The Light That Never Was

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  She contented herself with listening to the others, with vicariously enjoying the enormous pleasure Franff was experiencing in this reunion with his friends Harnasharn and Brance, with watching the meszs and admiring the tasteful decor of their community building. The one sobering note was supplied by the six moons that swam the lofty, star-flecked dome—Mestillian moons. The building was a haunting monument to a lost world.

  Suddenly, above the rolling murmur of a vast roomful of quiet conversations, a dull boom sounded. Jorno turned quickly and leaped to his feet. Eritha followed his gaze and saw a man standing in a distant entrance. At that instant he threw something and stepped back, and the massive door rolled shut.

  There was a flash, a boom that rocked the building, a concussion that swept dozens of tureens from tables, a poof of acrid smoke that brought tears to the eyes and left the nostrils stinging. Something slapped against the table, and Eritha looked down upon a cluster of bleeding mesz fingers.

  No one screamed; no one even spoke. The humans leaped to their. feet and then stood in stunned immobility. The meszs acted with calm resignation—except for those who remained to assist the wounded and dying, they were quietly filing toward numerous exits that opened magically beneath their feet as they pushed the tiers aside. A mesz was plucking at Eritha’s sleeve and motioning her to follow him.

  The distant door rolled open again. Arnen Brance saw it first, and he hurled his way up the tiers of tables. As he ran he shouted something, and then, still in full stride, he caught what was thrown and flung himself through the closing door and into the night. Eritha saw the flash but no sign of Brance.

  “This way!” Jorno called.

  A moment later they were moving along a dimly lit tunnel, and the only sound was the click of Franff’s hoofs. The tunnel branched in several directions; Jorno, after calling to them to follow the meszs, turned off and vanished around a corner. He rejoined them almost at once, announcing that he’d sent for help, and took the lead. At intervals they passed heavy metal doors, and they began to hear them being slammed behind them. Finally the tunnel floor pointed upward, and they emerged in the waterside warehouse.

  From the direction of the village came blasts that made the flimsy building shudder. Leaping flames cast remote, flickering shadows. Jorno hurried them the length of the pier to where their boat was tied. Then he halted and swore bitterly.

  “What are we waiting for?” Harnasharn demanded.

  “There was supposed to be someone waiting here to take you back.” Jorno hesitated, looking about him. “I can’t leave the meszs now, I simply can’t, and none of them will want to leave while their brothers are being murdered. I don’t suppose you—no, it would be too risky.”

  The countess and Lilya were looking longingly at the boat, which heaved gently at its mooring. Harnasharn, fretfully peering down at it, muttered that he had never operated a boat.

  “Help is on the way,” Jorno said. “You can wait in the tunnel until it gets here. You’ll be safe there.”

  They turned back.

  From the direction of the village a shout rang out, and footsteps pounded toward them. Franff, standing beside Eritha with drooping head, suddenly tensed as they began to clang on the pier. Eritha heard him hoarsely cough a word, “Brothers,” and he bounded forward.

  But he had no microphone, no amplifier to carry his message, and the first man he met raised a weapon and slugged at him viciously. Franff toppled into the water.

  Anna moaned and hurried to help him, but Jorno was ahead of her. Snarling invectives, he swung a killing blow with his fist, but it never landed. The weapon crashed onto his head, and he crumpled to the pier.

  The man turned toward Anna.

  Eritha leaped between them. In the shallow pier lights she had begun to recognize faces. “What do you think you’re doing, Benj Darwill?” she called. “Striking a poor defenseless beast—bully right to the end, aren’t you?” The weapon raised again. Eritha kicked his shin viciously. “You try that on me,” she snapped, “and I’ll claw your eyes out. You, Cal Rown. I hope you’re proud of yourself, throwing explosives at the meszs. It takes a really brave man to attack something that won’t fight back. Get out of here, all of you.”

  She gave Darwill’s face a resounding slap, and the men turned and fled precipitately. Eritha and Anna leaped from the pier and stood waist-deep in water trying to help Franff, but he was quite dead.

