XXXIII
A LONG WAY FROM SHORE
Once more Watson had taken the kind of chance he preferred--a slenderone. He took the chance that these people, however occult and advancedthey might be, were still human enough to build their prophecy out of anold foundation. If he were right, then the person of the Jarados wouldbe inviolable. If the professor were prisoner, held somewhere in secret,and it got noised about that he was the true prophet returned--it wouldnot only give Holcomb immense prestige, but at the same time render theposition of his captors untenable.
Chick needed no great discernment to see that he had touched a vitalspot. The philosophy of the Rhamdas was firmly bound up with spiritism;they had gone far in science, and had passed out of mere belief intothe deeper, finer understanding that went behind the shadow for proof.Certainly Watson inwardly rejoiced to see Rhamda Geos incredulous,his keen face whitening like that of one who has just heard sacrilegeuttered--to see Geos rise in his place, grip the table tightly, and hearhim exclaim:
"The Jarados! Did you say--the Jarados? He has come amongst us, and wehave not known? You are perfectly sure of this?"
"I am," stated Watson, and met the other's keen scrutiny withoutflinching.
Would the game work? At least it promised action; and now that he hadthe old feeling of himself he was anxious to get under way. Any feelingof fear was gone now. He calmly nodded his head.
"Yes, it is so. But sit down. I have still a bit more to tell you."
The Rhamda resumed his seat. Clearly, his reverence had been greatlyaugmented in the past few seconds. From that time on there was a markeddifference in his manner; and his speech, when he addressed Chick,contained the expression "my lord"--an expression that Watson found iteasy enough to become accustomed to.
"Did you doubt, Rhamda Geos, that I came from the Jarados?"
"We did not doubt. We were certain."
"I see. You were not expecting the Jarados."
"Not yet, my lord. The coming of the Jarados shall be close to the Dayof the Judgment. But it could not be so soon; there were to be signs andportents. We were to solve the problem first; we were to know the reasonof the shadow and the why of the spirit. The wisdom of the Rhamda Avectold that the day approaches; he had opened the Spot of Life and gonethrough it; but he had NOT sent the fact and the substance." Watsonsmiled. There was just enough superstition, it seemed, beneath all theRhamda's wisdom to make him tractable. However, Chick asked:
"Tell me: as a learned man, as a Rhamda, do you believe in the prophecyimplicitly?"
"Yes, my lord. I am a spiritist; and if spiritism is truth, then theJarados was genuine, and his prophecy is true. After all, my lord, it isnot a case of legend, but of history. The Jarados came at a time ofhigh civilisation, when men would see and understand him; he gave us histeaching in records, and imposed his laws upon the Thomahlia. Then hedeparted--through the Spot of Life."
And the Rhamda Geos went on to say that the teachings of the Jarados hadbeen moral as well as intellectual. Moreover, after he had formulatedhis laws, he wrote out his judgment.
"What was that?"
"An exhortation, my lord, that we were to give proof of our appreciationof intelligence. We were to use it, and to prove ourselves worthy ofit by lifting ourselves up to the level of the Spot of Life. In otherwords, the spot would be opened when, and only when, we had learned thesecrets of the occult, and--had opened the Spot ourselves!"
Watson thought he understood partly. He asked:
"And that is why you doubt me?"
"You, my lord? Not so! You were found in the Temple of the Bell andLeaf; not on the Spot itself, to be sure, but on the floor of thetemple. You were, both in your person and in your dress, of anotherworld; you had been promised by the Rhamda Avec; and, in a sense, youwere a part of the prophecy. We accepted you!"
"But I speak your language. Account for that, Geos."
"It need not be accounted for, my lord. We accept it as fact. Theaffinity of spirit would not be bound by the limitation of artificialspeech. That you should talk the Thomahlia language is no more strangethan that Rhamda Avec, when he passed into your world, should speak yourtongue."
"We call our language English," supplied Watson. "It is the tongue ofthe Jarados and of myself."
"Tell me of the Jarados, my lord!" with renewed eagerness. "In the otherworld--what is he?"
It was Chick's opportunity. By telling the simple truth about Dr.Holcomb he would enhance himself in the eyes of Rhamda Geas.
"In the other world--we call it America--the Jaradas is a Rhamda muchlike yourself, the head and chief of many Rhamdas sitting in a greatinstitution devoted to intelligence. It is called the University ofCalifornia."
"And this California; what is it, my lord?"
"A name," returned Chick. "Immediately on the other side of the Spot isa region called California."
"The promised land, my lord!"
"The promised land indeed. There are some who call it paradise, eventhere." And for good measure he proceeded to tell much of his own land,of the woods, the rivers, the cities, animals, mountains, the sky, themoon, and the sun. When he came to the sun he explained that no mandared to look at it continuously with the bare eyes. Its great heat andsplendour astounded Geos.
Concerning himself he nonchalantly stated that he was the fiance ofHolcomb's daughter; that is, son-in-law-to-be of the prophet Jarados;that he was sort of Junior Rhamda. He declared that he had come fromthe occult Rhamdas, through the other side of the Spot, in search ofthe Jarados who had gone before. As to his blankness up to now, and hisperplexity--he was but a Junior; and the Spot had naturally benumbed hissenses. Even now, he apologised, it was difficult to know and to recalleverything clearly.
Through it all the Rhamda Geos Listened in something like awe. Hewas hearing of wonders never before guessed in the Thomahlia. As theprospective son-in-law of the Jarados, Watson automatically liftedhimself to a supreme height, so great that, could he only hold himselfup to it, he would have a prestige second only to that of the prophethimself.
All of a sudden he thought of a question. It gripped him with dread,the dread of the unknown. The question was one of TIME. "How long have Ibeen here, Rhamda Geos?"
