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

safe! I've wanted so long to be with you again—I've been so frightened—so frightened—"

Giving me back my kisses unreserved; holding me with eager arms ... Tarrano? The memory of him came to me. How foolish my fears, my jealousy! That man of genius ... conqueror of worlds ...

But my Elza loved me!...

CHAPTER XXXI Industriana

It must have been two days later when at last we were rescued by the Rhaal patrol and taken to Industriana. Back there in the forest I had suddenly remembered that the mate to the thing I had killed would doubtless be lurking in the vicinity. We fled. Subsisting on what food of the wilds we could find, at last we were picked up and taken to the City of Work.

The Great City had been destroyed. Wanton capital of the Central State, we learned now that it lay dead. To outward aspect, unharmed. Fair, serene, alluring as ever it lay there on its shimmering waters; but the life within it, was dead. Refugees—a quarter perhaps of the inhabitants—had escaped; hourly the search patrols were picking them up, bringing them to Industriana. Rescue parties were searching the city, to find any who might still be alive.

And out in the forest lay a great pile of ashes, still exhaling a thin wisp of its deadly breath—where Tarrano had created the Black Cloud; lost his captive Elza, but doubtless had escaped himself back to his City of Ice.

We found Georg and Maida safe at Industriana. Marvelous city! Elza had never seen it before. She sat gazing breathless as from the air on the patrol vessel, we approached it.

The land of this region was a black, rocky soil upon which vegetation would not grow. A rolling land, grimly black, metallic; with outcroppings of ore, red and white and with occasional patches of thin white sand whereon a prickly blue grass struggled for life.

Rolling hills; and then places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil. Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides of sleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water flowing through them.

In such a place stood Industriana. The City of Work! Set in an area where nature lay scarred, twisted in convulsion, its buildings clung to every conceivable slope and in every position. Many-storied buildings—residences and factories indiscriminately intermingled. All built in sober, solid rectangles of the forbidding black stone.

A long steep slope from an excavated quarry deep in the ground, ran straight up to a commanding hilltop—the slope set with an orderly array of buildings clinging to it in terraces. Buildings huge, or tiny huts; all anchored in the rear to the ground, and set upon metal girders in the front. Bisecting the slope was a vertical street—a broad escalator of moving steps, one half going upward, the other down. Beside it, a series of other escalators for the traffic of moving merchandise.

Cross streets on the hill were spider bridges, clinging with thin, stiff legs. And at the summit of the hill stood a tremendous funnel belching flame and smoke into the sky.

To one side of the hill lay a bowl-like depression with a single squat building in its center—a low building of many funnels; and about it the black yawning mouths of shafts down into the ground—mines vomiting ore, broken chunks of the metallic rock coming up as though by the invisible magic of magnetism, hunting through the air in an arc to fall with a clatter into great bins above the smelter.

In another place, at the bottom of a canyon roared a surging torrent of river. A harnessed river; plunging into turbines; emerging to tumble over a cascade, its every drop caught by turning buckets spilled again at the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its power used again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge of the city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen and oxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammed back, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissing gases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops of two expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock—the gases released, were merged again to water. The tops of the tanks lowered, each in turn, one coming down as the other went up—hundreds of tons of weight—their slow downward pull geared to scores of whirling wheels—the power shifted to dynamos scattered throughout the city.

It was the twilight of nightfall when we arrived over Industriana. A thousand funnels and chimneys belched their flame and smoke—the flame tinting the sky with a lurid yellow-green glare, the smoke hanging like a dim blue gauze through which everything seemed unreal, infernal.

From the city rose a roar—the myriad sounds of industry mingled by the magic of distance. And as we got closer, the roar resolved into its component parts; the grinding of gears; clicking of belts and chains; whirring of dynamos and motors; shrill electrical screams; the clattering of falling ore; clanking of swiftly moving merchandise, bound in metal, magnetized to monorail cars shifting it to warehouses on the nearby hills. And over it all flashed the brilliant signal lights of the merchandise traffic directors whose stentorian electrical voices broadcasting commands sounded above the city's noises.

An inferno of activity. A seeming confusion; yet the aspect of confusion was a fallacy, for beneath it lay a precision—an orderly precision as calm and exact as the mind of the Director of a Signal Tower counting off the split seconds of his beams.

An orderly precision—the brain of one man guiding and dominating everything; at his desk alone for long hours throughout the days and nights. A quiet, grey-haired gentleman; unhurried, unharassed, seemingly almost inactive; always seated at his empty desk smoking endless arrant-cylinders. The dominating business brain of Industriana.

CHAPTER XXXII Departure

Georg and Maida were very busy in Industriana; and now Elza and I were admitted to their activities—Elza and I, with our new-found love and happiness neglected for the greater thing, the welfare of the nation upon which hinged the very safety of Venus itself; and Mars; and our own fair Earth.

Industriana, greatest commercial and manufacturing center of Venus, had been given over momentarily to the preparations for war. The Rhaals had at last turned from industry to the conquest of Tarrano. Preparations were almost completed; our armies were to start within a very few times of sleep.

I had had no experience in warfare; but the history of our Earth had told me much of it. The enlisting and training of huge armies of men; arming them; artillery; naval and air forces; commissary and supplies; a gigantic business organization to equip, move and maintain millions of fighting men.

