The Complete Margaret of Urbs Read online

  THAT moment was etched forever in Connor’s mind. He seemed to see everything, with the strange clarity that excitement can lend. The glint of sunlight on steel, the vast inextricable jam of traffic, the motionless thousands on the hill, the untold thousands peering from every window in every one of the gigantic buildings, the frowning towers of the Palace. And even, on a balcony of stone far up on the left tower, two tiny shining figures surveying the scene. The three Triangles hanging motionless as clouds high in the heavens. The vast brooding figure of Holland staring unperturbed into his black stone book.

  “He’s warned—he’s ready!” Jan muttered.

  “We’ll have to fire,” Evanie cried. But before her command, the sharp rattle of rifles came from far to the right. Machine-guns sputtered, and all down the widespread line puffs of steam billowed like huge white chrysanthemums, and dissipated at once.

  From a thousand windows in the bank of buildings burst other momentary clouds, and the medley of shouts punctuated by staccato explosions was like a chorus of wild music.

  Connor stared thunderstruck. In the opposing line not a single man had fallen! Each stood motionless as the giant statue, left arm crooked across breast, right arm holding a glistening revolverlike weapon. Was marksmanship responsible for that—incredibly poor marksmanship?

  Impossible, with that hail of bullets! Puffs of dust spurted up before the line, splintered stone flew from the walls behind. Windows crashed. But not one Urban soldier moved. “What’s wrong?” Connor yelled. “He knew.” Jan Orm panted. “He’s equipped his men with Paige deflectors. He’s the devil himself!”

  The girl Maris leaped forward.

  “Come on!” she shouted, and led the charge.

  Instantly the line of Urbans raised their weapons, laying them across their bent left arms. A faint misty radiance stabbed out, a hundred brief flashes of light. The beams swept the revolutionaries. Anguished cries broke out as men spun and writhed.

  Connor leaped back as a flash caught him. Sudden pain racked him as his muscles tore against each other in violent spasmodic contractions. A moment only; then he was trembling and aching as the beam flicked out. An electric shock! None should know that better than he!

  Everywhere the revolutionaries were writhing in agony. The front ranks were down, and of all those near him, only he and Evanie were standing. Her face was strained and white and agonized.

  Jan Orm was struggling to his feet, his face a mask of pain. Beyond him others were crawling away. Connor was astounded. The shock had been painful, but not that painful.

  Halfway up the slope before the immobile line of Urbans lay the blackhaired Maris. Her nerves had been unequal to the task set them, and she had fainted from sheer pain. The whole mass of the Weed army was wavering. The revolution was failing!

  CHAPTER XI

  Flight

  CONNOR had an inspiration. The deflecting force must emanate from the glittering buttons on the Urban’s left arms. Moreover, the field must be projected only before the Urban soldiers, else they’d not be able to move their own weapons. Springing to a fallen machine-gun, he righted it, spun it far to the left so as to enfilade the Urbans, to strike them from the side.

  He pulled the trigger—let out a yell of fierce joy as a dozen foemen toppled. He tried to shout his discovery to the others, but none heeded, and anyhow the Urbans could counter it by a slight shift of formation. So grimly he cut as wide a gap as he could.

  The beams flashed. Steeling himself to the agony of the shock, he bore it unflinching. When it had passed, the Weed army was in flight. He muttered a vicious curse and jerked a groaning man on the ground beside him to his feet.

  “You’re still alive, you sheep!” he snarled. “Get up and carry that girl!” He gestured at the prostrate Maris.

  The slope was clearing. Only half a hundred Weeds lay twisting on the grass, or were staggering painfully erect. Connor glared at the slowly advancing Urbans, faced them for a moment disdainfully, then turned to follow the flying Weeds. Halfway across the grounds he paused, seized an abandoned rifle, and dropped to his knee.

  In a gesture of utter defiance, he took careful aim at the two figures on the tower balcony five hundred feet above. He pressed the trigger. Ten shots spat out in quick succession. Windows splintered above the figures, below, to right and left. Tom Connor swore again as he realized that these, too, were protected. Then he gritted his teeth as the ionic beam swept him once more.

