Complete Short Fiction, page 270
The reason made no difference. Whatever it was gave him a breathing spell free of tension. That was important, to begin with. But even that was unimportant in the long run.
He had a plan, and he intended to force Ashargin to take any and every-risk. That included, if necessary, ignoring direct orders from Enro himself.
The corridor door was unlocked—as it had been a week before, A woman carrying a pail was coming along the corridor. Gosseyn closed the door behind him, and beckoned the woman. She trembled, apparently at the sight of the uniform, and she acted as if she was not accustomed to being addressed by officers.
“Yes, sir,” she mumbled. “The Lady Nirene’s apartment, sir? Two flights down. Her name is on the door of the apartment.”
Nobody stopped him. The girl who answered the door was pretty, and looked intelligent. She frowned at him, then left him standing. He heard her farther inside the apartment hallway call, “Niy, he’s here.” There was a muffled exclamation from inside. And then Nirene appeared in the hallway. “Well,” she snapped, “are you coming in? Or are you going to stand there like a nitwit?”
Gosseyn held his silence. He followed her into a tastefully furnished living room, and sat down in the chair to which she motioned him. There was no sign of the other woman. He saw that Nirene was studying him with bleak eyes. She said in a bitter voice, “Speaking to you carries heavy penalties.”
“Let me reassure you,” said Gosseyn; “you are in no danger of any indignity from the Prince Ashargin.” He spoke deliberately in the third person. “He’s not a bad sort, actually.”
“I have been ordered,” she said, “ordered on pain of death.” She was tense.
“You cannot help it if all your advances are refused,” said Gosseyn.
“But then you risk death.”
“The prince,” said Gosseyn, “is being used for a private purpose of Enro. You don’t think Enro will leave him alive after he’s through, with him.”
She was suddenly very pale.
“You dare to talk like that,” she breathed, “knowing that he might be listening.”
“The prince,” said Gosseyn, “has nothing to lose.”
Her gray eyes were curious—and more. “You speak of him—as if he is someone else.”
““It’s a way of thinking objectively . . .” He broke off. “But I had two purposes in coming to see you. The first is a question, which I hope you will answer. I have a theory that no man can subjugate a galactic empire in eleven years, and that four million hostages held here in Gorgzid indicate tremendous unrest throughout the Greatest Empire. Am I right about that?”
“Why, of course.” Nirene shrugged. “Enro is quite candid about it. He is playing a game against time, and the game interests him as much as: the result itself.”
“It would. But now, question two.” Quickly, he explained Ashargin’s position in the palace, and finished, “Has he yet been assigned an apartment?”
Nirene’s eyes were wide and wondering. “Do you mean to tell me,” She said, “that you don’t really know what has happened?”
Gosseyn did not answer. He was busy relaxing Ashargin, who had suddenly become tense. The young woman stood up, and he saw that she was regarding him in a less Unfriendly manner. She pursed her lips, and then looked back with a searching, puzzled gaze.
“Come with me,” she said. She walked swiftly to a door that opened on to another corridor. She passed through a second door at the far end, and stepped aside for him to enter. Gosseyn saw that it was a bedroom.
“Our room,” she said. Once again the tone was in her voice, and her eyes watched him questioningly. She shook her head finally. “You really don’t know, do you? Very well, I’ll tell you.”
She paused, and tensed a little, as if putting the fact into words gave it a sharper reality, then: “You and I were married this morning under a special decree issued by Secoh. I was officially notified a few minutes ago.”
Having spoken the words, she slipped past him, and was gone along the corridor.
Gosseyn closed the door after her and locked it. How much time he had he didn’t know, but If the Ashargin body was ever to be reorientated, then moments like this must be utilized.
His plan was very simple. He would remain in the room until Enro ordered him to do some specific thing. Then he would disobey the order.
