basilisk
a tale of the nitrogen era
from Uranian Gleams
by Robert gibson

Terran analogue of the Uranian vomdo

1: Ethical Action

At certain priceless moments, a faint line, appearing as a silver thread before Veppora’s mind’s eye, strung her days together like jewels on a necklace, to mean “opportunity”, or “hope”.

An old maid in late middle age, she vaguely knew that if it were not for the visionary thread she would simply be marking time until she died. She was tolerated by her nephews and their families, and she also got on well enough with a few unmarried women whose situation was like hers, but that was all the personal comfort she would have had – were it not for the thread, the vision, which gave meaning to her life.

“I’m sorry, Veppora, the flatcar’s broken down,” the voice of Gizwa, her niece by marriage, interrupted these large thoughts.

Veppora went white. The knife with which she had been slicing vegetables clattered to the floor.

“Oh,” her homely face sagged, “but I must get home to my meeting.” Her cheeks quivered.

“I’m really sorry,” Gizwa said.

Gizwa’s husband Bzurth entered the kitchen, “Yeah, most unfortunate. But stay overnight with us, won’t you? We’ve got…”

Neither of them understood! Bzurth’s chunky face, and his wife’s matronly bloom, became figures seen through a blur as Veppora came close to fainting, but she drew herself up and spoke with dignity: “I am sorry also. I must be at my meeting on time. Could not any of the neighbours…?”

“I looked,” said Bzurth. “Their cars aren’t there. Still at work. And by the time they get back it will be curfew…”

“Then I must set out at once.”

They could not dissuade her.  Bzurth tried to point out that the Noad had imposed the curfew for good reason.  With rising levels of crime and sedition, the city of Narar was no place for a lone woman pedestrian at the hour of evenshine; and he, Bzurth, would willingly accompany her except that if on the way back he got caught –

“Please don’t trouble youselves to argue any further,” Veppora said primly. She laid a hand on his arm. “Of course I won’t hear of you coming with me. Gizwa needs you here; you have other guests coming. Don’t put me in the position of being a nuisance! It is my decision and mine alone, that I set out immediately.  You’re not responsible at all for what I must do.”

Her hosts glanced at one another. The glance said: yes, we’ve said enough, let her go.

Veppora was not an adventurous woman; she was merely stubborn. As she emerged, in hat and shawl, into the red gully of Pnarash Street, her mind grasped anew that thread which guided her steps. Now she pictured it more like a rope, pulling her along the pavement past looming walls, sinister alleys and knots of loitering youths, towards the sanctuary of her home. The thought braced her, made her feel fortunate… more fortunate, though also more lonely, than her friends and kin.

“They take me for granted, of course,” she thought, “but there’s more to it than that.” Indeed, they rather riskily took other matters for granted too. All their daily lives were lived on the unacknowledged brink of doom – hers and theirs.  But whereas she tried, in her small way, to pull back from it, they pressed on with their little affairs as though civilization had been guaranteed a future. As though the darkness outside the city walls did not squash inwards.

Yet today Veppora hummed contentedly to herself.  Her silver thread of purpose was shining brighter than usual. This evening, she suspected, might bring the one, long-awaited, sufficient triumph, to content her for the rest of her life. She would then have “done her bit”, and afterwards the line, the thread, the secret silver wire of opportunity would pass on to another link-person, while she herself would be left with the satisfaction that she had not lived in vain.

Therefore it was especially vital that tonight’s Ethical Action meeting should go ahead. The signs were good. She had managed to arrange for a foreign guest, a travel writer of some renown, to come and speak. To have booked the Lady Hyoen Freld of Jador to address the gathering was quite a coup.  Not surprising that the thread of meaning was given an extra shine!

Who knows, Veppora mused, I might induce this Freld woman to set up a branch of Ethical Action in her home city.  That would mean I could truthfully claim that notice has been taken of my little club elsewhere. A heady thought. Today, two cities; tomorrow, who knows? All of Syoom – the civilized world – may one day look back to this as our organization’s most important ever!

But only if I get there.

The air was dimming towards a face-blurring dusk. Veppora hesitated at the sight of the tree-lined vista where Pnarash Street debouched into Kensh Avenue. The space was wide and sparsely lit, and pedestrians were few.

If she could cross the avenue boldly, confidently, and preferably at an oblique angle, she would reach the side-road she wanted as quickly as possible… She had heard stories of people being mugged, or worse, in this district.

Her heart sank as she saw that a half-dozen youths were scuffing their boots against the kerb some fifty yards away. They were in the direction she needed to go. She must advance, no matter what forebodings rasped at her insides.

As she cringed past the youths she heard one word which made her skin tighten painfully:

“Cur-few, cur-few” – the taunt aimed at her.  Implication: we can dodge it, but don’t you dare. 

Yet she got by, and heard no following footsteps.  Good - she tried to think as the yobs receded - but then why did unease still grip her shoulders? Something in these darkened streets still nudged and twitched her mind.  More disagreeable than any common fear... what could it be?

As if she didn’t know.  The old question:

If you succeed too much, how do you know that Dmara won’t come to you?

It didn’t help to say: Dmara can’t move; Dmara is only the name of an old ruined city, and of the dried-up lake beside it.  It didn’t help, because a sufficiently threatening vagueness hung about the name, to suggest it could reach out.

Veppora was a fairly ordinary woman of her time.  She adhered to the widespread popular belief that the cradle of evil was locatable. She, along with millions of other Uranian humans, had no doubt that it lurked in the dead city of human origins thousands of miles away on the other side of the civilized world. To this belief she added her own personal conviction, that it was the duty of all properly living governments to co-operate in mounting an expedition aimed at eradicating or exorcising Dmara. This should be done once and for all, so that the horror was wiped out.  Not for nothing was Ethical Action the name and watchword of her organization.

Why couldn't governments see that it was their duty to act?  Ridiculous, that it had been left to an individual like her to set up her pitiful little club… That thought caused her steps to falter in bewilderment… For an instant she would have abandoned all her life’s work. No, that was a crazy thought. It couldn’t be right. She reproved herself: “It’s not a pitiful club. Somebody has to start somewhere, and I’ve had some good responses…”

Right now, though, that was no comfort, in fact it made matters worse: for on this particular evening, as she stumbled through the dim streets of Narar towards the spacious haven of Nowan House, she began to wonder whether she had done the right thing in asking that prestigious foreign wordsmith Hyoen Freld to address the meeting tonight. Has it ever occurred to me before now that I might actually SUCCEED?  And that if I do, I may rouse something too big for those involved to endure?

After all, the thing we dread is real; it is out there; it is not asleep. If international pressure is brought to bear on it, it will surely retaliate. And might it even move before then, against those who locally annoy it – might it move against me to punish me for raising the alarm? Skies above, what have I already done?

She felt a craving for her own walls around her. By the time she finally reached her house unharmed she was shaking with relief. She drunkenly burst in, locked the double doors behind her and pressed the master switch which put on all the lights. Well – a drink might be sensible, at that! She lurched upstairs to her bedroom where she poured herself a glass of secret strong stuff, thankful that no one had yet arrived. Gulping, she reflected that the only thing which really mattered was results.

Everything was back on course now. How fortunate to have inherited a mansion of this size, and how comforting to have a steady objective as regards its use. An aim which was so grand, it was in no danger of being realized too soon. If it ever was realized, she’d be either dead by then, or so old that no one would expect… humph, never mind. Must hustle. Downstairs again, to prepare the lounge.

The richness of the lounge soothed her: its carpeting, its panelling, its lamplit glows, medicine for the mind. She went around straightening chairs, plumping cushions, and putting a pile of spare notices on the little table by the door – copies of the ones sent out some days back:

     Date and time: third hour of evenshine, Day 20,867 of the Nitrogen Era
       Venue: Nowan House, Ungezazz Street, Narar
       Guest Speaker: the Lady Hyoen Freld of Jador
       Veppora Munoo to take the Chair.
       Visitors welcome. Overnight accommodation available.
       Members are urged to make every effort to attend.

Proudly she thought: “I successfully made my own effort to attend –”  An effort it was.  That walk through the streets had been no joke.

The guest speaker was the next person to arrive. Younger and slimmer than Veppora, the Lady Hyoen Freld turned out to be quite short in stature but she stood straight and business-like. Her eyes were dark beads of restless glitter, giving her a forceful presence.

Her tone of greeting, however, as she shook hands, was kindly and appreciative. “I am most grateful for the opportunity to come and talk to you. How odd that it has taken me so long to make my first visit to Narar,” the lady smiled, and went on, expertly speaking the Nouuan tongue in lofty style, “I suppose that the pattern of my roamings has depended too much upon the convenience of the moment. Well, here I am at last, and high time I had a look at your city.”

Veppora was a touch irritated by the blithe assumption that anyone with enough money could still roam around Syoom the carefree way folk used to do. All right, ‘Syoom’ was supposed to denote ‘the civilized part of the world’. And all right, Hyoen Freld doubtless had a lot more money and a lot more luck than most people. But some day, your ladyship will find that the supply of both has run dry.

In fact – decided Veppora there and then – when I introduce her I shall give her the common title ‘sponndar’, and none of this ‘Lady’ business, and she can like it or flunnd it.

At the back of this assertive twitch there crouched Veppora’s newly re-awoken dread of success. She had always been apt to shy from any over-clear image of her aims. Now the presence of a likely agent brought the vision uncomfortably close to focus. This chic smartie just might go further than I bargained for, in a spurt of precipitate action… Astonished at the inconstancy of her thoughts (why was she doing all this, why do anything, if not for the purpose of being effective?), Veppora was glad when other guests began to arrive. It was a good turnout. About thirty people eventually settled themselves on the armchairs, the couches and the cushions in a semi-circle which faced the great wooden desk.  Soft light from the pillared lamps poured gentle gold over the scene, and Dmara and its horrors seemed impossibly far away.

The clock struck the hour. Chatter died down.

Veppora, her mood lightened, took the Chair and began, “It is my privilege to introduce sponndar Hyoen Freld…”

Soon, she was thinking: Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this.

Right from the beginning of the guest’s speech the meeting was given a new slant on the problem of evil. Very un-traditionally they were all soon laughing as if evil could be reduced to buffoonery. “You won’t believe this,” Hyoen Freld told them, “but recently the Jadorian Government introduced a slew of Well-Being regulations, including penalties for anyone who told a joke within hearing of someone chewing a spikko fruit, in case the hearer choked with laughter…”

Funny anecdotes, thought Veppora in wonder. A mere laugh. And there I was, worrying…

And yet I’m right about one thing. As soon as I saw her, I knew.

For on reflection Veppora understood that she had recognised Hyoen as the person who was going to pick up the silver thread. When she does, I shall be able to relax. The narrative will have passed to her and it will be in good hands, and I shall be out of it all.

“…and likewise recently,” Hyoen Freld went on, “in my home city of Jador, a campaign has begun to replace our ancient system of measurement with a set of polysyllabic terms having no evocative or descriptive power, the sole merit of the new system being that it facilitates multiplication and division by powers of ten. As though measurements were used only for calculation, rather than as descriptors. Thus instead of inches we’re told to use foopisnargles; instead of yards, snargles; instead of miles, kruntisnargles. I’m not making this up. Wait,” she held up her hand to control the audience’s incredulous mirth, “till you hear how the authorities where I live are also mucking about with the measurement of time.” (‘Mucking about?’ A lady should say tampering, Veppora’s inner censor protested, but the guest surged on; she could get away with anything – ) “In order to make citizens work harder and use their hours better by getting up earlier, our government has told us we must all put our clocks forward one hour –”

“Ah, come on!” said several in the audience.

“I’m serious! They really believe that the only way to get us Jadorians out of bed is to pretend that it is one hour later than it really is! But I see you’re having trouble accepting all this,” Hyoen went on as heads shook while bodies continued to heave with mirth. “All I can say to that is – come to my city and see and hear for yourselves. Meanwhile – do you wish to hear more?” (“Yea, yea,” responded the delighted audience, eager for more farce.) “Very well, one more tall tale that happens to be true. It’s about the way we Jadorians speak. We have a growing habit of using the word for ‘she’ as a polite form of ‘you’. And more serious still, I hear reports that the simple past tense is dropping out of use, so that ‘I have gone’, for example, is replacing ‘I went’, as in ‘yesterday I have gone to visit a friend’…”

Hyoen’s voice suddenly drooped to a more serious tone.

“All this,” she remarked, “is, of course, too barmy to be natural.”

