Thorana Komi"s brain was whirling as he left the Council of the Elders. Was it true, what Karak had said? Thorana - only to Thorana? A picture of her shimmered in his mind - as he had seen her on Spring Night, in the Hall of the Masters, aloof and alone and beautiful - as she had been in the desert, soft and slender needing his strength, needing him.
A man - any man - could find a hundred sweet delights in the intimacies of giving blood to Thorana. But he was not any man; he was Korul, son of Thandar, First of the Blood-Givers. And the Masters - all the Masters - were to die!
Through the centuries the lower levels of the city had been honeycombed with pa.s.sages and secret lifts which gave the Elders access to every public place, and to many less public. One led directly from the Hall of the Elders to the quarters allotted to the First Man. Chewing the black cud of his thoughts, Korul flung open the panel and was halfway across the room before he saw Thorana standing beside his table.
"What is that?" she demanded. "Where does it go?"
He dared not let her probe. "What brings a woman of the Masters to this place?" he countered savagely. "Surely there is nothing to amuse you here in the cattle-pens of my people. The smell of poverty must be too strong for your delicate nostrils."
Her green eyes grew darker and the color showed in her skin. Like Korul she used the ancient, formal tongue pre-scribed between Master and Giver. "It was aot curiosity that brought me here," she said, "though I have never been in the lower city. I have not forgotten what you did in the desert, Korul. I wanted to thank you, and be sure that you are able again to give blood."
So Karak had the truth! It was his blood she wanted, like any scarlet-mouthed s.l.u.t among them!
"When a Master is in need, our blood is his," he snapped. "That is the law, and I obeyed it. It seems that we Givers are blessed with more than our bodies need." He stared at her insolently, eyeing the soft body under her robe. "Tell me, Thorana - are you of the Masters in poor health? I have heard that we will be bled more, and oftener, for your benefit."
That gave her something to think about. The temper went out of her eyes and left her softer and somehow more appeal-ing. "You must have been listening to the dust- G.o.ds, Korul. But - it is true. After Autumn Night, when the waters come again, my father will give you the new law."
He thought she hesitated. Certainly she was slipping out of the formal address.
"There will be no more mingling of the races when the ice melts, Korul. I - we feel it is not seemly."
"No!" he jeered. "It might destroy the famous beauty of the Masters. It might put blood of their own into their veins, and grow them legs like the beasts they breed here in the Under-City!"
That had gone home! As Korul well knew, legs like Thorana"s would bring her nothing but ridicule among her own flabby, bloodless kind. She"d covered them close enough on Spring Night, until she thought there was no one sober enough to watch! Her ear-tips were crimson with shame - or rage.
But when she answered, it was very softly. "I have a request." Now it was coming!
"You are feeling faint? The reek place makes you ill? A little blood for your health"s sake - is that your request, Thorana?"
Her head was beat, hiding her eyes. She drew the fold of her robe away from her legs. Korul felt the pulse pounding in his neck as he stared. G.o.ds! These weren"t the pedestals of muscle on which the women of the Blood-Givers carried their chunky bodies. They were slim, smooth, the muscles swelling cunningly over the slender bones. This Thorana - she was like the women in the paintings of long ago which one of the Searchers had shown him!
"My - legs - Korul." He could barely hear her. "Only you among the Blood-Givers know how I am - deformed. Very few of my own people know." Her head came up defiantly. "We Masters protect our monsters, Korul! What is your custom? The Pit, perhaps, where I can amuse the children and old men? Or do you slaughter your unfortunates because they are different from you?"
Korul gaped at her. "What are you talking about? What I know is in my head.
Here, between these ears. If any man wants to spill it out, he must break the head open first - and a.s.sure you, Thorana, it is a hard head to crack. Ask those who have tried - if you can teach dry bones to talk."
She shivered and let the crimson silk fall down again over her legs. "Is it true, Korul, that a man - a Giver - must kill you and drink your blood if he is to become First Man of your race?"
"A man - Giver or Master - proves that he is a man when he can drink my blood.
It"s not an old custom, Thorana. Your own kind made it law. You need a strong breed here in the Under-City, if you"re to be fed and kept in comfort all your days.
And the First Man of the Blood-Givers must be strong-est of all if he"s to breed strength in his sons."
The girl came toward him. She moved gracefully, like a wisp of mist along the rock- slopes of the gorges. "I want to know things like that, Korul. I want to see your people, how they live, what they do here in the depths. I want to know the thoughts they think when they are alone, and the dreams that come to them.
"Will you show them to me, Korul? You will find me grate-ful."
Grateful! The word grated in his ears. He seemed to hear Karak"s mocking voice, raised over the clamor in the Hall of the Elders. She would be grateful!
