by Earl
“I’ll lead you to conquest of the world,” Elda promised. “Even Nartica. Vinna will be the heart of our World Empire!”
She led Perry toward her plane, with golden swastikas painted under the wings. Perry followed silently, guarded by two men with short swords.
AN HOUR later their plane drummed down over the ruins of ancient Vinna.
Ruins? Perry was startled. Since he had last been here, months before, most of the debris of centuries had been cleared away. Skeleton eyesore towers had been melted down. Several stone structures, still magnificent through time, were obviously to be preserved in memorium, like the Coliseum of more ancient Rome.
But elsewhere new buildings were already going up. It was a beehive of activity, renaissance, reconstruction of olden glory.
Vinna was rising out of the ashes, like New York.
And in its heart, Lar Tane stood again at the top of his tower. His short, stocky figure was straight, head high, as if surveying his soon-to-be empire.
Napoleon! That name flashed out of history, to Perry. Lar Tane was Napoleon reincarnated.
Beside him stood Stuart’s tall figure. In a flood, the recent events overwhelmed Perry. Three months before their father alive, the Magna Charta foremost in their thoughts, civilization rumbling to new life. Now Stirnye dead, a world divided, brother against brother, tyranny spawning. And himself prisoner of war!
What would be his fate?
Lar Tane met them in his vaulted chamber, with its significant council table, Stuart beside him. When the guards left, there were only the four facing one another.
“Victory!” Elda said jubilantly. She brought the first news of the recent battle. “We routed the rebels completely.” She gave brief details, then tugged at Perry’s sleeve. “And I’ve brought back a little prisoner of war!”
Stuart had stared with shock at Perry’s presence, Lar Tane with pleased surprise.
“You have done well, Commander Elda,” Tane said with formality that was ridiculous, and yet not ridiculous. They were not father and daughter, but emperor and military commander. “We will decorate you later with the World Empire Cross. Heil!”
The royal “we.”
He inclined his head stiffly toward Perry.
“We greet you, Lord Perry, Chief of the Rebels, as prisoner of war—”
“Rebels!” Perry’s tense nerves balked at the term. “You’re the rebels!”
Lar Tane spoke imperiously.
“In 2907, the Rebels revolted against my World Empire. Alive in 5000 A.D., by the will of the gods, my World Empire continues. It was the last official government in the 30th century, the first official government in the 50th, with my reincarnation. The Rebel elements wallowed in the Dark Age between. Now they must be put down.”
PERRY gasped.
Megalomania, this condensed viewpoint of history through his own eyes. Napoleon, Hitler, and 30th century iron rule combined!
“Words, phrases!” Perry charged. He turned to his brother. “Stuart, can you swallow all this claptrap?”
“Lar Tane is right,” Stuart returned coldly. “His World Empire was the crowning peak of civilization. The Rebels smashed it, brought down the Dark Age. That’s the plain fact of history. Our father couldn’t see it, because he was a thousand years behind, at the mere start of scientific civilization.”
“Good God!” Perry groaned. The gulf between this Stuart and the Stuart he had known was bottomless.
Stuart’s tones became more practical.
“But most important, Lar Tane knows how to rebuild civilization rapidly and efficiently. Our father puttered for twenty-five years, worrying about self-rule for the Tribers. You and I would have puttered, too, with a slipshod Congress tying our hands. Lar Tane, and I after him, will spread science and industry over the world in the next twenty-five years.”
“Puttering!” echoed Perry, shocked. “You call it puttering. Our father reinvented a hundred things from his 20th century. He devised the sea-extraction of metals, never known before. Lar Tane and you have all that to start with now.”
Tane nodded.
“Of course your father is to be given credit for that,” he acknowledged. “But he had come to the crossroads. How to introduce scientific civilization to a Stone Age world? His way was 20th century, obsolete.”
“And your way is 30th century—tyrannical!” shot back Perry. “Yes, you will rebuild rapidly, by regimentation. But you leave the clamp of dictatorship. After Stuart—what? A long line of other dictators, good and bad. The bad ones tear down what the good ones build. Then, like Rome, the foundations crack. Another Dark Age.”
