Child of Earth d-33

by E. C. Tubb

  Dumarest said, “I’m not asking for charity. I can pay you a fair price.”

  “Fair enough.” The man made up his mind. “You seem honest and I’ll be the same in return. I can’t teach you what you want to know. Only time and practice can do that. The book will guide you on the basics. The most I can do is to teach you how to accept them. If you agree follow me into the booth. I can spare you an hour.”

  The woman who had acted as the target brought them wine, a thin, cheap, ruby fluid which refreshed and eased the tension as it quelled their thirst.

  “Thank you, Melinda. That will be all for now.”

  As she left the grafter half-drained his goblet and set it down on the desk. Abruptly he said, “My name is Wendon. Drak Wendon. You are?” He grunted as Dumarest told him. “Well, Earl, first things first. Why do you want a knife and why do you want to learn how to throw it?”

  An odd question and Dumarest said so.

  Wendon shrugged. “Take offence if you want, but I am only trying to help you. Some people have an allergy to knives as others have an allergy to guns, vermin, and insects. Wanting a knife is normal. Getting one is easy. Being able to use one, if you really have to use one, is something some people simply cannot do. There is no shame in it.”

  “I am not afraid of a knife.”

  “I accept that.” Wendon paused. “And?”

  “As a gift to a woman. One I hope to marry. To win her family’s approval I must prove myself. Dexterity with a knife will help me to do that.”

  Plausible lies but ones the man could understand and accept. And they were not total lies.

  Wendon nodded, “Good enough. Now let’s get back to the knife.”

  He produced one, long in the blade, wide at the tip, smooth and slender at the hilt. It had no guard, no distinct pommel.

  “This is usually called a throwing knife,” he said. “Get your distance right, use the same force, the same hold and you’ll have no trouble putting on a show. It’s like a hammer,” he explained. “The weight is all at one end. If you can throw it like a spear that’s fine. If you want to add force then throw it as you would a hammer giving it a full turn, using hand, arm and wrist to govern the movement. That’s what I meant by practice. That’s the real secret of gaining the ability to throw a blade.”

  Obvious but Dumarest was patient. Teaching was a trade of its own.

  “When you come to a real blade things get more difficult.” Wendon turned to a long casket, threw back the lid and revealed a row of knives. “What you’re after is a tool and a missile rolled into one. What I just showed you isn’t that but a simple device for a single purpose. When you’re living in the field you need more. Done any hunting?”

  “A little.”

  “Ever thrown a knife at a creature?”

  “At times.” Dumarest added, “Never with much luck.”

  “Lack of practice.” Wendon was curt. “You can’t run before you can walk. Now check these knives. Which one is for you?” He waited, watching as Dumarest examined the selection, then said, “Try it a different way. You don’t choose the knife. The knife chooses you. Pick them up, feel them, the heft, the affinity, the sense of belonging. You’ll know when it’s right. Here. Let me help you.”

  He chose a knife and held it for Dumarest’s inspection. A nine inch blade, the sharp edge curved to a point, the curve reversed on the back so as to provide a double edge for a third of the length. The hilt carried a strong guard, the surface knurled to supply a firm grip, the pommel small, barely raised, smoothly rounded.

  “Like it? Now try it.” He led the way to the barrier outside. “Melinda!”

  She stepped forward, a long stave in her hand. It carried a large disc which she placed against the wood.

  “Right, Earl. Now hit it!”

  Dumarest poised the knife, grasping it by the point, doing his best to judge pace and distance. To hit correctly it must make a half turn. To lift, aim, guess and throw was something needing to be automatic.

  “Good.” Wendon moved to where the knife had hit within the edge of the disc pinning it firm. Jerking free the blade he said, “This seems right for you, but I’ve others. Let’s go and check them out.”

  Dumarest settled for a blade with minor differences, listening to Wendon’s advice as to balance and shape. Good advice and he paid for it and the knife together with an extra copy of the lauded volume.

  The time had passed faster than he had guessed and the tuition had swelled more that he had anticipated. Sardia would be expecting him and it would be an affront to keep her waiting.

