Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

Chapter Five

Allia Mertrony did the praying, kneeling before a disc of polished brass, the bright orb wreathed in plumes of fuming incense. Her voice was a high, keening ululating chant, echoing from the bulkheads, scratching at the nerves.

"Listen to her!" Charl Tao scowled as he faced Dumarest in the corridor. "Can't you put a stop to it, Earl? Praying's one thing but this howling is getting me down."

"It's her way."

"Maybe, but it isn't mine." Chart rubbed the backs of his hands, a common gesture now, as was the quick glance he gave them. "A pity she had to know."

Dumarest said, flatly, "She had the right."

"And she would have found out anyway." Charl shook his head as the sound rose to grate at the ears. "Who would have thought an old crone like that had such powerful lungs? It comes with practice, I suppose, Earl?"

"Nothing."

"As yet." Charl rubbed his hands again, halting the gesture with an obvious effort. "To hell with it. If it gets me, it gets me. Come to my cabin later, I've a special bottle we might as well share while we can enjoy it."

"Later," said Dumarest.

He walked through the ship, stood in the hold, totally empty now aside from the caskets used to transport beasts and which, more often than not, held men. Those traveling Low, doped, frozen and ninety per cent dead, risking the fifteen per cent death rate for the sake of cheap travel. He had ridden that way too often, watching the lid close firmly over his face, sinking into oblivion and thinking as blackness closed around him, "this time… ?"

A gamble he had won so far, but no luck could last forever.

Aside from the lack of crates nothing seemed to have changed. The same, blue-white light streamed down from the bulbs and threw the stained paint and shabby furnishings into sharp relief.

As familiar a scene as were the cabins, the salon, the corridors and appointments of the ship. As was the faint vibration of the Erhaft field which sent the vessel hurtling through space. He had traveled on a hundred such ships and worked on many of them. They were a form of home, a pattern into which he could fit. But the Varden was different now. Something had been added. Something small, invisible, unknown.

The threat of the final illness.

Each had met it in their own way.

To Allia Mertrony it was a time for prayer. God was good and would help, but first God had to be aroused and informed of her need. Lars would see to that. Ten years dead now he would be waiting. Drifting in a state akin to sleep, until she should join him, so that together they could continue their journey into the infinite. A mating for life and eternity, so her sect was convinced, and two-thirds of her life had been spent making certain she had found the right man. The cap she wore to hide the temptation of her hair was a public announcement that she was sworn to another.

The bulkheads quivered to the force of her wordless ululations.

The disc before which she knelt was not an idol but a focus for her thoughts. The incense was a sacrifice blessed by tradition. Her prayers were to inform Lars of her condition, to prepare him for her coming if that was to be. To wake him to intercede on her behalf. Not to be saved, for death was inevitable, and to live beyond the allotted span a sin, but to die bravely. So let there be no pain. Let her face and figure escape further ravishment, not for the sake of pride but for the dignity a man expected in his mate.

Soon now, soon-if God willed, they would be together.

In the engine room the handler and the engineer sat at their board playing endless games of chess, snarling at any who came to close. Firm in a limited area of isolation, they ate food from cans and drank from bottles sealed with heavy gobs of wax. Nurtured stores bought with past gains; small luxuries which normally would have been doled out a little at a time, now used with wanton extravagance for a double reason. Sealed they would be uncontaminated, used they would not be wasted.

Dephine remained in her cabin, taking endless mist-showers, anointing her body with salves Charl provided, adorning herself with the gems they had found.

She turned as Dumarest entered the cabin, tall, sparkling with jewels and precious metal. Her hair, dressed, provided a cradle for the tiara. The earrings fell from her ears to almost touch her shoulders. At throat and wrists reflected light shone with the lurid glow of trapped fires, green and red, amber and azure, the clear blue of sapphires, the splintered glow of diamonds.

Slamming the door he said, "You fool!"

