The Winter Plain

by Jo Bannister

  “Painkillers work by matching natural receptors in the brain. The natural match for the receptor, the system’s own anaesthetic, is normally very difficult to activate but production of it is stimulated by introduction of the drax which simulates it. That’s why a drax junkie can’t be dried out – once the habit is established he doesn’t even need to fix.”

  Lockwood, staring into the heartless analytical eyes, felt his own moisten. “It is hopeless, then.”

  “No. Not necessarily, not if I can get hold of some drax. If I can hook him back onto the synthetic stuff and then wean him slowly off, his own production may not rise again to compensate.”

  “May not?” echoed Lockwood. “Is that the best you can offer?”

  The engineer grinned again. “You still think I’m a magician. The only certainty about this is that if he survives he’s going to hurt a whole lot more than a spear in the leg.”

  “I told you to keep those muscle-bound cretins away from me,” snapped Paul, stalking unannounced into the throneroom where Harry Jess was trying on the crown jewels.

  “And I told you,” the Barbarian said silkily, weighing an orb in his neat hand, “or if I didn’t I should have done, to wait for an invitation before coming into my presence.”

  Paul went over to the window and sat down on the sill, a malicious smile curling his lip. “Keep your threats for the peasants, they might be impressed. And give those baubles to the girl: on you they look ridiculous.”

  The earl slammed down the orb, denting it, for it was hollow, and kicked the girl away as she proffered a golden torque from the open chest at his feet. Shah retreated a safe distance and sat down on the floor, watching the two men covertly.

  “You think you’re safe,” shouted Harry Jess. “Well, you’re not. Nobody’s that safe, not if they come annoying me they’re not. You can do a lot to a man short of killing him. Alive can also mean not quite dead. As long as I leave your hands and your eyes, Leshkas isn’t going to care slag for what happens to the rest of you.”

  So far as the eye could see the engineer was unmoved; and Shah found herself unaccountably reluctant to test his detachment from the inside. The memory of his mind was to her as the Ice Desert to a man with no compass. He said, “Lay a finger on me and it’ll cost you Chad.”

  “A week ago I hadn’t got Chad. And in three weeks I can strip it of everything I want. I’ve already told you it might be worth it to me to hear your scream.”

  “I don’t scream,” said Paul, so flatly it could have been true. “And Chad isn’t all you’ll lose if you try to pull this rabble you call an army out before they’re satisfied. Have you ever seen a mutiny, Harry? It’s like a wolf-pack when there’s blood on the air: thousands of armed men, angry and frustrated, with nowhere to go and nothing to lose. The explosion of the human machine. I’d rather be me in your hands, Harry, than you in theirs.”

  Harry Jess had too much imagination to be a brave man, and too little education to accept that aspect of his make-up philosophically. He saw it as a weakness and could not contemplate it with equanimity. Switching the conversation unsubtly from that disturbing area he demanded petulantly, “Did you want something?”

  “Yes. A monkey-wrench, three universal spanners, a book of logarithms, a bottle of drax and a pair of socks, size nine.”

  “And whatever makes you think —?” Harry began, amazed; then he stopped and a slow gloat spread across his pale thin face. “Did you say drax?”

  “Indeed I did. A large, expensive bottle and I want it back.”

  Harry feigned horror. “I can’t have a junkie fiddling around with my pile!”

  Paul breathed hard and hung onto his temper. “Unless you replace that drax, soon, I shall not be fiddling around with it. I shall be curled up sweating in a corner while your pile blows its valves and you pack your bags.”

  Harry shook his head, his imitation sorrow too shallow to conceal delight at the development. “I’ve heard of it happening,” he said sympathetically. “Some of the best brains mankind has produced rotted away by that vile stuff because they were arrogant enough to suppose they could control it. Tragic. Do you need some now, Paul? Can you feel the sweat beginning to break, the wonderful engineer’s hands beginning to tremble? Cramps in the gut, shooting pains behind the eyes, and when you stop sleeping for fear of the nightmares they start coming in the daytime too? It’s all right, Paul, don’t be ashamed – I’ve heard all about it. Never experienced it, of course: we Northerners are a pragmatic lot, we can generally manage without seeking consolation in a bottle, but I’m sure life is hell for more sensitive types. Don’t feel badly about it.”

