The Valley of the Flame

CHAPTER VII. DREAD FLAME

HIS WATCH said minutes had passed, but Raft knew that it had been hours since his interview with the lord of Paititi. Impatiently he waited in his apartment, left alone with his puzzled thoughts. He could not fathom the trick of the door, and Vann, after escorting him back here, had not reappeared. From the balustraded porch nothing could be seen but the torrent pouring lazily into the abyss below.

The room was sterile. It was beautiful, luxurious, but it held nothing that aroused Raft's interest. Inaction was twanging his nerves into tense irritability. He seemed the only thing not frozen into semi-stasis in this strange land.

A long time had passed when from beyond the window he heard his name called softly. He knew the voice. A stir of excitement quickened him as he hastily stepped out on the balcony. But there was nothing.

Only falling water. Lazy falling water.

"Brian!" The low call came again. "Brian Raft!"

He leaned over the rail, and found himself looking down into the soft, familiar face of Janissa. The aquamarine eyes were darker now, almost purple. She was clinging to grips and footholds on the castle's wall, crannies where it seemed not even a squirrel could find lodgment.

Catching his breath, Raft leaned down, extending his arm. But Janissa murmured a quick warning.

"Get a cushion, Brian. Bring it. No, I'm safe enough here. Do as I say."

He hesitated, turned, and hurried back into the room, where he snatched up the nearest cushion and carried it out with him. Janissa had not moved. Her slim body was flattened against the stone.

"Hold it by a corner. Yes, that's it. And lower it toward me, very carefully. Don't lose your grip on it."

Raft obeyed. There was a sudden whir and a flash of steel, and the cushion was almost torn from his hand. From the smooth wall beneath the railing a fan of sharp blades had leaped out, one of them impaling the pillow as Janissa's flesh would have been pierced had she continued her climb.

Her teeth showed in a smile.

"Now it's safe, I think. Give me your hand." With feline agility she clambered up, writhing between the swords so that no blade or edge touched her. On the balcony she shook herself, patted her hair, and took the cushion from Raft.

"You're alone? I thought you would be. I asked questions before trying this climb."

"You might have been killed," Raft said, looking down into dizzying emptiness where the slow cataract poured into bottomless deeps and the slower mist wreathed up in a swaying tower. Then he turned to the girl and, as he met her smile, he felt a little dizziness that did not come from vertigo.

This was the face that had drawn him over miles of river and jungle almost as unerringly as Craddock's trail had drawn him. No one, he thought, could have looked once upon this delicate, soft, malicious little creature and not wanted to look again.

In their first meeting he had been tired and bewildered. Today he could gaze more clearly into the aquamarine eyes and the gay, yet prim face of this contradictory girl. He stared frankly, trying to make the clear gaze waver.

Janissa laughed.

"We've met before, remember?" she jibed.

Raft grinned.

"Sorry. It was just—Do your people here know how beautiful you are?"

"Men of all races must be very much alike," Janissa parried demurely. "We must think about you just now, Brian Raft. You're in trouble."

"Trouble you walked out on, I remember." He did not mean to let her attractiveness blind him to that memory.

She shrugged lithely.

"What could I do then? Now I've walked in again, and you must forgive me."

He glanced over the balcony rail and shuddered. "You certainly did take a long chance. Lucky you weren't killed."

"Not by a fall. Not my race! Though if you hadn't been here to spring the trap, I might have had some trouble. Let's go in. We may be seen from another balcony."

She stepped through the window, stared around, and tossed the slashed cushion away. "Now we can talk."

Raft followed her, seeing how supple was the movement of her round, smooth limbs as they glided beneath velvety garments. She tilted him a sweetly wicked smile over one shoulder and shook the cloudy tiger-striped hair. There was a mound of silken cushions against the nearer wall. She laid a hand on Raft's arm and drew him down beside her to a cross-legged seat among them.

"We have much to tell each other," she said. "And perhaps not a very long time to do it in."

"You'll have to start, then. Remember, I don't know anything at all."

