Incident on Ath

Chapter Fourteen

He had died and was drifting in the void and his decaying brain was projecting the stored images in a series of scintillant flashes. The massed explosives, Ursula turning, the ruby light, the sudden gush of flame which turned her blue into scarlet; clothing, hair, skin all vanishing as the shock wave of the blast had reached toward him faster than he could think.

But now that he was dead and drifting there was time for thought. Ursula was dead and she had been of the Choud.

Eian, dying, had taken his revenge and destroyed the Hury.

The Choud. The Hury.

The Choudhury!

The obvious which had nagged at his subconscious and which he had failed to recognize until it was too late. Instead he had formed a wrong conclusion-a mistake which had cost him the chance of finding the whereabouts of Earth.

"Earl!" Someone was calling him, but who would waste time calling the dead?

"Earl, wake up. Wake up, Earl. Please wake up!"

A noise which gave him no peace. One which sent the darkness rolling back to leave a thin, pale, illumination pressing like a ghost light against his eyes. Fingers caught the hand he lifted to his face.

"No. It's all right. You were burned and had to be bandaged. Tuvey-"

"My eyes?"

"Should be healed now. Please, Earl, let me do it."

He lowered his hand and felt the touch of chill metal; scissors which snipped the bandages from the upper part of his face. As they fell away he blinked at the figure which stood beside the bed.

Kalin?

She looked the same but was misted against the light which caught her hair and turned it into flame. But the color was wrong, and as she turned, the flame changed to gold as the face became familiar.

"Pellia?"

"You recognize me. Good." She leaned closer, her fingers cool as they touched his face, the region around the eyes. "You were lucky, Earl. Instinct saved your eyes. You threw up an arm to shield them and the blast flung you back behind some cover." She added quietly, "The woman-"

"Is dead. I know." Dumarest sat upright on the bed and fought a momentary nausea. "How long?"

"Two days. We found you, and the captain told us what to do. Sardia helped."

With slow-time which had accelerated his metabolism so as to stretch hours into days. With intravenous feeding and selected hormones to mend the broken ribs and aid the replacement of destroyed tissue.

"It was completely destroyed, Earl." Pellia rubbed her hands over the bedcover like a small girl who is reluctant to break bad news. "Balain carried out his threat, He was a great man."

"He was a self-seeking animal and you're better off without him." Dumarest threw his legs over the side of the bed. He was naked. "Where are my clothes?"

They were burnt, seared, protective mesh bared to the light. Only the boots and belt remained relatively untouched. The knife would have to be honed and re-tempered as the garments needed to be refurbished but they were things easily managed.

As he stepped from the room with its bed and medical apparatus, Tuvey came into view down the corridor. Etallia was with him carrying a large jug. As they met, the captain halted her, took the jug from her hands and handed it to Dumarest.

"Here, I guess you could use this." It was basic. As Dumarest swallowed the energizing liquid Tuvey continued, "It's a hell of a mess. The only good thing about it is that Shartan was wrong about the generator. It doesn't need a replacement. We'll be ready to leave in a few hours."

"I want passage."

"Yes, I thought you might, and I guess you've earned it. Eian-" Tuvey broke off and looked at his clenched hands. "That bastard must have been crazy. He rode with me for years and all the time he was planning to ruin a world. He did ruin it. Ath will never be the same again.

"It could be better."

"Maybe." Tuvey sounded doubtful. "But it won't be the same. Finished with that jug?" He took it and handed it to the woman. "I owe her something," he explained. "She was good to me in the past and I'm trying to make things a little easy for her."

"Aren't the Ohrm helping?"

"Of course," said Pellia. "We are doing everything we can."

Which needn't be enough. Dumarest said, "They need you, Captain. The Choud and the Ohrm both. You can help them. They need books and educational apparatus; hypnotic tutors and the like. You can bring them in together with agricultural machinery; nothing too elaborate but something to relieve them of endless labor. In a few years, with your aid, Ath will have gained new life and have a viable culture. Give passage to a few monks-they'll be glad to help."

And would be grateful for the opportunity. The Church of Universal Brotherhood could use a relatively untouched world and would be kind to the innocence now prevailing. Tuvey thought about it, weighing the advantages, nodding as he reached a decision.

