_Realm of Mystery_
"We wish nothing of you," the man said, "save that you accept from us
what we have to offer. You are hungry. You will let us bring you food."
It was a simple rustic room to which they had been brought--a room in a
house seemingly of plaited straw. Crude furnishings were here--table and
chairs of Earth fashion, padded with stuffed mats. Woven matting was on
the floor. Through a broad latticed window the faint rose-light
outside--like a soft pastel twilight--filtered in, tinting the room with
a gentle glow. Thin drapes at the window stirred in a breath of
breeze--a warm wind from the hills, scented with the vivid blooms which
were everywhere.
It had been a brief walk from the space-globe. Lee had seen what seemed
a little village stretching off among the trees. There had been people
crowding to see the strangers--men, women and children, in simple crude
peasant garb--brief garments that revealed their pink-white bodies. They
babbled with strange unintelligible words, crowding forward until the
robed men from the globe shoved them away.
It was a pastoral, peaceful scene--a little country-side drowsing in the
warm rosy twilight. Out by the river there were fields where men stood
at their simple agricultural implements--stood at rest, staring
curiously at the commotion in the village.
And still Lee's captors would say nothing, merely drew them forward,
into this room. Then all of them left, save one. He had doffed his robe
now. He was an old man, with long grey-white hair to the base of his
neck. He stood smiling. His voice, with the English words queerly
pronounced, was gentle, but with a firm finality of command.
"My name is Arkoh," he said. "I am to see that you are made comfortable.
This house is yours. There are several rooms, so that you may do in them
as you wish."
"Thank you," Lee said. "But you can certainly understand--I have asked
many questions and never had any answers. If you wish to talk to me
alone--"
"That will come presently. There is no reason for you to be worried--"
"We're not worried," Franklin burst out. "We're fed up with this
highhanded stuff. You'll answer questions now. What I demand to know is
why--"
"Take it easy," Lee warned.
Franklin had jumped to his feet. He flung off Lee's hand. "Don't make me
laugh. I know you're one of them--everything about you is a fake. You
got us into this--"
"So? You would bring strife here from your Earth?" Arkoh's voice cut in,
like a knife-blade cleaving through Franklin's bluster. "That is not
permissible. Please do not make it necessary that there should be
violence here." He stood motionless. But before his gaze Franklin
relaxed into an incoherent muttering.
"Thank you," Arkoh said. "I shall send you the food." He turned and left
the room.
* * * * *
Vivian collapsed into a chair. She was trembling. "Well--my Gawd--what
is all this? Lee--that old man with his gentle voice--he looked like if
you crossed him you'd be dead. Not that he'd hurt you--it would
be--would be something else--"
"You talk like an ass," Franklin said. "You've gone crazy--and I don't
blame you--this damned weird thing. For all that old man's smooth talk,
we're just prisoners here. Look outside that window--"
It was a little garden, drowsing in the twilight. A man stood watching
the window. And as Lee went to the lattice, he could see others, like
guards outside.
The man who brought their simple food was a stalwart fellow in a draped
garment of brown plaited fibre. His black hair hung thick about his
ears. He laid out the food in silence.
"What's _your_ name?" Franklin demanded.
"I am Groff."
"And you won't talk either, I suppose? Look here, I can make it worth
your while to talk."
"Everyone has all he needs here. There is nothing that you need give
us."
"Isn't there? You just give me a chance and I'll show you. No one has
all he needs--or all he wants."
Groff did not answer. But as he finished placing the food, and left the
room, it seemed to Lee that he shot a queer look back at Franklin. A
look so utterly incongruous that it was startling. Franklin saw it and
chuckled.
"Well, at least there's one person here who's not so damn weird that it
gives you the creeps."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Lee said. With sudden
impulse he lowered his voice. "Franklin, listen--there are a few things
that perhaps I can tell you. Things that I can guess--that Vivian
senses--"
"I don't want to hear your explanation. It would be just a lot of damn
lies anyway."
"All right. Perhaps it would. We'll soon know, I imagine."
"Let's eat," Vivian said. "I'm hungry, even if I am scared."
