3 - Barbarians of Mars (15 page)

 
          
 
"Do not go to Varnal!" I cried, half
pleadingly. "Stay where you are! We will find a way of curing you. Do not
fear!"

 
          
 
"Cure us!" shouted the man.
"Why should you wish to? We are bringing the joys of the Green Death to
all menji!"

 
          
 
"But the Green Death means horror and
agony!" I cried. "How can you believe that it is good?"

 
          
 
"Because it is Death!" replied the
man.

 
          
 
"But surely you cannot seek death. You
cannot want to die - it is against all that is human!"

 
          
 
"Death brings the cessation of
function," droned the plague victim. "Cessation of function is good.
The evil man is the functioning man."

 
          
 
I shut the cabin door against him. I leaned
back against the walls of the cabin, sweating.

 
          
 
"They must be stopped!" growled Hool
Haji, who had overheard most of the conversation.

 
          
 
"How?"
I
half moaned.

 
          
 
"If it comes to that, we must destroy
them," he said bleakly.

 
          
 
"No!" I cried.

 
          
 
But I knew I hardly believed what I said. I
was becoming a victim of fear.

 
          
 
I must fight that fear, I knew. But what was I
to do?

THE THREAT TO VARNAL

 
          
 
We sped as rapidly as we could towards Varaal
and at last her slender towers came in sight.

 
          
 
As soon as we had landed I made for the palace
and there, waiting on the steps to greet me, was my Shizala, lovely Bradhinaka
of the Kanala, loveliest flower of the House of Varnal.

 
          
 
I sprang to embrace her, careless of
who
saw us.

 
          
 
She returned my embrace and looked into my
face with shining eyes.

 
          
 
"Oh, Michael Kane, you are back at last!
I had feared you dead, my Bradhinak!"

 
          
 
"I cannot die while you live," I
said. "That would be foolish of me."

 
          
 
She smiled at me then.

 
          
 
"Have you heard my news?" she said.

 
          
 
I pretended I had not.

 
          
 
I wished to hear it from
her
own
lips.

 
          
 
"Then come to our apartments," she
told me. "And I will tell you there."

 
          
 
In our apartments she told me simply that we
were to have a child. It was enough to bring a surge of joy to me just as
strong as when I first heard the news, and I lifted her high in my arms with
enthusiasm, putting her down again so rapidly when I remembered her condition
that she laughed at me.

 
          
 
"We of the Kanala are not delicate."
She smiled. "My old mother was out riding her dahara when I first showed
signs of my arrival into the world."

 
          
 
I grinned back. "Nonetheless," I
said, "I will have to make sure you have plenty of protection from now
on."

 
          
 
"Treat me like a baby and I'll be off to
marry an Argzoon," she threatened jokingly.

 
          
 
My elation began to be clouded again as I
thought of the carriers of the Green Death moving so steadily towards Varnal.

 
          
 
She seemed to notice that something was wrong
and asked me what it was.

 
          
 
I told her, grimly, simply, trying not to
dramatize the situation, though heaven knew it was bad enough.

 
          
 
She nodded thoughtfully when I had finished.

 
          
 
"But what can we do about it?" she
said. "We cannot kill them. They are not sane or well - they hardly know
they threaten us."

 
          
 
"That is the trouble," I said.
"How do we stop them coming to Varnal?"

 
          
 
"There might be one way," she
suggested.

 
          
 
"What is that?"

 
          
 
"We could set the Crimson Plain afire -
that would deter them, surely?"

 
          
 
"It would be a crime to destroy the
Crimson Plain. And, besides, there are towns and villages on it that would
suffer."

 
          
 
"You are right," she agreed.

 
          
 
"Moreover," I said, "they have
probably already reached the Crimson Plain by now. It will not be long before
they arrive at their destination."

 
          
 
"You mean Varnal?"

 
          
 
"Varnal is the city of which they
spoke."

 
          
 
Shizala sighed.

 
          
 
I sat down on a chair and leaned on the table
next to it, loosening the war-harness I had worn for so long. Something
clattered in my pouch and I drew out what had made the noise.

 
          
 
It was the small tube, the complete part of
one of the destroyed machines, I'd guessed,
that
I had
picked up in ruined Bagarad.

 
          
 
I placed it on the table, echoing Shizala's
sigh.

 
          
 
"In a few days the Green Death will come
to Varnal," she mused, "unless something can be done. Something
..."

 
          
 
"I have sought a means of countering the
effects of the plague," I said. "I have sought it for a very long
time - across two continents. I do not think it exists."

