by Jo Bannister
“The same thing was in yours,” challenged Shah. “Are you so sure it wasn’t your mind I read?”
He grinned; his humour was more chilling than his threats. “Quite sure. You tried my mind once. You didn’t like it very much. You didn’t come again.”
“There!” she exclaimed, over-triumphant in her effort to drown the icy spot of fear he conjured in her. “How else could you know that, except by some telepathic instinct?”
Faster than she could follow his sharp-edged mirth fled, his obsidian eyes iced over and the harsh planes of his face in a terrible hardness. His voice when it came was as bitter as the winter wind.
“I did not say I lacked the instinct, I said I had not the capability.”
“Could you be a sort of latent telepath?” she ventured cautiously.
Paul’s brimming fury flooded over, scalding Shah because she was nearest. “Damn you, woman, you cannot safeguard your own secrets but you’re after mine as well! No, I am not a latent telepath. I was a latent telepath, and then I was a telepath, and now I am a former telepath. An ex-telepath. A telepath no longer.”
Shah was deeply shocked, not so much by the pain she had finally wrung from him as by the implications for herself of what he had said. She had never considered, even momently, that her perception might be, independently of her, mortal. She whispered, “How is that possible?”
Paul might have spared her then. His outburst had served its purpose, shattering her healing equilibrium and stemming her interrogation. He seldom so lost control of himself as to say or do something he had not intended, and that blind and heedless fury passed quickly. But below it lay a vast reservoir of molten anger, and it was his one indulgence that he vented it when and where the inclination took him without regard to common sense or common humanity. It was his second greatest weakness that he did not care about hurting people. His greatest weakness was that he thought this was a strength.
So he told her. “The people who had control of me grew afraid of what I could do. They had a psycho-surgeon burn it out of me with a laser.”
Shah did not know what a psycho-surgeon was, nor a laser, but she knew subjectively what had been done to Paul and understood at last that faint, pervasive aura of bereavement. Vicariously she shared in it. Shah was a natural telepath, untrained, her faculty unsophisticated, its potential hardly scratched. Yet the prospect of life without it terrified her. Her perception was as essential to her, as fundamental a part of her, as her eyes and ears: deprived of that familiar, reassuring background of unconscious minds pursuing their daily rounds she would be blind and deaf. The world would lose its shape, its meaning, its certainty: she would have to wonder what people were thinking, what they expected of her, whether they meant her any harm. A vast area of her intellect would become an aching vacuum, incapable of being either filled or forgotten. Contemplation of such poverty sent deep shudders of pain and grief through her soul. Though she had never known another telepath, she had never for a moment considered herself without the gift. She considered now the possibility of losing it, as he had, to an act of premeditated violence, part mutilation, part rape.
Paul misunderstood the tears which started from her shocked eyes. He thought they were for him. “Save your pity for someone who needs it,” he advised caustically. “Come.”
When they returned to the poet’s cell with a bottle of drax as big as the quite imaginary vessel Paul had described to Harry Jess, Lockwood and Itzhak found the prince in Itzhak’s bed. Paul had carried him down while Shah scouted ahead a route from the tower to the dungeon.
Safely back in the basement Paul dumped his burden, somewhat unceremoniously, on the heaped cushions where Itzhak laid him down. The boy was wallowing on the rim of oblivion; possibly due to his condition, possibly because Paul hit him when he started to scream at imagined terrors in the kitchen remove.
Shah waited for the engineer to do or say something but she waited in vain: after depositing the boy he stood a moment, flexing his shoulder, then padded over to the door to check the dark tunnel beyond. Shah sighed and knelt beside the bed. Too old for lover, too young for mother, she began picking with distaste at the filthy rags of the young king’s clothes.
But Itzhak, arriving home at that moment with the crooked man, shouldered her aside as with an inarticulate croon he dropped to his knees beside the hapless youth and folded long arms protectively around him.
Shah smiled up at Paul. “I think you’ve found your nurse.” Paul was sneering but not any more than usual.
