by E. C. Tubb
Too apt for comfort and Dumarest tried not to remember the screaming thing lying in a pool of its own blood. The silence which came when severed arteries had ceased their spurting had signaled a merciful end.
"You knew," said Shakira. "But how? Zucco I could understand but Valaban? He seemed so harmless." He took a sip of his wine and smiling, said, "It would have been more logical to have suspected me."
"I did." Dumarest was blunt. "But you aren't that stupid. Only a fool or a sadist would warn a victim of his knowledge and Zucco was both. He couldn't resist having his little joke using Reiza and the cards. Valaban wanted Krystyna dead because she could lead me to Zucco and he would betray Valaban. Odd how both wanted the same thing."
"Zucco I suspected," admitted Shakira. "He was too ambitious."
"Which is why you wanted me to fight him. The only way you could defeat him-his telepathic ability had you cornered had you tried anything else." Dumarest took a sip of his own wine. "You took a chance there. I could have lost."
"As I told you, I'm an expert at assessing a person's skill. Zucco was a champion only because he'd never met a man of your caliber. A true survivor in every sense of the word. But Valaban?" Shakira shook his head. "He seemed so contented."
"A pauper in a small kingdom." The wine was rich and pungent and Dumarest held it in his mouth before letting it trickle down his throat. The combat was over but the battle had still to be won. Twelve hours, Valaban had said. How long did he really have? "He betrayed himself in small ways. No man who'd worked for the circus as long as he had would have so little knowledge. He'd know most of what had happened and all about those he worked with. And he was an expert with pheromones. It would have been easy for him to have arranged Hayter's death-maybe the price of Zucco's cooperation. And to have arranged the klachen's attack. Reiza's scarf was a deliberate plant to divert suspicion. He wanted me to concentrate on Zucco."
"And all the time he was an agent of the Cyclan." Shakira finished his wine and said, "They must want you very badly, Earl."
"They do."
"So I gathered. The cyber who came looking for you was most insistent. Cyber Tron-Valaban mentioned him."
"You can find him at the Dubedat Hotel." Dumarest met the other's eyes, holding them as he rose from his chair. Around him the office took on a new quietness as if the very walls could sense the mounting tension. "Are you thinking of selling me?"
"No, Earl!" Shakira lifted his hands. "No-I swear it!"
"Could you?"
"Elagonya no longer has power over you. I have kept to our bargain. Freedom from restraint, money," Shakira gestured to the bag lying on the desk, "and fortunately you are not in need of medical attention. Only Melome is left."
She rose as they entered her room, running forward to catch Dumarest by the hand, her face radiant with smiles.
"Earl! You came! I knew you would!"
"And you know why."
"Yes." A shadow touched her face, gone as soon as born. "Elagonya explained why you must do what you do and why I must not be a selfish child. To deny is not to love, Earl, and I love you."
"In your fashion, Melome."
"Yes," she agreed. "In my fashion as you love me in yours. Shall we begin?"
He sat and she took her place facing him, also cross-legged so they resembled two idols set as a pair on some ancient altar. Then she stirred, extending her hands for Dumarest to take.
As he closed his fingers around them he said, "You know what I need, Melome, please help me to find it. Send me back to that time in the past when I knew terror. The fear of discovery when I was in the captain's cabin. I must go back to that time. I must!"
To see the open book, to read it, to gain the coordinates of Earth!
To put an end to the long and painful search.
Music flowed from the recorder as Shakira touched a control, the air filling with the wail of pipes and the sonorous beat of a drum. Dumarest felt the hands he held grow chill as if the girl was withdrawing all but essential energy in order to power her song. One which came as it had come before, filling his mind, the room, the universe with its dominating cadences.
And again he was thrown on a mental journey back through time.
To feel again the stomach-gripping fear, the chill, the pain of terror.
A wind thick with knives and a sky blotched by the baleful eyes of a single moon. Snow on the ground and ice rimming the pond. A night in which too many would die and he knew that he would be one of them.
