5
The Subterranean City
I shouldn't have been surprised at the black cloud of sleep that descended over us all just then, because Check and Braid had told me about it before. I knew the people in that car were the same as the people who had abducted my two friends, but in the shock of that swift blotting out of consciousness, I didn't connect their experience with the present one.
Clory awakened me, and I found myself in a pleasantly light and cheerful room, lying on a luxuriously soft couch. We might be prisoners, but we were being treated well enough.
All four of us were there. For no reason except, perhaps, that she was youngest and best able to throw off the effects of the sleep ray or whatever it was, Clory had come to first, and immediately roused me.
Together we woke Braid and Check.
The oddest feature of the room was its very curious windows. As we looked out of them from the interior of the room, we saw a blue sky with occasional puffy clouds. But as we approached, and tried to look down, the apparent transparency of the glass clouded. By the time one reached the window, it was almost opaque; only vague formless shadows could be seen. And as one walked away, the sky slowly reappeared.
The door, we found, was locked.
The style of the room's furnishings was far less strange than we might have imagined. Except that each item was so beautifully made, it might almost have been a Chief's home of any progressive tribe.
But we didn't have too much time to investigate it. Some signal must have been given of our awakening, for the door flew open, and a man entered.
He seemed friendly enough, but when we besieged him with questions he said nothing, just stood there looking at us. There was no malice in his stare, but neither did he seem particularly interested.
He just stood there, regarding us. He was dressed like those of his kind we had already seen; the abbreviated divided trousers, tunic, belted back. In his hand he carried a smaller version of the rod we had seen used on the Eater; on his head he wore a flat-topped pillbox hat.
As moments passed without a movement from him beyond his shifting glances, Check edged over to me, darting meaningful stares at the man and at me. I didn't comprehend his meaning at first, but the stranger did.
"I wouldn't do that," he said smoothly, and raised the rod a trifle. (Check and I both noticed for the first time that we were unarmed.) He continued his easy stare as Check brought up sharp, flushing.
"No," said the man after a space, reflectively, "I don't think you'll find it necessary to gang up on me. Certainly"—he gestured with the rod—"you wouldn't find it safe. If you are all comfortable, we had better get started. There has been a special meeting of the Council to consider your problem. Come with me." And he stood aside. But he would not answer questions even then, just gestured wordlessly with the rod.
You might think we could have overpowered him. Certainly it would seem that we could have—and should have—made some objection to going so freely with him. I thought so. I even attempted, in passing, to clutch at the door and slam it on him as he stood in the threshold, barricading ourselves in until we could make more definite plans.
But I couldn't. Just couldn't. My muscles would not obey the orders from my brain. It was like a complete paralysis, though I was perfectly free to walk, to look around, to do anything that did not conflict with his orders.
It was his pillbox hat that did it. There was a tiny instrument in it which acted to amplify his will, to force his commands upon others. Our thoughts he could not control, but our actions were his to command.
So we went with him quite obediently. We had not far to go, just out into a door-studded hall, and along it for a few feet until we came to an empty door. We entered, the door closed and we looked around perplexedly. We were in a tiny room, scarcely large enough for us. There was no furniture save a row of studs set in a wall by the door. This could not be our destination.
Nor was it. The man with the helmet stabbed one of the buttons with his forefinger and an inner door whirred shut. There was a muffled click, then the floor surged up under us, and the whole room shot up into the air.
There was a frightened squawk from Clory, who grabbed me and hung on. I was nothing much to cling to, having left my stomach below when the room swooped up, nor were the others in a better state. The man took it calmly enough, grinning at our discomfiture, though, so I concealed my apprehension as much as I could.
The motion lasted only a few seconds. Then it stopped smoothly and the door opened. We were escorted out and into a large, handsome hall.
The man with the rod escorted us in, then stepped aside. "This is the Council Chamber," he said. "Go forward and answer the questions of the Council."
