by E. C. Tubb
“Nadine wasn’t a harlot,” said a man. “I knew and liked her. Gorin shouldn’t have called her that.”
Another said, “What did you mean when you said we are all taking on more than we can handle?”
“It’s time for us to make plans,” said Chagal. “To decide on what to do and how to do it. Where to go and when. We’ve sat here too long as it is.”
“There will be rescue,” said a woman. “Others are following us. We sent them the coordinates of Earth. They will find and rescue us.”
“When?” Dumarest stared at the assembly. “Can any answer? Are you certain they are following? Even if they are why should they search for us? To share the loot?”
“There is no loot.”
“Not here and if they were in a ship with working scanners they would know that. So why should they land? Why should they even look?” Anger hardened his voice. “Damn it! Act what you are! Don’t waste time hoping for rescue! Who the hell cares if we live or die?”
A man said, “We need time to think.”
“About rescue? You’ve had that. Now forget it. Start thinking about survival.” Dumarest paused, searching faces, his own hard, determined. “I’ve been watching the sun. It’s closer to the horizon now than when we landed. Which means winter is closing in. It will grow colder, bleaker, soon we won’t be able to move outside. We’ll freeze in here. If we hope to survive we have to move south. In order to do that we need sleds and active people to load and pull them.” Pausing he added, “I’m giving you until tomorrow morning. Then I’m leaving with whoever wants to accompany me.” To Chagal he said, “It’s time to visit your patients.”
They lay on their beds, men and women, broken, crippled, in pain but still alive. The doctor had done what he could but the medications that would have met his needs had been lost in the fury of the landing. A woman with a broken spine could do little more than move her head and lift her arms. A man could do less than that, his partner having to feed, wash and care for him in every way. She reared to her feet as Dumarest approached.
“Don’t touch him! I won’t have him killed!”
“No one is going to kill anyone,” soothed Chagal. To the man he said, “How are you feeling Chen? A little easier?”
“Just a little. Will it be long before I’m on my feet again?”
“Not too long. It just takes a little more time.”
Time and the magic of antibiotics and genetic compounds which would have healed and repaired and restored his normal mobility. Things they didn’t have. Soothing lies were a poor substitute.
The woman with the broken spine said, “Come closer, doctor. You too, Earl.” Then, in a whisper, added, “Did Tazima meet them? She told me she could hear them and was certain they would come in the night. The Shining Ones,” she said irritably as they made no response. “The Guardians of Earth. They will help us when they get here. Tazima could hear them. She told me so.”
“She heard the wind,” said Chagal.
“No! It was more than that!”
“Just the rustle of snow stirred by the wind,” repeated the doctor. “Ordinary sound. If you listen hard enough and have imagination enough you can hear anything you want to hear. Voices. Children crying, women screaming, angels singing, men cursing, Guardians talking-anything.”
“He’s right,” said Dumarest.
“But he could be wrong.” The woman was insistent. “I believed Tazima when she said she’d heard the Shining Ones. I want to hear them too. Will you take me outside? Please!”
Chagal said, “Tazima is dead.”
“I know. I heard. Sound travels in a place like this. But she could have met them. They could have been kind. If they helped her then they could help me.”
“Are you saying you want to die?”
“I am of the Kaldari. We do not fear death. You are of the Kaldari also, doctor. You should not fear killing. Be truthful, now. Can you cure me? Any of us here? Be honest. Do we have any real hope? If we haven’t then be merciful. Do what needs to be done.”
“You have courage,” said Dumarest. “There is no need for you to go outside. I can do what you ask.”
“I thank you for that. You have more compassion than some I could name.” She glanced at the doctor. “But to ask you to do that would be to ask too much. Just help me. Get me outside where I can hear the voices.” Then, urgently, she added, “Why do you hesitate? Why deny me mercy? Must I call others to witness your shame? Help me, I beg you!”
“We’ll need clothing,” said Dumarest. “Covers to keep you warm. There is no need for you to freeze while you listen to the voices. Covers and something to carry you on. I’ll get them now!”
