City of Illusions

X

IT WAS BROAD DAYLIGHT now, and realizing that he was very hungry Ramarren went to the concealed door and asked aloud, in Galaktika, for food. There was no reply, but presently a toolman brought and served him food; and as he was finishing it a little signal sounded outside the door. "Come in!" Ramarren said in Kelshak, and Har Orry entered, then the tall Shing Abundibot, and two others whom Ramarren had never seen. Yet their names were in his mind: Ken Kenyek and Kradgy. They were introduced to him; politenesses were uttered. Ramarren found that he could handle himself pretty well; the necessity of keeping Falk completely hidden and suppressed was actually a convenience, freeing him to behave spontaneously. He was aware that the mentalist Ken Kenyek was trying to mindprobe, and with considerable skill and force, but that did not worry him. If his barriers had held good even under the parahypnotic hood, they certainly would not falter now.

None of the Shing bespoke him. They stood about in their strange stiff fashion as if afraid of being touched, and whispered all they said. Ramarren managed to ask some of the questions which as Ramarren he might be expected to ask concerning Earth, mankind, the Shing, and listened gravely to the answers. Once he tried to get into phase with young Orry, but failed. The boy had no real guard up, but perhaps had been subjected to some mental treatment which nullified the little skill in phase-catching he had learned as a child, and also was under the influence of the drug he had been habituated to. Even as Ramarren sent him the slight, familiar signal of their relationship in prechnoye, Orry began sucking on a tube of parьtha. In the vivid distracting world of semi-hallucination it provided him, his perceptions were dulled, and he received nothing.

"You have seen nothing of Earth as yet but this one room," the one dressed as a woman, Kradgy, said to Ramarren in a harsh whisper. Ramarren was wary of them all, but Kradgy roused an instinctive fear or aversion in him; there was a hint of nightmare in the bulky body under flowing robes, the long purplish-black hair, the harsh, precise whisper.

"I should like to see more."

"We shall show you whatever you wish to see. The Earth is open to its honored visitor."

"I do not remember seeing Earth from the Alterra when we came into orbit," Ramarren said in stiff, Werelian-accented Galaktika. "Nor do I remember the attack on the ship. Can you tell me why this is so?

The question might be risky, but he was genuinely curious for the answer; it was the one blank still left in his double memory.

"You were in the condition we term achronia," Ken Kenyek replied. "You came out of lightspeed all at once at the Barrier, since your ship had no retemporalizer. You were at that moment, and for some minutes or hours after, either unconscious or insane."

"We had not run into the problem in our short runs at lightspeed."

"The longer the flight, the stronger the Barrier."

"It was a gallant thing," Abundibot said in his creaky whisper and with his usual floridity, "a journey of a hundred and twenty-five light-years in a scarcely tested ship!"

Ramarren accepted the compliment without correcting the number.

"Come, my Lords, let us show our guest the City of Earth." Simultaneously with Abundibot's words, Ramarren caught the passage of mindspeech between Kradgy and Ken Kenyek, but did not get the sense of it; he was too intent on maintaining his own guard to be able to mindhear or even to receive much empathic impression.

"The ship in which you return to Werel," Ken Kenyek said, "will of course be furnished with a retemporalizer, and you will suffer no derangement at re-entering planetary space."

Ramarren had risen, rather awkwardly—Falk was used to chairs but Ramarren was not, and had felt most uncomfortable perched up in mid-air—but he stood still now and after a moment asked, "The ship in which we return—?"

Orry looked up with blurry hopefulness. Kradgy yawned, showing strong yellow teeth. Abundibot said, "When you have seen all you wish to see of Earth and have learned all you wish to learn, we have a lightspeed ship ready for you to go home to Werel in—you, Lord Agad, and Har Orry. We ourselves travel little. There are no more wars; we have no need for trade with other worlds; and we do not wish to bankrupt poor Earth again with the immense cost of lightspeed ships merely to assuage our curiosity. We Men of Earth are an old race now; we stay home, tend our garden, and do not meddle and explore abroad. But your Voyage must be completed, your mission fulfilled. The New Alterra awaits you at our spaceport, and Werel awaits your return. It is a great pity that your civilization had not rediscovered the ansible principle, so that we could be in communication with them now. By now, of course, they may have the instantaneous transmitter; but we cannot signal them, having no coordinates."

