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Jewels of Aptor

<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> Dawn light lay a-slant the crater's ridge. Argo pointed down the opposite slope. A black temple was visible at the bottom among trees and lawns. "There is Hama's temple," Argo said. "You have your task. Good luck." They started down the incline of cinders. It took them an hour to reach the first trees that surrounded the dark buildings and the great gardens. Entering on the first lip of grass, they heard a sudden cluster of notes from one of the trees. "A bird," Iimmi said. "I haven't heard one of those since I left Leptar." Suddenly, bright blue and the length of a man's forefinger, a lizard ran halfway down the trunk of the tree. It's sapphire belly heaved in the early light with indrawn breath; then it opened its red mouth, its throat warbled, and there was another burst of music. "Oh well," said Iimmi. "I was close." They walked further, until Iimmi mused, "I wonder why you always think things are going to turn out like you expect." "Because when something sounds like that," declared Urson, "it usually is a bird!" Suddenly he gave a little shiver. "Lizards," he said. "It was a pretty lizard," said Iimmi. "Going around expecting things to be what they seem can get you in trouble—especially on this island," Geo commented. The angle at which they walked made one of the clumps of tree before them seem to fall apart. A man standing in the center raised his hand and said briskly, "Stop!" They stopped. He wore dark robes, and his short white hair made a close helmet above his brown face. Urson's hand was on his sword. Snake stood with his feet wide, his hands out from his sides. "Who are you?" the dark man declared. "Who are you?" Urson parried. "I am Hama Incarnate." They were silent. Finally Geo said, "We are travelers in Aptor. We don't mean any harm." As the man moved forward, splotches of light from the trees slipped across his robe. "Come with me," Hama said. He turned and proceeded among the trees. They followed. They passed into the temple garden. It was early enough in the morning so that the sunlight lapped pink tongues over the giant black urns that sat along the edges of the path. Now they passed into the temple. As they passed, Hama turned, looked at the jewels on Iimmi's and Geo's necks, and then looked up at the gazing eye of the statue at the end of the altar. He made no other sign, but turned again and continued. "The morning rites have not yet started," he said. "They will begin in a half an hour. By then I hope to have divined your purpose in coming here." At the other side of the stairway they mounted a stairway, and then entered a door above which was a black circle dotted with three eyes. Just as they were about to go in, Geo looked around, frowned, and caught Iimmi's eye. "Snake?" he mouthed. Iimmi looked around and shrugged. The man turned and faced them, apparently unaware of Snake's departure. As he closed the door, now, he said, "You have come to oppose the forces of Aptor, am I right? You come to steal the jewel of Hama. You have come to kidnap the Incarnate Argo. Is that not your purpose. Keep your hand off your sword, Urson! I can kill you in a moment. You are defenseless." <hr style="width: 45%;" /> "Damn! I'm sleepy." She rolled over and cuddled the pillow. Then she opened her eyes, one at a time, and lay watching the nearly completed motor of metal bars and copper wire that sat on the table beside her bed. She stood up. Then she collapsed on the bed and jammed her feet under the covers again. With thirty feet of one and a half inch brass pipe, she mused sleepily, I could carry heat from the main hot-water line under the floor which I would estimate to be about the proper surface area to keep these stones warm; let me see, thirty feet of one and a half inch pipe have a surface area of 22/7 times 3/2 times 30 which is 990 divided by 7 which is ... Then she caught herself. Damn, you're thinking this to avoid thinking about getting up. She opened her eyes once more, put feet on the stone, and held them there while she scratched vigorously at her uneven mop of red hair. She looked at the clock. "Yikes!" she said softly, and ran out the door, and slammed it behind her—almost. She whirled around, caught it on her palms before it banged shut, and then closed it with gingerly care the final centimeter and a half of the arc. Are you trying to get caught? she asked herself as she tiptoed to the next door. She opened it and looked in. Dunderhead looks cute when he's asleep, she thought. There was a cord on the floor that ran from under the table by the priest's bed, over the stones, carefully following the zigzag of the crevices between them, and at last the end lay in the corner of the door sill. You really couldn't see it if you weren't looking for it, which had more or less been the idea when she had put it there last night before the priests had come back from vespers. The far end was tied in a knot of her own invention to the electric plug of his alarm clock. Dunderhead had an annoying habit of re-setting his clock every evening making sure that the red second hand was still sweeping away the minutes. (In her plans for this morning she had catalogued his every habitual