'I do! I, Dray Prescot, onker of onkers, defy any man who seeks to destroy my Delia!'
'Then are you a doomed man!'
The Gdoinye vanished. The blueness swelled. The enormous form of the Scorpion swooped upon me, radiant blueness washed all around me, washed me away, washed my senses away so that as I fell I fell soundlessly and hopelessly, for the very last words of that inhuman bird were: 'Back to Earth, Dray Prescot, get-onker of onkers, back to Earth — to
Chapter Four
Back to Earth — to stay!
What a fool! What a fool!
Yet I could not have done other than I had.
I should have helped those poor devils of Vilasca. The island owed allegiance to Trylon Werfed, a man I knew only moderately well, a man against whom I had heard no whispers of plots against the Emperor. I should have jumped in and helped them beat off those damned Leem Lovers and then I could have taken voller for Delia.
But I am me, Dray Prescot, as thick-skulled a man as ever lived on two worlds. As I made my way back to civilization I reflected that I could not have done other than I had, and to pretend otherwise was folly. Dangerous folly. I admitted that I must have grown mighty proud and aloof in all these ridiculous titles and ranks I had amassed through no fault of my own. Well, leave out that I had deliberately made myself King of Djanduin. That is true. But the reasons for that decision were rooted in Khokkak the Meddler at first, and then in a sober understanding of a duty laid upon me. No, I had grown fat and comfortable and supine, and now I must pay the price of arrogance and pride. But to stay on Earth — to stay!
I reflected on that. The Star Lords had dumped me down all naked and miserable in Morocco, which was in a fine old state of unrest. The locals were standing up for their rights, and the French from Algeria, which they had taken in the 1830’s, were trying to take over there. By virtue of my tutor Maspero and the genetically coded language pill he had given me in Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, I could understand and speak the languages of people with whom I came into contact. The Moors — although that is hardly the correct term for the Sharifs, for the Moors were a light-skinned people — would no doubt have cut up a European dumped among them naked and defenseless. But I was enraged, and I used fury as a weapon to drown my maniacal despondency. I simply treated them as I would a people among whom I found myself on Kregen.
It has to be said that if a man can survive on Kregen he can find survival much easier on this Earth. I exclude from that the refined life of cities which in its artificiality can destroy more surely than sword thrust or ax bite.
With language no barrier it was easier, of course. Even as I talked with these dark-bearded, hawk-faced warriors of the desert, after I had shown them I was not a man to be lightly killed, I could still hear the hissing shrills of the shanks as they swarmed to the attack. 'Ishtish! Ishtish!' they shrieked as they charged forward. And as my men shot them down or struggled hand-to-hand with them, so my archers shouted: 'Vallia! Vallia!' Or: 'Valka! Valka! Prince Dray!' Well, I was a prince no longer. I was a foolish European among the Arabs and I had to fend for myself. I made my way to Fez and from there to the sea where I took passage for Marseilles. Once there I arranged with London for funds. I do not reveal the name of the bankers who looked after me. I had saved the founder of the bank from a nasty experience on the field of Waterloo; now his sons merely took me for my own son. But they were a closed-mouth lot. I do not think a great deal can discompose a tight-fisted, crafty, elegant banker of the City of London.
Through canny investment by these same people I was now a wealthy man. Of course, it meant nothing. Every day those dread words echoed in my obstinate skull: 'Stay on Earth —
The bankers, cool, assured men though they were, looked at me askance as I did business with them. I took myself off to become a solitary. A year passed, then another. Despair clawed at me. But I did not know how long that damned bird meant by his infernal 'Stay!' It could be forever. One foggy day as I stared out from my narrow leaded windows at the hurrying people passing in the London street, the carriages burning their lamps in spectral glimmers, each a little circular glow isolated from the others, with the moisture hanging on the trees and the railings, I made up my mind. One day, I said to myself, one day I would return to Kregen. I would take up the broken threads of my life. Why, then wouldn’t it be a fine thing to learn all I could, here on this Earth, against the time of my return to all that I held dear? I needed a purpose in life, here on Earth. I would make that purpose a conscious effort to learn all I could. I would return a master of statecraft, of science, of engineering, of war. I would seek the answers to the questions on Kregen that had plagued me, and I would seek what I could here. Foolish, pathetic, ludicrous even. Oh, yes, all of those. But it gave me back a semblance of sanity, for by studying I assured myself that I did have a future on Kregen to which to return one day. So rousing myself from my lethargy, I left London. On Magdalen Bridge in Oxford I stood and gazed up at the stars.
That upflung tail of the Scorpion was barely visible, but even if it was not, I could visualize it clearly. The red star that was Antares, the huge red star and the smaller green companion — I imagined I could see the constellation of Scorpio, and I would stand gazing up into the star-speckled night. I know the look on my face must have been one of infinite longing and infinite regret.
I am sure you can see that the idea of secrets on Kregen plaguing me was a fallacy, for I had long since felt that my life with Delia and my family far outweighed anything else on Kregen. But to bolster my resolve and to give a neat scientific and logical approach, I set down in tabular form the questions to which I would like answers.
The very first name was, of course, the Everoinye, the Star Lords.
Next the Savanti, those mortal but superhuman people of Aphrasoe.
Then the Todalpheme, the meteorologists and tide-watchers.
Then followed a list of various strange peoples, of whom I have introduced you so far to only a fraction. These included the volroks, the flying men of Havilfar.
Then the Wizards of Loh.
The secrets of the silver boxes of the fliers, of course, had to figure, for we in Valka were still only able to produce flying craft which could merely lift and must find their propulsion from the breeze like sailing ships.
As to unfinished business, well, there was indeed a formidable list of that, as you who have listened to these tapes must be aware.
Various religious cults were written down, and chief of these was the abominable practice of Lem the Silver Leem.
If I fail to mention anything in connection with the inner sea of the continent of Turismond, the Eye of the World, it was because I ached for that locale and for the Krozairs of Zy. All the titles I had won on Kregen could be stripped from me and I would not care a jot. But I was a Krozair Brother, a Krozair of Zy, and that did mean something.
How often I had planned to revisit Zy, that magnificent island fortress of the Brotherhood, or Sanurkazz, the chief city of the Zairians of the red southern shore of the Eye of the World. Well, something or other had always cropped up to prevent me. Now, back on Earth, that something had turned out to be the biggest obstacle of all.
The list did not satisfy me. Nothing satisfied me. Oxford at this time appeared to me to be an intellectual desert, its ancient halls given over to mindless pursuits after false doctrines. The studies pursued here seemed to me to offer no help or guidance to the things a man needed to know in the real world, for all its products strutted the preeminent stages of this world here on Earth. Through my accrued wealth and the machinations of powerful friends on my bankers, doors were opened to me that would, had I remained simply Dray Prescot, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, have remained firmly closed in my face. I tried Cambridge with a similar result. The best hope of education in these times lay with the Dissenting Academies, although my knowledge of the Greek Heroes was
