Exile From Xanadu, page 15
“And I—if I had guessed—” Carlo let the words hang in the air, and the silence that followed lagged, it seemed, into hours.
The gray eyes studied Regan, taking in details of his being, and, as in a dream, he heard Manuel say, “I have heard of you, Regan. My reports from the outside universe told me of your masquerade. Oh, yes.” He nodded at Regan s obvious surprise. “Oh, yes, I know of the error of identification that placed you in my shoes. It was a happy circumstance at the time, yet now I begin to doubt it.”
“Then if it wasn’t you aboard the ship—” breathed Carlo. “Does it matter who took his place?” rasped Regan. “The man is dead, and death was the price of his loyalty. What of the carrier, Manuel? The box that caused us so much trouble and concern.”
Manuel laughed gently. “I do not know what was in it, but whatever it was would have been of no use to anyone. It was the final happy circumstance that made my escape here—to Kaldori—so free of trouble.” He wiped a hand across his moist brow. “Come, let us sit in the shade. We have much to talk on.” He took Carlo by the elbow, linking arms as relatives do who are close to one another, but Regan saw the look on Carlo’s face as the couple moved away, and he followed them more slowly, still in a daze of surprise and apprehension,
Manuel led them to a rough wooden seat set under a tree with wide spread arms and large green leaves. There was a table with a jug of liquid and several glasses that glistened as the sunlight played upon them.
“Please, sit down.” Manuel waved them to the bench. “It is hot working in this sun, yet I think a drink will be as welcome to you as it will be to me.”
And still Carlo kept silent as the glasses were filled with sweet fruit juice that was unfamiliar to Regan.
“Remember how I always wanted a garden, Cousin?” asked Manuel.
“Yes, I remember,” replied Carlo, huskily. “You had all of Xanadu for your garden. Wasn’t that enough?”
“Was Xanadu enough for you, Regan?” asked Manuel, his gray eyes mockingly upon Regan’s scarred face.
“It was all that I could ever have wished for.”
“Then you are a fool. Once I saw this world I knew what I wanted.”
“You had it at Xanadu,” snapped Carlo bitterly.
“No.” Manuel’s voice was soft but his manner was grim. “No, Xanadu belonged to the family—to my father and to Giselle, to you and to Pedro, to Simon and all the other Cabreras. It was never mine—I had only a small part of it, and it was never enough.”
“Did you have to be so cruel?” asked Carlo. “Did you have to weigh down the hearts of your parents with so much anguish? Do you know the grief you caused, the worry—” “It was unavoidable,” broke in Manuel. “You know as well as I the difficulties, the trouble I had. The representatives of the colony worlds did their utmost to find what I was about. Thanks to Regan and the happy circumstance that allowed his survival with my supposed belongings, the way was made easier for me.”
“All you had to do was to confide in us.”
“That was all.” Manuel sneered. “Confide in the family and hand over all this?” He shook his head. “No, Carlo. This plan is mine, the efforts behind it are mine, and the fruits of its success will be mine. If the family had joined me, how much of it do you think would have been left to me?"
"It belongs to mankind.”
The quick exchanges had given Regan time to recover, and now there was a question burning within his brain to which he already knew the answer, yet it was a question that still had to be asked because the answer was too terrible to contemplate without complete confirmation.
“The Ferroval cruiser,” Regan said. “You were responsible for its destruction?”
The question was greeted with a deathly silence; Carlo turned his head slowly and looked at Regan from eyes that were stark with denial and horror. “Regan! No—”
“Yes, Carlo, I think the answer is yes. Look at his eyes and tell me that you can deny it.” Regan turned his gaze back to Manuel. “Did you—arrange it?”
“What would you have me say, Regan? What would you have me do? This whole thing is greater than any one person or group of people.”
