“There isn’t time.”
“A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough to teach you. You are a barbarian. You haven’t the basic knowledge.”
Emeric’s heart began to beat more heavily. He could sense that he was going to be tested, and tested, perhaps, beyond the power of mortal man to withstand.
The Warlock went on swiftly now. “There is danger, I won’t deny you that. I’m a trilaudid addict. My sanity comes and goes. If it goes while we are attempting a personality transfer, it could destroy your reason. I am dying. If I should die while the probes connect us, I don’t know what would happen to you. Because what I am suggesting, priest, is that we connect our minds by machine--and when it is done you will have all the knowledge that my forebrain contains. All of it. “ He laughed with a sudden, alarming wildness. “That will make you a saint or a madman, Emeric Kiersson-Rhad. Do you know the Faust legend? No? Well, never mind--if you have the courage, you will.”
Emeric’s mouth felt dry. “You can do this thing?” He scarcely dared free his mind to imagine the possession of such knowledge and powers.
“I can. With your help.”
“Why? Why should you want to?” Emeric could not suppress the tiny bead of suspicion that had formed in his chest--a feeling, no more.
“I’m not an altruist,” the Warlock said. “But you see that I am old--I am dying. Say only that dying men make strange bequests. I am a learned man, priest. I offer you knowledge.” He struggled to rise and did manage to push himself up so that his seamed face confronted both the Vulk and Emeric.
His voice was strong, impossibly strong and clear. “And knowledge is power, Emeric of Rhada. Are you man enough to take it?”
The words meant something else, Emeric sensed that. But the prize was too great to let fear command him.
“Tell me how this thing can be done,” Emeric said.
Only Vulk Asa sensed the presence of the girl Shana listening beside the open door in the passageway. He heard her run swiftly and knew that she was frightened and was seeking Glamiss to tell him what his chaplain now planned to do.
Chapter Sixteen
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall enslave all mankind.
--From The Book of Warls,
Interregnal period.
The young, in their self-righteousness, claim that there is no past. The old, in their bitterness, claim that there is no future. But the wise, young and old, know that the past unlocks the future, and that those who scorn the history of the race or its posterity are fools. I make no special claim to wisdom: My awakening was by chance. For one terrible moment, I clasped hands with both future and past.
--The Dialogues of St. Emeric,
Early Second Stellar Empire period.
The main entrance tunnel was crowded with men, some wounded, some resting, some even sleeping, battle-exhausted. There were villagers, as well, Tamil Hind for one, herding bleating weyr deeper into the mountain. And overall there hung the smell of battle: of sweaty men and sweetish blood and oiled iron. Shana shoved her way impatiently toward the fading light of day she could see the tunnel mouth, seeking Glamiss the Warleader.
Tamil said, “Here, Shana! Where are you going? You can’t go out there--they’re slaughtering one another.” His voice implied that this was fine with him, that these intruders in the valley should be allowed to butcher one another to the end, leaving things as they were before they came. Shana, who was not a fool as Tamil was, knew that things would never again be the same in Trama. The very sky had fallen on the village and its people, and it was senseless to dream of what could never be again.
Tamil caught her arm and said, “Shana, didn’t you hear me?”
Shana pulled away from him and said, “Don’t start getting brave now, Tamil.” She drew the knife-that-burns from under her weyr skins and held it. She had taken it from the Warlock, for it was a sacred talisman of the village, and in the confusion she had managed to retrieve it. “Last night you were willing to let them use this on me. Why are you so concerned about my safety now?”
Tamil stood crestfallen. “These are bad times, Shana,” he muttered.
“Then herd the weyr inside and let me be. Or times will get worse.” She turned away and hurried on past the warmen and the crowding villagers.
When she reached the tunnel mouth and could look down the slope of the moraine, she was appalled by what she saw. Dead and wounded men and horses clogged the stony defile. Two kilometers away she could see the humped back of the great starship. Its immense weight had made a depression in the meadow and men on war mares milled about the mystical shape in seemingly confused excitement.
