The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  The row of destroying shapes lengthened, each huge warrior of metal drawing far apart from its mates. They flexed their manifold arms, shadow boxed--grotesquely, dreadfully.

  Down struck the flails, the sledges. Beneath the blows the buildings burst like eggshells, their fragments burying the throngs fighting for escape in the thoroughfares that threaded them. Over their ruins we moved.

  Down and ever down crashed the awful sledges. And ever under them the city crumbled.

  There was a spider Shape that crawled up the wide stairway hammering into the stone those who tried to flee before it.

  Stride by stride the Destroying Things ate up the city.

  I felt neither wrath nor pity. Through me beat a jubilant roaring pulse--as though I were a shouting corpuscle of the rushing hurricane, as though I were one of the hosts of smiting spirits of the bellowing typhoon.

  Through this stole another thought--vague, unfamiliar, yet seemingly of truth's own essence. Why, I wondered, had I never recognized this before? Why had I never known that these green forms called trees were but ugly, unsymmetrical excrescences? That these high projections of towers, these buildings were deformities?

  That these four-pronged, moving little shapes that screamed and ran were--hideous?

  They must be wiped out! All this misshapen, jumbled, inharmonious ugliness must be wiped out! It must be ground down to smooth unbroken planes, harmonious curvings, shapeliness--harmonies of arc and line and angle!

  Something deep within me fought to speak--fought to tell me that this thought was not human thought, not my thought--that it was the reflected thought of the Metal Things!

  It told me--and fiercely it struggled to make me realize what it was that it told. Its insistence was borne upon little despairing, rhythmic beatings--throbbings that were like the muffled sobbings of the drums of grief. Louder, closer came the throbbing; clearer with it my perception of the inhumanness of my thought.

  The drum beat tapped at my humanity, became a dolorous knocking at my heart.

  It was the sobbing of Cherkis!

  The gross face was shrunken, the cheeks sagging in folds of woe; cruelty and wickedness were wiped from it; the evil in the eyes had been washed out by tears. Eyes streaming, bull throat and barrel chest racked by his sobbing, he watched the passing of his people and his city.

  And relentlessly, coldly, Norhala watched him--as though loath to lose the faintest shadow of his agony.

  Now I saw we were close to the top of the mount. Packed between us and the immense white structures that crowned it were thousands of the people. They fell on their knees before us, prayed to us. They tore at each other, striving to hide themselves from us in the mass that was themselves. They beat against the barred doors of the sanctuaries; they climbed the pillars; they swarmed over the golden roofs.

  There was a moment of chaos--a chaos of which we were the heart. Then temple and palace cracked, burst; were shattered; fell. I caught glimpses of gleaming sculptures, glitterings of gold and of silver, flashing of gems, shimmering of gorgeous draperies--under them a weltering of men and women.

  We closed down upon them--over them!

  The dreadful sobbing ceased. I saw the head of Cherkis swing heavily upon a shoulder; the eyes closed.

  The Destroying Things touched. Their flailing arms coiled back, withdrew into their bodies. They joined, forming for an instant a tremendous hollow pillar far down in whose center we stood. They parted; shifted in shape? rolled down the mount over the ruins like a widening wave --crushing into the stone all over which they passed.

  Afar away I saw the gleaming serpent still at play-- still writhing among, still obliterating the few score scattered fugitives that some way, somehow, had slipped by the Destroying Things.

  We halted. For one long moment Norhala looked upon the drooping body of him upon whom she had let fall this mighty vengeance.

  Then the metal arm that held Cherkis whirled. Thrown from it, the cloaked form flew like a great blue bat. It fell upon the flattened mound that had once been the proud crown of his city. A blue blot upon desolation the broken body of Cherkis lay.

  A black speck appeared high in the sky; grew fast-- the lammergeier.

  "I have left carrion for you--after all!" cried Norhala.

  With an ebon swirling of wings the vulture dropped beside the blue heap--thrust in it its beak.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  "THE DRUMS OF DESTINY"

  Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.

  Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and home--Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the rock--even as she had promised.

  The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor's forehead.

  In his eyes and in Drake's I saw reflected the horror I knew was in my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this--sternly, coldly triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty.

  I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed so ruthlessly could not ALL have been wholly evil. Yet mother and blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own civilization.

  From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But from Ruth--

  My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul of that catastrophe.

  My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor's head biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of swollen white flesh rimming the cincture. It was the mark of--torture!

  "Martin," I cried. "That ring? What did they do to you?"

  "They waked me with that," he answered quietly. "I suppose I ought to be grateful--although their intentions were not exactly--therapeutic--"

  "They tortured him," Ruth's voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in Persian--for Norhala's benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper reason. "They tortured him. They gave him agony until he--returned. And they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.

  "And me--me"--she raised little clenched hands--"me they stripped like a slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They took me before that swine Norhala has punished--and stripped me before him --like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother. Norhala--they were evil, all evil! Norhala--you did well to slay them!"