  So was Jaward Jorno.

  The meszs came, then, and helped them to pull Franff’s body onto the pier, and the sobbing Anna flung herself onto him.

  The explosions continued; the fires had spread, and the village became a caldron of swirling, crackling flames. In the melange of terrifying sounds they did not hear the boats approaching until the first swung alongside the pier. A man climbed out and confronted Eritha.

  “Where’s Mr. Jorno?”

  She pointed to his body.

  Confusion surged about them while boats tied up and men clambered out brandishing weapons. Then someone shouted an order, and they moved toward the shore; and each one, as he passed Jorno’s body, faltered momentarily and bowed his head. A moment later they were moving up the slope toward the village.

  One of the pilots called, “I’ll take you people back.” The meszs carried Franff’s body to the boat, and then Jorno’s, and Eritha handed a pale countess over the side and helped her to a seat. They pushed off, leaving behind them a ghoulish pattern of blood-red flames.

  “Who were those men?” Harnasharn asked.

  “Men from Zrilund Town,” Eritha said. She was not frightened—at no time had she been frightened—but she had to struggle to master her overwhelming anger.

  “Artists?” Harnasharn asked.

  “If they’d been artists, I’d have done more than slap a face,” Eritha said grimly.

  “Arnen Brance—do you suppose—”

  “As far as I could see, he had it in his hand when it exploded.”

  More men were waiting at the mainland pier, and they helped them from the boat and carefully laid out Franff’s and Jorno’s bodies before they embarked. A short time later Jorno’s chauffeur arrived. There was no room for Franff’s body in the limousine, and they had to coax the still-sobbing Anna away. The chauffeur promised to bring it to them later.

  At the rotunda the resort’s doctor was waiting for them. He gave sedatives to the countess, Lilya, and Anna, and ordered them to bed. Then he approached Eritha.

  “None for me,” she told him. “I still have things to do.”

  “Are you sure? You look somewhat overwrought.”

  “I’m not overwrought. I’m mad!”

  Harnasharn said, “Where can I place a call to the Metro?”

  “For millionaires, Jorno did things in style,” Eritha told him. “The rotunda has its own communications center, but I’m first.”

  With her grandfather, Neal Wargen, and Superintendent of Police Demron listening, she described the situation tersely.

  “From Zrilund Town?” Wargen asked. “You must be mistaken. They couldn’t have planned such a massive attack without Rearm Hylat finding out about it, and he would have told me.”

  “I recognized at least six, and I know four of them by name.”

  “Casualties?”

  “We didn’t stay to count them. Several meszs were blown up in front of us. Likewise your man Brance. Franff and Jam a died from blows on the head. That was just the beginning. The explosions were continuing when we left, and the fires were tremendous. They must have poured flammables all over the place. The building exteriors are of stone, but obviously the interiors aren’t. Jorno’s men were well armed, and there may be a war going on there right now with the meszs in the middle of it.”

  Wargen said, “Bron?”

  “I’ve already issued orders,” Demron said. “I’ll fly in every available man.”

  “Are you people all right?” Wargen asked.

  “The doctor put the countess and Lilya and Anna to bed. We
’re all right, except that I’m as angry as I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

  Eritha turned the communications center over to Lester Harnasharn. By that time Jorno’s servants had arrived with Franff’s body, and with their help she laid him out in an unused bedroom and smoothed the wonderfully soft, glowing fur.

  Then she dismissed them, and after they left she sat beside Franff’s body and wept.

  Gerald Gwyll, aroused from his bed by an urgent call from Harnasharn, made a frantic dash to Port Metro and at dawn was searching the Nor Harbor quays for his chartered boat. He had an uneventful trip to Zrilund across a smooth sea, and the pilot tied up at the disused ferry pier.

  Gwyll hurried up the steps and set out at a run through the deserted streets. He passed the oval, turned onto the Street of Artisans, and finally reached the court where Arnen Brance’s house stood. There he panted to a halt. The door was unlocked—no one ever locked a door in Zrilund Town—and one glance told him that the house’s interior had not been disturbed.

