The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

“Sure, okay, I get it,” the pilot answered.

  They moved along the cliff until they came to a ledge that sloped upward.

  “We go up here,” Gotch grunted.

  * * * *

  As they went upward, they rose above the tops of the trees. Sparkling thinly in the morning sunlight, the sea came into sight. Circling the shoreline at a distance of about a mile, a curtain of mist was visible. It seemed to close in above them too, shielding the island like a thin, shining dome.

  “That’s a strange fog,” Parker said.

  “It’s not a fog,” Retch answered. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but when it is there, the island is invisible. If you are on the other side of it, you see nothing at all.”

  “Um,” Parker said. They continued upward. The ledge twisted, curved, went around the rising cliff. Slowly Parker became aware that the rising ledge was not a natural formation, it was a pathway cut into the face of the cliff.

  At the realization, the pilot felt a touch of awe rise in him. This ledge was old. It must have been cut into this cliff long before Columbus had sailed westward.

  Off in the distance beyond the curtain of mist was the coast of California, the beaches bright with bathers, the cities wrapped in warm sunshine, the roads alive with traffic. Over there in the distance were orange groves and millions of people.

  Here on this island, behind this mist, unknown to millions of people so close to it, was something that did not belong in the 20th century, or in any other century Parker could imagine.

  His back felt cold. In him, somewhere, was gnawing anger. This island, this place, was real. Back in his past a horrible wrong had been done, a wrong that now could never be corrected. He put the thought out of his mind.

  The ledge turned into the cliff and became a tunnel that had been carved into solid stone. The walls of the tunnel were as smooth as polished marble. What tools could men have used in the old days to cut a tunnel with walls so smooth that they looked like glass? Modern equipment could not have done the job so well.

  Niches in the wall of the tunnel admitted light and gave them glimpses of the island.

  “Where the hell will we find—Oh, Pedro!” Retch spoke. The Indian messenger of the night before had appeared in the tunnel. He beckoned to them. They followed him into a large room cut out of solid stone.

  It was one of the cleanest and most simply furnished rooms Parker had ever seen. It contained hand-made chairs along the wall and a big table, also hand-made. Light from a wall slit flowed into the room.

  Seated behind the table, illumined by the light flowing in from the wall slit behind them, were Rozeno and Ulnar. Rozeno had a thin nose, the narrow face of the typical high bred Spaniard. Ulnar was short and squat, his cheeks were flat, his nose hooked. Both had black eyes that were utterly fathomless.

  The faces were old, wrinkled, and kind. Parker took one look at this priest, and instantly liked him. As he glanced at Rozeno, saw the kindness on that face, he also saw, out of the corners of his eyes, Retch drawing a gun.

  In that split second he knew why Retch had laughed so violently the night before, when Retch had said that he would go with them to see Rozeno and Ulnar.

  Retch intended to kill both of them; to shoot them as they sat there at that table, unarmed and defenseless; shoot them like dogs!

  The gun was already in Retch’s hand. Parker’s fist went out, up, connected with Retch’s jaw, a blow that had all the pilot’s strength behind it.

  Retch’s head was twisted to one side. He reeled away from Parker’s blow. The snarl that came from his lips was the snarl of a wild animal. Metal thudded as the gun hit the floor. The room echoed with sound—Mercedes screaming. Parker followed Retch, followed him as a dog follows a rat. He caught a wild man.

  Retch stumbled against the wall, caught himself on one of the hand-made chairs, jerked himself up, and drove at Parker. The pilot met the charge head on. They went down locked together.

  Retch was a tornado erupting with violent fury. He threw Parker away from him, leaped to his feet. Parker pulled himself to one knee. The fallen pistol lay in front of him. He snatched it up.

  Retch was coming toward him. He saw the gun in Parker’s hand, hesitated.

  “I’ll kill you,” the pilot said.

  * * * *

  Retch caught himself. For an instant he seemed to hang in the air before Parker, yellow glaring in his eyes as he tried to make up his mind whether or not to buck the gun.

