by James Palmer
The streets and shops were dirty, and crumbling tenements leaned out over the narrow streets, threatening to fall over. Sad, tired faces looked out at him from dirty windows, and he swallowed hard. “Reminds me of Red Hook,” he said, but the little disk did not reply. “You have reached your destination,” said its female voice, and Archer turned to his right, where a building’s opening yawned before him. He walked up narrow, crumbling steps into a dimly lit lobby. A man sat behind a plastic counter, his eyes rheumy and distant. Multiple squares of light floated around him, like television screens, each showing a different scene. He waved them aside with his hand and leaned in close to Archer.
“The Lady sent you.” It wasn’t a question.
Archer nodded and handed him the silver rod he had received from Cephon earlier. The man smiled when he took it, and Archer could see his teeth were in bad shape. How could this be? He wondered. With all this limitless technology?
The man secreted the rod behind his counter and returned to his entertainment screens, ignoring Archer. He knew his task was now complete, and that it was time to return to Lady Vashta’s tower. He beat a speedy retreat, fearing what would happen to him if he stayed in the Cadmium slums any longer.
His tail picked him back up again as he entered the market, that same man with the eye on his chest, and a short but hulking bald brute wearing blue and white robes. Archer did a double take as something familiar glinted in the sun. Hanging from the man’s hip was the cylinder! The same object that had sent him into this strange future.
Archer paused next to a stand selling what appeared to be blue pomegranates and considered his options. Should he try to overpower the Overman and take the device? He had no doubt he could do so, but if he did he had no idea how to operate the cylinder. He was also in a crowded place, with no way to escape undetected. He could also blow Lady Vashta’s cover, and with it any chance of getting home. For now he would have to wait, at least until a better opportunity presented itself. Gritting his teeth, Archer began walking again, letting the little talking disk guide him back to the white tower.
When he returned he told Lady Vashta all that he’d seen, including the man wearing the yellow eye that had followed him part of the way.
“A Watcher,” she said, a glint of fear in her voice. “If they are involved, we must be even more vigilant than before.”
“What’s a Watcher?” Archer asked.
“They are the eyes and ears of the Overmen.”
Archer nodded in understanding. “There was an Overman with him when I returned through the market. He was wearing the same device that sent me here.”
“Oh? The ray projector?” She drank a clear wine from a spun diamond goblet.
“You know about them?”
“They are a tool used by the Overmen. They can perform a variety of tasks, mostly involving protection and enforcement of the Overmen’s will.”
“So it’s a weapon,” said Archer. “Got it.”
“But apparently they have been upgraded to allow time travel,” said Vashta, sipping her wine. “Interesting.”
“It still doesn’t explain why they sent me here.”
Vashta nodded to one of her attendants, who filled a glass for Archer. She shrugged. “Perhaps the Overman who fired at you had it on the wrong setting, or maybe he figured the jungles of Venus would make short work of you.”
“I am tougher than I look,” Archer said.
Lady Vashta grinned. “I am thankful for that.” She watched him as he sipped his wine, as if considering something. Finally she said, “No more errands today. We shall have refreshments in the parlor, where you will tell me more of the Earth of nineteen fifty-two.”
“My Lady, I’d be honored,” said Archer, bowing.
They talked late into the night, Archer telling Lady Vashta something of the splendor of twentieth century Earth. In the meantime, she shared much of future Venus with him, and he got a better picture of this alien world in which he was trapped. Lady Vashta spoke of two classes of people; those like her who were extremely rich, and the rest who were extremely poor, living in deplorable conditions and working for the Overmen and people like Vashta for slave wages, struggling to survive. Vashta explained that the roots of this arrangement stretched back thousands of years to Earth. Jason Archer sat back and took it all in, scarcely believing that in all this time humanity had barely advanced at all. In fact, they had slid backwards into a kind of fiefdom, even while their so-called betters lived in idle luxury and traveled the stars. It made him angry, and he longed even more for home.
Yet Archer listened in rapt attention as Vashta told him something of Venus and its geography. The city of Cadmium was on the continent known as Ishtar Terra, but there were other cities. Far to the south was the coastal city of Oceanica. A vast planetary ocean separated the northern continent Ishtar Terra from a southern continent called Aphrodite Terra. There were a few smaller settlements there, and one large city called Terranus. The cities functioned as separate nation-states, sometimes fighting each other, sometimes allies. The last major war among the cities had been fought decades ago. Vashta’s father had risen to prominence during that time, winning the war for Cadmium and bringing peace to the people of Venus.
Archer listened until late into the night, his imagination kindled even while part of his mind rebelled, still refusing to believe that any of this was happening.
***
It wasn’t all wine and conversation. Lady Vashta kept Archer busy running around the city carrying memory crystals, metal disks, and all manner of strange objects. Once he even delivered a verbal message to a woman near the slums that was as cryptic as anything he’d yet seen or heard. And on his tenth day as a servant in Lady Vashta’s house, he had to fight in the pits.
