by Don Wilcox
“You’re worried about the robe, I suppose,” said Ecker in a manner excessively harsh and defensive.
“I’m worried that something may have happened to him that might have been meant for me,” said Mombal.
“Pray don’t let us jump at conclusions.” Ecker drew himself up with an effort to regain his lost poise. “Since he and Voileen and Hajjah are all gone, I feel sure they must have been trapped in the tunnel—which, I understand, had been closed.”
Mombal raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you, as the intended husband of Voileen, willing to let the matter rest there? . . . Or would you advise that we reopen the tunnel to search for the three dead bodies?”
“Now you’re trying to put my love to a test, Mombal,” said Ecker sarcastically.
“What do you intend to do?” Mombal put the question squarely. “With these three gone, your show will suffer, my friend. You don’t have Hajjah to strike with lightning. You don’t have Voileen to marry, to save her from Hajjah. What can the people praise you for now?”
Cold hatred passed through the glares between Mombal and Ecker. But the young actor repressed the bitter sneer that tried to form on his lips. He walked slowly to the palace window and gazed up toward the clouds.
“King Witfessal,” he recited in reverent tones, “will praise me for the sacrifice I am about to make.”
“And what would that be?”
“I shall refrain from searching the tunnel for the one I love. I shall ask no one to dig for her. Much as I love her, I am willing for her to take her punishment. That tunnel was a crime against the Law. If she has gone into it—she and her father and Hajjah—let them suffer death. For the good of the Law I sacrifice her.”
“For the good of the Law,” Mombal repeated with a bitterly cynical smile on his lips, “you sacrifice her! . . . Very well, the tunnel will remain closed. I shall cancel the orders for a wedding and for a public hearing. But the feast we shall have.”
“And what,” Ecker asked, “do we have left to feast about?”
“The noble sacrifice of a devout lover,” said the High Servant of the King.
XLV
Hajjah heard Voileen gasp. The tunnel digger suddenly hummed at high speed. Rocks jumped out of its path. Streaks of light blazed in and struck away the world of blackness.
Hajjah struck a lever. The machine stopped and fell silent.
Light! Light! Terrible, frightening, impossibly bright light. Such intense light as the world had never known.
Hajjah and Voileen were suddenly out. The tunnel was all back of them. Before them was a new world!
Voileen clasped her hands over her eyes. She was afraid to look. And yet she was so excited that she was afraid not to make the most of this rare sight. Perhaps it would stay for only a moment. Surely such dazzling, painful brightness as this couldn’t last.
Hajjah tried to tell her it was all coming from one little ball of fire high up in that awful, vast nothingness.
For both of them it was a shock beyond anything their hollow-planet minds had ever conceived.
For many minutes they simply gazed. Then they would turn to each other, gasping, laughing, crying by turns.
They nestled in the pocket of rocks through which they had so suddenly emerged. At first, all they wanted to do was stay right in their tracks and gaze.
Then Hajjah laughed to discover that both of them were holding onto the handles of the electric tunnel digger. In all the immense panorama before them, it was the only familiar thing.
And what a friend to hold onto. It had brought them here. Hajjah declared it would take them back.
Voileen made no comment on the matter of going back.
However, only a few moments before this sudden burst, Voileen had declared herself staunchly.
“If we should reach a new land—a land where people can live,” she had said dreamily, while they had rested, “we’ll never return home.”
“You’re very sure you’d never want to return?” Hajjah had asked.
“Never. Not with Ecker waiting to destroy you, and to marry me. Not when I have a father who hates me and is willing to sell me to a man I hate—all for the glory of King Witfessal. No, Hajjah, I won’t return. I’ll marry you and we’ll live in whatever new land we find.”
Then Hajjah had pressed his face against hers in a passionate token of love, and their lips had blended.
Their talk, during that hour of idleness, had been about an imaginary world that neither had been able to visualize. And all the while, this bright, dazzling, limitless realm of openness had been only a few minutes’ digging ahead of them.
Now Hajjah sprang up. He wanted to walk along the rocks.
“But you’ll fall off,” Voileen protested.
“Where will I fall?”
“I—I don’t know—but can’t you see—there are no sides to this world! It isn’t walled in.”
“There’s plenty of rock under us,” Hajjah declared. “All that we dug through is under us now.”
“But it all curves away from us—like-an upside down bowl. Suppose we should start to slide, with no ground to catch us?”
“There’s plenty of ground here. It’s too rough to let us slip.”
They plodded along together over the mountainous terrain. The enormous sky was terrifying, and neither of them could feel comfortable at first, with such a vast emptiness threatening them from above.
Every few minutes there were new discoveries that made the world seem an impossible dream.
“That ball of light—look, Haj, it’s moving.”
Haj looked up at the dazzling star which seemed to serve as the “King’s Cloud” of this realm, Undoubtedly it had moved. But it moved too slowly for its action to be detected. As time went on, this sun floated on down to the edge of the mountains and finally slipped out of sight.
