The Mantooth Part 31

Never, it seemed to him, had she spoken more truly. For he now felt in the wrenching of his heart, as surely as if the flesh itself ached and bled, the many scars that lay across him. He became quiet, and put his head against her, knowing that for all his yearning, patience alone would heal him, and make those forgotten dreams possible.

Time pa.s.sed.

At length Kalus raised himself, understanding, and better able to handle the heightened state of his senses, feeling once more like a peaceful sea from which the gale has pa.s.sed, softened and grateful.

'Thank you,' he said to her. He took a deep breath.

'Are you all right?'

There was something more than womanly concern in her voice. An intense curiosity had taken hold of her, as if she too pondered some great riddle of her past. The questions twirled like serpents about the object she now surveyed.

'Yes. What are you thinking?'

'I've been looking at the mirror,' she said, gazing at it still. 'All this time we've taken the altar, and the visions of that night, for granted, perhaps because the questions were too deep, and they frightened us..... But what does it all mean, Kalus? What's BEHIND it?'

Turning toward the singular apparatus, which like her he had left aside until this night as simply too much to contemplate, he was again drawn by its silent mystery. But in his more earthy, less ethereal way, he took the question literally. What lay BEHIND it? And stirred at last to physical action, he took from his pouch the round hammer-stone and approached the blue-black mirror, which seemed to waver in strange patterns before him.

As the woman watched, he tapped first along the rock immediately surrounding the gla.s.s, then above, and around the altar. There could be no doubt: the sounds were hollow. Some hidden chamber lay beyond. He turned to his companion.

'Shall I break the gla.s.s?'

Again she felt an inner turmoil. But her need to know was so great.....

'Yes.'

He s.h.i.+elded his eyes with his arm, much as he had on the night when together they heard the Voice. . .and hurled his stone into the heart of it.

With a crash the mirror burst. And when she dared to open her eyes again, her first reaction was disappointment. Only a hole remained, lined about the edges with jagged bits of gla.s.s. But forbidding and tooth-like as these appeared, they could with care be removed, and the pa.s.sage rendered safe. This Kalus set out to do, protecting his hand with a small skin and pulling out the pieces one by one, unable yet to penetrate the gloom of what lay beyond.

'Bring me the torch,' he said to her.

But now the girl became suddenly timid. Seeing the result of her handiwork, she wondered if in her restless curiosity she had not tempted the undoing of all Faith.

'It's all right,' he said, somehow knowing her thoughts.

'If a belief can be so easily destroyed, by the least physical reality, it is not worthy of the hope we place in it. I would rather put my faith in something that can be trusted.'

Her eyes pleaded.

'I know,' he said more quietly. 'Nothing is that simple. But the miracle of the Voice is not banished yet. Bring me the torch, and we'll see what lies beyond.'

Slowly she calmed the surge of religious fear, and took from its mount on the wall the torch that they had made. She handed it to him as he continued to reach across the polished granite, removing or brus.h.i.+ng aside the broken gla.s.s that remained. He then moved the torch from side to side, trying to see.....

'There is a room, about the same size of the upper cave. But it is higher, and filled with objects I don't know.' Taking the fur canopy from his bed, he folded it and used it to line the edges, still rough, of the opening. Then tossing the light in gently ahead of him, he mounted the altar. And pa.s.sed within.

'I'm coming, too,' came the woman's voice after him.

Perceiving no immediate danger, he wedged the torch into an opening, and helped her through the empty, oval s.p.a.ce. Upon regaining her feet, the girl looked around her. . .and gave voice to her dismay.

'Computers.' And so it was. One entire wall of the square-cut chamber consisted of nothing but the sterile MACHINES: voice and thought a.n.a.lyzers, communications and memory, species, mythology, and logic sequencers. The woman felt used, betrayed.

'All that time in the cave, alone and afraid. My only hope was the voice that spoke to me through the gla.s.s. To know that it was reading my thoughts and secret hopes, and telling me to remain there..... Just MACHINES. All a terrible hoax.'

