“You may need to see clearly soon,” she told them with a serene upward glance. “Let me have your mask, soldier. . . . Thank you.”
Afterward she fell back and watched the men move up to the battlemented tower top and unfold the vibrator. She was not smiling; it had been easy enough, but she did not feel like smiling this evening. The masks were well rubbed now with a secretion from certain spiderlike insects of the high mountains. Like some Terrestrial creatures, the arachnid paralyzes its victims so that its larvae can feed at leisure. It is the fumes that paralyze, and they would work swiftly after the men had donned their masks and body-heat released the poison for the mucous eye membrane to absorb.
After that, paralysis, instant and effective. But paralysis of the body, not the brain. Because of that, Quanna knew that her hours in Darva were numbered.
She paused for a moment in the door of the commander’s quarter to look back over Darva, which she might never see again. The walled city was in a hum of ordered activity as guns were rushed to the walls and defenders to positions in the mural towers. And always, she saw, it was Terrestrials who did the ordering, Venusians who scurried obediently into place. She could picture what Darva would look like in the first attack after the Earthmen left. Terror, confusion, inefficiency. She was not sure even in her own mind if she were glad for Vastari’s sake or sorry for Jamie’s that this should be so.
But there was no time now for loitering. She went in swiftly, moving on silent feet through the hurried confusion of indoors. There was a certain tapestry-hung angle of a hallway in which she paused while two servants hurried downstairs; then her fingers were flattening against the smooth surface behind the tapestry and a panel slid open without a sound. The Earthmen might suspect, but they could not know of the hidden passages which Venusian masons had built into Darva.
She went upward in darkness, even her cat-vision almost blind here. Halfway up she paused to find a long, scarf-wrapped bundle in a cubby-hole. The bundle squirmed faintly, giving off the musk scent of all night-flying things on Venus, where no definite evolutionary cleavage has ever been made between reptile and bird.
At the head of the dark stairs she found another panel, and a little slit of light widened in the wall. Blue twilight poured through, and the vague sounds of Venusian battle. She could hear the heart-quickening beat of the tripping drums below, the keening of the seven-toned pipes where Vastari’s men were making a desperate effort to scale the walls before the Earthmen’s invincible weapons could be turned upon them.
Quanna looked out on the turret where the Knute vibrator was being set up. From here it could rake the base of the walls with crossfire. The crew had not yet donned their masks, she saw. They were unfolding the umbrellalike weapon, till on a high tripod of meshed wires stood a conical torpedo of glass, mounted on a universal joint. From equidistant points at the base of the tripod wires led out to control boxes, each with a red push button.
“The Gilson,” said one of the men, and was handed the inert fuse, a short pencillike rod. Quanna watched him slip it into place. “Power.”
A red button was pushed. Themesh base of the Knute began to quiver — but only one section of it. Slowly the wavelike motion spread out, till the whole section was shimmering like a veil.
“Now!”
The next man pushed his button. The shimmer crawled on to his section. Then the third—
Quanna noticed that whenever one of the panels slowed in its rippling dance, the guardian of that section pressed his button again, replenishing the power. The three men bent over their tasks. The fourth handled the aiming of the projector.
It was not difficult. Quanna could not see its effect from her position, but she read the faces of the men, and heard the shouts of the Venusians from below the tower. A spear clattered against the battlement.
“Masks,” one of the men said, and slipped his into place. The others obeyed. Quanna hugged the vaguely squirming bundle under her arm and waited tensely.
She did not have a long wait. At the end of it she stepped out onto the tower top, walking delicately among the inert but conscious men, lying awkwardly in the attitudes in which they had fallen, unable to stir or speak. They watched her with wide, glassy eyes.
She waited for the vibrations of the Knute to subside. The arms folded up into place easily enough and the device was not heavy to lift. As serenely as if the shocked and horrified men were not watching, she unwrapped her scarf from the great, scaled wings and serpent body of the flying creature she had captured several twilights ago. A harness was already buckled around it; she fastened the Knute into place as quickly as she could, for by now the silencing of this tower’s defense must already have been noticed.
She tossed the freed serpent thing into the air. It hissed furiously and beat its broad, iridescent wings against the weight of the thing lashed to it. It would not fly far with that drag upon it, but there was no need of gaining distance now. Heedless of arrows, she leaned over the parapet to watch what happened.
~ * ~
Shouts rang out from below and from the wall defenders. Both sides had seen it now. Quanna held her breath. The flying snake was stronger than she had thought. It was carrying its burden out over the heads of the attackers, sinking slowly, but forging grimly ahead. Now it was clear of the last tower — and it was fluttering, confused falling. Another Knute had been focused upon it, she realized.
It dropped. A rush of Venusians, heedless of danger from above, closed over the threshing, scaly wings, hiding them from view. The pipes suddenly shrilled high and triumphantly. Quanna let her breath out in a long sigh.
Then Jamie’s voice, clear and resonant, shouted: “They’ve got a Knute! Open the gates—”
She flattened herself to the wall, straining to see the little troop of earthmen charging outward in a wedge toward the precious weapon. Quanna heard footsteps hurrying up the stairway toward her, but she did not move. Would Vastari obey? With this chance of killing Jamie — would he remember the surer plan and escape with the deadly vibrator?
No — not deadly. But Vastari would not know that. He would not guess the purpose of the Gilson inert fuse, or that Quanna had removed the little tube and hidden it. But as for Jamie — fighting forward toward the Knute—
A swarm of Venusians closed in between the Terrestrial wedge and the vibrator. She could not see clearly what was happening, and the footsteps were very close behind her now. She gave one last, despairing glance over the parapet and whirled toward her panel. The paralyzed Earthmen watched her go.
She was leaving few secrets behind her, she reflected as she hurried down the dark steps inside. When the gun crew recovered— But this had been the only way. And she must remain hidden now in some other of the secret places in the walls until she could escape after the gates were opened. It was a risky thing to trust Vastari with the weapon, but not even in peace time could she have walked out of Darva carrying a Knute; nor, of course, could she have captured the weapon except in the confusion and emergency of attack.
And this was only the beginning of the elaborate and cruel plan she had laid against Jamie. She should be thinking of that now, but she was not. She was seeing the battlefield as she had last glimpsed it, Jamie’s bare, dark head forging forward among the attackers, and the pipes shrilling triumph. Briefly she remembered Jamie’s ominous dream.
~ * ~
The rumble of a far-away landslide made slow thunder through the streets of Darva as Jamie stood in the door of his quarters, drawing on his gloves and watching the last Terrestrials upon Venus form into marching order down the street. He did not look up at the high blue mountains or out over the familiar roofs and terraces below. He would remember Darva, he knew, with an aching sort of memory that would last as long as he did. But he was not letting himself think at all. He was glad of Ghej beside him, to keep his mind turned outward.
“Sure you won’t join us?” he asked for the last time, and again received the beaky smile and the headshake with whi
ch the old Martian had answered that question before.
“No, I’ll stay. The Solar System isn’t too good a place to live in these days, but I think Venus will be the least turbulent in our lifetime. It’s the last refuge from the barbarians, anyhow. I don’t expect them on Venus yet awhile, perhaps not during my life span — but they’ll come, commander. They’ll come.” He pressed his lips together and squinted under his triangular, horny lids as if into a future he did not like at all. After a moment he shrugged. “No, I’ll stay. I’m adjusted here well enough.” He touched the small gun that showed at his belt when they gray robe swung back. “They respect me here.”
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 Terretrials 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, turqiose 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.
Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02] Page 29
