The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  "Equally nevertheless, Goodwin, the iron does meet Haeckel's three tests--it can receive a stimulus, it does react to that stimulus and it retains memory of it; for even after the current has ceased it remains changed in tensile strength, conductivity and other qualities that were modified by the passage of that current; and as time passes this memory fades. Precisely as some human experience increases wariness, caution, which keying up of qualities remains with us after the experience has passed, and fades away in the ratio of our sensitivity plus retentiveness divided by the time elapsing from the original experience --exactly as it is in the iron."

  * Professor Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, "The Mechanistic Conception of Life."

  CHAPTER XVI

  CONSCIOUS METAL!

  "Granted," I acquiesced. "We now come to their means of locomotion. In its simplest terms all locomotion is progress through space against the force of gravitation. Man's walk is a series of rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth's face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric--magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again, Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking of the current.

  "Take a motion picture of a man walking and run it through the lantern rapidly and he seems to be flying. We have none of the awkward fallings and recoveries that are the tempo of walking as we see it.

  "I take it that the movement of these Things is a conscious breaking of the gravitational current just as much as is our own movement, but by a rhythm so swift that it appears to be continuous.

  "Doubtless if we could so control our sight as to admit the vibrations of light slowly enough we would see this apparently smooth motion as a series of leaps--just as we do when the motion-picture operator slows down his machine sufficiently to show us walking in a series of stumbles.

  "Very well--so far, then, we have nothing in this phenomenon which the human mind cannot conceive as possible; therefore intellectually we still remain masters of the phenomena; for it is only that which human thought cannot encompass which it need fear."

  "Metallic," he said, "and crystalline. And yet--why not? What are we but bags of skin filled with certain substances in solution and stretched over a supporting and mobile mechanism largely made up of lime? Out of that primeval jelly which Gregory* calls Protobion came after untold millions of years us with our skins, our nails, and our hair; came, too, the serpents with their scales, the birds with their feathers; the horny hide of the rhinoceros and the fairy wings of the butterfly; the shell of the crab, the gossamer loveliness of the moth and the shimmering wonder of the mother-of-pearl.

  "Is there any greater gap between any of these and the metallic? I think not."

  "Not materially," I answered. "No. But there remains-- consciousness!"

  "That," he said, "I cannot understand. Ventnor spoke of--how did he put it?--a group consciousness, operating in our sphere and in spheres above and below ours, with senses known and unknown. I got--glimpses--Goodwin, but I cannot understand."

  "We have agreed for reasons that seem sufficient to us to call these Things metallic, Dick," I replied. "But that does not necessarily mean that they are composed of any metal that we know. Nevertheless, being metal, they must be of crystalline structure.

  "As Gregory has pointed out, crystals and what we call living matter had an equal start in the first essentials of life. We cannot conceive life without giving it the attribute of some sort of consciousness. Hunger cannot be anything but conscious, and there is no other stimulus to eat but hunger.

  "The crystals eat. The extraction of power from food is conscious because it is purposeful, and there can be no purpose without consciousness; similarly the power to work from such derived energy is also purposeful and therefore conscious. The crystals do both. And the crystals can transmit all these abilities to their children, just as we do. For although there would seem to be no reason why they should not continue to grow to gigantic size under favorable conditions--yet they do not. They reach a size beyond which they do not develop.

  "Instead, they bud--give birth, in fact--to smaller ones, which increase until they reach the size of the

  * J. W. Gregory, F.R.S.D.Sc., Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow.

  preceding generation. And like the children of man and animals, these younger generations grow on precisely as their progenitors!

  "Very well, then--we arrive at the conception of a metallically crystalline being, which by some explosion of the force of evolution has burst from the to us familiar and apparently inert stage into these Things that hold us. And is there any greater difference between the forms with which we are familiar and them than there is between us and the crawling amphibian which is our remote ancestor? Or between that and the amoeba--the little swimming stomach from which it evolved? Or the amoeba and the inert jelly of the Protobion?

