They rounded a sharp bend and Barry gasped at the vista before him. The
passage opened into a tremendous cavern.
Far below on the bowl-shaped floor sprawled a town composed of
cylindrical houses higher than they were wide, scattered in an
irregular pattern.
He looked upward for the source of the cold yellow light flooding
everything, and a few yards above his head lay a flat silvery plane.
Just below it the water glowed, like the phosphorescence that
microscopic life forms cause in the tropic seas of Earth--but a
thousand times brighter.
The men from Xintel's group had taken no part in her altercation
with Komso save to watch in uneasy silence. Now they were scattering
downward toward the houses. Nearly all had been joined by waiting
women, but Barry saw two women swimming pitifully and dejectedly alone.
The battle into which he had been precipitated had not been without its
casualties.
He stared about as Xintel led him in a long dive. On the bottom were
trees--he had no other name for them--with stiff trunks and snake-like
branches supported by air-filled knobs.
Their pale leaves were covered with minute bubbles that gave them a
frosty appearance despite the warmth of the water.
There were no streets or paths between the cylindrical houses, but in
small areas around the entrances the bright varicolored seaweed-moss
had been worn away by Venusian feet.
A few Venusians eyed them in curiosity as they swam downward, but none
approached.
They touched bottom beside one of the houses. Xintel pushed aside
a curtain covering the circular doorway. Barry saw the house was
constructed by training and grafting a number of the large trees
until they intertwined. Its foundations were the roots that clung to
irregularities in the rocks.
There were no windows, and for a moment after the girl let the curtain
fall into place it was pitch black. Then suddenly the circular room was
brilliantly lighted.
From the ceiling hung a globe a foot in diameter, the translucent
floatation chamber of some subaqueous plant. It was spinning at the end
of a twisted cord, the luminous milky fluid it contained stirred by the
motion.
Xintel sighed wearily and hung up her crossbow. Then with a graceful
leap she vanished through a hatchway in the ceiling.
She returned, floating down with a pair of pronged darts and a small
round box with bubbles dribbling upward in a steady stream through the
perforated lid. She opened it and, with a fingertip, smeared a dab of
vermilion paste on the base of each dart. Then she pushed the missiles
base first into her tube-weapons, twisting them until a latch caught.
Her weapons prepared, the girl turned back to the Earthman and made the
universal gesture of eating. Barry had no idea how long it had been
since he had eaten, and for the first time since the Sigma sickness
began he was really hungry. He nodded.
She leaped upward and he followed her to a second windowless room above
the first, then up through another hatchway to a third. This was the
top of the house, for through an opening in the flat roof he could look
up into open water. Several baskets, woven of strips of undersea wood
and equipped with close-fitting lids, stood along the wall. In a wooden
cage a few dozen strange fish swam sluggishly.
With her bare hands Xintel caught one and pulled it out. She picked up
a dagger of the same material as the spears--an unfamiliar substance
which Barry had had no chance to examine closely--and jumped to the
open roof. She returned a few minutes later with the fish neatly
cleaned and divided into halves.
Barry was hungry but Earth habits were still strong. The girl saw his
involuntary grimace. She looked hurt. He forced himself to take a bite
of the raw fish and to his amazement found it pleasant. Evidently his
taste organs had changed with the rest of his body.
From the baskets Xintel took other foods of vegetable origin. Barry ate
ravenously.
The cumulative effects of fatigue overwhelmed him even as he finished.
He felt a sense of dreamlike unreality and detachment, as though
nothing mattered. The girl too appeared tired but he could see she was
bursting with curiosity. He appreciated her restraint in not bombarding
him with questions. At her gesture he stepped through the hatch and
floated down to the middle room.
The light there had gone dim but she gave the globe a deft spin that
brightened it again. She motioned to a wide pallet woven of resilient
fiber, and he lay down at once. There were no coverings, no need for
them in the soothingly warm water.
