A World Called Crimson, Stephen Marlowe [red scrolls of magic txt] 📗

yours may have almost godlike powers, but you've spent your lives on an uncivilized world and well—frankly—couldn't a sophisticated man like Glaudot turn the girl's head? Couldn't he confuse her into going off with him, at least temporarily? And, assuming, he did, he doesn't know this world. He's aware of that. He'd know we'd be coming after him. Perhaps the girl would tell him about you. Tell me, man—where would the girl go if she didn't want you to find her? Is there such a place? Before you answer, I want you to know that what we do here may be far graver than you think. It is not merely the safety of one girl we have to consider—but no, you wouldn't understand ..."

"You mean," Charlie asked, "if this man Glaudot somehow convinces Robin to use her power as he tells her, he might want to take over all of Crimson?"

"Do you mean this world? Is it called Crimson? Yes—and more than that. There's no telling how far a man like Glaudot could go with such power. And with the ability to create all the armament and all the deadly weapons he needed, and all the missiles to carry those weapons, he might challenge the entire galaxy—and win!"

The words were strange to Charlie. He only understood them vaguely. Now Robin, she would understand, he thought. Robin was always more interested in things like that, Robin who almost knew their encyclopedia by heart, Robin ...

"Listen," he said. "Listen. We created all the life on this world. We made Greeks and Royal Navymen and Ministers and Russians and Congressmen and everything we knew or somehow had heard about or had read in our book. We get along fine with all of them, except ..."

"Yes," Captain Purcell prompted. "Go on, go on!"

"No, she'd never go there. She was always afraid of them."

"Where, man? Where?"

"No. Robin wouldn't. She just wouldn't."

It was not hot in Wild Country, but sweat trickled down Purcell's face while he waited for Charlie's answer.

"Show me!" cried Glaudot in rapture. "Show me! Show me! Show me!"

He stood with Robin in a little glade in the Land of the Cyclopes. About them were heaped all the treasures Glaudot had suddenly demanded. He did not quite know why. He felt his iron control slipping and permitted it to slip now, for once he got this wild desire from his system, he knew only his untroubled iron will would be left, and with it—and the girl—he might conquer the galaxy.

Heaped about them were jewels and precious metals and deadly weapons, all of which Robin had summoned into being at Glaudot's orders, while Glaudot smiled at her. It was almost a frightening smile. She was even a little sorry she had come away with him, but she could always go back, couldn't she? She wasn't shackled to this strange man from space, was she? And the way he looked at her, the desire she saw in his eyes, that was frightening too. She did not know how to cope with it. Oh, she could create a duplicate Charlie, for example. Charlie would know what to do. Charlie would help her. Charlie hadn't read the book as she had read it, but Charlie was more practical. Still, what would they do with the duplicate Charlie afterwards? You couldn't uncreate something ...

"A spaceship," Glaudot said suddenly. "Can you create a spaceship out of nothing?"

Robin nodded slowly. "I can. Yes, I can. It tells all about spaceships in the book. But I don't know if I want to."

Glaudot let it pass. There was no hurry. He was thinking about the future, though. If Purcell opposed him, as Purcell would, and managed to escape in the exploration ship, Glaudot would need a ship to leave this world ...

"Why not?" he asked, his voice quite calm now, the mania which had seized him under control now, and only his iron purpose motivating him.

"I—I don't know. You have one spaceship. I guess that's why. What do you need another one for?"

"It was just a thought," said Glaudot. "It doesn't matter." He kneeled near the heaps of sun-dazzled jewels. He let them trickle through his fingers. No, the desire wasn't gone yet. It was still fighting with his will. And, since he knew his will could win at any time, it pleased him to give his desire free rein.

He scooped up a handful of jewels. He found a necklace and came close to Robin and dropped it over her head. The pearls were very white against her sun-tanned skin. The pearl pendant hung almost to the start of the dusky valley which cleaved her breasts delightfully and disappeared with the tanned swell of flesh on either side into the gold-mesh halter. Glaudot fingered the pendant. His fingers touched flesh. Abruptly he drew the surprised Robin to him and kissed her lips hungrily.

