Once more Watson had taken the kind of chance he preferred—a slender one. He took the chance that these people, however occult and advanced they might be, were still human enough to build their prophecy out of an old foundation. If he were right, then the person of the Jarados would be inviolable. If the professor were prisoner, held somewhere in secret, and it got noised about that he was the true prophet returned—it would not only give Holcomb immense prestige, but at the same time render the position of his captors untenable.
Chick needed no great discernment to see that he had touched a vital spot. The philosophy of the Rhamdas was firmly bound up with spiritism; they had gone far in science, and had passed out of mere belief into the deeper, finer understanding that went behind the shadow for proof. Certainly Watson inwardly rejoiced to see Rhamda Geos incredulous, his keen face whitening like that of one who has just heard sacrilege uttered—to see Geos rise in his place, grip the table tightly, and hear him exclaim:
“The Jarados! Did you say—the Jarados? He has come amongst us, and we have not known? You are perfectly sure of this?”
“I am,” stated Watson, and met the other's keen scrutiny without flinching.
Would the game work? At least it promised action; and now that he had the old feeling of himself he was anxious to get under way. Any feeling of fear was gone now. He calmly nodded his head.
“Yes, it is so. But sit down. I have still a bit more to tell you.”
The Rhamda resumed his seat. Clearly, his reverence had been greatly augmented in the past few seconds. From that time on there was a marked difference in his manner; and his speech, when he addressed Chick, contained the expression “my lord”—an expression that Watson found it easy enough to become accustomed to.
“Did you doubt, Rhamda Geos, that I came from the Jarados?”
“We did not doubt. We were certain.”
“I see. You were not expecting the Jarados.”
“Not yet, my lord. The coming of the Jarados shall be close to the Day of the Judgment. But it could not be so soon; there were to be signs and portents. We were to solve the problem first; we were to know the reason of the shadow and the why of the spirit. The wisdom of the Rhamda Avec told that the day approaches; he had opened the Spot of Life and gone through it; but he had NOT sent the fact and the substance.” Watson smiled. There was just enough superstition, it seemed, beneath all the Rhamda's wisdom to make him tractable. However, Chick asked:
“Tell me: as a learned man, as a Rhamda, do you believe in the prophecy implicitly?”
“Yes, my lord. I am a spiritist; and if spiritism is truth, then the Jarados was genuine, and his prophecy is true. After all, my lord, it is not a case of legend, but of history. The Jarados came at a time of high civilisation, when men would see and understand him; he gave us his teaching in records, and imposed his laws upon the Thomahlia. Then he departed—through the Spot of Life.”
And the Rhamda Geos went on to say that the teachings of the Jarados had been moral as well as intellectual. Moreover, after he had formulated his laws, he wrote out his judgment.
“What was that?”
“An exhortation, my lord, that we were to give proof of our appreciation of intelligence. We were to use it, and to prove ourselves worthy of it by lifting ourselves up to the level of the Spot of Life. In other words, the spot would be opened when, and only when, we had learned the secrets of the occult, and—had opened the Spot ourselves!”
Watson thought he understood partly. He asked:
“And that is why you doubt me?”
“You, my lord? Not so! You were found in the Temple of the Bell and Leaf; not on the Spot itself, to be sure, but on the floor of the temple. You were, both in your person and in your dress, of another world; you had been promised by the Rhamda Avec; and, in a sense, you were a part of the prophecy. We accepted you!”
“But I speak your language. Account for that, Geos.”
“It need not be accounted for, my lord. We accept it as fact. The affinity of spirit would not be bound by the limitation of artificial speech. That you should talk the Thomahlia language is no more strange than that Rhamda Avec, when he passed into your world, should speak your tongue.”
“We call our language English,” supplied Watson. “It is the tongue of the Jarados and of myself.”
“Tell me of the Jarados, my lord!” with renewed eagerness. “In the other world—what is he?”
It was Chick's opportunity. By telling the simple truth about Dr. Holcomb he would enhance himself in the eyes of Rhamda Geas.
“In the other world—we call it America—the Jaradas is a Rhamda much like yourself, the head and chief of many Rhamdas sitting in a great institution devoted to intelligence. It is called the University of California.”
“And this California; what is it, my lord?”
“A name,” returned Chick. “Immediately on the other side of the Spot is a region called California.”
“The promised land, my lord!”
“The promised land indeed. There are some who call it paradise, even there.” And for good measure he proceeded to tell much of his own land, of the woods, the rivers, the cities, animals, mountains, the sky, the moon, and the sun. When he came to the sun he explained that no man dared to look at it continuously with the bare eyes. Its great heat and splendour astounded Geos.
Concerning himself he nonchalantly stated that he was the fiance of Holcomb's daughter; that is, son-in-law-to-be of the prophet Jarados; that he was sort of Junior Rhamda. He declared that he had come from the occult Rhamdas, through the other side of the Spot, in search of the Jarados who had gone before. As to his blankness up to now, and his perplexity—he was but a Junior; and the Spot had naturally benumbed his senses. Even now, he apologised, it was difficult to know and to recall everything clearly.
Through it all the Rhamda Geos Listened in something like awe. He was hearing of wonders never before guessed in the Thomahlia. As the prospective son-in-law of the Jarados, Watson automatically lifted himself to a supreme height, so great that, could he only hold himself up to it, he would have a prestige second only to that of the prophet himself.
All of a sudden he thought of a question. It gripped him with dread, the dread of the unknown. The question was one of TIME. “How long have I been here, Rhamda Geos?”
