Revelations in Black, page 8
“I—er—well, to be frank, I climbed up an outer wall, sneaked through an unbarred window and lifted it when the priests were sleeping.”
“You stole it?” I exclaimed.
Corlin nodded. “One has to do such things if he’s going to have a collection. This silk has some mystic significance to a Tibetan. The priests called it the cloth of the Fire-God, and all the terrors of seven hells are supposed to follow anyone who defiles it.
“The beauty of the piece is the dragon design in the center. I don’t know for sure, but I understand all sorts of evil obscene rites have been practiced in its name. This is the least understood religion of Asia. It is steeped in Black Magic and . . .”
I stepped closer and examined the cloth. The lower right corner ended in a ragged edge where a section had been torn off.
“The thief who broke in here did that,” Corlin snarled. “I surprised him before he could rip it completely out of the case, and he got away in the darkness— What is it, Fay?”
The Conservator’s daughter had entered the room. Her face was white as lime.
“Quick, Doctor,” she cried. “My mother . . .”
In ten strides I was into the other room. But the moment I knelt at the woman’s side I realized she was beyond human aid. There was practically no pulse. An instant later the death-rattle sounded. Alice Corlin was dead!
Still holding the lifeless wrist I looked through the window up into the sky. My eyes filled with horror. Even as I watched, the kite slowly settled downward. It fell into the jungle and disappeared.
Impatient as I was to leave Samarinda, the curious facts surrounding the death of Alice Corlin led me to postpone my departure. My certificate attributed her death to congestive malarial fever. But I knew—only too well—the cause went deeper than that.
I had the kite. River Dyaks near Corlin’s house had brought it to me in return for a quantity of tobacco. It was made of bamboo sticks and rice paper, as I had suspected. But glued to the surface was a small remnant of red silk—a fragment from Corlin’s Fire-God altar cloth.
Exactly a week later Corlin came to my quarters. He entered my veranda and faced me with haggard eyes.
“Van Rueller,” he said. “There’s another kite.”
“What?” I cried.
He nodded. “Exactly like the first. Same size, same color, same kind of wire. It’s been up two days now, but it seems to disappear each night. And my daughter Fay . . .”
“It isn’t affecting her too?” A feeling of helpless horror swept over me.
Corlin clenched his fists.
“Not physically the way it did Alice, but mentally. Something unspeakably evil is slowly claiming her soul.”
By this time I was tense with excitement. Dislike Corlin I did, but the events combined to draw me on with a hypnotic attraction. I told Corlin I’d go upriver in an hour.
It had rained during the night, and as we paddled up the Mahakam the sky was a leprous grey. Again Kang Chow sat stiffly in the stern directing the Dyak boatmen.
The kite came into view in almost identically the same spot I had seen its predecessor. I watched it until the sampan thumped against the wharf, but I made no comment.
A moment later in the house I came upon Fay Corlin. She sat in a chair in the center of the room, rigid, eyes fixed ahead. There was a drawn look of terror in her face; her lips were white.
For five minutes I spoke to her soothingly. She did not respond. Instead, abruptly and without warning, she leaped to her feet and gave a choking cry. Then like a lifeless thing she slumped to the floor. Even as I bent over her I knew my worst fears were realized.
The kite was working again!
But this time I had no intention of standing by without intervention. The girl’s physical condition was linked with the movements of that kite. Impossible as it seemed, I knew that was true. The kite could not be pulled down, or Fay Corlin would die. It must be destroyed in mid-air.
I seized my medicine case and ran out. I dashed along the jungle path and down to the jetty. I leaped into the sampan and paddled furiously for the opposite shore.
Overhead low-bellied storm clouds were racing in from the horizon. The sky to the east was a sickly green. Following the copper wire, I reached the far bank and plunged into the bush.
The wire was fastened to the same palapak tree. I opened my case and fell to work.
