Earthblood (34 page)

The dog piloting the craft dropped it to the tip of a tall spire of glowing yellow glass. Roan followed the others through an entry that looked like solid glass, but parted before him with a tinkle of cold crystals. Flushed, bright-eyed faces swarmed around him, but none of them was Desiranne. A tall girl with heavy golden hair came up to Roan, her bare arms ivory-white. She looked at him with her eyes half shut, her lips parted, her pink tongue showing. Roan showed his teeth and reached for her, and she shuddered and shrank back. Roan laughed and pushed through to follow Daryl. He was trying hard to remember where the table was, how he had come there. He couldn't; there had been so many tables, so much noise, so many of the little bottles of spicy wine. He felt very sober, though, and his mind seemed to be working unusually clearly. Neatly dressed dogs were serving food. Roan ate with voracious appetite while his companions nibbled and watched. Roan hardly noticed them. Once he looked up to see the blond girl sitting across the table from him.

"You Terries know how to make food," he said. "This is better even than blood."

The girl—Phrygette, Roan remembered her name—looked sick and excited at the same time. She put out her hand as though to touch the hair on Roan's arm, then drew it back.

"You're strange," she whispered. "I wonder what you think about. You with your sixteen-thousand-year-old brain and your years of wandering the universe."

"I think about many things," Roan said carefully, wishing the hot feeling and the humming in his ears would go away. "I think about the Niss, and how Man destroyed himself fighting them, and how they died alone, then, and how their ghosts haunted the Galaxy for five thousand years."

"Old Niss," Phrygette said, boldly touching Roan's arm now. "I always thought he was a silly superstition."

"I did a terrible thing when I ran the Niss blockade," Roan said. "I didn't free Terra; I shattered the myth that had held the universe out for five thousand years. Now she's exposed to the sharks: Trishinist, and after him, others, until Terra is no different than Tambool."

Phrygette was looking around for her dog, Ylep, to come and fix her makeup.

"A new Navy, that's what you need," Roan said. "Trishinist can muster fifty thousand men, and he has the ships to transport them. You have ships, too—underground, waiting. You need to issue weapons and learn how to use them, prepare tactics to meet an enemy landing party." Phrygette frowned at Roan. "Really, for someone from Beyond, you talk about the strangest things. Tell me how it feels to kill someone, Roan. Tell me how it feels to die—"

"You'll find out soon enough," Roan said roughly. Suddenly he felt very bad. His heart was trying to climb up his throat, and his head hurt terribly. He swallowed more wine, put his head down on the table. Phrygette got to her feet, wrinkling her nose.

"I'm afraid he's becoming a bore," she said to someone. "Let's go on to the Museum, Daryl. They've probably already started—without us!"

"They wouldn't dare!" Daryl said, sounding alarmed. "Not after I planned it!"

"They might—"

"Roan!" Daryl was shaking him. He raised his head and saw a crowd all around him, faces staring out of a blackish haze.

"Come on, Roan!" It was Daryl, catching at his hand. "You went to sleep again, you foolish boy, but now we're all ready to go to the Museum!"

"Go where?"

"To the Museum of the Glory of Man! Come on! Oh, you'll be thrilled, Roan!

It's an ancient, ancient place—just at the edge of the town. All sort of shuddery and dim—but marvelous, really! It's all there—all Terra's history. We've been saving it for a special occasion—and this is certainly the perfect night!"

"Funny place . . . for a party . . ." Roan said, but he got to his feet and followed the laughing, chattering crowd.

Out on the roof, the dogs jumped up, handing their masters and mistresses to their places in the waiting flyers, some of which hovered, waiting their turn. Roan felt as though he were moving in a dream imbued with a sense of terrible things impending. The dogs' eyes looked wide, afraid. Even Sostelle was awkward getting the flyer's door open. Roan's hand went to his belt, feeling for a gun that wasn't there.

"Askor," he said suddenly. "And Sidis. Where are they?" He half rose, sat down suddenly as the flyer jumped forward.

"They'll trouble you no more," Daryl said. "And now, Roan, just think!

Objects that were held sacred by our ancestors, five thousand—ten thousand years ago—"

"What do you mean," Roan said, feeling a tightness in his chest. "Where are they?"

"Roan—don't you remember? You sent them away yourself . . ."

