The Jewels of Aptor Page 12

  CHAPTER XI

  Under the trees, she raised up on tiptoe and kissed the balding foreheadof a tall, dark-robed priest. "Dunderhead," she said, "I think you'recute." Then she blinked very rapidly and knuckled beneath her eye. "Oh,"she added, remembering, "I was making yogurt in the biology laboratoryyesterday. There's two gallons of it fermenting under the tarantulacage. Remember to take it out. And take care of the hamsters. Pleasedon't forget the hamsters."

  Finally, they started once more around the slope of the volcano, and thetemple and grove fell black and green away behind them.

  "Two days to get to the ship," said Geo, squinting at the pale sky.

  "Perhaps we had better put the jewels together," said Urson. "Keep themout of harm's way, since we know their power."

  "What do you mean?" Iimmi asked.

  Urson took Geo's leather purse from his belt. Then he took the jewelfrom Geo's neck and dropped it in the purse. Then he held the purse outfor Iimmi to do the same.

  "I guess it can't hurt," Iimmi said, dropping his chain into the pouch.

  "Here's mine too," Argo said. Urson pulled the purse string closed andtucked the pouch in at his waist.

  "Well," said Geo, "I guess we head for the river, so we can get back toyour sister and Jordde."

  "Jordde?" asked Argo. "Who's he?"

  "He's a spy for the blind priestesses. He's also the one who cut Snake'stongue out."

  "Cut his--?" Suddenly she stopped. "That's right: four arms, histongue--I remember now, in the film!"

  "In the what?" asked Iimmi. "What do you remember?"

  Argo turned to Snake. "I remember where I saw you before!"

  "You know Snake?" Urson asked.

  "No, I never met him. But about a month ago I saw a movie of whathappened. It was horrible what they did to him."

  "What's a movie?" asked Iimmi.

  "Huh?" said Argo. "Oh, it's sort of like the vision screens, only youcan see things that happened in the past. Anyway, Dunderhead showed methis film about a month ago. Then he took me down to the beach and saidI should have seen something there, because of what I'd learned."

  "See something?" Iimmi almost yelled. "What was it?" He took hershoulder and shook it. "What was it you were supposed to see?"

  "Why...?" began the girl, startled.

  "Because a friend of mine was murdered and I almost was too because ofsomething we saw on that beach. Only I don't know what it was."

  "But ..." began Argo. "But I don't either. I couldn't see it, soDunderhead took me back to the temple."

  "Snake?" Geo asked. "Do you know what they were supposed to see? Or whyArgo was taken to see it after she was shown what happened to you?"

  The boy shrugged.

  Iimmi turned on Snake. "Do you know, or are you just not telling? Comeon now. That's the only reason I stuck with this so far, and I want toknow what's going on!"

  Snake shook his head.

  "I want to know why I was nearly killed," shouted the Negro. "You knowand I want you to tell me!" Iimmi raised his hand.

  Snake screamed. The sound tore over the distended vocal cords. Then hewhirled and ran.

  Urson caught him and brought the boy crashing down among leaves. "No youdon't," the giant growled. "You're not going to get away from me thistime. You won't get away from me again."

  "Watch it," said Argo. "You're hurting him. Urson, let go!"

  "Hey, ease up," said Iimmi. "Snake, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell.But I do want you to tell me. Very much."

  Urson let the boy up, still mumbling, "Well, he's not going to get awayagain."

  "When did he get away from you the first time?" Geo said, coming over tothe boy. "Let him go. Look, Snake, do you know what there was about thebeach that was so important?"

  Snake nodded.

  "Can you tell?"

  Now the boy shook his head and glanced at Urson.

  "You don't have to be afraid of him," Geo said, puzzled. "Urson won'thurt you."

  But Snake shook his head again.

  "Well," said Geo, "we can't make you. Let's get going."

  "I bet I could make him," the giant mumbled.

  "No," said Argo. "I don't think you could. I watched the last timesomebody tried. And I don't think you could."

  Late morning flopped over hotly in the sky and turned into afternoon.The jungle became damp, and bright insects plunged like tiny knives ofblue or scarlet through leaves. Wet foliage brushed against theirchests, faces, and shoulders.

  "Why would they show you a film of something awful before taking you tothe beach." Iimmi asked.

  "Maybe it was supposed to have made me more receptive to what we saw,"said Argo.

