"_Sanfel_," a voice said. "_Sanfel. Coth dr'gchang. Sanfel--sthan!_
"_Sanfel ... Sanfel ... have you returned, Sanfel? Answer!_"
It was a woman's voice ... the voice of a woman used to wielding
power, quiet, somehow proud as the voice of Lucifer or Lilith might
have been, and it spoke in a tongue that scarcely half a dozen living
men could understand.... A whole great race had spoken it once; only
the shamans remembered now, and the shamans who knew it were few.
Dantan's godfather had been one. And Dantan remembered the slurring
syllables of the rituals he had learned, well enough to know what the
proud, bodiless voice was saying.
The nape of his neck prickled. Here was something he could not
understand, and he did not like it. Like an animal scenting danger he
shrank into himself, not crouching, but withdrawing, so that a smaller
man seemed to stand there, ready and waiting for the next move. Only
his eyes were not motionless. They raked the room for the unseen
speaker--for some weapon to use when the time came for weapons.
His glance came back to the dark screen above the machine. And the
voice said again, in the tongue of ancient Klanvahr:
"I am not used to waiting, Sanfel! If you hear me, speak. And speak
quickly, for the time of peril comes close now. My Enemy is strong--"
Dantan said, "Can you hear me?" His eyes did not move from the screen.
Out of that blackness the girl's voice came, after a pause. It was
imperious, and a little wary.
"You are not Sanfel. Where is he? Who are you, Martian?"
* * * * *
Dantan let himself relax a little. There would be a parley, at any
rate. But after that--
Words in the familiar, remembered old language came hesitantly to his
lips.
"I am no Martian. I am of Earth blood, and I do not know this Sanfel."
"Then how did you get into Sanfel's place?" The voice was haughty now.
"What are you doing there? Sanfel built his laboratory in a secret
place."
"It was hidden well enough," Dantan told her grimly. "Maybe for a
thousand years, or even ten thousand, for all I know. The door has been
buried under a stream--"
"There is no water there. Sanfel's home is on a mountain, and his
laboratory is built underground." The voice rang like a bell. "I think
you lie. I think you are an enemy--When I heard the signal summoning
me, I came swiftly, wondering why Sanfel had delayed so long. I must
find him, stranger. I must! If you are no enemy, bring me Sanfel!" This
time there was something almost like panic in the voice.
"If I could, I would," Dantan said. "But there's no one here except
me." He hesitated, wondering if the woman behind the voice could
be--mad? Speaking from some mysterious place beyond the screen, in
a language dead a thousand years, calling upon a man who must be
long-dead too, if one could judge by the length of time this hidden
room had lain buried.
He said after a moment, "This place has been buried for a long time.
And--no one has spoken the tongue of Klanvahr for many centuries. If
that was your Sanfel's language--" But he could not go on with that
thought. If Sanfel had spoken Klanvahr then he must have died long
ago. And the speaker beyond the screen--she who had known Sanfel, yet
spoke in a young, sweet, light voice that Dantan was beginning to think
sounded familiar.... He wondered if he could be mad too.
There was silence from the screen. After many seconds the voice spoke
again, sadly and with an undernote of terror.
"I had not realized," it said, "that even time might be so different
between Sanfel's world and mine. The space-time continua--yes, a day
in my world might well be an age in yours. Time is elastic. In Zha I
had thought a few dozen--" she used a term Dantan did not understand,
"--had passed. But on Mars--centuries?"
"Tens of centuries," agreed Dantan, staring hard at the screen. "If
Sanfel lived in old Klanvahr his people are scarcely a memory now. And
Mars is dying. You--you're speaking from another world?"
"From another universe, yes. A very different universe from yours. It
was only through Sanfel that I had made contact, until now--What is
your name?"
"Dantan. Samuel Dantan."
"Not a Martian name. You are from--Earth, you say? What is that?"
"Another planet. Nearer the sun than Mars."
"We have no planets and no suns in Zha. This is a different universe
indeed. So different I find it hard to imagine what your world must be
like." The voice died.
