A Circus of Hells

Chapter X

Djana stumbled to bed and did not wake for thirty-odd hours. Flandry needed less rest. After breakfast he busied himself, languidly at first but with increasing energy. What he learned fascinated him so much that he regretted not daring to spend time exploring in depth the history of these past five centuries on Wayland.

He was in the main control room, holding technical discussions with the prime computer, when the speaker in its quaint-looking instrument bank said in its quaint-sounding Anglic: “As instructed, I have kept your companion under observation. Her eyelids are moving.”

Flandry got up. “Thanks,” he said automatically. It was hard to remember that no living mind flickered behind those meters and readout screens. An awareness did, yes, but not like that of any natural sophont, no matter how strange to man; this one was in some ways more and in some ways less than organic. “I’d better go to her. Uh, have a servitor bring hot soup and, uh, tea and buttered toast, soon’s it can.”

He strode down corridors silent except for the hum of machines, past apartments that held a few moldering possessions of men long dead, until he found hers.

“Nicky—” She blinked mistily and reached tremulous arms toward him. How thin and pale she’d grown! He could just hear her. Bending for a kiss, he felt her lips passive beneath his.

“Nicky…are we…all right?” The whisper-breath tickled his ear.

“Assuredly.” He stroked her cheek. “Everything’s on orbit.”

“Outside?”

“Safe as houses. Safer than numerous houses I could name.” Flandry straightened. “Relax. We’ll start putting meat back on those lovely bones in a few minutes. By departure date, you ought to be completely yourself again.”

She frowned, shook her head in a puzzled way, tried to sit up. “Hoy, not yet,” he said, laying hands on the bare slight shoulders. “I prescribe lots of bed rest. When you’re strong enough to find that boring, I’ll arrange for entertainment tapes to be projected. The computer says there’re a few left. Ought to be interesting, a show that old.”

Still she struggled feebly. The chemical-smelling air fluttered fast, in and out of her lungs. Alarm struck him. “What’s the trouble, Djana?”

“I…don’t know. Dizzy—”

“Oh, well. After what you’ve been through.”

Cold fingers clutched his arm. “Nicky. This moon. Is it…worth…anything?”

“Huh?”

“Money!” she shrieked like an insect. “Is it worth money?”

Why should that make that much difference, right now? flashed through him. Her past life’s made her fanatical on the subject, I suppose, and—“Sure.”

“You’re certain?” she gasped.

“My dear,” he said, “Leon Ammon will have to work hard at it if he does not want to become one of the richest men in the Empire.”

Her eyes rolled back till he saw only whiteness. She sagged in his embrace.

“Fainted,” he muttered, and eased her down. Rising, scratching his scalp: “Computer, what kind of medical knowledge do you keep in your data banks?”

Reviving after a while, Djana sobbed. She wouldn’t tell him why. Presently she was as near hysteria as her condition permitted. The computer found a sedative which Flandry administered.

Or her next awakening she was calm, at any rate on the surface, but somehow remote from him. She answered his remarks so curtly as to make it clear she didn’t want to talk. She did take nourishment, though. Afterward she lay frowning upward, fists clenched at her sides. He left her alone.

She was more cheerful by the following watch, and gradually reverted to her usual self.

But they saw scant of each other until they were again in space, bound back to the assigned round that was to end on Irumclaw where it began. She had spent most of the time previous in bed, waited on by robots while she recovered. He, vigor regained sooner, was preoccupied with setting matters on the moon to rights and supervising the repair of Jake. The latter job was complicated by the requirement that no clue remain to what had really taken place. He didn’t want his superiors disbelieving his entries in the log concerning a malfunction of the hyperdrive oscillator which it had taken him three weeks to fix by himself.

Stark Wayland fell aft, and mighty Regin, and lurid Mimir; and the boat moved alone amidst a glory of stars. Flandry sat with Djana in the conn, which was the single halfway comfortable area to sit. Rested, clean, depilated, fed, liquored, in crisp coverall, breathing ample air, feeling the tug of a steady Terran g and the faint throb of the power that drove him toward his destination, he inhaled of a cigarette, patted Djana’s hand, and grinned at her freshborn comeliness. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “I shall expect you to show your gratitude in the ways you know best.”

“Well-l-l,” she purred. After a moment: “How could you tell, Nicky?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t yet understand what went wrong. You tried to explain before, but I was too dazed, I guess.”

“Most simple,” he said, entirely willing to parade his cleverness anew. “Once I saw we were caught in a chess game, everything else made sense. For instance, I remembered those radio masts being erected in the wilds. An impossible job unless the construction robots were free from attack. Therefore the ferocity of the roving machines was limited to their own kind. Another game, you see, with more potentialities and less predictability than chess, even the chess-cum-combat that had been developed when the regular sort got boring. New types of killer were produced at intervals and sent forth to see how they’d do against the older models. Our boat, and later we ourselves, were naturally taken for such newcomers; the robots weren’t supplied with information about humans, and line-of-sight radio often had them out of touch with the big computer.”