The blanket he wore was torn, thin, crusted with dirt. More dirt masked his face and rimmed his mouth, the coating marked with paths of mucous from his nostrils, wind-born tears from his eyes. A child, begging, knowing that charity was dead. To steal was his only hope of survival. To be caught was to know pain.
And he had been caught.
The hand which gripped his wrist forced it closer to the fire, the pot smoking above it. A container half-full of seething stew, thin, odorous, but containing the nourishment he had to have.
"A thief," said the man holding him. "Caught him reaching for the pot. Guess he thought I was asleep."
"His bad luck you weren't." The other's voice was thick with drowsiness. "He get anything?"
"No."
"Good. We won't have to slice off a foot so as to make it up. Just teach him a lesson and let him go."
Harsh times and harsh justice and the lesson wouldn't be easy to take. The terror mounted as his hand was forced closer to the fire, closer until he felt the burning kiss of flame, the searing of his skin, the agony which flowed from the spot.
One small against the possibility of what could happen if his captor chose.
A finger burned to the bone. A hand burned to the wrist.
"God! God! God, please God! Make him let me go!"
Then his free hand dipping, plunging into the soup, lifting from the seething liquid to splash the near-boiling wetness into his captor's face. Freedom as the man cried out and then the running, the hiding, the plunging of burned hands into the snow. The luck as a rodent, startled by his action, crashed from hiding to land against his chest.
"No," said Dumarest. "No."
"Earl?" Melome's face was a blur before him. "Do you want to stop?"
"The wrong time. Too early." Dumarest heard his voice, thick, mumbling. "Try again. Later. Later."
"You should rest." Shakira's voice held a genuine concern. "Take a glass of wine."
Sit and talk and waste the time that was left. To squander the precious minutes and lose the chance of learning what he had to know.
"Keep going."
"But-"
"Do it!" A burned hand, a night of fear and terror which had happened long ago. A thing he could live with and already it was fading. "Try again, Melome. Again."
And the pipe, the drum, the wailing song with its soaring cadences which held a rare and unusual magic. One which worked as he listened. As the girl changed, the room in which he sat.
One to turn into the round dial of an instrument set against a wall. The other into a cabin.
Dumarest felt his stomach churn as he listened to the sound of approaching footsteps.
They would find him and take him before the captain and he would be punished as they had said others had been. Taken and flogged until his bones showed through the lacerated flesh or sealed in a suit and evicted into space with an hour's air. Or put into the generator where invisible energies would rot his bones and send him blind and turn him into a thing of horror.
Threats whispered in idle hours. Tales of torments done and stories woven from sick minds and fevered imaginations. The fruit of loneliness and frustration to be showered on an ignorant boy.
He turned, seeking employment for his hands, a visible task to justify his presence in the cabin. An added defense should anyone look in. A duster was to hand and he used it, nearing the table, the book resting on it. A fat volume, the pages open, sheets bearing rows of the captain's script.
Dumarest looked at it
as he plied the duster. Hearing the footsteps outside the cabin fade into silence. Seeing the pages thin and vanish as the moment of terror ebbed away.
"Success," said Shakira. "There is nothing so satisfying. Come, Earl, let us drink to it."
The wine he served was rich and darkly red, the same as he'd produced before. Then it had reminded Dumarest of blood, now it held the acrid taste of defeat.
"It was success, Earl?" The circus owner's voice sharpened as he saw Dumarest's unfinished wine. "Melome said you had returned to the right time. She was sure of it."
"She was right."
"Then-"
"You want to share my knowledge. The bargain we made." Dumarest reached for a sheet of paper. "I went back and I saw the book. This is what I read."
He wrote and passed the sheet to Shakira who picked it up and held it before his eyes.
