The Fire People, Ray Cummings [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

compare with aluminium, only this was far stronger and lighter. The boat was, in fact, a mere shell, extraordinarily buoyant. [Pg 111]

Miela sat in the stern, steering and operating the mechanism. I sat with her. Mercer was farther forward, beside Anina, talking to her earnestly. Our prisoners lay huddled in various attitudes—frightened, all of them, and obviously in no condition to give us further trouble. They were, I saw now, not ruffians by any means, but rather men of superior intelligence, selected by Tao evidently as those best fitted for spreading his propaganda among the people of the Great City.

We made slow progress down the bayou. Some of its turns were so sharp and so overhung with trees, and obstructed by fallen logs, we could hardly get through. During the latter part of the trip the bayou broadened rapidly, dividing into many channels like a delta.

We came out into the open sea finally—a broad, empty expanse, with a mirrorlike surface. The curvature of the planet was even more apparent now; it seemed almost as though the water should be sliding back downhill over the horizon.

We turned to the left as we came out of the delta, and for the first time Miela put the boat to the limit of its speed. The best comparison I can make, I think, to this rapid, noiseless, smooth progress, is that of sailing on an iceboat.

We sped along some five or ten miles, keeping close inland. I saw some of the small thatched shacks along here, though not many. For a while the shore remained that same palm‑lined, half‑inundated marshland. Then gradually it began to change, and we came upon a broad beach of white sand.

We landed here, and found the girls with the platform waiting for us. Miela took Anina and one or two of the older girls aside, and gave them last instructions.

"What do I do—just dump them on the other shore?" Mercer asked me.

"That's about it. I don't know the lay of the land over there. Anina does. You do what she tells you."

"You bet I will," he agreed enthusiastically. "Some kid—that little girl. We get along fine. She understands everything I say to her already. I'll have her talking English like a streak by the time you see her again."

[Pg 112]

We had removed the cords from our prisoners' ankles. I motioned them to get out of the boat. We crowded Tao's men on the platform. They were surprised, and some of them alarmed, when they saw how we proposed to transport them over the water. Miela silenced their protests, and soon we had them all seated on the platform, with Mercer at the rear end facing them.

The fifty girls grasped the platform handles. Another moment and they were in the air, with Mercer waving good‑by to us vigorously.

Miela and I, left alone, watched them silently as they dwindled to a speck in the haze of the sky.

We were about to start back when we saw a girl coming toward us, flying low over the water. One of those we had directed to patrol the coast, Miela said when she came closer. She saw us, and came down on the beach.

The two girls spoke together hurriedly.

"Tao's men in the Water City have caused great disturbance, Alan," Miela said to me.

"Where's the Water City?"

"Near the Great City—across the marshlands. We must get back. And when Anina and our friend Ollie have returned we must go to the Water City. It is very bad there, she said."

Our trip back to the Great City was without unusual incident. We followed the main route at the best speed we could make.

"We shall tell our king, of course, about this disturbance," said Miela. "Perhaps he will think there is something he can do. But I fear greatly that unless he appeals directly to the people, and they are with him—"

"He's an old man," I said, "and all his councilors are old. They're not fit to rule at such a time as this. Suppose he were to die—what would happen? Who would be king then?"

"A little prince there is—a mere child. And there is our queen—a younger woman, only married to our king these few years. His first queen died."

[Pg 113]

I questioned Miela concerning her government. It was, I soon learned, an autocracy in theory. But of later years the king's advanced age, and his equally old councilors whom he refused to change, had resulted in a vacillating policy of administration, which now, I could see plainly, left the government little or no real power.

Only by constantly pandering to the wishes of the people could the king hold his throne. The supreme command was held by the king and his aged councilors. At stated intervals the more prominent men of each city met and enacted laws. The cities were each ruled by a governor in similar fashion, paying tribute to the central government somewhat after our old feudal system; but for practical purposes they acted as separate nations. They were united merely by the bonds of their common need of defense against the Twilight People, and of intermarriage, which was frequent, since the virgins, flying about, often found mates in cities other than their own.

There were courts in each city, not much more than rude tribunals, and jails in which the offenders were held. The police I have already mentioned. They, like the king's guards, were inclined in an emergency to do, not so much what they were ordered, as what they thought the people wished.

It was all very extraordinary, but like many another makeshift government it served, after a fashion.

Hiding the boat in another bayou, we took our way home on foot. That is to say, I ran, and Miela followed me, alternately flying and walking. We made our best speed this way, and very soon were back at home in the Great City.

We crossed the garden and entered the front door, expecting to find Lua in the living room, but she was not there. The house was quiet.

