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Title: Rhythm of the Spheres
Date of first publication: 1936
Author: Abraham Grace Merritt (1884 - 1943)
Date first posted: July 15, 2013
Date last updated: July 15, 2013
Faded Page eBook #20130725

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                             RHYTHM of the SPHERES

    A World Where Robots Reign--and the Last Poet Strikes Out for
    Freedom!

                                 By A. MERRITT

                            Thrilling Wonder Stories

                                 Vol. 8, No. 2.

                                  October 1936




Narodny, the Russian, sat in his laboratory. Narodny's laboratory was a
full mile under earth. It was one of a hundred caverns, some small and
some vast, cut out of the living rock. It was a realm of which he was
sole ruler. In certain caverns garlands of small suns shone; and in
others little moons waxed and waned as the moon waxed and waned over
earth; and there was a cavern in which reigned perpetual dawn, dewy,
over lily beds and violets and roses; and another in which crimson
sunsets baptized in the blood of slain day dimmed and died and were born
again behind the sparkling curtains of the aurora.

And there was one cavern ten miles from side to side in which grew
flowering trees and trees which bore fruits unknown to man for many
generations. Over this great orchard one yellow sunlike orb shone, and
clouds trailed veils of rain upon the trees and miniature thunder
drummed at Narodny's summoning.

Narodny was a poet--the last poet. He did not write his poems in words
but in colors, sounds, and visions made material. Also, he was a great
scientist--the greatest in his peculiar field. Thirty years before,
Russia's Science Council had debated whether to grant him the leave of
absence he had asked, or to destroy him. They knew him to be unorthodox.
How deadly so they did not know, else after much deliberation, they
would not have released him. It must be remembered that of all nations,
Russia then was the most mechanized; most robot-ridden.

Narodny did not hate mechanization. He was indifferent to it. Being
truly intelligent he hated nothing. Also he was indifferent to the whole
civilization man had developed and into which he had been born. He had
no feeling of kinship to humanity. Outwardly, in body, he belonged to
the species. Not so in mind. Like Loeb, a thousand years before, he
considered mankind a crazy race of half-monkeys, intent upon suicide.
Now and then, out of the sea of lunatic mediocrity, a wave uplifted that
held for a moment a light from the sun of truth--but soon it sank back
and the light was gone. Quenched in the sea of stupidity. He knew that
he was one of those waves.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had gone, and he had been lost to sight by all. In a few years he was
forgotten. Unknown and under another name, he had entered America and
secured rights to a thousand acres in what of old had been called
Westchester. He had picked this place because investigation had revealed
to him that of ten localities on this planet it was most free from
danger of earthquake or similar seismic disturbance.

The man who owned it had been whimsical; possibly an atavism--like
Narodny, although Narodny would never have thought of himself as that.
At any rate, instead of an angled house of glass such as the thirtieth
century built, this man had reconstructed a rambling old stone house of
the nineteenth century. Few people lived upon the open land in those
days; and they had withdrawn into the confines of the city-states.

New York, swollen by its meals of years, was a fat belly of mankind
still many miles away. The land around the house was forest-covered.

A week after Narodny had taken the house, the trees in front of it had
melted away leaving a three-acre, smooth field. It was not as though
they had been cut, but as though they had been dissolved. Later that
night a great airship had appeared upon this field--abruptly, as though
it had blinked out of another dimension. It was rocket-shaped but
noiseless. And immediately a fog had fallen upon airship and house,
hiding them. Within this fog, if one could have seen, was a wide tunnel
leading from the air-cylinder's door to the door of the house.

And out of the airship came swathed figures, ten of them, who walked
along that tunnel, were met by Narodny and the door of the old house
closed on them.

A little later they returned, Narodny with them, and out of an opened
hatch of the airship rolled a small flat car on which was a mechanism of
crystal cones rising around each other to a central cone some four feet
high. The cones were upon a thick base of some glassy material in which
was imprisoned a restless green radiance.

Its rays did not penetrate that which held it, but it seemed constantly
seeking, with suggestion of prodigious force, to escape. For hours the
strange thick fog held. Twenty miles up in the far reaches of the
stratosphere, a faintly sparkling cloud grew, like a condensation of
cosmic dust.

And just before dawn the rock of the hill behind the house melted away,
like a curtain that had covered a great tunnel. Five of the men came out
of the house and went into the airship. It lifted silently from the
ground, slipped into the aperture and vanished. There was a whispering
sound, and when it had died away the breast of the hill was whole again.
The rocks had been drawn together like a closing curtain and boulders
studded it as before. That the breast was now slightly concave where
before it had been convex, none would have noticed.

