All the dark secrets of Terran evolution were laid bare in this garden, for the Martians to see. It made even Winters, the Earthman, flinch to think that bodies like that had given ultimate birth to him. What respect could the Martians have for such a race, that was still so close to its beginnings?
But he was to see more, much more, of those beginnings…
The gong struck a last booming summons. The tide of bowed hairy shoulders and flat brows and ugly things that went on all fours swept Winters and Jill out into the clearing at the center, where from the palace window he had seen the lake. A strong musky reek hung in the air. It had the same sickly taint that a snake-house does. And Winters saw that the lake was agitated by the creatures who lived there, and who were swarming out to answer the gong.
Back to the common ancestor, and beyond. Beyond the mammal, back to the gill and the scale, to the egg laid in the warm mud, to the hissing, squirming, utterly loathing ultimate!
Jill panted, “Shanga! Shanga!” looking up, and Winters felt a darkness swimming in his brain. A cold wet thing slithered between his legs, and he swayed, retching. The surface of the lake rippled, but he could not look. He could not.
Grasping Jill, he tried to batter his way through the crowd, but it was hopeless. He was caught, trapped.
Looking up, he saw the prisms that were set high overhead on long booms. He saw them start to glow, with the remembered flame.
He had reached the end, now. The end of his search for Jill Leland, the end of everything. The first sweet deadly thrill of the ray touched his flesh. He felt the waking hunger in him, the deep lust, the stirring of the beast that lay so close under his own skin. He thought of the lake, and wondered how it would be to lie in its wetness, breathing through the gill slits that had once opened in his own flesh when he was an embryo in his mother’s womb.
Because that is where I shall be, he thought. In the lake. Jill and I. And beyond the lake, what? The amoeba, and then…?
He saw the royal box, whence the Kings of Valkis had watched the gladiators and the flowing blood. Fand sat there now. She leaned her slender elbows on the stone and watched, and it seemed to Winters that even at this distance he could see the smile and the scorn in her golden eyes. Kor Hal sat beside her, and the old woman, a muffled shape of black.
The fires of Shanga burned and brightened. There was a silence on the clearing now. The sounds that came, the moanings and the little whimpers, did not touch the silence. They only made it deeper. The warm glints danced on the upturned faces, glowed in the staring eyes. Each scaled or shaggy body bore a nimbus of beauty. He saw Jill standing there, reaching up toward the twin suns, a slim shaft of silver flame.
The madness already in his blood. Muscle and sinew taut with it, arching, curving. Brain clouding with a bright soft veil, forgetfulness, release. Jill and Burk, dawn-man, dawn-woman, happy while they lived, done with everything but their own love, their own satisfaction. Why not? They were both in it now, both marked with the same stamp.
Then he heard the laughter and the jeering of the Martians who were gathered to watch the shame of his world. He tore his gaze away from the wicked light and looked again into the face of Fand of Valkis, and then at Kor Hal and the thousand other faces, and a bleak and terrible expression came into his eyes.
The ranks of the crowd had broken. The beast-shapes lay upon the turf, writhing in the ecstasy of Shanga. Jill was on her hands and knees. Winters felt the strength going out of him. The lovely pain, the beautiful, wild, exultant pain…
He grasped Jill and began to drag her, back toward the trees, out of the circle of light.
She did not want to go. She screamed and tore his face with her nails and kicked him, and he struck her. After that she lay limp in his arms. He kept on, stumbling over the twitching bodies, falling, crawling at last on his hands and knees. Only one thing kept him going on. Only one thing made him undergo the tortures of the damned, fighting Shanga.
That thing was the scornful, smiling face of Fand.
The touch of the ray weakened and was gone. He was safe, beyond, the circle. He dragged the girl farther into the shrubbery and turned his back on the clearing because he wanted more than any drug addict could conceive of wanting to go back into the light, and he dared not look at it.
