The Treasure of Atlantis - J. Allan Dunn (finding audrey .TXT) 📗
- Author: J. Allan Dunn
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Rana plied Morse with a thousand questions, and her expressive eyes and red, pouting lips were a magnet to him. “Were there many men like him in his own
land? Yes. Ah, he was surely too modest. In Atlantis such a man might aspire to anything; even a throne!”
Morse, in almost a hypnotic trance, tried to affect an ignorance of her plain speaking. She halted and appraised him, a trace of puzzlement on her brow. And all at once the vivacity flamed again. She covered him with a flattery that made no attempt to hide her delight in his person. She praised his Greek and promised to be his personal tutor of Atlantean idioms. She outlined a tour with a score of things to see with her as guide. And she made it clear that any attempt to include Laidlaw would prove distasteful to her.
“Let him prate to the priests,” she said. “He is old and I do not like his legs.” Evidently her keen eyes had judged their hidden proportions, despite the long robes. “His face is hairy, and he is a musty creature. Knowledge is for age, when the joys of manhood are mere fruit husks. Let us not waste our time upon rinds when the luscious pulp is before us.”
At last Laidlaw was finished, but there was further talk with the priests. There were games in the afternoon, and what better time was there that Ru might present the strangers to the people?
“He can sit in the priests’ benches,” said Rana, indicating Laidlaw. “You shall sit with me.”
Somehow, the imperiousness, the totality of her manner began to penetrate his consciousness, and beyond the outwardly beautiful shell he began to see her more clearly. Morse began to wonder what her purpose was in showering him with attention.
He was limp and perspiring when he left her spell; aware that he had been fighting with himself for nothing more than his own right to think; aware of her beauty and her magnetism; and suddenly and vividly aware of how Kiron had been tied and left to die at her command. He shuddered.
Laidlaw was full of talk and excitement. He was in his element. He had talked past a meal and had not even missed it. Now that the great archeologist had a few minutes apart from this hidden people, he could not silence his hoarse voice. And while he had been addressing
[paragraph continues] Morse all along, he suddenly realized that his fellow American was there.
“The queen is a beautiful woman,” he began, a question in his voice.
“She is that,” replied Morse unfeelingly.
“Remember Kiron,” admonished Laidlaw, for once laconic.
Morse nodded slowly, and was silent for a time.
“There is something about her,” he said at last, searching carefully for words. “When she was near me it was almost as if that part of me that knew what she had done was blocked out—there was something powerful about her… She is powerful!”
“Ru is powerful, too,” said Laidlaw. “He hates us, and someday he means to fill a throne. If that day comes … ” Laidlaw stopped and drew a finger across his throat suggestively. Then he continued:
“The old struggle between church and state is here. And the Atlantean priesthood is losing its grip. The people are overcivilized, too sophisticated. They demand to be amused, and the theologians are unable to satisfy them. Ru recognizes this and realizes that his only way of retaining power is to seize the throne. Oh, I found out a few things,” said Laidlaw. “Didn’t talk all of the time!
“Kiron is a cultured aristocrat, the kind out of style in most of the world. He was born to privileges that he will not give up lightly. Rana is a woman. One thing only dominates her—sex. It is her weapon, her armor, her delight; the one thing that Ru plays upon. He has her convinced that Kiron’s indifference is scorn, and she hates him.
“Ru has no love for either of us, but he fears you because you could become a permanent fixture—if Rana can dominate you.”
Morse looked at him quizzically. “You seem to have a keen insight into the ways of women.”
“I? Risk myself in that kind of labyrinth?” Laidlaw laughed, but there was a touch of bitterness in his voice. Morse wondered whether there was a claw mark somewhere that had not entirely healed.
“Rana,” summed up the scientist, “has been spoiled by adulation. As princess and queen, she has been
accustomed to cry for the moon and keep on crying until she got it. Now that she’s in power, she is incorrigible.”
“Don’t you believe in suffrage, Laidlaw?”
“Suffrage and sex—the fair sex don’t make a team. Over there”—he pointed to the island they had seen from the litter where the columned temple rose from its setting of tropical verdure—“is the home of Atlantean suffrage minus sex. It is the island of Sele, inhabited by a cult of women who have deliberately subordinated sex to the pursuit of knowledge and power. Their leader is none other than Rana’s sister, Leola, who is said to be more beautiful than Rana herself. But Rana is not jealous. Leola abjures mankind. She is the high priestess of Pasiphae, the moon goddess, sharer of the double ax.”
Morse looked at the island with curiosity. An island of beautiful virgins who had deliberately chosen to challenge men’s prerogatives was intriguing to him.
“Only the priesthood is allowed to land there,” said Laidlaw, interpreting his friend’s glance. “Ru and his followers are also celibates. I don’t imagine that Leola and her followers are overpopular. The population of Atlantis is on the wane.”
“Do you think they have any chance of achieving their ambitions?” asked Morse.
