The Well of The Worlds

VIII

Beyond the fringe of trees a range of dark hills rose against the silver mist of the sky. Sawyer labored stumbling up the slope, with no clear plan except to put space between himself and Nethe. He did not forget that this was an island, improbably drifting in space. He watched the ground underfoot suspiciously, and presently, between two hills, caught a glimpse of low-lying silver fog that looked like the brink of creation.

It was. He came out on the height of the next hill and pulled up sharply, seizing the trunk of a leaning tree to steady himself. He and the tree leaned together over the abyss. This was the shore of space. Eddies of mist lapped against the sheer drop at his very toes. The tree dangled its roots as a more familiar tree had done far above. Sawyer could see them swaying gently outward below, which probably meant the island was in motion.

Clasping the tree, he leaned out farther, shuddering, and saw that what he had from above taken to be dark clouds were actually islands, many of them, each carrying a cumulus over its center, drifting slowly in long, descending festoons between the upper world and that far-off, shadowy, mysterious world below. Almost like stairsteps, he thought. If you watched your chance, you might climb up from island to island as they rose and fell in their drifting, until, from the topmost, you could reach Khom’ad—

Was that why the city gates were guarded? Did they expect attack?

He glanced up, and caught his breath as he saw that the vast, impending thundercloud which was the under-side of Khom’ad glowed crimson and flickered with glancing white flashes and gleams. It looked like the end of the world. Then he realized that what he saw was nothing more sinister than the burning cloak, which must have become quite a respectable holocaust by now, sending down strong reflections from the overhang of the world above.

He saw something else, too, when he looked back. Two twinkling points of light were moving rapidly toward him up the ravine. Nethe had found her quarry. Sawyer clasped the tree and urged Providence to remember him. For he was quite literally between the devil and the deep. Nethe cut off retreat, and the abyss was a long way down.

Nethe saw him, silhouetted against the silver sky. She laughed in triumph, a clear, strong, musical laugh.

“One last chance,” she called to him as she came. “If you tell me where the Firebird is before I get to you, I’ll let you live.”

Sawyer looked down. He dangled a tentative foot over the void.

“All right,” he told her clearly. “That’s close enough. Stop right there. If you’ve got anything to say, I can hear you. But say it from where you are, because I’d rather jump than let you kill me.”

Nethe laughed, but a little hesitantly. She slowed, and then came on. Sawyer leaned far out. Rocks crumbled underfoot and rattled across the edge.

Nethe paused uncertainly.

“Be sensible, Khom,” she urged. “You can’t stand there forever. I’ll get you when you give out. You have to sleep. You—”

“I’m not a Khom,” Sawyer said in a patient voice. “You can’t order me around and you may as well get used to it. I know where the Firebird fell. And not on this island, incidentally.” He glanced down and wondered if he really did see the motion of crowding figures on the next lower land below.

“Tell me and I’ll spare your life,” Nethe offered, taking a tentative forward step. Casually Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge. She stopped.

“I might tell you,” he said, “if you made it worth my while. Otherwise I’ll just wait until the island grounds against the mainland. I can see they float. I can imagine what the gates of Khom’ad are guarded against. They must be expecting an attack. What made you drop us both on this island, anyhow? Didn’t you know it was crawling with these savages?”

“I didn’t mean to drop either of us on this one,” Nethe told him with some asperity. “If you hadn’t made such a fuss about falling we’d have struck a smaller island. It was right under you when you first dropped. But you had to hang on to that root and argue. So—”

“So that was the plan,” Sawyer murmured. “Drop Alper far enough to kill him and then loot the corpse. Well, now you’ve caught a Tartar. What do you offer me if I give up the Firebird?”

“Death if you don’t!” Nethe cried, and surged forward three eager steps. “So you have it? On you?”

Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge.

“Imagine that’s me,” he said. “With the Firebird.” She paused reluctantly. “No, I haven’t got it on me,” he went on. “You know that, you searched me, didn’t you? Besides, if I had it do you think I’d stay here? I’d use it. I’d—I’d open up the Gateway and go right back where I came from.”

