The Green Odyssey by Philip José Farmer (love books to read TXT) 📗

meant that when the rod was dropped to make contact between the wall and victim, the discharge only burned the sacrifice's head. Evidence of that was the fact that only skulls were stacked around the altar. The charred head was severed and the body carted outside to one destination or another.

What puzzled Green was how the audience managed to escape the fury of the blast and of the dust, even if they stood at the farthest end of the big room. Determined to find out what happened at those times, he returned to the doorway. Just around its corner, in the second room, he discovered what he'd not noticed before, probably because it was placed so upright and so firmly against one side of the wall. And because its back, which was turned away from the wall, was also made of gray metal. When he switched it around so he could see its other side, he was staring into a mirror about six feet high and four feet wide.

Now he could visualize the ceremony. The victim was strapped into the chair and a rope was tied around the rod. Everybody but the priestess, or whoever conducted the rites, retreated from the altar room. The conductor himself, or herself, then stood in the doorway and released the cord. Before the rod could make contact, the conductor had stepped around the corner. And there the audience saw in the mirror, placed in the doorway so it reflected the interior of the altar room, the ravening discharge of a tremendous electrostatic blast. And immediately afterward, no doubt, they saw nothing because of the dust that would fill the two rooms.

Strange and strong magic to the savages. What myths they must have built about this room, what tales of horrible and powerful gods or demons imprisoned in that wall of dirt! Surely their old women must whisper to the wide-eyed children stories of how the Great Cat-Spirit had been caught by their legendary strong man and savior, some analog to Hercules or Gilgamesh or Thor, and how the Cat-Spirit was the tribe's to keep prisoner with their magic and to appease from time to time with human kills from other tribes lest it become so angry it burst through the wall of earth and devour everybody upon the floating island!

Green knew that it was hopeless to try to dig through that wall, even if it would be safe for days. It might only be several feet thick, or it might be twenty or more.

But however thick it was, he bet that anybody who had the tools, time and strength to excavate would find, embedded somewhere in that mass, several large dust-collectors. He didn't know what shape they'd take, because that would depend on the culture that had built them, and their tastes in decorations would differ from Green's multimillennia-later society. But if they had architectural ideas similar to present-day Terrans they would have constructed the collectors in the shape of busts or of animals' heads or even of bookcases with false backs of books filling them, books that would in reality have been both chargers and filters. The busts or books would have been pierced with many tiny holes, and through these holes the charged particles of dust would have drifted. Once inside the collectors, they would have been burned.

Looking at the blank dirt before him, Green could see what had happened through the ages. Some part of the burning mechanism had gone wrong—as was the custom of mechanisms everywhere. But the charging effect had continued. And though the dust had piled up around the collectors, the extraordinarily powerful fields had continued to work even through the thick blanket. In the beginning, of course, their field could not have caused any human being harm. But these batteries must have been built to adjust to whatever demand was made of them, though their builders, of course, could have had no idea of how great that demand would some day be. Nevertheless it had come, and the batteries had been equal to it. By the time the savages had found this room they were blocked off by this imposing wall.

Through the death of their fellows they had discovered that touching the wall caused a terrible discharge of electrostatic electricity. The rest of the apparatus for execution and the ritual that went with it was foregone and logical, religiously speaking.

Green swore with frustration. How he would love to get through that dirt before another charge built up! On the other side must be another doorway, and it must lead to the fuel and control rooms for this whole island. If he could get inside and there figure out the controls, he'd turn this island upside down and shake off the man-eating monsters. There'd be no holding him then!

He remembered the story of Samdroo, the Tailor Who Turned Sailor. The legend went that Samdroo, his 'roller wrecked upon just such a roaming island as this one, had wandered into just such a cave and through rooms like these. But he'd found no barrier of electrically charged dirt and had walked into a room which contained many strange things. One of them was a great eye that allowed Samdroo to see in it what was happening outside the cave. Another was a board which contained many round faces over which raced little squiggles and lines. Of course, the story had its own explanations for what these things were, but Green could hardly fail to recognize TV, oscilloscopes and other instruments.

Unfortunately his knowledge was going to do him no good. He wasn't going to get through the dirt. Nor was he to be allowed time for excavation and exploration. Every minute on this island meant that he was traveling back to Quotz and its revengeful Duchess and getting farther from Estorya, where the two spacemen and their ship were. He had to find a way of getting off this place and onto some means of transportation.

He left the death chamber and went into the next room. After slumping down against the wall, between Amra with Paxi in her arms, and Inzax with Grizquetr in hers, he chewed some dried meat. Lady Luck meowed for some and he gladly gave her all she wanted. When he'd swallowed all he could hold without bursting and had washed that down with great drafts of the warm and sweet beer taken from the priestess's hut, he closed his eyes. Now, it was up to his Vigilante to take the food and rebuild his wasted tissue, throw off the effects of autointoxication, tone his tired muscles, relax his too-taut nerves, readjust his hormonal balance....

