Tarrano the Conqueror

by Ray Cummings

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.--a time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyondColumbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into thattime--to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read a novel of our present-day life.

To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time, addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself readinga present day translation of my original text--a translation so free that a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that couldnot possibly have their counterparts in the year 2430. - Summary by From the author's preface

Release date: May 24, 2017

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic when the first of the new murders was committed. The President fell almost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at my elbow was the murderer. I don’t know why, call it intuition if you will. The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in the press of the throng, seemingly as absorbed as all of us in what the President was saying.

It was late afternoon. The sun was setting behind the cliffs across the river. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand people within sight of the President, listening raptly to his words. It was at Park Sixty, and I was standing on the Tenth Level.[1] The crowd packed all twelve of the levels; the park was black with people. The President stood on a balcony of the park tower. He was no more than a few hundred feet above me, well within direct earshot. Around him on all sides were the electric megaphones which carried his voice to all parts of the audience. Behind me, a thousand feet overhead, the main aerials were scattering it throughout the city, I suppose five million people were listening to the voice of the President at that moment. He had just said that we must remain friendly with Venus; that in our enlightened age controversies were inevitable, but that they should be settled with sober thought—around the council table. This talk of war was ridiculous. He was denouncing the public news-broadcasters; moulders of public opinion, who every day—every hour—must offer a new sensation to their millions of subscribers.

He had reached this point when without warning his body pitched forward. The balcony rail caught it; and it hung there inert. The slanting rays of the sun fell full upon the ruffled white shirt; white, but turning pink, then red, with the crimson stain welling out from beneath.

For an instant the crowd was stunned into silence. Then a murmur arose, and swelled into shouts of horror. A surge of people swept me forward. I could not see clearly what was happening on the balcony. The form of the murdered President was hanging there against the rail; a score of government officials were rushing toward it; but the body, toppling over the low support, came hurtling downward into the crowd, quite near me; but I could not reach it—the throng was too dense.

The shouts everywhere were deafening. I was shoved along the Tenth Level by the press of people coming up the stairway. Shouts, excited questions; the wail of children almost trampled under foot; the screams of women. And over it all, the electrically magnified voice of the traffic director-general in the peak of the main tower roaring his orders to the crowd.

It was a panic until the traffic-directors descended upon us. We were pushed up on the moving sidewalks. North or south, whichever direction came handiest, we were herded upon the sidewalks and whirled away. With a hundred other spectators near me I was shoved to a sidewalk moving south along the Tenth Level. It was going some four miles an hour. But they would not let me stay there. From behind, the crowd was shoving; and from one parallel strip of moving pavement to the other I was pushed along—until at last I reached the seats of the forty mile an hour inside section.

The scene at Park Sixty was far out of direct sight and hearing. The park there had already been cleared of spectators, I knew; and they were doubtless bearing the President’s body away.

“Murdered!” said a man beside me. “Murdered! Look there!”

We were across the river, into Manhattan. The Tenth Level here runs about four hundred feet above the ground-street of the city. The man beside me was pointing to a steel tower we were passing. It was several hundreds yards away; on its side abreast of us was a forty-foot square news-mirror, brightly illumined. On all the stairways and balconies here a local crowd had gathered, watching the mirror. It was reporting the present scene at Park Sixty. As we sped past the tower I could see in the silver surface of the mirror the image of the now empty park from which we had been so summarily ejected. They were carrying off the President’s body; a little group of officials bearing it away; red, broken, gruesome, with the dying rays of the sun still upon it. Carrying it slowly along to where an aero-car was waiting on the side landing stage.

We were past the mirror in a moment.

“Murdered,” the man next to me repeated. “The President murdered.”

He seemed stunned, as indeed everyone was. Then he eyed me—my cap, which had on it the insignia of my calling.

“You are one of them,” he said bitterly. “The last word he said—the lurid news-gatherers.”

