Day by Night

by Tanith Lee

  “The council is human, and passed the judgment.”

  Ceedres smiled. Until that moment his face had mimicked the dark melancholy of Velday’s own. Motivated by the psychological cue, absurdly, Velday found he too was smiling.

  “You’re too good to me, Vay,” Ceedres said. “You won’t rest till you take the burden from my shoulders.”

  Velday’s head went up. A whisper of his own virtue had reached him. He was refreshed, as if by strong drink.

  “I won’t rest till you assume your residence at Hirz.”

  Ceedres rose. He glanced into the smoky aqua of the basin. Only the liquid saw his eyes, black as danger, fixed as the Zenith.

  “Very well,” Ceedres stretched. The knife wound was long-healed by an advanced science. The athlete’s body, male token of the princely line, moved fluidly, raced with golden lights on muscle, armlets, draped tunic. The sun combed over his hair. Aureoled, godlike, he turned to Velday, dazzling, but gentle: “In any event, we could work together more successfully, to gain her pardon. To undo this inappropriate sentence.”

  Velday’s heart broke.

  He felt himself borne up into new spheres of radiance and optimism. Ceedres lent him bright wings, showed him a glittering mountain where only a pit had yawned before.

  Ceedres plunged his arm into the minerally chilled basin, drew up a watertight flagon, cracked the lid.

  He walked to a table where cups were stacked under their protective plastum, the old graying glass of Thar.

  “Let’s drink then, Vay,” he said, “to a fair solution of our troubles.”

  The sun had seemed to follow him, to worship him. It sparkled on the long-stemmed glasses, and through the thin colorless fermentation that trickled into their bowls.

  “Violent liquor,” Velday commented. “If it’s the draught I take it for.”

  “It will do us good. I meant to sample it alone and put the sun out with it. But this is better. You’ve given me back hope, Velday, and my self-esteem. Thanks. My brother.”

  They drank.

  It was the white-berry caffea Velday had suspected, a whirlpool brew of the Slumopolis. This disturbed him briefly. But at the second glass, no more.

  Presently they went out, and strolled the edge of the marsh where the indigo shade-reeds rattled and the blood pools rippled to some subplanetary rhythm of their own.

  They were keeping J’ara, as often before. As often before, Velday, drinking deeply and assured of friendship, gave himself over to an innocent delight in all things, and a belief in all miracles. This Maram, Vel Thaidis was an outcast. But next Jate, might she not be freed?

  He thought of all their parents in their death urns, ash forever, while he and Ceedres lived and the sun burned with their youth.

  He did not see that Ceedres’ first glass was never emptied. He had never seen this. There was much he did not see.

  When at last, in the twentieth hour, Maram, the fourth of J’ara, they mounted the lion-dog Hirz chariot to ride across the hills, Velday saw instead white-berry phantoms crowding the landscape, air-flowers, rogue fires, the psychic arteries that ran along the earth, and a hundred rivers pouring up into the green sky.

  Ceedres set the chariot leaping. He threw his arcane crystal cup away, and did not watch it bounce from sight, unbreakable glass, among the rocks and rusty drifts of Thar that need no longer bother him.

  Part Two

  The process of the Law. . . .

  The room was spacious, pleasing, lit with a soft and pearly light by the frosted intensifiers in the ceiling. No machinery was visible, beyond the silken ovoid of highly glossed platinum which rested motionless in the air about two yards from a couch of pale cushions. Beside the couch, on a small table, a blue glass thimble ready to be filled from either or both of the two flasks of incised silver, and a tray of inhalants and alcohol sticks. Here in the computer complex of Uta, everything had been thought of to provide comfort and equanimity. Those giving evidence, accusers and accused, were all treated identically. When the voice came from the metal ovoid it was courteous and mild, encouraging even.

  Vitra sat on the pale couch, much paler, and twitched a jade fiddle-toy. Nonsensically, as she waited for the voice to begin, she found herself thinking of the dry rain which had fallen on the neck of Vel Thaidis as she was carried from Hirz. The rain, of course, was a waste product of the converted atmosphere of the solar side, a flaking off of gaseous scales smelted to a sort of consistency by their fall from the ether. She had been incredibly intelligent to devise such a detail. Incredibly.

