“Hey,” said Rennie. “How about letting me in on what you’re thinking?”
“Just this,” said Daenek. “If everything’s been crammed into those data banks, then all you’d have to do is look hard enough to find what you want.”
Chapter XVII
“I still think this is a dumb idea,” said Rennie. She shone her flashlight at the circular metal plate set into the ground. “I mean, what’s the point of taking a chance on getting caught down there? This isn’t going to lead us to any money.”
Daenek ignored her, turning to Lessup on his other side. “You sure they shut down for the night?” They had waited until night to make the attempt at the best time.
“Sure,” said Lessup. “Everybody’s got to sleep some time. We won’t run into anybody down there.”
“They won’t be waiting for you to come back?”
Lessup shook his head. “This is an old ventilation shaft that I discovered during my off-hours. I used to slip out at night, change into some clothes I had stashed, and go wandering around. The main entrance is automatically guarded, of course, but nobody knows about this.”
Daenek and then Rennie followed him out of the buildings’ shadows and over to the meter-wide plate. “See?” said Lessup.
“The bolts have all rusted and snapped. They’re just hanging there.” He bent down and slid the plate to one side, exposing the dark mouth of the shaft below it. “I’ll go first. The sides are corrugated, enough to give you a fingerhold, and its only a couple of meters until the shaft hits one of the corridors.”
They watched him lower himself into the shaft and disappear from view. “This still seems stupid to me,” whispered Rennie disgustedly. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“Go on,” said Daenek. “I’ll follow you down.”
Still muttering, she descended into the shaft. When her head was no longer visible, Daenek lowered himself, gripping the ridges on either side with the tips of his fingers. The air in the shaft was still and musty.
A small square of light appeared to one side below him, revealing the bottom of the shaft. He dropped the last short distance, knelt down and scrambled through the opening. Lessup and Rennie were on the other side, in a corridor dimly lit by overhead panels.
Lessup pushed a louvered grill back into place over the opening into the short. He grinned at Daenek. “I should’ve been a burglar,” he said. “I really get a charge out of sneaking around when everybody’s asleep. It puts you one up on ’em. Come on.”
The corridor crossed a wider hallway down which Lessup led them. Daenek was aware of their cautious footsteps sounding against the antiseptic blue-white walls. The doors were all unmarked but Lessup finally stopped before one, pushed it carefully open a few inches and looked inside. “All clear,” he said after a moment. He winked and opened it all the way.
When they were inside the room, he pulled the door shut after them. “This is the main data access terminal,” he said, gesturing.
There were a dozen seats molded of the same material as the walls and set into the floor facing tilted control panels. Above each panel was a blunt-cornered rectangle of dull-grey glass.
Lessup slid into one of the chairs and pressed one of the buttons before him. A faint electronic hum, and the screen in front of him pulsed with blue light. Daenek and Rennie stood behind him, silently watching.
The word INDEX—in English—appeared on the screen as Lessup punched another button, then disappeared. Rows of letters and numbers crawled upward, vanishing at the top of the screen. “The latest entries,” said Lessup and snorted in disgust.
“What a bunch of garbage.” The moving entries sped into a blur as he fingered another control.
After nearly a minute, he lifted his hand and the words froze on the screen. “Five years back,” he announced, pressing down again. More lines flew upwards on the screen, then suddenly disappeared entirely. The words LIMITED ACCESS MATERIAL flashed on. ENTER PHD #.
“Ah,” said Lessup. “We must be getting down to the good stuff.” He pulled on his lower lip, his other hand hovering nervously over the panel. “I’ll have to take a chance on this. I know it has to be seven digits—” He was talking only to himself, “—and I think it has to start with zero five.” He took a deep breath, then rapidly punched several buttons.
