The Complete Dumarest, page 49
“And now you want something in return,” said Jerome. “It is a natural reaction. But what you want and what others are willing to give need not be the same. I suggest you make an appointment in the normal manner.”
He turned, feeling deflated, empty. Pride, he thought bitterly. A man makes a prison in which to live and calls it his pride. Sometimes the prison is so strong that he can never break out. Again he heard the hiss of inhalation. Something caught at his garment.
“Brother!” Centon’s voice was almost unrecognizable. “Help me, Brother! For the love of God, help me!”
Jerome turned, smiling, waving off the guarding monks. His hand fell to the one gripping his robe. Centon’s hand: big, scarred, the knuckles white as he gripped the fabric. “Of course, brother!” said the High Monk. “Why else am I here?”
* * *
The inner office was a sanctuary in which Brother Jerome spent most of his waking hours. It was a comfortable place, a curious blend of the ultra-modern and near-primitive. Books lined the walls, old, moldering volumes together with spools of visual tape, recording crystals, impressed plastic and molecularly-strained liquids which, when stimulated, resolved themselves into mobile representations in full, three-dimensional color.
There were other things. Little things for the most part, for a monk has to carry what he possesses and weight and size are limiting factors. A fragment of stone, a shell, a plaited length of plastic wire. A piece of curiously carved wood, a weathered scrap of marble and, oddly, a knife made of pressure-flaked glass. Centon looked at it, then at the placid face of the monk seated behind his wide desk. “An unusual object,” he said. “Did you make it?”
“On Gelde,” admitted Jerome. “A primitive, backward planet only recently rediscovered. The natives had forgotten much of what they knew and had developed a metal-worshiping religion. They confiscated my surgical instruments. I made that knife as a general purpose scalpel and used it during my stay.” He dismissed the knife with a gesture. “And now, brother,” he said gently, “you asked for my help. Tell me your problem.”
Centon approached the desk and stood before it, the reflected light gleaming from his protective cloak. “I need to find my daughter.”
Jerome remained silent.
“She left home many years ago,” said Centon. “Now I need to find her.”
“And you think that we can help you?”
“If you cannot, then no one can!” Centon strode the floor in his agitation, his stride oddly heavy. “I belong to a noted family on Sard,” he said abruptly, then immediately corrected himself.
“Belonged.” His voice was bitter. “Can one man claim to constitute a family? We held wide estates, owned factories, farms, a fifth of the wealth of the planet was ours. And then my younger brother quarreled with the third son of the family of Borge. The quarrel was stupid, something over a girl, but there was a fight and the boy died.” He paused. “The fight was unofficial,” he said. “Need I tell you what that means?”
On the vendetta worlds it meant blood, murder, a wave of savage killing as family tore at family. “You could have admitted guilt,” said the monk quietly. “Your younger brother would have paid the blood-price and ended the affair.”
“With his death? With each Borge coming and striking their blow, abusing his body, killing him a dozen times over? You think I could have stood for that!” Again the floor quivered as Centon strode in agitation. “I tried,” he said. “I offered reparation to the extent of one-third of our possessions. I offered myself as a surrogate in a death-duel. They wanted none of it. One of their number had died and they wanted revenge. Three weeks later they caught my younger brother. They tied his feet to a branch and lit a fire beneath his head. His wife found him that same evening. She must have gone a little mad because she took a flier and dropped fire on the Borge estates, destroying their crops and farms. They retaliated, of course, but by then we were ready.” He paused, brooding. “That was five years ago,” he said. “That is why I need my daughter.”
“To fight and kill and perhaps to die in such a cause?” Brother Jerome shook his head. “No.”
“You refuse to help me find her?”
“If she were in the next room I would refuse to tell you,” said the monk sternly. “We of the Church do not interfere in the social system of any world, but we do not have to approve of what we see. The vendetta may be good from the viewpoint that it cuts down great families before they can establish a totalitarian dictatorship but, for those concerned, the primitive savagery is both degrading and cruel.” He paused, shaking his head, annoyed with himself. Anger, he thought, and condemnation. Who am I to judge and hate? Quietly he said, “If my words offend you I apologize.”
