Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the
brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human
life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.
Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and
home--Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the
rock--even as she had promised.
The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time
to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful
surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that
inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered
again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt
curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor's forehead.
In his eyes and in Drake's I saw reflected the horror I knew was in
my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this--sternly, coldly
triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she
scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of
living beauty.
I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed
so ruthlessly could not ALL have been wholly evil. Yet mother and
blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within
the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their
different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater
number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own
civilization.
From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But
from Ruth--
My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with
a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul
of that catastrophe.
My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep
indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor's head
biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of
swollen white flesh rimming the cincture. It was the mark of--torture!
“Martin,” I cried. “That ring? What did they do to you?”
“They waked me with that,” he answered quietly. “I suppose I ought to be
grateful--although their intentions were not exactly--therapeutic--”
“They tortured him,” Ruth's voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in
Persian--for Norhala's benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper
reason. “They tortured him. They gave him agony until he--returned. And
they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.
“And me--me”--she raised little clenched hands--“me they stripped like a
slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They
took me before that swine Norhala has punished--and stripped me
before him--like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother.
Norhala--they were evil, all evil! Norhala--you did well to slay them!”
She caught the woman's hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her
from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old
tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the
golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint
chimings.
“It is done,” she said. “And it was well done--sister. Now you and I
shall dwell together in peace--sister. Or if there be those in the world
from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go
forth with our companies and stamp them out--even as I did these.”
My heart stopped beating--for from the depths of Ruth's eyes shining
shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala's calling; and, as they
rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning--drew
closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance
had banished but that had now returned to its twin thrones of Norhala's
eyes.
And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the
face of Ruth!
The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over
her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.
“Sister!” she whispered. “Little sister! These men you shall have as
long as it pleases you--to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish
they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.
“But you and I, little sister, will dwell together--in the
vastnesses--in the peace. Shall it not be so?”
With no faltering, with no glance toward us three--lover, brother, old
friend--Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal,
royal breasts.
“It shall be so!” she murmured. “Sister--it shall be so. Norhala--I am
tired. Norhala--I have seen enough of men.”
An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over
the woman's wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to
her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and
caressing.
“Ruth!” cried Drake--and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even
as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.
“Wait,” said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully,
blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. “Wait. No
use--now.”
There was a curious understanding in his voice--a curious sympathy,
too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this
weirdly exquisite woman who held her.
“Wait!” exclaimed Drake. “Wait--hell! The damned witch is stealing her
away from us!”
Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an
invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And
as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it
rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the
city.
We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it
widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol
of this her second victory--or had set it between us as a barrier.
Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us
from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.
Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon
whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and
Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.
The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into
the waiting Thing.
Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it
had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us.
As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the
black blot at its breast.
We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through
the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel--speaking no word, Drake's
eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her
always with that enigmatic sympathy. We passed between the walls of the
further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.
There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint,
sustained thrumming--like the beating of countless muffled drums. The
Thing that carried us trembled--the sound died away. The Thing quieted;
it began its steady, effortless striding through the crowding trees--but
now with none of that speed with which it had come, spurred forward by
Norhala's awakened hate.
Ventnor stirred; broke the silence. And now I saw how wasted was his
body, how sharpened his face; almost ethereal; purged not only by
suffering but by, it came to me, some strange knowledge.
“No use, Drake,” he said dreamily. “All this is now on the knees of the
gods. And whether those gods are humanity's or whether they are--Gods of
Metal--I do not know.
“But this I do know--only one way or another can the balance fall; and
if it be one way, then you and we shall have Ruth back. And if it falls
the other way--then there will be little need for us to care. For man
will be done!”
“Martin! What do you mean?”
“It is the crisis,” he answered. “We can do nothing, Goodwin--nothing.
Whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of Destiny.”
Again there came that distant rolling--louder, now. Again the Thing
trembled.
“The drums,” whispered Ventnor. “The drums of destiny. What is it they
are heralding? A new birth of Earth and the passing of man? A new child
to whom shall be given dominion--nay, to whom has been given dominion?
Or is it--taps--for Them?”
The drumming died as I listened--fearfully. About us was only the
swishing, the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the
Thing. Motionless stood Norhala; and as motionless Ruth.
“Martin,” I cried once more, a dreadful doubt upon me. “Martin--what do
you mean?”
“Whence did--They--come?” His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath
the red brand clear and quiet, too. “Whence did They come--these Things
that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis's
city? Are they spawn of Earth--as we are? Or are they foster
children--changelings from another star?
“These creatures that when many still are one--that when one still are
many. Whence did They come? What are They?”
He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes
shone up at him, enigmatically--as though they heard and understood.
“I do not forget,” he said. “At least not all do I forget of what I saw
during that time when I seemed an atom outside space--as I told you,
or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that
seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.
“There were three--visions, revelations--I know not what to call them.
