The Valley of the Flame

CHAPTER IV. JANISSA

SHE WAS as he remembered her from that brief glimpse in da Fonseca's lens. There was a prim, gay touch of wickedness about her small mouth. The shadowed eyes were aquamarine, given a subtle slant by the darkness about them. Her hair was—was tiger-striped.

Honey-yellow and dim gold, it was a cloud about her head, so fine that it seemed to fade off into invisibility.

Her garments, blue and gold, clung so closely to her slim body that they seemed like a second skin. At her waist was a wide belt, and now she thrust something into a pocket of it as she smiled at Raft.

With that smile her face changed. It was infinitely appealing, completley tender and welcoming. Her voice, when Raft heard it, was as he expected. A rippling murmur, with that same familiar haunting undertone he had caught in Pereira's voice.

The language was unknown to him, though. Seeing this, the girl switched to stumbling Portuguese, and then, shrugging her slim shoulders, tried an Indio dialect that Raft knew, though he had never heard it spoken in quite this way.

"Don't be frightened," she said. "If I guided you this far, do you think I'll let anything harm you now? Though once I was afraid, when you hesitated at the fork of the road. But you took the right turning."

Raft had bolstered his gun, but his hand still lingered on its cool, reassuring metal. In the same dialect he answered her.

"You guided me here?"

"Of course. Parror does not know; he was too busy getting enough to eat outside." She chuckled. "He hated that. He's a good hunter, but burning meat over open flames—ugh! Parror is not as complacent as you may have thought."

"Parror?" Raft said. "Would that be Pereira?"

"Yes. Now come with me, Brian Raft. You see that I know your name. But there's much that I do not know, and you must tell me those things."

"No," Raft said. He hadn't moved from his position at the top of the staircase. "If you know so much, you know why I came here. Where's Dan Craddock?"

"Oh, he's awake now." She took a tiny lens from her belt and swung it idly. "Parror gave me back my mirror when he returned, since it was no longer needed to keep Craddock controlled. So I was able to see you coming through the jungle. You had looked into my mirror, and after that I could see you. Which was lucky for you, or you'd never have been able to open the gateway to Paititi."

"Take me to Craddock," Raft commanded, feeling very unsure of himself, and therefore acting very sure. "Now."

"All right." The girl's hand touched Raft's arm, urging him down the steps. As they descended the enormous columns seemed to rise above them, the vastness of the huge hall becoming more and more apparent.

"You haven't asked me my name," the low voice said.

"What is it?"

"Janissa," she told him. "And this is Paititi. But you must have known that."

Raft shook his head.

"You may know a lot about the outside world, but it's a one-way circuit. The only place I'd ever heard of Paititi was in a legend."

"We have our legends too."

They were at the foot of the stairs. Janissa guided him across the hall and through an arched opening into a mosaic-walled passage.

There were symbols on those walls, but they struck a note entirely strange to Raft. Once or twice he noticed pictures, but the figures in them seemed to have no resemblance to either Janissa or Pereira—Parror. He. had no time to observe closely.

The girl led him into a smaller hall, up a stairway, and at last into a round room whose walls were softly padded with velvet, cushioned and quilted in patterns like flowers. The floor was padded, too. The whole room was like a great pillowed sofa.

He had a moment to take it all in—the cushiony room, its strangeness and luxury, and the rich, deep colors of the velvet. He saw at one end of the room an oval door of some semi-translucent substance opening upon dim light, and in another wall was an archway, broad and low, which looked out upon moving trees.

There was something rather startling about the trees, but he had no time to look closely. He caught the fragrance of a breeze, though, smelling of flowers and damp jungle lustiness where the sun seldom shines, and realized that he had come out at last upon the surface of the earth somewhere, after the long journey underground.

"Sit down and rest," Janissa said. "You've come far."

Raft shook his head.

"You said you were taking me to Craddock. Well?"

"I cannot do that yet. Parror is with him."

"Good." Raft touched his gun. Janissa merely smiled.

"In Parror's castle—in this land where he has power—you think that will help you?"

"I think so. If it won't, there are other ways." He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against a cushioned wall. "I don't know what kind of superman Parror may be, but I'll bet he can't dodge a bullet."

"A bullet? Oh, I see. You are both right and wrong. Your weapon would have been useless against Parror outside, but in Paititi he is more vulnerable."

Raft stared at the strange, lovely, disturbingly different face upturned to him.

"Meaning what?"

"Parror does not know that you are here. So—"

"But Parror does know," said a very soft, smooth voice. Raft whirled, surprise heightening his pulse and making his breath catch. Parror!

