Part 2

She indicated the room with a gesture. "You will be comfortable here, and you have only to wish strongly for food or drink. If your wishes do not conflict with those of the elders they will come into being."

Eric asked, "And is this true of any wish? Suppose for instance I wished for--You."

She looked at him steadily, "That would depend on the nature of your wish. If you wished to take me as your wife the elders would approve."

Eric looked at her. He had hardly known her two hours. Yet the madness of the moment made him rash, and he asked, "And what of your wishes, Nolette?"

She said, "I am the Daughter of the City, and a virgin. If the Legend is to be fulfilled I would be wed before I die."

He took a step forward and reached out to take her in his arms, but she slipped away, saying quietly, "Not now. I will go away and let you think. When you have decided call me in your mind, and the machine will let me know." She smiled briefly, and left him alone in the room.

Eric was hardly aware of his actions as he seated himself in the comfortable chair. He fumbled about for his pipe. He must not be a fool. Perhaps if he thought quietly, and smoked, he could decide if this was a dream, if he had gone quietly mad in his space ship, and had been the victim of hallucinations. The chair was real to his touch, his pipe was gone, and he remembered leaving it in the navigator's section of the ship upon his earlier return. The memory seemed real enough. He wished for his pipe again, and realized that now he held it in his hand.

This was no mirage. He tamped tobacco created by the machine from Red Martian dust into the bowl of the pipe, and the smoke was as fragrant as ever. He could see how such luxury would stagnate a race. As the smoke curled around him he knew that two hours or two years were not important, and he knew what he wanted. He wished for Nolette.

She came into the room, watching him quietly, suddenly shy. He said, "It has come to me that I love you. Will you do me the honor to become my wife?"

She said, "Yes, Eric. Oh! Yes!" and came running to him. Her kiss had all the passion of his own.

An hour later she slipped from his arms, saying, "I must go and talk with the elder dreamers. We must be married today, at once. We have so little time. We must be husband and wife tonight." She slipped softly from the room.

Eric watched her, marveling at his luck. He suddenly remembered that he had not seen his brother since he had arrived at the house of the elder dreamers. He wondered where Garve was, and wanted to talk to him. Perhaps if he thought strongly enough the machine would get the message thought to Garve. He concentrated.

Ten minutes later Garve walked into the room. He said, "I thought I heard you calling. How'd you make out with the dreamers?"

"Well enough. Don't think me mad, Garve, but Nolette and I are to be married, tonight."

Garve's face grew red, then as white as river sand. He said bitterly, "I should have let them kill you in the street, but how could I? After all we are brothers."

"You love her too."

"No! But I love this city. It is paradise, and now you will destroy it."

Eric said, "The Legend again! Everyone believes it. Yet it is but a prediction. In time such a man as the Legend had to come, and some day one more greedy than myself may destroy the city. Perhaps I will refuse to carry out the destruction."

Garve laughed, a bitter cynical laugh. He cried, "You fool! How can you help yourself? Everyone believes you are the Bronze one and the machine will make that come true. How can you defeat the machine?"

Eric was staggered by a logic he had not even considered.

"Piece by piece," Garve said, "the prediction is coming to pass. Now you are to wed Nolette, and that too is a part of the Legend."

"That was predicted?"

"Yes. And that is not the end." Garve's voice was as sharp as the bite of a whip. "Do you know what else you will do?"

"No!" A thin horror seeped slowly into Eric's mind.

"You will destroy the Daughter of the City."

Eric's eyes were wide. He shuddered and cried, "NO! NO!"

Garve's face took on the glint of madness. He said, "But I will stop you. I'll stop you if I have to kill you." He turned and strode bitterly from the room.

* * * * *

Horror was still fresh in Eric's mind when Nolette returned. "All is ready," she said. "Come now, my husband-to-be."

Eric followed her into the chamber of the elder dreamers. Kroon stood at the doorway and greeted him as he entered. He said, "One cannot fight the truth, so we have consented to this marriage. Will you join hands?"

The ceremony was simple, but beautiful, much like an Earth wedding, with the city making music that was beautiful beyond belief. But all the time Eric listened his mind was working, and by the time he had kissed his bride at the end of the ceremony he knew what he had to do. He walked back to their room with his arm around her waist, and his resolve weakened with each step.

Yet when he reached the room he had the will to say, "I must leave you for a time. When I return our life together will begin." He kissed her again, and said, "It will not be long."

