The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “Me?” she murmured.

  “You—of course. Because I—want you to like me.” His fingers involuntarily touched a stray lock of her hair as she sat there at his feet, but when she moved her head away he withdrew his hand. His slow voice went on:

  “Back in those other days, Lady Elza, the little Taro had strange dreams. A power within him—he could feel it—here—” His gaze was far away; his fist struck his breast. “He could feel it—the urge to fulfill his destiny—feel it within him, and no one else knew it was there.

  “Then—you came. A shy, rather pretty little girl, he realizes now, is all you were. But then—you seemed a goddess. A new dream arose—a dream of you… I frighten you, child?” His tone was contrite. “I do not mean to do that. I am too hasty. Queer, isn’t it, that I can make men, nations, worlds, obey me—but I have to bide my time with a fragile little woman?”

  His mood changed; he stirred. “I could bend you to my will—break you—like that!” His lean fingers snapped. Then his hand dropped, and again he relaxed. “But of what use?… Your respect? I have it now. Respect and fear come to me from everyone. It is something more than that I want from you.”

  She would have spoken, but his gesture stopped her. “Queer that I should want it? Yes, I think perhaps it is. The little Taro was very queer, perhaps very impressionable. He knew he had nations and worlds to conquer—a destiny to fulfill. Not alone because of you, little Elza. I would not make you think that. But for you to share. The great Tarrano, master of the universe, and his Lady Elza! Worlds for you to toy with, like gems on a thread adorning your white throat—”

  He must have swayed her, the sheer power of him. Impulsively she touched his knee. “I am not worth—”

  His face clouded with a frown. “I would not try to buy your love—”

  “Oh,” she said. “No, I did not mean—”

  “I would not try to buy you. I want to share with you—these worlds—as your due. To make myself master of everything, so that you will look to me and say, ‘He is the greatest of all men—I love him’.… Soon I will be the greatest of all men throughout the ages. And very gentle always, with you, Lady Elza—”

  A buzz came from the disc at his belt. He answered the call—listened to a voice.

  “So? Bring him here.” He disconnected. “…very gentle with you, my Elza—”

  His voice drifted away. He seemed waiting; and Elza, her head whirling with the confusion of it all, sat silent. A moment; then Argo appeared, driving a half-nude man before him. A native official of Venia, stripped of his uniform. Argo flung him down in the garden path, where he cowered, his face ashen, his eyes wild, lips mumbling with terror.

  Tarrano barely moved. “So? You tell me he was asleep at the mirrors, Argo?”

  “Master, I could not help it! Since first you made your move in Greater New York at Park Sixty, I have sat there. Two nights and a day—”

  “And you fell asleep without asking for a relief?”

  “Master, I—”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. I did not realize I was sleeping—”

  A gesture to Argo, and the man was flung closer to Tarrano’s feet. Elza shrank away.

  “Left a mirror unattended. So?… The wire, Argo.” He took the length of wire, gleaming white-hot, as the leering, gloating Argo turned the current into it—Tarrano took it, lashed it upon the poor wretch’s naked back and legs. Welts arose, and the stench of burning flesh. A measured score of the passionless strokes made him writhe and scream in agony.

  It turned Elza sick and faint. Shuddering, she crouched there, hiding her face until the punishment was over and the half-unconscious culprit was carried away.

  “Very gentle with you, my Elza.…”

  She looked up to find Tarrano smiling at her; looked up and stared, and wondered what might be her fate with such a man as this.

  CHAPTER VII

  Prisoners

  From the garden where Tarrano was talking with Elza, the Mars man Wolfgar led us to the tower in which we were to be imprisoned. Quite evidently it had been placed in readiness for us. A tower of several rooms, comfortably equipped. As we crossed the lower bridge and reached the main doorway, Wolfgar unsealed a black fuse-box which stood there, and pulled the relief-switch. The current, barring passage through every door and window of the tower, was thrown off. We entered. My mind was alert. This man of the Little People could not again turn on that current without going outside. Once it was on, like an invisible wall it would prevent our escape. But now—could not Georg and I with our superior strength overpower this smaller man?

