THE METAL MONSTER. Abraham Merritt

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СКАЧАТЬ the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.

      As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint whisper of rushing waters.

      I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of the monster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played so murderously with the armored men.

      And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.

      “Do not fear.” It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassure a child. “Ascend. Cross. They obey me.”

      I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering line revealing where each great cube held fast to the other.

      I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence, for up from the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force, that was like a host of little invisible hands, steadying me, keeping firm my feet. I looked down; the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring up at me from deep within. They fascinated me; I felt my pace slowing; a vertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead; marched on.

      From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now there were but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end, dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended.

      Over the span came Ventnor. He was leading his laden pony. He had bandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it was treading. And close behind, a band resting reassuringly upon its flank, strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled along serenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darkness and guidance.

      Then, an arm about Ruth, floated Norhala. Now she was beside us; dropped her arm from Ruth; glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more we went, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall.

      She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent.

      I looked back into the darkness. Something like an enormous, dimly shimmering rod was raising itself. Higher it rose and higher. Now it stood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic slim figure whose tip pointed a full hundred feet in the air.

      Then slowly it inclined itself toward us; drew closer, closer to the ground; touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly it vanished.

      But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed had raised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress; had lifted itself across the chasm and dropping itself upon the hither verge had disintegrated into its units; was following us.

      A bridge of metal that could build itself — and break itself. A thinking, conscious metal bridge! A metal bridge with volition — with mind — that was following us.

      There sighed from behind a soft, sustained wailing; rapidly it neared us. A wanly glimmering shape drew by; halted. It was like a rigid serpent cut from a gigantic square bar of cold blue steel.

      Its head was a pyramid, a tetrahedron; its length vanished in the further darkness. The head raised itself, the blocks that formed its neck separating into open wedges like a Brobdignagian replica of those jointed, fantastic, little painted reptiles the Japanese toy-makers cut from wood.

      It seemed to regard us — mockingly. The pointed head dropped — past us streamed the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered — like the spikes that guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end came swiftly into sight — its tail another pyramid twin to its head.

      It FLIRTED by — gaily; vanished.

      I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow — and it did not need to! It could move as a COMPOSITE as well as in UNITS. Move intelligently, consciously — as the Smiting Thing had moved.

      “Come!” Norhala’s command checked my thoughts; we fell in behind her. Looking up I caught the friendly sparkle of a star; knew the cleft was widening.

      The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small as that hollow from which we had fled; ringed like it with heaven-touching summits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with a soft radiance as though into it the far, bright stars were pouring all their rays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames.

      It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys when on white arctic nights they are lighted, the Athabascans believe, by the gleaming spears of hunting gods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinite distances.

      The shimmering mists that had nimbused Norhala had vanished — or merging into the wan gleaming had become one with it.

      I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thought what it was that I had sensed as inhuman — never of OUR world or its peoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that had hovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings; nor even of her control of those — things — which had smitten the armored men and spanned for us the abyss.

      All of that I was certain lay in the domain of the explicable, could be resolved into normality once the basic facts were gained.

      Suddenly, I knew. Side by side with what we term the human there dwelt within this woman an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless, at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical — an emanation of the eternal law which guides the circling stars.

      This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked the lightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were those gestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater than my consciousness knew and accepted.

      Something which shared, no — that reigned, serene and untroubled, upon the throne of her mind; something utterly UNCOMPREHENDING, utterly unconscious OF, cosmically blind TO all human emotion; that spread itself like a veil over her own consciousness; that PLATED her thought — that was a strange word — why had it come to me — something that had set its mark upon her like — like — the gigantic claw print on the poppied field, the little print of the dragoned hall.

      I caught at my mind, whirling I thought then in the grip of fantasy; strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal.

      Her veils had slipped from her, baring her neck, her arms, the right shoulder. Under the smooth throat a buckle of dull gold held the sheer, diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk which swathed the high and rounded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them.

      A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips and thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with golden sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise studded bands.

      And shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracle of her body.

      The dream of master sculptor given life. A goddess of earth’s youth reborn in Himalayan wilds.

      She raised her eyes; broke the long silence.

      “Now being with you,” she said dreamily, “there waken within me old thoughts, old wisdom, old questioning — all that I had СКАЧАТЬ