“Sixty-eight people died on that ship,” Regan whipped off the dark glasses to reveal the bulging orbs of his alien eyes. “And I have wished many times in the dark of the night that I had been the sixty-ninth. There is no justification in all the universe—”
“Who are you to talk of justification,” rasped Manuel. “You are a little man who has strayed into something that is too vast for your comprehension. Can’t you understand that I had to vanish utterly and completely? Can’t you understand that my supposed death was the only way by which I could puruse the goal which I was seeking? Only one person in the whole galaxy knew where I was—”
“Plender.” Carlo’s voice was dead of all emotion. “Plender—and you killed him too.”
“You knew of Plender?” Manuel looked at them in surprise. “How else do you think we trailed you here?”
“It was a question I had intended to ask.” Manuel chuckled. “So my little Giselle remembered all too well. And for that one brief moment of weakness—ah, well! It is too late for regrets.”
“Giselle?” Carlo turned on Regan. “It was Giselle who told you?
Manuel laughed outright. “She would trust a stranger and yet she would not trust one of the family. Carlo, I think our friend has some attraction that is lost to us.” The smile vanished. “And yet, with Plender dead—” '
“You should have killed again,” snapped Regan. “Or did it not occur to you that Plender might have left records?” “His house was completely destroyed.”
“But not his friends—”
“He had none. He was a lone wolf with no other God but money.”
“There was one,” said Regan. “One man of whom wo learned.”
“I wondered—”
“You wondered. God in heaven.” Carlo rose to his feet and lifted his arms to the sky. “Is life so.cheap to you, Cousin?” “Sit down, Carlo. You wear your emotions too gaudily.” Manuel drained his glass and set it on the table. “Regan, can you not see the dream I have? Can you not see how great is the plan that I have created?”
“I see only dead men,” retorted Regan, “and I see them through alien eyes, and I touch them with false hands. No, I do not see.” He rose to his feet and stood beside the black man. "Come, Carlo. We have been here too long for any good that we might do.”
“Do you think that you shall leave here, now, Regan? With Plender in his grave, and those others lost on the Ferroval cruiser?”
“There are three ships up there. He wouldn’t dare—”
“Indeed he would. Tell him, Cousin."
Manuel gestured briefly and smiled at them. “I have to think on this matter, Cousin. Three ships are a strong force. In the meantime, consider yourselves my guests. This is a lovely world—as lovely as Earth once was—enjoy it and watch it blossom.”
For Regan, the next hours passed in a realm that bordered on the fantastic. By almost tacit consent the conversation veered away from controversial subjects, and Manuel Cabrera presented another side to his character that was very different from the picture that Regan had built up. He escorted them around his vast garden, proudly showing them his flowers and bushes, and explaining in great detail the science of horticulture. In the warm sun and under the blue sky the tension lifted and Regan relaxed. He savored the brilliant colors and the exquisite perfumes, and he found an unexpected gentleness in his prosthetic hands as he held in them the fragrant blooms offered by his host.
Only briefly did he wonder about the old man waiting in his ship.
The sun declined and the hours passed, and the shadows lengthened across the green lawns. Their tour ended back at the wood seat, and Manuel offered them further drinks from the large jug. As he did so a man came from the house and crossed towards them. Manuel moved away from them and listened intently as the man whispered in his ear.
“Cousin.” He turned away from the messenger. “You will excuse me. I have urgent business to attend to. Please, enjoy my garden while I am gone.”
Regan watched somberly as the slim wiry figure vanished inside the house, then he said, “I do not like what I hear, Carlo.”
“And have you heard as much as I?" Something in the black man’s tone made Regan look at him sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“I know Manuel and you do not. I knew him during all of our previous life together. I knew him then and I know him now.”
“Well?”
“He has had six years, Regan. Four years before he found it necessary to disappear, and a further two years since. He has had at the back of him all the resources of two planets.
There are thousands of men from Earth working here; there are towns and cities, and factories and farms and mines. There are two almost virgin worlds waiting for a flood of immigrants which each of them can easily absorb.” Carlo looked at Regan from cold, bleak eyes. “And yet he does nothing except guard his secrets and cover his tracks. He does nothing except maintain a veil of silence and secrecy that it has taken blind luck and a greal deal of valuable time to uncover.”
