Dumarest 33 - Child of Earth

by Tubb, E. C.

  “If they don’t?”

  “Then I must. You are right, Earl. As was she. It is wrong to withhold the mercy of a painless end. Perhaps I should begin at once.”

  “But not with her.” Dumarest stared down into the dell. “She has too much courage and has earned respect. If she wants I will do what must be done—but I’ll not leave her to die alone.”

  She turned her head as he approached and weakly tried to prevent him from replacing the covers. She smiled as he insisted, smiled again as he chafed her cheeks and let his fingers trail over her throat so as to locate the carotid arteries which carried the blood to her brain. Clamped they would cease to function and, within seconds, she would lose consciousness. In less than a minute she would be dead.

  “Not that, Earl. You promise?”

  “It would be kind.”

  “As you are. But I have made my own plan. I want to die as Tazima died. I want to hear the voices of the Shining Ones.” She moved a little, one hand rising to point to the far edge of the dell. “Can you hear them? Listen! Can you?”

  A soft hum of wind and with it a subdued rustling. A faint rasping as if a horde of insects were crawling over a resonant surface. A blur of ‘white sound’ that he had heard on another world in another time. And then—

  “You heard!” The woman sobbed with frustration as she fought her injuries and tried to rear upright, her weight sagging against his arms. “Earl! You heard! You must have heard!”

  “Sound,” he agreed. “A rustling—”

  “The Shining Ones!” She was adamant. “They are here! They have come for me! For all of us, perhaps. We are saved! Saved!”

  A woman delirious with hope, mastered by her delusion, dying, hearing what she needed to hear. To do other than bolster her conviction would be cruel.

  “Earl?”

  “I hear them!”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I’m not! I can hear them!” He drew in his breath, concentrating, listening, hearing the soft medley of sounds change, alter in a subtle fashion, to break into segments that gained their own identity. To form words, signals, shouts, ululations.

  The Shining Ones had arrived.

  They came like wisps of smoke, white against white, slithering over the snow, melting, vanishing to appear again, their movements heralded by squeaks, whistles, piping notes, trills. A host dressed in perfect camouflage, shining with a faint nacreous shimmer, coming closer, closer.

  The stuff of legend made real.

  “Earl!” The woman stirred in his arms, struggling to cling to him as he set her down. Rising he faced the drifting shapes, tensing as they drew near, poised for combat, ready to strike, to twist, move, dodge. “No, Earl, don’t! They mean us no harm!”

  A conviction he couldn’t share. These were no ineffable God-like beings glowing with a pure, inner grace, coming to deliver help and healing, safety, comfort and the endless pleasures of legendary Earth, but creatures wearing reflective garments and disguised weapons. Instruments that coughed and sent a swirling nacreous vapor towards himself and the woman. He heard her sigh, and felt the breath clog in his lungs. A numbing gas that froze his mobility and sent him to sprawl in the snow where time ceased to have meaning and order turned into nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He fought a dragon in a frigid sea of ebon chill, feeling the crushing grip of savage jaws, the rend of talons, the pain of wounds and the growing numbness of physical dissolution. Threshing he struggled for awareness, for warmth and light and conscious life. The darkness paled into a nacreous sheen. The crushing embrace of the dragon eased and reality replaced the nightmare.

  One born of associated memories. There was no dragon, no ebon sea of frozen chill, no spouting wounds. They were distortions created from buried fears and hard experience of travelling in the containers designed to carry livestock, doped, frozen and ninety per cent dead. The caskets which offered cheap transport to those men and women willing to risk the fifteen per cent death rate. As yet he had been lucky. Now it seemed his luck had come to an end.

  Lying supine, eyes closed, he recalled the onrush of the silvered shapes, the weapons, the gas, the overwhelming attack. Things belonging to the past now, fragments of dreams as had been the frigid sea and the dragon. But they had never existed outside his own mind. The beings that had taken him captive had been real.

  He stirred and stretched and touched the surface on which he rested. A warm, soft texture taut over a yielding interior. The air, too was warm, scented with the delicate odor of a summer’s day and small sounds graced the emptiness which he sensed around him. A chamber, he decided. One holding a soft couch. A warm place that could be a haven or a jail.

