“And I say that, in all our history, no man ever served the motherland as have you, a stranger. Nor has any man ever faced such evil and held it powerless for a space. It is not in my power to reward you fittingly, for to speak of rewards is to belittle what you have done. But ask whatever you desire-”
“Return to my own time and place,” asked Ray.
The Re Mu stood in silence. Then he said slowly, “our knowledge, all that exists, shall be yours. Whether this can be done, I do not know. But if it cannot—?”
“I do not know. Only that I am”-it was Ray’s turn to hesitate, to find it difficult to put into words his feelings- “not of this time. It may be that I cannot return, but I must try-”
“So be it!”
As Ray stepped back, Cho matched step with him. The Murian was sober-faced.
“Do-do you hate us, brother?” he asked. “Because of what they willed you to do? I did not know that this was so. But I can see how it would raise anger in a man-”
“Hate-” Ray repeated. He felt no emotion, only a kind of weary emptiness, an odd dislocation, as if he were not a part of life any more but existed in a place not meant for him. A swimmer in the ocean, looking upon all the wonders and colors of a world that was not his own and never could be, in which he was the alien visitor, might feel this way, Ray decided. Since he had been emptied of the will and seen the Loving One die, – he had been an onlooker only. And to be real again” No, not hate,” he said more to himself than Cho. r “Only tired-I am tired-”
“And-if you cannot return?” The. Murian put out his hand but did not quite touch Ray, as if he, also, felt they were somehow separate and even a meeting of -. fingers upon fingers could not in any way unite them.
“I do not know-”
Cho’s hand dropped to his side, but he continued to walk beside Ray, now and then glancing at him. He was tired, Ray thought, and now he went back to that place in the temple where he had been brought for treatment, stretching out on the couch there. Cho had y`- thrown himself down on a neighboring pile of cloaks and was quickly asleep. But though he was so weary, the American could not sleep himself. He shut his eyes and tried to picture-yes, this time – tried to see the trees, the silent forest.
The Re Mu had offered him whatever he wished. A . ship might be the answer, a ship to the north, and then across the plain and into the dusk of the forest-to the `:- place where he had entered this time. And what if he did come to stand once more on that very spot and nothing happened?
He heard a small movement nearby and opened his eyes. U-Cha, looking. very old-old and faded in his white robe, as if that had far more substance than the frail body it covered-stood there gazing down at him.
“You were that will,” Ray said.
“I was that will—in part,” agreed the Naacal.
“But,” he added, “the will was less than you held it to be, though you may not believe that, for the strength behind the will was more than half yours.”
“But I did not want–”
“To do our bidding? Yes, that is also true. Only; think upon this-when the will had need, there were depths to draw upon such as you will not find among us. Different you are, complex to our measuring, for you have been shaped in other days by a life we know nothing of. But I think that what you are now is not
what you were when you stepped from your time into ours. A smith draws molten metal from the heat and beats upon it. He chills, reheats, works. And what he has in his hands at the end of his labors is not what he held at the beginning.”
Ray sat up. Under the bandages his wounds pained him a little. And somehow that pain was faintly reassuring, making him more alive instead of only a detached onlooker.
“Do you mean-that this change might keep me here?”
“It is a thought that perhaps you should hold in your mind, my son, for this much I am sure of-you are not the same man who came to us. Perhaps that change began even as you entered from your world and is of a process like unto growth. So-”
“So I should be prepared to fail. Very well, you have warned me. But will you also help me?”
“With all that we have-we know-yes.”
“Not here,” said Ray, “nor in Mu, but in the north-”
U-Cha looked at him in surprise. “To the north-in the Barren Lands? But we have no temple, no place of learning-”
“I only know that it is from the north I came and there I must return. Also that it must be soon, I believe, or not at all.”
U-Chas head bowed. “So be it.”
Then he raised his thin hand, on the back of which the old veins made heavy blue ridges. And in the air between them he drew a sign that to Ray was not visible.
“Let your spirit rest and your mind give ease to your body, for it is not this day, nor tomorrow, nor perhaps many tomorrows, that we can aid you on that trail. Until then be at peace.”
And Ray, lying back upon the couch, discovered sleep waiting, a dreamless rest in which no shadows or memories dared to move.
At sunset he stood outside the city in company with Cho and those tough raiders who had guided the Murian forces into the citadel. The last of the survivors from the town were straggling through the inland gates, forming into family groups, then into companies, to trudge on and on, the mounted rebels from the plains forming the guard to keep them moving, while in the city a house-to-house search was in progress to make sure no hiders were forgotten. And it was dusk when the last of those searchers also came forth. When they, too, reached the hills, beams of light shot from the Murian ships offshore, from points inland. There was a crash as those rays met, louder than any thunderclap, a shuddering of ground that knocked many of the watchers from their feet. And a cloud of gritty dust was caught by whirling winds, drawn up to darken the sky still more.
“The temple of Ba-Al-” Cho caught at the American’s shoulder. “Look you to the temple!”
In the rubble the sullen red-walled structure still squatted, to their eyes intact. Again the beams closed, now aimed upon that one building alone, but when they were gone, still it stood.
Then from the sky itself, as , if their machines of destruction had drawn some force of nature, came a jagged stroke of blinding, dazzling light. There was a sound to deafen them, and when they could see again, the temple was gone.
But in that moment Ray had a curious impression he could neither believe nor explain, nor did he ever speak of it afterwards. He thought he saw a black shadow, not unlike that of a crouching human body surmounted by a bull’s head, flee into the night, drawing about it as a concealing cloak the very substance of the normal dark.
As they turned to seek their ships, a mounted man rode up from the slow-moving snake of the Atlantean refugees. Uranos leaned from the saddle to speak to Ray.
“Comrade, I have not forgotten. All mine is yours; ask it of me. Thus shall it also be with -our sons and sons’ sons. Should you call, and I shall come, even unto
have need-the ends of the earth. Now I must go with my people. But remember, brother-”
Ray’s hand went to clasp his. “No debt between us.” This he must make the other understand. “Go in peace, freely
The fingers tightened on his and then loosed, and the rider was gone. But Cho was now beside the American.
“The ships wait-and also the motherland-”
Together they started for the shore.
18
“THIS is your landing? You are sure of the place?”
– Ray could almost agree to the doubt expressed by
Captain Taut. There was no marker on that deserted and empty shore, and one piece of this coast was very like another, but Ray was sure.
– “Right there,” he repeated confidently. He turned his
head; it was hard even by so little to break that cord which he had felt drawing him with an intensity that grew stronger the nearer they approached the Barren Lands.
Home to the motherland, Cho had said days earlier. But Ray had known then that such a return could not