A World Called Crimson Part 10

"I--I don't know. You have one s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. I guess that's why. What do you need another one for?"

"It was just a thought," said Glaudot. "It doesn't matter." He kneeled near the heaps of sun-dazzled jewels. He let them trickle through his fingers. No, the desire wasn't gone yet. It was still fighting with his will. And, since he knew his will could win at any time, it pleased him to give his desire free rein.

He scooped up a handful of jewels. He found a necklace and came close to Robin and dropped it over her head. The pearls were very white against her sun-tanned skin. The pearl pendant hung almost to the start of the dusky valley which cleaved her b.r.e.a.s.t.s delightfully and disappeared with the tanned swell of flesh on either side into the gold-mesh halter.

Glaudot fingered the pendant. His fingers touched flesh. Abruptly he drew the surprised Robin to him and kissed her lips hungrily.

For a moment she remained pa.s.sive. She neither returned his ardor nor fought it. But when his hands began to stroke her back she pulled away from him and stood there looking at him. She took the necklace off and threw it at his feet.

"I don't want that any more," she said. "Why did you do--what you did?"

He felt the fire in his veins. He willed it to subside. He needed his control now. All of it. But this girl, in the full flower of her youth ... No, she was not a girl, not to Glaudot. He must not think of her as a girl. She was power. Power. The power was his--if he didn't alienate the girl.

"We do such as that on my world," he said. "It is a kind of homage to loveliness. I hope you didn't mind."

"I--it was strange. With Charlie sometimes I hope--but with Charlie it is ... different. Please don't touch me again. Please promise me that."

Glaudot shrugged. "If you wish, my dear child, if you wish...."

The dual desire was gone now, truly gone. He knew that. For his will had been threatened, more by his own foolish desire than by this innocent girl. He had to think. Clearly. More clearly than he had ever thought before. He needed the girl as an ally. Not as a slave. She had to be willing. She had to co-operate. Give her a warped picture of the rest of the galaxy? Convince her its governments were evil, totalitarian, when in reality they were democratic? Convince her that he alone, given unlimited power, could right the wrongs of a thousand worlds? She was naive enough for that sort of approach, he thought. Besides, it would strike her as something like creation--moral creation, perhaps. And creation she would understand. Then, with her as his partner, he could quickly build a war machine which the combined might of the galaxy couldn't stand against. And that, he suddenly realized, would even include an unlimited number of soldiers for occupation and policing duties. This power would be unparalleled.

"I have something I want to tell you about," he said. "It will take a long time and we must be undisturbed, which is why I asked you to bring me here."

"What is it you want to tell me?"

Before Glaudot could answer, they heard a cras.h.i.+ng, rending sound not too far off in the woods. It sounded to Glaudot exactly as if trees were being uprooted, boulders strewn carelessly.

"Cyclopes!" Robin screamed in terror, and began to run.

Glaudot ran after her, stumbling, picking himself up, hurtling in pursuit. He couldn't let her get away. He had to follow her ...

Nothing living, he told himself as he ran, could uproot those huge trees. Of course, there were the saplings, but even the saplings were the size of full-grown oaks and maples on far Earth.

Something roared behind him. The sound was pitched almost too low for human ears. He whirled. The earth shook, great clods of it flying. Bare tree roots suddenly appeared, and a young tree the size of a towering oak was lifted skyward.

Behind it, brandis.h.i.+ng it and then hurling it away, was a naked man whose head towered impossibly a hundred and fifty feet into the air.

Trembling, awestruck, Glaudot looked up at the great savage face. Wild hair streaming, filthy beard matted with dirt and tree-branches, it was the most ferocious face Glaudot had ever seen.

And it had only one eye, one enormous eye in the middle of its head. But an eye three feet across!

"A Cyclops!" Robin screamed again.

A moment later the creature stooped and with a scooping motion of its great right hand picked up the two tiny creatures on the forest floor beneath it. Then it ran, uprooting oak-sized saplings, back toward the rocky hillside where it dwelled, after the Cyclopes of old on which Robin and Charlie had naively patterned it, in a cave overlooking the sea.

"Where, man? Where?" Captain Purcell demanded.

"I don't know," Charlie said. "I really don't think she would. You see, she always threatened she'd go there if we ever had a fight, but she was usually half-joking. She knows it's dangerous--"

"But where? Don't you know a drowning man has to grasp at straws?

Haven't I gotten it across to you--the whole galaxy may be in danger!"

Charlie sighed. "I don't understand much of your galaxy. Robin knows the encyclopedia--she would understand. And I--I only want to know Robin is safe." He took a deep breath and said: "She always threatened to go to the Land of the Cyclopes."

"Then take us there at once," Captain Purcell said....

If he shouted and cried now, he would go insane. He knew that. He tried to hold his fear in check. He was being swung pendulum-like in an enormous hand as the one-eyed giant loped along. Robin shared the clenched-fist prison with him. Her hair streamed in the wind as the huge arm swung the huge hand in time with the giant's enormous strides.

"Does it eat people?" he managed to ask Robin. He had to shout because the wind created by the creature's movement was considerable. The ground spun giddily far, far below them, whirling patches of green, of yellow, of brown.

"We made them to eat people. Like in the book. We were just children.

It seemed--it seemed so thrilling."

The Cyclops loped along, uprooting saplings. After a while it began to climb a rocky slope and from the heights Glaudot could see the sh.o.r.es of an unknown sea. Then the Cyclops reached a cave entrance and rolled aside a huge boulder and took his prisoners within.

Glaudot heard the bleating of sheep.

"Why, it's a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the sight of all this wealth.

Charlie said: "Captain, look."

Purcell went over to him and saw the wide swathe cut through the forest and curving out of sight. "What went through there?" he gasped.

"A Cyclops," Charlie said grimly. "A Cyclops has them. Captain, we've got to hurry. Listen, there are two horses now. I could create horses for all of us, but all these men coming up would probably be seen by the Cyclops. You come on foot with your men. Let one of them come with me on the stallions." As he spoke Charlie unslung the Mannlicher and put it down.

"Oh, you want our more modern weapons?" Purcell asked.

Charlie shook his head. "For fun, Robin and I made the Cyclopes invulnerable to any kind of attack except the kind mentioned in the encyclopedia--putting out their single eye with a stake. To protect all the other people we created, we made the Cyclopes so they'd never want to leave their homeland. So if we can get Robin and your man Glaudot free, they'll be safe. Now, who's the volunteer?"

"I'm already on horseback," Chandler said. Charlie nodded and mounted the second roan stallion.

"My men will be coming as fast as they can march," Captain Purcell said.

Charlie nodded. He did not bother to tell the captain that a Cyclops could cover in a few minutes ground a marching party could not hope to cover in as many hours. He set off at a swift gallop with Chandler.

"Will he eat us now?" said Glaudot. Strangely, he was not afraid. The unexpected nature of their impending demise he almost found amusing.

Robin shook her head. "I don't think so. He'll probably drink himself to sleep. We made the Cyclopes great drunkards."

The Cyclops, his tree-trunk sized walking stick leaning against the wall, was reclining and drinking from a huge bowl of wine. The cave was torchlit. Seventy or eighty sheep milled about, settling for the night after three of their number had supplied a meal for the giant, who had eaten them raw.