A Wizard in Bedlam

CHAPTER 1

Engines bellowed, and the stubby cargo boat wallowed up out of the blastpit. It hesitated for a moment, feeling for balance, then shot up into the sky, roaring like an angry aurochs.

It cleared atmosphere and slewed into orbit, chasing the great globe of the mother ship down the ellipse.

In the control blister, the pilot slapped his board to automatic and looked up at Domigny. “Secure for coasting, Captain—reeling down the umbilicus. About half an hour till we head back into the womb.”

Domigny winced. “I’ve heard of extended metaphors, Lieutenant, but you stretched that one so far that it snapped back.”

“Really, sir?” The navigator looked up in feigned surprise. “I was about to compliment him on his knack for colorful language.” He was black-haired and lean, with a look of wiry strength to him—almost the pilot’s double. Not as close as twins, closer than brothers—but they weren’t related. Not technically, anyway.

“That is a polite way of saying it,” Domigny agreed, “though I could wish he didn’t take the term ‘mother ship’ quite so literally.” He loosened his shock webbing, stood up, and stretched. “Well, to business. Call the Seed of Insurrection, will you?”

The pilot winced as he thumbed the key. “I thought we were done with that metaphor… Lieutenant Dulain to control, please.”

The captain grinned wickedly and flexed an arm, kneading his pineapple biceps with the other hand. He was broad in the shoulder and beefy everywhere else, lard-faced and grizzle-haired, with eyes that seemed a little too small but saw much.

The navigator frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that was apt, Captain; the insurrection in Mélange scarcely needs seeding. From what Lords Port and Core were saying, I’d guess it’s about ready to blossom.”

The captain glanced up in irritation. “I was under the naïve impression that conference was private, Charts.”

“No, sir.” The pilot grinned. “At least, not when you ordered Dirk to listen in on the conference-room bug. Certainly you couldn’t expect me to resist a temptation like that.”

“I’d expect you to resist many things, Lieutenant, but temptation isn’t one of them,” the captain groused, settling himself back into his couch. The hatch opened, and a young man in waistcoat, knee pants, white hose, and buckled shoes climbed in. He looked enough like the pilot and navigator to make a man wonder about their mothers. But such a man would wrong those virtuous women—the fault was in their ancestors.

Captain Domigny raised an eyebrow in the newcomer’s direction. “You heard, Dirk?”

Dirk made an elaborate bow. “Your wish is my command, O Captain.”

Domigny turned to the pilot. “Turn on the blower, will you, Lieutenant? It’s getting a little thick in here.”

“Not as thick as it was in there.” Dirk straightened, massaging his knuckles. “Little out of line, wasn’t it? For Lord Core to be there with Lord Port?”

“Ah, you noticed!” Domigny said brightly. “Do I detect a note of sarcasm there? … But it looks a little strange, no? I mean, Lord Core has moved up in the world since I was an overworked brat on his estate—Lord Privy Councillor to His Majesty, and all that—but, personally interviewing a freighter captain? Now, really!”

“Perceptive, perceptive.” Domigny nodded over steepled fingertips. “Well, you’re supposed to be the dirtside operative—what do you make of it?”

Dirk sat down and leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees. “Offhand, I’d say things are getting tense. I know our spies said there was rebellion in the air—but they didn’t say it was the air around the throne.”

“Well, it might not be.” Domigny shifted in his chair. “Anything having to do with the throne—who knows? Nobody’s seen His Majesty since his coronation.”

“Yeah, and as I remember, he looked pretty scared then, poor kid.” Dirk scratched behind his ear. “But then, who wouldn’t be, with Core as his regent? … Either way, rumor speaks loudly enough for Core to hear, so here he is, to make very, very sure we don’t help out, if anything does flare up.”

“Not bad.” Domigny nodded. “A little superficial, perhaps, but still, not bad. Now—what does this mean, in terms of your assignment?”

“They’ll be watching us like hawks,” Dirk said immediately. “Each Lord will keep his radar screen manned, for a change. When you drop me in the gig, alarms’ll scream for a hundred miles around.”

