Witch's Daughter

**his room, but when he saw what was on her back**
**he went with her with fists clenched for battle**

TOM Kent is my name. I have al-
ways been a man with an ambition
to get a certain special something
out of life. Most men want women, or
money, or to be the big-shot in their busi-
ness, or something that everyone else
wants. Well, I want all those things, too,
but I have a desire over and above such
general ambitions.

Beyond the empty dullness that we call
"life," beyond the rows of houses full of
nearly identical people doing nearly iden-
tical things, lies, to my mind, a pathway.

Over the hills of vain wants and empty
hoping; over the ill-formed mountains of
partial fulfillments of futile desires . . .
to a further range of mountains, greater
and vastly more beautiful barricades that
shut mere man off from the thing I call the
"edge."

This path I take in my daydreamings,
and waiting at the end of that path is the
witchmaid!

This lovely daughter of a wise, but
somehow sinister mother is an ensorceling
mystery. Her soft white arms are to me
vastly more enticing than the real arms
of any earthborn female.

About her a living, breathing, writhing
aura-mist of awful beauty tells of the pow-
erful magic which is her heritage. About
her coil those plants, blooming and some-
how bearing upon their twisted limbs the
fruit and the strange flowers of fearful
truths.

Those deadly flowers, with their bril-
liant red blood-petals, are the materials
from which she brews a terrible, irresist-
ible potion.

That drink brings a man a new and ter-
rific life, a life whose pleasures are so
great that mere mortal life no longer can
be borne.

All these things and a multitude of other
enticements, wait at the "edge," beyond
those barrier mountains.

And those barriers are the time a man
spends in pursuit of ordinary, unworthy
goals. To drop such pursuit and pursue
instead the white body, the lightning of

the witch-maid's eyes; to pursue the ob-
livious ectsasy that can be found only in
her night-black hair; that is a lure that is
always with me.

But I am sane! I know better, and
such dreamlike maunderings of my mind
I put aside somehow for long walks in the
descending darkness, along the waterfronts
of this city, along the endless and ugly
but somehow to me weirdly fascinating
streets of the slums of this old city of
Baltimore.

This night I was doing just that, in-
dulging my dream desires, and dropping
off all the more practical cares of this
world in the conjuring up of the face of
the witch-maid who waits beyond the edge
for me: that fearfully lovely woman who
can and will give a man vastly more pleas-
ure than any mortal maid can hope to give.

Of course I know it isn't true, and I
know that nothing of the kind of life I
see in my dreams can exist. But I even
know her name: "Kyra". I know every
inch of her face as if it was a face I had
engraved upon metal a million times,
somewhere, sometime.

XITALKING home, this night, the sky

* » dripped blood from a gloomy hori-

zon. The sun, apparently suffering a mor-
tal wound, sank despairingly into the bay.
It was hot, too!

I climbed the grimly stairs to my rooms.
Their old wood creaked. The air, heavy
with the mould and dust of a century of
other sad feet climbing as wearily seemed
to cling to my face smotheringly. I started
to unlock my door, but it wasn't necessary.
The maid had left it unlocked . . .

As I crossed the darkened room to the
dresser, loosening my tie, I half-heard a
silken sigh of movement. But it didn't
register fully on my tired mind. I stood
in front of the mirror, looking at that face
and wondering if everyone I had faced to-
day had found that face as unsatisfying
as I did now. That face that we must
wear at some unknown one's behest — oh
well, maybe he had an ugly face himself.

64

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

65

Mine was probably as good as any god's
perdurable face, that had watched a mil-
lion centuries wash over it ... it must
be a pretty worn and weary face at that.

After all, those discouraged blue eyes
looking back at me had only seen twenty-
five summers; that tangled sandy mop of
sweat-heavy hair had been twisted in the
hands of some pretty classy females — and
they hadn't objected to my stocky two
hundred pounds of bone and muscle-bound
figure either.

Amid these casual cogitations before the
mirror, my mind kept hearing, without no-
ticing, the continuous soft sliding of silk
against silk, and now a faint perfume, an
alluring musky scent that reached and at
last penetrated my discouraged conscious-
ness. I whirled toward the door just in
time to see a flash of dark movement.

She was almost out the door, a slim
figure in black, moving silently, swiftly on
her toes. She had been behind the door
as I opened it, and had almost managed
to escape my attention entirely.

Suddenly I was angry. I loved my fel-
low men— any my women— and I hated
to have them make a sucker out of me. It
was so darn inconsiderate of them!

I leaped after her, and seized one smooth
silk-covered arm. But she twisted cleverly,
her face a white, emotionless mask, express-
ing nothing. She disappeared into the ad-
joining room, outside at the end of the
hall. The lock clicked behind her. It was
one of those old-fashioned jiggers with a
little lever at the top that anyone could
lock.

That flash view I had had of her white
face was a lightning bolt to me!

For that face was as familiar to me as
my mother's, although I had never seen it
in the flesh before. It was the face of
Kyrat And about the smooth, black silk
sleekness of that slippery female sneak-
thief had been an aura, an overwhelming
sensing of echoes of greatness, of terrible
mysterious involvement, like . . .

... if you saw a hand stretching to-
ward you from the air of your own room,
without a body, you would know that here
was something that extended into the
fourth dimension. Your mind would pic-
ture that world of the fourth dimension, a
tremendous echo of far unending reaches
of life would resound in your mind with an
earthquake effect. But the mysterious

thing causing this terrific echo of reason
can be just a simple, normal hand — just a
human hand.

So it was with this woman I glimpsed.
With her, went, to me, the awful sensing
of another world. Why, I couldn't under-
stand; except that she had the face of
Kyra — and so far as I knew Kyra was a
person who existed only in my mind.

VX7ELL, she hadn't escaped, for there

* \* was no way out of that room. No

way for an ordinary woman to travel, any-
way. Only one small window, high up,
and if she was slim enough to try it, a thir-
ty-foot drop. She wouldn't.

I reached into my room and seized the
chair by the door, and all the while in my
mind buzzed the mental echo of the intui-
tional glimpse of a vast alien landscape
that this woman had brought to me. In
front of the door I propped the chair.

I sat down and put my feet on the door
casing on the other side. Even if I fell
asleep, I was sure she would have to wake
me up in getting out of that room.

I couldn't leave to phone police; besides
I had no intention of arresting her. I was
just mad at her eluding me so easily.

I sat and smoked, wondering if she was
after what I thought she was after? The
newspapers had made so much fun of my
invention that I didn't believe anyone
thought it valuable enough to steal. But I
meant to find, out! If that elusive female
wasn't made of smoke . . .

She must work for someone in - that line
of business, who had read of me in the
newspapers. But the papers had said my
invention was "of no value whatever," in
fact, "dangerous to the health." They were
wrong, but how could anyone know that
but me?

I didn't want to rouse the house for some
vague, inner reason. The perfume worn
by the dark-clothed feminine figure? Per-
haps it was the lure of soft woman-form
Within the sleek black silk? Something
was at work within me, trying to protect
the woman from her own misguided action.
Anyway I sat and waited.

I got more and more angry as I waited.
What I would do with her when I caught
her never entered my mind.

Neither did the more probable chance
that she might use a weapon on me occur
to me. I was sure she was just a cheap

66

AMAZING STORIES

sneak-thief. No one could know the real
nature of my work, or plan to steal it. Or
so I thought then. But what I really
wanted to learn was: why did she look like
Kyra? Why?

I had a very hurt feeling inside me, il-
logically. I spend most of waking hours
trying to devise a thing to lighten the la-
bors of all men, and now one of the un-
grateful creature whom I call the better
part of man, "woman," had tried to rob me
of that thing. It wasn't sense but, it hurt!
That woman had hurt me. I was going to
get back at her some day. I waited.

You see, that was what my invention
was; a thing to make the labor of life
easier. Worn on the body, a synthetic
animal-electric battery would replace the
work-energy expended by the human body
with a synthetic flow of body electric. It
could give a man all the energy he needed
for a hard day's work without tiring him
in the least. I wish I had had it on me
today, but who would have thought a round
of waiting in the offices of manufacturers
would play a man out completely?

It was a good invention. It was per-
fectly developed to a useful stage; but the
medicos and engineers had frowned upon
it for several reasons.

Not good reasons, considering their con-
descending examination of the device in the
offices of G.I.D. (G.I.D. means General
Industrial Devices.) They had refused to
buy it. "Too liable to cause labor dissen-
sions." "Too apt to prove harmful to the
chemistry oj the human body." "The ex-
pense of research required to prove it
harmless would far overtop any reward to
be got from its use. Most probably only
prove it to be harmful to health," etc., etc.

It is so easy to use words to replace hon-
est thought. Pigheaded men! I was just
beginning to learn how hard it is to give
men anything new. Every inventor had to
travel the trail of refusal and scorn. So
had I, but it is a hard trail.

I nodded sleepily.

COFTLY the door opened, and one blue-
^ green eye, sparkling with the thrill of
adventure, peered out at me. I let my
eyes nearly close, and nodded my head
sharply again as though falling asleep.
She glided out, raised one trim leg to step
over my outstretched shanks. I galvan-
ized into swift action.

I leaped at her like a wrestler with two
hundred bucks on the bout, twisting her
round arm behind her, catching her soft,
sweet neck in the crook of my elbow.

She let out a little gasp, but did not
scream. She had no desire to bring in any
spectators.

"Now talk fast, you pretty sneak! What
were you looking for in my rooms, and
what did you find?"

Those sparkling blue-green eyes opened
in terrific innocence. She struggled so very
nicely in my arms. She spoke gaspingly,
and with a slight accent hard to place; like
none I ever heard.

"Please to let up on the neck, you large
roughneck. You are choking me!"

I was' still mad, but getting over it fast.

"You can talk. Do it, or you'll learn
how I don't like to be robbed."

"I didn't take a thing," she gasped. Her
face would have fooled the devil himseli
"I just got in the wrong room. The keys
all fit the same doors in these old houses."

"You don't live here. I know every face
in the house."

"All right, I could say I just moved in,
but what's the use. They made me do it.
I don't want to steal. But I have to. They
have my young brother. They will kill him
if I don't do what they say. They want
your invention."

"They do, eh? I can believe that! "

I laughed then at her artfully contorted
face, for I wasn't hurting her neck. I re-
leased my hold.

"Do you expect me to believe someone
wants my invention? Why, I can't give
it away! You have to do what 'they' want!
Who are 'they'? Now, tell me the truth!"

I twisted her arm a little, for I felt sure
she was lying about something, but couldn't
see just what.

"It is the truth! They have my young
brother. They would kill him or worse if
I double-crossed them; went to the police.
That is why I don't run away. I can't aban-
don him. Some day I'll get him away, and
then I'll run so far they will never find me."

She looked up into my eyes, twisting her
body so accidentally against mine, rubbing
her neck with such a graceful motion of
her slim, rounded arm. Well, after all, I
am only a man. My voice softened, and
she knew she had me. I said:

"It's a good story. But I just don't be-
lieve it. I think I had better call the po-

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

67

lice. You'd come back here tomorrow if
I didn't."

She twisted suddenly out of my now
relaxed grasp. But she didn't run. She
faced me, and now her face was a beautiful
mask of feminine anger. There were even
tears of vexation on her lashes; such glis-
tening tears. I gave up, and believed every
word she had said. I'm only a man.

"You stupid animal."

She was getting madder, her lovely face
flushed, her teeth glittered and that per-
fume was getting under my skin, too.

"Look here, if you don't believe me. . . ."

She turned, tore at her black dress. The
silk parted in her hands, slid down reveal-
ing to my now interested— nay, fascinated
— eyes a smooth and undeniably lovely
back. Probably her best feature, my cyni-
cal soul insisted on remarking to my gulli-
ble ego — but somewhat defeatedly. Across
the smoothness ran a series of welts, and
around her arm at the arm pit ran a raw,
red place where perhaps a strap had held
her against the agony of the beating.

