World of Promise

Chapter Eleven

She sat in a room ceilinged with shadows; gloom rested like a cloud so as to mask all detail ten feet above the carpeted floor. A trick of lighting as was the shimmering thing of crystal standing on a small table, the winking sparkles which came from flasks of restless fluids, the gleams which scintillated from her throat, the rich mane of her hair.

"Earl!" She rose to greet him, one hand resting on the table at which she'd been sitting, the scatter of papers spread over the polished wood. "My impetuous friend. All right, Dino, you may leave us."

"But-" He looked from one to the other. "Are you sure?"

"You think he will hurt me?" Her smile, her tone made a mockery of the concept. "I am as safe with him as with a hundred guards."

A confidence the old man didn't share and his hand crept up to touch the minor wound at his throat. The scratch had bled, the blood drying to leave an ugly smear, though she seemed unable to see it.

"Leave us," she said again, and this time her voice held impatience. "I assume you have no objection, Earl?"

"None."

"Then you may go." She waited until the door had closed on the old man and gently shook her head in mild reproof. "Such a devoted servant and so frail when compared to yourself. Did you have to threaten him? Cut the skin of his throat?" She leaned forward a little, eyes sparkling. "Would you really have killed him? Yes," she answered her own question. "Why not? Even though he had saved your life-why not? The law of the jungle, Earl; kill or be killed. Is that not so?"

He watched, saying nothing as she crossed the room to stand before the shimmering fabrication.

"Do you remember this?" It came alive beneath her touch, light flashing in motes and points of swirling brilliance which flared in silent explosions, to die, to be reborn in scintillant splendor. "My toy, Earl, surely you remember it? You saw it on Podesta when you acknowledged the debt you owed me. The small matter of having saved your life-but, now, that seems little to you. Would you have preferred me to have let you die? Your life, Earl, and not once but twice. A heavy debt for an honest man."

"Once," he said. "Not twice."

"Because you consider the original debt paid? The blood and tissue and sperm taken from your body sufficient compensation?" She smiled, then shrugged as if the matter were of no importance. "We will not argue the matter. Some wine?"

She moved to where a decanter stood with glasses and poured without waiting for his answer. As she turned, he strode toward the shimmering toy and, finding the switch, turned it off. As it darkened, the shadows thickening the upper reaches of the chamber seemed lower than before.

"Earl?"

"A distraction," he said. "One I can do without."

"So that you can concentrate on me?" She came toward him, one hand extended, the glass resting in her fingers. "Take it, Earl. Drink. At least let us share a toast to your continued good fortune." She sipped, frowning when he made no effort to follow her example. "Perhaps you would care to bathe first. Are you in pain?"

He was in too much pain for comfort but he ignored it as he did her suggestion. A shower had washed the pulp and slime from his clothing, the blood from his face and neck and hands. One taken with Sayer an unwilling partner.

"You hesitate," she said. "You did not refuse when Linda Vyna made you the same offer. Did you enjoy her ministrations? Was the bitch gracious? At least she's had experience enough in entertaining men in need." She drank and lowered the empty glass. "Do you love her?"

"No."

"Yet you would use her. As you were willing to use me on Ascelius."

"To escape," he said. "And you were there to help me do it. A lucky coincidence."

"They happen."

"Perhaps."

"Have you never known others?" She refilled her glass and, when she turned, again she was smiling. "Come, Earl, why be so suspicious? Drink and relax and talk to me. Of your travels and other coincidences you have known. Surely there are some?"

"Many." He lifted his glass and lowered it untouched. Her eyes ignored its passage. "One should amuse you. Two brothers left home at various times to seek their fortunes. Both became mercenaries and, after twenty years, they met on a battlefield."

"And one killed the other?"

"I said they were mercenaries," he said patiently. "They had been at their trade long enough to have learned the futility of slaughter. One held the upper hand and made an offer; terms which would leave his opponents far less than what they had but more than they could hope to retain if beaten into submission. The offer was accepted."

"And when they met face to face and realized their relationship they joined forces and turned against those who had hired them?"

"No. Mercenaries, if nothing else, are realists. The terms stood but, afterwards, they traveled together. A mistake; while there was work for one there was not enough for two. Finally they argued over a woman and one killed the other. He lived barely long enough to claim his prize; she had loved the other and took her revenge in bed."

"So?" She frowned. "What is your point?"

"A simple one, Charisse. Things are not always what they seem. You, for example, a young and beautiful woman-who would take you for a liar?"

She said, tightly, "You are a guest in my house, Earl. I suggest you remember that."

"A guest?" He looked at the glass in his hand then set it on the table. "On Podesta you told me your father had died a year earlier. I believed you-why should you bother to lie? But later I learned that a man, Rudi Boulaye, had visited you. You, Charisse, not your father. Circe was not a man. That was ten years ago."

