The Complete Dumarest, page 128
“You don’t want to hurt me,” she said, and lowered her arm. “You are gentle, Earl, and kind, and you think of others. You have shown me what love really is.”
He reached for his wine and sipped cautiously, wetting his lips while pretending to swallow. He felt the prickle of danger as if he stood at the edge of an invisible chasm in utter darkness. A thing not seen but sensed with the instinctive caution which had more than once saved his life.
“Love,” she mused. “Such a complex emotion, as you once told me, Earl. And it comes in so many different forms. The love of a man for his brother, for his companions, an emotion strong enough for him to risk his life. The love of a man for a woman. A woman for a man. A passion strong enough to make him kill. Never before have I experienced such a thing. Once I would have thought it madness.”
Dryly he said, “There are those who would agree with you.”
“But not you, Earl.”
“In some cases, yes.”
“No. Such an emotion would not be love as you have taught me it should be. Greed, maybe, the desire to possess, a yearning to fulfill a personal need, but it would not be true love.”
She had learned, he thought, and perhaps learned too well. He toyed with his wine, conscious of his inadequacy. He could have sensed a real woman’s mood and played on it, appealing to her pride and intelligence, manipulating words and meanings to achieve a desired end. But a woman would have had obvious motives none of which could be applied to Tormyle. This thing beside him, no matter how she appeared, was not a woman but the manifestation of a planetary intelligence.
“You admit that we have answered your question,” he said. “The thing you wanted to know.”
“Yes, Earl.”
“Then when can we leave?”
A couch stood against one wall. She moved toward it and gestured him to join her. As he seated himself, she said, “Why are you in so much of a hurry, Earl? I have provided for your friends. They have comfort and pleasant surroundings.”
“It isn’t enough. Men aren’t animals to be satisfied with food and a comfortable prison.”
“Other comforts, then? A larger house, a greater variety of food, entertainment which could amuse and please?”
Putting down his wine, Dumarest said, “You said the ship had been repaired and we made a bargain. We have kept our side of it. When are you going to keep yours?”
“Later, Earl.”
“You will let us go?”
Her laughter was music. “Of course, my darling. You worry over nothing. But not yet. I have waited so long for novelty, do you begrudge me a little now that I have the chance to enjoy it?”
He said flatly, “More fights, Tormyle? More tests? More tricks to amuse you?”
“No.” She moved against him, coming very close, her thigh touching his so that he could feel the softness of her flesh, the warmth of her body. A real woman would have felt like that, but she wasn’t real. Always he must remember that. She wasn’t real.
As if reading his thoughts, she said, “Touch me, Earl. Hold me. Close your eyes and be honest. Can you tell the difference between me and that other?”
He could, but he knew better than to say so.
“Can you imagine what my life has been?” she asked softly. “The long, so long, empty years. Always alone. I didn’t realize how much alone until you came. Now things can never be the same as they were. I have seen what life can really be like, the interplay of emotion, the sense of companionship, the sharing. Can you understand, Earl? Can you even begin to guess what it means? The ability to talk to someone as I talk to you. The knowledge that there is something wonderful which I can share. To love and be loved. To belong to someone. To have another entity care for me so strongly that he would kill and die for my sake. You have it. To you it is a normal part of existence, but I have never known it until now. I want it, my darling. I want it and you can give it to me. You must!”
He said, very carefully, “Me?”
“You, Earl.”
“I don’t understand, Tormyle. What can I give you that you don’t already have?”
She reached out to touch his shoulder and turned him so as to stare into his face. Her hair caught the light in metallic shimmers, bronze, beautiful, as were her face, her eyes.
“You are not a fool, Earl. You understand well enough. But if you want me to say it I will. I love you, darling. I love you—and I want you to love me in return.”
Chapter Fourteen
Vast caverns filled with crystalline growths, endless tunnels through which ran conductive fluids, the blazing heart of atomic fires; the brain, the veins, the heart of a planetary being. The control of tremendous forces were the hands which could reach across space, move worlds, tear apart the hearts of suns.
A world demanding to be loved.
Dumarest was thinking in mechanistic terms and that was wrong. Tormyle wasn’t simply a gigantic artifact There was more, a life-form in its own right, an intelligence which was too vast to comprehend. It was better to sit and look at the female shape and think of her as a woman with a woman’s needs: to meet her on those terms and deal with her as he could.
He said casually, “You have learned more than I guessed, Tormyle. It seems now that you also have a sense of humor.”
“Earl?”
“Surely you must be joking.”
“You think that? No, darling, I’m serious. And would it be so hard for you to love me? If this shape doesn’t please you, there are others I can wear. Shapes without number. And there is more I can offer. Think of what you desire and it will be yours. See?”
The apartment dissolved and became a great hall filled with bowing courtiers, creatures fashioned to obey his dictates. The hall opened to show fields of crops, houses, snaking roads filled with traffic. Mountains reared, golden, glittering with gems. They sank into an ocean filled with strange fish and on which armadas sailed. Ten thousand women danced in the silver light of a sky filled with lambent moons.