“You fool, you couldn’t open the Gateway,” Nethe said contemptuously.

“Alper did,” Sawyer reminded her.

“There’s more to opening a door than waving a key around,” she told him aloofly. “If I hadn’t already unlocked the Gateway to send Klai through, the Firebird wouldn’t have had any effect at all except to call the real Firebirds down the tunnel.”

“What are real Firebirds?” Sawyer inquired with interest.

Before she could answer, a new sound began to shake the air and both looked up quickly. The deep, heavy clangor of a great bell from somewhere above began to beat wildly through the abyss. Some resonance in its pitch made the island shiver slightly at every peal.

“They’ve seen the islands rising,” Nethe said, her face turned upward and away and her mask seeming to regard Sawyer with a disinterested stare. “It’s the Khom alarm-bell.”

While the echoes still rang, a second bell, farther off, took up the signal, and far away, at the very verge of hearing, a third began heavily to toll. Sawyer imagined the mobilization at the city gates, and he hoped the tuba-shaped weapons were better fit to deal with the savages than a knife through the chest had been.

“Are they really invulnerable?” he asked Nethe. “The savages, I mean?”

“The Sselli? To most things, yes. Like us.”

“Then you are vulnerable too?”

“Not to you, Khom.” She laughed and turned back to him, her eyes baleful. “All living things are vulnerable—to something. Only the Goddess can unleash the weapon that could destroy an Isier. Don’t worry. The Sselli won’t get far. Do you think a little band that size could stand against the Isier?”

Sawyer looked down at the circling swarm of islands upon which he had thought he saw the motion of living things. Perhaps a small band could be driven back, then, but not a large one? He strained his eyes through the dimness, which was beginning now to brighten with reflections from the upper world, long shafts of red and crimson streaming downward past this island and touching with a sort of false sunrise color the rising lands below.

The rock shivered under him in answer to the wild timbre of alarm-bells in the city. He thought of Jericho and the shivering walls. It might have been coincidence, or it might have been a faint premonitory tremor that made him think “Jericho!” for in the next instant a still, small, far-off quiver, terribly familiar, moved between his brain and his skull…

“Alper!” he thought. “Awake. The bells—did they rouse him? Now he’s sitting up, looking around the cell, trying to remember.” He could picture it very clearly. “Now he’s thought of me. Now he has his hand in his pocket, feeling for the transceiver control. Now he’s found the note…”

He could imagine Alper struggling up in the glass cell, his face dark with anger, hand in pocket, finding there the unexpected crackle of paper. In a moment Sawyer would know if his note was going to save him. His life was in Alper’s pocket. Alper could kill him with the motion of one finger as dead as if they stood in the same room with a loaded gun between them. If anger made Alper’s hand clench before he fully took in the import of the note—

“Alper!” Sawyer said sharply. “Do you hear me? Listen!”

The tremor shivered in his brain for an endless moment. Then very softly it ceased to be. Alper was listening.

“What is the Firebird?” Sawyer asked distinctly. And he could almost imagine that at the crown of his skull the transceiver quivered with listening intentness. That question of all questions Alper would most want to hear answered. To make the situation perfectly clear, he added, “What is it, Nethe?”

“The key,” Nethe said impatiently. “The key between worlds. Also, it’s the lens of the Well. Lens? Shutter? I don’t know your language well enough. There may be no equivalent. What does it matter to you, anyhow? You can’t use it. Let me warn you—don’t try. You could unlock powers even the Isier can’t control. Tell me where it is and I—I promise you safety.”

“Ha,” Sawyer said, and swung his foot over the abyss. “That’s the hollowest promise I ever heard.” He laughed. He felt a little light-headed. For the moment at least both Alper and Nethe were in his hands. While the moment lasted he meant to make the most of it.

Nethe’s eyes blazed. “Listen, Khom! My life depends on getting the Firebird back. The Goddess hates me. In three more days she must give up her place to me. It was my plan to wait in your world until the three days were over and she automatically lost the Double Mask to me.

