THE WANTON OF ARGUS aka THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER

by John Brunner

  Table of Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  THE WANTON OF ARGUS

  John Brunner

  I

  It was a wild night. The wind shouted in the bending trees like a giant’s child, shrieking its glee at the black, cloud-racing sky, and the rain poured and spattered on the earth, churning even the tough thin Argus grass from its place, dancing like a cloud of devils across the hard bare roads, whipping the faces of travelers like a myriad of icy needles, soaking and re-soaking the Imperial banners over the castle of the kings till they were too heavy to stand out from the staffs at the bidding of the wind, too heavy to reveal that they hung upside-down to signify the passing of a king.

  Outside the black castle, people waited, watching. They were gray people, common people, men with the coarse hands of farmers and mechanics, women with lined, careworn faces and eyes like dying coals.

  A bell was tolling.

  The same storm whipped at the windows of a lone helicopter but a few miles distant in the night. It had not the look of something made with human hands, for it came from one of the mutant worlds beyond the bounds of the Empire, whither the unhuman children of men had been harried by the lash of hatred, and where they had built themselves a culture that still retained knowledge lost to the Empire in the Long Night that had swamped the stars ten thousand years before.

  The man at the controls handled them with delicacy, for she was bucking like a live thing, and half an impatient move might tear the blades from the screaming rotors and toss them a mile to the barren lands below. He had a high bald forehead and sensitive lips, but the nose and eyes of an eagle, and his hands were pale and long, his voice, when he spoke, low and pleasant.

  He glanced for a second over his shoulder and said conversationally, “Nice weather, eh, Sharla?”

  There were two other people in the cockpit behind him, uncomfortable on seats built for not-men bigger than mere humans. The girl on the left shuddered, and drew her cloak tighter around her, and tried to force herself closer into the corner where she sat. She said, “Landor, is there much further to go?”

  Landor risked a quick glance from the wildness outside to the position marker glowing like a firefly in the corner of the control panel. He said, “Not far. Perhaps another ten minutes’ flying time will get us there.”

  The third passenger grunted expressively. He said, “This is the ride of the furies, Ser Landor, and no mistake!”

  Landor laughed shortly, without taking his eyes from the storm or shifting hands or body an infinitesimal fraction. He said, “You have the makings of a poet, Ordovic.”

  “A poet? Not I!” Ordovic retorted, his eyes straying from the windows to the pale, set face of Sharla across the seat beside him. “I’m nothing but a common fighting man, more at home with a spear than a pen and happier with a sword than either.”

  He dropped his hand to the hilt of his own blade, and the steel rang very softly in its scabbard, and at the noise his dark eyes filled with something that belied his self-deprecation.

  He added, putting his hand to the clasp at his neck, “You’re cold, my lady. Will you take my cloak?”

  Sharla stopped him with a gesture. “Not now, Ordovic. We have but ten minutes’ flying to do, and I have no wish to freeze you for that space of time. There will be warmth at the castle.”

  Landor said pointedly, “There may be a warm reception for us in more ways than one, Sharla. Ordovic, I’m no fighting man—my swordsmanship went with my youth—and I place our safety in your hands.”

  Ordovic squared his shoulders and under the coarse brown cloak there was a glint of metal. “But twenty-eight years, Ser Landor,” he boasted, “and as strong as a Thanis bull.”

  Sharla glanced at him very swiftly, and away. Her lovely face was troubled.

  The crowd before the castle thinned slowly. Many of them had watched since sundown last evening, and had seen the banners dip and vanish and rise again inverted in the dim red glow of the winter sun, and had raised the Passing Cry for Andalvar of Argus, and watched in the wet chill of the storm in honor of their ruler.

  On a bare slab of rock beside the road waited a boy of seven and a crone of sixty, bent and worn, for old age came quickly on this harsh bare world. The boy yawned and huddled against the old woman, trying to share the impact of the blast. Nearby, men stamped and shifted and blew on their hands, and their leather coats dripped wet.

