CHAPTER XII
THE ENCAMPMENT IN THE VOID
Brutar said, "Let us go in here. I want to talk to you."
We entered a globe very much like those of the Big-City. And reclined at physical ease. But there was no mental peace here—for us at any rate. A turgid aura of restlessness seemed pervading everything.
Brutar rested before us. He seemed always to be regarding Bee; contemplatively, yet with a satisfied triumph.
"I am glad to have you with us," he said; not harshly now, rather with an ingratiating note as though he sought our good will. "We are going to your Earth—to live there, and they tell me, these good people of mine, that they are going to make me its ruler."
He spoke with a false modesty, as though to impress us with his greatness forced upon him by his adoring followers. "I want you two for my friends—you will be of great help to me."
"How?" I demanded.
I had recovered from my confusion. I was wary; the thought came to me that I might be able to trick this Brutar—that being here with him—to see and feel what he was doing—was an advantage which later on I could turn to account. I wondered if he could hear or feel that thought. I willed it otherwise; and it seemed that he could not. His eyes were upon me, gauging me.
"How could we help you?" I repeated. "And why should we? You mean harm to our world."
"No," he protested. "No harm. We have selected it—your Earth—from all that great Universe of yours which I have inspected. We want to go to your Earth to live. That is all. You can help me, because you know so many things of Earth that I do not. I want you to tell me of them.... Stand up!"
I found myself upright, whether by my own volition or his I cannot say.
"Stand up, Bee!"
At his command she also stood erect. He came to us; his hands went to the belts we wore about our waists. I had forgotten my belt—those things in its pouches which Will had bade me not touch. Brutar took them now—my weapons perhaps. And those which Bee carried; took them, discarded them behind him. They floated away; I could barely see them—small formless blobs to my uncomprehending thoughts.
I had very nearly resisted Brutar; but it seemed a futile thing, and I stood quiet. Again we reclined. "Tell me of your Earth," he said; and began to question me.
I told him what I could. I had determined that my best plan was to appear friendly. I wondered how one would escape from a place like this. I was more accustomed to this strange state of being now; knowledge which seemed instinctive was growing within me. I knew that if Brutar's net of thoughts were not to hold me—if I could momentarily be freed of other thought-matter—then I could project myself out into the void. I believed I could find my way back to the Big-City—once having been there I would have the power to return.
This latter knowledge brought with it a thrill of triumph. I believed that Will and Thone had never been here in Brutar's strong-hold. Perhaps this was a secret place which they could not find. But now I had been here; and if I could escape, I could lead others back to it.
With these guarded thoughts surreptitiously roaming through my mind, I was all the while describing our Earth to Brutar. He interrupted me once. "Eo, come here."
I became aware of another shape hovering near us. It now advanced; and with Brutar's words of explanation it took form in the fashion of a young man. A smiling, deferential youth seemingly of an age just reaching maturity. He came forward meekly. Brutar spoke.
"This is my friend whom we call Eo. I have trust in him—he is helping me greatly. I want him to hear what you have to say, Rob."
Eo smiled again. "I hope we shall be friends." He regarded Bee, and his smile was curiously gentle. "They call you a girl? Brutar tells me what girls are—I am glad to see you."
He reclined beside Bee, continuing to regard her. A very gentle, guileless youth—how queer a companion for this Brutar! And I knew then that it was gentle beings like this whom Brutar was beguiling to his purpose.
Brutar said, "Go on, Rob. What you can tell us will be very interesting."
Particularly he questioned me about our physical bodies of Earth—the human body; and when I told him how mortal it was, how easily injured, he seemed disturbed. But only for a moment.
"I have been—well, very nearly in your Earth-state," he said. "I know how it feels. You have things with which to harm that body. Weapons—tell me of them."
I described our weapons; our warfare. Our poisons. I will admit it gave me a gloating pleasure grewsomely to picture all the dangers to which our mortal flesh is heir. But outwardly he was undisturbed. He interrupted me once with a sharp admonition to Bee.
"You think you can send your thoughts back to the Big-City and guide them here, don't you? I would not try that, if I were you!"
Bee started with guilt. She had been attempting to do that. Her thoughts had gone back, at first instinctively, then with a conscious direction, but he was stopping her now. Around us like a veil a barrier was materializing.
Eo said gently, "She will not do that, Brutar. She is friendly to us." His hand very lightly touched Bee. He added earnestly, "I like you—girl."
Brutar momentarily had turned away; I think he was not aware of what Eo had said. I saw that Bee was smiling. I felt her voice saying very gently.
"I like you, too. You are very kind—I think you are very good. On Earth we would call you—a boy."
"Boy!" He murmured it. "I like the way that sounds—hearing you call me—boy!"
Brutar had risen erect. "You have told me a great deal, Rob. We shall be friends." He was eyeing me. "On Earth when we get there, I shall make you into a great man—a very powerful man. You would like that?"
Did he feel that my intelligence was so limited that he could bribe me thus crudely? I smiled.
"Oh, yes—I should like that. But I've told you so much, and you haven't told me anything. How did you first find our Earth? How did you get yourself into that Borderland, and beyond? You were the first to go, weren't you?"
"The first," he said proudly. "I discovered it—well, by accident. Shall I show you how? And what I am doing to take all my loyal followers there with me?"
"Yes." I agreed. "That is what I want."
He led us outside. Eo walked close by Bee. I saw now that the encampment was itself one tremendous hollow globe; on Earth we would have said that it had a diameter of at least a mile. Brutar explained it proudly. Here, in the void of Space, his organized workmen had spun this huge shell of thought-matter. It was tenuous; I had not known when we passed through it coming in. Yet it was visible; within it we gazed at its interior surface. It glowed with a very pale dull light.