Instead, he pulled himself erect and faced the royal box. It was only pride that kept him standing. He looked straight into the distant eyes of Fand, and her clear silvery voice carried to him.
“You will go back into the fire of Shanga, Earth-man. Tomorrow, or the day after—you will go.”
Complete assurance there, as one is sure of the rising of the sun.
Burk Winters did not answer. He stood a moment longer, his gaze level with Fand’s. Then, even pride failed. He fell and lay still.
The last conscious thought of his mind was that Fand and Mars together had challenged Earth, and that it was no longer merely a matter of saving a girl from destruction.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN HE CAME TO, it was night. Jill sat patiently beside him. She had brought him food, and while he wolfed it down she went away to fetch water in a broad cupped leaf.
He tried to talk to her, but there was a gulf between them too wide to be bridged. She seemed subdued and brooding, and would not come close to him. He had robbed her of the fire of Shanga and she had not forgotten it.
The futility of trying to escape with her was obvious. After a while he rose and left her, and she did not try to follow.
The garden was still under the light of the low moons. Apparently the beasts of Shanga, true to their ape heritage, were sleeping. Moving with infinite caution, Winters prowled the arena in search of a way out. A plan had taken shape in his mind. It was not much of a plan, and he knew that very probably he would be dead before morning, but he had nothing to lose. He did not even particularly care. He was a man, an Earthman, and there was an anger in him that was deeper than any fear.
The walls of the arena were smooth and high. Even an ape could not have climbed them. All the tunnels were blocked off except the one by which they had entered. He crept down it and found the barred gate impenetrable. Beyond it was a little guard fire, and two sentries.
Winters went back to the arena.
He could see no sign of a guard in the empty tiers of seats. There was no reason for one. In itself, the amphitheater was a perfect prison, and the creatures of the garden had no wish. to escape from the besotting joys of Shanga.
Whipped before he started, Winters stood glaring bitterly at the walls that held him fast. Then he caught sight of the booms from which the Shanga prisms were suspended.
Going to the nearest one, he studied it. It was high out of reach, a long metal pole that stretched from the side of the arena above the wall and, with the other one, centered the Shanga-rays over the clearing.
High out of reach. But if a man had a rope…
Winters went in among the trees. He found vines and creepers, and tore them away, and knotted them together. He found a small log in a deadfall, big enough to weight one end but light enough for throwing. Then he returned to the boom.
On the third cast the log went over. He drew his flimsy rope down, making a double strand. Hand over hand, praying that the vines would hold, he began to climb.
It seemed like a long way up. He felt very naked and exposed in the moonlight.
The vines held, and no challenging voice shouted at him. He clung to the boom and worked his way along it, first dropping the telltale rope. Presently he was safe among the tiered seats.
Avoiding the guard by the tunnel, he made his way out of the amphitheater and circled out across the slope, keeping to cover where there was cover, crawling on his belly where there was none. The shifting moon-shadows helped him, because they made visibility a treacherous thing. The palace loomed above him, huge and dark, crushed under the weight of time.
Only two lights showed. One, on the ground floor, he guessed would be the guard room. The other, on the
third level, was dim as though made by a single torch. That, he hoped, would be the apartment of Fand.
Up the slope and into the shelter of the palace garden, and then into the palace itself. The great half-ruined pile could not have been guarded, even if there had been reason to guard it. Padding silently on naked feet, Winters glided through the vast empty halls, trying to keep a plan of the place straight in his mind.
His eyes were accustomed to the dark, and enough moonlight fell through the embrasures to let him see where he was going. Room and hall and corridor, smelling of dust and death, dreaming over their faded flags and broken trophies, remembering glory. Winters shivered. Something of the cold breath of eternity lived in this place.
He found a ramp, and then another, and at last on the third level he saw light, the weak flicker of it from the crack of a door.
There was no guard. That was a break. Not only because it was a difficulty eliminated, but because it confirmed his guess that Fand was a person who would want no check on her comings and goings. From the standpoint of safety in this place, a guard would be only a useless adornment. Fand was on her own ground here. There were no enemies.
