THE FIRST MURDER.
I was sitting alone in my bedroom in the Hill City, the capital of the
Light Country (went on Guy Palisse's amazing message), one evening
after the last meal of that day-cycle, when Tama's brother Toh arrived
to see me. My room, with workshop adjoining it, lay buried in a dark
gloomy labyrinth of passages beneath the ruler's palace. The half-mile
long artificial lake was near by. Water draining off the hillsides
of the circular valley walls came down the vertical streets in open
conduits and into the lake for the city's water supply. It drained from
the lake in a wide, swift-flowing flume which penetrated the hill in a
tunnel and spilled the surplus water outside the city.
The flume ran just above my subterranean room. I could always hear the
vague murmur of the flowing water, especially after the rain of a black
storm, surging with a lashing roar.
A storm seemed impending this evening. The normal daylight was gone.
Heavy clouds were gathering close overhead, slowly circling in a lofty
wind, the presage of a black storm. With evening of the cycle, darkness
fell upon the city, as dark as I remember it on an overcast, stormy
night of Earth. But there was no surface wind. A heavy, steaming,
oppressive stillness; and a lurid green sheen in the air. A sinister
portent of evil came always with these Mercutian storms; and sometimes
it was justified.
The storms whirled sometimes from the Fire Country, with a fetid,
fiery, blasting breath. Or again, from the Cold Country of eternal
blackness, with a sullen roar and a congealing cold.
With the darkness, the emergency lamps of the city winked on. A
weirdness settled upon everything. The streets lay black with shadow,
green-cast with the gathering murk.
But in my underground room none of this was apparent. I was sitting in
the little chair which I had built in Earth-fashion when Toh knocked
upon my door-slide, and I bade him enter. He stood before me; the light
from my animal-fat lamp flickered with its yellow glow upon him.
"Guy, I have been sent to you by Tama."
A slim, slender little fellow, this Mercutian youth of twenty-one. High
class, of pure Light Country blood--not squat and thick-set like most
Mercutian men who so often have Cold Country native blood in their
heritage. He was some five feet two inches in height, slim and straight
and boyish. He wore his thick black hair long to the base of his neck.
A ribbon of red was about his forehead.
With his high-bridged nose, he looked something like a North American
Indian youth. But except for his face and head the resemblance ended.
His short-sleeved jacket flared at the waist. His wide trousers were
knee-length, with a gaudy sash and dangling tasseled cord.
And in the sash I saw a knife handle sticking up.
"Toh, you have no right to wear that. Especially in the darkness of a
coming storm. Suppose one of Roc's men should seize you!"
"No one will--seize me." He was panting, out of breath. He gazed
furtively around my little room. "No one saw me come. The storm, it
upsets the city. I came by your lower passage under the palace. The
guard there was gone." He tried to smile--it was a strange simile
indeed. "Or maybe in the darkness he did not see me."
* * * * *
"Why do you come?"
"Tama wants you."
"Wants me?"
"Yes. Now. To come with me--to her. Will you?"
"Where?"
He gestured. "Out of the city. But near. We can most easy get there--in
what you call half an hour."
"But--"
"1 cannot answer questions." There was a hurried tenseness about him.
And a pleading, "Guy--Tama asks you to come."
"All right." I agreed. "Toh, how is the storm?"
"Just the same. Not upon us yet."
"Maybe it won't break. I hope not."
"Do you?" he responded vaguely. "I don't know about that."
He was waiting impatiently for me to get on my shoes. Resilient-soled
buskins suitable for running over the jagged metallic rocks. For the
rest, I wore only short fabric trousers and a white, sleeveless shirt.
In the heat of Mercury the costume was all I ever needed.
Toh gestured at the white shirt. "Have you no dark one? They can see
you, maybe, in that."
I changed it.
He said suddenly, "Have you a weapon?"
"You know I have not. None are available outside the sealed government
rooms."
"We could not get in there?"
"Of course not."
"Well, then--" His voice trailed away.
I was ready. Bareheaded, like himself; and I tied a band about my
forehead to keep the hair from my eyes. I recalled suddenly that twelve
years before, in a very similar costume to this I had run my college
races back in the old days on Earth. That sent a pang through me. I was
no more than a prisoner here on this strange world. In all its affairs,
there was for me only Tama.
"All right, Toh."
But he insisted. "Take a knife--like this." He waved his thin,
keen-edged blade. "You have one?"
"Yes. But, Toh--"
"Please. Tama asked that you hurry."
I got my knife and we started out through the hundred-foot vaulted
corridor sloping upward. The murmur of the flume-water near by was
audible as we crept forward. The guard at the gate was not there. We
slipped through the small opening; its bars stood wide; we reached the
open air.
We were just beyond the palace garden wall. The reservoir-lake showed
its dim expanse of water, unrippled in the breathless darkness. Behind
us loomed the government building. It should have been almost dark
at this hour of sleep, but it was not. Many of its window slits were
lighted.
Toh pulled at me. "Come."
But I lingered. Some instinct.
The trees arched overhead, great, spreading, spindly branches of the
lush, porous vegetation of Mercury which grows with miraculous speed
where-ever there is soil and water. Through the tree branches I could
see the luminous green haze of the sky. And near by, spreading around
us, was the circular city. Mere dots of light now, winking like eyes in
the murky, abnormal darkness of the coming storm.
"Guy, please come."
* * * * *
Suddenly I saw, not fifteen feet from us, a dark form lying on the
ground. I jerked from Toh's grip and with a single bound pounced upon
it.
It was the guard. He lay on his back; his heavy-jowled face a contorted
mask, his eyes staring. And on his chest, his thin leather shirt was
ripped with a hole. There was a dark stain of blood.
Toh gripped me again. "Yes, I killed him! He tried to stop me from
getting in to you! Roc ordered you kept a prisoner--until this is over."
"This--what?" I shook him. "Toh, see here--murder! Good God, lad!"
He was shaking from fear or excitement. "Guy, now that you see him,
help me carry him. I tried it. He's too heavy for me."
He added, almost with a stark whisper: "Guy, the first murder! I did
it! This is for Tama. All this--for Tama and the virgins."
A surprising, matured force came to him. "Guy, my friend, is it with me
you want to act? With me and Tama? Or with Roc? He had you prisoner, in
there to-night."
He broke off; we both stood listening. The city was in a turmoil; the
distant murmur of voices in the streets; and nearer to us, voices at
the palace doorways, in the garden--coming this way!
I cast my lot then.
"You mean, throw him in the flume, Toh?"
"Yes. I wanted to do that."
I lifted the body in my arms. The twenty-foot wide flume passed near
us. I lowered my grisly burden gently into it to avoid a splash. There
was blood on my shirt as I straightened.
"Gone, Toh."
The floating shape disappeared in the darkness.
There were voices at the garden wall, but we had not been seen. And
then the first surge of the black storm broke upon the city. A sigh
of hot wind stirred the fronds over us into a rustle. It rippled the
mirror-like surface of the little lake.
A hot, sulphurous breath. Overhead the green-black sky was shot with
luminous red streaks, and puffs of red like tiny silent bombs bursting.
And then, a moment later, came the dull staccato sounds of the thunder.
"It's on us, Toh."
We ran around the lake shore, circled its farther end, and plunged into
one of the city streets.