Then, for the first time the full realization of panic broke upon him. Matra must know that Elta was there in that room. And she had said that Elta must die.
He couldn’t let her go out that door, out of his sight. Had she known that by coming to the Temple she was putting herself in the old woman’s power?
There was nothing he could do. The others were beginning to look curiously at him as he stood in panic of indecision. He turned slowly and moved towards the platform with its low dais.
When they were all gone, Matra’s eyes still surveyed him, boring beneath the disguise, stripping away the false plastic, baring his identity before her.
“I had not thought to see you again so soon, Ketan.”
He stood still. The frozen air encased him in chill. Where had he blundered? She could not have recognized him unless she had known—
For a long instant he gazed steadily into her eyes. “I wanted to finish our conversation,” he said. “You left—rather suddenly the other night.”
She was taken aback momentarily. Then she smiled and shook her head. “You are lying. You did not know I was here. Tell me, why have you come?”
“I have come for the secret of life! You and all those like you have withheld the secret long enough. Man must have it, or he will die. When I have found that secret I shall destroy you and your Temple and all that it represents.” “That is good,” she said. “I was sure that you had come that far. Come closer, and sit here beside me, and I will tell you what I failed to tell you before. I planned to come again to the Karildex. It is better that you have come here.
“It will not be necessary for you to do what I ask. When I learned you were in Preparation Center, I gave your task to another.”
“You mean—?”
“Daran is already dead. Hoult— by this time tomorrow.”
Revulsion engulfed him in smothering nausea. A man killed—he had not realized what it meant before, even when Elta spoke of Hoult’s intent on his life. In three hundred tara no man had been deliberately killed in Kronweld.
Elta.
“We shall take care of Elta here,” the old woman was saying. “She—”
“Why, you—!” Ketan leaped up. His hands reached for the skinny wrinkled throat. “If you touch her, I’ll—”
With amazing agility, Matra sprang away from his grasp. “You fool/’ she raged. “What can you do?” Then she calmed. “You did not come well prepared in case your disguise was penetrated, did you, Ketan ?
“But don’t worry. I know how you feel. Igon— But when you have heard my story, you will have a change of mind. Listen.
“Imagine another world surrounding us on all sides, a w’orld of people like us who could see and know of us, yet couldn’t be seen. A world of which we had absolutely no knowledge.
“Such a world actually exists, Ketan. It knows of us, has known of us for more than a hundred tara. All the results of our Seeking are taken to that world and used for the benefit of those who will eventually destroy us. We have been permitted to live only so long as we have useful knowledge to supply to this surrounding world. Now, there is only one thing they want, our knowledge of atomic forces. So far, they have not obtained it because their emissaries among us have not been able to understand or grasp it. They are of a very low intelligence, generally.
“But now, there has come one of them into Kronweld with intelligence sufficient to take even that knowledge back. Kronweld is about to be betrayed and destruction loosed upon us.
“That emissary is Elta.”
The hypnotic rasping of the old woman’s voice drilled itself into Ketan’s mind and forged a place there that told him she was speaking the truth.
But the rest of his brain retched out the thought. Elta—! No— there was no part of him that could believe she was member of a mythical race from a mythical world that hovered over Kronweld with death and destruction.
“I do not believe you.”
“No—of course you don’t—yet. But I shall show you. I shall show you in a way that you can never disbelieve! Then you shall return to Kronweld like an avenging brand to root out the festering rot of destruction that hides there. I know you, Ketan. I have what it will take to convince you.
“Until you have seen, Elta shall be spared.”
Quite surely, he knew that what she said was true. She did possess whatever facts would be needed to convince him of what she said.
He was aghast at the significance of it. A world about Kronweld, she said. An invisible, spying, destructive world. And this one lone withered husk of humanity the sole agent against it.
She turned upon him suddenly. “Go to your room now. At once. You will be shown your duties by your personal guide.”
He turned. Behind him, a hard, sharp-faced woman had entered and eyed him disinterestedly.
“Pardon, Matra, I thought I had lost my student.”
“It is quite all right. Murna stopped to ask a question. I am pleased with her. She is earnest.” Ketan turned and followed the frozen-faced guide out the door. He looked back once, but Matra had vanished.
They turned from the large corridor into a smaller, coolly lighted passageway lined with doors. They halted before one.
“This will be yours—for the rest of your life.” There was a half gloating in the woman’s voice.
They entered and she indicated a closet where a supply of robes and harness were stored. “You may remove your induction robes. You’ll never need them again. Most of the Ladies keep them stored for sentiment. Here are your robes for relaxing—and here are those for duty in training, for watching, and-for teaching. Make yourself acquainted with the rooms.
“My name is Nelan. I’ll call for you tomorrow when it is time for you to go to the chamber of birth.” She paused with her hand on the door and turned back. “What was it you asked Matra?”
Ketan turned sharply to the impudent guide. Did she know, too? “Nothing that concerns you,” he said.
“I only want to help. Matra is old. She will not be with us long. Then when she is gone we will have a glorious new rule under Anetel. There are many things you must learn,” she added meaningly. “I only want to help.”
