by E. C. Tubb
"Did you enjoy the fur?"
"We both enjoyed it." She laughed with a soft amusement. "I didn't kill it, Earl. I fed it and kept it for a pet until winter came and it ran off to mate. I used to hear it barking from the hills at night and, sometimes, I would bark back." She snuggled a little closer. "Can you understand that?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever have a pet? On Earth, Earl? Did you?"
There had been no time for pets, no time for softness of any kind. To catch an animal was to gain a meal and to feed one was to invite starvation. Trust, love, affection, generosity-all were luxuries he'd never known.
She seemed to sense this and she didn't press the question, talking instead of her own world.
"You'd like Manita, Earl. We live simple lives close to nature. Hunting, fishing, growing crops. No one tells another what to do. There are no pressures. A man doesn't have to prove himself. To live. To share. To help when help is needed."
"But you left."
"I said we lived simple lives not that we are ignorant. To keep what we have we must be as educated as those who might want to take it from us. So I learned. I was always good at finding my way around and it was natural I should become a navigator. I like it so I do it. When I stop liking it I do something else."
"Like hunting down a legend?"
"Of course. But it isn't that to you, is it? It's real and you want to go back home." Her tone gentled. "At times I feel the same. I remember the open plains and the hills and the nights when the sky glowed with stars. The meetings and pairings and the fun. The hunts, too, and the fishing, but most of all, I think, the freedom. That's when I begin to get restless."
"And move?"
"Yes."
"And when you stop liking what you're doing now?"
She said, "What you're really saying is what happens when I stop liking you. Isn't it obvious? We stop being lovers. We stop being companions. You want more?"
"I wasn't talking about us. I'm talking about our partnership. Does that end too?"
For a long moment she stared at him then, smiling, she said, "Earl, you fool, for us there'll be no ending. We'll go on until we find a new beginning. Then, maybe, you'll go running into the hills and, at night, I'll hear you barking."
"And will you bark back?"
"Maybe. That's for you to guess." She grew serious. "Don't worry, Earl, I'm no quitter. Once I start a thing I see it through. If Earth exists we'll find it."
"It exists."
"Then we'll find it." She stretched like a cat on the soft comfort of the bed. "Now kiss me before I go and check the controls."
Maynard's death had robbed the Moira of experienced command. Seated in the big control chair Dumarest checked the instruments and studied the screens, going through a routine which he had learned from service with various freetraders, knowing it wasn't enough. To stand a temporary watch to relieve a tired captain was a different matter from accepting the full responsibility of a ship and all it contained.
As yet they had been lucky. Space was clear and the automatics capable of maintaining flight and safety, but space was also deceptive and odd vortexes of energy lay in unexpected places. Swirling maelstroms of force could take a ship and rip it apart with opposed energies. Nodes held within their parameters the fury of dying suns. In these areas the instruments couldn't be trusted and only an experienced hand and eye could guide a ship on a safe route.
Experience Dumarest lacked and he knew it.
"Earl?" Ysanne spoke from the intercom. "How is it going?"
"All right as yet. Are we on course?"
"The same as I set. Barely any deviation."
Proof of the superior efficiency of the Moira's equipment but enough to have missed their target had it been distant.
"Change," ordered Dumarest. "Set a new course."
"To where?"
"Take your pick. I want a random pattern to throw off any pursuit."
"From whom? We took care of that other ship."
"Just do it."
This precaution could be unnecessary but there could always have been a third vessel which had remained unseen or which had arrived just after they had left. A ship could be following them with its sensors picking up the spatial disturbance left by their passage.
Such a command decision was a part of a captain's duties. As it was his job to oversee the general running of the ship and crew. To insure that there were correct supplies, fuel for the engines, air for the tanks. To delegate authority but never to be careless. No matter what happened to a ship; in the end only one person alone was responsible.
Craig reported from the intercom, "Generator's showing signs of mounting inefficiency, Earl. I'd like to strip it down and monitor the coils."
"Have you replacements?"
"No. We were due for a refit but Pendance had to act in a hurry."
A decision was needed and Dumarest made it. "Leave things as they are for now. Checking will take time and the gain needn't be worth it. Let me know if the condition gets worse."
"As you say, Earl."
As the voice died an alarm flashed red, the glow holding for a long moment before the ruby turned green. A node of potential danger had been spotted by the sensors and avoided by the computer guidance system.
"Relax," said Ysanne from behind the chair. "Those lights will send you crazy if you stare at them long enough. That was Maynard's trouble. He couldn't trust the machines and ended by doubting himself." She moved so as to stand to one side, the braids of her hair reflecting the winking telltales in oily shimmers. "I've fed the course changes into the system. Three at varying angles and different periods. After the last we head to where we're going."
"Sorkendo?"
She betrayed her surprise. "How did you know we came from Sorkendo?"
"Why go back there?"
"Pendance has funds stashed away in the Homtage Bank and I figured we could get them. Land and claim he was dead and use them for a refit and supplies."
Dumarest said, "Were you checked in at the bank as a full crew-partner? Was Craig?"
