THE WANTON OF ARGUS aka THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER

by John Brunner

  Sharla seemed to come to life again slowly. “My father sick?” she echoed. Landor nodded.

  She sat up, pulling her costume together, her eyes fixed on nothing. She said, “We must go to him then—at once, quickly.”

  Landor said, “Ay, Sharla. You must go to him. It was to that end that I sought you out, for in you stands the future of the Empire. Your sister Andra—”

  Sharla blanched and looked at him fiercely. “Andra! My sister! What of her? And what of my brother Penda—a child of three when last I saw him?”

  “Well, both of them, but Penda spoilt and Andra known by the name of the black witch—and she it is who will be Regent in your father’s place till Penda comes of age. This must not be!”

  Ordovic looked from one to the other in puzzlement. He said, “Ser Landor, I do not understand.”

  Impatiently, without looking at him: “Soldier, no one cares whether you understand or not. Get you gone in peace and seek another trull—the Princess Sharla must come back to Argus with me. Here—take this purse.” He held out a small leather bag which jingled and hung heavy from his fingers.

  Ordovic’s face went slowly white. He said, “My lady! Forgive me for what I would have done!”

  Sharla’s voice was metallic and emotionless. She said, “I forgive you, Ordovic. Take your money and go.”

  He said, “You wish me to take your money, Ser Landor?”

  Landor shook it at him in annoyance. “Take it!”

  Ordovic snatched it from him and tossed it in his hand. A strange set smile played on his lips. “Right, Ser Landor!” he said. “Whether you like it or not, you have bought you a fighting man. I take no pay without service.”

  Landor looked at him with astonishment and then chuckled reluctantly. He said, “Soldier, you are a man of mettle. You are right. The road is grim from here to Argus as I know to my cost—”

  “How great a cost?” said Ordovic.

  “Some seven thousand circles,” said Landor, his eyebrows rising.

  “My price is a fraction of that,” said Ordovic. He set his helmet on his head and waited.

  Sharla said, “Ser Landor, there is the matter of my price—”

  “I bought you, Sharla. You are free—and when should you have been otherwise? Come, put my cloak around you and let us go.”

  She moved like one in a dream.

  Three months, it took. They came by way of Tellantrum, Forbit and Poowadya, and wasted three precious days at the frontier world of Delcadoré because Sharla was without papers and needed an Outland visa to enter the Empire. Ordovic rattled his sword under the nose of a frightened bureaucrat, and they obtained clearance in three days instead of three weeks. Then they came to Anfagan and Neranigh, and mercifully found a friend of Landor’s whose private ship was heading for Penalpar by way of Mercator, and brought them within hailing distance of Argus. And then by one last of the big slow traders that were now the only ships on the star-routes save the fleet and wicked vessels of the pirates and the navies of the autochthonous worlds, to Oppidum on Argus, and by helicopter to the castle of the kings.

  But they had come too late.

  And then the knowledge that Sharla was indeed heiress to the Regency of the Empire—and a burning shame was in him at what he had done, not to be quenched till he had given her back what he and his breed had taken from her—honor, dignity, rank, and the right to hold up her head in the company of kings.

  He slapped his hilt thoughtfully.

  After a short while he went to his quarters and was met by three silent slaves who offered to take his harness off and bathe him. He dismissed them angrily.

  “Am I a woman, then, that I should need aid in undressing? Out, slaves! Fetch me a meal, and get gone!”

  They vanished in a flurry, and he stripped and slid luxuriously into the steaming tub before the log fire that spat and crackled on the hearth. He had learned long ago that sorrows are best forgotten as soon as recalled, and what Sharla had said had faded from his mind.

  He was towelling himself lustily when the slaves reappeared with trays of food and drink, and he paused to look at it. He poked the food suspiciously and said, “What is this?”

  “The brains of katalabs and the hearts of nugasha fried in pebab oil,” said the first slave proudly. “This is honey cake with Thanis garlic, and this frozen breast of quail.”

