THE cage came to sickening halt.
He followed her through the vast emptiness of the room of thrones, noting curiously that both her own throne and that of the Master were now occupied by cleverly executed bronze figures. He paused to examine the effigy of the Princess, wondering how long ago it had been cast.
“Third century,” she said as if in answer to his thought. “Five hundred years ago. I was a child of two hundred and twenty then—and happier.” Sardonic amusement was in her face and manner. “There was no Black Flame in those days. I was the madcap Princess Peggy then, reckless and daring, but sweet and noble. Or so they thought.”
“I’m sure you deserved the reputation,” Connor observed acidly. He meant to follow her lead in whatever she said or did. She would have no complaint that he was the first to mention their previous meeting. If she said no more about it, then it would not be mentioned at all.
She flashed her green eyes on him, eyes as icy as the green cap over Antarctica.
“I’m sure I deserve it no longer,” she said in tones so cold that they startled. “Come on.”
There was something fascinating, almost hypnotic, about this weirdly beautiful being.
“I’d rather dine with your image there,” he remarked drily.
CHAPTER XVI
Immortality
MARGARET of Urbs laughed and led Connor through a door behind the line of thrones.
“Martin Sair’s laboratory,” she explained, gesturing at the chaotic confusion of glassware and microscopes. “And this”—passing into a chamber beyond—“is mine.”
The place seemed more like a luxurious, sumptuously furnished library than a laboratory. There were shelves upon shelves of books, hundreds of them obviously ancient, a great vision screen, a delicately inlaid desk, and here and there bits of statuary.
“Laboratory!” he echoed. “What do you do here?”
“I think. When I want to work I use Martin’s.” She picked up a white carving from the desk. “See here—some of your ancient work.” She added a trifle sadly, “We have no artists able to create such beauty today. It’s a tragedy that the arms were broken. During the Dark Centuries, I suppose.”
Connor looked at the exquisite little ivory replica of the Venus de Milo and laughed.
“Arms broken!” he scoffed. “That’s a copy of an ancient Greek statue of Praxiteles. The arms were broken two thousand years before my time!”
“A copy! Where’s the original? I want it!”
“It was in the Louvre, in Paris.”
“Paris is in ruins. Do you know where the Louvre stood?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me! I’ll have it searched for. Tell me!”
He gazed into eyes sincerely eager; the eyes now of the white-clad girl of the woods who had lolled with him on a mossy woodland bank and told him stories of the ages. That girl had loved beauty, too; had been seeking it, matching her own reflection in the black pool. It amazed him that now in her role as the frigid princess she could still be so avid for beauty.
“That’s a bit of information I withhold,” he said slowly, “until I can trade it for something else I may want. Evanie’s safety, or my own.”
The mocking light returned to her eyes. “You amuse me, Weed!” she said curtly. “But very well.” She led the way to the South Tower Elevators.
She was silent during the long ride to the very pinnacle of the tower. They emerged into a small chamber walled on every side in glass, and Connor stood awe-struck as the city spread out before them. The palace overtopped even the colossal structures around the Park. He gazed speechless at the mighty stretch of peaks outlined in light.
The Princess turned to a black-screened box.
“Send dinner to the tower,” she ordered. “I want—Oh, anything. And send Sora to the room of Evanie Sair.”
She flung herself carelessly on a purple couch along a glassed wall, and Connor seated himself.
“Now,” she said, “What will you take for your knowledge?”
“I won’t bargain with you. I don’t trust you.”
She laughed.
“You see me through Evanie’s eyes, Tom Connor, and once—Well once I thought you were attracted to me. But no matter. We will not again speak of that time—though it does seem odd that Fate should have had me set my Triangle down where you were. When I was just wandering restlessly, aimlessly, seeking peace in loveliness. . . It’s too bad you fancy yourself in love with Evanie. For I assure you she doesn’t love you.”
“That’s not true!” he flared.
SHE laughed, and instantly her touch of wistfullness was gone, to be replaced by wickedness.
“Be carefully,” she mocked, “or I’ll exact payment for that insult as well. But it was no lie.”
He controlled his anger.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because when I forced her to sleep, frightened as she was, she didn’t turn to you. She fought me herself. If she had loved you, she’d have instinctively called you for help.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you’re a fool,” she observed indifferently, and turned from him disinterestedly at the entry of two servants bearing food.
They slipped a table between the two and served a sumptuous repast, with dishes Connor failed to recognize. He ate hungrily, but the Princess, despite her professed hunger, picked and chose and ate scarcely anything. It was a silent meal, but afterward, smoking one of the black, magically lighted cigarettes, he prepared to ask certain questions.
She forestalled him. With green eyes glowing sardonically, she looked straight at him.
“Why do you love Evanie instead of me?” she asked.
“You? Because you are not what I thought you were. Instead of being pure and sweet, you revel in evil. That is not hearsay; it is the historical record of your seven hundred years. For that I hate you, thoroughly and completely.”
She narrowed her glorious eyes.
“Then you hate without reason,” she said. “Am I not more powerful than Evanie, more intelligent, stronger, and even, I think, more beautiful?”