She paused, and glanced at the Chair. Veppora gave the right verbal nudge:

“If it isn’t natural, then…”

“Something,” said Hyoen, “is rotting our minds.”

The audience had frozen in captivated suspense. Veppora experienced a sense of glad surrender, as a tired business-owner may feel willing to hand over nen’s enterprise to a young, able, energetic successor. This is it, this is the moment, she thought objectively, this is the point in the story where Veppora hands the thread to Hyoen.

Meanwhile the speaker continued:

“The something has been given a name. We call it the Corruption-Ray, or C-Ray for short. I dare say you may have heard the theory…”

(The thread having passed to Hyoen Freld, the narrative shifts to her point of view.  Sensing the pressure, Hyoen falters, noticing signs of impatient dissatisfaction in her audience as their lips murmur no, is that all, that C-Ray fantasy stuff...)

“…although the fashion is still to decry it and to posit alternative explanations. I have heard, for instance, that some of you people pin the blame upon spooks from Dmara – but I say, forget Dmara.”

Hyoen Freld’s gaze panned around to see how they took that last bit. She noticed that the lady in the Chair, Veppora Munoo, seemed delighted, really delighted at the phrase, Forget Dmara.

The rest of the audience, though, seemed disconcerted rather than pleased... Well, any change of outlook tends to be a bother, Hyoen well knew. But they did all continue to listen as she flowed on.

“…Whatever our differences in theory, at any rate your aims and mine coincide, as do some of our beliefs. You and I long for a better world. You and I agree that the source of contemporary evil is to be found in some place. So next we must ask, which place? Wherever the culprit’s headquarters may be, it must house a modern group of scientific criminals engaged in an international conspiracy. Yes – forget Dmara! Dmara is a cover, a distraction, an excuse. We face a plot by real flesh-and-blood people who aim the C-Ray at our cities. How to find their installation, how to defeat them, I have no idea. That’s why I seek support wherever I can; I hope to be speaking with your city government soon.” (Audience reaction still mixed... some nervous titters…) “Thank you for listening to me.”

“Thank you, Lady Hyoen,” said Veppora, who to herself commented: I need not have worried about the dangers of success. This woman isn’t going to get anywhere with our government. So if she does stir things, it won’t be here. No, thank goodness, the deed will be done a long way from here. “Questions from the floor?”

A portly bespectacled man put his hand up.

“What I’d like to know is, how are these C-Rays aimed? From towers? Airships? And how come nobody has traced them yet?”

Hyoen smiled tightly. “The rays belong to that type of radiation known as heavy-light. As you must be aware, heavy-light can travel in arcs. The trajectory of the C-Ray, we believe, is like that of a surface-to-surface missile. It needs no tower or airship platform. It could be launched from anywhere to anywhere.”

A woman gowned in bejewelled velvet asked the next question in a tone of formidable doubt. “Those who fire this… thing – what could be their motive? Living in hiding, as they must be, what’s in it for them?”

“Their motive,” replied Hyoen with a snap in her voice, “is to deprive people of their roots.”

“How?”

“How? By destroying their network of cultural referents. I say this because of my experience in Jador.  Anything well-established, anything of good quality, is a target.”

“Yes, but why?” insisted the velvety woman.

“To undermine public spirit, of course; to weaken the state, so making it more vulnerable to conquest or control by whomever is mounting this operation. Have no doubt, when matters have gone far enough, they’ll come out of hiding and show their hand. But by then it’ll be too late for Syoom.”

A hush fell, with few smiles. The bright little flowers of amusement were fading in a desolation of sombre thoughts.

Her questioner tried again:

“Do your compatriots, sponndar H-F, agree with you about this conspiracy?”

“Those who agree, as yet, are few, and none are in positions of importance,” admitted Hyoen. Even more frankly she added: “My supporters are mere drops in the bucket, so far.  If you want a reason to disbelieve, that’s certainly one.”

Veppora interjected:

“And so you came to Narar,”

“Yes, I have come to Narar. This is my last throw.” Hyoen softened her voice. “I dare say you will agree, rather than take offence, if I assert that your city is in some respects further than mine along the road to social decay.” She saw assent in their faces. No one was prepared to argue that one. It was the underlying reason they huddled here, in this bright room with the comforting lights and companionship. “I had thought,” she went on, “perhaps to bring one or two of you home with me, as witnesses to warn the people of Jador of the future of crime and hopelessness that lies in wait for them. Then it also occurred to me that the reverse was likewise true – that I could use the example of Jador to warn Narar. For some of our Jadorian idiocies have not yet taken root here. You’ve proved that, by laughing at them.”

Faces brightened at that, whereupon Veppora issued a kindly rebuke from the Chair:

“My feeling, sponndar H-F, is that it is all very well for you, having lived all your life in the relative freedom of Jador, to complain about minor silliness such as tinkering with measurement and clocks. What you have yet to realize is the degree to which we in Narar have to put up with real oppression. For example, here, if the Noad deigned to glance at our humble little club, he could imprison us all tonight, and keep us imprisoned without trial. Fortunately we’re way beneath his notice – but perhaps you can try to understand why we have been entertained rather than enflamed by your speech.”

Hyoen bowed her head. “I am aware of the oppression you speak of, sponndar V-M.”

“And now that you have gauged the sense of our meeting – what will you do next?” (Veppora, her silver thread of purpose gone, asked this only out of mild curiosity. She welcomed a new blankness in her own mind. It had replaced the terrible fear, the dread that she might get what she had asked for. Now the chance and the hope and the terror were all gone. All handed over. What a relief.)

“It has just occurred to me,” said Hyoen Freld bitterly, “that your oppressors may not be too stupid, they may know how to think…. I realize that your Noad is supposed to be a mere dictator, but –”

“Oh, you’ll find he’s a clever man,” interrupted Veppora. “Politician to the core. Yes, you’ll find that Vroonwik Clarm is a master of the Bleak Arts.”

2: The Button

Thebb Clarm paused with a large spanner in his muscular grip.

He listened for a moment, his senses tingling. A door had slammed.

Happiest when under the dim ceiling of his cavernous workshop, he was not so consumed by passion for his hobby as to neglect the arts of survival.

Though a constructor of hover-rafts by preference, he was a politician by necessity. No member of the ruler’s family could avoid politics. This being the case, any scrunch of footsteps on the gravel path outside –

Perhaps, though, he needn’t worry.  Those steps sounded merely like Smim… but why was she in such a rush? The door opened. Yes, it was Smim and as he looked at her leggy, tousled figure in the doorway, Thebb smiled in tolerant contempt.

Whatever it might be, that had brought his woman-of-the-moment scurrying to his shed, it wasn’t any regard she felt for him or for his hobby… that much was certain.

“Thebb!” she screeched. “Five men in your front garden!”

He gently replied, “Thanks for telling me. Send them round, will you? I’m not going anywhere.”

She really did look scared.  Did she, he wondered, care for him slightly after all? Of course she had been placed in his life to keep an eye on him.  On the other hand, it was a lazy enough eye. In fact the vacuous Smim appeared to show no interest in whatever he did. There was something so cheap about her, as to reassure him that his great-uncle could not possibly consider him much of a danger to the state.

And so the easy-going Thebb had never got round to looking very hard for something better, once Smim Lerank had trickled into his life.

She darted back out of sight as other, heavier footsteps tramped on the gravel. A guardsman pushed his way in through the shed door.

“Come right in,” invited Thebb

Another guard followed, and they stationed themselves on either side of the entrance. Then in strode a younger man, as young as Thebb himself, but harder; his piercing eyes seemed to prod the scene with invisible wires. And beyond him, through the still-opened door, a third and fourth guard could be seen, stationed outside.

Thebb smiled and straightened himself, still gripping the spanner. “What can I do for you, Advisor?”

The Noad’s Advisor, Ob Solm, bent his frown at the partly disassembled raft which overspread much of the shed floor.

Thebb noted his gaze. “Yes, your arrival has just broken some trains of thought concerning the optimum volume-to-drive ratio of the rear-port buoyancy tank –”

“Interesting,” drawled Ob Solm. “But, so I would think, marginal to the needs of the State…” His scrutiny swung back at Thebb. “Have you not thought of using your talents to further the Noad’s plans? Does the Navy of Narar not interest you more than this tinkering hobby?”

“You mean airships.”

“You say it boredly.”

“Let me tell you, Advisor, that dozens of rafts like this could be built for the cost of one airship. Besides, skimming close to the ground is much more useful in Unnesp’s terrain. More exhilarating too, than floating half a mile up –”

“That,” cut in Ob Solm, “is your opinion.”

“Which is why I voice it,” shrugged Thebb.

“The Noad takes a different view.”

Thebb nodded quietly, having had plenty of arguments with his great-uncle on this theme; arguments which (so far) had remained less energetic than quarrels.

What the young hobbyist really wanted to do was to put some of his working models to the test. And the only proper test was a voyage into the wilderness. Noad Vroonwik, however, had flatly forbidden Thebb to go exploring.

He’d thought of going anyway.  Really, though, he was stuck. As one of the ruler’s close relatives, were he to leave the city without permission there would be hell to pay when he got back. Politics! His heart wasn’t in it, but his fortune was.

He did not yet feel real danger. All he wanted was to be let alone. Surely that was not too much to ask, even in today’s sad world.

“So, am I due for another lecture?” he smiled at Ob Solm.

Then he wondered if perhaps he had gone too far. He noticed the guardsmen flicking expectant glances at their boss.

“What’s in that bin?” demanded Ob Solm in a sudden drab voice.  A jerk of the head towards the back of the workshop left no doubt as to what he meant.

Thebb turned. “Gvo crystals.”

Ob Solm strode over to stare down at the heap of what looked like magnified orange sugar. “A valuable hoard.”

“Accumulated legally; I can prove it,” said Thebb, now on the defensive.

Ob Solm turned back with a glare which could discompose the most guiltless; eyes which made Thebb want to wail, I’ve got nothing to hide! All right, in today’s resource-poor world it would have been far better not to have been caught with a whole bin of gvo, legal or not, but – thought Thebb despondently – politics was ultimately about what you could grab for yourself; Vroonwik knew it; Ob Solm knew it; and he, Thebb, needed the crystals for what he was doing.

Ob Solm remarked, “You’re looking unhappy, Thebb Clarm.” And he gave a signal to the guards.

One of them, in turn, signalled out the door.

A third guard came in carrying a dark grey cubical box with a lid and metal hasp. As the box neared, Thebb’s emotions reared, plunged, squirmed away from the lip of panic.  If only he could believe that the box was merely one of those admin monitors which Advisors trail around with. He was gripped by a hasty urge to chatter.  “Actually, my dream for a long time has been to be able to do without gvo…”

“Really?” said Advisor Ob Solm.

“Really. I have been experimenting – admittedly in a small way – I have no assistants, no state resources, it’s just a hobby – experimenting, I say, with an alternative source of buoyancy-light.”

“And what is that?”

The grim thought came that if Vroonwrik had finally given orders to eliminate him, he would have told Ob Solm to get all possible information first. In which case the longer a full confession could be avoided, the better… On the other hand, surely this thought must be mad. Granted that old great-uncle Vroonwik didn’t love him – didn’t love anybody – neither did he hate him…

“The ell-light of the vheic plant,” explained Thebb more calmly, “like gvo-light, is buoyancy-light. If vheic-light could be trapped in a chamber, well… that would really be something. Just think of it,” he went on, accelerating into confidence. “No more dependence on gvo, at any rate for transportation, so we could cock a snook at the gvo-merchants; their stranglehold would be broken and we’d earn the thanks of all the cities of Syoom. Picture it.” Thebb, as he warmed to his theme, was able to use his flood of enthusiasm as a fear-extinguisher. “Instead of a world dependent upon rapacious and elusive gvo peddlers, just imagine a world dependent upon sturdy farmers, reliably rooted in their lands, yet in their turn dependent upon protection by the cities. Far healthier for all of us.”

“Well! Quite the political engineer! You have thought about this, haven’t you?”

“Don’t call me a political engineer, Ob Solm,” pleaded Thebb. “I just live my life. I have no idea how to guarantee the people of Narar enough to eat, let alone solve the crime-wave and defeat the pirates in the badlands of Unnesp, or whatever... no, I just live.”

“Quite successfully, judging from the size of your house and the time and money you devote to your hobby. Enough of this.” Ob Solm made a gesture to a guard, which Thebb did not catch – he misunderstood the phrase enough of this to be a sign that Ob Solm was about to leave.

Thebb therefore made the mistake, for some seconds, of ceasing to watch his enemy.  Instead, he scowled at the floor while glooming over the Advisor’s taunt – for taunt it seemed – about Thebb Clarm the wealthy pottering dilettante.

