Read Online Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Mike Resnick, Robert T. Garcia - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mike Resnick, Robert T. Garcia
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rooms, towers, and courtyards.
As if sensing my reaction to this startling sight, our pilot pointed ahead and lifted the dragonfly even higher. We circled over the amazing structure. I shook my head in puzzlement, trying to identify the image which this titanic architectural achievement called to mind.
A gasp of surprise escaped me as I realized where I had seen a building of similar nature. As a young man I had traveled to the Orient. I had been one of the first Westerners ever permitted into the secret Kingdom of Tibet. There, in the holy city of Lhasa I had been welcomed into the Potala Palace, the capitol and abode of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
And here, on an alien world millions of miles from Earth, I beheld a replica of that ancient structure.
A banner of strange design fluttered from a shaft rising above the highest point on this alien Potala. Our pilot dipped his head toward the banner; then the dragonfly spiraled slowly downward, settling finally in a broad flagstoned courtyard.
Our pilot peeled back the facetted canopy that covered the cockpit and climbed from the dragonfly. Duare and I followed suit. Our long flight had been conducted in nearly perfect silence, and our pilot maintained that silence as we were met by two Amtorians clad from head to toe in costumes of black. Their hair was swept up into peaks. Their faces were stolid and expressionless.
Our pilot turned toward Duare and myself, then spun on his heel and strode away, disappearing into a darkened doorway in the Potala.
One of the two Amtorians who had come to meet our party spoke in a clear but uninflected voice, in the language which is universally known and used on Venus. “You will follow me, please.”
He and his counterpart—I realized now that one was male and other female—turned toward the Potala and began walking toward it at a steady pace. Before striding away from the dragonfly, I swept my hand across one of its winged surfaces, where a few of the glittering Amtorian hailstones had stuck. I picked up a handful of the little gemlike objects and dropped them in my pocket.
Speaking of pockets—I must admit, at this point, that Duare and I were a pair of very bedraggled travelers. We had trekked through the jungle for days following our escape from captivity in the village of the Zorangs, at the end of which we had fought and escaped from the semi-human Andaks with their scorpionlike caudal appendages, only to confront our grassy doppelgangers, the fearmharr arrachtach .
We were both exhausted, filthy, scratched, and scraped. Our clothing hung on us in tatters. Our boots had been through swamp and bramble. I stared at Duare and she at me, and we both burst into laughter at what we beheld.
And yet . . . and yet . . . to me this woman, her face streaked with dirt, knots and twigs in her tresses, her hands roughened and scraped . . . to me this woman was still the most beautiful creature on two planets.
We followed our guides into the great palace. After their initial invitation to follow them, neither spoke again until we had penetrated the great entry hall of the Amtorian Potala. This was floored with a substance that might have been polished marble or obsidian. It was lighted by cressets mounted every few yards along the walls, filled with an oily substance that burned without giving off smoke but a soft, orange-yellow illumination.
The walls on both sides were lined with cyclopean statues of grotesque figures that I inferred to be the ancient gods of Amtor. Each statue was different in color and configuration. Some were human, alternately magnificently heroic and distressingly deformed. Others were of beasts or, worst of all, monstrosities that combined the features of humans and other creatures, like the half-human, half-arthropodal Andaks from whom Duare and I had escaped only through the intervention of deceptively harmless-appearing green nathair culebra or Amtorian tree-snakes.
High on the shadowy walls of the great
As if sensing my reaction to this startling sight, our pilot pointed ahead and lifted the dragonfly even higher. We circled over the amazing structure. I shook my head in puzzlement, trying to identify the image which this titanic architectural achievement called to mind.
A gasp of surprise escaped me as I realized where I had seen a building of similar nature. As a young man I had traveled to the Orient. I had been one of the first Westerners ever permitted into the secret Kingdom of Tibet. There, in the holy city of Lhasa I had been welcomed into the Potala Palace, the capitol and abode of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
And here, on an alien world millions of miles from Earth, I beheld a replica of that ancient structure.
A banner of strange design fluttered from a shaft rising above the highest point on this alien Potala. Our pilot dipped his head toward the banner; then the dragonfly spiraled slowly downward, settling finally in a broad flagstoned courtyard.
Our pilot peeled back the facetted canopy that covered the cockpit and climbed from the dragonfly. Duare and I followed suit. Our long flight had been conducted in nearly perfect silence, and our pilot maintained that silence as we were met by two Amtorians clad from head to toe in costumes of black. Their hair was swept up into peaks. Their faces were stolid and expressionless.
Our pilot turned toward Duare and myself, then spun on his heel and strode away, disappearing into a darkened doorway in the Potala.
One of the two Amtorians who had come to meet our party spoke in a clear but uninflected voice, in the language which is universally known and used on Venus. “You will follow me, please.”
He and his counterpart—I realized now that one was male and other female—turned toward the Potala and began walking toward it at a steady pace. Before striding away from the dragonfly, I swept my hand across one of its winged surfaces, where a few of the glittering Amtorian hailstones had stuck. I picked up a handful of the little gemlike objects and dropped them in my pocket.
Speaking of pockets—I must admit, at this point, that Duare and I were a pair of very bedraggled travelers. We had trekked through the jungle for days following our escape from captivity in the village of the Zorangs, at the end of which we had fought and escaped from the semi-human Andaks with their scorpionlike caudal appendages, only to confront our grassy doppelgangers, the fearmharr arrachtach .
We were both exhausted, filthy, scratched, and scraped. Our clothing hung on us in tatters. Our boots had been through swamp and bramble. I stared at Duare and she at me, and we both burst into laughter at what we beheld.
And yet . . . and yet . . . to me this woman, her face streaked with dirt, knots and twigs in her tresses, her hands roughened and scraped . . . to me this woman was still the most beautiful creature on two planets.
We followed our guides into the great palace. After their initial invitation to follow them, neither spoke again until we had penetrated the great entry hall of the Amtorian Potala. This was floored with a substance that might have been polished marble or obsidian. It was lighted by cressets mounted every few yards along the walls, filled with an oily substance that burned without giving off smoke but a soft, orange-yellow illumination.
The walls on both sides were lined with cyclopean statues of grotesque figures that I inferred to be the ancient gods of Amtor. Each statue was different in color and configuration. Some were human, alternately magnificently heroic and distressingly deformed. Others were of beasts or, worst of all, monstrosities that combined the features of humans and other creatures, like the half-human, half-arthropodal Andaks from whom Duare and I had escaped only through the intervention of deceptively harmless-appearing green nathair culebra or Amtorian tree-snakes.
High on the shadowy walls of the great
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