Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/75

Rh tell you. If you are the man you may become, why then I will tell you how this has occurred. Why you have dreamed of me so long is something that will remain a secret yet for awhile, but rest assured it is not an accident. I did have something to do with it and have known you for a long time from a distance."

"This worship of Tanit, the ancient Goddess—I dreamed of that, too, last night. As you have a reality outside my dreams, does that cult of Tanit have a reality, too? Is there such a cult?"

"There is a cult of Tanit. I am a part of it, and have been for a long time. Its modern origins include extra-terrestial influences."

"Another thing, Kyra. That doll they doped me to make—why did they make that doll? What is it really all about? Why am I here?"

"You will hear all that soon enough. Meanwhile you are not ready to learn these things, and you must learn them from the proper sources in a careful exposition that leaves nothing unsaid. I am not prepared to give you such explanations, I have not thought about it enough. You will gather many facts as time goes on that will make such explanations far easier. It is like Einstein and relativity, and asking him about it. You are asking me just as hard a question. What is magic? Why am I connected with magic? I can tell you, but you would not understand me any more than you would understand Einstein if he told you about his work. You may learn in time, and you may never understandunderstand. [sic] Many think they understand but do not. Just as many men think they understand Einstein, but do so only vaguely. Such is my understanding of dolls and doll uses. These are ancient arts, a science from an older time; one is either raised with and understands such things and uses them, or just uses or is used by them. Or knows nothing, like yourself."

"Can't you give me an idea, Kyra? I can't just blindly accept anything Tanil says. My whole future is being decided here and I am having nothing to say about it. Tell me what you can."

Kyra settled herself with a swift feminine twist, swirling her transparent skirt in distracting spirals about her eye-blessing legs. I watched, and knew again the feeling that I had known this girl for years, and that she knew me of old. How could that be, my mind asked?

"Well, Mr. Kent, I'll tell you what will do you the most good. If you understand, you may be able to decide what is best for you to do, though I do doubt you will be able to any deciding about this for years to come. You are now in the power of people who have ways of ruling people unknown to those people ruled.

"These dolls are one of their ways, and are an ancient art. The dolls made by that machine have a pseudo-life, are activiatedactivated [sic] by electric currents similar to the currents of that machine you have built to make a man strong. They are precisely like your own body in a certain way—in that way a radio receiving set is like the sending station—in mental atunement, and this doll can receive your thought; is a key to your thought and actions.

"You are hereafter linked to that doll in strange ways, not in the way witch's dolls are commonly thought of, though. If Tanil wants to know what you are doing, she puts a certain ray upon the doll and no matter what you are doing, the doll will tell her your thought. It is a receiver. If she wants to help you; if you are in trouble; she then puts another ray upon the doll, sends her thought in strong augmentation along this beam to the doll's brain. You, no matter where you are, will think those thoughts and do those things she makes the doll think. Do you understand the mystery of the doll?"

UNDERSTAND," I said angrily, "she just stole my soul away and now I am her thing. She made a zombie out of me, and now I am supposed to like it!"

"Ordinarily, in the hands of evil people, such would be the case; you would be the loser. But Tanil is not a fool, and I have a great friendship for her. She has a doll of me, and it was made at my request. But there is also a doll of Tanil in other hands—so that she is not entirely a free agent.

"Tanil can do great favors for a person with her dolls. Such things are like any tool—like a tractor or a steam shovel—they are useful and harmless in the hands of sane people. But in the hands of a murderer or a madman they can be terrible weapons. So it is with the ancient art of the witch's dolls.

"They can be made only with machinery devised by the Elder race of the past, and there are not many such machines on Earth.