This Fortress World (24 page)

He grunted and staggered, but he kept his feet and came swinging back toward me, a shadow among shadows, and I realized that now I was outlined against the lights. I stooped and jerked. The lights went out, but Sabatini hit me with his shoulder while I was bent over, and I tumbled backward, rolling, crashing finally into a box which splintered into kindling.

I got cautiously to my feet. The warehouse, where spices from the spice worlds and fabrics and exotic foods had once been stored, was a stinking pool of darkness, and somewhere in that darkness was Sabatini, waiting like I was. And every second he waited, I was losing my advantage. He was getting back his night vision.

"Dane!" he shouted, and it was no help, because the warehouse echoed, "DANE! Dane! danedanedane…I'm going to kill you. KILL YOU. Kill you. Killyoukillyoukillyou.…"

It was strangely fitting that we should meet here, where the wealth of the galaxy had been brought together, and fight like animals with our bare hands, fight to the death, because I knew that one of us would not leave the warehouse alive. I knew where he was now. I had located him by his hate, which poured out to me. I wondered at it. It was odd, I thought, as I slipped my feet out of my shoes, that the hate should be mixed with fear. Sabatini was afraid of me. Me, Dane, the acolyte. The fearless, smiling Agent with the big nose and the cold eyes was afraid of me, and I slipped toward him through the darkness, silent on stocking feet.

A board creaked under my foot. I stood still, waiting. He shifted uneasily, and I saw him, black against blackness. I leaped, swinging. He ducked instinctively, and my fist smacked solidly against his shoulder instead of his chin. He reeled backward, and I followed him, hitting him again and again, sledgehammer blows that shook him as they landed on his chest and the side of his head. But never quite squarely. And then he was fighting back, standing up to me, trading blow for blow, and his fists got inside against my body, and my body went suddenly weak. My arms dropped. He leaped away and was gone again in the darkness.

I fought for breath, fought to breathe quietly, and my heart slowed, and I listened again. The warehouse was silent. He crouched somewhere, recovering, and his eyesight would be as good as mine, now. I probed into the darkness, but I couldn't hear him and I couldn't sense him.

I heard a whisper along the floor. He was crawling somewhere, but I couldn't locate it. Something crashed, far back in the warehouse, but it wasn't Sabatini. He had thrown something to draw me away, and I knew now where he was. He was trying to get out the door, and I ran silently and threw myself toward the spot I thought he would be.

The breath whistled out of him as I landed squarely on his back, flattening him to the floor, but he twisted under me like a snake, fists and feet flailing at me. And inexplicably he was on top, striking down. I threw a fist at him, knocking him back, leaped at him again, and caught him in my arms. His knees flashed up toward my groin, and I twisted my body away, one arm across his chest, bending him over my knee, arching him like a limber piece of wood. His muscles corded and bulged as he strained against me.

Then his body went limp as something cracked. "Ahnhuh!" he said in a strange, broken voice.

I got up wearily. I went to the cords and searched along the dusty floor for a moment and found them. I pulled the one with the knot in it, and the lights came on. His head and shoulders lay just inside the spot. His feet and legs and hips were in the darkness. I thought he was dead, but his eyes flickered open, dark and cold, and he tried to raise himself on one elbow. His face jerked, and his teeth slowly turned red as they bit into his lower lip. He closed his eyes and fell back to the floor.

I found my shoes in the darkness and put them on.

"Dane." The voice was twisted, like his back; it was only a whisper. "Are you there, Dane?"

"Yes."

"What are you, Dane?" I looked toward him; his eyes were peering blindly into the darkness. "You aren't human. I fought my way up from the bottom. I was nothing, and I became dictator of the largest of the United Worlds where the competition was terrific, where Agents come up like bubbles in a cesspool. But I did it, Dane, and I did it alone. Then I gave it all up. I gave it up to come here, knowing that the man I left in my place would seize control the minute I was gone, because I wanted the pebble and with it I could conquer the sister worlds and after that the galaxy."

It was a long speech, and it ended in a gasp of pain. He rested a moment before he went on.

