Lords of Creation Page 14

  The voice clipped off as ErMalne snapped tight a voice-shutter, in vexation. A scarlet flush had leaped into her marble-white face. She regained her composure instantly, but excused herself from further touring of the city that day.

  As they walked back to the palace, ErMalne turned her eyes from the strolling crowd to Ellory.

  “Notice how the passing girls watch you, Humrelly,” she observed casually. “Married ones, too, I’m afraid. You cut quite a figure in our style. Be honest, Humrelly, you like our clothing?”

  He looked down at his costume, ran fingers over it. Like it?

  He did. He had been given an Antarkan costume the first day, to replace his half-burned Norak outfit. The feel of silk and trim cut lines had grown pleasant. The colorful style was such that on a slight man it was foppish, but on a sturdy, broad-shouldered frame it looked well. Ellory’s six feet topped the average Antarkan height by a half-head. He thought now of the Norak broadcloth with a slight repugnance.

  “No,” he lied stubbornly, with her eyes on his. “This style is too lacy to suit me. I like the simple Outland clothing better.”

  “Even on me?”

  Ellory was forced to make the comparison out of the corner of his eye. Sharina, refusing Antarkan dress, in plain dull white, covering her from neck to ankle. ErMalne in creamy rose and regal purple, contrasting vividly with her whiteness of complexion. Rounded lines were accentuated by a short, clinging skirt, and her legs were silken-clad.

  “Clothes are like beauty—skin deep.” quoted Ellory, but he saw the mocking glint in the Antarkan girl’s eyes, as she left them in the hall.

  Sharina lingered before going to her room, staring with a strange air at Ellory.

  “Humrelly, you do like these clothes!” she accused sadly. “You are beginning to like all the things of Antarka—”

  “No,” muttered Ellory. “The clothes maybe, but not what’s underneath. Sharina”—he grasped her shoulders fiercely—“you don’t think I’d ever be disloyal to Norak and all I’ve fought for!”

  Sharina averted her eyes.

  “ErMalne is interested in you, Humrelly. I know; I’m a woman.”

  Ellory laughed grimly.

  “Nonsense, angel! Don’t you see her game? Dangling me, enticing me with the good things of Antarka—cat and mouse. Making me suffer. Then, when the trial is over, when she tires of the sport—”

  He smiled gently. “I’m doomed, Sharina. Never forget that. That’s why I’m sorry, you’re here—”

  Sharina ran for her room, but not before Ellory had seen the tears in her eyes. He slept little that night, his thoughts a squirrel-cage.

  Doomed! Doomed! The word reverberated dully in his mind.

  Chapter 21

  THE REVELS

  “You skipped showing us the lowest level of all,” Ellory reminded ErMalne, the Lady of Lillamra, the next day, already guessing the reason. “What’s down there—your Outland slaves?”

  “Servants,” she corrected blandly. “Their living quarters.” She looked at his grim face. “Come,” she said reluctantly.

  The lowermost level, resting a mile down on bedrock, though only slightly dank, made Ellory mutter the word, “Dungeon!”

  It was well lighted, however. Neat rows of tiered little houses, with sodded areas, spread in all directions. The air was just as fresh here as above. Shifts of workmen returning and leaving did not show maltreatment. They looked well-fed, well taken care of.

  Ellory was forced to admit, inwardly, that it wasn’t the grinding sort of slavery that spotted past history with black pages.

  “Fairly decent, isn’t it, Humrelly?” ErMalne said. She went on with a faint shrug as he Malntained a stony silence. “Frankly, though, their lot was harsher, at the beginning. But in the past six or seven centuries, they have been treated well.”

  “That isn’t the issue!” charged Ellory. “What’s your moral right in the first place to have them as servants?”

  “They lead a safer, saner life here,” countered the Antarkan girl urbanely. “What did they have in their former life? Senseless border wars, back-breaking toil in the fields, lack of necessities. Here they have better clothes, shorter working hours, implements of metal for their comfort—”

  Echo from the past! Ellory grinned mirthlessly at the girl.

