The Pulp Fiction Megapack

by Robert Leslie Bellem

  “That,” Naida answered unhesitatingly,“I’m not sure of. Our caciques believe that the Serpent, although it lives longer than any other sentient thing, finally dies and is succeeded by a new Serpent which is reproduced by itself, within its own body.”

  So overwhelming did Kirby find this unexpected sequel to their discovery of the great diamond head, so staggered was he by the fact that Quetzalcoatl, of Aztecan myth, might exist as a sentient creature here in this cavern world, that he had little heart left for exploring other wonders.

  Nevertheless, he presently pushed open the new door before which they had paused, and behind it found, as he had expected, the Duca’s living quarters.

  These were as severe as the jewel chamber had been gorgeous. A thin pallet spread upon a frame of wood formed the bed, and beside it stood a single stiff chair. That was all. The walls of glistening obsidion were bare.

  There was, however, a door in one circular wall, and as Kirby flung this open, his previous disappointment changed to delight. For shelves along the walls of the small chamber held roll after roll of parchment covered with script. And in one corner lay six undamaged, almost new Mannlichers and several hundred rounds of ammunition!

  “Naida,” he exclaimed, “do you know what those are?”

  “I suppose that they are weapons of the sort you used against the ape-men this morning?”

  Kirby grinned.

  “They are the same kind I used, and then some. With these weapons we can do what we never could with the smaller one. How did they get here?”

  “They came when I was much younger,” Naida answered with a shade of sadness in her voice. “The men who had them penetrated the Valley of the Geyser, coming by a different route from the one you followed. When the Duca learned they were there, he sent such men of the race as were still able to fight to kill them. That order of the Duca’s was one of the first things to turn me against him. The men were not harming us, and they should have been permitted to go away. But the Duca insisted that they be killed, and in the fight were lost eight of our youngest and strongest men.”

  Kirby stooped to inspect the rifles.

  “Has no one learned to use these weapons?”

  “No,” Naida answered. “The Duca kept them for himself.”

  “We think,” put in Ivana, “that he hoped to learn to use them, and was afraid for us to have the knowledge.”

  Kirby filled one of the magazines, and felt the heft of the gun with pleasure.

  “Very well,” he said. “It looks to me as though your time to learn the art of shooting has come at last. Come, I think we had better be getting back downstairs.”

  Kirby took three guns himself, and with the others lugging the rest, they started back. The parchment rolls, he decided, must be left for examination later on.

  They were all elated when they rejoined the girls in the prayer chamber, and high spirits were still further increased by the report, promptly given, that all had remained quiet in the amphitheatre. Save only for the presence of Elana, radiant and calm in death, the give and take of questions would have been accompanied by actual gaiety.

  But the time of peace did not last much longer. While Naida was in the midst of answering incessant questions about the wonders of the jewel chamber, Kirby heard a sound from below, and suddenly went over to the downward-winding steps.

  “Listen,” he called sharply back to the others.

  He had not been mistaken. Many footsteps echoed from the amphitheatre, and he made out that the caciques were coming toward the bolted gate at the foot of the steps. While he listened, and Naida came eagerly to his side, silence fell.

  But then clear words came up to them.

  “Let the upper-world man come to the foot of the steps,” called the Duca.“I have an offer to make him!”

  CHAPTER VII

  To himself Kirby chuckled. Such real entreaty filled the Duca’s voice that there seemed no danger of further treachery from him at the moment.

  With a grin, Kirby took Naida’s hand and led her down the steps, unbolting each bronze gate but the last.

  “What do you want?” he asked in a cool voice a moment later, when he stopped on the final step and faced the Duca from behind the protection of the final gate.

  Clearly the parley was going to be a blunt one.

  “I want you to leave our world,” the Duca rumbled promptly.

  He was drawn up in a posture intended to display dignity. But his left cheek, where Kirby had hammered him, was pulpy and discolored, and somehow he seemed to Kirby more than ever merely human.

  “Under what conditions am I to leave?”

  “If you will vacate my tower at once,” the Duca said with a flush of eagerness which he could not conceal,“I will permit Naida and one of my caciques to escort you back to the Valley of the Geyser. I will also give you directions by which you may travel in safety from there to the outer world.”

  Kirby, wanting more details, made himself seem thoughtful.

  “And what will happen to me, and to the girls, if I decline?”

  Encouraged, the Duca made an impressive gesture.

  “You will be left in the tower to die of starvation. Mine is not a complicated offer. It should require no complicated decision. What is your answer?”

  Kirby dropped his carefully assumed mask of thought.

  “My answer is this,” he lashed out.“I will not leave! The tower is ours, and we will hold it until you have accepted Naida’s peace terms on your priestly oath!”

  “But if you stay in the tower you will starve!” thundered the Duca.

  “No, we won’t starve! We won’t starve because we eat the food of Ducas!”

  In silence, Kirby took from his pocket a strip of the sacred Peyote and bit off one end of it. Suddenly the hush in the amphitheatre became complete. As he watched Kirby chewing, the Duca gasped and choked.

