by Tanith Lee
Alone and desperate, Hejerdi contemplated a crazy whim. Vitra and her brother were dangerous, but she had impressed him mostly as a silly hysterical hussy. And there was a limit to the crimes they could essay without detection. They had everything to clutch onto, and he nothing. Walking out from the Fabulism that was her art form, Casrus had said to Hejerdi, I recall sufficient to damn my enemies. A few Jates after Casrus’ disappearance, Hejerdi had visited the recreation area at Kaa Center and looked for himself. The hypnotism had made a haze of much of it, but having determined to, he salvaged enough to recognize a plot built on falsehood, culminating in a fall to a Slum. There was, too, something uncanny about this hot-side Fabulism. The Subterior, never quite recollecting it succinctly, yet seemed to throb and hum with unconsciously retained images and concepts. There were drawn suns on several walls, weird beasts and vehicles; some of the women had taken to dyeing their hair yellow and brass, there was a coarse tavern rhyme that mentioned a bright green sky. There was, too, an undercurrent of newborn antipathy for the aristocrats. This very Jate, someone had been vividly describing how an aristo had died, torn to shreds. Fantasy, Fabulism, whatever it was, the mood in hell was not quite as it had been. Like a turgid brew with a chemical agent in it, remodeling everything. Hejerdi had analyzed what the remodeling entailed. Before, they had foregone hope, lain down in brutalized quiescence. Now, they cursed fate and themselves. Now they kicked against the load, the whip, the very cold foul air. Now they were waking up from the frozen centuries.
Perhaps the presence of one aristo, reduced to their depth and cast among them—Casrus—had also helped to activate the key.
Where the program ended, Hejerdi had no proper concern. He must, as must they all, look out for himself. And it seemed to him, as he sat over the shallow basin of coals, that Vitra, the Fabulast aristo, might be the answer to his personal dilemma.
Presently Zuse rolled over on the ground and snored. Sometime in the last phase of Maram, the alchafax would disturb his glorious drunkenness, causing him to vomit, to groan, to pray to nonexistent, no-longer-titled gods. This alchafax, if absorbed in quantity, generally did, but men went on drinking it, nevertheless. A couple of hours of warmth and undespair seemed worth the price of an eighth of a Jate of misery. If the guts were rotted, no matter. Death was everywhere here. Why not anticipate?
Hejerdi, though, a mere quarter cup inside him, had only its sour taste to contend with. Leaving Zuse with a grunt of off-hand pity, Hejerdi adjusted his facial shields and went out of the tavern, along three or four alleys, across two or three spaces, under and through the barren forests of icicles and stalactites, stepping over the islands of sleepers, and by the chill-stinking holes of Subterine mansions.
He reached the center at Kaa and went in. A ramp lifted him. He was shown in passing places of expensive joy, of food and soft slumber, the area of the Fabulism, the medical section, cold as ice, cruelly able to make men well that they might go out and grow sick once more, and sicker; that they could die. Finally, a cubicle, a voice which asked Hejerdi’s name and quest.
“It’s this way,” said Hejerdi sulkily, staring at the plastomil flooring. “An aristo visited me in aita Slink. Her name was Vitra, a princess who was a Fabulast. . . . She took a liking to me. She wanted to make me an Upperling, have me with her in her palace in the Residencia City, the way they sometimes do with us, the aristos. But I was an idiot. I got angry. I said she might go—I said she might go away. She said if I thought better of it, come to a center and ask for her to be told. I had to give my message a certain way so she’d know it was me. You see? I’ve changed my mind.”
“You wish a message to be relayed to vitra Klovez?”
“Klovez . . . Yes, Vitra Klovez.”
“She may decline to receive you now.”
“Not if you give the message as I was to phrase it.”
“You are sure you are unmistaken.”
“No mistake. Contact her. You’ll see.”
Hejerdi did not like conferring with a machine. As with most Subterines, robots and mechanisms were to him alien, untrusted things. But useful, no doubt, most useful. Now, at least.
“What is the message you require given to Vitra Klovez?”
