It opened silently; the hinges had been well-oiled, not to disturb a wounded man’s sleep. In the corridor a serf and a mirror courtier stood frozen like statues. I crept softly past them, my ears straining for any sound. There! That could only be the gates of the Great Hall being opened; I would know that creak and groan anywhere. A small stair not far along this corridor would bring me out onto the dais; it was a way for the royal family to slip away from a feast that went on too long. Should I take a more indirect way? No! The King of Carpathia should face his enemies boldly, not creep like a rat in his own hold!
They were standing in the center of the Great Hall, a little knot of men in strange garments. Their leader was not Mortifer, but a man I had never seen before in strange close-fitting garments of green so dark it was almost black in some lights. Behind him was a man in brown with a strange object, which gleamed and sparkled . . . in his hands? No, floating in the air before him! Enchantments!
They had not seen me yet; they were gaping around the Hall. I stepped suddenly out onto the dais, letting my sword touch my shield to make a small ringing sound. Every eye turned to me, but no one made a hostile move. The green-clad leader looked at me impassively, but the man in brown gasped, “The same man—the same in every detail!”
The leader said in a steady voice, “That was what we might have expected, given what else we know.” He turned his gray eyes to me and said, “I am Justinian Droste. You are . . . Casmir?”
I nodded, trying to keep my face impassive. “Casmir, King of Carpathia, tenth of the Line. And you, I suppose, are creatures of Mortifer’s?”
The man named Justinian Droste gave a short laugh and said with apparent sincerity, “We’re no friends to Mortifer, King Casmir. In fact, we’re here to help you against Mortifer, if you’ll let us. Help you in ways you can hardly guess at yet.”
I lifted a skeptical eyebrow at them. “And what do you want in return for your—help?” All the same my blood was pounding in excitement. Mortifer was powerful and wily; despite all my royal power and authority I had half-feared the issue of any struggle between us. But with a rival gang of enchanters on my side, perhaps I could break Mortifer, break him and banish him as I had longed to do ever since he had wormed his way into my father’s confidence.
Droste looked into my eyes and said softly, “We want to bring Mortifer down. Just that. Will you help us?”
I held his eyes for a long moment and then nodded slowly. “If I can do it without prejudice to my people and my kingdom, I will.”
Justinian Droste sighed. “Your people and your kingdom, yes. I’m afraid that’s the first shock I have for you. But after the mistakes we made last time I’m determined to tell you everything. Perhaps it’s easier to show you than to tell you, though.” He walked over to the side of the hall; one of the castle serfs was frozen there where he had been wiping a table. Droste took a small globe from a pouch at his waist and pressed it, making a fine mist issue from a small orifice at one side of the globe. Droste directed the spray at his own hand and rubbed it lightly into the wrist. “This stuff is harmless,” he said, “just a solvent for a common adhesive. Notice that it does nothing to the hair on the back of my hand.”
He stepped over to the serf, lifted the fellow’s shock of hair and sprayed under it. Then he pulled gently and the whole head of hair came off in his hand. Under it was a dome of gleaming metallic blue, like a skullcap, coming almost to the serf’s eyebrows. Justinian Droste stepped back and nodded to the man in brown who touched the blue dome with a small glittering object, then put both of his hands on the dome and gave it a sharp twist. The whole top of the serf’s head came off in his hands and he laid it on the table the serf had been wiping. The thing was like a mushroom; the “stem” had been inside the lower part of the serf’s head.
“A control unit,” said Droste. “This is a fairly standard low-level general purpose android, generally called an ‘andro.’ All of the servitors in this place are of the same type; they haven’t even bothered to give them false foreheads under that mop of hair. I take it that you’ve been conditioned not to pay much attention to servitors, so they didn’t take much trouble with them.” He turned to the man in brown. “Andres, give me the stat of the plot of the other place.” He studied a sheet of what looked like parchment or stiff cloth for a moment then said formally, “Follow me, please, King Casmir.”
“Wait,” I said. “This—thing—is not flesh and blood? It is a . . . puppet, moved by magical arts?” Droste nodded, his face grave. I laid my shield on the table and gripped my sword. Trying to think of what remained of the serf as no more than a lay figure for practice, I swung the sword over my head and dealt the thing a mighty blow. What was left of the head and one shoulder and arm bounced to the floor. There was no blood and no bone, only the gleam of metal, the glitter of some sort of crystal, and a tangle of multicolored threads and tubes. “Yes,” I said, dully, “yes, the thing is—what you said.”
“By the Mercy,” said the man in brown, whom Droste had called Andres. “If you went on 3V with that act, you’d make a fortune.” Droste gave him a sharp look and he fell silent, following Droste and myself as we headed for the main staircase out of the Hall. I stole a glance at the glittering object he pushed along with him; without a doubt it did float in the air.
Droste led me to an ornamental door and turned. “What is behind this door, King Casmir?” he asked. “Have you ever been inside it?”
I shook my head. “It is the Ladies’ Suite,” I said, “the Solar, the bedchambers of the unmarried court ladies, sewing rooms and the like. As a bachelor knight it is all forbidden territory to me.”
