Sea Kings of Mars

by Leigh Brackett

  The prism began to glow with some queer perversion of light that seemed rather luminous darkness. It ran along the facets of the helix, faster and faster, stranger, darker, more dazzling.

  Brandon felt every drop of blood in him stop for a second, and then race on again, with the swirl of that mad, black luminosity. A cold terror caught him, a thing that hadn't come at all when Dhu Kar's hands were at his throat.

  He felt Tobul's being surge within him, fierce and rebellious and bitter. Not afraid, much. Only ragingly sad at his defeat, and the thought of his people being ruled by Kymra of the Prira Cen.

  "Negative energy," said Kymra's voice, ringing through the great vaulted rooms like a muted bugle. "It taps the power of the galactic wheel itself, turning against the cohesive force of space. Energy so close to the primal warp of creation that it needs only the slightest charge to push it over into the negative-the opposite balance that everything possesses."

  The grave, sad voice beat against Brandon's ears.

  "There is no defense against it, Tobul. All your force screens and projectors are worse than useless. They attract now, instead of repelling. Do you wonder we kept this weapon secret?"

  The little threads of blackness spiraled out into a cone, and grew.

  Brandon's heart thundered in his throat. The mocking devil in his brain laughed because the reckless grin was on his lips, playing to the audience-Sylvia's stricken eyes.

  He was sorry for Sylvia. She'd be alone now, in an alien world of wealth and decorum, that only he could have taken her out of.

  Alone, in an alien world-

  Brandon swallowed his heart. A sudden, desperate hope flared in him. Useless, but he had to try. The thing that had driven him through the desert made him try.

  He started to cry out, "Kymra!" And Tobul's will clamped his tongue to silence.

  "I will not beg for life," he said.

  Things happened then, all at once. Sylvia made a long-legged leap forward, into the path of that blackness that ribboned and twisted out from the helix. In a second it would have touched her. But Brandon, moving instinctively, so that Tobul had no time to catch his conscious thought and block it, flung himself against her.

  She went sprawling over out of harm's way. Kymra caught her breath sharply and started to move the projector to a new focus. And Brandon, looking up, cried suddenly:

  "Jarthur!"

  He stood there, the tall, thin Martian with the sad eyes. He had a needle gun in his hand, and six or seven black-clad policemen just behind him.

  He stared, momentarily stunned, at the vault and Kymra, with the blue hair cascading over her naked shoulders.

  Kymra made a sharp movement. The dark light in the prism changed. The black cone unraveled itself, back into the helix. Brandon's heart gave a wild shudder of relief. Kymra was reluctant to take innocent lives.

  He scrambled up, sensing Tobul's dangerous alertness. Jarthur, forcing himself to steadiness in spite of his amazement, said:

  "Max Brandon, you're under arrest."

  Tobul acted with the swiftness of his barbarian ancestors. With anesthetic needles splattering in flames from his force shield, he charged into the middle of Jarthur's group.

  The shock of Brandon's immunity demoralized them. Tobul's mind put forth tendrils of iron force.

  "Surround me," he said. "Walk forward,"

  Brandon saw the look in Jarthur's eyes, midway between nightmare and reluctant acceptance of insanity. Then he obeyed. Tobul moved forward, surrounded by a living shield.

  Kymra stood irresolute behind the projector, reluctant even then to destroy more of her people. And then Sylvia moved.

  She uncoiled from the floor with every ounce of her lithe strength, hurtling into Kymra. Kymra's mental force shield must have been momentarily dispersed by the shock of Jarthur's entrance and Tobul's sudden maneuver.

  Sylvia crashed into her, knocking her away from the projector. She yelled, "Brandy! Do something!" But it was Tobul who flung away his unwilling protectors and gained the control board behind the projector.

  Kymra rose, dignified and beautiful even then, standing beside the regenerator.

  "It's no use, Tobul," she said. "You can't use it."

  Brandon heard his voice say softly:

  "You forgot the girl. She was where she could see your hands-and she didn't blank her mind to what she saw."

  Tobul's hands moved over the intricate controls. Almost as an afterthought, he said to Jarthur, through Brandon's mouth:

  "You are no longer needed. Go."

  Jarthur's sad eyes became furious.

  "See here, Brandon! I don't know what kind of madness this is—probably some secret you've stolen from this place. But you're through looting. I'm going to send you to Phobos if I die doing it!"

  "You will," said Tobul calmly, and shrugged. "Please yourself."

  Kymra said steadily: "You don't know how to control the force. Every living thing beyond its focus will be destroyed, and part of the inanimate substance, before you can stop it even by smashing the projector."

  "You said yourself, Kymra, that Mars is more important than any of us."

  The prism began to glow with its queer, black light.

  And Brandon said desperately: "Tobul!"

  "I'm sorry to cheat you of your body, Brandon. But this must be done."

  Black rage suddenly took Brandon's mind, drowning out even the flashes of Jarthur's needles dying against the force screen.

  "You fool!" he snarled. "Can't you see that the world has changed? The things you're fighting over don't exist anymore!"