To Lee it seemed that the weird mystery here was crowding upon them. As
though, here in this dim room, momentous things were waiting to reveal
themselves. A strange emotion was upon Lee Anthony. A sort of tense
eagerness. Certainly it was not fear. Certainly it seemed impossible
that there could be anything here of which he should be afraid. Again
his mind went back to old Anna Green and what she had told him of his
grandfather. How far away--how long ago that had been.... And yet, was
Anna Green far away now? Something of her had seemed always to be with
him on that long, weird voyage, from the infinite smallness and
pettiness of Earth to this realm out beyond the stars. And more than
ever now, somehow Lee seemed aware of her presence here in this quiet
room. Occultism? He had always told himself that surely he was no
mystic. A practical fellow, who could understand science when it was
taught him, but certainly never could give credence to mysticism. The
dead are dead, and the living are alive; and between them is a gulf--an
abyss of nothingness.
Now he found himself wondering. Were all those people on Earth who
claimed to feel the presence of dead loved ones near them? Were those
people just straining their fancy--just comforting themselves with what
they wished to believe? Or was the scoffer himself the fool? And if that
could be so, on Earth, why could not this strange realm be of such a
quality that an awareness of those who have passed from life would be
the normal thing? Who shall say that the mysteries of life and death are
unscientific? Was it not rather that they embraced those gaps of science
not yet understood? Mysteries which, if only we could understand them,
would be mysteries no longer?
Lee had left the table and again was standing at the latticed window,
beyond which the drowsing little garden lay silent, and empty now. The
guard who had been out here had moved further away; his figure was a
blob near a flowered thicket at the house corner. And suddenly Lee was
aware of another figure. There was a little splashing fountain near the
garden's center--a rill of water which came down a little embankment and
splashed into a pool where the rose light shimmered on the ripples.
The figure was sitting at the edge of the pool--a slim young girl in a
brief dress like a drape upon her. She sat, half reclining on the bank
by the shimmering water, with her long hair flowing down over her
shoulders and a lock of it trailing in the pool. For a moment he thought
that she was gazing into the water. Then as the light which tinted her
graceful form seemed to intensify, he saw that she was staring at him.
It seemed as though both of them, for that moment, were breathless with
a strange emotion awakened in them by the sight of each other. And then
slowly the girl rose to her feet. Still gazing at Lee, she came slowly
forward with her hair dangling, framing her small oval face. The glow in
the night-air tinted her features. It was a face of girlhood, almost
mature--a face with wonderment on it now.
He knew that he was smiling; then, a few feet from the window she
stopped and said shyly:
"You are Lee Anthony?"
"Yes."
"I am Aura. When you have finished eating, I am to take you to him."
"To him?"
"Yes. The One of Our Guidance. He bade me bring you." Her soft voice was
musical; to her, quite obviously, the English was a foreign tongue.
"I'm ready," Lee said. "I'm finished."
One of her slim bare arms went up with a gesture. From the corner of the
little house the guard there turned, came inside. Lee turned to the
room. The guard entered. "You are to come," he said.
"So we just stay here, prisoners," Franklin muttered. He and Vivian
were blankly staring as Lee was led away.
* * * * *
Then in a moment he was alone beside the girl who had come for him.
Silently they walked out into the glowing twilight, along a little
woodland path with the staring people and the rustic, nestling dwellings
blurring in the distance behind them. A little line of wooded hills lay
ahead. The sky was like a dark vault--empty. The pastel light on the
ground seemed inherent to the trees and the rocks; it streamed out like
a faint radiation from everywhere. And then, as Lee gazed up into the
abyss of the heavens, suddenly it seemed as though very faintly he could
make out a tiny patch of stars. Just one small cluster, high overhead.
"The Universe you came from," Aura said.
"Yes." The crown of her tresses as she walked beside him was at his
shoulder. He gazed down at her. "To whom are you taking me? It seems
that I could guess--"
"I was told not to talk of that."
"Well, all right. Is it far?"
"No. A little walk--just to that nearest hill."
Again they were silent. "My Earth," he said presently, "do you know much
about it?"