  Suddenly the old woman closed her eyes, folded her cold hands together, and whispered, “Ronail?”

  “Here, granny,” the boy said, putting his arm around her wasted shoulders.

  “Ronail, I see bad days,” the old woman whispered, her voice like the rustle of dry leaves in the wind. “Ronail, I see evil days ahead of Argus, and I pity you.”

  One of the men nearby turned suddenly, his beard spangled with drops of rain like tiny jewels. He bent low and said urgently to the boy, “What was that?”

  The boy said casually, with the inconsequentiality of youth, “ ‘Tis only granny. She’s a seeress.”

  The man’s eyes lit, and he bent closer to hear the faint words as they fell from her stiff, withered lips. Other men stepped near.

  “Ronail—Ronail, where are you?”

  “Here, granny,” said the boy comfortingly. He pressed up against her.

  “Ronail—I see bad times for Argus soon. I see the black witch scheming to oppress us and forget the Empire—the people groaning and the soldiers bought—the Empire become dust.”

  “Ay!” whispered the bearded man. “The black witch. Andra! This is an evil day for Argus.”

  “Ssh!” said a man behind him. “There may be more.”

  “The purging of the fire and the chastening of the whip,” recited the old hag in her mumbling tones. “The sores and the wraths of the lords—”

  The bearded man signed himself, and the boy, after gazing in wonder for an instant, followed suit.

  “Ay, the dark of the Long Night is near to be seen, and ere the black witch be forgotten there are black days for Argus!”

  There was another sound than the storm, faintly, in the distance, like the buzzing of a monstrous fly, and the crone opened her eyes and stared unseeing at the castle.

  The noise grew. Even the deaf could feel it now, a great steady drone that made the ears ring and the heart falter. They stood, searching the bare black sky.

  Then there was a light that shone more brightly than all the moons of Argus—called after the many-eyed god for its nine bright satellites—which flared out of nothing in the sky and grew steadily as the noise grew. Above it there became visible a shimmer like the wings of an insect.

  “A devil!” shouted someone, and they threatened to break and run, but the bearded one said scornfully, “What devil would venture near the castle of the kings? No, ‘tis a machine, a flying machine. I have seen such in my travels, but I never thought to see one in the air of Argus.”

  They passed the explanation from mouth to mouth, and they signed themselves and stood fast. Slowly, the light settled, tossed by the wind but driving gently down into the bare space that the first drawing-aside had left. The noise was like the drumming of a demon.

  It touched the wet ground before the castle, and the light vanished and the noise ceased.

  The door of the thing opened and three figures came out, the first two dropping lightly to the ground and turning to aid the third.

  Together the new-comers passed through the crowd, who drew back at the air of authori
ty worn by the leader of the three. He was a tall man with a shining helmet and a cloak that stood out behind him like great wings, and he strode through the gale-strong gusts as if the storm had not existed.

  Before the mighty iron doors of the castle he paused. Then with sword reversed he hammered on the door till it rang and rang again, and he threw back his head and roared in a bull voice that shook the castle and drowned the storm.

  “Open! Open in the name of Andalvar’s daughter, the Princess Sharla of Argus!”

  Senchan Var raised the drape from the narrow slit in the wall, and glanced through it at the black night outside. He said, “There are quite a few of them left, my lady.”

  “But naturally, Senchan,” said Andra lazily, and there was half a laugh hidden in her voice. “Did you expect less from a people loyal to its kings?”

  He dropped the curtain again and turned to lean against the wall beside it, his face thoughtful. “Things have happened, my lady—sooner than we expected. Perhaps too soon. I counted on a month more.”

  Andra reclined on the yellow silk pillows of her divan like a well-fed cat. She had cat’s eyes too—yellow, with heavy lids—and her black hair hung around her shoulders as the night hung around the castle.

  “What makes you say that, Senchan?” she said casually, picking grapes from a bowl before her and splitting them with her perfect teeth. “Why should our plans not go through as well now as later?” She tossed one of the fruit to the black Sirian ape chained to the opposite wall of the room, and laughed when he caught it and rejected it. His kind were no vegetarians.

