There was a bridge of filigreed glass, insubstantial-looking as frost, that spanned the pool. One end lay at Sam’s feet, the other at a low platform, cushion-covered, on the far side of the room. A woman lay face-down among the cushions, elbow on the edge of the pool, one arm submerged to the elbow as she splashed in the shining water. Her hair hid her face, its curled ends dipping in the ripples. The hair was a very pale green-gold, wholly unreal in its color and its water-smooth lustrousness.
Sam knew her. The long lines of Kedre Walton’s body, her leisured motions, the shape of her head and her hands, were unmistakable even though the face was hidden. Why she should be here in the Harker stronghold, and why she had summoned him, remained to be seen.
“Kedre?” he said.
She looked up. Sam’s mind spun dizzily for an instant. It was Kedre—it was not. The same delicate, narrow, disdainful face, with the veiled eyes and the secret Egyptian mouth—but a different personality looking out at him. A malicious, essentially unstable personality, he thought in his first glimpse of the eyes.
“No, I’m Sari Walton,” the pale-haired woman said, smiling her malicious smile. “Kedre’s my grandmother. Remember?”
He remembered. Sari Walton, leaning possessively on Zachariah’s shoulder long ago, while Zachariah spoke with him about the murder of Robin Hale. Sam had scarcely noticed her then. He searched his memory quickly—antagonism was what returned to it first, antagonism between Sari and Kedre, submerged but potent as the two beautiful women watched each other across the table with mirror-image faces.
“All right,” he said. “What does that mean?” He knew well enough. Joel Reed could not be expected to remember a scene in which Sam Reed had figured. She knew who he was. She knew, then, that he, too, was immortal.
“Come here,” Sari said, gesturing with a dripping white arm. She sat up among the cushions, swinging her feet around beneath her. Sam looked dubiously at the glass bridge. “It’ll hold you. Come on.” Derision was in Sari’s voice.
It did, though it sang with faint music at the pressure of every step. At Sari’s gesture he sank hesitantly to a seat among the cushions beside her, sitting stiffly, every angle of her posture rejecting this exotic couch, this fantastic, water-floored bower.
“How did you locate me?” he demanded bluntly.
She laughed at him, putting her head to one side so that the green-gold hair swayed between them like a veil. There was something about her eyes and the quality of her laughter that he did not like at all.
“Kedre’s had a watch out for you for the past forty years,” .she said. “I think they traced you through an inquiry at the library archives about your eye patterns today. Anyhow, they found you—that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“Why isn’t Kedre here now?” Again she laughed, that faintly malicious laughter. “She doesn’t know. That’s why. Nobody knows but me.”
Sam regarded her thoughtfully. There was a challenge in her eyes, an unpredictable capriciousness in her whole manner that he could not quite make up his mind about. In the old days he had known one solution for all such problems as that. He reached out with a quick, smooth gesture and closed his fingers about her wrist, jerking her off balance so that she fell with an almost snakelike gracefulness across his knees. She twisted, unpleasantly lithe in his grasp, and laughed up at him derisively.
There was a man’s aggressive sureness in the way she reached up to take his cheek in the cup of her palm and pull his head down to hers. He let her do it, but he made the kiss she was demanding a savage one. Then he pushed her off his knee with an abrupt thrust and sat looking at her angrily.
Again she laughed. “Kedre’s not such a fool after all,” she said, running a delicate forefinger across her lip.
Sam got to his feet, kicking a cushion out of the way. Without a word he set his foot on the ringing bridge and started back across it. From the corner of his eye he saw the serpentine twist with which Sari Walton got to her feet.
“Come back,” she said.
Sam did not turn. An instant later he heard a hissing past his ear, felt the searing heat of a needle-gun’s beam. He stopped dead still, not daring to stir for fear another beam was on the way. It was. The hiss and the heat stung his other ear. It was fine shooting—too fine for Sam’s liking. He said without moving his head, “All right, I’m coming. Let me hear the gun drop.”
There was a soft thud among the cushions and Sari’s laughter sounded almost as softly. Sam turned on the narrow bridge and went back to her.