Regan sat down again on the bench. At the back of his mind there stirred something of the dread apprehension that had moved Carlo’s voice to urgency.
“Do you not see it, Regan?” Carlo insisted. “At the back of him is only murder and death and intrigue. Manuel is a master of intrigue—he learned well from his father, but he has not the old man’s compassion and belief in his fellow men. He is cold and calculating, and, as you have heard, human life means little to him beyond the overriding necessity to remove anyone who threatens his dream.”
Regan said nothing.
“He should be out in the open by now. He could be gaining the support of the Terran Central government. If he acted now then the threat that hangs over the galaxy Will be removed in a few months. The flow of immigrants could begin and in ten years—five years even—the whole structure of human inter-relationships could be changed beyond recognition. In twenty years the green spaces would begin to be seen on Earth, the city state would begin to die, the demands by Earth on the colony worlds would diminish and the causes of the tension would be removed.” Carlo turned and looked at the doorway through which Manuel had passed so recently. “And yet he waits. Why, Regan? Why?”
While Carlo spoke Regan allowed his thoughts to run ahead of the black man’s words. He looked around the brilliant garden and he remembered Xanadu. He thought of Manuel’s love for this garden and the things that grew in it, and he remembered the dead aboard the Ferroval cruiser. His eyes saw the flame red beauty of a burning bush, and his mind thought of the flowering horror of fire that had devoured the body and the home of Arfon Plender. In one man lay the love of beauty and a callousness of death that was at once both horrible and fascinating. The family meant more to Regan that it did to Manuel Cabrera—and in that fact lay the answer to the questions that Carlo was asking.
“I think, Carlo,” said Regan, “that your cousin is waiting on the death of the galaxy.”
“What?”
Regan gestured wearily. “He doesn’t want to end the conflict or reduce the tension. He wants the destruction of Earth and of the colony worlds as effective economic units, and the way in which that can best be done is to sit aside and watch them tear at each other’s throats. And when it is over he will be the one power within the galaxy that has been untouched by force; he will be the one person with an organization capable of rebuilding from the chaos that will be left.”
Carlo stood shaking his head in a desperate mute denial of the words that assailed his ears. “You must be wrong.”
“Am I? Can there by^any other reason for his secrecy? Manuel hated Xanadu because it was not his. He hated the family for denying him the power that he desired. Carlo,” Regan leaned urgently forward, “his every word confirms that what you attempt to deny must be so. There is too vast a picture spread over too long a time, and if you see all of that picture you must see what lies in the background.” “It could never happen,” whispered Carlo. “If such a conflagration comes it will be too widespread for even these worlds to survive.”
“There are few that know of them.”
“Yet there are some, and the Kaldori are not unknown to the colony worlds.”
“Exactly,” snapped Regan. “They are Kaldori worlds, and the Kaldori would not allow an outside conflict to threaten their system. And Manuel knows it.”
Carlo sat down heavily on the seat.
“No alien race would allow it,” insisted Regan. “Whatever happens on Earth or on the colony worlds—whatever destruction takes place—these two planets will be under the nominal protection of an alien race that cares nothing for Terran motives and desires. The Kaldori are interested only in the economic advantages to be gained by the presence within their system of an alien race. And so long as Manuel and his followers stick to their side of the bargain then they will be safe.”
Above them the blue sky had taken on the first faint purple tints of dusk. Carlo put his face in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees in an attitude of utter dejection.
“You must be right,” he whispered after a long pause. “I know you must be right for there can be no other answer.”
From the house the slim figure of Manuel emerged and crossed towards them. His face was cold and serious as he approached them, and Regan wondered what could have happened to change him from the pleasant companion of bare minutes before.
“What game are you playing, Cousin?” he demanded of Carlo who looked up at him in surprise.