action, and had observed this one for three nights running, hanging upside down from the bulky stone portcullis above and outside his window.) Tugging on the string, she saw it leap from the crevices into a straight line and then lift from the floor as she drew it tauter, and then go slack as the plug blipped quietly onto the floor. Next she pulled the string again until the slack left and raised her end a few inches from the floor. With her free hand now she gave the string a small twit and watched the vibration run up and down the string twice. The knot's invention was an ingenuous one. At the vibration, two opposed loops shook away from a third, and a four millimeter length of rubber band that had been sewn in tautened and released a fourth loop from around a small length of number four gauge wire with a holding tonsure of three quarters of a gram, and the opposing vibration returning up the thread loosed a similar apparatus on the other side of the plug. The knot fell away, and she wound it quickly around her hand. She stood up, closed the door, and the oiled lock was perfectly silent. The door knob was just the slightest bit greasy, she noted. Careless. Back in her room, it was standing on the table. Sunlight from the high window fell red across the board. It was very early in the morning. She took the parts of the motor up in her hands. "I guess we try you out today? No?" She answered herself, "Yes." Finally she put the parts in the paper bag, strode out of the room, and slammed the ... whirled around and caught it once more. "Gnnnnnnn," she said. "Do you want to get caught?" For the second time she answered herself, "Yes. And remember that too. Or you'll never get through it." As she walked down the hall, she heard through one of the windows the chirp of a blue lizard from the garden. "The sound I wanted to hear," she smiled to herself. "A good sign." Turning into the temple, she started down the side aisle. The great black columns passed before her. Something moved between the columns along the other side, swift and indistinct as a bird's shadow. At least she thought she saw something. "Remember," she reminded herself, "you have guilt feelings about this whole thing, and you could very easily be manufacturing delusions to scare yourself out of going through with it." She went on, passed two more columns, and saw it again. "Or," she went on with her monologue, "you could be purposefully ignoring the very obvious fact that there is somebody over there who is going to see you. So watch it." There were mirrors somewhere in the temple, but they weren't on the opposite wall, so she couldn't be seeing herself. In fact the mirrors were out in the vestibule through which she had come and maybe this other person had come, so maybe it was seeing her as a reflection of ... "Unscramble that syntax," she told herself. "You think like that and you'll never make it." But there was somebody, with no clothes on (for all practical purposes) sneaking between the pillars. And he had four arms. That made her start to think of something else, but the thought as it arrowed into the past, suddenly got deflected, turned completely about, and jammed into her brain again, because he was staring directly at her. If he starts walking toward me, she thought, I'm going to be scared out of my ears. So I better start walking toward him. Besides, I want to see what he looks like. She started out from the columns. Glancing quickly both ways, she saw that the temple was deserted save for them. He's a kid, she thought, three quarters of the way across. My age, she added, and again a foreign thought attempted to intrude itself on her but never made it, because he was coming toward her now. At last he stopped before her, silent, muscles like tight wire under the brown skin, black hair massing low on his forehead, his eyes deep beneath the black shrub of brows. She gulped and asked him, "What are you doing here? Do you know somebody could catch you in here and get mad as hell? I know I couldn't possibly have, but I think I've seen you before some place; if somebody comes along, they might even think you were trying to steal Hama's eye." I shouldn't have said that, she thought, because he moved funny. "You better get out of here because everybody will be up here in a half an hour for morning services." At that news, he suddenly darted forward, passed her, and sprinted down toward the altar. "Hey!" she called and ran after him. Snake vaulted over the brass altar rail. "Wait a minute," she called, catching up. "Wait, will you!" Snake turned as she slung her leg across the brass bar. "Look, I realize I gave away my hand. But that was only guilt feelings. You gave yours away too, though. And if you don't think you've got guilt feelings, boy, you're crazy." Snake frowned, tilted his head, and then grinned. "So we'll help each other see," she said. "You want it too, don't you." She pointed up to the head of the statue towering above them. "So let's co-operate. I'll get it for a little while. Then you can have it." He was listening, she saw, so she guessed her strategy was working. Play it by ear now, she thought. "We'll help each other. Shake on it, huh?" She stuck out her hand. All four hands reached forward. Whoops, she thought, I hope he's not offended. But the