It was not really dark. A shining coin of moon bathed the lawn in pale silver, but the terrace was full of shadows that melted into one another like the tonal values of a master artist. Jark must have been waiting with a mind carefully emptied of conscious thought, for Coman was not aware of his presence until he moved from the black cover of one of the urns dotting the stonework around the terrace. He saw first the glint of a weapon, indefinable but most certainly lethal, and he sighed deeply, waiting, his body not even tensed, as the last guardian deep within his mind suddenly, inexplicably tired, submitted to the possibility of imminent extinction.
Jark said: ‘I thought you’d come out sooner or later. You know what I want: the breaking of your bond with Jonl. And if you don’t agree to do it, then I shall kill you. It’s as simple as that.’
Coman looked into the young man’s mind and knew that this fantastic threat was a true one. He said quietly: ‘A bond is a bond, and in law cannot be broken except by mutual consent of the parties.’
‘To hell with that. My happiness lies with Jonl, and you bind her by reason of your freak mental powers. Why, she has only to begin thinking something you don’t agree with and you know it almost before she does, and thus you’re able to ‘correct’ her immediately. Do you think I don’t realise the extent of your cunning, and the advantage your sort have over ordinary people?’
Coman said: ‘You’re a fool. Any and every women contains the seed of that happiness you want, if you will take the trouble to find and nourish that seed.’
‘Don’t try to blind me, Coman. In another age that stuff might have meant something, but you and I both know that today happiness can be bought or take.’
‘Then why bother to ask for my consent? ‘You’d better hurry and finish me.’
Suddenly Coman was filled with anger – and sadness. Looking within himself for answers, he realised why he had disliked the young man from their first meeting: it was because Jark was too much like the person he himself had been, twenty years before. The same restlessness, hopes and dreams, the same sense of being alive in the wrong time, the same overweening desire for ‘truth’, the same awareness of human loneliness and the desperate, insensate need for women.
‘Why don’t you pull the trigger, Jark?’
‘There’s no hurry. There is nothing you can do, and I run little risk of being punished for killing you. As a matter of fact there are certain people in authority who want you eliminated – did you know that?’
‘So?’
‘So!’ Jark exclaimed, and his voice had become fretful, even desperate. ‘I don’t really want to kill you, so why don’t you bend a little, Coman? It was decided long ago that all men and women should be free to enjoy and communicate with one another so long as the question of blood relationship did not arise. Why do you adhere to a mode of life which is old-fashioned and basically wrong?’ He knew he was talking drivel, and that it was hopeless, that even if he did possess Jonl’s body he would not possess the thing he really wanted, and from this sense of hopelessness he would in a moment pull the trigger.
But then, across the pale lawn ran the long shadow of a creature which looked like, and yet unlike, a man, and Coman watched it over Jark’s shoulder with a feeling of pleased incredulity. He said: ‘Killing me will solve nothing for you. Buying or taking will achieve nothing for you in this case. You are intelligent enough to know that. Your mother has the money and the influence to buy the drugs and enforce the treatment which would change Jonl’s attitude toward you, once I’m gone, but with the change the woman you love and admire now would be gone also, and you would have the shadow, not the substance …’
He knew then that he had said the wrong things. It would have been better to have cursed or pleaded instead of speaking to the young man’s common sense, for now the gun came up and pointed.
‘You bastard. You won’t win me over with your mealy-mouthed …’
Somewhere behind, Conan could sense the approach of Sein and Jonl, and he stiffened, the old instincts to live and plan, enjoy, suffer, and know, coming back to him. Yet the gun was like a dagger placed at his windpipe, and he could hardly breathe. And then suddenly the pale gleam of a wrist showed around Jark’s throat and his head was forced back. Like a released spring, Coman jumped forward and struck the gun, and as it hit the stones with a metallic ring he struck again, this time at the upturned face, just below the ear. The young man sagged, the retaining forearm loosened and he fell sprawling and silent on the ground.
Above the stonework showed the grotesque, appalling face of Deenan, and Coman stared, the half-formed question dying upon his lips. Deenan would be unable to give any logical reason for coming, just ‘something in the old brain-box’ had told him to leave the ship and come fast. And a good thing too.
Coman turned to the two women who had stepped on to the terrace.
‘Shut the windows,’ he said. As Sein did so, Jonl came forward.
‘What’s happened?’ She stopped when she saw Deenan.
‘Nothing. Jark tried to be awkward, that’s all. Have you a handkerchief?’
Silently Jonl handed him one, while Sein stood transfixed by the sight of Deenan leaping the balustrade. Coman stuffed the tiny piece of fabric into Jark’s mouth and then, taking the thick cords from the young man’s trouser fastenings, tied one around the mouth and head and with the other secured his wrists behind.
‘Help me dump him out of sight,’ he said to Deenan, and together they carried the limp body down the steps to the lawn and finally to the shelter of bushes near the bright lake.
‘How did you manage to get past the guards?’ Coman asked then.
‘I spoke to them and they obeyed, just like that. To them I am something special, a somewhat better and more advanced version of themselves. Why didn’t I come out before? I could be king of the robots, for I am able to speak directly to the ‘closed enigma’ in their minds.’
Coman smiled, vastly intrigued, for this was possible. Ever since humanoid robots had been manufactured, most men had been aware of the presence of something eccentric, a tiny, unknown quality existing in or around their thinking circuits which had not been put there during the assembling process, and which the scientists and engineers had long since given up trying to eliminate. It made some of the machines talk a trifle oddly, phrase their sentences in not quite the correct way, and others often acted in an unnecessarily roundabout fashion. Sometimes it amused the beholder and sometimes it irritated, but it had never interfered drastically with the machines’ abilities to serve men.
