Terrors Read Online Free PDF Page B

assemblageof complex electrical gear. Hands that were hard for the eye to follow, that seemed strangely out of focus, made delicate adjustments. The Wizard turned away from the instruments and faced his lovely assistant once more.
    “That is part of their diabolically clever means of operating. The Society of Deep Ones has deep roots, roots that burrow into the sands of time, Nzambi. They are the inheritorsof a religious tradition with its origins among the peoples of the ancient world. They are the heirs of a civilization that was old when our own ancestors were barely emerging from savagery to develop the arts of thought, of mathematics, of astronomy and of writing. Arts which were copied by even more primitive Europeans who turned the fruits of our own civilization against us and laid low theonce mighty empires of the Dark Continent.”
    Perhaps the Wizard gestured, perhaps it was the play of light on the unique material in which he was garbed, but energy appeared to play across his figure.
    Once again he spoke, his voice deep yet soft, cultured and marked with precision.
    “Were the human race to be called for judgment, Nzambi, there would be much to answer for. The sins of our pettyspecies are many and horrendous, and the greatest of them may be our pride. We think that our vaunted intellect, our skill with tools and with weapons, entitle us to lord it over the rest of Creation. The authors of our holy books place words in the mouth of God, giving Man dominion over all of nature. What a foolish pretense that is!”
    Nzambi smiled ruefully. “But Man does rule the planet, doeshe not, Wizard?”
    The laugh that emerged from the weird vision that was the Crimson Wizard was a compound of painfully gotten wisdom and bitter amusement. “Man thinks he rules the planet. Let us hope that he is wrong, for the legacy of our generation will be nothing but misery and pain for our descendants, should we even survive to have any. No, Nzambi.”
    The Wizard paused. He strode across theroom and stood over his assistant. Although her slim, tall figure towered over most women and many men, she was obliged to tilt her head backwards if she hoped to catch even a glimpse of his stern, elusive, ever-shifting features.
    “No,” he repeated. “There were species before ours whose civilizations would put our own to shame, whose achievements were such that we should be awe-struck and reducedto fear and trembling had we but the remotest inkling of their greatness and their threat. The descendants of those beings dwell to this day midst the distant stars, and their agents walk among us, unknown, unrecognized, as plain before us as the purloined letter before the Parisian
sureté
in M. Poe’s brilliant tale.”
    With a swirl of red, the Crimson Wizard swept from the room.
    Fleeting momentspassed.
    A panel slid back atop the Central Railroad Tower. The hangar that topped the soaring structure was invisible from any other building in Seacoast City. Within the hangar stood an array of the world’s most advanced aircraft—a Cierva gyroplane, a Sapphire-MacNeese SM-10 monoplane, and a miniature lighter-than-air craft. The mechanics who maintained the fleet had been vetted for reliabilityand were as highly skilled as they were highly paid. Any of the Wizard’s aircraft was ready for use at any time.
    On this occasion the Wizard selected the lighter-than-air craft. It was coated with a special paint developed by the Wizard’s scientific aide, Nzambi. It was the world’s least reflective pigment, rendering the miniature Zeppelin virtually invisible by day or by night.
    To the Wizardthe craft was almost a person. He had named the airship
Kpalimé
after his ancestral city in Africa, but when he settled behind the controls of the miniature Zeppelin and spoke her name, it was if he spoke the name of a beloved woman rather than a machine.
    Unlike most Zeppelins,
Kpalimé’s
propellers were powered by silent compressed air generators. Thus, the