The Complete Dumarest, page 318
“You refuse!”
“To walk blindly into a trap, yes. To take a chance with the prospect of reward is another matter. You offer a reward?”
“Isn’t your life—” Gustav broke off then continued, “There will be a reward if you are successful. That I promise. And it will be large. The Matriarch will be generous to the man who restores her daughter to a normal life.”
“Her daughter?”
“And mine.” Gustav looked at the mirrors. “Our only child.”
“Iduna,” said Kathryn. “We named her Iduna. It was a name found by Gustav in an old book.”
“One a trader brought me, Earl. The name is that of an ancient goddess of spring, the guardian of the golden apples which the gods tasted whenever they wished to restore their youth.”
“Legend.”
“Of course, but what of that? And surely you have no quarrel with legend? A man who dreams of finding Earth?” Gustav smiled and gestured with both hands. “A scrap of delirium, Earl. You raved a little as they operated on your wound. Nonsense, naturally, but interesting as a matter of speculation. Mysterious planets, lost and forgotten which offer tremendous riches to those who are fortunate enough to find them. Earth is but one. Paradise is another. Eden another, I think, and Bonanza too if I am not mistaken. I have a list here somewhere.”
“Leave it,” said Kathryn as he turned to rummage among his papers. “We have other things to discuss.”
They were in Gustav’s study where she had joined them together with wine. Glasses to ease the tension and to occupy hands, though Dumarest needed no such aids. A mistake, she thought, the careful manipulation had been unnecessary. A direct proposition would have worked just as well but it had seemed wise to be sure. And she had doubted her own reaction to his presence. Anger, aroused at memory of his touch, his threats could have overwhelmed her. Even now she had to remember that he was to be used and was worth more alive than dead. Remembering that she held his life in her hands helped her to retain her equanimity. And she needed him. If he could win where the others had failed all would be forgiven.
The wine slopped in her glass as she lifted it to her lips and drank, barely tasting the wine, feeling only its needed warmth.
“Iduna,” said Dumarest meeting her eyes. “Your daughter who is lost.”
“Not lost. Not exactly. That is—Gustav, why don’t you explain?”
“You saw the man in the compound,” he said. “Would you say he was lost?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“And Iduna is lost in a similar way. That is we have her body safe on Esslin. We even know what happened to her. We can guess where her mind, her intelligence must be. But we can’t find it, Earl. We can’t get to her. We can’t guide her back to us!”
A mystery. Dumarest waited for him to explain.
“I collect old things.” Gustav gestured toward his desk, the crammed files standing against the wall, the shelves holding enigmatic objects. “Traders bring them knowing of my interest and usually they ask little for what, to them, is rubbish. To others too, perhaps, but to me it is an entrancing hobby. To piece scraps together to form a whole, to build from it, to guess and surmise, to indulge in fantasy and explore myths such as that of Earth. It began when, as a boy, I was given an old almanac. Then a recording of a play in which strange names were used. I’ve them both somewhere and used to value them highly. Now I wish to God I’d never seen them!”
The man was distraught. Dumarest poured wine and handed him the goblet.
“Thank you,” Gustav drank and sucked in his breath. “I digress. Iduna, I must tell you about Iduna. Of the thing she found while I was away. That damned, cursed thing found on a blighted world!”
“Gustav!”
“Yes.” He looked at the woman, responding to the iron note of command. “Yes, my dear.”
“You were not to blame!”
“So you tell me. But if it hadn’t been for my interest. If I had been more careful. If I hadn’t—”
“Luck,” said Dumarest. “We spoke about it, remember? Bad luck which causes you to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. The kind which made me a victim of slavers.” He glanced at the woman. “Which almost cost me my life.”
Without looking at him she said, “Continue, Gustav.”
