The Romance of Atlantis (21 page)

They were met at the door by two eunuchs, robed in black.

“They are deaf and dumb,” said the Empress. “Jupia has no desire that her private conversations reach the ears of the outer world.”

To the watchful Signar, it seemed that the slightest whisper of a smile flitted across at least one eunuch’s face at the Empress’ words.

Along a narrow path they followed two more eunuchs who seemed to emerge from the dimness. The footsteps echoed through the silence as the steps of intruders in a tomb.

The eunuchs held aside a heavy curtain, and Salustra commanded her courtiers to wait and entered the chamber beyond, attended only by an uneasy Signar. In the center of a bare floor, gleaming with pale lights, sat a large black throne; almost swallowed up in its immensity was the cadaverous figure of the High Priestess. Beside her stood a crystal globe of shimmering crimson, which glowed with inner fires, like a ruby, and cast rainbowed rays into the chamber.

As the royal pair entered, the High Priestess rose, touched her breast with one emaciated hand, and inclined her head.

“We are late, Jupia,” said Salustra carelessly, advancing into the chamber with her slow and languid step.

“Yes,” said Jupia gratingly. “But the honor of this visit compensates for any wait.”

Jupia’s eyes lingered for a moment on Signar, then moved back to Salustra.

The Empress, with a glance at Signar, said in a sardonic voice, “I have spoken to my lord of thy matchless ability in soothsaying, and he hath expressed a desire to have thee read the future for him.”

Signar had expressed no such desire but was amused nevertheless.

Jupia noted his surprise, and a dull color touched her cheeks. “The future,” she said solemnly, “is no mystery to one who knows the past and the present. The future does not spring, unique, unformed, new, out of the sterile air; it is a continuation, a weaving together from the past of diverse strands.”

“Yet there may come a new order, a new world, a new dispensation,” said the Empress. “And these may have nothing whatsoever to do with the past. The gods may evolve a new system, a new galaxy of stars, which has nothing in common with the present or the past. What then?”

An expression almost of fear passed over Jupia’s features. She glanced at the crystal at her side. “Who knows?” she murmured. “I have seen strange things in my crystal of late, I have seen the world dissolve in mist and water, and be no more.” She reached out a gaunt hand and drew the crystal closer to her, and became rapt in concentration, her eyes burning into the glittering globe.

Salustra glanced at Signar again, her eyes reflecting her amusement.

Jupia glanced up at this moment and her brows drew together angrily. Wanton! she thought.

Signar, irked by Jupia’s manner, stood up abruptly. As he did so, his shadow fell across the crystal globe.

A sharp exclamation burst from Jupia. She bent over the crystal, and something in her expression stilled the jest on Salustra’s lips. “Sire,” murmured the High Priestess in a shaken voice, “look thou within, and see what thou wilt see!”

As Signar bent forward, Salustra smilingly rose, approached the crystal and gazed down with the Emperor into the globe. For a moment nothing was visible, and then a dark chasm appeared to open up and from deep within its depths emerged a hand with a jeweled ring. As they peered, wide-eyed, they saw that the hand held a goblet of red wine in which lay coiled a writhing snake. The shadowy image remained but a moment, and then was gone, not, however, before the ring on the small hand became plainly visible. That ring was the royal Signet of Lazar, which the Empress wore constantly.

“Thou hast enemies, my lord,” said the Priestess in a somber voice. “Beware of poison.”

Signar examined the crystal with frank disbelief, smiling at Salustra, who managed to conceal her anger. Crone! she thought. She guesses my thought, and by some trickery contrived the image. No doubt, she prepared this in advance. She laid her hand carelessly upon the crystal. “And now, Jupia,” she said in a rasping voice, “tell me what thou dost see for me.”

In silence Jupia pointed to the crystal, and Salustra and Signar bent over it. For a moment the image was indistinct, and then they saw, in miniature, a woman’s bared breast, transfixed by a quivering sword.

Salustra recoiled with a sharp cry, and as she did so, the light faded, and the globe was benign and pale again.

Signar, still unbelieving, nevertheless felt a sudden chill. “Absurd,” he exclaimed. “Who would harm the Empress?”

