Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 (9 page)

 
          
He
faced toward the Cold People again. They ranged themselves across the tunnel
down which he had run those last stumbling moments. The car was stopped, and
upon it was a squat mortarlike device with around lens.

 
          
One
of them touched buttons with its tentacles. Out sprang green light, dark green,
such as had filled his aircraft at the moment of its recapture.

 
          
Darragh
felt as though he had been struck in the center of his leather-clad chest by
the end of a flying log. He flew from his feet and whirled backward through the
air, soared across the floor. Under him burbled that torrent of liquid in the
ditch. Then he hung spread-eagled against a perpendicular partition on the far
side, held there by the ray as by a crushing hand. A moment later, the
partition, too, gave way, sinking back and down.

 
          
Darragh
fell through, clumsily and heavily, and the valve snapped shut, as though
forced by a great spring. He struck on a solid level space and lay there
crumpled.

 
          
For
long moments he could only gasp for breath. Brightness stabbed at his eyes,
and he closed them beneath the goggles. He never wanted to move again.

 
          
Then
something touched him. He had not the strength to pull his exhausted body away.
There was a fumbling at his hood. The scarf, frozen across his nose and mouth,
began slowly, painfully, to peel away.

 
          
"Stop,"
he moaned miserably.
"Ill freeze."

           
But he was not freezing. He felt
warmth on his exposed face. An arm slid behind his shoulders, lifting him from
where he lay.

 
          
"Take
it easy," said a hushed voice. "You're among friends."

 
          
Mark Darragh lay
quietly, as though he
could never summon energy or inclination to move again.
Take it easy,
the soft voice had advised, and the advice seemed
good after all the fighting, flying,
running
.
You're among friends,
the voice had
added, and it had sounded friendly. Darragh opened his eyes.

 
          
He
sprawled with his head out of the hood and supported on an arm. Close above him
bent the face of a woman—a girl really—a pleasant blue-eyed face just now full
of concern. Corn-yellow hair made bright masses around the face. Beyond and
above were the faces of other people, stooping to look.

 
          
"He
isn't one of us," said a man's voice. "Who are you, anyway?"

 
          
Darragh
had some of his wind back. "I was going to ask that question of you,"
he replied.

 
          
"He
can talk," said another. "He speaks English."

           
Darragh sat up, then, and gazed at
the people around him. They were clad neatiy, in what he had seen in pictures
of the days of his unconquered grandfathers—the men in jackets and trousers,
the women in dresses of print or stout weave. There were a dozen of them and,
beginning to press around this inner group, twice as many more. The blonde girl
who had knelt beside him gazed with relief as he moved and half rose, and he
smiled at her. She looked capable and intelligent and pretty. She wore dark
slacks, a white blouse with short sleeves, and slippers that seemed to be made
of coarse cloth, like canvas. Her bare arms and face were tanned, the darker
because of that bright hair.

 
          
"You
mean, who are we?" prompted the nearest man, a fellow perhaps thirty, with
canny eyes set rather close together. "Why—we've been here ever since
this settlement has been here."

 
          
Darragh
only half-heard those words. He was getting up and looking beyond the gathering
of people.

 
          
A
town was there. At least it looked like the towns that Darragh had seen in old
salvaged pictures of the civilization from which his own forebears had fled.
There were ten houses or so—cottages, he remembered such houses were called—or
white-painted planks with roofs of snug red tile. They had green lawns and beds
of bright flowers, and they were ranged around a wide central court. Behind and
around those cottages rose a great lead-colored wall, that extended in a
sweeping curve to enclose the houses and the central common, holding them as
,at
the bottom of a tube. Looking up, Darragh was aware that
this wall rose to a tremendous height. It was as though he and these men and
women and their houses were at the bottom of an immense chimney.' Far above
them, the shaft was filled with radiance, dazzling and warm, that came down and
touched everything with brightness.

 
          
The
blonde girl, too, had risen. She stood straight beside him, as tall almost for
a girl as Darragh was for a man. All the excitement and mystery could not keep
him from seeing that her body was both strong and graceful, that she was
somebody he would like to know better.

 
          
"Where
did you come from?" she asked.

           
"Why, from
outside there."
Darragh gestured to the wall at one side.

 
          
"From the Owners?"

           
"Owners?" repeated
Darragh. "Who are the Owners?"

           
"They just threw you in here
with that ray," said the man with the close-set eyes.

 
          
"Oh,"
said Darragh. "You mean the Cold People. No, I didn't come from them. Do I
look like one of them?"

 
          
Everybody
was staring. "I say that I came from outside, "he repeated."
Far away from here.
Down on the
Orinoco
, if you know where that is."

 
          
"South
America," said the blonde girl. "You mean you come from South
America?"

 
          
"I
was scouting the Cold People," Darragh elaborated. "I got hold of one
of their aircraft and came here to look at this dome where they live. They got
my ship down, but I got away and ran off through about eighty-eight miles of
tunnels, and for some reason or other they pushed me in here among you."
He laughed. "I don't blame you for staring at me, I know it sounds
fantastic. Or should I say it sounds foolish?"

 
          
Nobody
answered that. Everyone kept staring for a moment. Then the man who had first
spoken crinkled the brow above his close-set eyes. "You'll have to forgive
us. It's hard to grasp the notion that there are still free human beings."

 
          
"Why,
aren't you free?" demanded Darragh.

           
Another man spoke. He was broadly
built, with short grizzled hair. "How can we be free? Don't you see this
pen we five in?"