  Reaching the front door of her building he thumbed the correct code into the electronic lock, waited until his identity was verified and moved through the opened portal. An elevator lifted him to the floor holding her apartment and he hurried to her door, hand lifted to code in the entry signal. It dropped as he realised the door was open.

  The panel was closed but not locked, a thin line of different hue rested between the door and the lintel, a thing which could not have happened had the lock been engaged. Sardia could have arranged it for reasons of her own, but he doubted it. She was too shrewd, too clever to take stupid risks. The door was a warning, one he couldn’t ignore.

  The books were in a pocket, the knife wrapped in paper in his hand. The blade gleamed as he slipped it from its sheath, holding it as if he were in the arena ready for combat. The only difference being that his present foe was unknown.

  An omission soon rectified.

  He was standing behind the door, his body turned away from the panel as he concentrated on the sounds coming from the bedroom. Ugly sounds, nasty, born of fear and pain. Pleasure to a scum of the arena standing with a knife in his hand, a smirk on his face. He lost both as Dumarest burst into the apartment, his new blade lifting to slice the hand from the wrist, slashing to open the throat beneath the grinning mouth.

  As he fell Dumarest moved on. Into the next room where a second man, warned, stood in a fighter’s stance. He raised his blade to strike, dying as Dumarest ducked beneath his arm to send his own weapon deep into the exposed armpit. To twist the blade. To sever arteries and tissue as he dragged it free. Before he hit the floor Dumarest was in the bedroom facing their opponent. One who reared upright from the edge of the bed, a smoking iron in his hand, and terror in his eyes as steel flashed towards them.

  “No! No! Please! No!”

  Dumarest glanced at the bed. Sardia lay there and one look was enough. Her tormentor shrieked as the knife closed the gap between throat and edge. As he fell the woman stirred on the bed.

  “Earl? Earl is that you?”

  “Sardia.” He touched her, held her, the knife still in his hand. “You are safe now,” he soothed. They are all gone. They can’t hurt you now.

  “They have hurt me enough.” Her voice was a whisper, the grip of her hand merely a gesture. But one with meaning. “Listen, Earl, you’ve got to look after yourself. I have money. It’s yours if you can find it. I’ve some gems, in a box, you know where to look. Take them, take everything of value you can find. Get to the field. A ship is due, the Ellermand. It’s got a handler, ask him for passage. Mention my name. Don’t tell him more.” Her voice changed, the whisper becoming a scream. “The pain! Earl, I can’t stand the pain! Help me! Help me!”

  She had been burned, blinded, seared into a thing of horror. Money could restore her. Buying regrowths, new organs bred from her stem cells, the use of an amniotic tank in which to grow new and healthy tissue. But it would take time and exposure and would be far from cheap.

  But he had no money, no friends or contacts, no drugs to ease her agony. Only a knife, newly bought as a gift, now a bitter reminder of what he had allowed to happen. If he hadn’t wasted time in the market. If he had returned to the apartment straight after the bout. If he had been present when the thugs had arrived to torment and destroy for the sake of what they could steal.

  If.

  The word had a sour taste.

  Yet
if he couldn’t save her he could join her. In death, if what some said was true, they would be reunited for eternity.

  The blade moved in his hand, the point aiming at his throat, his muscles tensing for the effort to drive it deep.

  “No!” The work was a command. “No, Earl, don’t!”

  Jarl Raven, stood in the doorway of the bedroom, a gun in his hand.

  “Lower the knife, Earl. Do it!”

  Dumarest said, “If I don’t you’ll use that gun? Then use it. Do me a favor.”

  “You want to die?”

  “I want Sardia to live. To get over this mess. Look at her. She’s in agony and there’s nothing I can do to help. I haven’t even the guts to pass her out.” The knife fell from his hands and he stared at his quivering fingers, fighting to be calm. “I didn’t do this to her. You must know that. I killed the scum who did but there has to be more. Someone passed them into the building. Someone told them the door code combination. I want to get that filth no matter who they are and what it costs.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “Just take care of Sardia.”

