Perilous Planets Part 23

She was rolling along the inner edge of the terrace, where a wall twice a man's height rose to the steep rubble at the crest of the gorge. Korul drew down until only his head cleared the terrace. Whatever she was seeking, she was too deeply en-grossed to see him there. The car rolled by, close against the wall, and he crept out of the ramp and followed in the darkness. Suddenly the tlornak darted ahead.

The line of the wall was broken there, where a ramp or steps led up into the desert.

As the machine stopped, Thorana sprang out and vanished in the opening.

By the G.o.ds, she had legs!

It was incredible. For centuries - for thousands of years -no Master had been able to walk. Long before their blood thinned, their legs had shriveled until they must roll on their soft-tired tlornacks, padded with pillows and swathed in draperies to protect their puny bodies from discomfort. And now - a woman of the Masters with legs? By the G.o.ds, it could not be!

A flight of steep steps led to the top of the wall, then there was only the rubble of the gorge's edge. Far above him Korul heard the trickle of loosened pebbles as the woman climbed into the darkness. Throwing aside the embroidered robe of office which he had worn. Korul followed her.

The mists of the city had not yet risen with the coming of spring and the melting of the polar ice, to boil out of the gorge and moisten the upper slopes. Then, Korul knew, the red rock would grow soft and green with freshening vegetation. Now there was only a sere, crackling mat of brittle vines and fallen leaves underfoot, which caught at his plodding feet and flung him headlong among the boulders. He lay where he had fallen, cursing the whim that had brought him after the woman - then far above him sounded the broken clatter of her climbing feet. No woman - especially no woman of the Masters - would put Korul to shame!

Up and up they clambered - it seemed endlessly. The soft moccasins he wore were shredded and his feet bruised and bleeding. Suddenly he realized that the sound of her stumbling flight had ceased. He stopped, panting, to listen. There was no sound but the thud of his own heart, beating in his ears, and far away a soft, sibilant slithering. Where had she gone? What brought her here?

It was sand that he had heard. Pouring over the crest of the gorge, it had spilled down in a vast silken cascade over the up-permost ledges, over vines and stunted shrubs. In places it was hard-packed and rippled by the wind, as the dust on the ter-race had been; in others he floundered and sank to his knees as the s.h.i.+fting grains slid away under his feet with that endless, secret whispering of grain on grain.

Thorana's footprints led still upward into the night, and Korul followed doggedly, slipping, falling, creeping on ,all fours. From the marks in the sand he knew that she, too, was having to struggle to keep her feet. Then, suddenly, the night opened out before him, and he knew that he had reached the top.

Beyond, beneath, stretching away into the night in great rolling waves of trackless sand, lay the red desert of Mur. Out of that desert his people had come, eons ago, to find shelter in the gorges which reached in a broad, dark band across the sandy waste for mile after desolate mile. Into that desert Thorana had gone, somewhere, for some purpose.

A faint breath of air touched his cheek, icy cold, scented with a raw taint that he had never known. The chill of the night began to bite into his naked body, but under the surface the sand still held the warmth of day. Korul crouched down, hugging his arms about him, and burrowed into it. He tipped his head back and let his gaze drive out and out...

He saw the stars.

The Desert Once the people of Mur had lived by the stars. They were the guiding beacons which brought them safely over the desert wastes of their dying world, from oasis to oasis, to sheltered valleys in the parched red hills where some seepage kept a few miles of greenery alive. Their G.o.ds lived there, behind the vel-vet curtains of Nur- Atlaka, Land of Souls. Their names and stories had come down from mouth to mouth - Atta, the Seeker - the twins, Nurdok and Maltura - the Three Wander-ers, Mulat, Mutaka, Maldruk.

At times they looked down into the depths of the city, to the Pit and the men and women who were penned there, peering through the mists of the upper gorge. From the Searchers, Korul knew that what he had seen there were planets, prison-ers of Mur's own sun, and a handful of scattered suns like it. But nothing they had said had prepared him for the living reality of the desert night.

In hundreds and thousands they were strewn over the mighty vault of black - burning - living - diamonds, rubies, saphires blazing against the sombre tresses of the infinite night. They were tiny watching eyes, the eyes of the G.o.ds of Mur themselves staring down through the half-drawn curtains of the Land of Souls.