"Hell, why not? I'm not going to live forever and I'll still hold the monopoly. If they can increase tekoa production I'll double trips and profit. And it could be fun to take a hand in the shaping of things. I might even retire and take up land to the south." Reaching out he took Etallia by the arm. "We leave at sunset."

Outside the hospital the city looked as he remembered and then little things gained his attention: men and women, gaily dressed who wandered without apparent purpose. The swimmers sitting beside the water who looked as if they had sat there for days and would continue to sit unless someone led them away. Others, the Ohrm, who walked with a new assurance and looked at the jewel-like houses with possessive eyes.

At his side Pellia said, "Earl, we need you. Please don't leave us. You could be our new leader. Now that Balain is dead we haven't anyone to follow. We don't know what to do." She ended plaintively, "I never guessed it would be like this."

A sudden change which hurt as all changes do. An alteration in the previously smooth-running scheme of things and the unaccustomed burden of responsibility. How many of them had thought beyond the glittering lies the handler had fed them? How many had been capable?

He said, "Pellia, when a woman gives birth it hurts, right?"

"Yes, Earl, but not for long."

"And this won't hurt for long either." She hadn't grasped the analogy. "A revolution is like a birth," Dumarest explained patiently. "Something new is created and creation is always accompanied with pain. At the moment you feel lost. The Choud are no longer telling you what to do and when to do it and how it should be done. Now you are having to think for yourselves. You are having to make decisions." Then, as she continued to stare at him, he snapped, Damn it, girl, did you imagine it would be easy?"

"Balain-"

"Wanted to be a dictator. He wanted to take over from the Choud and to become a despot. Thank your gods he didn't succeed. If he had you'd have learned what it was to be a slave. Now you've got to learn to stand up and act and think for yourselves."

"Earl why don't you stay and teach us?"

"I can't."

"You could have a house, the best there is, and we would do just what you told us to do. You could have anything you wanted. Anything. Earl, please!"

A world which he could use as a plaything, one he could guide as he wished. The tekoa would provide a fortune, the Ohrm willing servants, the Choud-he didn't want to think about the Choud. About what had been done to them.

"Earl?"

"No." He looked at the sky. The sun was past zenith and time was running out. "Where can I find Sardia?"

"I don't know." Woman-like she was sullen at his refusal. "At Cornelius's house, I guess."

She came to meet him as he turned from the path, crossing the lawn to stand before him and search his face with her eyes. Her own held shadows and a peculiar hurt and age rested more heavily on her face than he remembered.

"Earl!" Her hand lifted to touch his cheek. "I was so worried!"

"There was no need."

"You didn't see what you looked like after you'd been dragged from beneath the wreckage. And there was no one at the hospital who could help. If-"

"I know," he said. "Pellia told me."

"She learned," said Sardia. "And will learn more. They will all learn." Bitterly she added, "So much for victory."

"It was an accident. They didn't know."

"They didn't care!"

He repeated flatly, "They didn't know. Did you? Did I? We should have guessed but we didn't and we had all the clues. The way the Choud would tilt back the head and seem to listen and blink after the connection was broken. The things they knew without being told-of me leaving you after the dance, the subjects discussed, the whereabouts of others and the things they had done. The knowledge they had."

The hobbies taken up and dropped to make way for another. The gracious living. The certainty of supremacy. The ship they had arrived in.

The Choudhury,

The name they had taken. The name they had given to the computer to which they had all been linked.

He remembered the rounded nodule he had felt beneath the woman's scalp, the lack of anything similar on the heads of the Ohrm. Divergent stock could have accounted for the differentiation but he had been told they were both of common origin. And Ursula had known about Earth.

Not Ursula-Hury.

"Earl?" Sardia was looking at him, her eyes anxious. "Is something wrong?"

Dumarest looked down at his hands and forced himself to relax the clenched fingers. Forced himself, too, to fight the sick regret tearing at his insides, the anger at his own stupidity. Why hadn't he recognized the obvious sooner? Ursula could have told him about Earth- but so could any other of the Choud!

The information had been stored in the computer taken from the old vessel; one used as a general-purpose library to deliver information to all fitted with the engrafted transceivers. The strength of the Choud and their ultimate weakness.

