by Issac Asimov
“I don’t think it’s particularly selfish not to want to die. At least for nothing. I’ve got some fighting to do before I go. My father fought them.” He knew he was beginning to sound melodramatic, but she affected him that way.
She said, “And what good did it do your father?”
“None, I suppose. He was killed.”
Artemisia felt unhappy. “I keep saying I’m sorry, and this time I really mean it. I’m all upset.” Then, in defense, “I’m in trouble, too, you know.”
Biron remembered. “I know. All right, let’s start all over.” He tried to smile. His foot was feeling better anyway.
She said, in an attempt at lightness, “You’re not really ugly.”
Biron felt foolish. “Oh well—”
Then he stopped, and Artemisia’s hand flew to her mouth. Abruptly, their heads turned to the door.
There was the sudden, soft sound of many ordered feet on the semi-elastic plastic mosaic that floored the corridor outside. Most passed by, but there was a faint, disciplined heel-clicking just outside the door, and the night signal purred.
Biron and Artemisia froze at the sound of the little signal. It sounded a second time and then there was the cautious rap upon the door, and Gillbret’s voice was heard.
“Do let me try, Captain,” it said. Then, more loudly, “Artemisia!”
Biron grinned his relief and took a step forward, but the girl put a sudden hand upon his mouth. She called out, “One moment, Uncle Gil,” and pointed desperately toward the wall.
Biron could only stare stupidly. The wall was quite blank. Artemisia made a face and stepped quickly past him. Her hand on the wall caused a portion of it to slide noiselessly aside, revealing a dressing room. Her lips motioned a “Get insidel” and her hands were fumbling at the ornamental pin at her right shoulder. The unclasping of that pin broke the tiny force field that held an invisible seam tightly closed down the length of the dress. She stepped out of it.
Biron turned around after stepping across what had been the wall, and its closing endured just long enough for him to see her throwing a white-furred dressing gown across her shoulders. The scarlet dress lay crumpled upon the chair.
He looked about him and wondered if they would search Artemisia’s room. He would be quite helpless if a search took place. There was no way out of the dressing room but the way he had entered, and there was nothing in it that could serve as a still more confined hiding place.
And now he could only wait, staring at the blank wall; waiting for the sound of feet within the room, for the wall to pull back once more, for the muzzles facing him again, this time without a visisonor to help him.
He waited, holding a neuronic whip in each hand.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Biron tensed as the door slid away again. He held his breath and his fingers stiffened.
Artemisia stared at his whips. “Be careful!”
He puffed out his breath in relief and stuffed each into a pocket. They were very uncomfortable there, but he had no proper holsters. He said, “That was just in case it was somebody looking for me.”
“Come out. And speak in a whisper.”
She was still in her night robe, woven out of a smooth fabric with which Biron was unfamiliar, adorned with little tufts of silvery fur, and clinging to the body through some faint static attraction inherent in the material, so that neither buttons, clasps, loops, or seam fields were necessary. Nor, as a consequence, did it do more than merely faintly dim the outlines of Artemisia’s figure.
Biron felt his ears reddening, and liked the sensation very much.
Artemisia waited, then made a little whirling gesture with her forefinger and said, “Do you mind?”
Biron looked up at her face. “What? Oh, I’m sorry.”
He turned his back to her and remained stiffly attentive to the faint rustling of the change of outer garments. It did not occur to him to wonder why she did not use the dressing room, or why, better still, she had not changed before opening the door. There are depths in feminine psychology which, without experience, defy analysis.
She was in black when he turned, a two-piece suit which did not reach below the knee. It had that more substantial appearance that went with clothing meant for the outdoors rather than for the ballroom.
Biron said, automatically, “Are we leaving, then?”
She shook her head. “You’ll have to do your part first. You’ll need other clothes yourself. Get to one side of the door, and I’ll have the guard in.”
“What guard?”
She smiled briefly. “They left a guard at the door, at Uncle Gil’s suggestion.”
The door to the corridor ran smoothly along its runners an inch or two. The guard was still there, stiffly immobile.
“Guard,” she whispered. “In here, quickly.”
There was no reason for a common soldier to hesitate in his obedience to the Director’s daughter. He entered the widening door, with a respectful, “At your service, my ]—” and then his knees buckled under the weight which came down upon his shoulders, while his words were cut off, without even an interrupting squawk, by the forearm which slammed against his larynx.
Artemisia closed the door hurriedly and watched with sensations that amounted almost to nausea. The life in the Palace of the Hinriads was mild almost to decadence, and she had never before seen a man’s face congest with blood and his mouth yawn and puff futile under the influence of asphyxia. She looked away.
Biron bared his teeth with effort as he tightened the circle of bone and muscle about the other’s throat. For a minute the guard’s weakening hands ripped futilely at Biron’s arm, while his feet groped in aimless kicks. Biron heaved him clear of the floor without relaxing his grip.
And then the guard’s hands fell to his sides, his legs hung loosely, and the convulsive and useless heavings of the chest began to subside. Biron lowered him gently to the floor. The guard sprawled out limply, as though he were a sack which had been emptied.
“Is he dead?” asked Artemisia, in a horrified whisper.
