The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01

by George Allan England

  He hoped that in a year or so many of the Folk might even bear the noonday sun. Once he could get them to working with him by daylight his progress would leap forward mightily in many lines of activity that he had planned.

  An occasional short raid with the Pauillac had stocked the colony with firearms, chemicals and necessary drugs, cutlery, ammunition and some glassware, from the dismantled cities of Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and other places unidentified.

  Allan foresaw almost infinite possibilities in these raids. Civilization he felt, would surge onward with amazing rapidity fostered by this detritus of the distant past.

  He also unearthed and brought back to Settlement Cliffs the phonographs and records, sealed in their oiled canvas and hidden in the rock-cleft near the patriarch’s grave.

  Thereafter of an evening the voices of other days sang in the cave. Around the entrance, now protected by stout and ample timber doors, gathered an eager, wondering, fascinated group, understanding the universal appeal of harmony, softened and humanized by the music of the world that was. And thus, too, was the education of the Folk making giant strides.

  Progress, tremendous progress, toward the goal!

  Autumn came down the world, and the sun paled a little as it sank to southward in the heavens. Warmth and luxuriant fertility, fecundity without parallel, still pervaded the earth, but a certain change had even so become well marked. Slowly the year was dying, that another might be born.

  It was of a glorious purple evening late in October that Allan made the great discovery.

  He had come in from working with two or three of the hardier Folk on the temporary hangar he was building for the Pauillac on Newport Heights, to which a broad and well-graded roadway now extended through the jungle.

  Entering the home-cave suddenly—and it was home now indeed, with its broad stone fireplace, its comfortable furnishings, its furs, its mats of clean, sweet-smelling rushes—he stopped, toil-worn and weary, to view the well-loved place.

  “Well, little wife! Busy, as usual? Always busy, sweetheart?”

  At his greeting Beatrice looked up as though startled. She was sitting in a low easy-chair he had made for her of split bamboos cleverly lashed and softly cushioned.

  At her left hand, on the palm-wood table, stood a heavy bronze lamp from some forgotten millionaire’s palace in Atlanta. Its soft radiance illumined her face in profile, making a wondrous aureole of her clustered hair, as in old paintings of the Madonna at the Annunciation.

  A presage gripped the man’s heart, drawing powerfully at its strings with pain, yet with delicious hope and joy as she turned toward him.

  For something in her face, some new, beatified, maternal loveliness, not to be analyzed or understood, betrayed her wondrous secret.

  With a little gasp, she dropped into her lap the bit of needlework and sought to hide it with her hands—a gesture wholly girlish yet—to hide and guard it with those hands, so useful and beautiful, so precious and so dearly loved.

  But Allan, breathing hard and deep, strode to her, his face aflame with hope and adoration. He caught them up together in the gentle strength of his rough hands and pressed them to his heart.

  Beside her he knelt silently; he encircled her with his right arm. Then he took up the tiny garment, smiling.

  For a long minute their eyes met.

  His brimmed with sudden tears. Hers fell, and her head drooped down upon his breast, and—as once before, at the cathedral—an eloquent tide of crimson mounted from breast to throat, from cheek to tendrilled hair.

  About his neck her arms slid, trembled, tightened.

  No word was uttered there under the golden lamp-glow; but the strong kiss he pressed, reverently, proudly, upon her brow, renewed with ten-time depth their eternal sacrament of love.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE MASTER OF HIS RACE

  Days, busy days, lengthened into weeks, and these to months happy and full of labor; and in the ever-growing colony progress and change came steadily forward.

  All along the cliff-face and the terraces the cave-dwellings now extended, and the smoke from a score of chimneys fashioned among the clefts rose on the temperate air of that sub-tropic winter.

  At the doors, nets hung drying. On the pool, boats were anchored at several well-built stone wharfs. The terraces had been walled with palisades on their outer edge and smooth roadways fashioned, leading to all the dwellings as well as to the river below.

  On top of the cliff and about three hundred yards back from the edge another palisade had been built of stout timbers set firmly in the earth, interlaced with cordage and propped with strong braces.

  The enclosed space, bounded to east and west by the barrier which swung toward and touched the cañon, had all been cleared, save for a few palms and fern-trees left for shade.

  Beside drying-frames for fish and game and a well-smoothed plaza for public assemblies and the giving of the Law, it now contained Stern’s permanent hangar. The Pauillac had been brought along the road from Newport Heights and housed there.

  This road passed through strong gates of hewn planks hinged with well-wrought ironwork forged by some of the Folk under the direction of H’yemba, the smith. For H’yemba, be it known, had been brought up by Stern early in December.

  The man was essential to progress, for none knew so well as he the arts of smelting and of metal-work. Stern still felt suspicious of him, but by no word or act did the smith now betray any rebellious spirit, any animosity, or aught but faithful service.

  Allan, however, could not trust him yet. No telling what fires might still be smoldering under the peaceful and industrious exterior. And the master’s eye often rested keenly on the powerful figure of the blacksmith.

  Across the cañon, from a point about fifty yards to eastward of Cliff Villa—as Beta and Allan had christened their home—a light bridge had been flung, connecting the northern with the southern bank and saving laborious toil in crossing via the river-bed.

