THE TWELVE

For a minute or two Rolla was not observed. She simply stood and stared,

being neither confident enough to go forward nor scared enough to

retreat. Childlike, she scrutinized the group with great thoroughness.

Their comparatively white faces and hands puzzled her most. Also, she

could not understand the heavy black robes in which all were dressed.

Falling to the floor and reaching far above their necks, such garments

would have been intolerable to the free-limbed Sanusians. To the

watchers on the earth, however, the robes made the group look

marvelously like a company of monks.

Not that there was anything particularly religious about the place or in

their behavior. All twelve seemed to be silent only because they were

voraciously hungry. A meal was spread on the table. Except for the

garments, the twelve might have been so many harvest hands, gathered for

the evening meal in the cook-house. From the white-bearded man who sat

at the head of the table and passed out large helpings of something from

a big pot, to the fair-haired young fellow at the foot, who could

scarcely wait for his share, there was only one thing about them which

might have been labeled pious; and that was their attitude, which could

have been interpreted: "Give us this day our daily bread--and hurry up

about it!"

Apparently Rolla was convinced that these men were thoroughly human, and

as such fairly safe to approach. For she allowed her curiosity to govern

her caution, and proceeded to sidle through the doorway. Half-way

through she caught a whiff of the food, and her sidling changed to

something faster.

At that instant she was seen. A tall, dark-haired chap on the far side

of the table glanced up and gave a sharp, startled exclamation.

Instantly the whole dozen whirled around and with one accord shot to

their feet.

Rolla stopped short.

There was a second's silence; then the white-bearded man, who seemed, to

be the leader of the group, said something peremptory in a deep,

compelling voice. Rolla did not understand.

He repeated it, this time a little less commandingly; and Rolla, after

swallowing desperately, inclined her head in the diffident way she had,

and said:

"Are ye friends or enemies?"

Eleven of the twelve looked puzzled. The dark-haired man, who had been

the first to see her, however, gave a muttered exclamation; then he

cogitated a moment, wet his lips and said something that sounded like:

"What did you say? Say it again!"

Rolla repeated.

The dark-haired man listened intently. Immediately he fell to nodding

with great vigor, and thought deeply again before making another try:

"We are your friends. Whence came ye, and what seek ye?"

Rolla had to listen closely to what he said. The language was

substantially the same as hers; but the verbs were misplaced in the

sentences, the accenting was different, and certain of the vowels were

flatted. After a little, however, the man caught her way of talking and

was able to approximate it quite well, so that she understood him

readily.

"I seek," Rolla replied, "food and rest. I have traveled far and am

weary."

"Ye look it," commented the man. His name, Rolla found out later, was

Somat. "Ye shall have both food and rest. However, whence came ye?"

"From the other side of the world," answered Rolla calmly.

Instantly she noted that the twelve became greatly excited when Somat

translated her statement. She decided to add to the scene.

"I have been away from my people for many days," and she held up one

hand with the five fingers spread out, opening and closing them four

times, to indicate twenty.

"Ye came over the edge of the world!" marveled Somat. "It were a

dangerous thing to do, stranger!"

"Aye," agreed Holla, "but less dangerous than that from which I fled.

However," impatiently, "give me the food ye promised; I can talk after

my stomach be filled."

"Of a surety," replied Somat apologetically. "I were too interested to

remember thy hunger." He spoke a word or two, and one of his companions

brought another stool, also dishes and table utensils.

Whereupon the watchers on the earth got a first-class surprise. Here

they had been looking upon twelve men, living in almost barbaric fashion

amid the ruins of a great city; but the men had been eating from hand-

painted china of the finest quality, and using silverware that was

simply elegant, nothing less! Luxury in the midst of desolation!

Rolla, however, paid little attention to these details. She was scarcely

curious as to the food, which consisted of some sort of vegetable and

meat stew, together with butterless bread, a kind of small-grained corn

on the cob, a yellowish root-vegetable not unlike turnips, and large

quantities of berries. She was too hungry to be particular, and ate

heartily of all that was offered, whether cooked or uncooked. The twelve

almost forgot their own hunger in their interest in the stranger.

It was now pretty dark in the big room. The white-bearded man said

something to the young fellow at the foot of the table, whereupon the

chap got up and stepped to the nearest wall, where he pressed something

with the tip of his finger. Instantly the room was flooded with white

light--from two incandescent bulbs!

Rolla leaped to her feet in amazement, blinking painfully in the

unaccustomed glare.

"What is this?" she demanded, all the more furiously to hide her fear.

"Ye would not trick me with magic; ye, who call yourselves friends!"