“But you and your friend Alper spoiled that plan. Through your clumsiness I was drawn through into Khom’ad without the Firebird. For that I’ll kill Alper when I get to him. It was dangerous enough here in Khom’ad for me with the Firebird. But at least, while I held it, I could escape whenever I chose. There are gates to a long, strange pathway we Isier travel, through many worlds and forms. With the Firebird, I can pass them. Without it, I’m helpless.

“The Goddess’ guards are watching for me, and if they catch me I’ll have to face her at the Ceremony of the Unsealing. One of us will die. If I have the Firebird, I’ll win it. If I don’t—”

“Maybe I’d better get in touch with the Goddess, then,” Sawyer said cheerfully. “Alper, are you listening?” This last was sotto voce.

“Khom!” Nethe said furiously. “Animal!”

“Stand back,” Sawyer warned her. “I’m perfectly willing to bargain. For instance, could you send me back to the world I came from?” He added hastily, “With Alper, of course. And Klai too, if she wants to go.”

“Klai is being hunted by the guards now. She’ll go as a sacrifice at the Unsealing. But you I could send back. And Alper too. Now give me the Firebird and—”

“Not so fast,” Sawyer advised her. “What can you do for me the Goddess can’t?”

“I can let you live!” Nethe said violently, and surged forward a little without actually leaving her place. “The Goddess knows nothing! Nothing! Only I could send you back.”

“Interesting, if true,” Sawyer murmured, and turned his head to glance for a second down the abyss where the islands rose and fell. Light from the fire was beginning to touch the uppermost, and on these a vague stirring of motion among the trees was visible.

“If you make it clear enough,” he said, “I might be persuaded. Go on, convince me.” It was in his mind that with Alper listening—and he hoped Alper was—something might emerge which the old man’s trained brain could make sense of even if Sawyer’s could not.

Nethe gave him a long, hating look and said, “The Isier are gods. Why should I talk to you, animal? No, no—I will. I’ll make it clear. Once we were mortal, long ago. Never human, like you lower orders, but mortal. Until we made our great discovery and our great change. That happened a thousand years ago on another world—the world you see below us. It turns inside the vast outer shell which is Khom’ad, and these islands rise and sink on great gravitational currents flowing between the Under-Shell and the world above.

“In the ancient days our wise men made the Well of the Worlds, and after that we became gods. It worked a change in us so that our appearance—altered. Our bodies altered both inside and out, and yet we were the same. I can only explain it by a thing I learned on your world—the creation of isotopes is very like what the Well did for us. We became isotopes of our earlier selves. And the isotopes were gods, except for one thing—we need energy.

“All the power we need we draw out of the Well. It gives us immortality. We can resist all bodily harm, we heal instantly, we never eat or drink or sleep. I’ll tell you how the Well works, as nearly as I can, and then perhaps even your limited animal mind can understand the danger in the Firebird.

“There are many worlds in creation. Many states of matter. You know that? You know your sun, for instance, differs from the solid Earth? Well, there are many such states, far more than you would ever dream. Worlds of a vapor, for instance, attenuated not necessarily in space. States of matter inconceivable to you but no less real than your own planet.

“Khom’ad is a world of such other-matter. Your sun and worlds are invisible to us, as we are to you. Just as there are colors beyond the two ends of the visible spectrum, so there are states of matter above hydrogen and below the transuranic elements you know.

“But though these worlds and stars are invisible to us, they’re accessible through the Well. As your sun radiates energy to your world, so we draw energy from the vast seas of other-space. The Well drains it as we drift and the energy is radiated to us as we choose to take it, much or little, according to the need of the individual Isier. You have the transmission of energy through the air in your own world. We receive it in a similar way, regulating our intake as we need.”

“Transformers,” Sawyer murmured. “Built in, I suppose. An X-ray photo of an Isier ought to be very informative. I wonder if you’ve got coils of wire inside. Never mind. Don’t tell me. You haven’t come to the Firebird yet.”

“The Firebird is the energy-control from the Well. It belongs in the Well. It should be there now. It was stolen—” Nethe paused and then said firmly, “The Goddess stole it. And then all our troubles began. You see, we drifted near your world, which happens to have rich deposits of uranium near its pole. Our world’s pole is the Well. It is, incidentally, our south pole, which helps to explain what happened when the Firebird was—stolen.