  "Silence, Brandon!"

  The black threads were weaving themselves again around the focus of the projector, twisting out toward Kymra of the Prira Cen. In a few seconds they'd blast her out of existence, and the regenerator with her-and Brandon's only chance to get rid of Tobul and be a normal man again.

  He could foresee Tobul's mind moving to silence his own. His hands were free from the projector now.

  With a characteristic flourish, he ripped the circlet from his head and held it up.

  "By this crown, Tobul, I've earned the right to speak!"

  The mocking imp in Brandon's brain whispered: "Every inch the hero!" And behind it he could feel the struggle in Tobul's mind.

  It seemed an eternity before the quiet, curt answer came. "Speak, then."

  Brandon spoke, aloud, to Kymra as much as to Tobul.

  "You say that Mars is your first consideration, and I believe you. But you still live in the past. Can't you see that the war between Tobul's people and the Prira Cen is as dead as the dust of your bodies?

  "What right has either of you to rob Mars of the other? The two of you, working together as balancing forces instead of enemies, could make Mars the greatest planet in the System. You could give her water again, and the air she's losing, the courage and will to live that she's lost.

  "You could bring her the knowledge of the Lost Islands and the Prira Cen—complete, not in half-forgotten fragments. Kymra's councilors are invaluable to all humanity. What right have you, Tobul, to destroy them?

  "The world has changed. With each of you, the other is the only link to the world you knew. There can be no real companionship for you with anyone else.

  "What human would mate with someone forty thousand years old? Yet you're both young. Think of that, for a minute. To live for well-nigh endless years with no one to speak to, no understanding, only awe and fear and perhaps hate?

  "For Heaven's sake, Tobul, if you're the brave man, the great man you believe yourself to be, face this out and see the truth in it!"

  The little black threads wove out and out, and Kymra's eyes were burning gold, proud and steady.

  Sylvia spoke up furiously. "He's right, you know. You're just fooling yourselves. You don't care who you hurt as long as you don't have to share your power!"

  "That's not true," said Kymra gently. And Tobul echoed: "No—"

  Brandon felt Tobul's mind gather int
o itself, thinking. For an instant his body was free from compulsion. He raised his foot and sent the projector crashing to the floor.

  It shattered, became meaningless, shining fragments. But the fragments lay about a gaping hole, where the little black worms had gnawed.

  Jarthur had stopped the useless firing. His eyes were dazed, bewildered, but his back was stubbornly straight.

  "I don't understand," he said. "I may be only playing into your hands, Brandon. But if there are really beings from the past who can help Mars to live again-I beg them both to do it."

  Tobul whispered in Brandon's mind: "What is all this to you, Brandon? You, an Earthman."

  He shrugged. "I'm a human being, too. And I think I'm seeing what I've always wanted to see. The thing that, subconsciously, has drawn me to hunt up the old, forgotten places. I'm seeing the past-the past that is as real as the future or the present-come into its own."

  "You're a looter, Brandon," said Jarthur harshly.

  "But I've never destroyed anything. Oh, I'm not excusing myself. And I'm beginning to see the error of my ways."

  "Perhaps," said Tobul shrewdly, "because this looks more exciting?"

  Kymra said softly: "Your barbarian ancestors, Tobul, prided themselves on being honest with themselves. Let us be."

  Brandon could feel the struggle that went on in Tobul's mind. It seemed to him that the whole universe had stopped breathing, waiting. And at last, reluctantly, Tobul said:

  "Brandon speaks the truth. Much as I hate it, it is the truth. Blast you, Brandon, why did I give you my crown to wear?"

  "You may have it back." Brandon was suddenly weak, almost hysterical with relief. "I don't want much-"

  "Much?"

  "Well, my body has served as your draft animal. I'm giving up a profitable career of grave robbing in order to act as your ambassador, your link between the past and the present-"

  "Ambassador!" said Kymra, turning her imperious, golden gaze on him. "Who has asked you?"

  "Hm-m-m," said Brandon. "You'll need a personal diplomat, too. Can't expect love and kisses all in one minute, after forty thousand years—know anybody who could do it better?"

  Kymra looked at Brandon's handsome head cocked back, with the wide-winged bird glittering above it and his white teeth gleaming. She laughed.

  "You're mad, as well as insolent. But-Tobul?"

  "Why not? Kymra, you will restore my body, of course. But before I leave this Brandon, there is something I want to do—to tame him."

  Brandon's heart gave a swift, little jerk of apprehension. He stammered: "What—" But the iron grip of Tobul's will was on his mind.

  He found himself walking over to Sylvia. He found himself taking her in his arms, and whispering something, and then—

  "So that," said Tobul, "is how it's done now. The world hasn't changed so much!"

  The Jewel of Bas

  1

  Mouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it. She sniffed and said:

  "You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next town."

  "Uh huh," Ciaran grunted lazily.

  Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes.

  "I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food," she said sullenly.

  Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy gray eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.

  Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, "It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat and lazy."

  Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.

  Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.

  He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.

  To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint of gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.

