He looked up at the brightness of the Way, the towering buildings beyond, twinkling with lights, and something within him began to expand, growing and growing until it seemed the Keep could not contain this strange new vastness. He stared up at the impervium dome and pierced the shallow seas above it, and the clouds and the twinkling void beyond which he had never seen. There was so much to do now. And no need to hurry. He had time. All the time in the world.
Time to kill.
His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth …
—Job
He turned from his contemplation of the city and into the arms of the two men in uniform who had come up behind him on the Way platform. The uniforms had not changed—they were private government police and Sam knew before a word had been uttered that there was no point in trying to argue.
In a way he was rather more pleased than otherwise as the older of the two flashed an engraved plaque at him and said, “Come along.” At least, someone else had finally made a tangible move. Perhaps now he would learn the answers to some of the questions that had been tantalizing him.
They took him along the high-speed Ways toward the center of the Keep. People glanced curiously at the three as the city flashed past around them. Sam held the railing to keep steady, aware of an unaccustomed flutter around his face as his red wig blew in the wind of their speed. He was watching with interest and anticipation the destination toward which they seemed headed.
The Immortals of every Keep lived in a group of high, colored towers built at the city’s center and guarded by a ring of walled gardens. The police were taking Sam straight toward the tall, shining quarters of the Harker Family. Sam was not surprised. It seemed unlikely that Zachariah would have ordered his ruin forty years ago and then let him wander unguarded for the next forty. On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that Zachariah would have let him live at all. Sam shrugged. He should know the truth, soon.
They took him in through a small door at the back of the highest tower, down transparent plastic steps under which a stream of gray water flowed toward the gardens beyond. Red and gold fish went by with the stream, a long blue ribboneel, a strand of flowering seaweed.
At the foot of the steps a small gilded lift was waiting. The two policemen put Sam into it, closed the door without a word behind him. He had a glimpse through the glass of their impassive faces sliding down outside; then he was alone in the gently sighing cage as it rose toward the height of the Harker tower.
The lift’s walls were mirrored. Sam considered himself in the role of Joel Reed, feeling rather foolish about it, wondering whether whoever it was that waited him above knew him already as Sam Reed. The disguise was good. He couldn’t look exactly like his supposed father, but there was a naturally strong likeness. A red wig matched the heavy red brows, trimmed and smoothed a little now. A set of tooth caps altered the contour of his lower face. There were eye shells with bright blue irises instead of gray. Nothing else.
The eye shells served the same psychological purpose as dark glasses—unconsciously Sam felt himself masked. He could look out, but nobody could look in. It is difficult to meet a straight stare, unprotected, when you have something to hide.
The pressure on Sam’s soles decreased; the lift was slowing. It stopped, the door slid open and he stepped out into a long hall whose walls and ceiling were a constant rustle of green leaves. A glow of simulated daylight poured softly through them from luminous walls. The vines sprang from hydroponic tanks under the floor and met in a trellis-like tunnel overhead. Flowers and fruit swayed among the leaves in a scented, continuing breeze that soughed down the arbor. To a Keep-bred man it was exotic beyond all imagining.
Sam went warily down the silent hall, shrinking a little from the leaves that brushed his face. Like all Venus-bred-people he feared and mistrusted by instinct the dangerous products of the landside world.
From the other end of the hall came the pleasant tinkle and splash of falling water. Sam paused on the threshold of the room upon which the trellis opened, staring in amazement.
This room was an arbor, too. Vines looped down festooned with clustering blossoms; the air was heavy with their fragrance. And the floor of the room was water. Blue water, a shallow lake of it perhaps a foot deep, filling the room from wall to wall. Flowers mirrored themselves in its surface, other flowers floated upon it. Tiny fish darted among their drifting leaves. A luminous jellyfish or two lay motionless on the blue water, dangling dangerous-looking jeweled webs.
