By the Light of the Green Star

Chapter 13 Under the Peering Rays

For some days Janchan, Niamh, and the others dwelt undisturbed in the huge chamber of the Flying City, as part of what the ancient philosopher Nimbalim had ironically termed “the Legion of the Doomed.”

They were a healthy, well-fed, physically robust lot, the captives of the Skymen. Nutritious broths, cakes of highly enriched cereals, and a delicious variety of meat Nimbalim assured the travelers was synthetically grown in breeding vats, comprised their diet. The perpetual radiance of strange lamps suspended far above provided a stimulating and healthful illumination that was a precise imitation of sunlight.

For all their vigor and health, however, the Legion of the Doomed were a listless, dispirited lot. Their eyes were empty of hope, almost of cogitation, and, with nothing to do, they sprawled about on mats or merely wandered to and fro without purpose. Janchan had never seen laboratory animals, for his race was not of that level of technological advancement, but the similarity between the plump idleness of guinea pigs being fattened for the experimental lab and the healthy but spiritless humans penned by the black men would have struck him, had he known of such practices.

There was, quite literally, nothing to do. And from long inactivity, the morale of the captives had dwindled until will and ego were vestigial among them at best. They did not converse, or if they did, it was in the most desultory fashion. There was no activity among them, neither games nor communal enterprises of any kind. They merely sat slumped, hands empty and dangling, eyes glassy with bore dom, or wandered to and fro as aimlessly as bubbles drifting upon a current.

The listlessness of their fellow-prisoners began to get on Janchan’s nerves. He sought to engage them in conversation, to learn of their origins and professions, to enlist them in games. To all such attempts to arouse them from their stupor, however, they responded with disinterested monosyllables or merely with blank stares.

There were, however, a few who, like Nimbalim, strove to retain their sanity. Nimbalim tutored some of the brighter, less mentally dead of the captives in mathematics, philosophy, logic. With the few younger persons who gathered about the ancient philosopher, Janchan struck up friendships. Many of these, the still alert ones, had been born in captivity here in Calidar. They knew nothing of the outer world, nothing of the great planet beneath them, where tens of thousands of men and women of their kind lived and fought and loved and hunted, sang songs, pursued goals, created art, and worshiped gods.

To them The World Below was as much of a legend as this very Flying City had been to those who dwelt in the treetop cities. It was a twist of irony, and had Janchan been in better spirits, he might have appreciated the irony of it. However, he was sinking into despondency and despair himself, and was beginning to feel desperate.

“The only thing to do is to contrive our escape from this nightmare realm of living death,” he confided to his comrades.

“I agree,” said Niamh, “but how shall we manage it? The only door is of solid metal and must weigh tons. Furthermore it is locked or barred in some fashion on the outside, and here within it presents only a smooth, unbroken surface.”

“I know—I know!” Janchan groaned.

“Our food and drink come from panels in the wall, which seem to be operated automatically, and which are apertures too small to admit the passage of a human body, anyway,” she added.

“I am aware of that, as well,” he sighed. “Nevertheless, I intend to keep my eyes and ears open. Sooner or later we will be presented with the opportunity to make our escape, and I plan to be ready when that moment comes.”

“It is blasphemy, to speak of wishing to escape from the Holy City of the Gods,” Arjala said, “and my Divine cousins will punish you for your iniquities.” But her heart was not really in it, and, as no one paid her any attention, anyway, she lapsed into glum silence.

The following day there came a break in their routine. The great door unexpectedly slid open and superb black men with disdainful faces, armed with curious glassy rods, appeared, and for once the dull-eyed captives displayed animation. They squeaked, cowered, fled from the appearance of their masters.

The black men stepped through the milling throng without glancing to left or right. It was the four newcomers they were after, and, for all the interest they displayed in the mob of other captives, they might have been a herd of frightened but harmless sheep.

Janchan permitted himself to be taken, and stopped his companions when they would have fled, for he desired to discover more concerning the mysterious supermen who ruled this fantastic aerial city.

Light leashes were settled around their throats. Janchan, Arjala, Zarqa, and Niamh the Fair were singled out of the throng and were led from the great chamber into a domed corridor beyond. From thence they were led into a brilliantly lit laboratory, with openwork metal-frame tables rigged before immense screens of ground glass.

Then they were stripped naked. When the Skymen laid hands on Niamh and Arjala for this purpose, Janchan sprang among them and knocked down two of the ebon-skinned attendants. Another stepped up behind him and laid the glassy rod he carried against the back of the prince’s neck. Frightful agony exploded in his brain and Janchan reeled and would have fallen had not two of the Skymen seized him and held him erect. The glassy rods evidently carried a charge of electricity and served rather like bull-prods. He was dazed but conscious, although temporarily unable to move his limbs, due to the temporary paralysis induced by the electrical charge which overloaded and, for the moment, had burned out his motor-nerves.

They stripped him of his clothing and clamped him upright in the framework table of metal rods. Then they did the same to the two women. Niamh endured their touch stoically and without protest, and, in fact, they handled her as casually and impersonally as a veterinarian might handle a domesticated animal. But Arjala protested vehemently.

“My Divine cousins, is it possible you do not recognize one of your own kind? ‘Tis I—Arjala, Incarnate Goddess in Ardha. Take your hands off me, you—you—”

Then one of the black-skinned men touched her with the electric rod and she screamed deafeningly. They stripped away her gorgeous raiment, gems crunching underfoot as they pinned her against the metal framework and clamped her writhing limbs into place. Janchan, still groggy from his taste of the rod but scarlet with outrage and fury, struggled against his bonds but could not free himself in order to spring to her assistance.

