by E. C. Tubb
Tamiras said, harshly, "This is ridiculous! Accusations without proof!"
"Have I accused you?"
"Who else?" Tamiras appealed to the Matriarch. "Can't you see what he's doing? The man has lied and needs to create a diversion. By accusing me he hopes to gain your trust. But where is his proof?"
"Earl?"
Dumarest looked at the hard face, the hard eyes. The face and eyes of a woman who had sent men to be impaled, who would watch him die if he failed to convince her.
"Proof?" He didn't look at the scientist who sat glowering at him. "Iduna supplied that. She told me how friendly Tamiras was with her. How he used to bring her toys and small surprises. And think of the time it happened. It was late, remember? The sun was setting and the study would have been filled with gloom. It was summer and the days long so it would have been late. Iduna, a child, would not have been permitted too much liberty. It must have been close to her normal bedtime. Why should she have broken routine to run into the study? What better motive than to see the new toy? Who told her it would be there? Who explained how to hold it so as to feel the exciting tingle against the skin? How to look into it so as to see all the pretty pictures?"
"Tamiras?" Gustav glanced at the man, frowning. "But why, Earl? Why?"
"Iduna didn't know that."
Kathryn could guess. The mother who had rebelled, her banishment and later death, the return of her son to a world which offered neither land nor status. God, why had she been so blind!
Gustav was slow to understand. "But Iduna? Why would he want to hurt a child?"
The nuts crushed in Dumarest's hand. "Think of the years of hell you and your wife have lived through and you have your answer."
Revenge, what else, and he could have sown the seeds of hnaudifida to compound his hatred. A realization Tamiras saw mirrored on her face and he rose as she shouted, one hand diving beneath his blouse.
"Guards! Shamarre!"
She came as he jerked free the weapon, too late to prevent or protect her mistress from the killing beam of the laser, seeing a sudden glitter of steel, the blood, hearing his curse as the weapon fell from his limp hand. The meat knife Dumarest had snatched up and thrown had penetrated the wrist and severed the tendons.
Tamiras looked at the wound, at the man who had given it. "Why?" he demanded. "In God's name, why? What are these people to you?"
"Nothing." Dumarest was blunt, his face hard as he remembered what he had seen in the Tau, the horrors which had ruined adult minds. "But you sent a child into hell!"
Soon it would change; walls of carved and fretted stone forming an area which enclosed a shrine, a place made holy by what it contained but, as yet, the place had not changed.
The Tau still rested on its support bathed in a cone of brilliance, catching it, reflecting it in darting rainbow shimmers. A jewel of enigmatic beauty; the instruments to measure and calibrate, to test and monitor set like sentinels all around. Looking at it Kathryn thought of a snake subtle and deadly in its beauty, a snare, a contradiction.
"A toy," she mused. "You were joking, of course."
"No." Dumarest had accompanaied her at her command and now stood at her side. Shamarre, the Matriarch's shadow, was alert, remembering an earlier occasion when he had made a mockery of her protective role. "An alien toy," he said. "But a toy just the same."
"One which kills?"
"A game can kill. And the Tau did not actually kill those volunteers; they fell victim to their own fears." He had explained it too often and was tired of it. Why was the obvious so difficult for certain types of mind to grasp? "Think of it as a book," he urged. "You pick up a book and are enveloped in an author's world. You taste the flavors he mentions, see the images he portrays, meet the people he has created, experience the situations he provides. Reading, you use your imagination to clothe the skeletons and to fill the gaps; the form of a castle seen at sunset, the hues staining the sky, the garb worn by the host of inhabitants he does not bother to mention but which must exist. A thousand small details."
"The servant who opens the door," she said. "The workers who maintain the city. The pedestrians. The poor. Those who die from accident or disease. I understand."
"And think of a chess board on which players fight symbolical wars. Or a construction kit with which children can build palaces."
Analogies, but that of a book was the best. Something to pick up and delve into during odd moments. Something to provide an escape from boredom or reality grown too harsh. Worlds of excitement waiting to be explored. She had read much as a child. What was it an instructor had once told her? Books are the refuge of the lonely.
Was Iduna lost in a book?
If so she could be roused and Dumarest had learned how to reach her. She could go with him and find her child and together they could plan a new life. If Dumarest agreed- there was no need of that. What she ordered would be done!
"No." His voice was soft, a whisper in the echoing stillness. "I won't do it."
"Do what? Have you read my mind?"