Somat interpreted this to the others. Some laughed; others looked

pityingly at her. Somat explained:

"It is nothing, stranger. Be not afraid. We forgot that ye might know

nothing of this 'magic.'" He considered deeply, apparently trying to put

himself in her place. "Know ye not fire?" Of course, she did not know

what he meant. "Then," with an inspiration, "perchance ye have see the

flower, the red flower, ye might call--"

"Aye!" eagerly. "Doth it grow here?"

Somat smiled with satisfaction, and beckoned for her to follow him. He

led the way through a small door into another room, evidently used as a

kitchen. There he pointed to a large range, remarkably like the up-to-

date article known on the earth.

"The flower 'groweth' here," said he, and lifted a lid from the stove.

Up shot the flame.

"Great Mownoth!" shouted Rolla, forgetting all about her hunger. "I have

found it--the precious flower itself!"

Somat humored her childlike view-point. "We have the seed of the flower,

too," said he. He secured a box of matches from a shelf, and showed her

the "little sticks."

"Exactly what the angel showed me!" jubilated Holla. "I have come to the

right place!"

Back she went to her food, her face radiant, and all her lurking

suspicion of the twelve completely gone. From that time on she had

absolute and unquestioning confidence in all that was told her. In her

eyes, the twelve were simply angels or gods who had seen fit to clothe

themselves queerly and act human.

Supper over, she felt immensely tired. All the strain of the past three

weeks had to have its reaction. Like a very tired, sleepy child, she was

led to a room in another part of the building, where she was shown an

ordinary sleeping-cot. She promptly pulled the mattress onto the floor,

where she considered it belonged, and fell fast asleep.

Meanwhile, back on the earth, Van Emmon and Smith had lost no time in

making use of the doctor's description of the twelve. Within a few

minutes they had new agents; Van Emmon used Somat's eyes and ears, while

Smith got in touch with the elderly bearded man at the head of the

table. His name was Deltos.

"A very striking confirmation of the old legends," he was saying through

a big yawn, as Smith made connection. He used a colloquial type of

language, quite different from the lofty, dignified speech of the

Sanusians. "That is, of course, if the woman is telling the truth."

"And I think she is," declared the young fellow at the foot of the

table. "It makes me feel pretty small, to think that none of us ever had

the nerve to make the trip; while she, ignorant as she is, dared it all

and succeeded!"

"You forget, Sorplee," reminded Somat, "that such people are far hardier

than we. The feat is one that requires apelike ability. The only thing

that puzzled me is--why did she do it at all?"

"It will have to remain a puzzle until she awakens," said Deltos, rising

from the table. "Lucky for us, Somat, that you saw fit to study the root

tongues. Otherwise we'd have to converse by signs."

Neither Smith nor Van Emmon learned anything further that night. The

twelve were all very tired, apparently, and went right to bed; a

procedure which was straightway seconded by the four watchers on the

earth. Which brings us in the most ordinary manner to the events of the

next day.

After breakfast all but Somat left the place and disappeared in various

directions; and Rolla noted that the robes were, evidently, worn only at

meal time. Most of the men were now dressed in rough working garments,

similar to what one sees in modern factories. Whimsical sort of gods,

Rolla told herself, but gods just the same.

"Tell me," began Somat, as the woman sat on the floor before him--he

could not get her to use a chair--"tell me, what caused thee to leave

thy side of the world? Did ye arouse the wrath of thy fellow creatures?"

"Nay," answered Rolla, and proceeded to explain, in the wrong order, as

a child might, by relating first the crossing of the ridge, the flight

from the bees, the "masters'" cruel method of dealing with Corrus and

Dulnop, and finally the matter of the fire itself, the real cause of the

whole affair. Somat was intelligent enough to fill in such details as

Rolla omitted.

"Ye did right, and acted like the brave girl ye are!" he exclaimed, when

Rolla had finished. However, he did not fully appreciate what she had

meant by "the winged masters," and not until she pointed out some bees

and asked if, on this part of the planet, such were the rulers of the

humans, that the man grasped the bitter irony of it all.

"What! Those tiny insects rule thy lives!" It took him some time to

comprehend the deadly nature of their stings, and the irresistible power

of concerted effort; but in the end he commented: "Tis not so strange,

now that I think on it. Mayhap life is only a matter of chance, anyway."

Presently he felt that he understood the Sanusian situation. He fell

silent; and Rolla, after waiting as long as her patience would allow,

finally put the question temporarily uppermost in her mind:

"It is true that I have crossed the edge of the world. And yet, I

understand it not at all. Can ye explain the nature of this strange

world we live upon, Somat?" There was infinite respect in the way Rolla

used his name; had she known a word to indicate human infallibility,

such as "your majesty," she would have used it. "There is a saying among

our people that the world be round. How can this be so?"

