Transcriber’s Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,
August, 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
LAST ENEMY
by
H. BEAM PIPER
Illustrated by Miller
_The last enemy was the toughest of all—and conquering him
was in itself almost as dangerous as not conquering. For a
strange pattern of beliefs can make assassination an
honorable profession!_
[Illustration: ]
Along the U-shaped table, the subdued clatter of dinnerware and the
buzz of conversation was dying out; the soft music that drifted down
from the overhead sound outlets seemed louder as the competing noises
diminished. The feast was drawing to a close, and Dallona of Hadron
fidgeted nervously with the stem of her wineglass as last-moment
doubts assailed her.
The old man at whose right she sat noticed, and reached out to lay his
hand on hers.
“My dear, you’re worried,” he said softly. “You, of all people,
shouldn’t be, you know.”
“The theory isn’t complete,” she replied. “And I could wish for more
positive verification. I’d hate to think I’d got you into this—”
Garnon of Roxor laughed. “No, no!” he assured her. “I’d decided upon
this long before you announced the results of your experiments. Ask
Girzon; he’ll bear me out.”
“That’s true,” the young man who sat at Garnon’s left said, leaning
forward. “Father has meant to take this step for a long time. He was
waiting until after the election, and then he decided to do it now, to
give you an opportunity to make experimental use of it.”
The man on Dallona’s right added his voice. Like the others at the
table, he was of medium stature, brown-skinned and dark-eyed, with a
wide mouth, prominent cheekbones and a short, square jaw. Unlike the
others, he was armed, with a knife and pistol on his belt, and on the
breast of his black tunic he wore a scarlet oval patch on which a pair
of black wings, with a tapering silver object between them had been
superimposed.
“Yes, Lady Dallona; the Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two
years ago at the least. Really, I’m surprised that you seem to shrink
from it, now. Of course, you’re Venus-born, and customs there may be
different, but with your scientific knowledge—”
“That may be the trouble, Dirzed,” Dallona told him. “A scientist gets
in the way of doubting, and one doubts one’s own theories most of
all.”
“That’s the scientific attitude, I’m told,” Dirzed replied, smiling.
“But somehow, I cannot think of you as a scientist.” His eyes traveled
over her in a way that would have made most women, scientists or
otherwise, blush. It gave Dallona of Hadron a feeling of pleasure. Men
often looked at her that way, especially here at Darsh. Novelty had
something to do with it—her skin was considerably lighter than usual,
and there was a pleasing oddness about the structure of her face. Her
alleged Venusian origin was probably accepted as the explanation of
that, as of so many other things.
As she was about to reply, a man in dark gray, one of the
upper-servants who were accepted as social equals by the Akor-Neb
nobles, approached the table. He nodded respectfully to Garnon of
Roxor.
“I hate to seem to hurry things, sir, but the boy’s ready. He’s in a
trance-state now,” he reported, pointing to the pair of visiplates at
the end of the room.
Both of the ten-foot-square plates were activated. One was a solid
luminous white; on the other was the image of a boy of twelve or
fourteen, seated at a big writing machine. Even allowing for the fact
that the boy was in a hypnotic trance, there was an expression of
idiocy on his loose-lipped, slack-jawed face, a pervading dullness.
“One of our best sensitives,” a man with a beard, several places down
the table on Dallona’s right, said. “You remember him, Dallona; he
produced that communication from the discarnate Assassin, Sirzim.
Normally, he’s a low-grade imbecile, but in trance-state he’s
wonderful. And there can be no argument that the communications he
produces originates in his own mind; he doesn’t have mind enough, of
his own, to operate that machine.”
Garnon of Roxor rose to his feet, the others rising with him. He
unfastened a jewel from the front of his tunic and handed it to
Dallona.
“Here, my dear Lady Dallona; I want you to have this,” he said. “It’s
been in the family of Roxor for six generations, but I know that you
will appreciate and cherish it.” He twisted a heavy ring from his left
hand and gave it to his son. He unstrapped his wrist watch and passed
it across the table to the gray-clad upper-servant. He gave a pocket
case, containing writing tools, slide rule and magnifier, to the
bearded man on the other side of Dallona. “Something you can use, Dr.
Harnosh,” he said. Then he took a belt, with a knife and holstered
pistol, from a servant who had brought it to him, and gave it to the
man with the red badge. “And something for you, Dirzed. The pistol’s
by Farnor of Yand, and the knife was forged and tempered on Luna.”
The man with the winged-bullet badge took the weapons, exclaiming in
appreciation. Then he removed his own belt and buckled on the gift.
“The pistol’s fully loaded,” Garnon told him.
Dirzed drew it and checked—a man of his craft took no statement about
weapons without verification—then slipped it back into the holster.
“Shall I use it?” he asked.
“By all means; I’d had that in mind when I selected it for you.”
Another man, to the left of Girzon, received a cigarette case and
lighter. He and Garnon hooked fingers and clapped shoulders.
“Our views haven’t been the same, Garnon,” he said, “but I’ve always
valued your friendship. I’m sorry you’re doing this, now; I believe
you’ll be disappointed.”
Garnon chuckled. “Would you care to make a small wager on that,
Nirzav?” he asked. “You know what I’m putting up. If I’m proven right,
will you accept the Volitionalist theory as verified?”
