The Best of C. L. Moore Part 2

Yarol laid his hand on his gun, lightly, and opened the door wider. In the dimness all he could see at first was a curious mound in the far corner. - . . Then his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he saw it more clearly, a mound that somehow heaved and stirred within it-self. . . . A mound of-he caught his breath sharply-a mound like a ma.s.s of entrails, living, moving, writhing with an unspeakable aliveness.

Then a hot Venusian oath broke from his lips and he cleared the door-sill in a swift stride, slammed the door and set his back against it, gun ready in his hand, although his flesh crawled-for he knew. - "Smith!" he said softly, in a voice thick with horror. "Northwest!"

The moving ma.s.s stirred-shuddered-sank back into crawling qui-escence again.

"Smith! Smith!" The Venusian's voice was gentle and insistent, and it quivered a little with terror.

An impatient ripple went over the whole ma.s.s of aliveness in the corner. It stirred again, reluctantly, and then tendril by writhing tendril it began to part itself and fall aside, and very slowly the brown of a s.p.a.ceman's leather appeared beneath it, all slimed and s.h.i.+ning.

"Smith! Northwest!" Yarol's persistent whisper came again, ur-gently, and with a dreamlike slowness the leather garments moved - a man sat up in the midst of the writhing worms, a man who once, long ago, might have been Northwest Smith. From head to foot he was slimy from the embrace of the crawling horror about him.

His face was that of some creature beyond humanity-dead-alive, fixed in a gray stare, and the look of terrible ecstasy that overspread it seemed to come from somewhere far within, a faint reflection from immeas-urable distances beyond the flesh. And as there is mystery and magic in the moonlight which is after all but a reflection of the everyday sun, so in that gray face turned to the door was a terror unnamable and sweet, a reflection of ecstasy beyond the understanding of any who have known only earthly ecstasy themselves. And as he sat there turning a blank, eyeless face to Yarol the red worms writhed ceaselessly about him, very gently, with a soft, caressive motion that never slacked."Smith . . . come here! Smith . . . get up . . . Smith, Smith!" Yarol's whisper hissed in the silence, commanding, urgent-but he made no move to leave the door.

And with a dreadful slowness, like a dead man rising, Smith stood up in the nest of slimy scarlet. He swayed drunkenly on his feet, and two or three crimson tendrils came writhing up his legs to the knees and wound themselves there, supportingly, moving with a ceaseless caress that seemed to give him some hidden strength, for he said then, without inflection, "Go away. Go away. Leave me alone." And the dead ecstatic face never changed.

"Smith!" Yarol's voice was desperate. "Smith, listen! Smith, can't you hear me?"

"Go away," the monotonous voice said. "Go away. Go away. Go-"

"Not unless you come too. Can't you hear? Smith! Smith! I'll-"

He hushed in mid-phrase, and once more the ancestral p.r.i.c.kle of race-memory s.h.i.+vered down his back, for the scarlet ma.s.s was moving again, violently, rising. .

Yarol pressed back against the door and gripped his gun, and the name of a G.o.d he had forgotten years ago rose to his lips unbidden. For he knew what was coming next, and the knowledge was more dreadful than any ignorance could have been.

The red, writhing ma.s.s rose higher, and the tendrils parted and a human face looked out-no, half human, with green cat-eyes that shone in that dimness like lighted jewels, compellingly. .

Yarol breathed "Shar!" again, and flung up an arm across his face, and the tingle of meeting that green gaze for even an instant went thrilling through him perilously.

"Smith!" he called in despair. "Smith, can't you hear me?"

"Go away," said that voice that was not Smith's. "Go away."

And somehow, although he dared not look, Yarol knew that the- the other-had parted those worm-thick tresses and stood there in all the human sweetness of the brown, curved woman's body, cloaked in living horror. And he felt the eyes upon him, and something was cry- ing insistently in his brain to lower that s.h.i.+elding arm. . . - He was lost-he knew it, and the knowledge gave him that courage which comes from despair. The voice in his brain was growing, swelling, deafening him with a roaring command that all but swept him before it-command to lower that arm-to meet the eyes that opened upon darkness-to submit-and a promise, murmurous and sweet and evil beyond words, of pleasure to come. .

But somehow he kept his head-somehow, dizzily, he was gripping his gun in his upflung hand-somehow, incredibly, crossing the nar-row room with averted face, groping for Smith's shoulder.

There was a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness, and then he found it, and gripped the leather that was slimy and dreadful and wet-and simul-taneously he felt something loop gently about his ankle and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through him, and then another coil, and another, wound about his feet. - Yarol set his teeth and gripped the shoulder hard, and his hand shuddered of itself, for the feel of that leather was slimy as the worms about his ankles, and a faint tingle of obscene delight went through him from the contact.

