Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Рэй Брэдбери

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      He was utterly appalled. “She—she was in town!” he gasped, then fell silent at the sound of feet below.

      “Well, there’s no time,” she retorted. “So, if I must—” She strode steadily into the west chamber, paused a moment, and then stepped deliberately in front of the window!

      Hull was aghast. He watched her stand so that the lamplight must have cast her perfect silhouette full on the pane, stand tense and motionless for the fraction of a breath, and then leap back so sharply that her robe billowed away from her body.

      She had timed it to perfection. Two shots crashed almost together, and the glass shattered. And then, out in the night, a dozen beams crisscrossed, and, thin and clear in the silence after the shots, a yell of mortal anguish drifted up, and another, and a third.

      “There are snipers in the copse. I’ll draw them out!”

      The Princess Margaret smiled in malice, and licked a crimson drop from a finger gashed by flying glass. “Your treachery reacts,” she said in the tones of a sneer. “Instead of my betrayal, you have betrayed your own men.”

      “I need no accusation from you,” he said gloomily. “I am my own accuser, and my own judge. Yes, and my own executioner as well. I will not live a traitor.”

      She raised her dainty eyebrows, and blew a puff of grey smoke from the cigarette still in her hand. “So strong Hull Tarvish will die a suicide,” she remarked indifferently. “I had intended to kill you now. Should I leave you to be your own victim?”

      He shrugged. “What matter to me?”

      “Well,” she said musingly, “you’re rather more entertaining than I had expected. You’re strong, you’re stubborn, and you’re dangerous. I give you the right to do what you wish with your own life, but”—her green eyes flickered mockingly—“if I were Hull Tarvish, I should live on the chance of justifying myself. You can wipe out the disgrace of your weakness by an equal courage. You can sell your life in your own cause, and who knows?—perhaps for Joaquin’s—or mine!”

      He chose to ignore the mockery in her voice. “Perhaps,” he said grimly, “I will.”

      “Why, then, did you weaken, Hull Tarvish? You might have had my life.”

      “I do not fight women,” he said despondently. “I looked at you—and turned weak.” A question formed in his mind. “But why did you risk your life before the window? You could have had fifty woods runners scour the copse. That was brave, but unnecessary.”

      She smiled, but there was a shrewd narrowness in her eyes. “Because so many of these villages are built above the underground ways of the Ancients—the subways, the sewers. How did I know but that your assassins might slip into some burrow and escape? It was necessary to lure them into disclosure.”

      Hull shadowed the gleam that shot into his own eyes. He remembered suddenly the ancient sewer in which the child Vail had wandered, whose entrance was hidden by blackberry bushes. Then the Empire men were unaware of it! He visioned the Harriers creeping through it with bow and sword—yes, and rifle, now that the spell was off the valley—springing suddenly into the center of the camp, finding the Master’s army, sleeping, disorganized, unwary. What a plan for a surprise attack!

      “Your Highness,” he said grimly, “I think of suicide no more, and unless you kill me now, I will be a bitter enemy to your Empire army.”

      “Perhaps less bitter than you think,” she said softly. “See, Hull, the only three that know of your weakness are dead. No one can name you traitor or weakling.”

      “But I can,” he returned somberly. “And you.”

      “Not I, Hull,” she murmured. “I never blame a man who weakens because of me—there have been many. Men as strong as you, Hull, and some that the world still calls great.” She turned toward her own chamber. “Come in here,” she said in altered tones. “I will have some wine. Sora!” As the fat woman padded off, she took another cigarette and lit it above the lamp, wrinkling her dainty nose distastefully at the night-flying insects that circled it.

      “What a place!” she snapped impatiently.

      “It is the finest house I have ever seen,” said Hull stolidly.

      She laughed. “It’s a hovel. I sigh for the day we return to N’Orleans, where windows are screened, where water flows hot at will, where lights do not flicker as yellow oil lamps nor send heat to stifle one. Would you like to see the Great City, Hull?”

      “You know I would.”

      “What if I say you may?”

      “What could keep me from it if I go in peace?”

      She shrugged. “Oh, you can visit N’Orleans, of course, but suppose I offered you the chance to go as the—the guest, we’ll say, of the Princess Margaret. What would you give for that privilege?”

      Was she mocking him again? “What would you ask for it?” he rejoined guardedly.

      “Oh, your allegiance, perhaps. Or perhaps the betrayal of your little band of Harriers, who will be the devil’s own nuisance to stamp out of these hills.”

      He looked up startled that she knew the name. “The Harriers? How?”

      She smiled. “We have friends among the Ormiston men. Friends bought with land,” she added contemptuously. “But what of my offer, Hull?”

      He scowled. “You say as your guest. What am I to understand by that?”

      She leaned across the table, her exquisite green eyes on his, her hair flaming blue-black, her perfect lips in a faint smile. “What you please, Hull. Whatever you please.”

      Anger was rising. “Do you mean,” he asked huskily, “that you’d do that for so small a thing as the destruction of a little enemy band? You, with the whole Empire at your back?”

      She nodded. “It saves trouble, doesn’t it?”

      “And honesty, virtue, honor, mean as little to you as that? Is this one of your usual means of conquest? Do you ordinarily sell your—your favors for—?”

      “Not ordinarily,” she interrupted coolly. “First I must like my co-partner in the trade. You, Hull—I like those vast muscles of yours, and your stubborn courage, and your slow, clear mind. You are not a great man, Hull, for your mind has not the cold fire of genius, but you are a strong one, and I like you for it.”

      “Like me!” he roared, starting up in his chair. “Yet you think I’ll trade what honor’s left me for—that! You think I’ll betray my cause! You think— Well, you’re wrong, that’s all. You’re wrong!”

      She shook her head, smiling. “No. I wasn’t wrong, for I thought you wouldn’t.”

      “Oh, you did!” he snarled. “Then what if I’d accepted? What would you have done then?”

      “What I promised.” She laughed at his angry, incredulous face. “Don’t look so shocked, Hull. I’m not little Vail Ormiston. I’m the Princess Margaret of N’Orleans, СКАЧАТЬ