  Senchan Var followed the movement with his eyes and shuddered. He confessed frankly, “It is not that our plan is not working, my lady. It is working too well. All’s going too smoothly. I cannot rid myself of the fear that there will be a flaw.”

  “Is it the thought of Sharla that makes you afraid, Senchan? A child—forgotten, lost? She hasn’t been seen or heard of for seven years, Senchan.”

  Senchan Var elbowed himself away from the wall and paced restlessly up and down, his bare feet brown and thin on the snow-white fleece of the carpet. He said, “No, my lady. Sharla’s the least likely untoward factor to crop up. If she’s not dead, she still will not hear of your father’s death for long after you’re established regent.”

  “Is it Penda, then, that worries you? Where is he, by the way?”

  “Asleep, my lady. He displayed deep feeling earlier—wept, and fell asleep weeping.”

  “He would,” said Andra. “ ‘Tis natural at his age.”

  “Natural!” said Senchan Var scornfully, “Your pardon, my lady, but to weep like a girl at his age is shameful. If my son did that, being as he is much of an age with Prince Penda—King Penda, I should say, I suppose—I’d rise from my deathbed and strike him!”

  Andra curved her full red lips into a smile, and picked a bloody bone from the floor beside her. At the movement the ape across the room bounded out to the full length of his silver chain and dropped to his knees, his thick lips drawn back from teeth like chisels. She laughed again, very softly.

  “That’s a loyal sentiment, Senchan,” she said. “Which reminds me—he brought his hound into the dining hall again today, against his father’s commands. Have Dolichek brought, will you? And the whipmaster.”

  Senchan Var’s grizzled face turned to meet her gaze in astonishment. He said, “My lady, if you ask me, Dolichek is half the reason Penda is so insolent. If you’ll allow me the suggestion, Dolichek should be dismissed now, and this practice discontinued.”

  Andra’s fingers folded like a steel trap closing on the bone she held, and the blood from the meat on it welled red between her fingers. She said in a sort of sibilant whisper, “No, Senchan! Think! Spoilt he may be—spoilt he is. But as such he is most suited to our purpose. Fetch Dolichek.”

  Senchan shrugged, mute rebellion smoldering in his eyes. He said, “Very well, my lady; but it makes my heart ache to see the fruit of a fine stock go rotten.”

  Andra relaxed, and the ape whined tentatively, extending black hairless paws towards the bone. Impatiently she flung it at him. He seized it out of the air and curled up contentedly to gnaw it on the floor.

  Very faintly above the muted roar of the storm, dulled by six feet of stone, there was a buzzing sound like a gigantic fly. Senchan Var noted it and frowned, but since Andra did not comment on it he said nothing, but tugged at the gold-wove bell-rope beside the window. A small brassy bell rang somewhere outside.

  A slave with the hot brown skin of a Marzon and the twitching eyes of a man born under a variable star entered silently and stood waiting for orders.

  Andra picked more fruit from the silver bowl and said, around a soft Sirenian plum, “Bring Dolichek and the whipmaster, Samsar.”

  The slave bowed and vanished again, and she said a little peevishly to Senchan Var, “Senchan, what’s that row?”

  “I don’t know, my lady,” Senchan Var reported. He was straining his eyes into the blackness beyond the window. “It’s dark as a wolf’s throat out there.”

  “Then drop the curtain,” Andra commanded. “It’s cold enough in here as it is, in all conscience. And ‘twill be this way for days. You know these storms.”

  The slave stood again, silently, at the far end of the room, three paces from the black ape, grunting over his bone. He said, “My lady, Dolichek and the whipmaster wait.”

  “Bring them in,” said Andra, inclining her head. Senchan Var snorted and strode over to the window again, stood with his back to the entrance as the slave ushered in Dolichek and the wielder of the whip.

  Dolichek was a boy of perhaps fifteen, with a thin peaked face and a body more bone than flesh and little of that. He brushed back his straggling blond hair, matted with dirt, and essayed a bow to Andra, who smiled slowly and took another fruit.