There was a bridge of filigreed glass, insubstantial-looking as frost, that spanned the pool. One end lay at Sam’s feet, the other at a low platform, cushion-covered, on the far side of the room. A woman lay face-down among the cushions, elbow on the edge of the pool, one arm submerged to the elbow as she splashed in the shining water. Her hair hid her face, its curled ends dipping in the ripples. The hair was a very pale green-gold, wholly unreal in its color and its water-smooth lustrousness.
Sam knew her. The long lines of Kedre Walton’s body, her leisured motions, the shape of her head and her hands, were unmistakable even though the face was hidden. Why she should be here in the Harker stronghold, and why she had summoned him, remained to be seen.
“Kedre?” he said.
She looked up. Sam’s mind spun dizzily for an instant. It was Kedre—it was not. The same delicate, narrow, disdainful face, with the veiled eyes and the secret Egyptian mouth—but a different personality looking out at him. A malicious, essentially unstable personality, he thought in his first glimpse of the eyes.
“No, I’m Sari Walton,” the pale-haired woman said, smiling her malicious smile. “Kedre’s my grandmother. Remember?”
He remembered. Sari Walton, leaning possessively on Zachariah’s shoulder long ago, while Zachariah spoke with him about the murder of Robin Hale. Sam had scarcely noticed her then. He searched his memory quickly—antagonism was what returned to it first, antagonism between Sari and Kedre, submerged but potent as the two beautiful women watched each other across the table with mirror-image faces.
“All right,” he said. “What does that mean?” He knew well enough. Joel Reed could not be expected to remember a scene in which Sam Reed had figured. She knew who he was. She knew, then, that he, too, was immortal.
“Come here,” Sari said, gesturing with a dripping white arm. She sat up among the cushions, swinging her feet around beneath her. Sam looked dubiously at the glass bridge. “It’ll hold you. Come on.” Derision was in Sari’s voice.
It did, though it sang with faint music at the pressure of every step. At Sari’s gesture he sank hesitantly to a seat among the cushions beside her, sitting stiffly, every angle of his posture rejecting this exotic couch, this fantastic, water-floored bower.
“How did you locate me?” he demanded bluntly.
She laughed at him, putting her head to one side so that the green-gold hair swayed between them like a veil. There was something about her eyes and the quality of her laughter that he did not like at all.
“Kedre’s had a watch out for you for the past forty years,” she said. “I think they traced you through an inquiry at the library archives about your eye patterns today. Anyhow, they found you—that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“Why isn’t Kedre here now?”
Again she laughed, that faintly malicious laughter. “She doesn’t know. That’s why. Nobody knows but me.”
Sam regarded her thoughtfully. There was a challenge in her eyes, an unpredictable capriciousness in her whole manner that he could not quite make up his mind about. In the old days he had known one solution for all such problems as that. He reached out with a quick, smooth gesture and closed his fingers about her wrist, jerking her off balance so that she fell with an almost snakelike gracefulness across his knees. She twisted, unpleasantly lithe in his grasp, and laughed up at him derisively.
There was a man’s aggressive sureness in the way she reached up to
take his cheek in the cup of her palm and pull his head down to hers. He let her do it, but he made the kiss she was demanding a savage one. Then he pushed her off his knee with an abrupt thrust and sat looking at her angrily.
Again she laughed. “Kedre’s not such a fool after all,” she said, running a delicate forefinger across her lip.
Sam got to his feet, kicking a cushion out of the way. Without a word he set his foot on the ringing bridge and started back across it. From the corner of his eye he saw the serpentine twist with which Sari Walton got to her feet.
“Come back,” she said.
Sam did not turn. An instant later he heard a hissing past his ear, felt the searing heat of a needle-gun’s beam. He stopped dead still, not daring to stir for fear another beam was on the way. It was. The hiss and the heat stung his other ear. It was fine shooting—too fine for Sam’s liking. He said without moving his head, “All right, I’m coming. Let me hear the gun drop.”
There was a soft thud among the cushions and Sari’s laughter sounded almost as softly. Sam turned and went back to her.