That caressive pressure on his legs was all he could feel, and the voice in his brain drowned out all other sounds, and his body obeyed him reluctantly-but somehow he gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung Smith, stumbling, out of that nest of horror. The twining tendrils ripped loose with a little sucking sound, and the whole ma.s.s quivered and reached after, and then Yarol forgot his friend utterly and turned his whole being to the hopeless task of free-ing himself. For only a part of him was fighting, now-only a part of him struggled against the twining obscenities, and in his innermost brain the sweet, seductive murmur sounded, and his body clamored to surrender. .

"Shar! Shar y'danis . . . Shar mor'la-rol-" prayed Yarol, gasping and half unconscious that he spoke, boy's prayers that he had forgot-ten years ago, and with his back half turned to the central ma.s.s he kicked desperately with his heavy boots at the red, writhing worms about him. They gave back before him, quivering and curling them-selves out of reach, and though he knew that more were reaching for his throat from behind, at least he could go on struggling until he was forced to meet those eyes. . .He stamped and kicked and stamped again, and for one instant he was free of the slimy grip as the bruised worms curled back from his heavy feet, and he lurched away dizzily, sick with revulsion and despair as he fought off the coils, and then he lifted his eyes and saw the cracked mirror on the wall. Dimly in its reflection he could see the writhing scarlet horror behind him, cat face peering out with its demure girl-smile, dreadfully human, and all the red tendrils reaching after him. And remembrance of something he had read long ago swept incongruously over him, and the gasp of relief and hope that he gave shook for a moment the grip of the command in his brain.

Without pausing for a breath he swung the gun over his shoulder, the reflected barrel in line with the reflected horror in the mirror, and flicked the catch.

In the mirror he saw its blue flame leap in a dazzling spate across the dimness, full into the midst of that squirming, reaching ma.s.s behind him. There was a hiss and a blaze and a high, thin scream of inhuman malice and despair-the flame cut a wide arc and went-out as the gun fell from his hand, and Yarol pitched forward to the floor.

Northwest Smith opened his eyes to Martian sunlight streaming thinly through the dingy window.

Something wet and cold was slap-ping his face, and the familiar fiery sting of segir-whisky burnt his throat.

"Smith!" Yarol's voice was saying from far away. "N. W.! Wake up, d.a.m.n you! Wake up!"

"I'm-awake," Smith managed to articulate thickly. "Wha's matter?"

Then a cup-rim was thrust against his teeth and Yarol said irritably, "Drink it, you fool!"

Smith swallowed obediently and more of the fire-hot segir flowed down his grateful throat. It spread a warmth through his body that awakened him from the numbness that had gripped him until now, and helped a little toward driving out the all-devouring weakness he was becoming aware of slowly. He lay still for a few minutes while the warmth of the whisky went through him, and memory sluggishly began to permeate his brain with the spread of the segir. Nightmare memories. . . sweet and terrible. . . memories of- "G.o.d!" gasped Smith suddenly, and tried to sit up. Weakness smote him like a blow, and for an instant the room wheeled as he fell back against something firm and warm-Yarol's shoulder. The Venusian's arm supported him while the room steadied, and after a while he twisted a little and stared into the other's black gaze.

Yarol was holding him with one arm and finis.h.i.+ng the mug of segir himself, and the black eyes met his over the rim and crinkled into sud-den laughter, half hysterical after that terror that was pa.s.sed.

"By Pharolr' gasped Yarol, choking into his mug. "By Pharol, N. W.! I'm never gonna let you forget this! Next time you have to drag me out of a mess I'll say-"

"Let it go," said Smith. "What's been going on? How-"

"Shambleau." Yarol's laughter died. "Shambleau! What were you doing with a thing like that?"

"What was it?" Smith asked soberly.

"Mean to say you didn't know? But where'd you find it? How-"

"Suppose you tell me first what you know," said Smith firmly. "And another swig of that segir, too, please. I need it."

"Can you hold the mug now? Feel better?"

"Yeah-some. I can hold it-thanks. Now go on."

"Well-I don't know just where to start. They call them Shambleau-"

"Good G.o.d, is there more than one?"

"It's a-a sort of race, I think, one of the very oldest. Where they come from n.o.body knows. The name sounds a little French, doesn't it? But it goes back beyond the start of history. There have always been Shambleau."

"I never heard of 'em."

"Not many people have. And those who know don't care to talk about it much."

