“I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I—”
“Superstitious fool!” he apostrophized himself half angrily, and held out his hand to Ghej.
“I would not have liked to miss you, commander,” said the Martian in his precise English, accepting the chair Morgan pushed forward. “I hear you are leaving Venus soon.”
Jamie threw up his hands in a gesture of despair. “Half Venus seems to have heard about it already.”
Ghej’s pointed upper lip drew down in his beak-like smile. “I have been liquidating my assets for over a year now,” he told them, “preparing for this day.” The smile grew one-sided and twisted down a bit sadly at the corners. With his left hand he made the crook-sign of ancient Mars in the air. “Remember?” he asked. “It happened to Mars, too. I know about Rome and America and the other great fallen empires of Earth. I could see this coming from a long way off. As you could see it, commander.”
There was unconscious sadness in Jamie’s own smile. “Officially this is known as ‘temporary consolidation,’ ” he told the Martian. Ghej lifted deprecating brows and pulled the long upper lip down in a grimace. He was too polite to say what all three men in the room were thinking.
This is the end of the Solar Empire of Earth. This is the last Patrol, out of all the strong network that once bound the worlds together by unbreakable chains of men. The links are loosening; the Empire is falling apart. Earth evacuates the planet it has ruled for three hundred years. The Green Star of Earth is an outworn emblem now. Barbarian hordes from the outer world are pouring down upon the Imperial Planet, armed with weapons Earth taught them to make, that Earth might be destroyed. Little by little her grasp has let go. One by one the Patrols go home to defend the mother world. This is the last.
“Venus will be a different world without you,” said Ghej, smoothing his cloak over one knee. “It will be interesting to see what happens to the Terrestrialized cities — all the clean, broad streets, the markets, the busy shops — how long will they last?”
“Just as long as it takes Vastari to burn them,” Morgan declared bitterly.
Ghej nodded. “Vastari probably justifies himself in his own mind. They say he has reason to hate Earth, you know. He’ll want to destroy everything on Venus that has a Terrestrial background.”
“Three hundred years of Earth rule,” mused Jamie. “Three hours in the life of the race! Sometimes I wonder if twenty centuries would have been enough to make an impression on these people. Sometimes I wonder if everything we’ve done on Venus hasn’t been wholly in vain for both worlds. Six months after we’ve gone, the Terrestrialized cities will be gone, too. What the fire leaves the jungles will take over. Cementine huts will rise where cementine huts stood three hundred years ago, and there won’t be a trace left of anything Earthmen tried to do. No more cities where children can grow up in safety. No more protection for the farms that provide against starvation in famine seasons. Oh, damn Vastari!”
“He can’t help being a Venusian,” said Ghej mildly.
Jamie slapped his chair arms with impatient palms. “I know. It’s just that — well, I’ve been on Venus a long time now. I fought at the second siege of Norristown when I was twenty. I flew with Cressy when he explored the Twilight Belt. Here at Darva I’ve seen the city grow into something to be proud of. I got the appropriations myself to build the storehouses that tided three whole tribes over the last famine season. When I think of Vastari wiping it all out the moment my back’s turned, I could strangle him with my bare hands!”
“The Venusians are like quicksilver, commander,” Ghej said thoughtfully. “They slip away from contact with the logic of other worlds.”
“I know. It’s because they’re still barbarians, isn’t it? Perhaps they’ll always be barbarians. They have no words in any of their languages for ‘loyalty’ or ‘honor’ or any of the high-sounding ideals we live by. They have no values above the selfish animal values of survival. They’re incapable of civilized thoughts as we define civilization. I tell you, Venus is stagnant already, for all her rawness. There’s barbarism at both ends of the social scale, you know, and the men of Venus have gone from one barbarism to the other with no interval of true civilization between.” Jamie slapped the chair arms again.
“Think of Norris, colonizing Venus. Can you imagine any Venusian enduring such hardships, simply for an ideal? Remember the first siege of Norristown? The colonists could have taken ships for home at any time that year, and abandoned Venus and everything Norris and his men died to establish. But they didn’t. They stuck it out until the rescue ships came, a whole year late. Did you ever read the story of that siege, Ghej? Unceasing attack from the swamps and the seas, unceasing fevers and disease from the unknown plagues of Venus. But the colonists had a greater fever than anything Venus could inflict — the feverish dream of empire that was sweeping the Solar System then.
“The soldiers died on the walls one by one, and the civilians took up the battle. When the spaceship came in at last with provisions, they found the women and children, the invalids and the wounded manning the guns, and not one able-bodied fighting man left on his feet.
“That burning idealism has no roots in Venusian minds. And yet, you know, there’s something irresistibly fascinating about the planet and the people. It’s raw and lusty. It’s the future. Venus from Earth is the morning star, and I think that’s more than symbolism now.”
~ * ~
Jamie got up and walked to the window, looking out over the roofs of Darva toward the tremendous blue mountains where the cloud-tide thinned to let brightening daylight through.