21

Green dreamed that his mouth and nose were clogged with dirt and that he was suffocating. He woke to find that, while there was no earth upon him, he was having a difficult time getting his breath. Remedying that by removing the cat from his face, he rose.

"What do you want?" he asked her. She was mewing and striking gently at him.

She padded toward the doorway to the outside, so he imagined that she wished him to follow her. Grasping his cutlass, he walked after her and out to the tunnel that led to the cave mouth. Not until then did he hear the booming of cannon, far away.

The cat meowed plaintively. Evidently, she'd heard cannonfire before and had not liked the results.

Once out of the cave he stopped to look up at the sun. It was on its downward path from the zenith. About four o'clock in the afternoon. He'd slept about ten hours.

Unable to see much from where he stood, he climbed up the rocks outside the cave and soon stood upon the very top of the hill, a little tableland about ten feet square. From there he commanded as good a view of the island as anyone could get.

Tacking around the periphery of the island were three long, low, black-hulled 'rollers with over-large wheels and scarlet sails. Occasionally a lance of red spurted from one of the vessel's ports, a boom reached Green's ears a few seconds later and he would see the iron ball climb up and up, then fall toward the village. A tree around the clearing would lose a limb, or a spurt of dust would show where a ball landed in the clearing itself. Two of the long houses had big holes in their roofs. The village itself was deserted, as no one with good sense would have remained there. None of the cannibals were visible, but that wasn't surprising, considering how thick the woods were.

Green hoped the Vings would land soon and clean out the savages. That would leave him and his party a clear field, unless the pirates investigated the cave in the same day. If they didn't, then the refugees could leave the island and take to the plains under cover of the night.

Anxiously, Green traced the path that led from the hilltop where he stood and wound down to the village. It was a narrow trail and he often lost sight of it. But always there was a difference in the shading of the tree tops along the trail and the rest of the forest. With his eye he could follow the shading to the village and beyond, toward the back or western part of the island.

It was here that he came across the first sign of hope he had had since the wreck of the Bird of Fortune. It was a small break in the vegetation, which ran uninterrupted to the very edge of the island, a shelf of seemingly smooth earth, almost hidden from him by the slope of the terrain. Indeed, he could barely make it out and might have missed it altogether, but he saw the masts of three small 'rollers projecting from above the slope and followed them down toward the hulls. All three were yachts, obviously not of islander make. Beyond the stolen craft were the uprights of davits. These were behind a wall of branches, camouflage for anybody outside the island but visible to those on the inside.

It was all Green could do to keep from whooping with joy. Now he and his party wouldn't have to cast themselves on foot on the dangerous plains. They could sail in comparative safety. Now, while the cannibals were cowering helplessly under the bombardment Green could lead his people through the woods to the yachts. When dusk came and the island began moving again they could lower a yacht from the davits and set sail.

He went back to the cave entrance, where he found everybody awake, waiting for him.

He told them what he'd seen and added, "If the Vings come aboard we'll take advantage of the confusion and escape."

Miran looked at the sun and shook his head. "The Vings won't attack now. It's too close to dusk. They'll want a full day for fighting. They'll follow the island tonight. When dawn comes and the island stops they'll board."

"I bow to your superior experience," Green said. "Only I'd like to ask you one thing. Why don't the Vings launch their small craft at night and land boarding parties from them?"

Miran looked surprised. "No one does that! It's unthinkable! Don't you know that at night the plains abound in spirits and demons? The Vings wouldn't think of taking a chance on what the magic of the savages might unloose against them in the darkness."

"I knew of the general attitude, but it had slipped my mind," admitted Green. "But if this is so, why did you all wander about this place the night the Bird was wrecked?"

"That was a situation where we preferred the somewhat uncertain possibility of stumbling across demons to the certainty of being killed by the cannibals," said Miran.

"To be honest," said Amra, "I was too scared to think of ghosts. If I had I might have stayed where I was.... No, I wouldn't either. I've never seen a ghost, but I had seen those savages."

"Well," said Green, "all of you might as well make up your mind that, come ghosts, demons, or men, we're walking through the dark tonight. All those too scared will have to stay behind."

He began issuing orders, and in a short time he had the sleepy-eyed, bedraggled and dirty-looking party ready. After that, he turned to watch the bombardment.

By then it had largely ceased. Only occasionally did one of the vessels loose a single cannon shot. The rest of the time they spent in tacking back and forth and in running up close to the very edge of the island.

"I think they are trying the temper of the island's inhabitants," Green said. "They don't know whether the woods conceal a hundred savages or a thousand, or whether they're armed with cannons and muskets or just with spears. They want to draw fire, so they can get an estimate of what they're facing."

He turned to Miran. "Which reminds me, why