  “Faugh! You call that a meal? Fetch me the roast thigh of the katalabs whose brains you would have done better to lend to your own, and three measures of ancinard, and as much fruit as one of you puny children can carry. I wish to eat—not peck!”

  A quarter hour later he obtained what he wanted, and he chased the slaves away and, with caution born of long experience, searched the room thoroughly from floor to ceiling for spy-holes. He found three, and after pushing his sword down each to discourage eavesdroppers, he plugged them with strips torn from a curtain until he could obtain mortar and fill them permanently.

  Lastly he called for a swift horse and rode into Oppidum.

  The Street of the Morning had seemingly been so named because it was never so alive as at night. There were harsh yellow lights at the eaves of its buildings, and it was thronged with people of all colors and shapes. The beggars clustered in droves around the cheap infra-red lamps at the intersections, claiming a few ring from the passers-by. Occasionally a spaceman or a soldier on a spree was foolish enough to toss one of them a full circle or even more, and they flocked after him who was so lavish like bees after honey.

  There were the women of easy virtue, too; but most of them were in the cafes and drinking-shops, for the night was far spent already when Kelab the Conjurer again came down the Street. There were stars thick in the sky, and six of Argus’s nine moons hung over this hemisphere, but there were also yellow torches on the battlements of the fortress on the Hill of Kings, and he listened to the talking of the wind and not the noise of the crowds.

  He descended the steps and pushed his way into the House of the Bubbling Spring. It was bright and hot and noisy; a good deal of extravagant love-making was going on; there was a three-piece orchestra playing curious Outland instruments, one with strings to be bowed, one blown and one struck with little yellow mallets; there was the same party of spacemen playing shen fu, and their low-voiced bids and the click of chips went on unnoticed.

  The lid was over the Mimosan chromograph behind the bar, and four attendants moved among the tables. Finzey sat in front of his rows of bottles, grinning like a fat god. At the sight of Kelab he let go a joyous shout and reached for a bottle of the conjurer’s choice.

  Kelab nodded and leaned on the counter while it was being poured out, his head cocked to one side, the gold disk in his left ear gleaming in the garish light.

  Finzey set the mug before him, said, “So you’re back, Kelab! What have you done today? Earned your thousand circles yet?”

  The conjurer smiled faintly and nodded. “I think I have earned them again. Your burying money rises well?”

  “Seven thousand and ninety circles and a few odd ring at sundown last,” said Finzey proudly. “There has not been such a bowlful before in Oppidum, even at the burying of a king.”

  Kelab nodded. He said, “The poor will feast well if all the cities on Argus give so freely.”

  Finzey’s expression suddenly became drawn and worried. He said, “Kelab, while we speak of burying money, there was one who needed burying above on the street—remember?”

  Kelab said, “I recall her. Well?”

  “At noon there was but three ring in that cup.”

  The conjurer looked up. “I put a circle there myself, fat one.”

  “As I surmised. Will you divine the thief? Here is her cup.” He pushed a little tin mug across the bar, and Kelab picked it up and handled it, his face going strained and his eyes unfocused in the effort to recall.

  His hands, if any had watched them, would have seemed to flow like water on and in the mug, as if hands and mug were one, and there was a curi
ous flicker of blue fire when at length he relinquished it. He said, “It is hard to see, for the theft was the act of a moment and the thief thought little of the cup. Where are the three ring he left?”

  Finzey picked three tiny coins from a shelf behind him, and passed them to Kelab, who felt them one by one. He said finally, “Two of them were placed there after the theft, but the third remembers. The thief thought very hard about the money.”

  “His name?” said Finzey eagerly.

  “Arcta the Wolf,” said Kelab casually. “You will see to it?”

  Finzey nodded. The conjurer said, “It wearies me, that divination. I need rest.” He picked up his mug of liquor and walked into the deep shadowed bay at the far end of the room among the loving couples, and chose an empty alcove and a bare table. He sat down, and became a shadow among shadows.

  Later, Ordovic too came into the Street of the Morning. He had walked the Low City since close on sundown, asking for a dusky man, a conjurer named Kelab, and since his Argian was scanty and his thieves’ argot scarcely better, his temper had frayed thin.

