The SPOT of Life! And the subject of Dr. Holcomb's lecture, promised but
never delivered, had been announced as--The Blind SPOT!
To Watson it was fairly astounding to discover that the two--Holcomb
and Avec--had reached simultaneously for the curtain of the shadow. The
professor had said that it would be “the greatest day since Columbus.”
And so it had proven, did the world but know it.
“And--the Rhamda Avec never returned?” asked Chick.
“No.”
“But he sent back something within three days?” Watson was thinking,
of course, of the doctor who had disappeared on the day which, Jerome
overheard the Rhamda to say, was the last of his stay.
But Geos did not reply. Why, Chick could not guess. He thought it best
not to press the question; in good time, if he went at it carefully,
he could gain his end with safety. At the moment he must not arouse
suspicion. He chose another query.
“Did Avec go alone?”
“No. The Nervina went with him. Rather, she followed within a few
hours.”
“Ah!”
It was out before Watson could think. The Rhamda looked up suddenly.
“Then you have seen the Nervina! You know her?”
Chick lied. It was not his intention, just at present, to tie himself
down to anything that might prove compromising or restraining.
“The name is--familiar. Who is this Nervina?”
“She is one of the queens. I thought--My dear sir, she is one of the
queens of Thomahlia, half Kospian, half D'Hartian; of the first royal
line running through from the day of the Jarados.”
Chick cogitated for a moment. Then, taking an entirely new tack:
“You say the Rhamda and this Nervina, independently, solved the mystery
of the Spot of Life, I believe you call it. And that Spot leads,
apparently, into the occult?”
“Apparently, if not positively. It was the wisdom of Avec, mostly. He
had been in communication with your world by means of his own discovery
and application. It was all in line with the prophecy.
“Since he and the Nervina left, the people of the world have been in a
state of ferment. For it was foretold that in the last days we would
get in communication with the other side; that some would come and some
would go. For example, your own coming was foretold by the Jarados,
almost to the hour and minute.”
“Then it was fortuitous,” spoke Watson. “It was NOT the wisdom and
science of Avec, in my case.”
“Quite so. However, it is proof that the Rhamdas have fulfilled their
duty. We knew of the Spot of Life, all the while; it was to be closed
until we, through the effort of our intellect and virtues, could lift
ourselves up to the plane of the world beyond us--your world. It could
not be opened by ourselves alone, however. The Rhamda Avec had first
to get in touch with your side, before he could apply the laws he had
discovered.”
Somehow, Chick admired this Rhamda. Men of his type could form but one
kind of priesthood: exalted, and devoted to the advance of intelligence.
If Rhamda Avec were of the same sort, then he was a man to be looked up
to, not to hate. As for the Jarados--Watson could not make out who he
had been; a prophet or teacher, seemingly, looming out of the past and
reverenced from antiquity.
The Blind Spot became a shade less sinister. Already Watson had the
Temple of the Leaf, or Bell, the Rhamdas and their philosophy, the great
amber sun, the huge birds, the musical cadence of the perfumed air, and
the counter-announcement of Rhamda Avec to weigh against the work and
words of Dr. Holcomb.
The world of the Blind Spot!
As if in reaction from the unaccustomed train of thought, Watson
suddenly became conscious of extreme hunger. He gave an uneasy glance
round, a glance which the Rhamda Geos smilingly interpreted. At a word
the woman left the room and returned with a crimson garment, like a
bath-robe. When Chick had donned it and a pair of silken slippers, Geos
bade him follow.
They stepped out into the corridor.
This was formed and coloured much as the room they had quitted; and it
led to another apartment, much larger--about fifty feet across--coloured
a deep, cool green. Its ceiling, coved like the other, seemed made of
some self-radiating substance from which came both light and heat. Four
or five tables, looking like ebony work, were arranged along the side
walls. When they were seated at one of these, the Rhamda placed his
fingers on some round alna-white buttons ranged along the edge of the
table.
“In your world,” he apologised, “our clumsy service would doubtless
amuse you; but it is the best we have been able to devise so far.”
He pressed the button. Instantly, without the slightest sound or
anything else to betray just how the thing had been accomplished,
the table was covered with golden dishes, heaped with food, and two
flagon-like goblets, full to the brim with a dark, greenish liquid that
gave off an aroma almost exhilarating; not alcoholic, but something just
above that. The Rhamda, disregarding or not noticing Watson's gasp
of wonder, lifted his goblet in the manner of the host in health and
welcome.
“You may drink it,” he offered, “without fear. It is not liquor--if I
may use a word which I believe to be current in your world. I may add
that it is one of the best things that we shall be able to offer you
while you are with us.”