Despite his tiredness Barry's nerves were still tense and twitching,
and he kept hearing soft sounds as the girl moved about the room. After
several minutes he opened his eyes again.
Xintel had removed her brief skirt and was wearing only her silvery
necklace. She was anointing herself with an oily salve that sent a
pleasantly pungent odor through the water, giving special attention
to her wrists and ankles where the cords of the norus had chafed them
and to the livid bruises that were developing on other portions of her
slender body. She paused and smiled at him, not at all embarrassed.
Finally she came toward the pallet and without hesitation lay
down beside him. She stretched and moved slightly until she found
a comfortable position, and then her breathing took on the slow
regularity of sleep while the light dimmed.
For a while Barry remained awake. Half-formed questions spun madly
through his mind but when he tried to think rationally his tired brain
balked.
* * * * *
He woke and sat up, floated up from the pallet in the unaccustomed
support of the black water, settled back slowly while he strove to
winnow true memories from the remnants of nightmare. The girl woke and
spoke questioningly. It required great concentration on Barry's part to
understand and answer, for he had forgotten much of what he had learned
from those Mexican laborers.
"Yes, I feel better," he said hesitantly. "But--."
In the blackness their bodies touched accidentally. Her skin was warm
and smooth, soft but with the firmness of underlying muscle. After a
long moment she drew away.
Barry blinked as she spun the light into brilliance. Her dressing was
a simple and brief process, and then she turned to him with an intent
look on her face.
"You come here from the Above." It was more statement than question.
Barry nodded.
"But from what yort? And how did your people change to live in the
Above?"
"I come from Earth."
"Earth?" she repeated with a puzzled frown. "There is no yort beneath
the seas called Earth."
Trying to explain was like describing color to a man born blind. With
the surface of Venus she seemed to have a slight familiarity, but she
had never glimpsed planets or stars, never seen the sun.
"You are from the World Beyond--and yet you are alive!" she said in awe.
She smiled and seemed relieved when Barry hastily assured her there was
nothing supernatural about his place of origin, but she understood only
that he was not an undersea dweller by birth. She hurried on to other
questions.
"But why have only you of all your people come to the Here?" she asked.
"And now--Oh, tell me how!--did you cause the Place Of Change to work
again?"
Barry frowned, trying to grasp her meaning. "An accident happened to me
out in space that made me different."
"You did not come through the Place Of Change?" She seemed bitterly
disappointed. "Then how will you return?"
"I will never see my own people again, I fear," he admitted.
Xintel made a soft sound of sympathy.
"I owe my very life to you, for I would have killed myself rather than
bear a child to those norus who captured me. You can stay here in Tana,
with me--if Komso does not cause your death."
Barry knew that if he were to survive he must learn the ways of this
undersea world. Alone he would soon perish. He had no choice.
"Who is Komso?" he asked.
Xintel spat a few sibilant words that were evident obscenities.
"He is Leader of the Chosen Ones, and he fears you. If the people learn
you come from the Above they will grow dissatisfied, for there are some
who still remember the ancient promises that we may return."
Barry was silent and thoughtful, considering the implications of
the things Xintel had said. The girl watched the Earthman with a
calculating look.
"You will help me?" she asked at length.
"Help you?"
"Perhaps together we can succeed where my father failed. Perhaps
together we can overthrow Komso and break the hold of the Chosen upon
Tana."
Barry thought of the open sea and the savage norus he had battled, and
he had gathered the impression that Komso was some sort of priest or
witchdoctor who would be an adversary without mercy. All he wanted was
peace. But peace, Komso's face had told him, was something he could not
have.
"Yes," he said flatly. He had no choice.
The girl laid her hand on his arm, confident and suddenly affectionate.
"Good," she said. "There is nothing we can do now. We must wait for the
right time."
* * * * *
There was no night in Tana and the inhabitants slept whenever so
inclined, without set intervals. After several sleeping periods Barry
lost all sense of time.
