"No," he corrected. "This way."
In the morning Sin sent a messenger to Wor's rooms. The priestess of Sasso had known exactly where Margaret had spent the night. But she did not know of the things she and Wor had discussed in quiet whispers.
"Did you find Wor a satisfactory companion?" Sin greeted her.
Margaret eyed her steadily. "He's scarcely a mental giant," she replied. "A bit uncouth, but otherwise adequate."
The answer seemed to amuse Sin. "And did you like the Observance of Sasso?"
"It's—it's—" Margaret was at a loss for words but her face betrayed the tremendous hunger to wallow once more in Sasso's alien vileness. "How soon again?"
Sin smiled at her enthusiasm.
"You are one of us now, and the inherent character of your Closed World brain will help overcome the Rebels all the sooner," she declared.
A nagging worry gnawed at Margaret's mind. "How about Victor?" she asked.
Sin's face became masklike and unreadable. "He has become Of the Faith too. He may amuse me—for a while. Something new, you know."
Margaret nodded. She dared not probe too deeply.
"Just remember that I am Sin, and that in Varda my word is law."
Margaret wondered whether the ruler was suspicious or had uttered the warning on general principles.
V
For several days Krasna was out most of the time, and when home she was usually exhausted. Eldon was aware he was sharing her dwelling on sufferance only, because she pitied his maimed body and abysmal ignorance of this strange world, so in consideration he repressed most of the insistent questions pushing at his lips.
He spent many lonely, idle hours—when not indulging in orgies of self-pity—studying the scrolls he had found.
One dealt in scholarly fashion with the history of Varda, telling of a relatively small but highly civilized group, the Superiors, and a much larger number of uncivilized, barbarian Puvas. Most of the scroll dealt with the efforts of the Superiors to teach the Puvas the arts of civilization. It told of a populous, fairly happy world with a highly integrated culture of which Eldon had seen no trace, and it ended abruptly in the midst of a discussion of the economic system. The ending puzzled him. It was so—unfinished.
Whenever he tired of reading he investigated the marvelous mechanisms the girl used so casually. They left him perplexed, for they had no manual controls and he could not make them work at all. He dared not go out, for the girl had warned him that for her safety as well as his own he should remain underground. She had not explained.
The luminous walls bothered him particularly, and finally he asked her about them. She seemed surprised he did not understand.
"Just put your hand on a wall anywhere, so," she directed. "Now think of light. With your Closed World brain you should have no trouble."
Nothing happened.
"Think harder," she admonished. "Believeit will shine."
After a dozen attempts a wall suddenly flared into brilliance at his thought and touch. After that it became progressively easier.
"But why? How does it work?" he asked, still a scientist.
She frowned. "The detailed knowledge was lost many man-lives ago, when the Luvanscame throughand caused the Collapse." There was bitterness in her voice. "But of course it is by thought."
Eldon asked what she meant by the Collapse. She shook her head sadly and refused to discuss it, but before going out again she pointed out a small scroll he had overlooked. It was hastily written, an incomplete and fragmentary continuation of Varda's history.
The progressive civilization of the Superiors had been interrupted by alien creatures, Luvans, who had opened a Gateway from another world. They were few in number and the Superiors had not realized their danger until they had corrupted several individuals—the first of whom was a woman called Sin—to the worship of their vile deity. Then a deadly, devastating conflict had ensued, with those who refused to embrace the Faith at a terrible disadvantage.
For something in the nature of the Luvans had caused the Superiors' radiation-type power weapons to backfire whenever used near them. And with horror the Superiors had discovered that no matter how cut or bullet-punctured, the gross grey bodies of the Luvans repaired themselves within hours. They utterly refused to remain dead.
Most of the Superiors had been destroyed during the first few months. The survivors had been forced to scatter, taking to the forests.
Then the Luvans, lacking sufficient converts to establish an effective cell of their Faith and unable to corrupt more of the Superiors, had deliberately caused mutations to take place among the savage Puvas, breeding individuals more suited to their plans. The mutants were intelligent, but they lacked some of the Superiors' telepathic ability.
Eldon added up what he had read. Krasna was obviously one of the surviving Superiors, the hunted folk whose coordinated thoughts and mental powers held Varda against the Faith of Sasso. He remembered the lighted walls and the other devices without manual controls. Evidently thought was a tangible force here in Varda. Anxiously he awaited Krasna's return, one question uppermost in his mind.
He blurted it out as soon as he saw her. "Will you take me to your people? Perhaps they could return me to Earth."
Her body grew rigid and she stared at him in a silence suddenly grown hostile. Her hand hovered momentarily over the deadly radiant blast rod in her belt.
Then her eyes misted and her lips trembled. He knew he had unwittingly inflicted a deep hurt upon her, that somehow his words must have sounded like a taunt. He did not understand why, but he felt deeply apologetic and tried to tell her so. Finally the unfriendliness died from her eyes, but the hurt remained.
"My people?" she said in bitter unhappiness. "I have no people. I am an exile."
With an angry gesture she ripped her jacket aside, exposing the crescent-shaped red scar on her breast. "See this? It is the slave-mark of Sin."
Eldon stared blankly.
Jerkily, with words deliberately held to matter-of-factness, she told him. She had been captured by a raiding party of the Faith, gassed into unconsciousness, and had awakened in the slave pits beneath the Fortress of Sin. There she had been mistreated and tortured, dosed with a drug to reduce her to a mindless automaton, and in a bestial ceremony branded with the slave-mark. Her fate would have been eventual oblivion in the Vat.
But she had succeeded in poisoning herself before the drugs took full effect, and two mindless slaves under the direction of a mutant Puva guard had tossed her dying body on a rubbish heap outside the walls.
She had intended suicide, meaning to thwart the Faith, but a spying party of Rebels had found her barely breathing and rushed her to the Chamber, the only person ever to escape the clutches of the Faith.
"I went to the Thin World while the Chamber repaired the effects of the poison," she told him. "But even the Chamber could not removethis. Not so long as Sasso lurks at the Gateway."
Before Eldon could interrupt with questions she continued.
"They would have been kinder to let me die, even in the Vat."
The Forest People remembered the havoc traitorous adherents of the Faith had wrought among them, and would take no chances. Because she bore the slave-mark and was therefore suspect, Krasna had been sent into exile by the Council.
"The others can occasionally gather in small groups and fight their loneliness together," she sobbed. "But for two years they have even kept their minds closed against me. I'm completely alone, always."
Eldon felt a great longing to comfort the weeping girl. But even in her solitary exile she regarded him only as an object for pity, not as an equal and a friend. So there was nothing he could do but leave her alone with her grief. It made him feel more sorry for himself than ever.
Next day the alarm in the passageway hummed unexpectedly and Krasna leaped up as a man entered. His clothing was of the same blue-green material as hers, evidently intended to match the forest tints, and a bulging weapon belt encircled his waist. A long sword swung at his side, and he looked capable of using it well.
