Bowing before the building, the Priests deftly described certain ritualistic signs with their fingers. Then after removing their sandals, they raised Koz, and in spite of his protests, bore him into the tower—bore him, for they dared not let his feet walk on holy ground!
In the room they entered, they were greeted by a tall, thin man with little, ugly eyes—Sweig, the High Priest. At sight of Koz his thin lips twisted in an eager leer.
“You have him already!” he exclaimed in a voice as dry as the sound of two dead branches soughing against each other. “Soon, if the Mighty One wills, we may see brother Koz climbing the Pillar of Fire . . . But come, the Mighty One awaits.”
At the mention of the Pillar of Fire, the face of Koz grew pale. He had seen men climb the tall, metal pole with tongues of flame leaping hungrily after them—climb higher and higher with the flames drawing steadily closer, until they had crashed to earth, living torches. Crashed, and died. For an instant he contemplated attempting to escape; then he realized that his efforts would be futile. He remained passively in the arms of the Priests.
They were moving through a long corridor; it seemed endless. Koz knew that they were approaching the great domed chamber that held the Brain. His heart-beat quickened. Only twice before had he seen the Mighty One; once when as a boy he had accompanied his father, and a few days before when he had been admitted by the Priests. It was after the second visit that he had blasphemed.
They had reached the domed room now, and paused before the door. Again the fingers of the Priests made their signs; and Sweig said slowly:
“The Priests bring Koz, who has blasphemed against the Mighty One. They desire to consult the Master concerning his fate.”
FROM within the chamber a voice replied, “You may not enter; the Master will not see you.” It was the watcher, the attendant of the Brain, who was always there.
Before the High Priest could voice an answer, the thought of the Brain entered the minds of all of them. “I know of the offense of Koz; and I know him. He shall be cast out, separated forever from the company of men. He is to be blindfolded and bound, and four of you shall lead him far beyond the edge of the city to a place I shall show you. There leave him, bound and unarmed to await his death—unless he can release himself.” The thought ceased.
A disappointed expression crossed the face of the High Priest, to be banished quickly; and the men turned and retraced their steps through the corridor. Upon leaving the building, four of the Priests took Koz, and after blindfolding him and binding his hands behind him, as the Brain had directed, started toward the edge of the city. At length they entered the thicket.
For Koz there began a seemingly endless struggle through the thick, almost impenetrable undergrowth. The Priests led him, but they exercised little care; branches lashed him, outjutting roots and tangled vines caught at his feet. Cries of protest burst from him at first; but the Priests only mocked him, so he gritted his teeth and bore his torment in silence.
Several hours had passed when Koz and his captors came to an abrupt halt. One of the Priests spoke.
“Here we will leave you; it is the will of the Mighty One.”
Roughly they cast him to the earth; he felt them lash his feet together. For an instant he struggled, but to no avail. His only reward was a brutal blow that set his head to ringing, and that numbed his senses.
And when his faculties had fully returned, the Priests had gone. He was alone.
The sudden realization of his position momentarily shocked the mind of Koz into immobility. Sluggishly his thoughts came; his brain seemed to be groping in the dark, trying to grasp the full significance of all that had occurred. Knowledge broke upon him like a flood of light—and a great sickness of heart smote him—and mingled hate and fear besieged his mind.
Alone! Bound hand and foot—and blindfolded so that he could not even see the approach of peril! And the tales men told of the beasts of the wilderness; monsters, gigantic, horrifying! He had never seen any of them himself—but there was much that he had not seen.
Cold sweat broke out upon his forehead. What if one of the beasts were approaching now! He listened intently—heard a faint, rustling close at hand. A tremor shook him from head to foot, and a scream of terror leaped to his lips—a scream that he did not utter, however, for fear stopped his mouth. Perhaps no monsters were near, after all, and his cry might summon them!
He must free himself—at once! Only thus could he escape the death that seemed so imminent. He began struggling furiously with the cords that bound his hands. From side to side he rolled, exerting all his strength, but his bonds held.
