The Coming of the Terrans

by Leigh Brackett

  In that room, where the great shaft turned, I told her, “I have to tend the things below. Go up onto the platform, Duani, where you can see all Shandakor. I’ll be with you soon.”

  I don’t know whether she had some hint of what was in my mind or whether it was only the imminence of parting that made her look at me as she did. I thought she was going to speak but she did not, climbing the ladder obediently. I watched her slender golden body vanish upward. Then I went into the chamber below.

  There was a heavy metal bar there that was part of a manual control for regulating the rate of turn. I took it off its pin. Then I closed the simple switches on the power plant. I tore out all the leads and smashed the connections with the bar. I did what damage I could to the cogs and the offset shaft. I worked very fast. Then I went up into the main chamber again. The great shaft was still turning but slowly, ever more slowly.

  There was a cry from above me and I saw Duani. I sprang up the ladder, thrusting her back onto the platform. The globe moved heavily of its own momentum. Soon it would stop but the white fires still nickered in the crystal rods. I climbed up onto the railing, clinging to a strut. The chains on my wrists and ankles made it hard but I could reach. Duani tried to pull me down. I think she was screaming. I hung on and smashed the crystal rods with the bar, as many as I could.

  There was no more motion, no more light. I got down on the platform again and dropped the bar. Duani had forgotten me. She was looking at the city.

  The lights of many colors that had burned there were burning still but they were old and dim, cold embers without radiance. The towers of jade and turquoise rose up against the little moons and they were broken and cracked with time and there was no glory in them. They were desolate and very sad. The night lay clotted around their feet. The streets, the plazas and the market-squares were empty, their marble paving blank and bare. The soldiers had gone from the walls of Shandakor, with their banners and their bright mail, and there was no longer any movement anywhere within the gates.

  Duani let out one small voiceless cry. And as though in answer to it, suddenly from the darkness of the valley and the slopes beyond there rose a thin fierce howling as of wolves.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why?” She turned to me. Her face was pitiful. I caught her to me.

  “I couldn’t let you die! Not for dreams and visions, nothing. Look, Duani. Look at Shandakor.” I wanted to force her to understand. “Shandakor is broken and ugly and forlorn. It is a dead city—but you’re alive. There are many cities but only one life for you.”

  Still she looked at me and it was hard to meet her eyes. She said, “We knew all that, JonRoss.”

  “Duani, you’re a child, you’ve only a child’s way of thought. Forget the past and think of tomorrow. We can get through the barbarians. Corin did. And after that…”

  “And after that you would still be human—and I would not.”

  From below us in the dim and empty streets there came a sound of lamentation. I tried to hold her but she slipped out from between my hands. “And I am glad that you are human,” she whispered. “You will never understand what you have done.”

  And she was gone before I could stop her, down into the tower.

  I went after her. Down the endless winding stairs with my chains clattering between my feet, out into the streets, the dark and broken and deserted streets of Shandakor. I called her name and her golden body went before me, fleet and slender, distant and more distant. The chains dragged upon my feet and the night took her away from me.

  I stopped. The whelming silence rushed smoothly over me and I was bitterly afraid of this dark dead Shandakor that I did not know. I called again to Duani and then I began to search for her in the shattered shadowed streets. I know now how long it must have been before I found her.

  For when I found her, she was with the others. The last people of Shandakor, the men and the women, the women first, were walking silently in a long line toward a low flat-roofed building that I knew without telling was the Place of Sleep.

  They were going to die and there was no pride in their faces now. There was a sickness in them, a sickness and a hurt in their eyes as they moved heavily forward, not looking, not wanting to look at the sordid ancient streets that I had stripped of glory.

  “Duani!” I called, and ran forward but she did not turn in her place in the line. And I saw that she was weeping.

  Rhul turned toward me, and his look had a weary contempt that was bitterer than a curse. “Of what use, after all, to kill you now?”

  “But I did this thing! I did it!”

  “You are only human.”