Two of the beautiful black men stood apart from this scene, viewing it dispassionately.

“Odd, is it not, Kalistus, how the brutes jabber and squeal—almost as if they were capable of speech?” said one amusedly.

The other nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, Ralidux, but I am more interested in the instinct by which the male seeks to defend the female; a crude presentiment of the civilized ethic of chivalry. And then, there is the curious use of rags and scraps of vegetable matter, a sort of anticipation of the habit of clothing the body. It never fails to interest me how closely the animals come to imitating true humans such as ourselves.”

“Well, there is nothing in it to mystify the true scientist.” Ralidux shrugged. “There are creatures in The World Below which gather together nuts and stones and bits of bright feathers or leaves, like a rich man accumulating a hoard of treasure; and insects capable of building hanging nests or even bridges between the tree-branches, that employ some of the higher principles of stress-architecture. And, of course, as everyone knows, there are forms of insectoid life which possess an instinct for certain forms of rudimentary social order, even a caste system. The instinctive mimicry by which the four-limbed mammals, such as these, imitate civilized humanity are but another manifestation of Nature’s sense of humor.”

“Of course you are right; but it never fails to intrigue me,” Kalistus said indifferently. “Well, let us get on with it.

The four were now stripped and spread-eagled upon the framework of metal rods. Now, as Kalistus gave the command, the huge ground-glass screens were wheeled into place and strangely brilliant beams of colorless light probed at the bodies of the four subjects. Peering through goggles with heavy lenses at the glowing screens, Ralidux and Kalistus could scrutinize the muscles, bones, glands, and organs of the four subjects, visible to their eyes due to the peculiar penetrative power of the light rays.

“Splendid subjects for the L-sequence experimentation,” Ralidux observed. “The females, in particular, are superb specimens. Look at the endocrine glands of the juvenile female, and the frontal lobes of the older. And the musculature of the male, in particular. Admirable!”

“I agree,” Kalistus murmured. “But the fourth specimen is something new to my experience. An unknown species, I am certain of it. I must inquire of the learned Clyon if he has record of a winged proto-humanoid having ever been examined before. Observe that the wings are obviously functional. Notice the porous nature of the larger bones, and that ribs and minor bones seem to be hollow, to lessen the weight. The musculature of the wing-systems is particularly ingenious. This specimen we must surely not waste on idle L-sequence experimentation. Mark the winged one specimen ‘X-1’ and set it aside for the dissection chamber, will you?”

Zarqa found himself able to understand the speech of the Skymen, as, indeed, did Janchan, to his amazement. It was an antique variant of their own language, one which stressed certain vowels in a peculiar manner, and slurred certain consonants—but not to the extent that the words could not be hazily followed.

“Gods and Demigods,” said Janchan hoarsely, “can’t you understand that we are men like you, and not animals? It was Zarqa’s kind that built this Flying City of yours in the first place, you black-skinned maniacs! Dissection—Zarqa! They can’t mean it—”

Kalistus and Ralidux, bent over the glowing screens, busily directing the penetrative rays to this organ and that, paid precisely the same attention to the mouthings of the experimental subjects that a Terrene scientist would to the squealing or grunting of the guinea pigs he was examining. Which is to say, not the slightest.

I fear they do mean it, friend Janchan, Zarqa answered solemnly. Be of good cheer; it would seem we are now to be parted, but we may yet meet again. Farewell!

“Zarqa!” Janchan shouted. But the Kalood, still strapped erect to the standing frame, was wheeled out of the room at the directive of Kalistus, who followed the attendants from the chamber, leaving Ralidux behind to switch off the penetrative lamps.

“You—damnable—unfeeling—snakes!” Janchan panted, glaring at the indifferent black-skinned Skyman. For a moment their eyes met, and the young prince glared furiously into the cool, indifferent, quicksilver gaze of the black man.

At something in the eyes of Janchan, Ralidux shivered involuntarily. It was almost as if he had discovered a spark of intelligence in the blank gaze of a beast. Shuddering involuntarily, he hastily averted his eyes. It was only later that he wondered why he had done so; after all, however manlike in form the brute might seem, he was still only a brute.

“Remove them,” he said to the attendants, “and return them to their quarters. Oh, and return to them their rags; I have noticed they are quieter and more tractable when permitted to clutch their scraps of cloth about themselves.”

The three were taken down—Janchan grim-faced and glowering, Niamh pale but frigid with disdain. As for Arjala, the Goddess was sobbing in uncontrollable hysteria at being so casually handled—stripped, coldly examined, and subjected to that frightful lash of electric pain—and by the Gods she believed to be her own cousins. It was an unthinkable humiliation, and all the way back to the great domed room where they were penned up with the others, she was scarlet with embarrassment, shaken, and in tears.

Niamh sought to sooth her.

“Dear Arjala, it is as we have been trying to tell you, they are not gods at all, but merely a divergent branch of our own race, gone mad with pride and folly!”

Arjala snatched herself away from the girl’s soothing touch, and once they had been returned to the great domed chamber where Nimbalim anxiously awaited them, she drew apart and flung herself down in a corner to weep in vexation until her eyes were red and puffy, her throat raw, and her brain so exhausted that she was able to fall into a nervous, uneasy slumber, shot through and through with haunted nightmarish dreams.

Her world was destroyed, her most cherished beliefs proven to be unfounded myths. Is it any wonder she was distraught?

