The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  They went on. An earthquake shook some stones down on them, and a monolith of green, red and yellow stones toppled near them. Phemropit had to force his way through a barrier of fallen stones at the end of a canyon, but he burst through after several tries.

  The heat during the end of the bright-sky periods became almost unendurable. The party expanded the cube, tied it to the stone-metal creature’s back, and got inside. Though they had to go out now and then to check the route, they were quite comfortable most of the time.

  And then they came up over the ridge of a slope. There below them was a great oasis. In its centre was the glittering castle of The Shemibob.

  34

  A river flowed out of an opening in the surrounding cliffs of jewels. It wandered through forests and meadows and plunged into another opening at the opposite end. By the stream and through the grassy open places grazed small herds of animals. Some of these, Sloosh said, had long been extinct outside The Shemibob’s domain. Feersh assured them that they were not dangerous.

  ‘But something has happened here,’ she said. ‘You tell me the forests look as if they have been growing wild for some time. When I was here, they were well-tended parks. And you see no human beings, Tsimmanbul or Yawtl? Where are the slaves?’

  They had found a path down the cliffs that was just wide enough for Phemropit. They crossed the river by swimming, except for Phemropit, who travelled on its bottom. And now they were standing at the edge of a large meadow. A mile away was The Shemibob’s stronghold. It was a huge structure made of scarlet and violet blocks, emitting a slightly pulsing light and held together by a bright yellow cement, which would last for many many generations yet. Its towers and turrets rose high, though none went above the top of the encircling cliffs of jewels. A canal led water from the river to the moat around the castle.

  Feersh had told them that they had little, or perhaps no, chance of getting far before being detected. The Shemibob, however, might allow them to come up to her door before she acted. Or she might even let them get into her castle. It depended upon her mood.

  ‘But it seems as if things have changed since I was here,’ Feersh said. ‘Maybe she’s got rid of her slaves. Or… she may not be here. Could she have died?’

  After some discussion, they decided to walk in as if they owned the place. When The Shemibob attacked, she would find that she did not have just simple thieves to combat. Phemropit would show her that.

  The creature did not understand exactly what was going on. Even after all the time it had had to get acclimatized to its new environment, it was often puzzled. But it did have a sense of gratitude. Or perhaps it was a feeling of loneliness that made it so amenable to its rescuers’ requests. In any event, it was prepared to fight for them.

  ‘But we must not act in a hostile manner,’ Sloosh said. ’Not until she definitely shows she’s not friendly. That she has kept thieves as slaves doesn’t mean that she will make us slaves. We’re here for a number or reasons, of which theft concerns only one of us. The most important is the desire to enter another universe, if that’s possible. She should understand that and perhaps welcome our help.’

  Deyv did not say anything, but he could not see how any of them, even the knowledgeable Archkerri, could help such an ancient and powerful being as The Shemibob.

  They went across the meadow and through a grove of trees. From the grove a broad winding walk of some springy yellow material led to the moat. This was at least three hundred feet wide. Its clear waters revealed fish of many sizes, shapes and colours. The drawbridge was down. After some hesitation, they crossed it. The doorway was high and wide, pointed at the top. There was no evidence of a door. Over the open entrance shimmered a curtain of some very thin transparent stuff.

  Deyv put out his hand to push it aside. The fingers encountered only air, cooler than that outside.

  He turned. ‘I can’t feel the curtain.’

  ‘That’s because there is none,’ the witch said.

  Deyv shrugged and stepped inside. The others followed him, Phemropit rumbling in last. They were in an immense ante-room on whose walls hung many paintings. The floor was covered by a carpet so thick that Deyv sank up to his ankles. Beyond was a room that made the ante-room look small. He went into it and stopped, astonished and awed.

  The walls went up and up and up, the ceiling in a dark which made it invisible. Below it, though, the light was bright. It came out of the walls themselves like the light in the ancients’ vessel. Row upon row of murals, rising into the darkness, were on the walls. If he were not so concerned about The Shemibob’s whereabouts, he would have been fascinated by the paintings. They seemed to be scenes from Earth’s history, from its prehistory, even. A whispered question to Feersh confirmed his idea.