four hands grasped hers, and she added her second to the juncture. "All right," she said. "Come on. Now I had all this figured out last night. And we don't have much time. Let's go around ..." But he walked over to where the stalks of wheat spired from the altar base up through Hama's fist, and grabbed a stalk with the three hands, and hand, over hand, over hand, began to hoist himself up to where the first broad sheets of metal leaves leaned out to form a small platform. At first his dirty feet swung out frog-like, but then he caught the stem with his toes and at last hoisted himself to the front and looked down at her. "I can't climb up there," she said, "I don't have your elevation power." Snake looked down and shrugged. "Oh damn," she said. "I'll do it my way." She ran across the altar to the great foot of the statue. Sitting cross-legged, Hama's foot was on his side. Using the ridges made by the toes as steps, she clammered up to the dark bulge of the deity's godlike bunion. She made her way across the ankle, up the slanting shin, back down the black thigh, until she stood at the crevice where the leg and torso met. Out beyond the great knee, Snake regarded her from his perch in the groin of yellow leaf. They were about equal height. "Yoo-hoo," she waved. "Meet you at the clavicle." Then she stuck her tongue out. The bulges in the belly of the god made a treacherous ledge along which she inched until she arrived at the cavernous naval, leaving wet handprints on the black stone. The god's belly button from this intimate distance revealed itself as a circular door about five feet in diameter and controlled by a combination lock. She missed the first number twice, dried her hands off, and began again. According to the plans in the main safe of the temple (on which she had first practiced combination breaking) there was a ladder behind this door which led up into the statue. She remembered it clearly; and saved her life by doing so. Because when she caught the second number, reversed the direction and felt the telltale click of the third, she pulled on the handle and was almost pushed from the ledge by the swinging circular door. She grabbed at a handle that she hardly saw on the door's inside, just as the stone slipped from beneath her feet. Then she was hanging five feet out in the air over the sacred groin some fifty feet below. The first thing she tried, after closing her eyes and mumbling a few laws of motion, was to swing the door to. When she swung out, however, the door swung closed; and when she swung in, the door swung opened. After a while, she just hung. She gave small thanks that she had dried her hands. When her arms began to ache, she wished that she hadn't, because then it would be over by now. She went over what she knew about taking judo falls. Then the door swung closed, and someone grabbed her around the waist. She didn't open her eyes, but felt her body pressed against the tilting stone. Her arms fell tingling to her sides. The ligaments flamed with pain. Then the pain dulled to throbbing, and she opened her eyes. "How the hell did you get down here?" she asked Snake. With his help she staggered through the open door and stopped to rub her arms. "How did you know about the ladder?" They were standing in the shaft now, with the ladder beside them running up into the darkness. He looked at her with a puzzled expression. "What is it?" she asked. "Oh, I'll be able to climb up there, never you worry. Hey, can you speak?" Snake shook his head. "Oh," she said. Something started at the edge of her mind again, a picture of something unpleasant. Snake had started up the ladder, which he had come down so quickly a minute ago. She glanced out the door, saw that the temple was empty, pulled the door to, and followed. They ascended into complete darkness. Her arms were beginning to ache again, just slightly. She reached up for the next rung, and found it in its proper place. Then the next. And then again the next. She started counting steps now, and when seventy-four, seventy-five, and seventy-six dropped below her, there was a missing rung. She reached above it, but there was none. She ran her hand up the edge of the ladder and found that it suddenly curved into the wall. "Hey, you," she said in the darkness. Something touched her waist. "Gnnnnnggggg," she said. "Don't do that." It touched her on the leg, took hold of her ankle, and pulled. "Watch out," she said. It pulled again. She raised her foot, and it was tugged sideways a good foot and a half and set on solid flooring. Then a hand (her foot was not released) took her arm, and another held her waist, and tugged. She stiffened for one instant before she remembered the number of limbs her companion had. Then she came off the ladder, sideways into the dark, afraid to put her other foot down lest she step headlong into the seventy-five foot plus shaft. But he tugged again, and in losing her balance, her foot came down on cool, solid stone. Holding her arm now, he led her along the tunnel. They passed into a steep incline. Now down the upper arm, she recalled. "I feel like Eurydice," she said aloud. You ... funny ... an echoing voice sounded in her skull. "Hey," she said. "What was that?" But the voice was silent. The wall turned abruptly and the floor leveled