Читать книгу The Radio Beasts - Roger Sherman Hoar - Страница 5

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Just then the cell door opened, and a shackled figure was thrust rudely in. It was Poblath, the mango. His captor was Trisp, the bar-mango.

It was now Trisp’s turn to gloat. Said he: “Long have I served as your assistant, O Poblath, and long have I coveted your position. Now it is mine for the asking. I suspected you of treason when you deprived Cabot of his antennae. I noted that you preserved his apparatus in a cupboard in your office. But when you refused to permit the jailers to fire on the insurgent blockade in the street below, then I knew for sure of your treason to King Yuri. Now I go to clear the blockade. Thence to the king to be made mango of Kuana!”

He left. From the window, the three prisoners watched the insurgents below. In a few moments the jail opened fire on them, and they withdrew in disorder. Once more the street was clear for the passage of alien troops.

“But they are still cheering for King Kew,” wrote Hah.

By this time Poblath had begun to recover from the shock of his sudden incarceration. He called to the professor, and soon the latter had turned his back to the ex-mango and was rummaging beneath Poblath’s toga with his shackled hands. After considerable search he found what he was after, a small pouch containing three keys.

In a moment the prisoners were free of their handcuffs. Another moment and the cell door swung open. The prisoners emerged and glanced cautiously around.

The corridor outside was dark and silent. Most of the wardens were on the roof, firing at the insurgents who had returned to the attack with great force.

Cabot, Hah Babbuh and Poblath did not stop to release any of their companions, but hurried to the ground floor. On the way they met but two of the jail guards. Hah smashed in the skull of one with a handcuff; the other had the good judgment to join the party.

It scarcely seemed a moment before the big steel doors swung open at Poblath’s touch, to admit the besiegers. A brief exchange of greetings, and they swarmed up the stairs to clear the roof, while Myles and his two friends followed, to release the other prisoners.

Every prisoner, regardless of what he was in for, was given a chance at freedom if he would join Cabot’s forces, and none refused. They were all freed by the time the party from the roof returned with sufficient captured arms to equip nearly all the rest. On the roof every warden lay dead.

Then the cabinet, the generals, the leaders of the invading party, Poblath and Cabot adjourned to Poblath’s office for a council of war. Of course, the first thing was for Myles to get his headset again; but alas, the cupboard lock had been wrenched from its hinges, and the precious apparatus lay smashed to atoms on the floor.

I cannot regale you with very much of the conversation which took place during the events which now crowded fast upon Cabot; for, from now on, all words radiated by the antennae of the Cupians were absolutely lost to him.

Hah Babbuh, as Chief of Staff, presided in view of the earth-man’s disability. He opened the conference with some questions to the leader of the insurgents, and the latter replied.

The effect was electrical! The whole assemblage rose to their feet, with expressions of intense joy on their faces, rushed over to Cabot and began patting him on the cheek, the Porovian equivalent of a handshake.

What could it mean?

Finally, sensing his bewilderment, Poblath seized the paper and stylus, and wrote the startling information: “You are the father of King Kew the Thirteenth!”

When they had all calmed down a bit, it developed that Princess Lilla had given birth to a son at Lake Luno about an hour before the old king had been shot. This made the baby the King of Cupia, and deprived Yuri not only of his title to the throne, but also of his immunity for the assassination of Kew the Twelfth.

“Would that I had not stayed your hand!” wrote Hah Babbuh.

To which message, Poblath added the philosophical comment, “He who plays safe will often be sorry.”

Cabot was too full of surprised joy and wonder to write any reply.

Having completed the celebration, the conference settled down to business again.

During the congratulations, the earth man had scarce had time for any feelings except stunned stupefaction; but now, as the conference took up its duties again, his radio-deafness gave him a chance to reflect.

“My baby! My baby boy! Our little son!”

A warm thrill of pride and joy flooded through Cabot’s body. But this was immediately followed by a heart-gripping pang of fear. Was Lilla well? And this question was followed by another, even more terrifying. Were the Princess Lilla and the baby king safe from the clutches of Yuri?

Yuri had killed his venerable uncle. He had set a price on the head of his own brother. He had turned his country over to the control of its hereditary enemies. He was wading through blood to a coveted throne. Then was there any doubt that he would murder his beautiful cousin and her infant, if they stood in the path of his remorseless ambition?

Cabot, seizing his pad and stylus, plunged into the work of the council. They must act, and act quickly, if they would save his loved ones.

It was agreed that Myles Cabot should be proclaimed regent—it ought, by rights, to have been Lilla, but Cupia was in need of an active regent in Kuana at that moment—and he should keep the same cabinet, making Poblath Minister of Play to fill the place vacated by his own elevation; that Poblath and a specially selected squad of sharpshooters were to take the jail kerkools and try and break through, rouse the north country, and protect Lilla and the baby; that Buh Tedn and the regent should beat a strategic retreat to the northward with all the troops which they could gather; and that Hah Babbuh, with a mere handful of followers, was to hold the jail as a nucleus for the dissatisfied element of the city, and also for the purpose of diverting Prince Yuri’s attention from the strategic retreat.

