“I do not understand,” said Amatar. She continued sadly, “Yet I believe you can do what you say. And so, it must come. And I have one favor to ask of you. You must do it for me, in remembrance of what might have been between us.”
“What is that?” said Andrek uneasily.
“My father cannot survive in the Deep, alone. Send me with him.”
Oberon stared at the girl, his usually immobile features in turmoil. Clearly, he grasped the enormity of the fate proposed for him, and he foresaw the solitude of drifting alone on the wastes of eternity, with madness denied him. And yet, clearly he must forbid Amatar to share this journey without end. His vocal chords, diaphragm, and tongue tensed and gathered to pronounce his decision, and his brow knotted with the effort to speak. But he could not speak.
Andrek watched Amatar’s pallor deepen.
She dropped to her knees before him. “I beg you to permit me to go with him,” she said quietly.
“You do not have to go,” said Andrek sadly. “He has not asked that you go. And the Andreks are too greatly in your debt to permit it.”
“I must go with him.”
“But why?” demanded Andrek in despair.
“In all my life I have done nothing, accomplished nothing. And now I have an opportunity to be useful to one I love greatly. You concede you are in my debt. Then pay the debt. Send me into the Deep with Oberon.”
“Hold on!” cried the console. “Jamie, you can’t do that to Amatar! We love her!”
The girl was firm. “Omere will not need me anymore. For life, or death, he has you, Jim. And you know what it is to be alone in the Deep. Oberon my father cannot endure there without human contact. You see, dear friend, I do not reproach you. I plead with you.”
Andrek breathed heavily. “I would not harm you, Amatar; yet, Oberon must go. If you will go with him, if this is what you really want…” His face contorted in indecision. It was ironic. All his new fantastic power, the power that had destroyed him as a human being and which could, with little effort, destroy everyone in this room—this power availed him nothing. It was torment. His brother’s wish was first, but if he followed through on that, then Amatar would insist on losing her human existence to follow Oberon into the Deep. She would be on his conscience forever—and he knew he would live nearly that long. This, then, was the cruel stupidity of vengeance. The effects could never be confined exclusively to the guilty. And he realized now how impossible decisions are made. The decision-maker seizes on chance, and hardens his heart to abide by the consequences.
As if in answer to his thought, a flash of golden light caught his eye, and he turned and saw the Alean die sitting on the table by the console.
Amatar’s eyes followed his glance.
“Omere,” said Andrek, “there’s a die here, with the ‘two’ facing up. Do you know anything about it?”
“Sure. It belongs to Oberon. Before you left for the Node, Amatar made him roll it, trying to get a favorable number for you. But it came out ‘two,’ the sign of the diplon. The worst. It stuck in a crack in the table. Vang insisted that the time would come when it would be rolled again. So they left it there.”
“I submit,” said Oberon, “that Vang spoke truly, and that the time is now at hand. We must cast again, so that we may know the final word of the goddess.” His chin lifted proudly. “Yet, I do not plead for intercession.”
Andrek studied Amatar. “We will roll the die. But understand: Oberon your father goes into the Deep. The die merely determines whether you accompany him.”
“I understand,” the girl said calmly. “May I cast?”
“On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That you unscrew the clasp, so that it is mechanically feasible for the die to show a ‘two.’ ‘Two’ is an unfavorable number, and would count against your request to accompany Oberon.”
Amatar picked up the jewel, unscrewed the clasp, and dropped the die in the cup. She rolled it out.
3. OBERON SHALL NOT DIE
“Three,” muttered Oberon. “The number of pentagons intersecting at an apex. Favorable to Alea, and therefore to Amatar, and to her wish to accompany me.”
