by Eando Binder
He stared into her eyes. Was there a spark there, the same spark that he had seen lying fallow in the Outland people? Did the slight glow in her eyes, the faintly parted lips mean anything?
“You almost move me, Humrelly!” she said with a trace of eagerness in her tone. “You almost make me vision a new kind of life, a different world—a wonderful—no! What am I saying?”
Her tones became flat, uncompromising. “How emotion fogs the mind! Are you done, Humrelly? Now let me speak. Think over the offer of Lordship in Antarka well. More—”
She moved toward him suddenly, stood close.
In one breathtaking instant, the atmosphere changed subtly. Sharina had stiffened, as if in premonition. ErMalne’s manner had oddly altered. Ellory dimly sensed that the two weeks in Lillamra had culminated in this moment.
ErMalne spoke, her azure eyes on his. “This may violate custom of your time, Humrelly, but Lillamra needs a Lord. I have chosen—you!”
Ellory saw the new glow in her eyes, the warm, inviting smile on her half-parted lips. He stared as if he had never seen her before.
His mind, now, had become an utter blank. As that day in front of the Antarkan ship, he moved without knowing it. He had pulled Sharina to her feet, enfolded her in his arms.
“This is my answer!” he said with a strange calm, kissing Sharina.
“You great fool,” ErMalne said quietly. “You love me! A woman knows the signs. Sharina knows, too. Sharina, tell him he loves me!”
Sharina had faintly resisted the kiss. She pushed Ellory away, now, nodding with tight lips.
“What have you done to her, you witch!” Ellory accused the Antarkan girl. “I know my own mind. Sharina knows hers. If this is some trick to save me in spite of myself—”
“No, Humrelly.” ErMalne smiled as if at a rebellious child. “You have more in common with this life than with Jon Darm’s people. Sharina realizes that too, now. She would never be happy with you or you with her. Your whole minds exist on different planes.”
“Don’t try to rationalize love away!” Ellory flared. “I love Sharina, not you. At last I’m sure of it. It’s my own sentence, but I say it!”
ErMalne seemed hardly to hear.
“More,” she said, “Sharina loved Mal Radnor all the time. You merely swept her off her feet, for a while—a great man from the past. And girl would suffer the same. He does not believe, Sharina. Tell him!”
Sharina’s lips quivered. “Yes, Humrelly, she is right. Mal Radnor—oh, if only he were alive—”
“He is!”
Sharina and Ellory stared at the girl of Antarka.
ErMalne went on decisively. “I sent a ship up, checking a vague report that the rebellion’s second-in-command was alive. He was found hidden, badly burned, but recovering.” Ellory saw the sudden wild joy in Sharina’s face, and he knew that ErMalne had spoken the truth. In that moment he knew, too, that a great problem had been solved. A dizzying gladness sang through him, like potent wine.
“Wait!” he snapped suddenly. “ErMalne, if you’re lying, if you’re just saying that to prove your point to me—”
Sharina’s hand fluttered to her throat and she turned ashen-white.
Ellory trembled in rage and suspicion. “ErMalne, if you dared—” He took a step toward her, hands working.
The Antarkan girl winced a little. “No. Believe me, Humrelly, it’s true. Mal Radnor is alive. I swear it.” She turned to Sharina. “You will be taken to Norak immediately. Mal Radnor needs you. Go now to your room.”
Sharina moved to the door. Suddenly she turned, came back, and kissed Ellory lightly.
“It is well this way, Humrelly! You belong here. You will be happy, as First Lord of Lillamra. You will do much for them, and perhaps, some day, for us. We will always remember you for what you tried!”
Then Sharina was gone.
Ellory realized that in her mind all things had come to this inescapable climax. That the sojourn of Humrelly, the Lord from the Past, had ended in her world.
She had gone happy.
Ellory and ErMalne stood in silence a moment or two now. His eyes were on her lovely face; and her half-smile seemed to reach inside of him until all he could feel was a quick surge of joy. She met his glance, expectant, waiting.
