I remembered what Fra Rafael had said about an earthquake, three months before. Lhar nodded toward me.
'But this was a time-slip. The space-time continuum is also subject to great strains and stresses. It buckled, and strata—Time-sectors—were thrust up to mingle with others. This valley belongs to another age, as do I and the machine, and also—the Other.'
She told me what had happened.... There had been no warning. One moment she had been in her own World, her own Time. The next, she was here, with her robot. And with the Other....
'I do not know the origin of the Other. I may have lived in either your future or your past. This valley, with its ruined stone structures, is probably part of your future. I had never heard of such a place before. The Other may be of the future also. Its shape I do not know....'
She told me more, much more. The Other, as she called it—giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage—had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It was a sort of merging....
Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes, forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size, familiar laws of nature do not apply.
So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence.
Sitting there in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet—what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip—and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and transported to
A robot, a flower that was alive and intelligent—and feminine—and the Other....
'The native girls,' I said. 'What will happen to them?'
'They are no longer alive,' Lhar told me. 'They still move and breathe, but they are dead, sustained only by the life-force of the Other. I do not think it will harm me. Apparently it prefers other food.'
'That's why you've stayed here?' I asked.
The shining velvety calyx swayed. 'I shall die soon. For a little while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world, this alien time. Your blood has helped.' The cool tentacle withdrew from my arm. 'But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled with—with certain energizing vibratory principles.
'They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays. And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then my poor robot will be alone.' I sensed elfin amusement in that last thought. 'It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of a machine. But in our world there is a rapport—a mental symbiosis—between robot and living beings.'
There was a silence. After a while I said, 'I'd better get out of here. Get help—to end the menace of the other....' What sort of help I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?
Lhar caught my thought. 'In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this valley—you cannot. The fog will bring you back.'
'I've got my compass.' I glanced at it, saw that the needle was spinning at random.
Lhar said: 'The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog, you will always return here.'
'How do you know all this?' I asked.
'My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a colloid brain.'
I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.
'Can't your robot guide me?' I persisted.
'He will not leave my side. Perhaps—' Lhar turned to the sphere, and the cilia fluttered excitedly. 'No,' she said, turning back to me. 'Built into his mind is one rule—never to leave me. He cannot disobey that.'
I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said, 'It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try, anyway.'
'I will be waiting,' she said, and did not move as I slipped out between two trunks of the banyan-like tree.
It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous. I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.
Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And presently I would find myself back in the valley....
I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley—unless hypnotically summoned, like the Indio girls.
I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn't moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently.
'Lhar,' I said. 'Lhar, can't you help me?'
The white flame of the flower was motionless, but the robot's cilia moved in quick signals. Lhar moved at last.
'Perhaps,' her thought came. 'Unless both induction and deduction fail, my robot has discovered a chance for you. The Other can control your mind through emotions. But I, too, have some power over your mind. If I give you strength, wall you with a psychic shield against intrusion, you may be able to face the Other. But you cannot destroy it unless it is in its normal shape. The Indio girls must be killed first....'
'Killed?' I felt a sense of horror at the thought of killing those poor simple native girls.
'They are not actually alive now. They are now a part of the Other. They can never be restored to their former life.'
'How will—destroying them—help me?' I asked.
Again Lhar consulted the robot. 'The Other will be driven from their bodies. It will then have no hiding-place and must resume its own form. Then it can be slain.'
Lhar swayed and curtseyed away. 'Come,' she said. 'It is in my mind that the Other must die. It is evil, ruthlessly selfish, which is the same thing. Until now I have not realized the solution to this evil being. But seeing into your thoughts has clarified my own. And my robot tells me that unless I aid you, the Other will continue ravening into your world. If that happens, the time-pattern will be broken.... I do not quite understand, but my robot makes no mistakes. The Other must die....'
She was outside of the banyan now, the sphere gliding after her. I followed. The three of us moved swiftly across the blue moss, guided by the robot.
In a little while we came to where the six Indio girls were squatting. They had apparently not moved since I had left them.
'The Other is not here,' Lhar said.
The robot held me back as Lhar advanced toward the girls, the skirt-like frill at her base convoluting as she moved. She paused beside them and her petals trembled and began to unfold.
From the tip of that great blossom a fountain of white dust spurted up. Spores or pollen, it seemed to be. The air was cloudy with the whiteness.
The robot drew me back, back again. I sensed danger....
The pollen seemed to be drawn toward the Indios, spun toward them in dancing mist-motes. It settled on their bronzed bodies, their limbs and faces. It covered them like a veil until they appeared to be six statues, white as cold marble, there on the blue moss.
Lhar's petals lifted and closed again. She swayed toward me, her mind sending a message into mine.
'The Other has no refuge now,' she told me. 'I have slain the—the girls.'
