by Earl
“No,” he said sullenly. “You had tyranny. Science prostituted in the enslavement of mankind. First there must be freedom, democracy, then the civilization of science. People, and human thought, are the important things. They must be free. Better a world of free people without science, than your kind with slaves.”
“Your father said,” she laughed.
“Yes, my father said,” he snapped back. He went on, words tumbling out.
“My father saw the uprise of science war, and dictators, and oppression. It grew, for a thousand years. It fell apart, like a rotten apple, in your time. When my father awakened, after the Dark Age that resulted, he knew it must never happen again. Knew that civilization—his kind and your kind—had failed. Knew that—”
He broke off, bitterly.
“But of course you don’t understand,” he told her. “You were born, bred, and poured into a mold 2000 years ago. You just don’t—can’t, I guess—understand.”
“Defending me, in your own thoughts?” Elda gave a rippling laugh, then sobered.
“But maybe I do understand. More than you think. After my father, I rule. I hate a dull world. I love excitement. And there is excitement in building, creating, fashioning a new world—”
“You?” Perry laughed scornfully. “You love war, and killing, and destruction. That’s your man who doesn’t exist—Death!”
“No, Perry.” Her tones were strangely quiet, sincere. “You wrong me. I don’t love death, nor do I hate it. One doesn’t hate unless one fears. I accept the death I’ve wielded as a means to an end. I want you to understand that.”
“Why?”
“Because I believe in what I’m doing. Because, no matter what you think of me, I’ve had my own convictions. I’ve been sorry for the lives sacrificed. Believe me. Even, at times, I’ve wondered—”
He waited, but she had fallen to silence. Her face was wistful, almost sad.
For the first time, Perry had a glimpse into her soul. Into a strange soul that was both dark and bright, compounded of things of the mind and things of the heart that were at variance. She was baffling, at times hateful. But always fascinating in a deadly way, and vet—somehow almost pitifully wistful. Is was as though behind a mask of superficial things she was fearfully earnest.
Perry held his breath, gazing into her soul. He wanted to see more. See what lay glinting softly at the very bottom.
“Elda, what do you mean?”
She turned the glory of her emerald eyes on him.
“I mean—”
HER voice ended in a sharp gasp.
Abruptly, in a deserted passage they were traversing, a masked man leaped out silently. A knife glinted in his upraised hand. It swept down toward the throat of Elda Tane.
To Perry, the tableau seemed to freeze.
Aran Deen had done this, after all. Sent an assassin for Elda. Fleetingly, he noticed her face. There was no trace of fear there, only surprise. She had lived in a time of rampant death, all dread of it bred out. She stood like some tragic goddess, calmly accepting fate.
All this lanced through Perry’s mind in split-seconds. He had leaped almost instantly to intercept the knife. But hopelessly.
The knife slashed at her slim white throat—and missed!
With a sob of relief, Perry caught the wrist, on its second deadly swing. He twisted viciously. The knife dropped. The masked assassin moaned, jerked free, and sped away like a ghoul. Perry sprang after him, but Elda clutched his arm.
“Never mind,” she said briefly, her voice a trifle tight. “Let him go. I’ll not be taken by surprise a second time. Aran Deen sent him. I see it now. He was the one who suggested I accompany you around the city!”
Perry cursed.
“I didn’t think he would try it—”
Her green eyes smoldered on his, suspicion flaming. Then she shook her coppery tresses.
“You’re not acting. You had nothing to do with it. Well”—she smiled faintly—“you saved my life. I was paralyzed. The second time he would have succeeded.”
“Forget it,” Perry grunted, conquering the sick horror within him. Unbidden, the picture came into his mind of Elda lying with blood flowing. He strode on, as though nothing had happened.
Following his cue, she spoke.
“Where was I? I was telling you that I believed in what I was doing—”
She broke off. The spell of that had been broken. She had closed her soul. Her voice changed.
“Perry, why did you save me—your worst enemy? In my time, men—well, gallantry was a lost thing. This kind. Why did you do it, Perry?”
