CHAPTER 2

II

Her hand was hard and dry, running down his torn arm like a deadly scorpion. The aperture in the wall opened further and a hot, stinking wind belched out. He dropped as paws gripped his booted ankles from behind. He twisted, thrust his sword into a shaggy throat. His hand felt the harness he had lost. He dragged it inside with him, into a black, forgotten hole.

The opening closed. There was an invisible stench of stale bodies and drug vapor. He could hear the old woman's hoarse breathing. He hooked the broken harness about his waist.

"Light," he gasped. "What's this, a tomb?"

"It will be, dear boy," she said. "We must move quickly down into the catacombs. I wear the receiver band. I feel them groping, but it's you they want. They don't know I'm helping you, and they don't want an old bag of bones like me. But hurry. They'll blast in the wall."

Flame glowed. She lighted a smoky taper. He saw a bent ragged packet of animated bones, a mop of gray hair and a narrow hawked beak. In niches along the winding cavern, shapes stirred. Moisture dripped. Turgid Lethean vapors from escapist drugs curled sluggishly. Skeletal faces stared, glazed and unseeing, dying.

Cadmus swore. Three worlds were dying like this. A vast social system that had stopped moving, evolving, so it was dying. Fast! A yellow Martian girl's luminous eyes stared vacantly into shadows, buried in some dream far from the hopeless, meaningless reality.

Cadmus studied the old woman with growing suspicion. The amnesia was a throbbing ache of unknowing. If he only knew more. There was so much he felt he had to know, right now, but he couldn't remember! Who was this sudden benefactress? Not from the Asteroids, for she wore the disciplinary band. Yet she had saved him, preserved him a little longer to carry out an impossible task.

She turned, anticipating his suspicion. "Zaleel sent me. You can trust me, Cadmus. I know these catacombs. I'm old Pirri who sells her Lethean drugs along the forgotten places of Akal-jor. You Cadmeans have a few sympathizers. Some still have hope. The Cadmean society is that hope."

A wave of fear blew through Cadmus' fogged brain. "Cadmeans. My—memory! Johlan erased almost everything. I remember nothing—yet—there's something—something I've got to remember!"

She didn't answer. They walked on. A Martian half-breed ogled them from a niche in the stone, jaws chewing the mind-shattering pulp of the Venusian thiln-flower. Wrecks of three worlds. They believed in nothing but their dreams—and the Gray God in the valley. The former they believed in as an only escape from a hopeless reality. The latter, because they had been conditioned to regard it as a god, as omnipotent.

You may fear a god, and hate a god, Cadmus mused, but you cannot desert a faith with impunity.

"You know a lot of Cadmus and the Cadmeans," he said as they walked deeper into the gloom. "I know nothing. Nothing! Listen, who is Cadmus?" He frowned. A ridiculous question.

"You are he," said Old Pirri. "Gods and heroes will never die."

"Who am I?"

"Cadmus."

He swore. His head ached more with doubts and hidden fears. A desperate yearning to know clawed frantically in his skull.

Old Pirri said, "There is a myth, centuries old, dear boy." Her voice softened. "But myths repeat themselves. They're rooted in the soul. In this myth, that was born on Terra when it was young and fresh and when blood was hot with early flames, there was a prince. He was tall and strong, and his skin was gold over muscles of steel."

She peered over her shoulder. "His name was Cadmus."

"Yes."

"Prince Cadmus slew a dragon and sowed its teeth. From these sprang armed men who fought and founded a great city—"

"Teeth—dragon—armed men, what are the symbols here?" A strange thrill trembled in him as the words took hold.

"You are the son of a much more recent Cadmus who was named from that ancient myth. Only he knew why he called himself Cadmus. He kept that secret to himself. But you are his son. If anyone knows your father's great secret of why he called himself Cadmus, it is you. You are Cadmus, now."

