The Romance of Atlantis (6 page)

Salustra cut him off. “You would have had a larger candle, forsooth.”

The manager had the intelligence to blush. “We do find ourselves in unaccustomed straits, Majesty.”

She looked around a darkened chamber, toward an outside balcony. There, in the approaching dawn, she could see a series of giant rubylike crystals slanted toward the sky. “And what is being done to remove these straits?”

The manager, Zeno, was a product of the civil-servant system, like the others Salustra had encountered. He made no attempt to dissemble. “The Minister for Science just left, Majesty, and we are under his direct orders.”

“And the orders?”

“That we remain on duty through the crisis.”

“You may be here a long time, Zeno.”

He bowed. “My staff and I stand ready to do what we can.”

“That is very well, but meanwhile thou providest a spectacle of a solar-energy center without sufficient light to move around in. What has happened to thy independent generators, man, so thou canst at least see thy own shadow?”

For a moment he hesitated.

“Speak up, man.”

“The Minister for Solar Energy, Majesty, has never encouraged any other energy.”

“And why not?” Her voice was sharply insistent.

The manager suddenly became uncomfortable. “By the same reasoning,” he said uncertainly, “that the Minister for Tidal Energy resisted our efforts to modernize our system.”

“And what was that?”

“So that the one would not be more important than the other.”

Salustra drew a deep breath, and her lips curled in disgust. “It is no wonder that we have no ready way of overcoming this crisis. We have blockheads for ministers.”

She turned to Creto, but spoke almost as though to herself. “One knows a civilization is moribund when jackals quarrel over the first bite.” Her eyes took on a look of brooding intensity. “Underneath our Mount Atla and a hundred other mountains simmers enough volcanic energy to heat ten million homes, fuel ten million land wagons and a thousand ships, and a hundred great pumps if need be. The scientists call it thermal energy: It is the earth’s own steam heat, and yet we have done nothing with it because some thought it would spoil the aesthetic features of the mountain tops, while others have selfishly sought to make their department first.” She sighed. “Whom the gods would destroy they first make brainless.”

Her mood lifted, and her voice grew less intense as she motioned to the crystal-like reflector jutting out over the balcony. “Tell me, Zeno, how this works, when it does work?”

Zeno seemed relieved to be on positive ground. “This is one of a large network of reflectors which capture the sun’s latent power, then transform the limitless energy from the sun to relay centers around the country, sending varying impulses like a radio beam to ships, hovercraft, land wagons, and units of the city’s rapid-transit system.”

“What of our airplanes?” she said.

“As you know, Majesty, we have very few long-distance aircraft, as there is no civilization comparable to our own to journey to.”

As she looked into the intelligent eyes, she felt an inclination to expand on the thoughts turning in her mind. “Dost thou know anything of history, Zeno?”

“Some, Majesty. I am Atlantean born, though my ancestors came from honorable Dimtri.”

“Then thou must know that Atlantis faces its most serious crisis since the great dinosaurs overran the earth centuries ago and threatened our population. Having despoiled most of the earth’s surface, except for Althrustri, which was too cold and forbidding even for these monsters, these armored dragons next fell on our people. The Atlanteans of that time had no weapons with which to repulse these formidable creatures, some standing several stories high and weighing hundreds of tons. What were spears, swords, axes, arrows, even catapults against monsters who could swallow up a roomful of men with a gulp? But, driven by necessity as urgent as today’s, our ancestors devised new ways of defending themselves, First, there were flame-throwers, then explosives, but neither flames nor ordinary firearms could pierce hides two feet thick. So our ancestors, developing new sciences out of their extremity, experimented with the atmosphere and found they could draw vast streams of energy from the sun, capable of great explosive power when brought to atom-splitting heat. And so the nuclear atom-splitter was born. But even as it got rid of the beasts, it tore up forests, mountains and populated areas. But out of it all came the energy that gave Atlantis a technology never surpassed.”

She fell silent, musing a moment, as both Creto and Zeno maintained an air of respectful attention.

“And what has it done for us? It made us affluent, and then soft and pleasure-loving.”

Abruptly she shook her head. “Come, I keep you two awake, and myself as well. Let us—” she motioned to Creto “—bid good-bye to the worthy Zeno, who minds the lighthouse after the light has gone out.”

It was already dawn, though the sun was nowhere to be seen, when the Empress finally got back to her Palace and her bed.

“Go to, Creto,” she said playfully, giving him a fond tap on his head, “thou richly deservest thy own bed for thy services this night.”

