by C. L. Moore
Yes, she would find a lever, and she would have no mercy in her use of it, for it would take some intolerable force indeed to swerve Jamie from his course.
-
When the blue twilight was deepest over Darva and the Terrestrialized city slept, Quanna went up the winding stair which led to the roof of the commander's quarters. It was the dark of the cloud-flow, but she carried no light. Artificial lighting is rare on Venus, which never know true darkness on Dayside. Quanna moved unerringly through the blue gloom upon the roof.
She carried a sheaf of slender, hollow rods under her arm, and in one hand a basket of decaying flowers. The heavy, noxiously sweet fragrance of their dissolution is irresistible to several species of Venus' flying creatures, most of them poisonous.
Quanna joined her hollow rods together until she had a long, slender pole, about whose upper end she twined garlands of the heavy-smelling, rotting blossoms, working deftly in the near-darkness. Darva was hushes below her. From the mountains behind her to the mountains before blew the fragrances of jungle canyons; and the rumble of rockslides thundered from far away.
Darva was built like a medieval fortress, a walled plateau guarded by crenelated mural towers at regular intervals all around the city. The commander's quarters were built into the upper end of the wall, one with it, so that the roof upon which Quanna stood looked down sheerly over wall and plateau edge, toward the tremendous blue mountains beyond the river. She had taken refuge in a battlement and was waving her long, flower-twined pole in slow circles.
In an incredibly short time a whir of wings sounded in the deep, blue twilight and a night-flying shape swept out of the dimness toward the pole. Quanna braced herself against the battlement and continued to fish the air streams blowing toward the cliffs. More wings—more swooping, dim shapes out of the twilight as the cruising nocturnal creatures of the mountains began to catch that intoxicating odor on the wind. Presently she was the center of a whirling, dipping swarm of silent things, all making circles around the decayed flowers like moths around a light, all in the uttermost silence except for the beat of wings.
When she saw what she wanted, she lowered the pole until the flowery tip was within reach, and she put out an intrepid hand into the midst of the hovering creatures and seized a dark, winged horror by the neck. It beat at her furiously with scaled pinions a yard long, and its thick, muscular, serpent body lashed at her face. Composedly—she had handled the winged snakes since childhood—she put down the pole and went deftly to work over the threshing thing whose great blue-scaled wings winnowed the air. The blue, reptilian body wound and rewound about her forearms and venomous hissing punctuated the wing beats. Quanna paid no attention. Deadly poison though the winged snakes are, they can be safely handled by those who know how. This one bore a small, pale brand on its flat head as token that it had been handled before.
When Quanna tossed it into the air a moment later it shook outraged wings, dived at her once or twice with fierce hissings, and then hurled itself once more into the group still circling about the rotted blossoms on the pole.
Quanna went forward confidently, hesitated a moment, then reached out to seize another of the circling things out of the flutter and confusion around the flowers. This one she stroked with long, rhythmic motions until its scaled and writhing body quieted in hypnotized inertia and the great wings folded into stillness. She wrapped a scarf around them and then went forward to beat off the rest of the swarm and cover the flowers with her cloak.
In a few minutes, when the sick-sweet fragrance had dissipated upon the air, the noxious flying coven of poison things began to disband, great, dark shapes sailing and swooping out in widening circles until the blueness of the twilight swallowed them. Quanna smoothed her disheveled hair and began to dismantle her fishing rod.
She knew that when the light began to broaden again over the mountains the branded flying snake she had released would return to its home in the cliff above the hidden fortress where she had been born. It would not be long before Vastari had the message she had bound beneath its blue-scaled wing.
And then—if Vastari trusted her enough—a certain species of hell would be unleashed upon the citadel which Jamie Douglas still held for Imperial Earth.
-
When the alarm sirens exploded into sudden brazen wailing over Darva one twilight two days later, Quanna knew that Vastari still trusted her. She stood by Jamie's mirror, watching him buckle on the cuirass without which no one dared walk the battlements when Venusian spearmen were below, and her dark gaze was somber.