  When it ceased, he fled, to mingle with the last of the retreating Weed forces. They were trickling through, over, and around that traffic jam that would take heroic efforts to untangle.

  The Revolution was over. No man could now reorganize that flying mob. Connor thrust his way through the mass of panic-stricken humanity until he reached the car in which Jan and Evanie were already waiting.

  Without a word Jan swung the car hastily about, for the traffic snarl was reaching even as far away as he had parked. Evanie dropped her head on Connor’s shoulder, weeping quietly.

  “That’s a hell of a revolution!” he grunted. “Twenty minutes and it’s over!”

  The car swept through the semidusk of the ground level of Palace Avenue to the point where the ramp curved about the base of the Atlas Building. There Jan guided it into the sunlight of the upper tier. In the afternoon glare his face was worn and haggard. Evanie, her spell of weeping over, was pallid and expressionless, like a statue in ivory.

  “Won’t we be stopped?” Connor asked, as Jan put on speed.

  “They’ll try,” said Jan. “They’ll block all of the Hundred Bridges. I hope we get across first. We can only hope, because they can see every move we make, of course. There are scanners on every street. We may be watched from the Palace now.”

  The bridge over which they had come into the city loomed before them. In a moment they were over the canal and into Urbs Minor, where ten million people still moved about their occupations in utter ignorance of the revolution and its outcome.

  THE colossal buildings of Greater Urbs receded and took on the blue hue of distance, and Lesser Urbs slipped rapidly by them. It was not until they had surmounted the ridge and dropped into Kaatskill that Jan gave any evidence of relaxing. There he drew a deep breath.

  “Respite!” he murmured goomily. “There are no scanners here, at least.”

  “What’s to be done now?” asked Connor.

  “Heaven knows! We’ll be hunted, of course—everybody who was in it. But in Montmerci’s rebellion the Master punished only one—Montmerci himself; the leader.”

  “Evanie’s grandfather.”

  “Yes. That may weigh against her.”

  “This damned revolution was doomed from the start!” declared Connor irritably. “We hadn’t enough organization, nor good enough weapons, nor an effective plan—nothing! And having lost the advantage of surprise, we had no chance at all.”

  “Don’t!” Evanie murmured wearily. “We know that now.”

  “I knew it the whole time,” he retorted. “By the way, Jan—those Paige deflectors of theirs. Do you know how they work?”

  “Of course.” Jan’s voice was as weary as Evanie’s. “It’s just an inductive field. And metal passing through it has eddy currents induced in it.”

  Simple enough, mused Connor. He’d seen the old experiment of the aluminum ring tossed by eddy currents from the pole of an alternating current magnet. But he asked in surprise:

  “Against such velocities?”

  “Yes. The greater the velocity, the stronger the eddy currents. The bullet’s speed helps to deflect it.”

  “Did you know of these deflectors before?” snapped Connor.

  “Of course. But projectile weapons haven’t been used for so long—how could I dream he’d know of our rifles and resurrect the deflectors?”

  “You should have anticipated the possibility. Why, we could have used—” He broke off. Recriminations were useless now. “Never mind. Tell me about the ionic beam, Jan.”

  “
It’s just two parallel beams of highly actinic light, like gamma rays. They ionize the air they pass through. The ionized air is a conductor. There’s an atomic generator in the handles of the beam-pistols, and it shoots an electric charge along the beams. And when your body closes the circuit between them—Lord! They didn’t use a killing potential, or we’d have been burned to a crisp. I still ache from that agony!”

  “Evanie stood up to it,” Connor remarked.

  “Just once,” murmured the girl. “A second time—Oh, I’d have died!”

  It struck Connor that this delicate, small-boned, nervous race must be more sensitive, less inured to pain, than himself. He had stood the shock with little difficulty.

  “You’re lucky you weren’t touched,” said Jan.

  Connor snorted. “I was touched three times—the third time by ten beams! If you’d listened to me we could have won the dog-fight anyway. I blew a dozen Urbans down by firing from the side.”

  “You what?”

  “I saw that,” said Evanie. “Just before the second beam. But I—I couldn’t stand any more.”

