The Last Master

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Pandemonium swept the great hall while all the lights flashed and great klaxons roared. Ett sagged back in his seat and watched in disbelief as his tote board ran up an incredible balance in his favor. Down below in the hall two little Japanese men, at one table, and a young woman from Toronto, across the room, were also celebrating wildly—for they had bet on Ett’s sequence, and so had won, at tremendous odds though for much smaller amounts.

  It was some time before play could resume, and Ett had to refuse an invitation to receive his winnings in a ceremony to be broadcast around the world. When play was allowed to resume, Ett proceeded grimly on his course. He began by buying a magnum of champagne for everyone in the building, which used up a considerable sum; then he dived back into his play again. He also hit on the strategy of playing from the tote board on Rico’s chair, which he slaved to his own controls; and so he began to double his losses. The tide of his luck had at last turned. As he continued to play at the house limit, his winnings melted away before him.

  Ett paused, some time later, to lean back in his grav chair. Beyond the transparent wall which gave him a view down the mountainside, he could look into the sunrise. Possibly it was a glorious one, but his eyes were grainy and the headache behind them nearly a living, malignant force in itself, although he had drunk nothing more than coffee since Milan. He felt more deeply exhausted than he could ever remember feeling before. He turned to look at Rico Erm, feeling the protest of his back muscles as he did so. Rico was leaning back in another grav unit behind him and to his left. He looked as if they had begun their travels together only an hour or so before.

  Somehow Rico contrived to look even more attentive, as if physically indicating his eagerness to serve Ett in any way possible. Abruptly Ett felt an upwelling of raw, fiery anger again, and he threw himself back into the game, hunching over his console and punching savagely at the ivory surfaces that registered his wagers. In another two hours he had lost all he had earlier won. Two hours after that he was more than ten million units in debt.

  At last he paused again, and sat looking at his board for some moments. Then he turned back to Rico, who still looked chipper although by this time. Ett had become too fogged to notice.

  “Have I reached my limit yet?” he asked Rico. “Or can I keep going and try to recoup my losses?”

  “That’s entirely up to you, Mr. Ho,” Rico said. “I can order as much more credit as you’d like.”

  And so Ett gave up. If there was any end to the funds the EC was willing to supply him, finding out where it might be wasn’t worth this.

  “Let’s quit,” he said, and fell back on the cushions of his chair, while Rico slaved its controls and began to lower them both to the floor of the hall.

  Down there, though, waited the swarms of gamblers and other watchers who had been attracted to the saga of his effort. They had no notion of why he had played as he had, but he had captured their imaginations in some way—apparently even a loser could have some magic, provided he lost on a grand scale.

  Seeing them, Rico overrode the chairs’ controls and, surrounded by other men in grav chairs, until now themselves quite inconspicuous, they passed over the heads of the great crowd and down a long hallway, until they had lost the crowd and were quite alone. They took Ett to his room, where he stumbled to his bed, and left him.

  ***

  It was early evening when Ett awoke. He could remember being helped to his room, but after that he could recall nothing. He was still in his clothes, although his shoes were gone somewhere, and he was lying atop the rumpled surface of the large foam bed, with a single old-fashioned cloth blanket draped over him. Rico must have done that, he thought.

  He rolled over so that he was no longer lying on his side, but flat on his back—although the movement made a throbbing start through the back of his head. When that had died away he pulled a pillow down and doubled it up behind his neck, enduring another session of protest from the back of his skull. Then he simply lay there, looking out the window at the sky which slowly deepened in hue, from a milky blue to a pale lavender, to a cloud-grained purple with orange highlights, as the sun went down, somewhere beyond his line of sight.

  The sky was a deep, rich blue, almost black, when he threw back the blanket and rose, slowly and cautiously, from the bed. His head seemed all right, though something suggested it might be unduly fragile. There was a dull ache in the small of his back, and he stretched gingerly while undressing and moving towards the large bathroom. That room’s muted lighting and warm gold tones seemed to comfort him a bit; and he ran a warm bath, in which he simply lay, eyes closed, for an unknown period of time.

  The bath water never did get cold—this was, after all, one of the most expensive bathrooms in the world—but eventually he opened his eyes and sat up in the tub, reaching for a towel.

  ***

  Ett and Rico had dinner in the suite, seated on a balcony that overlooked the boat-filled harbor that was called the Living Sea. Ett found that he had an appetite again, although certain dishes now tasted different and seemed unfamiliar. By the time he reached the caramel custard, however, his queasiness had returned.

  “If you don’t mind, Rico,” he said, “I’d like to return to that conversation we were having in Milan—you might remember, you were saying you felt you were at least as important as I am, and perhaps more so.”

  “I recall, Mr. Ho,” said Rico. “I believe what I said was to the effect that because I function as well as I can, I am as important as anyone, and perhaps more important than even an R-Master, if he’s non-functional.”

  “Yes, that was it,” said Ett. “I take it you’re implying you deplore waste and inefficiency, and that therefore you’re aghast at my performance there the last couple of days.”

