The Terridae

Chapter Nine

They sat around a table in a long, low chamber decorated with a frieze of running animals, all in softly glowing colors. Diffused lighting softened their faces, blurring the sharply etched lines of age, the sunken eyes, the mouths grown taut with the passing of years. Among them Urich Volodya looked young, Althea little more than a child. Dumarest could almost smell the dust of antiquity.

Vole opened the proceedings. He sat hunched in his chair, the plate resting before him bearing his name. One name, and the plate was matched by others, each before a figure in a chair. Dumarest wondered at the need-had their memories grown so unreliable? Or did they, as did so many others exercising authority, believe that to be harsh and Spartan was to be efficient?

"We the Council of Zabul and the Guardians of the Terridae are assembled to determine the truth of your claim to be of Earth." Vole had a voice which matched his face: thin, dry, the words sharply delineated. "Althea Hesford will act as your adviser and explain any points of which you may be in doubt. You know the penalty should we not be satisfied."

Dumarest said flatly, "Why do you think I am lying?"

"That charge has not been made."

"Yet it is implied. This assembly is proof of that." Dumarest glanced from one to the other. "You believe in the existence of Earth but I have no need of belief. I know it is no legend. I know it is real. I know-you understand? I know!"

Gouzh said dryly, "We of the Guardians are not as inexperienced as our charges. We know that attack is often the best form of defense."

"I was not making an attack but stating my position."

"Even so, flat statements mean little. It is best to examine the evidence piece by piece. Tell us of the Original People."

A test-they must know the answer; Volodya's forbearance was proof of that.

Without hesitation Dumarest said, "They are a sect of minor importance to be found on various planets. They cultivate secrecy and neither seek nor welcome converts. The main tenet of their belief is that Mankind originated on a single world, Earth, and that after cleansing by tribulation the race will return to the world of its origin." He added, "I could give you greater detail but would prefer not to."

"Why? Are you of them?"

"I was accepted by them."

"And wish to respect their confidence." A woman, Logan, spoke from where she sat. "Do you follow their belief?" Her voice sharpened as he made no answer. "Do you?"

A trap? Did they adhere to the same faith? On the face of it, even to surmise that all the widespread branches of the human race could have originated on one, single world was ridiculous. Environment governed appearance, together with genetic mutation, and how could black and brown, yellow and copper and white, all have shared the same air, the same sun?

Althea came to his rescue. She said, "Earl Dumarest is not being tested as to his beliefs but for the truth of his claim regarding his planet of origin."

"A good point." Haren backed her objection. "We must be fair." To Dumarest he said, "What proof have you that you were born on Earth, as you claim?"

"What proof will you accept? The verdict of a lie-detector? If so I am willing to cooperate in such interrogation."

Logan said quietly, "The results may not be conclusive. A man convinced he is telling the truth will register as truthful. That is not to say the truth is what he claims."

"Conditioning? Delusion?" Haren frowned and glanced at Volodya. "Is it possible?"

Gouzh spoke before Volodya could reply. "Of course it is! Logan is right-and remember it was Dumarest himself who suggested the test. To me this is indicative of the fact he knows he must pass it. In turn this could mean he has been prepared for such an examination. My vote is-"

"There will be no vote!" Volodya spoke for the first time. "This assembly will be conducted according to established precedent. Only after a full investigation has been made will a decision be reached." He added coldly, "I suggest that certain members of the Council should strive for greater objectivity."

They accepted that rebuke but Dumarest wondered if there had been more. A warning? Subtle advice for him to be careful? Already he had sensed the hostility where he had anticipated interest. The woman's objection to a lie-detector examination-sophistry, but why? Why?

"A point baffles me." Another woman from lower down the table broke the silence. Tilsey-younger than Logan but with eyes as hard, lips as set, mind as unyielding. "You claim to have been born on Earth, left it when young and now wish to return. I fail to see the difficulty. Surely, if you left it, you must know where it is."

An obvious question but one holding undertones, and Dumarest hesitated before answering. To lie? To claim he possessed the coordinates? On the face of it they should welcome him for having ushered in the Event, but he felt the old, familiar tension preceding danger. A warning he had long since learned never to ignore. It would be safer to tell the truth.

"My lady, I know it exists."

"That is not answering the question."

"No," admitted Dumarest. "I find it hard to answer."

"Try," whispered Althea. "Try!"

He took the advice, knowing his life hung in the balance.

"I was very young," he said. "A mere boy, little more than a child. My parents were dead and I'd been taken in by others. We argued and I left home. After a long journey I stumbled on a ship with strange markings. I stowed away."