  But one of them had mentioned Finzey, at the sign of the Bubbling Spring, and he had come here, hoping.

  Also he wanted a drink.

  Finzey came to him, his face expressionless.

  “Ancinard,” said Ordovic. “A big measure, fat one. And some strine.”

  Without more expression than a statue Finzey slashed three strips from a side of strine under the bar and folded each into a ball and laid them on a plate. He filled a measure with fuming red ancinard, and pushed both across the counter.

  “Seven circles,” he said.

  Ordovic dropped the coins tinkling on the bar, took the measure and the plate and turned away to seek a table. His eyes swept the room.

  And suddenly, as he looked into the darkness at the far end, shadowed with consummate artistry for the lovers using it, the loud noise and the bright lights vanished and there were three birbrak trees, and a sky above powdered with rare stars except where the galaxy lay in a monstrous wheel. There was a shadowed pool of darkness facing him—a bay in one of the trees.

  Someone, somewhere, gave forth the drone of a Loudor moth.

  He took a few steps forward like a man in a dream as the trees brightened. Sharla? Sharla?

  Then there was a puff of smoke and a great crashing wind—

  And nothing before him except a slender man with a dusky face, staring into a mug of liquor cupped between his hands.

  “You?” said Ordovic hoarsely. “You? How did you know?”

  Kelab swirled the liquor in the mug and a stream of bubbles fled up from the bottom like a flock of birds rising into clear air. He said, “Be seated, Ordovic.”

  Ordovic lowered himself by touch on to the seat opposite him in the alcove, his eyes fixed on Kelab’s face. He found the forgotten drink and the strine in his hands, and pushed them to one side of the table. There was some kind of blue curtain drawn across the mouth of the alcove, which pulsed as if it were alive and glowed with a quiet light.

  Kelab said finally, “It was blazed like a beacon on the surface of your mind, Ordovic. You have met Sharla and you can never be the same again.”

  “That is truth,” said Ordovic. His hand stole out and he took the ancinard and sipped it. The fumes did something to his head, and when he looked at Kelab again, it was with a new clarity.

  He said, “I have been seeking you since sundown, here in the Low City.”

  Kelab nodded, still gazing into his mug as if it were a divining-bowl. He said, “I knew.”

  “You knew? And yet you let me tramp on, hunting for you?”

  The conjurer nodded again, with the suspicion of a smile. “I am not found unless I choose to be found, Ordovic. There are few men so completely master of their fate as I.”

  “My lady Sharla sent me to bring you to her,” Ordovic said slowly.

  “Her words were, to be exact, ‘If you can, buy him—if you must, drag him’,” agreed Kelab.

  Ordovic’s mouth fell open and he said, “Can you know everything that passes in my mind, wizard?”

  “Only that which is close to the surface. But, in answer, tell her I am not to be bought and that the man is not born who could drag me. Besides, she already owes me a thousand circles.”

  “What for?” demanded Ordovic, aghast.

  “For the regulation of the matter of the marriage bond,” said Kelab casually. “If she chooses to pay me, I shall be at my ship on the spaceport tomorrow, about the hour of ten. If not, not; but I shall not choose to see you again.”

  Ordovic bounded to his feet. “Of all the insolence!” he shouted, his hand closing on the hilt of his sword.

  Kelab’s hand moved like a ripple on water and the sword stuck fast in its sheath. He said, “Sit, Ordovic.”

  “Coward!” accused Ordovic bitterly. “You dare not fight with a man’s weapons!”

  “For that,” said Kelab evenly, “I am entitled by your standards to kill you. You would kill a man who called you a coward. I, whose powers are immeasurably greater than yours, dare not be so casual. I hold this world in the hollow of my hand, Ordovic. Remember that when you call me a coward.

  “You will come tomorrow morning.”

  He stood up and crumpled the blue curtain over the mouth of the alcove and shook it into nothing. Ordovic said, “Suppose I do not choose to?”

  “You will come,” said Kelab, and walked away into the brightness beyond.