Nirzav chewed his mustache for a moment. “Yes, Garnon, I will.” He
pointed toward the blankly white screen. “If we get anything
conclusive on that, I’ll have no other choice.”
“All right, friends,” Garnon said to those around him. “Will you walk
with me to the end of the room?”
Servants removed a section from the table in front of him, to allow
him and a few others to pass through; the rest of the guests remained
standing at the table, facing toward the inside of the room. Garnon’s
son, Girzon, and the gray-mustached Nirzav of Shonna, walked on his
left; Dallona of Hadron and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh on his right. The
gray-clad upper-servant, and two or three ladies, and a nobleman with
a small chin beard, and several others, joined them; of those who had
sat close to Garnon, only the man in the black tunic with the scarlet
badge hung back. He stood still, by the break in the table, watching
Garnon of Roxor walk away from him. Then Dirzed the Assassin drew the
pistol he had lately received as a gift, hefted it in his hand,
thumbed off the safety, and aimed at the back of Garnon’s head.
They had nearly reached the end of the room when the pistol cracked.
Dallona of Hadron started, almost as though the bullet had crashed
into her own body, then caught herself and kept on walking. She closed
her eyes and laid a hand on Dr. Harnosh’s arm for guidance,
concentrating her mind upon a single question. The others went on as
though Garnon of Roxor were still walking among them.
“Look!” Harnosh of Hosh cried, pointing to the image in the visiplate
ahead. “He’s under control!”
They all stopped short, and Dirzed, holstering his pistol, hurried
forward to join them. Behind, a couple of servants had approached with
a stretcher and were gathering up the crumpled figure that had, a
moment ago, been Garnon.
A change had come over the boy at the writing machine. His eyes were
still glazed with the stupor of the hypnotic trance, but the slack jaw
had stiffened, and the loose mouth was compressed in a purposeful
line. As they watched, his hands went out to the keyboard in front of
him and began to move over it, and as they did, letters appeared on
the white screen on the left.
_Garnon of Roxor, discarnate, communicating_, they read. The machine
stopped for a moment, then began again. _To Dallona of Hadron: The
question you asked, after I discarnated, was: What was the last book I
read, before the feast? While waiting for my valet to prepare my bath,
I read the first ten verses of the fourth Canto of “Splendor of
Space,” by Larnov of Horka, in my bedroom. When the bath was ready, I
marked the page with a strip of message tape, containing a message
from the bailiff of my estate on the Shevva River, concerning a
breakdown at the power plant, and laid the book on the ivory-inlaid
table beside the big red chair._
Harnosh of Hosh looked at Dallona inquiringly; she nodded.
“I rejected the question I had in my mind, and substituted that one,
after the shot,” she said.
He turned quickly to the upper-servant. “Check on that, right away,
Kirzon,” he directed.
As the upper-servant hurried out, the writing machine started again.
_And to my son, Girzon: I will not use your son, Garnon, as a
reincarnation-vehicle; I will remain discarnate until he is grown and
has a son of his own; if he has no male child, I will reincarnate in
the first available male child of the family of Roxor, or of some
family allied to us by marriage. In any case, I will communicate
before reincarnating._
_To Nirzav of Shonna: Ten days ago, when I dined at your home, I took
a small knife and cut three notches, two close together and one a
little apart from the others, on the under side of the table. As I
remember, I sat two places down on the left. If you find them, you
will know that I have won that wager that I spoke of a few minutes
ago._
“I’ll have my butler check on that, right away,” Nirzav said. His eyes
were wide with amazement, and he had begun to sweat; a man does not
casually watch the beliefs of a lifetime invalidated in a few moments.
_To Dirzed the Assassin_: the machine continued. _You have served me
faithfully, in the last ten years, never more so than with the last
shot you fired in my service. After you fired, the thought was in your
mind that you would like to take service with the Lady Dallona of
Hadron, whom you believe will need the protection of a member of the
Society of Assassins. I advise you to do so, and I advise her to
accept your offer. Her work, since she has come to Darsh, has not made
her popular in some quarters. No doubt Nirzav of Shonna can bear me
out on that._
“I won’t betray things told me in confidence, or said at the Councils
of the Statisticalists, but he’s right,” Nirzav said. “You need a good
Assassin, and there are few better than Dirzed.”
_I see that this sensitive is growing weary_, the letters on the
screen spelled out. _His body is not strong enough for prolonged
communication. I bid you all farewell, for the time; I will
communicate again. Good evening, my friends, and I thank you for your
presence at the feast._
The boy, on the other screen, slumped back in his chair, his face
relaxing into its customary expression of vacancy.
“Will you accept my offer of service, Lady Dallona?” Dirzed asked.
“It’s as Garnon said; you’ve made enemies.”
Dallona smiled at him. “I’ve not been too deep in my work to know
that. I’m glad to accept your offer, Dirzed.”
* * * * *
Nirzav of Shonna had already turned away from the group and was
hurrying from the room, to call his home for confirmation on the
notches made on the underside of his dining table. As he went out the
door, he almost collided with the upper-servant, who was rushing in
with a book in his hand.
“Here it is,” the latter exclaimed, holding up the book. “Larnov’s
‘Splendor of Space,’ just where he said it would be. I had a couple of
servants with me as witnesses; I can call them in now, if you wish.”
