Henry Kuttner

“ The ramp zig-zagged twice more and then there was a great open area, like a spacious chimney, rising overhead. The ramp had ended. Lightly, like the cloud it was, the robot left the ground. Teleportation carried it out of sight with startling swiftness. From high above the sound of voices drifted down the well, laughter, music.
Without a word Orelle put out her arm and clasped Miller’s hand. A moment later the ground no longer pressed his feet. The light-wall slid down past them like a Niagara of colored water.
The hall in which Brann held court was a vast domed circle. ”

“ Radiant shimmers of color flared down from the walls upon the cloudy thing as Llesi’s batteries went into action at last. In his own brain Miller could feel Llesi’s tense watchfulness as he waited to see how the creature would meet them.
Its lattice-work heart shifted like a kaleidoscope. The clouds thickened, grew dark. It shrank—expanded again—and moved on into the castle, a wreathed thing of velvety blackness that swallowed up the attacking lights and ignored them. ”

“ Miller hesitated for a moment. There is a curious reluctance in the human mind to strip aside the last dark barrier that separates each individual from the world he lives in. The privacy of the mind is so jealously guarded a secret that not even if a man wills it can he wholly bare his thoughts to another. But unless Miller let Orelle into those innermost chambers there was little hope of success for any of them.
“If I don’t,” he thought, “Brann will win, in the end. And if he wins—well, I have more to lose than anyone here.” ”

“ Circles formed where the rays struck, formed and spread outward in interlocking rings that seemed to gather momentum instead of losing it, so that they were seething together in a very short time, breaking over one another in tiny waves, tossing up bubbles and foam. The pool boiled in the cool starlight.
And among the boiling rings there were reflections. Pictures moved chaotically through one another, so rapidly and so bewilderingly that Miller grew dizzy as he watched. Once he thought he saw Tsi’s face with the rainbow hair disordered, streaming in the wind. ”

“ At the same moment Miller felt a surge of force suddenly burst into blinding violence in the center of his brain. For an instant he was stunned by the power that seemed to pour tangibly forth from him and through him. . . .
The robot that had screened them from view rose from the floor, lightly as a cloud, drifted forward over the heads of the gaping audience and turned suddenly incandescent just above the dais where Tsi stood.
Miller knew it was Llesi’s doing, even before the quiet voice in his brain said, “This is the best way, after all. Attack. You were right, Miller. Now watch.” ”

“ Until that moment he had not realized how much he had changed already, what nascent, nameless senses had begun to open up in him, pushing back horizons upon glories beyond glories. It was like deafness and blindness suddenly closing in about a normal man. It was worse—it was like having all the properties of death itself imposed upon the living. Miller held his breath, closed his eyes.
He felt the shift again as the isotope form renewed itself within him. The shifting stirred in the unthinkable myriads of the nuclei that formed him. He was whole again. ”

“ Now the two watchers—three, for Llesi waited in Miller’s brain—saw the lazily turning halo of pointed lights which was the Power glowing through the cloudiness of the machine that carried it. Faintly the soundless music of its turning floated to their ears.
“We’ll have no time to waste,” Llesi warned them. “Brann’s wanted the Power for a purpose, you know. Once he learns how to use it there’ll be no hope of controlling him. Whatever we do we must do fast.” ”

“ The curtains themselves fell far more slowly. Like smoke they wavered in the air, collapsing softly, deliberately, parting to one side and the other. . . .
Miller could see Brann trying to stop that fall. Invisibly the forces of his mind seemed to claw at their drifting lengths. But there was something wrong now in Brann’s mind. Even Miller could sense it.
A dissolution was taking place that the mind felt and shrank from. Something worse than hysteria, more frightening than fear itself. Llesi was suddenly intent and Orelle caught her breath. ”

