This time there was no doubt about it. The thought sequences did not originate within his own brain, but were somehow projected into his mind from an exterior source. The thought was frightening—terrifying.
Do not fear me, I mean you no harm for all that you intend to dissect me as if I were a crawling worm and not a being as intelligent and as human as yourself. And here Kalistus observed a very human smile on the lipless mouth of the winged creature. The expression in the sad purple eyes was one of gentle sympathy.
Kalistus sprang to his feet, shaken with the violence of his emotions, and deliberately turned away from those sad, thoughtful purple eyes that seemed to probe into his heart as easily as they probed into the depths of his mind. With shaking fingers he poured a clear green fluid into a small metal cup from a decanter and drank the heady liquid in a single gulp.
“Is it possible that one of my rivals, jealous of my eminence and favor with the Council, has perfected a mental communicator and seeks by its use to drive me mad?” he muttered to himself. His limbs were trembling and his brow dewed with globules of cold perspiration. He felt the uncanny pressure of unseen eyes and whirled with a startled cry, to meet again the sympathetic gaze of the gaunt, winged creature, which shook its head.
There are none present but you and I, nor are you being subjected to the assault of a cunning rival. I am Zarqa the Kalood, the last of an ancient race of Winged Men who ruled this planet in remote, prehistoric times before the evolution of other men. When the riders of your hunting hawks took captive my wingless friends and myself, we were en route to one of the cities of the wingless people in a flying machine invented ages ago by my kind, who conquered the skies and built such aerial metropolises as this very city of Calidar.
“No!” Kalistus cried, as if to silence by the vehemence of his retort the quiet inward voice that threatened his reason. The Winged Man continued to regard him with thoughtful and sympathetic eyes.
Like myself, the wingless people upon which you so mercilessly experiment are human beings—in every way as human as you, Kalistus, or your compatriot, Ralidux, came the cool, alien thoughts which intruded upon the whirling chaos of his dazed mind. Kalistus shook his head violently, as if to clear his wits.
“You lie! What you say is madness! You are not remotely human, and the wingless creatures taken with you are squalid and mindless animals. Humans are erect, wingless bipeds with silver eyes, hairless pates, and black skins, who dwell aloft in the Flying Cities, of which Calidar is but one of several. Intelligent races do not exist in The World Below—it is a howling wilderness wherein dwell naught but savage beasts. But… why am I answering what can only be the seething thoughts of an insane brain?” Kalistus broke off bewilderedly.
To be human is not a specific term of biology, but a measure of the intelligence of a being, and of its affection and concern for other beings, came the quiet telepathic intrusion once again. I am human, for I love my friends and feel sympathy for you in your torment. I am, therefore, as human as you, despite the trivial differences in the design of our bodies. My comrades are human, as well, and you must note that they differ from you only in the hue of skin and eyes, and in the matter of hirsute adornment. But neither humanity nor sentience may be defined by such trivia as the color of skin; surely you are sufficiently intelligent to grasp that obvious fact.
Kalistus again turned away and strode nervously the length of the laboratory. At the portal, he hesitated as if undecided.
Your race persistently clings to the belief that you are the only intelligent creatures to inhabit the planet. But you are wrong. The wingless creatures dwell in cities not particularly less civilized or less beautiful than this, although with a lower order of technology. You cannot deny the possibility of this information by the reiteration of dogma set down by the Council of Science, for neither you nor the Council have ever bothered to explore The World Below; had you done so, even out of simple curiosity, you would have discovered, ensconced in the branches of the giant trees, intricate and splendid cities of glittering crystals, the homes of a race no less human and no less intelligent, than your own… and considerably more civilized, in that they would shrink in horror from the very thought of conducting scientific experiments upon other human beings…
Kalistus touched the control stud. The door panel slid open. He staggered into the next room, as the panel slid shut behind him.
The insidious mental whisperings of an alien mind ceased.
The following day Kalistus found excuses to avoid his laboratory. The winged creature, of course, was safely penned up and the mechanism of the cage automatically supplied sufficiencies of food and drink. Kalistus debated with himself at length that day, while wandering aimlessly through the public ways, strolling in the central gardens, and seated in a theater which projected intricate colored lights delicately attuned to the fluctuations in tone of a dry, mathematical music.
At the first signs of aberration, the Skymen of Calidar were supposed to report their condition to a system of thought-police employed by the Council to maintain order. The obligatory code of behavior was deeply ingrained in the Calidarians from birth. Kalistus, however, managed to restrain himself from dialing the thought-police due to the peculiar nature of his aberration, which seemed artificially imposed from without, rather than caused by disturbances from within. He had not entirely ruled out the possibilities of a mental attack launched against him by a jealous scientific rival.
When at length he did reenter the laboratory, he found the Winged Man seated in precisely the same position he had left him in, and the food and water apparently untouched.
Kalistus did not approach Zarqa’s cage until he had generated through all six sides of the laboratory an electrical interference barrier precisely tuned to the wavelengths of human thought. This would seem to render impossible any mental interference with his brain from an external source.
As he approached the cage, however, the mental communications resumed, precisely as before.
In the interval since our last conversation, I have conceived of several tests to which you may subject me in order to prove to yourself that I am indeed an intelligent being, and that the telepathic communication you are experiencing truly comes from my own brain and not that of some remote enemy. Give me a drawing pad and a writing implement and I will, at your request, draw geometric forms, simple or complex. Come! Use the intelligence upon which you so esteem your race.
His face haggard, his brilliant eyes dull and haunted, Kalistus reached with numb fingers for the note pad on his desk and took up the indelible stylus beside it and, without conscious volition, slid them between the bars of the cage into the waiting hands of Zarqa the Kalood.
Clyon, senior savant of the immortality experiments, had upon several occasions secretly observed the actions of his junior, the youth Ralidux. The system of spy rays used for this unsuspected scrutiny employed vision crystals embedded in the ceiling fixtures of each chamber in the apartments assigned to the younger Skyman. Similar crystals were to be found in every residence in the citadel, save in those of savants superior to Clyon’s degree. In this manner the Council of Science kept under continuous scrutiny, when necessary, those scholars suspected of heretical thought or antisocial behavior. Only the hereditary monarch, a listless youth named Thallius, the nobles of his party, and those who adhered to a rival faction led by one Prince Pallicrates, were immune to this secret scrutiny.