"You were the only one in my way, a sniveling acolyte, and you beat me every time. It was a miracle, Dane. What are you?"

It was true. I had beaten him, even when he had me in the cavern room I had beaten him, and it hadn't really mattered that someone else had rescued me, because he was already beaten. It was a strange thing and a wonderful thing, and it hadn't been so surprising, after all, that he had been afraid of me.

"Just a man," I said softly. "Just an ordinary man."

"All I needed was the pebble," he said quietly, almost normally, "and I would have had the galaxy."

"No," I said. "It wouldn't have done you any good. It isn't any good to anybody, except maybe to someone who hasn't been born yet."

"You're lying!" he shouted. "I could have used it. Whatever it was, I could have used it. I was close to it once. I felt it. It was power. It poured out at me, and the galaxy nestled within it, glittering.…"

He raved on. Desire, that was the pebble. Something different to everyone who came close to it, and no use to any of them. Not to Sabatini or Siller or me or Laurie or anyone. And it was a sad thing that the death and the torment had been for nothing. Yet, perhaps it was not for nothing. I had an idea. It isn't objects that shake worlds, but ideas.

"Dane!" His voice was sane again, but it was weaker. "You don't owe me anything but hate. I'm going to ask you a favor, anyway. It won't cost you anything. Kill me, Dane. Before you leave, kill me."

I studied his face, white now in the light, the darkness of the features fleeing, the nose more prominent than ever. It cast a grotesque shadow. He meant it.

"I'll tell someone where to find you," I said. "You can be fixed up."

"No!" His voice was violent. "Dane! I beg you! Don't do that! If you won't kill me, leave me here to die. My back is broken. I'll never walk again. They'd fix me up to creep through life. Creep! Me! Sabatini! Please, Dane! Please!"

His voice broke, and I knew that this was the first time Sabatini had ever asked anybody for anything, and it was the most precious thing anybody could ever give him, even more precious than he had thought the pebble to be.

"Where is the girl?"

"I don't know, Dane. Believe me. I don't know."

He was telling the truth. Even if I hadn't been sure of it before, I was sure of it now. He was fighting for death, and he wouldn't lie now.

"Who has her?"

"Nobody."

"Not the Emperor?"

"Him!" His voice was contempt. "The fool doesn't even know what's going on in his own world."

"The Citizens?"

"No."

"The Peddlers?"

"No. Nobody, I tell you."

"How do you know?"

"Agents and counter-agents. Spies and counter-spies. They don't do anything that I don't know. Their organizations are riddled and rotten, because they aren't strong enough to keep their own counsel, as I did. The moment the pebble reached Brancusi, I knew about it. Before Frieda received her orders from the Citizens, I knew it, and I knew where she was supposed to take it, and who she was supposed to take it to. Then she didn't do it. She was taking it to someone else."

"Who?"

"I don't know," he said. His voice was puzzled. "She went mad before she told me. She kept babbling about the Cathedral."

I thought about it, and it made sense. It fit into the pattern that was shaping up in my mind, about the unseen player in the game, the one force in the galaxy that hadn't made itself known. It was obvious. It was so obvious that I almost laughed that I, of all people, hadn't seen it before. I knew where Laurie was and where the pebble was and the meaning of the circular dot Laurie had put on her note. I didn't know yet how to get there, but I would think of a way. I would force the unseen player to show his hand.

I picked up the cord, the one without a knot in it, and I walked to the door with it in my hand, slack. I opened the door, and I stood there for a moment, looking down at Sabatini, crippled beyond hope, his face no longer fierce and bold but ugly and pitiful, like a little boy who knows that he is different from the rest, with a nose that the others point at and laugh.

"Dane.…" Sabatini said weakly. It was a boy's prayer for pity and sympathy.

I dropped the cord near his hand and I went out into the night.

Before I was out of the alley, it was lit by a brief, blue glare.

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I climbed the long, low steps, and it was not as I had once imagined it would be, something proud and daring, but only a slow, steady plodding upward toward the massive palace doors. The people gathered to watch, because a monk is seldom seen outside the monastery and never near the palace, and I was cloaked in a coarse, gray robe and hood. I had to be careful as I climbed that I didn't step on the hem and stumble.

