Tama Princes of Mercury

by Terry Pratchett

  And set in a long strip at the bottom of one of the enclosing hillsides was a collection of little hutscrude habitations built* of the porous treetrunks, thatched with huge, dried leaves.

  A deserted camp. There seemed a litter of equipment lying abandoned. Agricultural implements stood in the fields where a vegatation growth had come up, unharvested, and died again... . We passed on in a moment once more over the metallic desert.

  "That was one of our girls' camps," Tama said. "Abandoned when we returned to the Hill City. You remember it, Roc? You ought toyou drove us there."

  "The camp of the flying virgins. Guy had told us of those events. Only the women of Mercury were endowed vidth wings, and the men, by instinct, were jealous. Man-made laws decreed that at marriage the wings of a virgin should be clipped.

  The revolt of the virgins, smoldering for years, had come at last. Led by Tama, they had pleaded for different laws.

  Instead of which, led by the sly Roc, the government had passed a new, more drastic law. Even before marriage, at the age of sixteen, the virgins were ordered to accept the mutilation. They had revolted, flown from the Hill City, the Water City and elsewhere, and established this camp in the desert. And then when Roc had proved a traitor, stolen the government secrets of war and joined his outlawed father in the Cold Country, the Hill City government had been repentant. Alarmed at the lengths to which it had forced the young girls, it had begged them to come back, promising them new laws.

  They had gone back, just before Tama and Guy had left for Earth. That was the situation, all we knew of it, save that here in the silver ball we had learned of the coming invasion of the Light Country by the Cold Country barbarians.

  Whether the Hill City government was prepared for it or not we could not say. Our duty now was to get to the Hill City and warn them.

  The welfare of our own Earth was at stake as well. The present Hill City government would never make a raid on Earth. But if the barbarians were victorious here on Mercury, raids upon Earth were inevitable.

  Rowena touched me. "Look off there!" Against the distant sky little moving dots were visible: a group of flying girls winging off toward the Hill City. And down on the naked plateau, a few miles away, men were moving.

  We came over the horizon to a new vista. Human figures moved on foot. Several groups at intervals, hastened laboriously forward. They were fairly distant, mere dots. But there seemed to be men, and women and children as well. A cart or two drawn by peculiar long creatures close to the ground.

  It seemed like a flight, a routas though these were refugees, with belongings hastily gathered in the face of some disasterall heading toward the Hill City.

  Then the horizon rim showed othersa line of tiny dots.

  Then several distant group of girls, coming from the Hill City, circling over the figures on the ground, and winging back.

  They had doubtless seen our vehicle, and fearing it, kept well away.

  This had come upon us all in a few moments as our flyer sped forward. I saw that Tama was white and grim. She stood clutching at Rowena, whispered to her. Horror swept Rowena's face.

  Jimmy whispered, "What in the devil, Jack" Roc had not been looking out of the window. He said abruptly, "Our pressure is right. I shall open the door." Dorrek was not here. Muta made no move. Roc unclamped the mechanism; the thick little panel slid aside. The air of Mercury surged in with a gust upon us: Moist, heavy air, with the smell of rain and a hint of sulphur in it from the recent storm.

  The change of pressure appraised Dorrek that the door was open. He appeared at once and stood gazing at us.

  The open doorway was near us allsix feet high, and half as widea threshold with a fifteen hundred drop down to the rocky plain beneath us.

  Dorrek made no move. There came a cry from Tama.

  "Roc-look! The Water Cityl" Ahead of us at the horizon a low-hanging murky cloud had appeared over a range of hills, with what I assumed was the Water City still hidden behind them. In a moment we could see clusters of figures on the distant hilltops.

  A little blob of light rose in an arc, went over the line of hills and fell into the still hidden city. A rocket bomb! This was an attack! We all forgot Dorrek and Muta behind us.

  Tama cried, "Roc, this is the invasionalready started! You have tricked ustricked me again!"

  "No, Tama. I swear I had no idea of this!" He seemed speaking the truth. He swung around. "Look at Dorrek, Tama! If you think I lie, look at Dorrekl He is as surprised as I am." The giant had glimpsed the scene through the window near him. He called Muta. Momentarily ignoring us, they flung open the breast-high circular pane and stood gazing with obvious astonishment.