For two weeks the sparkling cloud was observed far up in the
stratosphere, was commented upon idly, and then was seen no more.
Narodny's caverns were finished.

Half of the rock from which they had been hollowed had gone with that
sparkling cloud. The balance, reduced to its primal form of energy, was
stored in blocks of the vitreous material that had supported the cones,
and within them it moved as restlessly and always with that same
suggestion of prodigious force. And it was force, unthinkably potent;
from it came the energy that made the little suns and moons, and
actuated the curious mechanisms that regulated pressure in the caverns,
supplied the air, created the rain, and made of Narodny's realm a mile
deep under earth the Paradise of poetry, of music, of color and of form
which he had conceived in his brain and with the aid of those ten others
had caused to be.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now of the ten there is no need to speak further. Narodny was the
Master. But three, like him, were Russians; two were Chinese; of the
remaining five, three were women--one German in ancestry, one Basque,
one an Eurasian; a Hindu who traced his descent from the line of
Gautama; a Jew who traced his from Solomon.

All were one with Narodny in indifference to the world; each with him in
his viewpoint on life; and each and all lived in his or her own Eden
among the hundred caverns except when it interested them to work with
each other. Time meant nothing to them. Their researches and discoveries
were solely for their own uses and enjoyments. If they had given them to
the outer world they would only have been ammunition for warfare either
between men upon Earth or Earth against some other planet.

Why hasten humanity's suicide? Not that they would have felt regret at
the eclipse of humanity. But why trouble to expedite it? Time meant
nothing to them, because they could live as long as they
desired--barring accident. And while there was rock in the world,
Narodny could convert it into energy to maintain his Paradise--or to
create others.

The old house began to crack and crumble. It fell--much more quickly
than the elements could have brought about its destruction. Then trees
grew among the ruins of its foundations; and the field that had been so
strangely cleared was overgrown with trees. The land became a wood in a
few short years; silent except for the roar of an occasional rocket
passing over it and the songs of birds which had found there a
sanctuary.

But deep down in earth, within the caverns, there were music and song
and mirth and beauty. Gossamer nymphs circled under the little moons.
Pan piped. There was revelry of antique harvesters under the small suns.
Grapes grew and ripened, were pressed, and red and purple wines were
drunk by Bacchantes who fell at last asleep in the arms of fauns and
satyrs. Oreads danced under the pale moon-bows, and sometimes Centaurs
wheeled and trod archaic measures beneath them to the drums of their
hoofs upon the mossy floor. The old Earth lived again.

Narodny listed to drunken Alexander raving to Thais among the splendors
of conquered Persepolis; and he heard the crackling of the flames that
at the whim of the courtesan destroyed it. He watched the siege of Troy
and counted with Homer the Achaean ships drawn up on the strand before
Troy's walls; or saw with Herodotus the tribes that marched behind
Xerxes--the Caspians in their cloaks of skin with their bows of cane;
the Ethiopians in their skins of leopards with spears of antelope horns;
the Libyans in their dress of leather with javelins made hard by fire;
the Thracians with the heads of foxes upon their heads; the Moschians
who wore helmets made of wood and the Cabalians who wore the skulls of
men.

For him the Eleusinian and the Osirian mysteries were re-enacted, and
he watched the women of Thrace tear to fragments Orpheus, the first
great musician. At his will, he could see rise and fall the Empire of
the Aztecs, the Empire of the Incas; or beloved Cæsar slain in Rome's
Senate; or the archers at Agincourt; or the Americans in Belleau Wood.
Whatever man had written--whether poets, historians, philosophers or
scientists--his strangely shaped mechanisms could bring before him,
changing the words into phantoms real as though living.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was the last and greatest of the poets--but also he was the last and
greatest of the musicians. He could bring back the songs of ancient
Egypt, or the chants of more ancient Ur. The songs that came from
Moussourgsky's soul of Mother Earth, the harmonies of Beethoven's deaf
brain or the chants and rhapsodies from the heart of Chopin. He could do
more than restore the music of the past. He was master of sound.

To him, the music of the spheres was real. He could take the rays of the
stars and planets and weave them into symphonies. Or convert the sun's
rays into golden tones no earthy orchestra had ever expressed. And the
silver music of the moon--the sweet music of the moon of spring, the
full-throated music of the harvest moon, the brittle crystalline music
of the winter moon with its arpeggios of meteors--he could weave into
strains such as no human ear had ever heard.