He had come soundlessly through the oval door, and Raft realized, with some distantly logical comer of his mind, that Parror must have been much farther ahead than he had thought, for the man had had time to bathe and change from his ragged garments. The black beard was trimmed to no more than a velvety shadow outlining the heavy, but curiously delicate chin.

The garments he wore were thick, soft, gleaming like dull satin, and fitting so perfectly they might have been literally painted upon his body. He was fingering an odd weapon like a silver whip that hung from the broad jeweled belt he wore.

Raft felt suddenly very unsure of himself. This was too different a meeting from the one he had been anticipating. For this was not the jungle. There was, very definitely, something about Parror that made Raft's skin crawl. Wrong—wrong—a racial wrongness he could not define. He had felt it about Janissa, but not with the violence he felt now.

Arrogance clothed Parror like a garment. He was in his own environment. He was regally confident. Raft had an uncomfortable realization of his own awkwardness and crudity and, from the mockery in the velvety black eyes, he knew that Parror shared the thought.

Parror lifted his lip in a fastidious smile.

"You were not needed here," he said, in the Indio dialect. "But perhaps, after all, I can find a use for you. Yes, I think I can."

"We may, Parror," Janissa murmured, and for an instant unsheathed swords seemed to flash between the two.

"Listen, Pereira or whatever you call yourself, we're going to have a talk," Raft said angrily. "Now. It'll be fast talking, too."

"It will?" Parror murmured, and moved the silver whip jingling in his hand.

"Where's Craddock? What did you do to him?"

"I did nothing. I showed him a certain mirror. Through it he saw—well, I do not know what he saw. But he was tranced."

"Wake him up. Take me to him."

"He is awake now."

"He'd better be," Raft said coldly, his eye on Parror's whip and his fingers touching a cool gun-butt. "You killed da Fonseca with this same funny business, didn't you?"

"Killed him? The mirror is mine. I lent it to him and took it back."

"Yours?" Janissa breathed.

Parror ignored her. "What happened after that is no concern of mine. I had no further use for da Fonseca. And his tongue might have been a danger."

Sudden rage flooded Raft. The bearded man's arrogance, his indifference, even the subtle wrongness he could not put a name to made all the tension of the past three weeks crystallize into a hot fury. A bullet was not enough. Raft wanted to use his hands.

"You bicho!" he snarled. "If Craddock dies I'll break your filthy neck. Take me to him!"

He lunged forward and seized Parror's shoulder, feeling a savage delight in coming to grips with the man at last.

He knew judo. He was well-muscled and agile. But he did not expect Parror to—explode.

It was as if the handsome bearded face vanished and a demon glared out through the flesh and bone of the features. In that instant of utter, inhuman rage Raft saw the lips flatten away from Parror's teeth in a tigerish snarl, and he hissed shockingly as he struggled to tear free. Raft felt the smooth surge of muscles, and the power in them was shocking too, out of all proportion to that sleek, long-limbed slenderness. There was a moment of straining conflict.

Behind him, above the roaring in his ears, Raft heard Janissa's voice.

"Brian! Let him go—quick!"

The desperate urgency of her tone made Raft respond.

Shaken, a little dazed by his own anger and by the sudden, explosive violence it had roused, he released Parror. He felt oddly dazzled. He had never seen any human being, sane or mad, in the grip of a fury as sudden or as demoniac as Parror's.

There was another thing, too. The closeness of the grip had revealed a new, totally unexpected feature. Under the muscular arch of Parror's chest Raft had felt a steady throbbing that was unmistakable.

And yet—back in the base hospital—the man had had no heartbeat!

Parror drew back, shook himself, relaxed into an imperturbable dignity. Miraculously, the insane fury was gone as suddenly as it had been roused.

"You must not touch those of our race in such a way, Brian," Janissa said softly. "If you must kill, then kill. But not maul."

Raft's own voice sounded strange to him.

"What is your race?" he asked, and his questioning gaze moved from the girl's demure face to the man's enigmatic dark eyes.

Parror said nothing. He only smiled, a long, slow, infinitely proud smile. And Raft read the answer. He had been seeing it more and more clearly every moment that passed, in every smooth, flowing motion of his body, even in his insane, inhuman fury at being touched. Inhuman indeed. Raft remembered what Parror had said in the hospital.

"I passed your ancestors, chattering and scratching themselves in the trees. And I passed my ancestors, too."

Yes, Raft knew now that he had passed them in the jungle unseeing, many times. They had gone silently by in the underbrush, on great padding feet, the shadows of the forest gliding across the shadowy markings of their bodies. He had heard their roaring in the dark, and seen their lambent eyes in the firelight.

