He left me within sight of the main gate and drove off without requesting payment. The palace itself was tall, open, and translucent at this distance, though even from the ground I could see that many of its walls and windows were hazy, due to some process that left the material simultaneously opaque and transparent and allowed for the occupants’ privacy. I shrugged off this latest wonder and walked to the gate as though I were Lord Farren himself. The Thoran guards nodded politely as I went by, but made no move to intercept or question me.
I passed through a long, wide hallway, with a cold marble floor, and abstract paintings adorning the walls on either side. I mixed with Nuum and Thorans on their own errands. The former ignored me, the latter acknowledged me only insofar as they must to avoid impeding my progress, or even crossing my path to the extent they could. As my boots softly slapped the smooth floor, an inadvertent thought came to mind: This was the hall of the servers, the mental sentries whose constant scanning was the greatest, and technically, the only defense against violence the Nuum possessed in these walls.
As I walked, my new learning, absorbed in my sleep, arose to my conscious mind, and what I suddenly realized almost made me stop in my tracks.
The servers were alive.
Almost as though I were reading from a text, the concept materialized before my mind’s eye. The servers were Thorans, generally taken from the ranks of the terminally ill, who had volunteered to have their brains separated from their bodies and immersed in nutrient tanks, placed behind these very walls. Unfettered by the old demands of a body, they could create (with the use of Nuum technology) whatever world they desired in which to live, and yet enough of their mental potential remained to be harnessed by the Nuum for their own purposes, including security for this and other important buildings.
Each person passing through this gauntlet was scanned by these disembodied minds, searching for any indication of hostile intent. Finding such, the perpetrator would be immediately paralyzed by a telepathic jolt whose nature was only vaguely described. Moreover, any weapon he might carry was rendered useless, although by what means was not detailed. Had they recently been warned to watch for a ghost?
With an effort of my own will, I kept walking as though nothing were troubling me, but the thought that just behind those artistically-decorated walls lay tank after tank of naked human brains, hurried my feet despite my best efforts at nonchalance. After a long few minutes, I reached the end of the hall, and the palace proper.
Not being a commercial building or a tourist destination, there were no directories; every person there seemed to know exactly where he was going. I hesitated to ask directions, but then it came to me: Everyone had to come here for the first time; no one was born knowing the architecture. I marched straight up to the next guard I saw.
“Where are the elevators to Lord Farren’s quarters?” Being a Thoran, he should neither require nor expect an explanation, but what if Farren’s trust in his disembodied watchdogs was less than absolute? If he had warned his staff against intruders, I was likely to lose this battle before it was fairly joined.
But my fears were unfounded. “That way, sir,” the guard responded immediately, pointing out the direction. “Around the corner to the right.” Having said his piece, he snapped back to attention. I bit back my thanks and proceeded, as instructed, “as though I owned the place,” although I itched intolerably between my shoulder blades all the same.
For the first time in my life, I took an elevator to the top floor of a building and emerged outside.
Roof gardens were hardly new to me; they extended back to Babylonian times. Still, I had asked the elevator to take me to Lord Farren’s quarters, not his gardens. Yet before me stretched a spacious plaza of softly winding paths wending between profusions of lush foliage that tended largely to leafy palms, creepers, and mosses, copiously splashed with red, blue, purple, and orange flowers. I could not see clearly more than a few yards in any direction. Somewhere invisible birds sang softly; a breeze sprang up to cool my face as if on command.
On impulse, I turned to examine the elevator door that had silently closed behind me, and I was less than surprised to find that I had, to all appearances, stepped out of a thick stand of green bamboo. Nor was it merely a drawing or set piece; as closely as I looked, I could see nothing but thick green shoots of vegetation. The technology used by the Nuum made anything available to their Thoran serfs seem as primitive as… well, as I seemed to the Thorans.
An attitude which could serve me ill, should I be found gawking like a doughboy on his first leave in Paris. Just because I saw no one did not mean that no one saw me. I stepped forward along the first path I saw, apprehensive suddenly that I had not seen anyone here. I realized it had been naïve of me to expect that Farren would be in his own rooms when I came calling; Bantos Han’s personal opinion of him aside, it was natural to assume that he must have some business that took him away during the day. Still, I would have thought to see servants—unless everything was done mechanically?
No. I shook my head. Farren was the kind of man who would want others fawning over him and catering to his whims; witness his kidnapping of Hana Wen for his harem. Yet here were no maids—or gardeners. And yet the elevators had delivered me directly to Farren’s private quarters when I could state no legitimate business—not that anyone had asked. I had been left alone to wander at will. I saw no movement of any kind except myself, heard no sounds, not even the phantom birds—save for a sinister scurrying through the leaves of the overarching trees…
The hairs on the back of my neck told me nothing that was not already obvious. The trap was sprung, and I was caught.