Most horrible of all—they had taken away her amphashand to be cut up alive, under the cold scrutiny of the inhuman black monsters with eyes like gelid pools of mercury.

Arjala could delude herself only so far; she was far too intelligent to live a lie forever. And she, like Janchan and Zarqa, had recognized the tenor of converse between the two black Skymen. She knew what “dissection” meant. She knew the horrid agony that awaited the helpless Kalood beneath the bright lights and the sterile knives—and her mind winced and shuddered and recoiled in loathing at the knowledge.

Her gods were not gods but monsters of inhuman cruelty. Not supermen, but cold-blooded, torturing maniacs. It was intolerable, unendurable! But it was the truth, and she must face it. She had been completely wrong, in her spoiled pride and vanity and stubborn blindness. And the others… they had been right all along.

Let us leave her to her lonely agony of self-knowledge, as there in the sunlit hall, among the vapid, listless, wandering captives, the Goddess discovered herself to be nothing more than a woman, and a proud, foolish, overweening one, at that.

Chapter 14 Beast or Human?

Following the examination of the beast-creatures, Ralidux returned to his quarters to make entries concerning the newly acquired test-subjects in his log of experiments. He felt obscurely troubled, almost uneasy, but the cause of these perturbations was too elusive to be given a name.

Concluding his note-taking, the ebon savant drank a goblet of an effervescent beverage, supped lightly on herbcakes, and strolled into his garden thinking to relieve his mind by meditating on the beauties of cultivated foliage. But the peace of mind he sought continued to elude him.

The garden of Ralidux was a fairyland of immense, hybrid blossoms, some of which glowed luminously against the gloom, while others shed on the evening air exquisite perfumes. Narrow paths strewn with radiant crystal dust meandered between banks of mysterious flowers. Artificial fountains tinkled in the murmurous silence, and small bridges arched over wandering rivulets.

The Flying City generally floated at a height of six or seven miles above the surface of the planet, at a level some miles above the tops of even the tallest trees. The air was thin and cold, but breathable even at this extreme height, as the leafage of the giant trees, transmuting carbon monoxide into oxygen by the process of photosynthesis, released copious supplies of the gas into the upper layers of the atmosphere. However, the temperatures at this extreme height were arctic, and the gardens of Ralidux were roofed with domes of crystal so that the delicate blooms would not become blighted by the chill.

It was night on the World of the Green Star. The impenetrable mists which veiled the skies of the planet hid the stars from view, and, as this world went unaccompanied by any lunar attendants, the night was one of intensest gloom. In the velvety darkness, the phosphorescent flowers shimmered like ghostly lamps, dimly crimson, dark gold, glowing jade and amethyst and lucent azure.

The flowers were grouped so that their colored luminosities should show to best advantage by contrast. The hybrids had been bred for this luminosity through patient toil. Radioactive salts, mingled in their soil-beds, resulted in their phosphorescence. Generally, the luminous beauty of his garden soothed and made tranquil the mind of Ralidux. On this particular evening, however, tranquility eluded him.

The intelligence of the ebon savant was of far too high an order to permit him the luxury of self-delusion. Ralidux knew the cause of his perturbation lay in the all-too-human emotion he had glimpsed in the eyes of one of the male specimens—the one his notes listed as L-3394-M. Ralidux had examined the bodies of many of the captive beast-creatures before; usually, they were either paralyzed by fear or sluggish and apathetic. The quick response he had observed in this particular specimen, however, had been occasioned by the laboratory attendants’ handling of one of the females. As it happened, very few female specimens had ever been taken captive on zawkaw raids before, and those few had generally been of advanced age. The protective instincts of the male specimens, therefore, had seldom been roused before in the presence of Ralidux.

That the specimen should possess such instincts, indicative of a higher order of intelligence than was generally conceded to the beast-creatures, puzzled him. Ralidux had studied with great curiosity the annals of the past, and knew that human beings such as himself possessed an instinct for the protection of their women. Heretofore he had always regarded the instinct as a token of high intelligence, an instinct denied to the lower orders of mammalian life. To observe it in the conduct of this particular male specimen intrigued his curiosity.

An interrogative mewling cry disturbed the stillness of the dark garden. A small, sleekly furred creature emerged from the boughs of a glossy-leafed bush and sprang lightly to his shoulder. Absently, he fondled its silken ears as his pet mlimnoth turned its huge, moony eyes upon him plaintively.

“By rights the specimens ought to display an intelligence no higher than yours, my little friend,” Ralidux murmured, stroking the silken blue fur of the dainty, marmoset-like creature. “And its eyes should contain no brighter spark than do your own,” he added, as the delicate little creature peered at him with immense eyes of luminous amber. “I wonder… is it possible the beast-creatures are evolving into a higher order?”

On impulse, the beautiful black man reentered his apartments and touched dials set in the wall beneath an octagon of dimly lucent crystal. Light glowed behind the crystal pane and, before long, there formed within the plate the face of an older person whose lined features and glaring quicksilver eyes displayed ill-temper.

“Forgive me for disturbing you at so late an hour, esteemed Clyon,” began Ralidux. The image cut him off with a quick gesture.

“To have thus interrupted my preliminary meditations is an affront,” the aged savant said. “However, I was but sampling my variety of essences and extracts, preparatory to creating the appropriate mood of inner serenity. What is the cause of this late call?”

“Kalistus and I were subjecting some recently captured beast-creatures to the penetrative rays. I thought I detected signs of superior intelligence in one male specimen, when a female, perhaps its mate, was being handled by the attendants.”