"Do you think that was fun? The old
woman is a witch, and that strap mark is
from the witch's cradle! But of course you
would know about such things. You . . .
you law-abider . . . you! Do you think I
like what I go through? I don't know what
to do, where to turn! At the first move
from me, my brother would die; and no
one would find or arrest the devils. Police
search like blind men on a picnic!"

I LOOKED at her, my mental processes
stymied. The sudden realization that
what she was saying was fully true and
the plight she was in a genuine case of
sadistic enslavement was too much for me.
After all, I am only a man.

All the tales of witchcraft I had read as
a boy — including the beautiful maiden's
rescue by the so-charming prince — rose up
to confound my cynicism. I swallowed the
whole thing; hook, line and sinker.

"Maybe I can help you where no one
else could for bungling. I am not entirely
a fool. My invention could prove useful.
I think I see an idea."

She followed demurely through the bed-
room into the bleak workroom which I
managed to pay for out of a far-too-slen-
der income. I motioned to a chair. From
the case on the work-bench I took my bat-
teries and hung the case over my shoulder.

I attached the cables to the little metal
bands, slid them under my shirt, fastened
them about my arms. I was ready.

The juice in that battery gave me the
strength of four or five ordinary' men, and
the batteries were good for several days.
It was just a much greater supply of the
same electric which the cells of the body
manufacture and store. Crile says the elec-
tric is produced by oxidation of the lipoid
films of the cell's exterior — an oxidation of
the oil of the film. Using Geo. Crile's work
to produce a battery like the human cell
had been my life work so far. It had also
been Herrera's, the Mexican scientist. I
had succeeded. But I'm not famous — yet.

The brain controls that energy of the
body, directing where it should go and
when. The heart of my device was a sim-
ple little switch operated by a tiny toggle.
My harness placed one of these switches
on every large muscle of the body. When
the brain contracted a muscle the little
toggle switch operated, releasing a flood of
energy into the body from the big battery.
Then the toggle-spring shut off. If the mus-
cle remained contracted, the toggle went
on again — and so on till the muscle was
contracted by the brain when it remained
off. This little switch made the energy from
the life-battery as fully controlled as the
body's own energy— except there was a lot
more of it. It was a perfect tool of the
mind, giving the body a vastly greater sup-
ply of work-energy.

Just for a demonstration I lifted a 900
lb. bar-bell for the smooth dream-face who
had tried to burgle me. I bought that bar-
bell for just that purpose — demonstration
— but had never had a chance to use it.
She was surprised, and those sparkling eyes
registered a lot of admiration for my phy-
sique, a glow I did not miss as I held the
900 lbs. aloft, a feat no ordinary man per-
forms without world-wide publicity. But I
was no showman or I would have seen the
chances of getting attention from it.

"Now don't you think we could walk
into that place, overpower the people you
profess to fear so much, and walk out with
your brother? This device gives me a lot
of strength."

"They'd shoot you, the first move. But
I'm tempted to let you try — if you are
brave enough? It would be hard to refuse
you anything, if you did succeed. . . ." Her
voice drawled this last huskily, like a radio

68

AMAZING STORIES

siren registering temptation. She was a
natural, all right. A natural temptress.

Just to be on the safe side, I left a note
on my dresser, a signed and sealed and
stamped envelope, addressed to the police.
It told where I was going, and why. She
gave me the address with a slight, hidden
reluctance.

"The address is a cellar below 153 Port-
land St. The Baltimore Police would not
find it if they did not know it was there.
We go in through a store, and very seldom.
Only at night, when there is no one around.
We are very secret and very careful."

I noticed there was a hint of greater col-
laboration with these criminals than her
other words had given me, but I said noth-
ing. I signed the letter, having given all
the particulars of the address and what
might be found. I sealed it and stamped
it just in case.

THEN we went out into the night. There
was still a red light in the sky, as
though the night were tainted with the
bloody death of the sun. An ominous feel-
ing crept over me which I brushed aside.
I knew I was being a fool, placing myself
in the power of the people who could be
every bit as bad as the girl pictured. But
something drove me, something in the girl's
face, something in my own adventurous
spirit. It was the same thing that made me
loath to believe in the evil intent of any
person until proven. I thought I might be
able to help her, I was curious about her
"witch's cradle," and no little electrified
by herself, the lithe, slim body of her; the
white, too-innocent face with its large, sub-
tly provocative eyes; and the mystery that
breathed about her with the strange elusive
perfume of her. My imagination was cloth-
ing the sly thief with an aura of attraction
because of her likeness to my dream-world
Kyra. My imagination is not always cor-
rect, but it was the gift that made me the
man I am. I had always followed my imag-
ined idea of something bigger in men and
women than the surface might indicate. I
had sometimes been wrong.

We took a taxi to within a block of the
address. The girl, perhaps from habit, had
given an address that could not be traced
to the hole she claimed to fear so much.
My forebodings grew stronger, but I would
not turn back. I was ashamed to show fear
before her — or before the Kyra who lived
only in my brain.

We walked the block through the red-
tinged night. Through the glowering old
dark hulks of houses between the rotting
warehouses and vacant shops. It was a
partly abandoned waterfront section. Ap-
propriate for the kind we were calling on.
I was getting plenty worried long before
we arrived.

We entered a dimly lit shop. She walked
straight through, past the cigar counter,
past the sagging shelves full of ten-cent
goods, candy, kids' stuff, work gloves, what-
have-you.

There was an old woman sitting behind
the counter, an evil-eyed old bulgy-figured
hag, one of the foreign kind you just know
has a dozen dirty petticoats on. We walked
straight through around the end of the
counter and into the door in the back. The
woman only nodded at the girl, ignored me
too entirely.

The room behind the store room was
nearly empty, but the girl did not stop,
started down a staircase. I followed, and
we entered a big cellar. Empty barrels and
broken packing cases littered the place. It
was empty of life or the signs of life. She
walked to the age-greened concrete of the
wall, pressed on it. A section swung under
her hand. We passed through and it closed
behind us with a dull sound of finality. I
inwardly, prayerfully, hoped it wasn't final
for me.

The only thing that had kept me with
this girl so far was remembering the whip
marks on her back. She couldn't produce
those by acting. I stayed mad about that,
and I was going to do something about it
first chance showed.

Through a short tunnel-like passage we
passed, and suddenly into a room of star-
tling magnificence!

Hung with green, silken, heavy-brocaded
hangings, the walls writhed with the golden
shape of a huge dragon worked in the silk,
like a big nightmare swimming in green ink.
It was a rich setting for the woman who
rose from a couch as we entered. Her vivid,
ripened beauty struck my senses. The half-
nude, brown-skinned stalwarts, standing
like statues at each side just back of her,
told me she was somebody both from an
erotic country, and vastly important — to
have two bodyguards who could have made
a good living as strong men in any show.

A stimulating wave of something, maybe
woman-beauty, maybe something more sub-
tle and sinister — a ray, perhaps — washed

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

69

over me like an infinitely intoxicating li-
quid, invisible but potent. A liquid that
contained some subtle, all-powerful drug
that paralyzed the will with the promise
of everything the imagination could con-
jure of joy in a woman's giving.

This whole scene was the opposite of
what the girl's words had given me to ex-
pect. Her words disillusioned me more, but
awakened instead a vast anger and a curi-
osity as big in my breast.

'"pHE woman by the guarded couch spoke

* ■ first, with strange words. English with

that queer accent I could not place. Some-
thing archaic and Eastern about it. Men-
tally I decided never to agree with a nudist
again. For the transparent film of gown
she wore was infinitely more revealing and
satisfying than any nudity could be. Every
curve, every delicious sinuosity of a danc-
er's developed body shone behind the glis-
tening fabric with a luminosity as of a pale
flame of vitality leaping within her soft
flesh. Her voice carried a husky, man-con-
scious inflection to me, as well as her eyes,
boldly upon me.
"Did you get them, Kyra?"
As she used that name, my echoing
dream-memory struck me again with the
vast mystery here opening before me. How
could this girl be Kyra who existed only in
dreams? Kyra, my witch-maid — her name,
her face, what else of hers might this girl
have? Her wisdom, her occult power, per-
haps?

"I brought something worth a lot more
to us. I brought the inventor himself. He
came to save me from a terrible witch 1"
Kyra's laughter was gently mocking, and
as the strange woman joined in, I grew too
angry to stand still, with the two women
laughing at me. . . .

I flushed, said:

"I don't know what is funny. If you
people have brought me here to make fun
of me, I may as well go now!" Even as
I spoke, my mind wondered, what in hell
is Kyra wearing whip marks for ij this
place is not evil?

The woman, still laughing, took my hand
between her own and pressed it.

"Don't be angry. Kyra had to use the
first idea that came into her head, prob-
ably. We had a great need of your inven-
tion, a need that is greater than any scru-
ples we might have about stealing it. Now
that you are here we will take you into our

confidence. Kyra, get the man some wine,
while I introduce myself to him. Our best
blue wine, Kyra."

She turned now to me, and as women
can, turned on all the lure of her so that
the flame of her body within that trans-
parent gown did its work with me. My
anger was gone; my curiosity, as well as a
desire for her in its place. It was desire
that made staying there the one thing I
wanted to do. Something in her voice when
she had asked Kyra to bring wine had
warned me, but I was powerless to heed
any warnings just then. Who could have?
I was helpless. This woman was a witch
of another kind that I had come prepared
to meet. Yet my fear was not gone; it was
only overlaid with another thing, an attrac-
tion more powerful.

This lovely "witch" took my hand again
and pulled me to a seat on the low lounge
on which she had been reclining when I
entered. Her husky, vaguely alien voice
began to weave a spell about me, the spell
of charm and of well-told adventurous
promise, a spell of woman-charm and- of
culture, and another that has grown strong-
er .. . maybe it was evil, maybe it is more
than evil now! Judge for yourself.

"My name," she began, "is Tanil. I
come from a far country ... a country
you have never heard of. I have been here
quite a long time. There is a great deal I
must tell you, so that you can understand
why we need you. So keep your mind open
and unprejudiced against us until you have
heard me out. Then you will decide wheth-
er you wish to help us or not."

Kyra entered with three goblets of wine.
She had changed into a simple clinging
drape of the same kind of translucent ma-
terial of which Tanil's revealing gown was
made. Her own slim beauty sang through
the filmy stuff like a song from the past.
It was a lurid passionate past of midnight
revels in the groves of Pan; or perhaps the
more passionate revels held in the groves
of deeper antiquity of a still longer dead
time, to the worship of some more wilful
desiring God than ever Pan had been.

The clothing of the two women struck
this same strange note of archaic music, a
luringly familiar note in my male breast.
Something of the glory of ancient times
lived here in this room, hidden under the
squalor of the modern city. The question
of what this strangeness might be, made me
listen with an avid curiosity. The wine

70

AMAZING STORIES

trickled like liquid fire down my throat.
It was like no wine I knew. A pulse rose
swiftly in me, of warmth; and the beauti-
ful hangings, the low, odd furnishings with
their hint of the East, the inviting eyes and
half-revealed bodies of the two women took
on a new and greatly enhanced beauty. It
was a potent drink. I asked for more.

T ANIL'S low, almost eery voice began
again to weave its spell. Kyra brought
me another goblet of the potent blue wine.
I listened to Tanil talking, and her eyes
were on mine strangely, watching me for
some reason I didn't get. She was saying:
"We want to be your friends here. We
are that kind of people who want to help
and plan for such men as you — inventors,
the real scientists of the world. We, too,
consider ourselves scientists and useful peo-
ple. As such, in a kind of understood
brotherhood with all other intelligent peo-
ple. Strange things may happen to you
here at our hands, but please trust and
believe in us. For instance, you are going
to sleep now because I am putting you to
sleep, and you may have very strange
dreams. Very . . . strange . . . dreams . . .
indeed . . . !"

My voice now strangely answered Tan-
il's, but it was not of my own volition.
Alarm was ringing a bell all through my
body, the thrill of danger clamored in my
brain, but my inner self did not listen. It
was the influence of some subtle spell she
had been weaving about me, or else the
wine had been heavily drugged! And I had
asked for more. . . . That was funny. I
was full of wine and my senses all awry
with alcohol and drugs. The soft lure of
her sing-song tones and the subtly power-
ful influence of her strong female person-
ality, the utter desirability of her revealed
beauty and the warm closeness of her be-
side me made my voice uncontrollable. I
said:

"I hear, but I do not understand. . . ."
My head nodded sharply. . . .

