wearing a hunting knife and a long hunting pistol approached.
“Lord Virzal of Verkan? Welcome to Starpha Dome. The Lady Dallona
awaits you below.”
Verkan Vall had never been in an Akor-Neb dwelling dome, but a
description of such structures had been included in his hypno-mech
indoctrination. Originally, they had been the standard structure for
all purposes; about two thousand elapsed years ago, when nationalism
had still existed on the Akor-Neb Sector, the cities had been almost
entirely under ground, as protection from air attack. Even now, the
design had been retained by those who wished to live apart from the
towering city units, to preserve the natural appearance of the
landscape. The Starpha hunting lodge was typical of such domes. Under
it was a circular well, eighty feet in depth and fifty in width, with
a fountain and a shallow circular pool at the bottom. The storerooms,
kitchens and servants’ quarters were at the top, the living quarters
at the bottom, in segments of a wide circle around the well, back of
balconies.
“Tarnod, the gamekeeper,” Dirzed performed the introductions. “And
Erarno and Kirzol, Assassins.”
Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them. Tarnod
accompanied them to the lifter tubes—two percent positive gravitation
for descent and two percent negative for ascent—and they all floated
down the former, like air-filled balloons, to the bottom level.
“The Lady Dallona is in the gun room,” Tarnod informed Verkan Vall,
making as though to guide him.
“Thanks, Tarnod; we know the way,” Dirzed told him shortly, turning
his back on the upper-servant and walking toward a closed door on the
other side of the fountain. Verkan Vall and Olirzon followed; for a
moment, Tarnod stood looking after them, then he followed the other
two Assassins into the ascent tube.
“I don’t relish that fellow,” Dirzed explained. “The family of Starpha
use him for work they couldn’t hire an Assassin to do at any price.
I’ve been here often, when I was with the Lord Garnon; I’ve always
thought he had something on Prince Jirzyn.”
He knocked sharply on the closed door with the butt of his pistol. In
a moment, it slid open, and a young Assassin with a narrow mustache
and a tuft of chin beard looked out.
“Ah, Dirzed.” He stepped outside. “The Lady Dallona is within; I
return her to your care.”
Verkan Vall entered, followed by Dirzed and Olirzon. The big room was
fitted with reclining chairs and couches and low tables; its walls
were hung with the heads of deer and boar and wolves, and with racks
holding rifles and hunting pistols and fowling pieces. It was filled
with the soft glow of indirect cold light. At the far side of the
room, a young woman was seated at a desk, speaking softly into a sound
transcriber. As they entered, she snapped it off and rose.
Hadron Dalla wore the same costume Verkan Vall had seen on the
visiplate: he recognized her instantly. It took her a second or two to
perceive Verkan Vall under the brown skin and black hair of the Lord
Virzal of Verkan. Then her face lighted with a happy smile.
“Why, Va-a-a-ll!” she whooped, running across the room and tossing
herself into his not particularly reluctant arms. After all, it had
been twenty years—“I didn’t know you, at first!”
“You mean, in these clothes?” he asked, seeing that she had forgotten,
for the moment, the presence of the two Assassins. She had even called
him by his First Level name, but that was unimportant—the Akor-Neb
affectionate diminutive was formed by omitting the -_irz_- or -_arn_-.
“Well, they’re not exactly what I generally wear on the plantation.”
He kissed her again, then turned to his companions. “Your pardon,
Gentlemen-Assassins; it’s been something over a year since we’ve seen
each other.”
Olirzon was smiling at the affectionate reunion; Dirzed wore a look of
amused resignation, as though he might have expected something like
this to happen. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat down on a couch near the
desk.
“That was really sweet of you, Vall, fighting those men for talking
about me,” she began. “You took an awful chance, though. But if you
hadn’t, I’d never have known you were in Darsh—Oh-oh! That was why
you did it, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I had to do something. Everybody either didn’t know or weren’t
saying where you were. I assumed, from the circumstances, that you
were hiding somewhere. Tell me, Dalla; do you really have scientific
proof of reincarnation? I mean, as an established fact?”
“Oh, yes; these people on this sector have had that for over ten
centuries. They have hypnotic techniques for getting back into a part
of the subconscious mind that we’ve never been able to reach. And
after I found out how they did it, I was able to adapt some of our
hypno-epistemological techniques to it, and—”
“All right; that’s what I wanted to know,” he cut her off. “We’re
getting out of here, right away.”
“But where?”
