by C. L. Moore
Jamie smiled. He knew the old Martian was unexpectedly swift and accurate with that small weapon.
"You'll get along," he acknowledged, and then hesitated over a question he had to ask and dreaded. "Do you ... have you—About Quanna, I mean—"
Ghej nodded. "Once I've seen her. In Vastari's camp. She's very unhappy, commander. Venusians seldom show emotion, but I know. I think you haven't seen the last of Quanna."
Jamie's black brows met. "Lord, I hope I have! Though even now, I can't quite believe she'd—" He let the sentence die. "I wish I could get my hands on Vastari before I leave!"
"Other leaders would rise in his place," Ghej shrugged. "What Venus really needs is—oh, some common trouble to draw them all together. Here at the end, it just occurs to me that if the Terrestrials had really oppressed Venusians, it might have been the salvation of the race." He smiled dryly. "Too late now."
A horn sounded in the street below them. It was time to go.
The calm-faced Home Guard watched them marching away. There was a wild, curiously sad tempo to the music of the seven-toned pipes which played them out of Darva. Jamie saw the first shadow of decay even before they reached the gate. For the Home Guard, today, was not the fine line of soldiers he had reviewed last week. Nothing blatant, of course—just a tunic loosened at the throat, a helmet askew here, an unpolished buckle there, boots with dust on the toes—He looked away.
Another distant rockslide shook its low thunder through the air as they reached the gate. Jamie thought fancifully that the familiar, slow rumble was like the sound of the crumbling Solar Empire which was letting go its last world colony today. Behind them the wild, sad skirl of piping died away. Before them the road wound up through foothills toward the pass. And so the last legion rode out of Darva, not looking back.
Jamie thought they would all hear that skirling music until they died, and the long, low rumble of sliding rocks above peaceful Darva, and see the high blue mountains whenever they closed their eyes. These last Terrestrials had been a long time on Venus now.
There was decadence even in the marching of the Earthmen out of Darva, for a spaceport had once kept the city in touch with the outside worlds. It closed a year ago, when they moved the Seventeenth over nearer Darkside and the cost of the port became prohibitive. And so the last Terrestrial Patrol left Venus afoot, its officers mounted on padding horses, by a slow trail through the mountains over which Earth's ships had once glided on sleek wings.
Civilization had overreached itself in so many ways, thought Jamie. When the planes began to fail for lack of material from home, they had realized one serious gap, too late to bridge now. They had never needed surface transportation when the air was theirs, and now that the ships had failed—well, they tramped the roads as if their race had never mastered the drive of wheels.
-
Jamie was thinking inevitably of Quanna as they mounted the steep trail. He knew that one stolen Knute would not be enough to satisfy Vastari; there would be ambush somewhere along the way to the spaceport. He had come to personify in Vastari now all the qualities about Venus that irritated him most, and Quanna's shocking defection—he could scarcely believe even now that she had done what she had done—he, somehow, blamed Vastari, too, with the unreason of the subconscious. There was much he could not understand even yet; he was not sure he hoped more to see her or not to see her again before they left Venus.
The sheer, turquoise heights of the mountains were leaning above them now. They could look down, as they marched, over cloud-veiled distances at Darva showing and vanishing and showing again through gaps, each time farther away, smaller, more like a memory that recedes as time goes on.
Bright reptiles squirmed from their path, scaled, flying things swept more noiselessly than owls from their high nests as the Earthmen passed. The sound of falling water was all around them, and the low, shaking thunder of distant landslides.
It was a long journey over the mountain route toward the port. Somewhere along the way, Vastari must certainly strike in a last, desperate effort to take their weapons for himself. But, in spite of the difficulty and danger of the journey, Jamie thought none of them was wholly sorry that it was long. They were, for the last few days of their lives, alone in a high, blue world of turquoise rock beneath the slow surge of the cloud-tide, and all of them knew they were spending their last days on a world they loved and would not see again.