“To become the equal of man? I doubt it. Mentally and physically they are handicapped by the sex instinct. It would take many generations to overcome that, and by their own laws future generations are impossible. They can only add to their numbers by fresh recruits who are largely influenced by the chance of becoming more or less conspicuous. The priestesses of Pasiphae are very important at festival functions.”
“If you had been Adam, the world would never have been populated,” laughed Morse. “Eve would have had a lonely time of it.”
“It is because there is some of the old Adam in me that I am on my guard,” replied Laidlaw to his friend’s astonishment. “I am not a bachelor from choice, Morse. I am as human as you are.”
“I’m afraid that you met the wrong woman once,” thought Morse, but he did not speak his thoughts. Instead, he asked: “Did you notice that the lake water is noticeably warm?”
“The priests mentioned it,” Laidlaw replied. “They say it is a recurrent phenomena that precedes activity in the volcano, and they are rather glad of it. I imagine it gives them an opportunity to renew their grip on the credulity of the people by ceremonials. They can magnify their own importance and supposedly ward off the calamity by appeasing the wrath of the gods.”
The games were held in an amphitheater hewn from living rock on a volcanic islet not far from the mainland. Laidlaw was quickly ushered off into a group of priests, and Morse found that he was to share a seat in the royal lodge between the two monarchs.
Rana claimed his attentions immediately.
Morse looked to Kiron who merely shrugged and smiled. But when the opportunity afforded itself, he whispered: “Beware of the Flower of Everlasting Sleep. Do not inhale the fragrance. It intoxicates, but it is fatal.”
The Atlantean games opened with a procession of maidens, singing and bearing great armfuls of flowers with which they strewed the arena. Trumpeters with long-necked instruments circled the arena, accompanied by a band of priests. They halted at the royal lodge and hailed its occupants by name. Morse was surprised to hear himself included.
A second halt was made on the opposite side of the arena before a purple canopy. Morse was able to make out the figure of Ru—and beside him Laidlaw—as the hailing ceremony was repeated.
A strange perfume arose from the crushed petals that filled the arena. The air was clear, and the rays of the sun were warm and dazzling for the mid-afternoon spectacle. Morse fought to stay clear of Rana’s intense being and a repetition of their first meeting. He concentrated on the arena, asked questions profusely, and finally with a slight smile Kiron came to his aid—to the obvious displeasure of his co-ruler.
The monarch spoke of many things: of traditions and ancient festivals, of horses—unknown in New
[paragraph continues] Atlantis and known only through the lore of the past—of cattle. Kiron revealed that they possessed cattle, but their herd had shrunk and bulls were a scarcity. They were used only upon very special occasions—“of which this is one,” he added diplomatically.
A quartet of footraces began the arena activities, and when they had been completed wreaths of gilded leaves were bestowed upon the victors by the monarchs. Immediately following, a bull made its appearance. It was a magnificent creature, white, spotted with black, with gilded horns and hoofs, and a garland of roses about its neck. The crowd acclaimed it, calling it by name as if it were some stage favorite.
To those who were thirsty for blood-letting, this was a disappointment. Bulls were too scarce to be killed and served merely as a motive for an exhibition of marvelous agility. Youths and maidens armed with long spears and shorter darts attacked the brute, but the points of their weapons were short, and hardly drew blood. The bull was driven into a frenzy and finally into a sullen fit. A girl vaulted lightly to its neck, seized its horns, and rode off in triumph as her companions prodded the creature to an exit.
The gladiatorial games that followed provided the cue for general excitement. The weapons were real and the men in earnest. They fought in bands at first, then in couples: a javelin thrower, clad only in a linen breechcloth, protected by a partner with broad-bladed sword and a shield almost as long as himself. So dexterous were they that few serious wounds were dealt in the minutes allowed to each bout by the arena master. Still, there was blood enough to bring fierce shouts from their adherents on the benches.
Morse turned away from the action. He saw the beautiful mouth of Rana take on lines, saw her eyes glaze with crimson like some fierce beast. There was no hypnosis here. Morse knew Rana now; knew she could never hold him in trance again. He turned to Kiron who watched somewhat wearily, while making expert comments on the moves of the battlers.
The finest gladiators had been reserved for single combat, and the crowd shouted for its favorites. Occasionally, a winner, still breathing heavily, would
advance to a spot before a group of nobles and offer a challenge to the amateurs. There would be a pause, and finally a young aristocrat would rise, cast away his outer garments amidst the cheers of the spectators, and descend to the arena. At times, the professionals were hard pressed, but for the most part they treated their opponents with a good-humored tolerance born of conscious superiority.
Last of all came the boxers, deep-chested giants of heavier mold—men who flailed at each other within the limits of a square indicated by upright posts. Their hands were protected with leather bands bound about the knuckles, fastened at the wrists, and studded with bronze. Two slaves fought ferociously for a prize of freedom, one felling the other with a savage blow upon the temple, and watching with a grin as the loser was dragged away, dying and insensible.
The Atlanteans fought stripped save for
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