Kerac, with weary feet, returned to the city of Jove, retracing his path along the glittering stream; his posture, his every step, word and thought, one of deepest despair—

  “Hoa!”

  Kerac continued walking in the narrow alley.

  “Hoa! You!” A Jovian, immense and long-armed, staggered out from the bright scarlet light of a utana den.

  Kerac walked on.

  “Hoa!”

  The man snatched at Kerac, twisted him about and sent him sprawling to the street.

  “When I speak, you listen,” growled the man. He was huge, bloated and odorous with the smell of oama-weed and the brain-bruising utana liquor.

  Kerac tried to gain his feet, but the man’s heavy boot thrust him back. The purple face grimaced.

  “You the Martian?”

  Kerac nodded to save himself another jolt from the poised boot.

  “I thought so.” The Jovian laughed drunkenly. “Now, Martian, you will entertain. You will oblige me.”

  Kerac blinked at the Jovian. A crowd was gathering. The Jovian turned to the throng.

  “He is the Martian, the musician you heard about.”

  A murmur passed through the gathering. Someone said, “So that is a Martian? By the teeth of Jobar, he is brittle.”

  The first Jovian went on, after swallowing a mouthful of utana from a hand-flask. “This musician will play for us. Take him inside.”

  A hand pushed him. Kerac stumbled up, protesting. A fist lashed out, swiping across his lips. Fingers gripped him tight. Hot, sweating bodies pressed him into the utana hut that was blazing with painfully bright scarlet lamps and thick with the haze of burning oama cigarettes.

  The walls were painted a hideous yellow and the ceiling was low and garish with a hundred different nightmare designs—the effect on the whole producing a sense of drunkenness in a person almost immediately.

  “Sit here.” The Jovian leader picked Kerac up by his collar and shoved him into a low chair. “Now,” he said, pointing, “play.”

  Kerac found himself confronted by a weird, intricate Jovian musical instrument, somewhat like an insane version of an ancient organ.

  Kerac shrugged helplessly. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

  The huge Jovian scowled. “When I, Brondar, command someone to play—”

  “He is flat,” someone cut in shrilly. “Give him the weed to smoke. Give him utana to drink.”

  “Ua! Ua!” the others assented thickly.

  Brondar turned. “Give him dreams, Nar. I will pay.”

  Nar produced a flagon of utana quickly, offering it to Kerac, who refused it.

  Nar, an abnormally short, undernourished Jovian, leered. His blue skull-like face worked.

  “You refuse?”

  “I do not drink.”

  “You do not drink! Martian, when Nar produces utana he expects that person to drink.” The glass was poked against Kerac’s lips. “Now, drink. Else you eat the glass.”

  Kerac’s lips became a tight, firm line. His whole body shook with resentment.

  “Drink it,” roared the man named Brondar.

  Nar was angered. He pulled back his arm and sloshed the liquor over Kerac’s face. The crowd roared approval. Nar stomped off to his utana cubicle, leaving the Martian to splutter and swab his face dry with his cape.

  “Now,” commanded Brondar, “will you play? Or will we be forced to—”

  Kerac controlled himself. Quietly he reached into his cloak, brought out his Pipe. “I can only play this,” he said.

  “What?” came the roar. “A Pipe?”

  “Ua! Ua!” the others drowned Brondar out. ‘

  “Let him play. Let us hear.”

  Brondar scowled mightily. Finally he seated himself at a low table and roared, “Play.”

  Kerac played. He played until he was fatigued, haggard. Again and again they made him perform. And once, Brondar fired an electro-pistol at Kerac’s feet, making him dance and play simultaneously.

  Not before the dawn lifted in the east did he finally rest The smoke den was practically empty. The butts of oama weed littered the floor. Jovians crumpled in comers, snored. Nar was draped over the utana cubicle’s railing, and Bron- dar, still torpidly active, hiccuped and spat oaths at the wild-coloured ceiling.

  It was then that a flotilla of Kam birds winged from over the mountains, over the Jovian city and toward the rising sun. They sang their song, high, sweet, insistent. Immediately there came a faint, answering grumble.

