by E. C. Tubb
A girl with a winsome face and hair the color of her mother's as the boy matched his father. The first-born who stood straight and strong and looked older than his years.
"I want to learn how to throw a knife," he said. "I have one, see? Mother doesn't want me to learn but I think I should. Please teach me."
"Why doesn't your mother want you to learn?"
"She thinks it will get me into trouble."
"Or out of it." Dumarest lifted the blade from his boot. "A knife is a tool, son, and only as dangerous as the man who uses it. With it you can cut, slice, chop, stab and throw. Like this." His hand moved, a blur as the knife was a blur, one which halted against the bole of a tree the sharp point buried deep.
"Like this?" The small hand rose, the knife it held spinning to fall far to one side of the tree. The eyes masked his disappointment. "I failed."
"You have yet to learn," corrected Dumarest. "Now, son, hold it like this." He placed the recovered blade firm on the palm and adjusted the fingers. "Hold it firm and make it a part of your arm. Now look at what you want to hit. Look at it. Forget the knife. Just concentrate on the target then, as if you're throwing out your hand, you throw the knife." He watched as, again, the blade fell to one side. "It takes practice."
"Lots of practice?"
"As much as it takes."
Dumarest smiled as he watched his son recover the blade, throw it, pick it up again with a dogged determination to succeed. It was good to have had the boy and extend himself into new generations and so ensure the continuation of his genes. Good to have a woman he loved and who loved him. Good for her to have children and to know that his love for her was big enough to encompass them all. Good to be home where Chenault-
Chenault?
Chapter Fifteen
Dumarest opened his eyes and frowned at the rock in front of him. Stone illuminated with a bright blue radiance on which he lay half-out of the mistlike pool. As if even in his sleep he had struggled to gain familiar ground and he climbed higher to draw his legs free of the pool and to lie, eyes narrowed against the brightness of the column. One he had failed to reach but he felt no regret as he felt no pain. His only sadness was induced by the fading memory of a dream but the joy it had contained was something which still could be. Govinda was waiting with her warm, soft body and her wondrous scarlet hair. Kalin's hair but Govinda's talent could absorb the ghost of what had been and make it real again. And, soon now, he would be taking her home.
If Chenault was still alive.
A thought which sent him to his feet to stand as he examined his body. The pain had gone, the grate of broken, tearing bones. Beneath his fingers the ribs were whole again and strong. The breath he drew into his lungs brought exhilaration not agony. He felt no thirst, no hunger, no fatigue. The magic of the lambent pool had made him well.
Proof of the legend of Ryzam-if not renewed youth at least he had restored health. And the others?
The column was enigmatic, pulsing a little, flaring into a new brightness even as he watched. Flaring to fade a little as it followed the pattern of its nature. A pulse which must have been repeated many times as he lay drifting and dreaming in the pool. He had awakened naturally-if the others were still alive they would probably do the same.
Waiting, he did what had to be done.
The surrogate lay where it had fallen, a ghastly travesty of a man, too heavy for him to lift. Dumarest passed it, slowed as he neared the place where the casket had been left, slipped into it as he spotted no danger. The air stank of blood, Massak's corpse lying like a broken, headless doll in a dull brown puddle. Dumarest ignored it, uncoupling the cable from its junction, returning with it to the surrogate, looping it around the massive torso and then, sweating, dragged it to where Chenault had rested.
The casket yielded treasure; rods of heavy metal and power packs now exhausted but still composed of compact atoms. Other things which he set aside then moved the surrogate to rest on the spread-out components. On it he placed the body of the dead mercenary.
At the opening, his hands filled with a wire-lashed bundle, he looked at what he had done. A funeral pyre lacking fuel but the composition was the same and, if the mercenary was watching, he would approve.
As a thin, high, familiar sound began to fill the air Dumarest hurried down to the chamber of light. The hollow egg, he was certain, would provide sanctuary from the shining thing. An assumption proved correct as the bell-chimes came no nearer, fading, to be lost in the soft susurration from the column.