  ‘But they are the least of the wonders here,’ she said.

  They passed across a floor of smooth green stone into which brightly coloured mosaic patterns were set. Phemropit was behind them, its treads making a loud grinding noise. The owner certainly would not like her floor scratched, but leaving the creature behind was unthinkable.

  The next room was even larger. Its walls were set with round glowing knobs spaced among the heads of animals, fish, birds, great insects and sentients. These were not, as Deyv had first thought, carved representations. They were stuffed, and each was also covered with a thin transparent film. Feersh whispered that the film kept them from disintegrating. Some were as old as The Shemibob.

  Vana commented, in a low voice, that there was no dust anywhere.

  The witch said, ‘She has devices which draw out the dust and burn it.’

  At the far end of the mighty room and of the narrow green carpet leading to it was a platform. This was made of a solid block of gold. There were seven steps to its top, on which was a high-backed sofa of some soft green material. It was about fifty feet long, and the seat was five feet above the platform.

  ‘What giant sits here?’ Deyv asked.

  ‘There is only one allowed there,’ Feersh said. ‘But she doesn’t so much sit as lie.’

  They went from the room into a great corridor. This was lined with pedestals and chests of many kinds of hard polished wood. On these were statuettes and busts and other objects, many of gold or silver. Some pedestals lacked the ornaments, and when this was reported to the witch she looked puzzled.

  ‘As we go through the castle,’ she said, ‘describe what you see.’

  They did that, though there were so many things to tell about that they grew weary of it. At last she said. ‘It is much as I remember it being. But things are missing here and there. And it’s evident that the slaves are gone. I think they’ve fled, and they’ve taken some of the treasures with them.’

  ‘Which means,’ Sloosh said, ‘that either she gave them their freedom and allowed them to take the treasures, or she was in no position to stop them from fleeing and also robbing her before they left. I favour the latter speculation.’

  ‘I do, too,’ Feersh said. ‘She really needed slaves for only one thing. Companionship. People to talk to. She has machines to do any work which the slaves did. But she kept them in a room from which she seldom let them out.’

  ‘Then,’ Sloosh said, ‘what happened to The Shemibob?’

  They found an immense kitchen on the first floor and by it a larder containing enough food to feed Deyv’s village for an uncountable number of feasts. There was also enough liquor to make his whole tribe drunk for ever, it seemed. And there were enough drugs to keep it stoned for a little longer. The food was as fresh as when it was first brought in. According to the witch, it stayed fresh, no matter how long the passage of time, until it was brought out from the larder. Then it became subject to decay.

  ‘Except for our mortality,’ Deyv said, ‘this place seems much like that which the shaman says we will go to after we die. If The Shemibob is gone, why shouldn’t we just stay here and enjoy life? Of course, we’d have to get our tribes and bring them here. And, who knows? We might find
The Shemibob’s secret of immortality.’

  ‘But eventually the supplies would run out,’ Sloosh said. ’In the meantime, you’d be having children, and this place would become overcrowded. Though, given your tendency to quarrelling and thus to violence, over-population might not be a problem. In any event, you’d find the storehouse empty. So what would you do then? You’d have lost the ability to hunt and to grow crops by then. You’d all perish.’

  Deyv said, angrily, ‘I know that. I was only dreaming.’

  ‘That is because you are not the fear-trembling youth who set out to find a wife in an enemy tribe. You have been through many experiences, have travelled widely, have seen much that you would not have seen if the Yawtl had not stolen your soul egg. You have matured, and far past how you would have matured if you’d remained a simple tribesman. Still, you have much to learn.’

  ‘You do, too,’ Deyv said.

  ‘Happily, yes. If I knew everything, what would I have to live for?’

