“Do you think so?”
She smiled a taunt. “I’ll turn off the deflectors,” she murmured.
There was a pattering roar. Something crashed glancingly above him and the floor tipped and spun like a juggler’s platter. Margaret of Urbs laughed.
“Might I ask the object?” he queried.
“Yes,” she said gently. “I’m going to commit suicide!”
As he caught his breath sharply, unbelievingly, she moved the lever before her, and the throbbing roar of the blast died suddenly. The sensation of dizziness that followed was a thousand times worse than that Connor had experienced in the swift Palace elevators.
He was utterly weightless. They were in a free fall!
The Princess was laughing at him. Deep in those lustrous, inhumanly lovely sea-green eyes of hers was the glint of mockery.
“Scared?” she whispered, as she had done repeatedly, and gave a low rippling chuckle at his silence. “Three hundred miles!” she jeered. A moment passed. “Two hundred!”
HE couldn’t shift his gaze from the satanic beauty of her face, but he grimly fought his quivering lips to firmness. There was a low whine outside that rose abruptly to a screaming shriek that went gibbering across the world. The air! They had struck the atmosphere.
The floor grew warm, almost hot—it burned. At last Connor tore his eyes from the face of the Princess and gazed down at the up-rushing planet.
They were over ocean. What matter? At that speed it might as well be concrete. How high? Two miles—a mile? Less each succeeding second. The scream was a great roaring now.
“We’re going to crash,” he said evenly, knowing she couldn’t hear him.
Margaret of Urbs kicked a lever with a daintily casual foot. The blast roared out—too late! Or was it? Irresistible weight oppressed Connor as the sea rushed upward. So close it was now that he saw the very waters hollowed by the blast. That near!
But far enough. They were receding until the girl cut the blast again and set the rocket gently on the heaving swells of the Pacific.
Connor gulped.
“Nice flying,” he said steadily. “How often can you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she laughed. “I’ve never tried before. Scared?” The reiteration of that word was getting on his nerves as greatly as had the speed of the rocket.
“Did I show it?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not.” Her voice changed suddenly. She rose, whipped the beam-pistol from her side. “If I can’t frighten you,” she said, her eyes glittering, “I can at least kill you!” The beam flashed over him.
He took the shock unflinching. She slid her finger along the barrel until it stabbed harder, racking him. He bit his lips and gazed back into eyes, now deeply emerald. And at last she laughed and returned the weapon to its place.
“Were all ancients like you, Tom?” she murmured.
Somehow he managed a calm reply. “Some stronger, some weaker,” he said carelessly.
“I think I could—love you,” she whispered.
She thrust a hand suddenly toward him and involuntarily he started.
“Afraid of one thing, at least, aren’t you?” she jeered. “Afraid of—me!” Without warning he caught her arm, swept her suddenly to him. He pressed a fierce kiss on the perfection of her lips. She yielded instantly, returning the caress. For a moment her lips burned against his like strong wine, and lights coruscated in his spinning brain. With the Black Flame of Urbs in his arms, the world seemed to fall away as it had from the rising Triangle.
He felt her lips move against his, heard her murmur: “Tom! Tom! I do love you. Say you love me!”
“Love you? Love you?” he said. But just in time he caught that familiar gleam of mockery in her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Just as I love a drink of strong liquor!”
He pushed her roughly away, grinning sardonically. Margaret of Urbs laughed, but he fancied there was a quaver in her laughter. It was the first time he had seen the diamond hardness of her poise so much as ruffled. That is, since he had seen her in her robe of cruel Princess, the role she had played for seven hundred years. When he had seen her as a child of the woods she had been different.
BUT she quickly regained her hard control over herself. She slapped a trifle viciously at the controls, and the Sky-rat soared away from a boiling circle of ocean toward Urbs.
Arrived there, the Princess said not a word, but left Tom Connor at once. He wandered irresolutely to his room and opened Evanie’s door. She sat propped against some cushions while a man in the garb of a Palace servant leaned above her. Both turned startled faces toward him. In amazement he recognized the man as Jan Orm of Ormon!
