The Romance of Atlantis (4 page)

She now sat up on the edge of the bed, a shimmering vision in an abbreviated garment that began at the gentle swell of her breast and stopped at the hips.

Mahius coughed uncertainly.

“Now tell me of this earthquake, old man,” said Salustra in a teasing tone.

Mahius’ gaze was as close to a reprimand as it had ever been with his ebullient Empress. “It is nothing to jest about, Majesty, not when one considers the terrible situation we already find ourselves in.”

Salustra became instantly attentive. “Speak without riddles, old man,” she said sharply. “What dost thou mean to say?”

The old man gulped a few times. “This is no ordinary earthquake and there has been no such activity on the seismograph on Mount Atla since the last atom-splitter convinced our ancestors this was too devastating a weapon to be controlled by man.”

Salustra now threw a colorful wrapper about herself, reached for her father’s jeweled chain and stood up, immediately alert.

“If we do not shatter the atom in the air because of what it may do to us, how can others safely use it?” She looked up, struck by a sudden thought. “To the north is only the land of the Althrustri, and they are much too backward to have developed nuclear energy.”

Mahius waved his hand expressively. “Its manufacture is no secret, Majesty. Millions of Atlanteans have been concerned with its production and use, and some of these are Althrustrian-born, with a prior loyalty to their native land.”

“What art thou suggesting, old man?”

He shrugged. “Like thyself, Majesty, I ask where they got it, and no reasonable answer, except one, suggests itself.”

The Empress’ eyes flashed. “I cannot accept the suggestion that any Atlantean, however discontented, could submit his country’s fate to the whims of the barbarian.”

Mahius sat silent for a few moments. “That is not my immediate concern, Majesty.”

She looked up in surprise. “And what could that be?”

“We know the atom-splitter must be touched off deeply underground, lest it set up a chain reaction that could destroy the earth with its terrible heat.”

She gave him an impatient glance. “Yes, man, go on.”

“If the Althrustri have exploded the atom in the atmosphere, it could already, with its tremendous release of thermal energy, have begun a vaporizing action on mountains of solid ice at the pole.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “And if so, how would this first manifest itself?”

“It is too early to say, but as the heat chewed at the ice, there would be all the progressive elements of a great thaw; first, the pulverizing effect, and then as the radiation continues, a melting of an ice field as great as the Atlantic Ocean itself.”

“That would certainly mean an end of the Althrustri.”

He nodded gravely. “And perhaps of Atlantis, as the oracles have prophesied for centuries.”

She spoke sharply. “They named no time, old man.”

“Not quite so, Majesty.” He repeated serenely, “When the land is so corrupt that even the beasts in the fields and the birds in the sky flee it, then shall we see the latter days and the vengeance of the gods.”

Her lips curled in vexation. “Give me not the gods, Mahius. It is too early in the day for oracles. Besides—” she looked at a timepiece by her bed “—it is time to sit again with the Twelve Provinces. I must get ready for this meaningless sop to tradition.”

Mahius rose with an effort, his old bones creaking more than their wont. “I will meet thee there, Majesty, perhaps with more information.”

“Go to, old man,” she said. “And let us face this more immediate ordeal of the provincial Assembly together.”

Four times a year Salustra sat for three days with the representatives of the Twelve Provinces. The Commoner was chosen by popular referendum, the Noble by the aristocracy, each for six years, and none might serve longer without express consent of the sovereign. “In this way,” Lazar had said, “corruption can be minimized. It takes three years to become vulnerable to graft, another two years to overcome the fear of being caught!”

The sovereign was the last authority, and the lowliest might appeal over the heads of the highest public official. Treachery and the betrayal of public trust were the most heinous crimes, punished by confiscation and death. The sons of convicted representatives were disenfranchised for ten years. Elections were supervised, and no more than a thousand decenari could be spent on any campaign—an inconsiderable amount. At one time there had been a movement to give women the right to vote. Salustra had vetoed the proposal. “They would vote in the beginning as do their fathers, their husbands and their sons,” she said. “Therefore, there would be only a multiplication of the proportionate masculine vote. After a while, they would be governed by appearances and vote for only the handsomest and most personable men. They would all be actors or models.”

