The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  Kor had not seen his own father since that day he himself had entered the Institute. Kor’s father had died nobly somewhere on a forgotten world—and Kor kept the story of that sacrificial death enshrined in his heart. It was one of those inexplicable and ever-recurring dramas of space, where strange forces had seized a group of explorers, and one, through his sacrifice, had enabled the others to survive. That one was Kor’s father.

  An elation of pride lifted Kor as he swung along. His grandfather, his father, his friend Jon. He seemed to feel their ghostly presence in the penetrating chill of the early night. He was proud of them all, proud of the Men, and prouder still of his own place in the scheme of things. Kor’s whole world was one of consuming pride. It was with a lofty pity that he gazed down now from his Pelion-piled-upon-Ossa of pride and viewed the raggle and the baggle of No-ka-si—its merchants, its householders, its women, its wives and its girls.

  He and they were one, all right, but below the level of mind. There was a sharp dividing line there. It was the mind that made the Man which signalized him and divorced him completely from the People. It helped Kor’s sense of self-esteem as he went along to have the People fall respectfully from his path, and to swoop in behind him to touch or kiss the hem of his fluttering robe.

  It was a grand and noble thing to be a Man!

  * * * *

  Kor’s way through the streets of No-ka-si debauched finally into a broad thoroughfare that was doubly lined with palms. Woody fronds rattled in the night breeze, seemed to crackle in the cold. The ground lost its heat quickly to the arid air, once the Sun had set, and nights always were cold on Rth.

  The palm-lined avenue led straight to the crest of a low knoll, atop which glimmered the lighted windows of Lord Roen Gol’s sprawling residence.

  Kor tested the bark of one of the palms with his thumbnail. The tree was real, all right. He wondered how much water was required to keep these trees alive, and if even a Lord had the right to divert so much. By and by, he came upon flowers along the way, gorgeous blooms that had been bred to wrest a hardy livelihood from the grudging soil and to withstand the extremes of heat and cold normal in a single solar revolution.

  Stars blazed inordinately, like many-colored lights strewed at random across the velvet sky. The moon had not yet risen, but a lightening of the upper-air sand clouds to the east betokened its imminent presence.

  Carriages went by as he strolled up the avenue. Obviously, Lord Roen’s reception was to be a lavish affair. He entered finally the broad parking place before the official residence, picked his way among parked carriages and restive horses, until he came at last to the brightly lit doorway.

  Lord Roen Gol was a tall man and heavily built with high cheekbones and a jutting beak of a nose. His hair was iron-gray, and his eyes, sea-green like those of his lovely daughter, held a piercing and inquisitive stare. He greeted Kor’s arrival in person, quickly wrung his hand.

  “My pleasure, Sir!”

  Kor replied, “My gratitude, Lord!”

  They linked arms on the way into the reception room where the guests milled in light, warmth, and shrill talkativeness. The air was heavy with the smell of perfumes; smoke from the scented cigars of the gentlemen drifted in billowing strata. Musical instruments caressed by a score of scantily-clad girls issued a continuous, monotonous tinkle of gaiety.

  The affair was sparkling. Brightness and revelry were everywhere, but none of it meant anything at all to Kor—until he met the Lady Soma again.

  What had his memory of her been, he asked himself, that it seemed so shabby in the light of her real presence? She was dressed in scarlet sequins that flashed and glittered on low-cut bodice and flowing skirt, like a ruddy pyre from which her naked shoulders emerged in cool and lustrous contrast. Her breasts were creamy above her bodice; she held her head proudly erect. Her scarlet skirt in rich folds lashed like a froth of blood about her feet. Kor took her hand, his eyes caught and held by the compelling, sea-green, charm of her gaze.

  Kor spoke to the father, without taking his eyes from the daughter.

  “Your house is richly blessed, Lord.”

  Lord Roen chuckled genially, patted his daughter’s arm.

