In the Green Star's Glow
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #5
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «In the Green Star's Glow». Краткое содержание книги:
But he was also an Earthling, whose helpless body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other wold dare...
In the Green Star's Glow is a science fantasy novel in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written by American author Lin Carter, it is the final book in his Green Star series. It was first published in 1976.
Before leaving the royal isle of Komar, Zarqa had imbibed of the golden mead which was all the nutriment his physical system required. He could now go for many weeks, even for months, before he would begin to suffer from any lack of sustenance. When the extinct Kaloodhan race, with their miraculous super-science, had redesigned their bodies more than two thousand millennia before, they had wisely eliminated many of the built-in limiting factors which impaired the efficiency of their anatomy. They had done the job well …
After some days of tireless and unceasing search, Zarqa came to realize that his present mode of investigation was likely to prove ultimately unprofitable.
It became obvious to the Winged Flan that since they had first entered into the vast and towering forest, his friends had traveled or wandered or had been transported far away from their point of entry. He had, of course, no knowledge of the various mishaps and adventures which had befallen his former comrades, but they were simply nowhere to be found.
They were, quite obviously, still traveling. He reasoned that every hour and every day which he continued to waste by searching in his present slow, meticulous fashion, they were doubtless still voyaging far afield.
Before long, Zarqa thought of a more efficient mode of searching, a method by which he might cover enormous territory much faster, yet search just as carefully and minutely as before.
The solution to his problem was to search by mind alone.
When Nature denied the Winged Men the power of articulate speech, she repaired that omission by bequeathing to them the ability to communicate on a purely telepathic level. To the Kaloodha, then, it naturally follows, the mental radiations of a mind are as distinctly individual as personal speech is to us. Whereas we recognize differences in tone and pitch and timbre as characteristics of the individual, and recognize our friends’ voices even when unable to see them, so it is with the telepathically sensitive Kaloodha such as Zarqa.
I do not know precisely how the Winged Men identify individual mental radiations—whether it is by differences in the wavelength of thought waves or from the uniquely different configurations of each mental wavefront—but, however the manner in which they accomplish the feat, it is demonstrably possible for a Kalood to pick out the radiations of a single mind with which it is familiar, among many thousands.
So Zarqa began the mind-search.
Once before he had searched in this manner. That was when he and his companions had become separated by night during their flight from the Flying City of Calidar. Then he had searched for the mind of Ralidux the Black Immortal, but he could as easily have striven to locate Niamh the Fair or even the Goddess Arjala, for with their minds he had become by that time familiar.
Since Zarqa had no way of guessing which of his lost comrades he would encounter first, the Winged Man held firmly in mind the “flavor” and “style” and “color” of the mind radiations of Niamh and Delgan and Karn simultaneously. Only the mind of Zorak was not sufficiently known to him to afford Zarqa the chance to hold his mental characteristics firmly in memory during the search. These curious terms, by the way, are the closest that the Kalood can come in translating into human terminology the distinctly differing characteristics of individual human minds to which he is sensitive.
Now, mental radiations are not limited to line-of-sight. Neither are they blocked or dispersed or deflected by solid barriers, such as the boles or branches of the great trees of the forest (indeed, according to Zarqa, most solids are completely transparent to thought waves). Therefore, using the mind alone to search, the Winged Man was able to cover immense tracts of territory in very little time.
For another full day he flew without resting, ranging the forest in an ever-expanding spiral, his mental sensors alert and keen. The dim pulsations of brute mentalities he detected, and the keener, more articulated radiations of the minds of a variety of human brains. But nowhere did he catch the slightest trace or whisper of the three minds he sought.
Until night had fallen, that is.
Then, quite suddenly, there came to his alert concentration the distant echo of a familiar mind.
As soon as he was able to discern with some nicety the distance and direction of that mental source, he homed in on it. Flying on swift and tireless vans, the wise Kalood approached the position of the mind which was a familiar one.
It was in a peculiar set of surroundings, and more than a little danger compassed it around. But Zarqa arrowed through the dark night to come to the aid of one of the minds for which he had so untiringly searched… and found himself amid a frozen tableau of astonishing terror.
17.
A Chance Discovery
During my first few days as a captive of the band of wild girls, I had sufficient opportunity to observe and even to experience their dislike of all males.
The girls kept me busy at the most menial and degrading of tasks, and seized upon every excuse to heap abuse and mistreatment upon me. I was forced to go continually naked, and my appearance afforded my savage captresses endless amusement. They also enjoyed seeing me toil for them, and I was beaten with a switch for every conceivable infraction of the rules governing my behavior.
At nights I slept on a crude pallet in a rough lean-to that adjoined the cabin in which the chieftainess of my tormentors dwelt. I refer, of course, to Varda.
My sleeping quarters were crudely built and of flimsy construction. On frequent occasions, it occurred to me that when and if the opportunity to make a break for freedom ever came, I should have little if any difficulty in getting out. Unfortunately, however, the savage band was ever on the alert to the possibility of my escape, and took every precaution to prevent it.
When, during the day, I was sent out to gather fruits or nuts or berries, a group of the littler savages accompanied me, and I performed these labors with a choke halter about my throat. To this was affixed a tether which the girls either held and cruelly jerked upon, or which was tied securely to a twig or some other relatively solid protuberance.
Very frequently, my wrists or ankles were tied together with bonds which, while they did not completely render me immobile, served at least to hamper and to restrict my freedom of movement. When I was permitted to sleep, my wrist or leg was bound securely to an iron ring sunk into the branch upon which the house of Varda was built.
My bonds, by the way, were neither ropes nor lengths of woven material, but strips of tough, well-seasoned rawhide. While I still retained a physical strength and a vitality which was considerably superior to that of a normal boy of my age and weight and height—a lingering aftereffect of the magical Elixir of Light of which I had imbibed long ago at the command of Sarchimus the Wise—it requires more than sheer brute force to sever so tenacious a form of bondage as rawhide. Nothing less than a sharp knife-blade would do the trick. I watched continuously for the chance to steal a knife or some similar sharp-edged tool, but the opportunity never once presented itself.
It began to look as if my plans for escape were hopeless pipe dreams …
While the girls beat me and used me with the utmost humiliation and scorn, mistreating me in every manner which their agile and vindictive wits could devise, they neither starved me nor managed to break my spirit.
I remained aloof and unperturbed, absorbing their cruelest punishments with a somber and uncomplaining mien. For this example of stoicism, I ask no particular credit, neither do I regard my behavior under these adverse conditions to be particularly praiseworthy or exemplary. I lived in the constant hope and expectation of freedom, which might come at any moment and in the most unexpected manner.