The Man Who Loved Mars Anthology, page 31
They found Chastar by the trees.
He had seized upon one of the golden children. Sometimes they wandered idly into the gardens, for no particular reason. M’Cord had seen them dancing on the mossy turf, or splashing in the lake, or playing amidst the flowers. They paid scant attention to the six outsiders, did not answer their questions, and soon wandered off again into the dim, far places.
But this young girl had wandered in alone, and had chanced to be found by the drunken outlaw, who was inflamed and frenzied by the wine the lizard-folk brewed.
He had seized her and pulled her down and was struggling with her on the turf when Thaklar burst upon the scene, with M’Cord not far behind.
The girl was adolescent; perhaps she did not understand what Chastar was trying to do, but the violence and hunger of him frightened her, and she had cried out. Now he was fighting to master her, his hands moving over her tender young body, his mouth seeking hers fiercely. The bewildered innocent fought like a young tigress but she was only a child and Chastar was a fully grown man, and a powerful one.
Thaklar bore no weapons, of course; nor did M’Cord. And the outlaw wore his energy guns strapped to his thighs. But there was no need for them to attempt to subdue him with their bare hands.
For one of the guardians was … awake!
The girl struggled in Chastar’s arms and again she cried out—a single, piercing, bell-like note.
Behind them one of the trees… stirred.
Its roots pulled up out of the soil with a sucking sound. Its drooping, willow-like branches, which quivered to a wind that none of them could feel, now coiled and trembled with tension as the upper body of a cobra vibrates before it strikes.
M’Cord did not need Thaklar’s arm to restrain him from going forward. He stood as if rooted to the spot, and his blood turned to ice within his veins as he watched the incredible thing.
The tree had pulled itself up out of the soil by now. It sidled forward, hairy black roots wriggling beneath it like snakes. Drooping fronds bent forward extended toward the outlaw, who saw or knew nothing but the slim childlike body that lay helpless, panting in the circle of his arms.
Then the tree was upon him. Branches flashed like slithering tentacles to encircle his throat. His eyes bulged in an expression of shocked amazement that would have seemed comical at another time. His mouth opened to yell —to curse—but no sound came therefrom.
Branches lashed about him like the coils of an anaconda. They pulled him off the girl and dangled him in the air, inches above the mossy turf, kicking and struggling frantically.
The sobbing girl sprang to her feet and darted off with a single frightened backward glance.
“We must help him,” M’Cord growled between his teeth. Thaldar shook his head.
“We can do nothing to help him now,” he said heavily. “And if we try, the other Sleeping Ones will rouse themselves to deal with us in the same manner. They sleep but lightly, you see….”
He turned; Zerild was there watching, cramming her knuckles into her open mouth so that she would not scream. He put his arms about her shoulders and turned her about so that she could not see the end of it.
“Come,” he said. They went back into the garden while the tree crushed the life from Chastar the red wolf.
XXV. When the Valley Woke
No longer did the Valley seem fair and tranquil. There were forces within it, they now knew, that were vast and hidden and terrible. Forces that could transform an old, old man into a puling infant, or drive a girl over the brink of madness, or slay a man suddenly and horribly.
On the way back, Zerild fell to her knees and was sick— rackingly, horribly sick. It was as if she spewed up all the venom and rancor that had built up within her all these years of treachery and betrayal.
It left her pale and weak and shaken. But Thaklar tended her gently, as one might tend a child. He wiped the vomit from her face with a bit of cloth, hushed her tears, and when she was too weak to stand, he gathered her up in his strong arms and bore her thusly back to their camp, her head swaying with exhaustion, drooping wearily against his chest.
By the margin of the pond he put her down and gave her cool water to drink.
Then he squatted beside her on his heels, staring off into the gloom that hung over the garden.
The Ushongti were not to be seen. The lizard-folk were gone from the garden, to whatever place they nested. Nor were any more of the naked children of the woods to be found amidst the gardens.
