When the Mountain Shook Read online

surprise, and saw that theWatcher had become again the hoary ancient of last night.

  Var felt a twinge of unfamiliar emotion; only by its echo in Neena'smind did he recognize it as a sense of guilt. He said stiffly, "Youdon't blame us?"

  "You have taken life in your own hands," rasped the Watcher. "Who doesthat needs no blessing and feels no curse. Go!"

  * * * * *

  They groped through the fog above blank abysses that hid the snarlingriver, crept hand in hand, sharing their strength, across unstable dreambridges from crag to crag. Groz and his pack, in their numbers, wouldcross the gorge more surely and swiftly. When Var and Neena set foot atlast on the cindery slope of the great volcanic cone, they sensed thatthe pursuit already halved their lead.

  They stood high on the side of the Ryzga mountain, and gazed at thedoorway. It was an opaque yet penetrable well of darkness, opening intothe face of a lava cliff, closed only by an intangible curtain--solittle had the Ryzgas feared those who might assail them in their sleep.

  Var sent his thoughts probing beyond the curtain, listened intently,head thrown back, to their echoes that returned. The tunnel beyondslanted steeply downward. Var's hands moved, molding a radiant globefrom the feeble sunshine that straggled through the fog-bank. With anabrupt motion he hurled it. The sun-globe vanished, as if the darknesshad drunk it up, but though sight did not serve they both sensed that ithad passed through to light up the depths beyond. For within themountain something snapped suddenly alert--something alive yet notliving, seeing yet blind. They felt light-sensitive cells tingle inresponse, felt electric currents sting along buried, long-idlecircuits....

  The two stood shivering together.

  The morning wind stirred, freshening, the fog lifted a little, and theyheard a great voice crying, "There they are!"

  Var and Neena turned. Far out in the sea of fog, on a dream bridge thatthey could not see, stood Groz. He shook the staff he carried. It wastoo far to discern the rage that must contort his features, but thethought he hurled at them was a soundless bellow: "Young fools! I'vecaught you now!"

  Behind Groz the figures of his followers loomed up as striding shadows.Neena's hand tightened on Var's. Var sent a thought of defiance: "Goback! Or you'll drive us to enter the mountain!"

  Groz seemed to hesitate. Then he swung his staff up like a weapon, andfor the two on the mountainside the world turned upside down, themountain's black shoulder hung inverted above them and the dizzy gulf ofsky was beneath. Var fought for footing with his balance gone, feelingNeena reel against him until, summoning all his strength, he broke thegrip of the illusion and the world seemed to right itself. The mistbillowed again and Groz was out of sight, but they could hear himexhorting his men to haste.

  Neena's face was deadly pale and her lips trembled, but her urgentwhisper said, "Come on!"

  Together they plunged into the curtain of darkness.

  * * * * *

  At Var's thought command Neena froze instantly. "Feel that!" hemuttered, and she, listening, sensed it too: the infinitesimal trickleof currents behind what appeared to be a blank tunnel wall, a risingpotential that seemed to whisper _Ready ... ready.... _

  The sun-globe floated behind them, casting light before them down thefeatureless tunnel that sloped always toward the mountain's heart. Varsummoned it, and it drifted ahead, a dozen feet, a little more--

  Between wall and wall a blinding spindle of flame sprang into being,pulsed briefly with radiant energy that pained the eyes, and went out.The immaterial globe of light danced on before them.

  "Forward, before the charge builds up again!" said Var. A few feetfurther on, they stumbled over a pile of charred bones. Someone else hadmade it only this far. It was farther than the Watcher had gone intothese uncharted regions, and only the utmost alertness of mind and sensehad saved them from death in traps like this. But as yet the way was notblocked....

  Then they felt the mountain begin to tremble. A very faint and remotevibration at first, then an increasingly potent shuddering of the floorunder their feet and the walls around them. Somewhere far below immenseenergies were stirring for the first time in centuries. The power thatwas in the Earth was rising; great wheels commenced to turn, themechanical servitors of the Ryzgas woke one by one and began to makeready, while their masters yet slept, for the moment of rebirth thatmight be near at hand.