“Back on Earth I’ll be a misfit. An outlander, Earth is a world of orderly gardens and tamed seas and landscaped mountain ranges. The people are set in a pattern. You know to a syllable just how they’ll react to a given situation. It makes you yawn to think of it when you’ve spent twenty years on Venus under these gigantic mountains, where the people are as wild and unpredictable as the cloudbursts.
“I’ve forgotten the polite formulas of Earth that cover every possible situation. They’ve got a tight little society there and I won’t fit into it anywhere.”
Jamie was silent, and for a long moment no one spoke. Jamie’s mind went on:
“Not that it matters how Earth accepts any of us colonials. I have an idea we’ve seen the last of our little play-paradises with their formal rules. They don’t tell us much here on Venus, but the last news I heard was of barbarian bases spotted through Earth like a plague, and barbarian invaders pouring down out of the sky in ships we taught them how to build, with weapons we put into their hands many years ago.”
He couldn’t say it aloud, not even to Morgan. Certainly not to an outworld trader, however well he knew Ghej. He couldn’t say what had burned in his mind for so many months now, the terrible fear that had come to him and to the civilized world generations too late to save it.
For the era of civilized man was ending. Jamie almost wished he hadn’t had the leisure to see it coming. He wished he hadn’t read the old books, for he could see the cycle closing as it had closed for other cultures long ago.
“They say we’re ‘temporarily consolidating,’ ” he thought, staring out at the great cloud-marbled mountains. “I know better. I’ve got a perspective here they don’t have at home, or won’t admit having. I know the signs of rottenness, and the signs are plain on Earth. It’ll take a better race than modern man to win back what we’re letting go.
“And there is no such race. The Venusians might have done it — but they won’t now. Another few centuries and we might have instilled some conception of what idealism means into those slippery quicksilver minds. I don’t know. We’ll never do it now. And the Venusians were our last hope.
“No other race remains. The barbarians who are conquering Earth are decadent barbarians. The other worlds of the empire are either old civilizations, more tired even than we, or subhuman tribes which no amount of teaching could li
ft much above apehood.
“And so the greatest empire that mankind ever knew is crumbling from within, without a hope of rebirth.”
The strong fragrance of coffee entering the room like a tangible presence broke the little silence that had fallen upon the three men. Quanna came in smiling, followed by servants with trays. Her deep, quiet eyes saw everything readable on the faces before her, though no eyes caught her looking. She poured the coffee deftly.
When she handed Ghej his cup she set a small silver platter of bread at his elbow, according to the ceremonious Venusian custom, observed even among outworld people on Venus. There, as on Earth, bread symbolizes the staff of life, and guests are served with it whenever food is served and whether they intend to taste it or not.
Ghej’s horny-lidded eyes flickered at the plate and then slanted a glance up at Quanna. She caught it wonderingly. Something was afoot, then. Something concerning Jamie, for in the elaborate symbolism which governs all Venusian living, bread is the emblem for leader or head of the household.
“I think you misunderstand Vastari, commander,” said Ghej, sipping his coffee. “It’s true that no Venusian seems to comprehend what other worlds call idealism. But, in his own mind, Vastari is probably quite sure of his rightness. He talks of freedom, you know.”
“Freedom to loot and burn, and starve afterward!”
“Perhaps,” Ghej nodded, and began to toy with the silver knife that lay across the bread platter. “I think so. But then I represent the past, gentlemen. My world died millenniums ago. You yourselves are the present; your world is passing. Vastari is the future. What he does with it only the future can show. You and I will not be here to see.” He shook his crested head and picking up the knife, drove it idly halfway through the loaf of bread beside him. Under the horny lids he flickered a glance up at Quanna.
“As a trader among the mountain tribes, commander,” he remarked irrelevantly, “it has been my business for many years to fathom Venusian mentalities as nearly as any outworlder can. I’ve seen a hillman, for instance, take revenge for a blow by striking not at his attacker but at his attacker’s enemy, in the dead of night. None but a Venusian could clearly understand the tangle of motives behind such a revenge—
“Excellent coffee, my dear Quanna. May I have another cup?”
~ * ~
In the blue twilight of Jamie’s bedroom nothing moved but the softly blowing curtains. Jamie’s bedroom nothing moved but the softly blowing curtains. Jamie’s regular, hoarse breathing was the only sound except for an occasional, far-away thunder of rockslide and the receding footsteps of the sentry who paced outside the commander’s quarters.
Jamie’s sleep was deep. Quanna had seen to that with the nightcap she had served him. Now she sat in the farthest corner of the room, where the shadows hung as blue as if in some submarine cavern, far down under Venusian seas. She sat in perfect stillness, unwinking eyes fixed upon the window beyond which the shadow and the footsteps of the sentry passed and repassed.
She was grateful to Ghej. She was not sure how he could have guessed about her feeling for the commander, but she knew he had guessed. He was fit, almost, to be a Venusian in his sensitive perception of nuances. She knew, too, how it had amused him to tell her by symbolism and indirection under the very noses of an oblivious audience that Ystri planned to murder Jamie. Yes, Ghej had lived long enough on Venus to think almost like a Venusian himself.
