The Parallel Man

by Richard Purtill

  I reached over my shoulder and pulled my sword from its sheath strapped to my back, and all of our party unslung fire-shields and held them at the ready. We went down the corridor at a trot, dashing past doors, as members of our party peeled off to deal with whatever the side rooms might contain.

  The corridor ended in a circular anteroom from which three elaborate doors opened; solid doors hung on hinges—not the usual doors which flashed white and vanished to allow entrance. As we came to the anteroom some instinct made me halt my group. We waited, pressed against the corridor wall until the men who had fallen behind to deal with the side rooms joined us, signalling “All clear.” The Healer touched me on the shoulder and handed me a little message square. In glowing letters on its surface I read, “Hidden speakers giving alarm. Have several times repeated sequence of nonsense syllables; may be your ‘deathword.’

  I nodded and signaled for a very special member of our group; an andro with a highly unusual power source and very simple programming. It dashed out into the anteroom, headed for the center door. Flame flared from the ceiling and when the andro protected itself with an upflung shield, the floor under it flashed white and the andro dropped from sight into some pit or abyss below.

  I grinned mirthlessly and waved some of our special equipment forward. A device which vibrated so intensely that I could feel it through the soles of my feet immobilized the floor, while heavy-duty torchers flared out to destroy the painted ceiling of the anteroom and the weapons hidden above it.

  My voice sounding strange in my deadened ears, I said, “Squad Three, left door. Squad Four, right door. Squads One and Two through the center door with me. Go!”

  We crossed the antechamber in a few bounds and fell on the doors. On each side of me I could hear the other squads battering on locked or barricaded doors, but the central door burst open as we threw our weight on it and we burst into a room very much like the pictures I had seen of Mortifer’s laboratory at the Academy in Thorn.

  Mortifer himself was seated on a thronelike chair with a console of contacts and flashing lights before him. Behind him a display screen showed us ourselves bursting into the room as if in a mirror. Mortifer’s mouth moved but of course I could hear nothing. Then with his crooked smile on his face he touched a contact before him. The room shuddered and the floor pressed on my feet. The screen behind Mortifer showed the surface of the lake now, and a strange object breaking its surface. Suddenly I realized that this room in which we stood was part of some flying vehicle, in which Mortifer was trying to escape.

  I stepped forward, sword at the ready and Mortifer smiled again. He pressed another contact and on the screen behind him, written in letters of fire appeared the words

  AVAUNT FRANKENSTEIN!

  My vision blurred, my knees buckled as I dropped to the floor dimly conscious that both heart and breath had ceased.

  18. The Starship

  I regained consciousness to find the Healer from my assault team tending over me. My head ached and my breathing was heavy and unnatural. I realized that my breathing was not under my control. “Relax a minute more,” whispered the Healer, and I realized that he had turned on my sound receptors. “We had a program all set to defuse that reflex once it was triggered,” murmured the Healer. “Give it a moment to operate and I can shut off the heart-lung field.”

  I realized that I was lying on a carpeted floor with a forest of legs around me; my two squads had surrounded me, sheltering me with their bodies. The floor under me vibrated as I remembered the transport disc vibrating on my first ride in one, when we had passed near the starship taking off. I heard Mortifer’s voice over the heads of my men. “You may arrest me as much as you wish, monitor, but in a few minutes we will be on my starship and I think my defenses will hold you off until then. You had better lay down your weapons or my men will cut you down as soon as we are inside the cargo bay.”

  The leader of Squad One knelt by my side and whispered, “Any instructions, ser?”

  Fighting the heavy involuntary breathing I whispered back, “Keep him talking . . . give up weapons if you must . . . drop a flamer near my hand . . .”

  A great shadow darkened the sky above us and I could see that the giant transport disc which formed the “floor” of Mortifer’s secret laboratory was floating up into an open cargo bay on the great black disc of a starship. I heard my squadleader talking as calmly as if he had been standing on the streets of Thorn, “Academician Mortifer, this will get you nowhere. Kidnapping aboard a starship is a Commonwealth offense. Our support team undoubtedly had you under observation and a U.C. ship will be dispatched after you from Thorn starport. You will be stopped before you can go Q and come back to face increased charges.”