  The sphere swept on, rising to a higher altitude to pass over the line of hills. Presently the stricken Water City lay beneath us.

  Fantastic, ghastly scenes unrolled to our horrified gaze.

  VIII WASTE THE LITTLE LINE of jagged hills had behind it a sheer drop of perpendicular copper walls, clean as though cloven by Titan's knife. Beyond them the contour was a wide-spreading, shallow oblong bowl, with gentle slopes undulating upward to other heights at the distant horizon.

  A small inland sea had once been here. It was gone now but, at the bottom of the depression, water still collected, making a little lake some two miles wide, with the city houses built on stilts and water treesa spring-fed lake of turgid, warm water rising from the fire-heart of the planet.

  The copper precipice stood against the lake; to the left it straggled into a marsh as the land rose up. There were fields on the terraced hillsides off there, spreading in a great semicircle beyond the laketerraces of water and mud in which something like rice might be growing. To the right the lake drained in a slow-moving, sluggish little river that wound off into the distance between canyon walls.

  We stood gazing from the window of the silver ball at a height of some two thousand feet. Gray-black clouds were over us; the scene was flat and dim in the half light of day.

  And the murk of gas fumes and smoke clung to the city, hiding it. A murk of horror! We passed along the peaks of the rim at the top of the.

  precipice walls. The figures of men were massed down there.

  A flare burst momentarily to illumine them. Men garbed in animalskins; men like Dorrek and his fellows of the Cold Country.

  A giant projector sent dowra spurt of light-fire like a lightning bolt. It split the smoke cloud that hung on the city.

  A rift, through which I saw a little group of thatched buildings perched like a cluster of birds' nests between the huge stems of water trees. A tiny segment of the city was made suddenly visible, with a tangle of water plants rising thirty or forty feet above the lake surface. The huts were woven into this junglelaced platforms, with oval mounds of thatch upon them. There were six or eight of them in this cluster, set upon different levels. Leaves like giant palm fronds hung around them, with interlacing vines, woven into ladders.

  The heat-ray bolt hurled itself down. I saw the birds' nest houses wither, shrivel and fall to the water in a strewn little heap of wreckage. Human bodies were floating in it.

  I saw a woman with broken wings trying to flap upward.

  She struggled an instant and then fell back.

  The bolt's duration was only a second or two, when the murk closed again. I turned to see Tama staring at Roc.

  Her voice rang with horrified accusation: "That projector! You and your father stole the plans for those weapons!" He gripped her. "Yes, I did! I'm sorry, Tama." He ended with a wild laugh. "Lookthey do not know how to use it-" I looked down on the rocky hilltop, where the projector burst into a puff of light. The figures clustered about it were gone. There was only a small blackened patch of empty rock.

  We moved on, out over the city. Roc was laughing wild~ "This attack! They should have waited for mel Or you, Dorrek!" He swung toward the giant. "You saw that? They are not readythey do not know how to use their weapons." Dorrek shouted an order to one of his fellows. Our vehicle swung slowly over
the city, turning on its axis and making a great circular sweep. The scenes we saw down in the gloom were fragmentary. I recall them now as a kaleidoscope of horror.

  Men dying on the precipice top, and men fighting off on the distant terra-ced slopes. An occasional rocket flare rose in a slow arc and burst in the city. Brief vistas of shriveling houses.

  Presently the rockets and bombs ceased. Grayness fell upon the scene. Then a wind from the distant mountains sprang up. The murk began rolling aside. The city opened to our sight.

  The attack was almost over. On the terraces the clusters of men, and those dark oblong things slithering on the ground, began moving away. In the distance I saw moving dots in the skygirls, who had flown up from the menaced city and escaped. And other patches, dark and leprousholes where the black water showed, strewn with shriveled litter.

  As the smoke swept away, we descended. We turned at the entrance to the little canyon where the river wound into the naked hills, and swung back. I saw, in the strewn river surface, blackened, shriveled bodies floating off.

  There was a little patch of open water like a city street with tree stems lining it and the houses still intact. Something was still living, swiming down there. An oblong thing. It reared its head, came to a half-fallen tree, began climbing the incline of the trunk. It had a jointed body some ten feet long and myriad short, spindly legs. A round head, with waving arm-like antennae. A "brue" one of the giant' insects! There were some larger than this one. Guy had told us of them, how they were domesticated in the Hill City.

