by E. C. Tubb
The curved sheets of crystal were translucent, the view reduced to that of a nacreous blur which hid what lay outside.
If anything lay outside other than the hint of lush vegetation and warmth. Resting his palm against the crystal Dumarest felt no change of temperature. He searched for a door and found only a single panel leading to unfamiliar regions.
Watching him Chagal said, “If you are hoping to find another way out there isn’t one. Only that door. Delise came through it.”
“Did you?”
“I guess I must have done but I can’t remember. Can you?”
“I followed instructions,” said Dumarest. “Turned left when leaving Shandaha, turned right at a column tinted in the hues of the spectrum, turned-” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. “The route has probably changed by now. Perhaps it was never there.”
“Hypnotism,” said Chagal. “Is that what you think? That we were both hypnotized, conditioned to believe what we’ve been told. That, on a cue, you regress to relive your early life? As I did?”
“Yes.”
“It’s possible,” the doctor admitted. “But why do you think it happened? And why do you think we are in a prison?”
“Logic.”
“Just that?”
“Add experience,” said Dumarest dryly. “But let’s take logic first. How many people are resident in Shandaha’s domain? All we’ve seen are three; Nada, Delise and our host himself. Who maintains the place? Where are the servants? The cooks and guards and suppliers of food and wine? There has to be machinery so where are the maintenance engineers? Those who do the work. And where are those things which came for us. Those who, according to you, slaughtered the Kaldari? Did you actually see it happen?”
“No,” admitted Chagal. “I was told, but I think I heard it or what could have been it. Shots and screams and the smell and sound of burning.”
“Before you went down under the vapor?”
“I don’t know.”
“There is too much we don’t know. Too much that doesn’t make any real sense. That’s why I think we must be in a prison. Think of a cell,” Dumarest urged. “A box housed in a larger building. We see a couple of guards-Nada and Delise. The warden-Shandaha. In a prison as we know it that’s all we might be able to see. Especially if we were in confinement. Kept secluded while being interrogated.”
Chagal shook his head and reached for a flagon of wine.
He poured a stream of ruby fluid into a goblet and sipped then swallowed as if to wash away an unpleasant taste.
Dumarest said, “You find it hard to believe?”
“I think you could be reading into it more than there is to see. Shandaha could just be amusing himself. Joining with us to relive incidents from our past as he explained. Bored, he wants to expand his field of knowledge. I can’t see how you can think of it as interrogation.”
“Maybe we haven’t had the same experiences. With you did he always go through an initial ritual.”
“The sparkling liquid, the machine, the electrodes?” Chagal nodded. “Yes. To begin with. Then it just seemed to happen.”
“One second normal, the next up to your armpits in blood as you operated on some poor devil. Listening to his screams. Fighting to hold him down. Emergency field operations after a battle or during one. You rode with the Kaldari and it would have been a part of your duties. But did Shandaha ever question you as to your beliefs? Talk about God?”
“No.”
“Is he still riding your memories?”
Chagal shook his head. “No, Earl, not that I know of. Anyway, why should he? He’s taken all he wants. There’s nothing more he could gain.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain.” Dumarest touched the chessboard. “I don’t think you played a harmless game with Delise. I think you unknowingly supplied information of a kind. That you were being interrogated. It’s an art in a way and I think our host is very good at it. I also think he has made it into a game. He wants to find out what he wants to know without betraying what it is.”
“That’s crazy! Why doesn’t he just ask?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, if he has to, he will, but I don’t want to be around when he runs out of patience.”
Dumarest selected a flagon from the table. It was made of crystal ornamented with writhing images, filled with wine and heavy to his hand. He ripped the cover from a cushion and tipped cakes and other viands into the sac then tied the neck to secure the bundle. “Coming?”
“Where?”
“Through that door. I want to find out the size of our cell.”
“And the flagon and food?” Chagal answered his own question. “Emergency rations and something to take care of anyone who might want to stop us.” He followed Dumarest’s example. “Let’s go.”
The door was narrow giving on to a short, curving passage blurred with a dull ruby glow. The roof was low, the walls bare, the floor a pattern of oddly shaped tiles. A strange place that Dumarest couldn’t remember ever having seen before. He paused at the end facing another door. One closed and unyielding. Struck it yielded a hollow sound.
“What now?” said Chagal.
“We get through it.”
Dumarest set aside the flagon and bundle, the knife whispering from his boot as he knelt to examine the edges of the door.
“Did you come through this?”
“I can’t remember, but I must have done. How else would I have got to the room back there?”
A different way, a different portal. Chagal should have recognized that but Dumarest didn’t bother to explain. Instead he thrust the blade of his knife into the gap he had discovered, gripped the hilt and, with a surge of power from back and shoulders, lifted the steel to halt at an obstruction, to fight it, to feel it yield. The door swung open to the impact of his boot.
Chagal sucked in his breath as he saw what lay beyond.
Nothing. A void of darkness that was more than an absence of light. A region in which all illumination was sucked and extinguished as all matter was destroyed in a black hole.
One that radiated a vibrant warning. A place not to be touched, entered into, examined, investigated. The ultimate taboo.
