THE FACE IN THE ABYSS: Sci-Fi Classic. Abraham Merritt
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turned to Suarra.
“Your visit has brought great happiness, maiden,” he spoke in the Aymara. “It will not be a short one, if we have our way—and I think we will have our way—” There was covert menace in the phrase, yet if she noted it she gave no heed. “You are strange to us, as we must be to you. There is much for us each to learn, one of the other.”
“That is true,” she answered, tranquilly. “I think though that your desire to learn of me is much greater than mine to learn of you—since, as you surely know, I have had one not too pleasant lesson.” She glanced at Starrett.
“The lessons,” he said, “shall be pleasant—or not pleasant, as you choose.”
This time there was no mistaking the menace in the words, nor did Suarra again let it pass. Her eyes blazed sudden wrath.
“Better not to threaten!” she warned. “I, Suarra, am not used to threats—and if you will take my counsel you will keep them to yourself hereafter!”
“Yeah, is that so?” Soames took a step toward her, face grown grim and ugly. There came a dry chuckling from the hooded figure in red and yellow. Suarra started; her wrath vanished, she became friendly once more.
“I was hasty,” she said to Soames. “Nevertheless, it is never wise to threaten unless you know the strength of what it is you menace. And remember—of me you know nothing. Yet I know all that you wish to learn. You wish to know how I came by this—and this—and this—” she touched her coronal, her bracelet, her anklets. “You wish to know where they came from, and if there are more of them there, and if so, how you may possess yourself of as much as you can carry away. Well, you shall know all that. I have come to tell you.”
At this announcement, so frank and open, all the doubt and suspicion returned to Soames. Again his eyes narrowed and he searched the trail up which Suarra had come.
“Soames,” Dancret gripped his arm, and his voice and hand were both shaking, “the baskets on the llama. They’re not rushes—they’re gold, pure gold, pure soft gold, woven like straw! Diable! Soames, what have we struck!”
Soames’s eyes glittered.
“Better go over and watch where they came up, Danc’,” he answered. “I don’t quite get this. It looks too cursed easy to be right. Take your rifle and squint out from the edge of the trees while I try to get down to what’s what.”
“There is nothing to fear,” said the girl, as though she had understood the words, “no harm will come to you from me. If there is any evil in store for you, you yourselves will summon it—not we. I have come to show you the way to treasure. Only that. Come with me and you shall see where jewels like these”—she touched the gems meshed in her hair—“grow like flowers in a garden. You shall see the gold come streaming forth, living, from—” she hesitated; then went on as though reciting some lesson—“come streaming forth like water. You may bathe in that stream, drink from it if you will, carry away all that you can bear. Or if it causes you too much sorrow to leave it, why—you may stay with it forever; nay, become a part of it, even. Men of gold.”
She turned from them, and walked toward the llama.
They stared at her and at each other; on the faces of three, greed and suspicion; bewilderment on Graydon’s.
“It is a long journey,” she faced them, one hand on the llama’s head. “You are my guests—in a sense. Therefore, I have brought something for your entertainment before we start.”
She began to unbuckle the panniers. Graydon was aware that this attendant of hers was a strange servant—if servant he was. He made no move to help her. Silent he stood, and motionless, face covered.
Graydon stepped forward to help the girl. She smiled up at him, half shyly. In the depths of her eyes was a glow warmer than friendliness; his hands leaped to touch hers.
Instantly Soames stepped between them.
“Better remember what I told you,” he snapped.
“Help me,” said Suarra. Graydon lifted the basket and set it down beside her. She slipped a hasp, bent back the soft metal withes, and drew out a shimmering packet. She shook it and it floated out on the dawn wind, a cloth of silver. It lay upon the ground like a web of gossamer spun by silver spiders.
Then from the hamper she brought forth cups of gold, and deep, boat-shaped golden dishes, two tall ewers whose handles were winged serpents, their scales made, it seemed, from molten rubies. After them small golden-withed baskets. She set the silver cloth with the dishes and the cups. She opened the little baskets. In them were unfamiliar, fragrant fruits and loaves and oddly colored cakes. All these Suarra placed upon the plates. She dropped to her knees at the head of the cloth, took up one of the ewers, snapped open its lid and from it poured into the cups clear amber wine.
She raised her eyes to him; waved a white hand, graciously.
“Sit,” she said. “Eat and drink.”
She beckoned to Graydon; pointed to the place beside her. Silently, gaze fixed upon the glittering hoard, Starrett and Dancret and Soames squatted before the other plates. Soames thrust out a hand, took up one and weighed it, scattering what it held upon the cloth.
“Gold!” he breathed.
Starrett laughed, crazily, and raised his wine-filled goblet to his lips.
“Wait!” Dancret caught his wrist. “ ‘Eat and drink,’ she said, eh? Eat, drink and be merry—for to-morrow we die, eh—is that it?”
Soames started, his face once more dark with suspicion.
“You think it’s poisoned?” he snarled.
“Maybe no—maybe so,” the little Frenchman shrugged. “Anyway I t’ink it better we say ‘After you’ to her.”
The girl looked at them, then at Graydon, inquiringly.
“They are afraid. They think it is—that you have—” Graydon stumbled.
“That I have put sleep—or death in it? And you?” she asked.
For answer, Graydon raised his cup and drank.
“Yet it is natural,” she turned to Soames. “Yes, it is natural that you three should fear this, since—is it not so—it is what you would do if you were we, and we were you? But you are wrong. I tell you again that what there may be to fear is only that which is in yourselves.”
She poured wine into her own cup and drank it; broke off a bit of Starrett’s bread and ate it; took a cake from Dancret’s plate and ate that; set white teeth in one of the fruits.
“Are you satisfied?” she asked them. “Oh, be very sure that if it is in my wish to bring death to you, it is in no such shape as this.”
For a moment Soames glared at her. He jumped to his feet, strode over to the hooded figure and snatched aside the cowl. The uncovered face was like old ivory. It was seamed with scores of fine lines. It was a face stamped with an incredible ancientness—but the eyes were as bright and as youthful as their setting was ancient.
It stared at Soames, inscrutably. For a dozen heart-beats the gaunt New Englander stared back. Then, slowly, he let the hood drop. He returned to the silver cloth. As he passed, Graydon saw that all color had drained from his cheeks. He threw himself down at his place, and drank deep of the wine, the hand that raised the goblet shaking.
He drank, and drank again from the flagon. And soon, whatever the terror he had felt, the wine drowned it. The first ewer and a second, drawn by Suarra from the llama’s panniers, were emptied by the three before Soames lurched to his feet.
“You’re all right, sister,” he said, half-drunkenly. “Just keep on treatin’ us like this, and we’ll end by all bein’ little pals together.”
“What does he say?” asked Suarra of Graydon.
“He