Honcho's laugh came again. 'For a Lord, Blade, for Mazda, you look most undignified. Does coi mean so much, then?'
Blade won his battle with himself. He had the little cylinder clutched in his fist. Honcho had not seen, the spiscreens for once had failed. Blade felt better. He had won, not the neuter.
'I am sending the ceboids for you,' said Honcho. 'At once. You go to Urcit immediately.
Chapter Eight
So Richard Blade came to Urcit. Not as a body, at first, but as pure intelligence. So great were Honcho's powers. He had perfected a refinement of teleportation that even THEY did not understand and could not use.
Blade's big body, handsome and massive, lay fully clothed on a circular pad in the neuter's main laboratory. The corpus looked peaceful in sleep, the great sword at his side. A feathery veil of teksin covered him.
After he had sent Blade's mind away Honcho stayed alone with the body. He sent the ceboids and the minor neuters away. Again and again he walked to the edge of the pad and stood looking down at Blade. There was no one to see now, and the green eyes mirrored thoughts that Blade would have understood. Envy, fear, hate, jealousy - even admiration. They were all present. Envy loomed the greatest.
Once Honcho stepped on the pad, about to search the clothing, then he turned back with a shrug. The little cylinder snuggled unseen in a makeshift pocket in a fold of toga where Blade had hidden it.
Blade's mind wandered Urcit, seeing and understanding, assimilating and planning, yet unseen.
The towers of Urcit spired into points against the curdled milky sky, the eternal twilight. Blade understood that sky now. It was controlled so that mani, Tharn's single crop out of which everything was made, could best prosper.
Urcit stood on a vast and reaching plain. There were wide streets and graceful squares in which fountains played. Fountains that spewed colors and music instead of water. Blade had never heard such music before; it was everywhere and yet nowhere; it did not intrude and yet it was always there. Sensuous and gay, lifting the spirits like a powerful drug.
Urcit was clean. No speck of filth was seen anywhere. And yet nobody seemed to work. There were ceboids in the streets, and neuters, all hustling and bustling along, but he could discern no real intent.
And so it was that he saw THEY at last, and never thought of them so again. Richard Blade had never stood in awe of beautiful women!
Honcho had said that there were less than a thousand of them.
Blade watched them walk the streets, lounge in the squares and places, all regal, all tall, all lovely female creatures. There were brunettes and blondes and redheads, and every mingled shade, and their fine skins glowed in golden and copper tones. They dressed alike, and yet not alike, each wearing colors in breastplates and mini- togas that flattered and complemented them best.
There was a pleasant odor in the immaculate and windless streets. The smell of women.
Blade was fascinated and missed nothing, though mindful of the time. Kronos were ticking away and soon the Sacer would begin. A vastly different Sacer, so Honcho said, than the one of the Pethcines.
Sometimes the women were alone, sometimes accompanied by a ceboid or a neuter. Sometimes they were in twos, or groups, and some went hand in hand. The air was filled with bright badinage, in the high Tharnian that Blade understood, and he closed his mind to it less it distract him from his task. There was very little time now. Honcho had waited until the very last microkronos and Blade knew why. To cut down on the chances of matters going wrong.
Blade saw that all the women were now streaming toward a great slim pencil of a building that loomed in the exact center of the city. The Palace. It was here that Sacer was held and the twenty Lordsmen were sacrificed.
Blade had noticed, in his tour of Urcit, that phallic symbols were everywhere. In every square, place and crescent, were replicas of the male organ mounted on plinths. It was in shop windows. The women wore the same symbol on charm bracelets and necklaces. The gargoyles on the buildings were in the form of sharp thrusting phalli.
Engraved on the base of every image was the letter: M. Mazda. The symbol, the personification, of the male power.
The Palace stood in a great square. Before the main entrance was a huge phallus, sculpted from transparent teksin, that towered a hundred feet into the air. Flanking it on either side was the statue of a woman, each dressed in flowing white robes and each exactly resembling the other. Twins. Astar and Isma. Twin rulers of Tharn. Astar, the Queen-Goddess. Isma, the High Priestess. Astar clutched a phallic shaped scepter. Isma held aloft a half-rolled scroll. The Word.
The irony did not escape Blade. Honcho had pointed it out. Tharn was a dying civilization. Beautiful women, magnificent specimens that they were, were not enough. They worshiped the male organ as a symbol of fertility, of resurrection and immortality, of continuity. It was not enough.
Blade entered the Palace. The women were streaming along ramps towards a central arena. It was circular and covered with a pinkish-white sand, and illuminated by the nebulous drifting lights. There were no wires, no cables, no fixtures. Blade understood now that power was transmitted from some central source by means of invisible laser beams, that in some way the Tharnians could tap into magnetic fields and drain and harness the energy. There was a master Power Pool, and part of his mission for Honcho was to find it and render it useless. Then the great magveils would not work, the Red Storms could not be sent, and the Pethcines would sweep in like a scourge and devour the land.
If Blade willed it so.
The arena was full of women now. Quiet, waiting, only a low hum of conversation as obbligato to a waiting, haunting silence. The odor of the assembled females was overwhelmingly sensuous. Blade studied the two empty thrones that stood in the very center of the arena. The music that was everywhere, and nowhere, suddenly altered. There was a muted strain of trumpets. Astar and Isma, walking hand in hand, entered the arena. They were clad in golden breastplates and purple mini-tunics and were followed by a group of chanting Maiduke maidens. Many of the Maidukes strongly resembled Zulekia. Blade, hovering, observed that the sealed chastity belts were unbroken. Good Maidukes, these. No karno committed. Or they had been cleverer than Zulekia?
