No One Goes There Now, page 18
“What do you want of her?”
Nyemaster smiled a maddening smile. “My friends considered carefully before approaching me with this unsavory affair,” he said in an offhand manner. “One might think me mad for exposing my reputation to skulduggery—”
“Get to the point,” urged Grey tautly.
“It is simply this: the Director, yourself, and sera Lovelock are implicated in a monstrous crime.”
“Absolute nonsense!” bluffed Elan.
“So?” Nyemaster folded his arms and tried to stare down the determined Grey. “Come, ser; the depositions of the Assassins and the medic were most explicit. You are embroiled in a crime even ser Lovelock cannot shrug off. Why not confess and ease the punishment?”
“You are a meddler and a fool,” said Elan quietly. “Your meddling knight-errantry may cause harm once too often. You may drop from sight.”
Again the maddening smile. ’Tour concern is misplaced, ser Grey. It is you who may vanish from sight. Consider the alternative to your proposed journey to the outworlds. You might, instead, find yourself spitted and hung bleeding outside the Arena this night.”
Elan drew his rapier. “That is confidential information,” he said coldly. “How did you leam of my mission?”
“There are ways and means,” Nyemaster loftily replied.
“Those ways and means may cost you your life,” warned Elan.
“Pure bluster!” scoffed Nyemaster.
“Don’t wager on it,” said Elan, red-faced.
The gladiator snorted. “Young puppy! After you are discredited—should you escape with your life—I intend to cure your insolence permanently.”
Elan slashed the air millimeters from Nyemaster’s nose. “I may decide to curb your arrogance this minute.”
Nyemaster backed quickly out of range as a voice in Elan’s ear said, “Drop it!”
One Assassin covered him with an energy pistol while the other pinioned his arms professionally. He refused to struggle, realizing with a sinking sensation how careless he’d been.
“You’ll regret this,” he said lamely.
“I regret only the time wasted being civil to you,” said the premiere gladiator. “Bring him along, you two. Let him keep his blade. Should he be foolhardy enough to pull steel, it will be a pleasure to show him the end of my sword.”
* * *
Elan spent the ride back to the city in abject self-disgust, recriminating over his tactless handling of Nyemaster. He wished fervently for some way to recapture the advantage he had momentarily held back there on the quay.
Apprehensive as he was, he also felt concern for Minor’s safety, a morbid curiosity as to where they were taking him, and awesome wonder at what might even now be happening to ser Weldon Lovelock. It was inconceivable that another face might soon replace the Old One’s eternally fixed, augustan mask.
Elan glanced nervously at his wrist chronometer. In fifteen hours the shuttle would lift—probably without him and Minor— to rendezvous with the orbiting starship. If, by some miracle, ser Weldon weathered the storm, retained his seat…
No, that seemed unlikely in view of what Nyemaster seemed to know. Damn the man! He was a meddler and a fool. But there appeared to be much more than righteous indignation over violation of the sacrosanct Convention on Pyron’s juvenile mind.
Someone had put Pyron up to it. Most likely someone of stature.
Elan was not surprised when the aircar casually violated airspace over the reservation, then hovered and grounded on a midlevel roofpark of the Palace itself. They entered, passed a guard point as if expected, and marched along the corridor to the lift, riding upward together in silence.
When the portal dilated, the Assassins ushered him brusquely into the loggia of a tower suite, with Nyemaster a lordly three paces ahead. Elan had a premonition everything had been resolved. Seen from behind, the hulking geriatric chair floating near the glass wall made him think Earth’s Director had smelled out the plot, had taken things in hand. But the gnarled shell of Humanity who turned and regarded him as he entered the chamber was not ser Weldon.
It was ser Corte Errold, a senior Planner of the Star Council, and a trusted friend of Director Lovelock.
Minor, flanked by another pair of Assassins, was seated at a long table covered with bric-a-brac of some sort. She looked indecently disturbed, but otherwise unharmed as far as he could see.