The feel of the male hands of the guard
upon me woke me because my unconscious-
ly resisting muscles had closed the toggle
switch of my harness, released a flood of
my synthetic body electric from the case
of batteries into my libs. I leaped erect,
sharply awake, and the restraining hands
of the guard — who had been bending to
pick me up — reached for me again. He
was a third again my weight!

Kyra threw up her hands in alarm, re-
membering suddenly my harness and guess-
ing what had happened, but she was too
late to stop me now.

I seized the guard's arm, pulled him to
me, turned swiftly and heaved him over my
back. He flew, all three hundred pounds
of muscle and fat and smooth brown hide,
clear across the room and struck the wall,
lay there without moving, sprawled — out!
The other guard, not understanding my
battery and harness, and thinking my
prowess solely due to skill, advanced to-
ward me, his hands outspread like a wres-
tler, not to be caught as his fellow had
been. Kyra shouted:

"His invention; he's wearing it! I didn't
get a chance to tell you. He's stronger
than four men."

But her words were too late to save the
other guard, for I did not wait for him.
I leaped toward him, got him in the crotch
and around the waist, lifted — heaved. He
went up and over my head, fell heavily on
the floor six feet from me. He didn't get
up. Whether he was out or not, he had
had enough.

As I stood there panting, and the two
women staring at me wide-eyed with the
sudden revealing of strength in a victim
they had thought completely in their power,
I relaxed. The muscle tension gone, the
several little switches of my harness opened,
as they were made to do. The vital energy
of the battery ceased to course through my
body. The drugs they had given me took
sudden effect, I slumped to the floor! As
I fell, the switches opened, a flood of power
coursed through me — and as suddenly
stopped. I blacked out.

T AWOKE to find myself upon a table.
A About me were the white, masked faces
of nurses, of doctors! If I could have
screamed in terror I would have! No man
likes to find himself upon an operating ta-
ble, and least of all when he has given no
consent, has no illness, knows he is there
because of an enemy.

What kind of an operation would they
be doing upon my body? The worst pos-
sible ideas of their intent rose in my mind ;
they were stealing my young glands for
some old man's money, etc., etc. All the
lurid tales of fiction rose in my mind to
explain this sudden horrible appearance of
an operating room about me — and me the
guy to get the knife.

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

71

Over me were the multiple eyes of a
strange ray mechanism. From a mass of
weird glass eyes goggling at me came a
myriad of tiny colored little light rays.
Busy, moving little beams they were, mov-
ing flickeringly, in little jerks, but moving
on steadily — across my back, across and
back, over my body!

Each of the tiny rays made a strange
crawling sensation within me as if a million
microscopic ants were tearing at each cell
those little beams touched. It was as
though the moving little lights were alive
with terrible intelligent life of a micro-
scopic kind that was working a strange
metamorphosis within me.

At a little distance, obscured by the
bent form of Tanil whom I recognized easi-
ly in spite of her mask, was a similar con-
trivance to the one suspended over me,
though of much smaller size.

The thing struck an eerie freezing fear
into me, for there was also a duplicate
operating table, and upon it a smaller
thing, a thing I could see was a replica of
myself! It was like seeing in a reducing
mirror, but brother, that was no mirror,
that was real!

Tanil came, glanced at me. Seeing my
open eyes, she touched me soothingly on
the cheek. I suppose I looked hysterical
or had my mouth ready to sound like a
steam whistle. That's the way I felt!

Somehow, this Tanil was entirely too
smooth an article, or there was a weasel
in the henhouse I had not seen yet. I knew
I was being made a chump someway and
would probably wake up dead.

Then a needle pricked my arm, and I
saw Kyra's eyes, weird over the white mask
as ever I imagined them to be in my
dreams, bending over me, counting my
pulse, taking my temperature — or was she?

I didn't know, I was asleep, and Kyra's
face was still there, as it has been so many
times in my dreams.

As the blackness blotted out even Kyra's
image, a voice in my mind asked curiously
— a voice I couldn't tell from my own, but
was it me? — Where did Tanil obtain this
witch's lore? In what forgotten store of
terrible wisdom had she obtained this
weird, too-complex machine she had placed
over me; which I had seen was repro-
ducing me in miniature upon another table?
Or was she only another tool like Kyra,
and not the boss at all? Or were my senses
fooling me, and all this not as it seemed?

Or is it modern science she is using, there
in that reproduction mechanism, no witch's
lore at all? Some secret development of
modern science strange to me that she had
learned and applied in a new way. Or
was it all but more of my dreams about
"Kyra," and I would wake up again in
my dingy rooms and go back to work
perfecting my life-battery so that men
would accept it, allow it to help with their
daily labor?

But, darn it, there was something ter-
ribly alien and ancient about that machine.
It did not look like anything I had ever
seen. f

Sleep was stronger than my curiosity.
I really blacked out. But I remember
vaguely that those little rays were still
sweeping back and forth over my body
with their terrible crawling sensation tear-
ing inside my body, as if each cell was
being scraped off with a microscopic wire
brush.

I AWOKE, with a blissful languor in all
my limbs. I found myself on Tanil's
couch, the two muscular guards standing
where they had been when I first entered,
but the looks on their frozen pusses didn't
do me any good. I was lying on the couch,
and my head was in Tanil's lap. It seemed
incongruous to me that the creature whom
I feared, who was so mysterious and power-
ful to my inner eyes, should be holding my
head like a girl holds a lover on a picinc.

Kyra was fussing with a drink mixer,
presently handed me a cocktail. I drank it.
It revived me plenty! I sat up.

Somehow I didn't want any more physi-
cal contact with Tanil than I could help.
She was a witch in more ways than one,
and I didn't want her hooks in my emo-
tional responses too strongly till I knew
whether my fears or my desires were cor-
rect about her. I looked at her accusingly.

"Just what were you doing with that
nightmare of a ray-machine, and why did
you drug me?"

Tanil glittered a row of bright, regular
teeth at me and turned her body in a
sinuous motion that brought all those dev-
astating little movements of the covering
flesh over her muscles that her transparent
gown only served to decorate.

"I was making a doll of you. What do
you think? I make dolls of all my friends!"
"What for?"

"You will learn about that, and I hope

72

AMAZING STORIES

you like it. If you do not I will have to
destroy that doll. That would be a sad
thing, it is such a good one. So handsome
a little doll it it is, yes!"

"Dolls and witchcraft are always some-
way intermingled, Tanil. Are your dolls
connected with witchcraft?"

"Who told you I was a witch?"

"Call it masculine intuition. Do you
deny the charge?"

"Not exactly. I have knowledge of cer-
tain arts not generally understood. Igno-
rant people might call them witchcraft.
But surely you are too educated a man to
believe in the supernatural?"

"Just what are you trying to do, Tanil?"

"I am trying to live interestingly, beau-
tifully, powerfully! That such a life in-
cludes danger only adds spice."

"Doesn't explain anything. What use
do you expect from me?"

"Your invention. I want several hundred
of them for my employees."

"What do I get out of that?"

"That depends on you. If you cooperate
willingly, a great deal. If you refuse co-
operation, we will build them ourselves,
and we will make you help by using the
doll. You will understand all this as time
goes on. I am myself a person like you —
who must cooperate with others because
they have my doll, can make me do as they
wish. You have no alternative."

As if to explain her words, a peculiar
feeing came over me, my mind seemed
shoved aside by another thing; and without
volition of my own, I kneeled before Tanil,
placed her foot on my head. Then I took
her foot off, got to my feet, and the strange
compulsion passed. I swore.

"So that is what the dolls do! I don't
understand what the dolls are or how they
work, but that is what they are for?"

"That is why it was made. So that if
you are not cooperative, through misunder-
standing our methods and aims, we can use
you that way."

"I don't like it! I'm getting out of here
now!"

"You can't get out, Kent. The doll is a
thing that binds us all here. There is no
particular reason why you should worry
about it, but it is a fact you should know.
You are hired — and you can't quit! Ene-
mies may lie to you, call me an evil witch
who wants power at any cost — a terrible
creature. Do you think I am a terrible
creature, a horrible old witch?"

Tanil twisted her soft, sinuous body
again toward me, and the soft light of the
shaded lamps twinkled all over the gown
where little gems of sequins were sewn
onto the sheer fabric. My heart took a leap.

"No, Tanil, he would have to be a good
liar to make an evil creature out of you.
Still . . . why all this concealment? It is
an apparently criminal set-up in this hid-
den place. Why not operate openly?"

"We do things in an arbitrary way.
Sometimes we take the law into our own
hands. Always people of our kind must
hide to avoid narrow-minded repression.
Law is good, but it is sometimes so stupid
in its workings that one must avoid all
contact with it."

"I can understand that."

"That is good. Tonight, while you sleep,
you will have good dreams that I make for
you. Tomorrow you will tell me whether
you work with us willingly, or be an enemy,
which I do not advise."

Tanil lifted the great dragon shape, and
behind its green folds revealed a corridor
with several doors, a corridor which went
on into darkness endlessly. To one of these
doors she conducted' me, and showed me a
bed. I did not feel like sleeping and said
so, but she laughed and answered:

"You may not feel like sleeping, but I
promise you sleep and good dreams. Now
listen for once to Tanil, and do not argue.
She is sometimes wise."

Tanil left me with a smile.

I slipped off my clothes and hit the
sheets. I no sooner sank into that bed
than I fell asleep again.

I slept and I knew I slept. I knew I was
dreaming, too, yet my dream was real.
Myself and my dream self knew that my
body lay and watched it all.

IT SEEMED that I rose from bed, and
floated through the wall into a strange
land. And toward me came a vaporous,
beautifully curved woman's figure; a figure
awesome in its overstrong attraction for
me. She took me by the hand.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To the Kingdom of Micomican. To
the Land of the Chimera. To the pleasures
which only Atlantis, long dead, ever under-
stood on this sad earth. To the temple of
a cult which seeks to revive the ancient
worship of the land of the freed imagina-
tion!"

Her answer seemed right to me, though

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

73

I knew some way that this temple of the
imagination, and the cult that worshipped
there, was an ancient and established thing
on earth, but that she did not tell me this
for fear of misunderstanding.

It was Tanil, I saw now, and her body
was now as transparent as her gown had
been before. She laughed at my revealed
thoughts, and her laugh was the endless
echo of all the desires of all youths every-
where, and the answer to that desire, and
I knew love. We walked and my eyes
could not leave her swaying figure beside
me, but looked at her and through her into
paradise within her, to which she was the
door. I drank and ate of the irresistible
strength that vitalized her beauty, that was
her beauty, and from that drink I grew
to be something greater than myself — a
mighty lover with his love.

Now behind her I sensed, far behind and
over us, an ancient and familiar presence;
the witch-mother of Kyra, who seemed to-
night to be the mother of vastly more than
Kyra. Beside her was the daughter, Kyra
herself!

Her white, loved face seemed strained
and worried and sorrowful over losing me
to Tanil. Yet her face was also promising;
promising me the fulfillment of the yearn-
ing toward her which had long been my
inner life. I could not understand the
paradox of her thought.

We traversed a landscape not of this
world, and I know those spiraling tree
forms, with their multitude of great blos-
soms, those green skies, this shadowed, dim
lighting, revealed only sparingly yet so
mysteriously beautifully a garden land that
was not earthly. I knew from the thought
that softly connected me with Tanil, that
this was her homeland, a planet other than
earth.\*

"We are entering the temple of Tanit, an
ancient Goddess of earth as well as of this
planet, which is my homeland in space.
Tanit is symbolic of love, but her love is
a different thing than men conceive love

♦At this point in the manuscript of "Witch's
Daughter," the margin contained a penciled note
not in Mr. Shaver's handwriting, as follows. The
editors do not know who wrote it or what it
means. We reproduce it as it appears : "Now we're
travelin', sweet sailin', just like old times, Shaver
on the loose. I'm gettin' the knack of script
readin'. And you— with the other eye open?— are
sailin' along like a dream boat."

here on earth."