  “By no means, Mr. Ho—that is, as far as what you say applies to yourself. I don’t pretend to understand what you’ve been doing—but I do know you’ve been moving to a plan, and so you must be at work to fulfill a function of some sort. And as far as I can tell after today, you’ve been working very hard at it, indeed.”

  “It doesn’t matter to you if I define my function myself?” Ett asked.

  “Who could be better qualified to define your function than you?” said Rico. “You are, after all, an R-Master—and quite obviously an intelligent and active one.”

  Ett sat silent for a few minutes, looking at the young man before him. Rico accepted the scrutiny calmly, with no change of expression.

  ***

  For some time after that, the two of them walked about the great complex, always accompanied at a discreet distance by at least four of the unobtrusive security men. The crowds seemed to have forgotten Ett already, although perhaps it was simply that a whole new clientele had replaced those present during Ett’s gambling binge.

  The two of them took a table at a glittering floor show, but Ett was still in the grip of the restlessness that had brought him out of the suite in the first place. He left the theatre soon, pulling his entourage, unbidden, behind him. And as he went, a young redheaded woman rose from a table at the back of the room, and followed. Ett’s security noticed her movements at once, however, and when Ett noticed her, she was already hemmed in.

  He raised a hand to halt the men who were already about to hustle her away, and walked toward her.

  “Why, it’s Maea Tornoy, isn’t it?” he said. “No, it’s all right,” he told the security men, “she’s a friend of my brother’s.” The men moved slowly away, reluctant, and Ett led Maea along a hanging balcony. Rico fell back from them, and they moved slowly, renewing the brief acquaintance they’d had once.

  “Yes, I remembered you when I saw you walk out of the lounge,” she said. “I thought I should tell you how sorry I was to learn about Wally. I’m afraid I was in Africa on a temporary assignment when it happened, and I never heard until just a few weeks ago. I was so sorry!”

  She paced slowly beside him, generally watching the floor or the vista ahead, except when touchi
ng his arm to emphasize an expression of sympathy. Ett’s eyes were generally on her, and for the first few minutes he said very little.

  “Was there a funeral?” she asked.

  “No,” said Ett. “They got to him very quickly and put him in cryogenic as a matter of course. I’ve been told there’s no point in trying revival. But we’re going to try anyway.”

  “I see.” She looked down.

  “Yes.” For some reason Ett did not want to discuss Wally directly with her. To some extent his preoccupation with being an R-Master had driven the matter of her relationship with Wally into the back of his mind, it was true. But now that she had appeared to remind him of it, it did not seem so important…

  … He realized suddenly that he had stopped walking, and been lost in his thoughts for a moment or two. Maea had also stopped, a step ahead of him, stopped and twisted about in place, looking back at him. He put himself in movement, again, smiling jovially for public consumption. Rico was still about ten feet behind them, he noted, and no one else was closer.

  “You’re not here by accident, are you?” he said quietly to her, as he moved off beside her.

  She looked sideways and up at him as they moved—they were walking much closer to each other now—and appraised him for a moment.

  “Well, you are an R-Master now, aren’t you,” she said. It did not seem to be a question, but more a confirmation directed at herself. “Still, you can be misled as easily as anyone else. Don’t forget that.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” he said. “In fact, I’m still not sure I really believe this has happened to me. But don’t you try to mislead me, too, Miss Tornoy—”

  “Call me Maea,” she said.

  “Maea, then. Why are you here?”

  She was silent for a few moments, looking down in front of her feet as they moved along at a leisurely pace. He didn’t press her.

  “It’s going to sound horrible,” she said softly, looking at him, “but Wally is only incidental to the reason I’m here.”

  She stopped. “That was even worse than I thought it would be.”

  “Go on,” he said. His voice seemed noticeably cooler even to him, and she noticed it.

  “I belong to an organization which thinks you need to learn a lot more about the world,” she said. “Think about it. Ask questions. Any man of good will will be glad to help you.”

  “What has—had—Wally to do with this?” he asked. But she refused to meet his eyes, and they strolled on in silence. At the next cross-corridor she turned back to him as she stopped, and looked up.

  “Maybe you should talk to Lee Malone,” she said.

  “He’s another R-Master, isn’t he?” Ett asked.

  “Yes,” she said, looking at him now with curiosity frank in her eyes. He said nothing, and after a moment she turned and strode rapidly off down the cross-corridor.

  When Ett looked away from her, Rico had joined him. Neither of them said anything for some moments, and they both just stood in place, while couples and occasional small groups detoured around them. Eventually Ett decided to return to his suite. His head hurt again.

  An empty elevator opened its doors as they reached the bank nearest them, so they stepped into it alone, and Rico punched the code that would direct the conveyance up, across, and around to their suite. But as soon as they began to move, Ett, reflexively, stepped forward and hit the manual override switch. Rico stared at him.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know, Rico—call it restlessness,” Ett said. “Maybe I’m just feeling perverse.” He punched out another code at random on the elevator’s control pad. The car began to move again, and through the single transparent wall it began to be plain that they had left the public portions of Sunset Mountain, and entered service routes.

  Rico fingered his wrist communicator but said nothing.

