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CHAPTER 16
BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF KOM
Through a throbbing, pain-racked darkness, light came down to me, stronger and stronger. There was a dull, monotonous sound that seemed to float down to me from great heights. I turned, struggled, opened my eyes.
I was lying on a soft mat, set on a low, narrow platform of metal. Above me was a high, white ceiling, and as I half-raised myself on one arm, I was able to survey the rest of the room in which I lay.
It was a bright, airy room, white-walled and sunny. At one end of it were high, open windows, without glass or shutter, and through them streamed the sunlight and the soft air. Except for the bed on which I lay, and two metal chairs of simple design, the room was quite bare, but it was an austere, clean bareness that was pleasing to the eye.
Now memory rushed back to me, and sudden fear came with it. Where was Lantin? Had he survived the crash? I began to struggle up from my reclining position, but sank back for a moment as a door in one of the walls slid aside, and a man entered the room.
Tall and commanding of appearance, with dark hair and clear youthful face, yet something about the eyes stamped him as a man of middle age, almost elderly. He was dressed in a short white tunic, bordered with three narrow stripes of purple. When he perceived that I was awake and regarding him, he paused for a moment in surprize, then came on toward me.
A friendly smile illumined his face as he spoke to me, in the Kanlar tongue.
"You are awake, Wheelaire? And your friend, too, has just awakened."
"Lantin!" I exclaimed. "He is all right? He was not hurt?"
The other smiled. "No more than yourself. Would you like to see him?"
I assented eagerly, and made to rise, but he pushed me back. "It is not needful," he said, and reaching down to the foot of the metal platform on which I lay, he touched a concealed button. At once, the platform rose gently from its supports until it swung in the air four feet above the floor. When my new-found friend laid his hand on its edge, it moved gently through the air under the impetus of a slight push.
He saw my astonishment, and explained, "The metal is clorium, the same material we once used for our air-boats. It is weightless, under the influence of certain forces." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "My name is Kethra."
Pushing my platform easily through the air before him, he was moving toward the door of the room when I stopped him with a gesture. "Can I look from the window there a moment?" I asked, indicating the high openings. By way of answer, he stepped over to the window in question, his hand on my platform's edge bringing me there also. I raised myself, gazed eagerly out.
I saw at once that I must be near the top of the great cone-shaped building we had been making for when we crashed. Below, and all around, the white buildings extended to the horizons, looking like thousands of huge geometry-models cast down indiscriminately, cones and spheres and cubes. High above them as I was, yet I could discern swift movement in the streets, crowds of pedestrians surging to and fro, flashing vehicles of strange design, that followed the broad thoroughfares, rising in the air here and there to pass over each other. Glancing away down the long, slanting side of the cone near whose summit I stood, I saw at its base other great crowds, who massed and swirled aimlessly around the building. I turned to Kethra.
"And this is Kom?" I said.
He nodded. "It is Kom."
I pointed toward the teeming crowds that eddied around the building's base. "You must count your people here by the millions?" I queried.
His face grew somber as he too looked down at the masses of humanity below. "It is seldom there are crowds like that," he said. "But this is a time of great events, and our people gather around this building, which is the seat of the Council of Kom, that they may learn what decisions have been made."
He turned from the window, face solemn and unsmiling now, and with a slight push sent my platform drifting toward and through the door. Conducting me down a long corridor, he turned in at another room, similar in every detail to the one I had just left. And there, standing up and gazing down through an open window as I had just done, was Lantin.
He turned and saw me, came toward me anxiously. At a touch from Kethra, my platform sank down to the floor, and assisted by my friend, I rose weakly to my feet.
"You're all right, Wheeler?" he asked quickly. I assured him that I was, for the weakness and dizziness I had felt were rapidly leaving me. Lantin laughed ruefully. "What a fool's trick of mine, to smash straight down into that roof!" He pointed upward, toward the blue sky, and walking over to the window beside him, I looked up curiously.
