Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  But he had moved only a scant half dozen feet when his luck deserted him. He bumped violently into a table that he had failed to notice in the gloom, and the result­ing noise brought a bull—like bellow from the corridor without. The next moment, sword in hand, a veritable giant of a man dashed through the door and made for Tumithak.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER III - The Passing of Yakra

  That the man was a Yakran, Tumithak would have known, had he met him in the depths of Loor. Though the Loorian knew of the Yakrans only through the stories of the older men, who remembered the wars with that city, he saw at once that this was just the kind of barbarian that had figured in the stories. He was fully four inches taller than Tumithak, and far broader and heavier, and his chin was covered with a tremendous, bristly growth of beard—sufficient evidence in itself that the owner was of Yakra. His tunic was covered with bits of bone and metal sewn into the cloth, the former stained in various colors and sewn in a crude pattern. Around his neck was a necklace made of dozens of finger-bones threaded on a thin strip of skin.

  Tumithak saw in an instant that he would have little chance with this huge Yakran if he were to stand fairly up to him, and so, even as he drew his sword and pre­pared to defend himself, he was casting about in his mind for some method to overcome him by strategy. The most probable plan, he decided at once, would be to drive him somehow into the pit; but to drive this colossus was almost as impossible as to defeat him by face to face fighting methods. And before Tumithak could devise any more subtle method of overcoming his adversary, he found his entire mind taken up with methods of defending himself.

  The Yakran rushed at him, still shouting his rumbling war-cry, and it was but the merest luck that enabled Tumithak to avoid the first terrific blow aimed at him. Tumithak dropped to one knee, but in a moment was up again and only just in time to avoid another sweep of that glistening sword. On his feet again, however, his defense was perfect, and the Yakran found it necessary to retire a step or two, in order to prepare another of his lunging rushes.

  Again and again the Yakran rushed at Tumithak, and it was only the Loorian’s uncanny skill at fencing, learned through many years in the hope of facing a shelk, that saved him. Around and around the table, now close to the pit and now farther away, they fought ; until even Tumithak’s steel-like muscles began to tire.

  But as his body tired, brain quickened, and at last a plan came to him to defeat the Yakran, He allowed himself to be gradually forced to the edge of the pit and then, as he parried a particularly powerful lunge, he suddenly threw one hand high in the air and screamed. The Yakran, believing that he had struck him, smiled a vicious smile and stepped back for a final rush. Sword pointing at Tumithak’s breast, he dashed forward, and as he did so, Tumithak threw himself at his opponent’s feet.

  There was a wild howl from the giant as he stumbled over the recumbent form, but before he could recover himself, he dropped heavily at the very edge of the pit. Tumithak kicked wildly, and the great Yakran, grasping frantically at the air, dropped into the well! There was a hoarse cry from the darkness below, a heavy thud and then silence.

  For several minutes, Tumithak lay panting at the edge of the pit. This was the first battle he had ever had with a man, and though he was the victor, it was only by a miracle, it seemed, that he had not been defeated. What would the people of Loor and Nonone say, he wondered, if they knew that their self-appointed slayer of shelks had been so nearly defeated by the first enemy that had attacked him—and that enemy not a shelk, but a man, and a man of despised Yakra, at that? For several minutes, the Loorian lay, filled with self-reproach, and then, reflecting that if all his enemies were conquered with a margin even so small as this, his victory was certain, he arose, pulled himself together and left the room.

  He was in Yakra now, and it was necessary for him to find some means of passing safely through the city in order to reach the (lark corridors beyond. For only through these dark corridors might he win his way to the upper Surface. He continued cautiously on his way, turning over in his brain plan after plan that would enable him to deceive the Yakrans; but he was almost within sight of the inhabited walls of Yakra before he conceived an idea that seemed to him to be feasible.

  There was but one thing that all men in these pits feared, with a fear that was quite unreasoning: And it was upon this unreasoning fear that Tumithak decided to play.

  He began to run. He ran slowly at first, a mere trot, but as he drew nearer the corridors where men lived, he increased his pace, running faster and faster until he was fleeing along like one who had all the demons of hell at his back. Which was precisely the effect that he wished to produce.

  In the distance he saw a group of Yakrans approach­ing. They beheld him at the same time that he spied them, and in a moment more were charging down on him; quite aware, as he knew, that he was not a Yakran. Instead of trying to avoid them, he charged straight into their midst, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  “Shelks!” he shouted, as though in the last stages of terror, “Shelks!”

  The bellicose attitude of the men changed at once to one of extreme fright. Without a word to Tumithak or even so much as a backward glance, they turned, and as he dashed past them, they sped panic-stricken after him. Had they been men of Loor, they might have paused long enough to investigate, or at least, have held Tumithak and questioned him. But not these Yakrans. This town was many miles nearer the Surface than Loot, and many of the older men could still remember the time that the shelks had raided these halls on one of their rare hunting expeditions, leaving a trail of death and de­struction that would never be forgotten while those that witnessed it lived. So the terror was far more of a liv­ing thing to Yakra than it was to Loor, to whom it was little more than a terrible legend of the past.

