CHAPTER XXI
_Love, Music--and a Warning_
The Water Festival! As our barge rounded a bend in the canal, under thearchways of dangling colored lights, the festival spread before us.Involuntarily I stood up to gaze. The canal opened into an artificiallake--a broad circular sheet of water some 800 _helans_[17] in diameter.Sloping hillsides enclosed the lake--hillsides which I saw were terracedwith huge banks of seats in tiers one above the other.
[Footnote 17: About 4,000 feet.]
The seats were crowded with people. White ribbons of roads gave accessfrom the neighboring countryside for land-surface vehicles, and therewere stages for the accommodation of air-craft. The rural populace, andpeople from the nearby smaller cities, had gathered to view thisnational spectacle--a million or more of them probably, with theirindividual electrical telescopes for direct distant vision, and smallpocket mirrors for that which otherwise would be hidden. A millionpeople at least, seated here on these gigantic spreading tiers.
The lake itself was thus the stage as it were, of a tremendous arena.Tiny artificial islands dotted the lake--a hundred of them. Islands,some no more than a few feet broad; some larger, and in the center ofthe lake, one quite large. All the islands were covered with luxuriantvegetation. The tiny ones were no more than shadowed nooks of leaves andflowers.
Between the islands, crooked lanes of the placid water wended their wayin and out, broadening into occasional lagoons. Bridges crossed thelanes; archways of lights spanned them at intervals.
From this distance the whole scene was a riot of color and great red andpurple auroral lights of Venus, which at this midnight hour rode theupper sky, tinged everything vividly. The archway lights were soft rose,silver and gold. Some of the tiny islands, from sources hidden werebathed in bright silver. Others darker, in deep purple and red; stillothers, quite unlighted, dim and shadowed, touched only by the reflectedglow from those near them.
From the main island lights were flashing into the sky; occasional colorbombs mounted and burst, painting the heavens.
A riot of color. And then as we approached, I became aware of sound andmovement as well. Music from scores of unseen sources. Music from singleisolated instruments floating softly over the water--lovers playingaccompaniment to their pleading voices; or again, groups of voices--thecuriously mellow voices of young girls--and, on an island apart, musicfrom an aerial carrying strains from the public _concelan_.[18]
[Footnote 18: Orchestra.]
It was all music of a type unfamiliar to me of Earth. Theintellectuality of our Earth music was missing. This music of Venus wasbuilt upon queer minor strains; unfinished cadences; a rhythm of thesort we of Earth could never encompass. I listened, and felt the appealof my senses. The lavish, abandoned music of barbarism? I had almostthought it that. Yet it was not. Rather was it decadent. This wholescene; the color, the music, the heavy cloying scents with which thenight air was redolent; the warm, sensuous abandonment, felt rather thanmade obvious--it was not barbarism, but decadence. And I realized thenhow close are the two extremes. A reversion to type, merely. And I knew,then, that from the pinnacle of civilization which we of Earth hadreached, naught lay before us but this.
Music everywhere throughout the festival. And movement. As we floatedout of the canal, passing slowly along one of the broader waterways,boats and barges slipped past us. Barges crowded with revelers. And thesmall boats, generally with but a man and a girl--fugitive couples withthe holiday spirit upon them, seeking the shadowed nooks of islands fortheir love-making.
In one lagoon we came upon such a boat. The man in it--a gay youth inred and black motley, with the mask fallen from his laughing, perspiringface--was in its stern, manipulating it with a long, thin paddle. Thegirl was lying face down on cushions in its prow. She was facingforward, with her long white hair tumbling about her. Around the boatwere clustered a number of other boats. Each was small, with only a manin it. A ring of boats, besieging the girl. Our barge paused to watch. Aboat would dash forward, its occupant standing up to thrust it on. Butthe girl, swung to meet it by the efforts of her escort, would turn hercylinder of _alcholite_[19] upon the attacker. Befuddled, her adversarywould retreat; or another, momentarily drunk, would fall into the waterto be sobered.
[Footnote 19: A scent or perfume, highly intoxicating.]
All with gay shouts of laughter; until at last the couple werevictorious and scurried away to their island.
We passed on. There were mimic battles often on the islands. A hiddencouple found out and dragged back. A lone man attacked and pelted withflowers by a band of marauding girls. A diving platform at one end of anoval lagoon. Girls mounting it to dive into the red-shimmering water,where waiting youths were swimming, and by their prowess in downingother contenders would seize upon the girls and carry them off to wherea barge was loading its passengers for the main island.
To this main island we came at last. It was heavily wooded, and indentedwith shallow, placid waterways. In one of them we landed; and amid asudden quiet and awe at the presence of Tarrano, we went ashore. Georgwalking with Maida; Tarrano forcing Elza to hold his arm; and I, besideElza until Tarrano sternly bade me walk behind.
We were masked, but the revelers knew us. Amid the throng with which theisland was packed, we moved slowly forward toward a gay pavilion whichwas in the center of the grove. Music came from it--a broad, roofed-overpavilion with a dancing floor in the depression of its center space, andtiers of balconies above it.
