HARM (5 page)

Fremant sat up, dazed. “I was having a nightmare.”

“Have a quiet nightmare next time.” Tunderkin settled himself down for more sleep. Fremant remained awake, feeling chilled to his very core.

He sat up, clutching his knees. His past was lost to him, his future problematic.

To assassinate the leader, Astaroth, would not be overwhelmingly difficult. However, when he plunged in the dagger, the other three guards would, without a doubt, set on him. The question he asked himself was: Could he persuade the other guards that killing the All-Powerful was a good thing? They might have no liking for Astaroth, but he provided their livelihood. Two of them, not young Tunderkin, but Imascalte and Cavertal, were married with children.

He spoke to them in cautious terms. Tunderkin once ventured the remark that Astaroth had mistreated his woman, Aster. The other guards had merely frowned.

The days went by and he did nothing. When Aster was near, she simply averted her gaze from him. As Fremant got to understand the workings of the Center better, he saw that there were plenty of potential contenders for the leadership, were Astaroth to die: two men in particular, Desnaith and Safelkty, competitors and rivals; Desnaith all outward charm, Safelkty heavy and moody, a promoter of science.

The question arose in Fremant’s mind: Would the community be any happier under one of these men, supposing Astaroth were dead? And supposing they, too, were killed—there would be others, just as avid for power. Including Habander. And so the Clandestines’ assassination plan began to appear to him too simplistic.

There was always an inherent threat in all power being in the hands of one man—any man.

While Fremant did nothing but his duties, while he mulled over these problems, a note was handed to him. It read only, “Strike within ten days, or we strike you. C.”

The Clandestines were growing impatient. He tried to tell himself that they were not contenders. He was safe while he remained in the Center.

A
STIR OF EXCITEMENT
ran through the Center one day. First, Astaroth appeared in a night-black cloak, a band of followers behind him, similarly dressed. A military-type band practiced in the courtyard. Fish and a dozen local dacoims were brought in to be baked over glowing embers. A reception was in preparation. Guards were given extra duties.

Late in the afternoon, a posse of men riding the local variety of horse appeared from the direction of the hills, to be greeted by fanfares. A crowd had gathered, with many women, hooded and veiled, among them. They ran to greet the riders, their pale hands upraised.

The riders brought with them a wheeled cage. They stopped outside the Center, to be greeted formally by Astaroth, flanked by his guards, including Fremant.

Astaroth spoke. The crowd fell silent. He praised the returning expedition. The leader of the expedition, a tall, dignified man by the name of Essanits, with white stubble patching his jawline, then bowed to Astaroth. With a nod of permission from the All-Powerful, he addressed the crowd.

“We are glad to return to Stygia City. We come bringing victory with us. Ours has been a bloody task. I speak for most of my men when I say we carried out our duties with heavy hearts—the task of killing off our enemies, the Dogovers, or Doglovers as we used to know them. We slaughtered them when and where we tracked them down. I have to tell you that not one Dogover now remains alive on the face of Stygia.”

At this announcement, cheers rang out from the crowd.

Essanits, with a hint of irony in his voice, continued: “So you can now sleep easy in your beds. For us, in some cases we now have to endure a time of regretting, of penitence, because mass slaughter, even of aliens, is never pleasant. It goes against the God-given human conscience, the commandment to preserve life. While we killed off all the dogs we could find, we have brought back some prisoners—five of the Dogover tribe for you to see. Bromheed, bring the prisoners out for inspection.”

As ordered, the warrior called Bromheed opened up the door of the wheeled cage. Using a stick, he made the five prisoners emerge from the cage into the square. They stood in a forlorn group, none higher than a ten-year-old human child. They had milky-white faces and hair of the same color. Fremant studied them with interest. Poor little creatures, he thought. Their bodies were entirely cloaked in a sort of furry material, down to the ankles. Their feet were bare.

They stood motionless before the crowd, their heads lowered.

The onlookers muttered uneasily to one another. Then, recognizing the helplessness of those small folk they had decided were their enemies, they began to laugh—to laugh scornfully, Fremant thought as he listened, not only at the Dogovers but at their own fears.

This cruel noise affected the prisoners. They turned to one another, forming a small ring, linking arms over each other’s shoulders, putting their heads together.

Essanits swore a holy oath and ran to break up the ring. But too late. The prisoners collapsed, slowly, to sprawl in an entangled mass at Essanits’s feet.

Essanits fell to his knees and pulled one of the childlike folk to him. Its head lolled foolishly on its shoulders. Like the others, it was dead.

He laid the corpse gently down before turning to address Astaroth and the watching crowd. “Oh, sadness! We have witnessed this strange occurrence before. These little people, rather than bear disgrace, can will themselves to die. It is an uncanny, alien talent which we humans do not possess.

“I deeply regret my part in this…in all this…”

Tears of compassion glittered in his eyes as he spoke.

“Be a man, Essanits, damn you!” exclaimed the All-Powerful. “Whatever the cause, these weaklings committed suicide. Did not these feeble little creatures deserve to die? We would have killed them anyway.” He turned on his heel and strode back into the Center, closely followed by his guards. Meanwhile, the crowd had fallen silent. Conditions on Stygia were such that many had ended their own lives.

The scene had made a deep impression on many, not least on Fremant. The people assembled in the square drifted away, in silence or muttering uneasily to one another.

A scientific man, by name Tolsteem, one of Astaroth’s few researchers, stopped Essanits in the hall.

“Excuse me, sir, I heard you refer to willed death as uncanny. That is not necessarily the case. In the human frame, the constant beating of the heart is part of our autonomic nervous system. I surmise that in the case of the Dogovers, so called, their hearts are controlled by parasympathetic nerves which can slow the heart so severely it can cause death. Inhibition of the heart is known in humans and—”

“What does all this nonsense mean?” Essanits demanded. “They died, didn’t they?”