Jamie, ducking into the breast-armor, was as excited as she could remember seeing him. A Venusian attack was always exciting; the rippling drums and the shrill, high keening of the seven-toned pipes get into the listeners' blood and quicken the heartbeats in time with that wild, tuneless rhythm. Venusians do not shout in battle. The pipes and drums are the only sounds of attack, clear, inhuman music as if not men but something wild and rhythmic were attacking the city.
"Damned fools," declared Jamie, struggling with the straps of his cuirass. "Here, help me, Quanna. Attacking with spears and slings—must be something behind this. Recognize any of 'em, Quanna? Is Vastari there? Lord, I'd like to see him over a Knute before I go!"
Her eyes veiled. "You hate him, Jamie?"
"Hate?" He paused to look at her, smiling a little grimly. "Well, hardly that. He's a symbol, Quanna—a symbol of barbarism. If I could see him dead before I go, I'd be sure of one enemy less against Venusian civilization. Him and his babble about freedom!" Jamie snorted. "There might be safety a little longer for the people we leave behind if Vastari should die this evening. Well—" He shrugged and swung away. Quanna followed him smoothly, her satin skirts whispering along the floor as she walked.
They stepped out into the cool evening light, into a subdued, hushed murmur of activity. Except for the shrill, inhuman rhythm of the music outside, even battle, on Venus, was—hushed. And the music was dying now as the attackers went grimly into action.
Lieutenant Morgan was waiting by the Armory door, a file of armed Earthmen with him. The great, solid block of the Armory, and the lower walls of Darva, were the work of Earthmen's hands only and their secrets known only to Terrestrials. The Armory—heart and brain of Earth domination—was unlocked only in the presence of the commanding officer, and it was not unlocked with keys. There was no chance that Venusians might gain access to this vital ganglion of defense, or Quanna would not have resorted to this last dangerous expedient of inviting attack that the Armory be opened to her.
There was no hope even of tricking the guarded combination of the door out of the few officers who knew it, for strictly speaking, it was unknown even to them. The elaborate precautions that guarded that secret were eloquent of its importance. It had been implanted in the subconscious minds of a very few Terrestrials while under the influence of neo-curare.
Morgan had just finished making a hypodermic injection into the arm of one of his men as Quanna and Jamie came up. Neo-curare, dulling the conscious mind, releasing the subconscious—
"Ready?" asked Jamie crisply.
Morgan glanced at his watch. "Ready, sir." He slid aside a tiny panel in the door, uncovering a dial. The hands of the drugged soldier hid it; his dulled eyes did not change, but his fingers began to move as Morgan said: "Armory combination." This was the effective lock that guarded Earth weapons, the lock for which no key could be stolen.
Even if Vastari could have kidnaped one of the key men, neither he nor any Venusian knew the ingredients of the drug or the proper dosage to administer. Yes—an effective lock. But not wholly proof against traitors, Quanna told herself as she watched the weapons being brought out with rapid efficiency.
One of the Knute vibrators was being taken out of the Armory now. It looked like a thick, closed umbrella. The crew of four—three to operate, one to aim—handled the yard-long device with the carelessness born of long practice. Quanna had watched that practice more than once, from h
iding places that only Venusians knew.
The Knute vibrator was a device attuned to the delicate vibrations of the brain, a wave-thrower that could disrupt the molecules of the mind, causing a mental explosion that resulted in death. Quanna had learned the simple devices that operated it during her first weeks in Darva. More important, she had learned of the safety device, the vitally significant Gilson inert fuse. Eavesdropping in the violet twilight one evening she had heard Lieutenant Morgan excoriate a crew for testing the vibrator with the inert fuse in place.
"It's the difference between bullets and blanks," his angry voice had floated up to her out of the practice yard. "Once you put the Gilson in, you've got dynamite in your hands." There had been much more, and Quanna remembered it faithfully.
Without the inert fuse, the Knute vibrator was not deadly. It threw off a vibration that had the same effect as inaudible sound, causing reasonless confusion and terror in its victims. Dangerous wild beasts could be driven off by its use, or killed with the Gilson inert fuse in place.
