Slaves of Ijax. John Russell Fearn
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got everything so—” to Michael Blane, and the next he was saying “—hopelessly wrong!” to a tall impassive figure standing near him, silhouetted by a mighty window.
Peter stopped talking abruptly. It came to him slowly that he was free of straps. though he was still on the same long table. He closed his eyes and then opened them again, staring at a high domed ceiling made of some glazed and exquisitely patterned metal.
Presently he dared to move his eyes sideways. The tall thin figure was still there, hands tucked Oriental-fashion in the wide cuffs in the single-piece black garment he was wearing. The light through the window was so bright that Peter could not immediately distinguish the outline of the man’s features; beyond him was a wilderness of machinery and complicated electrical equipment, technicians in close fitting overalls moving silently about appointed tasks....
Peter swallowed hard and peered at his watch. It was ticking steadily and said 12:22. Bewildered he looked back to the window. Outside tall buildings of glazed grey metal climbed into the blue brilliance of a summer sky.
He realised at length that the tall man had been studying him for he came forward slowly.
“You are to be congratulated, my friend,” he said. “At last we have succeeded in breaking into the mystical Ebon Sphere.”
Still Peter remained quiet—mentally stunned. If this was a dream it was a vivid one indeed. He remained with head slightly raised so that he could study the tall stranger thoroughly—and was not unduly impressed by what he saw.
The man’s face was as thin as his body. A fleshless nose curved with the sharpness of an eagle’s beak over a thin-lipped mouth and smooth, jutting chin. The cheeks were hollow under high bones, and utterly bloodless. From beneath very finely lined dark eyebrows two eyes of so light a grey they seemed transparent studied Peter with detached interest. His gaze went beyond them to the man’s extremely high forehead and the black hair flattened back from it. He was fifty, perhaps sixty, it was difficult to tell.
“Who...are you?” Peter found his throat hoarse as he asked the question.
“I fancy I might ask Your Excellence the same thing,” the man responded, with a slight shrug. “However, I am Mark Lanning, your Adviser-Elect and First Scientist of the Western Federation.”
“My Adviser-Elect?” Peter repeated, struggling into a sitting position and jabbing a troubled hand through his sandy hair. “But why? Who am I supposed to be?” Then he looked at the austere face in sudden sharpness. “Just a minute! You did call me ‘Excellence’, didn’t you? For what reason?”
Mark Lanning replied in his cold, unhurried voice;
“There is much to explain, Excellence, and permit me to suggest that this is neither the time nor the place. You have been through a long ordeal and are in need of rest and food and...er...clothes. Seven hundred years is a long time....”
Peter started violently. “Seven hun...what did you say?”
“According to the records which I have closely studied, the Ebon Sphere of Surrey was first discovered in Twenty-One Forty-Eight, some seven centuries ago—but still earlier records report the mysterious disappearance of a scientist by the name of Michael Blane, and his friend Peter Curzon, a bank manager, in the neighbourhood of the spot where the Ebon Sphere was found. These earlier records place the disappearance of Blane and Curzon about Twenty Eighteen.... I assume, Excellence,” Mark Lanning finished, “that you are either one man or the other.”
“I am Peter Curzon,” Peter answered shakenly.
Mark Lanning inclined his glossy head gravely.
“I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Your Excellence.... If you will pardon me?”
He turned aside and crossed to a control panel studded with buttons of different colours. He pressed one of them and stood waiting. Peter watched fixedly as two robots with three pairs of arms came walking silently into view,
“Place yourself in the care of the left hand robot, Excellence,” Lanning instructed. “He will carry you to your own personal suite. I will accompany you in the arms of the other robot.”
Peter didn’t argue. He submitted dazedly and relaxed into the comfortable metal arms of the thing. With superb ease he was borne out of the enormous room, down a glazed metal corridor—where to his amazement men and women, attired in similar garb to Mark Lanning, bowed to him respectfully—and so into a huge magnificently furnished room, which, Lanning explained, was only one in the suite assigned to him.
Questions by the hundred kept occurring to Peter but he got little chance to ask them for his breath was constantly being snatched away by the marvels he beheld. Everywhere there seemed to be robots. They stripped him of his robe, bathed him, shaved him, gave him attire similar to that of Mark Lanning, carried him into an immense room with broad windows catching brilliant sunshine, and set him down before an exquisitely prepared meal of choice foods. Then the robots retired to the polished wall and became motionless.
Over by one of the great windows, hands locked behind him and powerful face in profile, stood Mark Lanning, watching as Peter tackled his meal,
Peter was thankful that eating utensils had not changed too greatly. He selected a couple and began to eat hungrily. “I suppose I’ll wake up soon?” he asked, glancing up.
“In Twenty Eighteen?” Lanning answered, shaking his head. “No, Excellence, the past is gone and can never be recalled. You are now the first citizen of the world in Twenty-Seven Forty-Six. In that capacity all, from the highest to the lowest, must pay you homage and revere you.”
Peter had a level mind and the observation did not overbalance him. He thought it out while he continued his meal.
“What did I do to achieve such eminence?” he inquired at length, as he finished his meal.. “What really happened to me? Does it mean that Michael Blane’s plan to imprison me indefinitely in a non-time sphere succeed?”
Lanning turned. “So that is what happened, Excellence? Tell me more. I am deeply interested.”
He seated himself at the other end of the table. his pale eyes fixed on Peter’s face. Peter gave a shrug and went on eating, and as he did so he sketched the whole story, finishing with a puzzled grin.
“Don’t you see, Mr. Lanning, this has me completely at sea? You say seven centuries have gone by.... All right, I believe it. But to me hardly a split second seemed to pass in that globe, and my watch—which the robots took from me—still said only twenty-two minutes past twelve when I woke up. It was just twenty past when Michael Blane threw the switch. I recall a second or two of dizziness and I started talking. I woke up finishing my sentence with you standing by a window.... Naturally I find it hard to picture seven hundred years rolling past in the interval. I’m not a scientific man, really—just the manager of a small district bank and....” Peter sighed. “I mean I was a manager!”
“Now you are a Legend come to life,” Lanning said. “And it is because you are legend that you automatically become the head of the world’s population. You are a Messiah for whom many generations have waited.”
“I just don’t understand. Be hanged if I do!”
“Let me explain.” Lanning suggested. “Since Twenty Forty-Eight the globe containing you has excited public interest, but no scientist in preceding generations could find a way of unlocking it. It became a matter of mutual consent among nations, and particularly when the World Federation was formed, that should a living person be inside the Ebon Sphere he or she should become the figurehead of the world—a symbol. a first citizen, a ruler, insofar that his knowledge would be untouched by our own politics and science. As such he would be able to give valued opinions upon points of argument, and so forth. Then I found a way into the sphere, Excellence!”
For the first time a trace of animation came into the austere face of the First Scientist of the Western Federation.
“I knew that it was a sphere which