“What do you mean?” snapped Regan.
Manuel’s eyes were cold as he said, “Another tender has landed from one of your ships. Its occupants are already on their way to this house.”
XXVI
Regan looked grimly at Carlo and read the alarm in the other’s face.
“Well?” demanded Manuel.
“I don’t know, Cousin,” replied Carlo slowly. "No one should have followed us.”
Yet Regan knew that within his mind there burned the same question that burned in Carlo’s. What was the old man doing? Why had he come? And in Carlo’s eyes he could read the same questions. Had the old man become too impatient with the silence of Regan and Carlo, and, with dusk drawing across the place where they had landed, had he decided to come and see for himself what lay on the surface of the world below the ship?
“I am waiting for an answer,” rasped Manuel.
“Then you will get none from us,” replied Regan, “for we don’t know the answer that you are seeking.”
From the house the same servant who had come before hurried towards Manuel.
“There are visitors arrived from the spacefield.”
“So soon?” Manuel’s eyes glinted with sudden anger as he turned on Carlo. “It seems my questions will be answered without your aid, Cousin.”
To the servant he said, “Bring them through to the garden.” The seconds ticked away in silence as Manuel paced a few impatient yards across the rich grass and Carlo sat, stiff backed, his face a mask on which no emotions were written. Regan felt numbed, first by the realization that he had foreseen the ambitions and the desires of Manuel Cabrera, and second by the conflict that he knew must come from the presence on the planet of old Cabrera. He wondered desperately what lay ahead of them—what the next few hours of time would bring forth, and his desperation faded into dull acceptance. He knew that there was nothing he could do—no single act that he could perform—which would prevent the onward march of events that had begun so long ago.
He knew that only here, now, in the next short period of time, there lay the climax to all that he had endured.
From the black doorway figures appeared. The servant at the head of the small group stood aside and waved the rest of the party through. Cabrera stood, hunched and old, his gray, old fashioned clothes drab and unbecoming in the bright garden. His right hand leaned heavily on his stick, and his left—Regan’s heart jumped—his left hand held the arm of Giselle. Behind them, the tall, lean figure of Armand stood.
Slowly, they came down the steps and on to the lawn, and Regan heard Manuel curse softly and unintelligibly behind him. Bare yards separated them when Giselle stopped dead in her tracks and her left hand flew to her mouth in sudden horror and surprise, and Regan knew that she had recognized Manuel.
He crossed to the old man, trying to keep himself between Manuel and the group, aware that such a shock as this could have disastrous consequences.
"Cabrera,” he greeted him, his eyes boring into the old brown, wrinkled face and drawing the gaze of the old man towards him. “We are ill met. You should have stayed aboard and waited for us to come to you.”
“I have waited too long, Regan,” said the old man softly. “My time is running out—and so is the time for all mankind. I had to come."
Clearly, he had not noticed Manuel, and Regan glanced hurriedly at Giselle standing stark and white beside her father. He read in her eyes the fear that he himself had felt— that the shock could kill the old man.
“I have news for you, Cabrera,” Regan said slowly. “It may be that it will shock you, and I ask you to brace yourself for it.”
The old eyes narrowed, searching his face for some sign and then he said, “I am beyond shock, Regan. I have lived too long to be surprised by what I hear or what I see.”
“So be it.” Regan stood aside and allowed the slim figure of Manuel to stand in clear view.
The silence grew and settled upon them. Cabrera looked and saw and stood as a stone statue, making no move nor showing any sign. Regan yondered if he would fall down and he noticed that Giselle had tightened her grip upon the old man’s arm. Then, slowly and with no word spoken, the old man walked forward, his step firm upon the soft grass and his stick planted solidly to aid his movements. He crossed to the seat from which Carlo had risen, and disengaged his arm from Giselle’s grasp so that he could seat himself. He rested his hands across the top of the cane and sat upright, his legs slightly apart.