Jupia said nothing, but smiled darkly. She glanced at Signar as though sharing a secret with him.

Salustra looked at Signar to judge his reaction. “To die by the sword is easy, my lord,” Salustra said, making an effort to be casual. “It is a swift death.”

She approached the globe again and stared at it intently. In that one flashing moment she had recognized the sword as Signar’s. She laid her hand again on the smooth surface of the crystal, and whether by design or accident, she stumbled, pushing the globe from its base. It fell with a crash, and after bouncing on the marble floor shivered into a hundred fragments.

With a loud shriek, Jupia leapt to her feet, and Signar fell back, startled. He glanced at Salustra. She was swaying a little, and he sprang to her side, catching her in his arms.

The enraged Priestess made a move as though she would smite Salustra. But meeting Signar’s eyes, she quickly dropped her hand and forced a smile. “It is nothing, Majesty,” she said, unctuously. “I am sorry the crystal is gone. It is very ancient. But it was an accident, I am certain.”

Salustra glanced at the fragments and shivered slightly. “Accept my apologies, Jupia,” she said coldly. She unfastened a gleaming pendant from her breast and tossed it at Jupia’s feet. “Buy thyself another crystal, Jupia, and see to it that it is not as imaginative as this one. Such flights of imagination may prove disastrous, and not only to the observer.”

Jupia stood expressionless, like a statue. She made no move to pick up the jewel.

At the door they looked back. The High Priestess stood now with one hand lifted, as though invoking a curse.

25

The visit with Jupia had cast a pall over the royal pair.

By talking, Salustra sought to dispel this dark mood. “That old harridan is a sorceress. She put into the crystal that which lay in her mind. It is a form of thought transference that will be commonplace one day, when man has outgrown the man-made machines that can now do as much, such as the disk I but recently showed thee.”

Signar, normally unimpressionable, found it difficult to erase Jupia’s prophecies from his mind. “I like not that wretched witch’s thought of a sword in thy breast,” he said. “It is far too lovely to be a depository for cold steel.”

“And what dost thou think of thy own poisoning?”

He shrugged indifferently. “What is my destiny I could not give away if I would.”

“Is it not possible that destiny can be given an encouraging thrust?”

“Only if that is the gods’ intention.”

“I am not such a fatalist as thou,” she said with a frown. “Otherwise there would be no point to launching any thought into purposeful action.”

“That may be,” he said thoughtfully, “but how many things turn out, lady, as one visualizes when he commits that thought into action?”

She looked at him with a start. Did he know how close Jupia might have been to reality?

His demeanor immediately reassured her. For he now said with a half-jest, “Thou didst promise me a glimpse of the Temple Beautiful and its rejuvenation chamber. Hath this tilt with the old harpy altered thy intention or is it still my destiny?”

She found her mood lightening. “Normally, Jupia is the custodian of the chamber. But I shall be the only law in this case, as seems my lot recently.”

He gave her a look of inquiry.

“The chamber works somewhat like a bank vault. Jupia turns the dial opening the door to one particular point, Mahius twists and turns the knob to the second point, and then the Empress makes the third and conclusive move.” She laughed. “But Lazar, my father, was not one to trust his welfare to minions, and so his scientists secretly installed an alternative entry system which he alone controlled.”

She touched the jeweled clasp about her neck. “And with this necklace, itself a stimulator, he passed this secret on with the burdens of his empire.”

It was Signar’s turn to laugh. “Is all this in thy head?”

She nodded. “With many other bits of information.”

“And wouldst thou use this chamber for thyself?”

They were moving toward a relatively small building, at the base of Mount Atla, which overlooked both the College of Total Knowledge and, farther on, the Palace itself.

“I have no fear of growing old,” she said. “It is not my destiny.”

His voice was still light. “Perhaps we shall grow old together.”

In the same vein she replied, “Or perhaps die together, if Jupia has her way.”

Their entourage discreetly kept some distance behind them. They paused finally before a cavernous door of solid marble.

“This door is twelve feet thick and immovable,” she said, “unless one knows the combination.”

He noticed a series of knobs in the rock. “And these?” he asked.