"Indeed," Ramarren said politely.

There was a slight, tense pause.

"I do not think I understand," he said.

"The ansible—"

"I understand what the ansible transmitter did, though not how it did it. As you say, sir, we had not when I left Werel rediscovered the principles of instantaneous transmission. But I do not understand what prevented you from attempting to signal Werel."

Dangerous ground. He was all alert now, in control, a player in the game not a piece to be moved: and he sensed the electric tension behind the three rigid faces.

"Prech Ramarren," Abundibot said, "as Har Orry was too young to have learned the precise distances involved, we have never had the honor of knowing exactly where Werel is located, though of course we have a general idea. As he had learned very little Galaktika, Har Orry was unable to tell us the Galaktika name for Werel's sun, which of course would be meaningful to us, who share the language with you as a heritage from the days of the League. Therefore we have been forced to wait for your assistance, before we could attempt ansible contact with Werel, or prepare the coordinates on the ship we have ready for you."

"You do not know the name of the star Werel circles?"

"That unfortunately is the case. If you care to tell us—"

"I cannot tell you."

The Shing could not be surprised; they were too self-absorbed, too egocentric. Abundibot and Ken Kenyek registered nothing at all. Kradgy said in his strange, dreary, precise whisper, "You mean you don't know either?"

"I cannot tell you the True Name of the Sun," Ramarren said serenely.

This time he caught the flicker of mindspeech, Ken Kenyek to Abundibot: I told you so.

"I apologize, prech Ramarren for my ignorance in inquiring after a forbidden matter. Will you forgive me? We do not know your ways, and though ignorance is a poor excuse it is all I can plead." Abundibot was creaking on when all at once the boy Orry interrupted him, scared into wakefulness:

"Prech Ramarren, you—you will be able to set the ship's coordinates? You do remember what—what you knew as Navigator?"

Ramarren turned to him and asked quietly, "Do you want to go home, vesprechna?"

"Yes!"

"In twenty or thirty days, if it pleases these Lords who offer us so great a gift, we shall return in their ship to Werel. I am sorry," he went on, turning back to the Shing, "that my mouth and mind are closed to your question. My silence is a mean return for your generous frankness." Had they been using mindspeech, he thought, the exchange would have been a great deal less polite; for he, unlike the Shing, was unable to mindlie, and therefore probably could not have said one word of his last speech.

"No matter, Lord Agad! It is your safe return, not our questions, that is important! So long as you can program the ship—and all our records and course-computers are at your service when you may require them—then the question is as good as answered." And indeed it was, for if they wanted to know where Werel was they would only have to examine the course he programmed into their ship. After that, if they still distrusted him, they could re-erase his mind, explaining to Orry that the restoration of his memory had caused him finally to break down. They would then send Orry off to deliver their message to Werel. They did still distrust him, because they knew he could detect their mindlying. If there was any way out of the trap he had not found it yet.

They all went together through the misty halls, down the ramps and elevators, out of the palace into daylight Falk's element of the double mind was almost entirely repressed now, and Ramarren moved and thought and spoke quite freely as Ramarren. He sensed the constant, sharp readiness of the Shing minds, particularly that of Ken Kenyek, waiting to penetrate the least flaw or catch the slightest slip. The very pressure kept him doubly alert. So it was as Ramarren, the alien, that he looked up into the sky of late morning and saw Earth's yellow sun.

He stopped, caught by sudden joy. For it was something, no matter what had gone before and what might follow after—it was something to have seen the light, in one lifetime, of two suns. The orange gold of Werel's sun, the white gold of Earth's: he could hold them now side by side as a man might hold two jewels, comparing their beauty for the sake of heightening their praise.

The boy was standing beside him; and Ramarren murmured aloud the greeting that Kelshak babies and little children were taught to say to the sun seen at dawn or after the long storms of winter, "Welcome the star of life, the center of the year…" Orry picked it up midway and spoke it with him. It was the first harmony between them, and Ramarren was glad of it, for he would need Orry before this game was done.

