by Earl
RENOUNCE THE OUTLAND
ERMAINE did not appear the next morning at the usual time. The Outlander attendant, told Ellory she had asked that he remain in his room. Shrugging, Ellory took to reading a finely-bound book. It was dainty, shallow verbiage that the most susceptible editor of the twentieth century would have rejected.
Ermaine came in, late in the afternoon, with Sharina. She faced them with a more serious expression than her imperturable features had ever shown before.
“Humrelly,” she began slowly, “you’ve seen all of Lillamra City. The others are the same. What do you think of Antarka now?”
Ellory stood up before her, drawing a long breath, preparing to launch out.
“Wait, before you speak!” She paused, then: “I think I’ll tell you first. You are offered a place in our civilization—as one of the Lords of Antarka, with all privileges! The Outland Council have agreed. Renounce the Outland, take up life here, as one of us. Either that or life imprisonment!”
Ellory was staggered. “Not death—in either case?” he gasped. This upset his whole theory, that Ermaine had been playing with an inevitably doomed man.
T don’t believe it!” he grunted.
“It’s true.” There was no hint of mockery in the Antarkan girl’s face. “We feel that you deserve better than death for a simple mistake, you who have come from a remote past. Your historical knowledge alone will add to our records. But we can’t, of course, let you go on our avowed enemy, either here or the Outland. You’re too dangerous! Well?”
Her tones had been impersonal, unemotional. She might be talking of whether he should wear a different suit.
Ellory straightened up.
“Ermaine, listen to me,” he began quietly. “I’ll tell you what I think of Antarka. For a thousand years you Antarkans have been in the lap of luxury. You are decadent, stagnant, spiritually dead. You were a truly vigorous people when you first settled in Antarka, building a civilization. Then a terrible mistake was made—the conscription of the Outland.
“It’s tyranny, from start to finish. But worse than your sin against the Outlanders, is your sin against yourselves! For you’ve buried yourselves in absolute sterility of mind.”
“Indeed?” Ermaine’s lidded eyes revealed no reaction. “Just because we don’t have wars, preaching reformers, and a hundred and one different philosophies pulling at odds? Have you stopped to think, Humrelly, that we have reached the perfect state? There is no need for what you would misname ‘vigor of mind’. We live life beautifully, as some of your own poets once chanted was the acme of human life!”
“Beautifully! I’ll tell you something, Ermaine, that will make you jump. Even with advance warning you’ll jump. You’re utterly bored—as you once hinted. All Antarka has been bored stiff for centuries. You’re all sick of each other, sick of safety, security, idleness, soft living. Your music sings out the same song, and your literature. Antarka—fluff of the ages, man’s zero point in endeavor. You are chained in a vicious little circle that you’d mortgage your souls to change, if you’d only realize it. You play hard because you’re afraid to stop and realize there is nothing else.
“Even a war would be preferable, wouldn’t it, Ermaine? Even a good, healthy rebellion in the Outland, instead of one you can so easily stop. You told me that yourself, and I was a fool not to see the truth sooner. An age-long ennui came down from your fathers, like a stuffy cloak, and it’ll go down to your children.
“That’s your whole horizon—complete boredom, to the day you die. Years and years of it! Why, even Sharina here has lived more in her short time than a half dozen of you Lords and Ladies.”
ERMAINE’S eyes, wide at first, became indolently amused. “Humrelly, you amaze me. I did not suspect such eloquence in your big body and blunt mind.”
Ellory went on, determined to finish. “There’s a solution open. A perfectly simple one. Come out of the grave, into the sun! Release all your slaves, do things for yourself. More, go out into the Outland world and labor with them and for them. Strive to bring them civilization. The tremendous odds against this are just the thing to add zest, meaning, fire to your stifled lives. You’d die happy, if you hadn’t gained an inch.”
Fervent appeal crept into his voice. “Don’t you see, Ermaine? I can’t believe you or any of your people are entirely lost. I can’t believe it—of you! You’ve got to do something—to work! Don’t you see, Ermaine? You must!”
He stared into her eyes. Was there a spark there, the same spark that he had seen lying fallow in the Outland people?
