Starke nodded. He went below with Beudag into a cabin with soft couches
covered with spider-silk and panels of dark wood beautifully painted,
dim fantastic scenes from the past of Rann's people. They sat opposite
each other. They still did not speak.
* * * * *
They raised Falga in the opal dawn--a citadel of basalt cliffs rising
sheer from the burning sea, with a long arm holding a harbor full of
ships. There were green fields inland, and beyond, cloaked in the
eternal mists of Venus, the Mountains of White Clouds lifted spaceward.
Starke wished that he had never seen the Mountains of White Cloud.
Then, looking at his hands, lean and strong on his long thighs, he
wasn't so sure. He thought of Rann waiting for him. Anger, excitement,
a confused violence of emotion set him pacing nervously.
Beudag sat quietly, withdrawn, waiting.
The longship threaded the crowded moorings and slid into place
alongside a stone quay. Men rushed to make fast. They were human
men, as Starke judged humans, like Beudag and himself. They had the
shimmering silver hair and fair skin of the plateau peoples, the
fine-cut faces and straight bodies. They wore leather collars with
metal tags and they went naked like beasts, and they were gaunt and
bowed with labor. Here and there a man with pale blue-green hair and
resplendent harness stood godlike above the swarming masses.
Starke and Beudag went ashore. They might have been prisoners or
honored guests, surrounded by their escort from the ship. Streets ran
back from the harbor, twisting and climbing crazily up the cliffs.
Houses climbed on each others backs. It had begun to rain, the heavy
steaming downpour of Venus, and the moist heat brought out the choking
stench of people, too many people.
They climbed, ankle deep in water sweeping down the streets that were
half stairway. Thin naked children peered out of the houses, out of
narrow alleys. Twice they passed through market squares where women
with the blank faces of defeat drew back from stalls of coarse food to
let the party through.
There was something wrong. After a while Starke realized it was the
silence. In all that horde of humanity no one laughed, or sang, or
shouted. Even the children never spoke above a whisper. Starke began to
feel a little sick. Their eyes had a look in them....
He glanced at Beudag, and away again.
The waterfront streets ended in a sheer basalt face honeycombed with
galleries. Starke's party entered them, still climbing. They passed
level after level of huge caverns, open to the sea. There was the
same crowding, the same stench, the same silence. Eyes glinted in the
half-light, bare feet moved furtively on stone. Somewhere a baby cried
thinly, and was hushed at once.
They came out on the cliff top, into the clean high air. There was a
city here. Broad streets, lined with trees, low rambling villas of the
black rock set in walled gardens, drowned in brilliant vines and giant
ferns and flowers. Naked men and women worked in the gardens, or hauled
carts of rubbish through the alleys, or hurried on errands, slipping
furtively across the main streets where they intersected the mews.
The party turned away from the sea, heading toward an ebon palace that
sat like a crown above the city. The steaming rain beat on Starke's
bare body, and up here you could get the smell of the rain, even
through the heavy perfume of the flowers. You could smell Venus in the
rain--musky and primitive and savagely alive, a fecund giantess with
passion flowers in her outstretched hands. Starke set his feet down
like a panther and his eyes burned a smoky amber.
They entered the palace of Rann....
She received them in the same apartment where Starke had come to after
the crash. Through a broad archway he could see the high bed where his
old body had lain before the life went out of it. The red sea steamed
under the rain outside, the rusty fog coiling languidly through the
open arches of the gallery. Rann watched them lazily from a raised
couch set massively into the wall. Her long sparkling legs sprawled
arrogantly across the black spider-silk draperies. This time her tabard
was a pale yellow. Her eyes were still the color of shoal-water, still
amused, still secret, still dangerous.