Roan followed, stared at looming walls decorated with objects as baroque and primitive as the crude weapons of the wild men on Aldo Cerise, others of a powerful, barbaric beauty, and still others of a glittering intricacy that his mind could not comprehend. There were more cases—miles of them, each glowing with is own soft light, each with its array of objects of metal, stone, wood, glass, fabric, synthetic.
“Look!” Daryl was poking Roan. “Those clothes were made from fibers that grew from the dirt. They scraped them clean in some way, and then worked them all together, and colored them with—with fruit juices or something. Then they sawed out pieces and looped them together with little strings. That was called sowing—”
“No, that was when they made the plants that they got the fibers from,” someone interrupted. “But aren’t they funny?”
Roan gazed at the display of old uniforms. Some were shapeless and faded, brown with age, curled with time, even protected as they were by the vacuum of the display cases. Others, farther along, were more familiar.
“You see those long, sharp things? They used those to stick into each other,” A high excited voice called. “And these odd-shaped objects made some sort of lightning and tore holes in people. There must have been a great deal of blood.”
Roan stopped, staring at a tunic of brilliant blue, with narrow silvery-gray trousers, and a belt with a buckle bearing an eagle and the words Terran Space Forces.
“It’s like the ITN uniform,” he said to no one. “But it was made before there was an empire. . . .” Daryl was beside Roan, his face puckered in thought. He looked up at Roan, his eyes snapping wide.
“You!” he said in a strained voice. “I know where it was I saw your face. Look, everybody, come with me!” He turned, ran off.
“What’s the matter with him?” Roan growled, but he followed.
In a small room off the main hall, a crowd clustered around a lighted case. They looked around as Roan came up, gave way, staring at him, silent now. Roan halted before the high glass panel, stared at a hazy scene, bright lit. He blinked, cleared his vision.
The figure of a man stood before him, clad in a uniform like the one he had just seen, leaning against the flank of a ship of quaint, primitive design. The eyes, blue like cool fire, looked into Roan’s from across the centuries. The deep red hair was hacked short, but its stubborn curl still showed. A deep, recorded voice spoke from a slot beneath the display:
“This was Vice-Admiral Stephen Murdoch, as he appeared in his last solido, taken only moments before he embarked on his last, heroic mission. Admiral Murdoch is renowned as the hero of the Battle of Ceres and of the Siege of the Callistan Redoubts. He was lost in space in the year eleven thousand, four hundred and two of the Atomic Era.”
“Master,” Sostelle said in the silence. “It’s you!”
Roan turned, looked at Daryl. “How . . .?” he started. He put his hands on himself as though to assure himself that he was Roan Cornay, alive here and now. But Daryl and the others stared back at him as though he was himself a thing from out of the remote past, like the figure in the case.
Roan laughed suddenly, wildly. “I wanted to know who my father was,” he said. “But I never suspected he was sixteen thousand years old.”
“He . . . really . . . is . . .” Daryl said, and licked at his lips. He whirled to the others. “Don’t you understand? He really did come from Beyond, just as he said! He’s returned from the dead!”
“No,” a loud voice said. It was Hugh, his face raw and cut from the beating Roan had given him. “He’s a dirty Lower, and he should be turned over to the dogs.”
“He’s returned from the dead!” Daryl screeched. “Come along! It’s easy enough to prove!”
“The genetic analyzer!” someone called. “In the next hall . . .”
“Roan, this will show them all,” Daryl said breathlessly. There was a strange light in his eyes. “And then—you’ll tell me how it feels to be dead, and rise again!”
“You’re insane, Daryl,” Roan said. “You’re all insane!” he shouted. “I’m the most insane of all, for being here, where I don’t belong!” He broke off. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll leave here. With Askor and Sidis. They’re my kind: I understand them. They’re not pretty, but they’ve got the beauty of reality about them . . .”
“And you’ll take me, Master?” Sostelle whispered.
“Sure, Man’s best dog is his friend, eh?” Roan stumbled, almost fell. He was hardly aware of walking, Sostelle at his side, Daryl trotting ahead, under a high arch with a flame burning under it in a metal tray, on into an even bigger room that echoed with the bat-like cries of the Terrans.
