“The—the Kaloodha?” I repeated. The golden creature nodded soberly.
The Kaloodha—the Flying Ones. We preceded mankind on this planet by a million years, but destroyed ourselves through our own unbridled folly. I, Zarqa, am the last living member of my species.
“Why does the science magician hold you prisoner in this cage of light?” I asked. The Winged One regarded me sadly.
So that he may wring from me by his torments the secrets of my vanished people, he replied. Already, of the Seven Savants, he has become first in his mastery of the ancient wisdom—and all, all, through my unwilling aid.
At last I knew the secret of Sarchimus the Wise! An actual member of the race which had built the City of Sotaspra was the ultimate source of his achievements in resurrecting the lost science of the Kaloodha!
And I had learned, as well, that six other searchers after the science magic of the Sotasprans shared the Dead City with him. Something of this I had long suspected, and from a remark which Sarchimus had let slip the night before, I had gained unsuspected further proof of my feeling. For I had often noticed, while staring out over the ruined metropolis from one of the balcony-like ornamental belvederes, that while most of the crystalline structures were dead and black and lusterless, a few buildings among them yet gleamed with vital color and living light, as did the Pylon of Sarchimus. Among these were an Opal Spire, a White Dome, and an Azure Minaret. Zarqa informed me that the savants who resided in these revitalized structures were named Hoom, Sarpasht, and Karoeth. These were the chief among the six rivals of Sarchimus the Wise, and of them all, it was Hoom of the Opal Spire who was the most dangerous and the most to be feared. “Room of the Many Eyes,” he was called; and it was said that little which occurred within the precincts of the Dead City of Sotaspra escaped his cunning notice.
The clue that Sarchimus had let slip, by the way, was that the crystal buildings fed on energy; thus, a building still luminous with color, and thus still powered, was most likely to be the residence of another savant such as Sarchimus himself.
Intrigued, I questioned Zarqa at length. I was puzzled as to how it had come to pass that he was the prisoner of the science magician—and, for that matter, how he still came to be living when the rest of his kind had perished from the hybrid predators a million years before. His answer was that, toward the final extinction of their race, the great brains of the Kaloodha had achieved a method of virtual immortality, whereby they hoped to prolong their lives for untold future ages. This recipe, which Zarqa referred to as the “Elixir of Light,” proved dangerous and erratic, and had at times the unexpected side effect of sterilizing males of the race, while it had no effect of any kind on the Kaloodha females. The race thus died out rapidly, not only due to the attack of the hideous plant-animal monstrosities bred, by the uncontrolled radiation factor, but because the males, immortal and sterile, outlived the females. Zarqa himself was the final survivor of his kind, and was more than a million years old. He had dwelt here in the Scarlet Pylon, alone with his memories amid the ruins of his people, until the coming of Sarchimus, who discovered him during a period of slumber or aestivation, when he was virtually helpless. I gathered that, to relieve the boredom and monotony of his unending existence, the Winged One periodically fell into a self-induced state akin to hibernation, during which he slept a century or a millennium by.
Further questioning revealed the secret of the amazing white stone statues I had marveled over during my early exploration of the tower. A vital factor in the composition of the Elixir was a certain rare ingredient whose absence causes petrification rather than immortality. Those of the Kaloodha who had unwisely experimented with the incomplete formula were turned to eternal stone!
And thus I became that most miserable of all living beings, the last of my own kind, Zarqa concluded his story. I am the Last Kalood, and when at length I perish from the mistreatment or the neglect of Sarchimus, then is my glorious race truly extinct. But Sarchimus hopes to doom himself to a similar fate, although he understands it not. For he strives to wring from me the recipe for the Elixir of Light, whereby he will become as immortal as I. Thus far I have resisted his importunities as best I could, but for seven and seventy days now he has denied me the golden mead which is the nutriment upon which my kind subsist, and I am greatly weakened and fear I cannot for very long withstand his urgings.
“How long can the Kaloodha survive without this mead?” I asked, and he replied that after one hundred days of total deprivation a Kalood was usually too weakened and sunken in apathy to respond favorably to the remarkable vivifying powers of the nutritive substance.
The Kaloodha, incidentally, had found they required the golden mead with all the fervor of addiction. This, too, was an unsuspected side effect of the immortality process; prior to their immortalization they had subsisted upon the usual varieties of nutriment enjoyed by ordinary humans—hence, of course, the supplies of perfectly preserved foodstuffs available on every tier, upon which Sarchimus and I had been dining.
It will be an ill service to the folk of the world, to loose upon them a Sarchimus made immortal, he added sadly. Already has he forced from me many secrets of weaponry and stealth and the dealing of death at a distance. But recently I have divulged the mode by which metal automatons may be vitalized and directed by a single will; from such he can compose an invulnerable army of robots to overrun the tree cities and to bring all nations of your kind under his dominance.
The prospect was horrifying, and the hairs prickled on my neck at the thought that had I not ventured to violate the sanctity of those apartments sealed by the Scarlet Hand I would have gone all-unknowing of the terrible menace Sarchimus posed to the World of the Green Star.
But now you must go quickly, and return to those apartments wherein you are permitted to reside, the mental voice whispered. For I detect the approach of the magnetic flux, and deduce that Sarchimus is returning from his mission.
I bid the sad-eyed Kalood farewell, promising to aid him if I could, and replaced the draperies concealing the force-prison in which the science magician held captive the million-year-old Winged Man.
Chapter 9
HOOM OF THE MANY EYES
The day which followed, and the day thereafter, Sarchimus was busied in those workrooms and chambers which adjoined the dark hall wherein the gaunt, golden Kalood was imprisoned in a cubicle of intangible energy, so I had no further opportunity to converse with the sad-eyed creature I pitied and whom I had already begun to think of as a potential friend and unexpected ally.
It would seem that what Zarqa had told me was no less than the truth itself. For Sarchimus was engaged in energizing the automatons whereof the Winged Man had spoken. Tall, ungainly things of sparkling brass with featureless visors for faces they were; and the metal automaton that came to clanking life under the hands of Sarchimus was only the first of many. The thing stood seven feet tall, its hands great spiked mauls, and it looked like nothing more than a suit of medieval armor brought to life. Sarchimus paraded the metal monstrosity before me, and I could not repress a shudder of revulsion which he doubtless mistook for superstitious terror.
On the third day after my conversation with the Kalood, there came an unexpected break in the monotony of my internment in the Scarlet Pylon. It was not the first time that Sarchimus had sent me on an errand, but it was the first errand that took me outside of the fortress tower. The goal of my errand was a supply of miniature energy crystals which were concealed in a vault beneath one of the buildings of the city, a trilobed dome which Sarchimus described to me in such minute detail that I could not possibly mistake it. The crystals he required for the vitalization of further automatons, since those crystals already in his store proved too large to fit the mountings.