The Greatest SF Classics of Stanley G. Weinbaum. Stanley G. Weinbaum
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on the Sleep in some way known only to yourself—since I understand you had no bank deposit to draw interest for you and make you a wealthy man. Now I am inclined to believe you have come from another age—an age of wisdom—and you're a dangerous man, Thomas Connor. You're a brave man to bait me as you do, and a strong one, but dangerous; too dangerous. Yet I'm rather sorry your courage and strength has been bred out of the race."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to kill you," said the Master softly. "I'm sorry. Were it not for Evanie, I might be tempted to ask for your oath of allegiance and release you, but I can't trust a man who loves a Weed woman. It's a chance I dare not take, though I bitterly regret losing your blood and your ancient knowledge. If it consoles you, know that I intend to free Evanie. She's harmless to me. Any trouble she might cause can be easily handled. But you —you're different."
"Thanks," retorted Connor.
Like a compass needle his eyes did return to the face of the Princess, then. Even now, condemned to die for the second time in his strange life, he gazed fascinated at her, smiling at her with an echo of her own mockery.
"I don't suppose," said the Master hopefully, "that you'd consent to—say, marry Evanie and perpetuate your blood before you die. I need that ancient strain of yours. Our race has grown weak."
"I would not!" Connor said.
"Tell me!" said the other in sudden eagerness. "Is it true, as an Ormon prisoner told us, and which I scorned to believe, having then no faith in this thousand–year Sleep, that you understand the ancient mathematics? Calculus, logarithms, and such lost branches?"
"It's quite true," snapped Connor. "Who told you?"
"Your Ormon chemist. Would you consent to impart that knowledge? The world needs it."
"For my life, perhaps."
The Master hesitated, frowning.
"I'm sorry," he said at last. "Invaluable as the knowledge is, the danger you, personally, present, outweighs it. I could trick you out of your secrets. I could promise you life, get your information, then quietly kill you. I do not stoop to that. If you desire, your knowledge goes to the grave with you."
"Thanks again," retorted Connor. "You might remember that I could have concealed my dangerous character, too. I needn't have pointed out the weakness in your defenses."
"I already knew them. I also know the weaknesses of Weed mentality." He paused. "I'm truly sorry, but—this seems to be the end of our interview." He turned as if to gesture to the guards along the wall.
Margaret of Urbs flashed a strange, inscrutable glance at Connor, and leaned toward the Master. She spoke in low, inaudible tones, but emphatically, insistently. The Master looked up at Connor.
"I reconsider," he said coolly. "I grant you your life for the present on one condition—that you make no move against me while you are in the Palace. I do not ask your word not to escape. I only warn you that a Messenger will follow. Do you agree?"
Connor thought only a moment. "I do."
"Then you will remain within the Palace." The Master snapped an order to a guard. "I will send doctors to attend little Evanie. That's all."
The guard, as tall a man as Connor himself, stepped forward and gathered Evanie in his arms. Connor followed him, but could not resist a backward glance at the Princess, who sat once more staring idly into space. But in his mind was the thought now, exultant in spite of his resentment, that at least she had not forgotten him, or those hours together in the woods.
They moved into the hall, and into an elevator that flashed upward with sudden and sickening acceleration. He had glimpses of floor after floor through the glass doors as they mounted high into the North Tower.
The motion ceased. Connor followed the guard into a room lit by the red glow of sunset, and watched as he deposited Evanie on a white–covered bed, then turned, and threw open a door. "That is yours," the guard said briefly, and departed.
Luxury breathed through the perfumed air of the rooms, but Connor had no time for such observations. He bent anxiously over the pallid–faced Evanie, wondering miserably why the release of the Messenger had not awakened her. He was still gazing when a knock sounded, and two doctors entered.
One, the younger, set instantly to work examining the scratch on the girl's ankle, while the other pried open her eyes, parted her still lips, bent close to listen to her breathing.
"Brain–burnt," he announced. "Brain–burnt by a vitergon—the Messenger. Severe electrolepsis."
"Lord!" Connor muttered anxiously. "Is it is it very serious?"
"Serious? Bah!" The older man spun on him. "It's exactly what happens to Sleepers—paralysis of the pre–Rolandic areas, the will, the consciousness. Like—if I'm properly informed—what happened to you! It might be serious if we let her sleep for a half a century, not otherwise." He stepped to an ebony table beside the bed, decanting a ruby liquid into a tumbler. "Here," he said. "We'll try a good stiff stimulant."
He poured the ruddy fluid between Evanie's lips, and when the last drop had vanished, stood over her watching. She moved convulsively and moaned in agony.
"Hah!" said the doctor. "That'll burn some life into her!" The girl shuddered and opened dazed and pain–racked eyes. "So! You can handle her now," he called to the younger man, and moved out through the doorway.
"Evanie!" croaked Connor tensely. "Are you all right? How do you feel?"
The dazed eyes rested on him.
"I burn! Water—oh, please—water!"
Two Women
Tom Connor glanced a silent question at the doctor. At his nod, Connor seized the empty tumbler and looked frantically for water. He found it beyond a door, where a silent stream gushed from the mouth of a grotesque face into a broad basin.
Evanie drank eagerly, thirstily, when he brought it to her. She stared bewilderedly about the luxurious room, and turned questioning eyes on Connor.
"Where—" she began.
"In Urbs. In the Palace."
Comprehension dawned.
"The Messengers! Oh, my God!" She shivered in fright. "How long—have I—"
"Just two days, Evanie. I carried you here."
"What is to—to be done with us?"
"I don't know, dear. But you're safe."
She frowned a moment in the effort to compose her still dazed and bewildered mind.
"Well," she murmured finally, "nothing can be done about it. I'm ashamed to have been so weak. Was he—very angry?"
"He didn't seem so." The memory of the Master's impassive face rose in his mind, and with it the vision of the exquisite features of the Princess.
"I suppose the girl who sits on his right is the Princess, isn't she?" he asked. "Who is she?"
Evanie nodded. "Every one knows that. On his left sits Martin Sair, the Giver of Life, and on his right— Why do you ask that?" She glanced up troubled, suspicious.
"Because she saved my life. She intervened for me."
"Tom!" Evanie's voice was horror–filled. "Tom, that was Margaret of Urbs, the Black Flame!" Her eyes were terrified. "Tom, she's dangerous—poisonous—deadly! You mustn't even look at her. She's driven men—I don't know how many—to suicide. She's killed men—she's tortured them. Don't ever go near, her, Tom! If she saved you, it wasn't out of mercy, because she's merciless—ruthless—utterly pitiless!"
Scarcely conscious as yet, the girl was on the verge of hysteria.