"I suppose not," Janissa murmured. There was a soft roughness to her voice when she lowered it, a luxuriant roughness, like a purr. "Not even Craddock knew, really, though he—created—our race. And now he does not remember certain things. So Parror will have to build a device that—"

"Suppose you start at the beginning," Raft interrupted her. "First, where is Paititi? On my own planet?"

"Yes. We know that, for some of us have gone through the unseen road to the jungle land outside. Not many, and only guardians, like Parror and myself. I went once and only once. It was horrible. Your world is frozen. Nothing moves.

"When we meet others outside, you know, we have to force ourselves to do everything as slowly as people in a nightmare. Otherwise we'd be only a blur when they looked at us. But we cannot live long outside Paititi, unless we carry something of the Flame with us."

"The Flame?" Raft echoed. "The Flame?"

"The Flame is the source of all life," Janissa said soberly. "In our whole land there are only two amulets that hold a little fiery seed of the Flame itself. We do not know how to make them. These two are very old, our heritage from the ancient race that lived here before us." Her eyes narrowed. "Parror has one. I should have the other. It's my right as Guardian. But the king claims it, and—well, never mind. I have my plans. The time is coming when—"

"Please," Raft broke in. "First tell me about this business of speed, and your people moving faster than ours. Why?"

"The Flame is sinking," Janissa said in a somber voice. "That is why Parror sought out Craddock. You see, Paititi was not always as it is now. In the old days, generations lived and died during the day, and other generations in a night. And before that, hundreds of generations in a day. The cycle slows now. Water moves faster than in the days of our fathers. Our memories go back a long way. We have written records, but certain things we had to guess. Before we were human, long, long ago, another race dwelt in Paititi.

"That race built these castles. Men and women not of our species but akin to yours, strong and wise and happy, dwelt in this land and lived beneath the Flame. Then the Flame sank and slept."

Raft scowled.

"That race died?"

"It did not die."

"What happened to it?"

She looked away.

"As you came through the unseen road, you must have seen a cavern there—a dark place where things crept and flew in shadow. You saw the monsters that dwelt in it. Those things—their ancestors—built this castle, and Parror's castle, and a hundred others. But as the Flame sank, they sank below the level of beasts. We know that now. But we did not always know."

Raft tried to marshal the facts. "The first race degenerated, eh? As your own evolved?"

"They degenerated long before we had the first glimmers of intelligence. I said that the Flame slept. Craddock wakened it, millions and millions of cycles ago. We know that, because our ancestors penetrated to the cave of the Flame, and found certain things there—a cloth sack, metal containers, a notebook with symbols we could not read.

"Not until da Fonseca came here, in his machine that flew, did we have any knowledge of the real truth, though we had often theorized. Parror and I took da Fonseca and through him learned the contents of that notebook."

"Millions of cycles? Craddock isn't that old!"

"The tides of time are altered in Paititi," Janissa said. "Craddock awakened the Flame, and our race was given birth. Now the Flame sinks, and that means great evil."

Dan Craddock! How much did he really know about the man, Raft wondered. For thirty years the Welshman had wandered the Amazon Basin. Why? Because of some secret he had stumbled on, long ago?

"What is this Flame?" he asked.

Janissa made a curious symbolic gesture. "It is the giver of life and the taker-away of life. It is Curupuri."

Raft stared at her. "All right, leave that, then. What do you want?"

The eyes shaded to purple again. "I am of royal blood. In the old days there were once three kings, enemies. They fought, and two were conquered. But the two vanquished kings were not shamed. They were given the hereditary honor of guardians of the Flame. They dwelt, after that, in the castle Parror holds now, while the conqueror dwelt in this place, by Doirada Gulf. It was so for generations. Until now!"

She seemed to bristle.