  "As for what Ventnor calls a group consciousness I would assume that he means a communal intelligence such as that shown by the bees and the ants--that in the case of the former Maeterlinck calls the 'Spirit of the Hive.' It is shown in their groupings--just as the geometric arrangement of those groupings shows also clearly their crystalline intelligence.

  "I submit that in their rapid coordination either for attack or movement or work without apparent communication having passed between the units, there is nothing more remarkable than the swarming of a hive of bees where also without apparent communication just so many waxmakers, nurses, honey-gatherers, chemists, bread-makers, and all the varied specialists of the hive go with the old queen, leaving behind sufficient number of each class for the needs of the young queen.

  "All this apportionment is effected without any means of communication that we recognize. Still it is most obviously intelligent selection. For if it were haphazard all the honeymakers might leave and the hive starve, or all the chemists might go and the food for the young bees not be properly prepared--and so on and so on."

  "But metal," he muttered, "and conscious. It's all very well--but where did that consciousness come from? And what is it? And where did they come from? And most of all, why haven't they overrun the world before this?

  "Such development as theirs, such an evolution, presupposes aeons of time--long as it took us to drag up from the lizards. What have they been doing--why haven't they been ready to strike--if Ventnor's right--at humanity until now?"

  "I don't know," I answered, helplessly. "But evolution is not the slow, plodding process that Darwin thought. There seem to be explosions--nature will create a new form almost in a night. Then comes the long ages of development and adjustment, and suddenly another new race appears.

  "It might be so of these--some extraordinary conditions that shaped them. Or they might have developed through the ages in spaces within the earth--there's that incredible abyss we saw that is evidently one of their highways. Or they might have dropped here upon some fragment of a broken world, found in this valley the right conditions and developed in amazing rapidity.* They're all possible theories--take your pick."

  "Something's held them back--and they're rushing to a climax," he whispered. "Ventnor's right about that-- I feel it. And what can we do?"

  "Go back to their city," I said. "Go back as he ordered. I believe he knows what he's talking about. And I believe he'll be able to help us. It wasn't just a request he made, nor even an appeal--it was a command."

  "But what can we do--just two men--against these Things?" he groaned.

  "Maybe we'll find out--when we're back in the city," I answered.

  "Well," his old reckless cheerfulness came back to him, "in every crisis of this old globe it's been up to one man to turn the trick. We're two. And at the worst we can only go down fighting a little before the rest of us. So, after all, whatEVER the hell, WHAT the hell."

  For a time we were silent.

  "Well," he said at last, "we have to go to the city in the morning." He laughed. "S
ounds as though we were living in the suburbs, somehow, doesn't it?"

  "It can't be many hours before dawn," I said. "Turn in for a while, I'll wake you when I think you've slept enough."

  "It doesn't seem fair," he protested, but sleepily.

  * Professor Svante Arrhenius's theory of propagation of life by means of minute spores carried through space. See his "Worlds in the Making."--W.T.G.

  "I'm not sleepy," I told him; nor was I.

  But whether I was or not, I wanted to question Yuruk, uninterrupted and undisturbed.

  Drake stretched himself out. When his breathing showed him fast asleep indeed, I slipped over to the black eunuch and crouched, right hand close to the butt of my automatic, facing him.

  CHAPTER XVII

  YURUK

  "Yuruk," I whispered, "you love us as the wheat field loves the hail; we are as welcome to you as the death cord to the condemned. Lo, a door opened into a land of unpleasant dreams you thought sealed, and we came through. Answer my questions truthfully and it may be that we shall return through that door."

  Interest welled up in the depths of the black eyes.

  "There is a way from here," he muttered. "Nor does it pass through--Them. I can show it to you."

  I had not been blind to the flash of malice, of cunning, that had shot across the wrinkled face.