"Sostelle . . ." Roan felt a sudden weakness as he tried again to rise. Blackness whirled in, shot with fire.

"Master, it is true. You ordered them to leave you. They laid hands on you, to drag you with them, but you fought, and then . . . then Master Daryl was impelled to. . . to call for the Enforcers."

"What are they?" Roan heard his own hoarse voice as from a great distance.

"Specially trained dogs, Master," Sostelle said in a tight voice. "Led by Kotschai the Punisher."

"Are they—did they—?"

"Your companions fought mightily, Master. They killed many dogs. At last they were overwhelmed, and restrainers were focused on them. Then they were taken away."

"Then they're alive?" The blackness broke, flushed away.

"Of course, Master!" Sostelle sounded shocked.

Roan laughed harshly. "They're all right, then. They've been in jail before. I'll bail 'em out in the morning."

They had landed on the wide roof of an ancient palace. Roan tottered, felt Sostelle's hand under his elbow.

"I'm sick," he said. "I've never been so sick, since I was burned when Henry Dread shelled the Extravaganzoo. There was a Man doctor there; he cured me. He couldn't cure Stellaraire, though. She was crushed by a chromalloy beam, and then . . . burned . . ."

"Yes, Master," Sostelle soothed.

"Gom Bulj died from the acceleration. But I killed Ithc. And I killed Henry Dread, too. You didn't know that, did you, Sostelle? But Iron Robert—he died for me . . ."

They were inside now. The voices of the others were like birds, quarreling over a dung heap. Their faces were blurred, vague. All around, tall cases were ranged, faced with glass. Someone was talking urgently to Roan, but he ignored him, walked to the nearest display, feeling as though he were toiling up a hill.

"This is a collection of famous jewel stones, Master," Sostelle was saying.

"All natural minerals, found here on Terra, and treasured by Men for their beauty and their rarity."

Roan stared down at rank on rank of glittering, faceted crystals—red, green, pale blue, violet, clear white.

"There is the Napoleon emerald," Sostelle said. "Worn by an ancient war chief. And beyond is the Buddha's Heart ruby, once the object of veneration of five billion worshipers. And there, just beyond—the Iceberg diamond, said to be the largest and finest ever found in Antarctica."

"Look, Roan," Daryl called. "These are called monies. They're made of solid natural gold, and in early times they were traded back and forth in exchange for, oh, other things," he finished vaguely. "Rather a bore, really. Come along to the next room, though. There are some fabulous things. . .

."

Roan followed, stared at looming walls decorated with objects as baroque and primitive as the crude weapons of the wild men on Aldo Cerise, others of a powerful, barbaric beauty, and still others of a glittering intricacy that his mind could not comprehend. There were more cases—miles of them, each glowing with its own soft light, each with its array of objects of metal, stone, wood, glass, fabric, synthetic.

"Look!" Daryl was poking Roan. "Those clothes were made from fibers that grew from the dirt; they scraped them clean in some way, and then worked them all together, and colored them with—with fruit juice or something. Then they sawed out pieces and looped them together with little strings. That was called sowing—"

"No, that was when they made the plants that they got the fibers from," someone interrupted. "But aren't they funny?"

Roan gazed at the display of old uniforms. Some were shapeless and faded, brown with age, curled with time, even protected as they were by the vacuum of the display cases; others, farther along, were more familiar.

"You see those long, sharp things? They used those to stick into each other," a high excited voice called. "And these odd-shaped objects made some sort of lightning and tore holes in people; there must have been a great deal of blood."

Roan stopped, staring at a tunic of brilliant blue, with narrow silvery-gray trousers, and a belt with a buckle bearing an eagle in place of a dove, and the words Terran Space Forces.

"It's like the ITN uniform," he said to no one. "But it was made before there was an Empire . . ."

Daryl was beside Roan, his face puckered in thought. He looked up at Roan, his eyes snapping wide.

"You!" he said in a strained voice. "I know where it was I saw your face!

Look, everybody, come with me . . . !" He turned, ran off.

