The Greatest Tales of Lost Worlds & Alternative Universes. Филип Дик
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room. He touched a carved flower at one side. There was a tiny sighing from overhead and instantly across the top spread a veil of blackness, impenetrable to light but certainly not to air, for through it pulsed little breaths of the garden fragrances. The room filled with a cool twilight, refreshing, sleep-inducing. The green dwarf pointed to the couches.
“Sleep!” he said. “Sleep and fear nothing. My men are on guard outside.” He came closer to us, the old mocking gaiety sparkling in his eyes.
“But I spoke too quickly,” he whispered. “Whether it is because the Afyo Maie fears their tongues — or —” he laughed at Larry. “The maids are NOT yours!” Still laughing he vanished through the curtains of the room of the fountain before I could ask him the meaning of his curious gift, its withdrawal, and his most enigmatic closing remarks.
“Back in the great old days of Ireland,” thus Larry breaking into my thoughts raptly, the brogue thick, “there was Cairill mac Cairill — Cairill Swiftspear. An’ Cairill wronged Keevan of Emhain Abhlach, of the blood of Angus of the great people when he was sleeping in the likeness of a pale reed. Then Keevan put this penance on Cairill — that for a year Cairill should wear his body in Emhain Abhlach, which is the Land of Faery and for that year Keevan should wear the body of Cairill. And it was done.
“In that year Cairill met Emar of the Birds that are one white, one red, and one black — and they loved, and from that love sprang Ailill their son. And when Ailill was born he took a reed flute and first he played slumber on Cairill, and then he played old age so that Cairill grew white and withered; then Ailill played again and Cairill became a shadow — then a shadow of a shadow — then a breath; and the breath went out upon the wind!” He shivered. “Like the old gnome,” he whispered, “that they called Songar of the Lower Waters!”
He shook his head as though he cast a dream from him. Then, all alert —
“But that was in Iceland ages agone. And there’s nothing like that here, Doc!” He laughed. “It doesn’t scare me one little bit, old boy. The pretty devil lady’s got the wrong slant. When you’ve had a pal standing beside you one moment — full of life, and joy, and power, and potentialities, telling what he’s going to do to make the world hum when he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pep of life, Doc — and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh — a piece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy and power and all the rest of it”— his face twitched —“well, old man, in the face of THAT mystery a disappearing act such as the devil lady treated us to doesn’t make much of a dent. Not on me. But by the brogans of Brian Boru — if we could have had some of that stuff to turn on during the war — oh, boy!”
He was silent, evidently contemplating the idea with vast pleasure. And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O’Keefe vanished, I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael — but only within the limits of Ireland.
In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.
“Some stuff!” Deepest admiration was in his voice. “If we’d only had it when the war was on — imagine half a dozen of us scooting over the enemy batteries and the gunners underneath all at once beginning to shake themselves to pieces! Wow!” His tone was rapturous.
“It’s easy enough to explain, Larry,” I said. “The effect, that is — for what the green ray is made of I don’t know, of course. But what it does, clearly, is stimulate atomic vibration to such a pitch that the cohesion between the particles of matter is broken and the body flies to bits — just as a fly-wheel does when its speed gets so great that the particles of which IT is made can’t hold together.”
“Shake themselves to pieces is right, then!” he exclaimed.
“Absolutely right,” I nodded. “Everything in Nature vibrates. And all matter — whether man or beast or stone or metal or vegetable — is made up of vibrating molecules, which are made up of vibrating atoms which are made up of truly infinitely small particles of electricity called electrons, and electrons, the base of all matter, are themselves perhaps only a vibration of the mysterious ether.
“If a magnifying glass of sufficient size and strength could be placed over us we could see ourselves as sieves — our space lattice, as it is called. And all that is necessary to break down the lattice, to shake us into nothingness, is some agent that will set our atoms vibrating at such a rate that at last they escape the unseen cords and fly off.
“The green ray of Yolara is such an agent. It set up in the dwarf that incredibly rapid rhythm that you saw and — shook him not to atoms — but to electrons!”
“They had a gun on the West Front — a seventy-five,” said O’Keefe, “that broke the eardrums of everybody who fired it, no matter what protection they used. It looked like all the other seventy-fives — but there was something about its sound that did it. They had to recast it.”
“It’s practically the same thing,” I replied. “By some freak its vibratory qualities had that effect. The deep whistle of the sunken Lusitania would, for instance, make the Singer Building shake to its foundations; while the Olympic did not affect the Singer at all but made the Woolworth shiver all through. In each case they stimulated the atomic vibration of the particular building —”
I paused, aware all at once of an intense drowsiness. O’Keefe, yawning, reached down to unfasten his puttees.
“Lord, I’m sleepy!” he exclaimed. “Can’t understand it — what you say — most — interesting — Lord!” he yawned again; straightened. “What made Reddy take such a shine to the Russian?” he asked.
“Thanaroa,” I answered, fighting to keep my eyes open.
“What?”
“When Lugur spoke that name I saw Marakinoff signal him. Thanaroa is, I suspect, the original form of the name of Tangaroa, the greatest god of the Polynesians. There’s a secret cult to him in the islands. Marakinoff may belong to it — he knows it anyway. Lugur recognized the signal and despite his surprise answered it.”
“So he gave him the high sign, eh?” mused Larry. “How could they both know it?”
“The cult is a very ancient one. Undoubtedly it had its origin in the dim beginnings before these people migrated here,” I replied. “It’s a link — one — of the few links between up there and the lost past —”
“Trouble then,” mumbled Larry. “Hell brewing! I smell it — Say, Doc, is this sleepiness natural? Wonder where my — gas mask — is —” he added, half incoherently.
But I myself was struggling desperately against the drugged slumber pressing down upon me.
“Lakla!” I heard O’Keefe murmur. “Lakla of the golden eyes — no Eilidh — the Fair!” He made an immense effort, half raised himself, grinned faintly.
“Thought this was paradise when I first saw it, Doc,” he sighed. “But I know now, if it is, No–Man’s Land was the greatest place on earth for a honeymoon. They — they’ve got us, Doc —” He sank back. “Good luck, old boy, wherever you’re going.” His hand waved feebly. “Glad — knew — you. Hope — see — you —‘gain —”
His voice trailed into silence. Fighting, fighting with every fibre of brain and nerve against the sleep, I felt myself being steadily overcome. Yet before oblivion rushed down upon me I seemed to see upon the grey-screened wall nearest the Irishman an oval of rosy light begin to glow; watched, as my falling lids inexorably fell, a flame-tipped shadow waver on it; thicken; condense — and there looking down upon Larry, her eyes great golden stars in which intensest curiosity and shy tenderness struggled, sweet mouth half smiling, was the girl of the Moon Pool’s Chamber, the girl whom the green