A slider was summoned and they went about the city, Ramarren asking appropriate questions and the Shing replying as they saw fit. Abundibot described elaborately how all of Es Toch, towers, bridges, streets and palaces, had been built overnight a thousand years ago, on a river-isle on the other side of the planet, and how from century to century whenever they felt inclined the Lords of Earth summoned their wondrous machines and instruments to move the whole city to a new site suiting their whim. It was a pretty tale; and Orry was too benumbed with drugs and persuasions to disbelieve anything, while if Ramarren believed or not was little matter. Abundibot evidently told lies for the mere pleasure of it. Perhaps it was the only pleasure he knew. There were elaborate descriptions also of how Earth was governed, how most of the Shing spent their lives among common men, disguised as mere "natives" but working for the master plan emanating from Es Toch, how carefree and content most of humanity was in their knowledge that the Shing would keep the peace and bear the burdens, how arts and learning were gently encouraged and rebellious and destructive elements as gently repressed. A planet of humble people, in their humble little cottages and peaceful tribes and townlets; no warring, no killing, no crowding; the old achievements and ambitions forgotten; almost a race of children, protected by the firm kindly guidance and the invulnerable technological strength of the Shing caste——

The story went on and on, always the same with variations, soothing and reassuring. It was no wonder the poor waif Orry believed it; Ramarren would have believed most of it, if he had not had Falk's memories of the Forest and the Plains to show the rather subtle but total falseness of it. Falk had not lived on Earth among children, but among men, brutalized, suffering, and impassioned.

That day they showed Ramarren all over Es Toch, which seemed to him who had lived among the old streets of Wegest and in the great Winterhouses of Kaspool a sham city, vapid and artificial, impressive only by its fantastic natural setting. Then they began to take him and Orry about the world by aircar and planetary car, all-day tours under the guidance of Abundibot or Ken Kenyek, jaunts to each of Earth's continents and even out to the desolate and long-abandoned Moon. The days went on; they went on playing the play for Orry's benefit, wooing Ramarren till they got from him what they wanted to know. Though he was directly or electronically watched at every moment, visually and telepathically, he was in no way restrained; evidently they felt they had nothing to fear from him now.

Perhaps they would let him go home with Orry, then. Perhaps they thought him harmless enough, in his ignorance, to be allowed to leave Earth with his readjusted mind intact.

But he could buy his escape from Earth only with the information they wanted, the location of Werel. So far he had told them nothing and they had asked nothing more.

Did it so much matter, after all, if the Shing knew where Werel was?

It did. Though they might not be planning any immediate attack on this potential enemy, they might well be planning to send a robot monitor out after the New Alterra, with an ansible transmitter aboard to make instantaneous report to them of any preparation for interstellar flight on Werel. The ansible would give them a hundred and forty year start on the Werelians; they could stop an expedition to Terra before it started. The one advantage that Werel possessed tactically over the Shing was the fact that the Shing did not know where it was and might have to spend several centuries looking for it. Ramarren could buy a chance of escape only at the price of certain peril for the world to which he was responsible.

So he played for time, trying to devise a way out of his dilemma, flying with Orry and one or another of the Shing here and there over the Earth, which stretched out under their flight like a great lovely garden gone all to weeds and wilderness. He sought with all his trained intelligence some way in which he could turn his situation about and become the controller instead of the one controlled: for so his Kelshak mentality presented his case to him. Seen rightly, any situation, even a chaos or a trap would come clear and lead of itself to its one proper outcome: for there is in the long run no disharmony, only misunderstanding, no chance or mischance but only the ignorant eye. So Ramarren thought, and the second soul within him, Falk, took no issue with this view, but spent no time trying to think it all out, either. For Falk had seen the dull and bright stones slip across the wires of the patterning-frame, and had lived with men in their fallen estate, kings in exile on their own domain the Earth, and to him it seemed that no man could make his fate or control the game, but only wait for the bright jewel luck to slip by on the wire of time. Harmony exists, but there is no understanding it; the Way cannot be gone. So while Ramarren racked his mind, Falk lay low and waited. And when the chance came he caught it.

Or rather, as it turned out, he was caught by it.

There was nothing special about the moment. They were with Ken Kenyek in a fleet little auto-pilot aircar, one of the beautiful, clever machines that allowed the Shing to control and police the world so effectively. They were returning toward Es Toch from a long flight out over the islands of the Western Ocean, on one of which they had made a stop of several hours at a human settlement. The natives of the island-chain they had visited were handsome, contented people entirely absorbed in sailing, swimming, and sex—afloat in the azure amniotic sea: perfect specimens of human happiness and backwardness to show the Werelians. Nothing to worry about there, nothing to fear.

