by Tubb, E. C.
“Give me a moment.” Chagal probed at Dumarest’s temples, touched the softness beneath the ears, the column of his throat. “He seems to be normal but has displayed all the symptoms of someone who has experienced a severe trauma. He was in shock as we saw but what caused it remains unknown. Fear? Fright? A near escape from death?” The doctor shook his head. “We may never know. He may never know. But this could help. Here, Earl, drink it.”
“What is it?”
“Something to relax you, I guess. Shandaha gave it to Nada to bring to me.”
“Why couldn’t he bring it himself?”
“Maybe he thinks he’s too big a man. Does it matter?” Chagal held out the phial. “Just take it.”
“And be grateful for small mercies?” Dumarest shook his head. “How did he know I was in shock or whatever it was?”
“I don’t know. Nada?”
“He sent for me, Earl. He told me to join the doctor here and give him the phial.”
“And how did you know?” Dumarest looked at Chagal, frowning at the reply. “You were coming to visit me when you heard me call out and you came in to see if anything was wrong. Then Nada joined you. Is that what happened?”
“Yes. It was just like that.” The doctor added, “It would have been a coincidence but it could have saved your life. In the state you were in you could have swallowed your tongue. I’d say you were lucky.”
Lucky!
Dumarest remembered the early part of his dream and what Sardia had said to him on the importance of being lucky. Had it been that or was someone taking care he should not come to serious harm? If so who and why?
Chagal said, “Do you want this?”
“No.” Dumarest waved aside the proffered phial. To Nadia he said, “Is Shandaha asleep now?”
“He could be. He wasn’t when I saw him.”
“Does he ever sleep? Lock himself away and is never to be disturbed?” He read the inability to answer mirrored on her face. “Can you tell me? Can anyone?”
“She doesn’t know, Earl.” The doctor hurried to her defence. “Any more than we know. Our host keeps things to himself.”
Too many things but not quite all. Dumarest stared at the woman’s face, examining it, noting small signs he had been too preoccupied to have noticed before. Subtly she had changed. Only in small details but, to him, they were clear. The eyes, the hair, the stance of her body, the curve of her lips, her height, her age.
Sardia, a little younger but just as lovely as he remembered.
To Chagal he said, “Was Delise with you?”
“No. Do you want me to find her?”
“It doesn’t matter. We can do without her help. What I want is for you to guide me back to the chamber where we were last together. Can you do that?”
The doctor frowned, “I’ll try. If you will give me a hand, Nada? You know these parts better than I do. It would help if you led the way?”
Through a series of chambers of various shapes and sizes, in a winding path which must have doubled back on itself or swirled at apparent random. Then, finally, the passage opened on a familiar chamber set with remembered furniture, ringed by translucent walls.
Dumarest halted at the low table set as before with flagons of wine and platters of succulent fragments. The food was fresh as if recently placed. The chessboard and scattered men were as he recalled. Either someone had replenished the viands and adjusted the pieces or only a short while had passed since he had been here last.
An effect similar to that which could be obtained by taking appropriate medication. Slow time which speeded the metabolism so that normal time seemed to crawl and much could be done in minutes which would have taken hours.
Drifting, suffering, healing, travelling back into the past, sleeping, dreaming, waking from nightmare, recovering and all, from the doctor’s viewpoint in a fraction of normal time.
Dumarest said, “I want you both to leave. Please go now. I need to have some time alone.”
To think, to assess the situation. To be free of delusions and distractions. To plot a path through the maze surrounding him in order to save his sanity and existence.
He watched as the others left and closed the door behind them. There was a second portal in the chamber behind which should lie a passage, an expanse of crystal wall behind which rested a secret space which held unsolved mysteries. Flickering lights, whispering voices, all of which could have been an illusion of his own creation in an effort to save his sanity. The attempt of his tormented mind to achieve some semblance of reality and reassurance as thirst-crazed men in an arid waste would see mirages of lakes and springs of sweet water in the desperate hope of salvation.