Ancient warfare! This—our modern way—was indeed dissimilar. It was, from most aspects, simplicity itself. We had no need of men in great numbers. I found something like a single thousand of men being organized and trained. And equipped with weapons to outward aspects comparatively simple.

On all the three worlds the age of explosives of the sort history records, was long since passed. Electronic weapons—all basically the same. And I found now that it was the power for them, developed, transformed into its various characteristics and stored for individual transportation and use, which was mainly engrossing Industriana.

I had opportunity, that first night, of meeting Geno-Rhaalton—the present head of that famous Rhaalton line, for generations hereditary leaders of their race.

We found him, this Geno-Rhaalton, in a secluded, somber little office of black metallic walls, grey hangings and rug, a block of carved stone his desk, and a few of the stiff-backed stone chairs, each with its single prim cushion.

The office was beyond sight and sound of the busy city. His desk was empty, save for the array of apparatus around its edges—the clicking tabulators which recorded, sorted, analyzed and summarized for him every minute detail with which the city was engaged.

Machines of business detail. We had them, of course, in the Inter-Allied offices of Greater New York. I have seen our Divisional Director voice into a mouthpiece the demand for some statistical summary computed up to five minutes before, and covering his entire Atlantic Division. He would have it, recorded in cold print before him, within a moment.

Yet, compared to the Rhaalton efficiency, our own methods seemed antiquated indeed. This man was in touch with every transpiring detail simultaneously; yet not confused by them, for every detail was also combined into a whole—to be examined for itself if he wished. Visually as well, the entire city lay before his gaze—the walls of the office were lined with rows and tiers of small mirrors; receivers and mouthpieces connected him with everything. Sights, sounds, and even smells of the various factories were available to him—smells when his sense of smell might be necessary for the testing of some elusive gas.

Without moving his physical body his presence was in effect transported wherever throughout the city he wished to be. A man of tremendous concentration, to handle but one thing at a time; with all the power of his brain to give instant decision, and then to forget it utterly.

I found him a rather small man; smooth-shaven; grey-haired; a grave face and demeanor, with dark eyes solemn with thought, yet twinkling often when he spoke. A man of flabby muscles and gentle voice; seemingly unforceful, and with a personality likable, but hardly dominating.

Instinctively I found myself comparing him to Tarrano. Tarrano's strong, wiry body. The flash of his eye; his inscrutability, always suggesting menace; the power, the genius of his personality—the force radiating from him which no one could mistake. His intellectual power—his concentration—certainly the equal of this little leader of the Rhaals.

Tarrano the Conqueror! Tarrano—man of destiny—risen from nothing and by the sheer genius of his will throwing three worlds into chaos, at one stage combining two worlds into his self-created Empire; and menacing the third. Surely Tarrano was a greater man than this Rhaalton. I knew it; much as I hated Tarrano I was forced to admit it.

Yet as I stood there acknowledging the soft-spoken greeting of Rhaalton, I had the swift premonition that Tarrano was going down into defeat. And that this little man, without moving from his desk or raising his voice, would be the main factor in bringing it about.

And I wondered why such a thing could be. I know why now. Tarrano, with all his genius, lacked just one quality which this little man had in abundance. The milk of human kindness—humanity—a radiating force the essence of which paradoxically was the unforceful gentleness of him. The Almighty—as we each of us in our hearts must envisage our God—is just, but gentle, humane in His justness. And with all the genius in the universe—the war-like power—the weapons—the cohorts—all the wonderful armament of war—you cannot transgress the Will of the Almighty. Against all human logic of what should be victory—you will meet defeat....

The thoughts fled through my mind and vanished into the realities of the present. Rhaalton was saying:

"We will be ready within another time of sleep. Jac Hallen, you wish, I suppose, to go out with our forces?"

"Oh yes," I said.

He smiled. "The eagerness of youth for danger! And yet is very necessary—very laudable—"

He passed a hand across his forehead with a weary gesture—a gesture which seemed to me despondent. Could this be our vaunted leader? My heart sank.

He added abruptly: "We shall conquer this Tarrano—but at what cost!" His smile was wistful. "We must choose the lesser evil."

Still gently, almost sorrowfully, but with a directness and clarity of thought which amazed me, he plunged into a detailed account of what Georg was to do in command of our forces. My own part in it, already planned by him in detail. Maida's part. Elza's. The division of Rhaal maidens.

Girlhood in war! It seemed very strange. Yet the Rhaal maidens were going as a matter of course, since there were some activities for which they were more fitted than the men. With all the Rhaal maidens going, Elza and Maida would not stay behind. And though Maida—a wife—was objected to by Rhaalton, he had yielded finally to her pleading.

I will not now detail our plans or our armament. We had, in general, one thousand unmarried men, in five divisions of two hundred each. They were largely Rhaals, with the few Earth men previously sent us; fifty perhaps of the most loyal slaans; and a scattering of the other races of the Venus Central State. A few—thirty perhaps—of the Little People of Mars. In addition, another hundred men, individually in charge of the larger apparatus and the vehicles. And the division of two hundred girls.

Our journey to the Cold Country was to be made on flying platforms and vehicles of various sizes; some large to carry fifty passengers or more; others so small that only one person could be carried. These latter, the girls were to use. I call them platforms. In this size they were not, literally speaking,