Quanna followed the crew that carried a Knute to the wall. They wore the usual outfit of wall defenders, metal cuirasses, helmets, face masks with heavily glassed goggles swinging at their belts.
"There is dust on your lenses, men," she said, pointing to the nearest mask.
The soldiers grinned down at her, a little flattered by the notice that she usually reserved entirely for the commander. Quanna reached for a mask and polished the eyepieces with a corner of the rainbow scarf that veiled her hair.
"You may need to see clearly soon," she told them with a serene upward glance. "Let me have your mask, soldier ... Thank you."
Afterward she fell back and watched the men move up to the battlemented tower top and unfold the vibrator. She was not smiling; it had been easy enough, but she did not feel like smiling this evening. The masks were well rubbed now with a secretion from certain spiderlike insects of the high mountains. Like some Terrestrial creatures, the arachnid paralyzes its victims so that its larvae can feed at leisure. It is the fumes that paralyze, and they would work swiftly after the men had donned their masks and body-heat released the poison for the mucous eye membrane to absorb.
After that, paralysis, instant and effective. But paralysis of the body, not the brain. Because of that, Quanna knew that her hours in Darva were numbered.
She paused for a moment in the door of the commander's quarter to look back over Darva, which she might never see again. The walled city was in a hum of ordered activity as guns were rushed to the walls and defenders to positions in the mural towers. And always, she saw, it was Terrestrials who did the ordering, Venusians who scurried obediently into place. She could picture what Darva would look like in the first attack after the Earthmen left. Terror, confusion, inefficiency. She was not sure even in her own mind if she were glad for Vastari's sake or sorry for Jamie's that this should be so.
But there was no time now for loitering. She went in swiftly, moving on silent feet through the hurried confusion of indoors. There was a certain tapestry-hung angle of a hallway in which she paused while two servants hurried downstairs; then her fingers were flattening against the smooth surface behind the tapestry and a panel slid open without a sound. The Earthmen might suspect, but they could not know of the hidden passages which Venusian masons had built into Darva.
She went upward in darkness, even her cat-vision almost blind here. Halfway up she paused to find a long, scarf-wrapped bundle in a cubby-hole. The bundle squirmed faintly, giving off the musk scent of all night-flying things on Venus, where no definite evolutionary cleavage has ever been made between reptile and bird.
At the head of the dark stairs she found another panel, and a little slit of light widened in the wall. Blue twilight poured through, and the vague sounds of Venusian battle. She could hear the heart-quickening beat of the tripping drums below, the keening of the seven-toned pipes where Vastari's men were making a desperate effort to scale the walls before the Earthmen's invincible weapons could be turned upon them.
Quanna looked out on the turret where the Knute vibrator was being set up. From here it could rake the base of the walls with crossfire. The crew had not yet donned their masks, she saw. They were unfolding the umbrellalike weapon, till on a high tripod of meshed wires stood a conical torpedo of glass, mounted on a universal joint. From equidistant points at the base of the tripod wires led out to control boxes, each with a red push button.
"The Gilson," said one of the men, and was handed the inert fuse, a short pencillike rod. Quanna watched him slip it into place. "Power."
A red button was pushed. The mesh base of the Knute began to quiver—but only one section of it. Slowly the wavelike motion spread out, till the whole section was shimmering like a veil.
"Now!"
The next man pushed his button. The shimmer crawled on to his section. Then the third—
Quanna noticed that whenever one of the panels slowed in its rippling dance, the guardian of that section pressed his button again, replenishing the power. The three men bent over their tasks. The fourth handled the aiming of the projector.
It was not difficult. Quanna could not see its effect from her position, but she read the faces of the men, and heard the shouts of the Venusians from below the tower. A spear clattered against the battlement.
"Masks," one of the men said, and slipped his into place. The others obeyed. Quanna hugged the vaguely squirming bundle under her arm and waited tensely.