"Why? Because I like what we found?" She turned before him, her dress stained, the jewels making her appear tawdry and, somehow, cheap.

"What if someone else had come into the cabin?"

"They wouldn't. I had it locked."

"You didn't."

"Then I forgot. But who would dare to walk in like you did? No one owns me, Earl. Not even you."

He said, cruelly, "The Lady Dephine de Monterale Keturah. A woman who comes from a family which values pride above all. Isn't that what you told me?"

"So?"

"They should see you now. Not even the cheapest harlot would dress herself like that."

"You bastard!"

He caught her hands as they rose towards his face, halting the nails as they stabbed towards his eyes, his fingers hard around her wrists, tight against the bone. She strained, spat into his face, jerked up a knee in a vicious blow to the groin. He twisted, taking it on the thigh, then pushed her back and away to slam hard against the far wall.

"Do that again and you'll regret it," he said coldly.

"You'd do what-slice off my fingers?" Her sneer turned to trepidation as she looked at his face, saw the cold eyes, the mouth grown suddenly cruel. "You'd do it," she said. "You'd really do it."

He said nothing, wiping the spittle off his cheek.

"Earl!" Afraid now, she was contrite. "I-you shouldn't have said what you did. You had no right."

"Look at yourself, woman!" Catching her shoulder he turned her to face the full-length mirror. "Dressed in gems looted from the dead. Have you no sense?"

"They didn't come from the dead! Earl, you know that! They were in a separate cache. I-" She broke off, a hand lifting to touch the tiara. "You don't think that girl wore this before she died? Some cultures destroy personal possessions with the dead. Earl?"

"No." To frighten her further would serve no purpose and the damage, if damage there was, had been done. "Get rid of those things. Hide them."

Slowly she removed the gems, letting them fall into a glittering heap on the bunk.

"Fren Harmond was talking, Earl. He can't understand why Remille doesn't return to Hoghan. They could have a vaccine there by now. He wanted Charl to join him in a deputation."

"He's wasting his time."

"Maybe, but Remille's only human and what good is a ship to a dead man? He might decide to take a chance on the penalties. If he does we're in trouble, Earl. Kan Lofoten would have spilled his guts about what we did. If they ever got us they would kill us. Atlmar's Legion isn't noted for being gentle." Pausing she added, "They could even follow us. Have you thought of that?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"You don't tell a captain to change course unless you have good reason," said Dumarest. "I've tried and he isn't interested. He needs more than words."

Fren Harmond provided it. He sat in his cabin, his bandaged leg supported before him, his face seamed and graven with lines of pain. A stubborn man, refusing the drugs Dumarest had offered which would have eased his anguish. A fanatic who believed that the body would heal itself if left alone.

"It's killing me!" The leg twitched as he moved it, beads of sweat dewing his forehead. "The pain-Earl, help me!"

Charl Tao stood at the other side of the sick man. Meeting Dumarest's eyes he shrugged.

"My friend, I have done my best, but what use is skill when dealing with a fool? I've offered him the surcease of dreams. I have a salve which will knit bone and abolish scars, add muscle and strengthen tissue if used in the correct manner. I-"

"You're not in a market now, Charl. Be serious." Dumarest touched the flesh above the bandages. It was febrile, the skin scabrous to the touch. "How did you do this?"

"I was out climbing. I slipped and hurt the ankle. Yield to a small pain and it will get worse so I made my way back home. The ship was due and I had to get to the field. A local man applied the bandage."

"A doctor?"

"A tradesman-he had the cloth."

"And it hurt then as it does now?"

"It hurt, but not as badly. Pain is the signal that the flesh is healing itself and to be expected in case of injury. But it is getting worse, more than I can bear."

Which should mean, following the man's own logic, that the injury was almost well. An anomaly which Dumarest didn't mention as he removed the bandages.

Charl Tao sucked in his breath at the sight of the wound.

"Harmond, my friend, you have a problem."

