The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “If he could only hear this!” Harmon exclaimed delightedly. “It’s funny, though, but I begin to see the sense of what he was trying to say when he spoke of the essence of the thing-in-itself, the reality apart from the weight or size or bulk or any quality at all. All right, you’re the essence of fire, and just for convenience or necessity or because you want it that way you’re tricked out as a woman. In which you couldn’t have made a neater choice!

  “But if I, the so-called I that my friends were chasing up the cone to catch and lock up, am maya, what is the actual me, where is it?”

  She looked at him a long time, steadily but with mysteriously changing eyes and a smile that was entirely inward. She closed her eyes as though to blot out illusion and when she opened them she said, “Let that answer itself when the times comes. Now cease trying to get ahead of yourself. I’m going to make a rijstafel.”

  The dish which Agni Deva prepared exceeded the fieriness that Harmon had so extravagantly described. It was an initiation.

  “This is the way of fire!”

  She laughed at his grimace, said he’d soon get used to it and added, very soberly, “Wade, one day you may learn that fire is not hot. If ever the test comes accept it—don’t be afraid.”

  “Accept it? Suppose I have no choice?”

  “All the more, do not be afraid. It is not as you think.”

  So he ate a slice of fresh mango to extinguish the flame. Then he said, “Kiss me and see if a bite of mango will be cooling.”

  * * * *

  But at last there came into those timeless hours the recollection of the rice crop. Harvest time was near. Whenever Harmon spoke of it to Agni Deva she assured him he had nothing at all to worry about.

  Eventually, however, he declared, “I should go back. They must by now have cooled down enough to get rid of their notion of locking me up. If they haven’t I’ll know where to go and what to do. Probably I’ll surprise them when I show up just as though nothing had happened.”

  She smiled cryptically. “You will. Oh, you surely will.”

  “If there’s any trouble I’ll be back and in a hurry.”

  “Must you go?”

  “It’s my work. All this has been beautiful. I’ve never before known beauty. What I took for beauty was always maya. Lorella’s face—the unmasking—it’s not on her account I’m going back. You know that.”

  “That much I can count on! But the rice is thriving. I’ve made it thrive. After all, I am Merah. You know this but you’re impatient, restless.”

  “Because I’m human.” With one hand he gripped his other, kneading and twisting it. “All this is maya. But whatever the real I, it has to do and act. Sitting here and being is not enough. You’re different. Your doing is only a sideline. Maybe if I knew more about being I’d see less importance in doing.”

  She drew a deep breath. Her smile became a glowing loveliness. “Go then and don’t think of me as neglected or deserted. Go, do your work and come back when it’s done. Maybe then you’ll be ready to walk the way of fire, to become fire with me, like me.”

  “We’ll be the volcano, you and I?” he said in affectionate whimsy. He kissed her.

  CHAPTER VI

  Taking no chances of another encounter with Lorella’s allies, one or both of whom might still be at the house, Harmon made a wide circuit and headed for the native kampong, to see Ahmat.

  Instead of greeting him the men and women who had worked in the fields regarded him with consternation. They looked as though they wanted to run but could not. The laughter of women and the speech of the groups of men who sat gossiping stopped at the sight of him. The silence that followed made Harmon feel life had suddenly left the Malays, that the houses of thatch and rattan were homes of the dead.

  He saw Ahmat and called him by name. “Tell these people I am not crazy. You know why those two fellows tried to take me away.”

  “They told us you were dead—fallen into the fires of Merah. You were on the rim and fire came up to pull you down. We believed but plainly it is not true.” He addressed the others. “Merah let him come back. Merah does what pleases her. Do you believe what is before you, or believe what they told us?”

  Harmon asked, “Ahmat, what’s been happening?”

  “Come, sit with us, we aren’t afraid.”

  Harmon accepted the invitation. Ahmat’s face was troubled but from natural reasons. The others had a similar expression. Disturbed, they exchanged glances. It was as though his being alive had raised a new problem.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your wife, the lady who calls herself your widow, she went last week to Batavia with Kirby to be married. We expect them back in a few days.”

  “See here! I can understand her marrying Kirby or Voerhaven or anyone else, and I’m all in favor of it. But what do you mean, last week?”

  “You have been gone many weeks, tuan.”

  “What?”

  “Be pleased to come with me and see the new rice crop.” When Harmon had followed, with most of the kampong at his heels, Ahmat gestured at the expanse of sprouting blades. “You had too much on your mind to notice this when you came,” the old man said. “But surely you remember that when you went a crop awaited harvest. Could it become young again or is this a new one?”

  The field spoke for itself. Dazed, Harmon asked, “Tell me more of what they said? What happened to me that day?”

  “You ran. They chased. They said fire came to pull you into the crater. When they looked back there was no more fire—only steam. When they tried to look heat drove them and fumes choked them before they could get to the rim. They knew that nothing could live through that fire.”

  Harmon said, “All I saw was mist and a young woman reaching to give me a hand if I stumbled. Her name is Agni Deva. She lives up there. When it seemed time to return to my work I left. How is it at my bungalow?”