Andrek frowned at the Magister. There was something sickening about the man. How could a number be interpreted as favorable when it would send Amatar into the Deep? But then, in a sudden insight, he understood the man’s unreasoning terror of total isolation. Eighteen years ago this man had hunted the krith and risked the quake; Oberon had animal courage. But he lacked (and knew he lacked) the monolithic mental integrity that he would need when imprisoned within his own mind, with no human contact, for eternity. Perhaps, thought Andrek, each of us has his breaking point, beyond which we are hapless cowards, and in our unseeing fear, drag those we love to death with us. I understand; yet I do not forgive.
He would have to adjust the rules a little.
“One throw cannot determine,” he said flatly. “A majority is required. The die must be rolled again.” He nodded to Amatar.
The girl cast the die again.
“A four,” said Andrek quickly. “A number unfavorable to Alea, and to Amatar.”
“One for, one against,” said Oberon. “She must cast again.”
Andrek nodded to the girl.
The next was a five.
“The number of sides in a pentagon face of the die,” said Oberon. “Most favorable, you will agree.”
“And that’s two favorable out of three,” said Amatar.
“Don’t let her talk you out of it, Jim-boy,” said the Console. “Figure something out!”
“There is a question,” said Andrek coolly, “as to whether we should combine the original two throws with these three. As I recall, Oberon, your first throw with this die, eighteen years ago, just before your accident, was a ‘one.’ And the second, four days ago, was a ‘two.’ Both are unfavorable numbers. The combination of the first two throws with these three would give three unfavorable out of a total of five. We shall combine. And having combined, to remove all doubt, we must continue.”
Oberon glared at him, and sputtered, “This is unheard-of!”
Amatar simply glanced at him, then cast again. “Six—favorable—the number of pentagon facets in one-half of the die.”
“Yes,” agreed Andrek smoothly, “but now, since we have combined, the contest stands at three to three.”
“By your rules,” said Oberon acidly, “the casting will never come to an end. When she rolls again, even if it is favorable, you will think up some reason why it is not.”
Andrek was imperturbable. “Perhaps. Once more, Amatar.”
A seven.
“Unfavorable,” said Andrek. “And you have only three out of seven. You lose, Amatar. I therefore deny your request to accompany Oberon into the Deep.”
“You are wrong, dear friend,” said the girl quietly. “I am winning. Have you noted the sequence? One-two-three-four-five-six-seven. The next will be ‘eight.’ We are going around the Ring of Ritornel. The god Ritornel rolls the Alean die!”
Andrek snatched the die from her, studied it in momentary disbelief. “Impossible! Ritornel is a hoax, a fantasy! There is no god of Ritornel!” He rolled it on the table.
“Eight!” whispered Amatar.
Andrek cast again—on the floor.
“Nine!” cried Oberon.
And again.
“Ten!”
Again.
The console sang out. “Don’t tell me! Eleven!”
“Yes,” clipped Andrek. “It was eleven.” He handed the die to Oberon. “Cast, Magister!”
Oberon of the Delfieri rolled the die on the table.
Twelve.
After that, they passed it around.
Eleven.
Ten.
Nine.
Andrek stopped. It was even as Iovve had predicted. When you create a religion, you must expect that the faithful will take it away from you, and finally, that the imagined gods will become real,
and seize you. But then, if the Ring were real, how could the god himself be false? And had all of this really happened before? In each of a myriad past, long-dead galaxies, had an Andrek paused in wonder, as he was doing now, to speculate: “It seems indeed to be the pattern of Ritornel. But if the god is speaking to us, what is he saying?”
“He says ‘return … repeat,’” said Amatar.
“How can that be? Neither you nor Oberon have been in the Deep before. This is meaningless.”
“Then it can harm nothing to continue,” said Amatar firmly. She cast the die again.
Eight.
Seven.
Six. Five. Four. Three. Two.
“There is no Alea … no chance,” intoned the girl, as though hypnotized. “Everything that is done has already been done. All that ever has been shall be again. All that will live hereafter is dead in the past. So that, James, Don Andrek, however strange and marvelous your powers, nothing that you now do is by your will; you are but the tool of Ritornel, to accomplish that which has already been accomplished, so that the pattern will begin again.”