Within the pavilion, where the air was heavy with the smell of wine,arrant-smoke, intoxicating whiffs of surreptitiously usedalcholite-cylinders and sensuous perfumes upon the garments of thewomen--in here, the throng pressed around us; the dancers stopped togaze; the music momentarily hushed; the spectators on thebalconies--girls reclining on cushions with young gallants seated besidethem with trays of food and drink--all turned to crane down at us.
"Honor to the Master Tarrano!"
A girl shouted it. A murmur of applause swept about us.
Abruptly Tarrano removed his mask. His face, which had been concealed,showed with the flush of pleasure and his lips were parted with a smileof gratification and triumph. But, as the red silk mask was doffed,another took its place--the mask of imperturbability--that grave,inscrutable look with which he always masked his real emotions.
"Honor to the Master Tarrano!"
Tarrano raised his hand; his quiet, calm voice carried throughout thesilent room.
"There is no Master here tonight. No Master--only the Mistress of Love.Let us honor her. Let _her_ rule us all--tonight."
For just an instant his gaze seemed to linger upon Elza; then he gravelyreplaced his red mask. Applause swept the room; the music started again.The lights overhead began whirling their kaleidoscope of colors downupon the dancers.
We took our places in a canopied enclosure upon the first balcony, sometwenty feet above the dance floor. Tarrano refused the cushions; heplaced Elza deferentially upon them, and spread food and drink andsweet-meats before her. Near them sat Georg and Maida. I would have satbetween Elza and Georg, but Tarrano pulled me away from them.
"You are wanted below." He said it very softly, for my ears alone; butthrough his mask I could see his eyes blazing at me.
"They are diving into the pool outside--cannot you hear them, JacHallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have beenstaring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seekinghandsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You arenot wanted here. Go!"
"I----"
"Another word will be your last." His voice was still almostemotionless, but I did not miss the gesture of his hand to his belt."You had best obey, Jac Hallen."
I was hardly so witless as not to realize the truth of his admonition. Iturned away; and with all the laughter and movement around us, I thinkthat Georg, Maida and Elza did not see me go.
For the space of an hour or more, I stood alone on the lower floor ofthe pavilion, watching the bal
cony where Tarrano and the others sat.Stood there alone, feeling helpless and with my heart heavy withforeboding. Beneath my grey robe I was dressed in holiday fashion of theGreat City--beribboned and gartered, with feathers at my scarletshoulders for all the world like a male _nada_.[20] My red mask I kepton, and folded my cloak around me.
[Footnote 20: A popinjay--fop.]
The dance floor was crowded. I saw now that it was cut into smallcircles marked with black--circles in diameter about the length of aman. At intervals--perhaps five minutes apart--a signal in the musiccaused each of the dancing couples to select a circle and to dancewholly within it. And then one of the circles, by mechanical device, wasraised into the air above all the others. The couple on it, thusprominent, danced at their best, to be judged by Tarrano for a prize.
For an hour I stood there. I could see Elza plainly. She had removed hermask. Her face was flushed, her lips laughing. Once, in a chancesilence, her shout of applause rang out. The quality of abandonment init turned me cold. Did I see Tarrano's hand move back to his belt? Washe intoxicating her? Then I saw Maida make a gesture--wave somethingfrom beneath her cloak at Elza. A scent to sober her? It seemed so, forElza looked confused; and I saw Maida flash her a look of warning.
Abruptly, from an alcove near me, a group of girls rushed out. Theircloaks and white veils fell from them as they came my way--laughing asthey ran for the doorway leading outside to the pool. I was in their wayand they bumped into me; one of them gripped me. I tried to jerk loose,but she clung. A slim girl, enveloped in her long, white tresses. Hereyes laughed at me; her red mouth went up alluringly to my face.
"I love you--_you_, Jac Hallen." Her arms wound about my neck as sheclung. I was trying to cast her off when her fingers lifted a corner ofmy mask.
"I was afraid you were _not_ Jac Hallen." Her whisper was relieved, andit had suddenly turned swift and vehement. "I am sister to Maida--myname, Alda. I am to warn you. When Tarrano dances with the RedWoman--when they go up on the raised circle--_you drop to the floor_!You understand? Keep down, or the rays might strike you! But be here,inside, and watch. And _afterward_, go quickly to join the Princess andyour Elza. You understand?"
She clung to me, with her slim, white body pressed against my cloak. Toanyone watching us, she would have seemed merely making love. Her eyeswere provocative; her lips mocking me. But she was whispering, _"Drop tothe floor when Tarrano dances with the Red Woman--drop or the rays mightstrike you!"_
Another girl was plucking at me from behind. Alda shouted: "You shallnot have him!" and cast me off. But I heard her whisper, _"Come outsidefor a moment--then come back!"_--and then, aloud, she cried to the othergirl, "You shall not have him! He is coming to watch me dive and swim! Iam more beautiful than you--you could not win him from me!"
I let them drag me out into the grove by the scented pool.