"She would wait up, she told me," Miela said, and, raising her voice, called her mother's name.

There was no answer, although now I remember I thought I heard a footfall upstairs.

[Pg 114]

We went up to Lua's room hurriedly. It was empty, and our loud cries of anxiety throughout the house evoked no response. We entered our own bedroom, and before I could make a move to defend myself I was seized tightly by both elbows from behind.

At the same instant an arm hooked around my neck under my chin and jerked my head backward, and another pair of arms clutched me around the knees. I struggled vainly to free myself, shouting to Miela to run.

But there were too many holding me. A moment more and my arms were tied behind me and a rope was about my legs. I was pushed into a chair, and as I sat down I saw Miela standing quietly near by, with two Mercutians holding her by the arms and shoulders.

The man who had pushed me to the seat bent down and struck me across the cheek with the flat of his hand. His grinning, malevolent face was only a few inches from mine. I saw that it was Baar!

CHAPTER XVIII.
REVOLUTION.

There seemed to be five of our captors, all of them as evil‑looking men as I think I have ever seen. They rummaged about the room, evidently in search for weapons they thought I might have secreted. Then they ordered me to stand up, and without more ado led Miela and me from the house.

This was once when I was glad of the interminable daylight. I hoped we might find some early risers about the streets, for I thought certainly the time of sleep must now be nearly over. But no one was in sight as we left the garden. We turned the first corner and headed toward the base of the mountain.

"To Baar's house they are taking us, I think. It is on the marshland below." Miela spoke without fear of our captors understanding the English words. We took advantage of this until after a moment we were roughly ordered to be quiet.

Lua, we thought, must have been taken away before we arrived; we would find her at Baar's house when we arrived there. We had come down to the level marshlands now, the outskirts of the city, and were passing along a path between occasional shacks. Before us, standing alone in a rice paddy, I saw a larger, more pretentious house—a wooden structure on stilts, with a thatched roof, which Miela said was where Baar lived.

[Pg 115]

We went in single file up its board incline, and entered a squalid room with matting on the floor, a rude charcoal brazier at one side, and the remains of a previous meal lying on a table.

Two women were in the room as we entered. I took these to be Baar's wife and a servant. Two naked little children lay on the floor, one of them crying lustily.

Baar glanced around as he came in, and with what I took to be an oath ordered the children removed from the room. The slave woman—I could see she was a slave by the band upon her arm—picked them up. Evidently she did not move fast enough to suit Baar's temper, for as she straightened up the man cuffed her upon the head. She stumbled to one side against Baar's wife, who was standing there, and the other woman, with a sharp imprecation, struck her full in the breast.

Neither of them saw the look she gave as she shuffled away, carrying the infants; but I did. It was a look of the most intense hatred, born and nourished, I realized, by long ill‑treatment.

Miela and I were now bound securely hand and foot, and Miela's wings were lashed to her body. Thus rendered entirely helpless, we were laid together in a corner.

From the talk that followed Miela gathered that Baar and his men were expecting the arrival of others. He roughly ordered his wife—a woman of the Twilight Country, obviously—to clear away the remains of their last meal and bring other food. She obeyed submissively.

This, the first of the Twilight Country People I had seen, was a thick‑set woman of perhaps thirty‑five, although she might have been older, for her black hair, which fell in an unkempt mass to her waist, was beginning to gray. She wore a single garment, a pair of silken trousers, drab with dirt. Her clipped wings were covered in the usual way.

[Pg 116]

I could see now why Miela had said these Twilight women could not fly, for this woman's torso was fat and flabby. Her skin was curiously pale—a dead, unpleasant white. Her face was broad, heavy and unintelligent. Her eyes were large and protruded slightly.

Baar and his men ate breakfast, paying no further attention to Miela and me. Suddenly Miela spoke in a frightened whisper. "They are going now in a moment to the castle. The king they will kill!"

It was evidently a widespread plot we now overheard. Baar's followers had for some time been talking quietly with the lower classes, and, finding they could count on their support, planned now to murder the king. Then with the queen and the little prince held as hostages, they expected that the men of science, threatened also with a revolt of the peons, would release the light‑ray.

The light‑ray once in his control, Baar could make himself king. It seemed an absurd hope, but such was the plan they were now discussing. And what was far worse, I could see no way by which I could prevent the attempt.

"They are going to the castle—now—to murder the king?" I whispered, incredulous.

"Yes," Miela answered. "So they plan. Now—in a moment—before the time of sleep is over."

"Isn't he guarded? Can they get in the castle without arousing others?"

"There are the guards—a few. But Baar has promised them great wealth, and they will