Andrek laughed shortly. “If that is true and I greatly doubt it, it makes absolutely no difference what I shall now choose. Whether you go with Oberon, or not, you seem to think it is done by the will of Ritornel, and not by your will, or mine, and that it is all predestined. Believe this if you like. I will have have none of it.” He paused. His eyes caressed the girl’s face moodily. “I would like to decide, by knowing what is best for you. But I do not know what is best for you. I know only what you want. And that, I think I must give you, because now, we can never have one another. You can go into the Deep with Oberon. This is my decision. If this is also the will of Ritornel, so be it.”
“Don’t forget me,” said the console hesitantly.
“I shall not, Omere. I now attend to you. I want you to relax, and to listen to my voice, and to my thoughts. Save for you and me, motion in this continuum now will cease. You and I are entering a different time-plane, because what we are about to do will take many hours. Let sleep descend, so that I can examine thoroughly your neural systems, and understand their operation.” He continued gently. “In your original cortex were some ten billion nerve cells. But the Master Surgeon did not transfer all of these to the console. Most of the gross motor areas were left behind. You have neither arms nor legs, nor in fact muscles of any kind. Yet your memories are intact—some three hundred billion billion bits of information stored away as twists and alterations in the amino-acid protein chains of your individual neural cells. These are highly proliferated in your convolution of Broca—for motor speech and music, and in the temporal lobe, for visual registry and storage of memory images of words, and in the second frontal convolution for writing; in your parietal and occipital lobes for visual imagery. The circuits take much time to memorize, but I have nearly eternity. Sleep, Omere!”
2. JAMES—OMERE
Andrek straightened slowly, eyes closed.
The full time had passed; the transference, the superimposition of Omere’s cerebral networks upon his own cortex was finished. And even though the juncture of minds had been paced and orderly, the real meaning of it finally now began to hit him. He paused to get his breath.
Omere’s thought spoke to him: “I know that I am now in your body. Am I you, or are you me, or—who’s who?”
“The question is irrelevant. We are together.”
“Open our eyes, then, Jim-boy. I would like to see Amatar.”
Andrek turned toward the girl.
“And may I borrow your larynx?” said the part of him that was Omere.
“It is yours.”
“Amatar,” said Omere-James, “how lovely you are.”
“It is the voice of Omere!” she said, wondering. She whirled toward the console. “How—?”
“My brother and I share this body,” said James-Omere. “Rimor-Omere sleeps. He will never waken.” He raised his arm toward the console. “When at night I go to bed, I put three bullets in my head…”
The sharp cracks of three successive explosions shattered the room.
The face of the console fell away, red liquid flowed down the sides. There was a crackle of sparks, and then black smoke billowed out of the casing.
James-Omere winced and clenched his teeth. “Is it suicide?” he thought. “Or is it murder. Or mutilation? Or nothing, since there is no corpus delecti?”
“Your legal mind is getting us all befuddled,” thought Omere-James. “Why give a name to what had to be done?”
There was a sudden commotion in the corridor.
“It is Kedrys,” said Amatar simply.
They looked out through the doorway. The pegasus-kentaur, assisted by Phaera, the Ritornellian priestess, had rolled up a strange assembly of apparatus, dominated in the center by a massive metallic cone. Phaera adjusted the wheeled platform, until the cone pointed squarely at the doorway.
Once, James-Omere caught Kedrys’ eyes. A strange smile flickered briefly about the youthful mouth as the two looked at each other. Then Kedrys returned to the levers and knobs of the machine. He seemed in his element, completely poised and confident.
The part of Andrek that was Omere whispered mentally to the part that was James: “He seems pretty sure of himself. Can he break through?”
“Yes. But I don’t think he will. Wait, I think he wants to parley.”
Kedrys called through the doorway. “Don Andrek!”
“Yes, Kedrys.”
“Let me in, or I’ll destroy your field—and you!”
