by Phillip Mann
TO PAWL, IN THIS TIME OF GRIEF, WE OF THE RULING FAMILIES EXTEND OUR DEEPEST SYMPATHY AND ASSURE HIM OF OUR CONTINUING GOODWILL.
The image of the Proctor faded and was replaced by a vivante of Laurel made at the time of her wedding to Pawl. The Beltane anthem played while Laurel walked and laughed and accepted flowers and good wishes. And when the anthem ended the vivante faded.
Pawl sat, amid members of his household, in the long dining room. When the lights came up people departed in ones and twos, some looking furtively at Pawl, others crying.
Pawl sat dry-eyed. Concealed in his hands he held a message newly-arrived from Forge. It was from Milligan, in haste, asking Pawl to contact Forge immediately. A giant Hammer had approached the particle fence and was waiting to speak.
27
AMONG THE FAMILIES
Disbelief.
Suspicion.
In some quarters dark feelings of delight.
Such were the reactions of the Families when they heard the news that Laurel was dead. Throughout space, wherever the mighty empires rubbed shoulders, there was a sudden tightening of guard.
The final consensus, never quite openly discussed but current nevertheless, was that Laurel had been murdered. Accidents such as this just did not happen; at least not when so many of the Families had reason to strike at the Paxwax and vengeance was a characteristic of all the Families.
But it was a frightful crime: shocking because it touched the very heart of leadership, disturbing because somehow a Family’s defences had been breached. That held meaning for all the Families, and explained their watchfulness.
*
In the great brass and aluminium palaces of Central, where the affairs of all the Families were discussed, the senior brothers and sisters of the Proctors met amid ostentatious security.
Lar Proctor, who felt he had been made a fool of by Pawl at the time of his marriage, was now Pawl’s implacable enemy. He made no bones about making his feelings known. “The Paxwax boy is deceitful and dangerous. He has probably inherited a cruel streak from his father. We must watch him at all times. He would be quite capable of killing her himself. He has flouted the Code once; he may try to do so again. Perhaps he has found some other strange beast to bed.”
All the senior Proctors nodded. The Senior Proctor eyed Lar Proctor coldly.
“We have already taken steps,” he said. “We intend to handle this matter ourselves.”
Clover and Helium of the Shell-Bogdanovich Conspiracy lay top-to-tail in their favourite pond, a great crystal sphere which bobbed like a bubble, while they mulled over the news. Helium was suspicious of the Proctors. “They could have engineered something. They have the means. They lost face when Pawl won the right to marry Laurel. Lar Proctor lost most. I hear the Senior Proctor tore shreds off him in front of everyone.”
“But to kill the lady,” said Clover softly.
“Aye,” said Helium, “that would be madness. If the Proctors are involved and Pawl finds out and can prove it, then the Families will rise against them.”
“I do not think the Proctors had anything to do with it; well, not directly,” said Clover, scooping up water and letting it sprinkle down on to Helium. “I believe the Sith are the villains. They are ambitious. That clown, Singular Sith, who always looks so earnest, would sell his own mother into servitude if he thought it would gain him another system.”
“True, he is worth watching. I have my eyes on him.”
“He may have been paid or he may have acted alone. An ambitious man would profit from chaos.”
“True,” sighed Helium, and there was great sadness in the word.
Far, far, far away on An, while the erhu wailed in the bamboo stands, Old Man Wong sat cross-legged and contemplated a picture of Helium Bogdanovich. It was held for him by a great grandson who knelt with head bowed. Old Wong Lungli took a deep breath and passed his hand over the picture. Then he nodded to himself, as though in conversation.
To Wong Lungli, the greatest enemy was always the greatest friend. The equation worked equally well in reverse. This was why the Wong family held no one close except their kin. Security for the Wong lay in absolute withdrawal. Old Man Wong had watched the manoeuvrings of the Xerxes and Paxwax like a man who watches fish swimming in a bowl. He had seen how the Shell-Bogdanovich befriended the Paxwax. He had observed carefully the way that Helium had struck at the Xerxes and Lamprey. In all these actions he had seen the seeds of later discord.
