Haven of Darkness

Chapter Three

Armand Ramhed lived alone in a house which held little more than a bed, a table, a few chairs, some kitchen equipment and the apparatus he had assembled in his study. Dumarest roved through it, checking the contents of the cupboards and finding nothing but empty packets and scraps of mouldering food. The air in the kitchen stank of the fermenting liquid; a thick slime coated with a yellow crust ornamented with a shimmer of bursting bubbles. It contained a mixture of fruits, vegetables, sugars and traces of acids, syrups and crushed roots. Garbage, Dumarest guessed, collected from the market place, pounded, boiled, diluted, used as food by the yeasts which clouded it, their waste the alcohol which had come to dominate Armand's life.

The man waved an irritable hand as Dumarest entered his study.

"Go away, Earl. Don't interrupt me. I haven't finished yet."

"It's late."

"Is it?" Armand lifted his head, blinking. The windows were shuttered, the only light that coming from the crude apparatus over which he crouched. Colored beams streamed from it to paint his face with a rainbow. In the illumination his thin features took on the grotesque appearance of a clown. "I hadn't noticed. How late is it?"

"It's dark. Are you hungry?" Dumarest had expected the shake of the head. Alcohol, especially when loaded with organic particles, could feed as well as numb. "Well, I am. You've nothing to eat in the house. Where's the nearest store?"

It lay down the road, a small automat which swallowed coins and disgorged pre-packed items. Dumarest returned loaded with a package stuffed with basic commodities together with more perishable viands. An hour later he dragged Armand from his study and sat him at the table.

"Earl, this is a waste. I'm not hungry. I'm-" The man broke off, sniffing. "Meat? Is that meat?"

It was steak, thick and rare, served with three kinds of vegetable, flavored and rich in spiced oils. As Armand stared at it Dumarest said, shortly, "Eat."

"But-"

"Eat." He set an example, cutting, lifting slivers of meat to his mouth. "Take your time, chew it well, but eat."

The food had little obvious effect, it would take a month of such feeding to even begin to plump out the sunken cheeks, but a trace of color graced the shallow flesh and the eyes held a sharper directness than before.

"That was good." Armand sighed as he wiped oil from his mouth. "You certainly know how to cook, Earl. But then you would, wouldn't you?"

"Why?"

"A traveler has to be the master of many skills. To hunt, trap, butcher, cook-without that ability how to survive? And to eat when food is available because there can never be any certainty of when the next meal will offer the chance to eat again. You see? I know a little about such things."

"You've traveled?"

"A little when young. It is a disease of youth, is it not? The urge to be up and moving, to see new worlds, new places. To find adventure and excitement and, perhaps, romance. Well, I found no treasure and no rich women waiting to fall into my arms. I was offered no exotic employment and found no natural advantage. But some things I did find."

"Dirt," said Dumarest softly. "Discomfort. Pain and hunger. Cold indifference, men who cheated, women who lied. Poverty and what it can bring."

"The need to be utterly selfish," whispered Armand. "To be greedy, to give nothing away which could be sold, to concentrate every thought and action on the need to survive. And the loneliness. The loneliness."

"So you returned to Harald?"

"After a couple of years, yes. I'd made a friend, together we traveled Low, but when we landed he had died in transit. It decided things for me. Some men are not made in an adventurer's mold. So I came back home and took up a post with-well, never mind. And then-but that doesn't matter now either."

"Perhaps one thing does."

"Hilda?" Armand looked bleakly at his hands. "It's too late for that now. Once we could have made a life together but I was weak while she was strong. Weak!" His fist slammed against the table. "The story of my life. Always I have been weak. Earl!"

He needed his demon and it would do little harm on top of such richly oiled food. And his metabolism, accustomed to alcohol, would be demanding it. Silently Dumarest handed the man a glass, watched as he plunged it into the bubbling vat. A gulp and it was empty.

"How are you progressing?"

"On the spectrogram?" Armand helped himself to another drink. "Slowly. The work is engrossing and a puzzle of interest but there are so many variables to take into account before it will be possible to present a final picture."

