Approaching the flotilla in gravsled, and boarding the giant battleship, he deduces that Latimer and the Shenn, Gahood, are the only living beings there. The vessels are entirely robotic. Gahood is a great, minotaurlike creature, living in surroundings that look at once barbaric and decadent. He appears to be some kind of patriarchal overlord, among others, on his home world of Dathyna. How could a culture like his have developed cybernetics to this fantastic extent? How could personalities so rash and brutal have patiently created an organization like Serendipity? Why have the Shenna kept their existence unknown to Technic planets while spying upon them?
Gahood soon loses patience and tries to have Falkayn killed by a robot. He himself is sheltered from the grenade. But Falkayn gets behind the barrier with Latimer and thus turns the tables. He cannot capture Gahood, but he can take Latimer back with him as a hostage. Under the circumstances, and infuriated as he is, he does not scruple to break that bargain. He makes Ladner a prisoner and starts for Satan while Gahood’s robots retrieve an empty spacesuit. Chee interrogates Latimer under drugs as Muddlin’ Through flees. Falkayn lures the bulk of the Shenn flotilla down into the atmosphere of Satan. Lacking
Muddlehead’s knowledge of Satan’s climate, they are destroyed, and the League craft attacks the rest. None escape but Gahood’s ship and another. Those beat a retreat, presumably back toward Dathyna.
Latimer reveals the location of that world, then dies. Falkayn did not intend this; he did not know the man was under mortal stress from the psychoconditioning given him. There is no time to feel sorry. Muddlin’ Through must report to Earth. He suddenly realizes she can’t!
Meanwhile van Rijn has been negotiating with Thea Beldaniel. On the side, he has done what he can to make both the League and the various governments ready for trouble. Given so many elements in the situation, both known and unknown, he dares not risk the unpredictable consequences of telling everything he has learned. (This includes the existence of the rogue planet—on which he wants a monopoly.) But he chicanes the powers that be into the preliminaries of mobilization; and he leaves a full account behind, to be opened if he does not return.
Thea prevents further preparation by insisting he leave with her for rendezvous now or not at all. They will travel on a ship fresh from an extraterrestrial yard, so that he cannot plant tracing devices, and she will inform him of their destination when they are outside the Solar System. She does allow him Adzel for a companion. The three depart.
Part 4
XIX
The ship went under hyperdrive and raced through night. She would take about three weeks to reach her destination.
In the beginning Thea held aloof, stayed mainly in her cabin, said little beyond the formulas of courtesy at mealtimes and chance encounters. Van Rijn did not press her. But he talked at the table, first over the food and afterward over large bottles of wine and brandy. It sounded like idle talk, reminiscence, free association, genial for the most part though occasionally serious. Remarks of Adzel’s often prompted these monologues; nonetheless, van Rijn seemed to take for granted that he was addressing the thin, jittery, never-smiling woman as well as the mild-mannered draco-centauroid.
She excused herself immediately after the first few meals. But soon she stayed, listening till all hours. There was really nothing else to do; and a multiple billion light-years of loneliness enclosed this thrumming metal shell; and van Rijn’s tongue rambled through much that had never been public knowledge, the stuff of both science and saga.
“. . . We could not come near that white dwarf star, so bad did it radiate . . . ja, hard X-ray quanta jumping off it like fleas abandoning a sinking dog . . . only somehow we had got to recover the derelict or our poor little new company would be bankruptured. Well, I thought, fate had harpooned me in the end. But by damn, the notion about a harpoon made me think maybe we could . . .”
What she did not know was that Adzel received his instructions prior to each such occasion. What he was to say, ask, object to, and confirm was listed for him. Thus van Rijn had a series of precisely planned conversations to try on Thea Beldaniel.
