The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

  The three men saw it coming.

  “Ho!” one yelled.

  “A shark!” the second said.

  “Have at him, boys!” the third shouted.

  * * * *

  The shark charged them. Drawing their swords, the three men executed a nimble dance on the surface of the sea. They thrust downward—their swords entering the water with no difficulty whatsoever although their feet did not enter it—drew them back dripping red. They skipped lightly out of the way of the wounded and infuriated monster.

  “Zounds!”

  “Chop the sea pig down!”

  “Carve his heart out!”

  Old battle cries rang in the air as they fought the shark. Blood colored the surface of the sea.

  The wounded shark suddenly took its death blow. It dived, was gone from sight, then broke the surface a hundred yards away. It beat the water into foam, threshing out its life.

  With pleased interest, the three men watched the shark die. Dipping their blades into the sea to clean the blood from them, they wiped them dry on their pants legs.

  Again they moved toward the raft.

  Parker’s hand went to the pistol inside his leather jacket. He loosed it in its holster but did not draw it.

  Mercedes moaned and covered her eyes. At the other end of the boat, Retch had risen to his feet.

  Bracing himself, Bill Parker waited for—whatever was to happen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Retch slowly drawing his gun.

  “Damn it, Retch, put that gun away!” Parker shouted. “Don’t shoot until you know what the hell is going on.”

  Retch turned, the gun visible in his hand. “What the hell—” Retch didn’t put the gun away. He lifted it. Parker found himself staring into the muzzle.

  “Get your hands up!” Retch snarled the words. “Mercedes, get that gun out of his holster. Get your goddamned hands up or I’ll blow your blasted head off!”

  The last was spoken to Parker as the dazed pilot tried to understand what had happened. He could hardly believe his own eyes. Automatically he lifted his hands. Mercedes slid past him, got behind him, taking no chances on getting between him and Retch’s gun. He felt her fingers go inside his jacket. Expertly she lifted the gun from its holster.

  “Toss me the gun!” Retch said. He caught the weapon the woman tossed toward him, glanced at Parker. “You thought I was going to start shooting at them?” He gestured toward the three approaching men. “You made a slight mistake.” The grin on his face was wolfish.

  “What the hell have I got into?”

  “You’ll find out, if you live long enough,” Retch said. “Just behave yourself and do as you’re told and maybe you’ll stay alive.” Again the wolfish grin showed on his face but under the grin, the words were harsh with meaning.

  “Ho, Johnny!” the three men were drawing near the raft. “Ho, Johnny Retch! What kind of a flying ship is this that you have brought back with you?”

  Retch turned to the three men. “Gotch! Peg-leg! Masterville!” Retch greeted them as old friends. The one he had called Gotch had spoken. All three of them stared at the raft and its occupants. Mercedes drew bold, appreciative stares. Parker got blank looks. Standing lightly and easily on the water, the three men surveyed the raft with doubtful contempt.

  “Does this thing fly through the air like the Jez—” Gotch caught himself. “It looks to me as if it were more fit for sailing on a mill pond back in Devon.”

  “This is not the ship that flies through the air, that ship was wrecked. This is a rubber boat that it carried.”

  “Wrecked?” Gotch spoke. “But where does that leave us?”

  “Everything has been taken care of,” Retch spoke quickly. “You can always trust Johnny Retch to have two strings for his bow.”

  “Hmmmm. And who is this?” Gotch gestured toward Parker.

  “The pilot of the flying ship that was wrecked,” Retch answered.

  “Ummmm. And what are we going to do with him?” Gotch glanced around toward the still floundering and dying shark as if he regretted their haste in disposing of what might have been a handy scavenger. “Um.” He moved around the raft and stood close to Parker, staring at him. The sword in his hands still showed faint traces of red from the blood of the shark.

  “We do not need any more men on the island!” Lifting his blade, Gotch glared at Parker.

  “Do you, per’aps, need women?” Mercedes spoke quickly. Gotch turned his eyes on her. As he looked, some of the anger seemed to go out of him.

