When the Mountain Shook Read online

the fume oftheir works, wrung its peoples dry for their labor ... and in each ofthose four generations they launched a ship of space. They were greatand evil as no other people has been, because they wanted the stars.

  "Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our onlyfire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, theEarth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age.If you turn up the sod in the plain where the wild herds graze, you willfind numberless fragments of rusted or corroded metal, bits of glass andstrange plastic substances, debris of artifacts still showing the marksof their shaping--the scattered wreckage of the things they made. Andwe--we too are a remnant, the descendants of the few out of all humanitythat survived when the Ryzgas' world went down in flame and thunder.

  "In the last generation of their power the Ryzgas knew by their sciencethat the race of man would endure them no longer. They made ready theirweapons, they mined the cities and the factories for destruction, makingsure that their works and their knowledge would perish with them.Meanwhile they redoubled the yoke and the punishments, hastening thecompletion of the last of the starships.

  "From the memories that the old Watchers have left here, and from thememories of dead men that still echo in the air, I have gathered apicture of that world's end. I will show it to you...."

  * * * * *

  Var and Neena stared, unstirring, with wide vacant eyes, while the oldman wove a dream around them, and the bright ice-cave faded from theirvision, and they saw--

  Black starless night, a sky of rolling smoke above the greatest citythat was ever built. Only the angry light of fires relieved the city'sdarkness--that, and the blue-white lightning flashes that silhouettedthe naked skeletons of buildings and were followed by thunder and ashaking of the earth.

  Along lightless streets, half choked with rubble and with the dead,poured a mad, hating horde. The recurrent flashes lit scarred faces,naked bodies blackened and maimed from the hell of the workshops wherethe Ryzgas' might had been forged, eyes that stared white and halfsightless from the glare of the furnaces, gnarled hands that now at longlast clutched the weapons of the last rebellion--a rebellion withouthope of new life on a world gutted and smoldering from the fulfilment ofthe Ryzgas' dream, without slogans other than a cry for blood.

  Before them death waited around the citadel where the masters stillfought. All round, from the lowest and most poisonous levels of theshattered city, the slaves swarmed up in their millions. And thelightning blazed, and the city howled and screamed and burned.

  Then, unbelievably, the thunder fell silent, and the silence sweptoutward like a wave, from ruined street to street. The mouths that hadshouted their wrath were speechless, and the rage-blinded eyes werelifted in sudden awe. From the center, over the citadel, an immensewhite globe soared upward, rising swiftly without sound.

  They had never seen its like, but they knew. It was the last starship,and it was leaving.

  It poised motionless. For an instant the burning city lay mute; then themillions found voice. Some roared ferocious threats and curses; otherscried desolately--_wait!_

  Then the whole city, the dark tumuli of its buildings and its leapingfires and tormented faces, and the black sky over it, seemed to twistand swim, like a scene under water when a great fish sweeps past, andthe ship was gone.

  The stunned paralysis fell apart in fury. Flame towered over thecitadel. The hordes ran and shrieked again toward the central inferno,and the city burned and burned....

  * * * * *

  Var blinked dazedly in the shadowless glow of the ice-cave. His armtightened about Neena till she gasped. He was momentarily uncertain thathe and she were real and here, such had been the force of the dream, avision of such scope and reality as Var had never seen--no, livedthrough--before. With deep respect now he gazed upon the bent old manwho was the Mountain Watcher.

  "Some of the Ryzgas took flight to the stars, and some perished onEarth. But there was a group of them who believed that their time torule would come again. These raised a black mountain from the Earth'sheart, and in hollows within it cast themselves into deathless sleep,their deathless and lifeless sentinels round them, to wait till someonedare arouse them, or until their chosen time--no one knows surely.

  "I have told you the story you know, and have shown you a glimpse of theold time, because I must make sure that you do not approach the mountainin ignorance. Our world is unwise and sometimes evil, full of arrogance,folly, and passion that are in the nature of man. Yet it is a happyworld, compared to that the Ryzgas made and will make again."