A number of warmen were returning to the concrete platform from the moraine after a sharp skirmish that had, apparently, sent still another detachment of Lord Ulm’s men retreating down the mountain toward the village. At the head of the battle-stained and weary troop walked the young man they called Glamiss. His reddened, naked sword was in his hands, and his bare arms were stained below the edge of his mailed sleeves.
Somehow, in spite of her antagonism, she was strangely stirred by the sight of him. He carried himself like a lord, even though her woman’s eye told her that he was sore and very weary.
He caught sight of her and essayed a grim smile that seemed to light up his grimy face. “Have you come to see the fighting, then, Shana, daughter of Shevaughn Six-fingers?”
“This is stupid,” the girl said smartly.
“Oh?” He was on the platform now, looking down on her. She could see that he was unwounded, and for some reason it eased her mind that he had not been hurt.
“Yes,” she said. “Ulm’s men can’t get in. But we can’t get out, either. Nothing gained and nothing lost--except men. How many have been killed?” Her voice was edged with bitterness, because she understood that killing was the business of soldiers, yet it was horrible that it must always be so.
Glamiss’s expression became somber. “I have lost a dozen good warriors.”
“And Ulm?”
His voice was steely. “Three times that.”
“Half a hundred dead or wounded.” Shana shivered. “They would have been better born to herd weyr or to plant grain.”
Glamiss sheathed his great sword and put his hands heavily on Shana’s narrow shoulders. “That is the Star’s truth, girl. I wish no man’s death in battle. It’s an empty business.”
“You believe that?” she asked, surprised.
“I believe it,” he said heavily. “But until all men believe it, you must have order. And most men want order imposed only on others. It is the way of the world, Shana-the-hetman’s-daughter,” he finished, almost tenderly rallying her.
For a moment her senses reeled with the sudden warmth and power of his personality. She had the crazy notion that she, if he would only ask it of her, would follow him willingly across the Great Sky. Part of it was that he was an attractive and virile young man--really not so much older than herself. But there was more: Glamiss was obviously gifted with the power to command loyalty--even from those who had no notion of his purposes, who might actually lose by his attainment of them.
She drew a quick breath and remembered why she had sought him out. “Your friend, the Navigator,” she said, “you should go to him.”
“Emeric? Why? I’m needed here.”
“How can I say this?” she asked, perplexed. “I know that you must stop what the Warlock is going to do to him--”
“The old man, Shana? Why he’s dying, girl. And in any case, Emeric could snuff him out like a candle-flame.”
Shana shook her head stubbornly. “I stood by the door and listened. The old man--” she did not think of him as “lord” any longer--”is tricking him. He’s promising him strange knowledge--” She caught at Glamiss’s wrist, feeling the strength of it under her hand. “There are terrible machines in this place, Glamiss, I know. I’m an adept. I’ve glimpsed things in the old man’s mind. He does not mean to be evil, but he comes from a diffe
rent world--a different time. He could twist your priest into something--different, strange. He will do it--”
Glamiss was moving and he pulled the girl along with him. “Take me to them,” he said, filled with a sudden cold premonition. Turning briefly, he gave orders to his men and then followed the girl into the deepening gloom of the mountain.
Emeric had, with Asa’s meager help, carried Lord Ophir--at his instructions--into a room lined with bays and racks of equipment. Row upon row of lighted tabs surrounded the two dull-metal pedestal tables that rose from the insulated floor. Above the tables, two slabs of the same metal hung from the low ceiling, creating the grisly impression that this was some strange press.
The old man’s voice was very thin. Death was stalking him, the Navigator thought. Death was coming to steal the millennia of history that lay compressed in the cells of the ancient brain.
Ophir said, “Place me on the far table.”
Emeric did as he was bidden, glad to be free of the frail weight and the musty smell of encroaching death.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Not now . . . don’t question now. You will know . . . everything.”