“Over eleven months, by our system of reckoning. You were found on the floor of the temple three hundred and fifty-seven days ago; you were in a lifeless condition; you must have been there some hours, my lord, before we discovered you.”
“Eleven months!” It had seemed but that many minutes. “And I was unconscious—”
“All the time, my lord. Had we caught you immediately upon your coming, we could have brought you around within three days, but in the circumstances it was impossible to restore you before we did. You have been under the care of the greatest specialists in all Thomahlia.”
Geos himself had been one of these. “The council of Rhamdas went into special session, my lord, immediately after your materialisation, and has been sitting almost continually since. And now that you are revived, they are waiting in person for you to show yourself.
“They accept you. They do not know who you are, my lord; none of us has guessed even a part of the truth. The entire council awaits!”
But Chick wanted more. Besides, he looked at his clothing.
“I would have my own garments, Geos; also, whatever else was found on my person.”
For Watson was thinking of a small but powerful pistol, an automatic, that he had carried on the night when he fell through the Blind Spot. This question of materiality was still a puzzle; if he himself had survived there was a chance that the firearm had done the same. It might and it might not preclude the occult. Anyway, he treasured the thought of that automatic; with it in his possession he would not be bare-handed in case of emergency.
They returned to the room in which Chick had awakened. The Rhamda left him. A few moments later he came back with a squad of men. Chick noted their discipline, movement, and uniforms, and classed them as soldiers. Two men were stationed outside the door—one, a stout, dark individual in a blue uniform; and the other a lithe, athletic chap, blond and blue-eyed, wearing a bright crimson dress. Chick instinctively preferred both man and garb in crimson; there was a touch of honour, of lightness and strength that just suited him. The other was dark, heavy and sinister.
Both wore sandals, and upon their heads curious shakos, made of the finest down, not fur. Both displayed a heavy silken braid looped from one shoulder. Each carried a spear-like weapon, of some shining black material, straight-tapered to a needle-point; but no other arms.
Watson pointed to the two uniforms.
“What is the significance, Geos?”
“One is from the queen, my lord; the other from Bar Senestro. The blue is the cloth of the Bars; the red, that of the queens. The Bar and the queen send this bodyguard with their respective compliments.”
Chick took the bundle that Geos had brought, and proceeded to don his own clothes, finding deep satisfaction in the fact that they had arrived as intact as he. He felt carefully in his hip pocket; the automatic was still there, likewise the extra magazine of cartridges that he had carried about with him on that night.
In his other pockets he found two packets of cigarettes, a pouch of tobacco, some papers, a few coins, a little money and two photographs, one of Bertha and the other of her father. Not a thing had been disturbed.
He announced himself ready.
The Rhamda conducted him down the corridor, which he found to be lined with guards; red on one side, blue on the other. These men fell in behind in two parallel files, one of the one colour and one of the other.
It was a building of great size. The corridors were long and high, all with the wide-coved ceiling, and of colours that melted from one shade to another as they turned, not corners, but curves. Apparently each colour had its own suggestive reason. Such rooms as Chick could look into were uniformly large, beautiful, and distinctly lighted.
The guard moved in silent rhythm; the chief sound was that made by Watson's leather-heeled shoes, drowning out, for once, the everlasting tinkling undertone of those unseen fairy-bells; that running cadence, never ceasing, silver, liquid, like the soul of sound.
Though Watson walked with head erect, he had eyes for every little thing he passed. He noted the material of the structure and tried to name it; neither plaster nor stone, the walls were highly polished and, somehow or other, capable of emitting perfume—light and wholesome, not heavy and oppressive. And in dark passages the walls glowed.
The corridor widened, and with a graceful curve opened upon a wide stairway that descended, or rather sank—to use Watson's own words for the feeling—into the depths of the building. To the right of one landing was a large window reaching to the floor; its panes were clear and not frosted as had been the others.
Chick got his first glimpse here of what lay outside—an iridescent landscape, at first view astonishingly like an ocean of opals; for it was of many hues, red and purple and milky white, splashed violantin blue and fluorescence—a maze and shimmer of dancing, joyful colours, whirring in an uncertainty of polychromatic harmony. Such was his first fleeting impression.
At the next landing he looked closer. It was not unlike a monster bowl of bubbles; the same illusion of movement, the same delicacy and witchery of colour, only here the sensation was not that of decomposition but of life; of flowers, delicate as the rainbow, tenuous, sinuous, breathing—weaving in a serpentine maze of daedalian hues; long tendrils of orchidian beauty, lifting, weaving, drooping—a vast sea of equatorial bloom; but—no trees.
“This is our landscape,” spoke the Rhamda. “According to the Jarados, it is not like that of the next world—your world, my lord. After you meet the Rhamdas, I shall take you into the Mahovisal for a closer view of it all.”
They reached the bottom of the stairway. Chick noted the architecture in the entrance-way at this point; the seeming solidness of structure, as if the whole had been chiselled, not built. The vestibule was really a hall, domed and high, large enough to shelter a hundred. Like the corridor outside Chick's room, it was lined with a row each of red and blue uniformed guards.
Invariably the one belonged to the blond, lithe, quick-feeling type, the others heavy, sturdy, formidable. The extremities of the two lines converged on an oval-topped doorway, very large, having above it a design conventionalised from the three-leafed clover. One leaf was scarlet, one blue, the other green.
Watson strode forward into the presence of the Council of the Rhamdas.
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