Henry Kuttner - The Well of The Worlds

“Go on,” Alper grunted, shuffling forward. “Go on, I’m listening.” The miners made way for him. Sawyer let the grip on his arm pull him on. He was very alert, every sense straining for impressions.

“Eddie got just around that bend, out of sight,” the miner told them. “Excuse me, Mr. Alper—I don’t feel like coming any farther.” He stood back stubbornly. “I’ll finish in a minute. There isn’t much to tell. Eddie started yelling. Then the ghosts came—Anyhow, we saw those lights begin to flash and Eddie yelled. Miss Ford said for me to come. She said we had to get the camera. We—well, she got ahead of me. And Eddie let out one awful scream and stopped, and—Miss Ford was around the bend, and I—I came back fast to set off the alarm.” The man’s voice was guiltily defiant.

“Did Miss Ford scream?” Sawyer asked.

“No sir. Not a sound.”

Alper grunted again and lurched forward, toward the darkness and the flickering of unearthly lights around the bend of the tunnel. It was very silent there. The underground had swallowed up Klai Ford and the man named Eddie, and only the flicker seemed alive in there now. The miners’ faces, scared and awed, watched the two men around the bend and out of sight. No one made a move to follow.

“Sawyer!” Alper wheezed, leaning heavily against him as they made their slow way forward. “Let me handle this. Don’t make any moves on your own. I’ll stop you if I have to. Understand? I’ve got my hand on the control of the transceiver right this minute. One touch and I could kill you in your tracks. I think Nethe has got the girl. I want to keep her alive if I can, but—”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. It was obvious that Nethe, with her mysterious energy-source, would survive if it came to a choice. Sawyer knew that the choice must not be left to Alper.

They came to the first bend in the tunnel. A flicker of lights fled away from them between walls of shining rock around the next bend. Stubbornly Alper shuffled on, Sawyer supporting him. The smell of ozone was heady in the air…

Then they saw the ghosts.

A dead man lay prone on the wet floor of the tunnel just around the next bend. And swarming over his body, dancing, flickering, rising and falling in the air, a whirl of winged lights shimmered. It seemed to Sawyer that suddenly wide spaces had opened all around him. The indigo smell of ozone was sharp in his nostrils; he had a feeling of breathless delimitation, and an intangible wind roared soundlessly through the tunnel.

The whirl of wings above the dead man were split flames, two by two, joined at the base in a V. Wheat-shaped, Klai had said. Like pale grain, dividing at the top into a fork of flickering light. The air seethed with them; flat, thin, dancing things shivering into fringes of light at the edges. They were beautiful. They were terrifying. They danced like vultures over the dead man, dipping, wheeling, with a dreadful eagerness stooping toward him and whirling high again. The whole tunnel dazzled with their motion.

Alper paused. Sawyer felt a tremor of some violent emotion shake the ponderous body that leaned against him. Then in a suddenly thin voice the old man called aloud:

“Nethe? Nethe, are you here?”

A familiar ripple of laughter sounded out of the darkness beyond the dancing wings of fire. It was the only answer, but when Alper heard it he drew a deep breath and shuffled forward resolutely, keeping his face turned toward the wings of light.

Sawyer asked softly, “What are they? Do you know? Did they kill the man?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” Alper said. “Hurry. All I do know is Nethe’s there and I can get energy again. Youth again! Hurry!”

Sawyer hesitated. He thought, “Is this my chance? If he gets more energy it may be too late, but now, while he still wants something of me—”

Without completing the thought, he sprang into sudden, violent action, leaping back away from Alper and the flames, disengaging his arm from Alper’s weight and clearing his own right hand for the quick sidewise blow that would free him, if he were lucky, from the tyranny of the old man’s power.

“Last chance,” he told himself as he sprang. “Maybe he was lying. Maybe not. Maybe if he’s knocked out I can get the transceiver control away from him. Maybe—”

Thunder and lightning crashed downward again in the familiar path through the center of his head. The tunnel wheeled dizzily, flashing with lights that were not all the winged ghosts. Alper’s heavy hand shut around Sawyer’s wrist before his brain cleared.

“Come on! Hurry! Don’t make me do it again! There isn’t time!”

Staggering and dazed, Sawyer let himself be pulled forward. The winged flames seemed to consider them as they stumbled past, to flutter a little and then subside again as if in some radiant feast upon the dead man on the floor. Shuddering and dizzy, Sawyer accepted the old man’s weight once more, let himself be urged on into the darkness beyond the flames.

Before them the shaft widened. There was light again, a broad circle of it upon the wall, like the light of a distant flashbeam, pale and wide. Flattened against the light, Klai stood motionless, pressing her back to the rock and staring straight before her into the shadows.

Sawyer stared, shook his head and stared again. The light came from behind the girl. It fell through the solid rock, from some point beyond. Klai was motionless, her head thrown back, her palms flat against the wall, and suddenly Sawyer realized that her immobility was deceptive, no choice of hers. For she was trying frantically to move.

And she could not. Like a moth pinned upon the circle of light she stood, fought hard and could not stir a finger. Only her quick breath and the flash of her eyes and the glint of her white teeth beneath the pretty upper lip as she spoke showed that she was alive at all. Her voice sounded frantic.

“You can’t do this!” she cried into the shadows. “You’re not allowed to! You’re not the Goddess!”

Automatically Sawyer turned his head to follow her gaze. In the darkness a luminous shadow stirred. Nethe was a preternaturally tall figure clothed in shadows, holding them about her like a veil through which her face gleamed dimly. Try as he would, Sawyer could not focus upon the figure and the features under the veil. But the voice was clear, very strong and sweet, with such music latent in it as an angel might hold latent, not choosing to release the full volume in a world so limited as Earth.

“I will be Goddess, soon enough,” Nethe said. “How do you know me, Khom? You are a Khom! A real Khom, not an earthling. How did you get here, girl?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Klai’s voice wavered. “But you’re not the Goddess. You can’t be, without the Double Mask. Oh, I wish I could remember—”

Nethe’s voice broke in sharply, in a language full of curious double consonants that lisped like diphthongs. Her words crackled. Klai caught her breath in a sound like a sob.

“I don’t understand you! I don’t remember! Who are you? Why—”

Alper’s forward lurch cut off the words. From the corner of her eye she saw the motion, gasped, and tried in vain to turn her head.

“Nethe—” Alper said.

Klai’s blue eyes rolled sidewise. “Who is it? Alper, is it you?”

“Be still, Klai,” the old man said. “If you want to live, be quiet.”

“Why should the life of a Khom matter?” Nethe asked derisively. “Even to a Khom? I’m finished with you now, old Khom. I have the girl!”

“Don’t do it, Nethe!” Alper’s voice was desperate. “I’ll lose the mine if you kill her! Then you won’t get the ore at all.”

“Your little Khom troubles are so important to you Khom,” Nethe said. “But not really important at all.”