The world below
as all sound should be? Would not even such as you are shrink to violate
it with the intolerable noises of the speech you practise?”
I did not answer, for her mind left me as it ceased its protest, and we
went forward in silence, soothed to drowsiness of thought by this
monotony of multitudinous sounds, till the trees ceased, and I was
suddenly conscious that my companion was left behind, and that her
thought was urgent to call me.
Thoughts that pass from mind to mind are swifter than speech, a thousand
times, and more luminous. So it was that we had mutually realised in a
moment that which would have been beyond the ready apprehension of human
intercourse.
She stood back because she was confronted by a wall of blackness, where
I saw sunlight, and a level lawn. It was not darkness that she saw, as
that of night, but a blackness as of a curtain, gross and palpable.
When she knew that the way was clear to me, and that it held no visible
menace, she decided instantly to go forward. “We will hold our purpose
of boldness, as the better hope both of success and of safety. I will
see with your mind, as you saw with mine in the night-time.”
I agreed, and we joined hands, and went on together.
Now, as we had found before, it is the disadvantage of this method of
helping another mind that it hinders thought, so that I went on with my
will fixed on conveying that which I saw to my companion, and could not
reflect, or even wonder, without some blurring of the vision which I was
transmitting.
The forest which we had left swept a wide forward curve on either hand
around a level plain, on which was a circular building which must have
been more than a mile in diameter. It consisted of a series of
platforms, each receding from the one below. There were many of these,
each about four feet higher than the last, and the central elevation
must have been considerable, though the extent of the building dwarfed
it. In colour it was opalescent, reminding me of the pavement which I
had first encountered, but it was of such extent and such beauty that
the comparison is one of kind only.
So far as I could see from that position, it was crowned by a level
platform. It was entirely silent: no life moved nor was visible.
All this I showed to my companion, who received it without interruption
as we paused for me to view it, but when the survey was completed, and I
would have continued our advance, I found her slow to follow, and it was
only after an interval of irresolution that at last she told me. “I am
afraid. I have doubted whether we should go forward. There is a mystery
here which awes me, whereas the unknown, or the perilous, has allured me
always. I have thought backward as far as mind will reach, and the
feeling is new. But, after this, I thought that we have taken a new road
with minds aware of its danger. We may come through harmless, or with
broken bodies, or, for all we know, we may be destroyed by forces which
are beyond experience or imagination. But there is one thing that
remains to our own wills, that if we fail we may do so conscious either
of a bold or of a craven failure. Having lived so long, I have no will
to perish with shame in my thoughts. You have walked where your sight
failed, and I can surely do so. We will go forward together, and you can
give me the sight I need, unless a greater urgency should require you.
It may be that the darkness will pass, as did the pressure.
“But, perhaps, you are yourself unwilling to continue with a comrade so
helpless? If you would rather that we turn aside, or that you go forward
alone, I am content for it to be as you will.”
I answered readily, “I am well content to go on together. I do not share
or understand your feeling. So far as I can see them, the platforms are
quiet and vacant, and nothing warns me of danger. It is a strange thing
that you cannot see, and may be ominous. But we have chosen a dangerous
search, and we are little likely to reach success if we turn from
shadows. To do so, would be (it is your own thought) to defeat
ourselves, before any hostile movement should avail to thwart us. Let us
at least go round the base of the building until we find whether the
other side be alike. We might do this without penetrating the space
within which you cannot see.”
She answered, “Not by my will. For the fear is less since my resolution
denied it; and how do we know that the higher platforms may not show us
the entrance which we seek? Or that my sight may not avail when we gain
them?”
But her sight did not return, and though I was able to convey the scene
so that she walked confidently, yet our minds could not divert to the
exchange of other thoughts,--could, indeed, scarcely think at all,
without reducing her to a darkness which was not merely such as I had
experienced on the previous night, but blackness absolute and
unrelieved.
We went straight upward from one circular platform to another, finding
no change whatever. We walked on surfaces as smooth as polished granite,
in some places of a milky opaqueness, at others of deep and
multi-coloured transparencies. Always before us was a wall of the same
substance: climbing it, we found another similar platform to traverse.
The outer edge of each curved very slightly upward, not more than a few
inches, like the low rim of a gigantic saucer. It was nothing,
proportionately, to the dimensions of the platforms themselves, but was
enough to make me wonder how they were drained, when the rain fell. Then
I wondered whether rain were allowed to fall in that solitude. Looking
closely, I noticed, at the foot of the next wall, that there was a space
of an inch or two between its apparent base and the platform beneath it.
Apart from these apertures, which gave to each of the circular walls an
appearance of being unsupported, there was no opening anywhere, as of
door or window, nor sign of joint nor division in the whole extents of
walls or platforms.