He soon developed a pretty good general idea of what subjects interested and pleased her, what bored or repelled. No doubt she was storing away in memory everything that might possibly be useful to the Shenna. But she must recognize that usefulness was marginal, especially when she had no way of telling how much truth lay in any given anecdote. It followed that her reaction to whatever he told her came chiefly from her own personality, her own emotions. Even more self-revealing were her reactions to the various styles he used. A story might be related in a cold, impersonal, calculating manner; or with barbaric glee; or humorously; or philosophically; or tenderly; or poetically, when he put words in the mouth of someone else; or in any number of other ways. Of course, he did not spring from one method straight to another. He tried different proportions.
The voyage was not half over when he had learned what face to adopt for her. Thereafter he concentrated on it. Adzel was no longer needed. She responded directly, eagerly to the man.
They were enemies yet. But he had become a respected opponent—or more than respected—and the hope was pathetic to see growing in her, that peace might be made between him and her lords.
“Natural, I want peace myself,” he boomed benevolently. “What we got to fight for? Two or three hundred billion stars in our galaxy. Plenty room, nie?” He gestured at Adzel, who, well-rehearsed, trotted off to fetch more cognac. When it arrived, he mad a fuss—“Wa-a-agh! Not fit for pouring in burnt-out chemosensors, this, let alone our lady friend what don’t drink a lot and keeps a fine palate. Take it back and bring me another what better be decent! No, don’t toss it out neither! You got scales on your brain like on your carcass? We take this home and show it to the dealer and make him consume it in a most unlikely way!”—although it was a perfectly good bottle which he and the Wodenite would later share in private. The act was part of the effect he was creating. Jove must loose occasional thunders and lightnings.
“Why is your Shenna scared of us?” he asked another time.
Thea bristled. “They are not! Nothing frightens them!” (Yes, they must be Jove and she their worshiper. At least to a first approximation. There were hints that the relationship was actually more subtle, and involved a master-figure which was actually more primitive.) “They were being careful . . . discreet . . . wise . . . to study you b-b-beforehand.”
“So, so, so. Don’t get angry, please. How can I say right things about them when you won’t tell me none?”
“I can’t.” She gulped. Her hands twisted together. “I mustn’t.” She fled to her cabin.
Presently van Rijn followed. He could drift along like smoke when he chose. Her door was shut and massive; but he had worn a button in his ear, hidden by the ringlets, when he embarked. It was a transistorized sound amplifier, patterned after hearing aids from the period before regenerative techniques were developed. He listened to her sobs for a while, neither bashfully nor gloatingly. They confirmed that he had her in psychological retreat. She would not surrender, not in the mere days of travel which remained. But she would give ground, if he advanced with care.
He jollied her, the next watch they met. And at the following supper, he proceeded to get her a little drunk over dessert. Adzel left quietly and spent half an hour at the main control board, adjusting the color and intensity of the saloon lights. They became a romantic glow too gradually for Thea to notice. Van Rijn had openly brought a player and installed it that they might enjoy dinner music. “Tonight’s” program ran through a calculated gamut of pieces like “The Last Spring,” “La, Ci Darem La Mano,” “Isoldes Liebestod,” “Londonderry Air,” “Evenstar Blues.” He did not identify them for her. Poor creature, she was too alienated from her own people for the names to mean anything. But they should have their own influence.
He had no physical designs on her. (Not that he would have minded. She was, if not beautiful, if far less well fill
ed out than he liked, rather attractive—despite her severe white suit—now that she had relaxed. Interest turned her finely boned features vivid and kindled those really beautiful green eyes. When she spoke with a smile, and with no purpose except the pleasure of speaking to a fellow human, her voice grew husky.) Any such attempt would have triggered her defenses. He was trying for a more rarefied, and vital, kind of seduction.
“. . . They raised us,” she said dreamily. “Oh, I know the Earthside jargon. I know it gave us deviant personalities. But what is the norm, honestly, Nicholas? We’re different from other humans, true. But human nature is plastic. I don’t believe you can call us warped, any more than you yourself are because you were brought up in a particular tradition. We are healthy and happy.”
Van Rijn raised one eyebrow.
“We are!” she said louder, sitting erect again. “We’re glad and proud to serve our . . . our saviors.”
“ ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’ ” he murmured.
“What?”
“A line in Old Anglic. You would not recognize. Pronunciation has changed. It means I am very interested. You never told nobody about your background before, the shipwreck and all.”
“Well, I did tell Davy Falkayn . . . when he was with us—” Tears gleamed suddenly on her lashes. She squeezed the lids together, shook her head, and drained her glass. Van Rijn refilled it.
“He’s a sweet young man,” she said fast. “I never wanted to harm him. None of us did. Not our fault he was, was, was sent off to danger. By you! I do hope he’ll be lucky.”
Van Rijn did not pursue the point she had inadvertently verified: that Latimer and her sister had carried word to the Shenna, who would promptly have organized a Beta Crucis expedition of their own. It was a rather obvious point. Instead, he drawled:
“If he was a friend like you say, you must have hurt when you lied to him.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She looked shocked.
“You spun him one synthetic yarn, you.” Van Rijn’s mild tone took the edge off his words. “That radiation accident, and you getting found later, is too big, spiky a coincidence for me to swallow. Also, if the Shenna only wanted to return you home, with a stake, they would not set you up for spies. Also, you is too well trained, too loyal, for being raised by utter aliens from adolescence. You might have been grateful to them for their help, but you would not be their agents against your own race what never harmed you—not unless you was raised from pups. No, they got you sooner in life than you tell. Nie?”
“Well—”
“Don’t get mad.” Van Rijn raised his own glass and contemplated the colors within. “I am simpleminded, good-hearted trying to come at some understandings, so I can figure how we settle this trouble and not have any fights. I don’t ask you should pass out no real secrets from the Shenna. But things like, oh, what they call their home planet—”
“Dathyna,” she whispered.
“Ah. See? That did not hurt you nor them for saying, did it? And makes our talking a lot handier, we don’t need circumlocomotions. Hokay, you was raised from babies, for a purpose, as might be because the Shenna wanted special ambassadors. Why not admit it? How you was raised, what the environment was like, every little friendly datum helps me understand you and your people, Thea.”
“I can’t tell you anything important.”
“I know. Like the kind of sun Dathyna got is maybe too good a clue. But how about the kind of living? Was your childhood happy?”
“Yes. Yes. My earliest memory is . . . Isthayan, one of my masters sons, took me exploring . . . he wanted someone to carry his weapons, even their toddlers have weapons. We went out of the household, into the ruined part of that huge old, old building . . . we found some machinery in a high tower room, it hadn’t rusted much, the sunlight struck through a hole in the roof like white fire, off metal, and I laughed to see it shine . . . We could look out, across the desert, like forever—” Her eyes widened. She laid a hand across her lips. “No. I’m talking far too freely. I’d better say good night.”
“Verweile doch, du bist so schon,” van Rijn said, “what is another old Earth quotation and means stay a while and have some Madeira, my dear. We discuss safe things. For instance, if you babies didn’t come off no colonizer ship, then where?”
The color left her cheeks. “Goodnight!” she gasped, and once again she ran. By now he could have shouted an order to stay and she would have heeded; for the reflex of obedience to that kind of stimulus had become plain to see in her. He refrained, though. Interrogation would only produce hysteria.
Instead, when he and Adzel were alone in the Wodenite’s stateroom—which had been prepared by ripping out the bulkhead between two adjoining ones—he rumbled around a nightcap:
“I got a few information bits from her. Clues to what kind of world and culture we is colliding with. More about the psychologies than the outside facts. But that could be helpful, too.” His moustaches rose with the violence of his grimace. “Because what we face is not just troublesome, it is nasty. Horrible.”
“What have you learned, then?” the other asked calmly.
“Obvious, the Shenna made slaves—no, dogs—out of humans on purpose that they got from babies. Maybe other sophonts, too—but anyways humans.”
“Where did they obtain the infants?”