The Mecca of all these operations was to be the town of Pronth in the Okarze Mountains, beyond Lake Luno. There the inhabitants were known to be of unquestioned loyalty, not only to the Kew dynasty, but also to Myles Cabot. There a mere handful could hold the passes indefinitely against an army, and there the air pockets would protect them to some extent from the airplanes of the ants.

Prince Toron, as already stated, had been present at the games in the stadium, but nothing had been seen or heard of him since the assassination.

The first step in these maneuvers was carried out by Cabot’s detachment sallying forth and manning the barricades in front, which had not been cleared away by the enemy during the battle in the jail. A few shots from the rifles of Cabot’s Cupians, and the long avenue was cleared of ant men for its entire length. Meanwhile Poblath and his sharpshooters packed themselves into the police kerkools in the garage of the jail, and the gyroscopes were set running.

At a signal from Buh Tedn, the garage doors were flung open, the barricades pulled aside and the swift and silent two-wheeled Porovian autos charged forth. With a cheer, Cabot’s party followed them. At the capitol, the kerkools turned sharp to the right and were soon lost to view, nor were they in sight on the cross-street when those who were following on foot reached the turn.

The foot troops had considerable difficulty in making the turn, for they were subjected to a withering fire from the palace. But, by sending snipers in advance to take cover at the corner, they were able to reduce the enemy fire considerably, and the rest of the party crossed the spot at the double-quick with very few casualties.

Out of range of the palace, they reformed their forces and proceeded without event to the northern edge of the city. Here, however, they met a formidable blockade of Formians. As there were no signs of disabled kerkools, it was rightly assumed that Poblath had gotten through before the erection of this barricade. But how Buh Tedn and Cabot were to get their troops through was another question.

Tedn decided to charge, in three successive waves, and accordingly launched the first assault.

As the first assault was beaten back, the second passed it with a rush, only to recoil in confusion before the fire of the Formians. The third wave flatly refused to go forward. In spite of the lessons taught by the overwhelming Cupian success in the great war of liberation, the tradition of Formian invincibility was still deeply rooted in the subconscious minds of most Cupians.

So they withdrew to the cover of a cross-street and held a council. As a result, some of their best marksmen were sent into adjoining houses to pick off whatever ant men dared show themselves above the fort.

Then Buh Tedn formed for the charge. This time the entire Cupian force advanced together, scaled the redoubt and beat back the black defenders.

As Cabot went over the top himself, he looked down the muzzle of an enemy rifle and discharged his own revolver in the Formian’s horrid face. Then he knew no more.

He came to in jet darkness, buried beneath an overwhelming weight, which required long and patient effort to dislodge. Finally, however, he struggled to the surface, and found that he had been lying in the ant-barricade, covered by the dead bodies of his comrades-in-arms.

Cabot, himself, presented a gruesome figure. His hair was matted with blood, but whether his own or that of some Cupian he could not tell. Probably his own, as there was a severe wound along the ridge of his scalp, presumably caused by a bullet from the rifle, down the muzzle of which he had looked as he surmounted the barricade. His toga, too, was drenched with blood. He felt weak and dizzy. Groping for support, he looked about him.

The street was lighted but vacant. The night was warm and moist and fragrant, as are all nights on Poros, but it afforded no balm for the aching head of Myles Cabot.

Among the dead Cupians in the barricade were many bodies of the ant-men, still grappling with their adversaries, even in death. Myles counted the bodies of the Cupian slain and was reassured to find that they represented but a mere negligible fraction of those who had stormed the redoubt. Of course, it was just as hard on the dead to be dead, regardless of proportions; so Cabot did not have the heart to rejoice at the fewness of the slain. But at least it was comforting to know that a large majority of his brave men had survived, and even more comforting to realize that they were presumably by this time far on their way northward toward Lake Luno, Lilla and the little king. At least Cabot hoped so. Of course, the Cupian assault might perhaps have been repulsed. At any rate, the victors, whoever they had been, had robbed the dead of their arms and ammunition. Cabot’s revolver, being in his right hand, had been overlooked, for the inhabitants of this planet are left-handed; but his cartridge belt was gone.

Just then his thoughts were rudely interrupted by the arrival of a Formian sentinel. Myles withdrew precipitately into a darkened doorway. The ant man halted directly outside the hiding place, almost within reach of Cabot’s hands. For a moment Cabot had the idea of shooting him. Then it occurred to him that the noise of his revolver would attract attention and bring other ant men to the scene. Then he realized that it would not, for, of course, the inhabitants of Poros have no sense of hearing. So he fired and rid the planet of one more member of the dominant race. But this left him only four cartridges. He could not replenish his supply from his victim, for the latter had been armed only with a sword.