  I saw this one leave the water and slither up the treetrunk. It reached a house platform, against which the top of the fallen tree was resting. A woman was lying there on the platform. Her wings were burned away, her body mangled so that she seemed even unable to crawl. But she was still alive, lying against the thatched side wall of her home. At her breast a white-skinned, golden-haired little girl was huddled in the dying mother's arms. The child's paleblue wings were flapping in helpless terror.

  The giant insect reached the platform. Our vehicle had dropped so low I could glimpse its face. Half-humanmonstrous. Its tongue licked out; its great slit of mouth seemed grinning.

  I heard the woman screama thin, racking shriek. The brue slithered eagerly forward. The woman tried to cast the child off the platform into the water. The insect caught it.

  I looked away. Tama and Rowena were shrinking, trembling against me. Roc and Jimmy were staring transfixed. "Mercifully, the ball turned on its axis. The window showed only a section of the city where all the houses were leveled and the blackened bodies were lying inert. I saw other brues: swimmingstopping to seize upon somethingeatingcasting it away.

  Then from the distant terraces, where the invaders now were withdrawing, a shrill, mechanical whine sounded. A siren call; it sang over the valley and echoed back from the cliff walls. The call for the brues. We could see a hundred or more of them appearing in the wreckage. Swimming in the demolished streets, slithering over the marsh shores, and up the terraces to join their masters.

  Our vehicle had been seen and recognized. Groups of men stood gazing up at us. A flare rose vertically up from them, as a signal.

  The ball had turned toward the center of the city. We had risen againan altitude of about a thousand feet over the water. Dorrek and Muta still stood at their window, engrossed in their thoughts.

  I whispered to Roc, "Now is our time! Order us back behind the hills, the way we came. Tell Dorrek to land us there." Roc nodded agreement. He advanced across the room toward Dorrek. Jimmy and I stood tense where we were. I whispered, "Watch them, Jimmy! Your flash ready? If Dorrek rebels, we can kill him from here and hold this room against the others." If only we had done that! And yet, Dorrek's men in the other room had control of the vehicle. The door was open beside us, but we were still a thousand feet in the air.

  Roc, cylinder in hand, reached the center of the room.

  Dorrek turned to face him. Tama and Rowena had moved aside, closer to the open doorway. But closer, also, to Dorrek.

  Roc gave his command. Dorrek stared. Again there was that instant of electrical tenseness. Would the giant obey? He stared at Roc impassively for an instantand then he leaped. My beat-cylinder was out but I could not use ltl I held my impulsive finger from the trigger. With my left hand I struck at Jimmy's rising weapon, and shouted in horror to Roc.

  For Dorrek had leaped, not at usbut upon Rowena I She had passed within a few feet of him. Like a huge leopard, without warning he whirled and pounced upon her and seized her. There was an instant when he was struggling with her, and with Tama. Rowena was taken too much by surprise to get her knife from the dressing gown pocket.

  Dorrek's arms went around her from behind. As she struggled with him, twisting, clutching backward over her shoulder at his face, Tama came at them. Her knife went into Dorrek's arm. He shouted with an infuriated roar of pain. Muta dashed heavily forward. A sweep of Tama's wing knocked the woman back. Dorrek, holding the struggling Rowena before him as a shield, retreated against the wall. Again, like a wrathful, desperate bird, Tama with spreading wings buried herself at them.

  Within an instant the little room was a chaos of strife.

  Whatever plans we had were discarded now. No time to think, even to realize what we were doing. Against the open door, the giant Dorrek fought with the two girls. Muta had turned aside, crouching, watching. I saw her stoop for Tama's fallen knife.

  Jimmy and I were rushing forward. Roc made a leapthen fell. Dorrek's weapon spat a blue bolt. It hissed overhead, struck the metal ceiling with a rain of falling sparks, crackled into the metal and was absorbed. I felt the heat of it; I thought Roc had been hit, but in a moment I saw him up again.