“Well, not a hundred miles,” Domigny said judiciously. “Ten would be more like it. But it is to our advantage the Lords allow only one spaceport. That’s where they’ll be watching with basilisk eyes—so, if we drop you a hundred miles away, there’s still a chance you might get by unnoticed.”

Dirk shook his head. “This is where the action’s going to be—in the capital, near the King. It’d take me too long to leg it in a hundred miles. Don’t worry—I can lose any search party they send out.”

The captain sighed and shook his head. “Your choice, I’m afraid. Personally, I’d opt for a hundred miles away.”

“I doubt it,” Dirk said dryly.

The captain glared at him; but he couldn’t hold it, and his face broke into a grin. “Well, maybe you’re right. Lord knows I wish it was my assignment—but age does have certain disadvantages… What did you think of the ‘no tourists’ policy?”

“Pretty insistent, weren’t they?” Dirk smiled grimly. “No more ‘accidental’ reconnaissance flights—isn’t that what he said? And that line about knowing your crew must get curious about a planet they trade with so much, but never get to set foot on… Think he suspects something?”

Domigny shrugged. “You know him better than I do. What would he suspect?”

“Anything,” Dirk said promptly. “Up to and including our landing secret agents to foment rebellion.”

“But there’ve been ‘accidental’ gig flights as long as we’ve been trading with them—nearly five hundred years.” Domigny watched Dirk keenly. “Wouldn’t that lull his suspicions?”

Dirk shook his head. “His predecessors, maybe. Not his. This time, if he spots the gig coming in, he’ll call you and cancel the franchise.”

Domigny smiled sourly. “Not effective immediately. It’ll take them a little time to line up a new freight company. They want their nice little ‘best of all possible worlds’ to stay safe from outside influence, so they deal with only one company, us—but now their safety snaps back at them, and the bars they put up to keep everybody else out will be keeping them in. Besides”—he spread his hands—“what do we care? Let them cancel us. Will that make us go away?” He jabbed a finger toward the viewscreen, filled with a huge golden sphere. “We’ll be sitting right there, behind the near moon in the radar shadow, waiting for your call—and when you send it, we’ll break out every boat and drop down on them like a nest of mad hornets.”

“What if it’s another flash in the pan?” Dirk said softly. “DeCade didn’t succeed five centuries ago. What if the rebellion fails?”

“It won’t,” Domigny said grimly. “We’ve waited five hundred years for this. The Wizard escaped off-planet under cover of the chaos DeCade created, starved and scrimped till he could start a freight line, took a huge loss underbidding the first company so he could get the franchise, and died happy only because he knew he’d set us on the path to this day.”

Dirk listened closely, knowing the words by heart, letting them sink in to stoke the fire of his purpose into flame.

“Ten generations of us have escaped from our masters to these ships,” Domigny went on. “Escaped off-planet, crammed knowledge into our heads till they ached, and worked our backs raw to keep this line running, trading with the planet of our birth so we could sneak in information, arms—waiting for The Day.”

He fell silent a moment, glaring at Dirk. “It won’t fail, Lieutenant.”

Dirk took a deep breath and stood, slowly. “No. It won’t.”

“Not if you do your job, you mean.” Domigny stood slowly, never taking his eyes from Dirk’s. “If we drop down before the peasants rise, and the rebellion fails because of it, you’ll be sitting in the blastpit when the ship lifts off.”

Dirk looked into Domigny’s grim eyes and knew he meant it.

“Find the rebel leader,” Domigny went on. “Make contact with him. Find out what he wants us to do. If he doesn’t want us to do anything and the rebellion breaks out, figure out what we should do. But when you call, you’d better be right.”

“Don’t worry,” Dirk said evenly. “When I call, I’ll be sure.”

Domigny held his eyes a moment longer, then smiled and clasped Dirk’s hand and forearm tightly. “Good luck,” he said. “And when you drop from that gig, drop running.”

