Wyndham Smith

by S. Fowler Wright

  A place of worship of ancient, foolish, forgotten gods: of sacrifices within its sunless chambers, its hollowed altar still little changed, and its cistern still half-filled with a dreadful witness of human bones, of chambers where the priests dwelt, of oracles through which they divined, and of deep store-pits, whether for use of the priests alone or of the tribe they ruled, with steps leading thereto which had, at a dark turning, a fatal gap, through which thief or foeman would fall into a pit of another kind.

  As they stood looking into the mouth of the cave, which twisted so that they could see little of what it was, a thin, wolf-like dog came trotting up, without seeing them at first, moving with the confidence of one who comes to her own home. But as Wyndham turned, she sprang back, with a whining cry. She did not snarl, nor show anger that strangers stood at the mouth of her own lair. She cringed. Her tail drooped. She had an aspect of abject fear.

  Yet in a moment her expression had changed.

  She paused in her panic flight. She came slowly, timidly back. She was at least as strange a creature to them as they were to her, but her first reaction did not suggest that she was ferocious, or inclined to pick a quarrel with these strangers about her gate. Rather she acted as though they were half-forgotten friends, to whom advances should be made with discretion, but still in expectation of being received in the same spirit.

  “It was the automata that it feared,” Vinetta said, making a simple guess; “it must go in a constant dread.”

  “It is a dog,” he suggested, “or a fox, or perhaps a wolf.”

  “No. A wolf was fierce. It had great teeth. And a fox had a thick tail.”

  “Well, we will call it a dog. You know how useful they were to men in the old days. We must practice to get them to serve us in the same way.”

  Vinetta looked doubtful. She drew down fastidious brows. “They used to hang round the feet of man—in their houses. You would not have them living with us?” She was prepared for much, but, crudely considered thus, it was too abrupt a descent from the life she knew.

  Wyndham saw he had gone too far, and his own prejudices revolted in the next instant, sympathizing with her own repulsion. “No,” he said, “I didn’t mean that. But they might be useful in other ways. We shall have time to learn what they are like.”

  They went on, not entering the cave farther at that time, to which it seemed that the dog had a prior right. They climbed higher yet. Looking back, they saw that the animal followed them, as though in a timid curiosity. Then they saw another dog trotting towards the entrance to the cave. It carried a smaller animal hanging limp in death from its mouth. They saw more of these creatures later, a species of coney that burrowed among these higher rocks, where the automata did not climb. There was an explanation there of how the dogs and the eagles fed, and of why the conies were hard to see.

  The dog which was following them barked when she saw her companion, and the second one looked up, but did not reply, having his prey in his mouth. After a moment’s hesitation, the first one bounded back to join her mate, and the two disappeared into the cave together.

  “They’ve gone to eat the creature they have caught,” Wyndham said. “Or perhaps to give it to young ones they have got inside.” It seemed to them a most filthy idea. He added, “Shall we come to that?”

  She had a sickening recollection of the steaming entrails of Pilwin-C6P, as they had protruded while he yet lived. The idea of eating such—she put it firmly aside. Why spoil the beauty of land and sky with such thoughts as that? “I don’t see why we should.”

  “No. We will hope not.”

  A yellow lizard, darting from stone to stone, diverted her mind, though she was not sure that it was a pleasant change. “The whole world,” she said, “seems alive.”

  It was a strange condition to them, to be thus surrounded by fecund, fighting life. “We shall get used to it in time,” he replied. “I suppose they all enjoy it in their own ways. We have chosen the same. You won’t say you are getting sorry for that?”

  No. Of that, at least, she was very sure. Come what might, she would not regret.

  Height piled on height they had climbed, and at last, when the sun warned them that noon was some hours behind, they came, after hand and foot had been used for a scrambling climb, to a plateau, narrow and flat, where they could ascend no more. They were not on any peak of the Sicilian hill. They were far below the snow level. To the south and west, Etna still shut out any farther view. But they had reached a point where they could judge what the country was, valley and height, and they had gained a wide view of sea and coast, and the Italian mainland beyond.

  They had a view also, broken at times by obtruding hills, of a wide, concrete road which wound from the inland groves to where the sea-causeway united what had once been Messina with Italy. The terrors of Scylla and Charybdis had been tamed by the engineering skill that reined the air-currents which had riotously wandered and ruled the world. The causeway had been lapped for two hundred years by the quiet waves of a tideless sea. But now, far, off though they were, they could see the line of breakers, whiter than it, which beat on its northern side. What they had been in yesterday’s rushing tempest could be vaguely guessed from what they now were beneath the force of a falling wind. Compared with the causeway, the long road seemed a duller white, the reason for which could only be read at a nearer view.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  As they returned, and had no longer the doubt of what was ahead, or to choose a way, they talked, during the easier descents, of the life which they might hope to build in so fair a land, if only the threat to Vinetta, which was in their minds, not on their tongues, should have glanced aside.

