World of Promise

Chapter Four

Someone with a taste for the bizarre had decorated the room with skulls and bones, death masks and symbols culled from ancient graves. The music matched the decor: wailing threnodies which stung the ears and sent ants to crawl over the skin; mathematical discords set in jarring sequences which created unease and irritation. A condition aided by the glare of strobotic lighting which threw faces into unreal prominence with various shades of livid color.

"Myra! How good to see you!" A woman called from the door and came thrusting toward them, eyes flashing toward Dumarest before returning to his companion. "So this is your friend. Such a handsome man. Your new protege, I hear. You must introduce me."

Jussara made her usual late entrance, demanding attention. Flaunting her feminity with a sequined gown cut and slashed to display the chocolate expanse of her breasts and thighs. Her teeth were plated with metal cut in a diffraction grating which filled her mouth with rainbows as the lights flashed.

"A professor?" Her eyebrows rose a trifle. "He is to teach?"

"Dumarest holds a doctorate in martial arts," explained Myra. This story, she had insisted, would give him the status necessary to be treated as an equal. "We are investigating the possibility of his joining the faculty."

"And, in the meantime, he shares your home." Jussara's smile held malice. "Such a convenient arrangement and no wonder that you look so well. I'd thought it was because you had resolved your difficulties. Okos, I presume?"

"No."

"Well it doesn't matter as long as things have sorted themselves out. And, as for the new project-well, let's hope you are more successful this time." She looked at Dumarest. "We must talk again. If you can't reach agreement with Myra, I could, perhaps, find a place for you at Higham. I'm certain you'd be happy with us."

Her tone left no doubt as to her meaning. Dumarest smiled and said, "Thank you, my lady."

"So formal!" Her smile was dazzling. "Call me Jussara- who needs more than one name? Until later then, Earl. I shall anticipate our next meeting." Her eyes moved on to search the crowd. "Ceram! How nice to see you, darling! Be an angel and get me a drink. How is Toris this evening?"

She moved off and Myra helped herself to a drink, downing it at a gulp, wondering at her irritation. Jussara was a troublesome bitch who loved to deal in scandal and would throw herself at Dumarest for no other reason than that he was her companion. Would it matter if she did? If his taste was so crude she was welcome to him.

She saw his eyes as she reached for a second drink.

"You object?"

"Have I the right?"

"No man has that!" The sudden blaze of fury startled her and she gulped at the wine, feeling the sweetness of it, the after-sharpness which constricted her throat. An illogical reaction to a harmless question, the question itself a product of her own stupidity. Why ask if none had the right? "I'm sorry. That bitch always manages to upset me. Do you like her?"

"Does it matter?" Dumarest took the empty glass from her hand. "What did she mean about you having resolved your difficulties?"

"An adjustment which needed to be made. University business. A matter of balancing classes and courses and student enrollments. Sometimes it isn't easy but it's all done now." She looked to where couples moved in complex gyrations. "Do you want to dance?"

"No. Where are the people we came to meet?"

"Later, Earl. Let's enjoy the party first."

He had waited long enough, forcing himself to be patient until this time, going through the pretense she had determined, playing things her way for lack of a better alternative. He was learning about the woman who had been so quick with her invitation.

It was a matter of cultural mores, perhaps; she had mentioned that the forming of intimate relationships was a common pastime, but had it been simply because she had been alone and bored and needing physical release?

Dumarest had begun to doubt it. There was a calculated deliberation in everything she did and even her passion was the result more of applied stimulus than released inhibitions. It was as if she followed the dictates of a manual, seeking reaction and not response, assessing instead of experiencing as if she were a programmed robot set to perform a routine task.

Now, again, the talk of delay.

He said flatly, "If you won't introduce me I'll manage on my own."

"A threat, Earl?" Anger blossomed again to burn in her stomach, to drive the nails of her fingers into her palms. "That's all you want, isn't it? Those damned introductions and to get them you'd lie in your teeth. Lie and pretend to love me and to use me as if you were doing me a favor. You bastard! If you were a woman you'd be a whore!"

