Down to a Sunless Sea

25 The Serpent

They discussed the marvels they had seen later, once the festivities had concluded. The outlaws regarded the phenomenon from the viewpoint of their superstitions.

“It was sorcery—black sorcery—and naught else more!” growled Tuan with truculence and aversion. Will Harbin shook his white head.

“It was a lot more than that,” said the older man. “Telepathic communion? A shared illusion, projected into the minds of those in the audience? That fellow Hathera seemed to be in charge somehow, as if he was sharing telepathically his own imaginings. …”

“Yeah, but did we see what we thought we saw?” demanded Brant.

“Only a camera could give us the answer to that question, Jim,” said Harbin. “But I don’t think so, not at all. The illusions were projected into our minds, and the visual centers of the brain translated them as floating shapes of color.”

“Looked damned real,” muttered Brant.

“Remember how we all joined hands?” asked Will Harbin. “Each human body projects a very weak electrical field. And thought itself is electrical in nature, for the brain is, among other things, an electrochemical battery. No, joining hands linked our electrical fields into communion, like they used to do way back in the old days at seances. Hathera then drew upon the communion of minds to conduct a symphony of color-illusions. …”

They talked about the thing a bit more, but gave it up as just another baffling mystery, one of the many Mars concealed in her ancient heart.

Garden of Eden, or Fairyland? Brant wondered: maybe a little of both.

Later on that “night” as they slept, the Serpent at last reared its ugly head.

Brant was sleeping soundly, with Zuarra clasped naked in his arms, when rudely and suddenly roused. Tuan was looming over him, his expression ominous, his eyes cold and dangerous.

“What’s up?” growled Brant, coming awake all at once, like a startled jungle thing.

“Is it you, O Brant, have thieved the f’yagha weapons from me?” demanded the chieftain, fiercely.

“Which weapons?”

Tuan, in hissing tones, said that the brace of power guns were missing from his side when he awoke. Brant grinned wolfishly, baring strong white teeth.

“You mean the pistols you stole from me, back at the camp?” he inquired sardonically. But Tuan was in a vicious temper, and refused to let the sarcastic implications of Brant’s questions faze him in the slightest.

“The same,” he snarled. Brant shrugged, opening his arms.

“Look around. See for yourself. I don’t have them—didn’t take them—and there’s nowhere to hide them here.”

Without another word, Tuan and his men searched the cubicle, and found no sign of the missing weapons.

“Then who else could have taken them, O Brant, answer that question if you can.”

Brant considered. As far as he knew, the Sea People of Zhah still had no idea that the weapons the visitors had borne with them were weapons. Will Harbin would hardly have run the risk of stealing the guns back from Tuan without discussing it first with Brant. And Zuarra had slept all night at his side.

That left only Suoli, who was much too fearful and timid to have risked arousing the ire of the outlaw chief.

Suoli or … Agila?

Brant mentioned this to Tumi The other grunted turned, stalked stiff-legged from the cubicle.

“Let us go and see,” he snapped at Brant over his shoulder.

They went to the cubiclc where Agila and Suoli had become accustomed to sleeping, and found it empty. Wild rage flared in the hard eyes of Tuan.

“Tuan should have slain that snake when he had the chance,” he muttered to himself between clenched teeth. Brant was about to propose a search of the palace for the missing pair, when the sounds of a distant commotion came to their ears. Cries of consternation and alarm were clearly audible in this many-roomed palace where the very walls were but flimsy screens of woven rattan.

“Come on!” Brant said to Tuan, setting off at a run in the direction from which the startled voices had come.

They pelted along, with Brant and Tuan side by side, and the others hot on their heels, shoving their way through cubicles and suites, rousing bewildered sleepers by their sudden interruption.

Before more than a few minutes had passed, they burst into one of the apartments of Prince Azuri, and stopped short. For they had found the scene of the commotion, and had burst upon a tableau whose nature froze the blood in Brant’s veins and raised the hackles on his nape.