  He turned aside and followed a path around the house and through a sagging gate. There he halted again, and with a cry of horror.

  The enclosure Brance had built was smashed, the stones tossed about haphazardly. The mud it had contained was scattered and completely dried up. In a momentary frenzy Gwyll pawed and kicked at it, and then he turned slowly and walked back to the ferry pier.

  19

  An appalling reek of devastation hung over the fire-blackened mesz village. The buildings were rubble-choked shells, their stone walls split and crumbled by the heat, and the shrubs and young trees were charred.

  But the most unnerving thing about the village was its silence. There were meszs everywhere, seated motionless amid the ashes or on the seared grass in attitudes of repose and meditation.

  Neal Wargen supposed that they were mourning their dead.

  “No,” Eritha Korak said. “They’re mourning our dead—Brance, and Franff, and especially Jaward Jorno. First Jorno rescued them from Mestil, and now he’s given his life for them.”

  “How many meszs were killed?”

  “Only fourteen. Twenty-one were seriously injured. Minor injuries were too numerous to count. Even so it’s unbelievable, but we have to remember that they’ve been through this before. Just because they won’t fight back doesn’t mean that they’re fools. They built fireproof, explosion-proof shelters under all of the dwellings, and they lived in them. It’s a habit they acquired on Mestil. The village wasn’t a place to live, it was a monument to their past.”

  “How many human casualties?”

  “Jorno and Brance. A few critical injuries among Jorno’s men, one is expected to die. Five known dead Zrilunders, they took their injured and maybe some of their dead with them. The battle didn’t last long after Jorno’s men arrived with weapons. The Zrilunders didn’t have any.”

  “They had plenty of explosives and flammables,” Wargen observed.

  “Demron is trying to find out how many boats were used. The Zrilunders he’s caught won’t talk.”

  “I want to see them,” Wargen said.

  As they walked toward the pier, he stopped once and looked back. “I suppose, being meszs, they have no anger.”

  “Being meszs, they don’t judge us by the humans who attacked them, but by the humans who died in their defense. It’s just as well. They can’t get angry at us and leave, they have no place to go.”

  Three Zrilund fishing boats were tied up at Jorno’s pier. The sullen Zrilunders, those who had not been injured, were under guard in Jorno’s warehouse.

  Wargen spoke to one sitting near the door. “Among your other good works of last night you managed to blow up the engines and the keel of the new underwater ferry the meszs were building for you.”

  “Generous of them,” the Zrilunder drawled, “considering that they blew up the old ones. It costs them nothing to say they were building it for Zrilund—they know Zrilund is ruined and couldn’t pay their price anyway. Actually, they were building it for Jorno’s resort.”

  “It was to be a gift,” Wargen said. “A gift of gratitude for the alleged hospitality of the people of Donov. Now they’ll rebuild the motors and try to finish the thing before you grateful Zrilunders blow it up again.”

  The Zrilunder met his eyes with a mocking grin. Wargen turned away.

  “What was it you wanted to find out?” Eritha asked.

  “Whether the madness of the riot worlds has come to Donov. It has.”

  Bron Demron had set up his headquarters in Jorno’s mansion. He was energetically directing the search for the missing boats and at the same time wondering what he was going to do with them when he’d caught them.

  “Those characters claim they were fishing last night,” he said indignantly. “They haven’t been able to explain what a Zrilund boat is doing fishing off Rinoly with a capacity load of passengers, some of them wounded, but I’d feel better with a few witnesses.”

  “Eritha can identify some of them,” Wargen reminded him.

  Demron smiled at her. “So she can. I’d forgotten about that.”

  “Have you found out where they got the explosives?”

  “No, but I will. Say—would you two like to hear a confession? One of Jorno’s men is dying upstairs, he was caught in an explosion, and he keeps saying he wants to confess. Then he talks gibberish.”

  Wargen nodded agreeably. “Gibberish is just what this situation needs.”

  Eritha suppressed her shattering memory of the mesz fingers and followed the doctor and Wargen into the dying man’s room; but this victim appeared to be untouched.