For a moment she remained passive. She neither returned his ardor nor fought it. But when his hands began to stroke her back she pulled away from him and stood there looking at him. She took the necklace off and threw it at his feet.

"I don't want that any more," she said. "Why did you do—what you did?"

He felt the fire in his veins. He willed it to subside. He needed his control now. All of it. But this girl, in the full flower of her youth ... No, she was not a girl, not to Glaudot. He must not think of her as a girl. She was power. Power. The power was his—if he didn't alienate the girl.

"We do such as that on my world," he said. "It is a kind of homage to loveliness. I hope you didn't mind."

"I—it was strange. With Charlie sometimes I hope—but with Charlie it is ... different. Please don't touch me again. Please promise me that."

Glaudot shrugged. "If you wish, my dear child, if you wish...."

The dual desire was gone now, truly gone. He knew that. For his will had been threatened, more by his own foolish desire than by this innocent girl. He had to think. Clearly. More clearly than he had ever thought before. He needed the girl as an ally. Not as a slave. She had to be willing. She had to co-operate. Give her a warped picture of the rest of the galaxy? Convince her its governments were evil, totalitarian, when in reality they were democratic? Convince her that he alone, given unlimited power, could right the wrongs of a thousand worlds? She was naive enough for that sort of approach, he thought. Besides, it would strike her as something like creation—moral creation, perhaps. And creation she would understand. Then, with her as his partner, he could quickly build a war machine which the combined might of the galaxy couldn't stand against. And that, he suddenly realized, would even include an unlimited number of soldiers for occupation and policing duties. This power would be unparalleled.

"I have something I want to tell you about," he said. "It will take a long time and we must be undisturbed, which is why I asked you to bring me here."

"What is it you want to tell me?"

Before Glaudot could answer, they heard a crashing, rending sound not too far off in the woods. It sounded to Glaudot exactly as if trees were being uprooted, boulders strewn carelessly.

"Cyclopes!" Robin screamed in terror, and began to run.

Glaudot ran after her, stumbling, picking himself up, hurtling in pursuit. He couldn't let her get away. He had to follow her ...

Nothing living, he told himself as he ran, could uproot those huge trees. Of course, there were the saplings, but even the saplings were the size of full-grown oaks and maples on far Earth.

Something roared behind him. The sound was pitched almost too low for human ears. He whirled. The earth shook, great clods of it flying. Bare tree roots suddenly appeared, and a young tree the size of a towering oak was lifted skyward.

Behind it, brandishing it and then hurling it away, was a naked man whose head towered impossibly a hundred and fifty feet into the air. Trembling, awestruck, Glaudot looked up at the great savage face. Wild hair streaming, filthy beard matted with dirt and tree-branches, it was the most ferocious face Glaudot had ever seen.

And it had only one eye, one enormous eye in the middle of its head. But an eye three feet across!

"A Cyclops!" Robin screamed again.

A moment later the creature stooped and with a scooping motion of its great right hand picked up the two tiny creatures on the forest floor beneath it. Then it ran, uprooting oak-sized saplings, back toward the rocky hillside where it dwelled, after the Cyclopes of old on which Robin and Charlie had naively patterned it, in a cave overlooking the sea.

"Where, man? Where?" Captain Purcell demanded.

"I don't know," Charlie said. "I really don't think she would. You see, she always threatened she'd go there if we ever had a fight, but she was usually half-joking. She knows it's dangerous—"

"But where? Don't you know a drowning man has to grasp at straws? Haven't I gotten it across to you—the whole galaxy may be in danger!"

Charlie sighed. "I don't understand much of your galaxy. Robin knows the encyclopedia—she would understand. And I—I only want to know Robin is safe." He took a deep breath and said: "She always threatened to go to the Land of the Cyclopes."

"Then take us there at once," Captain Purcell said....

If he shouted and cried now, he would go insane. He knew that. He tried to hold his fear in check. He was being swung pendulum-like in an enormous hand as the one-eyed giant loped along. Robin shared the clenched-fist prison with him. Her hair streamed in the wind as the huge arm swung the huge hand in time with the giant's enormous strides.