He had an answer to the insult, but he knew better than to give it.  It was the one possible answer: What else is there? Nothing for a great-nephew of the Noad, except to take whatever private advantage he could in exchange for the dangers of his position.

Those dangers would markedly increase if Noad Vroonwik Clarm and his henchmen ever got the false idea that Thebb was as interested in tinkering with the mechanisms of society as he was in those of his hover-rafts… using the masses and the interest-groups to advance his ideas and himself.

He had no desires in that line, none at all. It would be futile to have them, anyway.  These days when civilization was going downhill towards a crash, there’d be no point in revolution – except in the unlikely technological field. All sensible people knew this. In fact, come to think of it, some Professor at the University was actually saying so, and they hadn’t yet taken him to task…

Thebb looked up, intending to make this point as a parting shot. Then he saw his mistake. The visit was not over.  The guard with the big box (why didn’t I twig about the box?) came forward and Thebb’s jaw slackened. Words no longer came when he needed them. Click – another guard had the box open.

The Advisor reached in, all the while keeping his eyes fixed upon Thebb’s face.

Now something small and grey was lying in the palm of Ob Solm’s left hand. A metal ovoid with a button on its top.

“What’s that egg for?” rasped Thebb.

Ob Solm’s eyes blazed close now as he pushed the thing under the other’s nose. Thebb’s thoughts went scatty – Vroonwik doesn’t like long arguments – he hires Ob Solm to snip them short – as his mind bumped down a rough slope towards a pit of no return, of ultimate servility.

“This,” the Advisor was saying, “is your opportunity, Thebb Clarm. The Noad is honouring you. He is giving this to you first. Will you accept? If you refuse, the offer will go to Knef Krateen.”

Vroonwrik’s other great-nephew, Thebb’s cousin and chief rival for the succession to the noadex of Narar… Knef Krateen whose one idea was to expend the entire resources of the State upon an airship navy… Knef Krateen the would-be admiral of a fleet to boost Narar’s power against the day of collapse when the supply of gvo crystals finally ran out all across Syoom… the sort of man the Noad could believe in, and whom all the citizens might end up believing in as a revulsion from despair when the general darkness fell.

“Press this button,” urged Ob Solm, “and Knef Krateen will die.”

Thebb’s lips parted in eager thirst for this suddenly beautiful idea. Typical enough of Vroonwrik; the starkness of the choice, to obliterate or not, placing the life of a hated rival at the mercy of one jab of the finger.

The Advisor’s voice clanged on: “If you do not press it, the equivalent choice will be offered to him. The Noad is weary of trying to choose between you. And you cannot both be allowed to live.  As things are you are weakening Narar as each of you strives against the other.”

Thebb looked up at the eyes fixed upon him, the eyes that drowned all questioning. He did not bother to ask how the box would work. Nor did he ask why Vroonwik had chosen to sort out the problem this way. All he knew, now it had come to this point, was –

He could not bring himself to press the button.

3: The Noad

Hyoen Freld was scarcely aware of her own fidgeting as she smoothed down her skirt for the third time and repetitiously patted her hair, but when she caught herself standing up and sitting down again almost immediately, she angrily told herself to keep still. It was too late for nerves and doubts. She had committed herself. Here, in the anteroom of an office in the Palace of the Noad, hesitation was for weaklings; one might as well play one’s last card and get it over with.

By all accounts Noad Vroonwik Clarm of Narar was a fairly nasty piece of work – indeed quite apart from personal rumours one could hardly absolve him from responsibility for his regime – and yet, Hyoen told herself, he must have some common sense. It was essential for survival.

Besides, since all the so-called good people to whom she had applied had proved useless, she could hardly be blamed for turning to a bad one…

And the fact that she had been granted an audience after a mere couple of days was promising. Most likely the Noad realized that it was in his interest to encourage visitors who, if nothing else, were apt to bring in much-needed crystals into his realm…

The inner door clicked open and she jerked to her feet. A formulaic voice announced, “The lady Hyoen Freld may now approach.”

Jaw set, she marched into the office.

And stopped at the sight of the Noad who sat behind a crude, un-elegant desk of dingy wood. The only smart furniture she could see was a modernistic computer-terminal, a rare sight in an age when advanced technology was becoming prohibitively expensive. Otherwise the office was drab. Noad Vroonwik Clarm lolled and creaked in his inflated swivel-chair.

“Siddown,” he said, motioning her sloppily to a smaller, tubular chair. “Why have you come to me, Hyoen?”

At least he did get straight to the point. She noted that he was a large man, somewhat jowly but all in all not an ill-looking animal. Pursuing an earlier thought, she decided that although she could not hope to find honour here, she might at least expect intelligence.

She replied, “May I be candid with you, Noad V-C?”

“You may. Only worry if I start to yawn, for then you can expect to be thrown out of my office shortly. Though I don’t look it, I am actually a rather busy man. But I allow myself the occasional amusement, so – amuse me! Candidly or otherwise.”

Hyoen said, “I will take you at your word, Noad V-C. I am here because I have something vital to say. I –”

“Have you already said it in Jador?” the Noad interrupted.

Disconcerted, she forced her whirling mind to focus upon the perception that the Noad must be used to people coming to him with all kinds of tale to tell. Therefore he must have developed a habit of mind that leaped impatiently ahead of the tellers. Must watch out for that, she thought; he’ll be apt to categorise what I say before I finish saying it –

Controlling the rising heat of her temper she said:

“Yes, Noad Vroonwik, Jador has heard. Heard but not listened. The relatively unsullied cities have no idea of their own as to what’s going on, and do not believe me, whereas the thoroughly corrupted ones don’t care anyway.”

“And which group do we come in?”

“You of Narar are in an intermediate category – partially gone bad, but still with some sense.” That was telling him!

The Noad’s eyes bulged, his cheeks puffed and he burst out laughing. “I’d like to have you on my Board of Advisors!” he hooted. “Love ’em to hear you!” He gasped and wheezed, and it flashed across Hyoen’s mind that this ruler might not be in the best of physical health. “So tell me what’s up,” he encouraged.

She braced herself. She did not like being laughed at and she was much afraid that she’d get the same reaction which she had experienced so many times before – as though she were some crank. That would terminate this last precious chance of a hearing. But there was nothing for it: she had to plough on with the truth.

“The Corruption Ray,” she said. “That’s what’s ‘up’. You have heard of it, perhaps, as a hypothesis?” Seeing him nod, she went on: “I have statistical proof of its existence, proof that it is being aimed at the cities of Syoom. Not equally, and not all at once. Some cities have fallen to a lower state than others. Some are hardly touched…”

“And mine is pretty bad,” said the Noad gently.

She gave him a sharp glance and was disturbed at a vision of apathy which was not at all what she had expected. What had she imagined his reaction would be? Disbelief, anger, or the faint possibility of sudden conversion and support. Not this glimmer of sadly resigned wisdom. False wisdom. She refused to accept it.

“You’re a leader,” she snapped. “I am asking you to lead. The civilized world is in crisis and somebody somewhere has to be the first Noad to recognize the fact. It could be you.”

“Hmm, bossiness with backbone,” he smiled. “Suppose I did agree. What,” he asked in a mildly interested tone, “would be your next demand?”

“Send out warnings with copies of the evidence. Subsidize more statisticians to make the case even stronger. Form a coalition of cities. Mount an expedition to find the perpetrators of the Ray. Destroy them and it!”

Another “Hmm…” and Vroonwik Clarm leaned back in his chair. “This has been quite a morning, Hyoen. Have you heard of Professor Himbock Thiams? Author of The Impossibility of Ethics? Well, I’m supposed to make a decision on him in the next few hours. My advisors tell me I have let him go on too long. They may be right. You listening, Hyoen? You getting all this?”

“I’m listening, Noad,” she replied, hanging on to her own guide-rail of purpose with each sway and lurch of this roller-coaster interview.

“The Professor’s statements,” the Noad went on, “about mankind being on the way out, and everything being futile, and so on, are, on one level, mere expressions of fashionable opinion. But coming from him they may cause more harm than the average. I muse make a pragmatic decision as to when the time has come to say ‘enough is enough’. A few useful fools still exist who preach public spirit and so help to keep the State minimally functional. Himbock is busily undermining them. I am getting tired of it.” The Noad leaned forward again, resting his chin on one palm, and regarded Hyoen obliquely. “You see the sort of thing I have to put up with? No, of course, you don’t. Hmm… let me tell you some more about what I’ve got on today. Then you’ll see what my life is like.” His face brightened at this whim of his, this neatest of ways to silence her: for his own predicament was the effective answer to her requests. And she, meanwhile, guessed that it might, as a bonus, be a relief for him to unburden his soul to a visitor.

Despite some sympathy, she recoiled as he spoke on. She found herself listening to an account which sucked her deeper and deeper into the madness of power.

“Today I am due to pronounce sentence upon my favourite nephew,” Vroonwik continued. “You know, I get my worst pressures from members of my own family. Sad, but there it is. It had become obvious that either Thebb Clarm or Knef Krateen had to go, for Narar is not wide enough for both of them and I am determined not to leave a legacy of civil war. Therefore I sent my hypnotist, Ob Solm, to each of them – Thebb first – with the button to press: the button that is supposed, when pressed, to kill one’s rival. Sounds fantastic, but in Ob Solm’s presence one believes it. And yet Thebb refused. Whereas Knef Krateen went ahead and pressed it – so Knef, I must regrettably conclude, is the man who has the stuff in him to rule when I am gone.

“So there you are, that’s one sad sample from my in-tray. What else can I tell you?” As he spoke he shuffled some plastic sleeves around his desk. “Here, this is interesting.” He picked up a folder. “Take a look at that.” (Gingerly, Hyoen reached for it.) “Open it.”

She did so and saw the minutes of a secret trial. On the front page was a photo of a young man with a sullen stare.

“Political opposition?” she queried.

“No, just vandalism. I became curious to know why this lad had destroyed a tree in one of my parks. I had him brought in for questioning. I told him he would be released on one condition: he must give a good, convincing reason why he destroyed my tree. And you know what? Not even to save his life, could he give that reason!”

She sat clamped by a chill of dull horror.

“What do you intend to do to the boy?”

“It’s been done. I’ve had him put down.”

For a while there was silence. It was broken by the Noad, who began a rambling soliloquy. “My people are evil, Corruption Ray or no; and I reckon that no Corruption Ray is needed now, if it ever was; we’re doing a good enough job of undermining Narar ourselves. But in any case I wonder if perhaps it might be a good thing after all that the Ray should shine and toughen us, dirtying our minds to suit us for the dark days ahead. That nuisance Professor Himbock is doubtless right in assuming that we are in the final stage of civilization. How could we not be? When the gvo-crystals finally run out, the cities are doomed and most of us will starve. A remnant will retreat to what is left of the forests. That will be that. Not in my lifetime, I hope. For the time being the thing to do is to grab a comfortable berth and defend it against all comers. That’s what Thebb should have done, and that’s what I’ve done. Though actually the noadex is not very comfortable. I would prefer to be like you, Hyoen Freld: a rich traveller who has time to saunter around offering impractical advice. But I’m not complaining. You have given me some rest from my usual round. You have lent me an ear –”

Hyoen saw that the communicator light had been flashing for some seconds. Now the buzzer purred; the Noad with a sigh picked up the handset. “Yes…? Ah! Go on… Yes… just a moment.” Cupping the handset the Noad smirked: “I mentioned a certain Professor Himbock, didn’t I? Well, this looks good. Himbock’s not keeping his head down any longer, it seems. With luck, this can be turned around.” Once more speaking into the phone, he commanded, “Continue!”

Then as Hyoen watched, the Noad’s smile grew ever broader, until he heaved backwards and laughed, “Oh no!”

4: A Glass of Water

Tlall College was an island of mellow, scholarly calm. Its creamy stone was attractive to the eye amid the dingy quarter of Hwain.

The so-called slums of Hwain were not really much worse than many another district of Narar, in these days when a blight of drowsy hopelessness lay over most of Syoom, but the contrast of atmosphere, between the intellectual stimulation inside and the social decay outside the College walls, made the outside into something which (for philosophy student Jarchon Whepp) didn’t bear thinking about…

Jarchon therefore simply put off thinking about it.

A smooth-faced, flippantly handsome youngster, he had the reputation – oddly, in view of his shallow personality – of being as brilliant at his second subject, philosophy, as he was at his main field of study, engineering.

