Tarrano the Conqueror by Ray Cummings (book club suggestions txt) 📕

For an hour I stood there. I could see Elza plainly. She had removed her mask. Her face was flushed, her lips laughing. Once, in a chance silence, her shout of applause rang out. The quality of abandonment in it turned me cold. Did I see Tarrano's hand move back to his belt? Was he intoxicating her? Then I saw Maida make a gesture—wave something from beneath her cloak at Elza. A scent to sober her? It seemed so, for Elza looked confused; and I saw Maida flash her a look of warning.

Abruptly, from an alcove near me, a group of girls rushed out. Their cloaks and white veils fell from them as they came my way—laughing as they ran for the doorway leading outside to the pool. I was in their way and they bumped into me; one of them gripped me. I tried to jerk loose, but she clung. A slim girl, enveloped in her long, white tresses. Her eyes laughed at me; her red mouth went up alluringly to my face.

"I love you—you, Jac Hallen." Her arms wound about my neck as she clung. I was trying to cast her off when her fingers lifted a corner of my mask.

"I was afraid you were not Jac Hallen." Her whisper was relieved, and it had suddenly turned swift and vehement. "I am sister to Maida—my name, Alda. I am to warn you. When Tarrano dances with the Red Woman—when they go up on the raised circle—you drop to the floor! You understand? Keep down, or the rays might strike you! But be here, inside, and watch. And afterward, go quickly to join the Princess and your Elza. You understand?"

She clung to me, with her slim, white body pressed against my cloak. To anyone watching us, she would have seemed merely making love. Her eyes were provocative; her lips mocking me. But she was whispering, "Drop to the floor when Tarrano dances with the Red Woman—drop or the rays might strike you!"

Another girl was plucking at me from behind. Alda shouted: "You shall not have him!" and cast me off. But I heard her whisper, "Come outside for a moment—then come back!"—and then, aloud, she cried to the other girl, "You shall not have him! He is coming to watch me dive and swim! I am more beautiful than you—you could not win him from me!"

I let them drag me out into the grove by the scented pool.

I realize that I am, by nature, not overly observant; and in those moments, when I stood out there beside the pool, I think I came most forcibly to appreciate how little I habitually observe that which is not readily apparent. An incident now occurred to bring it home to me; and, quite suddenly, a score of things which I had seen during the past two hours at the festival were made plain.

Music, feasting, merry-making, love! In the midst of it all, an undercurrent of events was flowing. Unseen events—but I had partly seen some of them, and now, at last, I began to understand.

In the main hall of the pavilion, midway to its roof, a line of mirrors was placed along the wall facing Tarrano. A hundred small mirrors, side by side. On them were moving images of what was taking place in different parts of the festival—so that Tarrano and the others might see the merry-making, not only in the pavilion, but elsewhere, as well. It was interesting to watch the mirrors—and sometimes amusing. The scene of a gay battle of boats in a nearby lagoon; the diving girls in the pools; a view from the sky above of the whole scene; another, looking upward at the color bombs bursting overhead; a bridge on which a dozen girls were besieged by as many men, who sought to climb upward from their boats underneath, flowers for missiles, and the alcholite fumes which held off the attackers, or, perchance, caused a girl to fall into the water, to be instantly captured.

Other mirrors, eavesdropping upon the secluded islands, making public, for the amusement of the spectators in the pavilion, the furtive love-making of couples who fancied themselves alone.

All this I had seen. And now I remembered that, occasionally, a mirror had gone dark, and then turned suddenly to a scene somewhere else. I understood now. Quiet incidents against Tarrano were in progress. The mirrors were being tampered with, that none of these events should be shown.

There were, scattered throughout the festival, fully a hundred men of Tarrano's guard. Some of them I knew by their uniforms; others were concealed by red masks and robes like myself. When first we entered the pavilion, some twenty or thirty of them had been there with us. But many of them did not stay; and now I remembered that, one by one, I had seen them slip away, lured by the slim, white shapes of girls who came from the pool to beguile them.

I realized now that these girls of the scented pool were very possibly all working for Maida. Most daring of all at the festival, these fifty girls who now disported themselves in the water at my feet. All beautiful, none beyond the first flush of earliest maturity. Slight, grey-white nymphs, laughing as they discarded their hampering veils, tossing their white hair as they plunged into the shimmering pool. Seemingly the most seductive, most abandoned of everyone.

Yet, as I stood there, I saw three of them climb from the water and, with gay shouts, rush into the pavilion. Back in a moment; and with them a flushed man—one of Tarrano's guards—flushed and flattered at their attention. His hat was gone, his robe disheveled, as the girls fought for him. They stopped quite close to me; and I saw that one of them was Alda.

"You shall not have him!" she shouted to her companions. "He is mine! He loves me—none of you!"

From her thick hair I saw her draw a tiny cylinder, wave it in the man's face. And, with another laugh, she flung her arms around his neck and fell with him into the water. I watched the splash and the ripples where they went down. In a moment, the girl came up—but the man did not. In all the confusion of the crowded pool, it was not very obvious.

A dozen, perhaps, of such incidents, which now, that I was alert to understand, were apparent. The mirrors might have shown some of them—but the mirrors always went dark just in time.

