Part 6

“It is that for which we are in rebellion more than anything else! We of this generation now cannot stand it. We will not stand it!”

To my mind had come memories of the savages of our earth, not so many centuries ago. They too, had thought it expedient to leave aged members of their tribes to die. The vision Sonya was invoking to my imagination was horrible. I found my voice.

“Your men here, Sonya, surely they are not all against you girls? Your cause?”

“No,” she said. “But how many are with us at heart, we do not know. And men are very strange. You cannot talk with them; they pretend you are not intelligent enough to be worthy of talking. My cousin Ren—”

Ren! It seemed incongruous.

She went on, “He is like all the rest. It is not, from his viewpoint, inhuman. It is the way things always have been. His mother died that way. He says, ‘Her life was ended.’ He says that men, brave men, meet death that way. Their life is over, the creator calls them and they go bravely.”

“But,” said Dolores, “the man who hands out the death number is not the creator.”

“Ah,” said Sonya, “but if you told that to a man he would say you do not understand.”

Her hand went to her leg. “You asked me about this band. It is placed upon us when we are just maturing. On it is engraved the name of the man we are to marry.

“If he divorces us, that is written here, and the name of the man who next takes us. Our marriage record: written plain that all may see!” Her fingers touched the band’s smooth surface. “There is nothing on mine, as yet. And there never will be, unless we win our case.”

Alice said, “Are you one of the rebels?”

“I am at heart, and I’m working with them. Technically, legally I am not. It is nearly a year yet, as you on your earth measure time, before I am of the age when I can be forced to marry.”

“What have the girls done?” I asked. “Refused to marry?”

“Yes. About eighteen hundred of them. Most are just about at the legal age. They left the cities, went to the Great Island, and there they have built themselves a village. They grow food there; they work; they are self-supporting. To many old women and a few girl-children, they have given sanctuary.”

“And the government does nothing about it?” I exclaimed.

“They did, at first. Men were sent to the Virgins’ Island to get some of the old women; but the girls forcibly resisted them. Some of the girls were killed. Nothing much has been done about it since. The government, I think, does not know what to do.”

She was scornful. “Our girls are very beautiful. It would not be profitable to kill them.”

Alice said, “You reach the marriage age in a year, Sonya? Have any men recorded their names for you?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “There were eight, I think, when I last went to the records.”

“But you wouldn’t marry any of them? Or perhaps I should not ask.”

“Why not? There is no secret in such things. One man whose name is recorded for me I love very dearly. Our prince.”

A sound from Dolores interrupted her. Dolores was sitting with hands to her forehead and eyes closed. She murmured, “I caught someone’s thoughts! Now they come again.”

We waited through a breathless silence. Then Dolores murmured, “The prince. You called him Altho? It is he!”

Sonya gripped her. “What is he thinking? Tell me! Tell me quickly!”

Then she too, received the thoughts. She sat tense. “Oh, the princess is dead! Killed!”

“Killed!” echoed Dolores. Then her face went vague: she was getting nothing more.

But evidently Sonya was still in communication. She cried aloud involuntarily, “Altho! Dearest, dearest Altho! Where are you? Tell Sonya. Oh, he does not know! Or he cannot tell me! He says—” it was a stark whisper of horror—“he says soon he will be killed too.”

She sprang to her feet, then abruptly sat down again. “Altho! Altho, where are you?”

The communication broke. Her face went vague, puzzled, empty. And then despairing.

Beyond the window, in the street below the balcony, a sudden murmur of voices floated up to us. We went to the balcony. It was night now, a night of pale stars in a cloudless sky. Shouting people were coming up the street. They appeared in a moment at the bottom of the hill, a crowd of men, a hundred or more. They came forward, swept around the corner, and vanished. Above the babble was a single sentence. A man called it. Others took it up.

Sonya murmured, “They say, ‘Our king is dying.’ And the princess dead! And your grandfather. . . . Death everywhere!”

The man in the street shouted again. And Sonya sprang from the couch.