"I wasn't and I'm sure Jed wasn't either. Does it matter? They know we're both a part of the Moira's crew."
"It doesn't signify. Crews have been known to mutiny. A smart captain doesn't make it easy for them to gain any benefit from it."
"Maynard, then?" She frowned as she remembered. "Damn! We cycled him through the lock. We should have taken his hands first and used his prints to authenticate a deposition as to our right to claim."
The very suggestion revealed her lack of knowledge in certain areas.
"They wouldn't have accepted it," said Dumarest. "You aren't the first to have thought of that. In any case Pendance had probably radioed the bank to freeze his account."
"Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" She threw back her braids with an impatient gesture. "You'd have done better to have killed him, Earl. Well, if we can't go to Sorkendo, where else?"
To where the Cyclan wouldn't be waiting and they could find a captain willing to work for nothing but a promise. A world on which they could ready the Moira for a long journey-and to find it soon!
There was a subtle beauty in madness. An insidious attraction which manifested itself in the fabrication of complex logic which built alien worlds from accepted premises and realms of enticing fantasy from minor speculations.
Was this the root of the contamination?
Seated in his chair, alone in his office, Elge sensed rather than heard the swift interplay of minds honed and sharpened to a razor's edge. These intelligences had had centuries in which to ponder over abstract ideas, to create worlds based on adaptations of those concepts, to crystallize them into a variety of concrete wholes.
And that was the beauty of it. Not just one rigid universe beset by harsh disciplines but a plethora, each different from the other, each with its own basic logic. A game in which, like gods, the freed minds of old cybers had created worlds and planets and galaxies as they willed. Not like gods-t
hey had been gods, each cyber in the world of his making the only true deity.
The recording ended and for a long moment Elge sat motionless in his chair. Had he and Nequal before him been guilty of a heinous crime? The recording had been taken from brains since destroyed. Minds judged to be insane and erased for fear of future contamination. But what if the apparent sickness had been the result of a natural progression? The next step in the evolutionary scale?
Elge had considered this possibility before. A mind, like a body, could grow and mature, develop like a child into a man. To progress from the fear-ridden, superstition-poisoned mentality of an aboriginal savage to the calculating intellect of a being able to recognize the stars for what they were, demons and ghosts for the nonsense they represented, the awe of the unknown for the ignorance it personified.
A normal man could do that contaminated as he was with destructive emotions. A cyber was superior to a normal man, free as he was from distorting glandular exudations. And, as a cyber to a man-the developed brains?
Even if that were so there had been no crime. Life was the cheapest thing in the universe and, though some had been destroyed, others would follow if the theory was correct. And would the development end there? Elge remembered the demonstration and the massive arm of the robot which had crushed the brain controlling it. It would be suicide if the mind had been aware of what was happening and what it was doing. But if it had been aware, and there was no doubt that was the case, could it have been not suicide but release?-the intelligence finally freed of the last vestige of hampering flesh so as to soar into the limitless regions of the universe?
Such speculation held endless connotations and opened vistas of entrancing complexity which a century of uninterrupted thought would only begin to comprehend.
Could the intelligence survive once the brain had been destroyed? The mind was not the organ-that much had been proved long ago. The ego, the self, was the product of an electromagnetic potential which could be plotted and measured and set down in graphs and wavering lines. Could be caught by machines which emulated telepathy as the recordings demonstrated.
And a world of the mind, to that mind, was as real as any other.
For a moment his senses swam and Elge straightened, one hand reaching toward the recorder to play again the trapped emissions of now-dead brains. Or brains which even now were enjoying true release. Freed from the prisons in which, all unwittingly, they had been placed.
His hand halted as the door opened and Jarvet entered the room, a folder beneath his arm.
"Master!" He placed the folder on the desk and glanced at the apparatus recently installed. "The latest report from Cyber Vire."
"Leave it."
"Yes, Master. The Council has studied the report and it would be best to bring your information up to date."
A warning? Elge glanced at the aide then at the folder. Engrossed with the recordings, he had mischanneled his energies and recognized the error. Time had been lost which should have been put to better use. A matter of minutes only, perhaps, but there could be no excuse for inefficiency.
He reached for the file and began to scan the contents.
Lim was dead and Vire had failed. The Saito had vaporized and all within it-Lim's pyre and one he had merited by his stupidity. Vire was not wholly to blame and yet the tools he had chosen reflected on his ability.
"Time was a matter of prime importance," said Jarvet as Elge put down the final sheet. "He contacted agents on Sorkendo while in transit and arranged for a military-type operation. One which, as we now know, failed."
That failure left the cyber in a damaged vessel, the mercenaries dead or stranded, their own ship taken by the man they had been engaged to capture.
Where was he now?
Correction-where would he be? And when?
Elge looked again at the report. As yet Vire had made only radio contact with Pendance and it would take time before his ship could reach Zabul. The result for which Dumarest had planned.
How to locate him in the immensity of space?
A man, using available transportation, was restricted to certain definable areas of operation. He could only go where ships were available to take him. Even if he adopted a random path it could never wholly be that because, always, his choices were limited. But now Dumarest was in his own vessel and could go where he pleased.