Did the slight glow in her eyes, the faintly parted lips mean anything?
“You almost move me, Humrelly!” she said with a trace of eagerness in her tone. “You almost make me vision a new kind of life, a different world—a wonderful—no! What am I saying?”
Her tones became flat, uncompromising. “How emotion fogs the mind! Are you done, Humrelly? Now let me speak. Think over the offer of Lordship in Antarka well. More—”
She moved toward him suddenly, stood close.
In one breathtaking instant, the atmosphere changed subtly. Sharina had stiffened, as if in premonition. Ermaine’s manner had oddly altered. Ellory dimly sensed that the two weeks in Lillamra had culminated in this moment.
Ermaine spoke, her azure eyes on his. “This may violate custom of your time, Humrelly, but Lillamra needs a Lord. I have chosen—you!”
Ellory saw the new glow in her eyes, the warm, inviting smile on her half-parted lips. He stared as if he had never seen her before.
His mind, now, had become an utter blank. As that day in front of the Antarkan ship, he moved without knowing it. He had pulled Sharina to her feet, enfolded her in his arms.
“This is my answer!” he said with a strange calm, kissing Sharina.
“YOU great fool,” Ermaine said quietly. “You love me! A woman knows the signs. Sharina knows, too. Sharina, tell him he loves me!”
Sharina had faintly resisted the kiss. She pushed Ellory away, now, nodding with tight lips.
“What have you done to her, you witch!” Ellory accused the Antarkan girl. “I know my own mind. Sharina knows hers. If this is some trick to save me in spite of myself—”
“No, Humrelly.” Ermaine smiled as if at a rebellious child. “You have more in common with this life than with Jon Darm’s people. Sharina realizes that too, now. She would never be happy with you or you with her. Your whole minds exist on different planes.”
“Don’t try to rationalize love away!” Ellory flared. “I love Sharina, not you. At last I’m sure of it. It’s my own sentence, but I say it!”
Ermaine seemed hardly to hear.
“More,” she said, “Sharina loved Mai Radnor all the time. You merely swept her off her feet, for a while—a great man from the past. Any girl would suffer the same. He does not believe, Sharina. Tell him!”
Sharina’s lips quivered. “Yes, Humrelly, she is right. Mai Radnor—oh, if only he were alive—”
“He is!”
Sharina and Ellory stared at the girl of Antarka.
Ermaine went on decisively. “I sent a ship up, checking a vague report that the rebellion’s second-in-command was alive. He was found hidden, badly burned, but recovering.”
Ellory saw the sudden wild joy in Sharina’s face, and he knew that Ermaine had spoken the truth. In that moment he knew, too, that a great problem had been solved. A dizzying gladness sang through him, like potent wine.
“Wait!” he snapped suddenly. “Ermaine, if you’re lying, if you’re just saying that to prove your point to me—”
Sharina’s hand fluttered to her throat and she turned ashen-white.
Ellory trembled in rage and suspicion. “Ermaine, if you dared—” He took a step toward her, hands working.
The Antarkan girl winced a little. “No. Believe me, Humrelly, it’s true. Mai Radnor is alive. I swear it.” She turned to Sharina. “You will be taken to Norak immediately. Mai Radnor needs you. Go now to your room.”
Sharina moved to the door. Suddenly she turned, came back, and kissed Ellory lightly.
“It is well this way, Humrelly! You belong here. You will be happy, as First Lord of Lillamra. You will do much for them, and perhaps, some day, for us. We will always remember you for what you tried!”
Then Sharina was gone.
Ellory realized that in her mind all things had come to this inescapable climax. That the sojourn of Humrelly, the Lord from the Past, had ended in her world.
She had gone happy.
ELLORY and Ermaine stood in silence a moment or two now. His eyes were on her lovely face; and her half-smile seemed to reach inside of him until all he could feel was a quick surge of joy. She met his glance, expectant, waiting.
Swiftly Ellory went to her and took her in his arms. He kissed her once, lingeringly; then abruptly he pushed her from him.