Maybe, however (said some of his critics) this wasn’t so odd after all: the kind of intellectual pyrotechnics Jarchon was good at were nothing more than the kind of silly game chosen by the idle rich when they happened to have brains as well as money to waste.

In actual fact he was not that rich; he merely looked it. Moreover, outside of seminars and debating halls he was quite mild-mannered. Nevertheless the fact that he obviously could show off if he wanted to, gave him the reputation of having done so. This was a little unfair; after all he was merely one of many who adopted a public persona as a defence against a reality going to pot…

His Director of Studies, Ryel Nound, hoped that Jarchon would be on his best behaviour today. The scheduled seminar was due to be graced by none other than the illustrious Professor Himbock Thiams.

Ryel noted, approvingly, that during the preliminary chit-chat while glasses of liqueur were being handed round, Jarchon was listening with polite attention to Himbock’s affable remarks amid a circle of respectful students. And a few minutes later, as the Professor began his introductory address to the seminar, Jarchon, having got the seat next to him, seemed (thank goodness) quite rapt.  The chances seemed good, that the lad was going to behave.

Himbock was saying what he had often said before: that humanity was in its dotage and that rational people ought to come to terms with their species’ old age, just as an individual must resign nenself to senescence.

“Partly,” the Professor went on, “this involves doing away with wasteful emotions like indignation and surprise. Humanity is so old, has been through so much, that what with one thing and another we’ve seen it all. There’s nothing new, and it’s simply silly to get angry about injustice from others, or guilty about any injustice that flows from oneself. Good and evil are shared around. Whatever we do, those two attributes reach their own levels, like gases in an atmosphere. You may call this cynicism, but if so, cynicism can no more be evaded than the law of conservation of energy. And just as that law, of conservation of energy, has been expressed mathematically and can help us to model physical realities, so it would be an achievement in our lives if we could schematise the law of cynicism. Perhaps we can make a start today?”

Himbock paused, and beamed benignly around the oval table. That table, heavy and covered with velvet, and the fine leathery smell of old bindings pervading the room, lent such comfortable dignity to the scene, that to an impressionable scholar it might not matter what was said – the college atmosphere prevailed over the sense of the words, which murmured like a shallow brook through the wisdom of past, present and future academia.

“How would we make a start, sir?” asked Cuelna Dewsplir, a hurriedly scribbling girl.

The Professor bestowed a kindly glance upon Cuelna. “Let’s begin,” he suggested, “with possible guilt feelings. Do any of you have any twinges of conscience about your privileged position here? Attending this elite college – which incidentally, between you and me, has dumbed down its entrance requirements quite a bit, but still retains most of its prestige – attending as I say this college and enjoying this comfortable environment that’s in such contrast with what you can see out of the window – well, anyone for guilt?”

Following that cue, they beheld the distant huddled dwellings of Hwain quarter. It was a vista of ramshackle, tottering drabness. The older structures were constructed of good materials, but even the best of them were in disrepair. Energy was lacking, wealth was lacking – the energy and wealth which came from gvo crystals, of which the supply was fast disappearing as the great Dzolm, the Sun-Egg near Contahl, neared final depletion.

The Sun-Egg had been civilization’s source of energy for over two hundred lifetimes, but everything must come to an end eventually, and that clear prospect was depressing human culture – more so than any economic lack that had yet occurred.

“Well?” the Professor prompted them again, for the uncomfortable silence had remained unbroken. “That view through the window: does it make you morally uneasy, or not?”

“It does a bit,” confessed Cuelna.

Perhaps the Professor saw something fetching in her earnest, bespectacled face, for he smiled as he said, “In that case, let me tell you that you are wrong to feel uneasy. You don’t need to feel any guilt at all. That’s why I am here – to explain this truth. And that’s why this seminar is entitled ‘The Ethics of Determinism’.” He paused to sip from the glass of water in front of him. Some of the students did the same; they all had glasses of water, for this was serious stuff; later would be time for more liqueur but right now let plain water accompany the display of no-nonsense intellect.

“How much,” the Professor continued, setting his glass down, “do you people understand so far, of what I have said in the articles and books which I’ve seen are on your reading list?” He chuckled. “Eh, come on now. Time for your contributions. What do you grasp of the Ethics of Determinism?”

The silence threatened to lengthen again; then all eyes swivelled gratefully to the opening mouth of Jarchon Whepp.

“I grasp that there aren’t any,” he said, dryly.

Oh-oh, thought Ryel Nound. That’s all right if you can keep it there, Jarchon. Just don’t overdo it.

Himbock was nodding, lips pursed. “If you like to put it that way, yes. If you wish to define ‘ethics’ as the mysterious operation of a supernatural conscience, un-determined by physical laws, then yes, there aren’t any. Since every event has a cause, nothing can happen except what does happen. That goes back to what I said previously, that indignation is a waste of time…”

As the Professor continued his speech Ryel Nound relaxed. He felt grateful now, and contented. Good for Jarchon, he’s actually helped things along; I thought for a moment he was going to make a bit of trouble but really, come to think of it, it’s natural that he should get on well with the Professor. Nobody is likelier than Jarchon to agree with Himbock that it’s no use bothering or caring about anything. Nobody should be more pleased than he, at hearing such perfect justification for pleasing oneself and having as much of a good time as one can.

Jarchon Whepp, however, existed on a plane quite unconcerned with his Director of Studies’ wish for a quiet life.

Nothing in Jarchon-land at this moment was quite so strong as the whimsical impulse which caused his hand to reach for the glass of water in front of him. Nobody guessed what was in the student’s mind, no one could tell what he was about to do, though afterwards they wondered why they had not foreseen what it would be. He always did have an iconoclastic streak, did Jarchon; as a rule it manifested itself not in serious anti-establishment speeches but rather in a mocking literalness, a propensity to use his opponents’ own words against them – and that is why they ought to have foreseen.

Jarchon calmly lifted the glass of water and poured it over Professor Himbock’s head.

A strangled gasp arose from all around the table. Himbock flapped and sputtered. Ryel Nound, choked by shock, could not get a word out. It was so hard to believe one’s eyes. Could even Jarchon have done this, have really poured a glass over the Professor? Himbock lifted his arms, aghast over his wet suit… “What djis – what djistdoo?” he gibbered.

“It was inevitable,” Jarchon shrugged.

“Whaaa…”

“It was determined,” Jarchon explained. “The fact that I did it, means I could not have done otherwise. Could I? Come on, Professor, calm down – what are you so indignant about? Indignation is a waste of time –”

“Now look here, Jarchon –” began Ryel, and stopped.

Himbock’s wet features had sagged further. The others all now witnessed the unmistakable kind of appalled calm which came over the Professor – the awful clang of inner truth, which also, at that same moment, came upon Ryel Nound.

Ryel could not help it: he began to grin, and grins flickered round the rows of other students’ faces likewise, their thoughts wheeling to alight upon the un-suppressable awareness that a perfect hit had been scored.

Nobody was ever going to forget this…

5: Recruits

“…Can’t affort to put the University people’s backs up too much,” the Noad was explaining. “So I’ll have to let them expel Jarchon, pity though it is to punish such a hilarious deed. But I have an idea…”

Hyoen was sitting very still, trying with all her might not to allow herself to be taken in. Belatedly she appreciated the force of the Noad’s charm, his way of getting round people. Expertly, indeed, he had flattered her self-importance and her intelligence by giving her so much of his time, confiding in her and then recounting to her the tale he had just heard over the phone. At any moment she would hear the price he would demand in return. And she was going to pay that price. She would choose to pay it – to allow herself be used by this Noad - because she had come to the end of her resources as an individual. She’d get no further in her mission without state help of some kind; it was as she had said at the Ethical Action meeting: the good ones won’t listen so she must get help from the bad.

“Hyoen Freld!” His tone made her jump. “Are you all right?”

She unfroze and said, “I’m wondering what you’re after, Noad.”

“A mutually profitable agreement.” He breezed on: “There are some people whom I need to get rid of, and you are going to help me do it. In fact you’re just what I need. Come,” he stood up. “Pull yourself together and we’ll sort this business out.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the house of an honest man,” said Vroomwrik with sudden grimth.

He put out his arm, sweeping her along by his side. Out of the office and along a corridor, in which staff members straightened respectfully as they passed, he strode and she trotted to keep up with him, dragged in the current of his authority. She recognized, but could do nothing about, the psychological pressure he was exerting.

During the walk to his flatcar the Noad spoke orders to officials whom he beckoned to him briefly. They listened and fell back to do his bidding, whatever that might be; Hyoen gleaned the impression that he was making sure that various people would be gathered where and when he wanted them, as if he were moving units around on a game-board. Then, sitting with him in the back of the flatcar, she heard him tell her with complete assurance that he was appointing her to lead a mission, fitted out by himself, against the Corruption Ray – precisely what she had wanted all along – more than she had dared hope –

Yet she felt chilled rather than elated. There’d be a catch.

Sure enough, it soon transpired that the mission was to be financed by means of the confiscation of property from the Noad’s nephew, Thebb Clarm. “He won’t be needing it any more, where he’s headed,” added Vroonwrik Clarm.

A shudder wrenched Hyoen partly free.

“Noad V-C, don’t expect me to believe that you would kill your own family.”

He smiled at the scolding; at how she was blanking her horror by telling him off.  “Oh,” he said airily, “so you think there’s something specially bad about killing a relative rather than a stranger, eh? One’s own flesh and blood is of more value than the rest of humanity – is that your idea?”

“No, but…” her voice petered out.

He growled, “I know what I’m doing.”

Minutes later the flatcar swished along a drive and stopped outside a large house. The Noad emerged and so did the driver. Hyoen, shakily clambering out after them, was interested to see no guards. No armed men were in sight apart from Vroonwik Clarm himself and the chauffeur. No other witnesses, went one dark thought, but a lighter thought went the other way: not enough fire-power to risk the murderous deed. And really, at no time during the car ride had she managed fully to believe that he was bringing her along to watch an actual slaying.

Then a guard did appear, as the front door of the house opened to reveal the man saluting upon the threshold; the Noad in response pointed to a large shed beside the house and tilted his head inquiringly; the guard nodded – whereupon the three men drew their lasers and approached the shed door. It was all quite business-like, Hyoen perceived; this was Noad Vroonwik coping with a run-of-the-mill managerial problem. The guard kicked open the shed door…

The Noad called over his shoulder, “Come on, Hyoen. Meet the recruits I’ve gathered for you.”

He spoke lightly, making it obvious that no matter how much their lives were stamped by his decisions, the outcome would be their problem, not his. All he would say, as she edged past him, was: “You’ll take this bargain, I think.”

It was quite true, she thought as she walked in through the doorway.  Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

The workshop was patchily lit by adjustable spotlights, mounted upon the shelf-table all around the side, and by glows from ornamental cubes illuminating the upper shelves. And in a corner beyond the forty-foot hover-raft which occupied half the floor space, stood a tub three-quarters full of gvo crystals which cast an extra splotch of orange brightness onto the ceiling immediately above.

Three men waited by the raft.

One of them seemed at home in the workshop. He wore a stained overall and tools clipped to his belt. He was about Hyoen’s age, with the clouded face of one who has lost a long battle. “I am Thebb Clarm,” he said formally to Hyoen. “The Noad has granted me my life, if I keep to my side of the agreement. So you can expect obedience from me.”

Hyoen forced her head to nod, to swallow the idea that this man was subordinating himself to her.

Vroonwik’s voice boomed from behind: “Good, so I’ll leave you all to get on with it, then!” His departing footsteps scrunched away; Hyoen gazed back in stunned fashion.  Through the still open doorway she saw that one solitary guard remained obviously stationed to ensure that the order for exile was carried out. For this was the whole point. This was the beautiful method of ridding the State of a whole clutch of nuisances in one neat parcel.

Well, nonetheless it was a mission. Conscious of her need to assert the control she had been given, Hyoen turned back to Thebb and asked with formal courtesy, “And will you introduce me to these sponndarou?” – reminding herself as she spoke, that on this voyage “sponndarou” (“laser-bearers”) would most likely not be a mere honorific.

“This young fellow is Jarchon Whepp, who did a bad thing in college, which is why he is coming with us –”

“I know about that,” Hyoen smiled.

The youngster, who had been lounging against a workbench, performed a sarcastic bow.

“And this,” continued Thebb with a gesture at the third figure, a small man in a rumpled suit, “is Professor Himbock, who – so Jarchon and I suspect – is to accompany us as a spy.”

