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Read Ebook: The Man the Sun-Gods Made by Fox Gardner F Gardner Francis Moore Rube Illustrator
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Ebook has 421 lines and 17263 words, and 9 pages
The eyes and the mockery of the men he did not mind, but the steady eyes of the woman--
Forget her, and look about you, Tyr. This is a room of the Old Ones, with its silver and black-glass windows arching a hundred feet up along the wall, and the hooded eagle design carven into the stone and wood. A highbacked chair stood empty on a rostrum as the man who usually filled it stood with the others, watching him. This was wealth, from the priceless red damask drapes at the windows to the hand-laid tiles beneath his feet.
It was no use. Her dark eyes were too steady.
"A lie," said one of the Old Ones calmly. "No man could do what he did."
"He is no man, sire. He is the one the Trylla worship. He is--Tyr!"
They started at that. The pilot had told his story cleverly. He grinned with self-appreciation as the murmurs and the cries rewarded him. Tyr knew the closer scrutiny of the eyes beneath drawn brows. They ate him up, those eyes. Especially the eyes of the woman.
A lean man with a bald head and iron-grey mustache stepped forward and walked around Tyr, his glittering eyes probing. Shaking his head dubiously, he said, "Katha, you're our biochemical expert. Can it be?"
The woman with the black hair came toward him, swaying gracefully.
"I must make tests, Space Commander," she said, and Tyr liked the hoarse vibrancy of her voice. It sent tingles down his spine. But maybe that was the black eyes of her that smiled up at him as she asked, "Is it true, what he says?"
"Yes, it's true. I outran their planes. I could have killed them, but I did not choose to."
"Then why didn't you?" she smiled.
"Because I--show me to your commander. I want to treat with him. That is why I suffered capture. I will offer peace for peace. All I ask--"
The lean man with the bald head came around in front of Tyr and stared at him with cold eyes.
"I am Space Commander Ronald Mason," he said flatly. "I am in charge of Expeditionary Space Force to the Fornax Cluster. You will offer peace? But there is no war."
Mason smiled, but Tyr saw the flecks of passion deep in his ice-blue eyes. "The Trylla are a free race."
Tyr said patiently, "The Trylla worship me. They think I am a god. I know, and you know, that I am nothing of the sort. Yet I would help them, if I could. You cannot keep me here, if I seek to escape. I can plunge this planet into the bloodiest war you ever saw. But I do not want to do that. I seek only peace. Peace, and some sort of pride for the Trylla, that they may once again hold up their heads--"
Mason interposed, "A laudable desire. But the Trylla are quite content. Otho tells me they will make no trouble. As for your idle boast of escaping--"
Space Commander Mason gestured and turned away with, "Test him, Katha. See why his responses vary so far from the norm."
Red anger beat up in Tyr in mounting pulsings. He bit into his lip and eased up to the tips of his toes. His muscles writhed. He--
A cool hand touched his forearm. The black eyes were there again, and the red mouth was smiling at him.
"The tests? Please?"
"Follow me."
The room was big and white, and fantastically clean. Chrome and plasticine gleamed and shone under the bluish-white ceiling that diffused soft brightness into every corner. A fluoroscope machine stood against the north wall. On tables were set scalpels and needles and rolls of cotton. Electronic ray-machines, microscopes and cyclotroncancereas peered beyond them. This was the biochemical science of the Old Ones inside four walls.
Katha closed the door behind her and loosed her black cloak. She was garbed in black blouse with a star-and-bar in silver threaded into the material. Tight trousers, white, gave her a streamlined look.
"Be comfortable, please. This will not hurt, what I am about to do."
Tyr watched her roll a big machine out, saw her thrust a needle with a handle into a jar of white liquid. She saw him watching her, and laughed softly.
"You are like a caged animal. You do not like walls, do you?"
"No. I prefer the desert."
"You have spent all your life on the desert?"
"All. Ever since I was small."
She turned from a wad of cotton that she was unrolling to regard him thoughtfully from under long black lashes.
"A boy. What of your parents?"
"I don't remember them, if there were any to remember. The first thing I recall is sand under my feet, and running. The sun was always my friend. I love the sun. It feeds me. I need nothing to exist, other than the sun."
Her left hand was warm where it caught his wrist. The damp cotton was swept across his flesh swiftly.
Katha held his hand in hers and said, "I am going to draw blood. It will hurt--a little." As the ruby liquid oozed from his wrist, the woman went on speaking. "And you cannot recall anything beyond that? Only that you were a boy, and that you grew up?"
"Only that. It was many years before I saw another ... human. The Trylla are not desert-dwellers. They like their cities. But I saw a caravan, and came close to examine it, and when the guards saw me, I ran so swiftly they started rumors."
Her mouth smiled in amusement as she walked across the room.
"No wonder. A man who can outrun three aircraft is quite a runner."
"From that began the tales about me. A hunter would shoot and miss. That started my invincibility legend. After many years, during which I found the Tower, they sent a delegation to me, to ask me to be their god, to take the ruby throne."
"How did you learn to speak, if you never knew other men and women?"
Tyr paused. Some of his education he had gotten from the books in the Tower. His other knowledge, and it was vast, he secured from eavesdropping in the narrow alleys of Yawarta.
But he said, "Oh, I just picked it up."
"The tower you mention. What is that?"
"An old building I broke into. It stands by itself on the Desert of the Whipping Wind."
"Can you read?"
"No," he lied.
She was sliding a splinter of glass under a frosted screen, and depressing a button, and bending. Tyr watched, wondering what she sought.
"That is too bad," she murmured. "For if you--you--you--ohh!"
Her face whitened as she stared at him.
"What is it?"
"Your blood ... if it is blood. It is so--so different!"
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