A potential suitor had entered into marriage negotiations. His name was Prion, and he was handsome, well connected, and extremely rich. Vashta wanted nothing to do with him. There was much back and forth, and it quickly became apparent that the only way to settle the matter once and for all was through ritualized combat.
Prion selected his own champion from a stock of recent acquisitions from the jungle, and on the appointed day and time Archer faced him in the fighting pit.
He was a hulk of a man, the kind of opponent Archer would never fight voluntarily. But he knew there was no prize for second place, and he wanted to live long enough to make it back to his own time. So he fought.
His opponent was lean and muscular, with long blond hair and cold gray eyes that looked as if they’d seen much hardship. The man was clearly a survivor, and Archer knew he’d be tough to beat. A victor in the arena was well taken care of; he’d have food and drink and a soft bed of hay upon which to sleep, and he wouldn’t be hunted by the giant animals that stalked the Venusian jungle. All Archer had was his will to survive another day in hopes that he could go home.
The man was an uncanny fighter, sizing up Archer almost instantly. He blocked Archer’s every blow before delivering a few painful strikes of his own, and Archer tasted blood in his mouth as he narrowly dodged a powerful haymaker. He drove himself into the man’s midsection, knocking him off his feet, but he rolled away and recovered quickly, leaping into a fighting crouch. Then he reached into the dust and brought up a short, curved blade like that of a scimitar.
Archer looked around quickly for a weapon, and found a long slender blade pulled it from the dust at his feet. He was well practiced in stage combat, and had trained with Errol Flynn’s sword master, but he knew this was anything but staged. There would be no telegraphing of moves so that your opponent knew where to meet your blade, no flourishing thrusts that looked good on a movie screen but were impractical in actual combat. No, this was quite real.
Archer’s opponent, perhaps emboldened by his sword, raised it high over his head and ran toward him. Archer skillfully sidestepped him at the last possible moment, tripping the man with his foot. He went sprawling, got up, came at Archer again. Archer stepped back, knock
ing the scimitar’s broad tip away with his own blade.
The crowd screamed for someone’s blood as Archer deftly dodged his opponent’s blows. The man clearly had no skill with a sword, having been raised in the jungle. He used it more as a cudgel or a knife, as if he were hunting game or fighting off some titanic beast. He tired himself out slashing at open air that scant seconds before had contained his would-be prey, and it infuriated him. Archer used this to his advantage, but he was growing tired as well, and he couldn’t give the man a chance to get the upper hand. So he waited for the right moment, then struck.
Archer’s opponent slashed downward toward Archer’s skull with his sword. Archer ducked out of the way, then grabbed his opponent’s right wrist in his left hand, stepping inside the other man’s reach and punching him square on the nose with his sword’s hilt.
Bloody mist filled the air as the man fell to the ground, dropping his weapon. He raised his blood-covered face to find Archer’s blade at his throat. “I suggest you yield,” said Archer, his voice low. “We can still both walk away from this.”
The man’s gray eyes narrowed. He was breathing heavily. Slowly, the anger drained from his face, and he held up his hands in a placating gesture of surrender.
The rules were different when a marriage was being contested. No one died this day. Archer’s opponent was claimed by Lady Vashta as a house slave and taken to the basement of her tower. Archer returned to her a minor hero, though he did receive several distasteful looks from those who had lost money betting against him. Prion glared down at him as well, but Archer smiled inwardly. Within the hour talk had already drifted his way about the stranger Opir who fights so well.
That night a strange sound awoke him, and he padded from the room he shared with Lady Vashta’s servants. The rooms were dark, and Archer didn’t want to alert the stranger to his presence, or give him any advantage. He waited by the door to the servants’ quarters, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. The dome outside had gone pitch black, blotting out the seemingly eternal sun.
Archer watched as a shadow detached itself from the shadows that filled the corridor and walked slowly up the adjoining hallway, just a few feet from where he stood. Archer followed it silently, thinking at first it was Vashta or some other member of her household. But in a moment he knew this was not the case. The figure’s shape and movements were all wrong. He followed the apparition as it moved swiftly through the warren of rooms toward Lady Vashta’s bedchamber. It passed a hand over the wall beside the door, and the portal winked open soundlessly. Archer heard the scrape of metal on metal as the figure removed a small blade from somewhere, and he leaped upon the figure.
The knife clattered to the floor and slid into the bedchamber. The figure elbowed Archer in the ribs, then flipped him over his back. Archer was sprawled upon the floor staring up at his opponent, a blacker shadow amid shadows. He twisted around and stood just as the figure retreated, his element of surprise gone.
Archer heard stirring from behind him, then Lady Vashta’s voice said, “Light,” and the room and hallway filled with bright illumination. The figure was short and thin, clad in a black, hooded robe that seemed to absorb all the light, making him look like some kind of wraith, a living shadow that could live in the absence of darkness. It writhed in confusion, then turned toward the door. Archer ran at it again, thinking there would be worse trouble if he got away. He tackled the hooded figure, wrestling it to the ground. The figure was highly skilled, and gave Archer such a flurry of punches and kicks that he had to remove himself from on top of him.
