The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  My wide, thick-soled shoes did not look suspicious for one who planned much walking on the caked Lowland ooze. But those fat soles were cleverly fashioned to hide a long, keen knife-blade, like a dirk. I could lift a foot and get the knife out of its hidden compartment with fair speed. This I had in one shoe.

  In the other, was the small mechanism of a radio safety recorder and image finder, with its attendant individual audiophone transmitter and receiver. A miracle of smallness, these tiny contrivances. With batteries, wires and grids, the whole device could lay in the palm of one's hand. Once past this field inspection I would rig it for use under my shirt, strapped around my chest. And I had some colored magnesium flares.

  * * * * *

  The field operator came panting.

  "Who are you?"

  "Philip Grant. From Great New York." I showed him my name etched on my forearm. He and his fellows searched me, but I got by.

  "You have no documents?"

  "No."

  My letter to the President of Nareda was written with invisible ink upon the fabric of my shirt. If he had heated it to a temperature of 180°F. or so, and blown the fumes of hydrochloric acid upon it, the writing would have come out plain enough.

  I said, "You'll house and care for my machine?"

  They would care for it. They told me the price--swindlingly exorbitant for the unwary traveller who might wander down here.

  "All correct," I said cheerfully. "And half that much more for you and your men if you give me good service. Where can I have a room and meals?"

  "Spawn," said the operator. "He is the best. Fat-bellied from his own good cooking. Take him there, Hugo."

  I had a gold coin instantly ready; and with a few additional directions regarding my flyer, I started off.

  It had been hot and oppressive standing in the field; it was infinitely worse climbing the mud-slope into the village; but my carrier, trudging in advance of me along the dark, winding path up the slope, shouldered my bag and seemed not to notice the effort. We passed occasional tube-lights strung on poles. They illumined the heavy rounded crags. A tumbled region, this slope which once was the ocean floor twenty thousand feet below the surface. Rifts were here like gulleys; little buttes reared their rounded, dome heads. And there were caves and crevices in which deep sea fish once had lurked.

  * * * * *

  For ten minutes or so we climbed. It was past the midnight hour; the village was asleep. We entered its outposts. The houses were small structures of clay. In the gloom they looked like drab little beehives set in unplanned groups, with paths for streets wandering between them.

  Then we came to a more prosperous neighborhood. The street widened and straightened. The clay houses, still with rounded dome like tops, stood back from the road, with wooden front fences, and gardens and shrubbery. The windows and doors were like round finger-holes plugged in the clay by a giant hand. Occasionally the windows, dimly lighted, stared like sleeping giant eyes.

  There were flowers in all the more pretentious private gardens. Their perfume, hanging in the heavy night air, lay on the village, making one forget the over-curtain of stenching mist. Down by the shore of the Nares Sea, this world of the depths had seemed darkly sinister. But in the village now, I felt it less ominous. The scent of the flowers, the street lined in one place by arching giant fronds drowsing and nodding overhead--there seemed a strange exotic romance to it. The sultry air might almost have been sensuous.

  "Much further, Hugo?"

  "No. We are here."

  He turned abruptly into a gateway, led me through a garden and to the doorway of a large, rambling, one-story building. The news of my coming had preceded me. A front room was lighted; my host was waiting.

  Hugo set down my bag, accepted another gold coin; and with a queer sidelong smile, the incentive for which I had not the slightest idea, he vanished. I fronted my host, this Jacob Spawn. Strange fate that should have led me to Spawn! And to little Jetta!

  * * * * *

  Spawn was a fat-bellied Dutchman, as the field attendant had said. A fellow of perhaps fifty-five, with sparse gray hair and a heavy-jowled, smooth-shaved face from which his small eyes peered stolidly at me. He laid aside a huge, old-fashioned calabash pipe and offered a pudgy hand.

  "Welcome, young man, to Nareda. Seldom do we see strangers."

  The meal which he presently cooked and served me himself was lavishly done. He spoke good English, but slowly, heavily, with the guttural intonation of his race. He sat across the table from me, puffing his pipe while I ate.

  "What brings you here, young lad? A week, you say?"

  "Or more. I don't know. I'm looking for oil. There should be petroleum beneath these rocks."

  For an hour I avoided his prying questions. His little eyes roved me, and I knew he was no fool, this Dutchman, for all his heavy, stolid look.

  We remained in his kitchen. Save for its mud walls, its concave, dome-roof, it might have been a cookery of the Highlands. There was a table with its tube-light; the chairs; his electron stove; his orderly rows of pots and pans and dishes on a broad shelf.

  I recall that it seemed to me a woman's hand must be here. But I saw no woman. No one, indeed, beside Spawn himself seemed to live here. He was reticent of his own business, however much he wanted to pry into mine.

  I had felt convinced that we were alone. But suddenly I realized it was not so. The kitchen adjoined an interior back-garden. I could see it through the opened door oval--a dim space of flowers; a little path to a pergola; an adobe fountain. It was a sort of Spanish patio out there, partially enclosed by the wings of the house. Moonlight was struggling into it. And, as I gazed idly, I thought I saw a figure lurking. Someone watching us.