"Just what are you trying to do?"

"Nothing a computer couldn't do if correctly programmed. Basically, by a process of elimination, I'm saving you money. You want to find a certain star, right? But stars are not all the same. There are blue-violets, red giants, white dwarfs, variables, binaries, stars rich in radio waves, others verging on neutronic collapse."

"So?"

"I have determined that your spectrogram belongs to a G-type star, one of medium size, fairly stable, past the first flush of its creation but far from age-collapse. This alone, as you can see, is a great saving. A hired computer can be programmed to make comparisons only with stars of a similar type."

Dumarest said, grimly, "Did the woman lie to me? She said-"

"What, in her position, she had to say. The company does not exist to teach its customers how to save money. If you asked for a complete comparison check then that is what you would have been given." Armand shrugged. "Come, Earl, did you expect them to be charitable?"

On Harald nothing could be charitable. Dumarest said, "So you've isolated the spectral type. Good. What remains? A simple check?"

"Not so simple." Armand sipped at his drink and shrugged at Dumarest's expression. "You think that all we need to do is to expand the spectrum, isolate and determine the thickness and density of the Fraunhofer lines and then, as soon as we have found a match, there is the answer. Is that so?"

"What else?"

"The red shift." Armand lifted his glass, saw Dumarest's eyes and hastily placed it down. "Stars are at varying distances," he explained. "Any spectogram taken from one point will serve to identify all stars as seen from that point. Good enough-but what happens if we take a spectrogram of the same star but from different distances? They would have to be great, naturally, but only relatively so. And the direction too, that can have a bearing."

"The Doppler Effect," said Dumarest. "If the light comes from a source moving towards you it moved towards the blue end of the spectrum. If from a source moving away then it shifts towards the red."

"Exactly, and so we get the name for the phenomena." Armand frowned, thoughtful. "But why call it that? Why not the blue shift or the red-blue shift? You called it what- the Doppler Effect?"

"A name given to it by an old scientist I once knew. He learned it from an old book." Dumarest dismissed the matter of terminology with an impatient gesture. "Never mind what we call it, what effect does it have as far as I'm concerned?"

"It introduces a variable. If your spectrogram was taken from a point close to the primary it will be minutely different from those taken at great distances and they, in turn, will differ from each other depending on which position relative to the source they were taken. You see the difficulty?"

Find Earth and he would be able to identify Earth's sun- but his only interest in the primary was as a guide to the planet itself. A vicious circle-or was it?

"No." Boldly Armand took another drink. "I mentioned it to illustrate the difficulties but the real answer lies in the Fraunhofer lines. What I am doing is to isolate them, determine their position and density, correlate them with the elements which gave them birth and so build up a pattern stripped of all unessentials. Once I have done that a computer-comparison will be relatively cheap." He anticipated Dumarest's question. "At a rough guess I'd say in the region of a fifth to a tenth. It would depend, of course, on the company."

"Of course," said Dumarest, and clamped his hand on the other's wrist as he again made to lift his glass. "You'd better get back to work, yes?"

"And you?"

"I'm going to look around town."

The night had come with a thin scatter of rain and it puddled the streets, gleaming on the sidewalks, rising in pluming fountains from beneath the wheels of passing traffic. It was close to midnight, the area around the house dark with shuttered windows, sparse overhead lights throwing patches of brightness interspersed with pools of shadow.

A quiet, safe place by the look of it, but if it were it would be the first Dumarest had seen. Already he knew that the old vices ruled beneath the surface but here was not the place to look for what he wanted to find. Closer to the field he found it.

"Mister!" The voice whispered from a shadowed doorway. "You lost?"

"No, just looking."

"For a little fun?" His clothing had told the woman he was a stranger. The tunic with its high collar and long sleeves held tight at the wrists together with pants of matching grey plastic tucked into knee-high boots were the mark of a traveler. Such a man could be lonely.

