Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks)

by Leslie F Stone

  He appeared to be a gentle, well-disposed creature, and on peering into his mind, one found him to be a kindly, benevolent soul, who did not know what it meant to hurt a living being.

  Moura left the room for a moment and came back bearing a tray of several dishes filled with a golden, thickish food. He gave a dish each to Tel Tel and Wei Tel, and bade them eat it. “It is the Royal Jelly of the Yadans, which is fed to the adolescent creature destined to be their Queen, and which prolongs the life of the Dadans, who live on its diet. Sem Gu succeeded in stealing a portion of it from the vats in the Temple for me. It is supposed to give both strength and courage with one dose,” he told Ubca, as the others ate it. “Do you wish to taste some? It’s rather sweet, but you will be amazed by the feeling of power it gives you.”

  Ubca took a dish and ate it, but he waited in vain for the new feeling to creep over him. Moura had forgotten to tell him that its effect was not felt for an hour afterward, and when it came, he was flying miles away from Tel on the errand Moura dispatched him upon to bring back with him Rak Tel, a cousin of Tel Tel, administrator to three cities distant from the capital city of Dada. He was more than a hundred miles away from his destination when motor trouble developed, and he had to find a landing place to attend to it. Motor trouble is rare in Abruian flyers, and Ubca found that the matter was serious. A half a dozen times he sent telepathic messages to Moura as he worked in exasperation for fifteen hours, and only received one message from Moura to return as quickly as he could without continuing onward for Rak Tel.

  And in the meantime, things were happening in the Temple. With the departure of Ubca as the first sun was rising in a blaze of glory, life awoke in Tel. Today was the Day of the Pattern, a day of both joy and sorrow for Dada, a day of judgment for its millions, and for its Queen.

  It was but a moment before the city had begun to stir that the four, Tel Tel, Wei Tel, Moura and Urto, slipped unremarking into the Temple, through its low door into that absymal black room where each worshiper was called upon to prostrate himself before the God of the Pattern, and ask for cleanliness of spirit before entering the inner shrine, brilliant with the light of thousands of fireflies. Only now the great chamber was also in shadowy darkness, the flies hanging without movement on their brackets, awaiting the signal for them to automatically switch on their little green lamps. Thousands of generations of cultivation had increased their capabilities, and made them useful to their masters.

  WITH his intimate knowledge of the Temple, in which knowledge he had carefully perfected himself in the last few days, Moura knew that for the next ten minutes or so, he and his party were safe from any priestly interference, for at that moment all the thousands who found duties in the immense pile of the Temple were gathered in another chamber, from which the steady unbroken drone of their voices in prayer came, as they exhorted their God to be fair as well as kindly to their worshipers. Atun Wei was there, too, leading the prayer, perhaps already exulting over the greatness the day was to bring him.

  Quickly Moura led his companions across the broad floor of the wide chamber, which like all Dadan structures was circular, fully five hundred feet in diameter. At the far end of the chamber stood the mammoth loom that predominated all with its strange warp of hundreds of thousands of threads rising to the ceiling fifty feet above. Directly to the Loom or the Pattern as it was called, Moura led the three. Halting in the exact center, he pointed out to the Queen the heavy white thread which they both knew denoted herself in the scheme of things. Tel Tel nodded, and pointed out the second thread that appeared to have gotten itself entangled with the first. Moura nodded, and kneeling there he deftly untangled the thread, leaving it to dangle while he inserted another thick thread he carried and which he added to a short thread of the same size. This, in turn, he entangled about the first thread as the other had been entangled, and then taking the loose end of the now disengaged second thread, wound it in turn dexterously through the cloth so that it led in an opposite direction away from the main thread, losing itself in the material. When he was finished no one would have guessed that the cloth had been touched.

  With that finished to his satisfaction Moura turned to Wei Tel and Urto and directed the golden man to lead the blind creature to the position he had picked out for him behind the Pattern itself, in the space where the circular wall of the chamber overlapped behind the Pattern. Urto was to stay there with Wei Tel and lead him forth again when Moura gave him the word to do so.

