The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (buy e reader txt) 📗

do not have taxes. Quite the reverse, we sometimes have dividends.

"The government, you must understand, not only conducts a business account with each of its citizens, but one with itself also. The value of articles produced is computed with a profit allowance, so that by a successful business administration, the government is enabled not only to meet its public obligations, but to acquire a surplus to its own credit in the form of accumulated merchandise. This surplus is divided among the people every five years—a sort of dividend."

"I should think some cities might have much more than others," said the Big Business Man. "That would cause discontent, wouldn't it?"

"It would probably cause a rush of people to the more successful cities. But it doesn't happen, because each city reports to the National government and the whole thing is averaged up. You see it is all quite simple," the Chemist finished. "And it makes life here very easy to live, and very worth the living."

Unnoticed by the four interested men, a small compact-looking gray cloud had come sweeping down from the horizon above the lake and was scudding across the sky toward Arite. A sudden sharp crack of thunder interrupted their conversation.

"Hello, a storm!" exclaimed the Chemist, looking out over the lake. "You've never seen one, have you? Come upstairs."

They followed him into the house and upstairs to its flat roof. From this point of vantage they saw that the house was built with an interior courtyard or patio. Looking down into this courtyard from the roof they could see a little, splashing fountain in its center, with flower beds, a narrow gray path, and several small white benches.

The roof, which was guarded with a breast-high parapet around both its inner and outer edges, was beautifully laid out with a variety of flowers and with trellised flower-bearing vines. In one corner were growing a number of small trees with great fan-shaped leaves of blue and bearing a large bell-shaped silver blossom.

One end of the roof on the lake side was partially enclosed. Towards this roofed enclosure the Chemist led his friends. Within it a large fiber hammock hung between two stone posts. At one side a depression in the floor perhaps eight feet square was filled with what might have been blue pine needles, and a fluffy bluish moss. This rustic couch was covered at one end by a canopy of vines bearing a little white flower.

As they entered the enclosure, it began to rain, and the Chemist slid forward several panels, closing them in completely. There were shuttered windows in these walls, through which they could look at the scene outside—a scene that with the coming storm was weird and beautiful beyond anything they had ever beheld.

The cloud had spread sufficiently now to blot out the stars from nearly half of the sky. It was a thick cloud, absolutely opaque, and yet it caused no appreciable darkness, for the starlight it cut off was negligible and the silver radiation from the lake had more than doubled in intensity.

Under the strong wind that had sprung up the lake assumed now an extraordinary aspect. Its surface was raised into long, sweeping waves that curved sharply and broke upon themselves. In their tops the silver phosphorescence glowed and whirled until the whole surface of the lake seemed filled with a dancing white fire, twisting, turning and seeming to leap out of the water high into the air.

Several small sailboats, square, flat little catamarans, they looked, showed black against the water as they scudded for shore, trailing lines of silver out behind them.

The wind increased in force. Below, on the beach, a huge rock lay in the water, against which the surf was breaking. Columns of water at times shot into the air before the face of the rock, and were blown away by the wind in great clouds of glistening silver. Occasionally it thundered with a very sharp intense crack accompanied by a jagged bolt of bluish lightning that zigzagged down from the low-hanging cloud.

Then came the rain in earnest, a solid, heavy torrent, that bent down the wind and smoothed the surface of the lake. The rain fell almost vertically, as though it were a tremendous curtain of silver strings. And each of these strings broke apart into great shining pearls as the eye followed downward the course of the raindrops.

For perhaps ten minutes the silver torrent poured down. Then suddenly it ceased. The wind had died away; in the air there was the fresh warm smell of wet and steaming earth. From the lake rolled up a shimmering translucent cloud of mist, like an enormous silver fire mounting into the sky. And then, as the gray cloud swept back behind them, beyond the city, and the stars gleamed overhead, they saw again that great trail of star-dust which the Chemist first had seen through his microscope, hanging in an ever broadening arc across the sky, and ending vaguely at their feet.

CHAPTER XXII THE TRIAL

In a few moments more the storm had passed completely; only the wet city streets, the mist over the lake, and the moist warmth of the air remained. For some time the three visitors to this extraordinary world stood silent at the latticed windows, awed by what they had seen. The noise of the panels as the Chemist slid them back brought them to themselves.

"A curious land, gentlemen," he remarked quietly.

"It's—it's weird," the Very Young Man ejaculated.

The Chemist led them out across the roof to its other side facing the city. The street upon which the house stood sloped upwards over the hill behind. It was wet with the rain and gleamed like a sheet of burnished silver. And down its sides now ran two little streams of liquid silver fire.

The street, deserted during the storm, was beginning to fill again with people returning to their tasks. At the intersection with the next road above, they could see a line of sleighs passing. Beneath them, before the wall of the garden a little group of men stood talking; on a roof-top nearby a woman appeared with a tiny naked infant which she sat down to nurse in a corner of her garden.

"A city at work," said the Chemist with a wave of his hand. "Shall we go down and see it?"