"I could help out, maybe." She stepped into the light, tilting her head so as to look into his face. Her body sagged beneath the faded clothing she wore and her face was lost beneath a mask of paint. Only the eyes were alive, hard, questing. "I've a place nearby. Music, wine, some food if you want. I'm a good cook."

"No thanks."

"Not hungry?" She wasn't talking about food. "I've a spice which will take care of that. Something to get you in the mood and keep you in it for as long as you want. And I won't skin you, mister. We'll make a fair deal." Her eyes searched his face. "No? Something else then?"

Dumarest handed her coins. "If I wanted to watch some fights where would I go?"

"Fights?" Her tone sharpened. "You mean with knives?"

"Yes."

"You fooled me, mister. You don't look like a degenerate. Is that the way you get your kicks? Watching kids slash each other to ribbons? Betting, maybe? God, at times you men make me sick." Then, as he stood waiting, she added, "Try Benny at the Novator. It's down the road to the right of the gate as you come out."

The place was as Dumarest expected and similar to others he had known. A room with girls serving drinks. Food on a counter. Music from concealed speakers and the lights turned low so as to shield the faces of those who sat huddled in cubicles. But the whole thing was a facade. Behind lay the ring, the tiered seats, the lights, the stench of sweat and oil and blood.

The arena!

Always they were to be found, the places where men and women vented their primitive lust for blood, taking a vicarious pleasure from another's victories, gloating at another's pain. An escape some called it, a release from accumulated pressures. A few spoke of it as a therapy, a means to cool the aggressive instincts, to govern the beast which lurked always beneath the skin. Others called it butchery.

To Benny it was a business.

"You're lucky," he said to Dumarest. "We've started but there are still a couple of seats going. The first tier-the best."

And the highest priced, but Dumarest handed over the tariff without argument. To him, too, the arena was a business and he had come, not to gloat, but to study.

"Kill!" screamed a woman as he took his seat. "Kill, the bastard! Kill!"

She was a middle-aged matron, normally poised, normally horrified at the prospect of violence, but now the madness of the place had gripped her and she looked barely human.

As the others around her had changed, screaming for one man to kill another, to cut him open, to spill his blood, to act the butcher for their entertainment.

Their favorite did his best to oblige.

He was a tall, thin man with a scarred face and a torso thick with scars. A dancer who stood poised on the balls of his feet, always moving, never still, the ten-inch blade in his hand catching and reflecting the light in a constant shimmer of splintered brightness. A swift, hard, dangerous man. One who had learned his trade the hard way and bore the stigmata of previous failures in the cicatrices which patterned his body. A man who intended to earn his fee and the bonus of coins which would shower from the crowd if he pleased them.

His opponent was younger, as fast but not as skilled, a novice and hopelessly out of his class, matched for use as a victim more than anything else. Blood ran from a shallow gash on one shoulder, more from a minor cut on his left forearm. A thrust, barely missed, had ripped the top of his shorts so that threads hung in a ragged bunch. Sweat made them limp. Sweat ran over the face and body, oozing beneath the oil. Dumarest could smell his fear.

"Kill him!" screamed the woman at his side. "Kill!"

The tall fighter turned, smiling, lifting his knife in salute. A move which left him open; an apparent carelessness which the younger man was quick to put to his advantage. He came in, knife gripped like a sword, the point slightly raised, the edge turned inwards. So held the blade was ready to stab, to cut, to block, to turn and slash.

He almost made it-or so the tall man made it seem. As the attack developed he jumped back, appeared to stumble, moved clumsily to one side as the keen steel whined through the air where he had stood. A slash delivered too late and with too much effort. Unopposed the force put into it turned the younger man too far to his left. His recovery was too slow and a yell rose from the crowd as a third wound marked his gleaming flesh. A long cut running over the pectoral muscles of his chest.

A cut which had severed muscle, released blood, created pain.

The first of those which would leave him a maimed and crippled thing.

"Galbrio!" screamed the matron, "You did it! You did it!" Tearing a ring from her finger she threw it into the ring. "My hero! My love!"