  She caught the woman's hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint chimings.

  "It is done," she said. "And it was well done--sister. Now you and I shall dwell together in peace--sister. Or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out--even as I did these."

  My heart stopped beating--for from the depths of Ruth's eyes shining shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala's calling; and, as they rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning--drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished but that had now returned to
its twin thrones of Norhala's eyes.

  And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the face of Ruth!

  The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.

  "Sister!" she whispered. "Little sister! These men you shall have as long as it pleases you--to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.

  "But you and I, little sister, will dwell together--in the vastnesses--in the peace. Shall it not be so?"

  With no faltering, with no glance toward us three-- lover, brother, old friend--Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal, royal breasts.

  "It shall be so!" she murmured. "Sister--it shall be so. Norhala--I am tired. Norhala--I have seen enough of men."

  An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over the woman's wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing.

  "Ruth!" cried Drake--and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.

  "Wait," said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully, blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. "Wait. No use--now."

  There was a curious understanding in his voice--a curious sympathy, too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her.

  "Wait!" exclaimed Drake. "Wait--hell! The damned witch is stealing her away from us!"

  Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city.

  We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory--or had set it between us as a barrier.

  Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.

  Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.

  The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.

  Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us. As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.

  We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel--speaking no word, Drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy. We passed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.

  There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming--like the beating of countless muffled drums. The Thing that carried us trembled--the sound died away. The Thing quieted; it began its steady, effortless striding through the crowding trees--but now with none of that speed with which it had come, spurred forward by Norhala's awakened hate.

  Ventnor stirred; broke the silence. And now I saw how wasted was his body, how sharpened his face; almost ethereal; purged not only by suffering but by, it came to me, some strange knowledge.

  "No use, Drake," he said dreamily. "All this is now on the knees of the gods. And whether those gods are humanity's or whether they are--Gods of Metal--I do not know.

  "But this I do know--only one way or another can the balance fall; and if it be one way, then you and we shall have Ruth back. And if it falls the other way--then there will be little need for us to care. For man will be done!"

  "Martin! What do you mean?"

  "It is the crisis," he answered. "We can do nothing, Goodwin--nothing. Whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of Destiny."

  Again there came that distant rolling--louder, now. Again the Thing trembled.

  "The drums," whispered Ventnor. "The drums of destiny. What is it they are heralding? A new birth of Earth and the passing of man? A new child to whom shall be given dominion--nay, to whom has been given dominion? Or is it--taps--for Them?"

  The drumming died as I listened--fearfully. About us was only the swishing, the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the Thing. Motionless stood Norhala; and as motionless Ruth.

  "Martin," I cried once more, a dreadful doubt upon me. "Martin--what do you mean?"

  "Whence did--They--come?" His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath the red brand clear and quiet, too. "Whence did They come--these Things that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis's city? Are they spawn of Earth--as we are? Or are they foster children--changelings from another star?

  "These creatures that when many still are one--that when one still are many. Whence did They come? What are They?"

  He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes shone up at him, enigmatically--as though they heard and understood.

  "I do not forget," he said. "At least not all do I forget of what I saw during that time when I seemed an atom outside space--as I told you, or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.

  "There were three--visions, revelations--I know not what to call them. And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think, can be true; and of the third--that may some time be true but surely is not yet."

  Through the air came a louder drum roll--in it something ominous, something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.

  "I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through space. It was no globe--it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of God, if you will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.

  "I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars, pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling harmony--as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness--totalled.

  "The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the errors of the infinite.

  "The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer--the symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers--These!"

  He pointed to the Thing that bore us.

  "I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic notion came to me--fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was"--his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic --"it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical--a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us and the things we call living.

  "It had no mission; it wasn't at all out to do any reforming; it wasn't in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple with its equally tidy servitors.

  "Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through space on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics; its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for equilibrium by which we live; needing neit
her air nor water, heeding neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar space and stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun."

  A thrill of amazement passed through me; fantasy all this might be but--how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the Metal Monster upon our sun.

  "That passed," he went on, unnoticing. "I saw vast caverns filled with the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth--the fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.

  "But in those caverns, under countless orbs of many colored lights"--again the thrill of amaze shook me-- "they grew. It came to me that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst into it--into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that picture passed."

  His voice deepened.

  "There came a third vision. I saw our Earth--I knew, Goodwin, indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and polished symbols --geometric, fashioned.

  "The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned settings of crystal shores. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man. On this Earth that had been ours were only--These.

  "Visioning!" he said. "Don't think that I accept them in their entirety. Part truth, part illusion--the groping mind dazzled with light of unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to help it understand.

  "But still--SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I do know--that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face now--this very instant."

  The picture flashed behind my own eyes--of the walled city, its thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat--and then the dreadful, desolate mount.