"How do you plan to show this grat.i.tude, Thorana?"
She hesitated. Her eyes turned away from him. "My father - he has said that hereafter you will give blood only to me."
Korul felt his neck swelling. The arrogance!
"A privilege indeed," he sneered. "I am sure any man of the Givers would be proud to be at Thorana"s call day and night for the rest of his life! For there would be nights, wouldn"t there, Thorana? Nights when the warm blood would flow on and on and on in the perfumed darkness - when you would feel real life beating for the first time in your shriveled veins, as it drained out of the drugged, stupid clod in the cushions at your side! You must have great confidence in my strength, Thorana, to believe we could enjoy such moments often."
Every bit of colour had gone out of her face. She stood stiff and straight, taller than any woman he had ever seen.
"Keep your insolence to yourself!" she cried. "You may keep your savage"s blood. I need none of it."
"No blood?" he mocked, "Have you forgotten the desert?"
She stared him down. "I remember. I am no brute beast like you, but I have blood of my own, and it"s good blood. Once in a year I may need you - twice at the most, and maybe never. You see, Korul, I can read history as well as you. I know that we were once one race, with bodies and legs and blood like yours. We Masters have our own traditions of strength in our First Men, though we do not suck blood to prove it.
"I am proud to be a throwback to those old ones - proud to have blood and legs. But I think pride must be a stranger to your kind."
What kind of woman was this - one moment stiff with arro-gance and the ingrown ignorance of her domineering breed, the next like this, soft, human? What was she after?
"If you are trying to do me a kindness, forget it," he said stiffly. "I am strong enough: choose someone weak or old who needs what help you can give him. I can find many such for you."
Her green eyes were searching his face again. "Korul," she said smiling, "you are learning more secrets than are good for you, but I will tell you another. There will be changes in the law of blood-giving - you know that, but what you have heard is only part of the truth. After Autumn Night the periods be-tween givings will no longer be the same for everyone. You will come to our Searchers and be tested, your strength measured, every Spring Night. Those like you, Korul, who have blood to spare, will give it as often as it is needed - the sick and the old, never again."
Her eyes were shining. She put her hand on his bare arm. "We must work together in this plan, Korul - Masters and Givers together again! You will have to make a new work plan for your people, for now the whole burden of blood-giving will be on your young men and women. And it will help us to change. We aren"t all fools and parasites, Korul - there are some of us, many of us, who know the story of the past and how we have made ourselves into a race of blood-sucking vermin.
"But we are one blood, Korul! We are one flesh. We can be one race again! Will you help?"
He turned the words slowly on his tongue. "One race? One blood? What then?"
"Show me your people. Help me to understand them. If we are to be one kind, Korul, we must know each other. The Pit is open to both races: will you meet me there - tomorrow?
Will you teach me the things a Master must know, if he is to be a man?"
The words came with difficulty. "If you are telling the truth, Thorana, it seems one of the Masters is already a man. I will be in the Pit at mid-morning."
Karak The cities of Mur clung to the sides of their gorges like a dry crust of rock-weed to the desert ledges. Along the terraced lips of the great clefts were crumbling walls of laid-up native stone, their roofs open to the sky, their halls deep in dust. Not all the power of the Pit would drive warmth so high.
Lower the city was carved out of the living rock, level after level of it reaching down and down into the perpetual mists of the deep. Below the abandoned levels were storehouses, libra-ries, the strange laboratories of the Searchers. Deeper still were the levels of the Masters, and under them in turn the warrens of the Blood-Givers in the dank, grumbling bowels of the city.
Deepest of all was the Pit. Circling up from it on every side were the sheer walls and retreating terraces of the city. The cages were there, penning up the strange beasts that were still to be found in forsaken wastelands of the planet, or that had roamed those wastes in the forgotten generations when Masters and Givers were one people.
There were creatures in the Pit, one of the Searchers had said, whose pedigrees ran back father and straighter than man"s. Like the Blood-Givers they had been bred for strength, down through the centuries. Like Masters, they could no longer live outside their cages.
For a few hours each day during the Murian summer the sun rose clear of the gorges" rim, moved across the narrow strip of sky, and disappeared beyond the farther wall. Before its hot light cut through the mists of the gorge, Korul was hurrying through the lower corridors, surprising an occasional Giver. Thorana was there before him in a very small tlornak which could wheel silently through the narrowest pa.s.sage of the Under-City.
So it began. They made an odd pair - the slim girl in her wheeled carriage, the bronzed Giver striding beside her. No Master had come into those levels in generations: no Master had a right there! Their faces spoke their distrust and hatred, but under the law - their law - Korul was First of their men and what he did and said was not to be questioned to his face unless the questioner was ready to try for his throat.