Paul told Lockwood how to administer the drug, how often, and what results he should expect. “Dosage at that level should keep him short enough that he feels it, not so short that he’ll make up the difference himself. If he suddenly stops bothering, get me fast: it’ll mean he’s started synthesizing the stuff again.”
“I wish you’d do it,” muttered Lockwood, half a grumble, half a plea.
“I have to work on the pile or we’ll have Harry Jess enquiring into my activities. The job will take me about a fortnight, then we leave. You won’t get him fighting fit in that time but you should have him on his feet.” Indicating the kneeling man ministering to the mumbling youth: “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with our poet friend.”
Lockwood nodded towards Shah. “What about her?”
“She’s coming with me.”
“Paul.” The crooked man laid a hand on his arm as he turned away. “Don’t bring Harry Jess down about our ears, not before the king is safe. After that if you want to come back for her, all right, I’ll help you —”
Paul said quietly, “Do yourself two favours. Don’t assume you know what I’m thinking: you don’t. And don’t make the mistake of supposing that this enterprise is in any way a democracy. You had your chance to save the prince and his father, and you blew it. Because of the strong possibility that you would I was paid to come here and pick up the pieces. You’re not part of the solution, Lockwood, you’re part of the problem. Do as I tell you and you may yet prove useful. But if you get in my way I’ll deal with you as I would with anyone.”
Lockwood was patently not accustomed to threats. His whole misshapen body stiffened and bristled; his creased face was a portrait of constraint. Finally he managed, “It’s been said before.”
Paul flashed him that brilliant feral grin. “Not by me, it hasn’t.”
Chapter Four
Paul found Harry Jess at dinner, seated in splendid isolation at one end of the table where King John had entertained half the nobility of Chad. He had a succession of servants, awkward in borrowed livery, parade before him with dishes held high: so high that he had to crane to see what was on them. He was not too good on the details yet, but Harry was getting the taste for gracious living.
“You here again?” Harry enquired. “When are you going to fix this pile you insist I need?”
“I started today. Even engineers need to eat.” Paul hooked out a chair with his foot and sat down beside a pyramid of fruit, helping himself to something yellow half way down.
“Soldiers, ostlers and those who maintain the public drains need to eat too, but they don’t all do it here and at my expense. That passion-fruit has come something over a thousand miles.”
“That passion-fruit is a banana, and if you want to try one sometime you have to peel it first.” Paul demonstrated, throwing the discarded jacket carelessly onto the table.
Harry scowled. He was wearing an imaginative confection of ceremonial silk and brocade liberally laced with velvet, and about half the crown jewels; and he somehow contrived not to look absurd. “I suppose you want something,” he said ungraciously. “You usually do. What is it this time?”
Paul said, “Will you sell me that girl of yours?”
“What girl?”
“The dark one. The southerner. Sharvarim-something.”
Harry choked on his veal. “Shah? By all the gods, I don’t know if you’re a lion or a loon. Though I must admit, making an offer for her is pref
erable to theft. What’s the matter? – another vacancy arisen in your friendly neighbourhood convent?”
Paul grinned. “You had no title to the other one: you abducted her and they wanted her back. So far as I know to the contrary you own this one; in any event, nobody’s hired me to recover her. I’ll pay you what she’s worth.”
“I don’t want to sell Shah. She pleases me. But if it’s a girl you want —”
“You’ve got it wrong again, Harry,” interrupted the engineer. “It’s not a lay I’m after, it’s an assistant. With your genius for discrimination you’ve managed to kill off the entire maintenance crew of the pile. I’m interested in her hands: I’ve been looking for a pair that good for five years. You’ll tire of her soon anyway, why not cash her in while you stand to make a profit?”
“I’m not tired of Shah,” said the Barbarian thoughtfully. “No, Paul, she’s not for sale – you’ll have to keep looking.”