The gig swooped down out of the night and slammed to a stop as its hatch boomed open and Dirk shot out. He landed rolling, swung up to his feet, and lit out for the trees at the edge of the meadow. He glanced back over his shoulder—once—to see the gig a hundred feet up and rising; then he turned back to serious business, like running.

He sprinted through meadow grass, feeling as though a hundred snipers had their sights locked on him every foot of the way, and were just waiting for him to slow down a little so they could see if there was a brandmark on his back, to make sure he was a churl before they shot him down. Then Dirk was in among the trees, and he had to slow down to a rapid walk. He knew the forests well; they’d been his first refuge when he escaped from serfdom twenty years ago, and he’d run seven missions since—all involving the forests now and then, usually for the same reason. He picked his way through the underbrush, striking for the trail and finding it, listening intently to the normal sounds of a night forest—wind in the branches, scurrying of small animals, bat squeaks. There was nothing out of the ordinary yet. He almost wished there were; the waiting was screwing him tight as a piano string.

He swung on down the trail at a long, fast walk, staff slung over his shoulder, moving through patches of starlight. He was a tall, lean, wiry man, dressed like an eighteenth-century gentleman. The broad brim of his hat shadowed the deep-set gray eyes, leaving the blade of a nose, prominent cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and square jaw to the moonlight. It was a lean and hungry face, and the man behind it tried not to think too much.

He stopped suddenly, listening; then he slipped off the trail, silent as a drifting cloud of poison gas, found the tree trunk in the deepest shadow, and did a passable imitation of bark.

He waited, and the night waited with him. Then, faint but growing fast, came the drum of horses’ hooves.

The drum roll swelled to an avalanche, and they swept past him single-file—hard-faced men with iron derbies and chainmail waistcoats. Somewhere in the middle of the string, Dirk noticed the local Lord, in plum-colored tailcoat and white satin, powdered wig uncovered to the night breeze. Then he was gone, and the iron file was grinding by again.

Dirk leaned back against the trunk with folded arms, staff resting on his shoulder, admiring the sight. He’d always loved a parade.

Too bad he didn’t have a gun. Not even a crossbow. It was definitely out of character for a gentleman who wasn’t in the military—but not as out-of-character as it would have been for a churl. A dead churl, possibly …

Then the last horseman whipped on by, and the starlight filtered steadily down. Dirk lifted his head, turned toward the sound of fading hooves. That was all; he stayed still as a crystal till the last hoofbeat had faded. Even then, he waited till he was sure the night was quiet; then he moved out—but not onto the trail. At a rough guess, the local Lord was manning his radar screen and had detected the gig’s landing—though it was possible, Dirk supposed, that he was just on his way to a late party, or a tryst with a churl’s daughter. Still, the Lords didn’t usually bring more than a dozen bodyguards for a social occasion. No, the hunt was on. They’d find the meadow empty, of course, and would turn around and beat the brush till daybreak. But not too deep into the brush; there were dangerous animals in the woods, mostly with two legs and a nasty bite. They could leave a steel barb embedded in a soldier’s neck. No, they’d stay close to the trails—and therefore it behooved Dirk to do the reverse.

So he struck out through the underbrush, humming softly to himself, and looking brightly about him. It was a wonderful time to be alive…

He came out of the woods a couple of hours later and stopped in the shadow of an oak to get his bearings. The land rolled away before him, wild meadow rising to a ridge a mile away, dim and lustrous in the starlight.

Maybe an hour till moonrise—not time enough to make it to the nearest village. Dirk looked for cover.

There it was, off to the left and halfway to the ridge—a rocky outcrop. Where there are large rocks, there are, if not caves, at least niches to hide in. Dirk turned toward the little hill.

As he came hiking up to it, the giant attacked. He burst out of a crevice at the foot of the rockheap and came bounding down the slope toward Dirk, roaring and waving his arms—seven feet, three hundred pounds of maddened, muscled mendicant.

Dirk fell back, his quarterstaff snapping up to guard position, while his stomach hit bottom. He cowered behind his staff in abject terror; then he remembered he was a trained killer, supposedly skilled with the quarterstaff.