  Tel Tel and Moura now hurried back the way they had come, out through the black room, and out into the sunlight once more. There they found the sky already filled with flying creatures, and the Queen’s retinue awaiting her in the cleared place facing the low doorway. They were just in time, for then the high tone of a silvery bell sounded in their antenna, and they knew that the priests were taking their places in the Great Room. Atun Wei appeared in the doorway now, and standing stiffly erect, made ready to receive his Queen. Only now it was different, he was on sanctified ground, where he had to bow only to his god. Here Tel Tel had to bow her head, as she was the first to enter the Temple through the door that was only two thirds her height. The priest glared at Moura as he followed the Queen into the prayer room, but there was no tradition to keep the stranger from the Temple, so he was allowed to enter.

  There was the two-minute pause in the outer room, as Tel Tel sent up her prayer, and then they entered the temple room, now blazing brightly with the light of the fireflies, that during the long ten hours of ceremony, would have to be replaced five different times.

  It would take several hours for the many thousands awaiting outside to enter the temple, for not more than twenty could crawl into the dark room at one time, and, as each party arrived within, they squatted in the long lines until Atun Wei would face them and commence his rites. Tel Tel had taken her place directly in the center of the floor, facing the Pattern with her attendants about her, and with Moura at her side. Moura, for want of better seating, had dropped to the floor at her side with his legs crossed before him. The great chamber was strangely silent for all the great crowd that gradually filled it, but silence was imposed upon them in presence of the god, and there was only the light shuffle of the feet as each party entered and took its place. So quiet it was, that heads were often seen nodding, and Moura, in his place, deliberately slept, taking the full rest that only the Abruians know how to achieve.

  When he did awake, he noted that the time had not yet come for the ceremony, more and more butterfly creatures were still entering. Then there came a moment of darkness as the first shift of fireflies exchanged their places with fresh recruits. It was then that he received one of Ubca-tor’s messages concerning the untoward breakdown of the flyer. Looking about, he realized how late the hour and the futility of bringing Tel Tel’s relative here now. It had only been an eleventh hour thought to send to the capital for Rak Tel, the Queen’s uncle and unless he was there with the opening of the ceremony, his presence would be needless. This would change matters somewhat, and he, Moura, would have to take charge against his own desire. Yet since it could not be helped, he sent back a message to Ubca to return to the Temple as soon as the motor was repaired.

  At last came the welcome interruption in the monotony of that waiting hour. On both sides of the great chamber, along the aisles left clear for them, came the priests of Atun Wei. Each was clothed in a black apron, a black collar and a black fillet about the head with rough, unprecious pieces of hard coal hanging from the chain at the collar. All rock, mineral or ore was precious to the Dadans, no matter how common it might be, since it was useless to them in any other way.

  Atun Wei appeared next, the crowd making way for him through the center of the hall. The priests lined up in ranks as he took his place before his audience. In the strong light from above, one was struck by the cold, passionless expression that each priest wore, an expression that was a replica of that of the High Priest, in which there could be neither kindness nor compassion. Only a fe
w of the younger priests, of which Sem Gu was one, had as yet not learned to harden themselves to care nothing for the suffering and grief that they of the Weis so cruelly imposed on the creatures over whom they had such complete jurisdiction.

  Today, all over their nation, it was the same thing: the priests of each city forced their will upon the populace whom they held spell-bound and fear-stricken before the Pattern. Only here in the city of Tel it would be different, for here a priest was to teach a people that no one was superior to his rule, that even a Queen must bow to his sovereign power!

  CHAPTER XIX

  Checkmate!

  FOR fully two minutes Atun Wei held the great congregation with his eyes, fascinating it as a snake fascinates, and in that moment, Moura-weit hated him as he had never hated anyone or anything before. But too, he felt something of the emotions of that creature, could appreciate them, for had he not once held a world in leash as Atun Wei was holding his world now?

