“Please,” Daryl said, putting a hand on Roan’s arm. “I think—”
“Never mind,” Roan said. “I’m not very good at remembering all the things that are too ugly for you pretty people to talk about. I’m a man; I sweat and bleed and eat and excrete—”
“Roan!” Daryl said. Alouicia drew away with a small cry. Sostelle gasped.
“Go away,” Hugh said. “I don’t know who brought you here. You’re not fit for the society of civilized people!”
“There’s nothing civilized about the ITN,” Roan said. “What would you do if they showed up? If they came storming across those pretty gardens and in through the pretty door; what would you do?”
“I’m sure that thirty thousand years of culture have prepared us to deal with whatever a barbarian might do,” Daryl said uneasily.
Roan doubled a fist and held it before him. “Do you know what this is?”
Hugh eyed the double knuckles.
His nose wrinkled. “Of course. The dawn-men—Romans, I think they were called—had a primitive sport in which they flailed one another with their hands held in that way. This was done in a coliseum called Madison Square Garden, and the winner was awarded a fig-leaf, or something of the sort.”
Roan drew back his fist and hit Hugh square on the nose, taking care not to put too much power back of the blow. Hugh went down, blood streaming down across his lip and into his mouth. He cried out, dabbed at his face, stared at the crimsoned fingers. There were little shrieks all around.
“You brute!” Hugh said.
“All right,” Roan heard himself shouting. “What do you do, with your thirty thousand years of culture?”
Hugh came to his feet. All round, people stared, eyes bright, lips parted. Roan stepped to Hugh and hit him solidly on the side of the jaw. Hugh fell down again, his mouth open and a look of utter amazement on his face.
“You’re supposed to be an athlete,” Roan said. “Get up and fight back.”
Hugh got to his feet. He folded his fingers over his palms and held them in front of him; then he stepped up to Roan and struck out with an overhand blow. Roan casually brushed Hugh’s arm aside and hit him in the stomach. As Hugh doubled over, Roan planted a left and right to the face. Hugh sprawled on the floor and began to cry.
Roan reached, caught his garment by the shoulder, hauled him half erect, slapped him across the cheek.
“It may surprise you,” he said. “But members of an attacking army don’t stop when you cry. They just laugh at you. And they don’t fight nicely, like I do. If you’re on the floor—” he let Hugh drop—“they kick you. Like this.” And he planted a solid blow in Hugh’s ribs with his toe. Hugh scrambled back, tears streaming down his face. He was sobbing loudly.
“Get up!” Roan said. “Get mad! That’s the only thing that will stop me!” He followed Hugh, dragged him to his feet, hit him in the eye, then, holding him up, punched him in the mouth. Hugh’s face was a bloody mask now.
“Fight!” Roan said. “Hit back!”
Hugh broke away, stumbled back against the watching crowd. They thrust him back toward Roan. He saw their faces then, for the first time. They were like hungry charons, waiting for an old Gracyl to die.
“Kill him, savage!” a man called. Saliva ran out of his mouth and down into his perfumed, pale blue beard. Alouicia held out her hands, the gold-enameled nails like raking claws. “Bite his throat!” she shrilled. “Drink his blood!”
Roan dropped his hands, feeling a thrill of horror. Hugh broke through the ring and ran, sobbing.
“Master,” Sostelle said. “Oh, Master . . .”
“Let’s go,” Roan said. “Where’s my crew?” He staggered, feeling the room tilt under his feet. Terran wine was made for Terran nervous systems; it hit hard.
“Master, I don’t know. But—”
“Find them!” Roan shouted.
People scattered before him.
He was out in the wide entry hall now. The polished black floor threw back reflections of chandeliers and of the stars above the glass-domed ceiling. Sostelle hurried ahead, bounding on all fours. Two tall, wide shapes stepped from the shadow of a slender supporting rib ahead, stood silhouetted against the sweep of glass front.
“Askor,” Roan called. “Sidis!”
“Yeah, Boss.” They came toward him. They were dressed in their soiled ship clothes. Sidis wore a pistol openly at his hip.
“Thought I said . . . no guns,” Roan said blurrily.