"Bolan!" Krasna greeted him with a happy cry and ran to his arms. He held her affectionately.
"How do you dare—?" she asked through tears of joy.
The man made a disparaging remark about the Council. "After all, you are my sister."
Eldon felt a relaxation of the tension within himself. His hostility toward the man ebbed.
But Bolan glowered at the Earthman with black dislike.
"You certainly aren't helping yourself with the Council by keeping this Outworldling here," he told the girl. "You'd be well advised to send him into the forest."
"To die? But Bolan, he's harmless," the girl protested.
The man raised his eyebrows. "You think so? The other twohave not appeared in the slave pits. You know what that means. And with their Closed World minds—"
Eldon interrupted in sudden anger. "Listen here. Margaret would never join that Faith. The man, perhaps, but not the girl. If she's there it is as a prisoner."
Bolan turned on him contemptuously. "Be quiet!"
Krasna intervened. "Your loyalty is touching—but I fear sadly misplaced," she said quietly.
Furious words surged to Eldon's lips, but Krasna refused to argue. She treated him like a sickly and petulant child. Enraged self-pity filled Eldon's mind. If he had both arms he'd show that big oaf a thing or two.
"Don't be a fool, sister, even if you have made a pet of this thing," Bolan said with brutal abruptness. "Get rid of him."
Krasna's mouth set in a stubborn line and her eyes flashed. Bolan shrugged, knowing the signs.
"There's a raiding party near," he changed the subject. "I'm going to try an ambush."
At once the girl brightened. "I'm going too," she announced, gathering her weapons.
Bolan looked startled, then worried, and finally actually frightened.
"Don't worry," Krasna reassured him bitterly. "I'll go alone. I have no desire to be seen with you and make you an exile too."
"You know I don't believe—" her brother protested.
"Perhaps not. But the Council does."
Bolan went out first. Krasna followed a few minutes later with the lemur-creature riding upon her shoulder. Eldon was left alone with his own very unpleasant thoughts.
He slept, and was awakened by a skittering sound in the room. Silently he touched the nearest wall andthoughtlight, and as the glow flashed he grabbed up the dagger he had placed near. His breath went out in a sigh of relief, for it was only Tikta, and then with a shock he knew something was wrong.
He tried to catch the agile little creature, but it eluded him easily. Then he remembered Krasna's lessons about the power of thought. He sat down again and concentrated on the idea that he meant it no harm.
At last, with desperation overcoming shyness, Tikta made a leap to his shoulder. It had never come near him before. He sat perfectly still as the handlike little paws moved to his head, remembering how he had seen it communicate with Krasna.
The room was gone. A forest glade blurred, cleared, blurred again, shifted from colors to colorblind tones of grey, widened, narrowed, as though seen through changing sets of eyes, finally settled.
Krasna was there, writhing in the grasp of a pair of lumpy grey creatures who towered above her. Luvans. One was using a device that Eldon guessed was calling an aircraft to pick up the prisoner.
He pulled Tikta's paws away and instantly was back in the underground room. Tikta glared at him reproachfully as he sat on the side of the couch. His heart was pounding and he was caught in the grip of uncertainty.
Finally he rose and fumbled in one of the wall cupboards for the extra blast rod Krasna had left behind. He knew he had to at least try, no matter what the odds, but he moved reluctantly.
Tikta pulled at his trouser leg to attract attention, and Eldon remembered with a gasp of dismay. Power weapons such as the blast rod were worse than useless against Luvans. They backfired. Slowly he picked up the heavy sword the lemur-creature had laboriously dragged to the middle of the floor.
Tikta's chattering reached a frantic pitch. It leaped to Eldon's shoulder, clinging to his collar with one paw and pointing the way with the other in a manner almost human. The naked blade felt clumsy in his unpracticed right hand. All his life he had been left-handed, and he was no swordsman, and he was frankly frightened. But he had to at least try.
Huge butterflies flitted among the gigantic trees of the forest and rainbow-hued lizards raced over the rough bark, but Eldon hardly noticed. He was haunted by the vision of Krasna.
Tikta guided him straight to the clearing. It was not far. The two Luvans, indistinguishable duplicates of each other, still held the struggling Rebel girl between them.
Tikta leaped down in shrill, gibbering rage and raced ahead of Eldon to the defense of its mistress. One of the Luvans looked up unperturbed as Eldon tensed his muscles and forced himself to charge with sword swinging. One of them brought his knife hilt crashing down on Krasna's skull, and as she dropped unconscious both turned toward the Earthman.
Eldon staggered in mid-stride as his knees went rubbery with a chilling, unearthly fear surpassing his worst nightmares. His wrist drooped and his fingers were lax on the sword hilt. For an instant he came to a complete standstill, his body swinging involuntarily to run, and he knew himself as an arrant coward.
But, as he hesitated, through his terror seeped an impression of cynicalamusement.
Then Eldon knew. Rage burned away panic. And with the rage came relief. He himself was not afraid—at least not that desperately afraid. The Luvans were using a mental weapon against him, a lance of fear.
He took an unsteady step forward. Another. The third was easier, although his entire body still trembled. But now that he knew its cause the fear was less effective.
An expression that might have been amazement crossed the pasty grey features of the Luvans.
Eldon's sword slashed in a hissing arc, and as one Luvan moved sluggishly back it stumbled over Krasna's prostrate form. With a savage bellow Eldon leaped. His backswing bit deep. The Luvan's shapeless mouth opened soundlessly as blue-black fluid gushed from the wound.
With a savage bellow Eldon leaped.
With a savage bellow Eldon leaped.
With a savage bellow Eldon leaped.
Eldon's blade flashed bright in the sunlight as he brought it down again with all the strength of his arm. Then it was no longer bright and the ugly grey body collapsed slowly.
But the second Luvan had prepared. One splayed hand held a dagger while the other grasped an evil-looking whip tipped with a cluster of hooked blades.
The Earthman almost sprawled as projected fear gave way to a momentarily successful attempt to confuse the coordination of his leg muscles. Then he screamed aloud as his body burst into flames and he had the illusion that mile upon mile of empty space lay between him and the Luvan. But with an effort of will he plunged ahead, heartened by the growing sense of consternation he could read in the monster's thoughts. Any creature of Varda would have shriveled and died under the Luvan's psychic barrage. But not the cripple from the Closed World of Earth.
The metal whip licked out faster than eye could follow. The blades of its tip grated against the bone of Eldon's forehead and a gush of blood poured into his single eye. He lowered his sword momentarily to clear his vision with the back of his single hand, and in that defenseless instant the Luvan struck.
He felt the dagger snick against a rib and plunge deep into his chest. Automatically his foot came up in a tremendous kick that sent the Luvan reeling back, unhurt but thrown off balance.