Tom Connor opened his mouth to cry an involuntary greeting to Jan Orm, but checked it at the sight of Jan’s warning look and a gesture from Evanie. Of course! Jan was here in disguise, and there was the scanner with unwinking eye and attentive ear. Connor advanced to the side of Evanie’s bed and bent over her.
“Don’t look at Jan when you talk,” she said softly.
“I won’t. Lord, I’m glad to see you, Jan! I didn’t know what might have happened to you.”
“I’m working in the kitchen,” whispered Jan, nodding at a tray on the wall-arm. He added eagerly: “Tom, you can help us! We need you.”
“Help you to what?”
“To finish—” Jan began, but Evanie interrupted. “Help me to escape,” she whispered, then shot a glance at Jan Orm. “Be careful of him, Jan,” she warned. “He’s been around the Black Flame.”
Connor reddened. “Look here!” he muttered. “Here’s exactly how I stand. For safety’s sake, I’ve sworn to the Master to make no move against him for the present, and to tell him what I know of mathematics. That can’t hurt you, can it? Evanie’s safety is worth more to me than that.”
He caught a sidelong flash of Jan’s face gone suddenly blank. Jan’s lips tightened grimly.
“What’s the value of an oath to the Master?” he growled. “That needn’t bind you!”
“I keep my word,” Connor said, as grimly.
“But your oath doesn’t keep you from helping me to escape, does it?” whispered Evanie.
“I guess not—but what’s the use of it? To suffer another Messenger?”
“This time,” declared Evanie, “I’ll fight off any Messenger. I was worn out before, exhausted, almost helpless.”
“What can I do?” asked Connor, a little reluctantly.
“Are you free to move as you will about the Palace?”
“Not entirely.”
“Well, I want to see the Master. I must see him.”
“Why don’t you call him and ask for an interview?” Connor asked. That seemed simple enough.
“I have. All I can get is a statement from the vision room that he’s busy in his quarters and can’t come. I’m not supposed to leave my bed, you know.” She paused. “It’s probably true. Jan has heard that there’s a Conclave of the Immortals of the South day after tomorrow.” She glanced at Connor imploringly. “Can’t you get me to him, Tom? Please—I must see him.”
Connor smiled, amused, as a swift thought crossed his mind. Margaret of Urbs must indeed have been perturbed this morning. She had forgotten to reclaim her medallion. If he were to use it before she remembered—
“Perhaps I can help you reach him, Evanie,” he whispered. “If you’ll come at once.”
CHAPTER XX
The Conspirators
THE guards passed them without question, with only a glance at the medallion.
When they reached the anteroom beyond the arch they at once saw the Master at his littered desk. Evanie dropped gracefully to one knee as they neared the ruler. But Connor stood erect and stared at Margaret of Urbs, who sat in a chair by the window, a book on her lap, a black cigarette in her fingers spiraling smoke as she stared back at him.
The Master’s eyes flickered over them.
“May I ask how you two managed to arrive here?” he inquired mildly.
/> Connor tossed the medallion on the desk, and his lips twisted in wry amusement when he saw the quivering start that twitched the dainty lips of the Princess. She arose quickly and moved to the Master’s side. She and Evanie gazed at each other across the desk. The eyes of Margaret of Urbs were faintly disdainful, but Evanie’s were hostile.
It was Tom Connor’s first opportunity to make a first-hand comparison of the two. He hated himself for making it, but here it was thrust upon him.
The Princess was a trifle taller, a bit more slender than Evanie, and infinitely more beautiful, lovely as Evanie was. It wasn’t fair, Connor told himself bitterly—terribly unfair, in fact, to compare Evanie’s beauty with the unearthly beauty of the Black Flame of Urbs. It was like contrasting the simple loveliness of a wild rose to the splendor of an orchid, or a brown milkweed butterfly to a starflying Luna moth.
The Master spoke.
“I presume you have a reason for coming.”
