'A storm of stars,” he said. “A howling gale of nebulae and rushing suns, and bits of worlds and moons, torn loose and smashed to fragments in the gravity tides. The wildest cluster in the galaxy—” He turned to them and said, “And the Hammer is in there?'
'Yes,” said Rolf. He had iron in his voice now. “It's in there.'
To Banning, it made the ancient Valkar weapon of mystery more awesome when he looked upon the terrifying place where it had been prepared and hidden. What could it be, this strangely-named Hammer that the galaxy had whispered of in dread for ninety thousand years?
His mind went back to what Sohmsei had said. “Lord, I saw the whole broad sky on fire,” and such nightmare visionings rose in him that he forced them down with an effort.
'It's in there,” Rolf was saying grimly, “and we're going in after it. The Valkar will take us through.'
Banning, feeling weak and hollow, turned to him and said, “I think we'd better have another talk with Jommor.
But even as he walked down the corridor beside Rolf, he knew it was useless. He — Neil Banning, or the Valkar, or both of them together — take a cruiser through that cosmic wilderness of suns? Impossible!
Jommor looked up at them when they entered his prison room. No particle of his hatred and his bitter anger had abated, and yet Banning sensed that something in him had changed. The iron was beginning to bend.
Rolf, without speaking, touched a staid and opened the view-plate in the wall, giving oblique vision of that storm of clustering suns ahead.
'Spare me your subtleties, Rolf,” said Jommor, with an edge of contempt in his voice. “I have seen it.'
'I'm not a subtle man,” said Rolf. His face had never been more rock-like and bleak. “I just drive straight ahead and do what I can. You know that. You know when I say we re going into that Cluster, we are. You can take that as a constant, in your equations.'
Jommor's eyes brooded on Banning. “If I do the thing, do Tharanya and I get our freedom at once?'
Rolf jeered. “Oh no, not at once. Those damned cruisers are still trailing us, and they'd snap us up. No — not till we're back out of the Cluster.'
Jommor said suddenly, still looking at Banning, “He doesn't want it done. He's afraid.'
Banning felt swift anger. “I'm not afraid,” he lied. “And I would point out that you've little time, at the rate we're going.'
Again, a silence. Jommor finally made a decisive gesture. “I can't let Tharanya go out like this. I'll do it.” He added, and he spoke now to Rolf, “But don't feel too badly if it doesn't turn out quite as you expect.'
Rolf's face darkened. “Listen, Jommor, it's known that you can play with men's minds like a child with toys. But don't be clever now! Unless the Valkar's memory comes back perfectly, unless his mind is sound and strong and with no flaw or weakness, you and Tharanya won't live long!'
'I promise,” said Jommor deliberately, “that it shall be as you say. Yet — I know more of the mind than you. And I think you don't know what you are doing.'
He stood up, he became suddenly the scientist, calm, precise, assured. He gave directions as to the apparatus he would need, the power flow he would require. Rolf listened, nodded, and went away. Banning remained. His heart had begun to pound. He did not like the veiled threat that had been in Jommor's words. He didn't like it at all.
The machine, when Rolf brought it, looked so simple. Thousands of years of psychological science, of men's lives and dreams and work on far star-worlds, had gone into this thing, and to Banning's ignorance it seemed only to be a cubical cabinet with a face of odd vernier dials, and a thing like a massive, swollen metal helmet. The helmet, Jommor suspended from the ceiling, and then motioned Banning to a chair. He sat down, not speaking, and Jommor lowered the great helmet over his skull.
It occurred to Banning suddenly that he must look very much like a woman in a terrestrial beauty parlor with an oversize hairdryer on her head. He had an hysterical impulse to laugh. And then it hit him.
Just what hit him, he could not be sure. Electronic waves of some sort, he supposed, in octaves still beyond the science of Earth. Whatever it was, it invaded his mind with a silent crash, an — impact that sent his consciousness skidding and reeling over impossible abysses, around non-Euclidean curves. There was no pain. It was worse than pain. It was an agony of speed, distortion, flight, darkness, a whistling whirlpool that was all inside his skull but big enough to suck the universe into it. Round and round, faster, faster, lurching, sliding, caught helpless in the torrent of memory set free, as one by one the barriers were burned away and the neurones gave up their locked knowledge.
Sohmsei's arms were around him, Sohmsei's face bent very large above him. Himself, very small and crying. He had cut his knee.
A woman. Tharanya? No, no, not Tharanya, this woman's hair was golden and her face was gentle. Mother. Long ago—
A broken wrist — but not broken under the apple tree in Greenville, that was one of the false memories that were collapsing and fading away beneath the impact of real remembrance. This broken wrist was in a ship that had just crashed on one of the worlds of Algol.
The ruins. Red Antares in the sky, himself half grown, half naked, racing the Arraki among the broken statues of Katuun, playing with the stars they had let fall.
Nights and days. Cold and beat, eating, sleeping, being sick and getting over it, being praised, being punished, being taught. You are the Valkar, remember that! And you will rule again. Twenty years of — memories. Twenty million details, words, looks, actions, thoughts.
Tharanya.
A girl Tharanya, younger than he, beautiful, sharp-tongued, hateful. Tharanya in the palace garden, not the Winter Palace but the great grim pile inside the capital, tearing the petals off a purple flower and taunting him because he was the Valkar and would never sit upon a throne.
Beautiful Tharanya. Tharanya in his arms, laughing while he teased her lips, not laughing as he taught her, from the wisdom of his male seniority, how a woman can shape a kiss. Tharanya, never guessing how much he hated her, how deep her spoiled-child taunts cut into his sensitive pride. Never guessing how intensely he meant to break her.
Tharanya, believing the words he had spoken and the things he had done, trusting his love — and that had been easy, because who would not love Tharanya and be her willing slave? — letting him into the locked vault where the archives were kept, the lost, forgotten hidden key to the secrets of the Valkars.
Memories, sounds, colors, the feel of silk and woman's flesh, of leather and metal, of pages of imperishable plastic in an ancient, ancient book.
The ruined throne-room, open to the sky. The brooding lake, the stars, the night, and Father. Less of a man than a demigod, remote and very powerful, a beard and a hawk-like eye. Father beside him in the night, pointing to the stars.
Pointing to the Cygnus Cluster, saying, “My son, the Hammer of the Valkars—'
Memories, memories, memories, roaring, thundering, words and knowledge!
Words and actions, facts all neatly strung, and then a clear, clean break. Like the dropping of a curtain in Jommor's laboratory wing on that world of Rigel, one life ended and another began. The Valkar died, and Neil Banning was born.
Now, after ten long years, the Valkar was born again. But Neil Banning did not die, not the ten years when he had been real. Those memories belonged to both of them, share and share alike.
The Valkar-self and the Banning-self cried out together, as one man. “I remember! I remember — oh God, I know now what the Hammer is!'
CHAPTER X
He was awake.
And he knew now who he was. He was Kyle Valkar.
But he was also still Neil Banning! The memories of Banning, the real memories of ten years, were still there, far more strong and vivid than the Valkar memories of the twenty years before that.