The fiend managed to crawl away before getting up, but now he was headed in the wrong direction, running deeper into the house.
Lady Vashta appeared, wearing a flowing nightgown and a stunned expression. In her hand she held the dagger that had been meant for her.
Archer nodded at her before giving chase to her would-be assassin, cornering him again in the large room that Vashta called her receiving parlor. The room was now brightly lit, but out on the balcony all was total blackness, and for a moment the assassin seemed to blend in with the view outside.
The assassin feigned left, then right, but Archer was there waiting for him. Realizing he was cornered, he sneered at Lady Vashta before turning and running out onto the balcony and leaping over the side. He did not even scream as he fell to his doom.
Chapter Eight
Escape!
Archer ran to the balcony, but he could make out no detail of the ground below. The opacity of the city’s dome was absolute.
“He just jumped,” said Archer in disbelief. He looked at Vashta, who had come to stand beside him, a wispy, blue apparition in the darkness outside.
“Yes,” she said. “The guild of assassins has strict rules regarding capture. Failing his mission, it was his only choice.”
“His mission was to kill you,” said Archer. “And you sound like you admire the guy.”
“I do admire his sense of duty, if not his motives.” Lady Vashta turned and went back inside. Archer followed.
“What do we do now?”
“I must notify the authorities of this outrage. I will summon the Enforcers and the Watchers.” She turned and stared at Archer for a long moment. “I thank you, Jason. You saved my life tonight.”
Archer bowed. “All part of the job, my Lady.” Then his voice took a more serious tone. “I’m more worried about another attempt on your life. What is going on here? Do you think it was Prion?”
Vashta pondered this as she went to a wall panel and waved her hand in front of it. Lights flickered to life. “I do not think so. Prion is a very proud man, and I’m sure it hurt him to lose me in the rite of combat, but men of our age do not kill for jealously or rage or wounded pride.”
“No,” Archer mused, “but they still kill.”
Vashta ignored him while she summoned the authorities. When she was done, she returned to the parlor. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anytime soon. Join me for a glass of wine while we wait?”
Archer raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the fact that her request was phrased as a question instead of a command. “I’d love to,” he said, and poured the wine himself from a spun diamond decanter.
The Enforcers and Watchers were impersonal, blunt, asked too many questions, and were gone within the hour. Lights swirled in the darkness below where the assassin had jumped to his doom, and then the city and the tower were quiet again. Archer awoke around whatever passed for noon on Venus to find Vashta still asleep. He ate sparsely and busied himself by fiddling with Lady Vashta’s entertainment unit, trying to learn all he could about the city of Cadmium and this future Venus upon which he was trapped. When Vashta awoke, she sent him on another errand, this time in the underbelly of service tunnels and maintenance hatches below the city’s streets, there to procure a copper-colored cube from one of the guards of the pit slaves.
As he returned to street level, the little talking disk verbally guiding him, he overheard two men talking.
“What I can’t understand, Vachus, is this new slave in her household, this Opir. He fights like a jungle tekkat,” said the tall, lanky younger man.
“Aye, and they say he smells like one too, Vorius,” said his squat, older companion.
“I’m serious, Vach. You heard what happened last night. He bested the guild’s best assassin.”
“You should be careful where you get your information,” said Vachus. “Obviously the man was sloppy, or he would have jumped from the ledge after he slit the conceited cow’s throat.”
Vorius chuckled, shaking his head. “You do have a way with words. You should run for the senate. In the meantime, what do we do about Lady Vashta? We know she’s involved in the resistance, and they’re planning something big.”
“Patience my young friend. The wheels are in motion as we speak.”
Archer stood against a pillar, wreathed in shadow, until the two men had passed out of sight. His heart hamm
ered in his chest, and he ran the rest of the way to the white tower, running through the door as soon as it blinked open, looking for any sign of the lady of the house.
She stood in the parlor, surrounded by brutish men wearing the black robes of the Enforcers, her hands manacled together. She stared at Archer sadly, her eyes vacant. “I am sorry, my Opir,” she said. “We are found out.”
“Arrest this man,” one of the Enforcers barked, and rough hands seized him.
“On what charge?” Archer said.
“Treason!” said the lead Enforcer.
The Enforcers yank Archer’s arms behind his back, and he heard the rattle of heavy manacles. He knew he’d only get one chance, and kicked out behind him, striking the Enforcer holding the manacles in the shin. He dropped the heavy chains with a grunt before pulling a stun stick from a loop on his belt.
But Archer was ready. He whirled around, grabbing the stick from the man’s grip and smashing it into the side of his head. The Enforcer went down with a groan, stunned.
Archer turned on the second Enforcer, jamming the stun stick’s tip into his neck and finding the trigger stud. The end of the stick glowed red, and the Enforcer gurgled and crashed to the floor in a heap.
Archer looked toward Vashta and the other Enforcers, brandishing the little stun stick like a sword. There were too many of them, and he’d lost the element of surprise.