Masters of the Pit or Barbarians of Mars Read online

  The sounds came towards us. Again Hool Haji's hand went instinctively to his sword-hilt.

  Round the corner came a figure swathed in a black cloak, folded over his head to form a rudimentary hood. He held a bunch of flowers in one hand and a large flat case in the other.

  "Greetings," I said formally, in the Martian manner. "We are visitors to your city and seek help."

  "What help can Cend-Amrid give to any human soul?" the swathed man muttered bleakly, and there was no note of interrogation in his voice.

  "We know your folk to be practical and useful when dealing with machines. We thought..." Hool Haji's statement was cut off when the man voiced a strange laugh.

  "Machines! Speak not to me of machines!"

  "Why so?"

  "Do not stay to find out, strangers. Leave Cend-Amrid while you may!"

  "Why should we not speak of machines? Has some taboo been imposed? Do the people hate machines now?" I knew that in some Earthly societies machines were feared and that popular thought rejected them since people feared their lack of humanity, that too much emphasis on automation and the like made some philosophers uneasy that human beings might become too artificial in their outlook, and that as a scientist on Earth I had sometimes encountered this attitude at parties where I had been accused of all sorts of wickedness because of my work concerning nuclear physics. I wondered if the folk of Cend-Amrid had taken this reaction to its ultimate conclusion and banned the machines some feared, and this was why I felt encouraged to ask the question.

  But again the man laughed.

  "No,"' he said. "People do not hate machines - unless they hate one another."

  "Your remarks are obscure," I said impatiently. "What is wrong?" I was beginning to think that the first man we had met in Cend-Amrid was a madman.

  "I have told you," he said - and his head turned and he glanced around him, as if he was nervous. "Do not stay to discover what is wrong. Leave Cend-Amrid at once. Do not remain a second longer. This is the city of the curse!"

  Perhaps we should have taken his advice, but we did no^ We stayed to argue, and that was to be, in the short-term, a mistake which we were to regret.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "Why are you the only man abroad in Cend-Amrid?"

  "I am a physician," he said. "Or was!"

  "You mean you have been expelled from your physician's guild?" I suggested. "You are not allowed to practise?"

  Again the laugh, infinitely bitter - a laugh that hovered on the brink of insanity.

  "I have not been expelled from my guild. I am simply no longer a physician. I am known in these days as a Servicer of Grade 3 Types."

  "What are these 'types' that you service? Are you a mechanic now, or what?"

  "I am told to be a mechanic. I service human beings. These are the Grade 3 Types - human beings I" The words came out as a cry of misery. "I used to be a doctor - my whole training was to give me sympathy for my patients. And now I am" -he sobbed - "a mechanic. My job is to look at the human machine and decide if it can be made to function with minimum attention. If I decide that it cannot be made to function in this way, I must mark it down for scrapping and its parts go to a bank for use by the healthy machines."

  "But this is monstrous!"

  "It is monstrous," he said softly. "And now you must leave this cursed city immediately. I have said too much."

  "But how did this situation arise?" Hool Haji asked insistently. "When I was last in Cend-Amrid the people seemed an ordinary, practical folk - dull, perhaps, but that is all."

  "There is practicality," replied the physician, "and there is the human factor, the emotional factor in Man. Together they mean Man. But let one factor be encouraged and the other actively discouraged, and you have one of two ultimates -insofar as humanity is concerned."

  "What are they?" I asked, interested in this argument in spite of myself.

  "You have either the Beast or the Machine," he said simply.

  'That seems an oversimplification," I said.

  "So it is. But we are dealing with a society that has become oversimplified," he said, warming a little to his subject in spite of his nervous glances up and down the street. "Here the

  Machine in Man ha^ been encouraged and, if you like, it is the stupidity of the Beast which has encouraged it - for the Beast cannot predict and Man can. The Beast in Man leads him to create Machines for his well-being, and the Machine adds first to his comfort and then to his knowledge. In a healthy land this would all work together in the long run. But Cend-Amrid's folk cut themselves off from too much. Now Cend-Amrid is not a healthy place in any way whatsoever."

  "But something must have caused all this. Some dictator must have brought this madness to Cend-Amrid," I said.

  "The Eleven rule in Cend-Amrid - no one man dominates. But the dictator who holds sway over the city is the dictator who has always ruled mankind through the ages - unless the stories of the immortal Sheev are true."

  "You speak of Death," I said.

  "I do. And the form Death takes in Cend-Amrid is one of the most awesome."

  "What is that?"

  "Disease - a plague. The dictator Death brought fear - and fear led the Eleven to their doctrine."

  "But what exactly is their doctrine?" Hool Haji asked.

  The physician was about to reply when he suddenly drew in his breath with a hiss and began to scuttle back the way he had come.

  "Go!" he whispered urgently as he fled. "Go now!"

  His fear had so affected us that we were almost ready to obey his imperative when down the long, dark street towards us came an incredible sight.

  It was like a giant sedan chair, a huge box with handles on all four lower sides, borne on the shoulders of some hundred men who moved as one. I had seen armies on the move, but even the most regimented detachment of soldiers had never moved with the fantastic precision of these men carrying the great box on their shoulders.