Only the three of them were left.
“I should have seen it coming,” Thaklar muttered heavily. “The darkness. It is the Night-of-Gods, the khiah-i-huatha whispered of in the oldest myths. The Darkening-time. It comes over the Valley when the sleeping forces stir and wake to protect The Holy against those who would intrude upon and defile its tranquility.”
“Can we get out alive, do you think?” M’Cord asked hoarsely.
“If we leave now, perhaps. But we must be gone at once, and without delay.”
M’Cord started to move, then paused.
“What about Inga? And Nordgren. We can’t just leave them here!”
Thaklar was sweating; it glistened on his brow and on the bridge of his nose. He shook his head.
“Listen to me, ’Gort, my brother. This Valley is like a great machine, designed for a purpose. For many purposes. The gods are not here: they sleep in Yhoom—wherever and whatever Yhoom may be, which I know not. But it is not a machine of metal parts, such as those your people brought here. The Valley machine is composed of forces, forces vast and huge and powerful beyond our comprehension. Forces balanced against each other in tension, and bound together in rhythm and equipoise. We have disturbed that delicate balance by merely coming here; we disturb it, even now, simply by being here. Like a great machine, the Valley has resources built into its very nature for cleansing itself of impurities. Of grit, you could say. Once those forces have been stirred to wakefulness, they are swift to slay—as the red wolf was slain when he sought to violate the child. Nothing that creates a disturbance within the interplay of those forces whereof the machine is composed is permitted to exist here for very long. If we leave here now, taking nothing with us that is of the Valley, we may yet escape with our lives, and with ourselves unchanged, save in those matters wherein already the Valley has changed us. But to linger once the Darken-ing-time has come is madness and folly. We must go now, or remain here forever, and be changed—to innocent, forgetful childishness, as was the F’yagha girl, or to brutish madness, as I suspect the dok-i-tor her brother has been changed.”
It was an impassioned speech, a display of volubility unusual for Thaklar, who was of nature a man of few words. But M’Cord refused to be swayed by them.
“I’m not going without the girl,” he said stubbornly. “And that’s that. Maybe you’re right, and we should get out of here now before we get killed by those walking trees … but I don’t know, Thaklar; I don’t set such a big value on myself, that I can hightail it out of here and leave Inga behind to take care of herself…”
“She has forgotten you; she has even forgotten herself,” said Thaklar somberly. “The Valley has taken her into itself by now, I think. What is the word you Outworlders use? Assimilated; the Valley has assimilated her. She is a part of it.”
“Maybe. And maybe not. She was only touched by one bubble, remember. Anyway, whether she’s lost her memories permanently or not, she deserves a chance. My people have remedies for the mind that has been injured or made ill; I owe her that much, at least. To see her taken care of. Whether she ever remembers me or not.”
Thaklar looked at him with a wondering and bemused expression on his face. And when he laughed, softly, it was a laughter that had no bitterness nor mockery in it.
“The Valley has changed you, too, my brother: whether you know it yet or not.”
“Eh?”
“I think that you have learned how to love a woman again,” Thaklar said gently. “When you came here, there was a wound deep within you. You had been hurt sorely once, by a woman—as had I. There was a hard thing within you, a core of bitterness, like a knot of scar-tissue— a scab upon the heart. And now the Valley has worked its magic upon you, healing that wound as the Old One healed your tom leg, making it sound and whole again. Do you not love the woman, my brother?”
“I—” M’Cord started to speak, then checked himself and hesitated. What, after all, had passed between them except a few unimportant words, and a single kiss?
“I think you’re right; I do love her; God help me!” he said at last, in a choked voice.
Thaklar smiled gently.
“God will help you, I think. The Valley understands love, my brother. It is the twin of happiness, and the brother of peace. Love is one of the forces that go to make up the wholeness of the machine. Very well, then; we will search for her together, you and I. Perhaps the guardians of the Valley will know and understand—for they sleep no longer, since we have awakened them in our folly and madness!”