In the east the sky was paling, the stars were disappearing until only the great golden eye of Tarkak, giant of the G.o.d-worlds, burned there. Korul rose to his feet and with quickening step went out to meet the dawn.

On he strode, and on, over the slow, soothingly monotonous rise and fall of the sand-waves, while in the heavens before him a cone of s.h.i.+mmering white rose slowly toward the zenith and the red world took form before his unseeing eyes. Then from behind the shoulder of the world was hurled the sun!

The desert reeled with color at its coming - raw and new and burning. The sky was a burnished bowl. Only the endless flaming sands ran out in limitless desolation under the cruel scourge of the climbing sun.

The wind ran before it, dry and hot, licking at his tender skin. Leaping, wavering phantoms of brilliance danced among the dunes, prying at his narrowed eyelids, mocking him. The magic of the night was gone out of the desert; only the fiery fury of the Pit itself remained, scourging his dark-loving body, lapping at the portals of his mind. Alone and lost among the scarlet dunes, Korul tottered and fell to his knees, flung back his head and screamed his rage and defiance at the savage sun.

And out of that inferno came an answering cry - a woman's cry.

All thought of Thorana had slipped out of Korul's mind un-der the glory of the night, and in the growing torture of the desert morning. He crouched now, blind eyes buried in his, bent arm, gathering his senses. If he had been trapped thus by the stars and the leering sun, what must she - weak - a woman - what must she be suffering out there in the burning sea?

He shouted again, and heard her answering wimper, far to his left where a comber of frozen fire swelled against the sky. From its crest he saw her, small, pitifully slender, swathed in her crimson silk, a red dot amid redness. Drifting before the wind, the soft sand was filling the folds of her gown, piling against her body, spilling over her outstretched legs, burying her alive.

With a last cry of encouragement Korul raced down the long slope of the dune to where she lay. Brus.h.i.+ng the sand gently away, he raised her in his arms and peered into her face. It was thin and white - her lips were blue. Her blood was failing!

Korul had been bled two days before. By the Masters' own law he need not serve again for nearly fifty days. But without his blood this girl would die. Somehow, Master or no, he could not let her go.

Gently he searched for her valve. In the Blood-Givers it was in the throat, tapping the great vein, but the Masters placed theirs wherever their whim dictated. He found it beneath her heart, opening directly into the main artery - a perilous place, but one that many women chose. His back to the sun, shading her, Korul opened his pouch and drew out the little pump and tubes. Sterlizing them, he made the connection, opened the valves and started the pump. With each throb of his heart he felt the life gus.h.i.+ng out of his body into hers, and in the pause drawn back by the pump. His blood into hers, and the mixture drawn back into his veins, carrying the body poisons that were draining off her life. He felt a giddiness creeping over him, and went down on all fours, his body arched over hers, braced by his two arms.

Then her eyelids fluttered; her great green eyes, cool as the polar ice, opened and looked up into his face. A pointed red tongue licked nervously at her lips.

'Where am I?' she whispered weakly. 'When is it? Who are you?'

Korul found his voice grown husky. 'Spring Night is past,' he rea.s.sured her. 'You came into the desert, and I followed. The sun overcame you, and you needed blood, so I gave it.' His face hardened. 'Is not that my duty to the daughter of the First Master?'

She seemed not to have heard. 'It was my day yesterday,' she murmured, 'but I need less than the others, and I thought to wait.' The green eyes searched his features. 'You are Korul. You gave blood only two days ago - to Lula!'

'When I give blood and to whom is my own affair!' he snapped. 'I gave it to you because I am strong, and because you needed it. I will give it again when I arn ordered to.'

A shadow slipped over her face, and she turned it aside. 'I am not interested in your relations with Lula,' she said petu-lantly. 'She seemed to admire that strength of yours. She appreciates such things more than I. If you will disconnect us, I will go now.'

Korul stopped the pump and slipped off the connecting tubes. A little blood dripped out on the sand, making a tiny mirror of red that quickly blackened to a hard crust.

She stared at it, suddenly pale, then up at the giant dunes that hemmed them in on every side.

'Where is this?' she cried. 'Where is the city?'

'Where indeed?' Korul's voice was dry and bitter. 'This is the desert you found so enchanting by starlight. It has a differ-ent kind of beauty now, don't you think? We are lost, Thorana.'

'Lost? How can I be? Last night I walked straight away from the gorge, over the sands. I can go back as I came.'