“I had a hunch you might change your mind,” Sidis said. His teeth gleamed in the gloom.
“You did, eh?” Roan felt an unreasoning anger rising in him. It was almost like joy. “Since when did you start doing my thinking for me?” He took a step, swung what should have been a smashing blow to the Minid’s head, but he missed, almost fell. Sidis hadn’t moved.
“Gee, Chief,” Askor said admiringly. “You’re drunk!”
“I’m not drunk, damn you!” Roan planted his feet, breathing hard. “And what are you doing here in those rags? Why haven’t you washed your ugly faces? I can smell you from three yards away!” He could feel his tongue slurring over the words, and this made him angrier than ever. “You trying . . . ’sgrace me?” he roared. “Get out of here and don’t come back . . . till you look like human beings!”
“That could be quite a while, Chief,” Askor said. “Look, Cap’n, let’s blow out of this place. It’s creepy. I can hardly keep my hands off these Terries of yours.”
“They’re not mine,” Roan yelled. “And I’ll say when we leave!”
“He’s right, Boss,” Sidis cut in. “This world ain’t good for us. Let’s shove off, Cap’n. Just the three of us, like before.”
“I’m Captain of the bloody menagerie!” Roan yelled. “When I’m ready to lift ship, I’ll tell you. Now get out of my sight! Get lost!”
“Master,” Sostelle whispered. “You, too, you freak,” Roan staggered, wiped a hand across his face. It was hot, feverish. Everything seemed to be spinning around him; his mind seemed to be floating free of his body, like a captive balloon.
Then skyrockets came shooting up in a fiery shower and when they shimmered away into darkness there was nothing . . .
XXXVIII
Roan sat up and looked around.
Noise roared in his ears. A face swam mistily before him.
“Ah, he’s awake!” someone called. Someone else thrust a thin-stemmed glass into his hand. He drank thirstily, let the glass fall. Daryl was there, looking at him eagerly with painted eyes.
“Roan! You looked so lovely sleeping, with your mouth open and sweat on your face.”
“Where’s Desiranne?” Roan said. His head ached but he could speak clearly now.
“Eh? Why she’s preparing for her performance, later in the evening—but—”
“I want to see her.” Roan stood and the table fell over. “Where is she?”
“Now, Roan.” Daryl was at his side. “Just be patient. You’ll see her.” He laughed a high, tight laugh. “Oh, my, yes, you’ll see her. You liked her, didn’t you? You . . . you lusted after her?”
Roan took Daryl by the shoulder, lifted him from the floor. “Keep away from me,” he snarled, and threw the Terran from him. His vision seemed cloudy, as though the room were full of mist. There were other people around him, but their faces weren’t clear. Sostelle was there, his face worried and homely and familiar and dependable.
“Where is she, Sostelle?” Roan said. “Where did she go?”
“Master, I don’t know. This is not a matter for dogs.” His voice was almost a moan.
“Sure, I liked her,” Roan said loudly. “I loved her!” He kicked a chair from his path, started across the floor. “She liked me, too, didn’t she?” He rounded on the dog. “Well, didn’t she?”
Sostelle’s face assumed an unreadable canine expression. “Her interest in you was unmistakable, Master.”
“You think so?”
“Certainly. She is a lovely la
dy, Master. Worthy of you.” But there was something about his tone; something Roan didn’t understand.
“I’ve got to find her. Can’t leave this mad house until I find her.” He started on. The people before him flitted backward, just out of reach, just out of vision. The noise was like an avalanche of sound—a wild, screaming sort of music that seemed to tell of great birds of prey swooping to a feast.
“I will help you, Master,” Sostelle said. “I will help you all I can.”
“You’re a damned good dog, Sostelle. Hell, you’re the only friend I’ve met here.”
“Sir!” Sostelle sounded shocked. “It’s not done, Sir, to call a dog a friend.”
Roan laughed harshly. “I guess I’ll never learn the rules, Sostelle. I came too late—for all of us.”
“Master. Perhaps you should go now—and take me with you.”
“You, too? What is it, a conspiracy? I’ve told you, damn you, I’m not going until I find her!” There was a table in his path and he kicked it savagely aside.
