An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man") by Ralph Milne Farley (trending books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Ralph Milne Farley
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“Spoken like a king!” I cried. “Know then, King Kew and Princess Lilla, that if ever such a day comes, Myles Cabot can be counted on to fight in the vanguard of the army of liberation.”
“Brave words,” Lilla replied in a subdued tone, “but foolish as well. We are only brinks; Formis is a woofus, and it is futile to struggle against fate.”
She sighed.
Kew sat down heavily on his throne and put his head in his hands. I considered it tactful to withdraw.
Quarters were found for me near by the palace and the Ministry of Work assigned me, for my two parths a day, to the machine shop of the Department of Mechanics at the University. Tickets were issued to me as an advance on my pay, and this enabled me to make many necessary purchases from the government shops, to replace the articles borrowed during my incarceration in the mangool, and to buy presents for Poblath and his fiancee. Among my purchases was the most elaborate and expensive silk toga which I could obtain in the city, so as to enhance my standing and dignity at court functions.
A few days after my release the king honored me with an invitation to dinner with him and the princess alone; and this was followed, within a few days, by a banquet to some of the leading nobles—sarkars and barsarkars—and professors of the University—babbuhs.
On this latter occasion I met the Cupian professor who had stood at the head table at the banquet at Mooni, and who had later identified and befriended me at the Kuana jail. He was Hah Babbuh, Professor of Mechanics, head of the department to which I was attached.
He now sat at my right, and we speedily became great friends, a fact which was shortly to play an important part in my life and in the history of the whole planet.
It was on his recommendation that I had been assigned to his department by the Minister of Work.
Time sped rapidly during the succeeding days. My duties, which consisted in machine design, were interesting, though a bit out of my line. Of the twelve parths which make up a Porovian day, about four were required for sleep, and only two for work, thus leaving six, the equivalent of nearly twelve earth hours, for meals and recreation.
Recreation is the chief vocation of Cupia, and is conducted under the direction of the Minister of Play, who is the most important member of the king’s cabinet.
I was duly assigned to a “hundred” (i.e. athletic club) consisting of one hundred and forty-seven members, under the leadership of an elective pootah, assisted by two bar-pootahs. The hundreds are grouped together by twelves, into thousands, each led by an elective eklat; and so the grouping continues on the analogy of the defunct armies of the Cupian nations which existed prior to the great war of the Formian conquest. As I have already intimated, a similar organization obtains in the imperial air navy of the ant-men.
The games are mostly athletic in their nature, consisting in running, jumping, throwing stones at a mark, strap-dueling with blunt knives dipped in pitch, wrestling et cetera. Sons normally enter their father’s hundred as soon as there is a vacancy, and wives and daughters are organized into auxiliary hundreds. Teams, representing each hundred, compete annually within their thousand, the winning teams compete within their regiment, and so on up. Badges are awarded to the final winners, and a special prize to the hundred whose members capture the most badges. Then there is competitive marching in complicated evolutions in squads of twelve, conducted by each hundred as a whole.
This organized recreation is entirely optional, except as to the marching, which in my hundred occurred only twice a sangth, i.e., every sixty days; so I had plenty of time to spend as I saw fit. I made frequent visits to the Department of Electricity, and became quite intimate with its professor, Oya Buh.
I also became acquainted with Ja Babbuh, Professor of Mathematics.
The observatory fascinated me. Never for a moment is the huge telescope, with its revolving cylinder of mercury, left unguarded. Here sits constantly Buh Tedn, or one of his assistants, while four students scan the sky for an occasional rift in the clouds. This vigil, maintained throughout the ages, and a similar vigil at Mooni, have resulted in a knowledge of space comparable with ours, in spite of the clouds which envelop Poros. The Porovians have long been of the opinion that both Mars and the Earth are inhabited, but that the other planets are not.
Constant demands were made on me to lecture before the students, and to submit to physical examinations; but, as all this came during my work time, it did not interfere with my recreation.
The wing of the palace devoted to Lilla and her attendants, lay near to my quarters and not far from the machine shop, and could be reached by an outside door without passing through the rest of the palace. Thither I came as a frequent visitor, by invitation of the princess. In fact, to be perfectly frank, I spent nearly my entire spare time there.
She had an unquenchable sunny disposition, and a keen sense of humor. She had no particular accomplishments, and yet possessed that trait, often overlooked and yet more valuable than any mere parlor tricks, of tactfulness, sympathy, ability to smooth over the rough places of life, and to enrich with her personality every gathering which she favored with her presence.
I certainly was on the top of the world—or rather of the planet Poros—and to make my contentment complete my old ant friend Doggo was detailed as attache of the Formian ambassador, and brought with him my pet buntlote and Lilla’s pet mathlab, which we had left behind in Wautoosa.
Meanwhile my scientific attainments were attracting considerable attention, until finally Lilla informed me that her father had reached the conclusion that these attainments would furnish an excuse for elevating me to the lesser nobility. The real basis for my elevation was of course my rescue of the princess, but the king had not dared to give this reason, for fear of offending the sensibilities of Queen Formis.