Orry was dozing, with a parьtha-tube between his fingers. Ken Kenyek had put the ship on automatic, and with Ramarren—three or four feet away from him, as always, for the Shing never got physically close to anyone—was looking out the glass side of the aircar at the five-hundred-mile circle of fair weather and blue sea that surrounded them. Ramarren was tired, and let himself relax a little in this pleasant moment of suspension, aloft in a glass bubble in the center of the great blue and golden sphere.

"It is a lovely world," the Shing said.

"It is."

"The jewel of all worlds…Is Werel as beautiful?"

"No. It is harsher."

"Yes, the long year would make it so. How long?—sixty Earthyears?"

"Yes."

"You were born in the fall, you said. That would mean you had never seen your world in summer when you left it."

"Once, when I flew to the Southern hemisphere. But their summers are cooler, as their winters are warmer, than in Kelshy. I have not seen the Great Summer of the north."

"You may yet. If you return within a few months, what will the season be on Werel?"

Ramarren computed for a couple of seconds and replied, "Late summer; about the twentieth moonphase of summer, perhaps."

"I made it to be fall—how long does the journey take?"

"A hundred and forty-two Earthyears," Ramarren said, and as he said it a little gust of panic blew across his mind and died away. He sensed the presence of the Shing's mind in his own; while talking, Ken Kenyek had reached out mentally, found his defenses down, and taken whole-phase control of his mind. That was all right. It showed incredible patience and telepathic skill on the Shing's part. He had been afraid of it, but now that it had happened it was perfectly all right.

Ken Kenyek was bespeaking him now, not in the creaky oral whisper of the Shing but in clear, comfortable mindspeech: "Now, that's all right, that's right, that's good. Isn't it pleasant that we're attuned at last?"

"Very pleasant," Ramarren agreed.

"Yes indeed. Now we can remain attuned and all our worries are over. Well then, a hundred and forty-two lightyears distant—that means that your sun must be the one in the Dragon constellation. What is its name in Galaktika? No, that's right, you can't say it or bespeak it here. Eltanin, is that it, the name of your sun?"

Ramarren made no response of any kind.

"Eltanin, the Dragon's Eye, yes, that's very nice. The others we had picked as possibilities are somewhat closer in. Now this saves a great deal of time. We had almost—"

The quick, clear, mocking, soothing mindspeech stopped abruptly and Ken Kenyek gave a convulsive start; so did Ramarren at the identical moment. The Shing turned jerkily toward the controls of the aircar, then away. He leaned over in a strange fashion, too far over, like a puppet on strings carelessly managed, then all at once slid to the floor of the car and lay there with his white, handsome face upturned, rigid.

Orry, shaken from his euphoric drowse, was staring. "What's wrong? What happened?"

He got no answer. Ramarren was standing as rigidly as the Shing lay, and his eyes were locked with the Shing's in a double unseeing stare. When at last he moved, he spoke in a language Orry did not know. Then, laboriously, he spoke in Galaktika. "Put the ship in hover," he said.

The boy gaped. "What's wrong with Lord Ken, prech Ramarren?"

"Get up. Put the ship in hover!"

He was speaking Galaktika now not with his Werelian accent but in the debased form used by Earth natives. But though the language was wrong the urgency and authority were powerful. Orry obeyed him. The little glass bubble hung motionless in the center of the bowl of ocean, eastward of the sun.

Trechna, is the—"

"Be still!"

Silence. Ken Kenyek lay still. Very gradually Ramarren's visible tension and intensity relaxed.

What had happened on the mental plane between him and Ken Kenyek was a matter of ambush and re-ambush. In physical terms, the Shing had jumped Ramarren, thinking he was capturing one man, and had in turn been surprised by a second man—the mind in ambush, Falk. Only for a second had Falk been able to take control and only by sheer force of surprise, but that had been long enough to free Ramarren from the Shing's phase-control. The instant he was free, while Ken Kenyek's mind was still in phase with his and vulnerable, Ramarren had taken control. It took all his skill and all his strength to keep Ken Kenyek's mind phased with his, helpless and assenting, as his own had been a moment before. But his advantage still remained: he was still double-minded, and while Ramarren held the Shing helpless, Falk was free to think and act.

