THE CHRISTENING
I went toward the curtains and stood looking out between them, removing
so far as I could even my invisible presence from the tableau behind me.
The attendants were moving about. I heard the soft pad of their
gnuppa-hide sandaled feet, the softened tones of their voices. I heard
Naia speaking and Croft's deeply quivering answer, and once more the
wail of the child.
"Murray," Jason was speaking to me. I sensed his touch on my arm. Again
he was in astral form. "Come, while the women perform their task."
My glance shot beyond him to where his physical body was seemingly
lost in a lethargy of exhaustion, once more in the red wood chair. It
did more. It fell on Naia. The ray of sunlight had lowered as Sirius
had mounted above the eastern horizon. It made her golden tresses seem
more than ever an aureole about her face on the pillow--a face grown
exquisitely tender, lighted not merely with the sun of morning, but by
the inner, the newly ignited glow of motherhood. I turned from it and
followed Croft through the curtained doorway of the chamber, onto the
balcony, along which one approached the room.
He had described it minutely to me, but even so I marveled at it as
we stood together, sensing its proportions, its brilliant yet not
offensive blendings of yellow and white and red. White was the balcony
rail about it, red and yellow the alternating tiles that paved its
floors. Red and yellow, too, were the steps of the stairs that mounted
to the balcony from either end of the court, and red the carven pillars
that supported the balcony on a series of arches, between which pure
white examples of Palosian sculpture showed. Golden were the plates of
glass in the roof above us--open mainly now to the air of heaven, that
the flowers and plants and shrubs which dotted the unpaved portions of
the court beneath us might breathe.
And then I think I must have started very much as Croft himself had
done the first time he beheld such a sight, as I became conscious of a
man, blue as the blue girl of Mazzeria in the room behind me, wearing
upon his shaven poll a single flaming tuft of red. He was a stalwart
man, and he bore a skin equipped with a sprinkling-nozzle upon his back
while he sprayed the beds of growing vegetation--accompanied in his
occupation by a slow-stalking beast remarkably like a hound.
Croft noted the direction of my glance and manner. "Mitlos--our
majordomo, and Hupor," he said and smiled. "Zitu man, when I told you
about them, the last thing I dreamed was that some day you should see
them."
"And now?" I returned with a strange inclination to chuckle as I
thought that Jason was no longer alone in being the first mortal to
reach Palos in the astral presence, even though his potent will had
helped me to my present position.
"And now"--he laughed in a tone of exultation--"you see not only them,
but me, husband of Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and thanks to
you--the father of her child."
"Nonsense," I exclaimed, doubly abashed by his praise and my thoughts
of a moment before, "I did nothing--what can a ghost accomplish?"
He turned fully toward me. His eyes burned with the strong fire of his
spirit.
"I came here even as you are, Murray, and"--he waved a hand in a
comprehensive gesture--"I have accomplished this, and other things
besides--yet not so much that this morning--the most wonderful of
all my span of existence, I have either words or deeds in which the
assistance your presence within the last few hours gave me, may be
repaid."
And no matter how he voiced it, I knew he meant it. The sincerity of
his feeling forced itself upon me.
"Let us not speak of payment," I said--and I confess I felt embarrassed
by the value he seemed to place upon what was no more than my agreement
with his own valuation of a now favorably passed condition. "As it
happens, Croft, my presence here was no more than the granting of an
expressed wish."
He nodded. "The thought is father to the deed--isn't it, Murray? I
thought of that last night. Come--I'll show you about the place."
Turning he led the way along the balcony to one end. We went down the
red and yellow stairs.
At their foot was a group of sculptures--the figure of a man straining
to defend a crouching woman from the fangs of a rending beast. It was
of heroic size and wonderfully perfect in detail. I recalled it from
Croft's description of it, and how once he had told Naia that so he
would defend her were his right to do so granted. Well--last night I
had seen him do it. I had seen him strain body and soul to guard her
from the yawning jaws of death. I said as much.
He gave me a glance. "You're an odd sort, Murray. You've a lot of the
symbolism, the mysticism of life in your make-up. Come along. Let's get
a breath of the morning air outside."