One which, together with the varying intensity, cast a hypnotic spell almost impossible to resist.
Dumarest sat, his back against the wall, nails driven hard into his palms. To wait was never easy and now it was harder than at any other time he had known. Was Chenault alive? Would he emerge unscathed from the column? How long would it be?
Questions coupled to others and Dumarest retraced their path through the caverns a dozen times, mentally reviewing each turn and junction, each mark he had left, every danger they had faced.
Of them all the shining thing was the worst.
He rose finally, impatient to know the result of his calculated guess, moving softly back to where he had fashioned the mercenary's pyre. It had been without fuel-but now it glowed with fire.
With writhing movement and shimmering coruscations. With a covering of radiant beauty as the shining thing engulfed it, seeming more solid now, more inert. Condensing on itself, the writhings slowing even as Dumarest watched, the aura deepening, solidifying as if mist were turning to water and water to ice. A subtle change accompanied by a diminution in the bell-like singing. Down the bulk of the thing, in a line no thicker than a hair, a shadow slowly began to form.
One which widened as he watched. Growing darker as Dumarest turned and ran back to the chamber and the glowing column of light.
"Chenault!" His voice echoed from the curving walls. "Chenault! Mirza! Chenault!"
A flicker and the column was as before.
"Chenault! Can you hear me? Come out, damn you! Come out!" Dumarest stepped into the pool and headed toward the column. "It's time, man! Hurry! Hurry, I say!"
The column flickered again as, within it, something moved. A patch of darkness bearing the silhouette of a man. One who stepped from the column to stare at Dumarest with wide, clear eyes.
A stranger.
One tall, strong, dark-haired. A man of about twenty-five years with smooth skin and a generous mouth.
Looking at Dumarest he said, "Who are you?"
"Dumarest. Earl Dumarest. Chenault?"
"Yes." The man smiled, pleased at being known. "That's right. I'm Tama Chenault and my father owns the circus of Chen Wei. Where are we? What is this place?"
"The coordinates." Dumarest held out his hand as if to receive the precious figures. "Give me the coordinates."
"What coordinates? I don't know what you're talking about."
"The coordinates of Earth." Dumarest stared at the blank, uncomprehending face. "You swore you had them. You promised to give them to me. Damn you, Chenault! Keep your word or-"
"What word?" Chenault recoiled from what he saw in Dumarest's eyes, the knife lifted to hang poised before him. "I swear I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen you before and I've never heard of Earth. But I've something else-see?"
He turned to reach within the column, turning again as he straightened to display the bundle in his arms. One which kicked and gurgled and stared with bright, shining eyes.
A naked baby girl-the red blotch of a tattoo bright on one wrist.
* * *
Captain Lauter reached for the decanter, poured, handed a glass to Dumarest before lifting his own.
"A wonderful achievement, Earl. I drink to it. The journey must have been incredible."
Dumarest looked at the glass; one mirrored to reflect the salon in bizarre configurations. His own face was that of a stranger; warped, distorted, the thin lines of newly dressed wounds lying like lace
on the taut flesh.
"Without the casket we could make faster time."
"But the perils?"
"I laid a trap for the shining thing; one of a huge amount of heavy metal together with Massak's body. As it absorbed the man it began to absorb the rest. I gambled on it being a reactive creature and the extra food triggered off its reproductive cycle. It became dormant as it condensed prior to splitting."
"Like an amoeba." Lauter nodded, understanding. "Which means there are more than one now. But the rest? The spiders?"
"We ran through the place where Hilary and Vosper died. I had taken rods from the casket and they made good weapons. Chenault managed to protect the baby."
While he had beaten off the swinging, gnashing, spined and feral insects. Looking at the lacerations on cheeks and neck the captain wondered how he had managed to save his eyes. The wounds on face and torso would heal but, inside, something would continue to bear the scars.
"And the rest?"
