by E. C. Tubb
"You must tell it to me," he said mildly. "The prince cannot be bothered without good reason."
"I want drugs," said Dumarest harshly. Crowder had been the pressure of a finger away from death. "Is that reason enough?"
"Of course." The courtier smiled. "Come with me."
The prince was at play when they entered his chamber. He sat staring at the focused image of a solidiograph, his eyes glazed as he studied the variations of an age-old theme, entranced by the depicted skill. Not until the ephemeral images had faded did Crowder urge Dumarest forward. He placed him on a selected spot before the throne-like chair and hurried to his master's side.
Dumarest failed to catch his whisperings.
He looked around, noting the luxurious hangings, the subtle air of decadence, the expected appurtenances of a sybarite. He could see no guards but guessed at their presence. The prince was not a man to trust himself with a stranger.
"So." He had deigned to notice his presence. "You wanted to see me. Why?"
"For drugs, My Lord."
"So Crowder tells me. At least you are honest. Have you been addicted long?"
Dumarest restrained his impatience. Let the fool have his fun. "The drugs are for a friend of mine," he explained. "A man your courtier there lashed to the brink of insanity with his strag. Was that by your order, My Lord?"
"The man had displeased me. I ordered him to be punished."
"With a strag?"
"No."
"So I thought. Will you give me leave to punish the one responsible, My Lord?"
"Crowder? Perhaps." The prince was amused. His full lips parted to show gleaming white teeth as he smiled. He considered himself to be an attractive man. Physically he was. "You are a brave man," he mused. "Are you willing to risk your life for a friend?"
"If necessary. He could have saved mine."
"And you are grateful." The prince was pleased with the answer. "Tell me," he said gently. "What will you give me if I do as you ask?"
"Ten times the cost of the drugs, My Lord," said Dumarest promptly.
The prince shook his head.
"The High passage I won by defeating your fighter."
"So much?"
"If necessary, My Lord. A man is in pain."
"And you want the cure for his agony." The prince gestured to Crowder. "Find my physician. Have him give you what is needed. Go!" he waited until the man had left. "Come closer," he ordered Dumarest. "Closer. That is better." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You see? I trust you. I have placed myself within your power."
"Have you, My Lord?"
The prince caught the irony. "You are wise. Only a fool would wholly trust another. You are no fool and neither am I. There is a thing you could do for me. If you agree I will give you the drugs and the cost of a High passage." He paused. "The drugs now, the passage later. You could use it for your friend."
Dumarest nodded, waiting.
"I have seen you close to the Lady Seena," continued the prince. "She is an attractive woman. I would like to know her better. You understand?"
"Yes, My Lord."
"Good. What I ask is simple. It could be that I shall need a friend who is close to the lady in question. You could be that friend. If so you must obey my orders without question or hesitation. You agree?"
"Certainly, My Lord." Dumarest hesitated. "The High passage?"
"Comes when your work is done." The prince lifted his hand for silence as Crowder returned. The courtier carried a small package.
"The drugs, My Lord."
"Give them to Dumarest and escort him from the area."
The prince was thoughtful as the men left the room. He felt a vague sense of unease—Dumarest had been too willing to agree—then he shrugged off the feeling. How could he compare the values of a common traveler with those of a cultured man? Dumarest had nothing; to him the Lady Seena was a woman as distant as the stars while the price of a High passage was something which he could appreciate. No, he had reacted according to his type and would prove to be a useful tool when the time came to act.
The prince smiled as he thought about it. Crowder had done better than he knew.
Outside the tent Dumarest wiped the sweat from his palms and tucked the package under his arm. He felt dirty, soiled, yet there had been nothing else he could have done. Megan needed the drugs and, if he had to lie to get them, so what?
He frowned as he walked to where the monks waited in the shelter of their tiny church. It was hard to see: thick clouds had rolled from the east and covered the sky, blotting out the stars. They made the air even more oppressive, a lid clamped down on the oven below, stifling with their presence.