Whenever the girl was not attending to the routine tasks of daily life
he bombarded her with questions. She asked in turn about Earth and
the colony, and at some of his answers stared and giggled as though
suspecting him of concocting fantastic lies for her benefit.
At her suggestion he did not wander alone, although most of the
Venusians regarded him with suspicious curiosity rather than hostility.
"Trust no one," she warned him. "For the Chosen have spies everywhere.
Komso may know or suspect that you come from the Above but the less he
knows about you the better."
A small cave branched off from one wall of the great cavern. No houses
were placed near its black mouth and the common Venusians gave it a
wide berth.
"That is the Temple of the Chosen," Xintel explained. "To approach it
means death."
Just outside the forbidden zone several huge baskets had been anchored
to receive offerings from each inhabitant. Food, tools, clothing, a
fourth of everything produced went to the Chosen and their master.
"What would happen if the people refused to pay tribute?" Barry asked.
"The Chosen have many ways of enforcing their will," the girl replied
ominously. "And no scruples."
The thirty Chosen Ones ruled the thousand or so inhabitants of Tana
ruthlessly and arrogantly, a government of impulse and whim without
fixed laws. The rulers were immune from all work, taking whatever they
desired, subject only to Komso's word.
The situation had apparently existed so long it had been accepted as
the only possible mode of life, and the submissiveness of the people
was shocking to the Earthman. One day he saw a Chosen One approach one
of the younger woman and curtly order her to follow him. The woman
shrank back, but at a black glare choked off her sobbing and moved
docilely away. Her mate, standing nearby, made not the slightest move
to interfere.
"He will get her back when the Chosen One tires of her," Xintel told
Barry later, her normally soft voice harsh with bitterness. "That is,
if the poor creature lives, for the Chosen are often brutal to the
women they take. If her mate had so much as opened his mouth he would
have incurred the wrath of the Gods Of The Deeps as enforced by the
Chosen."
* * * * *
Occasionally Barry found himself wishing for a cigarette. That gave him
a wry laugh, but it also impressed upon him the fact that the Venusians
had created an underwater civilization without the knowledge of fire.
An unintelligent race could never have managed, and he wondered to what
stage they might have progressed without the yoke of the Chosen about
their necks.
Metal was known in Tana only in the form of a few ornaments of greatest
antiquity, about the origin of which it was forbidden by superstition
and tradition even to speculate. Almost all were in the hands of the
Chosen.
Xintel was one of the few exceptions, and upon examining her treasured
silver necklace Barry discovered that each beautifully wrought link had
been welded. _Welded._ That implied heat, which definitely did not fit
in a subaqueous environment.
He questioned her but she only shook her head. She had no idea of the
technique.
"It came through my family from the other life before the Place Of
Change," was her only explanation.
The most common substance for tools and weapons was something with
the cellular structure of wood but the weight and feel of cast metal.
It was slightly malleable and could be sharpened by grinding against
abrasive rocks, but it fractured when stressed beyond its elastic
limit. It fascinated Barry, not only because of its unfamiliarity but
because the Venusians had no tools suitable for working such a hard
material.
But Xintel explained. The soft wood of undersea trees was carved to
the required shape, and then the implements were taken to the Outside,
across the sea bottom to the Cleft Of Hardening. There the wood
underwent a change.
She had been returning from the Cleft--the Venusians always managed to
visit the Outside in groups despite the Chosen--when Barry saved her
from marauding norus.
The norus were outcast savages, hated and feared and despised. They had
long since learned the folly of attacking Tana, but whenever possible
would ambush anyone venturing into the Outside.
Males they invariably killed for their clothing and weapons, but
females the savages preferred to capture alive. The mortality among
their own women was frightfully high, particularly during pregnancy
and childbirth when they were unable to defend themselves against the
monstrous torvaks that scouraged the deeps, so replacement slave-wives
were in constant demand.
Tana was not the only undersea city or yort, Barry learned, but the
journey across the sea bottom was so perilous that communication was
most infrequent and warfare impractical.