  "Where does that way lead?" I asked. "There were those who sought us; men clad in armor with javelins and arrows. Does your way lead to them, Yuruk?"

  For a time he hesitated, the lashless lids half closed.

  "Yes," he said sullenly. "The way leads to them; to their place. But will it not be safer for you there--among your kind?"

  "I don't know that it will," I answered promptly. "Those who are unlike us smote those who are like us and drove them back when they would have taken and slain us. Why is it not better to remain with them than to go to our kind who would destroy us?"

  "They would not," he said "If you gave them--her." He thrust a long thumb backward toward sleeping Ruth. "Cherkis would forgive much for her. And why should you not? She is only a woman."

  He spat--in a way that made me want to kill him.

  "Besides," he ended, "have you no arts to amuse him?"

  "Cherkis?" I asked.

  "Cherkis," he whined. "Is Yuruk a fool not to know that in the world without, new things have arisen since long ago we fled from Iskander into the secret valley? What have you to beguile Cherkis beyond this woman flesh? Much, I think. Go then to him--unafraid."

  Cherkis? There was a familiar sound to that. Cherkis? Of course--it was the name of Xerxes, the Persian Conqueror, corrupted by time into this--Cherkis. And Iskander? Equally, of course--Alexander. Ventnor had been right.

  "Yuruk," I demanded directly, "is she whom you call goddess--Norhala--of the people of Cherkis?"

  "Long ago," he answered; "long, long ago there was trouble in their city, even in the great dwelling place of Cherkis. I fled with her who was the mother of the goddess. There were twenty of us; and we fled here--by the way which I will show you--"

  He leered cunningly; I gave no sign of interest.

  "She who was the mother of the goddess found favor in the sight of the ruler here," he went on. "But after a time she grew old and ugly and withered. So he slew her--like a little mound of dust she danced and blew away after he had slain her; and also he slew others who had grown displeasing to him. He blasted me--as he was blasted--" He pointed to Ventnor.

  "Then it was that, recovering, I found my crooked shoulder. The goddess was born here. She is kin to Him Who Rules! How else could she shed the lightnings? Was not the father of Iskander the god Zeus Ammon, who came to Iskander's mother in the form of a great snake? Well? At any rate the goddess was born--shedder of the lightnings even from her birth. And she is as you see her.

  "Cleave to your kind! Cleave to your kind!" Suddenly he shrilled. "Better is it to be whipped by your brother than to be eaten by the tiger. Cleave to your kind. Look-- I will show you the way to them."

  He sprang to his feet, clasped my wrist in one of his long hands, led me through the curtained oval into the cylindrical hall, parted the curtainings of Norhala's bedroom and pushed me within. Over the floor he slid, still holding fast to me, and pressed against the farther wall.

  An ovoid slice of the gemlike material slid aside, revealing a doorway. I glimpsed a path, a trail, leading into a forest pallid green beneath the wan light. This way thrust itself like a black tongue into the boskage and vanished in the depths.

  "Follow it." He pointed. "Take those who came with you and follow it."

  The wrinkles upon his face writhed with his eagerness.

  "You will go?" panted Yuruk. "You will take them and go by that path?"

  "Not yet," I answered absently. "Not yet."

  And was brought abruptly to full alertness, vigilance, by the flame of rage that filled the eyes thrust so close.

  "Lead back," I directed curtly. He slid the door into place, turned sullenly. I followed, wondering what were the sources of the bitter hatred he so plainly bore for us; the reasons for his eagerness to be rid of us despite the commands of this woman who to him at least was goddess.

  And by that curious human habit of seeking for the complex when the simple answer lies close, failed to recognize that it was jealousy of us that was the root of his behavior; that he wished to be, as it would seem he had been for years, the only human thing near Norhala; failed to realize this, and with Ruth and Drake was terribly to pay for this failure.

  I looked down upon the pair, sleeping soundly; upon Ventnor lost still in trance.