His three friends assented readily, the Very Young Man suggesting promptly that they first visit Lylda's father and Aura.

"He is teaching Loto this morning," said the Chemist smiling.

"Why not go to the court?" suggested the Big Business Man.

"Is the public admitted?" asked the Doctor.

"Nothing is secret here," the Chemist answered. "By all means, we will go to the court first, if you wish; Lylda should be through very shortly."

The court of Arite stood about a mile away near the lake shore. As they left the house and passed through the city streets the respect accorded the Chemist became increasingly apparent. The three strangers with him attracted considerable attention, for, although they wore the conventional robes in which the more prominent citizens were generally attired, their short hair and the pallid whiteness of their skins made them objects of curiosity. No crowd gathered; those they passed stared a little, raised their hands to their foreheads and went their way, yet underneath these signs of respect there was with some an air of sullenness, of hostility, that the visitors could not fail to notice.

The Oroid men, in street garb, were dressed generally in a short metallic-looking tunic of drab, with a brighter-colored girdle. The women, most of them, wore only a sort of skirt, reaching from waist to knees; a few had circular discs covering their breasts. There were hardly any children to be seen, except occasionally a little face staring at them from a window, or peering down from a roof-top. Once or twice they passed a woman with an infant slung across her back in a sort of hammock.

The most common vehicle was the curious form of sleigh in which they had ridden down through the tunnels. They saw also a few little two-wheeled carts, with wheels that appeared to be a solid segment of tree-trunk. All the vehicles were drawn by meek-looking little gray animals like a small deer without horns.

The court-house of Arite, though a larger building, from the outside was hardly different than most others in the city. It was distinct, however, in having on either side of the broad doorway that served as its main entrance, a large square stone column.

As they entered, passing a guard who saluted them respectfully, the visitors turned from a hallway and ascended a flight of steps. At the top they found themselves on a balcony overlooking the one large room that occupied almost the entire building. The balcony ran around all three sides (the room was triangular in shape) and was railed with a low stone parapet. On it were perhaps fifty people, sitting quietly on stone benches that lay close up behind the parapet. An attendant stood at each of the corners of the balcony; the one nearest bowed low as the Chemist and his companions entered silently and took their seats.

From the balcony the entire room below was in plain view. At the apex of its triangle sat the judge, on a raised dais of white stone with a golden canopy over it. He was a man about fifty—this leader of the court—garbed in a long loose robe of white. His hair, that fell on his shoulders, was snowy white, and around his forehead was a narrow white band. He held in his hand a sort of scepter of gold with a heavy golden triangle at its end.

In six raised tiers of unequal length, like a triangular flight of stairs across the angle of the room, and directly in front of the judge, was the jury—twenty men and twenty women, seated in alternate rows. The men wore loose robes of gray; the women robes of blue. On a seat raised slightly above the others sat a man who evidently was speaker for the men of the jury. On a similar elevated seat was the woman speaker; this latter was Lylda.

Near the center of the room, facing the judge and jury were two triangular spaces about twenty feet across, enclosed with a breast-high wall of stone. Within each of these enclosures were perhaps ten or twelve people seated on small stone benches. Directly facing the members of the jury and between them and the two enclosures, was a small platform raised about four feet above the floor, with several steps leading up to it from behind.

A number of attendants dressed in the characteristic short tunics, with breastplates and a short sword hanging from the waist, stood near the enclosures, and along the sides of the room.

The Chemist leaned over and whispered to his friends: "Those two enclosed places in the center are for the witnesses. Over there are those testifying for the accused; the others are witnesses for the government. The platform is where the accused stands when——"

He broke off suddenly. An expectant hush seemed to run over the room. A door at the side opened, and preceded and followed by two attendants a man entered, who walked slowly across the floor and stood alone upon the raised platform facing the jury.

He was a man of extraordinarily striking look and demeanor. He stood considerably over six feet in height, with a remarkably powerful yet lean body. He was naked except for a cloth breech clout girdled about his loins. His appearance was not that of an Oroid, for beside his greater height, and more muscular physique, his skin was distinctly of a more brownish hue. His hair was cut at the base of the neck in Oroid fashion; it was black, with streaks of silver running through it. His features were large and cast in a rugged mold. His mouth was cruel, and wore now a sardonic smile. He stood erect with head thrown back and arms folded across his breast, calmly facing the men and women who were to judge him.

The Very Young Man gripped the Chemist by the arm. "Who is that?" he whispered.

The Chemist's lips were pressed together; he seemed deeply affected. "I did not know they caught him," he answered softly. "It must have been just this morning."

The Very Young Man looked at Lylda. Her face was placid, but her breast was rising and falling more rapidly than normal, and her hands in her lap were tightly clenched.

The judge began speaking quietly, amid a deathlike silence. For over five minutes he spoke; once he was interrupted by a cheer, instantly stifled, and once by a murmur of dissent from several spectators on the balcony that called forth instant rebuke from the attendant stationed there.

The judge finished his speech, and raised his golden scepter slowly before him. As his voice died away, Lylda rose to her