Perilous Planets

by Brian Aldiss

  He had seen her soon. She was high-born, with the fragile beauty of her breed—only daughter of the First Master. Her great oval eyes—her soft red lips—her slender arms and delicate hands—even to him, with the black hatred of her kind cold in his heart, she was appealing. He might have taken her, under the law of Spring Night, but apart from the bitterness in his mouth there was an aloofness about her, a fastidious hauteur, that forbade it. Others had seen it that night—even Karak, who boasted that any woman of the Masters would come to him at any time—and they respected it.

  She was a spot of pure scarlet amid a riot of raw color. Her tlornak was heaped with scarlet cushions, and a vivid scarlet robe was flung about her, hiding her body. It would be beautiful, Korul mused: these women of the Masters had time for beauty.

  It was not long to dawn. By now, in all that great, gaudily decked hall, no one stirred. Drunken, exhausted by their debauchery, sprawled among the wine-stained cushions, they were sleeping. Only she, Thorana, sat proud and beautiful by herself, sipping her golden tulla. Then, with a little shudder, she sent the crystal beaker crashing across the floor and touched the controls of her machine. Swiftly it wound in and out among the sleepers, carrying her toward the corridors and the lifts. As she reached the outer archway, she turned and looked back. In the curve of her painted lips Korul read the same bitter scorn, the same mixture of pity and disgust, that lay in his own heart. Then she was gone.

  ==========

  As the silken hangings closed behind her, Korul sprang to his feet. Racing across the hall, he reached the corridor in time to see the winking fleck of red moving slowly around the circle—up, up past the levels which the Masters used, into the deserted upper regions of the city. Nobody went there now—neither Master nor Blood-Givers—yet the red dot crept up and up, level after level, until there were no more numbers, until, Korul knew, her lift must be at the topmost terrace of the city.

  Turning from the lifts, Korul raced down the long corridor toward the ramps. There were secrets of the ancient city which the Masters had never known. Near the head of the ramp, which law and custom decreed must be used by the Givers, was a hidden lift speedier far than the ponderous things the Masters reserved for their own use. He found the panel quickly, brought the car to his level and stepped inside. As be stabbed with one finger at the control-stud, the car gathered speed. Its drone rose to a shrill scream; his legs buckled under him, and he found himself on his knees, his body a leaden mass forcing him to the floor. Then with a sickening swoop it stopped. He pushed aside the panel, and stepped out into a corridor from which the bitter cold of the outer night licked at his naked skin. There in the dust at his feet were the tracks of the tlornak, leading away from the lifts toward the last short ramp that led to the summit of the city.

  It was an unbroken terrace of cut stone, worn and polished by the tread of many feet through the centuries when the city was young and full of life. Nobody had come here in ages, Korul knew, except an occasional Searcher studying the stars. Once it had been a highway of the people of Mur, running beside the great rift across the parched upland to the poles. Now the fine red dust of the desert covered it, rippled and curled in little drifts where a tendril of wind from the drylands had touched it.

  He had never been so high before. Terrace on terrace the city fell away below him. Down there, quarried in the rock under the clinging city, were the warrens of his own kind.

  Far down the terrace something moved. Crouching at the mouth of the ramp, Korul peered through the darkness. It was coming nearer, and he could hear the mutter of tires on the stone. It was the girl.

  She was rolling along the inner edge of the terrace, where a wall twice a man’s height rose to the steep rubble at the crest of the gorge. Korul drew down until only his head cleared the terrace. Whatever she was seeking, she was too deeply engrossed to see him there. The car rolled by, close against the wall, and he crept out of the ramp and followed in the darkness. Suddenly the tlornak darted ahead. The line of the wall was broken there, where a ramp or steps led up into the desert. As the machine stopped, Thorana sprang out and vanished in the opening.

  By the gods, she had legs!