Koz’s struggle had one effect, however; something of a vegetable nature crunched and squelched beneath his twisting body, with a semi-liquid sound. And the air became polluted with a heavy, concentrated stench, suggestive of dead flesh long in the clutches of decay.
Koz gagged and choked, and redoubled his efforts to break the prisoning cord. Not for long, he knew, could he breathe that terrible odor, and survive.
And suddenly his hands were free! The cord itself had held, but the knots, carelessly tied, had given way. With a single motion he tore the cloth from his eyes and stared around. His heart leaped. No monster was in sight.
Quickly he freed his feet and arose. With a single, sweeping glance he surveyed his surroundings; then turned and fled. In a few moments the charnel odor had been left behind.
At a safe distance Koz turned and studied with greater care the place he had left. It was a forest—but a forest totally unlike any he had ever seen. The trees were mere slender, pale-green stems, shooting upward to great heights, surmounted by feathery tufts of leaves from which hung long fronds of purple blossoms. Countless vines, gorgeously abloom with vivid flowers, twined about the slender trees. Here and there, huge, knotted masses of ugly, fleshy crimson reached skyward, ugly growths that thrust aside vines and trees alike in their groping toward the light.
But none of these had caused Koz to flee from the 6trange place. His had been a revulsion, a horror of the great variety of squat, mushroomlike things—violet, blue, yellow, orange, that covered the ground between the other flora like a discordantly colored carpet—and the all too numerous “death-traps”, carnivorous plants with great, gaping orifices in their sides, like hungry mouths from which writhed long, purple tentacles, curling and uncurling incessantly. He had crushed some of the fungi in his struggle for freedom, liberating the terrible stench; and his rolling had carried him almost within the reach of an eager tentacle. But now he was free of that danger.
SLOWLY he turned away with the intention of putting greater distance between himself and the wild scene—and abruptly in mid-stride he halted; and an expression of bewilderment settled upon his face.
What—what was this that had seized his mind? A thought of mirth, boundless, riotous mirth! It jarred and jangled insanely through the cells of his brain. Then came a telepathic message, a thought that was not his own:
“You are free now, Koz, are you not? Then why do you tarry?” And again the tumult of silent laughter coursed through his mind.
Koz cursed angrily; impatiently shook his head. Was he going mad—thinking so disjointedly? For that matter, why was he delaying? It must be that strange forest with its insane anarchy of coloring that was affecting his reason.
He essayed to move, but his body would not obey! A numbing paralysis gripped him.
Solemnly, grimly, now, another thought came. “The Brain is speaking, Koz, so heed!” It was as though a voice had whispered in his ear; yet he had heard nothing. “You are free in body, but you cannot move, for your mind is my slave—mine to do with as I desire! Slave of the Brain, the Mighty One!”
The Brain! Communicating with his mind across the miles of wilderness! The face of Koz grew hideous with a panic of dread.
Then slowly, inexorably he felt his will weakening, and felt all strength of mind oozing from him—drawn away by the will of the Brain. Vaguely, only half recognized, the
thought flickered in his consciousness: now was he slave indeed! Flickered—and was gone—and with it, all thought.
“Speak, Koz; are you not my slave?”
Weakly his lips twitched. Dully, in a colorless voice he replied, “Yes, Master, your slave.”
“Then obey my will.”
Like an automaton Koz turned, and with steady, unfaltering stride, moved toward the brilliantly-colored forest. Without hesitation, eyes facing directly ahead, he stepped upon the carpet of fungi, ignoring utterly the stupefying stench. He passed within a foot of an eagerly reaching tentacle, but he gave it no heed. It was as though his mind and body were so completely under the control of the Brain that he was totally oblivious to all extraneous things.
On and on, deeper and deeper into the unearthly wilderness Koz strode, moving ahead mechanically. Time after time he escaped death by a hair’s breadth; the power of the Brain guided him past the vegetable destroyers that sought his life.
