The Metal Monster Read online

  CHAPTER XIV. "FREE! BUT A MONSTER!"

  The peculiar ability of the human mind to slip so readily into therefuge of the commonplace after, or even during, some well-nighintolerable crisis, has been to me long one of the most interestingphenomena of our psychology.

  It is instinctively a protective habit, of course, acquired throughprecisely the same causes that had given to animals their protectivecoloration--the stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend socunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle,the twig and leaflike shapes and hues of certain insects; in fact, allthat natural camouflage which was the basis of the art of concealment soastonishingly developed in the late war.

  Like the animals of the wild, the mind of man moves through ajungle--the jungle of life, passing along paths beaten out by thethought of his countless forefathers in their progress from birth todeath.

  And these paths are bordered and screened, figuratively andliterally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out andcultivation--shelters of the familiar, the habitual, the customary.

  On these ancestral paths, within these barriers of usage, man moveshidden and secure as the animals in their haunts--or so he thinks.

  Outside them lie the wildernesses and the gardens of the unknown, andman's little trails are but rabbit-runs in an illimitable forest.

  But they are home to him!

  Therefore it is that he scurries from some open place of revelation,some storm of emotion, some strength-testing struggle, back into theshelter of the obvious; finding it an intellectual environment thatdemands no slightest expenditure of mental energy or initiative,strength to sally forth again into the unfamiliar.

  I crave pardon for this digression. I set it down because now I rememberhow, when Drake at last broke the silence that had closed in uponthe passing of that still, small voice the essence of these thoughtsoccurred to me.

  He strode over to the weeping girl, and in his voice was a roughnessthat angered me until I realized his purpose.

  "Get up, Ruth," he ordered. "He came back once and he'll come backagain. Now let him be and help us get a meal together. I'm hungry."

  She looked up at him, incredulously, indignation rising.

  "Eat!" she exclaimed. "You can be hungry?"

  "You bet I can--and I am," he answered cheerfully. "Come on; we've gotto make the best of it."

  "Ruth," I broke in gently, "we'll all have to think about ourselves alittle if we're to be of any use to him. You must eat--and then rest."

  "No use crying in the milk even if it's spilt," observed Drake, evenmore cheerfully brutal. "I learned that at the front where we got sowe'd yelp for food even when the lads who'd been bringing it were allmixed up in it."

  She lifted Ventnor's head from her lap, rested it on the silks; arose,eyes wrathful, her little hands closed in fists as though to strike him.

  "Oh--you brute!" she whispered. "And I thought--I thought--Oh, I hateyou!"

  "That's better," said Dick. "Go ahead and hit me if you want. The madderyou get the better you'll feel."

  For a moment I thought she was going to take him at his word; then heranger fled.

  "Thanks--Dick," she said quietly.

  And while I sat studying Ventnor, they put together a meal from thestores, brewed tea over the spirit-lamp with water from the bubblingspring. In these commonplaces I knew that she at least was findingrelief from that strain of the abnormal under which we had labored solong. To my surprise I found that I was hungry, and with deep relief Iwatched Ruth partake of food and drink even though lightly.

  About her seemed to hover something of the ethereal, elusive, anddisquieting. Was it the strangely pellucid light that gave the effect, Iwondered; and knew it was not, for as I scanned her covertly, therefell upon her face that shadow of inhuman tranquillity, of unearthlywithdrawal which, I guessed, had more than anything else maddenedVentnor into his attack upon the Disk.

  I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raisedher head and met my gaze. And in her eyes I read both terror and--shame.

  It came to me that painful as it might be for her the time forquestioning had come.

  "Ruth," I said, "I know it's not necessary to remind you that we're ina tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can layhold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine ourcourse.

  "I'm going to repeat your brother's question--what did Norhala do toyou? And what happened when you were floating before the Disk?"

  The blaze of interest in Drake's eyes at these questions changed toamazement at her stricken recoil from them.

  "There was nothing," she whispered--then defiantly--"nothing. I don'tknow what you mean."

