Jack of Swords

Chapter Five

Each morning, now, it was harder to wake, the time in which she lay, conscious only of pain, lengthening so that the days became shorter and life ran like sand from a container, each grain another precious hour. And yet, now, there were compensations, and lying in the shade of an awning, Usan Labria considered them, savoring them as she waited for the pills to take effect.

It was good to be in the open. Good to breathe deeply of the clean air and to feel the sun. Best of all was to know that she was not alone, that with her was someone who cared. Not for herself as a woman, but for herself as a person. More she could not expect, much as she would have liked it, but later perhaps, when she was free of pain and things were as she hoped-who could tell?

A dream and she knew it, but it was a nice one and it did no harm to dream. Less to relax and to let another take care of things, and Dumarest had proved to be a good companion.

"My lady?" He stood in the opening of the shelter, limned by the sunlight, which threw a nimbus of light around him while casting his face in shadow. "Is there anything you need?"

"A little water." It was close at hand but to be served was an added pleasure.

She sipped, taking another pill, then looking up, met his eyes.

"Do you think I'm a fool?"

"No, my lady."

"Call me Usan, Earl, and be honest. Am I?"

"No. To hope is not to be foolish."

"Others would not agree with you. My cousin for one." Memory of him thinned her lips. "He can't wait for me to die so that he can inherit. Much good will it do him. My lands are mortgaged to the hilt, the beasts sold, the house needing repair. Everything I own has been turned into money and I've borrowed all I could. A last fling, Earl, and still you say I am not a fool?"

"Would it matter if I did?"

He was blunt and she liked that, liked too his air of assurance, his smooth competence. Raoul had once been like that, or so she had thought, but that had been long, long ago. He was dead now as were others she had once called friend or lover. And the thing which had struck her had driven still more away. None like to be associated with illness and her manner hadn't helped. Well, to hell with them; soon, with luck, she would have the last laugh.

"Sit beside me," she ordered. "Talk to me, Earl. You have nothing else to do."

"The area must be checked, my lady."

"Usan-we are friends are we not?"

"The area must still be checked."

"Why? Are you afraid Avorot will find us here? What if he does? I have a right to go camping and you are in my charge." Her voice, she knew, was becoming querulous. Deliberately she deepened it, made it harsh. "Do as I say, man. You have nothing to fear."

For a moment Dumarest stared at her, scenting the odor which was strong in the shelter, the scent of decaying tissue exuded through the skin. Internal organs rotting, afflicted with a disease local medicine could not cure. She was dying and knew it but struggled to the last. An attribute he could appreciate.

"Later, Usan. Later."

Sufan Noyoka had planned well. The ship he had summoned would call at the field, pick him up together with Pacula Harada, then light to land again in this spot he had chosen. The only way to avoid the search Avorot would be certain to make. Usan Labria had to stay with him; alone she would not have been allowed to embark.

A responsibility Dumarest could have done without. The delay had been too long. Suspicion must have been aroused, a search launched, and others would have spotted the raft in which they had traveled.

Leaving the shelter Dumarest climbed to the summit of a mound. All around stretched the broken terrain of the foothills, the loom of mountains rising like a wall to the north. An arid place, as bad as the wilderness which ran beyond the city to the south, dotted only with clumps of thorny scrub. A bleak area into which they had brought food and water and supplies-things which were getting low.

Narrowing his eyes, Dumarest searched the sky. It was clear, touched only with patches of fleecy cloud, long streamers showing the presence of a wind high in the stratosphere. Turning, he looked toward the camp. The shelter was made of fabric the color of the ground, invisible to a casual eye, but any searching raft could be equipped with infrared scanners which would signal their body heat.

"Earl!" He heard the woman cry out as he neared the shelter. "Earl!"

She was crouched on her cot, one hand fumbling at her sleeve, at the laser she carried there. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the thing a foot from the edge of her cot. A small, armored body, the chitin a glossy ocher, the legs thin and hooked, the mandibles wide. A creature three inches long, which lived beneath the sand, coming out only at night, attracted by the water she had spilled. A thing relatively harmless, inedible, but with a sting which could burn like acid.

It died as the thrown knife speared through the thorax, writhing, crushing as Dumarest slammed down the heel of his boot.

"Earl! I-"

"It's dead. Forget it."

