CHAPTER XIV
THE REALM OF DEATH
I must tell again of that moment when we—Bee and I—were standing beside the lolos field with Brutar and Eo. Brutar had turned away. Eo—prompted, I had no doubt, by Bee—murmured, "This is evil! We will escape—"
My arm reached for Bee. I told myself intensely that now we must escape ... now I must fling my thoughts—my mind—out into the void.... And stay with Eo; he would lead us....
I think my groping hand never reached Bee. I felt a swishing sound. A swirl of thoughts struck me—like feathers blown against me in a gale. But they seemed to cling. Invisible, imponderable—barely palpable; dimly I could feel these thoughts like a net entangling me.
I was floundering. Surging through blackness. Where was Bee? I thought I saw her and Eo whirling near me. But it was a thought unreal—hallucination; for as I tried to grip it and make them visible, they were gone. My thought of them dissolved into a realization that I did not see them, for they were vanished.
But Brutar I saw; a distorted wraith of him ... his grim, menacing face ... grim with combat....
I was rushing through blackness. But as an undertow may suck the strongest swimmer, something was pulling me back ... a hampering net around me ... materializing into greater ponderability ... holding me firmly.... The blackness about me was taking form. I strove to think I saw the Big-City. Told myself that that hovering shape above me was Thone—the friendly Thone; not Brutar.
But it was not Thone; and this place that was clarifying to my vision was not the Big-City. The lolos field! I came—was dragged, sucked back to it! The lolos field—I was standing there where before I had been. And the menacing shape was Brutar—my captor standing there grimly confronting me.
But Bee and Eo were gone.
These two, escaping, came upon Thone, Will and Ala as I have related. Came upon them hovering nowhere in the void. Eo was stricken. Brutar, with what quickness and evil power of mind I could not conceive, had struck at Eo. A wound, a derangement not physical, but mental. His mind now—sick, stricken with disease. Almost wandering; yet not quite unhinged—for the power of his will was holding it. Bravely he clung to sanity. Fought for it. Yet those—his friends with him—knew then that he fought a losing battle.
They hung there in the void. Bee was sobbing, "I don't want him to die! He is my friend."
He held tightly to her. His eyes were very wistful. "They call you a girl—and now I know I love you!"
The void was moving. It seemed so to Will; seemed that the blackness was moving past them. Or was it that they—the little knot of their hovering shapes—was moving? Then Will realized that it was Eo—his stricken, wandering mind—dragging them somewhere. The void seemed moving—for how long Will did not know. And then, far away, in Space and in eons of Time, something became visible. A faint star-dust glow. A luminous patch. It broadened; spread to the sides, and up and down until everywhere before them lay its gleaming radiance.
The realm of disease! Will heard Ala murmur it in accents of sorrow and apprehension. Eo was rushing for it—and no power that they had could stop him.
The radiance intensified. A fear—a shuddering horror possessed Will. With every instinct within him, he recoiled from the approach. Revolted. But he held tightly to Thone and to Bee; told himself that they would lead him safely.
Everything was glowing; they were wholly within the glow now. A silvery glow that shone everywhere about them. But soon to the silver there came a greenish cast. It deepened. A green, with its sickly look of death. Green, with the silver turning to a pallid, flat, dead whiteness. And then a mingled brown; a murk, like a fog pervading everything.
Abruptly Will became conscious that Eo was no longer with them. His last despairing cry; and Bee's echo. He was going—floating downward; while they, uncontaminated, hovered above, at the edge of the realm, to see it but not to enter.
Will saw but dimly. Saw shapes floating in there. Dismembered shapes. Others, whole, floating inert. A cauldron, with bubbles of sight and sound, and smell. Shrouded in murk. Unreal.... A wailing ... sobbing ... faint aerial voices wailing like ghosts distraught.... And a stench—the thought of it, no more——but to Will the thought, the knowledge of all this was horrible, fearsome. Singularly fearsome; above everything at that moment he feared this realm, this state of unnatural, tortured existence....
They could still talk to Eo. See him there, laboring, losing his brave fight to come back to them. He seemed very far away; and yet very close, for though his form was down there, engulfed with all the leprous horrors of disease, his voice was very plainly heard. And his face, the image of it, the physical representation of it to Will's thought, seemed again at hand. His eyes were very wistful. He was smiling gently at Bee.
"Soon, girl, I will be gone—into death—it is very near now. I can see it—see it, just ahead...."
Will saw it, too. Another realm beyond the one they were skirting. The realm of death. It lay close ahead. Dark. Mysterious. Scarce to be seen, but only imagined.
Again came Eo's faint voice. "I shall—be there in a moment. It is very—beautiful. I can see it—right here—" And then he suddenly whispered, "I love you, my girl Bee—"
And vanished.
Or did he vanish? The shell of him then seemed lying in Bee's arms. But it was an empty nothing; the shell of a shape of something which once had been, but now was not....
Thone said gravely, "Watch it, Will. The Thought is gone from it. Our own thought-matter is all that is left. You shall see of what permanence that is."
The dead shell lay inert. It was dissolving.... Grewsome.... Will turned away; then forced his vision back to see a leprous wraith—a rotting shape which presently, like a melting fog, began to dissipate. Dissolving, until the very last essence of it was gone into nothingness.
Ala seemed to sigh. "It is very horrible. Yet I think that we are wrong to consider it so, for it is Nature."
Will recovered himself. The realm of disease had withdrawn to a memory. Around him the blackness seemed purified. But ahead he could see—or thought he saw—that other endless realm where dwell what we call the dead. Questions flooded him. Eo was there? Could they not go and see him? Could he—this Entity which had once been Eo—could he not still speak to them from beyond the borders of death?
Thone said, "We will approach it if you wish."
Unnameable time; and then Will found that they were there, hovering; and a realm, a place—a something he knew not what—lay spread above them. Earnestly he groped for it. Not with his physical hands; but with his senses. His thought went there and back. He thought he saw shapes up there. Hovering, glowing shapes in a great light space. And with futile, childish imagination he endowed them with beautiful, ethereal qualities; transfigured them into glowing human shapes of beauty and peace. And thought he saw them; and that they might speak to him. Or that perhaps, because Thone might be more than human, they might communicate with Thone, and thence to him.
And then he laughed. It was all so childish!
Thone said, "Eo is there, in the darkness and the light. You can think of him. Your thought will go there. And it will come back to you, fraught with what qualities your imagination may lend it. But nothing else."
"No," said Will, "nothing else. I understand that now."