The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  Straight as an arrow’s flight, Eluola sped joyously to join the swarm, and sight of her dwindled to nothing in his eyes, and she merged with the wave of color and darkness that was the migration of the Eeima. The song of her throat and the song of her soul both merged with the mighty, thrumming melody of the horde, and they raced by overhead, flashing in the brilliance of the sun, taking her with them, taking his love with them, leaving him standing on the plain, naked in the soul, and alone.

  Wave after wave, the Eeima came over the horizon behind and disappeared below the horizon ahead—butterflies of passage, soaring down from summer heights with the onset of winter, which had presaged its coming with a chill breath seeping down from the peaks into the canyons and gorges, riming rocks and trees, embrittling the shallows of quiet backwaters with a thin veneer of ice.

  Then the last of them had gone, melted into the nothingness of distance, and Jarvis knew that he had to find his way on from here by himself.

  * * * *

  They made camp soon thereafter, by a spring welling up in a grove. Jo set about preparing supper from the supplies they carried and Jarvis busied himself gathering enough wood for the evening fire, while Toby frolicked among the trees with Mr. Murchison.

  The stream that wandered away from the spring made a burbling, frivolous song that shimmered on the quiet air, and Toby’s shrill outcries sounded far away. The western sky was a dull red, with a band of sombre-hued cloud paralleling the horizon, maroon, deep violet and indigo.

  The warm earth was soothing to his touch as he stooped to pick up faggots fallen from the trees. Leaves gleamed yellow-green and golden-edged where the sun’s rays lanced through the grove, paralleling the face of the land. Shadows began to gather among the trees as one by one the sun’s lancets winked into obscurity.

  Jarvis carried his armload of wood to the fire. He stood, drinking in the pungent smell of smoke, the savor of meat broiling, the subtle perfume of the grassland. He was sad and lonely as he listened to the equally sad whisper of the breeze toying among the leaves of slim, tall trees. Little songs came from the grass beyond the bounds of the oasis, calls of the little people who dwelt there—he could not call them insects. They were fleshy little denizens of the grassland who sang or hummed faintly as they scurried among the roots. Like insects but not insects, these were the tiniest people of Eloraspon—Eloraspon, World of Beauty, which was not Earth. His heart tore within him.

  Eluola had said that the Eeima were the People of Love—and he knew now that in Eluola he had found the very personification of Love. She was complete carnality, pure emotion enwinged, and he had let her charm snare him through the vulnerable port of his undeveloped mind.

  He thought of Jo with a new tenderness filling his heart. He had neglected her. Only now was he aware how her attitude had lately been toward him. It was the fact that she had said nothing that had prevented him from seeing it to this moment. He had been too eager to thrust her out of his mind and consciousness and to receive the thing that Eluola was in ecstatic intimacy. Eluola was an elemental. It was all so clear now. He had dared to transgress on the emotional purlieues of an ancient people—and the fall had hurt him. He was not of Eluola’s kind, but of Jo’s…and the feeling that welled up in him he recognized for what it was, and he could have killed himself for the way he had treated her, knowing all along, as he did, that she loved him…

  Jo and Toby slept in the dying circle of firelight. Cautiously, Jarvis got up and paced his way out of the grove. He stood on the prairie, listening to the grasses whispering in the wind around his thighs. The splendor of the stars made a symbolic pattern in his eyes, a pattern etched in the eternal fires that blazed in the deeps of space, and he felt that, if he could only decipher the code, he could spell out the message in the sky which his soul longed to read. He lay down in the restless embrace of the grass. The soil of Eloraspon was firm and warm against his back. Overhead, the dreaming stars wove magic before his eyes in the incomprehensible glory of the firmament, and his mind was a darksome cavern where no thought wavered.

  CHAPTER 9

  They broke camp at dawn, bearing southwestward of the rising sun. Jarvis had not spoken to Jo of Eluola’s desertion, nor had Jo mentioned the subject. There seemed a tacit agreement between them to remain silent on something that was painful to both, though for opposed reasons.

  He said, “Eluola described what she called the Great Cliffs. I figure they lie about five days from here. We should be at the Lake of the Sky by nightfall, and rounding it will consume three days’ march. Then we follow its drainage river to the Cliffs. Then we need only find a way down before striking out westward again.”

  Jo said, “The change of scenery will be welcome. Shall we get started?”

  Her cold reserve was not lost on him.

  “You would rather have stayed in our camp by the river, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. I was almost happy there… I think. But there is still Brock. We have to go to him and that is all there is to it.”

  Her mood puzzled him. She had never before questioned the necessity he expressed to rendezvous with Eamus Brock. Now he sensed an undercurrent of resentment, and recognized it for what it was. Guilt and remorse stabbed him.

  “I haven’t been the best company,” he said lamely. “I’m sorry.”

  There was only the faintest tinge of green in her eyes. They appeared almost wholly gray.

  “Please don’t be, Jeff. You can’t help it if you don’t like me, and I know I’ve been a burden…”

  “That isn’t true!”

  She looked back over her shoulder to assure herself that Toby followed out of earshot.

