by Anthology
Not until then did it occur to the four watchers on the earth that there was anything premature about the affair. It was Smith who first observed:
"Say, Van, I never thought to impress Dulnop with any plan for using the fire. How about you and Corrus?"
"By George!" seriously, from the geologist. And immediately the two set to work trying to reach their agents' minds.
They failed! Dulnop and Corrus were both too excited, far too wide awake, to feel even the united efforts of all four on the earth. And the two Sanusians marched straight into the village without the remotest idea of how they should act.
"It is a flower!" he shrieked, frantic with joy. "The flower has come!" the shout was passed along. "Corrus and Dulnop have found the flowering blossom!"
Within a single minute the two men were surrounded by the whole human population of the place. For the most part the natives were too awe- struck to come very near; they were content to stand off and stare at the marvel, or fall upon their knees and worship it. It was now so dark that the flames fairly illumined their faces.
Shortly one or two got up courage enough to imitate Dulnop as he "fed the flower;" and presently there were several little fires burning merrily upon the ground. As for the aborigines, they let themselves loose; never before did they shout and dance as they shouted and danced that night. It was this Rolla and Cunora heard.
Before five minutes had passed, however, a scout awakened Supreme. Billie could see that the bee was angry at having been disturbed, but swiftly collected herself as she realized the significance of the scout's report.
"So they have found the terror," she reflected aloud. "Very well. Arouse all except the egg-layers and the drones. We can make use of the food- gatherers as well as the fighters."
The hive was soon awake. Billie was sure that every last bee was greatly afraid; their agitation was almost pitiful. But such was their organization and their automatic obedience to orders, there was infinitely less confusion than might be supposed. Another five minutes had not passed before not only that hive, but all within the "city" were emptied; and millions upon millions of desperate bees were under way toward the village.
Rolla and Cunora knew of it first. They heard the buzzing of that winged cloud as it passed through the air above their heads; but such was the bees' intent interest in the village ahead, the two women were not spied as they hid among the bushes.
By this time twilight was half gone. The firelight lit up the crowd of humans as they surged and danced about their new deity. For, henceforth, fire would replace Mownoth as their chief god; it was easy to see that.
Moreover, both Corrus and Dulnop, as primitive people will, had been irresistibly seized by the spirit of the mob. They threw their burden down and joined in the frenzy of the dance. Louder and louder they shouted; faster and faster they capered. Already one or two of their fellow villagers had dropped, exhausted, to the ground. Never had they had so good an excuse for dancing themselves to death!
And into this scene came the bees. Not one of them dared go within ten yards of the flames; for a while, all they did was to watch the humans. Such was the racket no one noticed the sound of the wings.
"Shall we attack those on the edge of the crowd?" one of Supreme's lieutenants wanted to know. The commandant considered this with all the force of what mental experience she had had.
"No," she decided. "We shall wait a little longer. Just now, they are too jubilant to be frightened; we would have to kill them all, and that would not be good policy."
Of course, the bee had the pollen crop, nothing more, in mind when she made her decision; yet it was further justified. There was no let-up in the rejoicing; if anything, it became more frantic than before. Darkness fell upon a crowd which was reeling in self-induced mental intoxication.
Rolla and Cunora came a little nearer; and still remaining hidden, saw that more than half their friends had succumbed. One by one the remainder dropped out; their forms lay all about what was left of the fire. The two women could easily see what their friends were blind to: the bees were simply biding their time.
"Ought we not to rush in and warn them?" whispered Cunora to Rolla. "Surely the flower hath driven them mad!"
"Hush!" warned the older woman. "Be quiet! Everything depends upon our silence!"
It was true. Only two of the villagers remained upon their feet, and shortly one of these staggered and fell in his tracks. The one who was left was Corrus himself, his immense vitality keeping him going. Then he, too, after a final whoop of triumph and defiance, absolutely unconscious of the poison-laden horde that surrounded him, fell senseless to the earth. Another minute, and the whole crowd was still.
AND THE FIRE HAD GONE OUT.
The bees came closer. Several thousands of them were stricken by smoke from the embers, and the rest of the swarm took good care to avoid it. They hovered over the prostrate forms of the aborigines and made sure that they were unconscious.
"Is there nothing we can do?" whispered Cunora, straining her eyes to see.
"Nothing, save to watch and wait," returned Rolla, her gaze fixed upon the dark heap which marked her lover's form. And thus an hour passed, with the four on the earth quite unable to take a hand in any way.
Then one of the villagers--the first, in fact, who had dropped out of the dance--stirred and presently awakened. He sat up and looked about him, dazed and dizzy, for all the world like a drunken man. After a while he managed to get to his feet.
No sooner had he done this than a dozen bees were upon him. Terror- stricken, he stood awaiting their commands. They were not long in coming.
By means of their fearful buzzing, the deadly insects guided him into the nearest hut, where they indicated that he should pick up one of the rude hoelike took which was used in the fields. With this in hand, he was driven to the little piles of smoldering ashes, where the fires had flickered an hour before.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, but not daring to disobey, the man proceeded to heap dirt over the embers. Shortly he had every spark of the fire smothered beneath a mound as high as his knees. Not till then did any of the others begin to revive.