It was tempting to accept the explanation, but to do so would be to take a gamble with his life.
Dumarest sat, leaning back, concentrating on being calm and detached. He was facing a problem and before hoping to solve it he had to recognise exactly what it was. First to accept the obvious, the true nature of Shandaha.
Earth was listed in no almanac and was regarded as a myth. An imagined planet, an object of derision. All his life Dumarest had known the falsity of that approach. He was living proof that Earth existed and could be found. He had been born on the world and had left it and later returned to it.
He had known from the first what Shandaha had to be.
The only organisations strong enough and capable enough to dictate the listings of the almanac carried on every vessel were the Church of Universal Brotherhood and the Cyclan. Those of the Church preached kindness, care, concern, tolerance and love. Things of emotion. Those of the Cyclan believed in nothing but logic and reason. Every cyber was operated on when young to destroy his capability of emotion. They had no time for adornment, fine art, soft furnishings, things of delight. They were incapable of feeling anything but the mental pleasure of having made a successful prediction of any event or enterprise based on a study of logic and relevant forces.
The Cyclan controlled the compilation and distribution of the essential book which alone enabled ships to traverse the distances between the stars.
The Cyclan had eliminated all knowledge of Earth for a purpose and Dumarest was positive it was because they wanted to reserve the planet for their own use.
Which meant that anyone in the form of authority would be an important unit of the Cyclan.
Shandaha had to be a cyber.
One who had adopted a bizarre disguise.
No cyber would tolerate the clutter of gaudy furnishings, garish adornments, or wear such elaborate garments unless he had a need to do so. As the same need would have led him to use holograms, deceptions, all the magic of a skilled illusionist to expand the apparent dimensions of his habitation. To call on the arts of camouflage to create a host of optical illusions.
But why?
The chessboard and scattered pieces on the table provided a possible answer.
For the game.
Was Shandaha playing a game?
Dumarest doubted it. To play a game was to allow your opponent the chance to win and to a cyber the very concept of failure was anathema. As was humour. All he saw, smelt, heard, tasted or touched, had a common source and a shared purpose. All were to provide distractions and to mask the reality behind the pretence.
In order to survive he had to find a way of tearing aside the veils of illusion and gain the truth behind the façade.
Dumarest rose and stepped towards the second portal half expecting to find it locked, relieved when the panel swung wide. He looked at what he had seen before, stepped to the unbroken surface of the translucent wall and lifted his hand to touch the crystal. It tingled against his fingers and he turned, resting his back against it, sliding down to squat on the floor, the rear of his skull maintaining contact with the shimmering surface.
Along moment when the substance of his brain seemed to stir and gain an individual life. Fragments twitching, pulsing, swelling to subside in a random pattern.
Changing the world.
He was back in a familiar place, drifting as he had before, but now there was no pain, no fear, just a comforting freedom. Lights winked around him and voices whispered on the edge of clarity and he studied both, feeling he knew what they had to be and then, suddenly, knowing for certainty where he was and what was happening.
The lights were not stars nor electrical emissions from elaborate machines, but they were still signals of a potent force at work, one which could erase the distance between the stars and enable instant contact between minds. The power of thought.
The place into which he had fallen was a communication unit. The muted whispers the information being sent and received. The unit itself was a human brain. One housed in the skull of a cyber.
Shandaha—Dumarest was certain of it and with the realisation came a flood of information as if an encyclopaedia had opened and shed its assembled contents into his brain.
“Earl!” Chagal’s voice growing louder. Intruding. Demanding even as it transmitted its fear “Earl—” A break as the doctor saw him lying on the floor. “No! Please! Not again!” Then relief as Dumarest rose to his feet. “Hurry! Please! Shandaha wants to see you!”
Dumarest took his time, showering, drying himself, dressing with care. Ignoring Chagal’s appeals to hurry and those of Nada as she joined them both.
