The Earth-Tube (14 page)

Amazed, he looked at her closely. She was a white woman! All the other persons he had seen in the metal city had been yellow, distinctively Asiatic. but this woman was white! Here was a surprising development, and one to which he hardly knew how to adjust himself.

The little Asian slave had curtsied and gone out, leaving her mistress alone. The hiding man saw a moment later that she had risen from the bed and was preparing to disrobe. Her fingers fumbled with the fastenings of her girdle; her lovely hands betraying agitation in their deft, nervous movements. To the shoulders her arms were bare and beautifully formed. On her feet were sandals, and through the straps the pale flesh showed. Beauty! From head to foot she was surpassingly beautiful, but in her beauty there was also a deep and moving tragedy. In her eyes there was a look of hopelessness. It left King overpowered with pity and a sense of shame.

Who was he, further to trouble this woman, spying upon her? Surely it was clear that she had been already troubled to the last barrier of her strength by whatever plagues existence here had set upon her.

King cast about him for some way of escape, but there was none. Beyond the bedroom door the little slave stood guard. Here by the silken couch the lovely woman, unknowing, held him prisoner. There was no choice, he saw with horror. If he were to fulfill his mission, he must kill her, and perhaps the slave girl, too.

The precariousness of his position behind the cabinet was borne upon him by his cramped muscles, which were already crying for release. His calves ached as he crouched there, trying desperately to hold his foot-grip on the glassy floor. He had squatted there, unnaturally, too long; with alarm he realized that of its own accord one throbbing foot had begun to move. He stared at it, fascinated, unable to stop, as the black shoe crept nearer and nearer the protecting edge of the cabinet.

In another moment he would have tumbled headlong upon the floor. Involuntarily he dropped the absurd bundle of policeman’s clothing he had carried in his arms and clutched the chest before him to regain his balance. The wadded bundle, projected with unexpected force, rolled out across the floor, a ghastly, telltale ball. While he followed its progress with amazed eyes, it crossed the intervening space and stopped abruptly at the woman’s feet. She gave a little cry, and looking, saw its source. The game was up. King arose and stepped from behind the cabinet. Now he must kill, and do it quickly, before she spread the alarm.

Her eyes grew wide with horror when she saw him coming, but she made no further sound. He had expected her to scream for help, to strike at him, to take some means of defending herself which would have made the deed he had to do easier, more like a game, a shot in self-defense. Instead, she only stared at him, wide-eyed, drawing her clothing about her with a quick, involuntary gesture.

There passed a moment of tense silence as the man and the woman stared at each other. King thrust at her breast his short and ugly pistol, aiming at her heart. His finger trembled on the trigger, but he could not fire.

“My God,” he said. “You are too beautiful!”

Her lips parted suddenly. Her expression changed from horror to surprise.

“English!” she cried aloud. “You speak English!”

It was his turn to be startled. He made a gesture of warning. “Hush, hush!” he said.

No less afraid than before, she shrank back against the bed, holding her flowing dress with one hand, the other touching her bare white throat.

“Who are you?’“ she asked. “Some new torment put upon me now?”

Her voice had in it a pleading quality; it was rich-timbred, fine, and strong. yet very tired; she had almost become resigned. But King had hardly noticed anything but her direct meaning, with its implication that the woman was, for all her silken luxury, a captive. and an unwilling one. Inexplicably, the knowledge filled him with pleasure.

He saw that he was still gripping the automatic grotesquely in his hand. Quickly, with an ashamed movement, he put it away and held the empty palm out for her to see that he no longer meant violence. Was it because he saw in her a possible ally alone that he was pleased to find her not an Asian born? He touched her gently upon the hand with which she had clasped her robe.

“You needn’t be afraid,” he said. “I am American. I need your help. I am more in your power than you in mine.”

She had not relaxed from her fearful retreat against the side of the drapery-hung bed. She had not answered him or yielded in any way, but now a slow smile came to her lips. He could not tell at first if it were one of pleasure or contempt. They had both heard a movement in the connecting hall. Some one in there was listening at the door.