"Yes." No child, a woman of experience, she felt a momentary shame at her panic. "It startled me. I was dozing and woke and saw it. Two years ago I would have ignored it. A year ago and I would have burned it." She looked at her hands and added bitterly, "Now even my fingers refuse to obey me. Age, Earl, the curse of us all. Couple it with disease and where is our dignity?"

He made no answer, kicking the crushed body of the insect from the shelter. As he wiped the knife she reached out and took it from his hand. It was heavy, the blade nine inches long, the edge sweeping to meet the reverse curve from the back, the point needle-sharp at the union. The hilt was worn, the guard scarred, the edge honed to a razor finish.

"And with this you killed a bull," she said. "And men too?"

"When necessary."

"Men who tried to kill you? Those who sought your life?"

He took the knife and slipped it into his boot, then stepped again to the open front of the shelter. The sky was still clear of any dangerous fleck-all that could be seen of a high-flying raft.

"Life," said the woman bleakly as he turned. "The most precious thing there is, because without it there is nothing. That is what Balhadorha means to me. With money enough to bribe them the surgeons of Pane will cure my ills. Given a fortune they could even be persuaded to transplant my brain into a new, young body. I have heard it is possible." She paused, waiting for his reassurance, then said sharply. "You think it possible?"

"Perhaps."

"And don't agree with it? The monks don't. I talked to Brother Vray and he was against it. He advised me to accept what had to come and pointed out that even if the surgeons could supply a new body, it would be at the expense of another's life. He told me to have faith. Faith!" Her voice was bitter. "What is faith to me? What matter if a thousand should die so that I might live? I-Earl!"

He supported her as she slumped, one arm around her shoulders, her head resting against his chest. Her skin was livid, the lips blue, the eyes stark with fear.

"Your pills," he snapped. "Which?"

"A blue," she panted. "And a white. Quickly!"

He thrust them between her lips and rubbed her throat to make her swallow. Relief came quickly, the flaccid skin showing a tinge of red, the eyes clearing from the haze of pain to become misted with chemically induced tranquility.

"Sleep," she whispered. "I must sleep. But don't leave me, Earl. You promise?"

"I promise."

She sighed like a child and settled against him, one hand rising, the thin fingers clutching at his own. Her voice was a susurration, thoughts vocalized without conscious thought.

"I don't want you ever to leave me, Earl. I want you to stay with me for always. When I get my new, young body I will show you the real meaning of love. You will be proud of me then. I will make you a king." Then, as the sky split with a crash of sound, she murmured, more loudly, "Thunder, Earl. It's thunder. We are going to have a storm."

She was wrong. The sound was that of a ship coming to land.

Standing before his desk Ibius Avorot listened to the even modulation of a voice asking questions and answered each with truth. More and he replied with lies. As the voice fell silent he said, "Well?"

"Your equipment seems to be in order."

"As I claimed."

Cyber Khai made no comment, none was needed. The Commissioner was intelligent enough to have made checks and the test had been only to prove his veracity. Standing behind the desk where he had seen the signals of the lie detector he made a warm splash of color in the cold bleakness of the room. Tall, dressed in a scarlet robe, the breast emblazoned with the Seal of the Cyclan, he seemed both more and less than human.

There was a coldness about the face, the cheeks sunken, the bone prominent, the skull shaved to accentuate the likeness to a skull. A face which betrayed no emotion, for the cyber could feel none. Taken when young, taught, trained, an operation performed on his brain, he was incapable of anger, fear, hate, greed-the gamut of human desires. The only pleasure he could know was that of mental achievement. His sole ambition was to serve the organization to which he belonged. The Cyclan which, one day, would dominate the entire galaxy.

Avorot said, "There is no mistake. The man is Earl Dumarest. How did you know he was here?"

"The prediction of his reaching this world was in the order of ninety-two percent probability once it was known he had left Laconde. Are you certain he did not leave on the vessel which had just departed?"

"Positive. I made a complete search."

"Including cargo?"

"Yes." Avorot added bleakly, "I have my own reasons for not wanting him to escape."

The loss of his position and the ruin of his career, but it was a matter which could be easily handled. The anger of the Owner concerned could be nullified with the offer of the service of the Cyclan. His own greed would make him accept the bargain and, once a cyber had been established, another step would have been taken to ensure the success of the Master Plan. Teralde was a poor world of jealous factions, one which posed no real problem and one of small gain, but if necessary it would be done.