“Roan, Roan,” a quavering voice called. He stopped, steadied himself against a table, peered through the mist. Daryl darted up to him, his carefully coiffured hair awry. A smile flicked on and off like leaf shadows playing on water.
“It’s Desiranne you want to see. I promise you, you’ll see her. Just wait. But now come along with me. The party’s just begun. We have wonderful things planned, and we must have you! It will be the greatest affair of the century—of a lifetime! And at the end—Desiranne!”
“Sostelle, is he lying?” Roan stared at the Terran, who was quivering with eagerness, like an Alphan slave awaiting a kick or the dregs of a wineglass, not knowing which it would be.
“Master,” Sostelle whined, “Master Daryl speaks the truth.”
“Then I’ll come.”
“You’ll be glad, Roan,” Daryl gushed. “So glad. And—”
“Never mind that. Where are we going?”
“First, we’ll dine. After the dancing and the . . . excitement . . . we need to nourish ourselves, don’t you think?” He giggled. “And then—but you’ll see. There will be marvelous things. All the pleasures of Terra are waiting for you tonight!” He danced away, calling to others. Roan started after him, then turned back to Sostelle with a quick thought.
“Pleasure,” he said, “is what you go after when there isn’t anything else left.”
The cold night air cleared Roan’s head. He looked down from the open flyer in which he and Daryl and two women and their dogs sat on silken cushions, drinking from small, thin-necked bottles of spicy liquor. There were other airboats around them, darting in and out like a school of playful fish. Over the rush of air, thin cries of excitement mingled with the chatter of many voices talking at once.
The dog piloting the craft dropped it to the tip of a tall spire of glowing yellow glass. Roan followed the others through an entry that looked like solid glass, but parted before him with a tinkle of cold crystals. Flushed, bright-eyed faces swarmed around him, but none of them were Desiranne. A tall girl with heavy golden hair came up to Roan, her bare arms ivory-white. She looked at him with her eyes half shut, her lips parted, her tongue showing. Roan showed his teeth and reached for her, and she shuddered and shrank back. Roan laughed and pushed through to follow Daryl.
He was trying hard to remember where the table was, how he had come there. He couldn’t. There had been so many tables, so much noise, so many of the little bottles of spicy wine. He felt very sober, though, and his mind seemed to be working unusually clearly.
Neatly dressed dogs were serving food. Roan ate with voracious appetite while his companions nibbled and watched. Roan hardly noticed them. Once he looked up to see the blonde girl sitting across from him.
“You Terries know how to make food,” he said. “This is better even than blood.”
The girl—Phrygette, Roan remembered her name—looked sick and excited at the same time. She put out her hand as though to touch the hair on Roan’s arm, then drew it back.
“You’re strange,” she whispered. “I wonder what you think about.”
“I think about many things,” Roan said carefully, wishing the hot feeling and the humming in his ears would go away. “I think about the Niss, and how Man killed himself fighting them, and how they died alone, then, and how their ghosts haunted the Galaxy for five thousand years.”
“Old Niss,” Phrygette said, boldly touching Roan’s arm now. “I always thought he was a silly superstition.”
“I did a terrible thing when I ran the Niss blockade.” Roan said. “I didn’t free Terra. I shattered the myth that had held the universe out for five thousand years. Now she’s exposed to the sharks: Trishinist, and after him, others, until Terra is no different than Tambool.”
Phrygette was looking around for her dog, Ylep, to come and fix her make-up.
“A new navy, that’s what you need,” Roan said. “Trishinist can muster fifty thousand men, and he has the ships to transport them. You have ships, too—underground, waiting. You need to issue weapons and learn how to use them, prepare tactics to meet an enemy landing party.”
Phrygette frowned at Roan. “Really, for someone from Beyond, you talk about the strangest things. Tell me how it feels to kill someone, Roan. Tell me how it feels to die.”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Roan said roughly.
Suddenly he felt very bad. His heart was trying to climb up his throat, and his head hurt terribly. He swallowed more wine, put his head down on the table. Phrygette got to her feet, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m afraid he’s becoming a bore,” she said to someone. “Let’s go on to the theater, Daryl. They’ve probably already started—without us!”