Paul looked irritated. “All right. But I’m still going to need help with those valves. Lend her to me for a few days. In return I’ll teach her how to run a check: it’ll make your sojourn here a deal safer. They’re pretty well fool-proof, these piles, they were designed to be operated by a handful of morons occasionally supervised by an idiot, but you’re going to need someone in your household who can recognise a danger signal when she sees one.”
Harry’s narrow, intelligent face brightened. “Teach me.”
“You?” Paul laughed out loud. “You’ve got hands like a pimp and you wouldn’t do a thing I told you. If I can’t borrow the girl I’ll manage alone. But I can do a better job for you with her help.”
Harry thought it over, examining the proposition for traps. There were obvious advantages in having close to him someone who understood something of his power-base, but one did not normally lend another man one’s concubine, least of all a man who had made off with a previous incumbent. “All right,” he agreed finally. “But you watch your step with her. She’s mine.”
“Fine,” said Paul, rising.
“Does Shah know about this yet?”
Paul raised an eyebrow. “How should she know? She’s a mind-reader?”
Harry chuckled. “Perhaps she won’t want to help you.”
“Does it matter what she wants?”
The earl bellowed and Shah appeared, gliding across the marble flags with a rustle of variegated silk. Paul looked at her once, disinterestedly, then said to Harry, “She’ll need something to wear.”
Shah also looked at Harry, blankly, and the earl explained. “You don’t mind, do you, Shah?”
“Not if it’s what you want, my lord,” she said tonelessly.
“Good, that’s all settled then,” said Harry. Beneath his bonhomie there glinted shards of malice. “Except for one thing, Paul. I know I’ve got a nasty suspicious mind, but it did occur to me after our last meeting that maybe you didn’t need that drax for yourself at all, that maybe you weren’t above selling it on the black market. Forgive me, I’m sure the suspicion is unwarranted, but perhaps you’d not object to setting my mind at rest?”
“How?”
“I’d like to see you take some of the stuff.”
Shah’s heart stopped, lurched and began to pound. Paul appeared unmoved. “You’re a real little vampire, aren’t you?”
Harry shrugged. “I’m responsible for what happens in this city. I need to know if someone is dealing in drax.”
Paul glanced at the horologram above the door. “It’s too early.”
“Then we’ll wait,” Harry said silkily, settling back in his chair.
“All right, if it’ll make you happy. But the least you can do if you’re going to waste my evening is feed me.”
Harry nodded. “You stay too, Shah. It’ll be a chance for you two to get acquainted.”
The meal was long and leisurely and the conversation easy. The men talked of the Ice Desert and the characters, more than half mythical, it had thrown up; they exchanged anecdotes of travel and tribulation, sniping and sharing a conspiratorial intimacy by turns. It occurred to Shah, excluded, observing with disbelief and deep foreboding, that they were closer in kind to one another than either was to anyone else. Of the meal she remembered nothing, not even if she ate. She could only wonder at Paul’s self-control, that he could spend perhaps his last hour of sanity joking with the man about to render him mad. Clutching at straws, she asked herself if he could have some plan, but all hope was dispelled when he finally looked up at the horologram and said, “Well, I suppose I’d better give you your little treat and then we can all go to bed. I’ll go and get —”
“No need,” interrupted Harry, indecently eager, bringing a small purple vial from a chest under the window and laying it carefully on the table. Beside it he placed a slim wallet from which Paul, after a moment’s pause, withdrew a hypodermic syringe.
He looked at it, and sniffed, and looked up at Harry. “I suppose these things are sterile?” All the humour had gone from his face and the familiar impassive curtain had dropped before it; but Shah, exploring round the edges, found thin shreds of anger, dismay and a peculiarly desolate resignation.
He took the syringe, drew off the purple fluid, made a tiny fountain of it in the air and punched it through the cloth of his trousers into his thigh where he discharged it. When it was empty he withdrew the needle and laid the syringe back on the table-top. “Happy now?”
