Cascade Point

by Timothy Zahn

  Wonky had been listening silently—probably, Javier thought, not really understanding. But now he spoke up. "Wait a minute. Mr. Schultz and you both said that most of the things you see don't ever happen. So what's this bridge thing you're talking about?"

  Javier didn't turn around. He didn't want Wonky to see his face. "Mr. Schultz is wrong, like the rest of us have been. Maybe we didn't want to believe it... but it's the only way this can possibly make sense. You see, just because a vision isn't fulfilled nearby doesn't mean it isn't fulfilled somewhere. We just never—I mean, there are just too many worlds out there that we don't hear much from." He bit his lip. "As I was getting dressed at the hospital I heard a report that had come in from Centauri, saying somebody important had been killed in an aircar crash. They gave enough details that... well, I saw the crash, Wonky, saw it almost a week ago. But if that VIP hadn't been in it, I'd still think the vision hadn't come true."

  He turned back to face Wonky. "No, Wonky. Every one of those damnable visions must come true. Maybe some of them haven't, yet. But they will."

  He stopped; not necessarily waiting for a response, but simply out of words. "I don't get it all," Wonky said slowly. "But I guess you know what you're talking about. You're a lot smarter than me, anyway." He hesitated, then stood up and held out his hand. "Good luck."

  A few minutes later Javier was back on the street, trudging toward the tube with his travelbags. He walked mechanically, only dimly aware of his surroundings, his mind numbed by emotional fatigue. On the way he dropped his letter in a mailbox; Dr. Rayburn would receive it in a day or two.

  Wonky hadn't understood, of course. How could he? To know someone had died each time you were awarded the dubious privilege of watching someone else die—it was too far out of his experience. And he probably wouldn't have been able to live with the idea if he had understood it.

  For Javier, though, there was no escape, either from the knowledge or its consequences. He could leave the city now, but he knew he'd have to return. Even if Dr. Rayburn believed him, experiments and massive data searches would have to be performed to prove it to the rest of humanity. And that would be only the beginning, because the ultimate goal was still to control the trances and their side effects. More experiments would have to be done, experiments like the ones that had nearly destroyed Melynn Uhland and her friends. It would require more volunteer Cassandras... and Javier knew who the first of those would have to be.

  Himself.

  The thought of it was terrifying—his hospital experience multiplied by a hundred. But he had no choice. The truth had to be told; the Cassandras had to learn, at whatever cost, how to use their curse.

  Because Earth was going to need all the resources she could muster. Glancing involuntarily at the sky, Javier shivered as he remembered that terrible hospital vision. Somewhere out there, sometime in the future, a war fleet powerful enough and vicious enough to burn off an entire planet was going to win a great victory. If the race that owned that fleet was expanding their own empire into space, they would someday reach the Colonia... perhaps very soon.

  And if the cost of developing the Cassandra ability into a weapon against that threat was enhanced public hatred and the loss of a few lives, then so be it. It would, Javier knew, be worth such a price.

  Even if one of those lives was his own.

  Afterword

  "The Cassandra" was one of those stories that I simply couldn't let go of, no matter how many rejection slips it collected. From 1979 to 1983 it underwent two complete rewrites and quite a bit of incidental fiddling on top of that. Eventually, the persistence paid off.

  Why I pushed the thing so hard is a little more difficult to explain. Certainly it's not a particularly upbeat story (and if you've made it this far you've surely noticed my fondness for upbeat stories); in fact, it almost qualifies as a tragedy. And, unlike the case in many of my stories, I would emphatically NOT want to be in the protagonists shoes.

  All I can suggest is that it was the story's underlying philosophy that had a grip on me. In an era where mankind too often considers itself to be a meaningless accident of nature, perhaps I needed to remind people that that wasn't necessarily so. We could just as easily be important—even vital—to the universe at large; and until and unless that's proven wrong, I intend to keep on believing it. You can't very well care about people, after all, unless you feel those people are ultimately worth the effort.

