Читать книгу The Radio Planet - Roger Sherman Hoar - Страница 10

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So ARKILU, the furry beauty, planned to marry Myles Cabot, the earth-man, he who already loved and was wed to Lilla of Cupia! A happy prospect indeed! Yet he dared not repulse the Vairkingian maiden, lest thereby he lose his chance of returning to his home and family.

For at last he had formulated a plan of action, namely to arm the hordes of Vairkingia, lead them against the ant-men, seize an ant-plane and with it fly back to Cupia. So, for the present, he appeared to fall in with the matrimonial whim of the princess.

Early the next morning, however, as he was prowling around inside the tent, testing his weak legs, he overheard a conversation on the outside, which changed the situation considerably.

“But, father,” remonstrated a voice which Myles recognized as that of Arkilu, “I found him, and therefore he is mine. I want him. He is beautiful!”

“Beautiful? Humph!” a stern male voice sarcastically replied. “He must be, without any fur! Oh, to think that my royal daughter would wish to wed a freak of nature, and a common soldier at that!”

“He’s not a common soldier!” asserted the voice of Arkilu. “He wears clothes merely so as to preserve his health for my sake.”

“Well, a sickly cripple then,” answered her father’s voice, “which is just as bad. At all events, Jud is the leader of this expedition, and therefore this captive belongs to him. You can have him only if Jud so wills. It is the law.”

Myles Cabot stealthily crossed the tent and put his eye to an opening between the curtains at the tent opening. There stood the familiar figure of Arkilu, and confronting her was a massive male Vairking. His fur, however, was snow white, so that his general appearance resembled that of a polar bear. His face was appropriately harsh and cold. This was Theoph the Grim, ruler of the Vairkings!

The dispute continued. And then there approached another man of the species. The newcomer, black-furred, was short, squat, and gnarled, yet possessed of unquestionable intelligence and a certain dignity which clearly indicated that he was of noble rank. He wore a leather helmet and carried a wooden lance.

Theoph the Grim hailed him with: “Ho, Jud, what brings you here?”

Jud raised his spear diagonally across his chest as a salute, and replied: “A change of plans, excellency. Upon reaching the river, I decided that it would be wiser not to return to Vairkingi by that route.”

“Really meaning,” Arkilu interposed, with, a laugh, “that you found it impossible to throw a bridge across at that point.”

“Why do you always doubt the reasons for my actions?” Jud asked in an aggrieved tone.

“You wrong me,” she replied, “I never doubt your reasons. Your reasons are always of the best. What I doubt is your excuses.”

“Enough, enough!” the king shouted. “For I wish to discuss more immediate matters than nice distinctions of language. Jud’s reasons or excuses, or whatever, are good enough for me. Jud, I wish to inform you that my daughter has recently captured a strange furless being, whom it is my pleasure to turn over to you. I have not yet seen this oddity—”

“Father, please!” Arkilu begged, but at this juncture, Myles, exasperated by Theoph’s remarks, parted the tent curtains and stepped out.

“Look well, oh, king!” he shouted. “Here stands Myles Cabot, the Minorian, beast from another world, freak of nature, sickly cripple, common soldier, and all that. Look well, O king!”

“A bit loud mouthed, I should say,” Theoph the Grim sniffed, not one whit abashed.

“Watch him crumple at the presence of a real man,” added Jud the Excuse-Maker.

Suiting the action to the word, the latter stepped over to Myles and suddenly slapped him on the face.

As a boy, the earth-man had often seen larger boys point to their cheek or shoulder, with the words: “There is an electric button there. Touch it and something will fly out and hit you.” But never as a boy had he dared to press the magic button, for he could well imagine the result.

Such a result now occurred to Jud; for, the instant his fingers touched Cabot’s cheek, out flew Cabot’s clenched fist smack to the point of Jud’s jaw, and tumbled him in the dust.

Jud picked himself up snarling, shook himself, and then rushed bull-like at the earth-man, who stood his ground, ducked the flying arms of his antagonist, and tackled him as in the old football days at college. Jud was thrown for a four-yard loss with much of the breath knocked out of his body.

Theoph the Grim, with a worried frown, and Arkilu the Beautiful, with an entranced smile, stood by and watched the contest.