“They wouldn’t dare!” Daryl said, sounding alarmed. “Not after I planned it!”
“They might.”
“Roan!” Daryl was shaking him. He raised his head and saw a crowd all around him, faces staring out of a blackish haze.
“Come on, Roan!” It was Daryl, catching at his hand. “You went to sleep again, you foolish boy, but now we’re all ready to go to the Museum!”
“Go where?”
“To the Museum of the Glory of Man! Come on! Oh, you’ll be thrilled, Roan! It’s an ancient, ancient place—just at the edge of the Lower Town. All sort of shuddery and dim—but marvelous, really! It’s all there—all Terra’s history. We’ve been saving it for a special occasion—and this is certainly the perfect night!”
“Funny place . . . for a party . . .” Roan said, but he got to his feet and followed the laughing, chattering crowd.
Out on the roof, the dogs jumped up, handing their masters and mistresses to their places in the waiting flyers, some of which hovered, waiting their turn. Roan felt as though he were moving in a dream imbued with a sense of terrible impending. The dogs’ eyes looked wide, afraid. Even Sostelle was awkward, getting the flyer’s door open. Roan’s hand went to his belt, feeling for a gun that wasn’t there.
“Askor,” he said suddenly. “And Sidis. Where are they?” He half rose, sat down suddenly as the flyer jumped forward.
“They’ll trouble you no more,” Daryl said. “And now, Roan, just think! Objects that were held sacred by our ancestors, five thousand—ten thousand years ago—”
“What do you mean,” Roan said, feeling tightness in his chest. “Where are they?”
“Roan—don’t you remember? You sent them away yourself.”
“Sostelle!” Roan felt a sudden weakness as he tried again to rise. Blackness whirled in, shot with fire.
“Master, it is true. You ordered them to leave you. They laid hands on you, to drag you with them, but you fought, and then . . . then Master Daryl was impelled to . . . to call for the Enforcers.”
“What are they?” Roan heard his own hoarse voice as from a great distance.
“Specially trained dogs, Master,” Sostelle said in a tight voice. “Led by Kotsohai the Punisher.”
“Are they—did they�
�?”
“Your companions fought mightily Master. They killed many dogs. At last they were overwhelmed, and restrainers were focused on them. Then they were taken away.”
“Then they’re alive?” The blackness broke, flushed away.
“Of course, Master!” Sostelle sounded shocked.
Roan laughed harshly. “They’re all right, then. They’ve been in jail before. I’ll bail ’em out in the morning.”
They had landed on the wide roof of an ancient palace. Roan tottered, felt Sostelle’s hand under his elbow.
“I’m sick,” he said. “I’ve never been sick, since I was burned when Henry Dread shelled the Extravaganzoo. There was a Man doctor there; he cured me. He couldn’t cure Stellaraire, though. She was crushed by a chromalloy beam, and then . . . burned . . .”
“Yes, Master,” Sostelle soothed.
“Gom Bulj died from the acceleration. But I killed Ycth. And I killed Henry Dread, too. You didn’t know that, did you Sostelle? But Iron Robert—he died for me. . . .
They were inside now. The voices of the others were like birds quarreling over a dung heap. Their faces were blurred, vague. All around, tall cases were ranged, faced with glass. Someone was talking urgently to Roan, but he ignored him, walked to the nearest display, feeling as though he were toiling up a hill.
“This is a collection of famous jewel stones, Master,” Sostelle was saying. “All natural minerals, found here on Terra, and treasured by Men for their beauty and rarity.”
Roan stared down at rank on rank of glittering, faceted crystals—red, green, blue, violet, clear white.
“There is the Napoleon emerald,” Sostelle said. “Worn by an ancient war-chief. And beyond is the Buddha’s Heart ruby, once the object of veneration of five billion worshippers. And there, just beyond—the Iceberg diamond, said to be the largest and finest ever found in Antarctica.”
“Look, Roan,” Daryl called. “These are called monies. They’re made of solid natural gold, and in early times they were traded back and forth in exchange for oh, other things,” he finished vaguely. “Rather a bore, really. Come along to the next room, though. There are some fabulous things. . . .”
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