All his for the price of love.
More power than any man had ever dreamed of. A world for his plaything in which he would rule as a king. A god.
A pet.
He lifted his wine as the apartment returned, his hand shaking a little as he drank, deeply this time, quenching more than a physical thirst. Every man had his need for heaven and she had shown him that and more. But at a price.
Unsteadily he said, “You offer much, perhaps too much, and I am overwhelmed. But you forget I am mortal and will age. You will grow bored. What then?”
“I will never grow bored, Earl. Not with your love.”
“And the rest?”
“Your age?” She laughed, triumphant. “Such a little thing. My darling, I can take your mind and the pattern which makes you unique and I can store it in a part of my being. You will never die. Your body, the shape you wear, may age, but then it can be replaced. We shall be together for an eternity, Earl. Always together. Always in love.”
A girl in the grip of her first love affair making promises impossible to keep. For a year, ten perhaps, and then the novelty would fade. She would become impatient with his limitations and he would become, at the best, a tolerated pet; at the worst a thing to be eliminated. Even if neither happened, what would happen to his pride?
He rose and moved restlessly about the room. It was warm, comfortable, but it had no door and no matter how pleasant a place it was still a prison. As the entire planet was a prison and one from which he had to escape.
He said, “You don’t need me.”
“That is nonsense, darling.”
“You will forget,” he said. “After we have gone, all this will diminish in importance. An interesting experiment which has yielded a new fact no more. You feel this way because you have put too much of yourself in a female shape. You have built too well. Change and you will no longer feel the same. Love is not as you think. It can’t be switched on. It is something founded in shared hardship, suffering and even pain. Unending joy would sicken and cloy by repetition. Surely you understand that.”
She sat very still and when she spoke there was no laughter in her voice.
“You refuse me?”
Carefully he tried to soften the fact. “Not refuse. Not in the way you mean. But I am a man and you are a world. What could there be in common between us? You can give me everything I wish, true; but what can I give you? Protection? You don’t need it. Comfort? How can that be possible? Companionship? I can’t even begin to understand the complexity of your being. As I said, you don’t need me.”
“You are wrong, Earl. So very wrong. I need the one thing I cannot otherwise obtain. The thing which you alone can give.”
An obsession, he thought, or perhaps the culmination of an experiment in which he was an integral part. Or it could be that he was observing the symptoms of a growing aberration. There was no way to be sure. He could be cunning and agree to do as she asked. With a normal woman who held him in her power that is what he would have done: given lip service and waited for an opportunity to escape. But how could he ever free himself from the tyranny of a planetary intelligence?
He said flatly, “What you ask is impossible. I can’t love a world.”
“You must stop thinking of me like that, Earl,” she insisted. “I am a woman.”
“If you were I would kill you. For what you did out there in the valley.”
“The experiment?” She shrugged. “Certain things had to be determined. The girl, for example. You care for her. But why her and not me? How am I different from that entity for whom you risked your life?”
He said harshly, “Isn’t that obvious? You have experienced none of the normal things which go to make a person. You are a beautiful pretense and nothing more. Damn it, you aren’t even human.”
“And if I were?”
He hesitated, sensing danger, conscious that he had already said too much. A woman scorned could be a vicious enemy and she was acting like a jealous woman, a woman determined to get her own way no matter what the cost. And he knew how ruthless she could be.
It was a time for lies.
“If you were it would be different. You are lovely, as you know, and any man would be proud to call you his own. But you are not human and we both know it.” He added regretfully, “It is something I cannot forget.”
“But if I were a real woman, Earl, as frail as you, as mortal?”
“Perhaps.”
“And if I could bear you sons?”
He almost smiled at the impossibility, but this was no game, no pleasant bandying of words.
“Certainly. But that is beyond reason. Why don’t you prove your love and let us go?”
“Perhaps I will, Earl,” she said softly. “Perhaps I will go with you. You would like that. You and I together, sharing, enjoying all the things which lovers do. It can be done, Earl. You know that.”
He tensed, sensing the closing jaws of a trap. Carefully he said, “I cannot begin to understand the full extent of your powers, Tormyle, but even you can’t become wholly human.”
“No?” Her laughter held a hint of mockery. “You know better than that, Earl. There is a way and you know it. You will give it to me, as a token of your love.”
* * *
The apartment vanished. Abruptly he was in the open air, staggering a little from the sudden shock of transition, catching his balance as the ground seemed to move beneath his feet. Before him the house quivered, then dissolved into streamers of colored smoke. From within the mist he heard Chom’s startled roar.
“The meat! The wine! What is happening?”
A gust of air blasted away the mist. Dumarest felt the pressure on his back and turned to see the great bulk of the ship standing at the end of the valley where the cages had hung suspended from their chains. It had been moved to this place by the power of Tormyle.
He heard Kara cry out and saw him running toward the ship. Daroca stared and headed toward him, Chom at his heels. Mayenne passed them both. She was shaking, her face wet with tears.
“Earl! I thought you were dead. When I woke and found you gone I didn’t know what to do.”