“Come in, ser Grey,” croaked Errold, guiding his geriatric chair in a half circle. “We realize how inconvenient this must be, but we shan’t keep you long. There are several items we must clear up; a simple deposition for you and sera Lovelock to sign. Then you and she can be on your way to the outworlds.” “Your ramblings suggest advanced senility,” quipped Elan in a casual tone.
Nyemaster blanched, putting hand to sword. “Hold your tongue! Allow me to correct this puppy’s manners, ser Errold!” “I thought you only challenged incompetents,” said Grey.
A clawlike hand waved Pyron away. The thin-fleshed skull developed a caricature of a smile. “Patience, patience. Let us make haste slowly, Pyron.”
“There is little point in attempting to display innocence, ser Grey. The facts are all before us: we know this Van Maar was illegally revived and smuggled back to the outworlds by Weldon. We have sworn depositions from all concerned.”
“From almost all concerned,” corrected Elan.
“I amend my statement,” granted Errold. “Your deposition will make it true, however.”
“Never,” he said flatly.
“Never is rather a long time, ser Grey.”
“I am patient,” said Elan, smiling at Minor.
Corte Errold knit his fingers and studied them for a moment. “Your loyalty is so misused, so undeserved. Weldon has done little to command such a following if one analyzes the matter carefully. Explain, if you will, what makes you so determined to throw away your precious young life in an effort to perpetuate his tyranny?”
“Will your tyranny improve upon his tyranny?” asked Elan in bland tones.
“I see.” Errold scowled. “You have fitted all of the various pieces into the puzzle and decided that we are to replace Weldon in the Directorship.”
“Please correct me if I’m mistaken, ser Errold.”
Again the haggard smile appeared briefly. “Wrong? Right and wrong are debatable issues, ser Grey. Weldon has committed a rare misstep, giving us the unique opportunity now before us. He has made few such blunders during his endless cycles in office. Were we to charitably allow this one to slip past, others would not be so generous, we are sure.
“Weldon must fall! Who the Star Council and Congress elect to fill his seat is anyone’s guess.”
Elan grinned. “You, ser Errold, are the worst sort of hypocrite.”
Nyemaster drew sword with an oath. “By the Convention! You shall feel my bite for that, Grey! Pull steel!”
Elan stayed his hand. “You won’t be allowed to perform this period, Pyron. Your master won’t let you.”
Nyemaster reddened. “Pull steel!” he insisted.
“Naughty, naughty,” clucked Elan, waggling a finger at the premiere gladiator. “Best not kill an immune official. It would be shameful to have the finest swordsman of them all spitted and hung outside the Arena tonight.”
It was a little more than Nyemaster could stand. Errold motioned just in time. Two Assassins jumped from beside Elan and dragged the raging gladiator into the dining alcove.
“Clever, ser Grey, but quite useless,” said Errold. “Pyron was never long on clearheadedness.
“Shall we sit down now like gentlefolk and discuss our problem. It is a mutual problem, you know. We must resolve the question.” He waved Elan to the long table.
Elan brushed his lips through Minor’s hair as he sat beside her. “Have they bothered your*”
“No,” she said angrily. “I was here picking up Gailen’s belongings—”
He grasped her wrist. “Don’t give him ammunition.”
She twisted free impatiently. “It doesn’t matter; he knows everything.”
“Quite correct, my dear,” soothed Errold.
“This was Gailen’s suite,” she told Elan, glaring at Errold. “I wanted him to have his material when he got back to Dan. There was a stereograph I wanted for myself; a black statue.
“They broke in and found me here, going through his things. Two of them kept me while Nyemaster went after you.”
Elan glanced at Errold. “Keeping hostages is in itself a rather serious breach of Convention.”
“That will hardly hold water, ser Grey,” argued the aged Star Councilor. “It is perfectly legitimate for the discoverer of a crime to hold material witnesses.”
“Not while he’s planning a Palace revolution,” denied Elan.
“Harsh words,” said Errold, frost in his tone. “Our sincere advice is that you adopt a broader viewpoint concerning our intervention in this proceeding, ser Grey.