So Narodny, the last and greatest of poets, the last and greatest of
musicians, the last and greatest of artists--and in his inhuman way, the
greatest of scientists--lived with the ten of his choosing in his
caverns. And, with them, he consigned the surface of the earth and all
who dwelt upon it to a negative Hell--

Unless something happening there might imperil his Paradise!

Aware of the possibility of that danger, among his mechanisms were those
which brought to eyes and ears news of what was happening on earth's
surface. Now and then, they amused themselves with these.

It so happened that on that night when the Ruler of Robots had
experimented with a new variety of ray--a space warper--Narodny had been
weaving the rays of Moon, Jupiter and Saturn into Beethoven's Moonlight
Symphony. The moon was a four day crescent. Jupiter was at one cusp, and
Saturn hung like a pendant below the bow. Shortly Orion would stride
across the Heavens and bright Regulus and red Aldebaran, the Eye of the
Bull, would furnish him with other chords of starlight remoulded into
sound.

Suddenly the woven rhythms were ripped--hideously. A devastating
indescribable dissonance invaded the cavern. Beneath it, the nymphs who
had been dancing languorously to the strains quivered like mist wraiths
in a sudden blast and were gone; the little moons flared, then ceased to
glow. The tonal instruments were dead. And Narodny was felled as though
by a blow.

After a time the little moons began to glow again, but dimly; and from
the tonal mechanisms came broken, crippled music. Narodny stirred and
sat up, his lean, high-cheeked face more Satanic than ever. Every nerve
was numb; then as they revived, agony crept along then. He sat, fighting
the agony, until he could summon help. He was answered by one of the
Chinese.

Narodny said: "It was a spatial disturbance, Lao. And it was like
nothing I have ever known. The Ruler of Robots is perfecting a ray with
which to annihilate mankind."

Narodny smiled: "I care nothing for mankind--yet I would not harm them,
willingly. And it has occurred to me that I owe them, after all, a great
debt. Except for them--I would not be. Also, it occurs to me that the
robots have never produced a poet, a musician, an artist--" He laughed:
"But it is in my mind that they are capable of one great art at least!
We shall see."

       *       *       *       *       *

Down in the chamber of screens, Narodny laughed again.

He said: "Lao, is it that we have advanced so in these few years? Or
that man has retrogressed? No, it is the curse of mechanization that
destroys imagination. For look you, how easy is the problem of the
robots. They began as man-made machines. Mathematical, soulless,
insensible to any emotion. So was primal matter of which all on earth
are made, rock and water, tree and grass, metal, animal, fish, worm, and
men. But somewhere, somehow, something was added to this primal matter,
combined with it--used it. It was what we call life. And life is
consciousness. And therefore largely emotion. Life establishes its
rhythm--and its rhythm being different in rock and crystal, metal, fish,
and man--we have these varying things.

"Well, it seems that life has begun to establish its rhythm in the
robots. Consciousness has touched them. The proof? They have established
the idea of common identity--group consciousness. That in itself
involves emotion. But they have gone further. They have attained the
instinct of self-preservation. They are afraid mankind will revolt
against them. And that, my wise friend, connates fear--fear of
extinction. And fear connates anger, hatred, arrogance--and many other
things. The robots, in short, have become emotional to a degree. And
therefore vulnerable to whatever may amplify and control their emotions.
They are no longer mechanisms.

"So, Lao, I have in mind an experiment that will provide me study and
amusement through many years. Originally, the robots are the children of
mathematics. I ask--to what is mathematics most closely related? I
answer--to rhythm--to sound--to sounds which raise to the nth degree the
rhythms to which they will respond. Both mathematically and
emotionally."

Lao said: "The sonic sequences?"

Narodny answered: "Exactly. But we must have a few robots with which to
experiment. To do that means to dissolve the upper gate. But that is
nothing. Tell Maringy and Euphroysne to do it. Net a ship and bring it
here. Bring it down gently. You will have to kill the men in it, of
course, but do it mercifully. Then let them bring me the robots. Use the
green flame on one or two--the rest will follow, I'll warrant you."

The hill behind where the old house had stood trembled. A circle of pale
green light gleamed on its breast. It dimmed and where it had been was
the black mouth of a tunnel. An airship, half rocket, half winged,
making its way to New York, abruptly drooped, circled, fell gently, like
a moth, close to the yawning mouth of the tunnel.