“No!” He forced the word from a dry throat. “I can’t betray myself, and all I believe in.”
The girl stared in bewilderment.
“I choose imprisonment!” Ellory said hoarsely.
“Lifelong imprisonment? You wouldn’t like it, Humrelly.”
She was calm again, confident.
“Our prison is for Antarkans who have committed murder. Death is denied them, for we have no capital punishment among ourselves. They waste away, thinking of the wonderful life they have forfeited.” Something of appeal crept into her voice. “Humrelly, you can’t cast a free life in Antarka aside for an impossible ideal! And my love—doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I choose imprisonment!” he said harshly.
Ermaine’s first angry flush changed to a slow, thoughtful smile.
“I see, Humrelly! Men in your time pursued women, or thought they did, whereas T—” She broke off, smiling cryptically. “You will change your mind, Humrelly.”
She left.
CHAPTER XXII
A KINGDOM OR A CELL
ELLORY sat for hours with his aching head in his hands. Hours of exquisite torment. He wished at this moment that he were back in the crypt, sleeping on and on into the peace of eternity. Marry Ermaine? Live out his natural life as an Antarkan? Be a passive partner to a double-edged tyranny? How could he, and ever face himself again?
Escape from Antarka! The thought grew, with the hours. It was the only solution. When a wall time-piece marking twentieth-century hours read 3:00 in the night period, Ellory stole from his room. It had never been locked or guarded, as be had previously noticed. He crept noiselessly down the deserted hall, lit only by a dim gas-jet, to the front portal. A guard sat here hunched in sleep, his flame-gun lying at his side.
Ellory picked it up without making a sound, looking it over swiftly. It had a trigger-like lever at the side, releasing the gas-pellets by a spring mechanism from the front muzzle. Grimly, he stepped away from the palace.
There was a chance of getting to the metal roof of the city. It was simple enough after that—tramping some fifty miles to the coast. Here, as Ermaine had told, lay a harbor to which the Outlanders brought their tribute of food. He could stow away on an Outland sailing ship, and eventually win back to Norak.
Filled with these plans, Ellory stepped along in the sleeping city. He thanked his lucky stars that a night period had been set aside, as in olden times, through this subterranean city knew no actual day and night.
Crossing the metal bridge to the great central elevator shaft, he confronted a dozing cage-operator with his gun. Secure Antarka evidently knew little of attacks or escapes. The man looked up blinkingly, turning pale even underneath his normal pallor at sight of the weapon pointing at his midriff.
“To the roof!” Ellory commanded.
Nodding dumbly, but with a faint lack of concern that made Ellory wary, the man stepped to his control box. He grasped the lever and Ellory breathed easier. In a moment now they would be shooting up to the roof—and freedom.
But instead of movement, there came sound.
A bell clanged brazenly through the night hush, like a clap of thunder. Ellory saw that the operator had pressed a button in the handle, instead of turning it. Cursing, Ellory jerked over the lever himself, but nothing happened.
“No use, Humrelly!” said the operator calmly, recognizing him. “The button rings the alarm and also shuts off power in the cage. Other Outlanders have tried to escape. None has ever succeeded. You are trapped. See?”
He pointed, to where running guards came up from several directions. “Give yourself up quietly,” he advised.
Blind rage at his helplessness rose in Ellory.
Standing defiantly at the cage door, he fired at the first guard about the lope across the metal bridge. Unfamiliar with the weapon, he shot wildly and the ball of fire spanged against a wall to the side, harmlessly scorching stone.
A return shot came, over his head, as warning. The burst of fire above tingled on Ellory’s skin and reminded him of the sickening holocaust on the Hudson.
Again gripped by his anger, he fired his gun again and again, raking the bridge end. One guard, scurrying back, screamed as a fire-ball skimmed his arm, but ran to safety.
“You are besieged, Humrelly!” observed the Antarkan in back.
Ellory’s eyes fastened on a nearby metal pipe, coming from below. Within it surged gasoline, part of the city’s network. Inflammable gasoline! Ellory aimed his gun at the pipe and sent blast after blast of blistering heat against it. If it melted through, gasoline would bubble out, catch fire . . .