“ In the center of the room, hanging in the heart of a filligreed framework which it did not seem to touch anywhere, a clear transparent cube three feet through floated free. Within it a tilted halo of—of stars?—rotated slowly through the solid substance of the block. And very faintly, Miller thought he could hear music as it turned, the same music he had caught from the night sky, subsonic but still perceptible to his new senses.
“The Power,” Orelle said, nodding toward the cube. ”

“ There was a terrible shriek of metal upon stone as the vaulted roof gave way. But the falling debris, in turn, did not strike the floor. Deflected in a rain of shattered marble, it moved to intercept the flying pillar. Column and broken stone together crashed to the ground at the very foot of Brann’s dais.
The great hall was full of the shrieks of the scattering court, the cries of men caught beneath the falling ceiling, the uproar of echo upon echo as Brann’s throne room collapsed in thunderous noise upon its own floor. ”

“ Miller took a deep breath and began to formulate them in his mind. And then—Tsi vanished! The earth was gone from underfoot and he spun through golden emptiness, dropping, falling. The water-wall hung beneath him. He floated in midair a hundred feet above the crag-bordered stream at the cliffs bottom!
Panic struck him. Then Tsi’s reassuring thought said, “You are safe. This is teleportation.”
He scarcely heard. An age-old instinctive fear chilled his middle. For a million years men have been afraid of falling. ”

“ And for the first time Tsi saw her own face twisted, distorted, into the grimace of chilly hatred that was irrevocably stamped on Brann’s features.
But what Miller felt was—pity. It was the basic principle of mental therapy—making the patient face his problem squarely. But no ordinary human schizophrenic had ever thus had the curtains of his brain ripped away with such sudden violence. The normal human brain has automatic safeguards against such intrusion. ”

“ Miller said.
“The beginnings of it. You’re merely beginning. It will be a long, long time before you stand where Atlantis once stood. First you must change the very structure of your world! Only then will you change, will the radiation-caused mutation alter you and give you the powers and senses you lost when a world went to war a millennium ago.
“The fires of matter itself moved across the planet, and where it passed, structure altered and what was bright and shining and glorious became a dull, empty thing. Men lost their specialized, hard-won powers then. ”

“ He remembered how the mountain-top world had begun to fade around him, Orelle’s pitying face growing ghostlike, the glass walls of her castle turning to mist and the wonderful nameless colors of her gardens thinning away to nothingness while the snow-covered peaks took shape solidly behind them. ”

“ There was one breathless, heart-stopping moment when the rocks turned beneath their feel and Orelle, stumbling, nearly fell. The darkness of the opened door was already beginning to mist over with solidity when they reached it.
“Dangerous.” Llesi’s thought flashed through Miller’s brain, lightning-like, far faster than it takes to express in words. “If we miss the turn of the wall-substance we’ll be caught in the solid mass. Hurry! Never mind making a noise. ”

“ Brann was abhorrent to Tsi. And to Brann the knowledge that Tsi was himself was a thing he could not face. The split mind, rocking on its foundation, reached out into Miller’s mind with a mad destructive violence.
“You brought ruin on me!” cried the double voice. “You wrecked my castle and my life! You must die and all your kind with you!” ”

“ Miller and Orelle, with Llesi a bodiless awareness beside them, stood at a glass wall looking out over the plain toward Brann’s castle.
Llesi breathed softly. “I know that pattern. It’s a bad one. The thing’s brain and control and energy-source are in the bright matrix you see. Watch now.”
The lattices shifted into new geometric formations and out of the cloud rippling, soft grey tentacles thrust, thickening as they moved.
“That would be stronger than iron once it took shape,” Llesi was saying. “The pseudopod principle, of course. It will be a hard thing to fight.” ”

“ There’s no guessing what unnatural thing Brann may have shaped to attack us. He wants you, Miller. Your coming brought our war to a climax and I know now he won’t stop until he gets you—or dies. It depends on you and me which thing happens.”
There was a guard at Miller’s door—or the glass wall that melted like a door when he approached it. Llesi’s mental voice spoke and the guard nodded and followed down the long sloping ramp of the glass castle, through great, dim, echoing rooms, along corridors behind which the people of Orelle’s dwelling slept. ”

