CHAPTER VIII
Rakshasi
With a sort of detached wonder, Ramey noticed that the blue man did not rise from his throne to greet them.
Even a ruler of men, the young airman thought dimly, should humble himself before gods. Then the conviction came to him that the ruler of Angkor did not consider them gods! Of their origin he had, could have, no knowledge. But it was obvious that he recognized them, somehow, for exactly what they were: human beings caught in a web of circumstances inexplicable even to themselves.
So the blue lord's preoccupation was with the giant Ravana. To the amber-skinned one he addressed his questions. The spate of their conversation sped back and forth between them so swiftly that there was not even time for the attentive Sheng-ti to translate for his companions.
But though the words of a conversation may be unintelligible, its tenor is ofttimes obvious to the careful witness. It became clear to Ramey that Ravana, at first polite in his salutation to the blue lord of Angkor, was becoming more presumptious and argumentative every minute.
His shoulders became stiffer, straighter, more bold. Once he glanced back as if to assure himself that behind him ranged the solid phalanx of his warriors. His voice assumed a belligerent stridency, and an arrogant light emboldened his eyes.
Nor was Ramey the only one to notice this gathering insolence. The blue ruler frowned, and his tone developed an edge of asperity.
Now, however, the amber giant exhibited startling rudeness. Boldly he interrupted the azure-tinted emperor in midsentence, and cried what sounded like a loud demand. A brief, startled silence fell upon the court room. In that silence, Dr. Aiken prodded the bonze for information.
Scanty as it was, it verified Ramey's suspicions.
"The Tall One says the gods appeared to him; he therefore claims the right to house their mortal avatars whilst they visit. The Blue One reminds him he is but a guest at the palace, and that he, Sugriva, is emperor of Angkor."
Lake chuckled. "Huh! Talk about your southern hospitality! It's peanuts compared to this! Scrapping over who's going to put us up for the night!"
"Scrapping" was a bit of an exaggeration. It did not quite reach that stage. But in the moment following the silence it looked very much as though it might. The tall lord, Ravana, concluding his defiant demands, turned and snapped an order to his followers. Their hands leaped to their swords, they moved as though to surround the little party of time-exiles.
But now the Emperor Sugriva had reached the end of his patience, and with a swift decision exposed the hand of steel beneath the velvet glove. He cried a word. It might have been a title or a name.
"Kohrisan!"
The cry brought an instant response. From one of the arched doorways of the council room, as if he had been waiting on hair-trigger for the call to catapult him forward, sprang a strange figure. A short, gnarled figure so elaborately adorned, cap-a-pied, in the glittering habiliments of a warrior that Ramey had to look twice to see it was no man at all, but another of the weirdly humanoid apes.
The monkey-captain sized up the situation at a glance, lifted his voice in a cry that bore little resemblance to the shrill chattering of ordinary banderlogs. The apparently tenantless court sprang to life. Through every portal flooded troops of the armed monkey-men to arraign themselves grimly behind their leader. The furry captain spoke, this time directly to Ravana, who scowled at him.
For a moment it seemed Ravana trembled on the brink of a decision. His right hand yearned toward his sword. Then he shrugged and forced a smile to his lips. He made a perfunctory, almost insulting, bow to the blue-skinned lord of the jungle, then crisped a word to his followers. They turned and marched from the room. As Ravana passed the squat ape-man, he sneered a mocking taunt; the gaudily garbed little creature flinched as if struck with a blow. Then Ravana and his bullies were gone, and Sugriva beckoned Ramey's party to advance toward him.
Ramey's first impression of the emperor had been that Sugriva was a wishy-washy sort. Now he was forced to alter that opinion. There was no nervousness, no uncertainty in the blue lord's manner. He seemed to have weighed carefully the problem and arrived at a conclusion. He was a gentle man but he could act when action was required. And he was a man of penetrating intellect. He had already recognized that Sheng-ti was the only one to whom his words held meaning. He addressed himself to the bonze. Sheng-ti answered with a new note of humility in his voice, then relayed the message.
"The Blue One says to follow him. He would understand and be understood."