Indeed it wasn't liquor. Watson took a sip; and he made a mental note
that if all things in the Thomahlia were on a par with this, then he
certainly was in a world far above his own. For the one sip was enough
to send a thrill through his veins, a thrill not unlike the ecstasy
of supreme music--a sparkling exuberance, leaving the mind clear and
scintillating, glorified to the quick thinking of genius.
Later Watson experienced no reaction such as would have come from
drinking alcohol or any other drug.
It was the strangest meal ever eaten by Watson. The food was very
savoury, and perfectly cooked and served. Only one dish reminded him of
meat.
“You have meats?” he asked. “This looks like flesh.”
Geos shook his head. “No. Do you have flesh to eat, on the other side?
We make all our food.”
MAKE food. Watson thought best simply to answer the question:
“As I remember it, Rhamda Geos, we had a sort of meat called beef--the
flesh of certain animals.”
The Rhamda was intensely interested. “Are they large? Some interpret the
Jarados to that effect. Tell me, are they like this?” And he pulled a
silver whistle from his pocket and, placing it to his lips, blew two
short, shrill notes.
Immediately a peculiar patter sounded down the corridor; a ka-tuck,
ka-tuck, ka-tuck, not unlike galloping hoof-beats. Before Watson could
do any surmising a little bundle of shining black, rounded the entrance
to the room and ran up to them. Geos picked it up.
It was a horse. A horse, beautifully formed, perfect as an Arab, and not
more than nine inches high!
Now, Chick had been in the Blind Spot, conscious, but a short while. He
knew that he was in the precise position that Rhamda Avec had occupied
that morning on the ferry-boat. Chick recalled the pictures of the
Lilliputian deer and the miniature kittens; yet he was immensely
surprised.
The little fellow began to neigh, a tiny, ridiculous sound as compared
with the blast of a normal-sized horse, and began to paw for the edge of
the table.
“What does he want?”
“A drink. They will do anything for it.” Geos pressed a button, and in
a moment he had another goblet. This he held before the little stallion,
who thrust his head in above his nostrils and drank as greedily as a
Percheron weighing a ton. Watson stroked his sides; the mane was like
spun silk, he felt the legs symmetrical, perfectly shaped, not as large
above the fetlocks as an ordinary pencil.
“Are they all of this size?”
“Yes; all of them. Why do you ask?”
“Because”--seeing no harm in telling this--“as I remember them, a horse
on the other side would make a thousand of this one. People ride them.”
The Rhamda nodded.
“So it is told in the books of Jarados. We had such beasts, once,
ourselves. We would have them still, but for the brutality and stupidity
of our ancestors. It is the one great sin of the Thomahlia. Once we had
animals, great and small, and all the blessings of Nature; we had horses
and, I think, what you call beef; a thousand other creatures that were
food and help and companions to man. And for the good they had done our
ancestors destroyed them!”
“Why?”
“It was neglect, unthinking and selfish. A time came when our
civilisation made it possible to live without other creatures. When
machinery came into vogue we put aside the animals as useless; those we
had no further use for we denied the right to reproduce. The game of the
forest was hunted down with powerful weapons of destruction; all went,
in a century or two; everything that could be killed. And with them went
the age of our highest art, that age of domesticated animals.
“Our greatest paintings, our noblest sculpture, came from that age; all
the priceless relics that we call classic. And in its stead we had the
mechanical age. Man likewise became a mechanism, emotionless, with no
taste for Nature. Meat was made synthetically, and so was milk.”
“You don't mean to say they did not preserve cows for the sake of their
milk?”
“No; that kind of milk became old-fashioned; men regarded it as
unsanitary, fit only for the calves. What they wanted was something
chemically pure; they waged war on bacteria, microbes, and Nature
in general; a cow was merely a relic whose product was always an
uncertainty. With no reason for the meat and no use for the milk, our
vegetarians and our purists gradually eliminated them altogether. It
was a strange age; utilitarian, scientific, selfish; it was then headed
straight for destruction.”
And he went on to relate how men began to lose the power of emotion;
there were no dependent beasts to leaven his nature with the salt of
kindness; he thought only of his own aggrandisement. He became like his
machine, a fine thing of perfectly correlated parts, but with no higher
nature, no soul, no feeling; he was less than a brute. The animals
disappeared one by one, passing through the channel of death, into the
world beyond the Spot of Life, leaving behind only these tiny survivors,
playthings, kept in existence longer than all others because of a mere
fad.
“Does your spiritism include animals as well as men?”
“Naturally; everything that is endowed with life.”
