but determined, lifted his left hand. The dart gun in the other glimmered with reflected light.
'This area is restricted, sir. Please do not force me to use this against you.' The dart gun lifted in his hand.
Dumarest said, 'Do you think it would stop me?'
'I'm certain of it.' The midget remained calm. 'It fires a spray with a cover four feet in diameter at a distance of as many yards. I shall fire as soon as you lessen that distance. One dart must surely hit your face and one will be enough to knock you out. To cost you an eye, perhaps, if you should be unlucky. Personally I wouldn't care to gamble on the odds.'
Too high against him but not for Dumarest. He knew he could close the distance between them and reach the man before he could fire. But to do it would reveal his speed and make an enemy and all to no purpose. Chenault had the right to act as he chose within his own house.
Casually Dumarest said, 'I wouldn't either. Will Tama be all right?'
'He will receive the best of attention, sir. That I assure you. You need have no concern. Now, if you would care to return to the dining room, refreshments have been served.'
Cakes and sandwiches and drinks of various types together with a collection of condiments.
Vosper, selecting a cake, sprinkled it with an aromatic red powder and tasted it with the tip of his tongue.
'Too sweet.' He added more powder. 'You shouldn't have been in such a hurry, Earl. I could have saved you that run-in with Baglioni. And Toyanna knew she was needed.'
'Why didn't she go directly to Chenault?'
'Didn't she?' Vosper shrugged. 'Maybe she went to get her medical kit. She couldn't have done much for Tama without one.' He tasted the cake again, nodded his satisfaction, and began to eat. 'Care for a game? Anything you like as long as it's for real money. I lose interest when playing for fun. Your choice; Starsmash, Spectrum, High, Low, man-in-between. You name it.'
'Poker?'
'Sure.' Vosper beamed. 'My favorite.' Finishing his cake he glanced toward the gaming room. 'Want to eat or shall we get at it?'
'You sound like a shark,' said Dumarest. 'Are you?'
'No.'
'A telepath? How did you know about my run-in with the midget?'
'A shrewd guess. When Tama's in trouble Baglioni comes running to protect him. It happens every time.' Vosper laughed. 'A telepath. I wish to hell I was. I'm just an engineer.'
Chapter Five
Like a mouse the nurse moved down the corridor and into the room where Avro lay like a corpse on the bed. A routine visit; monitors did a good job and normally were trusted but this was a special patient and Doctor Kooga had made it plain that any failure would bring harsh penalties.
Quietly she stepped to the side of the bed, looking at the flaccid, skull-like face, one seeming more dead than alive, yet the monitors registered the beating of the heart, the passage of oxygenated blood through the brain. Only one thing seemed out of place: a tiny, flickering lamp on the panel of the encephalograph, the signal of high current demand. Nothing to worry about, activity of the recording pens always registered above a certain level, but this was unusual in terms of duration.
The cyber's mental faculties were working at high pressure and she wondered why. He should be comatose, drifting in a mindless lethargy, thoughts at a low ebb. Instead his mind seemed to be acting like a dynamo.
Leaning over the inert form she gently touched his face. A gesture without the intention of a caress; part of her duties was to administer drops in each eye. A thing done with practiced skill and she wiped the surplus from the waxen cheeks, trying not to think of the orbs she had seen, the spark which seemed to glow in their depths. The reflection of light, she guessed, it had to be that. The cyber was drugged, asleep, resting like the dead man he would soon be unless things took a turn for the better.
Even so she tiptoed quietly from the room when she left.
Avro didn't register her going. He floated in a void shot through with swaths of warmly glowing colors illuminating shapes of unusual proportions. Vistas which rolled endlessly through the chambers of his mind. Stored impressions, memories, speculations, all now released to flood his questing awareness, but confined to the limits of his brain.
A foretaste of what would be when his cortex had been removed from his body and sealed in a vat to become a part of the tremendous complex which was Central Intelligence. There he would become one with the gestalt which directed the Cyclan, using cybers and agents to spread the dominance of the organization until, in the end, it would rule the entire galaxy.
A concept which yielded mental pleasure and he swam in a sea of ceaseless attainment during which problems were solved, new worlds based on unusual chemical combinations created, new frames of reference established to bring into being new and exciting universes.
A time of euphoria which faded as the colors dulled and the vast shapes diminished to form a rocky plain on which stood a solitary figure. One clad in the scarlet robe he knew so well, the breast glimmering with the Seal of the Cyclan.
Marie? Had the Cyber Prime come to visit him in his vision? A companion? Someone he had previously known? Avro strained his eyes but could make out no detail; the drawn cowl masked the figure's face.
'Master?'
His words died without acknowledgment but he was not surprised. The vision matched others he had experienced before; illusions born of his distorted mind. The Homochon elements grafted within his brain were now growing like a cancer running wild. Normally, when activated, they established rapport with Central Intelligence, placing him in direct mental communication with the great complex. An organic communication which was almost instantaneous. But, illusion though it seemed, this too could be the product of rapport.
He said, 'Who are you? Am I to be interrogated?'
Sound which did not exist beyond his enclosed world, just as the movement he made as he stepped toward the figure had no reality but in his mind.
'You failed,' said the cowled figure. 'You failed.'
Not once but twice and Avro felt the shame of inadequacy even as he admitted the truth.
'I admit it,' he said. 'I failed. But it was not wholly my fault. The affliction I now suffer struck me down. I had Dumarest in my hand, safe, captured, but I collapsed at the wrong moment. Even so he should have been held. The arrangements had been made. Those with me should have taken him.' In memory he was again the sight over the falls; the rafts almost touching, the flames, the bodies falling and Dumarest rising like a bird into the sky. 'Luck,' he said. 'I knew of his luck but thought I'd taken every precaution. I made a mistake, one, but it was enough. Who could have known I would be stricken down when I was?'
'You had the data. You knew of your condition.'
'Yes.'
'You should have predicted the logical outcome.'
'I did. But there was time.'
'Time is a variable.'
'A trait accounted for. The probability of my staying active and successfully completing the capture was 98.5 percent. Almost certainty.'
But it nor any other prediction could ever be that. Always there remained the unknown factor which, as had happened, could negate the highest probability. A factor which seemed to act to Dumarest's advantage with consistent regularity.
'Even so you failed. A proof of your inefficiency. Can you deny that you merit the penalty of failure?'
Avro felt the cold chill of what was to come. A cyber did not fail. If he did not succeed then he ceased to be a cyber. The reward for which he had dedicated his life was denied him. Instead he was given total extinction.
And the colors would be gone, the shapes, the endless drifting in a void thronged with mental attainment. There would be no created worlds, no new universes, no communion with others of his kind. No near-immortality