He said, "Where is Cornelius?"

He sat before the easel in the studio with the high, arched windows which framed the vista beyond. Paint was thick on his fingers, eyes fastened to the work as, tongue thrust between his teeth, he painstakingly daubed splotches on the ruined canvas.

"It's gone," said Sardia bitterly. "All gone. He doesn't know anything. He can talk and walk and that's about all. All the rest has been forgotten."

Not forgotten-never learned.

Dumarest looked at the man, wondering what it must have been like to have the answer to any question immediately at hand. There had been no need to memorize a single fact; a thought and it was delivered. As had been the data needed to take up pottery, weaving, painting, architecture, medicine, dancing-all that had been painfully learned over the millennia, condensed, refined, at hand at any moment. The accumulated knowledge which had made the Choud the masters of their world.

Cornelius turned and saw them and smiled. "Look," he said. "Look."

"That's good." Sardia's voice held tears. "Very good. But try and get the lines into a pattern which can be recognized. Two lines set opposite to each other and joined by a curve at the top. See?" Her hand lifted to point at the window. "Just like that. Now draw me a picture I can recognize as a window."

"A window?"

"An opening set into a wall to admit light," said Dumarest. The man was like a child. "You must know what a window is."

"An opening," said Cornelius. "One set in a wall to admit light."

A child, but like a child he would learn as all the Choud would learn. As they had to learn if they were to survive.

"A moon," said Dumarest. "Think of a moon. Describe it to me. Tell me where it can be found?" He looked at the blank face and uncomprehending eyes. "Terra," he said. "The moon as seen from Earth. "Where is Earth?"

A hope which died as Cornelius frowned and turned back to his painting. Once he could have answered with facts and figures, given the spatial coordinates and so pinpointed the location of the world which had become a legend. A simple question would have done it-why hadn't he asked it?

So close!

So very close!

"Earl! You're looking as you did in the garden! As if you wanted to kill someone. But Cornelius isn't to blame. You can't-"

"No." Dumarest shook his head. "No, he isn't to blame and I won't hurt him. Have you assembled his paintings? Are they here?" He walked across the room to where canvases lay piled on a table. "Tuvey is leaving at sunset."

"I know. I'm not leaving with him." Sardia came to stand at his side, to look as he was looking at the topmost portrait. It was of the degraded angel. "You spot the resemblance?"

"This isn't you."

"No? How can you be so sure, Earl? What do you know of me? Cornelius saw beneath the skin and into the heart." She reached out to touch it. "It's yours if you want it."

He lifted it without answering and looked at the one below.

"The suspended man," she explained, "He told me about it. He had yet to finish it. The face-" She drew in her breath.

"His face."

"Once, yes, but he must have added touches since I saw it last. Now it resembles someone else." She looked at him. "He must have done it after you'd met at the dinner. After I'd made a fool of myself."

"After you'd danced," he corrected. "If there is a fool on this world it isn't you. So you're staying?"

"Yes. They need help and I can give it. And I'm hoping that he'll get it back." She glanced at Cornelius. "It still has to be there. Genius isn't something you learn from a book or gain from a computer. He has it and maybe I can get it to flower again. It may take years, even a lifetime, but it's something I have to do. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," said Dumarest. "I can understand."

"We have an agreement, remember?"

"Forget it."

"I can't do that. These paintings are of value and should compensate you. You could take them to a man I know and let him sell them for you on a commission basis." She saw his expression. "No?"

"No." He added, "Cornelius could need them. They might trigger his latent talent or something."

"Then take one at least," she urged. "This one. I'd like you to have it. To give you something by which to remember me."

"I don't need that to remember you, Sardia." Dumarest made no move to take the painting. "And I need to travel light."

With his clothes and knife and little else aside from his memories but they would burden enough. As would be the pain he had known, the broken hopes, the aching loneliness.

She turned, looking at Cornelius, seeing him staring at her, one hand extended. He smiled as she took it in her own, comforted, satisfied and contented as a man could be who has found the thing necessary to his happiness. The thing most men needed; a woman who loved him and whom he could love. A simple thing but Dumarest-Dumarest needed to find a world.