The Romance of Atlantis (10 page)

They continued to drink. The nude girls no longer waited upon the guests but sat or lay next to them, suiting the guests’ pleasure. Salustra leaned casually on the breast of Erato, her eyes half closed, her red mouth curved in a sensuous smile.

The Empress lifted a languid hand, and the banquet hall was plunged into darkness. The soft whispers of women mingled seductively with the excited panting of men. The orgy had begun, but without the Empress. Salustra had disappeared, and Erato with her.

8

The National Assembly, composed of Senators and the Commoners and Nobles on the Council, gathered in the huge Hall of Law adjoining the royal Palace. Before the towering bronze doors, under tremendous white columns, stood the two giant lions of Atlantis. So cunningly were these figures carved, so lifelike, so fiery their phosphorescent eyes, that at a distance one could not distinguish them from actual animals of gigantic proportions. Inside the marble dome drooped the scarlet banners of Atlantis, bearing upon them the national coat of arms, crossed swords behind a lion rampant. A rigid line of ceremonial soldiery, helmeted and armored, massed around the circular marble walls. Their captain, the handsome Creto, stood directly behind Salustra’s throne.

The Senators sat upon cushioned benches to the right of the Empress. At her left were the twenty-four Commoners and Nobles of the Twelve Provinces, and twenty-four royal Representatives. In ivory chairs between the two groups sat three representatives of the capital, Lamora.

The heat and the haze disturbed them all more than they would acknowledge, but they tried to remain calm and deliberate, as befitted an august body.

The heat was intense, a strange heat, brazen, sultry, smoky. The Noble Gatus spoke of feeling the earth tremble the night before, but he was laughed down. Then Utanlio claimed that if one would listen, the sea had a strange sound, as though a great sea serpent growled beneath the waters. He had heard, also, that the tide had not come in as far as usual for the past few days; indeed, each day it had receded a little farther than the day before. The sun, barely outlined, was surrounded by a smoky ring of fire, and the orb itself was molten brass behind the unusual haze.

While awaiting the Empress, the solons went out onto the portico and stared up at the sky. Some shook their heads and looked uneasy, vaguely recalling an ancient prophecy. One day Sati would become weary of the crimes of Atlantis, and that day she would bid the waters of the sea to roll over it, and the living would know it no more. The aristocrat Contalio mentioned the prophecy, but was shouted down with laughter and ridicule.

“Is it possible that superstition still lingers amongst us?” exclaimed the plebeian Marati.

“Religion could not survive without superstition,” said the Senator Tilus, who was also a philosopher of renown.

“Religion!” exclaimed the Senator Vilio. “What religion? We still have its shadow, it is true, but the substance is gone.”

Gatus mockingly asked the question that Salustra asked herself so often. “What is truth?”

This question aroused great mirth, signaling as it did the entrance of the Empress.

At a great blare of trumpets, the councillors hastened back to their places. The bronze doors swung open, and Salustra emerged in her purple-and-white ceremonial robes, with the twelve-pointed crown of Atlantis. She moved with a stately step to her throne, Mahius a step behind.

Before she seated herself, a massive slave, naked except for a loin cloth and sporting pendants of linked gold in his ears, knelt before the Empress holding in his hands a brazier of hot coals. Mahius handed a red silken bag to the Empress. It contained portions of finely sifted earth from each of the Twelve Provinces. The assemblage knelt in conventional reverence as the Empress unfastened the bag and poured the contents upon the hot brazier. Immediately a pungent cloud of smoke leaped from the coals, spreading upward like a startled serpent.

The Empress lifted her hand and began to speak.

Every corner of the chamber rang with the sound of her voice. It was a twice-repeated welcoming, traditional for centuries, giving imperial sanction for the Assembly to sit. Then Mahius rose and hesitantly pointed out that the national treasury needed replenishing. He called for proposals. At this, Zanius, the Noble representing Lamora, rose with a plan, a tax on the private income of the owners of mills, factories, shops and ships.

