Child of Earth

CHAPTER SIX

Along time,” mused Shandaha. “When you are hurt and in pain and unsure as to your destination. Yet luck, it seems, was with you. No further attacks,” he explained. “Another predator would have found you easy prey.”

“As you would know,” said Dumarest.

“As I surmise.”

“Surmise?” Dumarest was sharp. “I don’t understand. You were with me, riding my memories, living my life. Every step I took you took also.”

Steps of agony as shattered bone grated against bone, lacerating internal tissues, tearing at his lungs, filling his mouth with blood. The boots the thug had worn had been tipped with metal and had created internal damage which turned his legs to water, filled his vision with swirling mists and flashing darts of pain. Every motion had needed greater effort, each step become a greater challenge. At times the desire to simply stop and sink to the ground had become almost overwhelming.

“The guards were obviously intent on robbing the dead man and you were an inconvenience.” Shandaha poured wine into goblets, shimmering purple into twisted skeins of convoluted crystal. “You must have guessed that and so masked your true condition. Had you not done so they would probably have killed you. Another victim of local violence-who would have cared?”

Dumarest lifted his goblet and looked at the wine. The surface shimmered with eye-catching brilliance, the innate glow accentuated by the transmitted motion of his hand. He sipped and tasted a sweet succulence carrying the hint of delicate spices and, abruptly, was again lurching an agonized path down a deserted street towards an unknown destination. A memory, nota relived incident, and he carefully set down the goblet on a table made of gold and amber.

He said, “You were with me. You sent me back!”

“And so should have felt everything you suffered, everything you felt.” Shandaha sipped at his wine, savoring it, smiling over the ornamented rim of the goblet. “I could have done that and would have done had it been desirable. I chose to do otherwise.”

“Why? Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Chagal has given you the answer. Did the good doctor not liken himself to a book? His mind, your mind, something to be read? And if you grow bored with a book do you not turn the pages?”

“Skip the boring parts? Close the volume?”

“Exactly. A minute of agony is enough-what more is to be learned or enjoyed by extending the suffering?”

“What point in leaving me to experience it alone?”

“An oversight. One I regret, but let us not linger over trivial detail.” Shandaha set down his goblet. “I am curious as to the actions of your late engineer. The situation he revealed to you of which you had no suspicion. Yet exactly how much do you know? Did the captain and the others really die? Was your vessel destroyed? Are you convinced the Cyclan were, in some way, involved with what happened?”

“You were with me. You know.”

“Only what you learned from Zander. He could have told you anything, made up any story he chose. You can’t even be certain he died.”

Dumarest made no comment, remembering the pyre, the searing light of destruction, the events which had followed. Looking at Shandaha he was reminded of the clump of vegetation behind which he had hidden. Like his host it had resembled ebony fashioned in intricate array but there the likeness ceased for where it had stood bare and vulnerable in the open Shandaha was far from that.

“Earl?”

“If you cannot trust my memories then why bother reliving them?”

“For amusement as you are aware. But I have already proved that some of your memories are suspect. Let us continue. After your journey, which obviously ended in success, what happened?”

Things Shandaha would have known had he continued to share in the relived life. Instead he had withdrawn leaving Dumarest to suffer the anguish alone. Pain, fear and agony he would have preferred to forget.

“I reached the church and the monks took me in. Without their help I would have died.”

Even with it he almost had. He sat, remembering, seeing again the crumbling building that formed the local church, the robed monks who had dedicated their lives to an ideal. Men who lived in poverty, wearing rough homespun and sandals, bearing chipped bowls as they begged for alms. They had eased his pain, kept him warm and fed and nursed him back to health. He had given them what he had and, when fit, had worked as best he could in order to repay their kindness.

“Charity,” said Shandaha. “From those dealing in superstition. How did you escape contamination?”

“There was neither contamination or superstition. The Church of Universal Brotherhood is a potent force for good throughout the galaxy. The monks have dedicated their lives to giving help and easing the torment of those in need.”

“So they would have you believe.”

“So I have seen.” Dumarest studied his host wondering ifhis attitude was genuine or a pretence. Another ploy leading to some conclusion that would reveal his failure in the realm of logic. A continuation of the elaborate game of which he seemed to be a part. “The universe is rotten with poverty and disease. The monks offer counsel, advice, medical aid and what goods and comfort they can provide.”

“In return for an unquestioning belief in their deity. For total obedience to their dictates.”

“The monks make no demands. There is no ritualized worship. Just the basic teaching that if all could be brought to recognize the truth of the credo-there, but for the grace of God, go I-the millennium will have arrived.”

“God?”