If only, thought Hyoen, I had not smiled at the mention of Jarchon’s prank – for here was the victim of that prank... Embarrassed, she noted the Professor’s wizened and bedraggled look; plainly, the shock which had uprooted his life now made him wince from all contact with his present environment: he huddled with his arms by his sides; he seemed to shrink inside his clothes. He made no immediate response to the accusation of being a spy, and Hyoen at first wondered if he had been rendered mute. But then, in a dead voice, the Professor said: “Yes, I was asked to keep an eye on things. However, I shall bear no tales to the Noad.”

“And why,” asked Thebb, “should you expect us to believe that?”

Himbock shrugged:

“Because as a matter of fact I am not bothered about ever returning to Narar. Drop me off at any big city we come to – anywhere I can get a university post – and neither you nor Vroonwik Clarm will hear from me again, I can promise you that.”

“Ah. If true, this does rather change things,” conceded Thebb.

Jarchon Whepp intervened. “Does it?” he drawled.  “So far as I can see, it doesn’t matter one way or the other.  Let the Professor spy all he likes, if he gets the urge – what can he tell about us? What could we be plotting? A coup? By blundering around Syoom on a raft? Not that I mind going on this pointless jaunt.  But only because it beats sitting exams.”

The ex-student did not seem to mind the unappreciative silence that followed his speech. Hyoen recognized the type – one who would never be dislodged from his breezy ego – and she decided not to worry about him.  The lad’s shortcomings were not of the sort for which fate would exact a penalty. The expedition would not get crushed any sooner for the falsity of that word “jaunt”.

They spent the early hours of the afternoon packing and arranging the raft, storing and checking vital equipment, and arranging for four blockish tents, called runks, to be placed on deck, one runk per person. While they worked, Hyoen spoke about the mission. The others listened obediently, but did not say much. Exile, especially in these darkened days, was a terrible fate; the two listless older men simply did not have the heart to show interest in where they were going or in what they might be called upon to do. They worked like automatons, leaving the thinking to Hyoen. As for the ex-student, he fetched and carried with a smile on his face. Obedience to orders was a whimsy he was prepared to indulge. Fate must after all be humoured. Fate apparently knew no better than to take this bizarre liberty with Jarchon Whepp.

Presently an official sent from the Noad came to chauffeur Hyoen back to her lodgings, waited while she packed a small case with her belongings, and then returned her to Thebb’s workshop. Otherwise there was no more word from those in authority. The single guard watched silently.

Thebb Clarm roused himself to make one surprising statement. “I must,” he said, “take these sculptures with me.”

“What sculptures?” asked Hyoen with a nervous flinch, for the slightest unknown factor in the preparations made her jumpy.

Thebb showed her the objects, which she had thought of as mere ornamental lights – beautiful glowing cubes and other geometrical shapes, ranged on the upper shelves.

He explained: “I cannot bear to leave them. My young brother, Rawm, made them. My late little brother, who made the mistake of retreating too far from politics into his art. I can’t leave them to be thrown away or sold off.”

“Pack them in a box,” nodded Hyoen.

Finally they named the raft the Rawmdeck, loaded its fuel chamber with gvo crystals, and stored the balance of the crystals in the aft bunker. Now the rectangular craft looked like a scale model of a shabby town block: part of a drab housing estate with the runks instead of buildings and the steering-post like a semaphore up front. The guard, seeing that they had finished, walked smartly up to Hyoen.

“May I report that you are ready to leave, sponndar H-F?”

“You may.”

The guard went off to one side and spoke into his transceiver. He then told them, “You must be out of the city before evenshine.”

“That suits me,” said Hyoen. She looked round and surprised a wan grin on the face of Thebb Clarm.

“I like the way you put things: ‘That suits me’.”

Approval? Irony? Or had he spoken in bitterness at her easy take-over of his property and his life? Hyoen brusquely postponed the question. The thing to do was to get away from Narar while the going was good. In that sense, the Noad’s orders did suit her.

6: Dark-Age Syoom

Thebb Clarm pressed a button on the wall of the workshop and with a mechanical sigh the main double doors swung open. He then stepped back onto the Rawmdeck, where the other three members of the expedition were already seated; he went over to the helm and switched on the engine. A hum in the fuel-chamber: crystals were being devoured, and in the process they began to release their force of levity; the raft lifted off the floor. Thebb pressed another switch to erect the windscreens. Then he pushed the steerstick and the vehicle began to move forward.

It was the supper hour, as he manoeuvred out through the doors, along the drive and into the street. People were going home or were already at home. Those few who remained on the pavements stared as if through invisible bars at the curious departure of the hover-raft. Some rumour had begun to spread, about the sentence of exile passed upon Thebb and Jarchon. As for Professor Himbock – the bystanders might not be so sure what he was doing on the raft, but a learned man might after all take it into his head to accompany an expedition. Or did people know more? Had the story of the water-pouring already got around? Were some of the pedestrians whom the raft overtook, grinning as their heads turned?

The raft floated out through a gate in the city wall, into suburbia. Then the houses thinned out; the underlying cork-like plain became visible in larger patches. Outcrops of unworked stone became more common. The definable road disappeared. The voyagers were gone from the city of Narar.

Thebb increased speed to the maximum: fifty miles per hour. Still he kept silent.  He did not ask for directions. His two compatriots were likewise taciturn. Affected by their mood, Hyoen, too, postponed utterance, as she at last began to view exile the same way they did; not yet personally, for it had not yet happened to her, but she knew it might.

They skimmed through the farm belt. Fields here glowed a beautiful orange. It was a fine colour for landscape painters but not as good a sign for the economy as bright yellow would have been; the worth of the vheic plants was diminished, and the purplish sky darkened, by fat pests in the form of wardrobe-shaped clouds hanging low to feed upon the vheic’s emissions, weakening the plants’ yield.

“Your territory,” ventured Hyoen, “could do with a sky-cleaning.”

“No navy,” muttered Thebb.

“Why doesn’t Vroonwik build one?”

Thebb shrugged. “Politics. Money. I don’t know.  He probably will, now.”

The gloomily beauteous farm-belt was left behind as fields petered out into scrubby stone badlands, where ancient lava had been whipped into a frenzy and then frozen into a knife-sharp jumble of arcs and spirals. Impassable on foot, the area looked hazardous enough for air transport at points where the rock-tips reared like frozen flames. 

According to what Hyoen had heared, this region of tortured terrain had played a varied part in the history of Narar, sometime serving as a defence, other times as a threat. Apparently these forbidding lands were not completely uninhabited. Predictably, they were the haunt of outlaws – though Thebb appeared confident that four sponndarou on a raft going fifty miles per hour could defend themselves against anything they were likely to meet.

After about an hour the country became easier and soon the only thing visible on all sides was the normal plain, the endless granular gralm, the solid world-ocean of Ooranye. It was not utterly uniform, being sparsely strewn with occasional crags, hills or mountain ranges which poked up through the even surface; but at least the pilot need no longer give all his attention to the steering. Hyoen thought it time to dictate a change of course.

She touched Thebb on the shoulder, pointed a bit to the right, and it was as easy as that. He simply nodded and obediently turned the helm, ceasing to turn when she touched him again. Perfectly, though listlessly, he had done as she wished.

She liked such quiet co-operation, but it was necessary also to speak, to convince Thebb to follow her with wholehearted, keen intelligence.

Of course he was supposed to obey her anyway, according to the terms of the agreement by which Noad Vroonwik had spared his life – but Hyoen was not stupid enough to believe that her authority would survive long of itself.  She had no means of coercion, no real hold over these three men who were speeding far beyond their Noad’s reach.

She raised her voice above the wail of the wind:

“Thebb, I need your co-operation.”

“In what?” he bawled back, and the others, she sensed, were edging forward.

She filled her lungs:

“Your Noad has sent you away as punishment – yes – but there is more to this voyage than punishment – it is a vital assignment.”

“Depends,” he retorted, “on whether we can see it the way you see it.”

“Initially,” she pressed on, “my plan is to get us to Jador, my home city. There I can impress the authorities with news of your Noad’s support for our mission against the Corruption Ray.  You have heard of the Ray, haven’t you?”

“I’ve heard the theory, yes.”

“Much more than a theory… I’ll coach you when the time comes. The point is, we haven’t yet got enough crystals to go looking all over Syoom.  We have to call at Jador first, get support from there.”

Thebb smiled bitterly at the mention of the crystals, which represented the greater part of his life’s savings. But he merely said, “Destination Jador, very well” – obedient though sullen.

Hyoen continued, “It’s about six thousand miles, at our top speed it should take one hundred and twenty hours, that is, four days of continuous travel… but I must ask, can we do it that way?”

“The raft can go non-stop, day and night,” shrugged Thebb, “but can we?”

His real meaning was, “can you?” This she could tell.  It suddenly came to her that she was terrified at the idea of stopping out here by night.

Airship travel was the kind she was accustomed to: up amongst the clouds, floating and dozing her comfortable way from city to city. As long as you had the money you could do it that way.  You could stick to your cabin, unaware of the enormity of the world. By contrast, here, viciously close to the ground, where the plains tore past a bare yard beneath the keel and the raft was thumped by rebounding winds, the idea hatched, that to be exposed on the dark ground would be unthinkable.

“We won’t stop,” she declared. “We’ll take it in turns to pilot. Surely, any of us can steer in a straight line.”

“Yes, that part’s easy.”

It was arranged among the four of them. Hyoen, when night fell, took the first watch. She had skill enough to skirt the odd isolated crag, although in order to be able to do that she had to keep the bow light on, thus risking the advertisement of their presence to any prowler of the wilderness. In the darkness beyond and around the bow light’s beam, the hum of the motor and the roar of the wind blended into what seemed to be a real, shouting voice, as if the world were giving tongue to warn voyagers who intruded in the wastelands. Standing at the helm for nearly four hours, constantly peering into an inadequate cone of illumination and imagining what shapes might suddenly appear ahead, Hyoen grew so rattled that she hardly slept after her watch was over.

Thebb could tell the strain was worst on her; patiently he endured her brittle manner towards him the next morning.

“Demoralisation, everywhere,” she complained on and on, standing beside him as he steered.  “We’re up against it. Cynicism. Both social and political. Complete selfishness shown by every regime. Jador’s as bad as any. I, a Jadorian, admit it.”

       Thebb began, “Then what’s the use…”

“But, let me finish, but, when they see the evidence we’ll bring! Ah, then.”

“Just so I know,” Thebb politely enquired, “ – what evidence?”

“Don’t take that tone,” she snapped. “You are the nephew of the Noad of Narar. If we can’t use that… if you have no faith…”

“I at any rate have hope,” he said with a thoughtful glance at her. “My own individual hope.”

“What good is that?”

He started as if to speak, then looked away. As if reconsidering his words he began again: “Individuals can always carry on and on, until in the far distant future the wheel of fortune may turn.”

“Not so long as there’s a Corruption Ray, it won’t.”

That dampened the conversation.

After a long pause Hyoen insisted, “Someone, somewhere, is aiming this evil thing at all of us, and nen – whoever nen is – must be stopped.”  She placed a hand on his arm.

“I can try to do my share to help,” he assured her. “But don’t be too surprised or upset if our efforts go down the drain. Anyhow, whatever happens, our soul-stuff recycles, maybe into a more fortunate species in some future aeon.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Not precisely. I suppose I am resorting to the cheap melancholy talk I used to hear from Smim.” He spoke with bite, because the effort of coping with Hyoen, though he was beginning to regard it as an honour, was also beginning to fray his nerves.

Of course she immediately asked what he meant and he then explained to her that Smim was his woman whom he had left behind. Hyoen said, “And you never even said goodbye to her? Don’t you care what happens to her?”

“I want her to be disgusted enough to forget me.”

“That’s unkind!”

“No, it’s kind. She can then go find herself a successful man. She’s not like you, Hyoen, she can’t make her own success.”

“Hah! I am glad you think I am successful.”

“You are at least trying to grab at something connected with what’s going on; to be political and not just private. It’s such a temptation to go private. It’s the fatal step, which I took. One ought to live and die with some clutch on events – otherwise life has no meaning.”

She put her hand on his for a moment, before pacing away.

Later, in conversation with Jarchon, Thebb broached the question of what to do the next night.

The ex-student nodded and said, “I’ll see it gets sorted out. She’ll agree, never doubt it.”