Emeric felt a surging thrill of--what? Intellectual hunger, perhaps. His swift and probing mind was constricted by the age. Was this moment, this old man, and this machine the construct of chance or destiny? he wondered. Could they set him free of feudalism, superstition, and barbarism? He murmured an Ave Stella, praying to God that he was doing His work, and not that of the Adversaries.
But do it he must, he knew with every fiber of his being.
“On the console facing the doorway,” the old man whispered. “A control... marked Power. Press the stud ...”
Emeric did as he was told, almost brushing Asa aside in his anxiousness to activate this magical work of ancient man’s hand. The room began to hum with a soft insistence. The air smelled of thunderstorms.
The Warlock rasped through the countdown. “Activate the bar marked Auto-time sequence ... set the red numbers for your body-mass. . . engage the studs that should be winking yellow now ... hurry, priest... there isn’t much time....”
Emeric, starship trained, followed the old man’s instructions swiftly.
“Priest . . . there will be a visible aura ... for some hours . . . after the transfer. Don’t be afraid . . He showed his yellowed teeth in a terrible, sick parody of a smile. “It. . . will impress . . . your savages . . . with your holiness. ...” He wheezed heavily, his breath coming harder with the effort of speech. “Now ... set the timer code--the clock face . . . above my head ... to six. No more than that . . . too much knowledge is a bad thing ...” Again that skull-smile. “Is it done?”
“Yes.”
“Tell that--thing with you ... to get out. It could be . . . dangerous to him ... it... whatever. Out... now.”
Emeric signaled Asa out of the humming room. He wondered what the Vulk made of all this. He had said nothing at all, but then, that was the Vulkish way.
“Now,” the Warlock said thinly, “lie on the table next to mine and wait for the timer to take control of the transfer. ...”
Emeric removed his cowl and mailed shirt and reclined on the dull metal surface. It was strangely warm to the touch. He could hear the old man’s rasping breathing over the humming of the air. The smell of thunderstorms grew stronger and the sound rose in pitch. He felt a rapidly increasing stiffness in his limbs, arid his vision seemed to grow dimmer.
A sudden leaping panic clutched at him. Great Star, what had he done to himself? What dreadful thing had he brought upon himself in his greed for knowing?
He would have rolled from the table to the floor, but he was too weak, seemingly, to move the weight of his body. It was as though his muscles had grown old.
Beside him he could hear a deeper breathing from Ophir. It was as though his own youth were being drained out of him, being poured into the ancient body of the Warlock.
In terror, Emeric began to pray to the Star, to the Spirit of the Universe.
“Don’t--fear,” Ophir said. His voice was much stronger, younger.
“What are you doing to me?” The Navigator did not recognize his own voice. He raised his hand and stared at it. His flesh was glowing with a blue-green fire, cold, insubstantial, ghostly.
Ophir said steadily, “There is a transference both ways, in the beginning. Great God, I haven’t felt this strong since--” he laughed with a wild delight--”since when? How can a man count the years I have been drugged, and old?”
Emeric felt his sight deteriorating. Darkness flickered at his eyes, like a bat. “You’ve tricked me,” he gasped feebly. “You are sucking my life out!”
Now, in almost total blackness, he could hear the Warlock’s voice. “I wish I could, sir priest! If it were possible, I wouldn’t spare you. But the transference is only temporary--that is true and you must believe it--you can’t accept a personality imprint if you block it with panic, you fool! Don’t fight me . . . now!”
The voice was young and powerful, but suddenly Emeric was unaware of it. It had become unimportant, as unimportant as the clamor he could faintly hear outside the room. Glamiss’s voice shouting? Asa saying something? It didn’t matter--nothing mattered--
A passageway between his mind and that of Lord Ophir ben Rigell ibn Sol alt Messier was opening. A dark vein first, but swiftly widening to contain more and more memories, sights, sounds. He knew instantly the sight of the night sky of Nyor, the sound of ancient music, the feel of Dihanna alt Aldrin’s lovemaking, the majesty of his uncle’s appearance on the Star Throne, the familiar (to them both, it seemed) tang of Rhada’s northern seacoasts--
Then, as suddenly as the opening had appeared, it began to contract, pulsate with jagged impressions: some terrible, some terrible in their pleasure, some indescribable to a brain not addicted to trilaudid--
Emeric’s mind, unprepared by anything in his life as simple starship priest and warrior, tottered as he looked into the dark jaws of hell: the shared mind of a drug-addicted paranoid.