The words disappeared from the screen and, after a second of nothing but blankness, the lines of the index re-appeared. Lessup slumped with relief in the chair. He turned his head and smiled ingenuously at Daenek and Rennie. “I didn’t tell you that there’s an alarm wired into this thing. Goes off if you goof up suspiciously.” Turning back to the screen, his hands sought out the controls, and the rows of words and numbers flashed upward again.
Several minutes more passed, then Lessup slowed the index to a crawl. He leaned forward, studying the characters. “All right,” he said slowly. “This is just . . . about . . . the time of the coup against the thane.” The index froze as he lifted his hand from the control panel. “Now if I can find the right envelope . . .”
Another button, and the words TOPIC, GENERAL replaced the index. Letter by letter, the words EVENTS, POLITICAL, SEQUENCE appeared as Lessup pecked at the buttons. The screen went blank, then read RESTRICTED MATERIAL. ENTER PRIORITY #.
Lessup sat back in the chair and stared at the screen. “Damn,” he said. “I’ve never even heard of that.” Chewing his lip, he reached out to the panel, then jerked his hand back as if from a fire. “Well,” he said after several seconds, “here goes.” His hand moved along the controls again, slowly pressing a sequence of buttons.
The screen went blank. A long moment passed. “Maybe we’d better—” began Daenek, when words suddenly flashed on the screen again. SEQUENCE, SPECIFIC.
Smiling, Lessup tapped out THANE, REFERENCE TO. He turned and winked at Daenek and Rennie. “Now we’ve got it.”
Suddenly, as he faced the screen again, it went dead, devoid of even its constant faint-blue glow. Lessup whirled around, lifting himself out of the seat. His smile was replaced with fear-widened eyes.
“What’s the matter?” said Daenek.
“It suckered us.” Lessup’s voice was harsh with tension. “We tripped an alarm. I should’ve known there wasn’t any such thing as a priority—” He broke off, staring past them at the door.
Daenek thought he could hear a muffled, ringing noise outside the room, then the sound of running feet, coming closer. “Come on,” he snapped, pulling Lessup from the seat.
The door wouldn’t open when Daenek tugged at the handle.
The sound of men running was growing louder.
“We’ll have to try and get past them,” said Rennie. “Scatter if you make it, then try to find your way back to the air shaft.” She flattened herself against the wall by the door.
There was only the sound of their breathing for a few seconds, then the door slowly moved inward. Daenek grabbed the handle and pulled violently. A figure in a dark uniform tumbled into the room. Rennie dashed past him into a group of several more men.
There was the dull crack of fists against their flesh as she struggled furiously to get free of them.
Lessup and Daenek followed on her heels. The corridor seemed to be filled with black uniforms and hands reaching for them, pulling them down. Daenek saw Lessup fall to the floor, tackled around his waist by two of the men.
Somehow, Daenek managed to jerk himself loose from the nearest ones and slip beneath a thick arm that started to encircle his neck. He sprinted down the corridor, then glanced quickly over his shoulder as he ran. One of the black-uniformed men seemed to be pointing at him. A small flash of light from the man’s outstretched hand, and the corridor darkened as Daenek turned his head. The floor flew up at him but he never felt its impact.
Chapter XVIII
Consciousness surprised him. Daenek opened his eyes and lifted his head, then winced at a sudden pain in the side of his neck. He pressed his hand to it, then took it away. There was a tiny spo
t of blood on his fingers. That’s where the needle must have hit, he thought dully.
He was lying upon some type of low couch. He righted himself and set his feet upon the floor. The room was in darkness except for what looked to be a small lamp upon a desk some meters away. As Daenek leaned forward, trying to make out anything else, the lamp tilted towards him, blinding him for a moment.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” came a voice from behind the desk. “Please don’t get up.”
Daenek shaded his eyes. Behind the glare of the lamp he could detect the outlines of the man who had spoken but nothing of his face. “What happened to the others who were with me?” said Daenek. His throat ached when he talked.
“They’ve been taken care of.”
Regret and anger mingled in Daenek’s chest at what had happened to them. “What about me?”