 
          
 
“There is still hope,” she said, trying to
keep my spirits up.

 
          
 
I rose and hugged her close. "Thank
you," I said. "Yes -there is still a little hope."

 
          
 
The next momiog I was in the central hall
conferring with my father by marriage, the Bradhi Camak; his son, Bradhinak
Damad; my wife, the Bradhinaka Shizala; and my friend the Bradhi Hool Haji. I,
the Bradhinak Michael Kane, completed this royal gathering.

 
          
 
Our royal minds seemed incapable of
constructive thought as we debated the problem of the Green Death.

 
          
 
I clung to my principles, though it was
difficult when my wife and unborn child were being threatened.

 
          
 
"We cannot kill them," I repeated.
"It is not their fault. If we kill them we kill something in
ourselves."

 
          
 
"I understand you, Michael Kane,"
said old Camak, nodding his massive head in agreement. "But what else can
we do if Vamal is to be made safe from the Green Death?"

 
          
 
"I think we shall have to come to the
decision in the end, Michael Kane," said Hool Haji seriously. "I can
see no alternative."

 
          
 
"There has to be an alternative."

 
          
 
'There are five minds trying to think of
one," Damad pointed out. "Five good minds, too - and not one of them
has
come up with a constructive idea. We could try capturing
them - something like that."

 
          
 
"But that would mean coming in physical
contact with them and risking the plague ourselves," said Hool Haji.
"Thus we should defeat our object."

 
          
 
"We could use some kind of big net to
trap them," said Shizala.
'Though I suppose that is an
impractical idea."

 
          
 
"Indeed, it probably is." Camak
frowned. "But it is an idea, my dear."

 
          
 
They were all looking at me. I shrugged.
"My mind is as empty as anyone's could be," I said.

 
          
 
Damad sighed.

 
          
 
'There is only one thing to do, you know,
Michael Kane.”

 
          
 
"What is that? Not to kill them -1 must
resist that solution.”

 
          
 
"We must go out in our airship and try to
persuade them to turn back again," he said.

 
          
 
I agreed. It was about the only sensible thing
we could do now.

 
          
 
So, soon afterwards, we had taken the air
again - Hool Haji, Damad and
myself
.

 
          
 
It was not long before we had sighted the
rabble, pouring raggedly across the Crimson Plain. It seemed, too, that they
had taken on some extra numbers, perhaps folk from some of the villages they
had passed through.

 
          
 
Green-tainted faces looked up as we began to
drop towards them. They stopped moving and waited.

 
          
 
I used the megaphone to address them again.

 
          
 
"People of the Green Death," I
shouted. "Why do you not stay where you are? Have you thought that you
might be wrong?"

 
          
 
"You are the one who spoke to us
yesterday,"
came
a voice. "You must speak
with the mechanic now. It is he who leads us to the ultimate
non-functioning!"

 
          
 
The crowd backed away from a man with a
green-ravaged face and large, insane eyes. He seemed to resemble in some ways
the physician we had originally met in Cend-Amrid.

 
          
 
"Are you the leader?" I asked.

 
          
 
"I am the
mind,
they are the hands, the motor - all the parts of the moving machine."

 
          
 
"Why do you lead them?"

 
          
 
"Because it is my place
to lead."

 
          
 
"Then why do you lead them to other
settlements, towns and cities when you know that you will spread the plague
wherever you go?"

 
          
 
"It is the benefits I bring them - the
benefits of death, the release from life, the ultimate non-functioning."

 
          
 
"Have you no thought for those you
infect?”

 
          
 
"We bring them peace," he rephed.

 
          
 
"Please do not go to Vamal," I
urged. 'They do not want your peace - they only want their own."

 
          
 
"Our peace is the one peace - the ultimate
non-functioning.”

 
          
 
It was obviously still impossible to break
through the man's insanity. It would take a subtler psychologist than
myself
even to begin.

 
          
 
"Do you realize that there are those in
Vamal who speak of destroying you because of the threat you offer?" I
asked him. "Destroy us and we shall not function. That is good."
There was no way round it. The man was totally mad. With heavy hearts we
returned to Vamal.

           
 
In the City of the Green Mists - soon to be
renamed City of the Green Death, I reflected
,
if the
rabble continued its march - we sat beside the green lake and again tried to
resolve our problem.

 
          
 
Damad was frowning as if searching mentally
for a forgotten piece of information.

 
          
 
Suddenly he looked up. "I have heard of
one man who might have the skill to devise a cure for the Green Death," he
said. "Though I believe the man is a legend - he might not even
exist."

 
          
 
"Who is he?" I asked.