This Fortress World (20 page)

I glided up the steps like a shadow, looking up. And I saw him.

The mirror had been replaced. I saw him in it. He was standing flat against the wall to the right side of the doorway, looking toward the opening expectantly, his gun ready in his hand. He didn't know that I could see him. He wasn't intending to capture me. His mouth was a straight line, as compressed and white as his hand on the gun he pointed at the doorway. I knew him. I had never seen him before, but I knew him. He was brother to all the other Agents I had seen, deadly in shadow black.

He waited there to kill me, for he had heard me coming, and I didn't know what I could do. He didn't care who I was. If I was Father Konek returning, he would kill me as soon as I stepped out into view. He had been ordered to kill, and that was a strange thing.

But I didn't have time to consider all the implications of that thought. He was growing impatient; he was wondering if his ears had tricked him or if the man on the stairs had suspected something. In a moment he would dart to the doorway, and he would fire, and there was nothing I could do, because I hadn't brought a gun. I hadn't wanted to carry a gun. I regretted it now.

He shifted, and in that moment of shifting, I took a whispering step upward and sideward. I brought my feet together just below the top of the steps and pressed myself against the right wall. I hugged the wall and, just around the corner, he hugged the wall, and we waited. I couldn't see him in the mirror any more, but he couldn't see me, either, and he couldn't be sure that I knew he was there.

We waited. Seconds passed, dragging their feet. Slowly the snout of a flash gun poked itself around the corner, sniffing toward me. I waited as it eased out and around, coming closer. The hole in the barrel got blacker and rounder, and I saw a patch of skin, and I struck, savagely, with the side of my hand.

The gun dropped. He made a sound that was half a grunt, half a scream, and whipped his hand back. I was around the corner while he was still nursing his right wrist in his left hand. I hit him low. As he doubled up, gasping, I swung the edge of my hand against the back of his neck. He crumpled to the floor.

I stood in the center of the room for a moment, struggling for breath. I hadn't realized until then that the suspense had sapped my strength so thoroughly. Then I stopped and tied him up securely and put a gag in his mouth. I straightened up and looked around, and it was good to be back.

Everything was in place, all the familiar machines, but this time it gave me no sense of power. I felt a strange humility. Forgotten geniuses of the lost ages had created these things, and we used them now as legacies, without knowing why they worked or how, only that they worked if we did this and that. We had fallen a long way.

I sighed and sat in the chair facing the controls. I flipped on the power switch, fitted the skull cap to my head, and slipped my hands into the gauntlets. The last time I had sat here there had been four men below in the Cathedral, searching for me. But I was here now to search for something else, and I must hurry.

I probed the murky darkness of the walls; I slid down them and through them and swung past the thinner darkness and swung back. I searched it, fishing back and forth, tugging. Nothing. There was nothing at all in the cornerstone.

The pebble was gone.

I sat there for minutes, trying to absorb this fact and fit it together with all the other little pieces. All at once it made sense. I turned around. The Agent's eyes were open, staring at me, bright with malice. He had been told to kill. Of course. Because the pebble had been found, and I was worthless.

I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief. Sabatini would like me dead now, and he would place guards to kill me if I came back, but he wouldn't search me out, because he had what he wanted. I was free. I had been tied to the pebble for a long time, but now I was free. Free to live, free to love Laurie. And I hadn't given it to him. He had found it for himself, or someone had found it for him. But I hadn't told; my responsibility was over.

But shame crept in, as I thought of Laurie and what she would think, and what I would think of myself. For the pebble could be the key, as Laurie said, but in Sabatini's hands it would be a key to terror and destruction. Responsibility for that wasn't something I could shake off, like water from a wet dog. Maybe I had told him the hiding place. I didn't think I had, but I had been almost out of my mind, and there was that chance.

The Agent's eyes were watching me narrowly, and it gave me an uneasy feeling as if I had forgotten something or wasn't seeing something that was obvious. I looked around the room, but there wasn't anything unexpected in it.