Dumarest didn't look at the sky. He was thinking about the Lady Seena and the Prince of Emmened. What did they have in common? What plan had the prince in mind and what would be his part in it?
Something hit wetly on the back of his hand. Another drop followed it, and another until, in seconds, the air was heavy with falling rain. At the same time a vivid flash of lightning ripped across the sky.
The storm had begun.
Chapter Eleven
IT CAME WITH a continuous rolling of thunder which tore at the ears and numbed the senses. The lightning was a web of electric fire across the sky, stabbing at the ground, searing wetly into the sea. The rain was a deluge, pounding the ground into mud, turning the air almost solid with its moisture.
The fires died. Stretched plastic echoed the drumbeat of the rain. Tourists cursed and huddled beneath the shelter of their rafts. Travelers fought to join them or scurried frantically to what shelter they could find. It was little. The wise stripped their shirts off and covered their heads with them so that they could breathe at least. The stupid drowned in the relentless downpour.
And still the air remained motionless. The winds had yet to come.
"I don't like it," said Megan. He sat, hunched in a corner of the church, his face pale from recent strain, "I've never known it this bad before."
"But it rains?"
"Sure." Megan moved so as to give Dumarest a little more room. The church was crowded with desperate travelers sheltering from the storm. They stood packed in an almost solid mass. The air was heavy with their heat and smell after their long confinement. "It rains and sometimes there's thunder, but not to this extent." He listened to the drumming of the rain. "This is something special."
He was shouting but Dumarest could hardly hear what he said. The thunder and rain seemed to fill the universe. Suddenly he could no longer stand the cramped confinement, the heat and the smell.
"I'm going outside." He tried to rise to his feet and Megan caught his arm.
"Wait it out, Earl. You're safe in here."
Safety was relative. In the church Dumarest was safe from the immediate danger of the rain but the rain would not last forever. Then would come fresh danger, perhaps from the Prince of Emmened, or Crowder, or the person who had tried to kill him on the journey. The violence of the storm triggered a violence within so that he burned with the need for action.
He jerked his arm free and tried to thrust his way toward the opening of the church. He failed; the press of men was too great. He dropped to his knees and probed the lower part of the wall. The plastic was thin, merging with the sea of mud outside. He dug and lifted and gasped as spattered rain lashed his face.
"Earl!"
"Wait here!"
Dumarest lifted the side wall, ignoring Megan's protest, flattening so that he could thrust head and shoulders outside. The rain slammed at his skull and forced it into the mud. He reached out and clawed at the ground, dragging the rest of his body from the tent. The side wall fell behind him and suddenly he was alone.
Alone in a peculiar world lit by the stroboscopic effect of vivid flashes of lightning, deafening with the roll of thunder, the drumming of rain.
He turned and felt water drive into his nostrils, his mouth, slam with bruising force against his closed eyelids, run wetly into his ears. He trie
d to breathe and choked as water reached his lungs. Coughing he turned to face the mud, stooping low as he ran forward in a long, loping crouch.
He paused to get his bearings, conscious of the proximity of the sea and the cliffs falling to the waves. In such a storm it would be easy to go over the edge. A lightning flash showed him his position. Ahead and to one side loomed the tents of the Matriarch, black in the fierce glare. He could see no guards but had expected none. They would be inside. Another flash and he could see the complex of the Prince of Emmened, equally black, equally lifeless. The rafts of the tourists rested, well away from the sea, a cluster of crowded travelers devoid of shelter, some alive, some dead, all inconspicuous in the mud.
He ran forward as darkness closed around.
It was hard work, harder still as he had to steal every breath, shielding his face and waiting as his gasping lungs reoxygenated his blood, retching as water reached where only air should go; waiting too as the vivid glare of lightning etched the plain with stark clarity, running only when it was safe to move unobserved.
The rain eased a little. The rolling thunder moved seaward; the lightning was no longer directly overhead.
Dumarest tripped and fell, slamming heavily into the mud, feeling the soft dirt splash into his eyes and mouth. He rolled, face upward, so that the punishing rain could wash him clean, rolling again in order to breathe. He looked at what had tripped him.
