Collected Short Fiction, page 365
Boyd had hoped to learn her language. His first serious attempt, however, to imitate her pealing golden word-sounds failed disastrously.
It was after he was almost completely recovered. He was sitting on the low, crumbling stone wall about one of the ancient gardens, which he had just dug up with an old bronze hoe.
HIS companion’s golden body was poised, as usual, on one small foot before him. His attempt to imitate her voice seemed to agitate her queerly. She trembled. Her breath made a piping whistle. Suddenly Boyd realized that she was laughing at him.
But she understood his effort. Boyd, to his surprise, discovered that she had already picked up, apparently from the casual comments that he had never expected her to understand, a number of English words.
For she pointed a tiny golden finger at him, while from the red circle of her pursed lips came a pealing:
“Ae! Ae!”
After a puzzled instant, Boyd touched himself excitedly.
“I,” he repeated. “I!”
“Ae!” She spun about the garden in a little skipping dance. Then she pressed the little hand against her gleaming golden breasts. Her bell-tones throbbed something that sounded like “Boo’fool!”
“Beautiful!” Boyd exclaimed. That was what he had so often called her. She skipped delightedly toward him. He caught her in his arms, kissed her. “My wonderful darling, you truly are!”
“Dar’in’ !” she throbbed, and touched the soft sleek velvet of her body again. “Boo’fool! Dar’in’ ! Shadrona!”
“Shadrona!” Boyd repeated softly. “That’s your name!” She danced about him in delight, as light and swift as some wraight of colored light. “Mine’s Carter Boyd.”
Her tiny finger touched him, and she cooed:
“Ae r Car’er Boy’ !”
Each aquiver with eagerness to know about the other, they carried on the lessons. Shadrona had some difficulty with English consonants, but soon she could render them with a surprising accuracy. She learned swiftly and forgot nothing.
It was easy for Boyd to teach her the names of most objects within reach or sight, a good many verbs of action, a few simple adjectives. But it proved appallingly difficult to communicate the question whose answer he wanted so desperately:
“Where did you come from?”
When at last she understood, the great eyes of Shadrona darkened again with sorrow. Hopping to Boyd’s side, she clutched his fingers with a tight, trembling little golden hand. She clung to him, shaken with a wind of nameless terror.
“Where, Shadrona?” he repeated.
Detaching her hand for a moment, she pointed at a thin feather of cloud drifting high above the black cliffs.
“Shar!” sobbed her golden voice. “You—from Shar!”
Still she had not grasped the complexities of pronouns. Ae was a name for Boyd, You a name for herself.
“You, Shadrona of Shar.” Her slanted eyes were bright with tears. Her head bowed. Meaninglessly, her low voice moaned, “Shar no Shar. Shar no Shar.”
Holding her fast in his arms, Boyd kissed her.
“You don’t mean, darling, that you came from a cloud?” His head shook wearily. “What are you afraid of? If I only knew—”
He smoothed the sand at his feet, sketched the outline of airplane. So that there could be no mistake, he even added the insigne of winged rock and crown that he had seen on the gray attacker’s fuselage. That meant something to her. Trembling, she sobbed tragically:
“Shar is Shar!”
Suddenly, then, she burst into a fit of wailing. Her cries were thin, prolonged, utterly heartbroken. Boyd was shaken. The tears of any woman were torture to him, Shadrona’s sheer agony.
He picked her quivering golden body up in his arms. Her bright wings dragged, hopelessly. He rocked her, like a child. At last, to his infinite relief, she ceased her cries. Silently, she lifted her tear-streaked golden face, for him to kiss.
Thereafter, Boyd was careful to avoid any too-sensitive spot on her past. He only hoped that their refuge might remain undiscovered.
At first, he had made plans for an attempt to take Shadrona out to civilization. But he began to fear that the inevitable notoriety would make her more unhappy than ever. She was clearly unwilling to leave their valley. And Boyd himself became more and more content with the life they led.
There was more wonder in her small golden body than he had found in all the world. More surprise in the continual revelations of her mind, her love, than in all the cities of men.