* * * * *
Once more I followed his lead across the red and yellow court where
unknown plants bloomed about us on every side. Mitlos, intent on his
duties, knew not of our passing, but Hupor sensed us, I think, and
turned his huge head toward us, and stood looking at us out of amber
eyes. Then we were outside the arch of a doorway at the head of a
flight of pure white steps, on a far-reaching esplanade.
On every hand there were mountains, wooded on their sides. The house
stood on one side of a natural mountain valley, in the emerald cup of
which was a tiny lake, its waters gilded now by the rays of the Dog
Star. And winding past it, and off along the flank of the hills in a
series of perfect tangents was a wonderfully metaled road. I followed
its turnings until I lost them, and my vision found itself baffled by
a further reach of the landscape, blanketed as it seemed beneath a
singular dun-colored haze.
In its way the scene was not unlike that of a morning on earth. I
turned my eyes back to the dim shape of Croft beside me. He lifted
an arm. "Over there is Himyra," he said, pointing, "but a ground fog
is hiding the desert. If you'll look across it, however, you'll see a
silver sort of shimmer. That's the Central Sea."
Himyra--the capital of Aphur--the Central Sea. And this was Palos.
The weirdness of the whole adventure came upon me. It was hard to
realize. And the sun up there was Sirius and not the sun to which I was
accustomed.
Abruptly Jason chuckled. "Murray--do you remember the night my
housekeeper thought I had died, and routed you out in a storm, and you
came to my house and compelled me to return from Palos by the infernal
insistence of your will? Well, tit for tat, old man. That night I did
your bidding, but last night I called you here."
"Quite so," I assented, smiling. In a way his remark seemed to lighten
the atmosphere between us. I caught sight of a rapidly moving object.
"Look there, Croft--that's one of your motors or some or sort of speedy
contraption coming up the road."
He glanced down the course of what I could not but agree he had done
well at first to compare to the ancient highways of the Romans because
of its permanent type of construction.
"Lakkon, by Zitu!" he exclaimed. "I telephoned him last night, but--I'd
forgotten all about him. He said he'd drive out the first thing in the
morning, and he seems to be burning the wind. See here--I'll have to
leave you, Murray, long enough to welcome grandpa, if you don't mind."
I nodded. Lakkon was Naia's father. And it was no more than natural
surely that he should be hastening to her, especially as she was the
old noble's only child.
"Run along," I said. "There's plenty to look at. I'll amuse myself."
Then, as an afterthought, I added, "Only don't spend too much time with
him. I've got to be getting out of here, Croft, or someone's likely to
fancy Dr. Murray is dead."
It had just occurred to me that it was morning also on earth and that
unless I returned to my body, I couldn't tell what might happen in the
institution of which I was the head.
Croft understood my meaning.
"You're right. I'll be as brief as possible," he agreed and vanished,
leaving me quite to my own devices.
I smiled. If one considered it was rather odd to be telling a man to
go get back inside his own body in order to welcome his father-in-law
in the flesh--or to contemplate a return flight across billions of
ethereal miles to accomplish a reunion between my material body and
myself. Myself. I took a deep breath of the mountain air--at least,
I went through the conscious effort with all the satisfaction of
fulfillment. I was myself, really. I felt it, knew it--and I felt a
buoyancy, a lightness, such as I had never known before now that the
weight, the restraint of the body was removed.
I stood and watched Lakkon's motor arrive. I saw Croft's material form
stalk forth to meet him at the head of the stairs. I saw Lakkon descend
from his car and hurry upward, the strong figure of a man with graying
hair, an expectant light in his beardless face. I marked his dress.
It consisted of a tunic of purple, embroidered with an intricate design
in small green stones, skirted, falling to just above the knees, and
the metal, ankle-jointed combination of greaves and sandals Croft had
described, plainly fashioned of gold, and reaching above the bulge of
his muscular calves.
He met Croft and crashed his flat palm upon his shoulder with an
exultant gesture. Croft extended his arm and laid his hand on Lakkon's
shoulder. The two men passed inside.