“I take no offense, Brother.”
“You are gracious. But is it essential that you find your daughter? Do you need her to end the vendetta?”
Centon was curt. “It is ended.”
“Then—?”
“The family must be rebuilt. I am the last of my name on Sard. The name of Borge is but a memory.”
Brother Jerome frowned. “But is your daughter necessary for that? You could remarry, take extra wives. You could even adopt others to bear your name.”
“No!” Centon’s feet slammed the floor as he paced the room. “It must be my seed,” he said. “My line that is perpetuated. The immortality of my ancestors must be assured. It would be useless for me to take extra wives. I cannot father a child under any circumstances. Aside from my daughter I am the last of my clan and I am useless!”
Standing, facing the desk, he swept open his long cloak. Metal shone in the light: smooth, rounded, seeming to fill the protective material. Brother Jerome stared at half a man.
The head was there, the shoulders, the arms and upper torso but, from just below the ribs, the flesh of the body merged into and was cupped by a metal sheath. Like an egg, thought the monk wildly. The human part of the man cradled in a metal cup fitted with metal legs. He took a grip on himself. Too often had he seen the effects of violence to be squeamish now. The cup, of course, contained the surrogate stomach and other essential organs. The legs would contain their own power source. In many ways the prosthetic fitments would be better than the fleshy parts they replaced but nothing could replace the vital glands. It was obvious that Centon could never father a child.
“We miscounted,” he explained dully. “I was to blame. I thought all the Borge were dead but I overlooked a girl. A child, barely fourteen, who had been off-planet when the vendetta had begun. She was clever and looked far older than her age. She gained employment as a maid to my nephew’s wife. Mari was expecting a child, a son, and was two months from her time. We held a small dinner party to celebrate the coming birth—and the bitch took her chance!”
Brother Jerome pressed a button. A flap opened in his desk revealing a flask and glasses. He poured and handed a glass to his visitor. Centon swallowed the brandy at a gulp.
“Thank you, Brother.” He touched his face and looked at the moisture on his finger. “I’m sorry, but each time I think about it—” His hands knotted into fists. “Why was I so stupid? How could I have been such a fool?”
“To regret the past is to destroy the present,” said the High Monk evenly. “More brandy?”
Centon scooped up the replenished glass, drank, set it down empty. “The dinner party,” he continued. “All of us around a table. All that were left of the Frenchi clan on Sard. Myself, Mari, her husband Kell, Leran who was eight and Jarl who was eleven. Five people left from almost a hundred. It had been a bitter five years.”
Brother Jerome made no comment.
“The Borge bitch was waiting at table, in attendance in case Mari should need her aid. She dropped something, a napkin I think, and stooped beneath the table. The bomb had a short fuse. The fire spread and caught her as she was trying to escape. She stood there, burning, laughing despite her pain. I shall always remember that. Her laughing as my family died.” Centon took a deep breath, shuddering. “They burned like candles. I too. The flame charred my legs, my loins, but I had risen and was leaning over the table pouring wine. The board saved me. Somehow I managed to reach the escape hatch. By the time help arrived the room was a furnace and I was more dead than alive.”
He wiped a hand over his face, dried it on his sleeve. “Often, when in the amniotic tank and later when relearning to walk I wished that they had let me go with the others. Then some of the pain died a little and I began to live again. Live to hope and plan and dream of the future.”
He stepped close to the edge of the desk and leaned forward, arms supporting his weight, hands resting flat on the wood. “Now you know why I need my daughter,” he said. “Need her. I do not lie to you, monk. I pretend no great or sudden love. But, without the girl the family is ended.”
“Not so,” corrected Jerome quickly. “She could be married with children of her own. The line will continue.”
