relayed the information to the others and, after you'd taken care of the towers, you gave the signal to strike. But why pick on my goods? All that bulk?'
'Weapons, Earl. There's a ready market for them on a lot of worlds.'
Weapons? He frowned then remembered how Polletin had described the value of the units to the farmers, the words he had used. Weapons against drought and famine. Weapons they couldn't do without. She had caught a word and had assumed the rest and made a mistake which had ruined him.
'Anything else?'
'The reason you rented this apartment. No cleaning service. No maids. No one to check your comings or goings or to see something suspicious. I guess you intended to leave with the others but you couldn't make it. When found you acted as you did. That was clever,' he admitted 'If I hadn't taken the wrong passage you'd have got away with it.'
'You did and I didn't. But it wasn't all an act. At first I didn't know where I was. You weren't gentle.'
'Your head hit a stone when you fell.'
'That makes me feel better.' She closed the space between them, her hand rising to touch his cheek, the fingers a lingering caress. 'So luck threw us together again. We can't argue with fate, darling. We -'
'Have business to finish. Get the money.'
For a long moment she stared at him, her hand falling from his cheek then, abruptly, she turned and padded from the room. He heard small sounds, rustles, clicks, the thud of a closing door. When she returned she was dressed as he remembered, the metallic fabric shimmering with reflected gleams. A matching belt hung like a dead snake over her arm.
'Here!' She threw it at him. 'What I promised you. All I have.'
He found no seal, sliced it open, spilled a handful of gems into his palm.
'I didn't promise you a fortune,' she said quickly. 'I haven't one to give. I was to have left with the others as you said. That's my emergency fund in case something went wrong.'
One she would have carried with her together with everything else of value if she'd intended to run. The contents of the apartment proved the intention, no food, no clothing or personal jewelry, just liquid soap, perfume, a bottle of forgotten wine.
'It isn't enough.' She sensed his disappointment. 'I guess you could make more if you turned me in for a reward.'
'You kept the deal. You gave me all you have.'
'I haven't done that yet. I've more than money, Earl. Not my body though it's yours if you want it, but an opportunity to make your fortune. You have the temperament for it. You could get back all you've lost and more.'
He said, dryly, 'As a raider?'
'Why not? There are worse things to do with your life. Better than wasting it in a factory or office or breaking your back on a farm making others rich. You were right about me working with them, but it's more than that. I'm one of them. I belong and so could you. Please, Earl! Think about it!'
Dumarest caught the note of desperation. Without money the woman was stranded. Running the risk of falling into debt and being collared to be sold as a virtual slave. She could make out in her own way but it would take time and the authorities were already suspicious. She needed to leave Arpagus quickly and she couldn't do it without his help. The reason for the offer, the bait, the appeal to his greed.
'Earl?'
He pretended to consider, to weigh advantage against risk. Then, shrugging, he lifted his glass.
'Hell, why not? What have I to lose?' The answer she had wanted to hear. 'A toast, Zehava! To love and life and endless loot!'
To the blast of guns, the screams of the dying, the stink of fear and blood and pain. He'd known them all as a mercenary and could well know them again. But it was more than that. She was giving him the chance to recover his stolen cargo. To be rich, to be safe, to find the means of revenge. Above all, the opportunity to complete his voyage. Raiders had ships and he needed a vessel to carry him home.
Chapter Three
In a chamber sunken deep beneath the torn and ravaged surface of a lonely world Master Ryon, Cyber Prime, sat and fished in the waters of madness.
Around him surged an endless susurration of voices, music, prepositions, scales, mnemonic jingles, abstruse speculations all interwoven with vivid flashes of vibrant color forming bizarre geometric forms and mathematical concepts. Universes flowered based on distorted forms of logic. Symbols took on animate life and the stuff of creation itself swirled to settle in alien configurations, to blaze with enticing perfection, to swirl again in restless chaos.
Then, suddenly, it was over.
Ryon sat bemused, staring at his desk, the machine on its surface, the time-switch which had terminated the playback of the recording. A moment and he was himself again, assessing, evaluating, making calculations, reaching decisions. The recording must be destroyed together with the brain from which it had been taken. No others must be made; the insidious attraction of undisciplined thought held a subtle danger. Any further aberration must be confined to the brains affected and they too must be destroyed. Even if those intelligences measured their life in centuries.
Ryon visualized them, the massed racks holding the remnants of cybers who had served well and who had earned the reward of extended existence. Their bodies had been discarded, their brains sealed into ovoid containers, fed with nutrients, connected to others of their own kind. Freed of all physical distraction their only duty to think, to compute, to serve the organization to which they had dedicated their existence. Forming Central Intelligence which was heart and brain of the Cyclan.
As he was its head and master.
Ryon rose, standing tall before the desk, a living flame in the scarlet of his robe, the seal of the Cyclan shimmering on his breast. A man lean from the lack of unnecessary fat, his face gaunt, his scalp hairless. One taken when barely a child, training and surgery ridding him of the capacity of emotion. He knew nothing of hate, love, fear, joy. Food was nothing but fuel for his body. Tenderness and concern were abstracts without meaning. His only determination was the pursuit of efficiency. His only pleasure that of mental achievement.
'Master?' The voice of his aide whispered from the air. 'The Council will be assembling in an hour.'
A communication needing no response. Ryon moved from the desk towards the center of the chamber, halting as light blossomed before him. As he watched the air became alive with a multitude of glowing points as a depiction of the galaxy came into being. A masterpiece of electronic magic, each mote of light held in a complex web of electromagnetic forces. With such diminution detail had to be lost but the stars were present and among them scarlet flecks glowed in scattered profusion.
The power of the Cyclan.
Each fleck represented a world which had lost its self-determination to become a part of the master-plan which would result in the total domination of the galaxy. Flecks which would spread and increase until all worlds worked together in a common unity. Then there would be an end to waste, ignorance, misdirected effort, squandered resources. An end to war, poverty, disease, the idiocy of emotional distraction. Culled of undesirable traits, ruled by reason, bred for genetic advantage, the race would achieve its true destiny.
The plan would work as it had been designed to work, the only variable was time. The only threat was that residing within the massed minds of Central Intelligence.
Too many of those minds had gone insane.
A creeping, insidious, progressive degeneration which had claimed thousands despite the most rigorous efforts to halt its progress. As yet neither a cure nor the cause was known. All affected brains had been destroyed.
To his invisible aide Ryon said, 'Report on the progress of Unit R.'
'Three hours ahead of schedule, Master.'
A satisfying response. Those busy recording the contents of brains as yet unaffected by the strange malady knew the urgency of their task. To lift skeins of knowledge from their organic prisons and impress them on sensitive, sponge-like nodes of fabricated metallic substance. An experiment with tremendous potential. One which
