With infinite effort he raised himself on his hands. Wavering bands of blackness and intense light obscured his vision. But he saw dimly that the Venusian had caught the girl and that the other two were struggling to subdue her, and that her struggle was beyond belief, the small white body fighting to be free.
He tried to rise and could not. In a minute they had borne her down, the three of them. The slender wrists were snared and bound. One of the men produced a cloth that gleamed like metal and raised it above her head.
They seemed to recede from Harrah, gliding away down a street curiously lengthened into some dark dimension of pain. The echoes of their grunts and scufflings rang queerly muffled in his ears. But he saw, quite clearly, the last despairing look that Marith gave him before the shining cloth descended and hid her face.
His heart was wrenched with sorrow for her and a terrible rage rose in him against the men. He tried to get up and go after her and for a time he thought he had but when his sight cleared a little he realized that he had only crawled a few inches. How long the effort had taken him he did not know but the street was empty and there was no sound.
“Marith,” he said. “Marith!”
Then he looked up, and saw that her brothers were standing over him, immensely tall, their beautiful strange faces very white in the shifting light of the moons.
CHAPTER III A Broken Edge
One of the Wanderers reached down and gathered Harrah’s shirtfront into his hand. Without effort, he lifted the Earthman to his feet. He looked into Harrah’s face with eyes that were like Marith’s, black and deep, charged with some cruel anger of the soul.
“Where is she?” he demanded. “Where have they taken her?”
“I don’t know.” Harrah found that he could stand up. He tried to shake off the Wanderer’s grip. “Where did you come from? How did you—”
“Find her.” The hand that would not be shaken off tightened on Harrah’s shirt until the cloth was drawn close around his throat. “You took her away, Earthman. Between you and the dogs something has happened that was not meant to happen. You took her—now find her!”
Harrah said between his teeth, “Let go.”
“Let him go, Kehlin,” said one of the others. “He will be of no use dead.”
Almost reluctantly the throttling grip relaxed and was gone. Harrah stepped back. He was furious but he was also more than a little frightened. Again, as with Marith, he had touched something strange in this man Kehlin. The terrible relentless strength of that strangling hand seemed more than human.
Then he swayed and nearly fell and realized that he was still dizzy from the blow and probably not thinking very clearly.
The man called Kehlin said, with iron patience, “She must be found quickly. At once, do you understand? She is in great danger.”
Harrah remembered his last sight of Marith’s face. He remembered her fear and the quiet deadly urgency with which the three strangers had gone about the taking of her. He knew that Kehlin spoke the truth.
“I’ll get Tok,” said Harrah. “He can find out where she is.” “Who is Tok?”
Harrah explained. “The aboriginals know everything that goes on in Komar almost before it happens.”
He turned, suddenly in a hurry to get on to his lodgings and look for Tok, but Kehlin said sharply, “Wait. I can do it more quickly.”
Harrah stopped, a cold tingle sweeping across his skin. Kehlin’s face had the same look that he had seen on Marith’s before, the odd expression of one listening to distant voices. There was a moment of silence and then the Wanderer smiled and said, “Tok is coming.”
One point of mystery cleared up for Harrah. “Telepaths. That’s how you found me, how you knew what had happened to Marith. She was calling to you to hurry.”
Kehlin nodded. “Unfortunately it’s a limited talent. We can communicate among ourselves when we wish, and we have some control over minds of the lower orders, that are animal or very near it, like Tok’s. But I cannot read or even trace the minds of the men who have taken my sister—and she is being prevented from using her own ability to talk to me.”
“They put a cloth over her head,” said Harrah. “A shining sort of cloth.”
“Thought waves are electrical in nature,” said Kehlin. “They can be screened.”
After that no one spoke. They stood in the empty space under the blank walls of the houses and waited.
Presently among the shadows a darker shadow moved. Slowly, with a terrible reluctance, it came toward them into the moonlight and Harrah saw that it was Tok. Tok, creeping, cringing, bent as though under a heavy burden—not wanting to come but drawn as a fish is drawn unwilling by hook and line.
The hook and line of Kehlin’s mind. Harrah glanced from the Wanderer’s still face to the awful misery of fear in Tok’s eyes and a wave of anger swept over him, mingled with a certain dread.
“Tok,” he said gently. “Tok!”
The aboriginal turned his head and gave Harrah one look of hopeless pleading—just such a look as Marith had given when the strangers took her away. Then he crouched down at Kehlin’s feet and stayed there, shivering.
Impulsively, Harrah started forward and one of Kehlin’s brothers caught him by the arm.
“If you want to save her—be still!”
Harrah was still, and felt the aching of his flesh where the man had gripped it, as though with five clamps of steel instead of human fingers.
Kehlin did not speak and the only sound that came from Tok was a sort of unconscious whimpering. But after a minute or two Kehlin said, “He knows where she is. He will guide us.”
Tok had already turned to go. The men followed him. Harrah saw that Tok’s step was swift now, almost eager. But the terror had not left him.
Kehlin watched him and his eyes were black and deep as the spaces beyond the stars.
Demons. Demons with the eyes of darkness.