But I shook my head. “We are necessary. It was unfortunate that he should have said that.”

I had no opportunity to talk further. The man moved away toward the foot of a landing stage near us. A south-bound flyer had overtaken us and was landing. I boarded it also, and ten minutes later was in my office in South-Manhattan.

I was at this time employed by one of the most enterprising news-organizations in Greater New York. There was pandemonium in there that evening. My supper came up in the pneumatic tube from the public cookery nearby, but I had hardly time to taste it.

This, the evening of May 12, 2430, was for me—and for all the Earth—the most stirring evening of history. Events of inter-planetary importance tumbled over each other as they came to us through the air from the Official Information Stations. And we—myself and a thousand like me in our office—retold them for our twenty million subscribers throughout the Anglo-Saxon Nation.

The President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic was murdered at 5:10. It was the first of the new murders. I say new murders, for not in two hundred years had the life of so high an official been wilfully taken. But it was only the first. At 6:15 word came from Tokyohama,[2] that the ruler of Allied Mongolia was dead—murdered under similar circumstances. And ten minutes later from Mombozo, Africa, the blacks reported their leader killed while asleep in his official residence.

The Earth momentarily was without leadership!

I was struggling to get accounts of these successive disasters out over our audiophones. Above my desk, in a duplicating mirror from Headquarters, I could see that at the palace of Mombozo a throng of terrified blacks were gathered. It was night there—a blurred scene of flashing lights and frightened, milling people.

Greys—next to me—had a mirror tuned to Tokyohama. The sun there was shining upon almost a similar scene of panic. Black and yellow men—on opposite sides of the Earth. And between them our white races in turmoil. Outside my own window I could hear the shouts of the crowd that jammed the Twentieth Level.

Greys leaned toward me. “Seven o’clock, Jac. You’ve got the arrival of the Venus mail. Don’t overlook it ... By the code, man, your hands are shaking! You’re white as a ghost!”

The Venus mail; I had forgotten it completely.

“Greys, I wonder if it’ll get in.”

He stared at me strangely. “You’re thinking that, too. I told the British National Announcer it was a Venus plot. He laughed at me. Those Great Londoners can’t see their fingers before them. He said, ‘That’s your lurid sense of newscasting.’”

Venus plot! I remembered my impressions of the Venus man who was beside me when our President fell.

Greys was back at his work. I swept the south shore of Eastern Island[3] with my finder, and picked up the image of the inter-planetary landing stage, at which the Venus mail was due to arrive. I could see the blaze of lights plainly; and with another, closer focus I caught the huge landing platform itself. It was empty.

The station-master there answered my call. He had no word of the mail.

“Try the lookout at Table Mountain,” he advised me. “They may be coming down that way.... Sure I’ll let you know.... What a night! They say that in Mediterrania—”

But I cut off; it was no time to chat with him. Table Mountain, Capetown, had no word of the mail. Then I caught the Yukon Station. The mail flyer had come down on the North Polar side—was already crossing Hudson Bay.

At 8:26 it landed on Eastern Island. A deluge of Venus despatches overwhelmed me. But the mail news, before I could even begin to handle my section of it, was far overshadowed. Venus, now at 8:44 was calling us by helio. The message came in the inter-planetary code, was decoded at National Headquarters, and from there flashed to us.

The ruler of the Venus Central State was murdered! An almost incoherent message. The murder of the ruler, at a time co-incident with 6:30 in Greater New York. Then the words:

“City being attacked ... Tarrano, beware Tarrano ... You are in danger of ...”

In danger of what? The message broke off. The observers, behind their huge telescopes at the Potomac Headquarters, saw the helio-lights of the Venus Central State go dark suddenly. Our own station flashed its call, but there was no answer. Venus—evening star on that date—was sinking to the horizon. But our Observatory in Texas could see the planet clearly; and gave the same report.

Communication was broken. The authorities of the Venus Central State—friendly to us in spite of the recent immigration controversy—had tried to warn us.