But Wong Lungli also wondered about the Proctors. He wondered if the killing of Laurel was the Proctors’ way of telling the Shell-Bogdanovich Conspiracy that they were becoming too powerful. If that were so then such crudity would mark the end of the Proctors. And Wong Lungli was ready. One day, he knew, the Wong family would be the First Family. Perhaps that day would come in his lifetime. When the time was right, the Proctors would fall like a ripe fruit, and the Wong would be waiting.
Meanwhile he wondered if he ought to close the Wong empire. Finally he decided to leave the Gates open.
His hands with their coils of long nails stirred and his Prime Minister, who was standing ten paces away, hurried close. “We will watch,” whispered Old Man Wong. “We live in interesting times.”
Dames Clarissa and Jettatura were not so calm. Perched secure within their stone tree, high above the racing storms of sand, they sat staring at one another while the dry voice of the Senior Proctor intoned the death announcement.
The announcement came to an end and the two sisters sat in silence. Where they had failed, Fate had contrived to succeed.
“I must brush my hair,” said Jettatura and tugged at a dark green ribbon which held the magnificent coils of her white hair. Her hair tumbled loose. “I am thinking of having it cut off. Or short anyhow. How would I look as an elf or a page boy?”
Clarissa had not heard her. She stared past her sister, out beyond the stone walls and into the misty future. “They will suspect us. Everyone will suspect us,” she said, her colour rising in her cheeks. “But we have done nothing, have we?”
“Perhaps your friend the Bogdanovich knows something,” offered Jettatura.
“I suppose I could contact Pawl. Offer condolences. Tell him we haven’t … didn’t….”
“He would think you were laughing at him. That boy set his lady at the centre of the world. This could drive him mad.”
“You don’t think he killed her himself?”
Jettatura shrugged. “Who knows with the Paxwax? But I think not. I think that at this very minute Pawl Paxwax, with the flashing yellow eyes, is hunting the killer. I am glad it is not us. We have a grandstand view.”
“I suppose it could have been an accident.”
Jettatura laughed without mirth. “I live a more dangerous life on my trapeze.”
“We must do something. You don’t think the Lamprey, what’s left of them …?”
“They don’t even have a Way Gate, out wherever they are.”
“The Sith, then, They suddenly seem to be everywhere?”
“That is possible.”
“Well, what shall we do?”
“Nothing. You must regain your health. I must retain my poise. We are elder stateswomen now. Let us act with dignity, not like silly schoolgirls. Let that be an end.”
“It could even have been the Proctor you know. Or even….”
Way out at the rim of the galaxy, where the Milky Way is a blazing sword which fills half the sky, and the rest is darkness save for the fleeing galaxies, the Lamprey heard the news after a long delay.
It meant little to them any longer. The old leaders of the family were dead or deposed. The Lamprey young wanted nothing of the past, except to forget it.
Their defeat and fall had effected a cleansing. Ancestors were now distrusted, not worshipped. The practice of blinding their children had stopped. The experiments which had led to the breeding of the Saints had also stopped and all the records were destroyed.
The Lamprey young looked out at
the dark vastness of space which sometimes seemed to oppress them like a wall and at other times called to them, and they felt a stirring of purpose. That dark sea was yet uncrossed.
One day the Lamprey will stir and rise and step out into that great wild blackness. But not for many generations; and besides, that is another story.
Dama Longstock fainted when she heard the news.
Preparations for her own wedding were well-advanced but halted the moment the news from the Paxwax broke.
Space between Sable and Festal, the Homeworld of the Long-stock, tingled with the urgency of communication as Clover Shell spoke with Livil Longstock. There was no mincing of words.
“If Pawl were to propose would Dama accept?”
“She is persuadable.”
“Let us work on that. Leave Pawl to me. He owes us favours.”
“I will slow the arrangements down. Find difficulties.”