Swiftly Ellory went to her and took her in his arms. He kissed her once, lingeringly; then abruptly he pushed her from him.
“No!” He forced the word from a dry throat. “I can’t betray myself, and all I believe in.”
The girl stared in bewilderment.
“I choose imprisonment!” Ellory said hoarsely.
“Lifelong imprisonment? You wouldn’t like it, Humrelly.”
She was calm again, confident.
“Our prison is for Antarkans who have committed murder. Death is denied them, for we have no capital punishment among ourselves. They waste away, thinking of the wonderful life they have forfeited.” Something of appeal crept into her voice. “Humrelly, you can’t cast a free life in Antarka aside for an impossible ideal! And my love—doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I choose imprisonment!” Ellory said hoarsely.
ErMalne’s first angry flush changed to a slow, thoughtful smile.
“I see, Humrelly! Men in your time pursued women, or thought they did, whereas I—” She broke off, smiling cryptically. “You will change your mind, Humrelly.”
She left.
Chapter 23
A KINGDOM OR A CELL
Ellory sat for hours with his aching head in his hands. Hours of exquisite torment. He wished at this moment that he were back in the crypt, sleeping on and on into the peace of eternity. Marry ErMalne? Live out his natural life as an Antarkan? Be a passive partner to a double-edged tyranny? How could he, and ever face himself again?
Escape from Antarka! The thought grew, with the hours. It was the only solution. When a wall time-piece marking twentieth-century hours read 3:00 in the night period, Ellory stole from his room. It had never been locked or guarded, as he had previously noticed. He crept noiselessly down the deserted hall, lit only by a dim gas-jet, to the front portal. A guard sat here hunched in sleep, his flame-gun lying at his side.
Ellory picked it up without making a sound, looking it over swiftly. It had a trigger-like lever at the side, releasing the gas-pellets by a spring mechanism from the front muzzle. Grimly, he stepped away from the palace.
There was a chance of getting to the metal roof of the city. It was simple enough after that—tramping some fifty miles to the coast. Here, as ErMalne had told, lay a harbor to which the Outlanders brought their tribute of food. He could stow away on an Outland sailing ship, and eventually win back to Norak.
Filled with these plans, Ellory stepped along in the sleeping city. He thanked his lucky stars that a night period had been set aside, as in olden times, though this subterranean city knew no actual day and night.
Crossing the metal bridge to the great central elevator shaft, he confronted a dozing cage-operator with his gun. Secure Antarka evidently knew little of attacks or escapes. The man looked up blinkingly, turning pale even underneath his normal pallor at sight of the weapon pointing at his midriff.
“To the roof!” Ellory commanded.
Nodding dumbly, but with a faint lack of concern that made Ellory wary, the man stepped to his control box. He grasped the lever and Ellory breathed easier. In a moment now they would be shooting up to the roof—and freedom.
But instead of movement, there came sound.
A bell clanged brazenly through the night hush, like a clap of thunder. Ellory saw that the operator had pressed a button in the handle, instead of turning it. Cursing, Ellory jerked over the lever himself, but nothing happened.
“No use, Humrelly!” said the operator calmly,
recognizing him. “The button rings the alarm and also shuts off power in the cage. Other Outlanders have tried to escape. None has ever succeeded. You are trapped. See?”
He pointed to where running guards came up from several directions. “Give yourself up quietly,” he advised.
Blind rage at his helplessness rose in Ellory.
Standing defiantly at the cage door, he fired at the first guard about to lope across the metal bridge. Unfamiliar with the weapon, he shot wildly and the ball of fire spanged against a wall to the side, harmlessly scorching stone.
A return shot came, over his head, as warning. The burst of fire above tingled on Ellory’s skin and reminded him of the sickening holocaust on the Hudson.