“The uranium made your world too strong a power-source for us. I think there’s a great deal your people don’t understand yet about what you call fissionable substances. And not uranium alone.

“Normally when we touch so rich a source of power the Firebird-control in the Well closes its wings and dies for awhile. This makes the Well go dead until we pass beyond danger. Otherwise the Well might drink up too much energy and burn out not only itself, but all the Isier too.”

“A circuit-breaker,” Sawyer said. “I see. What happened?”

“When your world drifted near ours, and the Firebird closed its wings, the Goddess happened to be alone by the Well. She saw her chance to lift the little control out of its place. This was one of the few times when it could be safely touched or moved. Instantly, when the control was lifted out of its place, the two worlds flashed together and sealed in an unbreakable fusion, because of the terribly powerful magnetic attraction between north pole and south. They’ll never be separated until the Firebird is put back into the Well.

“So now the two worlds are locked together. But the Well is dead. The Isier receive less and less energy. They don’t understand why. Only the Goddess and I know, and she has no idea where the Firebird really is. There have been times when our world drifted through other-space in regions where energy-sources were low. Then too our power flowed feebly. In times like that we have to feed sacrifices into the Well. That replenishes our energy until we drift out of the dead spaces into a place of stars again. The Isier think this is what’s happening now.

“But it isn’t. The energy will never flow again until the Firebird goes back into the Well. Meanwhile we offer sacrifices to keep the Isier alive and immortal. It gives us energy, but not enough. Disastrous things have happened. When an Isier uses up more energy than he possesses—something changes in him. I spoke of the parallel with isotopic elements. I think something very like that happens here. An Isier discharges more energy than he has and—and changes.”

Sawyer thought of the familiar three-stage isotopic change from uranium 238 through neptunium to plutonium, the complex rearrangement of charges and masses that can take an isotope of uranium around a cycle through plutonium and bring it out uranium again, but 235 three points down the scale from its start.

“It happens because they’re unstable,” he murmured. “Neptunium discharges an electron and turns into—oh, never mind. Go on. What does the Isier turn into?”

Nethe gave him a supicious glance. “He seems to—to vaporize in a cloud of heat. And then, much later, he returns as you saw, through the Ice-Hall. That was what I meant when I said we travel by a long, strange pathway, through more than one form. What happens in that interval no one could tell you, for no one remembers.”

She moved forward one impatient pace.

“Now you know the whole story. Will you give me the Firebird, or shall I make you jump?”

“What about these savages?” Sawyer inquired, anxious to get every element laid before the listening Alper.

“They’re part of the punishment the Goddess must suffer for stealing the Firebird. The trouble will go on until the Firebird is replaced. I got it away from her. When I’m Goddess I’ll put it back and the troubles of my people will all be over.”

“You could give her back the Firebird,” Sawyer suggested. “Why did she do such a stupid thing, anyhow? She was Goddess to start with. Or was it she who stole it, Nethe?”

“Of course it was,” Nethe declared rapidly. “She wanted power, more power than the Well would give her. Why should I hand the Firebird back and let her keep the Mask and Robe? When I’m Goddess it’ll be time enough to restore the Firebird. Let her suffer her own punishment.”

Sawyer looked at her thoughtfully. It seemed perfectly clear to him who had really snatched the Firebird from the Well. He hoped Alper was listening. He wondered if the Goddess had questioned him yet, and how much Alper would see fit to pass on from this conversation, if it were possible to communicate at all.

“I still don’t understand what the real Firebirds are,” he said. “What do they do? What’s the connection between the real Firebirds and the—the little symbol?”

“I won’t tell you that,” Nethe said, with a flash of brilliant anger. “Go ahead and jump if you want to. I will tell you this much—they feed on the energy in the uranium at your world’s pole. They can drink energy from the Khom, too. They could drink from you. Perhaps, in time, they will.” She gave him a dangerous look.

“What would happen,” Sawyer inquired, “if the Goddess knew you had the Firebird?”