  Now the creature spoke in that cold, impersonal manner of his, harsh, unfeeling, without expression, monotonously, but his audience was his, held as if by taut cords.

  “We of Dada,” said he, “are gathered here on this great day in our year to learn what the Pattern would have us learn, and it is not only our duty, but the inbred desire of us all to carry onward the decree of Fate without murmur, without hesitation, for in it, and in it only, lies our salvation! Otherwise are we forever damned, outcast from kind, subject to annihilation by the lowliest slave among us. Remember and beware, oh my people!

  “The Pattern knows all! Day after day the Loom weaves the warp and woof of our lives, the meanest thread is woven into the Pattern, and its decree is inexorable. Once again Kal has encircled the “Great Twins,” and for those who have forsaken their Fate as written a year since, so shall their sin be known and so shall they be punished forthwith. For them that have carried out the letter of prophecy to its end, so will it also be known, and they alone shall know the contentment that comes with fulfillment!”

  He ceased speaking, and turning he made obeisance to the god, bowing his body forward three times, and as one the assembly followed his example. With that a great sigh seemed to sweep the chamber, the sigh that came from thousands of antennae, and for the first time Moura heard the Dadans in song, a strange, stirring, wordless song that was more like a dirge than anything else, a deep humming and sighing that expressed the utter woe of a down-trodden people.

  For several minutes the song persisted during which time Atun Wei indulged in some sort of cabalistic rite. In two hands he held a long narrow rod horizontally, while with his other two hands he carried on a pantomime, imitative of a man at work at a loom. While he performed this, a dozen or so of his priests wove about him carrying long heavy ropes of fiber in which they entangled themselves and him so tightly it was a wonder they could ever get out of the mess, but at a word from their leader the priests made two or three intricate turns and the fibers fell from about them like magic.

  At the same moment the song that had gone on and on was dropped as quickly and sharply as it had begun, so that one who had been listening to it could have gone mad waiting for the end of the chord that never came. Instead the crowd in the hall moved forward a step to draw closer to the great cloth hanging like a shroud above their heads. At the top of the giant loom, lost almost in the great height of the Temple Room, was the great roll of material that through the ages had accumulated there. Reading upward from the floor, one accustomed to understanding the Pattern’s intricate meaning could have cited every little happening in the lives of each of the inhabitants of the city of Tel for hundreds of generations, but today they were interested in only the lowest three inches of the unattractive cloth which marked the lives of those assembled here.

  Allying his mind with that of Atun Wei’s, Moura felt the excitement that pervaded the creature’s being. Here was triumph at last, the ultimate zenith which he had sought to acquire throughout his lifetime, now ready at his hand for the taking. But a few hours before the High Priest had been here and with his own fingers entwined his own life’s thread about that of Tel Tel’s individual thread. Now he gave but a cursory glance at the arrangement, saw the entangled thread that he knew was there, and turned again to face his audience, his creatures!

  It had taken Moura many short stolen hours with Sem Gu as an instructor to learn to interpret that part of the Pattern with which he was most concerned, and now, as he stood on his feet beside Tel Tel, his whole body was tensed for the moment that was to come.

  ATUN WEI’S face was filled with emotion, now, the emotion of achievement, and he did not speak in monotones as he addressed himself to the hall, and particularly to his Queen.

  For the first time, the eyes of the High Priest seemed kindly, and his voice was soft, soft as that of a mother speaking to its child. “People of Dada,” he said, “for more than a year we have all been in mourning for a loss of that which we could not comprehend or understand. For many years we were blessed by a friend, a kindly ruler, whose only thought had always been for Dada, for his friends, who were his children. Then, as the god worked over the loom, we saw in fright the thread snap, and so passed away to the ‘other side of the Pattern,’ our greatest friend, our one leader, leaving in his place only a daughter, his only offspring, young and delicate, and a virgin, unwed and seemingly without an equal for a mating.

  “And it was with terror that we of Dada realized this truth, and so fear came to our world, for we were destitute, not knowing what to do with our problem.

