by E. C. Tubb
The fever died, his wounds healed, a good diet restored his condition. Exercise and practice enhanced his muscular strength, skill and physical ability. Under Sardia’s direction he learned and the learning was not confined to the arena and the bloody combats within it. It helped him to grow, to appreciate an alternate point of view, taught him the subtle delicacies of passion, the endearing qualities of love.
And he did love her in a way he had never before experienced, in a manner he had never known and with a depth which began to dominate his life.
He turned, twisting on the bed, mind alive with the memory of the eve of his first combat under her direction. The details were startling in their clarity, almost as if, again, he was reliving the past for Shandaha’s benefit. But he was only asleep; there could be no actual pain, no real injury. He could enjoy the ritual, the adornment, the food she had provided. A small festival for them alone. A special moment to be treasured.
“Earl!” She smiled and leaned towards him, the soft glow of the illumination robbing her of years, enhancing the delicate texture of her skin, the silken beauty of her hair. Raising the glass she said, “A toast to your success!”
Her glass held champagne-his some sparkling mineral water. A demonstration of her teaching. A fighter who intended to win could take no risks. Accept no help from anyone they couldn’t trust. No tablets, liquids, pills, guns, salves. Ignore all offered advice. All hints of habits and reactions. To trust only one person. The one offering his flesh and blood for the amusement of the crowd. Himself.
He had done it before and had paid the price of ignorance. Luck had given him another chance and he intended to make the most of it.
He drank and said. “I won’t let you down, Sardia. I promise you that.”
“You can only do your best. That’s all I ask.” She paused then said, her tone changing a little, “Earl, just how lucky are you?”
Luck? Why had she mentioned it when he had just remembered how fortunate he had been? He chose to answer in a casual manner.
“Not very and I’ve got scars to prove it.” He gestured towards his torso, then sobered as he recognised she was far from joking. “I’ve never really thought about it. Is it important?”
“It would be.” She refilled her glass and sipped and said, “I don’t want to preach but luck is something you have or haven’t. It’s a positive asset to any fighter or to anyone forced to live in a perilous state. If you have it you should know it. Not that you dare rely on it. Luck is too transient for that.”
“Do you think I am lucky?”
“I think you are fortunate in that respect. Think about it,” she urged. “Why are we here together if it were not for luck? From all the guards on duty at the desk you chose to ask Jarl for help. The one man who was willing to give it to you. The only guard on duty who knew me and my interests. It was good fortune for you that you chose him. Don’t you agree?”
He nodded and thought of other times when a seemingly impossible situation had been resolved by totally improbable events. Events which had occurred long after this remembered moment. Things he could review. But that would come later after he would win the coming combat as he knew he had.
For now, he would enjoy the pleasure of a dream. The company of a woman he adored. The food and conversation, the rich furnishing and the splendid adornment.
It was good to sit and look at her with adult eyes and not the love-sick yearning of an adolescent. To be confident and to be free of the touch of jealousy he had experienced when she smiled at another. To forget the disparity of age. To be at peace and confident for all future time.
But it was not to be.
Instead he drifted into nightmare and woke screaming as faceless monsters clawed at his naked brain.
“Earl!” Chagal had him by the arm. “What’s the matter with you? Calm down, man! Calm down!”
Dumarest tore himself free of the restraint and slammed both hands against the sides of his head, hammering at the bone, the agony searing his brain.
“Don’t do that!” The doctor fought the hands, the arms, mastering them with the techniques taught with his trade. “You’re in a state of acute shock. Dementia, even. What came over you?”
A question ignored as Dumarest tore free his hands and rose from the bed. Red mist blurred his vision as he stumbled towards the bathroom, the shower it contained. Water as cold as ice sprayed his head and naked body numbing the flesh and adding further shock to that he had already suffered. But shock of a different kind, one physical and not the mental torment which had turned him into a shrieking animal.
“Earl?” Nada had joined the doctor and stepped towards him as he left the bathroom. “Do you feel better now?”
He gestured her away. “I’ll be all right.”
“Let me be the judge of that.” Chagal took charge, seating Dumarest on the bed, touching his torso, his wrist, neck and skull. “Some heat which could be the reaction to the chill,” he murmured. “A fast pulse and heartbeat and I’d say your blood pressure is way too high.” A tap on each knee and the same on his elbows. “Reactions are good. Skin is clammy but that could be due to that shower you took.”
“But there is nothing wrong?” Nada was eager to know. “He’s going to be well?”
“Give me a moment.” Chagal probed at Dumarest’s temples, touched the softness beneath the ears, the column of his throat. “He seems to be normal but has displayed all the symptoms of someone who has experienced a severe trauma. He was in shock as we saw but what caused it remains unknown. Fear? Fright? A near escape from death?” The doctor shook his head. “We may never know. He may never know. But this could help. Here, Earl, drink it.”
“What is it?”
“Something to relax you, I guess. Shandaha gave it to Nada to bring to me.”
“Why couldn’t he bring it himself?”