Her anger shattered to leave a bleak chill as she suddenly became aware of the circle of watching faces, the silence which, too quickly, broke into a jumble of sound. Her coldness emphasized the realization that, to Dumarest, the insult had been devoid of meaning. In the world he knew the main ethic was to survive and to do so at any cost. And all were entitled to their pride; the woman who sold her flesh as much as the man who fought to entertain.

Different worlds, she thought dully, and how could she hope to understand his? Dumarest had killed, she was certain of it as she was in the manner it had been done. How had it felt to stand in a ring facing an armed man, nostrils clogged with the stench of oil and sweat and blood? She would never know, could never know; her knowledge stemmed from books and not from the acid of living experience.

"Myra?" A man was at her side. "Trouble?"

Moultrie, big and tall and comforting in his strength, hovered now beside her in protective concern. They had glided together and he was proud of his physique, the body which gave him the confidence to glare at Dumarest, to attack him if she gave the word.

"No trouble, Roy. Just a little difference of opinion." She smiled as she touched his arm and wondered at her hesitation. Had she wanted them to fight? For Dumarest to be humiliated? If so the moment belonged to the past. "No trouble," she said again. "But thank you for your concern, Roy."

"If you're sure?"

"I'm sure." She smiled again. "Everything's fine."

He accepted the statement with obvious reluctance, and Dumarest guessed that Moultrie had wanted to press the matter. For his own aggrandizement? To gain Myra's respect? Or had someone put him up to it?

"I'll take your word for it, Myra. But you-" he glared at Dumarest. "I suggest you watch your tongue. A guest should have better manners."

If he hoped for an answer he was disappointed.

"Roy!" Jussara called from the far side of the room. "Bring Myra over here-I've a drink waiting."

"Coming!"

He led her away before she could object, leaving Dumarest standing alone.

The music changed; turning into a susurration of thrumming chords which faded to return like the pulse of waves on a shore. The stroboscopic flashes died to be replaced by a nacreous glow in which decorations shone with sickly fluorescence; leprous greens and purples beside scabrous reds and blues. The colors of blood and pus and gangrene. Of hurt and decay and disease.

Dumarest wondered at the motivation of the man who had created the setting.

"Madness," said a voice. "Insanity and spite and an infantile desire to shock. It's getting rather tedious." The speaker was small, round, his sparse hair combed in a fan over a balding head. He held a drink in each hand and, smiling, offered one to Dumarest. "It's safe," he said. "From a private stock. Only a fool would trust what Levercherk provides at one of his parties."

Dumarest accepted the drink.

"I'm not a telepath," said the man. "I can't read your thoughts so you don't have to worry. It's just that your expression was obvious." He narrowed his eyes. "Did I offend you?"

"No." Dumarest took a cautious sip of his drink. It was fine brandy. "Are you a reader?"

"What?" The man frowned then smiled as he gathered Dumarest's meaning. "No. I lack that talent. To read a person from body signals and muscular alterations is a rare ability. But it required no genius to guess what you must have thought of this stupidity. Bones," he snorted. "Skulls. Masks and the rest of it. Is life so boring we yearn for its termination? Only the young can afford such mockery." He drained his glass. "Ragin," he said. "Carl Ragin. I teach at dyne."

"Then you know Myra Favre?"

"Of course. And I know about you, Earl. A fighter, right? A teacher of the subtle means of destruction. A man who hopes to start a class in martial arts. You will forgive my bluntness, but I wonder at Myra even entertaining the idea."

"She's crazed," said a newcomer. "As mad as Levercherk but in a different way. Love, perhaps? It is known to steal away the intelligence." He stared at Dumarest. "Are you the cause?"

Ragin said, quietly, "Steady Dorf."

"If so she is to be pitied." Dorf, young, aggressive, confident of the power his status gave him, ignored the older man. "She could have given Moultrie his head. Well, if he cannot cleanse this place of the scum which has somehow crawled in to soil it, then I can."

"Dorf!"

"You side with him, Carl?" The young man made no attempt to mask his contempt. "Such strange company for a man of academic standing to keep." Then, to Dumarest. "I assume you will be leaving now."