“A thing,” he said. “A trader bought it, he said, and thought of me. If he told the truth about its origins it was found when an earth-mover dug up a mass of debris and dropped it on the surface. The story could be true, stranger things have happened, and at the time I wasn’t interested. The thing itself was enough. An artifact of some kind and one never made by man. You realize what I am saying, Earl? I held the product of an alien civilization in my hands.”
Dumarest wasn’t impressed. “In some sectors such things are common. Bricks fashioned by some ant-like creature with rudimentary intelligence. Pots made of dust cemented with spittle. Discs scored with lines which could be equations of some kind. And—”
“Rubbish!” Gustav was impatient. “I know of such items and they prove nothing but that certain life forms constructed certain patterns which need have nothing to do with true intelligence. But can you deny that others must have lived in the galaxy before us?”
“No.”
“Then you can understand my excitement. I had examined it in a dozen ways and finally gained a response to certain stimuli. A reaction which registered on a dozen instruments. I couldn’t wait. I ran to the laboratory to gain the aid of experts and, while I was gone, Iduna entered the study.”
Memory of it made him weak, events long past suddenly alive again so that he could hear the thud of his feet as he ran, instinct warning him something was wrong. Feel again the pounding of his heart, the empty sickness in his stomach, the shouts which tore his throat, the tears which stung his eyes.
See again the small, limp figure lying before the damned artifact.
A sacrifice to his alien god.
“Here!” He looked up and saw Dumarest standing close with a glass in his hand. Dutifully he took it and drank and coughed as the contents caught at his throat. Brandy this time, distilled energy, an anodyne to the pain which had been obvious for all with eyes to see. “And then?”
“Nothing!” The glass shattered in his hand and he stared at the blood marring the whiteness of his palm. “Nothing!”
Nothing but endless grief, endless regret, the hollow emptiness and the accusation, never admitted, which he saw in Kathryn’s eyes. Or imagined he saw—what did it matter? The guilt was his.
“We tried,” said Kathryn. “My technicians aren’t fools and it was obvious the collapse had to be connected somehow with the Tau.” She noticed Dumarest’s frown. “We had to call it something.”
“Isn’t the word connected with something precious?”
“Anything connected with my daughter is that. But as I was saying tests were made on the Tau and others made on Iduna. She seemed to be asleep but for no apparent cause. No trace of drugs, injury, shock or the passage of any kind of energy. It just seemed that, somehow, she had been sucked from her body. Her awareness, that is, her basic self.”
“A working hypothesis,” said Gustav. “We had to begin somewhere.”
And later facts had supported it. Dumarest listened as they were enumerated, the checks, tests with beasts, tests with the girl, and then, after a long while, the first volunteer.
“He was mad,” said Kathryn. “Insane. He had to be to plunge into the unknown. But I think he loved me and certainly he loved my child.” She paused then said softly, “He was the first to die.”
“How?” Dumarest snapped his impatience. “Save the wake until later, my lady, grief for those I have never known is a luxury I cannot afford. How did the hero die?”
His insult worked as he’d intended. The flush on her cheeks matched the sudden flare of anger in her eyes and, at that moment, she would cheerfully have watched him die. Then Gustav, more perceptive, said, “Earl is right, my dear. He needs to know.”
“He died,” she said stiffly. “Quickly, thank God, but he taught us a little even as he did so. The next lasted longer and after him came others. You’ve seen one of the latest.”
“And you want me to join them?”
“No! No, Earl, the very opposite.” Gustav was emphatic. “We want you to succeed where they failed. To go after Iduna wherever she might be, to find her, to bring her back to us. And, if you do that—”
“Freedom,” said Kathryn. “Full citizen status, land, money, slaves if you want them.”
And death should he refuse. Dumarest glanced at the litter of papers, the files, the shelves then at the faces of the others.
The man would be reluctant but not the woman. And she had the power.
“Well?”
“Iduna,” said Dumarest. “It’s time that I saw her.”
* * *
The room was a womb, a place in which to hold a precious egg, the walls of softly shimmering satin, the floor piled with sterile whiteness. The bed was long and wide and as starkly white as the rest of the furnishings. On it, covered by a single sheet, rested a girl.