“Shadrona,” he whispered one bright morning, when he sat on the crumbling garden wall, with her soft-lined wing across his shoulder, and the velvet warmth of her body in his arms, “if we live our lives out here, we’ll still die the happiest beings on this planet!”
“So!” she cooed, that being her word of assent. “So—”
Then she stiffened and shuddered against him. Turning pale, her lips parted to a low, moaning sound. Her golden hand pointed. And Boyd saw the big gray plane, black muzzles of machine guns jutting evilly from its fighting turret. Silent, with all its motors cut, it was gliding down to the field below the pool.
Boyd knew that their sojourn in the desert Eden was ended.
CHAPTER VIII
SPIES MUST DIE!
THE two bombers dropped to the secret base, and taxied back into the line. Jimmy Hall’s anger was turning more and more to apprehension, but his horror at the fate of the unwarned village remained.
That helpless Chinese village, shattered by the uncanny purplish blast of the G-bomb, seemed to suggest what might lie in store for all the world.
“There was no danger, sir,” the young officer who had been his co-pilot ventured, uneasily. “We’ve tried the G-bombs before. It is always blamed on the Japanese.”
A curt word silenced him. Hall clambered out. He saw dark, bull-like Krošeć striding toward him, and waited.
“Veil, verdammt Sckweinhund!” snarled the man. His hairy face showed a sudden gloating grin. “Mutiny! J a, I think this will be the finish of you!”
Hall’s blue eyes were frosty.
“We’ll see.”
Some word must have been radioed ahead. For in a moment the armored limousine drew up beside them. Renvic sprang out, followed by several officers in gray. His thin autocratic face was white, the green eyes blazing with anger.
“Lieutenant ’All!” he rapped metallicly, “I hear zat you refuse to obey my orders.”
Hall stared back at him.
“If you’ll read my contract,” he said flatly, “you won’t find anything that requires me to bomb defenseless villages.”
Renvic’s thin hands made a savage gesture, as if they tore up the document.
“Contract?” he rasped. “Bah!”
Hall caught his breath.
“If that’s your attitude, Renvic—I quit. I won’t murder helpless women and children. What’s more, I won’t train other men to murder them. Consider this notice of my resignation.”
Renvic trembled.
“You’ve come too far to quit.” The green eyes narrowed. “Lieutenant ’All, I am placing you under military arrest. I will give you twenty-four hours to reconsider.”
“I don’t need them,” rapped Hall. “I’m no murderer today, and I’ll not be one tomorrow.”
He kept his voice steady and his tanned face grimly set. Inside, however, a cold sickness filled him. He had already learned far too much to be allowed to leave here—alive.
But Renvic seemed to make an effort to control his wrath.
“See here, lieutenant.” His pale face assumed an icy smile. “I need such men as you. Follow me, and I can promise you such a career as you never dreamed of.”
Hall watched him, grim-faced.
“You have seen a G-bomb,” rapped Renvic. “You must realize that one plane, carrying eighty of them, could crush New York, say, to a pancake of bloody brick and metal. You must realize that these sixty planes could conquer the world—or destroy it.”
“If—” whipped back the frosty voice of Hall, “you can get the men to fly them.”
“I’ve got the men.” Renvic trembled. “And I’ll get them trained.” He seemed to choke, made another effort to wipe the anger off his face. “However, lieutenant, the G-bombs represent less than half the power I have gathered to conquer the world for the new Alexander.”
Jimmy Hall waited, trying hard to keep any show of eagerness from his stiff face.
Renvic’s black arm swept back toward the silver tower.
“There is a G-ray projector. At a hundred miles, even, it can crush down a hostile plane with double its weight. At ten miles it can crush a men into dough, and make the solid earth flow like water to close the trenches over them, and cause battleships to sink as if a giant hand thrust them down!”
The green eyes of Renvic were glaring at Hall, with a terrible fanatic light. His thin face was marble, with a mad elation.
