The Sun Smasher

CHAPTER V

The simple conviction in his voice assured Banning that this was no trick. He relaxed his grip on Rolf, feeling his spine go cold with the knowledge that something stood behind him. Very cautiously, be turned his head.

Rolf said, “Steady on. It's been ten years since they saw you last. Give them time. Above everything, don't run."

Banning did not run. He stood immobile, frozen, staring.

Creatures had come out through the city gate. They had come very silently while he was occupied with Rolf, and they had thrust out a half circle beyond the two men that made flight impractical. They were not human. They were not animal, either. They were not like anything Banning had ever seen in or out of nightmare. But they looked fast and strong. They looked as though they could kill a man quite easily, without even working up a sweat.

"They're yours,” Rolf whispered. “Guardians and servants and devoted dogs to the Valkars. Speak to them."

Banning looked at them. They were man-sized but not man-shaped. Bunched, hunched bodies with several legs, spidery and swift and scuttling. There was no hair on them, only a smooth greyish skin that was either naturally patterned or tattooed in brilliant colors and intricate designs. Beautiful, really. Nearly everything — has some beauty, if you look for it—

Nearly everything—

"What shall I say?"

"Remind them that they're yours!"

Small round heads and faces — child faces, with round chins and little noses and great round eyes. What was it looked back at him out of those eyes?

The creatures stirred and lifted their long, thin arms. He glimpsed a glint of cruel talons. One of them stood in front of the others, as a leader stands, and it spoke suddenly in a sweet, shocking whisper.

"Only the Valkar may pass this gate,” it said. “You die."

And Banning said, “Look closer. Are your memories so short?"

What was it in their eyes? Wisdom? Cruelty? Alien thoughts that no human mind could know?

"Have you forgotten me?” he cried. “In ten short years, have you forgotten the Valkar?"

Silence. The great white monoliths that marked the gate reared up their broken tops, and on them were carvings, half obliterated, of the same spidery warders that guarded them still.

They moved, with a dry swift clicking of their multiple feet, their hands reaching out toward Banning. He knew that those talons could tear him to ribbons with unearthly swiftness. There was no safety in flight or struggle, he must put his life on the gamble. He held out his hands toward them, forcing himself to greet them.

"My spiderlings,” he said.

The one who had spoken before, the leader, voiced a shrill, keening cry. The others picked it tip, until the stone walls of the city threw it back in wailing echoes, and now Banning saw quite clearly what it was that looked at him out of those round child eyes. It was love. And suddenly, that transfiguring emotion made them less hideously alien to his eyes. The leader caught his hand and pressed it against its grey, cool forehead, and the physical contact did not shock him. And this, in its own way, frightened him.

"What is it?” he asked of Rolf in English. Rolf laughed, with relief strong now in his voice.

"Sohmsei used to rock your cradle and ride you on his back. Why would you be afraid of him?"

"No,” said Banning stubbornly. “No, I don't believe that. I can't."

Rolf stared at him incredulously. “You mean that even now you can doubt — But they know you! Listen, Kyle — millennia ago the Valkars brought the Arraki from the world of a fringing star far out on the Rim. They have loved and served the Valkars ever since. They serve no one else. The fact that you're alive this minute is proof of who you are."

Sohmsei's gaze slid sidelong, and he whispered to Banning, “I know this one, called Rolf. Is it your will that he live, Lord?"

"It is my will,” said Banning, and a deep doubt assailed him. These creatures, the ease with which be had learned the language, the instinctive knowledge of what to do that came, to him at times from outside his conscious mind, the enigma at Greenville — could it be true? Was he really the Valkar, lord of this city, lord of a ruined empire that once had spanned the stars?

No. A man had to cling to some reality, or he was lost. Neil Banning was real, life as he had known it was real. The Arraki were — unhuman, but not supernatural. They could be fooled, like men, by a resemblance. Rolf had chosen a convincing substitute, that was all.

He said as much, in English, and Rolf shook his head. “Obstinacy was always your biggest fault,” be said. “Ask Sohmsei.” Dropping into his own tongue again, he went on, “This is your homecoming, Kyle. I leave you to it. The others will be arriving soon, and I must be on the plateau to meet them. I'll bring the captains here, when all have come."

He saluted the Arraki and went away up the broken road. Banning looked after him briefly. Then he forgot him. All his fear was gone and he was eager to see the city.

"Will you go home now, Lord?” asked Sohmsei in a wistful whisper.

"Yes,” said Banning, “I will go home."

He strode in through the ruined gate, with Sohmsei on his right hand and the others clustering round in a piping, scuttling, adoring crowd. He could feel the adoration like an almost tangible wave, and he thought that the ancient Valkars had done well in picking their bodyguards. These could be trusted.

