The Light That Never Was

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  Wargen smiled at her affectionately. “Mother dearest, ever since Eritha was sixteen I’ve been asking her to marry me at every suitable opportunity. I have confidence that eventually she’ll consent. In the meantime, she keeps telling me that one of us still has some growing up to do. I have the uneasy suspicion that she may mean me.”

  “Perhaps if I spoke with her grandfather—”

  “No, Mother. Eritha will decide when she is to marry, and whom. No one knows that better than Ian Korak.”

  “I see. I do have one piece of advice for you. If, after you marry, she’s ever afflicted with one of these silly whims about buying paintings—let her!”

  Wargen felt both irritated and concerned because the attack on Mestil Island came without warning. His first act after Eritha’s call was to attempt, unsuccessfully, to reach Rearm Hylat. His second was to send men to Zrilund to find out what had happened. Now, using the rotunda’s communication center, he managed to get in touch with them, and he learned that Hylat, alive and furiously angry, had been a prisoner in his own adde cellar since before the fleet left Zrilund.

  Wargen returned to Jorno’s mansion. Demron reported the capture of another Zrilund fishing boat, and added, “Oh, about the man who wanted to confess.”

  “Did he succeed?”

  “He died. He babbled about riots right to the end, but he never actually said anything. Eritha’s waiting for you in Jorno’s study.”

  She looked very small indeed seated behind the vastness of Jorno’s ornate worktable, with the rows of book drawers looming behind her. She had lost her anger; now she seemed saddened and perplexed.

  He smiled at her wistfully. It had been some weeks since he last proposed, but this seemed an unpropitious moment for resuming a courtship. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Exercising my curiosity.”

  “On what?”

  She indicated the heavily bound tomes scattered about the table. She had sketched something on the table’s work screen, and Wargen regarded it with puzzlement. “That looks like the chart on the wall of my office. Did you memorize it?”

  She shook her head. “Jorno made the same study you did, only he didn’t visualize it.”

  “He studied the riots?”

  She nodded.

  “Did he get any further with them than I did?”

  “I don’t know how far he got, but he studied them in person. The man who wanted to confess was a long-time employee of Jorno’s and a crewman on Jorno’s private yacht—when the yacht is in port much of the crew works at odd jobs here on the estate. So if that particular employee of Jorno’s knew anything about the riots, it very likely concerned something that happened while he was on duty on Jorno’s yacht. I found the yacht’s logbooks here, and I checked the dates and plotted them, and the result is a chart like yours.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Jorno was extremely concerned about the refugees, you know, and he seems to have visited almost all of the riot worlds. We may never know what he learned, but if one of his crewmen was experiencing hallucinations about the riots—”

  “Let me see that,” Wargen said. He seated himself beside her and scowled at the chart. “Are you certain these dates are correct?”

  “They’re what the log says.”

  “You didn’t go back far enough. Or maybe Jorno started too late. He visited worlds long after the rioting started and in reverse order. Let me have a look.” He opened one of the heavy volumes, found the date at which Eritha had started charting, and began leafing the pages backward. “No,” he said finally, “he followed the riots right from the beginning.”

  When Demron came in he found them gazing at each other perplexedly. Eritha said to him, “This employee of Jorno’s who just died—the one who wanted to confess. What was his name?”

  “Jac Grawla.”

  “Since he was a crewman on Jorno’s yacht, don’t you think it might be interesting to find out if any of the others have anything to confess?”

  Demron seated himself on the opposite side of the table. “How would I go about finding out a thing like that?”

  “Have one in and ask him.”

  “From what you saw of Jorno’s men last night, you ought to know that it’d take more than a stem look to make one confess.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t if he thought Grawla told you all about it.”

  Demron nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Jorno’s men don’t know that Grawla spoke nothing but gibberish. I don’t suppose there’s much to lose by trying.” He stepped to the door, snapped an order, and returned to his chair.

  Minutes passed. The yacht crewmen had their quarters in a separate building, and they were being detained there—not because their defense of the meszs had violated any law, but because Demron thought they might be needed for further interrogation.

  Finally one of them shuffled in—an enormous hulk of a man who had faced far worse dangers than a world superintendent of police without quailing. He said, “You want me?”

  “Name?” Demron asked.

  “Sair Rondil.”

  “Have you heard that Jac Grawla died?”

  “I heard he was going to.”

  Demron nodded. “The doctor did his best, but there was no chance at all of saving his life. Grawla knew it, and before he died he made a full confession about the riots. Since you were with him—he named you and several others—”

  He broke off because Rondil was gone. Without a word he wheeled and sprinted for the door, flung it open, and disappeared. Demron sprang after him to shout an order; Wargen and Eritha stepped to a window and saw Rondil speeding along the drive with panicky, leaping strides.

  “Give him time to tell the others before you catch him,” Wargen suggested.

  “Right. Then I’ll question them one at a time. Sooner or later one will talk, though I can’t imagine what it is you expect him to say.”

  “Neither can I. The one thing I do know is that we need to look closely at Jorno’s personal affairs. His attorney is Medil Favic.”

  “I’ll send for him,” Demron promised.