Salustra listened, frowning. “No,” she said firmly. “That would be inflicting another injustice on the already overburdened middle class. Who would suffer from such a tax? Not the incompetent and shiftless poor; they are beyond such a tax. Not the independently wealthy, for they are not engaged in industry and trade and manufacturing but live off the investments of the past. As it is, we are becoming a nation of paupers, slaves and enormously wealthy aristocrats. Such a condition cannot long endure without a resulting discontent, chaos, revolution and national disaster.”

The subject was closed.

Another Noble confidently rose to lay a petition of a different nature before the Empress, a sweeping law to suppress treason by proclaiming an emergency. Government spies had unearthed widespread plots to overthrow Salustra and create a republic.

Salustra’s lips curled with derision. “How great your anxiety for me!” she exclaimed, her eye flashing with scorn.

“I am moved to the heart. Consider me overcome with the evidence of your love and devotion.

“Use no oily hypocrisy with me, noble sirs!” she added contemptuously. “Tell me, like men, that you are afraid for yourselves, for your own positions, for your own lives. You petition me for aid to suppress the revolutionists, the radicals, the protesters against your own rapacity. You would have me bypass normal civil rights and throw the dissidents into prison, take their lives, stop their tongues, torture them, confiscate their property. Go to, fools! When national wrongs begin to boil in a caldron of injustice and hatred, it is rank folly to clamp the lid upon it. Let the steam escape. When men talk, they lose energy to act. Let their tongues wag; let their pens write. Suppress them, and the steam blows off the lid.”

She passed on to other proposals, vetoing some, granting others. The Senator Toliti, a well-meaning, if narrow-minded, man, complained that the people were no longer reverent. The majority failed to attend the services in the temples, and ignored public holidays honoring the gods. Obscene epigrams had been written on their very statues. “Let the iron hand of the law descend upon this licentious people, and force them into godly worship,” he said solemnly.

Salustra shook her head wearily, “We will make Atlantis virtuous in spite of herself, eh? I’ll wager Jupia’s shadow is behind thee, Toliti; perhaps even her gold jingles in thy purse at this moment. If Atlantis does not worship her gods, is it the fault of the people or the interpreters—the priests who say do as I preach, not as I do?”

Because of the appalling increase of crime, one Noble proposed more rigid punishments.

Salustra was silent for some time before she spoke. “Why not look for the cause before attempting drastic treatment? Law is held in disrespect. Why? Our courts are slow, unwieldy. Punishment is uncertain. Immunity from justice is a matter of money and influence. Find out, my lords, what is polluting the bloodstream of Atlantis, and you will not have to worry about the increase of crime. Is it undesirable aliens, unjust laws, poverty? Is it overpopulation, congested cities, a trend away from honest labor, a too artificial and sophisticated life? Is crime the passionate protest of the adventurous human animal against the miserable drabness of his existence? Or is it unemployment, the multiplication of the inferior, with no wit for anything but theft and skulduggery? Find out, my lords. I shall hold you responsible for a prompt report.”

In the face of this sardonic inventory, the great hall was silent. The representatives were all too well aware of these ingredients in Atlantis’ decay. During the lull Salustra spoke to Mahius in an aside for several moments. Finally, she came forward a few steps, tall, commanding, vibrant. From her manner, all realized that she had something of importance to communicate.

“Noble sirs, I will recount what would have saved Atlantis. The wealth of the nation should not have been concentrated in the cities but spread over the country. Men’s bodies and spirits should not have been exploited for the sake of amassing fortunes for the aristocratic few. We should have allowed no religion to pollute the air with superstition. We should have prevented the propagation of the unfit, allowing only the superior to procreate. But we didn’t do all this and we have failed!”

The Assembly regarded her with uneasy astonishment.

She raised her hand eloquently. “The hour of reckoning is upon us. Do you know, my lords, that Signar of Althrustri is now approaching Lamora with a great fleet?”

Had the walls of the Hall of Law fallen upon them, the Assembly could have displayed no greater consternation. Voices, shrill, incoherent, merged in a babble of speculation. Where were the legions and the fleet? Why had not Signar been halted before entering Atlantean waters?

Salustra smiled grimly. She said in a low voice to Mahius, “Where is their stoicism now, their smiling indulgence?”