Eldon knew he was bleeding internally but as yet his shocked nerves refused to transmit the full story of pain to his mind. Minutes to live. Something clogged his throat as he panted, and he spat a gobbet of red-tinged foam onto the moss underfoot. Punctured lung.
He swung in a wide, clumsy lunge that missed by feet. And then he staggered, sagged, barely saved himself from falling. His sword point dropped weakly.
He felt the wave of triumphant, cruel gloating as the alien creature stepped in for the kill. And that had been the Earthman's last desperate hope, that the thing's inherent bestiality would not allow it to stand back and wait for him to fall. His time was short.
With a supreme, final effort he brought the sword up in a whistling uppercut. And struck. The point bit into the Luvan's chest. Into its throat. Snagged against the creature's jaw. Eldon stiffened his arm and let his body fall forward. The double-edged blade sliced through flesh and cartilage, then met with lessened resistance as the point emerged.
Eldon fell, blood from his wounds showering upon the obscene carcass, but he went down with the elation of the kill still in his mind.
Krasna moaned and opened her eyes as three men in blue-green emerged from the trees. "Bolan!" she gasped.
Her brother took one shocked look at the carnage, misunderstood, raised his sword above Eldon's bloody head.
There was no time to argue or explain. The sword was descending even as she snatched out her blast rod and fired.
Orange fire blazed. The sword went spinning away, torn from Bolan's fingers. But power weapons used near Luvans—even hacked and bleeding Luvans—invariably backfired, and where Krasna's right hand had been there was only a shapeless mass of mangled, heat-seared flesh. For an eternity everyone remained frozen by the unexpectedness of the blast rod's discharge.
"The exile!" one of the men whispered fearfully. "She is truly a Sasso-creature! Kill her!"
"Wait!" Bolan spoke as though dazed. "Why did you—?"
Krasna did not answer. Instead she seized the Luvan's dagger in her uninjured hand and carved a gaping cross-shaped gash in the chest of the carcass beside her. Through glazing eyes Eldon watched as she plunged her hand into the slimy, quivering mess and felt disgusted at her exhibition of rank savagery.
She brought her arm out, fouled and defiled to the elbow with the Luvan's evil-smelling blood. In her hand was a tiny glittering capsule. She tossed it to the ground. "Smash it!" she said weakly.
Uncomprehendingly one of the men crushed it beneath his heel. Instantly the bloated, obscene, mangled carcass vanished as though it had never existed. Even its spilled blood was gone. The men drew unsteady breaths and a look of awed understanding appeared on their faces.
"The other one!" Krasna writhed as pain from her blasted hand penetrated her consciousness. "I—can't."
Eager swords hacked at the remaining monster and eager hands pawed among the filth of its body.
"We have killed a Luvan!" One of the men shouted exultantly as the second capsule shattered under his foot and the second carcass disappeared. "We know their secret now."
Bolan had recovered from his stupefaction. "The Chamber!" he ordered. "Be quick!"
"But it is forbidden," a man objected. "She is an exile. The Council—"
"Damn the Council!" Bolan picked up his sword and brandished it. "To the Chamber!" he repeated. The man looked to where the two Luvans had been and nodded.
"Take—him." Krasna spoke with great effort. "He—must—be—El-ve-don."
"Both!" Bolan decided instantly. He whistled and three more Forest People emerged from the trees. One was a tall, rawboned woman who took charge of administering first aid while the men prepared makeshift litters.
Eldon knew he was dying, but he tried to speak.
"Be still!" the woman ordered without rancor, continuing her ministrations.
One of the men picked up a small furry bundle and deposited it tenderly beside Krasna. The lemur-thing whined softly and snuggled against her.
Eldon felt no pain as he was rolled onto a stretcher. He was too far gone for that. As everything grew dark Krasna was looking at him, and now for the first time there was no pity in her glance. Instead there was dawning admiration. Her thought reached him, bypassing his ears and entering his brain as a telepathic whisper.
"Call me. I will be near."
VI
Dead. Dead. No bodily sensations. Nobeing. But still thought. The individuality of Eldon Carmichael looked without eyes, listened without ears. It was absolutely, utterly alone innothingness. Nothing but terriblealoneness.
But something—someone—had said, "Call me." What? Whom? Shreds of memory began to coalesce.
"Krasna!" The individuality of Eldon Carmichael shouted without lungs or mouth. "Krasna!"
The nothingness was no longer quite so empty. A thought brushed his.
"Eldon? Where?"
"Here!"
"Think of your shape!" a thought commanded.
The individuality of Eldon Carmichael thought. Memory shreds were coagulating to remind him he had once had a body. This was not death. It was something else.
"Think of me—help meform!" The thought-appeal was urgent but unfrightened. "I can't alone."
"Krasna?" He sent out the wordless question.
"Yes!"
He remembered her as he had watched her bathing in the warm pool that flowed through her home. And then he could see her floating in nothingness beside him, tenuous at first, then solidifying. He saw her with a new three-dimensional clarity and depth, as though with two eyes. Instinctively he reached toward her—and his left hand clasped her right.
Krasna looked down at herself, at the crescent-shaped scar marring her loveliness, and winced.
"Even here I must bear that," her thought reached him. "Until Sasso is no more."
Confused memories were returning now, bringing horror of this unknown emptiness.
And then Krasna's thoughts were flowing around him protectively, soothingly—but not in pity. And her thoughts brought understanding.
They were in the Thin World, a—place—outside the more solid worlds. Here only thought had actuality. Their bodies here were nothing but thought-projections. And here they must remain until the Chamber had had its way with their torn, torturedrealbodies, healing them. For such were the unique powers of the Chamber.
"But my arm? And my eye?" Eldon asked.
"You forgot you had lost them. Here you are as you think you are. And I—"
"Exactly as I have dreamed." The thought left Eldon's mind before it could be altered by his loyalty to Margaret and his desire to return to Earth.
Krasna glanced at him sharply, but she seemed not displeased. And there was gratitude in her thoughts. Gratitude and surprised admiration for the way he had come to her rescue without thought of his own safety.
"We must stay away from our actual bodies long enough but not too long," she told him. "Otherwise we could not return at all."
She read his questioning thoughts. "No. A Vardan mind can not take knowledge of the Thin World back. I can remember almost nothing of the time I was here after escaping the Faith.
"But you, with your Closed World brain, can perhaps do what I can not."
With his new knowledge Eldon understood also that those crystalline capsules in the gross grey carcasses were the real essence of the Luvans. The bodies in which they had clothed themselves to live in Varda had been purely artificial.
"I learned the secret of the Luvans in the slave pits of the Faith." Krasna's thoughts grew grim and bleak as she remembered the things to which she had been subjected there. Vardan memories could be carried into the Thin World, though not back again.
