Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/108

108 are and why they have not known of you before."

"Who told you they killed the race of the machine dwellers? Who told you these people killed the Gods of the caves?"

"Has someone told you they did not kill? They have killed many of the Red Legion with no cause. Why should they not try to kill you?"

"I have become tired of life. It might be interesting if someone tried to kill me.Tell me more of these people."

Lane told the great emotionless being all that he knew of the newcomers to the northern caverns. Softly, mildly, the great face listened, the great lazy mind turned the thoughts idly and visibly before Lane's mental listening.

How to rouse the time-atrophied soul of that great body? How to give him human anger and human will to survive and create? Lane's mind leaped and struggled and wrestled with the problem. This great, flat, twisted, lazy whiteness of flesh seemed to Lane to typify, to be the whole race of men who do not think or try to solve life's problems, all the deadwood of the race of man rolled into one great spirit and put there to dwell forever in a terrible enigmatic punishment of one soul for all the sins of omission of all men. How to rouse such a devil of living nothingness into a God like fury of will toward creation and striving toward a greater, fuller life for all men?

How to fecundate that great thing with the red flame of courage that burned, Lane knew, in the men of the Red Legion? How to make him desire to forward the real purpose of life, to fight for them and their goals understandingly and eagerly?

"Let me show you my men? Looking into their minds, see their love for their children, for the great legends of the red men of the past, see their spirit seeking a method to make a way of life for the red man that will lead again to greatness as it was before such as you turned their faces from the red man and fell a-dreaming here within your God-built machines. Think what your duty toward your fellow men may be. Think, Eemeeshee! These men would fight to the death for you! Will you lie down and die like a coward before the coming of the evil thing that has killed their brothers? Are you a coward, Eemeeshee?"

Eemeeshee slowly turned the words within his mind. His hand idly turned the dials, and within the great cubical screens Lane could see the small encampment of his men where their fire burned beside the great cavern road.

Slowly, one by one, Eemeeshee sent his seeking telaug beam into each mind, read there all the thoughts, looked idly at Lane to note that he was watched as he did what Lane suggested.

And even as Lane dared to hope that the life in that mind might take fire from the desperation of his followers; even as Lane dared to send his mind along the vision of what the future might be with all the wisdom of this terrific being to guide them. . . the enemy struck again!

A terrible ray lanced, searing and deadly, down into that luxurious, lonely nest of crystal and blue and gold in that chamber. Struck, burning and smashing at the vast white coils and ugly billows of soft flesh, of ancient, pink-and-white life, struck rending at that soft vastness of Eemeeshee in a frenzied effort to bring death quickly before retaliation.

Lane fell to the floor, blinded and burnt from the ray flashing past his head, and a terrible odor of death, of burning flesh filled the great quiet room that had seen so much time go quietly by — and now this had come to Eemeeshee.

ABA was looking out upon the newcomers. Knowingly, thoughtfully her fertile, infinitely educated mind, revolved the new thing — men — in her life. Since a little girl she had spent all her waking hours seeing that the needs and wishes of the great Eemeeshee were filled. All the sensuous desires of his wholly mental life she had minded, too, making with her fertile mind all the images he might desire to watch augmented and developed into life fullness in the solidographic dream mech.

All those antique records she had read had given her avid young mind a food that has not been properly given to man since the Gods left the earth. She was vastly more than mortal; she was what simpler people call a white fairy, a sorceress. She knew mighty things that could be done with simple materials, she knew vast secrets of energy and life and matter without really realizing that she was superior to man. For