“Do you know what I am, Kedrys?”
“I know. I’ve analyzed your field. You’re antimatter. But I can still kill you.”
“I know you can. And when I annihilate, Amatar dies. And you. And all of Goris-Kard. Do you want that?”
“No. Of course not. But neither do you. So I think you must listen to me, Don Andrek.”
“I will listen to you. But I promise nothing.”
“This machine, Don Andrek, drew you here from the Deep. When the second quake of the diplon cast you out of the Deep, you were brought here, to the Great House. But for me, you might have reappeared in some other galaxy, and centuries away.”
“I know this. Why did you do it, Kedrys?”
“Not for you, Don Andrek. I did it for Amatar and me. The thing that must happen next is our destiny.”
“I do not understand.”
“Let me in.”
“Yes, come in.” Andrek released the shield, and the youth trotted in. He stood by Amatar and folded one great wing around her. He spoke solemnly. “We came from the same body, she and I, and we are more than brother and sister. Our destinies are inseparable. We began together, and we must continue together. From the beginning, I have known this hour would come. I accept it. Whither she goes, I will go. And now, Don Andrek, your ring is finished. But Amatar and I will seek Terra, in Time, and in the Deep. If we find it, our ring begins. And no hominid that ever existed, not even you, Don Andrek, could possibly imagine the Ring of the Kentaurs.”
James-Omere groaned inaudibly with a final realization of the complicated, impersonal futility of revenge and punishment. So now he must imprison yet another innocent with the guilty. And yet none of this could undo the wrongs that Oberon had heaped upon the Andreks. Punishing Oberon now could not be of any possible benefit to anyone, now or in the future. But, great injuries had been done, and he knew time and space could not rest until he had flailed out in vengeance. So he must proceed. To the end of our days, he thought bitterly, we are animals, devouring, and being devoured, and taking our revenge against those who would destroy us, and nothing beyond this is imaginable to our primitive understanding. So be it.
He said: “All that you say may be true. And any future that you may have may be indeed beyond my imagining. Yet, we are concerned here and now with a very present problem. You propose to go into the Deep with Amatar. I do not ask this of you; yet I am glad that you are willing to go with her. Perhap
s with your help she can survive. But it is only for her sake that I permit you to join these two. I do not care what happens to Oberon. And so, Kedrys, I give her into your keeping.” He concluded heavily. “It would be best if the three of you joined hands.”
Amatar gave Oberon one hand and Kedrys the other.
Cold sweat was gathering on Oberon’s face. It dripped from his brow through his eyelashes, and he blinked. “This is a senseless evil, James, Don Andrek, but get on with it.”
Yes, thought James-Omere. Perhaps it is senseless, and perhaps I am evil. I do not know. And you may be innocent, as the hawk is innocent, and the krith, who slay for survival. Perhaps retaliation cannot alter you, or deter others like you. Nevertheless, I judge you guilty, and condemn you, together with the truly innocent. And if I am skilled in this art, it is because you instructed me!
“We are ready,” said the girl calmly.
Amatar! thought James-Omere. Oh, Amatar.
He raised both arms, and the pale blue radiance flowed out from him and enveloped the little group. They were gone, and it was done.
Andrek stared numbly at the emptiness of the room. He wanted to scream. Instead, he moaned in desolation. “Oh, purify me!”
Even as the thought formed, he was aware of a novel process at work within his brain. It was a rapid thing, a bombardment of words and groups of words, cadences, concepts.
“I’d never hoped to see your face
Even through another’s eyes…”
(He held you in his arms, Amatar. And now I’m mixed up inside him.)
Music was breaking through with the poetry. First a melody, then counterpoint, and then individual instruments, a voice, tenor, and finally a chorus. And then, as the James part of James-Omere was bound enthralled, the orchestration faded, and yielded to the final lines.
“We’ll remember that embrace
When you’re adrift in sunless skies.
The Ring of Ritornel Page 22