  “You know it’s true!” she said. “Perhaps you had a right to be distant—but not uncordial. Am I in the way, Jeff? Would you rather Toby and I left you to go on by yourself? You could travel faster, you know.”

  “Let’s hear no more of that!” he commanded gruffly “Look, I admit I’ve been treating you rotten. But whatever it was that made me do that is over now. Believe me! I’ve got hindsight on my side now, and I can see everything very clearly. Do you really want to know what is wrong with me?”

  “If you can put it in words of one syllable.”

  “I can that—easily. Three words, Jo. Just three. I love you. What do you think of that? Three words that spell out all the misery and all the happiness a man’s heart can hold. I love you! Well—why don’t you say something? You could laugh, at least!”

  He was distraught, overwhelmed with the emotion that gripped him. He hadn’t planned to blurt out his love like that, in the naked light of day. He had dreamed last night, dreamed of stars and cool night winds and softly murmured words—and here he was, shouting at the woman he loved like a farmer chasing kids from an orchard.

  And what was in her mind? He wished desperately that he could tell, but her face was blank, her eyes twin pools of green that slowly deepened, began to well with tears. Then her month quivered and she collapsed suddenly against him, throwing her arms around his neck and looking up into his face.

  “Fool, fool, fool! Oh, not you, Jeff! Me—me! I’ve loved you like an idiot since the minute you chased me up that tree for my own safety—and then I got the impression you hated women—me in particular! How could I have been so wrong?”

  “You—love me?” He had not entirely heard her breathless outpouring.

  “Of course I love you! How could I help it? I had to love you, didn’t I? For being the man you are—for being a pilot in the wilderness—for being…”

  He seized her roughly in his arms and smothered her protestations with kisses. He had been the fool, not she. He had followed a will o’ the wisp when the beacon he sought had been shining brightly for him.

  After a minute, they both became aware that Toby was standing watching them
, not curiously, but grinning, and somehow, it seemed to both of them, that he looked relieved.

  * * * *

  It was only much later that Jarvis came to an understanding of the Eeima and of Eluola in particular and confirmed the analysis he had already made of the situation that had existed. Eluola had been Love itself, not the object of love, and he had fallen victim to a case of twisted semantics.

  But that was changed now. He knew where he stood. More than anything else, Eluola had been responsible for bringing about this avowal of faith between himself and Jo. She had brought to light the love that had been hidden in both of them, and to her he was grateful.

  The avowal of love, however, brought no material change in their relationship. They laughed together and made play of the grim business of survival, but there was a new art and a new spirit in their living. His eyes often followed Jo about her tasks, appraising her fine, supple figure, measuring the intrinsic beauty of line inherent in the curve of her slim throat, in the deft angles the planes of her lean face made with each other; and in his thoughts he often, too, weighed her capacity for love, but he made no effort to test his theory for validity.

  There was too much to do, too far yet to go. There was a time for love, and a place for it. After they had survived—then they could love. And he put the thought of physical contact from his mind.

  The Great Cliffs surpassed even the mental image Jarvis had of them from Eluola’s description. She had conveyed the concept of a great gulf, but he had deprecated the image in the measure of the butterfly maid’s size.

  The sheer escarpment of the Great Cliffs plunged away at their feet, opening an immense gulf in space that was blued and milky in its great depth. He could not guess how many thousands of feet below them rolled the roof of another great forest.

  They stood upon a promontory of the grasslands, rolling savannahs at their back. Before them was nothing…space…emptiness…as far as the eye could reach into the dwindling distance…banked with clouds and wreathed with streamers of blue vapor. Just to look upon it made him giddy and faint.

  Mile upon mile to northward, he saw the sea, a bluer blue, in the vastness of blue. The forest was like a pelt spread upon a floor, and its breadth was split by a mighty river, miles in width, rolling lazy S-curves down from the tree-shrouded south.

  Before them, across the gulf of empty space floored with forest, the land rose again in blue distance and heaped itself into mountains that were like clouds; and Jarvis’ heart leaped in his breast. That was his goal. He knew it with an inner certainty that could not be gainsaid. How he knew, he could not tell, but the knowledge was inside him that there in that cloud-like mass of land he would find the answers to his questions, the solution to the riddle of Eloraspon—and Eamus Brock.

  CHAPTER 10

  There was something about the vertiginous, awe-compelling drop that challenged Jarvis as no other obstacle had. Miles to the southward, he knew, the Great Cliffs shrank to the level of the forest, but he would rather not go so far out of his way. Still, his hope to find an immediate way down was not to be gratified.

  They marched many days southward along the brow of the declivity, crossing rivers that spurted into space in a rush of spray, often traveling miles upstream in order to do so.

  At last they came to a gash in the face of the cliff, a split in the virgin rock that extended into the grasslands and was filled with broken rock almost to the lip of the precipice. Descent was not easy, but it was possible, and another day of clambering over rock and steering around boulders found them at the bottom, at the edge of the forest, where it lapped like a sea of green leaves against the towering flank of the Great Cliffs.