  “It makes our position worse, I suppose,” muttered Jan. “The Master will be angry at injury to his men.”

  CONNOR gave it up. Jan’s regret that the enemy had suffered damage simply capped a long overdue climax. He was loathe to blame Jan, or the whole Weed army, for flying from the searing touch of the ionic beams. He felt himself an unfair judge, since he couldn’t feel with their nerves. More than likely what was merely painful to his more rugged body was unbearable agony to them.

  What did trouble him was the realization that he failed to understand these people, failed to comprehend their viewpoint. This whole mess of a revolution seemed ill-planned, futile, unnecessary, even stupid.

  This set him to wondering about Evanie. Was it fair to try to bring love into her life, to rouse her from the reserve she had cast about herself? Might that not threaten unhappiness to both of them—these two strangers from different ages?

  Humanity had changed during his long sleep; the only personality in this world with whom he felt the slightest sympathy was—the Master!

  A man he had never even seen, unless one of the two shining figures on the tower had been he. Like himself, the Master was a survival of an earlier time. Therein, perhaps, lay the bond.

  His musings were interrupted by a flash of iridescence in the air ahead. There was a long, desolate silence as the car sped onward.

  “Well,” Jam Orm at last said gloomily, “it’s come.”

  But Connor already knew, instinctively, that what he had seen was the rainbow glint of one of the Master’s Messengers.

  “For which of us, do you suppose?” he asked soberly.

  “For Evanie, I guess. But don’t watch it—don’t think of it. It might be for you.”

  Evanie was lying back in the seat, eyes shut, features blank. She had closed her mind to the unholy thing. But Connor was unable to keep either mind or eyes from the circling mystery as it swept silently about the speeding car.

  “It’s closing in,” he whispered to Jan.

  Jan reached a sudden decision. A rutted road branched ahead of them, and he swung the car into it, boring toward the hills.

  “Weed village in here,” he muttered. “Perhaps we can lose it there.”

  “How? It can pass through brick walls.”

  “I know, but the pneumatic freight tube goes through here. The tube’s fast as a scared meteor. We can try it, and—” He paused grimly.

  The sun was low in the west when they came to the village, a tiny place nestled among green hills. The ominous circling thing was glowing faintly in the dusk, now no more than twenty yards away. Evanie had kept to her resolute silence, never glancing at the threatening mystery.

  IN the village, Jan talked to an ancient, bearded individual, and returned to the car with a frown.

  “He has only two cylinders,” he announced. “You and Evanie are going.”

  Connor clambered out of the car. “See here!” he whispered. “You’re in more danger than I. Leave me with the car. I can find my way to Ormon.” Jan shook his head. “Listen a moment,” he said firmly. “Understand what I’m saying. I love Evanie. I’ve always loved her, but it’s you that’s been given to waken her. You must go with her. And for God’s sake—quickly!”

  Reluctantly Connor and Evanie fallowed Jan into a stone building where the nervous old man stood above two seven-foot cylinders lying on a little track. Without a word the girl clambered into the first, lying flat on her face with her tiny sandals pressed against the rear.

  The ancient snapped down the cover like a coffin lid. Connor’s heart sank as the man shoved the metal cylinder into a round opening, closed down a door behind it, and twirled a hissing handle. Jan motioned Tom Connor to the other tube, and at that moment the flashing iridescence of the Messenger swept through the room and away. He climbed hastily in, lying as Evanie had done.

  “To Ormon?” he asked.

  “No. To the next Weed village, back in the mountains. Hurry!”

  CHAPTER XII

  The Messenger

  THE old man slammed the cover.

  Connor lay in utter darkness, but as he felt the cylinder slide along the track, he thought he glimpsed for a bare instant the luminous Messenger in a flash through the metal sides. He heard the faint clang of the door, and there was a brief moment of quiet.

  Then, with a force that bent his knees, he felt the thrust of terrific acceleration. Only a faint rumble came to his ears, but he realized that his speed must be enormous. Then the pressure shifted. He felt his hands driven against the front, and in a few more seconds, no pressure at all.