  * * * * *

  Was it a boy, observing us from the shadowed moonlit garden? I thought so. A slight, half grown boy. I saw his figure--in short ragged trousers and a shirt-blouse--made visible in a patch of moonlight as he moved away and entered the dark opposite wing of the house.

  I did not see the boy's figure again; and presently I suggested that I retire. Spawn had already shown me my bedroom. It was in another wing of the house. It had a window facing the front; and a window and door back to this same patio. And a door to the house corridor.

  "Sleep well, Meester Grant." My bag was here on the table under an electrolier. "Shall I call you?"

  "Yes," I said. "Early."

  He lingered a moment. I was opening my bag. I flung it wide under his gaze.

  "Well, good night. I shall be very comfortable, thanks."

  "Good night," he said.

  He went out the patio door. I watched his figure cross the moonlit path and enter the kitchen. The noise of his puttering there sounded for a time. Then the light went out and the house and garden fell into silence.

  I closed my doors. They sealed on the inside, and I fastened them securely. Then I fastened the transparent window panes. I did not undress, but lay on the bed in the dark. I was tired; I realized it now. But sleep would not come.

  I am no believer in occultism, but there are premonitions which one cannot deny. It seemed now as I lay there in the dark that I had every reason to be perturbed, yet I could not think why. Perhaps it was because I had been lying to this innkeeper stoutly for an hour past, and whether he believed me or not for the life of me I could not now determine.

  * * * * *

  I sat up on the bed, presently, and adjusted the wires and diaphragms of the ether-wave mechanism. When in place it was all concealed under my shirt. As I switched it on, the electrodes against my flesh tingled a little. But it was absolutely soundless, and one gets used to the tingle. I decided to call Hanley.

  The New York wave-sorter handled me promptly, but Hanley's office was dead.

  As I sat there in the darkness, annoyed at this, a slight noise forced itself on me. A scratching--a tap--something outside my window.

  Spawn, come back to peer in at me?

  I slipped noiselessly from the bed. The soun
d had come from the window which faced the patio. The room, over by the bed, was wholly dark. The moonlight outside showed the patio window as a dimly illumined oval.

  For a moment I crouched on the floor by the bed. No sound. The silence of the Lowlands is as heavy and oppressive as its air. I felt as though my heart were audible.

  I lifted my foot; extracted my dirk. It opened into a very businesslike steel blade of a good twelve-inch length. I bared the blade. The click of it leaving the flat, hollow handle sounded loud in the stillness of the room.

  A moment. Then it seemed that outside my window a shadow had moved. I crept along the floor. Rose up suddenly at the window.

  And stared at a face peering in at me. A small face, framed by short, clustering, dark curls.

  A girl!

  CHAPTER III

  In a Moonlit Garden

  She drew back from the window like a startled fawn; timorous, yet curious, too, for she ran only a few steps, then turned and stood peering. The moonlight slanted over the western roof of the building and fell on her. A slight, boyish figure in short, tattered trousers and a boy's shirt, open at her slim, rounded throat. The moonlight gleamed on the white shirt fabric to show it torn and ragged. Her arms were upraised; her head, with clustering, flying dark curls, was tilted as though listening for a sound from me. A shy, wild creature. Drawn to my window; tapping to awaken me, then frightened at what she had done.

  I opened the garden door. She did not move. I thought she would run, but she did not. The moonlight was on me as I stood there. I was conscious of its etching me with its silver sheen. And twenty feet from me this girl stood and gazed, with startled eyes and parted lips--and white limbs trembling like a frightened animal.

  The patio was very silent. The heavy arching fronds stirred slightly with a vague night breeze; the moonlight threw a lacy dark pattern of them on the gray stone path. The fountain bowl gleamed white in the moonlight behind the girl, and in the silence I could hear the low splashing of the water.

  A magic moment. Unforgettable. It comes to some of us just once, but to all of us it comes. I stood with its spell upon me. Then I heard my voice, tense but softly raised.

  "Who are you?"

  It frightened her. She retreated until the fountain was between us. And as I took a step forward, she retreated further, noiseless, with her bare feet treading the smooth stones the path.

  * * * * *

  I ran and caught her at the doorway of the flowered pergola. She stood trembling as I seized her arms. But the timorous smile remained, and her eyes, upraised to mine, glowed with misty starlight.

  "Who are you?"

  This time she answered me. "I am called Jetta."

  It seemed that from her white forearm within my grasp a magic current swept from her to me and back again. We humans, for all our clamoring, boasting intellectuality, are no more than puppets in Nature's hands.

  "Are you Spawn's daughter?"

  "Yes."

  "I saw you a while ago, when I was having my meal."

  "Yes--I was watching you."

  "I thought you were a boy."

  "Yes. My father told me to keep away. I wanted to meet you, so I came to wake you up."

  "He may be watching us now."

  "No. He is sleeping. Listen--you can hear him snore."