  This bridge, of simple construction, was merely temporary. Allan counted on eventually putting up a first-class cantilever; but for now he was content with two stout fiber cables anchored to palm-trunks, floored with rough boards lashed in place with cordage, and railed with strong rope.

  This bridge opened up a whole new tract of country to northward and vastly widened the fruit and game supply. Plenty reigned at Settlement Cliffs; and a prosperity such as the Folk had never known in the Abyss, a well-being, a luxurious variety of foodstuffs—fruits, meats, wild vegetables—as well as a profusion of furs for clothing, banished discontent.

  Barring a little temporary depression and lassitude due to the great alteration of environment, the Folk experienced but slight ill effects from the change.

  And, once they grew acclimated, their health and vigor rapidly improved. Strangest of all, a phenomenon most marked in the children, Allan noticed that after a few weeks under the altered conditions of food and exposure to the actinic rays of the sun as reflected by the moonlight, pigmentation began to develop. A certain clouding of the iris began to show, premonitory of color-deposit. The skin lost something of its chalky hue, while at the roots of the hair, as it grew, a distinct infiltration of pigment-cells was visible. And at this sight Allan rejoiced exceedingly.

  Beatrice did not now go much abroad with him, on account of her condition. She hardly ventured farther than the top of the cliff, and many days she sat in her low chair on the terrace, resting, watching the river and the forest, thinking, dreaming, sewing for the little new colonist soon to arrive. Some of their most happy hours were spent thus, as Allan sat beside her in the sun, talking of their future. The bond between them had grown closer and more intimate. They two, linked by another still unseen, were one.

  “Will you be very angry with me, dear, if it’s a girl?” she asked one day, smiling a little wistfully.

  “Angry? Have I ever been angry with you, darling? Could I ever be?”

  She shook her head.


  “No; but you might if I disappointed you now.”

  “Impossible! Of course, the world’s work demands a chief, a head, a leader, to come after me and take up the reins when they fall from my hands, but—”

  “Even if it’s a girl—only a girl—you’ll love me just the same?”

  His answer was a pressure of her hand, which he brought to his lips and held there a long minute. She smiled again and in the following silence their souls spoke together though their lips were mute.

  But Beta had her work to do those days as well as Allan.

  While he planned the public works of the colony and directed their construction at night, or made his routine weekly trip into the Abyss for more and ever more of the Folk—a greatly shortened trip, now that he knew the way so well and needed stop below ground only long enough to rest a bit and take on oil and fuel—she was busy with her teaching of the people.

  They had carefully discussed this matter, and had decided to impose English bodily and arbitrarily upon the colonists. Every evening Beatrice gathered a class of the younger men and women, always including the children, and for an hour or two drilled them in simple words and sentences.

  She used their familiar occupations, and taught them to speak of fishing, metal-working, weaving, dyeing, and the preparation of food.

  And always after they had learned a certain thing, in speaking to them she used English for that thing. The Folk, keen-witted and retentive of memory as barbarians often are, made astonishing strides in this new language.

  They realized fully now that it was the speech of their remote and superior ancestors, and that it far surpassed their own crude and limited tongue.

  Thus they learned with enthusiasm; and before long, among them in their own daily lives and labors, you could hear words, phrases, and bits of song in English. And at sound of this both Allan and the girl thrilled with pride and joy.

  Allan felt confident of ultimate success along this line.

  “We must teach the children, above all,” he said to her one day. “English must come to be a secondary tongue to them, familiar as Merucaan. The next generation will speak English from birth and gradually the other language will decay and perish—save as we record it for the sake of history.

  “It can’t be otherwise, Beatrice. The superior tongue is always bound to replace the inferior. All the science and technical work I teach these people must be explained in English.

  “They have no words for all these things. Bridges, flying-machines, engines, water-pipes for the new aqueduct we’re putting in to supply the colony from the big spring up back there, tools, processes, everything of importance, will enforce English. The very trend of their whole evolution will drive them to it, even if they were unwilling, which they aren’t.”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered. “Yet, after all, we’re only two—”

  “We’ll be three soon.”

  She blushed.

  “Three, then, if you say so. So few among so many—it will be a hard fight, after all.”

  “I know, but we shall win. Old man Adams and one or two others, at the time of the mutiny of the ‘Bounty’ taught English to all their one or two score wives and numerous children on Pitcairn.

  “The Tahitan was soon forgotten, and the brown half-breeds all spoke good English right up to the time of the catastrophe, when, of course, they were all wiped out. So you see, history proves the thing can be done—and will be.”

  Came an evening toward the beginning of spring again—an evening of surpassing loveliness, soft, warm, perfumed with the first crimson blossoms of the season—when Bremilu ran swiftly up the path to the cliff-top and sought Allan in the palisaded enclosure, working with his men on the new aqueduct.

  “Come, master, for they seek you now!” he panted.

  “Who?”

  “The mistress and old Gesafam, the aged woman, skilled in all maladies! Come swiftly, O Kromno!”

  Allan started, dropped his lantern, and turned very white.