“You and sera Lovelock are two beautiful young people who have only begun to earn the bounties of life—”
“Spare us the speechmaking,” suggested Elan. “You want us to swear complicity in some nonsense or other. We refuse. What now?”
Corte Errold waved his skeletal hands. “You force a hard decision upon us—”
“Then it’s to be death,” said Minor furiously.
“An ugly, despicable word, sera.”
“The deed will be ugly,” said Elan. “The word is merely factual.”
Errold sighed. “We really do not need your statements; they would be frosting on the cake, so to speak. We are certain the word of the Giver of Life and the Assassins will suffice until this Van Maar can be returned from deep space.”
Minor shrugged. “Then it’s settled.”
“Unfortunately…” Errold looked pained. “If you would but reconsider. We despise making a drastic decision which could so easily be avoided.”
Minor smiled defiantly at Elan. “I have a parting gift for you, my darling; a bare-busted snake goddess from ancient Crete. Isn’t she pretty?” The girl lifted the ceramic goddess, handling her delicately, turned quickly and drove the statuette into the nearer Assassin’s face.
Elan bounded sideways out of his chair, caught the other Assassin in the pit of the stomach with his elbow, then chopped a stiffened hand to the hyoid bone of his neck. The Assassin staggered backward with a strangling sound. Elan kicked him neatly behind the ear as he went down, drew his rapier and took stock.
Minor’s Assassin was also down, clutching his broken nose. Errold had guided his geriatric chair into the loggia and was watching developments from relative safety. Nyemaster, sword in hand, looked supremely happy as he and the other two Assassins emerged from the dining alcove. The Assassins had drawn their side arms. Elan was uncomfortably aware of the pair of emission bells which looked to be the size of dinner plates.
“It is useless,” wheezed Errold. “Sheath your weapon.”
Elan called him a gutter name. “Come take it from me!” Nyemaster preened himself, bowing grandiloquently to Corte Errold. “I beg the privilege of honor,” he petitioned. “Curbing this poppinjay is long overdue.”
We deplore these gymnastics, Pyron,” said Errold.
“Get behind me,” whispered Elan, pushing Minor back with his free hand. “Watch the two behind Errold. If they seem distracted by the duel, get out the door and don’t look back.”
Pyron Nyemaster stepped forward, glowing, and began the Salute of Grievance in his best elocutionary manner. Elan allowed his pompous phraseology for a heartbeat or two, then lunged in the midst of a highflown sentence and came within millimeters of making carrion of the premiere gladiator.
But Nyemaster bounded away from the thrust like a rubber ball, turning crimson with fury at the affront to Convention. “Why, you pedestrian1.”
He fell upon Elan like an avalanche.
Grey parried desperately, backing around the end of the table. He avoided a thrust, riposted while slightly off balance, and banged his hip on the corner of the table. Knowing he could not possibly bring up his blade in time, he threw himself backward and felt the sting of Nyemaster’s steel in the deltoid area of his sword arm.
Nyemaster stepped back with a thin smile, kissed his rapier and saluted with a mocking bow. “Not yet, Grey,” he said meaningfully. “You are well-schooled and capable. You provide excellent sport.”
Elan sensed Minor move behind him. A striped pot whizzed past his ear and made the premiere gladiator weave gracefully to avoid it. “Sera Lovelock…!”
The Assassins standing beside Errold roared with delight as Nyemaster dodged, in succession, two more pots, two statuettes and a small flask. Elan took advantage of Pyron’s distraction to inspect his arm. It was bleeding freely, but until it stiffened it should not impede his movement.
Minor eventually ran out of ammunition, keeping the Roman gladius for future use. Nyemaster bowed again.
“One must admire your spirit, sera Lovelock, if not your aim. Shall we get on with it, Grey?”
Elan faced him dégagé. Pyron Nyemaster coughed once, began his advance, coughed again and attacked almost clumsily. Elan parried with difficulty, wondering vaguely how his insignificant wound could have so seriously affected his timing.
