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

But bulletins also were emanating from the City of Ice. We could not stop them. Cut off at every official Earth station—and with all unofficial stations unable to receive them—nevertheless at some secret station which could not be found, they were received. And from there, circulated throughout the Earth. The air was full of them. Mysteriously, scenes showing the great Tarrano appeared upon the official news-mirrors; a speech of Tarrano's was once officially broadcasted before its source could be located and stopped.

Like a smothered fire smouldering, lacking only a breath of vital gas to explode it into flame, the sentiment for Tarrano spread about the Earth.

Public opinion is fickle. It sways instinctively—not always, but often—to the winning side. Here in Venus we knew we must defeat Tarrano. Destroy him personally and thus put an end to it all forever, since his dominion hung wholly upon the genius of his own personality.

Our spies, some of them, got to the City of Ice, and back. A few flying men were able to hover about the city, and with instruments peer down into it. We knew that Tarrano was mobilizing for a move upon the Earth, where with a war-like demonstration he hoped to be accepted, yielded to, without a severe struggle. But, within a month now, we learned he had abandoned that idea. He knew, of course, our own preparations to attack him; and he began concentrating everything upon his own defense in the City of Ice.

His last stand. We officials knew it. And we knew he felt it also. And though on Earth our public felt differently, the Little People recognized it. A stirring, wonderful time—that day when on our mirrors was pictured the revolt of the Little People against the Tarrano rule of the Hairless Men. Grim scenes of tragedy; and over the carnage, the Little People triumphed. Tarrano's rule—with all the excesses of the Hairless Men who proved themselves mere rapacious plunderers in the name of warfare—was at an end on Mars.

The effect on Earth of this Martian reversal was beneficial to us. A good omen. We on Venus, redoubled our efforts to attack successfully the City of Ice.

Mars could send us no aid, though now in full sympathy with us. The planet was daily at a greater distance from us; and the Little People, not recovered from the effects of their own bloody strife, were in no position to help us.

Nor did the Earth Council deem it wise to send men additional to those few we already had. The Earth was rapidly being left behind by the swifter flight of Venus through her orbit. The official season for the mail-flyers was closed. The opposition of the two planets was long since passed; millions of additional miles were adding to the space separating them.

And the Earth Council was not sure of its men! Any one of them might secretly be in Tarrano's service—and do us infinitely more harm if brought to Venus, than if left at home.

We seemed of solid strength in the Central State. For the first time in generations the Rhaals—the men of science from whom all the progress of civilization on Venus came—departed from their attitude of aloofness. Their work—always before industrial—now turned to the sterner demands of war.

The Rhaal City[22] lay a brief flight from us. A grave sort of people, these Rhaals. Men of square-cut, sober-colored garments; women of sober grey flowing robes—white hair coiled upon their heads. Intelligent women, dignified of demeanor; many of them learned as were the men.

Their city, teeming now with the preparations for war, was intensely interesting to me. We spent most of our days in it, flying back at nightfall to Maida's palace. Yet I shall not describe it, nor our preparations, our days of activity—but hasten on to the first of the extraordinary incidents impending.

It came—this first incident—through my thoughts of Elza. I was worried—more than worried, sometimes almost terrified about her. My instinct would have been to take a handful of men and dash to her rescue—which of course would have been absurd. I tried to reassure myself. Tarrano would treat her kindly. Soon, in full force, our army would descend upon the City of Ice, capture it, destroy Tarrano—rescue Elza.

Rescue Elza! Ah, there lay the difficulty which I never dared contemplate in detail. How would we rescue her? Tarrano would treat her kindly, now during his own security. But if, at the last, he saw his own defeat, his death perhaps impending—would he treat her kindly then?

I loved Elza very deeply. A new torture came from it now. Did she love me—or Tarrano? I remembered the gentleness of the man with her. His dignity, his power—his undoubted genius. And who, what was I? A mere news-gatherer. A man of no force, and little personality. A nonentity. Sometimes as in my jealousy I contemplated Elza with Tarrano now, I felt that he was everything a young girl would fancy. How could she help loving him?

At night, when sleep would not come to me, I would lie tossing, thinking of it. Did Elza love me—or Tarrano? Once I had thought she loved me. But she had never said so.

It was out of this constant thinking of Elza that the first of the incidents I have mentioned, arose. There came to me one night the feeling that Elza was near me. I awoke from half sleep to full wakefulness. In my bedroom, upon the low couch on which I lay, the aural lights of Venus spread their vivid tints. The palace was silent; I sat up, pressing my palms to my throbbing temples.

Elza was coming nearer to me!

I knew it. Not by any of my bodily senses. A knowledge, which suddenly I realized that I had. A moment, and then I was conscious of her voice! No sound; my ears heard nothing. Yet my brain was aware of familiar tones. I recognized them, as one can remember how a loved voice sounded when last it was heard.

But this was no memory. A present actuality; it rang soundless in my brain. Elza's voice. Anxious! Frightened!

At first only the confused tone of it. Then the consciousness of words. Two reiterated words:

"Danger! Jac! Danger! Jac!"

I waited no longer, but rushed to Georg and Maida—beautiful Maida in her robe of sleep with her white hair tumbling about her. Georg half awake—yet almost at once he could understand me, and explain.