  "If horror makes you receptive to what ever it was," said Iimmi, "Ishould have been about as receptive as possible."

  "What do you mean?" asked Geo.

  "I just watched ten guys get hacked to pieces all over the sand,remember?"

  They walked silently for a time.

  "We'll come out at the head of the river. It's a huge marsh that drainsoff into the main channel," said Argo presently.

  Late afternoon darkened quickly.

  "I was wondering about something," Geo said, after a little while.

  "What?" asked Argo.

  "Hama said that once the jewels had been used to control minds, theperson who used them was infected--"

  "Rather the infection was already there," corrected Argo. "That justbrought it out."

  "Yes," said Geo. "Anyway, Hama also said that he was infected. When didhe have to use the jewels?"

  "Lots of times," Argo said. "Too many. The last time was when I waskidnaped. He used the jewel to control pieces of that thing you allkilled in the City of New Hope to come and kidnap me and then leave thejewel in Leptar."

  "A piece of that monster?" Geo exclaimed. "No wonder it decayed sorapidly when it was killed."

  "Huh?" asked Iimmi.

  "Argo, I mean your sister, told me they had managed to kill one of thekidnapers, and it melted the moment it died."

  "We couldn't control the whole mass," she explained. "It really doesn'thave a mind. But, like everything alive, it has, or had, the doubleimpulse."

  "But what did kidnaping you accomplish, anyway?" Iimmi asked.

  Argo grinned. "It brought you here. And now you're taking the jewelsaway."

  "Is that all?" asked Iimmi.

  "Well," said Argo, "Isn't that enough?" She paused for an instant. "Youknow I wrote a poem about all this once, the double impulse andeverything."

  Geo recited:

  "_By the dark chamber sits its twin, where the body's floods begin, and the two are twinned again, turning out and turning in._"

  "How did you know?" she asked.

  "The dark chamber is Hama's temple," Geo said. "Am I right?"

  "And it's twin is Argo's," she went on. "They should be twins, really.And then the twins again are the children. The force of age in each oneopposed to the young force. See?"

  "I see," Geo smiled. "And the body's floods, turning in and out?"

  "That's sort of everything man does, his going and coming, his greatideas, his achievements, his little ideas too. It all comes from theinterplay of those four forces."

  "Four?" said Urson. "I thought it was just two."

  "But it's thousands," Argo explained.

  The air was drenching. The leaves had been shiny before. Now theydripped water on the loose ground. Pale light lapsed through thebranches, shimmered, reflected from leaf to the wet underside of leaf.The ground became mud.

  Twice they heard a sloshing a few feet away, and then the scuttling ofan unseen animal. "I hope I don't step on something that decides to takea chunk out of my foot."

  "I'm pretty good at first aid," Argo said. "It's getting chilly," sheadded.

  Just then Geo slipped and sank knee-deep in a muddy pool. Urson raced tothe edge of the quicksand bog and grabbed Geo by his good arm. He pulledtill Geo emerged, coated to the thigh with gray mud.

 
; "You all right?" Urson asked. "You sure you're all right?"

  Geo nodded, rubbing the stump of his arm with his good hand. "I'm allright," he said. The trees had almost completely given out. Geo suddenlysaw the whole swamp sinking in front of him. He splashed a stepbackwards, but Urson caught his shoulder. The swamp wasn't sinking,though. But ripples had begun to appear over the water, spreading,crossing, webbing the whole surface with a net of tiny waves.

  Then they began to rise up. Green backs broke the surface, wet andslippery. They were standing now, torrents cascading their green faces,green chests. Three of them, now a fourth. Four more, and then more, andthen many more. They stood, now, these naked, green, mottled bodies.

  Geo felt a sudden tugging in his head, at his mind. Looking around hesaw that the others felt it too.

  "Them ..." Urson started.

  "They're the ones who carried us ..." Geo began. The tug came again, andthey stepped forward.

  Iimmi put his hand on his head. "They want us to go with them...." Andsuddenly they were going forward, slipping into the familiar state ofhalf-consciousness which had come when they had crossed the river, tothe City of New Hope, or when they had first fallen into the sea.

  Wet hands fell on their bodies as they were guided through the swamp.They were being carried through deeper water. Now they were walking overdry land where the vegetation was thicker, and slimy boulders caughtshards of sunset on their wet flanks, blood leaking on the gray, the wetgray, and the green.

