The Greatest Tales of Lost Worlds & Alternative Universes. Филип Дик
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A. of S.)
The wide, glistening road was gay with the coria. They darted in and out of the gardens; within them the fair-haired, extraordinarily beautiful women on their cushions were like princesses of Elfland, caught in gorgeous fairy webs, resting within the hearts of flowers. In some shells were flaxen-haired dwarfish men of Lugur’s type; sometimes black-polled brother officers of Rador; often raven-tressed girls, plainly hand-maidens of the women; and now and then beauties of the lower folk went by with one of the blond dwarfs.
We swept around the turn that made of the jewel-like roadway an enormous horseshoe and, speedily, upon our right the cliffs through which we had come in our journey from the Moon Pool began to march forward beneath their mantles of moss. They formed a gigantic abutment, a titanic salient. It had been from the very front of this salient’s invading angle that we had emerged; on each side of it the precipices, faintly glowing, drew back and vanished into distance.
The slender, graceful bridges under which we skimmed ended at openings in the upflung, far walls of verdure. Each had its little garrison of soldiers. Through some of the openings a rivulet of the green obsidian river passed. These were roadways to the farther country, to the land of the ladala, Rador told me; adding that none of the lesser folk could cross into the pavilioned city unless summoned or with pass.
We turned the bend of the road and flew down that farther emerald ribbon we had seen from the great oval. Before us rose the shining cliffs and the lake. A half-mile, perhaps, from these the last of the bridges flung itself. It was more massive and about it hovered a spirit of ancientness lacking in the other spans; also its garrison was larger and at its base the tangent way was guarded by two massive structures, somewhat like blockhouses, between which it ran. Something about it aroused in me an intense curiosity.
“Where does that road lead, Rador?” I asked.
“To the one place above all of which I may not tell you, Goodwin,” he answered. And again I wondered.
We skimmed slowly out upon the great pier. Far to the left was the prismatic, rainbow curtain between the Cyclopean pillars. On the white waters graceful shells — lacustrian replicas of the Elf chariots — swam, but none was near that distant web of wonder.
“Rador — what is that?” I asked.
“It is the Veil of the Shining One!” he answered slowly.
Was the Shining One that which we named the Dweller?
“What is the Shining One?” I cried, eagerly. Again he was silent. Nor did he speak until we had turned on our homeward way.
And lively as my interest, my scientific curiosity, were — I was conscious suddenly of acute depression. Beautiful, wondrously beautiful this place was — and yet in its wonder dwelt a keen edge of menace, of unease — of inexplicable, inhuman woe; as though in a secret garden of God a soul should sense upon it the gaze of some lurking spirit of evil which some way, somehow, had crept into the sanctuary and only bided its time to spring.
Chapter XVII.
The Leprechaun
The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. Larry was awaiting me. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the portal appeared with all its disconcerting, magical abruptness.
But now the scene was changed. Around the jet table were grouped a number of figures — Lugur, Yolara beside him; seven others-all of them fair-haired and all men save one who sat at the left of the priestess — an old, old woman, how old I could not tell, her face bearing traces of beauty that must once have been as great as Yolara’s own, but now ravaged, in some way awesome; through its ruins the fearful, malicious gaiety shining out like a spirit of joy held within a corpse!
Began then our examination, for such it was. And as it progressed I was more and more struck by the change in the O’Keefe. All flippancy was gone, rarely did his sense of humour reveal itself in any of his answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying his opponent; or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some far-reaching purpose in the game: alert, contained, watchful. Always he stressed the power of our surface races, their multitudes, their solidarity.
Their questions were myriad. What were our occupations? Our system of government? How great were the waters? The land? Intensely interested were they in the World War, querying minutely into its causes, its effects. In our weapons their interest was avid. And they were exceedingly minute in their examination of us as to the ruins which had excited our curiosity; their position and surroundings — and if others than ourselves might be expected to find and pass through their entrance!
At this I shot a glance at Lugur. He did not seem unduly interested. I wondered if the Russian had told him as yet of the girl of the rosy wall of the Moon Pool Chamber and the real reasons for our search. Then I answered as briefly as possible — omitting all reference to these things. The red dwarf watched me with unmistakable amusement — and I knew Marakinoff had told him. But clearly Lugur had kept his information even from Yolara; and as clearly she had spoken to none of that episode when O’Keefe’s automatic had shattered the Keth-smitten vase. Again I felt that sense of deep bewilderment — of helpless search for clue to all the tangle.
For two hours we were questioned and then the priestess called Rador and let us go.
Larry was sombre as we returned. He walked about the room uneasily.
“Hell’s brewing here all right,” he said at last, stopping before me. “I can’t make out just the particular brand — that’s all that bothers me. We’re going to have a stiff fight, that’s sure. What I want to do quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc. Haven’t seen her on the wall lately, have you?” he queried, hopefully fantastic.
“Laugh if you want to,” he went on. “But she’s our best bet. It’s going to be a race between her and the O’Keefe banshee — but I put my money on her. I had a queer experience while I was in that garden, after you’d left.” His voice grew solemn. “Did you ever see a leprechaun, Doc?” I shook my head again, as solemnly. “He’s a little man in green,” said Larry. “Oh, about as high as your knee. I saw one once — in Carntogher Woods. And as I sat there, half asleep, in Yolara’s garden, the living spit of him stepped out from one of those bushes, twirling a little shillalah.
“‘It’s a tight box ye’re gettin’ in, Larry avick,’ said he, ‘but don’t ye be downhearted, lad.’
“‘I’m carrying on,’ said I, ‘but you’re a long way from Ireland,’ I said, or thought I did.
“‘Ye’ve a lot o’ friends there,’ he answered. ‘An’ where the heart rests the feet are swift to follow. Not that I’m sayin’ I’d like to live here, Larry,’ said he.
“‘I know where my heart is now,’ I told him. ‘It rests on a girl with golden eyes and the hair and swan-white breast of Eilidh the Fair — but me feet don’t seem to get me to her,’ I said.”
The brogue thickened.
“An’ the little man in green nodded his head an’ whirled his shillalah.
“‘It’s what I came to tell ye,’ says he. ‘Don’t ye fall for the Bhean–Nimher, the serpent woman wit’ the blue eyes; she’s a daughter of Ivor, lad — an’ don’t ye do nothin’ to make the brown-haired coleen ashamed o’ ye, Larry O’Keefe. I knew yer great, great grandfather an’ his before him, aroon,’ says he, ‘an’ wan o’ the O’Keefe failin’s is to think their hearts big enough to hold all the wimmen o’ the world. A heart’s built to hold only wan permanently, Larry,’ he says, ‘an’ I’m warnin’ ye a nice girl don’t like to move into a place all cluttered up wid another’s washin’ an’ mendin’ an’ cookin’ an’ other things pertainin’ to general wife work. Not that