The Navigator’s scream was shocking in the small room, and it did not stop, but went on and on as Ophir’s sophisticated madness slashed daintily at his sanity.
The sight that met Glamiss’s eyes as he entered the Personality Exchange Therapy Room both frightened and infuriated him. Shana’s warning, and the spectacle of his closest friend writhing in seeming agony on the gray metal slab jolted him into action. Had the apparent victim been someone other than Emeric, the ghostly glow that covered his figure and that of the old Warlock would have stopped him. But the sound of Emeric’s animal cries was in his ears, piercing his caution like a sharp quarrel piercing armor to the flesh underneath.
He reacted. Thrusting both Vulk Asa and the girl aside, he bolted toward the Navigator. The machines meant nothing to Glamiss. In fact they resembled nothing more in his experience than the devices found in the deepest parts of Ulm’s keeps and used for torture.
The warning shout from Asa was ignored; Glamiss could think only of removing his friend from the torturing slab. His hands closed on Emeric’s arm and Shana screamed in terror.
The Navigator’s writhings stopped as the fields of the device spread from his nervous system into the axons and dendrites of this new body.
Glamiss seemed frozen, lying half across the slab, his hands welded to his friend’s arm by some invisible power. Swiftly, the ghostly blue Saint Elmo’s fire spread over him until he seemed to be blazing with cold, flickering flames.
Shana screamed again and sank to her knees, sobbing with superstitious fear. But Vulk Asa, more aware than the human girl of what was happening, began the mental disciplines that would prepare him to intervene if the life-force in the Navigator and warman began to shatter under the pressure of the electronically induced form of Triad.
For the three minds were tightly linked, now. The Vulk could sense the agony of it pulsing through the humming air. Three lives, wildly dissimilar, were being neuro
logically interwoven. It was a crude process compared to the Triad induced by the Vulkish mind-link, and dangerous. It would have been risky under any circumstances, but the melding of two modern personalities with a third, which was the product of a distant and highly sophisticated age, held the peril of brain-damage and insanity and possibly even physical injury to the nervous system of the three suffering creatures on the gray slabs.
Still, the Vulkish dictum applied: Do not interfere. Asa wondered if he could, in fact, stand by and watch Emeric and Glamiss being reduced to human vegetables without intervening. They were, after all, the only humans who had treated him with consideration in the last thousand years of his life--
The Lord Ophir’s life-thread was flickering. The temporary infusion of youthful neural vitality was burning up his deteriorated nervous system. He did not care. He seemed apart from the withering old body on the slab of the exchanger. Like a glow-globe near the end of its functioning life, the mind of Ophir ben Rigell burned brightly, the heat of advancing death searing away the drug-damaged blocks in his personality.
Memories and fresh new impressions blazed. He remembered everything.
Childhood: the Rhadan sea, silvery under the stormy polar winds--his father, the brother of the Galacton, saying many times, “Ophir, you will probably have the Star Throne one day and the Feathered Cape and Flail of Empire, so learn to serve, my son--the Imperium is not a thousand suns, it is the people, the human billions who have populated the galaxy --history is the key to all things, the bedrock of all human knowledge, for without a history a race is no better than the beasts of the fields or the fishes of the sea--“
The days, hours, minutes of his life flamed in his surging thoughts. He relived the rearing of a prince--a prince destined to rule a galaxy. History, yes. And science. And the arts--the gentle arts of music--Dihanna, Dihanna, he thought, I remember you clearly now!--and painting and sculpture--There was once a man called Michelangelo and another called Steinberg who moved him deeply--and the less gentle arts of war--
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