"Well, half this town knows. I hadn't any idea what they were talk-ing about, then. And I still don't understand, but-""Yes, it happens like this, sometimes. They'll appear, and the news will spread and the town will get together and hunt them down, and after that-well, the story doesn't get around very far. It's too-too unbelievable."

"But-my G.o.d, Yarol!-what was it? Where'd it come from? How-"

"n.o.body knows just where they come from. Another planet- maybe some undiscovered one. Some say Venus-I know there are some rather awful legends of them handed down in our family-that's how I've heard about it. And the minute I opened that door, awhile back-I-I think I knew that smell. . . ."

"But-what are they?"

"G.o.d knows. Not human, though they have the human form. Or that may be only an illusion - . . or maybe I'm crazy. I don't know. They're a species of the vampire-or maybe the vampire is a species of -of them. Their normal form must be that-that ma.s.s, and in that form they draw nourishment from the-I suppose the life-forces of men. And they take some form-usually a woman form, I think, and key you up to the highest pitch of emotion before they-begin. That's to work the life-force up to intensity so it'll be easier. . . . And they give, always, that horrible, foul pleasure as they-feed. There are some men who, if they survive the first experience, take to it like a drug- can't give it up-keep the thing with them all their lives-which isn't long-feeding it for that ghastly satisfaction. Worse than smoking ming or-or 'praying to Pharol."

"Yes," said Smith. "I'm beginning to understand why that crowd was so surprised and-and disgusted when I said-well, never mind. Go on."

"Did you get to talk to-to it?" asked Yarol.

"I tried to. It couldn't speak very well. I asked it where it came from and it said-'from far away and long ago'-something like that."

"I wonder. Possibly some unknown planet-but I think not. You know there are so many wild stories with some basis of fact to start from, that I've sometimes wondered-mightn't there be a lot more of even worse and wilder superst.i.tions we've never even heard of? Things like this, blasphemous and foul, that those who know have to keep still about? Awful, fantastic things running around loose that we never hear rumors of at all!

"These things-they've been in existence for countless ages. No one knows when or where they first appeared. Those who've seen them, as we saw this one, don't talk about it. It's just one of those~ Yague, misty rumors you find half hinted at in old books sometimes. . . . I believe they are an older race than man, sp.a.w.ned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to man that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it-forget them again as quickly as they can.

"And they go back to time immemorial. I suppose you recognized the legend of Medusa? There isn't any question that the ancient Greeks knew of them. Does it mean that there have been civilizations before yours that set out from Earth and explored other planets? Or did one of the Shambleau somehow make its way into Greece three thousand years ago? If you think about it long enough you'll go off your head! I wonder how many other legends are based on things like this-things we don't suspect, things we'll never know.

"The Gorgon, Medusa, a beautiful woman with-with snakes for hair, and a gaze that turned men to stone, and Perseus finally killed her-I remembered this just by accident, N. W., and it saved your life and mine-Perseus killed her by using a mirror as he fought to reflect what he dared not look at directly.

I wonder what the old Greek who first started that legend would have thought if he'd known that three thousand years later his story would save the lives of two men on another planet. I wonder what that Greek's own story was, and how he met the thing, and what happened. - "Well, there's a lot we'll never know. Wouldn't the records of that race of-of things, whatever they are, be worth reading! Records of other planets and other ages and all the beginnings of mankind! But I don't suppose they've kept any records. I don't suppose they've even any place to keep them-from what little I know, or anyone knows about it, they're like the Wandering Jew, just bobbing up here and there at long intervals, and where they stay in the meantime I'd give my eyes to know! But I don't believe that terribly hypnotic power they have indicates any superhuman intelligence. It's their means of gettingfood-just like a frog's long tongue or a carnivorous flower's odor. Those are physical because the frog and the flower eat physical food. The Shambleau uses a-a mental reach to get mental food. I don't quite know how to put it. And just as a beast that eats the bodies of other animals acquires with each meal greater power over the bodies of the rest, so the Shambleau, stoking itself up with the life-forces of men, increases its power over the minds and the souls of other men. But I'm talking about things I can't define-things I'm not sure exist.