“The instinct of the male to protect the female should afford you no particular surprise,” sniffed the elder with some asperity. “The protective instinct has been noted in previous cases—the records of the 7-sequence, I believe, preserve the observance.”

Ralidux shook his head.

“Not so, honorable Clyon. I have just scrutinized those records, and in that particular the protective instinct was displayed by a brood-female, angered by the molestation of her cubs.”

“Is that so?” Clyon queried absently. “Well, perhaps you are correct. At any rate, the datum is not sufficiently important to cause me to postpone my meditations. The L-sequence is in your hands, yours and those of young Kalistus, and have naught to do with my own studies.”

“I was wondering if the beast-creatures might not be evolving into a higher order,” Ralidux suggested diffidently. Clyon’s image looked first amused, then indignant.

“An heretical concept, young Ralidux! Over nine millennia have passed since the immortal Lysippus, with the concurrence of the Council of Science, established the doctrine of the bestiality of the creatures, and their innate inferiority.”

Ralidux nodded. “Yes, senior, but the same Council also established the doctrine of evolution, according to which the lower orders are consistently striving toward superior forms and higher refinements of their intellectual processes.”

Clyon eyed him sternly.

“The hour of my meditation approaches,” he said with finality. “My mood of passive receptivity must be encouraged, due to this delay, by imbibition of a narcotic. Your interruption was poorly timed, and the direction of your thinking leads toward heretical doctrine. Beware of intellectual error, my young friend. Continue the L-sequence as bade by Council decree, and cease pondering these dangerous fallacies.”

Before Ralidux could protest, the image faded from the octagonal plate and Clyon’s voice faded from the receiver, leaving the beautiful black man alone with his thoughts.

The very next morning, Ralidux dispatched two attendants to the chamber where the specimens were penned, with a written order to deliver two of the specimens into his personal care. An hour later Janchan and Arjala found themselves imprisoned in an opaque cell for two on a higher level of the citadel. The captives were unaware of the scrutiny of Ralidux.

Their sudden separation from Niamh and the ancient philosopher aroused in both inward trepidations upon which they did not care to dwell. It had been bad enough, when Katistus had carried off Zarqa the Kalood for the grisly purpose of dissection. But now, to be removed from the common cell indicated they were about to be subjected to torments all the more loathsome in that they were undefined and even unimaginable.

Arjala curled in the far corner of the cubicle, a woeful and sullen figure. Janchan, striving to relieve her of her unspoken fears, put the best interpretation on the events he could, and tried to hearten her through optimism.

When this failed, he made her as comfortable as he could, saw that supplies of food and water were within her reach, and squatted before the entry panel as if on sentinel duty.

Through a cleverly concealed spy-hole, Ralidux observed the way in which the male tended to the female in a solicitous manner, and, seemingly, mounted guard over her nest. These seemed to him to possess all the earmarks of a refined and even civilized intelligence. He would have much preferred it had the two specimens squalled and capered about, jabbering like frightened brutes. Their economy of gesture and restraint of deportment, together with the obvious solicitude tendered to the female, roused within him again those nameless and heretical forebodings against which the senior savant had issued stern warning the night before.

After a time, Ralidux inserted a slumber-inducing essence into the air system of the cubicle. Disdaining the use of attendants, once both specimens had succumbed, he then entered himself and studied the form of the sleeping female. Her garments were rags and her ornaments seemed to his taste barbaric baubles on a class with the colored pebbles or vivid feathers found in a jackdaw’s nest or a pack rat’s hoard. Yet her features were symmetrical and her limbs delicately curved. Had it not been for the unearthly tawny amber hue of her flesh, so unlike his own rich jet hide, and for the weird floating mane of silken fur which hid her scalp and flowed uncleanly down her back and shoulders, she could almost have been a human being.

He examined her curiously, with an inner excitement he was hardly aware of, noting the voluptuous curves of hips and thighs and the soft rondure of her magnificent breasts. Something stirred to life within him—something which he had never previously experienced, and something which he found strangely disturbing.

There were no female members of the race of the Skymen. According to authentic doctrine, the race had always perpetuated itself by cellular fission and the cloning process, followed by laboratory incubation. The decree of the Council of Science had been intact from time immemorial, that the race was devoid of the female component, and that the division into sexes and reproduction by brute copulation were marks of the beast, known only to the lower orders of mammalian life. Whence, therefore, this strange excitement that welled within him? Whence this trembling urgency, this curious hunger to touch—to caress and fondle? Why did his heart race, his temples throb, his breath come in fast, hot panting?

Leaning over the sleeping figure, his nostrils distended so as to drink in the warm perfume of her naked flesh, Ralidux without realizing it extended his hand and almost stroked the silken hair of the unconscious woman.

A moment later, he snatched his hand back, arresting the half-completed gesture. The tips of his fingers tingled, as if he had nearly touched live coals.

Abruptly, he turned about and left the cubicle, closing the entry panel behind him. The excitement within him shook the very core of his being with a violence akin to nausea. He mixed and drank a potent beverage to calm his pounding heart and cool his blood, and resolved to have the specimens removed from their isolation in his private laboratory and returned to their pen in the central citadel.

But not now… tomorrow, perhaps …

Strive though he did to involve himself in other matters, he could not erase from his mind the speculation that if the female were painted black, her pate shaved of its unseemly growth of animal fur, she would resemble in almost every detail a human being of his own species…

A… female… of his species.

Now, why should that thought cause him such strange excitement?