Its door opened, and out came two men, pilots, cursing. There was a
little sigh from the tunnel's mouth and a silvery misty cloud sped from
it, over the pilots and straight through the opened door. The pilots
crumpled to the ground. In the airship half a dozen other men, slaves of
the robots, slumped to the floor, smiled, and died.

There were a full score robots in the ship. They stood, looking at the
dead men and at each other. Out of the tunnel came two figures swathed
in metallic glimmering robes. They entered the ship. One said: "Robots,
assemble."

The metal men stood, motionless. Then one sent out a shrill call. From
all parts of the ship the metal men moved. They gathered behind the one
who had sent the call. They stood behind him, waiting.

In the hand of one of those who had come from the tunnel was what might
have been an antique flash-light. From it sped a thin green flame. It
struck the foremost robot on the head, sliced down from the head to the
base of the trunk. Another flash, and the green flame cut him from side
to side. He fell, sliced by that flame into four parts. The four parts
lay, inert as their metal, upon the floor of the compartment.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the shrouded figures said: "Do you want further demonstration--or
will you follow us?"

The robots put heads together; whispered. Then one said: "We will
follow."

They marched into the tunnel, the robots making no resistence nor effort
to escape. They came to a place whose floor sank with them until it had
reached the caverns. The machine-men still went docilely. Was it because
of curiosity mixed with disdain for these men whose bodies could be
broken so easily by one blow of the metal appendages that served them
for arms? Perhaps.

They came to the cavern where Narodny and the others awaited them.
Marinoff led them in and halted them. These were the robots used in the
flying ships--their heads cylindrical, four arm appendages, legs
triple-jointed, torsos slender. The robots, it should be understood,
were differentiated in shape according to their occupations. Narodny
said: "Welcome, robots! Who is your leader?"

One answered: "We have no leaders. We act as one."

Narodny laughed: "Yet by speaking for them you have shown yourself the
leader. Step closer. Do not fear--yet."

The robot said: "We feel no fear. Why should we? Even if you should
destroy us who are here, you cannot destroy the billions of us outside.
Nor can you breed fast enough, become men soon enough, to cope with us
who enter into life strong and complete from the beginning."

He flecked an appendage toward Narodny and there was contempt in the
gesture. But before he could draw it back a bracelet of green flame
circled it at the shoulder. It had darted like a thrown loop from
something in Narodny's hand. The robot's arm dropped clanging to the
floor, cleanly severed. The robot stared at it unbelievingly, threw
forward his other three arms to pick it up. Again the green flame
encircled also his legs above the second joints. The robot crumpled and
pitched forward, crying in high-pitched shrill tones to the others.

Swiftly the green flame played among them. Legless, armless, some
decapitated, all the robots fell except two.

"Two will be enough," said Narodny. "But they will not need arms--only
feet."

The flashing green bracelets encircled the appendages and excised them.
The pair were marched away. The bodies of the others were taken apart,
studied, and under Narodny's direction curious experiments were made.
Music filled the cavern, strange chords, unfamiliar progressions
shattering arpeggios and immense vibrations of sound that could be felt
but not heard by the human ear.

And finally this last deep vibration burst into hearing as a vast drone,
hummed up and up into swift tingling tempest of crystalline, brittle
notes, and still ascending passed into shrill high pipings, and
continued again unheard, as had the prelude to the droning. And thence
it rushed back, the piping and the crystalline storm reversed, into the
drone and the silence--then back and up.

And the bodies of the broken robots began to quiver, to tremble, as
though every atom within them were dancing in ever increasing, rhythmic
motion. Up rushed the music and down--again and again. It ended abruptly
in mid-flight with one crashing note.

The broken bodies ceased their quivering. Tiny star-shaped cracks
appeared in their metal. Once more the note sounded and the cracks
widened. The metal splintered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Narodny said: "Well, there is the frequency for the rhythm of our
robots. The destructive unison. I hope for the sake of the world outside
it is not also the rhythm of many of their buildings and bridges. But,
after all, in any war there must be casualties on both sides."

Lao said: "Earth will be an extraordinary spectacle--a plaintive
phenomenon, for a few days."

Narodny said: "It is going to be an extraordinary uncomfortable Earth
for a few days, and without doubt many will die and more go mad. But is
there any other way?"

There was no answer. He said: "Bring in the two robots."

They brought them in.

Narodny said: "Robots--were there ever any of you who could poetize?"

They answered: "What is poetize?"

Narodny laughed: "Never mind. Have you ever sung--made music--painted?
Have you ever dreamed?"

One robot said with cold irony: "Dreamed? No--for we do not sleep. We
leave all that to men. It is why we have conquered them."