He handed the book to Harnosh of Hosh. “See, a strip of message tape
in it, at the tenth verse of the Fourth Canto.”
Nirzav of Shonna re-entered the room; he was chewing his mustache and
muttering to himself. As he rejoined the group in front of the now
dark visiplates, he raised his voice, addressing them all generally.
“My butler found the notches, just as the communication described,” he
said. “This settles it! Garnon, if you’re where you can hear me,
you’ve won. I can’t believe in the Statisticalist doctrines after
this, or in the political program based upon them. I’ll announce my
change of attitude at the next meeting of the Executive Council, and
resign my seat. I was elected by Statisticalist votes, and I cannot
hold office as a Volitionalist.”
“You’ll need a couple of Assassins, too,” the nobleman with the
chin beard told him. “Your former colleagues and fellow-party-members
are regrettably given to the forcible discarnation of those who differ
with them.”
“I’ve never employed personal Assassins before,” Nirzav replied, “but
I think you’re right. As soon as I get home, I’ll call Assassins’ Hall
and make the necessary arrangements.”
“Better do it now,” Girzon of Roxor told him, lowering his voice.
“There are over a hundred guests here, and I can’t vouch for all of
them. The Statisticalists would be sure to have a spy planted among
them. My father was one of their most dangerous opponents, when he was
on the Council; they’ve always been afraid he’d come out of retirement
and stand for re-election. They’d want to make sure he was really
discarnate. And if that’s the case, you can be sure your change of
attitude is known to old Mirzark of Bashad by this time. He won’t dare
allow you to make a public renunciation of Statisticalism.” He turned
to the other nobleman. “Prince Jirzyn, why don’t you call the
Volitionist headquarters and have a couple of our Assassins sent here
to escort Lord Nirzav home?”
“I’ll do that immediately,” Jirzyn of Starpha said. “It’s as Lord
Girzon says; we can be pretty sure there was a spy among the guests,
and now that you’ve come over to our way of thinking, we’re
responsible for your safety.”
He left the room to make the necessary visiphone call. Dallona,
accompanied by Dirzed, returned to her place at the table, where she
was joined by Harnosh of Hosh and some of the others.
“There’s no question about the results,” Harnosh was exulting. “I’ll
grant that the boy might have picked up some of that stuff
telepathically from the carnate minds present here; even from the mind
of Garnon, before he was discarnated. But he could not have picked up
enough data, in that way, to make a connected and coherent
communication. It takes a sensitive with a powerful mind of his own to
practice telesthesia, and that boy’s almost an idiot.” He turned to
Dallona. “You asked a question, mentally, after Garnon was
discarnate, and got an answer that could have been contained only in
Garnon’s mind. I think it’s conclusive proof that the discarnate
Garnon was fully conscious and communicating.”
“Dirzed also asked a question, mentally, after the discarnation, and
got an answer. Dr. Harnosh, we can state positively that the surviving
individuality is fully conscious in the discarnate state, is
telepathically sensitive, and is capable of telepathic communication
with other minds,” Dallona agreed. “And in view of our earlier work
with memory-recalls, we’re justified in stating positively that the
individual is capable of exercising choice in reincarnation vehicles.”
“My father had been considering voluntary discarnation for a long
time,” Girzon of Roxor said. “Ever since the discarnation of my
mother. He deferred that step because he was unwilling to deprive the
Volitionalist Party of his support. Now it would seem that he has done
more to combat Statisticalism by discarnating than he ever did in his
carnate existence.”
“I don’t know, Girzon,” Jirzyn of Starpha said, as he joined the
group. “The Statisticalists will denounce the whole thing as a
prearranged fraud. And if they can discarnate the Lady Dallona before
she can record her testimony under truth hypnosis or on a lie
detector, we’re no better off than we were before. Dirzed, you have a
great responsibility in guarding the Lady Dallona; some extraordinary
security precautions will be needed.”
* * * * *
In his office, in the First Level city of Dhergabar, Tortha Karf,
Chief of Paratime Police, leaned forward in his chair to hold his
lighter for his special assistant, Verkan Vall, then lit his own
cigarette. He was a man of middle age—his three hundredth birthday
was only a decade or so off—and he had begun to acquire a double chin
and a bulge at his waistline. His hair, once black, had turned a
uniform iron-gray and was beginning to thin in front.
“What do you know about the Second Level Akor-Neb Sector, Vall?” he
inquired. “Ever work in that paratime-area?”
Verkan Vall’s handsome features became even more immobile than usual
as he mentally pronounced the verbal trigger symbols which should
bring hypnotically acquired knowledge into his conscious mind. Then he
shook his head.
“Must be a singularly well-behaved sector, sir,” he said. “Or else
we’ve been lucky, so far. I never was on an Akor-Neb operation; don’t
even have a hypno-mech for that sector. All I know is from general
reading.
“Like all the Second Level, its time-lines descend from the
probability of one or more shiploads of colonists having come to Terra
from Mars about seventy-five to a hundred thousand years ago, and then
having been cut off from the home planet and forced to develop a
civilization of their own here. The Akor-Neb civilization is of a
fairly high culture-order, even for Second Level. An atomic-power,
interplanetary culture; gravity-counteraction, direct conversion of
nuclear energy to electrical power, that sort of thing. We buy fine
synthetic plastics and fabrics from them.” He fingered the material of
his smartly-cut green police uniform. “I think this cloth is Akor-Neb.