His arm swept around the circle of unbroken sand. 'How did you come, Thorana?

The stars circled and the sun came up. The wind has filled our tracks, and it will bury us when the time comes. Master and Blood-Giver - we'll die the same death.'

She stared at him, her green eyes wide, then broke into sudden mocking laughter.

'How do the Blood-Givers choose their First?' she de-manded. 'For brute strength, isn't it? You are very strong, Korul, but you could use sharper wits. It is the sun that will kill you - then let the sun lead you home! Or stay here, if you like, and I will send men to fetch your body when you are dead.'

With a swirl of her crimson robe she spun and stalked off up the side of the dune.

Bewildered, Korul stared after her. Little fool! Let her die, if that was what she wanted; he had done his duty. Suddenly his eyes caught the black splotch of his shadow. It sprawled straight away, in the direction the girl had gone. Of course! The sun had risen in their faces - by keeping it at their backs, it would guide them back to the city.

Thorana was out of sight when Korul reached the top of the dune. Her footprints stretched away from him across the sands, straight away from the sun, each one a little black puddle of shadow against the crimson. The wind was filling them.

They had come a long way through the darkness, under the stars, and his shadow shortened. Korul trudged on through the s.h.i.+mmering scarlet sea, eyes closed to slits to shut out the glare. The girl was nowhere in sight, and a long time had pa.s.sed since he had seen her tracks.

Hour followed hour. The red haze enveloped him now, he was floating in it, preceded by a dancing, wavering wraith of black that for some reason he must catch. However fast he stumbled after it, it evaded him.

Black beast, swimming in a red sea. The thought was funny! There had been no seas on Mur since the race was young. He began to laugh. That scared the black thing, and it scurried away, but he kept after it, almost on its tail, close enough to seize it if it were not so slippery. After a while it disappeared. Had it run away? He looked down, and it was hiding behind his feet. He kicked at it - almost fell - he ran shouting over the long dunes of fire, the blood singing in his ears, his head full of swirling, bursting lights. He slipped over the crest of a sand-cliff and rolled in a rosy avalanche into the very middle of a streak of snowy white that licked out at its base.

He lay there for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, and swayed to his feet, the shadow-beast was crouching behind him. He turned and began to stalk it, swiftly and silently. It crept away, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to hide. This time he had it! And suddenly it seemed to rear up before him and he dove and caught it in his hands.

It was the girl, Thorana, senseless and half buried in the drifting sand. Korul lay sprawled over her limp body. The red fog was clearing from his brain. That black thing - his shadow - it had crept between his legs, then behind him. But it was the sun that had moved! It was past midday, and the sun was in the west. For the G.o.ds alone knew how long he had been traveling away from the gorge and the city!

He gave her blood again. When she could walk they headed into the sun, clinging together, heads down, blinded by its white fire. Time seemed to be slowing; the beat of their hearts seemed heavier, wearier, pleading with them for rest, but they went on.

Korul could give no more blood. When Thorana collapsed again, he picked her up and wound her filmy scarf around his head. It shut out some of the sun, so that he could go on again.

Twice he found himself following the shadow, away from the city, into the desert.

He began to chant, to keep his tired mind clear. 'Into the sun! Into the sun! Into the sun!' He swung Thorna's slim body back and forth in a long, slow arc to the beat of the chant and the tread of his weary legs.

The scarlet scarf whipped loose in the singing wind. It fluttered away over the sand.

He dropped the girl and ran after it. He caught it, and started on again. After a while he remembered Thorana. He started back, following his shadow again - or was it the sun he must follow? He found her, picked her up, began his chant again.

His eyes were closed now, caked and blackened by the sun. His throat was swollen with the dust; his lips were cracked and bleeding. Mad visions danced against the back of his eyes, in and out of his brain. But he held her tight against him and stumbled on over the sand - on and on and on...

The Elders They came to the city again. For hours the search had been on, Masters and Blood- Givers ferreting through every level of the city, into every room. No one could have imagined that they would have ventured into the desert. Then, blind, blackened, bleeding Korul came plodding into the great hall with the girl cradled in his arms.

The Masters took her from him; his own people led him away, down into their own levels where he could be given care.

He was strong, but the Masters were duly grateful. He had given blood to Thorana twice in the desert. He was excused from two givings.