And then I realized that I was jumping to the conclusion that Sabatini had found the pebble days ago, that he was gone with it. It didn't have to be that way. It could still be in the monastery, and I had at my disposal the finest searching device on Brancusi. With it someone had found the pebble where I had hidden it. With it I could find the pebble again, if it was still within range.

I turned back to the controls and slipped through the back wall, lowered the scanner to eye level along the corridor and sped back through the monastery faster than a man could run.

The corridors were empty. But I didn't expect the pebble to be there. I wasn't sure where it would be, but I knew where to start. I didn't want to start there. I was afraid of what I would find.

I hesitated before the door, the Abbot's door, and then slipped through its brief darkness. They were there.

The Abbot was in his armchair, powerful and white-haired, impassive. Opposite him stood Sabatini, dark, big-nosed, smiling sardonically. Between them, on a small table, was the pebble, gleaming dully.

"…haven't learned anything in three days," Sabatini was saying. "Now I will see what I can do."

"And you think you can succeed where we have failed?" the Abbot's deep voice asked. "What facilities do you have to work with? What trained minds can you put on it?"

"At least," Sabatini said, "I won't be afraid to take a chance."

"And in the process, destroy it. No, Carlo, this is too subtle for your bluntness. You will leave it with us, and if the secret can be solved, Brother John will solve it. It's too valuable for you to tamper with."

"Valuable!" Sabatini exclaimed. "What do you know of value? Maybe you've forgotten whose money paid for it, paid
you
for it as well as others, and who told you to look for it in the Cathedral. Who kept saying, 'Put yourself in Dane's place. You're besieged in the control room. Where would you hide the—?'"

"And yet," the Abbot broke in casually, "it could be sold for more, much more than you've paid, especially when we discover its secret. And we will."

Sabatini's face got red. "Not another chronor!" he shouted, slapping the table. The pebble jumped.

"Now, now, Carlo," the Abbot cautioned, frowning. "There is no need for such a display of temper. It's very likely that the thing is worthless, that you would be getting nothing in any case. I think that it is probable that you have already given up too much for too little."

"What I have given up, I can get back," Sabatini said coldly. "What I have paid for," he roared, "I take."

He reached for the pebble. It shifted away from his hand, but he didn't notice. The Abbot noticed.

"Really, Carlo," the Abbot said, "you can't expect to get away with theft in my monastery. Not when I have the control room at my disposal."

"And I have your future at my disposal," Sabatini said, smiling. "A word to the Archbishop about your activities—? And remember, I have my man in the control room—by your consent."

He reached for the pebble again. It slid off the table onto the floor. As he stooped for it, his gun slipped out of his inside jacket pocket and poised in the air. The pebble joined it. They hung there in two unseen hands.

Sabatini straightened, lunged for the pebble and the gun in a sudden rush of anger.

Ah! Ah
! The gun waggled menacingly in the air as the words formed themselves in Sabatini's mind. He stopped.

"Who is it?" the Abbot asked. "Is it you there in the control room, Father Konek? Good work, Father! Now give the gun and the pebble to me!"

He got up from his chair and started forward.

Ah! Ah
! The Abbot stopped, confused and alarmed, as the gun pointed at him.

It is I, Father. William Dane. An acolyte thrown out into the world to die, an innocent man sold to the torturers.

"William!" the Abbot said. "William, my son!"

Sabatini gathered himself.
Careful
!

I have come for what is not yours nor his, Father, but what is mine. One of you is a callous, hypocritical traitor and the other is a torturing killer, and I should kill you both where you stand!

The sudden passion of the thought rocked them both. Sabatini recovered first. He folded his arms across his chest and stared into the air where the pebble and the pistol hung. The Abbot's ruddy face turned pale.

"No!" he said hoarsely. "You mustn't do that! You mustn't have my blood on your hands!"

The blood of a false Abbot? The blood of a breaker of vows, a cheat, a thief, a merchant of torment?