“You have no cause to worry.” The voice remained smooth, emotionless. “I accord you some respect, as the son of a great man. A man whose downfall I had the misfortune of aiding.”
“You’re the Regent.”
“Yes.”
Daenek leaned back against the couch and dug his fingers into the soft upholstery. Tensing, he began to gauge the distance between himself and the desk, then stopped. More of the black-uniformed men, the Regent’s personal militia, were probably only a fraction of a second away. And even more important, the man behind the desk might be the last source left for the answers he had come so far to find. “What do you want with me?” he said, relaxing only a fraction.
The glare-obscured face made no movement. “To talk,” he said. “I’ve spent years thinking of what I would say to you, when you finally came.”
Daenek’s voice tightened into a rasp. “Is that why you ordered the subthane to kill me when I turned seventeen?”
An amused note crept into the other’s voice. “I knew that you’d only be worth talking to if you escaped and made your way here. That would show how much of your father was in you. And as it now seems . . . please relax your disguise.”
Squinting, Daenek tried to discern the expression on the Regent’s face, but his features were still hidden by the lamp’s glare. After a few seconds, Daenek concentrated, then relaxed, letting the muscles and sinews that formed his mask shift back into the contours of his own face.
“Thank you,” said the Regent. His voice was oddly respectful.
“Yes . . . it is his face. You are the son of a thane.”
The last few words seemed to burn into Daenek’s chest. He waited, saying nothing.
The Regent spoke again. “To this day I regret the necessity of his death. He wanted great things.”
“Why was he killed?” Daenek’s throat felt tight around his words.
“The things he wanted were inconvenient to some—the Academy. Fearful to others—most of the men he thought supported him. Between those his dreams were pressed to death.”
Words came to Daenek without thinking. “What did he want? That was so dangerous?”
A heartbeat’s pause. “He wanted the people of this world to be free. And powerful, and wise, and all the things men are at their best. Instead of fearful and ignorant—with that which separates them from beasts and stones dissolving in the acid of their own sloth.” The Regent’s voice had risen slightly, and now fell to its former pitch. “And so the ones for whom he was inconvenient had him killed and helped me take his place, and the ones who feared him and his ideas were grateful.”
“But he had his power!” cried Daenek. “He could command their minds, make people do what he wanted—”
“So why didn’t he save himself?” said the Regent, almost sadly. “We were very careful, and it was too late before he knew. And even in the last seconds, as the assassin aimed the gun, the thane might have welcomed his death, for his disappointment was very great. His last days were bitter with the realization that he had no power to do what he wanted—that he couldn’t command people to be free and wise and brave. What is missing from a man’s heart can’t be put there by another. Your father learned that. For his body to die was almost an afterthought.”
Daenek was silent, feeling everything that had been said ebb through him like the dregs of an ocean. There’s more, he wanted to say, there must be something else besides that, besides a black seed grown as big as a world— But no words came.
“I have something of yours,” said the Regent after several moments. “I’d like to keep it, if I may. As a remembrance of a great man.”
Looking up, Daenek saw something dangling from the Regent’s hand, glittering in the lamp’s harsh light. Daenek’s own hand went to his throat. The fine-linked chain and square of white metal wasn’t around his neck. “No,” he said, looking at it turn slowly above the desk. “It’s mine.”
“Come. I’ll trade you for it.”
“There isn’t anything I want.” Besides that, the thought flared inside Daenek. And whatever it unlocks. There must be more.
“You have a life to live yet,” said the Regent. “I’ll arrange for you to be taken back aboard the caravan. To be a mertzer was pleasant, wasn’t it? Great circles around the world—motion, at least. Perhaps it’s best to settle for the illusion of progress.”
Daenek said nothing, but got to his feet, pushing himself up from the couch.
“Perhaps you could be the next governor,” continued the Regent, “with whom I replace some old and incompetent subthane. Though your father’s blood might find that sad.”
