Chapter V

Komso had not forgotten Barry. Everywhere Barry and Xintel went a Chosen One followed, and even though their actions were not interfered with in any way it was nerve-wracking to know their every move was being reported. Under such continuing surveillance his temper grew ragged.

But he heeded Xintel's repeated warnings and the watchers learned little. Finally the Leader grew annoyed and decided this outsider, this potential threat to his unchallenged supremacy, had existed long enough. And so had the girl who sheltered him.

Barry was helping Xintel in the fields beyond the house, harvesting thick, meaty leaves that were a staple article of diet. A score of Venusians were engaged in the same task nearby.

Something prompted Barry to look up just in time to see Komso and a large Chosen One called Czerki hanging in the water some distance away. They looked aside a bit too ostentatiously as they noticed the Earthman's eyes upon them.

A frown crossed Xintel's face as he nudged her.

"We avoid trouble if we can," she whispered.

But Czerki swam unhurriedly toward them and caught Xintel by the shoulder. The girl winced as the Chosen One swung her around.

"Give me that necklace," Czerki ordered.

Xintel's face was pale as he fumbled for the catch of the ornament but her arms remained limp at her sides. Raising a hand against a Chosen One was sacrilege punishable by death--and she had guessed what Komso intended.

Barry took a step forward.

"Get your hands off!" His voice was deceptively soft.

Czerki turned with a challenging sneer. "You oppose the will of the Chosen?"

"Barry! Don't!" Xintel cried. "He has killed many."

But the sight of the Chosen One touching her slender body was more than Barry could bear. He took another step forward, his fists clenching.

Czerki whipped out a long wood-metal knife and smiled.

"Suitable?"

Duel. Xintel had told Barry of their custom.

In a move too perfectly timed for coincidence, someone thrust a duplicate knife toward Barry, hilt first. In that instant the Earthman knew he had walked into a framed-up battle against an expert, and with the expert's chosen weapons, just as Komso had planned it.

He must smash that plan. Still empty-handed he braced his feet against the bottom and dived. The Chosen One's knife made one startled lunge and then Barry's hand caught Czerki's wrist. For a second Earthman and Venusian glowered face to face, the Venusian's expression of surprise changing to pain as Barry's Earth-trained muscles tightened.

Barry clutched, digging his fingers into the tendon of Czerki's wrist. Czerki's face contorted. His free hand clawed out, but Barry caught the Chosen One's middle finger and forced it back.

Joints strained and the Venusian whimpered under his breath as Barry increased the crippling pressure. The knife dropped from Czerki's numbed fingers, and then with a twist Barry brought him helpless to his knees.

The faces of the watching Venusians seemed to consist almost entirely of gaping mouths and staring eyes. Barry considered the situation. Perhaps he could do more against Komso and his Chosen by discrediting and releasing this one than by killing him.

"Enough?" he gritted.

The Venusian nodded.

"Next time you bother Xintel you die," Barry warned.

Czerki got to his feet.

"Look out!" Xintel screamed, just as the Chosen One's hand flashed to his belt.

Barry leapt. His right hand, straight-arming, jolted the Venusian's head back, and at the same instant his left whipped a deadly palm-edge judo chop to Czerki's neck.

There was a sound like the breaking of a dry twig. Czerki's body jerked once and the dart of his tube-weapon plowed into the bottom.

With a gesture of revulsion the Earthman dropped the limp body and stepped back.

He looked about for Komso, angry enough now to force an immediate showdown, but the priest had prudently withdrawn.

Xintel took his arm and smiled proudly for all to see.

"Come, Barry," she said. "It is over for now."

The uneasy stares of her people followed them, and only the long-standing superstitious fear of appearing to criticise the Chosen kept them from breaking into excited comment.

The stranger had not only defied a Chosen One but had killed in the manner of a Leader, with the touch of an empty hand. All knew now he did not come from another yort. And his companion was Xintel!

As soon as they were alone Barry turned to the girl.

"What now?" he demanded.

"Next time Komso will not underestimate you."

"What do you think he'll try?"

Xintel frowned. "Not force. One of the secret methods which have kept the Chosen in power. Perhaps the Curse with which he killed my father."

"Your father?" Barry asked. She had never spoken of her family before.

The subject was obviously painful, but she forced herself to talk.

* * * * *

Her father, Soren, had been an unusual individual from a family of chronic dissidents, a doubter who despite the long indoctrination of the Chosen still possessed the power to think independently. And in his family there had been passed by word of mouth across the generations all the ancient traditions of the other life which the Chosen had nearly succeeded in consigning to the limbo of forgotten knowledge.

He had the courage to venture into the Outside alone, even into the dread Above for short periods, to see for himself the things the Chosen wished forgotten.

He had actually dared to organize groups for cooperative action and to circulate whispers that the Gods Of The Deeps were a fraud perpetrated by the Chosen for their own purposes. He had aroused doubt and become the rallying point for all the latent forces of resistance.

For a brief but exciting time his efforts to undermine the priesthood had been successful. But then the old priest of the Chosen had died suddenly and Komso had succeeded to the post. Where the old priest had been senile and vacillating, Komso took forceful action.

He had publicly named Soren a blasphemer against the Gods Of The Deeps and had called down their Curse upon him.

A few sleeps later Soren had started with others toward the Cleft Of Hardening. They had scarcely left the tunnel when dozens of torvaks descended upon the group.