We sell a lot of Venusian _zerfa_-leaf; they smoke it, straight and
mixed with tobacco. They have a single System-wide government, a
single race, and a universal language. They’re a dark-brown race,
which evolved in its present form about fifty thousand years ago; the
present civilization is about ten thousand years old, developed out of
the wreckage of several earlier civilizations which decayed or fell
through wars, exhaustion of resources, et cetera. They have legends,
maybe historical records, of their extraterrestrial origin.”
Tortha Karf nodded. “Pretty good, for consciously acquired knowledge,”
he commented. “Well, our luck’s run out, on that sector; we have
troubles there, now. I want you to go iron them out. I know, you’ve
been going pretty hard, lately—that night-hound business, on the
Fourth Level Europo-American Sector, wasn’t any picnic. But the fact
is that a lot of my ordinary and deputy assistants have a little too
much regard for the alleged sanctity of human life, and this is
something that may need some pretty drastic action.”
“Some of our people getting out of line?” Verkan Vall asked.
“Well, the data isn’t too complete, but one of our people has run into
trouble on that sector, and needs rescuing—a psychic-science
researcher, a young lady named Hadron Dalla. I believe you know her,
don’t you?” Tortha Karf asked innocently.
“Slightly,” Verkan Vall deadpanned. “I enjoyed a brief but rather
hectic companionate-marriage with her, about twenty years ago. What
sort of a jam’s little Dalla got herself into, now?”
“Well, frankly, we don’t know. I hope she’s still alive, but I’m not
unduly optimistic. It seems that about a year ago, Dr. Hadron
transposed to the Second Level, to study alleged proof of
reincarnation which the Akor-Neb people were reported to possess. She
went to Gindrabar, on Venus, and transposed to the Second Paratime
Level, to a station maintained by Outtime Import & Export Trading
Corporation—a _zerfa_ plantation just east of the High Ridge country.
There she assumed an identity as the daughter of a planter, and took
the name of Dallona of Hadron. Parenthetically, all Akor-Neb
family-names are prepositional; family-names were originally place
names. I believe that ancient Akor-Neb marital relations were too
complicated to permit exact establishment of paternity. And all
Akor-Neb men’s personal names have -_irz_- or -_arn_- inserted in the
middle, and women’s names end in -_itra_- or -_ona_. You could call
yourself Virzal of Verkan, for instance.
“Anyhow, she made the Second Level Venus-Terra trip on a regular
passenger liner, and landed at the Akor-Neb city of Ghamma, on the
upper Nile. There she established contact with the Outtime Trading
Corporation representative, Zortan Brend, locally known as Brarnend of
Zorda. He couldn’t call himself Brarnend of Zortan—in the Akor-Neb
language, _zortan_ is a particularly nasty dirty-word. Hadron Dalla
spent a few weeks at his residence, briefing herself on local
conditions. Then she went to the capital city, Darsh, in eastern
Europe, and enrolled as a student at something called the Independent
Institute for Reincarnation Research, having secured a letter of
introduction to its director, a Dr. Harnosh of Hosh.
“Almost at once, she began sending in reports to her home
organization, the Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science, here
at Dhergabar, through Zortan Brend. The people there were wildly
enthusiastic. I don’t have more than the average intelligent—I
hope—layman’s knowledge of psychics, but Dr. Volzar Darv, the
director of Rhogom Foundation, tells me that even in the present
incomplete form, her reports have opened whole new horizons in the
science. It seems that these Akor-Neb people have actually
demonstrated, as a scientific fact, that the human individuality
reincarnates after physical death—that your personality, and mine,
have existed, as such, for ages, and will exist for ages to come.
More, they have means of recovering, from almost anybody, memories of
past reincarnations.
[Illustration: ]
“Well, after about a month, the people at this Reincarnation Institute
realized that this Dallona of Hadron wasn’t any ordinary student. She
probably had trouble keeping down to the local level of psychic
knowledge. So, as soon as she’d learned their techniques, she was
allowed to undertake experimental work of her own. I imagine she let
herself out on that; as soon as she’d mastered the standard Akor-Neb
methods of recovering memories of past reincarnations, she began
refining and developing them more than the local yokels had been able
to do in the past thousand years. I can’t tell you just what she did,
because I don’t know the subject, but she must have lit things up
properly. She got quite a lot of local publicity; not only scientific
journals, but general newscasts.
“Then, four days ago, she disappeared, and her disappearance seems to
have been coincident with an unsuccessful attempt on her life. We
don’t know as much about this as we should; all we have is Zortan
Brend’s account.
“It seems that on the evening of her disappearance, she had been
attending the voluntary discarnation feast—suicide party—of a
prominent nobleman named Garnon of Roxor. Evidently when the Akor-Neb
people get tired of their current reincarnation they invite in their
friends, throw a big party, and then do themselves in in an atmosphere
of general conviviality. Frequently they take poison or inhale lethal
gas; this fellow had his personal trigger man shoot him through the
head. Dalla was one of the guests of honor, along with this Harnosh of
Hosh. They’d made rather elaborate preparations, and after the shooting
they got a detailed and apparently authentic spirit-communication from
the late Garnon. The voluntary discarnation was just a routine social
event, it seems, but the communication caused quite an uproar, and rated
top place on the System-wide newscasts, and started a storm of
controversy.