  Opening his eyes he stared at magic.

  The chamber was vast, the vaulted roof soaring high, the walls distant, the illumination glowing from the floor and walls and the arching roof as if sunlight had been collected and stored and gently released to warm and gild all within view. Water gushed gently from a fountain and glimmering shapes rested on the surface of the surrounding pool. Among them a girl of gold and alabaster glided with the smooth agility of a fish.

  Dumarest rose. He was naked beneath the gossamer silkiness of the fabric that had covered him and he wound it around his waist. The girl smiled as he approached lifting an arm in greeting

  “Earl Dumarest. Welcome to Shandaha. Would you care to join me?”

  “I would rather have some answers.”

  “Of course. You are curious. That is to be expected. But there is time. There is always time. Too much time if the truth be admitted.” She swam to the edge of the pool and rose from the water to stand, a symphony of feminine perfection, droplets like pearls adorning her skin. “If you are interested you may call me Nada.”

  “I am very interested.” Dumarest took a step towards her. “In you and this place and what has happened. How long have I been here? Am I alone? Was it your men who captured me? Those wearing white. What some poor, dying woman thought of as the Shining Ones?”

  “So many questions, Earl. I promise you all will be answered but not now. You have just woken, you have yet to become accustomed to Shandaha, there are things to explain and ideas to exchange. You will accommodate me?”

  “Have I a choice?”

  “No, Earl. You have no choice. Here, in this place, the will of Shandaha is paramount.”

  Not a haven then, but a jail. One luxurious beyond imagination but still a place where he was to be held and dominated and forced to live to the dictates of another’s whim. A prisoner of some unknown war. A captive as if he had been held by a raiding band. As a slave? For ransom?

  He closed the space between them and gripped her upper arms and, thrusting his face close to her own, snarled his anger.

  “I’ve had enough of this! Now take me to the one who owns this place! Move, damn you!”

  “Don’t be a fool, Earl!”

  “Just do it! Do it before I break your damned neck!” His hands lifted, changed their grip, fingers resting on soft tissue, firm bone. “Your choice, Nada. You have five seconds to make it. Shall I count?”

  “Four,” she said calmly retaining her smile. “Three. Two. One—goodbye, Earl.”

  And, suddenly, she was gone.

  He stared before him, at his hands still raised before him, the fingers curved to mirror the shape of a neck that was no longer there. Perhaps had never been there. Like the imagined dragon of his dream the girl could have been a trick of his mind, a vision conjured from scents and colors and wistful longing. Nada—Nadine. Shandaha—Shemmar. Women he had known and loved and lost. Was he hoping to find them again? Here, on Earth, the planet of legend, all things were deemed possible. Or perhaps he was still lying in the snow where he had fallen. Freezing, lost in delirium, dying of hypothermia as Tazima had died.

  “No. Earl, you are not dying.”

  A man, tall, strong, graceful, with a deep musical voice. One with a thick mane of neatly dressed hair and an elaborately pa
tterned beard. Hair, beard, eyes all of the same ebon hue as his skin and the clothing he wore. A creature of jet adorned with the glitter of gems. They flashed as he lifted a hand in warning as Dumarest strode towards him.

  “Come no further!” Then, smiling, he added, “I must apologize. It seems my initial greeting was not to your liking. The girl, perhaps? Some men resent their air of superiority induced by the biological reactions of their opposite gender. Most lack that fine delicacy of feeling so essential to the establishment of a congenial harmony. I had hoped she would soothe your fear. I misjudged your reaction. It was a mistake to have used her as I did. Can any but a man truly understand another man? Your comments, Earl?”

  “I think you talk too much and say too little.”

  “A man of action as I had determined. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Shandaha.”

  “My jailer.”

  “Never that, Earl. You are my most welcome and treasured guest.”

  “You own this place?”

  “This place, the surrounding area, all that is above the ground and beneath it.”

  “And, if I wish, I can leave at any time?”