He looked thoughtfully at a boy, scarcely a man, the one who had traveled with Sime and the crone. He was quite dead.
Drowned, perhaps, caught in the storm and not knowing what to do in order to survive. He lay face-up, his face very pale beneath the patina of rain, his thin hands crossed on his stomach, his lips parted, his hair a dark smear on his forehead. Dumarest reached out and turned his head, waiting for a flash of lightning before turning it to the other side.
The sky crackled with a livid glare and he saw, quite clearly, the little red spot high on the cheek, just before the ear and below the temple.
A spot which could have been made by the thrust of a heavy needle.
* * *
The rain ceased and the thunder muttered into silence. The lightning blazed on the horizon in a lambent chiaroscuro. Far to the west the libration of the planet thrust a wall of cold air into the tropic heat of the sun. The thermodynamic balance began to change. Equally far to the east a cold bank of frigid air began to move, drawn by the vacuum of expansion. It speeded as it moved, rushing over the cold of the nightside toward the warmth of the sun. It swept across plains of ice and hummocks of frost and streamed down on the mountains. It hit and surrounded the obstruction, blowing up and over, forcing its way through cracks and crevasses, bathing the fretted and filigreed mass of stone and crystal with the thrust of its passage.
The air became murmurous with sound.
Ghost sound. The distant skirl of pipes, the crying wail of strings,the heartbeat of rattling drums, all mingled and faint, thin and unimpressive.
The wind blew stronger.
And the dead rose to talk again.
Dumarest rose from where he knelt beside the body.
Around him streamed a medley of voices, a cacophony of sound, a vibration which covered the audible range and extended far beyond. He heard his name and turned and saw nothing. He caught the echo of a laugh, the snarl of a curse, the thin tremolo of a baby's wail. He closed his eyes.
Immediately the sounds grew louder. A multi-toned murmur whispered past his ears and, buried within it, a voice scratched with boneless fingers at the doors of memory.
"It's your turn next, Earl, Make it doubles—I want to celebrate."
"Carson!"
"Don't be a fool, Earl. Why don't you settle down now that you've got the chance? Take my advice and do it before it's too late."
* * *
"Carson!" Dumarest opened his eyes, almost expecting to see the familiar shape of the man who had traveled with him to a dozen worlds. Carson who had gambled against the odds once too often and was now five years dead.
There was nothing, only the mountains, the wind, the thin wavering of the unmistakable voice. That and the cries of the others, the travelers and tourists, who had left their shelter to stand, entranced, exposed to the magic of the winds of Gath.
Again he closed his eyes—the illusion was better that way, more complete. Now the voices were clear and strong, ringing from the winds which blew about his head. Many voices, some of men who had tried to kill him, others of men he had killed. Moidor sneered his challenge, Benson murmured his envy; he heard the spiteful whine of a phygria, the hot snarl of a laser. The past unfolded and the dead became real:
The old captain who had taken pity on a scared and frightened boy.
"One thing, son. You must promise never to tell anyone of this. Never mention it or go into detail. If you do it will cost my life. Do you understand?"
The promise he had kept until now and then only broken in part. But a man should know how to find his home.
Other voices, harsh, impatient, some appealing. A dizzying blend of sound containing within itself all the voices he had ever known. And one voice, warm with sensuous passion, whispering with rising emotion, tearing at his heart with painful memory: "Darling… darling… darling. . . ."
"No!"
He jerked open his eyes. The past was dead, she was dead, let it lie. But the temptation was strong. To hear her again, to thrill to her words of love, to recapture the joy of the past and warm his spirit in tender memory…
Savagely he shook his head. The voice was a lure, an illusion without flesh or real meaning, a ghost from the past born in his own head from memories impossible to eradicate. Now he could understand Megan's warning. How many had run to their death thinking that they ran to the arms of their lovers, family, friends?
Or ran from some imagined danger which tore at their sanity?