Narodny said, almost gently: "Not yet, robot. Have you ever--danced? No?
It is an art you are about to learn."

The unheard note began, droned up and through the tempest and away and
back again. And up and down--and up and down, though not so loudly as
before. And suddenly the feet of the robots began to move, to shuffle.
Their leg-joints bent; their bodies swayed. The note seemed to move now
here and now there about the chamber, and always following it,
grotesquely. Like huge metal marionettes, they followed it. The music
ended in the crashing note. And it was as though every vibrating atom of
the robot bodies had met with some irresistible obstruction. Their
bodies quivered and from their voice mechanisms came a shriek that was
hideous blend of machine and life. Once more the drone, and once more
and once more and then, again, the abrupt stop.

There was a brittle crackling all over the conical heads, all over the
bodies. The star-shaped splinterings appeared. Once again the drone--but
the two robots stood, unresponding. For through the complicated
mechanisms which under their carapaces animated them were similar
splinterings.

The robots were dead!

Narodny said: "By tomorrow we can amplify the sonor to make it effective
in a 3000 mile circle. We will use the upper cavern, of course, it means
we must take the ship out again. In three days, Marinoff, you should be
able to cover the other continents. See to it that the ship is
completely proof against the vibrations. To work. We must act
quickly--before the robots can discover how to neutralize them."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was exactly at noon the next day that over all North America a deep
inexplicable droning was heard. It seemed to come not only from deep
within earth, but from every side. It mounted rapidly through a tempest
of tingling crystalline notes into a shrill piping and was gone. Then
back it rushed from piping to drone; then up and out and down. Again and
again. And over all North America the hordes of robots stopped in
whatever they were doing. Stopped--and then began to dance--to the
throbbing notes of that weirdly fascinating music--that hypnotic rhythm
which seemed to flow from the bowels of the earth.

They danced in the airships and scores of those ships crashed before the
human crew could gain control. They danced by the thousands in the
streets of the cities--in grotesque rigadoons, in bizarre sarabands;
with shuffle and hop and jig the robots danced while the people fled in
panic and hundreds of them were crushed and died in those panics. In the
great factories, and in the tunnels of the lower cities, and in the
mines--everywhere the sound was heard--and it was heard everywhere--the
robots danced ... to the piping of Narodny, the last great poet ... the
last great musician.

And then came the crashing note--and over all the country the dance
halted. And began again ... and ceased ... and began again....

Until at last the streets, the lower tunnels of the lower levels, the
mines, the factories, the homes, were littered with metal bodies shot
through and through with star-shaped splinterings.

In the cities the people cowered, not knowing what blow was to fall upon
them ... or milled about in fear-maddened crowds, and many more died....

Then suddenly the dreadful droning, the shattering tempest, the
intolerable high piping ended. And everywhere the people fell, sleeping
among the dead robots, as though they had been strung to the point of
breaking, sapped of strength and then abruptly relaxed.

And as though it had vanished from Earth, America was deaf to cables, to
all communication beyond the gigantic circle of sound.

But that midnight over all Europe the drone sounded and Europe's robots
began their dance of death ... and when it had ended a strange and
silent rocket ship that had hovered high above the stratosphere sped
almost with the speed of light and hovered over Asia--and next day
Africa heard the drone while the black answered it with his
tom-toms--then South America heard it and last of all far off
Australia ... and everywhere terror trapped the peoples and panic
and madness took their grim toll.

Until of all that animate metal horde that had fettered Earth and
humanity there were a few scant hundreds left--escaped from the death
dance through some variant in their constitution. And, awakening from
that swift sleep, all over Earth those who had feared and hated the
robots and their slavery rose against those who had fostered the metal
domination, and blasted the robot factories to dust.

       *       *       *       *       *

Again the hill above the caverns opened, the strange torpedo ship
blinked into sight like a ghost, as silently as a ghost floated into the
hill and the rocks closed behind it.

Narodny and the others stood before the gigantic television screen,
shifting upon it images of city after city, country after country, over
all Earth's surface. Lao, the Chinese, said: "Many men died, but many
are left. And the Ruler of Robots is no more. They may not
understand--but to them it was worth it."

Narodny mused: "It drives home the lesson--what man does not pay for, he
values little."

And Narodny shook his head, doubtfully. But soon harmonies were swelling
through the great cavern of the orchards, and nymphs and fauns dancing
under the fragrant blossoming trees--and the world again forgotten by
Narodny.


[The end of _Rhythm of the Spheres_ by Abraham Grace Merritt]