He set his feet, grounded the butt of the staff, and aimed its tip at the giant’s solar plexus.

The giant scrabbled to a halt and scowled down at him, puzzled.

Dirk snapped the staff back up to guard. “Rrowr-r-r-r!” The giant threw his arms up, hands curved like talons.

Dirk’s mouth tucked into a smile. The roar had a distinctly tentative ring.

“Rrowrrr?” He sounded wary this time. “ ‘Fraid! … ‘Fraid?”

“Sorry, no.” Dirk shook his head, smiling. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then suddenly stamped the ground, yelling, “Boo!”

The giant started and leap back five feet. There he hesitated, watching Dirk nervously, hands half-raised. He was seven feet tall, and at least two and a half feet wide from shoulder to shoulder, muscled like an ox. That was easy to see because he was naked, except for a filthy rag of a loin-cloth. His whole body was crusted with dirt, and the black hair hanging down to his shoulders was matted and greasy. His forehead sloped forward, jutting out over large, widely spaced eyes. His nose had been broken a long time ago. His face was wide across the cheekbones, but tapered sharply to a square chin. His mouth was thin-lipped, wide, and, at the moment, quivering, as he eyed Dirk warily—in fact, fearfully.

Dirk decided to press the advantage while he had it. He swung his staff up, bellowing, “For God, Harry, and Saint George!”

The giant bleated, leaped up, executing an about-face in midair, and landed running.

Dirk ran after him, bellowing happily and brandishing his quarterstaff. The giant neighed in terror and ran for his life, head flung back, elbows pumping.

Dirk chased him up the path for a good hundred yards, where the giant turned aside and leaped into the rocks. He was out of sight in five seconds, but pebbles rattled under his feet, and Dirk followed the crunching with absolutely no trouble. “Hurry, Watson! The game is afoot!”

He skidded to a halt at the end of the giant’s trail, an abrupt cul-de-sac where two miniature cliffs met in a corner. The giant was scrabbling at the rockface, trying to get a handhold. He threw an agonized look back over his shoulder, saw Dirk five feet away, and whipped about, pressing his back against the stone, mewing deep in his throat.

Dirk leaned his head against his staff, contemplating the giant.

Then he leaped forward, yelling, “Havoc!” The giant jumped, too, then shrank down onto his heels against the base of the rock, arms flung over his head, sobbing like a baby.

Dirk planted the butt of his staff and leaned on it, hand on his hip, head cocked to the side. What—in the names of all the saints—was he to make of this?

He frowned down at the giant, brooding. The starlight darkened the hollows of his cheeks, and exaggerated his gauntness, giving him a battered, world-weary look, bringing out the sadness that always dominated his face. The giant seemed to be a little on the slow-wilted side—maybe an idiot. He wasn’t exactly a rarity—there were a lot of half-wits running around the countryside. Giants weren’t quite as common, but this one wasn’t anywhere nearly as big as some Dirk had seen. There were dwarves, too, and geniuses, mostly neurotic—and short-lived, the Lords saw to that. Not to mention large helpings of mental illness and physical deformities—in fact, everything one could expect from six hundred years of inbreeding.

This giant was a case in point, and not really an extreme one. The recessive genes that had given him his size had taken away a large part of his mind, by way of compensation.

What was Dirk supposed to do with him?

He sighed, and eased his hat back on his head. Go off and leave the big fellow, he supposed. He couldn’t be encumbered—not on this mission.

But it didn’t seem right…

The giant dared a peek upward. Dirk’s sadness must have reassured him because he lifted his head and, slowly, cautiously, rose to his knees.

Dirk nodded, with a wry smile. “That’s right, fella—you’ve got it figured. I won’t hurt you.” The giant’s mouth stretched into a loose-lipped, lopsided grin. He crawled forward to tug at Dirk’s clothing. “Poor Gar’s a-hungered!”

Dirk pursed his lips. “Oh. You can talk.”

Gar nodded eagerly and folded his hands together, looking up at Dirk with pathetic eagerness. Dirk sighed and fumbled in his purse, bringing out a silver coin. “Money—that’s all I can do for you. At least maybe you won’t go trying to rob travelers for a while… That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

Gar’s eager grin slipped and faded.

