The Quillian Sector

Chapter Nine

The weather peaked at dusk, a hammer of wind racing over the ocean, lifting waves, filling the air with a screaming fury as lightning danced a jagged saraband. Filigrees of eye-searing brilliance reached from water to sky, the roar of thunder a savage accompaniment to the voice of the wind.

Lying huddled in her casket, Dilys Edhessa imagined herself to be dead and in hell.

It was ridiculous even to hope that anything could live through such a storm, and so the fact that she could breathe and hear and feel was nothing but an illusion-a part of the punishment meted out to those who had strayed from the path, or so the Elder had so often told her when she had attended the Place of Contemplation when a child.

A long time ago now, but she had never forgotten and now it was all present in sharp clarity; the old, musty building, the smell of hay and manure, the dampness, the hard benches, the cold impact of the floor against her knees. The dimness. The enigmatic shapes. The monotonous drone of the Elder, who stood fiercely proud of his power and authority and urged them all to be humble and obedient and true servants of the Revealed Truth. A bad time, and one she remembered only in nightmares. But she was dead and not asleep, so why should she be dreaming of the harsh time of childhood?

"Dilys!"

She felt the touch and stirred and looked up into Dumarest's face. And that, too, seemed a dream because he was leaning over her, head thrust into a narrow opening, water running down his hair and face and, behind him, the night blazed with unrestrained violence.

"Dilys!" His hand reached out to slap her cheek. "Wake up, girl! Wake up!"

"Earl?" Water gushed through the opening and she gasped in sudden shock. Abruptly awake, she became aware of the heaving of her chest, the pounding of her heart. "I was asleep, I think. Dreaming. I-"

"You were dying." His voice was harsh with anger. "You kept the lid sealed too long and were breathing your own carbon dioxide."

A mistake both Egulus and Threnond had made as they shared a casket, but which Bochner had not. He had helped to check the lashings and adjust the tattered fabric used as a sail. He had even laughed into the fury of the storm.

"An experience to remember, my friend. At least, the weather is keeping the predators below. Now, if we can remain afloat-"

If the caskets held and the lashing kept them together. If the lightning missed and no rocks waited to rip them open with jagged teeth. If they could run before the wind and not drown or suffocate in their containers then, possibly, they might survive to drift in calm waters. But not yet.

Dilys gasped as Dumarest eased himself into the casket beside her. His clothing was glistening with water and his hands bore thin, ugly welts from the stranded wire used to lash the caskets together. When they were settled close, she said, "Is everything all right?"

"So far, yes."

"You were out there a long time."

Almost too long. He remembered her pallor, the waxen appearance of her face which had given her the likeness of a corpse. A big woman, she needed a lot of oxygen to maintain the fires of her body. He had warned her to keep the lid cracked so as to admit air but she had forgotten, or had been already numbed by inhaling the waste product of her lungs.

Now, shivering, she said, "The water's cold, Earl. So very cold."

"It'll be warm soon."

"I was dreaming," she said, "of when I was young. I came from a stern culture, Earl. Did I tell you that? A farming community which tried to follow the Revealed Truth. We used no machinery of any kind. Nothing but natural fertilizers. No energy other than that provided by natural means-muscles and the use of ropes and levers. Of pulleys and wheels."

"Machinery."

"No, Earl. Such things were not considered to be that. We used no artificial means of power, but we had a windmill and a water wheel and…" She nodded, almost asleep, then jerked in his arms, gasping. "They killed a man. Stoned him to death. They tied him up by the wrists to a post and stood close and threw stones at him until he stopped screaming. Stopped moving. It was horrible!"

Another pause. Water blasted through the narrow crack and drenched her face and hair, and lightning blazed to hurl brilliance through the transparent lid. In its glare her lips looked black and her hair silver.

"Why?" Dumarest shook her. "Why did they kill him?"