Tanil's thought was talking, soft dream-
talk that yet left a stronger image of
meaning than ever did waking conversation.

Looming now before us was the temple,
built, I knew, to the worship of Tanit, a
goddess whose teaching contradicts all that
made medieval religion such a sterile and
unpleasant affair.

Tanil's whisper made clear what was to
come, as we entered the red transparent
rock of the door, that glowed with an inner
light as a ruby's fire.

"In the Temple of Tanit, love is glorified
in the same way that we glorify "virtue,"
or our sterile concept of virtue. It differs
only from the love concept of the Christians
in its greater emphasis on the love of man
for woman, and it offers opportunities for
the expression and development of ideas
which the Christian religion has left more
or less dormant. This worhsip of our God-
dess Tanit is another reason for our secrecy
and our hiding. Little of what goes on here
would be understood or allowed in the
surface world.

My mind revolved the words "surface
world" questioningly, and hearing my
thought in the dream, Tanil answered.

"You will learn that there is, on every
planet, a subterranean world. Some of
these subterranean worlds of other planets
are lived in although the surface is un-
inhabitable. The subterranean world of this
planet earth is better known on many other
worlds than it is on your own surface
world. You have much to learn."

The temple floor was a shimmering, bril-
liant emerald stone. The vaulted roof was
sapphire, glowing with peculiar fires of
flickering blue flames.

The ruby altar, shaped like a heart, and
serving as a warm backdrop to the white
and flawless beauty of the near-nude
dancer, was symbolic of the love-base of
the religion of Tanit.

For that matter, the dancer, expressing
with her silken gleaming flesh all the
promise of ecstasy that woman is to man,
was symbolic of Tanit's worship, too. I
stood held by all the mystery and the ter-
rible strength of that lure of love that was
in her expressed — and alive.

IN THE red altar burned a fire, that
flickered far away, as though mysteri-
ous distance lay some how imprisoned
within the ruby. From this fire radiated

74

AMAZING STORIES

a lure, a mind-conjuring promise welled
endlessly from the great red translucent
stone. The promise was one of endless
. bliss for those who worshipped Tanit before
that altar. Subtly it pervaded the mind of
those who looked upon it with a thought, a
conviction that Tanit was a living immortal
Goddess of wondrous divine beneficence,
and that her power flamed forever within
the heart of the altar, and would so flame
within the heart of all who claimed her as
their own Goddess, and worshipped her.

In my dream, looming big, over and be-
hind the scene like a watching spirit was
the vast face of Kyra, and below that, her
sinister mother. I wondered vaguely if
her mother also had a counterpart in reality.
They were watching me, for what reason I
could not fathom.

Behind them, in the dream, stole a figure,
a lean, long, and menacing figure. In his
hand gleamed a wide, ugly knife, and as I
watched the knife flashed up and back and
then down in one swift hard movement.
Kyra fell, and fell, and fell, and my feet
were frozen in the hell of immobility that
occurs in dreams only, thank God!

Sweating, my hands clenched in horror, I
awoke. My mouth was saying: "Kyra,
Kyra, look out!" over and over, and my
feet were struggling with the silken coverlet
to go, to leap, to stop that gleaming knife.

It was a vast relief to see the light of
that real cave glowing softly outside my
door, to know that something serene and
safe was keeping this place its own. Some-
how that awakening made me realize that
the power Tanil seemed to have was not
evil, nor was Kyra evil; but that the evil I
sensed was still hidden, not revealed to me,
and perhaps not to them either. But was
that only an illusion, myself a dupe, her
character wholly different that I imagined?

Surprisingly, the living Kyra, the girl
who had burglarized my diggings unsuc-
cessfully, walked into my waking sight. I
sat up, saying:

"Thank God!"

"Well, you needn't be that delighted to
see me." Her face was wholesome, laughing
slightly at me, and myself was as relieved
as though she were in truth my Kyra of
dreams, of the "edge" beyond all life.

"I dreamed some man-thing was stabbing
you, and it really gave me the creeps. 1
just awake from that dream and you walk
in."

For some reason Kyra did not accept

that story of my dream with any flippant
disregard.

"Quick, while it is in your mind, tell me
what that man who stabbed me looked like.
This could mean a great deal to me. Tell,
friend, tell me!"

Not understanding why she should think
a mere dream important, I told her as
closely as I could of the appearance of
the tall lean horror who had wielded that
blade in my dream. She listened with nar-
rowed, intent eyes, their bright green irises
centered squarely on my face to catch the
slightest nuance of meaning. When I fin-
ished she mused:

"It must have been Neues Panot, the
priest, fiend that he is! He serves Tanit —
or any of us — as I serve the devil, and that's
not all."

Her words meant little to me, but as I
searched them the depths of the meaning
struck me. There was such a cult as the
worship of Tanit, there was such a man who
wielded behind-the-scenes power here, and
who stabbed Kyra in a dream. That dream
was not wholly foolishness, and Kyra knew
it came from some source that sought to
warn her through me.

As Kyra rose from the chair where she
had sat to talk to me, I stopped her.

"There are things I must talk to you
about. Please spare me a few minutes?"

She sat again, perhaps in her role of
nurse that she had assumed since my drug-
ging; perhaps pleased for me to talk as
though she meant something to me. When
Tanil was not near, I knew that somehow
Kyra meant a great deal to me, must be
somehow fatefully connected with my past
dream life. But Tanil had such a vast per-
sonal magnetism, and always seemed so
taken with me, had such a dominant pos-
sessive way about her . . .

LISTEN, Kyra, all my life since I have
been old enough to think of woman,
I have dreamed of a certain witch-woman,
a maid who in my dreams has your name,
Kyra. Her face is your face, her body and
her ways yours, you are the same person.
She has a mother, as I told you. In the
dream last night, she stood beside her when
she was stabbed. How is it that you are
my dream girl? Is it only a strange coin-
cidence, or do you know more of it than
that?"

"I know the answer to your question, but
I am not sure that the time has come to

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

75

tell you. If you are the man you may be-
come, why then I will tell you how this
has occurred. Why you have dreamed of
me so long is something that will remain
a secret yet for awhile, but rest assured it
is not an accident. I did have something
to do with it and have known you for a
long time from a distance."

"This worship of Tanit, the ancient
Goddess — I dreamed of that, too, last night.
As you have a reality outside my dreams,
does that cult of Tanit have a reality, too?
Is there such a cult?"

"There is a cult of Tanit. I am a part
of it, and have been for a long time. Its
modern origins include extra-terrestial in-
fluences."

"Another thing, Kyra. That doll they
doped me to make — why did they make
that doll? What is it really all about? Why
am I here?"

"You will hear all that soon enough.
Meanwhile you are not ready to learn these
things, and you must learn them from the
proper sources in a careful exposition that
leaves nothing unsaid. I am not prepared
to give you such explanations, I have not
thought about it enough. You will gather
many facts as time goes on that will make
such explanations far easier. It is like
Einstein and relativity, and asking him
about it. You are asking me just as hard
a question. What is magic? Why am I con-
nected with magic? I can tell you, but you
would not understand me any more than
you would understand Einstein if he told
you about his work. You may learn in
time, and you may never understand Many
think they understand but do not. Just as
many men think they understand Einstein,
but do so only vaguely. Such is my under-
standing of dolls and doll uses. These are
ancient arts, a science from an older time;
one is either raised with and understands
such things and uses them, or just uses or
is used by them. Or knows nothing, like
yourself."

"Can't you give me an idea, Kyra? I
can't just blindly accept anything Tanil
says. My whole future is being decided here
and I am having nothing to say about it.
Tell me what you can."

Kyra settled herself with a swift feminine
twist, swirling her transparent skirt in dis-
tracting spirals about her eye-blessing legs.
I watched, and knew again the feeling that
I had known this girl for years, and that
she knew me of old. How could that be,

my mind asked?

"Well, Mr. Kent, I'll tell you what will
do you the most good. If you understand,
you may be able to decide what is best for
you to do, though I do doubt you will be
able to any deciding about this for years
to come. You are now in the power of peo-
ple who have ways of ruling people un-
known to those people ruled.

"These dolls are one of their ways, and
are an ancient art. The dolls made by that
machine have a pseudo-life, are activiated
by electric currents similar to the current\*
of that machine you have built to make a
man strong. They are precisely like your
own body in a certain way — in that way a
radio receiving set is like the sending sta-
tion — in mental atunement, and this doll
can receive your thought ; is a key to your
thought and actions.

"You are hereafter linked to that doll in
strange ways, not in the way witch's dolls
are commonly thought of, though. If Tanil
wants to know what you are doing, she puts
a certain ray upon the doll and no matter
what you are doing, the doll will tell her
your thought. It is a receiver. If she wants
to help you; if you are in trouble; she
then puts another ray upon the doll, sends
her thought in strong augmentation along
this beam to the doll's brain. You, no mat-
ter where you are, will think those thoughts
and do those things she makes the doll
think. Do you understand the mystery of
the doll?"

"T UNDERSTAND," I said angrily,
A "she just stole my soul away and now
I am her thing. She made a zombie out of
me, and now I am supposed to like it!"

"Ordinarily, in the hands of evil people,
such would be the case; you would be the
loser. But Tanil is not a fool, and I have a
great friendship for her. She has a doll of
me, and it was made at my request. But
there is also a doll of Tanil in other hands —
so that she is not entirely a free agent.

"Tanil can do great favors for a person
with her dolls. Such things are like any tool
— like a tractor or a steam shovel — they are
useful and harmless in the hands of sane
people. But in the hands of a murderer or
a madman they can be terrible weapons.
So it is with the ancient art of the witch's
dolls.

"They can be made only with machinery
devised by the Elder race of the past, and
there are not many such machines on Earth.

76

AMAZING STORIES

Tanil brought hers from another planet, but
you are not yet ready to understand that
Tanil is from another planet. She is a
'witch,' an evil person, if you are ignorant
and fearful. She is a 'good fairy' if you are
a sentimental fool. She is a sane and normal
person trying to do her job and take care
of her own fate in her own wise way — if
you know her well. You reserve such de-
cisions as to what is evil and what is not,
for when you know a great deal more than
you do about life and its ways you will
find this: a thing is evil only when its hurts
life's proper development, and no other
thing is evil. Tanil is not a person that
hurts things much, is she, Mr. Kent?"

I looked at Kyra, my mind confused.

"I'll reserve judgment. But mind you,
I don't trust you either. You have never
explained how you got those whip marks
on your back, which were what led me here
in truth, and not your lies."

"Among the other unusual things of the
caverns, there is a cult of flagellants not far
away from here in the underworld. I went
to see their procession not long ago; and
getting too near, one of them mistook me
for a participant. He liked my looks, I
guess, for he laid it on heavy. They are
very mad people. There are many such
lost groups, scattered through these end-
less caverns. You have much to learn . . ."
She had disregarded my insult, was musing
of something else.

I said:

"I caught you robbing my rooms, too."

Her face flushed with sudden anger at my
■insistence on explanations from her. She
cried:

"In a few weeks you may be doing for
more questionable things for Tanil, and
liking it too! You virtuous yokel!"

She flung out of the room, angry with
me, left me feeling like a yokel indeed, for
it was witless of me to anger one I thought
of as constantly as herself. Kyra was wise
and clever, and knew her way around here
where I was completely at sea. I felt swad-
dled in wool, and trying to walk where
there was no place to put my feet.

Now that I was alone, I dressed, walked
out of the sleeping room into the long
gloomy corridor and paused, my breath
taken for a moment by the ageless splendor
of the Elder work that had carved this
passage from the rock no one knew when.
Carved it so that the walls were many

bodies of many beautiful people all pushing
together up the walls, and the ceiling a
splendor of half-revealed forms in gay
abandon as though it were the place the
pushing bodies tried so hard to reach.