“Ghamma, in an airboat I have outside, and then back to the First
Level. Unless there’s a paratime-transposition conveyor somewhere
nearer.”
“But why, Vall? I’m not ready to go back; I have a lot of work to do here,
yet. They’re getting ready to set up a series of control-experiments at the
Institute, and then, I’m in the middle of an experiment, a
two-hundred-subject memory-recall experiment. See, I distributed two
hundred sets of equipment for my new technique—injection-ampoules of this
_zerfa_-derivative drug, and sound records of the hypnotic suggestion
formula, which can be played on an ordinary reproducer. It’s just a crude
variant of our hypno-mech process, except that instead of implanting
information in the subconscious mind, to be brought at will to the level of
consciousness, it works the other way, and draws into conscious knowledge
information already in the subconscious mind. The way these people have
always done has been to put the subject in an hypnotic trance and then
record verbal statements made in the trance-state; when the subject comes
out of the trance, the record is all there is, because the memories of past
reincarnations have never been in the conscious mind. But with my process,
the subject can consciously remember everything about his last
reincarnation, and as many reincarnations before that as he wishes to. I
haven’t heard from any of the people who received these auto-recall kits,
and I really must—”
“Dalla, I don’t want to have to pull Paratime Police authority on you,
but, so help me, if you don’t come back voluntarily with me, I will.
Security of the secret of paratime transposition.”
“Oh, my eye!” Dalla exclaimed. “Don’t give me that, Vall!”
“Look, Dalla. Suppose you get discarnated here,” Verkan Vall said.
“You say reincarnation is a scientific fact. Well, you’d reincarnate
on this sector, and then you’d take a memory-recall, under hypnosis.
And when you did, the paratime secret wouldn’t be a secret any more.”
“Oh!” Dalla’s hand went to her mouth in consternation. Like every
paratimer, she was conditioned to shrink with all her being from the
mere thought of revealing to any out-time dweller the secret ability
of her race to pass to other time-lines, or even the existence of
alternate lines of probability. “And if I took one of the
old-fashioned trance-recalls, I’d blat out everything; I wouldn’t be
able to keep a thing back. And I even know the principles of
transposition!” She looked at him, aghast.
“When I get back, I’m going to put a recommendation through department
channels that this whole sector be declared out of bounds for all
paratime transposition, until you people at Rhogom Foundation work
out the problem of discarnate return to the First Level,” he told her.
“Now, have you any notes or anything you want to take back with you?”
She rose. “Yes; just what’s on the desk. Find me something to put the
tape spools and notebooks in, while I’m getting them in order.”
He secured a large game bag from under a rack of fowling pieces, and
held it while she sorted the material rapidly, stuffing spools of
record tape and notebooks into it. They had barely begun when the door
slid open and Olirzon, who had gone outside, sprang into the room, his
pistol drawn, swearing vilely.
“They’ve double-crossed us!” he cried. “The servants of Starpha have
turned on us.” He holstered his pistol and snatched up his
submachine-gun, taking cover behind the edge of the door and letting
go with a burst in the direction of the lifter tubes. “Got that one!”
he grunted.
“What happened, Olirzon?” Verkan Vall asked, dropping the game bag on
the table and hurrying across the room.
“I went up to see how Marnik was making out. As I came out of the
lifter tube, one of the obscenities took a shot at me with a hunting
pistol. He missed me; I didn’t miss him. Then a couple more of them
were coming up, with fowling pieces; I shot one of them before they
could fire, and jumped into the descent tube and came down heels over
ears. I don’t know what’s happened to Marnik.” He fired another burst,
and swore. “Missed him!”
“Assassins’ Truce! Assassins’ Truce!” a voice howled out of the
descent tube. “Hold your fire, we want to parley.”
“Who is it?” Dirzed shouted, over Olirzon’s shoulder. “You, Sarnax?
Come on out; we won’t shoot.”
The young Assassin with the mustache and chin beard emerged from the
descent tube, his weapons sheathed and his clasped hands extended in
front of him in a peculiarly ecclesiastical-looking manner. Dirzed and
Olirzon stepped out of the gun room, followed by Verkan Vall and
Hadron Dalla. Olirzon had left his submachine-gun behind. They met the
other Assassin by the rim of the fountain pool.
