Return To Kaldak

Chapter 17

It was Feragga, the woman who had ruled Doimar when Blade last visited.

Blade had heard of people's hearts stopping from sheer surprise. He came closer to having the experience than he liked this time. However, his mind kept working. He even kept some control over his mouth.

«I suppose there'd be no point in suggesting that you're imagining things in thinking I'm Richard Blade?» he asked drily.

«Of course not,» said Feragga with her old bluntness. «After Moshra's reading of your thoughts, I don't care a pile of munfan dung who you say you are. I know you're Blade.» She rolled her wheelchair close to the table. «Pour me a drink, Moshra.»

«Mother Feragga, do you think you should?»

«I don't think about what I should or shouldn't do, Moshra. I haven't the time left to waste on thinking about such things. I just go on the way I did, and that means wine when I want it. Or do, you want your father to pour it?»

Blade grinned. Feragga hadn't changed a bit. She was still accustomed to getting what she wanted, when she wanted it. Moshra sighed and poured the wine. Feragga drank thirstily, smacking her lips.

«Good. Thank whoever's done it that I can still taste. When that goes, I will be ready for laying out and burning.» She set the cup back on the table and stared at Blade. «You haven't aged hardly at all. I suppose time passes at a different rates where you spent the last thirty years?»

«It obviously does,» said Blade. If Feragga and Moshra had dug out his major secret, there wasn't much point arguing over the minor ones. There also wasn't much point in wasting time with polite conversation. Feragga couldn't have brought him here just to talk about old times.

«You're still a canny soul, aren't you?» said Feragga. «Well, I hardly expected anything else, and indeed it makes me glad. You'll understand what I want of you, and you'll do it better.»

«Mother Feragga-«began Moshra again, but a shake of the white head silenced her.

«Remember how much trouble it took to get me out here tonight without anyone knowing?» Feragga said. «And remember that every new trip means more danger of discovery. Then think-do we have that much time to spare?»

«No.»

«I knew you'd see it my way.» She turned back to Blade. «First, let me just tell you that I adopted your daughter, Moshra, after her natural mother died in childbirth. In this way, I was able to have one of your children for my own, even though my seed was dry when you visited here last. I had great plans for Moshra and Doimar, but then Detcharn began assuming more and more power. I was considered too feeble to be a threat, so I was left alone, but that's where Detcharn made his greatest mistake. Blade, I want you to escape from Doimar and warn Kaldak of what Detcharn plans.»

Blade wasn't an easy man to surprise, and he'd already had one surprise this evening big enough to make everything else look puny. So he merely shrugged. «Easier said than done. And what if I think it's a trap?»

Moshra winced, but Feragga only laughed. «If you hadn't asked that question, I might have doubted you were the same Blade. I'll speak plainly. You do what I tell you, or I tell Detcharn who you are.»

«If you want to attack him, should you give him that kind of knowledge?»

«I've give him the blood out of my heart if it would take his attention off his plans!» snarled Feragga. «Trying to find out how you came back from wherever you were will do that. Also, the Kaldakans will learn your secret sooner or later. Then they'll stop at nothing to get you back. Detcharn and the Seekers will be busy trying to prevent them. More attention gone elsewhere. It could go on like that for years. Meanwhile, sooner or later I can find someone else to get the secret to Kaldak. Not as good as you, maybe, but good enough for the job.»

So if he didn't cooperate, he would be thrown to the wolves, and the Dimension X secret would be up the bloody spout! «You haven't changed either, Feragga.»

«Thank you. I've tried not to, at least until there is peace between Doimar and Kaldak. There can't be until Detcharn's scheme is defeated.»

She lowered her voice. «I do not love Kaldak, Blade. I do not even love you that much. But I do not love at all the idea of Detcharn ruling over a land of corpses and ruins, which is what he will do if he is not stopped.»

Blade said nothing. If he and Feragga agreed that much, he didn't need to. It was still ironic, that this time he would be escaping from Doimar to warn Kaldak with her blessing instead of her curse. He made a business of pouring himself some more wine, while he considered her proposal for possible traps. He didn't entirely trust her, and he wasn't going to trust at all to luck if he could help it. Not with so much at stake.

«I'll do it,» he said finally. «But one condition. I take the formula for the fever vaccine with me. That way Kaldak will be protected even if nothing else happens to Detcharn and the Seekers.»