“He says, ‘Our king is dead.’” She laughed hysterically. “Death everywhere! I must go to the Island of the Virgins. Will you come? I can take you. The virgins are ready! We must act at once!”

IX THE NAMELESS HORROR

It was the first time we had had any freedom since our arrival. Ren had not returned with Jim. If the king were really dead, there would be a great confusion at the castle. They might be detained indefinitely.

Sonya would not wait. “A few hours only,” she urged. “Then we will be back. I will leave a message for my cousin and your friend.”

The first shock of Dr. Weatherby’s death was over. There was no advantage in the girls remaining here.

We started finally. On the lower floor of the house we found long dark cloaks and donned them, with a queerly flat, mound-shaped hat for me and light scarfs to cover the girls’ heads. The lower door was open. Ren had left it so, knowing that Sonya would stay with us.

Technically we were prisoners. But Sonya paid scant ceremony to that now. The king was dead: our oath of allegiance to the nation would be taken for granted.

“My allegiance goes to you,” Dolores said naively. “You girls.”

Alice nodded.

“Yes,” said Sonya. “But do not say so openly. And you, my friend, Leonard—you are a man—be careful what you say if you have any sympathy for our cause.”

Sympathy! How mild a word, as again visions of what she had told us sprang before me!

In this residential section of the city there was at this hour no traffic in the street. The shouting crowd had disappeared. Sonya led us to the main street level. The pedestrian bridges were above us.

An unnatural silence seemed to hang about the dark, somnolent city, as though it only seemed sleeping and was wide awake. A tenseness was in the air. The houses were dark, but in almost every window I fancied that figures were watching, faces peering out.

We avoided the lights. Mounted the hill for a block or two, then turned into a very narrow street of shadows.

The houses here, the back of houses, I assumed, were blank, two-storied walls.

We passed each of them hurriedly. My heart was thumping. Sonya had said that these were merely back entrances to inner courtyards of the houses. But it seemed, to my sharpened fancy, that in every one some horrible lurking thing was waiting to spring upon us.

Sonya was leading. She was taking us through a back way to her home, to get the vehicle that would transport us to the island. We were nearing the end of the alley; it opened ahead of us into a broad street with a dim glow of light illumining it. To our right, just ahead, was a courtyard entrance: a yawning cave-mouth of emptiness.

We had almost reached it when Sonya abruptly halted, checked our advance as though she had struck some invisible barrier, stopped, and shrank backward, pressing against us. And her hand in terror was over her mouth to stifle a scream.

I saw it then, what she was seeing. A thing, something monstrous, lurking in the blackness of that cave-like house entrance, a thing huge, of vague, grotesque outline, an upright thing, with a great balloon-like head, bobbing from side to side, two eyes glowing in the darkness. And below them, where a neck might have been, two other smaller eyes, green, blazing points of fire.

In all my veins the blood seemed freezing, prickling needle-points of ice exuding through my pores, my scalp prickling at the hair-roots. I was stricken with fright and horror. But an instinct, so that I scarcely realized what I was doing, made me pull Sonya soundlessly backward, sweep all three of the girls behind me and downward. And as they sank to the pavement, I crouched tense in front of them.

The thing seemingly had not heard us, or seen us. It advanced out of the darkness of the doorway; in the dimness of the outside light I saw it more clearly, a thing like a great upright animal, ten feet tall, perhaps, and monstrously cast in human mold, with thick, bent legs. It had a long, thick trunk with wide, powerful shoulders and a deep, bulging chest, and arms that dangled nearly to its knees.

Its head, no wider than its powerful neck, was small, round, and flat on top. There seemed a face; its tiny blazing eyes were plain in the darkness.

A two-headed thing! The small head was bent forward. Behind it, as though astride of the shoulders, was another head, balloon-like: huge, wider than the shoulders, a head seemingly inflated, distended. A large flat face. The thing took a step. Its large head wobbled as it moved.

My hand behind me kept the girls motionless. The thing came to the end of the narrow street, emerged into the glow of light there. It did not pause—the light obviously was not to its liking—it bounded sidewise, noiseless on padded feet, and was gone into the shadows.

