by Jerry
They say the mental influences are very bad, too; numbers went queer in the years after Nahum’s taking, and always they lacked the power to get away. Then the stronger-minded folk all left the region, and only the foreigners tried to live in the crumbling old homesteads. They could not stay, though; and one sometimes wonders what insight beyond ours their wild, weird stories of whispered magic have given them. Their dreams at night, they protest, are very horrible in that grotesque country; and surely the very look of the dark realm is enough to stir a morbid fancy. No traveler has ever escaped a sense of strangeness in those deep ravines, and artists shiver as they paint thick woods whose mystery is as much of the spirits as of the eye. I myself am curious about the sensation I derived from my one lone walk before Ammi told me his tale. When twilight came I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.
Do not ask me for my opinion. I do not know—that is all. There was no one but Ammi to question; for Arkham people will not talk about the strange days, and all three professors who saw the aerolite and its coloured globule are dead. There were other globules—depend upon that. One must have fed itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was too late. No doubt it is still down the well—I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I saw above that miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever demon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do at night.
What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed laws that are not of our cosmos. This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
I doubt very much if Ammi consciously lied to me, and I do not think his tale was all a freak of madness as the townsfolk had forewarned. Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible—though I know not in what proportion—still remains. I shall be glad to see the water come. Meanwhile I hope nothing will happen to Ammi. He saw so much of the thing—and its influence was so insiduous. Why has he never been able to move away? How clearly he recalled those dying words of Nahum’s—“can’t git away—draws ye—ye know summ’at’s cornin’, but ’tain’t no use—” Ammi is such a good old man—when the reservoir gang gets to work I must write the chief engineer to keep a sharp watch on him. I would hate to think of him as the grey, twisted, brittle monstrosity which persists more and more in troubling my sleep.
THE END
THE INVADING HORDE
Arthur J. Burks
“YOU see before you,” said Sark Darlin, with a gesture toward his office window, “the realization of a dream that endured for a thousand years. Eighteen generations of long-lived architects have had their part in the dream, and through that window you see the result.”
Of course I had seen it before, but I never tired of it. Sark Darlin had reason to be proud. The culmination, this man, of a thousand years of specialization. He was old, and his wife had given him no man-child to carry on the family tradition. The growth of City of the East would die with Sark Darlin, and a little of the sadness of it showed in his face as he beckoned me to the window. I, as his son-in-law, must take up the torch he must relinquish, but I—I was not a Darlin, and the pill was a bitter one for Sark to swallow. Yet he loved me, else he never would have allowed my addresses to his daughter—for that is the law.
His hand was on my shoulder as we stood side by side and gazed from the window. We were in his office on the top floor of the Executive Building, five hundred stories above ground level. Outside the window, the platform for the landing of monopters thrust outward into space. Looking downward beyond the edge of the platform I could see the other platforms below, one at each window, scores and scores of them, like perches before the uncountable doors of some mighty Gargantuan dovecote. Straight across from our window yet well below it, since the Executive Building is the tallest in all the City, were other platforms, and as we talked there, watching, men and women and children, like monster bees, dropped from windows in their monopters, and glided across to this or that window in the Executive Building. All the windows were numbered or marked with other distinguishing signs. It was like this throughout the whole City, so that the great and awesome canyons between the buildings were fairly alive with flitting and industrious people, going about their mysterious business speedily and in silence.
Over the top of the building opposite I could see some of the other buildings, their spires glistening in the sun, now visible, now obscured as wraiths of white clouds, like fingers of some bodiless entity of space, moved into and along the canyons. Below the spires, many stories below, there often were clouds, shutting out the world beneath, so that at times, looking from this window, it was as though our building had been cut in twain somewhere below us, leaving us here in space, immovable. At such times as these the myriad noises of the City were muffled, as well they might be, when one considers the depth of the great canyons. But even then, when impenetrable fog held the whole city in its grip, the noises came up to us, even through the almost sound-proof walls of Sark Darlin’s office. A vast, voiceless roar, as though some subterranean monster, imprisoned in a pit that was bottomless, cried out in agony at his restraint. But the clouds, white misty draperies, sent their tentacles into the canyons and paid no heed. While the clouds were passing through, it was always interesting to watch the monopters, each encasing a human being, stand upright on the platform, patiently waiting for the mists to lift or move on. With clouds in the canyons it was virtually suicide to attempt a crossing from one platform to another. Sark Darlin, I knew, had all but perfected a device whereby monopters might be directed at will toward a fixed destination, but the purpose of the invention had been defeated because, among the mists, monopters might collide and their occupants be hurled to the depths. As we watched there, while I sensed, without looking, that the face of Sark Darlin was radiant with pardonable pride, the platforms opposite were fairly aswarm with monopters waiting for the mists to lift or clear. Like doves standing before their cotes. It was impossible, of course, to tell which were men and which were women. Not that it mattered, especially, for in the City of the East there is no difference between them, save the fundamental difference of sex, and women and men work side by side. Sark has told me, he having read extensively, that this was not so, long ago; but Sark is getting old, and I have never believed it. To me it is inconceivable that women were once considered to be of a lower order than men—or the other way around. My principal reason for loving the daughter of Darlin is that she can do everything that I can do.
