Eando Binder - Anton York, Immortal

“Anton York,” he returned, trying to ease his archaic accent to something approaching hers.

The name that would have made any contemporary citizen of Earth freeze into awe and incredulous wonder failed to bring more than a welcoming smile to the girl’s lips.

“An-ton Y-york,” she repeated. “Anton York. I like it. And you are nice. I love you!”

Without another word she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him. York gasped at the girl’s directness and pushed her away gently.

“Just a minute,” he objected, and for perhaps the first time in centuries, he stammered a little. Fleetingly he felt glad that the wall of force kept Vera from knowing about the kiss. “Certainly you don’t mean what you say—”

“But I do,” insisted the girl softly, kissing him again.

“Don’t you want me to love you?”

York had to think for a moment. And for a moment he glanced around dizzily, aware that the girl’s presence made the setting seem almost a paradise. Then his eyes caught a glint of pink skin a dozen yards away, behind leafy bushes.

Instantly the camouflage that had made the place seem so wonderful vanished. It was in reality a hell, in which the hypno-beast not only played man against man, but woman against man!

York pushed the girl away. The monster, divining that it had been seen, lumbered forward. Over York swayed the serpentine neck and gleaming eyes of the Beast, reminding him of all the tragedies he had seen, in this dome and the others.

York sprang erect. Their eyes locked.

York’s first impulse was to dash at the monster and twist its thin neck. But when he tried, he had the sensation of plunging into an invisible flood of force that tore at him and beat him back. It came from those glittering saucer eyes—the hypnotic force!

York tried to wrench his eyes from the Medusa stare that turned him to helpless stone, but failed. He fought the intangible force for a stubborn minute before he eased back.

Still he could not tear his eyes away. Now the force changed. Like a resistless gravity, it pulled him forward, but at the same time locked his arm muscles. He fought to strain backward against the ghostly hands that seemed to draw him forward. One step—two steps—He advanced like a bird caught in the spell of a snake.

The dome, trees, grass, girl—all had vanished. York saw only two enormous, deadly, compelling eyes that seemed to grow and fill the whole universe—He did not even see the quivering tentacle that stretched in anticipation for his throat.

But all the while, within York, something had been working. His subconscious mind gave the call of alarm. His immortality radiogens, stored with cosmic energy that constantly battled the poisons of old age and the raids of deadly germs, released a tide of power to his brain.

York stopped, stiffening, fighting the invisible force with renewed strength. The hypnotic force gave one final tug. York swayed, straining, and then took a step backward.

The spell snapped like the twang of a bowstring. York had won.

He leaped forward, but now in command of himself. The Beast bleated in fear, trying to run. York easily overtook it, grasped the neck and wrung it like that of a chicken. The head drooped on its broken neck. The hellish eyes glazed. The body thrashed wildly for several minutes before it finally lay still in death.

York stared at it with hands on hips, panting more in loathing and rage than exertion. Never in all his exploits had he felt more completely satisfied. He had destroyed a fleet of powerful ships once, and moved worlds, and wielded a godlike science. But here with his bare hands he had killed a repulsive beast. That was his supreme achievement!

After a while, he smiled in detached calm at the strange contrast between this event and the others in his stirring career. His thoughts were terminated by a pair of soft arms that stole about his neck.

“You have saved me-freed me!” Leela murmured. “Now I truly love you. Take me with you.”

York disengaged himself firmly.

“Leela, I have a wife. I’ve had her for a long, long time and wouldn’t change now!”

He wondered what she would say if he told her he was two thousand years old. He decided not to, for the present. “You have a—mate?’

“Yes.” York was relieved, for she did not press her attention. “Now—tell me about this beast, and you.” To himself he mused: “Beauty and the Beast.”

“The master brought me here, where the Free Ones often come. If we found a young man—as we did you—I was to lure him with me, away from any others. It was a hateful duty, please believe that. Then the Beast would either kill him or bring him back to be a slave. The Beasts use all sorts of means to reduce the numbers of the Free Ones. They are trying to kill off all those of the Free Ones who are too mind-powerful to become slaves.”

“You mean there are certain ones here who can resist the Beasts’ spell, like myself?”

The girl looked at him, puzzled.

“Surely you know that. Why do you ask questions as though you have never been here before?’

“I haven’t,” York said. “I came from outside the dome wall.”

She stared at him in sudden astonishment, at his strange clothes, at his oddly glowing eyes, the sign of immortality.

After a moment, shrugging helplessly, she answered his questions.

“Yes, many can resist the spell. And each generation there are more.”

“Generation!” gasped York. “You’ve never heard of me, Anton York? You’ve never been on Earth?”

“Earth? You mean the Original World, which our forefathers came from, they say. No, of course not. I was born here.”

“And how many generations have there been, according to that story?’

“One hundred.”

One hundred generations! At least two thousand years! For twenty centuries Earth people had been under this great dome, living and dying, in some gigantic experiment carried out by the dome builders. York shook his head. More and more it loomed as something vital and far reaching—and sinister.

“Do you know why this was done?” he pursued. “Why your forefathers were taken from the Original World and brought here? Or where the hypno-beasts came from?”

“I know little,” vouched the girl. “But perhaps at the village of the Free Ones some of the learned men know. Come, I’ll lead you there.”

Glancing at him in growing wonder, she turned. York followed.

The way led out of the small forest, into open land. There were more grazing lands for cattle and beyond lay a checkerboard of tilled fields with ripening crops. Nut-browned men laboured among them and waved greetings. They all had rifles and looked cautiously behind York and Leela to make sure they were not slaves of the hypno-beasts, on some sinister errand.

The village two miles ahead struck a chord of ancient memory in York’s mind. It was a stockaded camp, surrounded by a wall of high wooden posts with here and there a lookout station. Within were log cabins and horse-drawn wagons and buckskin garbed people. It was a setting that had vanished from Earth’s history since the nineteenth century. It was here, reincarnated and apparently jelled. Why?

York’s mind bristled with unanswered questions. He was impatient when an elderly woman spied them. She dropped an armload of kindling wood and hugged Leela.

“My child, my child!” she cried, yet with a stoic lack of tears in her motherly joy. “You are back. I thought I’d never see you again. It’s been a year. Leela, my baby—”

“He rescued me.” Leela pointed to York. An eager crowd formed around, shouting greetings to the girl who had miraculously returned from the slavehood of the Beasts. “He killed my Beast master with his bare hands!” She told the story.