Eldon's thought-body drew hers close as they floated side by side in limbo, drew her to him comfortingly and protectingly to thrust those memories aside. He thought she should be soft and warm to touch—and she was.
She pulled away—after a time that could have been either a moment or an age—with a tinkling laugh and a change of mood.
"Time here isdifferentand it will seem long before we can return," her mind said. "Let us build a world to our own hearts' desires and live there until—until you can destroy Sasso and the Faith."
"But—"
She ignored his protest.
"I will go back to the Chamber occasionally—it will be necessary—but if you with your tenacious Earth mind went it would be disastrous."
"Understand this once and for all," he warned her. "If ever I can return to my own Earth I shall do so. I am not your marvelous El-ve-don, and I have no intention of fighting this thing you call Sasso. Those Luvans were bad enough."
Krasna frowned. Then her look of disappointment gave place to a knowing smile.
There was a hint of a surprising idea. Just the faintest sort of hint—and then she closed her mind, half laughingly and half in seriousness. But tightly.
"Let's build our world," she said.
It was a Godlike sensation tothinka world. It changed with their thoughts, part Earth, part Varda, and part the solidification of the non-existent lands of dreams. There were groves, streams, mountains, plains. There were towns too, but these could be seen only dimly, indistinct in the distance, the men and women in them tiny figures without individuality. Neither Krasna nor Eldon had formulated their ideas for an inhabited utopia concretely enough to fill in the details.
Krasna created for herself a wardrobe of wonderful gowns every fold of which draped in a perfection of beauty, and jewels of kaleidoscopic inner fires that shifted with her mood. After her hunted forest life in Varda she indulged her fancies to the fullest.
Eldon built a laboratory. He lavished concentrated attention upon it—and then it failed to give him the satisfaction he had expected. For he did not have to work to find solutions. Heknew. Even the mysterious bound charges yielded up their secrets in minutest detail, and when he discovered his Earth theorizing about the close connection between interacting bound charges and life itself had been on the right track he felt no surprise. The experimental equipment he designed was worse than useless, answering so perfectly to his thoughts that he could make the needles of his meters swing by merelywillingit. He gathered almost limitless knowledge.
Krasna asked about life on Earth, and occasionally Eldon created Earth scenes for her. Once he built a dream automobile, unhampered by the structural limitations of Earth materials, and any number of miles of broad highway. Everything but the traffic. Krasna was delighted at first, amused by the manually operated controls, but then she saddened as she remembered that once Varda had had its own system of roads. So Eldon erased the perfect automobile and perfect highway from existence.
Krasna looked at him peculiarly. She seemed almost afraid of him, so deep was her awe.
"You—you are most certainly El-ve-don!" she whispered. "Only El-ve-don could know how to do such a thing. My people will be grateful to you forever when you save us from Sasso."
Irrational anger stirred within him at her assumption. "No! I shall return to Earth as soon as I can—if I can. I am not El-ve-don."
Krasna was shocked. "Then some day Sasso will come to Earth."
Eldon shrugged, rejecting the thought, his mind still unwilling to believe in the very existence of Sasso.
Then it was time for her to visit the Chamber. Her thought-bodythinned out, vanished.
Eldon found their private world dreary and dead without her. With the bright, vital waves of her personality missing there was no joy. He grew intolerably lonely, anxious for her return.
When she reappeared everything was right again in their self-created world. The news she brought was mixed. Their bodies were repairing satisfactorily, she reported, but outside the Chamber there was chaos and steadily deepening defeat for the Forest People. Many had been captured—she shuddered with horror—while others more fortunate had been killed.
Her eagerness to leave their dream world communicated itself to Eldon, but their reasoning was different. She was dedicated to the struggle against Sasso. He hoped with his newfound knowledge to escape the brutalities of Varda and return to old familiar Earth.
But the time was not yet.
Once more she went away and once more she returned, this time almost at once. "Eldon!" she wailed even as she materialized. "We must go back now!"
"Why?" he demanded.
"Because The Night approaches. Two Earth minds aiding the Faith have disturbed the balance. My people can not hold the Gateway much longer."
"But—?"
"If we don't we shall be lost here forever!"
Suddenly Eldon's homesick longing for Earth gave way to hesitation. Here he was whole, not a cripple. There—
But Krasna's absences had shown him that to be alone for all eternity on this self-created world would be unendurable. Even a disembodied brain could—would—go mad from loneliness. And there was Margaret, a prisoner of the Faith. He had no choice.
"All right," he agreed reluctantly.
"Now!"
Instinctively he knew the way.
"Eldon! El-ve-don! Stay near me!" He sensed Krasna's appeal even as their thought-world crumbled back into the featureless opacity of limbo, and he responded amid thenothingness.
VII
The irregular walls, roof and floor were crystals of all shapes and colors. Some glowed, shedding polychromatic light. He rolled over—his body responded with a heavy stiffness—and beside him lay the red-haired girl. This was the Chamber, a natural formation possessing strange characteristics possible only in Varda. In the Chamber they had cheated death by giving their bodies complete rest.
He moved his left arm. It moved! His breath went out in a sigh of happiness as he looked at it, his two eyes focusing with difficulty at first. It was less heavily muscled and the skin was white and tender. It lookednewer. Here in the Chamber he had grown it like a—like a crawfish. And the mortal dagger wound had healed scarlessly.
Krasna opened her eyes and stretched. He looked over to see if she had fared as well.
She caught his look. Instantly her face flushed and she snatched up a cloak one of the rescue party had left beside her, wrapped it around herself. Eldon was surprised. The prudery of bodily modesty had seemed entirely lacking from her character. In her home she had always been charmingly natural and unembarrassed.
She saw he had discovered his new arm and eye.
"Pleased?" she asked.
He nodded vigorously, forgetting everything else.
He felt a pull, a tugging deep within himself. Krasna felt it too and jumped up.
"Come," she urged. "We must get out of the Chamber at once."
Together they climbed a crystal-lined passage so steep it was almost a shaft. His muscles felt stale, unused and stiff. They came out on the rugged slope of a mountain, high above the forest line, and the opening to the Chamber was a small black hole amid a cluster of boulders.
Eldon shivered in the chill wind after the tingling warmth of the Chamber, and Krasna drew her cloak more closely around the tattered remains of her clothing. There was a flash of movement among the rocks and Tikta came running, chattering happily. Krasna stroked its soft fur and the lemur-thing placed its paws on her head in the way Eldon had learned meant mental communication.
He watched her face become set and grim.
"Things are going—badly," she said.
She hurried him down the jagged slope, telling him as they went that the Forest People were gathering. It was risky, an unprecedented move of desperation, for if any large numbers were killed or captured Varda's entire defense against Sasso would collapse. The Gateway could be fully opened.
