The Metal Monster

by Abraham Grace Merritt

  It is instinctively a protective habit, of course, acquired through precisely the same causes that had given to animals their protective coloration—the stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend so cunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle, the twig and leaflike shapes and hues of certain insects; in fact, all that natural camouflage which was the basis of the art of concealment so astonishingly developed in the late war.

  Like the animals of the wild, the mind of man moves through a jungle—the jungle of life, passing along paths beaten out by the thought of his countless forefathers in their progress from birth to death.

  And these paths are bordered and screened, figuratively and literally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out and cultivation—shelters of the familiar, the habitual, the customary.

  On these ancestral paths, within these barriers of usage, man moves hidden and secure as the animals in their haunts—or so he thinks.

  Outside them lie the wildernesses and the gardens of the unknown, and man's little trails are but rabbit-runs in an illimitable forest.

  But they are home to him!

  Therefore it is that he scurries from some open place of revelation, some storm of emotion, some strength-testing struggle, back into the shelter of the obvious; finding it an intellectual environment that demands no slightest expenditure of mental energy or initiative, strength to sally forth again into the unfamiliar.

  I crave pardon for this digression. I set it down because now I remember how, when Drake at last broke the silence that had closed in upon the passing of that still, small voice the essence of these thoughts occurred to me.

  He strode over to the weeping girl, and in his voice was a roughness that angered me until I realized his purpose.

  "Get up, Ruth," he ordered. "He came back once and he'll come back again. Now let him be and help us get a meal together. I'm hungry."

  She looked up at him, incredulously, indignation rising.

  "Eat!" she exclaimed. "You can be hungry?"

  "You bet I can—and I am," he answered cheerfully. "Come on; we've got to make the best of it."

  "Ruth," I broke in gently, "we'll all have to think about ourselves a little if we're to be of any use to him. You must eat—and then rest."

  "No use crying in the milk even if it's spilt," observed Drake, even more cheerfully brutal. "I learned that at the front where we got so we'd yelp for food even when the lads who'd been bringing it were all mixed up in it."

  She lifted Ventnor's head from her lap, rested it on the silks; arose, eyes wrathful, her little hands closed in fists as though to strike him.

  "Oh—you brute!" she whispered. "And I thought—I thought—Oh, I hate you!"

  "That's better," said Dick. "Go ahead and hit me if you want. The madder you get the better you'll feel."

  For a moment I thought she was going to take him at his word; then her anger fled.

  "Thanks—Dick," she said quietly.

  And while I sat studying Ventnor, they put together a meal from the stores, brewed tea over the spirit-lamp with water from the bubbling spring. In these commonplaces I knew that she at least was finding relief from that strain of the abnormal under which we had labored so long. To my surprise I found that I was hungry, and with deep relief I watched Ruth partake of food and drink even though lightly.

  About her seemed to hover something of the ethereal, elusive, and disquieting. Was it the strangely pellucid light that gave the effect, I wondered; and knew it was not, for as I scanned her covertly, there fell upon her face that shadow of inhuman tranquillity, of unearthly withdrawal which, I guessed, had more than anything else maddened Ventnor into his attack upon the Disk.

  I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raised her head and met my gaze. And in her eyes I read both terror and—shame.

  It came to me that painful as it might be for her the time for questioning had come.

  "Ruth," I said, "I know it's not necessary to remind you that we're in a tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can lay hold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine our course.

  "I'm going to repeat your brother's question—what did Norhala do to you? And what happened when you were floating before the Disk?"

  The blaze of interest in Drake's eyes at these questions changed to amazement at her stricken recoil from them.

  "There was nothing," she whispered—then defiantly—"nothing. I don't know what you mean."

  "Ruth!" I spoke sharply now, in my own perplexity. "You do know. You must tell us—for his sake." I pointed toward Ventnor.

  She drew a long breath.

  "You're right—of course," she said unsteadily. "Only I—I thought maybe I could fight it out myself. But you'll have to know it—there's a taint upon me."

  I caught in Drake's swift glance the echo of my own thrill of apprehension for her sanity.

  "Yes," she said, now quietly. "Some new and alien thing within my heart, my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode the flying block, and—he—sealed upon me when I was in—his"—again she crimsoned, "embrace."

  And as we gazed at her, incredulously:

  "A thing that urges me to forget you two—and Martin—and all the world I've known. That tries to pull me from you—from all—to drift untroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace. And whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed!

  "It whispered to me first," she said, "from Norhala—when she put her arm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover me like—like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and peace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterly tranquil and utterly free.

  "I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies—and the life I had known only a dream—and you, all of you—even Martin, dreams within a dream. You weren't—real—and you did not—matter."

  "Hypnotism," muttered Drake, as she paused.

  "No." She shook her head. "No—more than that. The wonder of it grew—and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, saw nothing—except that once through the peace enfolding me pierced warning that Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutching Norhala and to see floating up in her eyes death for him.

