_The Girl in the Golden Cage_
"My world," Glora was saying. "You like it? See the starlight on the
lake? I have heard that your world looks like this at night, in
summer. Ours is always like this. No day, no night. Just like
this--starlight." Her hand went to Alan's shoulder. "You like it? My
world?"
"Yes. Yes, Glora, It's beautiful."
There seemed a sheen on everything, a soft, glowing sheen of
phosphorescence from the rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight.
The night air was soft, with a gentle breeze that rippled the distant
lake into a great spread of gold and silver light.
The city was called Orena. I saw at once that we were about normal
size to its houses and people. There were fields beneath our ledge,
with farm implements lying in them; no workers, for this was the time
for sleep. Ribbons of roads wound over the country, pale streamers in
the starlight.
Glora gestured. "The giants are on their island. Everyone sleeps now.
You see the island off there?"
Beyond the city, over the low stone roofs of its flat-topped
dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some
three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem
small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large to their
environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island
was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was
coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and
above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out like a
balloon-parachute by the wind.
* * * * *
"The giants live, there?" said Alan.
"You mean Polter's men?"
"And women. Yes."
"Are there many giants?"
"No."
"How many?" I put in. "How large are they? In relation to us now, I
mean. And to your normal size?"
I turned to Alan. "Polter and Babs must be down there now! They must
have arrived only recently. But we must determine what size to be
before we go any further. We can't be gigantic If he sees us--if we
assailed him--well, he'd kill Babs. We're got to plan. Glora tell
us--"
"You ask so many questions so fast, George. There are two hundred or
more of the giants. And there are more than that many thousands of our
people here. Slaves, because the giants are four times as large. This
little city, these fields, these hills of stone and metal, all this
was ours to have in peace and happiness--until your Polter came. And
that starlight on the water--"
She gestured. "Everywhere is a great reach of desert and forests.
Insects, but there are no wild beasts--nothing to harm us. Nature is
kind here. The weather is always like this. We were happy--until
Polter came."
"And only a few thousand people," Alan said. "No other cities?"
"What lies off in the great distance we do not know. Our nation is ten
times what is here. A few other cities, though some of our people live
in the forests--"
She broke off. "That boat is coming for Polter. He is in the city, no
doubt of that. The boat will take him and that girl you call Babs to
the giant's island. His castle is there."
* * * * *
If we could get on that boat and go with him to the island--! But in
what size? Very small? But then, if we were very small it would take
us hours to get from here to the boat. Glora pointed out where it
would land--just beyond the village where the houses were set in a
sparse fringe. It would be there, apparently, in ten or fifteen
minutes. Polter was probably there now with Babs, waiting for it.
In our present size we could not get there in time. It was two or
three miles at least. But a trifle larger--the size of one of Polter's
giants--would enable us to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale
starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might
only be mistaken for Polter's people. And when we got closer we would
diminish our size, creep into the boat, get near Babs and Polter and
then plan what to do.
Futile plans! All of life is so futile, so wind-swept upon the tossing
sea of chance!
We climbed down from the ledge and stood at the base of the towering
cliff which reared its jagged wall against the stars. A field and a
road were near us. The road seemed of normal size. A man was across
the field. He did not seem to notice us. He was apparently about my
height. He presently discarded his work, went away from us and
vanished.
"Hurry, Glora." Alan and I stood beside her while she took pellets
from her vials. It needed a careful adjustment. We wanted our stature
now to be four times what it was. Glora gave us pellets of both drugs,
one of which was slightly more intense than the other.
"Polter made them this way," she said. "The two at once gives just the
growth to take us from this normal size to the stature of the giants."
Alan and I did not touch our own vials. We had used none of our
enlarging drug upon the journey; the supply she had given us of the
other was nearly gone.
* * * * *
As I took these pellets which Glora now gave us, standing there by the
side of that road, I recall that I was struck with the realization
that never once upon this journey had I conceived myself to be other
than normal stature. I am normally about six feet tall. I still
felt--there in that golden atom--the same height. This landscape
seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby--spreading, fantastic
looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But
still, as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown
leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms--whatever the
size of the tree, my consciousness could only conceive myself as of a
normal six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always is
supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the entire
universe revolves!
We crouched on the ground when this growth now began; it would not do
to be observed changing size. Polter's giants never did that. Years
before, he had made them large--his few hundred men and women. They
were, Glora said, people both of this realm and from our great world
above--dissolute, criminal characters who now had set themselves up
here as the nucleus of a ruling race.
In a moment now, we were the size of these giants. Twenty to
twenty-five feet tall, in relation to this environment. But I did not
feel so. As I stood up--still myself in normal stature--I saw around
me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese
garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth level path:
the little field near us a toy fence around it. In another road across
it, the man was walking. In height he would barely have reached my
knees. He saw us rise beside the trees. He darted off his road in
alarm, and disappeared.