“Yes,” said Evanie. “I can’t stand it—being imprisoned in a single room. I had to see you.” Her lips quivered. She was a consummate actress, Connor suddenly realized. “You know I—I have—metamorphic blood in me. You know what that means. I have to move about in the open to breathe air that comes from the sky, not from Palace ventilators. So I’ve come to ask you for a little freedom. Just permission to walk now and then in the Inner Gardens.”
Connors wondered how walking in the square of the Inner Gardens could encompass her escape, since the Palace surrounded it.
“It is my intention to release you, but not yet,” the Master said. “Not until I have had what I wish from Thomas Connor.”
“But I can’t stand it!” the girl pleaded tremulously.
The Master turned to Connor.
“Remembering your oath,” he said, “do you second this request? This is no move against me?”
“I do not break my word,” Connor said.
“Well, I see no harm in it.” The Master called a few syllables into the box beside him, then spoke to Evanie. “You have the liberty of the halls and the Inner Gardens—no more. As for you”—his eyes flickered over Connor—“apparently you manage without my permission. That’s all.”
Evanie dropped again to her knee, rose and moved toward the archway. As Connor followed, the Master called:
“Not you, Thomas Connor.”
Connor turned again toward the faintly amused face of the ruler.
“I perceive,” the Master said, “that my sister has disobeyed me.”
The Princess laughed in that mocking way of hers.
“Do I ever obey you, Joaquin?”
“Nominally, at times.” He paused, studying his sister coolly for a moment, then again turned his attention to the man before him. “As you may know,” he remarked, “I have summoned a Conclave for day after tomorrow. I am completely occupied. But I do not forget your promise, Thomas Connor, nor have I lost interest in the stores of ancient knowledge. Therefore, you will accompany the Princess to the chambers behind the Throne Room and fulfill your promise by explaining to her as much as time permits of mathematics, particularly of the meaning of Logarithms and of the device I have heard termed the slide-rule. She will understand you. That’s all.”
HE met the eyes of the Princess.
“I may obey you this time, Joaquin,” she said, and moved out of the door.
Connor followed her. The halls betrayed the activity of the coming Conclave, and were more crowded than he had observed before. Twice gravefaced, long-haired Immortals passed them, raising respectful hands in salute to Margaret of Urbs.
She turned into the South Corridor. “This isn’t the way,” he objected. “We’re going to the Tower.” She glanced sideward at him. “You’ll see soon why the Palace needs all its size. There’ll be twenty thousand Immortals here, and we have room for all of them—half the Immortals in the world.”
“Half! Evanie said there were three million.”
She gave him an inscrutable smile. “It does no harm to let the Weeds over-estimate our strength.”
“Then why tell me?”
Her smile was the unfathomable one of the Mona Lisa.
“I never do anything without reason,” was her only reply.
He laughed. When once again they reached the aspiring pinnacle of the Tower, without a glance at the mighty city below the Princess pulled pen and paper from a table, seated herself, and faced Connor.
“Well?” she queried. “Begin.”
He did. It was a new Margaret of Urbs he saw now, unknown before save possibly in that brief moment when he had mentioned the Venus of Milo, or when earlier in the woods she had shown him how vast was her knowledge of and interest in history and world events.
She was eager, curious, questioning, avid for knowledge, and uncannily quick to comprehend. There were queer gaps in her learning. Often he had to stop to explain terms utterly elementary, while at other times she followed him through the most complex maze of reasoning without a question.
The afternoon waned, dusk crept over the great vista, and at length she threw down her pen.
“Enough,” she said. “We must have ten-place logarithm tables worked out. They’ll be priceless at Eartheye.” Not until then did a trace of mockery creep in to her voice. “I suppose you realize,” she taunted, “that once we have your knowledge all reason to keep you alive is gone, but the reasons to kill you remain.”
He laughed.
“You’d like to frighten me, wouldn’t you? Haven’t you tried that often enough? The Master trusts my word. I trust his—but not yours.” His lips twisted. “Had I not trusted him, I could have escaped this morning. What was to prevent me from taking your weapon away, dropping you on a deserted shore—or even kidnapping you—and escaping in the Sky-rat? I never promised not to escape. What kept me here was my trust in his word, and a desire to see this game played out!”