“But not on Sard! Not on the world we have won with our blood and pain!” Centon straightened, controlled himself. “And she may not have children yet,” he pointed out. “She may never have them. She may die or be killed or rendered sterile. I want to find her. I must find her,” he insisted. “I will pay anything to the man who can tell me where she is. The man,” he added slowly, “or the organization.”
Jerome was sharp. “Are you trying to hire the services of the Church?”
“I am a rich man,” said Centon obliquely. “But I come to you as a beggar. Help me, Brother. Ask your monks to look for my daughter. Please.”
The monks who were on every habitable world. Eyes and ears and sources of information. In the slums and the palaces of those who ruled, the homes of the wealthy and the streets of the poor. Everywhere the message of tolerance needed to be sown, which was everywhere in the galaxy.
Thoughtfully the monk pursed his lips. “You have a likeness of the girl? Some means by which to identify her?”
Centon plunged his hand into an inner pocket and laid a wafer of plastic on the desk. Brother Jerome looked at the flame red hair, the pale, translucent skin, the green eyes and generous mouth. A panel gave details as to height, weight, measurements, vocal and chemical idiosyncrasies.
“Her name is Mallini, Brother. You will help me to find her?”
“I promise nothing,” said the High Monk. “But we shall do our best.”
Chapter Four
Elmo Rasch checked the time and spoke to the woman. “Now.”
She hesitated, trembling on the brink of irreversible action, then stiffened as she summoned her resolve. The reward was too great to be dismissed. Against renewed youth, death was a thing without terror. She rose and stepped toward the door of the cabin. Without glancing at the man she stepped outside into the passage. The steward sat in an open cubicle facing the lounge, a book open on his lap. It was of a type designed to educate and entertain those who were illiterate. The steward was not uneducated but, among spacemen, certain volumes held a special attraction. He looked up as Sara approached, and touched a corner of the page. The moving illustration of naked women faded, the whispering voice died. Casually he closed the book.
“Could I help you, my lady?”
“I feel ill,” she said. “Sick. Have you something to reestablish my metabolism?”
She watched the movement of his eyes as, unconsciously, he glanced to where he kept his hypogun. It would be a common model loaded with quick-time for the benefit of those traveling High but it would serve her purpose.
“It would not be wise to travel Middle, my lady,” protested the steward. “The journey is long and there will be complications.”
Too many complications. More food and not the easily prepared Basic. The need for entertainment, books, tapes, films perhaps. The need for constant attendance and she had the look of a real harridan. And, more important, the captain would be far from pleased. It was the steward’s job to keep things simple. Complications would cost him an easy berth.
“Look, my lady,” he suggested. “Why don’t you—”
His voice died as her fingers closed around his throat in a grip learned from her third lover. Deliberately, she squeezed the carotids, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. A little would result in unconsciousness, too much in death. Unconscious men could wake, cause trouble. It was better to make certain he died.
The hypogun in her hand, she looked back at her victim. He sat slumped in his chair. Time was precious but little things were important. She opened his book and rested it on his lap.
Naked woman twined in sinuous embrace to the accompaniment of a whispering drone of carnal titivation.
* * *
Elmo looked at her face and nodded his satisfaction. “You did it. Good. You have the hypogun?”
She lifted it, put it into his hand. He lifted his own and shot her in the throat.
She felt nothing, not even the blast of air forcing the drug it carried into her bloodstream, but abruptly things changed. The lights dulled a little, small sounds became deeper pitched, surroundings took on a less rigid permanency. The latter was psychological.
Elmo stood facing her, the hypogun in his hand, motionless.
Motionless and utterly at her mercy.
He had made a mistake in neutralizing the quick-time in her blood before speeding his own metabolism. She could kill him now. She could do anything she wanted. She could do—nothing.
He had insisted that she kill the steward to prove herself, to blood her hands. He had treated her first in order to show his trust or to point out her weakness. To kill him was now to double her fault.