She stood forward and again lifted her hand. “Sirs,” said the Empress with quiet contempt. “You have lived up to my expectations. This panic is what I anticipated.” She paused a moment. Something in her manner made them suddenly hopeful. “I said, sirs,” she repeated with a smile of derision, “I said that we had failed, that the hour had arrived, that Signar was already in Atlantis. It is all true. But he comes with peace in his hand and war in his heart. His primitively powered ships have slipped like a shadow between the vessels of my stationary fleet mysteriously made immobile, as have been our aircraft and land wagons. Even our warning system failed to function in this accursed fog.”

Dismay would again have overwhelmed the Assembly, but Salustra, with an imperative gesture, calmed the group.

“Fortunately, he comes on an ostensibly peaceful mission. Sirs, he hath asked my hand in marriage. In doing so, he states his determination to annex Atlantis peacefully, if need be.”

Hope again surged through them. She saw this, and something akin to contempt again welled up in her.

“I promised my father that I would attempt to preserve the integrity of Atlantis. Could I, by marrying Signar, maintain that integrity, I would gladly marry him. But should I marry him, Atlantis as a nation would disappear.”

She paused dramatically. “But I shall offer him my sister, Tyrhia, in marriage. After my death, his son shall sit upon my throne, and Atlantis will still be a separate nation.”

An awkward silence fell over the hall. Now that the threat of immediate danger seemed past, shame took possession of many.

“If I were in a position to do so,” she continued, “I should attempt to stop Signar. But Atlantis would crumble before him like a rotten melon. He has a weapon that would kindle all of Atlantis. And it was we who gave it to him—traitors here in this Assembly who feel they will be a part of Signar’s new order. They are not only traitors but fools.”

Those like Divona who were guilty all craned their necks as if trying to ferret out the traitors. But for the most part, hope, like a cool wind, blew over the Assembly. The members whispered together in excited tones, ignoring that quiet figure in the shadow of the throne.

She looked down on them as if they were chattering magpies. “You ask yourselves why we do not blast Signar’s empire with our atom-splitter. It is a barren waste, and with it we would only bring the glaciers down upon us.” She smiled bitterly. “Signar hath not the same problem as Atlantis. The beggar hath naught to lose, and so can gamble all on a reckless throw of the dice.”

For the first time the Assembly even considered there was such a person as Tyrhia. Better that she be sacrificed than they. They looked upon Salustra warmly, even affectionately.

She returned their regard in grave silence. “We must deck Lamora as for the visit of a beloved friend,” she said dryly at last. “We will pretend, with him, that he is here on a friendly mission. That is the way of diplomacy.”

9

The Empress strolled into the imperial gardens alone. Under the heavy haze, the great trees formed a rustic pattern of ordered greenery. Marble statues dotted the heavy foliage and the rolling lawns; fountains splashed their perfumed spray into marble basins, the water running off into artificial lakes on which floated regal white swans. The sun, obscured by the endless cloud, barely filtered through the boughs.

At a distance she spied Tyrhia tossing a golden ball with her friends Zutlia, Utanlia and Ludia. Their movements were graceful, their young bodies lithe, full of delicate promise. Their white garments swirled seductively about them with every sudden movement.

Salustra paused in the shade of a tree, watching the frolicking maidens with an amused smile.

Tyrhia pouted when she missed the ball, and angrily accused her companions of deliberately misthrowing it. They deferred to her openly, but Salustra saw the wry smiles they covertly exchanged with each other. She frowned. That babe! she thought to herself. I am beginning to wonder whether I am being just to Signar. Will he crush her fluttering little heart, or will she, like many trivial women, wind the superior male about her fingers, in still another classic example of the tyranny of the weak over the strong? It did not once occur to Salustra that Signar would not grasp at Tyrhia eagerly as a means to what he wanted most—Atlantis. She fell into a reverie. Would Signar’s sons inherit their father’s ambition and enterprise, or would they, as did so many sons, inherit their mother’s softness and smallness?

At this moment, the gamboling maidens caught sight of that majestic figure. Tyrhia, turning swiftly, ran to her with a little exclamation of surprise. Salustra, smiling rather perfunctorily, put her arm about the girl. She looked down into the charming face. With a careless hand, she pushed aside the tendrils of golden hair which curled down on the white forehead. “Thou art warm, little one,” she said. “Thou shouldst be resting, not tripping about in the heat.”