The Kings of Eternity (16 page)

We arrived at the fork in the path, and shortly after that the clearing itself. There was no moon to illuminate the arena tonight and the orange glow of our lamps cast it in an altogether more ruddy and eldritch aspect. It was as if I were seeing the clearing for the first time, and thus I noticed stunted trees that I had missed before, as well as the curious absence of ground cover.

The trio of tripod-mounted cameras stood gazing into the centre of the clearing like mute spectators. Jasper dashed from one to the other, fussily checking and rechecking his calibrations. At last he was satisfied, and returned to where Vaughan and I were setting up the Morse machine. It consisted of a box on legs, with a lens at the front and a lid that hinged and allowed access to its interior. Vaughan was adjusting something within, by the light of a paraffin lamp which I held high. Five minutes later he was finished, and we retreated from the clearing and settled ourselves behind the fallen log.

Jasper distributed brandy-laced coffee, and I huddled in my bed-roll and warmed my hands on the brew.

“Have you remembered your missive to the beings?” I enquired of Vaughan.

From the deep pocket of his great coat he extracted a Jacob’s Cream Cracker tin, which he opened to reveal a scroll of quarto, weighted with a sizeable stone. “At the first available opportunity,” he said, “I shall attempt communication with the creatures.”

“And perhaps next week,” I said with levity, “we might receive a reply contained in just as singular a casing.”

“Fifteen minutes to midnight,” Jasper reported, squinting at his fob watch. “All quiet so far.”

Vaughan and I had positioned ourselves on either side of Carnegie, in case he might attempt another rash move towards the light. As Jasper gave the time signal Vaughan winked at me, reminding me to be vigilant.

Midnight came and went. Jasper was unbowed. “Don’t be downhearted, gentlemen. Remember last week: it was almost a quarter past the hour when the portal appeared.”

As minute after minute elapsed, I willed the light to appear, for something to happen. I think we all did, and the tension in the air, along with our nascent disappointment, was almost palpable.

Twelve-thirty came and went, and I settled deeper into my bed-roll. Charles began talking of his time in India, telling Vaughan of his experiences of working as a medic for the Raj.

His voice lulling me, I slipped into sleep. I awoke a little later; Jasper informed me that it was one o’clock. Vaughan and Charles were still conversing, evidently about the portal.

“But if it does manifest itself,” Charles was saying, “and we do somehow establish communication with the beings, then how should we proceed? Have you considered the protocol of the situation? I mean, should we make our finding public? Whom should we tell?”

Vaughan stared at him, his face grim in the light of the lamps. “We should keep the findings to ourselves until such time as we can discern the motivations of the beings,” he said. “I would be loath to tell the world and his wife immediately.”

“I was thinking more in terms of informing the relevant government body,” Charles said.

“I rather think,” Vaughan replied, “That his Majesty’s Government has yet to set up a department for trans-dimensional affairs! And anyway, what if these beings are innocent and peace-loving? Surely you’d be the last one to advocate our government getting wind of the portal? By God, they’d be through in no time and subjugating the natives there just as in India...”

I dozed again, only to be woken by a hand shaking my shoulder. “What?” I cried, sitting upright. Vaughan too had been dozing, and looked as startled as I.

Charles said, “It’s almost three, gentlemen. I’ve been trying to persuade Jasper that we ought to beat a retreat. What do you think?”

“I’m happy to remain till dawn,” I said. “Perhaps the creatures are running late.”

Vaughan nodded. “I haven’t come this far to give up so easily.”

“That settles it, then,” Jasper Carnegie said. “We stay.”

Five minutes later he was pouring more coffee when, suddenly, we were startled by a brilliant flash of sapphire light, and a sudden raging gale of intense heat. I turned and saw the portal expand and hang in the air, accompanied as before by an almost inaudible thrumming sound that vibrated within my chest.

“My God!” I said.

Charles stared in slack-jawed wonder, unable to bring himself to exclaim aloud.