The Vairking noble lay motionless on his back as Myles scrambled to his knees astride the other’s body and placed his hands on the other’s shoulders. But suddenly, the underdog threw up his left leg, caught Myles on the right shoulder and pushed him backward. In an instant both men were on their feet again, glaring at each other.

Then they clinched and went down once more, this time with Jud on top. Theoph’s look changed to a smile, and Arkilu became worried. But before Jud had time to follow up his advantage, Cabot secured a hammerlock around his neck and shoulders, and then slowly forced him to one side until their positions were reversed, and the shoulders and hips of the furry one were squarely touching the ground.

In a wrestling match, this would have constituted a victory for Myles Cabot, but this was a fight and not a mere wrestling match; so the earth-man secured a hammerlock again and turned Jud the Excuse-Maker over until he lay prone, whereupon the victor rubbed the nose of the vanquished back and forth in the dirt, until he heard a muffled sound which he took to be the Vairkingian equivalent of the “’nuff” so familiar to every pugnacious American schoolboy.

His honor satisfied, Cabot arose, brushed himself off, and bowed to the two spectators. Jud sheepishly got to his feet as well, all the fight knocked out of him. Theoph stared at the victor with displeasure and at his own countryman with disgust, but Arkilu rushed over to Cabot with a little cry, flung her arms around him, and drew him within the tent.

As they passed through the curtains, Myles heard Jud the Excuse-Maker explaining to the king: “I decided to let him beat me, so that thereby I might give pleasure to her whom I love.”

Inside the tent, Arkilu bathed the scratches and bruises of the earth-man, and hovered around him and fussed over him as though he had accomplished something much more wonderful than merely to have come out on top in a schoolboy rough-and-tumble fight.

Myles was very sorry that it all had happened. In the first place, he had lost his temper, which was to his discredit. In the second place, he had made a hero of himself in the eyes of the lady whose love he was most anxious to avoid. And in the third place, he had fought the man who was best calculated to protect him from that undesired love. Altogether, he had made a mess of things, and all he could do about it was meekly submit to the ministrations of the furry princess. What a life!

Finally Arkilu departed, leaving Cabot alone with recriminations for his rashness, longings for his own Princess Lilla, and worries for her safety.

The next day the expedition took up its delayed start homeward, Jud having found a route which required no alibis. The tents were struck, and were piled with the other impedimenta on two-wheeled carts, which the common soldiers pulled with long ropes.

In spite of Arkilu’s pleadings, Myles was assigned to one of these gangs, Theoph grimly remarking: “If the hairless one is well enough to vanquish Jud, he is well enough to do his share of the work.”

Jud explained to Arkilu that the real reason why he had suggested this was that he sincerely believed that the exercise would be good for Cabot’s health.

During one of the halts, when Jud happened to be near Cabot’s gang, the earth-man strode over to the commander, who instinctively cringed at his approach.

“I’m not fighting to-day,” Myles assured the Vairking with an engaging smile, “but may I have a word with you?”

So the two withdrew a short distance out of earshot of the rest, and Myles continued: “I do not love Arkilu the Beautiful. You do. Let us understand one another, and help one another. You assist me to keep away from the princess, and I shall assist you by keeping away from the princess. Later I shall make further suggestions as to how we can cooperate to mutual advantage. I have spoken.”

Jud stared at him with perplexed admiration.

“Who are you?” he asked, “who stands unabashed in the presence of kings and nobles, who addresses a superior without permission, and yet without offensive familiarity?”

“I am Cabot the Minorian,” the other replied, “ruler over Cupia, a nation larger and more powerful than yours. A race of fearsome beasts have landed on the western shores of your continent. They are enemies of mine, and will become enemies of yours as they extend their civilization and run counter to yours.”

“Impossible!” Jud exclaimed. “For how could these mythical creatures cross the boiling seas to land on our shores?”

“By magic,” answered Myles, “magic which they stole from me. And they held me prisoner until I overthrew their magic and escaped, to be found by your expedition.”

“Then you are a magician?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that explains how you defeated me in combat yesterday,” Jud asserted with a relieved sigh.

“We will let it go at that,” Myles agreed, smiling. “But to continue, let me frankly warn you that unless you destroy these Formians, they will eventually destroy you.