She was small, delicately boned, fashioned with an elfin grace. The face was pert, the chin pointed, the eyes closed, lashes lying like resting moths on the smooth alabaster of her cheeks. Beneath the cover her body held an immature softness. Hair spilled from her rounded skull to frame her face with a tapestry of jet.
Dumarest had expected a child. He saw a young and lovely girl.
“She was eleven when it happened,” whispered Gustav. “That was years ago now. She has grown since then.”
Fed by machines, massaged by devoted servants, her physical well-being monitored every moment of the day. Dumarest could see the thin lines of monitor wires, the staring eyes of electronic alarms.
“Does she move?”
“At times, yes. Turning as if dreaming in her sleep. At first, during such times, we hoped she was about to recover but always we were disappointed. Now we have almost ceased to hope.”
“The others who followed her, did they follow the same pattern?”
“For a while but never for long. Deterioration was present almost from the first. They would fall and seem to be asleep but then display symptoms of unease. Then, when they woke, they were not whole. You’ve seen Muhi. You know what I mean.”
Struggling back to a parody of life to shamble like mindless beasts as their bodies spun into dissolution. The men but not the girl. She had lain quietly for years without apparent harm. Her sex?
“No,” said Gustav when Dumarest asked the question. “It can’t be that. We had a few female volunteers in the early days but they failed as did the men. And the technicians assure me there is no difference in the structure of a male and female brain.”
“We are retreading old ground,” said Kathryn. “Let us see the Tau.”
It was close, housed in an adjoining chamber, one which had been enlarged to hold a battery of instruments and testing devices all centered on the alien thing which stood at chest height on a stand of polished rods. A light shone down on it, a cone of harsh, white brilliance balanced by others focused from ground level so as to eliminate all shadow.
A thing double the size of a man’s head, rounded, nodulated, alien—and beautiful!
Dumarest walked toward it, seeing the shimmering interplay of light on the granulated surface, the birth and death of living rainbows, wells of luminescence which winked and shifted to glow again and to vanish as the eye attempted to examine their configurations.
Light from the focused brilliance caught and reflected into breathtaking splendor. Or was it just the light?
Dumarest said, not turning his head, “Is this the usual arrangement? Are things as they were when the volunteers took their chance?”
Kathryn said, “Marita?”
The technician was old, her face smooth, her hair a crested mass of silver, yet there was nothing soft or weak about her eyes and nothing indecisive in her voice. “Things are exactly the same, my lady.”
“Speak to Dumarest. Answer his questions. Explain if he needs explanations.”
“Facts will do.” He stared into the woman’s eyes and saw the reflected glow of the cones of brilliance, the sparkling shimmer of the Tau. “Always it is the same?”
“There have been variations. We are not fools. Temperatures have ranged from freezing to half again the heat of blood. There has been calculated vibration and electronic blankets of silence. It is all in the reports.”
“I’ve no time to read them. Turn off the lights.” Dumarest looked again at the Tau as, reluctantly, she obeyed. The rainbows had not died. The coruscations of color seemed even brighter than before, sparkling and whirling, spinning, holding, expanding to contract to expand again in an attention-holding succession of enticement. “Lights!”
He narrowed his eyes as they blazed into life and turned from the enigmatic object they illuminated. After-images danced to form shifting blurs of color, and he waited until they had gone. From across the room a technician studying monitors coughed and swallowed, the sound oddly loud.
“Well?” Marita was looking at him. She radiated the impatience of an expert to one who had interloped into her field. “Is there anything else?”
“Did the volunteers take any precautions? Make any preparations?”
“What would be the point? Clothing and weapons would be useless.”
“I was thinking of less tangible things. Appeals to the gods, perhaps. Prayers. Mental adjustments of some kind. Deep breathing, even.” His voice hardened. “I’m serious, woman!”