For none of them had any illusions about the world they were returning to. The barbarians of the outer worlds were, thought Jamie ruefully, the last plague that Earthmen would have to suffer, a latter-day Black Plague which neither Earth civilization nor Earthmen would survive.
Suspense tightened as they drew nearer and nearer the end of their journey, and still Vastari had not struck. Jamie had fantastic dreams in which he thought Quanna had killed her brother to save the Earthmen, but his rational mind knew better. That she had had more than one motive in stealing the Knute he was sure, but he did not expect to feel pleasure when he learned what it was.
Darva was far behind. Each day that passed drove it farther and farther into memory. They all gave themselves up to the timeless present, knowing that each succeeding moment of peace might be the last. And still Vastari delayed.
There is a valley in the peaks a few hours this side of Port City. Countless tortuous ravines run up from its floor through the steep cliffs around. Earthmen did a little mining there in the old days, but nothing remains today except the great scars upon the cliff faces and the long, dark blasts the rocketships left—marks upon Venus that will far outlast the race that made them.
It was so obvious a place for ambush that Jamie had been fairly sure Vastari would not use it. That was probably one of the devious reasons behind the fact that he did.
Jamie, riding at the head of the column, eyed the labyrinth of ravines around him with wary eyes as they entered the valley. The ravines looked curiously confusing. There was a shimmer over the whole valley that reminded him suddenly of Mars. If he had not known himself on Venus, he would have thought that heat waves were dancing between the honeycombed walls of the valley.
Then the shimmer began to spread, and a violet blindness closed softly across Jamie's eyes; the sound of falling water from the peaks faded into a ringing silence, and the valley was full of terror and confusion. Little mindless horrors chased one another like ripples across his consciousness.
This was it. Even knowing that, it was incredibly hard to shout across his shoulder: "Knute helmets!" and to fumble at his saddle for the limp pack of his own. The horse was beginning to shiver under him, though the Knute vibrations were still too high to do more than touch its animal brain. But for Jamie there was terror in everything, even in the feel of the helmet he was shaking out of its pack. He had to grind his teeth together to get the courage to pull it down over his head—he had the dreadful certainty that it would smother him when he did.
The soft, metallic cloth went on smoothly, its woven coils hugging his skull. There was a moment more of blindness and the unpleasant ringing silence that might be hiding all sorts of terrible sounds. Then something like warmth in the very brain began to ooze inward from the helmet, and the world came back into focus.
His first conscious thought after that, as he tried to quiet his uneasy horse, was that the Knute had not been turned to killing power—yet. The helmets were protection against the lesser power of the vibrator, but they would not hold out long when the Gilson fuse turned the Knute into a death weapon. Before that happened they would have to find and silence it.
He swung his excited horse around, shouting commands in a voice that echoed thinly in his own ears through the helmet, knowing that though it would be a matter of moments to locate the source of the vibrations, storming it up these twisting ravines in the face of what might at any moment become deadly waves would be quite another matter.
Everything still shimmered a little—the hills, the waterfalls, the face of Morgan hurrying up to give him
the location of the Knute.
"That ravine, sir," he said, squinting over his lifted arm. "Between the waterfalls, see?" His voice was thin and quivering through the helmet. There was a strangely dreamlike air to the whole scene, as there always was under the fire of a Knute. Everything seemed so unreal that it was hard to bring his mind seriously to bear upon the problem of attack.
-
It was probably in a dream that Jamie thought he saw Quanna come down the slanting valley, picking her way with delicate steps and holding her familiar green velvet cloak up to clear her scarlet shoes. She was carrying a white scarf like a flag.
Unexpectedly the rainbow shimmering of the Knute began to fade. The illusion of unreality trembled a moment longer over the valley and was gone, and Jamie blinked to see the illusion of Quanna still there, looking up at him diffidently under her emerald hood and holding the white scarf up like a banner.
He kicked his horse into a trot and went forward a little way to meet her, not at all sure what he would say when he did. He could feel Morgan's eyes on his back and was angrier at her just now for making him a fool before Morgan than for anything she had done before.