"What?" She gasped again, her breasts pressing against his body, eyes blinking as they tried to focus. "The man? Why, he'd devised a system of mirrors to reflect the rays of the sun so as to heat water in a boiler and so produce steam. With it, he turned a painted wheel set with bright crystal. A toy to amuse the children, Earl. A toy-and they killed him because of it."

"For making a machine?"

"Yes," she said dully. "For making a machine."

"And the windmill and water wheel?"

"Were allowed under the Revealed Truth. The wind blew and the water flowed, but the sun did not boil water and to force it to do that was acting against the creed. It was to invite the seeds of destruction to cast down the race again."

Dumarest said quietly, "From terror, they fled to find new places on which to expiate their sins. Only when cleansed will the race of Man be again united."

The creed of the Original People-was Dilys one? Had she originated in a commune of the sect? Had the "Revealed Truth" she had mentioned contained the belief that all men had originated on one world and that world had been possibly Earth?

Terror-Terra.

An easy enough transition from one to the other and if she knew, she might, in her present state of mental fog induced by too high a percentage of carbon dioxide, be induced to betray the closely guarded secret.

"Earl?" She stared at him in puzzlement. "What did you say?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter." A hope to be discarded along with so many others. More than one commune had turned their backs on machinery, and she had obviously been born into one. But, in that case, how had she become an engineer?

"The man who was stoned was my brother," she said, when he asked. "I had to do what I could to avenge him."

By leaving the community and doing the one thing they would have hated most for her to do; to embrace the vileness they condemned. To become a servant of the machine.

"Earl?"

"Nothing." He eased his arm around her, cushioning her against his body, against the punishing slap of the waves. "Go to sleep, now."

"You'll stay with me?" Like a child, she needed reassurance. "You'll take care of me?"

"Yes."

"You promise? Earl, you promise?"

"I promise."

She sighed and settled and fell asleep, with her lips parted and the soft mounds of her breasts rising to press against him like small, insistent hands. Lying beside her, he watched the glare of lightning tracing pictures in the sky. Spume thrown by the wind dashed against the lid like rain. Droplets which clung and quivered to the thrust of wave's, which ran and formed patterns illuminated by the stroboscopic effect of the lightning.

Faces. Hair the color of flame, of ebon, of silver and of rich, warm brown earth. Eyes which held longing and tenderness, fear, anger and hate. A scarlet shape which advanced with extended hands ready to take and hold and bend the universe to its will. A ruby monster, squatting like a spider at the heart of a web of intrigue.

The fifteen units of the affinity twin.

Kalin's gift, and one which the Cyclan would spare no effort to recover. The discovery made in one of their secret laboratories, stolen, passed on, now his alone. The knowledge of the sequence in which the fifteen units must be assembled to be viable.

A secret which could give them the galaxy.

Thunder roared and the casket tilted, a fresh wave dashing over the lid so that when the lightning next flared, the images had changed. But the sequence would never be lost until Dumarest was dead, or his mind so damaged as to be virtually destroyed.

The affinity twin-an artificial symbiont which, when injected into the bloodstream, moved to the base of the cortex, to nestle there, to take over control of the entire nervous and sensory apparatus of the body. An intruder, which would act as an organic relay, creating an affinity between the dominant half and the subject-host. An affinity which was a literal cojoining so that, in effect, the dominant half became the host, seeing, feeling, hearing, using all the motor and sensory apparatus.

An old and dying man could become young again in a new and virile body. A cripple become whole. A beggar become a ruler. A crone look into the mirror and see a beauty. And all would keep their new shapes until they died, or their own body failed.

Power of incredible potential locked in the arrangement of fifteen units.

The Cyclan knew it, and knew how to use it. They would place the mind of a cyber into the body of every ruler and person of influence, and all would dance to their dictates. But before they could hope for that power, they had to find the order of assembly. They were trying. They would continue to try, but mathematics was against them. The possible combinations ran into millions, and it took time to assemble and test them all. Too much time. Millenia would be needed to check them all.

