A ragged, dirty little girl appeared suddenly around the corner. She careened expertly off the walls to negotiate the turn with as little loss of momentum as possible, and her eyes opened wide as she ploughed headlong into Hercules' substantial stomach. She squealed with shock on the rebound and scrambled off along the walls as quick as a cockroach, vanishing around the corner again in an instant.
Three more children, as ragged as she, appeared around the same corridor, apparently flying in pursuit of her. They had already been warned by her hasty retreat and were able to avoid crashing into the Argonauts. For a few seconds they stared with open mouths and then bounded off.
Followed by the others, Jason darted forward around the bend, just in time to see dirty, naked feet disappearing into hatchways and ducts all about them. For minutes afterwards they could hear the sounds of small bodies clambering through pipes and duct-ways in the walls.
"They're good," said Orpheus. "It's been a long time since I saw such grace in free-fall."
"They certainly weren't expecting us," Hercules guffawed. "But their parents will be, now. We'd better be on our guard."
They moved on through the maze of corridors into slight gravity and came upon another barrier as adamantine as the first: obviously a safety door, and well beyond their ability to open. As they stood in dejection, they heard a giggle from behind and turned to see a small, rumpled head poking out of a hatchway in the ceiling. The girl vanished instantly.
"Wait!" Atalanta called. "Don't go. How do we get through?" She moved to just below the opening, jumped easily to the ceiling and spoke into the duct. "We won't hurt you. We're looking for Colchis."
Laughing children's voices echoed in the walls, speaking in a language none of the Argonauts understood.
"Shall we try the duct-ways?" Atalanta asked.
"We'd be lost in minutes," Jason said. "We'd better go back and try another route. Maybe Artemis will guide us."
"That's what I suggested in the first place," Atalanta sniffed.
"More likely," Orpheus said, "all the passages are blocked by these doors. That's why the children use the ducts. We might do better to bed down here and hope these children are intrigued enough to investigate us."
"They may well return with their elders," Hercules warned. "Can't Athena help us?"
"I believe I can contact her." Orpheus tapped a key on his lyre. "Goddess, can you hear us?"
The Guardian shimmered into view in the corridor.
"Yes, I can hear you," she said, "but only when you revolve to my side of the island. When you are on the other side, and its entire bulk is between us, I cannot maintain contact with the lyre, and I am unable to help you."
Orpheus pleaded: "Can you see a passage through this maze?"
"I can only see where power flows," she replied in her dulcet voice. "I have no perception in chaos and most of this place is in chaos. As an Apollonian, my dear Orpheus, you should know that the Guardians have power over the world of order only. Between the place you stand and the place you seek is only darkness and downed systems. But here is one who may help."
The image faded and the little girl was revealed, staring in open-mouthed wonder at the place where the goddess had been. The Argonauts waited while her gaze darted from one stranger's face to the other, and then she came forward and took Jason's hand. Orpheus realized she was a pretty child, beneath the dirt, and older than he had thought. And he realized why the Argonauts had to be led by a handsome young man and guided by a goddess who was just the thing to impress a young girl. She tugged at Jason's hand, and he allowed her to pull him into a hatchway. The other Argonauts followed, Hercules sometimes struggling to force his huge shoulders through the tight places. They crawled through air-ducts, squeezed through smashed wall-panels, drifted across debris-strewn chambers.
Jason had been right: in minutes they were lost. But the girl led them into gravity, through darkness, and along throbbing walls until they emerged from a grating into deep forest. The undergrowth rustled underfoot, birds chattered and whistled overhead, and light angled down through the foliage. The girl led them along a path as straight as a ruled line. At a point where the path was crossed by another, just as straight, at right angles, there was a slight break in the cover, and they could see the ceiling. It was not a greenhouse roof, but a steel vault. The sunlight was artificial, coming from glowing panels far overhead, where cables and catwalks and pipes hung like forest vines.
"This is an overgrown orchard," Atalanta said. "Look at the way the trees grow in long, straight rows."
"They're not fruit-trees."
"No, but there were fruit-trees here at one time. New trees grew up wild between them and crowded them out, and then these saplings grew in their place. Do you see? And look, this ditch was an irrigation channel at one time."