"The cargo we loaded on Ascanio was spoiled and had to be unloaded at a total loss," he murmured, reading. "A bad trip with no prospect of improvement so I took a chance and risked a journey to the proscribed planet. A waste of time-the place is a nightmare. God help the poor devils who lived here. Those remaining are degenerate scum little more than savage animals. Found a stowaway after we'd left, a boy who looks human. He claims to be twelve but looks younger and could be dangerous. Decided to take a chance and kept him but if he shows any sign of trouble I'll have to-"
Shakira looked at Dumarest. "Is this all?"
"Yes."
"But you were so sure there would be more."
"I was wrong." Dumarest gulped at his wine. "The book was a journal, not the ship's log. A private diary of events. And I could only look at it. I couldn't turn the pages. The coordinates could have been written plain on the previous sheet but I'll never know. Not even if I went back could I ever know."
"And you can't go back. Terror, relived, loses its impact. You could try for a dozen years and never again hit that exact period. But it lives in your mind. Your memory. Perhaps-"
"The facts remain," said Dumarest. He was curt. "I saw the book, remembered what it said, wrote it down. You have it in your hand. All of it. Useless rubbish!"
Words for which he had risked his life. Once they had him in their power the Cyclan would not be gentle. They would sear his brain with electric probes, test him with endless pain, tear him apart cell by cell in order to regain their lost secret. And time was running out.
"Wait!" Shakira lifted a hand as Dumarest rose to his feet. "Disappointment has blunted your natural shrewdness. The coordinates are lacking, true, but still you have won information. The name of a world, Ascanio. It must be relatively close to the proscribed planet. Earth? But why should it be proscribed? And by whom? And the rest? That about the boy who was found- you?"
"It has to be."
"A strange description. Malnutrition would account for your size, but why should he think you dangerous? Sit, my friend, take some more wine, let us consider this. You may have gained more than you realize."
Shakira brooded over the paper as Dumarest followed his suggestion. A few more minutes against what the other's fresh viewpoint could gain. Extra danger set against the possibility of winning gold from apparent dross.
"Proscribed," murmured Shakira. "Set apart. Outlawed. Banned. Incredible that a world should be so treated. But by whom? And how to enforce the proscription?"
Questions which hung in the air as he considered the matter. A silence broken by an imperious knocking at the door.
"Who is it?" Shakira's tone held anger though his face remained as placid as before. "I gave orders that on no account should I be disturbed." The paper fell to the table as the knocking was repeated. "Who is there?"
The answer stepped through the opened panel, tall, thin, glowing in a scarlet robe. One adorned with the Seal of the Cyclan.
"Cyber Tron." Pushed Shakira had fallen back to the support of the table. Now he stood, hands lifted, facing the intruder. "What do you want here?"
"You know the answer to that." Tron lifted his hand, the gun it held. One like that used by Valaban. "Do not waste time calling for help. Those you set on guard have been taken care of." The guard moved to point at Dumarest, the wide orifice aimed directly at his face. "You are to come with me. Unless you obey me implicitly I shall fire. The shot will not kill you but your face will be ruined, your eyes. Even in the open a blind man cannot get far."
And in the maze of the circus it would be impossible. Dumarest froze where he sat, hands on the table, one close to the glass holding his wine. Across the board Shakira faced the cyber, hands still lifted in his pathetic gesture of appeal or surrender. An act? One to cover his betrayal? The face remained a mask and gave no hint as to the answer.
Dumarest said, "It seems you win, Cyber Tron. But I expected you earlier. What delayed you?"
"You will not move and you will not talk." Tron's face, like Shakira's, did not change expression but his eyes revealed his pleasure. "Disobey and I fire."
A good moment and he relished it; the prediction had been correct. Now, even though the agent had failed, Dumarest was held fast in the trap. One now sealed tight by his own presence.
"You will lift both hands and place them on your head," said Tron. "You will make no other movement." Then, as Dumarest made no move to obey, "Do it or-"
"You will fire. I know. You told me." Dumarest saw the tightening of the finger on the trigger and added, quickly, "To shoot me would be proof of your inefficiency. A blind man needs help-who will give it? Can you trust them? Could you watch them? It would be far more logical to keep me functional." Dumarest moved a finger closer to the glass of wine. A poor weapon but the only one available. "There is always the possibility of error should you fire. How can you be certain as to the charge? The damage it could do? And what of the trauma of the wound?"