  “Nothing on Carpathia can stop this ship or keep my ship from slipping away into quasi-space,” snapped Mortifer. “Drop your weapons or my men will cut you down.” The squad leader gave a quiet order and weapons rained down about me, one flamer dropping neatly into my open hand.

  Under cover of this the Healer whispered, “We’ve killed the reflex; I’m turning off the field.” My breathing became normal again, but I practiced breathing as shallowly as I could; I might have to play dead in hopes of seizing some opportunity later. I heard the ominous clang of the closing doors of the cargo bay and the hiss of air equalizing pressure.

  I was still sheltered by my monitors when I heard a woman’s voice from a direction that could only be on the floor of the cargo bay. “Everything all right, Councillor Mortifer?” the voice asked. I turned my head slowly and stealthily so that when my squads moved away my “dead” open eyes could see as much as possible.

  “On my part, yes,” said Mortifer’s voice, “but what about yours? This starship isn’t Sceptre!”

  “The Tribune had Sceptre impounded,” said the woman’s voice. “We had to seize this trading ship to carry out your instructions to meet you here.” The fascinating thing about that was that it was a lie; we had not been able to trace the ownership of any starship to Mortifer or his friends; I had never even heard of the starship Sceptre, much less given orders to impound her. Someone was playing Mortifer false; had some of his own folk revolted?

  “Fool,” snapped Mortifer, showing his usual stupidity about handling his subordinates. If that tale had been true the woman deserved commendation, not insults. “Fool,” he repeated. “Nothing could have caught Sceptre, but you’ve trapped us on some lumbering trader which will be run down before we can slip into quasi-space.”

  “I assure you, Councillor, not a single starship will lift to pursue us,” said the woman. “What do you want done with these monitors?”

  “Over against that wall for the moment,” said Mortifer and the squads of monitors filed off of the disc which held the laboratory, showing me a group of humans in support suits not unlike ours with heavy weapons trained on my monitors. The woman who had been speaking to Mortifer was evidently the pale, red-haired woman who stood not far from me. I saw that she too wore a monitor’s uniform and remembered the woman monitor who had tricked Casmir Thorn into Mortifer’s hands. “Freeze this body until I can get around to dissecting it,” said Mortifer matter of factly. That gave me a little time; whatever move I made would have to be made before I went into the freezer. They would hardly be foolish enough to put me in it in my support suit; even turned off it would impede the quick-freeze action.

  “Shall I intern the monitors in some of the crew rooms?” asked the red-haired woman.

  “No,” said Mortifer almost casually. “They are of no use to me. Cut them down.”

  The woman looked at him and became even paler. “Ser, I can’t do that,” she said.

  “Can’t!” said Mortifer. I half saw from the corner of my eye that he had risen from his console and was coming toward me. “You’ve disobeyed me for the last time, bitch. I’ll torch you first and then cut the others down myself.” He reached down for a flamer dropped by one of my monitors. With a roll and a bound I had him from behind; one of my
arms around his throat and my sword point touching his neck just under his ear.

  “Drop your weapons,” I called to the red-haired woman and her followers. To my surprise they broke into broad grins and lowered their weapons immediately. A door flashed open behind them and a tall man accompanied by a dog came out of it. The dog was a ghost-hound, not Trinka but a younger dog, and I thought a male. The man had a face tanned by some fiercer sun than that of Carpathia, a scar on his forehead and a flamboyant blond mustache. But the eyes were my eyes and the grin my grin as he laid his hand on the ghost-hound’s head and said, “Peace, my brother. I’m Casmir Thorn, and this piratical-looking bunch are my crew-mates on Starship Argo, in which you stand.” The ghost-hound remained placidly white as he went on. “The lady with the fiery locks is our friend, Nadia Ivanovna, who had the courage to pretend to still be Mortifer’s creature after she had changed her allegiance to me.”