  She said, “Dolichek, Prince Penda—King Penda, now—brought his hound into the dining hall again today, against his father’s command.” She took a tiny malicious delight in saying it.

  Dolichek sighed so slightly that one had to look hard to notice it, and said, “Very well, my lady. That was three strokes last time.”

  “This time four, then,” said Andra casually. “Slave, four lashes!”

  The wielder of the whip was black, and seven feet tall. He hailed from Leontis, where under the first King of Argus his ancestors had sweated to mine platinum on a world scant millions of miles from its primary. When he nodded at Andra’s bidding, the muscles of his neck rippled down his chest and shoulders like waves in oily water. He spat on his hands and wetted the thong of his silver-mounted whip, flexed it, raised his arm—

  Andra stopped him with a gesture. “Listen!” she said. “Senchan, that noise has stopped. Look outside.”

  Senchan Var needed only take a pace to lift the yellow drape from the window. He peered out into the night, shook his head.

  “Too dark after the light in here,” he reported. “There seems to be some sort of cart or carriage outside on the road before the castle—”

  From somewhere below came the crash-crash-crash of smitten iron, and Andra froze as if struck to stone by an enchanter’s wand. In utter silence, save for the slobbering of the ape over his bone, they heard a man’s voice from below shout, “Open!

  “Open in the name of Andalvar’s daughter, the Princess Sharla of Argus!”

  II

  Kelab the conjurer looked both ways along the Street of the Morning, surveying the wet gray stones of the cracked paving and the pools of water in the blocked gutter.

  A few yards down the road from him an aged crone, one of the many beggars who sat along the Street of the Morning, huddled on a doorstep. He looked her over, from her closed eyes to her stiff hands and bare feet, and noted the mouth, slackly open like that of an idiot. She was dead.

  He signed himself, as any vagrant would, and tossed a few coins into the tin cup at her feet. No sweeper would touch those coins, for they were burying money and as such, tainted
. She would have her funeral.

  He sniffed the air. It had a part-clean smell, made of the new-washed streets and the unwashed thousands of the Low City, and he inhaled it gratefully, his eyes running along the ill-matched roofs of the houses till they fell on the flagstaff over the fortress on the Hill of Kings a mile away.

  The banner on it was upside down, the proud golden sun hanging sadly in the bottom quarter instead of the top, the black-lettered motto of the House of Argus inverted above it. Kelab’s lips formed the words slowly.

  “Be strong; be just; be faithful.”

  Without taking his eyes from the banner he fumbled in his pouch and pulled a watch from it—a watch that had never come from any forge within the Empire. He looked at it, and his eyes filled with satisfaction and his lips took on the shadow of a smile.

  Under a swinging rain-worn sign that had once said, “The House of the Bubbling Spring,” he paused and rubbed his clean-shaven chin. He seemed to come to a quick decision, descended the few steps below the sign and pushed open the ill-fitting door.

  Beyond it, the air was thick, twice-breathed; it was laden with the stench of sweat, stale liquor and smoking drugs. At one table a party of thin, shifty-eyed spacemen sat around five empty bottles of tsinamo, playing the endless game called shen fu, and their soft-spoken bids and the click of chips were the only noises in the muggy-hot room.

  There was a long bar on the left, littered with empty drink cartons and stained with spilt liquor, and behind it a fat man with thinning sandy hair sat, his back to the room, playing a color-sonata on a Mimosan chromograph.

  He didn’t turn as Kelab came up to the bar and hitched himself on to a reasonably clean seat, said only, “What’s yours?”

  Kelab said, “Water, Finzey. Water from the Bubbling Spring.”

  Finzey shut off the chromograph and whirled, his fat face splitting in a lavish grin. He said explosively, “Kelab! How long have you been on-world?”

  “Since about midnight—and a rough coming I had of it, too. There wasn’t so much as a mile of clear weather between here and the Silent Mountains.”