CHAPTER IX
THE ATTACK ON THE MEETING HOUSE
Ala was saying, "At last—it is so good to be back." For her the struggle was wholly past; she was smiling, relieved, and upon her face there was solicitude for us. "You are not injured? At rest—now?"
"Yes," said Will. "It is over." His hand touched Bee affectionately. "The strangeness will soon be gone, I think. You all right, Rob?"
"Yes," I said. In truth, every moment a rationality of being was coming to me. And curiosity, of itself evidence of normality, made me ask, "Where are we going? What are we going to do?"
"Going with Ala," said Will briefly. "Her people are friendly to us—deploring the threatened invasion of our world."
I realized that he and Ala at their first meeting must have exchanged knowledge, and planned what we now were to do.
Bee asked, "Are we going far? Will it take long?"
Ala seemed puzzled. "Far"—"long." The words involved Space and Time. I saw that at first they had no meaning to her.
"We are going there," she answered. Her gesture was vaguely downward ahead of us. "Come," she added.
We started. My impression now is that we were walking. I could feel a part of my body in movement, quite as though of my volition I were moving my legs. A sense of lightness again possessed me; a lack of stability. But I could feel solidity beneath me, and I was moving upon it.
We walked then, down the hill. There was vegetation; things, let me say, seemed rooted within the ground. But they bent from our advance as though with a knowledge and a fear that we might tread upon them.
The scene was no longer empty. A rolling land, with what might have been a mountain range rising in the distance. All in that half-light of seeming phosphorescence. I noticed now that the familiar convexity of earth was gone. The scene had a queer concavity; to the limit of my vision it stretched upward; as though we were upon the inner surface of some vast hollow globe with the concave darkness overhead coming down to meet it. A hollow globe within which we were standing; but it seemed of infinite size.
Not far away now was that region which first I thought was water. We passed over it—partly through it. I felt the resistance against me. Like water with no wetness; but to my sight it was a heavy fog lying upon the land. Its breath was oppressive; I was glad when we were past it, emerging again into the twilight with a city before us.
A city! Houses—human habitations! I knew it—divined it with a new mental alertness; and Ala's words presently confirmed my thoughts.
"Our Big-City," she said.
Before us lay an area upon which was spread a confusion of globes. Circular, yet visually flat of depth. In size I found them later to be, from the smallest some twice my own height, to others I would in my own world have said to be a hundred feet in diameter. Opaque grey globes, of a material unnameable. Of every size they lay seemingly strewn about; and in places piled one upon the other. All of grey color that glistened with a sheen of iridescence.
The Big-City. Diminished by distance it seemed indeed as though a thousand varying-sized soap bubbles, smoke-filled, lay piled together. And the whole flattened, queerly unnatural like a picture with a wrong perspective.
The globes were scattered about; but as we approached I saw open spaces twisting among them like tortuous streets. Horizontal streets; and vertical streets as well. Abruptly I realized that this realm was not cast like my own upon a single plane. On earth we move chiefly in a world of two dimensions—only in the air or water do we have the freedom of three. Here, the vertical and the horizontal seemed no different.
Bee said, "The Big-City. Houses—" Her voice trailed away into wonderment. From our presently nearer viewpoint, movement showed in the city; beings—people like ourselves—moving about the streets. And soon we were among the globes—within the city.
I say, "Soon." I can remember no conception of time, save in terms of the events within my ken. How long it was from our crossing the borderline until we reached the city I do not know—we moved, walked and entered the city. How far we walked—that too I do not know.
The people we passed did not heed us; the globes, from whatever angle we viewed them were circular, seemingly flat, but always flat in the unseen dimension. We passed close to one. It appeared solid. It had no apertures—no doors nor windows. A man went by us—a shape in the guise of a man; and he entered the globe by passing through it. It yielded to his passage; its substance closed after him, opaque, sleek, glistening as before.
We stopped at a globe of larger size. Ala said, "I will leave you here. And when I come back—we will go together to the meeting place. They are waiting for you."
Will nodded. "Very well, Ala. How long before you come?"
Again she was puzzled. "How long? Why, I will come."
She left us; I did not see how or where she went.
Will said, "Come on. This is our house they have given us."
Together we passed through the side of the globe. I felt almost nothing—as though I had brushed against something, no more. Were the globes of a material solidity? I do not know.
Within the globe was a hollow interior. Call it a room. The same luminous twilight illumined it. A room of circular concavity. No walls, no ceiling; it was all floor. We walked upon it and though we had passed through it, nevertheless it sustained us; and in every position beneath us seemed the floor, above us the ceiling. A memory of the vanished gravity of our earth came to me. The word—the conception—had no meaning here. Yet we had weight; the substance upon which we rested attracted us perhaps. I cannot say.
We gazed around us. There were places of rest—rectangles of a misty white into one of which I found myself instinctively reclining as though with a need of physical quiet. A sense of ease came to me; but it was only vaguely of the physical. I was indeed now barely conscious of a body; but of my mind I was increasingly aware. I could be tired in mind. I was, and I was resting.
Will and Bee were resting also. I saw upon Bee's face that same queer, wistful expression which had marked Ala's; I saw her regarding me intently; and I answered her affectionate smile.
Will said, "The strangeness is leaving us. I'm tired—I wish I did not have to talk, but I feel that I should."
He told us then what he had learned from Ala. This Big-City was the most populous place of the realm. Ala's parent—I might say her father, to make the term more specific—was leader of the Big-City people. One among them—one whom they called Brutar—had found a way to get into the Borderland. He had gone there—and I think that it was he whom we termed the first of the ghosts—whom we had seen that night on the little Vermont farm. He had returned, with tales of an outer world ... tales of the consciousness of a different body ... a physical being with pleasures unimagined....