  They might have struck out due westward, except that Jarvis did not relish travel again through the forest. He remembered the sea to northward, and its unencumbered beach, and he led the way there, along the foot of the bare talus.

  Weird creatures lived in the interstices of the wall of rock, some armored with scales or chitin, others soft-bodied, many-legged and antennaed. The least repulsive of these, Jarvis slew for food, running after them over the bare rock, swinging his stone axe; for their store of bullets was now preciously few.

  Where the rivers they had crossed above plunged over the crest of the precipice, they struggled below through an eternal rain, hugging the face of the cliff to avoid the morass where the ever-falling downpour thundered on the forest and gathered itself again into a stream rushing off to join the mighty river they had seen from above.

  They had grown accustomed to the clean, fresh wind of the savannahs and the coolness of altitude. Now the forest breathed its rank breath upon them by night, and by day the lashing heat of the afternoon sun seemed to gather extra, savage strength as it beat down in unendurable reflection from the face of the cliff.

  What a strange group of wanderers they had become, Jarvis thought. Their shoes and clothing had long since vanished, ripped and rotted away. They trekked in the hides of animals Jarvis had slain, and were shod with moccasins Jo made for them, sewing with sinew and needles of bone Jarvis had fashioned. She plaited hats for them from grass, and all three carried packs, pouches of hide they had chewed upon around evening campfires, and from which the hair had been rubbed with coarse stones. Nothing but the buckles remained of Jarvis’ original pack. The frying pan and pot with which they had begun their journey were still with them, blackened and dented, but still serviceable.

  They were scarecrows, all three of them. He saw his own skinniness mirrored in the compact stringiness of both Jo and Toby. But he had to admit that the ultra thinness of the woman he loved was not without a grace and beauty of its own. Her figure was straight as the fall of windless rain; the muscles rippled in smooth, flat bands under her bronzed, satiny skin. He thought of her as a poem in flesh, long-limbed, supple, flashing of foot and hand, her form pared of all but the essential strength required to forge the body ahead. Jo was more to him than a whiplash of a half-naked woman. She was a symbol of the indomitable spirit of Mankind, the epitome of all that had made Mankind great. She was the race-mother in person, toiling against adversity with a cheerful face, the febrile strength of her perfectly integrated muscles managed by a resourceful brain that opposed the most despicable efforts of the wilderness to reduce her to its level of savagery.

  It was women like Jo, he thought, who in the Old Stone Age had followed their men on endless migration, as they roamed with that restlessness of spirit which from the beginning has characterized man and set him apart from the apes, and which has known no peace up to last days of man’s conquest of Earth. As long as women like Jo lived to mother a new race, the best that there had been in Man was not dead and would not die.

  Toby had developed amazingly, too. No longer a round-cheeked, chubby little boy, he was lean, strong and gracefully tall—almost as tall as Jarvis. Whatever it was in the air of Eloraspon that promoted this phenomenal growth of the young, it had made Toby develop from a ten-year-old in a few short months to a youth of sixteen.

  Mr. Murchison was no longer with them. The intolerable, humid heat of the forest had not been to his liking and he had left them after the first day, obviously returning to the highlands where the climate was more suited to his coat of thick fur.

  Even the memory of Eluola had grown dim in Jarvis’ mind. They had not seen any of the Eeima since the passing overhead of the swarming migration.

  * * * *

  At last, they basked in a cool wind that breathed in off the ocean, and the thunder of surf was like music in their ears. The Great Cliffs were now miles behind them, their crown wreathed in coils of mist in the blue heights, Jarvis regretted the need to leave that lovely park up there, but the drive in him would not let up. He must continue this journey to its inevitable end.

  They bathed in the sea, the three of them together, their skin garments cast aside; the low-lying sun g
linted many-colored in the brine dewing their bronzed skins. Jarvis scooped shellfish from the shallows, prying them off the rocks with the blade of his stone axe, and with the same implement cracking them open to get at the flesh inside. They were delicious, roasted in the coals of their beach fire. Once again they had accustomed themselves to the nightly, lashing storms of the forest. After it was over and the others slept, Jarvis departed silently and wandered alone on the beach in the glow of twin moons and the light of a billion stars. The surf pounded with a hollow, booming roar, and the night wind skirled across the sand, swirling its particles with a sibilant wail that was like the thin music of a distant flute, muted below the consuming throb of the vast orchestration of the sea.

  He turned at sound of a step behind him. A warmth clasped his heart and extended to his limbs as Jo padded softly up to him. The twin moons speared catchlights from her eyes, silvered the halo of her hair, which was long now, below the level of her shoulders, when it was not bound up with vines.

  “Thinking, Jeff?”

  “Thinking,” he admitted. “But you should be resting. It’s late.”

  “I can rest as well here as there. Better, maybe. Being with you is restful to me.” She sat down on the sand, pulling him down beside her. She said, “I love you, Jeff. Whatever happens to us on this terrible journey, I want you to know that. And wherever I shall ever be, I shall always love you. I want to be with you wherever you are, sharing with you whatever you are doing.”