But in that instant under the light, I had seen it more clearly. A giant, gorilla-like figure. A man! Black hair seemed upon its body, but the body was partially clothed. And I fancied I had seen a belt strapped about its waist, with dangling weapons.

The bobbling head astride upon its shoulders was very different from the rest of the thing. A bloated membrane? I got that impression. It seemed a smooth, dead-white skin; I thought I had seen distended veins on it.

And as the powerful body leaped, I fancied I saw thin little arms, four of them, hanging inert from the bloated head.

It was gone. I breathed again. Behind me the huddled girls were shuddering. At my ear Sonya was whispering,

“The Nameless Horror!”

X THE FLIGHT TO THE VIRGINS’ ISLAND

We did not continue down that street. Sonya took us back. We turned another corner, and another. Soon we were near her home. She had not swerved from her purpose to take us to the Virgins’ Island. This thing we had seen was one of many of its kind which dwelt in the fastnesses of the mountains beyond the caves.

They never came out into the light; none, Sonya thought, had ever been seen more clearly than we had seen this one. No man of this realm, to Sonya’s knowledge, had ever ventured into the caves to seek them out.

I could not understand such a condition. On earth, nothing had ever been so fearsome but that man had sought to destroy it. But these people were of a different cast of mind.

“Sonya,” I demanded, “how long have these things been in the caves?”

“They were first seen only just before our prince and princess vanished.”

We reached Sonya’s home, a low, oval stone building, dark in its enshrouding garden of flower-trees. She led us aside, toward a small outbuilding. I suddenly paused.

I was in sympathy with Sonya and her cause, but was not the plight of the prince more important? Had I not better go and join Jim now, and follow the course we had planned?

We reached the dark, single-storied outbuilding. Sonya touched a switch. A soft glow showed inside. It was a square building of stone and metal, windows barred by a metal screening, a doorway with a hinged screen.

“Sonya,” I said, “just what is this you intend doing?”

She regarded me. Alice and Dolores stood beside her. I found myself arrayed against the three of them.

“Why,” she said, “we are going to the Island of the Virgins. The girls are ready; we have been waiting—” she hesitated, then finished, “waiting for this chance which has come tonight.”

“What chance? The king being ill or dead?”

Her eyes flashed. “Yes. The girls are ready. They will come back with us, now.”

She stood with shoulders squared, a defiant little figure before me.

I said, more gently, “What are you girls planning to do, Sonya?”

I think she had already told Alice and Dolores. They moved closer as though to defend her. Alice flashed me a defiant look.

I repeated, “What are you planning to do?”

Her eyes held level. “It is not my secret. You are a man. I have no right to tell you.” She added very slowly, but wholly without emotion,

“I think perhaps you had better go back.”

It struck me with a vague sense of shame. I felt like a deserter.

Alice said calmly, “Are you going back, Len?”

With what loyalty these girls already were banded against me! Little Dolores clutched me.

“Don’t do that, Leonard! Sonya, you misunderstand him.”

I tried to explain myself. “It’s only because I thought the other course would be better for the prince,” I finished. “How long will this take us, Sonya?”

Sudden tears were in her eyes. “I believe you! But you must know that I . . . least of all, would delay to help him I love! Mine is the better way, and we won’t be long—a few hours at most.”

I yielded, “All right, Sonya. You know best.”

We entered the building, a large room divided by the metal screening into huge cages. A great commotion, the flapping of wings, greeted our entrance. Travel in this realm indeed was primitive. We were to go by air, on a gliding platform drawn by giant birds trained to harness.

Sonya pulled down a swinging tube of light from the ceiling and held it toward one of the cages. Eight giant birds were there, soft, gray-white feathered bodies, heads small, round and bald with black top-knots like plumes.

They stood upon short legs, yet were as tall as myself. They seemed very gentle; they regarded us timorously, but curiously. They knew Sonya; as she entered the cage, they nuzzled with their beaks against her smock.

“Ah, Nana! They want sweets,” she laughed. One, more bold, pecked at her pocket. She leaned, and with her shoulder heaved it away. Then she produced small pieces of sweetmeat and made them each take a piece decorously.