A shiver of superstitious fear went over Harrah. Then he looked again at the Wanderers in their tawdry rags—outcasts of any outcaste tribe, selling their sister’s beauty in the marketplace for the sake of a few coins, and his awe left him.
He had caught too much of it from the aboriginals, who could make an evil spirit out of every shadow.
He began to think again of Marith, and the yellow-eyed Martian who had cracked his skull, and his knuckles itched.
He had no weapon now except a knife he carried under his shirt but he felt that he could make shift.
Abruptly he asked a question that had been on the top of his mind. “What did the men want with her?”
One of the Wanderers shrugged. “She is beautiful.”
“That was not in their minds,” said Harrah. “Nor is it in yours.”
“An old feud,” said Kehlin harshly. “A blood feud.”
Something about his voice made Harrah shiver all over again.
There was something strange about Komar now. After that brief violence of the dogs, nothing stirred. The sound of voices came from the roofless houses, a sort of uneasy muttering that burst into sharper cadence around the wineshops.
But no man walked in the streets. Even the dogs were gone.
Harrah was sure that eyes watched them from the darkness, as Marith and her captors had been watched. But it was only a feeling. The aboriginals themselves were intangible as smoke.
Tok led the way swiftly, doubling back toward the lower side of the bazaar. Here was a section that Harrah never visited—the Quarter of the Sellers of Dreams. Poetic name for a maze of filthy rat-runs stinking with the breath of nameless substances. The sliding roofs were always closed and what few voices could be heard were beyond human speech.
They came to a house that stood by itself at the end of an alley. It looked as though it had stood a long time by itself, the fecund weeds growing thick around the door, rooting in the chinks of the walls.
There was no light, no sound. But Tok stopped and pointed.
After a moment Kehlin nodded. With that
gesture he dismissed Tok, forgot him utterly, and the aboriginal went with three loping strides into the shadows and was gone.
Kehlin moved forward, treading noiselessly in the dust.
The others followed. Around at the side was a wing, partially destroyed in some old quake. A thick stubby tree had sprouted in the dirt floor, its branches spreading out over the broken walls.
Without waiting for Kehlin’s orders Harrah swung up into the tree and climbed from there to the coping of the house, where he could look down upon the roof.
The sliding sections were closed. But they were old and rotted and through the gaps Harrah saw a dim glow of light. Somewhere below a lantern burned and a man was talking.
The Wanderers were beside him now on the coping, moving with great care on the crumbling brick. Their eyes caught the lantern-glow with a feral glitter, giving them a look unutterably cruel and strange.
Harrah thought they had forgotten him now as completely as they had forgotten Tok.
He shifted position until he could see directly down through a hole in the roof. Kehlin was beside him, very close.
The man’s voice came up to them, slow, deliberate, without pity.
“We’ve come a long way for this. We didn’t have to. We could have stayed safe at home and let somebody else do the worrying. But we came. One man from each world—men, hear me? Human men.”
His shadow fell broad and black across the floor, across Marith. A large shadow, ponderous, immovable. The girl lay on the floor. The metallic cloth still covered her head and a gag had been added outside it, to keep her from screaming. She was still bound but the cords had been replaced by metal cuffs, connected by wires that led to a little black box. A tiny portable generator, Harrah thought, and was filled with fury.
“You’re tough,” said the man. “But we’re tough too. And we won’t go away empty-handed. I’ll ask you once more. How many—and where?”
Marith shook her head.
A lean dark hand that could only have belonged to the Martian reached out and pressed a stud on the black box. The body of the girl stiffened, was shaken with agony.
Harrah gathered himself. And in the instant before he jumped Kehlin moved so that his shoulder struck the Earthman a hard thrusting blow and sent him plunging head foremost through the roof.
There was a great splintering of rotten wood. The whole room was suddenly revealed to Harrah—the three men looking upward, the girl scarlet and white against the brown floor, the small black box, all rushing up, up to meet him.
He grasped at a broken edge of roof. It crumbled in his hands, and he saw the Venusian step back, it seemed very slowly, to get out of his way. The momentary breaking of his fall enabled Harrah to get his feet under him and he thought that he was not going to die at once, he would surely live long enough to break Kehlin’s neck instead of his own.
He hit the floor in a shower of dust and splinters. Half smiling the Martian drew his gun.
CHAPTER IV As Leopards…
After that for a moment no one moved. The dust of years sifted down on them. Another board fell with a crash. Harrah gasped for the breath that had been knocked out of him and the girl writhed in her uninterrupted pain. A brief moment of stillness in which the Earthman, the Martian and the Venusian stared at Harrah and thought of nothing else.
Then, very stealthily and swiftly, the Wanderers dropped through the open roof as leopards drop on their quarry from above. In a way, it was beautiful to watch—the marvelous grace and strength with which they moved, the flashing of the three bright silent blades. A ballet with knives. The Martian’s gun went off once. It didn’t hit anything. The big Earthman turned to grapple with Kehlin and grunted as the steel went home between his ribs.
Harrah got up. There didn’t seem to be any place for him in that fight. It was over too fast, so fast that it seemed impossible that three men could die in so few seconds. The faces of Marith’s brothers were cold with a terrible coldness that turned Harrah sick to look at them.