  “I’ll do that as soon as you’ve left.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure she is safe.”

  “I told you. I’ll take care of that.” Raven was impatient. “Don’t waste time, Earl. I’ll phone for an ambulance and they will take her to where she can get all the help she needs.” He stepped towards the bed. “Now get out of my way and let me do what needs to be done.”

  Dumarest looked at his face, the gun in his hand and knew better than to argue. To Raven he was nothing. To him Sardia was the world. The woman he obviously loved and now was apparently going to kill.

  “Steady, girl,” he said. “This is Jarl. You know I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Jarl? Her whisper was a prayer of thanksgiving.

  “That’s right.” He rested a hand on her throat, fingers hard against the flesh beneath her ears. “Just a little pressure on the carotid arteries to cut the flow of blood to your brain and the pain will be over. You’ll sleep like a log and when you wake all will be better than before. I promise that. Trust me!”

  Watching as the woman sighed and relaxed, Dumarest said, “Do you mean that? I need to know.”

  “I know what I’m doing. She’ll live. What did she say to you?” Raven nodded as Dumarest told him. “Good advice. You’d best take it.”

  “Not until I’ve taken care of those who did this.”

  “No!” Raven was curt. “I will take care of that.”

  “I can help you!”

  “You would do the reverse. I know those concerned. I know how to hurt them.” He thrust the gun into a hidden holster. “Now do as Sardia told you. Take what money you can find and go.” He gestured at the dead man. “Start with him. Search his pockets and take all he’s got. Then take care of the others. Be quick,” he added, “but get cleaned up before you leave.”

  Good advice and he followed it. Bathing and changing to remove the blood which had spattered him. Branding him with the mark of a killer. The man who had attacked and almost murdered Sardia. He would stand no chance if arrested. He knew the door codes, he could gain easy access, he was trusted as a supposed friend. The men who had died had walked in on him while committing the crime and had been slaughtered for their bravery. Those behind them would see to that.

  He could do nothing but take the money and run. To the field, the handler who, for a price, would arrange his passage. Shipping him to another world, there to begin the quest which would dominate his life.

  CHAPTER TEN

  An intriguing story.” Shandaha poured wine into two goblets, red and sparkling with drifting bubbles of a deeper hue. Red as the wine he had drunk with the grafter had been red, as the blood he had shed, as the water he had bathed in, as his discarded garments had displayed. Dumarest found the association distasteful. “You are disturbed, Earl?”

  “Disgusted would be a better word. There are some things better not remembered, still less to be relived.”

  “Yet, surely, it must be a comfort to know that all was not lost. The woman would have lived as the man had promised. He would have become her partner and guardian. And you escaped the trap with your life.” Shandaha paused then added, “You realise it was a trap? The woman, Yanya, set you up by hinting you were to be passed on. Naturally you would want to discuss it with Sardia. Knowing that those who intended her harm would have a perfect opportunity to dispose of her and to saddle you with the blame. Yanya would have known the entry codes. All they had to do was wait. They grew impatient when you failed to arrive on time and did what they came to do.”

  To maim, torture, rob and gloat at a helpless woman’s pain. But Shandaha was right. On reflection the trap had been obvious, but he had been too young to recognise it, too emotionally involved to retain mental clarity.

  “Drink, Earl, forget.” Shandaha passed him the goblet. “On the whole I would say it would be best to regard the incident as your rite of passage. You first met the woman as a boy and left her as a man. An unusual episode but often followed in many cases mostly by those alone and isolated. In modern cultures, naturally. In primitive societies they know how to conduct ceremonies.”

  With rituals, with trials of endurance, of hardship, of combat. With struggle and introspection and visions summoned by various hallucinogens. The survivors were accepted as men.

  “Earl?”

  “You could be right.”

  “You know I am right.” Shandaha lifted his goblet. “To you, Earl Dumarest! I greet you as one who has earned the right to be accepted as a man among men!”