  The long line shuffled on and Duani’s little feet were closer to that final doorway. Rhul looked upward at the sky. “There is still time before the sunrise. The women at least will be spared the indignity of spears.”

  “Let me go with her!”

  I tried to follow her, to take my place in line. And the weapon in Rhul’s hand moved and there was the pain and I lay as Corin had lain while they went silently on into the Place of Sleep.

  The barbarians found me when they came, still half doubtful, into the city after dawn. I think they were afraid of me. I think they feared me as a wizard who had somehow destroyed all the folk of Shandakor.

  For they broke my chains and healed my wounds and later they even gave me out of the loot of Shandakor the only thing I wanted—a bit of porcelain, shaped like the head of a young girl.

  I sit in the Chair that I craved at the University and my name is written on the roll of the discoverers. I am eminent, I am respectable—I, who murdered the glory of a race.

  Why didn’t I go after Duani into the Place of Sleep? I could have crawled! I could have dragged myself across those stones. And I wish to God I had. I wish that I had died with Shandakor!

  Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon

  IN THE OBSERVATION BUBBLE of the TSS Goddard Harvey Selden watched the tawny face of the planet grow. He could make out rose-red deserts where tiny sandstorms blew, and dark areas of vegetation like textured silk. Once or twice he caught the bright flash of water from one of the canals. He sat motionless, rapt and delighted. He had been afraid that this confrontation would offer very little to his emotions; he had since childhood witnessed innumerable identical approaches on the tri-di screen, which was almost the same as being there one’s self. But the actuality had a flavor and imminence that he found immensely thrilling.

  After all, an alien planet…

  After all, Mars…

  He was almost angry when he realized that Bentham had come into the bubble. Bentham was Third Officer and at his age this was an admission of failure. The reason for it, Selden thought, was stamped quite clearly on his face, and he felt sorry for Bentham as he felt sorry for anyone afflicted with alcoholism. Still, the man was friendly and he had seemed much impressed by Selden’s knowledge of Mars. So Selden smiled and nodded.

  “Quite a thrill,” he said.

  Bentham glanced at the on-rushing planet. “It always is. You know anybody down there?”

  “No. But after I check in with the Bureau…

  “When will you do that?”

  “Tomorrow. I mean, counting from after we land, of course… a little confusing, isn’t it, this time thing?” He knew they did three or four complete orbits on a descending spiral, which meant three or four days and nights.

  Bentham said, “But in the meantime, you don’t know anybody.”

  Selden shook his head.

  “Well,” said Bentham, “I’m having dinner with some Martian friends. Why don’t you come along? You might find it interesting.”

  “Oh,” said Selden eagerly, “that would be… But are you sure your friends won’t mind? I mean, an unexpected guest dragged in at the last minute…”

  “They won’t mind,” Bentham said. “I’ll give them plenty of warning. Where are you staying?”

  “The Kahora-Hilton.”

  “Of course,” said Bentham. “I’ll pic
k you up around seven.” He smiled. “Kahora time.”

  He went out, leaving Selden with some lingering qualms of doubt. Bentham was perhaps not quite the person he would have chosen to introduce him to Martian society. Still, he was an officer and could be presumed to be a gentleman. And he had been on the Mars run for a long time. Of course he would have friends, and what an unlooked-for and wonderful chance this was to go actually into a Martian home and visit with a Martian family. He was ashamed of his momentary uneasiness, and was able to analyze it quite quickly as being based in his own sense of insecurity, which of course arose from being faced with a totally unfamiliar environment. Once he had brought this negative attitude into the open it was easy to correct it. After a quarter of an hour of positive therapy he found himself hardly able to wait for the evening.

  Kahora had grown in half a century. Originally, Selden knew, it had been founded as a Trade City under the infamous old Umbrella Treaty, so-called because it could be manipulated to cover anything, which had been concluded between the then World Government of Terra and the impoverished Martian Federation of City-States. At that time the city was housed under a single dome, climate-conditioned for the comfort of the outworld traders and politicians who frequented it and who were unused to the rigors of cold and thin-aired Mars. In addition to the climate, various other luxuries were installed in the Trade Cities, so that they had been compared with certain Biblical locales, and crimes of many different sorts, even murder, had been known to occur in them.