Natural, instinctive telepathy! It had not occurred to me. I had never bothered to develop telepathy; and indeed with any degree of fluency—or even of surety of reception—the phenomenon is difficult to perfect. Yet, as I knew, with a loved one absent upon whom one's thoughts dwell constantly—in time of stress telepathy is occasionally automatically established.

It was so in Georg and Maida's case, back there in the Mountain Station on Earth. Telepathy was the explanation of Georg's mysterious actions as he stood there before the sending mirrors, crossed the room in confusion, and like one in a dream leaped from the window to be seized by Tarrano's spies. Maida had been abducted a moment before. Georg's brain became aware of it. Her danger, the appeal she sent to him.

So it now seemed to be from Elza to me. Georg, out of bed now beside me, urged me to greater efforts of concentration, that I might understand what message Elza was sending.

"Elza! Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"

I murmured the words to myself as with all my power, I thought them over and over, flinging out the thoughts like radio waves into the night. Mysterious vibrations! In an instant, from here—everywhere in the universe. Who knows their character? Their speed? The speed of light a laggard perhaps beside the flash of a thought! Waves of my thoughts, speeding through the night, with only one receiving station in all the universe! Would Elza's brain capture them?

"Elza dear! Where are you? What is it?"

"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"

It was very clear. The words rang in my head. But always only those two. And then at last—it may have been an hour later—other words:

"Death! The black cloud of death! You can see it coming! See it coming! Death! To you Jac! To all of you in the city!"

We rushed to the casement. The broad lagoon before the palace lay like a mirror tinted red and purple. Beyond it, palms and the outlines of houses lay dark against the star-strewn sky.

But out there, over the city, in the distance a dark patch obscured the stars. We watched it breathless. A dark patch which soon took shape. A cloud! A black cloud—unnatural of aspect somehow—a rolling, low-lying black cloud. Growing larger; spreading out side-wise; sweeping toward the city on a wind which had not reached us.

"Jac! Jac dear! Danger! Death to all the city!"

Elza's words were still beating in my brain. Soundless words of terror and warning!

"Death, Jac! Death to all the city! The black cloud of death!"

CHAPTER XXVII Tarrano the Man

"Wake up, Lady Elza."

A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. "Wake up, Lady Elza. It is I—Tarrano."

Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano's palace of the City of Ice were stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her eyes to meet Tarrano's inscrutable face as he bent over her couch; became conscious of his low, insistent, "Wake up, Lady Elza;" and his fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that covered her shoulders.

Terror flooded Elza; that time she had always feared, had come. Yet she had the presence of mind to smile, drawing away from him and sitting up, with the fur bed-covering pulled to her chin.

"Tarrano? Why—"

He straightened, and into his expression came apology.

"I frightened you, Lady Elza? I'm sorry. I would not do that for all the worlds."

Her terror receded. The old Tarrano over whom she still held sway. She summoned a look of haughty questioning.

"You are bold, Tarrano—"

His gesture was deprecating; he seated himself on the edge of her couch. She saw now that he was fully dressed and armed with a belt of many instruments.

At this time Elza had been in the City of Ice for a considerable period. Irksome, worried days of semi-imprisonment; and through them, Tarrano's attitude toward her was unchanged. She saw little of him; he seemed very busy, though to what end, and what his activities, she could not learn.

Within the palace, half as guard, half as maid-servant, Tara was generally Elza's only companion. And then, one evening when Tara's smouldering jealousy broke forth in Tarrano's presence and Elza uttered an involuntary cry of fear, Tara was summarily removed.

Elza was left practically alone; until at length came this night when invading the privacy of her sleeping room, Tarrano awakened her. He sat now upon the edge of her couch.

"I have a confession to make to you, Lady Elza." He smiled slightly. "As you know, there is no one else in our habitable universe to whom I would speak thus frankly."

"I am honored, Tarrano. But here, at this hour of sleep—"

He waved away the words. "I have asked your pardon for that. My confession—as once before, Lady Elza, I come to you most humbly, confessing that my affairs are not going as I would like. You do not know, of course, that Mars—"

"I know nothing," she interrupted. "You have kept me from the news-mirrors, if indeed there are any here—"

"Mars revolted against me," he went on imperturbably. "The Little People are again in control. Fools! They do not realize, those governors of Mars, that their public ultimately will demand this Everlasting Life of mine—the Brende secret—"

She frowned. "No one knows better than you, Tarrano, that my father's secret does not bestow immortality. To cure disease, in a measure—"

He checked her; his smile was ironical. "You and I know that, Lady Elza. We know that on this plane we would not want everlasting life if we could have it. But the public does not know that—let us not discuss it. I was telling you—confessing to you—I have lost Mars. Temporarily, of course. Meanwhile, I have been preparing to invade the Earth." His gesture was expansive. "I have been planning, from here in the Cold Country, to send armies to your Earth."

He paused an instant. "I think now I shall wait until the next opposition—we are far from Earth now, but all in good time we shall be closer.... Strange is it not, that I should like to tell you my plans?"

She did not answer; she watched his smile fading into a look of grimness. "In the Great City, here on Venus, they are getting ready to attack me. Did you know that?"

"No," she said.

"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"

"Yes."

"And you hoped they were, of course?"

"Yes," she repeated.

He frowned. "You are disconcertingly