“It was Elta, her name was—”
Ketan’s mind groaned under the weight of that statement and refused to accept it. It came down the line again—and again—Elta tried to kill Anetel. They were all whispering it—a crazy new girl— got in a fight with Anetel—tried to kill her—was she dead yet? Elta was her name.
Ketan went back into his room and closed the door. What could have happened, he asked himself over and over again. He threw himself in a chair and held himself perfectly still for the space of a hundred heartbeats.
There was nothing he could do to assist Elta yet, if it were true that she had tried to kill Anetel.
But why should she do such an insane thing? That could not be the purpose for which she had come to the Temple.
He must not reveal himself sooner than necessary. He forced himself into semicalmness until the furor in the hall died down. He must wait until morning to obtain the available information. There would be time enough to act then. There must be— He must hold himself in abeyance until then.
He did not know whether or not he finally slept, or how long he sat there. He was only aware next of a voice within the room calling out — It whispered suddenly and low and unintelligibly. He twisted his head. There it was again. He spotted the source—an apparently blank space on the wall. He listened, holding his breath.
It came again, as if in an agony of death. It was the voice of Matra.
“Ketan … Ketan … answer if you hear me. Ketan—”
“I hear. Where are you?” he whispered hoarsely.
“My room. Come to me at once. Watch. See that you are not discovered. Come—” The voice trailed to inaudibility.
Swiftly, fully awake now, Ketan crept to the door, opened it a crack. The hall had long been cleared, and the Ladies of the Temple restored to troubled, fretful sleep.
But one of them—undoubtedly a cohort of Anetel—was patroling the far end of the corridor. Lie saw her disappearing back as she turned a corner.
He raced out and down the hall on tiptoe. he kept his head turned, almost running backwards to keep an eye on the far end. He saw the foot of the slow moving guard appear beyond the corner again and flattened himself in a shallow doorway. It was far from deep enough to hide him.
He flattened the side of his face against the door and watched the guard with, one eye. His breath sucked in sharply as she started down the hall towards him.
He thought in that instant of Matra. Why had the old woman called him at this time? Could it be that she was? dying?
The thought set his pulses pounding. He had to hear the rest of her story before—
The guard had stopped now and was peering down the hall. He drew himself inward and literally willed himself flatter.
Then slowly she turned, satisfied that all was well. He held his breath as she retreated and finally disappeared out of sight around the corner.
Matra’s simple quarters were at the end of the hall, facing the opening into the great main assembly room of the Temple. Ketan leaped from the shallow hiding in the doorway and raced once more along the hall. He hesitated before Matra’s door. The hall was clear. He burst in.
For a moment he thought the room was empty, until his eyes became accustomed to the half darkness. Then a small, almost inaudible voice spoke his name. It came from a deep bed in the far corner of the room.
Matra was there. Only her face appeared and her hands clutching the edge of the coverlets. They looked like fallen leaves,
“I’m glad you came … in time —” she uttered with an extreme exertion. “I am dying, and there are things I must tell you.”
“Is there anything I can get?” Ketan asked softly. “Anything to ease your going?”
“To make it quicker? That is what you mean, isn’t it? You mean to be kind,” she said queerly. “But no, I must talk as long as there is life left in me.
“First, I must tell you of Elta. I was wrong about her. She came to me today, and I was wrong. Be good to her, Ketan. She loves you,
I talked long with her. I showed her what the Statists have done to Kronweld and to Earth … you do not know that name, do you? She believed me and she will help you.” A contortion of pain gripped the withered countenance and twisted it almost beyond recognition. Ketan sat hopelessly while the spasm passed.
“The poison—works swiftly,” Matra groaned.
“Poison!”
Matra nodded. “Anetel did it. I should have known. But it does not matter. You shall carry on. I must hurry … the end is near. I want you to take this ring—”
She slipped a ring from her hand and passed it over. Ketan took it wonderingly. It barely fitted his little finger.
“Keep that. It will protect you from the evil that Anetel plans for you. Yes … she knows you. You have been known from the first moment you entered the Preparation Center. It is not that easy to gain access to the Temple of Birth,” she smiled grimly. “We both knew you and each of us thought to use you for our own purposes. In that, I have won.
“I fear my time is short.” Another grimace of pain crossed the weathered face. “Elta knows what to do. She will tell you the rest. I wanted you to know that she is innocent of any harm.”
“But whv did she try to kill Anetel?”
“She … did … that?” The crone tried to rise in bed and sank back with a groan. “Oh, the fool
… the little fool … the wonderful little fool—”
“Why?”
“She thought to help. But it will be of no avail. We have the situation under control— But you say she tried?”
“I am not certain of anything— only what is rumored in the Temple. Anetel’s minions are keeping the corridors cleared.”
“Yes … she has had her own organization among us for a long time. I have watched her build it up. But it does not matter. I have my own, too, and we have prevented her from sending any important information out of here.” Quick pain now embraced the husk of Matra, pain that would not leave. It twisted her face and clouded her eyes until she shut them and wide pools of liquid formed in their corners, pools that widened and at last burst and flooded down the canyons of her face like overflowing reservoirs.
