Dying of the Light

by George R. R. Martin

  “This is boring,” Gwen said after they had walked for a few minutes. “The sameness is too depressing. And I don’t see any maps, either. I’m surprised people don’t get lost.”

  “I imagine they could just ask the Voice for directions,” Dirk said.

  “Yes. I forgot about that.” She frowned. “What happened to the Voice? It hasn’t had much to say lately.”

  “I shut it up,” Dirk told her. “But it’s still watching.”

  “Can you get it working again?”

  He nodded and stopped, then led her toward the nearest of the black doors. The compartment, as he’d expected, was unoccupied and opened easily at his touch. Inside, the bed, the layout, the viewscreen—everything was the same.

  Dirk turned on the viewscreen, pressed the button marked with a star, then turned the set off again.

  “Can I help you?” the Voice asked.

  Gwen smiled at him; a thin, strained sort of smile it was. She was as tired as he was, it seemed. There were worry lines around the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes,” she said. “We want something to do. Entertain us. Keep us busy. Show us the city.” Dirk thought that she spoke a trifle too quickly, like someone frantic to distract herself and take her mind off an unpleasant subject. He wondered whether it was fear about their safety he was hearing, or possibly concern about Jaan Vikary.

  “I understand,” the Voice replied. “Let me be your guide, then, to the wonders of Challenge, the glory of ai-Emerel reborn on distant Worlorn.” Then it began to direct them, and they walked to the nearest bank of tubes, out of the realm of endless straight cobalt corridors, into regions more colorful and diverting.

  They ascended to Olympus, a plush lounge at the very summit of the city, and stood ankle deep in black carpet while they looked out of Challenge’s single vast window. A kilometer below them rows of dark clouds scuttled by, racing on a bitter wind they could not feel. The day was dim and gloomy; the Helleye burned and glowered as always, but its yellow companions were hidden by gray haze smeared across the sky. They could see the distant mountains from their tower, and the faint dark green of the Common far beneath them. A robowaiter served them iced drinks.

  They walked to the centershaft, a plunging cylinder that cored the tower-city from top to bottom. Standing on the highest balcony, they held hands and looked down together, past other balconies in never-ending rows that dwindled into dim-lit depths. Then they opened the wrought iron gate and jumped, and hand-in-hand they floated down in the gentle grip of the warm updraft. The centershaft was a recreational facility, maintained at a trace gravity that was hardly great enough to be called a gravity at all—less than .01 percent Emereli normal.

  They strolled the outer concourse, a broad slanting corridor that spiraled around and around the rim of the city like the threading on some vast screw, so that an ambitious tourist could walk from the ground level to the top. Restaurants, museums, and shops lined both sides of the concourse; in between were deserted traffic lanes for both the balloon-tired cars and faster vehicles. A dozen slidewalks—six up, six down—formed the median strip of the gently curving boulevard. When their feet grew tired, they climbed onto a belt, then to a faster one, then onto one faster still. As the scenery slid by, the Voice pointed out items of particular interest, none of which were particularly interesting.

  They swam nude in the Emereli Ocean, a freshwater pseudo sea that occupied most of the 231st and 232nd levels. The water was bright green crystal, so clean that they could see algae twisting in sinuous ropes on the bottom two levels below. It sparkled beneath panels of lights that gave the illusion of bright sunshine. Small scavenger fish darted to and fro in the lower reaches of the ocean; on the surface, floating plants bobbed and drifted like giant mushrooms done up in green felt.

  They used power-skis to descend the ramp, a plunging, bracing flight over low-friction plastic that took them from the hundredth level all the way down to the first. Dirk fell twice, only to bounce back up again.

  They inspected a free-fall gymnasium.

  They looked into darkened auditoriums built for thousands, and declined to view the taped holoplays the Voice offered.

  They ate, briefly and without relish, at a sidewalk cafe in the middle of a once-busy shopping mall.

  They wandered in a jungle of twisted trees and yellow moss where the animal sounds were all on tape and echoed strangely off the walls of the hot, steamy park.

  Finally, still restive and worried and only a little distracted by it all, they allowed the Voice to whisk them up to their room. Outside, they had been told, true dusk was settling over Worlorn.