  Our eyes met across the room; he knew as well as I the strength of the Jagellon Gift. “Our apologies for the mummery, but we had to lure Mortifer away from the controls of that thing you rode up here on; he could have done considerable damage to Argo from that console and he was shielded besides. The sword is probably not necessary, brother, but keep a good hold on Mortifer’s throat; he may have a few other ‘death-words’ for you or me and I’d prefer not to find out the hard way. Nadia, my dear, if you would use a neural interrupter On Mortifer I doubt if you would do my brother any harm; I’m sure he is as full of Lysergol as I would be in his place.”

  Looking rather stunned, Nadia Ivanovna looked to me for permission and when I grinned at her and nodded, she pointed a familiar stubby weapon at Mortifer, who struggled frantically in my arms. There was a purple flash and he slumped, but I did not release him.

  “Quite right, brother,” said Casmir Thorn. “He might be faking. Nadia, a stasis suit for the distinguished Academician.” The red-haired woman slipped a sort of gray shroud over Mortifer and two of my monitors took charge of him.

  “We seem to have done it, brother,” I said to Casmir Thorn.

  He grinned. “With both of us against him, poor Mortifer had very little chance,” he said. “Not to mention our allies. Gorda, go see if Mortifer is really fast asleep.” The young ghost-hound padded over to where the shrouded Mortifer was held by the monitors, sniffed at him, yawned and sat down and scratched.

  I laughed. “Mortifer seems to be no threat,” I said. “I suppose Gorda is the replacement ghost-hound we ordered.”

  Casmir Thorn nodded. “I hope that you don’t mind paying a rather high freight rate for him,” he said. “My captain is a good friend but also a shrewd business woman. Gorda comes direct from Chrysonomia, the only planet where humans and Caphellans live together. I recommend that we each spend some time there.”

  I nodded thoughtfully; the ghost-hounds had renewed the interest in Caphellans which had been stirred by my first meeting with one. “They may have much to teach us,” I agreed. I walked over to stand near Casmir Thorn, and both crew members and monitors withdrew respectfully, leaving us alone at one side of the cargo bay. “You’ve been on Argo since you destroyed Mortifer’s laboratory in Thorn?” I asked.

  “Oh, he did that himself to keep his secrets from falling into the hands of the mob that came to rescue me. I never learned that young scholar’s name . . .” said Casmir Thorn.

  “Paul Sobeski,” I said. “He’s my secretary now. If you had contacted him again, you might be Tribune now instead of me.”

  He shrugged. “Nadia got me out of the exploding laboratory and warned me about the deathword. Since I didn’t know when Mortifer might spring that on me, it seemed safer to take up Captain Petros on an offer of a berth on Argo, leaving Nadia to work from within. But when I heard of an order for a Caphellan ghost-hound by Casmir King, Tribune of Carpathia, clone of King Casmir the Tenth . . .”

  I laughed. “You didn’t want to miss out on the end,” I told him.

  He laughed in his turn. “Of course not,” he said. “And just as well for you that I got here in time, contacted Nadia, and arranged to disable Sceptre and have Argo make the rendezvous. Of course, either of us alone might have done it, but as it was what you didn’t do, I did . . .”

  “And what you didn’t do, I did,” I finished. “Yes, that’s something to be thought of for the future. Not that we always want to work together. . .”

  “But we ought to duplicate experiences where possible,” said Casmir Thom. “I think I can persuade Captain Petros to train another green recruit when you can get away . . .”

  “. . . And you should have no trouble getting elected Tribune; the Jagellon legend is still very strong on Carpathia,” I replied.

  “Paul Sobeski and some others know about us, but we’ll have to break the news of your existence to the people eventually.”

  “You’ll need to meet a nurse named Molly and an ultraviolet named Benton—and his sister,” said the other Casmir, “and we both need to consult with Justinian Droste.”

  “I’ve met Molly,” I said, “and that reminds me our credit accounts are the same, unless Droste has taken steps to get it straightened out, and I don’t think he has.”

