At her answer, I said, "All right. You saved my life; I must do the
same for you. I can spare that much blood easily. Go ahead."
She bowed toward me, a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the
tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself
about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman's hand. I felt no pain.
"You must rest now," Lhar said. "I will go away but I shall not be
long."
The robot clicked and chattered, shifting on its tentacle legs. I
watched it, saying, "Lhar, this can't be true. Why am I--believing
impossible things?"
"I have given you peace," she told me. "Your mind was dangerously
close to madness. I have drugged you a little, physically; so your
emotions will not be strong for a while. It was necessary to save your
sanity."
It was true that my mind felt--was drugged the word? My thoughts were
clear enough, but I felt as if I were submerged in transparent but
dark water. There was an odd sense of existing in a dream. I
remembered Swinburne's lines:
_Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams...._
"What is this place?" I asked.
Lhar bent toward me. "I do not know if I can explain. It is not quite
clear to me. The robot knows. He is a reasoning machine. Wait...."
She turned to the sphere. Its cilia fluttered in quick, complicated
signals.
Lhar turned back to me. "Do you know much of the nature of Time? That
it is curved, moves in a spiral...."
She went on to explain, but much of her explanation I did not
understand. Yet I gathered enough to realize that this valley was not
of Earth. Or, rather, it was not of the earth I knew.
"You have geological disturbances, I know. The strata are tumbled
about, mixed one with another--"
I remembered what Fra Rafael had said about an earthquake, three
months before. Lhar nodded toward me.
"But this was a time-slip. The space-time continuum is also subject to
great strains and stresses. It buckled, and strata--Time-sectors--were
thrust up to mingle with others. This valley belongs to another age,
as do I and the machine, and also--the Other."
She told me what had happened.... There had been no warning. One
moment she had been in her own World, her own Time. The next, she was
here, with her robot. And with the Other....
"I do not know the origin of the Other. I may have lived in either
your future or your past. This valley, with its ruined stone
structures, is probably part of your future. I had never heard of such
a place before. The Other may be of the future also. Its shape I do
not know...."
* * * * *
She told me more, much more. The Other, as she called it--giving the
entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage--had a strangely
chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I
could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically.
And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession,
in the strict sense of the word. It was a sort of merging....
Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes,
forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size,
familiar laws of nature do not apply.
So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that
Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her
robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here.
There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had
created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the
sun, which threatened its existence.
Sitting there in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a
concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of
lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite
cosmos. And yet--what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable
infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip--and a sector of land and
three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and
transported to _our_ time-stratum.
A robot, a flower that was alive and intelligent--and feminine--and
the Other....
"The native girls," I said. "What will happen to them?"
"They are no longer alive," Lhar told me. "They still move and
breathe, but they are dead, sustained only by the life-force of the
Other. I do not think it will harm me. Apparently it prefers other
food."
"That's why you've stayed here?" I asked.
The shining velvety calyx swayed. "I shall die soon. For a little
while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world,
this alien time. Your blood has helped." The cool tentacle withdrew
from my arm. "But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled
with--with certain energizing vibratory principles.
"They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays.
And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then
my poor robot will be alone." I sensed elfin amusement in that last
thought. "It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of
a machine. But in our world there is a rapport--a mental
symbiosis--between robot and living beings."
There was a silence. After a while I said, "I'd better get out of
here. Get help--to end the menace of the other...." What sort of help
I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?
Lhar caught my thought. "In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what
that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this
valley--you cannot. The fog will bring you back."
"I've got my compass." I glanced at it, saw that the needle was
spinning at random.
Lhar said: "The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog,
you will always return here."
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a
colloid brain."
I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult
for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I
hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.
"Can't your robot guide me?" I persisted.
"He will not leave my side. Perhaps--" Lhar turned to the sphere, and
the cilia fluttered excitedly. "No," she said, turning back to me.
"Built into his mind is one rule--never to leave me. He cannot disobey
that."
* * * * *
I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid
cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said,
"It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try,
anyway."
"I will be waiting," she said, and did not move as I slipped out
between two trunks of the banyan-like tree.
It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous.
I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.
Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was
blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my
footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And
presently I would find myself back in the valley....
I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no
landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance
would anyone blunder into this valley--unless hypnotically summoned,
like the Indio girls.
I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn't
moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently.
"Lhar," I said. "Lhar, can't you help me?"
The white flame of the flower was motionless, but the robot's cilia
moved in quick signals. Lhar moved at last.
"Perhaps," her thought came. "Unless both induction and deduction
fail, my robot has discovered a chance for you. The Other can control
your mind through emotions. But I, too, have some power over your
mind. If I give you strength, wall you with a psychic shield against
intrusion, you may be able to face the Other. But you cannot destroy
it unless it is in its normal shape. The Indio girls must be killed
first...."
"Killed?" I felt a sense of horror at the thought of killing those
poor simple native girls.
"They are not actually alive now. They are now a part of the Other.