I followed the beautiful passage in the
direction I thought lay the room of the
great dragon drapes. I passed several great
doors into the lovely cavern rock chambers,
and hearing the murmur of voices behind
one, I stopped, slid cautiously forward to
the aperture, peered in.

Tanil— talking with a man. The same
man who had stabbed Kyra in my dream!
Somehow Kyra was my friend, and I hated
this man instantly. On such things hinge
future events, sometimes. But Kyra hated
him, too. I had heard her mention his
name with venom, Nueces Panot. He
looked like an Indian.

"CHE must not know our plans any more.

^ She will tell such men as this new-
comer, and sooner or later their squeam-
ishness will take offense at our needful
work and betray us!"

Tanil's voice was scornful.

"Betray us to whom, may I ask? Do
they know the life, the ways, the roads of
the caverns? Could they go to far Ornouts
with their tales, or would that fool, Chong,
listen if they did? They would die before
they had gone fifty miles. You talk like a
fool sometimes, Nueces! You tend to your
work. And don't imagine I do not see
through you. Always I have this ambition
in such as you, fearful of every newcomer,
jealous of every glance I give a man. One
would think you my lover!

"Nueces, you may have power in your
own way and your own field, but see that
you do not get the idea that you are pre-
ferred by the hidden ones to myself. They
cannot do without my wisdom, and they
can do without your flummery. Kent will
learn nothing that would make him squeam
from us, and for that matter what do we
do that is so criminal? Or are you hiding
something horrible from me that you fear
one of these newcomers may blunder on?
Is it your own acts you fear may betray
you? Nueces, sometimes you go too far!

"This Kent has been with us but one
night and one day, and already you come
to warn me of him! Fool, that man Kent
is in love with me, or with Kyra, or both,
and Kyra is my right hand! Quit your

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

77

croaking and get back to your work, and
remember that it had better be cleaner work
than usual. If I did not need you, Nueces,
your skill in some matters, I would bid you
the dark and lonesome trail for these croak-
ings of yours."

Tanil's voice stopped, I heard Nueces
coming toward me, had a glimpse of his
face, turned from Tanil to hide his mur-
derous rage at her warning words. I knew
he was an enemy to her, and somehow her
stock rose with me, at the same time a
knowledge that she was not the master of
diplomacy that she might be — else she
would have handled this knife-in-the-back
Panot differently to minimize his opposi-
tion.

As the man shuffled past me, his white
robes gave him a corpselike air in the dim
light; a shudder at him passed over me.
As soon as he was out of hearing, I stepped
from the shadow, spoke to Tanil.

"Time for a word with me?"

"Come in, Kent." Her voice was still
angry.

"I was passing. Just got up. I heard
you talk."

"Eavesdropping, eh?" Tanil's voice was
mocking. "I can't say I blame you. I'd
eavesdrop a little, too, were I in your posi-
tion. What did you want, anything in
particular?"

"I couldn't help trying to warn you
against that fellow. He had murder on his
face as he went out."

"He'll get murder, the fool! If I didn't
need him, I would have rid myself of him
long ago. But he knows things, the ways
and the whereabouts of certain people of
the caverns, the locations of things that are
hidden in the winding ways of this planet's
under-earth; much that I can learn from
no one else at hand. But to have to use a
traitor and a sneak day after day as though
he were a friend, becomes impossible to me.

"These cavern people of Earth are loyal
to old traditions, and those traditions are
secrecy, not wisdom, I'll tell you. But their
blind secrecy and a loyalty even to an evil
and foolish master? They have had many
generations of very bad bringing-up, here
on earth. So it is that I need him for a
guide; and he takes a lot of humoring, for
he is trying to build his own power beyond
my own and so become my master. Always
he tries to lead me, to tell me what to do —
and always I must do the opposite, for he

is evil, and would lead only into trouble.
He tells me everyone but himself is my
enemy, and verily he is the only real
enemy I have except . . . never mind. He
is transparent as a glass snake. I have to
listen and humor him, and I cannot play
that game well. I am very tired of such
things. Amuse me, Tom Kent!"

After all, I did wish an excuse to talk
with her further.

I entered, sat down, said:

"Tanil, over and over I have heard men-
tion of the "caverns," the "underworld,"
and other phrases I cannot understand.
Can't you enlighten me a little? Too, I
have heard you are from another planet. Is
this a commonplace thing, that you do not
make capital of it? Is it that I know
nothing of my own world?"

"'"pHAT is the truth, Tom Kent." Tanil
smiled wearily as though the question
were one she had heard too often. "You
people of the surface are sure you know
all about life and its history on this earth.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.

"Long ago a vast race of great technical
knowledge lived on Earth — not on the sur-
face but in a tremendous series of deep
cavern cities that stretched then and still
do so stretch over the whole globe. Those
caverns and those machines they left are
duplicated in every other planet I have been
on — three of them beside Earth. And those
caverns have been inhabited since the
earliest days here on Earth. But, here on
Earth, unlike other planets, they have been
kept secret from the people of the surface
by a clique of hereditary monopolizers of
the secret — few but powerful. The ma-
chines, the vast powers of the ancient work,
and the endless living space within the
empty caverns they consider their private
property. It is those we mean when we
speak of the 'Hidden Ones' with fear.

"There is regular commerce between this
cavern worlds' people and the other planets.
Infrequent trips occur between all planets,
from the farthest one the knowledge may
reach. One learns this is true in space — •
men know of the Elder race and use their
machines everywhere except on Earth, and
on Earth the Elder race has become a
secret kept from common people by custom
since early times.

"It is the greatest secret of earth, and
your ignorance of this secret is what makes

78

AMAZING STORIES

me and my knowledge and my use of the
machines strange and weird and frighten-
ing to you. There is no reason for you to
fear this knowledge now that it comes to
you. That fear is perhaps also a legacy of
your heredity, who knows?"

I gazed at Tanil, a strange whirling in
my head, a whirl that was of wonder and
two-swift and sudden comprehension of
vast vistas of new explanations for old
mysteries growing suddenly within my
mind ; a sudden opening of my mind to the
unending differences this knowledge would
make in all my thinking.

The whole education I had been given
as to the beginnings of man and science and
history must now all be revised to accom-
modate the mighty new base for my think-
ing those few words have given me.

I sank to a chair weakly, for I needed
no convincing to believe Tanil's words.
There was the doll-making machine, a ma-
chine that I new no earth science could
produce. There was the words of Kyra
which were much the same but too brief
to give me this full revelation. There were
a hundred mysteries of my past life sud-
denly explained to me: phantasms of my
youth; ghosts; fairy tales; wizards and
magic; the legend of the underworld; of
the Styx, of Charon and of Pluto and
Proserpine.

My mind was by those words of hers set
awhirl upon an endless series of new re-
actions to which I knew there would never
be an end. New associations of inescapable
logic to make about all my past false con-
clusions about God ; the origins of primitive
man; the source of man's inventions and
sciences. My whole understanding of Earth
and man must be revised, and I would
never get done in this life all the needed
thinking fully to understand and correlate
the new understanding with the old false
teaching. I could only gaze weaking at
Tanil and say:

"Now I understand! I . . . understand
. . . now!"

"npHAT is good that you comprehend
A so greatly what I have said. Your
reaction tells me you have a good mind,
for it does not need a great deal of thought
to understand what a revolution this makes
in all your thinking. I have seen other
men like yourself struck into silent thought
for a week while they concentrated on fully

realizing just what this knowledge does to
all their former teachings of the past and
of science and of religion. If you will trust
me, Kent, I will be able to use you for a
great plan I am working upon which will
be good for your Earth peoples ; very good.
More I cannot tell you, chiefly because I
cannot take time or effort to make you
understand. You will have to trust me and
obey — if you can do that? Can you?"

She gazed down at me, and caressed my
cheeks delicately with the points of her
long fingers.

"For Tanil? Can you obey and not dis-
trust what you do not understand?"

"I can try, Tanil. Certainly it should
not be hard, for I would do nearly any-
thing to please you. But if you ... I
mean, I must warn you my heart turns
toward Kyra, for I have dreamed of a girl
with her face all my life . . ."

"My attitude does not mean what your
Earth mind thinks it means. It is only
friendly, the way of people brought up un-
der the love of Tanit, the Goddess of all
Love. We are not backward with our af-
fections as are you of Earth. Nor is Kyra,
my Kent. Do not worry, you will not
break my heart. It has already been bent
in the fire of love; it is tempered now."
Tanil smiled reminiscently, dismissed me
abruptly. I knew why well enough.

"I am tired now. Do you mind, my
friend?"

"I leave you with a great deal more to
think about than I had before, Tanil. Do
not think I am not susceptible to your
charms. I like you a great deal too much,
as you probably know."

She pushed me gently toward the door.

"Go and look for your Kyra. She has
long held the key to your heart, as she will
one day explain to you. She is probably
on duty in the Dragon room, the one with
the great green drape. You know where
it is."

I went, but I could not help wondering
if it would not have been wiser not to have
mentioned my tie for Kyra. After all, I
did not know this woman well, was trusting
her. And I tried to feel suspicious of her,
but her "magic" was too strong. I trusted
her implicitly, my heart was hers in one
way, if not in another. I had much to
learn of "witches" and their devious ways.
For Tanil held that doll, and with it she
held my actions, my life-pattern, in her

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

79

• two hands. I knew that, and I feared her.
She was an alien, powerful, above and'
outside the law. I was an American in-
ventor who had already given her my best
invention, and control over my actions, my
soul. Perhaps I was being a dupe, falling
for glossing words and sweet smiles. An
entire dupe! Where would her domination
end if I kept on giving her myself? I would
be nothing but a monkey on a stick.

My head in a whirl again, my heart torn
between the strange loyalty Tanil had in-
spired in me, and my own knowledge that
she had appropriated to herself both my
work and my will left me not even freedom.
I went in to Kyra, suspicious even of her.

DAYS went by swiftly, in a kind of daze
of working and waiting, of pleasure
in the subtle contention between the two
women, Tanil and Kyra, over my affections,
and in a growing comprehension of what
they were doing. A growing dread that the
peculiar activity of these peoples would
result in no good for the human race came
to live with me. There was evil about it,
but just why and what the threat was I
could not fathom.

It took me many days to absorb what
Tanil was about, what she intended. When
I did understand, a kind of dread of my
own conclusions and doubt of my own abil-
ity to analyze such work from a moral
standpoint was my attitude.

I watched her working, always working
with the dolls. To me it was unholy, mys-
terious, pure black magic. It was a subtle,
invisible enslavement of men to her pur-
poses. Even if her purposes were of the
purest white, she was at the same time set-
ting up a machine for absolute rule that
might be seized at any time by the "Hid-
den Ones" whom she served, as I served her.

I could learn almost nothing about them,
their purposes, or why they were hidden.
From Kyra I learned that they were the
old hereditary rules of the sparse popula-
tion of the endless caverns, and that Tanil
was doing a good thing in preparing to
break down this barrier between them and
the surface world. Sometimes I wondered
if Tanil was not being duped by them,
rather than that ourselves were duped by
Tanil.

The more I learned about Tanil's work
the more I doubted my own ability to ana-
lyze such alien work from a moral stand-

point.

I decided that she herself was not cog-
nizant that her work was potentially evil,
that she was inherently incapable of appre-
ciating that a man's soul and self-determi-
nation in life were sacred.

On a screen in front of her rapt, lovely
face would be a scene in the city overhead.
The screen was a kind of televisor, bring-
ing over a beam the scene from above and
displaying the city at any magnification
she wished. She could make a man's face
take up a space four feet in area on that
screen, or she could spread it out till a
vision of the whole city was displayed, the
people but dots wandering in its vastness.

On the great expanse of level floor in the
mech-chamber was a miniature reproduc-
tion of the city. There were also several
larger-scale reproductions of central sec-
tions of the city, just that size in which
those dolls of hers could move about as
though they were normal-sized men. The
dolls, placed in these three-dimensioned du-
plicates of the city above, went through
exactly those actions she told them to with
her mental control.