4

Salustra conferred gravely with her minister and her representatives on an entirely new matter. A strange band of foreigners had recently appeared in Lamora. Who they were, and from whence they came, no one knew. They were dark men with hungry black eyes and large aquiline noses so unlike the fair, regular features of the Atlanteans. Atlantis traditionally granted peaceful residence to all, asking no questions, but this group had become a problem through arousing public resentment by their conspicuous lack of piety. The national religion of Atlantis involved the worship of Sati, the great goddess of wisdom and fertility. In the early life of the nation, she had also been the jealous patroness of agriculture. Salustra paid her homage tongue in cheek, but she recognized the wisdom of her father in upholding the national religion, to give the masses something they could feed on in time of stress. With the problems she already had she found this new problem most vexing. “Are these strange men peaceful?” she asked of Mahius.

The old man replied hesitantly. “They publicly declare they oppose conflict and dissension, but they refuse tribute to Sati, and never attend the temples, or celebrate the holidays. Also, they expound the tenets of their own faith to all who will listen.”

“And what are these tenets?”

“They declare there is only one God, and He is not Sati. They declare Him just, virtuous, jealous, all-powerful when He wills; that He hates idols, intemperance, incontinence and pleasure of a worldly kind.”

Salustra smiled cynically. “Atlantis has always granted religious sanctuary, provided the religionists do not meddle with affairs of state, blaspheme Sati, or cause public disturbance. From what thou hast told me, Mahius, they seem harmless enough, except I like not this all-powerful concept. It would not do to encourage this belief. New religions are poison in the bloodstream of an old nation. They cause division and lay authority open to attack.” She looked off into the distance with narrowed eyes. “Pleasure!” she said. “Pleasure of whatever kind is the only thing that makes tolerable this most intolerable of all worlds. They must be corrupt who call pleasure sinful!”

The new religionists talked disturbingly about freedom. One million of Lamora’s inhabitants, almost every fourth man, were slaves, and a million others from Althrustri maintained their old allegiance. The slaves were descendants of those impressed from the tropic islands near Atlantis at a time when Atlantis had been thinly populated and men were needed to fell the forests, tame the rivers, plant the plains. The slaves had multiplied and formed a formidable nation within a nation. The old Emperors had wanted to free them when the original purpose had been served, but the slaveholders objected, even though the state offered to reimburse them. For prestige was measured by the slaves one owned.

Salustra had hoped to return the slaves to their ancestral islands, but after hundreds of years few felt ties to the misty lands of their origin and most desperately clung to a desire to be taken care of.

Salustra saw the dangers of a large parasitic population. The slaves, backed by their masters, saw only the present urgency. “We have never provided for ourselves,” they said, “and we dread the prospect of not being provided for.”

Even as she thought of all this, and the representatives thought longingly of their perfumed baths and their female slaves softly massaging them with fragrant oils, Salustra watched the dark clouds against the dull outline of the sun. One formation startlingly resembled the Lamora skyline. Through a momentary gap in the perennial mist, the aurocalcric white pillars, towers, domes and walls of the city were momentarily splashed with color, and, too, the lofty peaks in the distance, as though a whole city were covered with blood.

Shaken by this vision, she rubbed her eyes uncertainly. She stood up abruptly, even as Mahius was speaking. “None of you has anything to say,” she said impatiently. “In three months the Council will sit again. Tomorrow, ambassadors from the Emperor Signar of Althrustri bring an urgent message from their master, and it will be curious to note whether their urgency is also ours.”

She stood impatiently as each representative approached to touch her foot with his forehead, a precedent that preserved the gulf between her and her advisers. By the time the last had departed, she was worn to a frazzle. But once alone, she lay back upon the cushions and closed her eyes gratefully. She was not only weary but sick in spirit, knowing in her heart what the future foretold for Atlantis.

I am soul-weary, she thought, as she stretched out upon a divan in the cool shadow of a chamber that opened out onto a roofless gallery.

From where Salustra lay, she could see the mist shrouding the normally purple sky and mountains. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the musky ambrosia from the lush gardens below. A slave touched a mechanism on the wall, and a round lamp on a slender golden pedestal filled the chamber with a soft light, which flickered for a moment before it stayed on. Thick crimson rugs were islands of color on the shining marble floor. Exquisite statues were half-glimpsed in the shadows of the stately pillars. Frescoes on the snowy walls peered out quietly in delicate hues. The arched ceiling was so high it was lost in a haze. Large vases, of beautiful symmetry even in their odd shapes, were decorated with masses of varicolored and fragrant flowers.

