This Fortress World (6 page)

But she began to fade, and the animals began to fade, and the meadow began to fade, and I tried, frantically, to keep her from leaving.

"Is it worth living for? Is it worth dying for?"

But she looked sad and shrugged her shoulders and everything kept fading. Then I thought of the question I had to ask.

"Come back," I shouted. "Come back."

She shook her head silently, helplessly.

"I don't know the secret," I shouted. "I don't know how to read it. Tell me. Tell me.…"

Far in the distance I could see her lips framing themselves into a word, but I was too far away to make it out, and I looked down and the pebble was gone, too, and I was alone, always alone, forever alone, alone and afraid.…

I blinked into the dim light overhead and felt gentle fingers rubbing the back of my right hand with something that was oily and soothing. The light was only vaguely bluish and my eyelids felt stiff and sandy and the back of my head hurt. Slowly a face swam into sight, bending over me, and at first I thought it was the girl's face, because it was fair and pretty and the hair was blond. But my eyes focused, and I saw that the hair was short and the face belonged to a man.

"Waking up, eh?" the man said in a voice that was high and clear and casual. "Thought you would."

I struggled to sit up. "I've got to get away," I said. My lips hurt when I moved them, and my voice came out in a hoarse croak.

The man pressed me back easily, gently. The pneumatic bunk under me gave a little. The man was sitting on the edge of it. I turned my head. I was in some kind of living quarters. The room was larger than my own cell, but it wasn't huge. The furnishings seemed comfortable and colorful, but they not luxurious—the bunk I was lying on, a couple of deep chairs, a small bookcase filled with old-fashioned books, drapes concealing the walls all around except for a single open doorway.

"You aren't going any place," the man said gently. "Not tonight. Not in your condition."

I relaxed, not completely but a little. The man seemed kind. My mind was confused, but one thought came clear. "It's dangerous," I blurted out.

His eyes narrowed. "Why?"

I put my hand to my forehead and winced. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again. "It's hard to remember. There's someone after me. A gunman in a black uniform. He wants to kill me. He'll kill you, too."

The man smiled lazily. "That's not so easy to do. Where I grew up we got trouble more often than food. Been so quiet since I got to Brancusi I haven't felt more than half alive. Now if you were what you seem to be"—his eyes glittered with a wicked amusement—"you wouldn't be any trouble at all. You'd be dead, and your body would be disposed of."

"'What do you mean?"

"You dress like a Free Agent. You're not. Skin is too white. Hands too soft. Clothes were made for a man bigger around the waist, smaller around the chest and across the shoulders. Offhand, I'd say you're a monk."

"An acolyte," I said, unconsciously imitating his clipped speech. "Or I was. What do you mean, 'Free Agent'?"

"One of the hard boys, the smart boys, the high-priced mercenaries. Free with a gun, free with a woman, free with their money, and free to change sides if someone offers them a little more money."

"I think I killed three of them," I said, and the memory sent a shudder rippling through my body.

"'That wins the medal for acolytes," he said, smiling, but I thought I detected a new note of respect. "A few more sprees like that and you'll be a master."

Suddenly full realization swept over me. I lifted myself on one elbow. "Where am I? Can they—?"

"Not unless they followed you." His eyes seemed a little narrower. "Found you wandering in the street, dazed, just before you collapsed. Lie back. Relax. Get some strength. I dragged you in here, but any farther you get under your own power."

He selected a thin white cylinder from a case and drew it into life between his lips. An acrid, sweetish smoke drifted through the air; the man's eyes got brighter. I took a good look at him for the first time, and I realized how I could have mistaken him for the girl. It wasn't only the blond hair; his skin was delicate, though lightly tanned, his lips were redder than seemed natural for a man, and when he got up—as now—he seemed small and slim, although he moved with a sort of catlike grace and supple strength.

"As for where you are," he said, pacing as he sent thin threads of smoke curling from his small nostrils, "you're in the shop of Fred Siller, Bookseller"—a smile mirthlessly curled his lip and tilted the corners of his light blue eyes—"bookseller to the masses. Business is terrible. Tell me, how did you do it?"

"Do what?" I asked cautiously.

"Get those burns on your hand and face."

