Part 3

Kortha floated in clouds, bodiless. Fragrance drifted past in tendrils of white mist, curling and crawling with scented life. Through the mist came a battleship with Guantra seated on it, laughing at him. A silken garment dyed with scarlet and magenta flickered past, obscuring Guantra. Wrapped in the silk was Ilse, dancing for him, trailing a cape of moonlight behind her white shoulders, above the multicolored scarves. The clouds shifted beneath him, causing him to fall. He dropped, faster and faster.

Golden men caught him, carried him on their shoulders. They led him to a wall and chained his wrist to a red-hot manacle--

It was Ilse who held his wrist in her hand; Ilse bending above him, crystal tears quivering on her long amber lashes.

"Kortha! Thank Zut. You've lain so still."

He was in a bed. He grunted as he sat up. Ilse fought him, tried to force him down, saying, "The doctor said you had the constitution of a desert boar. What you went through would have killed ten ordinary men. But lie still, lie still. The wards are filled with the men you've wrecked--"

She laughed and sobbed, fighting him. But Kortha put her aside easily, asking, "Where is he? Where is the smell?"

"I am here, Kortha," said Guantra from the doorway where he stood, a gun steady in his hand.

The gun was aimed at Ilse. Kortha was a little too far away to jump, but the muscles on his legs and arms writhed like snakes with the fury that pounded in his blood.

Guantra was saying, "Stand away from him, Ilse. A bullet won't stop Kortha, but he won't risk your chances with hot lead."

"What do you want of me?" snarled the giant, mastering his red rage, fingers opening and closing.

"You will be my friend, Kortha. That is all I seek of you. Just your friendship."

Ilse gasped in her throat and whirled around, blue eyes wide. She stood rigid, bent a little forward. She choked, "No, no. Guantra, you wouldn't--not to Kortha. Not that!"

"Not what?" rasped Kortha, scowling in puzzlement.

"The Blue Grotto! It changes men. It makes them different. They aren't the same after they come out of there."

Kortha stared at Ilse, noting the wide ashen eyelashes, the red mouth twisted in pain, the white forehead riven with furrows. Torture! So. It was what he had expected of Guantra: to torture a man until he became a broken thing begging for friendship. Suddenly he looked at Guantra and found the man lost in admiration of Ilse's tanned loveliness.

Kortha leaped like an uncoiling spring. He caught Guantra about the waist and flipped him across a thigh, sending him into a wall. The Premier thudded into the oak and steel, hitting hard. He crouched for long moments on hands and knees, shaking his head. Then he crawled to his feet and looked into his own gun held in Kortha's hand.

"You'll let Ilse and Xax go, Guantra. I remain."

Guantra rubbed his hip, smiling grimly. He nodded.

"Gladly, Kortha. It will be guarantee of our future friendship."

"No," sobbed Ilse, long fingernails biting into Kortha's hairy forearm. "He'll change you. He'll do to you what he did to those--others."

Kortha shook her off. Torture he hated, but he could stand up to it. But if they did anything to Ilse--he wasn't that sure of himself. He had to get rid of her, send her away to Hurlgut. Maybe they could somehow contact Earth or Venus; get help.

Ilse hit his furred chest with tiny fists, whimpering.

"Idiot! Can't you see? Guantra will make you his friend. You'll do what he says. You'll be a figurehead. All the Confederacy will hail the union of Guantra and Kortha. It won't know that only Guantra gives the orders, that you're just a puppet."

Kortha shoved her away.

"Get moving," he snapped. "I'll hold off Guantra until you're safely gone."

Ilse fought and raged, but she was helpless with her bare arm in one of Kortha's hands. She went sideways in front of him as he pushed her. Her red mouth whimpered.

Kortha stood and watched the fleet little scout ship fade into the south. When it had disappeared, he waited for minutes, calculating Ilse's speed against possibility of pursuit. Satisfied, he handed his gun to Guantra.

He growled, "Bring on your torturers, Guantra. Let's get this over with."

But Guantra laughed softly, sheathing the gun.

"Torture? Oh, no. That's a bit--ah--antiquated, isn't it? Besides, I know men, Kortha. Torture would never make me your friend."

"Not torture?"

"Come with me into my stateroom. Oh, be my enemy, if you will. But you'll be needing food, and a bit of Sharasta wine. I have both."