Again gripped by his anger, he fired his gun again and again, raking the bridge end. One guard, scurrying back, screamed as a fire-ball skimmed his arm, but ran to safety.
“You are besieged, Humrelly!” observed the Antarkan in back.
Ellory’s eyes fastened on a nearby metal pipe, coming from below. Within it surged gasoline, part of the city’s network. Inflammable gasoline! Ellory aimed his gun at the pipe and sent blast after blast of blistering heat against it. If it melted through, gasoline would bubble out, catch fire…
“You’ll start a terrible fire!” gasped the operator.
“And you’ll turn on the elevator power, or burn with me!” Ellory declared savagely. Furthermore in the excitement of putting out the fire, his escape would be easier.
He did not think to watch the Antarkan behind him.
Something descended on the back of his head and wheeling lights blanked out Ellory’s mind…
Ellory’s opening eyes looked straight into those of ErMalne. His head was bandaged and aching dully.
“You poor, stubborn fool!” Her voice was half mocking, half tender. “What drove you to that madness?”
Ellory moved his eyes and saw that he was alone with her, in a private antechamber to her sleeping quarters. He could not have been unconscious long, since the operator had knocked him out with a blow on the head. The girl wore a diaphanous sleeping gown, around which she had thrown a more concealing robe.
His failure to escape left a bitterness on Ellory’s tongue that he could taste.
“You!” he said wearily.
“I?”
She looked at him for a moment, and her eyes were enigmatic.
“Come.” Taking his hand, she pulled him from the couch he lay on. Ellory followed dully as she led him through a door into a small, private lift. The cage doors closed, and the lever she twisted sent them up.
Wonder struck Ellory as they stepped out again in a sealed chamber. Where were they? He started as he looked up through a crystal-clear skylight and saw stars. The chamber rested above the city’s metal cap.
The goal he had striven for a while ago.
“A little surface room I had built for myself,” ErMalne explained. “At times I like to sit up here and look out into the night.”
Ellory’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and made out comfortable furniture. He looked up again, with something of a thrill, at the wide bowl of sky strewn with polar stars. It was a sight no polar explorer of the twentieth century had ever seen, for none had dared brave the bitterness of the six-month night.
ErMalne stood motionless in the starlight glow.
Ellory caught his breath. She was a moon goddess again, lovely and strange. Star-glow shafted from glossy hair like the patina of rare old silver. Beams of heaven-blue danced in and out of her eyes, paling even the glory of the pure blue diamond at her swan-white throat. Soft shadows led his eye along every perfect curve, every rounded grace. Hers was inconceivable beauty, in a setting conspired by the mystery of night to break the last shred of Ellory’s resistance.
“Well?” he challenged. “I suppose you expect me to melt at your feet!”
She tossed her head arrogantly. “On the contrary, I expect you to behave.”
“Then what are we here for?”
‘To give you a last look at the stars.” Her voice was low, final. “Once imprisoned, you’ll never see them again.”
“Kind of you,” Ellory murmured. “Sharina is gone?” ErMalne nodded.
“Our ship is probably now landing her at Norak. You’ll never see her again. Or me. Tomorrow morning your imprisonment begins, for years and years—”
Ellory peered at her, perplexed. “When you last left me, your alternative offer seemed still open. You’ve retracted it?” She nodded wordlessly.
In two steps he was before her, crushing her in his arms. “Then I can say it now! God help me I love you, ErMalne! Whatever happens, that reMalns!”
She resisted faintly, but he kissed her fiercely. Her resistance melted. She clung to him and Ellory realized now that he had loved her from the start. In all the uncertain adventure of the past months, this alone was certain.
Then, still in his arms, she whispered: “From the first moment, dearest! Up in Norak—you were like a strange god among the Outlanders. You faced my gun, dared me to kill you, and I could never forget that. I thought of you every day, wondered about you. It was no accident, at Thakal. I was searching for you, watching you do things. Almost, I didn’t report you to the Outland Council at all, hoping—”
She paused.