Harry was torn between disappointment that his trap had not sprung and a small, obscene pleasure at what he had witnessed. If not happy he was at least satisfied. He nodded. “Like I say, I have a nasty suspicious mind.”
Paul kicked back his chair and walked away. Shah half expected him to waver but he did not. At the door he paused with one hand on the frame and said shortly, “You’d better come while I fix you up with some proper clothes.” Harry nodded again, and she had to fight against haste until she shut the door safely behind her.
Paul stumbled against her. “That bloody man!” he wrung out.
His face was white under the wind-tan, the eyes narrow and stretched, the jaw set; a muscle high up in his cheek worked as though he wrestled with an angel. “What can I do?” Shah whispered.
“A strip of that silk.”
She had difficulty tearing it. Shakily she laughed. “I could do with Lockwood and his knife now.” Paul drew one of the little secret darts, bodkin-slim, from his belt. Shah used the diamond tip to rend the fabric; then, in the act of returning it, remembered where she had seen its like before and froze. It was long seconds before she could drag her eyes from the silver dart to meet Paul’s, but he was not looking at her. He seemed to be concentrating very hard and was barely aware of her. Shah took a deep breath and gathered her wits, and lodged the dart back in his belt and said, “What now?”
He tied the silk flag tightly round his leg above the puncture. When it was done he leaned back against the wall, panting slightly. “The next part I’d sooner not do in public.”
His accommodation beside the powerhouse and Itzhak’s cell in the basement were both too far and involved too many steps. Shah took him to her own room, only a shout away from Harry’s, fully recognising the danger but considering that the risk of having him pass out on the floor of a busy corridor was probably greater. She steered him to a sedilla in the wall, then ran to bar the door and draw close the heavy curtains.
She turned back in time to see him slit open the cloth with the tip of a dart, drive its point into his leg where he had injected the drax, then wrench it viciously left and right. The blood leapt.
Shah, unprepared, gasped a little scream. Paul made no sound but vented a spastic breath through bared teeth. Shah rushed forward, tearing at her dress, but he would not let her stem the flowing blood. “Let it drain,” he muttered, “I’d sooner cope with anaemia than drax.” He allowed the bleeding to continue for some minutes, kneading the wound with his fingers to express the toxin, his eyes glinting darkly under lowered lids.
When he fin
ally permitted her to dress the incision she bound it tightly with silk strips and then sat back on her heels. She said testily, because she had been frightened, “Would you care to explain that?”
Paul smiled thinly. Under the hooded lids the pupils of his eyes were enormous, the gold-flecked irises shining like the coronas of dark stars. He spoke deliberately. “I couldn’t avoid taking the drug so I did the next best thing: made it work for its living. Give it pain to fight and it’s effective and useful – it’s when the narcotic effect is not balanced by a pain stimulus that it becomes destructive. Opening the injection site served two purposes: it washed out some of the drax held back by the tourniquet, and gave what was left something to work on. It may be a long night but I’ll be all right tomorrow. Shall we be disturbed if we stay here?”
“You’ll be safe enough,” Shah answered obliquely. “I may have to leave for a short time but no one will come here.”
“If I get too euphoric during the night you’ll have to open the wound again,” he remarked vaguely as the treacherous tranquillity lapped up around him and stole him into sleep.
To Shah’s relief it did not happen. Nor did the call from Harry. Paul slept quietly through most of the night, isolated from discomfort by the drug cocoon, but as dawn wore close his rest grew fretful, fragmentary, and finally fractured as the drax in his bloodstream became too dilute to be effective. He woke stiff, sore, bad-tempered and patently not an addict.
While Paul was sweating drax out of his system in Shah’s chamber, Edmund was sweating out the need for it levels below in Itzhak’s. While Shah was watching Paul twitch and wondering if she should go for Lockwood, Lockwood was watching the king and wondering if he should summon Paul. His vigil was to last much the longer, to prove more harrowing than a battlefield, and to impress on him indelibly the debt he owed to the strange shrinking man with the hands of a surgeon and the devotion of a mother.