Her gaze lingered upon him. She turned abruptly and- was gone.
Ketan was left with an undefined sense of conflicting forces within the Temple itself as he gazed at the closed door. The guide, Nelan, had exhibited an unmistakable antagonism towards Matra.
He shrugged it off. There were other problems, too important for him to concern himself with petty schisms in the Temple organization. He sank deeply in a soft chair and uncoiled the tenseness that pervaded every muscle of his body. The lack of sleep and the bewildering forces he had perceived swirling in intangible patterns about him and about all mankind during the past three days had drained his energies.
The chair was equipped with both entertainment and refreshment panels. He selected light food and drink which swung out on a shining tray and elevated to the proper level before him. He wondered what the food was as he tasted it. New and untried foods had long ago ceased to surprise him since the Food Center produced a new creation regularly every tenth of a tara. This was exceptionally good, however. If he had been outside the Temple, he would have been moved to recommend that it be rated a permanent item. If it did not obtain enough recommendations, it would be abandoned forever and the Center would go on to new and endless creations.
He inspected the titles of music on the other panel and noted with a start that many of them had been produced in Kronweld only recently. That meant there was regular exchange between the Temple and the city, even as was implied by the visit of Matra to the Karildex.
Music began to flow into the room as he made a selection. He settled his body lower in the chair and abandoned his mind to idle scrutiny of the compartment.
It was designed with the ultimate of luxury that the skills of Kronweld were capable of producing. No Seeker on the Council itself, or in the First Group could obtain more o
f comfort and expensive surroundings than Ketan found himself in possession of.
There were no natural windows, of course, but compact energizers threw a sheet of luminous air against the ceiling and spread a soft, compelling glow over the compartment. Ketan reached out and turned the control switch. The glow slowly shifted from its restful cream to a cool green and through a quiet blue to violent red and crimson shades. He brought it back to light green and lay back in the chair.
How long he slept he didn’t know. But when he awoke he was refreshed though stiff in his back and shoulders.
He rose and shifted the lights to bright blue-white glowing. He shrugged out of the induction robes he still wore, with a grotesquely unfeminine motion. Across the room the reflector surface gave him back the image of his woman form.
He grimaced but stepped closer to inspect his job of sculptoring and see if the plastic were holding up. He inspected his face and was thankful that he had submitted early to permanent removal of his facial hair. Without such, his disguise would surely have been hopeless.
Most of the men of Kronweld welcomed the removal, but occasionally some Seeker retained it as a curious mark of distinction—or perversion.
Assured that his sculptoring was still intact, he searched for the spray room and was about to step under the shower of chemical cleanser and invigorator when he looked down as his body and laughed aloud. A lot of invigorating he would get from spraying the layer of plastic. But he stepped in from force of habit and was surprised to find how much actually penetrated the porous material.
He stepped out and dried before the warm flow of air that fanned over him. He dressed then in the robes the guide had indicated would be proper for the day and sat down at the larger refreshment panel for a full and more diverse meal.
His mind still refused to register any definite familiarity with the surroundings. Yet there began to be insistent tuggings as if from a dream that could not be recalled.
And somehow, these tuggings of mind centered about the ancient, Matra. He knew he had never seen her before in his life—as far as he could remember—except for the night at the Karildex. But the image of her face drew him more persistently each moment.
Probably he had seen her before he had emerged into Kronweld. Perhaps some strange bond had been established between them. It seemed fantastic, but so did her conversation of the day before. So did everything that had occurred since he met her that night alone.
Sudden chimings of a hidden bell startled’ him as he ate. Then a voice spoke from the same unseen source.
“The new section of Ladies will assemble in the corridor at once, prepared for admission to the chamber of birth.”
He hurriedly gulped the remainder of his food, adjusted his garb to what he presumed was the proper fit and brushed his hair smooth.
He opened the door and stepped out.
Already, most of the others were at attention before the doors of their compartments. Nelan was waiting for him. She offered a nod of expressionless greeting and remained silent. A column of marching Ladies was advancing down the hall. As they passed, each pair standing by the doors joined them.
Ketan could not quell the pounding within his chest nor the flush that suffused his features. The climax of his tara of Seeking and hoping was about to come. He was to learn the truth of the secrets he had sought for so many tara—-to witness at last the creation of life.
But (here was more than excitement. There was dismay and fear mingled in his emotions. Every sign, every indication pointed to something far different from the thing he had imagined the creation of life to be.
He had seen no sign of a single man being present in the Temple— except himself. How, then, did life come into being? Had some incredible means been produced by Seeking to accomplish it by other factors.
The column came abreast of him. He and Nelan joined in. Her eyes searched anxiously for Elta. He had not discovered where her assigned compartment was. Now he saw her a dozen doors ahead of him. She looked slim and deceptively fragile in the robes she now wore. They were more drab than the induction robes, but they seemed to heighten, rather than decrease the loveliness of her.
His hungry eyes tried to attract her glance, but she did not see him as she and her companion went to the rear of the column.