In due course of time my promotion occurred, and I became a barsarkar, entitled to wear a red circle over where my heart ought to be, i.e., on the right side of my toga.
Lilla gave a special dinner to celebrate this, and invited Bthuh and Poblath. In fact, she was always getting up special occasions on one pretext or another, for she was very fond of devising new ways of cooking alta and mathlab and the red lobsterlike aphid-parasite, and of trying these dishes on her friends.
We played at a four-handed game resembling checkers, and a pleasant time was had by all. After the game we sat on a little veranda in the warm soft evening air, two pairs of lovers blissfully happy.
Doggo had not been invited. He would not have fitted in. Being a sexless female, what could he know of love? And then, too, I had begun to learn that, except in educational circles, where “science knows no national boundaries,” there was very little fraternizing between the Cupians and their conquerors. The social barrier between Doggo and me, which resembled the pale between our two countries, was the only drawback to an otherwise idyllic life.
But as Poblath would say: “The cloudiest day may have its sunshine,” meaning just the opposite to our “every cloud has its silver lining.” For one day I received a letter from King Kew announcing, as a special mark of his favor, my betrothal to—the Duchess Bthuh!
Horrified, I rushed to the apartments of my Princess, and obtained entrance. She, too, had heard the news, and was in tears.
“My rank or not, Bthuh or no Bthuh, you are mine, mine!” she sobbed as she clung to me, while I covered her with kisses. “If it were not for Yuri and your criminal record, we could flee into Formia; but here in Cupia my father is supreme. If you were still a commoner, you could marry or not as you chose, within your own class; but as a barsarkar you must marry as the king directs.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do about it?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” she replied. “A princess cannot marry lower than a full sarkar, which is a rank that you can attain only by performing some distinguished service for your country. Our only hope lies in accepting fate for the present, and in striving to get you a sarkarship before the wedding. And think of poor Bthuh! This will be as much of a blow to her and to Poblath as it is to us.”
But, to our surprise and consternation, Bthuh took the news very philosophically.
“The king’s will be done,” she said with a pretty little pout and shrug. “Myles Cabot is not a bad match after all; and, if rank prevents him from having the princess and prevents me from having the mango, why not solace ourselves with each other?”
And she glanced shyly up at me.
But somehow the idea did not appeal to me at all.
I must have looked at Bthuh with much the same expression of horror as the princess had worn the day of our first meeting at Wautoosa when I was still an unkempt earth man, for Bthuh laughed and said: “Come, come, Myles, do not look thus. Am I so horrible that you cannot learn to love me, even to please our gracious king?”
“Bthuh! Stop that foolishness at once!” ordered Lilla. “You make me sick.”
But Bthuh insolently replied: “Cannot I flirt with my own betrothed, O princess?” She left the room, smiling.
“She is merely trying to hide a broken heart,” I apologized.
Whereat Lilla wheeled on me furiously and said: “Don’t you dare stand up for that creature!”
So I desisted.
I certainly was in a fix! Engaged to girl whom I didn’t love, but who had apparently determined to put up with me. Estranged from the girl whom I did love. Forced to play false with the first man who had befriended me in Cupia. And no way out in sight. What was I to do?
I thought of renouncing my rank. But this, I found, was impossible; and, besides, such a step would put the princess even further out of my reach.
Bthuh bore up nobly; much too nobly, in fact.
Poblath sent me a brief note reading: “I expected no gratitude, but I did expect a square deal,” and then refused to receive me when I hastened to the mang-ool to explain.
I took Hah Babbuh into my confidence, but he had no suggestion to offer, for I had as yet done nothing to deserve a sarkarship.
As time passed I saw less and less of Lilla and more and more of Bthuh, but I managed to keep from being left alone with the latter.
The date of our wedding was set, and drew nearer and nearer. We were to be married in state by the king himself. I could not help admitting that my bride was an exquisite creature. But I did not, could not, love her; though, if I had never met the Princess Lilla, I could doubtless have lived very happily with Bthuh. But how can the eagle’s lover mate with a parakeet?
At last the eve of my wedding arrived. After supper I dragged my footsteps to the quarters of the princess, to spend with her the last few parths which I should ever be free to spend, for on the morrow I was to become a married man. Bthuh, my affianced bride, met me, and the princess was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh Cabot, Cabot,” entreated Bthuh as she seized my hands and gazed into my eyes. “Cannot you bow to the inevitable? Is life with me such a horrible fate? I can be very sweet if you will but let me try. You have never once kissed me yet. Is that the way to treat your betrothed? Kiss me, Cabot, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!”
And, still holding me with her amber eyes, she slid her hands up my arms and drew her fragrant presence close to me.
But I broke away abruptly from her spell and demanded: “Where is my princess? Surely you will not rob me of my last few hours of freedom.”
Bthuh shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Your princess, it is always your princess! Well, what should I care? For tomorrow you are mine, wholly mine, and even a princess will not pirate the husband of a sarkari. Find her yourself and gather flowers while it yet is day.” And with another shrug she left the salon.
“Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I may be myself with yesterday’s seven thousand years,” I quoted softly as I pulled the signal cord for the maid.
The maid informed me that her
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