to take a stance upon those feet, separate from the chair which, to all who knew him, had always seemed a part of his very being.
"You have speculated," Morven spoke as if addressing the crowd about him, yet never took his gaze from the shocked face of Robret the Islay, "why a man might choose, if choose he did, in a civilization capable of nerve- and limb-regeneration, to remain helpless, useless, trapped in and dependent upon an obsolete, noisy monstrosity such as I have just surprised you by abandoning." Now at last, although he trembled with the effort, he turned his head, scanning the breadth of the Hall, taking them all in, one, as it seemed, by one. "I have been aware from the first how this marked me in the estimation of many as a sort of freak, perhaps physically, genetically incapable of such regeneration, or, far worse, a psychotic, some kind of mystical fanatic."
In a sudden, furious gesture, he stripped the masque of the ancient judge from his face, revealing handsome, hate-contorted features. Gathering composure, he shook his head as if in sorrow and turned back to the Islay. "As you know ... as each and every one of you is all too well aware for the sake of my privacy and self-esteem, I was, in my long-ago youth, a warrior in service to my family Shandish, my beloved Ceo, my revered imperium-conglomerate. I was, as yet, entirely undistinguished, but destined, at least within my own fancy—as many a boy-soldier is in his dreams—to remarkable and valorous achievements." He shrugged. "As the fortune of war would have it, I fell wounded in the first battle ever that I fought, rent almost beyond redemption. It was the selfsame shockingly bloodsoaked incident wherein my comrade-in-arms and closest friend—"
From intonations of reverie and closeness to tears, Morven's voice assumed a sarcastic timbre, the sheer malevolence of which made Arran shiver where he stood, lost in the astonished crowd. It fell almost to a whisper with the repetition of the last phrase, before it rose again. "—my comrade-in-arms and closest friend, the erstwhile classless, penniless, futureless, peasant Robret Islay, became the hero of the day and of theMonopolity by virtue of saving what was left of poor unlucky Tarbert!"
104 HENRY MARTYN
The last few words were shouted. Now silence fell once more. Morven stopped speaking as abruptly as he had begun. No one present thought to fill the oppressive silence with a word or question, even the noise of movement. Stunned, as he would never have been in physical combat, taken aback by the injustice of the accusation, its unexpectedness, by his closest friend's treachery, the Islay stood pale and silent as his son.
The Oplytes remained rigid. Their human officers imitated them, watching with minutest attention every gesture Morven made—when, from strictly tactical considerations, they ought to have been watching the accused—hanging upon his every word.
At last: "Poor Tarbert remained helpless, at least took measures to convey such an impression, in consequence of a secret, sacred vow of determination. Cruel chance, nothing more, had elevated this unworthy nobody who stands before you, caught out in his misdeeds, to the peerage. Yet, owing to the intimacy of wartime friendship and the advantage afforded by casual conversation in such circumstances, for some time before my personal misfortune, I had come to suspect both his loyalties and his intentions.'* Showing the strain of standing for so long, Morven inhaled and exhaled. "Yet it was I who, unwillingly to be sure, was ultimately responsible for the fame, the wealth, the power he won. Thus I vowed to set affairs aright myself, remaining in this chair where chance had placed me, until my suspicions be confirmed and I could expunge the evil I had unintentionally accomplished, while others, including this upstart himself, gossiped among themselves about me and were wrong."
The speaker allowed another pause, as if gathering himself for a final effort. "Robret Islay," he rolled the syllables across his tongue as if they were at once distasteful and savory to him, "having fraudulently arrogated yourself to the title Drector: in the name, and upon authority of his Wisdom and Sagacity, Leupould IX, Ceo of that august and terrible imperium-conglomerate we know as the Mono-polity of Hanover.. ." He paused, enjoying the moment, searching faces about him for signs that the ritual was
being performed to the letter of correctness. "I arrest you and your renegade, half-bred spawn under due and established process, in the presence and sight of numerous disinterested and distinguished guests, for the high crime of treason, in that you have held and acted upon an overtolerant attitude toward rebellious ^holdouts' upon the Ceo's dominion of Skye, and given ship-haven to his enemies, world-spoilers, picaroons, and brigands of the Deep!"