Khai touched a control and listened to the recorded voices of the interrogation. Avorot had been a fool, not once had he asked a direct question as to guilt and Dumarest must have known that his physical reactions were being monitored to determine the truth of his answers. A matter he did not mention, the episode was past and recriminations would serve no useful purpose.

"The woman," he said. "Usan Labria. Why did you allow her to take the man into her custody?"

"I had no choice. Also I hoped to discover an association between them. There had to be a reason for her lies."

"And have your informants reported?" There would have to be spies, otherwise Avorot could not have hoped to gain information. As the Commissioner hesitated Khai said again, "Have they?"

"No. The woman is not at home. She left with Dumarest that same evening and neither has been seen since."

"And she was not on the vessel which left?"

"No. Sufan Noyoka and Pacula Harada but not her and not the man. Both must still be on this world. The woman is old and ill, soon they will have to make an appearance, and when they do, I'll arrest Dumarest and hold him for judgment."

The man was compounding his folly, blinded by his own limitations. Dumarest was not an ordinary man, something he should have realized from the first, and to plan as if he would act like one was to insult his intelligence. Yet the man was not wholly to blame. He did not have the ingrained attribute of any cyber, the ability to take a handful of facts, correlate them, extrapolate from a known situation to predict the logical sequence of events.

"Where did Usan Labria take Dumarest after she left her house? To that of Sufan Noyoka? And he with another left on the ship?"

"Yes," said Avorot. "But what has that to do with it?"

The cyber's voice did not change from its smooth, even modulation, tones designed to eliminate all irritant factors, but Avorot inwardly cringed as he listened to the obvious.

"Dumarest and the woman left the city and must now be in hiding somewhere. There was an association between them and those who left on the vessel. It was obvious you would make a search. Therefore the prediction that they expect to be picked up at some other place by the ship is in the order of ninety-eight percent."

"Not certainty?"

"Nothing is or can be certain, Commissioner. Always there is the unknown factor to be taken into consideration. Bring me maps of the immediate area and have your men check on the movements of all rafts during the period since the interrogation."

Fifteen minutes later they were in the air, flying toward the north and the loom of distant mountains. The cyber had selected three places as probable sites and at the second they found it. Even as they fell to land Avorot knew they were too late.

Bleakly he looked at the shelter, the crushed body of the insect. The fact it was still visible showed how close they had been; nothing edible was left by the scavengers for long.

That evening the sky flamed with color but Cyber Khai saw none of it. The pleasure it gave to normal men held no magic for him as neither did food and wine and sweet perfumes. Food was nothing but fuel to maintain the efficiency of the body-his gauntness was due not to deprivation but to an elimination of wasteful fat and water-heavy tissue. A flesh-and-blood robot, he was concerned only with the determination of the logical sequence of events.

Again Dumarest had escaped, the unknown factor of luck and circumstances which worked so well on his behalf augmenting his innate cunning. Even now he was on a ship traversing the void-heading where?

Given an intelligence large enough, a single leaf would yield the pattern of the tree on which it had grown, the planet on which it stood, the shape of the universe to which it belonged. Khai was not so ambitious; he would be content if the trained power of his mind could predict the world to which the ship was bound.

Seated in Avorot's office he assembled scraps and fragments of data; the name of the vessel, the number of its crew, the tally of those it carried. From the Commissioner's spies he learned more; casual words, idle gossip, and finally, a name.

"Balhadorha." Avorot frowned. He sat at a communicator from which he relayed information. "I've heard of it. The Ghost World."

"A place of legend," said Khai evenly. "It's whereabouts is unknown unless those in the vessel have learned of it."

A chilling thought. Space was vast and journeys could be long. Without a guide any planet in the galaxy could be its final destination. He needed more.

Yethan Ctonat provided it. He entered the office, smiling, bland, his eyes shifting from the cyber to Avorot, from the Commissioner back to the figure in the scarlet robe.

"My lord!" His bow was humble. "It has come to my ears that you are in some small difficulty. It may be within my power to aid you. You are interested in Sufan Noyoka?"

"Yes. What do you know?"

"Perhaps little, but a man in my position hears odd items, and at times I have been entrusted with various commissions. They could have no meaning, of course, but who knows in what scrap of information the truth may lie?"

"What do you know, man?" Avorot was impatient. "Speak or waste no more of our time!"

The Hausi stiffened, an almost imperceptible gesture which the cyber recognized. Despite his demeanor the man had pride.