“Oh,” said Hejerdi. He had planned out the words so carefully that in this vital instant they almost failed him. Then he visualized Casrus Klarn, incinerated in a burst of sub-planetary volcanic radiation, erupting as Vitra Klovez must have known it would. Jealous, greedy little cat. Spoiled, vicious, meddling little cat. Well, others could meddle. “The message was,” said Hejerdi. He felt an upsurge of courage and determination. “Princess, I heard and remember everything you said when you came to the Subterior, to the hovel in Aita Slink. I remember, too, your clever Fabulism. I remember the wisdom of its plot. Let me come into the Residencia to you, and prove my admiration and loyalty.”
The machine merged its panels in colored lights.
“Your message to Vitra Klovez has been recorded and will be delivered. It is doubtful you will be called to the Residencia. Leave the center now.”
Hejerdi slunk from the chamber, and the ramp sung him back into the dreary cold of Maram. Best run to cover, now, in some chink he had grown fit enough to fight for. The Klovez might send Dorte or another after him, though he doubted it. Too many inexplicable corpses, however tenuously linked, would besmirch their reputation.
And Vitra was not very intelligent.
Her response to his message would be swift panic, and the effeminate brother’s the same. They would send for Hejerdi. He would be carried into the princes’ city, and then—his brain suddenly balked, unable to proceed. Tripped up by his own deeds, the circumstances he had set in motion, Hejerdi lunged off into the warren of the Subterior.
Shedri Klur had completed his chariot exhibition. He had engaged the course with a rigid nervous gusto. There had been no accident or dislodgment of vehicle or driver, and now and then he had demonstrated tricks, such as shifting the right foot over onto the back of the nearer right-hand dogga, or, enwrapped with reins, presenting his back a moment to the team. But these fireworks of skill were performed with an asymmetrical adherence to detail, for Shedri was afraid to move intuitively. All had been conned, as it were, by rote. A single departure from the lesson would have inaugurated disaster.
But he was proud of himself. He came to Vitra with a swagger, offering her the magnificence which was himself. She reacted with the proper display, but her eyes were dull, vacant. He tried not to register her eyes. Then, when he could no longer overlook them, across the glasses of thin turquoise wine, he said to her: “You seem oppressed by something.”
“No. Not at all,” said Vitra quickly. The dull eyes screened themselves behind black lashes and silver paint.
“Yes. Come, Vitra, confide in me. Is it Casrus’ reputed death which troubles you?”
“Oh,” said Vitra. Now she lowered her head and hid her whole face in a brief, forward-falling wing of black hair.
“He was your enemy, but his death is a profound shock to each of his peers. My sisters talk of nothing else.”
“Don’t speak of him,” said Vitra.
Surprised, embarrassed, Shedri stared. He had thought himself gaining on her, as had happened once or twice before, always, admittedly, with the same result, that he was shown he had not gained. Not quite aware of what he did, he cast a sideways frown at Vyen. Shedri had come to see that Vyen was his rival, Vyen, whom he usually liked and was happy enough to be in company with, Vyen’s razor edges deflected by Shedri’s easy-going nature, or admired by Shedri’s princely arrogance—or else merely missed by Shedri’s slowness. But Vyen, as Vitra’s possessive brother, was another being, and Shedri had come to censor him for Vitra’s indifference. Though during this J’ara, Vyen appeared to have left Vitra wholly alone. The thought inspired Shedri. Unkindly, lovingly, he said to her: “You’ve quarreled with your brother,
and it’s upset you.” She said nothing, still hiding in her hair. Confident of having pierced the target at last, Shedri went on: “Dear Vyen has too much mastery of you just lately. He’s a year your junior, and should be more respectful. I’ll be your brother instead, your elder brother. How would that be?” He waited tensely, playfully, for her answer.
He never got it.
A platinum sphere, which, unseen during their interchange, had been wafting gently through the stadium, now settled in the air before Vitra.
“Vitra Klovez,” said the sphere, “I have a message for you.”
The novelty stirred the nearer groups on the tiers of Nle. Most of the Klovez’ acquaintances were there; thus who should send messages? Olvia laughed, and made some facetious remark about an unknown worshipper. Vyen, his plastivory face abruptly taut as the carving it resembled, turned to his sister for the first time that J’ara. He seemed to sense, as the others did not, the terrible crystallization of foreboding which Vitra was experiencing.