He stepped over the body of the Venusian, noting how the curling silver hair was mottled with crimson and dark dust. He cut the power from the black box and Marith relaxed slowly, her flesh still quivering. He tore the gag and the metal cloth from her head, and thought that men who could do this thing to a girl deserved to die. And yet he took no joy in it.
Marith looked up at him and he thought she smiled. He
lifted her and held her in his arms, touching her with awkward gentle hands.
The big Earthman raised his head. Even death he would meet on his own time, refusing to be hurried. He saw what had been done, and there was something now in his broad stolid face that startled Harrah—a grim and shining faith.
He looked at the Wanderers with a look of bitter fury in which there was no acknowledgment of defeat.
“All right,” he said. “All right. You’re safe for a while now. You set a trap and you baited it with her and it worked—and you’re safe now. But you can’t hide. The very dogs know you. There’s no place for you in earth, heaven or hell. If it takes every drop of human blood in the System to drown you we’ll do it.”
He turned to Harrah, kneeling in the dirt with Marith in his arms.
“Don’t you know what they are?” he demanded. “Are you in love with that and you don’t know what it is?”
Harrah felt Marith shudder and sigh against him and before he could speak Kehlin had stopped, smiling, over the big man. The Wanderer’s knife made one quick dainty motion and there were no more words, only a strangled grunting such as a butchered pig makes when it falls. Then silence.
Marith’s fingers tightened on Harrah’s wrist. She tried to rise and he helped her up and steadied her.
Still smiling, Kehlin came across the room, the knife swinging languidly in his hand.
Marith said, “Wait.”
Kehlin’s smile turned into something sardonic. As one who is in no hurry he waited, coming only far enough so that the blood of the big Earthman would not touch his sandals.
Marith looked up into Harrah’s face. There was no hatred in her eyes now.
“Is it true?” she asked. “Do you love me?”
Harrah could not answer. He looked at the dead men and the three silent beings that stood over them and there was a sickness beyond the fear of death.
“What are you?” he said to them. “The dogs know you. Tok knows you. But I don’t know you.”
His gaze came back to Marith. She had not taken her eyes from him. They broke his heart.
“Yes,” he said, with a queer harshness. “Yes, I guess I love you as much as you can make any meaning out of the word.” The smell of blood lay heavy and sweet on the air and the blade gleamed in Kehlin’s hand and it seemed a strange word to be speaking in this place. It had a jeering sound of laughter.
Marith whispered, “Kiss me.”
Stiffly, slowly, Harrah bent and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were cool and very sweet and a queer wild pang rang through him so that his flesh contracted as though from pain or fear and his heart began a great pounding.
He stepped back and said, “You’re not human.”
“No,” she answered softly. “I am android.” Presently she smiled. “I told you, Earthman. I am Marith. I am Forbidden.”
She did not weep. She had no human tears. But her eyes were heavy with the sadness of all creation.
“From time to time,” she murmured, “men and women have loved us. It is a great sin and they are punished for it and we are destroyed. We have no souls and are less than the dogs that tear at us. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—even that is denied us for we are not born of the earth, of Adam’s clay. The hand of man made us, not the hand of God, and it is true that we have no place in heaven or hell.”
“We will make a place,” said Kehlin, and his fingers played with the shining knife. There was no sadness about him. He looked at the dead men, the man of Earth, the man of Venus, the man of Mars.
“On their worlds we will
make a place. Heaven has no meaning for us nor hell. Only the life we have now, the life man gave us. You, Earthman! How long have you been out here beyond the Belt?”
“A long time,” said Harrah. “A long, long time.”
“Then you haven’t heard of the war.” Kehlin’s white teeth glittered. “The secret quiet war against us—the slaves, the pets, the big wonderful toys that grew so strong we frightened the men who made us. It’s not strange you haven’t heard. The governments tried to keep it secret. They didn’t want a panic, people killing each other in mistake for runaway androids. We were so hard to detect, you see, once we shed our uniforms and got rid of our tattoo marks.” He stirred the Martian with his foot, the dark face turned upward, snarling even in death.
“It took men like this to recognize us,” he said. “Men trained in the laboratories before they were trained against crime. We thought we were safe here, far beyond the law, but we had to be sure. Law wouldn’t matter if word got back to the Inner Worlds. They would come out and destroy us.” He laughed. “Now we’re sure.”
“For a time,” said Marith. “There will be others like them.” “Time,” said Kehlin. “A little time. That’s all we need.” He moved again toward Harrah, casually swift, as though one more thing needed to be done.
Harrah watched him come. He did not quite believe, even now. He was remembering androids as he had known of them long ago—Kehlin had named them. The slaves, the pets, the big wonderful toys. Synthetic creatures built of chemical protoplasm, molded in pressure tanks, sparked to intelligent life by the magic of cosmic rays drawn pure from outer space.
Creatures made originally to do the work that human flesh was too frail for—the dangerous things, the experiments with pressure and radiation, the gathering of data from places where men could not go, the long lonely grinding jobs that tear human nerves to pieces.
The Halfling and Other Stories Page 5