  But all of that, or nearly all of that, was in the bad old days of laissez-faire, and now Kahora was the administrative capital of Mars, sheltered under a complex of eight shining domes. From the spaceport fifteen miles away, Selden saw the city as a pale shimmer of gossamer bubbles touched by the low sun. As the spaceport skimmer flew him across the intervening miles of red sand and dark green moss-grass, he saw the lights come on in the quick dusk and the buildings underneath the domes rose and took shape, clean and graceful and clothed in radiance. He thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful. From the landing stage inside one of the domes a silent battery-powered cab took him to his hotel along gracious streets, where the lights glowed and people of many races walked leisurely. The whole trip, from debarkation to hotel lobby, was accomplished in completely air-conditioned comfort, and Selden was not sorry. The landscape looked awfully bleak, and one needed only to glance at it to know that it was damnably cold. Just before the skimmer entered the airlock it crossed the Kahora canal, and the water looked like black ice. He knew that he might have to cope with all this presently, but he was not in any hurry.

  Selden’s room was pleasantly homelike and the view of the city was superb. He showered and shaved, dressed in his best dark silk, and then sat for a while on his small balcony overlooking the Triangle with the Three Worlds represented at its apices. The air he breathed was warm and faintly scented. The city sounds that rose to him were pleasantly subdued. He began to run over in his mind the rules he had learned for proper behavior in a Martian house, the ceremonial phrases and gestures. He wondered whether Bentham’s friends would speak High or Low Martian. Low, probably, since that was most commonly in use with outsiders. He hoped his accent was not too barbarous. On the whole he felt adequate. He leaned back in his comfortable chair and found himself looking at the sky.

  There were two moons in it, racing high above the glow and distortion of the dome. And for some reason, although he knew perfectly well that Mars had two moons, this bit of alienage had a powerful effect on him. For the first time he realized, not merely with his intellect but with his heart and bowels, that he was on a strange world a long, long way from home.

  He went down to the bar to wait for Bentham.

  The man arrived in good time, freshly turned out in civilian silks and, Selden was glad to see, perfectly sober. He bought him a drink and then followed him into a cab, which bore them quietly from the central dome into one of the outer ones.

  “The original one,” Bentham said. “It’s chiefly residential now. The buildings are older, but very comfortable.” They were halted at a concourse waiting for a flow of cross traffic to pass and Bentham pointed at the dome roof. “Have you seen the moons? They’re both in the sky now. That’s the thing people seem to notice the most when they first land.”

  “Yes,” Selden said. “I’ve seen them. It is… uh… striking.”

  “The one we call Deimos… that one there… the Martian name is Vashna, of course… that’s the one that in certain phases was called the Mad Moon.”

  “Oh no,” Selden said. “That was Phobos. Denderon.”

  Bentham gave him a look and he reddened a bit. “I mean, I think it was.” He knew damn well it was, but after all… “Of course you’ve been here many times, and I could be mistaken.

  Bentham shrugged. “Easy enough to settle it. We’ll ask Mak.”

  “Who?”

  “Firsa Mak. Our host.”

  “Oh,” said Selden, “I wouldn’t…

  But the cab sped on then and Bentham was pointing out some other thing of interest and the subject passed.

  Almost against the outer curve of the dome there was a building of pale gold and the cab stopped there. A few minutes later Selden was being introduced to Firsa Mak.

  He had met Martians before, but only rarely and never in situ. He saw a dark, small, lean, catlike man with the most astonishing yellow eyes. The man wore the traditional white tunic of the Trade Cities, exotic and very graceful. A gold earring that Selden recognized as a priceless antique hung from his left earlobe. He was not at all like the rather round and soft Martians Selden had met on Terra. He flinched before those eyes, and the carefully mustered words of greeting stuck in his throat. Then there was no need for them as Firsa Mak shook his hand and said, “Hello. Welcome to Mars. Come on in.”