“We’d better get back,” Haj said, trying to suppress the note of alarm in his voice.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Voileen asked. Her body trembled against his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Haj admitted. “But it’s getting dark. There might be something wrong.”
“It’s already darker than it ever gets in Wanzuura,” Voileen gasped. “Put your arm around me, Hajjah. Do you think we’re safe?”
“We’re not going to be afraid of darkness,” Hajjah said, “after all we’ve come through. But we’ll stay by our camp until we learn what to expect.”
They found a spring close by, and it was more as if they had a share in this new world after they had drunk the sweet water. They bathed their aching arms and made themselves comfortable. A stellar show was spread before them in the deep blue sky.
They watched the magic of the stars and wondered how such things could be.
They wondered, too, if all such mysteries were completely understood by the people who dwelt in this land.
But the mysteries of the skies were no more wonderful than those of the darkened land.
On the gently curved horizon only a few dunes away—for one could see only a few dunes’ distance on this outside world—jewels of lights were twinkling through the soft hazy night air. Lights were moving through definite paths. Star-like lights were heaped up in tall, graceful towers.
“It’s magic,” Hajjah said. “Those moving lines of light must be people with some sort of torchlights. That’s the world we’ve come to explore.”
“Not yet, Haj.”
“Afraid?”
“A little.”
“Want to go back to home?”
“N-no. I just want to stay here—resting against your arm, so I’ll know I’m safe—and listen to you talk, Haj. Tell me it’s real.”
Hajjah laughed quietly. “I suppose if I weren’t with you, Leenie, you’d say it was only a beautiful, terrible dream.”
“If you weren’t here with me,” Voileen mused, “I wouldn’t be here.”
XLVI
The fence was not made of dravoth.
&nbs
p; Hajjah examined the posts carefully and saw that they were the product of some plant life—apparently the same sort that grew over all these mountainsides—big bunchy cones full of green needles that stemmed from a tough stalk.
But it was a fence, even though the posts were widely spaced and linked together with strings of hard round metal.
Hajjah and Voileen followed that fence for several dunes. They learned from it. It told them plainly many things.
Since the fence led all the way down to the blue foliage-filled valley, and since it curved along a roadway and took in a beautiful white mansion, obviously this land belonged to the people who lived in that mansion.
And obviously those people owned fandruffs (though the animals which were contentedly grazing among the soft green brush that filled the valley were very odd-looking fandruffs).
“We are camping in their land,” said Hajjah. “Maybe they will like it. Maybe not.”
“We left the tunnel digger well hidden,” Voileen commented. “They won’t find it unless we show them the way.”
“We won’t say anything about it,” said Hajjah, “until we see how friendly they are. They might want to take it for theirs because it is on their land.” Voileen frowned. The suggestion was a jarring one. This world was too beautiful. The people who lived in it must be beautiful too, not mean and hurtful.
“Soon we’ll know,” said Hajjah, and he led the way down the slope. To Voileen it was a perilous hike, for the new day had not lessened her apprehension about the unnatural curve of this new world. She seemed forever to be in danger of falling off.
Now, they stopped. Voileen cupped her hand to her ear.
“It the wind singing through a dravoth stalk,” Hajjah said.
“No—it’s coming from that big white mansion. Listen!”
“It’s a song! But how can anyone sing so loud?”
“It’s more like the high song the digging machine made when it tore up out of the earth,” said Voileen.
“No, it’s more like the cry of a home-sick fandruff calf.”
“I like it!” Voileen exclaimed. “It’s a new kind of music. Let’s go see what causes it.”
She led the way on the run.
She stopped at the edge of the green yard that spread around the mansion. What she saw was so fascinating that she couldn’t even speak to Hajjah when he caught up with her.
There was the source of the entrancing music.
It was coming from a glistening horn which a small boy was holding to his lips.
The little fellow was swinging idly in a shallow net that hung low between two trees—or rather, to Hajjah’s eye, two tall dravoth-like stalks.
“A music boy,” Voileen whispered. “He’s singing music through those shiny metal tubes.”
They watched in silence for a long time.
“Why does he have to do that?” Hajjah finally asked.
“He’s doing it because he wants to—the same as we sing,” Voileen said. “Can’t you see he’s happy?”
“Do you like it, Leenie?”
“Of course. It’s wonderful.”
“Would you like to make music like that yourself?”
“Oh, Haj! Could I?”
“I’m going to get one of those shiny things for you. I don’t know where or how, but I’m going to get one!”
XLVII
When the boy finally stopped his playing and started into the house Haj called to him from the edge of the yard.
The little fellow turned in surprise. He rubbed his eyes. But Voileen was smiling at him, and he smiled back.
“The song was good,” Voileen called. “Do you like to do it?”
The boy’s face was a study in consternation.
“The song was good,” Voileen repeated.
The boy burst out laughing. He walked out toward them; he was not the least bit timid. He was obviously fascinated by the strangeness of their faces, and no less by the glittering jewels that adorned their clothing.