How much and how far, he was to find out later.

The city was enormous, a Babylon of the stars, and when it was in its glory it must have blazed splendidly with light and color, and roared with sound, and glittered with wealth of countless worlds. Banning could picture the embassies coming down that ruined road, princes from Spica and kings from Betelgeuse and half-barbaric chieftains from the wild suns of Hercules, to bend their knees in the King City of the Valkars. And now there was only silence and the red twilight of Antares to fill the streets and the shattered palaces.

"It will live again,” whispered Sohmsei, “now that you are home."

For some reason, Banning answered, “Yes."

A great avenue ran inward from the gate. Banning followed it, striding over the sunken paving blocks, and the feet of his escort clicked and rustled on the stone. Ahead, on the very edge of the lake and dominating the whole city by its sheer size and might, was a palace of white marble. Banning went toward it. The avenue widened into a mighty concourse flanked on either side by statues of tremendous size. A grim smile touched Banning's lips. Many of the figures had fallen to block the way, and those that still stood were mutilated by the brutal hand of Time. But when they all stood whole and sound, mighty figures reaching out toward the stars and grasping them with proud hands, they must have dwarfed any human embassy into insignificance, driving home to them the overwhelming strength of the Empire, so that they would reach the throne-room with sufficiently chastened minds.

Now the hands of the statues were broken and the stars had fallen from them, and the eyes that watched Banning's passage were blind and filled with dust.

Banning mounted the steps of the palace.

"Lord,” said Sohmsei, “since you left, the inner porch has fallen. Come this way—"

He led Banning to a smaller door at one side. Behind it there was wreck and ruin. Great blocks of stone had fallen, and the main vault of the roof was open to the sky. But the inner arches still stood, and fragments of fretted galleries, and wonderful carvings. The main hall, he thought, might have held ten thousand people, and at the far end, dim and shadowy in the blood-red light, he saw a throne. And he was astonished, for he felt now a hot, angry sense of wrong.

Sohmsei scuttled ahead, and Banning followed, picking his way among the fallen stones.

There was a ruined gallery, and then a lower wing directly on the lake. Banning guessed that here had been the personal apartments of the Valkars. The wing was in fairly good repair, as though long efforts had been made to keep it habitable, and when he entered it he saw that it was clean and cared for, the furniture and hangings all in place, every ornament and trophy polished bright.

"We have kept it ready,” Sohmsei whispered. “We knew that some day you would return."

"You have done well,” said Banning, and shook his head irritably — this pilgrimage was having too disturbing an effect on his emotions. But Sohmsei only smiled.

Slowly Banning wandered through the deserted rooms. Here, more than anywhere else in the city, he was conscious of the weight of centuries of unbroken rule, of pride and tradition, and of the human individuals, the men and women who had made it so. It came out here in little things, in personal belongings, in portraits and curios and all manner of objects collected over the centuries from other lands and stars, used and treasured and lived with. It was sad to see them as they were now, lost and forgotten except by the Arraki who had guarded them—

There was one room with tall windows looking out over the lake. The furnishings, now a little ragged, were rich but plain. There were books, and maps, and starcharts and model ships and many other things. There was a massive table, and beside it was a chair, not new. Banning sat down in it, and the worn places received his body with comfortable familiarity. Through a door to his right was another room with a great tall bed that bore the sunburst symbol on its purple curtains. On the wall at his left, between the bookshelves, was a full-length portrait — of himself.

A cold fear caught him, deep inside. He felt Neil Banning begin to slip away, as a veil is drawn away to show another face, and he sprang up again, turning his back on the portrait, on the chair that fitted him too well, on the bed with the royal hangings. He held on hard to Neil Banning, and strode out onto the terrace, beyond the windows, where be could breathe again, and think more clearly.

Sohmsei followed him.

They were alone in the red twilight, looking down at the darkening lake. And Sohmsei murmured, “You come home as your father years ago came home. And we Warders were glad, since not for many generations had our lords been with us, and we were lonely."

"Lonely?” A strange pathos touched Banning's heart. These unhumans, faithful to their lords the Valkars through all the dead ages after the fall of empire, waiting on their ruined world, waiting and hoping — And finally a Valkar had come back. Rolf had told him, of how Kyle Valkar's father had returned to the old throne-world that all others shunned in fear, that his son might be born to the memory of the Valkar greatness.

"Lord,” Sohmsei was whispering, “on the night when you were born, your father laid you in my arms and said, “He is your charge, Sohmsei. Be his shadow, his right arm, the shield at his back."

Banning said, “And you were that Sohmsei."