“This is it,” she gurgled through the pain. “There was so much more I had to tell you. But Elta … she knows all of it. See that she has her ring … it may be necessary for her, too. Do not lose them, either of you. Now … God bless you!”
Her body twitched, her throat noised horribly—and she lay still.
For a long time Ketan knelt beside the body, uncomprehending, unable to move a muscle. He stared down in utter bewilderment and wonder. And a terrible sense of alien forces and powers over him came with the realization that it was not the God referred to by Nabah and his followers to whom Matra had called out for blessings upon him.
He gazed down upon the tired little body. What burdens it had carried during the infinite tara it had existed! Now, already, disintegration had set in. Probably no man would ever know what those burdens were.
He rose abruptly, conscious once , more of his own position and the peril of lilta. He looked at the curious ring that Matra had given him. It wras only a shining golden band. And Elta had one like it. How could powers of salvation exist in the tiny, impotent looking thing ?
The hall was still deserted as he stepped back into it. Not even the guard was in sight. He returned quickly to his own room without incident and sat down in the deep chair.
The death of Matra had shaken him. There was nothing so repellent as witnessing death. In Kronweld, those who escorted incurables to the Place of Dying were themselves pariahs, and only the lowest of the declassed could be foixed into the job. Death was abhorrent.
Yet, he recalled, there had been a curious peacefulness and serenity about Matra. She was not afraid. She appeared to almost welcome death. She regretted only that the terrible wrestling forces about her had not reached satisfactory equilibrium. Ketan felt an irrational obligation to the dead woman, an obligation
to carry on her work even as she had implied—whatever her work was.
But the thought of Elta tormented him. Why had she tried to kill Anetel? The petty internal affairs of the Temple did not concern her. It was the entire structure that had to be destroyed.
He strove in vain to conceive a logical plan of reaching Elta.
They came in upon him while he sat there.
XIV.
Anetel was foremost. Three of her followers were behind her.
Ketan leaped up. Anetel’s eyes flashed insolence at him. A satirical smile played about her lips. One arm was suspended in a sling and thickly bandaged.. Someone luid stabbed her—
“You might as well remove that piece of plastic from your nose. It’s about to fall off.”
“I’ve grown rather accustomed to it.”
“As you will. What a fool you must have been to think you could come in here without detection— and deceive Anetel. I have every record that Matra made of your attack upon the girl at the Preparation Center. Your words with Matra. Your amusing sculptoring each morning. And your desecration in the chamber of birth.
“I want that message! Give it to me.”
She held out her hand imperiously.
Katen leaped backwards to the original and his translation which lay on the table behind him. He flung them into the open waste disposal chute in the wall,
“That is just as well,” said Anetel. “I just didn’t want it lying around where curious Ladies might wonder about it. We have to remove Ladies who succeed in translating them.”
“There have been others?” “Many of them. That’s why you were warned not to examine the babies, but bring them quickly to the reception chamber. But in any case it would have been necessary to sentence you.”
He gazed straight into her arrogant face. “And what does that mean ?”
“I’m surprised,” she mocked. “You were such a great Seeker in Kronweld, You would tear down and destroy this false Temple and replace it with truth. Have you never heard the truth of the Temple and the great door in the Edge ?”
Ketan looked puzzled. Anetel laughed. Then amazement flooded over him. That blackness in the niche!
What a fool he had been not to realize it before. That was the Edge itself.
“I recall from your history,” said Anetel, “that in your youth you proposed that Seekers find a way .to pass through or over the Edge and discover what was on the other side. Well, you shall find out!” “What do you mean ?”
“Hundreds of tara in the past, there was a great battle in Kronweld. There were thousands of ignorant primitives who opposed the Seekers. They said that Seeking was against the will of the God and they slew hundreds of our noblest Seekers. But in the end they were defeated and a great Seeker whose very name is now forgotten discovered how to build a gate in the Edge which would open upon a bleak and terrible prison world on the other side. A world that would make Fire Land and Dark Land look as if they were gardens of paradise. He built this gate and the defeated ignorants were imprisoned in this land. It is an eternal land. One in which none ever die and they are there to this day.”
A sudden, haunting vision grew up before Ketan’s eyes—a mighty assemblage of pleading faces. His own face betrayed his emotion.
“Ah—you have seen them, then,” Anetel laughed. “And by your face I see that you pity them. Pity yourself, poor Seeker, for you shall join them and your face shall be one of those to stare and haunt the curious Ladies who shall try to penetrate the secret of life in the future—until they also shall join you.”
“You can’t believe me so stupid as to believe a fantastic lie as that. Why should nothing be known in Kronweld of this? And where does new life come from? Your tale hardly explains that.”
“That—? That was another triumph of the same Seeker who opened the Edge. If it is any consolation, you may know that you were right in your theories of the creation of life. We come into being in the same horrible manner as the Bors whose association you found so desirable. But the people of Kronweld have been spared this horror. It is the creation of the imprisoned ones who are drawn through the Edge to replenish Kronweld. They are the. animals which breed us. The infants alone can come through. The others can go only from here to there.”