  I caught Georg’s glance as our captor led us into the lower room—an apartment cut into the half-segment of a circle. Georg, at my elbow, whispered: “No use! Where could we go? Could not get out of the city—”

  The hearing of the Little People is sharp. Wolfgar turned his head and smiled. “You will be quite secure here—do not think of escape.” His bronzed fingers toyed with a cone at his belt. “Do not think of it.”

  Soon he left us, with the parting words: “You may use the upper circle of balcony. The current rises only from its rail.” He smiled and left us. A pleasant smile; I felt myself liking this jailer of ours.

  We took a turn of the tower. There were three bedrooms; a cookery, with food and equipment wherein evidently it was intended that Elza could prepare our meals; and two bath-apartments, one of them fairly luxurious, with a pool almost large enough for a little swimming; tubes of scent for the water and the usual temperature rods.

  “Well,” I remarked. “Obviously we are to be comfortable.” I was trying to be cheerful, but my heart was heavy with foreboding nevertheless. “How long do you suppose they’ll keep us here, Georg? And what—”

  His impatient gesture stopped me. His mind was on Elza—alone down there in the garden with Tarrano—as was mine, though I had not wanted to speak of her.

  There was an instrument room, up the circular incline in the peak of the tower! We heard the hum of it; and when we went up there, the first thing we saw was a mirror tuned in readiness for us to view the garden we had just left. This strange Tarrano, giving Georg the visible proof that he would keep his word and not harm Elza. We could see in this mirror the image of the scene down there—Elza and Tarrano talking. But could not hear the words—those were denied us. We saw the culprit brought in; the punishment with the white-hot wire-lash, and a few moments later Elza was with us.

  During the hours which followed, we made no attempt to escape. Such an effort would have been absurd. The current controls were outside, beyond our reach. Visibly, we were free, with open, unbarred arches and casements. But to pass through one of them, the barring current struck you like a wall, with darting sparks when it was touched. As Wolfgar had said, we had access to the upper balcony; the waist-high rail there, with its needle-points of electrodes, sent up a visible stream of the Nth Electrons—a dull glow by daylight; at night a riot of colors and snapping sparks.

  Through this barrage an inner vista of the city was visible; towers, arcades, landing-stages and spider bridges a hundred feet or so above us; the lower levels beneath, and through a canyon of walls we could just make out a corner of the ground-plaza, with its trees and beds of flowers.

  A queerly flat little city—tropical with banana trees and vivid foliage in every corner plot of the viaducts. At night it was beautiful with its romantic spreading lights of soft rose and violet tubes, and there was a fair patch of open sky above us—a deep purple at night, star-strewn.

  Under other circumstances our imprisonment would not have been irksome. But these hours, most critical of any in the history of the nations of Earth, Venus and Mars, unfolded their momentous events while we were forced there to helpless idleness. All sending apparatus of our instrument room was permanently disconnected. But the news came in to us from a hundred sources—rolled out for us in the announcer’s droning words; printed for permanent record upon the tapes and visible images of it all c
onstantly were flashing upon the mirrors.

  We spent hours in that instrument room—one or the other of us was almost always there. Save that we were ourselves isolated from communication, we were in touch with everything. A whim of this Tarrano; perhaps a strain of vanity that Elza should see and hear of these events.

  So much had occurred already during those hours of our trip over the Polar ocean and back that we scarce could fathom it. But gradually we pieced it together. Underlying it all, Tarrano’s dream of universal conquest was plain. In the Venus Cold Country he had started his wide-flung plans. Years of planning, with plans maturing slowly, secretly, and bursting now like a spreading ray-bomb upon the three worlds at once.

  In Venus, the Cold Country had conquered its governing Central State. Tarrano’s army there was in full control. The helio station in the Great City was now reinstated. The Tarrano officials had already set up their new government. With notification to the Earth and Mars that they demanded recognition, they were sending the usual routine helio dispatches and reports, quite as though nothing had occurred. The mails would proceed as before, they announced; the one due to leave this afternoon for the Earth was off on time.