* * * * *
And it was a voice he knew. Dantan was nearly sure of that now, and
the certainty frightened him. When a man in the Martian desert begins
to see or hear impossibilities, he has reason to be frightened. As the
silence prolonged itself he began almost to hope that the voice--the
implausibly familiar voice--had been only imagination. Hesitantly he
said, "Are you still there?" and was a little relieved, after all, to
hear her say,
"Yes, I am here. I was thinking.... I need help. I need it desperately.
I wonder--has Sanfel's laboratory changed? Does the machine still
stand? But it must, or I could not speak to you now. If the other
things work, there may be chance.... Listen." Her voice grew urgent. "I
may have a use for you. Do you see a lever, scarlet, marked with the
Klanvahr symbol for 'sight'?"
"I see it," Dantan said.
"Push it forward. There is no harm in that, if you are careful. We can
see each other--that is all. But do not touch the lever with the 'door'
symbol on it. Be certain of that.... Wait!" Sudden urgency was in the
voice.
"Yes?" Dantan had not moved.
"I am forgetting. There _is_ danger if you are not protected from--from
certain vibration that you might see here. This is a different
universe, and your Martian physical laws do not hold good between our
worlds. Vibration ... light ... other things might harm you. There
should be armor in Sanfel's laboratory. Find it."
Dantan glanced around. There was a cabinet in one corner. He went over
to it slowly, his eyes wary. He had no intention of relaxing vigilance
here simply because that voice sounded familiar....
Inside the cabinet hung a suit of something like space armor, more
flexible and skin tight than any he had ever seen, and with a
transparent helmet through which vision seemed oddly distorted. He got
into the suit carefully, pulling up the rich shining folds over his
body, thinking strangely how long time had stood still in this small
room since the last time a man had worn it. The whole room looked
slightly different when he set the helmet into place. It must be
polarized, he decided, though that alone could not account for the
strange dimming and warping of vision that was evident.
"All ready," he said after a moment.
"Then throw the switch."
With his hand upon it Dantan hesitated for one last instant of
wariness. He was stepping into unknown territory now, and to him the
unknown meant the perilous. His mind went back briefly to the Redhelms
scouring the canyons above for him. He quieted his uneasy mind with the
thought that there might be some weapon in the world of the voice which
he could turn against them later. Certainly, without a weapon, he had
little to lose. But he knew that weapon or no weapon, danger or not, he
must see the face behind that sweet, familiar, imperious voice.
He pressed the lever forward. It hesitated, the weight of milleniums
behind its inertia. Then, groaning a little in its socket, it moved.
Across the screen above it a blaze of color raged like a sudden shining
deluge. Blinded by the glare, Dantan leaped back and swung an arm
across his eyes.
When he looked again the colors had cleared. Blinking, he stared--and
forgot to look away. For the screen was a window now, with the world of
Zha behind it.... And in the center of that window--a girl. He looked
once at her, and then closed his eyes. He had felt his heart move, and
a nerve jumped in his lean cheek.
He whispered a name.
Impassively the girl looked down at him from the screen. There was no
change, no light of recognition upon that familiar, beloved face. The
face of the girl who had died at the Redhelm hands, long ago, in the
fortress of Klanvahr.... For her sake he had hunted the Redhelms all
these dangerous years. For her sake he had taken to the spaceways and
the outlaw life. In a way, for her sake the Redhelms hunted him now
through the canyons overhead. But here in the screen, she did not know
him.
He knew that this was not possible. Some outrageous trick of vision
made the face and the slender body of a woman from another universe
seem the counterpart of that remembered woman. But he knew it must be
an illusion, for in a world as different as Zha surely there could be
no human creatures at all, certainly no human who wore the same face as
the girl he remembered.
* * * * *
Aside from the girl herself, there was nothing to see. The screen was
blank, except for vague shapes--outlines--The helmet, he thought,
filtered out more than light. He sensed, somehow, that beyond her
stretched the world of Zha, but he could see nothing except the
shifting, ever-changing colors of the background.
She looked down at him without expression. Obviously the sight of him
had wakened in her no such deep-reaching echoes of emotion as her face
woke in him. She said, her voice almost unbearably familiar; a voice
sounding from the silence of death over many chilly years,
"Dantan. Samuel Dantan. Earthly language is as harsh as the Klanvahr I
learned from Sanfel. Yet my name may seem strange to you. I am Quiana."