He appealed to his brother.
“Can’t you see, Stuart? It’s the future we must think of. We must build not for one age, but all to come. How many times our father said that. Have you forgotten, Stuart? Have you forgotten it all?”
Stuart was staring, a little startled. Elda stepped to his side, taking his hand.
Perry ground his teeth. The spell of her green eyes—she was using that.
Perry whirled on Lar Tane.
“Words, words!” he snapped. “Strip them all away, reduce everything to its bare essential. Behind all that camouflage, Lar Tane, you want only one thing—power! Power to rule over a world of humans. You’ve duped my brother, you and Elda, but you can’t blind me. Power! That’s all you want. Deny that if you can.”
Tane made an airy gesture.
“Ach! I had power—world power—in 2907. It is ashes. You wrong me, Perry. I wish to do the world good, in my own way.”
A LAUGH rang from Perry, harsh and cynical.
“Like when, in 2903, you purged central China because they resisted a tax increase!”
Lar Tane glared. His mask of pious suavity dropped.
“All right. I’m after world power, personal power, because it’s within my grasp.”
The words, slow and measured, startled even Perry. He saw the open gleam in Tane’s eye. The gleam of a human wolf who would sit on a throne and play god to a world.
“I can’t be stopped now,” he went on in cold, dry tones. “You were the only worthy opponent I had, Perry. You’re my prisoner now. Still, if you wish, I offer you a place at my council table, along with certain Tribers and Narticans whom I will invite. Well?”
There was no waste of words now.
This was sheer plain realism. Lar Tane had come out in the open.
“No,” Perry snapped briefly. “I don’t want it.”
“I sentence you to death,” Lar Tane said quietly, indifferently.
He strode to the table and picked up an instrument of shiny metal. It was a rifle-like, a model of the extinct weapons of the past.
“I devised it,” Tane said, stroking it. “A gun. It shoots bullets by steam. My Rhine plant is already turning them out in quantity. Our victories over you, Perry, have solidified my tribes behind me. Armed with this gun, my army will now take the offensive. Europe will be mine first. Then Asia, Africa, swiftly. Finally America and Nartica.”
He pointed the instrument at Perry, fingering the trigger. Suddenly he laughed and put the gun down.
“Ach! It’s beneath me. My official executioners will take care of you—in three days. I give you three days of life, Perry. You might change your mind.”
Perry didn’t answer. He was staring pityingly at his brother.
“I’m more sorry for you than myself, Stuart. Now you see—”
“It doesn’t matter if he does,” Lar Tane shrugged. “Not now.” He addressed Stuart. “Well, which do you choose?”
Strangely, Stuart laughed.
“Choose? I made my choice long ago. I am to be your successor!”
Even Lar Tane and Elda were startled.
Perry gasped.
“Stuart, you mean—” He stopped, choking, for the same gleam was in his eye that Tane had.
“Behind it all, I knew what I was after,” Stuart said in flat tones. “I haven’t been duped. I want power, too.
>
You won’t live long, Lar Tane. As with my father, your heart will stop suddenly, after its journey through time. After that, I rule. Elda and I.”
Perry reeled and the universe reeled with him. This Stuart was not even remotely the Stuart of old. What had changed him?
Perry’s eyes went toward the girl beside him.
“Green-eyed witch of hell!” he hissed.
Guards came to take Perry away, at Lar Tane’s order. He was led down steps to a cold, dank chamber below Tane’s tower of rule. Perry was the first of a long line of prisoners who would sit here and await execution.
CHAPTER XVII
You Die at Dawn!
PERRY sat alone, in candle-lit gloom.
It was silent as a tomb. Scurrying rats made the only sounds, outside of his own breathing. A jailer came with food and water twice a day. The rest of the time, Perry staggered through the hell of his mind.
Three figures swirled endlessly through his brain. Lar Tane, power-mad Frankenstein from the past. Stuart, betrayer of a world. And Elda, green-eyed witch who had stolen his brother’s soul.