“Some, yes,” she admitted. “They would vocalize their mental attitudes. Others seemed to meditate before taking the final step. You know what that is, of course?”
“I know what it has to be.”
“Then—”
“That will be all. Thank you for your courtesy.” He looked at Gustav. “Did Iduna often play with the things she found in your study?”
“Yes.”
“There was no rule against it? No prohibition she could be conscious of breaking?”
“No, of course not. Why do you ask? What are you getting at?”
Questions Dumarest ignored as he stood thinking, remembering, assessing the information he had gained. It was little enough but it would have to do.
“The time,” he said. “When you found Iduna in your study what time was it?”
“Late afternoon.” Gustav sounded baffled. “Earl, I don’t understand what you are getting at. What does the time matter?”
“You have only one window and the sun sets to one side. Am I correct?”
“Yes. The window faces to the north and the sun sets in the west.” Sudden understanding warmed the man’s voice.
“The light? You think the intensity of light had something to do with it?”
“Perhaps. Marita, lower the brilliance of the lights.” Dumarest frowned as they died. “Don’t kill them, woman! Just dim them.”
“How? We have no rheostat in the circuit.”
“Then fit one!” Kathryn was sharp. “And be quick about it!” As the technician hurried to obey she said to Dumarest, “You have discovered something? You have a plan?”
“An idea. It may be nothing.” He knew she wanted more. “A question of attitude,” he explained. “I feel it could be important.”
“Is that all?” She frowned her disappointment, the frown clearing as Marita called that all was ready. The woman had worked fast. “Have you seen enough?”
Dumarest nodded. The gamble had to be taken, there was no point in extending delay.
“Then commence!”
Guards stepped from where they had been lurking in the shadows, armed, armored, strong women dedicated to the Matriarch. Invisible until now but always Dumarest had been conscious of their presence. Watching, waiting for him to move, to make the journey which others had taken and which, for them, had ended in mindless dead. One he had no choice but to take in turn.
“Dim the lights,” he ordered. “More. More—keep dimming until you emulate a shadowed room.”
The harsh glare faded as he began to walk toward the Tau, dulling even more as the complimentary lights died so as to leave the enigmatic object apparently unsupported and shining with a soft effulgence as if oil had been spread on glowing water.
Dumarest stared at it, concentrating, adjusting his attitude, blanking out the threat of guards and possible horror. Forgetting those who had gone before aside from one. Iduna who now lay quietly sleeping in a room of sterile whiteness.
And, walking, he stepped through time and space to a point years in the past when a happy, carefree child came skipping into a deserted study to discover something new and wonderful which held an immediate fascination. A bright and glowing object illuminated by the dusty light of the setting sun. Enigmatic, mysterious, magical.
And he became that child, running now, entranced, eager to discover what a doting parent had bought. To reach out with open arms. To fold them around the Tau. To hug it close and to press his face against the bright enchantment. To feel the faintest of tingles and to see the luminosity suddenly expand to engulf him. To take him elsewhere.
Chapter Four
He was in a room designed for the use of giants with walls which soared like the face of cliffs and a ceiling which looked like a shadowed sky. The floor was covered with a carpet with a pile so thick it reached to his ankles and all about loomed the bulk of oddly familiar furniture. Turning he studied grotesquely distorted tables, chairs, something which could have been a desk, something else which held stuffed and sagging dolls.
“Hello, there! Will you play with me?”
Dumarest spun to see a waddling shape come hopping toward him. A parody of what a human should be; the face round as were the eyes, the mouth a grinning slit, the chin merging into the neck, the whole dressed in a clown’s attire.
“Will you play?” The voice had a high-pitched squeakiness. “I know lots of fine games. We could hunt the slipper or find the parcel or we could roll marbles or climb. Don’t you want to play?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Clownie. I’m the one who makes you smile when you are sad and unless I am very, very good, very good, you give me no tea but that isn’t often because always I am good.”
