The Ship from Atlantis Read online

  While waiting, a group of boys and young men were kicking around a rolling object and Gwalchmai saw it to be a human skull upon which still hung a few shreds of flesh and a little black hair. They did not stop at the approach of the strangers, but went on with their grim sport in a spirit of dull ferocity. It seemed to be a duty or a custom, and they appeared to find little enjoyment in the exercise.

  But there was worse to follow before the quartet could pass beyond this squalid section.

  Out of a tumbledown, windowless building a shrieking virago ran, lugging a squalling infant by the heels. Though it could scarcely be a year old, it scratched at her flying legs with its tiny nails, biting and yelling like a changeling imp.

  Finally she could stand the uproar no longer and stopped to pound its head against the stones.

  Corenice clutched Baraldabay's robe. "Stop itl Stop it!" she cried, but he was indifferent.

  "What would you? She is the child's mother. Here we do as we please!"

  "But why? Why should she do that?" Nunganey asked, in horror at an unnatural parent who would strike a child even lightly, much less beat it to death.

  "Who knows?" Baraldabay answered. "Possibly it bit her while it suckled. Woman's temper is always unpredictable, here perhaps more then elsewhere. We are a dying people—let us die in our own way!"

  The baby's wails whimpered away into complete silence before they had gone very far. Afterward, they heard a long hysterical cry—half laugh, half scream, as the frenzy passed and the infanticide's shaky reason returned to haunt her. If she was in grief or merely sadistically excited, they had no way of knowing.

  They passed on, without speaking, and Gwalchmai's impression was that there had been little sincerity in Corenice's plea. He felt that it had been made only to bring out more plainly the philosophy governing the actions of all the denizens of this grand yet hideously savage city-state.

  He wondered anew what her motives were in coming here, a strange missionary from the past. What change did she mean to bring about? What could she hope to accomplish?

  In a few more years, at the present rate of declining births and frequent strife, the inhabitants must render themselves extinct. Why not let them eliminate themselves in their own cruel way?

  They looked down a lateral street where, at a distance, an old slave was staggering through a gauntlet of young boys, who were striking at him with sticks and light wooden axes. He went down and they fell upon him, but he did not cry out.

  Baraldabay saw their glances and their pity. He shrugged.

  "He belongs to them. That is how boys leam to become men."

  Lost in moody reverie, Gwalchmai took no more notice of the passing scene and was surprised when they debouched into a broad, impressive square. They walked across this, suiting their gait to the old man's halting pace, and climbed a long series of time-rounded steps fronting a high pillared building, once a temple to Poseidon and still in a good state of preservation.

  Ancient carvings on the pediment showed men on horseback hunting down a mammoth with bow and lance, but without time for inspection they were hurried through a wide doorway. Choking black smoke rolled out above their heads as they entered, finding egress at its own will. Just inside the portico they stopped where an armorer had set up his forge hear the altar, which had been tipped over upon its side to make room for it. He was busily beating out a half-moon head for a ponderous war axe.

  He lifted his deep set bloodshot eyes to them, to answer Baraldabay's question.

  "Caranche? The king? He went beyond the Wall this morning. There was a disturbance among the field slaves and the foresters gave shelter to the runaways. Some more of them want to be sent into the Hole!"

  He chuckled grimly and began to hammer again upon the cooling steel.

  They passed down a dark corridor and into an open courtyard.

  Here stood the magnificent chariot of Poseidon, drawn by leaping dolphins of bronze, each ridden by laughing Nereids. The chariot, of gold and silver, was decorated with stylized octopi and seahorses swam in dipping procession around the border upon the base. The fountain before it was dry and the statue of the god, still brandishing his trident, was headless.

  Corenice gave it one agonized glance and averted her eyes.

  "You have the liberty of the building," said Baraldabay, succinctly. "Take any vacant sleeping room you choose. Food will be brought you here and you may keep your weapons until Caranche gives orders concerning you. He may be gone two or three days. Until then, all entrances will be guarded. If you try to leave you will be killed!"

