Man of Two Worlds Page 19

  There was blood covering his hand and it streamed down his face and neck, lie could feel the warmth of it inside his leather shirt. All the conditioning of Kronweld fell away from him then and the redness and the smell of the blood was like a drug in his throat.

  He lunged about, looking for any more who dared attack from the rear. Automatically he dodged a heavy stone and watched it drop on the other side, felling a mobster with a blow in the temple.

  The horse seemed to share his own blood lust. With sharp screams it pawed the air and lunged upon the attackers. Just in time, Ketan saw a hand bearing a knife towards the horse’s exposed belly and the coil of rope swept down to obliterate the face of the man that held it.

  He was near enough now to feel the intensity of the flames, to see that Elta was hanging limp with her eyes closed, overcome by the smoke and the heat that billowed about her. Her dress—an idle part of Ketan’s mind noted that it was her induction robes—was browned and beginning to burn. With fury that rose with the flames, he lashed unmercifully the horse’s flanks. He leaned down and stabbed a man in the throat and crushed another’s face with his boot.

  Then the horse screamed and surged away from the flames. Ketan turned the coil again upon its flanks and reined it nearer until its forelegs rose in the air and smashed down into the burning wood, scattering embers into the mob.

  He slashed out once and a portion of the bonds parted. he screamed out Elta’s name to keep her from falling upon her face into the flames, but she could not hear him.

  The horse lunged away again, whimpering in terror and Ketan laid open the flesh of its flanks. lie drove it nearer and threw a loop about the post above Elta’s head and twisted it about the pommel of the saddle.

  The heat of the fire was agonizing. It seared his throat and scorched his lungs. He could smell the hair of his head and upon his arms burning.

  While the mob howled in frenzied frustration he hacked at the ropes. The horse screamed and lunged in the flames until it nearly uprooted the post.

  Then Elta was free. Her sudden weight as she sagged away from the post almost unseated Ketan and plunged him into the white-hot embers below. It was a superhuman effort that held him in the saddle and allowed him to drag Elta’s unconscious form across the horse. He cut away the loop and burst away from the flames.

  If the cries of the mob had been savage before, there was no name for the frustrated howl that rose into the night as they saw Ketan bearing the limp body of Elta away from the fire.

  Renewed in insanity, they came at him again and surged about the burned and wounded flanks of the horse. Burdened now by the additional weight of the girl, the horse slowed and came to a near halt in the midst of the sea of hate.

  Ketan struck out with renewed savagery, but he knew instinctively that his handicap of Elta’s unconscious form was too great. It would be only a matter of moments now. They were surging forward with clubs and beat upon his legs and body and struck at the horse. His entire attention was spent diverting blows away from the still form of Elta.

  He was glad with a part of his mind that this had happened before he made the terrible mistake of turning the Seeking of Kronweld over to these savages. It would be a thousand times better in the hands of the Statists than here. Perhaps the Statists were not what the Illegitimates had pretended at all. True, there was the series of incidents in Kronweld to indicate the Statists were enemies. In any event, when Kronweld did come, they would crush both Statists and Illegitimates alike.

  He did not notice the other nucleus of battle and confusion until it was almost upon him. He heard the rising thunder of a bellowing voice in his ear, and the wave of mob cry slowly ebbed. He turned to see William Douglas and John Edwards battling towards his side.

  The great, rolling voice of William Douglas was surging out above the cries about him, drowning them, subduing them, all but the knot of attackers surrounding him.

  William Douglas reined the horse up and brought its forelegs crashing down upon the backs of the outermost ring. His hand swung a great club about his head, bringing it down in lightning strokes that crushed skulls.

  “Stop! Listen to me!” His voice bellowed. Now the thudding of his club against heads could be heard above the sound of the mob. They fell back, dazed and uncomprehending, drained of the emotion that had ignited them and wearied of trying to match the berserk fury in their midst.

  The three on horseback seemed reluctant to cease their clubbing and slashing but any more would have been like beating a dead body.

  William Douglas rose in his saddle. “These two have come back, back from beyond the Selector. Do you know what that means?”

  The terrified silence of the now frightened villagers was as if a sudden vacuum had appeared to cancel all sound. Then William Douglas went on in a lower voice that still carried to the outermost fringe of the gathering.

  As if he sensed the thoughts that were in Ketan’s mind, he said, “For three generations we have waited and hoped for the return of those who have gone through, hoping for the heritage of liberation that we believed they might bring us. Tonight you have forfeited all right to that heritage. You deserve to grub and slave for ten times three generations for this night.

  “Go to your homes!”

  Like a whispering, retreating wave, they dispersed so swiftly that it was almost impossible to see where they had gone. Ketan raised Elta in his arms and followed as William Douglas led the way through the deserted streets—deserted except for the two score dead that lay sprawled upon them.

  The silence was like the calm on the eve of a hurricane, quiet, portentous, hot and breathless. Ketan’s hate still burned. He knew that it would never die. No means of extermination would be too unmerciful for these barbarians.

  William Douglas did not speak until they came to the end of the straight, narrow street to the house where he had stayed. “We will stay here,” he said. “Elta will be cared for. I will get Carmen to come.”