Droste nodded soberly, “Much of the castle is, is it not, on one pretext or another? Let’s look inside the door.” It resisted and Andres applied another of his glittering instruments to it. The door swung open, revealing a large gray chamber with no windows and no other doors. The walls were perfectly smooth and the room was without any furniture. Around the walls stood a dozen or so women, some in the dress of court ladies, others garbed as upper servants. All the faces were familiar; women I was used to seeing about the castle. Droste stepped over to the nearest, sprayed at the hairline and lifted the hair to reveal a blue dome. A flap of skinlike stuff peeled away from the forehead, revealing the blue.
“These are what are called ‘gynos,’ ” said Droste quietly. “They’re replicas of real women, and a great deal more detailed physically than a GP andro like the servitors. Ordinarily they’re only used for, well, rather discreditable purposes. Some of the male courtiers are probably from similar sources, but women generally have more sense than to . . . well it does happen though. But probably some of them are custom-made, both male and female. The resources of a good-sized planet were open to the people who constructed this place. If you’ll come out onto the battlements with me I’ll show you more.” As I followed him out into the hallway he said, “There are no children here, are there?”
I shook my head. “We sent them away when the firedrake came. They don’t seem to fly across the river. That’s why the Castle is so empty, my father didn’t want to separate families more than could be helped . . .” My voice died away.
Justinian Droste said dryly, “There’s very little call for child-size andros, and no tapes for childlike behavior. Their resources weren’t unlimited. Speaking of the, ah, firedrakes, how many have you seen close up at one time? More than one?” I shook my head and Droste nodded. “We only found one,” he said. “That must have been custom-made. Someone had done it quite a bit of damage, though. Ah, here’s the way out onto the battlements. Do you notice anything odd?”
I looked around me at the familiar scene. Around the horizon were the circling mountains; below us at the foot of the Castle Crag were the huts and cottages of Thorn village. Across the valley was what was now being called the Mount of Sacrifice, a name of ill-omen. But that was . . . Suddenly something about the clouds struck me. There was almost always a wind at Castle Thom, especi
ally at this time of year. I had hardly ever seen the clouds completely still at Thorn, even in midsummer. But now the clouds were utterly motionless, as if on a blazing day in midsummer.
“We’re underground here, King Casmir,” said Droste’s voice in my ear. “The sky and clouds are holographic projections; so is most of the more distant scenery. Normally the cloud movement would be following a taped program but the little gadget that Andres is taking care of so assiduously stops all motion which depends on—well, certain electronic processes which are rather basic. I take it that you’ve been able to leave the castle very little and on those occasions you’ll have gone north or roughly east.”
At my stupefied look he shrugged lightly. “Those are side caverns,” he said, “some of the scenery there is real. Any other direction you’d soon run into rock.”
“But when I was a boy I ranged all over the countryside,” I burst out. “It’s only the last two years that we’ve been hemmed in like this.”
Droste’s tone was less somber as he said, “Two years, yes. That seems to be the time that this has been going on. Before that your memories are probably genuine, though they’ve been tampered with.”
The state of shocked lethargy gave way to a surge of hope “Then all this is just some sort of spell cast over me for the last two years?” I asked. “Of course, that’s when Mortifer came with his warning of the firedrakes. When they came as he predicted my father would hear nothing against him. But I never trusted him . . . What did he do—kidnap me and imprison me here? The kingdom . . . my father . . . are they . . . ?” Hope died as I saw the look on Droste’s face. I swallowed a lump in my throat and faltered. “In some of the old tales they say that men taken under the hills by the elvish folk have returned to find their friends grown old or dead; that a year with them under the hills is many years in the world of mortals. Is it . . . something like that?”
“Not quite, perhaps,” said Droste gently. “But as nearly that as you’re ready to hear now, I think.”
“How long?” I asked, making my voice as strong as I could.
Droste’s eyes met mine as he said quietly, “As nearly as we can tell from the time of your last genuine memory until now is about five hundred years.”
11. A Double Tale
After that I was too dazed to put up much resistance to what they asked of me. I followed the man named Justinian Droste to a part of the battlements which, because it overlooked the Ladies Court, was normally forbidden to bachelor knights. A sort of bridge made of some grey metallic substance extended from the battlements to . . . I rubbed my eyes and looked again. A long arrow’s flight away there was a jagged hole in the sky itself, and the metal bridge disappeared into it! Beyond the hole there was a gray-walled corridor which reminded me of the room in which the immobile “court ladies” had stood.
“Block out the bridge and the gap with your hand, then take it away,” said Droste quietly. “Then you’ll get some idea of the tricks of perspective which they used in building this place.” I did as he said. When my hand covered the bridge and the hole I seemed to be looking out into a broad vista of mountains beyond the valley in which Castle Crag stood. But when I took my hand away I could see that the sky and mountains were some sort of picture, marvelously done, and that a strongly shot arrow could easily have struck that “sky.”