As soon as he could stand, a messenger came to him from the Elders. Behind the facade of the Masters' law - behind the pattern of tradition which made Korul First of their race until some other man should drink his blood in fair combat - it was the Elders who ruled. The Masters knew nothing of them, but in every city two were chosen by the Givers - man and woman. Where they met and worked, deep in the secret vaults under the cities, was known only to a chosen few.

Korul came into the great hall, made in mocking imitation of that Hall of the Masters where the council of the ruling caste held its own deliberations, where the First Master sat in state and the orgy of Spring Nights took place. They lay on for-bidden tlornaks, dressed in robes which mocked the Masters' finery, arrayed in circles around the central dais where their own chief sat.

There were cus.h.i.+ons on the dais for Korul. As First of the Blood-Givers it was his right to sit there beside old Turun, First of their council and true First Man of Mur.

Pages brought fine food, stolen from the Masters' own kitchens, and flagons of tulla.

Nothing would be done until the ritual of food and drink was finished. The buzz of murmured conversation rose all about him.

Old Turun set down his cup. It was a signal; all through the Hall of the Givers the mutter of talk was quieted.

'Elders of Mur,' he said, 'here at my side sits Korul, son of Thandar, First Man as his father was before him. We have brought him here into our council because there are certain things that we have agreed must be said, through him, to the Blood- givers of Mur.'

He laid a bony hand on the young leader's shoulder. 'Have you asked yourself why you are First of the Blood-Givers - why your father was - why some day some other young man of your people will challenge you, and drink your blood, and take your place here? We are an old people. We have built great cities. We carry water from the poles across half the world, and more. We draw heat out of the bowels of our planet, and make it warm our beds and turn the wheels of our machines. Then why - why - must our young men fight among themselves like the very beasts in their cages, why must they lap at each others' spilled blood like beasts?' The old voice took a mocking note. 'Because it is the law, you'll say. The Masters' law - not ours.

They make beasts of us!'

His arm swept the circuit of the hall. 'We come from a dozen cities now, where once there were thousands. You know what is happening in those cities. By the law - the old law - the law of the Masters - a man of our people is bled every fiftieth day, and a woman every seventieth. Long ago the Searchers found that would keep the Masters alive, and would not kill us - so it became the law of Mur. The law says that except on two nights, when the waters of the poles are freed, no Blood-Giver may mate with a Master. That was our law - made to keep our race from weakening.

'But by the G.o.ds, Korul, the laws are not obeyed: Our women give their bodies and their blood to the Masters for food and comfort and pleasure which they cannot find in our life. Our children are born with blood like water and spindling, puny legs which will not hold their weight. Even our men give again and again, l.u.s.ting after their painted women with their soft, perfumed fles.h.!.+

'Once there was force behind the laws the Masters made. Once they had power - weapons - knowledge with which to enforce their rule. But you know - we all know - that power is long gone. We are bound by habit, by tradition - by sand. And the time has come to sweep that sand away.'

A shout went up from every mouth in the great hall. There was hysteria in it, and an ugly note of hunger. Offer food to the starving and they will eat sand, Korul thought wryly. But Turun's gaunt arms, upraised above his head, quieted them.

'There is one other thing, Korul. Tell him, Karak - tell us all.'

Karak! The skin along Korul's nape tightened. The man was Elder in this city - his own. He stood half a head taller than Korul; his shoulders were nearly as broad. By sheer brute force he had driven himself into the Council of the Elders, and Korul knew that a time would come soon when he would try to drink the blood of the First Man.

Karak was on his feet, swaggering to the dais. There was a mutter of antic.i.p.ation as he turned and looked slowly around over the faces of the Elders, then down at Korul who sat stiffly among his cus.h.i.+ons.

'I am a big man,' he said boastfully. 'The women of the Masters like big men. They like to caress muscles like mine. They like me to tell them foolish things. And they tell me their secrets in return.

'Listen to this, Elders of Mur! There is a woman who has taken my blood many times. She is of a high family. Her mate is second to none but their First Man. What she has told me is true.

'They have their own Searchers for Truth - or for the kind of truth they want to find. Their Searchers have told them that a man can give blood every tenth day and still live - that a woman of our kind can be bled every twentieth day, and still work well. They have told them another thing - that their race is growing stronger and more numerous, while ours weakens and grows fewer.

'There will be a new law for the Blood-Givers of Mur to obey. There is a new law.