“You’re outrageously, incredibly, fantastically beautiful!” he cried, as if the acknowledgement were wrenched from him against his will. “You’re perhaps the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy, and the most dangerous. And yet I hate you.”
“Why?”
“Because of your lack of a little factor called character. I concede your beauty and your brilliance, but Evanie is sweet, kind, honest, and lovable. One loves character, not characteristics.”
“Character!” she echoed. “You know nothing of my character. I have a hundred characters! No one can be so gentle as I—nor so cruel.”
The faintest ripple of a mocking smile crossed her exquisite features, and then they were suddenly pure as an angel’s. Without rising she kicked the switch of a vision screen with a dainty, sandaled toe.
“Control,” she said as it glowed.
A face appeared.
“A vitergon set tell to this room,” she said cryptically, and then to Connor as the face vanished: “There is no scanner here. This chamber and Joaquin’s in the North Tower are the only two in Urbs lacking them.”
“What of it?”
“It means, Thomas Connor, that we are in utter privacy.”
He frowned, puzzled. Abruptly he started back in his chair as a flash of iridescence flickered. A Messenger! And almost with his start the thing was upon him.
“Tell!” it creaked in his brain. “Tell! Tell! Tell! Tell!”
HE sprang erect.
“Take it off!” he roared.
“When I have your knowledge of Venus,” his tormentor said carelessly.
“Take it off, or—”
“Or what?” Her smile was guileless, sweet, innocent.
“This!” he blazed, and covered the space between them in a bound, his right hand clutching the delicate curve of her throat, his left pressing her shoulders fierc
ely down against the cushions.
“Take it off!” he bellowed.
Suddenly there was a sound behind him, the grating of doors, and he was torn away, held by four grim-faced guards. Of course! The operator of the Messenger could hear his words. He should have remembered that.
The Black Flame pushed herself to a sitting position, and her face was no angel’s, but the face of a lovely demon. Green hell glittered in her eyes, but she only reached shakily for the vision switch.
“Tell Control to release,” she choked huskily, and faced Tom Connor.
The Messenger tingled and vanished. The princess rose unsteadily, but her glorious eyes burned cold as she snatched a weapon from the nearest guard.
“Get out, all of you!” she snapped. The men backed away. Connor faced her.
“I should have killed you!” he muttered. “For humanity’s sake.”
“Yes, you should have, Thomas Connor.” Her tones were bitter cold. “For then you would have died quickly and mercifully for murder, but now—now you die in the way I choose, and it will be neither quick nor merciful. I cannot”—her voice shook—“bear the touch of violence!” Her free hand rubbed her throat. “For this—you suffer!”
He shrugged. “It was worth it. I know your character now! I no longer have to guess.”
Mockery gleamed.
“Do you?” Her face changed suddenly, and again it was soft and pure and wistful. “Do you?” she repeated, in tones that were sad, but held that bell-like quality he so well remembered. “You don’t. Do you think the Black Flame is the true Margaret of Urbs? Do you realize what immortality means?” Her exquisite face was unutterably mournful as she thrust the weapon into her belt. “You think it’s a blessing, don’t you? You wonder, don’t you, why Joaquin has withheld it from everybody?”
“Yes, I do. I think it’s tyranny. It’s selfish ”
“Selfish! Oh, God!” Her voice shook. “Why, he withheld it from his own mother! Blessing? It’s a curse! I bear it out of my duty to Joaquin, else I’d have killed myself centuries ago. I still may, do you hear. I still may!” Her voice rose.
Appalled, he stared at her.
“Why?” he cried.
“You ask why! Seven hundred years. Seven—hundred—years! Denied love! How do I dare love a man who ages day by day, until his teeth yellow and his hair falls out, and he’s decrepit, senile, old? Denied children! Immortals can’t have children. Don’t you think I’d trade immortality for motherhood? Don’t you?”
Connor was speechless. Her voice rose to a tense pitch.
“Do you know what seven hundred years mean? I do! It means seven centuries of friendlessness. Do you wonder that I run away to the woods sometimes, seeking the companionship, the friendship, the love, that everywhere else is denied me? How can I make friends among people who vanish like ghosts? Who among the dry scientists of the Immortals is alone—and I’m bored—bored—bored!” Her green eyes were tear-bright, but when he opened his lips to speak, she stopped him with an imperious gesture. “I’m sick to death of immortality! I want someone who loves me. Someone I’d love to grow old with, and children to grow up beside me. I want—I want—a friend!”
She was sobbing. Impulsively he moved toward her, taking her hand.
“My God!” he choked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”
“And you—will help me?” Her exquisite features were pleading, tear-streaked.
“The best I can,” he promised.
Her perfect lips were two rosy temptations as she drew him toward her. He bent to kiss her gently—and sprang back as if his own lips had in truth touched a flame.
Laughter! He looked into mocking eyes whose only tears were that of sardonic mirth!
“So!” she said, her red lips taunting. “There is the first taste, Thomas Connor, but there will be more before I kill you. You may go.”
CHAPTER XVII
The Destiny of Man
“YOU—devil!” Connor choked, and then whirled at a soft click behind him. A white envelope lay in a wire basket by the elevator.