* * * * *

Kortha realized that if he leaped on Guantra now, he could break his neck or snap his spine. But there would be other Guantras. Better to fight this one, than the others who might arise. He smiled to himself. Apparently those years in the desert had aided him to control his mad temper. In olden days he would have been on Guantra, slaying without thought to a possible future.

He shrugged broad shoulders, aware that his stomach was empty. There was no need to starve to death. He had done a lot without food. He walked after Guantra slowly, thoughtful.

A dull black plasticine screen formed one wall of the hexagonal stateroom. Before it a curved desk glittered dully, littered with charts and papers. Chrystolite chairs and benches gleamed in myriad colors over the thickly woven black rug. Kortha stared around him, nodding. He remembered the ship. It was one he had himself planned.

But the screen was new. He stood in front of it, frowning. Guantra came to his side, gesturing.

"Since you turned hermit, things have happened on Mars, Kortha. This screen is a by-product of researches by my science division. With it, I can detect scenes at certain distances in the open air. Essentially the same as television, we can focus an unlimited field by using cosmic ray amplifiers."

Guantra went to the wall, pressed a button.

"We use radio waves though, throughout the ship, in order to prepare our food."

Kortha looked through the transparent shield in the wall; saw a frozen steak thaw suddenly, cook before his eyes in a matter of seconds.

"High frequency waves," Kortha said. "That's old."

"True, but I've found it saves time to install them in every room. In time of battle, my men need not desert their posts for food. The food is there frozen; needs only six to eight seconds to cook, and be taken out, ready to eat."

A steward came and lifted out the steak, setting it on a table before Kortha. He served chilled Sharasta wine and freshly baked bread. Chilled sugar sauce over bitter fruits brought a hard grin to the giant's mouth. He had not realized before just how hungry he was.

He began to eat.

When he was done, he went and stood at Guantra's side in front of the starboard windows. Outside, sunlight blazed on the quartz-veined cliffs over which the _Varadium_ was passing. Hollow depressions glittered as though filled with sparkling gems, while huge stalagmites lifted jagged edges, shot forth scintillating hues that etched color madness on the dun cliffsides.

The sheer cliffs fell away, exposing a massive gap in the mighty mountains. The _Varadium_ poked its dull grey nose downward and sank between the ledges.

Staring from the darkened starboard windows, Kortha beheld the iridescent gleam of the mountain-walls turn to yellow and red and green. The colors deepened as the ship lowered on the air currents: grew lavender, then purple. Shadows from the tall cliffsides gave the canyon into which they sank a dark sombreness.

"The Blue Grotto is far below the surface," whispered Guantra. "A young lieutenant discovered and told me about it. I checked his findings; had my engineers pay it a visit. Their work resulted in something that will make your eyes shine."

With her keel scraping dry red sand, the _Varadium_ edged along the bed of the canyon. Ahead lay a great black orifice in the side of the cliff: a gigantic cave, vast as Mars' mightiest hangar. Even by straining his keen eyes, Kortha could make out nothing beyond that ebon darkness.

But when the flier poked its prow into the cave, a battery of tremendous mercury floodlamps leaped to bluish-white life. Blinking in their glare, Kortha looked down at the floor of the cave; found it fitted with great steel cradle, with benches and lathes and tools. The battleflier sank into the cradle with a lurch and a swift righting of its bulk. Springs sighed softly under its weight, cushioning it on a blanket of compressed air.

Guantra led Kortha from the stateroom out along the grey deck, toward the gang-plank, saying, "This place has been useful to me. Extremely so. I've found that it paid to spend the money to equip it."

Kortha looked around him, gauging his chances for fight. Men stepped to benches, swung down ladders, with an air of deft sureness. They paid him the insult of inattention. His hands knotted, then relaxed. Suppose he did fight? It would do him no good. Even Kortha could not overcome the entire crew of a battleflier. Not without a weapon.

Guantra motioned him to a tiny monorail car.

"The journey is not far, but we must avoid some--ah--rather terrifying precipices in this. The rail cost fifty lives to install. A misstep above an abyss--"

He shrugged, pressing buttons. The car lurched forward, gathered speed.

"Personally, I think some of them are bottomless. We could take no soundings."