“I see. Let me ask you: why didn't the Rhamdas interfere and put a stop
to this wanton sacrilege against Nature?”
The Rhamda smiled. “You forget,” replied he, “that these events belong
far in the past. At that time the Rhamdas were not. It was even before
the coming of the Jarados.”
Watson asked no more questions for a while. He wanted to think. How
could this man Rhamda Geos, if indeed he were a man, accept him, Watson,
as a spirit? Solid flesh was not exactly in line with his idea of the
unearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. The
doctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body,
his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of his
superior's wisdom, should accept Watson in the same way.
And then, the Jarados: at every moment his name had cropped up. Who was
he? So far he had heard no word that might be construed as a clue.
The great point, just now, was that the Rhamda Geos accepted him as a
spirit, as the fact and substance promised by Avec. But--where was the
doctor?
Chick ventured this question:
“My coming was foretold by the Rhamda Avec, I understand. Is this in
accord with the words of the Jarados?”
The Rhamda looked up expectantly and spoke with evident anxiety.
“Can you tell me anything about the Jarados?”
“Let us forgo that,” side-stepped Watson. “Possibly I can tell you
much that you would like to know. What I want to know is, just how well
prepared you are to receive me?”
“Then you come from the Jarados!”
“Perhaps.”
“What do you know about him?”
“This: someone should have preceded me! The fact and the substance-you
were to have it inside three days! It has been several hundred times the
space allotted! Is it not so?”
The Rhamda's eyes were pin-pointed with eagerness.
“Then it IS true! You are from the Jarados! You know the great Rhamda
Avec--you have seen him!”
“I have,” declared Watson.
“In the other world? You can remember?”
“Yes,” again committing himself. “I have seen Avec--in another world.
But tell me, before we go on I would have an answer to my question: did
anyone precede me?”
“No.”
Watson was nonplussed, but he concealed the fact.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, my dear sir. The Spot of Life was watched continually from the
moment the Rhamda left us.”
“You mean, he and the Nervina?”
“Quite so; she followed him after an interval of a few hours.”
“I know. But you say that no one came out ahead of me. Who was it that
guarded this--this Spot of Life? The Rhamdas?”
“They and the Bars.”
“Ah! And who are the Bars?”
“The military priesthood. They are the Mahovisal, and of the Temple of
the Bell. They are led by the great Bar Senestro.”
“And there were times when these Bars, led by this Senestro, held guard
over the Spot of Life?” To this Geos nodded; and Watson went on: “And
who is this great Senestro?”
“He is the chief of the Bars, and a prince of D'Hartia. He is the
affianced of the two queens, the Aradna and the Nervina.”
“The TWO of them?”
Whereupon Watson learned something rather peculiar. It seemed that the
princes of D'Hartia had always married the queens. This Senestro had had
a brother, but he died. And in such an event it was the iron custom
that the surviving brother marry both queens. It had happened only once
before in all history; but the precedent was unbreakable.
“Then, there is nothing against it?”
“Nothing; except, perhaps the prophecy of the Jarados. We now know--the
whole world knows--that we are fast approaching the Day of Life.”
“Of course; the Day of Life.” Watson decided upon another chance shot.
“It has to do with the marriage of the two queens!”
“You DO know!” cried the Rhamda joyously. “Tell me!”
“No; it is I who am asking the questions.”
Watson's mind was working like lightning. Whether it was the influence
of the strange drink, or the equally strange influence of ordinary
inspiration, he was never more self-assured in his life. It seemed a day
for taking long chances.
“Tell me,” he inquired, “what has the Day of Life to do with the two
queens and their betrothal?”
The Rhamda throttled his eagerness. “It is one of the obscure points of
the prophecy. There are some scholars who hold that such a problem as
this presages the coming of the end and the advent of the chosen. But
others oppose this interpretation, for reasons purely material: for if
the Bar Senestro should marry both queens it would make him the sole
ruler of the Thomahlia. Only once before have we had a single ruler; for
centuries upon centuries we have had two queens; one of the D'Hartians,
and the other of the Kospians, enthroned here in the Mahovisal.”
Watson would have liked to learn far more. But the time seemed one for
action on his part; bold action, and positive.
“Rhamda Geos--I do not know what is your version of the prophecy. But
you are positive that no one preceded me out of the Spot?”
“I am. Why do you persist?”
“Because”--speaking slowly and with the greatest care--“because there
was one greater than I, who came before me!”
The Rhamda rose excitedly to his feet, and then sank back into his chair
again. In his eyes was nothing save eagerness, wonder and respect. He
leaned forward.
“Who was it? Who was he?”
Watson's voice was steady as stone.
“The great Jarados himself!”