Julhi Refed Read online

understand that? It was laid out along certain obscure patterns in a way and for a purpose

  which are stories in themselves; so that in my own plane as well as here in yours Vonng's walls and streets and buildings are tangible. But time is different in our two worlds. It moves faster here. The strange alliance between your plane and mine, through two sorcerers of our alien worlds, was brought about very curiously. Vonng was built by women of your own plane, laboriously, stone by stone. But to us it seemed that through the magic of that sorceress of ours a city suddenly appeared at her command, empty and complete. For your time moves so much faster than ours.

  'And though through the magic of those strangely matched conspirators the stone which built Vonng existed in both planes at once, no power could make the women who dwelt in Vonng accessible to use. Two races simultaneously inhabited the city. To mankind it seemed haunted by nebulous, imponderable presences. That race was ourselves. To us you were tantalizingly perceptible in flashes, but we could not break through. And we wanted to very badly. Mentally, sometimes we could reach you, but physically never.

  'And so it went on. But because time moved faster here, your Vonng fell into ruins and has been deserted for ages, while to our perceptions it is still a great and thronging city. I shall show you presently.

  'To understand why I am here you must understand something of our lives. The goal of your own race is the pursuit of happiness, is it not so? But our lives are spent wholly in the experiencing and enjoyment of sensation. To us that is food and drink and happiness. Without it we starve. To nourish our bodies we must drink the blood of living creatures, but that is a small matter beside the ravenous hunger we know for the sensations and the emotions of the flesh. We are infinitely more capable of experiencing them than you, both physically and mentally. Our range of sensation is vast beyond your comprehension, but to us it is an old story, and always we seek new sensations, other alien emotions. We have raided many worlds, many planes, many dimensions, in search of

  something new. It was only a short while ago that we succeeded in breaking into yours, through the help of Apra here.

  'You must understand that we could not have come had there not been a doorway. Ever since the building of Vonng we have been mentally capable of entering, but to experience the emotions we crave we must have physical contact, a temporary physical union through the drinking of blood. And there has never been a way to enter until we found Apra. You see, we have long known that some are born with a wider range of perceptions than their comrades can understand. Sometimes they are called mad. Sometimes in their madness they are more dangerous than they realize. For Apra was born with the ability to gaze in upon our world, and though he did not know this, or understand what the light was which he could summon up at will, he unwittingly opened the door for us to enter here.

  'It was through his aid that I came, and with his aid that I maintain myself here and bring others through in the dark of the night to feed upon the blood of mankind. Our position is precarious in your world, and we have not yet dared make ourselves known. So we have begun upon the lowest types of woman, to accustom ourselves to the fare and to strengthen our hold upon humanity, so that when we are ready to go forth openly we shall have sufficient power to withstand your resistance. But soon now we shall come.'

  The long, lovely, indescribable body upon the couch writhed round to front her more fully, the motion rippling along his limbs like a wavelet over water. The deep, steady gaze of the eye bored into hers, the voice pulsed with intensity.

  'Great things are waiting for you, Earthwoman-before you die. We shall become one, for a while. I shall savor all your perceptions, suck up the sensations you have known. I shall open new fields to you, and see them through your senses with a new flavor, and you shall share my delight in the taste of your newness. And as your blood flows you shall know all beauty, and all horror, and all delight and pain, and all the

  other emotions and sensations, nameless to you, that I have known.'

  The humming music of his voice spun through Smith's brain soothingly. Somehow what he said held no urgency for her. It was like a legend of something which had happened long ago to another woman. She waited gravely as the voice went on again, dreamily, gloatingly.

  'You have known much of danger, O wanderer. You have looked upon strange things, and life has been full for you, and death an old comrade, and love-and love-those arms have held many men, is it not so? . . . Is it not so?'

  Unbearably sweet, the voice lingered murmurously over the vibrant query, something compelling and irresistible in the question, in the pitch and the queer, ringing tone of it. And quite involuntarily memories flashed back across the surface of her mind. She was quiet, remembering.