On the screen in front of her she watched
people in the city overhead, those of whom
she had doll duplicates especially. For
those people duplicated with their actions
and movements precisely the motions of
the dolls, and the dolls moved as she dic-
tated with a thought-beam upon them. So
of course she was in reality controlling
those people, and they were quite uncon-
scious of it.

Just what her purpose was in this prac-
tice of hers I could not guess, unless it was
to accustom the people themselves to this
control in many actions and over long pe-
riods when they did only normal things and
so would not notice when the control made
them do things they would not normally
have done.

In time, I guessed another answer to this
question, and a greater dread of her seized
me, for I could not but think that what she
was doing was greatly wrong. I was con-
vinced she was up to no good; but such
was her nature one approved of her and
could not gainsay her. Even while I feared
and detested the things for which she stood,
an absolute control of surface life beyond
any possibility of free choice in important
matters, still I could not convince myself
I was opposed to her.

so

AMAZING STORIES

TANIL seemed to have certain trouble
, with her work. There were always dis-
turbing factors in the human equation "up-
stairs," and the movements of the dolls in
the reproduction city had to allow for, to
adapt themselves to, the observed variant
moments introduced by the humans in the
scene above — those for whom she had no
dolls. This mental forecasting of the move-
ments of humans over whom she had not
control seemed very difficult. I imagine it
was something like having a fleet of robot-
planes under radio control and suddenly
finding the fleet of controlled planes flying
through another fleet of friendly planes
piloted by friendly humans with whom one
must not allow the bomb-carrying robots
to collide. For she sometimes had humans
driving cars under control, and that was
ticklish work with cars or trucks cutting in
and out. She was "just practicing." Prac-
ticing— -with human lives risked because of
her practice? Practicing for what? She
would not say, only to give me an enig-
matic look with those other-world eyes of
hers ; a look full of the mystery of her alien
wisdom, as though to say:

"I would tell you if your poor Earth-
mind could comprehend."

I was never complimented by this exclu-
sion of myself from her plans. Still, I knew
she had not decided whether I was truly a
friend or just someone to use and forget.
Someone to trust and confide in, or some-
one to watch and guard against no matter
what her emotions.

So I waited, and worked, building my
harnesses and batteries to her order. It was
a job to build a hundred of those things by
hand; without help. For I had no inten-
tion of teaching the know-how to any
"helpers".

Nightly my sleep was filled with dreams
similar to my first dream there in the cav-
erns ; dreams of the worship of Tanit. And
nightly it seemed to me that the two women
contended gently over which owned my
heart — Tanil, or Kyra. This contention
seemed to be robbing me of some deep
pleasure, some terrific fulfillment that
would give full understanding of what these
women's mysterious efforts were leading to-
ward — what their goal.

How could the two things hinge togeth-
er? I could not understand. These women
seemed to be waiting for me to decide be-
tween them; in dreams quite openly wait-

ing; in the day-time activity subtly, hid-
denly waiting. Perversely I gave no sign
which one my deepest affections preferred.
For I did not truly know, and feared to
lose one by preferring the other. Time went
on, and Nueces Panot and his white-robed
priests waited too, and watched. And I
knew he was vastly more to be feared than
Tanil realized. I spoke of this to Kyra.

"This death's head priest of 'love' who
stalks around here — the one I dreamed
stabbed you — how is it he is still trusted
and powerful? Why does Tanil not see
that he is plotting something, that he is
danger?"

Kyra said:

"Tanil is biding her time. If she made
the first move, he would have the sympathy
of the other priests as one unjustly dealt
with. They would be troublesome to han-
dle, as the workers here follow them pretty
blindly. But if he makes a break, then
she can deal with him openly and it will
be understood he is in the wrong."

T> Y NOW I had realized that Tanil's full

* -\* purpose with her dolls was a full and

unbreakable control of this city with her
dolls. And after that the control of other
and greater cities, and in time the whole
government itself. I realized that she could
do this without anyone "upstairs" being
any the wiser that they were not in truth
ruling themselves.

She could move into Washington tomor-
row, and, after her dolls of the chief figures
of government were made, she could at
any time control the whole workings of
the government from a distance. I could
understand how this could pay off richly
commercially. But I was not sure that such
a goal was Tanil's real purpose. What was
her purpose? She could take control now,
what was she waiting for? Why "practice,"
if her practice was unobserved? It didn't
seem to matter whether her control was
perfect or not. They would not know the
difference on the surface. Not them, not
they who laugh if one mentions witchcraft
seriously as existant.

But whatever Tanil's real purpose, things
happened to throw her and Kyra and my-
self into a peril that superseded all her
work toward that goal. It told me, too,
why she waited.

Nueces Panot was not alone. There were
a group of priests who, as Kyra said,
"served Tanit as she served the Devil, very

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

poorly." And among the workmen whom
I saw very often but knew not at all inti-
mately, Nueces was looked up to as the
spokesman. He, like all priests, had built
himself up for years as an intermediary
between themselves and the Goddess Tanit
—and tried to do the same between the
ruler Tanil and themselves. Tanil's activ-
ity with her dolls took much of her day.
And Nueces was very industrious in plac-
ing himself in the good regard of these
workmen who were the real lifeblood of the
place. They were, some of them, people
from the surface, but for the most part
they were the underworld, alien types,
whom I had the greatest difficulty in un-
derstanding.

Their mental processes were very differ-
ent from men of the surface. They were
born reactionaries, seeming to prefer not
having rights to being bothered with them.
Which did not seem to annoy anyone but
the few surface-trained electricians and
technicians who had learned to repair and
service some of the ancient machines in
constant use. To Nueces it was these cav-
ern people went when they wanted some-
thing, and it was his promises and explana-
tions they listened to when they did not
get what they wanted.

So it was that when Nueces saw his op-
portunity he had a number of these people
in his confidence.

It happened this way. Tanil had decided
to make a trip up to the city to buy mate-
rials. Materials she had to have to build
the great number of dolls she was planning
on using — materials of many kinds I could
not imagine her using. But she had strange
needs. Silk screens for art work, what did
she want of them? Plastics of the new
strengths lately developed, a long list of
apparently unrelated materials, which I
knew could only be used to construct some
electric mechanisms of a nature to handle
great quantities of electric of the static sort
—stored on large areas of dielectric. But
all of Tanil's work was mysterious to me,
even though it was my own field.

She took Kyra and I with her on the
trip; and as we returned, riding gloomily
along in the taxi toward the entrance in
that unassuming little grimy store on Port-
land Street, things happened! g

Control from an exterior source of nerve
energy is a very strange thing to happen
to a man. There is nothing else like it,
nothing that takes a man out of the illusion

of being a free agent in life. Suddenly you
do things without volition, you are a by-
stander in your own mind.. A mechanical
doll your body. Yourself, the little thing
in your brain that dignifies your thought
with a consciousness of identity.. Your ego
suddenly becomes only a passenger, won-
dering what is going to happen next.

THAT is how it happened to me. Sud-
denly my hands rose up and began to
choke Tanil. Nothing I could do about it,
it was my body doing it and I had no con-
trol. Something outside me was directing
my body. Logic, reason, nothing I thought
had any connection with my actions, with
the horrible things my hands were doing
to Tanil's lovely neck. She fought, kicked,
scratched — and then Kyra leaped upon my
back, pounding, screaming at me.

Tanil's hands fumbled a small object,
crushed it. I smelled a funny odor. Even
as my eyes noted the purpling face of Tanil
and squeezed a little harder to make sure
she was properly dying, the peculiar odor
rose stronger in the cab. A cloud of weird,
coiling smoke swirled heavier about me. I
breathed it in, and the contorted, lovely
straining face before my horrified eyes
drained away into a great black tunnel into
which we were rushing. I was unconscious.

When I woke up, it was to the smell of
ether, of disinfectant, of the soft brisk feet
of rubber-soled nurses, rustling their white-
starched selves past my bed. I looked
around, a forty-bed ward, I guessed. All
those sick people, and me one of them!
What was it, a plague?

As I raised up to see better, a man got
up from a chair beside me.

"I'm police. We found you and two
women unconscious in a taxi. Driver said
he smelled gas, but that the smell went
away. Got anything to say?"

I looked at him, wondering just what
he would do if I told him the truth. I
knew! He would have me transferred to
the psychopathic ward.

"Nothing I could say would tell you a
thing. I smelled something and passed out
in a cloud of yellow smoke. That is all."

"That's not much help. We know that
much. But why? Who would want to
harm you? Who are you? Give us some
idea of why such a thing would occur to
you?"

"I couldn't tell you a thing. Brother,
not a thing!" I couldn't help grinning.

82

AMAZING STORIES

Suppose I did tell him? Oh My!

The ward was on the ground floor. Out-
side the window I could see some grass, a
shrub, the sidewalk.

That night, when the nurses were all off
the ward but one nodding sleepily at her
table in the end of the ward, I heard a soft
tapping at the window.

The face was Kyra's, eerily beautiful as
in my dreams she had always been. I
pinched myself to make sure this wasn't
a dream, too. Then I slid softly out of bed,
and, crouching in the dimness between the
beds, slid the window open. Kyra hissed:

"Come on. Tanil doesn't want any police
attention. We are skipping out to avoid
all the rigamarole while they try to under-
stand what happened. Have you seen the
papers?"

"What papers?"

"Don't you realize that your attack on
Tanil was the opening move of Nueces;
that he has the doll mech and the whole
caverns in his hands? He used your doll
to make you try to kill Tanil. When she
got around that with a gas capsule from
her bag he turned his attention to terroriz-
ing the city. Dozens of banks have been
robbed by people in his control ; the city
is in an uproar. He has murdered dozens
of men — guards in banks; cops; tellers . . .
There's Hell to pay! Come on. Tanil says,
'you are very strong, but she has more gas
capsules,' so come along! "

"Lucky for her I wasn't wearing my
harness. She would be a dead woman."

"We have no time for talk now. We will
explain later. Nueces is raising hell! We
have to stop him. Tanil is very depressed.
She thinks the powerful 'hidden ones' have
turned away from her, have lied to her.
We must save our own lives as well as the
lives of the people of the city. Come on,
we will get clothes for you later."

/"MAD only in the hospital pajamas and
feeling silly, I slid out of the window.
The screen made a hell of a racket. It was
one of those tricky, hinged gadgets they
have in such places. I never could figure
them out, could you?

I dropped to the grass and Kyra led the
way on a run. Half a block down the street
a cab was waiting. Kyra and I plunged
into the dark interior. I sat down on Tan-
il 's lap, inadvertently, in the dark. She
squeezed me, laughed. That terrific effect
she had on me, an effect like no other wom-

an, throbbed through my veins. Could a
man love two women? It has been done,
I guess. Certainly I wanted Kyra with all
the fervor of young love. But Tanil! Tanil
had all the lure of the mystery of wisdom,
that lure that had placed the image of
Kyra in my dreams ahead of all other faces
in a greater degree — that wisdom that is
the witch's alone. I often wondered what
Kyra would have done with her own knowl-
edge and arts without the eclipsing Tanil
as her superior.

The cab took off in a rising crescendo of
motor. In a second we were on the park-
way.

Nueces hadn't been killing time. As the
cab pulled off the parkway onto Grand
Ave. — a street containing many of the big-
gest stores and banks of the city — we heard
tumult far ahead, saw people running,
heard shots, screams, and the dull rumble
of dynamite. Traffic was a snarl of cursing
drivers in front — everyone trying to leave
— while the curious, thinking it a fire, were
trying to get nearer.

We got out of the cab, ran toward the
scene of the uproar on foot. A line of
trucks hogged the center of the street. They
were big trucks, and out of the stores, jew-
elry shops, and out of the bank, men were
hurrying, their arms loaded with loot, toss-
ing their burdens into the trucks, and hur-
rying back for more. The trucks inched
ahead against the jammed traffic, horns
tooting steadily. The shop fronts had been
blasted open with dynamite. Clouds of
dust hung in the air.

"What the H is going on?" I yelled at
Tanil.

"It's Nueces! He's operating all the doll
control men to loot the city; the trucks are
driven by his own men."