“See, Gerd?” he pointed vaguely beyond the window. “The City of the East! The greatest city of all time! The realization of a dream of my first recorded ancestor. Would that he lived today to see his dream in truth as he must have seen it then in his mind! He promised himself, this dreamer-ancestor of mine, to dedicate his life to the building of this City which lies before you, and the tradition was passed on to his son, and from him to his son, and the line has never been broken. Only now is it threatened, because my time is coming. Lona is my only offspring.
To her, and to yon, I tender the torch which has burned brightly through all the generations of the Darlins. You, and she, must carry on.”
Something of the solemnity of the thing entered into me there as we stood by the window. I s
tood like a statue, his hand resting on my shoulder, harkening to the myriad sounds of the City that persisted in invading the silence of Sark Darlin’s office—and realized a little of the tremendous responsibility that was one day to rest on my shoulders. I shook off the feeling, however, in a moment, and gazed into the old man’s eyes.
“Nonsense!” I said sharply. “You have twenty years of active service before you yet. You are only sixty-five!”
“Sixty-five,” he repeated. “That is young, I know. Ordinarily I should live to twice that age. But I have led a strenuous life, and I shall welcome the chance to leave it behind me. I have received warnings——”
He pressed his white hand, slim and graceful as Lona’s, against his heart. A pang shot through me. I wondered if something of his affliction might not have been passed on to Lona. To win her for my own, only to lose her to Death! But I shook myself impatiently. Lona was too young, too replete with health and brimming vitality.
“So,” continued Darlin, “you must study City of the East as an artizan studies craftsmanship. Every spare hour must be spent in the air, learning all there is to learn about this City in whose future you will have such an active part. The sun is high now, my son, so drop off and busy yourself. This is a tremendous responsibility I am passing on to you.”
I fancied I read a vague hint in his voice as he said it, as though he somehow doubted his choice of a successor—and decided instantly—that, before he should leave us, I would erase any lingering doubt of me his heart might harbor. Now, however, there were other things to do. He had bade me go, and to obey his slightest wish was my law—since I was soon to become his son-in-law. We stepped back from the window and Darlin kept up a running fire of conversation, while I stepped into my monopter and adjusted the filament wires to the headpiece which, last of all, would be set in place, closing the monopter to all sound save that which was transmitted by the mechanism of the wireless telephone inside the headpiece.
WITH Sark Darlin’s words ringing in my ears I stepped to the window. Darlin opened it and closed it swiftly behind me. I was alone on the platform, preparing myself for the duty to follow. To see and to learn, and to remember, and the whole of City of the East was my place of operation. Added to this duty, which I loved, was the anticipation of again seeing Lona, who had promised to meet me at the fifty thousand foot air lane, directly east of the Executive Building, at the edge of the Great Rampart which holds back the rising waters of the vast Atlantic—our usual trysting place where, hand in hand, communing by telephone, we were accustomed to flying far out to sea, beyond the usual range of other monopters, where we might enjoy the privacy our love demanded. Prom day to day I lived in anticipation of that winging flight outward from the Great Rampart in which, like a Lord and Lady of Creation, we talked lovers’ nonsense and looked down upon the vast dominion we were to inherit from Sark Darlin.
My heart was all aflutter as I stood on the platform, waiting for the mists to disperse slightly before leaping into space. I knew that behind me Sark Darlin stood by the window, wishing me a silent Godspeed.