  "Sit," I ordered the eunuch. "And turn your back to me."

  I dropped down beside Drake, my mind wrestling with the mystery, but every sense alert for movement from the black. Glibly enough I had passed over Dick's questioning as to the consciousness of the Metal People; now I faced it knowing it to be the very crux of these incredible phenomena; admitting, too, that despite all my special pleading, about that point swirled in my own mind the thickest mists of uncertainty. That their sense of order was immensely beyond a man's was plain.

  As plain was it that their knowledge of magnetic force and its manipulation were far beyond the sphere of humanity. That they had realization of beauty this palace of Norhala's proved--and no human imagination could have conceived it nor human hands have made its thought of beauty real. What were their senses through which their consciousness fed?

  Nine in number had been the sapphire ovals set within the golden zone of the Disk. Clearly it came to me that these were sense organs!

  But--nine senses!

  And the great stars--how many had they? And the cubes--did they open as did globe and pyramid?

  Consciousness itself--after all what is it? A secretion of the brain? The cumulative expression, wholly chemical, of the multitudes of cells that form us? The inexplicable governor of the city of the body of which these myriads of cells are the citizens--and created by them out of themselves to rule?

  Is it what many call the soul? Or is it a finer form of matter, a self-realizing force, which uses the body as its vehicle just as other forces use for their vestments other machines? After all, I thought, what is this conscious self of ours, the ego, but a spark of realization running continuously along the path of time within the mechanism we call the brain; making contact along that path as the electric spark at the end of a wire?

  Is there a sea of this conscious force which laps the shores of the farthest-flung stars; that finds expression in everything--man and rock, metal and flower, jewel and cloud? Limited in its expression only by the limitations of that which animates, and in essence the same in all. If so, then this problem of the life of the Metal People ceased to be a problem; was answered!

  So thinking I became aware of increasing light; strode past Yuruk to the door and peeped out. Dawn was paling the sky. I stooped over Drake, shook him. On the instant he was awake, alert.

  "I only need a little sleep, Di
ck," I said. "When the sun is well up, call me."

  "Why, it's dawn," he whispered. "Goodwin, you ought not to have let me sleep so long. I feel like a damned pig."

  "Never mind," I said. "But watch the eunuch closely."

  I rolled myself up in his warm blanket; sank almost instantly into dreamless slumber.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  INTO THE PIT

  High was the sun when I awakened; or so, I supposed, opening my eyes upon a flood of daylight. As I lay, lazily, recollection rushed upon me.

  It was no sky into which I was gazing; it was the dome of Norhala's elfin home. And Drake had not aroused me. Why? And how long had I slept?

  I jumped to my feet, stared about. Ruth nor Drake nor the black eunuch was there!

  "Ruth!" I shouted. "Drake!"

  There was no answer. I ran to the doorway. Peering up into the white vault of the heavens I set the time of day as close to seven; I had slept then three hours, more or less. Yet short as that time of slumber had been, I felt marvelously refreshed, reenergized; the effect, I was certain, of the extraordinarily tonic qualities of the atmosphere of this place. But where were the others? Where Yuruk?

  I heard Ruth's laughter. Some hundred yards to the left, half hidden by a screen of flowering shrubs, I saw a small meadow. Within it a half-dozen little white goats nuzzled around her and Dick. She was milking one of them.

  Reassured, I drew back into the chamber, knelt over Ventnor. His condition was unchanged. My gaze fell upon the pool that had been Norhala's bath. Longingly I looked at it; then satisfying myself that the milking process was not finished, slipped off my clothes and splashed about.

  I had just time to get back in my clothes when through the doorway came the pair, each carrying a porcelain pannikin full of milk.

  There was no shadow of fear or horror on her face. It was the old Ruth who stood before me; nor was there effort in the smile she gave me. She had been washed clean in the waters of sleep.

  "Don't worry, Walter," she said. "I know what you're thinking. But I'm--ME again."