  I could, indeed. The silence of the garden was broken now by a distant, choking snore.

  We both laughed. She sat on the little mossy seat in the pergola doorway And on the side away from the snore. (I had the wit to be sure of that.)

  "I wanted to meet you," she repeated. "Was it too bold?"

  * * * * *

  I think that what we said sitting there with the slanting moonlight on us, could not have amounted to much. Yet for us, it was so important! Vital. Building memories which I knew--and I think that she knew, even then--we would never forget.

  "I will be here a week, Jetta."

  "I want--I want very much to know you. I want you to tell me about the world of the Highlands. I have a few books. I can't read very well, but I can look at the pictures."

  "Oh, I see--"

  "A traveler gave them to me. I've got them hidden. But he was an old man: all men seem to be old--except those in the pictures, and you, Philip."

  I laughed. "Well, that's too bad. I'm mighty glad I'm young."

  Ah, in that moment, with blessed youth surging in my veins, I was glad indeed!

  "Young. I don't remember ever seeing anyone like you. The man I am to marry is not like you. He is old, like father--"

  I drew back from her, startled.

  "Marry?"

  "Yes. When I am seventeen. The law of Nareda--your Highland law, too, father says--will not let a girl be married until she is that age. In a month I am seventeen."

  "Oh!" And I stammered, "But why are you going to marry?"

  "Because father tells me to. And then I shall have fine clothes: it is promised me. And go to live in the Highlands, perhaps. And see things; and be a woman, not a ragged boy forbidden to show myself; and--"

  * * * * *

  I was barely touching her. It seemed as though something--some vision of happiness which had been given me--were fading, were being snatched away. I was conscious of my hand moving to touch hers.

  "Why do you marry--unless you're in love? Are you?"

  Her gaze like a child came up to meet mine. "I never thought much about that. I have tried not to. It frightened me--until to-night."

  She pushed me gently away. "Don't. Let's not talk of him. I'd rather not."

  "But why are you dressed as a boy?"

  I gazed at her slim but rounded figure in tattered boy's garb--but the woman's lines were unmistakable. And her face, with clustering curls. Gentle girlhood. A face of dark, wild beauty.

  "My father hates women. He says they are all bad. It is a sin to wear woman's finery; or it breeds sin in women. Let's not talk of that. Philip, tell me--oh, if you could only realize all the things I want to know. In Great New York, there are theatres and music?"

  "Yes," I said. And began telling her about them.

  The witching of this moonlit garden! But the moon had presently sunk, and to the east the stars were fading.

  "Philip! Look! Why, it's dawn already. I've got to leave you."

  I held her just a moment by the hand.

  "May I meet you here to-morrow night?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said simply.

  "Good night--Jetta."

  "Good night. You--you've made me very happy."

  She was gone, into a doorway of the opposite wing. The silent, empty garden sounded with the distant, reassuring snores of the still sleeping Spawn.

  I went back to my room and lay on my bed. And drifted off on a sea of magic memories. The world--my world before this night--now seemed to have been so drab. Empty. Lifeless. But now there was pulsing, living magic in it for me.

  I drifted into sleep, thinking of it.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Mine in the Cauldron Depths

  I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.

  It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by the flat light of dawn.

  Hanley's microscopic voice:

  "Phil? I've just raised President Markes, there in Nareda. I've been a bit worried about you."

  "I'm all right, Chief."

  "Well, you'd better see President Markes this morning."

  "That was my intention."

  "Tell him frankly what you're after. This smuggling of quicksilver from Nareda has got to stop. But take it easy, Phil; don't be reckless. Remember: one little knife thrust and I've lost a good man!"

  I laughed at his anxious tone. That was always Hanley's way. A devil himself, when he was on a trail, but always worried for fear one of his men would come to harm.

  "Right enough, Chief. I'll be careful."

  He cut off presently.

  I did not see Jet
ta that morning. I told Spawn I was hoping to see President Markes on my petroleum proposition. And at the proper hour I took myself to the government house.

  * * * * *

  This Lowland village by daylight seemed even more fantastic than shrouded in the shadows of night. The morning sun had dissipated the overhead mists. It was hot in the rocky streets under the weird overhanging vegetation. The settlement was quietly busy with its tropical activities. There were a few local shops; vehicles with the Highland domestic animals--horses and oxen--panting in the heat; an occasional electro-automatic car.

  But there were not many evidences of modernity here. The street and house tube-lights. A few radio image-finders on the house-tops. An automatic escalator bringing ore from a nearby mine past the government checkers to an aero stage for northern transportation. Cultivated fields in the village outskirts operated with modern machinery.

  But beyond that, it seemed primitive. Two hundred years back. Street vendors. People in primitive, ragged, tropical garb. Half naked children. I was stared at curiously. An augmenting group of children followed me as I went down the street.

  The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern instruments before him.

  "Sit down, Grant."

  * * * * *

  He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President. White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration.

  "Damnable heat, Grant."

  "Yes, Sir President."

  "Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it." His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy, twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver production very closely. The government fee is a third."

  I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corporation.