Jarchon’s smoothness, reflected Thebb, has its uses. Sure enough, that evening, as Thebb steered while the others sat and ate their rations, Jarchon made the casual remark: “I don’t think any of us really want to try to sleep through another night of howling wind.” He went on, with no contradiction from Hyoen or the Professor, “So we do want to park this time.” He looked neither at, nor obviously away from, the leader, and every moment in which she did not speak was a gain for his point. “There are various schools of thought among hover-raft travellers in these parts. Should one settle for the night in the open plain, or close to a forest? I suppose one could argue about it forever.”

“I don’t want to argue forever,” said Hyoen testily; “I’m tired.” She had given in. She would risk a landing.  “Let’s camp close, but not too close, to a forest.” And so it was decided.

Professor Himbock had hardly uttered a word during the trip so far, though he had done his share of the steering, but now he said, “I can take the first watch.”

The Rawmdeck settled a hundred yards from the next sizeable forest. The air was darkening from evenshine to anyne; the dark green of the treetops nearby was deepening to black. Hyoen fell asleep in her chair before she even had the energy to get inside her runk. Himbock entered his tent. Thebb and Jarchon stepped quietly off the raft, glad for a stroll.

Jarchon said, “Our leader is not so full of resource as she likes to make out.”

Thebb replied, “We seem to be her last hope. And I think deep down she knows she’ll get nowhere with this mission.”

“Oh, well,” said the younger man, “she’s got an idea and she’s trying it out. Good luck to all triers.”

“I’m going to stick with her as long as she needs me. How about yourself?”

“Oh,” said Jarchon airily, “I’m not bored yet.”

The night passed; the air brightened into the 20,871^st day of the Nitrogen Era.

It did not seem such a Dark Age while they sat at breakfast on the parked raft, with the breeze from the limitless plains fanning their faces and the treetops of the forest close by. Hyoen, now bright-eyed and refreshed, said: “I’m so glad we stopped here. Perhaps,” she added shyly, “you men might accompany me on a short walk?”

“You’re the boss,” said Thebb, “but leave me to guard the raft.”

He watched the other three hop down and stroll across the gralmy plain in the direction of the forest: Hyoen with Jarchon on her left and the silent Himbock on her right. Hyoen, it seemed, had quite swung away from her previous mood of apprehension. Thebb saw them approach to within perhaps forty yards of the trees.

He then beheld an abrupt shake in the higher branches. Through a ripped gap protruded a head. It was of gleaming cartilage and two yards wide at least, split by a down-curving, lipless mouth that undulated like the base of a curtain.  The creature, in fact, seemed to be almost all mouth. The eyes were mere dead black spots in the smooth face. Next, as pincers pushed the branches further apart, the enormous head, and the meagre body behind it, toppled out and fell in a rolled-up state, a vast stony ball, to crash onto the ground. A cable still seemed to connect it with the trees; Thebb stared dazedly at that cable and tried to think, while he drew his laser with one hand and started the raft’s engine with the other.

He had no real hope that he could advance in time to help his companions. Drearily aware that he was out of training for a fight, he was above all appalled at his own lack of knowledge, such stark proof of his ignorance as was furnished by the existence of this monster, which, as seconds ticked by in slow motion, was unrolling to reveal its body plan.  Thebb gunned the motor; the raft lurched forward; then he saw Jarchon waving him back.

Thebb obediently reversed the steerstick, though he did not understand.

Hyoen was crouching out there, taking pot shots at the thing with her laser in bolt mode. The bolts were pinging off its body surface, making no difference at all, but she did not seem able to change her tactics; she simply continued to fire, in frozen panic. The other two, however, behaved as though they knew precisely what to do. Thebb was close enough now to overhear their words.

“Umbna-jorraynt,” observed Himbock in an academic tone.

“Still hyphenated,” agreed Jarchon brightly; “shall we make it just an umbna?”

“That would be best,” the Professor agreed. “You circle round… I’ll keep its pincers off.”

Jarchon ran and dodged as he ran. Leftwards and to the rear of the monster, his course left Himbock free to approach it from the right, waving his laser almost in the thing’s face.

Watching all this, Thebb got off the raft, came up behind Hyoen and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, telling her to stop her incessant firing lest she hit their companions. “Let the experts deal with it,” he murmured. “We’re outclassed here.”

Himbock stepped aside from a flopping pincer as the creature subsided. Jarchon emerged from behind the suddenly inert mass. “It’s just an umbna now,” he affirmed.

“Don’t stand too close,” Himbock warned. “A specimen this size won’t remain stupefied for more than a minute.”

“In that case we’d better be going.”

The conquerors led the way back to the raft, Thebb and Hyoen following in humble silence. Thebb did not need to be told to start the engine and pull out as soon as all were aboard. New despondency dug roots into his mind during the cheerful post-victory comments swapped by Jarchon and Himbock.

Hyoen, likewise, was unreconciled to the shock of it all.  “Tell me, for Sky’s sake,” she burst out as the Rawmdeck accelerated, “what is an umbna-jorraynt?”

“One end animal, the other end plant,” answered Jarchon. “Sometimes the umbna snaps the link between them and strikes out on its own, but this one hadn’t, yet, so I helped it on its way. You could say I did it a favour freedom.”

“But what in the world does a thing that size live on?”

“The very occasional traveller,” replied Professor Himbock. “Umbnas can wait tens of thousands of days in stasis between meals.”

“Which is why, when they do wake, they’re quite determined,” added Jarchon -  the remark tossed out with such casual worldly wisdom, that Hyoen was made to ask herself how she could possibly presume to lead such experienced people. 

7: Kasproueh

Thebb awoke in a state of depression which made him unable to face the day, so he lay still awhile, yearning for sleep to reclaim him. Because he made no move and no sound, through the fabric of his runk he overheard voices which otherwise might not have spoken.

“…a case of nebulation,” Jarchon was saying.

“Aaaah, no,” responded Hyoen’s voice.

Jarchon insisted, “It might well prove so. He hasn’t been his usual self the past few days.”

“I think it was the umbna-jorraynt that unnerved him,” said Hyoen. “It certainly had that effect on me.”

“Yes, but you got over it. Thebb has sunk into a stupor. That’s why I reckon it’s nebulation…”

Nebulation?  Hearing the dreaded term, Thebb was shocked.  Might he really have succumbed to the mental cloudiness, the leakage of identity which can overcome the unwary out in the plains?  Surely not.  They don’t understand, he mused sadly. The truth is simpler than they imagine..

He spelled it out in big letters on the blackboard of his closed eyelids as he listened to his companions discussing him.

He had wasted his life.  He was nothing. He had always been nothing.

No wonder his great-uncle had finally exiled him: Thebb could now see clearly that he had fooled himself all his adult life, imagining that the business of attending committees of this and that, wielding a certain minimum of patronage and exercising occasional influence that came to him from Vroonwrik’s coat-tails, might make him, Thebb, a citizen worth the name. Complete waste of time.  He had fallen between two stools, the politician and the engineer.

To think that if only he’d followed his own bent, he might instead have become a proper engineer!  Perhaps a real inventor… instead of a failed politician, a moral weakling who took refuge in his workshop whenever he could spare an hour.

Admittedly he’d had his reasons. Survival. To keep a finger on the political pulse had seemed to him the only way for a member of the ruling clan to stay alive. Besides, if he had risked all for his true vocation, he might still have failed.  He could have ended up as isolated and ignorant as he was now -

But at least he would have had more fun.

While he lay, cheek on pillow, intuition took on a whispered voice-of-the-world: You think you’re in a bad way now, but wait till I hit you with some real misfortune. I, Ooranye, have you exposed. You’re out on my plains.  Anything can happen.

He gave a start and a shiver.  Had he dozed off again?

Call the voice a dream, but – dreams can be advance warnings.

Sure enough, bad news arrived over breakfast.

Rawmdeck’s communicator buzzed and the four travellers looked up from where they sat around a trestle table near the stern. Hyoen half-rose and sat down again when she saw that the others kept still. She said, “Shouldn’t we answer?”

       Jarchon shrugged, “Might as well, I suppose. If someone has beamed us, the damage is done.”

Hyoen rose once more and walked to the box near the helm. The others saw her stoop over the dial, listen, and then straighten indignantly. “What!” Next, her shoulders drooped and finally they heard her say, “Thank you, Olmiroa, for telling me. Goodbye.” She wobbled back to the table.

“Suffered a blow?” asked Jarchon.

“A friend just called to warn me.” Hyoen slumped back in her chair. “My property, all my wealth has been confiscated by the government of Jador.”

A sympathetic silence.

“My city,” she concluded in a listless calm, “has beggared me.”

A few days back Thebb would have retorted, “So it’s your turn now”, or some comment to that effect. But now he felt too companionable for that; they were all sinking together…

Jarchon said crisply, “Why this measure, just now?”

Professor Himbock suggested, “Jador like most cities has rules on citizens’ foreign expenditure and I expect Hyoen has exceeded her allocation. That is to say, Hyoen, the amount of wealth you are allowed to take out of your country…”

“I have heard of some such rule, yes”

“It carries stiff penalties,” remarked the Professor.

Jarchon patted her on the shoulder: “But you didn’t think it would ever be applied to you.”

“Whereas,” added Himbock, “it’s because it’s you, that they’ve applied it, obviously.”

“Do either of you realize,” Hyoen glared round the table, “what a disaster this is? The mission we’re on is rendered vastly more difficult if I can no longer get to my money –”

“I think,” said Jarchon softly, “we should be more worried about something else. Your friend was most unwise to send that message across the plains in times like these. This isn’t the Lithium Era.”

“She felt she had to,” insisted Hyoen. “Olmiroa felt she had to warn me against returning to Jador. I might face a prison sentence. The government has changed…”

“Governments, everywhere,” remarked the Professor, “are lurching towards greater controls.”

“Meanwhile let’s be brisk,” Jarchon said, “in putting some distance between ourselves and this spot.”

Yet it was hard to force themselves to clear away the breakfast things and make ready for departure with the proper urgency, hard to believe that the empty, silent horizon, which had encircled them without harm for days, would change face so soon.

Finally they got underway.  Barely an hour later, it became apparent that their luck had run out.

At three points of the compass, steadily growing dots appeared between ground and sky. It was their even spacing, one hundred and twenty degrees apart, which in itself was the worst news.  “Three rafts. We’re boxed in,” gloomed Thebb.

Nevertheless at this most inconvenient time he felt suddenly intoxicated by the limitless possibilities of the plains; strangely, he could not help but admire the scene which seemed poised to destroy him.  Mind-expanding thoughts – which he hoped were not the prelude to nebulation – rushed into his head.

Hyoen, who sat at the telescope mounted on deck, reported: “I can see about ten men standing on each raft.”

“Pirates, I dare say,” said Jarchon at the helm. “How far are we from Jador?”

Himbock replied, “About five hundred and fifty miles. Too far to summon help.”

“Naturally,” said Jarchon. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing this. But maybe we should transmit anyway, for others’ sakes.”

“Or,” suggested the Professor, “we could use the possibility as a bargaining counter.”

“Hyoen is going to transmit,” Jarchon nodded as the lady jumped up and ran to the communicator. “She’s in a real fury.”  They watched her, imagining the acerbic reproaches she must be hurling at her home city, which had so carelessly broadcast their location.

Then when the enemy rafts had approached to within a few hundred yards, and the insigne on the nearest could be made out, she fell silent and re-joined the others as they all waited, lasers in hand, for their foes to make the next move.

The Rawmdeck and its enemies were now travelling in formation. One of the strange rafts edged closer. A man on its deck held up his hand in a “stop” signal.

Hyoen said dully, “We had better obey.”  Jarchon brought them to a halt, and they sank to the ground.

The other rafts settled likewise, positioning themselves like siege-works.

Within minutes Hyoen, Thebb, Jarchon and Himbock, their lasers confiscated, were “guests” seated on low chairs on the deck of their captor’s raft. Under strong guard, they faced the reclining chief: a lanky, stringy man with a face of red leather and a drooping silver moustache.

“I,” he told them, smiling up at a point in the sky, “am Metek Kasproueh, gvo merchant. Merchant? Well, I pay when I have to.” And he laughed the revelling laugh of one who knows that his audience’s desire to wring his neck must remain forever unfulfilled.

His face shining with false cheer, he called for a bottle and glasses. His captives did not speak. They all felt the same – that to speak would put them at an even greater disadvantage.

Before long they sensed that it would have been easier to deal with a pirate who knew he was a pirate. This jovial madman seemed really to think of himself as imbued with the rank, prestige and importance of a nomadic merchant prince. He spouted on about his “business” although it was perfectly obvious that, while they sat and listened, the Rawmdeck was being robbed of every gvo crystal in the tank and storage bin.