There was the same flicker in the sky that I had noticed from above, an elusive, wavering flash of light that I knew now was caused by the sunlight glinting off the flat, transparent roof.
"The roof," I said to Kethra, "does it cover all the city?"
"All of Kom lies beneath it," he said. "Without it, could we live like this?" He swept an arm around in a wide gesture that included the soft, warm air, the open windows, and the white city below, laced with the greenery of gardens.
"But how is it built?" I asked. "How supported? Is it glass, or what material?"
"It's no material at all," he replied, astoundingly. "It's force."
I looked at him, a little incredulously. "Force? It was solid enough when we crashed into it."
"Yes, it is force," he smiled. "That's the reason it is almost invisible, from above or below. It is a perpetual sheet of electric force, drawn over the city from end to end. It is so designed and projected, from a ring of stations around the city, that it excludes some vibrations of the ether, and allows others to enter. For instance, it excludes the vibrations called matter, such as air, or such as your car. All of the city's air is pumped in through special vents in the force-shield. On the other hand, it allows the vibrations of light and of radiant heat to enter, and so our city is lighted and heated by the sun itself. Without such a shield, we would be living in a city as bleak and cold as the plains that surround it."
"So we crashed into an invisible field of force," I said, and shook my head. "Well, it seemed solid enough when we hit it."
"The most powerful force in the world could not crash through it," said Kethra, "and it is fortunate that you were not going at high speed or you would have been annihilated. As it was, we found you both lying unconscious in your car, up on the force-shield, and as we can neutralize it at will, at given spots, we were able to bring you down to the city."
"But the car!" I cried. "It is not destroyed, is it? It was not completely smashed?"
He shook his head. "It was hardly damaged at all," he assured us. "The point, or prow, was bent back, but that has already been repaired." He paused a moment, then said an astounding thing. "The car does you credit, in its design. It is too bad that, after making it and coming so far into the future, you have been unable to find your friend."
I gasped and looked at Lantin. His face reflected utmost surprize, and he said, "I didn't tell him, Wheeler. I'll swear I didn't."
Kethra smiled. "Neither of you told me," he said. "But you have lain unconscious for a day, and in that time we learned all your story, my friends, and learned how you came here to warn us of the peril beyond the ice, that peril of an evil being, whom you call the Raider."
"But how?" I asked helplessly.
In answer, he touched a button set in the wall, and motioned us to seat ourselves in the chairs beside the window. A green-robed servant entered, in a moment, with a metal cabinet. He handed this to Kethra, and then departed.
The cabinet was an oblong box of black metal, a yard or more in its greatest length. Our companion touched a stud in the floor with his sandaled foot, and a small square section of the floor sprang up on four legs, or supports, forming a little table. Setting the cabinet on this table, our friend opened it.
Inside was a small, gleaming apparatus, consisting of a squat little box on which was set a small horn like that of a radio loud-speaker, but much smaller. From the box a flexible cord led, splitting at its end into three separate cords, each of which was metal-tipped. Setting this on the table, Kethra then drew from the cabinet three or four small, shapeless objects, gray and withered and deeply wrinkled, smaller in size than a baseball, the nature of which I could not guess.
He turned to us, now. "This mechanism," he said, indicating the gleaming apparatus, "is what we call a brain-reader. As you know, the brain preserves in its convolutions an indelible, unchangeable record of every word and action. When we remember a thing, we simply refer to that record, which we call memory, but which is in reality a very tiny change, but a lasting one. And this apparatus, when connected to a human brain by way of the nervous system, reads, from the myriad convolutions of that brain, the record of memory which is stamped on those convolutions."
With a swift movement, he fastened three clamps of metal to his body, one above the forehead, one around the neck, and the other along his spine. "These clamps make direct contact to the nervous system, through the skin," he explained, "and to them I attach the three cords from the brain-reader," suiting the action to the word. This done, he snapped a switch in the little box beneath the horn, and at once a nasal, metallic voice began to speak from that horn, in the Kanlar tongue.
