"UNDER GARDENS"
"Well!" said father. "Well, you did come safely, didn't you? I'm so
glad, Peter. Light your light, Frederick. Well, Dan! I'm mighty glad to
see you. Here's Hulda! Come here, child--here is your Dan, at last!"
Freddie snapped on our light. Even in the confusion of our joyous
greetings I was aware of how strange father and Hulda looked. Father
wore his hair, snow-white now, in a long, thick, shaggy mass about his
ears; a smooth and glossy black animal skin was draped about him, with
a white decoration on his chest; his arms and legs were bare, with skin
sandals on his feet!
And Hulda! Her brown hair was shot now with pure-white strands. It
fell in waves upon her bare white shoulders, where her filmy robe of
light-brown silken fabric was caught with gay red ribbons. The robe
hung in folds nearly to her knees.
I have seen pictures of the maidens of ancient Greece. Hulda looked
like that. Thongs of red crossed her breast, bound her waist and hung
dangling at her knees with tasseled ends. Her legs were bare. Her feet
in sandals like father's, but with pointed toes, the heel cut away, and
thongs of red crossing her instep. Her right arm was bare; but on the
left, her wrist was bound with a red ruching.
Dan had infolded her in his first hungry embrace, kissing her without
thought of the rest of us, until she cried for breath. Then he held her
off.
She was gasping, and laughing. "Do I--look so queer? Dan, don't you
like my looks? Don't you--like me--"
"Like you?" His great arms would have wrapped her up again, but she
fended him off. She was radiant; I can imagine how Dan felt; I had
never seen Hulda half so beautiful. She was blushing; she laughed at
him archly.
"The red, Dan." She indicated her tassels, and the ruching at her left
wrist. "You see, I wear it--for you. The sign that I am spoken for, and
pledged to a man."
"Wonderful, Frederick, that you all got through so safely." Father
turned with Freddie, to me. "Frederick, you must meet Zetta--Peter,
have you seen Zetta? There she is--come in, child."
Zetta was dressed very much as on earth I had last seen her. She stood
lingering in the vehicle doorway, eager to see us, but reluctant to
encroach on our family greetings. At father's words, she now shyly
approached.
I stammered, "Zetta, I'm--very glad to see you again."
"How do you do, Peter." She held out her hand, and I took it. A
confusion was upon me. This moment for which I had longed, came, and
passed. Perhaps, as once before, the barriers of conventionality rose
instinctively to hold my emotion in check.
I think it was so with Zetta, too. Our fingers barely touched; but my
heart pounded harder, for I heard her murmur, "Be--careful, Peter. Be
ver' careful!" A warning against the power between us! Then I met her
glance as she eyed me sidewise. A roguish, impish look. This was a new
Zetta--here upon her own world, her real self. Little imp, mocking my
confusion with glee! She turned away, toward Freddie.
"And this is Fred'rick? I am ver' pleas' to meet so good a frien'."
I saw leaping into Freddie's eyes a swift surprise as he neared her,
took her hand and shook it cordially. Freddie's nature, from mine, or
from Dan's, is wholly different. Whatever surprise he felt, he gave no
further sign; shook her hand heartily, grinned at her, and swung on me.
"Say, she's a little beauty, isn't she, Peter?" The old Freddie,
relieved now of the responsibility of commanding our voyage, his
characteristic breezy boyishness came back to him. I had not seen him
in this way since the first dreadful days of the Great Change came upon
us. He added, "You and I are going to be great friends, Zetta."
Her gaze on him was full of undisguised admiration. "Yes," she agreed.
"I think so, too."
We were ready to start. "Leave everything," said father. "I'll have it
guarded, and we're not going far."
He took his lantern; shook it. It seemed to be a translucent
animal-bladder, possibly, filled with small objects that rattled. The
light from it was a glow of phosphorescence. He held it aloft.
"This light is bad. Zetta, fix this up, will you? Can't they do better
than this?"
Strange thoughts to spring to my mind! As Zetta took the lantern, held
it near her face, I fancied that she murmured to it. And as though in
answer to her command, the purple light grew stronger! I fancied so.
"Thanks," said father. "Give it to me. I'll lead the way. Put out your
light, Frederick. You lads took your landing very well. Strange and
disturbing--this unreality just beyond our reach--isn't it, Peter?