To Chagal he said, “Do you have that phial he sent to you?”
“The one Nada gave to me? I think so.” Chagal rummaged in his pocket. “Yes.”
“Give it to me.” Dumarest bounced it in his hand as the doctor obeyed. “Now I’ll return his gift. If it is what you say he claimed he’ll have need of it.”
The scene was becoming more than familiar, the round table, the flagons, goblets, trays of titbits. The colors and glints and the facing chairs. The trace of exotic perfumes drifting in the air and which prickled warning signs. Dumarest knew that to underestimate Shandaha would be the worst mistake he could make. A cyber was predictable as most men were, but those who normally wore the red robe offered far less opportunity for manipulation.
Dumarest had asked for the phial and boasted how it would be returned. Information one or both of the others could have repeated. Shandaha would be ready to face any threat. His face remained implacable as, obeying his gesture, Dumarest took his chair and sat.
He said, “You summoned me and here I am.”
“You took your time coming to me. Is this the way you think a guest should treat his host?”
“I meant no discourtesy,” Dumarest opened his hand and displayed the phial. “I was soiled and wished not to offend you. I also wanted, still want, to thank you for having sent this to me.”
“It helped?”
“The thought behind it did. I had no need to take the medicine.”
“So you return it. You could have thrown it away.”
“That I would never do. Such waste is inexcusable.”
“As is this waste of time. Earl, I want—”
“To help me as I am sure,” interrupted Dumarest. “As you made so clear when last we met and spoke of mazes and prisons and freedom as I am certain you remember.”
“I remember.”
“And will grant my request as I am sure.” Dumarest added. “The promise you made. The offer you repeated. The one in which you stated that I was not being held against my will. That I was free to leave any time I wished.”
“So?”
“So I wish to leave,” said Dumarest. “As soon as possible. Now would be a good time.”
He fell silent, waiting, sensing the familiar tension always to be found around a poker table where bluffs were common and the ability to recognise them all-important if a player hoped to win.
“For an intelligent man you are displaying a peculiar stupidity.” Shandaha reached for a flagon and poured them both a quantity of emerald wine. It swirled in glasses touched with the hue of the bark of bushes, the solemn colours to be found at the heart of a hedgerow. The tint of darkness, of mystery, of doom and destruction. The shade of death. “Or of life, Earl. It depends on your point of view.”
“You were reading my mind?”
“Not your mind,” said Shandaha. “Your face and body. Strange how the inevitable always yields sombre thoughts and dire feeling. Yet what do we see when holding this?” He lifted his glass and turned it within his palm. “A shade of green, the colour of vegetation, of cleanliness, comfort and peace. The shade of brown, the hue of soil, of tree trunks, of wispy twigs. All good things, fine symbols offering promise of a fine future…” Pausing he added, “If we have the wisdom to face it.”
“And the intelligence to drink it.”
“Together with the patience to bide our time. You can leave here now if you insist, Earl. I will not detain or prevent you. You will leave and you will die and another book will close and another story of a man’s tribulations and joys will be lost as if it had never existed. But that is life.” Raising his glass Shandaha added, “Let us drink to life!”
They drank and glass splintered as Shandaha smashed his empty container against the edge of the table. A ceremony which Dumarest had seen before from mercenaries toasting their dead companions in wakes which would be remembered. A gesture he would never have expected from a cyber.
Which was probably why the man had done it. But if so he was more wily than Dumarest had suspected.
“Be honest with me, Earl. Do you really want to leave here? To abandon Nada and Delise, me and mine. The pleasures you have tasted. The pleasure yet to come.”
“Pleasures? You can describe them?”
“I can do more than that. I can illustrate them. I can give them life. Make them real. Make them last. Think about it, Earl. Nada is beautiful, lovely, but she can be even better. Let me look into your mind to discover the seed core of your desires.”