Kethra's own voice came to us above the twanging one from the brain-reader. "It is giving a record of my experiences within the last few hours," he explained, "and will go back farther and farther as it continues, back to my very first memory, if allowed to run. Or I can use it to concentrate on any given period of my own life, and it will read with unvarying accuracy the impressions and sensations of my brain during that period. A mechanical, perfect memory," and he snapped off the switch and removed the clamps from his body.
"Nor does its usefulness stop there," he added, while we stared dumfoundedly at the little mechanism. "Here," he went on, picking up one of the withered gray objects, "is a human brain, the brain of one of the great men of our people, who died five centuries ago. And yet every memory and every thought and sensation in his life, imprinted unchangeably on his brain, is available to us by using the brain-reader."
He rapidly fitted over the withered brain a hollow hemisphere of metal, and attached to it the cords from the apparatus. A snap of the switch, and again the same nasal voice broke the silence, from the horn, speaking in the Kanlar tongue, and reading steadily on from the brain it was connected with, reciting the inmost thoughts and ideas and aspirations of a man dead for five hundred years. I shuddered, involuntarily, and Kethra snapped off the apparatus.
"It seems strange to you," he said, "but you will see the wisdom of such an apparatus. When a great man dies, a man of mental ability above the rest of us, his brain is removed, especially prepared, and then filed and indexed in a building reserved for that purpose. There are thousands of brains preserved there, and every one of them is available at all times, by means of the brain-reader, to aid us with its knowledge, its experience, its memories. Thus when a man dies among us, his intelligence does not die, but remains as a record for us to consult at will, a record of that man's ideas and achievements."
"And while we were unconscious," I broke in, "you used the brain-reader on us? Learned our story, learned why we came here?"
"It is so," he said, and his face darkened. "We sought to know who you might be, the first strangers ever to approach us. And from the brain-reader came your amazing tale, and we know all that you came to tell us, concerning that creature of evil you term the Raider. And it is that knowledge that has brought those crowds below to await the decision of the Council."
"But the Raider?" I cried. "What is it, Kethra? Do you know?"
"I know," he said simply, and a brooding expression dropped on his face. "I know," he repeated, "and all here in Kom know. And that you too may know, who have had dealings with this same Raider, I will relate to you what we do know. Soon the council meets, and you will be questioned further. But now—"
He was silent a moment, then spoke in a voice vibrant and low-toned.
"The history of the Kanlars," he began, "the people of the cylinders, the evil ones whose doom draws near. Know, men of the past, that ages ago, though not so far back as your own time, our people dwelt in four mighty cities, each of which was nearly as large as Kom itself. There was no ice-flood from the north, then, and the country around those cities was green and fair, yet none lived in that country, all preferring the gayer life of the vast towns. Long ago, the people had learned to make their food from the soil direct, as we do today, and so there was no need of tilling the land, or living on it. And so, into the four great cities had drifted all the people in this land.
"In each city, the buildings were constructed of a different design. Here in Kom, all of the buildings were cone-shaped, and thus this became known as Kom, the city of cones, and we, the dwellers in it, as the people of the cones. Another city was the city of cubes, another the city of spheres, and still another the city of cylinders.
"Each of these four cities was free and independent, each ruled by a council selected by its inhabitants. And being thus independent, there arose rivalry between the cities, and fierce jealousy. Each strove to outdo the others, in their scientific achievements, and each strove to keep its blood from intermixing with the others. Thus in the city of cylinders, the Kanlars, or people of the cylinders, gradually evolved into a bright-haired race, while in Kom, the Khluns, or people of the cones, were a dark-haired race. And the other two cities differed likewise from each other and the rest.