"A little. I have been told."
"It seems so far away to me now."
She gazed up at him. She was smiling. "Is it? To me it seems quite
close." She gestured. "Just up there. It seemed far to you, I
suppose--that was because you were so small, for so long, coming here."
Like a man the size of an ant, trying to walk ten miles. Of course, it
would be a monstrous trip. But if that man were steadily to grow larger,
as he progressed he would cover the distance very quickly.
"Well," Lee said, "I suppose I can understand that. You were born here,
Aura?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Your world here--what is it like?"
She gazed up at him as though surprised. "You have seen it. It is just a
simple little place. We have not so many people here in the village, and
about that many more--those who live in the hills close around here."
"You mean that's all? Just this village? Just a few thousand people?"
"Oh there are others, of course. Other groups--like ours, I guess--out
in the forests--everywhere in all the forests, maybe." Her gesture
toward the distant, glowing, wooded horizons was vague. "We have never
tried to find out. Why should we? Wherever they are, they have all that
they need or want. So have we."
The thing was so utterly simple. He pondered it. "And you--you're very
happy here?"
Her wide eyes were childlike. "Why yes. Of course. Why not? Why should
not everyone be happy?"
"Well," he said, "there are things--"
"Yes. I have heard of them. Things on your Earth--which the humans
create for themselves--but that is very silly. We do not have them
here."
Surely he could think of no retort to such childlike faith. Her faith.
How horribly criminal it would be to destroy it. A priceless
thing--human happiness to be created out of the faith that it was the
normal thing. He realized that his heart was pounding, as though now
things which had been dormant within him all his life were coming
out--clamoring now for recognition.
And then, out of another silence he murmured, "Aura--you're taking me to
my grandfather, aren't you? He came here from Earth--and then he sent
back there to get me?"
"Yes," she admitted. "So you know it? But I was instructed to--"
"All right. We won't talk of it. And he's told you about me?"
"Yes," she agreed shyly. She caught her breath as she added, "I have
been--waiting for you--a long time." Shyly she gazed up at him. The
night-breeze had blown her hair partly over her face. Her hand brushed
it away so that her gaze met his. "I hoped you would be, well, like you
are," she added.
"Oh," he said awkwardly. "Well--thanks."
"And you," she murmured out of another little silence, "you--I hope I
haven't disappointed you. I am the way you want--like you wished--"
What a weird thing to say! He smiled. "Not ever having heard of you,
Aura, I can't exactly say that I--"
* * * * *
He checked himself. Was she what he had wished? Why yes--surely he had
been thinking of her--in his dreams, all his life vaguely picturing
something like this for Lee Anthony....
"I guess I have been thinking of you," he agreed. "No, you haven't
disappointed me, Aura. You--you are--"
He could find no words to say it. "We are almost there," she said. "He
will be very happy to have you come. He is a very good man, Lee. The
one, we think, of the most goodness--and wiseness, to guide us all--"
The path had led them up a rocky defile, with gnarled little trees
growing between the crags. Ahead, the hillside rose up in a broken,
rocky cliff. There was a door, like a small tunnel entrance. A woman in
a long white robe was by the door.
"He is here," Aura said. "Young Anthony."
"You go in."
Silently they passed her. The tunnel entrance glowed with the pastel
radiance from the rocks. The radiance was a soft blob of color ahead of
them.
"You will find that he cannot move now," Aura whispered. "You will sit
by his bed. And talk softly."
"You mean--he's ill?"
"Well--what you would call paralysis. He cannot move. Only his lips--his
eyes. He will be gone from us soon, so that then he can only be unseen.
A Visitor--"
Her whisper trailed off. Lee's heart was pounding, seeming to thump in
his throat as Aura led him silently forward. It was a draped, cave-like
little room. Breathless, Lee stared at a couch--a thin old figure lying
there--a frail man with white hair that framed his wrinkled face. It was
a face that was smiling, its sunken, burning eyes glowing with a new
intensity. The lips moved; a faint old voice murmured:
"And you--you are Lee?"
"Yes--grandfather--"
He went slowly forward and sat on the bedside.