“You see,” she said quietly. “It would require very little effort on my part to summon aid at any moment.”

“I have not doubted that,” King replied. “Instead, I have thrown myself upon your mercy by relinquishing whatever temporary advantage I may have had over you when you discovered me here.”

He saw the look of distrust in her eyes slowly die out as she regarded him. Abruptly she motioned him back into his hiding place and walked cautiously toward the metal door.

She quickly flung it open. The little Asian slave girl was there, looking very frightened.

The slave asked a question. Her mistress answered soothingly.

“See, there is no one here,” she said, lapsing for a moment into English. Recovering, she again addressed the slave in the Asian tongue, explaining, reassuring. At length the girl closed the door and went away, and the white woman came back to the bed and sat down upon the edge of it.

“She will not listen again though I can summon her at any moment,” she said to King warningly. “She heard some one talking and thought I needed help.” Looking closely at him, she changed her tone. “But tell me. “ she exclaimed. “You look like an American as you say. but I cannot be sure. You might be, for all your clothing and your manner, a spy from Tal Majod.”

“And who,” asked King, “is Tal Majod?”

The woman glanced at him suddenly, suspiciously, out of the corner of her eyes. “Really, you don’t know about Tal Majod?” she asked. “Can it be possible that you have never heard of him?”

There was mockery in her voice. King saw that she still suspected him, that he had by no means convinced her that he was not a spy from the Asian authorities.

“Don’t you see,” he asked her, “who I am? Can’t you see that I have entered your metal city here to learn the secrets of the Asians?”

She replied quietly, with dignity. “To learn the secrets of the Asians you will have to go farther than Tiplis,” she said. “The Asians are a mightv race;

they know many things that none but Tal Majod or his engineers could tell you about. You can learn little enough from Diane, who was a slave, but who is now a Chosen One.”

Her voice was filled with bitterness.

“Nevertheless,” King replied, “I must find out. The freedom of many people is at stake.”

For a moment he thought that she had not understood him. Sitting on the edge of her silken bed, she was staring steadfastly before her. Slowly she moved her head until her burning eyes met his.

“The Americans. were my people too,” she said. “I am a slave here now, but I was an American before they captured my family. in Japan five years ago. We were traveling. My father was killed. they tortured him before my eyes, because he would not be a slave. My mother. I never knew what became of my mother.”

They were quiet for a long minute while her white shoulders betrayed the depth of her feeling. She had covered her face with her hands, but she was not crying. Her eyes were dry and brave when she looked up at him again.

“They made a slave of me,” she said. “I was sent to take a cell and carry water and clean floors. They drove us around in gangs. We were like bees in a hive; not individuals, but hands and feet and muscles . good for so much work, then thrown away. They are masters of cruelty, these Asians! They are masters because they are also cruel to themselves. They live for the machines they have built; the Asian nation is the mightiest machine of all. They have no emotions. they neither hate nor love. Through generations of training they have become cold and lifeless^ They live to reproduce and serve machines!”

Her voice was trembling when she paused again,

“Women here must either work or bear children,” she went on. “At first I worked. but one day I was . admired by an agent of the government. Now I have been selected to be one of the wives of Tal Majod. !”

He placed a firm hand upon her shoulder. She was a woman such as he had often dreamed about. And to come upon her at such a time, in such a place!

“Had you never thought of escaping?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. But how?”

“I have a boat.” He almost whispered as he told her that. “You must help me. Then we will escape together.”

She did not answer for many minutes. At last she took his hand, impulsively.

“If I can, I will,” she said. “But it is difficult. On all sides there are spies and guards. The city is brightly lighted by day and night. in fact we have no night or day.”

King considered the problem. “Nevertheless,” he replied, “I must know how this metal is made and how to destroy it again. That should be simple.”

“I think not,” said Diane. “But maybe we can find a way.”

“We must. Diane,” said King.