Time the Cyclan wanted to save.

Time he could save them. Time… time… time…

Dumarest woke, gasping, reaching up and lifting the lid, relishing the cool breeze clearing the stale air from the casket. It was a new day and the storm had passed, the container drifting on an even plane in the water, barely rocking to the slap of waves. Easing himself from the woman's arms, he threw back the lid and rose, breathing deeply the clear, crisp air.

"Earl!" Leo Bochner was up and sitting on the casket he shared with Gale Andrei. "I was just about to call you."

"Why?"

"Look around. We're in trouble."

The sail was still with them, a tattered fragment flapping against the mast they had fashioned from welded pipe. The buoyancy containers rode snug in their frayed lashings, but of the four caskets they had started with only three remained. One had vanished during the night. With it had gone their water and food.

Shen Threnond adjusted the sheet of plastic and, as it bellied with the wind, said, "Once, on Sante, I saw a man who had fasted for thirty days. It was a show at a carnival and I think he was doing it for a bet. If he lasted for thirty-seven days he would have beaten the record."

Egulus said, "Did he?"

"I don't know. I moved on before the period ended but I am sure he did. He seemed fit enough when I saw him. A little spare, perhaps, but fit."

"Going without a few meals doesn't hurt anyone." Bochner looked up from his work. "I've starved for days at a time when on a stalk, and gained because of it. Hunger sharpens the senses and cleanses the body. Of course, some can do without better than others."

Gale Andrei snapped, "Meaning me, I suppose. Hell, can't you talk about anything but food? I'm starving!"

"Not starving," he corrected. "You just want to eat. You're not even really hungry yet. It's just that your stomach is accustomed to be filled at regular intervals and has started to complain. Just be patient. In a few days, it will pass."

Less than that. They had drifted for two days since the storm had ended, but food wasn't the major problem. Thirst would kill them long before they could starve.

Dumarest spread the flotation container he had cut open, set it with others and glanced at Bochner.

"Finished yet?"

"Almost." The hunter, too, had a knife, a heavy bladed instrument with a serrated back which could saw through bone. With it, he had cut thin metal into strips and had rolled them into a spiral tube. Plastic cut from a sheet had sealed the joins. "Here."

Taking it, Dumarest set one end into a water-filled container set within the ring of curved metal plates. The other end he sealed within a plastic bag, which he suspended in the sea.

"Some distillery." Dilys shook her head as she studied it. "Where did you get the idea of using focused sunlight to heat the boiler?"

"From you."

"You did?" She blinked, not remembering. "Well, even if it works, the output will be low."

But better than nothing, and it gave them something to do. Egulus and Gale could attend it while Threnond busied himself with his radio. And Dilys, as engineer, had been put in charge of the raft itself.

Now, looking over the ocean, she said, "How long can we last, Earl? I mean really last. I can take the truth even if others can't."

By the movement of her eyes, he knew she meant the other woman.

"We can last as long as we want to."

"On hope?"

"On work. On resolve. You know what keeps people alive? The desire to live. The determination. Too many give up too quickly. They defeat themselves. They wait for help and when none arrives, they give up." Dumarest pointed at the sea. "Look at it. A place full of water and food."

"Food?"

"Fish, girl. Fish."

"If we can catch them. But water?"

"In the fish." He smiled at her blank expression. "Didnt you know that? A fish is full of drinkable water. All you need to do is catch one, cut it open, scrape it to a pulp and eat it."

"Is that all?" She remembered the thing which had almost killed him and which had killed Charl Zeda. "And if it has other ideas?"

"We change its mind." He dropped his hand on her shoulder. "Make me a line and hooks-you'll have to use wire and what metal is available. And something for bait. Bright rag, or something shiny might do to snare our first catch. After that, we can use the body for bait."

Bochner shook his head as he came close. Then, at Dumarest's side, he said softly, "Spacers-what do they know about basic survival? And if you think catching fish is so easy, why all the work on the distillery?"

