Slaves of Ijax. John Russell Fearn
thin hand rose deprecatingly. “Certainly not—but in your high position you can learn here all that you need without mingling with the masses.”
“Sorry,” Peter said, shaking his head; “but as I told you I like to find things out for myself and the only way I can do that is to potter about on my own. Don’t you realise that I am in the same position as Alice in Wonderland when she found Wonderland?”
Lanning sighed, passed a hand uncertainly over his lofty brow, then made a gesture of resignation.
“As you wish, Excellence. Now I really must leave you. The control panel is perfectly understandable. Press whichever button you require—be it food, robot, secretary, and so forth. I shall call upon you again later.”
Peter nodded and watched the thin figure stride across the room and vanish behind twin doors that shone like polished gold as they closed....
CHAPTER THREE
MYSTERY IN METROPOLITA
For a moment or two longer Peter remained by the window, still trying to fit himself and his mind into the extraordinary position. This sudden leap of seven hundred years took a good deal of assimilating. He turned at length, glanced at the electric clock which said 10:20 in the morning, then looked back through the window into a dizzying canyon at the bottom of which, a thousand feet below, sprawled pedestrian and traffic levels and below them again open parks.
“You’re not dreaming, my boy,” he said out loud. “Michael pitchforked you into something you never even guessed at.”
For a moment he thought it odd that he should consider Michael as still alive, as though in another city. And Judith? Hard to think they were dusty memories seven centuries away. With an effort ha forced himself back to reality and went over to the control panel to study it. The most promising button of all seemed to be the amber one labelled ‘Secretary’, so he pressed it and waited for something to happen. Somehow he expected a robot to come in with a notebook in its metal hand. Instead the polished doors swung open to admit a slender girl.
Peter straightened up interestedly and watched her as she came walking across the expanse. She was not very tall, but her carriage was regal and her figure perfect. She was dressed in a soft, clinging garment, with long sleeves and a skirt ending just below her knees. Her legs were bare, very shapely, and bronzed. Rich golden hair was drawn back from her brow and held in place with a single gleaming band over the crown of her head.
As she came nearer with graceful steps Peter looked at her face. She was not pretty, he decided, but definitely intelligent. Grey eyes were set wide apart; the nose was straight. The mouth was a trifle large and full in the lips, and the chin very firm and determined.
“Excellence...,” she said gravely, halting six feet away and inclining her blonde head momentarily.
Still Peter gazed at her, marvelling how the amethyst colour of her dress rippled and sparkled in the sunlight.
“I...er....” He cleared his throat. “Sit down, Miss...?”
“I am Alza Holmes,” she told him readily, her voice very distinct and feminine. “Your first secretary.”
“First?”
“Yes, Excellence. There are seven altogether.”
Peter nodded towards a chair and the girl sealed herself and studied him with her frank grey eyes, so much so that he began to feel vaguely uncomfortable.
“Look, Miss Holmes,” he said, sitting down opposite her, “I sent for you so I can get a few things straight. I...hmmm! You know who I am of course?”
“Of course, Excellence.”
“Then you must appreciate that I am in an awkward position. I don’t know one thing from another and I’m in need of a guide. It seems that Mr. Lanning, my Adviser-Elect, is too busy to conduct me about the city himself, so I wonder if—perhaps you—?”
“Whatever you command,” the girl responded, smiling. “You mean that you wish to view the city?”
“Yes. Is it—London? I belonged to London before I came here, you see.”
“No, Excellence, it is not London any more. It has the name of Metropolita, and is the capital city of Great Britain. In the United States the capital city n Pacifica, which was at one time San Francisco.”
Peter nodded wonderingly. The changes in civic status were not really interesting him at the moment: he was thinking how very attractive this girl really was, despite a lack of real beauty and a most unprepossessing name.
“Mr. Lanning speaks of a Task, Miss Holmes,” he resumed at length. “Have you any idea what it is?”
It was extraordinary how animation suddenly took hold of the girl. Colour mounted into her smooth cheeks and brightness came into her grey eyes. Peter noticed her long, slender hands clenched with sudden emotion in her lap.
“Of course I know what the Task is, Excellence! It is the sacred duty that Ijax has assigned to us. All of us, throughout the world.”
“Ijax?” Peter frowned. “Who—or what—is Ijax?”
The girl hesitated. “You—you don’t know, then? Mr. Lanning did not tell you?”
As Peter shook his head the girl felt inside her robe and from an inner pocket produced a small idol. It stood perhaps four inches high, a delicately carved, squatting figure with folded arms, the face square and expressionless. The stomach was distended and the head apparently bald. Vaguely it reminded him of photographs he had seen of Buddha.
He looked at the image in wonder, lifted it up, turned it over, then set it down on the table. The sunshine gleamed through the thing as though it was made of green glass.
“You see,” Alza said, with a touch of reverence, “everybody in the world has an Ijax. And we all listen to him too, once every four weeks, usually about midnight. It is he who gives us instructions about the Task.”
She picked the idol up, smiled at ut in a fascinated kind of way, then returned it inside her robe.
“Seems odd to me,” Peter said, rubbing his chin, “I mean it savours of idolatory, and that’s the last thing I can reconcile with a city like this whose science has reached such a development.”
“There are Temples of Ijax all over the world,” the girl said, after a pause. “Into them, every month, go the devotees of Ijax to receive their latest orders concerning the Task.... Tonight, for instance, happens to be the time of meeting for this month. If your Excellence would care to go with me and see for yourself—?”
“You bet I would!” Peter declared readily. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go on a sightseeing tour most of the day, drop in somewhere for meals, and then go to this Temple tonight. How’s that?”
“Admirable. Since it is your command,” Alza agreed, getting to her feet. “Would you care to make the journey by plane? I rather think it would be best, in your high position.”
“By plane it is,” Peter assented, getting up. “Where do we start from?”
“Right here, Excellence. The robots will take us to the airport.”
The girl walked across to the switchboard and pressed the requisite buttons, then he stood waiting as a robot glided towards her. Calmly she settled in the six supporting arms. Peter allowed the same thing to happen to him, then he waited in rather uneasy wonder as whirring helicopter screws suddenly sprouted from the heads of the things and Alza Holmes and he were lifted into the air and borne like thistledown across the great room.
As they intercepted an actuating photoelectric beam the centre window opened and they floated out over the thousand-foot canyon of street. Peter closed his eyes and felt himself sweating. When he dared to look again they were soaring high over the giant buildings and the girl was looking at him in polite amusement, the warm summer wind streaming the blonde hair out behind her head.