  If only she could maintain that intelligence now.

  The silvery ovoid spoke in its silkiest tones.

  “This machine is prepared to receive your statement, Vitra Klovez. Please speak in your own time, withholding nothing.”

  “Will you—” Vitra hesitated, “will you record what I say?”

  “Naturally, but the statement is for the computer’s assessment alone. No other human will hear it.”

  The computer complex lay even farther below ground than the Residencia, and was reached by a series of moving stairways. Quite suddenly, and with no warning, Vitra experienced a sense of smotheration. She mastered it hastily and plunged into the tale she and Vyen had so meticulously rehearsed. Vyen had already spoken here. Also the princes of Klur and Klastu. Casrus’ statement would most probably be called for last.

  Vitra tried not to gabble. Luckily, if she appeared distraught and anxious, these emotions were readily accounted for by her supposed ordeal. For the lie, no machine could delve in her mind, and she was word perfect as any reasonable actress had to be. She had called for the help of Klarn, as she and her brother had called for the help of all the neighboring princely families. Finding her alone, unprotected and despairing, Klarn had sought to violate her.

  The machine spoke to her.

  “And you had no feelings of liking for this prince?”

  The question had been anticipated, Vyen had predicted it. Cannily, he advised her to offer, where possible, the truth, even in the midst of the deception.

  “Yes. Since childhood, I—had admired him.”

  “Would you, if circumstances had been other than they are, have consented to become the wife of Casrus Klarn?”

  “I am ashamed to say I should have consented. I didn’t know then that, rather than remain an ideal, he could become—”

  “Pardon my interruption,” said the machine blandly, “but did you, during your interview with this prince, act within the bounds of Klave propriety?”

  Vitra flung up her head.

  “Yes,” she flared. “How dare you ask me such a thing!”

  The machine did not reply to her virtuous outburst, and Vitra suffered an apprehension that she should not rail against it as she had against her house robots.

  Presently, the machine prompted her to continue with her statement, and Vitra told of Casrus’ threats with the knife, and displayed the thin lilac seam along her arm, which deliberately she had left unrepaired. Then came Vyen’s return, Casrus’ blow that felled Vyen, and last of all Casrus’ departure from the house in stony rancor, only to be detained by the Klurs and the Klastus and the Klinns, at Vyen’s cry, a few paces from the house.

  The machine remained silent awhile, assimilating her sentences. At length, it said, “This incident was brought about by the failure of the lamps and other gadgets of the palace of Klovez. If Klarn had not attempted assault, what were to have been your plans?”

  Again, well-rehearsed.

  “We were unsure what to do, which is why we appealed to our friends, and to Casrus—no friend of ours, but reckoned to be grave and trustworthy. Ultimately, I believe we must have come to this complex, or to another computer elsewhere in the Residencia.”

  “Did you tell Klarn of this plan?”

  “I did. He responded that the compute
rs would refuse us aid. I declared he was mad, that the computers would restore Klovez’ technology in full, and that therefore I had no need to sully my honor, with him or with anyone.”

  “In part, you are correct. But I regret that Klovez would not, nor will, be completely restored. The collapse of the life-system of an entire house is so rare as to be virtually unprecedented, which is fortunate. The Klave is perpetuated on a most finely balanced scale. To draw off sufficient power to replace the whole support pattern of a palace would tilt that scale precariously. Certainly, Klovez can be made livable again, but no more than that. For your luxuries and aesthetics, you would need to depend on the generosity of your peers.”

  Vitra looked startled. It had been essential to appear to think Klovez could be restored, hence removing from herself and Vyen all whisper of an ulterior motive for the charge against Casrus. Now, within herself, Vitra sizzled in anger, at the patronage of the computer, the dismal half-existence it offered. Through no fault of their own, she and Vyen had lost everything, and were to be awarded the life of Subterines and beggars in exchange. That portional help was forthcoming seemed insult rather than alleviation.