  Mouse said suddenly, "Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of Life?"

  Ciaran struck a shivering chord from the harp. "That's it."

  "Let's eat," said Mouse.

  "Scared?"

  "Maybe you want me to go back! Maybe you think a branded thief isn't good enough for you! Well I can't help where I was born or what my parents were—and you'd have a brand on your ugly face too, if you hadn't just been lucky!"

  She threw the ladle.

  This time her aim was better and Ciaran didn't duck quite in time. It clipped his ear. He sprang up, looking murderous, and started to heave it back at her. And then, suddenly, Mouse was crying, stamping up and down and blinking tears out of her eyes.

  "All right, I'm scared! I've never been out of a city before, and besides . . ." She looked out over the silent plain, to the distant glint of Ben Beatha. "Besides," she whispered, "I keep thinking of the stories they used to tell—about Bas the Immortal, and his androids, and the gray beasts that served them. And about the Stone of Destiny."

  Ciaran made a contemptuous mouth. "Legends. Old wives' tales. Songs to give babies a pleasant shiver." A small glint of avarice came into his gray eyes. "But the Stone of Destiny—it's a nice story, that one. A jewel of such power that owning it gives a man rule over the whole world . . ."

  He squinted out across the barren plain. "Someday," he said softly, "maybe I'll see if that one's true."

  "Oh, Kiri." Mouse came and caught his wrists in her small strong hands. "You wouldn't. It's forbidden—and no one that's gone into the Forbidden Plains has ever come back."

  "There's always a first time." He grinned. "But I'm not going now, Mousie. I'm too hungry."

  She picked up the plate silently and ladled stew into it and set it down. Ciaran laid his harp down and stretched—a tough, wiry little man with legs slightly bandy and a good-natured hard face. He wore a yellow tunic even more ragged than Mouse's.

  They sat down. Ciaran ate noisily with his fingers. Mouse fished out a hunk of meat and nibbled it moodily. A breeze came up, pushing the sunballs around a little and bringing tatters of red fog in off the sea. After a while Mouse said:

  "Did you hear any of the talk in the market squares, Kiri?"

  He shrugged. "They gabble. I don't waste my time with it."

  "All along the border countries they were saying the same thing. People who live or work along the edge of the Forbidden Plains have disappeared. Whole towns of them, sometimes."

  "One man falls into a beast-pit," said Ciaran impatiently, "and in two weeks of gossip the whole country has vanished. Forget it."

  "But it's happened before, Kiri. A long time ago . . ."

  "A long time ago some wild tribe living on the Plains came in and got tough, and that's that!"

  Ciaran wiped his hands on the grass and said angrily, "If you're going to nag all the time about being scared . . ."

  He caught the plate out of her hands just in time. She was breathing hard, glaring at him. She looked like her name, and cute as hell. Ciaran laughed.

  "Come here, you."

  She came, sulkily. He pulled her down beside him and kissed her and took the harp on his knees.

&nbs
p; Mouse put her head on his shoulder. Ciaran was suddenly very happy.

  He began to draw music out of the harp. There was a lot of distance around him, and he tried to fill it up with music, a fine free spate of it out of the thrumming strings. Then he sang. He had a beautiful voice, clear and true as a new blade, but soft. It was a simple tune, about two people in love. Ciaran liked it.

  After a while Mouse reached up and drew his head around, stroking the scar on his lip so he had to stop singing. She wasn't glaring any longer. Ciaran bent his head.

  His eyes were closed. But he felt her body stiffen against him, and her lips broke away from his with a little gasping cry.

  "Kiri—Kiri, look!"

  He jerked his head back, angry and startled. Then the anger faded.

  There was a different quality to the light. The warm, friendly, reddish sunlight that never dimmed or faded.

  There was a shadow spreading out in the sky over Ben Beatha. It grew and widened, and the sunballs went out, one by one, and darkness came toward them over the Forbidden Plains.

  They crouched, clinging together, not speaking, not breathing. An uneasy breeze sighed over them, moving out. Then, after a long time, the sunballs sparked and burned again, and the shadow was gone.

  Ciaran dragged down an unsteady breath. He was sweating, but where his hands and Mouse's touched, locked together, they were cold as death.

  "What was it, Kiri?"

  "I don't know." He got up, slinging the harp across his back without thinking about it. He felt naked suddenly, up there on the high ridge. Stripped and unsafe. He pulled Mouse to her feet.

  Neither of them spoke again. Their eyes had a queer stunned look.

  This time it was Ciaran that stopped, with the stewpot in his hands, looking at something behind Mouse. He dropped it and jumped in front of her, pulling the wicked knife he carried from his girdle. The last thing he heard was her wild scream.

  But he had time enough to see. To see the creatures climbing up over the crest of the ridge beside them, fast and silent and grinning, to ring them in with wands tipped at the point with opals like tiny sunballs.

  They were no taller than Mouse, but thick and muscular, built like men. Gray animal fur grew on them like the body-hair of a hairy man, lengthening into a coarse mane over the skull. Where the skin showed it was gray and wrinkled and tough.