  “His legs were blown off,” the doctor whispered. “Many fragments of stone penetrated his body.”

  Wargen stepped to the bed. “What is it you have to confess, fellow?”

  “The riots!” the patient gasped.

  “What about them?”

  “The riots!”

  Wargen coaxed patiently, but the man kept repeating the same two words. Finally they withdrew, and the doctor said, “It sounds as though he was on one of the riot worlds, and he thinks the same thing has happened here.”

  “What happened last night must have been a very palpable imitation of the rioting,” Wargen agreed.

  “He hasn’t been rational since he was brought here, and he’s under heavy sedation.”

  “I understand. Just the same, I’d like to have a servant stationed here. If he says anything more, it should be written down.”

  Demron was waiting for them. Two more Zrilund fishing boats had been captured, and he wanted to find out whether Eritha could identify any of the men already in custody. Wargen left her there and went to pay his respects to his mother, the countess.

  She had found herself obliged to assume the role of hostess under circumstances as trying as any that had perplexed a Wargen in all of that family’s illustrious history. In one bedroom lay a dead animaloid. The countess had refrained from pointing out that its fur would make the most magnificent garments she or anyone else had ever seen. She sensed that some would consider the remark in bad taste, and a Wargen did not make remarks in bad taste. In another bedroom reposed an elderly woman of dubious character, worthless ancestry, and precarious health. She seemed likely to expire at any moment and the countess accepted this fact as confirmation of her lack of breeding. The carnage of the previous night had produced casualties much more urgently in need of medical attention than a woman afflicted by old age and the loss of a friend, so the doctor had been forced to leave Anna’s fate in the hands of the countess, who received it unwillingly. In the third bedroom lay her own long-time friend and companion, Lilya Vaan, who had chosen a most inconvenient moment to go completely to pieces. This offended the countess less than the fact that Lilya was so obviously enjoying it.

  As a hostess must, the countess was coping. Relentlessly she made the rounds: Medicine and a surface bath for Anna, fresh sheets wrapped about her pe
rspiring old body, a servant left to keep watch over her. A quick look at Lilya Vaan, an exchange of insults, Lilya accusing the countess of being a parasite that fattened itself upon the misery of its friends, and the countess answering that she was running the flesh from her bones looking after a lazy hypochondriac. She darkened the room, told Lilya to rest if her conscience would permit it, and left her. Next she glanced at Franff’s body, wondering what sort of death rites such creatures observed. Perhaps none. She could think of nothing to do with him or for him, death was such a risky thing to tamper with, so many silly prejudices existed. For herself, all she wanted was flowers, music, and a whiff or two of incense, something to please the sight, hearing, and scent of the mourners if there were any; but there were humans to whom all three would seem offensive. With another covetous glance at Franff’s fur, she left him.

  Then her son arrived.

  “I don’t suppose,” she told him bitterly, “that you came down here to succor your poor old mother in her time of trial. You merely came on some silly government business.”

  “Very serious government business,” Wargen said soberly, “and you’re a part of it. You had a narrow escape last night. Eritha says you were heroic.”

  “Does she, indeed!” The countess sniffed haughtily. Then she said, a touch of awe in her voice, “Eritha—did you hear what Eritha did?”

  “No. Obviously it’s something I’m not likely to hear from her, or she would have told me. Did she disgrace herself?”

  “Disgrace herself? Eritha?” The countess eyed him indignantly. “She’s a remarkable young woman. All she did was save our lives. Sit down, please.”

  Wargen did so, wonderingly.

  “Neal, I’ve been thinking for some time that you should be getting married. And I think the little Korak girl would make an excellent wife for you. She has neither wealth nor lineage, but surely we Wargens already have ample of either. There was something quite—quite regal about her, the way she faced danger. I don’t know how she comes by it, but she certainly has it. Those men had just murdered Franff and Mr. Jorno, and I knew we would be next, and she just stepped forward and ruled them. She told them to go away, and she slapped their faces, and they went! No queen could have done it better. Would you like me to speak to her grandfather, Pet?”