  “Get your hands up,” Parker said.

  Slowly the yellow went out of Retch’s eyes.

  “Get your hands up!” Parker repeated.

  This time Retch obeyed him. Parker backed him against the wall, took the second pistol from his pocket, his own gun.

  “Damn you!” Retch snarled. Parker saw that the man was not speaking to him but to Gotch, he saw also that during all this Gotch had not moved. The man stood transfixed; afraid to move.

  Parker turned to the two men behind the table. They had not moved either, though Ulnar looked as if he was about to come to his feet. Rozeno sat very still. There was sadness on his face.

  “Go away,” he gestured toward Retch. “And you, too, Gotch, go away.”

  “You mean we can go after—” Gotch faltered.

  “I don’t want to see either of you again,” Rozeno said. There was actual living pain in his voice. “Go!”

  “Wait a minute,” Parker spoke quickly.

  “Yes, my son?” Rozeno’s face lost its sadness when he looked at Parker, it came alive with sudden animation.

  “You don’t mean to tell me you are going to let these two go?” the pilot protested.

  “Of course.”

  “But Retch tried to kill you.”

  “I know—”

  “And he’ll try it again. There’s something here that’s driving him crazy. I don’t know what it is but he knows. If you turn him loose—I would just as soon turn loose a rattlesnake, Johnny Retch.”

  Parker’s words were hard, blunt, forceful. But for all the effect they had on the old priest, he might as well not have spoken them. Rozeno smiled. “I do not think Retch or Gotch will ever harm us. They have no means to harm us.” He made a gesture with his hands, spoke a single word, “Go!”

  Retch and Gotch went quickly from the room, like men who were very glad to go.

  “I hope you know what you are doing,” Parker said, saw that Rozeno was not looking at him. The old priest was watching Mercedes.

  “You may stay here, with us,” Rozeno added.

  Mercedes’ face mirrored gratitude. “Thank you.”

  Rozeno turned his attention to Parker. “You are new to our island, are you not, my son?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you arrive here? Was your ship wrecked?”

  “Yes. Actually, however, we were looking for this island.” Swiftly Parker explained what had happened.

  “Retch went away, he hired you to bring him back in a ship that flies?” Rozeno seemed a little perturbed.

  For the first time, Ulnar spoke, a single grunted sound. Rozeno answered with a swift flow of gutturals that Parker did not understand. Ulnar grunted again, a hot light appeared in his eyes. “Kill him!” His fist came down upon the table.

  Again Rozeno looked pained. “I have worked so long and so hard with him, trying to show him the Way, trying to explain to him that killing is not a part of the Way. But the old savagery is still in his heart. Sometimes I despair of him.” He shook his head very gently. The light flowing in from behind him made a halo of his long white hair. His eyes searched Parker. They were the kindest and at the same time the keenest eyes the pilot had ever met. They looked at him and through him; they probed deep down inside of him; they seemed to search down to the bottom of his soul. Parker had the feeling he was being weighed, measured, probed.

>   “It is not often that I offer a choice to those who come here,” Rozeno spoke. “Usually they prefer to live in the village at the base of the cliff. You may live here with us, if you wish.” The smile on Rozeno’s face was a living thing.

  Deep down inside of him, Parker felt his soul come to sudden life. “I’ll stay here, Father, if I may.”

  The smile on Rozeno’s face became even brighter. “Good, my son. You have made a very wise choice.”

  Parker was silent, perturbed, suddenly uneasy. Here in this place two old men lived in rooms near the top of a cliff. Down below was a village where brawling men lived, men who could walk on water. In the night, in this place something called a Jezbro went on the wings of a harp. There was magic here, mysteries that went beyond his understanding. What else was here?

  “Tell me about this place, Father?”

  Rozeno nodded. “Gladly, my son, gladly. I will show you and tell you as I show you. There are things here that even I do not understand.” For a second, the old priest frowned as if he was contemplating mysteries that lay afar. Then his smile came back and he was rising to his feet. “Come with me, my son.”