  When they were alone, Corenice turned to the men.

  "What do you think of these people whom Ahuni-i loved —and whose very name has been corrupted by them?"

  There was iron in Gwalchmai's voice as he replied, "They cannot be allowed to go on. They are totally evil and a menace to the Abenaki."

  Nunganey muttered, "They must be destroyed!"

  "I determined that long ago, in my floating prison—looking upon them astrally, abominating their evil plans—knowing what I must do, lest they bring destruction upon the whole world. I know what it may cost me. But we will give them a chance they never gave the Abenaki, brother. I do not remember this king of theirs—he may be of a better breed.

  "We will wait his coming. If in that time we find one spark of good in this people, or in him—! Well, let us bide in patience and learn what more we may."

  VII

  THE HOLE

  Caranche, King of Nor-um-Bega, came back to his city before evening of the second day of their incarceration, but when the prisoners were brought before him darkness had fallen, owing to the mountainous wall of water between them and the low sun.

  Flaming cressets lit the throne room and one glance told the young Aztlanian that here was a man not likely to be deceived by any naive claims of Nunganey concerning his own and Corenice's divinity. He motioned furtively to the Abenaki, in the almost universal sign language common to all nations of polyglot Alata, that he was to keep silent. Nunganey nodded in answer. But the mischief had already been done.

  Caranche was a very ox of a man, bull throated, mightily muscled, his arms and legs furred with red bristles. His mop of carroty hair fell over his fierce restless eyes into his tangled beard.

  He sprawled in his seat, peering morosely through his unkempt locks at die strangers, occasionally lifting a ham-like hand to suck a small bleeding wound on his wrist. Gwalchmai saw several in the throneroom who wore bandages or moved carefully. He guessed that Caranche's punitive expedition against the foresters had not had everything its own way.

  Either the smart or the manner in which the king had received the scratch irked him, making his mood more ugly than usual. The surrounding men-at-arms gave him fearful respect and the three surmised that this man was, like his subjects, of an invariably quick temper and vicious whims.

  Baraldabay, their sponsor, went up and whispered something to him which they could not catch. Caranche at once favored Gwalchmai with an intent and interested gaze, centering on the flame-gun at his belt. He motioned Gwalchmai to advance, peremptorily beckoning with a pudgy finger glittering with jewels and coming to the point without preamble.

  "My Tower Man tells me what I can see for myself," he rumbled, in Abenaki. "You have a weapon of the Old Ones who built this city. Where did you get it?"

  Gwalchmai stammered, trying to think of an answer which would not disclose the true identity of Corenice.

  "Never mind! Let me have itl" the king interrupted, holding out his hand.

  Gwalchmai shot a look of indecision at the girl. She nodded imperceptibly and he unwillingly gave up the weapon.

  Caranche fingered it inexpertly, turning it over and over, while they hoped fervently that he might manage to blow his head off with it. Scarcely lifting his eyes from it, he grunted to an attendant:

  "Bring in those field slaves!"

  A group of crippled and bleeding red men were herded in and lined up against t
he farther wall. None had their wounds attended and some were in a dying condition, being supported by their companions. Obviously these were unfortunates who had been handled with malicious and unnecessary violence, by men who loved the sight of suffering. Nunganey's relieved sigh told the others that his friend was not among them.

  The king looked hard at Gwalchmai.

  "We have a storeroom filled to tie top with these things and not one of them will work. If this one does what our legends say it should, I will make you chief armorer and commander of a hundredl"

  He raised it, took aim and pulled the trigger. The echo of the long and continued discharge filled die broad hall with thunder as charred heaps, which had once been men, fell to the floor half buried under cascades of masonry torn from the wall behind them. Heedless of the destruction he was causing, Caranche swung the besom of flame back down the long line. He had not quite finished when the light waned rapidly, running down the spectrum from brilliant blue-white to dark cherry—red, then went completely black like a cooling ember.

  Caranche was furious and swung upon the three.