A bad one. The flesh around and above the ankle was puffed and streaked with ugly strands of red, parts of it so purple as to be almost black. A broken place oozed a thick, yellow pus and the wound held a sickly stench. The result of infection, gangrene, poisons, carried into the broken skin from stale clothing. The cause no longer mattered.

"Earl?"

"It's bad. Does this hurt? And this?" Dumarest pressed his fingers along the length of the leg. "Have you a swelling in the groin? Yes?" His fingers touched the spot through the clothing, meeting a hard node of swollen tissue in the crease between the leg and stomach. One of the major lymph glands acting as a defense against the poisons. "That will have to be lanced to ease the pressure. A drain fitted. The ankle needs to be cauterized-you've dead tissue there which must be burned away."

"No!" Harmond shook his head. "Not the use of drugs and fire. Not the touch of iron. The body will heal itself given the chance."

"You asked me to help you."

"Yes, to change the dressing, to ease the pain in some way. Some have that power. By the touch of their hands they can bring peace."

"Earl is one of them," said Charl dryly. "But the peace he gives is permanent. He does it like this." His hands reached for the sick man's throat; thick fingers pressed sharply and lifted as the head lolled. "Quickly, Earl! Give him the drugs before he recovers!"

Dumarest lifted the hypogun and blasted sleep-inducing drugs into the unconscious man's throat. Changing the setting and load of the instrument he fired it around the wounded ankle, heavy doses of antibiotics coupled with compounds to block the nerves and end the transmission of pain.

"Help me get him on his bunk," he ordered. "Strip and wash him and then you can operate."

"Me?"

"You have the skill," said Dumarest. "And the knowledge. The way you put him out-a trick taught to the monks of the Church of Universal Brotherhood. A pressure on sensitive nerves, as good as an anesthetic if applied with skill. You've had medical training, Charl. You deny it?"

The plump man shrugged. "A few years in a medical school, Earl, in which I gained a few elementary facts and some basic knowledge. Then something happened-a woman, but there is no need to go into detail. Just let me say that it became imperative to travel." He looked at his hands. "But I have never operated since that time."

"Then it's time you began. Tell me what you need and I'll see if it's in the ship. If it isn't you'll have to make out the best you can."

"You'll help me?"

"No, I'm going to see the captain."

Crouched like a spider in its lair, Captain Remille sat in his great chair and dreamed. Around him the web of electronic, impulses searched space and hung like a protective curtain about his ship. From an outside viewpoint the shimmering field of the drive would have turned the scarred vessel into a comet-like thing of beauty but inside where he sat only the glow of tell-tales, the brilliant glory of the screens, relieved the gloom.

A buzz and he tensed, a click and he relaxed. The warning had been taken care of. The ship had made a minute correction in its headlong flight and a scrap of interstellar matter, perhaps no larger than a pea, had been safely avoided.

Sinking back, he looked at the screens. Always he enjoyed the spectacle of naked space, the blaze of scattered stars, the sheets and curtains of glowing luminescence, the haloed blotches of dust clouds, the fuzz of distant nebulae. Stars uncountable, worlds without end, distances impossible to contemplate with the limited abilities of the mind.

Remille didn't try it. More than one captain had been driven insane by contemplation of the cosmos, fantasies born in distorted minds, the product of wild radiations and wilder rumors. Things lived in space, or so it was hinted, great beings with gossamer wings which caught the light of suns and carried them like drifting smears of moonlight across the voids. And other creatures which no one living had ever seen. Ravenous beasts which lurked in space as great fish lurked in seas, waiting to rend ships and men.

The proof had been found in wreckage ripped plates bearing unnatural scars, crews which had vanished without apparent cause, empty hulks which had been gutted and robbed of life. If living entities hadn't done such things then what had?

Questions asked by old men in taverns, echoed by romantic fools. Space, to Remille, was something to be crossed. Dangers to avoid. All he had in life was the ship-he could do without imagination. "Captain?"

