to pieces is right, then!" he exclaimed.

  "Absolutely right," I nodded. "Everything in Nature vibrates. Andall matter--whether man or beast or stone or metal or vegetable--ismade up of vibrating molecules, which are made up of vibrating atomswhich are made up of truly infinitely small particles of electricitycalled electrons, and electrons, the base of all matter, arethemselves perhaps only a vibration of the mysterious ether.

  "If a magnifying glass of sufficient size and strength could be placedover us we could see ourselves as sieves--our space lattice, as it iscalled. And all that is necessary to break down the lattice, to shakeus into nothingness, is some agent that will set our atoms vibratingat such a rate that at last they escape the unseen cords and fly off.

  "The green ray of Yolara is such an agent. It set up in the dwarfthat incredibly rapid rhythm that you saw and--shook him not toatoms--but to electrons!"

  "They had a gun on the West Front--a seventy-five," said O'Keefe,"that broke the eardrums of everybody who fired it, no matter whatprotection they used. It looked like all the other seventy-fives--butthere was something about its sound that did it. They had to recastit."

  "It's practically the same thing," I replied. "By some freak itsvibratory qualities had that effect. The deep whistle of the sunkenLusitania would, for instance, make the Singer Building shake to itsfoundations; while the Olympic did not affect the Singer at all butmade the Woolworth shiver all through. In each case they stimulatedthe atomic vibration of the particular building--"

  I paused, aware all at once of an intense drowsiness. O'Keefe,yawning, reached down to unfasten his puttees.

  "Lord, I'm sleepy!" he exclaimed. "Can't understand it--what yousay--most--interesting--Lord!" he yawned again; straightened. "Whatmade Reddy take such a shine to the Russian?" he asked.

  "Thanaroa," I answered, fighting to keep my eyes open.

  "What?"

  "When Lugur spoke that name I saw Marakinoff signal him. Thanaroa is,I suspect, the original form of the name of Tangaroa, the greatest godof the Polynesians. There's a secret cult to him in the islands.Marakinoff may belong to it--he knows it anyway. Lugur recognized thesignal and despite his surprise answered it."

  "So he gave him the high sign, eh?" mused Larry. "How could they bothknow it?"

  "The cult is a very ancient one. Undoubtedly it had its origin in thedim beginnings before these people migrated here," I replied. "It's alink--one--of the few links between up there and the lost past--"

  "Trouble then," mumbled Larry. "Hell brewing! I smell it--Say, Doc,is this sleepiness natural? Wonder where my--gas mask--is--" headded, half incoherently.

  But I myself was struggling desperately against the drugged slumberpressing down upon me.

  "Lakla!" I heard O'Keefe murmur. "Lakla of the golden eyes--noEilidh--the Fair!" He made an immense effort, half raised himself,grinned faintly.

  "Thought this was paradise when I first saw it, Doc," he sighed. "ButI know now, if it is, No-Man's Land was the greatest place on earthfor a honeymoon. They--they've got us, Doc--" He sank back. "Goodluck, old boy, wherever you're going." His hand waved feebly."Glad--knew--you. Hope--see--you--'gain--"

  His voice trailed into silence. Fighting, fighting with every fibreof brain and nerve against the sleep, I felt myself being steadilyovercome. Yet before oblivion rushed down upon me I seemed to see uponthe grey-screened wall nearest the Irishman an oval of rosy lightbegin to glow; watched, as my falling lids inexorably fell, aflame-tipped shadow waver on it; thicken; condense--and there lookingdown upon Larry, her eyes great golden stars in which intensestcuriosity and shy tenderness struggled, sweet mouth half smiling, wasthe girl of the Moon Pool's Chamber, the girl whom the green dwarf hadnamed--Lakla: the vision Larry had invoked before that sleep which Icould no longer deny had claimed him--

  Closer she came--closer---the eyes were over us.

  Then oblivion indeed!