CHAPTER XVIII
THE RESCUING ARMY
I stood gaping, every sense within me shuddering at that soundless scene of ruin and death. And then it came upon me that now I could escape. Brutar had turned triumphantly to his underlings. I heard his voice: "The first success! Now let us try the others!"
No one seemed to be noticing me. I turned and swept myself away into the darkness....
I was aware of the grey outlines of New York floating by above me.... A dim idea was in my mind that I must rejoin Will and Thone....
Out there beneath the Westchester hills the silent mob of Brutar's ghostly followers still waited. Near them was the main body of his army, inactive, waiting here while he with his chosen few were experimenting upon New York!
Experimenting! This little experimental test, and it had brought down the Woolworth Building! What then would they do with a general attack?
I passed around the mob—silent, fleeing spectres—and sped again into darkness. With no conscious thought of passing time, or direction to my flight. Yet there must have been some instinct to guide me. The thought of Bee came strong. A growing triumph, a relief, told me I was nearing her; and I think now that it was her thought of me which guided my flight.
Darkness. But overhead lay the shadows of my own world. Winding grey hills; towns that lay like grey, colorless pictures in a book, queerly distorted as I looked, upward and through them....
Shadows like myself were advancing from the gloom in front of me! A little group; behind them a vague sweep of shapes stretching out to seem a throng, a multitude. Thone! Will and Bee—with the rescuing army of the Big-City behind them!
The rescuing army....
There came upon me with that meeting a great surging knowledge of my love for Bee. My love, born up there in my own world. And then, in the realm of the Egos, stripped of the physical, a changed love which had faded to a vague affection—a knowledge that she was dear to me, but nothing more.
Now—in the Borderland once more, at least of half-material substance, a very human love descended in a torrent. My arms went around her.
"Bee, my darling." And she responded to my caresses, kissing me with an eagerness, a longing undisguised. "Rob! I've been so frightened, not having you—" Murmured then that she loved me; and clung to me.... The threshold of our own world.
But it was no time for love-making. I told Thone and Will what was transpiring, what already had come to pass, down there in New York. And with them we presently swept forward to the rescue.
Thone's army was at least as large as Brutar's; and it was not, like his, burdened by those who could not fight. In orderly array it advanced, and soon ahead of us we saw the shapes of Brutar's forces.
Strange ghostly battle into which now we plunged! I did not, could not fully understand it at the time—but now I think I do. The very essence of it a physical inactivity. Fighting! The word to our Earthly minds is so full of movement! Yet a man battling with himself, pitting the good against the evil within himself, may sit in his easy chair and fight a fierce fight.
So it was here; unleashed forces of the mind, grappling silently—a struggle without rules of combat in which no quarter could be given, and which could only end by complete annihilation of one side or the other. I knew all this, and standing with Bee, Thone and Will on a dark eminence above the scene, I watched, breathlessly.
We were under that same little Westchester town. Its streets and houses lay shadowy above us. Ghostly people were up there—thronging the streets—gazing down with fear and awe at these flowing masses of ghosts advancing to battle.
The mob of Brutar's followers, frightened now, were huddled compactly. In area, they spread under perhaps half the village. And around them in a great concentric ring, Brutar's fighters massed. This movement Thone did not disturb.
"Let them," he said. "It's what I wish, to have them massed like that."
From our eminence—we were poised not very far beneath the ground level—we could see over the whole area of the battle which was proceeding below us. The central mob who could not fight; the ring of Brutar's soldiers; and surrounding that, at a distance of some five hundred feet, another ring, Thone's fighters who now were massing to the attack.
"What will they do?" I murmured. But no one answered me, and soon I was answered by the scene itself. From both sides—Thone's army and Brutar's—little waves of the Thought-substance were flowing out over that segment between the opposing rings. Like slow-floating wisps of grey smoke from the heads of the fighters. Flowing across the space between the lines. Materializing steadily. Solidifying until I could almost imagine it might become a grey wall. But this was an illusion. It was merely thought-antagonistic which would grip and hold like a net, no more.
The two opposing streams met in the center of that circular No-man's land between the lines. A chaos of blurred formless color was there. Not grey now. An angry red. The visible substances holding each other immovable. A boiling cauldron of red, with livid, lurid tongues like flame darting from it.
No sound. But I could feel it. A mental distress, as even at this distance its influence swept me. An uneasiness; a depression; a vague sense within me of a growing panic.
It seemed a deadlock. And then began movement; strategic movement. From one portion of his line Thone suddenly withdrew a number of his thinkers. They came sweeping around to our side. With this reinforcement we became stronger over here, and the red chaos surged inward. I saw it flow almost to engulf the crouching Brutar fighters who were here opposing it. Saw a few of them fall—ghostly shells lying inert—and above them a something luminous, the Ego-mind deranged, unhinged, hovering, then winging away into death....
A shape hurriedly approached us; a man with harried, anxious face. "Thone! We are too weak now upon the other side. The Red Death is almost upon us there! They want the thinkers back."
Thone ordered them back. He turned to me. "We will win, Rob."
But I could not see it so.
"Look!" He gestured. "There is a haze above the red. It passes inward—can't you see that? And they cannot stop it. They have not been trained, for they do not know what it is."
Above the red seething ring, where the opposing thoughts were meeting, I saw as he said, a haze. It seemed a dim purple. It was floating up and inward. Very tenuous, hardly to be noticed. An imponderable something.
Thone said, "A quality of our thought which they cannot combat since they do not know what it is—or realize perhaps its presence. But its influence will reach them in time."
He swung upon the attentive shapes near us. "Ohl—give orders not to hasten. Hold the deadlock. Keep them there. Do not hasten. We must drive up the others if we can. Brutar and the others—"
Brutar! His few picked men down there in New York working death and destruction! I had forgotten them completely. Thone issued other orders. "If thoughts of distress come from here—let the thoughts out. They may reach Brutar—bring him back to help his battle here. Let out their thoughts that way." He gestured toward New York. "And if we drive Brutar and his men up here, let them in."
Other orders. A hundred or two of our fighters withdrew from the line. One here and there, ceasing to fight, coming toward Thone, forming behind us. A picked force with which we were to descend into New York.
And soon, leaving the scene here, we sped under the grey shadows of Westchester, southward toward the city. And in time, came upon it. New York! Splendid giant. Like some great helpless lion standing harried. Cuffed, wounded, stricken. Unable to fight back. Amazed, bewildered, yet undaunted, ready to fight.
But helpless.