  “Of course. But remember the hostility of the terrain outside. Without provisions, clothing, maps, transport I’m afraid you wouldn’t get very far. But the choice is yours.” He smiled as Dumarest remained silent. “I meant it when I said you were a treasured guest. I could also add that you owe me a small debt of gratitude. I saved your life. In return all I ask is that you entertain me for a while. Shall we begin by sharing wine?”

  There were preliminaries, surprises, meandering that Dumarest ignored. The couch on which he had woken had vanished to be replaced by a deep sofa faced by a table bearing familiar items. His clothing, the grey plastic refurbished as new. Pants, knee-high boots, the tunic with the high collar and long sleeves falling to the middle of his thighs. His knife; nine inches of honed and polished steel, curved and balanced, razor-edged and with a needle point. He fingered it, letting his fingers check the band of weld beneath the pommel, satisfied with what he found. As he was when he checked the buckle of his belt.

  “You are pleased?”

  Pleased and puzzled, he had seen no sign of attendants or activity, yet the furniture had been changed and his clothing set in position.

  Shandaha said, “I asked you a question, Earl. Are you pleased?”

  “Very pleased.” Dumarest hesitated then added, “My lord.”

  “You are courteous, or perhaps merely cautious, but there is no need for rigid formality between us. If you wish to dress do it now. I have arranged refreshment to be served in a smaller chamber. You will find it to your right as you pass through the end door. Join me when you are ready. There is no need to hurry.”

  Time gained in which to think and assess what he had learned. A man of power living in an oddly deserted edifice and what had happened to the girl? If he threatened Shandaha would he vanish as Nada had done? Had the offer of freedom been as genuine as it seemed? Yet, without help and supplies escape was impossible. And what had happened to the others?

  The Kaldari and the Shining Ones or the creatures aping them. Men he had thought, wearing camouflage and bearing arms. A dozen of them? A score? More? Had they been men? He heard again the chirps, whistles, howls, assorted noises as they had exchanged signals. Felt again the numbing impact of the gas.

  He tried to remember what had followed but could only recall scattered fragments of dreams.

  Perhaps Shandaha would provide the answers.

  He sat in a chamber shaped and glowing like the interior of a gem. Facets reflected soft shimmers, gleams, furnishings, the goblets on the table, the decanters of wine.

  Thin plumes of rising smoke held tantalizing odors and gleaming salvers held a profusion of cunningly fashioned delicacies. Nada sat beside him, a vision in white adorned with gold. Next to her another woman, her flesh richly golden, stared with undisguised interest as Dumarest approached the table. Her eyes were darkly enigmatic. Her gown the color of ripened wheat.

  “Delise,” introduced Shandaha. “This is Earl Dumarest,” he said to her then, as a man walked into the room, “I think you all know Doctor Chagal.”

  He had changed. His face had smoothed to a younger design now clear of strain and fatigue. He walked tall and stood straight but something had gone from his eyes as if a dark secret had been revealed or his innermost privacy had been violated. A strange detachment as if he had looked into the depths of his being and found no reason for respect, pride, hope or virtue.

  Dumarest moved to greet him, gripping his hand in the old gesture of mutual trust, then guided him to a chair.

  “We’ve a lot to talk about, doctor. Here, have some wine.”

  A discourtesy with the host present but Dumarest was beyond caring about the niceties of protocol. As yet he had been fumbling in the dark, unsure of the truth of what he had been told, uneasy at the continued façade of apparent concern and friendship that could mask something far more sinister.

  Chagal should be able to tell him what he needed to know.

  “Earl!” His hand closed in turn. “It’s good to see you again. “Ladies,” he bowed to them both. “My lord!”

  A title Shandaha had rejected when Dumarest had offered it. A politeness offered by the doctor, which he retained. A subtle hint as to their relative standings.

  “Here!” Shandaha gestured to Nada. “Earl’s goblet has yet to be filled. See to it. And you Delise, my dear, attend the doctor. Help yourself to anything you desire.” Rising he added, “I must leave now. Entertain yourselves.”

