Nightwings

by Robert Silverberg

  I nearly laughed at that. But I held a straight face before this cowardly Rememberer, who did not even dare to go himself to denounce the man who had cuckolded him.

  “Ultimately,” I said, “the Prince will become aware of what we have done. Is it right of you to ask me to betray a man who was my companion for so many months?”

  “It is not a matter of betrayal. It is a matter of obligations to the government.”

  “I feel no obligation to this government. My loyalties are to the guild of Dominators. Which is why I gave assistance to the Prince of Roum in his moment of peril.”

  “For that,” said Elegro, “your own life could be forfeit to our conquerors. Your only expiation is to admit your error and cooperate in bringing about his arrest. Go. Now.”

  In a long and tolerant life I have never despised anyone so vehemently as I did the Rememberer Elegro at that moment.

  Yet I saw that I was faced with few choices, none of them palatable. Elegro wished his undoer punished, but lacked the courage to report him himself; therefore I must give over to the conquering authorities one whom I had sheltered and assisted, and for whom I felt a responsibility. If I refused, Elegro would perhaps hand me to the invaders for punishment myself, as an accessory to the Prince’s escape from Roum; or he might take vengeance against me within the machinery of the guild of Rememberers. If I obliged Elegro, though, I would have a stain on my conscience forever, and in the event of a restoration of the power of the Dominators I would have much to answer for.

  As I weighed the possibilities, I triply cursed the Rememberer Elegro’s faithless wife and her invertebrate husband.

  I hesitated a bit. Elegro offered more persuasion, threatening to arraign me before the guild on such charges as unlawfully gaining access to secret files and improperly introducing into guild precincts a proscribed fugitive. He threatened to cut me off forever from the information pool. He spoke vaguely of vengeance.

  In the end I told him I would go to the invaders’ head-quarters and do his bidding. I had by then conceived a betrayal that would—I hoped—cancel the betrayal Elegro was enforcing on me.

  Dawn was near when I left the building. The air was mild and sweet; a low mist hung over the streets of Perris, giving them a gentle shimmer. No moons were in sight. In the deserted streets I felt uneasy, although I told myself that no one would care to do harm to an aged Rememberer; but I was armed only with a small blade, and I feared bandits.

  My route lay on one of the pedestrian ramps. I panted a bit at the steep incline, but when I had attained the proper level I was more secure, since here there were patrol nodes at frequent intervals, and here, too, were some other late-night strollers. I passed a spectral figure garbed in white satin through which alien features peered: a revenant, a ghostly inhabitant of a planet of the Bull, where reincarnation is the custom and no man goes about installed in his own original body. I passed three female beings of a Swan planet who giggled at me and asked if I had seen males of their species, since the time of conjugation was upon them. I passed a pair of Changelings who eyed me speculatively, decided I had nothing on me worth robbing, and moved on, their piebald dewlaps jiggling and their radiant skins flashing like beacons.

  At last I came to the squat octagonal building occupied by the Procurator of Perris.

  It was indifferently guarded. The invaders appeared confident that we were incapable of mounting a counter-assault against them, and quite likely they were right; a planet which can be conquered between darkness and dawn is not going to launch a plausible resistance afterwards. Around the building rose the pale glow of a protective scanner. There was a tingle of ozone in the air. In the wide plaza across the way, Merchants were setting up their market for the morning; I saw barrels of spices being unloaded by brawny Servitors, and dark sausages carried by files of neuters. I stepped through the scanner beam and an invader emerged to challenge me.

  I explained that I carried urgent news for Manrule Seven, and in short order, with amazingly little consultation of intermediaries, I was ushered into the Procurator’s presence.

  The invader had furnished his office simply but in good style. It was decked entirely with Earthmade objects: a drapery of Afreek weave, two alabaster pots from ancient Agupt, a marble statuette that might have been early Roumish, and a dark Talyan vase in which a few wilting deathflowers languished. When I entered, he seemed preoccupied with several message-cubes; as I had heard, the invaders did most of their work in the dark hours, and it did not surprise me to find him so busy now. After a moment he looked up and said, “What is it, old man? What’s this about a fugitive Dominator?”