“Fate. Destiny. Luck. Chance-call it what you choose,” snapped Dumarest. “Maybe there is a supreme being somewhere in the universe, the original creator and, for convenience, we call it God.”

“And you?”

Dumarest made no answer, sitting, remembering a tall gaunt figure in a shabby homespun robe, sandals on callused feet, scarred hands twisted with arthritis and torments endured when he was young. Brother Edom, a kind and gentle man. One who maintained a warmth and depth of compassion which Dumarest had found hard to understand.

“Think of God as a concept,” he had said. “As a word symbolizing a whole. A total of goodness, perhaps. Of tolerance. Of kindness. Of compassion. Or as a friend, an elder brother or a trusted companion. As a protector or a loving, forgiving, father. Or simply as someone or something always better than we are, for all of us fall into error. Or sin if you prefer to call it that. Acts done with deliberate intent or from unthinking ignorance. Deeds that cause hurt to others yielding physical, mental or emotional distress. Sometimes the guilt of doing such deeds is too much to bear and so the perpetrator seeks forgiveness. Absolution.”

Hence the lamp held in a small compartment. The Benediction Light beneath which a supplicant knelt and confessed his sins to the attendant monk who listened and soothed and gave comfort together with the hypnotic command never to kill.

Dumarest had never knelt before the Benediction Light.

Lying in a semi-coma on a cot close to the inner sanctum he had heard the babble of the supplicants and the measured response of the attendant monks. The comfort they gave and how they gave it. Things he had learned as he had learned of the conditioning-a thing he could do without. If he’d had it he would have died when attacked on the clearing.

Dumarest sipped at his wine, looking at the beauty of the goblet, the table, the furnishing and decoration of the chamber in which they sat. This time it resembled the interior of a tent, one adorned with swathes of shimmering silk and esoteric patterns. Luxury at total variance with the small church he had known in which the monks had helped him win his battle to live. Here was light and the sweet scent of perfume. Then had been the stench of poverty with all that entailed.

“Earl-”

“Yes, I know, you want answers and quickly. So do I. Does it make you a god because you can give or withhold them? That you have the power of life and death? We all have that; the ability to kill or not to kill. Is that your definition of a deity? The concept of a being with awesome power, unpredictable desires, an inflated ego and the ability to pander to any whim regardless of its effect on others? If so you aren’t talking about a god-you’re talking about a megalomaniac.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Do you give a damn what I think?” Dumarest looked at the goblet in his hand then carefully set it on the table. The wine was unexpectedly strong. “Life is a gamble,” he said. “A game of chance. The cards are dealt and each gets a hand. It can be worthless, have potential value, have value of a kind, or be unbeatable. You improve it if you can. Otherwise you just make do.”

“A cynical point of view, Earl. One I would not have expected from a man of action such as yourself. Yet, if you had been indoctrinated to believe that all is foreordained, then there would be no point in trying to improve your situation. If God deals the cards then God must have decided your station. Which proves that God must be omnipotent.”

“Omniscient,” corrected Dumarest. “You don’t need total power to deal out a hand of cards. You just hand them out and let luck take care of the rest. But if you want to fix the deal you need to have knowledge.”

“As you would know.” Shandaha shrugged, “So we have managed to resolve the nature of God. A crooked card-dealer. A novel proposition but one I find hard to accept.”

“I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about luck. Life is a gamble all along the line. Who we are, what we are, all the rest of it. The random products of chance.”

“Perhaps. You have a point but I doubt if the monks would agree. How long did you stay with them?”

“About a year.”

“And then?”

“I moved on. The Church held attraction but it wasn’t for me.”

“You hated wearing the robe, the begging, the need, always, to be humble?”

“Something like that.”

“Their pacifism?”

“That too.” Dumarest looked at his hands, remembering those of the old monk, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him to have suffered the agony of broken joints and torn flesh. Knowing that he could never accept their creed of peace, accepting torment hoping, that by example, they would teach their tormentors the futility of inflicting agony.

Not in a universe where life itself was a continual act of violence.

“And then?”

“Hsi Wei taught me how to survive.”

He had remembered the man when lying in satiated lethargy with Nada before opening the door that had led to his past. Hours ago? Minutes? There was no way to tell. Drugs could alter the apparent passage of time and he could have relived previous experiences at an accelerated rate. Most probably had done but there was nothing he could do about it. Now he simply sat, thinking, assessing Shandaha’s reluctance to accompany him on the pain-wracked journey to the church. His host did not seem to relish pain and Hsi Wei had provided more than enough of that.

“A lesson accompanied with pain is a lesson never to be forgotten.”