He could feel Ashargin quivering at the utter deadliness of such an idea. But Gosseyn held out against the weakness, and thought consciously for the benefit of the other’s nervous system; “Prince, every time you take a positive action or prevent a negative one, part of a conditioned reflex is established. The totality of such conditioned reflexes makes for automatic courage, automatic self-assurance and automatic skills.”
All that was oversimplified, of course, but a necessary preliminary to higher level Ā training.
Gosseyn’s first act was to go into the bathroom and turn on the hot water. He set the thermostat, and then, before undressing, went out to the bedroom to look for a mechanical device that would give off a rhythmic sound. He failed to find one.
That was disappointing, but still there were makeshifts titbit would do. He undressed and, when the tub was full, turned off the faucet, but allowed a steady leak, not too fast and not too slow.
He had to force himself to climb into the water. For Ashargin’s thin body, it seemed hot to the point of scalding. At first he breathed gaspingly, but gradually he grew accustomed to the heat, and he settled back and listened to the rhythmic sound of the leak.
Drip, drip, drip, went the faucet. He kept his eyes unblinkingly open, and watched a bright spot on the wall at a point higher than eye level. Drip, drip, drip. Steady sound, like the beat of his heart. Beat, beat, beat—hot, hot, hot, he transposed the meaning. So hot, every muscle was relaxing. Drip—drip—drip. Re-lax, re-lax, re-lax.
There was a time in the history of man on Earth when a drop of water falling rhythmically on a man’s forehead had been used to drive him mad. This, of course, was not on the head; the position under the faucet would have been uncomfortable. But the principle was the same.
Drip—drip—drip. The Chinese torturers who used that method didn’t know that behind it was a great secret, and that the man who went mad did so because he thought he would, because he had been told he would, because he had absolute faith that the system would produce madness.
I f his faith had been that it would produce sanity, the effect was just as great in that direction. If his faith had been that it would make a thin, gangling body strong, the rhythm worked equally well in that direction. Drip, drip, drip. Relax, relax, so easy to relax. In hospitals on Earth, when men were brought in taut from emotional or physical ills, the warm bath was the first step in relaxation. But unless other steps were taken, the tension soon returned. Conviction was the vital ingredient, a flexible, empirical sort of conviction which could be readily altered to fit the dynamic world of reality, yet which was essentially indestructible. Gosseyn had it. Ashargin did not. There were too many unbalanced developments in his weak body. Years of fear had kept his muscles flabby, drained His energy and stultified his growth.
The slow minutes dragged rhythmically by. He felt himself dozing. It was so comfortable, so cozy, to lie in the warm water, in the womb of warm water from which all life had come. Back in the hot seas of the beginning of things, in the bosom of the Great Mother—and drift to the pulsing rhythm of a heartbeat that still quivered with the thrill of new existence.
A knock on the outer door of the bedroom brought him lazily back to awareness of his surroundings. “Yes?” he called.
“Enro,” came the strained voice of Nirene, “has just called. He wants you to report to him immediately.”
Gosseyn felt the pang go through Ashargin’s body. “All right,” he said.
“Prince,” said Nirene, and her tone was urgent, “he was very blunt about it.”
Gosseyn nodded to himself. He felt stimulated, and he could not completely fight off Ashargin’s uneasiness. But there was no doubt in his mind as he climbed out of the bathtub.
The moment for him to defy Enro had arrived.
He dressed, nevertheless, without haste, and then left the bedroom. Nirene was waiting in the living room. Gosseyn hesitated at sight of her. He was acutely conscious of Enro’s special power of hearing and seeing through solid walls. There was a question he wanted to ask, but not directly.
The solution occurred to him after a moment. “Have you a palace directory?”
She walked silently to the videophone in one corner, and brought a glowing, flexible plate, which she handed him with the explanation. “Just pull this slide down. Each time it clicks it shows the floor of the person you want, and where his apartment is. There’s a list of names on the back. It’s automatically kept up to date.”
Gosseyn didn’t need the list. He knew what names he wanted. With a quick movement of his hand he slid the lever to Reesha, covering the action as much as possible.