Holding out his hand, Daenek walked towards the desk.
“Keep it, then.” He tossed the chain at Daenek’s palm. “There really is nothing I can give you.”
Daenek caught the metal and squeezed it tight within his fist.
He stood in front of the desk and looked across at the Regent, his features no longer hidden by the glare from the lamp. A face like other men’s, with a broad forehead and a grey-flecked, pointed beard. Eyes sad, surrounded by a webbing of fine lines in the skin.
“I’ll have someone take you outside,” said the Regent. He rose and pushed a button set into the desk top.
A door opened, spilling a shaft of light into the room. A black-uniformed man stood in the opening and gestured to Daenek.
He turned and walked away from the desk. After he stepped out of the room, there were corridors and stairs that he barely noticed as he followed the man in black, emerging at last onto a wide, gravel-lined path. Outside the Regent’s palace, the world was filled with the cold grey light of dawn. In the distance at the end of the path, another of the men in black held open a gate set into a high iron fence. Daenek pulled his jacket tighter around himself against the morning chill. The noise of his boots on the gravel was like something breaking.
The gate clicked shut behind him. Several meters away the city appeared a seamless mass. As he pulled the chain over his head and dropped the little metal square against his chest, he froze, hearing something behind him.
“Well, what now?” It was Lessup’s voice.
Daenek whirled around and saw the ex-sociologist walking towards him, grinning. Rennie still leaned against the iron fence, the corner of her mouth curled in disgust.
The three of them walked back through the city to the deserted building where Daenek and Rennie had left their packs.
No words were spoken on the way—even if Daenek hadn’t been lost in thought, Rennie’s silent anger made the air impenetrable between them. The city dwellers, rising for their day’s work in the warehouses and processing factories at the city’s edge, glanced at the trip with mild curiosity.
When they reached the empty building, Rennie went to one corner and lifted her pack onto her shoulder. “You two,” she announced, “can decide what fool thing you want to try next. I’m cutting out.” She started towards the door.
Daenek caught her by the arm. “Come on,” he pleaded. “We’ve been together a long time, looking for—”
“Crap.” The lines of her mouth hardened. “You’re so hot on kno
wing things, knowing why this happened and why that happened—crap. Man, all I want to know is where’s the money.”
She jerked her arm free from his grasp. “You’re not even asking that question. That stupid jaunt with the sociologist tears it.”
After she was gone from the building, Daenek stood staring at the doorway for a long time. It was slowly filling with light as the morning wore on. “Right,” he muttered. “That was a good question. What now?”
Lessup walked to the doorway, looked out, then sauntered back towards Daenek with his hands thrust into his pockets.
“Well,” he said. “It’s never too early for a drink.”
Chapter XIX
The tavern they wound up in had warm, thick ale and a window that gave a view of the Regent’s palace. Daenek forced another swallow of the brew down his throat, then set his glass heavily upon the table-top. He had never been this drunk before—in fact, had never taken advantage of the occasional opportunities to drink aboard the caravan with the mertzers—but now it seemed like more and more of a good idea.
There was something odd floating in the ale, though—both lumpy and hairlike at the same time. Daenek squinted at the half-empty pitcher in the center of the table, trying to spot again whatever it was. Lessup, sitting on the other side, didn’t seem to notice, but just kept tossing down glass after glass of the dark-brown liquid. The wages Daenek had accumulated aboard the caravan grew lighter coin by coin with each fresh pitcher.
He pushed his glass away in a momentary fit of disgust.
Turning in his seat, he could look out of the window and see the palace. Its high walls were bright with the overhead sun. Daenek guessed that it was noon already, which meant they had been drinking for several hours.
“My father lived there,” he announced somberly, facing Lessup again. “And—now—he—doesn’t” jabbing with his finger for emphasis. “And neither do I.”
Lessup stared at him, his eyelids drooping. “Your father never lived there,” he said simply.
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