out. They were in a section of the passage now that corresponded roughly to the statue's radial artery. At the wrist, there was a light. They mounted a stairway, came out a trap door, and found themselves standing high in the temple. Below them the great room spread, vastly deep, and still empty. Beside them, the stems of the bronze wheat stalks rose up through the fist and spired another fifty feet before breaking into clusters of golden grain and leaves. Across from them, over the dark curve of Gargantuan chest, in the statue's other hand, the shaft of the scythe leaned away into shadow. "Look," she said. "You follow me now." She started back along the top of the forearm and then began the tedious climb over the rippling biceps, till at last they reached the broad shoulder. They walked across the hollow above the collar bone until they stood just below the great scooping shell of the ear. She took the paper bag she had stuffed into her belt, tied one end of the string around the neck, and then, holding the other, she heaved the bag up and over the ear. She got the other end of the string, knotted it as high as she could reach, and gave it a tug. "I hope this works," she said. "I had it all figured out yesterday. The tensile strength of this stuff is about two hundred and fifty pounds, which ought to do for you and me." She planted her foot on the swell of the neck tendon, and in seven leaps she made it to the lobe of the ear. She swung around into the hollow, using the frontal wing as a pivot. Crouching in the hollow trumpet, she looked down at Snake. "Come up," she said. "Hurry up." Snake joined her a moment later. The ear was hollow, too. It led back into a cylindrical chamber which went up through the head of the god. The architect who had designed the statue had conveniently left the god's lid flipped. They climbed the ladder and emerged amid the tangle of pipes which represented the hair of the god. They made their way forward through the mass of pipes to where the forehead sloped dangerously forward. They could see the foreshortened nose and the rim of the statue's middle eye above that. There wasn't much of anything after that for the next thousand feet until the base of the altar. "Now you can really be some help," she told him. "Hold on to my wrist and let me down. I'll get the jewel." They grabbed wrists, and Snake's three other hands, as well as the joints of his knees, locked around the base of five pipes that sprouted around them. Slowly she slid forward, until her free hand slipped on the stone and she dropped the length of their two arms and swung just above the statue's nose. The eye opened in front of her. The lid arced above her, and the white of either side of the ebony iris shone faintly in the half darkness. At the center of the iris, in a small hollow, sitting on the top of a metal support, was the jewel. She reached her free hand toward it as she swung. From somewhere a gong suddenly sounded. Light flooded over her. Looking up, she saw white sockets of light shining down into her own eyes. Panicking, she almost released Snake's wrist. But a voice in her head (hers or someone else's, she couldn't tell) rang out. Hold ... on ... damn ... it ... Then she grabbed the jewel. The metal shaft in which the jewel had stood was not steady, and tilted as her hand came away from it. The tilting must have set off some clockwork mechanism, because the great eyelid was slowly lowering over the ivory and ebony eye. She swung again at the end of the rope of bone and flesh; half blinded by the lights above her, she looked over her shoulder, into the temple below. There was singing, the beginning of a processional hymn. The morning rites had started! Light glinted on the stone limbs of the god. Figures were pouring into the temple. They must have seen her, but the hymn, sonorous and gigantic, rose like flood water, and she suddenly thought that if she fell, she would drown in the sound of it. Snake was pulling her up. Stone against her arm, against her cheek. She clenched her other fist tightly at her side. Another hand came down and helped pull her. Then another. Then she was lying among the metal pipes, and he was loosening her fingers from his wrist. He tugged her to her feet, and for a moment she was looking out over the now filled temple. Nervous energy contracted coldly along her body, and the sudden sight of the great drop filled her eyes and her head, and she staggered. Snake caught her and at last helped her back to the ladder. "We've got it," she said to him before they started down. She breathed deeply. Then she checked in her palm to see if it was still there; it was, and again she looked out over the people below. Light on the up-turned faces made them look like scattered pearls on the dark floor. An exaltation suddenly burst in her shoulders, flooded her legs and arms and for a moment washed the pain away. Snake, with one hand on her shoulder, was grinning also. "We've got it!" she said again. They went down the ladder into the statue's skull. Snake preceded her out the hollow ear. He reached around, caught the cord, and let himself down to the shoulder. She hesitated for a moment, then put the jewel in her mouth, and followed him. Standing beside him once more, she removed it, and then rubbed her