Korul knew the city as he knew the back of his spread hand. With him Thorana went into the very vitals of the city-the city within the city, where the great conduits rose like twisted en-trails out of the bowels of the planet, where dynamos three levels high purred through the gloom, where the air machines hissed and bubbled, pumping warmed and perfumed breezes into the quarters of the Masters and cool, invigorating blasts into the shops and cells of the Givers.
She saw the shops of the Makers where tlornaks were built; the kitchens where the food of the Under-people was prepared; the hospitals where the weak and old came to recover from their blood-letting, where children were born and Givers died and she saw the dead fed into the furnaces which would burn away the semblence of life and leave a puff of clean ashes.
Holding Korul"s arm, she went on her own feet down into the Pit beneath the Pit where the eternal fires of Mur smould-ered, and sweating men tended the huge heat-pumps which kept the city alive.
What impressed her most, Korul thought, was his intimacy with his people. As leader of the Givers he knew hundreds of his folk by sight and name, and they knew and welcomed him. It startled her.
But what was most marked was the reception she had from them. Dressed quietly and un.o.btrusively, as she was from the first, and except for occasional traits of speech or att.i.tude, Thorana might have been one of them - slight, weak-looking, finer than any of them in features and carriage, yet - human. She tried to fit into the life of the places Korul took her, to make friends with the people she saw there, but - she was a Master. Even the children in the great public nurseries shrank from her, as if by instinct.
They did not always explore the city. There were times when she had duties of her own, or when Korul had work of his own. Then they would come to the Pit at night, and talk.
Usually it was of the old times, when the races were one people. He forgot, then, that they were Master and Giver. To-gether, man and woman, they lived over the life of those old, good times. They remade the universe in their own pattern, like children, and in that made-over world, where the two races were again one blood and one flesh, they too would be one like their peoples. It was a pretty dream.
Korul had forgotten the Elders, and his pledge to them. They knew he had forgotten. That knowledge was in the whispers that followed them through the levels of the Under-City, in the eyes that watched their trysts in the Pit. It was in work hidden when he appeared.
All over Mur the preparations were under way. In the hid-den shops men and women both were beating out slashing blades of steel and building ugly little bows that hurled steel bolts with deadly accuracy.
He should have seen. That was why he was First Man of all the Blood-Givers of Mur. The pulse and timbre of his people should have been his pulse, should have tightened his nerves. But - Korul was in love.
On the surface, everything was normal. Even before the Plan there had been muttered resentment and rebellious talk: the Masters expected it. Little overt acts of contempt - mock-ing slowness in obeying an order - scrawled obscenities in the dust or on a wall - catch-words in the jargon of the Givers. The Masters expected it; their spies and supervisors saw it and reported it as usual. But now it was planned as carefully as the secret a.r.s.enals the Givers were building in every city of Mur. Now it was a screen for the soberer thoughts behind it.
Behind the screen, behind the secret bustle, was Karak.
Except in name, Korul was no longer first of his people. They let him keep the t.i.tle as part of the screen. But it was Karak who carried the Elders" orders, who planned with them, who called the secret meetings and named their lieutenants. It was he who forged the lies which would keep the People"s hate at fever-pitch, and who thundered out his war cry in the Hall of the Elders while men and women and half- grown children flung it back in savage frenzy: "Death to the Masters! Death!"
Korul should have sat on the dais beside Turun at that meeting of his people. He sat in the Pit with Thorana, moon-ing over her fragile beauty, listening to her low, sweet voice, thinking her thoughts.
At another time Korul might have read a good deal in the strained att.i.tude of the woman who brought him a summons from the Elders. As it was, he strode into the hall to see Karak standing in his place on the dais, beside Turun - and beside the banked controls of a transmitter which, Korul knew, would carry every detail of what happened to every corner of the city. There was an empty s.p.a.ce before Turun"s throne. It was the place decreed by the law of his people for those who came on trial before their Elders. And he stood there.
Old Turun looked down at him with pity behind the sadness in his eyes. "You have not been helpful, Korul," he said bitterly, "but the People have been strong without you. Tell him, Karak."
Karak swaggered forward to the edge of the dais. "You"ve been so busy with - things - Korul," he sneered, "that I was glad to help the Elders. I"ve cleared up some of the little de-tails of organization that you"d have taken care of if you"d have the time."
The bl.u.s.terer had to be deflated. "What details?" Korul de-manded. "What have you accomplished, that is so important?"
He had walked into Karak"s trap. "Perhaps not important to you, or your new friends, Korul - but we have the sluices at both poles. Torkul is in command in the North, and Tatokin the South. I have found leaders in every city - strong leaders, without other distractions on their minds. And the People have weapons now, Korul."