You'll grow used to it--you'll forget it."
He started away, with the rest of us following in the shadows behind
his upheld lantern. At his words, the crimson murmuring things in the
darkness again began crowding me. But I was not afraid of them now.
On earth, always there are a million tiny sounds, audible if we will
but listen, and things constantly to be seen which, through habit, we
look at but cease to see. This was like that. With attention upon it,
this unreal sub-world of Xenephrene was strange and fearsome. But it
never obtruded; and already, as father said, I found myself ignoring it.
There was, indeed, so much of strange reality spread now before
me! We stepped from our small doorway, upon the solid ground of
Xenephrene. The moon was beneath a heavy cloud. The landing lights were
extinguished; darkness enveloped us. It seemed a haze; the swinging
purple rays of father's lantern showed it as a swaying mist in the air.
The night was warm, almost steamingly oppressive. But this feeling,
too, soon passed, and I found it wholly comfortable. The lantern, I
learned later, was what I had thought--filled with phosphorescent
insects, like fireflies; and Zetta had commanded them to shine more
brightly!
Father led us slowly. The ground was level beneath my feet--a
corrugated, metallic surface. Sometimes there seemed a soil, and in
the darkness, the deeper shadows of giant vegetation. Great leaves
arched up over us, and soon we were under them, walking now on a soft,
moldy turf. A heavy, earthy scent rose from it; the damp smell of
molding vegetation. In the air, too, there seemed the scent of distant
blossoms. A fragrance. It lay in strata, seemingly; for occasionally it
was heavy, exotic.
* * * * *
A moving shadow came up to us--a white-skinned man, darkened by the
purple glow of father's light.
"Oh, Kean?"
"Yes, Professor." He spoke our language!
"We're going down. They came safely. Have the guard placed as I
directed."
"Yes, Master."
"Not Master--Professor. You had it right the first time."
"Yes--Professor."
"Come to me after sunrise, Kean. I'll have plenty to say then."
A man gestured. "They are checking too many of them in. A hundred or
two more came to-night."
"Oh!" exclaimed Hulda.
Zetta said quickly. "That woman, Brea--I saw her to-day--"
This fellow Kean seemed a young man, my own age or less. His face was
serious. "Yes, I saw her. They checked her in--for how long it is they
would let her stay I do not know. Too many Brauns are here now. They
come, but there seems no record of their going--"
"Place the guard," said father. "And after sunrise I'll see you, Kean."
Zetta said abruptly: "Kean, will you seek out Graff? I wish to see
him--"
"No!" father protested.
"Yes," she said quietly. A clinging, soft little vine I had thought
her, but obviously it was not so. Kean met father's glance. Evidently
he also did not approve of Zetta's wish.
"I may not see him," he returned evasively. Before Zetta could speak
again, he vanished silently into the shadows. I fancied he made a leap
upward; I did not see him come down. We started off.
We were descending now down a gentle slope. The verdure grew thicker
as we advanced. The perfume in the air turned aromatic, as though
scented by a million spiced blossoms. Abruptly the moon came out for a
moment, a small purple sun. The darkness lifted. We were in a jungle of
vegetation. It arched over us--great leafy spires, interlocking to a
network through which the moonlight straggled.
There seemed few trees; it was all a network of stalks, and giant vines
and great huge lacy leaves. Pods and flowers hung in clusters. Over our
heads the foliage was solidly interwoven. I gazed up, and in the open
moonlight up there, it seemed to me on top of this tangled vegetation,
an artificial roadway--a street perhaps--was resting. There were moving
shapes up there, as though people might be passing along a city street.
"Here we are," father called back over his shoulder. He shook his
lantern vigorously, and raised it over his head. "Here we are, '_Under
Gardens_,' Hulda named it. Our home--yours too now, while we are here."
He chuckled. "You might almost think you were back on earth, mightn't
you?"
[Illustration: "Here we are," father told us. "This is 'Under
Gardens'--it is our home. You might almost think we were back on Earth,
mightn't you?"]
He had stopped to let us come up with him. We had been following a
narrow, winding path, which like a tunnel, had been cut downward into
the jungle. It opened now unexpectedly into a small clearing. Not
that, rather should I call it a cave. The vegetation had obviously been
hewn away to form a circular opening--a cleared ground space in an oval
of a few hundred feet, walled in by the jungle, with the heavy network
closing overhead fifty feet or more above us.
