“You mean your scientists just did away with the law of inverse squares? Those—and I pointed to the six-foot diameter, two hundred foot high balls of fire which hung unmoving above the pillar tips—“heat and light the whole planet? Both hemisphere: at once? Equally?”
“Of course. We have reached perfection in all ways. It is why the Machine of Illusion is so necessary. Our world must never suffer contamination . . .”
“You let me in, and I’m an old contaminator from way back,” I reminded her again. “How come?”
And again, she only laughed.
The banquet appeared.
It wasn’t served by magnificently-muscled slaves—it wasn’t brought in by a noiseless procession of robots. It wasn’t as far as I know prepared by anybody and it wasn’t brought in to the fanfare of golden trumpets. It just appeared, that’s all.
And one by one, the inhabitants of this perfect world began filling the Hall o’ Suns. They were young-looking, tall, handsome men with bronze-colored flesh, and scores more of women each as dazzling in their beauty as the ones who had escorted me to this fantastic place. None of them were old, none were malformed j none less god-like in appearance than his fellow.
They had this perfection business down to a T.
While I ate the strange but superbly delicious foods that from time to time appeared before me, I kept asking questions. Jjaro, for such was the tall girl’s name, sat—or rather reclined—beside me at what was-obviously the place of honor at my long, low, gently curving table.
“This isn’t,” I asked her, “just a dream, is it? I’m not laying out on a gray, stony plain, someplace, getting ready to die, am I?” I said it with a smile, so she’d know I intended no offense with any of my questions, but as soon as I had said the words, a shadow of consternation danced across her eyes, but was gone almost before I had recognized it for what it was.
“Do you think you are sleeping?” was all she said. Not that it proved anything, but I gave myself a pinch. It hurt, and I was as satisfied as I was able to be.
“No,” I said. “I couldn’t dream up stuff this good anyway. When I dream, it’s about finding a big strike and hauling it home with a whole fleet of luggers—”
“It is always of work that you think, isn’t it?” she broke in.
“Work, and making a reasonably honest buck, sure. Why? Is work passé with your crowd? Don’t those fellows—” and I gestured toward the scores of other tables at which the Apollo-like men were enjoying the feast with their women—“do anything to earn a living, or to keep a layout like this from getting mortgaged?”
“Our forebears made certain of all this for us,” she said, with the faintest hint of surprise in her reply. “And now it is ours to use as we wish! Qyylao is too beautiful to be marred by toil, Joe.”
I didn’t remember telling her my first name, but she had it. I wondered what else she could pluck from my mind without my knowledge.
The men, I learned, spent their time at various kinds of sports, or just taking it easy, when, as, and how they wanted to. The women spent most of their time with the men. I could see the logic there.
But, just the same, the civilizations of yore had apparently done their work so well that their posterity not only had lived to reach an ultimate state of perfection, but once they got there, didn’t even have to lift a finger to keep things that way.
Not bad, when I stopped to think about it. Not bad at all. Maybe if I played things smart, I could get these kids to take a real shine to me . . . I thought about it.
Something gave a tug at the back of my mind, but I didn’t get a good look at what it was because Jjaro was thinking at me again.
“Now, if you are finished,” she said, “you will be furnished with suitable attire. And then as you wish, you may sport with the others, or visit the Garden of Dreams, or swim with Jjaro in the Lake of Forgetfulness.”
I hadn’t thought about being finished with the meal. I guess I must’ve eaten tons of stuff, because although I had a curious still-hungry feeling, at the same time I felt content and satisfied. I thought then that it was more habit than anything else that made me slip a couple of concentrate pills in my mouth. Perhaps it was. Or maybe it was because you can fool a man, but not his stomach.
HAND in hand, Jjaro and I, followed leisurely by a few of the other women, wended our way through the fantastic blooms of the Garden of Dreams. Here, all consciousness was lost save for an awareness of the sheer joy of living with the fulfillment of all human desires at one’s fingertips. Before this, my five senses had been buried somewhere deep in a black mire, never coming within light-years of the true wonderment that they reveled in here in the Garden. And the further we walked, the more I was sure I would never leave Qyylao.
I knew without question that Jjaro could be mine, and would be, if I did but ask. And somehow I knew, too, that on Qyylao there was no such thing as death—only life; life, as a man should live it. Qyylao was forever. A forever of idleness, beauty, and fulfilled desire.
As was the Garden of Dreams, so was the Valley of Melody, which took a man’s soul and flung it free to the stars on the strains of music which came from nowhere, yet was a part of the very air he breathed.
And when we had finished swimming beneath the waters of the Lake of Forgetfulness, which I knew must stretch into infinity, for it could have neither beginning nor end in time, but was indeed as timeless as man’s desire to shrug from his shoulders the burdens of care, worry, and responsibility, Jjaro and I once again stood at the fringes of the great city, myself seeing as though for the first time the incomparable fantasy of its exquisite beauty.
“You will never leave Qyylao, never leave Jjaro . . .”
It was more like a statement than s question.
“No,” I said. “No.”
Something was needling a part of my mind on which I had locked the door and thrown away the key. Jjaro sensed it. Suddenly, I felt a vague nervousness, as though death itself were beside me disguised in some little thing. But I did not want to leave Qyylao.
