The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  Thork shrugged. “A window is to see out of and a door is to walk through. Maybe they were just more careful where the walls are than where they aren’t.”

  Jarvis was mentally reviewing his stay in the City of Brock, which had been built by modern Magnanthropus in the mountains of the northern continent. There had been neither doors nor windows in those fabulous structures. The Mag environment created within that city had been deadly to ordinary men, but the breath of life to Magnanthropus. Thousands had lived there, before the threat of solar eruption and they had gone in and out of the doorless buildings and looked through non-existent windows.

  He leaped to his feet, rubbing his palms together. He began to feel over the walls, searching for the key of exit. Whoever had pierced openings in this almost impenetrable substance had done so after the Mighty had left Eloraspon forever. The way of the Mighty must still exist!

  After a fruitless interval, Jarvis sat down wearily and dozed with his back against the wall. The door banging startled him awake. Thork was sitting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “They have brought us food and water,” he growled. “Take your share.”

  Jarvis eyed the bowl of unsavory-food askance.

  “Don’t worry,” the Tharn reassured him. “It’s probably rotten, but it has no tharn in it. They would not so honor you, and I have my own.”

  The food was awful but Jarvis choked it down. His body craved nourishment.

  “Skal was once an ishak,” Thork related while they ate. “He quarreled with a neighboring ishak and got beaten in the ensuing war. He abandoned his troops to be butchered by the enemy and fled to Drahubba for the protection of the Lugal. Considering Skal’s noble rank, the Lugal forgave him his cowardice and conferred upon him rank in the army. The military hated and distrusted him, knowing him to be a coward. That is why he was left to watch the dil when we others went out to engage you. But even with all this against him, whom do you think the Lugal will believe—a ranking noble of his own army, or an erstwhile Giparian slave who stole tharn?”

  “How much time do you think we have left?” Jarvis asked.

  Thork ticked a tusk with a fingernail. “It is just after sunrise in the world above. The Sharing and Judging begin at midday. I should say we have about half a turn of Munus about Nanna.”

  About six hours. And it might be the last six hours of both their lives.

  “How long does it take to do the Sharing and Judging?”

  “Most of the afternoon. It is all figured out beforehand by the nishaks—they are court officials. Rewards and punishments are dispensed one after the other to the Tharn who line up and pass before the Lugal’s throne. Rewards are given in the form of chits, which the warriors cannot collect on before tomorrow.”

  Jarvis prowled the cell some more, searching for the elusive key. It was like being a modern Ali Baba seeking an “Open Sesame!”. Even as the thought crossed his mind, the wall in front of him was no longer solid…more like a curtain of smoke. He could see dimly into the next cell and sense clearly with his Mag perception. That was it! It wasn’t the words—it was the will. All he had to do was will the wall to open! He stepped through, feeling no resistance, and turned, feeling the wall with his palms. It was as hard and opaque as before.

  “Madre de dios!” exclaimed a voice behind him. “Que pasa?”

  Jarvis whirled. The prisoner slumped against the opposite wall was obviously an Earthman. His Earth-made boots and trousers were relatively new, but the beard upon his chin spelled weeks of neglect.

  “You are from Earth!” The meeting was as starling as it was totally unexpected. “What are you doing here?”

  “Aha! The angels speak English!” The prisoner spoke with a barely perceptible accent. “In a land of devils, where the devils speak gibberish, it is to be expected. Do you come to take me to abide with you among the saints, señor angel?”

  “No angel,” said Jarvis tersely, “but an Earthman like yourself. Did you cross over at the time of the earthquakes or before?”

  “Por dios!” muttered the prisoner. “No angel but a gringo! How do you like that, Jesus, Francisco de Valdez? It is because you spent so much time in the United States yourself you are more American than Peruvian.” He stirred, shooting a troubled glance at Jarvis. “I had accustomed myself to the fact of being dead. You now raise doubts, señor. Do I live, or is this indeed Purgatory and Americans pass this way also?”

  “Neither of us is dead…yet.”

  “Then perhaps I shall some day again see my father’s ranch in Peru,” said Valdez.