"Does it eat people?" he managed to ask Robin. He had to shout because the wind created by the creature's movement was considerable. The ground spun giddily far, far below them, whirling patches of green, of yellow, of brown.

"We made them to eat people. Like in the book. We were just children. It seemed—it seemed so thrilling."

The Cyclops loped along, uprooting saplings. After a while it began to climb a rocky slope and from the heights Glaudot could see the shores of an unknown sea. Then the Cyclops reached a cave entrance and rolled aside a huge boulder and took his prisoners within.

Glaudot heard the bleating of sheep.

"Why, it's a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the sight of all this wealth.

Charlie said: "Captain, look."

Purcell went over to him and saw the wide swathe cut through the forest and curving out of sight. "What went through there?" he gasped.

"A Cyclops," Charlie said grimly. "A Cyclops has them. Captain, we've got to hurry. Listen, there are two horses now. I could create horses for all of us, but all these men coming up would probably be seen by the Cyclops. You come on foot with your men. Let one of them come with me on the stallions." As he spoke Charlie unslung the Mannlicher and put it down.

"Oh, you want our more modern weapons?" Purcell asked.

Charlie shook his head. "For fun, Robin and I made the Cyclopes invulnerable to any kind of attack except the kind mentioned in the encyclopedia—putting out their single eye with a stake. To protect all the other people we created, we made the Cyclopes so they'd never want to leave their homeland. So if we can get Robin and your man Glaudot free, they'll be safe. Now, who's the volunteer?"

"I'm already on horseback," Chandler said. Charlie nodded and mounted the second roan stallion.

"My men will be coming as fast as they can march," Captain Purcell said.

Charlie nodded. He did not bother to tell the captain that a Cyclops could cover in a few minutes ground a marching party could not hope to cover in as many hours. He set off at a swift gallop with Chandler.

"Will he eat us now?" said Glaudot. Strangely, he was not afraid. The unexpected nature of their impending demise he almost found amusing.

Robin shook her head. "I don't think so. He'll probably drink himself to sleep. We made the Cyclopes great drunkards."

The Cyclops, his tree-trunk sized walking stick leaning against the wall, was reclining and drinking from a huge bowl of wine. The cave was torchlit. Seventy or eighty sheep milled about, settling for the night after three of their number had supplied a meal for the giant, who had eaten them raw.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" demanded Glaudot, whose dreams of galactic conquest were fading before the spectre of being eaten alive.

"Reserve your strength until he sleeps," Robin said. "Of course there's something we can do."

"Yes? What?"

"His walking stick. You see the end comes almost to a point? We harden it in the fire—and put his eye out. Then, in the morning, when he unrolls the stone from the cave-entrance and blindly leads his flock out, we hide among the sheep and make our escape. At least that's how it happens in the encyclopedia."

Glaudot swallowed hard. He had never had a great deal of physical courage....

Just then they heard a great fluttering, groaning sound. Robin said: "You see, he's asleep. He's snoring."

"I—I don't think I could possibly—"

"He's liable to want us for breakfast. Come on."

They got up swiftly and silently, and crept to the walking stick. It was the size of a young tree. It would be heavy, perhaps too heavy for them to handle.

"Easy now," Robin said. She nimbly climbed the ledges on the cave-wall and tipped the great walking stick, then leaped down and grabbed the front end as Glaudot got a grip on the rear of the big pole.

"Heavy," Glaudot said.

"But not too heavy, I—I think."

"Try to lift it," said Glaudot.

They tried. Together they could barely get it overhead.

"Try to poke it at something," Glaudot said.

They could not. Robin sighed. They put it down slowly, quietly. It would take more than the two of them. It would take them and two or three more men to do the job.

"We wait," Glaudot said bleakly.

Robin stared up in frustration at the smoke hole, through which smoke from the Cyclops's fire poured out into the gathering night. It was hopelessly over their head, although help could reach them through it from the outside. But how could they possibly expect help to come...?

"We wait," Glaudot said again, hopelessly.

"For breakfast," Robin said.

Glaudot broke suddenly. "I don't want to die!" he cried. "I don't want to die ..."

The feeblest of Crimson's three suns came over the horizon, lighting the landscape with