"Yet it is true," answered Somat, "although ye must know that it be not

round like a fruit or a pebble. No more is it flat, like this,"

indicating the lid of the stove, near which they sat. "Instead, 'tis

shaped thus"--and he took from his finger a plain gold band, like an

ordinary wedding ring--"the world is shaped like that!"

Rolla examined the ring with vast curiosity. She had never seen the like

before, and was quite as much interested in the metal as in the thing it

illustrated. Fortunately the band was so worn that both edges were

nearly sharp, thus corresponding with the knifelike ridge over which she

had crawled.

"Now," Somat went on, "ye and your people live on the inner face of the

world," indicating the surface next his skin, "while I and my kind live

on the outer face. Were it not for the difficulties of making the trip,

we should have found you out ere this."

Rolla sat for a long time with the ring in her hand, pondering the great

fact she had just learned. And meanwhile, back on the earth, four

excited citizens were discussing this latest discovery.

"An annular world!" exclaimed the doctor, his eyes sparkling

delightedly. "It confirms the nebular hypothesis!"

"How so?" Smith wanted to know.

"Because it proves that the process of condensation and concentration,

which produces planets out of the original gases, can take place at

uneven speeds! Instead of concentrating to the globular form, Sanus

cooled too quickly; she concentrated while she was still a ring!"

Smith was struck with another phase of the matter. "Must have a queer

sort of gravitation," he pointed out. "Seems to be the same, inside the

ring or outside. Surely, doc it can't be as powerful as it is here on

the earth?"

"No; not likely."

"Then, why hasn't it made a difference in the inhabitants? Seems to me

the humans would have different structure."

"Not necessarily. Look at it the other way around; consider what an

enormous variety of animal forms we have here, all developed under the

same conditions. The humming-bird and the python, for instance.

Gravitation needn't have anything to do with it."

Billie was thinking mainly of the question of day and night. "The ring

must be inclined at an angle with the sun's rays," she observed. "That

being the case, Sanus has two periods each year when there is continuous

darkness on the inner face; might last a week or two. Do you suppose the

people all hibernate during those seasons?"

But no one had an answer to that.

Van Emmon said he would give all he was worth to explore the Sanusian

mountains long enough to learn their geology. He said that the rocks

ought to produce some new mineral forms, due to the peculiar condition

of strain they would be subjected to.

"I'm not sure," said he thoughtfully, "but I shouldn't be surprised if

there's an enormous amount of carbon there. Maybe diamonds are as

plentiful as coal is here."

At the word "diamonds" Smith glanced covertly at Billie's left hand. But

she had hidden it in the folds of her skirt. Next moment the doctor

warned them to be quiet; Somat and Rolla were talking again.

He was telling her about his world. She learned that his people, who had

never concerned themselves with her side of the planet, had progressed

enormously beyond the Sanusians. Rolla did not understand all that he

told her; but the people on the earth gathered, in one way or another,

that civilization had proceeded about as far as that of the year 1915 in

Europe. All this, while fellow humans only a few thousand miles away,

not only failed to make any progress at all, but lived on, century after

century, the absolute slave of a race of bees!

But it was a fact. The ancient city in which Rolla found herself had

been, only a generation before, a flourishing metropolis, the capital of

a powerful nation. There had been two such nations on that side of the

planet, and the most violent rivalry had existed between them.

"However," Somat told Rolla, "'twas not this rivalry which wrought their

downfall, except indirectly. The last great war between them was

terrible, but not disastrous. Either could have survived that.

"But know you that the ruler of one of the nations, in order to carry on

this war--which was a war of commerce (never mind what that means)--in

order to carry it on was obliged to make great concessions to his

people. In the other nation, the ruler oppressed the workers, instead,

and drove them mad with his cruelty. So that, not long after the end of

the war, there was a great rebellion among the people who had been so

long oppressed, and their government was overthrown."

Back on the earth the four investigators reflected on this in amazement.

The case was wonderfully like that of Russia after the great war.

Perhaps--

"Immediately the other nation forced its soldiers to fight the

victorious rebels. But at home the workers had tasted of power. Many

refused to work at all; and one day, behold, there were two rebellions

instead of one! And within a very short time the whole world was

governed by--the working class!"

So this was what the Venusians had meant when they wrote that Sanus was

ruled by the workers!

"What became of these rebellions?" Rolla asked, little understanding

what it meant, but curious anyhow.