"But Johlan—he stifled my brain so the Guards couldn't probe my secrets—"

Old Pirri's eyes glowed, became red pools. "Zaleel told me. She, too, is ignorant of many things other than her assigned duties. Beware, lovely boy. Beware of friends and patriots who are out to achieve selfish ends. Beware even Zaleel, and Johlan, and Old Pirri. Remember history, and recall that when the Great Machine God was spawned and stopped all progress, wars were brewing between the worlds. Remember that was the reason the Machine was made—to halt progress and social evolution that might lead to another atom war. If the Machine is destroyed, remember that the old hates will return. For the ancient hates between peoples and planets and ideas still smolder."

Cadmus shivered. The sword hilt was ice in his grasp.

They turned. Several corridors branched into black mouths. Bats darted from hollows. Nothing must deter him from his objective. Yet—Old Pirri spoke wisdom. When the Machine quit, the three worlds would be plunged into chaotic anarchy. No government would exist until some kind of governmental agency was established. Who, then, or what group, would aspire to power? Consar III of course, if he lived. Others if there were others who still knew how to think.

They came into a subterranean street illuminated with cold luciferin light. Escapeasies lined its length. A forgotten river flowing from ennui to forgetfulness, and death. Archways crumbled overhead. Purple spider webs shimmered.

"We're directly under the Street of Shadows," said Old Pirri. Sense-drunkening music floated from dark maws. "Just inside that escapeasy, Cadmus. A door just inside leads up into the Street of Shadows, and into the Maenad." She gripped his arm. Tears shone in her eyes.

She took a chain from about her neck. A square of metal dangled heavily from the chain as she put it over Cadmus' head.

"Dear boy," she said, "this is a small force-shield device. I got it from a Cadmean who was killed in the last revolt. Press this small lever." She demonstrated. The unit hummed with power. It glowed with a strong effulgence. "This will nullify the vibro-guns of the Guards, for a while anyway."

Footsteps pounded. Old Pirri screeched, horribly, then went down on her knees. "Run—dear boy. Guards—" her voice shattered with pain. Her flesh jerked with the agony of a vibro-beam.

But he was safe, thought Cadmus quickly, while a sad rage wrenched his heart. She had sacrificed herself for him. She had given him the little force-shield unit.

He dropped down behind a crumbling column near the old woman as three Guards edged along the street. "Back—into the wall—find Maenad." Red froth specked her lips. "Beware all who might get power—when you slay—the Gray God—dear boy—"

She died. A blind rage burned up, flamed in Cadmus' brain. He yelled wildly as he raked the energy gun from his tunic and fired point blank at the approaching Guards.

Part of the street, with the Guards in it, erupted in a sheet of white flame. Shattered bodies, bits of uniform spread out through blazing columns like an unfolding flower. He dropped the burned-out gun and leaped backward, into the wall.

He ran blindly. Many-legged rats spilled out into the dark, ran with glowing eyes beside him. Pink, fleshy scorpions scurried before the vibrations of the blast. Later he found a wandering Venusian drug-peddlar who guided him to the trap-door leading up into the Maenad. It was only a few minutes now, until dawn.

There were no Guards in the escapeasy. Dancing girls from three worlds danced with a bored lifelessness. All except one. Zaleel. A flood of red-gold hair, flashing rust-flecked eyes, and smooth agile limbs. Her vitality failed to stir the sluggish futility clouding the Maenad. Her eyes flashed recognition as Cadmus edged along the wall and sat down in a shadowed booth. As the climax of her dance ended she walked to his booth and sat across from him. There was no applause. Apathetic eyes failed to follow the lithe swing of her gleaming body.

He held her hands, felt the animal warmth sparkle and tingle in his arms. "You made it, Cadmus," she breathed, eyes glowing. "I knew you would. I've got the microtape here. It's all you need to destroy the Machine—if you can reach it."

She handed him a small role of microtape. "Listen, Zaleel," he said, "I'm going crazy because of this amnesia Johlan threw over my brain. I tell you there's something vital to the plan I should know."