  “Moreover,” Kirby announced with slow emphasis, “I have taken possession of the weapons which you took from men of the upper world, and which have already sent men of your race to their death. I have no wish to kill either you or your caciques, but if you do not presently discuss peace with me, you will certainly find yourself embroiled in a struggle more bitter than the mild one of this morning.”

  With that said, he swung on his heel, and taking Naida’s hand again, started with her up the steps.

  “I have nothing more to say,” he called over his shoulder to a Duca whose white haired majesty had been stripped from him.

  “We’re getting on,” he whispered to Naida a moment later. “The best thing for us is just to sit still now, and wait.”

  With the questions he wanted to ask Naida about her world becoming insistent, he found himself, as a matter of fact, glad for the prospect of further respite. As both of them rejoined the girls in the Duca’s prayer chamber, the first thing he did was to take from his tunic the cylinder of gold which he had found in the canyon.

  “What is this, Naida?” he asked, hoping to start talk that would make all of them forget the Duca and politics, and at the same time help him to learn much that he wished to know.

  But a queer thing happened. Naida’s reaction to the carven gold was as unexpected as it was marked.

  “Oh!” she cried in a voice which suddenly trembled with surprise, with blank dismay. Somehow, the cylinder of gold brought to her face things which not even the Serpent’s head of the diamond had evoked.

  The prospect of a long session of talk began to fade out in Kirby’s mind.

  “But Naida, whatever is there about this fragment of gold to startle you as it does?”

  By this time all of the thirty-odd other girls had come flocking about them, and all were staring at the cylinder as fascinatedly as Naida.

  “Do you see what he has there?”Naida finally asked, ignoring Kirby in her continued excitement.

  “Do we see?” answered the girl she had addressed. “Naida, surely it is the carving which was lost!”

  Naida
was quivering with feeling now.

  “Do you realize what it means to our cause that it should have been returned to us in this way?”

  The girl to whom she had spoken, and the others, simply looked at her, but in one face after another presently dawned awe and joy.

  Kirby stood still, puzzled and interested, until at last Naida was recovered enough to speak to him.

  “Where did you get this thing which you call ‘a fragment of gold’?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “I found it,” Kirby answered, “lying beside the skeleton of an upper-world man, while I was ascending the canyon which brought me to the Valley of the Geyser.”

  “And you do not know what the cylinder is? But no, of course you could not.”

  “What is it, Naida?”

  Naida glanced at her friends, then laid her hand on Kirby’s.

  “Next to the great diamond, it is the most cherished possession of our race. In some respects it is even more holy than the Serpent’s head. The cylinder happens to be the first work in gold which was ever produced by our people. It was made when the race was new. It was because our first wise men had found they could create things of beauty like this cylinder, that they decided to attempt the creation of the Serpent’s head, which is supposed to have brought all of our blessings upon us.”

  Kirby thought he was beginning to understand the excitement which his introduction of the cylinder had created. He also thought he could see what Naida had meant by implying that the cylinder could be made to aid their cause.

  “Tell me,” he asked in a mood approaching reverence, “how the cylinder came to be lying beside a dead man’s bones.”

  “It was stolen,” Naida answered in the breathless silence which the others were keeping. “When I was very young, an upper-world man found his way here, and the Duca captured and meant to sacrifice him. But while they were leading him to the temple where such special ceremonies are held—the building stands on another plateau, beyond this—the man broke away. Some of the priests in the procession were carrying the cylinder, for it was an occasion of great importance. The prisoner knocked them down, got the cylinder away from them, and finally escaped by the same route over which you came.”

  “And he escaped,” said Kirby wonderingly,“only to be killed by a rattlesnake before he ever reached the civilized world. But do you mean that you never knew your sacred cylinder was so close to you all these years?”

  Naida shook her head.

  “We never got to the canyon of which you speak, for a special reason which I shall explain some day. And besides that, I think the Duca was afraid of this man who fought so bravely. So he counted the cylinder as lost. And that is one of the reasons why he killed the men with the rifles, who appeared in the Valley a few years later.”

  Kirby looked at her thoughtfully. The mood for discussing all the wonders of this lower world, which had made him bring out the cylinder originally, had quite vanished.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that anyone who was responsible for the return of the cylinder to its rightful owners, would be held in some respect?”

  Naida nodded vigorously, while little lightnings of excitement flickered in her eyes.

  “He might be held in more than respect.”

  “What, then, do you suggest that we do next?”

  Again the small lightnings darted, and Naida reached for the cylinder.

  “Do you mind if I take it for a moment?”

  “Of course not.”

  Promptly then she faced around.

  “Wait here, everyone,” she ordered.

  And with that she waved the cylinder in a flashing little arc before their eyes, and darted to the door.

  It was all so unexpected that she was gone before Kirby could speak. Slowly, with all of the suddenly gay company of girls following after him, he went to the doorway, and stood on the steps leading to the amphitheatre.

  A minute passed. He heard voices downstairs. He heard Naida’s voice ringing clearly, though he could not distinguish her words. He heard a great cry from a score of male throats. More minutes passed. Words that were low and tense poured out in a rumbling volume. Above the rumble, Naida’s voice presently sounded again, clear and sweet, but incisive. Then, when no more than five or six minutes had gone, Kirby heard the clang of the bronze gate at the foot of the steps, heard light, swift footsteps ascending.

