Still, on this journey he had already met with that which could not be measured by the senses. As a smith he labored with his hands, but what he so wrought was first a picture in his mind, so that he followed a pattern no other man might see. Thus he, too, in a way dealt with the intangible.
Should he after all his experiences of these past hours now refuse to use imagination when that might be the one key to defeat the walls? That voice from the air that had addressed him earlier had used a smith’s words. True, they had been intermingled with others Sander could not understand, but he was certain of those few. He must take that as an omen of sorts and now trust his guesses, no matter how wild they might seem.
“Brown,” he spoke aloud, and thumbed the darkest of the buttons on that row. “Gold.” He sought out the brightest there, one that reminded him most of molten metal as it ran, fiery swift, into a mold. “Green.” Not the dark top one there, but one halfway down the row, which was most akin to the fresh growth of early spring. “Red.” And this one was that shade a dancing flame might own.
A grating noise sounded. One wall broke apart as a panel pulled upward, leaving a narrow space open. Somehow Sander was not even surprised. He had had the feeling as he pressed the buttons in his chosen order that he had indeed solved another small segment of a mystery.
Now he walked forward with some confidence, passing through the opening to face once more the unknown.
14
This was not another room as he had expected, rather a narrow corridor boxed in by blank walls. Sander strode along with that new confidence his solving of the door code had given him. Nor was he surprised when, as he approached the far end of the way, a section of the blank expanse facing him rolled aside without any effort on his part.
Sound filtered from beyond. There was a hum, a clicking, other noises. Once more he slowed, trying to judge what he might have to face. Sander had an idea that whoever used this strange maze was not one to be easily bested or even menaced by either weapon he carried. The dart thrower and his long knife were as far removed from the things he had seen as those weapons in turn were from some unworked stone snatched up by a primitive being to do battle.
Making his decision, he fitted the thrower back into its shoulder case to step through that second portal empty-handed. An increased glare of light made him blink. Nor could he begin to understand what he saw—webbings of metal, of glass, squat bases from which those webs grew, the flashing of small lights.
Among all this there was one familiar sight. Rhin bounded toward him, giving voice to yelps that meant welcome in such a crescendo of sudden sound that spoke the koyot’s vast relief at Sander’s arrival.
The animal’s rough tongue rasped across Sander’s cheek. He himself clutched the loose hide across Rhin’s shoulders. In all this strangeness the koyot was a tie with a world Sander knew well.
At that moment, once more he heard the voice out of the air. This time he could not understand even a few words of its gabble. The machines, if these rods sprouting webbing were machines, stood about the walls, leaving the center of the area free. Sander advanced into that, one hand still resting on Rhin’s back. There was nothing in this place that was in the least familiar though he was forced to marvel at the workmanship of the installations.
What was their purpose? Now that he could see those lines in their entirety, he was also aware that not all of them glowed. In fact, on a few of the the heavy bases the remains of webbing lay in broken fragments. From others issued a pitch of sound that made him flinch and the koyot yelp in protest as they passed them.
But there was no sign of any living creature. Sander raised his voice to call Fanyi’s name. There was no answer, save the clatter and drone of the machines.
“Who are you?” For the first time then he dared the Voice to answer. It did not reply.
With Rhin beside him, glancing quickly from right to left, half expecting a challenger to arise from behind an installation, Sander crossed the room. There was a second archway, beyond which he found quite a different scene. Here, the center of a large chamber was occupied by an oval space surrounded by two similarly curved lines of cushioned chairs. The oval itself was sunk below the surface of the floor and filled with what Sander, at first glance, thought was a remarkably still pool of water. Then he realized that this was also glass or some equally transparent material.
Leaving Rhin, the smith pushed between two of the chairs which he found to be firmly fastened in position. He stood gazing down at that dull glassy surface, dark blue in color. Sander was sure that, like the food box, it had some highly significant use. The whole arrangement of this room suggested that people had once gathered here to sit in these chairs, to look down onto that surface.
It was not a mirror, for, though he stood at its very edge, it did not reflect his image. Nor were there any of those knobs along it, which the food box had displayed. Slowly, he went from chair to chair, until he reached the one at the left-hand curve of the oval. There, for the first time, he noted a difference. This chair had very broad arms studded with buttons, each bearing some of those symbols Fanyi had called letters.
Slowly, Sander lowered himself into that seat. It was very comfortable, almost as if the chair instantly adjusted itself to his form. He studied the knobs. They had something to do with the glass surface just beyond the toes of his worn boots, he was sure. But what?
There were two rows of them on each of the wide arms, arranged for the ease of anyone resting his elbows on those supports and stretching out his hands naturally. There was only one way to learn—and that was by action. He brought the forefinger of his right hand down on the nearest button.
There came no response, to his disappointment. But it was only only one button—perhaps like so much else, it had ceased to function over the long years. He could hope that enough remained active to give him some idea of why men had gathered here to watch a dull-surfaced and non-reflective mirror.
Methodically, he pressed the next button in line with no better response. But a third gave him an amazing answer. Points of light appeared on the mirror, lines glowing like quickly running fire came to life, outlining large patches, irregular in size and shape. Sander leaned forward eagerly, tried to make some meaning of the display.
There were four—no five—large outlined shapes there. Two were united by a narrow, curved string, the other two larger shapes had a firmer junction. There were also smaller ones here and there, some near to the larger, others scattered farther away. The brilliant points of light were, in turn, strewn by no orderly method over the outlined patches.
Regretfully, though he studied it hungrily, Sander could deduce no possible meaning. He pressed the next button and the pattern flashed off. New lines moved, assembled in another quite different form. Only the bright points of light now totally vanished, and many of the outlines of the patches were blurred and weak.
“Our world—”
Sander swung around, his hand already reaching for the hilt of his long knife. He did not need Rhin’s growls to alert him, though for a moment he wondered why the koyot had not given earlier warning. This voice had not come, disembodied, out of the air. Those two words had been spoken by a man, a man who hobbled forward, watching Sander as warily as the smith eyed him.
The stranger was not an attractive sight. Once tall, he was now stoop-shouldered and bow-backed. His overthin arms and legs were emphasized, as was his swollen belly, by the fact that he wore a gray garment made to cling tightly. His head was covered with stiff, whitish bristle, as if the dome of his skull had been first shaven and then allowed to sprout hair again for an inch or so. A long upper lip carried a thin thatch of the same wiry growth, but his seamed face was otherwise free of beard. What skin showed—only his face and knobby-fingered hands—was so pale a color as to resemble that of the White Ones, yet it also had a grayish cast.