His face grew even whiter. "You would be spilling your own blood," he said wildly. "You are my flesh, my blood. You are my real son."

GOD
! The thought shook me like an earthquake. The gun trembled in the air as my hand clenched uncontrollably in the gauntlet. I had been surprised and shocked by the Abbot's falseness, but I wouldn't have shot them. Not before. Now the world reeled.

My father! My father! I could shoot them now. I could shoot them both, before they could move, shoot them down unarmed, in anger and horror. My father! The word was like blasphemy.

You are no father! It takes more than an act of passion to make a man a father
!

The old man sank down on his knees, his hand clenched and upraised. "Please," he said in a dry, tight voice. "My son." He bowed his head before a gun and a pebble and an unseen spirit of vengeance.

Live then
! It was a scream of agony.
And suffer
!

I pulled them back to me, the gun and the pebble, suffering with an intensity I had never known, not ever in the worst days in Sabatini's torture cell. My mind was a raging, probing torment.

Oh, God! If there is any help in the world, if there is any hope, speak now
!

The pebble spoke.

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I remember it still. I could not forget it if I wanted to. It is seared into my mind so deeply that time's erasing hand can never rub it out, except with death. It is only when I try to put words to it that I have difficulty. Because it was not in words. The medium cannot be described. I could say pictures or images, but these are only approximations.

Perfect mental communication is an experience which cannot be explained, because there is nothing with which to compare it. And so the pebble spoke to my mind, saying everything in seconds it takes pages to repeat. Words are slow and stumbling; ordered thoughts are precise and time-cheating. If the words are awkward, then it is because there are no good words.

The pebble said:

To you (mental communicator—a word, a word) who come after, who are our children, from us (Terrans, mental communicators), who once lived and loved and died and now are dead, greetings.

This is the story of your fathers:

A small, green world circling a small, yellow sun (Earth and Sol). A vision of the galaxy, solid, packed tight with stars, one among them shining yellow and unmistakable, the world circling it green and bright (Sol and Earth located indelibly). Here Man was born and lived and died long ages before he spread to the stars.

Man's history on Earth was a cyclic thing, his civilizations rising and falling periodically (the history, complete), but at last Man broke through the cycles and climbed one peak higher than he had ever climbed before. He conquered space and colonized the galaxy, and secure on his height he thought he would never fall again.

The conquest was not an easy sweeping-out and overrunning and consolidation. It was a long, weary, extended effort that exhausted the resources of Earth and the Solar System and drained the vitality of those who stayed behind on Earth. The colonies, held together by a slender strand of memory and affection for the mother world, grew lustily. And Terrans looked out upon the galaxy and the empire, and it was good, because men had done it.

But memory is a weak thing, and building a new world is a hard thing and begets realism. Realistically, Earth had no future; it had a past. It was a debtor world. It could export nothing but sentiment. But the out-worlds would not trade resources for sentiment, and no one argued that this was not right.

The Second Stage began. The Empire was only sentimental fiction, but Earth carved itself out another empire. Earth transformed itself into a vast university with all knowledge as its realm. Classified wisdom flowed outward from Earth in an endless stream: inventions, basic science, philosophy. The colonies had no time for such things; they were exploiting their inheritance, the stars. But they were willing to trade food for the prototype of a gadget, raw materials for a basic law of nature, and a little fuel for philosophic insight.

From all over the galaxy men came to Earth to learn, to sell, to buy. Earth was a marketplace for all things. But the galaxy was restless, and Terrans foresaw their world torn between contending forces. To possess the marketplace, the worlds would make it a battleground, and in so doing destroy it. Such is the wisdom of possession: to possess is to destroy.

Gradually Earth relinquished its role, ceased exporting, and simplified its existence. Men forgot. They thought that Earth was dying. And when the First Empire exploded, Earth was overlooked. While other worlds were dying in flames, Earth survived, green and peaceful, thoughtful and quiet, watching with a great sorrow the death throes of a galaxy.