  “Before you go off to chase the crewmen, would you send in Jorno’s steward?”

  The steward shuffled in quietly. His eyes were red with weeping, his lank old body stooped under a blow from which it would never recover. He had served the family more years than Jorno was old, he regarded Jorno more as a son than an employer, but he was bearing up bravely. The police, the doctors, the injured persons had to be considered guests, Jorno would have wanted it that way, and there was work to be done.

  Wargen greeted him courteously, got him seated, and explained the problem. “We need to know a few things about Mr. Jorno. Perhaps you could help us. Are you familiar with his Good Works?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Could you tell us something about them?”

  “There are the meszs, sir.”

  “Before that. Just a few examples.”

  “Yes, sir. Did you know there is a world named Jorno?”

  Wargen shook his head.

  “It happened many years ago, when Master was quite young. He took a long tour on his yacht, and he happened onto this world—it was called something else then—where the settlers had caught an epidemic. Those who weren’t dying from it were starving to death. They’d come from a number of worlds, and their governments were arguing about which was responsible. Master hired doctors and brought all the supplies the world needed and saved the colony. He wouldn’t let them pay him anything. They changed the name of the world to Jorno.”

  Wargen stepped to the referencer, punched the gazetteer code, and a moment later was reading a description of the world of Jorno. “That was quite a long trip that your master took,” he observed.

  “Yes, sir. He was gone for several years, and he did many Good Works along the way. I may be the only one who knows about them. Sometimes late of an evening he would invite me to have a glass with him, and then—” His voice broke. He swallow
ed and continued hoarsely, “Then he’d reminisce about things he enjoyed remembering.”

  “Tell us some of the others.”

  “Yes, sir. Somewhere he kept a list of all the young people whose educations he financed. There are at least four universities named Jorno—he gave handsome gifts to many, but these four could not have survived without his help, and all of them changed their names to Jorno. Master felt very strongly about the value of education. I doubt if he knew himself how many Jorno hospitals there are—he founded so many, on so many different worlds.”

  Wargen stepped to the referencer again. “How many?” Eritha asked.

  “Three Jorno universities, but that’s only in this sector.” He returned to his chair and said awesomely, “The Jorno fortune must be enormous!”

  “It was, sir. I’ve heard it said that Master’s father was the wealthiest man in the galaxy. His financial interests were galactic in scope.”

  “To be sure. He amassed the money, and his son gave it away like a saint.”

  “That’s true, sir,” the steward agreed. “I’ve had the pleasure of serving him and observing his generosity throughout his life. I wonder if the galaxy has ever had another man who has helped so many people in so many ways. He was entirely selfless where the needs of others were concerned. That’s what put him on the verge of bankruptcy.”

  “On the verge of what?”

  “Bankruptcy. That’s why he had to sell his space yacht to finance the mesz village and his resort. But both projects are unqualified financial successes. He was well on his way to accumulating another fortune.”

  “To give away?” Wargen asked politely.

  The steward looked surprised. “But of course. What else would he do with it? You said yourself that he was a saint.”

  Wargen thanked him and let him go. The two of them remained silent for some time, and finally Wargen asked, “Did you have an inkling of a suspicion that Jorno was a saint?”

  “I didn’t and I don’t. That’s your word.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I won’t offer one. I’ll just say that I have one thing in common with Donov’s millions of overcharged vacationers. I’d be utterly astounded to find a saint running a tourist resort.”

  20

  Neal Wargen had a report to write. The Interplanetary Tribunal had requested full information, as had the twenty-four riot worlds, and a staff was at work sifting the accumulated evidence and preparing copies for the oppressive number of appendices the report would have to have. The analysis, the explanations, the conclusions were Wargen’s responsibility.

  First he had a report to think. He had to understand before he could explain, and he began by placing a new star chart on the wall of his office. Resting both elbows on the thick files that littered his worktable, he studied it, traced the order of cruises up and down the spiral of riot worlds, and contemplated the malignant Odyssey of Jaward Jorno.

  For Jorno, assisted by the crew of his space yacht—Jorno had caused the riots.

  No one wanted to believe it.

  The World Manager exclaimed, his face ashen, his sightless eyes peering incredulously, “Caused the riots? You mean he deliberately brought them about? Made them happen?”

  There was the yacht’s log, there were the confessions of the crewmen, and once it became clear that Donov was working, not to embarrass individual worlds, but in the interest of the entire galactic community, the governments of the riot worlds reversed themselves and supplied volumes of supporting evidence.

  What Wargen had called a spiraling galactic wind had been the cruise of a single ship. Jaward Jorno had studied the populations of twenty-four worlds until he plumbed their hatreds and discovered depths they themselves had not envisioned in their foulest nightmares. For more than a year before the riots, he moved up and down the spiral, spreading rumors with diabolical ingenuity, playing upon fears as a skilled lumeno virtuoso manipulated his keyboard. Finally he was ready, and he caused the riots.

  On Skuron, where according to rumor industrial wastes had poisoned a reservoir, Jorno’s men had done the job with bacteria. “We went at night with unpowered boats and dumped cultures of Gelon 12 directly into the intake pipes,” one confession read. Gelon 12 did not occur on Skuron, and Skuron’s water-treatment procedures merely encouraged the bacteria to proliferate.