To crouch cold and terrified in a darkened corner, afraid to move, afraid even to breathe, waiting as he forced trembling limbs to be still, fighting cramps and the pains of hunger. Tasting bile from nausea and blood from his bitten lips. Things he didn't mention, as he had glossed over the rest. Leaving out the blood, the death and pain, the savage violence of his childhood world.

"I was lucky," he continued. "The captain was old and kind, in his fashion. He could have evicted me but he let me work my passage. I stayed with him until he died."

To be stranded on a hostile world. A stranger bereft of the protection of House or Guild or Family. To survive as best he could and to move on. To plunge deeper into the heart of the galaxy where suns were close and worlds plentiful. To where Earth was nothing but the stuff of legend.

"Is that all?" Haren cleared his throat. "Is that all you care to tell us?"

"There has to be more." Vole was emphatic. "There has to be. Why are you so reticent?"

Dumarest said, "When I tried to find Earth again it was impossible to discover the coordinates. The old captain would have known them but he was dead and his log lost or destroyed. No almanac lists them, no navigational tables-but you know this!"

"Yes," said Vole. "We know. The location of Earth is a mystery yet to be resolved. But one thing is clear beyond question-you do not come from Earth."

"You say I lie?"

"Did you see the soaring towers of crystal? The floating cities? The tremendous waterfalls which contain all the colors of the universe and shake the air with celestial music? The trees on which grow a score of various fruits and nuts and flowers together with scented and succulent leaves? The pools in which, once immersed, a man grows younger again and a woman more beautiful? Did you talk with the Shining Ones and learn of their esoteric lore? Walk in endless caverns of awesome majesty? Know the end of pain and hunger and need? The cessation of fear?" He leaned forward, eyes burning with a febrile light. "Are you immortal?"

"No," said Dumarest. "I am not that."

"Then you cannot be of Earth. Not the Earth we seek and the finding of which will herald the Event. You come from some small backward planet, perhaps. One aspiring to greatness by the local use of a hallowed name, but that can be all." Vole raised a hand to still any protest. "The Council has heard enough. Leave. When we have decided your fate you will be notified."

As usual the room had been tidied, the beds made, fresh wine set together with a tray of delicacies on the table. Acts performed by invisible servants or by those who watched his every move. Dumarest closed the door behind him and leaned back against it as he looked at the furnishings. They, like the beds, the cushions and carpet on the floor, were soft and luxurious but, even so, the place was a cell.

One he was, as yet, permitted to leave, but how long would that freedom last?

The door was a smooth panel broken only by the orifice of a thumb-operated latch. It could be locked only from the outside. Dumarest stooped, lifted the knife from his boot and rammed the blade beneath the lower edge. Acting as a wedge it would hold the door against intrusion. Rising, he again examined the room.

The beds stood on short legs, the pneumatic mattresses covered with light sheets of gaily decorated plastic. His own was nearest to the door and he moved forward to stand beside the other. Nubar Kusche was absent, engaged in business of his own, maintaining a low profile as he sheltered beneath Dumarest's wing.

Quickly Dumarest searched his bed, turning over the mattress, the stand itself, running his fingers over every inch. He found nothing and moved on, checking his own bed, the table, the chairs, probing the cushions and examining the underside of the carpet. In the bathroom he continued the search. The door to the room in which he had wakened was still locked and he examined the panel. Back in the other room he knelt and checked the position of his knife. None seemed to have tried the door. Jerking free the blade, he sheathed it and lay supine on his bed.

And heard again the music of dreams.

He turned, listening, trying to localize the sounds. They were small, a susurration which held within itself a medley of notes and chords and sequences all pitched in a close-to-subaudible murmur. Ghosts whispering in nighted graveyards as they bewailed lost opportunities and vain regrets. The unborn whimpering as they feared the harsh expulsion from the snug comfort of the womb. The thin echoes of fear and the shadows of joy.

Against the tips of his fingers the wall felt hard and cold.

He turned again to look at the ceiling, which spread like a nacreous cloud from wall to wall. A seemingly unbroken expanse but if Volodya had spoken the truth it would mask watching eyes and things which could do more than watch- an electronic guard system with lasers following the radiated heat of his body or directed jets of nerve gas which could drop him in screaming agony.

What would the Council decide?

Vole was easy to predict, Logan too; both had revealed a bigoted mind. Had he argued, they would have destroyed him for his heresy in threatening their faith in an idealized concept of Earth. The others? He looked at their faces, delineated by memory against the expanse of the ceiling. Gouzh, Haren, Volodya, others. Tilsey might be an ally, though a weak one, yet her vote could soften the verdict. Volodya had seemed sympathetic, and Demich, who had said nothing, had nodded encouragement. Individuals who could be swayed by a majority, but who, in turn, could force that majority to be less adamant.