CHAPTER V

THE FROST-SHOWER

I

THE metal city was like a tiny knob upon the end of the earth-tube. The vibrations stirred up by the flying car as it passed from hemisphere to hemisphere jarred it continually, so that the inhabitants had long ago become used to the sounds and sensations of earthquake and whistling steam. Through its shining metal streets went bands of workers continually, marching in regimented ranks, driven by men in uniform who were themselves but members of a higher unit in the organization. The Asian city was a city of two machines. one made of metal and the other flesh. It was, indeed, the highest development of communized life; without individuals, without ideals or private hopes or joys of any kind.

Long before, all persons who had sought to express themselves had been exterminated. Their children had also been killed; there were none left now but the meek and the unprotesting. If a rule were made by those in authority, it was implicitly and unquestioningly obeyed, for the essence of the machine was obedience to law. Principles they knew nothing of, save those of the most pragmatic kind. Even the Asians who had authority and power to command lived by set rules which had come down to them.

And the city of metal at the head of the earth-tube was an epitome of the whole kingdom of the Asians. The race had grown to its enormous power, in fact, by practicing those principles first laid down by the grandfather of Tal Majod, in the little semidesert plateau where the ancestors of the tribe had lived for countless generations, undisturbed and ignorant of the great world of white men, from whom they were cut off by mountains and arid miles and the hostile tribes which lived in the valleys round about.

For many generations they had known that a certain very hard substance, brighter than gold, but pale and glassy and metallic in appearance, could be made from materials commonly found, when treated in a certain manner by the priests. The treatment had to do with a mineral which outcropped upon a hill, and which was dangerous to the touch, and glowed at night. Gradually the Asians, in their primitive state, learned to handle both this material and the other, the finished product, their hard, metallic substance, which they molded into various fanciful shapes, and cast for all time with the quick, magical application of certain fluids and fire.

This metal, they learned, was tremendously hot when first formed, but would soon become cool and indestructible. It was too heavy for extensive use in warfare. A man could not hold a shield made of it. Neither was it valuable for coins or ornaments because of its weight. But for houses and shelters it was unsurpassed, and for generations the early Asians lived in houses made of the metal with which they were afterward to set out to conquer the world.

Year in and year out the metal remained the same, neither rusting nor wearing away. Gradually they learned improved methods of making it. They built fortresses which withstood the worst onslaughts of their enemies. They learned to tip their sharp weapons of war with it and to carry barricades of wood, armored with thin plates of it, into the valleys on every side, increasing by this means their domain.

They were already a mighty people, hidden away in the deserts and plateaus of Asia, when the grandfather of Tal Majod appeared among them. Some said he was born naturally, of the daughter of a high priest and the son of a warrior. But many held. and this belief gained credence in later years. that he was found upon a high hill on a stormy night, after lightning had blasted away the scanty foliage there. He was a child of the storm, many said, distilled of the lightnings, and left in the crater made by the blast to lead his people to the conquest of many lands.

Certain it was that he first learned the secret of the lightning, his parent, and drew fire from the clouds from ribbons of wire, from rods of ebony and glass, and from squares of woolen cloth.

He also learned the use of steam and made an engine which roared and belched and spun its wheels so fast they fell apart. Later he built the engine’s wheels of the everlasting metal, which they called
undulal,
and they did not fall apart however fast they went. 139

“Now I have made a servant here that will work for us,” he announced to his tribe. “But we must also work for it. I must have some who will carry wood and coal; others who will carry water to my slave, the engine. See, I will mount our slave upon a wagon’s wheels, and he will move the wagon of his own accord and carry walls of undulal down to our enemies and sweep them off the earth!”

Then they built fires of wood upon the hilltops to celebrate the day and made Tal Majod’s grandfather ruler of the Asian peoples, with power of life and death over all the members of them, as was befitting a man who could build engines for steam and draw fire from glass and stone. And he set out immediately to reorganize the tribe into a kind of flesh machine of his own designing. He thought in terms of machinery. There was no selfishness in this spreading of his power, only the plan. If a tribe were to succeed and become great, he reasoned, it must be responsive to its leader; it must have no will save that of the ruler, no individuality save that of the tribe, no desire save that of conquest, no pleasure except in obedience.