  Dirk stood in the narrow space between the bed and the wall as he pressed the buttons in sequence. Gwen sat just behind him.

  Ruark was a long time answering, too long. Dirk wondered apprehensively if something terrible had happened. But just as he thought it, the throbbing blue call signal faded out, and the plump face of the Kimdissi ecologist filled the screen. Behind him, in a grayish pall, was the dirt of a deserted apartment.

  “Well?” Dirk said. He glanced back at Gwen. She was chewing the edge of her lip, and her right hand was still, resting on the jade-and-silver bracelet that she wore yet on her left forearm.

  “Dirk? Gwen? Is this you? I cannot see you, no, my screen is dark.” Ruark’s pale eyes flicked back and forth restlessly beneath lank strands of paler hair.

  “Of course it’s us,” Dirk snapped. “Who else would call this number?”

  “I cannot see you,” Ruark repeated.

  “Arkin,” Gwen said from where she sat on the bed, “if you could see us, then you’d know where we were.”

  Ruark’s head bobbed. He had just the slightest suggestion of a double chin. “Yes, I did not think, you are right. Best that I do not know, yes.”

  “The duel,” Dirk prompted. “This morning. What happened?”

  “Is Jaan all right?” Gwen asked.

  “No duel,” Ruark told them. His eyes still flicked back and forth, searching for something to look at, Dirk supposed. Or perhaps he was nervous that the Kavalars would burst in on him in the vacant apartment. “I went to see, but no duel, utter truth.”

  Gwen sighed audibly. “Then everyone is all right? Jaan?”

  “Jaantony is alive and well, and Garsey, and the Braiths,” Ruark said. “No shooting or killing at all, but when Dirk did not come to die on schedule, everyone got crazy, yes.”

  “Tell me,” Dirk said quietly.

  “Yes, well, you were the cause of the other duel being postponed.”

  “Postponed?” said Gwen.

  “Postponed,” Ruark replied. “They will still fight, same mode and weapons, but not now. Bretan Braith appealed to the arbiter. He said he had a right to face Dirk first, since he might die in the duel with Jaan and Garsey, so his grievance against Dirk would go unsettled. He demanded that the second duel be stayed till Dirk could be found. The arbiter said yes to him. A Braith tool, the arbiter, yes, agreed with everything the animals wanted. Roseph high-Braith, they called him, an utter malevolent little man.”

  “The Ironjades,” Dirk said. “Jaan and Garse. Did they say anything?”

  “Jaantony, no. He said nothing at all, no, just kept standing very still in his corner of the death-square. All the rest of them were running around, shouting and yelling and being Kavalar. Nobody else was even in the square but Jaan, no, but he kept standing there looking around, like he expected the duel to start any second. Garsey, now, he got very angry. First, when you did not come, he made jokes about you being sick, then he got very cold and silent for a time, quiet as Jaan was, but later he was a little less angry, I think, so he began to argue with Bretan Braith and the arbiter and the other dueler, Chell. All the Braiths were here, to witness perhaps. I did not know we had so much company in Larteyn, no. Well, I did abstractly, yes, but it is different when they come together all in one place. A pair of Shanagates came also, though not the Redsteel poet, so we were short three, you two a
nd him. Otherwise, perhaps it was a city council meeting, everyone dressed up formally.” He chuckled.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen now?” Dirk said.

  “Do not worry,” Ruark said. “You two will hide and catch the ship, yes. They cannot track you down, a whole planet to hunt! The Braiths, I think, will not even look. Truth, they had you named a mockman. Bretan Braith demanded it, and his partner spoke about old traditions, and others of the Braiths too, and the arbiter said yes, that if you did not come to duel you are no true man at all. So they will hunt you, maybe, but not with special purpose, you are now just another animal to kill, any other will do as well.”

  “Mockman,” Dirk said hollowly. Oddly, he felt as if he had lost something.

  “To Bretan Braith and those, yes. Garse, I think, will try harder to find you, but he will not hunt you like an animal. He swore that you would duel, duel Bretan Braith and then duel him, or maybe him first.”

  “What about Vikary?” Dirk said.

  “I have told you, he said nothing at all, nothing.”