His brother, for his part, was struggling to his feet. Vaughan and I did likewise, and each held him by a shoulder. He seemed totally oblivious of our restraining grip, being more intent on the pulsing portal not thirty feet before us.

“It’s come again!” he cried. “I’d almost given up all hope!”

It was even more magnificent in reality than the image I retained of it in my memory. It seemed larger than I recalled. I had thought the oval on the first occasion to be in the region of twenty feet high and half again across; now it stood perhaps thirty feet high, its lower ellipse beginning in the air at the height of a man, and its topmost curve as tall as the treetops. It pulsed and shimmered with the same effulgent lapis lazuli light as before, but was it this time more intense? Perhaps my thwarted anticipation invested it with greater properties, now that it had actually deigned to show itself.

One thing was for sure: none of us had ever perceived its like, and we stood agape like children as it radiated before us.

Jasper strained against our grip, his eyes almost popping to take in the details. “I see no shadow-beings this time,” he observed.

Vaughan said, “They did not show themselves immediately on the first occasion, as far as I recall.”

I stared at my friends. In the electric wash of the portal’s light, their faces were transformed, thrown into stark shadow, their expressions of mingled fear and wonder seemingly exaggerated as if by the pen of some phantasmagorical caricaturist. No doubt my expression was likewise distorted; certainly, I was hardly in control of myself. My heart beat wildly, fit to burst, and my limbs were taken by a violent trembling that I could not quell.

Charles, until that second standing beside us behind the fallen tree, at that moment climbed over the trunk and stared in astonishment. At first I thought that, like his brother on the first occasion, he too was being drawn by some hypnotic compulsion towards the portal; but my fear was quashed as he halted, then looked back at us and shook his head in wonder.

Jasper struggled to join his brother, but we held him back. “Easy!” Vaughan counselled. “You will gain nothing from getting too close!”

Jasper made some half-strangulated noise in protesting reply, but did not increase his struggle. Still, Vaughan and I were gainfully employed in keeping him at a safe distance.

I noticed that the cameras were clicking away, and that Vaughan’s Morse machine was projecting its series of coded messages. I wondered what the beings behind the light - if indeed there were any beings there tonight - made of the code, or of the staring cameras, or if indeed they were aware of our own shadowy presence among the trees.

“There!” Charles cried, pointing. “Did you see...?”

Indeed I had; within the light, but fleetingly, I had observed a shape: it was tall, its limbs monstrously elongated like some attenuated creation by Giacometti. It appeared briefly at the periphery of the oval interface, face on, for all the world as if it were staring out at us and our world. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it retreated off-stage again, frustrating us.

We were not disappointed for long, however; a minute later not one but three humanoid shapes showed themselves. They seemed to float across the face of the portal, two tall figures and a third, this one perhaps half the other’s height. The tall creatures’ arms appeared longer than they should have, gangling tentacles reaching almost to their knees.

“Charles!” Vaughan cried, startling me. “Here!”

Charles spun around, and, on realising what Vaughan intended, joined us behind the fallen tree. He held his brother’s arm while Vaughan, relieved of custodial duty, drew the biscuit box from his greatcoat.

I watched, my heart racing, as Vaughan approached the trans-dimensional interface.

I realised then, and it struck me again later, that this must rank as one of the most primitive, not to say absurd, attempts at communication in the history of our race. There was something at once wonderfully courageous, and at the same time pathetically optimistic, in the sight of a man with a biscuit tin endeavouring to effect inter-species dialogue with beings in control of technology at which we could only marvel.

Vaughan was approaching the interface by painful degrees, one arm raised to cover his face, the other drawn back in order to launch the biscuit tin. At last he could approach no further, the energy of the portal beating him back, and he chose this instant to hurl the tin towards the blue light.

I watched the slow arc of its trajectory against the pulsing glow, and it seemed to take an age to arrive at its destination.

And then, of a sudden, it made contact with the membrane and, instead of passing through as we had hoped, it seemed to hang for long impossible seconds in the light before bursting into sudden and voracious flame.

“And to think,” I murmured to Charles, “that that might have been Jasper’s fate!”