"Devastation!" stated Somat solemnly. He waved a hand, to include all

that lay within the ruined city. "Not altogether because of the workers,

although they were scarcely fit for ruling but because the former rulers

and others of that kind, who liked to oppose their wills upon others,

saw fit to start a fresh rebellion. Conflict followed conflict;

sometimes workers were in power, and sometimes aristocrats. But the

fighting ended not until"--he drew a deep breath--"until there were none

left to fight!"

"Ye mean," demanded Rolla incredulously, "that your people killed

themselves off in this fashion?"

Aye," sorrowfully. "There were a few of us--they called us 'the middle

class'--who urged equality. We wanted a government in which all classes

were represented fairly; what we called a democracy. Once the experiment

was started, but it failed.

"Saw ye the skeletons in the streets?" he went on." 'Twas a dreadful

sight, those last few days. I were but a lad, yet I remember it all too

well." He paused, then broke out fiercely: "I tell ye that I saw brother

slay brother, father slay son, son slay mother, in those last days!

"Lucky am I that I fled, I and my parents! They took me to a mountainous

country, but even there the madness spread, and one day a soldier of the

army killed my father and my mother. He sought me, also, that he might

slay me; but I hid from him beneath a heap of manure. Aye," he gritted

savagely, "I owe my life to a pile of manure!

"These other eleven men all have like tales to tell. Only one woman

survived those awful days. Young Sorplee is her son; his father was a

soldier, whom she herself slew with her own hands. Even she is now dead.

"Well," he finished, after a long pause, "when the madness had spent

itself, we who remained came from our hiding-places to find our world

laid waste. 'Tis now thirty years since Sorplee's mother died, since we

first looked upon these ruins, and we have made barely a beginning. We

have little heart for the work. Of what use is it, with no women to

start the race afresh?"

Rolla started despite herself. Was this the reason why she, despite her

savagery, had been made so welcome?

"Ye have not told me," said she hurriedly, "why ye and the others all

wear such curious garments when ye eat."

Somat was taken off his guard. He had been chuckling to himself at the

woman's childlike mind. Now he had to look apologetic and not a little

sheepish as he made reply:

"The robes are a mere custom. It were started a great many years ago, by

the founders of a--a--" He tried to think of a simpler expression than

"college fraternity." "A clan," he decided. "All of we men were members

of that clan."

"And," pursued Rolla, "will ye give me the magic stone, that I may take

the flowing blossoms back to my people, and release my loved one from

the masters' cruelty?"

The great question was put! Rolla waited in tremulous anxiety for the

answer.

"Aye, stranger!" replied Somat vigorously. "More; ye shall have some of

the little sticks!"

Whereupon Rolla leaped to her feet and danced in sheer delight. Somat

looked on and marveled. Then, abruptly, he got up and marched away. He

had not seen a woman in thirty years; and he was a man of principle.

That night, when the twelve were again seated at the table, Somat

related this conversation with Rolla. Since he used his own language, of

course she did not understand what was said. "And I told her," he

concluded, "how we came to be here; also the reason for the condition of

things. But I doubt if she understood half what I said. We have quite a

problem before us," he added. "What shall we do about it?"

"You mean this woman?" Deltos asked. Rolla was busy with her food. "It

seems to me, brothers, that Providence has miraculously come to our aid.

If we can handle her people rightly the future of the race is assured."

Somat thought it was simple enough. "All we need to do is send this

woman back with a supply of matches, and implicit instructions as to how

best to proceed against the bees. Once released, their friends can make

their way over the edge and settle among us. Let the bees keep their

country."

The two who had seconded him before again showed agreement. Sorplee and

Deltos, however, together with the other seven, were distinctly opposed

to the method.

"Somat," protested Deltos, as though surprised, "you forget that there's

an enormous population over there. Let them come in of their own free

will? Why, they would overrun our country! What would become of us?"

"We'd have to take our chances, replied Somat energetically, "like good

sports! If we can't demonstrate our worth to them, enough to hold their

respect, we'd deserve to be snowed under!"

"Not while I'm alive!" snarled Sorplee. "If they come here, they've got

to give up their wilderness ways, right off! We can't stand savagery!

The safest thing for us, and the best for them, is to make an industrial

army of 'em and set 'em to work!" His enthusiasm was boundless.

"I must say," admitted Deltos, with his usual dignity, "that you have

the right idea, Sorplee. If I had stated it, however, I should have been

more frank about it. The arrangements you propose simply means that we

are to take possession of them!"

"What!" shouted Somat, horrified.

"Why, of course! Make slaves of them! What else?"