“They are well trained, you see?” She rested an arm against the great curving side of one of them. I could well imagine that on its soft back she could have ridden into the air. One had lazily opened its wings; a feathered spread of fifteen feet at least, graceful wings, gray-white, with tips that were solid black.

The platform was under an enclosure of the flat roof. Sonya rolled it out, a platform some ten feet long, by six wide. Soft furs covered its surface. It was mounted upon small wheels, with a frame set in small cylinders of compressed gas as cushions against the shock of landing.

Midway of the platform, underneath, was a cross rod. Sonya extended its sections sidewise, each jutting out some six feet beyond the platform edge. To each of the ends of this rod, a bird was harnessed. The other six were in two strings in front, three in a string, one in advance of the other.

There were reins for the leading birds to pull their heads gently from one side to the other, a rein to pull downward on their feet, another rein, which when drawn upon, raised a cushion to press upward against the bird’s throat.

It took Sonya only a few minutes to harness them. I had been inspecting the platform. It was built of a light metal framework, upon which a thin, strong membrane was stretched. The whole seemed light as a kite.

Beneath it, set in the space between its landing gear, was a system of small, flexible wings, and movable cones through which the air rushed. And there was a horizontal and vertical rudder, with flexible tips. Flying skill was needed. There were several controls near the front of the platform, where now the reins were held in a notched cross-bar.

“We are ready,” said Sonya. She stretched upon her side on the fur covering of the platform with the reins and the controls before her.

We took our places beside her and behind her, lying at full length, arms crooked into leather straps to hold us. Sonya called to the birds. Eight of them as one, leaped upward. The great wings flapped. We moved, rolled across the roof. At its edge we lifted with a jerk.

The low housetop, the dark trees, other roofs, the dim city lights all slid downward into a blur of shadow. On a long slant, we headed upward into the starlit night.

I lay on my side, clinging to that swaying, leaping platform. The wind surged past, tearing away every sound save the flapping of those giant wings. A graceful bird on each side of me, two strings of them slanting upward in front, winged swiftly up into the night, drawing me after them.

The dark world was lost and gone. The star encrusted dome of the heavens encompassed everything.

This was not an air voyage. It was flying. The platform fluttered, slid over the air like some swiftly drawn kite. The heavens swung with a dizzy lurching. I gazed over the edge at the dark, moving landscape far down.

The faint lights of the city showed a thinly-built, suburban area, then the shore of a star-lit sea ahead. Primitive flying, with the first startling strangeness of it gone, its romance swept over me, a magic carpet upon which I lay, magically flying over reams of mystery, a flight unreal—romantically miraculous.

I was brought back from roaming fancy. Dolores, lying beside me, was pulling at my shoulder. I caught her words before the wind snatched at them.

“Look, Leonard! There is the island!”

There was no fear of this flight upon Dolores’s face. Only an eager wonderment, her mind struggling with these sights: romantic, awing to me, how much more so to her so newly emerged from a life-long darkness! “See the island, Leonard!”

We were, I suppose, no more than a thousand feet high. The shore of the sea was nearly beneath us, a dark, curving shore of gray sand with gentle white waves rolling upon it. Beyond the shore, some ten miles out, a dark island showed. It seemed irregularly circular.

As we swept closer its beach became visible, gray-white sand with white rollers. A tangle of vegetation was behind the beach, a forest jungle with the land sloping up over gentle foothills to a cone-shaped hill which occupied the island’s center.

Along one shore of the island, yellow and blue spots of lights were showing among the trees at the edge of the beach. It was all dim in the starlight. Far ahead, where the sea unbroken reached the horizon of stars, a yellow glow had come to the sky.

Sonya gestured, “The moon is rising.”

It came with a startling abruptness. A great yellow world swung up, twice, three times the visual size of our moon: a glowing yellow disk, marked with the dark configurations of its mountains. It rose horn-shaped, mounted straight up, slowly, but with a movement quite visible. The stars paled around it. A flood of yellow light lay upon the sea in a broad path of rippling gold.