At least so it seemed, but Elge knew better.
Paper moved beneath his hand as he checked certain data. Vire had been thorough in his questioning of Pendance and his men. Facts; details as to supplies carried by the Moira, the temperament of the crew, the state of the vessel itself-all helping to build an overall picture.
The faulty generator would slow the ship and need repairing. Fuel was low. Of the crew Maynard had emotional difficulties which could lead to a confrontation if the woman was careless. The engineer, while skilled, would be of little use outside his field.
To operate the ship Dumarest would need men, money and material.
And those needs could drive him into a trap.
CHAPTER NINE
Ysanne said, "Millett, Earl, or Emney. Either will do but you'll have to decide now so I can set the new course. Even as it is we'll be pushing things to the limit."
She sat in the chart room, almanacs at her side, the chamber filled with the flash and winks from the instruments, the pungent odor of her perfume, which was in keeping with the barbaric dress she wore: leather decorated with painted symbols, the skirt fringed and falling to her knees. The belt hugging her waist was broad, beaded, the buckle massive.
She seemed a savage seated in the middle of modern technology, hair and skin illuminated by the glow of telltales and registers. It was easy to imagine her squatting before an open fire, tearing at half-cooked meat with her strong teeth, face and hands smeared with grease and stained with smoke. A child of nature, now over-tired and short on patience.
"Earl?"
A choice and a decision he had to make but one he didnt like. The choice was too limited, the decision too predictable.
"Millett is favorite by a hair," she said. "Good yards and facilities. We could raise a loan or charter the ship to cover the cost of fees and generator-parts. Emney is more isolated but could do the job and we'd have no trouble eating. The place is lousy with game."
"You know it."
"I've been there." She volunteered no further information. Instead, as if reading his mind, she said, "You aren't happy with either. Why? Afraid of Pendance?"
Pendance was the least of his worries; the man would be dead by now if Volodya had any sense. But she had provided a reason he could use.
"He could have friends who'd recognize the Moira and get curious. They might even decide to take over and we aren't strong enough to safeguard the ship. Are you sure there's no other choice?"
"There's always a choice. We could drift until we're forgotten and thought dead. We could try to reach the Puchon or Venner's Twin-good worlds if you can breathe chlorine. We could even try praying for a miracle-one which will give us fuel and a new generator and supplies."
"I'm serious."
"So am I." Her gesture embraced the instruments, the almanacs and navigational tables, the charts. "Facts, Earl. I have to deal in facts and they are against us. We aren't free agents. That damned generator makes us prisoners of the equations and we can only go so far. So which is it to be? Millett or Emney?"
The decision was reached through fatigue but absolved her of further strain. Now the burden was his and she could rest and close her eyes and remember the touch of cool winds on her face and hair as she ran over rolling plains to where the fires of the evening meeting already shone like ruby stars beneath their thin columns of smoke.
That moment of illusory comfort was lost as he said, harshly, "You're falling down on the job. You boasted you were the best navigator in space but this is a hell of a way to prove it. Maybe I should ask Craig to take over."
Her eyes opened, flaring with the anger he'd
deliberately aroused; rage washed her brain clear of dulling fatigue even as it thinned her lips.
"Earl! You-"
"Think again," he snapped, giving her no time to protest. "And stop trying to play it safe. Drift, you said, well, why not? Maybe we could use a force-current or magnetic flow to help stretch the fuel. Damn it, woman, use your imagination!"
She said tightly, "Pendance was a bastard-don't try to be a bigger one."
"Or?" He saw the movement of her hand and caught her wrist as her fingers touched the bright metal of her buckle. "You'll kill me, is that it?" He gripped the metal and pulled and looked at the blade which shone in his hand. Short, with a double-edge and a wicked point. A stabbing blade with the buckle acting as a grip. "Have you ever used this?"
"You want a demonstration?"
Dumarest shook his head and slid the blade back into the belt. Rising, he stepped back and away from the woman, watchful, ready to act if her rage overpowered her. She sat where he had left her, seething, fighting for control. A wrong word and, like the innate savage she was, she would explode into a mindless, berserker fury.
At the door he said, "Get back to work. Use that skill you boasted of. Forget those worlds you mentioned and find alternatives. And do it soon!"
"Go to hell!"
"Do it!" She recoiled as he stepped toward her, his face a mask of barbaric cruelty as ugly as his voice. "Do it or, by God, you'll learn what a real bastard can be!"
Outside he strode down the corridor, fighting to control the anger which had started as pretense and edged into the real. Too much depended on the woman for him to be gentle. Strong herself she respected only a greater strength; a trait which could have drawn her to Pendance mistaking the slaver's viciousness for the attribute she admired.
Reaching the captain's cabin Dumarest entered and looked around, seeing the whips, the electronic scourges, the mementos of his career. The cabinet held ornate finery and a box of assorted rings and gems of price. Spoils he could use as he could the bottle of rare brandy and the vials of stimulating drugs. Opening the spirit, he added the contents of a vial, shook the mixture and went in search of the engineer.