“But they made the same mistake as the people before the Great Fire made?” suggested Iimmi.
“Not exactly,” said the Priestess. “That is, they were not so stupid as to misuse the fire metal that ravaged the world so harshly before. History is cyclic, not repetitive. A new power was discovered that dwarfed the significance of the fire metal. It could do all that the fire metal could do, and more efficiently — destroy cities or warm chill huts in winter — but it could also work on men’s minds. They say that before the Great Fire, men wandered the streets of the cities terrified that flames might descend on them any moment and destroy them. They panicked, brought flimsy, useless contraptions to guard themselves from the fire.
“Geo, Iimmi, have you any idea how terrifying it would be to know that while you are walking the streets, at any moment, your mind might be snatched from you, raped, violated, and left broken in your own skull? Only three of these instruments were constructed. But the moment their existence was made known by a few fantastic demonstrations, the City of New Hope began the swerve down the arc of self-destruction. It lasted for a year and ended with the wreck you escaped from. During that year invasions were launched on the backward nations across the sea with whom, months before, there had been friendly trade. Civil wars broke out and internal struggles caused the invasions to fall back to the homeland. The instruments were lost, but not before the bird machines had even destroyed the City of New Hope itself. The house of the fire metal was broken open to release its death once more. For a hundred years after the end, say our records, the city flamed with light from the destroyed powerhouse. And mechanically, to this day, our instruments tell us, the lights along its elevated highways flare at sunset, as if dead hands were there to operate them. During the first hundred years more and more of our number were born blind because of the sinking fire in the city. At last we moved underground, but it was too late.” She rose from her seat. “And so you see, Hama destroyed himself. Today, loyal to Argo, are all the beasts of the air, of the land…”
“And of the waters,” concluded Iimmi.
She smiled again. “Again, not exactly. We have had some trouble with a certain race of aquatic creatures, as well as the ignorant ghouls. Right after the Great Fire, evolutionary processes were tremendously turned awry, and we believe this is how these creatures developed. For some reason we cannot control them. Perhaps their intelligence is too elemental even to respond to pain. But all the rest are loyal,” she said. “All.”
“What about the…the three instruments?” Geo asked. “What happened to them?”
The blind Priestess turned to him. “Your guess,” she said, smiling, “is as good as mine.” She turned and glided from the room.
When she left, Geo said, “Something is fishy.”
“But what is it?” asked Iimmi.
“For one thing,” said Geo, “we know there is a Temple of Hama. From the dream I would say that it’s just about the size and organization of this place.”
“Just how big is this place anyway?”
“Want to do some more exploring?”
“Sure. Do you think she does know about Hama but was just pretending?”
“Could be,” said Geo. They started off down another corridor. “That bit about going into men’s minds with the jewels…”
“It gives me the creeps.”
“It’s a creepy thing to watch,” said Geo. “Argo used it on Snake the first time we saw her. It just turns you into an automaton.”
“Then it really is our jewels she was talking about.”
Stairs cut a white tunnel in the wall before them, and they mounted, coming finally to another corridor. For the first time they saw doors in the wall. “Hey,” said Geo, “maybe one of these goes outside.”
“Fine,” said Iimmi. “This place is beginning to get to me.” He pushed open a door and stepped in. Except for the flowing white walls, it duplicated in miniature the basement of the New Edison building. Twin dynamos whirred and the walls were laced with pipes.
“Nothing in here,” said Iimmi.
They tried a door across the hall. In this room sat a white porcelain table and floor-to-ceiling cases of glittering instruments. “I bet this is the room your arm came off in,” Iimmi said.
“Probably.”
The next room was different. The glow was dimmer, and there was dust on the walls. Geo ran his finger over it and looked at the gray crescent left on the bleached flesh. “This looks a little more homey.”
“This is what you call homey?” Iimmi gestured toward the opposite wall. Two screens leaned from the face of a metal machine. A few dials and meters were set beneath each rounded rectangle of opaque glass. In front was a stand that held something like a set of binoculars and what looked like a pair of earmuffs.
“I bet this place hasn’t been used since before these girls went blind.”
“It looks it,” Iimmi said.
Geo stepped up to one of the screens, the one with the fewer dials on it, and turned a switch.
“What did you do that for?”
“Why not?” Suddenly a flickering of colored lights ran over the screen: swellings of blue, green, scarlets. They blinked. “That’s the first color I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
The colors grayed, dimmed, congealed into forms, and in a moment they were looking at a bare white room in which stood two barefoot young men. One was a dark Negro with pale hands. The other had an unruly shock of black hair and one arm.
Iimmi gestured: the figure on the screen gestured too. “That’s us!” Geo walked forward and the corresponding figure advanced on the screen. He flicked a dial and the figures exploded into colors and then focused again into complete whiteness. “What’s that?” asked Iimmi.
“We must be looking at a room with no people in it.” Geo flicked the dial again. When the screen focused, they were looking at the dining room. Now a hundred or more women sat at the long tables, each bending and raising her blind face over bowls of red soup. In one corner, empty, was the table at which they had eaten. “I bet we could look into every room in the place.” He switched the dial again. “Maybe we can find Urson and Snake.” Two more rooms, then the great temple hall formed on the screen, empty save for the statue of Argo kneeling. As the next room passed, Geo called out, “Wait a minute!”
“What is it?”
In this room stood three of the blind women. On one wall was a smaller screen similar to the one in their own room. The women, of course, were oblivious to the picture, but the face on the screen had stopped Geo.
One of the women had on an earmuff apparatus and was talking into a small metal rod that she carried with her as she paced.
But the face! “Don’t you recognize him?” demanded Geo.
“It’s Jordde!” exclaimed Iimmi.
“They must have gotten in contact with our ship and are arranging to send us back.”
“I wish I could hear what they’re saying,” said Iimmi.
Geo looked around and then picked up the metal earmuffs from the stand in front of the screen. “That’s what she seems to be listening through,” Geo said, referring to the Priestess in the picture. He fit them over his ears.