The monopter, as you must know, is nothing more nor less than a slipover suit of specially prepared material which, equipped with a tiny atomic engine resting compactly behind and between the shoulders of the wearer, keeps out the cold of the higher altitudes. No one has yet found it necessary to ascend to any altitude greater than fifty thousand feet, which is almost the ceiling for monopters. There are air lanes below this level, a lane for each two hundred feet, in fact, and each type of monopter, passenger and freight, keeps to its particular level, assigned by law, the monopters of the various trades and strata of society being designated by words on the outside of each monopter as, for example: “Engineer, Air Lane 50,000”, or, “Building Level 200, Air Lane 35,000”. This last indicates that the occupant of the monopter is a man or woman from that City level indicated by the two hundredth story of City buildings, assigned by law to Air Lane 35,000, which is to say, that monopters from this level must confine themselves to an elevation not greater than 35,000 feet. The first designation is virtually self-explanatory, indicating that the Engineers, whose business is the building of the City of the East to still grander proportions, are allowed to ascend to the highest lane, whence they are enabled to view everything below them, which includes every activity known at present to the City of the East. I am of the Engineers, soon to be the head of the Guild, through my marriage to Lona Darlin. But in reference to the monopter: as I say, it is no more than a slip-over suit, entirely enclosing the occupant, and the motive power is supplied by a small, compact, atomic engine, an invention of Sark Darlin, and is guided and directed by tiny buttons inside the finger-tips of the right glove. In the air the monopter and its occupant are one entity, directed by one brain. Lenses of specially prepared material, with fused quartz as the principal alloy, allow the eyes of the occupant full view in all directions, or as far as the eyes may swerve in any direction. To look at the rear requires a turning of the entire monopter. From which it may be seen that a person in the air is virtually the same in appearance as a person on the ground, free of the monopter, with the exception of the slight enlargement of the head and torso, caused by the covering which houses the engine of propulsion and the mechanism of the headpiece. It is as though man had suddenly lifted into the air on invisible wings, and when all the monopters of the City of the East are in the air, which seldom happens at one time, the City resembles more than ever a gigantic dovecote, with its inhabitants circling about in preparation for landing, filling the air to the very crest of Air Lane 50,000. An awe-inspiring sight, even when, as I am, one is accustomed to it.
Standing on the platform before Sark Darlin’s window, I was glad that I had locked myself securely inside my monopter, for I was slightly giddy with my thoughts, inspired by the stupendous responsibility soon to be mine, and, in my excitement, might have fallen from the platform. This would have been disastrous had I, as I sometimes did, left the fastening of the headpiece of the monopter until I had taken my place on the narrow platform. Now, however, it would have been perfectly safe to step off into space and drop like a plummet, for to slacken speed required but the pressure of finger on button, so that I would have landed at the bottom of this great canyon as lightly as a feather fluttering downward.
It has always been a great moment for me, a thrilling moment, to stand on the platform before leaping outward. From far below comes the bellowing voice of the City, welling up like thunder from the depths, rattling the very headpiece about my ears, causing my whole body to tremble, so that the platform under my feet seems to sway as though some invisible hand is shaking it from side to side. A cloud of snowy whiteness passes through the canyon below me, blotting out some of the sound, shutting out the world below, so that it seems the world as I know it has its foundation in space, with spires and towers afloat in the whiteness, a City in the air. The moving of the clouds gives the sense of motion, so that, as I gaze at the building across from me, it seems to be leaning in my direction, so that I have an insane desire to leap into space before it shall have toppled against the Executive Building and both shall have fallen crashing into the canyon. Even the Executive Building seems to be moving, as though it tilted away from me, toppling me forward, so that I unconsciously lean backward to keep from falling over the edge. It is intoxicating and I never tire of this experience. But a tapping sound comes through the phones and I turn to look at the window through which I have just stepped. Sark Darlin is tapping the window with one hand, while his other hand makes a sweeping gesture which bids me soar aloft on the business assigned me. Thus, in a gesture, I am brought back to the matter in hand, recalled to a mission that never becomes humdrum.
However, just for the joy of falling, I step to the edge of the platform and lean forward until the pull of gravitation topples me from my perch and I go plummeting downward. I always revel, dropping thus, in the thought that there may be something wrong with my monopter and that I shall not be a
ble to halt my downward flight. I might have failed to connect some all-important filament, a failure that would assuredly spell disaster. But when I decide to check my falling, speed slackens gradually until, by an effort of will, I am moving in the opposite direction, upward. Once this is accomplished the matter is simple. I keep on climbing, straight into the clouds.
My flight upward is uninterrupted, for the aerial traffic laws compel monopters already in the air to keep out of the way of monopters ascending or descending while, in the up and down traffic, descending monopters keep out of the way of those ascending.
So in a few moments, I find my monopter becoming almost stationary, indicating that I have reached Air Lane 50,000 or the ceiling for monopters, 50,000 feet above ground level. Here for a moment I tilt forward to peer down. What a magnificent sight! No wonder Sark Darlin is proud! Air lane after air lane, each alive with its myriads of flitting, darting monopters, as the individuals occupying them scurry here and there toward unknown destinations. A veritable cloud, black layer upon black layer, extending downward to swathe the very buildings of the City of the East. A cloud, moreover, through which it is easy to get glimpses of the City itself.
AS I have said before, the highest building is the Executive Building, 500 stories, almost in the mathematical center of the City. All about this building are grouped the others, many of them far more massive, most of them in fact, since Executive Building is more like a slender spire than a building—and they vary in height from two hundred and fifty stories to four hundred and ninety, the latter building being an annex to the Executive Building, housing the subordinates and apprentices of the Engineers, who themselves are housed in the Executive Building. This latter building, with its sprawling annex, is the most industrious hive in all the City. Its work is the City’s progress. Its officials are the City Administrators.