Khai said, "You wish to speak to me in private? Commissioner, if you will be so kind? During your absence perhaps you will compile a total list of the cargo the ship carried. And I would be interested to know exactly what was left in the shelter we found."

Small errands, but they would salve his pride, and from him had been learned all of use. As the door closed behind the rigidly stiff back of the officer the cyber said, "Well?"

"A small matter first, my lord. If my information should be of value?"

"You will be rewarded. A prediction as to the immediate future of the market in chelach meat."

It was enough, the service of a cyber at no cost and information which could lead to an easy fortune. Taking a step closer to the desk the Hausi lowered his voice.

"Sufan Noyoka is an unusual man. For years he has been interested in things out of this world. By that I mean his interests lie elsewhere. His lands are poor, his herd depleted, yet he is not the fool many take him to be. Goods have been converted into money. Friends have been made."

He went on, telling of things the cyber already knew, but he made no interruption, knowing the man was merely trying to inflate his importance. And verification was always of value. Only when the agent had finished did he speak.

"Are you certain?"

"My lord, why should I lie? I handled the matter myself."

"The Hichen Cloud?"

"All available maps of the area together with reports from those who had either penetrated the Cloud or who had ventured close. I sold him an artifact, a thing of mystery, one found on a wrecked vessel discovered by a trader."

The Hichen Cloud! It was enough. After the Hausi had left, gratified with his prediction, the cyber rose and stepped into an inner room. It was one used by Avorot when working late and contained little aside from a cot and toilet facilities.

Locking the door Khai rested supine on the couch, resting his fingers on the wide band locked around his left wrist. A device which, when activated, ensured that no scanner or electronic spy could focus on his vicinity. Like the locked door it was an added precaution; even if someone had stood at his side they would have learned nothing.

Relaxing, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the Samatchazi formulae. Imperceptibly he lost the affinity with the sensory apparatus of his body. Had he opened his eyes he would have been blind. Closed in the womb of his skull his brain ceased to be irritated by external stimuli, the ceaseless impact of irrelevant data impossible to avoid while in a wholly conscious state. Isolated, it became a thing of pure intellect, its reasoning awareness untrammeled. Only then did the grafted Homochon elements become active. Rapport was immediate.

Khai became vibrantly alive.

A life in which it seemed every door in the universe had opened to emit a flood of light. Light which was the pure essence of truth, flooding his being, permeating his every cell. He was the living part of an organism which stretched across endless space in a profusion of glittering nodes, each node the pulse of an intelligent mind. All were interconnected with shimmering filaments, a glinting web reaching to infinity. He saw it, was a part of it while it was a part of himself, sharing yet owning the tremendous gestalt of minds.

At the heart of the web glowed the mass of Central Intelligence, the heart of the Cyclan. Buried deep beneath miles of rock on a lonely world, the massed brains absorbed his knowledge as a sponge sucked water. A mental communication in the form of words, quick, almost instantaneous, organic transmission against which that of supra-radio was the merest crawl.

"Dumarest? There is no possibility of doubt?"

"None."

"Your prediction as to present whereabouts?"

"Insufficient data for prediction of high probability but certainly in the direction of the Hichen Cloud. Other factors, unknown to me, may have important bearing."

A moment in which he sensed the interchange of a million diverse items of information, facts correlated, assessed, a decision reached. The multiple intelligence doing what one brain alone could never achieve.

And then, "Chamelard. Word will be sent. Follow."

That was all.

The rest was sheet intoxication, which filled him with a pleasure beyond the scope of ordinary flesh.

Always it was the same during the period when the Homochon elements sank again into quiescence and the machinery of the body began to realign itself with metal control. Like a disembodied spirit Khai drifted in an empty darkness while he sensed and thrilled to strange memories and unlived experiences; the overflow of other minds, the emission of unknown intelligences. The aura which radiated from the tremendous cybernetic complex which was the unifying force of the Cyclan.

One day he would be a part of it. His body would age and his senses lose their sharp edge, but his mind would remain as active as ever. A useful tool not to be lost. Then he would be taken and his intelligence rid of the hampering constraints of flesh. His brain, removed, would join the others to pulse in nutrient fluid, hooked in a unified whole, all working to a common end.

The complete and absolute control of the entire galaxy. The elimination of waste and the direction of effort so that every man and every world would become the parts of a universal machine.