  Ordovic followed him with his eyes, his hand automatically seeking the hilt of his sword. It moved easily in its scabbard again, but now that he had the chance of drawing it he left it, and sat slowly down again behind the table, his hand pulling his ancinard towards him.

  VI

  Ten o’clock. Six moons over the castle of the kings, a few flying clouds, a chill wind that rustled the crowns of the trees. In the castle—near silence, for there was no carousing tonight. Andalvar of Argus lay dead in the castle, and tomorrow was the day of burying.

  Sharla had eaten at the table of her guests, and there was a blank space left for the Barkasch of Mercator. But rumor said Barkasch and his company of fighting men had lifted at sundown from Oppidum and bent for Mercator again, Barkasch in a towering rage.

  She had eaten in somber silence, bowing to the guests as they arrived and departed, and took the first opportunity of returning to her apartment with Landor. When she did so, Valley and the other quick, quiet maids bathed her in scented water and combed her hair.

  Landor sat in the antechamber, thoughtfully sampling the fruit which packed the silver bowls and considering the impending visit to Sabura Mona. An enigma, that one: all-powerful over Andalvar, seeking perhaps to establish the same control over Sharla.

  Suddenly a smile touched his lips. A worthy antagonist, perhaps: for Landor held that the man—or woman—who could match him in the game of statecraft was not yet born.

  Sharla came through from the inner room, her hair golden and shining around her face, wearing a plain white kirtle without sleeves that reached to her knees. She was barefoot.

  Landor surveyed her appreciatively. He said, “Sharla, I don’t despair of you. It seems that your childhood schooling in the arts of deception is not entirely lost to you.”

  Sharla nodded seriously. She said, “The innocent Outland girl without much experience—is my disguise.”

  He nodded back. “If you will put on your least subtle expression, I think it is near the hour.”

  Sharla turned to the trio of waiting slaves, said, “Valley, Lena, Mershil, I shall not need you again tonight. Call me at the same hour tomorrow. You may go.”

  They curtsied silently and withdrew.

  Then Sharla and Landor called the guard from the door and requested escort to the chambers of Sabura Mona.

  The guard led them down echoing stone passages lit only by flickering torches. They passed slaves on errands, who failed to recognize Sharla in her unregal attire and went by with a scuffle of ba
re feet. The passages grew colder and the torches more and more infrequent.

  Sharla said in a low voice to Landor, “She doesn’t live in state, does she?”

  “That’s an understatement,” said Landor softly. “This is a part of the castle reserved to the slaves, as I recall, apart solely from Sabura Mona’s apartment. I do not understand. A woman of power and influence—”

  The guard stopped before a plain wooden door set in the stone wall. There was no mat before it and no curtain, no guard stationed outside. Just the plain door.

  “This is it,” said the guard.

  “Strike the door and say the Princess Sharla awaits,” commanded Landor, and the guard pounded twice at it with his fist.

  A soft voice from within questioned, “Who stands there?”

  “The Princess Sharla awaits, Sabura Mona,” answered the guard.

  There was no sound of bars being withdrawn or bolts shooting into place, but the door began to open gently and the guard turned and strode wordlessly away.

  Sharla looked questioningly at Landor, and he nodded. She went in.

  The room beyond was bare—quite bare. The walls were unadorned stone and the floor was uncarpeted. There was no fire in the hearth, and two flaring torches were the only lights. There was a rough bed with a coarse cloth spread, a table with half a dozen pens and ink and sheets of paper, wooden chairs.

  On one of the chairs sat Sabura Mona.

  She wore a homespun robe of brown which did no more than cover her fat body, nothing to decorate it. She was the fattest woman Sharla had ever seen. Her arms were like tree-branches and her legs like tree-trunks, but soft. Yet she was not absurd.

  No. She was not fat. She was big. She was imposing. There was no shadow of the ludicrous in her monstrous bulk. And Sharla wondered why.

  It was her eyes, she thought. They were big and dark and there was the sorrow of a world in their depths, as if the wisdom of all the ages hid behind that mask of soft pendulous flesh.