I raised my hand. It was red and glistening with grease.

So that was why my face and hand hurt. "One of them shot at me."

Siller whistled softly. "That's a new one. A burn from a flash gun! Usually there's nothing left to burn."

"I was—I was going someplace else at the time," I said.

"You must have been," Siller said, raising an eyebrow, "and in a hurry. Don't you remember?"

"I don't know," I said vaguely. "Some of it—I remember that my name is Dane. William Dane. I was an acolyte until this afternoon—when a girl came into the Cathedral while I was on duty. She came in to escape from four—Free Agents…And when she went out, they cut off her feet—"

"Go on," he said impatiently.

"Don't you understand?" My head was confused and aching, but one idea cried out for recognition. "They smiled and cut off her feet."

"Yes, yes. I understand that." His eyes seemed magnified by the drifting smoke between us. "What happened then?"

I lowered myself hopelessly to the bunk and passed a hand across my forehead, ignoring the pain. No one was interested in the vital things. In fragments, sketchily, confused, the story came out. My eyes were closed as I finished. "It's hard to remember. I can't remember any more."

When I opened my eyes again, his eyes loomed through the smoke, large, blue, feverishly bright. "Why did she come into the Cathedral?…What did she have with her?…Why did she leave?…"

My head rolled from side to side. "I don't know…I don't remember…I don't know.…"

The eyes finally went away and the voice with them. I sank into a kind of stupor. I was roused by a chuckle which seemed to come from a long way off.

"You need a rest," a voice said, "and a chance to let those burns heal. Must have thrown up your hand to protect your eyes just as the gun went off. Lucky for your sight. You're not exactly pretty right now. Eyebrows and eyelashes burnt almost off. Face looks like raw meat."

"What am I going to do?" I asked weakly. "I'm like a baby outside the monastery walls."

The chuckle rolled out again. It was almost a giggle. "Well fixed for a baby. Clothes. Money—five thousand imperial chronors in one hundred chronor pieces—"

My eyes opened.

Siller giggled. "In the money belt."

I reached toward my waist with my unburnt left hand.

Siller exploded with laughter. 'It's still there. If I'd wanted to rob you, I wouldn't have left you around to worry about it. Always find out what I'm getting into. The Agent you stripped was well padded. If it was the price for his share of the job, he or the job came high. Unless you raided the Abbot's treasury." He poked me in the ribs as I struggled to rise. "Never mind. It isn't important. To conclude—you've got a gun worth at least five hundred, a respectable stock of ammunition—"

He pulled down a flap on my jacket to expose a row of slender metal tubes stuck into padded cloth pockets. "Ten of them. Good for about one hundred short bursts apiece, ten long ones, or one big whoosh. Enough power to heat and light this shop for ten years. Fifty chronors each—if you can get them. Oh, there's no doubt about it. You're well fixed all right."

"You can't buy freedom with money," I said, "or peace."

"You'd be surprised what it will buy—if you know where to go and how to spend it. And how to protect it. That means a lot. That you'll have to learn. With a little education, a good deal of ruthlessness, and a lot of luck, you might be able to survive."

Survive.
I shivered as a face swam up into my mind. "Not with the dark one after me."

Siller's face sharpened. "Who?"

"I don't know who," I said. I was tired and sick and the endless questioning had made me petulant. "He had a dark face, careless and bold at the same time. Cold, black, ruthless eyes. A hard, heavy jaw, and a big, grotesque nose that wasn't funny at all. He was big—at least as tall as I am—"

"Sabatini," Siller said. His voice was low and unsteady. The light tan seemed to bleach from his face.

"You know him?" I said stupidly. I was too tired to be astonished any more.

"I know him," Siller said, almost talking to himself. "We've met twice. Once on MacLeod. Once on the United Worlds. But I wasn't in his way, and he wasn't in mine—not directly. This time—" He shrugged, but his face was puzzled. "Sabatini had a stake on the United Worlds that should have nailed him down until someone came along just a little faster and harder and smarter."

"But the United Worlds are over a hundred light years away," I objected.

"Exactly," Siller muttered. "Who'd have thought—?"