I turned away. There was something vastly formal, vastly ancient,
about that greeting--an old world atmosphere--that spoke of age-long
custom, despite the throbbing motor in which the noble had reached
the house of his daughter. There was almost something Biblical about
it, the thought came to me. They had met and laid their hands on each
other's shoulders--two strong men, and looked into one another's eyes.
I knew it the Tamarizian greeting of unfaltering friendship, no more a
greeting than a pledge.
Well, then, Lakkon had gone to see his daughter. I gave a glance to
the driver of his motor--a chap dressed plainly in blue unembroidered
tunic, and copper leg-casings, with a fillet supporting a sun screening
drape of purple fabric, about his head. Then I turned and made my way
into the garden. It had occurred to me to examine the private bath.
I found it, screened behind vine-clad walls, and slipped inside it,
past a staggered entrance wall that screened its gate. It lay before
me, a limpid pool in a basin of lemon stone like onyx save that it was
neither mottled nor veined. It shimmered in the Sirian ray, an oblong
of water as brilliant as a bit of polished silver, inside the expanse
of the enclosure, paved with alternating squares of rock-crystal and
pure white stone. I stood gazing upon it, recalling that it was here
Croft had once met Naia of Aphur--the first time when in defiance of
all social custom on Palos, she had yielded him her lips.
* * * * *
Then I went back to the front of the house, and seated myself on a
carven stone bench. I lifted my eyes to the light-filled heavens. This
was Palos--and up there somewhere or down or sidewise--or however you
chose to call it--was earth. It was like Omar as to direction when he
says:
"For Is and Is not though with rule and line
And Up and Down without, I can define--"
Anyway, out there somewhere in the void there floated the mundane
sphere, where the body of me might even now be exciting consternation
among the staff of the hospital, where it had been moved and held a
little prestige in its work. And here was I. Suddenly there stole over
me the sensation that the whole thing was a dream excited by Jason's
stories--a feeling that I ought to rouse myself and get about my
business. I rose. I felt all at once restless, vaguely disturbed. I
turned and found Jason beside me.
"I was longer than I meant to be, Murray," he said. "And, see here--I
know you'll understand me when I tell you it's past ten o'clock on
earth."
I nodded. It was no time for misunderstanding or niceties of speech.
More and more I was finding myself filled with a vital urge--to be away
from here and about my own affairs.
"To tell the truth, with all respect to your feelings and those of
Naia, I was getting impatient of your coming," I replied.
"She sends you her deepest thanks, and the blessings of Zitu and Ga the
Mother," he responded quickly. "I know you know how I feel, old fellow.
Now fix your mind on your body--and try to open its eyes."
I was ready. I put out a hand and laid it on his shoulder. He did the
same. We looked into one another's faces.
"Some time--you'll come again," Croft told me. "And--now that we've
established the astral power, I'll come to you, Murray--and when
I speak you will answer. Don't forget it. Man--mayhap we'll build
Tamarizia up together--at least, I can come to you like this from now
on for knowledge--conversation. Can you see where the thing may lead
to?"
"Yes," I said. "It's big, Croft--big. But if I don't get out of here
now it may lead a very important part of me to the grave. Make my
adieus to Naia. I'd envy you, man, if you weren't my friend. Now--do
what you can to help me, for I'm going to try a pretty broad jump, as
such things are considered."
I closed my eyes.
A sound like splintering wood assailed my ears. A blended sound of
voices beat upon them.
"Murray--Murray--doctor!"
There was no doubt about it. A very human voice was calling to me--a
hand laid hold upon my shoulder--only it wasn't the hand Jason Croft
had laid upon it in farewell. The thing bit into the flesh. It seemed
trying to shake me.
With an effort I lifted my lids and stared up into the face of a
hospital orderly, strained and anxious. I was back on earth, there
wasn't any doubt about it. I was on earth, in my room in the mental
hospital and in bed.
"Yes," I said; "yes."
The man's breath actually hissed as he let it out. He stammered.
"You'll excuse us, doctor, but you didn't show up and you didn't answer
when we rapped--and--well--we broke in the door at last. It seemed
best."