  “Naida!” he called softly.

  She flashed upward toward him around the last curve in the stairway. Straight to his outstretched arms she went.

  “It is done! It is done!” she whispered.

  “Tell us!” cried first one girl and then others.

  Naida drew away from Kirby at last.

  “I told the Duca,” she said to all of them, “that our leader would keep the cylinder for a period of time equal to one upper-world year. If the Duca grants all the terms of peace which we will ask of him, and if he accepts the upper-world man as our temporal ruler, and all goes well for a year, then we will consider replacing the cylinder where it belongs.”

  “And what,” Kirby asked exultantly,“does the Duca say?”

  Suddenly, without warning, Naida dropped before him on one knee, and from that position gazed up at him laughing.

  “He says he will make you our King, to govern all temporal affairs within our realm! He is waiting for you to come and hold a conclave now.”

  “What?”

  Still kneeling half in fun, half in sincere reverence, Naida held out the precious, potent cylinder of gold.

  “Guard it carefully!” she exclaimed.“So long as you keep it away from the Duca, making him hope to win it back, he will consent to almost anything. Yes, he is waiting with the caciques in the amphitheatre now; waiting to draw up terms of peace.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  To be King amongst these people! A queer sensation tugged at Kirby’s heart as he descended the steps with Naida at his right, and all of her—and his—dainty and gracious friends following after. Yet, intense as his emotion was, never for a second was he able to doubt the evidence of his senses which told him that all of this was real. As they descended the black steps of the tower, Naida’s sweetness, her grace, the warm humanity of her, made him humble with gratitude for the extraordinary fortune which had come to him, an unromantic aviator born in Kansas.

  Then they were standing in the brilliant light of the amphitheatre, and the Duca, surrounded by his caciques, was advancing to meet them.

  It was not a long conference which followed. Kirby saw from the start that the Duca was indeed ready to come to terms. So treasured an object, it seemed, was the cylinder of gold, that the mere fact that Kirby possessed it made the Duca respect the possessor, whether he would or no. With this initial advantage, it did not take long to make demands and win acceptance.

  It was agreed that some systematic campaign of extermination should be planned and carried out against the ape-men. Further, the project for eventually bringing other upper-world men to the realm was accepted. Most notable of all, it was agreed that while the Duca should retain a voice in the regulation of temporal affairs, Kirby should possess an absolute veto over his word.

  Naida said there must be some formal ceremony to celebrate Kirby’s ascendency to power. To this the Duca consented, and established the date as a fortnight hence, and the place as the temple on the plateau beyond the plateau of the castle, where the Ducas had been invested with their robes of state from time immemorial. At the end, it was decided that little Elana should be left in the prayer chamber until a burial ceremony could be held on the morrow.

  * * * *

  In less than an hour, Kirby, Naida, and the others withdrew from the amphitheatre to return to the regular dwelling places of the girls. Deep in his mind, Kirby did not know how sincere the Duca was, and fear lingered, somehow, but he put it aside for the present.

  As they came out of the castle, proceeding in a gay procession across the drawbridge above the moat of beautiful aquatic p
lants, Kirby saw that the light from the glass sky was fading to a glow like that of spring twilight in the upper world. Naida answered his question about the phenomenon by saying that day and night in the cavern corresponded to the same period above. What quality of the glass sky gave out light, she did not know, but it seemed definite that the element was sensitive to the presence of light in the upper world, and when the sun sank there, the glow faded here.

  A flower embroidered path led them around the castle to a group of little crystalline houses all overgrown with bougainvillea vines and honeysuckle. In front of the first, Naida paused, and while the others went on to the other houses, she looked at Kirby.

  “It is Elana’s dwelling,” she said simply, “and it will be vacant now. Elana would want you to take it. Will you, please?”

  The twilight was deepening swiftly. Kirby nodded reverently, then drew close to Naida.

  “Naida?”

  “Yes?”

  He took her hand.

  “I can stay here, I can consent to become, after a fashion, a King, only if you will reign with me as Queen. Will you, Naida? Will you love me as I have learned to love you during this single day in Paradise?”

  She did not answer. But presently Kirby’s mind went blank for sheer joy. For then Naida raised her face, and he kissed her lips.

  It made no difference then that, despite the day’s victory, Kirby could see trouble ahead, and feared, rather than rejoiced at, the Duca’s too easy acceptance of terms. The future could take care of itself. This moment in the dusk belonged to him and Naida.

  * * * *

  The two weeks which passed for Kirby after that particular twilight sped quickly. During the first morning, all attended the ceremony which was held for Elana’s burial in the plot of gardened ground where lay her ancestors. Ensuing mornings were devoted to conferences in the amphitheatre with Duca and caciques.

  After the fourth day Kirby, at Naida’s insistence, moved into splendid quarters in the castle—a suite of chambers across the amphitheatre from those in which the caciques dwelt. In practically forcing the move on Kirby, Naida won his consent finally by agreeing to have their wedding ceremony performed on the day of his coronation; then she would come to the castle with him.