From one compartment I drew forth a quantity of pyroxylin, spread it before me. Forty grams of pyroxylin mixed with ether and alcohol make collodion, which is useful in treating small wounds. But pyroxylin is nothing more than gun cotton.
I had in my case also a brass tube, capped at both ends to carry matches. Tearing off the caps, I inserted the gun cotton. Next, from an inner pocket I drew forth a large piece of paper, then ripped free my watch chain.
You’ve seen a boy send a message up a kite string, driven upward by the wind? I was doing much the same, only my “message” was a charge of inflammable gun cotton.
The slightest charge of lightning from the oncoming storm would be sufficient to ignite the pyroxylin and destroy the kite in mid-air. I re-fastened the wire to the tree again, then threaded the paper up the wire.
As I worked, the storm raced nearer. The kite rode high above the undulating roof of the jungle.
I released it. For a moment the “message” hung motionless. Then with a low hum it began to mount upward along the wire. I rushed back to the sampan and paddled back across the river.
Back in the house I found Fay unconscious on the cot in the collection room where Corlin had carried her. At the far side of the room, peering out the window, stood the Cantonese boy, Kang Chow.
I waited. One hand clamped to the girl’s wrist, I knelt there. Corlin paced back and forth across the room. If he saw Kang Chow, he gave no sign. The room was half-masked in shadows.
In the corner the crimson silk, the Fire-God cloth from the Tibet temple shown luridly in its bamboo case. Its scarlet surface seemed enlarged a hundred times.
The storm drew nearer. From out of the east a blacker cloud raced over the jungle. And then, knifing down, a jagged fork of lightning shot toward the kite. A roar of thunder trembled the very piles of the house.
Five seconds later a sheet of flame burst out into the sky, high above the open window. The fire swept down the dragon tail like a devouring monster, and the wire dropped earthward like a writhing snake. The kite was gone!
Instantly a violent tremor shot through the stricken girl. A gasp came to her lips. The pulse became a pounding hammer. Then the beats slowed to normal, and I leaned back with a cry of exultation.
But at that instant any thought of success was thrust from my mind. A muffled cry from Kang Chow spun me around. The Cantonese boy stood rigid, eyes fastened on the crimson silk in the case beside him.
And it was that silk that held by own gaze. Even as I watched, a streamer of smoke appeared over the design of the Fire-God. A tongue of flame shot outward.
Corlin whirled. One instant he stood motionless. Then the door of the case shot open. And slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the flaming silk began to move outward. Of its own accord, without support, it moved, lifted into the air, began to float across the room.
Relentlessly it closed in on Corlin. The Conservator’s face was ashen. He tried to turn, but seemed riveted to the spot. Horrified, I watched the flaming silk lessen the intervening distance. Then with a final jerk it leaped forward.
The burning mass dropped over Corlin’s head, tightened like a shroud!
I swear I was powerless to move. For an instant I vow some outer power prevented me from taking a single step.
Screaming hideously, Corlin fell to the floor. A curtain of smoke rolled over him. Into my nostrils swept the odor of burning flesh.
I broke the spell then, ran forward. I snatched at the cloth with both hands. It resisted all efforts. I seized a rattan rug, attempted to smother the flames. But the fire only flared higher.
At last Corlin’s hands flailed wildly in a last death agony. He sank downward and lay still.
Fay Corlin left Samarinda on the 29th of January. My own passage to Singapore and thence to home was scheduled for a week later. But Kang Chow disappeared.
I might have explained the Cantonese boy’s part in the death of Edward Corlin to the Dutch authorities. Or I might have asked for an inquest and testified to all that I knew. Yet somehow those facts, if brought to light in a colonial court of law, would have seemed even more impossible.
I can offset the whole thing by cataloguing a few of my subsequent findings. There was for example, the can of gasoline which I discovered under Corlin’s house.
There was the spool of wire, a section of which had been stretched across the collection room, presumably as a supporting line for a bamboo curtain. Such a wire might conceivably have served as a track for the floating, flaming silk.