It seemed likely, from his speech, that he had been a real trader once, a member of the guild which distributed the gvo crystals to be found in the Dzolm, or Sun-Egg, the mountain of treasure – what was left of it – close to the ancient city of Contahl.

He boasted as he cocked a twinkling eye at them: “If I had been Noad of Contahl when the Dzolm was discovered, you would have seen a difference, oh yes. Never would I have allowed people like myself to get in on the act! Imagine, a whole mountain of gvo in one’s own back yard… Fools say that Contahl could never have retained control of it; that the other cities would never have stood for that; yet the same fools do stand for the entire lot being monopolized by the likes of us! Anyhow, it’s nearly all gone now.” His tone veered towards sadness. “I’ve been there recently and, you know, the Sun-Egg now looks more like a field of rubble than a mountain. The gvo is nearly gone,” he repeated, dropping his voice to a whisper. “One or two more lifetimes to go, and then, lights out and negative energy will rule – ” Kasproueh’s head jerked and he whooped, “Enough of this gloom. Let us drink to the vanishing remains of the Dzolm – ”

At no time had the pirate made eye contact, and his manner, especially his use of the odd phrase “negative energy”, made their flesh creep. Each one of them had at some time heard the folk tale about the renegade gvo merchant who carried nightmare for sale in his bags.  Thebb dumbly licked his lips; not defeat or death but a wider, deeper fear suggested that whereas Kasproueh himself was hardly anything, a verbose thug, a boring idiot, nevertheless -

The pirate had them escorted back to the Rawmdeck and then, with nothing but a contemptuous wave of the hand, he returned to his own raft, to depart so as to leave Hyoen’s party with an emptied fuel-tank, marooned weaponless on the plains of Ooranye.

Marooned: the word that had a worse sound than exile.

8: The Decision

Thebb ran his eye down the paper they had brought him to sign. Then he bleared at them, mouth agape.

“You want me to lead?”

Oh yes, they meant it, all right. This was no dream. Hyoen gestured with the upturned palm of her hand.  It was a manual shrug, as if to say, what else did you think this document might mean? The paper, drafted in official style, would count as an Instrument of Succession if, by some miracle, they ever got back to Narar.

In other words, Hyoen was resigning. She seemed not to think that any comment was necessary: her failure, in her own eyes, was so obvious.

Thebb thought it pretty obvious too; thinking abou it, he could understand her feelings of dejection. Guilt also, no doubt, at having answered the radio signal which had allowed Kasproueh to home in on them… and then the deeper consequence: the total failure of her mission. Yes, fate had snubbed her in a big way.

That slob, Metek Kasproueh, had not even offered the chance for a fight; he had cleaned them out and gloated over them and left them, and now poor Hyoen had finally taken on board the awful truth: the world was a lair of forces which trampled and squashed and were infinitely far from being “nice”.

As for Jarchon and Himbock – Thebb’s gaze turned to them – they were a somewhat different case, but equally in favour of Hyoen’s decision. Their supportively close stance, almost as if holding her up, expressed their strong sympathy.  Some self-interest came into it, no doubt.  Jarchon, for one, must want to get back some day. He wouldn’t want to get into any more trouble, wouldn’t want awkward questions asked about the change of leader, so it must all be rightly done.  The document must prove that Thebb Clarm, great-nephew of Vroonwik Clarm (and thus the natural choice) had legally assumed the responsibility for the take-over, by means of an officially worded Instrument. As for Himbock, he doubtless did not care who led, so long as it was not the unstable Hyoen who might get them all killed…

But anyway it was all crazy! They were marooned, finished!  What did it matter which of them was leader?  Without transport, almost nobody out here, even if armed, could expect to survive long enough to reach a city on foot. And if they did by some miracle cover the five-hundred-plus miles to Jador, they would most likely end up in prison. Cities were becoming more suspicious of strangers; Hyoen’s losses by confiscation were part of a trend. She might well turn out to have been the last rich traveller in the old style…

Yes, the mission was doomed, and their chances of life were poor.  Thebb, however, signed the paper.

As he did so he watched their faces and suddenly had a glimpse of the real, underlying reason why they were putting him in this position.

A bitter laugh almost bubbled out of his throat. They were superstitious. For all their rationality, they clung to a belief in the power of leadership of a ruling clan! They trusted he might have a special something because he was a member of the House of Clarm!  Of course they would not admit it. No more than Hyoen would have admitted to a belief in the ghostly exhalations of Dmara.  Yet the fact was, they really did believe that he might get them out of this.

How ironic. On a previous occasion Hyoen, with a sneer, had trashed the notion he’d tried to express, that the international criminals who aimed the Corruption Ray at the cities of Syoom might somehow be using the Dmaran exhalations; yet now she and the others were indulging in the considerably more far-fetched belief that he, Thebb Clarm, simply because he was who he was, might extricate them from the mess they were in.

Thebb heaved a tired sigh, all arguments now a weariness to him.  He would play along. Having put his name to their paper, he would do what the paper said, he would lead them, and the sooner the inevitable disaster occurred, the sooner he would find rest.

After death would come the second chance in the second life, preferably far down the river of time, well beyond all influence of this unfortunate period of history.

Long ago, he used to tell jokes, and now a certain humour in the situation brushed his thoughts again; how odd it all felt, yet how compelling.  He was co-operating with the joke, he was readying himself to play the part expected of him; something fizzed in his head, perhaps it was lremd, the quality which Fate demanded of leaders, the gift of being in the right place at the right time: the inbuilt radar which enabled a person to weave nen’s way around the themes of life in a triumphant manner, so as to surf the waves of destiny –

Thebb’s blood ran cold.  Perhaps it was not a joke.

Hyoen touched his arm and said, “Are you all right?”

The others watched in silence.

Thebb said, “Wait.” He went to his runk and dragged out a box. “My brother’s sculptures,” he panted. Yanking the box towards the raft’s emptied fuel tank, he grunted: “Give me a hand with this.”

Jarchon ran to him and helped to haul the box. “Do you have an idea? Will it work?”

“I have and it will.”

He reached the tank and turned to face his companions. “As you may have heard, I have been experimenting with vheic fuel for some time.”

“I know there has been talk,” Himbock said, “of it being used as a replacement for gvo when the Dzolm runs out, but…” He paused as Thebb began throwing the sculptured objects into the tank.

Beautiful geometric shapes, glowing with blue and gold ell-light from the vheic plants gathered and compressed long ago by the late Rawm Clarm… the others stood around awkwardly, letting him use them up, waiting to see if the sacrifice of art would bring its reward.

The adapted motor accepted the offering. When switched on, it roared louder than ever, and the voyagers’ outlook was transformed.

No longer marooned, the raft soon sped away across the plain.

“Lucky for us,” Jarchon remarked, “Kasproueh wasn’t interested in art.”

“They were just tat to him,” nodded Thebb, staring at the horizon ahead. The sacrifice of his brother’s work had keyed him up as if he had signed a contract with Fate. “I am betting that there is a link,” he added after a while, “between two stories we’ve been hearing.”

“Oh? Which two?”

“Can’t you guess?”  But the ex-student did not want to guess, at least not out loud, so Thebb voiced the connection: “Between the folk-tale of a renegade gvo merchant who sells ‘negative energy’, and the origin of the Corruption Ray.”

Jarchon whistled at this. “Let me go fetch the others.” He went to summon Hyoen and Himbock who were currently standing at the stern observation posts. When all were gathered round, Thebb told them:

“The time has come to follow the right trail. A line of evidence which has been around a long time. Let us start by considering Metek Kasproueh. What can we know about him, from what we have seen and heard?”

Himbock in his dry voice said, “From details of clothing and accent, I place his origin at Ao or Innb, or possibly Nuvium.”

“Here’s another crumb,” murmured Hyoen: “it would make more sense for gvo merchants to be the culprits, in any case.”

“You are making sense,” nodded the Professor. “Gvo merchants, of the worst kind, would have an interest in undermining city governments. In the power vacuum that ensues…”

“Crumbs here and crumbs there,” interrupted Thebb, “all lend support to my idea.”  The others leaned at him as they stood around the helm on which he, Thebb, rested his hands. He thought groggily:  Leadership-fever – a thirst for justification – could only be soothed by the balm of success – “The perfect hideout for the users of the Ray,” he began, “is to be found in the part of the world we’ve just mentioned, a particular part, shunned by everyone else for superstitious reasons.”

“If you mean Dmara,” said Hyoen, “there are practical reasons to shun it. Radiation, disease…”

“Not after all this time,” Thebb shook his head. “Let us be honest. It is simply that none of us like the idea of going to Dmara.”

And if he was honest he must admit that part of him still hoped they would talk him out of it. But no, they were thinking about it, then slowly nodding.  They apparently believed in his star.

9: The Vomdo

So the days passed and they approached that unfrequented region of Syoom, roughly mid way between the cities of Ao, Innb, Nuvium and Pjourth, and several thousand miles from each: a desolation which contained the dry bed of the prebiotic lake from which, at the very start of Era One, humanity had emerged.

Superstition, repeated Thebb to himself as he pulled back the steerstick to allow the raft to settle.  They had reached the lip of the ancient shore line. A psychic reek, so strong I can smell it, pervades this place.

Groves of giant grasses, the size of trees, waved their pods in scattered clumps on the plain, but nothing grew on the dead lake-bottom itself: that great hollow was a sterile cauldron of ragged mists that shiftingly revealed a surface blotched with chemical stains, glinting in poisonous sheens of grey, brown and metallic blue.

Professor Himbock muttered, “Not sure I ever wanted to see this. But now I’m here, well, it is something to see.”

Thebb nodded. “The sivvan, the Lake of Origins. The source of what we are.”

One could not disbelieve, standing here, that this was where the Nenns’ physical nature and minds and senses all began: this was where Lrar Verzak himself, the first Uranian Man, had crawled out on Day One of the Hydrogen Era, back when Dmara was a real liquid lake with waves, a place of life.

Lrar and the other few hundred verzaknenns, the First People, had not been born of woman but had come directly from the sivvan. It could never happen again: now the place was dry, having produced naught since that morning of the race, a thousand lifetimes ago.

Still, with such an aura, it was hardly surprising that legends persisted –

Legends of emanations from the now-dead lake.  For the belief was universal, that the sivvan, as it had dried up, had gone bad.

“I assume,” said Himbock in his dessicated tone, “that we must next locate the ruins of Dmara-City.”

Thebb hastily objected: “We ought to stock up first.”  He pointed backwards with his thumb.  “Maybe glean some food from those groves.”

It was no use. Jarchon, supporting Himbock, said: “That would just be wasting time.”

Hyoen explained remorselessly, “We’ll find supplies where we’re going, anyway. If, that is to say, our thoughts have led us in the right direction.”

“Very well,” sighed Thebb, “let’s get on with it.  We had better walk, though.  We ought not to approach under power.”

This the others did agree with.  They jumped off the raft with alacrity. It was odd how the mere fact of having reached this dread shore had galvanised them. Gloomy optimism, if you could imagine such a thing!  A faith that fortune and vindication were close by. Thebb had to admire their attitude.  He was more doubtful than they, but he would stay the course.

A leader leads, even when leading really means following…

Just over five minutes on the raft brought them round the spur of a little headland into view of what was left of the First City.  Despite the public urgency of their mission it was natural for them to stop and stare for some minutes of personal contemplation. So they stood still in awed silence, till Thebb bade them advance again.  With cautious steps, their thoughts hovering between the hugeness of Time and the smallness of what their eyes actually saw, they walked into the ruins of Damara.

It was a jumble, about half a mile in extent, that had the appearance of litter strewn by careless giants. Metal boxes, house-sized, lay crumpled or mangled on the shore.  Amongst them were a few which had resisted the damage dealt by storms or war; their tidy emptiness was even more forlorn.

Some distance inside the wrecked city, the explorers came upon a more modern structure.  This round-edged stellated cuboid they recognized straightaway as built in the style of Innb. The clincher, was that in front of this modern building was parked a standard model Xennat mobile gun.  The company turned shining eyes to Thebb – he had led them right.

The gun’s snout was pointed at a meaningless angle at the empty sky, but the presence, unattended, of such a weapon told an obvious story. The users of the Ray had at first arrived prepared for opposition, but after thousands of days had gone by without any challenge to their hideout, they felt themselves secure.  That was why no one was guarding the gun, and why no one hailed the approaching explorers.

Lasers drawn, believing in the advantage of surprise, Thebb and his followers entered the Innban structure through an archway.

Jarchon swept the scene with expert eyes. He was the one who knew architecture and structural engineering.