He broke away, and left her. When he reached the hallway he felt once in his pocket to be sure the explosive grenades were still there. So far the machine had controlled his destiny. So far the very belief of the dreamers in his destiny had brought the predictions to pass. Very well now, he would destroy the machine, but not at the request of the dreamers. He would do it now, before there was time to consummate the horrible part of the prediction. Then he would come back to Nolette and his honeymoon.

He ran along the hallways, always going down when he found a stairway, always seeking the central area below that had been indicated by Kroon in their first talk. And when at length he came out into a large room, with a maze of delicate electronic apparatus below, he knew he had arrived, and he pulled the grenade from his pocket.

Yet before he pulled the safety release he could not but marvel a moment at the intricate science below him. Much was familiar, and much was unintelligible.

As he stood he was seized from behind, and he twisted to find he was caught in the hate-strengthened grip of his brother. Pain lanced through his arm, and Garve gritted, "Drop it." Eric dropped the grenade, and it fell between them. Eric was suddenly glad that the safety had not been pulled, and then he was fighting savagely with his brother.

He was older, and wiser in the dirty tricks of fighters from the planets. After a time he was able to set himself, and bend forward. Where Garve had been behind, now he was flung up, over Eric's back in a sprawling arc. He fell, teetered for an instant, and then crashed into the delicate heart of the machine below. Glass tinkled, and a flare lit the room. Eric closed his eyes, afraid to look. Garve must have been electrocuted.

* * * * *

Eric opened his eyes to find the room subtly changed. It was roughly the same, but the walls were a rough sandstone, and the glamour was gone. He heard sounds, and saw Garve struggling up from the wreckage below. Both of them knew it was ended. The machine was beyond repair.

Garve paused. He said, "It's over now. I suppose in a year or two I shall forget this. I am going away. Until I can forgive you I shall stay away. God grant you peace, for you have lost more than I." Garve's steps echoed hollowly on the stone corridor and he disappeared in the distance.

Eric stood quietly. There was no happiness in him, only a nameless fear brought on by his brother's words, a fear that he had forgotten something.

Then suddenly he knew what it was. He remembered the ugly city. When he came out of the corridor, out of this building, the city would be a foul sty again. And the people, he had not seen the people, but they would no doubt be horrible. Nolette, his wife--he could not let himself think of how she would look. It seemed Garve was right and the final prediction had come true. All was finished, even the Daughter of the City had been destroyed.

He began to move up out of the subterranean room and back to the city. He reached the outer door, and did not even pause to look for Nolette, but set his teeth, and stepped out into the city.

And there he was surprised. Here was no ugly city, only a very normal, ordinary one, with ordinary persons going about the streets, blinking at the changes. The lines of the city were still there, but the jeweled panes were ordinary glass.

Eric tried to understand. Then suddenly he recalled his hatred of the city when he had been cast out, his subconscious thoughts of it as evil. He had taken off the helmet, and for an instant he had been out of contact with the elders, disoriented. In that instant the city had shown him his concept of ugliness. That ugly city was as unreal as the fantastically beautiful one created by the elders.

Eric turned, and went back into the building, looking for Nolette.

He found her, standing with Kroon in the great room, before a table which was only laminated wood. She was a slender girl, gray eyed, pleasant to look at, but without the beauty and the music and the witchery of her counterpart.

She said quietly, "It is finished, Eric, and we are not the two who married. It is finished, and the dream is ended."

Eric said only, "Yes," watching her.

She said, "I release you from the marriage. It will be a memory for us both, a wonderful dream that ended before it was consummated, a dream cut short too soon."

Eric asked, "What will you do?" Her voice was hardly changed, and watching her he felt an odd pleasure. There was no wild racing of his blood, yet his interest was awakening.

She said, "Go away, I suppose, as far as I can from this place."

He liked the way she was taking this. No dramatics, no tears.

He said, "I could take you back to Earth as a passenger. You might like Earth." He felt oddly eager as she considered.

And then suddenly, he could not wait, and the words came tumbling out. "Nolette," he said, "you must come with me. I do not know how it will be with us yet. But somehow I feel that if we stay together things will be good."

He waited for her decision, half afraid, half eager, and then saw a slow smile break the seriousness of her eyes.

She said gently, "If that is what you wish." The smile widened. "A girl must follow her husband. Even I know that."

Eric reached out and took her hand. "The ship is waiting," he said. "Let's go home."

End of Project Gutenberg's The Beast-Jewel Of Mars, by V. E. Thiessen