And there was my own knowledge that the Chinese will sacrifice anything to attain the proper theatrical effect. For Kang Chow, as was later revealed was not a Cantonese coolie.
He was a Tibetan, a former priest of the forbidden temple of Po Yun Kwan, from which the cloth of the Fire-God had been stolen!
And yet there was the kite, the death of Corlin’s wife and the strange effect on the life of the daughter, Fay. Perhaps it was fever that caused these things. But I do not think so.
Canal
At the top of the stairs Kramer stood still a long moment, listening. The road behind him was empty and desolate, stretching off into the red-rimmed horizon like a crayon streak on a piece of cardboard. Up above in the dry motionless air a lone Kiloto wheeled and soared, searching for prey. There was no sign of pursuit.
Mentally Kramer checked over his equipment: canteen, food concentrate envelope, sand mask, and most precious of all, the map. The official Martian Cartographic Folio 654, direct from its glass case in the FaGanda Bureau of Standards. The map still lay in its oilskin pouch, and the archaic printing thrilled him as he stared down upon it.
It was Monday morning, 11:14 Earth time; he checked with his watch. In exactly eleven days, assuming all went well, he should be entering Canal 28 Northwest and coming down the home-stretch. After that it would be easy. His forged passports would give him easy access to the Crater City port. The regular Earth Express would take off at high noon. Not even Blanchard would suspect him of escaping in this direction. Since Kramer had first conceived the plan a month ago, he had studied each detail, accounted for each contingency, and everything had worked like clockwork.
He began to descend the steps, absently counting them as he went down: fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight. Level One. Here the first sign, almost illegible from age, met his gaze:
IT IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN
TO ENTER THESE CANALS
BY ORDER OF
ZARA
It seemed strange seeing that name, Zara, there out of a history book. The last Martian monarchy had passed on into the limbo ages ago. And Kramer remembered that even during the last three—or was it four?—dynasties the canals had been closed.
One twenty-eight, one twenty-nine. Third, fourth, fifth level. Kramer drew up before a massive door, fashioned of arelium steel. A second sign stood out mockingly in the light of his torch:
IT IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN . . .
Without hesitation he reached into his pocket and drew forth a key. He removed the royal seal with the utmost care, inserted the key in the lock and twisted. The door swung open slowly of its own accord.
Even then with virtual success just within his grasp, he did not forget himself. He replaced the seal in such a way that the closed door would show no signs of passage. Then he broke into a low laugh.
There it was—Canal Grand, the master artery that linked North Mars with South Mars, the single avenue that crossed the Void, and offered a possible means of escape. No Earth men, no living Martian had ever penetrated the Void and returned. Planes, expeditions, rocket ships had taken off time and time again, only to disappear without trace. In their wake superstition had flowered, rumor had multiplied, until today the Void stood, a chasm of isolation, effectually slicing the red planet into two parts.
Kramer strode boldly forward, warm and comfortable in his space suit and hextar helmet. For the first twenty yards alluvial drift impeded his progress, and he swore to himself as he thought of his early schooling that had taught him there was no wind on Mars.
Then he reached the hard-packed center of the canal, and the ground here was firm and level as a pavement.
The frowning walls, towering sheer on either side, were as oppressive as a tunnel at first. The geometric desolation fatigued the eye. But after he had gone a mile Kramer swung along rapidly, immune to these irritations.
Queer how things worked out in one’s life. A month ago he had been an ordinary salvage ratio clerk at the Metropolitan Power Unit in FaGanda. His life had been routine, with only a few petty thieveries and unimportant swindlings to break the monotony. Then, quite by accident, he had hit upon the plan.
The plan had as its nucleus the secret of the Void which had baffled mankind for so many years. In 3091 the historian, Stola, had written:
I am convinced that the great catastrophe which caused the complete dehydration of the canals and began the rapid decline of the early Martians under the monarchy is linked in some unexplainable way with that corridor which we know today as the Void.
