Pharaoh's Broker<br />Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner by Ellsworth Douglass (thriller books to read txt) 📖

I attempted to explain that the Earth was more than twice as far from the Sun as she was from us; but he believed the evidence of his eyes, and I had to give it up in despair.

"I pray thee, bring this Larger Eye to the Council Chamber. I must summon all the wise men at once to behold this wonder. How long will it continue?"

The doctor told me it might last almost two hours; but I found it impossible to convey any idea of this period of time to Zaphnath, until I told him that it would continue half the time of the crossing of Phobos, who had just risen dimly in the west.

We made a quick breakfast on fruit like grapes and a wheaten gruel, and hastened to the chamber where we had been received the day before. Zaphnath was already there, and so were eleven of the grey-beards. We did not wait for the twelfth, but Zaphnath led the doctor to the place at the centre of their oval table, which thus filled all the seats. Then the young ruler ascended his throne and thus addressed them:—

"While ye have tossed and tumbled in an idle slumber, two things of grave importance have happened touching you. The Pharaoh, acting upon my urgent advices, hath appointed this grey-beard from the Blue Star to be your chief; and now the Blue Star herself hath re-appeared upon the[254] very face of the Day-Giver, even as these, her people, told us yesterday that she must do."

Just at this point the belated wise man came straggling in, a slow surprise growing upon him when he saw that his seat was taken. Zaphnath then turned, addressing him,—

"Thou hast not heard, O lazy idler in the lap of morning, what I have just spoken to thy brothers? Then go thou to yonder Larger Eye and speak truthfully to these grey-beards all that thou seest."

I adjusted the instrument, and placed him in the proper position to see. He looked long and carefully, then left the instrument and looked with the unaided eye. Coming back he gazed again, and finally spoke very slowly, as if resigning his life with the words:—

"I am old, and my sight deceiveth me, O my brothers, for when I gaze into this mysterious instrument the Day-Giver suddenly groweth very large, and hath two blots of shadow upon the upper half of his brightness. But when I look with my proper eyes, he keeps his size, and there are still spots upon him, but they are upon his lower side."

I explained to Zaphnath that the telescope made things look wrong side up, just as it made them look larger, and I focussed it upon the Gnomons to convince the wise man of this. Then the youth spoke to him again:—

"The Pharaoh hath appointed this grey-beard[255] from the Blue Star to be chief of all the wise men, and as there can be but twelve, thou art no longer one. Unto thee, however, is given the duty of teaching our language to the chief. See that thou doest it well, for the lives of all of you, having now been forfeited by the law, are in his hands. But so long as his wisdom spares you, ye shall live."

As there was now a lull, I saw an opportunity for my plan which I had not yet found time to explain to the doctor. I translated to him as I proceeded, however,—

"Tell me, O Zaphnath, is it the custom here to relate dreams to the wise men for interpretation? I had last night a most peculiar one, and I will give this golden coin to whomsoever is able to explain its meaning." All the great eyes opened wide and round at beholding the eagle I held up to view. So large a piece of gold must have been uncommon. The youth replied,—

"It is, in truth, an obsolete formality to submit dreams to the wise men, for they have interpreted none since I came into Kem. But let us hear it; if they cannot make it known, mayhap I can do so."

"I dreamed that I stood by the great river which runneth just without thy city walls, and I saw coming up out of the water, as if they had been fishes, seven familiar beasts, such as I have not seen since I came to Kem. Knowest thou here such large, useful animals, each having a long tail and four legs, and whose peaceful habit is to eat the[256] grass of the fields, which, having digested, the female yieldeth back in a white fluid very fit to drink?"

"It is kine thou meanest," answered Zaphnath. "In truth there are but few within the city, but they are well known, for in the land of my father my people do naught but to breed and raise them and send them hither for ploughing in the fields. At the season of planting thou shalt see many of them."

"I saw seven kine, most sleek and plump of flesh, feeding in a green meadow by the river; but suddenly there came up out of the water in the same manner two lean and shrunken kine, whose withered bones rattled against their dry skins, they were so poor and hungry. And they stayed not to eat the grass of the meadow, but fell upon and devoured their fatter sisters——"

"Saidst thou two?" interrupted Zaphnath.

"Two of the lean and shrunken, but they ate the fat-fleshed, which were seven," I answered, watching Zaphnath and the wise men closely, for he was translating to them phrase by phrase as I spoke. He faltered when I described the eating up of the fat cattle; there were wondering and inquiring looks among the wise men and a constant chattering in Kemish. I waited patiently for some time, then waving my coin I demanded,—

"Can none of the grey-beards declare the meaning to me?"[257]

There were more consultations among themselves and with Zaphnath, and presently he said,—

"Before the wise men can declare thy dream, they demand to know whether the lean kine only slaughtered the sleek ones, or if they ate them wholly up? And were they filled and satisfied when they had eaten their fatter sisters?"

"In truth, I forgot to say that they devoured the fat kine wholly and completely, yet it could not be known that they had eaten anything, they were still so lean and ill-favoured."

This caused even a greater chattering than before, and the youth finally asked,—

"Didst thou dream aught more, or is this all?"