"So? My father was busy."

"He would never have been too busy to entertain Boulaye. They shared a common interest. Did you see him?"

"Boulaye? No. I merely gave him access to the library and Armand's papers. He offered to pay and I had need of the money at that time." She drank some of her wine. "I wish you'd drink with me, Earl."

"Later, perhaps."

"It's harmless, I swear it." She shrugged as he made no comment. "All right, so I lied. What of it?"

"I wondered why. Was it just to make yourself seem younger than you are? A harmless vanity? But then came the meeting on Ascelius and your loving care." His left hand rose to touch his temple. "The implant you so generously gave me."

"Something to ease your pain," she said quickly. "A convenient form of medication."

"Which dulled my intellect and made me amiable and robbed the temporal lobe of a true awareness of time. Which is why I removed it. What else did it contain? A receptor for a stunner? Something you could activate to throw me into an artificial sleep? Why? Were you afraid of me?"

Her laughter rose in genuine amusement. "Afraid of you? Earl, of all men you are the one I trust most. You couldn't hurt me if you tried. As you couldn't hurt the creature I set you against. Those fools, Enrice and the rest, they thought you had no chance but they hadn't seen you fight the mannek. It was stronger, taller, better equipped and more fearsome and you fought it to the point of death. Yet you ran from an overgrown girl. Do you know why?"

"Tell me."

"A simple thing, Earl, the color of her hair. Black hair like mine, like that of the child you risked your life to save. Whom did she remind you of? A woman you had loved? A child you had lost?" She paused, waiting, shrugging when he made no answer. "Not that it matters. I had the clue and it was enough. The rest was a matter of routine."

Of suggestions whispered into his ear while he lay at her mercy in drugged unconsciousness. Hypnotic conditioning used as an elementary precaution could have cost him his life. Not from the female he had faced, the men set on the roof of the building would have prevented that, but there could have been others. Black-haired women with the urge to kill.

"No, Earl!" Her voice held command. "Don't be a fool!"

He looked at his hand, at the knife he had drawn, the blade reflecting shimmers as it amplified the nervous tension of his muscles.

"You hate me," she mused. "But you can't harm me. Classic conditions for developing a mind-ruining conflict. One aggravated by your recent exertions. Another classic example, this time of an exercise in utter futility. What did you hope to gain? What had you to fear? The only dangers you faced were of your own choosing." Her eyes widened as he stepped toward her, to halt with the knife lifted, the point aimed at her throat. "Earl!"

"I can't harm you," he said. "Remember?"

"The knife-"

"An illustration. The real point of the story I told you. Things are not always what they seem, true, but the moral wasn't that. It was to make the point that it is a mistake to jump to the wrong conclusion. A knife is a tool designed to cut and so you imagine I intend hurting you. But you know I can't do that so-"

She cried out as the blade lifted, caught at her necklace, tore it free to send it flying to the floor where it lay with gleaming, winking eyes. The strands in her hair followed to lie in an ebon tangle.

"No!" She backed, hands lifted to shield her face. "No, Earl! No!" And then, with sudden fury, "You bastard! You'll pay for what you've done!"

He saw the fall of her hand, the gleam as she drew metal from her waist, springing forward, knife raised as she aimed the weapon at his face. Metal clashed as he knocked it aside, a thin, high ringing which rose to die in fading murmurs as he tore the gun from her hand to send it after the gems.

"You attacked me," she said incredulously. "You could have killed me." Then, dully, "Well, Earl, do you like what you see?"

She was still as tall, the curves of her body taut against the fabric of her gown and, with her face hidden in shadow, she seemed much the same. Then as he looked Dumarest noted changes, a blurring which seemed to accelerate, a shifting and alteration as the last shreds of illusion vanished before the impact of harsh reality.

Charisse was grotesque.

Nothing is really ugly in the context of its environment; a spider, a slug, a snail all have the beauty of functional design, but Charisse was a woman and, as a woman, she was monstrous.

"Armand," she said dully. "My loving father. My creator. A fool who aspired to be a god. The egotistical bastard! May he rot in hell." She took the glass of wine Dumarest had poured for her, stared at him for a moment, drank and threw the delicate crystal to shatter in a glitter of shards. "And you, Earl-did you have to be so cruel?"

He said nothing, handing her more wine. This time after drinking, she did not hurl the glass to ruin.

Bitterly she said, "You know, I was a very pretty child. A living doll, they used to call me. A sweet creature who won the hearts of all who saw me. A success, Armand thought. The living proof of his genetic skill." Her hand shook as she looked at the glass. "A pretty child-who would think it now?"