After an indeterminable time Koz paused; and with startling abruptness the control of the Brain was withdrawn. To Koz it seemed like the awakening from a deep sleep—awakening in a nightmare world! He staggered wildly, caught himself, and stared around; an incredulous gasp burst from him. An instant he stood rigid; then he sank weakly back against a huge rock.
He was in the heart of the rainbow-hued jungle, standing on a rough, jagged hemisphere of stone that reared its head above the surrounding thicket like an island in a sea of verdure. At the very edge of the rock the carnivorous death-traps grew; and beyond them Koz could see other strange plants that might likewise constitute a menace to his safety. He was trapped—led to this place by the Brain, and left there—to die!
Suddenly he cringed. A thought had come—from the Brain:
“I’ll leave you now, Koz, to your own devices. Here you can meditate upon my divinity—or lack of it—and perhaps you may recall some of the distant past—may remember the justice of the Brain! If you wish to leave this place, you may do so; but I believe you will be—safer here!”
And with the cessation of thought, mental presence of the Brain was gone.
CHAPTER X
The Justice of the Brain
SLOWLY his self-possession returned. He remained standing there motionless until his self-mastery was complete; then he turned and climbed to the top of the bald mass of stone. If there was a single way of escape, he intended finding it. But there was none; on every side as far as eye could reach lay the alien wilderness. Only by plunging into that trackless waste and fighting his way through it, could he hope to gain freedom. His face paled at the thought. The terrible odor of the fungus growths still clung to his clothing; he had no desire to tread again on the reeking things.
Koz realized at that moment that dusk was falling. The reddening west gave evidence of the approach of night. Night—when beasts prowled abroad through the jungle—so men said. Night, with all its hidden horrors! Koz could not know that the deluge of six centuries past had blotted out all animal life save Man and a few of the smaller animals that could swim, and had remained alive on masses of floating wreckage.
Through the gray of dusk, into the blackness of night, Koz waited. He could do nothing else.
Slowly time passed; and as the minutes dragged by the imagination of Koz began to work—even as the Brain had known it would. The deep, purple shadows creeping over the wilderness so stealthily, seemed to him to be the hiding place of countless terrifying shapes, monsters that even now might be crouching to leap upon him!
Deeper grew the shadows, more oppressive became the blackness. The sky was overcast, heavy with clouds; the darkness seemed to become tangible to the touch. And, with the deepening night, twilight crept upon the darkening mind of Koz.
His thoughts gradually lost all semblance of order—even his terrors became disjointed things. He grew aware of a fearful sense of isolation, a horrible, haunting sense of insecurity. A horde of ghostly shapes were rising up out of the blackness to plague him with sinister possibilities. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight—and hastily opened them again, lest some horror leap upon him, unseen.
Suddenly Koz bent forward, listening. Faintly, scarcely audible, there came a curious, swishing sound. It was only the rustle of the plumelike leaves of the slender trees swaying under the weight of a sudden gust of wind—but to Koz it signified the approach of an indescribable monstrosity. He whirled toward the sound.
Only the impenetrable blackness lay before him.
A brisk breeze had sprung up, and in an instant the swishing sounds assailed him from every side. Suddenly Koz, in a moment of lucidity, realized the nature of the noises, and laughed—and shuddered at the rasping, unnatural, mirthless tones. Then the sea of mental torment closed over him again, and all those visions that plagued him, and all the sounds that beat at his brain had returned, gnawing like rats at his dying reason.
Up to this point the mental torture of Koz had seemed cunningly just to skirt the border-line of strain that he could endure, just to stop short at the breaking point—but suddenly that border-line was crossed. Koz, peering wildly into the blackness, saw rising up before him a vast, formless cloud of grey vapor, filling half the sky, a cloud that contracted slowly until it resolved itself into a gigantic vision of the Brain in its crystal globe! Each convolution of the ghastly thing, increased in size a thousandfold, was clearly visible, silhouetted against the pitchy blackness of the night.
And suddenly into the mind of the man there rolled a thunderous voice, cold, harsh, mocking: “Crazy, crazy Kos! Crazy, crazy Kos!” And there followed a wild peal of laughter, an insane, abandoned crackle.