“When we tried to call for help, though—”

“You mean from the peak of Mt. Maidens? Well, obviously none of the wild robots would recognize our signal, on the band they used. And that part of the computer’s attention which ‘listened in’ on its children simply filtered out my voice, the way you or I can fail to hear sounds when we’re busy with something else. With so much natural static around, that’s not surprising.

“Those masts were constructed strictly as relays for the robots—for the high frequencies which carried the digital transmissions—so that’s why they didn’t buck on my calls on any other band. The computer always did keep a small part of itself on the qui vive for a voice call on standard frequencies. But it assumed that, if and when humans came back, they would descend straight from the zenith and land near the buildings as they used to. Hence it didn’t make arrangements to detect people radio from any other direction.”

Flandry puffed. Smoke curled across the viewscreen, as if to veil off the abysses beyond. “Maybe it should have done so, in theory,” he said. “However, after all those centuries, the poor thing was more than a little bonkers. Actually, what it did—first establish that chess game, then modify it, then produce fighters that obeyed no rules, then extend the range and variety of their battles further and further across the moon—that was done to save most of its sanity.”

“What?” Djana said, surprised.

“Why, sure. A thinking capability like that, with nothing but routine to handle, no new input, decade after decade—” Flandry shivered. “Br-rr! You must know what sensory deprivation does to organic sophonts. Our computer rescued itself by creating something complicated and unpredictable to watch.” He paused before adding slyly: “I refrain from suggesting analogies to the Creator you believe in.”

And regretted it when she bridled and snapped, “I want a full report on how you influenced the situation.”

“Oh, for the best, for the best,” he said. “Not that that was hard. The moment I woke the White King up, the world he’d been dreaming of came to an end.” His metaphor went over her head, so he merely continued: “The computer’s pathetically impatient to convert back to the original style of operations. Brother Ammon will find a fortune in metals waiting for his first ship.

“I do think you are morally obliged to recommend me for a substantial bonus, which he is normally obliged to pay.”

“Morally!” The bitterness of a life which had never allowed her a chance to consider such questions whipped forth. But it seemed to him she exaggerated it, as if to provide herself an excuse for attacking. “Who are you to blat about morals, Dominic Flandry, who took an oath to serve the Empire and a bribe to serve Leon Ammon?”

Stung, he threw back: “What else could I do?”

“Refuse.” Her mood softened. She shook her amber-locked head, smiled a sad smile, and squeezed his hand. “No, never mind. That would be too much to expect of anyone nowadays, wouldn’t it? Let’s be corrupt together, Nicky darling, and kind to each other till we have to say goodbye.”

He looked long at her, and at the stars, where his gaze remained, before he said quietly, “I suppose I can tell you what I’ve had in mind. I’ll take the pay because I can use it; also the risk, for the rest of my life, of being found out and broken. It seems a reasonable price for holding a frontier.”

Her lips parted. Her eyes widened. “I don’t follow you.”

“Irumclaw was due to be abandoned,” he said. “Everybody knows—knew—it was. Which made the prophecy self-fulfilling: The garrison turned incompetent. The able civilians withdrew, taking their capital with them. Defensibility and economic value spiraled down toward the point where it really wouldn’t be worth our rational while to stay. In the end, the Empire would let Irumclaw go. And without this anchor, it’d have to pull the whole frontier parsecs back; and Merseia and the Long Night would draw closer.”

He sighed. “Leon Ammon is evil and contemptible,” he went on. “Under different circumstances, I’d propose we gut him with a butterknife. But he does have energy, determination, actual courage and foresight of sorts.

“I went to his office to learn his intentions. When he told me, I agreed to go along because—well—

“If the Imperial bureaucrats were offered Wayland, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Probably they’d stamp its existence Secret, to avoid making any decisions or laying out any extra effort. If nothing else, a prize like that would make ‘conciliation and consolidation’ a wee bit difficult, eh?

“Ammon, though, he’s got a personal profit to harvest. He’ll go in to stay. His enterprise will be a human one. He’ll make it pay off so well—he’ll get so much economic and thereby political leverage from it—that he can force the government to protect his interests. Which means standing fast on Irumclaw. Which means holding this border, and even extending control a ways outward.

“In short,” Flandry concluded, “as the proverb phrases it, he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

He stubbed out the cigarette with a violent gesture and turned back to the girl, more in search of forgetfulness than anything else.

Strangely, in view of the fellow-feeling she had just shown him, she did not respond. Her hands fended him off. The blue glance was troubled upon his. “Please, Nicky. I want to think…about what you’ve told me.”

He respected her wish and relaxed in his seat, crossing shank over knee. “I daresay I can contain myself for a bit.” The sight of her mildened the harshness that had risen in him. He chuckled. “Be warned, it won’t be a long bit. You’re too delectable.”

Her mouth twitched, but not in any smile. “I never realized such things mattered to you,” she said uncertainly.

Having been raised to consider idealism gauche, he shrugged. “They’d better. I live in the Terran Empire.”

“But if—” She leaned forward. “Do you seriously believe, Nicky, Wayland can make that big a difference?”