We stepped forward timorously, and he made his exit. The Council Chamber was vast—larger, even, than the big ceremonial field back in the village of the Tribe, the field in which I was nearly burned to death. How long ago that seemed!
A triple-tiered balcony ran around the wall. It reminded me of the Balcony of Men back in the ceremonial field, though the crude wooden balcony there was not to be compared with this ornate structure of metal and fabrics. The seats were occupied, with some vacancies, by perhaps fifty men and women. They eyed us with much the same friendly unconcern that had characterized the man with the rod.
We were brought up before this impressive audience and seated in chairs as comfortable as their own. The questions began almost immediately.
The oldest of the Council—they were a youngish lot—rustled some papers on the flat arm of his chair and glanced at us piercingly. "Have you any objection to allowing Check to act as your spokesman?" he asked suddenly. Check asked us with his eyes; we all nodded.
"None," he said. "But how did you know my name?"
"I know a great deal about you—all of you," laughed the judge. "Braid and Keefe better than Clory, and you best of all, but even Clory is familiar to me. We have heard of her from her father."
"Her father!" I gasped as Clory squealed in surprise. "Her father is dead!"
"No. Glory's father is not dead. He is—elsewhere, just now, but he is alive. Perhaps Clory may see him soon, when he returns. At the time of his 'death' he was injured by a blow. He did not die, but he would have, had not one of our patrols found him. When he was well again we examined him, as we are examining you now, and decided favorably. . . . But we will do the asking here, just now. You, Check, tell me: how did you come to be here?"
Check told what he knew, and I supplemented the account with dory's history and mine. The interrogator appeared to be satisfied; when he had finished, he held a low-pitched conversation with those around him, which we could not hear. For a few moments all of them talked among themselves, then apparently a decision was reached.
The one who had questioned us signed to a guard standing by the entrance, who opened the portal and admitted three men trundling a large, flat box on wheels, from which depended flexible tubes of varying descriptions. The guard, who was wearing one of those hypnotic hats, accompanied them up to us, ordering us to do as they said.
We submitted perforce to having a tube wrapped around the wrist of each of us, various other gadgets clamped to other parts of our anatomy, and our eyes bandaged so we could see nothing. As soon as all the equipment was adjusted to their satisfaction, one of them commenced to question us.
But what questions! Nothing we could have expected—at least, not in our right minds. Apparently they had no desire to learn facts, to discover what we wanted to do here, or anything about our backgrounds. To the accompaniment of ominous buzzings and clickings from the machine, we were asked such questions as, "If you were to be imprisoned in a dark room for twenty-four hours, what would you do?" and, "Would you prefer to witness a pageant or take part in it?" and others even less rational. I could hear a stylus scratching the answers on a pad, and wondered what type of persons these might be.
Then I heard a cry of alarm from Braid and tensed my muscles to rip off my blindfold and see what was happening. I couldn't, of course; the hypnosis of that helmet forbade any resistance. But I felt a gentle pressure in my arm, and then a stinging jolt of mild electricity. I leaped, and I think I cried out too. A squeal from Clory and a grunt from Check showed that they had received the same treatment.
Our blindfolds were removed, but the tests continued. They detached all the gadgets from Clory and sent her away to sit in the comer, while Braid, Check and I were quizzed in a new fashion, A string of such words as "read," "learn," "sleep," "eat," and other verbs of varying meaning were spoken to us, and one of the men noted the readings of a leaping dial needle attached to the bands on our wrists.
But that was all. We were released from the apparatus and conducted out of the room by the same man who had brought us. As we left, the head man of the Council called to us, "You will return tomorrow, and everything will be clear. Have patience till then."
We were returned to our room, where we found ourselves unaccountably sleepy. Though we had been awakened not more than four hours before, we could not stay awake. We sought couches and lay down. Just as I was dropping off, I thought I saw the door open, and a man enter and fasten something to Glory's head. It appeared to be a helmet, but I could not force myself to awaken and make it out. As he approached me, I dropped off into deep slumber.