Read Ebook: The Beast-Jewel of Mars by Thiessen V E Emshwiller Ed Illustrator

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Ebook has 2287 lines and 62038 words, and 46 pages

Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."

There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.

There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.

He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"

There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.

Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."

The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"

Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.

The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.

A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.

"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."

Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.

She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking, "If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.

She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.

Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.

After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.

The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."

Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."

Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.

The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."

Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.

There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"

Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"

Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."

Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"

Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."

Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.

Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."

"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.

"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."

Eric stared. The idea was staggering.

"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused. "You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."

Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.

Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"

"Yes. The time has come."

"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.

Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."

"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."

Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"

For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."

Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"

"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."

"My brother, Garve. What about him?"

"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"

Eric followed Nolette through a hallway to a well furnished room. Walking behind her the graceful sway of her walk reminded him of the touch of her waist as he held it earlier when they rode, and he felt the blood racing through his veins. He was tempted to seize her shoulder, turn her, and take her in his arms.

She indicated the room with a gesture. "You will be comfortable here, and you have only to wish strongly for food or drink. If your wishes do not conflict with those of the elders they will come into being."

Eric asked, "And is this true of any wish? Suppose for instance I wished for--You."

She looked at him steadily, "That would depend on the nature of your wish. If you wished to take me as your wife the elders would approve."

Eric looked at her. He had hardly known her two hours. Yet the madness of the moment made him rash, and he asked, "And what of your wishes, Nolette?"

She said, "I am the Daughter of the City, and a virgin. If the Legend is to be fulfilled I would be wed before I die."

He took a step forward and reached out to take her in his arms, but she slipped away, saying quietly, "Not now. I will go away and let you think. When you have decided call me in your mind, and the machine will let me know." She smiled briefly, and left him alone in the room.

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