When they were standing like this he had to tip his head back to look into her eyes. He did not like it. He liked nothing about her, least of all her air of self-confident aggressiveness which from time immemorial has belonged to man, not woman. She looked as fragile as the frost-patterned bridge, as delicately feminine as the most sheltered woman alive—but she was an Immortal and the world belonged to her and her kind. There had been generations of time for her to set in this pattern of malice and self-assurance.
Or—had there been? Sam squinted at her thoughtfully, an idea beginning to take shape in his mind that blotted everything else out for a moment. In contrast to Kedre, this beautiful, fragile creature seemed amazingly immature. That was it—immaturity. It explained the capriciousness, the air of experimental malice he had sensed in her. And he realized that for the Immortals maturity must be a long, long time in forming fully. Probably he himself was very far from it, but his early training had hardened him into the accepted pattern of a normal adult.
But Sari—sheltered and indulged, wielding almost godlike powers—it was no wonder she seemed unstable in these years before her final matrix of centuries-old maturity had set. It would never set quite properly, he thought. She was not essentially a stable person. She would never be a woman to like or trust. But now she was more vulnerable than she knew. And one of Sam’s devious schemes for making use of an adversary’s weakness started to spin a web in his mind.
“Sit down,” Sam told her.
She lifted both hands over her green-gold head to pluck a cluster of pale fruit like grapes that dangled from a vine. Sam could see her cradling fingers through them, they were so nearly transparent, the blue seeds making a pattern of shadows inside the tiny globes. She smiled at him and sank to her knees with her unpleasantly boneless litheness.
Sam looked down at her. “All right,” he said. “Now. Why did you get me up here? If Kedre sent the orders out, why isn’t she here instead of you?”
Sari put a pale, glassy globe into her mouth and bit down on it. She spat out blue seeds. “Kedre doesn’t know, I told you.” She looked up at him under heavy lashes. Her eyes were a paler blue than Kedre’s, “The warrant’s been out for forty years. She’s in Nevada Keep this week.”
“Has she been notified?”
Sari shook her head, the lustrous, improbable hair swinging softly. “Nobody knows but me. I wanted to see you. If Zachariah knew he’d be furious. He—”
“Zachariah ordered me dream-dusted,” Sam broke in impatiently, eager to get the story clear in his head. “Was Kedre behind it?”
“Zachariah ordered you poisoned,” Sari corrected, smiling up at him. “He meant you to die. Kedre said no. They had a terrible quarrel about it.” Her smile grew secret; she seemed to hug herself with a pleasant memory. “Kedre made it dream-dust,” she went on after a moment. “No one could understand why, really. You wouldn’t be any use to her after that, alive or dead, young or old.” Her voice failed gently; she sat with a transparent fruit between thumb and finger halfway to her lips, and did not move for a long second.
Sam had a sudden, dazzling idea. He dropped to his knees before her and put a finger under her chin, turning her head toward him, looking into her eyes. And a surge of triumph made his throat close for an instant.
“Narco-dust!” he said softly. “I’ll be damned! Narco-dust!”
Sari gurgled with laughter and leaned forward to rub her forehead against his shoulder, her eyes glaz
ed with that strange luminous luster which is unmistakable in the addict.
It explained a great deal—her instability, her curious indifference, the fact that she had not yet quite realized Sam’s strange youth. How odd, he thought—and how significant—that the two people he had met who remembered him from long ago were both under a haze of drug-induced dreams.
Sari pushed him away. She put the fruit in her mouth without knowing her gesture had been interrupted, and spat out the seeds and smiled at him with that sharp, glittering malice that had no reason behind it. Of course his inexplicable youth had not struck her. She was quite accustomed to see unchanging faces about her as the decades went by. And under narco-dust a serene, unquestioning acceptance of all one sees is a major factor. But at any moment now she might have a flash of clarity. And Sam still had much to learn.
“Kedre substituted dream-dust for the poison,” he said. “Did she have someone guard me after that?”
The greenish hair spread out like a shawl as Sari shook her head.