  And so, without a word of question, the Yakrans fled down the long corridor after Tumithak, through branching hallways and through doorways that seemed mere entrances to apartments, but were actually roads to the main corridor. Several times they passed other men or groups of men, but at the fearful cry of “Shelks” these always dropped whatever they were doing and followed the frightened throng. A good many dashed down branching corridors, in which, they imagined, lay greater safety; but the majority continued on their way to the heart of the city, the direction in which Tumithak was going.

  The Loorian was no longer in the lead now, several of the fleeter Yakrans had passed him, terror lending wings to their feet. And so the size of the mob grew, and was augmented by greater and greater numbers as they came closer to the town center; until at last the corridor was filled with a screaming, terrified multitude in which Tumithak was completely lost.

  They neared the wide main corridor, and here they found a great mass of people that had surged in from every one of the branching corridors. How the news had traveled so quickly, Tumithak was unable to guess, but apparently the entire city was already aware of the sup­posed danger. And like sheep, or rather, like the humans they were, all had been seized with the same idea—the desire to reach the center of the city, where, they supposed, the greatest safety lay in the presence of the great­est numbers.

  But now this frenzied confusion bade fair to defeat the plan that Tumithak had devised to cross the city safely under cover of the excitement he caused. To be sure, he had almost won to the center of the city without discovery, and the inhabitants were so wrought tip that there would be little chance of anyone noticing that he was a stranger; but so thickly packed was the crowd that it became more and more certain that the Loorian was not going to he able to work his way through, in order to reach the corridors beyond. Yet in spite of the apparent hopelessness, Tumithak struggled along with the frantic mob, hoping against hope that he might gain a comparatively clear corridor beyond the city’s center before the fright of the people died down to the point where they would begin the inevitable search for the one who had started the panic.

  The crowd, its fright enhanced by that strange
sense of telepathy that is evident in any large assembly of peo­ple, was becoming dangerous. Men were using their fists freely to hatter their way, they passed their weaker brothers, and here and there voices could be heard, high pitched with anger. Tumithak saw a man stumble and fall, and a moment later, heard a scream as the un fortu­nate one was trampled on by the ones behind him. Hardly had the scream died away when there was another cry from the opposite side of the passage, where another man had fallen and found himself unable to regain his feet.

  The Loorian seemed little more than a leaf borne along on the stream of shouting, gesticulating Yakrans by the time he reached the center of the city. Time after time he had almost been swept from his feet, only to regain his balance by what seemed a miracle. He had nearly gained the huge square that marked the crossing of the two main corridors when he stumbled over a fallen Yakran and almost went down. He attempted to pass on, and then stopped. The form beneath his feet was that of a woman with a baby in her arms!

  Her face was tear-stained and bleeding, her clothes were torn in a dozen places, yet she was attempting bravely to prevent the injury of her child beneath the feet of the multitude. Tumithak instantly stooped over to raise her to her feet, but even before he could do so, the crowd had pushed him almost beyond the reach of her. Sudden anger swept over him, and plunging out wrathfully, he dealt blow after blow into the faces of the onrushing multitude of creatures, who would have crushed one of their own people in their anxiety for personal safety. The Yakrans yielded before his blows, poured on either side of him for a moment, and in that moment, Tumithak stooped and raised the woman to her feet.

  She was still conscious, as the wan smile that she be­stowed upon him showed, and though he knew she was an enemy of his people, Tumithak felt a momentary pity that his ruse to frighten the Yakrans had been so successful. She was trying to tell him something, but so great were the confused shouts that it was im­possible for him to understand her. He bent down his head to hers to hear what she had to say.

  “The doorway across the hail,” she screamed in his ear, “Try to get through the crowd to the third doorway across the hail! There is safety there !”

  Tumithak placed her in front of him and drove sav­agely into the crowd, his fists flashing out around her and protecting her as they moved. It was hard to keep from being hustled, against his will, into the central square, but at last he gained the doorway and thrust the woman through it. He followed her inside, and gave a great gasp of relief as he found himself free from the struggles of the crowd. He stood for a moment in the doorway, to assure himself that nobody intended to fol­low them, and then turned back to the woman with the child.

  She had torn a small piece of cloth from the sleeve of her tattered garment and as he faced her, she paused from wiping the blood and tears from her face long enough to flash him a frightened, little smile. Tumithak could not but wonder at the apparent gentleness and refinement of this woman of savage Yakra. He had been taught to believe, since childhood, that the Yakrans were a strange race, not unlike our concept of goblins and witches, and yet, this woman might have been a daughter of one of the best families of Loor. Tumithak had to learn that in no matter what nation or age one finds one­self, he will find gentleness, if he looks, as well as savagery.

  All this while the child, who had evidently been too frightened to cry, had been as silent as though dead, but now it set up a lusty screaming. The mother, after attempting for several moments to silence it with croonings and whispers, at last applied nature’s first silencer, and as the child quieted down and began nursing, she arose and motioning Tumithak to follow, led the way to the door­way across the room and entered the rear of the apart­ment. She was gone a moment, and then she called to the Loorian, and with a realization of what she meant dawning in his mind, he followed her. In the next room, sure enough, the woman pointed to the ceiling and showed him the circular hole of a shaft- leading upward.