I saw the men playing at their sports; watched them dart about on a lush carpet of grass that had been sown by someone else.
I saw the women with their lovers in the shadowed alcoves of the towering, magnificent buildings, over which other men had labored.
I saw the men and the women, immortal, and increasing in their beauty and grace by the hour as they wallowed in the riches striven for by an aspiration and genius not their own.
And the tugging at my mind became a gnawing pain until I knew, somehow, what it was I wanted, although I did not know why.
“My spacesuit, Jjaro,” I heard myself saying. “My ray-pistol—”
“Why, after all the beautiful things I have shown you, must you think of such as those?” she asked gently.
“What’s wrong with thinking of them?” I asked back.
“Surely you must know by now that they are only reminders of the—the other life from which you came. They serve only as bonds with the colorless existence which was yours before.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’ve destroyed my gun? My suit?”
“No, but—”
“But what?” I felt an old, familiar strength slipping back into my veins and my muscles, and all at once the air seemed a little too sweet.
“But perhaps your things are just being examined by some of the men resting from their games. We like new things, especially when they intrigue our fancies. When the men tire of examining your properties, they will be put aside, and—”
“My stuff is like a new toy to them, is that it?” I wasn’t mad. After you’ve been through the Garden of Dreams, the Valley of Melody, and the Lake of Forgetfulness—after you’ve dined in the. Hall of Suns and walked among the wonders of a city built by the architects of paradise, it’s not easy to get sore at anything, and I wasn’t quite able to. But quite suddenly there was a storm of feeling welling up from somewhere inside me that didn’t fit in with the perfection of
Qyylao, and which no Lake of Forgetfulness could make me deny.
“Maybe I’m a toy,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I was let in here—let to see your beautiful, perfect planet—your royal purple society—because I was something that ‘intrigues your fancy!”
“Joe—” She came close to me, but women have come close to me before.
“And what happens when you tire—am I to be put aside like my suit and my gun? Maybe I’ll contaminate your pretty place, baby! Get me my suit and my gun. Or I’ll break your lovely neck.”
Oh, I made it all right. I got good and sore once I really started trying.
And don’t think she took long about getting the suit and hardware. It was like all of a sudden saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at a fancy party.
She just stood there while I looked things over to see if anything had been tampered with. Maybe I’d been a heel, at that. For the first time since I’d been with her, there was a look that could’ve been unhappiness in her eyes.
“Don’t, Joe,” she said. I had the helmet in my hands, ready to put it on and test the mixing valves.
The helmet was an ugly thing, and Jjaro and her city, her garden, her friends, were beautiful things, beyond the imaginings of a man from a; bawdy civilization such as the one from which I had come. Something was holding me, and I knew I was in another one of those spots where you either jump off the diving board on the next spring or you don’t jump at all.
I had the helmet in my hands. For some reason, Jjaro wanted me to drop it. Without taking time to think, I thrust it over my head.
Maybe you’ve guessed already what happened then.
Qyylao was the same bleak, gray, wasted place that it had been when I had first set foot upon it, and the city in the distance was hollow, empty, and dead with the death of a million years.
HOW long I stood that way, with the helmet on, the suit a heap at my feet, the ray-pistol holstered beside it, I don’t know. I stood there long enough to think the thing through as far as I could, I know that.
The first thing I reasoned was that something was going on that the lead lining in my helmet had a hell of a lot to do with. It had no power to show me things that didn’t exist. But with the lead lining, put there for protection against harmful space radiations, it did have a damn good stopping power.
The second thing I reasoned was that you don’t build cities of precious metals unless your planet abounds in them—and your planet isn’t heavy unless it packs some pretty solid ore-lodes, even if they’re only lead.
And the city hadn’t been built of lead, transmuted or otherwise.
The third thing I reasoned was that if there were ore here it should mean dough in my pocket, so I had to repair my Omicron and get back to the lugger so I could set up things on Qyylao for some extensive operating.
Which I should’ve done right then.
I’m practical enough when I don’t get het up—especially when it means money. But when I’m curious, or when I’m a little riled—or when I’m both, I can get some screwy ideas. And like the poet once said, “a man’s a man for a’ that an’ a’ that . . .”
The fourth thing I reasoned was that in addition to the ore, I might still have Jjaro.
If, of course, she were real.
So instead of admitting to a bellyful, I stuck out my neck for more. Literally. I took the helmet off again.
Jjaro was gone.
But Qyylao was once more in all its glory. I figured there were two things to do; first, I had to find the girl, and second, if I were going to entertain any ideas about her, I had to find out if she were real, or if she and the paradise in which she lived were nothing more than a bunch of radiations that could be stopped by the lining in a space-helmet.
The solution of that problem, I was pretty certain, would clear up in no time flat if I could find the Machine of Illusion. Jjaro had said that the bleak, dead Qyylao was the illusion. And I had a hunch that she believed it—for some reason, had to believe it. But even counterfeit money has two sides.