Those blind who would make their judgment on her voice but none who could see. The thrust of the knife had torn the wig from her scalp leaving a naked skull, the false eyebrows and eyelashes adding to the clownish distortion of her face, pocked with nodulated skin, flesh mounding over bone, puffed, seamed, a parody of what a face should be, rendered even more bizarre by the cosmetics emphasizing the eyes, the mouth, the line of the jaw.

"Do I disgust you, Earl?"

"No," he said with sincerity. "Never that."

"You are kind but I suppose no one who has traveled as you have could be other than tolerant. Others are not so generous." The empty glass in her hand reflected the light in a host of broken rainbows as she twirled it between her fingers. Clean, well-shaped fingers, the flesh smooth, undistorted as was the hand. "It's progressive," she explained as if guessing his thoughts. "A gene which held an unsuspected weakness. One added to the chromosome pattern to give me a useful talent. It turned into a bomb which exploded into biological nightmare when triggered by the hormones released during puberty. At first it was minor; a slight thickening of the skin coupled with a succession of small nodulations. Treatment seemed to cure the problem but it merely eradicated the symptoms for a while. Armand did what he could but it wasn't enough. Nothing I tried was enough. I was doomed to turn into a repulsive freak."

"But you found an answer."

"A protection, yes." She handed him the empty glass and watched as he refilled it. "How did you guess?"

"I was curious," said Dumarest. "I wondered why such an attractive woman should choose to wear such gems. And I remembered what I've learned from working in carnivals. Always there is the noise and the shine, the glitter and the movement. The beat of drums to dull the hearing, the wink and gleam of tinsel to draw the eye, shifts of light to distract, to break unwanted concentration. An art, Charisse, one you developed to an unusual extent. But you had more than just paint and hypnotic gems. The teleths?"

"You know," she said. "Damn you, man, you know too much. Who else would have seen through my subterfuge? Would have guessed at the drugs he'd been given? The conditioning? Guessed and known what to do to free himself of both. That's why you ran and kept on running, wasn't it? Risked your life for no obvious reason, killed, climbed, faced death on the roof." Lifting her glass she said, "Earl, I drink to a most unusual man!"

As she lowered the glass he said, quietly, "The teleths?"

"Armand's madness or a part of it. Yes, Earl, he wanted to give me telepathic ability. Instead all I gained was the power to make others respond to me in a protective manner. They saw me as an object of tender affection-even when I turned into a monster that attribute remained. With the help of art, as you called it, I managed to mask my real appearance."

Her manner now seemed incredible. Had he really held her naked in his arms? Kissed her? Felt the overwhelming tide of passion, the ecstasy he had known on Podesta? Had it been real or merely the product of hypnotic suggestion as he lay drugged on the couch, arms clutching the air, perhaps, his orgasm collected in a flask as she won sperm to add to her stores.

"Earl?"

"Nothing." He shook his head, remembering her ability, wondering as to its depth. "You spoke of Armand's madness. Did your father-"

"My creator," she interrupted. "I call him a parent for convenience only. The only one I had. He constructed the chromosome pattern, did what needed to be done and, when the attempt proved viable, turned me over to the care of an artificial womb. The first, he hoped, of endless millions, all cloned from my body. The reason I had to be female. The perfect woman as he saw perfection. The Supreme Mother of the human race." Her laughter rose, harsh, brittle. "The fool! He wanted to turn back the clock and breed the creatures he swore must have inhabited Earth."

"You-"

"I'm the result of his lunacy. He had the dream but I inherited the nightmare. Can you imagine what it is to be like this? To know that things can only get worse? It isn't a disease, you understand. Not a cancer which can be cut or burned away. It's a natural part of me as the color of your hair is of you, the color of your eyes. In ten years time it will have spread. In twenty I will be twice the bulk I am now and the epidermis will begin to harden. A decade later and I will be locked in a prison of inflexible living tissue. And then what? Shall I metamorphose into something even more strange and horrible?"

Dumarest said, "Did Armand intend that? For you to develop wings, for example?"

"If he did he didn't tell me."

"His papers? Surely he must have kept records. If you had the original pattern wouldn't it give you a clue?"

"Do you think I haven't checked? The man was insane and believed in legends. The records show a pattern but how can I be certain it's mine?"

"You could check," he urged. "The original could be among Armand's private papers." And they would be in the library if anywhere at all. If he could get to them, the books and records stored in the room, to find the secret he had come to learn and then to leave while there was still time-if there was still time. Dumarest said, "It would be a beginning. If nothing else it could resolve a doubt. Try, Charisse-what have you to lose?"

He had expected an argument, instead he gained immediate cooperation. Setting down her glass, she moved to where her wig and gems lay gleaming on the floor. Stooping she donned them, careless of his presence, making small adjustments by touch. When she turned to face him again lights winked from her throat and hair, gleams which drew his eyes from the parody of her face. Even as he watched that face seemed to blur, to take on softer, more endearing lines-illusion backed by telepathic projection.