Vitra said nothing. The sphere rested before her, featureless and perfect in the blue gleams of the pylon.
“Vitra, do ask for the message,” said Olvia. “We’re in such suspense.”
“The message isn’t for you, but for my sister,” Vyen said harshly.
“Oh, very well, let’s go up to the next tier,” Olvia snapped.
“You go,” said Vyen.
“And I?” said Shedri.
Vitra said nothing.
Vyen stalked along the tier, and the others swaved aside, drew back, began to move away to a discreet distance. murmuring, gesticulating damningly at his uncharacteristic uncouthness.
“Vitra,” Shedri said.
“Please—” said Vitra—he hung from the pause, waiting—“please go.”
Scowling, pushed away into the crowd, Shedri went.
“What is it?” Vyen said to his sister, gripping her arm.
“I don’t know, how can I know—”
“Ask it then.”
Both trembled, both were white. Both felt. it seemed. the cloud of imminence, in a world without clouds, which had gathered above their delicate skulls.
“Give me the message,” Vitra said to the sphere.
An aperture unsealed, a bead dripped out. Vitra automatically extended her hand and the bead settled in her palm. The sphere drifted away across Nle stadium. She stood there, and she recalled the bead of message she had sent to Casrus, the invitation into the snare, his initial step toward the door of death.
“Activate it.”
“Vyen—”
“Activate it.”
He had been so blithe before, cuttingly, jeeringly blithe. He had reckoned on safety. Now his eyes swam in his white face as if he might faint.
Vitra’s thumb activated the bead.
“This message is relayed from the Subterior, from one, a man. Name: Hejerdi. As follows.”
Vitra and Vyen froze, holding their breath, or breathless.
“Princess,” said the bead, with a new male voice. “I heard and remember everything you said when you came to the Subterior to the hovel in Aita Slink. I remember, too, your clever Fabulism. I remember the wisdom of its plot. Let me come into the Residencia with you, and prove my admiration and loyalty.”
Vyen and Vitra watched the bead as if it might spring at them. But it was motionless, and said no more. It had said indeed everything that was necessary.
“Hejerdi,” she faltered eventually. “He was with—he was with Casrus. I don’t recollect him, he was like the rest of the worms, ugly, in rags, obnoxious—but I recollect the name. He listened.” Her face lightened momentarily with an unsuitable righteous indignation. “And now plainly he threatens me—he’s guessed—Vyen, what shall I do?”
“Do?” A livid color rushed through the pallor into Vyen’s cheeks, mostly into his eyes, inflaming them. “You should have done it long ago.” She stared, her lips parted. “You would not stop it, would you? Your Fabulism.”
“I tried to,” she croaked, no moisture in her mouth.
“No. On and on. You would not.”
“I would have—couldn’t—”
“No. Would not. And now, as they had to, one of the rabble has sussed you out. You’ve ruined us.” He raised, not his voice, but his hands into the air, flagrantly gorgeous with their rings. “Ruin. . . . Go and slice your wrists, you worthless, witless bitch!” The hands flashed. The two blows caught her across the face, one after the other, and she dropped on the floor of the tier.
She was inert, had entered a state where everything was of horror, flowing to all horizons, and beyond.
As she lay there in the gray nightmare, a paroxysm of movement and noise broke out before her and above. Then she heard Shedri Klur shouting.
“Whatever your disagreement, you don’t strike an aristocratic woman when I am by.”
Vyen sounded obscurely, terrifyingly nonchalant.
“Oh, but she’s my kin, Shedri. That gives me the privilege of being able to strike her, don’t you understand?”
“Vitra is under my protection now.”
She raised her lids, and saw Shedri slash Vyen, in peculiar imitation of what had gone before, full across the mouth with his open hand. The blow was reasonably powerful, even Shedri was more of an athlete than Vyen. Vyen staggered, caught one of the arches, and saved himself. He bled, neatly, from both corners of his lips. His eyes gradually filmed over.
