The Valley of the Flame Page 4

  Arrogance clothed Parror like a garment. He was in his own environment. He was regally confident. Raft had an uncomfortable realization of his own awkwardness and crudity and, from the mockery in the velvety black eyes, he knew that Parror shared the thought.

  Parror lifted his lip in a fastidious smile.

  "You were not needed here," he said, in the Indio dialect. "But perhaps, after all, I can find a use for you. Yes, I think I can."

  "We may, Parror," Janissa murmured, and for an instant unsheathed swords seemed to flash between the two.

  "Listen, Pereira or whatever you call yourself, we're going to have a talk," Raft said angrily. "Now. It'll be fast talking, too."

  "It will?" Parror murmured, and moved the silver whip jingling in his hand.

  "Where's Craddock? What did you do to him?"

  "I did nothing. I showed him a certain mirror. Through it he saw—well, I do not know what he saw. But he was tranced."

  "Wake him up. Take me to him."

  "He is awake now."

  "He'd better be," Raft said coldly, his eye on Parror's whip and his fingers touching a cool gun-butt. "You killed da Fonseca with this same funny business, didn't you?"

  "Killed him? The mirror is mine. I lent it to him and took it back."

  "Yours?" Janissa breathed.

  * * *

  Parror ignored her. "What happened after that is no concern of mine. I had no further use for da Fonseca. And his tongue might have been a danger."

  Sudden rage flooded Raft. The bearded man's arrogance, his indifference, even the subtle wrongness he could not put a name to made all the tension of the past three weeks crystallize into a hot fury. A bullet was not enough. Raft wanted to use his hands.

  "You bicho!" he snarled. "If Craddock dies I'll break your filthy neck. Take me to him!"

  He lunged forward and seized Parror's shoulder, feeling a savage delight in coming to grips with the man at last.

  He knew judo. He was well-muscled and agile. But he did not expect Parror to—explode.

  It was as if the handsome bearded face vanished and a demon glared out through the flesh and bone of the features. In that instant of utter, inhuman rage Raft saw the lips flatten away from Parror's teeth in a tigerish snarl, and he hissed shockingly as he struggled to tear free. Raft felt the smooth surge of muscles, and the power in them was shocking too, out of all proportion to that sleek, long-limbed slenderness. There was a moment of straining conflict.

  Behind him, above the roaring in his ears, Raft heard Janissa's voice.

  "Brian! Let him go—quick!"

  The desperate urgency of her tone made Raft respond.

  Shaken, a little dazed by his own anger and by the sudden, explosive violence it had roused, he released Parror. He felt oddly dazzled. He had never seen any human being, sane or mad, in the grip of a fury as sudden or as demoniac as Parror's.

  There was another thing, too. The closeness of the grip had revealed a new, totally unexpected feature. Under the muscular arch of Parror's chest Raft had felt a steady throbbing that was unmistakable.

  And yet—back in the base hospital—the man had had no heartbeat!

  Parror drew back, shook himself, relaxed into an imperturbable dignity. Miraculously, the insane fury was gone as suddenly as it had been roused.

  "You must not touch those of our race in such a way, Brian," Janissa said softly. "If you must kill, then kill. But not maul."

  Raft's own voice sounded strange to him.

  "What is your race?" he asked, and his questioning gaze moved from the girl's demure face to the man's enigmatic dark eyes.

  Parror said nothing. He only smiled, a long, slow, infinitely proud smile. And Raft read the answer. He had been seeing it more and more clearly every moment that passed, in every smooth, flowing motion of his body, even in his insane, inhuman fury at being touched. Inhuman indeed. Raft remembered what Parror had said in the hospital.

  "I passed your ancestors, chattering and scratching themselves in the trees. And I passed my ancestors, too."

  Yes, Raft knew now that he had passed them in the jungle unseeing, many times. They had gone silently by in the underbrush, on great padding feet, the shadows of the forest gliding across the shadowy markings of their bodies. He had heard their roaring in the dark, and seen their lambent eyes in the firelight.

  He thought he knew, now, what race Parror's was. And Janissa's.