"We had suits-more than we needed. They yielded spare oxygen and other things. I rigged up a flame-thrower of sorts and used fire and smoke to get us to the surface."
Where luck had been with them. It had been dark and the flat creatures hugging the spires somnolent from lack of sunlight. Even so something had caught up with them as they reached the raft and, in the mirrored surface of the glass Dumarest saw, in memory, the bulk of it, the sting, the tearing, pincer-like jaws. A predator of the night which had died beneath the hammering impact of bullets from the gun he had left.
Then to where Baglioni waited and back to the ship and help and sanity. To the drugs which had eased the pain of injected venom. To dressings and sleep and now to satisfy Lauter's curiosity.
"How's the baby?"
"Govinda's taking care of her." Lauter refilled their glasses. "It's Mirza, right enough, the tattoo leaves no doubt. But how? How?"
"The legend," said Dumarest. "Youth restored- well, she got what she wanted."
"And so did Chenault. But she didn't want it in that way. She just wanted to be young and beautiful and get what she'd always wanted and never seemed to find. I guess you know what that was."
Dumarest nodded, thinking of the conversation they'd had in the caverns, the way she had touched his hand. A gesture which had betrayed her as had so many other small things when the facade she had built for protection cracked to reveal the true person it had shielded.
"She'll find it," he said. "She'll grow and, this time, she may know better than to believe that to be pretty is to be beautiful. That comes from within. And love can recognize it. It is the person which is important not the shell. Once she learns that, her life will be happy."
As Chenault's would be; Lauter would look after their interests. And Mirza was free of the Cyclan-they would never look for their prey in the form of a baby.
Lauter said, thoughtfully, "What is it, Earl? That thing in the caverns. What the hell is it?"
"A machine."
"What?"
"I think it has to be a machine. Mirza said the area was unnatural and I agree with her. No natural force could have created it. Something must have come from outside, a ship of some kind, out of control and crashing with tremendous velocity. The impact broke the crust and its own internal forces molded the magma into the shapes we see. A long time ago, now, of course. A millennium at least. Maybe more."
An accident which had ruined a world. One which must have seared the surface with flame and molten stone, turning metals into vapors, destroying all intelligent life. Only the insects would have had a chance to survive and their mutated descendants dominated Ryzam.
"The drive must have remained functional if only in part." Dumarest picked up his glass and drank and in the surface saw the lambent beauty of the glowing column. "The drive," he said. "It has to be that. One working on a different principle from our own. The Erhaft field cocoons us against the restrictions imposed by the speed of light but the alien mechanism works in the distortion of time."
"A guess, Earl?"
"We can do nothing but guess but the evidence supports it. Look at Mirza and Chenault. Both entered the column old and both came out young."
"An intensification of the process which healed you."
"No. I stayed in the pool. In fact I must have crawled almost out of it fairly soon. The energies loose in the mist reshaped me. Maybe they were designed to do exactly that; to isolate the DNA blueprint and to shape the body back into what that blueprint said it should be. Another guess but it's good enough. The column was something else."
"Time reversal." Lauter frowned, nodding. "The tattoo on Mirza's wrist was recent; the flesh was still puffed. That makes her almost newborn. If Chenault hadn't picked her up-"
"She would have reverted to a blob of sperm. A zygote."
"Then nothing." Again the captain nodded. "No wonder those who found it never came back."
The column saw to that, luring them into its embrace, stripping away the unwanted years as it moved them back in time. Restoring the youth they craved-but as their bodies shed years of age so their brains shed the accumulated knowledge of those years.
"Chenault didn't recognize me," said Dumarest. "He didn't know me because, to him, we'd never met. I had to explain to him where we were and what we were doing. Luckily he was a quick learner."
Lauter said, looking at his glass, "Are you going back, Earl? Govinda-"
"No. It would be of no use. The pool doesn't cure and it can't help her. It can only restore you to what your blueprint tells it you should be. It can't take Baglioni and make him a normal-sized man. And the column can only make you young."