  Gwen rose from the bed. “You’ve only been talking about Dirk,” she said to Ruark. “What about me?”

  “You?” Ruark’s pale eyes blinked. “The Braiths said you were mockman too, but Garse would not allow it. He talked very strong of dueling any who touched you. Roseph high-Braith waffled. He wanted to call you mockman as well as Dirk, but Garsey was very angry, and I understand Kavalar duelers can challenge arbiters who make bad decisions, though they are still bound to follow the decision, truth. So, sweet Gwen, you are still betheyn and protected, and they will only bring you back if they catch you. Afterwards, you will be punished, but it will be a punishment of Ironjade. In truth, they did not talk of you overmuch, many more words were spent on Dirk. You are only a woman, eh?”

  Gwen said nothing.

  “We’ll call you again in a few days,” Dirk said.

  “Dirk, it must be a picked time, no? I am not always in this dust hole.” Ruark gave another little chuckle at that.

  “In three days, then, at dusk again. We’ve got to give some thought to how we’re going to get to the ship. I figure that Jaan and Garse will cover the spacefield when the time comes.”

  Ruark nodded. “I will think on it.”

  “Can you get us weapons?” Gwen asked suddenly.

  “Weapons?” The Kimdissi made a clucking noise. “Truth, Gwen, the Kavalar is seeping into your blood. I am from Kimdiss. What do I know of lasers and such, violent things? I can try, however, for you, for Dirk my friend. We will talk of it when we speak again; now I must go.”

  His face dissolved, and Dirk blacked out the wallscreen before turning to face Gwen. “You want to fight them? Is that wise?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She walked to the door slowly, turned, walked back again. And then stopped; the compartment was so small that it was impossible to pace with any real vehemence.

  “Voice!” Dirk said as sudden inspiration struck. “Is there a gunshop in Challenge? A place where we can purchase lasers or other weapons?”

  “I regret to inform you that the norms of ai-Emerel prohibit the carrying of personal weaponry,” the Voice replied.

  “Sport weapons?” Dirk suggested. “For hunting and target practice?”

  “I regret to inform you that the norms of ai-Emerel prohibit all blood sports and games based on sublimated violence. If you are a member of a culture where such pursuits are esteemed please be assured that no insult is intended to your homeworld. These forms of recreation are available elsewhere on Worlorn.”

  “Forget it,” Gwen said. “It was a bad idea anyway.”

  Dirk put his hands on her shoulders. “We won’t need weapons in any case,” he said with a smile, “though I’ll admit that it might make me feel a little better to be carrying one. I doubt that I’d know how to use it if the time came.”

  “I would,” she said. Her eyes—her wide green eyes—had a hardness in them that Dirk had never seen. For a single strange second he was reminded of Garse Janacek and his icy blue disdain.

  “How?” he said.

  She waved impatiently and shrugged, so that his hands slid off her shoulders. Then she turned away from him. “In the field, Arkin and I use projectile guns. To fire tracer-needles when we’re trying to keep track of an animal, study its patterns of migration. Sleep darts too. And there are sensor implants the size of a thumbnail that will tell you everything you might want to know about a life form—how it hunts, what it eats, mating habits, brain patterns during various stages of the life cycle. Enough clues like that, and you can work out a whole ecosystem from the data that different species are reporting back. But you have to plant your spies first, and you do that by immobilizing the subjects with darts. I’ve fired thousands of them. I’m good. I only wish I’d thought to lug one along.”

  “It’s different,” Dirk said. “Using a weapon for something like that, and shooting a man with a laser. I’ve never done either, but I don’t think they would be at all comparable.”

  Gwen leaned against the door and regarded him sourly from several meters away. “You don’t think I could kill a man?”

  “No.”

  She smiled. “Dirk, I’m not the little girl you knew on Avalon. In between then and now I spent several years on High Kavalaan. They were not easy years. I’ve had other women spit in my face. I’ve heard Garse Janacek deliver a thousand lectures on the obligations of jade-and-silver. I’ve been called mockman and betheyn-bitch by other Kavalar men so often that sometimes I find myself answering to them.” She shook her head. Beneath the broad headband pulled tight across her forehead, her eyes were hard green stone. Jade, Dirk thought inanely, jade as in the armlet she still wore.