He reined in silently and sat looking down at her without a word. His black-browed scowl was forbidding. Quanna put all the delicate submissiveness she could summon into her voice. She was twisting the improvised white flag between her hands with a nervousness that might or might not be assumed.
"Lord, will you hear a message from Vastari?"
Her voice was very sweet. There had been a time when Jamie might have softened to hear it; lethargy was all that possessed him now. He said nothing, only nodded shortly.
"I have persuaded Vastari," she said, "that because I saved your life once and still hold an unfulfilled promise from you, and because you have had a warning already from the Knute, you will put down all your weapons if Vastari lets you go free to the spaceport."
Jamie laughed harshly. "How far do you think I trust Vastari—or you?"
"He could kill you," she reminded him in her sweet, reflective voice. "You, and most of your men. The Knute is too well hidden to find soon, and too well barricaded to take in time, even if you found it. I know how weak the helmets are against the killing strength of the Knute. No, you must bargain, Jamie dear. But not with Vastari." She came forward with a lovely, swaying motion to lay both narrow pale hands upon his knee, tilting up her face.
"I can't let you go without me, Jamie dear." Her voice quivered as musically as a harp string. "This is the only way I know to make you listen. Jamie, if you take me back to Earth with you, I can save you from Vastari. No, listen!" Her fingers clasped his knee as she saw anger darken the face above her. "Listen, Jamie! If you won't listen for your own sake, remember your men. Earth needs them, Jamie—you've told me about that! Let me go back to Vastari and say you'll give your weapons up—at the spaceport! I can make him believe that. Let me ride with you. When we reach Port City—"
"What's to prevent him killing us then?" demanded Jamie, his voice harsh. "He won't let us out of range, for all your lies."
"Oh, Jamie, believe me! Would I risk your life now, when I've saved it? I can control Vastari—I can! But I can't tell you how. Jamie, I'll ride with you ... would I do that if there was any danger? Jamie ... I ... I—"
Her face and her voice both quivered suddenly. He saw her lift her hands to her eyes and a look of terror and confusion went over her features. The whole valley began to swim again in a rainbow shimmer, and sound and sight distorted faintly even with the helmet's protection. Vastari had turned the Knute on—on Quanna and the Earthmen.
-
Bewilderment made Jamie's mind blank for a moment. Why would even Vastari risk so safe a bargain as he thought his sister was making, sacrifice her wantonly with the Earthmen for no reason at all? For no reason—
Then he saw his own men moving to the left against the swaying backdrop of the waterfalls that flanked Vastari's ravine, heard the shouts of their officers, and kenw that someone had blundered inexcusably. Morgan? Morgan who distrusted Quanna and the commander's weakness, and had taken fatal advantage of the delay to attempt storming the Knute up the ravine?
Jamie had no way of knowing, and in spite of himself was savagely glad that Morgan had done it—if he had. The weight was off Jamie now—he had no impossible decision to make—whether to trust Quanna, whether to risk his men, whether to surrender to her pleading as he wanted to do and dared not.
He spurred his restive horse and swung violently around to the ravine, shouting to her over his shoulder: "I'll make my own bargain with Vastari!"
Quanna reeled back in a shower of sand from the padded hoofs, screaming above the shouts of the charging soldiers: "Jamie ... Jamie, wait! He can't hurt you, Jamie! The Gilson—I have it! Jamie, Jamie, you'll be killed!"
But if he heard any of that illogical cry he did not believe or heed it. The soft thudding of hoofbeats in sand, and Jamie's shouts mingling with the voices of his men, were all that came back to her. She stood staring as the last Terrestrial Patrol on Venus made its last sortie into the mountains in pursuit of outlaw natives.
The range of the Knute followed them. Her own terror and confusion faded as the vibrations died around her, but they did not fade entirely. She watched until the last man vanished up the ravine between the waterfalls. Then, for lack of anything else to do, she began to brush the sand from her cloak with long, unconscious motions.