As fast as they recovered the bees took charge of them. Not a human had courage enough to make a move of offense; it meant certain death, and they all knew it only too well. As soon as they were wide awake enough to know what they were doing, they were forced to search the bodies of those still asleep.
"We must find the means for growing the flower," said Supreme, evidently convinced that a seed was a seed, under any circumstances. And presently they found, tucked away in Corrus's lion-skin, a large chunk of the pyrites, and a similar piece on Dulnop.
"So these were the discoverers," commented Supreme.
"What is your will in their case?" the subordinate asked.
The commanding bee considered for a long time. Finally she got an idea, such as bees are known to get once in a great while. It was simply a new combination--as all ideas are merely new combinations--of two punishments which were commonly employed by the bees.
As a result, eight of the villagers were compelled to carry the two fire-finders to a certain spot on the bank of a nearby stream. Here the two fragments of pyrites were thrown, under orders, into the water; so that the eight villagers might know just why the whole thing was being done.
Next the two men, still unconscious, were buried up to their necks. Their heads, lolling helplessly, were all that was exposed. So it was to be the Head Out punishment--imprisonment of one day with their bodies rigidly held by the soil: acute torture to an aborigine. But was this all?
One of the villagers was driven to the nearest hut, where he was forced to secure two large stone axes. Bringing these back to the "torture- place," as the spot was called, the man was compelled to wield one of the clumsy tools while a companion used the other; and between them they cut down the tree whose branches had been waving over the prisoners' heads. Then the villagers were forced to drag the tree away.
All of which occurred in the darkness, and out of sight of Rolla and Cunora. They could only guess what was going on. Hours passed, and dawn approached. Not till then did they learn just what had been done.
The villagers, now all awake, were driven by the bees to the place on the bank of the stream. There, the eight men who had imprisoned the two discoverers told what had been done with the "magic stones." Each villager stared at the offenders, and at something which lay on the ground before them, and in sober silence went straight to his or her work in the fields.
Presently the huts were deserted. All the people were on duty elsewhere. Such bees as were not guarding the fields had returned to the hives. Rolla and Cunora cautiously ventured forth, taking great care to avoid being seen. They hurried fearfully to the stream.
Before they reached the spot Rolla gave an exclamation and stared curiously to one side, where the tree had been dragged. Suddenly she gave a terrible cry and rushed forward, only to drop on her knees and cover her face with hands that shook as with the palsy. At the same instant Cunora saw what had been done; and uttering a single piercing scream, fell fainting to the ground.
Heaped in front of the two prisoners was a large pile of pebbles. There were thousands upon thousands in the heap. Before each man, at a distance of a foot, was a large gourdful of water. To the savages, these told the whole story; these, together with the tree dragged to one side.
Corrus and Dulnop were to be buried in that spot every day for as many days as there were pebbles in the heap; in other words, until they died. Every night they would be dug up, and every morning buried afresh. And to keep them from telling any of the villagers where they had found the pyrites, they were to be deprived of water all day long. By night their tongues would be too swollen for speech. For they had been sentenced to the No Shade torture, as well; their heads would be exposed all day long to the burning sun itself.
XI
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
It is significant that Billie, because of her connection with the bee, Supreme, was spared the sight that the doctor saw from Rolla's point of view. Otherwise, the geologist's wife might have had a different opinion of the matter. As it was--
"Corrus and Dulnop," said she as cooly as Supreme herself might have spoken, "are not the first to suffer because they have discovered something big."
Whereupon her husband's wrath got beyond his grip. "Not the first! Is that all you can say?" he demanded hotly. "Why, of all the damnably cruel, cold-blooded creatures I ever heard of, those infernal bees--"
Van Emmon stopped, unable to go on without blasphemy.
The doctor had got over the horror of what he had seen. "We want to be fair, Van. Look at this matter from the bees' view-point for awhile. What were they to do? They had to make sure, as far as possible, that their supremacy would never be threatened again. Didn't they?"
"Oh, but--damn it all!" cried Van Emmon. "There's a limit somewhere! Such cruelty as that--no one could conceive of it!"
"As for the bees," flared Billie, "I don't blame 'em! And unless I'm very much mistaken, the ruling class ANYWHERE, here on the earth or wherever you investigate, will go the limit to hold the reins, once they get them!"
The expression on Van Emmon's face was curious to see. There was no fear there, only a puzzled astonishment. Strange as it may seem, Billie had told him something that had never occurred to him before. And he recognized it as truth, as soon as she had said it.
"Just a minute," remarked Smith in his ordinary voice; "just a minute. You're forgetting that we don't really know whether Rolla and Cunora are safe. Everything depends upon them now, you know."
In silence the four went back into telepathic connection. Now, of course, Smith and Van Emmon were practically without agents. The prisoners could tell them nothing whatever except the tale of increasing agony as their torture went on. All that Van Emmon and Smith could do was lend the aid of their mentality to the efforts of the other two, and for a while had to be content with what Billie, through Supreme, and the doctor, through Rolla, were able to learn. However, Kinney did suggest that one of the other two men get in touch with Cunora.