When they were standing like this he had to tip his head back to look into her eyes. He did not like it. He liked nothing about her, least of all her air of self-confident aggressiveness which from time immemorial has belonged to man, not woman. She looked as fragile as the frost-patterned bridge, as delicately feminine as the most sheltered woman alive—but she was an Immortal and the world belonged to her and her kind. There had been generations of time for her to set in this pattern of malice and self-assurance.
Or—had there been? Sam squinted at her thoughtfully, an idea beginning to take shape in his mind that blotted everything else out for a moment. In contrast to Kedre, this beautiful, fragile creature seemed amazingly immature. That was it—immaturity. It explained the capriciousness, the air of experimental malice he had sensed in her. And he realized that for the Immortals maturity must be a long, long time in forming fully. Probably he himself was very far from it, but his early training had hardened him into the pattern of an adult.
But Sari—sheltered and indulged, wielding almost godlike powers—it was no wonder she seemed unstable in these years before her final matrix of centuries-old maturity had set. It would never set quite properly, he thought. She was not essentially a stable person. She would never be a woman to like or trust. But now she was more vulnerable than she knew. And one of Sam’s devious schemes for making use of an adversary’s weakness started to spin a web in his mind.
“Sit down,” Sam told her.
She lifted both hands over her green-gold head to pluck a cluster of pale fruit like grapes that dangled from a vine. Sam could see her cradling fingers through them, they were so nearly transparent, the blue seeds making a pattern of shadows inside the tiny globes. She smiled at him and sank to her knees with her unpleasantly boneless litheness.
Sam looked down at her. “All right,” he said. “Now. Why did you get me up here? If Kedre sent the orders out, why isn’t she here instead of you?”
Sari put a pale, glassy globe into her mouth and bit down on it. She spat out blue seeds. “Kedre doesn’t know, I told you.” She looked up at him under heavy lashes. Her eyes were a paler blue than Kedre’s. “The warrant’s been out for forty years. She’s in Nevada Keep this week.”
“Has she been notified?”
Sari shook her head, the lustrous, improbable hair swinging softly. “Nobody knows but me. I wanted to see you. If Zachariah knew he’d be furious. He—”
“Zachariah ordered me dream-dusted,” Sam broke in impatiently, eager to get the story clear in his head. “Was Kedre behind it?”
“Zachariah ordered you poisoned,” Sari corrected, smiling up at him. “He meant you to die. Kedre said no. They had a terrible quarrel about it.” Her smile grew secret; she seemed to hug herself with a pleasant memory. “Kedre made it dream-dust,” she went on after a moment. “No one could understand why, really. You wouldn’t be any use to her after that, alive or dead, young or old.” Her voice failed gently; she sat with a transparent fruit between thumb and finger halfway to her lips, and did not move for a long second.
Sam had a sudden, dazzling idea. He dropped to his knees before her and put a finger under her chin, turning her head toward him, looking into her eyes. And a surge of triumph made his throat close for an instant.
“Narco-dust!” he said softly. “I’ll be damned! Narco-dust!”
Sari gurgled with laughter and leaned forward to rub her forehead against his shoulder, her eyes glazed with that strange luminous luster which is unmistakable in the addict.
It explained a great deal—her instability, her curious indifference, the fact that she had not yet quite realized Sam’s strange youth. How odd, he thought—and how significant—that the two people he had met who remembered him from long ago were both under a haze of drug-induced dreams.
Sari pushed him away. She put the fruit in her mouth without knowing her gesture had been interrupted, and spat out the seeds and smiled at him with that sharp, glittering malice that had no reason behind it. Of course his inexplicable youth had not struck her. She was quite accustomed to seeing unchanging faces about her as the decades went by. And under narco-dust a serene, unquestioning acceptance of all one sees is a major factor. But at any moment now she might have a flash of clarity. And Sam still had much to learn.
“Kedre substituted dream-dust for the poison,” he said. “Did she have someone guard me after that?”
The greenish hair spread out like a shawl as Sari shook her head.