"I only know that when I felt-when those tentacles closed around my legs-I didn't want to pull loose, I felt sensations that- that-oh, I'm fouled and filthy to the very deepest part of me by that -pleasure-and yet-"

"I know," said Smith slowly. The effect of the segir was beginning to wear off, and weakness was was.h.i.+ng back over him in waves, and when he spoke he was half meditating in a low voice, scarcely realiz-ing that Yarol listened. "I know it-much better than you do-and there's something so indescribably awful that the thing emanates, something so utterly at odds with everything human-there aren't any words to say it. For a while I was a part of it, literally, sharing its thoughts and memories and emotions and hungers, and-well, it's over now and I don't remember very clearly, but the only part left free was that part of me that was but insane from the-the obscenity of the thing. And yet it was a pleasure so sweet-I think there must be some nucleus of utter evil in me-in everyone-that needs only the proper stimulus to get complete control; because even while I was sick all through from the touch of those-things-there was something in me that was-was simply gibbering with delight. . . . Because of that I saw things-and knew things-horrible, wild things I can't quite remember-visited unbelievable places, looked backward through the memory of that-creature-I was one with, and saw-G.o.d, I wish I could remember!"

"You ought to thank your G.o.d you can't," said Yarol soberly.

His voice roused Smith from the half-trance he had fallen into, and he rose on his elbow, swaying a little from weakness. The room was wavering before him, and he closed his eyes, not to see it, but he asked, "You say they-they don't turn up again? No way of finding- another?"

Yarol did not answer for a moment. He laid his hands on the other man's shoulders and pressed him back, and then sat staring down into the dark, ravaged face with a new, strange, undefinable look upon it that he had never seen there before-whose meaning he knew, too well.

"Smith," he said finally, and his black eyes for once were steady and serious, and the little grinning devil had vanished from behind them, "Smith, I've never asked your word on anything before, but I've-I've earned the right to do it now, and I'm asking you to promise me one thing."

Smith's colorless eyes met the black gaze unsteadily. Irresolution was in them, and a little fear of what that promise might be. And for just a moment Yarol was looking, not into his friend's familiar eyes, but into a wide gray blankness that held all horror and delight-a pale sea with unspeakable pleasures sunk beneath it. Then the wide stare focused again and Smith's eyes met his squarely and Smith's voice said, "Go ahead. I'll promise."

"That if you ever should meet a Shambieau again-ever, anywhere -you'll draw your gun and burn it to h.e.l.l the instant you realize what it is. Will you promise me that?"

There was a long silence. Yarol's somber black eyes bored relent-lessly into the colorless ones of Smith, not wavering. And the veins stood out on Smith's tanned forehead. He never broke his word-he had given it perhaps half a dozen times in his life, but once he had given it, he was incapable of breaking it.

And once more the gray seas flooded in a dim tide of memories, sweet and horrible beyond dreams.

Once more Yarol was staring into blankness that hid nameless things. The room was very still.

The gray tide ebbed. Smith's eyes, pale and resolute as steel, met Yarol's levelly.

"I'll-try," he said. And his voice wavered.

Black Thirst

Northwest Smith leant his head back against the warehouse wall and stared up into the black night-sky ofVenus. The waterfront street was very quiet tonight, very dangerous. He could hear no sound save the eternal slap-slap of water against the piles, but he knew how much of danger and sudden death dwelt here voiceless in the breathing dark, and he may have been a little homesick as he stared up into the clouds that masked a green star hanging lovely on the horizon-Earth and home. And if he thought of that he must have grinned wryly to him-self in the dark, for Northwest Smith had no home, and Earth would not have welcomed him very kindly just then.

He sat quietly in the dark. Above him in the warehouse wall a faintly lighted window threw a square of pallor upon the wet street. Smith drew back into his angle of darkness under the slanting shaft, hugging one knee. And presently he heard footsteps softly on the street.

He may have been expecting footsteps, for he turned his head alertly and listened, but it was not a man's feet that came so lightly over the wooden quay, and Smith's brow furrowed. A woman, here, on this black waterfront by night? Not even the lowest cla.s.s of Venusian street-walker dared come along the waterfronts of Ednes on the nights when the s.p.a.ce-liners were not in. Yet across the pavement came clearly now the light tapping of a woman's feet.

Smith drew farther back into the shadows and waited. And presently she came, a darkness in the dark save for the triangular patch of pallor that was her face. As she pa.s.sed under the light falling dimly from the window overhead he understood suddenly how she dared walk here and who she was. A long black cloak hid her, but the light fell upon her face, heart-shaped under the little three-cornered velvet cap that Venusian women wear, fell on ripples of half-hidden bronze hair; and by that sweet triangular face and s.h.i.+ning hair he knew her for one of the Minga maids-those beauties that from the beginning of history have been bred in the Minga stronghold for love- liness and grace, as racehorses are bred on Earth, and reared from ear-liest infancy in the art of charming men. Scarcely a court on the three planets lacks at least one of these exquisite creatures, long-limbed, milk-white, with their bronze hair and lovely brazen faces-if the lord of that court has the wealth to buy them. Kings from many nations and races have poured their riches into the Minga gateway, and girls like pure gold and ivory have gone forth to grace a thousand palaces, and this has been so since Ednes first rose on the sh.o.r.e of the Greater Sea.

