A World Called Crimson by Stephen Marlowe (most popular novels .txt) 📗

couldn't unmake them.

The tiger roared again. But they were downwind from it and it went elsewhere in search of prey. Huddled together near the embers of the Indian campfire, the two children slept fitfully through the cold night.

Then the three suns finally came up on three different sides of the horizon. Crimson was deadly, but beautiful....

Although credit for the discovery of Aladdin's Planet goes to the explorer Richard Purcell of Earth, two Earth children actually were shipwrecked there twenty years before Purcell's expedition. But instead of paving the way for Purcell, they actually made the exploration more difficult for him. In fact, it was positively fraught with peril. But since Aladdin's Planet had become the galaxy's arsenal of plenty, it was well worth Purcell's effort. As any schoolboy knows in this utopia of 24th century plenty, Aladdin's Planet, almost exactly at the heart of the galaxy, where matter is spontaneously created to sweep out in long cosmic trails across the galaxy, is the home not merely of spontaneous creation of matter, but spontaneous formed creation, with any human psyche capable of doing the handwork of God. A planet of great import ...

—from The ANNALS OF SPACE, Vol. 2

She stood poised for a glorious moment on the very edge of the rock, the bronze and pink of her glistening in the sun, the spray still clinging to her from her last dive. Then, grace in every line of her lithe body, she sprang from the rock in a perfectly executed swan dive.

Charlie helped her out, smiling. "That was pretty," he said.

"Well, you taught me how." Her figure was not yet that of a woman, but far more than that of a girl. She was very beautiful and Charlie knew this although he had no standards to judge by, except for the Indian women they occasionally saw or Blackbeard's slave girls when the pirate ship came in to trade.

Unselfconsciously, Robin climbed into her gold-mesh shorts. Charlie helped her fasten the gold-mesh halter. Long, long ago—it seemed an unreal dream, almost—he had been a very small boy and his mother had taken him to a show in which everyone danced and sang and wore gold-mesh clothing. He had never forgotten it, and now all their clothing was gold-mesh.

Robin spun around and looked at him. Her tawny blonde hair fell almost to her waist, and he helped her comb it with a jewel-encrusted comb he had wished into being a few days before.

"I so like Crimson!" she cried impulsively.

Charlie smiled. "Why, that's a funny thing to say. Is there any other kind of a place?"

"You mean, but Crimson?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. It is funny. Sometimes I think—"

Charlie smiled at her, a little condescendingly. "Oh, it's the book again, is it?" he asked.

"All right. It's the book. Stop making fun of me."

Many years ago, when they'd been small children, they had returned to the ruined spaceship which had brought them to Crimson. It had been empty except for the book, as if the book had been placed there for them by whatever power had put them in the spaceship. Naturally, they had not been able to read, but they kept the book anyway. Then one day, years later, Robin had wished to be able to read and the next time she lifted the book and opened it, the magic of the words was miraculously revealed to her. The book was called A ONE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY and it told about just everything—except Crimson. There was no mention of Crimson at all. Robin read the book over and over again until she almost knew it by heart. Even Charlie had listened to it twice all the way through when she read it, but he had never wished for the ability to read himself.

Now Charlie asked: "Do you really believe the book? This is Crimson. This is real."

"I don't know. Sometimes I think this isn't as real as everything in the book. And sometimes I just don't know."

They walked in silence to their elevator and took it to the top of the highest cliff. They had wished for a house there, like one Robin had seen in the book. They had wished for many things to make their lives interesting, or pleasant. They had peopled Crimson with the fruit of their wishes, using the ONE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY as a guide.

They lived a mile from the Indian Camp. They traded with the Indians who, strangely, did not know how to wish for things. Neither did the pirates, or anyone. Just Robin and Charlie. The pirates lived across the sea on an island. To the south along the shore were Phoenicians, Greeks, Mayas, Royal Navymen, Submariners, mermaids and Cyclopes. To the north along the shore were Polynesians, Maoris, Panamanians and Dutchmen. Inland were Cannibals, Lotus Eaters, a few settlements of cowboys to make life interesting for the Indians, farmers, Russians, Congressmen and Ministers. All had been created by Robin and Charlie, who visited them sometimes. They never believed for a minute that Robin and Charlie had really created them, although all were amazed by Robin and Charlie's ability to make things appear out of thin air.

Just as they reached their house, an Indian brave came running down the trail toward them.

"Skyship come!" he cried, gesturing wildly and excitedly.