"Ages passed, and then down from the north rolled a mighty tide of ice, sweeping over the whole land and submerging all under its frozen flood. It rolled down toward the four cities, and finally had forged south until it was at the gates of the city of cubes. In desperation, the people of the cubes appealed to those in Kom for shelter, and it was granted them. They came down to Kom, every one, and the ice rolled over and hid the city of cubes. Next it engulfed the city of spheres, and its people likewise found refuge in Kom, which was the most southern of all the four cities. And finally, the ice-tide swept over the city of cylinders, and its people, the Kanlars, were forced to seek refuge in Kom also, though they liked it not.
"But the ice did not stop. It came on, ever south, until it threatened to cover Kom also, and leave our people homeless and shelterless. So, taking counsel among themselves, the people of Kom set out to stop the progress of the glacial sheet.
"They kindled great uprisings far beneath the earth's surface, until the tortured earth heaved up in a great wall across the ice-flood's path. And then, that this wall of earth might not be swept away, the scientists of Kom showed them a way by which every kind of material could be transmuted at will into other elements, by a recasting of its electronic structure. And, using this power, the people of Kom smoothed the gigantic barrier they had created, and then, using the instruments their scientists had devised for them, they turned on the great wall a ray that changed it to metal by its power of element-transmutation. It was finished, and when the ice rolled down to this smooth mountain-range of metal, it was checked, halted. Far away, on either side, it rolled on and engulfed the country, but the wall so dammed it that it could not progress farther toward the city.
"Yet the cold of the glacier was not halted by the wall, and to combat that cold, the great shield of force was devised that stretches over all Kom, and into which you crashed in your car. It admitted the sun's light and heat, but excluded the cold winds from the glacier. And thus, having thwarted nature itself, the troubles of the people of Kom were seemingly at an end.
"The people of the other three cities settled down contentedly enough in Kom, and each people built their own type of dwelling, cube or sphere or cylinder. And all mixed, intermarried, and mingled in race, with the exception of the Kanlars, the people of the cylinders. These still held apart, though unobtrusively.
"And as the years went by, the scientists of Kom came to more and more wisdom. They found ways to strengthen their own bodies, so that they lived for great stretches of time, as we do yet. They sent their explorers out to other planets, they cast their vision out to the farthest stars. They learned to create life, and they learned to conquer death, almost. The flight of the soul from the body they could not control, for there is a wisdom above man's, but the body itself they could retain as moving and lifelike as in life itself, though soulless.
"It seemed, indeed, that no other steps of wisdom remained up which to climb. And then, without the knowledge of the other people, the Kanlar scientists set themselves to conquer the secret of time. Unable to find a way of controlling time themselves, of moving in it at will, they created a monstrous, undreamed-of thing, a thing of shapeless, inchoate body, which was yet living, and which could transform itself, at will, into mists and vapors, and in that gaseous form could travel at will through time. And this thing the Kanlars made, setting in it three orbs of light that were its organs of sense and its seat of intelligence, and this thing is the same that you now call the Raider.
"This, indeed, happened in my own lifetime, a scant score of years ago. And when the Kanlars brought their creation before the supreme council of Kom, I was a member of that council.
"They explained the power of their creation, they showed its life, its intelligence. And they proposed to the council a plan which possession of the Raider made possible.
"They pointed out that since the Raider could travel at will through time, it could whirl back into the past, or into the future, and seize people from every age, bringing them back to our own time to be our slaves. Always there had been none but free people in our cities, nor were slaves needed, since nearly all of our work was done by machinery, yet such was the evil plan of the Kanlars.
"The council rejected the plan in horror. And it also warned the Kanlars that unless they destroyed the thing they had made, the council would hunt it out and destroy it itself. The Kanlars left in rage, and took with them the Raider, but later they promised to destroy it within a certain period of time, saying that they desired to study it further before doing so.
"So for a time they kept the Raider, and it grew swiftly in power and intelligence, until it became a deity to the Kanlars, a being whose every word to them was law. Again the council warned them to destroy their creation, and again they agreed to do so. But in secret, on a night soon after, every one of the Kanlars assembled on their air-boats and fled from the city, taking with them the Raider.