  While in the rear part of the second floor, Deyv had a frightening experience. He entered a huge room in which the illumination was almost as dark as the light when The Beast was fully overhead. Many vague forms swam in the air. They glowed faintly, providing most of the light. They were of many colours and hues, and were shaped like tadpoles. They writhed and rotated on their horizontal axes or sometimes reared up, darting here and there.

  He thought about going back to get a torch or, better, staying out of the room entirely. Vana came along then and, emboldened by companionship, he decided to investigate. He had no sooner passed the doorway than one of the scarlet figures dashed at him, turned just before, it touched him, and flicked its tail out. Deyv screamed with pain and clutched his face.

  Vana ran into the room then, crying, ‘What’s the matter?’ Another figure, turquoise-coloured, swam writhing to her and its head touched hers briefly. She sank down onto the floor, moaning. Deyv’s agony had passed as swiftly as it had come. He leaned down to bring her to her feet, but she said, ‘No. I’m fine.’

  ‘I thought you were hurt.’

  ‘Far from it,’ she said. ‘I was in ecstasy. Only, it’s over now.’

  She rose. ‘Where’s the turquoise thing that touched me? I’d like it to touch me again. I’ve never felt such exquisite sensations.’

  Deyv took her arm and pulled her out.

  ‘I don’t know what those things are, but they’re dangerous.’

  After getting her reluctant promise that she would not go back into the room, he went to fetch the others. Feersh at once told them what they had encountered.

  ‘The Shemibob has many art forms of the ancients. This room contains one type of them. They were made by the same people who made the soul-egg trees, the people who were destroyed when the planetoid fell.’

  ‘What’s their purpose?’

  The witch shrugged. ‘What is art all about? These seem to give intense pain or intense ecstasy, depending upon which one touches you. It is also a pleasure just to stay away from them and watch the interplay among them. If you do this for some time, you begin to detect certain patterns made by the relative positions of all the things.

  ‘The Shemibob thought that they must have a therapeutic effect, too. But to benefit from this you had to be made of strong stuff. She would sometimes enter the room and station herself so that she could be touched at the same time by one form giving pain and another giving ecstasy. She said that she could not endure the opposing sensations for long. But when she left the room she felt that she had gained a little wisdom. Not intellectual wisdom. Emotional.

  ‘I didn’t understand what she meant by that. And I refused her invitation to enter the room. I was afraid to do anything but stand outside and watch the designs.’

  Sloosh made a suggestion. From then on, if they came to a chamber which held anything outside their experience, they should refrain from entering.

  ‘Art can be both rewarding and dangerous. The ancients refined both of these features in their art to a degree unknown before them. And after them.’

  Deyv and Vana went out with the animals to eat their lunch on the drawbridge. Afterwards they decided to go for a walk. But when they were almost halfway across the bridge, they were stopped. Something invisible and impalpable kept them from advancing a step beyond it.

  Alarmed, they went to fetch the others. Sloosh tested the barrier and got no farther than Deyv and Vana. He then sent Deyv down into the moat. Halfway across, he came against the unbending resistance. He swam back and was pulled up the steep wall of the moat by a rope. They went to the back of the castle, and this time the Yawtl swam in the moat. He reported that the barrier was there also, though much closer to the outer ditch of the moat than in front.

  Vana tried another side; Deyv, the opposite. The results were the same.

  Feersh said, ‘The Shemibob has allowed us in but won’t let us out! If she’s dead or has left this place, we’re doomed! We’ll never find out how to dissolve the barrier!’

  ‘We’re far from hopeless,’ Sloosh said. ‘We haven’t investigated more than an eighth of the rooms. I suggest we get to work.’

  The fourth floor had a tremendously large laboratory. The Archkerri said that he thought that soul eggs could be made in it. Unfortunately, he had not the slightest idea how to do it. Only The Shemibob could show them.

  ‘But is it really necessary to have the eggs?’

  Deyv and Vana looked at each other. They read in each other’s face the same thought. Somehow, they had managed to get along without the stones. And for a long time they had not even missed them. Yes, strange though it was, they did not need them any more.