His use of the pronoun arrested my attention. I made another effort and
sat up. The orderly had fallen back from my bedside as he spoke, and
beyond him I saw a nurse--a woman--not blue-robed like those I had seen
in Naia of Aphur's apartments, but crisply gowned in white--and back of
her the door of my own chamber, sagging open with a broken lock.
"It's all right, Hansen," I made answer. "I must have been pretty sound
asleep." There wasn't anything else to say, any use to attempt fuller
explanation. "What time is it?" I asked.
"Ten thirty," said the nurse, consulting a watch on her wrist. "You're
sure you feel all right, doctor?"
"Perfectly," I nodded. "If you'll withdraw, I'll get up."
She left the room and Hansen followed. I rose and began to dress.
Outside a brilliant sunlight was visible through my windows. It showed
me familiar objects. The Palosian landscape had faded. It had been
after ten when Jason had come to me, to, as it were, speed a parting
guest, and now it was half after ten, and I was back on earth. Well, he
had told me the gulf could be bridged by the spirit in a flash.
Or had he? I fumbled my way into my garments in a somewhat clumsy
fashion. I felt odd. Just what had happened, I asked myself. And it
was then that the thing began to seem like a dream to me, really, no
matter how vividly real it had seemed while it occurred. Save only for
that vividness I think I would have considered it no more than a dream
indeed.
But dream or not, it continued to go with me through all the familiar
routine of the succeeding days. It kept bobbing up, in all its colorful
details. I kept recalling that gorgeous chamber in which I had seen,
or seemed to see, Naia of Aphur. I could even recall the soft thud of
Lakkon's metal sandals as he mounted toward Jason, waiting to welcome
him at the top of a flight of pure white stairs. And I could see again
that light I had seen in the purple eyes of Naia--that exquisite look
of the Madonna, I had seen in the faces of other new-made mothers,
and in their eyes. Yes, if it had been a dream instead of an actual
occurrence, it had been very, very real.
For the life of me, I couldn't decide. The mind of me balked no matter
what the spirit decreed. As an actual fact, I wanted to believe I was
in a somewhat similar position to men I have known, who tried to accept
a religion, feeling their salvation depended upon it, and yet could not
quite compass full acceptance in the end.
At the last I settled down to a sort of compromise with myself, based
on my recollection of Croft's assertion that he would come to me some
time for an astral conversation, similar to those meetings with Naia he
had employed to sway her decision, before he finally won her and that I
myself should visit Palos some time again. If those things happened I
felt I could give credence without reservation. I did a lot of reading
in Croft's books and waited. But he did not come.
A month passed and a little more, approximately such a span of time as
they called a Zitran on Palos, where the year was a trifle longer than
ours, though divided in similar fashion into twelve periods. I had
about settled back into acceptance of a completely corporeal routine,
and then--once more I had word of Jason's son.
"Murray--Murray," a voice whispered to me in my slumber.
It roused me. I sat up, distinctly conscious of an intelligent presence
in my room.
"Murray--get out of that cloud, and let's talk," what seemed a whisper
prompted.
Something happened. Suddenly I was intensely awake, and I saw--the
nebulous form of Jason, seated against the metal rail at the foot of my
bed.
"That's better. How would you like to take another trip to Palos?" he
inquired.
He smiled as he said it, and I answered in similar fashion. "If I can
make the round trip a little quicker I wouldn't mind it. What's wrong
up there now?"
"Nothing's wrong up there. Everything's all right."
His expression quickened. "But what happened?"
I told him, and he nodded. "Well, this will be different as you'll get
back before morning. Murray, both Naia and I want very much that you
should be present in so far as you can, two nights from now, at the
christening of our son."
The christening of his son. The thing thrilled me. It was real then,
and not a dream after all. I had really gone to Palos that night over a
month ago, and now--Croft had kept his promise. He was here asking me
to essay the venture again.
"Of course," he said as I delayed my answer in the grip of full
realization, "you'll see without being seen, but--after it's over--Naia
wants to meet you astrally at least. Will you come?"
Naia wanted to meet me. After the thing was over and the others were
gone, we three would meet as Croft and I were meeting now and establish
a personal relation.
"Will I?" I exclaimed. "Well, rather."
Croft smiled. "It will be a somewhat brilliant spectacle. You'll enjoy
it."
