_The Invisible World_
Tako showed us how to operate the transition mechanism. The little
banana grove on the Bermuda hilltop began fading. There was a
momentary shock; a reeling of my head; a sudden sense of vibration
within me. And then a feeling of lightness, weightlessness; and
freedom, as though all my earthly life I had been shackled, but now
was free.
The thing was at first terrifying, gruesome; but in a moment those
feelings passed and the weightless freedom brought an exuberance of
spirit.
Don and I were sitting with Jane between us, and the figure of Tako
fronting us. I recall that we clung together, terrified. I closed my
eyes when the first shock came, but opened them again to find my
head steadying. Surprising vista! I had vaguely fancied that Tako,
Jane and Don would be sitting here dissolving into apparitions. But
my hands on Jane's arm felt it as solid as before. I stared into her
face. It was frightened, white and set, but smiling at me.
"You all right, Bob? It's not so difficult, is it?"
She had endured this before. She reached out her hands, one to Don
and one to me.
"We're dropping. I don't think it's far down, but be careful.
Straighten your legs under you."
We seemed unchanged; Don and Jane were the same in aspect as before,
save the color of their garments seemed to have faded to a gray. It
was the Bermuda hilltop which to our vision was changing. The grove
was melting, turning from green and brown to a shimmering silver. We
now looked upon ghostly, shadowy trees; fading outlines of the
nearby house; the nearby figures of Tako's men and the group of
captive girls--all shadowy apparitions. The voices were fading; a
silence was falling upon us with only the hum of the mechanism
sounding in my ears.
* * * * *
I felt with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on the
ground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as though
perhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vague
shadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. I was
drifting down, sinking, with only Jane's hand to steady me.
"Thrust your feet down," she murmured. "A little fall. We want to
land on our feet."
The imponderable ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped,
as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt a
weight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solid
surface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Jane
steadied us. We were standing upon a dark rock slope, steeply
inclined.
"Off with the current!" came Tako's voice. "The belt switch--throw
it back!"
I found the little lever. The current went off. There had been a
moment when the spectral shadows of my own world showed in the air
above me. But we passed their visible limits and they faded out of
sight.
We were in the realm of the Fourth Dimension. Outdoors, in a region
of glowing, phosphorescent night....
* * * * *
"This way," said Tako. "It is not far. We will walk. Just a moment,
you three. I would not have you escape me."
Our revolvers were gone. Being metal, they could not, of actuality,
be carried into the transition. We had no light-beam cylinders, nor
did we as yet know how to use them. Tako stood before us; he reached
to the operating mechanisms under the dial-face at our belts, making
some disconnections which we did not understand.
His smile in the semi-darkness showed with its familiar irony. "You
might have the urge to try some escaping transition. It would lose
you in the Unknown. That would be death! I do not want that."
I protested, "We are not fools. I told you if you would spare us,
return us safely to Bermuda when this is over--"
"That you might be of help to me," he finished. "Well, perhaps you
will. I hope so. You will do what you can to help, willingly or
otherwise; that I know." His voice was grimly menacing. And he
laughed sardonically. "You are no fools, as you say. And Jane--" His
glance went to her. "Perhaps, before we are through with this, you
may even like me, Jane."
Whatever was in his mind, it seemed to amuse him.
"Perhaps," said Jane.
We three had had only a moment to talk together. There had been no
possibility of escape. It was obvious to us that Tako was the leader
of these invaders; and, whatever they were planning, our best chance
to frustrate it was to appear docile. Safety for us--the possibility
of later escaping--all of that seemed to lie in a course of
docility. We would pretend friendliness; willingness to help.
Tako was not deceived. We knew that. Don, in those two or three
hours we were with Tako before starting upon the transition, had
said:
"But suppose we do help you in your scheme, whatever it is? There
might be some reward for us, eh? If you plan a conquest, riches
perhaps--"
Tako had laughed with genuine amusement. "So? You bargain? We are to
be real friends--fellow conquerors? And you expect me to believe
that?"
* * * * *
Yet now he seemed half to like us. And there was Jane's safety for
which we were scheming. Tako had been interested in Jane. We knew
that. Yet she was at first little more to him than one of the girl
captives. He might have left her with those others. But she was with
us now, to stay with us upon this journey, and it was far
preferable.
"This way," said Tako. "We will walk. It is not far to my encampment
where they are preparing for the trip."
It seemed that a vast open country was around us. A rocky, almost
barren waste; a mountainous region of steep gray defiles, gorges and
broken tumbled ravines. A void of darkness hung overhead. There were
no stars, no moon, no light from above. Yet I seemed presently to
see a great distance through the glowing deep twilight. The glow was
inherent to the rocks themselves; and to the spare, stunted,
gray-blue vegetation. It was a queerly penetrating, diffused, yet
vague light everywhere. One could see a considerable distance by it.
Dim colors were apparent.