  "Did you do that? How can I recharge it?"

  "Go to Mictlampa and find out, you blood-soaked murderer!"

  Gwalchmai snatched for his sword, while the Abenaki and the girl from Atlantis pressed closer to him in silent approbation. His action was not quick enough. He and Nunganey fell buried beneath a dozen guardsmen and were overpow-ered at once. They were carried off, weaponless, though Corenice, who oddly enough had not used her miraculous strength, was led peaceably in another direction, smiling secretly at them to be unafraid.

  Caranche shouted after them, beside himself with fury:

  "Give them a sight of the Hole! Take them down with the relief lot, but bring diem back to the pits until morning. They can decide then to tell me or to die!"

  The two men were hurried out to the street, where they joined a line of perhaps forty men with only minor wounds, and were linked to them by a long chain. Then, under close guard, they passed out of the city through a gate in the wall and were marched across the open fields beyond. After about a mile of traveling they came to a place where heaps of jagged rock encumbered the ground, in mounds higher than houses.

  Far as eye could see in the dusk, these mounds stretched away to left and right, refuse heaps from some industry fit for Titans.

  Torches were lit at this point and they pressed forward under the flickering light. They followed a well traveled road and after a half hour of steady marching among the mounts they came to an unencumbered field. Here stood a high tower of metal with a guiding wheel at its top over which a cable ran, and slaves there were chained to a winch, waiting their coming.

  Without delay ten men were separated and led upon a platform which sank into the ground and disappeared out of sight to the creaking accompaniment of the winch and the cracking of whips.

  Not long after, it rose again with a load of rock upon it, wet and shining in the torchlight. Slaves came forward and cleared this away and another ten men took place upon the platform and followed the others.

  Again this was repeated, and again, and at last Nunganey and Gwalchmai also sank into the depths. The shaft was lined with metal and planks until bedrock was met and from there only the natural living granite met their gaze. Peering over the sides, they saw lights below and soon with a grating bump they came to a stop.

  This was not the bottom. The shaft widened out into a chamber, broad and high, with another framework beside them and another contingent of slaves. Here too, another platform waited, and after its load of rock had been transferred to the one upon which they had come down, they stood upon the scarred planks and were carried deeper.

  Again they sank from chamber to chamber of this tremendous shaft. There seemed to be no end to lower levels. It became hard to breathe. The least effort was an exertion; the air seemed drenched with fog and the torches would not burn.

  They dropped past chambers lit wanly with clustered luminous fungi feeding upon rotten wood left there for that purpose. The floor glowed with foxfire and shining glow worms hung from the roofs of the chambers on long threads, winking like little stars as they swung in the slow movement of the dead air.

  They felt their eyes starting from their heads and their eardrums cracking from the pressure. A dead man came up on a rock-loaded platform. They transferred him as well and were lowered once again.

  The platforms began fitting the shaft more snugly and were no longer able to hold more than five men. Butterfly valves in the floors opened as the lifts sank and were closed as they rose. Like a piston in a pump, the rising and falling of the platforms helped to change the fetid atmosphere.

  Now at this depth the fungi could no longer grow and luminous paint took its place, providing a hazy effulgence in which the newcomers could barely see. The others, though suffering, seemed to experience less distress. They still descended, moving the rock which waited for them and lowered still deeper, from platform to platform by the animalized slaves.

  At last they heard picks and hammers below them and came into a partly finished chamber hewn in the basalt, miles below the very lowest of the strata with which men are now familiar. Here, in the very bones of Earth's carcass, the slaves strove and died at the command of Caranche, the king, who carried on the plans of rulers dead long before him.

  Here was a man smearing luminous paint, bent over by the weight of his small can and brush, fighting for air with straining lungs. Beside him another had fallen over his hammer and was painting in weakness. His eyes were closed, nor did he open them under the urging lash of an overseer, himself in little better condition.