“You miss my point, sir, if you will excuse me. If the heart is surrounded by parasympathetic vagus nerves, then it can be controlled on occasions—stopped, in fact. It’s not uncanny, but a simple biological fact. The little Dogovers are products of an evolution which differs from ours.”

“You talk unholy rubbish,” said Essanits sternly. “Out of my way, if you please.”

T
O WILL YOURSELF TO DEATH…
The prisoner lay sprawled on the floor of a room, the dimensions of which he did not know. To will yourself to death. He strained every nerve, yet could not die. His heart functioned as part of his autonomic nervous system.

A sensation of burning numbness penetrated his entire body. He could think only of how good it would be to commit suicide simply by willpower, as the Dogovers did: their hearts must be, much like human breathing, part of a semiautonomic nervous system. Tolsteem had understood.

A bowl of soup was passed through the door flap. The prisoner’s mouth was dry. He needed the liquid but could not order his limbs to move, to drag himself across the floor to the bowl.

Fading in and out of consciousness, he kept imagining he was drinking from the bowl. Then, rousing, he tasted only dust on a swollen tongue.

He swore to himself that in that other world he would not be a victim. That he swore, and swore again, even as they came and hauled him back for a further session of interrogation.

His interrogator this time was a small, weasel-faced man. Under a sharp little nose grew the bristles of a meager ginger mustache, much as a thistle grows in the shade of a rocky outcrop. His weak gray eyes were supplemented by a pair of metal-rimmed spectacles.

His opening statement, made in a thin voice, was not encouraging. “Many of your bastarding friends and conspirators have passed through our hands. Few are now alive. What precisely are your claims to be English?”

The prisoner said that his ID card gave his nationality as English.

“And your father’s nationality?”

“He was born in Uganda. But I was born in England, in Ealing.”

The little mustache twitched. “Your father was a black.”

“No.”

“Liar! Ugandans are black.”

“We came from Hyderabad. We were not Ugandans, we are not blacks.”

“What have you got against blacks?”

“We were immigrants.”

“You’re still a bastarding immigrant. You take advantage. You seek to undermine our culture. You lie, you cheat, you blow things up.”

“Not me.” A guard hit him in the stomach. He doubled up, gasping in pain.

“You blow things up, you shit! You’re a fucking Muslim!”

“Please
—please—
let me explain…” He was gasping, hardly able to speak. “I do admire your culture, your freedom of speech as it used to be, and above all—”

“You liar! You published a book advocating the assassination of the prime minister.”

Wearily, he wondered what had made this little man into the turd he was. He could hardly speak. He gasped that he had never advocated any such thing. Both guards began to beat him.

“You published a bastarding book about assassinating the prime minister. Do you deny that, you bastard?” Spit issued with the words. The voice was growing shriller.

“I do deny it. Please, please—it was just one silly sentence, a joke…”

The sharp little face darted forward. “You think that killing the PM is a bastarding joke? We’ll show you what a bastarding joke is!”

Again the fists fell upon him, on his face, on other vulnerable areas. He was on the edge of a dark cliff. He fell over.

T
HE MATRIX OF SPACE
was a howling wilderness of elementary particles. It was a fast-moving stew, a prototemporal storm of the lethally tiny. Light permeated it without time or direction: light simply was, in the darkness. This was where God would have lived—in a creative fury, spread like weed over a pond across the universe—had he existed.

For those with eyes that saw all over the electromagnetic spectrum, there would be beauty here. But for those who traveled on the great ship, far from their native habitat, merely as molecular components of the LPR, many things withered: not vocabulary alone.

The dreamself traveled through this chaos harmed, vindictive, destined for the alien planet.

T
HE INTERSTELLAR SHIP
had been brought down—had crash-landed—outside what grew to be Stygia City, where it now stood as a memorial to the unique journey. Because there was more oxygen in the atmosphere than had been the case back on Earth, many parts of the ship were rusting. Nevertheless, work went on in the interior; this was the one place where workshops were set up and still functioning.

Fremant and the other guards accompanied Astaroth on a visit to the ship for one of his irregular inspections. On these occasions, Astaroth acted against his ascetic beliefs. He favored the scientists working here, and brought them a cartload of vegetables, of rydalls, hodgerks, jhamies, and the peppy dirdist, together with such fruits as busk and clammerdumm. Also meat: dacoims, jackrat, and portleg in particular.

The scientists were engaged in Operation Cereb, developing a mind-evaluator. The first phases of this complex scanning device had been researched during the final years of the ship’s journey, in an effort to understand what precisely had gone wrong mentally with those who had lapsed into insanity. It was only here, in the bowels of the old ship, the
New Worlds,
that computers were allowed.

The project appeared to be going well, although never speedily enough for the great Astaroth. The scientists showed him, cringingly, the model-in-progress they had rigged up for the occasion.

After the inspection, a feast was held for the researchers on the M-E, along with their families and those who worked for them. A spirit of jollity prevailed. Astaroth, with Aster close at hand, and his Waabee clan stood to one side, looking on haughtily with barely disguised contempt for human weakness and the pleasures of the flesh.

A middle-aged man, a cleaner, came up with a plate of the golden busk and offered it with smiles to the leader.

“Go away,” said Astaroth. “Give it to the peasants. I do not eat.”

Sports were held. The highlight was billed as the Kontest. In a small rectangular arena two piles of small stones were arranged, no stone bigger than fifty millimeters in diameter. One pile was painted red, one blue. These were the weapons of the two contestants.