The Earth Lords

by Gordon R. Dickson

  It was what it looked like, a meaty stew—not just with meat flavor in the gravy of it, but with large chunks of what seemed to taste like goat meat, although the dish had been so spiced with cinnamon that it was hard to be certain. In any case, it tasted good, and he got to work on it.

  “I am Chandt,” said Chandt.

  Bart nodded, for his mouth was full. He swallowed.

  “Dybig,” he said. He met the other’s eyes briefly and then returned to his eating. “I heard the men call you Chandt.”

  “I don’t care if you fight,” said Chandt. “But if you do, you mustn’t hurt the other men seriously, for then they can’t work for the Lords. Learn to fight so that you win; but do not harm them much. Here you cannot die, but you can be not-well; and anyone who’s not-well deprives some Head of his services until he’s well again. And that is bad.”

  Bart stopped eating to look at the other man.

  “I know I’m below the mine,” he said. “There’s no windows anywhere around here.” He looked up at the lights over their heads which made the room as bright as day. There had been similar lights in all the rooms he had seen so far. They were round globes that radiated illumination. Bart had at first assumed without thinking that the globes enclosed gas lamps, but now, examining them more closely he could see nothing inside them but brightness that he could not examine closely.

  Chandt had not replied.

  “Where am I, then?” he asked Chandt.

  “There is no special name for it,” said Chandt. “It is away from ordinary Earth and Time. Some call it Hell, but its proper name is the Inner World.”

  “Hell?” Bart stared at him. The chained men in the mine had called that Hell, but with obvious bitterness and hatred. Chandt, on the other hand, now pronounced the word almost worshipfully, as if he had said not “Hell” but “Heaven.”

  “All the new ones ask where they are.” Chandt looked away from him, at the wall—no, through the wall. There was a look in his eyes that was thoughtful and sad. “All of them wonder why some call this Hell. It’s because they don’t understand, at first.”

  “What don’t we new ones understand?”

  Chandt looked back at him, into Bart’s eyes.

  “you died,” he said. “Just as all of us here did. Probably you can remember, if you think hard enough about it, exactly how you died. But whether you remember or not, now you are with the rest of us in Hell for eternity; and here you will spend all your days from now on serving the Heads.”

  He stopped speaking, and sat watching Bart. Bart sat in silence himself for a moment, thinking.

  “I don’t believe I died,” he said, finally.

  Chandt continued to look at him. The expression of thoughtfulness mixed with something sad was there in his eyes again, but now directed at Bart.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you remember or not,” said Chandt. “Most of us here in the end remember how they died, but not all. It makes no difference. Those who call it Hell mean the word with no discourtesy. We use it because to the Lords “Heaven” is a special place from which they, alone, came; and which brute beasts like ourselves have never known and can never know. The closest we can come to Heaven is to exist to serve the Lordly class. There are also the Hybrids, who are the children of those who take human concubines; but you’ll learn more about them later.”

  “Who are ‘Lords’?” asked Bart. He had almost finished the bowl of stew. “Can I have some more of this?”

  “Clap your hands,” said Chandt absently. “One clap for one bowl. If there are more of you, one clap for every bowl you want. Would you like something to drink with it? You can have water or beer.”

  Bart clapped his hands once, then turned back to Chandt.

  “Beer,” said Bart. At least it would have more taste than water. “The Lords?” he reminded the other. Chandt looked through him with that sad and distant look that had been in the shorter man’s eyes since Bart had asked where this place was.

  “In a minute,” he said.

  They sat in silence until the white-aproned man brought Bart another full bowl and spoon and took away the utensils he had brought the first time.

  “Beer. One,” said Chandt to the serving man, who went off without a word and was back shortly with one of the largest drinking glasses Bart had ever seen, filled with a brown liquid that fizzed and held a head of foam above it. As the man left, Bart tasted the liquid. It was sweet, more like a nonalcoholic root beer than ordinary beer; but since he did not care whether it was alcoholic or not, that made no difference.

  He put the glass down and turned to Chandt, ready to remind the other man again about his question. But Chandt spoke before Bart could.

  “Who and what the Lords are, you’ll find out for yourself,” Chandt said. “I’ll tell you this much. They are an Elder Race, older than we who call ourselves men. They have many strange powers. My people had known of the Lords for many generations before I came to serve them; but the world you live in is one of the Lords hate, with good reason.”

  “Your people?” said Bart. “Who are your people?”

  “They live far from this place. On the plains to the west of Cathay. Whether they’re still there I don’t know. It may be the world has killed them off, otherwise they would have conquered it. I come from a race of conquerors. At one time we had conquered all but a few small pieces of the world.”

  “When was this?” Bart had stopped eating to stare at him.

  “A very long time ago. I was one of them, then. We rode west, and farther west yet, conquering as we went. I told you most remember their deaths, in time. I remember mine. It was at a bend in the river. We were only a small part of Ogotai’s force and the Germans trapped us there, many to our one. In the bend where we were, it was all marsh and our horses’ legs sank deep in the muck, so that they were hampered. On his horse, any one of us was unconquerable, but without his horse a Mongol is only half a Mongol. Still, we slew most of them before they killed us. They had to kill us all to stop us; and so we died and I came to be a servant of the Lords. In other places, then here, in the Inner World.”