Of what?

It must have been nearly nine o’clock when a personal message came for me. Not through the ordinary open airways, but in the National Length, and coded. It came to my desk by official messenger, decoded, printed and sealed.

Jac Hallen, Inter-Allied News. Come to me, North-east Island at once, if they can spare you. Important. Answer.

Dr. Brende.

Our Division Manager scanned the message curiously and told me I could go. I got off my answer. I did not dare call Dr. Brende openly, since he had used the code, but sent it the same way. I would be up at once.

With a word of good-bye to Greys, I shoved aside my work, caught up a heavy jacket and cap and left the office. The levels outside our building were still jammed with an excited throng. I pushed my way through it, up to the entrance to the Staten Bridge. The waters of the harbor beneath me had a broad band of moonlight upon them, dim in the glare of the city lights. I glanced upward with satisfaction. A good night for air-traveling.

My small personal air-car was on the stage near the bridge entrance. The attendant was there, staring at me as I dashed up in such haste. He handed me my key from the rack.

“Going far, Jac? What a night! They’ll be ordering them off if many more go up.... Going north?”

“No,” I said shortly.

I was away, rising with my helicopters until the city was a yellow haze beneath me. I was going north—to Dr. Brende’s little private island off the coast of Maine. The lower lanes were pretty well crowded. I tried one of the north-bound at 8,000 feet; but the going was awkward. Then I went to 16,000.

But Grille, the attendant back at the bridge, evidently had his finder on me, out of plain curiosity. He called me.

“They’ll chase you out of there,” came his voice. “Nothing doing up there tonight. That’s reserved. Didn’t you know it?”

I grinned at him. In the glow of my pitlight I hoped he could see my face and the grin.

“They’ll never catch me,” I said. “I’m traveling fast tonight.”

“Chase you out,” he persisted. “The patrol’s keeping them low. General Orders, an hour ago. Didn’t you know it?”

“No.”

“Well, you ought to. You ought to know everything in your business. Besides, the lights are up.”

They were indeed; I could see them in all the towers underneath me. I was flying north-east; and at the moment, with a following wind, I was doing something over three-fifty.

“But they’ll shut off your power,” Grille warned. “You’ll come down soon enough then.”

Which was also true enough. The evening local-express for Boston and beyond was overhauling me. And when the green beam of a traffic tower came up and picked me out, I decided I had better obey. Dutifully I descended until the beam, satisfied, swung away from me.

At 8,000 feet, I went on. There was too much traffic for decent speed and the directors in every pilot bag and tower I passed seemed watching me closely. At the latitude of Boston, I swung out to sea, off the main arteries of travel. The early night mail for Eurasia,[4] with Great London its first stop, went by me far overhead. I could make out its green and purple lights, and the spreading silver beam that preceded it.

Alone in my pit, with the dull whir of my propellers alone breaking the silence of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon. But Mars was up there—approaching the zenith. I wondered what the Martian helio might be saying. I could have asked Greys back at the office. But Greys, I knew, would be too busy to bother with me.

What could Dr. Brende want of me? I was glad he had sent for me—there was nowhere I would rather have gone this particular evening. And it would give me a chance to see Elza again.

I could tell by the light-numerals below, that I was now over Maine. I did not need to consult my charts; I had been up this way many times, for, the Brendes—the doctor, his daughter Elza, and her twin brother Georg—I counted my best friends.

I was over the sea, with the coast of Maine to my left. The traffic, since I left the line of Boston, had been far less. The patrols flashed by me at intervals, but they did not molest me.

I descended presently, and located the small two-mile island which Dr. Brende owned and upon which he lived.

It was 10:20 when I came down to find them waiting for me on the runway.

The doctor held out both his hands. “Good enough, Jac. I got your code—we’ve been waiting for you.”

“It’s crowded,” I said. “Heavy up to Boston. And they wouldn’t let me go high.”