“Lady Dallona of Hadron,” the Starpha Assassin began. “I and my
colleagues, in the employ of the family of Starpha, have received
orders from our clients to withdraw our protection from you, and to
discarnate you, and all with you who undertake to protect or support
you.” That much sounded like a recitation of some established formula;
then his voice became more conversational. “I and my colleagues,
Erarno and Kirzol and Harnif, offer our apologies for the barbarity of
the servants of the family of Starpha, in attacking without
declaration of cessation of friendship. Was anybody hurt or
discarnated?”
“None of us,” Olirzon said. “How about Marnik?”
“He was warned before hostilities were begun against him,” Sarnax
replied. “We will allow five minutes until—”
Olirzon, who had been looking up the well, suddenly sprang at Dalla,
knocking her flat, and at the same time jerking out his pistol. Before
he could raise it, a shot banged from above and he fell on his face.
Dirzed, Verkan Vall, and Sarnax, all drew their pistols, but whoever
had fired the shot had vanished. There was an outburst of shouting
above.
“Get to cover,” Sarnax told the others. “We’ll let you know when we’re
ready to attack; we’ll have to deal with whoever fired that shot,
first.” He looked at the dead body on the floor, exclaimed angrily,
and hurried to the ascent tube, springing upward.
Verkan Vall replaced the small pistol in his shoulder holster and took
Olirzon’s belt, with his knife and heavier pistol.
“Well, there you see,” Dirzed said, as they went back to the gun room.
“So much for political expediency.”
“I think I understand why your picture and the Lady Dallona’s were
exhibited so widely,” Verkan Vall said. “Now, anybody would recognize
your bodies, and blame the Statisticalists for discarnating you.”
“That thought had occurred to me, Lord Virzal,” Dirzed said. “I
suppose our bodies will be atrociously but not unidentifiably
mutilated, to further enrage the public,” he added placidly. “If I get
out of this carnate, I’m going to pay somebody off for it.”
After a few minutes, there was more shouting of: “Assassins’ Truce!”
from the descent tube. The two Assassins, Erarno and Kirzol, emerged,
dragging the gamekeeper, Tarnod, between them. The upper-servant’s
face was bloody, and his jaw seemed to be broken. Sarnax followed,
carrying a long hunting pistol in his hand.
“Here he is!” he announced. “He fired during Assassins’ Truce; he’s
subject to Assassins’ Justice!”
He nodded to the others. They threw the gamekeeper forward on the
floor, and Sarnax shot him through the head, then tossed the pistol
down beside him. “Any more of these people who violate the decencies
will be treated similarly,” he promised.
“Thank you, Sarnax,” Dirzed spoke up. “But we lost an Assassin:
discarnating this lackey won’t equalize that. We think you should
retire one of your number.”
“That at least, Dirzed; wait a moment.”
The three Assassins conferred at some length. Then Sarnax hooked
fingers and clapped shoulders with his companions.
“See you in the next reincarnation, brothers,” he told them, walking
toward the gun-room door, where Verkan Vall, Dalla and Dirzed stood.
“I’m joining you people. You had two Assassins when the parley began,
you’ll have two when the shooting starts.”
Verkan Vall looked at Dirzed in some surprise. Hadron Dalla’s Assassin
nodded.
“He’s entitled to do that, Lord Virzal; the Assassins’ code provides
for such changes of allegiance.”
“Welcome, Sarnax,” Verkan Vall said, hooking fingers with him. “I hope
we’ll all be together when this is over.”
“We will be,” Sarnax assured him cheerfully. “Discarnate. We won’t get
out of this in the body, Lord Virzal.”
A submachine-gun hammered from above, the bullets lashing the fountain
pool; the water actually steamed, so great was their velocity.
“All right!” a voice called down. “Assassins’ Truce is over!”
Another burst of automatic fire smashed out the lights at the bottom
of the ascent tube. Dirzed and Dalla struggled across the room,
pushing a heavy steel cabinet between them; Verkan Vall, who was
holding Olirzon’s submachine-gun, moved aside to allow them to drop it
on edge in the open doorway, then wedged the door half-shut against
it. Sarnax came over, bringing rifles, hunting pistols, and
ammunition.
“What’s the situation, up there?” Verkan Vall asked him. “What force
have they, and why did they turn against us?”
“Lord Virzal!” Dirzed objected, scandalized. “You have no right to ask
Sarnax to betray confidences!”