And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think,
can be true; and of the third--that may some time be true but surely is
not yet.”
Through the air came a louder drum roll--in it something ominous,
something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now
I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.
“I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through space.
It was no globe--it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished
planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut
out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of God, if you
will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.
“I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet
patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical
hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of
interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars,
pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling
harmony--as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those
which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness--totalled.
“The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the
errors of the infinite.
“The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer--the
symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers--These!”
He pointed to the Thing that bore us.
“I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic
notion came to me--fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around
a nucleus of strange truth. It was”--his tone was half whimsical,
half apologetic--“it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some
mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with
amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse
of mathematical--a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us
and the things we call living.
“It had no mission; it wasn't at all out to do any reforming; it wasn't
in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the
Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences
between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple
with its equally tidy servitors.
“Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through space
on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics;
its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for
equilibrium by which we live; needing neither air nor water, heeding
neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar space and
stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun.”
A thrill of amazement passed through me; fantasy all this might be
but--how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as
we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the
Metal Monster upon our sun.
“That passed,” he went on, unnoticing. “I saw vast caverns filled with
the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth--the
fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.
“But in those caverns, under countless orbs of many colored
lights”--again the thrill of amaze shook me--“they grew. It came to me
that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst
into it--into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that
picture passed.”
His voice deepened.
“There came a third vision. I saw our Earth--I knew, Goodwin,
indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling
hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and
polished symbols--geometric, fashioned.
“The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned
settings of crystal shores. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the
ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on
all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man.
On this Earth that had been ours were only--These.
“Visioning!” he said. “Don't think that I accept them in their entirety.
Part truth, part illusion--the groping mind dazzled with light of
unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to
help it understand.
“But still--SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I
do know--that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face
now--this very instant.”
The picture flashed behind my own eyes--of the walled city, its
thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of
the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat--and then the dreadful, desolate
mount.
And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth--the city as Earth's cities--its
gardens and groves as Earth's fields and forests--and the vanished
people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.
“But Martin,” I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror,
“there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of
our striking through the sun to destroy the Things--something of them
being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke
them they must fall. A hope--a PROMISE, that they would NOT conquer.”
“I remember,” he replied, “but not clearly. There WAS something--a
shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of
our own world--some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.
“I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a
little of it that I say those drums may not be--taps--for us.”
As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth--no
longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air
and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like
covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees.
The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and
deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb,
accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.
I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under
me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.
“Drums?” muttered Drake. “THEY'RE no drums. It's drum fire. It's like a
dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come
from?”
“Drums,” whispered Ventnor. “They ARE drums. The drums of Destiny!”
Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading.
The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent
over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.
Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.
Came a shrill, keen wailing--louder than ever I had heard before. There
was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a
swift sinking.
The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid;
little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows
across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of
cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward--away from us.
From Norhala came a single cry--resonant, blaring like a wrathful,
golden trumpet.
The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed
down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory,
commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the
trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.
Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief,
Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through
her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.
Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala's flaming
hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl--about
Ruth's creamy skin--a radiant nimbus began to glow.
In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala's home. Not
far from it now was the rushing pyramid--and it came to me that within
that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for
the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the
shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its
spheres and tetrahedrons--at least within its visible bulk.
The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we
gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail
of notes from Norhala--never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor
that seemed to try to smother them.
The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the
Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the
pillar's base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the
blue dome of Norhala's house.
The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted
down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had
carried us.
I had been right--built it was only of globe and pyramid; an
inconceivably grotesque shape, it hung over us.
Throughout the towering Shape was awful movement; its units writhed
within it. Then it was lost to sight in the mists through which the
Thing we had pursued had gone.
In Norhala's face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant
uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful.
“I am afraid!” I heard her whisper.
She tightened her grasp upon dreaming Ruth; motioned us to go within.
We passed, silently; behind us she came, followed by three of the great
globes, by a pair of her tetrahedrons.
Beside a pile of the silken stuffs she halted. The girl's eyes dwelt
upon hers trustingly.
“I am afraid!” whispered Norhala again. “Afraid--for you!”
Tenderly she looked down upon her, the galaxies of stars in her eyes
soft and tremulous.
“I am afraid, little sister,” she whispered for the third time. “Not yet
can you go as I do--among the fires.” She hesitated. “Rest here until I
return. I shall leave these to guard you and obey you.”
She motioned to the five shapes. They ranged themselves about Ruth.
Norhala kissed her upon both brown eyes.
“Sleep till I return,” she murmured.
She swept from the chamber--with never a glance for us three. I heard a
little wailing chorus without, fast dying into silence.
Spheres and pyramids twinkled at us, guarding the silken pile whereon
Ruth lay asleep--like some enchanted princess.
Beat down upon the blue globe like hollow metal worlds, beaten and
shrieking.
The drums of Destiny!
The drums of Doom!
Beating taps for the world of men?