It seemed beyond dispute that this was true. The tales he had been told of the despicable zhaggua and their evil ways perhaps were sullied and distorted by the blind
fanaticism of men like the priest Dmu Dran, and by the cunning of such ambitious zealots as Zarouk, and by the greed of such as Houm. And those tales might not be true.
Why had not Valarda unleashed against them the immensely strong Stone Giants, to slay and maim the warriors?
Why had not the warriors of her own people manned the walls, to cut the desert raiders down with spear and dart and missile?
Why had not the winged serpents so much as inflicted a single wound upon the men when they harried them from the gate?
If this world was truly another Eden, then perchance its unknown and nameless god had issued forth a commandment which was to be obeyed by all of the living creatures of this world, including men—a commandment identical to another given voice by yet a different God from the cloud-wrapped heights of Sinai long ago—
Thou shalt not kill.
Ryker felt a cold horror growing in his guts. It was he alone had made it possible for these warriors to invade this gentle, idyllic Eden. He had given them the key to open those gates that should have been guarded by angels with flaming swords.
Oh, God, what had he done?
19. The Secret of Zhiam
Ryker awoke shortly before dawn, disturbed by something entering the tent. He sat up swiftly, reaching about him for a weapon. Then he relaxed, leaning back. By the flickering green nightlight of the small bronze pan of liquid fire he saw that it was the old Israeli scientist.
“You’re still awake, my boy?” asked the old man in his querulous voice. Ryker nodded, then looked closely at him. Herzog seemed like a man walking in his sleep-distracted, bemused, almost ecstatic.
“Are you all right, Doc?” he asked.
The old man looked at him with eyes filled with excitement.
“What’s with me?” he chuckled. “Ah, my boy, you should ask it. I have the proof now, all I need. Wonderful—incredible! You wouldn’t believe it!”
“What wouldn’t I believe?” grinned Ryker. The old man’s enthusiasm could be infectious at times. Ryker didn’t know very much about science, and cared little, but the way the scientist was carrying on was beginning to arouse his curiosity. He seemed to be repressing his emotions with difficulty, trembling with sheer delight.
“I know where we are—that’s all!” Herzog burst out.
Ryker blinked.
“All right, where are we?” he asked, as it was obviously expected of him.
Doc sat down, squatting tailor-fashion or a bit of rug one of the warriors had given them for their tent.
“You were thinking it was another dimension,” the old man began. “And I told you that it wasn’t, because the word doesn’t mean anything, not in that context, anyway—”
“Yeah,” said Ryker flatly. “I remember. Go on.”
“Oh, I guessed it from the very beginning! I had no proof, is all. Theories, sure; hypotheses, plenty. But evidence? Hard facts, data, these were what I needed. You see, a theory is nothing unless it covers the observed phenomena and accounts for all items of data—”
“Will you get to it,” groaned Ryker. “Save the lectures for the classroom, just out with it and let me get back to sleep!”
Doc looked apologetic.
“The stars,” he blurted. “The constellations were, well, twisted around, maybe, but I could still recognize them. You see, that meant we were still in our galaxy, still in our own immediate stellar neighborhood, in fact. Our system belongs to a—what do you call it in English, outcropping? No—peninsula? Well, whatever. It’s called the Orion Spur, and it sticks out of the Carina-Cygnus Arm of our galactic spiral like …”
Doc broke off, realizing that he was rambling on in the general direction of another digression. He frowned determinedly. “All right, all right! Here’s the gist of it. The constellations were distorted, but not distorted right. I mean, they weren’t angled around as if we were seeing them from a different direction, or anything like that. They looked inside out, and the only way I could explain that was with one single assumption. But it was even more fantastic, the assumption, you see, than the idea that by going through the door we had somehow been transported to another planet somewhere in ‘near space.’ So I looked around, and believe me, I kept my eyes open!”
Ryker opened his mouth, weary of this roundabout way of getting to the point. Doc raised his hand and hastened to it.
“The cats,” he breathed faintly. “There were cats like that back on Mars once, we know, from fossils. In fact, some authorities consider it at least possible that the Martian natives evolved from a common feline ancestry, just like you and I, my boy, evolved from a simian ancestor. But there are no apes on Mars, and nothing like apes, and there never have been.”
He grinned excitedly, his face lighting up with enthusiasm.
“And then, those trees,” he burbled. “Well, there used to be trees of some sort back on Mars, too, and again we know this from the fossil record.”
An uncanny presentiment began to make Ryker’s nape hairs lift, and the skin creep on his forearms.
“Doc, what are you trying to say?” he breathed.
“And the vegetation is all blue! Just like it is on Mars, even today! Oh, biochemists worked out the formula for photosynthesis on Mars way back when. With the kind of sunlight that reaches Mars, blue vegetation canphotosynthesize just as well as green does back where you and I come from. You know? But trees—and those cats—and air this warm and humid, and all the free water in those lakes—Mars hasn’t had any of these things in millions and millions of years! So that was the problem I sort of had to solve. Oh, I knew the answer already, by sheer intuition; but the solution to the problem was even more fantastic than the problem itself, if you know what I mean. But I put the facts together, and they fit—”
“Where—”
“So, where are we, you ask?” The aged scientist beamed upon him fondly. “On Mars, my boy, where else?”
“But—” began Ryker, exasperatedly.
“The important question isn’t really where,” finished Doc. “It’s—when!”
Ryker blinked at him dazedly.
“You mean, when we stepped through the Door to Zhiam, we didn’t travel through space at all, but through—time?”
Herzog nodded affably.
Ryker looked at him, incredulously. But a dawning comprehension filled his mind. Suddenly, all sorts of curious facts and observations, scraps and bits and pieces, began to fall together. And they made a kind of sense.
The peculiar expression on the faces of Valarda and Melandron when they looked for the first time upon the Lost City—that expression of mingled sorrow and horror. The city had been fresh and new when last they had seen it—they or their ancestors, that is—now it was crumbling into ruin.
The unknown language in which they had at times conversed—an obsolete variant of the modern Tongue, elsewhere but in Zhiam forgotten for ages.
The golden eyes of the girl—strange color that has not been seen in the eyes of Martians for many ages.
The very name of the old man, Melandron, like something out of one of the ancient sagas.