The Greatest SF Classics of Stanley G. Weinbaum. Stanley G. Weinbaum

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СКАЧАТЬ dinner to the tower," she ordered. "I want—Oh, anything. And send Sora to the room of Evanie Sair."

      She flung herself carelessly on a purple couch along a glassed wall, and Connor seated himself.

      "Now," she said, "what will you take for your knowledge?"

      "I won't bargain with you. I don't trust you."

      She laughed.

      "You see me through Evanie's eyes, Tom Connor, and once—well, once I thought you were attracted to me. But no matter. We will not again speak of that time—though it does seem odd that Fate should have had me set my Triangle down where you were. When I was just wandering restlessly, aimlessly, seeking peace in loveliness…It's too bad you fancy yourself in love with Evanie. For I assure you she doesn't love you."

      "That's not true!" he flared.

      She laughed, and instantly her touch of wistfulness was gone, to be replaced by wickedness.

      "Be careful," she mocked, "or I'll exact payment for that insult as well. But it was no lie."

      He controlled his anger.

      "Why do you say that?"

      "Because when I forced her to sleep, frightened as she was, she didn't turn to you. She fought me herself. If she had loved you, she'd have instinctively called you for help."

      "I don't believe you."

      "Then you're a fool," she observed indifferently, and turned from him disinterestedly at the entry of two servants bearing food.

      They slipped a table between the two and served a sumptuous repast, with dishes Connor failed to recognize. He ate hungrily, but the Princess, despite her professed hunger, picked and chose and ate scarcely anything. It was a silent meal, but afterward, smoking one of the black, magically lighted cigarettes, he prepared to ask certain questions.

      She forestalled him. With green eyes glowing sardonically, she looked straight at him.

      "Why do you love Evanie instead of me?" she asked.

      "You? Because you are not what I thought you were. Instead of being pure and sweet, you revel in evil. That is not hearsay; it is the historical record of your seven hundred years. For that I hate you, thoroughly and completely."

      She narrowed her glorious eyes.

      "Then you hate without reason," she said. "Am I not more powerful than Evanie, more intelligent, stronger, and even, I think, more beautiful?"

      "You're outrageously, incredibly, fantastically beautiful!" he cried, as if the acknowledgement were wrenched from him against his will. "You're perhaps the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy, and the most dangerous. And yet I hate you."

      "Why?"

      "Because of your lack of a little factor called character. I concede your beauty and your brilliance, but Evanie is sweet, kind, honest, and lovable. One loves character, not characteristics."

      "Character!" she echoed. "You know nothing of my character. I have a hundred characters! No one can be so gentle as I—nor so cruel."

      The faintest ripple of a mocking smile crossed her exquisite features, and then they were suddenly pure as an angel's. Without rising she kicked the switch of a vision screen with a dainty, sandaled toe.

      "Control," she said as it glowed. A face appeared.

      "A vitergon set tell to this room," she said cryptically, and then to Connor as the face vanished: "There is no scanner here. This chamber and Joaquin's in the North Tower are the only two in Urbs lacking them."

      "What of it?"

      "It means, Thomas Connor, that we are in utter privacy."

      He frowned, puzzled. Abruptly he started back in his chair as a flash of iridescence flickered. A Messenger! And almost with his start the thing was upon him.

      "Tell!" it creaked in his brain. "Tell! Tell! Tell! Tell!"

      He sprang erect.

      "Take it off!" he roared.

      "When I have your knowledge of Venus," his tormentor said carelessly.

      "Take it off, or—"

      "Or what?" Her smile was guileless, sweet, innocent.

      "This!" he blazed, and covered the space between them in a bound, his right hand clutching the delicate curve of her throat, his left pressing her shoulders fiercely down against the cushions.

      "Take it off," he bellowed.

      Suddenly there was a sound behind him, the grating of doors, and he was torn away, held by four grim–faced guards. Of course! The operator of the Messenger could hear his words. He should have remembered that.

      The Black Flame pushed herself to a sitting position, and her face was no angel's but the face of a lovely demon. Green hell glittered in her eyes, but she only reached shakily for the vision switch.

      "Tell Control to release," she choked huskily, and faced Tom Connor.

      The Messenger tingled and vanished. The Princess rose unsteadily, but her glorious eyes burned cold as she snatched a weapon from the nearest guard.

      "Get out, all of you!" she snapped.

      The men backed away. Connor faced her.

      "I should have killed you!" he muttered. "For humanity's sake."

      "Yes, you should have, Thomas Connor." Her tones were bitterly cold. "For, then you would have died quickly and mercifully for murder, but now—now you die in the way I choose, and it will be neither quick nor merciful. I cannot"—her voice shook—"bear the touch of violence!" Her free hand rubbed her throat. "For this—you suffer!"

      He shrugged. "It was worth it. I know your character now! I no longer have to guess."

      Mockery gleamed.

      "Do you?" Her face changed suddenly, and again it was soft and pure and wistful. "Do you?" she repeated, in tones that were sad, but held that bell– like quality he so well remembered. "You don't. Do you think the Black Flame is the true Margaret of Urbs? Do you realize what immortality means?" Her exquisite face was unutterably mournful as she thrust the weapon into her belt. "You think it's a blessing, don't you? You wonder, don't you, why Joaquin has withheld it from everybody?"

      "Yes, I do. I think it's tyranny. It's selfish."

      "Selfish! Oh, God!" Her voice shook. "Why, he withheld it from his own mother! Blessing? It's a curse! I bear it out of my duty to Joaquin, else I'd have killed myself centuries ago. I still may, do you hear. I still may!" Her voice rose.

      Appalled, he stared at her.

      "Why?" he cried.

      "You ask why! Seven hundred years. Seven—hundred—years! Denied love! How do I dare love a man who ages day by day, until his teeth yellow and his hair falls out, and he's decrepit, senile, СКАЧАТЬ