  Seated in the box and visible through the unglazed windows on the two sides that were most clearly visible to me were two men. Their faces were immobile and their bodies stiff and straight. They did not look in any way alive - just as the men who bore this strange carriage did not look alive. This was not a sight I had ever expected to see on Mars, where the human individual, no matter what battles and tensions arose in ordinary life, was respected and regimentation of the sort I now observed had hitherto seemed totally alien. Every instinct in me was outraged by the sight and tears of anger came into my eyes. Perhaps this was all instinctive then; perhaps I have rationalized my feelings since. But no matter. I was offended by the sight - deeply, emotionally and psychologically - and my reason was offended, too. What I saw was an example of the insanity the almost-insane physician had spoken of.

  I could feel that Hool Haji, too, was offended in the same way, reacting against the sight.

  Happily we are men of sense and controlled our instincts for the moment. It is a good thing to do this but a bad thing to use this control - which, as rational human beings, we have - to convince ourselves that action is never needed. We simply bided our time and I decided to learn more of this dreadful place before I began to work against it.

  For work against it I was going to. That, I decided, there and then. If the cost was my life and all I held dear, I swore an oath to myself that I would eradicate the corruption that had come to Cend-Amrid, not only for my own sake but for the sake of all Mars.

  I did not then, as the carriage approached us, understand to what ends I would be driven in order to carry out my personal vow. I did not realize the implications of my oath.

  Even if I had it would not have diverted me from my path. The decision made, the vow sworn - and I sensed Hool Haji's own personal vow sworn, because he was my friend and because I knew just how much we had in common - I stood my ground and waited for the carriage to reach us.

  Reach us it did, then it stopped.

  One of the men leaned forward and in a cold voice, devoid of emotion, said:

&
nbsp; "Why you come Cend-Amrid?"

  I was momentarily taken aback by the form of the question. It went so well with the dead face.

  Something in me made me reply in a more flowery manner than the one which I normally employ.

  "We come with open hearts to ask a favour of the folk of Cend-Amrid. We come with nothing to offer but our gratitude, to ask you for help."

  "What help?"

  "We have a motor that is malfunctioning. A flying ship of my own construction with a motor of a kind unlikely to be found on Mars."

  "What kind motor?"

  "The principle is simple. I call it an internal combustion engine - but that will mean little to you."

  "Does it work?"

  "It is not working at present, and that is why we are here," I explained, quelling my impatience. The malfunctioning engine was decreasing in importance after what I had observed in the place that the physician had so aptly termed the City of the Curse.

  "Do principles work well?" asked the dead-faced man.

  "Normally," I replied.

  "If it works it good, if not work then bad," came the emotionless voice.

  "Can you work?" I said angrily, hating the implications of the questions.

  "Cend-Amrid work."

  "I mean - can you repair my motor?"

  "Cend-Amrid do anything."

  "Will you repair my motor?"

  "Cend-Amrid think will repair of motor be good for Cend-Amrid?"

  "It will be good for us - and therefore ultimately good for Cend-Amrid."

  "Cend-Amrid must debate. You come."

  "I think we'd prefer to stay outside, spend the night in our ship and learn your decision in the morning."

  "No. Not good. You not known."

  I was struck by the incredibly primitive reasoning of the man who spoke and saw at once to what the physician had been referring when he mentioned the Beast creating the Machine and leaving Man out of it altogether. Perhaps, looking back, this was good for me, for I realize now exactly what my Mars means to me in logical terms. Make no mistake, the curse which had come to Cend-Amrid was even more alien to the Mars I love than it would be to Earth. And, perhaps because Mars was not prepared against the dangers inherent in Cend-Amrid, I felt that it was my duty to eradicate the disease as soon as possible.

  "I think it would be best, however, if we left Cend-Amrid and waited outside," I said. It was my intention, of course, to try to repair the motor and get back to Varnal as soon as possible, there to get help. One part of me was aware that just as I resented an intrusion on my own personal liberty, the rulers of Cend-Amrid would resent an intrusion of mine, but the decision had been taken and in my heart I knew I was right, though I decided there and then that if violence could be avoided then it would be avoided, for I am fully aware that violence produces nothing, in the end, but further violence, and to react in terms of violence is only to create more violence in the future.

  The dead-faced man's reply was, in fact, an illustration of this when he said:

  "No. Best for Cend-Amrid you stay. If not stay then Cend-Amrid make stay."

  "You will use force to make us stay?"

  "Use many men make two men stay."

  "That sounds like force to me, my friend," said Hool Haji with a grim smile, and his hand went to his sword. Again I stayed his arm.

  "No, my friend - later, perhaps, but let us first see what we can of this place. With luck they will see no reason in not helping us. For the moment let us curb our emotions and go along with them." I muttered this rapidly and the dead-faced man, whose partner beside him had not moved or spoken at any time, did not appear to hear.

  "For the moment," he growled.

  "Only for the moment," I assured him.

  The dead-faced man said: "Do you come?"

  "We'll come," I said.