“I like to believe it. Why do you ask? I can’t well imagine you giving a rusty horntoot about future generations.”

“That’s what I mean. Suppose…Nicky, suppose, oh, something happens so Leon doesn’t get to exploit Wayland. So nobody does. How’d that affect us—you and me?”

“Depends on our lifespans, I’d guess, among other items. Maybe we’d see no change. Or maybe, twenty-thirty years hence, we’d see the Empire retreat the way I was talking about.”

“But that wouldn’t mean its end!”

“No, no. Not at once. We could doubtless finish our lives in the style to which we want to become accustomed.” Flandry considered. “Or could we? Political repercussions at home…unrest leading to upheaval…well, I don’t know.”

“We could always find ourselves a safe place. A nice offside colony planet—not so offside it’s primitive, but—”

“Yes, probably.” Flandry scowled. “I don’t understand what’s gnawing you. We’ll report to Ammon and that will finish our part. Remember, he’s holding the rest of our pay.”

She nodded. For a space they were both silent. The stars in the viewscreen made an aureole behind her gold head.

Then craftiness came upon her, and she smiled and murmured: “It wouldn’t make any difference, would it, if somebody else on Irumclaw—somebody besides Leon—got Wayland. Would it?”

“I guess not, if you mean one of his brother entrepreneurs.” Flandry’s unease waxed. “What’re you thinking of, wench? Trying to rake in more for yourself, by passing the secret on to a competitor? I wouldn’t recommend that. Bloody dripping dangerous.”

“You—”

“Emphatically not! I’ll squirrel away my money, and for the rest of my Irumclaw tour, you won’t believe what a good boy I’ll be. No more Old Town junkets whatsoever; wholesome on-base recreation and study of naval manuals. Fortunately, my Irumclaw tour is nearly done.”

Flandry captured her hands in his. “I won’t even risk seeing you,” he declared. “Nor should you take any avoidable chances. The universe would be too poor without you.”

Her lips pinched together. “If that’s how you feel—”

“It is.” Flandry leered. “Fortunately, we’ve days and days before we arrive. Let’s use them, hm-m-m?”

Her eyes dropped, and rose, and she was on his lap embracing him, warm, soft, smiling, pupils wide between the long lashes, and “Hm-m-m indeed,” she crooned.

Thunder ended a dream. Nothingness.

He woke, and wished he hadn’t. Someone had scooped out his skull to make room for the boat’s nuclear generator.

No…He tried to roll over, and couldn’t.

When he groaned, a hand lifted his head. Cool wetness touched his mouth. “Drink this,” Djana’s voice told him from far away.

He got down a couple of tablets with the water, and could look around him. She stood by the bunk, staring down. As the stimpills took hold and the pain receded, her image grew less blurred, until he could identify the hardness that sat on her face. Craning his neck, he made out that he lay on his back with wrists and ankles wired—securely—to the bunkframe.

“Feel better?” Her tone was flat.

“I assume you gave me a jolt from your stun gun after I feel asleep,” he succeeded in croaking.

“I’m sorry, Nicky.” Did her shell crack the tiniest bit, for that tiniest instant?

“What’s the reason?”

She told him about Rax, ending: “We’re already bound for the rendezvous. If I figured right, remembering what you taught me, it’s about forty or fifty light-years; and I set the pilot for top cruising hyperspeed, the way you said I ought to.”

He was too groggy for the loss of his fortune to seem more than academic. But dismay struck through him like a blunt nail. “Four or five days! With me trussed up?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I don’t dare give you a chance to grab me or—or anything—” She hesitated. “I’ll take care of you as best I can. Nothing personal in this. You know? It’s that million credits.”

“What makes you think your unknown friends will honor their end of the deal?”

“If Wayland’s what you say, a megacredit’s going to be a microbe to them. And I can keep on being useful till I leave them.” All at once, it was as if a sword spoke: “That payment will make me my own.”

Flandry surrendered to his physical misery.

Which passed. But was followed by the miseries of confinement. He couldn’t do most isometric exercises. The wires would have cut him. A few were possible; and he spent hours flexing what muscles he was able to; and Djana was fairly good about massaging him. Nonetheless he ached and tingled.

Djana also kept her promise to give him a nurse’s attentions. Hers weren’t the best, for lack of training and equipment, but they served. And she read to him by the hour, over the intercom, from the bookreels he had along. She even offered to make love to him. On the third day he accepted.

Otherwise little passed between them: the constraints were too many for conversation. They spent most of their time separately, toughing it out. Once he was over the initial shock and had disciplined himself, Flandry didn’t do badly at first. While no academician, he had many experiences, ideas, and stray pieces of information to play with. Toward the end, though, environmental impoverishment got to him and each hour became a desert century.

When at last the detectors buzzed, he had to struggle out of semi-delirium to recognize what the noise was. When the outercom boomed with words, he blubbered for joy.

But when hypervelocities were matched and phasing in was completed and airlocks were joined and the other crew came aboard, Djana screamed.