  “Perhaps what you need on the island are more women,” Mercedes said. She smiled boldly.

  * * * *

  Gotch broke into a grin. “But definitely, we need more women, if they are like you.”

  “Hey, lay off of her, she belongs to me!” Retch spoke violently.

  “Come, let us pull the boat to the island,” Peg-leg spoke quickly. “We have too many things to do to stand waiting here.”

  Grumbling, Gotch allowed himself to be persuaded to get in front of the raft and join the other men in pulling it.

  Not until then did Parker dare to breathe. “Thanks,” he spoke to Mercedes.

  “It was nothing, Beel. Anyone could have done it.”

  “Thanks, anyhow,” Parker said. “But what have we got ourselves into here?”

  “I do not know for sure, Beel. Johnny, he like me, and he ask me to come along. He say we will both get reech—”

  “Shut up!” Retch spoke.

  Parker, sitting in the raft, watched the three men tow it toward the shore. He watched their feet. Where they stepped, the water seemed to grow firm. Pirates, cut-throats, killers, they certainly were. But added to that was the equally obvious fact that they could walk on water. In all history, Parker had only heard of one man who could do that, and he hadn’t been a man, but a God.

  Ahead of them, the island loomed in the sunset; a long strip of white, sandy beach; behind it a thick growth of trees; behind the trees the rocky central mass of the island rising up into the sky. Off to the right, Parker caught a glimpse of a wreck that lay against rocks jutting from the shore. He stared at it. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, it was the wreck of a Spanish galleon, a ship that belonged to the days when Spain had been draining the gold and silver and jewels of the new world into her coffers.

  The men stopped, stared uneasily at the shore. Parker could make out two men barely visible between the beach and the grove of trees.

  “Rozeno and Ulnar!” Gotch spoke. “Watching us.” His lips curled and his hand went automatically to the hilt of the sword he was wearing. “Some day I will slit the throats of that priest and that Indian.” Gotch spat into the sea.

  “They’re not causing any trouble,” Peg-leg spoke.

  “They’re witches, by Gad!” Gotch answered. “They’re warlocks, wizards.”

  “Father Rozeno is a very devout and holy man,” Peg-leg said.

  “He pretends to be a priest but he is more of a warlock than he is a holy man. As for that Indian, if he ever gives me the chance—” Gotch glared at the figures at the edge of the grove.

  “Come on,” Peg-leg said.

  Mercedes contrived to move closer to Parker. “Beel, what are theese theengs here? I do not understand them. I do not like them.”

  “Nor do I,” Parker said.

  A shiver passed over her.

  “What’s the matter, baby, you cold?” Retch grinned at her. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you warmed up on the island.”

  Imperceptibly she again moved closer to Parker. “Beel, it ees not good.”

  “You got into this of your own free will.”

  “Yes, but I did not know that theengs like theese were going to ’appen. I just thought—”

  “Mercedes, if you open your mouth again, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat
!” Retch said.

  Mercedes was silent.

  As they came in to the shore, the two men who had been visible on the beach disappeared. Off to the left something else came into view. It was a small cabin plane, wrecked there in what had apparently been an attempt at a forced landing.

  Before they reached the shore, the fat sun had wallowed itself out of sight into the sea. In the dusk, the island looked like a vast, rocky pinnacle thrust up out of the Pacific Ocean, or out of the ocean of time—Parker couldn’t tell which. Mysterious, silent, it waited in the darkness like a vast sleeping monster on the surface of the sea, a monster on which Spanish galleons and planes had been wrecked. Parker, his nerves jumpy, halfway expected it to vanish beneath the surface before they reached it.

  But it didn’t vanish. It remained fixed, solid, firm. When they stepped from the raft, the sand under their feet was solid, the crunch of it reassuring.

  * * * *

  A breeze whispered through the trees. The island was quiet, too quiet. It seemed to brood in the darkness. In the vast stillness that hung like a pall over the place, the only sound was that of a bird, chittering sleepily in the dark woods.