“Maybe he thinks he’s too big a man. Does it matter?” Chagal held out the phial. “Just take it.”
“And be grateful for small mercies?” Dumarest shook his head. “How did he know I was in shock or whatever it was?”
“I don’t know. Nada?”
“He sent for me, Earl. He told me to join the doctor here and give him the phial.”
“And how did you know?” Dumarest looked at Chagal, frowning at the reply. “You were coming to visit me when you heard me call out and you came in to see if anything was wrong. Then Nada joined you. Is that what happened?”
“Yes. It was just like that.” The doctor added, “It would have been a coincidence but it could have saved your life. In the state you were in you could have swallowed your tongue. I’d say you were lucky.”
Lucky!
Dumarest remembered the early part of his dream and what Sardia had said to him on the importance of being lucky. Had it been that or was someone taking care he should not come to serious harm? If so who and why?
Chagal said, “Do you want this?”
“No.” Dumarest waved aside the proffered phial. To Nadia he said, “Is Shandaha asleep now?”
“He could be. He wasn’t when I saw him.”
“Does he ever sleep? Lock himself away and is never to be disturbed?” He read the inability to answer mirrored on her face. “Can you tell me? Can anyone?”
“She doesn’t know, Earl.” The doctor hurried to her defence. “Any more than we know. Our host keeps things to himself.”
Too many things but not quite all. Dumarest stared at the woman’s face, examining it, noting small signs he had been too preoccupied to have noticed before. Subtly she had changed. Only in small details but, to him, they were clear. The eyes, the hair, the stance of her body, the curve of her lips, her height, her age.
Sardia, a little younger but just as lovely as he remembered.
To Chagal he said, “Was Delise with you?”
“No. Do you want me to find her?”
“It doesn’t matter. We can do without her help. What I want is for you to guide me back to the chamber where we
were last together. Can you do that?”
The doctor frowned, “I’ll try. If you will give me a hand, Nada? You know these parts better than I do. It would help if you led the way?”
Through a series of chambers of various shapes and sizes, in a winding path which must have doubled back on itself or swirled at apparent random. Then, finally, the passage opened on a familiar chamber set with remembered furniture, ringed by translucent walls.
Dumarest halted at the low table set as before with flagons of wine and platters of succulent fragments. The food was fresh as if recently placed. The chessboard and scattered men were as he recalled. Either someone had replenished the viands and adjusted the pieces or only a short while had passed since he had been here last.
An effect similar to that which could be obtained by taking appropriate medication. Slow time which speeded the metabolism so that normal time seemed to crawl and much could be done in minutes which would have taken hours.
Drifting, suffering, healing, travelling back into the past, sleeping, dreaming, waking from nightmare, recovering and all, from the doctor’s viewpoint in a fraction of normal time.
Dumarest said, “I want you both to leave. Please go now. I need to have some time alone.”
To think, to assess the situation. To be free of delusions and distractions. To plot a path through the maze surrounding him in order to save his sanity and existence.
He watched as the others left and closed the door behind them. There was a second portal in the chamber behind which should lie a passage, an expanse of crystal wall behind which rested a secret space which held unsolved mysteries. Flickering lights, whispering voices, all of which could have been an illusion of his own creation in an effort to save his sanity. The attempt of his tormented mind to achieve some semblance of reality and reassurance as thirst-crazed men in an arid waste would see mirages of lakes and springs of sweet water in the desperate hope of salvation.
It was tempting to accept the explanation, but to do so would be to take a gamble with his life.
Dumarest sat, leaning back, concentrating on being calm and detached. He was facing a problem and before hoping to solve it he had to recognise exactly what it was. First to accept the obvious, the true nature of Shandaha.
Earth was listed in no almanac and was regarded as a myth. An imagined planet, an object of derision. All his life Dumarest had known the falsity of that approach. He was living proof that Earth existed and could be found. He had been born on the world and had left it and later returned to it.
He had known from the first what Shandaha had to be.
The only organisations strong enough and capable enough to dictate the listings of the almanac carried on every vessel were the Church of Universal Brotherhood and the Cyclan. Those of the Church preached kindness, care, concern, tolerance and love. Things of emotion. Those of the Cyclan believed in nothing but logic and reason. Every cyber was operated on when young to destroy his capability of emotion. They had no time for adornment, fine art, soft furnishings, things of delight. They were incapable of feeling anything but the mental pleasure of having made a successful prediction of any event or enterprise based on a study of logic and relevant forces.
The Cyclan controlled the compilation and distribution of the essential book which alone enabled ships to traverse the distances between the stars.
The Cyclan had eliminated all knowledge of Earth for a purpose and Dumarest was positive it was because they wanted to reserve the planet for their own use.
Which meant that anyone in the form of authority would be an important unit of the Cyclan.
Shandaha had to be a cyber.
One who had adopted a bizarre disguise.
No cyber would tolerate the clutter of gaudy furnishings, garish adornments, or wear such elaborate garments unless he had a need to do so. As the same need would have led him to use holograms, deceptions, all the magic of a skilled illusionist to expand the apparent dimensions of his habitation. To call on the arts of camouflage to create a host of optical illusions.