Between us, Jasper seemed not to have noticed my words. He was straining forward, seemingly oblivious to the fate of the biscuit tin.

Vaughan beat a quick retreat and joined us behind the trunk.

His face was red raw from the heat of the interface, and the reek of singed hair hung about his person. “So much for that little idea,” he muttered. “Let’s hope the Morse machine effects better results.”

Perhaps Charles and I had relaxed our grip on Jasper, assuming that even he would not now venture forth towards the interface, having witnessed the fate of the biscuit tin. If so, then we assumed in error. No sooner had Jasper perceived a lessening of our grip, than he pulled himself free.

I have no real notion of what his intentions might have been as he staggered across the clearing towards the portal, the shadow of his plump person thrown back towards us in elongated exaggeration.

Before we could shout aloud in warning, much less move ourselves to effect a rescue, Jasper Carnegie was within feet of the light.

I am certain that his life was saved a second time - not by Vaughan on this occasion, but by pure happenstance. For whatever reason, the beings in control of the interface chose that precise second to effect a change in the nature of the membrane.

As we stared, convinced that we were about to see our friend reduced to ashes, the blue light vanished...

It did not, as on the other occasions, shrink to a point and pop from existence. This time the light disappeared but was replaced by something equally fabulous - if not more so, to judge by subsequent events.

Just as it seemed that Jasper Carnegie was about to take a flying leap into perdition, the blue light changed instantly and became a scene of midnight calm. Not only did the light cease, but also the heat and the low thrumming vibrato, and instead there came from the portal an absolute silence, then the waft of a warm wind freighted with some heavenly, otherworldly scent such as I had never experienced before.

Jasper, brought up short by the transformation, came to a comical halt and stared.

Vaughan and I, released from stasis, ran forward and wrestled Jasper to the ground. We caught him by surprise, and his opposition was minimal; we succeeded in hauling him from the clearing and back behind the fallen trunk, where we gathered ourselves and took stock of the situation.

As my eyes adjusted to the sable membrane of the interface, in contrast to the blinding blue of earlier, I saw with amazement that the portal now framed a scene, an otherworldly landscape, much as a picture frame encloses a canvas: but no earthly canvas had ever depicted such a scene as this!

“Oh, my God...” Vaughan breathed in awe.

“What is it?” Charles said.

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “the blue light was just a precursor to this, a stage through which the process had to pass before the true other world was revealed.”

For through the portal we made out what could only have been another world. It was in darkness, but as we stared we gradually discerned a string of lights around what might have been a bay, for the lights were duplicated with a ripple effect on the surface of the water. Around the shore stood dwellings, but dwellings the like of which we had never seen before. They were bulbous and squat, like wasp’s nests, with circular lighted windows positioned centrally upon their protuberant walls.

“Perhaps,” Vaughan speculated, “this is some far future vision.”

I pointed, my hand trembling as I did so. “If this is the future of our planet,” I said, “then how do you account for those?”

For riding high in the sky of this tranquil scene were two large moons, one quite orange and the other crimson.

“Perhaps,” I said, “now that the heat is no more, we might take a closer look?”

We glanced at each other, desire fighting with trepidation as we considered the advisability of a closer inspection.

Jasper was the first to speak. “I can see no harm in doing so,” he said, “so long as we stay together. We might even chance a step through to the other side.”

“Let’s merely take a look, first,” Vaughan cautioned.

“I’ll second that,” said Charles.

We released Jasper and moved cautiously from behind the log, walking four abreast towards the magically transformed interface.

We slowed as we neared the alien scene. The warm wind was stronger here, and with it the fragrant scent; it reminded me of honeysuckle, but with an undertone of spice.

I heard a sound: the gentle lapping of water, and the distant calling of what might have been an animal.

Vaughan placed a restraining hand on my arm as I ventured near. “The interface was opened for a purpose,” he said. “Perhaps in order for beings to pass from the other side.”

“I see no one abroad,” Charles said. “There’s no sign at all of the earlier figures.”