His personal credo founded on years of experience and primitive teaching, backed by the generous use of the thin cane looped to his wrist. One he used to emphasize every facet of the information he regarded as essential to the art of personal survival.

“Learn the major areas of maximum sensitivity to physical attack.” A pause as the tip of the cane touched points on an anatomical chart. “The genitals, the throat, the larynx, the eyes, the ears. Boned structures such as the jaw, the temple, the cheek, the neck. Repeat!” The lash of the cane as he was obeyed. “Again! Again!”

Anatomy, circulation, the placement of nerves that, when correctly struck, would result in pain and temporary paralysis. Practice bouts with one student set against another, then against a pair, a trio, more. All to find the art of determining how and if to attack, when, which to strike first.

“In any unavoidable conflict the basic rule is to strike first, fast, and furiously.” The sting of the cane. “Repeat! Repeat!”

Tuition, practice, learning which opened doors he had barely known existed. There were more ways than one to resolve a situation. More subtle methods than direct attacks. Actual physical conflict was to be avoided whenever possible but, when by necessity used, to be short, sharp and final. A dead opponent was harmless, an injured one was not. Mercy was a weakness and warnings a waste of time. Things Dumarest had painfully learned together with the wisdom of masking his actions from official scrutiny.

“You are dwelling on the past,” said Shandaha. “I am not entertained.”

“Join me.”

“I think not.”

“Then I’ll leave.” Dumarest rose, ignoring his wine, remembering the lesson Hsi Wei had beaten into him; never to offer unnecessary offence. “With your permission, naturally.” He added, “I’d appreciate guidance to find the doctor.”

Chagal was in a room fashioned like a conservatory with sheets of crystal curved to form a gleaming structure of light and brightness containing delicately scented air. One furnished with the luxury that seemed normal to Shandaha’s domain. A low table before the doctor held warmed pots of tisane, an assortment of viands wrapped in delicate pastry, wine, goblets, bowls of fruits and trays of succulent dainties. Among them a chessboard seemed an incongruity.

Dumarest looked at the feast, the board with its scattered pieces. “Was this here when you came?” Then, as the doctor nodded, “You’ve had company. Delise?”

“Yes.” Chagal rubbed his cheeks. His face seemed smoother, younger than when Dumarest had seen him last. “She joined me in a game. I beat her but only just. The next time it could be the other way around.” He gestured at the table. “If you’re hungry help yourself.”

“I’m not hungry and I’ve had enough wine. Let’s talk about you. How are you keeping?”

“Fine.” Chagal was curt. He added, “How did you think I’d been keeping? You didn’t bother to find out.”

“I’ve been busy. You?”

“No. Shandaha seems to have lost interest in me. I’ve eaten, drunk, slept and did a few things and-”

“Played chess,” interrupted Dumarest. “I know. You told me. With Delise. How are you getting on?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s start again, doctor. If you think I’ve been avoiding you I’m sorry. I haven’t. I’ve been busy-our host has been having his fun. How long did it take for him to finish with you?” He waited then said, “Not long, I guess. You’ve been too close to suffering and pain. Shandaha doesn’t like such things when they come too close. Among other things I’m wondering what else he doesn’t like. Delise, perhaps?”

“They seem to get on together.”

“And you? With her? Has she come visiting when you’ve been taking your rest?” Then, as Chagal again made no answer, Dumarest snarled in impatient fury, “Snap out of it, man! I’m talking about our survival. Are you just going to roll over because you’ve found a charming companion to share your bed?”

“Are you?”

“With Nada? No. I figure that both she and Delise are bribes. Comforts to keep our minds off the real question. And I’m not too sure about you. You’re looking younger, fitter, like a pampered pet. You could be grateful to Shandaha for that. Willing to tell him everything we talk about. Has Delise persuaded you to do that?”

“Damn you, Earl! I-” He broke off as Dumarest closed his hand around his throat.

“Listen,” he said quietly. “I’m growing tired of playing this game. I don’t like the rules and I don’t like the mystery. All the illusion and deception, the smoke and mirrors. If I can’t persuade you to help me then I don’t want you to get in my way. If I can’t trust you then-” His hand tightened. “Which way is it going to be?”

“You’re crazy!” Chagal rubbed his throat as Dumarest loosened his grip and removed his hand. “Insane. Why the hell do you think I’d betray you?”

“If the price was right why wouldn’t you?”

“I can’t answer that. Could you?”

Dumarest could but made no attempt to elaborate. Instead he looked at the table, the wine and cakes, the fruit and meats, the pots of tisane, the chess board with its pieces. They were of jet and silver, oddly shaped yet the rank of each was clear.

“Which color did she choose?”