“. . . classify persons wishing to contribute to the germinal banks,” Daryl was saying. “Here in the Hall of Man, all the records were kept—”
“My genetic patterns won’t be here,” Roan said, almost clearheaded for the moment.
“He’s afraid,” Hugh said. “Will he confess his pretensions now?”
Roan looked around at gleaming equipment, towering metal panels, winking clinical lights.
“Put your hand here, Roan,” Daryl urged. He indicated an opening, guided Roan’s hand to it. He felt a sharp tingle for an instant, nothing more.
There was a soft hum and a plastic tab extruded from a slot in the face of the genetic analyzer. Daryl snatched it, looked at it, then whirled to face the others.
“It’s him! It’s Stephen Murdoch, returned from beyond the crematorium!”
XXXIX
He didn’t remember again then; not until they were in a vasty room with ancient flags hanging from age-blackened rafters.
“. . . minster Hall,” an excited voice was saying. “Over thirty thousand years old. Think! Of the toil, the human tears and sweat and heartache that went into building this, so long ago, to preserving it down through the ages, to bring it here—for us!” The voice went on, excited, rapturous.
“What’s it all about?” Roan asked. “What’s this old building? It looks like something on Tambool.”
“It’s very ancient, Master,” Sostelle said. Somewhere a bright light was flaring in the gloom.
“. . . took them so many ages to create, with all its traditions and memories—and we, us! Yes, in a single night! A single hour! We can destroy it all. Thirty thousand years of human history end—now!” Roan watched as a slender man in flowing garments ran forward, applied the torch to the base of a hand-hewn column. Fire licked upward. In moments it had reached the faded pennants; they disappeared into smoke. Fire ran across the high peaked ceiling. Voices shouted as the crowd pushed forward. Suddenly a woman whirled madly, striking out at those around her. They fell back yelping, and the frenzied girl tore at her garment, stripped it off, threw it at the fire. Roan saw with a dull shock that there was no hair on her body.
“Give me something sharp!” she screamed, then plunged, caught up a jagged fragment of smoking wood, scored it down the creamy white of her chest and stomach. Blood started. The woman staggered back, wailed faintly, fell, and dogs started forward, bore her away.
“Get back!” Someone was calling. The ceiling was a mass of boiling smoke and flame. Each massive timber supporting the rafters blazed, crackling. Roan backed away, then turned and ran.
Behind him, the roof fell with a great thunder. A blast of scalding air struck at him, and sparks flew all around . . .
Later, he stood at the top of a broad flight of marble steps, where a group of men wheezed under the weight of a black stone statue of a man with a wide head-dress and a straight-ahead gaze.
“See him, Roan?” Daryl called. “Isn’t he wonderful? The labor, the hopes that went into that image. And now . . .”
The Pharaoh Horem-heb went over with a resounding smash, tumbled down head over throne, pulverizing the steps as it struck them. The head flew off, struck a man standing below, who fell screaming, and a crowd closed around him like fish after a bait.
“Master, you’re not well,”
Sostelle was saying. “Let me take you home!”
“Wait! Have to see Desiranne.” Roan shook his head, started down the stairs. Daryl skipped ahead, dragging a picture in a heavy frame. At the foot of the stairs, he raised it high, brought it down on the bronze figure of a girl with a water jar; it burst into a cloud of dry chips.
“The Mona Lisa,” he caroled. “The only one in the world—and I destroyed it!” He spun on Roan. “Oh, Roan, doesn’t it give you a wonderful feeling of power? Those old ones that conquered the Universe—they treasured all this! And we have the power to do as we like with it. They made it—we finish it! Doesn’t that make us their equals?”
Roan stared past him at a bigger-than-life white marble of a thick-bodied woman with her garment down around her hips. She was chipped and her arms were missing.
“Shame,” Roan mumbled. “Shouldn’t break . . . old things.” He felt as though he were falling.
“I didn’t do that one,” Daryl said. “Someone else . . . but I’ll finish it!” He ran to the statue and pushed. It didn’t budge. Daryl made a face and ran on to pull down a painting of a man with one ear missing.