  A wiry brown hand propelled him in the most friendly fashion into a large low room with a glass wall that looked out through the dome at the moon-washed desert. The furniture was simple modern stuff and very comfortable, with here and there a bit of sculpture or a wall-plaque as fine as, but no better than, the Martian hand-crafts obtainable at the good specialty shops in New York. On one of the couches a very long-legged, gaunt and white-haired Earthman sat drinking in a cloud of smoke. He was introduced as Altman. He had a face like old leather left too long in the sun, and he looked at Selden as from a great height and a far distance. Curled up beside him was a dark girl, or woman… Selden could not decide which because of the smoothness of her face and the too-great wisdom of her eyes, which were as yellow and unwinking as Firsa Mak’s.

  “My sister,” Firsa Mak said. “Mrs. Altman. And this is Leila.”

  He did not say exactly who Leila was, and Selden did not at the moment care. She had just come in from the kitchen bearing a tray of something or other, and she wore a costume that Selden had read about but never seen. A length of brilliant silk, something between red and burnt orange, was wrapped about her hips and caught at the waist by a broad girdle. Below the skirt her slim brown ankles showed, with anklets of tiny golden bells that chimed faintly as she walked. Above the skirt her body was bare and splendidly made. A necklace of gold plaques intricately pierced and hammered circled her throat, and more of the tiny bells hung from her ears. Her hair was long and deeply black and her eyes were green, with the most enchanting tilt. She smiled at Selden, and moved away with her elfin music, and he stood stupidly staring after her, hardly aware that he had taken a glass of dark liquor from her proffered tray.

  Presently Selden was sitting on some cushions between the Altmans and Firsa Mak, with Bentham opposite. Leila kept moving distractingly in and out, keeping their glasses filled with the peculiar smoky-tasting hellfire.

  “Bentham tells me you’re with the Bureau of Interworld Cultural Relations,” Firsa Mak said.

  “Yes,” said Selden. Altman was looking at him with that strange remote glare, making him feel acutely uncomfortable.

  “Ah. An
d what is your particular field?”

  “Handcrafts. Metalwork. Uh… the ancient type of thing, like that…” He indicated Leila’s necklace, and she smiled.

  “It is old,” she said, and her voice was sweet as the chiming bells. “I would not even guess how old.”

  “The pierced pattern,” Selden said, “is characteristic of the Seventeenth Dynasty of the Khalide Kings of Jekkara, which lasted for approximately two thousand years at the period when Jekkara was declining from her position as a maritime power. The sea was receding significantly then, say between fourteen and sixteen thousand years ago.”

  “So old?” Leila said, and fingered the necklace wonderingly.

  “That depends,” said Bentham. “Is it genuine, Leila, or is it a copy?”

  Leila dropped to her knees beside Selden. “You will say.”

  They all waited. Selden began to sweat. He had studied hundreds of necklaces, but never in situ. Suddenly he was not sure at all whether the damned thing was genuine, and he was just as suddenly positive that they did know and were needling him. The plaques rose and fell gently to the lift of Leila’s breathing. A faint dry spicy fragrance reached his nostrils. He touched the gold, lifted one of the plaques and felt of it, warm from her flesh, and yearned for a nice uncomplicated textbook that had diagrams and illustrations and nothing more to take your mind off your subject. He was tempted to tell them to go to hell. They were just waiting for him to make a mistake. Then he got madder and bolder and he put his whole hand under the collar, lifting it away from her neck and testing the weight of it. It was worn thin and light as tissue paper and the under surface was still pocked by the ancient hammer strokes in the particular fashion of the Khalide artificers.

  It was a terribly crude test, but his blood was up. He looked into the tilted green eyes and said authoritatively, “It’s genuine.”

  “How wonderful that you know!” She caught his hand between hers and pressed it and laughed aloud with pleasure. “You have studied very long?”