  “I shan’t,” said Paul. “Until about this time tomorrow, at which point it will cease to matter that some barbarian gorilla has stolen my spanners because I shall be shaking too much to use them. Malaria, Harry. Sorry to disappoint you, but the only reason I use drax is because I’m allergic to quinine. If you can’t find the thief you’d better find me an alternative supply: to the best of my knowledge the nearest nuclear engineer is a thousand miles south of here and can’t stand the cold.”

  “How would I know where to find drax?”

  “I don’t care how,” said Paul, rising to go. “Just do it.”

  Shah tasted his mind and decided the earl would welcome a suggestion. “Itzhak might know.”

  Harry looked at her vacantly, at the torque she was twisting in her hands. “Itzhak?”

  “The poet. He does some doctoring. He might have some, or know where to get it.”

  “There you are then,” said Harry expansively, waving a jewelled hand towards the door. “There’s your answer. Go and see Itzhak.”

  Chapter Three

  After the palace fell to the Barbarians Itzhak, wandering, stumbled across the dove-grey cell remotely deep beneath the glittering staterooms. Windowless, under a low domed ceiling, the tiny vault was a little like a monk’s cubicle and a little like a stone womb. Behind its shut door, his battery candle throwing calm shadows on the close walls, Itzhak felt instinctively safe; and since safety was the sensation he treasured above all others he immediately fetched down his belongings and staked his claim.

  Shah led the way, her own candle registering their progress as a succession of architectural changes, always for the worse, as the plaster perfection of the upper levels gave way by degrees to older, rougher stones.

  The man from the desert walked at her right shoulder, a little behind, half in shadow. Shah quickly recognised that this station, though possibly unconscious, was by no means arbitrary. He used other people as armour. In the unlikely event of Itzhak leaping out at them with a claymore, Paul’s body would be shielded by that of the girl while his right arm remained free to wield his own weapon. Though he carried no sword and Shah could see no dagger, she found it difficult to believe that he habitually went defenceless. All his responses suggested otherwise.

  They moved in silence. The stone walls listened greedily for any kind of sound to magnify and distort and throw back at them, but there was no sound, neither of conversation nor even footsteps: the girl wore slippers while her companion moved with the terse, elastic grace of a cat.

  Shah could not have pin-pointed the moment at which she became aware of the crooked man. She was accustomed to having as a mental backdrop a mosaic of other minds, softly focused, a psychic hum; gradually as he drew closer to them his emerged from that background. She recognised him because she had seen him around the palace: his mind had a distinctive shape although it did not reflect that of his body. She knew he was a menial, though his mind suggested he had once been more than that, and she supposed he was on his way to some store or cellar.

  Itzhak’s cell was mazed about by tunnels but Shah never lost her way. It was a side-effect of her curious faculty – being able to home in on thoughts radiating from a human presence like ripples from a pebble tossed in a fountain.

  Itzhak, behind his iron-hooped door, sounded startled at her knock. “Who’s there?
What do you want?”

  “Shah,” she called. “I want to come in. I have someone with me.”

  “Who? – Oh!” From the haste with which the bolt was drawn and the door flung back it was evident that his mind had gone first to Harry Jess. When Paul stepped out of the shadows the poet was torn between means that he had been mistaken and concern at confronting a stranger, an unknown quantity.

  He was a tall man, of middle-age, slenderly built, somehow without substance. His skin was very pale and soft, his fine limp hair was white, his eyes were wide and pale blue. His effeminacy was so obvious that it drew no comment: the Northlanders were familiar with eunuchs. He had beautiful slim, strong hands.

  Shah did not introduce them. She did not know quite how to. Also she was preoccupied with the other man, the one she had not seen but who she was now certain had followed them. When they entered Itzhak’s cell he stopped and then edged forward again until he was just the other side of the dove-grey wall, close enough for her to step into his mind.

  “He wants drax,” Shah said without preamble, and without much attention either. “Harry – er – the earl said perhaps you could get him some.”