“It’s hot in here,” Roan said aloud. The walls were sailing by, going faster and faster. He groped for support, sank down on the steps. All around, people were running like Gracyls in moulting time, carrying things that smashed, or broke, or were torn apart. Someone started a blaze in the center of the floor, and pictures went flying into it. The floor shook as heavy marbles toppled.
“Get a cutter,” a girl screamed, “to use on the bronzes!”
“What a night!” Daryl exulted. “We did the Louvre long ago, and the Grand Palais e’Arte, and the Imperial Gardens. We were saving this one for a special occasion. And your being here—it’s just made it perfect!”
Roan got to his feet, fighting the blackness. “I can’t wait any longer,” he shouted over the din. “Where’s Desiranne?”
“Roan, Roan! Forget her for now! There’s her Performance coming! There’s lots of luscious sport to be had before then—”
Phrygette was there tucking back a strand of corn-yellow hair with a white arm smudged with soot.
“I’m bored,” she said. “Daryl, let’s get on to the Performance.”
“But there are still lots of things to do,” he cried, dancing round her. “The books! We haven’t even begun on the books—and the tapes, and the old films, and . . . and . . .”
“I’m going,” Phrygette pouted. She looked at Roan. He stared back, seeing her face dancing in fire.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “You look so peculiar!”
Roan took a deep breath and held one part of his mind away from the whirling dizziness that enveloped him. He produced something that could be defined as a smile.
“If you were a sixteen thousand year throwback, you’d look peculiar, too.” He seemed to be watching everything through a view-screen now; Daryl looked tiny and far away, and all around the floor curved upward. A wild singing whine rang in Roan’s ears. His face felt furnace-hot. “I want to see Desiranne now,” he said.
“Oh, all right.” Daryl gave Phrygette an icy look. “Spoilsports!”
They were in a mouldy velvet and chipped gilt room lit by tiny lights glaring down from above like stars as seen in Deep Space, set in a ceiling that slanted away toward a small, bright-lit platform below. There were seats ranked beside Roan’s and more rows lower down, and others swinging in wide sweeps farther up, and still more, perched like tiny balconies just above the stage, and all of them were filled with slim-necked, soot-streaked Men and Women.
“In all that you’ve told me of other worlds, Roan,” Daryl said in a low, vibrant voice, “there has been nothing to equal what you will see Desiranne do here tonight.”
“What will she do? Play some instrument? Sing?” The thought of seeing her again made his pulse throb in his head, driving back the sickness. He remembered Stellaraire and her erotic dancing. Surely Desiranne wouldn’t do anything like that . . .
“Master,” Sostelle whined at Roan’s side. “Please let me bring the doctor to see you now.”
“The stuff you gave me is working,” Roan said. “I feel better.”
A blue mist blew across the stage. Out of it, a little blue and silver dog merged, singing an eerie, piercing little song in a register so high it was barely within hearing. The blue color faded, and now there were pale pastels—mauve, bluish pink, sunshine-yellow, rain-gray—swirls, clouds, blown foams. The blue dog’s song ended in a tiny yelp, and behind Roan, Sostelle winced. Roan could make out another figure in the mist now, dressed in diaphanous robes, swathed from head to foot. It came forward and the scarf blew from its head. It was Desiranne and her pale hair swirled down about her shoulders.
The music was low and gentle, almost a lullaby, and Desiranne ran gracefully, girlishly about in the mists, playing. Then, by degrees, the tempo changed and a drum began to beat—an insistent, commanding beat. Roan began to be aware of Daryl’s breathing beside him and he also remembered the fearful beat of the drums that night he stood frozen with fear by the high wire on Chlora, when he was with the circus.
Was that it? Was that what was making the small hairs on his arms prickle, and bringing the smell of danger and the cold sweat in his stomach? Something . . . he turned to Daryl to tell him to stop the show. Whatever it was going to be, Roan could feel it beginning to stink. Something was wrong. Something . . .
But Daryl was smiling expectantly and proudly at Desiranne.
“By the way,” he said. “Did I mention that she is my daughter?”