  “There is no enemy. There is only a young woman there, Kirby’s sister. She came by air when they told her of his plans to marry. What you do or what you do not do, that is for you to decide. Haste is evil. Talk to her and think and when you know what is to be done, then we will do it with you and for you. And that is on our head and on our eyes!”

  And so, presently, Harmon met Eileen Kirby, who was not in the least disconcerted at the sight of him, since they had never until that moment met.

  Eileen was just short of being plump and like so many solidly built women she had unusually small feet and dainty ankles and carried herself straight up. He had scarcely seen her move more than a few steps when he realized that this was one of the only two or three women he had ever seen who could wear high heels without seeming to stilt along, ever on the verge of falling on her chin.

  Her tawny golden hair waved naturally. The curl was particularly noticeable in the strands on either side of the part, at the center. Her cheekbones were sufficiently prominent to give a piquant touch, which kept her features from being too regular, though her nose added zest, being neither tip-tilted nor yet quite straight. The nostrils had an eager flare and the friendly eyes, dark and warm, made him welcome at once. Harmon knew that she would be easy to talk to and she was.

  She listened to his story without revealing any doubts as to his sanity. She finally said, “You’ve described Lorella and my brother Dave, and you’ve told me where to find your picture and other things in the house. Oh, don’t try to explain or prove anything!

  “However it happened, whatever did happen, you’re Wade Harmon. Oh, it’s awful—what an embarrassing fix Lorella and Dave are in. They did believe you dead.”

  Harmon shrugged. While her sympathy did her credit he saw no good cause for being concerned.

  “Suppose we take it easy till they get back from their honeymoon,” he said. “There must be some way out of all this without hurting anyone.”

  “You’re no
t at all resentful?”

  “The more I think about it the less I can hold it against her or them for thinking I was balmy. She couldn’t really think otherwise. And we couldn’t have got along again afterward. We’d not been doing any too well before it happened. It’s simply a matter of getting the property and the business unscrambled. What possessed you to take over the place by yourself?”

  “I could hardly tag along on their honeymoon, could I?”

  “No, I suppose not. So you just stayed here to carry on with your sketching and painting?” he asked.

  “After all, that’s what I came over for. I’d wanted to for a long time but Dave discouraged me. The political mess. But that’s quieted down now.”

  The more Eileen told him the more complex Harmon’s problem became. He sat up with her until some hours past midnight, testing one suggestion after another. But there was no way in which he could straighten out such material essentials as the trust fund without making Lorella’s unintentional bigamy conspicuously public.

  The following day he and Eileen resumed the discussion. She devoted herself to the human side of the problem as though it involved far more than merely her brother, who certainly knew his way around and had little need for her solicitous pondering. She ended by going with Harmon to look at the new crop, then to the granaries where the first crop of the improved strain was stored.

  “All this,” he said, as they regarded the warehouses of woven rattan, “is left after sowing every bit of cleared ground on the shelf. It’s a growing business your brother married into.”

  He told her how his success would help the ever-increasing population of Java to feed itself without imports from other countries equally short of grain. Dry rice had always grown after a fashion but not in a way to be relied upon. The crop which fed the Indies required terraced and dyked fields, which had to be flooded. Thus land above the irrigation level could not be cultivated, since pumping sufficient water was out of the question. With dry rice, it would be otherwise.

  It never occurred to Harmon that all this might be an old story to Eileen—and each day, he showed her how the new growth was developing, true to type.

  “It can probably be improved—anything can. But this is success, no doubt about it.” He glanced up at the volcano, during a long moment crowded with memories. “My work is done. There’s no reason why I should be a nuisance or obstacle.”

  Eileen’s eyes became wide and troubled. She did not speak until they were back on the veranda. “Wade, you sounded so solemn and out-of-this-world back there. Not depressed but—well, you’ve got me feeling low. What was on your mind?”

  “Oh? Back there?”

  Again Agni Deva loomed up in his mind. The recollection of her loveliness was so keen as to be painful. Yet he could not go back. Not even a deva could be a twenty-four-hour-a-day interest for one who, as she herself had so often phrased it, was “bound to the wheel” of action and doing. Agni Deva had understood. She had been too wise to keep him imprisoned. Each succeeding day Harmon spent with Eileen convinced him of Agni Deva’s wisdom.

  “What was it, Wade?” she persisted.

  Regarding her intently he saw not the serene omniscience of the timeless but the troubled spirit of a warm and human woman, one who like himself was bound to the wheel.

  “I was thinking,” Harmon said, “how easy it would be to end this muddle. Just make it so.”

  “Oh, no!”

  The cry was low-voiced but stabbing, shocking in its intensity.

  “Darling!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t mean it that way. Good Lord, I meant just that there are other things to do, other work to do, other experiments to carry on. That’s what I meant when I thought of making it so. The notion that I was finished suggested going somewhere else to carry on, where I’d bother no one.”

  Reaction unstrung her. With a cry of relief she caught him in both arms. She kissed him time and again—her tears trickled down his cheeks. But though all this was purely human sympathy the fact remained that Eileen was a woman and wholly desirable. Her distress on his behalf, her solicitude, went beyond the friendliness they had set out to express.