They caught glimpses of black depths to their left as the car slid along on its ribbonlike rail. A string of lights fastened to the cliff cast eerie shadows into the gulf. The car slowed to round a curve.

It halted in a chamber whose walls were sculped with vividly stained statuary. Their colors were faded now, but here and there were spots of red sunset, or blue ocean, or the white of a ship's sail.

Kortha muffled a curse of surprise in his throat.

"I thought you'd like it," Guantra laughed. "That lieutenant of mine found it. He swears it's a lost museum of some very early Martian race. The ones who lorded it when there were oceans on the planet."

* * * * *

Kortha did not fight the drag of curiosity. He walked along the wall, intent on the friezes. Here were the tall-prowed water-ships, sails bellying before the wind, cleaving foaming, blue-green ocean. He saw men in mail and helmets battling on green grass. There were boudoir scenes, too, with tall and lovely blonde women reclining on soft cushions, fanned by strangely shaped slaves.

How had this forgotten clue to a past civilization come to be buried under tons of mountains? Perhaps a planetary catastrophe in the past had shifted an entire mountain-range, to bury a city beneath its rock foundations. Then again, the Old Ones might have carved out niches in the stone itself, hollowing chambers the better to preserve traces of their culture.

Kortha hastened his steps, found Guantra waiting for him in a room hung completely with expensive blue-and-gold draperies. Even the ceiling was muffled in bands of rich silk. The floor was a thick fur rug that would have cost a million _kofuls_ on the open market. And in the mathematical center of the room was a couch of incredible softness draped with a spotted black-and-silver _ocemar_ pelt.

"Lie down and rest, Kortha. I shall leave you to your thoughts."

Kortha came up swiftly in front of Guantra and grasped him by his arms above the elbows. He swung the Premier off his feet, held him inches above the ground, glaring at him.

"I could kill you, Guantra. I could snap your spine as a king gorilla could a twig. You would die."

Guantra paled and licked him lips. Then he managed to laugh.

"No need for that. All I ask is that you spend the night here. In this room, sleeping on that couch. After that, you are free to leave."

Kortha dropped the man in his bewilderment, saying, "Is that all? Is the place haunted? Ought I start at ghosts? Or do you gas the lungs out of me?"

"Neither. Just stay here. No harm will come to you."

Kortha grinned and surveyed the drapes. He ran fingers through his thick yellow hair. He chuckled, "I'll stay. In the morning, I'll leave."

He watched Guantra close the door behind him. He heard the bolt snick into place. He went and sank on the couch. It was soft, enticing. Putting up his tanned legs, he crossed them at the ankles.

Kortha tried to think, to reason out the danger of the room. But even his giant body knew the lassitude of fatigue. He closed his eyes, trying to sort out facts and interpret them; shaking his head a little, muttering at his tiredness. Guantra had the whiphand, with Hurlgut a cripple and Ilse and Xax no help at all. And he, Kortha! Of what use was he, sleeping like a perfumed harlot on this couch? If he could raise an army, now--

His eyelids blinked against the tiredness beating up from deep within him. Wave upon wave of languor swept to his brain, wrapping it in soft and gentle folds. He closed his eyes. Just for a minute, just until he was refreshed--

Kortha slept. His big body lay utterly relaxed, every muscle inert, like a lazing panther. The room was drugging in its silence. The thick draping seemed to enfold, to cradle.

"_Kortha!_"

It was a voice like a wind whispering in pines. It soughed across the room, making the man turn lazily in his slumber, uneasy.

"Kortha, speak to me. Tell me of yourself. Who are you, Kortha?"

The man slept, but his lips spoke, sighing, "I am Kortha the strong. The hard, the cruel."

"Ahhh, no. You must forget that, Kortha. True, you are heavily muscled, but so are many men."

"I crippled Hurlgut my best friend, in a fit of rage. I am not to be trusted. My temper is the red heart of the living volcano. It can spew destruction."

"Forget that you are Kortha. He never existed. You are not that Kortha, but another. Tell me about this best friend, Kortha. Tell me. Tell me."

Kortha whispered the tale, shuddering even as he slept.

The voice spoke to him, and its softness was the purl of a wave lapping at the shore.

"You are wrong. It happened thus--"

Kortha half-rose, listening, though his eyes were closed and his breath came evenly.