  It was incredible. For centuries—for thousands of years—no Master had been able to walk. Long before their blood thinned, their legs had shriveled until they must roll on their soft-tired tlornacks, padded with pillows and swathed in draperies to protect their puny bodies from discomfort. And now—a woman of the Masters with legs? By the gods, it could not be!

  A flight of steep steps led to the top of the wall, then there was only the rubble of the gorge’s edge. Far above him Korbul heard the trickle of loosened pebbles as the woman climbed into the darkness. Throwing aside the embroidered robe of office which he had worn. Korul followed her.

  ==========

  The mists of the city had not yet risen with the coming of spring and the melting of the polar ice, to boil out of the gorge and moisten the upper slopes. Then, Korul knew, the red rock would grow soft and green with freshening vegetation. Now there was only a sere, crackling mat of brittle vines and fallen leaves underfoot, which caught at his plodding feet and flung him headlong among the boulders. He lay where he had fallen, cursing the whim that had brought him after the woman—then far above him sounded the broken clatter of her climbing feet. No woman—especially no woman of the Masters—would put Korul to shame!

  Up and up they clambered—it seemed endlessly. The soft moccasins he wore were shredded and his feet bruised and bleeding. Suddenly he realized that the sound of her stumbling flight had ceased. He stopped, panting, to listen. There was no sound but the thud of his own heart, beating in his ears, and far away a soft, sibilant slithering. Where had she gone? What brought her here?

  It was sand that he had heard. Pouring over the crest of the gorge, it had spilled down in a vast silken cascade over the uppermost ledges, over vines and stunted shrubs. In places it was hard-packed and rippled by the wind, as the dust on the terrace had been; in others he floundered and sank to his knees as the shifting grains slid away under his feet with that endless, secret whispering of grain on grain.

  Thorana’s footprints led still upward into the night, and Korul followed doggedly, slipping, falling, creeping on ,all fours. From the marks in the sand he knew that she, too, was having to struggle to keep her feet. Then, suddenly, the night opened out before him, and he knew that he had reached the top.

  Beyond, beneath, stretching away into the night in great rolling waves of trackless sand, lay the red desert of Mur. Out of that desert his people had come, eons ago, to find shelter in the gorges which reached in a broad, dark band across the sandy waste for mile after desolate mile. Into that desert Thorana had gone, somewhere, for some purpose.

  A faint breath of air touched his cheek, icy cold, scented with a raw taint that he had never known. The chill of the night began to bite into his naked body, but under the surface the sand still held the warmth of day. Korul crouched down, hugging his arms about him, and burrowed into it. He tipped his head back and let his gaze drive out and out…

  He saw the stars..

  ==========

  The Desert

  Once the people of Mur had lived by the stars. They were the guiding beacons which brought them safely over the desert wastes of their dying world, from oasis to oasis, to sheltered valleys in the parched red hills where some seepage kept a few miles of greenery alive. Their gods lived there, behind the velvet curtains of Nur-Atlaka, Land of Souls. Their names and stories had come down from mouth to mouth—Atta, the Seeker—the twins, Nurdok and Maltura—the Three Wanderers, Mulat, Mutaka, Maldruk.

  At times they looked down into the depths of the city, to the Pit and the men and women who were penned there, peering through the mists of the upper gorge. From the Searchers, Korul knew that what he had seen there were planets, prisoners of Mur’s own sun, and a handful of scattered suns like it. But nothing they had said had prepared him for the living reality of the desert night.


  In hundreds and thousands they were strewn over the mighty vault of black — burning—living—diamonds, rubies, sapphires blazing against the sombre tresses of the infinite night. They were tiny watching eyes, the eyes of the gods of Mur themselves staring down through the half-drawn curtains of the Land of Souls.

  In the east the sky was paling, the stars were disappearing until only the great golden eye of Tarkak, giant of the god-worlds, burned there. Korul rose to his feet and with quickening step went out to meet the dawn.