"You tell me."

"Insurance. You alone, or with one other, could survive with comparative ease. But six of us? No, Earl, not while we're all cramped on this raft. Small fish won't have enough water content to satisfy us all, and if we attract larger specimens, then it will be us, not they, who will provide the repast." Bochner glanced at the sun. "Hot," he mused. "We're going to sweat. A matter of days, I think. Even with fish, a matter of days. Then the trouble will start."

The quarrels, the stealing, the fighting, the apathy and, perhaps, the murders. Certainly the deaths. Who would be the first to go? Threnond was old, but his frame was tough, and in his time he had lived hard. Bochner glanced to where he sat in one of the caskets, busy with his radio. Egulus? Also tough, but with a different form of hardness. Space weakened a man for survival in the wild. Dilys? She was big and so would lose more water because of her larger surface area, but she would have a good reserve of fat and Dumarest would certainly help her all he could. Gale Andrei? Small, compact, light-boned but with scant fat, and accustomed to civilized ease. Already, she had begun to complain. She would be the first to die.

They would all die unless they reached shore soon, or help arrived, and to hope for that was to believe in miracles. Caradoc was on Mucianus, waiting for the Entil to arrive. Trusting in the traps and snares, the arranged cargoes which were to have guided it there, himself to see that Dumarest was on it when it did. A good plan negated by a fool. How long would the cyber wait? Not long, Bochner knew, then Caradoc would go hunting. With luck, he would discover the emergency signals from the Entil. With his trained skill, he might even be able to determine which world they had reached.

And then?

Bochner smiled and stretched his legs and watched Dumarest at his work. The quarry, tracked and now ready at hand, the stalk over and the sport ended before it had really begun. A disappointment. But a question remained: Why did the Cyclan want Dumarest so badly? What did he know or possess which made him so valuable?

To discover that would be to engage in a hunt of another kind and the reward, once the kill was made, could be incredible.

It was taking too long.

Death should not come on slow, creeping feet, but be mercifully swift so that, at the end, there was no pain, not even the anticipation of hurt but a sudden, devastating extinction. There shouldn't be endless days in which the sun burned like a furnace in a mottled sky, and heat radiated from the water, the caskets, the sail itself as it flapped against the mast. Only the nights were kind, the heavens blazing with a luminous splendor reflected in the ocean, the image broken, at times, by leaping shapes, ripples spreading to reach to infinity.

Gale Andrei looked at it, her back against the mast, salt crusting her hair from where she had plunged her head into the sea. Salt which stung her lips and eyes, creating tears which added to the illusion.

Light, winking and shimmering, forming patterns which changed, turning sea and sky into a mirrored image, an intricate chiaroscuro of silver and black which swelled to embrace her, to engulf her, to swallow her in its insatiable mouth. Death wore beauty as a garment. But death came accompanied by pain. Thirst consumed her, a fire which could not be quenched. Her lips were cracked, her throat constricted, every cell and fiber yearning for water. Pools, baths, rivers into which she could plunge. Waterfalls and cascades of icy coldness. Long drinks in dew-adorned glasses, tart and heavy with the chill of ice.

She needed to drink. She had to drink-and if death followed, then it was worth the price.

Lying on the casket, stripped, body glistening with perspiration, Bochner saw her move and said nothing. On another, Dilys, restless, lifted herself on one elbow; a near-naked shape occluding the stars. Wakened by her movement, Dumarest whispered, "Dilys?"

"It's Gale. She-" Her voice rose to a shout. "No, you fool! No!"

Dumarest heard the splash as he rose. Like the others, he was naked but for shorts, hard white flesh gleaming in the starlight, silver droplets lifting as he plunged after the girl who now floated in the sea. Bochner caught him as he reached the edge of the raft. "No!"