The forest thinned into swampy bush-country, still marked out in rectangles like a giant chessboard. Atalanta paused to examine the remains of a sluiceway. "This is even stranger," she mused. "Rectangular patches of forest separated by these grassy avenues."
"Rice paddies," Jason said. "The ground was harder here; that's why only grass grows. But here there was water, and the ground was more fertile. There was an area like this in the agricultural torus where I grew up, though it wasn't as thickly overgrown. This has been neglected for a long time."
They emerged from the checkerboard forest onto a broad plain, dotted with copses of birch and willow, ruined cisterns, and tumbled stone fences. What had once been pastureland for hundreds of animals was now a meadow filled with wildflowers, and in the distance lay the ruins of a great farm.
The girl gestured toward the buildings and pulled Jason forward across the plain. A huge barn, many stories tall, was fallen into ruin, and a smaller outbuilding, perhaps a dairy at one time, had been converted into a small barn. There were a handful of animals in a corral outside, and as they approached, they began to see people. The girl waved and shouted, and heads turned their way.
"Her people have let this whole farm fall into ruin," Orpheus said.
"It probably fed a great population once," Jason replied. "Why maintain a huge farm if there are only a handful of people left?"
The sight of the newcomers had generated a flurry of motion. Several children, some of whom seemed familiar from the encounter in the corridors, were snatched up and dragged into the house. As the Argonauts approached, they found themselves confronted with farmers armed with forks and hooks and rakes. Hercules let out a great guffaw of amusement as he drew his sword, and the farmers fell back, raising their tools threateningly. The girl rushed to protect the Argonauts, waving her arms and speaking quickly in her still-incomprehensible language.
"Stop it," Jason said. "These people may not have seen strangers for generations. How do you expect them to react to armed warriors?" He opened his hands and stepped forward.
"We are searching for a place called Colchis," he said.
There was no recognition.
"Can you take us there? Is there a King Aeetes or someone named Medea?"
There was no reaction, except for the exchange of uncomprehending looks. The girl stepped forward from among the Argonauts and spoke to the assembly in the same strange language she had used before. There were sharp words, and the girl hung her head in obedience.
"Do you notice," asked Atalanta, "how much they resemble each other? Like one family?"
"I think they are one family," said Orpheus, "very much interbred. And I think the girl is in serious trouble for bringing us here."
"The Colchians," Hercules snorted, "certainly are living up to their reputation for cordiality."
The elders argued among themselves and finally reached a consensus. One old man stepped forward and pointed toward the house in a barely remembered gesture of hospitality. He did not smile--in fact, no one smiled, including the children. The Argonauts smiled, however, put away their weapons, and tried to appear friendly. They followed the farmers into their house.
The interior was simple, but cheerful enough. The Argonauts were ushered into a large dining room, where a trestle table stood before a huge fireplace. The fact that the hosts could not converse with their guests was not a problem; a generous stew of some sort was placed in the centre of the table and a large helping dished out for each.
"Don't be the first to eat," Orpheus said. "I mean you, Hercules. Wait and see what our hosts do, then do the same."
But the elders urged them to eat with unmistakeable gestures, and the Argonauts' smiles and nods as they ate were equally unmistakeable. Some of the hosts talked among themselves, and as he dined Orpheus did his best to puzzle out some words of their language, but well-travelled as he was, he could not remember ever having heard any of these sounds before. He guessed that this community had been isolated for an extremely long time. Very well, then, he decided, all communication would have to be pictorial.
After dinner, he stood and bowed to the elders. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, ignoring the uncomprehending looks, "we thank you for this most excellent repast, but it's time to explain what brings us to your lovely, if somewhat neglected isle."
He swept away some of the ashes before the fire, picked up a piece of charcoal, and began to draw pictures upon a large slab of slate. He drew the Argo and pointed to himself and his companions. The onlookers seemed to understand; they nodded and spoke among themselves, giving Orpheus the impression that they had at least heard of the concept of sun-sailing. Then he drew the brazen bulls and generated some considerable excitement. After all, they were farmers, and cattle would be familiar. His drawing of the sleepless dragon elicited some shocked responses and a great deal of murmuring. There was no doubt that they recognized the figure, crude as it was.