This girl walked here unafraid and unharmed because she wore the beauty that marked her for what she was. The heavy hand of the Minga stretched out protectingly over her bronze head, and not a man along the wharf-fronts but knew what dreadful penalties wbuld overtake him if he dared so much as to lay a finger on the milk-whiteness of a Minga maid-terrible penalties, such as men whisper of fearfully over segir-whisky mugs in the waterfront dives of many nations-mysterious, unnamable penalties more dreadful than any knife or gun-flash could inflict.

And these dangers, too, guarded the gates of the Minga castle. The chast.i.ty of the Minga girls was proverbial, a trade boast. This girl walked in peace and safety more sure than that attending the steps of a nun through slum streets by night on Earth.

But even so, the girls went forth very rarely from the gates of the castle, never unattended. Smith had never seen one before, save at a distance. He s.h.i.+fted a little now, to catch a better glimpse as she went by, to look for the escort that must surely walk a pace or two behind, though he heard no footsteps save her own. The slight motion caught her eye. She stopped. She peered closer into the dark, and said in a voice as sweet and smooth as cream.

"How would you like to earn a goldpiece, my man?"

A flash of perversity twisted Smith's reply out of its usual slovenly dialect, and he said in his most cultured voice, in his most perfect High Venusian, "Thank you, no."

For a moment the woman stood quite still, peering through the darkness in a vain effort to reach his face.

He could see her own, a pale oval in the window light, intent, surprised. Then she flung back her cloak and the dim light glinted on the case of a pocket flash as she flicked the catch. A beam of white radiance fell blindingly upon his face.

For an instant the light held him-lounging against the wall in his s.p.a.ceman's leather, the burns upon it, the tatters, ray-gun in its hol-ster low on his thigh, and the brown scarred face turned to hers, eyes the colorless color of pale steel narrowed to the glare. It was a typical face. It belonged here, on the waterfront, in these dark and dangerous streets. It belonged to the type that frequents such places, those lawless men who ride the s.p.a.ceways and live by the rule of the ray-gun, recklessly, warily outside the Patrol's jurisdiction. But there was more than that in the scarred brown face turned to the light. She must have seen it as she held the flash unwavering, some deep-buried trace of breeding and birth that made the cultured accents of the High Venusian not incongruous. And the colorless eyes derided her.

"No," she said, flicking off the light. "Not one goldpiece, but a hundred. And for another task that I meant."

"Thank you," said Smith, not rising. "You must excuse me."

"Five hundred," she said without a flicker of emotion in her creamy voice.

In the dark Smith's brows knit. There was something fantastic in the situation. Why-?

She must have sensed his reaction almost as he realized it himself, for she said, "Yes, I know. It sounds insane. You see-I knew you in the light just now. Will you?-can you?-1 can't explain here on the street. . . ."

Smith held the silence unbroken for thirty seconds, while a light-ning debate flashed through the recesses of his wary mind. Then he grinned to himself in the dark and said, "I'll come." Belatedly he got to his feet. "Where?"

"The Palace Road on the edge of the Minga. Third door from the central gate, to the left. Say to the door-warden-'Vaudir.'"

"That is-?"

"Yes, my name. You will come, in half an hour?"

An instant longer Smith's mind hovered on the verge of refusal. Then he shrugged.

"Yes."

"At the third bell, then." She made the little Venusian gesture of parting and wrapped her cloak about her. The blackness of it, and the softness of her footfalls, made her seem to melt into the darkness without a sound, but Smith's trained ears heard her footsteps very softly on the pavement as she went on into the dark.

He sat there until he could no longer detect any faintest sound of feet on the wharf. He waited patiently, but his mind was a little dizzy with surprise. Was the traditional inviolability of the Minga a fraud? Were the close-guarded girls actually allowed sometimes to walk un- attended by night, making a.s.signations as they pleased? Or was it some elaborate hoax? Tradition for countless centuries had declared the gates in the Minga wall to be guarded so relentlessly by strange dangers that not even a mouse could slip through without the knowl-edge of the Alendar, the Minga's lord. Was it then by order of the Alendar that the door would open to him when he whispered "Vaudir"

to the warden? Or would it open? Was the girl perhaps the property of some Ednes lord, deceiving him for obscure purposes of her own? He shook his head a little and grinned to himself. After all, time would tell.