We trod the rocks with a feeling of almost normal body weight. The
air was softly warm like a night in the tropics, with a faint breeze
against our faces. It seemed a trackless waste here. We mounted an
ascending ramp, topped a rise with an undulating plateau ahead of
us.
Tako stood a moment for us to get our breath. The air seemed
rarefied; we were panting, with our cheeks tingling.
"My abode is there." He gestured to the distant lowland region
behind us. We were standing upon a gray hilltop. The ground went
down a tumbled broken area to what seemed a lowland plain. Ten miles
away--it may have been that, or twice that--I saw the dim outline of
a great castle or a fortress. A building of gigantic size, it seemed
strangely fashioned with round-shaped domes heaped in a circle
around a tower looming in the center. A wall, or a hedge of giant
trees, I could not tell, but it seemed as gigantic as the wall of
China, and was strung over the landscape in an irregular circle to
enclose an area of several square miles, with the castle-fortress in
its center. A little city was there, nestled around the fortress--a
hundred or two small brown and gray mounds to mark the dwellings. It
suggested a little feudal town of the Middle Ages of our own Earth,
set here in this trackless waste.
* * * * *
And I saw, down on the plain, a shining ribbon of river with thick
vegetation along its banks. And within the enclosing wall there, was
the silvery sheen of a lake near the town; patches of trees, and
brownish oval areas which seemed to be fields under cultivation.
"My domain," Tako repeated. There was a touch of pride in his voice.
"I rule it. You shall see it--when we are finished with New York."
Again his gaze went to Jane, curiously contemplative. We started
walking over the upper plateau level, seemingly with nothing in
advance of us save empty luminous darkness. A walk of an hour.
Perhaps it was that long. Time here had faded with our Earthly
world. It was difficult to gauge the passing minutes--as difficult
as to guess at the miles of this luminous distance.
As though the sight of his fortress--his tiny principality, whose
inhabitants he ruled with absolute sway--had awakened in Tako new
emotions, he put Jane beside him and began talking to us with
apparent complete frankness. It must have been an hour, during which
he explained this world of his, of which we were destined to have so
brief a glimpse, and told us upon what diabolical errand he and his
fellows were embarked. I recall that as he talked Jane gripped me in
horror. But she managed to smile when Tako smiled at her. He was
naively earnest as he told us of his coming conquest. And Jane, with
woman's intuition knew before Don and I realized it, that it was to
herself, a beautiful girl of Earth, he was talking, seeking her
admiration for his prowess.
Tako was what in Europe of the Middle Ages would have amounted to a
feudal prince. He was one of many here in this realm; each had his
little domain, with his retainers cultivating his land, paying fees
to him so that the overlord lived in princely idleness.
* * * * *
Scattered at considerable distances, one from the other, these
rulers of their little principalities were loosely bound into a
general government; but at home each was a law unto himself. They
lived in princely fashion, these lords of the castle, as they were
called. Among the retainers, monogamy was practiced. The workers had
their little families--husband, wife and children. But for the
rulers, more than one wife was the rule. Within each castle was a
harem of beauties, drawn perforce from the common people. The most
beautiful girls of each settlement were trained from childhood to
anticipate the honor of being selected by the master for a life in
the castle.
They were connoisseurs of woman's beauty, these overlords. By the
size of his harem and the beauty and talent of its inmates was an
overlord judged by his fellows.
Out of this had grown the principal cause for war in the history of
the realm. Beautiful girls were scarce. Raids were made by one lord
upon the village and harem of another.
Then had come to Tako the discovery of the great world of our Earth,
occupying much of this same space in another state of matter.
"I discovered it," he said with his gaze upon Jane.
"How?" Don demanded.
"It came," he said, "out of our scientific method of transportation,
which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!"
He laughed ironically. "The workers say that we princes are
profligate--that we think only of women and music. But that is not
so. Once, many generations ago, we were a tremendous nation, and
skilled in science far beyond your own world--and with a population
a hundred times what we have now. The land everywhere must have been
rich and fertile. There were big cities--the ruins of them are still
to be seen.
* * * * *
"And then our climate changed. There was, for us, a world
catastrophe, the cause and the details of which no one now knows
very clearly. It sent our cities, our great civilizations into
ruins. It left us with this barren waste with only occasional
lowland fertile spots which now by heredity we rulers control, each
to possess his own.
"But that past civilization gave us a scientific knowledge. Much of
it is lost--we are going down hill. But we have some of it left, and
we profligate rulers, as the workers call us, cherish it. But what
is the use of teaching it to the common people? We do very little of
that. And our weapons of war we keep to ourselves--except when there
is a raid and our loyal retainers go forth with us to do battle."
"So you discovered how to get into our Earth world?" Don repeated.
"Yes. Some years ago, and it was quite by chance. At first I
experimented alone--and then I took with me a young girl."
Again he smiled at Jane. "Tolla is her name. She is here in our camp
where our army is now, starting for New York. You will meet her
presently. She loves me very much, so she says. She wants some day
to lead my harem. I took her with me into the Unknown--into that
place you call Bermuda. I have been there off and on for nearly a
year of your Earth time, making my plans for what now is at last
coming to pass."