  It was the most out-of-place sound Bill Parker had ever heard.

  It seemed to affect the others. At the bird-sound they were suddenly quiet, listening.

  “To hell with it, it’s nothing,” Gotch said. “Come on.”

  Following a well defined path, they moved inland, toward the base of the cliff. Through the trees, Parker glimpsed fires. As he moved closer, he saw the source of the lights, the cooking fires of a village set against the base of the cliff.

  “Ho!” Peg-leg called, announcing their arrival.

  As they entered the village, the inhabitants came rushing out to them. They were the queerest lot of human beings Parker had ever seen. Spaniards, bearded grandees in tattered and mended bits of ancient finery, Indians, squat, stalwart, Englishmen, tall and blond, a motley crew.

  They looked like the relics of half a dozen different nations, drawn from the fringes of time. Their garments did not belong in the 20th century. Their weapons were knives, swords, bell-mouthed pistols. Their language was a mixture of Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Indian dialects.

  “What kind of a mad-house is this?” Parker muttered. “Get away, you!” The last was spoken to a slender Spaniard who was trying to jerk Parker’s leather jacket from his back.

  The man snarled at him, drew back.

  “Get out of our way!” Retch yelled. The crowd made way for him. Calling greetings, snarling, Retch seemed very much at home here.

  Mercedes looked hopelessly confused and at a loss. She stared around her as if she was appalled at what she saw. Parker drew the obvious inference. Mercedes had never been here before. All this was as new to her as it was to him. But Retch had been here.

  Off in the woodland behind them somewhere a bird chirped, the same sleepy quiet sound that Parker had heard as they landed. Now it was louder, nearer, and even more out of place than it had been before.

  The people around Parker also heard the sound. Startled faces turned toward the dark forest.

  The sound came again, louder now. Parker was certain it was the call of a bird.

  But if it was the chirp of a bird, it was frightening these people. Why should a bird-sound in the night frighten grown men? Utter silence fell. Even Gotch was still. Parker saw that the man’s face had turned gray, that all the bristling bravado had passed out of him.

  Even Retch, showing signs of strain and growing temper, was silent.

  “The Jezbro!” someone whispered.

  At the words, the strain and temper coming up in Retch burst the surface. “There is no such thing as the Jezbro!” His voice was almost a scream. “It’s only superstitious nonsense—” His shouting voice went into silence as the sound came again.

  The chirp was louder now. It was no longer one bird chirping in the dark night, it was a dozen. And it wasn’t quite the sound of a bird any longer, it was a musical tinkle, an air-borne throbbing somewhat similar to the sound of a harp, a softly ringing chime. Parker could easily imagine that somewhere among those dark trees was a harper, moving closer.

  The harpist did not seem to be upon the ground. He—or she—seemed to be up in the air, somewhere near the tree tops, moving in the dark night.

  As the sound came louder, a man in the village suddenly went down on his knees, then another and another, until the whole group, including Gotch, were kneeling. Even Mercedes went to her knees in response to deep internal, superstitious pressures. Only Retch and Parker stood erect as two men strong enough to face the sound coming from the night.

  “Get down, you fools!” Peg-leg’s voice had real anguish in it.

  “Get down, hell!” Retch answered. He had a gun in each hand, his own and the one he had taken from Parker.

  “Beel! Beel!” Mercedes was jerking at Parker’s leg. “What is ’appening?”

  “Something,” Parker answered. “I don’t know what.” There was fear in him. He could feel it in his heart, sense it in his bones, taste in his mouth. He rose above it.

  The sound swept through the air. It came out over the trees above them. On the ground, the kneelers moaned in response.

  The harping sound leaped up, became a melody of weird notes filling the night air. Mingled with the eerie music were the moans from the prostrate humans.

  Looking upward, Parker caught a glimpse of something moving through the sky. It blotted out the light of the stars and it looked a lot like a bird but like no bird he had ever seen before. It was too big to be any bird that had ever flown through Earth’s air, but yet it flew. As it flew, it made the sound of a gigantic harp.