  Kerac received his first inspiration, his first clue. He listened. His Pipe clattered to the floor. Stooping to pick it up, he stopped, looked strangely at it lying there, his eyes widening. Then he looked to Brondar, who was stirring, mumbling in a husky voice.

  “Whass that?” asked Brondar. “That noise?”

  “The birds,” murmurred Nar. “The Kam birds.”

  “Au. Au.” Brondar shook a woozy head. “I mean the other noise, the other noise.”

  “Marsquake,” said Nar, feebly rousing himself. “Shifting strata in the hills.”

  Kerac jerked up, the Pipe in his hands, and ideas sprouting full-bloomed in his brain. These ignorant Jovians didn’t even know the Dark Race lived in the mountains.

  And Kam birds. They became part of a colossal plan that had suddenly exploded inside Kerac.

  Brondar swayed, rose, his purpled face retching. “Oa. Where are you going, Martian?”

  Brondar barred the way to the door.

  In desperation Kerac seized upon an empty utana jug and crashed it full on Brondar’s skull.

  Brondar ceased barring the way.

  The painted signs had not been evident at night, when Kerac had first passed this way, but they were posted every hundred yards, their black letters hot under the morning sun:

  DANGER!

  MARSQUAKES

  SHIFTING OF STRATA

  In smaller letters he read: “Any employee of Jovian Minerals discovered beyond this point will be dismissed immediately.”

  Kerac stood there for a long moment, the sun slashing at his tall body. The hills were not far off, baked in the oven of the early hours. The stream glittered like a million flashing knife blades. He tried to piece together the jigsaw of the signs and the ignorance in the Jovian city.

  The Dark Race had survived in the mountains, untouched. The Jovian labourers called the noise that came from the mountains, “Marsquakes.” There wa$ only one possible explanation. A big job of excavating was going on in the South. The Southern mountains were already vacuumed clean of the Dark Race. These Northern ranges would be flushed soon, when the Jovians were ready to begin work here.

  Until that time, the officials had decided that what the ordinary labourer didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. So the Dark Race was kept secret. If the workers knew about the menace, many of them would have quit immediately. They were a superstitious lot—these Jovians.

  Anyway, the Dark Race was no real menace. They didn’t have the brains to organize and attack. They killed themselves. Even an intelligent man like Kerac would be unable to organize them. The Jovian Council knew this or they would never have allowed Kerac to return.

  Kerac hurried on in the blistering warmth.

  On the mountain top it was cooler. From where he stood he could command a view of both cities; the ancient and the modern. Off in the South came the noises of busy excavators in the Yellow Mountains.

  He waited patiently until the Kam birds flew over the caverns, drawing forth a trembling Marsquake response.

  When the birds vanished, Kerac, with a confident smile, lifted his Pipe and played the very same notes that the birds had flung from the sky—ten notes, short, plaintive. Followed by six long sweet chords, and then lower and more insistent notes—an urgent summons. Over and over again, piping to the night wind.

  The mountains took up the song. But it was as weak as the last faint dawn star.

  The Dark Race responded, quivering the earth. But Kerac knew they would not venture into the hated sun.

  They heard his song and were stimulated by it This much was optimistic. He would practise, listen to the Kam birds again and again, impressing their melody on his brain, making his interpretation of it more expressive, more urgent. And then, when night came…

  At twilight Kerac stationed himself nearer the mountain base. He played the music, offered it to the slight wind that wafted down through the slate-grey walls to the holes where the creatures squatted glaring at him.

  The music was heard by the creatures, coerced them. They came plodding out, their feet moist on the rocks, gesticulating ponderously, uttering cyclopean grunts.

  Kerac ran to take another station. The creatures swarmed slowly out, hypnotized by the breeze-borne melody, over the narrow gullies, down the small cliffs.

  “Come, my brothers,” shouted Kerac wildly. “Come. Kill the Jovians.” He played the hellish music. It arrowed to the stars and shook them in their orbits.