V
Komso had not forgotten Barry. Everywhere Barry and Xintel went a
Chosen One followed, and even though their actions were not interfered
with in any way it was nerve-wracking to know their every move was
being reported. Under such continuing surveillance his temper grew
ragged.
But he heeded Xintel's repeated warnings and the watchers learned
little. Finally the Leader grew annoyed and decided this outsider,
this potential threat to his unchallenged supremacy, had existed long
enough. And so had the girl who sheltered him.
Barry was helping Xintel in the fields beyond the house, harvesting
thick, meaty leaves that were a staple article of diet. A score of
Venusians were engaged in the same task nearby.
Something prompted Barry to look up just in time to see Komso and a
large Chosen One called Czerki hanging in the water some distance
away. They looked aside a bit too ostentatiously as they noticed the
Earthman's eyes upon them.
A frown crossed Xintel's face as he nudged her.
"We avoid trouble if we can," she whispered.
But Czerki swam unhurriedly toward them and caught Xintel by the
shoulder. The girl winced as the Chosen One swung her around.
"Give me that necklace," Czerki ordered.
Xintel's face was pale as he fumbled for the catch of the ornament but
her arms remained limp at her sides. Raising a hand against a Chosen
One was sacrilege punishable by death--and she had guessed what Komso
intended.
Barry took a step forward.
"Get your hands off!" His voice was deceptively soft.
Czerki turned with a challenging sneer. "You oppose the will of the
Chosen?"
"Barry! Don't!" Xintel cried. "He has killed many."
But the sight of the Chosen One touching her slender body was more than
Barry could bear. He took another step forward, his fists clenching.
Czerki whipped out a long wood-metal knife and smiled.
"Suitable?"
Duel. Xintel had told Barry of their custom.
In a move too perfectly timed for coincidence, someone thrust a
duplicate knife toward Barry, hilt first. In that instant the Earthman
knew he had walked into a framed-up battle against an expert, and with
the expert's chosen weapons, just as Komso had planned it.
He must smash that plan. Still empty-handed he braced his feet against
the bottom and dived. The Chosen One's knife made one startled lunge
and then Barry's hand caught Czerki's wrist. For a second Earthman and
Venusian glowered face to face, the Venusian's expression of surprise
changing to pain as Barry's Earth-trained muscles tightened.
Barry clutched, digging his fingers into the tendon of Czerki's wrist.
Czerki's face contorted. His free hand clawed out, but Barry caught the
Chosen One's middle finger and forced it back.
Joints strained and the Venusian whimpered under his breath as Barry
increased the crippling pressure. The knife dropped from Czerki's
numbed fingers, and then with a twist Barry brought him helpless to his
knees.
The faces of the watching Venusians seemed to consist almost entirely
of gaping mouths and staring eyes. Barry considered the situation.
Perhaps he could do more against Komso and his Chosen by discrediting
and releasing this one than by killing him.
"Enough?" he gritted.
The Venusian nodded.
"Next time you bother Xintel you die," Barry warned.
Czerki got to his feet.
"Look out!" Xintel screamed, just as the Chosen One's hand flashed to
his belt.
Barry leapt. His right hand, straight-arming, jolted the Venusian's
head back, and at the same instant his left whipped a deadly palm-edge
judo chop to Czerki's neck.
There was a sound like the breaking of a dry twig. Czerki's body jerked
once and the dart of his tube-weapon plowed into the bottom.
With a gesture of revulsion the Earthman dropped the limp body and
stepped back.
He looked about for Komso, angry enough now to force an immediate
showdown, but the priest had prudently withdrawn.
Xintel took his arm and smiled proudly for all to see.
"Come, Barry," she said. "It is over for now."
The uneasy stares of her people followed them, and only the
long-standing superstitious fear of appearing to criticise the Chosen
kept them from breaking into excited comment.
The stranger had not only defied a Chosen One but had killed in the
manner of a Leader, with the touch of an empty hand. All knew now he
did not come from another yort. And his companion was Xintel!