  “The Prince of Roum,” I said. “I know of his location.”

  At once his cold eyes sparkled with interest. He ran his many-fingered hands across his desk, on which were mounted the emblems of several of our guilds, Transporters and Rememberers and Defenders and Clowns, among others. “Go on,” he said.

  “The Prince is in this city. He is in a specific place and has no way of escaping from it.”

  “And you are here to inform me of his location?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m here to buy his liberty.”

  Manrule Seven seemed perplexed. “There are times when you humans baffle me. You say you’ve captured this runaway Dominator, and I assume that you want to sell him to us, but you say you want to buy him. Why bother coming to us? Is this a joke?”

  “Will you permit an explanation?”

  He brooded into the mirrored top of his desk while I told him in a compressed way of my journey from Roum with the blinded Prince, of our arrival at the Hall of Rememberers, of Prince Enric’s seduction of Olmayne, and of Elegro’s petty, fuming desire for vengeance. I made it clear that I had come to the invaders only under duress and that it was not my intention to betray the Prince into their hands. Then I said, “I realize that all Dominators are forfeit to you. Yet this one has already paid a high price for his freedom. I ask you to notify the Rememberers that the Prince of Roum is under amnesty, and to permit him to continue on as a Pilgrim to Jorslem. In that way Elegro will lose power over him.”

  “What is it that you offer us,” asked Manrule Seven, “in return for this amnesty for your Prince?”

  “I have done research in the memory tanks of the Rememberers.”

  “And?”

  “I have found that for which you people have been seeking.”

  Manrule Seven studied me with care. “How would you have any idea of what we seek?”

  “There is in the deepest part of the Hall of Rememberers,” I said quietly, “an image recording of the compound in which your kidnaped ancestors lived while they were prisoners on Earth. It shows their sufferings in poignant detail. It is a superb justification for the conquest of Earth by H362.”

  “Impossible! There’s no such document!”

  From the intensity of the invader’s reaction, I knew that I had stung him in the vulnerable place.

  He went on, “We’ve searched your files thoroughly. There’s only one recording of compound life, and it doesn’t show our people. It shows a nonhumanoid pyramid-shaped race, probably from one of the Anchor worlds.”

  “I have seen that one,” I told him. “There are others. I spent many hours searching for them, out of hunger to know of our past injustices.”

  “The indexes—”

  “—are sometimes incomplete. I found this recording only by accident. The Rememberers themselves have no idea it’s there. I’ll lead you to it—if you agree to leave the Prince of Roum unmolested.”

  The Procurator was silent a moment. At length he said, “You puzzle me. I am unable to make out if you are a scoundrel or a man of the highest virtue.”

  “I know where true loyalty lies.”

  “To betray the secrets of your guild, though—”

  “I am no Rememberer, only an apprentice, formerly a Watcher. I would not have you harm the Prince at the wish of a cuckolded fool. The Prince is in his hands; only you can obtain
his release now. And so I must offer you this document.”

  “Which the Rememberers have carefully deleted from their indexes, so it will not fall into our hands.”

  “Which the Rememberers have carelessly misplaced and forgotten.”

  “I doubt it,” said Manrule Seven. “They are not careless folk. They hid that recording; and by giving it to us, are you not betraying all your world? Making yourself a collaborator with the hated enemy?”

  I shrugged. “I am interested in having the Prince of Roum made free. Other means and ends are of no concern to me. The location of the document is yours in exchange for the grant of amnesty.”

  The invader displayed what might have been his equivalent of a smile. “It is not in our best interests to allow members of the former guild of Dominators to remain at large. Your position is precarious, do you see? I could extract the document’s location from you by force—and still have the Prince as well.”

  “So you could,” I agreed. “I take that risk. I assume a certain basic honor among people who came to avenge an ancient crime. I am in your power, and the whereabouts of the document is in my mind, yours for the picking.”