There was harshness in his lungs. It suddenly seemed very difficult to breathe, and his rapier weighed twice what it should.
Worried, he concentrated, throwing his entire being into the effort of defending himself. Taken by a coughing fit, he stumbled and nearly fell.
Lungs burning, he saw the room waver around Nyemaster’s dim figure. Then he could see nothing but vague, milky shapes.
Elan felt overpowering panic. Nyemaster could have him now or any time he wanted. In sheer, defenseless desperation, he backed, coughing, away from where he imagined the thrust might come, and was astounded to see a shadowy rapier thud to the carpet before him.
He stared dumbly at his empty, bloody hand.
Then he tried to turn toward Minor, but the floor surged up and smashed his consciousness into a thousand incandescent shards of light.
XII
Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;
Come like shadows, so depart!
From Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Circa a.d. 1600 (old style).
Holt Morrow waited patiently through the early morning hours, resting with his back comfortably pressed against the thirty-meter bole of one of the smaller trees in quiet contemplation of the changing light and the flight patterns of birds skylarking high among the lowermost branches. Summer had come to Dan’s northern hemisphere, bringing long spells of mild, clement weather, with cool evenings swept by a fresh breeze from the forest.
Rising before the sun, seeing no one at his quick, scanty breakfast, Holt had flown his aircar to the shelf beside the stream that wound down from the high country. The hike up to this dell on the brow of a hill, soothing and spectacular, had taken him through a chain of tree-ringed meadows laid out like some huge, idealized golf course. From where he sat, Holt could look down the rich savanna toward a small lake sparkling against the darker rim of forest, toward the spot where Roberts should emerge at any moment, climbing the hill in his measured, economical gait.
Holt wondered how the Planners would construe Roberts’ lazy method of contacting the Danii and pleasing himself at the same time. The Danii apparently considered every area of Dan equivalent to every other; his old friend had waited for them to appear in various places in the city as well—the roofpark of the Directoral Seat, the terrace garden of his residence warren, the greenbelt across from the Lovelock tower. Simple concentration was enough. They always came.
The single time they had ever appeared indoors, to the best of his knowledge, was the night Pierce Grey had been taken.
Morrow thought about Pierce often, imagining every sort of fate for the Director, none of which, he was certain, came within parsecs of the truth. Roberts had questioned the Danii repeatedly, always receiving the same, exact wordage in reply: “Higher Ones have need of him. Fear not; he is in Their gende care.” Today, he knew, Roberts intended to ask once again why “Higher Ones” returned purportedly gently-cared-for individuals in such bad repair.
Higher Ones! What spooky images that blasted term evoked! Mysticism had never attracted Holt except as a matter of general curiosity. Pragmatic, considering himself fairly well oriented, he had attended meetings of the Pantheistic Brotherhood for a short time in early youth, finding the context of the sermons rambling and discursive. Pantheism was mighty democratic; anything you wanted could be read into Pantheism.
And, superficially acquainted with the doctrines of the few remaining religious disciplines of Earth and her colonies, Holt thought them a generally mixed bag. Take reincarnation, for example; a quite unrealistic concept, though thought-provoking. Reincarnation carried earmarks of falling more or less within the known schema of the physical universe, being analogous to the laws of conservation of energy or mass. Should there be a life essence—a soul—might it not likewise be conserved and reused?
What a dizzy spiral! Man couldn’t help getting a headache, thinking about things like that. Holt had long ago decided that things not demonstrable were not worth dwelling upon. And as to the ultimate causality of the universe—a postulated “prime mover”—he had formed a null opinion.
Imponderables and indeterminables were not worth the skull sweat, except in the passing fervor of schoolboy bull sessions or, he remembered, during that first memorable watch when he had stood alone on the bridge of a starship and looked deep into the bottomless dark and felt very, very insignificant. That had been long ago.
Holt pulled himself erect and walked among the trees. He had stewed about the mystery surrounding him so long that his thoughts had come full circle. Beneficent or malignant—and for some reason he suspected the former—the reality of Higher Ones had to be established very soon.