“Now, lieutenant!” His voice was breathless, high. “What do you say? What do you say if I tell you that I have another stronghold—a secret fortress that no enemy can ever discover? What do you say if I tell you that the G-weapons are not all?”
HIS white face twisted into a demoniac mask.
“For there are other, greater secrets, lieutenant. One is a ray of freezing death, that could congeal a whole city. I withhold my power, until they also are mastered. Then truly the new Alexander will conquer!”
He swung closer to Hall.
“Now you must see what I can offer my loyal followers. I can give you a share in the dominion of the earth. I need you, lieutenant. Name your price, and you shall have it when the earth is under my heel—even if it is a whole nation.”
Hall shook his yellow head.
“No, Renvic,” he said flatly. A swift anger made him blurt, dangerously: “You don’t need me, Renvic. What you need Is a strait-jacket.”
Renvic flushed, and his hands made a furious clawing motion.
“All, you had better eat those words. Get down on your knees, and beg the forgiveness of Alexander. Or—die!”
Sick at heart, the American flier still managed to hold his head up defiantly. After all, nothing could now make things any blacker.
“Go ahead, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Do your dirtiest!”
Anger expanded Renvic.
“Seize this man,” he screamed. “Prepare for him to be shot at sunrise.”
Jimmy Hall swayed, as hard fingers gripped his arms. He had been a fool, not to pretend to yield. But something in him rebelled at any duplicity. His defiance had succeeded in getting a good deal of amazing information out of Renvic. But probably he would not live to use it.
His numbed mind searching the future, Jimmy Hall could see only death. And death not for himself only, but for civilization. Even if Renvic should fail in the end, his attack would surely ignite the powder keg of an armed and war-primed world.
His heart lifted a little, however, when the gray motorcycle came roaring down the road from the castle, and its reckless rider turned out to be Linda Gaylord. She wore a jaunty yellow sweater, that modeled her high proud breasts. Rest had restored all her red-haired beauty. Still he couldn’t believe her a complete accomplice of Renvic’s. But she greeted the pale man with a dazzling smile.
“Alec!” she shouted. “Your fugitive is found! One of the Mongol spies has just ridden in to claim the reward.”
Hall was forgotten.
“Found?” echoed Renvic. “Where?”
“In some canyon off in the bad lands northwest. There is a spring and the ruins of an old monastery. The spy watched from the cliffs. He swears he saw her there. He says she’s with a white man.”
“I’m going after her,” barked Renvic. “Krošeć, get a plane ready.”
Meantime, the gray eyes of Linda Gaylord found Jimmy Hall, standing between his guards. Her lovely face looked puzzled, as:
“Jimmy,” she demanded quickly, “what’s the trouble?”
“Trouble enough,” Hall muttered. Then his voice went ragged with an urgency of pleading. “Linda, you got me into this. Won’t you—can’t you help me out?”
“I made some promises,” she agreed. “I’ll speak to Alexander.”
Beyond Hall’s hearing, she slipped a smooth arm through Renvic’s. He saw Renvic’s angry glance at him, saw the cruel set of the thin pale face. Then the girl flushed suddenly. And at last she came back to Hall, white and quivering with scornful anger.
“Well, Mr. Secret Agent,” her cold voice flayed him, “I’ve got to admit you were pretty good. You had me going.” He saw the tiny quiver of her lip. “Fortunately, Alexander was a little harder to deceive.”
Her trembling hand made him a little mocking gesture of farewell.
“An operative of your acuity will understand that there can be no appeal from the necessary rule that spies must die.”
Hall’s big body jerked forward, against the hands that held him.
“Linda!” he gasped hoarsely. “You can’t believe that!”
“I do.”
“Then,” his low voice croaked, “I know what you are. You are Renvic’s—”
She ran away from him. In an instant she was on the motorcycle, thundering ahead of a plume of yellow dust, back toward Renvic’s castle.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WHO CRAWLED
A SPY! Through the hot afternoon, as Jimmy Hall paced wearily back and forth behind the barred iron door of his cell in the sandstone guardhouse, that began to seem like a very good idea.