She never thought of herself as a woman, and was considered colder, more ruthless and more indomitable than even her father. Occasionally, Lazar had been moved to pity and generosity. But not Salustra. A matter was right or wrong; either it was an infringement of the national law or it was not. Some declared her cruel; others defended her as hard but fair. And fairness without mercy can be a terrible thing. Just as she met with the provinces four times a year, she conferred for diplomatic reasons with the ambassadors of the small southern kingdoms and Althrustri. Althrustri’s two ambassadors habitually wore an air of quiet defiance before the queen.

“Althrustri,” they murmured, “is as great as Atlantis.”

“The strong have no need of diplomacy,” she said dryly, “certainly not such diplomats as you.”

They reported back regularly to their master about this extraordinary woman. She had no illusions about the Emperor Signar’s ambitions. She knew Althrustri to be younger, more vigorous, hungrier for dominion than Atlantis. She kept a wary eye to the north, she heard the protestations of friendship from Signar’s ambassadors without comment. She bore no resentment. Signar merely represented the inevitable. As well resent the storm, earthquake or flood. Youth was always in hot pursuit of age. Atlantis had had her day: Althrustri’s was coming. Nevertheless, she would delay the hour.

“Be peaceful,” was her watchword. “Make no overt act, but let all see that your sword is well sharpened.” Her ministers, save Mahius, had urged disarmament. To make a constant show of nuclear aircraft and ships and missiles, together with disintegrating rays, was to tempt war, they said. Let the northern neighbor see Atlantis disarm, and it would soon follow suit. Salustra had smiled incredulously. How could so-called wise men be so simple? “A disarmed man is a temptation to his enemies,” she replied. She told her people: “If you love Atlantis and would enjoy peace, arm to the teeth.”

The people had so trusted her that they had voted a larger arsenal of weapons. Signar had been compelled to give Salustra a grudging accolade. “This is a leader,” he told his distresssed ambassadors, “though she leads a sick and craven flock.”

The Althrustri were not sufficiently advanced technologically to match Atlantis in any nuclear race. But through espionage, through promises, to Atlantean malcontents and traitors, of petty principalities and high offices, they had stolen what they could not create. They had touched off their first blasts in the glacial wilderness north of their bleak capital city of Rayjava. Huge gaping holes had been torn into mountains of ice, and clouds of heavy mist had vaporized, hovering over the ice caps like a thick blanket. After a while, the water level immediately south of Althrustri had risen noticeably, but they thought nothing of this, not knowing enough of the weapons they had stolen to understand their long-range action. And in his contempt for the consequences, Signar made it clear he would not hesitate to use the atom in attack. “What other reason for weapons, but to subdue one’s adversaries?”

He despised the Atlantean regime’s reluctance to curb him when they had the chance. “Except for their Empress,” he said scornfully, “they are all women.”

Beyond his plan of annexing Atlantis, there was a mounting interest in this woman. When she apprehended his agents, he only laughed appreciatively. For his part, he caught a few of her spies and returned them to Atlantis with splendid gifts for the Empress. Salustra responded almost in kind. When the next Althrustrian spy was apprehended, she sent his head to Signar in a golden casket. The energy crisis was not so easily disposed of. With necessity the mother of invention, Atlantis over the centuries had harnessed the energy flow of the sun and the sea to become the greatest power on earth. Technologically, it was supreme. Its industries, homes, shops, vehicles, all had drawn on this apparently limitless reservoir of nature to maintain a complex system of production, transportation and communication.

But while this technology developed until Atlantis clearly dominated its neighbors, there was not a commensurate development in cultural and philosophical values. Indeed, the very abundance of energy, contributing to a leisure-time society that emphasized luxuries and creature comforts, served to hasten the decay of a society that knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Salustra was right in her estimate of her own people. Soft, indolent and self-indulgent, rotting at the core, they were ripe for a takeover by any adversary with sufficient cunning to perceive their internal corruption and the driving ambition to capitalize on this weakness.

The mysterious mist over the land, together with the power breakdown and ancient prophecies of destruction, had created a climate of confusion. Had it not been for drastic measures taken by Salustra and her ministers, the country would have been in chaos. Before meeting again with her National Assembly of Nobles and Commoners, Salustra had promptly summoned her Ministers for Transport, Communication, Atmosphere, Science, Solar Energy and National Preservation in secret session to meet Atlantis’ most serious crisis since the old struggle for survival with the giant dinosaurs.

