Time Travel Omnibus, page 84
It seemed, to the new arrivals, at this first glance, a primitive world indeed into which they had fallen. The heat, the palms, the thatched bungalow, and their costumes—all might almost have existed in some out-of-the-way tropical land of their own time world.
During the meal Georgie was insistent with questions, but Loto smilingly refused to talk. Instead, he led his father into a brief description of their flight forward through time and south through space. When the meal was over Loto took them to the front veranda.
“I’ve a great deal to tell you,” he said, “and I know you’re as impatient to hear it as I am to have you. I’ve been here on the island five months—”
“We realize it,” Georgie murmured. “Didn’t I watch for that light through every day and night of ’em?”
Loto smiled. “I put the signal up last night because I felt that I needed you. Before we do anything I must tell you of our affairs here. You notice I say ‘our affairs.’ They are a part of me now. I don’t exactly know why, but the thing here grips me. I want to help these people—I feel already that I am one of them.”
It was no mystery to Georgie.
“Where’s Azeela?” he demanded with apparent irrelevancy.
“In Anglese City—the capital and largest center of population on the island. It’s north of here—on the channel. I’ve been living there. I came down here merely to meet you. The situation here is drastic, father. War has been impending, and now it will not be postponed much longer. This Toroh—as I told you, he is an Anglese renegade—is organizing the barbarians of the north—the Noths, as they are called. They are a people of low intelligence—brutes of men with black hair thick on their bodies.
“God knows how many of them there are—hordes scattered about the northern wastes of snow. Toroh has been gathering them. He has a base up north where he is manufacturing scientific weapons. There is class hatred here on the island, but thank Heaven, in the face of an outside invasion, the Anglese will stick together.”
“You’re preparing for war,” Georgie interposed. “You—”
“Yes, of course. The Anglese have had no warfare for several generations. They were totally unprepared. But now they are getting things in shape.”
Loto’s tone was optimistic, but the anxiety of his expression belied it. “I wanted you here, father—you and Georgie. Without Toroh, we would not fear the Noths. But Toroh is a scientist; and what weapons he will have been able to manufacture we do not know. We can only—”
The figure of a man came dashing up the garden path—a man in the familiar wide trousers, torn and dirty. His red-brown, naked torso gleamed with sweat; a white cloth was tied about his forehead to keep the damp hair from his eyes.
Loto leaped to his feet; and the man, gazing at the strangers with one swift, surprised glance, flung himself prostrate on the steps.
“What—” began Rogers.
“Wait! A messenger from Azeela. Something has gone wrong.”
Loto raised the man up, and listened to his flood of frightened words with obvious concern. A sharp question from Loto—a crisp order—and the messenger was dashing away as quickly as he had come.
Loto’s gaze followed him, came back to his companions on the porch. His whole aspect had changed. He stood erect, his slender, boyish figure drawn to its full height, his eyes flashing.
“Bad news, father. We must get up to Anglese City at once. Spies have appeared in Orleen—a city at the western end of the island—spies from Toroh, former Anglese, banished like himself. They are being put to death as fast as they can be caught. But meanwhile they are talking to the lower class—telling the people that Toroh is for them, and only against their government. There is class hatred here. The people are listening to the emissaries. We may be facing a revolution—an internal break, on the eve of fighting the Noths! We will lose if that happens—lose to Toroh inevitably!”
THEY were down on the beach in five minutes more. The plane stood there undisturbed. Half a dozen figures rose from the sand beside it and stood respectfully waiting for Loto to approach.
Rogers took his seat behind the Frazia controls. They were presently in the air, flying northward over the palm-covered island that lay calm, serene in its false sense of utter security and peacefulness.
Loto sat close to his father, with Georgie beside them.
“I must tell you briefly the conditions here,” Loto said. “Then you will be able to understand—be able to help with your advice and Judgment as well as actions.”
He spoke briskly, but carefully, and his manner had regained its poise. Georgie was gazing down through one of the side windows.
“That’s Azeela’s messenger,” Loto commented. “Going back to Anglese City.”
They were flying hardly five hundred feet above the palms. A white road lay beneath them. Along it a huge, shaggy dog was running, with the figure of a man on its back. The dog’s neck was stretched forward, its body low to the ground as it rain with almost incredible speed, the man lashing its flanks with a leather thong. The plane passed very slowly and drew away.
“We will not land in the heart of the city,” Loto added. “He’ll be with Azeela before we are.”
“Go on and tell us about things,” Georgie urged. “We’ve got the time now; maybe we won’t have it later.”
Loto nodded. “I will. We have here on the island—three social classes. How they developed throughout the centuries you will have to imagine for yourself. Ancient, almost prehistoric Egypt was no more than a quarter as far into the past of our time world as we are now ahead of it. Considered in that light, the changes have been rather less radical than you would anticipate.
“The lowest class—you would call them peons in our old Latin America—are now termed the Bas. They include more than nine-tenths of all the inhabitants of the island. They are most of them ignorant, uneducated; yet they include also many intelligent, almost learned individuals.