Dumarest looked at the glass in his hand, the brandy it contained. A weapon as was the knife in his boot but to use either would be to make a mistake. These people would have nothing but contempt for a man who argued with his muscles. Moultrie would have been forgiven both for his status and his protection to a member of the faculty had it come to physical combat. Now, if he should accept Dorf's challenge, he could destroy any chance he had of gaining the information he wanted.

He looked up, conscious of watching eyes, the tension coiled in the air.

"You are courteous," he said to Dorf. "And I thank you for the opportunity to demonstrate the skills I hope to teach. I drink to your continued good health."

As he lifted the glass someone chuckled, an expression of mirth quickly silenced, but it was enough to tell Dumarest his guess had been right. Dorf was testing him, trying to make him display anger, a fighting rage. He was unaware of the danger he stood in, the risk he ran.

Now he said, "You must be as mad as the rest. What do you mean-a demonstration? Are you going to kill me to close my mouth? To avenge some imagined slight to your pride? To prove the superiority of brawn over brain? Is that all you have to offer?"

"No." Dumarest lowered the glass, feeling the burn of brandy in his mouth. "Now let me ask you a question. You take people, youths, men, women and girls of all kinds, and you teach them and give them a paper saying they have reached a certain standard and then send them away to live as best they might. But what good are your degrees if they need to survive on worlds hostile to learning? On worlds which have no place for the skills they possess?"

"You claim to be able to give them the ability to survive?"

"I teach martial arts."

"Warfare." Dorf shook his head. "The trick of murder."

"No!" Dumarest was sharp. "I talk of art not assassination. Of protection not persecution."

"Protection?" Dorf looked around, enjoying his moment of triumph. "Words. What the hell could you do if I came at you with a gun?"

"Came at me?" Dumarest shrugged, it was his turn to act the academic. "Exactly what do you mean? If you came running toward me carrying a gun? If you wanted to hit me with one? If you wanted to give me one? How can I answer unless you are precise?"

"I mean this!" Dorf snatched a roll from a plate; bread fashioned in the shape of a bone, his fingers closing around it as he swung to point it at Dumarest as if it were a gun. "Now, tell-"

He broke off, staggering back to hit the edge of a table, to fall in a shower of comestibles, as Dumarest, taking two steps forward, snatched the roll from his hand as he sent the heel of his other palm up and against Dorf's jaw. A blow hard enough to shock, to throw the other off-balance, but restrained enough to do no damage other than minor bruising.

"I'd do that." Dumarest threw aside the broken crust. "And that is one lesson you may have without cost: never give your opponent the luxury of choice. If he has a gun pointed at you then assume he intends to use it. Act as if he will and act without delay. Of course," he added, dryly, "it's best never to get into that position in the first place."

Ragin said wonderingly, "You could have killed him. Even if he'd been holding a real gun you could have taken his life. Damn it, man, I didn't even see you move."

"Training."

"Just that?"

"Add anticipation and execution. If you want to know more then join my course if and when it starts." Dumarest looked at Dorf who rose, hugging his jaw. "That goes for you, too, youngster. In the meantime remember not to start what you can't finish."

The advice stung more than the blow but was accepted where physical argument was not. As he moved away a woman who had been watching said, "You've made an enemy, Earl. Dorf has powerful connections and won't hesitate to use them."

"It was a game," said a man at her side. "Surely he accepts that?"

"It started as a game," she agreed. "It ended with his being shamed. Well, Earl, you've been warned."

She moved away, the man with her, others following to leave Dumarest in a cleared space with only Ragin at his side.

"So much for popularity, Earl, but Enid was right. A pity. You would have livened things up."

"I haven't gone yet."

"But you will." Ragin was shrewd. "I've a feeling about you, Earl. The academic life isn't for you. It's too petty, too limited. There's too much spite and too much fear. Take Enid, now. If her contract were terminated where could she find other employment? Look around-they're all in the same position."

And all from the same mold-students who had graduated to stay on and take post-graduate studies and then to become assistants and gain doctorates and gain a professorial chair; prisoners in a system which fed on itself to create more; academics lacking the spirit or courage to break free of the surrogate womb and blinding themselves to the reality beyond the university walls.