  One who had learned to love, to struggle, to fight, to kill. Who had run and who had been running ever since.

  Dumarest reached for the brimming container. The wine was like water but it was far from that. Something within himself seemed to be a barrier against the effects of alcohol. He knew what it was.

  He said, “We had an agreement. Will you keep to it?”

  Shandaha frowned. “An agreement?”

  “Provisions, transport, tools, release from this place for Chagal and myself. All in return for allowing you to drag me through a trip to hell. My hell-you probably enjoyed it.”

  “It was interesting.”

  “But, for you, disappointing,” said Dumarest. “It wasn’t the journey you wanted. Not the ending you hoped for.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You wanted to accompany me on the most important journey of my life. One which would dominate my future. You gained what you asked for but it wasn’t what you intended. You wanted to be with me, inside my head, watching through my eyes when I was given a gift stolen for the Cyclan. But you would have made another mistake. I didn’t know I had been given the gift. You would have been no wiser.”

  And now would never be. The secret of the affinity twin, as far as Dumarest was concerned, would remain that. The possible sequences in which the fifteen biological units could be assembled ran into millions. The Cyclan knew their composition but had lost the sequence in which they had to be assembled.

  Shandaha said, “I don’t understand. I agree we had an agreement. I will double the items you desire if you will-”

  “Grant you another trip into my past?” Dumarest shook his head. “No.”

  “Must I remind you that I need give you no choice?”

  “And give me further proof of how badly I was mistaken?” Dumarest drank more of the wine enjoying the moment. “The second time when I returned to the chamber in which you had arranged the chess pieces I sat and studied the situation. Only the Cyclan could have gained control of Earth. A Cyclan vessel attacked our ship and brought us down. The Cyclan could have spotted our signals and known of our position and our hopeless situation. They probably thought I was dead but, being what they are, they had to be sure. So they sent you. I assumed you were a cyber masking himself in a bizarre disguise. Creating a habitation out of illusion. Now I know
that cannot be the case.”

  “Then who and what am I?”

  Dumarest paused before answering, studying the man, noting small details which increased his conviction. Things overlooked before had grown a new clarity and, within his skull, he felt what seemed to be a subtle movement of cranial tissue.

  “Who you are is a matter of title. What you are is a farmer.”

  “A farmer!”

  “Or a herdsman. The title isn’t important. My guess is that you are a minion of the Cyclan. You have been given the task of rearing and breeding cattle to be checked and tested and then to be harvested when the crop is ripe.” Dumarest leaned forward, his words like ice. “Cattle, Shandaha. Men and women. The children of Earth. People just like me!”

  “No, Earl! You are mistaken!”

  “Why bother to deny it? What difference can it make? You and others like you scattered over the planet, have a single task. That of selecting, rearing, and farming humans to gain an ingredient vital to the Cyclan. The homochon elements growing in the mutated brains.”

  “This is madness!” Shandaha’s hand shook as he poured the goblets full of wine, the ruby liquid splashing to soil the table. “Earl, what has come over you? Shall I summon Chagal?”

  “Do you want him to hear what I have to say?” Dumarest paused, waiting, then as the other remained silent said, “As I thought. Now take a drink, you are shaking and we both know why. You have tried to control me and have failed to do so. And if the Cyclan discover what you have tried to do they will not be gentle.”

  “Dare you tell them?”

  “When you have lost everything then what do you have to lose?” Dumarest drank and shrugged. “It seems we are back on logic, again. Of question and answer. So tell me this-how can a blind man complete a jigsaw?”

  “By touch.”

  “You are correct but most would say it was impossible as he could not see the picture or pattern and so would have no visual guide. But he has hands and fingers and could feel, imagine and remember. As I did when I tried to find a way out of this maze. To find motive, means and opportunity. I found them, but I had some help. In the secret chamber I fell into after I had broken the wall. The barrier of crystal which you said didn’t exist,” he explained. “The odd area in an odd place which also had no existence. But it held something else and it taught me things I had never suspected.”