The offer was in her voice, her eyes. Should he care to take her, she was his for as long as the stimulated passion which now controlled her should last. Then, after it had died, she would go home, satiated, a little disturbed, swearing, perhaps, never to witness another fight, but the vow would be broken and the ritual again experienced.

Like an addictive drug the spectacle of blood and pain was hard to relinquish.

Dumarest rose as the shouting died. Dropping to the sunken level surrounding the ring he made his way to the dressing rooms. There were small, cubicles holding the personal effects of those who fought, a few private chambers for the prime contenders, an open area fitted with a bloodstained table on which the hurt were given crude first aid. To one side rested the boxes for the dead.

Benny sat on the pile of coffins. He held a pomander in one hand and sniffed it as he looked at the screaming wretch now on the table. As Dumarest touched his arm he turned with a cat-like swiftness.

"What-oh, it's you! What do you want?"

"A chance at Galbrio."

"You want to fight him?" Benny began to shake his head, halting the gesture as he ran his eyes over Dumarest's face. "Hell, you made it. But why? The man's good. The best. He'd butcher you inside three minutes."

"Maybe."

"He would. I know him. Do you?"

His type only, but it was enough. Cold, ruthless, devoid of mercy, the way a good fighter should be. But he had a streak of cruelty, a sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain. The young man had been maimed with savage deliberation. The wounds had cut too deep and had been wrongly placed simply to please the crowd. There had been a spiteful intent behind the act and, as Dumarest knew, the man's days were numbered.

"I'll make it simple," he said. "First blood or third; to the death or a timed end; a split purse or winner take all." He let his voice falter a little. "I don't care. I just don't care."

"You in trouble?" Benny guessed the answer. "Need cash bad, uh? Is that why you come here?" He beamed at Dumarest's silence. "I can fit you in but the purse will be small. Hell, what else do you expect? An unknown."

"Set a purse," said Dumarest. "Winner take all. And I'll back myself against Galbrio."

"Galbrio? Maybe he won't want to know."

But he did as Dumarest had known he would. An apparent novice willing to put himself at the mercy of his blade. Another victim to throw to the crowd, more cash and jewelry thrown into the ring, an easy victory and a cheap enhancing of his reputation. No man with his inclinations could miss the opportunity.

Only when they stripped did he sense that, perhaps, he had made a mistake.

"You've fought before," he said, looking at the thin lines of old scars on Dumarest's chest and forearms. "Often?"

"Only when I had to."

"To the death?"

"Only when I had to."

"Well, this isn't one of those times. Third blood and there's no need for either of us to get hurt. Keep the blade light, just scratches, you understand, and we'll both have something to show for it. One fifth to the loser, right?"

A change but Dumarest wasn't deluded into thinking the man was genuine. He would kill or cripple so badly that death would be a mercy. The talk was to gain an added advantage, to pander to his warped nature. He would gain extra pleasure in the deception should it work.

"Knives!" An attendant came towards them, a pair of blades in his hands. Ten-inches of naked steel, hilts of heavy brass, points like needles. But they were badly balanced, awkward to the hand.

"I'll use my own," said Dumarest.

"It's an inch shorter."

"So I'll give an advantage." He held out his hand towards Galbrio. "Let me see your knife."

"Why not?" The man handed it over. "Now let me check yours."

Both were looking for the same thing, the minute hole which would reveal a secret mechanism; a dart projector which could spit a missile coated with a numbing poison or a gas projector which would spray a noxious vapor into an opponent's eyes. Such devices gave one chance only but, correctly used, they would ensure victory.

Both knives were clean, and taking his, Dumarest led the way into the ring. A scatter of applause greeted him. It rose to a thunder as Galbrio appeared, bowing, smirking at the crowd.

"Kill him, Galbrio!" yelled a man. "Kill him!"

The fighter answered with a smile.

Dumarest did not smile. He stood, waiting, poised in the little circle, knife in hand and every muscle tense.

Now, as always, he was conscious of the fact that this could be his last fight. That here, in this ring, he could end both his search and his life.