"Repeat after me--Repeat--

"I saw Hurlgut in his tower room. We did not quarrel over politics with Earth. Hurlgut did not call me names, denounce me as 'war-mad' and 'enhanced with my own powers.' The sun formed a pool at his feet, true. But it was the guard--not I!--who leaped, struck swift and sure. I slew the guard, but the damage had been done.

"Hurlgut slandered me. He said _I_ did it. I did not. Hurlgut was jealous of my strength on Mars. He thinks I want power on Mars. I do not. Guantra is the one true leader of Mars. It was the guard who crippled Hurlgut, the guard who did it.

"The guard did it.

"The guard."

* * * * *

Kortha lay back in his cushions, muttering. The room grew silent once again. Then--

"Kortha!"

"I hear."

"Tell me of your life, Kortha. All of it. All the deeds of childhood, all the incidents. Tell me of your youth and manhood. Speak to me and tell me."

Kortha spoke for hours while the voice listened. When he had done, the voice whispered once again, and its sound flitted through the arras-hung room, susurrating eerily.

"Your childhood pattern fits into section j-2364-k7. Therefore the treatment will be relayed over into that pattern, with emphasis on friendship."

If Kortha had been awake, he would have heard the click of tiny wheels, the metallic rustle of machinery, the flick of a needle of compressed air on a metal filament. The drapes helped deaden those sounds, and Kortha slept on.

"Kortha, listen. When you came from Fraysia to be a student at the Academy. You remember that first day when you met--Guantra?"

No, it had not been Guantra. It had been Hurlgut whom he'd met, there on the white walk. Or had it really been Guantra? Was his memory that bad? Guantra standing before him, smiling at him, putting a friendly hand on his big arm and saying, "You look like officer material. Come with me. I'd like to see you fence. You have the build for it."

And it was Guantra, not Hurlgut, who stood with him, awed at the magic in the lightning parry and thrust of the sword in his hand. He had defeated Mayram the champion that afternoon as Guantra looked on. Beaten him with a glittering sword in his hand and a fire in his green eyes and dancing joy in his heart.

He told Hurlgut--no, Guantra! about it afterward in his rooms; how his father had had him taught by Eric MacCormac the American, who was tri-planet champion in all three weapons: foil, sabre and epee. And Guantra listened, pleased.

The voice went on, whispering softly, speaking to him, lifting from his memory the threads of recollection, removing the very fibre of his character, as a mason lifts old tile to lay the new. Bit after glittering bit of fact was slipped in to take the place of memory. Fact that was so plausible it became the truth.

It was Guantra who had given him his first engineering chance, in letting him charge and electrolize the bastion of cliffworks surrounding radio-city Ruuzol. With cables and generators, he had made those mountain ridges of solid metals the sounding board for a spacevox system that was first in the solar system. Kortha had done a great job on that, thanks to Guantra. Later, there were other triumphs. Then--

"You fled to the desert to escape Ilse. She sought after you, trying to enmesh you in her charms. All the time you knew she was the chosen of Guantra. Guantra loves her.

"Guantra is your friend. You would not steal the woman of a friend.

"You gave her up. You ran from her, hoping to lose yourself in the desert, thinking Ilse would forget...."

Kortha stirred restlessly, but relaxed. He listened, absorbed.

"Ilse found you in your smithy. You wanted to find Guantra to get his advice, so you went to Yassa. Hurlgut sent men to kill you. You slew them instead, and fled again. Ilse came to tempt you, but you were saved by Guantra. He sent Ilse away, and brought you to safety."

Kortha sighed softly.

"Guantra is your friend, Kortha. The two of you might easily rule Mars. Two friends to lead Mars to its rightful place among the planets. You and Guantra. True friends...."

Kortha whispered, "Guantra is my friend. Ilse is a wanton seeking my love. Hurlgut hates me, for Hurlgut is jealous."

"That is correct. Now repeat all that I have told you, after me."

Their voices susurrated in the draped room. Their voices fled from wall to wall, and sank into oblivion. The candle that marked the hours and the days burned lower. Only the voices lived, and the teeming brain of Kortha that was taught by an unsleeping, patient, mechanical teacher.