“After the shooting and the communication, Dalla took the officiating
gun artist, one Dirzed, into her own service. This Dirzed was spoken
of as a generally respected member of something called the Society of
Assassins, and that’ll give you an idea of what things are like on
that sector, and why I don’t want to send anybody who might develop
trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home
of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for
Dalla’s apartment, about a hundred miles away. That’s the last that’s
been heard of either of them.
“This attempt on Dalla’s life occurred while the pre-mortem revels
were still going on. She lived in a six-room apartment, with three
servants, on one of the upper floors of a three-thousand-foot
tower—Akor-Neb cities are built vertically, with considerable
interval between units—and while she was at this feast, a package was
delivered at the apartment, ostensibly from the Reincarnation
Institute and made up to look as though it contained record tapes. One
of the servants accepted it from a service employee of the apartments.
The next morning, a little before noon, Dr. Harnosh of Hosh called her
on the visiphone and got no answer; he then called the apartment
manager, who entered the apartment. He found all three of the servants
dead, from a lethal-gas bomb which had exploded when one of them had
opened this package. However, Hadron Dalla had never returned to the
apartment, the night before.”
* * * * *
Verkan Vall was sitting motionless, his face expressionless as he ran
Tortha Karf’s narrative through the intricate semantic and
psychological processes of the First Level mentality. The fact that
Hadron Dalla had been a former wife of his had been relegated to one
corner of his consciousness and contained there; it was not a fact
that would, at the moment, contribute to the problem or to his
treatment of it.
“The package was delivered while she was at this suicide party,” he
considered. “It must, therefore, have been sent by somebody who either
did not know she would be out of the apartment, or who did not expect
it to function until after her return. On the other hand, if her
disappearance was due to hostile action, it was the work of somebody
who knew she was at the feast and did not want her to reach her
apartment again. This would seem to exclude the sender of the package
bomb.”
Tortha Karf nodded. He had reached that conclusion, himself.
“Thus,” Verkan Vall continued, “if her disappearance was the work of
an enemy, she must have two enemies, each working in ignorance of the
other’s plans.”
“What do you think she did to provoke such enmity?”
“Well, of course, it just might be that Dalla’s normally complicated
love-life had got a little more complicated than usual and
short-circuited on her,” Verkan Vall said, out of the fullness of
personal knowledge, “but I doubt that, at the moment. I would think
that this affair has political implications.”
“So?” Tortha Karf had not thought of politics as an explanation. He
waited for Verkan Vall to elaborate.
“Don’t you see, chief?” the special assistant asked. “We find a belief
in reincarnation on many time-lines, as a religious doctrine, but
these people accept it as a scientific fact. Such acceptance would
carry much more conviction; it would influence a people’s entire
thinking. We see it reflected in their disregard for death—suicide as
a social function, this Society of Assassins, and the like. It would
naturally color their political thinking, because politics is nothing
but common action to secure more favorable living conditions, and to
these people, the term ‘living conditions’ includes not only the
present life, but also an indefinite number of future lives as well. I
find this title, ‘Independent’ Institute, suggestive. Independent of
what? Possibly of partisan affiliation.”
“But wouldn’t these people be grateful to her for her new discoveries,
which would enable them to plan their future reincarnations more
intelligently?” Tortha Karf asked.
“Oh, chief!” Verkan Vall reproached. “You know better than that! How
many times have our people got in trouble on other time-lines because
they divulged some useful scientific fact that conflicted with the
locally revered nonsense? You show me ten men who cherish some
religious doctrine or political ideology, and I’ll show you nine men
whose minds are utterly impervious to any factual evidence which
contradicts their beliefs, and who regard the producer of such
evidence as a criminal who ought to be suppressed. For instance, on
the Fourth Level Europo-American Sector, where I was just working,
there is a political sect, the Communists, who, in the territory under
their control, forbid the teaching of certain well-established facts
of genetics and heredity, because those facts do not fit the
world-picture demanded by their political doctrines. And on the same
sector, a religious sect recently tried, in some sections
successfully, to outlaw the teaching of evolution by natural
selection.”
Tortha Karf nodded. “I remember some stories my grandfather told me,
about his narrow escapes from an organization called the Holy
Inquisition, when he was a paratime trader on the Fourth Level, about
four hundred years ago. I believe that thing’s still operating, on the
Europo-American Sector, under the name of the NKVD. So you think Dalla
may have proven something that conflicted with local reincarnation
theories, and somebody who had a vested interest in maintaining those
theories is trying to stop her?”
“You spoke of a controversy over the communication alleged to have
originated with this voluntarily discarnated nobleman. That would
suggest a difference of opinion on the manner of nature of
reincarnation or the discarnate state. This difference may mark the
dividing line between the different political parties. Now, to get to
this Darsh place, do I have to go to Venus, as Dalla did?”