“I doubt it,” said Biron. “It takes four or five minutes of it to kill a man. But he’ll be out of things for a while. Do you have anything to tie him up with?”
She shook her head. For the moment, she felt quite helpless.
Biron said, “You must have some Cellite stockings. They would do fine.” He had already stripped the guard of weapons and outer clothing. “And I’d like to wash up too. In fact, I have to.”
It was pleasant to step through the detergent mist in Artemisia’s bathroom. It left him perhaps a trifle overscented, but the open air would take care of the fragrance, he hoped. At least he was clean, and it had required merely the momentary passage through the fine, suspended droplets that shot past him forcefully in a warm air stream. No special drying chamber was required, since he stepped out dry as well as clean. They didn’t have this on Widemos, or on Earth.
The guard’s uniform was a bit tight, and Biron did not like the way the somewhat ugly, conical military cap fit over his brachycephalic head. He stared at his reflection with some dissatisfaction. “How do I look?”
“Quite like a soldier,” she said.
He said,-“You’ll have to carry one of these whips. I can’t handle three.”
She took it between two fingers and dropped it into her bag, which was then suspended from her wide belt by another microforce, so that her hands remained free.
“We had better go now. Don’t say a word if we meet anyone, but let me do the talking. Your accent isn’t right, and it would be impolite to talk in my presence unless you were directly addressed, anyway, Remember! You’re a common soldier.”
The guard on the floor was beginning to wriggle a bit and roll his eyes. His wrists and ankles were securely tied in a clump at the small of his back with stockings that had the tensile strength of more than an equal amount of steel. His tongue worked futilely at his gag.
He had been shoved out of the way, so that
it was not necessary to step over him to get to the door.
“This way,” breathed Artemisia.
At the first turning there was a footstep behind them, and a light hand came down on Biron’s shoulder.
Biron stepped to one side quickly and turned, one hand catching the other’s arm, while his other snatched at his whip.
But it was Gillbret who said, “Easy, man!”
Gillbret rubbed his arm. “I’ve been waiting for you, but that’s no reason to break my bones. Let me stare admiringly at you, Farrill. Your clothes seem to have shrunk on you, but not bad—not bad at all. Nobody would look twice at you in that getup. It’s the advantage of a uniform. It’s taken for granted that a soldier’s uniform holds a soldier and nothing else.”
“Uncle Gil,” whispered Artemisia urgently, “don’t talk so much. Where are the other guards?”
“Everyone objects to a few words,” he said pettishly. “The other guards are working their way up the tower. They’ve decided that our friend is on none of the lower levels, so they’ve just left some men at the main exits and at the ramps, with the general alarm system in operation as well. We can get past it.”
“Won’t they miss you, sir?” asked Biron.
“Me? Hah. The captain was glad to see me go, for all his toe scraping. They won’t look for me, I assure you.”
They were speaking in whispers, but now even those died away. A guard stood at the bottom of the ramp, while two others flanked the large, carved double door that led to the open air.
Gillbret called out, “Any word of the escaped prisoner, men?”
“No, my lord,” said the nearest. He clicked his heels together and saluted.
“Well, keep your eyes open,” and they walked past them and out, one of the guards at the door carefully neutralizing that section of the alarm as they left.
It was night time outside. The sky was clear and starry, the ragged mass of the Dark Nebula blotting out the specks of light near the horizon. Palace Central was a dark mass behind them, and the Palace Field was less than half a mile away.
But after five minutes of walking along the quiet path, Gillbret grew restless.
“There s something wrong,” he said.
Artemisia said, “Uncle Gil, you haven’t forgotten to arrange to have the ship ready?”
“Of course not,” he snapped at her, as nearly as one could snap in a whisper, “but why is the Field Tower lit up? It should be dark.”
He pointed up through the trees, to where the tower was a honeycomb of white light. Ordinarily, that would indicate business at the field: ships leaving for space or arriving from it.
Gillbret muttered, “Nothing was scheduled for tonight. That was definite.”
They saw the answer at a distance, or Gillbret did. He stopped suddenly and spread his arms wide to hold back the others.
“That’s all,” he said, and giggled almost hysterically. “This time Hinrik has really messed things properly, the idiot. They’re here! The Tyranni! Don’t you understand? That’s Aratap’s private armored cruiser.”
Biron saw it, gleaming faintly under the lights, standing out among the other undistinguished ships. It was smoother, thinner, more feline than the Rhodian vessels.
Gillbret said, “The captain said a ‘personage’ was being entertained today, and I paid no attention. There’s nothing to do now. We can’t fight Tyranni.”
Biron felt something suddenly snap. “Why not?” he said savagely. “Why can’t we fight them? They have no reason to suspect trouble, and were armed. Let’s take the Commissioner’s own ship. Let’s leave him with his trousers down.”
He stepped forward, out of the relative obscurity of the trees and onto the bare field. The others followed. There was no reason to hide. They were two members of the royal family and an escorting soldier.
But it was the Tyranni they were fighting now.
Simok Aratap of Tyrann had been impressed the first time he had ever seen the Palace Grounds at Rhodia years earlier, but it had turned out to be only a shell that had impressed him. The interior was nothing but a musty relic.