“Jump out roaring,” Dirk pressed, “and scare me so badly I’d count myself lucky if all you did was snatch my purse? That’s how you live, isn’t it?”

Gar nodded reluctantly, eyes downcast like a whipped puppy.

Dirk nodded, too. “I thought so.”

He flipped the coin, spinning through the air. The giant clapped at it, missed, and scrabbled after it in the dust. He came up with it wrapped tightly in a fist the size of a beef joint and an ear-to-ear grin.

Dirk smiled bleakly and turned away. He’d have to find another hiding place; an uneasy conscience made uneasy sleep. He knew Gar wasn’t his fault, but he still felt guilty for not being able to help him.

Whenever he was on this planet, he spent a lot of time feeling guilty.

He set out for the ridge again, his guilt churning in with the satisfied glow of philanthropy and the self-disgust of feeling like a sucker.

Dirk came out of his morass of self-flagellation when he realized he heard footsteps behind him. He looked back over his shoulder. The giant was trailing about fifty feet behind him, still grinning. Dirk turned and leaned on his staff, frowning. Gar stopped too, but he kept on grinning. “Why are you following me?” Dirk said carefully.

“Nice man,” Gar said hopefully. “Nice to Gar.” A red light flashed in Dirk’s mind: SUCKER. He’d been through this before, with a puppy that had followed him home. It had grown into a small horse and eaten up most of his salary. To top it off, the darned thing couldn’t be trained. He’d been through it with girls, too, with much the same results.

The grin faded into a lost, mournful look. “No friend?”

“Look,” he said desperately, “I don’t need a sidekick. I can’t be tied down with responsibility right now. Especially right now. You can’t follow me now. Maybe later. Not now.”

The big man’s face seemed to crumple, his lower lip turning under. Tears squeezed out of his eyes.

And a warning blared in Dirk’s mind.

Up till then, he’d’ve bought it—attack, remorse, fear, the whole bit. But—tears? They wouldn’t have come naturally; they’d have to be a deliberate play on Dirk’s sympathy.

And anyone with enough brains and control to stage deliberate tears couldn’t be all that much of an idiot.

And, come to think of it, roadside beggars didn’t try to latch onto their patrons. They’d had too many kicks from their masters before they ran away.

Dirk straightened, cupping his hands on the tip of his staff, ready to snap it to guard in the blink of an eye. “You just overplayed it, friend,” he said quietly. “You’re no more an idiot than I am.”

Gar stared.

Then he frowned; his jaw firmed; he squared his shoulders; and, somehow, he seemed much more intelligent.

Also dangerous.

Dirk swallowed and slid one hand down the staff, ready to snap it up to guard.

Gar’s mouth thinned in disgust. He shrugged. “All right, the game’s up. I won’t try to run a bad joke into the ground.”

“Joke?” Dirk said softly. “Game?”

Gar shrugged again, impatiently. “A figure of speech.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure.” Dirk nodded. “What game?”

Gar started to answer, then caught himself and grimaced in chagrin. “Twice in a row; it’s a bad night. Okay, I’ll admit it—I was trying to latch onto you for a guide.”

Dirk stood very still. Then he said, “Natives don’t need guides. Also, a native would have a definite place—he’d be a lord, a gentleman, or a churl. In any event, he wouldn’t be wandering around loose—unless he were an outlaw. But then he’d be hiding in the forest with the rest of his band.”

“Very astute,” Gar growled. “Yes, I’m from offplanet. If I didn’t want you to know it, I wouldn’t’ve said ’guide.‘ ”

Very true, Dirk thought; but, by the same token, if Gar was willing to admit he wanted Dirk for a guide, he had another purpose that he didn’t want Dirk to know about. Second Corollary of Finagle’s Law of Reversal: If a man says something is true, then it isn’t.

“If you did want me to know it,” Dirk said slowly, “why’d you pose as a poortom?”