  “Here is the entrance to an old corridor that is not known to more than twenty people in all Yakra,” she said, “It leads across the square to the upper end of the city. We can hide up there for days and the shelks will probably never know that we exist. Here is safety.”

  Tumithak nodded and began the ascent of the ladder, pausing only long enough to assure himself that the woman was following him. The ladder extended not more than thirty feet upward and then they found them­selves in the dark in a corridor that must have been un­used for many centuries. So dark was it that as soon as they moved away from the pit shaft, it was impossible to distinguish the faintest glow of light. Certainly the woman was right in calling this an unknown corridor. Even Tumithak’s maps had never told him of this passage.

  The woman seemed to be quite at home in the passage, however, for with a whispered word to Tumithak, she began to feel her way along the wall, only stopping now and then to whisper softly to her baby. Tumithak fol­lowed her, keeping one hand on her shoulder and so they felt their way along until they came at last to a spot where a single light glowed dimly, and here the woman sat down to rest. Tumithak did likewise, and the woman, reaching into her pocket, drew out a crude needle and thread and began to stitch the tears in her garment. Presently she spoke.

  “Isn’t it terrible,” she whispered, her voice hushed as though she feared that even here the shelks might be listening. ‘What has started them to hunting again, I wonder?”

  Tumithak made no reply and in a moment, she continued:

  “My grandfather was killed in a shelk raid. That must have been nearly forty years ago. And now they have come upon us again! My poor husband! I separated from him almost as soon as we left our apartment. Oh! I do hope he reaches safety. He doesn’t know about this corridor.” She looked to him for comfort. “Do you think he will be safe?”

  Tumithak smiled.

  “Will you believe me if I tell you that he is surely safe from the shelks?” he asked, “Truly, I can assure you that he will not be slain by the shelks in this raid.”

  “I only hope you are right,” the woman began, and then, as if she had noticed him for the first time, she continued, suddenly, “You are not of Yakra!”

  And then, quite positively and harshly, “You are a man of Loor!”

  Tumithak realized that the woman had at last noticed the Loorian clothes that he wore, and so made no attempt to dissemble.

  “Yes,” he answered, “I am of Loor.”

  The woman arose in consternation, clasping her baby tighter to her breast, as though to protect it from this ogre from the lower corridors.

  “What are you doing in these halls?” she asked, fear­fully, “Is it you that have brought this raid down upon us? I could well believe that the men of Loor would ally themselves with the shelks, if such a thing were possible. And surely, this is the first time in history that the shelks ever came upon us from the lower end of the city.”

  Tumithak considered for a moment. He saw no rea­son why he should not tell this woman the truth. It could do him no harm, and might at least put her mind at rest, regarding the safety of her husband.

  “It will probably be the last time that the shelks ever come upon you from the lower end of the city, too,” he said, and in a few brief words, he explained to her his ruse and its rather appalling success. The woman was puzzled.

  “But why should you desire to pass through Yakra?” she asked, incredulously, “Are you going into the dark corridors? What man in his senses would desire to explore them?”

  “I am not seeking to explore the dark corridors,” the Loorian answered. “My goal lies even beyond them!”

  “Beyond the dark corridors?”

  “Yes,” said Tumithak, and rose to his feet. As always when he spoke of his “mission,” he was, for the moment, a dreamer, a fanatic.

  “I am Tumithak,” he said, “I am the slayer of the shelk! You wish to know why I seek to go beyond the dark corridors? It is because I am on my way to the Surface. For on the Surface is a shelk that, all unknowing, awaits hi
s doom! I am going to slay a shelk!”

  The woman gazed at him in consternation. She was quite certain, now, that she was alone with a madman. No other could even conceive such an incredible thought. She clasped her child tighter to her and drew away from him.

  Tumithak was quick to notice her attitude. He had, many times before, seen people draw away from him in just the same manner, when he spoke of his mission. And so, quite unoffended by her unflattering opinion of him, he began to explain to her why he believed it possible for men to once more engage in battle with the mas­ters of the Surface.

  The woman listened for a while, and as he waxed more and more eloquent on his subject, Tumithak saw that she was beginning to believe. He told her of the book he had found, and how it had decided for him what his mission in life should be. He told her of the three strange gifts of his father, and how he hoped they would help him to be successful in his quest. And at last, he saw the look come into her eyes that he had often seen in Thupra’s, and knew that she believed.

  The woman’s thoughts, however, had been quite different from what Tumithak believed. She had listened, to be sure, but as she listened, she was thinking of the fury with which Tumithak had attacked the terror-stricken mob that had nearly crushed her. She was study­ing the erect, handsome form of him, the smooth-shaven face and keen eyes; and comparing him with the men of Yakra. Ann! at last she believed, not because of Tumithak’s eloquence, but because of the age-old appeal of sex.