“What’s this,” he said, speaking awkwardly through the blood. “A challenge to a duel?”
There was a huge silence. Not only on the tier, but throughout the Nle stadium. On the track the teams had been reined in, the chariots were static, their drivers gazing up. From the chambers of swords and guns, princes and princesses had emerged. Always alert for theater, the Residencia had faultlessly relayed, in a few minutes, the impact of the scene which had built between Vitra, the message sphere and Vitra’s brother. Somewhere, maybe an eighth of a staed away inside Nle, a gun sounded, some practicing marksman that the alerting current had not yet reached.
Shedri felt the moment fly to his shoulder like an arcane bird.
“Yes, I’ll challenge you. For the sake of Vitra Klovez, her honor and her welfare. You accept?”
“Why not?” said Vyen. “I suppose you intend to the death.”
Shedri rocked a little.
“The death?”
“Oh yes. That’s legend, Klur. A means to legal murder.” One of the Klinns started to call from the upper tier. Vyen cut him short. “I’m willing.” He began to walk toward Vitra, Shedri hurrying after him, grabbing at him, Vyen thrusting him off. Vyen kneeled by Vitra. “I’ve bruised your face. It serves you right. If we fight with fire-swords, Shedri can kill me, and that will serve you right, too.”
“Don’t,” she said. She sat up and flung her arms around him. “Don’t fight him.”
He held her tightly.
“We’ve lost everything,” he said. “The idea of the Subterior frightens me. The cold and the vileness. I’d rather die here. And you’ll watch me die. I’ll do it prettily, Vitra. And wittily. I’m scared, but never mind that, I’ll give you a last picture of me that you’ll be proud to remember.” He twisted her hair cruelly. “And you can say, ‘I brought my brother to that.’ ”
They began to cry into each other’s necks, while Shedri, feeling and appearing stupid, loomed in the background.
Soon, unable to bear his redundant position any longer, Shedri snarled the traditional question.
“Weapons!”
Vitra clawed at Vyen’s sleeves, but he rose, pulling free. He wiped his eyes and the blood from his mouth with elegant studied gestures.
“Fire-swords, Shedri Klur.”
“Very well.”
Shedri was also becoming afraid, and he stammered slightly as he gave orde
rs to the Klur robots. The duel would be legal, certainly, but the stigma might not. Though the Residencia loved drama, it did not love those who provided it. But, of course, despite the heated dialogue, they would not battle to the death.
One of Shedri’s sisters and a woman of Klef were supporting Vitra. Klef and Klarn robots glided behind. The tier was emptying of aristocrats, as the concourse swarmed through into the lower rooms of Nle, toward the arenas of combat. Far off, the practice gun had ceased firing.
Vitra took each step very properly. She looked straight ahead but saw nothing, not even Vyen now. Vyen was chattering to Ensid, to Olvia who was entreating him, to the Klinns. Feverish, nonsensical chatter. She could hear him, not the words.
Now they went under an arch, idled on an escalator. On the walls glassy draperies sewn with drops of gold sheered up in the breeze of their passage. Vistas of ice caverns behind translucent plastic—more beautiful than the Subterior, but as cold.
Death was so close. The prolonged death of exile. The man called Hejerdi had sentenced the brother and sister. Or was it Casrus, reaching out to them from the black geography of space in which his soul had been netted? Or was it Temal, the omen of Temal, clawing a way back from her ashes?
How lovely the ornamental balustrade, its flutings and curlicues of polished copper.
Perhaps it would be simple to die.
Perhaps it would not be necessary.
Perhaps she had imagined everything. Shedri and Vyen about to exercise together, an athletes’ bout with fire-swords. And shortly they would drink wine and sample alcohol sticks, and dine in someone’s palace. And Casrus would meet Vitra on a thoroughfare, handing her a jade rose copied by machines from the memory bank of a computer. Casrus would love her. She would not be guilty or liable to retribution.
A weapon of vengeance. . . .
The arena was one of the smaller chambers of its kind. A red light pervaded it, conducive to affray. Aristocrats congealed at the low marble rail. Without prologue, she found she would see everything.
Where had Vyen gone to, and Shedri? To be dressed, to select swords—