  It was all very clever propaganda for our Earth public consumption. Tarrano—who was visiting our Earth at present, they said—had been chosen Master of Venus. His government desired Earth’s official recognition, and asked for our proclamation of friendliness in answer to their own. The present Ambassadors of the Venus Central State to the Earth—there were three of them, one each in Great London, Tokyohama and Mombozo—this new government requested that we send them back to the Great City as prisoners of the Tarrano forces. Other Ambassadors, representing the new government, would be sent to the Earth.

  All this occurred during the first few hours of our imprisonment in the tower. And during the day previous, at 7 P.M. this night—70° West Meridian Time—the governments of our Earth met in Triple Conference in Great London. Three rulers pro tem—White, Yellow and Black—to replace the three who had been assassinated. The responsibility for the assassinations was placed by the Council upon Tarrano. But this—from his headquarters here in Venia—he blandly refused to accept, denying all knowledge of the murders. Venia was the principal Venus immigrant colony of Earth’s Western Hemisphere. It had already been closed by our Earth Council; its inhabitants interned as possible alien enemies, pending diplomatic developments. This was the meaning of that line of official vessels lying there to the north on guard. No one could leave Venia, and for a day Venus refugees had been ordered into it from everywhere.

  At 8:40 this evening came from Great London our ultimatum to Tarrano. A duplicate of it went to the Great City of Venus via the Hawaiian Station. The Earth would not recognize the Tarrano government of Venus. We would hold to our treaty of friendship with the Central State. We would remain neutral for a time. But Tarrano himself we declared an outlaw. His presence was required in Washington to stand trial for the assassinations, and the delivery in Washington of Dr. Brende’s notes and model was demanded.

  The ultimatum carried a day of grace; the alternate was a declaration of war by the Earth, and our immediate attack upon Venia. It was the same proposition which our War Director had previously made unofficially to Tarrano while he was there in the garden with Elza and which Tarrano so summarily had rejected.

  The ultimatum came to us in the tower as we sat listening to the announcer’s measured tones. Elza exclaimed:

  “But why do they wait? Father’s model must be here. Tarrano, the leader of all this—is here. Within the hour those vessels of war could sweep in here—capture Tarrano—recover father’s model—”

  Georg interrupted quietly: “No one knows if the model is here. That other car from the laboratory—we don’t know where it went. The plundered laboratory has been found, of course. No station up there is near enough to have eavesdropped upon our capture, but the whole thing must have come out by now. But that aero with the model may have met an inter-planetary vessel—the model may be on the way to Venus by now.”

  “Georg,” I exclaimed, “do you know the workings of that model? Could you build another without the notes?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Yes. And they know that, in Washington. I could build another. But they know by now, that I, too, am in Tarrano’s hands—”

  “And he will kill you, of course, to destroy that knowledge and keep the secret for himself—” I did not say it aloud, for Elza’s sake; but I thought it, and I realized that Georg was thinking it also.

  Dr. Brende’s secret of longevity was the crux of all this turmoil—the lever by which Tarrano was raising himself. Scores of facts amid the tumultuous news of these hours showed us that. For months, throughout Venus, Tarrano had spread the insidious propaganda that he alone had the secret of immortality—that when he was made ruler, he would use it for the benefit of his followers.

  Converts to Tarrano’s cause were everywhere. In the Central State many welcomed the coming of his army. And now from the Great City his propaganda was being sent to the Earth. Murmurs from our own Earth public were beginning to be heard. The ignorant lower classes seemed ready to swallow anything. A new beneficent ruler who guaranteed everlasting life! Throughout the ages people have flocked to that same standard!

  In Mars, much the same was transpiring. At almost her closest point to the Earth these days, Red Mars sent us constant helios from the midnight sky. The Little People had appointed a new ruler to take the place of him who had been assassinated. The Council there put the assassination to unknown causes. Tarrano was held blameless. The Little People declared themselves neutral. But they gave prompt official recognition to the Tarrano government of Venus. And everywhere throughout Mars the public was stirred by the thought of everlasting life.