  On he strode, and on, over the slow, soothingly monotonous rise and fall of the sand-waves, while in the heavens before him a cone of shimmering white rose slowly toward the zenith and the red world took form before his unseeing eyes. Then from behind the shoulder of the world was hurled the sun!

  The desert reeled with color at its coming—raw and new and burning. The sky was a burnished bowl. Only the endless flaming sands ran out in limitless desolation under the cruel scourge of the climbing sun.

  The wind ran before it, dry and hot, licking at his tender skin. Leaping, wavering phantoms of brilliance danced among the dunes, prying at his narrowed eyelids, mocking him. The magic of the night was gone out of the desert; only the fiery fury of the Pit itself remained, scourging his dark-loving body, lapping at the portals of his mind. Alone and lost among the scarlet dunes, Korul tottered and fell to his knees, flung back his head and screamed his rage and defiance at the savage sun. And out of that inferno came an answering cry—a woman’s cry.

  All thought of Thorana had slipped out of Korul’s mind under the glory of the night, and in the growing torture of the desert morning. He crouched now, blind eyes buried in his, bent arm, gathering his senses. If he had been trapped thus by the stars and the leering sun, what must she—weak—a woman—what must she be suffering out there in the burning sea?

  He shouted again, and heard her answering wimper, far to his left where a comber of frozen fire swelled against the sky. From its crest he saw her, small, pitifully slender, swathed in her crimson silk, a red dot amid redness. Drifting before the wind, the soft sand was filling the folds of her gown, piling against her body, spilling over her outstretched legs, burying her alive.

  ==========

  With a last cry of encouragement Korul raced down the long slope of the dune to where she lay. Brushing the sand gently away, he raised her in his arms and peered into her face. It was thin and white—her lips were blue. Her blood was failing!

  Korul had been bled two days before. By the Masters’ own law he need not serve again for nearly fifty days. But without his blood this girl would die. Somehow, Master or no, he could not let her go.

  Gently he searched for her valve. In the Blood-Givers it was in the throat, tapping the great vein, but the Masters placed theirs wherever their whim dictated. He found it beneath her heart, opening directly into the main artery—a perilous place, but one that many women chose. His back to the sun, shading her, Korul opened his pouch and drew out the little pump and tubes. Sterlizing them, he made the connection, opened the valves and started the pump. With each throb of his heart he felt the life gushing out of his body into hers, and in the pause drawn back by the pump. His blood into hers, and the mixture drawn back into his veins, carrying the body poisons that were draining off her life. He felt a giddiness creeping over him, and went down on all fours, his body arched over hers, braced by his two arms.

  Then her eyelids fluttered; her great green eyes, cool as the polar ice, opened and looked up into his face. A pointed red tongue licked nervously at her lips.

  ‘Where am I?’ she whispered weakly. ‘When is it? Who are you?’

  Korul found his voice grown husky. ‘Spring Night is past,’ he reassured her. ‘You came into the desert, and I followed. The sun overcame you, and you needed blood, so I gave it.’ His face hardened. ‘Is not that my duty to the daughter of the First Master?’

  She seemed not to have heard. ‘It was my day yesterday,’ she murmured, ‘but I need less than the others, and I thought to wait.’ The green eyes searched his features. ‘You are Korul. You gave blood only two days ago—to Lula!’

  ‘When I give blood and to whom is my own affair!’ he snapped. ‘I gave it to you because I am strong, and because you needed it. I will give it again when I am ordered to.’

  A shadow slipped over her face, and she turned it aside. ‘I am not interested in your relations with Lula,’ she said petulantly. ‘She seemed to admire that strength of yours. She appreciates such things more than I. If you will disconnect us, I will go now.’

  Korul stopped the pump and slipped off the connecting tubes. A little blood dripped out on the sand, making a tiny mirror of red that quickly blackened to a hard crust. She stared at it, suddenly pale, then up at the giant dunes that hemmed them in on every side.

  ‘Where is this?’ she cried. ‘Where is the city?’