This was the chance, the moment; there would be no other.

Falk asked aloud, "Where is there a lightspeed ship ready for flight?"

It was curious to hear the Shing answer in his whispering voice and know, for once to know certainly and absolutely, that he was not lying. "In the desert northwest of Es Toch."

"Is it guarded?"

"Yes."

"By live guards?"

"No."

"You will guide us there."

"I will guide you there."

"Take the car where he tells you, Orry."

"I don't understand, prech Ramarren; are we—"

"We are going to leave Earth. Now. Take the controls."

"Take the controls," Ken Kenyek repeated softly. Orry obeyed, following the Shing's instructions as to course. At full speed the aircar shot eastward, yet seemed still to hang in the changeless center of the sea-sphere, towards the circumference of which the sun, behind them, dropped visibly. Then the Western Isles appeared, seeming to float towards them over the wrinkled glittering curve of the sea; then behind these the sharp white peaks of the coast appeared, and approached, and ran by beneath the aircar. Now they were over the dun desert broken by arid, fluted ranges casting long shadows to the east. Still following Ken Kenyek's murmured instructions, Orry slowed the ship, circled one of these ranges, set the controls to catch the landing-beacon and let the car be homed in. The high lifeless mountains rose up about them, walling them in, as the aircar settled down on a pale, shadowy plain.

No spaceport or airfield was visible, no roads, no buildings, but certain vague, very large shapes trembled mirage-like over the sand and sagebrush under the dark slopes of the mountains. Falk stared at them and could not focus his eyes on them, and it was Orry who said with a catch of his breath, "Starships."

They were the interstellar ships of the Shing, their fleet or part of it, camouflaged with light-dispeller nets. Those Falk had first seen were smaller ones; there were others, which he had taken for foothills…

The aircar had intangibly settled itself down beside a tiny, ruined, roofless shack, its boards bleached and split by the desert wind.

"What is that shack?"

"The entrance to the underground rooms is to one side of it."

"Are there ground-computers down there?"

"Yes."

"Are any of the small ships ready to go?"

"They are all ready to go. They are mostly robot-controlled defense ships."

"Is there one with pilot-control?"

"Yes. The one intended for Har Orry."

Ramarren kept close telepathic hold on the Shing's mind while Falk ordered him to take them to the ship and show them the onboard computers. Ken Kenyek at once obeyed. Falk-Ramarren had not entirely expected him to: there were limits to mind-control just as there were to normal hypnotic suggestion. The drive to self-preservation often resisted even the strongest control, and sometimes shattered the whole attunement when infringed upon. But the treason he was being forced to commit apparently aroused no instinctive resistance in Ken Kenyek; he took them into the starship and replied obediently to all Falk-Ramarren's questions, then led them back to the decrepit hut and at command unlocked, with physical and mental signals, the trapdoor in the sand near the door. They entered the tunnel that was revealed. At each of the underground doors and defenses and shields Ken Kenyek gave the proper signal or response, and so brought them at last to attack-proof, cataclysm-proof, thief-proof rooms far underground, where the automatic control guides and the course computers were.

Over an hour had now passed since the moment in the aircar. Ken Kenyek, assenting and submissive, reminding Falk at moments of poor Estrel, stood harmlessly by—harmless so long as Ramarren kept total control over his brain. The instant that control was relaxed, Ken Kenyek would send a mindcall to Es Toch if he had the power, or trip some alarm, and the other Shing and their toolmen would be here within a couple of minutes. But Ramarren must relax that control: for he needed his mind to think with. Falk did not know how to program a computer for the lightspeed course to Werel, satellite of the sun Eltanin. Only Ramarren could do that.

Falk had his own resources, however. "Give me your gun."

Ken Kenyek at once handed over a little weapon kept concealed under his elaborate robes. At this Orry stared in horror. Falk did not try to allay the boy's shock; in fact, he rubbed it in. "Reverence for Life?" he inquired coldly, examining the weapon. Actually, as he had expected, it was not a gun or laser but a lowlevel stunner without kill capacity. He turned it on Ken Kenyek, pitiful in his utter lack of resistance, and fired. At that Orry screamed and lunged forward, and Falk turned the stunner on him. Then he turned away from the two sprawled, paralyzed figures, his hands shaking, and let Ramarren take over as he pleased. He had done his share for the time being.