She did not have a long wait. At the end of it she stepped out onto the tower top, walking delicately among the inert but conscious men, lying awkwardly in the attitudes in which they had fallen, unable to stir or speak. They watched her with wide, glassy eyes.
She waited for the vibrations of the Knute to subside. The arms folded up into place easily enough and the device was not heavy to lift. As serenely as if the shocked and horrified men were not watching, she unwrapped her scarf from the great, scaled wings and serpent body of the flying creature she had captured several twilights ago. A harness was already buckled around it; she fastened the Knute into place as quickly as she could, for by now the silencing of this tower's defense must already have been noticed.
She tossed the freed serpent thing into the air. It hissed furiously and beat its broad, iridescent wings against the weight of the thing lashed to it. It would not fly far with that drag upon it, but there was no need of gaining distance now. Heedless of arrows, she leaned over the parapet to watch what happened.
-
Shouts rang out from below and from the wall defenders. Both sides had seen it now. Quanna held her breath. The flying snake was stronger than she had thought. It was carrying its burden out over the heads of the attackers, sinking slowly, but forging grimly ahead. Now it was clear of the last tower—and it was fluttering, confused falling. Another Knute had been focused upon it, she realized.
It dropped. A rush of Venusians, heedless of danger from above, closed over the threshing, scaly wings, hiding them from view. The pipes suddenly shrilled high and triumphantly. Quanna let her breath out in a long sigh.
Then Jamie's voice, clear and resonant, shouted: "They've got a Knute! Open the gates—"
She flattened herself to the wall, straining to see the little troop of earthmen charging outward in a wedge toward the precious weapon. Quanna heard footsteps hurrying up the stairway toward her, but she did not move. Would Vastari obey? With this chance of killing Jamie—would he remember the surer plan and escape with the deadly vibrator?
No—not deadly. But Vastari would not know that. He would not guess the purpose of the Gilson inert fuse, or that Quanna had removed the little tube and hidden it. But as for Jamie—fighting forward toward the Knute—
A swarm of Venusians closed in between the Terrestrial wedge and the vibrator. She could not see clearly what was happening, and the footsteps were very close behind her now. She gave one last, despairing glance over the parapet and whirled toward her panel. The paralyzed Earthmen
watched her go.
She was leaving few secrets behind her, she reflected as she hurried down the dark steps inside. When the gun crew recovered—But this had been the only way. And she must remain hidden now in some other of the secret places in the walls until she could escape after the gates were opened. It was a risky thing to trust Vastari with the weapon, but not even in peace time could she have walked out of Darva carrying a Knute; nor, of course, could she have captured the weapon except in the confusion and emergency of attack.
And this was only the beginning of the elaborate and cruel plan she had laid against Jamie. She should be thinking of that now, but she was not. She was seeing the battlefield as she had last glimpsed it, Jamie's bare, dark head forging forward among the attackers, and the pipes shrilling triumph. Briefly she remembered Jamie's ominous dream.
-
The rumble of a far-away landslide made slow thunder through the streets of Darva as Jamie stood in the door of his quarters, drawing on his gloves and watching the last Terrestrials upon Venus form into marching order down the street. He did not look up at the high blue mountains or out over the familiar roofs and terraces below. He would remember Darva, he knew, with an aching sort of memory that would last as long as he did. But he was not letting himself think at all. He was glad of Ghej beside him, to keep his mind turned outward.
"Sure you won't join us?" he asked for the last time, and again received the beaky smile and the headshake with which the old Martian had answered that question before.
"No, I'll stay. The Solar System isn't too good a place to live in these days, but I think Venus will be the least turbulent in our lifetime. It's the last refuge from the barbarians, anyhow. I don't expect them on Venus yet awhile, perhaps not during my life span—but they'll come, commander. They'll come." He pressed his lips together and squinted under his triangular, horny lids as if into a future he did not like at all. After a moment he shrugged. "No, I'll stay. I'm adjusted here well enough." He touched the small gun that showed at his belt when they gray robe swung back. "They respect me here."