  Ketan said nothing. Though the two Illegitimates had fought for him and saved his life he could not forget that they were Illegitimates and that William Douglas had only wanted to keep him from seeing the burning, until he found out who it was.

  William Douglas was no less a savage than the rest of them.

  There were no signs of other Illegitimates about. Ketan took Elta into the house and laid her on the crude bed. She stirred as he moved her. William Douglas bent over and examined her closely. He saw her breathing was good.

  “Overcome by smoke, but she’ll be all right. Open those windows and see that she gets plenty of air. The burns on her legs will be somewhat painful for a time, but they aren’t serious. I’ll treat them and have food brought to us.”

  John Edwards merely stood against the far wall, staring out the window. Ketan saw his arm was bloody and hanging limp. What thoughts were in the Illegitimate’s mind, Ketan could not know.

  William Douglas returned in a moment with materials to treat Elta’s burns. He left the injuries unbandaged and turned to Ketan.

  “Looks as if you need something yourself.”

  Ketan realized dully that the long slash on his face was sending out waves of pain, but he had forgotten it. His legs and body were bruised and cut by the blows of clubs and rocks. Silently, he submitted to William Douglas’ examination and care.

  He watched with a distant, objective curiosity as the marks on his body were washed free of blood, and compounds of herbs were applied and bandaged to the cuts and bruises.

  It was a strange and curious procedure. If such wounds had been inflicted in Kronweld no one would have done anything to them. He would have washed them, and if they swelled and flowed with the yellow compound as they usually did he would have taken the self death to alleviate the pain, or, if he had refused that, he would have been taken to the Place of Dying and abandoned.

  There was no question of mercy or pity in such treatment. It was the only possibility. The taboos surrounding the investigation of life processes had
made Seeking into the possibility of repair of sickness and injury impossible.

  Ketan wondered how many thousands of lives would have been saved through the simple remedies of William Douglas if the Temple of Birth had never been allowed to perpetrate its blinding restrictions upon Kronweld.

  When he was through with Ketan, William Douglas set John Edwards’ arm and attended to his own needs.

  Carmen appeared with food that had been prepared in another part of the house. As if possessed of some guilty knowledge, .she glanced abashed at Ketan and did not speak. They ate in silence.

  At the end of the meal William Douglas rose awkwardly and looked at Elta. She was sleeping from the effects of the herb drug he had given her.

  John Edwards had gone to his own house, but William Douglas sat down near Ketan and began speaking in a low voice.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I can guess,” he said. “I’m not going to try to explain or persuade. Perhaps I just want to hear myself talk to keep from thinking too much. Any time you want me to stop, just say so.

  “What you saw tonight must have been like a knife through you. I know, bccaii.sc I have lived among the Statists for so many years. Their blood lust is more refined.

  “Ages ago, men used to breed animals. One called the dog, for example, was originally a wild animal with no particular characteristics except living and fighting and hunting for food. But man took individual dogs of slightly variant characteristics and bred them. After hundreds of years, there were scores of different kinds of dogs as different from each other as if they were different animals.

  “That’s how I think of man, himself, a huge collective animal. Every trait of gentleness, beauty, brutality and savagery is there. Ages ago we existed and survived in this welter of contrasts. All individuals realized the existence of them.

  “Then Richard Simons’ Selector began breeding this great animal for distinctive characteristics. The scientific and the artistic and the poetic were selected out and segregated in Kronweld. Savagery and tyranny were left behind. But there was still something good remaining, and that, too, separated itself by its own force.

  “That was the independence, the lighting love of unhampered rights to live without being owned body and mind by a tyrannical so-called superior class.

  “These were the Illegitimates.

  “You’ve seen them tonight. You’ve seen their hate and their blood lust. It’s not them, but it’s a part of them. They’ll still give every particle of energy to the over throw of the Statists and the establishment of a just and scientific way of life. But they’ll demand their freedom. They prefer death to anything less, and they’re savage and cruel to any who challenge their freedom. They need your science —perhaps you could use some of their vigor and independence.”

  Ketan did not answer. His eyes stared unseeingly before him. After a long time, William Douglas went on.

  “It happened about the same way once before. The greatest pioneers and freedom loving people that ever lived upon this continent became for a time the most brutal and savage. They were among those who first founded a civilization here, but they became imbued with a rigidity and intolerance that led them to burn and drown and torture members out of their own midst merely upon accusations arising out of whims and selfishness and fear. They were called the Puritans. You will read about them in the histories in the pinnacle.”

  In the room next to Elta’s, Ketan lay awake on the pile of skins thrown in a corner long after William Douglas had gone to sleep. He heard Elta moaning faintly and tossing about in her drugged sleep. Carmen was sleeping in the room with her.

  His thoughts were upon the scenes of that night and upon the words of William Douglas. And now that Elta was here, and miraculously safe, he knew there was no great urgency to return to Kronweld as there was before. He could give the full powers of his attention to the commission of Richard Simons.