"Just how does he expect to keep the
coppers from breaking up his party?
They'll have to call out the militia for this! "

"He's probably set a few apartment
houses or hotels ablaze in some other part
of the city. It wouldn't matter — he could
drop them with the ray."

"If he could, why doesn't he? Why
doesn't he kill us if he's so anxious?"

"Oh, shut up! I'm trying to think what
to do. He'll wreck the city if I don't stop
him."

I subsided. It was too much for me. I
turned to watch the commotion. The op-
eration was going forward with the organ-
ized stolidity of an automobile assembly

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

83

line; the trucks were the conveyor belt,
and the shops and the bank the source of
supply of parts. The doll-control men la-
bored steadily with the rapt expression I
'had come to recognize as that of one whose
mind has been taken over from the dis-
tance by the control mech.

At the curb, as we hurried forward, sat a
Police Patrol car, full of uniforms — uni-
forms containing burly coppers. But they
were all unconscious — or asleep! Here and
there I saw other blue uniforms prostrate
on the pavement. There was no sign of a
wound on them.

"How the heck did Nueces knock out
the police?"

"There are a dozen ways. A dozen dif-
ferent rays would accomplish that — or sim-
ple teleport of nitrous oxide into their
lungs. What's the difference how it was
done?"

"Just what do you expect to do and why
are you hurrying into the thick of it? You
haven't even got a cap pistol!"

A siren rushed up a side street toward
us. As we sighted the speeding car the
motor died suddenly, the car slowed and
the police started to climb out. One by one
they slumped in unconsciousness without
visible cause. It was eerie, potent stuff
Nueces was handing out.

Even as I stood there wondering just
what Tanil expected to do about a thing
as big as this — the looting of a city — I felt
a choking sensation, the world turned from
a mad bright impossible scurrying of rapt-
faced figures into a soft darkness, and my
head cracked hard on something.

AXTHEN I came to, the scurry and con-
" \* fusion had gone and the streets were
nearly empty of life. Down the street an
ambulance was stopped beside a body. The
white coats were bending over some one
lying across the curb. Beside me Tanil and
Kyra still lay unconscious. As I sat up
Tanil murmured:

"Got to get to Harruh, he will have a
mech up there. . . ." She stirred, opened
her eyes. I said:

"Well, wherever you were going, I gather
it's too late now."

A cruising cab coasted up to us, his
brakes screeched gently as he paused near
the curb.

"Feel like going home, folks?" called the
cabbie, grinning down at us. "The party's
over. I've been picking up quite a few of

you innocent bystanders."
I answered:

"Wait a minute! Soon as the women
come out of it — we will have plenty of use
for you."

Tanil sat up, her face sharpening by the
second. Together we half-carried Kyra to
the cab, tumbled in. I gave my address, as
Tanil said nothing. The cab swung around,
started off for my former rooms. I was
hoping the landlord had decided to await
my return, had not thrown out my belong-
ings. The rent had been paid for a few
weeks in advance, but was now two weeks
overdue.

The cabbie was talkative.

"You're the only folks I picked up who
didn't bust out with questions, 'What hap-
pened?' 'What's the matter with the po-
lice?' " He mimicked the confused citizens'
natural queries. "I suppose you folks know
all about it, that's why you're not asking
questions?"

"Maybe we're just smart enough to know
that a cab-driver wouldn't know any more
about it than we do. What did happen,
just to conform to polite procedure? Do
you know?" I parried, for the fact we
weren't curious might start him off on the
angle that would lead to our own question-
ing by the police — and I had no desire to
be questioned by any police in the frame
of mind they must be in right now.

"Just the biggest robbery in the history
of any city, that's all! A whole fleet of
trucks came along, knocked out the police
faster than they could arrive on the scene,
and walked off with every bit of valuable
merchandise and every bill in every bank
on Grand Ave. That's all that happened!"

"Some clever gang, that. Wonder how
they did it?"

' "They seemed to have a way of knock-
ing the cops unconscious from a distance.
Science run amok, that's what it was. Some
criminal mind is better at building a weap-
on than the whole U S army, I guess."

"Well, nearly every weapon they have
now was invented by a private party some-
time. It isn't so strange that one of them
should decide to use his weapon for his own (
private war on society, instead of giving it
to the government for some future Hitler
to get big-headed about."

"Brother, this guy is going to be a Hit-
ler, if I'm any judge! He sure picked up
a few million bucks in a hurry. If they
don't stop him, it'll be the U.S. Mint one

84

AMAZING STORIES

of these days."

Tanil came out of her thoughtful ab-
straction to speak to me in a voice the
cabby couldn't hear.

"I was hurrying to a certain member of
the 'Old Covenant,' a man who has some
of the Elder mech up here on the surface.
But now, I don't think so much of the idea.
For I do not trust him; he might kill us,
or imprison us. He does not agree with my
ideas of expansion. He fears we will betray
the ancient secret which has given him life
of luxury and monopoly. He fears compe-
tition. I had thought that in the emergency
he would help in order to eliminate Nueces,
but now I realize that he would also elimi-
nate me did he have me at his mercy so
completely. So it is best that I find my
way out of this difficulty myself instead of
getting in hotter water by calling in tools
that might turn in my hand. I will con-
struct what I need with your tools, which
I have seen you use so dexterously when I
watched you making your harness of
strength." She paused, looked musingly at
Kyra's face, who was sleepily snuggled
against my shoulder. Then she added:

*It will not be long before Nueces makes*
another attempt upon us. We must pro-
tect ourselves while we prepare for an at-
tempt to re-enter our cavern. We will have
to go to your workshop while we prepare
certain devices which will shield us from
the mental flows which are used for con-
trol. We must hurry."

IT SEEMED very strange to return to
my rooms after the time that had
elapsed; time that had changed my life so
completely. To enter those black, weary
doors, to go up those time-eaten stairs and
smell that queer musty odor that only an
old rooming house ever acquires so richly.
But once in my diggings and unlocking the
door of my workshop, I felt at home again.

I showed the place to Tanil, explained
the machinery. I stepped back, for the
reason that I wanted to observe her every
move carefully. I appreciated fully the
fact that I was going to see a scientist
from another planet in action; in action
that would be all the more fascinating be-
cause it was an emergency. Her life de-
pended on using all she knew quickly to
defeat Nueces' next attempt to kill us from
the distance. That he had other weapons
than the dolls' peculiar telepathic control
I did not know. I surmised he did.

That Tanil was equal to the sudden test
put upon her knowledge and skill I sin-
cerely hoped. But while my workshop was
well equipped for such an experimental
electrician as myself, still I did not see
how from the limited materials she could
construct a device that would protect us
from a ray that passed through all that
rock. But she did! And though I asked
her questions and watched her every move
in spite of my resolve not to get in her way
or distract her, I could not understand her
work fully.

"It is a 'doraytelmacini,'" she said.
Which was Greek to me. It was a device
which was going to make us safe from
Nueces, was all I really understood.

It consisted of a generator, tuning coils
of great complexity and several simple con-
trols, topped by spiderweb coils of large
size, heavy — on swivels. She turned the
power into the webs, and swiveled the webs
about till an indicator at the base read zero.
She explained:

"It generates a neutralizing flow of en-
ergy that damps the 'tenoF energy of the
control rays from the mech Nueces is us-
ing. When it is in use, he cannot control
us. Now we have to put it into a truck,
and with the truck, return to the cavern.
But some other things we will need for
protection, such as as a gun or two."

Tanil was more conversant with the city
than perhaps many of its oldest residents,
from her watching of its life day after day
on her screens, and from reading the minds
of its citizens. She went to the phone,
called a number, and within minutes there
was waiting at the curb an unmarked, closed
body truck, a moving van. Coming up the
stairs were two large-bodied, ungainly and
somewhat sinister appearing individuals. I
took them to be furniture movers, but when
they opened the bags they carried and
showed Tanil what they contained, I sur-
mised the better word for them would be
"torpedoes," as the bags contained each
a pair of M 3's, as well as plenty of am-
munition. They pulled out the extension
stocks, attached the barrels, and between
us we had a fire power at our disposal not
to be sneezed at.

They carried, with our assistance, the
"doraytelmacini"— which I called a "damp-
er" to save my tongue from cramps, down
the stairs in sections, set it up inside the
truck, and Tanil got in and set the thing
in operation. One of the torpedoes got in-
side with Tanil, as did myself, but Kyra

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

85

chose to sit with the driver, to direct him
to the store on Portland St.

THE ride was uneventful, and I gath-
ered whatever lightning Nueces planned
to hurl at us was waiting for our entry into
the caverns behind the cellar of the store-
room.

I was right. The truck backed up to the
doorway at the side of the store that opened
to a wide flight of steps down into the
storerooms of the cellar. The three men —
myself and the two massive explosive gen-
tlemen — succeeded in getting the weird
creation of Tanil's unharmed down the
stairs in one piece. Down upon us — from
that nowhere that all rays in use seem to
come from — came blue and deadly light-
ning, crackling about us fearfully, swiftly
stealing away our strength and leaving us
leaning against the walls gasping for breath.
Desperately Tanil worked with the controls
of her creation, and gradually the blue leap-
ing electric waves became less evident, lost
their life-stealing power. She had tuned the
mech to damp the waves. I knew she would
have to do that for every change Nueces
made in the rays he used — and wondered
if she was taking the desperate gamble it
seemed she was taking. The two grim gen-
tlemen looked at Tanil's nervously twitch-
ing face, and I could see a vast doubt of
her in their eyes. I murmured:

"Don't worry, she knows her onions.
This guy behind the blue stuff is a no-
body. ..."

Tanil shot me a grateful glance.

We entered the chamber of the dragon
drape to find the furnishings overturned,
the great glittering drape torn and stained.

Beside one of the low divans lay the
body of a man. I recognized him as one
of the better minds of the group who served
Tanit as priests, and Tanil as their leader.
One of those I knew who must have tried
to protect Tanil's rights in her absence. A
knife wound in his belly reaching upward
to the short ribs had let out his life. I had
no doubt it had been Nueces' work.

About us still lashed the blue lightning,
robbed of its destructiveness by the purring
mech Tanil had built. We had mounted it
on a wheeled baggage truck and trundled
the thing along.

Down the corridors leading toward the
great machine shops of the ancients, to-
ward the chambers where the doll-control
mech was installed, we moved, impossible

to be quiet or to expect that surprise was
with us. The trundling mech on the truck
our only defense. I handled the truck, the
two heavy gentlemen had their machine
guns in their hands, the bags abandoned
back in the cellar.

Behind the three of us moved the two
women, and their bearing made me very
proud of them, a feeling as though they
were my own, my sisters or my wives. . . .

We came out into the huge chamber of
the dolls, and behind the great mech-con-
trol we saw Nueces, his deep eyes shot with
madness, his hair on end, and fear written
across his face in great deep lines.

Beside him moved half-a-dozen of the
other white-robed unnecessaries that Tanil
had kept on. Tanit's priests are "sacred."
Well, she had her reward. . . .

As we entered, Nueces played the card
he had been holding till now . . . played
it desperately.

The dolls, waiting in ranks before him,
were ready — and as we entered, stormed
us under Nueces' frantic mental control.
He had armed them with lancets, several
of them carried small women's revolvers he
had found somewhere, with scalpels, knives
— there were some two hundreds of them
suddenly swarming toward us.

The -two guns of the torpedoes began to
hammer and Tanil screamed:

"Don't shoot the dolls, it won't do any
good. Shoot the priest. Kill Nueces; he
controls them!"

The two heavy men with the guns did
not understand. One of them cursed:

"What the hell, we didn't bargain on
fighting witchcraft. This wasn't in the bar-
gain!" But he kept spraying the oncoming
horde of tiny people with lead and the
heavy slugs knocked them down in wind-
rows; but they got up again and kept com-
ing. Holes showing light clean through
their bodies.