As she waited here in the twilight for the assassin she was not unduly perturbed. She knew enough of her race in general and Ystri in particular to be sure he would come alone. He could not wholly trust an coplotter not to betray him to Vastari, and he would want the glory alone if he succeeded.
The sentry’s feet gritted up and down on the pavement outside; Jamie’s heavy breathing measured the silence in the room. Quanna sat unwinking and waited.
She could not have said what warned her when the time came. Certainly no sound. But when the sentry’s tread approached the far end of his beat and a shadow slid up to the thin grille that masked the windows, Quanna was at the grille and crouching low against it before the shadow itself was aware of her. It must have been something of a shock to the newcomer to find a second figure six inches away just inside the screen. The shadow started back with a muffled gasp.
Quastri breathed, “Ystri — look!” and let the light from the gateway shine for an instant on the snub-nosed gun she held.
“Quick!” whispered Ystri, speaking indistinctly because of his injured nose. “Let me in! The sentry—”
“No.” Quanna’s voice was flat. “I know what you want. Not tonight, Ystri.”
“Let me in,” Ystri demanded fiercely, “or the commander will know tomorrow that you are a spy.”
Quanna thought he meant that. His prestige had been severely damaged by Vastari’s blow; he might do anything to discredit her and Vastari through her.
“Not tonight,” she temporized. “I have plans— Afterward, you may kill him.”
“I don’t trust you!”
“Tomorrow—”
“Traitress!” hissed Ystri. “Let me in! With him dead, there’ll be confusion enough to steal weapons, even take the town! In Vastari’s name, let me in!”
“Not tonight! Tomorrow I’ll prove myself — kill him if you can, then. But not here.”
“Where then? You’re lying.”
“It’s the truth. Tomorrow I’ll bring him into a trap for you. The mangrove forest, say? At cloud-ebb tomorrow?”
Ystri peered at her doubtfully in the blue dimness through the grille. The sentry’s returning feet grew louder on the pavement, but Ystri hesitated for one last mistrustful moment.
“Is this the truth? Do you swear it by Vastari?”
“I swear. I’ll bring him into the mangrove forest tomorrow, to kill if you can.”
Ystri scowled at her in the twilight, seeing a certain sincerity upon her face that made him accept the promise reluctantly. That, and the gun gleaming dully in reflected light.
“Tomorrow at cloud-ebb, then — or you both die,” he growled, and his shadow melted from the grille without a sound. Quanna sat back on her heels and looked after him, her eyes deep and expressionless.
~ * ~
“The mangrove forest?” Jamie’s voice was doubtful, but he turned his horse toward the upward path. “That gloomy place? Sure you want to ride that way?”
Quanna smiled at him under her hood of emerald velvet. “You said I could choose — and it’s our last ride together on Venus, Jamie dear.”
“Oh, all right. I always get my feet wet there, but — have it your way.”
“I think it’s a lovely place, Jamie. Listen, Jamie, I’ll sing to you — a going-away song.”
The Martian monochord harp hung at her saddle. She laid it across her green velvet knee and began a soft Venusian chant with a ringing call at the end of each stanza. Partly it was to amuse Jamie, partly to warn the hiding Ystri of their coming. It would amuse Ystri, too, in a grim sort of way, for this was a going-away song indeed, a Venusian dirge for a man about to die.
The mangrove forest lay high in a narrow canyon above Darva. Jamie and Quanna had ridden here more than once before, for the pleasure of walking the narrow mossy ways that wound over the water. The forest filled a valley between peaks veined with waterfalls whose music tinkled all around the canyon. It was half swamp, half lake of clear dark water out of which gigantic mangroves rose in arches and columns and long green aisles. The labyrinthine paths wound intricately over the great gnarled roots which stood above the water.
The glassy surfaces gave back such faithful reflections that the forest seemed double, suspended in green space. It was like walking in a dream to stroll along the winding, mossy ways and watch one’s own reflection swimming dimly underfoot.
Not even the padding Venusian horses could walk these paths. Jamie and Quanna dismounted at the mouth of the canyon and entered the glassy forest in silence except for the music Quanna stroked n
ow and again from her harp. She was watching for Ystri. He would not be easy to see, she knew. It was not for nothing that she had worn her green cloak today, and he was certain to be green-clad, too, and almost invisible in the bewildering reaches of the forest.
They had strolled a long way into the mirrory labyrinth before a sliding motion among the trees caught Quanna’s eyes. She had been sure he would come alone, and she could see now that she had not been mistaken. She had been sure, too, that he would not use a gun. He wanted Jamie dead for many reasons. The chiefest was to forestall Vastari of the glory of that murder, and Ystri would want to use the long Venusian dagger for that pleasure. And so he would have to creep close enough to stab Jamie in the back, and there was no danger of a random shot across the water.
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