"What's the matter with him?" Roan growled, but he followed. In a small room off the main hall, a crowd clustered around a lighted case. They looked around as Roan came up, gave way, staring at him, silent now. Roan halted before the high glass panel, stared at a hazy scene, bright lit. He blinked, cleared his vision. The figure of a man stood before him, clad in a uniform like the one he had just seen, leaning against the flank of a ship of quaint, primitive design. The eyes, blue like cool fire, looked into Roan's from across the centuries. The deep red hair was hacked short, but its stubborn curl still showed. A deep, recorded voice spoke from a slot beneath the display:

"This was Vice Admiral Stuart Murdoch, as he appeared in his last solido, taken only moments before he embarked on his last, heroic mission. Admiral Murdoch is renowned as the hero of the Battle of Ceres and of the Siege of the Callistan Redoubts. He was lost in space in the year eleven thousand, four hundred and two of the Atomic Era."

"Master," Sostelle said in the silence. "It's you!" Roan turned, looked at Daryl. "How . . . ?" he started. He put his hands on himself as though to assure himself that he was Roan Cornay, alive here and now. But Daryl and the others stared back at him as though he was himself a thing from out of the remote past, like the ancient figure in the glass case.

Roan laughed suddenly, wildly. "I wanted to know who my father was," he said. "But I never suspected he was sixteen thousand years old."

"He . . . really . . . is . . ." Daryl said, and licked at his lips. He whirled to the others. "Don't you understand? He really did come from Beyond, just as he said! He's returned from the dead!"

"No," a loud voice said. It was Hugh, his face raw and cut from the beating Roan had given him. "He's a dirty Lower, and he should be turned over to the dogs."

"He's returned from the dead!" Daryl screeched. "Come along! It's easy enough to prove!"

"The genetic analyzer!" someone called. "In the next hall . . ."

"Roan, this will show them all," Daryl said breathlessly. There was a strange light in his eyes. "And then—you'll tell me how it feels to be dead, and rise again!"

"You're insane, Daryl," Roan said. "You're all insane!" he shouted. "I'm the most insane of all, for being here, where I don't belong—" He broke off.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow I'll leave. With Askor and Sidis. They're my kind. I understand them. They're not pretty, but they've got the beauty of reality about them . . ."

"And you'll take me, Master?" Sostelle whispered.

"Sure, Man's best dog is his friend, eh?" Roan stumbled, almost fell. He was hardly aware of walking, Sostelle at his side, Daryl trotting ahead, under a high arch with a flame burning under it in a metal tray, on into an even bigger room that echoed with the batlike cries of the Terrans.

". . . classify persons wishing to contribute to the germinal banks," Daryl was saying. "Here in the Hall of Man, all the records were kept—"

"My genetic pattern won't be here," Roan said, almost clear-headed for the moment.

"He's afraid," Hugh said. "Will he confess his pretensions now?" Roan looked around at gleaming equipment, towering metal panels, winking clinical lights.

"Put your hand here, Roan," Daryl urged. He indicated an opening, guided Roan's hand to it. He felt a sharp tingle for an instant, nothing more. There was a soft hum and a plastic tab extruded from a slot in the face of the genetic analyzer. Daryl snatched it, looked at it, then whirled to face the others.

"It's him! It's Stuart Murdoch, returned from beyond the crematorium!" He didn't remember again then; not until they were in a vast room with ancient flags hanging from age-blackened rafters.

". . . minster hall," an excited voice was saying. "Over thirty thousand years old. Think of the toil, the human tears and sweat and heartache that went into building this, so long ago, to preserving it down through the ages, to bring it here—for us . . ." The voice went on, excited, rapturous.

"What's it all about?" Roan asked. "What's this old building? It looks like something on Tambool. . . ."

"It's very ancient, Master," Sostelle said. Somewhere, a bright light was flaring in the gloom.

". . . took them so many ages to create, with all its traditions and memories—and we, us! Yes, in a single night! A single hour! We can destroy it all. Thirty thousand years of human history end—now!" Roan watched as a slender man in flowing pale garments ran forward, applied the torch to the base of a hand-hewn column. Fire licked upward. In moments it had reached the faded pennants; they disappeared into smoke. Fire ran across the high peaked ceiling. Voices shouted as the crowd pushed forward. Suddenly a woman whirled madly, striking out at those around her; they fell back, yelping, and the frenzied girl tore at her garment, stripped it off, threw it at the fire. Roan saw with a dull shock that there was no hair on her body.

"Give me something sharp!" she screamed, then plunged, caught up a jagged fragment of smoking wood, scored it down the creamy white of her chest and stomach. Blood started. The woman staggered back, wailed faintly, fell, and dogs darted forward, bore her away.