  Down into the sloping foothills Kerac moved, cautiously, the inflamed horde following his music. And then a great, shattering wind came from the Jovian city, bearing with it another music. The Jovian music, the maddening symphony of sound that ravened the air.

  It devoured Kerac’s pitifully weak song, punched fists of noise at the Dark Beasts and sent them whimpering, fleeing, back to the caves, back into the mountains, back into the Stygian gloom.

  Kerac, struck mute, defeated, stood with the hideous Jovian music consuming the air he breathed. The music, spawned through the towering audios in the city, thrived on the east wind, flung up echoes, demanded attention. Demanded it and received it.

  Kerac put his Pipe away, his lean face hieroglyphed with defeat. His last hope, his last plan destroyed by the wind from the east and the music of Jove.

  He stood there a moment, with the wind fondling his cloak, tossing dust into his face.

  The wind.

  The wind!

  Kerac turned about, exhilarated at this new breeze-inspired solution. He ran, bounding from rock to rock, fighting the wind, returned to Jove City for the last time.

  Kerac hurried through narrow streets, musing over his task. It could not be accomplished with direct, drastic action. It would take a peaceful, psychological bit of handling that would throw no suspicion upon himself until it was too late.

  A ponderous twenty-wheeled ore-vehicle hissed to a half in the street. A beefy Jovian mountain leaped down, bawling loudly: “Hoa, Martian.”

  It was Brondar, returning from the work in the Southern mountains. But he was smiling.

  His huge blue arm shot out, picked Kerac up by his blouse.”1 have been looking for you since you ran this morning. I have need of you and your Pipe. Come.”

  He stalked off, dragging Kerac after him through the rambling alleyway.

  “Release me,” demanded Kerac angrily. “I’m a charge of the Jovian government.”

  “Charge?” A tremendous snorting laugh wrinkled the bruised-blue face. “Government! There is no government here. Walk.” And he shoved Kerac ahead of him through the semi-gloom.

  “We will make money together, Martian,” he said. “After you ran this morning, the audio base official came to the utana den. I told him of your music. He is interested. He is looking for a man such as you. Now I have found you again, and I will demand that the audio official pay me well for discovering you and your Pipe! Turn here.”

  Kerac was thrust around a comer into a plaza at the centre of which stood a yellowish building with the word AUDIO printed in large Jovian scrawl above the roof.

  Up the steps and through a door they went Inside, six Jo-vians sat about a table conferring; bottles of utana at every elbow, oama cigarettes in every cobalt-lipped mouth. Ugly faces turned towards him. He realized, by the insignia on their bulging uniforms, that these men were the highest officials in the local government. These were some of the men responsible for the destruction of Mars.

  The man heading the table jumped up. “Brondar,” he clipped. “You interrupt conference. What is it?”

  Brondar shoved Kerac forward, waved a big paw to the assemblage and said, “He did not escape, Grannd. He will play music for you, as I promised. And you will pay me well for finding him.”

  Grannd, the short Jovian, came quickly to Kerac, his little dark eyes flicking over the tall Martian’s cloaked form.

  “You are the Martian.” It was a statement. “I have heard of you from Jupiter when you were exiled. There you did as you pleased. Here, where there is less law and more prejudice, you will act as we please. They say you are good, If Grannd, will judge. Play.”

  Kerac looked at Grannd, knowing that here was the head of the audio base, the building from which all broadcasts emanated over the city through the audio pillars.

  Now, if Kerac played his cards right, the Jovians would cooperate in their own destruction.

  The next few minutes would be crucial, the next hour would mean either the success or failure of his whole plan, He was a little frightened because his big opportunity had arrived so soon.

  Kerac seated himself, pretending to be sullen, procured his Pipe and set about producing music.

  The music was so low and so sad and so sweet that the oama smoke ceased idling in the room and froze upon the air.

  The Jovian officials, posed in various slit-eyed postures over their oama and utana, found themselves clutched in the vice of enchantment. This was musical hypnotics. Each note touched ears that ached for more. It was the melancholy song of the Kam birds, slower and sadder than ever it had been interpreted.