"Skyship?" repeated Charlie, looking at Robin. "Have you created any spaceships?"

"No. You know it's a bargain between us. We don't create anything we don't think we understand."

The Indian was sweating. His name was Tashtu, which meant Wild Eagle, and he was their go-between with the tribe. "Skyship sweep across heavens," he said. "Not land. Go up in Wild Country."

Charlie's interest quickened. Wild Country. They had created it on impulse, about twenty miles from the Indian Camp, midway between the settlements of Congressmen inland and Cyclopes on the shore. It was a place of tortuous gorges and rocks and mountains, utterly lifeless. No one ever went there. Someday, he had always told Robin, they would explore Wild Country. If there really was a spaceship, and if it had gone there ...

"No," Robin said. "I know what you're thinking. But I'm perfectly happy here."

"You just now said you sometimes thought Crimson wasn't real and there were other, real worlds which—"

"That's different. I can dream, can't I?"

"But don't you see, if a spaceship's really come, maybe they can tell us."

She gripped his arm. "Charlie. Oh, Charlie, I don't know. I'm afraid. We've been happy here, haven't we? We really wouldn't want it to change ..."

"I'm going to Wild Country," Charlie said stubbornly.

Tashtu nodded his head. "It is good that you do. For the braves—"

"Don't tell me they went after the skyship?" Charlie asked.

"Yes, Lord. Skyship come low, ruin crops mile around. War dance follow. War party leave last sunrise."

"Six hours ago!" Charlie cried. "Can we overtake them?"

Tashtu shrugged. "Hurry, Lord."

"Don't you see," Charlie told Robin. "They're savages. They wouldn't understand anything like spaceships. They wouldn't want to. If they get the chance, they'll kill first and ask questions afterwards. We've got to go to the Wild Country now."

Big and brawny Tashtu was nodding his head earnestly, but Robin seemed unconvinced. "Why," she said, "there isn't even anything about Wild Country in the book."

"That's because we made it."

"And besides, the Congressmen are dangerous."

"Congressmen? Don't you mean the Cyclopes?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. The Cyclopes are dangerous."

She couldn't possibly have meant the Congressmen. It was never clear to either of them precisely what a Congressman did. But there were hundreds of them on one side of Wild Country and they were forever making speeches and promises, little round bald men with great, rich voices and wonderful vocabularies. Charlie loved to hear them speak.

"We go, Lord?" Tashtu asked.

Charlie nodded and went inside swiftly for his rifle. It was modeled after the most powerful rifle in the encyclopedia and was called a Mannlicher Elephant Gun. Robin came with her own smaller Springfield repeater.

"Ready?" Charlie asked.

"Yes. We can think up food along the trail."

"Hurry, Lord," Tashtu urged.

Charlie could hardly contain his excitement. The Wild Country, at last. And a spaceship.

By the time they were ready to make planetfall on the unexplored world, Purcell knew his dislike of Glaudot bordered on actual hatred. Purcell, who was forty-five years old and a bachelor, liked his spacemen tough, yes: you had to be tough to land on, explore, and subdue a couple of dozen worlds, as Purcell himself had done. But he also liked his spacemen with humility: facing the unknown and sometimes the unknowable at every step of the way, you needed humility.

Glaudot, younger than Purcell by fifteen years, confident, arrogant, a lean hard man and handsome in a gaunt-cheeked, saturnine way, lacked humility. For one thing, he treated the crew like dirt and had treated them that way since blastoff from Earth almost five months before. For another, he seemed impatient with Purcell's orders, although Purcell was not a cautious man, and certainly not a timid one. What had been growing between them flared out into the open moments before planetfall.

"I can't get over it," Purcell said. "I've never seen a world anything like it." They had made telescopic observations from within the atmosphere. "Giants living in caves," Purcell went on. "Sailing ships flying the Jolly Roger. A town consisting of miniature replicas of the White House on Earth. Mermaids."

"Don't tell me you really thought you saw mermaids?" Glaudot asked a little condescendingly.

"All right, I'll admit I only caught a glimpse of them. I thought they were mermaids. But what about the Indians?"

"Yes," Glaudot admitted. "I saw the Indians."

Using their atmospheric rockets, they had flown over the Indian village at an altitude of only a few hundred feet, to see bronze-skinned men rush out of tents and stare up at them in awe. After that, Purcell had decided to find some desolate spot in which to land, in order not to risk a too-sudden encounter with any of the fantastically diversified natives.