The craze to follow him spread. An element undesirable among the people seemed most inspired to join him.
"Ala told me little more than that," Will went on. "The method they are using to get to the Borderland—I do not yet know. But I know that this Brutar—he would sweep with his followers into our world. Physically possessed, in a fashion they could not understand...."
He stopped with the sentence unfinished; it left me with a memory of that Kansas farmhouse, and of the young girl who had died of fright.
Bee asked, "What do they call themselves—these people? This race—beings—" She floundered. "There are no words, yet I have so much to ask."
He shook his head. "All that we have to learn. There is a civilization here—a mental existence in which we'll soon be taking a rational part. For myself, it is less strange every moment."
I nodded. "And Ala's people—they refuse to join in this invasion of our world?"
"Yes," he said. "They deplore it—they're trying to stop it. A meeting is to be held—Ala is coming to take us to it."
I drifted off into a reverie; and Ala came. I glanced up to see her beside us.
"If you are ready," she said, "we will go."
Again we passed through the enveloping globe which was our home: passed along the city street. It was now deserted. We walked on its level surface; it wound and twisted its way between the globes. At times a group of them piled one upon the other—the smallest on top like a disarray of bubbles—obstructed the street. But the substance upon which we walked (it was often barely visible) turned upward; a sharp upward curve to the vertical; then straight up, again leveling off, and then downward. We trod it; with no more effort going up than upon the horizontal. It seemed, indeed, only as though the scene about us had shifted its plane.
In silence we proceeded. I wondered where the inhabitants of the place might be. Then I saw a few. Not walking openly, these few we now encountered; one I saw lurking in the curve between two adjacent globes. A man ... robed darkly ... a dark hood seemingly over his head ... like a shroud enveloping him to mingle his outline with the darkness.... Darkness? Had the twilight turned to night?... Was this the Borderland again?... I seemed to see its darkness.... I strained my vision for the familiar shadows of our own world.... Was that a tree?... A street?... Was that Will's house over there?...
Bee's agonized voice reached my consciousness. "Rob! Rob, dear, come back to us!"
My mind had wandered, and had drawn with it the tenuous wraith of a body it so easily dominated. I fought myself back. Told myself vehemently I was not in the Borderland; I was with my friends. With Will—Bee; with Ala.
I saw them, distantly; with Space I know not how much, nor Time, how long—between us. Saw them; saw Bee with horrified arms held out as though to bring me back. And felt myself whirling in Nothingness.
"Rob! Rob!"
"Yes," I called. "I'm here—coming." And at last again I was with them.
"You're careless, Rob." Concern mingled with the relief in Will's tone. "Careless—you must not wander that way."
Ala said quietly. "There are many like that. A wandering mind brings evil to the body it tosses about."
"But with us now, it is additionally hard," Will said. "Every instinct within us draws us away—as it was with you, Ala, in the Borderland."
"Yes," she agreed. "I know that."
We continued our passage toward the meeting house. That shrouded shape I had seen was not of my wandering fancy, for now I saw others. Peering at us from dark spaces; eyes that glowed unblinking; or shapes of mantled black skulking furtively along the streets. Avoiding us, yet always watching as we boldly passed.
"Brutars," Ala said. "Those who with Brutar would attack your world. They are everywhere now about the city. I am afraid of them."
We came upon the meeting house. It was a tremendous globe, in outward aspect no different from the others save that its size was gigantic. As we neared it I saw that upon its luminous grey surface were narrow circular bands of a lighter color—bands both vertical and horizontal. These also I had noticed on most of the other globes; a lighter color in bands, or sometimes in small patches. I questioned Ala; the lighter-colored parts were where one might safely enter, thus not to encounter the occupants, or the furnishings within.
We passed through one of the bands of the gigantic globe, and found ourselves in a single great room. A globular amphitheatre; to use earthly measurements it had perhaps a thousand feet of interior diameter. Its entire inner surface was thronged with grey-white shapes of people, save where, like aisles, the space of the outer bands divided them into segments.
The segments were jammed; the people seemed crouching upon low pedestals one close against the other. A few of the pedestals were vacant. None where we entered, and the nearest I saw were almost above us. We passed along an aisle to reach them. The globe and everyone in it appeared slowly turning over, so that always we seemed to be at its bottom with those opposite to us over our heads.
At last we were seated. In the center of the globe, suspended there in space by what means I could not know, was a ball some fifty feet in diameter. Upon it men were sitting. Dignitaries; leaders of the people facing from every angle the waiting throng. And one—a man of great stature—Ala's father, walking around the ball restlessly, awaiting the moment when he would begin his address.
A silence hung over everything. Again I was reminded of the utter soundlessness of this realm. I felt the suppressed murmurs of the people—but I know no physical sounds were audible. Nor indeed, had I ear-drums with which to hear them had such sounds existed.
Time passed as we found our seats. Immobile we sat; and for me at least, time ceased to exist.
Then Ala's father spoke. "My people—danger has come to a strange race of friendly neighboring beings. And it brings a danger also to us all—to you, to me——"
He stopped abruptly. I felt a sound; a myriad of sounds everywhere about us. Shouts of menace; a swishing, queerly aerial sound as of many rapidly moving bodies.
Through all the aisles of the globe, from outside, the shapes of men were bursting. Swishing through the opaque surface of the globe, entering among us, whirling inward. Like storm-tossed feathers they whirled, end over end, uncontrolled with the power of their rush. A cloud of hostile grey shapes in the fashion of menacing men come to attack us!