Obviously, Renvic had turned Linda against him by telling her that he was an agent employed by some outside power. Hall was shaken with a cold hatred of the girl—she was doubtless hoping to share Renvic’s world dominion.
But certainly the world had need of a good secret agent here, to stop Renvic or carry warning out. It was not a job that Jimmy Hall Was trained for. He could see no considerable hope of achieving either aim.
But he grimly resolved to try.
The chance of escape seemed small enough. Most of Renvic’s men must be adventurers in the worst sense, itching to share the loot of the world. Cupidity, as well as fear of Renvic, would hold them loyal. There was the G-ray projector, standing guard over the camp. There was the ray of cold. And the desert’s stark hostility would be another barrier.
Small hope enough—but it was all there was.
Hall peered out through the grille in the heavy steel door. A gray clad sentry carried a rifle back and forth outside. The tower that carried the silver egg of the G-ray projector stood a hundred yards away, on the plateau’s edge.
Clearly, he would have to wait for darkness.
The strange jewel, the little winged golden figure on its ruby chain, was the key he planned to use. He was glad there had been no time to bring about its return to Renvic.
Darkness fell at last. A motor generator began drumming somewhere. Lights flashed out, through the camp. Great floods burned down from the tower. Hall heard automobile engines, saw men moving about. He imagined that some unusual excitement filled the camp, wondered if it had anything to do with the mysterious fugitive after whom Renvic had gone.
No enlightenment came. At last, tired of waiting for quiet, Hall decided to make the attempt. At first the guard ignored his shouts. Hall was beginning to think the swarthy fellow knew no English. But at last he changed his beat, so that he walked nearer the door.
“I can make you a millionaire,” Hall’s cautious voice assured him. “You have heard of the jewels that come in the plane? Well, I have one of them. If you want it—unlock the door and give me five minutes.”
“Zat so, buddy?” Hall instantly guessed that his guard had once been employed at some cheap lunch counter in America. “Where ze jool?”
Stepping well back from the door, under the single unshaded electric, Hall let it dangle from his fingers. Blood-red rays lanced from the ruby chain, golden breasts gleamed, and the bright wings glittered enticingly.
The guard’s dark face was a grimace of triumph.
“Thanks, buddy,” he snarled. “Now jes’ geeve it over.”
“Open the door,” Hall said. “And give me five minutes. If you hold me up, I’ll tell your officers you have it.”
“Geeve it!” The guard leered at him. “Or I’ll shoot—and say you were attempting to escape.”
Hall’s plan of operations had included that. The heavy little figure swung on its chain, in his quick fingers, as the guard leveled his rifle. The two crashes were close together. Hall fell, with the fragments of the light globe. He groaned, attempted a death-rattle, and held his breath.
A long moment of agonized waiting—then he heard the lock.
He lay quite still, until shoe leather grated on the stone floor beside him, until the smoke from the gun barrel stung his nostrils. When the muzzle prodded his body, he seized it, twisted, struck.
With a muted cry, the guard went down.
Hall reversed the rifle, replaced the useful trinket in his pocket, and ran to the door. He had hoped to slip out quietly—hoped even for some miracle of good fortune that would set him aboard one of the big gray planes.
But evidently the gun-shot had caused alarm. A shouting officer came at a run from the line of tents, with half a dozen men in gray behind him.
This was no time for halfway measures. The rifle was a Mauser, with four shots left in the vertical box. From inside the doorway, Hall emptied it. The officer went down with a broken leg. Two men fell. The rest wavered. Hall dropped the gun, and sprinted for the plateau’s rim.
THE wounded officer screamed commands to his men. Lead ricocheted and shrieked about Hall. But aim, as he had just learned, was uncertain by artificial light. Twelve seconds from the guardhouse, he plunged down a ragged talus slope into darkness.
He had most greatly feared the great silver egg of the G-ray projector. But perhaps the operator of that was absent or napping. For the lofty case did not move.
Hall at first ran in great desperate strides down the black slope, trusting the mental map he had made of the canyon from the air, that day.