  When Kerac finished, he played it over because the silence that followed could not be assimilated by the nerves. He played it over, a little faster. The room was quiet. Even Brondar, impressed, did not speak.

  Finishing the second time, Kerac was greeted with no applause. There are wondrous things in the universe that one does not appreciate with noise, but with reverent silence. It would have been like crying “Bravo!” in the midst of a majestic church mass, or clapping hands at a glimpse of an awesome spiral nebula.

  Then there was silence.

  Brondar stirred uneasily, as if he had appreciated beauty for the first time in his life and was resentful because of it. Finally he swore and lighted an oama cigarette.

  The five officials came out of their trance, murmured among themselves uneasily, smoked, lifted and emptied their flagons of liquor.

  Grannd sipped his utana, thinking. He turned to the officials. The officials nodded. Grannd turned to Kerac.

  “You will repeat that, so I can make an audio transcription of it”

  Kerac repressed the smile that came to his lips. Grannd continued to talk.

  “You did well. You should be flattered that I, Grannd, have said so.” His speech was clipped as short as his stature. Conceit oozed from the man. He expected a “thank you” instantly.

  Kerac mused, taking his time purposely. He did not wish to seem eager to cooperate.

  “I don’t know,” he aplied slowly. “I have always refused, before, to record.”

  Grannd’s eyes crackled. “But you will. For me. Now. Immediately.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Grannd puffed out blue cheeks. “I, Grannd, will transmit your music to Jupiter, present it through audio pillars all over Mars. Perhaps to Earth. You will write a symphony. It will be profitable.” His voice was hard. “Come. We will make sound tests. If they are acceptable, we will sign contracts.”

  Grannd started for a door that led into a soundproofed room, expected that Kerac was following. Kerac was not Brondar had to use force.

  Kerac stood before a series of intricate acoustical instruments. Grannd cursed over a maze of machinery in the recording booth. The Jovian officials sat in a glassed cubicle, watching. Brondar with visions of much money, stood by.

  A small sound-spool was adjusted. Grannd looked up. “When I signal, you play. You are ready? Silence, then.”

  A pause. Then, the signal.

  Kerac played as he had never played before. He played the song slowly, and then, with each time he repeated it, he went faster, faster, higher, shriller. He played it eight times, becoming more insistent. And on the eighth rendition inaudible. But it was grimly, terribly commanding.

  “Good!” Grannd snapped off the sound-spool transcriber. “You are talented. This will bring much money.”

  Kerac was amused. “What is it that you find in my music that interest you so?”

  “Interests?” The radioman patted his chest. “It does something to me—here.”

  “But will the others like it—the labourers?”

  “You have seen what it does to the men who drink utana and smoke oama. If they like, everyone will like it.”

  “I’m sceptical. I don’t believe it.”

  This irked Grannd tremendously. “I will prove it.” He snatched up the sound-spool, transferred it to another machine, made dial adjustments and said, “We have audio pillars in every street of the city.”

  “Yes. I noticed them several times.”

  “I will transmit your music through those audios immediately, proving that you are talented by offering you to the labourers, to everyone.”

  “And don’t forget,” Brondar put in, “/ discovered him.”

  Grannd snapped a button, the sound-spool turned. “If you wish,” he said, “you can step outside and listen to this over the street audios.”

  Kerac nodded and headed for the door with Brondar behind him. In the night air, he paused, smiling. He turned to Brondar. “Shall we go to the utana den to listen?” he asked.

  Brondar laughed, nodded.

  Kerac felt the breeze plucking at his cloak. “Good. Good,” he said, as they started walking. “There is a strong wind from the east tonight. A wind from the east.”

  This night the music was different when it spilled from the audios. It was the same music Kerac had played faintly in the hills, but now it was monstrously amplified. It came from Jove City, the east wind seized upon it, shoved it over the hills like a scourge of locusts and let it fall in a vast curtain of hypnotism into the dark caverns.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19