Men will be bled each twentieth day - women each thirtieth. Twice as often as of old they will glut on our blood - and the poison in their veins will flow into ours and make our blood water. Their accursed seed will foul our race. And as we die - as they grow strong - the period will be shortened again, and again, and again!

'Get on your feet, Korul! Give us the word! Death to the Masters! Death /'

Their roar echoed from the vaulted roof as Korul rose. He stepped down from the platform and stood among them, Karak and old Turun looking down at him. He waited until the clamor subsided.

'The plan is ready,' he told them. 'We will use it. In every public place of Mur there are secret screens and speakers. In the walls of every city there are panels and lifts that lead to the quarters of the Masters. There are hidden cities beneath the cities, hewn out of the solid rock of Mur, where a race can live for an eternity.

'I will name a day, and the Blood-Givers of Mur will gather. I will speak the word, and they will hear me. We will seize the Masters and seal them in the hidden cells we have made for them. We will make the laws of Mur, and they will bow to them. Our Searchers will tell them what blood they can have - and they will get no more. Our Searchers will breed strength back into their flabby bodies - breed life into their blood again - and the time will come when Mur is ruled again by one race, one blood!'

Utter stillness answered him; then one mighty roar of rage and protest rose from every throat. Behind him old Turun was screeching at him, words he could not understand. Karak's bull-bellow roared out above the melee.

'Men and women of Mur,' he shouted, 'are we bloodless cowards to listen to such talk? So we will keep the Masters as our pets for a thousand years or two - or ten?

So we will bleed for them whenever they whine prettily, and feed them well, and keep them strong and happy while we work and die? So we will let our Searchers make Masters of them again, strong and crafty as they once were, so that they can grind us back into the Pit? By the G.o.ds, we will not!

'We have had our fill of parasites. We have had enough of their luxuries. We have heard the last of this blasphemous myth of brotherhood and one-bloodedness that old women and skulluts teach! The Masters will die - to the last - and if there are so- called leaders among us who prefer to let their blood be licked up, by the G.o.ds there will be blood-letting among them and we will have men to lead us!'

Korul felt the blood draining out of his face. He knew that his ears had gone white with rage. With one hand he seized Karak by the shoulder and spun him in his tracks. He felt the giant wince in his grip.

'Who is First Man here?' he cried. 'Who fought Narkul barehanded and tasted his blood? By the G.o.ds, Karak, what I do I do - and if you thirst for the honor, come and earn it. I offer it!'

Giant that he was, Karak had never willingly fought any man unless he was cornered. Redfaced, he pulled himself away from Korul's grip.

'Your Karak seems modest,' Korul sneered. 'He does not want high rank. He wants only to serve his people. Hear this, Elders of Mur - I am First Man, and what I plan the Blood-Givers of Mur will do. Who questions it?'

They were quiet now, Karak, all of them. There was fear in their faces. Then, at his back, the tired old voice of Turu spoke: 'I question you, Korul, son of Thandar. I am First of these Elders as you are of the people. We are the people, Korul. The rest - they are mattaks, rus.h.i.+ng after the first bl.u.s.tering bully to catch their fancy! They will fawn on Karak as well as you - and you know it. And if Karak is afraid to let your blood, then the Elders will do it for him and lead the people of Mur to mastery over your stripped bones!

'We want men over us, who will wipe the scourge of blood-giving off this world for all time. By the G.o.ds, if Thandar lived he would do it!'

Enheartened, Karak sprang to the dais again. His eyes were small with hate, and red as coals.

'I have given you one piece of news from the Masters' coun-cils,' he cried. 'I can give you another. Who in all Mur does not know the story of what happened in the desert on Spring Night? Who does not know how our leader, Korul met the painted witch Thorana under the stars and let her suck his blood - not once, but twice? A man will do foolish things on Spring Night, you tell me; let it be. But do you know.

Elders of Mur, that by special decree of the First Master this Korul will give blood to no one but Thorana from this day on?'

With one blow Korul sent the mocking giant sprawling on the floor. 'Listen!' he cried. 'I cozen no women! I lap no Master's feet! They will die - but they will die when I give the word! Go to your cities - rally them - and when the time comes you will hear my word and blood-giving will end on Mur!'

He strode out of the hall. They parted to let him through as the curtains fell behind him, he heard the buzz and gabble rise again, with Karak's bellow above it all.

There was a man to be watched - a man, it might be, to be feared.