The Complete Margaret of Urbs Read online

  “Your impulses take violent form,” said the Master coldly. “Why do you, who claim to be a newcomer to this age, hate me so?”

  “Hate you?” Connor echoed fiercely. “Why shouldn’t I? Didn’t you put me through two days and nights of hell with your damned Messenger?”

  “But there would have been no torment had you obeyed immediately.”

  “But Evanie!” Connor snapped. “See what you’ve done to her!”

  “She was interfering. I didn’t want her here, particularly, but she might have released you from the Messenger. If you’d left her to herself, I would have freed her within a few hours.”

  “Kind, aren’t you?” sneered Connor. “You’re so confident in your own powers that you don’t even punish revolt. Well, you’re a tyrant, nevertheless, and some day you’ll get more than you bargain for. I could have done it myself!”

  He glanced again at the Princess. Was there the faintest flicker of interest in her imperious eyes?

  “AND what would you have done,” queried the Master amiably, “if you had been running the revolution?”

  “Plenty!” retorted Connor. “In the first place, I’d never have shipped weapons into Urbs through the public tubes. You were bound to discover that, and surprise was our greatest ally. I’d have had ’em made right here, or near here. There must be Weed factories around, and if not, I’d have bought one.”

  “Go on,” said the Master interestedly. “What else?”

  “I’d have had a real organization—not this cumbersome leader upon leader pyramid. I’d have laid real plans, planted spies in the Palace. And finally, your deflectors. I didn’t know of them, or we could have won even as things were. My—associates—forgot, rather carelessly, to mention them.”

  The Master smiled. “That was an error. If you had known of them, what would you have done?”

  “I’d have used wooden bullets instead of metal ones,” said Connor boldly. “Your induction field won’t stop wood. And your ionic beams—why the devil couldn’t we have used metal screen armor? We could have closed the circuit with that instead of with our bodies!”

  He was aware, though he steadfastly refused to look at her, that the Princess was watching him now with undisguised mockery, her lovely lips parted in the ghost of a smile.

  “True,” said the Master with a curious expression. “You could have.” He frowned. “I did not believe the stories I first heard of you—that you were a Sleeper who had awakened after a sleep of a thousand years. They were too fantastic for belief. I thought you were meaning to capitalize 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 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 of the door.

  “Evanie!” c
roaked Connor tensely. “Are you all right? How do you feel?”

  The dazed eyes rested on him.

  “I burn! Water—oh, please—water!”

  CHAPTER XV

  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. Her voice grew shrill, and Connor glanced apprehensively at the young doctor’s face.

  Evanie turned ashen pale.

  “I—feel—dizzy,” she choked. “I’m going—to—”

  The doctor sprang forward. “You mustn’t!” he snapped. “We can’t let her sleep again. We must walk her! Quickly!”

  Between them they dragged the collapsing girl from the bed, walking her up and down the chamber. A measure of strength returned, and she walked weakly between them, back and forth. Then, abruptly, they paused at the sound of a sharp rap on the chamber door.

  The doctor called out a summons. Two Urban guards in glittering metal strode through the entrance, and stood like images on either side of it. One of them intoned slowly, deep as an anthem:

  “Margarita, Urbis Regina, Sororque Domini!”

  The Princess! Connor and the doctor stood frozen, and even Evanie raised weary eyes as the Princess entered, striding imperiously into the room with the scaly gold of her kirtle glittering crimson in the last rays of the sun. She swept her cold eyes over the startled group, and suddenly her exquisite features flashed into a flame of anger. The glorious lips parted.

  “You fool!” she spat. “You utter fool!”

  CONNOR flushed in sudden anger, then realized that the Princess addressed, not him, but the doctor at Evanie’s left, who was fear-stricken and pallid.

  “You fool!” repeated Margaret of Urbs. “Walking an electroleptic! Put her to bed—instantly. Let her sleep. Do you want to risk brain fever?”

  The frightened physician moved to obey, but Connor interposed.

  “Wait a moment.” He shot an accusing glance at the Princess. “Do you know anything about this? Are you a doctor?”

  He received a cool glance from her narrowed green eyes.

  “Do you think,” she drawled, “that I’ve learned nothing in seven hundred years?” And he alone caught the full implication of her words. She was subtly reminding him of how once before she had given him evidence of how vast was her knowledge. She turned imperiously. “Obey!” she snapped.

  Connor stood aside as the doctor complied in panic.

  “Where’s Kringar?” the Princess demanded.

  “Your Highness,” babbled the medico, “he gave the girl a stimulant and left. He said—”

  “All right. Get out.” She nodded at the impassive guards. “You, too.”