  Wyndham spoke with some appreciation of the assistance which he had had from the librarian and museum curator—particularly Colpeck-4GZ—but he had found the historian’s knowledge of less certain avail.

  Avanah had not lacked willingness, and his learning, even concerning most ancient times, had been very great. Some things which he had told of simple primitive methods of existence had been illuminating, and might prove to be of practical value, but in response to Wyndham’s natural curiosity, as it had been directed upon his own unrememberable twentieth century, although Avanah had been able to supply much strange, and some repulsive, detail, a credible vision of what the life of that time had been would not emerge.

  He tried to imagine them retiring at night into their little, separate houses, where lights blinked or failed amidst patches of unstable darkness, exhausted by a day spent in aimless whirling about, and in ceaseless watchfulness to avoid disastrous collision with other maniacs similarly employed, or, if they should belong to the unfortunate class quaintly labelled “pedestrians,” in derision of the fact that they still moved on their own legs, cleansing their sandals as they came in from the stains of the bloody roads.

  He imagined them at a later hour in the “kitchens” behind their lairs, baking slabs of raw flesh cut from the beasts they killed. But there would be no consistency even in that. One man might feed on milk, another on fish. There was no settled process in what they did. With filthy hands, often ungloved, they would grope in the dirt which at that time covered so large a part of the earth’s surface. Their backs ached, bending to the spade. Diseases of cold and damp caused their limbs to stick out stiffly at grotesque angles. Yet they had some complicated machines. Daily they must read printed words with half-blinded, myopic eyes, to obtain the information which was necessary to enable them to maintain their precarious lives.

  No. He could realize separate facts, but a coherent picture refused to come.

  Beyond that, what he could understand roused him to a curious repulsion. Primitive existence had its disadvantages, no doubt, as he would soon learn. And so, most surely, had the negative, sheltered civilization which had now faded away. But this period from which his ego derived seemed to have given hospitality to all the horrors of both, and with a bizarre streak of insanity—perhaps because of that streak—added
thereto.

  But of the earlier beginnings of human life he could form pictures, bewildering enough, yet with a greater aspect of reality and a more genial simplicity. He regarded them, however mistaken he may have been, as more primitive, but less barbarous times.

  As they repassed the ancient cave, the two dogs came out together, but with no display of hostility. Showing rather a wistful indecision, the one they had first met followed them some distance down the mountain-side, paused, and then came on again, her companion, with greater hesitation, coming some distance behind. Finally he refused to follow farther, and after a moment of whimpering uncertainty she turned, and they raced back together.

  Observing a line of descent which appeared easier than that which they had climbed, they bent somewhat to the left of their previous track, and so came upon the great concrete road which they had observed to run from the interior to the sea, and which had appeared to be of a somewhat duller white than the mole by which it was connected with the Italian mainland. Now they saw the cause of this difference. A thin film of volcanic dust had settled upon the life-denying surface, and upon this a grey-green moss, microscopically minute, had commenced to grow.

  It had not been a matter which the automata would observe, or which they could report to the superior machines by which they were designed and sent out on their agricultural errands. It illustrated the vanity of attempting suppression of promiscuous life. “I wonder,” Wyndham said, “whether it would have saved them if they had had any idea of what fools they were.”

  He saw that only life can destroy life while the earth’s surface remains; it will rise resurgent from any loss, in a new form which will conquer death.

  “I expect,” Vinetta replied more lightly, “that men always have been fools, more or less. I dare say we’re being silly enough now.”

  “If we are, we know of about five millions who were sillier still,” he said, responding to her mood, as it was easy to do. They were finding life to be good in new and almost unbelievable ways. So long as they would remain two, they had no doubt that it would continue so. While that fact endured, they would be bold to face a mutable world. But if either should be alone….

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When the next dawn came with little light in a sunless sky, they had cause to be glad of the shelter that the plane gave, and that they had stores of food which rendered them, as yet, independent of what foraging might obtain.

  The wind rose again, blowing from a more westerly direction than it had done on the previous day, and bringing torrential rain. The cabin was no longer heated, and though the temperature would not have been regarded as uncomfortably low by those whose bodies had acquired the most moderate adaptability—being, in fact, no more than three or four degrees below that to which they had been accustomed—they found it shiveringly depressing as they waited inactive for the wind and rain to cease.

  They exhausted themselves with the practice of such gymnastic exercises as were possible in that narrow space, and when these could be sustained no longer, they searched out additional garments from the stores, finding that these had more than a conventional use.

  It was in consequence of this experimental activity that they had their first experience of how easily the foundations of life may shake when there is no precedent of routine to control the eccentricities of human conduct.

  Vinetta, finding that the masculine garments, lighter in colour and somewhat different in shape from that which she wore (they being the ones that Wyndham had thought it prudent to bring), did not fall precisely in place above her own, attempted the reversing of one of these, and in so doing cast a loop of cloth briskly behind her neck. She felt it catch, pull, and tear, and turned quickly, but not enough, to find that it had caught upon one of the control levers by which the plane was started upon its lonely journeys.