  The Watcher eyed them speculatively. "Before all," he said finally,"this is a world where you are free to risk wakening the old tyrants, ifin your own judgment your great need renders the chance worth taking."

  Neena pressed her face against Var's shoulder, hiding her eyes. In hermind as it groped for his there was a confusion of horror and pity. Varlooked grimly at the Watcher, and would have spoken; but the Watcherseemed suddenly a very long way off, and Var could no longer feel hisown limbs, his face was a numb mask. Dully he heard the old man say,"You are tired. Best sleep until morning."

  Var strove to cry out that there was no time, that Groz was near andthat sleep was for infants and the aged, but his intention sank anddrowned under wave upon wave of unconquerable languor. The bright caveswam and dissolved; his eyelids closed.

  * * * * *

  Var woke. Daylight glimmered through the ice of the cave mouth. He hadbeen unconscious, helpless, for hours! At the thought of that, panicgripped him. He had not slept since childhood, and he had forgotten howit was.

  He came to his feet in one quick movement, realizing in that action thatsleep had refreshed his mind and body--realizing also that a footstephad wakened him. Across the cave he faced a young man who watched himcoolly with dark piercing eyes that were familiar though he did not knowthe face.

  Neena sat up and stifled a cry of fright. Var growled, "Who are you?Where's the Watcher?"

  The other flashed white teeth in a smile. "I'm the Watcher," heanswered. "Often I become a youth at morning, and relax into age as theday passes. A foolish amusement, no doubt, but amusements are few here."

  "You made us fall asleep. Groz will be on us--"

  "Groz and his people could not detect your thoughts as you slept. Theywere all night chasing elusive dreams on the high ridges, miles away."

  Var passed a hand across bewildered eyes. Neena said softly, "Thank you,Watcher."

  "Don't thank me. I take no sides in your valley feuds. But now you arerested, your minds are clear. Do you still mean to go on to the Ryzgamountain?"

  Not looking at the Watcher, Var muttered unsteadily, "We have noalternative."

  There was a liquid tinkling as the ice-curtain collapsed; the freshbreeze of morning swept into the cave. The youth beckoned to them, andthey followed him outside.

  The glacial slope on which the cavern opened faced toward the mountain.It rose black and forbidding in the dawn as it had by sunset. To rightand left of it, the grand cliffs, ocher and red, were lit splendidly bythe morning sun, but the mountain of the Ryzgas drank in the light andgave nothing back.

  Below their feet the slope fell away into an opaque sea of fog, fillinga mile-wide gorge. There was a sound of turbulent water, of a riverdashed from rock to rock in its struggle toward the plain, but thecurling fog hid everything.

  "You have an alternative," said the Watcher crisply. The two took theireyes from the black mountain and gazed at him in sudden hope, but hisface was unsmiling. "It is this. You, Var, can flee up the canyon to thenorth, by a way I will show you, disguising your thoughts and maskingyour presence as well as you are able, while the girl goes in the otherdirection, southward, without seeking to conceal herself. Your pursuerswill be deceived and follow her, and by the time they catch her it willbe too late for them to overtake Var."

  That possibility had not o
ccurred to them at all. Var and Neena lookedat one another. Then by common consent they blended their minds intoone.

  They thought, in the warm intimacy of unreserved understanding: "_Itwould work: I-you would make the sacrifice of shame and mockery--yetthese can be borne--that I-you might be saved from death--which is aloneirreparable.... But to become_ I _and_ you _again--that cannot beborne._"

  They said in unison, "No. Not that."

  The Watcher's face did not change. He said gravely, "Very well. I willgive you what knowledge I have that may help you when you enter theRyzga mountain."

  Quickly, he impressed on them what he had learned of the structure ofthe mountain and of its guardian machines. Var closed his eyes, a littledizzied by the rapid flood of detail.

  "You are ready to go," said the Watcher. He spoke aloud, and his voicewas cracked and harsh. Var opened his eyes in