“Earl!” Dumarest felt the tug at his belt. “Earl, step back! Step back!”
Away from the insidious temptation of the unknown. The subtle and sometimes lethal attraction felt when looking down from the edge of a cliff, the rim of a waterfall.
A danger he recognized and he yielded to the tug at his belt. As he moved back the door swung shut to be as it had been before.
“God!” The doctor looked ill. “What the hell was that?”
“A dead end.”
Dumarest turned and began to retrace his steps down the passage. Before him the door leading to the conservatory grew nearer, larger. Beyond the chamber seemed unchanged.
Chagal, shaken by what had happened, reached for an open flagon and gulped directly from the bottle.
“That was close,” he said. “Too damned close.”
Dumarest ignored the doctor. He walked to the far end of the conservatory and narrowed his eyes hoping to penetrate the nacreous glow that illuminated whatever lay beyond the crystal. His skin prickled with familiar warnings of danger. Did the darkness they had seen extend to beyond the conservatory? Had he stepped into it what would have happened? Chagal had prevented that. He had also claimed the narrow door was the only way into the chamber but was that what he had been led to believe? Had Delise merely joined him to play a game? Had she known what was to come? Arranged for it to happen?
How to escape the trap?
A whirl of thoughts and speculation that spun at his mind and corroded his normal objectivity. Indecision was a danger as was strong emotion and now he was being affected by both. Shandaha’s work?
“No! Earl, for God’s sake! No!”
Dumarest heard Chagal’s cry as he stepped back from the shimmering crystal, the heavy weight of the flagon rising in his hand. It left his grip in a flo
wing arc, bursting as it met the pane, shards flying, wine spattering, the glowing barrier shattering, revealing darkness.
An ebon cloud that engulfed him and sent him whirling through space and time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was as if he had been instantly transported to a place of stygian darkness assailed by forces beyond his experience and understanding. A place so alien that his mind and body could sense nothing which could be interpreted as familiar. He seemed to be floating, drifting-wild speculation but he could sense no point of material contact on his body and the only association he could make was when he had drifted in the void.
But then he could see; now he was blind. Blind and deaf and helpless as a new-born child thrust from the comfort of the womb into a realm of fear and terror, needing to learn the basics of living, to breath, to move, to communicate. Touching, tasting, feeling, learning to avoid pain, to gain mobility, to master the mysteries of a new environment.
As he needed to master the mounting terror of being trapped in an alien space.
Dumarest moved, spreading his arms, his legs, twisting his head so as to gain control of his body. As his limbs responded to his direction he concentrated on his senses. His skin prickled as if covered with minute insects, his muscles bunching as he fought the irritation. His ears felt as if blocked by wax. His eyes as if coated with an opaque film. His thoughts vague, distracted, floundering without discipline in the unknown.
He concentrated, focusing his thoughts, isolating doubt and negative images. The fact that he was less than a mote of pollen swept by hurricanes over endless jungles. A scrap of plankton immersed in an infinite ocean. He was a man, a human, a sentient being. A creature capable of logic and extrapolation. One whose ancestors had crawled from the mud to conquer the stars.
The stars!
He concentrated on the stars.
The sun was a star and illuminated the Earth. If it was day he should be able to see it. If night then other stars would illuminate the darkness. Why couldn’t he see them?
Dumarest lifted his hands, fumbling at his face, carefully touching his eyes. They seemed undamaged, uncovered, the lids responding as they should, but the darkness remained unbroken. His ears also seemed not to have received any form of injury. Anger and fear strengthened his resolve. If there was light he should be able to see it. If noise to hear it. He was mobile, free to move, yet when he tried he made no progress. His anger increased, died as he forced himself to be calm. Action without direction was wasted effort. It was better to rest than to struggle. To let his mind take command, his brain which seemed, like his skin, to be affected by an insect-like irritation.
Then, slowly, as his senses responded, things changed.
Light came into being, the glow of distant stars, flashes of colour in jewelled brilliance winking and changing in endless confusion. He could see and, together with the light came sound. It came with the touch of air against his cheek, the gentle impact of a soft breeze which carried a susurration of voices, soft whispers and a medley of noises all dim and muted as if a crowd demanded his attention from all sides.
But the interpretations were at fault. His cortex was striving to gain familiarity but could only relay what it knew. There were no stars-stars did not flash and burn and sparkle. The lights he saw must come from another source. Something electrical, perhaps, such as lightning from a storm. But that was a guess, as was the interpretation of the sounds. There could be no whispers, no music, no noise from an invisible crowd. There had to be another explanation. He was given no time to find it.
Abruptly, within his skull, pain seared his brain with numbing impact. A series of small explosions of agony as if cells were bursting in wild progression. Pain echoed by the twitching of his muscles, the jerking of his nerves. A sea of torment which threatened to last too long.
Dumarest fought against it, striving to remain rational, conscious of the mistakes he had made about the lights and the sounds. All were the result of his desperate mental need to find some kind of familiarity with the situation.
Familiarity with what?