  “Be wary of her, Sir Kor!”

  The girl flashed her father a look which was not lost upon Kor, and the Lord sobered at once. He bowed shortly, excused himself, and left the two alone.

  “His Lordship seems troubled about something,” Kor began.

  The girl shook her head quickly, laughed with a bright, artificial sound.

  “Not at all. It’s a terrific strain playing host to all these people, and poor Daddy’s been so overworked lately…”

  He strolled with her through the enveloping crowd, her hand on his arm. She was quiet, walked with eyes cast down; it seemed, Kor thought, that she was embarrassed.

  “Let me introduce you to the guests,” she said suddenly, looking up into his face with a sudden reversal of expression, smiling, eyes sparkling. “They’ve all come to meet you, of course.”

  A sense of foreboding swirled over Kor, spoiling the delicious intimacy of their contact.

  He should have extrapolated this encounter, he thought, but it was too late now to profit from it, even if he were successful at it. He turned the task over to his superconsciousness, with a silent command to deliver any warning of danger, and forgot his foreboding in the sensations of the moment.

  It seemed hours before dinner was announced, and by then, Kor had met, formally, nearly all the more important guests. Each name and face was properly filed in his memory without confusion. He would be able at any future time to recognize, or recall by name and appearance any whom he had met tonight—if he should live so long, he thought wryly.

  The dinner was long and heavy. There were speeches. Kor himself had to stand and formally acknowledge introduction to the crowd in a body. At last, Lord Roen clapped his hands and the tables broke up. The air was heavy with scented cigar smoke. The guests drifted toward the next room, where music and dancing had begun already.

  As Kor got to his feet and offered his arm to Lady Soma, he surprised an expression on her face which startled him. It was a look of alarm, mingled with a savage repulsion, and overlaid with grim determination, with fear and sorrow. The look vanished as quickly as she became aware of his glance, and was replaced by a warm smile and a laughing sparkle in her sea-green eyes.

  She doesn’t resemble her father except for the color of her eyes, Kor thought, deliberately wrenching his thoughts from the desolate expression he had surprised on her face. Perhaps more like her mother, or some ancestor—the loveliest woman in the world. Kor realized, with a sense of shock, that he had fallen in love with the Lady Soma.

  They strolled into the ballroom. Soma almost clung to Kor’s arm; her weight dragged him down. He put his arm around her in alarm.

  “Soma…are you ill?”

  She shook her head, then nodded. A look of misery swam in her eyes.

  “It—it’s nothing. Let’s—let’s go out on the terrace.”

  “Of course!”

  The air was warm and stuffy—too much for her, Kor thought. She needed the brisk night air. He turned obediently with her in the direction of wide doors that stood open upon the nighted expanse of a terrace. As he did so, a spear-point of shrill menace darted from his superconsciousness, transfixed him for a breathless instant, and left him gasping.

  Death lurked on the terrace!

  Kor’s eyes narrowed. Lady Soma seemed to be in agony. She couldn’t be faking, he told himself. Her shoulders were bent, she held her head low and breathed with difficulty, as if she were sobbing.

  He steered her quickly through the dancing throng, scorning the jangle of alarm bells in his mind. The air on the terrace was bitingly cold, but it carried a bracing tang that refreshed. A grea
t, golden moon, occupying a full eighth of the quadrant, stood high in the eastern sky. It hung there like a glowing, orange shield, every crater, every ridge, rill, and ancient “sea” easily discernible to the naked eye. The moon hung close now, very close to Rth’s surface. Had the oceans and seas of old still existed, the height of their tides would have staggered the imagination. But the seas were only stagnant ponds, and some day relatively soon, the moon would approach closer until, too close, it would rend itself asunder in a mighty conflict of gravitational forces. But there would be none on Rth then to see the majesty of its destruction, or to suffer from its hurtling fragments. There would be nothing left save the bleached bones of a world bled dry by the Trisz.

