Chapter XXVII: Tarrano the Man

“Wake up, Lady Elza.”

A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. “Wake up, Lady Elza. It is I--Tarrano.”

Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano’s palace of the City of Ice were stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her eyes to meet Tarrano’s inscrutable face as he bent over her couch; became conscious of his low, insistent, “Wake up, Lady Elza;” and his fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that covered her shoulders.

Terror flooded Elza; that time she had always feared, had come. Yet she had the presence of mind to smile, drawing away from him and sitting up, with the fur bed-covering pulled to her chin.

“Tarrano? Why--”

He straightened, and into his expression came apology.

“I frightened you, Lady Elza? I’m sorry. I would not do that for all the worlds.”

Her terror receded. The old Tarrano over whom she still held sway. She summoned a look of haughty questioning.

“You are bold, Tarrano--”

His gesture was deprecating; he seated himself on the edge of her couch. She saw now that he was fully dressed and armed with a belt of many instruments.

At this time Elza had been in the City of Ice for a considerable period. Irksome, worried days of semi-imprisonment; and through them, Tarrano’s attitude toward her was unchanged. She saw little of him; he seemed very busy, though to what end, and what his activities, she could not learn.

Within the palace, half as guard, half as maid-servant, Tara was generally Elza’s only companion. And then, one evening when Tara’s smouldering jealousy broke forth in Tarrano’s presence and Elza uttered an involuntary cry of fear, Tara was summarily removed.

Elza was left practically alone; until at length came this night when invading the privacy of her sleeping room, Tarrano awakened her. He sat now upon the edge of her couch.

“I have a confession to make to you, Lady Elza.” He smiled slightly. “As you know, there is no one else in our habitable universe to whom I would speak thus frankly.”

“I am honored, Tarrano. But here, at this hour of sleep--”

He waved away the words. “I have asked your pardon for that. My confession--as once before, Lady Elza, I come to you most humbly, confessing that my affairs are not going as I would like. You do not know, of course, that Mars--”

“I know nothing,” she interrupted. “You have kept me from the news-mirrors, if indeed there are any here--”

“Mars revolted against me,” he went on imperturbably. “The Little People are again in control. Fools! They do not realize, those governors of Mars, that their public ultimately will demand this Everlasting Life of mine--the Brende secret--”

She frowned. “No one knows better than you, Tarrano, that my father’s secret does not bestow immortality. To cure disease, in a measure--”

He checked her; his smile was ironical. “You and I know that, Lady Elza. We know that on this plane we would not want everlasting life if we could have it. But the public does not know that--let us not discuss it. I was telling you--confessing to you--I have lost Mars. Temporarily, of course. Meanwhile, I have been preparing to invade the Earth.” His gesture was expansive. “I have been planning, from here in the Cold Country, to send armies to your Earth.”

He paused an instant. “I think now I shall wait until the next opposition--we are far from Earth now, but all in good time we shall be closer ... Strange is it not, that I should like to tell you my plans?”

She did not answer; she watched his smile fading into a look of grimness. “In the Great City, here on Venus, they are getting ready to attack me. Did you know that?”

“No,” she said.

“You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?”

“Yes.”

“And you hoped they were, of course?”

“Yes,” she repeated.

He frowned. “You are disconcertingly frank, Lady Elza. Well, let me tell you this--it would come to nothing. The Rhaals are with them--all the resources of the Central State are to be thrown against me. Yet it will come to nothing.”

Her heart leaped. Tarrano was making his last stand. Beyond the logical sense of his words, she could see it in his eyes. He knew he was making his last stand. He knew too that she was now aware of it; and that behind the confidence of his words--that was the confession he was making.

Tarrano’s last stand! There seemed to her then something illogically pathetic in it all. This man of genius--so short a time ago all but the Emperor of three worlds. And now, with them slipping from his grasp, reduced to this last stronghold in the bleak fastnesses of the Cold Country, awaiting the inevitable attack upon him. Something pathetic...