Wonderingly the little group followed Sugriva to a small privy chamber beyond the throne-room. As they entered this Ramey's eyes widened to behold another metal cabinet somewhat similar to that in which they had been borne here, but of hemispherical shape. Into this the ruler motioned them. Red Barrett looked dubious.
"Hey, what's he going to do, Ramey? Send us back where we come from? So soon? Aw, gee! Me and Toots here ain't hardly got acquainted yet."
Syd offered warningly, "Look out. It's a trick of some sort. I don't trust—"
"I think it's all right," Ramey reassured them. "Yes, I know it is. See, he's going in it himself. Come on. We'll never find out what this is all about if we don't take a chance."
He stepped into the chamber behind Sugriva. The others followed. The blue lord closed the door.
This chamber, too, had a control panel on one wall. To this the emperor went, adjusted small dials and pressed a plunger. Sheila screamed. Cries of alarm ripped the throats of Lake and Dr. Aiken. Ramey Winters was conscious that he, too, had cried aloud under the impact of a lance of fiery pain piercing his brain. From the ceiling of the chamber a radiation terrible to look upon blazed down upon them, its intangible beam of light seemed to smash them with tangible force. Ramey staggered a step forward, clutching for Sugriva. But even as he did so, he was aware that the ruler pressed another button, that the radiation had died, and the pain was suddenly gone.
His head throbbed and burned. He cried, "Damn you! What's the big idea? What are you trying to do to us?" But there was disarming candor in the blue man's smile. "Peace, my friend," he soothed. "There will be no more pain. It is over now."
"Over?" repeated Ramey. "It had damned well better be over. You can't—" Then he halted, his mouth foolishly agape, as realization of what had happened dawned upon him.
He had spoken to the Lord of Angkor. And the blue lord had answered. And each of them had understood the other!
Sheila Aiken stared at their new acquaintance wildly.
"You—you're speaking English!"
He shook his head, a quiet smile on his lips. "No, on the contrary, it is you who speak my tongue. Not that it matters. We can converse in either. Now that we have undergone the ministration of the vilyishna, each of us possesses the other's language." He turned to the yellow-skinned bonze who, heretofore, had been his sole interpreter. There was a curious comprehension and sympathy in his eyes. "And you, my friend—your brain has cleared?"[6]
The surly Sheng-ti was surly no longer. An amazing change had come over him; his eyes, which had ever been dark and cloudy with half-mad suspicion, were now gleaming. Ramey knew, even before the old priest spoke, what this meant. The mysterious vilyishna had performed for Sheng-ti the greatest of all possible services. It had lifted from his brain the cloud of insanity which had veiled it for years!
Sheng-ti cried out, a choking little cry of joy, and dropped to his knees. "It is, O my Lord! Thou knowest it is indeed clear and strong again!"
Sugriva laid a hand on his shoulder, raising him.
"I am sorry it was necessary to subject you to even a moment's pain. But there was no other way. The patterns of the brain are not rearranged without a modicum of discomfort." As he spoke he opened the door again, they returned to the room whence they had come. "You are all recovered now?"
Dr. Aiken's eyes were those of a new Balboa staring out across uncharted seas of knowledge.
"The vilyishna! Transference of knowledge by machine! Learning by superimposition of brain patterns!" he whispered. "Lord, what an achievement! Where did it come from?"
"It is an invention of my people," Sugriva told him.
"Your people?" repeated Ramey. "Who are your people, my Lord? In the world from which we came there are no men of your pigmentation. Who on earth are your people?"
It was then the blue lord Sugriva smiled. There was a touch of sadness in his voice. "My people are not of Earth, my young friend. They are of—another world altogether!"
"Venus!" cried Dr. Aiken suddenly. "Venus—that is your homeland! I knew it! Ramey, do you remember just as the Japanese attacked I was about to tell you of one of the oddest carvings we had discovered? That mural was a representation of the solar system, showing at the center the mother Sun, then, circling about her in their orbits, the planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the other spheres.