  Now he laughed in an unmistakable show of good humor.

  “Wait one moment,” he said. He spoke a few words of his own language into an amber communication device, and shortly a second member of his species entered the office. I recognized him instantly, although he was shorn of some of the flamboyant disguise he had worn when he traveled with me as Gormon, the supposed Changeling. He offered the ambivalent smile of his kind and said, “I greet you, Watcher.”

  “And I greet you, Gormon.”

  “My name now is Victorious Thirteen.”

  “I now am called Tomis of the Rememberers,” I said.

  Manrule Seven remarked, “When did you two become such fast friends?”

  “In the time of the conquest,” said Victorious Thirteen. “While performing my duties as an advance scout, I encountered this man in Talya and journeyed with him to Roum. But we were companions, in truth, and not friends.”

  I trembled. “Where is the Flier Avluela?”

  “In Pars, I believe,” he said offhandedly. “She spoke of returning to Hind, to the place of her people.”

  “You loved her only a short while, then?”

  “We were more companions than lovers,” said the invader. “It was a passing thing for us.”

  “For you, maybe,” I said.

  “For us.”

  “And for this passing thing you stole a man’s eyes?”

  He who had been Gormon shrugged. “I did that to teach a proud creature a lesson in pride.”

  “You said at the time that your motive was jealousy,” I reminded him. “You claimed to act out of love.”

  Victorious Thirteen appeared to lose interest in me. To Manrule Seven he said, “Why is this man here? Why have you summoned me?”

  “The Prince of Roum is in Perris,” said Manrule Seven.

  Victorious Thirteen registered sudden surprise.

  Manrule Seven went on, “He is a prisoner of the Rememberers. This man offers a strange bargain. You know the Prince better than any of us; I ask your advice.”

  The Procurator sketched the outlines of the situation. He who had been Gormon listened thoughtfully, saying nothing. At the end, Manrule Seven said, “The problem is this: shall we give amnesty to a proscribed Dominator?”

  “He is blind,” said Victorious Thirteen. “His power is gone. His followers are scattered. His spirit may be unbroken, but he presents no danger to us. I say accept the bargain.”

  “There are administrative risks in exempting a Dominator from arrest,” Manrule Seven pointed out. “Nevertheless, I agree. We undertake the deal.” To me he said, “Tell us the location of the document we desire.”

  “Arrange the liberation of the Prince of Roum first,” I said calmly.

  Both invaders displayed amusement. “Fair enough,” said Manrule Seven. “But look: how can we be certain that you’ll keep your word? Anything might happen to you in the next hour while we’re freeing the Prince.”

  “A suggestion,” put in Victorious Thirteen. “This is not so much a matter of mutual mistrust as it is one of timing. Tomis, why not record the document’s location on a six-hour delay cube? We’ll prime the cube so that it will release its information only if within that six hours the Prince of Roum himself, and no one else, commands it to do so. If we haven’t found and freed the Prince in that time, the cube will destruct. If we do release the Prince, the cube will give us the information, even if—ah—something should have happened to you in the interval.”

  “You cover all contingencies,” I said.

  “Are we agreed?” Manrule Seven asked.

  “We are agreed,” I said.

  They brought me a cube and placed me under a privacy screen while I inscribed on its glossy surface the rack number and sequence equations of the document I had discovered. Moments passed; the cube everted itself and the information vanished into its opaque depths. I offered it to them.

  Thus did I betray my Earthborn heritage and perform a service for our conquerors, out of loyalty to a blinded wife-stealing Prince.

  7

  DAWN had come by this time. I did not accompany the invaders to the Hall of Rememberers; it was no business of mine to oversee the intricate events that must ensue, and I preferred to be elsewhere. A fine drizzle was falling as I turned down the gray streets that bordered the dark Senn. The timeless river, its surface stippled by the drops, swept unwearyingly against stone arches of First Cycle antiquity, bridges spanning uncountable millennia, survivors from an era when the only problems of mankind were of his own making. Morning engulfed the city. Through an old and ineradicable reflex I searched for my instruments so that I could do my Watching, and had to remind myself that that was far behind me now. The Watchers were disbanded, the enemy had come, and old Wuellig, now Tomis of the Rememberers, had sold himself to mankind’s foes.