And he had not lied-none could accuse him of that.

Had Kusche?

Dumarest, of necessity, traveled light. The entrepreneur had no such pressure, yet he had no baggage, nothing but his clothes and the deck of cards and the jewelry on his person: the heavy-stoned ring, a thin chain of gold rings carried around his neck, a bracelet on his left wrist. Portable wealth, a part of any mercenary's normal garb and an elementary precaution for anyone who lived by his wits on the edge of danger.

A man who had left a safe world on the thin chance of gain.

How much did he know?

Dumarest turned again, restless, feeling the prickle which warned of danger. The room was a trap, as was the building, the situation into which he had been thrown. One compounded by those who ruled Zabul and who even now could have condemned him to death. Yet this trap held an irresistible bait-here, if anywhere, he must surely find the clues which would guide him to Earth.

The sound of the door brought him to his feet, carried him to the panel, the knife in his hand, steel gleaming as it rose to come to rest. "Earl?" Kusche swallowed, moving back from the blade which had halted against his throat. "What the hell's come over you?"

"Nothing. Forget it. Where have you been?"

"Moving around, talking, learning what I could. It was little enough. What did the Council decide?"

"They're still deciding. They'll let us know."

"You, Earl, not me. I abrogated my responsibility. What they decide for you will apply to me also." Kusche moved deeper into the room and stood looking down at the table with its wine and delicacies. "They're mad, all of them. Living in this maze like rats in a warren. A pity we learned too late. The chance of a lifetime and we didn't know." He poured himself wine as if yielding to an inward struggle. "And it would have been so easy."

Dumarest watched the entrepreneur as he drank. The man seemed to have shrunken a little, lost some of his oozing confidence, his easy bonhomie. Now, as he swallowed the wine, little points of reflected brilliance danced from the stone of his heavy ring.

"A chance," he said again as he set down the goblet. "You to make the claim and me to back you. You know the game as well as I do. Tell them what they want to hear. Embroider it as much as the traffic will stand and arouse their hope and greed. Sell them something you haven't got, then make them afraid of losing what they never had. Promises, speculations, hints-there would have been no need of lies. You could have given them what they wanted and named your own price."

The location of Earth. The thing he didn't have. Dryly, Dumarest mentioned it.

"You could have invented something, Earl. Fed them a line. Hell, this is no time to grow a conscience. Not when our lives are at stake."

A man in character, putting the question of easy profit first, the regret at a lost opportunity, mentioning personal danger only at the end. An act? If so he performed well-but light sparkled from the quiver of his ring as he poured himself more wine.

Dumarest left him to it, stepping from the room into the passage outside, to stand for a moment with his fingers resting on the wall, to turn finally to his right where stairs rose in sweeping curves to the upper galleries.

She came to him while he sat on a bench studying a mural depicting a wooded glade, halting to one side as her eyes searched his face. A scrutiny he ignored as she slowly came close, rising when her hand touched his shoulder to turn and look down into the wide-spaced green eyes inches below his own.

"Althea?"

Her name and a question which she chose to leave unanswered.

"You knew I was there," she accused. "How?"

"I smelled your perfume."

"I don't wear any."

"The scent of your hair," he said, and touched it with a gentle hand. "The Council?"

"Have made their decision." He was in no mood for games and she had been at fault to tease him. "You are to be given a choice, Earl, but I know which you will take. To stay here and work with us. To mingle with us and to join us in every way."

"As an equal?"

"In time, yes." Then as she saw his expression she added quickly, "You must be fair. You came here as an uninvited stranger. An interloper. The trespass alone merited death. You are still an unknown quality. After a few years in which to prove your loyalty you will become truly one of the Terridae."

And, until then, to do what? Dumarest could guess the answer. No establishment such as he had seen could operate without those to tend the machines, clean the halls, dust, sweep, clean. He would live as a menial.

"And the alternative?"

"One you would not accept. Death, Earl." Her hand rested on his own, her fingers warm, groping with a sudden intimacy. "Don't let's talk about it."

"Why not? Are you afraid of death?" She and all the rest of the Terridae, and he saw the movement of her eyes, the small signs which betrayed her fear of personal termination. More gently he said, "All things die in their season, Althea. It is the way of life-as you must know to have depicted it so well."

He turned her to face the mural, pointing out the drift of gaudy-winged insects, the birds waiting to feed on the bright allure, the faint mesh of a spider's web, the furry creature watching the bird as it was watched in turn by a lithe animal larger than itself.