"Two things about this mural perplexed us. One, that there was a definite line scored between the planets Venus and Earth, such a line as experience in deciphering Angkor's symbolism had taught us always represented 'contact' of some sort.
"The second point was that immediately beneath this diagram were a series of smaller carvings. One showing a forest of lush vegetation unlike anything known to Man, another showing a cylindrical, shiplike object surrounded by heavenly bodies, a third showing a troup of earthmen kneeling before a man like Sugriva. A man with blue skin. My Lord—you know the carving whereof I speak?"[7]
Sugriva nodded. "Indeed, I know it well. Did I not cause it to be made? In the long years that have elapsed since I assumed the protectorate of this Earth colony I have had my subjects carve much of the history of our people into the walls of this citadel. But more of that later. I would hear now of yourselves. You came hither in the cabinet of Rudra?"
Ramey said, "Then you knew of the time-machine?"
"Of a certainty, my son. Was it not built by my own blood-brother, Rudra, who, until he grew restless and fretful, ruled this colony with me? Ah, he was a brilliant one, Rudra, and a great scientist. It was he who designed the vilyishna, aye, and even the Bow of Death which now you bear. Important things might he and I have accomplished had he been content to stay here with me. But a score of years ago, dissatisfied and impatient, he built in the chamber beneath the altar room the cabinet which flies backward in Time. In this cabinet he made many trips into the past, returning ever and anon to amuse me with tales of marvels seen. But ever longer and more daring grew his trips, until finally there was one from which he returned not ever, nor the cabinet in which he had gone. Tell me—and saw you my blood-brother Rudra in the era whence you came?"
Dr. Aiken shook his head sorrowfully. "No, my Lord. We saw him not. The cabinet was thick with dust, and Rudra's bow lay on the floor. The machine itself had lain hidden in its chamber from the sight of man for countless centuries."
Sugriva sighed.
"Then he is indeed perished. But tell me—how came you to find the cabinet? And from what ancient era came you? Rudra found many signs of life in the ages he traversed, but never a race of Earthmen cultured as yourselves."
"We are not from the Past, my Lord, but the Future."
"Future! But my brother's machine could not safely move forward in Time! He told me so. Only into the Past—"
"Nevertheless, he must have tried. For we found his cabinet in an age five thousands of years later than this."
Sugriva nodded dolefully.
"Now I can guess why he returned not. He was daring, my brother. Too daring. But—the future, you say? Tell me, then—is my small colony a great and beautiful metropolis in the period whence you came hither?"
"Not so, my Lord Sugriva," answered Dr. Aiken regretfully. "Somewhere in the centuries which span between now and our era, an evilness has befallen this colony of yours. For in the world we left behind us, these mighty halls and temples are but a haunting wonder lost in the slumbering sea of leafy jungles."
Sugriva's sadness deepened.
"This is grievous news you bring me, my friends. If what you say is true, if fifty centuries hence this colony is vanished, its people scattered, then my labors here are of no avail. And my mission on Earth has failed. But—why?"
It was a question for which the time-exiles knew no answer. Its solution lay yet in Sugriva's future, and was so far buried in their world's past as to be a forgotten secret. But they were spared the necessity of answering. For at that moment came an interruption. There wakened a flurry of action at the central gate, the doorway opened, and through its great portals swept a woman.
And what a woman! She was tall ... much taller than the average man, almost as tall as Ramey himself. But there was no gangling awkwardness to her height. Her figure was perfectly proportioned to her stature. She walked with the slow and lithe and languorous grace of a jungle creature. A panther, perhaps, thought Ramey, with rapt approval watching her move nearer. Yes, assuredly a panther. For she was neither white nor Mongolian. Her skin was the soft, fine ivory of the Eurasian. Ivory, shading to tawny gold with the contours of her body, deepening with the curve of her thigh, the round of her elbow, the shadowy cup of her breasts. Pantherine, too, were her eyes. Triangular eyes, long-lashed and lazy, with pupils of dusty emerald.
Captain Kohrisan sprang to attention as she approached, saluted and cried introduction:
"My lords—the Lady Rakshasi!"