IV

It was still in the room when Kortha woke. He stared around, wondering. Of course! Guantra had brought him here to seek repose. He chuckled. You'd think he was a baby, the way Guantra humored him. Always giving him the best. Well, that was the way of a friend for you. He clambered to his feet and rubbed his arms with his big, brown hands. The candle was spluttering in its golden socket. Kortha frowned. That candle had burned for three days!

He must have been tired. He recalled it had been a new candle when Guantra had shown him into this room. There had been some question of his sleeping and leaving? No, that could not be. He would have no reason to leave Guantra, now. But he must have been very tired. Three days asleep!

Kortha searched among the drapes, seeking an exit. He found a tiny, moon-shaped door opposite his couch. It opened creakily under his palm, and he stepped into a tunnel. Lights switched on as though by the heat of his body. He walked slowly, frowning. He did not remember this passageway at all.

Water lapped at rock ahead of him. He was puzzled. There were no large bodies of water on Mars, unless there were subterranean seas that topographers knew nothing of!

He hurried forward; came to an abrupt stop, staring.

An underground cave widened before his eyes. Throughout its shadowy length, the haze that filled it was tinted blue, and the waters of this undersurface ocean blazed like blue fire in its reflection. Azure stalagmites thrust up gnarled arms and heads in eerie grotesqueries. Ahead of him for mile after mile stretched that limpid sea. Here and there a rock rose, wet and clammy, above its blue surface. Shadows gloomed in the distance.

Kortha fell to his knees at the edge of the stone floor, fascinated by the water. He dipped a hand into it: felt it cool and soothing on his flesh.

Startled, he stared into its depths. There was something moving down among those bluish fires, something white and strange. Something was flashing through the water, swooping up toward his kneeling figure. He saw white flesh and tossing hair. He saw flanks and breasts, and churning legs.

Her white hands and wrists broke water first. Then Ilse lifted her wet, platinum hair and shook it, spraying drops. She put hands to his and let him lift her to the ledge.

"Xax showed me a way through the mountains that the tumblies used to know, long ago. I hurried here, Kortha, to get you away before--"

His green eyes were sullen, looking down at her. Ilse stopped her flow of words, listening to him say, "Guantra will be glad to see you."

Kortha thought: this is the wanton in all her seductive flesh. See how the silver hair brushes her smooth shoulders, look how her legs are straight and shapely; that red mouth is ripe for kisses, and those eyes of blue are looking at me with love and affection.

He turned his face away from her, staring down the long emptiness of the sea cavern.

Ilse put her hand to her open mouth, staring in horror at the big man's averted face. Her throat quivered uncontrollably, but she choked back the cry rising to utterance. Her wet hands found his and squeezed desperately.

"Oh, my darling! He's done it to you as I knew he would unless I hurried. I thought I would be in time, but it was a hard trail up the mountains. We had to go on foot. I'm too late, too late!"

Kortha shoved her away from him roughly, snarling, "Save your blandishments, Ilse. You won't find them helpful with me. You belong to Guantra. I do not find you attractive."

He lied, and he knew he lied. This white witch of a woman with the red mouth and the blue eyes and the platinum hair was a draught to make a statue hunger. Yet she was for Guantra. Well, Guantra deserved the best. And yet....

"You must come with me, Kortha. Hurlgut--"

"Hurlgut is jealous of me. He slanders me. I have never given him cause to do that. He claims I broke his back, but he does not tell the truth. It was the guard, not I. The guard did it."

Eyes closed, Ilse bowed her head. Her heart was a thing of lead in her bosom. This mewling, complaining thing was Kortha! Kortha, who would spit in the face of a living Zut if he angered him. She bit her lip hard, and tasted the drops of blood that welled to the surface.

She looked up. She said slowly, "We are going to surprise Guantra. You see, if Guantra could learn that with you all Mars would be his friend, he would like it. If he heard from your lips that you would back him as Premier against Earth and Venus--"

"Is there any doubt of that?"

Ilse knew she had to feel her way here. Not knowing what Kortha had been told, been made to believe in as truth, she must be wary; step lightly in her speech, explore his knowledge with words.

"Yes. When you ran away to the desert," she looked at him curiously and breathed again when she saw him nod curtly, "there were some who said that you and Guantra had a falling out. That you ran from him as a sort of protest."

Kortha laughed, looking at the girl, "That is ridiculous. _You_ know why I ran away. Because you wantoned after me. I ran away from you, Ilse."

* * * * *