  The cover was raised. He thrust himself out, to face Evanie, just clambering from her own cylinder, and a frightened nondescript man who muttered frantically,

  “Don’t tell on me! Don’t tell!”

  He turned to listen to a low-voiced inquiry from Evanie, and answered in an inaudible whisper and a gesture to the north.

  Connor followed Evanie as she hurried out of the building into darkness. He caught a faint glimpse of the stone cottages of a village smaller than Ormon, then they were trudging over a dim trail toward the hills black against the stars.

  “To the metamorphs of the hills,” Evanie said mechanically. “They’ll hide us until it’s safe.” She added wearily, “I’m so tired!”

  That was not surprising, after such a day. She started to speak. “You’ve been—Oh!”

  He saw it too. The luminous needle-beaked shape that was the Messenger, circling them still twenty yards away.

  “Lord!” he whispered. “How fast can that thing travel?”

  “Disembodied electric force?” she asked wearily. “As fast as light, I suppose. Well—it doesn’t matter. I can fight it off, if I must. But hurry!”

  “God!” Connor groaned. “That persistent demon!”

  His voice rose in a yell of surprise and fear. The misty thing had stopped in mid-air, poised a moment, then launched itself at his head!

  There was no pain, just a brief buzzing. Connor realized that the needle-beak had thrust itself into his skull, and the horror rested above his shoulder. He beat at it. His hands passed through it like mist. And then, in a squeaky little voice that clicked maddeningly within his very brain, came the words of the Messenger.

  “Go back to Urbs!” it clicked. “Go back to Urbs.” Over and over. “Go back to Urbs!” Just that.

  He turned frantic eyes on Evanie’s startled face.

  “Get it off!” he cried. “Get it off!”

  “It was for you!” she whispered, stricken. “Oh, if it had only been for me! I can fight it. Close your mind to it, Tom. Try! Please try!”

  He did try; over and over. But that maddening, clicking voice burned through his efforts: “Go back to Urbs! Go back to Urbs!”

  “I can’t stand it!” Connor cried frantically. “It tickles—inside my brain!” He paced back and forth in anguish. “I want t
o run! To walk until I’m exhausted. I can’t—stand—it!”

  “Yes!” Evanie said. “Walk until you’re exhausted. It will give us time that way. But walk north—away from Urbs. Come.”

  SHE turned wearily to join him. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll walk alone. Not far. I’ll soon return.”

  He rushed off into the darkness. His thoughts were turmoil as he dashed down the dim trail. I’ll fight it off—Go back to Urbs!—I won’t listen—Go back to Urbs!—If Evanie can, so can I. I’m a man, stronger than she—Go back to Urbs! Go back to Urbs!

  Clicking—tickling—maddening! He rushed blindly on, tripping over branches, crashing into trees. He scrambled up the slope of a steep hill, driving himself, trying to exhaust himself until he could attain the forgetfulness of sleep.

  Panting, scratched, weary, he paused from sheer necessity on the crest of the hill. The horror on his shoulder, clicking its message in his brain, gave him no surcease. He was going mad! Better death at the Master’s hands than this. Better anything than this. He turned about and plunged toward the hill from which he had come. With his first step south, the maddening voice ceased.

  He walked on in a relieved daze. Not even the dim mist of the Messenger on his shoulder detracted from the sheer ecstasy of stillness. He murmured meaningless words of gratitude, felt an impulse to shout a song.

  Evanie, resting on a fallen log, glanced up at him as he approached.

  “I’m going back to Urbs!” he cried wildly. “I can’t stand this!”

  “You can’t! I won’t let you! Please—I can rid you of it, given time. Give me a little time, Tom. Fight it!”

  “I won’t fight it! I’m going back!” He turned frantically to rush on south, in any direction that would silence that clicking, tickling voice of torment.

  “Go back to Urbs!” it ticked. “Go back to Urbs!”

  Evanie seized his arm.

  “Please—please, Tom!”

  He tugged away and spun around. What he immediately saw in the darkness halted him. In a luminous arc, not three yards distant, spun a second Messenger—and in a mad moment of perversity, he was almost glad!