The island was bathed in the golden flood. We were much closer to it now, swooping a few hundred feet above its beach which along here was broad and hard. The jungle was beside us, a fairyland of tropical verdure.

Warmed by the waters of the sea, and perhaps by hidden fires of the cone-shaped hill, the vegetation grew to giant size.

A giant forest edged with gold, mysteriously dark, romantic, amorous, scented with spices and the heavy perfume of flowers.

We landed upon the beach where the warm waves were liquid gold beside low, primitive, palm-thatched dwellings set like ground nests in the verdure.

With the rush of our flight gone, I felt a new warmth in the air. Upon my cheeks was the caressing breath of a warm breeze from the sea; it stirred the palm-fronds to amorous whispering.

White figures were drawn back from the beach to watch us land. They crowded forward into the moonlight, young girls, slim and white, with long, flowing black hair.

As I stood up and stepped from the platform to the sand, some of them scattered and fled with startled feminine cries into the enshrouded foliage. Others came shyly forward, crowded around us—golden nymphs in the moonlight, with a brief, veil-like garment from shoulder to thigh.

They were surprised at me, a man, here upon their island. They crowded around Sonya, talking seemingly all at once, casting mistrustful glances at me, and glances of curiosity and friendliness at Alice and Dolores.

What Sonya said to them I could only guess. It caused an excitement; like fauns, many of them leaped away, running down the beach, scattering over the village. In the distance I could hear their cries, and other cries, shouts, a great activity beginning.

And presently there was heard the cheep of giant birds, the flapping of their wings as they were released from their cages and brought out to be harnessed. Far ahead down the beach in the moonlight, presently a crowd of the girls began rolling out a huge platform.

The few girls who remained with Sonya continued talking. They were tense now, but wholly composed, beautiful, intelligent-looking girls, most of them a year or so older than Sonya, and very much the same type. Upon the left leg of each, just above the knee, was a broad metal band.

The girls now were ignoring me. But Sonya called Dolores and Alice over, and it was obvious they were welcomed.

I saw presently, some of the older women. With a few little girls among them, they came to the edge of the forest and stood timidly regarding us—infancy and age, common fugitives.

Alice was gesturing toward the sky. I turned. Off there in the starlight, in the direction we had come, was a lone bird flying. In a moment I could see its wings.

Sonya called something; and added to Alice, “A girl arriving from Kalima.”

The bird swooped in a great descending arc, a great white bird like those which had drawn our platform. Mounted upon its back was the figure of a girl, her arms clinging about its neck. It soared with poised wings, descended to the beach near us.

The girl leaped to the sand and called, “Sonya! Sonya!”

They talked in their own language; then Sonya whirled to me. Her face had gone white.

“Alta, this girl, lives very near Ren’s house in Kalima. I do not mean my home, his and mine. I mean that other house of his where you were living. Alta went there to see me.”

She was talking swiftly. Alice and Dolores drew me to one side; a common feeling of disaster was upon us all.

“Alta found the door open and went in. She read my message to Ren, that we had come here to the island. She was leaving. In the street outside she heard voices. From the window she saw Ren with your Jim. They were nearly to the house.

“Then . . . a great black thing leaped upon them, a giant, with a great, wobbling head. What we saw, Leonard! The Nameless Horror! It leaped upon them, and there were two or three others of its kind. They seized my cousin and Jim. Lifted them up, carried them off! She . . . Alta, took one of my birds, and came here to tell us!”

XI A MAN, TO PLAY A MAN’S PART

I stood a moment, transfixed with horror. Alice’s face had become as white as Sonya’s. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, “Jim!”

“Sonya—” I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls. They sped away. I finished, “Sonya, get me back, at once!”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But you can do nothing—a stranger—you cannot talk our language.”

“I can, with you to interpret for me.”

She whirled upon Alta with other questions, then back to me. “More than ever now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says the king is not dead. But dying, he will die at any moment. We must get back.”

Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or more were loading upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of the birds, it moved down the beach. Rose into the air. It had four strings of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and passed us high overhead.