“Good. Give my love to Dama. How is she?”
“She is in the mountains, resting.”
“Keep her there. A rumour of sickness would help.”
The Outer Families, after maintaining a loose confederation, now lapsed into open suspicion and rivalry.
The Felice believed the Sith were in league with the Proctors.
The Paragon believed the Sith were safe in the pocket of the Shell-Bogdanovich Conspiracy.
The Sith believed that the Felice and Paragon had formed an alliance with one another and with any of the Inner Families just to spite them.
But the Felice and Paragon stared at one another with scorn.
Singular Sith, his great curved horns clasped in his hands, sat down and tried to comprehend the situation. So complex had his machinations become that he had to call in a junior brother just to make sure that no member of the Sith family had accepted a contract to kill Laurel. They hadn’t. He was relieved, but still the situation was beyond him. Everything had been going so well, and now this. Why? Why? He beat his fists on the desk and bellowed.
He did not know what to do and so did the best thing, nothing. He closed down the Sith for a while and went hunting.
Not so for the people who lived in Elliott’s Pocket.
Pettet and Raleigh received the news in stunned silence. They could not believe it and yet they had to believe it. Finally Pettet roused himself. The giant had aged since his return from Ultima Thule. He moved more slowly and there was often a hunted look in his face. “I’ll get Paris,” he said and left Raleigh, white-faced, to play through again the sombre vivante announcing Laurel’s death.
Paris watched in silence. At the second viewing a pallor spread through his face. He stopped the vivante at the moment of the wedding ceremony. “I will kill the beast,” he whispered.
“What?” asked Raleigh.
Paris turned to face her. His eyes were all pupil and stared at her from a blackness without depth. She could not guess what he was seeing. “I will kill the beast.”
“Pawl? Is it Pawl you are talking about?”
“Who else?”
Raleigh gasped. “You don’t think….”
“My father. My Homeworld, people I loved and now….” The final words were too much for him and he stood staring at Raleigh. A hatred, more violent than any emotion he had ever felt, had come welling up inside him and filled his mind with bile. Finally he roused himself from his trance. “I must leave your Homeworld. I shall leave now. Make my goodbyes to … to your daughter, and to Pettet. You have been very kind but you must realize that I can’t stay now.”
“Where will you go?”
Again he looked into her and again there was blackness. “Where can I go? Where have I? I shall make my way to Lotus-and-Arcadia for a while. Then we shall see.”
“Call Pawl. Talk to Pawl. He loved Laurel beyond all reason. Perhaps now you can even help one another.”
Paris did not reply. For a moment he hesitated and then turned and left the room.
Some minutes later Raleigh monitored his progress to the Way Gate above Lumb.
Later, when she was with Pettet, she told him of her conversation. “I will warn Pawl,” said Pettet. “I will even leave the Pocket and travel to his Homeworld if need be. You, Raleigh. You are the mystical one. You should see these things coming. Tell me I’m wrong, but it seems to me that everything has gone out of joint since those three arrived.” He nodded up to where Erix, Thule and their bright sun were just rising above the horizon.
Sanctum had known of Laurel’s death at the moment it occurred. And now it waited. No creature approached the giant Tree, for death lay in its shadow, so great was the energy it transmitted as it maintained a link with Odin.
The plans were laid and ready. Everything now depended on Pawl. If he were true to his nature he would turn to fight.
And then came the news that they had waited to hear. Pawl was speaking to Odin and there was no mistaking the meaning of his conversation. The great Tree allowed the conversation to spread wide and be felt throughout Sanctum. They saw a round room like a bowl, with dark shiny windows, and within it a man who blazed like a pillar of fire and a Gerbes who glowed green and yellow and hectic red. They heard the words, from the man.
“And how if I were to help them? How if I were to help the aliens … would they be interested?”
At that a great cry went up on Sanctum. So great was the spirit of the cry that little Odin, alone on Pawl’s Homeworld, felt it.