If Venusians were given to tears, Quanna would have wept then. It had all gone so well up to this vital point. The plan itself had been simple enough—to give Vastari the emasculated Knute and let him ambush the Terrestrials, thinking he could kill them with the vibrations when he chose. Vastari had not wanted to bargain with the Earthmen, but she had convinced him of that necessity, too, in the end. And she had been sure Jamie would surrender. She had seen it in his face, deep down, under the anger and distrust—because he must take his men back to earth. He could not throw their lives away here for an ideal, and he had known he must surrender in the end, even if it meant lies and a broken bargain at the spaceport.
Neither he nor Vastari, of course, had guessed that the Knute was harmless to kill. She had not trusted Vastari that far, and she had been right indeed. Anger shook her briefly out of her lethargy. Vastari had been ready to sacrifice her, then—if he must—her usefulness was ended now. He had no way of knowing that under her robe she was clutching the Gilson fuse which made his weapon only a dangerous toy.
She smiled a thin, malicious smile even in the midts of her anxiety over Jamie. Vastari must be an astonished man just now. His deadly weapon powerless, enemies charging up the ravine, his men scattering before the gunfire of the Terrestrials—Vastari would be retreating already. With the Knute or without it. The Venusians would not stand long against Earthmen suddenly and uncannily impervious to the supposedly deadly vibrations of the Knute.
But it might be long enough to ruin all that Quanna had planned for. It might be long enough for an arrow or a spear to find a chink of Jamie's cuirass. Vastari's men were such excellent spearmen—
And she could do nothing now but wait.
-
Faintly, far up among the twisting ravines, the noises of battle reached a climax and wore themselves out. Quanna sat down on a flat stone close beside one of the waterfalls, hearing the thin threnody of its music above the diminishing sounds from overhead.
She did not hear the nearer padding of a horse's hoofs coming up the valley until it was nearly upon her, and a harsh, hissing voice said:
"Quanna!" There was a subtle excitement in the voice that was not wholly explicable.
She looked up, startled almost—but not quite—out of her self-possession. Then she cried: "Ghej! What ... why—"
He smiled. "So Vastari did attack here," he nodded, glancing about the trampled valley floor where the Terrestrials had thrown off their packs for fighting in the mountains. "I was almost sure he would. The old cave's so near, for one thin
g. What happened?"
She told him, keeping her voice level. He sat listening, his hands folded on the saddlebow and his opaque, old eyes piercing under the horny lids. When she had finished he nodded gravely.
"Yes—I knew it would be something like that the day you stole the Knute. There had to be something other than simple theft in what you did. So it was all a bluff, eh? Well—" He slanted an upward glance toward the labyrinth of ravines above them, and then swung off his horse a little stiffly. "I'll wait with you until—something happens."
"But why did you come?" Quanna returned belatedly to her first questions.
Ghej shook his crested head.
"Something's happened—I can't tell you yet."
She looked at him curiously from under her lashes, and saw now on the leathery, old face the same repressed excitement she had heard in his voice. Excitement, and something like dread. But she knew there was no use in questioning him.
She did not move again until she heard voices and sliding footsteps up in the ravine. The she got up and stood quite still in her green cloak against the thin, green veil of the waterfall, waiting.
By twos and threes, carrying their wounded, the Terrestrials came straggling back to the valley. Jamie was not among them.
He was almost the last to return. He came very wearily, alone, one arm hanging in the improvised sling of his unbuttoned tunic and the blood still dripping from what was probably an arrow wound.
Quanna took one involuntary step toward him and then stopped. Jamie looked at her phlegmatically, saying nothing. She saw in his face that he had ceased to believe or trust anything she might do, and he was clinging to the protection his lethargy offered him.
Then he saw Ghej, and his face came alive again.
"Ghej? What's happened? Did you change your mind? I—"
"Tell me first how the battle went," Ghej suggested. "And let Quanna dress your arm. Were the arrows poisoned, Quanna?"