We talked for an hour after that, before he vanished, and I found
myself sitting bolt upright in bed, staring into the darkness and
filled with the firm conviction that on the second night from this I
would witness the christening of Jason's son.
* * * * *
That conviction went with me during the two succeeding days and it was
with the positive expectation of its fulfillment that I locked myself
in my room and stretched myself out on my bed the second night.
I lay there and fixed my mind on the home of Lakkon in Himyra--the
great red city of Aphur, where Croft had said the ceremony would occur.
I pictured it even as I had pictured Jason's home in the mountains, its
splendid court paved with the purest of rock-crystal--he had fancied it
was glass when first he saw it--its circling balcony reached at either
end of the court by yellow onyxlike stairs.
I focused every vestige of my will on reaching to it, and--suddenly--it
seemed that I heard Croft calling me just as he had said he would do;
the sense of lightness, of untrammeled freedom I had experienced on the
other occasion came upon me--and--I was there.
Light, color. They were all around me. The flawless crystal of the
floor caught the radiance from the lights above them in a million
facets, broke it into a myriad flashing pin-points of refraction
until the whole, vast court seemed paved with a shimmering iridescent
carpet. White was the balcony about it, and the pillars on which it was
supported, and the gleaming bits of sculpture between. And the shrubs,
the banks and hedges of vegetation, in the unpaved beds of the court
were green, save that they were blooming, loaded down with colorful
flowers everywhere.
Tables a-glitter with gold and glass stretched down the central portion
of the sparkling pavement in the form of three sides of a rectangle,
with a purple-draped dais at the closed end. Guests thronged the vast
apartment, seated on chairs of wine-red wood or reclining on couches
interspersed among the beds of flowering vegetation. Nodding plumes of
every hue and shade graced the heads of the women. Of every grade of
richness were their jewel-embroidered robes. Nor were their men-folk
any whit behind them in the lavish ornamentation their tunics or metal
cuirasses displayed.
Men and women, they were like birds of brilliant plumage, and as the
lights struck down upon them, save for the gleam of the bared arms
and shoulders of the women, the glint of their fair limbs through
the intricate slashings of their leg-casings and sandals of softest
leathers, the rose tint of their knees, they blazed. A babble of
voices--the rhythm of music from concealed harps, was in the room. I
indulged in a single comprehensive glance and looked about for my hosts.
But I did not find them anywhere among their guests. Nor did Jason
appear to greet me, though that I did not expect. We had arranged
between us that he should summon me just before the ceremony occurred,
and that we would meet only after the departure of the guests. Hence,
failing to sight either Croft or Naia or even Lakkon, I made shift for
myself.
A trumpet blared with a softened tongue. I became aware of a page in
purple garments, standing with the instrument at his lips, on the
topmost tread of one of the flights of yellow stairs.
The thrum of the hidden harps quickened. The assembled company rose.
They stood and faced the stairway where, now, something in the nature
of a ceremonial procession showed.
Naia and Croft came first, Naia in white from the tips of her slender
sandals to the feathers that nodded from a fillet of shimmering
diamondlike jewels in the masses of her golden hair. Croft led her
downward. He was in all his formal harness, golden cuirass, on the
breast of which glowed the cross ansata and the wings of Azil in
azure stones--golden greaves and sandals gem-incrusted, golden helmet
supporting azure plumes.
And after them came Maia, the blue girl of Mazzeria, bearing on a
purple cushion, the child.
Lakkon followed, walking side by side with a man, stalwart, grizzled,
strong-faced, clad in a cuirass of silver, rarest of all Tamarizian
metals, wearing the circle and cross of Zitra, the capital city of the
nation, done in more of the diamondlike stones upon his armor.
Jadgor, I thought; Jadgor, president of the Tamarizian republic,
recognizing him from Croft's former descriptions and the quality of his
dress.
Behind them, azure-clad--the cross ansata on his breast, a flame of
vivid scarlet gems--stalked a man, white-haired and most benign of
appearance in company with a second, more stalwart, also in azure
robes. They carried staves tipped with the looped cross and were
followed by a boy supporting a tray of silver, on which were two silver
flasks and a tiny, blazing lamp.