  Jarvis shook his head. “Earth is destroyed,” he said brutally.

  Valdez struggled to a sitting position. “Incomprehensible, señor! Did the earthquakes come again? I have been here a full month that I know of and have had no news…”

  “Three years ago…” Jarvis began. “Valdez? Is that your name? What do you mean—a month that you know of?”

  “A month ago,” said Valdez, getting up, “I was rounding up horses on my father’s ranch in Peru. My horse stumbled and I flew over his head. When I came to my senses, there was no Peru, no ranch, no horses. Just desert and blazing sun and I thought myself dead and in Hell! I was sure of it when blue devils came riding up on monsters, made me prisoner and brought me here to rot. If Earth is destroyed this time, as you say, where can this place be?”

  Jarvis’ brain was in a whirl. Could Valdez be right, or was he deranged? Quickly he explained his own presence, referring to the earthquakes three years ago when Eloraspon and Earth had merged through hyperspace and he and others had escaped death by crossing over to Eloraspon.

  “Oh, yes,” Valdez agreed. “It was bad then, Many parts of the Earth were badly damaged. But nothing was ever said about another world, or anything such as you say. It was just earthquakes, the experts said. Something to do with an eruption on the sun that quickly quieted itself.”

  “Sometimes,” Jarvis said, “there are holes in hyperspace, through which it is possible to pass through, from one world to the other. If you could lead me back to the place where you entered Eloraspon, many other Earthmen, trapped now on a continent north of here, could return to Earth. Can you do it?”

  Valdez shook his head. “Not even supposing I were out of here. It was a barren plain, where all parts look the same.”

  “Just lead me to the general area,” Jarvis put in. “I could find the hole.”

  “I was carried face down, slung over the saddle of one of my captors, for many days,” Valdez grimaced. “I would not know one direction from another.”

  Jarvis was disappointed, but hope was far from extinguished. Earth still lived! It was more imperative than ever now that he reach Surandanish! It was there Eamus Brock had found the secret of transporting himself at will between the worlds. He paused in his thoughts. Eamus Brock had made them all believe that Earth was destroyed. Had he really believed that himself…or had he had some reason, still hidden, for making them believe so? The answer was… Surandanish!

  It was obvious now that Eloraspon had merged only briefly and incompletely with Earth. In theory, the atoms of Eloraspon, materializing in Earth space-time, had occupied the inter-atomic spaces of the Earth-body. Since Eloraspon was slightly larger than Earth, the terrestrial planet would have been completely enclosed within the curst of Eloraspon, had the trans-spatial merging been complete. As it was, the earthquakes accompanying the phenomenon had provided a seeming cause for the destruction that had ensued in those places where merging had been complete. The people of Earth were still ignorant of what had really happened.

  Jarvis returned to his own cell with Valdez, explaining to a surprised Thork what had happened. Valdez plucked at his sleeve.

  “This is one of those blue devils! Can you trust him?”

  Jarvis reassured him. “He is as much a prisoner
as you and I. And he is my friend.” He said to Thork. “Now that we can leave this place as we please, we can think about getting out of here. There is nothing but the corridor in front and cells on either side. What is behind the rear wall?”

  Thork shrugged. “Stone. The old ones built around a central column of stone to give the building strength—so say the Tharn.”

  “Was a door ever cut anywhere in this wall?”

  “Who would think of it? The building might fall!”

  Jarvis did not believe the Tharn knew anything about it. The theory was evidence, however, that there could be anything but Tharn on the other side.

  He opened the wall and probed through with his Mag senses. Not stone, but space lay on the other side. Lighted space, and circular balconies that staged both upward and downward inside a cylinder at least a hundred feet across. He beckoned Valdez and had to push Thork through the wall, then followed quickly as keys rattled at the door of dingan wood, three fingers thick.

  CHAPTER VI

  That great shaft piercing the heart of the building was an awesome thing to see, and no man or Tharn had ever dreamed that such a thing existed. A thousand feet above them, it was topped by the roof of the building. An unguessable distance below, its very depths were hidden in a shimmer of golden light, and the stages, connected by ramps at intervals, went up and down in diminishing rings of uncountable number.