Aratap felt uncomfortable in the shell and was unhappy. It was late, he was tired, his eyes burned so that he longed to remove his contact lenses, and, most of all, he was disappointed.
There was no pattern! He glanced occasionally at his military aide, but the major was listening to the Director with expressionless stolidity. As for Aratap himself, he paid little attention.
“Widemos’s son! Indeed?” he would say, in abstraction. Then, later, “And so you arrested him? Quite right!”
But it meant little to him, since events lacked a design. Aratap had a neat and tidy mind which could not bear the thought of individual facts loosely clumped together with no decent arrangement.
Widemos had been a traitor, and Widemos’s son had attempted a meeting with the Director of Rhodia. He had attempted it first in secret, and when that had failed, such was the urgency, he had attempted it openly with his ridiculous story of an assassination plot. Surely that must have been the beginning of a pattern.
And now it fell apart. Hinrik was giving up the boy with indecent haste. He could not even wait the night, it seemed. And that did not fit at all. Or else Aratap had not yet learned all the facts.
He focused his attention on the Director again. Hinrik was beginning to repeat himself. Aratap felt a twinge of compassion. The man had been made into such a coward that even the Tyranni themselves grew impatient with him.
And yet it was the only way. Only fear could insure absolute loyalty. That and nothing else.
Widemos had not been afraid, and despite the fact that his self-interest had been bound at every point with the maintenance of Tyrannian rule, he had rebelled. Hinrik was afraid and that made the difference.
And because Hinrik was afraid, he sat there, lapsing into Incoherence as he struggled to obtain some gesture of approval. The major would give none, of course, Aratap knew. The man had no imagination. He sighed and wished he had none either. Politics was a filthy business.
So he said, with some air of animation, “Quite so. I commend your quick decision and your zeal in the service of the Khan. You may be sure he will hear of it.”
Hinrik brightened visibly, his relief obvious.
Aratap said, “Have him brought in, then, and let us hear what our cockerel has to say.” He suppressed a desire to yawn. He had absolutely no interest in what the “cockerel” had to say.
It was Hinrik’s intention at this point to signal for the captain of the guard, but there was no necessity for that, as the captain stood in the doorway, unannounced.
“Excellency,” he cried and strode in without waiting for permission.
Hinrik stared hard at his hand, still inches from the signal, as though wondering whether his intention had somehow developed sufficient force to substitute for the act.
He said uncertainly, “What is it, Captain?”
The captain said, “Excellency, the prisoner has escaped.”
Aratap felt some of the weariness disappear. What was this? “The details, Captain!” he ordered, and straightened in his chair.
The captain gave them with a blunt economy of words. He concluded, r‘I ask your permission, Excellency, to proclaim a general alarm. They are yet but minutes away.’
“Yes, by all means,” stuttered Hinrik, “by all means. A general alarm, indeed. Just the thing. Quickly! Quickly! Commissioner, I cannot understand how it could have happened. Captain, put every man to work. There will be an investigation, Commissioner. If necessary, every man on the guards will be broken. Broken! Broken!”
He repeated the word in near hysteria but the captain remained standing. It was obvious that he had more to say.
Aratap said, “Why do you wait?”
“May I speak to Your Excellency in private?” said the captain abruptly.
Hinrik cast a quick, frightened look at the bland, unperturbed Commissioner. He mustered a feeble indignation. �
�There are no secrets from the soldiers of the Khan, our friends, our—”
“Say your say, Captain,” interposed Aratap gently.
The captain brought his heels together sharply and said, “Since I am ordered to speak, Your Excellency, I regret to inform you that my Lady Artemisia and my Lord Gillbret accompanied the prisoner in his escape,”
“He dared to kidnap them?” Hinrik was on his feet. “And my guards allowed it?”
“They were not kidnaped, Excellency. They accompanied him voluntarily.”
“How do you know?” Aratap was delighted, and thoroughly awake. It formed a pattern now, after all. A better pattern than he could have anticipated.
The captain said, “We have the testimony of the guard they overpowered, and the guards who, unwittingly, allowed them to leave the building.” He hesitated, then added grimly, “When I interviewed my Lady Artemisia at the door of her private chambers, she told me she had been on the point of sleep. It was only later that I realized that when she told me that, her face was elaborately made-up. When I returned, it was too late. I accept the blame for the mismanagement of this affair. After tonight I will request Your Excellency to accept my resignation, but first have I still your permission to sound the general alarm? Without your authority I could not interfere with members of the royal family.”
But Hinrik was swaying on his feet and could only stare at him vacantly.
Aratap said, “Captain, you would do better to look to the health of your Director. I would suggest you call his physician.”
“The general alarm!” repeated the captain.
“There will be no general alarm,” said Aratap. “Do you understand me? No general alarm! No recapture of the prisoner! The incident is closed! Return your men to their quarters and ordinary duties and look to your Director. Come, Major.”
The Tyrannian major spoke tersely once they had left the mass of Palace Central behind them.
“Aratap,” he said, “I presume you know what you’re doing. I kept my mouth shut in there on the basis of that presumption.”