Arguments to ease the tension and so lessen the immediate danger, but ones which he knew weren't going to work. Tron was too determined. Dumarest looked at the gun, knowing that before he could move it would fire. That it was only a matter of seconds before it did.
"Efficiency is a matter of adjusting action to the relevant situation," said Tron. "Your points are valid but negated by the paramount need to ensure your captivity. Therefore-"
Shakira screamed.
It was a sound like grating metal, a nail dragged over a slate, loud, shocking, totally unexpected. As the cyber turned toward him Shakira stepped forward, hands high, voice pleading.
"No! Don't! Please don't! I beg you not to do it!"
Words which masked action, even as he spoke the fabric of his blouse ripped open from neck to waist to reveal a hand. Holding a gun.
A laser which fired as Dumarest snatched up the glass and threw it as Tron fired at the same time. A blast which tore at Shakira's face and sent him turning as the cyber fell with smoke pluming from the ruined pattern of his insignia.
"Shakira!" Dumarest rose from his examination of the dead man. "How badly are you hurt?" He had tried to divert Tron's aim but knew he had failed. "Shakira?"
The owner remained turned away, hands to his face, leaning against the edge of the table. Something cracked beneath Dumarest's foot as he stepped toward him and he looked at the fragment beneath his boot. One of several lying scattered around; scraps of flesh-coloured plastic holding a limited flexibility.
Dumarest knew what they had to be.
"A mask," he said. "You wear a mask."
One shattered and ruined by the blast from the cyber's gun, but what other damage had been done? Shakira turned away as Dumarest reached him.
"Please. The mask is damaged, true, but I have another. In the bottom drawer of my desk. Be so good as to face the wall while I don it."
"I'll do that." Dumarest reached again for the shielding hands. "But only after I've seen what injuries you have."
A moment and they were exposed, ugly welts scored on flesh but harmless enough. The mask had taken the brunt of the shot, shattering like an eggshell but saving the wearer. One no
w revealed for what he was.
"You are disgusted," said Shakira. "I can read it in your eyes."
"No. You see what you expect to find. I'm concerned, not disgusted." Then, as the other made no comment, Dumarest added in a burst of sudden anger, "What kind of a man do you take me for? You saved my life-what the hell do I care what you look like?"
"You are kind. The other mask?"
"You don't need it."
"For you, no, but for others? And I must maintain the habit of wearing it. Help yourself to wine, Earl. I shall not be long."
It still held the color of blood and the acrid taste of defeat, but now a new dimension had been added, one of alien scope.
Dumarest sat, drinking, remembering how Shakira had looked when the last of the ruined mask had been discarded. The bald, rounded head, the protruding eyes, the noseless face, the mouth, the jaw-against him Elagonya was beautiful.
But there had been more than a distortion of the familiar, the visage had held inhuman facets as had the eyes as if an alien form of life had been so disfigured as to ape the human frame.
"Pour me wine, Earl." Shakira had returned, his face seemingly as it had been, but more stiff now as if the mask were an earlier model, made before he had recognized the necessity of falsifying a smile. "Thank you." He drank and set down his glass. "We each have secrets, Earl. Do we agree never to divulge them?"
"Of course." Dumarest looked at the dead cyber. "And him?"
"He will be disposed of."
"In the sump?" Dumarest guessed the answer. "He will be missed and others will come after him."
"When they do I shall tell them of the tragic accident which took so many lives. Valaban's, the cyber's, yours." Shakira picked up his glass and took a sip of wine. "A good story, my friend, and there will be those to swear to its truth. And they will not lie."
Primed and conditioned by the sensitives Shakira controlled. The powers he owned which could delude the test of machines. Dumarest relaxed even as he wondered why Shakira should go to so much trouble. He had been made a part of the circus and the circus took care of its own, but was that the real answer?