Feragga's bushy eyebrows rose. «Why should I do that?»

«So I can be sure that no one in Doimar can ever use the fever against Kaldak.»

A long silence. «You don't trust me,» said Feragga at last.

«Not enough to leave everything in your hands,» said Blade. «I learned that early, in a hard school. Come on, Feragga. It won't do you any good if I tell Detcharn about this conversation, will it?» He saw her swallow and knew he was right.

However; she wasn't going to give up without a fight. «What good would that do you, Blade? Your secret would be out anyway, and Detcharn isn't given to gratitude. You'd have as much to fear from him as ever.»

«Not if he thought he had to conduct a purge of your friends before he could move. That would also keep him busy.»

«You would be signing Moshra's death warrant as well as mine, Blade. Do you care so little for your daughter?»

Before Blade had to pretend that he didn't, Moshra slammed her hand down on the table angrily. «Mother Feragga, enough of this! If you go on asking for what my father will not give, we will get nothing. I am certain he would see us both die rather than do less than what he thinks is his duty. So if you will not talk sense, I will give him the formula myself.»

«How did you come to know it?» said Feragga, startled.

Moshra blushed and bowed her head. «I could not help learning it from Detcharn's mind once when-when I was lying with him?»

«Your own brother?» said Blade.

«Half-brother,» she corrected him in a flat voice. «He-he is proud of being bound by no Law-except-his own will. He- Father, why are you looking like that?»

Feragga gave a bawdy chuckle. «I'll wager his daughter Baliza tried to bed him in Kaldak. There's a lusty wench, by all reports. She wouldn't have known who he was, of course. Just seen a fine piece of man's flesh and wanted to grab.»

«Mother Feragga, do you read thoughts, too?»

«No, I just know more about the ways of men and women than you do.» She sighed. «Blade, since it's doing things your way or not at all-so be it.»

Over the last of the wine they worked out the details. Blade would make his planned trip to the new tracking station. Moshra would go with him. So would a soldier in Feragga's pay. Halfway to the station, the soldier would «hijack» the lifter by killing the pilot. Then Blade would take over.

«You can handle one of our lifters, I hope?» Feragga asked Blade.

«Well enough to get it and us down in one piece.»

«Good.»

Blade would then fly the lifter to a place free of Tribesmen, near the border with Kaldak. They would abandon the lifter and destroy it, then march overland into Kaldakan territory. After that it would be up to Blade. He would still need some luck, but with the serum formula to bargain with he thought he could manage.

«Make sure you destroy the lifter so thoroughly that no one will suspect it wasn't an accident,» Feragga insisted.

«Why?» said Blade. He thought he knew, but wanted to draw her out anyway.

«It will be my neck otherwise,» she said. «And while it's an old stiff neck, I'd like to keep it in one piece a little longer if I can. Also, I don't want civil war in Doimar.»

She explained. The regular army of Doimar hadn't really forgiven the Seekers for their retreat in the great battle against Kaldak. Only Feragga herself had kept them from destroying the Seekers after the battle. Now only Detcharn kept the two factions working together. He was as good a soldier as he was a scientist, even though he had become a brutal tyrant, obsessed with the destruction of Kaldak.

«If it is learned, however, that the lifter was sent in order to warn Kaldak of Detcharn's plans, the soldiers will probably rise up against the Seekers. The Seekers will fight back. Neither side will win, but there will be many dead, and Doimar will not recover. I want peace not only between the soldiers and Seekers, but also between two strong cities. I do not want the Doimari to be slaves of Kaldak.»

«I wouldn't ask it,» said Blade. Also, the Seekers of Doimar were still the best and most advanced scientists in this Dimension. If they survived until peace broke out between the two big cities, the whole Dimension would benefit.

He still wasn't entirely happy with the thought of leaving Detcharn alive. No victory would be complete and no peace secure without his death. Even if his scheme for germ warfare was defeated, he might have a few other cards up his sleeve. What about hydrogen bombs, with the fusion reaction started by lasers instead of by a nuclear explosion?

However, this made it even more important to keep Blade's escape a secret. As long as Detcharn didn't know his plans were exposed, he would not use some other weapon against which Kaldak might have no defenses.

Blade would be buying time, no more. But if he bought enough, perhaps he could safely leave to others the job of killing Detcharn.