  The picks and hammers rang in the dense air. At each stroke, an echo seemed to rise through the rock below the workmen. At first, Gwalchmai and Nunganey thought it was only an echo, but when the work stopped for the change of workers, the deep sounds continued. It was clearly evident that from some unknown depth of horror a second shaft was being driven upward to meet this one which so painfully sank.

  The two comrades saw no more than this of the lowest chamber of the Hole. Almost at the same time the dreadful meaning of the years of digging became apparent to Gwalchmai, both of them collapsed upon the splintered floor, bleeding at nostrils and ears. They did not know when they were dragged roughly upon the next heap of rock, hurriedly piled from platform to platform, rising jerkily with it by slow stages once again to the upper levels.

  A cool wind revived them. They saw stars shining down upon them through a roughly circular opening. It enlarged as they watched and the stars became flaring torches. They felt hands upon them, cuffing them from their swoon, and then they were stumbling like automatons, stupidly, heavily, back to the city.

  Once more at Poseidon's temple, they were led down a step, dark, poorly ventilated ramp whose walls glistened in the torchlight with stinking slime and luminous molds.

  Caranche met and followed them down and saw them locked behind iron bars. The guards left them alone and the king growled:

  "So you are the mighty Glooskap, Son of the Mountain? You came here to visit Hobbamock, they tell me! Well, the slaves here talk of Hobbamock, but we know him not. Could it be possible that you were born to be a slave?

  "You, shall die a slave's death tomorrow, Glooskap, unless you tell me what I want to know. It may be that you will go back to the Hole, for as long as you chance to live. I promise you, in that case, you shall not come out alive. Possibly we may decide to use some charming little custom of your own country. We must be hospitable to a guest and make him feel at home.

  "Shall we wrap you with red-hot chains or warm your feet with coals or throw ashes in your eyes? Eh? Would that help you to remember?"

  "The Black Captain take you!" Gwalchmai grunted, and turned his back in disgust. This seemed to amuse Caranche mightily. He went down the corridor, taking the torch with him and laughing in his beard.

  When they thought themselves finally alone, but for the scurrying rats, Nunganey
turned to Gwalchmai in the dark.

  He muttered, "That Sachem! He is no real man at alll Never heard of Hobbamock, said he. I think he is Hobbamock the foul, and none other! The body you chose to dwell in, Glooskap, is too weak to fight these people. They are demons. Do you think the Night Woman can master him?"

  Gwalchmai laughed shortly.

  "Who? Cor—Bumole? She can take care of herself. Don't worry about her at all. We'll be out of here before you know it. As for that stupid fool—that red bear! If he only knew that he had but to flip up the pan over the butt of the flame-gun and expose the interior to direct sunlight for an hour, in order to completely restore the charge—"

  A cackle of mad laughter interrupted him and bare feet pounded in the dark passageway as their unseen listener scurried away to the upper air.

  "He may not have known it before," tersely remarked the Abenaki, "but he soon will! All that remains to us now is to pray to Kiehtan and daub on the deathpamt."

  Gwalchmai groaned. There was only one thought to cheer him in his self-disgust: Merlin's ring lay cold upon his finger. Danger was not very close.

  That night, all North Alata lay under a cold, cloudless sky. The very air seemed snapping with electricity and above the Inland Sea the Ghost Dancers roamed, paling the cold majesty of the moon. Perhaps because of the huge copper deposits there, or for other, more terrible, reasons, a broad-winged bird shape took form, high in the heavens.

  Beneath it, men looked up and marked it well and wondered whither it would fly to forecast war between the nations. The aged Hayonwatha, called from his lodge in Onondaga, saw the angry crimson of its rippling wings as it hung above the Long House of the Five Nations and his eyes narrowed, thinking that he must call a council to learn what danger threatened.

  It moved away, toward the East. He yawned, relieved, and went back to his furs with a peaceful mind.

  The phenomenon did not change in formation. It drifted on, a little faster, flickering low, then brightly, pulsating with odd brilliance and changing colors. Riding upon, or driven by, the mysterious magnetic currents of the upper air it hastened easterly along die Ghost Road.