13. The Garden of Death
“It’s called a tiger spider,” advised a voice from nowhere and yet everywhere at once. “It comes from the southern jungles. Its bite is invariably fatal, and there is no antidote.”
Finding the location of the voice was of much less concern to me right now than locating the creature of which it had just warned me. While some rational part of my brain was trying to maintain composure by reassuring me that anything I heard could be broadcast in the same way as the strange voice, and anything I saw could be as false as the bamboo elevator, it was fighting a losing battle with my Neanderthal hindbrain. Caught between the urge to run and the need to hide, my feet were glued to the floor. By an effort of will, I removed my Webley from my tunic.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spindly stick-like object emerge from cover—then another, and another. My lips were dry. The thing sidled into view not two feet from me and the urge to run became almost overwhelming. I have never been fond of spiders, and this must have reigned as their king.
I would estimate its legs spread twelve full inches across, yet it balanced its yellow and black striped body on a single leaf as though it weighed nothing at all. Its segmented eyes watched me intently, as though measuring the size web it would require, and despite every sermon I had ever heard pronouncing that Man was the only living creature with a soul, I would defy any priest to deny that this foul arachnid held evil in its gaze.
A single drop of sweat rolled down my throat.
Then it leaped.
I jumped backward in sheer instinctive fright, but it was not leaping at me. It stood on its eight legs blocking the path forward, tensed every so slightly forward, like a mastiff guarding its master’s house from a burglar.
“It’s not real, of course,” said the same voice, only now it belonged to a man, a man who stepped out of hiding and stood behind his hideous bodyguard: Farren. He sneered at my obvious fear. “It’s only a robot. I couldn’t possibly have the real thing; it would kill everyone, even if I could find a way to capture one and bring it here. You don’t want to know what it cost me to have this one made. It’s an exact duplicate.” He smiled like a chess master who has just determined the move that will give him the match. “Well, almost. It’s also completely ray-shielded and telepathically activated.” He indicated the Webley. “I a
ssume that’s some sort of weapon. If you try to shoot me, it will leap to my defense. And then it will kill you.”
I could see now. Every living thing moves, however slightly, at every moment. This spider did not have that quality. Yet I would not doubt its lethality.
“How did you get in here, by the way?” Farren’s question sounded genuine, and that was no surprise; he had a great deal invested in my answer.
I, on the other hand, had no intention of satisfying his curiosity.
“Where is Hana Wen?”
Farren blinked. “What do you care?”
I lifted the revolver and pointed it straight at the bridge of his nose. “I’ll not ask again.”
“I’ve already told you: If you activate that weapon, you’ll die.” His words were cold and precise, but he couldn’t keep the smirk off of his face. “The same trigger that fires it will set the spider on you—and it’s impervious to hand weapons.”
I hadn’t had an opportunity before to study the man, to see who he was. Now I stood curiously detached, a soldier facing an enemy whose humanity I had discounted, reduced to an abstract to facilitate the act of killing him.
His age I estimated at thirty, but it was impossible to be sure. I had noticed since my arrival in this time that no one seemed old, gray or decrepit. Perhaps Farren was my age, perhaps he was old enough to be my father. Once he had been an athlete, but now his love for easy living was betraying him through the softness of his jaw and the bags under his eyes.
Those eyes were staring into mine now, blue where the spider’s were black, but otherwise the same. They both held contempt, utter disdain for anyone who could neither help nor harm them. But in Farren’s face I saw too the smirk of a man who was used to his own way, all the time, no matter the cost to young women or their families—or the planet. It was the cocksure ghost of a smile of a conqueror who had never felt a hand in anger.
I lowered the barrel, taking careful aim on the robot. His twisted pride and joy, he had taken pains to show it off and tell me how much it had cost him, despite believing that I was a specialized assassin sent specifically to kill him—or perhaps because he believed it. The epitome of millennia of destructive engineering, the spider was telepathically triggered and impervious to modern weapons. I carefully squeezed the trigger of my million-year-old revolver and blew Farren’s deadly toy into a hundred pieces. The noise staggered him, hands over his ears. I raised the gun to his face again. I had warned him I wouldn’t ask about Hana Wen a second time, and I kept my promise.
He was trembling now, his eyes darting between my eyes and my Webley. A man of the kind I knew would have begun to sweat, his forehead would be moist and glistening, but Farren’s was neither. Perhaps Nuum did not sweat. I had no doubt, however, that they would bleed. Still not speaking, my aim shifted to his left knee.
“All right! All right!” He fairly screamed, like a woman. “I—”
And in that moment, when I had unconsciously relaxed my guard, thinking the battle won, he jumped wildly to the side and disappeared into the foliage. Cursing, I fired wildly, but the bullet itself disappeared and I do not know what I hit. I plunged after him, entering the plants at the same spot, hardly surprised by now to find that there were no plants at all, but merely an illusion hiding another twisting path. Farren was nowhere to be seen, but I did not need to guess where he had gone. In seconds, this entire floor would be flooded with armed guards.