  She looked for one moment of blank consternation upon that small polished bar, not more than five inches in length, which had responded so readily to the trivial pull. She remembered the warning that these levers, having once been set, must not be changed before the completion of any flight which the plane had been directed to undertake.

  “Look,” she exclaimed, “look what I have done now!”

  Wyndham saw, and no words of explanation were needed “What will happen if we put it back now?” she asked. But it was a question to which, unless the dubious experiment should be tried, there could be no reply. Wyndham recalled his experience with the watering automaton, and it did not encourage blind interference now. Doubtless a sufficiently skilled engineer would have been equal to dealing with the emergency, but could they dare to interfere with the intricate mechanism of this automaton of the air, with ignorant and almost certainly blundering hands?

  The control had been set for Warsaw, which they supposed vaguely would be in arctic region under the new conditions of weather which were now sweeping over the world. Wyndham said, “If we go north, we shall freeze. Nor do we even know that there will be food when that which we have shall fail.”

  “You mean we must leave the plane? Within fifteen minutes from now?”

  So he did, and to that they agreed, without further words, though consternation was in their eyes.

  Already, they could hear rumbling and gurgling movements within the belly of the plane, indicating that its preparations for flight commenced. They could see that it was taking liquid fuel from the great sunk tank which was in close proximity to its landing-ground.

  But what of their possessions which were stored in the plane? What of the tempest that raged without? There were no two answers to that. They must save what they could, bundling it out to lie in the drenching storm. They must lose much, for Wyndham’s loading had been liberally done. They might be unfit to face the inclemency of the storm, but, one way or other, they must learn to endure unendurable things.

  With a haste which put discrimination aside, they began to unload the plane, carrying bundles of tools and weapons, cases of food, utensils and clothing, out into the violence of wind and the soaking rain.

  The entrance into the store-room was too narrow for two people, even unburdened, to pass each other, so that they must time themselves to alternate exits rather than to work side by side, as they would have preferred to do, and, as the minutes passed, Vinetta became increasingly apprehensive that the plane would rise while one or the other of them would be inside and the other out, so that she would have ceased the vital salvage at which they toiled rather than risk the possibility of such separation.

  “But we are risking nothing,” Wyndham said reasonably; “there is nearly ten minutes yet, and we know that these machines are not erratic in what they do.”

  Perhaps it was natural that his thoughts were more sharply concerned for the securing of that which he had been at care to collect, much of which, at the best, and however irreparable it might be, must be borne away. “We’ll manage three more lots, if not four,” she heard, as his voice receded.

  The next time, as they met, with sodden garments clinging to rain-drenched forms, he burdened to start outward, and she returning with empty arms, he said hurriedly as he passed out, “At the worst, the one who went could fly back.”

  Her voice followed him, “Then why didn’t we go together?”

  He had thought of that already. Perhaps it might have been best at first. To have let the plane have its way, and remain within it. To go to Warsaw, and then return by the simple method of setting the controls to Taormina again.

  But with half their possessions already spread on the rain-beat ground, it had seemed a more dubious plan. And there was the incalculable risk of whether the plane were equipped for numerous flights without attention they could not give. Suppose that its next flight should have been to some depot of supplies or renovations where it could have renewed itself in essential particulars? Probably not. But they did not know.

  Or suppose the weather in the northern skies should be such that it would have no strength to endure?

&
nbsp; No. Even together, they would not adventure again into the perilous skies. Into those heights he supposed that man had risen for the last time, at least for ages to come. He had conquered the air, but had been unable to rule himself, so that his curiosity and his cunning had come to this.

  But to risk that either should go alone—no, they were alike in declining that. Yet, at the last, Vinetta’s anxiety to avoid the risk brought them very near to that which she had been over-careful to avoid.

  “You’ll make this the last?” she asked, as they met, he passing outward again, and she stretching impatient hands for whatever might be most quickly snatched in that urgent haste.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We mustn’t stop to talk. There are some things that we’re bound to have.”

  He was out of hearing before the sentence was finished. He had thought of some utensils which there might be time to find. There were two minutes yet, if not three. The dashes in and out were very quickly done.

  She came out, and would have restrained him, but he pushed past her. “There is time, he said breathlessly. “I shan’t run any risk. You can be certain of that. But don’t hinder me now.”

  In an impatient fear, that increased as the seconds passed, she stood waiting beside the door. She had been unconscious of cold as she had toiled, but she shivered now. Her drenched garments flapped in the gusty wind. She did not observe that. The life which had been concentrated upon its physical self was forty-eight hours behind. But she was sick with apprehension and fear. She heard movements within the plane which reminded her of those which had preceded its former flight. In a few seconds, she thought, it would rise. She was right in that.

  Wyndham, searching desperately for a package of cooking and frying utensils which the museum had contained, and which he had been assured were essential to the comfort of a primitive existence, had found it, just as he had decided to risk no further second, and just as that premonitory rumble which had alarmed Vinetta had become audible to him also.