Orpheus thought he was getting somewhere. But when he drew the earthborn men, there was no response but a return to uncomprehending stares. Puzzled, Orpheus peered down at his drawing. He was no artist in this crude medium, but no one could have mistaken the images of armed warriors rising from the ground. He considered using his lyre to project a better image, but he was reluctant to reveal its powers to these people.
The girl was beside herself with excitement. She rushed over, held out her hand for the charcoal, and then she began to add to his figures. The bulls were left unchanged, but she added a series of spines to the dragon and altered the look of its forelegs. Orpheus, never having seen a real dragon, could not judge how accurate her drawing might be, but it looked more like a real living creature than his own sketch.
But when she tackled the figures of the Earthborn Men, it was Orpheus' turn to stare uncomprehendingly. She began by erasing their weapons and their armour, leaving them naked. As Orpheus watched, admiring her skill, she turned to adding individual facial features, then suddenly laughed and clapped her hands, threw down the charcoal, and ran from the room. Orpheus turned to Jason and the others, but they shrugged in obvious bafflement at her strange behaviour. He noticed, however, that the farmers were beginning to look uncomfortable. Some talked rapidly among themselves, and their words were harsh. Others wrung their hands with either worry or indecision.
The girl returned, babbling, and unrolled a sheet of parchment on which she had drawn several human figures in exquisite detail, apparently some time ago. Orpheus recognized them as the same figures she had been trying to sketch quickly on the hearth, but he had never seen such beings before and thought them as strange as any dragon might be. Naturally, his eye was drawn first to the beautiful naked woman with the long hair, as perfect as any goddess, but then he marvelled at a wizened dwarf, a bearded giant, a hairless and dark-skinned genie of great height, and a strange hermaphroditic creature covered with elaborate designs. All these figures seemed to be asleep or dead, cocooned in cradles or coffins of some sort.
At first, Orpheus was excited by the drawings, but then his heart sank. These were not real creatures, after all, but figures from the girl's imagination, and her excitement at seeing Orpheus' own drawings was not of recognition, but of joy at discovering a fellow artist. However, the Bard had little time to dwell on his disappointment.
With a scream of rage, one of the girl's elders rushed forward, snatched the picture from Orpheus' hands, and tore it in pieces. The girl screamed defiance at him and was answered with a chorus of screams from the rest of the family. As the Argonauts watched in astonishment, the man snatched up the fireplace poker and raised it above his head, obviously intending to strike the girl dead on the spot.
Suddenly Atalanta was at the man's side. With one hand she snatched the poker away and with the other she twisted his arm behind his back, rendering him helpless. Some of the other natives started forward in his defence, so Atalanta pushed the elder into Hercules' embrace and went to meet them. She stood in a strange perfectly balanced crouch, arms held up before her. Something in her stance, or perhaps the darting of her glance from face to face, made her would-be attackers hesitate. But they were many, and she was only one slim girl, so they rushed her.
She completed a series of moves, shifting and whirling and kicking too swiftly for the eye to follow. The Argonauts were barely conscious of the girl's sandaled feet connecting with half a dozen ribs, stomachs, chests, and jaws in rapid succession, and suddenly half a dozen men were collapsing on the floor, moaning and screaming in pain as she stood relaxed, breast heaving, eyes darting.
Reinforcements came, raising scythes and rakes in the air, and one old woman locked the door behind them. Hercules gripped the elder by the cloak, lifted him above his head as if he were made of feathers, and hurled him into their attackers' midst, sending another half-dozen natives sprawling across the floor.
The rearguard stood well back. They raised their pitchforks to hurl them as spears. Orpheus lifted his lyre over his head. "Shut your eyes tight," he shouted, and the Argonauts obeyed. Even through tightly lidded eyes they were aware of an intense flash of light, and when they opened their eyes again, they saw the remaining natives groping blindly into walls and tables, their weapons forgotten.
"It won't last long," Orpheus shouted above the din. "Hercules, get us out of here."
