The cavern she was seeking lay two hours high in the towering peaks above Darva. No one but a Venusian could have found it in less than days. Both Quanna and her horse knew the path well enough, but it was a difficult climb even for them, and when they came out into the cathedral-walled canyon where a thin waterfall swayed like smoke, the horse’s sides were heaving with the steepness of the climb.
In these narrow walls the waterfall made a thunderous music. Quanna drew her cloak over her face and rode straight through the smoking veil of water, into the Gothic arch of the cavern beyond. She whistled three clear, liquid notes as she came, and heard answering music from the walls, piercing the roar of the waterfall.
Around two bends firelight flickered. Quanna slid off the horse into the waiting arms of servants, and went down a sparkling sandy slope toward the fire. Light danced bewilderingly upon a fairyland of crystalline columns which slow centuries had built of dripping water here. It was an Aladdin cave of flashing jewels in the firelight.
Of the group by the fire, all but one man rose as Quanna came forward, her scarlet boots showing and fading with delicate precision beneath her emerald cloak. Quanna had been trained meticulously in every rite that befits a Venusian woman, and ceremonious behavior was not the least of her knowledge. Even her gait was traditional as she approached the men before the fire.
They had risen — all but the hooded old one — not in deference to her rank or her womanhood, for women are not held highly on Venus, but because she was an important emissary bringing news of the enemy. And had they had reason to think her news would be bad or her prestige in the enemy camp lowered, they would not have risen. Under the elaborate ceremony of Venusian courts is a basis of dog-eat-dog which shocks Earthmen. Venusians scorn the unsuccessful and toady to the strong with a certain courtliness which ingratiates even as it repels.
The richly colored robes of the men made points of jewel colors dance along the crystalline walls as they moved. A young man pushed impatiently out among them and came forward, his crimson cloak swinging from supple shoulders, his long fair hair swinging, too, as he came to meet the girl. The two of them were as alike in looks as blood relation can make man and woman.
Quanna took both his hands with the exact degree of deference which was due from her temporary man-status as important spy. Vastari’s face blazed with impatient eagerness as Quanna exchanged the proper ceremonious greetings with the group of tribe leaders around the fire. It amused her a little to let her royal brother wait upon her. She met the fierce stares of the other men composedly, too accustomed all her life to seeing that avid hope for disaster in every face to notice it much now. No Venusian rises to influence without knowing very well the eager, searching stare of rivals hungry for a sign of weakness.
Last of all she smiled at the hooded figure by the fire, who gave her back a greeting in a harsh, hissing voice that was very pleasant to her ears.
“Well?” demanded Vastari, pulling her to a seat upon the cushions by the fire as the last ceremonies fell silent and the leaders grouped wolfishly around to listen. “Well, how goes it, sister? Is the glass knife broken yet?”
“Not yet,” said Quanna, making her voice low and confident. “The Earthmen have a fable about a goose that laid golden eggs. It’s still too soon to kill ours, brother. The Dark Man gave me great news only a few hours ago.” She used a Venusian term of time measurement which is so complex that few Earthmen ever master it. Watching the avid eyes fixed upon her all around the fire, she went on: “The last Patrol is leaving Venus. The orders came in today.”
Vastari smacked his ringed hands together and cried out something exultant in a voice too choked for articulation. The fire always smoldering behind his eyes blazed up with all but perceptible violence.
“Leaving!” he cried. “So they’ve come to it at last. Do you hear, all of you? That means freedom! Venus under Venusian rule, after three hundred years of Earth tyranny! Is it true, Quanna?”
“True enough, surely,” said a harsh voice behind him. They all turned. The cloaked figure at the fireside had thrown back his hood from a crest of white hair and was smiling at them sadly now, horny lids drooping over his eyes. “I’ve seen it coming all my life, children. Mars was great once, too, you see.” He lifted bony shoulders in a shrug.
“But aren’t you glad, Ghej?” Vastari spun toward him, scarlet cloak flying with the motion. Everything he did had a quicksilver volatility. “The freedom we were fighting for, put right in our hands? No more hiding in the mountains for us, Ghej! No more Earth laws! A free Venus, after three hundred years of tyranny!”
The old Martian lifted his peaked brows.
“Is freedom always good, then? Freedom can mean anarchy, my boy.”
Vastari snapped his fingers impatiently. “Out of anarchy, something may grow,” he said. “Under tyranny, nothing can. You’ll help us, won’t you, Ghej?”
Ghej looked up somberly under his triangular lids. “Against Earth? You don’t need help against the Imperial Planet, son. Earth has brought her own ruin upon her, and nothing we can do will affect that. I know. I saw Mars fall.”
He put his chin in his hands and stared into the fire under heavy lids. Ghej had a strange way of talking about the past of millenniums ago as if he himself had been present. It was the result of the vivid three-dimensional pictorial records by which all Martians learn their history in childhood.
Vastari’s face, as he turned away, was unconsciously eloquent with the impatience of the young for the dreaming old.