Yet at least one had managed to break free.

Ragin frowned when Dumarest mentioned him. "Rudi? Rudi Boulaye? You knew him?"

"Did you?"

"To my cost I admit it. I donated a hundred veil to his crazy enterprise. Well, I wasn't alone. Tomlin had a share and Seligmann-he's dead now. Collett put in a thousand but he could read the writing on the wall and it was his only hope. Dying," he explained. "Rotting inside. All his money could buy him was drugs to ease the pain so he gave all to Rudi and went into freeze. That was a long time ago and when they tried to revive him it was wasted effort."

"Cucciolla?"

"He was against it and with reason but I have a suspicion he chipped in just the same. Another romantic who wanted to believe the impossible could be true and that legend needn't be all lies. But Rudi made it all sound so logical. He always was a persuasive bastard as Myra could tell you, but, on second thought, you'd better not ask. You knew him, you say?"

"He's dead." He added, "Isobel too."

"A pity." Ragin looked around and found glasses filled with streaked amber fluid. Emptying a couple, he refilled them from a flask he took from his pocket. "A toast," he said, handing one to Dumarest. "To the last journey."

It was the same brandy that he had tasted before and Dumarest took enough in his mouth to perfume his breath.

"A dreamer," mused Ragin. "A fool in many ways but show me an idealist who isn't. Weak too, but does that matter if you're lucky? Rudi had a way with women and Isobel was an angel." He sniffed and poured himself more brandy. Lifting his glass he said, "Well, Earl, let's drink to the death of a dream."

"It wasn't a dream," said Dumarest. "Rudi found his mine."

"Mine? Who the hell is talking about a mine?" Ragin shook his head. "I'm talking about the search he made before he left to make his fortune. The thing I and Tomlin and Cucciolla and all the others had shares in. The search for Earth," he explained. "Rudi swore he knew how to find it."

They had called it the Forlorn Endeavor and of them all only a handful were still alive.

"Time," said Cucciolla. "The years take their toll and many of us were old at the instigation. You've heard of Seligmann?" He glanced at Ragin as he nodded. "I see Carl has told you. He was dying at the time and the only real difference was he knew it. Consciously knew it, I mean, others refused to admit the possibility. Pantoock, Klugarft, Kepes, Bond-the list is long, my friend. Gone now. All dead and dust and ashes. Sometimes I think I hear their voices in the wind."

Calling him to join them, perhaps, for Cucciolla, too, was old. He moved slowly about the room, taking care as he brewed a pungent tisane, lacing it as if the act of adding the spirit were of momentous importance. Taking his cup Dumarest examined the chamber, noting the small, telltale signs of poverty. Dust lay thick on the row of books standing on a shelf, each volume protected by transparent plastic. More durable were the cassettes and recordings, the models and spools which added their litter to the home of a man who had spent his life in the halls of wisdom. A man who now waited to die, glad of the company, the opportunity to talk, to relive old dreams.

"Tomlin should have been here," he mourned. "A pity he left two months ago for the eastern peninsula. His health," he explained. "The sea air will do him good and he is lucky enough to have a son willing to share his home."

"And the rest?"

"Zara's teaching at a small school to the north. Nyoka is on a sabbatical-and he'd be a fool to return. Luccia-" The old man shrugged. "I'm the only one available, Earl. I and Ragin, who was one of the youngest at the time. As I remember it Rudi asked you to go with him, Carl. For some reason you refused."

"A moment of sanity." Ragin looked up from his cup, scented vapor wreathing his face. "I had a new appointment which would have been lost had I absented myself, and you know how hard it is to get a place with the Tripart. And, to be frank, I thought of the whole thing as a kind of joke. Earth-how can it exist? It's the same as Bonanza and Jackpot and Eden and all the rest. A name given to a dream of eternal happiness. You must have heard the stories, Earl. The legends. The world on which there is no pain or hurt or fear. The trees grow food of all descriptions, the rivers are wine, the very air is a perfumed caress. The sun never burns, the nights never chill, garments are made as needed from leaves and flowers." He drank some of the tisane, frowned, added spirit from his own flask. "The concept is intoxicating and we become drunk on wild hopes and fantastic optimism. To find Earth. To dip our hands in its inexhaustible treasure. To cure all our ills and slake all our desires. Paradise!"

