“He could be. He wasn’t when I saw him.”
“Does he ever sleep? Lock himself away and is never to be disturbed?” He read the inability to answer mirrored on her face. “Can you tell me? Can anyone?”
“She doesn’t know, Earl.” The doctor hurried to her defence. “Any more than we know. Our host keeps things to himself.”
Too many things but not quite all. Dumarest stared at the woman’s face, examining it, noting small signs he had been too preoccupied to have noticed before. Subtly she had changed. Only in small details but, to him, they were clear. The eyes, the hair, the stance of her body, the curve of her lips, her height, her age.
Sardia, a little younger but just as lovely as he remembered.
To Chagal he said, “Was Delise with you?”
“No. Do you want me to find her?”
“It doesn’t matter. We can do without her help. What I want is for you to guide me back to the chamber where we were last together. Can you do that?”
The doctor frowned, “I’ll try. If you will give me a hand, Nada? You know these parts better than I do. It would help if you led the way?”
Through a series of chambers of various shapes and sizes, in a winding path which must have doubled back on itself or swirled at apparent random. Then, finally, the passage opened on a familiar chamber set with remembered furniture, ringed by translucent walls.
Dumarest halted at the low table set as before with flagons of wine and platters of succulent fragments. The food was fresh as if recently placed. The chessboard and scattered men were as he recalled. Either someone had replenished the viands and adjusted the pieces or only a short while had passed since he had been here last.
An effect similar to that which could be obtained by taking appropriate medication. Slow time which speeded the metabolism so that normal time seemed to crawl and much could be done in minutes which would have taken hours.
Drifting, suffering, healing, travelling back into the past, sleeping, dreaming, waking from nightmare, recovering and all, from the doctor’s viewpoint in a fraction of normal time.
Dumarest said, “I want you both to leave. Please go now. I need to have some time alone.”
To think, to assess the situation. To be free of delusions and distractions. To plot a path through the maze surrounding him in order to save his sanity and existence.
He watched as the others left and closed the door behind them. There was a second portal in the chamber behind which should lie a passage, an expanse of crystal wall behind which rested a secret space which held unsolved mysteries. Flickering lights, whispering voices, all of which could have been an illusion of his own creation in an effort to save his sanity. The attempt of his tormented mind to achieve some semblance of reality and reassurance as thirst-crazed men in an arid waste would see mirages of lakes and springs of sweet water in the desperate hope of salvation.
It was tempting to accept the explanation, but to do so would be to take a gamble with his life.
Dumarest sat, leaning back, concentrating on being calm and detached. He was facing a problem and before hoping to solve it he had to recognise exactly what it was. First to accept the obvious, the true nature of Shandaha.
Earth was listed in no almanac and was regarded as a myth. An imagined planet, an object of derision. All his life Dumarest had known the falsity of that approach. He was living proof that Earth existed and could be found. He had been born on the world and had left it and later returned to it.
He had known from the first what Shandaha had to be.
The only organisations strong enough and capable enough to dictate the listings of the almanac carried on every vessel were the Church of Universal Brotherhood and the Cyclan. Those of the Church preached kindness, care, concern, tolerance and love. Things of emotion. Those of the Cyclan believed in nothing but logic and reason. Every cyber was operated on when young to destroy his capability of emotion. They had no time for adornment, fine art, soft furnishings, things of delight. They were incapable of feeling anything but the mental pleasure of having made a successful prediction of any event or enterprise based on a study of logic and relevant forces.
The Cyclan controlled the compilation and distribution of the essential book which alone enabled ships to traverse the distances between the stars.
The Cyclan had eliminated all knowledge of Earth for a purpose and Dumarest was positive it was because they wanted to reserve the planet for their own use.
Which meant that anyone in the form of authority would be an important unit of the Cyclan.
Shandaha had to be a cyber.
One who had adopted a bizarre disguise.
No cyber would tolerate the clutter of gaudy furnishings, garish adornments, or wear such elaborate garments unless he had a need to do so. As the same need would have led him to use holograms, deceptions, all the magic of a skilled illusionist to expand the apparent dimensions of his habitation. To call on the arts of camouflage to create a host of optical illusions.
But why?
The chessboard and scattered pieces on the table provided a possible answer.
For the game.
Was Shandaha playing a game?
Dumarest doubted it. To play a game was to allow your opponent the chance to win and to a cyber the very concept of failure was anathema. As was humour. All he saw, smelt, heard, tasted or touched, had a common source and a shared purpose. All were to provide distractions and to mask the reality behind the pretence.
In order to survive he had to find a way of tearing aside the veils of illusion and gain the truth behind the facade.
Dumarest rose and stepped towards the second portal half expecting to find it locked, relieved when the panel swung wide. He looked at what he had seen before, stepped to the unbroken surface of the translucent wall and lifted his hand to touch the crystal. It tingled against his fingers and he turned, resting his back against it, sliding down to squat on the floor, the rear of his skull maintaining contact with the shimmering surface.
Along moment when the substance of his brain seemed to stir and gain an individual life. Fragments twitching, pulsing, swelling to subside in a random pattern.
Changing the world.
He was back in a familiar place, drifting as he had before, but now there was no pain, no fear, just a comforting freedom. Lights winked around him and voices whispered on the edge of clarity and he studied both, feeling he knew what they had to be and then, suddenly, knowing for certainty where he was and what was happening.
The lights were not stars nor electrical emissions from elaborate machines, but they were still signals of a potent force at work, one which could erase the distance between the stars and enable instant contact between minds. The power of thought.
The place into which he had fallen was a communication unit. The muted whispers the information being sent and received. The unit itself was a human brain. One housed in the skull of a cyber.
Shandaha-Dumarest was certain of it and with the realisation came a flood of information as if an encyclopaedia had opened and shed its assembled contents into his brain.
“Earl!” Chagal’s voice growing louder. Intruding. Demanding even as it transmitted its fear “Earl-” A break as the doctor saw him lying on the floor. “No! Please! Not again!” Then relief as Dumarest rose to his feet. “Hurry! Please! Shandaha wants to see you!”
Dumarest took his time, showering, drying himself, dressing with care. Ignoring Chagal’s appeals to hurry and those of Nada as she joined them both.
To Chagal he said, “Do you have that phial he sent to you?”
“The one Nada gave to me? I think so.” Chagal rummaged in his pocket. “Yes.”
“Give it to me.” Dumarest bounced it in his hand as the doctor obeyed. “Now I’ll return his gift. If it is what you say he claimed he’ll have need of it.”
The scene was becoming more than familiar, the round table, the flagons, goblets, trays of titbits. The colors and glints and the facing chairs. The trace of exotic perfumes drifting in the air and which prickled warning signs. Dumarest knew that to underestimate Shandaha would be the worst mistake he could make. A cyber was