“She meant to. Zachariah fixed that, I think. Kedre always thought he did. You’d disappeared when her men went to look for you. You’ve been missing ever since—until now. Where were you, Sam Reed? I think I could like you, Sam. I think I see now what was in Kedre’s mind when she sent her people out to find you and cure you. I—”
“What are you doing here, in the Harker house?”
“I live here.” Sari laughed, and then an ugly timbre crept into the laughter and she closed her delicate, long-fingered hand suddenly over the cluster of fruit. Colorless juice spurted through her fingers. “I live here with Zachariah,” she said. “He wants Kedre. But if he can’t have her—I’ll do instead. Some day I think I’ll kill Zachariah.” She smiled again, sweetly enough, and Sam wondered if Zachariah knew how she felt about him, and that she was a narco-addict. He rather doubted it. The combination was dynamite.
He was beginning to realize what a ripe plum of opportunity had dropped into his lap—but an instant later the familiar doubt crept in. How opportunely had it dropped, after all? How much reasoned planning lay behind all that had happened to him since he woke? There was still no explanation of the watcher in the alley. And that man had known what he was doing. There was no drug-dream behind the precise pattern of what had so far happened to Sam Reed.
“Why did you send for me?” he demanded. Sari was splashing her hand in the water to wash away the sticky juice. He had to ask her twice before she appeared to hear him. Then she looked up and smiled her bright, vacant smile.
“I was curious. I’ve been watching Kedre’s private visor for a long time now. She doesn’t know. When word came in that they’d found you I thought I’d see . . . I thought I could use you. Against Kedre or against Zachariah—I’m not sure yet. After awhile I’ll think about it. Not now. I’m thinking about Zachariah now. And the Harkers. I hate the Harkers, Sam. I hate all Harkers. I even hate myself, because I’m half a Harker. Yes, I think I’ll use you against Zachariah.” She leaned forward, brushing Sam’s shoulder with a fan of green-gold hair, looking up at him with a pale-blue flash under the heavy lashes.
“You hate Zachariah too, don’t you, Sam? You should. He wanted you poisoned. What do you think would hurt him most, Sam? I think for Kedre to know you’re alive—and young. Young?”
Her narrow brows drew together in brief bewilderment. But that was a subject that required thought, and she was in no condition now to attack serious problems. Her mind was not working except in its deepest levels at this moment, the primitive levels that move automatically, without conscious effort.
Suddenly she threw back her head and laughed, choked on the laughter, looked at Sam with swimming eyes. “It’s wonderful!” she said. “I can punish them both, can’t I? Zachariah will have to wait until Kedre’s tired of you, now that you’re alive again. And Kedre can’t have you if she doesn’t know where you are. Could you go away and hide, Sam? Some place where Kedre’s men couldn’t find you? Oh, please, Sam, do go and hide! For Sari. It would make Sari so happy!”
Sam rose. The bridge rang musically as he crossed it, a series of faint, sweet undernotes to Sari’s laughter. The scented breeze blew in his face as he went back down the trellised hall. The lift stood waiting where he had left it. There was no one in sight when he came out at the foot of the shaft and went back up the glass steps over the swimming stream and into the street.
Moving almost in a daze, he stepped onto the nearest Way and let it carry him at random through the city. The episode just past had all the qualities of a dream; he had to focus hard upon it to convince himself it had happened at all. But the seed of a great opportunity lay in it, if he could only isolate what was important.
The Harkers had a weakness they did not suspect—Sari. And beyond that lay implicit an even deeper weakness, if Sari was really a Harker, too. For she was definitely not a normal person. The narco-dust and the possible immaturity of her mind explained only partly that shuddering instability at the very core of her being. It opened new vistas for Sam’s thought. So even Immortals were not wholly invulnerable, even they had hidden weaknesses in the fabric of their heritage.
There were two secret paths now by which he might ambush Zachariah. The paths would need exploring. That must come later.
Just now the most important thing was to hide while he thought things over. And the more he considered this, the more inclined Sam felt to visit the Colony where Robin Hale administered his sterile jurisdiction.
Hale would probably shoot him on sight. Or would he, as Joel Reed? No one knew Sam yet except Sari, but who could guess what wild caprices might move her between now and the time he was face to face with Hale? He had better act fast.