  Before the two had relaxed from the first tension of contact Harmon was saying, “We can leave together. You’re so very much like me. Your work brought you out here. Wherever we go you can carry on. We shan’t hamper each other—for all I know we can be mutually helpful.”

  She drew back a little and looked up at him with gleaming eyes. “Wade, do you mean that? We’ve been thrown together so closely from the moment we met… Are you sure this isn’t just an impulse?”

  “If you’re wondering whether it’s not a case of your being too exciting an armful of woman for me to stay cool and aloof around you, you’re right. But it’s more than that. What counts is that you had a thought for me and weren’t doing any figuring for yourself. You’ve been groping and grappling with this problem from the start, not for your brother’s sake but for mine. Now do you see what I mean?”

  “I do and I love it. And some day you might tell me what really happened up there in the crater. I won’t think you’re crazy.” Eileen laughed softly. “Maybe that’s the artist in me. And you with your plant biology—you’re an artist in a more important way.”

  Harmon glanced at the volcano. He knew now that Agni Deva was surely a goddess. The contrast between her and a human woman gave him the knowledge directly.

  “Someday I may find the words to tell you. Right now there’s so much I can’t understand. The only certainty is that Merah did stop erupting when I took an offering to the crater.”

  “They admitted that themselves.”

  Harmon chuckled. “But since they could not understand or explain why, they insisted the fact proved I was crazy. Do you know, a lot of scientists are just that way?” He stretched in a yawn of contentment, slumped comfortably, drew Eileen closer.

  “I’ve half a notion not to wait for Dave and Lorella to come back from that king-sized honeymoon of theirs. Though I guess we should wait so they won’t be worried about you or by yarns the natives tell about my ghost coming down from the mountain.”

  “I’d like to leave now,” she murmured. “I have a feeling that we should while we can. But—well, you’re right.”

  “What are you afraid of, fuss-budget? Brother raise Cain at the thought of your taking charge of a lunatic?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just—but we’ll wait.”

  Several days later there was an earthquake. Fumes issued from the crevices at the foot of the cone. Ahmat came to say, “Tuan, you are our father and our grandfather. You have increased our rice. But Merah is jealous. She is displeased because of the yellow-haired lady. Send her away or it will not be well with any of us.”

  “Is danger close at hand or is this a first warning?”

  “That we do not know. But all the seed-rice may be destroyed if Merah sends lava over the kampong.”

  “But how can I send this woman away? Where would she go? Have you ever sent your guest away or anyone who had your protection?”

  “I have never been put to that test,” Ahmat admitted. “But with your permission we will pack up our goods, carry seed-rice on our heads and save what we can. If Merah is angry…”

  “What makes you think it’s on her account?”

  “Because Merah saved you from your enemies, so now you belong to her. You cannot belong to this strange woman.”

  “Do what seems good, Ahmat,” was all that Harmon could answer. There was even less that he could say to Eileen when, that night, they noted the dull glow which indicated lava was flowing into the debris of the previous upsurge.

  “Maybe we’d better not wait for Dave and Lorella,” she finally suggested. “If this keeps up I’d better start packing.”

  “We’d better,” he amended and, thinking back to Ahmat’s words, he wondered if it woul
d be as simple as all that.

  CHAPTER VII

  The following afternoon, Dave and Lorella arrived with Voerhaven in his jeep. Harmon found and pocketed his pistol. “Go and break the news,” he told Eileen. “Tell them I’ll not be chased around again. I’ll not put up with any attempts at manhandling. I don’t want trouble but they’ll get it if they force my hand.”

  “Darling, I don’t want trouble either. But I’m all for you, and with you. I don’t care who’s hurt, not if it has to be.”

  That morning the subterranean muttering had subsided. The earth-tremors had ceased. Harmon, watching from a window, noted that the hiss of escaping vapors was not as loud. Then he dismissed Ahmat’s fears, for the meeting of Eileen with the three who had come into the compound held all his attention.

  He heard their voices crack with shock and incredulity. He saw them recoil and regain their ground. They made false starts for the bungalow, then checked themselves. The three closed in on Eileen as though to force her to admit the whole story was a hoax. It was as if they counted her mad and felt that she could become sane again by admitting she was crazy.

  Harmon strolled into view. “Let her alone,” he said easily. “I sent her to break the news but since you can’t take it that way, have a look. Who am I? You know now. Come on in—and congratulations. Sure I mean it—no double talk.”

  Once in the house he said, “Sit down—Eileen, tell them about us. They’ll believe it sooner, coming from you. The servants are out and they’ll stay away until this is settled. They want no part of it. Tell them while I round up a drink.”

  When he returned Eileen had done with reciting what she and Harmon proposed.

  “In the first place, Dave,” she summed up, “it’s none of your business what I do or who with. In the second place, even if Wade and I were planning, as you put it, bigamy, it’s no worse than what you two have already done.

  “It will simply put us all on a par, so you’ll never have any cause to doubt our good faith. You’ll know we don’t mean to embarrass you, much less blackmail you.