  Through a rip in the arras of vegetation, they saw the moon push throughthe clouds, staining them silver. A rock rose in silhouette against themoon. On the rock a naked man stood, staring at the white disk. Whitehighlighted one side of his body. As they passed, he howled (or anyway,opened his mouth and threw his head back. But their ears were full ofnight and could not hear.) and dropped to all fours. A breeze blewmomentarily in the sudden plume of his tail, in the scraggly hair of theunder-belly, and light lay white on the points of his ears, hislengthened muzzle, his thinned hind legs. The animal turned its headonce, and then scampered down the rock and into the darkness as acurtain of trees swung across the opened sky.

  Eyes of flame whipped ahead of them as water swirled their knees oncemore. Then the water went down and sand washed back under the soles oftheir feet on the dark beach. The beating of the sea, the rush of theriver, and the odor of the wet leaves that fingered their cheeks,prodded their shins, and slapped against their bellies as they movedforward, all this fell away. Red eyes wavered into flaming tongues, andthe tongues showed themselves housed in the mouths of a dozen caves.

  Light flickered on the wet rocks and they entered the largest one. Theireyes suddenly focused once more. Foam washed back and forth over thesand floor, and black chains of weeds, caught in crevices on the rock,lengthened over the sand with the inrush of water. Webbed handsreleased them.

  Brown rocks rose around in the firelight. They raised their eyes towhere the Old One sat. The long spines were strung with shrunkenmembrane. His eyes, gray and indistinct, were close to the surface ofhis broad nostriled face. A film of water trickled over the rock wherehe sat. Others stood about him, on various levels of the rock.

  The tugging left them, and they glanced at one another now. Outside thecave it was raining hard. Geo saw that Argo's hair had wet to darkauburn and hugged her head now, making little streaks down her neck.

  Suddenly a voice boomed at them, like an echo, more than thereverberation that the cave would give. "Carriers of the jewels," itbegan, and suddenly Geo realized that it was the same hollowness thataccompanied Snake's soundless messages. "We have brought you here togive a warning. We are the oldest forms of intelligence on this planet,"continued the Old One from the throne. "We have watched from the deltaof the Nile the rise of the pyramids; we have seen the murder of Caesarfrom the banks of the Tiber. We watched the Spanish Armada destroyed byEnglish, and we followed Man's great metal fish through the ocean beforethe Great Fire. We have never aligned ourselves with either Argo orHama, but rise in the sexless swell of the ocean. We can warn you, as wehave warned man before. As before, some will listen, some will not. Yourminds are your own, now. That I pledge you. Now, I warn you; cast thejewels into the sea.

  "Nothing is ever lost in the sea, and when the evil has been washed fromthem with time and brine, they will be returned to man. For then timeand brine will have washed away his imperfections also.

  "No living intelligence is free from their infection, nothing with thedouble impulse of life. But we are old, and can hold them for a millionyears before we will be so infected as you are. Your young race is toocondensed in its living to tolerate such power at its fingers now. AgainI say: cast these into the sea.

  "The knowledge which man needs to alleviate hunger and pain from theworld of men is contained in two monasteries on this island. Both havethe science to put the jewels to use, to the good use which is possiblewith them. Both have been infected. In Leptar, however, where you carrythese jewels, there is no way at all to utilize them for anything butevil. There will only be the temptation to destroy."

  "What about me?" Argo suddenly piped up. "I can teach them all sorts ofthings in Leptar." She took one of Snake's hands. "We used one for ourmotor."

  "You will find something else to make your motor turn," came the voice."You still have to see something that you have not yet seen?"

  "At the beach?" demanded Iimmi.

  "Yes," nodded the Old One, with something like a sigh, "at the beach. Wehave a science that allows us to do things which to you seemimpossibilities, as when we carried you in the sea for weeks withoutyour body decaying. We can enter your mind as Snake does. And we can domuch else. We have a wisdom which far surpasses even Argo's and Hama'son Aptor. Will you then cast the jewels into the sea and trust them withus?"

  Here Urson interrupted. "How can we give you the jewels?" he said. "Howcan we be sure you're not going to use them against Argo and Hama onceyou get them. You say nobody is impervious to them. And we've only gotyour say so on how long it would take you to fall victim. You canalready influence minds. That's how you got us here. And according toHama, that's what corrupts. And you've already done it."