A hand abruptly appeared out of nowhere at my side, seizing my arm and pulling at me. When I resisted, a voice hissed:
“Come with me if you want to live!”
What choice did I have? I found myself in a small area half-filled with gardening implements—items I recognized because their basic utility had never changed. Evidently some of the plants in Farren’s garden were real, and here was where his gardeners kept their tools. And where, it appeared, his gardeners spied on him.
My rescuer put a finger to his lips, another sign that had not changed at all.
“If you don’t know where the door is,” he whispered, “it is almost impossible to find.”
The area outside exploded with noise, men—many men—bursting into the apartment, spreading out in a search pattern, looking for me. I heard them shouting instructions, suggestions, and finally questions as I was not run to ground. Farren’s voice I did not hear.
While we stood unmoving and silent, I had a chance to appraise the Thoran who had saved me. Typical of his race, he stood only to my shoulder, dark-haired, elfin of features. His smock was irregularly smudged with dirt, a rarity in this world where dirt seemed as conquered as air travel or telepathy.
He was the first Thoran whom I had had an extended opportunity to study, other than Bantos Han and his family. Heretofore I had assumed that the similarities between them were simply familial, and where observed elsewhere, I did not ascribe a great deal of importance to them because I was trying not to stare, but without such a prolonged study, deductions become difficult.
Here, however, was a completely different person from my friends, different of background and breeding, perhaps different of racial origin, and yet he appeared in most respects quite similar to them; his skin, for example, was the same dark milky color, as though all of the races of Man had long ago coalesced into one. I confess that even I, who had grown up in America and felt no greater racial antipathy toward others than did my neighbor, found the idea of such melding a trifle unsettling. Lost I might be in a far-advanced era, but I was still a man trapped in my own time. I was glad that my unique brain physiology allowed me to keep such thoughts entirely to myself.
At length, the sounds of the search died away, but even then neither my rescuer nor I moved to leave our hiding place. By this I appreciated that he was no fool, and I fancy that he understood the same of me. In such a necessarily brief and uncommunicative friendship as our was to be, this kind of unspoken bond is the most to which one can aspire.
“I think they’re gone,” he whispered at last. “Let me go first.”
“If they see you, they will know that you were here all along,” I objected. “I won’t stay hidden if they arrest you.”
“If anyone sees me, I will stall as long as I can. You can either come to my rescue or try to escape, whichever seems best. But you can’t be caught.”
He turned to leave but I took his arm. Gentle as my grasp was, I doubted he could easily break it.
“What do you mean? Who are you? How did you know I was here?”
He shook his head. “Names are dangerous—but Bantos Han sent word you would be here. You’re a ghost; you’re more valuable to Thora than I am—than any of us.”
“What are you talking about? I came here to find Hana Wen, that’s all. No matter what Farren thinks, I’m not an assassin.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “You’re a soldier, I know that much. You could help. You can go places where we can’t, carry machines that we aren’t allowed to own. You can help us take back Thora.”
I thought back on Bantos Han now with greater clarity, and respect. What a weapon he must have thought he had found in me—and yet he was willing to give it all up to allow my quixotic adventure, rather than deny me my freedom. Or was it the life of his sister-in-law he held above all else? I doubted I would ever know, since I was unlikely to see him again. But my own path, dictated by my heart and my own sense of duty, was unchanged.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I came here to find Hana Wen, and I’m going to.” His disappointment was evident on his face and in his thoughts. “Look,” I continued on impulse, pulling out the Webley. “I can’t carry this around any more; they’ll be looking for it. But if you can smuggle it out of here…”
His despair evaporated in an instant. He had witnessed, in some sense, the entire exchange between Farren and me; he knew what my Webley could do, and how it could operate where more sophisticated machinery was useless. I quickly showed him how to use it, paying special attention to the importance of never pointing
even an “unloaded” gun at anyone you did not plan to shoot. He accepted the gift with alacrity.
“This is wonderful,” he said as he hid it among his tools. “Now we can both be shot on sight.” I must not have appreciated his wry humor, because when he spoke again it was with utter earnestness. “Look, Farren’s probably gone back to Dure. That’s where his family is. It’s thousands of miles away. We can use you here. You don’t even have any way of getting there.”
“Leave that to me.” Assuming I can get out of here, of course...
14. I See War
There was no sound in the cabin, no rush of air or roaring engines, nothing but the steady soft rasp of my own breath. Common soldiers didn't merit outside berths with breathtaking views of the tops of the clouds, and as my bunkmate Harros had joked right before he went off to mess, if you climbed to the observation deck at this speed the wind would sweep you straight off the ship.
I had begged off from breakfast, citing my injuries, although they were just memories now, and even the scars were fading fast. But Harros hadn't argued; I think he was put off by my manner. I am normally much more gregarious with my fellows-in-arms, but under the present circumstances I thought battlefield friendships both unnecessary and ill-advised.
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