Ketan stood aghast. As abhorrent as her story was, it would explain everything if it were true. Everything about the Temple was fantastic, unreal, yet each incredible revelation seemed to bring him nearer the truth.
“You will be sentenced today,” Anetel said. She turned to leave.
Kctan leaped swiftly after her. Instinctively, she whirled aside and her one free hand snapped out from beneath her robe.
“I think you know1 what this is,” she said.
Ketan glanced at the object in her hand. It was a Dark Land weapon—capable of reducing him to a breath of ash in an instant.
Then as Anetel caught sight of him standing immobile there the flash of the golden ring on his finger struck her eye.
It seemed to sober her,
“So Matra thought to outwit me even as she died,” Anetel murmured. “Give me that ring.”
Her eyes were hard gems of utter coldness beyond human comprehension. Ketan handed the ring over instantly.
He knew it was either that or let her flame him.
“Good,” she said, pocketing the ring with a quick motion. “Now, Elta undoubtedly has one, too. I must get hers.”
They sealed the door when they left. Ketan stared dumbly at it. Idly, he glanced down at the barren finger. There was no escape now. But he had at last found the secret of the Temple. He would be sent to the exile beyond the Edge.
A fantastic exultation swept through him. What did his own life matter if he proved his Seeking?
And somehow, somewhen—if he still lived—he would find a way back. Elta was his only worry. What would become of her?
At that moment a voice spoke within the room. “Ketan … Ketan! Can you hear me ? Speak if you hear me.”
“Elta! Where are you ?”
“I escaped from my confinement and found the communication center of the Temple. I’m speaking to you by it. I can hear anything that is spoken in your room. Listen to me, Ketan. I know what they plan to do to you. I have stolen one of the Dark Land weapons and I can get another. I have a disguise and will hide in the chamber of birth. I’ll be one of the watchers there. I will hide one of the wreapons just inside the niche. Let them lead you up to it and then take the weapon and we’ll fight our way out.”
“No, Elta! That is impossible— we’d have to slay everyone in the Temple. And then where would we go? All Kronweld would he waiting for us outside, for I know there is communication with the outside.”
“We must! There is no time to lose.”
“Put the weapon in the niche as you planned. When I go through, follow me.”
“No—!”
“That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”
“Yes … yes, hut—”
“We’ll find the way back. You know what is 011 the other side, but I don’t, and it will be the realization of dreams for me. And I will prove to you that whatever it is you are afraid of is no cause for fear. Now, do as I say, Elta.”
“All right. I’m a fool, but it’s only because I love you. Have your weapon ready to use the instant the flames begin. You must kill quickly when you get through.”
The chamber of birth was tomblike as sentence was passed upon Ketan. He stood silent and waiting before the ebon sheet of the exposed Edge.
Behind him, white-robed Ladies of the Temple stood like attendant ghosts.
He did not give a betraying glance at the watchers post where Elta sat. He wondered how she had succeeded in escaping. Her presence gave him a sense of satisfaction and comfort for he knew that no dangers they could be going into could match the danger to Elta here in the Temple.
Behind him he now observed two burly Ladies with long padded poles. These were for use in case he became reluctant to walk into the flames
. And still farther back was Anetel with her waiting Dark Land weapon in case the two assistants failed.
Ketan was still clad in his plastic disguise and Anetel had ironically ordered him to clothe in the induction robes with which he had entered the Temple. “A new induction awaits you,” she had said.
Now they waited. He hoped it would not be long. But he well knew that it might be days even, before another infant appeared amid the flaming opening of the gateway.
It was coming!
The flickering purple shadows crossed the ebony sheet in the depths of the niche. A low cry came from the assembled Ladies. Ketan glanced towards the spot where Elta’s promised weapon was to be.
There was nothing there.
He stared in dismay.
The purple was becoming red. A wave of deep, blasting heat swept momentarily over him. Then it was gone. The light rose through the spectrum and flamed white and became edged with blue.
He hesitated and turned. There was a vicious jab in the small of his back that cramped him with pain. It drove him forward into the blue-white flames.
His backward glance took in the watchers post. Neither of them was Elta.
He did not have time to comprehend the catastrophe of this. The poles jabbed the small of his back in sickening pain. Then he was running down a long corridor of twisting, writhing flames that flung his body about and tore at him with tangible fingers of fire.
They stared up at him as if time had stopped for them eons ago. There was fear and terror frozen into their gaping faces—thousands of them. Wave on wave—wave on wave—they surged and cried out to him.
And they shrank back from him as if from a lightning blast. He was glowing, burning—every fiber of him—with an incandescent blaze that would have seared blind any normal eyes.
But he was not normal. He was a god in an inferno of light, a great bubble of it that swept him on and on through the reaches of space and eternity, beyond realms where Kronweld was only a half remembered dream that had never existed in reality—into a land where mutely pleading faces looked up at him and cried out for salvation. Wave on wave—wave on wave—
Man of Two Worlds Page 11