  From behind, up the tunnel, came a clear involuntary thought of dismay,then a directed thought, echoing and ghostly in the confinement of thedark burrow:

  "_Stop!_--before you go too far!"

  Var faced that way and thought coldly: "Only if you return and let us gofree."

  In the black reaches of the shaft his will groped for and locked withthat of Groz, like the grip of two strong wrestlers. In that grip eachknew with finality that the other's stubbornness matched his own--thatneither would yield, though the mountain above them and the worldoutside should crumble to ruin around them.

  "Follow us, then!"

  They plunged deeper into the mountain. And the shaking of the mountainincreased with every step, its vibrations became sound, and its soundwas like that of the terrible city which they had seen in the dream.Through the slow-rolling thunder of the hidden machines seemed to echothe death-cries of a billion slaves, the despair of all flesh and bloodbefore their monstrous and inhuman power.

  Without warning, lights went on. Blinking in their glare, Var and Neenasaw that fifty paces before them the way opened out into a great roundedroom that was likewise ablaze with light. Cautiously they crept forwardto the threshold of that chamber at the mountain's heart.

  Its roof was vaulted; its circular walls were lined with panels studdedwith gleaming control buttons, levers, colored lights. As they watchedlight flicked on and off in changing patterns, registering theprogressive changes in the vast complex of mechanisms for which thismust be the central control station. Behind those boards circuits openedand closed in bewildering confusion; the two invaders felt the rapidshifting of magnetic fields, the fury of electrons boiling in vacuum....

  For long moments they forgot the pursuit, forgot everything in wonder atthis place whose remotest like they had never seen in the simplicity oftheir machineless culture. In all the brilliant space there was no life.They looked at one another, the same thought coming to both at once:perhaps, after two thousand years, the masters were dead after all, andonly the machines remained? As if irresistibly drawn, they stepped overthe threshold.

  There was a clang of metal like a signal. Halfway up the wall opposite,above a narrow ramp that descended between the instrument panels, amassive doorway swung wide, and in its opening a figure stood.

  Var and Neena huddled frozenly, half expecting each instant to be theirlast. And the Ryzga too stood motionless, looking down at them.

  * * * * *

  He was a man of middle height and stocky build, clad in a garment ofchanging colors, of fabric delicate as dream-stuff. In his right hand,with the care one uses with a weapon, he grasped a gleaming metal tube;his other hand rested as for support against the frame of the doorway.That, and his movements when he came slowly down the ramp toward them,conveyed a queer suggestion of weariness or weakness, as if he were yetnot wholly roused from his two millenia of slumber. But the Ryzga'smanner and his mind radiated a consciousness of power, a pride andassurance of self that smote them like a numbing blow.

  With a new shock, Var realized that the Ryzga's thoughts were quiteopen. They had a terse, disconnected quality that was strange andunsettling, and in part they were couched in alien and unintelligiblesymbols. But there was no block. Apparently the Ryzga felt no need toclose his mind in the presence of inferior creatures....

  He paused with his back to the central control panel, and studied theinterlopers with the dispassionate gaze of a scientist examining a new,but not novel, species of insect. His thoughts seemed to click, likemetal parts of a mechanism falling into places prepared f
or them. Theimage occurred oddly to Var, to whom such a comparison would ordinarilyhave been totally strange.

  "Culture: late barbarism. Handwork of high quality--good. Physicallyexcellent stock...." There was a complicated and incomprehensibleschemata of numbers and abstract forms. "The time: two thousandyears--more progress might have been expected, if any survivors at allinitially postulated; but this will do. The pessimists were mistaken. Wecan begin again." Then, startlingly super-imposed on the coolprogression of logical thought, came a wave of raw emotion, devastatingin its force. It was a lustful image of a world once more obedient,crawling, laboring to do the Ryzgas' will--_toward the stars, thestars!_ The icy calculation resumed: "Immobilize these and the onesindicated in the passage above. Then wake the rest...."

  Var was staring in fascination at the Ryzga's face. It was a face formedby the custom of unquestioned