Chapter 15 The Madness o f Kalistus

After Kalistus saw the winged, golden-skinned creature safely installed in the private laboratory which adjoined his own apartments, he dismissed the attendants with a curt nod and bustled about, gathering his instruments.

Zarqa the Kalood watched his every movement with close attention. The instruments which Kalistus selected from wall cabinets bore no resemblance to knives or scalpels, but were calipers and measuring devices of similar nature. By this, the Winged Man perceived he was not at once to be subjected to the horrors of the dissection table.

The black savant began noting the width, length, and circumference of Zarqa’s limbs, tracing his skeletal system and outlining his musculature on a drawing tablet, after studying the interior of the Winged Man’s physique through glowing lamps obviously identical with the penetrative rays previously employed.

Looking up abstractedly from his instruments, Kalistus found himself looking directly into the eyes of the experimental subject. They were in nowise human, those eyes, lacking the whites. They were large and purple and luminous, and the expression in them was one of habitual melancholy.

If the eyes of a beast can be said to have expression, thought Kalistus wryly, in comment on his own poor choice of phrase.

I am not a beast but a sentient being such as you, yourself, was the next thought that flashed through the mind of Kalistus. He blinked bright quicksilver eyes, with an involuntary shiver. The thought had come from nowhere, a cool, alien message impinging upon his own mental processes as if by telepathy.

That is the correct term for the mental transmissions the members of my race use for communication. We lack the organs of audible speech, and, you will observe, the organs of hearing as well.

In weird juxtaposition to this peculiar sequence of thought, the winged creature touched with long fingertips its temples, where the ears would appear on a human being. The fingers touched nothing but smooth golden hide tightly stretched over unbroken bone.

A prickling of awe, not unmixed with superstitious fear, went through Kalistus. He sat, staring rigidly at the tall, ungainly figure in the cage. Mad—I’m going mad, he thought dazedly.

Permit me to correct you. You have been mad, like all your race, who have for untold generations resisted the arguments of evidence and reason, persisting in their insane delusion that the manlike denizens of The World Below are mindless beasts, whereas in fact, they too are sentient beings, and your own distant descendants, or at any rate, the descendants of a common ancestor.

This time there was no doubt about it. The thought sequences did not originate within his own brain, but were somehow projected into his mind from an exterior source. The thought was frightening—terrifying.

Do not fear me, I mean you no harm for all that you intend to dissect me as if I were a crawling worm and not a being as intelligent and as human as yourself. And here Kalistus observed a very human smile on the lipless mouth of the winged creature. The expression in the sad purple eyes was one of gentle sympathy.

Kalistus sprang to his feet, shaken with the violence of his emotions, and deliberately turned away from those sad, thoughtful purple eyes that seemed to probe into his heart as easily as they probed into the depths of his mind. With shaking fingers he poured a clear green fluid into a small metal cup from a decanter and drank the heady liquid in a single gulp.

“Is it possible that one of my rivals, jealous of my eminence and favor with the Council, has perfected a mental communicator and seeks by its use to drive me mad?” he muttered to himself. His limbs were trembling and his brow dewed with globules of cold perspiration. He felt the uncanny pressure of unseen eyes and whirled with a startled cry, to meet again the sympathetic gaze of the gaunt, winged creature, which shook its head.

There are none present but you and I, nor are you being subjected to the assault of a cunning rival. I am Zarqa the Kalood, the last of an ancient race of Winged Men who ruled this planet in remote, prehistoric times before the evolution of other men. When the riders of your hunting hawks took captive my wingless friends and myself, we were en route to one of the cities of the wingless people in a flying machine invented ages ago by my kind, who conquered the skies and built such aerial metropolises as this very city of Calidar.

“No!” Kalistus cried, as if to silence by the vehemence of his retort the quiet inward voice that threatened his reason. The Winged Man continued to regard him with thoughtful and sympathetic eyes.

Like myself, the wingless people upon which you so mercilessly experiment are human beings—in every way as human as you, Kalistus, or your compatriot, Ralidux, came the cool, alien thoughts which intruded upon the whirling chaos of his dazed mind. Kalistus shook his head violently, as if to clear his wits.

“You lie! What you say is madness! You are not remotely human, and the wingless creatures taken with you are squalid and mindless animals. Humans are erect, wingless bipeds with silver eyes, hairless pates, and black skins, who dwell aloft in the Flying Cities, of which Calidar is but one of several. Intelligent races do not exist in The World Below—it is a howling wilderness wherein dwell naught but savage beasts. But… why am I answering what can only be the seething thoughts of an insane brain?” Kalistus broke off bewilderedly.

To be human is not a specific term of biology, but a measure of the intelligence of a being, and of its affection and concern for other beings, came the quiet telepathic intrusion once again. I am human, for I love my friends and feel sympathy for you in your torment. I am, therefore, as human as you, despite the trivial differences in the design of our bodies. My comrades are human, as well, and you must note that they differ from you only in the hue of skin and eyes, and in the matter of hirsute adornment. But neither humanity nor sentience may be defined by such trivia as the color of skin; surely you are sufficiently intelligent to grasp that obvious fact.

Kalistus again turned away and strode nervously the length of the laboratory. At the portal, he hesitated as if undecided.