~ * ~
One of the tribe leaders leaned forward, jutting a scarred, wolfish face above his robe of apricot velvet. His eyes glittered at Quanna.
“She brings news the old Martian could have told us years ago,” he declared, his voice jealous and eager. “That same news my own spies will bring me tomorrow from the city. What other reasons has she for calling herself our equal? I say, let her kill the Earthman and go back to the harem where she belongs.”
There was a rising of voices around the fire, some few in agreement, most deprecating not so much the sentiment as the crude way in which it had been put. The true Venusian prefers his malice more deftly expressed.
Quanna faced them equably. Showing no resentment — it did not behoove a woman to resent openly anything a man might say — she declared in a voice pitched low:
“To us in the city it doesn’t look so simple, lord. With the right knowledge, we may glean much from the Earthmen before they go.”
The scarred hillman pounded his velvet knee with a clenched fist. “I say fight as we planned!” he roared. “Fight and conquer and loot, before they can get away from us! It was good enough for our fathers, wasn’t it? What do we want a new plan for? Kill and loot, and all this waiting be damned!”
A babble of voices echoed him around the fire, cut off in a moment by the brilliant scarlet of Vastari’s leap, his red cloak streaming. There was a flash of glittering colors in one swift arc and a thud of weapon on flesh, all too quick for the eye or the brain to follow clearly.
Then Vastari was standing over the huddled hillman, the scarlet cloak settling in bright folds about him and his wickedly jewel-studded blackjack swinging ready for another blow. The hillman nursed his smashed nose, blood running down beneath his hand to spatter upon apricot velvet.
Vastari’s eyes glittered dangerously up at the rest under lowered brows as he stood above the silenced rebel, head sunk between his shoulders. The bloody blackjack swung in short, twitching arcs that caught the firelight in jeweled glints.
“Has Ystri any friends here?” he demanded softly. No one spoke. Vastari bent and deliberately slapped Ystri’s face twice, heavy blows that rocked his head. The hillman was nearly twice Vastari’s size, but he made no move to retaliate, only crouched there masking his broken nose behind a bunched hand and glaring up with reluctant respect in his eyes.
The same respect showed in every subdued face around the fire as Vastari turned away with a certain sw
agger, hooking the blackjack back in his belt, careless of the blood smear upon his satin tunic.
~ * ~
“This isn’t the way to freedom,” Vastari said, reseating himself beside Quanna. “If we quarrel among ourselves, we’ll go the way so many went before us. We’re no guerrilla band, squabbling for loot! Freedom is worth a little sacrifice today if we can take all Venus tomorrow! It was not under slavery that Earthmen conquered their empire. They were free men, fighting for themselves. We must be free, too, if we can hope to conquer Venus. Free of Earth rule and free of all petty greeds among ourselves. We aren’t children, snatching at toys. We’re free-born leaders fighting to drive Earthmen off our soil and rule Venus under Venusian law.”
The fire of the crusader kindled in Vastari’s voice as he went on. “If Ystri had his way, he’d attack Darva and die. The Earthmen have weapon we can’t hope to conquer. And even if we did — what would happen? Ystri and his kind would loot and run back to the mountains, each to his separate stronghold, each with all he could carry. And presently each would envy his neighbor’s loot, and in a little while you’d all be back where I found you, little nations too busy with your petty squabbles to unite against Earth rule or the raiders from Darkside or anything else that threatens you. Fools like Ystri made Earth tyranny possible on Venus. Fools like Ystri will bring it on us again if they ever return, unless I can unite us all. Union and freedom! Think of it, men!”
Vastari stood up and began to pace the shining floor with long, nervous strides. The heads of his hearers turned to follow his as if hypnotized. His voice shook and glowed with his passionate sincerity, and the bright light of avarice kindled in the eyes that followed his pacing.
“I tell you, it will be worth fighting for! We must be rid of the Earthman, but we mustn’t ruin ourselves to drive him out. There will be much to do after he’s gone — leaving his weapons behind him. We must have those weapons! We can’t conquer Venus without them. And that’s why Quanna must go back to Darva and learn more of their plans. Somehow, we must possess what the Earthmen now possess, if we intend to rule Venus as they did. That will take courage — cunning and courage. And after that—” Vastari paused, looking up into the glittering shadows of the ceiling with eyes that saw something far away and wonderful. “After that — freedom and Venus will be ours! The Earthmen fought for freedom long ago — and won it and conquered the stars with it! Our turn is next. When the Earthmen were first fighting against tyranny they sang an old battle song whose words might be our own. Quanna learned it from her Earthman. I’d like you all to hear it. Quanna—”
She bent her smooth fair head becomingly and began in a low, clear voice to chant as well as she could in Venusian to the tune of a very old drinking song of Earth, once the battle anthem of a nation that had fallen long ago. The listening men sat silent, firelight glittering in their eyes. It was a curious scene; surely the song had never been sung in a stranger setting than this crystalline ice cavern with its pale, sparkling shadows, to these wolfish men in their gorgeously colored robes.
“Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loves homes and the tyrant’s oppression,”
sang Quanna. Vastari’s fanatic young face lighted up at the words; his lips moved soundlessly, mouthing them.
“The conquer we must,
For our cause, it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust!’
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!”
Behind the group the gray Martian listened enigmatically, his leathery face sad.
~ * ~
James Douglas wakened to a room translucent with the blue twilight of the ebbing cloud-tide. His mind was clear and relaxed for a moment, as tranquil as the twilight in the room. The memory came back, and the familiar heaviness of spirit, and he sat up slowly, the crease deepening between his black brows. Quanna sat by the window where the breeze just lifted her fine, pale hair. When she heard him stir she turned, tranquility in every gentle motion she made.
“How well you slept,” she murmured, rising. “I couldn’t bear to wake you, Jamie, you were so soundly asleep. You must have been very tired, dear.”
He leaned forward on the edge of the couch, forearms crossed on knees so big his shoulders hunched. He looked up at her under his brows rather as Vastari had looked up in the crystal cavern, but with all the difference in the world in his dark, weary face.
“I had a dream,” he said somberly. “I thought I was back in Norristown, at the edge of the Twilight Belt, and the mountaineers were attacking. I thought a spear went through me, right here—” He laid a hand on his tunic just above the belt buckle. “It was so real it still hurt for a moment after I woke up. But in the dream it didn’t hurt at all. I thought it nailed me to the wall, and I pulled it out and—” He laughed and hesitated. “Dreams are silly things. I thought I led a charge brandishing that bloody spear, and we drove the attackers back.” He laughed again, but looked up at her under the black brows with a dark and somber gaze, no laughter in his eyes.
Quanna shivered a little under her blue-green gown. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said lightly. “It was only a dream. Wouldn’t you like some coffee, Jamie dear? You missed dinner, you know.”
He ignored the question. “What was it you were playing before I fell asleep? ‘Otterburn,’ wasn’t it?” He hummed the tune, and words came back to his memory.
“Oh, I have dreamed a dreary dream
Beyond the Isle of Skye;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I—”
“The Isle of Skye,” he repeated after a long moment. “I wonder! The old Isle of Skye’s on Earth, but you and I are on a new one now, Quanna. From Earth, wouldn’t Venus be the Isle of Skye?”
She shook her head, the fine hair clouding about her face. “I can’t picture it all. Stars! Shall I ever see them, Jamie?”
“Not from Venus. And Earth’s no safe place to be just now, my dear. No, you’re safer on your Isle of Skye. As for me—” He shook his black head. “Now if I believed in dreams as my people used to do, I’d take that for an omen.” He stood up. “Did you say something about coffee? Lord, how I must have slept!”
Quanna’s smile as she rose had the clarity of uttermost innocence. When she opened the door the tall figure standing there with knuckles lifted to knock made her jump a little.
“Lieutenant!” she laughed. “You startled me.”
“Commander here?” Lieutenant Morgan, second in command of Darva Post, gave her an impassive stare from sleepy, brown eyes.
“Come in, Morgan,” called Jamie from the room beyond. “All right, Quanna. Run along and bring that coffee.”
Morgan entered with the loose-jointed, deceptive laziness that colored everything he did.
“Don’t like that girl,” he said, looking at the closed door under his lids.
Jamie laughed. “You don’t like any Venusian.”
“Damn right I don’t. You’ll wake up with a knife in your ribs some day, commander.”
Douglas said: “Not Quanna’s knife.”
“Think not?” Morgan shrugged. “By the way, Vastari was up in the hills last night.” He glanced out of the window toward the great leaning cliffs above Darva, where the light was broadening as the morning cloud-tide thinned. A long rumble of rockslide shook the window frames as he spoke.
“Attack?” asked Jamie.
“No, just a powwow. They’re up to something, commander.”
“Oh, I suppose so. They usually are. Any ideas?”
“Two to one they know we’re leaving. That means ambush somewhere on the way out.”
“Or attack here?”
“Morgan shook his head. “Too risky. Vastari’s no fool.”
“Maybe not open attack. But they’ll hate to see us leaving with all our artillery. Vastari’d like that for his campa
igns in the mountains. He’ll try to get it, and he’ll try hard.”
“Preferably by foul means,” put in Morgan with a grin. “He—”
A gentle tap at the door interrupted him. Quanna looked in deprecatingly.
“A caller, commander,” she said. “The Martian trader, Ghej—”
Jamie stood up quickly. “Ghej! Come in, come in! It’s good to see you. Quanna, how about coffee for us all?”
~ * ~
The cloaked gray figure came in with the odd little shuffle in his gait that is so typically Martian. Jamie had a sudden Scots premonition that vanished in a moment and left him deriding himself, but in that moment the gray-robed figure had looked like Death shuffling in to greet him, holding out its hand. He remembered his dream, and the buried Celtic credulity of his forebears rose into the light just long enough for him to wonder if he were to leave Venus after all, if his longing to stay were to be granted more grimly than he had bargained for. The Isle of Skye, the morning star—
Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02] Page 26