Sarnax spat against the door. “In the face of Jirzyn of Starpha!” he
said. “And in the face of his _zortan_ mother, and of his father,
whoever he was! Dirzed, do not talk foolishly; one does not speak of
betraying betrayers.” He turned to Verkan Vall. “They have three
menservants of the family of Starpha; your Assassin, Olirzon,
discarnated the other three. There is one of Prince Jirzyn’s poor
relations, named Girzad. There are three other men, Volitionalist
precinct workers, who came with Girzad, and four Assassins, the three
who were here, and one who came with Girzad. Eleven, against the three
of us.”
“The four of us, Sarnax,” Dalla corrected. She had buckled on a
hunting pistol, and had a light deer rifle under her arm.
Something moved at the bottom of the descent tube. Verkan Vall gave it
a short burst, though it was probably only a dummy, dropped to draw
fire.
“The four of us, Lady Dallona,” Sarnax agreed. “As to your other
Assassin, the one who stayed in the airboat, I don’t know how he
fared. You see, about twenty minutes ago, this Girzad arrived in an
airboat, with an Assassin and these three Volitionalist workers.
Erarno and I were at the top of the dome when he came in. He told us
that he had orders from Prince Jirzyn to discarnate the Lady Dallona
and Dirzed at once. Tarnod, the gamekeeper”—Sarnax spat ceremoniously
against the door again—“told him you were here, and that Marnik was
one of your men. He was going to shoot Marnik at once, but Erarno and
I and his Assassin stopped him. We warned Marnik about the change in
the situation, according to the code, expecting Marnik to go down here
and join you. Instead, he lifted the airboat, zoomed over Girzad’s
boat, and let go a rocket blast, setting Girzad’s boat on fire. Well,
that was a hostile act, so we all fired after him. We must have hit
something, because the boat went down, trailing smoke, about ten miles
away. Girzad got another airboat out of the hangar and he and his
Assassin started after your man. About that time, your Assassin,
Olirzon—happy reincarnation to him—came up, and the Starpha servants
fired at him, and he fired back and discarnated two of them, and then
jumped down the descent tube. One of the servants jumped after him; I
found his body at the bottom when I came down to warn you formally.
You know what happened after that.”
“But why did Prince Jirzyn order our discarnation?” Dalla wanted to
know. “Was it to blame the Statisticalists with it?”
Sarnax, about to answer, broke off suddenly and began firing at the
opening of the ascent tube with a hunting pistol.
“I got him,” he said, in a pleased tone. “That was Erarno; he was
always playing tricks with the tubes, climbing down against negative
gravity and up against positive gravity. His body will float up to the
top—Why, Lady Dallona, that was only part of it. You didn’t hear
about the big scandal, on the newscast, then?”
“We didn’t have it on. What scandal?”
Sarnax laughed. “Oh, the very father and family-head of all scandals!
You ought to know about it, because you started it; that’s why Prince
Jirzyn wants you out of the body—You devised a process by which
people could give themselves memory-recalls of previous
reincarnations, didn’t you? And distributed apparatus to do it with?
And gave one set to young Tarnov, the son of Lord Tirzov of Fastor?”
Dalla nodded. Sarnax continued:
“Well, last evening, Tarnov of Fastor used his recall outfit, and what
do you think? It seems that thirty years ago, in his last
reincarnation, he was Jirzid of Starpha, Jirzyn’s older brother.
Jirzid was betrothed to the Lady Annitra of Zabna. Well, his younger
brother was carrying on a clandestine affair with the Lady Annitra,
and he also wanted the title of Prince and family-head of Starpha. So
he bribed this fellow Tarnod, whom I had the pleasure of discarnating,
and who was an underservant here at the hunting lodge. Between them,
they shot Jirzid during a boar hunt. An accident, of course. So Jirzyn
married the Lady Annitra, and when old Prince Jarnid, his father,
discarnated a year later, he succeeded to the title. And immediately,
Tarnod was made head gamekeeper here.”
“What did I tell you, Lord Virzal? I knew that son of a _zortan_ had
something on Jirzyn of Starpha!” Dirzed exclaimed. “A nice family,
this of Starpha!”
“Well, that’s not the end of it,” Sarnax continued. “This morning,
Tarnov of Fastor, late Jirzid of Starpha, went before the High Court
of Estates and entered suit to change his name to Jirzid of Starpha
and laid claim to the title of Starpha family-head. The case has just
been entered, so there’s been no hearing, but there’s the blazes of an
argument among all the nobles about it—some are claiming that the
individuality doesn’t change from one reincarnation to the next, and
others claiming that property and titles should pass along the line of
physical descent, no matter what individuality has reincarnated into
what body. They’re the ones who want the Lady Dallona discarnated and
her discoveries suppressed. And there’s talk about revising the entire
system of estate-ownership and estate-inheritance. Oh, it’s an utter
obscenity of a business!”