He looked stonily ahead, refusing to say what she wanted him to. Refusing the bait of mockery.
“Gallantry, and other things,” she mused, at his side, as they took an elevator up to the first level. “Honor, integrity, loyalty—but what am I saying? Those are the catch-words of a dream-world, which doesn’t exist. Your kind of world. The kind of empire you’d give me, if you won. But it doesn’t exist—couldn’t. No more than the man exists who—”
SHE was peering at him, Perry knew.
He steeled himself. She was using deliberate sincerity and earnestness as weapons. Luckily, he saw that now. He wouldn’t yield a second time, as on the night of the escape at Vinna. She was whiling away time, enjoying the battle on that hidden front between them.
“Where—”
He had suddenly noticed, in the hall of the palace, that she had taken his hand and was leading him to her rooms.
She urged him into a private lift.
“These were once the rooms of the Queen of Limerka, Lord Plaronne told me. Your mother. She liked to look out at the stars.”
They stepped out in a hemispherical dome on the surface of the city’s metal cap. A wide skylight let in the clear cold starlight of the polar firmament. Perry bit his lips. Was this sacrilege? Twenty-five years ago, in this same hushed chamber, his father and mother had pledged their love. Did she know?
She saw the question in his eyes.
“Yes, I know.” Her voice was soft. “Look at me, Perry!”
In the star-glow, she was Diana, the moon goddess again. Coppery hair glinting like rare old patina, ivory skin aglow, emerald eyes sparkling—she was inhumanly, achingly lovely.
The battle began again, within.
Perry fought desperately, as guns pounded in tune with his pulse. She touched his hand and liquid fire raced through him.
The perfect lips formed words.
“Perry, tell me. Am I wrong? Is my father wrong? Is your kind of world the right kind? Is the kind of empire you would lay at my feet the one I really yearn for, deep inside?”
The questions were like a muted machine-gun.
He couldn’t let her batter down his defenses again. Mockery! It must be there—but it wasn’t.
“Elda!” His voice was hoarse, strained. “Elda, don’t. It isn’t fair.”
“Are you the man who doesn’t exist?” she said slowly, deliberately.
He shrugged, by sheer will-power.
“Why ask me? I—”
“You are the man who doesn’t exist! Perry, come to me—”
He swayed, as an invisible wind beat down his last resistance. Eagerness flamed in his eyes.
“This time you mean it, Elda!” he croaked. “This time—”
Her lips were hot fire against his. Her lithe body yielded, and the flaming desire and wonder and sweetness of her blazed like a comet across Perry’s universe. . . .
And then burst!
For the green eyes laughed—laughed into his.
He thrust her away, brutally.
“Witch of hell!” he moaned.
“That for casting me aside, once,” she exulted. “Twice I’ve made you pay. And that, too, to keep you fighting—for me. I’ll take your kind of empire, if you win. You still fight against me—and for me!”
Perry fled, as the other time. Fled from her trilling laugh of womanly triumph. Twice she had made a fool of him
.
ARAN DEEN waited in his room. He looked up searchingly, wincing a little at the rage in Perry’s face.
“You sent that assassin, old man? You utter, stupid, meddling old fool!”
“Assassin?” Aran Deen chuckled a little. “The man had his orders, to make it look good. Counter-attack, in your little private war with the green-eyed witch. Women often see men in a new light, when they ‘save’ their lives. Didn’t it work, Perry?”
“Work! Work!” Perry groaned in utter misery. He ground the episode from his mind. “Any news from the council?”
The old seer shook his head, worriedly.
“Nothing official. Through friends, however, I hear they are debating furiously. And Perry—the best we can hope for is Nartican neutrality!”
CHAPTER XXIV
Lost Cause
PERRY was not too surprised, the next morning, when Elda again appeared at his door.
“Let’s look over Nartican machinery and factories,” she said blandly. “Estimate how fast they can turn out armament. Whichever way Nartica goes, we both need to know. Coming?”
She might be a family friend, suggesting a little outing in the country, by her casual tone. She made no mention of the previous day.