  "Ruth!" I spoke sharply now, in my own perplexity. "You do know. Youmust tell us--for his sake." I pointed toward Ventnor.

  She drew a long breath.

  "You're right--of course," she said unsteadily. "Only I--I thought maybeI could fight it out myself. But you'll have to know it--there's a taintupon me."

  I caught in Drake's swift glance the echo of my own thrill ofapprehension for her sanity.

  "Yes," she said, now quietly. "Some new and alien thing within my heart,my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode the flyingblock, and--he--sealed upon me when I was in--his"--again she crimsoned,"embrace."

  And as we gazed at her, incredulously:

  "A thing that urges me to forget you two--and Martin--and all theworld I've known. That tries to pull me from you--from all--to driftuntroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace.And whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed!

  "It whispered to me first," she said, "from Norhala--when she put herarm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and coverme like--like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness andpeace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterlytranquil and utterly free.

  "I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies--and the life I hadknown only a dream--and you, all of you--even Martin, dreams within adream. You weren't--real--and you did not--matter."

  "Hypnotism," muttered Drake, as she paused.

  "No." She shook her head. "No--more than that. The wonder of itgrew--and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, sawnothing--except that once through the peace enfolding me pierced warningthat Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutchingNorhala and to see floating up in her eyes death for him.

  "And I saved him--and again forgot. Then, when I saw thatbeautiful, flaming Shape--I felt no terror, no fear--only atremendous--joyous--anticipation, as though--as though--" She faltered,hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered: "andwhen--it--lifted me it was as though I had come at last out of someendless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise."

  "Ruth!" cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced.

  "Wait," she said, and held up a little, tremulous hand. "You asked--andnow you must listen."

  She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low,curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt:

  "I was free--free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love orhate; free even of hope--for what was there to hope for when everythingdesirable was mine? And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yetfully conscious that I was--I.

  "It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon thebreast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a littlewind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen;a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes.

  "And there was music--strange and wondrous music and terrible, but notterrible to me--who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes thatrang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were likethe very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. Andall--all--passionless, yet--rapturous.

  "Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires p
ulsed vitality--aflood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though thisenergy were--reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the elementalthings, changing me fully into them.

  "I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing--then came the shots.Awakening was--dreadful, a struggling back from drowning. I sawMartin--blasted. I drove the--the spell away from me, tore it away.

  "And, O Walter--Dick--it hurt--it hurt--and for a breath before I ranto him it was like--like coming from a world in which there was nodisorder, no sorrow, no doubts, a rhythmic, harmonious world of lightand music, into--into a world that was like a black and dirty kitchen.

  "And it's there," her voice rose, hysterically. "It's still withinme--whispering, whispering; urging me away from you, from Martin, fromevery human thing; bidding me give myself up, surrender my humanity.

  "Its seal," she sobbed. "No--HIS seal! An alien consciousness sealedwithin me, that tries to make the human me a slave--that waits toovercome my will--and if I surrender gives me freedom, an incrediblefreedom--but makes me, being still human, a--monster."

  She hid her face in her hands, quivering.

  "If I could sleep," she wailed. "But I'm afraid to sleep. I think Ishall never sleep again. For sleeping how do I know what I may be when Iwake?"

  I caught Drake's eye; he nodded. I slipped my hand down into themedicine-case, brought forth a certain potent and tasteless combinationof drugs which I carry upon explorations.

  I dropped a little into her cup, then held it to her lips. Like a child,unthinking, she obeyed and drank.

  "But I'll not surrender." Her eyes were tragic. "Never think it! I canwin--don't you know I can?"

  "Win?" Drake dropped down beside her, drew her toward him. "Bravest girlI've known--of course you'll win. And remember this--nine-tenths of whatyou're thinking now is purely over-wrought nerves and weariness. You'llwin--and we'll win, never doubt it."

  "I don't," she said. "I know it--oh, it will be hard--but I will--Iwill--"