  “Drax?” echoed Itzhak, eying the stranger curiously. Itzhak’s long narrow frame housed two distinct personnae, the spiritual considerably braver than the physical, so that, while his wide pale eyes were assessing Paul calmly, his mouth was babbling anxious, deferential nonsense. “Of course, lord. Only I don’t think – it’s not the sort of thing there’s much – I’m sure I can find some though – er – Is it for you? I mean —”

  Shah’s gently probing psyche felt the mind beyond the wall unfold a flower as its owner, confident in his invisibility, concentrated on the proceedings within and on the poet’s voice. Its portals open and undefended, she slipped into his mind like a practised bather entering water, with hardly a splash.

  Several things happened virtually simultaneously.

  Itzhak said, “Is it for you?”

  Shah’s eyes flew wide and she drew a sharp breath.

  Paul, his own eyes locked on her face, shouted, “Lockwood, guard your thoughts!”

  And Lockwood burst into the little room like a minor Act of God, knife in hand, totally uncomprehending and trying to fathom what action was required of him.

  Paul slammed the door shut behind him and shot the bolt. “You damn fool,” he snarled, “don’t you trust me? Or do you think I need your protection?”

  “I need to know what’s happening,” Lockwood returned stiffly, straightening as far as he was able. “I could see no reason for you to be brought down here, so I followed. Yes, it occurred to me you might require assistance: I was not aware you were invincible. And will you kindly moderate your language to such terms as may in chivalry be used between one gentleman and another?”

  “Chivalry?” Scorn dripped from the word and turned to icicles under the influence of Paul’s glacial rage. “My God, I don’t wonder Harry Jess walked over you: I suppose you were still working out the protocol while he was chopping down your flag. And now your chivalry has made necessary the wanton destruction of perhaps the most remarkable mind in the world today. Damn you, Lockwood, damn your interference. You really are all I need: the fastest knife in the north, and brains like porridge. Well, don’t just stand there gawping, finish what you started. Kill her.”

  Lockwood raised his blade, slowly, but made no move towards the girl. He looked confused and unhappy. “Kill her? Why? I don’t understand you. She’s only a girl. What did you mean – ‘guard your thoughts’?”

  “She’s a telepath,” Paul explained, his tone heavy with sarcasm. “A mind-reader. She knows what you were thinking. Lockwood – she knows.”

  Then he understood. His seamed face twisted with regret: only briefly, hardening as he moved towards her. Paul turned away, hiding the expression of loss condensing unexpectedly in his obsidian eyes.

  As Lockwood’s left hand closed on her wrist Shah said, very distinctly, “They have the prince.”

  For a moment the scene froze. Time took a breather. Then Itzhak’s eyes grew enormous and terrified and he wailed, “Shah!”

  Her mind was on the knife, her eyes on Paul, her reply – tense and brittle but without emotion – directed at Itzhak. “You always said you’d betray me to save yourself. Why should you expect any greater fidelity of me?”

  Lockwood took a deep breath. “So I kill them both.”

  “If you kill Itzhak you won’t get the drax,” Shah said with that same flat urgency. “And if you go back to Harry Jess you’ll have to explain what became of me.” Paul turned back towards her and his brow, though creased with thought, was lighter; if he were not pleased then he was at least faintly impressed. “And then there’s the other thing.”

  “Other thing?”

  “You’re a telepath too. You’ve been a long time in the desert. The kind of companionship I can give you, you can’t pick up in every wayside tavern.”

  Paul’s face that had started to clear, as if he were glad that she had made it difficult for him to kill her, went opaque again: again she touched that haunting sense of loss. “I’m not a telepath.”

  “Pardon my interfering once more,” Lockwood said pointedly, flicking the edge of his knife with an impatient thumbnail, “but do you want these two dead or not?”

  “Kill them,” Paul said bleakly; then, with a weary sigh, “No, wait. She could be right. They could be more dangerous dead than alive.”

  “Knowing what they know, can we afford to let them live?”

  “No, but then neither can I afford to kill them, at least not yet.” He stared at Shah until the margins of her mind began to crawl with his scrutiny. Finally his eyes shifted to Itzhak. “All right. You: Can you get me that drax? – now, today?”

