Deathworld (31 page)

He circled the thing, looking for a gate. There wasn't one at ground
level. A slanting cleft in the stone could be climbed easily, but it
seemed incredible that this might be the only entrance. A complete
circuit proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting
and broken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly.

"I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work any more. I'm bringing the
message from Nyjord that you have been waiting to hear." This was
a slight bending of the truth without fracturing it. There was no
answer—just the hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and the
mutter of the car in the background. He started to climb.

The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to watch where he put
his feet. At the same time he fought a constant impulse to look up,
watching for anything falling from above. Nothing happened. When he
reached the top of the wall he was breathing hard; sweat moistened
his body. There was still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly
shaped wall that appeared to circle the building. Instead of having
a courtyard inside it, the wall was the outer face of the structure,
the domed roof rising from it. At varying intervals dark openings
gave access to the interior. When Brion looked down, the sand car
was just a dun-colored bump in the desert, already far behind him.

Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There was still no one
in sight. The room inside was something out of a madman's funhouse.
It was higher than it was wide, irregular in shape, and more like a
hallway than a room. At one end it merged into an incline that
became a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole that vanished
in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in through slots and
holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the
same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took the stairs. After
a number of blind passages and wrong turns he saw a stronger light
ahead, and went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the
unusual Disan design in the different rooms he passed through. Yet
no people. The light ahead grew stronger, and the last passageway
opened and swelled out until it led into the large central chamber.

This was the heart of the strange structure. All the rooms,
passageways and halls existed just to give form to this gigantic
chamber. The walls rose sharply, the room being circular in cross
section and growing narrower towards the top. It was a truncated
cone, since there was no ceiling; a hot blue disk of sky cast light
on the floor below.

On the floor stood a knot of men who stared at Brion.

Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very periphery of his
consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room—barrels,
stores, machinery, a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps
that made no sense at first glance. There was no time to look
closer. Every fraction of his attention was focused on the muffled
and hooded men.

He had found the enemy.

Everything that had happened to him so far on Dis had been
preparation for this moment. The attack in the desert, the escape,
the dreadful heat of sun and sand. All this had tempered and
prepared him. It had been nothing in itself. Now the battle would
begin in earnest.

None of this was conscious in his mind. His fighter's reflexes bent
his shoulders, curved his hands before him as he walked softly in
balance, ready to spring in any direction. Yet none of this was
really necessary. All the danger so far was nonphysical. When he did
give conscious thought to the situation he stopped, startled. What
was wrong here? None of the men had moved or made a sound. How could
he even know they were men? They were so muffled and wrapped in
cloth that only their eyes were exposed.

No doubt, however, existed in Brion's mind. In spite of muffled
cloth and silence, he knew them for what they were. The eyes were
empty of expression and unmoving, yet were filled with the same
negative emptiness as those of a bird of prey. They could look on
life, death, and the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest
and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time, without
words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and walked a
step he understood what he had to face. There could be no doubt, not
to an empathetic.

From the group of silent men poured a frost-white wave of unemotion.
An empathetic shares what other men feel. He gets his knowledge of
their reaction by sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of
interest, hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small
sensations that accompany all thought and action. The empathetic
is always aware of this constant and silent surge, whether he makes
the effort to understand it or not. He is like a man glancing across
the open pages of a tableful of books. He can see that the type, words,
paragraphs, thoughts are there, even without focusing his attention
to understand any of it.

Then how does the man feel when he glances at the open books and
sees only blank pages? The books are there—the words are not. He
turns the pages of one, of the others, flipping the pages, searching
for meaning. There is no meaning. All of the pages are blank.

This was the way in which the magter were blank, without emotions.
There was a barely sensed surge and return that must have been
neural impulses on a basic level—the automatic adjustments of nerve
and muscle that keep an organism alive. Nothing more. Brion reached
for other sensations, but there was nothing there to grasp. Either
these men were without emotions, or they were able to block them
from his detection; it was impossible to tell which.

Very little time had passed while Brion made these discoveries. The
knot of men still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren't
expectant, their attitude could not have been called one of
interest. But he had come to them and now they waited to find out
why. Any questions or statements they spoke would be superfluous,
so they didn't speak. The responsibility was his.

"I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?" Brion didn't like
the tiny sound his voice made in the immense room.

One of the men gave a slight motion to draw attention to himself.
None of the others moved. They still waited.

"I have a message for you," Brion said, speaking slowly to fill the
silence of the room and the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to
be handled right. But what was right? "I'm from the Foundation in
the city, as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to the people
of Nyjord. They have a message for you."

The silence grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a
monologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking
at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut,
and finally Lig-magte spoke.

"The Nyjorders are going to surrender."

It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized
before how much of the content of speech was made up of emotion.
If the man had given it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with
enthusiasm, it would have meant, "Success! The enemy is going to
surrender!" This wasn't the meaning.

With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question.
"Are they going to surrender?" It was neither of these. The sentence
carried no other message than that contained in the simplest
meanings of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations,
but these could only be gained from past knowledge, not from the
sound of the words. There was only one message they were prepared
to receive from Nyjord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message.
If that was not the message Brion was bringing the men here were
not interested.