“She meant to. Zachariah fixed that, I think. Kedre always thought he did. You’d disappeared when her men went to look for you. You’ve been missing ever since—until now. Where were you, Sam Reed? I think I could like you, Sam. I think I see now what was in Kedre’s mind when she sent her people out to find you and cure you. I—”
“What are you doing here, in the Harker house?”
“I live here.” Sari laughed, and then an ugly timbre crept into the laughter and she closed her delicate, long-fingered hand suddenly over the cluster of fruit. Colorless juice spurted through her fingers. “I live here with Zachariah,” she said. “He wants Kedre. But if he can’t have her—I’ll do instead. Some day I think I’ll kill Zachariah.” She smiled again, sweetly enough, and Sam wondered if Zachariah knew how she felt about him, and that she was a narco-addict. He rather doubted it. The combination was dynamite.
He was beginning to realize what a ripe plum of opportunity had dropped into his lap—but an instant later the familiar doubt crept in. How opportunely had it dropped, after all? How much reasoned planning lay behind all that had happened to him since he woke? There was still no explanation of the watcher in the alley. And that man had known what he was doing. There was no drug-dream behind the precise pattern of what had so far happened to Sam Reed.
“Why did you send for me?” he demanded. Sari was splashing her hand in the water to wash away the sticky juice. He had to ask her twice before she appeared to hear him. Then she looked up and smiled her bright, vacant smile.
“I was curious. I’ve been watching Kedre’s private visor for a long time now. She doesn’t know. When word came in that they’d found you I thought I’d see … I thought I could use you. Against Kedre or against Zachariah—I’m not sure yet. After a while I’ll think about it. Not now. I’m thinking about Zachariah now. And the Harkers. I hate the Harkers, Sam. I hate all Harkers. I even hate myself, because I’m half a Harker. Yes, I think I’ll use you against Zachariah.” She leaned forward, brushing Sam’s shoulder with a fan of green-gold hair, looking up at him with a pale-blue flash under the heavy lashes.
“You hate Zachariah too, don’t you, Sam? You should. He wanted you poisoned. What do you think would hurt him most, Sam? I think for Kedre to know you’re alive—and young. Young?” Her narrow brows drew together in brief bewilderment. But that was a subject that required thought, and she was in no condition now to attack serious problems. Her mind was
not working except in its deepest levels at this moment, the primitive levels that move automatically, without conscious effort.
Suddenly she threw back her head and laughed, choked on the laughter, looked at Sam with swimming eyes. “It’s wonderful!” she said. “I can punish them both, can’t I? Zachariah will have to wait until Kedre’s tired of you, now that you’re alive again. And Kedre can’t have you if she doesn’t know where you are. Could you go away and hide, Sam? Some place where Kedre’s men couldn’t find you? Oh, please, Sam, do go and hide! For Sari. It would make Sari so happy!”
Sam rose. The bridge rang musically as he crossed it, a series of faint, sweet undernotes to Sari’s laughter. The scented breeze blew in his face as he went back down the trellised hall. The lift stood waiting where he had left it. There was no one in sight when he came out at the foot of the shaft and went back up the glass steps over the swimming stream and into the street.
Moving almost in a daze, he stepped onto the nearest Way and let it carry him at random through the city. The episode just past had all the qualities of a dream; he had to focus hard upon it to convince himself it had happened at all. But the seed of a great opportunity lay in it, if he could only isolate what was important.
The Harkers had a weakness they did not suspect-Sari. And beyond that lay implicit an even deeper weakness, if Sari was really a Harker, too. For she was definitely not a normal person. The narco-dust and the possible immaturity of her mind explained only partly that shuddering instability at the very core of her being. It opened new vistas for Sam’s thought. So even Immortals were not wholly invulnerable, even they had hidden weaknesses in the fabric of their heritage.
There were two secret paths now by which he might ambush Zachariah. The paths would need exploring. That must come later.
Just now the most important thing was to hide while he thought things over. And the more he considered this, the more inclined Sam felt to visit the Colony where Robin Hale administered his sterile jurisdiction.
Fury Page 10