Hercules snatched up the now-blinded young girl and tossed her onto his shoulder like a doll. He strode to the door and slammed the sole of his foot into it. The door flew off its hinges with the shriek of rusted metal, careened across the yard, and ploughed into the earth, scattering poultry in all directions.
In a moment, the Argonauts were jogging through the overgrown orchard toward the girl's secret hole in the wall. Behind them came a mob of crazed farmers, robes flying, hoes swinging.
"Can you see now?" Jason asked the girl as she bounced gasping and giggling on Hercules' shoulder, and he waved his hand before her eyes.
She smiled at him. Hercules put her down and she led them into the walls. After a few turns they could still hear the farmers stumbling about and talking among themselves in the ducts behind them, but there was no question of any further pursuit. Any farmer who ventured deeper into the maze would be as lost as the Argonauts soon found themselves and would be lucky to find his way back.
They followed the girl until she led them to a rat's nest of a room somewhere in the labyrinth. There were bits of broken furniture, parts of toys and games, a number of dolls with missing limbs. Her proud smile told them this was her secret place. She pointed to a corner and waved her hand before a plate in the wall.
The wall shimmered and a story appeared--soundless, blinking out at times and distorted around the edges, but unfolding before them at the proper speed. There was an island not unlike the one in which they found themselves, adrift in the Black Sea. A small ship appeared and docked. The scene shifted to the interior, where a hatch opened, and a handsome young man appeared. With a flickering, glowing blade he hacked his way through the thick and malevolent thorn forest that filled the corridors and did battle with a fierce dragon-like creature. Finally, he entered a gleaming chamber where a beautiful young woman lay encased in glass tubes and flickering light. The handsome young man touched a series of buttons and the light faded about her. He removed the tubes, bent over, and put his lips to hers, whereupon her breast began to rise in breath, her eyes fluttered open, and she embraced her saviour in ecstasy.
The scene vanished and the girl turned to the Argonauts with tears in her eyes. There was a sob behind them, and they turned to find Hercules weeping uncontrollably.
"This is an ancient story," Orpheus said, "called Sleeping Beauty. Very popular with young girls, particularly. That's why she defied her people to help us. She identifies Jason with the handsome prince in the story. And I suppose the image of Athena reinforced that impression."
"Can she really be Medea?" Atalanta asked. "She's a little young."
"She's our guide, in any event," Jason said. "She can't go back to her people, so we're responsible for her. Besides, she's the only one who knows her way around this island. We'll have to follow her--if we can fit in her tunnels."
"Look at this," said Orpheus.
They gathered around him and admired the drawings on the wall, sketched in charcoal and coloured with various pigments. The girl stood by proudly.
"She's very talented," Orpheus said. "Her people seem an unimaginative lot, but she's a genuine artist." He smiled down at her and she beamed with childish delight. "These are the figures she sketched back at the farm, but in much more detail..."
Orpheus fell silent as he peered at the drawings.
"What is it?" Jason asked. "What's the matter?"
"These are not mythological creatures. These are real creatures that the girl has seen with her own eyes."
"How can they be?" Hercules demanded. "They're not human. Look, an ancient dwarf, a bearded giant, a black genie, a beautiful maiden, and... some kind of illustrated woman."
"But they are human. The oldest tales say that our ancestors came in many different colours and sizes, and it is living in the cramped quarters of our islands that has made us all so similar. Except for the effect of various gravities and the different amounts of sunlight in the various islands, we're all about the same size and colour. We bred that way, mixing all the original different sizes and shapes and colours until we became uniform. But the legends say there were men on Earth twice as tall as other men; there were men as black as the earth itself and others so white you could see the blood in their veins; and there were creatures with eyes as blue as the sky and hair as golden as the sun, like this one."
"She's like the sleeping beauty in the girl's story."
"Yes, and she's sleeping in a similar contraption. I'd always thought these cryo-crypts were legendary as well, but perhaps they existed, and could really keep people alive for centuries."
"Then, these are the Earthborn Men," said Jason.
"It certainly looks that way. And the girl can lead us to them."
Jason grinned with joy, and then his face fell. "The girl expects me to awaken this beauty with a kiss, doesn't she?"
"I think she does. Athena, on the other hand, expects you to kill her, so you can secure the Golden Fleece."