Stepping over the dead body, Cabot staggered down the street and soon gained the open country. Here there were no more street lights, and accordingly walking in the pitch darkness became very difficult. Finally after falling off the road several times, he groped his way into the woods and, crawling into the heart of a tartan bush, lay down to sleep.

Until reaching this haven of refuge, he had really had scarcely a moment for consecutive thought since the fatal shot had been fired that morning. Think of it! This morning, only six parths ago, he had been sitting at a Peace Day celebration, as Field Marshal and Minister of Play of a peaceful nation. Now this whole nation had been plunged into civil war and invaded by its enemies, and he himself was a hunted fugitive. And in the meantime what a host of events had occurred! A beloved monarch assassinated. His traitorous murderer declared king. The best and most loyal men of all Cupia thrust rudely into prison. Cabot himself deprived of both speech and hearing, by the destruction of his artificial antennae. The domination of hideous ants over Cupia, which had taken a grueling war to destroy, now restored by a coup d’etat in an instant. Poblath overthrown as mango of Kuana.

Then the joyous news of the birth of a new king to dispute the succession with the renegade Yuri. Fighting in the streets. The siege of the jail. The renaissance of the Army of Liberation. The storming of the redoubt. And finally Cabot’s own seeming death and resurrection.

He wondered for the safety of the Princess Lilla. And of his son, the new-born king. Poor wee baby! Little would he know, as he lay kicking and bubbling in his cradle, that he was the storm center of a whole empire, that the fate of a whole planet was wrapped up in him.

Myles thrilled at the thought that he was a father. Yet he shuddered at the realization of what lay before his loved one. And thus musing, he fell into a fitful sleep, from which he awakened in the morning with no clear understanding as to how much of his recollections of the day before had been reality and how much a dream. In fact, it was not until many sangths later, when he had an opportunity to compare notes with several others of the chief actors of this eventful drama, that he was able to reconstruct the actual happenings of Peace Day in the year three-fifty-ten. And even now, the entire day stands forth in his memory as one long, terrible, continuous nightmare.

But, from the morning of his awakening in the tartan bush, his recollections, although terrible, are clear.

His first thoughts on arousing himself were: “Lilla! And my baby!”

So, pushing the protecting leaves to one side, he set out to the northward. A thousand stads away lay Lake Luno and the royal family. Four days’ travel by kerkool. Fifty days’ travel on foot under favorable circumstances! And here he was essaying it, battered and wounded, without antennae, without food, without an umbrella to shield him if the scorching sun should burst through the protecting clouds; in fact, with nothing but an army revolver, four cartridges, and an unconquerable will.

Myles Cabot recited to himself:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you,

Except the Will that says to them: ‘Hold on’!”

He could and he would! And so he set out on that thousand-mile journey.

His plan was to reach the nearby suburb of Lai, where he had many friends. Surely one of these would lend him fresh raiment and a kerkool in which to overtake the army of Buh Tedn.

At the first brook to which he came, he shed his toga and washed from it as much of the blood and grime as possible. Also he bathed his face and head. The cool water stilled the ache of his wound, and refreshed him greatly. His appearance now was thoroughly presentable, but the destruction of his antennae by Trisp in the jail prevented him from looking like a real Cupian any longer. At most he looked like a deformed person, a deaf-mute. Still, his friends would not mind this, if he could but reach them.

He breakfasted off of milk which he drew from a herd of aphids, those green cows kept by both races of intelligent beings on Poros. And then he felt nearly his old self again, and pressed on with more vigor.

Around midday, 600 o’clock, he reached the outskirts of the town of Lai. One of the first houses was the villa of a very intimate friend of his and Lilla’s. There it stood, set in a clearing, surrounded by thick woods, a little way to the right of the road, at the end of a flower-flanked path. The architecture was typically Cupian, white stucco with steep red-tilted roof, ornamented with turrets, towers and minarets.

Just as Cabot was about to turn in at the gate, a Formian appeared at the door. This was unexpected. His friend had never before been known to entertain ant men. Ant men were the last creatures on the planet whom Myles desired to see at that moment, so he hastily passed by.

At last he topped a rise, from which he could see the whole of Lai stretched beneath him. And what a sight met his eyes. Not a Cupian stirring in the usually bustling little village, but instead all the streets patrolled by ant men.

There would be no haven here. So Myles sadly circled the town, rejoined the road at the other side, and resumed his journey northward.

Day after day he trudged on, avoiding the towns, which he rightly assumed were policed by ant men as Lai had been, and hiding whenever a kerkool approached or an airplane motor sounded in the sky. True, the kerkool might bear friends, but he was taking no chances.