They wi-und through labyrinthine halls. Once, he caught the sound of a pain cry far away, and all eyes turned towards it momentarily— and forgot it. But something hard congealed within Ketan.
lie remembered the creation of new life by the Bors—
Abruptly, they came to a dead end. They halted while a guide pressed a lock button. Thick, ponderous doors slid aside with reluctant inertia. Ketan puzzled at the massive construction. As he passed through, he saw they were more than half his height in thickness.
With fearful expectancy the new Ladies gazed into the chamber revealed before them.
Dull green glow illumined the utter barrenness of the place. There was only dead, stifling silence.
The chamber was shaped like a quarter of a sphere in miniature of the Temple itself. Ketan sensed that they were at the very core of the building.
But there was nothing within the chamber. No—his eyes adjusted to the dim glow and he saw two figures silent and statuesque seated before a niche in the flat wall.
The niche was a shallow, semicircular opening no higher than a man. Dark shadows lay in its depths. The two immobile girls did not turn nor glance about. Their staring gaze remained firmly fixed upon the niche.
There was one other figure within the room. It stood motionless and alone in the exact center, watching the group. It was Matra. Her eyes seemed to glow out from the depths of her shrunken face with more brightness than the dull illumination of the chamber.
With a jerky motion of her arm she thrust a finger out straight and pointed to a low marble bench at the back, curved wall of the room, facing the waiters who sat before the niche.
They filed slowly to their place, hardly breathing to break the stillness. They sat down and there was —nothing.
Ketan’s mind spun upon its own axis in turmoil, but it could get no grip ou any factor of the surroundings. He did not know what he had expected to see. Vague visions of a superb and glistening Seeker’s laboratory greater than his own hidden workshop had been in the back of his mind. But this—this barren chamber. What could it have to do with the creation of life?
There was nothing but silence, a queer suspension of life within that chamber, as if the whole energies of life had paused to gather their forces for some colossal demonstration.
Ketan felt it. He knew the others sensed it too, a tangible, physical demonstration. But what it was, he could’ not guess.
He was almost in the center of the arc of the bench. He could peer into the depths of the niche, but there was nothing to see.
There was nothing—only waiting.
The girls shifted uneasily as their muscles began to cramp and ache from the rigidity of their posture on the uncomfortable stone bench. But the two watchers before the niche had never moved since the group entered, though they sat on tiny stone pillars, backless and formless.
There was a low chuckling that filled the room like an eerie far away screeching. They looked about. Matra was trembling with her own bitter humor.
“You’ll learn patience, my Ladies. There will be days when you will sit alone with endless wonder and pray to the God that he will send new life, that Kronweld has not yet come to its end. But that end will come—unless you find a way to prevent it. Half the halls and chambers of this Temple are barren and unused. They have not been opened for more tara than half the Ladies of the Temple can remember. Learn patience, my Ladies.
“Perhaps it will be one of you who waits at the last in this chamber before the dust grows thick and the doors are sealed forever because the God withholds life!”
A chill trembled in the air and settled upon them. The scent of death was an astringent upon their souls.
They
sat in wonder and dismay, hopeful at first for some strange miracle to take place before their eyes, watching the mysterious niche with straining gaze.
Then, at last, aching and weary, they began to pray that the useless vigil might end and they be allowed to go back to their compartments.
Ketan, perhaps, was the first to see it.
He stared with hypnotic attention into the black depths of the niche. But those depths were no longer black. With a pulsing like that of the night sky there was a sudden flame of color. Violent, tearing, purple light that flashed over the walls of the chamber in hideous garishness.
It died slowly, and when it was gone they could not see. Then it rose again, swimming up from the depths of the spectrum below the infrared, bursting through a crescendo of light to blind them with radiation beyond the violet.
The two watchers had leaped to their feet, shielding their eyes, and stood tensely before the chaotic display. Ketan stole a half blinded glance at Matra. Even she was trembling visibly at the phenomenon. He wondered what cataclysm was upon them.
One of the new girls screamed.
And suddenly the flame split. In its center was blackness. The blackness spread, and they felt as if unseen hands had grasped the entire chamber twisting and turning it—
The end came suddenly. The flame exploded into blackness and the twisting, tearing hands restored the chamber to a dully lit room full of terrified and crying Ladies.
But the two watchers and Matra were huddled about the little platform before the niche. A new sound rose, a tiny crying sound that echoed the fear and terror that filled the chamber of birth.
One of the watchers turned. In her arms was a tiny, squirming animal form. Slowly, like a dream of, vast terror, realization broke upon their minds. That form was a diminutive human being.. They had witnessed the creation of life.
XII.
“Human life is helpless at its creation,” the lecturer said. “It cannot feed or walk or make any but involuntary movements. It has no intelligent means of communication.”
The group sat in a lecture hall following the experiences in the chamber of birth. The faces of the girls about him showed Ketan the effect of the shock they had received. Three of them had fainted at the horrible ugliness of the tiny animal on finally realizing that it was a human being. The rest had turned pale and sick with uncomprehension. He doubted that many of them actually believed that they had once looked like that.
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