  “Don’t try to throw ideological dust in my eyes!” he interposed. “I heard the cream of it, three thousand years ago.” He went on steadily. “You know, in your heart, that it’s a substitution of shallow well-being for freedom. You can’t get away from that. Your propaganda fools even yourselves. Or else, like true realists, you argue with tongue in cheek. I suppose you’ve done this for their sake, not because it happens to benefit you!”

  ErMalne outfaced it without a flicker.

  “You’re still on trial, Humrelly,” she warned him coldly. “Your arguments happen to be an ideology too, not a fundamental truth.”

  Ellory felt helpless. He hadn’t won a point yet, in this strange, undefined mental duel with the Antarkan girl.

  “How did it all begin?” he asked, hoping to strike at the roots of their propaganda.

  “Well—”

  ErMalne thought a moment. “That first century of upbuilding was done entirely by Antarkans. Half the people worked at the cities, half in their homeland, raising food. The transfer of supplies across the oceans like that became cumbersome. With the development of rocket craft, and the flame-weapon, the solution came. The Outland was conscripted, under threat of attack, to supply food, and then servants. They yielded. All our people moved to Antarka. Life here became stabilized, easy, luxurious.”

  Ellory had to admire her. She hadn’t pulled her punches. It was realism, cold and efficient.

  “And why not?” she concluded. “Life is meant to be lived beautifully, by those who can achieve it.”

  A thousand years of oligarchic rule, and its corresponding psychology. There was no hope of battering it down, Ellory saw clearly. And why should he argue with her, in the first place?

  “How many Outlanders do you have in each city?” he asked.

  ErMalne glanced at him quickly, mockingly.

  “Not enough for revolt, Humrelly! About two hundred thousand in each city of a million Antarkans. The total population of the Outland is about two hundred million. Each ninth month we take ten young men, at the age of twenty, from every million of Outland population. This keeps exact pace with the death-rate of our servant group, whose average span is thirty-five years, from age twenty to age fifty-five. It also keeps pace with the gestation period of the human race, so that the Outlanders are not drained too heavily of their young.”

  Her voice was impersonal, as if she spoke of coins or bales of wool.

  Earth’s grand total of two billions in 1970, then, had sunk to a mere two hundred million, through the Dark Time.

  These two hundred million were dominated by the ten million of Antarka. Every nine months, two thousand Outlander youths were brought to Antarka, to work for an average of thirty-five years before natural death.

  Ellory darted his eyes about the Outlander community suddenly. He saw no children playing in the park areas, although women’s faces peered dully from windows.

  ErMalne saw his glance.

  “They have no children. They are all sterilized. It is trouble enough raising our own children. Their women, among other things, are nurseMalds for our babies.”

  The cold, scientific logic of it struck Ellory in the face. Youths ready to work, at the age of twenty, all parental care already invested in them in their home world, brought here as if they were assembled machines. Thirty-five man-years of usefulness in them, in return for simple shelter and food. The greatest bargain in human labor, in all history! A piracy of human lives!

  “I see
the storm-clouds in your face already, Humrelly. Save your tongue. I weary of denunciations, based on conditions and beliefs obtaining three thousand years ago. Come now. There are the ten upper levels to view.”

  Ellory subsided for a simple reason. He pictured himself as a “radical” of three thousand years ago, on a soapbox at Union Square exhorting a crowd of typical America to give up half their wealth for their underprivileged and downtrodden. There, he would have been speaking again two centuries of the American way of life as it existed. Here, against a thousand long years of tradition still more firmly entrenched.

  “The ten upper levels,” ErMalne explained, “hold our living quarters and centers. We have something of a caste here. By heredity, the highest-born occupy the top level, and run all government affairs. My family has carried the royal mark since the beginning of Antarka.

  “Each lower level is a step down in prestige and family. Yet they all, except the top-level class, work at the machines, the lower down the more hours. Those on the tenth level are called Commons. They do most of our policing, technical work and scientific routine.”