This was the vital fact. If they were not interested he could have
no further value to them. Since he came from the enemy, he was the
enemy. Therefore he would be killed. Because this was vital to his
existence, Brion took the time to follow the thought through. It
made logical sense—and logic was all he could depend on now. He
could be talking to robots or alien creatures, for all the human
response he was receiving.

"You can't win this war—all you can do is hurry your own deaths."
He said this with as much conviction as he could, realizing at the
same time that it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred
in the men before him. "The Nyjorders know you have the cobalt
bombs, and they have detected your jump-space projector. They can't
take any more chances. They have pushed the deadline closer by an
entire day. There are one and a half days left before the bombs fall
and you are all destroyed. Do you realize what that means—"

"Is that the message?" Lig-magte asked.

"Yes," Brion said.

Two things saved his life then. He had guessed what would happen as
soon as they had his message, though he hadn't been sure. But even
the suspicion had put him on his guard. This, combined with the
reflexes of a Winner of the Twenties, was barely enough to enable
him to survive.

From frozen mobility Lig-magte had catapulted into headlong attack.
As he leaped forward he drew a curved, double-edged blade from under
his robes. It plunged unerringly through the spot where Brion's body
had been an instant before.

There had been no time to tense his muscles and jump, just the space
of time to relax them and fall to one side. His reasoning mind
joined the battle as he hit the floor. Lig-magte plunged by him,
turning and bringing the knife down at the same time. Brion's foot
lashed out and caught the other man's leg, sending him sprawling.

They were both on their feet at the same instant, facing each other.
Brion now had his hands clasped before him in the unarmed man's
best defense against a knife, the two arms protecting the body,
the two hands joined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever
direction it came. The Disan hunched low, flipped the knife quickly
from hand to hand, then thrust it again at Brion's midriff.

Only by the merest fractional margin did Brion evade the attack for
the second time. Lig-magte fought with utter violence. Every action
was as intense as possible, deadly and thorough. There could be only
one end to this unequal contest if Brion stayed on the defensive.
The man with the knife had to win.

With the next charge Brion changed tactics. He leaped inside the
thrust, clutching for the knife arm. A burning slice of pain cut
across his arm, then his fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. They
clamped down hard, grinding shut, compressing with the tightening
intensity of a closing vise.

It was all he could do simply to hold on. There was no science in
it, just his greater strength from exercise and existence on a
heavier planet. All of this strength went to his clutching hand,
because he held his own life in that hand, forcing away the knife
that wanted to terminate it forever. Nothing else mattered—neither
the frightening force of the knees that thudded into his body nor
the hooked fingers that reached for his eyes to tear them out. He
protected his face as well as he could, while the nails tore furrows
through his flesh and the cut on his arm bled freely. These were
only minor things to be endured. His life depended on the grasp of
the fingers of his right hand.

There was a sudden immobility as Brion succeeded in clutching
Lig-magte's other arm. It was a good grip, and he could hold the arm
immobilized. They had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their
faces only a few inches apart. The muffling cloth had fallen from
the Disan's face during the struggle, and empty, frigid eyes stared
into Brion's. No flicker of emotion crossed the harsh planes of the
other man's face. A great puckered white scar covered one cheek and
pulled up a corner of the mouth in a cheerless grimace. It was
false; there was still no expression here, even when the pain must
be growing more intense.

Brion was winning—if none of the watchers broke the impasse.
His greater weight and strength counted now. The Disan would have
to drop the knife before his arm was dislocated at the shoulder.
He didn't do it. With sudden horror Brion realized that he wasn't
going to drop it—no matter what happened.

A dull, hideous snap jerked through the Disan's body and the arm
hung limp and dead. No expression crossed the man's face. The knife
was still locked in the fingers of the paralyzed hand. With his
other hand Lig-magte reached across and started to pry the blade
loose, ready to continue the battle one-handed. Brion raised his
foot and kicked the knife free, sending it spinning across the room.

Lig-magte made a fist of his good hand and crashed it into Brion's
groin. He was still fighting, as if nothing had changed. Brion
backed slowly away from the man. "Stop it," he said. "You can't win
now. It's impossible." He called to the other men who were watching
the unequal battle with expressionless immobility. No one answered
him.

With a terrible sinking sensation Brion then realized what would
happen and what he had to do. Lig-magte was as heedless of his own
life as he was of the life of his planet. He would press the attack
no matter what damage was done to him. Brion had an insane vision of
him breaking the man's other arm, fracturing both his legs, and the
limbless broken creature still coming forward. Crawling, rolling,
teeth bared, since they were the only remaining weapon.

There was only one way to end it. Brion feinted and the Lig-magte's
arm moved clear of his body. The engulfing cloth was thin and
through it Brion could see the outlines of the Disan's abdomen and
rib cage, the clear location of the great nerve ganglion.

It was the death blow of kara-te. Brion had never used it on a man.
In practice he had broken heavy boards, splintering them instantly
with the short, precise stroke. The stiffened hand moving forward
in a sudden surge, all the weight and energy of his body
concentrated in his joined fingertips. Plunging deep into the
other's flesh.