"What is it?" Remille turned to stare at Dumarest. "Trouble?"

"A man is sick." The truth even though Remille must think it other than what it was. "Fren Harmond."

"The one with the bad leg?"

"Yes."

"A fool, one almost as bad as the old woman with her noise." Remille made an impatient gesture. "Well, you know what to do. Complete isolation."

None to get too near to another, a thing he and the navigator had followed from the first hint that disease could be aboard. Haw Mayna was in his cabin now, probably locked in a drugged sleep, there was little for him to do once the course was set.

"I've attended to it," said Dumarest. "Captain, are you still heading for Malach?"

"That's our destination."

"They could be waiting. Word could have been sent ahead, but you must have thought of that. Do you think they will permit us to land?"

Remille bared his teeth, yellow bone which looked as if covered with oil in the light from the screens.

"I'll land. How the hell can they stop me?"

"And?"

A thing Remille had thought of, a problem for which he had found no answer. A suspected ship was unwanted on any planet and Malach was not a gentle world. If he carried disease and tried to land the ship would be confiscated, himself and the others placed in six-month quarantine, heavy fines and penalties ordered against him. At the end he would be worse than ruined.

"You carry no cargo," said Dumarest. "No one will have reason to complain if you don't reach Malach."

"The passengers?"

"I'll take care of them. They can be compensated and found passage on another ship." Dumarest added, quickly, "That can be arranged, surely?"

"Passages cost money."

"And so does delay. They won't want to be quarantined with all the cost that entails. Charl Tao will agree and the woman can be persuaded."

"And Harmond?"

"As I told you, Captain, he's sick." Dumarest paused, waiting, then relaxed as Remille, coming to a decision, nodded. "Tell the navigator to report to me at once."

Mayna didn't respond to the knock at his door. Dumarest knocked again then tested the lock. The door opened as he pressed to reveal the man sitting cross-legged on his bunk. His eyes were rimmed with pus, veined with red, the pupils contracted to pin-points. Before him, lying on the cover, was a paper covered with a lewd design.

Dumarest folded it, held his hand before the staring eyes, moved it from side to side. The pupils remained stationary, looking at the point where the paper had lain. In imagination the navigator was a living participant in what the design had portrayed. Until the drug he had absorbed had been neutralised or had run its course he would remain deaf and blind to external stimulae.

From the door Charl said, "Earl, there is something you should see."

"It must wait. The captain wants Mayna to report to him immediately. Did you provide him with his amusement?"

"A simple thing, Earl, and harmless. Life can be hard and lonely for those who live in space and who can begrudge them a dream? You care to try one? I have patterns and compounds to induce illusions of love, of adventure, of unbridled luxury and domestic bliss. Oddly the latter is the one in greatest demand. A loving and faithful wife, children, the sweetness of contained passion. Or-"

"Get him out of it."

"Earl, I can't! The dream must ran its course." Charl leaned forward and touched the man's temple, the great arteries in the throat. "It won't be long now. The acceleration of the heart, the growing warmth of the skin-soon it will be over and he will wake. But this I can do." His plump hands moved with sure dexterity as he scrawled a message with a crayon on the back of the pattern. "There, when he wakes he will see it and obey. Now, Earl, please come with me."

"Harmond?"

He lay supine on his bunk, his face relaxed, his body naked from the waist down. Bandages covered his ankle and the air held the taint of charred flesh. A drain had been set in the lanced swelling of his groin; a thin, plastic tube held with sticky tape to permit the escape of accumulated fluids. The thing had a professional look about it as did the bandage.

"Did you have to burn deep?"

"Almost to the bone but I think we caught it in time. But that's not what I wanted to show you." Charl lifted the edge of the shirt and drew it upwards over the stomach and the lower ribs. "There, Earl. There!"

Dumarest followed the guide of the pointing finger, seeing a small, ebon blotch, a patch of velvety darkness rimmed with a thin band of angry red.