  “You’re angry,” he said. “It’s easy to get angry. But I’ve known you, love, and you’re essentially a gentle person.”

  “I was. I try to be. But it’s been a long time, Dirk, a long, long time, and it’s been building, and Jaan Vikary has been the only part of it that’s been any good at all. I’ve told Arkin; he knows how I feel, what I’ve felt. There have been times when I’ve come so close—so damned close. With Garse especially, because in a very odd way he is part of me, and very much a part of Jaan, and it hurts more when it’s someone who you care about, someone you could almost love if it weren’t for . . .”

  She stopped. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest and she was frowning, but she stopped. She must have seen the expression on his face, Dirk thought. He wondered what it was.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said after a little bit, uncrossing her arms. “Maybe I couldn’t kill anyone. But, you know, I feel as if I could sometimes. And right now, Dirk, I would very much like to have a gun.” She laughed a small unfunny laugh. “On High Kavalaan, of course, I wasn’t allowed to go armed. Why does a betheyn need a sidearm? Her high-bond and his teyn protect her. And a woman with a gun might shoot herself. Jaan . . . well, Jaan has fought to change a lot of things. He tries. I’m here, after all. Most women never leave the safe stone of their holdfasts once they take the jade-and-silver. But for all his trying, and I do respect it, Jaan doesn’t understand. He’s a highbond, after all, and he’s fighting other things as well, and for everything I tell him, Garse tells him something else. Sometimes Jaan doesn’t even notice. And the small things, like my going armed, he says aren’t important. I talked to him about it once, and he pointed out that I objected to the whole practice of going armed, the whole big artifice of code duello, which is true. And yet—Dirk, you know, I did understand what you were saying to Arkin last night, about wanting to face Bretan even if you don’t feel yourself bound by his code. I’ve felt the same way at times.”

  The room lights flickered briefly, dimming, then flaring back to full intensity. “What?” Dirk said, looking up.

  “Residents should not be alarmed,” the Voice said in its even bass tones. “A temporary power failure affecting your level has now been rectified.”

  “P
ower failure!” A picture flashed through Dirk’s mind, a picture of Challenge—sealed, windowless, totally contained Challenge—without power. He did not like the idea. “What’s going on?”

  “Please do not be alarmed,” the Voice repeated, but the overhead lights gave the lie to its words. They went out entirely, and for a brief second Gwen and Dirk stood in frighteningly total darkness.

  “I think we had better leave,” Gwen said when the lights came back on. She turned and slid open the wall panel and began to remove their bags. Dirk went to help her.

  “Please do not panic,” the Voice said. “For your own safety, I urge you to remain within your compartment. The situation is under control. Challenge has many built-in safeguards, as well as back-ups for every important system.”

  They finished packing. Gwen went to the door. “Are you on secondary power now?” she asked.

  “Levels one through fifty, 251 through 300, 351 through 451, and 501 through 550 are on secondary power at present,” the Voice admitted. “This is no cause for alarm. Robotechs are repairing primary power as quickly as possible, and other standby systems exist in the unlikely event that secondary power should fail.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dirk said. “Why? What’s the cause of the failures?”

  “Please do not be alarmed,” the Voice said.

  “Dirk,” Gwen said calmly. “Let’s go.” She went out, a bag in her right hand and her sensor pack slung over her left shoulder on a strap. Dirk picked up the other two bags and followed her out into the cobalt-blue corridors. They hurried toward the tubes, Gwen two steps ahead, the carpets swallowing the sounds of their footfalls.

  “Residents who panic are more likely to harm themselves than those who remain within the safety of their own compartments during the duration of this small inconvenience,” the Voice chided them.

  “Tell us what’s going on and we might reconsider,” Dirk said. They did not stop or slow up.

  “Emergency regulations are now in effect,” the Voice said. “Warders have been dispatched to conduct you back to your own compartment. This is for your own protection. I repeat, warders have been dispatched to conduct you back to your own compartment. The norms of ai-Emerel prohibit . . .” The words abruptly began to slur, and the bass voice rose and squeaked and became a grating whine that clawed briefly at their ears. It ended in a sudden shuddering silence.