  “I’m sorry to distress you, Vitra Klovez,” said the machine. “But your friends, surely, will be thoughtful.”

  “Oh, I suppose they will. Only Casrus has shown himself a monster—the one allegedly most upright and conscientious among us. What a parade he’s made of his sobriety and charity! What a mask it has turned out to be. I can only assume,” she added bitterly, “that spending his hours in obscure connivance with the Subterines, he’s learned their manners.”

  “Vitra Klovez, I thank you for your statement. You may now leave the complex. You are a guest in the house of Klur, but this Jate, Klovez has been made livable, should you wish to return there. Should your charge against Klarn be found proven, you and your brother will be entitled to recompense. At this stage, its substance has not been decided. You will be informed of the computerized verdict in four Jates, when all evidence has been collated and perused.”

  Shedri Klur waited for her at the arched portico of the complex, and behind him his coal-blue chariot car. Strung taut as a wire, Vitra took in the earnest bejeweled young man, the gleaming functional vehicle, and burst into tears.

  Shedri comforted her with a tender, almost a smug enjoyment. For a long while she had fenced with him, flirted, and turned him coldly aside when she grew bored. Now, in her reduced circumstances, afraid to lose his good will (in case the plot foundered), Vitra was very gracious, and her vulnerability soothed him, toned up his self-esteem, making him irresistibly a little cruel. When he said, “I hear Klovez is restored. Would you like to see?” he was paying her out for six years of indifference. He understood, as well as she, having himself made inquiries of the computer during his statement of evidence, what Klovez had been restored to.

  “Very well,” said Vitra bravely. And so they rode there.

  The first sight that greeted her was that of all the fungyra trees dejectedly dying on the rock around the house. Naturally, no sustenance of the impoverished palace could be spared to nurture flora.

  They left the vehicle and went into the foyer—the door having been opened, not by Vitra’s command, but by the wrenching of a handle. There were no lights. Then two of three insipid globes came on, giving an unattractive pallor to a scene already redolent of neglect. The lift worked, but grudgingly, slowly. The upper rooms, the lower, the salon, the bedchambers, each was the same. Vaguely lit and barely warm, augmented with an array of dreadful functional heaters, like squat stones, that gave off a raw sear when activated, drying the air, which itself smelled overused. Three robots were in evidence. They did not speak to anyone and, horror upon horror, their wheels creaked and squealed, as if on purpose to fray the nerves. Dust was gathering on the furnishings. At the corner of a court where a fountain had played, but played no longer, white mold had begun to colonize. Tepid water came from gold and silver faucets. Books in a cabinet showed already signs of mildew, a steel fire-sword, an edge of rust. No alcohol of any variety could be obtained. The rare rich dishes that had been brought to the breakfast and supper tables would be brought no more. Viands were basic now, uncolored, unspiced and undecorative. Washing of utensils and garments must be performed by hand. (Obscene things, these, events never before contemplated.) One robot in particular had developed a distinct list to its right-hand side. When Vitra, clenching her fists in abject fury, shouted at it to stop, it paid no heed.

  “Are we to endure this!” she screamed, and the house echoed, as now it consistently did.

  Alarmed, out of control of her once more, Shedri blustered that his home was hers, she need fear no loss of dignity or opulence.

  But Vitra, scarcely hearing him, struck her fists upon a table of fine mosaic.

  “It must,” she hissed, “It must. I will not suffer this. It must.”

  Shedri could not know to what she nounlessly referred, or that, extraordinarily, it abruptly seemed to her that Casrus had been the cause of all her trouble, even of the fall of Klovez. That she had shaped the villainous Ceedres from him was no more than just. Indeed, in that moment, she believed the lie she had spoken in the computer complex. For in a way, Casrus had attempted a rape—the rape of her personal world—when he recommended that she live like this.

  * * *

  • • •

  Vyen sat in Olvia Klastu’s heated chariot, upon a bridge if silvered rock, in a grotto of green and blue ice pillars.