And now Sanctum was throbbing like a giant pulse.
Plans were afoot to move the planet.
28
ON FORGE
The vivante image jolted and bounced as the man holding the camera, Milligan presumably, walked towards the glowing particle fence where the giant Hammer waited. The beast crouched in the sullen ochre air, its hammer head lowered against the wind and its ventral orifice closed to a tight point of blackness. The feelers which fringed that dark mouth were themselves coiled back like young ferns. The plated tail too was coiled and the giant sting with its beak and barb were hidden.
Milligan came within range of the Hammer which could, if it had wished, have reached over the fence and struck at him. It didn’t move, except that the head with its widely-spaced eyes arched slightly to keep Milligan in focus.
Squatting between the Hammer’s front legs was the humanoid Pawl had met when he had visited Forge.
Abruptly the Hammer reared, its legs working like hydraulic pistons. Its tail uncoiled and the beak of its sting opened and closed. The camera halted and jerked, almost dropped. A drumming began as the fine tendrils along the Hammer’s side roused and frilled and beat.
This was surely Trader.
The drumming ceased and the thin, dark-robed alien began to speak in its dead way.
“Trader will come. Trader hopes for better game. Trader hopes for best of game. Trader sets riddle.
“What comes from behind and runs before?
“What can be trusted though cities tremble?
“What deals in honey, delights in dark wine?
“What moves like the shadow of death at your door?”
Pawl heard and understood. “I will give you two answers,” he said, and heard unmistakably his own voice tinnily amplified by the small vivante speaker carried in the camera. “I Pawl Paxwax am one of the answers to your riddle. But your sting is, I believe, the answer you are looking for.”
The Hammer’s head arched and then nodded, though this gesture looked more like laughter than agreement and was possibly neither.
The drumming began again, in broken rhythm, allowing the alien time to translate.
“Trader hopes the Master of Paxwax has thought deep, for the striking sting cannot be stopped … nor will the stinging cease until the dead men-of-earth buttress the walls and the water channels run red.”
“I have thought long enough,” replied Pawl. “Will you come to my world to play?”
“I cannot leave my prison world. Remember the eyes in the sky.” The tail and sting suddenly straight
ened and jabbed at the dark red clouds which hurried by above.
“Leave that to me. Will Trader play?”
“Yes, Trader will play.”
“Then the next time I call you will be the time to depart. Milligan will call you.”
There was no more drumming. The Hammer stepped backwards, its long body slung between its high-kneed legs. Then it reared, turned and ran. Within seconds it was lost in the murk.
Milligan turned the camera and, holding it at arm’s length, pointed it at himself.
“You’re never going to let that thing loose on your Homeworld, are you?” he said through tight lips.
“I am,” said Pawl.
29
ON BENNET
Within days of Odin’s conversation with Pawl concerning the aliens of the Inner Circle, a small delegation from Sanctum was on its way to Bennet Homeworld. It was a war party, consisting of those species best able to plan, and which could most easily cope with the atmosphere on Pawl’s Homeworld.
A special area on the mainland, well away from the small island, was prepared for their arrival. A giant Way Gate normally used only for cargo was hastily adapted and positioned above an improvised shuttle port.
Trader was also on his way. Pawl had neutralized the spy satellites above Forge and arranged for the giant Hammer to lift from the planet aboard one of the ore carriers. What Milligan thought of this is not recorded.
The people of Bennet Homeworld were pleased to see their Master so relaxed and obviously in good spirits as he prepared his flyer for the short trip over the sea to the mainland. Some reckoned it would not be long before there was a new Mistress. Only Peron, scholar and observer that he was, saw something dangerous in Pawl’s bright eyes.
Pawl landed near the low grey domes which roofed the underground chambers. The shuttle was already descending, bringing the first arrival. “It is your friend the Hammer,” whispered a voice in Pawl’s ear. Pawl had taken the precaution of establishing a high-frequency link between himself and Wynn. If the Hammer proved gamesome Wynn would be a valuable ally.