CHAPTER IX
"—Or Not to Be"
The Lady Rakshasi spoke, and her voice was just what Ramey thought it would be. Throaty and mellow, caressing-low with a throbbing undertone of promise. She addressed Sugriva, and her words included all present, but there was that in her tone, her manner, the sidelong appraisal of her eyes, which made Ramey feel her welcome was for him alone.
"Greetings, Sire. My brother tells me the Children of the Gods favor us with a visit. I come to welcome them."
Red Barrett made no attempt to conceal his frank admiration. He said, "Don't mention it, baby. Boy, Ramey, I'm getting gladder we come every minute. They grow 'em terrific around these parts! First little carrot-top, here, then this Ziegfeld doll—"
The Lady Rakshasi looked confused.
"I am sorry," she apologized. "The red-haired god no doubt speaks words of great wisdom. But his humble maid-servant does not understand."
"It is nothing," Ramey assured her hastily. "The red-haired god but expresses his pleasure." Aside to Barrett he whispered, "Utcay the ackscray, opeday!" and Lake O'Brien guffawed loudly.
The interview was brief. That was Sugriva's doing. Politely, but with gentle firmness, he told her, "You have done well, Lady Rakshasi. The gods are pleased with your attendance. But now you must leave, for they would rest. They have come from afar to visit their worshippers, and they are weary."
The lovely Rakshasi bowed obedience. "Yes, Sire. I hear and obey. But ere I go, my brother bids me tender unto you his humblest apology for that which transpired in this hall. He bitterly rues his hastiness. He was confused, he bids me say, and overcome with awe by the presence of gods."
"It is forgotten," said Sugriva graciously. "Go now in peace, my lady. Convey to your brother our forgiveness."
Rakshasi left, but Ramey's eyes followed her to the door. And the golden creature knew it, for just as she slipped from the chamber she turned once more, and for a fleeting instant her green eyes met Ramey's fascinated gray ones. And the look that passed between them held little of piety.
Then she was gone, and with her departure it was as if a disturbing fever had left the room. Ramey, feeling the gaze of Lake O'Brien curious upon him, felt a stab of warmth in his cheeks, and wondered just how much an ass he had made of himself. Apparently he had done a pretty fair job of it, for the one person whose eyes would not meet his was Sheila. And strangely, now that Rakshasi was gone, it was the clear, mist-blue sanity of Sheila's eyes that Ramey wanted most to look upon. He shook himself angrily and turned to Sugriva.
"Sire, you permitted the Lady Rakshasi to believe we are gods. Why? When you know we are not."
The Venusian overlord nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, my friend, I did not disabuse her belief. But it was no useless deceit. What I did, I did for your own safety."
"Our safety, my Lord?"
"You have probably already guessed that Ravana is no more of this earth than am I. As my people come from Gaanelia, that planet which you know as the morning or evening star, he and his giant underlings spring from the red desert planet of Videlia."
"Videlia?" repeated Dr. Aiken. "You mean—Mars?"
Sugriva searched his brain, nodded.
"Yes. That is its name in your language."
Lake O'Brien moaned.
"Sweet saints, 'what fools we mortals be'! And men think they are intelligent. Yet here, five thousand years before our time, the civilizations of our two neighboring worlds have simultaneously developed spaceflight—"
"No, my friend. It was we, and only we, who learned the secret of spaceflight. And like fools, we gave it away."
"Gave it to the Videlians?"
"Yes. We Gaanelians are a quiet, peaceloving people. For centuries our culture has been great. Our cities dwarf anything you humans know. Our commerce, agriculture and industry are great. We want for nothing. Thus we have turned our leisure hours to the pursuit of knowledge and the refinement of art.
"Our science discovered the secret of flight amongst the stars. Our expeditions flew to all the children of the Sun; to the planets you know as Mercury, Mars, even massive Jupiter and far, frozen Pluto.
"Only on three other planets, however, did we find life. Here on Earth—crude, nomadic barbarism for the most part, with only in one or two places the rude beginnings of a social culture—on the second moon of Jupiter, and on Mars.
"The Martian, or Videlian, culture alone was in any way equal to our own. In our blind altruism we freely gave the videlian giants our great secret—" Sugriva smiled ruefully—"and now we regret it. For we have learned that the Videlians are not such lovers of peace as we. They are hard cruel people, greedy and grasping, predatory. Their space-vessels, like ours, have brought colonists to Earth. And of these interlopers, Lord Ravana is ruler. Lately it has became increasingly clear that he has not the same benevolent designs on the people of Earth that I was sent here to bring about."
"You mean he wants Earth for himself?"
"That is what I suspect and fear. Consider. With a whole wide world of pleasant hills and valleys in which to establish himself, Ravana chose to construct his fortressed capital on an inaccessible island sixty miles off this mainland—the Isle of Lanka.
"While he has pretended friendship, visiting me here and occasionally inviting me to his island stronghold, I have heard strange rumors about his over-lordship. Where as it has ever been the Gaanelian desire to achieve harmony between our race and yours, it is hinted that the humans who serve Ravana do so not as willing subjects but as—slaves! We have tried to pass on to our neighbors something of our learning and culture, exhibiting good will and friendliness. But I am told that what Ravana wants he exacts by forceful means.
"It was to investigate these rumors that I recently sent for representatives of all Earth's governments to meet here at Chitrakuta. You saw these representatives, I believe, in the altar room?"
Ramey nodded. "They didn't seem to be particularly fond of Ravana. I don't blame them much. There's a brutal streak in the guy. His first idea, when the idol spoke, was to pacify it with a human sacrifice. If we hadn't spiked that deal, I'm afraid this young lady—" He nodded toward the chestnut-haired beauty clinging close to Barrett's side—"wouldn't be with us now.