  * * * *

  As they moved from the big room, Ulnar grunted hastily and gestured toward the wall slit. Looking through it, Parker saw a speedy craft moving inside the veil—a PT boat. His heart jumped at the thought that the Navy had finally penetrated the secret of this strange island. His heart sank when he saw that even if this was a PT boat, it was not a Navy ship. The craft was dirty, unkempt, it was not the smart, spick and span vessel that the Navy would operate.

  As he watched, the boat veered abruptly, slowed, almost came to a halt as if its occupants had suddenly discovered the presence of the island.

  Ulnar shook his fist at the boat. “Vondel me sego!” he said.

  “No, no, Ulnar,” Rozeno spoke hastily. “You must not vondel them. They are just some people who have stumbled through the veil and now are bewildered.”

  “Me make ’em more frightened,” the Indian spoke. He brought one fist down into the other fist, a smacking sound.

  “What is vondel?” Parker spoke.

  Rozeno seemed not to hear him. The priest was already moving from the room.

  “We do not know who cut these passages here,” Rozeno said. “We do not know who cut these rooms into the rock. Some race that lived a long, long time ago—perhaps the legendary Murians, perhaps some other race—had this island as an outpost. I think, also, they used it as a scientific laboratory; a dangerous laboratory that they put far away from their homeland. A place where their wise men—their philosophers—could seek out the mysteries of nature.”

  “Um,” Parker said. There was cold in him. He tried to force it away, discovered it would not go.

  “There is something else that is very strange about this island,” the priest continued. “Time is different here.”

  “How is time different?”

  “In this way,” Rozeno answered. “I came to the New World with Cortez.”

  “I see,” Parker said.

  “You take it very calmly.”

  “I do not doubt my own eyes nor do I doubt you.”

  The old priest glowed. “Good. Good. Tell me, my son, are there many men like you in the world of today? I have a dream, a secret private dream, that the scientists from your world might come here and study the strange things on this island.”

  “They would come here in droves if they knew about it. And so would everybody else. You would be over-run by hordes of the curious.”

  “Yes, we know that. That isn’t quite what I meant. It was my hope that perhaps we could make this island what it was in the olden days—secret place where the wise men could come to study.” The priest’s face glowed again. “There is so much here to be learned and here, also, is the time in which to learn. Here great discoveries might be made. Here could possibly be discovered not only the secrets of nature but the secrets of the minds and the hearts of men. From this place, as the centuries passed, there might be fed out, little by little, knowledge that would change the world; knowledge that would change the hearts and the minds of men; knowledge that would eliminate poverty, stop wars, knowledge that would help the human race become what it must one day be.”

  The glow on Rozeno’s face was bright. The dream he dreamed was suddenly, in Parker’s mind, a living, breathing vital hope, the hope of all honest men everywhere, that tomorrow might be better!

  “Would you, my son, help me achieve that dream? Will you go back through the veil and explain to some of your greatest scientists what we have here?”

  “I would like nothing better,” the big pilot answered. In a way, this was his dream too, though up until now it had always been a secret, hidden, impossible-to-accomplish thing. His hand went out to Rozeno. Deep inside of him, the glow grew to greater heights. Only one other thing was needed to make this glow a really perfect feeling, Effra, who had found this island and had tried to tell him about it. But Effra was gone.

  They moved on to a big room where some of the scientific equipment of the vanished race still functioned. Set in a sunken pool ten feet in diameter in the center of the room was a circle of what looked like mercury. Leading up from it were heavy bus bars of some unknown metal. The bus bars came together and marched across the room to a control panel, one of the strangest control panels Parker had ever seen. The meters were graduated in colors. In front of the chair where the operator sat was a keyboard like that of a vast pipe organ. How much training would an operator need to operate this keyboard? Directly in front of the operator’s seat was a square panel that looked like a television screen.