Tarrano's guards were disappearing. And now I saw a slaan skulking in the shadows of the shrubbery nearby. And I noticed, too, that this pool at my feet had a stream flowing outward from it—a waterway connecting it with the main lake. And I remembered the Earth man in sub-sea garb whom I had seen. Were there many Earth men down here in the water?

"When Tarrano dances with the Red Woman, you drop to the floor."

I remembered Alda's words and her admonition, "Be inside the pavilion." And presently I caught her glance as she was poised for a dive—and it seemed directing me to leave.

Wrapped in my drab cloak, I went back inside. The merry-making had increased; the place was more crowded than ever. I had been there but a moment when a gong sounded. The music stopped. In the hush Tarrano, on the balcony, rose to his feet.

"The tri-night hour[21] is here." He removed his mask; his face was grave, but a slight smile curved his thin lips. "Let us see ourselves now as we really are."

He slipped his robe from his shoulders and stood in his festive costume. For so slight a man, I was surprised at the strength of him. Bands of gold-metal encircled his naked torso; a broad girdle of purple cloth hung from his waist. His bare limbs were lean and straight; sandals of red were on his feet. And a band about his forehead with a single feather in it.

Yet, for it all, he was no male nada, but every inch a man. Gravely smiling, as, with a gesture, he bade them all discard their masks and robes. From overhead the colored lights turned white. And in the glare, the robes and masks were dropped. Costumes grotesque, some of them; others symbolic; others merely beautiful. Vivid colors. Dancers daringly garbed, with whom the girls from the pool now mingled.

A moment of breathless silence; then ripples of applause from the spectators. And then the music and the dancing went on.

Barbaric costumes? Some frankly imitated the bygone ages of Venus, Mars and Earth. But the spirit that prompted them was decadence—nothing more.

Presently, as I stood unmasked in my effeminate garb, holding myself aloof from the girls who would have carried me off to the dancing floor, I saw the roof of the pavilion roll back. The open sky spread above us. And from it came down an effulgence of silver light, from a source high overhead. It bathed us all in its soft radiance; and, simultaneously, the lights in the pavilion went out. A single golden shaft rested on Tarrano. Elza, Georg and Maida were still there. In the golden light I could see them quite plainly—could see that Elza was flushed with suppressed excitement. Not the alcholite fumes now. Georg, too, seemed very alert. And Maida. There was, indeed, a tenseness about them all—an air of vague expectancy which made my heart beat faster as I realized it.

Was Tarrano totally unaware of what was about to happen? Was he unaware of this hidden, lurking menace to him, which now, to me, was so obvious? I could not believe that; yet, he was imperturbable, solemn as ever.

A shaft of golden light upon Tarrano. The darkened chamber. The silver radiance coming down upon us in a shaft from the sky. A hush lay upon the room. The music had ceased; now it began again, very soft, ethereal. Everyone in the room was gazing upward. From high overhead in the silver shaft a shape appeared, slowly floating downward. A woman's figure. It came down, supported by what mechanical or scientific device I never knew. It seemed floating unsupported.

Within the pavilion, suspended in mid-air, I saw that it was a woman in filmy red veils. Poised on tip-toe in the air. Arms outstretched, with the red veils hanging from them like wings. A woman fully matured. White hair piled in coils on her head, with a huge, scarlet blossom in it. A face, somewhat heavy of feature, powdered white; with glowing eyes, dark lidded; and a scarlet mouth. A face, an expression in the smouldering eyes, the full lips half parted—a face and an expression that seemed the very incarnation of all that is sensuous in humans. The Red Woman! The living symbol of all that lay beneath this festive merry-making.

The Red Woman! For a moment she hovered there before us. A shaft of red light now came down from above. It caught her, bathed her in its lurid glow. On her face came a look of triumph, and a leer almost insolent, as slowly she began fluttering through the air toward Tarrano. He rose to meet her. Whispered something aside to Elza.

Close before him, the Red Woman hovered. And now a circle-dais from the floor came up to her. She rested upon it; began a slow, sinuous dance; one by one loosening the veils; the red light deepening until it painted her body red in lieu of the draperies.

No frivolous mockery here. Intense, smouldering eyes as she held her gaze on Tarrano's face and slowly raised her arms in invitation to him. At her gesture, he rose to his feet. Yet I knew he was not under her spell, for his lips were smiling, bantering.

But he rose obediently, and stepped from the balcony to the upraised dais. Around his neck the Red Woman wound her arms—white arms stained red by the lurid light.

A flash! I did not see from whence it came; but within me some subconscious impulse made me drop to the floor. The light from overhead was out. Momentary darkness. A woman's scream of terror. Then others. The sound of running feet; bodies falling. Panic in the crowd. Confusion everywhere.

Then light from somewhere came on. People were tramping me. I fought them off, climbed to my feet. On the dais the Red Woman lay dead. Huddled in a heap, with a brand of black searing her forehead. Slaans were leaping about the room—huge, half-naked men—brandishing primitive knives. Flashing steel, buried in the backs of the fleeing merry-makers. Other figures—Earth men they seemed—gripping the slaans, staying their murderous fury.

Tarrano? I did not see him at first. The air above the floor of the pavilion was full of snapping sparks—a battle of some unknown rays. The mirrors were