  One of Jorno’s crewmen was an expert chemist. “Gelon 12 rarely has fatal results,” he said protestingly. “Why, if we’d wanted to kill people…”

  Hundreds of thousands became ill; hundreds died. Chemical analysis of the polluted water found Gelon 12. The government suppressed that information, not wanting it known how easily the world’s water supplies could be sabotaged, and blamed industrial pollution, but the people were not deceived. Rumors, astutely planted and spread by Jorno and his crewmen, placed the blame on the animaloids, and the riots followed.

  On Sornor, enormous tracts of grazing land were sprayed with chemicals. It wasn’t necessary to kill the vegetation, but only to produce a reaction that made the natives think it was dying. One of Jorno’s crewmen invented an apparatus that produced a spray fine enough to taint an area miles wide. “We rented winged transports and did several thousand acres a night for a week,” he confessed. The nonors were blamed, with Jorno guiding the rumors.

  On Proplif, Jorno damaged grain crops with the same spraying apparatus. On Mestil, explosives caused the landslides and cracked the dam. A hundred thousand humans died; no one bothered to count the dead meszs. The Bbronan fires were arson, they were set by Jorno’s crewmen.

  On world after world after world…

  A light flashed, and Wargen started irritably. The World Manager said, “Eritha’s coming with Lester Harnasharn. They want to know if you can join us.”

  “When?” Wargen asked.

  “When they get here. They’re about to leave the galleries.”

  “Let me know when they arrive.”

  He got to his feet and paced back and forth, pausing from time to time to look at the new star chart.

  Jaward Jorno. A good man. A saint. The author of more Good Works than his own steward had time to catalogue. Jaward Jorno had caused the riots. With no compunction that anyone was able to notice, he performed inconceivable evils merely so that he could go on doing good.

  His dedication to Good Works had so reduced his father’s enormous fortune that he found himself rapidly approaching bankruptcy. His remaining assets were a space yacht, a devoted and talented crew, an estate on Donov, and a diminishing amount of capital. His eye fell on the animaloids, many species of them brilliant, all of them abused minorities. They could be an invaluable economic asset for the man who knew how to make use of them.

  Jaward Jorno knew how. Everyone had been so pleased at the possibility of low-priced textiles for Donov that no one had stopped to ponder the fact that Jorno would have a textile monopoly for an entire world. His daily profits would amount to a fortune. With ingenious animaloids to achieve automation miracles, expansion of the monopoly to other worlds would be inevitable. Already Jorno had moved toward a dominant if not domineering position in Donov’s fabulously profitable tourist industry. He had taken options on properties with resort potential all over Donov, and with the meszs to construct quality resorts without labor costs, he soon would have been taking another daily fortune from that source.

  And that was only a beginning. Nothing was known about Jorno’s long-range plans, but Wargen was certain that he’d had some. He’d established tarff in Rinoly years before his animaloids arrived to make use of it. He committed enormous evils, but it was enormous stakes that he was playing for.

  Perhaps he hadn’t expected success on all twenty-four worlds, but he achieved it, and he selected the animaloid refugees with the most potential value for him. His project almost foundered on Donov’s immigration laws and the unexpected coolness of its officials toward accepting the refugees, but a trick saved him.

  And he acquired three thousand uniquely
valuable slaves. No other individual slaveholder in history possessed such brilliant servants. They could build anything, they could do almost anything, and all of them were willing to die for the man who rescued them from Mestil.

  And yet—Jorno certainly returned the meszs’ affection, he respected their culture and traditions, and he was conscientious about his responsibility for them. He made them his heirs, and they now owned his entire estate.

  Anyone doubting that Jorno had caused the riots had only to contemplate the fiendish efficiency with which he crushed the island of Zrilund. The poison used was the same that simulated the poisonous alga on Cuque, stained red instead of green. On Donov, Jorno was so certain of himself that he saw no need for subtleties.

  Neither did he see any need to make the cost higher than absolutely necessary. His men dumped just enough poison at Virrab to divert suspicion from him, and the boats they blew up there were worthless hulks that Jorno acquired for that purpose. He reasoned that a wrecked boat looked very much the same as a good boat after an explosion, and he was light. Demron’s men never suspected a thing.

  Jorno ruined Zrilund in a childish fit of temper. He was performing such splendid Good Works for Donov—prosperity for Rinoly farmers, low-priced textiles for the entire planet, a revitalization of Donov’s tourist industry that would benefit Zrilund and every other resort—and instead of being properly grateful, the stupid people and artists of Zrilund were subjecting him to every petty harassment they could think of. He lost his temper, he determined to show them that no one crossed Jaward Jorno with impunity. It took him just two nights to smash Zrilund utterly.

  He forgot that his own animaloids were as vulnerable as the animaloids on other worlds, and he forgot that such enemies as Ronony Gynth were capable of clumsy but effective use of the same forces he himself had unleashed so skillfully. Ronony so little understood what she was doing that she aimed all of her efforts at Zrilund’s artists—and she still succeeded in arousing the townspeople and fishermen against Jorno.