Ramarren had no time to spend on compunction or anxiety. He went straight to the computers and set to work. He already knew from his examination of the onboard controls that the mathematics involved in some of the ship's operations was not the familiar Cetian-based mathematics which Terrans still used and from which Werel's mathematics, via the Colony, also derived. Some of the processes the Shing used and built into their computers were entirely alien to Cetian mathematical process and logic; and nothing else could have so firmly persuaded Ramarren that the Shing were, indeed, alien to Earth, alien to all the old League worlds, conquerors from some very distant world. He had never been quite sure that Earth's old histories and tales were correct on that point, but now he was convinced. He was, after all, essentially a mathematician.

It was just as well that he was, or certain of those processes would have stopped him cold in his effort to set up the coordinates for Werel on the Shing computers. As it was, the job took him five hours. All this time he had to keep, literally, half his mind on Ken Kenyek and Orry. It was simpler to keep Orry unconscious than to explain to him or order him about; it was absolutely vital that Ken Kenyek stay completely unconscious. Fortunately the stunner was an effective little device, and once he discovered the proper setting Falk only had to use it once more. Then he was free to coexist, as it were, while Ramarren plugged away at his computations.

Falk looked at nothing while Ramarren worked, but listened for any noise, and was conscious always of the two motionless, senseless figures sprawled out nearby. And he thought; he thought about Estrel, wondering where she was now and what she was now. Had they retrained her, razed her mind, killed her? No, they did not kill. They were afraid to kill and afraid to die, and called their fear Reverence for Life. The Shing, the Enemy, the Liars…Did they in truth lie? Perhaps that was not quite the way of it; perhaps the essence of their lying was a profound, irremediable lack of understanding. They could not get into touch with men. They had used that and profited by it, making it into a great weapon, the mindlie; but had it been worth their while, after all? Twelve centuries of lying, ever since they had first come here, exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star, determined to rule over these races whose minds made no sense to them and whose flesh was to them forever sterile. Alone, isolated, deafmutes ruling deafmutes in a world of delusions. Oh desolation….

Ramarren was done. After his five hours of driving labor, and eight seconds of work for the computer, the little indium output slip was in his hand, ready to program into the ship's course-control.

He turned and stared foggily at Orry and Ken Kenyek. What to do with them? They had to come along, evidently. Erase the records on the computers, said a voice inside his mind, a familiar voice, his own—Falk's. Ramarren was dizzy with fatigue, but gradually he saw the point of this request, and obeyed. Then he could not think what to do next. And so, finally, for the first time, he gave up, made no effort to dominate, let himself fuse into…himself.

Falk-Ramarren got to work at once. He dragged Ken Kenyek laboriously up to ground level and across the starlit sand to the ship that trembled half-visible, opalescent in the desert night; he loaded the inert body into a contourseat, gave it an extra dose of the stunner, and then came back for Orry.

Orry began to revive partway, and managed to climb feebly into the ship himself. "Prech Ramarren," he said hoarsely, clutching at Falk-Ramarren's arm, "where are we going?"

"To Werel."

"He's coming too—Ken Kenyek?"

"Yes. He can tell Werel his tale about Earth, and you can tell yours, and I mine…There's always more than one way towards the truth. Strap yourself in. That's it."

Falk-Ramarren fed the little metal strip into the course-controller. It was accepted, and he set the ship to act within three minutes. With a last glance at the desert and the stars, he shut the ports and came hurridly, shaky with fatigue and strain, to strap himself in beside Orry and the Shing.

Lift-off was fusionpowered: the lightspeed drive would go into effect only at the outer edge of Earthspace. They took off very softly and were out of the atmosphere in a few seconds. The visual screens opened automatically, and Falk-Ramarren saw the Earth falling away, a great dusky bluish curve, bright-rimmed. Then the ship came out into the unending sunlight.

Was he leaving home, or going home?

On the screen dawn coming over the Eastern Ocean shone in a golden crescent for a moment against the dust of stars, like a jewel on a great patterning frame. Then frame and pattern shattered, the barrier was passed, and the little ship broke free of time and took them out across the darkness.

— END —