  “When did you and the Lords come here?” Bart watched the other carefully.

  Chandt shrugged.

  “Who can tell time in Hell? Here we are beyond time. But I have worn out fourteen belts serving the Heads.”

  Bart looked down at the broad band of black leather that encircled the tree-trunklike waist of the other man. How quickly would something like that wear thin? In any case he did not believe what Chandt was telling him.

  “You were one of the Mongols who fought at the time of Ghengis Khan?” he asked.

  “I fought under the Great Khan, yes,” said Chandt.

  Ghengis Khan, Bart remembered from the history books he had devoured in his father’s study, was a Mongol chieftain who had lived in the twelfth century. He had pulled together the multitude of tribes of Mongols into one force, with which he conquered India, China and as far west as eastern Europe, he had lived.

  There were historians who felt that he would undoubtedly also have conquered Europe if he had lived.

  It was unthinkable that Chandt had lived that long. As unthinkable as that the Lords, whose group must include the three big-skulled, thin-limbed individuals he remembered seeing briefly during an interlude in his unconsciousness, could be an Elder Race of the sort Chandt described.

  “You mean you’ve lived since the t»me of the Great Khan and never grown old?” Bart said.

  “Yes,” said Chandt. “There is no change here; and no one ever dies unless killed. The Heads have taken us beyond ordinary death. And now you, too.”

  At that moment a tiny, very sweet bell chimed on the air. It chimed again; and Bart traced the sound to Chandt’s belt, to which were clipped five small metal clips, each with a different colored jewel. It was impossible to say which jewel had made the sound, or how.

  “I had forgotten, in all this talk,” said Chandt.

  He reached down
and took from his belt a clip with a yellow, cat’s-eye colored jewel. It ceased sounding the moment he touched it.

  He handed it to Bart.

  “Fasten this to your belt and always answer when it sounds, no matter what you are doing at the time. Say ‘I hear.’ Say it now.”

  “I hear,” echoed Bart, feeling foolish, speaking to the empty air.

  “And now we will go,” said Chandt, rising. “For you are called. I had not thought it would be this quickly.”

  chapter

  six

  BART FOLLOWED CHANDT out of the room. Within himself he had abruptly become alive. His goal, here as it had been in the mine, was to escape—except that the purpose was doubly imperative, because he would not be escaping alone. He would be taking Emma with him—because the only reasonable deduction was that Emma was in this place also. She and her brother would not have been in the mine as mere sightseers. They had to have been headed toward the end of the tunnel that had dumped him in the underground river. Although for Emma’s party there must have been some way to activate a bridge over that river.

  So she must be here, and somehow he would bring her out of this place with him when he went. Of course, by the same line of reasoning,her brother must be here as well. But whether she would insist on Arthur’s being taken along also was a bridge Bart would cross when he came to it.

  First things first. And the first thing he needed to know was all there was to be learned about this place connected with the mine. Particularly, he must make himself a mental map here as he had in the mine; the memory system of counted steps and turns that he had developed while wearing the leg-irons could be used here in the light as well as in the dark of the mine tunnels.

  So it was he began his mental map with his first turn to the right as they left the eating room, counting his first step up the corridor. He continued as they went on past the other rooms Chandt had shown him. They went for some distance and eventually came to the end of the tunnel—or corridor would be a better name for it, the bright lights and the light-colored walls gave more an impression of being inside a building above ground than buried deep in the earth.

  In that end wall was set a tall door of metal with its surface carved in bas-relief to show undersized children being whipped or otherwise tortured and made to dance or do balancing tricks. Bart stared at the figures with astonishment.

  “Can you blame the Lords that they call us brute beasts?” said Chandt as he opened the door.

  He pushed Bart inside; and Bart found himself in a small, square room with smoothly finished walls, floor and ceiling, but otherwise either cut from the surrounding rock or panelled with slabs of it. Four very large men in gray, knee-length tunics, belted at the waist, and short boots of dark brown leather—men larger than himself and those he had seen in the dormitory, and muscled in proportion—took hold of him; and he elected not to struggle as they put on him a tough, thick leather jacket of a dun brown.

  It was like no garment Bart had ever seen before, for there were no sleeves, in the real sense of that word—only casings within the outer shell into which he was made to put his arms—in effect locking those limbs helplessly in front of him once those dressing him had buckled tight the straps that closed the garment at his back.

  None of the four, or Chandt, who stood watching, said a word as this process of encasing Bart went on. Once he was completely fastened within it, one of the men took hold of a leather cord which depended from the middle of the chest area of the garment and pulled Bart after him, out a farther door of the room and into a completely different scene. Another of the men followed after Bart, silently. Behind him came Chandt.

  Bart was once more in a corridor, but here thick carpets cushioned the floor beneath the soles of the light, moccasinlike shoes they had furnished him at whatever time they had dressed him in the trousers in which he had awakened. The walls of the corridor were panelled in dark wood which shone under softer light from the globes overhead in a ceiling that was twice as high as the ones Bart had seen up until now.

