neatly folded bundle of garments wrapped and tied with red twine. Tohm broke the string and laid them out on the couch that was bolted to the wall. There was a red velour of velveteen with a turtleneck ridged in black. The trousers were leotards, actually, black as the night is black. Slipper boots that came just below the knee slid on easily, almost of their own accord, comfortable, sleek, perma-polished. They repelled any form of dirt, maintaining that immaculate appearance popular among the wealthy here. Lastly, there was a cape of velveteen that fell just below his waist, a black and sinister thing with a quarter inch of tassel about the bottom. It tied about his shoulders by a polished brass chain whose links were studded by simu-pearls.
Turning before the mirror, he admired himself. A uniform like this made a man seem so much more a man, so capable and magnificent. The grandeur of Basa II must be overwhelming, he thought, if this were standard dress. A grand and wonderful world. He had never been an aggressive man until they forced him to it, but in that getup, he felt as if he could reach out and stop the world in its orbit and rotation, black out the sun, command the gods!
Cape fluttering behind, he walked back to the control center and keyed the computor to bring him a car. The capital lay above and ahead, and he did not wish to delay. A moment later, the small, bullet-shaped vehicle rose through the floor elevator and sat purring like a contented cat, waiting for him to lift the transparent cap and climb in. He did so, strapping himself in and sliding the roof shut again.
The board before him twinkled with dozens of lights, the largest being a rotating map which glowed green like a radar scope and had a blinking red dot (the position of the Jumbo), a glistening shimmer of blue (his car), and a field of pink haze slashed by fine yellow lines (the city and its roads). Punching the starter before him, he took the wheel, steered the car through the opening door, and came out in the bubble of air that surrounded the Jumbo. The shield was there to keep the sand back when he opened the ship's door. Now, door closed behind him, it blinked off and the sand came pouring back, burying him. Kicking the accelator aside into the slot marked Digger, he pressed down and watched as the dull, almost invisible flame ate out at the sand, fused it into glass, and built a tunnel slanting upward, dropping unused blocks of still hot glass behind.
He broke the surface at a gentle angle after three hours of digging. It should have been only eighty-three miles to the surface, but he had slanted the shaft and gone much farther. It was night. He cut the flames and turned on the infrared headlights. Nothing about but sand. Plenty of that, though. He decided it would be best to leave the car there, buried, and make it to the capital alone. It would not be prudent to make his appearance in a Romaghin war car when he wasn't even a soldier. That might arouse the suspicions of the local constabulary.
Getting out, he set the car to Settle and watched as it slowly, like a sand crab, covered itself. When it was out of sight and the humming of its motor had ceased, he turned toward the highway that slashed the desert a hundred feet away, and began to walk. At the road's edge, he gathered his directional sense, stared at the faint glow of lights that would be the city. Lying on the ground, he activated the concealed flybelt beneath his velour, lifted, and drifted silently through the cool air toward the city.
And Tarnilee.
Four miles later, he saw the campfire…
IV
He would not have stopped if he had not heard the screaming. But that drew him. His people had been prideful, honest, helpful people. They had known little evil in their daily lives, but they fought against that which they did find. Screams indicated someone in trouble, and he could not let anyone go unaided.
Checking his directions so that he would not lose the pathway to the city, he banked left toward the clump of scrubby trees and bushes that stood as a solitary monument on an ancient battlefield. The tallest trees cut at the dark sky like saber points brandished by the smaller growths. The fire lay to the edge, flickering and dancing like some frolicking beast. He cut into the dark portion of the woods and drifted between the trees, seeking the forms of men he knew must be there.
And were. A band of men in old clothes sat about the fire. Actually, he saw, they were sitting around a very small boy. The men were unshaven, gruff-looking creatures. Nomads, he thought. Traveling the deserts of Basa II in search of what little there was to find, coming occasionally to the city to satisfy themselves with women of the houses, to stupify themselves with the ale and wines of the inns. The boy was a smaller version of the men. Unscrubbed, dressed in tatters, he sat in the center of the human semicircle. But in one way, he was different. His eyes.
White eyes…
Snow eyes…,
They were not albino orbs, for they didn't have that pinkish cast. Besides, the boy had dark hair and skin. They were not simply light blue bordering on colorless. They were white, white eyes. White iris and even whiter pupil.
“Do it,” a large man at the end of the semicircle said.
“One at a time. Maybe two,” the boy said, his voice quavering.
“Sure,” the man said. “Sure, and the others wait an hour while only two at a time dream. You've tranced all six before.”
“I'm tired. We've been trancing all day.”
“And will all night. Tomorrow we go into the city. You will make us feel good, hone our senses to the sharpest point so that everything we do is totally experienced, so that all we drink and eat we will taste completely, minutely, so that our moments with the women will seem like days, like months.”
“Like years,” a fat nomad said, wiping sweat from his cheeks before it could trickle down and into his beard.
“You'll kill me,” the boy warned.
The first nomad who had spoken, and who seemed to be the nearest thing to a leader these people had, picked up a pair of tongs and lifted a glowing coal from the fire, blew on it to heat it even more, then tossed it at the boy. It bounced from his slender arm, leaving a brown burn.
The boy screamed again, the same scream Tohm had heard from the highway. It wasn't a scream quite like any he had ever heard. It was a dozen screams at once, each a hundred decibels above the last. Tohm thought they might go on into infinity, far above the human ear's perception, spiraling and spiraling, an eternity of screams.
“We tie you down,” said the fat man, lifting his arm and pointing at the boy. There was a great wet patch under his arm, spreading down his side. “We tie you down and lay the coals on your face, one by one, then fan them hotter. They'll eat right through your skull, right into your brain.”
The boy screamed again. Even the trees seemed to shudder, to hear. “All right,” his weak voice said at last. “I will try. But I can
Suddenly as he hung there, Tohm felt the world swaying about him. He moved to grab hold of a limb — and then was no longer Tohm…
REDREDREDREDREDRED… RED… REDRED-REDREDREDRED…
REDREDREDREDRED