"By the G.o.ds, Karak," he cried, "do you have a plan? Speak it out!"
The mockery went out of Karak"s broad face. "It"s very simple, Korul - and soon done. In two days the sluices will open and the autumn flow begin. The Masters will be our equals again for one night. It"s to be the last, they tell me - and it will be the last, but we will make it so! Every man has been drilled in his part until he dreams it. Every woman knows her duty. In three breaths they will be cut down to the last one, and there will be no blood-giving on Mur."
"And my part, Karak? You"ve said nothing about that."
He was being sly again. "Oh, no, Korul!" he protested. "You are our First Man - you"ll give the word that frees us. You will be at the feasting, I"m sure - in a very prominent place, no doubt. When you are quite ready, and have made your fare-wells to the old days, you will rise and give us the word."
He was holding out something that glistened: a knife, ham-mered out of steel, sharpened to a needle point and razor edge, with a handle of carved bone. "Take it, Korul - and strike the first blow for your people. The blood of the First Master and all his breed will drip from this blade when you"re done."
And Turun"s croak goaded him on. "Take it, Korul. Hold it up for the People to see.
Then speak to them."
Slowly Korul"s fingers closed over the carved hilt. It was a sweetly, wickedly made thing - and it would kill as quickly in Karak"s hand as in his. If he refused now - if he hesitated in any way - the allegiance of the Givers would be lost. Karak would be First, then - and no woman"s face swam before his eyes.
If he agreed, then he must smile and whisper and murmur love-words to Thorana and with his next breath slit her lovely throat - or see Karak do it for him.
At least, there were two days.
Every eye in the hall was on Korul as he stepped up on the dais beside Turun, in his rightful place, where the transmitter would carry face and voice to every city of Mur.
"People of Mur," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "I will give you the word. The word is - Death!"
Behind him he heard Karak chuckling.
In The Pit She was waiting for him there in the shadow of the great open cage of the Star- Beast, as she had waited so often. She rose as she heard his footsteps and stood slim and wonderful in the soft light that sifted down through the mists of the gorge.
Korul took her hands. He could not speak, or look at her. The knife, in its secret sheath at his side, seemed to burn into his flesh. In two nights that knife must slash across this lovely throat - must slip into this warm soft breast.
The warmth in his hands was suddenly the sticky warmth of fresh blood. Korul stepped quickly back; rubbed his open palms down his thighs.
Thorana reached out and drew him close again. "Tell me, Korul - what is it? I will not blame you."
It came pouring out then, in a flood of broken words - how he loved her - how he had betrayed her - how all her race were to be butchered at his word.
"Warn them!" he pleaded "Tell them everything. There must be some stronghold - one of the abandoned cities, per-haps - where they can hide and give me time to reason with the People."
"It is too late for reasoning, Korul," she told him. "We could not live without your people Who would tend the heat engines? Who would prepare our food? What should we do for blood? No - some of them have known it would come. We hoped, as we have always hoped, that it would be a little later - not in our own lifetime, but later. Instead, it is now."
Her fingers tightened on his arms. "Be true to them, Korul. Use the knife they gave you, and be quick and kind. Then they will trust you again; they will follow you as they used to. You can lead them in the way we"ve dreamed here so often, and keep it all from happening again in a thousand years or two thousand when the Givers of today have in their turn be-come Masters, and some other crushed-down race strikes back."
He stared at her. Kill her - that was what she was asking him. Drink her blood, as she had drunk his there in the desert. "I"ll go with you - now," he insisted. "We"ll use the secret lifts. There are places in the upper city that not even the Elders know.
They don"t need me now - they"ve proved that. Let the Elders care for the People."
Thorana pointed to the archway through which he had come into the Pit. There were shadows there, and as one moved he caught the glint of light on bare metal.
Slowly he looked around him. Every entry was guarded.
Remembering, he heard Karak"s mocking chuckle.
The girl drew him down beside her on the stone bench that ran across the front of the Star-Beast"s cage. "We"ve been watched from the beginning, Korul: I thought you knew that. They know how it is with us. They knew you would betray them, to me. Karak has never intended that we would live out this night."
Korul went down on his knees at her side. How could he have been so stupid? This was Karak"s real plan - to strike tonight. Everything was ready - the sluices taken - weapons distributed - only a word was needed, and why should that word wait for Autumn Night? No - his death, and Thorana"s, here in the Pit, would be the signal for ma.s.sacre.
Out of the darkness above him came a thundering voice, hoa.r.s.e, savage, rasping!
"Korul!"
Korul"s heart stood still. Was this some other mockery of Karak"s? Gently he slipped the knife out of its hiding place and balanced it in his hand. Then it came again: "Korul!"