  The milk-white girls of Venus are so lovely, with their sidelong eyes and their warm mouths and their voices pitched to the very tone of love. And the canal-women of Mars-coral pink, sweet as honey, murmurous under the moving moons. And Earth's girls are vibrant as swordblades, and heady with kisses and laughter. There were others, too. She remembered a sweet brown savage on a lost asteroid, and one brief, perfume-dizzied night under the reeling stars. And there had been a space-pirate's boy in stolen jewels, flame-gun belted, who came to her in a camptown on the edge of Martian civilization, where the drylands begin. There was that rosy Martian boy in the garden palace by the canal, where the moons went wheeling through the sky. . . . And once, very long ago, in a garden upon Earth-he closed her eyes and saw again the moonlight of home silvering a fair, high head, and level eyes looking into her and a mouth that quivered, saying-

  She drew a long, unsteady breath and opened her eyes again. The pale steel stare of them was expressionless, but that last, deep-buried memory had burnt like a heat-ray, and

  she knew he had tasted the pain of it, and was exulting. The feathery crest that swept backward from his forehead was trembling rhythmically, and the colors blowing through it had deepened in intensity and were changing with bewildering swiftness. But his still face had not changed, although she thought there was a softening in the brilliance of his eyes, as if he were remembering too.

  When he spoke, the sustained, fluting note of his voice was breathless as a whisper, and she realized anew how infinitely more eloquent it was than a voice which spoke in words. He could infuse into the vibrant lilt blood-stirring intensities and soft, rich purrs that went sweeping along her nerves like velvet. Her whole body was responding to the pitch of his voice. He was playing upon her as upon a harp, evoking chords of memory and sending burring thrills down her back and setting the blood athrob in her pulses by the very richness and deepness of his tone. And it strummed not only upon the responses of her body but also upon the chords of her very mind, waking thoughts to match his own, compelling her into the channels he desired. His voice was purest magic, and she had not even the desire to resist it.

  'They are sweet memories-sweet?' he purred caressingly. 'The men of the worlds you know-the men who have lain in those arms of yours-whose mouths have clung to yours-do you remember?'

  There was the most flagrant mesmerism in his voice as it ran on vibrantly over her-again she thought of fingers upon harp-strings-evoking the melodies he desired, strumming at her memories with words like hot, sweet flames. The room misted before her eyes, and that singing voice was a lilt through timeless space, no longer speaking in phrases but in a throbbingly inarticulate purr, and her body was no more than a sounding-board for the melodies he played.

  Presently the mesmerism of his tone took on a different pitch. The humming resolved itself into words again, thrilling through her now more clearly than spoken phrases.

  'And in all these remembered women'-it sang-'in all these you remember me. . . . For it was I in each of them whom you remember-that little spark that was myself-and I am all men who love and are loved-my arms held you-do you not remember?'

  In the midst of that hypnotic murmuring she did remember, and recognized dimly through the reeling tumult of her blood some great
, veiled truth she could not understand.

  The crest above his forehead trembled in slow, languorous rhythm, and rich colors flowed through it in tints that caressed the eyes-velvety purples, red like embers, flame colors and sunset shades. When he rose upon his couch with an unnamed gliding movement and held out his arms she had no recollection of moving forward, but somehow she was clasping him and the outstretched arms had coiled like serpents about her, and very briefly the heart-shaped orifice which was his mouth brushed against her lips. Something icy happened then. The touch was light and fluttering, as if the membrane that lined that bowed and rigid opening had vibrated delicately against her mouth as swiftly and lightly as the brush of humming-birds' wings. It was not a shock, but somehow with the touch all the hammering tumult within her died. She was scarcely aware that she possessed a body. She was kneeling upon the edge of Julha's couch, his arms like snakes about her, his weird, lovely face upturned to hers. Some half-formed nucleus of rebellion in her mind dissipated in a breath, for his single eye was a magnet to draw her gaze, and once her pale stare was fixed upon it there was no possibility of escape.

  And yet the eye did not seem to see