It was as ifnothinghad changed. The sun still hung in the sky, lower now, but the wind was the same and the undulating expanse of snow coated with the fine, seemingly alive swirl of drifting particles. The dell was as he remembered now graced with the woman on what she intended to be her bier. From the rim he looked back at the elfin grace of the wreck and beyond it to where a mound of ice and snow reared in an oblong hummock. Tazima’s final resting place and close to her would be the captain and the navigator and others who had died in the crash. Nadine among them and he felt an inner pain as he remembered the warm softness of her body as he hugged it in his arms knowing, but not wanting to accept the fact, that she was dead. That never again would they share thoughts and emotions, make plans, make love. That, again, he would be alone.
“She is setting an example,” said Chagal. He pointed to where the woman had eased the clothing from her head and shoulders to expose her body to the cold. “Demonstrating the courage of the Kaldari. I hope others will learn from it.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then I must. You are right, Earl. As was she. It is wrong to withhold the mercy of a painless end. Perhaps I should begin at once.”
“But not with her.” Dumarest stared down into the dell. “She has too much courage and has earned respect. If she wants I will do what must be done-but I’ll not leave her to die alone.”
She turned her head as he approached and weakly tried to prevent him from replacing the covers. She smiled as he insisted, smiled again as he chafed her cheeks and let his fingers trail over her throat so as to locate the carotid arteries which carried the blood to her brain. Clamped they would cease to function and, within seconds, she would lose consciousness. In less than a minute she would be dead.
“Not that, Earl. You promise?”
“It would be kind.”
“As you are. But I have made my own plan. I want to die as Tazima died. I want to hear the voices of the Shining Ones.” She moved a little, one hand rising to point to the far edge of the dell. “Can you hear them? Listen! Can you?”
A soft hum of wind and with it a subdued rustling. A faint rasping as if a horde of insects were crawling over a resonant surface. A blur of ‘white sound’ that he had heard on another world in another time. And then-
“You heard!” The woman sobbed with frustration as she fought her injuries and tried to rear upright, her weight sagging against his arms. “Earl! You heard! You must have heard!”
“Sound,” he agreed. “A rustling-”
“The Shining Ones!” She was adamant. “They are here! They have come for me! For all of us, perhaps. We are saved! Saved!”
A woman delirious with hope, mastered by her delusion, dying, hearing what she needed to hear. To do other than bolster her conviction would be cruel.
“Earl?”
“I hear them!”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not! I can hear them!” He drew in his breath, concentrating, listening, hearing the soft medley of sounds change, alter in a subtle fashion, to break into segments that gained their own identity. To form words, signals, shouts, ululations.
The Shining Ones had arrived.
They came like wisps of smoke, white against white, slithering over the snow, melting, vanishing to appear again, their movements heralded
by squeaks, whistles, piping notes, trills. A host dressed in perfect camouflage, shining with a faint nacreous shimmer, coming closer, closer.
The stuff of legend made real.
“Earl!” The woman stirred in his arms, struggling to cling to him as he set her down. Rising he faced the drifting shapes, tensing as they drew near, poised for combat, ready to strike, to twist, move, dodge. “No, Earl, don’t! They mean us no harm!”
A conviction he couldn’t share. These were no ineffable God-like beings glowing with a pure, inner grace, coming to deliver help and healing, safety, comfort and the endless pleasures of legendary Earth, but creatures wearing reflective garments and disguised weapons. Instruments that coughed and sent a swirling nacreous vapor towards himself and the woman. He heard her sigh, and felt the breath clog in his lungs. A numbing gas that froze his mobility and sent him to sprawl in the snow where time ceased to have meaning and order turned into nightmare.
CHAPTER TWO
He fought a dragon in a frigid sea of ebon chill, feeling the crushing grip of savage jaws, the rend of talons, the pain of wounds and the growing numbness of physical dissolution. Threshing he struggled for awareness, for warmth and light and conscious life. The darkness paled into a nacreous sheen. The crushing embrace of the dragon eased and reality replaced the nightmare.