  * * * *

  Set in niches where the right hand of the operator could reach them easily were statuettes of birds, animals, reptiles. Made of some metal, they were perfect representations. Parker saw a condor, a bald-headed eagle, a humming-bird, a cougar, a jaguar, an alligator. His eyes went back to the pool in the center of the room.

  “It is generating power,” Rozeno said. “As it turns, it creates some force, some energy. I do not understand this energy. No one now alive understands it. Understanding is one of the things I hope your scientists may achieve—come away, Ulnar.” The last was spoken as the Indian strayed near the operator’s seat.

  Ulnar grunted impatiently. There was something about that seat that lured him. But he came away. They went into another room, leaving behind them the pool of mercury that turned slowly, like a miniature earth on some axis of its own. Parker took one look at the contents of this room, and gasped.

  The crown jewels of England were no greater than these! Here were crowns of pounded yellow gold; here were gargoyle masks made of the same yellow metal; masks that sparkled with gems. Here, lying on the rock shelves, were ingots of what looked to be solid gold, each one heavy enough to be a full load for a grown man.

  Ulnar was examining a gargoyle mask. He touched a gold bar, his old withered fingers seeming to savor the feel of it.

  Rozeno smiled gently. “Ulnar treasures these things, they were put in his charge a very long time ago. He has been faithful to his trust.”

  “But—” Parker whispered.

  “This is a part of Montezuma’s treasure, a part that Cortez did not get. There is as much of it here as 400 men could carry away. Ulnar was one of Montezuma’s most trusted sub-chiefs. He brought the treasure here, to keep it for his Chieftan.”

  Ulnar’s wrinkled face broke into a grin. “Me take good care,” he said simply. “Me clean, me polish, me save for my Chief.”

  “Tell me one thing?” he said.

  “Gladly, my son.”

  “Does Johnny Retch know this is here?”

  “I suppose so. All who live on our island know about it.”

  Muscles knotted at the corners of Parker’s jaws. He pressed his arms down against his jacket so that he could fee
l the guns in the pockets. The guns felt good.

  “Father Rozeno!” a voice called from a corridor outside the treasure room. “Father Rozeno? Where are you?”

  “Here I am, my dear,” the priest answered.

  At the sound of that voice, Bill Parker forgot all about the guns in his pockets, Johnny Retch, Montezuma’s treasure, and everything else that was on this island. He stood stock still, paralyzed.

  A girl came through the opening into the treasure room. She wore a dark dress; sandals; her hands were gloved; she had apparently been working at some task. She smiled at Ulnar, glanced at Parker, nodded, looked at Rozeno, smiled, then glanced back quickly at Parker as if he reminded her of someone she had once known, then turned again to the priest. “Father, I have been cleaning all morning—”

  So far she got. Bill Parker broke his paralysis and swept her into his arms.

  “Effra—Effra—Effra—” His voice was a choked whisper, almost inaudible in the treasure chamber of Montezuma. As she had come through the door, his mind had given him a flashing picture of the plane wrecked on the shore. Effra, fleeing from Dr. Yammer, had taken one last desperate chance on finding her island; one last lonely flight out over the Pacific. No wonder he had been unable to find her. She had found her island. She had come here. She was here, in his arms.

  There was wonder and awe and bewilderment in the big pilot. Here was a miracle almost past the understanding. “I’ve found you—Effra—”

  For an instant, she lay in his arms like a frightened child who dared not move. “Please—” she whispered. He did not hear her. His lips sought hers, found them. She did not draw away, but neither did she respond. “Effra—” Parker looked up. Rozeno and Ulnar were regarding him with mild astonishment. In his arms, Effra stirred again. “Please—let me go.”

  This time the big pilot heard her. Setting her back on her feet was one of the hastiest movements he had ever made in his life. “Effra—I did not mean to startle you—but darling—”

  She stood irresolute, staring at him. “Please—You have no right—”

  He saw that her eyes, fixed on him, regarded him as an utter and complete stranger.