A man with a cuirass, on which showed a rayed sun, and wearing plumes
of scarlet, and a woman, scarlet-robed, with the same ruddy feathers
above her soft brown hair brought up the rear.
Zud and Magur, and a temple boy, Robur and Gaya, his wife--high priest
of Zitra and his deputy of Himyra, governor of Aphur and his consort, I
named them to myself.
* * * * *
While the company kept silent and the harps filled all the air with a
sort of triumphant paean, the little procession advanced. It reached
the foot of the stairs and crossed to the dais, mounted its steps. It
formed itself in a shimmering semi-circle, Croft and Naia--and Maia
kneeling before them in the center--the others on either side, and
before them the boy of the temple and the two priests.
Him I named Zud, because of his bearing and his mane of snowy hair,
raised his stave. The music died. Silence came down for a moment, and
then the voice of Magur rose:
"Hail Zitu, giver of life, and Ga, through whom life is given, and
Azil, bringer of life, we are met together that a name may be given
unto this new soul thou hast seen fit to assign to the flesh.
"Greetings to you, Naia, daughter of Ga, and to you, Jason, Hupor,
named Mouthpiece of Zitu among men through whose union Zitu and Ga have
expressed their will that life shall remain eternal, renewing its fire
from generation unto generation, in the name of love. Is it your will
that a name be given this, thy child?"
"Aye, priest of Zitu." Naia and Jason inclined their heads.
"And how call you it between yourselves?"
"Jason, son of Jason," came Croft's voice.
"Then present him unto Zud, high priest of Zitu, that he may receive
Zitu's blessing at his hands," Magur said.
The girl of Mazzeria raised the cushion of her arms with the child upon
it. The temple boy advanced his silver tray, and knelt. Zud uncorked
the silver flasks.
"Jason, son of Jason, in the name of Zitu, the father, and Ga, the
mother, and Azil, the son, I baptize thee with wine and with water
and light," he began. Moistening his fingers from one of the two
flasks, he went on, "With wine I baptize thee, which like the blood,
invigorates the body, and strengthens the heart and makes quick the
brain." Bending, he touched the child on the forehead, poured water
from the other flask into his palm and continued, "I baptize you with
water which nourisheth all life, purifies all with which it comes in
contact, makes all things clean."
He paused and sprinkled the glowing little body before him, took up the
light and a tiny bit of silver I had not noted before and threw into
the little face a golden reflected beam. "With light I baptize thee
Jason, Son of Jason, since by the will of Zitu it is the light of the
spirit which fills the chambers of the brain. May that light be with
thee ever and forever, nor be absent from thee again."
Of course I didn't understand it. It was only afterward when Croft
had translated it to me that its inward meaning was plain, but the
solemnity of the ritual, the rhythm of well-balanced words, the quiet
attention of the assembled guests and the reverent voice of the priest
affected me, who stood unseen with the company on the dais, as he
baptized Jason's son.
And then he took the cushion from the kneeling girl of Mazzeria, lifted
it, turning to face the brilliant assemblage.
"Jason, Son of Jason," he cried, holding the infant toward them.
"Hail, Jason, Son of Jason," the guests responded like a well-drilled
chorus, and the thing was done.
Followed a feast, similar I fancied in every detail to those Croft had
told me he had witnessed at first and been privileged to attend. Men
and women reclined at the tables on padded divans. Blue servitors moved
about, filling the golden and crystal goblets with wine, loading the
golden plates with food. Once more the harps broke forth. And suddenly
from under the farther yellow stairway there broke a band of maidens,
clad in garlands of woven flowers, and danced to the music of the
harps, with a waving of slender arms, a bending of supple, unrestrained
bodies, a flashing of whitely rounded limbs. With dances and music the
feast ran to an end.
The guests departed, last of them, according to Tamarizian custom,
Jadgor, president of the Republic, the guest of honor, and with him
Gaya and her husband Robur, governor of Aphur and Jadgor's son. Naia
took the child into her arms from the hands of its Mazzerian attendant.
She and Jason moved toward the stairs. I knew that the hour I had
waited had come.