  Above, thought Jarvis, the rooms and apartments swarmed with Tharn warriors. They had been in what Thork described as the bottom-most pits of the building. Descent might bring them to a way out unknown to the Tharn. He set off at a rapid trot down the nearest ramp, followed by Thork and Valdez.

  A dozen levels down, the smooth, shimmering walls of the cylinder were broken by arched openings giving onto huge, echoing rooms filled with monumental objects that might have been machines, stilled now in the silence of multi-millennia. One of the chambers they traversed gave onto another, larger than any and circular, ringed with arched openings. What seemed to be a map of the city hung suspended from the ceiling, without supports, and it glowed with light of its own, delineating every street and causeway of Arolaneti, as that mighty workshop of the old ones had been when dinosaurs teemed the Earth.

  “Can you locate the Lugal’s palace from that?” Jarvis asked Thork.

  The Tharn frowned. “It would seem as if it were Drahubba, all right, Jeff Jarvis. There is a red light at one of the places, and I think that is where we are now, If so, the palace should be… there…” Thork pointed.

  Jarvis sharpened his Mag senses on the map, scanning the area. How to reach it? Into his mind crept the answer, softly, innocuously, as if he had known it always.

  He swung off into one of the arched openings and found himself in a lighted tunnel. Small cars strewed the way, relics of a million years gone, a comment on the metallurgy of the ancients that they had not long since dissolved into mineral dust. But Jarvis had no time to give them so much as a second glance.

  “Thork! You’re familiar with the palace. Where does the Lugal keep weapons?”

  “There is an armory at what is now the ground level,” said the Tharn.

  A few minutes rapid walking brought them to the central cylinder of the palace. From there it was a dogged climb, stage to stage, Jarvis “opening” wall after wall, probing for what he sought. He grunted at last with satisfaction.

  “Weapons,” he said, gesturing “but there is an armed Tharn on duty.”

  “Let me get them!” urged Valdez. “I ache to get at one of those blue devils!”

  Jarvis shook his head and conferred swiftly with Thork. He turned to Valdez.

  He said, “By now, almost everyone is gathered in the Lugal’s main audience room for the Sharing and Judging. But I can’t risk you or I being seen. Thork will get what we need.”

  He turned back to the wall, reaching for the nape of his neck. Jarvis’ knife glinted silently and there was a dull thud from beyond the opened wall. Jarvis jerked a thumb at Thork, who darted through and a moment later shot the bolt on the heavy door. Jarvis and Valdez followed.

  Jarvis’ lean face lighted with pleasure as he discerned his own weapons hanging on the end of a cabinet. Adjusting sword and axe to his hips, he thrust the boomerang through his waistband. Valdez was hefting a Tharn sword with a light dancing in his eyes.

  “Can you handle that thing?” Jarvis asked.

  “I led my college fencing team for four years, Jeff Jarvis! I can handle it well enough.”

  Thork dumped the body of the attendant in a large, empty chest and the trio returned to the inner stage. A few levels above, Jarvis again opened the wall, sensed for danger, then motioned the others to follow him.

  The apartment was sumptuously furnished, rich with hangings and deep-piled rugs. There was a sound, like a slight gasp, and Jarvis whirled. A woman stood in the doorway, young, beautiful with the exotic, dark-eyed beauty of Elorasponian women, and dressed in gauzy trousers and a breast-length jacket of diaphanous material that revealed her every charm. She placed a finger to her lips and cautiously closed the door behind her, locking it.

  “Why have you come here?” she whispered. “You cannot hope to escape! Guards throng every corridor.”

  “Is she friendly?” Valdez asked with more than modest interest.

  Jarvis nodded, and to the girl, “Do you know who we are?”

  “You must be Jarvis,” she muttered. “My lady, the princess of Gipar, told me about you and described you well. Your companions are Thork, called a coward by Skal, and a mad Giparian who escaped this morning from his cell when you did.” She looked at Valdez carefully. “Though I think him no Giparian, but an other-world man like yourself.” She smiled. “The Tharn think him mad because he speaks only gibberish instead of the tongue common to all Eloraspon.”