Dumarest said, carefully, "Did Rudi actually know the coordinates?"

"I don't know. I don't think so but, as I told you, he was a persuasive bastard. He could talk the leg off a dog if he wanted. He managed to convince us he knew something and we backed him to follow it through." He glanced at the old man. "Some of us have reason to regret it."

"I'm not one of them."

"Not you, perhaps, but Luccia?"

Cucciolla shrugged. "Life is a gamble, Carl, as you must be aware. Some win and others lose, but it all evens out in the end. She doesn't regret the money she invested. Like us she wanted the results. She wanted Rudi to find Earth."

And he had.

He had!

Dumarest looked down at his cup and saw the shimmer of light reflected from the surface of the liquid it contained. Radiance reflected from the surging tisane as it flowed in a series of mounting ripples from one side to the other. The movement amplified the quivering of his hands.

Rudi Boulaye had cheated and lied for reasons he could guess. He had found the coordinates of Earth; the essential figures which alone could guide a ship to where it hung in space. The figures which were absent from all navigational tables and almanacs. Data which had rested inches from his hand and was now irretrievably lost.

Could a copy have been made?

"He returned," said Cucciolla. "He was absent a year or more and he came back and we met and he told us the bad news. Earth is a lie. It is nothing but a legend. The planet simply does not and has never existed."

"Yet you backed him to look for it." Dumarest was sharp. "You-all intelligent people-you believed the legend could be true."

"It was a game," said Ragin. "Something to amuse us. A childish fantasy."

"No!" Dumarest set aside the tisane and rose to pace the floor. Tiny plumes of dust rose from the carpet beneath his booted feet. "That's what you told yourselves after Rudi had returned to report his failure. An easy way of salving your pride. But before that, when you gave him your money, you had a belief in the enterprise. A conviction that he could succeed. Why?"

Cucciolla blinked. "Your meaning eludes me, my friend."

Was he deliberately obtuse? Dumarest said, patiently, "You must have had something to go on. Facts, data, items of information enhanced by considered logic. A rumor, even, which you considered to be worth investigating. For God's sake, man, think! Try to remember! Rudi went somewhere- that's why you raised the money. Where did he go? Why did he go there? What was it he went to check out?"

Talk, damn you! Die if you must, burst your heart, your brain, but talk before you go. Talk and tell me what Rudi had learned!

"Earl!" Ragin was standing before him, face close, eyes anxious. "Steady, man! Steady!"

"I'm all right."

"You sure? You looked like murder."

"It's nothing." Dumarest felt the perspiration on his face, the quiver of muscles, the raw tension in his stomach. He breathed deeply, inflating his lungs, fighting to be calm. "It's all right," he said. "I just want him to remember."

"He's an old man," said Ragin. "For him it isn't easy."

"You then? Can't you remember? You must have sat in on the discussions."

"Some, yes, but not all. I was almost a passenger and went along with the others." Ragin frowned, thinking, throwing his mind back into the past. "It began as a game, one of those what-would-happen-if things. What would happen if some of the old legends were true? Earth was mentioned, I forget why, and we took it from there."

"And?"

"That's about all?" Ragin met Dumarest's eyes. "All I remember," he added quickly. "It all happened years ago and things happened to blur the memory."

The desire to eliminate a mistake, of not wanting to appear a fool even to the inward self. A defense used by sensitive minds to maintain their delusions of superiority. Forget it and it ceased to exist. Think of it if you must but only as an amusing episode or a time of good fellowship, the meetings themselves the main reason for the existence of the group.

Ragin's reaction-Cucciolla?

"He had a book," he said. "Rudi had a book and it gave some hints and clues. Mostly rubbish, of course, but we applied the science of logical determination to the given statements and came up with some interesting speculations. As Carl said, it began as a game and progressed from there. Without Rudi to fire our imaginations it would have died within a week."