But Krasna was unable to maintain the pace at which she started. She tired rapidly, and often they rested at her suggestion. She seemed clumsy, unsure of her footing, and frequently he helped her over the rougher places.
"Do you remember the Thin World?" she asked during one pause.
"N—no," he admitted. He could remember Earth and Varda, remember his battle with the Luvans. But about the Thin World he could recall only that there was such a—was it a place?
"But you must!" she wailed. "You must!"
"I don't," he insisted.
She sighed. "Perhaps it will come back to you."
Finally they were out of the mountains, the blue forest moss squeaking beneath their feet as they walked. Once they stopped for a brief sleep, and although Eldon found it uncomfortably hot on the forest floor Krasna kept her long cloak wrapped closely.
"Where are we going?" he asked, very tired of this hiking and of the girl's reproachful glances. Even the little lemur-thing seemed to stare disapproval at his lack of memory.
"To my people, of course. Perhaps they will allow me to return now. Every one of us will be needed to counteract the two Earth minds working with the Faith."
"Ugh!" Eldon grunted, furious over her reiterated hints that Margaret—his Margaret, for she had come to him that last night on Earth—was Of the Faith.
They continued walking in strained silence.
"Can't you remember anything?" she asked again, her lips trembling. "About the Thin World? That you are El-ve-don?"
"No."
His tone was unintentionally sharp, for he was irked by his inability to remember. There was something—something he couldn't quite grasp. She responded by bursting into a flood of tears and he stared at her, astonished. She had seemed such a well-balanced girl, one who did not cry easily. And so healthy and active too. But now—
She was still sobbing intermittently when three heavily armed men stepped from among the trees and approached with swords and blast rods drawn.
Eldon tensed instantly at their hostile attitude, and though he was unarmed he prepared to resist.
But Krasna grasped his arm. "No. They are my people. We must go with them quietly."
With a guard on either side and the third behind they were hustled through the forest. Krasna stumbled occasionally and Eldon took her arm. They were not allowed to speak to each other, and the guards were so watchful they seemed almost afraid of their unarmed prisoners.
Once three tubular silvery ships like the one which had hunted Eldon on his first night in Varda cruised overhead in echelon formation. Instantly their guards forced them into hiding.
"Kill both if they signal," the leading guard directed.
Neither Eldon nor Krasna had the slightest intention of signaling the aircraft of the Faith, and with their captors they breathed a sigh of relief when the ships vanished in the distance.
Their hurried progress continued, with Krasna panting and stumbling. Perspiration beaded her face, but still she kept the heavy cloak around herself.
Finally one of the guards whistled and almost at once they were surrounded by armed men who stared at them in hostile silence for a moment, then forced them into a black opening at the base of a tree.
The tunnel smelled musty and unused and the huge underground room smelled the same. But the room was in use now, packed from wall to wall with Forest People.
Sudden silence fell as the captives were led in, and hundreds of eyes turned toward them. Krasna gasped and her face grew pale.
"Oh, Eldon! They think we—"
"Be quiet!" one of the guards snapped, prodding her roughly in the back.
Eldon's fists clenched despite the swords ringing him in, but Krasna's look counselled to wait.
Something was very, very wrong with many of the Forest People. Their skins were red and raw and their bodies were swollen and bloated, as though they had been severely burned or were in the last stages of some dreadful disease.
A woman—she might have been good looking at one time—pushed toward them. Her feverish eyes were sunk deep in pockets of swollen flesh and her poor, distorted face twitched uncontrollably.
"You did this, red witch of Sasso—and you, Earthman!" Her voice was so cracked with hate that Krasna stepped back.
A middle-aged man put his arm gently around her, and she was sobbing and leaning heavily upon him as he led her away.
"Sasso-creatures!" he growled, his eyes flashing venom.
All at once Eldon realized he could read thoughts, just as Krasna had read his. He knew what these Forest People were thinking and his face went tight as he felt their concentrated hate. For every one of them believed that Krasna had been deliberately allowed to escape from the Fortress as part of the Faith's dark plot. Didn't she carry the slave-mark? And they were sure that he, Eldon, was as much Of the Faith as his two fellow-worldlings.
The ancient, white-haired man in charge of the meeting pounded for attention. He peered at the prisoners with searing loathing and spoke to Krasna.
"The Council erred when it sentenced you to exile," he declared grimly. "It should have been death. But this mistake which has cost so many lives will be rectified."
There was a growl of approval.
"And this Earthman—"
Krasna straightened. "This Earthman is El-ve-don!" she shouted.
For a moment there was incredulous silence.
"You lie, Sasso-creature!" screamed one of the bloated, dying men.
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!" The chant roared deafeningly from the low ceiling and the old leader made no attempt to stop it.
Krasna raised her arms high in a plea for silence. She got silence, sudden and complete, but in an unexpected way. For as she raised her arms the cloak fell open and the tattered and bloodstained clothing beneath hid little. There was a startled gasp from the crowd, then a hum of shocked comment.
But it was not her semi-nudity that caused the sensation. Her condition, the heaviness of her body, were obvious.
She saw that her secret had been disclosed.
"This man is El-ve-don!" Her voice was firm and defiant now, pitched to cut through the noise. "Though he has refused to save our world, which only he can do, Varda must have another chance."
Eldon was held in outraged motionlessness as an angry mutter spread.
"Forest People!" Krasna lifted her voice. "The Earthman is the father of my child—although he himself did not know it until now!"
Eldon wanted to shout a denial. But he understood why she had been so unsure of her footing descending the mountains, why she had tired so easily.
"This Earthmancould beEl-ve-don of the prophecy if he would. He will not. But some day—if the Gateway can be held long enough—perhaps our child will accept the burden its father has shirked. The child will inherit characteristics of a Closed World mind. It was all I could do for Varda."
Her voice broke in a sob.
Eldon read a thought in her mind, a thought intended for him alone.
"And besides, I love him."
His brain was awhirl. It was all utterly impossible. But his confusion was interrupted by a stir in the back of the hall. Bolan entered, shoved his way to the dais. He spoke to the old leader and there were cries of angry protest from those near enough to hear.
"But—" the old man began.
"A trick to regain our confidence," someone broke in loudly. "Even Luvans would be sacrificed to defeat us."
The old man spoke to Bolan again, and Bolan turned to stare at his sister with disbelief changing to undisguised loathing.
"But she is the only one who knows the arrangement of the Fortress," he said aloud. "Kill her and you doom our attack to failure."
There was a babble of disagreement.
"I say this not as her brother—if she has chosen a mate outside our own People I hereby declare her no longer my sister—but as chosen leader of our attack."
Amid the ensuing uproar the old man made a gesture to the guards, and with his newfound telepathic ability Eldon caught the thought-command.
"Take them to the side rooms, apart from each other. We must consider this."