As soon as they were alone Barry turned to the girl.
"What now?" he demanded.
"Next time Komso will not underestimate you."
"What do you think he'll try?"
Xintel frowned. "Not force. One of the secret methods which have kept
the Chosen in power. Perhaps the Curse with which he killed my father."
"Your father?" Barry asked. She had never spoken of her family before.
The subject was obviously painful, but she forced herself to talk.
* * * * *
Her father, Soren, had been an unusual individual from a family of
chronic dissidents, a doubter who despite the long indoctrination of
the Chosen still possessed the power to think independently. And in his
family there had been passed by word of mouth across the generations
all the ancient traditions of the other life which the Chosen had
nearly succeeded in consigning to the limbo of forgotten knowledge.
He had the courage to venture into the Outside alone, even into the
dread Above for short periods, to see for himself the things the Chosen
wished forgotten.
He had actually dared to organize groups for cooperative action and to
circulate whispers that the Gods Of The Deeps were a fraud perpetrated
by the Chosen for their own purposes. He had aroused doubt and become
the rallying point for all the latent forces of resistance.
For a brief but exciting time his efforts to undermine the priesthood
had been successful. But then the old priest of the Chosen had died
suddenly and Komso had succeeded to the post. Where the old priest had
been senile and vacillating, Komso took forceful action.
He had publicly named Soren a blasphemer against the Gods Of The Deeps
and had called down their Curse upon him.
A few sleeps later Soren had started with others toward the Cleft Of
Hardening. They had scarcely left the tunnel when dozens of torvaks
descended upon the group.
The others had escaped easily, the monsters paying no attention to
them. All had converged upon Soren and he died quickly.
Komso had regained unquestioned power. His curse had been fulfilled in
too dreadful a fashion for any to dispute his word.
* * * * *
Barry developed an unwillingness to spend the remainder of his life
hiding behind Xintel's skirt. With increasing boldness, but conscious
always of the menace of the Chosen, he began to leave the house and
observe the Venusian way of life.
The undersea people bore him no grudge for killing Czerki, he
discovered. In fact the Chosen One's death was not mourned even by his
three women. But neither were the Venusians openly friendly toward this
strange outlander who spoke haltingly and killed without weapons. They
regarded him with mingled suspicion and awe.
Xintel's position in the community, he soon decided, was extremely odd.
Marriage relationships in Tana were informal, continuing only as long
as mutually satisfactory. Polygamy was an accepted institution. It was
customary for the girls of Tana to enter marriage relationships, on a
temporary basis at least, almost as soon as they developed the curves
of maturity.
Xintel was as beautiful as any female of Tana, and in addition she
owned a house and tools and weapons representing considerable wealth.
Nevertheless she was the only grown woman who did not have a mate or
ex-mate or who was not a widow.
One day he asked her outright about it, and she burst into tears.
For a minute Barry stared, nonplussed. He put one arm around her bare
shoulders.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said gently.
She snuggled closer in the curve of his arm.
"Don't talk about it if you don't want to," Barry urged.
She raised her head, "But you must know.
"When Komso put his Curse upon my father he could easily have killed me
too. I was but a small girl then, and my mother already dead. But he
had brought about the death of my father to display his power, and he
wanted the people to remember. I was to be a living reminder.
"But, he told the people, I shared my father's guilt of blasphemy by
being of his blood. Anyone mating with me would be contaminated, and
upon him too would fall the curse of the Gods Of The Deeps.
"The men of Tana are not cowards despite what the Chosen have done to
them. Some have faced and fought even the torvaks of the Outside. But
to act contrary to what Komso has declared the will of the Gods--that
they will not do. So although several have looked upon me with desire,
none have dared take me as mate."
There was pity in Barry's heart as he thought of the deep loneliness
to which Komso had condemned her from childhood on. More than pity,
he thought now. What had started with him as a matter of survival had
changed and deepened, become more than friendship.
"But I am not a man of Tana," he blurted impulsively. "And I love you."