"The book?" A gesture told Dumarest it was useless to search. Rudi had taken it or it had been lost or destroyed. "The hints, then? The clues you mentioned?"

"I remember the first," said Ragin, glad to be of help. "Something connected to a religion of some kind. The creed of a cult which worked to remain secret. The Folk?" He frowned. "No, the People. The Original People. An item about a single home world. Ridiculous, of course, a moment's logical thought proves the inconsistency. How could so many divergent types have evolved on a single planet? How could there have been room to hold them all?" Those questions, for him, needed no answer. "But I think there was something else. A name. What was it now?"

"Erce," said Cucciolla. "It was Erce."

Erce-the name meant nothing. Dumarest looked from one to the other, at the books, the recordings. Had nothing been saved from those meetings?

"There was no need," said Cucciolla when he asked. "We met and talked and thrashed things out but nothing was important enough to keep. As Carl said we were swayed by Rudi and went along with him. A desperate move on the part of some, admitted, but what had they to lose? And we trusted him."

That was a mistake, but Dumarest didn't mention it. There was no need to destroy their happiness with the past. Rudi had succumbed to greed but he hadn't been the first and wouldn't be the last.

"Erce," he said. "Are you certain about that?" He watched them look at each other, nod. "Was there anything else? Think," he urged. "At one point in your discussion the need for Rudi to travel must have been mentioned. You simply wouldn't have given him money for no apparent reason. He wanted to book passage, right? To where? He returned, correct? From where? You'd backed him and he must have made a report. Those places would have been named, surely?"

These would be clues to work on failing all else, and Dumarest kept at it long past the time when good manners dictated he should leave. It was past dawn when he finally emerged from the building into the street and he stood with the cold wind stirring his hair as it stirred the flags high above. Early as it was the streets were busy-the three-shift system of the universities had destroyed the divisions of day and night in the city.

In a cafe he drank strong coffee while thinking, half-listening to the gossip which wafted around and over him like windblown leaves.

"Another suicide in Bolloten's class." A girl relayed the news while chewing at a bun. "That's the fourth this semester. One more and I hear they'll terminate his contract."

"Someone should cut his throat." A man scowled over a bowl of gruel. "He pushes too hard."

"But teaches fast. Three years' work done in two. If you can't take the heat you shouldn't stand near the furnace."

"Hear about Pell's tussle with the bursary?" A man spoke over a mouthful of bread. "They were going to dump him when he came up with that paper on sensitives."

"Convenient."

"It saved his skin. Any guesses where he got it?" A scatter of laughter greeted the question. "All right, but only a fool would sign up with him for easy credits. In a half-semester they'll be valueless."

"I can't see that," protested a woman. "What if he did get it from Okos? What difference does it make?"

"None, my innocent, but what the Cyclan lift up they can also let down. What good is Pell to them? Take my advice and stay away from his classes."

A man said wistfully, "Anyone care to stake me to a dorm bed for the winter? Treble back when I graduate or I'll be your willing slave in the spring. No takers? Well, no harm in trying."

So spoke the voice of poverty, and it would be worse outside where students huddled together in the chill of the night dreading the bleak time which would leave many of them frozen in the gutters.

Dumarest rose and left the cafe, making his way to the field where he stood in a secluded spot watching the ships, the men gathered at the perimeter, loungers with no apparent purpose and no obvious means of making a living. There would be touts among them and students and those with time to kill. Others could be there for a different reason and he tensed to a mounting sense of danger.

A cyber on Ascelius-why?

The Cyclan could have little interest in such a world; their concern with graduates would come only after they had gained positions of authority. The universities themselves would resent the services the Cyclan had to offer, priding themselves on their own intellectual ability. Even the Tripart had little influence beyond its immediate sphere and the Cyclan were noted enemies of wasted effort.

A coincidence, perhaps, but Dumarest knew it could be fatal to assume that. It was time for him to leave and yet he had gained nothing but a few names, times, places none of which held seeming importance. This was scant information on which to base a search but it was all he had and all he was likely to get from those involved. There had to be another way.