Of a sudden, space appeared about the elder Islay, evaporate of humanity, as if all who had been at his side now wished to be disassociated from him. It seemed natural that the Drector-Honorary and Lady Nasai-Ulness were nowhere to be seen. Arran spotted them at last. Somehow they had reappeared like thille-projected images behind Morven, that individual being, if not the true voice of Hanoverian righteousness, at least the obvious commander of the scene. The Lady Alysabeth, as well—and for some reason this did not surprise the boy—had taken several steps backward from her husband, leaving him alone to confront her father's dire accusation. The wry smile upon her lips left no doubt as to the position she would take in this affair.
Not aware he had acted, and even less of what he intended to accomplish thereby, Arran alone in all the room stepped forward to his father's defense. Scarce had the boy taken three short-legged paces when he was halted from behind. A hand descended upon the collar at the back of his neck, seized him, swept him up, all in a single unbroken gesture, into the steel embrace of a slave-warrior at the end of the row of Oplytes. As the breath was squeezed from his body, his struggles went unnoticed by the inhuman creature.
Almost the last thing Arran remembered, as a sparkling red haze descended before his eyes (poor substitute, he thought with the inanity of hypoxia, for the salute he had so looked forward to) was the gray-green, immobile, merciless expression of the Oplyte, the rotten stench of its cannibal breath. What wrenched him from the brink, saving his life, was the sound of a scream. One of the oflScers had fallen upon his face, a bayonette —a stout tubular knife afl&xed
106 HENRY MARTYN
about the axis of an otherwise unworkable Effen Effayal, seized from a wall as the first weapon which came to hand—thrust through the back of his neck and upward into his brain.
Grinning down at his grim handiwork. Old Henry took fresh hold upon the corroded Effen Effayal lurched toward the Oplyte holding Arran, and, with the slight weight of his body augmenting whatever power his muscles could bring to the task, jammed the bloody rust-toothed point into the creature's rippled back, where kefflar uniform and thick-fleshed ribs covered the kidneys. The blade penetrated no more than a couple of siemmes, leaving the weapon to stand out from the inhuman soldier's body like the solid limb of a tree.
More from curiosity than pain or anger, the Oplyte turned, dragging Old Henry and the weapon round, pawed with one hand at its back, wrenched the Effen Effayal free of the bloodless wound, and seized the old man by the face, covering his agony-distorted features with the span of its gray-green palm. The fingers closed, blood pooling about their tips, until, with a gruesome noise Arran would carry in his memory the remainder of his life, the skull fractured at the crown and burst, spewing brains in every direction. The Oplyte tossed what was left of its assailant at a wall, measures away, where the body struck, sliding down a broad scarlet smear onto the graniplastic floor, no longer recognizable as anything which had ever been human.
Arran was allowed scant time to mourn the death of his old friend, scarce enough for it to register upon his mind. Jostled by the Oplyte, he was reminded of the walther-weapon at his side. The Oplyte's crushing hold had forced the sash about his waist upward, jamming the pistol into his armpit. With only one of the Oplyte's arms wrapped about him, Arran's own arms were free. Wrenching himself round, Arran seized the steel and plastic handle of the weapon, jerked it from its holdster, shoved it into one of the Oplyte's soulless eyes, and pulled the trigger
as fast and as many times as he could. Blood spurted from the ruined eye. The Oplyte staggered, its body shuddering.
The crashing multiple reports of the ancient chemenergic
pistol filled the great room as no humming thrustible could, breaking the spell of startled inactivity which held everyone in as firm a grip as the Oplyte had held Arran. Many things took place at once.
The Oplyte released Arran and fell dead upon its face, almost crushing the boy a second time. Arran scrambled from beneath the fallen giant, the weapon smoking in his hand. All about him, people screamed and backed away, disminded and fearful of any unknown, alien device which could overcome a warrior they had supposed invulnerable.