  Not human. They came from a different stock. As a physician who had done biological and anthropological work, Raft knew that the incredible thing was not theoretically impossible. Evolution is not rigid. It was an accident that had made man the dominant, intelligent race. Accident, and the specialization of opposing thumbs.

  Our ancestors were simian, arboreal, using those flexible hands to build the foundations of civilization. But in a different setup, the ruling race might have descended from dogs or reptiles or cats.

  Cats.

  It struck Raft suddenly, and he was shocked by the realization, that of all animals there is, except for the rodents who do not use it, only one which shows signs of developing an opposing thumb. The domestic cat does occasionally have an extra toe on each forefoot. An opposing toe.

  The owner names it Mittens or Boxer and thinks no more about the matter. But given a little flexibility in that extra member, and given time and a favorable environment, such as this secret world of Paititi he did not yet know, what miracles might now develop!

  * * *

  Feline stock. That, perhaps, explained a great deal, but it did not clear up the entire mystery by any means. Raft still had no idea of the connection between Parror and Dan Craddock, nor exactly what was the lens-mirror that had killed da Fonseca. There were many other problems as well. Too many.

  He noticed a tenseness ripple through Janissa, as though she had bristled. The word sprang unbidden into his mind. Almost simultaneously, he caught a distant noise, the tramp of feet, the ringing of metal upon metal.

  Parror did not seem surprised. He turned toward the translucent door, and shadows loomed against the pale panel. There was a knock.

  "Parror?" Janissa said. Her voice held a question.

  He spoke to her briefly in the tongue Raft did not understand. She looked quickly toward Raft. Her eyes grew blank. A veil of demure withdrawal dropped down upon her. Suddenly, with a smooth, lithe motion, she was on her feet and vanishing among the trees beyond the arched portal.

  Parror called a command. The oval swept up and vanished. Across that threshold, silhouettes against faint light, came men. Men?

  They wore close-fitting chain-mail, very finely meshed. Glittering caps of tiny metal links, interwoven into designs, protected their heads. There were ten of them, and each had at his belt a thin, bare blade like a rapier.

  They had the same mingled strength and delicacy of features that marked Parror, the same lithe, flowing agility. The taint of the tiger was in the way they moved, and the way their slanted eyes glowed intently on Raft.

  Parror had stepped back, with a little shrug, and the ten men, without pausing, closed in on Raft. He realized his danger, though none of them had drawn a sword. He sprang toward the wall where his rifle leaned, saw that he would be intercepted, and snatched out his revolver.

  Thin, wiry metal burned like a hot brand about his wrist. Parror had lashed out with his whip. The gun spun from Raft's grip. He felt the onrush of charging bodies, but, curiously, none of the soldiers touched him.

  The shining rapiers were out, flickering, gleaming, weaving a deadly mesh all around him. Up and down, feinting, dancing, the steel sang, and Raft drew back, respecting the menace of those glittering swords. He swung toward Parror, but the bearded man had retreated and stood by the open archway, watching alertly.

  "He speaks the Indio?" a deep voice asked.

  Parror nodded. A soldier with a bronzed, scarred face gestured toward Raft.

  "Will you come with us peacefully?"

  "Where?" Raft countered.

>   "To the Great Lord."

  "So you're not the big shot around here," Raft said to Parror. "Okay, I'll play it that way. Maybe it won't turn out exactly as you expect."

  Parror smiled. "I said I thought I could find a use for you," he murmured in Portuguese. Then he relapsed into the cryptic tongue of the cat-people, and the scarred soldier asked a quick question. Parror's answer seemed to be satisfactory, for the man lowered his rapier.

  "Well, Craddock, will you come?" The guard looked at Raft and spoke in Indio.

  Craddock? Raft started to answer but Parror cut him off. There was another quick, enigmatic exchange.

  Raft interrupted.

  "My name's not Craddock. I'm Brian Raft, and I came here after Craddock. That man—" He pointed at Parror "—kidnapped him."

  "I'm sorry," Parror said. "Such a trick won't work, and I cannot help you now. The Great Lord rules here. You must talk to him. Best to go with Vann."

  Vann, the scarred soldier, grunted.