“We looked everywhere,” said Daroca. “But I guessed what had happened. Tormyle?”
“Yes.”
“A long, cozy chat?” said Chom. “A deal, maybe?”
“We talked, yes.”
“About her letting us go?” Chom rubbed his hands. “I wish I could have joined the conversation. A woman like that, crazy for love, how often does a man get such a chance? You took advantage of it, of course. Used your attraction to get us free. A bonus too, perhaps? A cargo of precious metal to help us on our way? Food, at least; that meat was delicious.”
Daroca said, “Chom, you disgust me. What happened, Earl? Has anything been decided?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you spoke?”
“Yes, and something was decided, but I am not sure exactly what.”
He remembered the girl, the words she had used, the thin spite in her voice at the last, that and the expression of triumph in her eyes. Human emotions for an alien being, too human, and he wondered if it had all been part of an act. There had been something else too, a note of conviction that, in this game they were playing, she would surely win.
And he would help her do it.
Kara came back toward them from the ship. He looked distraught.
“It’s still sealed,” he said. “I don’t understand it. Why should Tormyle have brought the ship here, if it didn’t intend us to leave? Damn it, we did what it wanted; why can’t it play fair?”
“You credit it with a sense of justice it doesn’t possess,” said Daroca, “and ethics it couldn’t understand. Fair play is a uniquely human attribute. It is a voluntary sense of duty toward another which dictates that it is moral to keep a promise. It isn’t even universal. On Krag, for example, there is a culture which has no time for such softness. They think it a mark of insanity. On that world it is normal to lie and cheat and steal.”
“Philosophy,” Chom sneered. “At a time like this we have to listen to your spouting. You said that I disgusted you, Daroca; well, you sicken me. It is all very well for the wealthy to prate of ethics, but when you’ve had to snatch a living from the dirt you have no time for such luxuries.”
“I hardly call acting like a civilized human being a luxury.”
The entrepreneur shrugged. “What does it mean to be civilized? To live in houses and obey laws and consider others? There are harsher jungles in cities than are to be found on primitive worlds. A code of ethics, then? If Tormyle said that all could leave but one and that one was you, Daroca, would you be willing to sacrifice yourself? If it chose another, Earl perhaps, would you insist that he stayed?”
“That is an academic question.”
“Is it?” Chom’s eyes were shrewd. “Perhaps it is, but there has to be some reason why we still cannot leave. Is that what happened, Earl? Was an offer made?”
“No.”
“If it came to that, would you be willing to stay so that we could leave?”
“He wouldn’t stay alone,” said Mayenne. “I would never leave without him.”
“Love,” said Chom. “Madness. To hell with it. Kara, let’s see if we can get into that ship somehow.”
The ports were sealed as they had been before. Dumarest examined them, frowning. Chom and the officer slammed heavy stones against the locks. The metal resisted the impact. Chom swore as a stone split in his hands, and he flung aside the pieces.
“There has to be a way,” he stormed. “We are intelligent beings with brains and imagination. A lock is nothing but a strip of metal—surely we can find a way to break it Kara, can’t we get in through the vents?”
“Without tools, no.”
“Explosives?” Chom was clutching at straws. “A ram of some kind?”
A hammer was the best they could devise. Dumarest swung the long shaft made from a sapling he had cut down with his knife. The head was a great stone lashed with strips of cloth. Three times he slammed the weight against the port, denting the metal before the lashings broke and the stone fell to one side. Panting, chest heaving from the effort of manipulating the heavy weight, he watched as Kara checked the lock.
“It’s still fast,” he said. “I don’t think we can get in this way.”
“We can try,” snapped Chom. “Stop worrying about the damage to your precious vessel and help me repair the hammer.”
At Dumarest’s side Mayenne said quietly, “It isn’t over yet; is it, Earl? If Tormyle was willing for us to leave, why should the ship still be sealed?”
“An oversight, perhaps.” He was deliberately casual. “Or perhaps a final test. If we are intelligent we should be able to gain entry.”
“We couldn’t before.”
“Our motives were different. Then we wanted weapons and shelter. Now we are all together and want to leave. Once we hammer in that port our troubles will be over.”
He watched as Chom lifted the repaired hammer, thick shoulders heaving as he lifted the weight. He took two steps toward the port and halted, pressing at the air.
Kara said sharply, “What is wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Chom grunted as he pushed forward, the hammer falling from his hands. “Daroca?”
“It’s a barrier,” he said wonderingly. “Invisible, soft, but I can’t pass. It seems to be all around the ship.”
“Not the ship,” said Kara. He had been investigating. “About us.”
It circled them in a cylinder of confining energy through which they could see the trees, the cliffs and the ship now more remote than ever before. Dumarest looked at the others where they had spread to determine its perimeters. As he watched they fell toward each other, pushed by the relentless pressure he felt at his back, moving to halt in a circle ten feet in diameter. He lifted his hand. Two feet above his head he felt resistance. Stooping, he thrust his knife at the soil. It halted an inch below the surface.
“Earl?” Mayenne’s eyes reflected her fear as she caught at his arm. “What is happening?”