He nodded. And then Elza put her cool little hand in mine.

“We’re glad to see you, Jac. Very glad.”

They took me to the house. Dr. Brende was a small, dark man of sixty-odd, smooth-shaven, a thin face, with a mop of iron-grey hair above it, and keen dark eyes beneath bushy white brows. He was usually kindly and gentle of manner—at times a little abstracted; at other times he could be more forceful and direct than anyone with whom I had ever had contact.

At the house we were joined by the doctor’s son, Georg. My best friend, I should say; certainly, for my part, I treasured his friendship very highly. He and Elza were twins—twenty-three years old at this time. I am two years older; and I had been a room-mate with Georg at the Common University of the Potomac.

Our friendship had, if anything, grown closer since my promotion into the business world. Yet we were as unlike as two individuals could possibly be. I am dark-haired, slim, and of comparatively slight muscular strength. Restless—full of nervous energy—and, they tell me, somewhat short of temper. Georg was a blond, powerful young giant. A head taller than I—blue-eyed, from his mother, now dead—square-jawed, and a complexion pink and white. He was slow to anger. He seldom spoke impulsively; and usually with a slow, quiet drawl. Always he seemed looking at life and people with a half-humorous smile—looking at the human pageant with its foibles, follies and frailties—tolerantly. Yet there was nothing conceited about him. Quite the reverse. He was generally wholly deprecating in manner, as though he himself were of least importance. Until aroused. In our days of learning, I saw Georg once—just once—thoroughly angered.

“... Came up promptly, didn’t you?” Georg was saying. He was leading me to the house doorway, but I stopped him.

“Let’s go to the grove,” I suggested. We turned down from the small viaduct, passed the house, and went into the heavy grove of trees nearby.

“He’s hungry,” Elza declared. “Jac, did you eat at the office tonight?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you really?”

“Some,” I admitted. In truth the run up here had brought me a thoroughly hearty appetite, which I just realized.

“I was pretty busy, you know,” I added. “Such a night—but don’t you bother.”

But she had already scurried away toward the house. Dear little Elza! I wished then, for the hundredth time, that I was a man of wealth—or at least, not as poor as a tower timekeeper. True, I made fair money—but the urge to spend it recklessly dominated me. I decided in that moment, to reform for good; and lay by enough to justify asking a woman to be my wife.

We reclined on a mossy bank in the grove of trees, so thick a grove that it hid the house from our sight.

The doctor extinguished the glowing lights with which the tree-branches were dotted. We were in the semi-darkness of a beautiful, moonlit night.

“Don’t go to sleep, Jac!”

I became aware that Georg and his father were smiling at me.

I sat up, snapping my wits into alertness. “No. Of course not. I guess I’m tired. You’ve no idea what the office was like tonight. Roaring.”

“I can imagine,” Georg said. “You were at Park Sixty when the President fell, weren’t you?”

“Yes. But I wasn’t supposed to be. I wasn’t assigned to that. How did you guess?”

“Elza saw you. She had our finder on you—I couldn’t push her away from it.” His slow smile was quizzical.

“On me? In all that crowd. She must have searched about very carefully to——”

I stopped; I could feel my cheeks burning, and was glad of the dimness there under the trees.

“She did,” said Georg.

“I sent for you, Jac,” Dr. Brende interjected abstractedly, “because——”

But Georg checked him. “Not now, father. Someone—anyone—might pick you up. Your words—or read your lips—there’s light enough here to register on a finder.”

The doctor nodded. “He’s afraid—you see, Jac, it’s these Venus——”

“Father—please. It’s a long chance—but why take any? We can insulate in the house.”

The chance that someone who shouldn’t be, was tuned to us as we sat there in that lonely grove! With the doctor’s widespread reputation—his more than national prominence—it did not seem to me to be such a long chance either, on this, of all nights.

“As you say, no use in putting private things into the public air,” I remarked; a. . .