The House that Stood Still by A. E. van Vogt

Author:A. E. van Vogt [Vogt, A. E. van]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

XII

Old was the house. For a thousand years or more it had crouched on its mountain, and looked down at the unchanging sea. And like the sea it had no purpose, no thought, no desire. As the days of the years went by, outward change was wrought upon its basic structure, but only outward change: New decorations, new efforts at cleanliness, new interior arrangements. Again and again the trimmings were renewed and altered. Different designs of gardens were conceived and laboriously achieved to give it an ever greener, more cultivated setting. Masses of earth were moved, landscaped, left for years, and then removed. Trees were planted and lived and died or were felled. The house neither saw nor felt nor cared nor changed. Through all the years it sat solid on the solid earth, a lifeless edifice of marble and mystery.

It was an imposing, single story house, and it stood on a high hill. Stephens had often thought that what saved it from the attention of the people who passed by on the road below was that its most outstanding feature was hidden by a barrier of trees. He had seen the steps on his one trip up to the house years before, and he was still impressed.

As the car climbed higher, he looked back. The sun was shining slantingly down onto a vast body of water that began just west of where the town ended. To the right and left, the suburbs of Almirante spread into a series of hills that were green with growth. Far to the south there was a twin silvery gleam where the railway came out of the brush and concealing valleys, and turned gradually to the Pacific.

The car made a sharp turn around a clump of trees, leveled off on the knob of the mountain, and there was the house.

The first look brought Stephens upright in his seat He had forgotten the full effect of the steps. Or perhaps the house hadn’t meant so much to him the last time he had seen it. The hedge of trees must have been planted with the deliberate intent of making the memory grow vague. It hid the steps. Passersby could gaze up over the trees and see what looked like a wide-fronted, one-story house. Not a single step was visible from farther down, and there were (Stephens counted them meticulously) twenty-five steps altogether. They ran the full front of the house, a hundred feet at least, and they reached up to a broad marble terrace which centered on a thick glass double door.

The steps were of marble. The house was made of highly polished slabs of the same material, and its whiteness was an illusion of distance. Seen from nearby, it had a greenish tinge underlying a shiny gray white.

Stephens followed Mistra and Howland out of the car, climbed slowly behind them up to the terrace, and stood by as Howland rang the bell.

A minute, and some five rings later, there was still no reply.

Stephens was the first to leave the door.

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