have been lucky. No. The crazy idiot took care of that. Busted it all to hell and the spare unit with it. I guess we should be thankful he didn't wreck the screens while he was at it.'
A small advantage, and of dubious merit. Had the screens been wrecked they would have been 'blind' but as it was, they could see the cold hostility of the universe in which they now drifted helplessly. See the flare of a nearby sun and the ugly corona around it, the leaping prominences, the blotches of roiling vapors which gave it a pocked appearance as if it were a thing alive and horribly diseased.
'We're heading towards it,' said Egulus, 'and without power we're going to hit it. Jumoke's last gift to his friends and partners.' His hands closed as if he could feel a throat. 'I was too gentle,' he said bitterly. 'I smelled the stink of that smoke but never thought he would be such a fool. To lose his head over a woman!'
'That's all you noticed? The smoke?'
'He was tense and withdrawn, but that's normal when in the Rift. To make a living, we have to take chances and always something can go wrong. It's worse in the Quillian Sector, but you know about that. We make profits but we earn them.' He ended bleakly. 'Greed. It's killed more men than anything else. The temptation to make an easy profit. To take that one extra chance.'
'Kumetat?'
'We didn't have to go there. I was going to give it a miss this time and hit it on the way back in. Only there was a cargo, and how could I refuse?'
An odd cargo for a desert world, Dumarest remembered, but odd things were carried at times. And he'd had no choice but to stay with the Entil. The worlds at which it had touched had been too backward for plentiful shipping. Too undeveloped for a man to earn the price of another passage. Bad worlds on which to be stranded. Hard planets to easily leave. Impossible places on which to hide.
'And if we hadn't got that cargo?'
'We'd be on Tullon by now. At least, that's where we were headed until we touched at Kumetat. They had an urgent delivery for Mucianus. A good world. One on the rim of the Sector and close to the edge of the Rift. We could have stayed awhile, a day or two, maybe. There's always a choice of cargoes.' He ended bitterly, 'Now it looks as if we're going to roast in hell.'
The Garden of Emdale had gone, the bright colors vanished, the flowers, the darting insects, all had disappeared. They had been followed by the chill mistiness of the Chephron Gorge, with its souring walls and looming masses, its blurred details and rocks stained and weathered with time and climate so as to give the appearance of ranked and leering skulls. Other recordings had followed, and now she sat engulfed by the glittering magic of the Elg Cavern. A place of winking points of variegated hue as crystals caught and reflected a mote of light, amplifying it, splintering it into a hundred component parts, distorting it, filling the salon with a snowstorm of sparkles, of eye-catching joy.
But now they gave her no pleasure. Nothing now could give her pleasure. She was filled with the knowledge that she was to die.
What had she said to Bochner?
An end. An extinction. The total erasure of a personal universe. The termination of existence.
And he had called it a form of beauty!
She looked to where she had seen him last, but failed to spot him in the flickering showers of brilliance. At the table, perhaps? Talking to Threnond about his wares? A stupidity, if he was-how could there be interest now in instruments of death? Better to buy some of Fele Roster's compounds. They, at least, could bring sweet dreams and illusions and a release from the fear of death.
And she was afraid.
God, she was afraid!
'Here!' The mercenary loomed beside her, his scarred face grotesque in the splintering glitters. He lifted the bottle in his hand and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. 'Have a drink,' he urged. 'The steward's been generous. The best, and all free.'
'No.'
'Drugs then? He-'
'No,' she said again, and then added, 'Please, I'd rather sit alone.'
'In the salon?' His tone was dry and she realized that he was far less drunk then he seemed. 'Haven't you a cabin?'
'Charl, you're an opportunist.' The dancer had joined them, her eyes glittering, mouth twisted in a smile. 'But she's too young for you.'
'I was offering her a drink.'
'And asking for payment, eh?' She gave a harlot's laugh. 'Reminding her that time is short and not to be wasted. Asking about her cabin. Hinting that one more experience can do her no harm and do you a lot of good. Why her? Can't I give as much as she can?'
He said flatly, 'You've a dirty mouth.'
'To match your dirty hands! Mercenaries! Scum! Killers of women and children! Murderers!' The slap of an open hand preceded her scream of anger. 'Bastard! You hit me! I'll-'
A scuffle, a muffled sound, and the mercenary swore before he collapsed, his eyes vague, the bottle falling to spill its contents on the floor. The dancer picked it up, laughing, lost in her drugged euphoria. She had used the wrong ring, the man would recover and be none the worse for his experience, but if he struck her again she would make no mistake. A dart in his throat or one in his eye. One for the uppity young bitch who played with light. And the third?
The third she would save for herself.
Allain said, 'They're getting restless, Earl. I've given them drink and drugs but they know there's little hope. People act oddly when they know they're going to die. Some try to cram everything into the last few days. Some just sit and look at their hands. Some pray. Some even commit suicide. Can you understand that? They kill themselves because they are certain they are going to die.'
'Everyone has to die.'
'That's what I mean. Why anticipate it?' The steward shrugged with strained bravado. His face was a little too tense, his eyes a little too bright, but he had a responsibility and recognized it. And some of the hope he disseminated among the passengers had stuck. Death was something which happened to others. Always it happened to others. 'The generator?'
'Nothing, as yet.'
'Maybe if I helped?'
'You can't help.' Dumarest, understanding, was patient. 'It's all up to Dilys.'
She'd worked like a machine, drugs giving her a temporary reprieve from the need to sleep, other compounds robbing tissue and nerve to provide a chemical strength. Now, she took the steaming cup Dumarest handed to her and gulped at the protein-rich fluid, sickly sweet with glucose and laced with vitamins. A second cup of basic followed the first. She waved aside a third.
'No more, Earl. You'll have me as fat as a pig.'
'You need the energy. It's been a long time.'
'Yes.' She set down the container and glanced at the bulk of the generator. Dark rings of fatigue circled her eyes and her hands held a slight tremble. She looked at them, splaying the fingers, examining her cracked nails, the tips stained with acid, torn with abrasives. 'How long, Earl? Five days?'
'Seven.' A week, during which time she hadn't slept and had rarely eaten. The food he had given her was the prelude to the exhausted sleep which would follow. 'Here.' Dumarest handed her a glass filled with a smoky amber fluid. 'Brandy, and Allain tells me it's the best. From his own private stock.' He added, 'He has reserved another bottle-one with poison.'
The final drink, but one which she knew he wouldn't share. Death, when it came, would be met by Dumarest with open eyes. He would fight it as he had fought it all his life. Facing impossible odds because, no matter how high they were against him, there was always the chance that, somehow, he could win.
Lifting the glass, she said, 'You'll join me?'
'In a toast, yes.' Dumarest raised a second glass. 'To success!'