The bridge was narrow but steady as a rock as I put my foot on it. “You wish me to go this way?” I asked Droste, and he nodded. Half expecting to fall through the bridge or find myself in some unimaginable heaven or hell when I had crossed it, I walked over the bridge, with only a glance at what seemed to be the abyss below me. I have always had a good head for heights, but the feeling that I was in a waking dream helped take away any apprehension I might have felt the strange bridge and its impossible terminus.
The “sky” seemed to be made of some translucent stuff, some of which lay in shards on the floor of the gray corridor. I picked up a shard and looked at it, feeling as if I were a child in a nursery-story dream. The corridor itself was drably utilitarian, with smooth gray walls and a slightly resilient floor of somewhat darker gray. Droste came over the bridge behind me and walked along by my side. After a long stretch of corridor we came to a great circular space larger than the inside of the castle keep. Above us there was no roof; we stood as if at the bottom of a great well. The circle of blue high above was no larger than a shield. “That’s the real sky,” said Droste.
In the middle of the circular space were two great metal discs on which stood glittering machines and chairs which looked luxuriously soft. Seated in a chair near the center of the disc was a woman in close-fitting garments like Droste’s; she faced a glittering array of lights and switches on a sort of table before her. As we walked toward the disc she turned toward us, and her whole chair swiveled to match her movement; a minor marvel, but one which startled me more than some of the greater marvels I had seen. “Citizen Droste?” she said sharply, seeing my sword; her hands moved sharply toward one part of the array of lights and switches before her.
“It’s all right,” said Droste reassuringly and I felt a small spurt of amusement as I realized that the woman must have thought that I had taken Droste captive. In fact, I was captive, not to his weapons, for he had shown none, but to my own ignorance. Until I knew more—much more—I did not dare to take action. But time and observation are great healers of ignorance; I could wait.
Droste waved me courteously to a seat on the platform and said to the woman, “Take us on in to the city; General Hospital. Andres will take the rest of the party back on the cargo disc.” The woman looked a little dubiously at my sword, which I had laid across my knees for lack of a better place to put it, but gave a sort of salute and busied herself at her table. Suddenly I realized that the ground had dropped away and that we were rising in the shaft like a bucket in the well I had likened it to.
As we cleared the rim of the shaft I saw about me low arid hills and scrubby vegetation. We continued to rise until we were high above the hills, with the mouth of the shaft we had come out of only a small dark circle. Then the platform began to move smoothly and silently above the ground. We were moving away from the sun, which if this new world was anything like the one I was used to, meant that we were going east or west. But the dry desert landscape and clear sky gave me no hint whether it was morning or evening.
Presently I could see ahead of us what I thought at first was a curious group of mountain peaks. Then a certain regularity of shape and arrangement told me that these were monstrous buildings; each not only bigger than Castle Thorn but bigger than Castle Crag, Castle Thorn and all. There seemed to be parks and gardens at the foot of the towers, and one great stretch of what seemed to be greensward, looking oddly out of place in the desert setting. The woman spoke into the air as we approached the towers and was answered by a disembodied voice. Her hands played among the levers on her table and she said to Droste, “We’ll have to loop around the starport; a starship is lifting and their GE fields can interfere even at this distance; it’s a big cargo ship.”
Droste nodded and leaned forward to look at the stretch of greensward, which we were now swerving to pass on our right. From the green area a gigantic black disc began to rise into the air. As it rose I thought that I could feel a faint tremor in our own flight, but that was soon gone as the black disc rose higher and higher until it dwindled into a dot in the sky. “Ever want to flit?” Droste asked the woman.
She shook her head with a smile. “Home is good enough for me,” she said. “The operational height of this little buggy is as far as I want to get from Mother Earth.”
Droste smiled back at her and turned to me. “You’re coming out into a wider world in more senses than one, King Casmir,” he said. “Wider than you can know now.”
I laughed shortly. “So it would seem, ser,” I said. “No need to call me King, though; it is clear enough that my kingdom down under the hills was only a mummery, and my true throne gone to others these
many years. The family name of the lords of Thorn is Jagellon; that, I suppose, is still mine.”
“Indeed,” said Droste with a curious note in his voice, Could it be pity? But he went on in a serious tone. “You know better than I what you have lost,” he said. “But there is plenty for you to thank the Mercy for. I’ve seen other people from pre-tech societies meet our modern gadgetry for the first time and show everything from panic, fear to religious awe, to retreat into insanity. And it’s worse for you because of the way you’ve been deceived for the past two years and the sudden way you learned of it. But you’ve hardly turned a hair.”
It was an odd phrase but I could see that he meant that I had shown no sign of fear or amazement. What else, I wondered, did he expect from a knight of Thorn? But perhaps he knew as little of the knights of Thorn as I of what he termed “gadgetry.”
I tried to keep that impassivity he had praised as our flying disc rushed toward one of the great towers, lifting at the last possible moment to come to rest on a broad flat roof at the top of the tower. As the woman dropped her hands from her table of lights she cast me a glance; I thought that in her own way she had been testing my courage. I grinned at her and she was startled into an answering smile. I heard and felt a brisk breeze blowing at the top of the tower and realized that a sort of barely perceivable thickening of the air which had surrounded our disc in flight had now vanished.
The Parallel Man Page 9