They stared, the glittering nobles and their women, and the watchful guards, but they didn't move to stop me. I reached the doors, and I stopped, because the doors weren't open. They were three times my height, and I felt small and insignificant as I lifted the huge metal knocker, which was round like a world and engraved with the outlines of continents by which I recognized Brancusi. I let it fall, and the door boomed hollowly. I waited, and after a little while the doors swung open, creaking, and I knew that they weren't used very often.

A slave stood in front of me. He was dressed brilliantly in orange-and-blue livery, but he was wearing a golden collar. "What is it?" he asked respectfully.

"I wish to be taken before the Court of Justice."

"The Court of Justice?" he repeated.

I nodded gravely. "It is in session?"

"Yes, Father," he said. "But what business can you have with the Court?"

"That," I said, "I will reveal to the Court."

He shook his head bewilderedly and led me through long, vaulted corridors, towering high above my head, lavishly decorated with frescoes and murals glorifying the Emperor and his line. Beneath our feet deep carpets muffled our steps and hid all but an edge of rosy, almost luminescent marble.

The slave stopped before two tall wooden doors that glowed with a rich patina. He opened one of the doors and held it for me. "The Court of Justice, Father."

I took one step into the room beyond and stopped. The room was huge. At one end of it was a platform. On the platform was a long, high desk. Behind it sat three grave-faced men in ceremonial orange robes. Behind them was a tall chair, richly ornamented. The chair was empty.

In front of the dark desk was a small wooden box with barred, wooden sides. Inside the box was a cringing serf, ragged and hopeless. Back of him, ranged on low benches, were other serfs, freedmen, craftsmen, some gazing hopefully up at the desk and the great chair behind it, some staring with dazed eyes at the floor beneath their feet. Uniformed mercenaries lined the walls, vivid in orange and blue, and two stood in front of the high desk, facing the crowded benches, their arms folded across their chests. In spite of their fine appearance, the mercenaries were careless. They expected no rebellion; it was obvious that they would get none.

Riches and poverty, I thought, here they meet in the court of justice where all are equal. And why, I asked myself, are there no nobles here or Peddlers? I remembered an old saying, "The law is for the poor; it is the only thing they can afford."

My appearance had caused a stir, a ripple that turned the benches into a sea of faces, a murmuring of distant surf. The mercenaries shifted. Even the judges turned, frowning. I studied them now. The one on the right was old. His hair was white and his face was lined, but his eyes were like cold, blue stones. The one on the left was young and bored; he leaned back in his chair, his white face superior and indifferent. Between them, leaning forward, his black eyes fixed upon me like two spears, was a big man with an ageless, craggy face. He was hard, like a rock; his eyes were hawk eyes. There was something of Sabatini in him. He was the one of whom I would have to be careful.

Still frowning, the middle judge turned back to the serf who was shivering in the box below.

"With which hand did the criminal steal the bread?" he growled.

One of the mercenaries below the desk answered in a loud, firm voice. "With the right hand, your Justice."

"The penalty for theft is written," the judge said, glowering at the serf. He brought down a mallet. A clear, ringing sound vibrated through the huge room like the unblemished voice of truth. "Strike off his right hand. It will steal no more."

A single, wordless cry broke from the lips of the serf; the benches sighed. Silence descended again as the two mercenaries stepped forward and dragged the serf away through a small black door to the right of the high desk. Two more mercenaries took their place in front of the desk.

The judges turned to look at me once more. I felt the hawk eyes again, and shivered.

"What brings you here, Father?" he said.

"Justice," I said clearly.

"For whom?"

"For myself."

The room murmured.

"Who has injured you, Father?"

"Everyone. But that is not why I am here. I am here to surrender myself."

"This is very irregular," the judge growled, frowning. "What is your crime?"

"I have killed."

The room gasped and then roared. The mallet rose and fell again and again, shivering the room with vibrations. "Silence! Silence!" the judge roared. Slowly the room quieted. He turned to me once more, his eyes black and intent. "You intend to waive your clergy?"