* * * * *
I have taken longer to tell all this than the actual time which
passed. We could see the boat coming from the island, and it was still
a fair distance off shore. We ran along the road, skirting the edge of
the little town. Its houses were none of them taller than ourselves.
The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have
inserted a head or an arm. They were most of them dark. Little people
occasionally stared out, saw us run past, and ducked back, thankful
that we did not stop to harass them.
"This way," said Glora. She ran like a fawn, hardly winded, with Alan
and me heavily panting behind her. "There are trees--thick
trees--quite near where the boat lands. We can get in them and hide
and change our size to smallness. But hurry, for we will need so much
time when we are small!"
The little spread of town and the shining lake remained always to our
right. In five minutes we were past most of the houses. A patch of
woods, with thick interlacing treetops about our own height, lay
ahead. It extended a few hundred feet over to the lake shore. The
sailboat was heading in close. There was a broad, starlit roadway at
the edge of the lake, and a dock there at which the boat was preparing
to land.
Would we be in time? I suddenly feared not. To get small now, with
distance lengthening between us and the boat, would be disastrous. And
where was Polter?
Abruptly we saw him. There had been only little people visible to us;
none of our own height. The lake roadway by the dock was brightly
starlit. As we approached the intervening patch of woods it seemed
that a crowd of little people were near the dock. Polter must have
been sitting. But now he rose up. We could not mistake his hunched
thick figure, the lump on his shoulders clear in the starlight with
the gleaming lake as a background. The crowd of little figures were
milling around his knees. In the silence of the night the murmur of
their voices floated over to us.
"There he is!" Alan gasped. We all three checked our running; we were
at the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! Let's get
larger! Rush him! Why that's only a few hundred feet over there!"
But Babs? Where was Babs?
"Alan! Down!" I crouched, pulling Alan and Glora with me. "Don't let
him see us! He'd know at once--and where is Babs? Can't rush him,
Alan. He'd see us coming--kill her--"
* * * * *
Of all the strange events which had been flung at us, I think this
sudden crisis now most confused Alan and me. To get larger, or
smaller? Which? Yet something must be done at once.
Glora said, "We can get through the woods best in this size. And not
be seen--get closer to the landing."
We crouched so that the little treetops were always well over us. The
patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick
soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and
branches were at our shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing
our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of
the crowd grew louder.
Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly
shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear
view of the strange scene now directly before us.
And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, barge-like open sailboat
was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng
of people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd
milled almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery.
Across the road by the dock. Polter stood with the crowd down around
his knees. In height he seemed the old familiar Polter. Bareheaded,
with his shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth
fashion: narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar
with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed--the
change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now
forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an abnormality. A man old
before his time; or younger than he should have been for the years he
had lived. An indescribable mingling of something. The mingling, of
the two worlds, perhaps. It marked him with a look at once unnatural
and sinister.
These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the
white chest of his shirt, something is there."
* * * * *
Polter was coatless, with snowy white shirt and cuffs to his thick
wrists. He was no more than fifty feet from us. On his shirt bosom
something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an
ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there with a band about
his chest, a cord like a necklace chain up to his thick hunched neck,
and other chains down to his belt.
I stared at it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his
shirt-front--a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars.
I heard Alan murmuring, "A cage! Why George, it's--"
And then, simultaneously, realization struck me. It was a golden cage
strapped there. And I seemed to see that there was something in it. A
tiny figure? Babs!
"I think he has her there," Glora murmured. "You see the little box
with bars? The girl Babs, a prisoner in there." She spoke swiftly,
vehemently. "He will take the boat to the island."
She suddenly gripped us. "You think really it best to go? I do what
you say. I had the wish to get to my father with these drugs."
"No!" exclaimed Alan. "We must keep close to Polter!"
We were ready with our pellets. But a sudden activity in the road made
us pause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen
hostility. They milled about him as he stood there, gazing down at
then sardonically.
And abruptly he shouted at them in English. "You speak my language,
some of you. Then listen."
The crowd fell silent.
"Listen. This iss your future Queen. Can you see her? She iss small
now. But she has the magic power. Soon, she will be large. Like me."
The crowd was shouting again. It surged forward, but it lacked a
leader, and those in advance shoved backward in fear.
Polter spoke again. "This girl from my world, you will like her. She
iss kind and very beautiful. When she iss large, you will see how
beautiful."
A little stone suddenly came up from the throng of little people and
struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. The crowd, emboldened,
made a rush; surged against his legs.
He shouted, "You do that? Why how dare you? I show to you what giants
do when you make dem angry!"
From down by his knees he plucked the small figure of a man. The crowd
scattered with shouts of terror. Polter had the struggling
eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around his head like
a nine-pin and flung it over the canopy of the dock far out into the
shimmering lake!