Save one.
Winters opened the door without sound. A maid slept on a low couch. She did not stir as he passed. Beyond an open arch hung with heavy curtains he found the lady Fand.
She slept in a large carved bed, the bed of the Kings of Valkis. She looked like a child lost in its hugeness. She was very beautiful. Very wicked, and almost damnably beautiful.
Winters struck her, quite ruthlessly. Sleep became unconsciousness. There was no outcry. With silks and girdles he found in the room he bound and gagged her, and flung her light weight over his shoulder. Then he went back the way he had come, silently out of the palace.
It was as easy as that. He had not thought it would be easy, but it was. After all, he thought, men seldom guard against the impossible.
Phobos had gone on its careening flight around Mars, and Deimos was too low to give much light. Now carrying the unconscious Fand, now dragging her across the open spaces, Winters made his way back to the amphitheater. In and across the tiered seats to the wall. It was a twenty-foot drop, but he made it as easy as he could on her. He didn’t want her dead. Then he slid over, himself, hung briefly by his fingertips, and fell into cushioning brush.
When he got his breath back he made sure that Fand was not hurt. Then he carried her swiftly into the shelter of the unholy garden. Remembering a particularly dense patch of shrubbery near the central clearing, he made for it and crept thankfully into concealment with the heir of all the Kings of Valkis.
Then he waited.
Her eyes were looking up at him in the dim light, bitter gold above the gag of scarlet silk.
“Yes,” he said, “you’re here, in the garden of Shanga. I brought you here. We have a bargain to talk about, Fand.”
He undid the gag, keeping his hand close over her mouth lest she should cry out.
She said, “There will be no bargain between us, Earthman.”
“Your life, Fand. Your life for mine, and Jill’s and the others here who can still be saved. Destroy the prisms, stop this madness, and you can live to be as old and crazy as your mother.”
There was no fear in her. Unbending pride, and hatred, but no fear. She laughed.
He put his hand on her throat, his fingers reaching iron-strong around her neck. “Slim,” he said. “Soft, and tender. It would snap so easily.”
“Break it, then. Shanga will go on without me. Kor Hal will take over. And you, Burk Winters—you can’t escape.” Her teeth showed white in a taunting smile. “You’ll run with the beasts. No man can break free from Shanga.”
Winters nodded. “I know that,” he said quietly. “Therefore I must destroy Shanga before it destroys me.”
She looked at him, naked and unarmed, crouching in the brush. Once more, she laughed.
He shrugged. “Perhaps it is impossible. I won’t know that until it’s too late, anyway. It isn’t really me I’m worried about, Fand. I could be perfectly happy running on all fours through your garden. Probably I would be perfectly happy hissing and wallowing in the lake. Now the idea sickens me, but after a touch of Shanga it would be all right. No. It isn’t me that matters, nor even Jill.”
“What, then?”
“Earth has its pride, too,” he told her gravely. “It’s a younger and cruder pride than yours. It can become pretty ruthless and obnoxious at times, I’ll admit. But on the whole, Earth is a good planet, and her people are good people, and she’s done more to advance the Solar System than all the other worlds put together. As an Earthman, I don’t like to see my world disgraced.”
He glanced up and around the amphitheater. “I think,” he went on, “that Earth and Mars can learn a lot from each other, if the fanatics on both sides will stop making trouble. You’re the worst one I’ve ever heard of, Fand. You go even beyond fanaticism.” He looked at her speculatively. “I think you’re as mad right now as your mother.”
She did not flare up at that, which convinced him that she was not mad at all, only twisted by the way she lived and the things she had been taught.
She said, “What do you plan to do about all this?”
“Wait. Until dawn, or perhaps later. Anyway, until you’ve had time to think. Then I shall give you a last chance. After that, I shall kill you.”
She was smiling when he replaced the gag, and her eyes did not waver.