  "Besides," Geo said. "There's something else. We've nearly messed thisthing up a dozen times trying to figure out motives and counter motives.And it always comes back to the same thing: we've got a job to do, andwe ought to do it. We're suppose to return Argo and the jewels to theship, and that's what we're doing."

  "He's right," said Iimmi. "It's the general rule again. Act on thesimplest theory that holds all the information."

  The Old One sighed again. "Once, fifteen hundred years ago, a man whowas to maneuver one of the metal birds walked and pondered by the sea.He had been given a job to do. We tried to warn him, as we tried to warnyou. But he jammed his hands into the pockets of his khaki uniform, anduttered to the waves the words you just uttered, and the warning wasshut out of his mind. He scrambled up over the dunes on the beach, nevertaking his hands out of his pockets. The next morning, at five o'clock,when the sun slanted red across the air field, he climbed into his metalbird, took off, flew for some time over the sea, looking down on thewater like crinkled foil under the heightening sun, until he reachedland again. Then he did his job: he pressed a button which released twoshards of fire metal in a housing of cobalt. The land flamed. The seaboiled in the harbors. And two weeks later he was also dead. That whichburned your arm away, poet, burned away his whole face, boiled his lungsin his chest and his brain in his skull."

  There was a pause. And then, "Yes, we can control minds. We could haverelieved the tiredness, immobilized the fear, the terror, immobilizedall his unconscious reasons for doing what he did, just as man can nowdo with the jewels. But had we, we would have also immobilized the--thehonor which he clung to. Yes, we can control minds, but we do not." Nowthe voice swelled. "But never, since that day on the shore before theGreat Fire, has the temptation to do so been as great as now." Again thevoice returned to normal. "Pe
rhaps," and there was almost humor in itnow, "the temptation is too great, even for us. Perhaps we have reachedthe place where the jewels would push us just across the line where wehave never before gone, make us do those things that we have never done.You have heard our warning now. The choice, I swear to you, is yours."

  They stood silent in the high cave, the fire on their faces weavingbrightness and shadow. Geo turned to look at the rain-blurred darknessoutside the cave's entrance.

  "Out there is the sea," said the voice again. "Your decision quickly.The tide is coming in...."

  It was snatched from their minds before they could articulate it. Twochildren saw a bright motor turning in the shadow. Geo and Iimmi saw thetemples of Argo in Leptar. Then there was something darker. And for amoment, they all saw all the pictures at once.

  A wave splashed across the floor, like twisted glass before the rock onwhich the fire stood. Then it flopped wetly across the burning driftwoodwhich hissed into darkness. Charred sticks turned, glowing in the water,and were extinguished.

  Rain was buffeting them; hands held them once more, pulling them intothe warm sea, the darkness, and then nothing....

  Snake was thinking again, and this time through the captain's eyes.

  _The cabin door burst open in the rain. Wind whipped her wet veils abouther in the door as lightning made them transparent, blackening herbody's outline. Jordde rose from his seat. She closed the door onthunder._

  _"I have received the signal from the sea," she said. "Tomorrow youpilot the ship into the estuary."_

  _The captain's voice: "But Priestess Argo, I cannot take the ship intoAptor. We already have lost ten men; I cannot sacrifice ..."_

  _"And the storm," smiled Jordde. "If it is like this tomorrow, how can Itake her through the rocks?"_

  _Her nostrils flared as her lips compressed to a chalky line. She wasregarding Jordde._

  _The captain's thoughts: What is between them, this confused tension. Itupsets me deeply, and I am tired._

  _"You will pilot the boat to shore tomorrow," Argo nearly hissed. "Theyhave returned, with the jewels!"_

  _The captain's thoughts: They speak to each other in a code I don'tunderstand. I am so tired, now. I have to protect my ship, my men, thatis my job, my responsibility._

  _But Argo turned to the captain. "I hired you to obey me. I order you topilot this ship to Aptor's shore tomorrow morning."_

  _The captain's thoughts; Yes, yes. The fatigue and the unknowing. But Imust fulfill, must complete. "Jordde," he began._

  _"Yes, captain," answered the mate, anticipating. "If the weather ispermitting, sir, I will take the ship as close as I can get." He smilednow, a thin curve over his face, and turned toward Argo._