“It is the lowest class which is now plunged into almost intolerable conditions. They are the workers—red-brown skinned from the sun through generations. The higher class—the nobility—are the Arans. They are the governing class; they live for the most part in idleness and luxury—while the Bas are held down to almost universal poverty.
“You have not seen the Arans yet. We will shortly be in their chief city. You will find them white-skinned—their women especially, milk white, for they shield themselves carefully from the sun. They are cultured, yet without great learning.
Can you appreciate that condition? It is they who really show the decadence of this time world.”
“There is a third class,” Rogers prompted.
“Yes. The scientists—to me the most interesting of all. You will appreciate that in long past ages, science was supreme. In war It was everything. The Anglese came to this island—grew apathetic. But the scientists, in some measure, clung to their learning. Gradually, their attitude must have changed to secrecy. They became a sect, holding knowledge for its own sake, keeping it among themselves.
“The real power lay with them, and they knew it. But curiously enough, their science seemed all-sufficient. As a body, they never desired governing power—no individual rose among them with a yearning for conquest, except Toroh.
“Foreign wars came. The scientists offered their help—and when the wars were over, retired with their knowledge to themselves. The sect, as you will find it today, is on the down grade. It had dwindled to a thousand or two individuals—no more—who were scattered throughout the island. They call themselves the League—I should say, a word that means about that. They have their own officers—a council of a hundred in Anglese City, and a life-time president, Fahn, Azeela’s father.
“Thus, you understand, the League of Scientists really controls everything. But its members are content with the prestige their position gives them. The government itself has for centuries fostered this secrecy of all that pertains to science. In times of war, the Arans are helpless, and leave it all to the League. In times of peace they forget the possibility of war and go back to ruling the Bas in their own fashion.”
Loto glanced out one of the windows. “Look down there.”
The island was mountainous—a constant succession of green hills and valleys. A small lake came into view, with steam rising from it. Everywhere the scene was dotted with thatched huts—occasionally a more pretentious bungalow like the one in which the visitors had passed the previous night. As they flew low over the hills, they could see small brown and white patches of cultivated areas scattered everywhere.
“That is the way the Bas live,” Loto commented. “Sometimes they bring their produce to the cities and sell it for sums ridiculously small. If there is a food shortage, the Arans come out and take it—paying for it nominally.”
“But your factories—and your industries?”
“In the cities, father. Reduced to a minimum—for the use and welfare of the Arans and scientists almost exclusively. Skilled labor is performed by the higher types of the Bas. They are allowed to live in the cities—but are paid so little that they must live unpretentiously. Everything is done for the welfare of the Arans—and the League of Scientists.”
“And the government?”
“A monarchy. A king and his council of fifty—and his personal cabinet of five. A hereditary monarch, wholly inefficient, except in the matter of forcing his laws upon the Bas.”
“I should think that would be somewhat difficult,” Rogers commented.
“No, sir. There is a large police force—swaggering young men of the Arans. They serve for the joy of it—they’re most arrogant individuals who take pleasure in the enforcement of the personal power they hold. And they abuse it, of course. Their task is easy, for they have the scientists behind them. Any one of them killed, or even attacked by a Bas, would mean the death of that Bas and the death of all his family.
“I said the Bas were under conditions almost intolerable. And that’s exactly why these spies of Toroh’s are dangerous to us just now. The whole social condition here is wretched—yet I suppose, logical enough under the circumstances of environment and racial development. Fundamentally, the difficulty has been a limited land area. The race cannot expand, hence numerically It must be restrained.”
“How?” demanded Rogers.
“Well, you see, a Bas woman is allowed but two offspring.”
“But suppose she has three?” Georgie suggested.
“The mother and her child are banished from the island.” Loto’s voice rose to sudden vehemence. “Can you understand what that sometimes does? I have seen a mother with her newborn infant, two or three weeks old, pleading before the King’s Council. She would not murder it at birth, as the Bas women sometimes do; and I saw her plead for its right to live on the Island. And then, with her plea denied, she took it away into the frozen north. Her husband did not follow her. That is optional.
This woman stayed behind, keeping the other two children, and letting her take the infant alone. And she went, to save its life—her child, born without a birthright.”
There was a silence. Rogers was staring down at a hilltop, where, as the plane swept past, a woman with two naked children at her side stood In front of a small shack.
“And when you have seen the Arans, living their life of luxury and pleasure,” Loto went on, “you will wonder why the Bas have stood It so long. ‘After us—the deluge.’ That has always been the Aran reasoning.”
He pointed through the forward window. “Look, father, there’s Anglese City.” The plane was climbing to pass over a jagged, volcanic-looking peak. Behind It, nestled In a hollow, with a curving stretch of white sand and the blue waters of the channel beyond, lay the capital city of the Arans—reckless, pleasure-loving, secure in its beauty and supremacy, yet trembling from so many causes upon the brink of disaster.