  "Follow," he ordered, and then to the carriage-bearers, who had remained as expressionless and immobile as he and his friend, he said: "Bearers go back to Central Place."

  Then came another horrifying and unexpected event.

  Instead of turning round, the carriage-bearers began to run backwards.

  Was this efficiency, even in the limited terms of the rulers of Cend-Amrid?

  It was not. It was madness, pure and simple. Sight of this madness almost made me lose the control I had been fighting to maintain, but noticing Hool Haji's stance and knowing that he, too, was about to break, made me restrain him again and thus restrain myself.

  In a mood of outraged horror that made me understand just why the physician had seemed insane we followed the carriage.

  Chapter Three

  THE ELEVEN

  The Central Place had obviously been created by careful calculation of the exact centre of Cend-Amrid, then knocking down existing buildings and putting up a structure that was square and squat, contrasting unnaturally with the other buildings. The Central Place also showed signs of having been erected only recently, and I marvelled at how speedily it must have been built and at what cost - since it must have been created primarily by human labour.

  The Central Place had been built by the blood of men -man subjected to a tyranny far harder to understand than that created by some power-mad dictator!

  The carriage stopped and was lowered to the ground outside the main entrance - a perfect square let into the side -and from it, walking like robots, the two men descended, leading the way into the building.

  Inside it was dim, poorly illuminated by simple lamps that seemed roughly the same as our oil lamps. This surprised me since most Martian peoples still use the almost everlasting artificial lighting that was one of the benefits left behind by the Sheev - the super-scientific race that had, according to legend and the little history that remained, destroyed themselves in a monstrous war many centuries earlier, leaving just a few immortals who had learned the error of their ways and rarely became involved in the affairs of men, fearing perhaps that they might repeat their errors. I remarked on this to Hool Haji and he said that they had once had these lights, but in attempting to make more like them had taken them all to pieces and hadn't been able to put them together again.

  This information added to my impression of the people of Cend-Amrid and helped me to understand why they had become what they were. In sympathizing with the causes of their insanity, it did not alter one wit my intention to attempt, in the best way I could, to eradicate this insanity.

  We walked behind the two into a chamber where we found nine more men, all having the same unnaturally erect bearing and immobile expression as the first two. They differed, of course, in physical appearance.

  The first two took their places at a circular table where the other nine already sat. In the centre of the table, which had been hollowed out, was a grisly sight. In this place it seemed strange that it should be there - until I realized the exact significance of it.

  It was a human skeleton.

  A memento mori, in fact.

  Originally - and perhaps even the Eleven had now lost sight of their original motive - it had been placed there to remind them of death. If the physician had been right, it was fear of the plague which had caused them to create this unnatural system of government.

  The next thing I noticed was that there was one place short at the table. Yet if there were twelve seats around the skeleton, then where was the twelfth? For the rulers of Cend-Amrid called themselves the Eleven.

  I hoped that I might find an answer to this later on.

  In the same flat voice, the man I had originally spoken with told the other ten exactly what had passed between us. He made no personal comment on this and did not seem to be trying to convey anything but the precise information.

  When he had finished, the others turned to regard us.

  "We talk," said the first man after a moment.

  "Shall we go, so that you can decide?" I asked.

  "No need. We consider factors. You here not matter."

  And then began an incredible conversation between
the eleven men. Not once did anyone state an opinion depending 281 on his own personality. To some this might sound attractive - reason ruling emotions - but to experience it was horrifying, for I suddenly realized that a man's personal point of view is necessary if any realistic conclusion is to be reached, no matter how imperfect it might seem.

  To repeat the whole conversation would bore you but, in essence, they debated whether by being of use to us they could get something good for Cend-Amrid.

  Finally they came to a conclusion - a conclusion which I couldn't help feeling a more balanced human being would have come to in a matter of moments. Briefly, it was this: If I would explain how an internal combustion engine was constructed and explain, in general, how it worked, they would help me repair mine.

  I knew how dangerous it could be if I started this unhealthy society on the road to real technical advancement, but I pretended to agree, knowing also that they did not have the tools necessary to build many internal combustion engines before I could be back with help and attempt to cure the sickness that had come to Cend-Amrid.

  "You show?" queried one of the eleven.

  "I show," I agreed.

  "When?"

  "In the morning."

  "Morning. Yes."

  "Can we now return to our airship?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "You stay, you not stay. We now know. So you stay here."

  I shrugged. "Very well. Then perhaps we can sleep somewhere until the morning." At least, I thought, we could conserve our energy until we had decided how to act.

  "Yes."

  "Is there an inn we could stay at?"

  "Yes, but you not stay there."

  "Why not? You could guard it if you didn't trust us."

  "Yes, but you die, not die. We not know. So you stay here."

  "Why might we die?"

  "Plague make die."

  I understood. They did not want us to become infected with the plague, which still held sway, we gathered, in the city. This place was better protected, perhaps, than the rest of the city.

  We agreed to stay.

  The first man then led us out of the chamber and down a short passage-way, at the end of which a flight of steps ran downwards into the cellars of the Central Place.