 
          
Darragh
gazed around the lead-colored walls again. "Is this a prison, you mean?
The Cold People keep you prisoners?"

 
          
"Cold
People," repeated the younger man. "That's a good name for
them."

 
          
"And
you call them ..." began Darragh.

           
"We call them Owners."
A harsh, bitter flash of teeth.
"They own us, you see.
What's your name, may I ask?"

 
          
"Mark
Darragh."

           
"I'm Orrin Lyle." He held
out a hand, long but slimmer than Darragh's. "And this is Brenda
Thompson."

 
          
"He
means me," said the girl beside Darragh. "But aren't you still shaky
on your legs?"

 
          
Darragh
realized that he was, and nodded.

           
"Let's take him to my place,
Orrin," she said.

           
"Wait a second," spoke up
Darragh suddenly. "Excuse me if things take a while to sink in, but they
get there. You're prisoners, and you were brought here alive. Why don't you
fight your way out again?"

 
          
There
was silence at that, and more stares; somewhat abashed stares, as though
Darragh had said something embarrassing.

 
          
"You're
not in shape to fight your way out just now," said the man called Orrin
Lyle. "Come with us to Brenda's."

 
          
The
others made way for Darragh. Orrin Lyle took Darragh's leather-clad arm and
twitched him toward one of the cottages. Brenda Thompson came along at
Darragh's other side. As they walked, Darragh could feel eyes watching them go-

 
          
"In
here," said Brenda Thompson, opening a door, and Darragh walked through.

 
          
Inside
the cottage things were tasteful and comfortable. A hand-braided rag rug
covered the concrete floor. There were chairs, old but well kept, a sofa, a shelf
of books.
On the walls hung pictures.
To Darragh these
pictures looked strange and vivid, masses and arrangements of color.

 
          
"I
did those," said Brenda Thompson, seeing his interest. “Do you like
them?"

 
          
"I
don't really know about art," confessed Darragh.

           
"But you know what you like,
eh?" Orrin Lyle completed the old cliche. "Sit down,
Mr.—eh—Darragh."

 
          
He
spoke as though doing the honors in his own home. Darragh, who had been well
brought up, stood where he was with his eyes on the girl. She smiled.

 
          
"Go
ahead, sit down," she seconded Lyle's invitation. "I'm going to get
us some tea."

 
          
She
was gone into another room, sure and confident of movement. Lyle dropped into
an armchair, the most comfortable-seeming of all the seats in the room.
Darragh sat down opposite him.

 
          
Now
he noticed that in the center of the room rose a joist or support, a pole
perhaps four inches square. It seemed to support the ceiling. On the wall
beyond, the rear wall of the
room,
was a rectangular
stretch of glass, perhaps a mirror.

           
Orrin Lyle spoke again: "If I
may be frank, Mr. Darragh, let me caution you about talking escape to the
people here."

 
          
"Why
not?" demanded Darragh. "Don't they want to escape?"

 
          
"Ill
put it like this: We have our own plans for escape. Our time's coming."
Lyle leaned forward, an elbow on the arm of the chair. "You see, I'm
pretty much in command here. I'm like the mayor of this community, or you might
call me the captain of this band. I'm in charge of escape plans, among other
things."

 
          
"Maybe
I can help you," said Darragh. "I've been in traps twice—traps of the
Cold People—and escaped both times . . . No, the second time I blundered in
here with you."

 
          
"Suppose,"
said Lyle, "that you tell me more about how you came all the way up here
from the Orinoco."

 
          
"Shouldn't
we wait for Miss Thompson?"

           
"I'm here," she called,
entering with a dark wooden tray. It bore a teapot and cups, figured in green
and red. She set the tray on a table near the upright support, and poured
steaming liquid into the cups. One of these she handed to Darragh. As he took
it, he saw Orrin Lyle gazing at the girl, in a strange mood of mingled
suspicion and relish.

 
          
The
second cup she gave to Lyle, and seated herself with the third cup in her hand.
"All right," she smiled to Darragh. "Begin."

 
          
He
told them, as briefly as possible, about how his people lived in the tropics;
how a group of chieftains planned a counter-assault on the Cold Creatures; and
how he had gone out as a spy and a scout, to what adventures so far. Both
Brenda Thompson and Orrin Lyle asked frequent questions. To illustrate his
tale, Darragh fumbled inside his leather suit to drag his drawings from his
belt-pouch and offer them.

 
          
"This
is the kind of shelter the Owners make?" asked Brenda Thompson. "I've
never seen one."

 
          
"Never
seen one?" echoed Darragh. "How did you get in here?"

 
          
"I
was bom here," she told him, and handed the sketches to Lyle. "He
draws very well, doesn't he, Orrin?"

 
          
"Very
well indeed," granted Lyle. "Now, Mr. Darragh, I find a couple of odd
points in your story."

 
          
"Odd
points?" echoed Darragh sharply.

           
"
Oh,"
and Lyle grinned, showing big, even teeth, "I didn't mean I thought you
were telling lies."

 
          
"Let's
hope not," said Darragh.

           
"I meant your attitude toward
the Owners—what you call the Cold People. You say you argued against those
chiefs of yours. You urged a policy of waiting for the right time."

 
          
"And
that's what I did," Darragh assured him.

           
"Yet,"
went on Lyle, sipping his tea, "just now you started talking about escape
from here, when the rest of us are content to wait for the right time.

 
          
"And
how long have you waited for the right time?" inquired Darragh.

 
          
"Some years now.
We don't want to go off half-cocked."