"The girl-"

"She's mad. Thirst-crazed. Gulping down sea water even as she bathes in it." He grunted as Dumarest pushed him aside. "No, you fool! The predators-"

They had followed for days, eager for the prey they sensed would inevitably be theirs. Long shapes which glided, breaking water at times, never coming too close to risk capture, ignoring the baited hooks which had only caught their natural prey sheltering under the raft. Now, as the girl thrashed in wild abandon, they closed in.

Dumarest saw them as he stood, knife in hand, eyes calculating time and distance. A moment, then he dived, hitting the water in a shallow curve, reaching the girl to grab her by the hair, to drag back her face, to slam his knife-weighted fist hard against her jaw. As he headed back to the edge of the raft, the first predator struck.

Dazed, half-stunned by the blow which had forestalled her anticipated resistance, the girl felt the rasp of scales against her thighs and screamed.

"Earl!" Bochner stood on the edge of the raft, hand extended. "Quickly, you fool! Quickly!"

"The girl-"

"To hell with her." The hunter snarled his impatience. "Save yourself, man. Hurry!"

He snarled again as Dumarest ignored the instruction and dived in turn. He hit the water like an eel, twisting, body curved, hand and knife extended as, again, the predator attacked. Blood foamed from the creature, to fog the water and dull the gleam of starlight. More blood followed as the girl screamed. Dumarest released her, slashed at an arrowing shape, felt the impact of his blade on skin and flesh.

"Gale!"

She drifted to one side, face down, hair spread, cradled in the water as beneath her something rose to tear, to sink again.

"Earl!" Bochner thrashed at the water, then headed toward the raft. "Quick, man. The girl's dead. Save yourself!"

Move while the girl provided a distraction. Reach the raft while her body was being torn into shreds. To grip outstretched hands and to climb to safety. To slump, conscious of weakness, of the price exertion needed to be paid.

"Earl!" Dilys was beside him, her face anxious as she stared at his thigh, the raw patch where the skin had been rasped and which now oozed blood. "You're hurt!"

"I'll live."

"Gale-"

"Is dead." Hadn't she seen? "We can't help her now, but we can help ourselves. Let's get some of those fish!"

Crazed by the blood, the flesh, the fish were easy prey to the nooses, the lines and hooks, the stabbing blades. Before they dispersed, three of them jerked in one of the caskets adding their blood to the saline in which they died. Food and water for those who survived-the gift Gale Andrei had bought with her life.

"She was crazed," said Bochner dispassionately. "I guessed she'd be the first to go. I knew she was near the edge, but didn't think she was about to break."

"You should have stopped her."

"Going into the sea? How?" The hunter stared at Dilys. "She was gone before I knew it, and once in the water what could I have done?"

"What Earl did. Gone in after her."

"And got myself killed as he almost did?" Bochner pointed to the wound. "If I hadn't gone in after him when I did, that leg wouldn't be scraped, it'd be gone. He'd be dead now, if it hadn't been for me."

A claim Dumarest didn't bother to dispute, but why had the man dived into the sea to help him and not the girl?

Egulus said, "I think the wind is rising. Look at the sail."

It billowed from the mast, snapping, suddenly taut, and the captain went to adjust one of the guy ropes. When it was to his satisfaction he stood, looking upwards, starlight limning his face, his eyes. An aged and haggard face. A pair of yearning eyes.

Dumarest could understand why. Up there, in the vast immensities of space, ships lanced from world to world, eating distance with the power of their drives, while down where the captain stood, they inched along over endless water on a bleak journey to an unknown destination.

He said quietly, "It won't be long before you're back up there, Captain."

"As what?" Egulus didn't lower his eyes. "A steward? A handler? What chance have I of ever getting another ship of my own?"

"The big lines?"

"Don't want or trust men who've been free traders. We're too independent, and not used to wearing the reins. Once a mans had a ship of his own-" Egulus sighed and looked down and became suddenly brusque. "To hell with it! Let's get busy on these damned fish before the sun rises to bake our bones!"

The next day they saw land.