“You’ll start a terrible fire!” gasped the operator.
“And you’ll Urn on the elevator power, or burn with me!” Ellory declared savagely. Furthermore, in the excitement of putting out the fire, his escape would be easier.
He did not think to watch the Antarkan behind him.
Something descended on the back of his head and wheeling lights blanked out Ellory’s mind . . .
ELLORY’S opening eyes looked straight into those of Ermaine. His head was bandaged and aching dully.
“You poor, stubborn fool!” Her voice was half mocking, half tender. “What drove you to that madness?”
Ellory moved his eyes and saw that he was alone with her, in a private antechamber to her sleeping quarters. He could not have been unconscious long, since the operator had knocked him out with a blow on the head. The girl wore a diaphanous sleeping gown, around which she had thrown a more concealing robe.
His failure to escape left a bitterness on Ellory’s tongue that he could taste.
“You!” he said wearily.
“I?”
She looked at him for a moment, and her eyes were enigmatic.
“Come.” Taking his hand, she pulled him from the couch he lay on. Ellory followed dully as she led him through a door into a small, private lift. The cage doors closed, and the lever she twisted sent them up.
Wonder struck Ellory as they stepped out again in a sealed chamber. Where were they? He started as he looked up through a crystal-clear skylight and saw stars. The chamber rested above the city’s metal cap. The goal he fad striven for a while ago. “A little surface room I had built for myself,” Ermaine explained. “At times I like to sit up here and look out into the night.”
Ellory’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and made out comfortable furniture. He looked up again, with something or a thrill, at the wide bowl of sky strewn with polar stars. It was a sight no polar explorer of the twentieth century had ever seen, for none had dared brave the bitterness of the six-month night.
Ermaine stood motionless in the starlight glow.
Ellory caught his breath. She was a moon goddess again, lovely and strange. Starglow shafted from glossy hair like the patina of rare old silver. Beams of heaven-blue danced in and out of her eyes, paling even the glory of the pun; blue diamond at her swan-white throat. Soft shadows led his eve along every perfect curve, every rounded grace. Hers war inconceivable beauty, in a setting conspired by the mystery of night to break the last shred of Ellory’s resistance.
>
“Well?” he challenged. “I suppose you expect me to melt at your feet!”
She tossed her head arrogantly. “On the contrary, I expect you to behave.”
“Then what are we here for?”
“To give you a last look at the stars.” Her voice was low, final. “Once imprisoned, you’ll never see them again.”
“Kind of you.” Ellory murmured. “Sharina is gone?”
Ermaine nodded.
“Our ship is probably now landing her at Norak. You’ll never see her again. Or me. Tomorrow morning your imprisonment begins, for years and years—”
Ellory peered at her, perplexed. “When you last left me, your alternative offer seemed still open. You’ve retracted it?”
She nodded wordlessly.
In two steps he was before her, crushing her in his arms.
“Then I can say it now! God help me, I love you, Ermaine! Whatever happens, that remains!”
SHE resisted faintly, but he kissed her fiercely. Her resistance melted. She clung to him and Ellory realized now that he had loved her from the start. In all the uncertain adventure of the past months, this alone was certain.
Then, still in his arms, she whispered; “From the first moment, dearest! Up in Norak—you were like a strange god among the Outlanders. You faced my gun. dared me to kill you, and I could never forget that. I thought of you every day, wondered about you. It was no accident, at Thakal. I was searching for you, watching you do things. Almost, I didn’t report you to the Outland Council at all, hoping—”
She paused.
Ellory held her at arm’s length, wild joy running through him. “Hoping I’d succeed? Ermaine, it must mean—you do see it my way! You’ll come with me, away from Antarka? Our work lies out there—”
The girl drew back, gasping.
There was a faraway, tinkling crash, as though the walls of heaven had shattered.
“Humrelly! What do you mean? I’d been hoping for you foolishly, because of my love. Then I did report you, in time to stop the rebellion, for your own sake. I knew you belonged here, with us, with me. You do belong here, beloved! We’ll rule Lillamra together—”