"Your face mirrored your thoughts-and why else am I here? But I won't take you into the Tau."
"We made a bargain," she reminded. "You to rescue Iduna in return for certain rewards. You have yet to rescue her."
"I did my best."
"And if I think it not good enough?"
"You can go to hell!" His sudden viciousness startled her and she glanced around to see Shamarre standing close, the glint of a weapon in her hand. Once had been enough; she would not be caught wanting again. Dumarest followed the Matriarch's eyes and guessed her thoughts. "Try it," he invited. "Order me back into a collar and see what happens."
"You'd kill me?"
"I'd try."
And probably succeed before dying in turn. She remembered the speed with which he had acted when Tamiras had been unmasked. The thrown knife had been a blur, hitting even before she'd noticed he'd moved his hand. A flicker which had robbed an enemy of the power to hurt. What greater harm could he have done had Dumarest chosen to remain silent?
Quietly she said, "Earl, I owe you too much for us to quarrel, all I can do is to appeal. Iduna is my child and I yearn to see her, surely you can understand that? It's a natural, mother's need. If-"
"She is happy as she is. Leave her alone."
"And me?"
"You have your memories. The knowledge that your daughter is safe and happy as I've told you. Take care of her body and you'll do all that can be done."
He was telling her something, warning her, perhaps, and she said with sudden insight, "She hates me, is that it?" She saw by his tension she had scored. "Don't be so astonished- all children hate their parents at times as I've cause to know and, as a mother, I was far from being the best. Iduna was willful and headstrong and impatient to rule. Always she wanted that. To give orders without first learning how to obey. An essential-how else to avoid an absolute lack of restraint?"
A barrier which no longer existed. And how could a child have understood the necessity of such teaching? To realize that untrammeled despotism led inevitably to cabals, assassinations, civil wars.
Kathryn said, "I will treble your reward if you take me into the Tau." She read the answer in his face and was suddenly aware of the reason behind the refusal. Not the simple fear she had imagined or the willful stubbornness of ignorance but something far beyond that; the awful longing once again to act the god. How had he managed to tear himself from such temptation?
"I died," he said when she asked. "I chose to die. I think it is the only way a human can leave the Tau."
Died? She restrained the obvious question. The mechanics were unimportant but how had it felt? To have willingly faced extinction. To have actually experienced it-but had it been like that? Had he really died or had he been convinced, deep inside, that it was just an extension of the game? But if the world of the Tau were as real as the one she now experienced wouldn't death hold the same terror?
Dumarest said, "My lady, you spoke of a rew
ard."
"What?" She was startled at the intrusion into her thoughts, the abrupt change of subject. "Reward-you are impatient to leave?"
"Yes, my lady." Before her gratitude waned in the face of her urgent desires. "There is nothing more I can do here."
He had earned the reward and Gustav would condemn her for withholding it. He had the money together with Dumarest's clothing, his knife, a certificate of citizen status and a grant of land which would be his should he choose to stay. Bribes which she now recognized as worthless. He would not stay. If the Tau couldn't hold him then nothing could and to use restraint was to invite destruction. Yet she was reluctant to see him go.
"Earl-we shall remember you."
"For a while, my lady, perhaps. But you have other things to occupy your attention."
The ravages the disease had left, the organization waiting to be done, the arranging of affairs so as to ensure the safety of her rule. Tamiras had been one but there would be others and they would have to be discovered and dealt with. Duties-always there were duties. But, for now, she would indulge herself in a brief time of pleasure. As a moth turning toward a flame she turned to face the Tau.
"My lady?"
"You are so impatient, Earl. So impetuous. Shamarre, our guest is leaving us. Escort him to where Gustav waits in the study."
"My lady! And leave you alone?"
At another time the protest would have annoyed her and brought a swift rebuke. Now she only smiled. "Alone? How can I be alone? I have Iduna with me. My child."
Trapped to wander in the maze of her mind, but Dumarest said nothing of that. He turned as he reached the end of the chamber to look back at where the Matriarch stood like some priestess at the ancient altar of a pagan god. The light caught her, haloed her with a rainbow nimbus, bound her as if entranced and, already, she was doomed.
An hour, a day, a week-the period was unimportant but, inevitably, she would succumb. She would approach the Tau and caress it and become as a child and enter into the world it provided. A victim. A god. Always a slave.
"Hurry!" Shamarre was impatient to return. "Gustav will be waiting." As were the ships, the stars, his freedom.
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