"So that's how you learned our language?" I said.
"Yes. It came easy to me and Tolla. That--and we were taught by two
girls whom a year ago I took from Bermuda and brought in here."
"And what became of them?" Jane put in quietly.
"Oh--why, I gave them away," he replied calmly. "A prince whose
favor I desired, wanted them and I gave them to him. Your Earth
girls are well liked by the men of my world. Their fame has already
spread."
* * * * *
He added contemplatively, "I often have thought how strange it is
that your great world and mine should lie right here together--the
one invisible to the other. Two or three minutes of time--we have
just made the transition. Yet what a void!"
"The scientists of your past civilization," I said, "strange that
they did not learn to cross it."
"Do you know that they did not?" he demanded. "Perhaps with secret
visitations--"
It brought to us a new flood of ideas. We had thought, up there in
St. Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that
all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like
this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition.
Ghosts--things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism
is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in
the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the
Fourth Dimension ventured forth a little way toward our world. And
seeing them, we called them ghosts.
What an intrepid explorer was this Tako! An enterprising scoundrel,
fired with a lust for power. He told us now, chuckling with the
triumph of it, how carefully he had studied our world. Appearing
there, timidly at first, then with his growing knowledge of English,
boldly living in Hamilton.
His fame in his own world, among his fellow rulers, rapidly grew.
The few Earth girls he produced were eagerly seized. The fame of
their beauty spread. The desire, the competition for them became
keen. And Tako gradually conceived his great plan. A hundred or more
of the overlords, each with his hundred retainers, were banded
together for the enterprise under Tako's leadership. An army was
organized; weapons and equipment were assembled.
Earth girls were to be captured in large numbers. The most desirable
of them would go into the harems of the princes. The others would be
given to the workers. The desire for them was growing rapidly,
incited by the talk of the overlords. The common man could have more
than one wife--two, even three perhaps--supported by the princely
master. And Tako was dreaming of a new Empire; increased population;
some of the desert reclaimed; a hundred principalities banded
together into a new nation, with himself as its supreme leader.
* * * * *
And then the attack upon Earth had begun. A few Earth girls were
stolen; then more, until very quickly it was obvious that a wider area
than Bermuda was needed. Tako's mind flung to New York--greatest
center of population within striking distance of him.[3] The foray
into Bermuda--the materialization of that little band on the Paget
hilltop was more in the nature of an experiment than a real attack.
Tako learned a great deal of the nature of this coming warfare, or
thought he did.
[3] The extent of the Fourth Dimensional world was never
made wholly clear to us. Its rugged surface was coincident
with the surface of our earth at Bermuda, at New York City,
and at many points along the Atlantic seaboard of the United
States. For the rest, there is no data upon which one may
even guess.
As a matter of actuality, in spite of his dominating force, the
capacity for leadership which radiated from him, there was a very
naive, fatuous quality to this strange ruler. Or at least, Don and I
thought so now. As the details of his plot against our Earth world
unfolded to us, what we could do to circumvent him ran like an
undercurrent across the background of our consciousness. He knew
nothing, or almost nothing of our Earth weapons. What conditions
would govern this unprecedented warfare into which he was
plunging--of all that he was totally ignorant.
* * * * *
But, we were speedily to learn that he was not as fatuous as he at
first seemed. These two worlds--occupying the same space and
invisible to each other--would be plunged into war. And Tako
realized that no one, however astute, of either world could predict
what might happen. He was plunging ahead, quite conscious of his
ignorance. And he realized that there was a vast detailed knowledge
of the Earth world which we had and he did not. He would use us as
the occasion arose to explain what might not be understandable to
him.
I could envisage now so many things of such a character. The range
of warships and artillery. The weapons a plane might use. The
topography of New York City and its environs.... And the more Tako
needed us, the less we had to fear from him personally. We would
have the power to protect Jane from him--if we could sufficiently
persuade him he needed our good will. Ultimately we might plunge his
enterprise into disaster, and with Jane escape from him--that too I
could envisage as a possibility.
The mind flings far afield very rapidly! But I recall that it
occurred to me also that I might be displaying many of the fatuous
qualities I was crediting to Tako, by thinking such thoughts!
I have no more than briefly summarized the many things Tako told us
during that hour while we strode across the dim rocky uplands toward
his mobilized army awaiting its departure for the scene of the main
attack. Some of his forces had already gone ahead. Several bands of
men were making visual contact with the seacoast of the southern
United States. It was all experimentation. They were heading for New
York. They would wait there, and not materialize until this main
army had joined them.
We saw presently, in the distance ahead of us, a dim green sheen of
light below the horizon. Then it disclosed itself to be quite
near--the reflection of green light from a bowl-like depression of
this rocky plateau.
We reached the rim of the bowl. The encampment of Tako's main army
lay spread before us.