"Arran!" Robret jS/5 and his brother Donol dashed through the open space the crowd had cleared for himself and Lia, later for Morven, afterward for Arran, leaping upon the glittering new riding machines which hovered upon their dormant §-fields beside the overloaded gift-tables. The vehicles leapt forward, engendering a kind of panic of their own among a crowd which had this day suffered too many surprises, clearing a path. Donol swept Arran up into the saddle-seat in front of him as Robret steered toward Lia, having hesitated a moment, thinking first to rescue his father.
"Seize me that man!" Morven's order was obeyed. Two Oplytes fell at once upon the Islay, taking him by the arms, the crack of broken bone audible to all within the room, forcing him to his knees and holding him there.
"Go!" he shouted to his sons. "You can do nothing but avenge me!"
This fortuitous distraction lent precious moments to the sons' attempted escape. As Robret ^/5' machine roared past Mistress Lia—the young man's split-second hesitation had not occurred without cost—she, too, was seized with cruel force by an Oplyte who, controlling the struggling woman with one great, gray-green, knobbly hand, struck out with the other at the eldest son, fetching him a glancing blow upon the forehead which sprang scarlet.
"Run!" Lia cried. The room began vibrating with unleashed §-energies. The Oplytes thrust after the brothers, unmindful of innocent spectators who fell like sheaves of harvested grain. Robret had no choice but to obey.
"Lia! I shall come back for you!" Thus he shouted over his
shoulder as both vehicles smashed through the half-open doors and were gone across the meadow before the Oplytes could act further. Arran's last thought within his father's house was of his pet triskel, Waenzi, locked up and forgotten in the tower bedroom, and of what might now become of him.
Within the Hall, a squad was shouted together, Oplytes being capable of speeds afoot which seldom failed to astound the most sanguine advocates of machine warfare, and commanded by Morven to pursue the fleeing brothers to the ends of Skye if necessary. As their surviving officer conveyed this in hysterical terms to his gigantic underlings, he emphasized each order with a heavy-booted kick which sank deep into the unresisting torso of Old Henry Martyn lying upon the floor before him. Other Oplytes would follow in the squad's wake once transport could be commandeered. The brothers would not become aware until some time afterward how, from this logistical delay, proceeded an infamous and general slaughter of the household retainers and their families, leaving behind one individual in fifty who managed to escape into the surrounding forest, thence into those mountains in which they themselves would soon lay hiding.
Blotting out Morven's voice and the screaming of the officer, Robret's words echoed within Lia's mind: '7 shall come back for you!"
"I know you will, my love," she sobbed to herself, watching the machines dwindle in the distance, unmindftil of the hard hand crushing her wrists. "I know you will."
Chapter XIV: A Fair Hearing
Spreighformed wheels of pneumoplastic hissed along the gritty corridor beneath a drapery of cobwebs hanging from the block-formed ceiling.
Nor, upon either side of the corridor, did the many dull-eyed Oplyte warriors, searching by twos and threes for escaped Islay retainers in the basement's dozens of twists and turns, bother to look up as the wheels passed. They would come to be a familiar presence in this place.
The man conveyed upon the wheels was equally oblivious to the warriors, deep as he was within the warm, dark embrace of his own familiar thoughts. Although he hoped this might be among his last rides in the uncomfortable contrivance, it was a necessary one. He had tired himself, straining to stand as he had in the Holdings Hall, standing as he never had in decades. It had been worth it, thus to confront his lifelong enemy. Still, the regenerative enzymes he had begun administering to himself during the long Deep-voyage here would require many months, perhaps even years, to manifest their powers to the fullest degree. Now, naturally enough, would follow an endless, agonizing period of daily exercises —therapy, his scientific staff would term it, astounded at being commanded to heal someone for a change—a time for reteaching blunted nerves and withered muscles too long allowed to grow forgetful of their duties.