"I was,” said Sohmsei. “After your parents died, I was that. I hated even Rolf, because he could teach you man-arts that I could not. But now, Lord, you are different."

Banning started a little. “Different?"

"Yes, Lord. You are the same in body. But your mind is not the same."

Banning stared into the dark strange eyes, the wise unhuman loving eyes, and a deep shudder shook him. And then there was a sound in the sky and he looked up to see a bright mote flash across the vast face of Antares, sinking in the west. The mote swept in and became a ship, and vanished out of sight beyond the palace, and Banning knew that it had landed on the plateau.

It seemed cold to Banning, very cold, as though the dusky lake exhaled a chill.

"You must not tell the others that my mind is different, Sohmsei,” he whispered. “If it is known, it could be my death."

Another ship dropped down, toward the plateau, and then another. It was growing dark.

"They will not know,” said Sohmsei.

Banning still felt cold. These alien Arraki, then, had parapsychic powers of some kind? And this one had sensed that mentally he was not the Valkar?

Presently, into the darkening rooms with a swift, rustling rush came another of the Arraki, smaller and lighter than Sohmsei, and less brilliantly marked.

"It is Keesh, my son,” said Sohmsei. “He is young, but he shows some promise. When I am dead, he and his will serve the Valkar."

"Lord,” said Keesh, and bowed his head. “The man Rolf, and others, come. Many others. Shall the Warders let them enter?"

"Let them enter,” Banning said. “Bring them here."

"Not here,” said Sohmsei. “It is not fitting. A Valkar receives his servants on his throne."

Keesh sped away. Sohmsei led Banning back through the darkening shadowy rooms and ruins. He was glad of the guidance as he stumbled over the broken blocks. But in the great main hall, Arraki with torches were now entering.

The gusty red torchlight was almost lost in that vast, ruined gloom. But through the great rent in the ceiling, two ghost-like ocher moons now shed a faint low. By the uncertain light, Banning followed Sohmsei to the black stone seat. It was uncarved, stark — its very lack of ornament speaking a pride too great for show. Banning took his seat upon it, and a great whispering sigh went up from the Arraki.

It would be easy, Banning thought, sitting in this place to imagine oneself a king. He could look past the ruined porch, down that great avenue of colossi, and see other Arraki torches approaching with Rolf and the others. Easy to imagine that those were great princes of distant suns, nobles and merchants of the mighty galactic empire of long ago, bringing the tribute of far-off worlds to their king—

King? King of shadows, posturing here in a dead throne-city on a ruined, lost world! His subjects only the Arraki, the dogs of the Valkars who had staved faithful though the stars crashed. His royalty only a poor pretense, a phantom like the long-dead empire of old—

Banning's hands clutched the cold stone arms of the throne. He was thinking too much like the Valkar he was supposed to be.

"You're no king or king's blood,” he told himself fiercely. “You're Rolf's pawn, an Earthling he’ use for his own plans — if you let him."

Flanked by the torches, Rolf and at least twenty other men came down the great hall. They looked askance uneasily at the Arraki as they came. The dread of the Warders was still alive, and it was plain to see why this old king-world was visited by few.

Banning could see their faces now. Except for Captain Behrent and some of the officers from his own ship, they were all strangers to him, and they were a mixed lot. Some had the look of honest fighting-men, soldiers devoted to a cause. Others looked like arrant jailbait with no loyalty to anything but their own greed. They stopped ten paces away, looking up at the dark throne on which Banning sat with Sohmsei hovering back in the shadows.

"Hail, Valkar!” Behrent gave the salutation, and the others made it a ragged cheer.

Rolf stepped up toward the throne. He spoke in a low voice, in English. “Let me handle them. I think I've won them over."

Banning demanded in an angry whisper, “Won them over to what?"

"To a raid on Rigel,” Rolf answered evenly. “We're going there, Kyle. Jommor is there, and he can restore your memory. And when you remember again, we'll have the Hammer."

Banning was stricken dumb by the overwhelming boldness of the proposal. Rigel, the capital of the New Empire — to raid it secretly, with a handful of men — sheer madness!

It flashed across his mind that Rolf, then, did believe him to be the Valkar or he would not have made this plan. Or else, Rolf was playing an even deeper game of deception than he could fathom—

Rolf had made an elaborate bow, and was turning to present the captains.

Sohmsei murmured suddenly, “Lord, beware! There is treachery here — and death!"

Banning started. He remembered the strange parapsychic sense the Arraki had already showed. He felt his body go cold and tense.

Rolf had straightened, and his voice rolled through the great hall as he said loudly to Banning, “I've told them what you plan to do, Kyle! And I think every captain here will follow you!"