Chapter III

Realm of Mystery

“We wish nothing of you,” the man said, “save that you accept from us what we have to offer. You are hungry. You will let us bring you food.”

It was a simple rustic room to which they had been brought--a room in a house seemingly of plaited straw. Crude furnishings were here--table and chairs of Earth fashion, padded with stuffed mats. Woven matting was on the floor. Through a broad latticed window the faint rose-light outside--like a soft pastel twilight--filtered in, tinting the room with a gentle glow. Thin drapes at the window stirred in a breath of breeze--a warm wind from the hills, scented with the vivid blooms which were everywhere.

It had been a brief walk from the space-globe. Lee had seen what seemed a little village stretching off among the trees. There had been people crowding to see the strangers--men, women and children, in simple crude peasant garb--brief garments that revealed their pink-white bodies. They babbled with strange unintelligible words, crowding forward until the robed men from the globe shoved them away.

It was a pastoral, peaceful scene--a little country-side drowsing in the warm rosy twilight. Out by the river there were fields where men stood at their simple agricultural implements--stood at rest, staring curiously at the commotion in the village.

And still Lee’s captors would say nothing, merely drew them forward, into this room. Then all of them left, save one. He had doffed his robe now. He was an old man, with long grey-white hair to the base of his neck. He stood smiling. His voice, with the English words queerly pronounced, was gentle, but with a firm finality of command.

“My name is Arkoh,” he said. “I am to see that you are made comfortable. This house is yours. There are several rooms, so that you may do in them as you wish.”

“Thank you,” Lee said. “But you can certainly understand--I have asked many questions and never had any answers. If you wish to talk to me alone--”

“That will come presently. There is no reason for you to be worried--”

“We’re not worried,” Franklin burst out. “We’re fed up with this highhanded stuff. You’ll answer questions now. What I demand to know is why--”

“Take it easy,” Lee warned.

Franklin had jumped to his feet. He flung off Lee’s hand. “Don’t make me laugh. I know you’re one of them--everything about you is a fake. You got us into this--”

“So? You would bring strife here from your Earth?” Arkoh’s voice cut in, like a knife-blade cleaving through Franklin’s bluster. “That is not permissible. Please do not make it necessary that there should be violence here.” He stood motionless. But before his gaze Franklin relaxed into an incoherent muttering.

“Thank you,” Arkoh said. “I shall send you the food.” He turned and left the room.

Vivian collapsed into a chair. She was trembling. “Well--my Gawd--what is all this? Lee--that old man with his gentle voice--he looked like if you crossed him you’d be dead. Not that he’d hurt you--it would be--would be something else--”

“You talk like an ass,” Franklin said. “You’ve gone crazy--and I don’t blame you--this damned weird thing. For all that old man’s smooth talk, we’re just prisoners here. Look outside that window--”

It was a little garden, drowsing in the twilight. A man stood watching the window. And as Lee went to the lattice, he could see others, like guards outside.

The man who brought their simple food was a stalwart fellow in a draped garment of brown plaited fibre. His black hair hung thick about his ears. He laid out the food in silence.

“What’s your name?” Franklin demanded.

“I am Groff.”

“And you won’t talk either, I suppose? Look here, I can make it worth your while to talk.”

“Everyone has all he needs here. There is nothing that you need give us.”

“Isn’t there? You just give me a chance and I’ll show you. No one has all he needs--or all he wants.”

Groff did not answer. But as he finished placing the food, and left the room, it seemed to Lee that he shot a queer look back at Franklin. A look so utterly incongruous that it was startling. Franklin saw it and chuckled.

“Well, at least there’s one person here who’s not so damn weird that it gives you the creeps.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lee said. With sudden impulse he lowered his voice. “Franklin, listen--there are a few things that perhaps I can tell you. Things that I can guess--that Vivian senses--”

“I don’t want to hear your explanation. It would be just a lot of damn lies anyway.”

“All right. Perhaps it would. We’ll soon know, I imagine.”

“Let’s eat,” Vivian said. “I’m hungry, even if I am scared.”

To Lee it seemed that the weird mystery here was crowding upon them. As though, here in this dim room, momentous things were waiting to reveal themselves. A strange emotion was upon Lee Anthony. A sort of tense eagerness. Certainly it was not fear. Certainly it seemed impossible that there could be anything here of which he should be afraid. Again his mind went back to old Anna Green and what she had told him of his grandfather. How far away--how long ago that had been ... And yet, was Anna Green far away now? Something of her had seemed always to be with him on that long, weird voyage, from the infinite smallness and pettiness of Earth to this realm out beyond the stars. And more than ever now, somehow Lee seemed aware of her presence here in this quiet room. Occultism? He had always told himself that surely he was no mystic. A practical fellow, who could understand science when it was taught him, but certainly never could give credence to mysticism. The dead are dead, and the living are alive; and between them is a gulf--an abyss of nothingness.

Now he found himself wondering. Were all those people on Earth who claimed to feel the presence of dead loved ones near them? Were those people just straining their fancy--just comforting themselves with what they wished to believe? Or was the scoffer himself the fool? And if that could be so, on Earth, why could not this strange realm be of such a quality that an awareness of those who have passed from life would be the normal thing? Who shall say that the mysteries of life and death are unscientific? Was it not rather that they embraced those gaps of science not yet understood? Mysteries which, if only we could understand them, would be mysteries no longer?

Lee had left the table and again was standing at the latticed window, beyond which the drowsing little garden lay silent, and empty now. The guard who had been out here had moved further away; his figure was a blob near a flowered thicket at the house corner. And suddenly Lee was aware of another figure. There was a little splashing fountain near the garden’s center--a rill of water which came down a little embankment and splashed into a pool where the rose light shimmered on the ripples.

The figure was sitting at the edge of the pool--a slim young girl in a brief dress like a drape upon her. She sat, half reclining on the bank by the shimmering water, with her long hair flowing down over her shoulders and a lock of it trailing in the pool. For a moment he thought that she was gazing into the water. Then as the light which tinted her graceful form seemed to intensify, he saw that she was staring at him.