“ Miller let a ripple of amusement run through his mind. “Thanks to you. Can you tell from my thoughts that I didn’t know what I was bringing into your castle? I didn’t mean to attack you.”
“I believe that—with reservations. Does Orelle?”
“She thought I was Brann. She may still think so though I hope I’ve convinced her.”
“I can’t read your mind. But I must trust you—no more than I can avoid! Get up, Miller, and look toward Brann’s castle. I have a feeling of danger. I think that was what roused me. Something evil is coming our way.” ”

“ And then reason, stirring in his mind, argued, “Why not? How do we know the limits of possibility? Out of the few simple building blocks of the universe—out of neutrons, protons, electrons—everything we know is made. How much else may there be we can’t even perceive—unless transmutation takes place and the structure of a man’s nuclear patterns change to let him see. ”

“ She wouldn’t have branded him with something that would give him away to the first inspection. Or would she? What he had heard of Tsi did little to increase his confidence in her. Still . . .
“Search if you like,” he said.
The room went dark. Miller, blinking in the sudden blindness, felt something like the vertigo he had not suffered in flight seize him relentlessly now he was on solid flooring. The air spun around him in a shrill diminishing vortex and it seemed to him limitless gulfs were opening underfoot and sucking him down, tight, tight, into a crushing spiral of darkness. . . . ”

“ Miller bent to look. An iridescent pathway lay there, curving up around a boulder and out of sight, rough crystal surfaces that caught the light with red and blue shadows. Here in the white, silent world of the high peaks it looked very beautiful and strange. Miller knelt and ran a gloved hand over it, feeling even through the leather a slight tingling. ”

“ Miller told her grimly. “If electrons change, or if the nucleus changes, the structure changes too.”
She said, “Well, that was what happened. All earth is dull and dead now. Only here does the old special type of matter still exist. It throws off a certain radiation that makes it possible for us to be born and live as we are. In Atlantis there was experiment with nuclear structures, and transmutation.” ”

“ Orelle shook her head. Small bells she wore in her ears tinkled at the motion, and even the tiny sounds they made were vividly beautiful to Miller’s increasingly keen new senses.
She said, “No one has seen him except Tsi. No one but she can tell you what he is. He receives his friends only in the dark or from behind curtains. Ever since he built that castle, centuries ago, he’s kept his secret hidden—whatever it may be. I should like to see him dead.”
She said it without passion. “Brann is true evil, perhaps pure evil in its most flawless form. He’s very wise and very powerful. ”

“ When the glass dome is closed starlight, falling through the moving rays, projects these pictures back into the pool for anyone to read who knows how. Men from time everlasting have tried to read the future in the stars but you can see from this how difficult it is and how unreliable even a trained mind can be when it has only this to work from. ”

“ Finally Van Hornung said, “It is—still the same up there? The castles and the wonderful people and the—colors? But it would be. The colors—I was an artist once. I think the colors meant most to me. There were so many we do not know.”
“Orelle told me,” Miller said dully. “I wouldn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her.”
“There are the legends, Miller,” Van Hornung said. “You and I aren’t the first. We won’t be the last. There have always been stories of humans who visit Paradise for a little while—and leave again. I’m no scientist. ”

“ Llesi said. “What she says about Tsi is true enough. We may need her.”
In the quiet a musical ringing of more breaking glass sounded clearer than before.
“It’s coming,” Llesi said. “Now we have work to do. Are you ready, Miller? Take down that lens mounted on the tesseract and do as I tell you. We mustn’t let the machine win without a struggle. . . .”
CHAPTER VII
Battle of the Titans In the light of earliest dawn they could see it rolling toward them far off across the plain. Crouching under the loom of Brann’s castle walls, Miller and Orelle waited almost in silence. ”