But why?
The chessboard and scattered pieces on the table provided a possible answer.
For the game.
Was Shandaha playing a game?
Dumarest doubted it. To play a game was to allow your opponent the chance to win and to a cyber the very concept of failure was anathema. As was humour. All he saw, smelt, heard, tasted or touched, had a common source and a shared purpose. All were to provide distractions and to mask the reality behind the pretence.
In order to survive he had to find a way of tearing aside the veils of illusion and gain the truth behind the facade.
Dumarest rose and stepped towards the second portal half expecting to find it locked, relieved when the panel swung wide. He looked at what he had seen before, stepped to the unbroken surface of the translucent wall and lifted his hand to touch the crystal. It tingled against his fingers and he turned, resting his back against it, sliding down to squat on the floor, the rear of his skull maintaining contact with the shimmering surface.
Along moment when the substance of his brain seemed to stir and gain an individual life. Fragments twitching, pulsing, swelling to subside in a random pattern.
Changing the world.
He was back in a familiar place, drifting as he had before, but now there was no pain, no fear, just a comforting freedom. Lights winked around him and voices whispered on the edge of clarity and he studied both, feeling he knew what they had to be and then, suddenly, knowing for certainty where he was and what was happening.
The lights were not stars nor electrical emissions from elaborate machines, but they were still signals of a potent force at work, one which could erase the distance between the stars and enable instant contact between minds. The power of thought.
The place into which he had fallen was a communication unit. The muted whispers the information being sent and received. The unit itself was a human brain. One housed in the skull of a cyber.
Shandaha-Dumarest was certain of it and with the realisation came a flood of information as if an encyclopaedia had opened and shed its assembled contents into his brain.
“Earl!” Chagal’s voice growing louder. Intruding. Demanding even as it transmitted its fear “Earl-” A break as the doctor saw him lying on the floor. “No! Please! Not again!” Then relief as Dumarest rose to his feet. “Hurry! Please! Shandaha wants to see you!”
Dumarest took his time, showering, drying himself, dressing with care. Ignoring Chagal’s appeals to hurry and those of Nada as she joined them both.
To Chagal he said, “Do you have that phial he sent to you?”
“The one Nada gave to me? I think so.” Chagal rummaged in his pocket. “Yes.”
“Give it to me.” Dumarest bounced it in his hand as the doctor obeyed. “Now I’ll return his gift. If it is what you say he claimed he’ll have need of it.”
The scene was becoming more than familiar, the round table, the flagons, goblets, trays of titbits. The colors and glints and the facing chairs. The trace of exotic perfumes drifting in the air and which prickled warning signs. Dumarest knew that to underestimate Shandaha would be the worst mistake he could make. A cyber was predictable as most men were, but those who normally wore the red robe offered far less opportunity for manipulation.
Dumarest had asked for the phial and boasted how it would be returned. Information one or both of the others could have repeated. Shandaha would be ready to face any threat. His face remained implacable as, obeying his gesture, Dumarest took his chair and sat.
He said, “You summoned me and here I am.”
“You took your time coming to me. Is this the way you think a guest should treat his host?”
“I meant no discourtesy,” Dumarest opened his hand and displayed the phial. “I was soiled and wished not to offend you. I also wanted, still want, to thank you for having sent this to me.”
“It helped?”
“The thought behind it did. I had no n
eed to take the medicine.”
“So you return it. You could have thrown it away.”
“That I would never do. Such waste is inexcusable.”
“As is this waste of time. Earl, I want-”
“To help me as I am sure,” interrupted Dumarest. “As you made so clear when last we met and spoke of mazes and prisons and freedom as I am certain you remember.”
“I remember.”
“And will grant my request as I am sure.” Dumarest added. “The promise you made. The offer you repeated. The one in which you stated that I was not being held against my will. That I was free to leave any time I wished.”
“So?”
“So I wish to leave,” said Dumarest. “As soon as possible. Now would be a good time.”
He fell silent, waiting, sensing the familiar tension always to be found around a poker table where bluffs were common and the ability to recognise them all-important if a player hoped to win.
“For an intelligent man you are displaying a peculiar stupidity.” Shandaha reached for a flagon and poured them both a quantity of emerald wine. It swirled in glasses touched with the hue of the bark of bushes, the solemn colours to be found at the heart of a hedgerow. The tint of darkness, of mystery, of doom and destruction. The shade of death. “Or of life, Earl. It depends on your point of view.”
“You were reading my mind?”
“Not your mind,” said Shandaha. “Your face and body. Strange how the inevitable always yields sombre thoughts and dire feeling. Yet what do we see when holding this?” He lifted his glass and turned it within his palm. “A shade of green, the colour of vegetation, of cleanliness, comfort and peace. The shade of brown, the hue of soil, of tree trunks, of wispy twigs. All good things, fine symbols offering promise of a fine future…” Pausing he added, “If we have the wisdom to face it.”
“And the intelligence to drink it.”