I followed up the stairway and along the balcony and to a room--hung
here in golden tissues, furnished with wine-red woods and twin couches
of molded copper--with the mirror pool in its center and once more the
figure of Azil close beside it as in Jason's home.
Naia placed the child on a tiny couch and covered its sleeping form
with a bit of silken fabric. She turned to Jason, her blue eyes
shining. He drew her into his arms and held her, smiling.
"There is yet one guest, beloved," he said in English.
"Aye," she responded softly; "but--one who understands the heart both
of the wife, and the mother of Jason's son."
"And awaits a welcome from her," said Jason. "Come, beloved." He led
her to one of the copper couches and sat down with an arm about her
white-sheathed form.
From it there crept a lovely thing--an exact replica of it--the very
essence of it, as indeed it was and seemed, as the lights in the
chamber flooded down upon it. And that shape stretched out its slender
hands. It swayed toward me, with Croft's astral presence close behind
it.
"At last," said Naia of Aphur, "I may welcome you, Dr. Murray, as mine
and Jason's friend."
"At last, I may converse with Naia of Aphur, and thrill with the glory
of her--a thing I have long desired," I replied, and took her shadowy
hand and raised it to my none less shadowy lips, yet with a distinct
sensation of the contact none the less.
She smiled, and glanced at Jason. "Beloved, are all the men of earth so
courtly? It was even so if you remember that you met me first in the
flesh."
Croft chuckled.
"Life is much the same on earth or Palos," he made answer. "Well,
Murray, what do you think of Palosian life?"
"Babylonian," I said. "You were right in the simile beyond question. I
was thinking tonight when I watched it that it was almost a pity in one
way you should be changing it all with your innovations."
He nodded. "In a way I've thought as much myself. I get your meaning.
But I'm going to try and preserve it at least in part."
"Babylonian?" said Naia in a tone of question.
Jason and I explained, and she heard us out.
"Oh, but--things must change, must they not, Dr. Murray?--and the
common people will be so much happier for the knowledge Jason brings to
Palos. And even I--think where I and my child would be now save for
the knowledge possessed by a man of earth. It is to you and Jason that
we owe our lives. Think you not that I carry your name to Ga and Azil
in my prayers--that I have wished to meet you in order to express my
thanks myself?"
* * * * *
Her words gave me a feeling of something like exaltation, even while
in a way they embarrassed. "I, too," I faltered, "am very glad of the
meeting, to be able to assure you that it was my happiness to serve
you, and to wish you and Jason the happiness of each other, and your
son a long and useful life."
She glanced toward the tiny couch and back again, smiling. "Life," she
said softly. "It is so wonderful to hold him--to realize that his life
is but the blending of Jason's and mine. Sometimes I even think that
I understand in a measure what Ga must feel as she guards the eternal
fire."
And what is one going to say to a wife and mother when she talks like
that? I know I mumbled something to the effect that what Ga probably
felt was an all compelling compassion and love. And then I asked Croft
to translate the words of the baptismal ceremony as voiced by Magur and
Zud the high priest.
He complied and I questioned him of Jadgor and Gaya and Robur,
confirming my recognition of Naia's relatives and his friends.
Conversation became general for something like an hour, and then Jason
prompted. "Beloved, shall we accompany Murray somewhat--show him Himyra
in passing when he returns?"
"Aye, as you like," she assented. "And he must come to us again. Now
that our need has rendered possible such communion it will not be
necessary for you to seek earth in the flesh when you need additional
knowledge, or leave me overly long again."
Croft nodded. "Yes, Murray is going to have his hand in Tamarizian
affairs from now on, and the boy there will know more than any man ever
born on Palos in the end. Well, Murray, want to see Himyra?"
"I've always wanted to see it since you told me about it first," I
assented.
"Then come along."
"But," I added as he led the way with Naia through one of the open
windows of the chamber. "I never expected to see it exactly like this."
Naia turned her eyes and smiled as we floated free of the house and
upward under Croft's guiding will. "Dear friend," she said, "you know
so much of us that to me it does not seem strange to find you one of us
at last."
"Behold Himyra," said Croft, and flung out a shadowy arm.