“Hand it to me,” said the Flame coolly.
He snatched it and thrust it at her, in a turmoil of emotion as he watched her read it.
“Indeed!” she murmured. “My esteemed brother orders me to keep well away from you—which I shall not do—and commands you to his quarters at once.” She yawned. “Take the elevator to any floor below the Tower and ask a guard. That’s all.”
Yet, as the cage dropped, Connor could not forget that there had been something wistful about the Princess, at his last glimpse of her. Somehow, try as he would, he couldn’t hate her quite whole-heartedly, and he frowned as he found his way to the West Chambers. A guard admitted him to an inner room, and then retired quietly, leaving him facing the Master, who sat behind a paper-littered desk,
“Well, what do you think of me?” the Master greeted him abruptly.
Connor was taken aback, unprepared for the question.
“Why,” he stammered, “what would I naturally think of you? You dragged me back here by torture. You nearly killed Evanie. Do you think I can easily forget or forgive such things?”
“After all, Thomas Connor, you participated in a revolt against me,” the Master said suavely. “You wounded eleven of my men. Did the governments of your day deal so leniently with treason?”
“I’ve wondered why you are so easy on the rebels,” he admitted. “Frankly, in my time, there’d have been a good many of us lined up against a wall and shot.”
The Master shook his head. “Why should I do that? The Weeds are the finest of my people. I made the only mistake—that of giving leisure to a race not ready for it. Leisure is what’s bred all these minor revolutions. But does a father kill his favorite children?”
“Does a son kill his mother?” retorted Connor.
The Master smiled bleakly.
“I see my sister has been talking to you. Yes, I refused immortality to my mother. She was an old woman—ill, infirm. Should I have condemned her to added centuries of misery? Immortality does not restore youth.”
The point was incontrovertible.
“Yet you withhold it from those who have youth,” Connor protested. “You keep it selfishly as a reward, to bind to yourself all men of ability. You’ve emasculated the rest of humanity.”
“You feel that immortality is a highly desirable reward, don’t you?”
“I do! In spite of what your sister says.”
“You don’t understand,” said the Master patiently. “We’ll pass the question of its desirability; it doesn’t matter. But suppose I were to open it to the race, to instruct all the doctors in its secrets. Wouldn’t it immediately halt all development? How can evolution function if no one dies and no children are born?”
That was a puzzler.
“You could permit it after the birth of children,” Connor said.
“I could. But at the present birthrate, the land areas would provide bare standing room in just a century and a half. I could then kill off nine-tenths of the population, presumably, but what of the famines and food shortages intervening?”
CONNOR was silent for a long moment.
“The fault’s with immortality itself!” he burst out vehemently. “Men should never have learned that secret!”
“But they have learned it. Would you have me destroy the knowledge because fools envy it—and envy it mistakenly?”
“Did you summon me here merely to justify your acts?” Tom Connor snapped in reply.
“Exactly. You possess knowledge invaluable to me. I’d like to convince you of my sincerity.”
“You never will.”
“See here,” said the Master, still in tones of calm gravity. “Don’t ever doubt that I could steal your knowledge. I know ways to encompass it, and if I failed, others would not fail.”
“The Princess tried that,” said Connor grimly. “She will not try it again.” He fingered a small bronze bust on the desk before him. “And i
ncidentally, what’s to prevent me from flinging this bronze through your skull right now—killing you, instead of waiting for you to kill me?”
“Your word to make no move against me in the Palace,” reminded the Master gently.
Connor’s lips tightened. In that moment he realized suddenly what it was that had perturbed him so violently. He was beginning to believe the Master—and he didn’t want to! The memory of the Messenger’s torture was too recent; the picture of Evanie’s helplessness was too burning. He was being won over against his will, but—
“You win,” he growled, releasing the bust. “Go ahead. Tell me what all this is leading up to. You must have some objective other than the indefinite perpetuation of your own power.”
The Master smiled. “I have. I plan the ultimate destiny of Mankind.” He held up a hand to still Connor’s quick, unbelieving protest. “Listen to me. I have bred out criminals by sterilizing, for many centuries, those with criminal tendencies. I have raised the general level of intelligence by sterilizing the feeble-minded, the incompetent. If we have fewer supreme geniuses than your people, we have at least no stupid nor insane—and genius will come.
“I try, to the best of my knowledge, to improve the race. I think I’m succeeding. At least we’re far advanced over the barbarians of the Dark Centuries, and even, I believe, over the average of your mighty ancient people. I think we’re happier.” He paused. “Do you?”
“In a way,” Connor conceded. “But even happiness isn’t always a fair exchange for—liberty!”
“Liberty? Suppose I granted liberty? Suppose I abdicated? How long do you think it would be before every sort of Weed village was at war with every other sort? Do you want the world to break up into another welter of quarreling little nations? That’s what I found; out of it I’ve created an empire.”
He drummed a finger on the desk, thoughtfully eyeing Connor.
“Moreover, I’ve preserved what differences I could. The yellow race was a remnant; I’ve bred it strong again. The red race was gone, but the black is growing. And the tag-ends of nations—I’ve nourished them.”
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