“Delise? Black. Why?”

“So you started the game.” Dumarest moved a piece at random. Followed it with another. “And, while playing, you talked. About what?”

“Things. Love, life, the universe. You, me, Nada. She is in love with you, Earl.”

“As Delise is with you?”

“No. Nada is genuine. To Delise I am just a temporary distraction.” The doctor was pragmatic. “Age, Earl, what do you expect. Any harlot can wear a smile and make pleasing compliments as can any woman bored and, maybe, instructed to do just that. But Nada is genuine.”

“As Delisa told you.” Dumarest moved another piece. “As she could have been instructed to do. Why should we believe her?”

“Why would she lie?”

“Why would anyone?” Dumarest answered his own question. “To obey orders. To get their own way. To amuse themselves. To hide something. To gain something. To avoid trouble. A better question would be why should they tell the truth? Why should anyone in this madhouse?”

Chagal said, slowly, “You’re getting at something, Earl. What?”

“Look at the board,” Dumarest gestured. “The pieces. Give them identities, names. Nada does this and Delise does that and you and I dance to the dictates of an unknown and unseen player. Or, perhaps, not unseen.”

“Shandaha?”

“Our host. Yes. Unless he too is a piece moved by an invisible player. A gamer who doesn’t realize he is a part of the game.”

“You think that possible?”

“In this place anything is possible. Time, for us, hasn’t passed at the same rate. For you days, perhaps, for me hours. One second facing Shandaha, the next in another place, alone, surrounded by illusion. Or, without warning, thrown back to relive my early life. And now this.” Dumarest rapped a piece hard against the surface of the board. “A clue as to what is going on.”

“A game of chess?”

“Which you opened. I knew a master once who claimed to know, within three moves, the character of his opponent. The opening told him all he needed to know. A calm, recognized, safe move meant one thing. A bold, unusual, adventurous one, another. He played on the knowledge, used it, manipulated his opponent-and always won.”

“Delise didn’t.”

“She wasn’t meant to. She just wanted you to start the play. To provide more information.” Dumarest saw the doctor’s blank expression and felt a sudden rush of irritation. “Damn it, man, haven’t you got it yet. The board wasn’t placed here to allow us to play-it was placed to give us a clue as to our real situation. We’re not in a snug refuge. A luxury hotel. An oasis of comfort in a hostile world. We’re in a prison. A trap-and we’ve got to find a way out before it snaps shut!”

The curved sheets of crystal were translucent, the view reduced to that of a nacreous blur which hid what lay outside.

If anything lay outside other than the hint of lush vegetation and warmth. Resting his palm against the crystal Dumarest felt no change of temperature. He searched for a door and found only a single panel leading to unfamiliar regions.

Watching him Chagal said, “If you are hoping to find another way out there isn’t one. Only that door. Delise came through it.”

“Did you?”

“I guess I must have done but I can’t remember. Can you?”

“I followed instructions,” said Dumarest. “Turned left when leaving Shandaha, turned right at a column tinted in the hues of the spectrum, turned-” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. “The route has probably changed by now. Perhaps it was never there.”

“Hypnotism,” said Chagal. “Is that what you think? That we were both hypnotized, conditioned to believe what we’ve been told. That, on a cue, you regress to relive your early life? As I did?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible,” the doctor admitted. “But why do you think it happened? And why do you think we are in a prison?”

“Logic.”

“Just that?”

“Add experience,” said Dumarest dryly. “But let’s take logic first. How many people are resident in Shandaha’s domain? All we’ve seen are three; Nada, Delise and our host himself. Who maintains the place? Where are the servants? The cooks and guards and suppliers of food and wine? There has to be machinery so where are the maintenance engineers? Those who do the work. And where are those things which came for us. Those who, according to you, slaughtered the Kaldari? Did you actually see it happen?”

“No,” admitted Chagal. “I was told, but I think I heard it or what could have been it. Shots and screams and the smell and sound of burning.”

“Before you went down under the vapor?”

“I don’t know.”

“There is too much we don’t know. Too much that doesn’t make any real sense. That’s why I think we must be in a prison. Think of a cell,” Dumarest urged. “A box housed in a larger building. We see a couple of guards-Nada and Delise. The warden-Shandaha. In a prison as we know it that’s all we might be able to see. Especially if we were in confinement. Kept secluded while being interrogated.”

Chagal shook his head and reached for a flagon of wine.

He poured a stream of ruby fluid into a goblet and sipped then swallowed as if to wash away an unpleasant taste.

Dumarest said, “You find it hard to believe?”

