The peculiar tenor of the questions Ralidux had asked of Clyon during their brief communication a day or two earlier had aroused suspicions in the mind of the older savant. Thus, through the secret spy rays, he observed as Ralidux selected from the central pens two specimens, one male and the other female, and penned them within his laboratory. What he did with them could not be easily ascertained, for the cubicle in which they were penned was constructed of a substance entirely opaque to light waves and to the subtler frequencies of the vision crystals.
Whatever the nature of his experiments, Ralidux could not be caught in any suspicious activities, so, consigning the younger sage to the scrutiny of one of his agents, Clyon thought of the companion of Ralidux one Kalistus, who shared with the other responsibility for the L-sequence of immortality experiments.
It was not impossible that the heresy, if heresy it indeed proved to be, had spread to Kalistus as well thus infecting both. As soon as this thought occurred to Clyon, the old man attuned his spy-ray equipment to the frequency of the crystals embedded in the ceiling of the apartments of Kalistus and waited for the swirling mists to clear in the vision screen. When they did he watched as Kalistus busied about with some idle business whose nature Clyon did not understand.
The young savant was seated at his desk staring with blank, expressionless features and horror-filled eyes at several sheets of tablet paper embossed with peculiar geometric designs in a neat, careful hand. Increasing the magnifying power of his dial settings, Clyon narrowly scrutinized these geometrical designs, alert for the taint of heresy.
However, they were, or seemed to be, not only harmless but meaningless as well. Upon one sheet had been carefully drawn a triangle, a square, a circle, an ellipse, a cube, and a cone, and other sheets contained drawings of more complex forms such as a hexagon, a parallelogram, an octagon, a pentagon, and suchlike. Clyon could find in these drawings nothing which should warrant the blank-eyed horror clearly visible in the drawn features of Kalistus.
He did not observe the Kalood in its cell, or if he did, he thought nothing of it.
He resolved to bide his time.
Assigning a second agent to the scrutiny of the apartments of Kalistus, he robed himself in glittering stuff and departed for a social function in the palace of Prince Pallicrates, to whose faction he belonged.
It occurred to Clyon that both Ralidux and Kalistus were members of the faction loyal to Prince Thallius, the reigning monarch of Calidar, whose enemy was his own master, Pallicrates.
And it did not fail to occur to him that, should he be so fortunate as to discover—either Ralidux or Kalistusor both—tainted with heresy and experimenting in defiance of approved doctrine, to such an extent that the Council of Science would feet it necessary to discredit or remove the young men, it would be a slight blow to the prestige of the Thallian loyalists, while restoring control of the L-sequence to the Pallicratians.
It looked promising.
Waiting for his floating bubble-car to arrive at the landing of his residence, Clyon fussily adjusted the folds of his garment, smiling slightly to himself, humming a little tune.
Chapter 16
The Cunning of Clyon
That night Ralidux tossed and turned feverishly on his silken couch, unable to attain the serenity needful for slumber. The seductive curves of Arjala’s body haunted his dreams when at length the imbibing of a soporific succeeded in inducing the sleep he seemed elsewise unable to find.
He awoke listless and weary, with a headache and little appetite. Both conditions were alien to him, and the cause of both he correctly ascribed to the strange influence of Arjala.
During the day he spied many times upon the two subjects. They behaved like rational creatures, the male tending to and comforting the fears of the female. They conversed in low tones, or at least exchanged the meaningless jabber they made in perverse imitation of human speech. And, again, like rational creatures and in nowise like the natural behavior of beasts, they shared the food and drink supplied by the automatic mechanism of the cubicle, without quarreling over it.
But that was absurd, of course, for they were beast-creatures brought here from The World Below, and not rational creatures at all.
Recalling the circumstances of their capture reminded Ralidux that, when seized, they had been nesting in something which seemed to resemble a man-made machine. He read again the report of the captain of the zawkaw expedition and found his imagination excited in a new direction. For the description of the machine tallied in considerable detail to the sky-sleds employed by the Skymen of Calidar in a remote epoch. A specimen or two of the ingenious flying machine might be found in the Calidarian museum in the central citadel; Ralidux vaguely recalled that the secret of powering the aerial vehicles had been lost ages ago, and the last mechanism of this kind to have possessed the ability of flight had become exhausted a millennia before.
He resolved to examine the artifact at once. If it was truly a human antiquity, even if powerless, it would be an interesting discovery. And, by some odd chance, should it still possess the power of flight, it would be a famous discovery and would vastly enhance his own prestige and that of his faction, the Thallian.
Also it would take his mind off the peculiarly fascinating female…
The zawkaw from his stables was, by a lucky chance, one of those who had been employed in the original capture, and thus the hunting hawk, like all his quite intelligent kind, easily found its way back to the branch on which the Calidarian expedition had captured Niamh, Arjala, Janchan, and Zarqa the Kalood days before.
Dismounting, Ralidux approached the sky-sled, his excitement mounting. He pushed aside the heavy golden leaves to obtain a clear view of the craft. Instead he got a shock of surprise that momentarily rendered him speechless.
For there stood his compatriot, Kalistus, examining the very craft Ralidux had come here to discover.
In his surprise he gave voice to an involuntary cry. Hearing it, Kalistus glanced about, spied the astounded Ralidux, and froze in an identical pose of astonishment.
The two Calidarians stared at each other without speaking for a moment. The same suspicion passed through the mind of each—that is, that the other was a secret member of the rival Pallicratian faction, here to execute a coup—but, of course, this was not true.
Kalistus, driven by the haunting dread that the words of Zarqa were truth, had come here to ascertain for himself the veracity of the Winged Man’s statement that the sky-sled was operational. But he could not imagine what had possessed his comrade, Ralidux, to the same mission, and puzzled over his motive.
“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Kalistus.
“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Ralidux, almost in the same breath.
“I… became curious over Captain Plycidus’ report on the capture of the recent beast-creatures… the nest in which they were discovered seemed to resemble the antique sky-sleds used by our ancestors.”
“Much the same in my case.”
The two beautiful black men stood silent, eyeing each other with vestigial suspicion, for a moment unable to think of anything else to say. Each could not help noticing that the other looked drawn and haggard.
But neither guessed the reason for the other’s distraught condition.
Together they began to examine the sky-sled. And, of course, they discovered it to be operable still.
The mighty room was composed entirely of mirrors, floor, circular walls, domed ceiling. It was lit by enormous, wan globes of light which floated hither and thither, like bubbles of luminescence drifting on the breeze. The lords and princelings of the Calidarian Skymen, attired and jeweled in exquisite taste, strolled about gossiping, exchanging quips, listening to the muted songs of minstrels, sampling essences.