  Casmir Thom shrugged. “Leave it as it is, if they’ll let us,” he said. “Half of my pay as a starship crewman goes to Central Credit at Home, the other half I get in ecus. So we have credit at Home . . .”

  “. . . And plenty on Carpathia,” I told him. “The Tribune’s stipend is fairly modest, but I haven’t had a chance to spend much of it.”

  “Good,” said Casmir Thom. “I’ve spent most of my ecus on artifacts from off-world . . .”

  Just then a crewman approached us and said a little uncertainly, “Casmir?”

  The other Casmir grinned and said, “We’re both Casmir, Jogo, but he’s only the Tribune of Carpathia and I’m the second supercargo of Argo.”

  “Aw well, we can’t all be lucky,” said the crewman with perfect seriousness. “He looks just like you did when you came aboard. Anyway, Captain wants you both on the bridge. Says if you don’t want to go right back to Thorn she wants to know who’s paying for all this time on GE. In fact I guess she wants to know that anyway.”

  “I think I can answer that one,” I said. “And I’d like to communicate with my backup crew, too. Will someone find my monitors somewhere to rest up?”

  “Sure,” said Jogo. “I’ll take ‘em to the crew lounge and give ‘em a drink if they’ll take it; we’re not going Q anytime soon.”

  “Tell them from me that they’re off duty except for the ones in charge of Mortifer,” I said, “and they’ll get their chance to celebrate later.”

  “Yesser,” said Jogo and strode off with the catlike tread that seemed to be characteristic of starcrew.

  The other Casmir chuckled. “You must have impressed him to get a ‘ser,’ ” he said. “We starflitters rather look down on you planetaries.”

  Once back in Thorn Mortifer was handed over to Universal Commonwealth authorities; safer than trying to keep him on Carpathia where some of his secret sympathizers might work to free him. I requested the Council to reimburse Captain Elena Petros for all expenses incurred by Argo and to open the Lake of the Crater for swimming by local children as soon as possible. Such “requests” were increasingly mere formalities which worried me more than a little. I didn’t mind being watchdog of Carpathia’s liberties, but I had no desire to be her king.

  It was late that night when all of the formalities were over and Casmir Thom and I paced the battlements of Castle Thorn in the moonlight. Soberly I told Casmir Thorn of the last time I had seen a face like mine by moonlight.

  “Needless to say, I would have done the same,” he told me. “Our talents and Mortifer’s mind was a combination just too dangerous to take any chances with.”

  “What are the limits of our talent?” I asked him. “Would a man like Justinian Droste or a woman like Wanda Jagellon do something against their conscience because of the loyalty we inspire
?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I hope not,” he said. “Otherwise the burden becomes almost too great to bear. Perhaps the Caphellans can help us find our limits—and our strengths. Will you flit when Argo lifts or shall I?”

  “I’d better go this time,” I said. “Otherwise you’ll be too far ahead of me in the crew hierarchy. You can stand for Tribune or not as you please; things are quiet now. You can live here in the castle in any case; the Knights are regarding us as co-Commanders, and the rooms go with that office, not with the Tribune’s office.”

  He nodded. “Perhaps I’ll wait and see,” he said. “We don’t want to slip into being defacto kings and a rest from a Casmir as Tribune might help there. Besides, I want to explore some of the back country, see how much it has changed. No need for us to parallel exactly, so long as each keeps in touch with the other’s experience.”

  “Will we always parallel?” I mused. “Could we ever come into conflict?”

  The other Casmir frowned thoughtfully. “We’re different men, that I know. I think, for one thing that you’re more reflective than I and I’m more inclined to act before I think. I wish we had Mortifer’s records; I suspect that our differences started even back in those identical environments. But of course we’re far more like than unlike; closer than brothers, closer than twins. For better or worse we’ll grow more unlike our prototype; he never had a parallel Casmir. As for whether you and I ever come into conflict I find it hard to imagine but I don’t know.”

  “If we do,” I said, looking up at the stars, “we can arrange that our paths don’t cross at the same place at the same time. It’s a big universe, big enough for. . . what can you call us?. . . a parallel man.”