Perry nodded grimly.
Spending long hours in the levels that hummed with machines and spinning lathes, they both saw how rapidly the weapons of science warfare could be churned out.
“With Nartica lies the balance of power,” Perry said frankly, since the girl must know too.
Elda shook her coppery head.
“Not quite—”
She went on, after a thoughtful pause. “I’ll tell you something, Perry. Nartica neutral, or on our side, means quick victory for us. We have the heat-ray. But even with Nartica behind you—if that happened—you wouldn’t win!”
“Wishful-thinking,” Perry snorted. “Bluff.”
“No.” The girl was earnest. “Against Nartica turning your way, my father is turning out thousands of heat-ray guns. Improved ones. They are being installed along every mile of our Maginot frontier. The beams will cover every inch, with a mile range to each. Your troops could never break through. Not in years and years. And when the heat-ray is further developed, we’ll sweep out, conquering.”
She grinned in his face, like a lovely evil flower.
“You can’t win the war. Or me!”
Perry shrugged.
“Wars are won by fighting, not talking.”
But within, he was appalled. The damnable heat-beams encircling Lar Tane, protecting him in a ring of fire. Vinna protected similarly, against airraids. Not all the armies of Earth would break through. Somehow, Perry believed her. But why had she told him? Out of sheer, malicious spite! To make his unrestful nights still more hideous.
LATER, wandering, they viewed ancient relics in Limerka’s museums.
Pottery from 4000 A.D., made by backward folk of the Second Dark Age. Instruments of torture from barbaric 3400 A.D., when mankind had reached an ebb close to utter savagery, after civilization’s collapse.
Wheeled sky-cars from Elda’s time, in a sudden plunge back to the science age.
“Combination plane and auto,” she murmured reminiscently. “Once, in one of those, I set a round-the-world record of 23 hours, broken a year later. Ah, Perry, my times were great—”
She peered into his stony face.
“Don’t say it,” she mocked softly. “My times were a veneer of civilization over jungle law. Mechanical Elysium around a framework of social purgatory. You see, Perry, I know, too. When I rule, I’ll do better.”
“Power is your god,” Perry snapped shortly.
She seemed about to answer, but sighed and turned away.
They passed glass cases filled with resurrected relics of the long science age from 1800 to 3000. Parts of huge machines, labeled vaguely, for records of their use were lost. Metal-paged books from 2500, when they had been introduced. Half-smashed delicate microscopes that had peered into the heart of matter. A cracked telescope mirror, fifty feet across, reputed to have observed planets around the star Sirius. Slabs of transparent steel, a secret lost in antiquity.
Pathetic fossils of the supreme period when the human mind had searched for all the universe’s secret. By 2800, man had understood most manifestations of the cosmos—excepting himself.
Bub mainly, the relics of 2800 to 3000 were the engines of war. Little hand-guns that shot poisoned needles. Cracked bombs once containing deadly germs. A giant, rust-eaten cannon barrel from 2600, whose legend claimed that the mammoth gun had shot ten-ton shells five hundred miles. It had been used to bombard half of Europe from the north coast of Africa, across the Mediterranean. A stratosphere torpedo, which in 2300 had rocketed from Asia to America, landed precisely in the heart of a city, and would have blown down a square mile of buildings, like its mates, if it hadn’t been a dud.
Perry shuddered.
Mad orgy of scientific death-dealing. In comparison, the present war with its little guns faded to little more than a Stone Age battle touched up slightly.
“You think our trifling scuffle a war?” laughed Elda, sensing his thoughts. “You should have seen the drive on New York, in 2904. Two million bombers attacking daily for six weeks!”
She shuddered herself.
“Even the heat-ray we have is a toy.
But it represents the most powerful weapon today. It will win for us. And—”
HE stopped, stiffening.