He gritted his teeth against the rising wind. Around him the plain was in turmoil. Men sat entranced, beating time to invisible orchestras, walking as if in a dream, standing with tears running down their faces or cursing or holding conversations with the empty air. They stood revealed in the flicker of the distant lightning, helpless in the grip of their illusions.
The wind blew stronger.
High on the mountain a young man checked his instruments and felt the rising force of the wind. He heard nothing, the muffs clamped to his ears deadening all sound, but he was curious. The instruments required little attention and it was doubtful if he would ever again visit Gath. And, if he should listen, just for a short while, who would ever know?
He lifted his muffs and listened and screamed and fell two hundred feet to his death.
On the plain the Prince of Emmened blanched as voices rang in his head, sharp, accusing, the words of men long dead, the sobs of women long forgotten. He cried out and his physician came running, an old man, long deaf, the electrodes of his mechanical ears glistening against the hairless dome of his skull.
"The voices!" screamed the prince. "The voices!"
The physician read his lips. He had turned off the power for his ears when the wind had first brought its pleasure and pain and he could guess at what troubled his master.
"Think of pleasant things," he suggested. "Of the sighs of women, the laughter of children, the song of the birds."
"Fool!" The prince snarled his anger but the man made sense, more sense than the wind which carried the tormenting voices. But he could not do it alone. "Bring drugs," he ordered. "Euphorics. Hurry!"
Drugged, dreamlike, drifting in illusion, the prince sprawled in his chair and thought of pleasant things. Of combats and diversions yet to come. Of the richness which life had to offer and the painful joy of complex jests—painful to the victims, of course, never to him. And he thought of the Lady Seena, the most pleasant thing of all.
He was not alone. Rigid in her chair, her room open to the wind, the Matriarch of Kund sat alone in a world of memories. She listened again to the deep, strong vo
ice of a man and could imagine his touch, firm yet tender, the hands on her shoulders, her waist, the curve of her hips. Her lips pursed to his kiss, the blood running hot in her aged veins.
"Darling!" she whispered. "Oh, my darling!"
"My love," echoed the voice in her mind. "Gloria, my love. I am yours for all eternity. We are meant to be together—I cannot live without you. My darling, my love, my own!"
A man, dust for over eighty years, now talking and breathing at her side, his voice, his beloved voice, soft in her ears.
"I love you, my darling. I love you… love you… love you… "
Another voice, thin, high, childish.
"Mummy! Look, mummy. See what I have!"
A scrap of root shaped in the likeness of a man, a doll drawn from nature. Arms and legs and the rudiments of a face. With cosmetics she had drawn in the details, the eyes and lips and ears. With lace from her handkerchief she had fashioned a dress. The sun had been warm that day, and the air full of tenderness. Her heart ached with the memory of it.
And other voices, the thin, whispering echoes of ambition, the temptation of office and the knowledge that the coveted prize was hers—for a price.
"Mummy." whispered the voice, the thin, girlish voice. "When am I going to see you again?"
The tears ran unheeded down her withered cheeks.
Dyne crouched over his recorder, his head grotesque under the muffs which covered his ears, his eyes burning with the light of scientific dedication. Around him the wind moaned against the tents, the drumming of the plastic adding to the medley, reenforcing rather than blanketing the catholic noise.
On the machine the tapes wound soundlessly from their spools, recording every note of the entire spectrum of audible sound, recording even the sub- and ultrasonic vibrations beyond the range of normal hearing. It was a sensitive instrument. It would miss nothing but it would solve nothing. It lacked the catalyst of the brain which could transmute sound into imaginary image.
The cyber leaned back, pensive, wondering at the world of emotion of which he knew nothing. The secret of Gath was, to him, no secret. It was merely a combination of circumstances which had a cumulative effect: the mighty sounding board of the mountains which, beneath the thrust of the wind, responded in terms of living sound; sound which could trigger thought-associations so that the hearer would live in a world of temporary hallucination, sound which could be filtered by the brain to form actual words, music, songs and declamations.