Ten Lizard Men of Xenor

For weeks she trolls the racks. She goes to the nearest drugstore, buys some emery boards or an orange stick, something minor, then strolls past the magazines, not touching and careful not to be seen looking, but riffling through the titles with her eyes, on the lookout for his name. One of his names. She knows them by now, or most of them: she used to cash the cheques.

Wonder Stories. Weird Tales. Astounding. She scans them all.

At last she spots something. This must be it: Lizard Men of Xenor. First Thrilling Episode in the Annals of the Zycronian Wars. On the cover, a blonde in a quasi-Babylonian getup, a white robe tightly cinched under her unlikely breasts by a gold-link belt, her throat wound in lapis jewellery, a crescent moon in silver sprouting from her head. She's wet-lipped, open-mouthed, big-eyed, in the grip of two creatures with three-fingered claws and eyes with vertical pupils. They're wearing nothing but red shorts. Their faces are flattened discs, their skin is covered with scales, a pewtery teal in hue. They shine slickly, as if basted; under their grey-blue hide their muscles bulge and gleam. The teeth in their lipless mouths are numerous and needle-sharp.

She'd know them anywhere.

How to get hold of a copy? Not in this store, where she's recognised. It would never do to start rumours, by strange behaviour of any kind at all. On her next shopping trip she makes a detour to the train station and locates the magazine at the newsstand there. One thin dime; she pays with her gloves on, rolls the magazine up quickly, caches it in her handbag. The newsie looks at her strangely, but then men do.

She hugs the magazine to her all the way back in the taxi, smuggles it up the stairs, locks herself in the bathroom with it. Her hands, she knows, will tremble turning the pages. It's a story of the kind bums read on boxcars, or school-age boys by the light of a flashlight. Factory watchmen at midnight, to keep themselves awake; salesmen in their travellers' hotels after a fruitless day, tie off, shirt open, feet up, whisky in the toothbrush glass. Police, on a dull evening. None of them will find the message that will surely be concealed somewhere within the print. It will be a message meant only for her.

The paper's so soft it almost falls apart in her hands.

Here in the locked bathroom, spread out on her knees in hard print, is Sakiel-Norn, city of a thousand splendours-its gods, its customs, its wondrous carpet-weaving, its enslaved and maltreated children, the maidens about to be sacrificed. Its seven seas, its five moons, its three suns; the western mountains and their sinister tombs, where wolves howl and beautiful undead women lurk. The palace coup stretches its tentacles, the King bides his time, guessing at the forces deployed against him; the High Priestess pockets her bribes.

Now it's the night before the sacrifice; the chosen one waits in the fatal bed. But where is the blind assassin? What's become of him, and his love for the innocent girl? He must be keeping that part for later, she decides.

Then, sooner than she's expecting it, the ruthless barbarians attack, spurred on by their monomaniac leader. But they've just made their way inside the city gates when there's a surprise: three spaceships make a landing on the flat plain to the east. They're shaped like fried eggs or Saturn cut in half, and they come from Xenor. Out of them burst the Lizard Men, with their rippling grey muscles and their metallic bathing trunks and their advanced weaponry. They have ray guns, electric lassoes, one-man flying machines. All sorts of newfangled gadgets.

The sudden invasion changes things for the Zycronians. Barbarians and urbanites, incumbents and rebels, masters and slaves-all forget their differences and make common cause. Class barriers dissolve -the Snilfards discard their ancient tides along with their face masks, and roll up their sleeves, manning the barricades alongside the Ygnirods. All salute to each other by the name oftristok, which means (roughly), he with whom I have exchanged blood, that is to say, comrade or brother. The women are taken to the Temple and locked into it for their own safety, the children as well. The King takes charge. The barbarian forces are welcomed into the city because of their prowess in battle. The King shakes hands with the Servant of Rejoicing, and they decide to share command. A fist is more than the sum of its fingers, says the King, quoting an archaic proverb. In the nick of time the eight heavy gates of the city swing shut.

The Lizard Men achieve an initial success in the outlying fields, gained by the element of surprise. They capture a few likely women, who are shut up in cages and drooled at through the bars by dozens of Lizard soldiers. But then the Xenorian army suffers a setback: the ray guns on which they rely don't work very well on the planet of Zycron due to a difference in gravitational forces, the electric lassoes are efficient only at close quarters, and the inhabitants of Sakiel-Norn are now on the other side of a very thick wall. The Lizard Men don't have enough one-man flying machines to transport a sufficient assault force to take the city. Projectiles rain down from the ramparts on any Lizard Man who gets close enough: the Zycronians have discovered that the Xenorians' metal pants are inflammable at high temperatures, and are hurling balls of burning pitch.

The leader of the Lizards has a screaming tantrum, and five Lizard scientists bite the dust: Xenor is evidently not a democracy. Those left alive set to work to solve the technical problems. Given enough time and the proper equipment, they claim, they can dissolve the walls of Sakiel-Norn. They can also develop a gas that will render the Zycronians unconscious. Then they will be able to have their wicked way at leisure.

That's the end of the fist instalment. But what's happened to the love story? Where are the blind assassin and the tongueless girl? The girl has been all but forgotten in the confusion-she was last seen hiding under the red brocade bed-and the blind man has never turned up at all. She riffles back through the pages: maybe she's missed something. But no, the two of them have simply vanished.

Perhaps it will turn out all right, in the next thrilling episode. Perhaps he'll send word.

She knows there's something demented about this expectation of hers-he won't send a message to her, or if he does, this is not how it will arrive-but she can't free herself of it. It's hope that spins these fantasies, it's longing that raises these mirages-hope against hope, and longing in a vacuum. Perhaps her mind is slipping, perhaps she's going off the tracks, perhaps she is coming unhinged. Unhinged, like a broken door, like a rammed gate, like a rusting strongbox. When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.

She thinks, Perhaps I've been forsaken. It's an outworn word, forsaken, but it describes her plight exactly. Forsaking her is something he might be imagined as doing. On impulse he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different. He has no talent for monotony.

Despite her better judgment she waits and watches, month after month. She haunts the drugstores, the train station, every chance newsstand. But the next thrilling episode never appears.