The Messiah of the Cylinder

by Victor Rousseau

I felt my way around the gallery, working toward the light, which seemed to descend as I approached it, until, standing immediately above it, I looked down and saw it shining an unknown distance beneath. It showed now the uplifted antenna of the idol, the edge of the stone altar in the center of the bridge that spanned the Temple, and the round body of the cylinder, which seemed to hang in space above it.

I had entered the Temple upon a floor one stage too high, and there was no way down from the gallery; it would be necessary to go back to the elevator and descend to a lower level, that of the bridges that spanned the interior court.

But that was too dangerous, and I could wait no longer. I estimated that the light was five and twenty feet below. I swung from the brass rail and dropped into space. It was a mad plunge in the dark toward that slender bridge a hundred feet above the Temple floor. But fortune was with me, for I struck the golden grille around the altar-stone and tumbled inside, rising upon my feet with only a bruise or two.

The grille was about four feet high, and the ends formed gates which, when opened, made the altar-stone one with the two bridge spans that extended to meet it from either side of the building. It formed thus a sort of keystone in aspect, though not architecturally, since it did not support the spans, which seemed to be on the principle of the cantilever. I saw now that the stone was suspended by steel chains from the roof, and over it, hung by two finer ones, was the cylinder.

Presently I could grasp the meaning of the mechanism. Cylinder and stone altar were in counterpoise, so that, when the first was drawn up, the second would descend from between the spans to the level of the Ant’s pedestal, forming, as it were, a sacrificial stone immediately before the idol, disrupting the continuity of the bridges also, and leaving a gap between them.

But I spared no thoughts on this. I looked through the cylinder’s face of glass, and, though I saw but the dimmest outlines there, I knew that I had found Esther again, and that there were to be no more partings, so long as we both lived.

I do not know what follies I committed there, for I forgot everything but her. Forgotten was the imminent danger, remembered only our reunion. I flung my arms about the iron case and called to her, telling her of my love, as if she heard me. I came back to sanity at length to find myself kneeling before the case upon the stone, with the tears raining down my cheeks.

It was a mad wooing of a sleeping woman upon that giant slab, swung by its chains from the vault above, and vibrant under me. Each movement set the heavy mass to trembling as the chains quivered, and the cylinder, too, danced before me, like some steel marionette.

I stretched my hands up, feeling for the cylinder cap. It was still on the neck, but it had almost reached the end of the thread and moved under my fingers. I could not see the figures upon the dial, but I knew that Esther’s awakening was not many hours away.

I twisted the cap between my fingers. I could dislodge it. If I did so ... Lazaroff had told me that would bring death, but surely not when there remained only a few short hours before the awakening. Air must have been entering in measurable quantities during some days. And, even if Esther died—better that than to awaken in Sanson’s arms!