The moonlight straggled down, to mingle its purple light with father's
purple lantern. I saw here in this cave-like space, a little house
built in earth fashion, a solidly square, two-storied structure of
metallic blocks. Its walls gleamed smooth and burnished. Its windows
had shutters sticking out at an angle. Behind one of the windows a dull
interior light showed.
There was a front veranda, with a railed balcony over it. Flowers were
massed upon a flat roof. A few of their stalks had climbed and mingled
with the vegetation arching above the house. On the ground there was a
front garden with a metallic fence. Flowers growing; and low things in
the ground which might have been vegetables.
Altogether, it was a friendly-looking little dwelling place, neat,
orderly, and for all its fantastic surroundings, of wholly earthly
aspect. It was, I think, just for that reason, as surprising a sight as
anything Xenephrene ever showed me.
* * * * *
Father was laughing at our amazement. "The government built it for me.
They were very kind--built it exactly as Hulda and I directed. They
think it is the most bizarre affair in their world--as no doubt it is.
Zetta lives here with us but she hates it. You do, don't you, Zetta?"
"No," she said. Her gaze at him was affectionate, and again I saw that
roguish, sidewise glance. A little witch, fascinating. "Oh, no," she
added. "I grow used to it now. But at first it was ver' terrible."
We were at the garden gate, which father had flung wide.
"Come in," said Hulda. "Dan, when you see how father has fixed
it up--the trouble everybody went to, trying to make things look
like earth. Oh, if we could only welcome you all at a time less
critical--frightening. Xenephrene is really very beautiful around here,
Dan--"
We mounted the metallic veranda and entered the living room. It held a
soft illumination of yellow-white light. Grass matting on the floor.
A polished wooden table--wood queerly porous; on the table a fabric
doily; a lamp of skin like the lantern father was carrying; and his
writing materials.
Furniture about the room, chairs of wood, with cane seats. A metallic
bowl, with water and flowers. Cushions on some of the chairs. On the
floor, a huge cushion bound circular with a fabric rope; I surmised it
to be a seat for Zetta. On a chair near an inner doorway lay a feminine
garment which Hulda snatched away.
Father gazed around him proudly. "Not bad, is it? Come on. I'll show
you the rest of the place, and then put you to bed. You must, all of
you, be exhausted--"
"I'm not tired," Freddie declared. And added, like a child: "I don't
want to go to bed."
"Well, you're going," said father. "I'll give you till dawn."
Dan demanded, "How long is that?"
"Five or six hours. It will be dark when I wake you up." His arm went
around my shoulders affectionately. "It's good to have you with us,
Peter. There is a great deal I have to say--but more which we'll have
to do." His voice turned very solemn. "Things have reached a crisis
here. It has come--more quickly than I thought."
Zetta said: "My people have made a mistake--if now they will listen to
you--"
"They'll listen to me to-morrow," he said grimly. "If it isn't too
late. We mustn't get into any discussion now--get these poor travelers
to sleep."
It did not seem to me that Freddie or Dan or myself could possibly
sleep, with all these new, strange things whirling in our heads. But we
certainly did. In an upper bedroom, upon beds which might have been on
earth, with bedroom windows open wide to the scented night, I closed
my eyes and in a moment drifted off. In the silence and darkness, the
crimson unreal things lurked around me. But they now seemed friendly
visions; my closed eyes shut them out; my ears heard their faint
murmurs, but they lulled me.
The last thing I remember was thinking of how we had said good night
to Zetta and she had left us. On Xenephrene, gravity was almost the
same as earth; in walking, I had noticed no difference. Zetta said good
night to us at the doorway of one of the upper rooms. She turned and
went through the doorway with a graceful leap.
I think she knew it would startle us--I think she did it just for that
reason. It carried her past the head of the stairs; she touched the
balustrade lightly with a hand for balance as she went over it, and
dropped the fifteen feet to the floor below. A fairy's leap, Dan had
called it that in the moonlight of a Porto Rican night. But it seemed
even more fantastic in these conventional interior surroundings of the
house, the halls and the stairway. I drifted off to sleep, thinking of
it.