‘Do you think you can get us out safely?’ asked Coman.
Deenan spread his hands. ‘I don’t know. They may have special instructions regarding the entry and departure of all humans.’
‘Very well. Go forward and try them while we follow. If they prove awkward we shall have to fight.’
The metal mouth opened wide, the nearest Deenan could get to a grin. In his mind Coman read the thought: I cannot kill robots. But his voice said: ‘All was quiet in my little backwater, and then you came, and it’s been violence and excitement ever since, keyman.’
‘Yes,’ said Coman, without emotion, ‘the world outside your backwater is violence from beginning to end.’ He turned and beckoned, and the two girls came down to them, silent and beautiful. ‘It seems that your absence hasn’t been noticed.’
‘It won’t be for a while,’ replied Jonl. ‘A pretty little play has just started, the kind of thing guaranteed to hold everyone’s attention while it lasts.’
‘Splendid. Go ahead, Deenan.’
Deenan stepped on to the proper belt and after a few second the others followed suit. When they got to within fifty yards of the guards they stepped off and proceeded on foot. Deenan stood apparently in conversation with the robots. The gates were open and the moving pathways ran in and out of the estate like rivers in the moonlight. Suddenly Deenan half turned and beckoned with one hand, his eyes still fixed on the guards who stood like statues, and
Coman said: ‘Right. Let’s go.’
They stepped once more on to the belt and, their bodies tensed, poised on the balls of their feet, where carried at the standard speed of four miles an hour towards the three figures. It seemed an interminably long time before they reached the gate. Perfectly still, like figures in a dream, Deenan and the robots stood facing one another. Coman tried to catch the thoughts, but there was nothing, only a vacuum of silence and immobility. Then, as they drew level, the one armed with a blaster pistol hefted his weapon slowly from its holster, lifted it and pointed it vaguely at them for a long moment, then slowly lowered it to his side. They were through then out, and Deenan turned and ran after them, jumping on to the belt and waving his arms in the strange excitement which seemed to come and go in him, like sudden gusts of wind from an unknown source.
They went quickly through the maze of beltways, with Coman in front, his eyes scanning restlessly each fresh intersection, his hand upon the blaster in his pocket. But there were few people about at this time of night and they were not accosted. As for the police, they constituted a factor about which he could do nothing, and for all he knew, every movement the four of them made was being recorded on the screens at the Central Department.
However, they reached the lifts to Ellice Island without mishap and as the door closed and the cube shot downwards Coman looked at Jonl. She stood, tall and straight, her eyes meeting his immediately, one hand upon the cape of gold she wore, the fingers resting upon the collar as it spread beneath the column of her throat. For the first time he allowed himself to think properly of what they were about to do together. Equally thrilling, but far more complex, it would, he felt sure, prove infinitely more satisfying and rewarding than the mere union of bodies.
There would be torment, the laying bare of endless memories, a wearisome sickness of past anxieties, the sweetness of childhood innocence and the slow, gradual, sometimes shocking, spoiling of that innocence, the terror images of adolescence. There would be suspicion, fear, even revulsion, but in the end, if he were successful – for it depended primarily upon him – there would be an understanding and a peace of a kind which Jonl had not dreamed existed, and which, perhaps, he himself could not envisage.
Coman sent a probe now to the surface of her mind, and found it hesitant and afraid, despite her outward air of composure, struggling to control its fear of outrage, of losing that which it had always considered its most precious possession, privacy. Jonl would learn that there were ways of ensuring mental privacy even from a telepath, where this was desired, but he hoped she would forgo that power during the exchange of experience memories with him. As if to encourage this hope he saw trust in her, the memory of his gentleness and consideration during the conquest of her body. And best of all, there was strength. Final consent to desire had brought firmness and resolution – the resolution to face herself and attempt to know herself, and also to know him, completely.
This last, he knew, was his greatest risk. In the light of all he had learned from the intermittent study of many men and women over a period of time, he could assimilate all knowledge of her, regard and accept her faults, all the errors she had ever made, the countless thoughts, sly or evasive, pitiable or contemptible, lustful, even murderous, that she had naturally conceived at one time or another, during the years of girlhood and womanhood. But to Jonl, faced not only by these things in herself but also by the stronger and often evil facets of the male character, it would be a terrifying experience, a nightmare, during which, if Coman were not careful, she might slip from him and be irretrievably lost.
And Sein. She too was watching him, her eyes steady and lustrous, and he understood that somehow she had realised what was intended, and had already accepted it, without fear or anger.
It was then, as the lift moved downwards on the last few score feet of its journey, that realisation came simultaneously to the man and the tow women. In an instant in which time and movement became locked and indivisible, they saw themselves not as three individuals but as a single entity, containing meaning and purpose of a kind so strange and complex as to defy ordinary description. In this moment of revelation their personalities were fused, yet each retained his or her place in the scheme of their union, like neutrons and electrons of an atom, beautifully, perfectly, as if ordained from time immemorial.
The moment was gone, and the lift had reached the shore below.
The End
~~O~~
About the Author
Leonard Daventry
(1915-1987) UK writer whose first sf novel, A Man of Double Deed (1965), began the Claus Coman series of tales set on an Earth partly recovered from nuclear Disaster and run by telepaths, one of whom, the protagonist, is assigned the task of solving various problems. The sequels, two book-length stories, were published together as Reflections in a Mirage, and The Ticking is in Your Head (coll 1969) and later appeared separately as Reflections in a Mirage (1969) and The Ticking is in Your Head (1970), by Robert Hale Limited, for which firm Daventry wrote most of his remaining novels. The best of these is probably Terminus (1971), a grim Dystopia; but it is his first, quite remarkably bleak novel for which Daventry is now best remembered.
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