M’Cord was vastly relieved. He said as much, gruffly, as was his way. Thaklar nodded.
“But there is one thing which we must do, ’Gort my brother. We must leave this place, and make our new camp at the edge of the Valley where the steps are cut into the stone of the cliff-wall. From that place we can search the woods for your woman … it will be a sign to the forces which, even now, watch us that our intentions are to leave here as soon as possible…. ”
He got to his feet purposefully.
But he did not walk away.
For suddenly Zerild was there. She had thrown herself 202
at his feet, sobbing wildly. And her arms crept up to embrace his long legs. And he looked down at her with an expression written upon his face in a language of the heart which even M’Cord could read.
XXVI. The Surrender
She lifted her face to him. It was wet with tears and wild with conflicting emotions. And her eyes—no longer sharp and fierce with mockery—were frightened and open as those of a child.
“Do not leave me. Take me with you,” she panted.
“Now why should you, who spumed me once, wish to go at my side now?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head furiously, black tresses tousling over slim, bare shoulders. And she clung to his legs with surprising strength.
“I cannot ask you to forgive me, prince. And I do not ask it. Take me with you on any terms you like. As your woman! Or your servant. Even as your slave. But do not leave me alone here in this awful place where men are turned to babes or beasts, or rent apart by trees that have learnt to walk! I will cook for you, tend your beasts, mend your clothes. Anything! I will do anything you ask—only do not leave me alone in this place where trees can walk and women go mad! Take me with you, I beg of you—yes, I—even I!—Zerild!—who never begged aught of a man before—beg it of you, of you whom I have wronged so terribly—and laughed at—and made mockery of—and spumed! See me, prince! Tamed and bumbled at last .. . and do not spurn me, prince, as once I wantonly did spurn you…
He bent and grasped her shoulders and drew her to her feet.
“Well,” he said gruffly. “Well, perhaps I shall take you along to make the meals. But do not grovel at my feet like a whipped khirth! When you were proud and free and untamed, I loved you. I do not love servility; but you can come—to mend my raiment and prepare my meals, remember! Only that, nothing more!”
Despite the harshness of his words, his voice was tender and almost joking, and there was something in his face which M’Cord had never seen there before, nor ever thought to see.
She saw it, too, the woman. And smiled through her tears and the tangle of her long black hair—a smile no longer proud or mocking, but shy, curiously shy—as a young girl smiles when for the first time she has seen ardor and the desire for her in the face of a boy.
And he smiled, too; and something was decided between them, and M’Cord guessed—correctly—that, whatever would be there between them in the days to come, it would not be a matter of the mending of clothing or the making of meals.
He watched them with wonderment, and shook his head.
The Valley had worked its magic upon the two of them, as well. On Thaklar. On Zerild!
They, too, were changed.
They, too, were—healed! And whole again.
Without even taking the time to eat the evening meal, they bundled up their gear and made ready to depart. Thaklar cautioned them against taking along anything that was part of the Valley. They could not even fill the waterskins from the pond.
The gear that had belonged to the others they simply left where it lay. But Thaklar took the weapons Chastar had stripped from them back in Ygnarh, and the outlaw’s weapons as well, save for the pistols he had worn when the walking tree had slain him.
The other gear they left behind. The extra blankets and bedrolls and clothing. There was no point in loading themselves up with things they would not need and could not easily carry. And, said Thaklar, the garden could—cleanse itself. That which they discarded would quickly crumble into dust, he said. For decay is one of the forces built into the world-old machine that was the Valley; thus it was that it rid itself of that which did not belong here.