They can never be restored to their former life."
"How will--destroying them--help me?" I asked.
Again Lhar consulted the robot. "The Other will be driven from their
bodies. It will then have no hiding-place and must resume its own
form. Then it can be slain."
Lhar swayed and curtseyed away. "Come," she said. "It is in my mind
that the Other must die. It is evil, ruthlessly selfish, which is the
same thing. Until now I have not realized the solution to this evil
being. But seeing into your thoughts has clarified my own. And my
robot tells me that unless I aid you, the Other will continue ravening
into your world. If that happens, the time-pattern will be broken....
I do not quite understand, but my robot makes no mistakes. The Other
must die...."
She was outside of the banyan now, the sphere gliding after her. I
followed. The three of us moved swiftly across the blue moss, guided
by the robot.
In a little while we came to where the six Indio girls were squatting.
They had apparently not moved since I had left them.
"The Other is not here," Lhar said.
The robot held me back as Lhar advanced toward the girls, the
skirt-like frill at her base convoluting as she moved. She paused
beside them and her petals trembled and began to unfold.
From the tip of that great blossom a fountain of white dust spurted
up. Spores or pollen, it seemed to be. The air was cloudy with the
whiteness.
The robot drew me back, back again. I sensed danger....
The pollen seemed to be drawn toward the Indios, spun toward them in
dancing mist-motes. It settled on their bronzed bodies, their limbs
and faces. It covered them like a veil until they appeared to be six
statues, white as cold marble, there on the blue moss.
Lhar's petals lifted and closed again. She swayed toward me, her mind
sending a message into mine.
"The Other has no refuge now," she told me. "I have slain the--the
girls."
"They're dead?" My lips were dry.
"What semblance of life they had left is now gone. The Other cannot
use them again."
Lhar swayed toward me. A cool tentacle swept out, pressing lightly on
my forehead. Another touched my breast, above the heart.
"I give you of my strength," Lhar said. "It will be as shield and
buckler to you. The rest of the way you must go alone...."
Into me tide of power flowed. I sank into cool depths, passionless and
calm. Something was entering my body, my mind and soul, drowning my
fears, stiffening my resolve.
Strength of Lhar was now my strength!
The tentacles dropped away, their work done. The robot's cilia
signalled and Lhar said, "Your way lies there. That temple--do you see
it?"
I saw it. Far in the distance, half shrouded by the fog, a scarlet
structure, not ruined like the others, was visible.
"You will find the Other there. Slay the last Indio, then destroy the
Other."
I had no doubt now of my ability to do that. A new power seemed to
lift me from my feet, send me running across the moss. Once I glanced
back, to see Lhar and her robot standing motionless, watching me.
The temple enlarged as I came nearer. It was built of the same reddish
stone as the other ruined blocks I had seen. But erosion had weathered
its harsh angles till nothing now remained but a rounded, smoothly
sculptured monolith, twenty feet tall, shaped like a rifle shell.
A doorway gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the
threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward,
finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden
in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They
gave a suggestion of inhuman beings that watched.
It was dark but I could see the Indio girl who had been Miranda Valle.
Her eyes were on me, and, even through the protecting armor of Lhar
strength; I could feel their terrible power.
The life in the girl was certainly not human!
"Destroy her!" my mind warned. "Destroy her! Quickly!"
But as I hesitated a veil of darkness seemed to fall upon me. Utter cold,
a frigidity as of outer space, lanced into my brain. My senses reeled
under the assault. Desperately, blind and sick and giddy, I called on the
reserve strength Lhar had given me. Then I blacked out....
When I awoke I saw smoke coiling up from the muzzle of the pistol in
my hand. At my feet lay the Indio girl, dead. My bullet had crashed
into her brain, driving out the terrible dweller there.
My eyes were drawn to the farther wall. An archway gaped there. I
walked across the room, passed under the archway. Instantly I was in
complete, stygian darkness. But I was not alone!
The power of the Other struck me like a tangible blow. I have no words
to tell of an experience so completely disassociated from human
memories. I remember only this: my mind and soul were sucked down into
a black abyss where I had no volition or consciousness. It was another
dimension of the mind where my senses were altered....
Nothing existed there but the intense blackness beyond time and
space. I could not see the Other nor conceive of it. It was pure
intelligence, stripped of flesh. It was alive and it had power--power
that was god-like.
There in the great darkness I stood alone, unaided, sensing the
approach of an entity from some horribly remote place where all values
were altered.
I sensed Lhar's nearness. "Hurry!" her thought came to me. "Before it
wakens!"
Warmth flowed into me. The blackness receded....
Against the farther wall something lay, a thing bafflingly human.... a
great-headed thing with a tiny pallid body coiled beneath it. It was
squirming toward me....
"Destroy it!" Lhar communicated.
The pistol in my hand thundered, bucking against my palm. Echoes
roared against the walls. I fired and fired again until the gun was
empty....
"It is dead," Lhar's thought entered my mind.