  In the shadow of a twin-steepled religious house of the ancient Christers I let myself be enticed into the booth of a Somnambulist. This guild is not one with which I have often had dealings; in my way I am wary of charlatans, and charlatans are abundant in our time. The Somnambulist, in a state of trance, claims to see what has been, what is, and what will be. I know something of trances myself, for as a Watcher I entered such a state four times each day; but a Watcher with pride in his craft must necessarily despise the tawdry ethics of those who use second sight for gain, as Somnambulists do.

  However, while among the Rememberers I had learned, to my surprise, that Somnambulists frequently were consulted to aid in unearthing some site of ancient times, and that they had served the Rememberers well. Though still skeptical, I was willing to be instructed. And, at the moment, I needed a shelter from the storm that was breaking over the Hall of Rememberers.

  A dainty, mincing figure garbed in black greeted me with a mocking bow as I entered the low-roofed booth.

  “I am Samit of the Somnambulists,” he said in a high, whining voice. “I offer you welcome and good tidings. Behold my companion, the Somnambulist Murta.”

  The Somnambulist Murta was a robust woman in lacy robes. Her face was heavy with flesh, deep rings of darkness surrounded her eyes, a trace of mustache lined her upper lip. Somnambulists work their trade in teams, one to do the huckstering, one to perform; most teams were man and wife, as was this. My mind rebelled at the thought of the embrace of the flesh-mountain Murta and the miniature-man Samit, but it was no concern of mine. I took my seat as Samit indicated. On a table nearby I saw some food tablets of several colors; I had interrupted this family’s breakfast. Murta, deep in trance, wandered the room with ponderous strides, now and again grazing some article of furniture in a gentle way. Some Somnambulists, it is said, waken only two or three hours of the twenty, simply to take meals and relieve bodily needs; there are some who ostensibly live in continuous trance and are fed and cared for by acolytes.
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  I scarcely listened as Samit of the Somnambulists delivered his sales-talk in rapid, feverish bursts of ritualized word-clusters. It was pitched to the ignorant; Somnambulists do much of their trade with Servitors and Clowns and other menials. At length, seemingly sensing my impatience, he cut short his extolling of the Somnambulist Murta’s abilities and asked me what it was I wished to know.

  “Surely the Somnambulist already is aware of that,” I said.

  “You wish a general analysis?”

  “I want to know of the fate of those about me. I wish particularly for the Somnambulist’s concentration to center on events now occurring in the Hall of Rememberers.”

  Samit tapped long fingernails against the smooth table and shot a glaring look at the cowlike Murta. “Are you in contact with the truth?” he asked her.

  Her reply was a long feathery sigh wrenched from the core of all the quivering meat of her.

  “What do you see?” he asked her.

  She began to mutter thickly. Somnambulists speak in a language not otherwise used by mankind; it is a harsh thing of edgy sounds, which some claim is descended from an ancient tongue of Agupt. I know nothing of that. To me it sounded incoherent, fragmentary, impossible to hold meaning. Samit listened a while, then nodded in satisfaction and extended his palm to me.

  “There is a great deal,” he said.

  We discussed the fee, bargained briefly, came to a settlement. “Go on,” I told him. “Interpret the truth.”

  Cautiously he began, “There are outworlders involved in this, and also several members of the guild of Rememberers.” I was silent, giving him no encouragement. “They are drawn together in a difficult quarrel. A man without eyes is at the heart of it.”

  I sat upright with a jolt.

  Samit smiled in cool triumph. “The man without eyes has fallen from greatness. He is Earth, shall we say, broken by conquerors? Now he is near the end of his time. He seeks to restore his former condition, but he knows it is impossible. He has caused a Rememberer to violate an oath. To their guildhall have come several of the conquerors to—to chastise him? No. No. To free him from captivity. Shall I continue?”