Абрахам Меррит - The Face In The Abyss

"That seems to be about all. We start life in Yu–Atlanchi afresh with some three hundred of the Old Race, of whom considerably more than half are women. Each and all have, perforce, put off our deathlessness. The Mother herself saw that the Two Doors were flung wide open. Having more than half of us women is better, however," said Regor, thoughtfully, "than having more than half of us men."

Graydon closed his eyes; lay thinking over what he had heard. The Serpent–woman was certainly efficient once she waited! Ruthless! He visioned the Dream Makers blotted out in the midst of their mirages which were so real—so real. He hoped that the one who had created on the web of dream the miraculous world of color had chosen life. Drone and light of madness—how had Nimir created them? Some manipulation of the infrared rays, he supposed. Light waves of the lower spectrum linked in some way, transmuted somewhere in their range, to sound vibration. That the two had been so linked, were parts of the same phenomenon, he felt sure. And the Mother's little diadem of suns? Manipulation of other radiant waves which had cancelled Nimir's. Why had the collar saved him from one—delivered him over to the other? Some sort of receiver, probably…tuned up to Nimir's stuff…well, it was off him…

He sank into deep sleep.

He saw nothing of the Serpent–woman for several days. She had gone off to the caverns, Suarra said, with the Lord of Folly and Kon, borne by the Indian women in her litter, only her Messengers guarding her. His strength returned slowly. He was carried out in Suarra's own litter one day, the girl beside him. The once flowering plain between the Temple and the lake was blackened and desolate, blasted by the icy shadows and the leaping pillar of flame. A thin covering of impalpable dust marked where the amphitheater of the Dream Makers had stood. Many trees along the mead were dead or dying. And where the pillar had leaped upon the city there was a roughly circular place two thousand feet in width from which habitations and vegetation had been turned into the same thin ash.

He asked Suarra what had been done with the dead. The Emer had gathered them together in great heaps, she told him; then they, too, had been blasted into dust by contrivances the Mother had ordered set up. Huon lay with his ancestors in the Cavern of the Dead.

He told her to turn the bearers of the litter back to the Temple; recovered in the silence of the chamber of the thrones his peace.

The next day the Mother returned; and thereafter for a week Graydon was with her many hours each day; answering her countless questions, telling her in detail of the life of men beyond the barrier, their habits and aspirations, and this time, too, of their wars and gods, and all the long history of the race since the fires of the Cro– Magnons were quenched in their caves twenty–five thousand years ago. Of the aims and conditions of the races, white and yellow, black and brown, he spoke; and of Russia's drab experiment in communism, and the great unrest in Asia among the Chinese and Indians.

Then for another time she ceased her questionings, told him in turn of that forgotten civilization of which her strange race was the head, and of how it had come into being; of other lost civilizations and races, buried beyond trace under the dust of time; gave him blinding glimpses of attainments in science as advanced over those he knew as Einstein's geometry over the Euclidean; conceptions of mind and matter and energy that dazed him.

"In nothing," she told him, "that you have seen was there touch of sorcery or magic. All that you have beheld, each manifestation, was nothing but conscious manipulation of purely natural forces, my Grayden. The slaying shadows?—a definite energy made obedient by purely mechanical means to Nimir's will. In words of your own to make it understandable—etheric vortices, power condensed from that universal ocean of energy about us from which all energy and mind and what you term matter comes. The shapes of flame I summoned to meet them? Another harnessed force which neutralized the shadows—and more. The pillar of flame? Nimir's last play and one I truly feared. For by his swift shutting off of that which brought the shadows into being, he disturbed abruptly the interaction of the two forces, overbalanced me; hoped that before I could gain control of it, the tremendous freed energy which shaped itself into that pillar would overwhelm me. And he came within a hair of being right!"

She sat silently for a time; then seemed to have come to some decision; roused herself.

"Go you with Suarra, child," she said. "Amuse yourselves. Get strong quickly. For two days I shall have no need for either of you."

And when those days had passed, summons from the Snake Mother came to him by way of Regor. He found her coiled upon her cushions in her bower, complacently gazing at herself in her mirror while Suarra coifed her hair. The bower seemed oddly empty; stripped. And Suarra's eyes were misty with unshed tears. With her was the Lord of Folly. She laid down her mirror, gave Graydon her hand to kiss.

"I am going to leave you, child," she began without preamble. "I am tired. I am going to sleep—oh, for a long, long time. Nay—do not look so startled and unhappy. I don't intend to die. I know of no other world to which to go. But I don't intend to grow old—" her eyes sparkled at Graydon's uncontrollable expression of surprise at this remarkable statement, considering her thousands of years. "I mean I do not intend to let myself look old. Therefore, I shall sleep and renew myself—and my looks. It was the custom of my people."

"Now thus have I decided. There are not many of you left in Yu– Atlanchi, it is true. But shortly there will be more. Trust your race for that—if for nothing else. Let you and Regor govern here—with Tyddo to aid you. Nimir is gone forever. Those of his who still lurk, outlaw—destroy as speedily as you can. Let nothing of him nor of Lantlu remain. If any of the Makers of Dream—relapse—kill them. Danger lurks in that—Suarra! Stop your crying! You're pulling my hair!"

She frowned for a moment into the mirror.

"I have told you," went on the Mother, briskly, "that I do not intend to die. And certainly I do not intend to be made uncomfortable while I sleep. I do not think so highly of those people you've told me so much about, Graydon. Oh, I have no doubt that they include any number of persons as estimable as yourself. But collectively, they irritate me, to put it mildly. I don't propose to have them digging around where I am sleeping, nor blowing up things with their explosives, nor building—what is your quaint word—skyscrapers over me. Nor ransacking the caverns for their treasure, nor poking around trying to find out things they're much better off not knowing—and wouldn't know what to do with if they did find them. I will have no invasion of the Hidden Land.

"Therefore, during the last two days I have seen to it that there cannot be. I have destroyed much of what Nimir recovered from the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom, including that which evoked the shadows. I have destroyed my two disks which summoned the shapes of flame. You will not need them—nor shall I, again.

"And, Graydon, I have sent my Messengers on guard beyond the barrier, and especially against those flying boats of yours which have done so much to make barriers negligible. They will bring them down without mercy. They will as mercilessly destroy those who may survive the fall. No eyes shall peer down on Yu–Atlanchi to bring back strong companies who would—destroy my slumber. I put it that way, child, not to hurt your feelings.

"That is definite. That is irrevocable. And thus shall it be," said the Serpent–woman, and Graydon had no doubt at all that quite as ruthlessly as she promised it, so would it be carried out. "And if by any newly discovered wisdom they overcome my Messengers, Tyddo will awaken me. And me, Graydon, they will not overcome. That, too, is certain."