  "And I saved him—and again forgot. Then, when I saw that beautiful, flaming Shape—I felt no terror, no fear—only a tremendous—joyous—anticipation, as though—as though—" She faltered, hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered: "and when—it—lifted me it was as though I had come at last out of some endless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise."

  "Ruth!" cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced.

  "Wait," she said, and held up a little, tremulous hand. "You asked—and now you must listen."

  She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low, curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt:

  "I was free—free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love or hate; free even of hope—for what was there to hope for when everything desirable was mine? And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yet fully conscious that I was—I.

  "It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen; a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes.

  "And there was music—strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me—who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. And all—all—passionless, yet—rapturous.

  "Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality—a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this energy were—reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the eleme
ntal things, changing me fully into them.

  "I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing—then came the shots. Awakening was—dreadful, a struggling back from drowning. I saw Martin—blasted. I drove the—the spell away from me, tore it away.

  "And, O Walter—Dick—it hurt—it hurt—and for a breath before I ran to him it was like—like coming from a world in which there was no disorder, no sorrow, no doubts, a rhythmic, harmonious world of light and music, into—into a world that was like a black and dirty kitchen.

  "And it's there," her voice rose, hysterically. "It's still within me—whispering, whispering; urging me away from you, from Martin, from every human thing; bidding me give myself up, surrender my humanity.

  "Its seal," she sobbed. "No—HIS seal! An alien consciousness sealed within me, that tries to make the human me a slave—that waits to overcome my will—and if I surrender gives me freedom, an incredible freedom—but makes me, being still human, a—monster."

  She hid her face in her hands, quivering.

  "If I could sleep," she wailed. "But I'm afraid to sleep. I think I shall never sleep again. For sleeping how do I know what I may be when I wake?"

  I caught Drake's eye; he nodded. I slipped my hand down into the medicine-case, brought forth a certain potent and tasteless combination of drugs which I carry upon explorations.

  I dropped a little into her cup, then held it to her lips. Like a child, unthinking, she obeyed and drank.

  "But I'll not surrender." Her eyes were tragic. "Never think it! I can win—don't you know I can?"

  "Win?" Drake dropped down beside her, drew her toward him. "Bravest girl I've known—of course you'll win. And remember this—nine-tenths of what you're thinking now is purely over-wrought nerves and weariness. You'll win—and we'll win, never doubt it."

  "I don't," she said. "I know it—oh, it will be hard—but I will—I will—"

  CHAPTER XV.

  THE HOUSE OF NORHALA

  Her eyes closed, her body relaxed; the potion had done its work quickly. We laid her beside Ventnor on the pile of silken stuffs, covered them both with a fold, then looked at each other long and silently—and I wondered whether my face was as grim and drawn as his.

  "It appears," he said at last, curtly, "that it's up to you and me for powwow quick. I hope you're not sleepy."

  "I am not," I answered as curtly; the edge of nerves in his manner of questioning doing nothing to soothe my own, "and even if I were I would hardly expect to put all the burden of the present problem upon you by going to sleep."

  "For God's sake don't be a prima donna," he flared up. "I meant no offense."

  "I'm sorry, Dick," I said. "We're both a little jumpy, I guess." He nodded; gripped my hand.

  "It wouldn't be so bad," he muttered, "if all four of us were all right. But Ventnor's down and out, and God alone knows for how long. And Ruth—has all the trouble we have and some special ones of her own. I've an idea"—he hesitated—"an idea that there was no exaggeration in that story she told—an idea that if anything she underplayed it."

  "I, too," I replied somberly. "And to me it is the most hideous phase of this whole situation—and for reasons not all connected with Ruth," I added.

  "Hideous!" he repeated. "Unthinkable—yet all this is unthinkable. And still—it is! And Ventnor—coming back—that way. Like a lost soul finding voice.

  "Was it raving, Goodwin? Or could he have been—how was it he put it—in touch with these Things and their purpose? Was that message—truth?"

  "Ask yourself that question," I said. "Man—you know it was truth. Had not inklings of it come to you even before he spoke? They had to me. His message was but an interpretation, a synthesis of facts I, for one, lacked the courage to admit."

  "I, too," he nodded. "But he went further than that. What did he mean by the Keeper of the Cones—and that the Things—were vulnerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could he know—how could he?"

  "There's nothing inexplicable in that, at any rate," I answered. "Abnormal sensitivity of perception due to the cutting off of all sensual impressions. There's nothing uncommon in that. You have its most familiar form in the sensitivity of the blind. You've watched the same thing at work in certain forms of hypnotic experimentation, haven't you?

  "Through the operation of entirely understandable causes the mind gains the power to react to vibrations that normally pass unperceived; is able to project itself through this keying up of perception into a wider area of consciousness than the normal. Just as in certain diseases of the ear the sufferer, though deaf to sounds within the average range of hearing, is fully aware of sound vibrations far above and far below those the healthy ear registers."