“There is no safety anywhere in the world for you, Thomas Connor,” said the Flame softly, “except in my favor. And why you still live is a mystery, so much so that I wonder at it. I have never before been so indulgent to one I hate.” She flashed her glorious emerald eyes to his face. “Do I hate you?”
“You should know hatred better than I.”
“Yes—and yet I wonder.” She smiled slowly. “If ever I love the way I hate, not death itself could thwart me. But there is no man strong enough to conquer me.”
“Or perhaps,” he retorted, “that one isn’t interested.”
SHE smiled again with almost a trace of wistfulness.
“You’re very strong,” she admitted. “I should have loved to have lived in your ancient days. To have lived among your great fighters and great makers of beauty. At least those were men—your ancients. I could have loved one of those.”
“And haven’t you,” he asked ironically, “ever loved a man?”
He could detect no mocking note in her voice.
“Loved? I have thought myself in love a hundred times. At least a dozen times I have gone to Joaquin to beg immortality for some man I have loved. But Joaquin swore to Martin Sair long ago to grant it only to those worthy of it, and he has kept that oath.”
She smiled wryly. “It takes all a man’s youth to prove himself worthy, and so the Immortals are all dry scientists—not to my taste! Joaquin refused me each time I asked for the favor, wanting to know if I were sure I’d never tire of him for whom I begged—to swear I was sure. And of course I couldn’t swear.” She paused thoughtfully. “He was always right, too; every time. I did tire even before old age blighted them.”
“And what did you do to prove yourself worthy?” Connor mocked.
“I’m serious today,” the Princess said. “I’m not teasing now. I think I could love you, Thomas Connor.”
“Thank you.” He grinned, suspecting the glitter in the green eyes though he did not see it. “In my time it was the custom for the man to make such declarations.”
“Your time!” flared Margaret of Urbs. “What d
o I care for your antediluvian customs and prehistoric prejudices? Would you have the Black Flame as shrinking and modest as little Evanie pretends to be?”
“I’d dislike you less if you were.”
“You don’t dislike me. You’re merely afraid of me because I represent everything you hate in a woman—and yet you can’t hate me. Indeed, I rather think you love me.”
He laughed, mocking now, himself. “I’m Margaret of Urbs!” she flashed. “What do I want of you? Nothing! I don’t really want you at all, Tom Connor. You’d be like all the others; you’d age. Those mighty limbs of yours will turn skinny, or else fat and bloated. Those clear eyes will be pale and watery. Your teeth will yellow and your hair fall out, and then you’ll be gone!”
She pulled a cigarette from the box and blew a plume of smoke in his impassive face.
“Go brag of this when we release you—if we do! Go tell it up and down the world that you alone of all men were strong enough to reject the love of Margaret of Urbs. Go say that the Black Flame failed to scorch you—failed even to warm you.” Her voice quivered. “And go say too that no other man save you ever learned—how unhappy—she is!”
The deep eyes were tear-bright. He stared into them perplexed. Was this merely more acting? Was there nothing left of Margaret of Urbs save a lovely masque and a thousand poses—no real being within? He forced a sardonic grin to his lips—forced it, for the impossible beauty of the girl tore at him despite his will.
AT his smile her face darkened.
“And then say,” she said, from between tight lips, “that the Black Flame doesn’t care what talk you make of her, because she burns on, while you—and those you talk to—in so very few years will be dust! Dust!” Again he laughed at her and the Flame turned suddenly away.
“I suppose you may go now,” she said dully.
But Connor hardly heard her. He was caught in speculations concerning the strange black and golden soul of the Princess, baffling, hateful, fascinating to the point of deadliness, and yet—somehow wistful, almost pitiful. It was almost, he thought, as if in the glimpse he had caught of her in the freedom of the woods he had seen the true soul of the woman, and all the rest was masquerading.
The Complete Margaret of Urbs Page 12