“They now possess magic against which you Vairkings would be powerless; magic methods of soundless speech; magic devices for transmitting that speech as far as from here to Vairkingi; magic wagons which can travel through the air and at such a speed that they could go from here to Vairkingi and back in a twelfth part of a day; and magic bows which shoot death-dealing pellets faster than the speed of sound, and which can outrange your bows and arrows ten to one.

“But if you will give a workroom and materials—and keep Arkilu away from me—I can devise magic which will overcome their magic, and which will make Vairkingi the unquestioned master of this whole continent, in spite of the Roies and the Formians. Then I shall seize one of the Formian magic wagons, fly back in it to my own country, and leave you in peaceful dominion over this continent. What do you say?”

“I say,” the Vairking replied, “that you are an amusing fellow, and an able spinner of yarns. But you talk with evident earnestness and sincerity. Therefore I shall give you your workshop and your materials; but on one condition, namely, that you entertain us likewise. I have spoken.”

And thus it came to pass that Jud the Excuse-Maker attached the earth-man to his personal retinue, and placed a laboratory at his disposal upon the return arrival of the expedition at Vairkingi.

This city was built entirely of wood. It was surrounded by a high stockade, and was divided by stockades into sections, each presided over by a noble, save only the central section which housed the retinue of Theoph himself. Within the sections, each family had its own walled-off enclosure. All streets and alleys passed between high wooded walls. The buildings and fences were carved and gaudily colored.

As the returning expedition approached the great wall, they were met by blasts of trumpet music from the parapets. Then a huge gate opened, and they passed inside. Here they quickly separated, and each detachment hastened to the quarter of the nobleman from whom they had been drawn. Jud and his detachment proceeded down many a high-walled street until they came to a gate bearing the insignia of Jud himself.

Inside there were more streets of the same character through which Jud’s retinue dispersed to the gates of their own little inclosures until Jud and Myles Cabot were left alone.

The noble led his new acquisition to a gate.

“This inclosure is vacant,” Jud explained. “It will be yours. Enter and take possession. Within, you will find a small house and a shop. Serving maids will be sent from my own household to make you comfortable. Repair to my palace to-night and tell me some more stories. Meanwhile good-by for the present.”

And he strode off and disappeared around a bend in the street.

Cabot passed in through the gate.

He found a well, from which he drew water to fill a carefully fashioned wooden pool. Scarce had he finished bathing, when a group of furry girls arrived from the house of his patron bearing brooms and blankets and food.

One of them also bore a note which read as follows:

If you love me you will find a way to reach me.

Arkilu.

“And if not, what?” said Myles to himself.

After he had rested and dined, and the place had been made thoroughly neat, all the girls withdrew save the one who had brought the note. She informed him that her name was “Quivven” and that she had been ordered to remain in the inclosure as his servant.

She was small and lithe. Her hair was a brilliant yellow-gold, and her eyes were blue. If it had not been for her fur, she would have passed for a twin to his own Lilla. This fact brought an intense pang to him and caused such a wave of homesickness that he sat down on a couch and hid his face in his hands.

But the pretty creature made no attempt to comfort him. Instead, she merely remarked half aloud to herself: “I wonder what Arkilu can possibly see in him. Even Att the Terrible is much more handsome.”

Finally, Myles arose with more determination and courage than he had felt at any time since his return to Poros.

Guided by Quivven, he set out for Jud’s dwelling, firmly resolved to take steps that very night, which should result eventually in his reaching Cupia, and rescuing his family from the renegade Yuri.

Jud’s palace was elaborate and barbaric. Jud himself was seated on a divan surrounded by Vairkingian beauties. They all were frankly inquisitive to see this hairless creature from another world, yet they rather turned up their pretty noses at him when they found him dressed like a common soldier.

Cabot regaled the gathering with an account of his first arrival on Poros and of the two wars of liberation which had freed Cupia from the domination of the ants. All the while he was most eager to get down to business with the noble; yet he realized that he had been employed for a definite purpose, namely story-telling, and that his first duty was to please his patron.

Finally, the ladies withdrew, and Myles Cabot, the radio man, began the first discussion of radio that he had undertaken since his return to Poros.