“No. The Outtime Trading Corporation has transposition facilities at
Ravvanan, on the Nile, which is spatially co-existent with the city of
Ghamma on the Akor-Neb Sector, where Zortan Brend is. You transpose
through there, and Zortan Brend will furnish you transportation to
Darsh. It’ll take you about two days, here, getting your hypno-mech
indoctrinations and having your skin pigmented, and your hair turned
black. I’ll notify Zortan Brend at once that you’re coming through.
Is there anything special you’ll want?”
“Why, I’ll want an abstract of the reports Dalla sent back to Rhogom
Foundation. It’s likely that there is some clue among them as to whom
her discoveries may have antagonized. I’m going to be a Venusian
_zerfa_-planter, a friend of her father’s; I’ll want full hypno-mech
indoctrination to enable me to play that part. And I’ll want to
familiarize myself with Akor-Neb weapons and combat techniques. I
think that will be all, chief.”
* * * * *
The last of the tall city units of Ghamma were sliding out of sight as
the ship passed over them—shaft-like buildings that rose two or three
thousand feet above the ground in clumps of three or four or six, one
at each corner of the landing stages set in series between them. Each
of these units stood in the middle of a wooded park some five miles
square; no unit was much more or less than twenty miles from its
nearest neighbor, and the land between was the uniform golden-brown of
ripening grain, crisscrossed with the threads of irrigation canals and
dotted here and there with sturdy farm-village buildings and tall,
stack-like granaries. There were a few other ships in the air at the
fifty-thousand-foot level, and below, swarms of small airboats darted
back and forth on different levels, depending upon speed and
direction. Far ahead, to the northeast, was the shimmer of the Red Sea
and the hazy bulk of Asia Minor beyond.
Verkan Vall—the Lord Virzal of Verkan, temporarily—stood at the
glass front of the observation deck, looking down. He was a different
Verkan Vall from the man who had talked with Tortha Karf in the
latter’s office, two days before. The First Level cosmeticists had
worked miracles upon him with their art. His skin was a soft
chocolate-brown, now; his hair was jet-black, and so were his eyes.
And in his subconscious mind, instantly available to consciousness,
was a vast body of knowledge about conditions on the Akor-Neb sector,
as well as a complete command of the local language, all hypnotically
acquired.
He knew that he was looking down upon one of the minor provincial
cities of a very respectably advanced civilization. A civilization
which built its cities vertically, since it had learned to counteract
gravitation. A civilization which still depended upon natural cereals
for food, but one which had learned to make the most efficient use of
its soil. The network of dams and irrigation canals which he saw was
as good as anything on his own paratime level. The wide dispersal of
buildings, he knew, was a heritage of a series of disastrous atomic
wars of several thousand years before; the Akor-Neb people had come to
love the wide inter-vistas of open country and forest, and had
continued to scatter their buildings, even after the necessity had
passed. But the slim, towering buildings could only have been reared
by a people who had banished nationalism and, with it, the threat of
total war. He contrasted them with the ground-hugging dome cities of
the Khiftan civilization, only a few thousand para-years distant.
Three men came out of the lounge behind him and joined him. One was,
like himself, a disguised paratimer from the First Level—the Outtime
Export and Import man, Zortan Brend, here known as Brarnend of Zorda.
The other two were Akor-Neb people, and both wore the black tunics and
the winged-bullet badges of the Society of Assassins. Unlike Verkan
Vall and Zortan Brend, who wore shoulder holsters under their short
tunics, the Assassins openly displayed pistols and knives on their
belts.
“We heard that you were coming two days ago, Lord Virzal,” Zortan
Brend said. “We delayed the take-off of this ship, so that you could
travel to Darsh as inconspicuously as possible. I also booked a suite
for you at the Solar Hotel, at Darsh. And these are your
Assassins—Olirzon, and Marnik.”
Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them.
“Virzal of Verkan,” he identified himself. “I am satisfied to intrust
myself to you.”
“We’ll do our best for you, Lord Virzal,” the older of the pair,
Olirzon, said. He hesitated for a moment, then continued: “Understand,
Lord Virzal, I only ask for information useful in serving and
protecting you. But is this of the Lady Dallona a political matter?”
“Not from our side,” Verkan Vall told him. “The Lady Dallona is a
scientist, entirely nonpolitical. The Honorable Brarnend is a business
man; he doesn’t meddle with politics as long as the politicians leave
him alone. And I’m a planter on Venus; I have enough troubles, with
the natives, and the weather, and blue-rot in the _zerfa_ plants, and
poison roaches, and javelin bugs, without getting into politics. But
psychic science is inextricably mixed with politics, and the Lady
Dallona’s work had evidently tended to discredit the theory of
Statistical Reincarnation.”
“Do you often make understatements like that, Lord Virzal?” Olirzon
grinned. “In the last six months, she’s knocked Statistical
Reincarnation to splinters.”
“Well, I’m not a psychic scientist, and as I said, I don’t know much
about Terran politics,” Verkan Vall replied. “I know that the
Statisticalists favor complete socialization and political control of
the whole economy, because they want everybody to have the same
opportunities in every reincarnation. And the Volitionalists believe
that everybody reincarnates as he pleases, and so they favor
continuance of the present system of private ownership of wealth and
private profit under a system of free competition. And that’s about
all I do know. Naturally, as a land-owner and the holder of a title of
nobility, I’m a Volitionalist in politics, but the socialization
issue isn’t important on Venus. There is still too much unseated land
there, and too many personal opportunities, to make socialism
attractive to anybody.”