  “Fools!” muttered Georg. “That Little People government—they’ll have a revolution of their own to fight at this rate. Can’t you see what Tarrano is doing? Working everywhere with propaganda—working on the public—the gullible public ready always to swallow anything—”

  On Earth, lay the crisis. Our own governments only had taken a firm stand. What could Tarrano do with this ultimatum? Either he must yield himself and the Brende secret, or a war in which he would be immediately overwhelmed here in Venia would follow.

  It was nearly ten o’clock that first night. Elza had gone to the balcony. We heard her call us softly, but with obvious tenseness. Out there we found her pointing excitedly. A few hundred feet away and somewhat below us was a tower similar to our own. In one of its oblong casements a glow of rose-light showed. And within the glow was the full-length figure of a girl. We could see her plainly, though a small image at that distance with the naked eye, and our personal vision instruments had been taken from us. A slender, imperial figure—a young girl seemingly about Elza’s age. Dressed in a shimmering blue kirtle, short after the Venus fashion, with long grey stockings beneath. A girl with flowing waves of pure white hair to her waist—a girl of the Venus Central State. She seemed, like ourselves, a prisoner. An aura or barrage was around her tower. She stood there, back in the tower room, full in the rose-light as though surreptitiously trying to attract our attention.

  As we gathered on our balcony, behind the glow of our own barrage, she gestured to us vehemently. And then, with one white arm, she began to semaphore. One arm, and then with both. Georg and I recognized it—the Secondary Code of the Anglo-Saxon Army. We murmured the letters aloud as she gave them:

  “I am—” Abruptly she stopped. A violent gesture, and she disappeared; her rose-glow went out; her tower casement was dark. On a lower spider bridge Tarrano had appeared. He was crossing it on foot toward our tower, his small erect form advancing hastelessly, with the figure of Argo behind him.

  He reached our lower entrance, cut off the barrage there, and entered. Argo replaced the barrage, lingered an instant, gazing upward at us with his habitual leer. Then he retraced his steps across the bridge and disappeared.

  A
moment more, and in our lounging apartment Tarrano faced us.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Unknown Friend

  “Sit down.” Tarrano motioned us to feather hassocks and stretched himself indolently upon our pillowed divan. With an elbow and hand supporting his head he regarded us with his sombre black eyes, his face impassive, an inscrutable smile playing about his thin lips.

  “I wish to speak with you three. The Lady Elza—” His glance went to her briefly, then to Georg. “She has told you, perhaps, what I had to say to her?”

  “Yes,” said Georg shortly.

  Elza had indeed told us. And with sinking heart I had listened, for it did not seem to me that any maiden could resist so dominant a man as this. But I had made no comment, nor had Georg. Elza had seemed unwilling to discuss it, had flushed when her brother’s eyes had keenly searched her face.

  And she flushed now, but Tarrano dismissed the subject with a gesture. “That—is between her and me.… You have been following the general news, I assume? I provided you with it.” He rolled a little cylinder of the arrant-leaf, and lighted it.

  “Yes,” said Georg.

  Georg was waiting for our captor to lay his cards before us. Tarrano knew it; his smile broadened. “I shall not mince words, Georg Brende. Between men, that is not necessary. And we are isolated here—no one beyond Venia can listen. As you know, I am already Master of Venus. In Mars—that will shortly come. They will hand themselves over to me—or I shall conquer them.” He shrugged. “It is quite immaterial.” He added contemptuously: “People are fools—almost everyone—it is no great feat to dominate them.”

  “You’ll find our Earth leaders are not fools,” Georg said quietly.

  Tarrano’s heavy brows went up. “So?” He chuckled. “That remains to be seen. Well, you heard the ultimatum they sent me? What do you think of it?”

  “I think you’d best obey it,” I burst out impulsively.