"Over eleven months, by our system of reckoning. You were found on thefloor of the temple three hundred and fifty-seven days ago; you werein a lifeless condition; you must have been there some hours, my lord,before we discovered you."
"Eleven months!" It had seemed but that many minutes. "And I wasunconscious--"
"All the time, my lord. Had we caught you immediately upon yourcoming, we could have brought you around within three days, but in thecircumstances it was impossible to restore you before we did. You havebeen under the care of the greatest specialists in all Thomahlia."
Geos himself had been one of these. "The council of Rhamdas went intospecial session, my lord, immediately after your materialisation, andhas been sitting almost continually since. And now that you are revived,they are waiting in person for you to show yourself.
"They accept you. They do not know who you are, my lord; none of us hasguessed even a part of the truth. The entire council awaits!"
But Chick wanted more. Besides, he looked at his clothing.
"I would have my own garments, Geos; also, whatever else was found on myperson."
For Watson was thinking of a small but powerful pistol, an automatic,that he had carried on the night when he fell through the Blind Spot.This question of materiality was still a puzzle; if he himself hadsurvived there was a chance that the firearm had done the same. It mightand it might not preclude the occult. Anyway, he treasured the thoughtof that automatic; with it in his possession he would not be bare-handedin case of emergency.
They returned to the room in which Chick had awakened. The Rhamda lefthim. A few moments later he came back with a squad of men. Chick notedtheir discipline, movement, and uniforms, and classed them as soldiers.Two men were stationed outside the door--one, a stout, dark indivi
dualin a blue uniform; and the other a lithe, athletic chap, blond andblue-eyed, wearing a bright crimson dress. Chick instinctively preferredboth man and garb in crimson; there was a touch of honour, of lightnessand strength that just suited him. The other was dark, heavy andsinister.
Both wore sandals, and upon their heads curious shakos, made of thefinest down, not fur. Both displayed a heavy silken braid looped fromone shoulder. Each carried a spear-like weapon, of some shining blackmaterial, straight-tapered to a needle-point; but no other arms.
Watson pointed to the two uniforms.
"What is the significance, Geos?"
"One is from the queen, my lord; the other from Bar Senestro. The blueis the cloth of the Bars; the red, that of the queens. The Bar and thequeen send this bodyguard with their respective compliments."
Chick took the bundle that Geos had brought, and proceeded to don hisown clothes, finding deep satisfaction in the fact that they had arrivedas intact as he. He felt carefully in his hip pocket; the automaticwas still there, likewise the extra magazine of cartridges that he hadcarried about with him on that night.
In his other pockets he found two packets of cigarettes, a pouch oftobacco, some papers, a few coins, a little money and two photographs,one of Bertha and the other of her father. Not a thing had beendisturbed.
He announced himself ready.
The Rhamda conducted him down the corridor, which he found to be linedwith guards; red on one side, blue on the other. These men fell inbehind in two parallel files, one of the one colour and one of theother.
It was a building of great size. The corridors were long and high, allwith the wide-coved ceiling, and of colours that melted from one shadeto another as they turned, not corners, but curves. Apparently eachcolour had its own suggestive reason. Such rooms as Chick could lookinto were uniformly large, beautiful, and distinctly lighted.
The guard moved in silent rhythm; the chief sound was that made byWatson's leather-heeled shoes, drowning out, for once, the everlastingtinkling undertone of those unseen fairy-bells; that running cadence,never ceasing, silver, liquid, like the soul of sound.
Though Watson walked with head erect, he had eyes for every little thinghe passed. He noted the material of the structure and tried to name it;neither plaster nor stone, the walls were highly polished and, somehowor other, capable of emitting perfume--light and wholesome, not heavyand oppressive. And in dark passages the walls glowed.
The corridor widened, and with a graceful curve opened upon a widestairway that descended, or rather sank--to use Watson's own wordsfor the feeling--into the depths of the building. To the right of onelanding was a large window reaching to the floor; its panes were clearand not frosted as had been the others.
Chick got his first glimpse here of what lay outside--an iridescentlandscape, at first view astonishingly like an ocean of opals; for itwas of many hues, red and purple and milky white, splashed violantinblue and fluorescence--a maze and shimmer of dancing, joyful colours,whirring in an uncertainty of polychromatic harmony. Such was his firstfleeting impression.
At the next landing he looked closer. It was not unlike a monsterbowl of bubbles; the same illusion of movement, the same delicacyand witchery of colour, only here the sensation was not that ofdecomposition but of life; of flowers, delicate as the rainbow, tenuous,sinuous, breathing--weaving in a serpentine maze of daedalian hues; longtendrils of orchidian beauty, lifting, weaving, drooping--a vast sea ofequatorial bloom; but--no trees.
"This is our landscape," spoke the Rhamda. "According to the Jarados, itis not like that of the next world--your world, my lord. After you meetthe Rhamdas, I shall take you into the Mahovisal for a closer view of itall."
They reached the bottom of the stairway. Chick noted the architecture inthe entrance-way at this point; the seeming solidness of structure, asif the whole had been chiselled, not built. The vestibule was reallya hall, domed and high, large enough to shelter a hundred. Like thecorridor outside Chick's room, it was lined with a row each of red andblue uniformed guards.
Invariably the one belonged to the blond, lithe, quick-feeling type,the others heavy, sturdy, formidable. The extremities of the two linesconverged on an oval-topped doorway, very large, having above it adesign conventionalised from the three-leafed clover. One leaf wasscarlet, one blue, the other green.
The door opened. The guards halted. Geos stepped aside with a bow, andWatson strode forward into the presence of the Council of the Rhamdas.