"Good idea," said Smith. "Go to it, Van Emmon."
The geologist stirred uneasily, and avoided his wife's eyes. "I--I'm afraid not, Smith. Rather think I'd prefer to rest a while. You do it!"
Smith laughed and reddened. "Nothing doing for an old bach like me. Cunora might--well, you know--go in bathing, for instance. It's all right for the doctor, of course; but--let me out!"
Meanwhile the two women on Sanus, taking the utmost care, managed to retreat from the river bank without being discovered. Keeping their eyes very wide open and their ears strained for the slightest buzz, the two contrived to pass through the village, out into the fields, and thence, from cover to cover, into the foothills on that side of the valley where their lovers had found the pyrites.
"If only we knew which stream they ascended!" lamented Cunora, as they stood in indecision before a fork in the river.
"But we don't!" Rolla pointed out philosophically. "We must trust to luck and Mownoth, ye and I."
And despite all the effort the doctor could put forth to the contrary, the two women picked out the wrong branch. They searched as diligently as two people possibly could; but somehow the doctor knew, just because of the wrong choice that had been made, that their search would be unsuccessful. He thought the matter over for a few moments, and finally admitted to his three friends:
"I wonder if I haven't been a little silly? Why should I have been so precious specific in impressing Rolla about the pyrites? Pshaw! Almost any hard rock will strike sparks from flint!"
"Why, of course!" exploded Van Emmon. "Here--let's get busy and tell Rolla!"
But it proved astonishingly difficult. The two women were in an extraordinary condition now. They were continually on the alert. In fact, the word "alert" scarcely described the state of mind, the keen, desperate watchfulness which filled every one of their waking hours, and caused each to remain awake as long as possible; so that they invariably fell to sleep without warning. They could not be caught in the drowsy state!
For they knew something about the bees which the four on the earth did not learn until Billie had overheard Supreme giving some orders.
"Set a guard on that river bank," she told her subordinate, "and maintain it night and day. If any inferior attempts to recover the magic stone, deal with him or her in the same manner in which we punished the finders of the deadly flower."
"It shall be done, Supreme. Is there anything further?"
"Yes. Make quite sure that none of the inferiors are missing."
Shortly afterward the lieutenant reported that one of the huts was empty.
"Rolla, the soil-tester, and Cunora, the vineyardist, are gone."
"Seek them!" Supreme almost became excited. "They are the lovers of the men we punished! They would not absent themselves unless they knew something! Find them, and torture them into revealing the secret! We must weed out this flowing blossom forever!"
"It shall be done!"
Such methods were well known to Rolla and Cunora. Had not their fellow villagers, many of them, tried time after time to escape from bondage? And had they not inevitably been apprehended and driven back, to be tortured as an example to the rest? It would never do to be caught!
So they made it a practice to travel only during twilight and dawn, remaining hidden through the day. Invariably one stood watch while the other slept. The bees were--everywhere!
Upon crossing the range of mountains going down the other side, Cunora and Rolla began to feel hopeful of two things--first, that their luck would change, and the wonderful stone be found; and second, that they would be in no danger from the bees in this new country, which seemed to be a valley much like the one they had quit. It was all quite new and strange to them, and in their interest they almost forgot at times that each had a terrible score to settle when her chance finally came.
Twice
they had exceedingly narrow escapes. Always they kept carefully hid, but on the third day Cunora, advancing cautiously through some brush, came suddenly upon two bees feeding. She stopped short and held her breath. Neither saw her, so intent were they upon their honey; yet Cunora felt certain that each had been warned to watch out for her. This was true; Billie learned that every bee on the planet had been told. And so Cunora silently backed away, an inch at a time, until it was safe to turn and run.
On another occasion Rolla surprised a big drone bee, just as she bent to take a drink of water from a stream. The insect had been out of her sight, on the other side of a boulder. It rose with an angry buzz as she bent down; a few feet away from her it hung in the air, apparently scrutinizing her to make sure that she was one of the runaways. Her heart leaped to her mouth. Suppose they were reported!
She made a lightninglike grab at the thing, and very nearly caught it. Straight up it shot, taken by surprise, and dashed blindly into a ledge of rock which hung overhead. For a second it floundered, dazed; and that second was its last. Cunora gave a single bound forward, and with a vicious swing of a palm-leaf, which she always carried, smashed the bee flat.
Before they had been free five days they came to an exceedingly serious conclusion: that it was only a question of time until they were caught. Sooner or later they must be forced to return; they could not hope to dodge bees much longer. When Rolla fully realized this she turned gravely to the younger girl.
"Methinks the time has come for us to make a choice, Cunora. Which shall it be: live as we have been living for the past four days, with the certainty of being caught in time or--face the unknown perils on the edge of the world?"
Cunora dropped the piece of stone she had been inspecting and shivered with fear. "A dreadful choice ye offer, Rolla! Think of the horrible beasts we must encounter!"
"Ye mean," corrected the philosophical one--"ye mean, the beasts which men SAY they have seen. Tell me; hast ever seen such thyself? Many times hast thou been near the edge, I know."