  Jimmy and I did not dare fire. As we plunged those few steps forward toward Dorrek, Jimmy screamed a warning, "Jackbehind you!" Half turning, I saw three of Dorrek's men crowding through the doorway. One flung a knife. I turned in time to see it coming; the heavy handle of it struck me in the forehead.

  There was a moment of blackness. But at once my senses came back. I was on the floor, with two of the Mercurians upon me. I found myself stfll clutching the ray gun. My revolver had fallen from my bootwas gone. Hands were plucking at me. A heavy shoulder pinning me, another body on my legs.

  I lunged, twisted with returning strength. Above me I heard Jimmy's shouts, then Roc's. A turmoil of staggering footsteps; the thud of blows; the beat of Tama's wings; a scream. A man's scream of agony. The thick body of a Mercurian man fell on me and my antagonists as we struggled.

  Then another hiss over me; Roc's weapon, I thought. I saw a gray figure lunge past me, meet the heat bolt and fall.

  A hand and knife came down with a stabbing blow. I jerked away from it, fired my cylinder into a flat gray face bending down at me. The face went black, sank backward. The stench of burned flesh was around me as I heaved off restraining arms and staggered to my feet.

  The room was crowded with struggling forms and clouded with vapors: the acrid gas of the bolts, the smell of charred flesh. The lights were out; the place was dim with the outside daylight. I stumbled over a body on the floor as I took a step. I saw the outlined window ovals, and the rectangle of open doorway. Tama was there, in the grip of a Mercurian. Roc and Jimmy were rushing at them. I found myself reeling against Dorrek, who still held Rowena. We were in the center of the room. I leaped upon them, struck at the giant's face, and felt another antagonist thud against me from behind. Then a stab of pain as a knife blade went into the flesh of my shoulder.

  At the doorway, silhouetted against the outside light, four figures were entangled in a struggling mass: a Mercurian maii, Tama, Jimmy and Roc. They toppled at the threshold the brink of a void with a thousand-foot drop to the Water City beneath us. I saw Tama and Roc go over the brink, and Jimmy with them! The Mercurian swayed, fought for his balance. Jimmy's disappearing hand made a last clutchcaught the Mercurian's leg, and pulled him oVer.

  The rectangle of doorway was empty. I struc
k again at Dorrek, trying to pull Rowena from him. The man behind me pounded at my head with a ray-cylinder. I crumpled to the floor as I felt my senses going.

  IX SUSPENSE GUY AND TOH waited impatiently in a room of Guy's apartment in the palace at Hill City. Some twelve hours earlier, Dr. Grenfell had brought the Flying Cube to a safe landing.

  But they had lost sight of the Mercurian sphere in clouds of smoke and fog, and with it their hopes of finding Tama and Rowena, Jimmy and me.

  "But, Guy, what are we to do?" demanded Toh. "What does Dr. Grenfell say?"

  "What can he say? We have no idea where the ball landed. Girls have been flying here to the Hill City from everywhere. You must talk to them, Toh."

  "I havel Alwaysnone have seen it." Guy seized the little Mercurian youth. "Toh, I'm as eager as you-desperate. Tama, off there somewhere" He choked on his words.

  They had reached the Hill City only to find chaos. News of the unexpected invasion from the Cold Country had just come, brought by girls flying from the outlying districts. The twelve hours that followed were a blurred turmoil to Guy.

  The shocked, frightened government of the Light Country received Guywhom they knew welland bis friendly companions from Earth with pleasure at having them as allies. The Flying Cube, with its Earth weapons and its crew of five men in addition to Grenfell was an asset in the war.

  Grenfell, as he afterward told me, was startled by this sudden crisis into declaring his Earth party as active allies and participants. His first instinct was reluctance. With scientific foresight he appreciated the new era of interplanetary relations, at the threshhold of which he now stood as a pioneer. He was upon Mercury, meeting the inhabitants of this other world as a representative of the Earth. He had planned coming merely as a friendly visitor; but it was imavoidable that he should not be in pursuit of Mercurian outlaws who had abducted an Earth girl.

  Grenfell was a forceful man. Once his decision was announced, he sat with the aged, impractical rulers of the Hill City government, doing his utmost to cope with the chaos of hasty preparations for defense into which the Hill City was plunged. Earth and civilized Mercury were allied against a Mercurian barbarian nation.