One born of associated memories. There was no dragon, no ebon sea of frozen chill, no spouting wounds. They were distortions created from buried fears and hard experience of travelling in the containers designed to carry livestock, doped, frozen and ninety per cent dead. The caskets which offered cheap transport to those men and women willing to risk the fifteen per cent death rate. As yet he had been lucky. Now it seemed his luck had come to an end.
Lying supine, eyes closed, he recalled the onrush of the silvered shapes, the weapons, the gas, the overwhelming attack. Things belonging to the past now, fragments of dreams as had been the frigid sea and the dragon. But they had never existed outside his own mind. The beings that had taken him captive had been real.
He stirred and stretched and touched the surface on which he rested. A warm, soft texture taut over a yielding interior. The air, too was warm, scented with the delicate odor of a summer’s day and small sounds graced the emptiness which he sensed around him. A chamber, he decided. One holding a soft couch. A warm place that could be a haven or a jail.
Opening his eyes he stared at magic.
The chamber was vast, the vaulted roof soaring high, the walls distant, the illumination glowing from the floor and walls and the arching roof as if sunlight had been collected and stored and gently released to warm and gild all within view. Water gushed gently from a fountain and glimmering shapes rested on the surface of the surrounding pool. Among them a girl of gold and alabaster glided with the smooth agility of a fish.
Dumarest rose. He was naked beneath the gossamer silkiness of the fabric that had covered him and he wound it around his waist. The girl smiled as he approached lifting an arm in greeting
“Earl Dumarest. Welcome to Shandaha. Would you care to join me?”
“I would rather have some answers.”
“Of course. You are curious. That is to be expected. But there is time. There is always time. Too much time if the truth be admitted.” She swam to the edge of the pool and rose from the water to stand, a symphony of feminine perfection, droplets like pearls adorning her skin. “If you are interested you may call me Nada.”
“I am very interested.” Dumarest took a step towards her. “In you and this place and what has happened. How long have I been here? Am I alone? Was it your men who captured me? Those wearing white. What some poor, dying woman thought of as the Shining Ones?”
“So many questions, Earl. I promise you all will be answered but not now. You have just woken, you have yet to become accustomed to Shandaha, there are things to explain and ideas to exchange. You will accommodate me?”
“Have I a choice?”
“No, Earl. You have no choice. Here, in this place, the will of Shandaha is paramount.”
Not a haven then, but a jail. One luxurious beyond imagination but still a place where he was to be held and dominated and forced to live to the dictates of another’s whim. A prisoner of some unknown war. A captive as if he had been held by a raiding band. As a slave? For ransom?
He closed the space between them and gripped her upper arms and, thrusting his face close to her own, snarled his anger.
“I’ve had enough of this! Now take me to the one who owns this place! Move, damn you!”
“Don’t be a fool, Earl!”
“Just do it! Do it before I break your damned neck!” His hands lifted, changed their grip, fingers resting on soft tissue, firm bone. “Your choice, Nada. You have five seconds to make it. Shall I count?”
“Four,” she said calmly retaining her smile. “Three. Two. One-goodbye, Earl.”
And, suddenly, she was gone.
He stared before him, at his hands still raised before him, the fingers curved to mirror the shape of a neck that was no longer there. Perhaps had never been there. Like the imagined dragon of his dream the girl could have been a trick of his mind, a vision conjured from scents and colors and wistful longing. Nada-Nadine. Shandaha-Shemmar. Women he had known and loved and lost. Was he hoping to find them again? Here, on Earth, the planet of legend, all things were deemed possible. Or perhaps he was still lying in the snow where he had fallen. Freezing, lost in delirium, dying of hypothermia as Tazima had died.
“No. Earl, you are not dying.”