Your race persistently clings to the belief that you are the only intelligent creatures to inhabit the planet. But you are wrong. The wingless creatures dwell in cities not particularly less civilized or less beautiful than this, although with a lower order of technology. You cannot deny the possibility of this information by the reiteration of dogma set down by the Council of Science, for neither you nor the Council have ever bothered to explore The World Below; had you done so, even out of simple curiosity, you would have discovered, ensconced in the branches of the giant trees, intricate and splendid cities of glittering crystals, the homes of a race no less human and no less intelligent, than your own… and considerably more civilized, in that they would shrink in horror from the very thought of conducting scientific experiments upon other human beings…

Kalistus touched the control stud. The door panel slid open. He staggered into the next room, as the panel slid shut behind him.

The insidious mental whisperings of an alien mind ceased.

The following day Kalistus found excuses to avoid his laboratory. The winged creature, of course, was safely penned up and the mechanism of the cage automatically supplied sufficiencies of food and drink. Kalistus debated with himself at length that day, while wandering aimlessly through the public ways, strolling in the central gardens, and seated in a theater which projected intricate colored lights delicately attuned to the fluctuations in tone of a dry, mathematical music.

At the first signs of aberration, the Skymen of Calidar were supposed to report their condition to a system of thought-police employed by the Council to maintain order. The obligatory code of behavior was deeply ingrained in the Calidarians from birth. Kalistus, however, managed to restrain himself from dialing the thought-police due to the peculiar nature of his aberration, which seemed artificially imposed from without, rather than caused by disturbances from within. He had not entirely ruled out the possibilities of a mental attack launched against him by a jealous scientific rival.

When at length he did reenter the laboratory, he found the Winged Man seated in precisely the same position he had left him in, and the food and water apparently untouched.

Kalistus did not approach Zarqa’s cage until he had generated through all six sides of the laboratory an electrical interference barrier precisely tuned to the wavelengths of human thought. This would seem to render impossible any mental interference with his brain from an external source.

As he approached the cage, however, the mental communications resumed, precisely as before.

In the interval since our last conversation, I have conceived of several tests to which you may subject me in order to prove to yourself that I am indeed an intelligent being, and that the telepathic communication you are experiencing truly comes from my own brain and not that of some remote enemy. Give me a drawing pad and a writing implement and I will, at your request, draw geometric forms, simple or complex. Come! Use the intelligence upon which you so esteem your race.

His face haggard, his brilliant eyes dull and haunted, Kalistus reached with numb fingers for the note pad on his desk and took up the indelible stylus beside it and, without conscious volition, slid them between the bars of the cage into the waiting hands of Zarqa the Kalood.

Clyon, senior savant of the immortality experiments, had upon several occasions secretly observed the actions of his junior, the youth Ralidux. The system of spy rays used for this unsuspected scrutiny employed vision crystals embedded in the ceiling fixtures of each chamber in the apartments assigned to the younger Skyman. Similar crystals were to be found in every residence in the citadel, save in those of savants superior to Clyon’s degree. In this manner the Council of Science kept under continuous scrutiny, when necessary, those scholars suspected of heretical thought or antisocial behavior. Only the hereditary monarch, a listless youth named Thallius, the nobles of his party, and those who adhered to a rival faction led by one Prince Pallicrates, were immune to this secret scrutiny.

The peculiar tenor of the questions Ralidux had asked of Clyon during their brief communication a day or two earlier had aroused suspicions in the mind of the older savant. Thus, through the secret spy rays, he observed as Ralidux selected from the central pens two specimens, one male and the other female, and penned them within his laboratory. What he did with them could not be easily ascertained, for the cubicle in which they were penned was constructed of a substance entirely opaque to light waves and to the subtler frequencies of the vision crystals.

Whatever the nature of his experiments, Ralidux could not be caught in any suspicious activities, so, consigning the younger sage to the scrutiny of one of his agents, Clyon thought of the companion of Ralidux one Kalistus, who shared with the other responsibility for the L-sequence of immortality experiments.

It was not impossible that the heresy, if heresy it indeed proved to be, had spread to Kalistus as well thus infecting both. As soon as this thought occurred to Clyon, the old man attuned his spy-ray equipment to the frequency of the crystals embedded in the ceiling of the apartments of Kalistus and waited for the swirling mists to clear in the vision screen. When they did he watched as Kalistus busied about with some idle business whose nature Clyon did not understand.

The young savant was seated at his desk staring with blank, expressionless features and horror-filled eyes at several sheets of tablet paper embossed with peculiar geometric designs in a neat, careful hand. Increasing the magnifying power of his dial settings, Clyon narrowly scrutinized these geometrical designs, alert for the taint of heresy.

However, they were, or seemed to be, not only harmless but meaningless as well. Upon one sheet had been carefully drawn a triangle, a square, a circle, an ellipse, a cube, and a cone, and other sheets contained drawings of more complex forms such as a hexagon, a parallelogram, an octagon, a pentagon, and suchlike. Clyon could find in these drawings nothing which should warrant the blank-eyed horror clearly visible in the drawn features of Kalistus.

He did not observe the Kalood in its cell, or if he did, he thought nothing of it.

He resolved to bide his time.

Assigning a second agent to the scrutiny of the apartments of Kalistus, he robed himself in glittering stuff and departed for a social function in the palace of Prince Pallicrates, to whose faction he belonged.

It occurred to Clyon that both Ralidux and Kalistus were members of the faction loyal to Prince Thallius, the reigning monarch of Calidar, whose enemy was his own master, Pallicrates.

And it did not fail to occur to him that, should he be so fortunate as to discover—either Ralidux or Kalistusor both—tainted with heresy and experimenting in defiance of approved doctrine, to such an extent that the Council of Science would feet it necessary to discredit or remove the young men, it would be a slight blow to the prestige of the Thallian loyalists, while restoring control of the L-sequence to the Pallicratians.