  I wax overly philosophical. Let's get to the next story.

  Dragon Pax

  Scholars and doomsayers had been predicting the Great War for almost a century beforehand, and when it finally came it was brief and furious, erupting like a fusion bomb among the sixty worlds of the Empire. The more strategic planets were fought over by as many as seven separate factions, and were often reduced to rubble in the process. Other planets—the poor or unimportant ones—were largely neglected by the starfleets, and were left to their individual fates as space travel all but disappeared.

  Power, not the destruction of civilization, was the goal of those in the struggle; but, too late, they realized they were in over their heads. For although each faction had carefully calculated its strength and chances before making its move, none had anticipated the wild-card effect of the Dragonmasters who had suddenly appeared from nowhere onto the scene. These twelve men—virtual unknowns, all of them—had no warships and only minimal troops. But the powerful nightmare shapes that were their dragons evened the odds tremendously. Huge, virtually indestructible, appearing and vanishing on command, the dragons wreaked havoc on any ground forces that opposed their masters, crushing soldier and armored treader with equal ease.

  Their size and sheer impossibility inspired almost universal fear and hatred, but it also prompted new alliances and betrayals among the warring factions as each tried to guess who the ultimate victor would be. But the forces unleashed were too destructive and the scramble for power quickly became a fight for survival. For many, even this goal was not to be achieved.

  One of the few planets untouched by the war was Troas, and this was due more to luck than good planning. Rosette, the western end of Troas's single continental land mass, was the summer home of the Emperor and a resort area for members of the Imperial Court. Had anybody of importance been there when hostilities broke out, Rosette would undoubtedly have been burned to a cinder. But the Emperor was back on the capital, and the relative handful of Imperial troops were quickly withdrawn from Rosette for more important duties.

  Royd Varian was three years old when the war began; he was five when Dragonmaster Harun Grail arrived at Troas and declared himself absolute dictator. At his age, Royd knew nothing of the politics of the situation. All he knew was that, later that year, his father was taken away to fight against the Easterlings from the other end of the continent, a war from which he never returned. Lying awake night after night, tears streaming down his cheeks, Royd listened to his mothers muffled sobs in the next room and resolved that, someday, he would kill the Dragonmaster.

  His mother died barely a year later, and Royd—with no close relatives at hand—spent the rest of his childhood in a state-run orphanage. Though with the passage of the years the fire of his hatred waned, his resolve remained firm, and as he grew up all aspects of his life began to shape themselves toward his goal.

  He studied history and political science in school, the better to know his enemy. On his own he learned military science and the use of weapons, and he worked at building up his physical strength and stamina. He sent letters asking about the chances of working on the household staff at either of the Dragonmaster's two estates, and landed a temporary job as mason's assistant; at about the same time he made his first delicate contacts with the outlawed Rosette Freedom Party. He rose through the ranks upon both sides, his single-minded determination driving him over all obstacles.

  And finally, at age twenty-four, he considered himself ready.

  —

  Royd hefted the little four-shot dart gun d
oubtfully. "I don't know, Phelan," he told the tower of muscle standing beside him in the backroom darkness. "This doesn't pack much punch."

  Phelan Hapspur shrugged. "You want something with punch or something you can hide? We've only got a limited arsenal, you know."

  "Yeah." Royd frowned, then stuck the gun into his waistband, pulling his tunic down to conceal it. "All right, I guess this'll have to do. I'd better go now; the loading should be finished out front."

  "Good luck." Phelan slapped him on the shoulder. "We'll be watching for your signal."

  Royd nodded and slipped out the door into the meat market's main room. A burly man in a bloodstained apron came up and handed him a piece of paper. "All loaded, sir," he said. "If you'll sign here..." Royd glanced through the store window in time to see one of the butchers boys closing the doors on the cold-truck outside. As one of the food buyers for the Dragonmaster's city palace it was Royd's responsibility to personally check all the meat as it was loaded; but he knew Temmic could be trusted. Taking the paper, he glanced over it and then signed.