His voice fell a little as Shandaha emulated someone selling a rare and exotic device. A thing Dumarest had experienced often before from touts clustered at the edges of fields catering to the desires of those who had spent too long locked in the coffins of their vessels. Men too vulnerable to temptation. As the mercenaries he had fought with had been easy prey for similar harpies. As the unwitting at the card tables had followed the temptation to be too much too quickly and had lost each time.
As he would lose unless he was ultra careful. If he aroused suspicion. If he failed to grasp the other’s intention and method of gaining his objective. He could only do that while they remained in close contact. He knew a way of how it could be done but, before he could test his theory, Shandaha solved the problem for them both.
“You are a hard man, Earl, and a cautious one. I blame you for neither. A wise man dare be nothing else, but a man, to be truly wise, also needs to learn how to trust. I will make you an offer. I am intrigued by your early life. I freely admit it. Your youth was so different to mine that, to experience it, is much like having lived twice. And we have unfinished business—the end of your affair with the lovely Sardia. Nada resembles her a little, you have noticed that?”
“Now that you mention it, I have.”
“You approve?”
“There can never be too much beauty in the universe.”
“So you approve. Good. Let us drink to it.”
They drank, blue wine this time served in bloated goblets adorned with silver. A long toast to a woman long dead but neither mentioned that. Instead Dumarest said, “You mentioned an offer. Shall we discuss it?”
“I thought we had.”
“No. You told me what you want. I didn’t hear what I would get for agreeing with you.”
“You will agree with me?”
“I’ll think about it. After I hear your offer.”
He waited, silent, wanting to urge the man as he would a laggard punter at the card table. Telling him to put up or shut up. To bet or fold. To play or walk. He held his tongue. Shandaha was going against all his training, inclinations and indoctrination. He had yielded his pride, detachment and a measure of respect
. He had acted the deviant. The tout. The conspirator. Pushed he could react in a way Dumarest would find far from pleasant.
He said, “I too would like to see Sardia again. To be young and the envy of others. I feel you would gain by it also. We could take the opportunity or throw it away. I would like to take it. It could well be my last chance.”
Shandaha poured himself more wine.
Watching him Dumarest said, “I cannot insist you make me an offer. Men in your position do not make it a habit to haggle or beg. They give orders and what they want is done. But others can be just as determined in following their own path. If two such people face each other it would seem a folly for neither to be willing to yield a little to gain their objective.”
“Food!” Shandaha was abrupt. “Provisions, as much as you can carry. Warm clothing.”
“A map,” said Dumarest. “Instruments of navigation. Transportation to a more amiable climate.”
“A map and compass,” agreed the other. “If our journey is a success then the matter of travel can be settled.”
“The rest remains? The food and clothing?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have an agreement,” said Dumarest. “When do we leave?”
CHAPTER NINE
The atmosphere was unique. A blend of sweat, blood, scented salves, sprays, sex, hysteria and frenzy. The exhalations of near-madness, of strained emotions, of released desires, the perfume of the arena which to Dumarest had become a familiar part of life.
As had the screams of adulation, the acid comments of the connoisseurs, the wanton displays of passion, the invitations to join in combat in the arena of the bedroom. To match other foes in the shape of jaded women, dissolute men, using the weapons of the body instead of ones of edged and pointed steel.
Things he dismissed as he did the piercing stare of the gamblers, the distracting shrieks and calculated movements of those wanting him to lose. To fall with blood streaming across his torso. Another wound to add to the rest. A scar to further enhance his status and to advertise his profession.
Dangers he avoided as he dodged the blade which, in this bout, had yet to touch him. Scarlet shone on the flesh of his opponent, a pair of ruby slashes marring his chest. The permitted area in this particular form of combat. The upper part of the body from the shoulders to the waist, the chest, back and sides. A hit on the arms would bring instant disqualification. The neck, face and legs the same. Those areas were reserved for the more lethal bouts ending in crippling injuries or death.