"Well, Sugriva, I'm beginning to understand the setup now. It's not so unusual. The world we left behind was being sadly muddled by a mob with pretty much the same idea as the Videlians. They want to be top-dogs or nothing. So, now that we're here, what can we do to help you out? You want us to continue playing gods while you hold your round table conferences with the boys in the back room?"
But Sugriva shook his head. "Not now, my friend. I shall explain that later. First you must have food, rest, time to collect your thoughts. Meanwhile, guard carefully the Bow. It is of vital importance. Kohrisan—" The ape-captain saluted smartly—"Show our guests to chambers where they may rest and refresh themselves."
The time-farers allowed themselves to be led away.
So began the incredible adventure, the "strange journey" of which Johnny Grinnell, in the prescience of life's ending, had spoken.
It was Syd O'Brien's idea when, that evening, after having bathed, napped or refreshed themselves as each saw fit, they gathered again in the garden-close outside their quarters, that they should bring this episode to a close. The gloomy twin looked—if such a thing were possible—more disgruntled than ever.
"If you ask me," he said, "we ought to get going."
"Going?" repeated his brother.
"That's what I said. I don't like this business of messing around in things that happened five thousand years before we were born. It's not normal and it's not right. No good will come of it. I'm for getting back to the time-cabinet and pulling out of there before something happens and we can never get back."
Sheila gasped, "And miss this marvelous opportunity to discover the truth about things men have always wondered about, argued over? Why, Syd, we haven't even begun to discover the marvels of Angkor!"
Dr. Aiken said seriously, "Yes, Sydney, Sheila is right. Fate has granted us an opportunity to solve more of the mysteries of Man's beginnings than all earth's savants have been able to uncover in two thousand years. It is more than an opportunity; it is an obligation! We cannot leave yet. Why—" His fine old eyes glowed—"this afternoon as the rest of you slept, I wandered through the courts and the temples, conversing in their ancient tongues with men whose races were vanished before the first recorded history was written! Already I have learned enough to establish an entirely new chronology of history. And I have merely skimmed the surface!"
"Just the same—" grumbled Syd.
"Just the same," snapped his brother, "you're nuts! Back in our time, these temples are probably crawling with a regiment of vengeful Japs, wondering where the hell we disappeared to. It would be suicidal to go back now. We'd better just sit tight for a week or so ... take advantage of our opportunity, and return to our own time with a real contribution to science."
So it was decided. And somehow a week passed. Where fled those warm days and even more languorous nights, Ramey Winters could never afterward tell. For there was much to be seen and done, and once the weird comprehension of their actually being here established itself in his mind, Ramey, like all the others, dipped eagerly into the garnering of new knowledge.
With the Lord Sugriva they spent many hours. Even feeling sure, as they did, that everything the blue lord of Angkor told them was true, some of his statements were so fantastic as to be almost incredible. As when Dr. Aiken queried him on the extent of Gaanelian colonization.
"I do not know, exactly," admitted Sugriva. "But there must be five, six, perhaps more colonies. One of my compatriots, I know, governs an outpost south and west of here. A desolate territory bordered on the north by vast desertland. Another bears the light of culture to jungle natives on a far continent, a hemisphere removed. Still a third has established himself on a tiny island to the west, where the mighty sea begins."
"Lower Egypt!" cried Dr. Aiken raptly. "Its culture, differing sharply from that of the Upper Kingdom, has always puzzled archeologists. The lost Merouvian civilization which left great paved roads and cities where now is Peru. And a tiny island—?"
"England!" cried Sheila. "Daddy, that explains why the legend of the 'blue gods' persists in ancient Anglo-Saxon history. The Druids worshipped 'men from the skies.' They had their 'sky-blue heaven' of Tir-n'a-nog. And as late as 1,000 A.D. the Picts went forth to battle with their bodies painted with blue pigment!"
But again, as before, arose the question: if these colonies now existed, into what darkness had they disappeared that those of the Twentieth Century knew them only as legend? This was a cause of great sadness to Sugriva.
"I can only confess," he conceded regretfully, "that somehow our mission, the bringing of culture to your less enlightened Earth races, must have failed. Why, I do not know."
Here a great thought struck Ramey Winters.
"But if we could only find out what destroyed your attempt, perhaps we could do something to prevent it!" His eyes glowed. "What a glorious thing for mankind! Already you have converted men from nomadic wanderers into a semi-cultured people. If that cause which destroyed—or is to destroy—your tutorship were to be removed—" Ramey faltered over the use of tense, feeling keenly the anomaly of their position as men of a future age, living in a past, being part of that past, yet knowing inerrably that which was to come—"Why, then, the whole history of mankind could be changed! There would be no decay in Egyptian culture, no Rome rising mightily, then toppling, no long Dark Ages. There would be only steady progress, ever forward, upward, to greater knowledge!"
Syd sniffed, "You're day-dreaming, Ramey. The fact that we exist proves that the history of mankind took a certain channel. There's no way of changing that. Is there, Doctor?"
"I don't know, Sydney. There is much to be said on either side. It may be that history is, as you say, unchangeable. But there is the problem of causality. Once this era was. We, having not been born then, were not here. Causes developed effects new causes—and a course of history was written leading to the world we know.
"But a new factor enters an old equation. This era again is, but we who do not properly belong here have entered into the picture by way of a time-machine. It is conceivable that our very being here is sufficient of a cause to change and divert the entire sequence of events which would otherwise have been the 'future.'"
"Rot!" snorted Syd. "Excuse me, Doctor, but that's not logical. For if our being here were to change history in any slightest way—then we would automatically cease to exist! Because the exact and precarious chain of circumstances which brought us into being would have been altered."