Alone in a tiny cell Eldon tried to bring his whirling thoughts to order. Krasna had lied. She must have lied. Why? But for a moment her mind had been so open to his telepathic sense that lying was improbable. And—
He felt a sudden mental wrench, a dislocation, a twisting—a million ideas spun through his brain—and heremembered. Memories of the Thin World—those very memories whose lack had made Krasna cry so bitterly—all at once. They had been there all the time, but buried, and the quick series of emotional shocks had brought them to the surface. Gone was the irksome, nagging feeling that had made him speak so harshly to the poor girl, replaced by a sense of surety and power.
Krasna had returned to the Chamber, to their real bodies, while he had remained in the Thin World. It could have—must have—happened that way. He remembered the secret, knowing smile she had worn, and the hints he had detected in her mind. And thought was a powerful force in Varda, controlling material objects. And time in the Thin World was different, variable.
It had been her patriotic urge to give Varda a chance at no matter what cost to herself. But he suspected there was also a shrewd feminine attempt to involve him emotionally in the fate of her world. It was most disconcerting.
Then that other thought—that most surprising thought of all. So she loved him. So what? He had not encouraged her.
He tried to shrug it off, tried to tell himself he had no responsibility whatsoever in the matter. But his heart spoke otherwise. He tried to grow angry at Krasna for the unfair advantage she had taken—and failed miserably.
He made no resistance as he was led back into the hall. Memories of the Thin World, of the nature of interacting bound charges, were arranging themselves in his mind. And he understood how to use that knowledge. His was a triple mind with an understanding of Earth, of Varda, and of the Thin World. But somehow there was little satisfaction and no happiness in the belief that soon he could return to Earth.
The old man began, for the benefit of the crowd, with a lengthy explanation that there was still some doubt in Krasna's case. She had, after all, given them the Luvans' secret, and she was necessary to the plan to infiltrate the Fortress and assassinate the leaders of the Faith. But still she bore the slave-mark.
"She will be kept under guard and her mind will be intensively probed," the old man announced. "The child with the Earth taint will be destroyed at birth."
"No!" Krasna shrieked. "No!"
Eldon felt a twinge at her frantic, pitiful cry, but he hardened his heart and did not face her.
He did not wait for the inevitable death sentence to be pronounced upon him. He turned away, almost casually, and walked toward the passage. He must find Margaret, attend to the matter of Victor, and then return to Earth. And he must go first to the dread Fortress of Sin, for he would have need of the Gateway.
But he was filled with a deep sadness for Krasna and her—their—unborn child.
At first the Forest People did not guess his intention, for he screened his thoughts. Then two warriors leaped to block his path with upraised swords. Eldonthought, and for the fragment of time it took to pass them they remained immobile. A knife whistled toward his unprotected back. Hefeltit coming and with incredible swiftness whirled and caught it in mid-air.
"Up! Up! Higher!" Eldon concentrated as a blast rod was drawn somewhere behind him. The sizzling lethal charge passed over his head and tore a gaping scar in the plastic ceiling as the aim of the operator was disturbed by his penetrating thought.
He risked one look at Krasna. She was struggling to tear loose from her guards and follow.
"El-ve-don!" she called. In her voice was the anguish of one who has lost hope.
Then he ran, knowing that as soon as the Forest People recovered from their surprise he would be no match for their massed mental powers.
VIII
Mottled splotches of tree-filtered sunlight flashed across his body. He ran, wishing he had not looked back at Krasna, guiding himself by the sun, and when he grew tired he used his new knowledge to postpone fatigue. His body would have to pay a price later, but for that he was prepared.
He knew now that he must inevitably come into conflict not only with the Faith, but with the Sasso-thing itself. For Sasso held the Gateway. He smiled wryly to himself as he considered fragmentary plans. Perhaps he was El-ve-don after all.
The forest thinned to allow glimpses of the Mountains that Move, and then he was clambering up the same barren, rock-strewn slopes he and Krasna had descended so slowly together.
He found the entrance to the Chamber without difficulty, for that black hole among the rocks was fixed indelibly in his memory. Then he had to drive himself, push himself step after lagging step down the steep tunnel until he stood amid the warmth and polychromatic glow of the crystal-lined grotto. He felt his spirit, hisself, float free from his body. It was like swimming in a riptide, requiring a conscious and constant effort to hover near and not be swept out again into the Thin World.
And then, deliberately, Eldon'sselfdid strange and terrible things to the body that lay crumpled on the rough floor. There was a psychic pain that ripped and tore at theself, more intense and poignant than any purely physical torment, and it continued for a timeless age.
When at long last a body staggered up the tunnel its left arm was a stump and one eye blinked and squinted in a ruined, disfigured face. By his own choosing he was outwardly as he had been during those last unhappy months on Earth. The mental changes were invisible.
Above the Chamber the mountains grew steeper, rougher, and to an already exhausted cripple the difficulties were almost insuperable. Time after time he narrowly avoided rock slides loosened by the constant earthquakes, and there were ledges where the slightest misstep meant death, and crevices from which noxious, choking fumes puffed in irregular spurts. And always there was the howling, shrieking wind that strove to wreck his precarious balance and send him tumbling to destruction.
He wished he had an antigravity egg. With time and proper facilities he could have constructed one. He understood how. But he was not in the Thin World and could not produce one from nothing merely by thinking about it.
And he could not have used it anyhow. It was necessary that his maimed body be tortured almost to the point of collapse. The Gateway must be reached through Sasso, and Sasso could be reached only through the Faith. But one who was Of the Faith could not be false to Sasso.
Scratched and bleeding, half-frozen, his shoes worn through and the palm of his single hand shredded by jagged rocks, he crossed the summit and made the long descent to the semi-desert plateau on the other side. Near the bottom a small stream trickled across the rocks, and Eldon drank deeply although the water stank of chemicals leached from the volcanic core of the range.
The domain of the Faith was huge, and for three days he plodded across the drifting brownish sands. His breath whistled noisily in a throat parched with thirst and seared by alkali dust. Beneath the tattered remains of his shirt his ribs showed starkly through weather-scoured, sun-blistered skin, but he welcomed the emaciation and each scratch of the cactus-like plants. It was all necessary.
As the merciless sun rose for the fourth day he sighted a column of mist ahead. In the afternoon he topped a slight rise and looked down upon a small lake steaming in the brazen sunlight. On its shore two dozen mud and wattle huts huddled together for mutual protection. A settlement of the primitive Puva tribesmen, the original non-mutants. Eldon hid in the scanty shade of a boulder and slept a couple of hours.
Then he stood up, allowing the setting sun to outline him. It was only a minute before a savage saw him and gave a shout. Still Eldon stood in plain sight, and soon thirty Puvas armed with clubs and spears were racing toward the stranger who had dared invade their territory. To their primitive minds stranger and enemy were the same.