We know of a certainty that Canal Grand was unquestionably the only passage which crossed that corridor even in those early times, and we know by spectroscopic analysis that somewhere along that canal lies a deposit of retnite, now catalogued as Chemical X. Since Chemical X is the most desired thing by Earthmen today, there is no doubt in my mind but that eventually the lode will be tapped and the mysteries of the Void explored.
Stola had written that, and he had been conservative. In the entire System, Kramer knew, there were but fourteen kilograms of retnite known to exist. That was reserved for the nine members of the Interplanetary Council and their elected successors.
But retnite was in reality nothing more than a drug, a mental stimulant which, when taken correctly, could amplify the thought processes of the brain a thousandfold. A retniter carried with ease, not only the heritage of his ancestors but viewed the panorama of life intelligently. A retniter, in other words, was a super intellect.
Kramer wanted that elixir. He wanted it because it would open the door for him to success. No more petty swindlings then, no more trickster schemes with constant fear of the police. He could tell Blanchard and the law to go to blazes.
Inside his helmet he pressed his chin against a stud, and automatically a Martian cheroot dropped out of a rack and slipped between his lips. A tiny heat unit swung over to ignite it, and the exhaust valve behind his neck increased its pulsations to expel the smoke. He walked on . . .
Kramer’s introduction to the plan had come about in an odd way. In a small curio shop in FaGanda he had purchased an old vase, marked with a mixture of curious hieroglyphics on one side and some doggerel Martian verse on the other. Now Kramer was no student of languages, but in order to quicken his wits he had frequently pored over early Martian.
He was astounded to discover that the hieroglyphics and the verse keyed the two languages and offered the first translation of the ancient parchments in the Bureau of Standards.
The rest was a matter of detail. Kramer had managed to hide in the gallery at night. Alone, behind locked doors, he had selected one folio of the hundred and twenty-six in the glass cases. It was that one, he knew, which held the secret of the Void.
There remained then but one thing to do. Hom Valla, the Martian philologist, must be removed. Hom Valla had announced only recently that, after years of study, he was finally on the verge of deciphering early Martian and the folios.
Kramer had taken his time. He waited until Hom Valla was known to be leaving on a trip up-country. Then he had entered his apartment, fired one shot with a heat gun and fed the body into the city’s refuse tubes.
Blanchard? Yes, Blanchard would probably couple the three details: the stolen folio, the death of Hom Valla, and Kramer’s disappearance. But it would take time, and during that time Kramer would be increasing the distance between himself and the law.
He began to study the canal as he paced along. Straight as a knife blade, it stretched before him to the vanishing point. The walls were sheer, dug out of the red rock by a means that so far had baffled archaeologists. Three-quarters of the way up he could see a series of darker serrated lines, and he knew these were the ancient water marks.
How many hundreds of explorers had started this way, hoping to penetrate the secret of the Void, only to disappear completely. And what was the Void? If it held retnite at its core, what power did it wield to entrap all trespassers?
The stolen folio in this respect had been oddly disappointing. It had charted the location of the lode, in such a way that only a person able to decipher ancient Martian could read it. It had mapped a route through the labyrinth of canals, but it had made no mention of the mystery that lay ahead.
At noon, by his Earth watch, Kramer halted for a rest. After a half hour he set off again, walking at that same mechanical pace that ate up the miles.
The red ditch faded out of his thoughts now. He saw the canals as they were of old, as the Chronicles had described them. Luxurious waterways clogged with commercial shipping, with tapestried gondolas and canopied barges. He saw the gigantic locks and the way stations where swashbuckling pilots drank genith and watched South Martian girls writhe and sway to the rhythm of the Ucatel drums.
It was at that moment that preceded the sudden advance of night that Kramer found himself rudely torn back to reality. He had kept his visa set turned on, and now a low magnetic hum told him that its finder was in operation. The vision plate above his eyes began to glow with a dull light.