  "He's right. Lies will not save you. Come! As for you, Parror…"

  He spat out a few words Raft could not understand. Parror's eyes narrowed, but he made no reply.

  A point pricked Raft's back. With a longing glance toward his fallen gun, now, with rifle and rucksack, in the hands of the soldiers, he moved unwillingly forward. Over his shoulder he looked hard at Parror.

  "I'll be back," he said, a world of promise in his tone.

  Then he stepped through the oval portal and was in Paititi.

  CHAPTER V.

  VALLEY OF WONDERS

  AGAIN, AND EVER after that, he was conscious of the indefinable strangeness about the lost land that set it apart from any other of which he had heard. Raft had read tales of hidden civilizations, of Atlantis, Lemuria, and fantastic survivals from the past.

  But in Paititi he found nothing of such arabesques—no jewel-city set down on an uncharted sea, no isolated world cut off from the earth outside. Nevertheless Paititi was as secret, as isolated, as if it had been on another planet.

  It was too alive to be regarded as anything but a vivid, vital reality. Mixed with mat tremendous vitality which pulsed through Paititi was the strangeness that hung like an intangible veil between earth and sky, the thing that had made mis secret valley a place blessed and cursed as no spot on earth ever had before been.

  Something had leaned down and touched the soil of Paititi, the trees of Paititi, the very air that breathed through alien leaves, and there had come a change. It was as though the touch of that unearthly thing had altered all that dwelt here, changing and transmuting until what remained was different.

  It was a valley, probably a meteoric one, Raft thought, remembering that fifty-mile-wide circle of jungle he had seen from above. But it was well camouflaged. No earthly trees could have fulfilled that task, and no earthly trees grew here. Looking out across that dim twilit land, he was reminded of the columnar pillars that had marched across the hall where the invisible tube ended. Pillars of Karnak—but dwarfed by comparison with these trees that might have upheld the sky itself.

  Yggdrasil is the tree of life which Norsemen say supports the world.

  Only the largest California redwoods could have approached their sheer magnitude. For each one, in diameter, was as thick as a city block is long. They grew at irregular intervals, a half-mile or more apart, and they towered up to a luminous green ceiling which was incredibly far above. A tree five miles high!

  Up they plunged into that green sky, and down into the depths those vast columns fell, like arrows of titan gods deeply embedded in the earth.

  Their roots, Raft thought, might tap the very roof of Hell. Without branches, smooth and straight, they grew until, at their tops, they burst into a rank lushness of green.

  Yet that green vault was translucent. At one point, almost directly overhead, an emerald brilliance told of the noonday tropic sun. But in the valley itself hung a clear, cool dawnlight that hid nothing.

  Transparent as the air was, the trees themselves made a barrier. Raft could see a curving arch winding down from where he stood, fifty yards or more to a path that disappeared into that mighty forest. From far away came a very low, scarcely audible rumble, almost below the threshold of hearing.

  That was all. Except that Vann tilted back his head and stared up questioningly. Raft followed his example.

  Behind him were smooth walls and towers, the bulk of Parror's palace that jutted out from the base of a rock cliff, an escarpment which swept up and up till it vanished amid the ceiling of green. And dropping toward them with nightmare slowness was a cloud of rubble and stone.

  "It's only a landslide," Vann said casually. He pushed Raft forward. "There's no danger."

  "No danger!"

  "Of course not." The soldier was surprised. "Surely you know why."

  Again Raft looked up. The avalanche was perceptibly nearer, but by no means as close as it should normally have been. A great boulder struck a ledge, bounded out, and Raft fixed his gaze upon it.

  It fell slowly—slowly!

  It drifted down, revolving gently as it fell, floating out in an arc that ended briefly at one of the castle's turrets. It rebounded, doing no harm to the structure that Raft could see. It dropped past him, so sluggishly that he could make out every detail of its craggy surface, and embedded itself in the ground below.

  * * *

  That boulder had not been featherlight. Yet it had floated down as slowly as any feather.