It looked promising.

Waiting for his floating bubble-car to arrive at the landing of his residence, Clyon fussily adjusted the folds of his garment, smiling slightly to himself, humming a little tune.

Chapter 16 The Cunning of Clyon

That night Ralidux tossed and turned feverishly on his silken couch, unable to attain the serenity needful for slumber. The seductive curves of Arjala’s body haunted his dreams when at length the imbibing of a soporific succeeded in inducing the sleep he seemed elsewise unable to find.

He awoke listless and weary, with a headache and little appetite. Both conditions were alien to him, and the cause of both he correctly ascribed to the strange influence of Arjala.

During the day he spied many times upon the two subjects. They behaved like rational creatures, the male tending to and comforting the fears of the female. They conversed in low tones, or at least exchanged the meaningless jabber they made in perverse imitation of human speech. And, again, like rational creatures and in nowise like the natural behavior of beasts, they shared the food and drink supplied by the automatic mechanism of the cubicle, without quarreling over it.

But that was absurd, of course, for they were beast-creatures brought here from The World Below, and not rational creatures at all.

Recalling the circumstances of their capture reminded Ralidux that, when seized, they had been nesting in something which seemed to resemble a man-made machine. He read again the report of the captain of the zawkaw expedition and found his imagination excited in a new direction. For the description of the machine tallied in considerable detail to the sky-sleds employed by the Skymen of Calidar in a remote epoch. A specimen or two of the ingenious flying machine might be found in the Calidarian museum in the central citadel; Ralidux vaguely recalled that the secret of powering the aerial vehicles had been lost ages ago, and the last mechanism of this kind to have possessed the ability of flight had become exhausted a millennia before.

He resolved to examine the artifact at once. If it was truly a human antiquity, even if powerless, it would be an interesting discovery. And, by some odd chance, should it still possess the power of flight, it would be a famous discovery and would vastly enhance his own prestige and that of his faction, the Thallian.

Also it would take his mind off the peculiarly fascinating female…

The zawkaw from his stables was, by a lucky chance, one of those who had been employed in the original capture, and thus the hunting hawk, like all his quite intelligent kind, easily found its way back to the branch on which the Calidarian expedition had captured Niamh, Arjala, Janchan, and Zarqa the Kalood days before.

Dismounting, Ralidux approached the sky-sled, his excitement mounting. He pushed aside the heavy golden leaves to obtain a clear view of the craft. Instead he got a shock of surprise that momentarily rendered him speechless.

For there stood his compatriot, Kalistus, examining the very craft Ralidux had come here to discover.

In his surprise he gave voice to an involuntary cry. Hearing it, Kalistus glanced about, spied the astounded Ralidux, and froze in an identical pose of astonishment.

The two Calidarians stared at each other without speaking for a moment. The same suspicion passed through the mind of each—that is, that the other was a secret member of the rival Pallicratian faction, here to execute a coup—but, of course, this was not true.

Kalistus, driven by the haunting dread that the words of Zarqa were truth, had come here to ascertain for himself the veracity of the Winged Man’s statement that the sky-sled was operational. But he could not imagine what had possessed his comrade, Ralidux, to the same mission, and puzzled over his motive.

“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Kalistus.

“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Ralidux, almost in the same breath.

“I… became curious over Captain Plycidus’ report on the capture of the recent beast-creatures… the nest in which they were discovered seemed to resemble the antique sky-sleds used by our ancestors.”

“Much the same in my case.”

The two beautiful black men stood silent, eyeing each other with vestigial suspicion, for a moment unable to think of anything else to say. Each could not help noticing that the other looked drawn and haggard.

But neither guessed the reason for the other’s distraught condition.

Together they began to examine the sky-sled. And, of course, they discovered it to be operable still.

The mighty room was composed entirely of mirrors, floor, circular walls, domed ceiling. It was lit by enormous, wan globes of light which floated hither and thither, like bubbles of luminescence drifting on the breeze. The lords and princelings of the Calidarian Skymen, attired and jeweled in exquisite taste, strolled about gossiping, exchanging quips, listening to the muted songs of minstrels, sampling essences.

The wily Clyon noticed his master, Prince Pallicrates, across the length of the glimmering room and headed toward him by a devious route. Catching the eye of Pallicrates he made a certain sign which the leader of the faction was sure to comprehend, then wandered, seemingly at random, into the lantern-lit pleasure gardens that surrounded this tier of the palace.

As in the gardens of Ralidux, the delicate blossoms were shielded from the piercing cold air and rude winds of this altitude by a domed roof of crystal, creating an effect similar to that of a greenhouse. Here the air was humid and heady with the mingled perfumes exuded by the enormous, cultivated flowers.

Clyon selected a secluded corner of the garden and within a few moments Pallicrates joined him. The arch-conspirator was a tall, superbly muscular man with a coldly beautiful face whose perfection was marred only by the expression of disdain he habitually wore, and by certain lines of cruelty about his mouth. His eyes were aloof, keen, uncompromising.

“Well?” he demanded.

In a fawning manner, the older man quickly apprised the prince of his suspicions concerning Ralidux. The taint of heretical error, he hinted, may have spread to Kalistus, the co-leader of the current sequence of experiments, as well. In fact, he conjectured, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that both of the brilliant young savants were leagued together in a series of covert experiments forbidden by Council decree.

“In short, then, you suspect that either Ralidux or Kalistus, or both, have fallen into the mad heresy of believing that the animals are of an intelligence equal to our own?” the prince murmured.