“Over there,” Jarchon pointed. “The cradle for the launcher.”

They ran to it and took up position around it.  A diagonal upward flue, set in a bowl mounted on a platform with thick springs, the thing was a cradle indeed, one in which something heavy had rested.  Some gun-barrel far more massive and peculiar than the Xennat…. but gone now. Taken away.

It was a moment of let-down and Thebb felt all the pangs of a new kind of disappointment. He had just recently dared to hope that they might have come upon the main apparatus of the Corruption Ray, at a lucky moment when its users were absent. But of course that had been too much to expect.

Now, where was Jarchon? Thebb heard a shout. The fellow appeared to be rushing and darting about among some glowing screens in another corner of the immense hall. Half a dozen of them – vidscreens – lined up diagonally in front of each other, and Jarchon was hastening to adjust switches as though it were a matter of life and death. Next, the ex-student plumped into a swivel chair before a nearby array of switches and dials, then waved to his companions to gather round. Together with the other two, Thebb hurried forward, frozen-tongued with disquiet. Odd to see Jarchon trembling.

Peculiar, also, the first screen’s image, or rather its periphery.

Jarchon grew calm enough to speak.

“I think we can look. For a moment I thought they’d gone out of phase –”

“What are you talking about?” rasped Himbock.

“Not sure I’d like to say.” A wild grin. “Look at those frames…”

Thebb peered forward.

The vidscreen showed a picture of a picture of a picture: nested images, one inside the other. Odd.

Himbock cut in: “The object of this arrangement is, evidently, to interpose layers of relayed transmission between viewer and object.”

“Between us,” Jarchon explained, “and something out there.”

“Ah-hah,” nodded Thebb. And you, youngster, have made sure that all the relays are properly in line, so that all interpose. Thebb gave silent tribute to the ex-student, but also wished – and knew he wished in vain – that this entire building and the vidscreens inside it could have nothing to do with any source material for the Corruption Ray. He wished they were anywhere but here; that their voyage had achieved anything but this worst thing possible, success.      Duty bound, he looked at the nested images.

The inmost one showed part of the dried-up sivvan shore. More precisely it showed an inlet, or what would have been one if the lake had still existed.

No way of telling how far away it was. But it could not be further than a few miles; the lake wasn’t that big. And that flat gleam, in the centre of the inlet, must be a mere pool…

Just a little pool, ten yards across perhaps?

“So,” breathed Hyoen, “not quite all the lake has gone.”

Nobody answered her because they all became paralyzed by the sight of what was happening on screen. The stagnant water had begun to ripple. After a minute or two the surface broke. A black and glistening object reared out of it, to unfold in the open air. The four watchers immediately understood the purpose of the arrangement of relayed transmissions. What they were seeing, if perceived directly, would have blown their minds.

The thing shook the drops from its scaly skin and from its black wings as it rose out of the liquid. Evil, undeniable, unarguable, bulged from the head. Blurry eyes and sagging mouth offered a message of dismay beyond all reason. Certainty flooded the watchers: this could not be dismissed as “only” this or “only” that; it was…

The thought of it must not form.  A thing that should not be. Should not count as real, anywhere in our universe. But behold the nightmare was trespassing in daylight, clambering and waddling out of the pool to strut onto the shore.  It turned its eyes this way and that -

The vidscreen panned automatically to keep it in view -

“The vomdo,” breathed Thebb.

“I don’t believe it!” shouted Himbock.

“There it is,” Thebb shrugged.

“But – an evil beast? Absurd!” cried the Professor. Outrage shrilled his voice almost into a squeak. “Work it out! If an animal gets responsible enough to choose between good and bad, well then, it’s no longer an animal; so –”

Jarchon interrupted, “It’s an animal, all right. Look at its tiny bird-size head. Can’t have more than a tiny brain.”

“Speak for yourself!” came the sputtered reply.

“Hey, calm down, Professor,” Jarchon soothed; “we’ve been getting on quite well, you and I. You know better than to renew our past differences now.”

Himbock after a few ragged breaths subsided and managed a gentle smile. “What will you do about this thing, this legend – pour another glass of water over me?”

“No glass handy, but I can point out that according to your philosophy good and evil have no meaning anyway –”

Thebb intervened, “This is not the time to argue. We’ve learned one thing. The vomdo is no myth.”

None of them could deny it.  The screen’s display matched perfectly with the legendary creature which killed with its glance.

Without a doubt the sight of it would have killed them, had they come face to face with it in the open air. Their minds finally admitted this truth. You could reason it away, but –

A sudden whupp made them flinch anew.  The image on screen underwent a kind of in-folding compression.  Too fast to follow, the process nevertheless left a sense of what had occurred. The compression, become a dagger of light, plunged forward and for a second the screen went dark.

It winked back to normal. Simultaneously they heard a clatter.

A solid object of some sort had fallen. Out of a chute? Into a bin? The sound suggested these things.

“Another bit of ammunition for the Ray,” commented Jarchon.

“What?” demanded Thebb, as often dismayed at his own slowness.

Exhaustedly casual, Jarchon said: “I suppose there’s a big box of it somewhere around.”

“Of… ammunition, you said.”

“Might as well use that word.”

“But – ” A helpless sound.

Jarchon continued, “As for how, I’d guess some pattern-recognition programming – you can bet that if we knew all of psychology we could draw evil with a pencil, and somebody has found out how to do it.”

“Then,” said Thebb, “we must destroy this thing.”

A pause.

“Destroy the installation?” queried Jarchon.

Thebb gave the order in clear:

“We must destroy the vomdo.”

He expected argument, because they all knew the legends; but this did not happen. Jarchon nodded quiet assent. Hyoen moved closer. “We’ll find a way,” she reassured Thebb, brushing into physical contact, and signalling affection and support when he needed it most, so as to give him a reason to live past the nightmare.  Pridefully he began to phrase the order which would commit them to action, but a softish sound made him turn, to see the Professor backing away.

Himbock’s face was pale grey, twisted with a scowl from behind the laser he was pointing straight at them.

“What are you doing, Professor?”

“Stay where you are, all of you,” Himbock winced, continuing to back towards the exit.

10: Sacrifice for a Sideshow

Once again it was proved to Thebb that Jarchon’s mind moved – when necessary – faster than his own.

“You can’t, by yourself – let me help,” cried the youngster, twisting out of his chair. He rose and began to stride with decision towards the Professor.

Himbock stared blankly – then sheathed his laser. “Can’t deny it,” he muttered. “But the rest of you must at all costs stay here.”

Thebb and Hyoen watched the two of them leave the building.

“I see,” he said to her, “but I always see too late.”

“No, Thebb, don’t say that about yourself. You have played your part. You’ve been like a carrier platform, a human raft, to bring us all here. You did it by making the correct decision, the crucial decision, several days ago – certainly not ‘too late’.”

And her head came to rest on his shoulder; her arm stole around him, squeezing, comforting.

She continued, “Nnow that you have brought them this far, they are – you might say – taking off from the ‘carrier platform’ on their own.”

“Do you know,” mused Thebb, hugging her in return, “I have a mind to employ you for the rest of your life, to say this sort of thing.”

After this proposal, they nested in each other’s arms in blissful understanding for perhaps a minute; then he walked her to the window. From there they gazed at the Xennat gun parked outside.

He murmured, “Do you think they know all the legends?”

“Of that I am sure. Otherwise you would not have let them go.”

He laughed in wonder at her confidence in him.  Then he was able to realize that she had done him proper justice. He had, indeed, been right to let them go … not that he’d had much other choice.  “You’re right there, at least.”

They watched as Himbock climbed into the cockpit of the mobile gun. They saw Jarchon follow Himbock and check the controls. Then the two men appeared to be having an argument which lasted a couple of minutes.  Jarchon finally made an arm-spreading gesture and climbed down again, out of the cockpit, back onto the ground, to wander back towards the building where Thebb and Hyoen waited.

Meanwhile the mobile gun with the Professor at the helm began to crawl away on its treads. Slowly it wove off among the ruins, out towards the open lake shore.

“He told me,” said Jarchon upon re-entering, “that there was no point in both of us risking our lives.”

“Welcome back. He was right,” said Thebb.

“Sure about that?”

Thebb reinforced his reply with all the firmness he could muster: “Wait and you’ll see. Keep watching the screen.”

The multiple-relay vid was once again tracking the vomdo. It now showed the nightmare creature waddling in a different direction, back towards the pool whence it had come.

“Good,” said Hyoen, “that’ll give the Professor more of a chance. He won’t have so far to circle…”

“Ah, you’re right, he has to circle,” nodded Jarchon, “to come at it from directly behind; otherwise he has no chance at all…”

“Yes but in any case,” broke in Thebb, “he has no choice but to fire while he’s still on this side of the teletransmitter array.”

“You mean –” said the others, simultaneously.

“He must know he can’t afford to get actually within sight of the thing. Whether behind or in front of it. It could, probably would, turn in an instant.”

“How then will he aim the gun?” quavered Hyoen.

Jarchon tried to reassure her: “He told me just before I left him, that he had reasoned out where the pool must be. That’s where he must make the kill.”

“Let’s assume,” said Thebb, “that not only he, but also the people who left the Xennat gun knew what they were doing. If the scum have any sense they’ll have equipped it with extra powerful shells…”

Hyoen nodded disgustedly, “…in case the vomdo turned against them.”

“Not understanding,” added Jarchon in a murmur, “that with the vomdo, safety is not possible.  None can exist.”

Queasy silence fell; the prickly moments dragged on. And then they felt the floor quiver.

Seconds later came the roar of an explosion and the TV screen flashed white for an instant, after which it imaged grey, billowing smoke.

The televised smoke gradually cleared to reveal a hole in the ground.

Thebb, Hyoen and Jarchon all thought the same thing: this has to be enough. The shell has burst and the monstrosity has been obliterated.

They filed out of the building, returned to the Rawmdeck in a solemn daze, and Thebb started up the raft. No thought remained to them but to skim along the dead shore and look for the Professor. After about five minutes they found him. He still clutched with one hand the wheel of the mobile gun, well out of sight of the target on which he must have scored a direct hit.

“Look at his face,” whispered Hyoen. They all stared at the wizened countenance. “Poor face!  What must it have been like, to see…” The others offered no comment, while Hyoen continued to try to hack her way through her thoughts aloud: “As though he saw it coming, despite all precautions –”

“No,” spoke Thebb at last with a firm shake of the head. “It wasn’t like that.  He was dead the instant he fired. The terror was momentary.”

“Backward-causation,” murmured Jarchon.

“And,” added Thebb, “he must have known it was likely to happen that way.” Since they were going to have to live with this memory for the rest of their lives, it was important to spread such reassurance. He looked to Jarchon for more confirmation.

“Yes,” nodded the ex-student, “he went in for it with open eyes. Er – you know Himbock and I were, let’s say, opponents… I mean, everyone’s heard the story of our, er, dispute in college; yes, well, in the end he must have learned his lesson from that.”

Hyoen demanded, “What precisely do you mean?”

“I mean,” and Jarchon’s voice strengthened, “that the Professor, once he decided to accept the idea of absolute evil, went all the way. No more doing what I mocked him for; no more believing contradictory things with different halves of his mind. He accepted, really accepted the entire legend as true. Including the part which states that the vomdo is so noxious, that any direct connection with it - any connection, even a backward-causal one – kills. So you see, it was not possible for him both to succeed and to survive.  To be the cause of the thing’s death, though remotely, was enough to kill him, wherever he was. No shielding can suffice against backward-causation.”

Hyoen sighed, “I see now.”

“Whatever happens from now on,” Thebb’s voice rang out, speaking to history, “he shall not have died in vain. We may or may not find and destroy the users of the Ray – but we have destroyed the source of their ammunition.”

The three adventurers stood for some silent minutes gazing down into the crater gouged by the shell blast. It had not only killed the vomdo, it had also destroyed the pool, vaporising the final remnant of the ancient waters of Dmara.

11: Veppora Munoo – again

In a quiet room in Narar, a contented old lady opened an envelope and extracted a letter. Her eyes grew rounder as she skimmed the pages.

“…The C-Ray users are working on borrowed time… After their current store of encapsulated evil is exhausted they will get no more… Henceforth we are fighting merely the quotidian evil in man.”

She felt a tingle as though, from that lost current of purpose which used to shimmer its way through her life, a spark had blown from afar to touch her skin.

She dried some tears and whispered –

Thank you, Hyoen, for thinking of me. Now to believe, if I can, that the Dmaran menace is dead.

– And burned the letter.