And Koz, wild-eyed with insane terror, his lips drawn back over clenched teeth, glared for an instant at the vision—then he threw back his head and roared in unhinged glee—roared and shrieked and howled with mad mirth—roared even after the vision had gone. For the mind of Koz had sunken into the gibbering realms where reason tottered and was lost!
Minutes later, when his mad laughter had subsided, he squatted on the top of the rock, glaring into the blackness of the wilderness. His deep-set eyes glowed with a demented light, burning like live coals. And there he stayed throughout the remainder of the night.
Not until the sun was well above the horizon did he stir on the following morning. Then abruptly he sprang to his feet and croaked the single word:
“Thirsty!”
As suddenly as he had arisen, he dashed down the sloping side of the mass of stones, into the jungle.
The tentacles of the death-traps tore at him as he passed; clouds of noisome odors arose in his wake from crushed fungi; dangling vines strove to trip him. But madman he was; and to him had come the strength that maniacs often possess. Though his clothing was torn from him in a very few moments, though blood poured down his naked body from open wounds, though ugly crimson welts arose on his flesh, nothing seemed to stop him. Twice he fell, entangled in the vines and creepers, and once a death-trap had him in its grasp, but each time he tore loose and dashed on. And at last he passed beyond the edge of the nightmare thicket, into a forest of natural trees and undergrowth.
STRANGELY, a stream of water ran through the woods close at hand—instinct, evidently, had guided him to the life-giving fluid. Again Koz uttered the single word, “Thirsty!” dashed over to the stream; and drank. His thirst satisfied, he arose, smiling vacantly—then suddenly he stiffened. The vacuous smile left his face; the insane light in his eyes dimmed.
“Kos,” a voice whispered in his mind, “listen to your Master, the Brain.”
“I hear you, Master,” Koz replied tonelessly.
“Then heed! That ordeal through which you have just passed was punishment for your blasphemy, your antagonism toward me. For another offense must you likewise be punished. Then will all be finished . . . But now, obey my will.”
With the same mechanical stride, the same lack of interest in extraneous things that he had displayed when entering the wilderness of the death-traps, Koz m
oved rapidly along the bank of the stream. After going about a half mile, he turned away from the water-course and fought his way through the wilderness, moving unerringly toward a strange object half buried in the thick loam of the forest.
It was a crystal sphere, four feet in diameter, with long, needle-sharp spikes protruding from its surface—a globe that had been used by invaders from space six centuries before.
Without hesitation, guided by the Brain, Koz lifted the sphere from the loam, opened it, removed the rotting bones and the queer, metallic scales that lay within it. He entered the vehicle, which, despite its age, seemed uninjured.
An instant later it rose into the air, hovered high above the tree tops, then sped eastward toward the ruins of Cosmopolis.
In a curiously detached way the mind of Kos, its place usurped by the mentality of the Brain, was aware of what was taking place—but he had power to do naught but obey.
In a few minutes the spiked globe descended into the open space before the Tower of the Mighty One—and as abruptly as before, the Brain released the mind of Koz.
Momentarily bewildered, he stared through the transparent wall of the sphere at the awe-stricken faces of the nearby members of the Clan. Then suddenly recovering his senses, suddenly aware of his precarious position, his nakedness, and suddenly wracked by the pain of his wounds, he fumbled frantically with the machinery behind the nearest spike, in an effort to escape. Nothing happened. With a muttered imprecation, Koz drew himself through the opening in the sphere, and sprang to the earth.
“It’s Koz!” the amazed cry arose from many throats. “Kos,” someone said, “and look at his body—naked and a mass of wounds!” Koz turned slowly. He was surrounded; men hemmed him in on every side.
He heard the voice of the High Priest. “Hm-m—Koz, returned to climb the Pillar of Fire!” But Koz gave little attention to that; his mind was centered on the men who were closing in on him.
Forgotten Fiction Page 30