shoulders. "Boy, am I going to have some Charley horse by tomorrow," she said. "Do me a favor and untie my bag for me?" Snake untied the parcel from the end of the cord, and together now they climbed down the bicep and back over the forearm to the trap door in the wrist. She glanced down at the faces of the worshipers just before they disappeared into the tunnel. Snake was taking the jewel from her hand. She let him have it, and watched him raise it up above his head. Immediately, when he raised the jewel, the pearls of faces went out like extinguished flames as heads bent all through the temple. "That's the ticket," grinned Argo. "Come on." But Snake did not go into the tunnel. Instead he walked around the fist, took hold of one of the bronze wheat stems, and slid down through an opening between the thumb and forefinger. "That way?" asked Argo. "Oh well, I guess so. You know I'm going to write an epic about this." But Snake had already gone. She followed him, clutching her feet around a great bunch of stems. He was waiting for her at the plateau of leaves, and nestled there, they gazed out once more at the fascinated congregation. Again Snake held aloft the jewel, and again heads bowed. The hymn began to repeat itself, the individual words lost in the sonority of the hall. They started down the last length of stems now, coming quickly. When they stood at last on the base, she put her hand on his shoulder and looked across the brass altar rail. The congregation pressed close, although she did not recognize an individual face. Yet a mass of people stood there, enormous and familiar. As Snake started forward, holding up the jewel, the people fell back from the rail. Snake climbed over the altar rail, and then helped her over. Her shoulders were beginning to hurt now, and the enormity of the theft ran chills up and down, up and down her spine. The black marble altar step as she put her foot down was awfully cold. They started forward again, and the last note of the hymn echoed to silence, filling the hall with the roaring quiet of the hushed breathing of hundreds. Simultaneously, both she and Snake got the urge to look back at the great diminishing height of Hama behind them. All three eyes were shut firmly now. A quiet composed of the rustling of a hundred dark robes upon another hundred hissed about them as they started forward again. There was a spotlight on them, she suddenly realized. That was why the people, hovering back from the circular effulgence over the floor around them seemed so dim. Her heart had become a pulse at the bottom of her tongue. They kept on going forward, into the shadowed faces, into the parting sea of dark cloaks and hoods. Then the last of the figures stepped aside from the temple door, and she could see the sunlight out in the garden. They stood still for a moment, Snake holding high the jewel; then they burst forward, out through the door and down over the bright steps. Instantly the hymn began again behind them, as if their departure had been a signal. The music flooded after them, and when they reached the bottom step, they both whirled, crouching like animals, expecting the congregation to come welling darkly out after them. But there was only the music, flowing into the light, washing around them, a transparent river, a sea. <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Freeze the drop in the hand, and break the earth with singing. Hail the height of a man, and also the height of a woman." </div> </div> Over the music came a brittle chirping from the trees. Fixed with fear, they watched the temple door as the hymn progressed. Then Snake suddenly stood up straight and grinned. She scratched her red hair, shifted her weight, and looked at Snake. "I guess they're not coming," she said, sounding almost disappointed. Then she giggled. "Well, I guess we got it." <hr style="width: 45%;" /> "Don't move," repeated Hama Incarnate. "Now look—" began Urson. "You are perfectly safe," the god continued, "unless you do anything foolish. You have shown great wisdom. Continue to show it. I have a lot to explain to you." "Like what?" asked Geo. "I'll start with the lizards," smiled the god. "The what?" asked Iimmi. "The singing lizards," said Hama. "You walked through a grove of trees just a few minutes ago. You had just been through a series of happenings that was probably the most frightening in your life. Suddenly you heard a singing in the trees. What was it?" "I thought it was a bird," Iimmi said. "But why a bird?" asked the god. "Because that's what a bird sounds like," stated Urson impatiently. "Who needs an old lizard singing to them on a morning like this?" "Your second point is much better than your first," said the god. "You do not need a lizard, but you did need a bird. A bird means spring, life, good luck, cheerfulness. You think of a bird singing and you think of thoughts that men have been thinking for thousands upon thousands of years. Poets have written of it in every language, Catullus in Latin, Keats in English, Li Po in Chinese, Darnel X24 in New English. You expected a bird because after what you had been through, you needed to hear a bird. Lizards run from under wet rocks, scurry over gravestones. A lizard is not what you needed." "So what do lizards have to do with why we're