A lesson in paint wrought with artistic genius like those he had seen repeated over and over in the corridors and chambers of galleries: adornment enamored of life, each wall a canvas for its depiction.

She said, "Earl! You're hurting me!"

"Sorry."

He released his grip but the pressure of his fingers remained on her arm to stir her senses with ghostly dominance. An unconscious display of his strength and she felt the reaction of her body in a flood of raw and primitive demand, which she resisted with the aid of banal conversation.

"We love life," she explained, looking at the mural and feeling it necessary to explain. "Death is so final. A total erasure. A waste." Pausing, she added, "That's why some of us wanted our caskets decorated. A fashion I think will be discontinued. At least the habit of using outside artists. The pursuit of perfection can be carried too far."

"Is your casket decorated?"

"Of course. Would you like to see it?" She stepped from him to turn, smiling, waiting for him to follow. "It isn't far."

She led him to an elevator which dropped them to lower depths where the air held a chill crispness and thick padding muffled their footsteps as it absorbed echoes, turning her words into a flat monotone. Chatter to which he paid little attention, concentrating instead on the chambers with their low roofs and thick dividing walls, the caskets set out in neat array.

"Here!" She halted beside one, turning to look at him with a smile. "What do you think of it?"

She raised the lid, a portion of the side swinging down to allow easy examination and entry. Within, the padding was of pale green, the carvings the deeper hue of natural jade. Again they depicted life but were subtly different from those he had seen in the other box. The figures were less polished, less discreet in shape and form and action. As she grew older they would probably be changed but now, in her, the tide of life and creation ran strong.

"It's snug," she said from where she stood at his side. "Warm and cozy. Once the lid is down nothing else matters, nothing else exists."

And nothing would be lacking except the one thing she now needed. Dumarest could sense it; the femininity she radiated, which carried her sexual invitation and desire. A message of which she was consciously unaware but which betrayed her inner yearnings.

"Earl!" Her hand was warm against his own. "Would you like to try it? With me, I mean? There is room for us both."

To lie and yield to the pleasure of the moment, to feel the softness of her, to respond to her passion. Time extended by the magic contained in the casket, minutes turned into hours, hours into days. A time to dream and sleep, to dream and wake to dream again. Time flowing past like a streaming river. Time he did not have.

"Earl?" Her hand closed in anticipation of his answer. "Will you go first?"

"No." He softened his refusal. "This isn't the time, Althea."

She misunderstood, the false explanation saving her from the hurt of rejection.

"Of course! You're worried about the verdict. But, Earl, you have no choice. To die or to work with us-how can you hesitate?"

The logic of a child; she hadn't even considered the other alternative. To die or to stay, she had said-what if he chose to leave?

A question he almost asked, then changed his mind as caution prickled its warning. As yet she was friendly, almost an ally; it would be madness to make her an enemy. And he could guess the answer: if he tried to leave they would kill him. At least they would try.

He stepped back, looking at her casket, memorizing the decorations, the small differences which distinguished it from the others. So many others. He counted them, added the number of rooms he had seen, guessed at others which must exist. When had it begun?

"A long time ago, Earl," she said when, later, he put the question. "A thousand years at least. Maybe two-I'm not sure."

"Who would know?"

"The Elders, perhaps. The Archives. Does it matter?"

She had taken him to a small park which rested beneath a domed roof flushed with the gold and amber of a summer's day. The place held the soft music of running water, the air heavy with the scent of flowers. Listening, Dumarest could hear the faint susurration of voices as some of the Terridae sat and conversed in private conference.

Men and women renewing their contact with reality, Althea had said, but for them this reality was no more substantial than a dream.

"So many questions, Earl," she whispered. "So many thoughts. I can see them crossing your mind. But why bother? Given time all will be clear. Why not just enjoy the moment? Don't you like it here?"

He said, "Do you like the shape of mountains? To climb up high among the snow and ice? To swim in tepid seas and to run in one straight line as if you were an arrow aimed at the horizon?"

"Of course! In dreams-"

"In reality," he interrupted. "To do these things not dream about them. To scratch a foot and feel the pain as you see the blood. To stand and fill your lungs with air so cold it hurts. To dive so deep your ears feel as if they must burst, then to rise and break surface and to see the sun gilding the waves. To feel. To know hate and love and fear. To know pain. To know happiness, to laugh and, yes, to cry also. Life, girl! I'm talking about life!"

Real life, not the stuff of dreams, the kind she had never experienced and so could never fully understand. But that, at least, she could change.