Ellory held her at arm’s length, wild joy running through him. “Hoping I’d succeed? ErMalne, it must mean—you do see it in my way! You’ll come with me, away from Antarka? Our work lies out there—”
The girl drew back, gasping.
There was a faraway, tinkling crash, as though the walls of heaven had shattered.
“Humrelly! What do you mean? I’d been hoping for you foolishly, because of my love. Then I did report you, in time to stop the rebellion, for your own sake. I knew you belonged here, with us, with me. You do belong here, beloved! We’ll rule Lillamra together—”
But Ellory had stepped away from her now.
“I see,” he said dully. “No, ErMalne. I’m sorry. Lordship in Antarka? Never, for me!”
The girl made no answer to the unshakable resolve in his voice. “You choose imprisonment still,” she said. “And you are the sort who would never change, through years—” Defeatedly, she turned to the elevator. Ellory hesitated. “There is no escape from here,” she said, noticing. “There is no exit through these stone walls. If you broke through the skylight, guards would capture you outside. They have been told to watch, from the nearest open-air station.”
Ellory followed and the cage shot him down to what would be his lifelong prison, from that moment on. ErMalne parted from him silently.
In his room, sleep came to a troubled mind suffocated by a black future.
The next evening, Ellory’s pacing was interrupted by the locked door of his room opening. ErMalne entered. She leaned back against the closed door, as if needing its support. Her eyes were shadowed, her lips quivering. It was the first time Ellory had seen her composure so completely shattered. “Humrelly!” Her voice was low. “The death sentence!”
“What!”
“The Outland Council—they demand your death!” she went on. “The episode at the ball, and your wild attempt at escape convinced them you must go. They voted nine to one against me, this morning.”
Ellory fought the impact of despair. After all, he had come to Antarka, a prisoner, expecting nothing less. He smiled wanly.
“Thanks, ErMalne,” he murmured, “for the one vote.”
She was still leaning against the door, as if against intrusion.
“There’s one chance yet, Humrelly. And you must take it. Marry me now! As First Lord you’ll find the Council’s sentence becomes void.”
She saw the slow, determined shake of his head.
“Humrelly, you must! I can’t let y
ou die—” She trembled.
Ellory’s lips were white and set.
ErMalne, Lady of Lillamra, suddenly drew herself up. “I won’t humiliate myself further, even in the face of death. I’ll laugh when you die. I swear it! Once more I ask you, Humrelly, for your own sake—”
She turned from his stony silence.
“Follow me,” she said quietly.
He followed wonderingly. She led him down the hall to the privacy of her chambers, and again in the lift to the chamber under the canopy of polar stars.
She faced him, in starlight glow.
“There is a door,” she said in low, even tones. “Outside, there is a small ship waiting. I knew you would refuse and arranged this. The pilot can be trusted. He will take you back to Norak!”
Ellory stood stunned for a moment, realizing what she had done for him.
“But you, ErMalne—”
“I can take care of myself. My private lift, after I’ve descended, will slip its cable and crash below. There will be a smashed, unrecognizable body in it—that of a young Outlander who just died of disease. Humrelly, the man condemned to die, tried to escape again, I will say.”
“You’re letting me go!” Ellory clutched her hand. “ErMalne, it must mean you believe in the things I say. Come with me! Life in Antarka is stifled, meaningless. Come with me to the open world. Together we can do much for the Stone Age people.”
Ellory saw the sparkle in her eyes, the slightly parted lips. He gave a glad cry.
“ErMalne! You will come! I can see it in your face. You know I’m right!”
The girl started. The spell was broken. Sadly she shook her head.
“Still the dreamer, Humrelly!” she murmured. “But it can’t be. It’s like faraway music, sweet, but gone in the wind of reality. Antarka is my life, the only life I know, or believe in. Kiss me once, beloved, then go!”