here?" demanded Urson. "Why are you here?" repeated the god, subtly changing Urson's question. "There are many reasons, I am sure. You tell me some of them." "You have done wrongs to Argo—at least to Argo of Leptar," Geo explained. "We have come to undo them. You have kidnaped the young Argo, as well as her mother apparently. We have come to take her back. You have misused the jewels. We have come to take the last one from you." Hama smiled. "Only a poet could see the wisdom in such honesty. I thought I might have to wheedle to get that much out of you." "I guess it was pretty certain that you knew that much already," Geo said. "True," answered Hama. Then his tone changed. "Do you know how the jewels work?" They shook their heads. "They are basically very simple mechanical contrivances which are difficult in execution, but simple in concept. I will explain. Human thoughts, it was discovered after the Great Fire during the first glorious years of the City of New Hope, did not produce waves similar to radio waves, but the electrical synapse pattern, it was found, can be read by radio waves, in the same way a mine detector reads the existence of metal." "Radio?" Geo said. "That's right," Hama said. "Oh, I forgot, you don't know anything about that at all. Well, I can't go through the whole thing now. Suffice it to say that each of the jewels contains a carefully honed crystal which is constantly sending out beams which can read these thought patterns. Also the crystal acts like a magnifying glass or a mirror, and reflects and magnifies the energy from the brain into heat or light or any other kind of electromagnetic radiation—there I go again—so that you can send great bolts of heat with them, as you have seen done. "But the actual workings of them are not important. And their ability to send heat out is only their secondary power. Their primary importance is that they can be used to penetrate the mind. Now we come to the lizards." "Wait a minute," Geo said. "Before we get to the lizards. Do you mean go into minds like Snake does?" Suddenly he remembered that the boy was not there. But the god went on. "Like Snake," he said. "But different. Snake was born with the ability to transmute the brain patterns of his thoughts to others; in that he has a power something like the jewels, but nowhere as strong. But with the jewels, you can jam a person's thoughts...." "Just go into his mind and stop him from thinking?" asked Iimmi. "No," said the god. "Conscious thought is too powerful. Otherwise, you would stop thinking every time Snake spoke to you. It works another way. How many reasons does a man have for any single action?" They looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Why, for example, does a man pull his hand from a fire?" "Because it hurts," said Urson. "Why else?" "Yes, why else?" asked Hama. "I think I see what you mean," said Iimmi. "He also pulls it out because he knows that outside the fire his hand isn't going to hurt. Like the bird, I mean the lizard. One reason we reacted like we did was because it sounded like a bird. The other reason was because we wanted to hear a bird just then. The man pulls his hand out because the fire hurts, and because he wants it not to hurt." "In other words," Geo summarized, "there are at least two reasons for everything." "Exactly," explained Hama. "And notice that one of these reasons is unconscious. But with the jewel, you can jam the unconscious reason; so that if a man has his hand in a fire, you can jam his unconscious reason of wanting it to stop hurting. Completely bewildered, and in no less pain, he will stand there until his wrist is a smoking nub." Geo reached over and felt his severed arm. "Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage, convince a slave that he's free, and he will fight to maintain his slavery. Why does a poet sing? Because he likes music; and because silence frightens him. Why does a thief steal? To get the goods from his victim; also to prove that his victim cannot get him." "That's how Argo got Snake back," Geo said to Urson. "I see now. He was just thinking of running away, and she jammed his desire not to get caught; so he had nothing to direct him in which direction to run. So he ran where she told him, straight back to her." "That's right," Hama said. "But something else was learned when these jewels were invented. Or rather a lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of the people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, would conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power. For this reason, the jewels are evil. That is why we have summoned you to steal them from us." "To steal them from you?" asked Geo. "Why couldn't you have simply destroyed them when you had them." "We have already been infected," smiled the god. "We are a small band here on Aptor. To reach the state of organization, to collect the scattered scientific knowledge of the times before the Great Fire, was not easy. Too often the jewels have been used, and abused, and now we cannot destroy it. We would have to destroy ourselves first. We kidnaped Argo and left you the second jewel, hoping that you would come after the third and last one. Now you have come, and now the jewel is being stolen." "Snake?" asked Geo. "That's