The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt

to Norhala’s good intentions.”

      He started for the doorway; the eunuch blocked his way.

      “We have with us food of our own, Norhala,” I explained. “He goes to get it.”

      She nodded indifferently; clapped her hands. Yuruk shrank back, and out strode Drake.

      “I am weary,” sighed Norhala. “The way was long. I will refresh myself —”

      She stretched out a foot toward Yuruk. He knelt, unlaced the turquoise bands, drew off the sandals. Her hands sought her breast, dwelt for an instant there.

      Down slipped her silken veils, clingingly, slowly, as though reluctant to unclasp her; whispering they fell from the high and tender breasts, the delicate rounded hips, and clustered about her feet in soft petalings as of some flower of pale amber foam. Out of the calyx of that flower arose the gleaming miracle of her body crowned with glowing glory of her cloudy hair.

      Naked she was, yet clothed with an unearthly purity, the purity of the far-flung, serene stars, of the eternal snows upon some calm, high-flung peak, the tranquil, silver dawns of spring; protected by some spell of divinity which chilled and slew the flame of desire. A maiden Ishtar, a virginal Isis; a woman — yet with no more of woman’s lure than if she had been some exquisite and breathing statue of mingled ivory and milk of pearls.

      So she stood, indifferent to us who gazed upon her, withdrawn, musing, as though she had forgotten us. And that serene indifference, with its entire absence of what we term sex consciousness, revealed to me once more how great was the abyss between us and her.

      Slowly she raised her arms, wound the floating tresses into a coronal. I saw Drake enter with the saddlebags; saw them drop from hands relaxing under the shock of this amazing tableau; saw his eyes widen and fill with wonder and half-awed admiration.

      Now Norhala stepped out of her fallen robes and moved toward the further wall, Yuruk following. He stooped, raised an ewer of silver and began gently to pour over her shoulders its contents. Again and again he bent and filled the vessel, dipping it into a shallow basin from which came the bubbling and chuckling of a little spring. And again I marveled at the marble smoothness and fineness of her skin on which the caressing water left tiny silvery globules, gemming it. The eunuch slithered to one side, drew from a quaint chest clothes of white floss; patted her dry with them; threw over her shoulders a silken robe of blue.

      Back she floated to us; hovered over Ruth, crouching with her brother’s head upon her knees.

      She made a motion as though to draw the girl to her; hesitated as Ruth’s face set in a passion of denial. A shadow of kindness drifted through the wide, mysterious eyes; a shadow of pity joined it as she looked curiously down on Ventnor.

      “Bathe,” she murmured, and pointed to the pool. “And rest. No harm shall come to any of you here. And you —” A hand rested for a moment lightly on the girl’s curly head. “When you desire it — I will again give you — peace!”

      She parted the curtains, and the eunuch still following, was hidden beyond them.

      CHAPTER XIII

      “VOICE FROM THE VOID”

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      Helplessly we looked at each other. Then called forth perhaps by what she saw in Drake’s eyes, perhaps by another thought, Ruth’s cheeks crimsoned, her head drooped; the web of her hair hid the warm rose of her face, the frozen pallor of Ventnor’s.

      Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “Walter! Dick! Something’s happening to Martin!”

      Before she had ceased we were beside her; bending over Ventnor. His mouth was opening, slowly, slowly — with an effort agonizing to watch. Then his voice came through lips that scarcely moved; faint, faint as though it floated from infinite distances, a ghost of a voice whispering with phantom breath out of a dead throat.

      “Hard — hard! So hard!” the whispering complained. “Don’t know how long I can keep connection — with voice.

      “Was fool to shoot. Sorry — might have gotten you in worse trouble — but crazy with fear for Ruth — thought, too, might be worth chance. Sorry — not my usual line —”

      The thin thread of sound ceased. I felt my eyes fill with tears; it was like Ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity, like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and crave forgiveness — as like him as that mad attack upon the flaming Disk in its own temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlike his usual cool, collected self.

      “Martin,” I called, bending closer, “it’s nothing, old friend. No one blames you. Try to rouse yourself.”

      “Dear,” it was Ruth, passionately tender, “it’s me. Can you hear me?”

      “Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void,” the whisper began again. “Terribly alive, terribly alone. Seem outside space yet — still in body. Can’t see, hear, feel — short-circuited from every sense — but in some strange way realize you — Ruth, Walter, Drake.

      “See without seeing — here floating in darkness that is also light — black light — indescribable. In touch, too, with these —”

      Again the voice trailed into silence; returned, word and phrase pouring forth disconnected, with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rushing wave crests linked by half-seen threads of the spindrift, vocal fragments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of the mind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message.

      “Group consciousness — gigantic — operating within our sphere — operating also in spheres of vibration, energy, force — above, below one to which humanity reacts — perception, command forces known to us — but in greater degree — cognizant, manipulate unknown energies — senses known to us — unknown — can’t realize them fully — impossible cover, only impinge on contact points akin to our senses, forces — even these profoundly modified by additional ones — metallic, crystalline, magnetic, electric — inorganic with every power of organic — consciousness basically same as ours — profoundly changed by differences in mechanism through which it finds expression — difference our bodies — theirs.

      “Conscious, mobile — inexorable, invulnerable. Getting clearer — see more clearly — see —” the voice shrilled out in a shuddering, thin lash of despair —“No! No — oh, God — no!”

      Then clearly and solemnly:

      “And God said: let us make men in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

      A silence; we bent closer, listening; the still, small voice took up the thread once more — but clearly further on. Something we had missed between that text from Genesis and what we were now hearing; something that even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. The whisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence.

      “Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions who through those same centuries, and centuries upon centuries before them, found earth a garden and grave — and all these countless gods and goddesses only phantom barriers raised by man to stand between him and the eternal forces man’s instinct has always warned him are ever in readiness to destroy. That do destroy him as soon as his vigilance relaxes, his resistance weakens — the eternal, ruthless law that will annihilate humanity the instant it runs counter to that law and turns its will and strength against itself —”

      A little pause; then came these singular sentences:

      “Weaklings praying for miracles to make easy the path their own wills should clear. Beggars who whine for alms from dreams. Shirkers each struggling to place upon his god the burden whose carrying and whose carrying alone can give him strength to walk free and unafraid, himself