He did.
The most striking thing about the Colony was that it might just as well have been undersea.
At no time since Sam Reed had left the Keep was the open sky ever above his head. First there was the Keep’s impervium dome and above that a mile of water. Then the plane, with its alloy and plastic shell. After that, the great Colony locks, with their safeguards against infection—UV, acid spray, and so on—and now he stood on the land of Venus, with a transparent impervium dome catching rainbows wherever the fugitive sun broke through the cloud blanket. The air smelt the same. That was a tip-off. The free air of Venus was short on oxygen and long on carbon dioxide; it was breathable, but not vintage atmosphere. And it was unmistakable. Here, under the dome, the atmospheric ingredients were carefully balanced. Necessary, of course—just as the impervium shell itself seemed necessary against the fecund insanity that teemed the Venusian lands—flora and fauna bursting up toward the light, homicidally and fratricidally determined to bud and seed, to mate and breed, in an environment so fertile that it made its own extraordinary imbalance.
On the shore stood the old Fort, one-time stronghold of the Doonemen Free Companions. It had been rehabilitated. It, too, was inclosed under the impervium, the great shell a quarter of a mile in diameter. There were small houses arranged here and there, with no attempt at planning. The houses themselves were of all shapes, sizes, and colors. With no rainfall or winds here, the architects had a free hand. The only limitations were those of natural gravity, and paragravitic shields made even Pisa-towers possible. Still, there was nothing really extravagant in material or design. No lavishness. The whole Colony had an air of faint attrition.
There was no open land visible beneath the dome.
The ground had been floored over with plastic materials. Protection .against the ground-lichens: Probably. Great hydroponic tanks were the gardens, though a few shallow tanks held sterilized soil. Men were working, rather lazily. It seemed a siesta hour.
Sam walked along one of the paths, following the sign that pointed toward Administration. A mild agoraphobia afflicted him. All his life he had dwelt under an opaque dome, knowing the weight of water above it, shutting out the upper air. Now through the translucent impervium above he had glimpses of watery sunlight, and the illum
ination was not artificial, though it seemed a bad imitation of the surrogate daylight of the Keep lamps.
His mind was very busy. He was taking in all he saw, evaluating it, packing facts and impressions away against the moment when his innate opportunism saw its chance. Pie had for the moment dismissed Sari and the Harkers. Let that group of ideas settle and incubate. How Robin Hale would receive Sam Reed, or Sam’s son, was the important question now. He did not consider that he owed Hale any debt. Sam did not think in terms like that. He thought only in terms of what would best benefit Sam Reed—and the Colony was something that stilt looked promising to him.
A girl in a pink smock, bending over a tank of growing things, looked up as he passed. It was curious to see the effect even diluted sunlight made upon the faces of these Landsiders. Her skin was creamy, not milk-white as Sari’s in the Keep. She had smooth brown hair, brushed sleek, and her eyes were brown, with a subtly different focus from the eyes of Keep people. An impervium dome shut in her life as fully as any undersea Keep life, but light from the sun came through it, and the jungle pressed ravenously against the gates—a hungry, animate jungle, not the dead weight of sea water. You could tell by her eyes that she was aware of it.
Sam lingered a little. “Administration?” he asked unnecessarily.
“That way.” Her voice was pleasant.
“Like it here?”
She shrugged. “I was born here. The Keeps must be wonderful. I’ve never seen a Keep.”
“You wouldn’t know the difference—there isn’t any,” Sam assured her, and went on with a troubling thought in his mind. She had been born here. She could be no more than twenty. She was pretty, but not wholly to his taste. And the idea had come to him that if she had only partially the qualities he liked in a woman, he could afford to wait for her daughter, or her daughter’s daughter—if he chose the parents of the final product with reasonable care.
An Immortal could work out a strain of humanity as a mortal could breed for elegance in cats or speed in horses. Except that the product would be only a cut flower, lovely but perishing in a day. He wondered how many of the Immortals did just that, maintaining in effect a harem in time as well as in space. It would be excellent, so long as one’s emotions remained unengaged.
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