STRANGER FROM SPACE-6
1158 Words
IT WAS DAY. KOROBY sat up in bed and scanned her surroundings. She was in Yasak’s house. The bed was very soft, the coverlets of the finest weave. The furniture was elegantly carved and painted; there were even paintings on the walls.
A woman came to the bed. She was stocky and wore drab grey: the blue circles tattooed on her cheeks proclaimed her a slave. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“Fairly well. How long have I been ill?” Koroby asked, sweetly weak.
“You haven’t been ill. They brought you in last night.”
“Oh,” Koroby said disappointedly, and sat upright. “I feel as if I’d been lying here for weeks. Where’s Yasak? Where’s the strange man in armor?”
“Yasak’s out somewhere. The stranger man is in the room at the end of the hall.”
“Fetch me something to wear—that’s good enough,” the girl accepted the mantle offered by the slave. “Quick, some water—I must wash.”
In a few minutes she was lightly running down the hall; she knocked on the door of Robert’s room. “May I come in?”
He did not answer. She waited a little and went in. He was seated on one of the carved chairs, fussing over some scraps of metal on the table. He did not look up.
“Thank you for carrying me, Robert.” He did not reply. “Robert—I dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you built another round house and that we both flew away in it. Yasak had to stay behind, and he was furious. Robert! Aren’t you listening?”
“I hear you.”
“Don’t you think it was an exciting dream?” He shook his head. “But why? Robert”—she laid longing hands on his shoulders—“can’t you see that I’m in love with you?” He shrugged. “I believe you don’t know what love is!”
“I had a faint idea of it when I looked into your mind,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t any use for it. Where I come from there is no love, and there shouldn’t be here, either. It’s a waste of time.”
“Robert—I’m mad about you! I’ve dreamed of your coming—all my life! Don’t be so cruel—so cold to me! You mock me, say that I’m nothing, that I’m not worthy of you—”
She stepped back from him, clenching her hands. “Oh, I hate you—hate you! You don’t care the least bit about me—and I’ve shamed myself in front of you—I, supposed to be Yasak’s wife by now!” She began to cry, hid her face in suddenly lax fingers. She looked up fiercely. “I could kill you!”
Robert stood immobile, no trace of feeling marring the perfection of his face.
“I could kill you, and I will kill you!” she sprang at him.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” he admonished kindly, and after she had pummeled his chest, bruising her fingers on his armor, she turned away.
“And now if you’re through playing your incomprehensible little scene,” Robert said, “I hope you will excuse me. I regret that I have no emotions—I was never allowed them. But it is an esthetic regret.... I must go back to my wrecked ship now and arrange the signals there.” He did not wait for her leave, but strode out of the room.
Koroby huddled on a chair, sobbing. Then she dried her eyes on the backs of her hands. She went to the narrow slits that served as windows and unfastened the translucent shutter of one. Down in the City street, Robert was walking away. Her eyes hardened, and her fingers spread into ugly claws. Without bothering to pull the shutter in place she hurried out of the room, ran eagerly down the hall. She stopped at the armor-rack at the main hall on her way outside, and snatched up a siatcha—a firestone. Then she slipped outside and down the street.
- - - -
* * * *
THE CITY’S WALL WAS not far behind. Robert was visible in the distance, striding toward his sky-ship, a widening cloud of dust rising behind him like the spreading wake of a boat. Koroby stood on tip-toe, waving and calling after him, “Robert! Robert! Come back!” but he did not seem to hear.
She watched him a little longer. Then she deliberately stooped and drew the firestone out of its sheath. She touched it to a blade of the tall grass. A little orange flame licked up, slowly quested along the blade, down to the ground and up another stem. It slipped over to another stem, and another, growing larger, hotter—Koroby stepped back from the writhing fire, her hand protectively over her face.
The flames crackled at first—like the crumpling of thin paper. Then, as they widened and began climbing hand over hand up an invisible ladder, they roared. Koroby was running back toward the City now, away from the heat. The fire spread in a long line over the prairie. Above its roar came shouts from the City. The flames rose in a monstrous twisting pillar, brighter than even the dust-palled sky, lighting the buildings and the prairie. The heat was dreadful.
Koroby reached the City wall, panted through the gate into a shrieking crowd. Someone grasped her roughly—she was too breathless to do more than gasp for air—and shook her violently. “You fool, you utter fool! What did you think you were doing?” Others clamored around her, reaching for her. Then she heard Yasak’s voice. Face stern, he pushed through the crowd, pressed her to him. “Let her alone—Let her alone, I say!”
They watched the conflagration, Yasak and Koroby, from a higher part of the wall than where the others were gathered. They could glimpse Robert now and then. He was running, trying to outrace the flames. Then they swept around him, circling him—his arms flailed frantically.
- - - -
* * * *
THE FIRE HAD PASSED over the horizon. The air was blue with smoke, difficult to breathe, and ashes were drifting lightly down like dove-colored snow. Yasak, watery eyed, a cloth pressed to his nose, was walking with several others over the smoking earth and still warm ashes up to his knees. In one hand he held a stick. He stopped and pointed. “He fell about here,” he said, and began to probe the ashes with the stick.
He struck something. “Here he is!” he cried. The others hurried to the spot and scooped ashes away, dog-fashion, until Robert’s remains were laid clear. There were exclamations of amazement and perplexity from the people.
It was a metal skeleton, and the fragments of complicated machinery, caked with soot.
“He wasn’t human at all!” Yasak marvelled. “He was some kind of a toy made to look like a man—that’s why he wore armor, and his face never changed expression—”
“Magic!” someone cried, and backed away.
“Magic!” the others repeated, and edged back ... and that was the end of one of those robots which had been fashioned as servants for Terrestial men, made in Man’s likeness to appease Man’s vanity, then conquered him.
- Writer