  The corridor led them out into a very large room indeed, with a ceiling three or four times the height of the corridors back in the area where Bart had awakened. They had come out into it by one of a number of doors that pierced one wall under an overhead, open gallery that ran the full length of the of the wall over their heads. Opposite it was what seemed to be a great stained-glass window, easily twelve feet high and twice that in width, lit from behind so that the figures it showed glowed in the same quiet lighting that had illuminated the carpeted corridor that had gotten them here.

  Alerted by Chandt’s question earlier, Bart now noticed that all the children depicted had enlarged heads—not so abnormally enlarged as those of the three figures at his bedside in the episode he remembered from a break in his earlier unconsciousness, but larger than they should be. He had not recognized this difference in them at first, the starved scrawniness of their bodies and the things pictured being done to them having too overwhelmed his attention to give him a chance to pick out fine details.

  They came out through the pillared archways that upheld the gallery overhead, into the carpeted open spaces of the room. A profusion of low, upholstered seats and tables, clumped into islands that made a series of scattered lounges, seemed to fill the vast space; and yet there was a great deal of open space between those islands. They crossed between them and went to a pair of great metal doors, that were again carved much as had been the metal door Bart had seen earlier.

  His escorts pressed a metal stud that was mounted on the doorframe to the left of the doors. The doors swung inward, away from him; and he found himself looking down yet another carpeted corridor.

  Standing in the center of this corridor, just inside the doorway, was a middle-aged man. Unlike most of those Bart had so far seen in this place, this man was not a particularly well-muscled specimen. In fact, he was no more than ordinary, physically, and he looked thin after the others Bart had so far met in this place—except for the food-server.

  This new man wore a short robe or tunic, a knee-length garment belted at the waist, of a light brown color. His legs were naked below this, and on his sockless feet were leather sandals with thin, soft-looking soles.

  He looked at Bart, and at the two escorts.

  “This one’ll do,” he said. His voice was soft, tenor, and a little husky, but it reminded Bart of the voice of a singer he had met once in an opera house in Denver some years back.

  The escort who held the strap attached to Bart’s leather body-casing let it drop. He, his fellow, and Chandt turned away, going without a word back out through the doors. These closed behind them, and Bart turned back from watching them go to find the eyes of the man in the robe watching him with what seemed to be amusement.

  His eyes were a bright blue, and the face was slim, almost ascetic. Like all the rest Bart had seen here below, he was clean-shaven; but his hair was brown and thinning back from his forehead. It had been cut short and combed smoothly into place. He smelled of soap.

  “That’s good,” he said now. Like all the rest so far down here, he spoke in English. “You act like you’ve got some brains. That’s very good. But I hope you don’t let them carry you away and tempt you to do anything contrary to what you’re told. Believe me, if you did you’d only make trouble for yourself—and the rest of us.”

  He turned and began to walk away down the corridor.

  “Follow me.” He did not bother to turn his head as he gave the order. “Don’t talk.”

  Bart followed him, shrugging, and staggered a bit, finding that bodily movement such as a shrug could throw him off-balance as long as his arms were held tight against his chest this way. But he got himself back under control and continued to follow.

  At the end of the corridor, perhaps a hundred feet or slightly more down the way, were a pair of doors that exactly matched those at the head of the passage. The stranger strode directly up to the doors and pressed the metal button beside them. This
time the doors swung open toward Bart and his guide.

  Two people were in evidence beyond the doors, both dressed exactly as was Bart’s guide; and both well-formed, clean-shaven, middle-aged men. No words were spoken as Bart’s guide stepped to the side and motioned Bart to enter ahead of him. Bart did so, and heard the doors close softly behind him. The guide had stayed in that bare passageway, and Bart was alone with the two new strangers.

  Bart, in a wry, way, was once more feeling the old stir of rebellion—and he amused himself with it, by checking his first impulse, which was to ask questions. He suspected these men were expecting any newcomer to babble questions; so he deliberately stood silent, once more following his father’s precept about making the first move.

  The room he had entered was small, with a door at each side wall, to his left and right. Both the middle-aged men were standing near the back wall, which appeared to be of bare but white-washed rock. Each door was of a single wooden panel, again set with bronze fittings. The wood of each door was carved, but Bart could not see the details of that carving.

  Bart deliberately looked around him, then returned his attention to the two waiting men, and found them watching him. Still, they said no word, and Bart remained silent, simply watching them and waiting. After a moment, one of the two looked away from him and moved closer to his companion; they did not look at each other, but it was almost as if they had drawn together for mutual protection. Bart grinned at them.

  Again, he heard the bell-sound that he had heard in the dining area; this time, however, it seemed to come to his ears out of the air, from no definite point. Instantly the two faces before him lit up, and they moved. One went to Bart’s right, toward the door on that side of the room; the other moved to Bart’s left, and took a position near him. This one motioned Bart to turn and follow the other man, so Bart turned to his right, realizing that this put the man on his left directly behind him. But there was no point in worrying about that, he thought; he was already helpless, for the most part.