  * * * *

  The bird passed over the village, moving along the cliff. As it slid into the distance, the harp music faded slowly away, became again the sound of a sleepy bird.

  Around the village, the prostrate humans moaned, stirred, began to rise.

  “What the hell was that thing?” Parker gasped.

  “The damned fools call it the Jezbro!” Retch snarled. “The yellow cowards are afraid of it. I don’t know what it is.”

  Parker was silent. To him, Retch sounded like a man scared right down to the soles of his shoes but desperately trying to pretend he wasn’t.

  “It was a warning sent by them,” Peg-leg whispered, gesturing up toward the cliff in the darkness. “A warning to us to mend our ways.”

  “It was no such thing!” Retch shouted.

  Peg-leg did not argue. He got slowly and silently to his feet. The group was silent, perturbed, and afraid. Even Gotch was silent. Whatever had passed overhead, had cast a pall of fear over them.

  “You bilious, yellow-livered cowards!” Retch raged at them.

  They made no response. The fear the Jezbro had inspired in them seemed to have made even his anger unimportant.

  “But what is the Jezbro?” Parker questioned again. “I mean—”

  “I told you it’s nothing and that’s enough of an answer. Hey!” The guns that Retch held came up sharply as another figure came soundlessly out of the forest and moved toward them. An old, bent, wrinkled Indian who hobbled along with the aid of a staff.

  “Oh, it’s you, Pedro!” Retch said. “What the hell do you want?”

  For all the sign he gave, the Indian, Pedro, did not hear Retch’s question. He hobbled straight to Parker.

  “En la manana Padre Rozeno huit nole el hombre e la mujer. Father Rozeno will see the man and the woman in the morning.” The voice was broken with age.

  “I don’t get it,” Parker said. The Indian was already turning. He had delivered his message, his errand was finished.

  “That damned Rozeno is not going to see anybody in the morning!” Retch yelled.

  The Indian staffed his way into the forest. He still s
eemed not to hear Retch.

  “Tell him they won’t be there!” Retch screamed.

  Pedro’s back went out of the firelight as he moved into the trees.

  Retch seemed almost to go mad. His face turned purple. Both guns came to focus on the spot where the Indian had disappeared.

  “Why shoot him?” Parker said. “He was just a messenger.”

  “Damn it!” Slowly, while the group watched impassively, Retch got himself under control. Suddenly he began to laugh. Strangely his laughter in this moment was more horrible than his anger had been.

  “He sent for you, and the woman. All right, he’ll get you. But I’ll go with you. If he wants you, I’ll take you to him.” Again the laughter sounded.

  “Who is Rozeno?” Parker asked.

  “He is, or he was once, a Spanish priest. He and Ulnar think they rule this island. They are the two men we saw watching us from the shore. You’ll see them in the morning.”

  That was the last word Retch said on the subject. He took Gotch apart, to talk to him. Peg-leg found food for Parker, but refused to talk. “Na, na, my son, when the Jezbro passes over us as a great bird—when it goes through the woods at night as a great howling beast—we do not talk about it.”

  Parker pressed for more information, but the old man turned stubbornly silent. Later he found Parker a place to sleep in his own hut. Parker had the impression that, all during the night Peg-leg, sat on guard at the entrance.

  But nothing came in the night. In the morning Retch was there, saying, with grim bitterness, that now it was time to go up the cliff to see Rozeno and Ulnar. Mercedes, looking wan and bedraggled, with hate in her hot black eyes, was with him. So was Gotch. Gotch did not look in the least happy.

  “What’s biting you?” Parker said to Retch.

  “Nothing.”

  “I get the impression something around here is just about scaring the pants off of you.”

  “You’re crazy!” Retch’s voice was a snarl. “I’m not afraid of anything around here—you—or anybody else.” As he spoke, the man’s face was a mask and his eyes were wild.