  But tonight in its near fullness, the moon cast an orange glow upon the garden and terrace of Lord Roen Gol, and Kor felt himself transfixed again by the voiceless urging of his superconscious mind.

  He held the girl close in his arms, wrapping a fold of his cloak around her to protect her naked shoulders from the chill.

  “Soma! Are you ill?” He had asked this question once before. That he asked it again was indicative of the intensity of his desire that illness was all it might be. A Saint possessed powers in this direction also, and to cleanse her of illness would take him only a moment.

  The Lady Soma shook herself free of the envelopment of his cloak, thrust his supporting arm aside, and walked unsteadily to the balustrade. She toyed with a cluster of blooms that dispelled their fragrance on the frigid night.

  “Lovely, aren’t they? Hydroponics, of course. The tanks hidden in the stonework.”

  That could not be all she had brought him out here to say. Kor would have liked to explore the mind behind those sweet, pallid features. The thought disgusted him. He could not take such a liberty with her! A fog of menace swirled around him, seemed to choke him with its urgency.

  “Something is wrong,” he protested. “I should like to know what it is.”

  She whirled suddenly, thrusting the cluster of flowers behind her. The touch of her hand upon his arm was like the alighting of a frantic bird.

  Her cheeks were deathly pale, her eyes dark and stormy. She drew red lips away from white, even teeth.

  “I brought you out here, Sir Kor—” She stopped, gathered her forces, and continued—“to have you killed!”

  CHAPTER IX

  Kor stepped back a pace. Soma stood rigid against the balustrade, the night-blooming blossoms a hectic background of her distraught loveliness.

  “I do not kill easily!” he said.

  His mind opened automatically, swept out like an expanding spring of tempered steel. He felt the impingement of inimical presences upon his consciousness. He counted them. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six featureless shapes lurked in the deep shadow of palms in Lord Roen Gol’s garden.

  Kor sensed the infinitesimal stir of their bodily electrons. He reduced his vibratory rate of perception until he was merely conscious of the air whistling in and out of their lungs, the unconscious slipping of one muscle upon another, the stirring of the blood in their veins. One of the lurkers had an uneven heartbeat, he noted in passing, probably he would not live long.

  Kor straightened, shaking out his cloak so that it fell cleanly from his shoulders.

  “You supposed it would take six of your killers, Lady Soma? I perceive that many in your garden.”

  His tone dripped scorn, a scorn that hid the hurt and bewilderment that had left him stricken. How had he been wrong? Why had she done this? Was it not, rather, the machination of her father, that genial politician dancing in the next room with some fat, elderly dowager? Was not the Blue Brother also at fault, and beyond them all, the Trisz?

  A burst of tinkling music followed by a wave of applause surged through the doors and stormed the terrace.

  “No,” she whispered. “Be quiet. There is time. I was not to have told you that, only to bring you here, put you at your ease, then go back inside for my wrap. I—I am trying to help you!”

  “Which,” Kor asked wonderingly, “is the real you?”

  She stepped toward him. “Come, your arm, Sir Kor. Embrace me!”

  “The embrace—of death?”

  “Of life! You are safe so long as I am with you. But I cannot stay long.”

  It was an effort for her to keep her attention strictly upon his face, to keep from looking into the darkness of the palm grove. Her manner belied her words, even, for she laughed excitedly, as she talked, seemed animated and gay—

  “Quickly! Your arm, Sir Kor!”

  Slowly, Kor obeyed. She squirmed quickly into his grasp, laid her head on his scarlet-covered breast.

  “Listen, closely. I know you can detect those men in the garden. Be ready to act if one of them moves. But pretend to be interested in me. Smile—if you can. Those men in the garden are Trisz Thugs. Do—you know what Thugs are?” Kor knew. They were the secret murder corps of the Trisz. The Institute knew the history of the Thugs; the Men were not released wholly to be babes in the jungle.