It was unnerving, uncanny, frightening
to see the little man-things hopping on one
leg or with an arm hanging by a tough
shred or by a wire of the inner part still
intact, coming on and on, little knives
glittering; deathless; implacable; each of
them reflecting on their faces the face of
Nueces. Under Nueces' mental command,
their faces grimaced oddly all alike, each of
them the same expression, fierce with a
cornered rat's desperation.

Then they were on us; the little knives
rose and fell; the tiny revolvers spoke. Kyra

86

AMAZING STORIES

fell under a swarm, the knives ran with her
blood. I swept the M-3 sub-machine gun
from its place on the truck and blasted the
little fiends off Kyra. And now Tanil was
covered with the leaping things where she
stood on the hand truck beside her "damper
mech." She beat them down with one hand
while she held the other firm on the con-
trols that kept off the blighting blue rays.
Tanil kept screaming. "Shoot the priest!
shoot Nueces! That will end it!"

A T LAST when I was going down my-
self, bleeding from a hundred tiny
wounds and a score of them leaping upon
me, clinging to me, trying to trip me, her
words percolated my thinking skull. I
turned the scatter-gun on Nueces, across
the great chamber. One of the torpedoes
got the idea, too, surprisingly, and together
we emptied our weapons toward the robed
figure crouching behind the shielding bulk
of the great old doll-mech. He had to show
part of his body to keep his fingers on the
controls that activated the little dolls. His
face was a contorted mask of effort as he
strove madly to get the last ounce of
energy into the swarming bodies of the
tiny ro-dolls.

One of the slugs nicked Nueces, he stag-
gered back from the mech — which probably
saved his lousy life, for the other slugs had
found and torn into a great power cable at
the base of the giant mech. Weird blue and
red lightning flashed upward in a fountain
of terrible light-sparks clear to the
shadowed ceiling — a volcano of sudden
lightning — and Nueces flung up an arm and
fled blindly, his face burned and scarlet.
His long legs leaped bare and ugly and
hairy under the flying skirt of his robes.

The little dolls dropped over, suddenly
lifeless around us, a horde of battered little
bodies as weirdly lifelike in death as in their
pseudo-life.

I picked up Kyra, found her crying and
alive, her body scored with a hundred tiny
punctures; no way to know if any were
serious. Perhaps due to the fact that the
dolls were essentially brainless and not
calculating, she was unhurt in any vital spot
I could see.

Tanil, still upright on the low truck by
her mech, was bleeding from scores of
little wounds in the legs, but they did not
seem to have hurt her in the body. The
two big-bodied torpedoes lowered the smok-

ing guns, inserted fresh long clips of .45
A.C.P.'s.
Tanil cried:

"After that long-legged skunk, and kill
him. Don't let him get away. He can
make more trouble for us yet!"

They both lumbered off, but I could see
they would not overtake the high-jumping
lean figure of Nueces. Tanil leaped down
from the truck, ran like a deer to the great
smoking doll-mech and got down on her
knees at the source of the smoke column
that told me its mighty anique power supply
was shorted and arcing down there some-
where.

She rose swiftly to the wall panels,
pulled the master switch. The arcing splut-
ter ceased. I had approached. She seized
my wrist, placed a kit of electrician's tools
in my hand. She pointed at the big shat-
tered cable, composed of many smaller
wires, saying fiercely:

"Splice, Kent, splice as fast as you have
ever done. Our lives depend on how
quickly you get that mech working again.
It has a weapon ray hidden in its com-
plexities that Nueces did not know, or we
would all be dead. I will see about an-
other ray to trace him so that we can kill
him when you fix that cable. He is even
now racing toward another ancient ray
mech down the unused corridors."

I hunkered down, ripped the cable loose,
cut back the lead, and color on color,
swiftly replaced the burnt and torn wires
in place, twisting them savagely together,
taping, replacing, over and over, as fast as
I could drive my hands.

Tanil came back, looked, hurried away,
her usual self possession was now a very
worried woman's face. It would be five
minutes yet before I was through. At the
other side of the room, weird green lights
flickered as Tanil sent power into another
black metaled ancient machine. A ray
leaped v from its myriad incomprehensible
coils out and down the corridor. The trail
of footprints left by Nueces and the two
torpedoes glowed greenly visible. Unused
corridor after dusty corridor appeared and
disappeared as she sent the ray sweeping
after the crazy priest who had nearly
killed us all.

As I saw the two women working
frantically with the ancient mech, I could
not but wonder who were these supposed
supporters, the "Hidden Ones," who could

WITCH'S DAUGHTER

87

let these things happen to those who served
them? Or whether they were really so for-
midable as Tanil seemed to think not to be
able to protect their own from such as
Nueces. Or whether Neuces was not their
spy and tool, expressing and encompassing
their fear of wisdom like Tanil's, the tool
of their own traitorous minds that could
never support a more able person than
themselves? But in truth, of their nature
I knew nothing.

T FINISHED, shouted to Tanil.
A "All set!"

She dropped the booster cable she was
hooking to still another great generator,
came racing toward me across the vast floor.

Even as she came, a silver ray — ghastly
yet beautiful — leaped in through the rock
walls, played over Tanil's lovely, supple
figure softly. It was a weirdly beautiful
and yet heart-breaking sight to see her
freeze, her face and her wonderful tall
figure contort into agonized lines as death
raced through her. I stood with a terrible
sorrow and a feeling of futile helplessness
tearing through my breast. I knew she was
dying and I was helpless! I could not
think of anything to do toward saving her.
Frantically my hands sought the utterly
mysterious controls of the Elder race mech
before me, and miraculously from my ig-
norant fingers' motions, a ray, a strange
lovely beam of power, throbbed outward
from the enigmatic heart of the great mech.
Desperately my frantic hands tried dial
after dial and knob after knob —

Kyra came running, her sweet face a
piteous mask of terrible loss at Tanil's
plight. She had been working at the other
mech beside Tanil, seen the deadly silver
ray freezing her, ducked around its deadly
circle of ghastly beauty, raced toward me.

Her clever hands sent the great beam I
had started inadvertently into action, sent
it swiftly swinging along the path of deadly
silver light— beautiful as moonlight — as
terrifying to the sensing of its electric force
as a viper's venom trickling up the nostrils.

Her little tapered fingers plied several
tiny lever-switches upon the great keyboard
of intricate controls. Then she reached out
and touched a finger into the beam where
it shot from the center of the mech. Her
finger shriveled, disappeared and she
gasped with the sudden voluntarily assumed
agony of the searing pain. Then she sent

the now deadly atuned beam leaping on
and on, across the now glass-like transpar-
ency of the adamantine under-rocks, seek-
ing Nueces with the penetrative power ray.

At its end we finally found Nueces, his
hair standing straight up with electric and
with fear, his face working with ugly
triumph as he kept the silver beam upon
the now prostrate body of his enemy, Tanil.
He was a cornered rat clinging, biting to
the end.

As Kyra touched him with the great
beam, he screamed, a sound to haunt a
man's dreams — screamed and screamed—
and quite suddenly stopped. The flesh
shriveled under the far power of the beam,
shriveled tightly about his bones, and under
our eyes his body turned swiftly to mummy-
like appearance, dried up, fell like a sack of
dried sticks, his mouth still working feebly
— and then turned slowly to powder before
our eyes.

Those were terrible rays that the ancients
manufactured and hid within the intricacies
of their machines that only the wiser
initiates might know where weapons lay.

The index finger of Kyra's finger was
gone I noted as she shut off the power of
the death ray. I realized she had not
hesitated at all to sacrifice her hand for
Tanil's sake. I leaped forward now to
where Tanil lay, still under the silver
death beam, where Nueces' death had left
it full upon her.

I tugged her body from under the beam
with one swift motion. The deadly moon-
whiteness lay in a round circle of vicious
emanations as I carried her to a huge couch
at the side of the room.

Tanil looked piteously up at me, and that
was the hardest thing I ever went through,
to look into her confident eyes, once re-
ceptacle of endless unknown secrets, now
stricken and begging me for release from
her inward agony. She gasped:

"It is too late. The hidden ones have
double-crossed me sooner than I expected,
though I knew they would do that one day
anyway. I have been deluding myself and
others. They could have protected us,
Kent; they chose. not to do so! You and
Kyra leave here, go far away. They are
not good, these hidden ones that loom over
such work as ours. They have duped me
into working out a system of absolute
tyranny for them to fasten on your
United States. I have been as much a dupe

AMAZING STORIES

as ever you suspected you were, Kent.
Go, while you may!"

KYRA, her lovely sea-green eyes filled
with streaming- tears, bent over Tanil,
her mouth working, her hands touching the
racked face so tenderly and so pitifully.

"Yes, dearest Mistress . . . yes. The
Hidden Ones hate intelligence in anyone.
We thought we had found a different sort,
but they were only getting us to accomplish
work they did not know how to do. They
have been hiding their monstrous selves
from the sight of men so long they hate us
all. They have not real brains left — and
cannot stand any in others. I believe they
are hateful creatures like Panot, in truth,
their evil nature only surpassed by their
immense stupidity."

I listened to this mysterious interchange
astonished, for to me the only villain of the
piece was Nueces Panot. But as we bent
over her, a lovely, too lovely voice began
to speak beside us — and there was no one
here at all! It said, in false sorrow:

"Oh, dear Tanil, we are endlessly grate-
ful for your work, which has taught us so
much. Now that you die, we will carry on
your efforts, attain your goals for you.
Never fear, dear Tanil, your beloved
surface fools will have tender care."

The saccharine, mocking voice ended in
a hideous titter of weird and ugly triumph,
and Tanil's dying face lit with a terrible
hate. I would have not wanted to be the
owner of that tittering horror voice and
been in Tanil's power then.
I bent and whispered : •
"We know, Kyra and I. We know and
we love you, Tanil. Can you tell us some-
thing we can do to save you even yet. It
is better you live with such enemies as
that voice yet to conquer."

"Kent, you can love Kyra and take care
of her, but without me our plans are
finished. You can do nothing now. Go
up to that City overhead and marry, and
then go far away; too far ever to hear that
voice again. Be happy, and just citizens.
This game is not for you, except you have
such as me with you. Forget it."
In a few moments she died.
About her still lovely body gathered the
other workers of our cavern, some fifty
people who had come and gone, done their
work and been what people always are on
this earth— just shadows in our unseeing
eyes. Softly some of them wept, and I

knew they had been more than shadows
to Tanil's eyes, and that she had been a
glory in their own.

Tanil, I realized, had been a good force
in a morass of horrible evil, but had not
quite figured out how to overcome that
evil and accomplished what she willed with-
out hurting the innocent— had hesitated too
long for that very reason.

I turned sadly to Kyra, as the two husky
torpedoes came back from their hunt for
Nueces.

"Kyra, shall we do what Tanil advised
— go up to that city and become normal
citizens. Or shall we stay and try to be-
come what she might have succeeded in
becoming?"

"Kent, I think that sweet, evil voice that
mocked her death also made her tell us to
leave by controling her dying body. But
there is a way to find that out. You and I
will take a honeymoon to Niagara Falls,
and when we return our friends here will
let us back into these caverns. If they do
not let us in, they will drive us away, and
we will know that our ugly hidden enemies
do not want us here. They will not kill
us in the open in the city — as they usually
seek to hide the power they have in the
ancient mech rays. We will be safe enough,
I think. When we return, we will not feel
Tanil's death so greatly. We need time
now to start over. Time to recover our-
selves from this experience. Our friends
here will carry on while we are gone. And
one day we may yet become what Tanil
planned — the saviors of mankind from the
morass of war and stupidity that is their
life today.

So it was that our honeymoon and the
thunder of Niagara's mighty waters spelled
release from sorrow and a promise of all
the magic of love to us — as it has for others.

But we shall go back and wrest from
those forgotten machines and those idling,
superior and evil hidden ones the secrets
of those dead forgotten sciences that built
those vital and needed mechanisms — and
give them to the men of the future.

"The dreams of me you had," Kyra one
day explained, "were due to one kind of
machine they built. As a little girl, play-
ing in those same caverns, I watched you
and loved you — and made your mind my
own. It was wrong of me? They were
good dreams I made; were they not?"

What would you say? The same as I,
would you not?