His aimless movements became purposeful. He went to one wall and pulled aside the hangings. Beneath his fingers a piece of the wall opened out. Behind it was a small cupboard. He selected a few objects and slipped them into his jacket pockets. One of them was a gun, although it didn't look like the one I had taken from the Agent. This had a long, slim barrel. It slipped under his arm, inside his jacket.

He was getting ready to leave. I watched him, not knowing what to say. Finally he turned back toward me.

"We'd better be moving along," he said easily. "This place may not be—"

He stiffened, and I felt a strange, unlocalized sense of alarm. A moment later, from beyond what was apparently an adjoining room, came a loud, officious knocking.

Siller crouched. "Knock!" he whispered viciously. "Come in and get a taste of hell!"

Slowly, casually, as if the scene just before had never happened, he straightened and turned a carefree face toward me. "On your feet," he said. He was beside the doorway leading, I presumed, to the bookshop. In that direction, at least, the knocking continued. He pressed a section of the door frame. Nothing happened.

"Who is it?" I asked. The knocking stopped, ominously.

Siller looked at me, apparently surprised that I was still lying on the bunk. He shrugged. "Some customer, perhaps. The shop is closed. Permanently."

While Siller went to the draped wall opposite the doorway, I listened in silent torment to the beginning of a sound I was coming to know too well—a thin, spitting sound, muffled now by distance. Then, in the other room, a crash, a shout, and a crackling roar. The last sound was meaningless to me. Then a wave of heat radiated from the wall, and a tongue of flame licked through the doorway.

"Come on!" Siller's voice was impatient. "Get up. Even if I could wait, the fire won't."

I looked toward him. He was standing by the wall, holding back a drape from a rectangular, black opening. I sat up. The room wavered and spun. I forced myself slowly to my feet. The room rocked under me. Instinctively I reached out to support myself against the nearest wall. The hand jerked itself back without my volition; the wall was smoking hot.

I clenched my teeth and concentrated on taking a step. Sweat beaded my forehead as the room steadied. There were ten steps in all. I took five of them cautiously, slowly, as if I were balancing myself on a thin wire above a gulf. On the sixth step I stumbled. The last four I made in a headlong dive. At the last moment I grabbed the edge of the doorway with both hands to keep myself from plunging through.

"Good man," said Siller, patting my arm. "I had to make sure you were worth taking along."

I raised my head with great effort. Siller's face was a pink blur. I forced the words out like bitter pellets. "And—if I hadn't—made it?"

Siller's voice had a shrug in it. "I would probably have left you here."

The flames were eating hungrily into the room behind us, but the space beyond the wall opening was dark. A slim tube in Siller's hand became a light and illuminated a corridor. I took a step. It was not so much a corridor as an unfinished space between two rough walls. Dusty, cob-webbed, it was littered with broken boards, pieces of metal and plastic, and other discarded building materials.

Behind me, Siller slid a thick plastic door into the opening and touched a button beside the doorway. A thin line of fire ran around the edge and sputtered out.

"Now," Siller said, chucklingly, "if they save this room—as they probably will—let them figure out how we left it."

He draped my left arm around his shoulders and led me down the musty corridor. Even in my exhaustion, I wondered at the weight Siller's slight figure could bear without apparent effort. For the trip seemed eternal, and the light splashing ahead suggested no changes in the corridor, no possible end to the journey. Stumbling, coughing in the haze of dust raised by our feet, I made my way onward until time and distance became meaningless.

At the end of eternity the feet stopped, and I stopped, and Siller was gone from beneath my arm. I sagged against something hard and rough, and Siller made vague, blurred motions in front of a blank wall. Then there was a doorway where the wall had been, and I was inside, blinking in a blaze of magnificence.

I've lost my way,
I thought disjointedly.
We've come through a hack door in space into the Emperor's palace.

But I knew I was wrong. Somewhere a voice whispered that this was the room of a humble bookseller, but my senses, shocked into a moment of clear vision, rebelled.

Humble? Not this! Pictures built into the walls in almost three-dimensional reality were surely the work of genius. The walls themselves glowed with hidden light and subdued color. Shimmering chairs and a davenport squatted on the deep-carpeted floor. An alcove held tall bookcases, and the bookcases held row on row of magnificently bound volumes. In one corner stood an oversized three-dimensional teevee…