"Truly I had another dream, but it was different. I thought that all the wheat in the field grew upon one stalk in seven great kernels; then a shrivelled and withered stalk began to spring up; when suddenly a rapping on my door awakened me, and I dreamed no more."

The effect which this produced was most curious. Blank surprise, hidden cunning, anxious debating and uneasy hesitation, succeeded each other among the wise men. I watched it with great interest, and perceived the doctor's satisfaction, but I again demanded the interpretation.

"Know, then, O dreamer," answered Zaphnath, "that we understand not only the import of all that thou hast dreamed, but even what thou wouldst have dreamed hadst thou not been wakened![258] But, in spite of thy handsome offer, it doth not appear fit or proper to us that the interpretation of it should be made known to thee. Tell me, however, hast thou had conversation with any other person in Kem, save with me and with the wise men?"

"Thou knowest well, O Zaphnath, that I speak not the Kemish tongue, and can understand or communicate only through thy interpretation. I have spoken with no one on all of Ptah except through thee, and if thou wilt not declare my dream I care not, for while ye have been debating among yourselves I have learned its meaning!"

"Thou understandest it already!" he exclaimed. "Pray tell us, then, how thou hast learned it."

"The chief wise man hath declared it to me in my own tongue!" I exclaimed, with a meaning look toward the doctor, who had been speaking to me to urge caution. "He saith that the seven sleek kine are the Kemish people, and the two lean and ill-favoured are we two from the Earth—for are not thy people larger and plumper than we!—and the seven denoteth their much greater number. But the dream meaneth that we two, poor and hungry, might eat up all your people and become their masters."

There was still more delighted jabbering and excited comment. Then Zaphnath arose, and turning graciously to the doctor said to him,[259]—

"Thy marvellous interpretation, O chief grey-beard, is most correct and wise, and it hath wholly eaten ours up! We quite agree with thy superior wisdom, for thou only hast read the dream aright!"

[260]

The doctor's new official position carried with it the use of a spacious, rambling dwelling, situated just inside the gate where we had met Miss Blank. It was thus conveniently located for the doctor's duties at the observatories on the plateau. Another house would have been assigned to me, but I preferred to live with the doctor, and I desired to keep my eye on those enormous stone structures which our telescope had quickly relegated to scientific uselessness.

We had established ourselves comfortably in this house, surrounded ourselves with a modest retinue of servants, and were rapidly becoming acquainted with Kemish life and manners. The doctor learned the language laboriously from the deposed wise man, who had no means of communicating with him except in the tongue he was teaching. Thus it happened that the doctor could teach me in a few hours in the evening what it[261] had taken him all day to learn. Naturally I picked up the most common phrases used in receiving and handling the grain, by hearing them frequently; but I soon learned that I must pronounce them with exactly the same intonation and emphasis, or they were not understood. Knowing but one language themselves, they had no facility in recognising mispronounced words, or in guessing at the meaning of incomplete phrases on which I stumbled.

The most difficult thing I encountered was their method of telling the time. During the day it was reckoned rationally enough by the passage of the Sun, which was never obscured by clouds and could always be seen. Every house had a small hole in the roof, at a fixed distance from the floor, and the daily track and varying shape of the spot of sunshine thus admitted gave names to the periods of the day. There seemed to be a settled superstition that no house was fortunate unless this spot of sunshine entered by the door in the morning. For this reason the principal door in nearly every house was built in the west, so that the rising Sun would cast its spot first on the porch outside and then gradually creep in through the door, across the floor, and up the opposite wall late in the afternoon. Of course there were daylight periods in the early morning and late afternoon when the Sun was too low to cast a spot, and these were known by terms which are[262] best translated "before the clock" and "after the clock."

No one dared to make a social call while the Sun was still outside the door, but friends were best welcome when the Sun was just entering it. Moreover, whoever slept until the Sun had entered the door was looked upon as an irredeemable sluggard. The track of the spot from the door-sill to the wall opposite was measured by linear distance from the centre or noon-position of the spot. As in different houses the apertures through which the clock-light was admitted were always the same distance from the floor, such expressions as "two feet before noon," or "a foot and a quarter after noon" (which I translate from the Kemish) always had a definite and exact meaning. The nearer the spot drew to noon the more exactly circular it became and the more slowly it moved. Therefore, very fine measurements were needed in the middle of the day, and an inch near noon represented nearly as much time as a foot in the morning or evening.

But the daylight methods were simplicity itself compared with the night methods, which were calculated on an entirely different system, based on the combined movements of the two moons, neither of which agreed or coincided with the movement of the Sun in any close degree. I urged upon the doctor, as one of his earliest duties, the necessity of reforming their calendar and establishing[263] a uniform method of denoting the time, to extend throughout the day and night. But on this point he failed to agree with me.

"What are our seconds, minutes, hours, and weeks after all?" he queried. "They are only arbitrary and meaningless divisions of time, which we have found necessary because we have a very meagre heavenly clockwork; but here they have a very elaborate one. Our day is a rational period based on the Sun's revolution. Here they