“I got no proof, but here is a better guess than Beldaniel and her partners maybe thought I could make. Look, we can assume pretty safe the rendezvous planet we is bound for is fairly near Dathyna so they got the advantage of short communications while we is far from home and our nice friends with guns. Right?”
Adzel rubbed his head, a bony sound. “ ‘Near’ is a relative term.
Within a sphere of fifty or a hundred light-years’ radius there are so many stars that we have no reasonable chance of locating the centrum of our opponents before they have mounted whatever operation they intend.”
“Ja, ja, ja. What I mean is, though, somewhere around where we aim at is territory where Shenna been active for a longish while. Hokay? Well, happens I remember, about fifty years back was an attempt for planting a human colony out this way. A little utopian group like was common in those days. Late type G star, but had one not bad planet what they called, uh, ja, Leandra. They wanted to get away from anybody interrupting their paradise. And they was successful. No profit for traveling that far to trade. They had one ship for their own what would visit Ifri or Llynathawr maybe once a year and buy things they found they needed, for money they had along. Finally was a long time with no ship. Somebody got worried and went to see. Leandra stood abandoned. The single village was pretty burnt—had been a forest fire over everywhere for kilometers around—but the ship was gone. Made a big mystery for a while. I heard about it because happened I was traveling by Ifri some years afterward. Of course, it made no splash on Earth or any important planet.”
“Did no one think of piracy?” Adzel asked.
“Oh, probable. But why should pirates sack a tiny place like that? Besides, had been no later attacks. Who ever heard of one-shot pirates? Logical theory was, fire wiped out croplands, warehouses, everything the Leandrans needed to live. They went after help, all in their ship, had troubles in space and never made port. The matter is pretty well forgot now. I don’t believe nobody has bothered with Leandra since. Too many better places closer to home.” Van Rijn scowled at his glass as if it were another enemy. “Tonight I guess different. Could be Shenna work. They could of first landed, like friendly explorers from a world what lately begun space travel. They could learn details and figure what to do. Then they could kidnap everybody and set a fire for covering the evidence.”
“I believe I see the further implications,” Adzel said softly. “Some attempt, perhaps, to domesticate the older captive humans. Presumably a failure, terminated by their murder, because the youngest ones don’t remember natural parents. No doubt many infants died too, or were killed as being unpromising material. Quite
possibly the half-dozen of Serendipity are the sole survivors. It makes me doubt that any nonhumans were similarly victimized. Leandra must have represented a unique opportunity.”
“What it proves is bad enough,” van Rijn said. “I can’t push Beldaniel about her parents. She must feel suspicions, at least, but not dare let herself think about them. Because her whole soul is founded on being a creature of the Shenna. In fact, I got the impression of she being the special property of one among them—like a dog.”
His hand closed around the tumbler with force that would have broken anything less strong than vitryl. “They want to make us the same, maybe?” he snarled. “No, by eternal damn! Liever dood dan slaaf!” He drained the last whiskey. “What means, I’ll see them in Hell first . . . if I got to drag them down behind me!” The tumbler crashed warheadlike on the deck.
XX
The rendezvous site was listed in Technic catalogues. Scanning its standard memory units, the ship’s computer informed van Rijn that this system had been visited once, about a century ago. A perfunctory survey revealed nothing of interest, and no one was recorded as having gone back. (Nothing except seven planets, seven worlds, with their moons and mysteries, life upon three of them, and one species that had begun to chip a few stones into handier shapes, look up at the night sky and gropingly wonder.) There were so uncountably many systems.
“I could have told you that,” Thea said.
“Ha?” Van Rijn turned, planet-ponderous himself, as she entered the command bridge.
Her smile was shy, her attempt at friendliness awkward from lack of practice. “Obviously we couldn’t give you a hint at anything you didn’t already know. We picked a sun arbitrarily, out of deserted ones within what we guessed is a convenient volume of space for the Shenna.”
“Hm-hm-m.” Van Rijn tugged his goatee. “I wouldn’t be an ungentleman, but wasn’t you never scared I might grab you and pump you, I mean for where Dathyna sits?”
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