Yet this fledgling effort, even the subsequent exhaustion it had engendered, had been worth the toll it was taking. It was a matter of pure chance, he repeated a sort of litany to himself, which of the two, he or Robret—no longer "the*'— Islay, had become a celebrated hero and which a cripple, pitied and laughed about behind his back. Rather than feeling the gratitude toward Islay everyone always expected, and
which he himself had simulated for his own purposes, Morven had burned with resentment of the man for thirty years. How dare that nameless social-climber overreach himself to an expectation of gratitude, when he had only been acting as any decent servant ought to!
Morven shook his head. He had already thought those thoughts a million times. He had even—at long last—spoken them aloud in denunciation of his tormentor. What was happening to him? He halted his chair and sat a long while in even deeper thought than was usual for him.
To his dismay, he discovered he was angry all over again, as if he had not just completed his revenge, as if Islay were not a helpless captive whose survival depended upon his captor's merest whim. With something resembling horror, Morven found his thoughts traveling the same, slow, smoldering circle which had burned into his brain for three decades. He wondered if a moment would ever come when he did not starve, did not feel parched, was not consumed altogether by a need for the revenge he had already accomplished.
No! No such moment could ever come! Not until Islay himself, his entire misbegotten half-bred family, every one of his lickspittle retainers, and the very memory of his vile name were erased from the galaxy! Not even a snippet of DNA must remain which could call itself Islay! Morven sat quivering, locked in the murderous throes of blackest fury. Passing his way, Oplytes and their officers—more had arrived from the starship in orbit—trod quiet as they could about him. He regained control of his thoughts and feelings, set his chair in motion once again, and, with it, his thoughts.
Now he, himself, had truly arisen from humble beginnings, as the second (and, upon that account, he felt, disenfranchised) son of a powerful family which ruled the faraway mining planet Shandish. To his eternal humiliation, unlike the battle-wounded Tarbert himself, his family had been grateful to young Robret—at that time not yet "the" Islay— for saving their son's life. Upon Tarbert's account, therefore, and this was what had rankled most, this nameless nobody, this soldier, had been elevated in a twinkling to the peerage and given outright grant of Skye, an independent Holding the likes of which Tarbert himself, as second son, could
never hope for. Thus Morven's secret resentment had grown deeper, although it had required ten thousand bitter days and nights to reach full flower from the seed planted within him by mere circumstance.
They had not been empty days and nights. Ruined in body and spirit by wounds from which, by all rights, he should have died, he had come to owe Islay another debt, one which even now evoked real gratitude, and which he was about to pay in full. Robret had given what was left of him reason to continue living, to martial his resources, along with what he could accumulate of his now-indulgent family's, to rise
upon his merit within the Monopolitan 'Droom of Ceo Leupould IX.
In some ways it had been childishly easy. Whatever was asked of him, he simply did superbly. Perhaps after all he could have been a hero but for terrible mischance. Perhaps, upon the other hand, only terrible mischance had made it possible to concentrate himself without distractions—those of love and merely mundane hatred—which ordinary men fall victim to. It mattered not. In either event, he had, over a long, steady course, acquired vaster power and wealth than even he might have awaited once upon a time, for no other reason than to obtain the revenge he ached after in body and spirit. Perhaps now, he thought (and it was not displeasing), with the inevitable return of his health, he, too, could occasionally be distracted by sensual diversions which other—
Of a sudden, flushed by the Oplytes from a branching side corridor, a small, fast-moving creature bounded across his path. One of the local yermin, Morven thought, about the size of a man's head, covered with short, stiff" brownish-gray fur. Three legs, no more than pseudopods, sprouted from its underside, a matching number of eyestalks from its rounded top. With a swirling motion and a grateful noise, it ran to him, as if discovering long-sought refuge, and appeared ready to jump into his lap.
Morven shuddered. With a jerk of his head at its sensors, he swerved the chair. The creature struck an arm-support and fell, dazed, to the floor. His left wheel caught the fallen animal in a direct line over its center. No resistance, the man thought, disappointed. It had no bones. As the wheel crushed
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