“Poortom?” Gar frowned. “Oh, you mean an idiot… Sure, I’d’ve rather you would have thought I was a native, just tagging along. But you found me out, so I had to come clean.”

Dirk wondered if the man knew how poorly he lied. But he nodded slowly, letting Gar think he believed him. Why not? It was a harmless delusion and might give Dirk an advantage. “How’d you get in? If you’d come on the freighters, I’d have known about it.”

Gar shrugged, irritated. “I’ve got my own boat.” Dirk held himself stiff, trying to keep his face empty of emotion while he absorbed the information. A private yacht bespoke money—real money. But why would a millionaire come to Mélange? “So you just dropped in for a visit,” he mused aloud. “Don’t you know Mélange is off-limits to tourists?”

“Off-limits to just about everyone, from what I hear.” Gar smiled contemptuously. “That kind of thing is liable to give a man a bothersome itch in the curiosity bump.”

For a moment, Dirk had to fight down boiling rage. Not bad enough he and his kind had to be treated like animals—now they had to be a sideshow, too.

He forced the tension to ease off. “So you just dropped in, managed to shake the search party, and went looking for a guide. Sounds a little thin, friend.”

Gar scowled. “No doubt. But it’s not quite that simple—I’ve been here for a month already.”

“Oh? Like what you saw?”

Gar’s mouth twisted; he turned his head and spat. “It makes me sick to see a bunch of rulers, ostensibly educated and cultured men, so decayed as to treat their people like toys, whose sole purpose for existence is to satisfy their lords’ drives and whims.” He turned back to Dirk, glaring. “Why do you take it? Isn’t there any manhood left in you? Why don’t you just rise up and throw them out?”

Dirk pursed his lips thoughtfully, surprised to realize he was suddenly thinking of Gar as a kid. But that’s what he was—a spoiled brat with a conscience, a rich man’s son with nothing to do and a need for a purpose, a reason for living. He couldn’t find one in his own life, so he was looking at someone else’s—probably rodding from planet to planet, hoping to find a cause he could believe in.

And, at a guess, he’d just found it. Which in turn meant …

“You could’ve ambushed a traveler weeks ago, if you wanted to con yourself a guide,” Dirk pointed out. “But you didn’t; you tried to put the touch on me—tonight—when there aren’t many travelers abroad. None, in fact—or at least, no one legal. Why me?”

Gar turned away, disgusted. “All right, all right! I needed someone from off-planet, and when I saw the search party riding out at night, I knew they weren’t just out after an escaped serf! Whole thing looked very familiar, in fact—almost exactly like the party that came hunting me when I touched down! Therefore: wherever they were going, there’d be someone coming from, and that someone’d be from off-planet. So I figured out which way you’d come walking, and I laid an ambush! Good enough?”

Dirk nodded slowly. It was fine—except that Gar left out the part about rebels. On an interdicted planet, an illegal visitor was either a spy or a rebel, possibly both. So Gar was trying to latch onto a contact with the rebel forces.

Which meant he might not be from off-planet at all—just a spy for the Lords.

Dirk shook his head. He wasn’t a spy—you could see it in his face. This was one planet where you could tell which side a man was on just by looking at him. Inbreeding will do that.

So Gar was trying to contact the rebels, with an eye toward joining up; but of course he didn’t want them to know that he knew.

Yes. A kid.

“Well, how about it?” Gar demanded. “Can you hack a tag-along? Or do I keep wandering on my own?”

Dirk was very tempted to refuse; if there was one thing he didn’t need at this point, it was an enthusiastic amateur. So he would’ve told Gar to go on his own, or go to hell, whichever he chose, if it weren’t for one nagging possibility:

The revolution might fail.

And if it did, the churls were going to need high-powered help from off-planet: influence—to push an investigation of the local government. And where there is money, there is influence.

The kid had enough money for a private spaceyacht…

Dirk shrugged, turning away. “It’s okay by me, as long as you try to stay out of the way. But I warn you; it won’t be a pleasant tour.”

He turned his back and swung off toward the ridge.

After a moment, he heard footsteps behind him.