  "Move, Craddock," Vann said, and pushed Raft away from a watermelon-sized rock that struck the ramp and bounded away gently. The other soldiers, looking up, shifted casually to avoid the falling stones. Raft, utterly dumbfounded, stared up.

  "I thought it would wreck the castle," he said.

  "No. The ones who built here built for an eternity," Vann told him. "Not our race, but they were very great once."

  "What the devil made those rocks fall so slowly?"

  The soldier shrugged.

  "They fell faster now than in the days of our fathers. But they are still not dangerous. Only living things can harm one of us. Now we've talked enough. Come."

  He took Raft's arm firmly and led him down the aerial pathway. The soldiers followed, their arms clinking softly, mesh-armor murmuring metallically against steel blades.

  Yes, Raft thought, they had talked enough. Or else not nearly enough. Mystery after mystery was piling up here, and no sooner did he seem to solve one puzzle than another appeared.

  The fact that this race sprang from feline stock explained much but it certainly did not begin to explain boulders that dropped from the sky as lightly as air-inflated, toy balloons.

  Nor did it solve the mystery that surrounded Parror's actions, or Janissa's. At first the girl had seemed friendly. Then she had given up to Parror without an argument. Moreover, the soldiers thought he was Dan Craddock.

  Parror had taken advantage of that twist very neatly, and Raft knew there was no use trying to prove his identity to Vann. But when he was taken to the Great Lord, presumably the ruler of Paititi, there would be a chance then. Unless, of course, the Great Lord was a hairy savage who wore human skulls at his belt.

  Raft grinned wryly. Savagery there was in this land, he knew already, but it was not barbarous. There was a high culture here, an intelligent civilization, though it was alien. A feline world would be strikingly different from a human one, yet the same basics would apply. An isosceles triangle was the same on Earth or Mars.

  Unfortunately, he probably would not be dealing in geometry. The subtler pitfalls of psychology loomed before him, and in that feline and anthropoid might be very dissimilar. A cat people, in fact, would not be builders.

  They would be artisans. Vann had already said that some other race had built Parror's castle. A race that had been very great once. When? A thousand years ago? Or a million? It had taken man eons to evolve into rational beings, and evolution moved at a predetermined rate. Not even mutations could create an intelligent cat-race
from feline stock in a few generations.

  There was no use even in wondering about such things now. He stepped from the smooth footing of the ramp on to an ordinary dirt pathway that led off among the colossal trees. Now, with his feet actually touching the ground of Paititi, he felt the strangeness of his surroundings more strongly than ever. Those incredible columns seemed to be moving toward him, a giant Birnam Wood malignantly alive. Trees!

  For they were trees, not Jurassic cycads, not tree-ferns. He could tell that. They were true trees, but they should have grown on a planet as large as Jupiter, not on Earth.

  They were sanctuaries as well, retreats for living organisms, he saw as the trail passed near the towering wall of one. From a distance he had thought the bark smooth. Instead, it was literally covered with irregular bumps and swellings.

  Vines slid across the trunk like snakes, creeping with a slowness that belied the sudden flash of tendrils as—tongues?—snapped out to capture the insects and birds that fluttered past.

  Rainbow flowers glowed on the leafless vines, and a heavy, sweet scent drifted into Raft's nostrils. From something like a shallow shell that jutted from the trunk a lizard darted out, seized a vine, and carried it back, writhing, to its water-brimming den. There it proceeded to drown the snaky thing and devour it at leisure.

  But the reptile was no lizard. It was, Raft decided, a saurian. Only three feet long, it nevertheless reminded him of the great caymans that teem in Brazilian rivers. Except, of course, that crocs are meat eaters.

  The saurian was no freak, for there were others just like it.

  Swelling pale excrescences bulged on the tree, like wasps' nests thirty feet tall, with myriad window-openings from which bright eyes glittered at Raft. Furry brown bodies moved rapidly across these nests, little mammals with tapir-snouts, but adapted to tree-life.

  There were other parasites on that enormous tree, like the great crimson leech that clung to the bark and sucked sap out to nourish its hideous length, and the inch-long, hairless, white creatures like monkeys that lived like lice upon the sloth things that clambered with extraordinary agility in pursuit of insect prey.