  The door closed behind them. Margaret of Urbs bent over Evanie, now fully conscious, but pale as death. She placed a dainty hand on the girl’s forehead.

  “Sleep,” she said softly.

  “Leave me here alone, please,” Evanie begged, trembling. “I’m afraid of you. I don’t trust you, and I won’t sleep. I’m afraid to sleep again.”

  Connor stood miserably irresolute. While he hesitated, the Princess fixed her eyes on Evanie’s; they glowed emerald in the evening dusk as she repeated, “Sleep!”

  He saw the fear vanish from Evanie’s face, leaving her features as blank as those of an image. Then she was sleeping.

  The Princess faced Tom Connor across the bed. She took a black cigarette from a box on the ebony table. It glowed magically as she removed it, and she blew a plume of perfumed smoke at him.

  “Worried, aren’t you?” she asked mockingly.

  “You know I am.”

  “Well, rest your mind. I mean no harm to Evanie.”

  “But do you know what you’re doing?”

  She laughed, low laughter soft as rain in a pool.

  “See here,” she said, still with a taunt in her eyes, “I conceived the vitergons. Martin Sair created them, but I conceived them. I know what harm they can do, and I know the cure for that harm. Do you trust me?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Well, you have small choice.” She exhaled another cloud of scented smoke. “Your little Weed is safe.”

  She moved toward the adjoining room. “There’s a bath in here,” she said. “Use it, and then put on some Urban clothes. I’m inclined to dine with you this evening.”

  He was startled. He stared back at the mocking perfection of her face, but the green eyes carried no readable expression, as she came closer so that only Connor could hear what she said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Perhaps to recall a more pleasant meeting,” she said gently. “Oh, I have not forgotten you—if that is what you are thinking. I recall every word of that day in the woods, but it may be better if you forget it; publicly. Margaret of Urbs does not care to have her private business broadcast to the city. Nor is it the affair of anyone here—or any business of yours—that I choose to get away from them all occasionally, with only the birds and the trees to bear me company. You will do well to bear that in mind, Thomas Connor!”

  SUDDENLY her voice took on a taunting note, and the mockery in the emerald eyes was plain. “Perhaps,” she said, “I have another reason for commanding you to dine with me. I may want to steal your knowledge—then kill you. I might have more than one reason for wanting to do that, but you fired a dozen shots at me on Sunday, Thomas Connor, as I stood on the balcony of the Tower. I do not fail to repay such debts.”

  “It will take more than you to steal what I will not give,” he growled, and turned into his room, closing the door.

  He stepped instantly to the hall door, opened it and gazed squarely into the impassive eyes of an Urban guard standing quietly opposite. So he was watched!

  He turned back into the chamber, stripped, and entered the water of the pool, reveling in the refreshing; coolness. As he bathed he could look out a window, and saw that the colossal Palace was built as a hollow square. Opposite him rose the mountainous spire of the South Tower, and far below was the wide pool and green-bordered walks of the Inner Gardens.

  Drying his glowing body, he glanced distastefully at the swe
at-stained pile of Weed clothing on the floor. In a closet he found Urban dress. It gave him a queer, masqueradelike feeling to don the barbaric metal corselet and kirtle, but the garments were cool, and befitted his great frame.

  Ready at last, he flung open the door to Evanie’s room.

  Margaret of Urbs sat cross-legged on the bed, beside Evanie, smoking her black cigarette. Her green eyes passed appraisingly over Connor, and the glint of mockery was again in their depths.

  “I always thought the ancient sculptors exaggerated their contemporaries’ physiques,” she said, smiling. “I was wrong . . . But you’re to kneel when you enter my presence, Thomas Connor. You didn’t before.”

  “And I don’t know. As an enemy, I owe you no such respect.”

  “As a gentleman you do, however. But never mind—I’m hungry. Come.”

  “Why can’t we eat here? I won’t leave Evanie.”

  “Evanie will be dull company for a dozen hours more. I’ll send a maid to undress and bathe her.”

  “You’re very considerate, aren’t you?”

  She laughed maliciously.

  “I have no quarrel with her. But I have with you. Come!”

  The glorious green eyes swept him. Both eyes and voice—a voice that now seemed to glory in malice—were so different from those of the girl of the woods that it was hard for Tom Connor to believe they were the same. But he knew they were. And now that he and she were alone every gesture seemed to admit that.

  She rose without a glance at Evanie’s still, white face and Connor followed her reluctantly past the guard, whose challenge she silenced with a peremptory word, and over to the bank of elevators.

  “Where to?” he asked as the cage dropped, plummetlike.

  “To a room of mine in the South Tower, I think. We’ll have to go all the way down and walk across.”