The city lay beneath us. I saw the double row of lights that fringed
the flood of the Na, the mighty pyramid of Zitu, up-reared against the
skyline, black now instead of red, save where the lights threw ruddy
splashes upon it, banded with white at the apex with the pure white
temple of Zitu upon its truncated top--the long line of the houses of
the nobles of the old regime, fronting a wide street at the top of the
river embankment in an amazing vista, set down each in its private
grounds among night-darkened shrubs and trees, the wide-flung palace
of the governor of Aphur, once the palace of Jadgor, Aphur's king.
The thing swam a shimmering vision before me under the light of the
Palosian moons. I strained my eyes and saw the mighty sweep of Himyra's
shadowy walls.
It moved me oddly. Already I knew so much of the city's history as
involved in Croft's romance. I turned my eyes.
"Himyra," I said, "I shall not forget it--nor Naia of Aphur, nor Jason,
mouthpiece of Zitu, nor Jason, Jason's son. Zitu guard you, my friends.
I must be going."
"Zitu guard thee," Naia answered.
And suddenly I was back in my own room, remembering her parting smile.
These things have I narrated in order to show how there was built
up between Croft and Naia of Aphur, his mate, and myself, a subtly
intimate relation that must, as I hope, make what followed plain.
Life went on pretty much with me after that for some further eight
months, however, before the events I intend to relate occurred. Now and
then during the interval Jason Croft came to me in the astral presence,
and on several occasions I succeeded by my own endeavors in visiting
him and Naia in their home.
Between them they taught me somewhat of the Tamarizian tongue, Croft
explaining that as all life was the same in reality, and the thought
back of the word similar in intent even though the word itself might
vary in sound, all languages were really one in thought and purpose.
With that as a key, I soon discovered that the spoken words of those
about me were not difficult for one in the astral condition to
understand--that the vibrations of their thought affected the astral
shell in a manner that made their meaning plain.
I suggested to Croft that it was because of that very thing he had so
readily apprehended the speech of Tamarizia when he first projected
himself to Palos and came down outside Himyra's walls, rather than
because of the similarity of their speech to the Sanscrit, now nearly a
forgotten tongue on earth, and he nodded and smiled.
"Exactly, Murray," he agreed, "but then I didn't realize it altogether,
and--" He broke off and glanced at his wife.
"And you had something else to think about," I said, grinning as I
recalled how he had seen Naia that first morning and followed her to
Lakkon's house, drinking in her beauty.
"It's true I wasn't very logical in my considerations the first time I
heard the language," he replied, and Naia of Aphur dropped her eyes.
The inner fires of her spirit seemed to quicken. I think she would have
blushed had she been in the flesh instead of sitting there with us like
an inexpressibly lovely wraith.
So at least in those months I acquired a fair understanding of
their speech, and I came more and more to regard their home in the
western mountains of Aphur, across the desert from Himyra, on Palos,
with the same intimacy of feeling I might have experienced for the
home of two friends of earth. My conversations with Jason came more
and more to resemble consultations on modern affairs. He asked me
constantly concerning this and that fresh progress in mundane matters.
He discussed with me his plans for improving material and social
conditions on Palos.
He had already established a series of public schools for the masses
where, before his arrival, education of a sort had been provided only
for the nobles and men of wealth. Plainly the man was planning to do
more where he had already done so much. He had given them moturs--as
they called them--airplanes, electricity, printing, telephones of
short radius at least, weapons by which Zollaria's schemes had been
overthrown. And now he planned to lead them toward higher standards of
national and commercial and individual life. And but for what occurred
there is no telling what, working together as we were at the time, we
might have accomplished.
Indeed Croft had established both wireless and telegraphic
communication between Zitra and Himyra, and was planning railways on
which he intended to run motur-driven trains--was dreaming of a great
beltline about the Central Sea, with lateral branches to reach every
part of the nation.
And then--one night he called me to him as he had called me the night
of Jason's birth--and I found him in the self-same chamber, with the
purple draperies half torn down and trampled--the fair form of Azil
drowned in the mirror pool, beside which the dead body of Mitlos the
Mazzerian majordomo lay sprawled.