“This,” Verkan Vall told Dalla, “is something we will not emphasize
when we get home.” That was as close as he dared come to it, but she
caught his meaning. The working of major changes in out-time social
structures was not viewed with approval by the Paratime Commission on
the First Level. “_If_ we get home,” he added. Then an idea occurred
to him.
“Dirzed, Sarnax; this place must have been used by the leaders of the
Volitionalists for top-level conferences. Is there a secret passage
anywhere?”
Sarnax shook his head. “Not from here. There is one, on the floor
above, but they control it. And even if there were one down here, they
would be guarding the outlet.”
“That’s what I was counting on. I’d hoped to simulate an escape that
way, and then make a rush up the regular tubes.” Verkan Vall shrugged.
“I suppose Marnik’s our only chance. I hope he got away safely.”
“He was going for help? I was surprised that an Assassin would desert
his client; I should have thought of that,” Sarnax said. “Well, even
if he got down carnate, and if Girzad didn’t catch him, he’d still be
afoot ten miles from the nearest city unit. That gives us a little
chance—about one in a thousand.”
“Is there any way they can get at us, except by those tubes?” Dalla
asked.
“They could cut a hole in the floor, or burn one through,” Sarnax
replied. “They have plenty of thermite. They could detonate a charge
of explosives over our heads, or clear out of the dome and drop one
down the well. They could use lethal gas or radio-dust, but their
Assassins wouldn’t permit such illegal methods. Or they could shoot
sleep-gas down at us, and then come down and cut our throats at their
leisure.”
“We’ll have to get out of this room, then,” Verkan Vall decided. “They
know we’ve barricaded ourselves in here; this is where they’ll
attack. So we’ll patrol the perimeter of the well; we’ll be out of
danger from above if we keep close to the wall. And we’ll inspect all
the rooms on this floor for evidence of cutting through from above.”
Sarnax nodded. “That’s sense, Lord Virzal. How about the lifter
tubes?”
“We’ll have to barricade them. Sarnax, you and Dirzed know the layout
of this place better than the Lady Dallona or I; suppose you two check
the rooms, while we cover the tubes and the well,” Verkan Vall
directed. “Come on, now.”
* * * * *
They pushed the door wide-open and went out past the cabinet. Hugging
the wall, they began a slow circuit of the well, Verkan Vall in the
lead with the submachine-gun, then Sarnax and Dirzed, the former with
a heavy boar-rifle and the latter with a hunting pistol in each hand,
and Hadron Dalla brought up in the rear with her rifle. It was she who
noticed a movement along the rim of the balcony above and snapped a
shot at it; there was a crash above, and a shower of glass and plastic
and metal fragments rattled on the pavement of the court. Somebody had
been trying to lower a scanner or a visiplate-pickup, or something of
the sort; the exact nature of the instrument was not evident from the
wreckage Dalla’s bullet had made of it.
The rooms Dirzed and Sarnax entered were all quiet; nobody seemed to
be attempting to cut through the ceiling, fifteen feet above. They
dragged furniture from a couple of rooms, blocking the openings of the
lifter tubes, and continued around the well until they had reached the
gun room again.
Dirzed suggested that they move some of the weapons and ammunition
stored there to Prince Jirzyn’s private apartment, halfway around to
the lifter tubes, so that another place of refuge would be stocked
with munitions in event of their being driven from the gun room.
Leaving him on guard outside, Verkan Vall, Dalla and Sarnax entered
the gun room and began gathering weapons and boxes of ammunition.
Dalla finished packing her game bag with the recorded data and notes
of her experiments. Verkan Vall selected four more of the heavy
hunting pistols, more accurate than his shoulder-holster weapon or the
dead Olirzon’s belt arm, and capable of either full or semi-automatic
fire. Sarnax chose a couple more boar rifles. Dalla slung her bag of
recorded notes, and another bag of ammunition, and secured another
deer rifle. They carried this accumulation of munitions to the private
apartments of Prince Jirzyn, dumping everything in the middle of the
drawing room, except the bag of notes, from which Dalla refused to
separate herself.
“Maybe we’d better put some stuff over in one of the rooms on the
other side of the well,” Dirzed suggested. “They haven’t really begun
to come after us; when they do, we’ll probably be attacked from two
or three directions at once.”