  "Thanks, Mr. Varian," Temmic nodded. "See you next week?"

  Probably not. "Sure, Temmic. So long."

  Stepping out into the afternoon sunlight, Royd paused for a moment to listen. Above the normal city sounds around him, he could just make out the low roar of many vehicles. Grail's convoy, returning from the Dragonmaster's country retreat as scheduled. Royd squinted off in the proper direction—sometimes Grail had the smaller of his two dragons lead his convoys—but nothing could be seen. No matter; the Dragonmaster would soon be home.

  Climbing into the cab of his cold-truck, Royd started the engine and headed toward the palace, threading through the mixture of pedestrian, animal, and motorized vehicle traffic with practiced skill. Within a few minutes he was at the outer wall of the palace grounds. The gate guard passed him through with a nod, and he drove another two kilometers through sculped lawns and gardens to the huge building itself.

  Entering one of the service bays, he helped the kitchen workers unload the cold-truck and then chatted with one of the cooks for a few minutes before returning to his bed in the number two servants' dorm. He was now off duty until later in the evening. Then, by prearrangement with one of the other servants, he would help clear the dishes from Civil Affairs Director Marwitz's customary late- evening supper... a task that would bring him to within fifty meters of Grail's own office suite.

  Lying back on his bunk, Royd closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Curiously, despite the nervous tension slowly building within him, he felt no elation or pride in what he was about to do. Assassinating Dragonmaster Grail had long ago ceased to be just a matter of personal vengeance. It was something he had to do for the people of Rosette, for while Grail and his dragons lived there could be no freedom. And if it cost Royd his life—as it probably would—it was still a fair bargain.

  At seven-thirty he got up, changed clothes—making sure no one saw the gun—and reported to the majordomo for work. With three other boys he was sent up to the palace's fifth floor.

  Civil Affairs Director Clars Marwitz was a short, dark-eyed man with a perpetual scowl and an acrid personality. Royd had disliked him from the first, and that opinion had been going steadily downhill ever since. His power over the lives of Rosette's people was absolute, and he used it ruthlessly to crush any dissention that he found. Next to Grail himself, Marwitz was the most hated man in Rosette. Still, Royd managed to give him a vacuous servant's smile as they collected the Director's dishes.

  Back in the hall, Royd took a deep breath. This was it. "You go on ahead," he told the other three servants. "I'm going to check down the hall and see if there's anything to pick up in the Dragonmaster's office."

  Picking up an empty tray, he turned and started walking, not giving them the chance to warn him that no one could enter Grail's suite without an invitation. The hall was very long, and Royd's throat was very dry by the time he reached the Dragonmaster's door.

  Two men wearing hard faces and the gray uniforms of Grail's personal bodyguard flanked the portal; their laser-sighted automatic rifles pointed a centimeter or so to either side of him. "That's close enough, kid," one of them growled as Royd came to within three meters. "State your business."

  "Hey, I'm just a waiter," Royd said, staring with suitable nervousness at the guns. He'd been holding the tray vertically in front of him, concealing the dart pistol clutched in his right hand; now he lifted the tray to a waist-high horizontal position, bringing the gun invisibly to bear on one of the guards. "I just came by to pick up any dishes that Dragonmaster Grail might need washed."

  "Anyone send for you? No? Then scram."

  "Yes, sir." Gently, Royd squeezed the trigger, turning the tray and gun slightly. The drug was supposed to act almost instantly to paralyze the nervous system—if the darts penetrated the guards' clothing, that is. He fired again. "I just thought—"

  Without a word, the first man crumpled to the ground. The other wasted his last second gaping in bewilderment, then he too collapsed.