  "I know," he said. "I don't need to be convinced. But we accept these things in theory—and when we get up against them for ourselves we doubt.

  "How many people are there in Christendom, do you think, who believe that the Saviour ascended from the dead, but who if they saw it today would insist upon medical inspection, doctor's certificates, a clinic, and even after that render a Scotch verdict? I'm not speaking irreverently—I'm just stating a fact."

  Suddenly he moved away from me, strode over to the curtained oval through which Norhala had gone.

  "Dick," I cried, following him hastily, "where are you going? What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going after Norhala," he answered. "I'm going to have a showdown with her or know the reason why."

  "Drake," I cried again, aghast, "don't make the mistake Ventnor did. That's not the way to win through. Don't—I beg you, don't."

  "You're wrong," he answered stubbornly. "I'm going to get her. She's got to talk."

  He thrust out a hand to the curtains. Before he could touch them, they were parted. Out from between them slithered the black eunuch. He stood motionless, regarding us; in the ink-black eyes a red flame of hatred. I pushed myself between him and Drake.

  "Where is your mistress, Yuruk?" I asked.

  "The goddess has gone," he replied sullenly.

  "Gone?" I said suspiciously, for certainly Norhala had not passed us. "Where?"

  "Who shall question the goddess?" he asked. "She comes and she goes as she pleases."

  I translated this for Drake.

  "He's got to show me," he said. "Don't think I'm going to spill any beans, Goodwin. But I want to talk to her. I think I'm right, honestly I do."

  After all, I reflected, there was much in his determination to recommend it. It was the obvious thing to do—unless we admitted that Norhala was superhuman; and that I would not admit. In command of forces we did not yet know, en rapport with these People of Metal, sealed with that alien consciousness Ruth had described—all these, yes. But still a woman—of that I was certain. And surely Drake could be trusted not to repeat Ventnor's error.

  "Yuruk," I said, "we think you lie. We would speak to your mistress. Take us to her."

  "I have told you that the goddess is not here," he said. "If you do not believe it is nothing to me. I cannot take you to her for I do not know where she is. Is it your wish that I take you through her house?"

  "It is," I said.

  "The goddess has commanded me to serve you in all things." He bowed, sardonically. "Follow."

  Our search was short. We stepped out into what for want of better words I can describe only as a central hall. It was circular, and strewn with thick piled small rugs whose hues had been softened by the alchemy of time into exquisite, shadowy echoes of color.

  The walls of this hall were of the same moonstone substance that had enclosed the chamber upon whose inner threshold we were. They whirled straight up to the dome in a crystalline, cylindrical cone. Four doorways like that in which we stood pierced them. Through each of their curtainings in turn we peered.

  All were precisely similar in shape and proportions, radiating in a lunetted, curved base triangle from the middle chamber; the curvature of the enclosing globe forming back wall and r
oof; the translucent slicings the sides; the circle of floor of the inner hall the truncating lunette.

  The first of these chambers was utterly bare. The one opposite held a half-dozen suits of the lacquered armor, as many wicked looking, short and double-edged swords and long javelins. The third I judged to be the lair of Yuruk; within it was a copper brazier, a stand of spears and a gigantic bow, a quiver full of arrows leaning beside it. The fourth room was littered with coffers great and small, of wood and of bronze, and all tightly closed.

  The fifth room was beyond question Norhala's bedchamber. Upon its floor the ancient rugs were thick. A low couch of carven ivory inset with gold rested a few feet from the doorway. A dozen or more of the chests were scattered about and flowing over with silken stuffs.

  Upon the back of four golden lions stood a high mirror of polished silver. And close to it, in curiously incongruous domestic array stood a stiffly marshaled row of sandals. Upon one of the chests were heaped combs and fillets of shell and gold and ivory studded with jewels blue and yellow and crimson.

  To all of these we gave but a passing glance. We sought for Norhala. And of her we found no shadow. She had gone even as the black eunuch had said; flitting unseen past Ruth, perhaps, absorbed in her watch over her brother; perhaps through some hidden opening in this room of hers.

  Yuruk let drop the curtains, sidled back to the first room, we after him. The two there had not moved. We drew the saddlebags close, propped ourselves against them.

  The black eunuch squatted a dozen feet away, facing us, chin upon his knees, taking us in with unblinking eyes blank of any emotion. Then he began to move slowly his tremendously long arms in easy, soothing motion, the hands running along the floor upon their talons in arcs and circles. It was curious how these hands seemed to be endowed with a volition of their own, independent of the arms upon which they swung.

  And now I could see only the hands, shuttling so smoothly, so rhythmically back and forth—weaving so sleepily, so sleepily back and forth—black hands that dripped sleep—hypnotic.