  “Is there much research, in new fields?” Ellory’s interest was more than casual.

  “Little,” vouched ErMalne. “All problems have been solved. Their Maln duty is to increase efficiency, if they can, so that our coal and metal supplies will last longer.”

  “And when they are finally gone?”

  ErMalne waved a careless hand. “Time enough for that consideration—two thousand years. That is not the wink of an eye, you know.”

  “I was buried three thousand,” murmured Ellory, “and awoke to find my world gone! If you were buried two, ErMalne—”

  Ignoring the implication, the Antarkan girl went on.

  “All Antarkans mingle socially at the fifth level. But those of the upper four never descend to the lower five, and vice versa. I’ll take you now to the fifth level. I’ve not been there for some months.”

  “Slumming,” Ellory called it, and explained to her. It brought an amused smile to her lips.

  The fifth level hummed with what Ellory mentally labeled “night life”, though it was the day period.

  Various great balls were in progress. Orchestras—of Commons, Ellory learned—ground out music that even to his untrained ear was mediocre. A monotonous four-four rhythm dominated every theme. Their dancing was stilted, less appealing even than the most savage prancing would have been. Ellory grinned to think what a sensation a swing-band of his time would cause here.

  Everywhere, the Lords and Ladies of Antarka sought social amusement in one grand round of parties. Liquor was imbibed freely, though seldom to the point of intoxication. Ellory sat at a table, sipping a heady champagne, and watched a dramatic play of love intrigue so involved and shoddy that he instantly knew it was the key to their romantic life.

  “We are more decorous in the upper levels,” apologized ErMalne, watching him. Vaguely, Ellory was relieved.

  Later he found himself dancing with the Antarka girl-queen. The full power of her nearness overwhelmed him suddenly. She was supple in his arms. The perfume in her argent hair stung his blood.

  “Humrelly,” she murmured in his ear, “I’m beginning to be sorry you led the revolt. You don’t deserve to—die!”

  He steeled himself against showing any reaction. That was the way to spoil her cruel little game. They went back to their table.

  Ellory suddenly leaped ahead, for the last half of the distance. He grasped the shoulder of the jaunty Antarkan standing over Sharina, pulling at her arm. He spun him around.

  “Get away from here, before I—” Ellory said savagely, enraged to see the pained flush on Sharina’s face.

  “She’s just an Outland gal—” began the Antarkan, and then Ellory’s fist leaped out in a short-arm punch that rocked the Antarkan off his heels. He went down with a glassy stare.

  Instant quiet came over the ballroom.

  “He’s that revolt-monger, the man from the past!” shrilled a voice suddenly. Antarkan men moved up threateningly.

  “Stop!”

  ErMalne, Queen of Lillamra, said it quietly, but they paused. Two men in uniform, with flame-guns, came up—Commons again, Ellory surmised.

  “Resume the dancing.” ErMalne commanded.

  Men scattered. The babble and artificial gaiety bubbled up again. Ellory wondered how men could change so suddenly, guns and queen to the contrary. It was almost as if their first hostile move against Ellory had been an instinctive reaction on their part, dying as soon as it was born.

  “Let’s go,” ErMalne said in annoyance. “The upper levels are quieter.”

  But only in degree, Ellory found. The pace of revelry was slower, but as widespread. What mad spirit had gripped these people to indulge in one continuous round of sham enjoyment? Even in ErMalne’s more sedate level, the blue-blooded Antarkans played hard, as if each moment were precious. And yet before them stretched lifetimes of a more absolute security and luxury than any other human beings had ever enjoyed.

  By bedtime, Ellory had drawn a great truth from what he had seen. He slept more peacefully than he had since the horror on the Hudson.

  Chapter 22

  “RENOUNCE THE OUTLAND!”