  Moodily, he stared across the ice and drank wine clear as water from Olvia’s flask. Olvia, in a robe of synthetic gray fur, chattered archly, unaware she was no more than a background to his thoughts. Not that his thoughts were in any way meaningful or progressive. Like Vitra’s they went in an endless circle of uneasiness, anger and biting concern for self. The ovoid machine had made no unpredictable comment when he rendered his statement. His bruised lip and jaw would have been noted. And Vitra would have been as faultless as he in performance. On the whole, he might congratulate himself on both the scheme and its perpetration. Nevertheless, sudden horrors assailed him, at the knowledge of the vast sequence he had set in motion. The abhorred Casrus was yet a fixture. To topple him was, all at once, a strangely disconcerting achievement. Added to that were the bad dreams of discovery of the truth, plus great rollers of appalled realization that everything had been drunkenly based on Vitra’s ridiculous Fabulism.

  Olvia was stroking his hair. If he wed her, or one of the several girls of Klur, there was a way out of technological deprivation. Probably he would have to take it. A dismal cogitation. Of course, Vitra might enchant Shedri or another into a union. That, Vyen supposed, would do. But with fraternal possessiveness, even that did not satisfy him, any more than had her pursuit of Casrus.

  “And I trust Casrus will be packed off to live with the nauseating Subterines he’s so fond of,” said Olvia, coming near enough Vyen’s thoughts to interrupt them.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” said Vyen, and, before he could resist it: “It wasn’t, after all, an attempted murder.”

  “To threaten with a dagger; it might have come to a beating and a near murder if you, you handsome, courageous boy, hadn’t burst in on them.”

  “He loves the Subterines,” said Vyen gloomily. “He should be happy to dwell with them. I don’t know why he stayed in the Residencia when their company was preferable.”

  “So everyone says,” said Olvia.

  Of course, however, everyone knew why Casrus had remained a prince. While he was Klarn, he kept hold of the Klarn technology, whose machines and robots he constantly set to work in the Subterior.

  “But in any case,” said Vyen, “the computers are just.”

  He could have wished them less so.

  “Ensid remarked the other Jate on how great a voice our machines have in the Klave. Unavoidable, but absurd, he said. We’re fashioned from our pa
rental genes in the computers’ genetic matrixes. Our names are chosen by the computers when we’re delivered to our parents at birth. We’re raised and nursed and tutored by robots. Thereafter our security rests on mechanical diligence.”

  “The machines obey us, not we them.”

  “Will you say that, if the punishment given to Casrus is a light one? Ensid says,” irritatingly droned Olvia, “that the computers may call for a council of Klovez’ neighboring houses to decide the punishment. The records of Klave Law refer to such an event.” Vyen’s heart had jumped. The similarity to Vitra’s story shocked him at last. He said nothing, and Olvia finished, “If the punishment were to be selected by Casrus’ peers, he wouldn’t escape. It’s become quite fashionable to detest him. He could expect small leniency.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Casrus, Prince of Klarn, delivered the only real truth to the ovoid machine in the computer complex. The single flaw in this truth was that, robbed of the motive of villainy, his deeds at Klovez seemed inconsequential. And though, undoubtedly, he had reasoned Vyen and Vitra’s perfidy by now, and the aim of their accusation against him, he said nothing of it, nor did the computer ask him for any conclusions on the matter. He assumed it could divine their impulse for itself; if he failed to add a pointing finger they might receive less censure.

  It was not necessarily only the innocent and the naïve who looked for justice from an ostensibly perfect Law. The just might also rely on it. In fact, Casrus had observed the ruthless efficiency of the Law, following countless tumultuous crimes of the Subterior. But in the instance of Temal, never had the Law been executed so fairly.

  Serene and unemphatic, therefore, Casrus gave his statement, and went home to await the verdict. (He even had some notion of attempting to mitigate whatever sentence should be passed on the two liars. He viewed them with sympathy and some tedium. As with the Subterines, loss had incited transgression.) He was therefore surprised to come on Temal weeping in the falsely sunlit salon of Klarn.