Eldon waited until they were near. Then hethought, and a moment later smiled to himself as he passed undetected within a few feet of the tribesmen seeking his blood. His peculiar Earth mentality, coupled with the control he had learned in the Thin World, made him completely invisible to the Puvas. But he knew well it was a trick which would never work against mentalities that were more nearly his equal.
Beside one of the huts he found a crudely made clay pot of water. He drank his fill and threw the remainder of the water over a Puva woman. She screamed. He shattered the pot at the feet of another woman who ran to investigate. Then he trotted away, leaving the village in turmoil behind him, trusting the wind-whipped sands to obliterate his footprints.
All night long he plodded steadily eastward toward the Fortress of Sin. Near morning he threw himself down on the sand, this time making not the slightest effort at concealment.
The whistling ships appeared with the grey of dawn, heading for the Puva encampment. The first passed high and to the south, but as the second approached Eldon opened his eye, lurched to his feet, staggered a few steps. He did not look up as the sound of the ship changed. Then he let himself sink limply to the sand.
The ship skidded to a stop nearby and through a slitted eye Eldon watched two men emerge. Men—mutant Puvas of the Faith—and not Luvans. He allowed himself a sigh of relief before feigning unconsciousness.
One of them rolled him over with a booted toe.
"Hey, Thordan," he said to his companion. "It's the crippled Outworldling that Highness Sin ordered us to watch for."
"But how could this have—" Thordan began.
"Those Puvas!" The other mutant sounded disgusted. "They saw this thing; and when he hid from their clumsy searching they sent that false alarm that the Rebels had crossed the mountains. Superstitious fools!"
Thordan nodded and examined Eldon critically. "Bah! Who'd want such an atrocity as a slave? Not me! Let's blast it here and not dirty our ship."
"Blast it and you'll carry lash scars," the other warned. "That thing is—was—an Earthman."
"All right. Throw it in and let's get back," Thordan agreed sourly.
"And don't give it food or water either," the other reminded. "Highness Sin, or perhaps Lesser Highness Margaret may have other ideas."
Something inside Eldon died at the casual mention of Lesser Highness Margaret. The words did something Krasna's hints and the open accusations of the Forest People had failed to do. They convinced him, brought into sharp focus all the half-thoughts and doubts he had so resolutely pushed aside.
The ship landed and Eldon was half-led, half-dragged across the courtyard of the Fortress and into Sin's audience hall. There he was given a final shove, tripped at the same instant, and made involuntary prone obeisance to the dark-haired woman on the throne. He had just time to notice with a start how closely she resembled Margaret.
Sin looked down in questioning contempt Eldon could feel her mind probing tentatively at his and deliberately made incoherent thought-pictures of burning sands and torturing thirst, of howling savages with blood lust in their eyes, of the trembling hell of the Mountains that Move. He invented scenes of being hunted through an endless towering forest by murderous people. To set up a complete mind block would only have called attention to his ability.
Sin's mind displayed increasing interest at those pictures, so he took his thoughts back to Earth and reproduced the nightmarish, multiform and utterly horrible and meaningless images of morphine and delirium which had haunted him in the hospital. He had the satisfaction of feeling her mind withdraw in fastidious disgust.
"His mind is gone, Highness Sin?" a hulking, much-decorated warrior asked.
Sin nodded. "Curse those Rebels. He is of no value in this condition."
Wor nodded. "Could his mind be restored?"
"Not worth it," Sin decided. "It would be a tedious task, I fear. A third Closed World mind for the Faith would have made the victory simpler, but no matter." She shrugged.
"The Rebels still die under the new weapons?" she asked her military chief.
"Yes, Highness Sin," Wor responded. "It will end soon now. Shall I—?" He made a snapping motion with his hands.
Sin shook her head. "Not so quickly, Wor." She raised her voice slightly. "Margaret, do you want this thing?"
Eldon resisted the temptation to turn, for that would have betrayed that he understood every word.
Margaret's voice came clearly from behind him.
"No!" she declared, her tone indicating revulsion at the sight of his maimed ugliness and the grime that clung to his blood-flecked skin.
Then quickly she changed her mind.
"For the Faith, Highness Sin—yes. He was always a fool, but with proper care perhaps enough of his mind can be restored to hasten The Night."
"Granted." Sin sounded pleased at Margaret's devotion to the Faith. "This idiot creature could not possibly be El-ve-don. But have your slaves take it out of my sight. It sickens me."
Eldon heard the girl he had once loved give an order, felt himself lifted and carried. A few minutes later, still feigning semiconsciousness, he was deposited on a soft bed.
"What do you want with this thing?" It was the big man Sin had addressed as Wor, and he sounded suspicious.
Margaret answered calmly. "As an unexpected aid to our plans."
"How?"
"Victor hates me since I chose you. Now Sin has taken a fancy to him. She will use him against us—if she suspects. And we both know Sin is dangerously clever. But I hope we can use this one—against Sin through Victor."
"But can you be sure—?"
"This one will do whatever I say." Margaret laughed confidently. "But remember, Wor dearest, for a while Eldon must be my only love. Now leave me alone with him."
The big man muttered an oath.
"Jealous? Don't be stupid, Wor. This should be a real surprise for Sin."
Eldon lay motionless, the slow, unsteady rise and fall of his chest the only sign of life. But his brain was alert. He heard the tantalizing sound of water being poured. A vessel was held to his lips and water dribbled into his mouth. It took all his control to keep from gulping greedily, and he had not had nearly enough when Margaret took the glass away.
Once more there was water, this time mingled with perfumed soap on a soft cloth as she washed the dirt from his face. Once he had delighted to have this woman near him, but now it was all he could do to suppress a shudder. Whenever her hands touched his skin he couldfeelthat she was Of the Faith in a manner possible only through her own free will.
She snipped the tattered remains of his clothing away and applied a soothing ointment to his cuts and scratches. He thought he understood why she did not leave such ministrations to her slaves. She wanted his first waking thoughts to be of her love and solicitude. His lips almost thinned angrily.
He waited until she was growing impatient before he opened his single bloodshot eye. And then he held his face blank and empty.
"Eldon," she whispered softly, in English. "Eldon, it's me, Margaret. The girl who loves you."
"Margaret?" His voice was thick and hoarse, and that was not acting. Thirst had left his throat cracked and dry.
"Poor Eldon!" Her tone was soothing, caressing. "What did those nasty Rebels do to you?"
Eldon twisted his face in an idiotic grin. He giggled insanely, and when she tried to touch him drew back like a frightened animal. He muttered vaguely of horrors.
"Poor Eldon," she said again, and kissed him. With his increased sensitivity it was all he could do to keep from retching as her lips touched his. But he clung to her with his one shaking arm as though begging her protection.
At last he lay back and gradually his trembling subsided.