A man, tall, strong, graceful, with a deep musical voice. One with a thick mane of neatly dressed hair and an elaborately patterned beard. Hair, beard, eyes all of the same ebon hue as his skin and the clothing he wore. A creature of jet adorned with the glitter of gems. They flashed as he lifted a hand in warning as Dumarest strode towards him.
“Come no further!” Then, smiling, he added, “I must apologize. It seems my initial greeting was not to your liking. The girl, perhaps? Some men resent their air of superiority induced by the biological reactions of their opposite gender. Most lack that fine delicacy of feeling so essential to the establishment of a congenial harmony. I had hoped she would soothe your fear. I misjudged your reaction. It was a mistake to have used her as I did. Can any but a man truly understand another man? Your comments, Earl?”
“I think you talk too much and say too little.”
“A man of action as I had determined. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Shandaha.”
“My jailer.”
“Never that, Earl. You are my most welcome and treasured guest.”
“You own this place?”
“This place, the surrounding area, all that is above the ground and beneath it.”
“And, if I wish, I can leave at any time?”
“Of course. But remember the hostility of the terrain outside. Without provisions, clothing, maps, transport I’m afraid you wouldn’t get very far. But the choice is yours.” He smiled as Dumarest remained silent. “I meant it when I said you were a treasured guest. I could also add that you owe me a small debt of gratitude. I saved your life. In return all I ask is that you entertain me for a while. Shall we begin by sharing wine?”
There were preliminaries, surprises, meandering that Dumarest ignored. The couch on which he had woken had vanished to be replaced by a deep sofa faced by a table bearing familiar items. His clothing, the grey plastic refurbished as new. Pants, knee-high boots, the tunic with the high collar and long sleeves falling to the middle of his thighs. His knife; nine inches of honed and polished steel, curved and balanced, razor-edged and with a needle point. He fingered it, letting his fingers check the band of weld beneath the pommel, satisfied with what he found. As he was when he checked the buckle of his belt.
“You are pleased?”
Pleased and puzzled, he had seen no sign of attendants or activity, yet the furniture had been changed and his clothing set in position.
Shandaha said, “
I asked you a question, Earl. Are you pleased?”
“Very pleased.” Dumarest hesitated then added, “My lord.”
“You are courteous, or perhaps merely cautious, but there is no need for rigid formality between us. If you wish to dress do it now. I have arranged refreshment to be served in a smaller chamber. You will find it to your right as you pass through the end door. Join me when you are ready. There is no need to hurry.”
Time gained in which to think and assess what he had learned. A man of power living in an oddly deserted edifice and what had happened to the girl? If he threatened Shandaha would he vanish as Nada had done? Had the offer of freedom been as genuine as it seemed? Yet, without help and supplies escape was impossible. And what had happened to the others?
The Kaldari and the Shining Ones or the creatures aping them. Men he had thought, wearing camouflage and bearing arms. A dozen of them? A score? More? Had they been men? He heard again the chirps, whistles, howls, assorted noises as they had exchanged signals. Felt again the numbing impact of the gas.
He tried to remember what had followed but could only recall scattered fragments of dreams.
Perhaps Shandaha would provide the answers.
He sat in a chamber shaped and glowing like the interior of a gem. Facets reflected soft shimmers, gleams, furnishings, the goblets on the table, the decanters of wine.
Thin plumes of rising smoke held tantalizing odors and gleaming salvers held a profusion of cunningly fashioned delicacies. Nada sat beside him, a vision in white adorned with gold. Next to her another woman, her flesh richly golden, stared with undisguised interest as Dumarest approached the table. Her eyes were darkly enigmatic. Her gown the color of ripened wheat.
“Delise,” introduced Shandaha. “This is Earl Dumarest,” he said to her then, as a man walked into the room, “I think you all know Doctor Chagal.”
He had changed. His face had smoothed to a younger design now clear of strain and fatigue. He walked tall and stood straight but something had gone from his eyes as if a dark secret had been revealed or his innermost privacy had been violated. A strange detachment as if he had looked into the depths of his being and found no reason for respect, pride, hope or virtue.