"You've got to keep blind faith. We can't hesitate now."

He told her about Old Pirri. She blinked at tears.

"Poor Old Pirri. She was in the first revolt. She was captured, had a disciplinary band put in her head, and slaved five years in one of Consar's mines. She lived only to see the Machine's end."

"She died too soon," said Cadmus.

"Your memory will return if you succeed, Cadmus. Johlan planted a threshold-response word in your subconscious mind. When you hear that word your full memory will come back. I heard him make the posthypnotic suggestion. But I can't tell you what it is. If you were captured—"

"I know. How and when will I receive this word?"

"It will be on millions of lips—if you succeed."

Cadmus said quickly, "All right. Give me the details, and let me get at it! Now what's the microtape for?"

She leaned forward. The fragrance of her hair was a promise.

"You know how the Machine's mechanical brain operates. But because of your amnesia, maybe I'd better refresh your memory. Now—any question, social, economic, individual, is submitted to the supreme council in the council tower. On the top of the tower is the question submission chamber. There are big digital panel-boards with facilities to receive the questions and problems which are submitted on microtapes.

"These microtapes are placed before the photoelectric analyzing eyes of the digital panels. From there, the problems or questions are carried by electron beam tubes directly into the Machine for solving. The Machine's answer comes back through the electron beam tubes and is recorded on answer tapes. Audio tapes are recorded and broadcast from the tower. Also the broadcast is received in every Martian city and is conveyed to Venus and Earth by ethero-magnum. You remember all this?"

"Some of it," said Cadmus, frowning. "Go on."

"The Machine's doom is in that microtape I've given you, Cadmus. It contains a highly complex problem which Johlan has worked out during all these years of isolation on our asteroid. You have only to get inside that question submission chamber in the council tower. Get that tape in front of those analyzing eyes. That's all. Get the problem on that tape into the brain of the Machine."

He looked at her steadily. "And then—is that the end of the plan?"

Her hand trembled. "There's you and I, after that."

"I remember that, Zaleel. If I succeed, it's you and me together, in a new System of progress and change and hope. If I fail—"

"If we fail, Cadmus, there'll be nothing for you and me. Nothing for anyone, ever again."

He got to his feet quickly. "Zaleel, what's your part in it? Why are you dancing here?"

Red flushed her face. "I knew that one of Consar's scouts would find me during the worship. One has already found me. They'll be here to pick me up before dawn."

He gripped her shoulders, hard. His face worked with unvoiced emotion.

"I've got to do it, Cadmus. My father died in one of Consar's Lunarian mines. He died—horribly. I'll settle with Consar myself. I have an explosive lithium capsule which...." It would be easier to do it than to talk about it.

She finished. "Everything will be dead then that threatens our System. The Machine, Consar, the Guards—they'll die when the Machine goes. The council tower will be the next center of governmental operations, no matter who handles it. The people have grown accustomed to receiving all their commands from the Tower."

"I'll see you then," said Cadmus. "If we succeed." He went quickly out into the Street of Shadows.

He flattened against the wall as the five Guards came past and turned into the Maenad. A civilian was among them, a grotesque little man, like a spider. His garments were studded with jewels and precious stones which could only signify that he was one of Consar III's personal slaves.

Which, in turn, signified that they had come for Zaleel.

A bitter hate burned in Cadmus as he edged past the Maenad's entrance toward the policejet the Guards and the civilian had parked in the street. He unsheathed his sword. He turned the little force-field unit to full power. This was it. Dawn was about to break.

He had the advantage of surprise and here was a way. He knew he could never get into that council tower from the ground levels. It was too heavily guarded. He might manage it from the air.

He ran straight out of the shadows, taking advantage of the surprise that froze the two Guards standing outside the entrance panel of the policejet. Deimos blinked as Cadmus' sword struck. Its light was red. The slain Guard sank wordlessly in a fresh warm pool that was redder still on the worn stones.

Cadmus laughed tonelessly as he struck again.