“Your daughter?” Roan repeated dumbly. “You’re not old enough,” he blurted.
Daryl looked astonished. “Not old enough. . . .” A strange expression crossed his face. “You mean—you’re . . .” he gulped. “I remember learning once that long ago, men died like dogs, after only a moment of life. Do you mean, Roan, that you—that you . . .?”
“Never mind.” On the stage, Desiranne had begun a slow, sensuous strip tease. The music became more and more insinuating, erotic, then slowed as Desiranne removed her last wisp of garment. As she pirouted, all pink and gold in the lights, the little silver and blue dog came mincing out onto the stage with something sharp that glittered silver where the light caught it.
It was a knife, long and leaf-thin and sharp. Desiranne dipped in her dance to pluck the stilleto from its cushion, danced away, and now a savage tempo took over. An animal music. It went straight to some dark, forgotten part of Roan’s mind and again fear began to swell in him insistently. He came to his feet—Desiranne stopped, stood poised. She held the scalpel-keen blade in her right hand and with great grace and sure slowness, cut off the little finger of her left hand.
A terrible cry tore itself from Roan’s throat. He plunged down through the crowd, not even aware of the screams and the smash of his fists on anything that impeded him. With a leap he was on the stage, snatching the knife from Desiranne’s hand as she moved to stroke it across her wrist. He caught her, looked into eyes as vacant and dead as the glassless windows of a ruined city.
“Why?” Roan screamed. “Why?” Blood ran down Desiranne’s arm. For a moment her eyes seemed to stir with returning life; then she wilted. Roan caught her up, whirled on the others who had crowded around the stage now, all shouting at once. The air reeked of blood; it was a taste in the mouth.
“Get a doctor! She’ll die!” Daryl’s livid face was in front of him. He shook his fists over his head. His mouth looked loose and wet.
“Your” daughter!” Roan said hoarsely, looking down at the small, gentle, beautiful face. “Your own daughter!”
“She felt nothing! She was drugged! Do you realize that her one chance for a perfect Death Performance is ruined forever? That this is all she has lived for and now she will never have it? I reared her for this, trained her myself! All these years I’ve kept her perfect, waiting for the one, the ideal occasion—and now—”
Roan
snarled and kicked him brutally, and Daryl doubled over, mewing, coiled on the bloody floor.
“Sostelle—get a Man-doctor!” Roan jumped down, ran toward the rear of the theater. Desiranne hung limp in his arms, her face as pale as chalk.
In a vast gilt room. Desiranne lay on a narrow couch of pale green silk with curved legs wrought of silver and ivory. A small crowd of eager-eyed Terjans stood by, watching. The doctor, a scrubbedlooking dog carrying a pouch, clucked and sprayed something from the pouch over Desiranne’s stumped finger, looking over at Roan.
“She will survive. The tourniquet saved her from excessive bleeding. A pity. So fair she was. But you, Sir; you don’t look well. Sostelle tells me—”
“Never mind me! Why doesn’t she wake up? Are you sure she isn’t going to die?”
“She won’t die. I’ll see to a bud implant from self-germinal tissue, and in a year or two, with the proper stimuli, she’ll be as good as now. Now I must insist, Sir. Let me have a look at you.”
“All right.” Roan sank down in a high-backed chair. The doctor applied smooth, cold metal objects to him, muttered to himself.
“You’re sick, Master,” he said. “Temperature over one hundred and four; blood-pressure—”
“Just give me some medicine,” Roan interrupted. “My head aches.”
“I’ve heard a bit of your background, sir,” the doctor said as he rummaged in his bag. “I think I see what’s happened here. You’ve no immunity to the native diseases of Terra. And, of course, they find in you a perfect host. Now—”
“I’ve never been sick,” Roan said, “not like this. I thought it was just the wine, but . . .” He tottered in the chair as a wave of dizziness passed over him.
“Master!” Sostelle was at Roan’s side, “They are coming—Master Hugh and many others—and with them are the Enforcers. Kotschai himself!”
“Good!” Roan snarled, showing his teeth. “I need something to fight! Terrans are no good—they just fall down and cry.”
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