And a fourth vision danced in his mind. Himself, blindfolded, against a wall, slumping to the ground as bullets took his life. Lar Tane would undoubtedly have it done that way, with his new gun.
The door opened suddenly, after what seemed an eternity. Lar Tane strode in, dismissing the guards with him. He looked at Perry’s haggard face for a long moment.
“Changed your mind, mein herr? You have a scientific brain. Pity to destroy it. I’ll make you chief of science and industry, as with your father. What would you lose?”
“My self-respect,” Perry retorted.
“Will you have it—dead?” Lar Tane visibly sneered. “Knowing your cause is lost?”
“You haven’t won yet, Tane!” Perry shouted. “America and Nartica still oppose you, even without me. If I joined you, they would capitulate, making things easy for you. I see that. Without me, you still have a fight ahead of you.”
“But certain victory,” Lar Tane said easily. “You saw the gun I quickly devised. It was modeled after a relic preserved with me in my vault, from my time. I have another interesting model. A heat-ray projector, standard weapon of my day. With the radioactive wax your father developed, ten times more powerful than radium, I can make heat-ray projectors.[3] How long do you think America and Nartica will stand against super-science?”
“Bluff!” snapped Perry. “Like your daughter, you bluff.”
“You think so?” Tane grinned. Suddenly his voice crackled. “One more chance, Perry. My council table or execution?”
Perry’s answer was written on his face, sneeringly.
Tane shrugged and stalked out.
Alone, Perry’s shoulders sagged. Bluff? Perhaps not. Bullets, heat-rays, appalling weapons of a war age. Lar Tane digging them up, conquering a world. After that a Pax Romana, enforced peace. All the mistakes of the past rising like gibbering ghosts.
And he, Perry, with Hobson’s choice. With no choice at all!
Alive or dead, Lar Tane was bene-fitted. Better dead, then.
A night of sleep came, filled with horrifying visions. Battlefields in which men waded knee-deep in blood. His army fleeing before one-eyed giants. Perry, alone, surrounded by a forest of steel swords. . . .
THE next day, the door opened again, in the dank chamber. Stuart entered. Brother stared at brother. Neither spoke a greeting. Stuart broke the strained silence finally.
“Perry, listen to me,” he said firmly. “After Lar Tane is gone, I’ll rule justly, I swear it. You’ll be at my side, as our father wished. The only difference is that we’ll be without handicap. Father didn’t reason it out. The world has to be whipped from behind, not led by the nose. At least this Stone Age world.”
Perry’s voice was dry, biting.
“Words. Why not be honest? You simply want power. And Elda.”
Stuart’s face hardened.
“Yes, both. And you, you poor little fool, throw what you could have aside. Power! Power to build and mold—”
His eyes gleamed.
“And destroy,” Perry was shaking his head pityingly. “Remember when we were youths, Stuart? How often we told ourselves history had been a repetition of jungle law? And told ourselves we would bring a new order, a new faith. Remember when we shook hands, after the Magna Charta—”
His voice died. The silent room seemed filled with apparitions from their youth, faces glowing and alight, looking out over the world that lay ready for a new faith, a new way.
Stuart started from reminiscence.
“Dreams! Young, foolish dreams, that’s all.” His voice was hard. “What’s your answer, Perry?”
“Lar Tane sent you down.” Perry’s voice was equally hard. “He knows my answer.”
Stuart left wordlessly.
Perry released the groan he had held. Nothing would ever come between them, they had pledged.
Again tortured dreams. A green-eyed Amazon, tall as Colossus, towered over him with a sword dripping scarlet. Perry woke in a cold sweat. It was the morning of the third day.
ELDA entered, suddenly, as though she had sent the dream of her as warning. She leaned against the door, indolently, watching him.
“You’re suffering,” she said mockingly. “Needlessly,” she added. “Your execution is today. You’ll break down.”
“Will I?” Perry grinned mirthlessly at her. “Did I—when your plane came at mine that time?”
She bit her lip, nettled.