CHAPTER V
BLOOD OF THE MOON
ON THE gently undulating floor of a valley, surrounded by three mountains and with the sea rolling up on its beach to the north, lay the Aran City. From an altitude of some three thousand feet, the travelers gazed down upon a scene of extraordinary color and beauty. Low buildings of pure white—buildings with many balconies and patios with tiny fountains; gardens of vivid flowers; white pergolas trellised with scarlet blossoms; sunken pools of limpid water, with huge date-palms curving over them. A grove of royal palms close to the beach, with a huge, rectangular bathing pool and a white pavilion beside it. A white palace on a rise of ground. A balconied tower rising five hundred feet beside it, on the top of which was a tiny flower garden. And everywhere the romantic green foliage of the tropics, the blue-red sky, soft red-white cloud’s, and the azure channel.
“Where do we land?” Georgie asked eagerly.
“To the west a little, father,” Loto directed. “See the cavern entrance?”
He pointed for Georgie, explaining, “We will not land directly in the city. I want the plane permanently guarded now. We will leave it with my plane—in the Cavern of Thunderbolts.”
“The what?” Georgie demanded.
“That’s what the Bas picturesquely call it. You see the cavern mouth?”
Across the city a yawning black hole gaped in the mountainside near its base—an opening of irregularly circular shape some two hundred feet in diameter. A gentle slope led up to it from the city. It seemed the gigantic mouth of a cave within the mountain.
“We can fly directly in,” Loto added. “It is the entrance to the subterranean chambers where the scientists work—and where they store their apparatus under guard. It is a museum also, where relics of the past are gathered.”
Georgie relapsed into an awed silence, staring down at the city. In the city streets now, and on the housetops, figures were standing, gazing up at the plane curiously.
The mouth of the cavern grew steadily larger as the plane swooped down upon it. The yawning hole seemed to have a level floor extending horizontally back into the mountain. Far back in the darkness little blue lights twinkled.
“You’d better take the controls, Loto,” Rogers said anxiously. “I don’t like the idea of flying into that—at some fifty miles an hour.”
Loto slipped quietly into the seat and relieved him. The Frazia motors stopped abruptly. Silently, with only the sound of the air rushing past, the plane glided swiftly downward.
About the cavern mouth was a small platform with a roof over it, built on an overhanging ledge of rock. The figures of three men seated there were visible. Abruptly one of the figures rose, and from its upflung hand a tiny flash of blue-white light shot into the clouds overhead. Even In the daylight it was plainly visible.
“Lightning!” exclaimed Georgie, and as though to confirm him, a little miniature crack of thunder sounded an instant later.
“They know I’m coming,” Loto said. “They’re expecting us.”
It was a queer sensation, darting into that blackness. The cave mouth seemed to open and swallow them.
The plane slackened its speed and came to a stop.
They were soon on the clay ground. The hum of dynamos sounded from far away in the mountain’s depths. The roof high overhead was dimly visible. Ledges on the side walls held back holes behind them. Great shadows, flickering blue-white lights, were everywhere. Near at hand was a space more brightly lighted—where the cave broadened—and narrowed again beyond, with a dozen branching passages. An incline fifty feet broad sloped down into blackness, with a faint pencil-point of blue light shining far down within its recesses.
“Why, the whole mountain is honeycombed!” Rogers exclaimed.
Figures were approaching, robed in black rubber garments, gloved and hooded. Loto turned to greet them, and they drew back their hoods, disclosing the heads and faces of men. There was a brief conversation, then Loto turned back to his companions.
“Fahn is at home in the city,” he said swiftly. “Well go.”
“Is your plane in here, Loto?” Rogers asked.
“No, sir. I left it at Orleen. There is a cavern there similar to this—but smaller. It’s there—in the other cavern.”
THEY passed out of the cave and on to the road of white sand and clay that led down the mountain slope. Palms lined it thickly. Further down, at the bottom of the quarter-mile descent, houses began—the outskirts of the city. The road soon took on the aspect of a street. It was broad, with narrow pedestrian paths on both sides. Flower gardens, often with hedges of thick, bayonet-like plants, lined the paths. The houses were for the most part almost obscured by palms and trellised vines that were loaded with scarlet blossoms.
It was obviously a residential section. As the party advanced, passers-by grew more numerous. The Bas men were distinguishable by their clipped, bullet-like heads, covered with broad, circular-brimmed hats of straw, their sun-tanned bodies naked above the waist, bare feet, and the wide trousers; and the Bas women, red-brown of skin as well, clothed usually merely with a loin cloth and a white sash bound over the upper torso, their hair twisted in plaits hanging down the back.
The Bas walked always in the road itself. On the pedestrian paths occasional Arans passed—men with hair long to the base of the neck, and dressed somewhat as Loto had garbed his father and friends. Most of them saluted Loto—a queer, flowing gesture of the left hand—and all of them stared with frank curiosity at the strangers. Occasionally an Aran woman came along—white swathed, mysterious figures—a twinkle of tiny, black-slippered feet—a flash from alluring eyes veiled by lashes heavily darkened.
An Aran man riding a dog went slowly by down a cross street. A dog, pulling a small three-wheeled cart piled high with merchandise, passed in the opposite direction.
Georgie edged toward Loto. “Those dogs,” he whispered. “They’re friendly? Not vicious?”
“Of course not,” Loto laughed. “Just like regular dogs. Except—well, I’ll tell you later.”