  “Yet always are the ways of the Pattern inexplicable, unsolvably mysterious to us, its slaves. Nor has the Pattern ever failed us, as it has not failed in this emergency, and we are taught our lesson anew, a lesson that must be well imprinted upon our minds. It teaches that at all times we have the god for deliverance, the god who faces us and hears our cry of despair.

  “For many thousands of generations those of the Tel and the Wei have worked side by side for the benefit of their kind, always following the dictates of the Pattern, who directs not only the destiny of the people, and the nation, but of the planet and of the stars as well! And now has the Pattern spoken once more, tells us that the time is come to unite these two great races, to make the Tels and the Weis one, for behold, the god has entwined the lives of your princess, and of one of his humble subjects, of one who has given his life in the behalf of his people, of him who stands before you in all humility!”

  For all the weaving of fine words, it was a bald-faced statement, and without a doubt the butterfly creatures had accepted it as such, for a strange hush fell upon the great chamber, a hush that seemed to reach out and enfold the entire world. If Atun Wei had expected approbation for his work, he was sadly disappointed, but Moura saw that in his egotism he had taken the silence to mean more than applause could mean, and he seemed to swell to twice his size.

  The time had come for Moura to act, and he did not hesitate to put his finger to the bubble and burst it. Stepping forward, he faced the populace, who stared in wonder and perhaps fear at the strange creature before them. Some of them had had glimpses of the strangers, but the others had only heard of them by word of mouth, (or rather antennae to be more exact), and they had been too close packed here in the Temple to see Moura at all. Now they were startled, but interested at his untoward action.

  Without preliminaries and speaking slowly and distinctly, enunciating each word as clearly as possible so that all could hear and understand, he addressed them and Atun Wei.

  “People of Dada,” he said, “I am an outsider, a stranger to these halls, and unknown to most of you here, and I do not know all of your customs. However, I am a reader of your Pattern, and I am anxious to see justice carried out. And I stand before you to see that this is done, for I fear that in his zealousness, your priest had misread the Weave, else the meaning of the Pattern is obscure to him. I call for a second reading!”

  Again there was silence, but a silence that was different—a living
silence that was pregnant with a newborn hope. Then came the rustle of thousands of creatures, who tried, by craning their heads, to see better the principals in this new drama.

  Moura knew that Atun Wei was seething inside, that had he believed in his gods he would have prayed them to strike this interloper down, for his moment was spoiled. But still he had no fear, no inkling of the trick that had been played upon him. With a great show of dignity he acquiesced to the stranger’s demands, a demand that had been enunciated more than once in these halls by hopeful miscreants. Atun Wei intended only to give the Pattern a glance, and the eyes of all his priests followed him, including those of Sem Gu.

  The glance he gave it was perfunctory, but when the High Priest turned his head away again his eye caught the shocked surprise on the face of his nearest fellow, Ti Sem, the priest second only to himself in rank. In sudden fear he turned again, and this time he saw the trick that had been played upon him, recognized the change that had been wrought since the few hours ago when he himself had arranged the threads to suit himself. Slowly the green of his face turned sickly pale, for he knew now that he had been tricked, and that it was impossible to change it back. In that instant he lost all that he had gained throughout his life-time. Someone, something had come after him and broken him!

  His wings seemed to have wilted as his body had wilted at the blow, so that it was only by the power of his will that he could stand erect. Someone put out a supporting arm to aid him as he turned his now unwieldly body about. Then he squatted there where he stood, unable to control his movements any more, all but losing consciousness, but he was conscious enough to hear what was to follow.

  CHAPTER XX

  Moura Falls

  NEVER before had there been such a hubbub in the Temple Hall. All its thousands were aroused, asking for an explanation. It was Ti Sem who took his fallen superior’s place. He did not mince words, he was as startled as his master and as fearful, but he knew his duty, and understood that unless he acted quickly, the power of the Weis would be entirely broken, as their High Priest was now broken.