Presumably, Enro could “see” through a hand as readily as through walls, but there must be some limitation to his gift. Gosseyn decided to depend on speed.
One glance he took, had his information—and then he shifted the lever to the name of Secoh. That, also, required only an instant. He moved the lever casually but swiftly to zero position, and handed the plate back to Nirene.
He felt wonderfully calm and at ease. The Ashargin body was quiescent, accepting the violent positivities that were being forced upon it with an equanimity that promised well for the future.
“Good luck,” he said to Nirene.
He suppressed an Ashargin impulse to tell her where he was going. Not that Enro wouldn’t know in a few minutes. But he had the feeling that if he named his destination an attempt would be made to divert him.
Out in the hall, he walked swiftly toward the stairway, climbed one flight of stairs, which brought him within one floor of Enro’s apartments. He turned off to the right, and a moment later he was being admitted J:o the apartment of the woman he had once known as Patricia Hardie. He hoped that Enro would be curious as to what his sister and the Prince Ashargin had to say to each other, and that the curiosity would restrain him from immediate punitive action.
As Gosseyn-Ashargin followed the servant into a large reception room, he saw that Eldred Crang was standing at the window. The Venusian Ā detective turned as the visitor entered, and gazed thoughtfully at him.
There was silence as they looked at each other. It seemed to Gosseyn that he was more interested in seeing Crang than Crang could possibly be in the Prince Ashargin.
He could appreciate Crang’s position. Here was an Ā who had come into the heart of the enemy stronghold, who was pretending—with her connivance—that he was married to the sister of the warlord of the Greatest Empire, and on that tenuous basis—more tenuous even than he might realize, in view of Enro’s belief in brother-sister marriage—was apparently prepared to oppose the dictator’s plans.
Just how he would do it was a problem in strategy. But then there were people who might wonder how the Prince Ashargin could ever hope to set himself against the same tyrant. Gosseyn was trying to solve that problem by a bold defiance, based upon a plan that still seemed logical.
He had no doubt that Crang would be equally bold, if necessary. And that he would not have come at all if he had thought his presence would not have some effect.
It was Crang who spoke first. “You wish to see the Gorgzin Reesha.” He used the feminine of the title of ruler on Enro’s home planet.
“Very much.”
Crang said: “As you possibly know, I am the Gorgzin’s husband! I hope you don’t mind telling me your business first.”
Gosseyn welcomed it. The sight of Crang had braced him immensely. The non-Aristotelian detective was so skillful an operator that his mere presence on this scene seemed partial proof at least that the situation was not as bad as it seemed.
Crang spoke again. “What’s on your mind, prince?” he said pleasantly.
Gosseyn launched into a frank account of what had happened to Ashargin. He finished, “I am determined to raise the level of the prince’s position here in the palace. So far he has been treated in an unforgivably debasing fashion. I should like to use the good offices of the Gorgzin to alter the attitude of his excellency.”
Crang nodded thoughtfully. “I see.” He came away from the window, and motioned Gosseyn-Ashargin into a chair. “I hadn’t really estimated your position in this picture at all,” he said. “From what I had heard, you were accepting the debasing role which Enro assigned to you.”
“As you can see,” said Gosseyn, “and as Enro must be realizing, the prince insists that so long as he is alive he be treated according to his rank.”
“Your use of the third person interests me,” said Crang, “and I am also interested in the qualifying phrase ‘so long as he is alive.’ If you are able to hold firmly to the implications of that phrase, it seems to me the, uh, prince might obtain redress from the Gorgzid.”
It was approval of a kind. It was cautious and yet unmistakable. It seemed to assume that the dictator might be listening in on the conversation, and so the words were on a high verbal level. Crang hesitated, then went on:
“It is doubtful, however, if my wife could be of much assistance to you as an intermediary. She has taken the position of being absolutely opposed to the war of conquest which her brother is waging.” That was information indeed, and from the look on Crang’s face, Gosseyn realized that the man had imparted it to him deliberately.