The others had escaped easily, the monsters paying no attention to them. All had converged upon Soren and he died quickly.

Komso had regained unquestioned power. His curse had been fulfilled in too dreadful a fashion for any to dispute his word.

* * * * *

Barry developed an unwillingness to spend the remainder of his life hiding behind Xintel's skirt. With increasing boldness, but conscious always of the menace of the Chosen, he began to leave the house and observe the Venusian way of life.

The undersea people bore him no grudge for killing Czerki, he discovered. In fact the Chosen One's death was not mourned even by his three women. But neither were the Venusians openly friendly toward this strange outlander who spoke haltingly and killed without weapons. They regarded him with mingled suspicion and awe.

Xintel's position in the community, he soon decided, was extremely odd.

Marriage relationships in Tana were informal, continuing only as long as mutually satisfactory. Polygamy was an accepted institution. It was customary for the girls of Tana to enter marriage relationships, on a temporary basis at least, almost as soon as they developed the curves of maturity.

Xintel was as beautiful as any female of Tana, and in addition she owned a house and tools and weapons representing considerable wealth. Nevertheless she was the only grown woman who did not have a mate or ex-mate or who was not a widow.

One day he asked her outright about it, and she burst into tears.

For a minute Barry stared, nonplussed. He put one arm around her bare shoulders.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said gently.

She snuggled closer in the curve of his arm.

"Don't talk about it if you don't want to," Barry urged.

She raised her head, "But you must know.

"When Komso put his Curse upon my father he could easily have killed me too. I was but a small girl then, and my mother already dead. But he had brought about the death of my father to display his power, and he wanted the people to remember. I was to be a living reminder.

"But, he told the people, I shared my father's guilt of blasphemy by being of his blood. Anyone mating with me would be contaminated, and upon him too would fall the curse of the Gods Of The Deeps.

"The men of Tana are not cowards despite what the Chosen have done to them. Some have faced and fought even the torvaks of the Outside. But to act contrary to what Komso has declared the will of the Gods--that they will not do. So although several have looked upon me with desire, none have dared take me as mate."

There was pity in Barry's heart as he thought of the deep loneliness to which Komso had condemned her from childhood on. More than pity, he thought now. What had started with him as a matter of survival had changed and deepened, become more than friendship.

"But I am not a man of Tana," he blurted impulsively. "And I love you."

Xintel lowered her eyes. "Barry, do you really like me--that way?"

"Yes."

"Then it is settled," she declared, and came into his arms. "See, it is simple."

Later, still holding her closely, he told her, "Xintel dearest, whatever lies ahead we shall face together."

* * * * *

But even his newfound happiness could not curb Barry's restless tension. Large as it was, the cavern of Tana was still confining to one accustomed to the open sweeps of Earth, and the threat of Komso hung like a looming storm cloud. And, despite much thinking and long, fruitless conversations, neither Barry nor Xintel could see a way to attack the Chosen's almost invulnerable position.

Roaming the great cave, Barry's attention turned one day to the gas filling the upper portion. It gathered from the tiny bubbles given off by the submarine plants, with even the living houses of Tana contributing, and its level was nearly constant. Whenever its volume increased beyond a certain point the excess spilled into the tunnel leading to the open sea.

"What's up there?" he asked.

Xintel laughed. "It should do no harm to go there."

Together they swam high above the town along one insloping wall of the cavern, passing through the thin layer where swarming microscopic life furnished Tana's constant illumination, and reached the surface.

"Clear the water from your lungs all at once," Xintel instructed him. "It's easier that way."

She exhaled as far as possible, water pouring from her open mouth, and gasped in a breath of gas. He did likewise, and after some choking and coughing, found he could breathe.

They climbed out on a slanting rock outcropping and he stared around.

"This gas must be almost pure oxygen," he said, his voice ringing hollowly.

He looked around at the vaulted roof and irregular walls, noticing that his breathing, while not painful, was somewhat labored. Then suddenly the girl laughed wildly and did a few steps of a strange sinuous dance.

"What's the matter?" he asked anxiously.

She threw herself into his arms with limp abandon and squinted up into his face as though having difficulty focusing her eyes. He believed he understood, and besides he was beginning to cough.

She was giggling as he pushed her head under the water, but he had to force himself to overcome his instinctive Earth reactions before he could take that first breath of liquid.

After a few minutes Xintel gave him a shamefaced smile.

"Did I make a fool of myself?" she asked.

"Of course not," he replied gallantly but with a trace of absentmindedness.

Slowly they let themselves drift down into the city, with Barry's mind working furiously. He had remained out of water several minutes. He though of the colony, and--until Xintel touched his arm--of Dorothy.

The experience gave a new purpose to his oddly timeless life. After that during each waking period he swam up to the cavern roof. Each time, as well as he could judge, he was able to remain out of water a little longer.

At first Xintel scolded him bitterly, as from time immemorial wives have scolded husbands for their own good. Upon the Venusians breathing gaseous oxygen had the same effects as alcohol addiction on Earth. She told him horrible stories of people who had drunkenly wandered into the Outside and fallen afoul of norus or torvaks. She pointed out an oxygen addict who moved jerkily and seemed half insane. Once she even resorted to the ancient feminine weapon of contending amid loud sobs that he no longer loved her or he would instantly cease his debauchery.

But Barry persisted, and after following him and seeing for herself that he did not become intoxicated she finally accepted his habit, along with his periods of silent thoughtfulness, as an inborn peculiarity of her alien mate.