Perry stared at the largest thing they had seen yet. It filled one end of the huge museum, on a pedestal of stone. The legend said:
“Fighting boat of the 20th century, destroyer class, 2500 tons, twelve six-inch guns. Found remarkably preserved, frozen solid in an iceberg. Was undoubtedly sole survivor of Antarctica Naval Battle of 1986, between fleets of Pan-Europe and Pan-America. Engines disabled, the crew died, and the winter freeze caked the ship in ice that remained for almost 3000 years.”
A torn yellow piece of paper, pasted carefully on glass, was still legible, from the original log. It read, in 20th century script that Perry knew:
“Destroyer Chicago. January 1, 1986, New Year’s. Enemy action disabled engines. Drifting south. Weather freezing. Food supplies low. No hope for us.”
The log-writer had gone on, breaking from formal recording:
“But our fleet fights on. If it wins, Pan-America wins, and there will be no more war—ever! Pray God the New Year brings that!”
“He couldn’t know,” Elda murmured, herself subdued, “that there would follow a thousand years of war, off and on.” She shook herself free from the incubus of that lost wail out of the past. “Remarkably well-preserved, isn’t it?”
Locked away from corroding air and water within dry, sub-zero ice, time had passed the ship by. Its armored sides and deck were almost shiny. The guns were unrusted, seemingly ready to belch flame as of yore. At the rear an enemy shell had cracked through the deck, exploded below, wrecking the engine.
“It is,” agreed Perry. “My father took me through the ship once. It has an arsenal of unused shells. If its engine were replaced—”
He started, realizing to whom he was talking. Their eyes locked a moment.
Perry turned on his heel.
“Let’s go. Time for dinner.”
They separated at the palace. Aran Deen met Perry with a worried face.
“The Council will vote tomorrow,” the old seer mumbled.
“How much chance have we?” Perry demanded.
“For Nartican help?” Aran Deen shook his head. “None. Just a chance for neutrality. Slim chance.”
Perry groaned. The suspense of it was driving him mad. And had Elda guessed what he had thought, looking at the great fighting ship of ancient days?
Aran Deen touched his arm.
“I spoke to Stuart today, bringing Leela along. Stuart lives in hell. I did not say much. He is beyond the appeal of words. But tomorrow—” His old eyes narrowed. “Somethi
ng may yet be done.”
“You can’t break her spell,” Perry ground out. “You simply can’t.”
THE next day, Aran Deen, mysteriously evasive, led Perry and Leela from their palace rooms to the elevators. Perry’s eyes widened, as he saw Stuart and Elda awaiting them.
Aran Deen addressed them collectively.
“Lord Plaronne has graciously invited us to attend a play. I think it will ease all our nerves.”
He looked around, as if for assent.
Elda Tane shrugged.
“Why not? Come, my dear.”
Linking her arm in Leela’s again, she entered the cage. Staring coolly at each other, Perry and Stuart followed. Aran Deen came last, with a studied air of nonchalance.
His plan was utterly transparent. Perry silently cursed him for a fool, playing a game that Elda was past-master in. Perry’s mind translated it into war terms. Aran Deen battering away at Stuart’s defenses with Leela. Elda standing between like a Maginot Line. And like a witch who had cast an evil spell over the heart and soul of Stuart. And Perry!
And what if Stuart turned from Elda now? What good was that, at this late hour? The Nartican war-council dealt with the realities of world diplomacy, not the personal undercurrents of four humans.
Descending to the fifth level, the playground of the city, they were ushered into an open amphitheatre. There was no rain in sealed-off Limerka. A crowd of five thousand Narticans stared at them curiously, whispering among themselves. It was strange to see the leaders of a world war sitting together. Not less strange than Alexander with Xerxes. Or Hitler with Churchill.
The play was frothy, typical of a decadent culture. Overly gallant men and faithless women pursuing desire in a squirrel-cage of intrigue. One of the songs was queerly in contrast with the shoddiness of it, sung by a troubadour to a lady-love on a balcony. Romeo and Juliet, flinging back the curtain of time.
“I walk in the towers,
They call me the King!
But what says my heart?
Of love does it sing!
I rule all the regions,
I bow down to none;
Yet triumph is empty,
If love isn’t won.