“You … damned . . .fool!” he groaned helplessly. For they were all truly helpless now, and the Serpent had entered into Eden at last. And, which was very much worse, they had brought the Serpent with them, however unknowingly… .

Sprawled out stark naked in a jumble of soft, small cushions Prince Azuri lay. Blood ran slowly from a ghastly wound on the side of his head. The travelers could not at once tell whether the young monarch of Zhah was dead or merely unconscious. Then they saw he was not breathing.

The young woman who had been his companion earlier at the Dream Festival now crouched pale and wide-eyed and shivering with fear in the far corner. She seemed merely frightened and shocked, but was unharmed as far as they could tell.

Over the limp body of Prince Azuri, Agila crouched, snarling and showing his white teeth, like a wild beast brought to bay by hunting-hounds. In one hand he clenched one of the two power guns.

From the other hand, looped and trailing chains of jeweled fire flashed and glowed and glimmered. The lean wolf had been in the act of robbing Azuri’s body when he had been interrupted.

Zuarra clutched Brant’s arm, nodding in the other direction. “Oh, no!” she moaned under her breath. Brant looked in that direction and saw Suoli, shaking with fear or excitement— perhaps from both—holding the other power gun in trembling fingers.

Just before Brant and the others had burst upon the scene of the crime, some of the Sea People who dwelt in the palace had come upon it unexpectedly. It was from their throats had come the cries of alarm and shock and consternation which had alerted Brant and Tuan.

They stood frozen in disbelief, the naked youths and maidens. They seemed not so much angry as appalled, and it occurred to Brant that perhaps never before in their young lives had the Sea People observed a crime of violence. In this peaceful floating paradise, violence and crime, theft and murder, were doubtless completely unknown.

And Brant groaned a curse under his breath, staring at Agila. This dreamlike fairyland, with its innocent golden children had reminded him of the old story of Eden—of Eden before the Serpent. And now the Serpent was come at last into Eden, and they had brought him in… .

Agila caught Brant’s attention with a savage gesture.

“You speak their strange tongue a little, fyagh,” he snarled, his voice shaking as if he was dangerously near to losing his self-control. “Tell them that these things we hold are weapons of great power, weapons that can slay from afar, and of power so great that at will we could bring this city down upon their heads!”

“Agila, don’t be more of a fool than you already are,” said Brant swiftly. “Put down the guns, you and Suoli and surrender. These are a people given to peaceful way, at very most, they will drive you out of the city, and the two of you can easily fend for yourselves in the fungus forests of the mainland—”

The cold, unwinking black eye of his own power gun stabbed in the direction of Brant’s gut. “Do as I say,” hissed Agila, his eyes wild and wary.

Tuan caught Brant’s eye. “Do as the dog orders,” whispered the outlaw chief. “Or we are all dead men.”

Just then a newcomer came pushing through the shock-frozen crowd of the Sea People, and stopped abruptly at the scene before him. Brant recognized the man as Hathera, he who had orchestrated the Dream Festival earlier, and who seemed in a position of some authority in the palace of Zhah.

Hathera said nothing, not even bothering to inquire what had happened here. He looked sorrowfully at the naked body of his Prince, sprawled in an awkward position like that of a jointed puppet whose strings have suddenly been cut.

“Aihee!” moaned Hathera in sobbing tones. “Aihee, O my brethren! Behold the young Prince, the beautiful Prince, struck down by the hand of one that was a visitor in his own city and a guest in his own house!” And he swayed, moaning a soft, crooning, wordless song. One by one all of the other Sea People began to sway to the same slow rhythm, joining their voices to his own.

“Aihee, aihee,” they chanted. And strangely there was no anger in their expressions, only sadness, a deep, heart-aching sadness that touched Brant to his soul.

“Aihee, my brethren, come … let us join minds in memory of our fallen Prince, Azuri the Beautiful,” moaned Hathera softly, and he closed his eyes as if concentrating, as did all of the Sea People in the room.

And Brant’s guts went ice-cold, for he knew exactly what was about to happen—