Upon this concave slope, in the foreground near us, were a variety of globes—small habitations for the workers. Paths ran between and over them. Further away, other larger globes glowed as though translucent, with light inside. Beyond them was a shimmering white lake—water or mist. Higher up—in the distance where the concave surface extended upward and swept back over our heads—was what seemed like dark soil. Things were growing there in orderly rows—a gigantic concave field of plants. It was dim off there, and so far above us that I could not make them out plainly.
Again, close at hand, just beyond the village of globes, was an enclosure possibly a thousand feet across. Movement was there—busy workers moving in the artificial glow of strings of lights. Vague, shifting shadows—grey shapes of men, from which the lights cast monstrous grey shadows as they moved. It seemed a dim inferno of strange industry incomprehensible.... Brutar led us toward it.
"We built all this," he said; and his gesture encompassed the entire inner void within that glowing tenuous shell. "We built and poised this here in Space. My followers have forsaken their homes to join me here. Soon we will go to your Earth-realm.... Some of us often go out there now—into that Borderland—to test our power."
The enclosure had a wall about it—a thick high wall built of a grey substance lying in layers, folded in convolutions. We stood upon the wall, gazing at the scene within.
"I would not have you see too much—now," Brutar said.
A cunning look was on his face. "Not—too much, until we are better friends and I can be sure of your loyalty."
The lights were dazzling when near at hand—yet their rays carried but a little distance. I saw in the foreground beneath us, a section where men were squatting one behind the other in a long curved line. Their backs were bent forward, with heads and necks unnaturally held upright. Their arms and hands were outstretched in a curious attitude as with supplication. There must have been two hundred of the men, squatting in this single line which curved in a crescent until its end was near its beginning. They were men with bodies which seemed shrunken; their arms and hands very long; thin, tenuous. But their heads were over-large; distorted to a swollen size.
Brutar said softly, "Now—in a moment—watch them."
A leader, raised above these squatting, motionless workmen, gave a signal. From the head of the man at the back of the line a pallid light seemed streaming. It was very faint—a glow of pale white light, no more. But as I stared, breathless, I saw that it was not exactly like light, but a stream of something moving. Very faint; a fog, a mist, which a sweep of the hand might dissipate.
It streamed forward; and as it passed the head of the next man, there seemed additional light adding to it. Both men had their hands up, as though to guide the stream—gently to guide that which must have been very nearly impalpable.
But it was growing in density. Soon, further up the line with every brain contributing a share, the slowly moving stream began to have substance. From vague, luminous pallidness, it turned darker; gaining a solidity—a weight. The guiding hands sustained it, moulded it, pushed it onward.
It came to the end of the line. Other workers appeared; carried it away—a long flexible rod of newly created thought-matter. The basic inorganic substance of this world. The thickness of a man's body, it seemed coming of interminable length. Then the first worker gave out—dropped back exhausted. Then others. The rod grew tenuous and pale in places. It broke. Workers carried away the broken segments. It was not a solid yet; they moulded it by their touch as they carried it away.
Another signal from the leader. The two hundred workmen, their duty done for the time, rose and departed. They moved unsteadily, exhausted. And another shift came to take their places.
How long a spell of mental work this might have been, I cannot say. Bee asked me, in an awed whisper, how long we had been watching. A futile question! As Will once said, "Like trying to add an apple to an orange." To me—idly watching, and with memory of an Earth-standard of what we are pleased to call Time—I would have said, five minutes. To one of those laboring workers—an eternity of effort. Yet in our fatuous little world of Earth we tick off seconds, minutes, hours, and think we are establishing a standard for the Universe!
Brutar said, "That is the crude thought-material. From there it goes to our workshops, where other minds bring it to higher, individual substances from which we make—well, we make these things we are making here."
His look of cunning came again. He would give away no secrets to me—his enemy. He seemed very proud of his cunning, this Brutar. A man of low intelligence, I realized. Yet he must be powerful, to be the leader of all this. Later I learned that he had a powerful mind—not for creating this useful substance of industry; nor was his an intellect of keen reasoning ability. Rather was it a mind powerful for the weaving of that tenuous thought-substance of combat. He was a warrior. And in mental speech as well, he was fluent, plausible, guileful.
Bee was saying, "Is all work mental?"
He did not understand the question. Eo said, "She means, is all work done by the mind?"
"Oh yes," Brutar smiled. "Why not? Except—well you've seen what part the hands play—the bodies. It is comparatively unimportant."
"May we see what they are doing with that thought-substance?" I suggested.
"No," he smiled. "I told you before, not now."
I did not press it. I was wondering if the shell of this huge globe would let me through. Could I clutch Bee and will myself away into the void? Could I not thus escape Brutar....
My thoughts must have reached him. He said sharply, "If you regard the welfare of your mind, Rob, you will not attempt to wander." His tone changed to a menacing contempt. "I can strike that sickly mind of yours from your body in an instant. Have a care!"
I fancied I caught a warning glance from Eo. Bee gave a low half-suppressed cry of fear. I smiled at Brutar.
"You are too suspicious," I said. "If we are to be friends you go about it badly."
He did not answer that, and I added, "You said you would tell us how you discovered our Earth-realm. It must have seemed an extraordinary discovery."
His vanity was easily touched. He smiled again.
"Yes, I will tell you. And show you. It is no secret—that leader Thone of the Big-City knows it.... So I do not mind showing you."