  “You mean—”

  “Yea, master! Come!”

  He found Beatrice in bed, the bronze lamp shining on her face, pale as his own.

  “Come, boy!” she whispered. “Let me kiss you just once before—before—”

  He knelt, and on her brow his lips seemed to burn. She kissed him, then with a smile of happiness in all her pain said:

  “Go, dearest! You must go now!”

  And, as he lingered, old Gesafam, chattering shrilly, seized him by the arm and pushed him toward the doorway.

  Dazed and in silence he submitted. But when the door had closed behind him, and he stood alone there in the moonlight above the rushing river, a sudden exaltation thrilled him.

  He knelt again by the rough sill and kissed the doorway of the house of pain, the house of life; and his soul flamed into prayer to whatsoever Principle or Power wrought the mysteries of the ever-changing universe.

  And for hours, keeping all far away, he held his vigil; and the stars watched above him, too, mysterious and far.

  But with the coming of the dawn, hark! a cry within! The cry—the thrilling, never-to-be-forgotten, heart-wringing cry of the first-born!

  “Oh, God!” breathed Allan, while down his cheeks hot tears gushed unrestrained.

  The door opened. Gesafam beckoned.

  Trembling, weak as a child, the man faltered in. Still burned the lamp upon the table. He saw the heavy masses of Beta’s hair upon the pillow of deerskin, and something in his heart yearned toward her as never until now.

  “Allan!”

  Choking, unable to formulate a word, shaking, he sank beside the bed, buried his face upon it, and with his hand sought hers.

  “Allan, behold your son!”

  Into his quivering arms she laid a tiny bundle wrapped in the finest cloth the Folk could weave of soft palm-fibers.

  His son!

  Against his face he held the child, sobbing. One hand sheltered it; the other pressed the weak and trembling hand of Beatrice.

  And as the knowledge and the joy and pain of realization, of full achievement, of fatherhood, surged through him, the strong man’s tears baptized the future master of the race!

  CHAPTER XX

  DISASTER!

  That evening, the evening of the same day, Allan presented the man-child to his assembled Folk.

  Eager, silent, awed, the white barbarians gathered on the terrace, all up and down the slope of it, before the door of their Kromno’s house, waiting to behold the son of him they all obeyed, of him who was their law.

  Allan took the child and bore it to the doorway; and in the presence of all he held it up, and in the yellow moonlight dedicated it to their service and the service of the world.

  “Listen, O folk of the Merucaans!” he cried. “I show you and I give you, now, into your keeping and protection forever, this first-born child of ours!

  “This is the first American, the first of the ancient race that once was, the same race whence you, too, have descended, to be born in the upper world! His name shall be my name—Allan. To him shall be taught all good and useful things of body and of mind. He shall be your master, but more than master; he shall be your friend, your teacher, your strength, your guide in the days yet to come! To you his life is given. Not for himself shall he live, not for power or oppression, but for service in the good of all!

  “To you and your children is he given, to those who shall come after, to the new and better time. When we, his parents, and when you, too, shall all be gone from here, this man-child shall carry on the work with your descendants. His race shall be your race, his love and care all for your welfare, his every thought and labor for the common good!

  “Thus do I consecrate and give him to you, O my Folk! And from this hour of his naming I give you, too, a name. No longer shall you be Merucaans, but now Americans again. The ancient name shall live once more. He, an American, salutes you, Americans! You are his elder brothers, and between you the bond shall never loosen t
ill the end.

  “I have spoken unto you. This is the Law!”

  In silence they received it, in silence made obeisance; and, as Allan once more carried the child back to its mother, silently they all departed to their homes and labors.

  From that moment Allan believed his rule established now by stronger bonds of love than any force could be. And through all the intoxication of success and consummated power he felt a love for Beatrice, who had rendered all this possible, such as no human words could ever say.

  Allan, Junior, grew lustily, waxed strong, and filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs. The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all the social bonds.

  An esprit de corps, an admirable and powerful cooperative sense developed, and the work of reconstruction, of learning, of progress went on more rapidly than ever.

  Beatrice, seated at the door of Cliff Villa with the child upon her knee, made a veritable heart and center for all thought and labor. She and Allan, Junior, became objects almost of worship for the simple Folk.

  It was heart-touching to see the eager interest, the love and veneration of the people, the hesitant yet fascinated way in which they contemplated this strange boy, blue-eyed and with yellow hair beginning to grow already; this, the first child they had ever seen to show them what the children of their one-time ancestors had been.

  The hunters, now growing very expert in the use of firearms, fairly overloaded the larder of the villa with rare game-birds and venison. The fishers outdid themselves to catch choice fish for their master’s family. And every morning fruits and flowers were piled at the doorway for their rulers’ pleasure.

  Even then, when so much still remained to do, it seemed as though the Golden Age of Allan’s dreams already was beginning to take form. These were by far the happiest days Beta and he had ever lived. Love, work, hopes and plans filled their waking hours.

  Put far away were all discouragements and fears. All dangers seemed forever to have vanished. Even the portent of the signal-fires, from time to time seen on the northern or eastern horizons, were ignored. And for a while all was peace and joy.