  “I thought I heard the guard entering as we left our cell,” Jarvis said. “I suppose the alarm has been sounded?”

  “Indeed, Jeff Jarvis. Not a quarter of a twelfth of a turn of Munus about Nanna ago, the Lugal learned of your escape. Mounted warriors are scouring the city. They would not dream you would come here—from whence no escape is possible!”

  Jarvis ignored her assertion. “Where is the princess of Gipar?”

  “She was here—in this very chamber. Now she is in the great audience hall, awaiting her turn of Sharing.”

  Jarvis was aware that Thork nudged him. In an oddly distorted whisper, the Tharn muttered, “Ask the maid her name!”

  “I am Rani, daughter of Araush, ishak of Tukulta,” she said proudly.

  Thork groaned deep in his blue-skinned chest. “What do you here, maid of Tukulta?”

  “A dealer in slaves took me from my father’s garden, promising to reunite me with him. Instead he sold me to the Tharn. That is why I am here.”

  Thork muttered again in Jarvis’ ear. “Say not that I am her father, but ask her of her mother.”

  “The Lady Kriah, is well,” Rani replied to Jarvis’ question. “She awaits still the return of my father, who was taken ten years ago by the Tharn. But I have sought him here in vain. None remember him.”

  “I remember him,” Thork said. The girl’s face lighted, but the Tharn quenched her joy. “He is dead,” he said brutally. “I saw him die with my own eyes.”

  “You knew him, Tharn?”

  “As well as I know myself.” Thork turned his ugly face aside. “He died saving my life. Your father was a brave man. Remember that, girl.”

  Jarvis’ stood quietly to one side, noting the tears in the great eyes of Thork. His heart wrenched with feeling for the Tharn.

  He said to the maid, “We cannot stand here forever. You must come with us. We shall return you to Tukulta.”

  He saw Thork’s look of gratitude and added, kindly, “Señor Valdez will be your gua
rdian.”

  “But how shall we leave here?” she protested. “Armed warriors are everywhere!”

  “Come.” Jarvis took her arm and led her shrinking through the wall to the stage in the central cylinder, followed by Thork and the Peruvian. “You see,” he smiled, “it is simple. Just as easily, we shall bear you off to Tukulta, but first we must rescue the princess Ilil from the Lugal of Kullab.”

  * * * *

  Moments later, the girl and Valdez safely hidden in a lavish but deserted apartment off the great audience chamber, Jarvis and Thork joined the press of spectators before the throne of the Lugal Zag-ab-Shab. The hall thronged both with Tharn and male Giparian slaves and Jarvis depended on the concentration of attention holding the crowd to pass unnoticed, even though he went armed.

  The Lugal Zag-ab-Shab, the most enormous and ugliest Tharn Jarvis had yet seen, sat, enthroned upon a dais at the far end of the hall, surrounded by rich hangings and gold emblems of royalty studded with jewels, a horde of nishaks and nobles, and the royal guard, standing ten deep in solid ranks in front of the dais. At the Lugal’s left and far from him, in the corner of the chamber, the captives stood upon a high platform, raised up where all could see them.

  Jarvis’ heart leaped. Foremost among the captives stood Ilil, clad in the revealing female attire common to Eloraspon and the breath stopped in his throat at the beauty of her. How much her warrior’s garb had hidden from him!

  Having worked his way to the platform, Jarvis lurked just below its level. Somewhere in the crowd, Thork had pushed his way to the front, to the area of the Lugal’s throne. They had timed their action to coincide with the rewarding of Skal for the capture of the princess Ilil.

  Only half visible to Jarvis, for the huge Tharn obstructed his view, the Lugal Zag-ab-Shab overlooked his audience from a throne on a level with the heads of the tallest. From his heavily muscled shoulders, green robes flowed over the golden throne studded with jewels. He towered in his seat like an obscene statue, huger, fatter and uglier than all his subjects. His bloated features were frozen in a grimace of boredom. The long, ivory tusks projecting from under the coarsely moustached upper lip made him look so much like a walrus that Jarvis almost snickered. The Lugal’s white, saucer-like eyes scarcely blinked.