  “I know,” Kor nodded, and smiled as if he had uttered a sally of wit.

  “In a few moments,” Lady Soma continued breathlessly, “I must go back in and leave you here alone. The instant I am safely inside the door, the Thugs have their orders to blast you where you stand.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Kor kept his mind opened, alert for the least motion among the six. All stood motionless, waiting. He sensed the tenseness of their attitudes.

  “Why do you think?”

  For a moment, an indescribable feeling of giddiness rushed over Kor. He thrust it brutally aside.

  “I cannot believe you have a personal reason, Lady Soma.”

  She smiled as she looked up into his eyes, but her own were dark with the turmoil of her thoughts.

  “Perhaps; perhaps not. Let us say this, then—that I am a woman of the People. My father is Lord of this region. Do we not also owe a duty to the People, even as great as that assumed by the Men?”

  Kor was troubled. What did she know of the Men’s duty toward the People?

  She said, “Sir Ten Roga was a great friend, Kor. We know things, my father and I, that we cannot tell even to you and we know things, about the Men that neither the People nor the Trisz know. Is that enough? Must I tell you also that not only is your own life forfeit, but that of my father, also?” She paused to control the rising passion in her voice.

  “Let me tell it to you quickly. I must not linger too long. You see me now as the daughter of my father. I am also a spy in the city. I work on the staff of the Trisz Extrapolator. My father does not know that, of course. He would object if he did. But he has been playing a dangerous game, himself. He is allied with the Men, Kor. To help drive the Trisz out of our world!”

  Kor listened calmly, analyzing the words that fell from her lips. The semantics were clean and proper, he detected no overtones of falsehood.

  “Go on,” he said quietly.

  “Recently my father concluded a brotherhood pact with the Lord of Set-loo. Before, there had been some feuding between them, and flare-ups of fighting between our opposing troops were common. The Lord of Set-loo misunderstood certain things, but my father ironed out these difficulties with him. The Trisz were at the bottom of the discord, of course. It is an open secret that they encourage poor relations among the various districts. My father undertook to make his pact with the Lord of Set-loo in secret, but the Trisz found out. The Trisz punish secrecy of this kind with death. Your death will be the signal for my father’s arrest. He will be publicly executed for your murder.”

  “Not all you say is understandable.”

  “I cannot make it more plain. There is not time. My real identity is not known where I serve the Trisz. I was chosen to attend this function as my other self to lur
e you within blaster range of the Thugs. I had to let myself be chosen, you see, because only I could have given you warning!”

  She moved away from him. “Now there is no more time. I must go in and get my wrap.”

  “Wait!” Kor caught her by the shoulder, spun around to face him. “You would walk off like this, knowing that in another moment I will be blasted to a charred crust?”

  She smiled, calmly possessed of herself.

  “Not you, Kor. I told you I know things about the Men. You can save yourself. I have given you the opportunity. Good-bye, Kor.”

  “Wait!” She hesitated, poised. He rushed on. “If you are asked ever to identify me—swear you have never seen me before. Claim that you talked with an imposter here tonight. You understand?”

  She nodded, wide-eyed, then hurried through the open doors.

  And Kor reacted. The softly swaying palm fronds froze into icy petals. All sound stopped. The air was solid around him. The universe stood still.

  The action he must follow came to him in a burst of rationalization. With infinite deliberation, Kor palped with his mind the six motionless figures in the garden. There was one about his own size.

  The time-stasis—actually, the acceleration of Kor’s consciousness of time—brought its own peculiar set of conditions into play. Kor was living fast at an extremely high rate of molecular vibration. Every molecule in his body vibrated at such tremendous speed that his body no longer bore any relationship to normal matter, but was matter beyond matter. If he continued to remain in one position long enough for an observer’s eye to react, he would seem to have disappeared completely. What Kor had to do required doing in that brief fraction of a second before he would appear to vanish into nothing before the eyes of the watching Thugs.