"We could not know where they had gone, but sent out many scouts to search for them. And when all our scouts had returned without finding trace of them, we decided that they had fled with their evil god to another planet, and so the matter rested. We had always thought that the ice-fields in the north extended clear to the pole, and could not know of the land there where the Kanlars had gone.
"But now, with the knowledge the brain-reader gleaned from you while you were unconscious, all the people in Kom know the peril that hangs over them, know that the Raider and the Kanlars have gathered thousands of fierce warriors from all ages, and that they plan to sweep down and loot our city and kill its people. So the council meets, now, to decide what course of action we will take."
Kethra finished, and I silently pondered his amazing story, but Lantin broke in with a query. "Two things puzzle me," he said; "how is it that you speak the same tongue as the Kanlars, and why are there no cylindrical buildings in the city below? You spoke of each people building its own design of dwellings here, but there are no cylinders."
"When the Kanlars fled," Kethra explained, "the cylinders were demolished, for none of the other peoples would then live in them. As to our language, it was always the same, for all the four cities. You call it the Kanlar tongue because you heard it first from them, but it is equally the language of the people of Kom."
Before we could ask more questions, a single bell-note sounded from a corner of the room. "The council," murmured Kethra; "you are summoned before it."
He motioned us out of the room and led us down the corridor outside, toward a small elevator that was curiously familiar in appearance, there in that building of the future. A lever was touched and we flashed silently down a long shaft, past level after level of the great cone's interior. The car stopped, and we stepped out of it into a small antechamber. Following Kethra across it, we strode through a high, arched entrance, into a great amphitheater, a semicircular room with bank on bank of rising tiers of seats. In each seat was a man attired like Kethra, and the gaze of all was instantly focused on us as we entered. On a dais at the semicircle's center sat four men, older than the others, and there was another chair beside the four, which was empty. A servant swiftly placed two collapsible seats on the dais, on which Lantin and I seated ourselves. Then Kethra strode to the front of the dais and began to address the assemblage.
He spoke in an even, unraised voice, but from the expressions on the faces of the council members it was easy to see that his words were of intense interest to them. He reviewed the history of Kom, which he had already briefly recounted to us, and then pointed out the peril that threatened the city. He concluded with a strong plea that the people of Kom should take the offensive and strike at the Kanlars and the Raider in their own city, rather than let the battle come to Kom.
When he had finished, there were many questions as to the means to be employed for the battle. It seemed that air-boats had not been used greatly of late in Kom, because of the difficulty of flying beneath the great roof of force, and thus it would be hard to transport a force over the ice-fields in any short space of time.
But Kethra waved aside these objections. A great fleet of air-boats could be made in a few days, he declared, if the people of Kom turned their energies toward it. As to weapons, the scientists of Kom could design these, and they would also be made in great numbers, as effective as possible.
A solidly built, white-haired man in a lower row stood up and exclaimed, "But what of the Raider?" (I give our own equivalent of the unpronounceable term used by the people of Kom for that being). "Remember he is powerful, how powerful we can not even guess. And, if hard-pressed, he can flee into time and bide his time to strike at us again, with or without the Kanlars."
"Not so," replied Kethra. "When we build our air-boats, we will equip each with the time-traveling apparatus invented by these two men, which is installed in their own car. Thus equipped, our air-boats will be able to pursue the Raider into time and destroy him, should he flee there."
There were other objections, other questions, but Kethra overrode them all. It was plain that he was intent on following his plan of striking at the Kanlars unexpectedly, instead, of awaiting their attack, and he finally won the council over to his side. We were called on twice to furnish information on pertinent points, and finally, after hours of debate, the council voted by a large majority to build with all speed a great fleet of air-boats, equipped for time-traveling, like our own car. As soon as completed, and provided with weapons by the scientists, the entire force was to speed north under the leadership of Kethra, drop unexpectedly upon the city of the cylinders, and crush the Kanlars and the Raider forever.