“No, perhaps you wouldn’t,” she said soberly. “But you’re a fool. An idealist, dreamer, altruist, and all the rest of it. You’re that quaint character from ancient literature—what is it?—Don Quixote, chasing down windmills. You’re going to be a haloed martyr, is that it?”
Perry set his lips, wordlessly. The sting of her words was like acid under his skin.
She was staring at him mockingly—and wonderingly. Suddenly she changed.
“What do you think of me, Perry?”
He started, almost convulsively. A woman’s question. He laughed silently within himself. Behind all her hard composure was that.
“What do you expect me to think of you?” he retorted. “You and your father have plunged the world into war. Human wolves from the past, I’d call you. Seeking power, to lord it over all other human beings. Satisfying petty vanity. Glorying in the thoughts that your slightest whim will be law—”
“No, no,” she interrupted. “What do you think of me?”
“You asked for it.” He grinned evilly and went on. “I think you’re depraved, rotten to the core, behind your mask of beauty. You’re the end-product of a ruined, decadent civilization. You’re human in name only. Behind that you’re a monster, a black-souled demon, a—”
She cut off his torrential denunciation.
“Taking it out on me now? You couldn’t on the battlefield.” Again her tone changed. “But you do think I’m beautiful!”
Perry gritted his teeth helplessly. “Your mirror tells you that,” he snapped. “But it doesn’t show what’s underneath—corruption.”
Strong words, but she deserved them. Her eyes flashed emerald fire. “How righteous! It would defile you to touch me, wouldn’t it?”
Smiling maliciously, she threw her arms around him, kissed him clingingly.
Perry hesitated, before he pushed her away. He hesitated as he had there on the battlefield, with her life in his hands. She was at once hateful and desirable. He couldn’t hate her wholeheartedly, as he should. When he did. push her away, she laughed triumphantly.
“You love me!” she said. “You burn for me! I wasn’t sure till now.”
“YOU?” Perry’s voice dripped with infinite scorn. “Green-eyed witch of hell! You can’t make me your slave, like Stuart. Your father sent you down. Tell him you failed.”
Deliberately, he looked her up and down.
“Your price is too low.”
Flaming indignation sho
t from her emerald eyes. She clutched at her side as though for a sword that wasn’t there. Then, with silent ferocity, she leaped at him. One hand clawed across his face, fingernails drawing blood.
Perry caught her two wrists, laughing.
She struggled wildly. She did not call the guards. It wasn’t in her nature to call for help. She simply fought for freedom, to scratch him again. She had amazing strength, but Perry’s fingers tightened. The past months of open air, activity, and rough life had hardened his muscles.
With an easy surge of strength, he twisted till a silent scream came into the green eyes. Then he flung her away, again with a laugh.
“Your price,” he repeated, “is too low. Get out.”
She glared at him, rubbing her wrists. Abruptly, she shrugged.
“Yes, my father sent me down. But only to talk reason with you. Since you won’t, I’ll go. You’re still a fool. And when you die, your last thought will be of me—me!”
When she was gone, Perry forbade her in his thoughts. He wanted a last hour of peace. But she was there—entrancingly lovely. Mocking. No, not mocking. He always saw her as in the plane, roaring at his—just a frightened girl. A headstrong, queenly, daring girl, but human behind it all, despite his bitter words. Perhaps if a man tamed her—
Where were his thoughts leading him? Perry clipped them off. What did it all matter now? Death today. He awaited the guards who would take him before a firing squad.
BUT there was a sound opposite the barred door, instead.
A digging sound through the dirt wall that made up one side of the prison space. It became louder and finally the digger broke through. A spade rapidly cleared a four-foot circle. A figure stooped through and straightened—Stuart!
Perry stared incredulously.
Stuart tip-toed to the door, listened for a moment, then pulled Perry aside. He waved toward the hole.
“Subway tunnel of ancient Vinna runs by here. This is only a temporary tower. Lar Tane is having a bigger one built. He didn’t bother to wall off the tunnel with concrete. You can escape, when it’s dark. The execution isn’t scheduled till dawn.”
Perry was almost giddy at the hope of escape, and Stuart’s act.