Margaret bent over him. "Victor is here," she said slowly and distinctly. "You remember Victor. He tried to kill you. I tried to save you. Now you must get well and kill Victor. You hate Victor, just as you love me."
Eldon whispered obediently. "Yes, I must kill Victor!"
He found himself wondering why normal people so often speak to invalids and cripples as though they were feeble-minded. He knew full well that if his body had been whole and well Margaret would have been more careful and Sin would have been much more thorough in her examination. This tendency to discount the mentality of a cripple was particularly strong when the victim was full of irrational fears and whining self-pity. All Eldon's hopes rested upon this simple psychological fact.
"You must sleep now, lover," Margaret crooned. She gave him a pill and a swallow of water. "This will make you feel better."
He let his body relax as though drifting into slumber. He could not hear her footsteps on the deep, rich carpeting but the swish of her gown and the soft opening and closing of a door traced her movements. Quickly he removed the pill from his mouth and tossed it through the open window. Sleep he needed, but drugged sleep he could not afford.
A murmur of voices came from the next room. Silently Eldon rose and pressed one ear to the door.
Margaret was speaking. "Great Sasso! That thing clung to me like a slobbering baby. But he'll be easy enough to control, especially—"
"Careful! Want him to hear us?"
"It wouldn't matter. He couldn't understand a word. Besides I gave him a control pill."
"But we don't want to make a mindless slave of him," Wor remonstrated.
"Of course not," Margaret assured her alien lover. "He'd be useless that way. The drug will only paralyze his will so he will believe unquestioningly anything we tell him, and you can see that he does not receive the mark that would make him a complete slave of the Faith."
"Ssh!" Eldon heard the big warrior whisper. "I thought I heard—" A chair creaked and there were footsteps.
Silently but with utmost speed Eldon threw himself on the bed.
"You're nervous as an old woman," Margaret complained.
Wor's voice was deep in his throat. "One lives longer that way when plotting against Sin," he declared.
Eldon was lying on his back, breathing raspingly through his open mouth. Wor gave a satisfied grunt as he closed the door, and almost at once Eldon had his ear to the panel again.
"Ugh! What an ugly sight! How can you stand having that thing near you?"
"When the stakes are the control of a world one can endure much," the woman said evenly. "And it should not be for long."
Wor chuckled softly.
"There is one more problem," Margaret continued. "Hemustbe present on The Night."
"An idiot Outworldling at an Observance! Impossible! Highness Sin would never permit it," Wor objected.
Margaret's tone sharpened. "Are you or are you not commander of the Forces? And aren't you clever enough to invent a story? Perhaps that a mild administration of life-essence from the Vat could restore enough of his mind to give you information on the Rebel defenses, and thus hasten The Night."
Wor gave a low whistle of appreciation. "It might be arranged."
Eldon had heard enough, but still he had no plan. He must improvise in accordance with developments.
About failure he did not dare to allow himself to speculate. Even El-ve-don could fail—if he were really El-ve-don. And the price of failure he must keep from his mind lest it confuse his thoughts at a moment when he would need all his powers.
But now the deliberate self-torment of his body had served its purpose, and well. To carry it further would be stupid. Carefully he closed his mind against telepathic probing and prepared for sleep.
But his last thoughts were not of his own safety, not of the disheartening shock of discovering that Margaret was not a prisoner but was Of the Faith, not of vengeance on Victor. He thought instead of poor Krasna as he had last seen her, and of their unborn child—the child she had hoped would one day save Varda—doomed to die at birth. He cursed himself for a fool while his mind groped in hopeless longing.
IX
Gradually his body recovered. After the first day or two Margaret tired of the menial tasks of caring for his wants, as he had expected, and turned them over to her mindless slaves. But first she assured him carefully that it was all perfectly right and normal, and Eldon, supposedly under the hypnotic influence of the drug, nodded docile, unquestioning acceptance.
The slaves, two men and two girls, all carried crescent-shaped scars upon their chests, duplicates of the one marring Krasna's loveliness. One of the men had the racial characteristics of the Forest People. The other three were Puvas, evidently of the non-mutant group. Carefully Eldon suppressed the wave of indignant sympathy they aroused in him, and almost as though he too were mindless submitted as they rubbed his abraded skin with healing ointment, fed him, brought him clothes at Margaret's command, dressed him.
But Margaret did not abandon him. Each day she visited him and sat near him, often touching him. Her hypocritical, saccharine attentiveness was so revolting that at times it was all he could do to maintain his dazed, semi-idiotic pose. She spent the hours planting suggestions in his supposedly vacant mind—about trusting her implicitly, about obeying no one else, about preparing to exact a blood revenge from Victor. Sasso and the Faith she did not mention.
At intervals she brought him more pills. After a terrifying experience in which she remained with him so long that a small portion of the drug dissolved in his mouth and left him unable to think for hours afterward he adopted the expedient of tucking a small strip of cloth beneath his tongue to absorb his saliva and keep the pills from melting before he could spit them out. Just one would seal his doom—and that of Varda.
He was glad now of the long hours he had spent reading Krasna's scrolls. One had been a medical treatise and the mental control he had acquired in the Thin World enabled him to dilate the pupil of his single eye, slow his pulse, and counterfeit the drug symptoms exactly.
On the sixth day Wor visited him, alone.
"Stand up!" he commanded. He spoke a queerly accented English, evidently learned from Margaret.
Eldon obeyed.
"Turn around.... Bend over.... Walk to the door.... Now come back."
Eldon obeyed the warrior, although Margaret thought she had conditioned him to take orders from no one but herself. The time for a showdown was not yet ripe.
"Turn on the lights," Wor directed crisply.
Eldon hesitated.
"Turn them on!" Wor bellowed.
Eldon looked blank. It had been a trap, for the lights were mentally controlled. Wor tried another trick.
"Catch!" He pulled a blast rod from its holster and tossed it. Eldon caught it, but clumsily.
"Fire it out the window."
The weapon differed from the blast rods of the Forest People. This one had a button, evidently a trigger, while Krasna's had been entirely controlled by thought.
Eldon was sorely tempted. It would be so easy to whirl and burn Wor down. But he resisted the impulse, knowing he would have only one chance and must make it really count. And perhaps the weapon was not charged. Wor was not altogether a fool. He pretended stupid unfamiliarity with the device.
Wor appeared satisfied that Margaret had not been arranging some scheme of her own.
"We will teach you to use this weapon later," he said. "You will use it to kill Victor."
That gave Eldon his first ray of hope, a foundation upon which to build a plan.
Wor's eyes narrowed with jealousy as he spoke the Earthman's name, and Eldon had overheard enough to understand why. Since Victor Schenley's arrival the officer had found himself with a formidable rival for Sin's confidences and attentions. A smaller, physically weaker rival, but sly, and one who could not be removed by force without incurring Highness Sin's wrath.