“Perhaps she does. But she doesn’t intend to let anyone else know the Firebird’s gone from the Well. The Well is her trust—her charge. Do you suppose she would want to advertise the fact that she allowed—that she stole the Firebird?”

Sawyer grinned. He felt quite sure now who had really stolen that strange talisman. Perhaps Nethe read his face, for she went on:

“Would you like to go to her with your story? The first thing the Goddess would force you to do is reveal where you’ve hidden the Firebird. She has powers I haven’t—yet. And the second thing she would do would be to seal your mouth forever, so you could never reveal that the Goddess had failed her trust. She wears the Double Mask, and she intends to keep on wearing it—by killing me, if she can, at the Unsealing. And if I die, the Goddess will make no bargains with a Khom like you. Why do you suppose I didn’t simply wait for you outside the Temple?”

“For Alper, you mean,” Sawyer said. “Well, why didn’t you? What were you afraid of?”

“The soldiers of the Goddess, of course,” Nethe said. “I’ve disobeyed the summons to the Unsealing. I intend to keep on disobeying it as long as I can hide, but where can I hide from the Goddess in Khom’ad? Nowhere, for long, without the Firebird to open a Gate past which even the Goddess can’t follow me.”

“The Gate to Earth?” Sawyer asked.

Nethe hestitated for an instant.

“Somewhere else, then?” Sawyer went on speculatively, watching her. “Back in the uranium mine, you intended to take Klai through the Gate to question her—but I don’t think it was to Khom’ad. Then we all were sucked through into that ice-hall, so…” Sawyer paused, nodded once, and continued briskly, “So perhaps that’s a necessary way-station to wherever you’d intended to take Klai. But you couldn’t finish the trip without the Firebird. The current in the ice-hall carried you away—carried all of us away except Alper, who had the Firebird then.”

“Never mind that,” Nethe said impatiently. “You understand now that I’m desperate. The city’s alive with soldiers searching for Khom sacrifices—during the Unsealing, the Well drinks up many lives. And outside the city, the Goddess has ways of finding me—so now I intend to get the Firebird, or you can jump.” She took a long, smooth forward step. “Make up your mind, animal. Is it yes or no?”

Sawyer glanced down again into the swimming abysses below, combed now by long, slanting shafts of reflection from the fire that glowed just beyond the hill. He had been watching considerable activity growing and changing down there, where the rising islands floated in the light of the false sunrise from above.

“Just a moment, Nethe,” he said. “One little matter you haven’t considered yet. I don’t know if you realize it, but your fire has become quite an attraction among the—Sselli, you called them? I think there’s going to be some excitement in Khom’ad very soon now. Climb that rock beside you and you can see. Not too near, though! Careful! I can always jump ”

She hissed at him scornfully, put her foot in a pocket of rock and climbed until she could see what he meant. Then she sucked her breath in with a sound of consternation.

In the ruddy glow of the fire reflecting downward from Khom’ad’s underside, the floating lands were alive with great hordes of climbing Sselli, clambering swiftly upward toward the glow, leaping from isle to rising isle, springing the dangling roots and swarming up them like creatures under a spell of hypnotized fascination. Their blank, lifted eyes reflected red and flat in the light which drew them on.

At this moment a violent shock made the ground jump like a spurred horse under Sawyer’s feet. Nethe swore in Isier and slid helpless down the rock to which she had been clinging. Only Swayer’s instinctive embrace of his tree saved him from pitching to destruction over the cliff. As it was, he struck his head painfully against the trunk and saw stars for a moment.

Then the island under him swung ponderously around in a full quarter-turn. Something brushed his face with a familiar network and he looked up in time to receive a moist smack in the cheek from a dripping tree-root. The island had risen until it all but touched the underhang of Khom’ad, and the roots which were dripping now with rain from the upper world brushed the tree-tops of the island.

Overhead, floating like the gates of heaven, loomed through darkness and rain the high iron doors and the granite wall of Khom’s gateway. The doors were opening. The bells rang wildly all through the city now.

Sawyer clasped his tree and watched.