  ErMalne did not appear the next morning at the usual time. The Outlander attendant told Ellory she had asked that he reMaln in his room. Shrugging, Ellory took to reading a finely-bound book. It was dainty, shallow verbiage that the most susceptible editor of the twentieth century would have rejected.

  ErMalne came in, late in the afternoon, with Sharina. She faced them with a more serious expression than her imperturbable features had ever shown before.

  “Humrelly,” she began slowly, “you’ve seen all of Lillamra City. The others are the same. What do you think of Antarka now?”

  Ellory stood up before her, drawing a long breath, preparing to launch out.

  “Wait, before you speak!” She paused, then: “I think I’ll tell you first. You are offered a place in our civilization—as one of the Lords of Antarka, with all privileges! The Outland Council have agreed. Renounce the Outland, take up life here, as one of us. Either that or life imprisonment!”

  Ellory was staggered. “Not death—in either case?” he gasped. This upset his whole theory, that ErMalne had been playing with an inevitably doomed man.

  “I don’t believe it!” he grunted.

  “It’s true.” There was no hint of mockery in the Antarkan girl’s face. “We feel that you deserve better than death for a simple mistake, you who have come from a remote past. Your historical knowledge alone will add to our records. But we can’t, of course, let you go on our avowed enemy, either here or in the Outland. You’re too dangerous! Well?”

  Her tones had been impersonal, unemotional. She might be talking of whether he should wear a different suit.

  Ellory straightened up.

  “ErMalne, listen to me,” he began quietly. “I’ll tell you what I think of Antarka. For a thousand years you Antarkans have been in the lap of luxury. You are decadent, stagnant, spiritually dead. You were a truly vigorous people when you first settled in Antarka, building a civilization. Then a terrible mistake was made—the conscription of the Outland.

  “It’s tyranny, from start to finish. But worse than your sin against the Outlanders, is your sin against yourselves! For you’ve buried yourselves in absolute sterility of mind.”

  “Indeed?” ErMalne’s lidded eyes revealed no reaction. “Just because we don’t have wars, preaching reformers, and a hundred and one different philosophies pulling at odds? Have you stopped to think, Humrelly, that we have reached the perfect state? There is no need for what you would misname ‘vigor of mind’. We live life beautifully, as some of your own poets once chanted was the acme of human life!”

  “Bea
utifully! I’ll tell you something, ErMalne, that will make you jump. Even with advance warning you’ll jump.

  You’re utterly bored—as you once hinted. All Antarka has been bored stiff for centuries. You’re all sick of each other, sick of safety, security, idleness, soft living. Your music sings out the same song, and your literature. Antarka—fluff of the ages, man’s zero point in endeavor. You are chained in a vicious little circle that you’d mortgage your souls to change, if you’d only realize it. You play hard because you’re afraid to stop and realize there is nothing else.

  “Even a war would be preferable, wouldn’t it, ErMalne? Even a good, healthy rebellion in the Outland, instead of one you can so easily stop. You told me that yourself, and I was a fool not to see the truth sooner. An age-long ennui came down from your fathers, like a stuffy cloak, and it’ll go down to your children.

  “That’s your whole horizon—complete boredom, to the day you die. Years and years of it! Why, even Sharina here has lived more in her short time than a half dozen of you Lords and Ladies.”

  ErMalne’s eyes, wide at first, became indolently amused. “Humrelly, you amaze me. I did not suspect such eloquence in your big body and blunt mind.”

  Ellory went on, determined to finish.

  “There’s a solution open. A perfectly simple one. Come out of the grave, into the sun! Release all your slaves, do things for yourself. More, go out into the Outland world and labor with them and for them. Strive to bring them civilization. The tremendous odds against this are just the thing to add zest, meaning, fire to your stifled lives. You’d die happy, if you hadn’t gained an inch.”

  Fervent appeal crept into his voice.

  “Don’t you see, ErMalne? I can’t believe you or any of your people are entirely lost. I can’t believe it—of you! You’ve got to do something—to work! Don’t you see, ErMalne? You must!”