"Parror uses me—uses me! And I am of blood no less royal than his own. I held the secret of the lens, which he needed, but now that he has Craddock, he can waken the Flame, and I will be stripped of my birthright." Her eyes glowed. "Holding the castle of the Flame is a trust. We guard. Parror intends to break the trust, and act on his own, without waiting for the king's decision. That will be a shameful thing. It will bring shame on me, one of the guardians."

"Yet you helped him murder da Fonseca," Raft said. "You helped him kidnap Craddock."

"As for the murder, I did not know he intended that. The spell of the mirror can be broken, but it must be done slowly, carefully, or the victim will die. I had no love for da Fonseca, yet I did not want his death, and I would have stopped Parror could I have done so.

"Craddock—well, Parror lied to me. He told me he would do no more than bring Craddock here. I would not have trusted his word alone, but he gave me logic I could not deny. False logic, I know now. For he will get the knowledge he needs from Craddock's brain, and waken the Flame. That—that—" She hesitated. "It may be a very great sin. I am no longer sure what is the right way, Brian."

"Well, one way is for me to get out of here and see Craddock," Raft said practically.

"I cannot get you out—yet," she told him. "But the rest is easy. I have the mirror. See?" She drew the little lens from her bosom and held it out. Raft, remembering da Fonseca, found himself instinctively glancing away.

Janissa laughed softly.

"There's no harm in it, unless the psychic cleavage is violent. Look into my mirror."

"Not so fast," Raft said. "How does it work?"

"We know much of the mind," Janissa said. "The device is—is a mental bridge. Once it has caught the matrix of a man's mind, it can be put en rapport with that man. Each brain has a different basic vibration. You could not use the mirror alone, Brian, for it needs a trained mind to direct. But with my aid, you can. Look."

He obeyed. In the tiny lens the gray storm-clouds misted and swirled. They were driven aside. Tiny and alive, Raft saw the face of Dan Craddock.

He had a stubbly white beard. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked utterly exhausted. Beyond him Raft could make out vague outlines. Silks, he thought, of many colors.

"He is alone, and resting," Janissa whispered. "So you may speak with him freely."

"Speak?"

"In the mind. Look closer now, while I summon him."

Raft stared down at the lens. He saw Craddock's gaze lift, and sudden awareness spring into them.

Raft heard his name!

He did not hear it. He sensed the impact of Craddock's thought. Abruptly he was conscious of nothing but his friend's presence. The room about him darkened and vanished. There was present only the odd feeling that Janissa was here, somewhere, alive and guiding.

"Dan. Are you all right?" His thought formed words.

"All right, Brian. Yes. You?"

"So far I'm alive, anyway," Raft thought grimly. "Janissa's here."

"Good. She managed to tell me a little. And Parror's told me more."

"Is he—has he tried any tricks?"

Craddock grinned wanly.

"More or less. He's the most dangerous altruist I've ever met. You shouldn't have come after me, Brian."

"You should have told me the set-up back in the hospital, when Parror first showed up," Raft pointed out. "But that's water under the bridge. What we've got to figure on now—"

"I didn't know," Craddock interrupted. "When Parror brought da Fonseca to the hospital, I hadn't the least idea what was going on. When he showed me my notebook, I was—well, as flabbergasted as I looked."

"You were here before, though."

"Yes. I was here. Thirty years ago by our time, a hundred million, maybe, by Paititi's time. For it's variable. There's the Flame…"

"Tell him," Janissa's thought urged.

Craddock nodded.

"Yes, I—I'd better, I suppose. Though thirty years ago I hadn't much idea what I was getting into. I was pretty young. I was on the trail of the secret medicines the Indio witch-doctors were supposed to have around here, and that's how I stumbled on the unseen road. It wasn't closed then. It lay wide open. A trap, as it proved."

"A trap?"

"One set by fate," Craddock thought grimly. "I went on, though, past the cavern of the monsters, and to the place where the road forks. One branch leads to Paititi. The other leads to the thing the Indios call Curupuri."

"The Flame," Raft supplemented. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Radiant energy of some kind. It may be alive. It may not. But certainly it's nothing that ever was spawned on this earth. Paititi's a meteoric crater, Brian, and I think Curupuri came to this planet in a meteor. Perhaps it was the meteor. It's—life."