  Orders, not requests, and a further hint that the host was not quite all that he appeared to be. Dumarest was not surprised. The rich and powerful had always acted the despot and Shandaha was typical of his kind. A selfish person, his needs, wants, inclinations, paramount to the safety or comfort of anyone else. A man with a charming façade but, because of his position, a dangerous one.

  “Tell me what happened.” Dumarest lifted the decanter from the table, ignoring Delise, filling Chaga’s goblet, draining his own.

  The wine was thick, rich, bursting with flavor. It clung like blood to the rim of the goblet and left ruby touches on the doctor’s lips. Stains that vanished as Delise plied a napkin.

  Chagal said, “They came Earl. The Shining Ones. You remember?”

  “Men or things wearing camouflage. They used gas. Yes, I remember.”

  “You stood up to them and were the first to go down. The woman was next. Adele, you remember her? The one with the broken spine. She died. I was captured and taken to the wreck. They broke in and cleared it out. It didn’t take long. Then I was gassed and woke up in this place. Shandaha, the same name as the owner. It tells you something.”

  “He has pride,” said Dumarest. “He claimed to have saved my life. Did he?”

  “Yes. You’d have frozen if they’d left you, but it wasn’t just that. The Kaldari had broken into the arms locker and my guess is they would have shot you on sight. Aside from that some were diseased. They’d hid it but it would have spread. In a few days we’d all have gone down.” Chagal stared broodingly at the contours of his empty glass, then added,

  “The injured didn’t survive.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s it.” Chagal watched as Delise filled his goblet. Dumarest shook his head as Nada offered to serve him in turn. “It’s been a while. I don’t know how long. Time acts oddly here. Drugs, maybe, or something which affects the senses. There are odd blank spots and strange happenings. A day can seem an hour, an hour a day. Especially when Shandaha wants to be entertained.” He stared at Dumarest’s blank expression. “You don’t know? He hasn’t told you yet?”

  “He said I owed him a little entertainment. He didn’t explain just what he meant.”

  “He wants to live your life. To feel the things you did. Do the things you’ve done. Somehow to connect with your memory and ride with you on your journey through life. I’ve been t
hrough it.” Chagal’s hand tightened on his goblet, the crystal quivering, the surface of the wine shimmering with reflected light. “He’s bored,” he explained. “Too much time, too much comfort, not enough people, no distractions, nothing but endless repetition. So he borrows incidents, memories, romances, just as if he’s reading a row of books. But he’s reading lives. He lives them. Feels them.”

  “It hurts?”

  “Not from what he does. You don’t even know he’s there. But you go back in time. Mentally, of course, but you go back. Can you guess what it’s like?”

  Too well. Dumarest remembered a circus, a girl with an unusual talent, a song which twisted the mind. Journeys into terror. Trips back into hell.

  “These girls,” said Chagal with sudden anger. “This chamber—the whole damned place. The food, the wine, the comfort. Everything. All toys to keep us happy. Shandaha supplies them all. Cross him and they go. Attack him and you’d be out in the snow, naked, dying.”

  “And when he’s drained you dry?”

  “I don’t know.” Chagal voiced his desperation. “That’s what’s twisting my brain. I never know what’s going to happen next. I’ve nothing more to give him. Nothing!”

  He gulped more wine, the rich fluid slopping over his chin as Shandaha suddenly appeared before them. Silently Delise cleared away the mess.

  “The doctor has explained,” said Dumarest. “Which is what you intended when you left us alone. It seems you have an unusual talent.”

  “One you recognize.” Shandaha leaned forward, his eyes as bright as the gems adorning his fingers. “It is not new to you. I sensed it in your mind. You are not like Chagal. You have had a different upbringing. More varied experiences. You will accommodate me?”

  “You saved my life,” said Dumarest. “I owe you a debt. I am willing to entertain you. When shall we begin?”

  There was no girl, no drums, no wailing song that twisted the mind and sent it hurtling back to a time of fear and terror. Instead there was a flask of sparkling fluid, two small glasses and a machine connected to electrodes that Shandaha fitted to both their skulls.