A place. A void. A nothingness. A contradiction in itself. Why build such a thing? For what purpose? Or did it exist at all? What if it was an invention of his own mind? A defence against an unacceptable reality?
Too many questions. Too few answers. Too much pain which exploded within his skull to send him into oblivion.
The words were shimmering birds drifting through an azure sky. Tiny motes of communication which held the impact of drills.
“Darling! Please, Earl. Please, my dearest! Wake up! Wake up. Talk to me!”
Nada’s voice, husky with strain, tense with desperation.
Dumarest listened to it, not responding, struggling to recall vague memories, fragments of oddity which could have been nothing but the fruit of dreams but which could also be the clue to what had happened. The fragments dispersed, driven away by Nada’s pleading, the irritation born of the touch of her arms.
He stirred and said, “How long?”
“What?” Gladness replaced the desperation. “Earl, my darling, you are alive! I’ve been so worried. You’ve been so still. So cold.”
He said, again. “How long?” Then, as she made no reply, “It’s important to me that I know. Please concentrate. How long was I in that place?”
She didn’t know or couldn’t understand. He read it in her face as he opened his eyes and sat upright on the couch beneath him.
“Earl-”
She fell silent as he lifted a hand to rest his fingers lightly across her lips. They, like the couch, the air, the touch of her flesh as she gripped his wrist, were warm and comforting.
Gently he said, “I broke a crystal wall and something drew me through the opening into a strange place, an area of some kind where it was dark and more than unusual. Do you know how long I was in there?” He lowered his hand as she shook her head. “Tell me what you do know.”
It was little enough. Shandaha had required his presence and had ordered Nada to bear the summons. She had found Chagal almost paralysed with fear and had sounded the alarm. Dumarest had been found and she had taken care of him.
“It seemed like forever.” Her hand closed on his wrist like a band of steel to hold him safe or to demonstrate her possession. “You were so still. I felt so helpless. There was nothing I could do.”
And nothing more she could add. A facile story with too much missing. Who had found him? Why was the doctor absent? Why had Shandaha demanded his presence? What really lay beyond the crystal wall?
And why was he in such pain?
It filled his skull with renewed intensity and before him the figure ofNada blurred and the furnishings of the chamber seemed to shift and change. A transformation in which he seemed to share. An alteration of perspective. A physical improvement. An enhancement of hearing and vision. Subtle changes of benefit to nerve and muscle. A sharpened ability to detect inconsistency.
“Earl?” Nada moved closer, “Is anything wrong, darling? You seem different in some way. As if you are worried about something. Did anything happen to you when you fell ill?”
“How would I know?” Dumarest smiled and gently touched her on the cheek. “I broke the wall and must have slipped and banged my head and knocked myself out.”
A lie she accepted as the truth and she smiled and moved closer her eyes bright with desire.
“I’m so glad that is all it was. I want you to be fit and well. I need you so much, my darling. Tell me you feel the same. Please!”
He was too tired, too detached, too much in pain. What she offered was the last thing he needed. But to reject her would not be wise.
“Of course I do, how could you be in any doubt?” He smiled again then added, “But we have no time. Shandaha sent you to collect me, he must have something of importance to discuss. In any case I need to shower and get rid of this headache. Will you be joining us?”
“No.”
“Then we will meet later? You pro
mise?”
She smiled her answer as she returned his caress, her fingers light against his cheek, her disappointment a thing of the past. She rose, her movement a thing of grace as she left his side.
Dumarest watched her go then headed for the bathroom. He stripped and stood beneath the shower, setting the temperature cold so the spray stung, then hot so it eased both skin and muscle. He checked himself but found no sign of recent injury.
Aside from the fading discomfort of the headache he felt fine.
When he left the shower and dried himself and dressed the pain had gone leaving his mind sharp and crystal clear. He felt vibrant, active, ready for action. Leaving the bathroom he made his way to where Shandaha would be waiting.
He said nothing, just sat, watching as Dumarest looked at the chair facing him, face expressionless, eyes intent-a cat studying a mouse, the analogy was plain. In return Dumarest followed the other’s example, remaining silent, noting small things with obvious interest, the way Shandaha was poised on his chair, the tension of his hands, the set of his shoulders. Studying the man as if he were a potential opponent soon to be faced in the arena of blood. A thing he had done before and it had the desired effect.
“We have much to discuss, Earl,” said Shandaha breaking the silence. “But first the preliminaries. Are you at ease? No physical distress? No harm resulting from your unfortunate adventure?” He paused, waiting, frowning as Dumarest remained silent. Then, regaining his composure, reached for one of the flagons, which graced the table along with glasses and trays of tasty morsels. “Then let us share wine.”
Dumarest watched as the lambent fluid filled goblets of glimmering crystal, deep ruby encased in containers of apparent ice embossed with motifs of gold. The contrast one of design rather that accident. Something which matched the lavish furnishings of the chamber.
“Help yourself, Earl.” Shandaha lifted his own glass as Dumarest obeyed. “A toast, my friend. To life and happiness.”
He drank and Dumarest followed, sipping the wine, conscious of the rich sweetness, the subtle strength.