I found her, watching the men at their games. And while I had been locating a good hiding place for the suit—you bet the pistol was strapped to my thigh—and had been walking back to the city, I worked out what I thought was a pretty decent strategy. The only thing that bothered me was remembering how she’d dug my first name out of my brain without my even knowing.
She was standing with a large group o: women near one of the smaller sports arenas, and believe me, I had no trouble in picking her out from among all the other young goddesses.
There was only one girl like Jjaro, ever on Qyylao.
She turned even before I called her name. She smiled, but it was not the same kind of smile as before, and I should’ve known I was being like a kid in school. But those things don’t make much difference when a creature like Jjaro has gotten in your blood.
“I’ve been let back in again,” I said. “Maybe that means you and your people will forgive me for—for the things I said. I’m sorry.”
“Of course you are forgiven, Joe,” she said. “Unhappiness would mar our world. There is no room here for any but the most graceful thing. And unhappiness is not a graceful thing. And you have shared our life; what other is there that you could wish?”
She came close to me again, and extended her arms. “There are precious metals in the very ground over which you walk,” she murmured, “but to what advantage is the lowly toil of their acquisition with your machines—the baseness of the scheming for their barter, when the perfect life of our planet is yours merely for the asking? Let us return to the Garden of Dreams together, Joe . . .”
The men continued at their gaming, the women watched. Jjaro clung to me, kissed me, openly and with no shame.
So I played my little trick.
“What do you see in my mind, Jjaro?” I asked. I tried to fill my mind with the idea. Had she been looking for anything but sincerity, she probably would have found me out. But I gambled that she’d be satisfied with what she saw first.
“I see that you are still sorrowful, still wish in some way to make amends for the guilt you feel, Joe. And I see promises of—of—” I concentrated hard. I knew that my mind was up against something much stronger than hers alone. I could feel it. “—Of many great delights, Joe!” she was saying. “You wish the peace and beauty, wonderful idleness and ease of Qyylao for your own people. And in return, there would be promise of many gifts for my people—intriguing gifts, that would forever please our fancies.”
“Anything you wanted,” I lied, “to play with. New pleasures, new indulgences, new joys for your planet, Jjaro.” I hoped she missed the overtone of irony that I could not keep from my voice. “But to do this,” I said slowly, “I must have knowledge of the Machine of Illusion. It is the greatest accomplishment of your forebears, for it has kept their posterity from—contamination. For my people to live as yours, they, too, would need the secret of your device. Would you take me to it, so that I might study its working, and learn how to reproduce it for my people?”
I knew if I slipped just one jot from the right angle of approach to the problem I would miss the boat. Something just hanging on the fringe of my subconscious told me that I had two birds to kill with my stone.
I had to convince Jjaro.
And something else.
I think it was the promise of “new pleasures, new indulgences, new joys,” that hit both targets for me. Because that idea was the keystone of the half-witted philosophy behind this whole business, and I was sure of it.
“I will show you the Machine of Illusion,” she said at last.
And I knew I was about to discover whether I would be able to have Jjaro, or not.
CHAPTER THREE
Into the Crypt
I COULD tell that what Jjaro was doing was not to her liking; the caverns beneath the shining city were distasteful enough to me. They, I knew, like the empty city of Qyylao as I had first seen it, had not echoed a human voice or to the sound of fo
otsteps in untold centuries. They were neither dark nor light, but simply shadow, and somewhere in them was the thing I wanted.
Jjaro’s hand was in mine as we descended, picked our way over the uneven, broken tile-work that must once have been the floor of a utility tunnel. The air was stale and dank, and I could hear Jjaro choke on it. But she kept leading me, yard by yard, turn by turn. I could feel her tremble, and I knew she was afraid, revolted. For the tunnels, even had they once been appealing to the eye, had long since begun this disintegration into mouldering ruin.
Jjaro picked her way as though uncertain, yet as though knowing where she must lead.
“You’ve never been down here before, have you?” I asked. My voice echoed flatly from the slime-smooth walls and sounded like the voice of a dead man. “No,” she said.
“Yet, you know where—”
“I—am—learning as we go,” she said. “Do the others know?”
“Of the Machine, they have always known; knowledge of it is deep within their brains. It is protection, and the life of Qyylao . . .”
You bet it was.
“But I mean,” I said, “do they know where it is?”
“No more than do I,” she said, “yet the way is within my mind.”
And it was, because at length, we came to a series of corroding panels, once set flush with the sides of the tunnel. It was in front of perhaps the twentieth—the widest and stoutest of them—that we stopped.
And Jjaro’s slender fingers groped in the slime of the tunnel wall. It was as though she were in a deep trance, not quite alive, not quite dead.
At length the panel slid back, hesitatingly, noisily, but it moved. And it opened upon a subterranean amphitheater ten times the size of the Hall of Suns!
Despite its size and the half-light of the shadows that engulfed us, I should have been able to see at least to both sides of this Gargantuan pocket, but I could not. That they were not empty, and that housed here was more than the colossus of engineering which sprawled before us, I was certain. But despite all my efforts, I could not see what I knew to be there—lining the curving sides of the amphitheater for its entire circumference and towering above our heads to the full height of the vaulted roof. But I think Jjaro saw.
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