  Shortly, the elevator doors opened before them and Ett stepped out into a plain, metal-walled corridor. Rico was at his heels.

  “Mr. Ho, I don’t mean to object,” he said, “but while Earth Council has a tremendous amount of authority and even more power of good will, no one can guarantee you absolute protection. It would be safest—”

  He broke off. Down the corridor ahead of them a door had opened, and a man, dressed in a tight-fitting black garment, with a hand-laser clipped to his belt, had just stepped through it. He stood in the center of the hallway, looking at them and frowning.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “I don’t see any passes.”

  “Forgive me, sir,” Rico said, “but Mr. Ho is a new R-Master—” but the man in the black suit cut him off.

  “I don’t care who he is. This is a private section. Get back to the elevator and get out of here.”

  Ett was grinning. He had been feeling miserable for hours, but this situation, which sounded as if it might lead to a fight, had him feeling better. Adrenalin was suddenly pouring into his bloodstream, washing the weariness and the headache out of his awareness. He didn’t notice it was gone, but he was feeling better.

  “What’s in that room you just came from?” he asked the man in black.

  “Mr. Ho—”

  “Never mind, Rico,” said Ett. “The man can answer me. Let him.”

  “I’ll answer you,” said the other. He reached back and touched a point on the wall beside the door. A high-pitched humming filled the corridor. The door opened and the two other armed men in black came out. Farther down the hall another door opened to let out three men, and Ett heard yet another door opening behind himself and Rico, beyond the elevator door.

  The elevator opened and four of Ett’s security men stepped out. They moved forward quickly; all at once Ett found himself surrounded by their bodies.

  Rico released the dial of his own wrist communicator, and stepped forward, reaching between Ett’s bodyguards.

  “Mr. Ho—if I may?” Without waiting for an answer, Rico took Ett’s wrist and lifted it, with the arm, before his face, pressing against the stem of the communicator. The small Buddha image appeared above the dial, before his eyes.

  “This is Rico Erm, speaking for Etter Ho. Security problem. Please record and locate.”

  “Affirmative, Mr. Erm—” the voice from the communicator was set on area broadcast, and so could be heard by everyone there—“Do you require assistance?”

  The men in black, who had been moving in, had stopped. Rico let Ett’s wrist fall and stepped back out from among the security men. He moved forward in front of the man they had first encountered.

  “Not at the moment,” Ett said. He, too, stepped forward from the circle of his own security men. Then, as he looked at the door behind the man in black, his grin widened.

  At a jaunty, relaxed pace Ett walked up to and past Rico, past the man in black—and opened the door through which the other had come.

  He stepped into what seemed to be a balcony with seats overlooking a gym. Those seats were sparsely filled with spectators who were hunched over viewscreens apparently meant to give them a closeup of action on the gym floor. At one end of the gym some kind of tally board burned with lights. Down on the floor of the gym itself, two men in black suits like those worn by the men in the corridor, were engaged in a fencing match.

  It was all so commonplace and harmless that Ett halted, ready to feel foolish at forcing his way in.

  Then he noticed that neither of the fencers wore masks. Nor were they fitted with mesh shirts for electrical scoring of touches. Instead, they were naked to the waist; and the one on the right had a long red line slantwise across the upper left of his chest.

  Ett stepped forward to an empty seat and looked into the viewer before it.

  The viewer gave him an excellent closeup. It was as if he looked at the fencers from less than six feet away. He saw then that the weapons had no protective buttons. Their points were sharp. As he looked, the arm of the man on the left straightened and his right leg kicked forward, as he lunged, and the point of his weapon disappeared into the a
lready scratched chest of his adversary.

  As the man on the right crumpled, Ett turned and pushed his way back out the door, brushing by Rico and the security men, who’d been waiting for him just inside it.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Rico said. He looked somehow disheveled, for the first time since Ett had known him.

  “All right,” said Ett thickly. “We’ll go.”

  Silently, they went, the black-clad men moving out of their way as they approached. Still in silence, Ett rode the elevator to his own corridor and his own suite. He fell on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The exhausted feeling was back. The headache was like a tourniquet about his temples. But more than that was churning inside him. He had seen fights, plenty of them. He had even seen knives and bottles and clubs used, and he was aware that waivers could be signed allowing two contestants to fence with naked weapons.

  But the presence of the casino’s security men and the tote board confirmed that this had been something more, a duel to the death taking place only so that spectators could bet on it.

  With that ugly image still floating in his mind, he slid into a light and uneasy sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  He dreamed that he was busy building something beautiful and intricate. In a very large room, he was constructing all sorts of different shapes out of small crystalline shapes. Pillars, arches, and fragile enclosures—they covered the available floor surface and stretched from floor to ceiling. The facets and angles of their innumerable tiny crystals reflected points of fire in all colors around him: diamond-white, red, green, purple, yellow…

  A hand blundered into the room, a massive chunk of flesh and bone cut off at the wrist, bigger than a man, bigger than Ett. Blindly and brainlessly, it began to draw straight lines along the floor, arbitrarily dividing the room into sections. It followed the line it was drawing without regard for what was in the way, smashing through and destroying the crystalline creations in its path.