“Well, that’s about it,” Zortan Brend told him. “I’m not enough of a
psychicist to know what the Lady Dallona’s been doing, but she’s
knocked the theoretical basis from under Statistical Reincarnation,
and that’s the basis, in turn, of Statistical Socialism. I think we’ll
find that the Statisticalist Party is responsible for whatever
happened to her.”
Marnik, the younger of the two Assassins, hesitated for a moment, then
addressed Verkan Vall:
“Lord Virzal, I know none of the personalities involved in this
matter, and I speak without wishing to give offense, but is it not
possible that the Lady Dallona and the Assassin Dirzed may have gone
somewhere together voluntarily? I have met Dirzed, and he has many
qualities which women find attractive, and he is by no means
indifferent to the opposite sex. You understand, Lord Virzal—”
“I understand all too perfectly, Marnik,” Verkan Vall replied, out of
the fullness of experience. “The Lady Dallona has had affairs with a
number of men, myself among them. But under the circumstances, I find
that explanation unthinkable.”
Marnik looked at him in open skepticism. Evidently, in his book, where
an attractive man and a beautiful woman were concerned, that
explanation was never unthinkable.
“The Lady Dallona is a scientist,” Verkan Vall elaborated. “She is not
above diverting herself with love affairs, but that’s all they are—a
not too important form of diversion. And, if you recall, she had just
participated in a most significant experiment: you can be sure that
she had other things on her mind at the time than pleasure jaunts with
good-looking Assassins.”
* * * * *
The ship was passing around the Caucasus Mountains, with the Caspian
Sea in sight ahead, when several of the crew appeared on the
observation deck and began preparing the shielding to protect the deck
from gunfire. Zortan Brend inquired of the petty officer in charge of
the work as to the necessity.
“We’ve been getting reports of trouble at Darsh, sir,” the man said.
“Newscast bulletins every couple of minutes: rioting in different
parts of the city. Started yesterday afternoon, when a couple of
Statisticalist members of the Executive Council resigned and went over
to the Volitionalists. Lord Nirzav of Shonna, the only nobleman of any
importance in the Statisticalist Party, was one of them; he was shot
immediately afterward, while leaving the Council Chambers, along with
a couple of Assassins who were with him. Some people in an airboat
sprayed them with a machine rifle as they came out onto the landing
stage.”
The two Assassins exclaimed in horrified anger over this.
“That wasn’t the work of members of the Society of Assassins!” Olirzon
declared. “Even after he’d resigned, the Lord Nirzav was still immune
till he left the Government Building. There’s too blasted much illegal
assassination going on!”
“What happened next?” Verkan Vall wanted to know.
“About what you’d expect, sir. The Volitionalists weren’t going to
take that quietly. In the past eighteen hours, four prominent
Statisticalists were forcibly discarnated, and there was even a fight
in Mirzark of Bashad’s house, when Volitionalist Assassins broke in;
three of them and four of Mirzark’s Assassins were discarnated.”
“You know, something is going to have to be done about that, too,”
Olirzon said to Marnik. “It’s getting to a point where these political
faction fights are being carried on entirely between members of the
Society. In Ghamma alone, last year, thirty or forty of our members
were discarnated that way.”
“Plug in a newscast visiplate, Karnil,” Zortan Brend told the petty
officer. “Let’s see what’s going on in Darsh now.”
In Darsh, it seemed, an uneasy peace was being established. Verkan
Vall watched heavily-armed airboats and light combat ships patrolling
among the high towers of the city. He saw a couple of minor riots
being broken up by the blue-uniformed Constabulary, with considerable
shooting and a ruthless disregard for who might get shot. It wasn’t
exactly the sort of policing that would have been tolerated in the
First Level Civil Order Section, but it seemed to suit Akor-Neb
conditions. And he listened to a series of angry recriminations and
contradictory statements by different politicians, all of whom blamed
the disorders on their opponents. The Volitionalists spoke of the
Statisticalists as “insane criminals” and “underminers of social
stability,” and the Statisticalists called the Volitionalists
“reactionary criminals” and “enemies of social progress.” Politicians,
he had observed, differed little in their vocabularies from one
time-line to another.
This kept up all the while the ship was passing over the Caspian Sea;
as they were turning up the Volga valley, one of the ship’s officers
came down from the control deck, above.
“We’re coming into Darsh, now,” he said, and as Verkan Vall turned
from the visiplate to the forward windows, he could see the white and
pastel-tinted towers of the city rising above the hardwood forests
that covered the whole Volga basin on this sector. “Your luggage has
been put into the airboat, Lord Virzal and Honorable Assassins, and
it’s ready for launching whenever you are.” The officer glanced at his
watch. “We dock at Commercial Center in twenty minutes; we’ll be
passing the Solar Hotel in ten.”
They all rose, and Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders
with Zortan Brend.
“Good luck, Lord Virzal,” the latter said. “I hope you find the Lady
Dallona safe and carnate. If you need help, I’ll be at Mercantile
House for the next day or so; if you get back to Ghamma before I do,
you know who to ask for there.”