"Only? Men would give a fortune for that alone."
"Would they? Would you? Think about it. To be a boy again as you were before. A young man with it all to do again. The growing, the learning, the pain and frustration. The fear and hate and-" Dumarest broke off; not all had had a childhood like his. In a quieter tone he said, "It's a form of death, Captain. You retain nothing of what you know now. Nothing!"
"So much for legend." Lauter drank and reached for the decanter. "Join me, Earl, I insist." He waited until Dumarest set down his empty glass, then, pouring, said, "The treasure of Ryzam and it's something no one in their right mind would ever want to use. The pool, maybe, but any good hospital could do as much. And there's the danger- what was the shining thing?"
"Another guess," said Dumarest. "But I think it was a parasite of some kind. Vermin which managed to escape the destruction. Or it may even have been a cleaning device." He looked at his wine, red as the blood which had been shed in the pursuit of the unknown. Was Massak laughing at the joke? Vosper? The artist who had contained so much genius? The others? But they were dead and only the living held promise. "To the living," he said, and drank.
A toast in which Lauter joined. "So we face the future, Earl. Mirza and Chenault I can take care of but what about you?" He added, without waiting for an answer, "Mirza told me a little on the journey here. I'm not fond of the Cyclan and I'd like to help. I can take you to where you'd like to go. There are some nice worlds close to the Burdinnion; good climates, cheap land, plenty of space and no one asks too many questions. You could pick one. There's money; Mirza signed a note before she left the ship. Your reward for having helped her and I guess there's no doubt you've earned it." Lauter drained his glass and rose from the table. "Think about it," he urged. "Let me know what you decide."
* * *
Alone Dumarest drank his wine, then, refilled, lifted the glass and stared at the mirror surface. It seemed to hold more than the reflection of the salon and his own face. The dream was there and the disappointment. Chenault had reverted back to before he became interested in Earth and had learned the coordinates only when he was too weak to utilize them. Now the knowledge he'd held was lost as if it had never been.
Dumarest drank, the wine stinging with a bitter-sweetness, sliding like water down his throat to rest in his stomach.
A search of Chenault's st
udy might reveal clues; but on Lychen the Cyclan would be waiting and would capture him within hours. A gamble with the odds set too high and the possible reward too vague. Another world then? A new place with new faces where, perhaps, he could find new clues? The search to continue until, like Chenault, he became too old to profit by anything he might find?
Had the dream been just a wishful longing instead of the certainty he had felt could materialize?
Need it be?
Govinda was real and here and she loved him as he loved her. Worlds, as Lauter had said, were plentiful and Mirza's gift would make life easy. There would be no children of her body but, given time, something could be arranged. A surrogate mother; his sperm and what could be salvaged from her genes. Not what she yearned for, nothing could ever be that, but as good as he could provide. And, if there were no children, no daughter who carried her mother's scarlet hair, no boy who wanted to model himself on his father, at least there would be peace.
Peace and love and an end to the obsession which had dominated his life. The search which had cost him so much and had yielded so little.
Earth!
In the mirrored glass he saw it, distorted as he was distorted, twisted, ravaged, suddenly hateful. An image which shattered beneath the closing pressure of his hand to leave the ruby of wine and scratches which yielded the carmine of blood.
A sacrifice to seal a bargain. One conducted by himself for himself with himself as the victim. Blood and wine and shattered crystal to seal his new resolve.
Outside the air was warm, perfumed from small tufts of flowers growing thickly around the ship. In the distance the spires of Ryzam loomed with somber menace, a picture in sharp contrast to that at the other side of the ship where the ground sloped to a stretch of sward soft beneath the foot and gentle to the eye.
"Earl!" Baglioni came running from the ship, his short legs pumping. "I wanted to talk to you," he said as he halted before Dumarest. "I had no chance before. You were all beat up and-" His hand made a vague gesture.