Now Glaudot said: "You're taking what we saw too literally, Captain. Why, I remember on Harfonte we had all sorts of hallucinations until Captain Jamison discovered they were exactly that—we'd been hypnotized into seeing the things we most feared by powerless natives who really feared us."

"This isn't Harfonte," Purcell said, a little irritably.

"Yeah, but you weren't there."

"I know that, Glaudot. I'm only trying to point out that each world must be considered as unique. Each world presents its own problems, which—"

"I say this is like Harfonte all over again. I say if you'd had the guts to land right smack in the middle of that Indian village, you'd have seen for yourself. I say to play it close to the vest is ridiculous," Glaudot said, and then smiled deprecatingly. "Begging your pardon, of course, Captain. But don't you see, man, you've got to show the extraterrestrials, whatever form they take, that Earthmen aren't afraid of them."

"Caution and fear aren't the same thing," Purcell insisted. He didn't know why he bothered to explain this to Glaudot. Perhaps it was because Ensign Chandler, youngest man in the exploration party, was in the lounge listening to them. Chandler was a nice kid, clean-cut and right out of the finest tradition of Earth, but Chandler was, like all boys barely out of their teens, impressionable. He was particularly impressionable in these, his first months in space.

"When you're cautious it's as much to protect the natives as yourself," Purcell went on, and then put into simple words what Glaudot and Chandler should have learned at the Academy for Exploration, anyway.

When he finished, Glaudot shrugged and asked: "What do you think, Ensign Chandler?"

Chandler blushed slowly. "I—I'd rather not say," he told them. "Captain Purcell is—the captain."

Glaudot smiled his triumph at Purcell. It was then, for the first time, that Purcell's dislike for the man became intense. Purcell wondered how long he'd been poisoning the youth's mind against the doctrines of the Academy.

Just then a light glowed in the bulkhead and a metallic voice intoned: "Prepare for landing. Prepare for landing at once."

Purcell, striding to his blast-hammock, told Glaudot, who was the expedition's exec, "I'll want the landing party ready to move half an hour after planetfall."

"Yes, sir," said Glaudot eagerly. At least there was something they agreed on.

"Men," Purcell told the small landing party as they assembled near the main airlock thirty-five minutes later, "we have an obligation to our civilization which I hope all of you understand. While here on this unknown world we must do nothing to bring discredit to the name of Earth and the galactic culture which Earth represents."

They had all seen the bleak moon-like landscape through the viewports. They were eager to get out there and plant the flag of Earth and determine what the new world was like. There were only eight of them in the first landing party: others would follow once the eight established a preliminary base of operations. The eight were wearing the new-style, light-weight spacesuits which all exploration parties used even though the temperature and atmosphere of the new world seemed close enough to Earth-norm. It had long ago been decided at the Academy that chances couldn't be taken with some unknown factor, possibly toxic, fatal and irreversible, in an unknown atmosphere. After a day or two of thorough laboratory analysis of the air they'd be able to chuck their spacesuits if all went well.

They filed through the airlock silently, Purcell first with the flag of Earth, then Glaudot, then the others. White faces watched from the viewport as they clomped across the convoluted terrain.

"Nobody here but us chickens!" Glaudot said, and he laughed, after they had walked some way across the desolate landscape. "But then, what did you expect? Captain took us clear of all the more promising places."

The man's only motive, Purcell decided, was his colossal ego. He made no reply: that would be descending to Glaudot's level.

After they walked almost entirely across the low-walled crater in which the exploration ship had come down, and after Purcell had planted the flag on the highest pinnacle within the low crater walls, Glaudot said:

"How's about taking a look-see over the top, Captain? At least that much."

Purcell wasn't in favor of the idea. It would mean leaving sight of the ship too soon. But the radio voices of most of the men indicated that they agreed with Glaudot, so Purcell shrugged and said a pair of volunteers could go, if they promised to rejoin the main party within two hours.

Glaudot immediately volunteered. That at least made sense. Glaudot had the courage of his convictions. Several others volunteered, but the first hand up had been Ensign Chandler's.

"I don't want to sound like a martinet," Purcell told them. "But you understand that by two hours I mean two hours. Not a minute more."

"Yes, sir," Chandler said.

"Glaudot?"

"Yes, sir," the Executive Officer replied.

"All right," Purcell said. He walked over to the first of the big magna-sleds piled high with equipment. "We'll be setting up the base