“I think you could be reading into it more than there is to see. Shandaha could just be amusing himself. Joining with us to relive incidents from our past as he explained. Bored, he wants to expand his field of knowledge. I can’t see how you can think of it as interrogation.”

“Maybe we haven’t had the same experiences. With you did he always go through an initial ritual.”

“The sparkling liquid, the machine, the electrodes?” Chagal nodded. “Yes. To begin with. Then it just seemed to happen.”

“One second normal, the next up to your armpits in blood as you operated on some poor devil. Listening to his screams. Fighting to hold him down. Emergency field operations after a battle or during one. You rode with the Kaldari and it would have been a part of your duties. But did Shandaha ever question you as to your beliefs? Talk about God?”

“No.”

“Is he still riding your memories?”

Chagal shook his head. “No, Earl, not that I know of. Anyway, why should he? He’s taken all he wants. There’s nothing more he could gain.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain.” Dumarest touched the chessboard. “I don’t think you played a harmless game with Delise. I think you unknowingly supplied information of a kind. That you were being interrogated. It’s an art in a way and I think our host is very good at it. I also think he has made it into a game. He wants to find out what he wants to know without betraying what it is.”

“That’s crazy! Why doesn’t he just ask?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, if he has to, he will, but I don’t want to be around when he runs out of patience.”

Dumarest selected a flagon from the table. It was made of crystal ornamented with writhing images, filled with wine and heavy to his hand. He ripped the cover from a cushion and tipped cakes and other viands into the sac then tied the neck to secure the bundle. “Coming?”

“Where?”

“Through that door. I want to find out the size of our cell.”

“And the flagon and food?” Chagal answered his own question. “Emergency rations and something to take care of anyone who might want to stop us.” He followed Dumarest’s example. “Let’s go.”

The door was narrow giving on to a short, curving passage blurred with a dull ruby glow. The roof was low, the walls bare, the floor a pattern of oddly shaped tiles. A strange place that Dumarest couldn’t remember ever having seen before. He paused at the end facing another door. One closed and unyielding. Struck it yielded a hollow sound.

“What now?” said Chagal.

“We get through it.”

Dumarest set aside the flagon and bundle, the knife whispering from his boot as he knelt to examine the edges of the door.

“Did you come through this?”

“I can’t remember, but I must have done. How else would I have got to the room back there?”

A different way, a different portal. Chagal should have recognized that but Dumarest didn’t bother to explain. Instead he thrust the blade of his knife into the gap he had discovered, gripped the hilt and, with a surge of power from back and shoulders, lifted the steel to halt at an obstruction, to fight it, to feel it yield. The door swung open to the impact of his boot.

Chagal sucked in his breath as he saw what lay beyond.

Nothing. A void of darkness that was more than an absence of light. A region in which all illumination was sucked and extinguished as all matter was destroyed in a black hole.

One that radiated a vibrant warning. A place not to be touched, entered into, examined, investigated. The ultimate taboo.

“Earl!” Dumarest felt the tug at his belt. “Earl, step back! Step back!”

Away from the insidious temptation of the unknown. The subtle and sometimes lethal attraction felt when looking down from the edge of a cliff, the rim of a waterfall.

A danger he recognized and he yielded to the tug at his belt. As he moved back the door swung shut to be as it had been before.

“God!” The doctor looked ill. “What the hell was that?”

“A dead end.”

Dumarest turned and began to retrace his steps down the passage. Before him the door leading to the conservatory grew nearer, larger. Beyond the chamber seemed unchanged.

Chagal, shaken by what had happened, reached for an open flagon and gulped directly from the bottle.

“That was close,” he said. “Too damned close.”

Dumarest ignored the doctor. He walked to the far end of the conservatory and narrowed his eyes hoping to penetrate the nacreous glow that illuminated whatever lay beyond the crystal. His skin prickled with familiar warnings of danger. Did the darkness they had seen extend to beyond the conservatory? Had he stepped into it what would have happened? Chagal had prevented that. He had also claimed the narrow door was the only way into the chamber but was that what he had been led to believe? Had Delise merely joined him to play a game? Had she known what was to come? Arranged for it to happen?

How to escape the trap?

A whirl of thoughts and speculation that spun at his mind and corroded his normal objectivity. Indecision was a danger as was strong emotion and now he was being affected by both. Shandaha’s work?

“No! Earl, for God’s sake! No!”

Dumarest heard Chagal’s cry as he stepped back from the shimmering crystal, the heavy weight of the flagon rising in his hand. It left his grip in a flowing arc, bursting as it met the pane, shards flying, wine spattering, the glowing barrier shattering, revealing darkness.

An ebon cloud that engulfed him and sent him whirling through space and time.