His sustenance was root-crops stolen from the fields, edible twig-knobs plucked in the woods, green milk drawn from the grazing aphids, and even lobsterlike parasites plucked from the sides of these creatures. Once he was about to extract a bullet from one of his cartridges and discharge the blank into a pile of dried leaves to start a fire and roast some of these parasites; but, realizing that his ammunition was now limited to four rounds, he decided to forego the experiment.

His hair and beard grew long and unkempt, so that now there was no possible hope of escaping unrecognized, if ever he should be seen. For in the whole history of the planet Poros, there had never been but one person with long hair and beard, and that one person was Myles Cabot, the earthman. Cupians cannot grow beards, and the hair on their heads remains a fixed length, never requiring cutting.

As he plodded along, day after day, he did a great deal of thinking. Most of it was useless recrimination: “Why wasn’t I a bit quicker on the draw, that fatal morning in the stadium? Why did I ever leave Lilla alone at Lake Luno, even at the behest of her father, the king? Was I not influenced by my conceited desire to pose as a popular hero on the anniversary of the beginning of my great victory over Formia, and by my wish to star as a pistol shot, rather than by deference to the king?”

And so on. And so on.

Then, too, he worried a great deal about the safety of Lilla, and their little son. And about the progress of the civil war. Not daring to approach any towns, he was completely cut off from all knowledge of current events. The only clues he had were the fact that he met no Cupians stirring abroad, that the roads were constantly patrolled by ants in kerkools, and that airplanes scoured the sky.

This might mean any one of several things. For instance, it might mean that the insurrection had crumbled, and that the last survivors were being run down. Or perhaps the ant men were trying to prevent reenforcements from joining an already augmented Cupian army in the Okarze Mountains. Or perhaps it might even be that they were scouting against an impending advance of overwhelming forces from the Cupian strongholds. But whatever it meant, Cabot was resolved to reach Lake Luno, and find out what had happened to Lilla, and little Kew.

Finally, one day, he espied through the woods the tower of one of the radio relay-stations which formed a part of the network of wireless communication which he had installed throughout the kingdom.

As Minister of Play in the cabinet of King Kew XII, Myles had introduced radio broadcasting, and thus had given to the Cupians the benefit of music, which heretofore their lack of ears had denied them, but which he had been able to translate into their antenna-sense.

One of the stations of his broadcasting system now loomed before him. There was more than an even chance that it was an automatic station, and that the attendant would be absent. Although a trip to this tower would take Cabot a bit out of his way, yet it might enable him to listen in on the news of the day, and thus find out how his loved ones fared, and how the revolution was progressing. So thither he turned his weary steps.

The aerial loomed above the tree-tops about a stad away to the right of the road. Thick woods intervened. The trees were mostly of that typical Porovian variety which resembles a greatly enlarged form of that red-knobbed many-branched gray lichen which is so commonly found growing on rocks and tree-stumps on the earth. There was a heavy underbrush of ferns and small conifera. Gayly colored plants, of the sort which grace the fields and gardens of Poros, were conspicuously absent; but there was no lack of tropical vines and gray moss. Here and there flitted four-winged snakes, but in numbers merely sufficient to be a nuisance, not a menace.

Through all this tangle, Myles Cabot had to plow his way for at least one whole stad, in order to reach the relay-station. And to add to his discomfiture, the sky began to darken. This portended one of those torrential Porovian thunderstorms, the like of which is never experienced on earth.

Well, there was one thing to be thankful for: the relay-station would furnish a shelter from the storm, if he could but reach it in time.

He did. The storm had not yet broken when he entered the little clearing where the station stood. A brief reconnaissance convinced him that the shack was vacant. Its door was standing open. So he cautiously made his way inside.

But, even as he entered, he realized how foolish he had been, for of course the set would be without earphones, as the inhabitants of Poros have no sense of hearing; and Cabot’s own earphones lay smashed on the floor of the office of the mango of Kuana.

All was not lost however. He could still use the set for the purpose of sending in dots and dashes a cryptic message, which Poblath alone would understand. Such as “When will we four play ming-dah again?” for Poblath, and his wife Bthuh had been the most frequent opponents for Myles and Lilla in that four-handed Porovian checker-game. Or, for Toron’s antennae alone, “The black light still shines,” for to no one except Toron had Cabot disclosed that masterpiece of optical science which had safeguarded the American troopships in the war against Germany. So with renewed courage, he continued to enter. But, alas, the entire installation lay wrecked by some vandal hand.

Cabot surveyed the disorder sadly for a long time. Then he turned to the door to resume his journey north—

And looked into the muzzle of a rifle held by an ant man in the doorway.

Up went Cabot’s hands. The other advanced to shackle him.