The colours before and beneath us were of innumerable variety, and of
deep and glowing intensities, changing continually as we advanced. They
changed, but did not flicker, nor sparkle. We walked on lakes of frozen
fire, that faded as we advanced to the quiet green of an English sunset
when the mists are windless. Here, I thought, might be the place of the
birth of sunsets. Sometimes the approaching wall would show a violet
colour of an intensity which I had neither seen nor imagined, but this
colour was never beneath our feet, nor could we reach it closely, for as
we approached, it always changed and faded, if fading it could be called
which was most often into a blue of more than peacock brilliance. But it
was dull to the violet light which had preceded.
So we climbed unhindered, till we traversed a much wider platform than
those below, and knew that the last wall was before us. It was higher
than the previous ones had been, and we mounted it with some difficulty.
We then saw a circular space of a diameter of about two hundred yards,
and of an absolute flatness. It seemed that there was nothing more than
the sides had shown already to reward our climbing. Except--so small a
thing. A tiny point of light on the surface at the centre--so small a
point. As we walked toward it I expected it to show more largely, but it
did not do so. When we stood within a few yards, which was the nearest
that we dared to venture, it was still too small for the eye to measure.
It was a point without magnitude. I cannot say that it was embedded in,
or that it lay upon, the surface. I cannot say that it was red or
yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle.
We stood there for a long time. I had no thoughts that I can translate
to words. I have none now.
At last, we continued our way to the farther side of the platform, where
we found a new reason for pausing. Beneath us lay the penultimate
terrace which we had noticed to be so much wider than the others.
Where we had crossed it in ascending there had been no other difference.
But here I looked upon the body of one of the Dwellers, who lay
face-downwards before us.
She did not lie on the flat surface, but in a shallow depression,
hollowed to the shape of her body, which was half beneath and half above
the surface of the platform on which she lay. It fitted her as though it
were a mould in which she had been cast. It fitted her arms, that lay
stretched straight and wide above her head. The whole attitude was one
of grief or adoration. We watched, and saw no movement.
We walked aside for some distance, before climbing down to the platform
on which she lay. Having done this, I looked toward her, and saw that
she was now standing. We remained motionless. We could merely watch. If
she saw us there could be no escape nor evasion. We could not exchange
thought, for my mind was occupied in conveying to my companion the
vision of what I saw, but she contrived to let me know that it was as
inexplicable to her as to me, and I remembered that she had told me that
she had never seen more than three women among the Dwellers, although
she supposed them to be more numerous.
The one we now saw stood upright, showing a girlish slimness, her great
size neutralised by the parity of her surroundings. She was gazing
towards the point of light, her arms held down before her, and the
joined hands twisting as in an extremity of controlled emotion.
Unlike the male Dwellers, she had hair on her head, abundant, though not
long. It was golden-brown in colour, and extended down the spine, a
narrow lifted ridge. Otherwise the body was hairless. The back was the
brown of a burnt biscuit, changing in front to rich cream-colour.
Otherwise, she might have been a woman of to-day or yesterday, with the
grace and symmetry of a Grecian statue.
So, for a time, she stood, and then turned, and descended.
As I watched her do so, I became conscious that she could see no more
than my companion. For though she walked confidently enough down what to
her were no more than very wide and shallow stairs, I saw her twice put
a foot forward, as with an instant’s doubt, to feel the slight flange
which rose at the edge of each platform.
Before we descended farther, we walked to the edge of the hollow in
which she had lain, and I had an impression of the enormous mould of a
human form, as though it had been pressed in wet sand, but all the
substance of that hollow showed the violet light of which I have told
before, and though it did not flash nor shine into the eyes as sunlight
does, but was, as it were, buried within the stone that contained it,
yet it was of such intensity that my sight was lost as I saw it, and for
some moments after I turned away I was a sharer of my companion’s
blindness.
It was inevitable that we should take much longer in our descent than
had the Dweller, whose stride from platform to platform was so different
from our shorter steps, yet when we arrived again on the level ground
she was still there, and had turned to face the temple (if such it were)
with thrown-back head, and uplifted arms, and an expression as of one
who has been hopelessly repulsed, and yet makes one more appeal, not
with expectation, but because it is intolerable to turn away, and to
admit defeat which is final.
* * * * *
It may be convenient here to explain certain facts regarding the
Dwellers of which I learnt later, and in gradual ways. They had, in the
course of numerous millenniums, developed bodies which were immune from
disease, and (in comparison with our own) from accidental injury also.
So far as their experience showed, there was no physical deterioration,
nor any reason why they should not continue indefinitely. Yet their
solution of the problem of longevity proved inferior to that which had