“Naturally,” said Crang, “as her husband, I also oppose the war without qualification.”
Briefly, it was dazzling. Here was their method of boldness, different from his own, yet rooted in the special reality of Patricia’s relationship to Enro. Gosseyn grew critical. The-method had the same inherent flaws as did the opposition he was developing at this moment. How were they overcoming the flaw? Gosseyn asked the question.
“It seems to me,” he said slowly, “that in taking such a stand, you and the Gorgzin have greatly restricted your freedom of action. Or am I wrong?”
“Partly wrong,” said Crang. “Here in this sun system, my wife’s legal rights are almost equal to those of Enro. His excellency is greatly attached to the traditions, the customs and the habits of the people, and so he has made no effort to destroy any of the local institutions.”
It was more information. And it fitted. It fitted his own plan. Gosseyn, was about to speak again, when he saw that Crang was looking past his shoulder. He turned, and saw that Patricia Hardie had entered the room. She smiled as her eyes met his.
“I was listening in the next room,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Gosseyn indicated that he didn’t, and there was a pause. He was fascinated. Patricia Hardie, the Gorgzin Reesha of the planet Gorgzid, sister of Enro—the young woman who had once pretended to be the daughter of President Hardie of Earth, and who had later pretended to be the wife of Gilbert Gosseyn—with so great a career of intrigue behind her, she was unquestionably a personality to be reckoned with. And, best of all, she had never to his knowledge wavered in her support of the League and of Ā.
She was, it seemed to him, becoming more beautiful, not less. She was not quite so tall as Leej, the Predictor woman, but she seemed more lithely built. Her blue eyes had the same imperious expression in them as was in Leej’s gray eyes, and both women were equally good looking. But there the resemblance ended.
Patricia glowed with purpose. Perhaps it was a youthful purpose, but the other woman didn’t have it. Possibly, he knew what Leej was like, and knew, also, Patricia’s career. That could be very important. But Gosseyn thought it was more than that. Leej was a drifter. As long as she had been aware of her future, she had had no reason to be ambitious. And even if she should suddenly acquire a purpose, now that she could no longer depend on her prophetic gift, it would take a long time to change her habits and her basic attitude.
Crang broke the silence: “Prince,” he said and his tone was very friendly, “I think I can clear up your puzzlement as to why you are married to Lady Nirene. My wife, knowing nothing of the conversation of last week, took it for granted that any relationship between Nirene and yourself would be legalized by the church.”
Patricia laughed softly. “It never occurred to me,” she said, “that there were undercurrents in the situation.”
Gosseyn nodded, but he was grim. He assumed that she was aware of Enro’s past intentions for her, and that she regarded those intentions lightly. But she was missing, additional undercurrents, it seemed to him, Enro must still hope for a legal marriage relationship with his sister, or he would not, have tried to prevent her from learning that he regarded the relationship as unimportant where other people were concerned. His about-face gave a sharp insight into both his character and his purposes.
“Your brother,” Gosseyn. said aloud, “is a remarkable man.” He paused. “I presume he can hear what we’ve saying here—if he so desires.”
Patricia said. “My brother’s gift had a curious history.” She paused, and Gosseyn, who was looking directly at her, saw from her expression that she intended to give him information. She went on, “our parents were either very religious or very clever. They decided that the male Gorgzid heir should spend his first year after birth in the crypt, with the Sleeping God. The reaction of the people was hostile in the extreme, and so after three months Enro was removed, awakened, and thereafter his childhood was normal.
“He was about eleven when he began to be able to see and hear things in distant places. Naturally father and mother immediately considered it a gift from the God himself.”
“What does, Enro think?” asked Gosseyn.
He didn’t hear her answer. A rush of Asharghi memories flooded into his consciousness about the Sleeping God, bits of things he had learned when he was a slave of the temple.