“Master, I do. But as yet I lack positive evidence to support my conjecture.”

“I see.” The prince rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, pondering the implications of the situation. They were interesting and not without promise. The Pallicratian faction had sustained a blow to its prestige when control of the current sequence of experiments had been given to two highly promising young adherents of the rival faction which centered about the effete and ineffectual Prince Thallius, whom Pallicrates hoped to supplant. Here fate had handed him a means of rectifying the situation, while dealing a blow of his own to the prestige of the Thallians. For if the two youths could be found guilty of heretical error, the luster of Thallius would be tarnished thereby, and his own name would shine all the brighter.

“Continue surveillance,” he commanded. “Have the two watched night and day. Compile dossiers of relevant information. And report to me daily on the progress of your investigations.”

“Yes, master!” Clyon bowed obsequiously.

“It will prove extremely interesting, and of great potential worth to our cause, if the youths can be proved to have fallen into the dangerous heresy of suspecting intelligence in the beast-creatures.”

“It will indeed, master. And the L-sequence stands now at a point of crucial significance. If we can manage to replace the two heretics with two trusted Pallicratians, our cause can reap the full benefits of a successful experiment sequence.” Clyon smiled. The prince flashed him a haughty glance from eyes of cold silver.

“Only if the experiments are successful, old fool. However, it has not escaped me that, when and if the secret of immortality is conquered at last by a triumph of Calidarian science, it must be scientists of the Pallicratian faction who are given the credit for the momentous discovery. See to your surveillance, and let me hear frequent reports.”

It was less than an hour later that Clyon’s spies reported that Ralidux and Kalistus had both left the Flying City by unobtrusive ways and had met together in secret for a time, returning together with an antique mechanism. The nature and purpose of the mechanism, unfortunately, was not obvious to the spies assigned to observe the actions of the two suspected heretics, for the spies had received technological training inadequate to identify it.

Clyon rubbed his palms together in silent gloating, and carefully entered the information in the fresh new dossiers he had just opened. Then he activated the octagonal viewplate in his suite and placed a private call to a Pallicratian colleague who occupied a high position in the hierarchy of the thought-police.

The sky-sled floated a few feet above the floor of Kalistus’ laboratory, humming softly. The young savant and his companion studied it through a variety of lenses.

“The antigravity effect seems illusory,” said Kalistus. “According to my meters, the craft is not sustained in its weightlessness by means of kaophonta. That is to say, I detect no gravity crystals present in the structure, unlike those used to sustain the City aloft.”

Ralidux nodded. “The sled is not truly weightless, then, but merely seems to be, because it has been sensitized to the magnetic field generated by the planet. It rides the magnetic lines of force created by the planetary field. Interesting.”

“But this is the same method by which the City flies where the Council wills. The City, however, employs both the magnetic-field effect and the kaophonta engines. Why do you suppose the sled is powered only by the magnetic field?”

Ralidux shrugged. “Perhaps the device dates from an earlier era in which the use of gravity crystals had not been perfected. Or perhaps the weight of the City is such that the magnetic field alone is not sufficient to render it effectively weightless, while the sled is light enough to ride the magnetic currents without need of the kaophonta to counteract its weight. Whatever the explanation, the discovery is one of great moment; we are both famous men as soon as we announce the event!”

Kalistus frowned uncertainly. “It will be difficult to explain how we chanced to discover the sky-sled,” he said slowly. “In your case it was simple curiosity, stimulated by the ambiguous description of the antiquity in which the beast-creatures were nesting when seized by Plycidus’ huntsmen. But in my case, well…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He had not revealed to Ralidux that the captive Kalood was an intelligent being and had telepathically revealed that the abandoned sky-sled was empowered for flight.

It was not that he distrusted Ralidux especially, but the fear of committing heresy was deeply ingrained into the nature of the Calidarian savants. And the thought-police were everywhere. So he kept the matter to himself.

That night as he slept, Kalistus was visited by a peculiar dream. It seemed to him that a still, soft voice was whispering from deep within his soul—a voice whose urgings were irresistible and whose commands his will was unable to overrule.

Like a somnambulist he rose from his silken couch and entered into the laboratory which adjoined his sleeping quarters. There in the corner stood a strong cage of crystal bars, which, still drowned in slumber, he unlocked. Then the quiet inner voice commanded him to return to his bed and to sleep without dreams until the dawn. As he left the room, walking slowly and stiffly, Zarqa opened the door of his cage and emerged. The telepathic powers of the million-year-old Kalood were such that he could not only communicate with another mind, he could control it if he wished. It was a power he seldom cared to employ, for his race deemed it an evil thing to manipulate the mind of another sentient being in this manner.

However, the power was his to use when conditions warranted so unethical an intrusion into the mind of another. And, unlike his former captor, Sarchimus the cunning science-magician of Sotaspra, who had been wary of the possibility and had guarded against it by means of telepathy-weakening force fields, the savant of Calidar had not foreseen the possibility, or, if he had, had neglected to protect himself against it.

Thus Zarqa had insidiously planted the suggestion in the mind of Kalistus that he should retrieve the lost sky-sled, and that in his slumber he should unlock the cage wherein the Winged Man had been imprisoned.

Now he was free at last, and, with the sky-sled at his command, he had the means to free his friends and escape from this fantastic aerial kingdom of madmen.

Unaware that Clyon’s agents watched all the while with spy rays, the Winged Man climbed aboard the sky-sled and rode it as the craft glided out the window and floated through the night on its mission of rescue.