'Not all, my sweet Sylvie, and not terrible. The warnings they spoke were true, and may have saved your life. And in the end, I did come to you.' He put his arm around her.

'And is it not a miracle after all? Think of it. I was born fully human, on a night when stars fell from the sky. Then Akar comes to me in Barabbas' cave: I see a terrible vision, and am made an outcast.

The Mantis finds you in the mountains of the North and brings you here.

We are brought together.' He turned towards her. 'Even if machines could accomplish all or part of that, so many miracles had to come first. Life on Earth. The Universe itself, rather than a great, formless void.

'What are the odds of it?' he continued. 'That you and I should be standing here now, alive and still young, with love and hope, and the chance to make a better life. Is that not miracle enough?'

'I know what you're saying. And of course you're right. It just felt better. . .I don't know. . .to think that G.o.d was watching me. That He loved and cared about ME..... I'm going to miss that.'

'When I was a child, I thought as a child,' he quoted. 'When we are young we need such illusions, such security. And who is to say what does and does not exist in the world beyond our sight? Not I.

Here I stand, surrounded by wonders I could not dream of. To think that a light from a machine could reach inside my mind, and give me the power to speak.'

At this the woman suddenly stirred, and drew away from him. She examined the machinery more closely, confounded, overwhelmed. It wasn't possible.

'What is it, Sylviana?' Still for a time she could not speak, trying to follow the rapid, and incredible chain of thought.

'My father was a scientist,' she said finally. 'And I knew something of on-going research. This technology: the fire that burned from nothing, the ability to read my thoughts..... And the violet beam, GIVING YOU THE POWER OF SPEECH. Kalus, unless I'm dead wrong. This equipment, and the altar. . .weren't left here by men! We haven't advanced nearly this far.'

With this her weary despondency left her. She was consumed instead by the eager, questioning thought that her father had pa.s.sed on to her almost without her knowing it: Science, the study of the visible G.o.d.

Examining the back of the chamber, she found a steep pa.s.sage carved into the rock, after a single bend to the left, leading in a straight line upward and eastward. But surely ?carved' was not the right word.

The walls were smooth as gla.s.s, the floor rippled, as if to accommodate some creature which had used the uneven surface to enter and return.....

The slanting tube rose far out of sight---to the top, she imagined, of Skither's fifteen-hundred foot mountain. A score of masons couldn't have done the fine work in twenty years.

'What does it mean?' asked Kalus, lost in the wake of her discovery and unable to follow.

'The oldest question of all, Kalus. Is there life among the stars?

But here, let's follow the pa.s.sage and see where it leads. I'll tell you more when I know more.'

Now it was he who became trepid, not understanding. She couldn't help herself. She laughed.

'Oh, did I look as foolish when you broke the mirror? There's no reason to be afraid. I'm sure there's no one here now. Machinery this advanced could have been working completely on its own for centuries.'

She took his hand, and together they made their way up the long, arrow-straight pa.s.sageway, pacing their steps and resting often, so as not to exhaust themselves in the climb and have nothing left. And yet at each pause their sense of wonder, as well as the now tenable magic of the peyote, only seemed to increase.

For so, too, do Science and the indescribable beauty Nature walk---the study and living manifestation, respectively, of the enigmatic Spirit of the Universe.

And as they stepped out at last onto a high platform open to the stars, both felt it so clearly. The sabled dome of sky, scattered with living diamonds, throbbed and pulsed, undeniable: Eternity's Breath.

And though they found nothing more alien or fantastic than a smooth, half-crater floor, opening unbarriered on the East, still, this was more than enough. The vastness of the sky reached like a limitless ocean, islanded by countless suns and unseen planets.

And on the nearer, more tangible horizon, its pounding surf just audible in the distance..... Kalus' heart caught in his throat. How it called to him! Earth-mystical, everlasting, unvanquished by the follies of men. . .he saw it as for the first time. Endlessly living.

The Sea.