He swung about briskly and shouted something that neither Hajjah nor Voileen understood.
A large, quiet man then emerged from the doorway and came down to him. The man, clothed in a white uniform with ornamental gold braid, was strangely obedient to the little fellow, who seemed to be giving orders and making explanations.
“They don’t talk so you can understand them,” Voileen whispered.
“I don’t understand it,” Hajjah mumbled. “Their words sound big and jumbled, like some of the words Teacher Crassie used to use.”
They listened again, for the little boy and the uniformed man were speaking by turns, bowing pleasantly.
“What are you trying to tell us?” Hajjah asked. “Can’t you talk any slower? We don’t understand you.” The incomprehensible jabbering went on.
“They don’t understand us, either,” Voileen whispered. She was growing afraid. “They aren’t really talking. They’re not saying any words. They’re just making funny noises. Come on, Haj.”
“Wait.”
“They’re trying to scare us away.” Voileen started to run, but Hajjah caught her by the arm and led her back to face the two picturesque strangers.
“They are talking, Voileen,” Hajjah said. “They understand each other. There must be more than one way of talking.”
Meanwhile the boy and his servant were doing their best—in their own language.
“We’re asking you who you are and where you came from. Can’t you understand us? What foreign languages do you speak? How did you get here?”
“They don’t understand you,” said the servant. “They act as if they never saw anyone like us before.”
“But how could that be?” the boy asked. “The space port is fifty miles away. They couldn’t come here without talking to someone.”
“Maybe they’ve landed in their own ship somewhere in our fields.”
The boy turned to gaze toward the mountains.
It was Hajjah’s turn, to be worried. His instincts for danger sharpened when he saw the little fellow and the uniformed man looking off toward the uplands. Had they already guessed that a digging machine was hidden up there?
Hajjah would have led Voileen away on the double quick. But at that moment she embarked upon interests of her own.
Gently, gracefully, she reached for the gleaming musical instrument in the little fellow’s arm.
He smiled and handed it over to her.
She put it to her mouth and tried to sing into it—and most of the hum came through her nose instead of the horn.
But everyone laughed, Voileen most of all; and from that moment on, Hajjah and Voileen knew they were among friends.
XLVIII
The parents of the “music boy” were not actually the king and queen of this land.
This fact they tried ever so many times to explain to Voileen and Hajjah. But all of these funny conversations were so full of confusion that Ted Green was never sure whether his two guests got rid of their misimpression.
What a curious situation. Here they sat, in the big comfortable living room, marvelling at the wonder and beauties of electric lights and wooden furniture, refrigerators, shower baths, radios.
To them it seemed impossible that one family should own all of these things unless it be the family of a king. For these things were riches beyond measure.
And yet these two strangers, whose eyes were wide from trying to conceive of all these riches, were wearing upon their garments hundreds of precious stones, any one of which would buy this whole mansion.
“You must be the king and queen of your land,” Ted Green would tell them. But when he tried to explain his words by pointing to the precious gems on Hajjah’s sleeve, the handsome stranger would quickly jerk one of the stones off and hand it over.
Ted Green couldn’t help laughing at such unbelievable generosity. Most of the time he refused. But Hajjah wanted to make an exchange, and he persisted until Ted understood. Hajjah wished to exchange a stone for the musical instr
ument.
“So that’s it! You want a trumpet. Very well, tomorrow we’ll go into the city and I’ll take you to my father’s store. For this one stone my father will let you have all the trumpets you want.”
And so, on the following day, Hajjah and Voileen found themselves being moved along over the road in a magnificent cart that raced far more swiftly than any fandruff could have pulled it.
The little music boy pointed to the majestic white towers, the very ones that Voileen remembered having seen that first night, trimmed in rows of magic torchlights.
“That’s the city,” the music boy said, and the big uniformed servant, who was herding the swift cart by turning a wheel, repeated the words, “That’s the city.”
Voileen smiled and whispered, “They must be saying, ‘Roadcrossing’.”
Hajjah nodded. Not the least fascinating of all these wonderful experiences was this game of picking up new words. He and Voileen were learning fast. “That’s the city,” Hajjah repeated. But Voileen was watching the great buildings as they seemed to stretch right up into the sky, and she was too breathless to say anything.
XLIX
“Some of these times we must go back,” Hajjah told Voileen one evening after he had watched the sun sink down over the mountain top.
“Some of these times,” Voileen echoed casually, “but not too soon . . . Do you think my playing is any better today than it was yesterday, Haj?”
Hajjah looked at her and smiled. She lay in the hammock languidly, looking up at the sky, watching the stars pop out. Each time she saw a new one she greeted it with a blast on the trumpet.
“I’ve learned two notes already,” she laughed, when she noticed how intently Hajjah was looking at her. “Why don’t you get a horn for yourself so that we can both make music.”
“Would there be enough stars?” Hajjah asked. He dropped down on the grass and rested his head against the foot of the tree. “They say those stars are other worlds, Leenie.”