  ‘What you say is true, Sloosh,’ Deyv said. ‘It’s a very strange feeling to know that. Both uneasy and exhilarating. But we can’t return to our tribes until we have our eggs. There is no getting out of that.’

  The Archkerri’s huge hand, partly sheathed in leaves, made a circular gesture.

  ‘We are your tribe!’

  The Yawtl laughed, and he danced a jig while grinning maliciously. ‘Some tribe!’

  ‘Well, what I mean,’ the plant-man said, ‘is that you have a temporary tribe. However unhomogeneous this group, its members do get along with one another. And we’ve been most efficient. When we get out of here, you can look for a human tribe that doesn’t require eggs. If you can’t find any, then you can become witches and raise your own tribe. You’ll have plenty of ancient devices to give you great power.’

  ‘No,’ Deyv said. ‘We’d die if we thought we had no chance of returning to our people.’

  ‘Do you really think you two could retrace that journey all the way? You’d get lost. You’d be killed. I’m sorry to say that, but facts are facts.’

  ‘Facts can be reshaped,’ Deyv said.

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. But…’

  He paused. From down the vast hall had come a strange and loud noise. A hissing like a chorus of a thousand snakes.

  Feersh put her hand upon her heart.

  ‘The Shemibob!’

  35

  Feersh’s description had prepared Deyv for the real being. Also, he had encountered so many monsters that he had become, though not blasé, hardened to shock at the sight of them. Nevertheless, he was awed when the owner of the castle appeared in the enormous doorway.

  She seemed at first view to be half-snake, half-human. Her body was that of a python’s and at least forty feet long. Her skin, however, was scaleless, smooth as Deyv’s. It had a silvery quality, as if impregnated with metal, with dark spindle-shaped markings on the back and sides. The body was raised from the floor in a most unsnake-like manner by twenty pairs of short thick humanoid legs. These were black up to the thighs and then silvery to the body. The feet were also human, though they were very broad and three-toed. The cat-like nails were painted crimson.

  Her forepart curved upward where the legs ceased, giving her the effect of a snake-centaur. She had shoulders and quite woman-like arms
and hands, but these were four-fingered. The two large cone-shaped breasts showed that she was, despite the ophidian body, a mammal. Or perhaps not, in the strictest sense of the term. Feersh had said that she gave, instead of milk, blood. She did bear live young; she was no egg-layer. The hairless reddish delta of her sex was located just below the point at which her body became vertical.

  Her head was twice the size of Deyv’s, similar to a human’s but more triangular than the face of any member of homo sapiens could be. The cheekbones were very prominent. The chin was very pointed but had a deep cleft. Her lips were very everted and very red. The open mouth showed pointed teeth, a fox’s. The tongue increased the snakish look, being slightly bifurcated. The nose was short but hawkish. Her eyes were very large in relation to the head and completely leaf-green. The forehead was broad and high, so large that it seemed that the relatively tiny face had been attached to it as an afterthought.

  She lacked head-hair, having instead very long and thick silvery quills banded in the middle with black. Feersh had said that the young were born bald and a good thing, too. Otherwise, the quills would have made birth even more painful for the mother.

  The Shemibob looked angry, and though she spoke in the witch’s language, which Feersh had not yet allowed her fellow travellers to learn, her intonation conveyed obvious fury. Deyv’s fear of her was somewhat tempered by his amazement that The Shemibob could recognize the witch after all this time.

  Feersh replied, at the same time pointing to her companions. She seemed to be telling The Shemibob that they did not understand the speech.

  The snake-centaur at once opened a huge hand and revealed a mouth-buzzer. Obviously, she was prepared to talk to the Archkerri, too, which meant that she had been observing them for some time. No doubt this was through the devices, disguised as objets d’art, which, Feersh had said, were in every room.

  The Shemibob put the buzzer in her mouth.

  ‘I was roused from my sleep by an alarm,’ she said in the language of Sloosh. ‘I decided to let you roam about while I studied you. But I couldn’t abide any longer that monster’s destruction of my carpets and its chipping off pieces of my floors and stairs. What is that strange thing?’