He looked at the gun in her hand, the bare floor where it had lain.

"A mistake, Earl," she said. "Not your first, but it's probably your last. Move and I'll burn your legs off at the knees."

The table was at his side, the glass of untouched wine resting on it like a lambent gem. It crashed to shatter in a pool of liquid as Dumarest upended the heavy board.

From behind it he said, "Remember, Charisse, the Cyclan won't pay you for a corpse."

The snout of the laser wavered, dropped from where it had aimed at his upper body. To carry out her threat the woman would have to burn through the wood and with such a lightweight weapon that would take time. Time for him to take action of his own. Yet should he move, expose his legs, she would fire.

A mistake as she had said; he should have remembered the gun, but he had been too eager to get to the library, to find the secret it could contain. But why had she threatened him at all? The answer lay in the hand she lifted to her face, the fingers touching the ornate wig. He had stripped her of defenses, exposing her true appearance and humbling her pride. To her, now, revenge would be sweet.

"Help," he said, talking to distract her attention, to ease the tension he felt mounting between them. If it rose too high not even her promised reward would keep her from closing her finger on the release. "They promised to help you. Is that why you contacted them?"

"Clever," she said. "You're too damned clever, but not this time. I didn't contact them, they got in touch with me. After Podesta when I'd taken what I wanted from you and was out in space. They thought you were riding with me and offered to buy you. A good price, Earl, too good for what you seemed to be and I became curious. What made you so special? You are fast and strong and intelligent but why should the Cyclan be interested in that? So I came after you."

To Ascelius and what else?

Dumarest was certain but it did not harm to talk, to continue easing the tension and so gain a measure of greater safety. Against an ordinary woman he would have taken a chance if there had been no other way, snatching out his knife and throwing it and trusting to speed and luck that it would strike home before the gun could be fired or, if fired, badly aimed. But Charisse had a degree of telepathic ability, enough to warn her of imminent danger, and she was almost hysterical with released fury. He saw the tautness of the skin over her knuckle, the white rim around the irises of her eyes. Anger blazing, barely contained, obvious despite the illusion.

He said, "And now you have me, Charisse. What did they offer? What do you hope to gain?"

"So much, Earl. So very much." Even the thought of it brought a degree of calm. The finger eased a little and the eyes lost some of their wild fixity. "The full resources of their laboratories to isolate and cure the malfunction built into my chromosome pattern. Money to enable me to continue my own research."

"Together with a few technicians to reside here with you to guide that research," he said. "The advice of the Cyclan at all times free of charge. Correct?"

"And if it is?"

"You'll become a servant of the Cyclan, Charisse. It will be inevitable. Within a few years you'll be totally dependent on them for your income if nothing else. And, always, they'll dangle the carrot of a final cure before your eyes." Dumarest took a step toward the edge of the table. Given time and a short enough distance he would make a rush to snatch the gun from her hand. Risking a burn for the sake of escape from the trap she had constructed. "But no cure will ever be discovered and you must know it. Don't be a fool, woman! Don't sell yourself for a lie! A promise which can't be kept!"

"Move again and I'll ruin your face." The laser rose to aim at his eyes. "I know where to hit, Earl, how deep to burn."

And how to heal should the need arise. Did she know that, to the Cyclan, only his brain was of value? The knowledge he held within it? The secret which they hunted as he sought to find the coordinates of Earth?

He said, "We could make a deal. Work to our mutual advantage. There is no need for you to hand me over to the Cyclan at all. In fact it would be a mistake. As you guessed, I'm valuable to them, and once you know why you'll have something to bargain with. They'll give you all you want and on your own terms. You tell them nothing until they deliver your cure. A new face," he urged. "An end to pretense. No more hiding behind a veil of illusion. No more fear of what is to come. Trust me, Charisse. Trust me."

The gun wavered a little, began to lower, the finger growing slack on the trigger as she digested his offer. He could almost read her mind, the computations she was making. To lie, promise him anything in order to learn why he was so valuable, then to lock him away as insurance while she made her arrangements with the Cyclan. A mouse dealing with a cat but she needn't know that. In the meantime he would make his own chances.

Dumarest tensed, ready to make his rush should she prove stubborn, to snatch at the weapon and negate its threat. Once that had been done he would promise anything to gain access to the library and the precious papers it would contain.

His plans shattered as brilliance winked from a point behind him. The guide beam of a laser accompanied by the burning shaft of raw energy which touched the woman's wrist, to spear it, to send her weapon falling as it cauterized the wound it had made.

Dumarest turned, hand freezing as he saw the tall figure, the aimed laser, the glow of scarlet and the gleam of the hated seal on the breast of the robe. The face which rose like a skull above the thrown-back cowl.

From where she stood the woman said, "Okos! Why did you fire? There was no need!"

The cyber from Ascelius-a man insane.