He thought he knew, now, what race Parror's was. And Janissa's.

Not human. They came from a different stock. As a physician who had done biological and anthropological work, Raft knew that the incredible thing was not theoretically impossible. Evolution is not rigid. It was an accident that had made man the dominant, intelligent race. Accident, and the specialization of opposing thumbs.

Our ancestors were simian, arboreal, using those flexible hands to build the foundations of civilization. But in a different setup, the ruling race might have descended from dogs or reptiles or cats.

Cats.

It struck Raft suddenly, and he was shocked by the realization, that of all animals there is, except for the rodents who do not use it, only one which shows signs of developing an opposing thumb. The domestic cat does occasionally have an extra toe on each forefoot. An opposing toe.

The owner names it Mittens or Boxer and thinks no more about the matter. But given a little flexibility in that extra member, and given time and a favorable environment, such as this secret world of Paititi he did not yet know, what miracles might now develop!

Feline stock. That, perhaps, explained a great deal, but it did not clear up the entire mystery by any means. Raft still had no idea of the connection between Parror and Dan Craddock, nor exactly what was the lens-mirror that had killed da Fonseca. There were many other problems as well. Too many.

He noticed a tenseness ripple through Janissa, as though she had bristled. The word sprang unbidden into his mind. Almost simultaneously, he caught a distant noise, the tramp of feet, the ringing of metal upon metal.

Parror did not seem surprised. He turned toward the translucent door, and shadows loomed against the pale panel. There was a knock.

"Parror?" Janissa said. Her voice held a question.

He spoke to her briefly in the tongue Raft did not understand. She looked quickly toward Raft. Her eyes grew blank. A veil of demure withdrawal dropped down upon her. Suddenly, with a smooth, lithe motion, she was on her feet and vanishing among the trees beyond the arched portal.

Parror called a command. The oval swept up and vanished. Across that threshold, silhouettes against faint light, came men. Men?

They wore close-fitting chain-mail, very finely meshed. Glittering caps of tiny metal links, interwoven into designs, protected their heads. There were ten of them, and each had at his belt a thin, bare blade like a rapier.

They had the same mingled strength and delicacy of features that marked Parror, the same lithe, flowing agility. The taint of the tiger was in the way they moved, and the way their slanted eyes glowed intently on Raft.

Parror had stepped back, with a little shrug, and the ten men, without pausing, closed in on Raft. He realized his danger, though none of them had drawn a sword. He sprang toward the wall where his rifle leaned, saw that he would be intercepted, and snatched out his revolver.

Thin, wiry metal burned like a hot brand about his wrist. Parror had lashed out with his whip. The gun spun from Raft's grip. He felt the onrush of charging bodies, but, curiously, none of the soldiers touched him.

The shining rapiers were out, flickering, gleaming, weaving a deadly mesh all around him. Up and down, feinting, dancing, the steel sang, and Raft drew back, respecting the menace of those glittering swords. He swung toward Parror, but the bearded man had retreated and stood by the open archway, watching alertly.

"He speaks the Indio?" a deep voice asked.

Parror nodded. A soldier with a bronzed, scarred face gestured toward Raft.

"Will you come with us peacefully?"

"Where?" Raft countered.

"To the Great Lord."

"So you're not the big shot around here," Raft said to Parror. "Okay, I'll play it that way. Maybe it won't turn out exactly as you expect."

Parror smiled. "I said I thought I could find a use for you," he murmured in Portuguese. Then he relapsed into the cryptic tongue of the cat-people, and the scarred soldier asked a quick question. Parror's answer seemed to be satisfactory, for the man lowered his rapier.

"Well, Craddock, will you come?" The guard looked at Raft and spoke in Indio.

Craddock? Raft started to answer but Parror cut him off. There was another quick, enigmatic exchange.

Raft interrupted.

"My name's not Craddock. I'm Brian Raft, and I came here after Craddock. That man—" He pointed at Parror "—kidnapped him."

"I'm sorry," Parror said. "Such a trick won't work, and I cannot help you now. The Great Lord rules here. You must talk to him. Best to go with Vann."

Vann, the scarred soldier, grunted.

"He's right. Lies will not save you. Come! As for you, Parror…"

He spat out a few words Raft could not understand. Parror's eyes narrowed, but he made no reply.

A point pricked Raft's back. With a longing glance toward his fallen gun, now, with rifle and rucksack, in the hands of the soldiers, he moved unwillingly forward. Over his shoulder he looked hard at Parror.

"I'll be back," he said, a world of promise in his tone.

Then he stepped through the oval portal and was in Paititi.