"The creator and the destroyer," Janissa put in quietly.

"Destroyer? Yes. There are forms of energy we know nothing about. Sometimes we see them through telescopes, in the giant nebulae light-years away. The stuff of primal energy, spawned in interstellar space, where that tremendous force can safely exist. It can't exist—safely—on a planet. Not unless the planet is still gaseous, still molten. Curupuri, the thing that fell on Brazil in a meteor ages ago, is a source of life, Brian."

"A living thing?"

"Too colossal for us to conceive of or measure. You know the Arrhennius theory, that life reached Earth in the form of spores, drifting through space on light-pressure tides. Well, that's fair enough, but what gave life to those spores?

"It's the old chicken or the egg problem, with a difference. The spores may have been the dust, the waste-products of things like the nebulae. Or that vast force raging in space may have had power to create life in dust, a galaxy away. I don't know. I'm theorizing, that's all. But radiant energy, vibration, power—they're tied up with it, somehow."

Craddock's tired face brightened.

"And the merest fraction of that energy fell on Earth once, in a meteor. It must have been a microscopic amount, for anything more would have devastated the planet. Growth, unchecked. I guessed some of that, and learned a little more, from records I found in Paititi."

"Records? Left by whom?"

"I didn't know then. There was no one in the valley, no life except birds and insects, peccary, tapir, and the jaguars. Remember the jaguars, Brian. They're important. Meanwhile, I found those records in what is now Parror's castle.

"They weren't unlike the written Indio language. I suppose that's where the Indies get their lingo in the first place. Anyway, I found out the truth. Curupuri had given life to Paititi. The merest touch of that energy has made the Amazon Basin the most fertile and prolific place on Earth."

Raft nodded.

"Keep going. How does this trick work?"

"In cycles. There are cycles in suns, giants and dwarfs, and in nebulae too, though our lives are too short to comprehend them. When the Flame is at full tide, a certain type of energy pours forth from it. The result is peculiar."

"Time is speeded up?"

Slowly Craddock shook his head. "No. Not objectively. What happens is a metabolic change. The rate of growth is tremendously increased. Not only in men, in mammals, but in all living things. When the Flame is at the top of its cycle, a man may be born, live a complete life, and die in one second. Yet it will be a lifetime to him.

"Inanimate things are not affected, of course. The radiation won't make stone crumble faster. It influences living cells only. The animal world, and plants. That is what happened."

"The Flame wakened," Janissa supplemented. "And in its light all things sprang to life."

"Yes. Long ago. But that cycle was more normal. The First Race, the one that built these castles, lived here, evolved, and—and then the Flame sank. They did not die. But apparently the radiation is a false stimulus.

"When the Flame's power falls below a certain level, its rays are actively malignant. Cellular tissue may be stimulated, but it can also become cancerous. When the Flame sinks, there is a retrogression. It's freakish. It's—horrible."

"I saw what was left of the First Race," Raft mentioned. "Those monsters in the cavern."

"Yes. They saw their fate coming, and made plans. They were skilled scientists. They found a way to rekindle the Flame before its cycle had been run, but they failed to do it. Because it was dangerous. If they were not accurate to a hair's breadth, if they failed to control the Flame exactly, it would mean total destruction. The radiation would rage out unchecked. The Flame would devour itself instantly, but in that instant Paititi would be seared lifeless."

"They didn't do it, then."

"No. They waited. Each generation thought it could live out its own span. Each generation let the problem go on to its children. And the children thought the same. In the end, the beast-minds were too dull to comprehend.

"The creatures that had been the First Race remembered only the Flame, and they found their way to the cavern where you saw them. Their nearness to the radiation keeps them alive, and they've lived and bred there in the dark for a long time."

Raft frowned.

"But the cat-people. How did they come into being?"

Craddock's eyes held a touch of deep horror. "I created them. I—wakened the Flame."