The hours passed. Darkness into dawn, and then into full daylight. Winters sat unmoving, his head bowed over his knees. Fand’s eyes were closed, and it seemed that she slept.
The garden woke to life with the sun, and all around the dense thicket Winters heard the padding footsteps and the growling of the beasts of Shanga. The things in the shallow lake cried out, and their musky taint soured the wind. Winters shivered like a man with fever and his brooding eyes were haunted.
After a while Jill came. Animal-like she had found him, animal-like she came slipping without sound through the brush. She would have cried out at the sight of Fand, but he silenced her. She crouched beside him, watching him. She was afraid of him and yet she could not stay away. He stroked her shoulder. It was soft and strong and trembling under his hand. Her gaze was doe-like, full of sadness and bewildered yearning.
Winters’ face became as bleak and pitiless as the barren stars that watch from outer space.
The time grew very short. Jill began to look upward toward the prisms. Winters sensed in her a growing nervousness.
He shook Fand. She opened her eyes and looked at him, and he knew what her answer would be before he asked the question.
“Well?”
She shook her head.
For the first time, Winters smiled. “I have decided,” he said, “Not to kill you, after all.”
What he did after that was done quickly and efficiently, and there was no one to see but Jill and Fand. Jill did not understand; the heiress of the Kings of Valkis understood too well.
People began to drift into the amphitheater. Martians, coming to see a show, coming to learn contempt and loathing for the men of Earth. Winters watched them. He was still smiling.
Suddenly he turned to Jill. When he rose a few minutes later, scratched and panting, she was securely bound with strips torn from bonds of Fand. This time she would not bathe so helplessly in the fire of Shanga.
The Martians gathered. Kor Hal came into the royal box, bringing the old woman, who leaned on his arm.
The gong sounded.
CHAPTER FIVE
ONCE AGAIN, Winters watched the gathering of the beasts of Shanga. Hidden in the thicket, beyond the reach of the rays, he saw the hairy bodies rush and jostle toward the central clearing. He saw the shining of their drugged eyes. He heard them moan and whimper, and all over the garden the mouthing whisper went—“Shanga! Shanga!”
Jill writhed and thrashed in the agony of her desire, her cries muffled by the wad of silk he had thrus
t into her mouth. Winters could not bear to look at her. He knew how she was suffering. He was suffering too.
He saw that Kor Hal was leaning forward over the edge of the wall, searching the garden. He knew what the Martian was looking for.
The last notes of the gong rang out. A silence fell on the clearing. Hairy anthropoid, shambling brutes that ran on all fours, nameless creatures beyond the ape, crawling things with wet and shining scales—all silent, all waiting.
The prisms began to glow. The beautiful wicked fire of Shanga filled the air. Burk Winters set his hand between his teeth and bit until the blood ran.
It seemed to him that he could hear a faint thin screaming, rising out of the flowering shrubs by the lake. Low, tough-stemmed shrubs that lay under the full rays of the prisms.
Shanga! Shanga!
He had to go, into the clearing, into the fiery light. He could not stand it. He must feel again the burning touch on his flesh, the madness and the joy. He could not stay away.
In desperation he flung himself down beside Jill and clung to her, shuddering in torment.
He heard Kor Hal’s voice, calling his name.
He steadied himself and rose, stepping out into the full sight of the royal box. The Martians ranged on either side watched him with interest, turning their attention momentarily from the orgy of the beasts of Shanga.
Winters said, “I’m here, Kor Hal.”
The man of Barrakesh looked at him and laughed. “Why fight it, Winters? You can’t keep away from Shanga.”
Winters asked, “Where is your high priestess? Has she wearied of the sport?”
Kor Hal shrugged. “Who knows the mind of the Lady Fand? She comes and goes as she will.” He leaned forward. “Go on, Winters! The fire of Shanga is waiting. Look how he sweats there, trying to be a man! Go on, apeling—join your brothers!”
The Coming of the Terrans Page 4