Reaching out she took the hypogun from rigid fingers, maneuvering it with care to avoid broken bones and torn flesh. She aimed, triggered, watched as he jerked back to normal-time existence.
“Tough,” he said, and shook his head as if to clear his senses. “I don’t—” He broke off and concentrated on what had to be done. He ejected a vial from, the steward’s instrument and replaced it with one from his pocket. “Just to make sure.” He handed Sara the hypogun. “Now get moving and inject everyone you meet with quick-time. As long as we stay normal we’ll have the edge.” He stood looking at her. “Well?”
“We’ll be apart,” she said. “Out of touch. What if something goes wrong?”
“Nothing can go wrong.” He stole time to be patient despite the screaming need for haste. “We’ve been over this a dozen times. Now move!”
He watched as she vanished from the cabin and down the passage toward the lower region of the ship. The scars writhed on his face as he watched her go. He who had once commanded the lives and destinies of a hundred thousand men to now be dependent on one old woman. And yet her desperation made her the equal of any. He could have done far worse.
Turning, he ran from the cabin toward the upper regions of the ship where the officers guided the vessel through the tortuous rifts of space.
* * *
Dumarest opened his cabin door and looked at the girl standing outside. Her eyes were wide, anxious.
“Earl, something is wrong.”
He stood back to let her enter. “Wrong with you? The ship?”
“The ship, I think; it isn’t very clear. I was lying down thinking of us. I was looking ahead, trying to—” She shook her head. “Never mind what I was looking for, but things were all hazy and dim almost as if there were no future at all. And that’s ridiculous, isn’t it, Earl? We’re going to be together for always, aren’t we?”
“For a while at least,” he said. “All the way to Solis if nothing else.”
“You promise that?” She gripped his hand and pressed, the knuckles gleaming white beneath the pearl of her skin. “You promise?”
He was startled by her intensity. “Look ahead,” he suggested gently. “You don’t have to take my word for anything. You are able to see the future. Scan it and satisfy yourself.”
She swallowed, teeth hard against her lower lip. “Earl, I don’t want to. Suppose I saw something bad. If I’m going to lose you I don’t want to know about it. Not for certain. That way I’ll always be able to hope. It isn’t nice knowing just what is going to happen, Earl. That’s why I’d rather not know.”
“But you looked,” he pointed out. “You tried.”
“I know, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be sure but, at the same time, was frightened of knowing the worst. Does that make sense, Earl?”
Too much sense, he thought bleakly. That was the price she had to pay for her talent. The fear it could bring. The temptation to use it, to be sure, against the temptation not to use, to retain hope. And how long could the desire simply to hope last against the desire to know for certain?
“You said something about the ship,” he said thoughtfully. “That you thought something might be wrong. Would be wrong,” he corrected. “What did you see?”
“Nothing too clear,” she said. “Faint images, a lot of them, stars and—”
“Stars? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Earl, but we’re in space and surely that’s natural.”
Wrong, he thought bleakly. From a ship in space stars were the last thing anyone would expect to see. Not with the Erhaft field wrapping the cocoon of metal in its own private universe and allowing it to traverse the spaces between worlds at multi-light speeds. Stars could not be seen beyond that field. If she saw them it could only mean that, somehow, the field had collapsed. But when? When?
“Look,” he said, suddenly worried. “Look now. Concentrate. Tell me what you see an hour from now.”
“I can’t, Earl. I told you. I don’t know just how far I can visualize. Not with any degree of accuracy. A few seconds, even a few minutes, but after that I can’t tell with any certainty. That’s what frightened me. We aren’t together and we should be. We should be!”
“Steady!” He gripped her shoulders, holding her close, trying to dampen her incipient hysteria. “The images were faint, weren’t they?” He waited for her nod. “That means they showed an alternate future of a low degree of probability. Now be calm. We’ll try an experiment. Think of this cabin. Concentrate. What do you see?”