  Itzhak was as pale as one of his vellums. His native mistrust of the world had been horribly reinforced; his recognition that his life was no longer in imminent danger gave him absolutely no confidence for the future. He thought desperately. “Yes, I – I think – Yes. Sir.”

  “Good. Well, apothecary, you’ve got a new apprentice – he can’t reach the high shelves but he’s useful with a scalpel.” Lockwood grinned. Paul told him, “Watch him like a hawk. If he worries you, dispose of him. Otherwise get all the drax you can and bring it back here.”

  When they were left alone Shah thought philosophically, Here’s where he loses all interest in my mind. But she was mistaken. Holding her in the searchlight gaze of those disturbing idol’s eyes he said: “How long have you been Harry Jess’s seer?”

  “Seer?” She shook her long black hair. “I’m not his seer, or his prophet or his examiner or even his spy. I’m his whore.”

  In the months following her abduction, from a caravan as she travelled with her merchant brother to Gilgar, she had tormented herself with the word, made of it – for some reason she could not now quite recall – a flail for her own back; but with the passage of time both the word and the function it described became as familiar to her and as little uncomfortable as the hardness of the bed she slept on: it cost her no grief to say it.

  Even so the engineer’s reaction was disappointing. He merely raised one eyebrow and said, “It seems a waste of talent.”

  Stung by his indifference she replied tartly, “I’m alive, aren’t I? With the exception of the one I gather you already know about, my predecessors aren’t. They each died when they began to bore him. I have a distinct advantage: I know when he’s getting bored before he does. A whore who can read her client’s mind can just about guarantee satisfaction. It’s a bit like screwing yourself,” she added, deliberately crude, “but when the alternative is a quick trip to the chopping block you tend not to be too fastidious.”

  She could not interpret the look he gave her. There was no distaste in it, and no sympathy; interest, but not of a sexual kind; nothing to suggest that he could like her. Indeed, nothing she had seen of him so far suggested he could like anybody. His interest was cal
culating. “Does Harry know this?”

  “Are you mad? Until you came along the only one who knew was Itzhak. Twenty-four hours after Harry finds out I’m dead. He’ll think how he can use me, and then he’ll think how I could use him, and then he’ll get to wondering about all the things he’s thought around me in the last three years. And finally the possibility of risk to himself will outweigh all the advantages and he’ll have me killed. That’s why your prince is quite safe from me. I couldn’t reveal him without revealing myself, and that I am not prepared to do.”

  “And your poet friend?”

  “Ah,” said the girl softly. “Well, Itzhak is a very kind, very gentle person, who would never willingly harm anyone. But if he’s frightened or hurt he’ll do anything, say anything, betray anyone, to stop it. Your best defence so far as Itzhak is concerned is to keep him safely away from Harry. All the same, he’s kept my secret for three years and it wasn’t him who gave it away in the end.”

  She looked straight at Paul, her chin lifting, her luminous eyes fear-shadowed but resolute. She was afraid of him – more of him than of Harry – but her fear had weaknesses. When she had spoken to Paul of the desert she had spoken from experience. Her mind, extraordinarily gifted, craved the communion of like-oriented intellects. She had never known that glorious wordless intimacy, but knew that it existed and what form it must take from the shape of the emptiness in her soul. Sharvarim-besh was lonely.

  And it was because her longing was greater than her fear that she demanded, “Why did you lie?”

  Negligently he failed to meet her gaze. “Did I lie?”

  “You said you weren’t telepathic. Yet you read both my mind and your friend Lockwood’s.”

  “No.”

  “Damn you,” she cried in frustration, “what are you talking about? You knew Lockwood was there, you knew what he was thinking and you knew I knew. Of course you’re a telepath.”

  “I recognised you as one the minute I saw you. You’re not very subtle about it. You react too quickly. Sometimes you react to a thought that has no outward manifestation. Once I knew about you it was easy enough to spot you working. When you did it here, and were so startled by what you found, it had to be Lockwood, and there’s only one thing on his mind.”