CHAPTER XII
The End of the Journey
"SAY DOC!" It was Larry's voice flung back at me. "I was
thinking about that frog. I think it was her pet. Damn me
if I see any difference between a frog and a snake, and one
of the nicest women I ever knew had two pet pythons that
followed her around like kittens. Not such a devilish lot of
choice between a frog and a snake - except on the side of
the frog? What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is hers,
I don't care if it's a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a whalebodied scorpion. Get me?"
By which I knew that our remarks upon the frog woman
were still bothering O'Keefe.
"He thinks of foolish nothings like the foolish sailor!"
grunted Marakinoff, acid contempt in his words. "What are
their women to - this?" He swept out a hand and as though
at a signal the car poised itself for an instant, then dipped,
literally dipped down into sheer space; skimmed forward in
what was clearly curved flight, rose as upon a sweeping upgrade and then began swiftly to slacken its fearful speed.
Far ahead a point of light showed; grew steadily; we were
within it - and softly all movement ceased. How acute had
been the strain of our journey I did not realize until I tried
to stand - and sank back, leg-muscles too shaky to bear my
weight. The car rested in a slit in the centre of a smooth
walled chamber perhaps twenty feet square. The wall facing
us was pierced by a low doorway through which we could
see a flight of steps leading downward.
The light streamed through a small opening, the base of
which was twice a tall man's height from the floor. A curving
flight of broad, low steps led up to it. And now it came to my
steadying brain that there was something puzzling, peculiar,
strangely unfamiliar about this light. It was silvery, shaded
faintly with a delicate blue and flushed lightly with a nacreous rose; but a rose that differed from that of the terraces of
the Pool Chamber as the rose within the opal differs from
that within the pearl. In it were tiny, gleaming points like
the motes in a sunbeam, but sparkling white like the dust of
diamonds, and with a quality of vibrant vitality; they were
as though they were alive. The light cast no shadows!
A little breeze came through the oval and played about us.
It was laden with what seemed the mingled breath of spice
flowers and pines. It was curiously vivifying, and in it the
diamonded atoms of light shook and danced.
I stepped out of the car, the Russian following, and began
to ascend the curved steps toward the opening, at the top of
which O'Keefe and Olaf already stood. As they looked out I
saw both their faces change - Olaf's with awe, O'Keefe's
with incredulous amaze. I hurried to their side.
At first all that I could see was space - a space filled with
the same coruscating effulgence that pulsed about me. I
glanced upward, obeying that instinctive impulse of earth
folk that bids them seek within the sky for sources of light.
There was no sky - at least no sky such as we know - all
was a sparkling nebulosity rising into infinite distances as the
azure above the day-world seems to fill all the heavens -
through it ran pulsing waves and flashing javelin rays that
were like shining shadows of the aurora; echoes, octaves
lower, of those brilliant arpeggios and chords that play about
the poles. My eyes fell beneath its splendour; I stared outward.
Miles away, gigantic luminous cliffs sprang sheer from
the limits of a lake whose waters were of milky opalescence.
It was from these cliffs that the spangled radiance came,
shimmering out from all their lustrous surfaces. To left and
to right, as far as the eye could see, they stretched - and
they vanished in the auroral nebulosity on high!
"Look at that!" exclaimed Larry. I followed his pointing
finger. On the face of the shining wall, stretched between two
colossal columns, hung an incredible veil; prismatic, gleaming with all the colours of the spectrum. It was like a web
of rainbows woven by the fingers of the daughters of the
Jinn. In front of it and a little at each side was a semi-circular
pier, or, better, a plaza of what appeared to be glistening,
pale-yellow ivory. At each end of its half-circle clustered a
few low-walled, rose-stone structures, each of them surmounted by a number of high, slender pinnacles.
We looked at each other, I think, a bit helplessly - and
back again through the opening. We were standing, as I have
said, at its base. The wall in which it was set was at least ten
feet thick, and so, of course, all that we could see of that
which was without were the distances that revealed themselves above the outer ledge of the oval.
"Let's take a look at what's under us," said Larry.
He crept out upon the ledge and peered down, the rest of
us following. A hundred yards beneath us stretched gardens
that must have been like those of many-columned Iram,
which the ancient Addite King had built for his pleasure ages
before the deluge, and which Allah, so the Arab legend tells,
took and hid from man, within the Sahara, beyond all hope of
finding - jealous because they were more beautiful than his
in paradise. Within them flowers and groves of laced, fernlike trees, pillared pavilions nestled.
The trunks of the trees were of emerald, of vermilion, and
of azure-blue, and the blossoms, whose fragrance was borne
to us, shone like jewels. The graceful pillars were tinted
delicately. I noted that the pavilions were double - in a way,
two-storied - and that they were oddly splotched with circles,
with squares, and with oblongs of - opacity; noted too that
over many this opacity stretched like a roof; yet it did not
seem material; rather was it - impenetrable shadow!
Down through this city of gardens ran a broad shining
green thoroughfare, glistening like glass and spanned at regular intervals with graceful, arched bridges. The road flashed
to a wide square, where rose, from a base of that same silvery
stone that formed the lip of the Moon Pool, a titanic structure of seven terraces; and along it flitted objects that bore
a curious resemblance to the shell of the Nautilus. Within
them were - human figures! And upon tree-bordered promenades on each side walked others!
Far to the right we caught the glint of another emeraldpaved road.
And between the two the gardens grew sweetly down to
the hither side of that opalescent water across which were
the radiant cliffs and the curtain of mystery.
Thus it was that we first saw the city of the Dweller;
blessed and accursed as no place on earth, or under or above
earth has ever been - or, that force willing which some call
God, ever again shall be!
"Chert!" whispered Marakinoff. "Incredible!"
"Trolldom!" gasped Olaf Huldricksson. "It is Trolldom!"
"Listen, Olaf!" said Larry. "Cut out that Trolldom stuff!
There's no Trolldom, or fairies, outside Ireland. Get that!
And this isn't Ireland. And, buck up, Professor!" This to
Marakinoff. "What you see down there are people - JUST PLAIN
PEOPLE. And wherever there's people is where I live. Get me?
"There's no way in but in - and no way out but out," said
O'Keefe. "And there's the stairway. Eggs are eggs no matter
how they're cooked - and people are just people, fellow
travellers, no matter what dish they are in," he concluded.
"Come on!"
With the three of us close behind him, he marched toward
the entrance.
|