  ‘Where indeed?’ Korul’s voice was dry and bitter. ‘This is the desert you found so enchanting by starlight. It has a different kind of beauty now, don’t you think? We are lost, Thorana.’

  ‘Lost? How can I be? Last night I walked straight away from the gorge, over the sands. I can go back as I came.’

  His arm swept around the circle of unbroken sand. ‘How did you come, Thorana? The stars circled and the sun came up. The wind has filled our tracks, and it will bury us when the time comes. Master and Blood-Giver—we’ll die the same death.’

  She stared at him, her green eyes wide, then broke into sudden mocking laughter.

  ‘How do the Blood-Givers choose their First?’ she demanded. ‘For brute strength, isn’t it? You are very strong, Korul, but you could use sharper wits. It is the sun that will kill you—then let the sun lead you home! Or stay here, if you like, and I will send men to fetch your body when you are dead.’

  With a swirl of her crimson robe she spun and stalked off up the side of the dune. Bewildered, Korul stared after her. Little fool! Let her die, if that was what she wanted; he had done his duty. Suddenly his eyes caught the black splotch of his shadow. It sprawled straight away, in the direction the girl had gone. Of course! The sun had risen in their faces—by keeping it at their backs, it would guide them back to the city.

  ==========

  Thorana was out of sight when Korul reached the top of the dune. Her footprints stretched away from him across the sands, straight away from the sun, each one a little black puddle of shadow against the crimson. The wind was filling them.

  They had come a long way through the darkness, under the stars, and his shadow shortened. Korul trudged on through the shimmering scarlet sea, eyes closed to slits to shut out the glare. The girl was nowhere in sight, and a long time had passed since he had seen her tracks.

  Hour followed hour. The red haze enveloped him now, he was floating in it, preceded by a dancing, wavering wraith of black that for some reason he must catch. However fast he stumbled after it, it evaded him.

  Black beast, swimming in a red sea. The thought was funny! There had been no seas on Mur since the race was young. He began to laugh. That scared the black thing, and it scurried away, but he kept after it, almost on its tail, close enough to seize it if it were not so slippery. After a while it disappeared. Had it run away? He looked down, and it was hiding behind his feet. He kicked at it—almost fell—he ran shouting over the long dunes of fire, the blood singing in his ears, his head full of swirling, bursting lights. He slipped over the crest of a sand-cliff and rolled in a rosy avalanche into the very middle of a streak of snowy white that licked out at its base.

  He lay there for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, and swayed to his feet, the shadow-beast was crouching behind him. He turned and began to stalk it, swiftly and silently. It crept away, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to hide. This time he had it! And suddenly it seemed to rear up before him and he dove and caught it in his hands.

  It was the girl, Thorana, senseless and half buried in the drifting sand. Korul lay sprawled over he
r limp body. The red fog was clearing from his brain. That black thing—his shadow—it had crept between his legs, then behind him. But it was the sun that had moved! It was past midday, and the sun was in the west. For the gods alone knew how long he had been traveling away from the gorge and the city!

  He gave her blood again. When she could walk they headed into the sun, clinging together, heads down, blinded by its white fire. Time seemed to be slowing; the beat of their hearts seemed heavier, wearier, pleading with them for rest, but they went on.

  Korul could give no more blood. When Thorana collapsed again, he picked her up and wound her filmy scarf around his head. It shut out some of the sun, so that he could go on again.

  Twice he found himself following the shadow, away from the city, into the desert. He began to chant, to keep his tired mind clear. ‘Into the sun! Into the sun! Into the sun!’ He swung Thorna’s slim body back and forth in a long, slow arc to the beat of the chant and the tread of his weary legs.

  The scarlet scarf whipped loose in the singing wind. It fluttered away over the sand. He dropped the girl and ran after it. He caught it, and started on again. After a while he remembered Thorana. He started back, following his shadow again—or was it the sun he must follow? He found her, picked her up, began his chant again.