And there was something to his words, M’Cord realized with a shiver. The tent Nordgren had put up still stood, a blot on the tranquility of the eternal garden. But the tent was not eternal, and already the insidious forces of decay were at work upon it. The heavy nioflex of which it was made was tough and sturdy—durable enough to hold its sheen through a decade of use. But already it was dull and blotchy-looking; a film of mold had rooted itself in the glistening synthetic fabric, and had eaten into the material, fretting its edges into raggedness. And something had gotten into the vacuum pockets of the flap, opening the pressure-seams that should have been able to withstand hurricanes without parting. Now the flaps dangled open, loosely swaying in the breeze.
The tent already had the look of something abandoned —dilapidated—slumping into decay.
M’Cord was glad to be gone from this uncanny place where the sturdiest synthetic fabric in existence crumbled to rags overnight. And he was fretful and impatient, nervous at each moment of delay.
That feeling of being watched by unseen eyes was upon him again. He felt eyes against his back, and the sensation was so uncanny that it made his skin creep and his nape-hairs stiffen like a dog’s hackles.
They all felt it; Zerild was subdued and obedient, and her eyes clung constantly to Thaklar, as if for reassurance —as if she drew strength and comfort from his very nearness. She did not leave his side for a moment, if she could help it.
It would have been nice to have made their goodbyes to the Old One and his friendly, hospitable brethren, but the Ushongti were nowhere to be seen and must still be hidden in their nests, whose whereabouts none of them had ever known. With a little pang of guilt, M’Cord realized that he had never even thanked the great, comical, kindly lizard-creature for the healing of his crippled leg. So suddenly had events rushed forward to their climax, and so bewildering had been the discoveries and transformations of this single day, that it had slipped his mind.
But perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the wise, philosophical old lizard could read the gratefulness in his heart with its strange, telepathic gifts. He hoped so.
He stood for a moment, making a silent goodbye to the garden and to those who tended it, remembering all that had happened to him here.
Then he turned, shouldered his knapsacks, and trudged after Thaklar and Zerild, in the direction of the edge of the Valley.
M’Cord had half expected that when they reached the wall of the walking trees they would find the sleeping guardians awake, aroused, and alert to stand against them.
But this did not happen. The trees were awake, all right, their tentacular branches stirring with unnatural agitation, but they remained firmly rooted in the sod. The three travelers passed swiftly through the ring of their boles— shudderingly aware of being watched by truculent, suspicious, even hostile eyes—but emerged therefrom onto the mossy plains without being attacked or even having their way impeded.
The mysterious darkness still cloaked the Valley. They could not see across its breadth to the far walls of the crater. But Thaklar led them to the foot of the stony stair with that unerring compass-like faculty the Martians have, and nothing happened to disturb or alarm them along the way.
They entered the woods cautiously, for here it was very dark indeed, and there was no telling what might be lurking within the gloom, awaiting them.
The naked children had fled, it seemed, into the deepest parts of the forest. At least they encountered not a one of the slim, golden inhabitants of the wood during their journey through it.
In one moonless glade, however, they encountered a beast.
It was one of the primordial cat-creatures, such as M’Cord had seen upon first entering the Valley. Then it had eyed him indifferently, paying no attention to his presence. Now the lithe, tawny thing that Nordgren had suggested might be a living fossil from the past—an ancestor of the Martian race; one of the beasts from whose flesh the Timeless Ones had shaped and molded the Firstborn of the People in the Beginning—now it turned upon them, the great cat, baring long ivory fangs in a snarl of menace, eyes burning green-gold through the velvet gloom.
It made no move to attack them, however; it crouched at the far end of the glade, growling deep in its chest in an attitude of watchful menace.
“It is even as I said,” grunted Thaklar. “The Valley has turned against us now, and thrusts us forth from within it.
Even the placid, gentle beasts have tamed against ns and threaten us.”
M’Cord nodded. Adam and Eve had been driven from their own garden thusly, by an angel with a flaming sword. And the eyes of that angel had blazed, he suspected, with watchful fires no less threatening than the eyes of the beast that crouched, spitting and growling, to watch them go.