“For Jupia and Mahius to tinker with.”

She put her face within six inches of the door, which resembled more a wall, and spoke sharply in a tongue completely foreign to him.

Suddenly the wall commenced to groan, and the ground under their feet began to tremble. Before Signar’s startled eyes, a chink was beginning to form at the top of the door, gradually getting larger as the marble wall continued its slow descent into a receiving slot.

In a minute or so, the top of the door was even with the ground, and they were free to make their passage through the doorway.

He looked at her in amazement. “Though I stood at thy side, I did not see how thou managed it.”

She put her hand to her lips. “Certain words, now archaic, uttered at a certain decibel level, set up a vibratory wave which tunes precisely into the frequency under which the door opens and closes. There is no magic to it, merely a fundamental understanding of the power of the sound wave when properly synchronized. Over this, fortunately, the mist has no influence.”

“Atlantis,” he murmured, “has much to show its neighbor from the north.”

“And thou hast much to show us.”

They left the entourage some distance outside the cavern as they moved into a large corridor, the door almost instantly closing behind them.

There was a look of puzzlement on his face. “Would it not be possible to break through this door with powerful explosives, which thou hast no lack of, or with thy solar rays?”

She nodded appreciatively at his question. “My father considered all this. While one sound wave establishes access to the chamber, any vibration of a sufficiently violent nature to cut through marble would at the same time bring the mountain down on the chamber.” She smiled mischievously. “And with the chamber destroyed, nobody could be rejuvenated, not the mightiest conqueror, not even the mighty Signar.”

His head inclined slowly. “Would I had known the great lion Lazar. From him I could have learned much, just as,” he added with a bow, “I am learning now from the lion’s cub.”

They proceeded for approximately a hundred yards down a long, dark corridor when she suddenly turned off, and they found themselves in a dimly lit room, rosy with a glow that seemed to permeate its every corner.

He looked around curiously. The room was no more than twenty feet square and led into a series of smaller rooms, in which there could barely be seen, through an open door, sleeping quarters and bathroom facilities.

“The initiate remains in this chamber for twenty-four hours,” Salustra explained, “exposing himself to the crystalline rays which penetrate into each and every cell of the body, from the brain to the little toe, regenerating the body through its revitalizing action on the tiniest molecules that make up each cell.”

He looked about the room curiously. “And from where,” he asked, “does this red ray emanate, when none of thy energy systems presently give off light or power?”

She sat down in a comfortable chair, with soft cushions piled up to her neck. “Twice,” she said, “my father took this seat. It would not have prolonged his life any further to have sat more, as the cells can only regenerate twice. Beyond the age of two hundred there is not enough collagenous or fibrous material in the connective tissues to provide a basis for cell renewal.”

He repeated his question. “The source of these wondrous rays, lady?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Is it not obvious? Look about at the walls, the ceiling, the floor itself. It is all a giant ruby crystallized from mountains of stone when the first atom-splitter was detonated in ancient times. This vitreous substance that was formed by the great heat absorbed in time all the beneficial nuclear rays set off when the destructive force was unleashed. It is now a constant source of radiating, life-renewing rays.”

He was engrossed with this whole process beyond anything he had yet heard. “How was it known that these rays had this effect?” he asked.

“Merely by chance,” she said, “like nearly every other invention of note.” She paused a moment. “When my ancestors touched off the first atom-splitter in their fight against the dinosaurs, there was a wide swath of destruction in every direction, in some instances unexpectedly destroying populated areas. Eventually people slowly started returning to the familiar places and rebuilding their homes. These people, it was noted after a while, stayed younger-looking and lived longer than people elsewhere in the land.”

“And how widespread was this?” he asked.

“Only in one area, where a combination of factors counteracted the harmful radiation remaining from the explosion and transformed it into something compensatingly good, as nature often does when left alone by man.”

Signar had never been so fascinated.

“And that area? Where was it located?”

She smiled. “You are surrounded by it, Sire. Out of this furnace of vaporized destruction came the giant red crystal that you stand on and see. And on this memorable site was erected the original capital of Atlantis. And this—” she pointed around the room “—is the keystone of all that remains of the early city.”