  Royd dropped the tray and snatched up one of the rifles, shoving his dart gun back in his waistband. He tried the door; it was locked. Stepping back, he raised the rifle and gave the lock a full second on automatic. The wood and metal shattered, and a single kick sent it swinging inward. Royd charged in as the hall behind him filled up with the raucous clang of alarm bells.

  The room he had entered was an anteroom of sorts, with three other doors heading inward from it. A saucer-eyed woman sat frozen at a desk by one of the doors, her fingers still poised over her scriber. Keeping his gun pointed toward the doors, Royd snapped, "Where is he?"

  She might have been carved from stone. Cursing under his breath, Royd studied the doors. Barely visible under the leftmost was a thin line of light. He strode to it, wrenched it open, and stepped in, rifle at the ready.

  Sitting at a desk in the center of a luxuriously furnished office, his eyebrows raised quizzically, was Dragonmaster Harun Grail. Royd raised his rifle. "Don't move, Grail."

  The Dragonmaster's gaze never faltered. "You've got exactly one second to put that gun down before I call out my dragon," he said with icy calmness.

  "Don't waste your breath on bluffs; I know better. Neither of your dragons is small enough to fit in a room this size. You're all alone now."

  "All right." Grail's tone hadn't changed. "What do you want?"

  "Your life."

  "Why?"

  He was stalling for time, Royd knew; waiting for reinforcements to arrive. "Ask the devil," he retorted.

  "You can't escape," Grail pointed out. "Soldiers are on their way right now."

  "That doesn't matter. What matters is that Rosette will be free again once you're dead."

  "You're a fool if you believe that."

  Royd opened his mouth to reply, but just then he heard the sound of running feet out in the hall. He aimed the rifle—

  And with a miniature thunderclap of displaced air a five-meter-long black creature appeared, its serpentine neck arching high over Grail's desk, its wings spread in defense of its master. Fiery red eyes glared balefully at Royd; taloned paws rose against him. Reflexively, Royd pulled the trigger; for all their effect, the steel-jacketed slugs might have been confetti. At least two of the ricochets came close enough to hear.

  "You see," Grail's voice came from behind the outstretched wings as the echoes died away, "I have three dragons, not two."

  "Damn," Royd breathed—and just then a half-dozen soldiers stormed through the door behind him.

  Wrenching his gaze from the dragon, he spun around, rifle ready. But these weren't Grail's professional bullies; they were just common soldiers, many of them draftees—the sort of people whom he was trying to free. Besides, killing them wouldn't buy him more than a few minutes at most. Taking his finger off the trigger, he lowered the weapon and prepared to die.

  "Don't kill him!" Grail's voice snapped from behind him. Royd half-turned, a bitter curse rea
dy for delivery... and then the soldiers were swarming over him. Something wet and aromatic hit his face and the world went black. —

  He awoke slowly, by degrees, as if his head had gone on a long journey and had to be coaxed back. Something was pressing against his back; only slowly did he realize he was lying face-up on a cot of some sort. With a supreme act of will, he managed to force his eyes open.

  "How do you feel?" a gruff voice behind him asked.

  "All—all right." Gritting his teeth, Royd sat up, fighting paroxysms of dizziness and nausea. Carefully, he turned around.

  Dragonmaster Grail was sitting on a chair, watching him.

  Royd gazed back, wondering briefly if this was a dream. "What are you doing here?" he croaked, his throat strangely dry.

  "I want to talk with you."

  Frowning, Royd looked around him. The room he was in, though small and plain, was clean and airy. The two chairs looked comfortable; the cot he was sitting on was soft and had clean sheets and blankets. Whatever this was, it was no ordinary cell.

  Grail interpreted Royd's inspection correctly. "No, you're not in my dungeon. This is a sort of guest room I've had set up for you."

  "Why bother? You're going to shoot me anyway. Or do you want me in good shape for the torture?"

  "There will be no torture, and perhaps no shooting either. Tell me, why did you try to kill me?"

  "That again? What difference does it make?"

  "It matters a great deal to me." Grail's voice was low, but strangely intense.