* * * * *
A number of assassins loitered in the hallways and offices of the
Independent Institute of Reincarnation Research when Verkan Vall,
accompanied by Marnik, called there that afternoon. Some of them
carried submachine-guns or sleep-gas projectors, and they were
stopping people and questioning them. Marnik needed only to give them
a quick gesture and the words, “Assassins’ Truce,” and he and his
client were allowed to pass. They entered a lifter tube and floated up
to the office of Dr. Harnosh of Hosh, with whom Verkan Vall had made
an appointment.
“I’m sorry, Lord Virzal,” the director of the Institute told him, “but
I have no idea what has befallen the Lady Dallona, or even if she is
still carnate. I am quite worried; I admired her extremely, both as an
individual and as a scientist. I do hope she hasn’t been discarnated;
that would be a serious blow to science. It is fortunate that she
accomplished as much as she did, while she was with us.”
“You think she is no longer carnate, then?”
“I’m afraid so. The political effects of her discoveries—” Harnosh of
Hosh shrugged sadly. “She was devoted, to a rare degree, to her work.
I am sure that nothing but her discarnation could have taken her away
from us, at this time, with so many important experiments still
uncompleted.”
Marnik nodded to Verkan Vall, as much as to say: “You were right.”
“Well, I intend acting upon the assumption that she is still carnate
and in need of help, until I am positive to the contrary,” Verkan Vall
said. “And in the latter case, I intend finding out who discarnated
her, and send him to apologize for it in person. People don’t forcibly
discarnate my friends with impunity.”
“Sound attitude,” Dr. Harnosh commented. “There’s certainly no
positive evidence that she isn’t still carnate. I’ll gladly give you
all the assistance I can, if you’ll only tell me what you want.”
“Well, in the first place,” Verkan Vall began, “just what sort of work
was she doing?” He already knew the answer to that, from the reports
she had sent back to the First Level, but he wanted to hear Dr.
Harnosh’s version. “And what, exactly, are the political effects you
mentioned? Understand, Dr. Harnosh, I am really quite ignorant of any
scientific subject unrelated to _zerfa_ culture, and equally so of
Terran politics. Politics, on Venus, is mainly a question of who gets
how much graft out of what.”
Dr. Harnosh smiled; evidently he had heard about Venusian politics.
“Ah, yes, of course. But you are familiar with the main differences
between Statistical and Volitional reincarnation theories?”
[Illustration: ]
“In a general way. The Volitionalists hold that the discarnate
individuality is fully conscious, and is capable of something
analogous to sense-perception, and is also capable of exercising
choice in the matter of reincarnation vehicles, and can reincarnate or
remain in the discarnate state as it chooses. They also believe that
discarnate individualities can communicate with one another, and with
at least some carnate individualities, by telepathy,” he said. “The
Statisticalists deny all this; their opinion is that the discarnate
individuality is in a more or less somnambulistic state, that it is
drawn by a process akin to tropism to the nearest available
reincarnation vehicle, and that it must reincarnate in and only in
that vehicle. They are labeled Statisticalists because they believe
that the process of reincarnation is purely at random, or governed by
unknown and uncontrollable causes, and is unpredictable except as to
aggregates.”
“That’s a fairly good generalized summary,” Dr. Harnosh of Hosh
grudged, unwilling to give a mere layman too much credit. He dipped a
spoon into a tobacco humidor, dusted the tobacco lightly with dried
_zerfa_, and rammed it into his pipe. “You must understand that our
modern Statisticalists are the intellectual heirs of those ancient
materialistic thinkers who denied the possibility of any discarnate
existence, or of any extraphysical mind, or even of extrasensory
perception. Since all these things have been demonstrated to be facts,
the materialistic dogma has been broadened to include them, but always
strictly within the frame of materialism.
“We have proven, for instance, that the human individuality can exist
in a discarnate state, and that it reincarnates into the body of an
infant, shortly after birth. But the Statisticalists cannot accept the
idea of discarnate consciousness, since they conceive of consciousness
purely as a function of the physical brain. So they postulate an
unconscious discarnate personality, or, as you put it, one in a
somnambulistic state. They have to concede memory to this discarnate
personality, since it was by recovery of memories of previous
reincarnations that discarnate existence and reincarnation were proven
to be facts. So they picture the discarnate individuality as a
material object, or physical event, of negligible but actual mass, in
which an indefinite number of memories can be stored as electronic
charges. And they picture it as being drawn irresistibly to the body
of the nearest non-incarnated infant. Curiously enough, the
reincarnation vehicle chosen is almost always of the same sex as the
vehicle of the previous reincarnation, the exceptions being cases of
persons who had a previous history of psychological sex-inversion.”
Dr. Harnosh remembered the unlighted pipe in his hand, thrust it into
his mouth, and lit it. For a moment, he sat with it jutting out of his
black beard, until it was drawing to his satisfaction. “This belief in
immediate reincarnation leads the Statisticalists, when they fight
duels or perform voluntary discarnation, to do so in the neighborhood
of maternity hospitals,” he added. “I know, personally, of one
reincarnation memory-recall, in which the subject, a Statisticalist,
voluntarily discarnated by lethal-gas inhaler in a private room at one
of our local maternity hospitals, and reincarnated twenty years later
in the city of Jeddul, three thousand miles away.” The square black
beard jiggled as the scientist laughed.