right," replied Hama. "But I thought he was your spy," Geo said. "That he is our spy is his unconscious reason for his actions," explained Hama. "He is aware only that he is working against the evil he has seen in Jordde. Spy is too harsh a word for him. Say, rather, little thief. He became a spy for us quite unwittingly when he was on the island as a child with Jordde. I have explained something to you of how the mind works. We have machines that can duplicate what Snake does in a similar way that the jewels work. This is how the blind priestesses contacted Jordde and made him their spy. This is how we reached Snake. But he never saw us, never even really talked to us. It was mainly because of something he saw, something he saw when he first got here." "Wait a minute," Iimmi said. "Jordde wanted to kill me, and did kill Whitey because of something we might have seen. I bet this was the same thing. Now, what was it?" Hama smiled. "My telling you would do no good. Perhaps you can find out from Snake, or my daughter, Argo Incarnate." "But what do we do now?" Geo interrupted. "Take the jewels back to Argo, I mean Argo on the ship? She's already used the jewels to control minds, at least Snake's, so that means she's infected, too." "Once you guessed the reason for her infection," said Hama. "We have been watching you on our screens since you landed. Do you remember what the reason was?" "Do you mean her being jealous of her sister?" Geo asked. "Yes. On one side her motives were truly patriotic for Leptar. On the other hand they were selfish ones of power seeking. But without the selfish ones, she would have never gotten so far as she did. You must bring young Argo back and give the infection a chance to work itself out." "But what about the jewels?" asked Geo. "All three of them will be together. Isn't that a huge temptation?" "Someone must meet this temptation, and overcome it," said Hama. "You do not know how much danger they are in while they are here on Aptor. Even if the final danger is only delayed, that delay will make it safer to bring them to Leptar." Suddenly Hama turned to the screens and pushed a switch to on position. The opaque glass was filled with a picture of the interior of the temple. On the huge statue, a spotlight was following two microscopic figures over the statue's shoulder. They were climbing over the statue's elbow. Hama increased the size. It was two people, not bugs, climbing down the gigantic sculptured figure. They made their way along the statue's forearm now, to the golden stalks of wheat in the god's black fist. One, and then the other began to shimmy down the stems. They arrived at the base and climbed over the rail. The screen enlarged again. "It's Snake," said Geo. "And he's got the jewel," Urson added. "That's Argo with him," Iimmi put in. "I mean—one of the Argos." They clustered around the screen, watching the congregation give way before the two fearful children. The red-haired girl in the short white tunic was holding onto Snake's shoulder. Suddenly Hama turned the picture off, and they looked away from the screen now, puzzled. "So you see," said the god, "the jewel has already been stolen. For the sake of Argo, and of Hama, carry the jewels back to Leptar. Young Argo will help you. Though her mother and I are pained to see her go, she is as prepared for the journey as you are, if not more. Will you do it?" "I will," Iimmi said. "Me too," said Geo. "I guess so," Urson said. "Good," smiled Hama. "Then come with me." He turned from the screen and walked through the door. They followed him down the long stairway, past the stone walls, into the hall, and along the back of the church. He walked slowly, and smiled like a man who had waited long for something finally arrived. They turned out of the temple and descended the bright steps. "I wonder where the kids are?" Urson asked. But Hama led them on, across the broad garden to where the great black urns sat in a row close to a wall of shrubbery. A woman—old Argo—suddenly joined them. She had apparently been waiting for them. She gave them a silent smile of recognition, and they continued across the garden path. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> Light fell through the shrubbery across her white tunic and Snake's bare back as they crouched over the contraption of coils and metal. She twisted two pieces of wire together in a final connection as Snake placed the jewel on an improvised thermocouple. Then they bent over it and both concentrated their thoughts on the bead. The thermocouple glowed red, and electricity jumped in the copper veins, turning the metal bone into a magnet. The armature tugged once around its pivot, and then tugged around once more. Finally it was whipping around steadily, the brushes on its shaft reversing the magnetic poles with each half circle of the arc. It gained speed until it whirred into an invisible copper haze between them. "Hey," she breathed, "look at it go, will you! Just look at it go." And the young thieves crouched over the humming motor, oblivious to the eyes of the elder gods that smiled at them from the edge of the green shift of shadow and sunlight, by the side of the marble urn. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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