The Cabinet members had been as bewildered as the general populace, but Salustra, renewing her own flagging energies from the energizing jeweled amulet around her neck, had announced that they had no time for debate, as the country would soon be at a standstill, with food supplies spoiling in the fields or not getting produced or distributed.

She told Timeus, the Minister for Transport: “I give you twelve hours to restore the movement of goods and supplies on our roads and waterways.” When Timeus, a lean man with a dark brow, opened his mouth to protest, the Empress held up a hand. “Don’t tell me, Timeus,” she said mockingly, “that you have already come up with a solution. Fine, we shall see evidence of it in the morning.”

The ministers, convened in her private chambers, were looking most profound.

She gave them a steadfast look. “I need no ministers to tell me what can’t be done, only what can be done.”

“You, Fribian—” she pointed to the Minister for Solar Energy “—tell me why our crystal receptors and our radiating transmitters are neither receiving nor sending energy through the atmosphere.”

Fribian, a strikingly young-looking man, stood up promptly and began to talk with the directness of youth. “We relate it to the mist, Majesty. Hours after the mist descended, we began to get word of stoppages in all solar-driven ships, aircraft, land wagons, which could not even send messages of their predicament. Our telesound and distant-pictures apparatus stopped simultaneously, as did all facilities depending on the transmission of electricity through the atmosphere.”

Salustra nodded thoughtfully. “And what have you done, Fribian?”

The minister waved his hands expressively. “Short of moving the sun, I can only suggest.”

“And what have you suggested?”

Fribian motioned curtly to Hammu, the Minister for Atmosphere, sitting opposite him, doodling with a pencil. “I discussed with Minister Hammu the possibility of dissolving the mist, as we have done with cloud banks when we felt a need for additional rain.”

“Yes?” Salustra impatiently looked from one minister to the other.

Hammu was a stocky man, with a round face, dull brown eyes, and a truculent look. He was known as a great physicist. “It is easy to suggest, Majesty, but suggestions do not move the heavens.”

The Empress gave him an imperious look. “What have you done, sir?”

“These clouds are different from any others, Majesty. We have stocked them with all types of water-producing chemicals, without the slightest effect. The mist only seems to get thicker, hanging lower in the atmosphere.” He paused for a moment, and his eyes moved slowly around the table. His face was glum and his shoulders sagged. “The birds have all disappeared from the skies of Lamora, as if they had some foreknowledge of disaster.”

Nothing he said could have more oppressed the minds of the assembled dignitaries, susceptible as they were to the astrologers’ repeated portents of catastrophe.

But Salustra was quick to counteract Hammu’s bombshell. “Bah,” she exclaimed. “They were no doubt driven off by the noxious fumes; this mist reeks of sulfur.”

Her eyes now rested on her supreme councillor, Mahius. “What sayest thou, dear friend, to this gloomy talk?”

Only Mahius dared speak his mind, not only because he was closest to the Empress but because two lifetimes had wearied him and he no longer aspired to the greatest reward a grateful Atlantis could conceive—the rejuvenation chamber. For this reason, too, Salustra, grown cynical with rule, knew she could count on him for an honest opinion. He had nothing to gain or lose.

“What sayest thou?” she repeated, as he remained rapt in thought.

He spoke slowly, with a solemn mien. “Majesty, just as Fribian cannot move the sun, Hammu cannot alter the atmosphere, and Timeus—” his head nodded toward the Minister of Transport “—cannot move the unmovable.”

Her head bridled impatiently. “Then are we to sit around and do nothing, while the people starve and Signar moves in on fossil-fueled vessels and takes over all we have built over the centuries?”

There was the trace of a smile on Mahius’ gray lips. “No, Majesty, but we can learn from the barbarian. We have our network of canals and fleets of smaller barges, some fitted for nuclear energy, others for the sun’s rays. We can fit them overnight with sails and oars, and let them sweep over the waterways in the same way that our ancestors did centuries before. Meanwhile, we could scour the museums for the internal-combustion engines that our forefathers once used, and perhaps find fuel for them in the ground.” He paused, as he saw her frown. “It would be a temporary expedient, Majesty, to move foods, perishable for lack of refrigeration, and to feed an empire, while your ministers apply themselves to this crisis.”