The slaves brought forward a little ivory table and noiselessly laid out the Empress’ supper. She watched them listlessly. She had an increasingly terrible sense of unreality, a premonition of disaster. With an effort she turned to her food. The meal was simple: fruit, cheese, honey, wheaten cakes, a roasted bird, wine. She lifted a crystal goblet to her lips and frowned over its sparkling brim. With a curt gesture she motioned for all but one slave to leave. The girls exchanged furtive glances as they withdrew between the columns like white shadows. Some were trembling, for with the self-importance of the insignificant, they were sure her displeasure concerned them.

“What is wrong with me?” Salustra shook herself irritably. Bah! she thought. What I need is a new lover or a physic. But where shall I find him? We are a nation of monkeys. We chatter emptily of things, label wonders with words, and think that in this way we have pierced their mysteries. We call a mysterious force electricity, and are therefore content. We have given it a name! What more can be desired? We call our existence life and, once naming it, never ask what it is. Monkeys, without a monkey’s peace of mind. Where is there a man who is not a fool? But perhaps I am the fool, after all.

She picked up a bunch of grapes and surveyed them with a critical eye. She had put one to her lip when a soft laugh interrupted her reverie. She frowned, looking up quickly. A slim girl stood at the foot of the divan, watching the Empress with dancing eyes. White flowers garlanded a crowd of golden hair, and dark-blue eyes looked brightly from under golden lashes. The soft lamplight, highlighting the gold in her hair, at the same time silhouetted the ripening curves of slim thighs and bosom.

Salustra’s lip softened. She lifted herself on an elbow and held out her hand.

“Oh, Salustra,” pouted the girl, “thou didst promise me that thou wouldst return early. Hast thou forgotten that this is my birthday? Already the guests begin to arrive, and thou art lying here!”

Salustra drew a blue cushion to her side and motioned the girl to seat herself. “Thou foolish little Tyrhia!” said the Empress fondly. “Dost think I have naught else to occupy me? I have not forgotten. But thy guests must wait. Who are they but virgin maids like thyself, and their beardless fondlers?”

Tyrhia’s voice turned shrill. “Thou dost treat me as though I were a child, Salustra! And thou dost speak as if thou wert a crone with bleary eyes. Knowest thou not that I have invited Lustri?” She smiled with arch pride. “Didst thou think I had forgotten thee?”

Salustra frowned faintly, then smiled indulgently. “Lustri will not come,” she said. “Ask me not how I know. Here, child, wilt thou have wine, or perhaps this orange is more to thy liking?”

Tyrhia scowled at her sister. “There are others, they always come,” she went on in a sultry voice. “There are always thy friends, and Mahius, and the Council. Already they arrive.”

Salustra’s face hardened suddenly, and Tyrhia shivered a little. “Have I not told thee that thou art too young for such dissolute company? The Council! Debauchees! And, I suppose, in thy foolishness thou hast included the Senate. Monkeys. Hippopotami! Baboons! How didst thou dare?”

Tyrhia’s lips trembled. “I am not a child!” she said sullenly.

Salustra shrugged. “Thou art a child.” She touched the white flowers on the girl’s head and adjusted a stray blossom with tender fingers, responding to the springlike radiance and untouched virginity of her sister.

After a moment, Tyrhia artfully began to chatter of the day’s gossip, interrupting her own flow of words with supplications that Salustra hasten. “Dost thou know that foolish little Poymnia, Salustra? What dost thou think? She hath lost her heart to Licon, the son of Glaurus, that gilded butcher! Her father declares she shall enter the cloister of Sati if she doth not turn aside her eye, and she is defying him. Is it not absurd? She thinks herself a languishing heroine of the drama, dying of love. And absurdity of absurdities, Licon does not even know that she casts calf eyes upon him. He is serenely in love with Utanlia, and Utanlia hates him, which makes him love her the more. And, oh, dost thou remember Zutlia, whom thou didst call a little crocodile with her sleepy eyes and big sharp teeth? She is betrothed to Seneco, that fat old roue! He drips with jewels, and her father hath lost his fortune in sunken vessels and at the gaming table. So he sells Zutlia, who hath a voluptuous figure. But she is quite content to be sold. She is tired of having but one slave girl to attend her. She puts on such airs! Ludia was here today, also; she minces like a cat, and her mother purrs like one. They fawn when they speak of thee, but they shiver, too, in spite of their wealth. Ludia poked her fingers in the cage of my parrot, and got them well nipped. I laughed until I wept; they departed in high indignation. And today, Salustra, I saw the most entrancing necklace of sapphires; the stars shone in them. And only two thousand sallions! Seneco has them in his shop, and he dangled them for me to admire. Only two thousand sal-lions, Salustra! How they would glitter on thy neck!”