  He wondered if he had not by accident stumbled upon the reason for Igon’s failure. Perhaps Igon had discovered just in time the brutality and ignorant savagery of this world and judged it not worth returning to.

  Surely that must be it.

  Then Ketari recalled his own actions. He recalled the blind emotion that had poured through him in that first instant when he saw Elta, and guided him through to her. He had not believed a brain, his or any other, capable of such feeling as he had experienced that night.

  Slowly, he realized what William Douglas had implied, but not stated: That within each man as well as in the race, there were all the contrasts of beauty and hate and love and savagery. He thought of the Statist hunters who flew out of the sky and burned the forest villages and killed the Illegitimates like animals for mere sport of it.

  He asked himself: Was the action of the Illegitimates logical in the face of that?

  The only answer he could find within him was yes.

  With their ignorance, their inherited crudities of life, the hopelessness of their position, there was no other possible reaction except the most brutal retaliation of which they were capable. They were like those others, of whom William Douglas had spoken, who first founded the nation that had become greatest on this land, except that the Illegitimates were in a more hopeless position.

  They would have to be taught. That would be the job of the men of Kronweld, to fuse into themselves the heritage of this world of Earth, and then amalgamate with the Illegitimates to form the race of which Richard Simons and his scientists had dreamed.

  His sleep was short and soon sunlight burst in upon him. He opened his eyes a moment, trying to recall the terror of the nightmare he had dreamed. Then he sat up with the sharp realization that it was no dream. Elta was here. He had fought off on entire village of Illegitimates to get to her.

  There was a faint, welcome sound from the next room. It was his name upon her lips. He dressed quickly and went in as Carmen motioned from the doorway. She smiled and looked at him without condemnation.

  Elta was lying where the sunlight fell upon her hair. She was smiling through the pain of the burns.

  “I came, didn’t I ?” she said.

  “Elta!”

  He fell to his knees beside the’ bed and buried his face against her.) She felt his body tremble with a great, subdued sob.

  “Elta.” He raised his head and repeated her name softly. “I had thought that I should never see you! again. Tell me what happened; how you came here.”

  She looked at him hesitantly. “I wonder … how much you know. Have you learned … everything?”

  “Almost everything,” he said. .“Except about you—”

  “I am a Statist,” she said simply. The earth seemed to sink away beneath him and a cold breath swept over him.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Listen to me, Ketan, and believe me. For ten tara I have been in Kronweld. With Leader Hoult and Teacher Daran I passed knowledge and discoveries of Kronweld back to Earth and the Statists for their own uses. I saw no harm in it. I didn’t realize that there were others on Earth besides the Statists who were worthy of consideration. The great masses of people —I looked upon them as do all Statists. They are considered breeding cattle for the brains that go to Kronweld to develop more luxuries and riches for the Statists.

  “But then a terrible plan was conceived by the Statists. They grew to believe that they were as capable as the Seekers of Kronweld and they feared that Kronweld would soon discover the Gateway and invade Earth, wiping out their rule and their luxury. They decided to wipe out Kronweld. Only one thing more they wanted, and that was the details of the machines you use to employ atomic energies. When they are certain of their mastery of these principles, they plan to turn those forces upon Kronweld and destroy it.

  ‘When I learned of this, I rebelled. I refused to go further.

  Neither Hoult nor Daran could understand what was being done on atomic principles. I was the only one of them able to understand, and they forced me to give it to them on thr
eat of killing you because they knew I … that we were to make our companionship, to be married, as they say on Earth.”

  “You bought my life with that! Why didn’t you tell me? I could have protected myself.”

  “No. Not from Hoult. You saw how easily he had his way with you when you appeared before the Council. It was all a farce, your appearance there. Hoult knew exactly what would happen. You could never have protected yourself from him.”

  “What of Matra? Who was she? When I first met her she wanted to kill you. In the Temple she told me she understood what you were doing, and that I should trust you.” “Matra was a Statist,” said Elta. “She came to the Temple more years ago than anyone can remember. She was the main channel of distribution through which information came from Kronweld to the Statists. That’s what we thought.

  “Now I know that during all that time sh£ was actually working against Statists, withholding information, distorting it so that Statist engineers couldn’t make sense out of it. In a thousand ways she retarded the flow.

  “She knew me and Hoult and Daran because we had to work with her. When she learned of the plan to destroy Kronweld, she caine to you to get you to kill us. But her time was too short to tell you everything you needed to know.

  “If Leader Hoult had not interrupted you that night, you … you might have come up behind me while I was waiting for you and killed me.”

  “Elta!”

  “I told Matra that I was going through the Gateway to destroy it and the Selector, scaling off the worlds forever. I convinced her that I was sincere and she gave me the ring which was supposed to protect me somehow. I don’t know how, because I never got to use it.”

  “Destroy the Gateway! But you would not have been able to come back!”

  “It would have been worth the cost. I was willing to give you up for that. I knew you could never live among the Statists. There was nothing that would keep them from their intention to destroy. I had the choice of my own happiness with you, or seeing the destruction of Kronweld. To have gone into Dark Land as we had thought to do once was a wild and wonderful scheme, but we could not have lived there. The Statists will destroy it all when they come.