Silence is Deadly (3 page)

“Please do. Is there any further business?”

Rok Wllon snapped to alertness and leaned forward. He said, in a soft voice, “I desire your counsel.”

Darzek turned instinctively to FIVE, the council’s medical authority. She was gazing at the Eighth Councilor in consternation. Never in Darzek’s recollection had Rok Wllon asked advice from anyone except when he was transparently attempting to manipulate it to some advantage.

“It concerns a poem,” Rok Wllon continued apologetically. “I have translated it, and I will render it to you as a song—to capture the spirit of the original.”

Now all of the councilors were staring at him. FIVE was completely engrossed. E-Wusk was flabbergasted enough to rise up out of his tangle of limbs and gape. SIX absently discarded her light shield and gazed at the Eighth Councilor with her three enlarged, tearing eyes. The others, including Darzek, were simply speechless.

Rok Wllon, still acting apologetic, looked about the table as though he expected someone to stop him. When no one did, he began to sing.

Death’s heavy shadow

unseen, unfelt, unsmelled

ripples no awareness

heeds no sanctuary.

It enters and touches

and departs

leaving no mark of passage

except Death.

His voice was not unpleasant, Darzek thought; but the grunted inflections and breathy melismas made the performance one that would have held more appeal for masochists than music lovers.

The other councilors remained speechless. There was in fact nothing that could be said, but as First Councilor Darzek was required to say something. After a pause, he asked, “Is it a song from your world?”

“It is not a song,” Rok Wllon said irritably. “I told you I had translated it and would render it as a song, but it is a poem.”

“From your world?” Darzek persisted.

“No. From the world of Kamm. The Silent Planet.”

Darzek had never heard of it. “What’s silent about it?” he asked.

Rok Wllon told them. Then he pronounced the phrase again, the Silent Planet, and the touch of horror in his voice suggested that there must be something uncanny about a world where no one, where no thing, could hear.

FIVE, with her instant interest in anything with medical implications, wanted to know more. Medical literature, she said, was unaware of the existence of a world where no life form had developed a sense of hearing.

“But they did develop senses of hearing,” Rok Wllon said testily. “And then they lost them.”

FIVE was incredulous. “You mean all the life forms on the planet had senses of hearing that disappeared through atrophy? That’s impossible!”

Rok Wllon was becoming increasingly agitated. Abruptly he got to his feet. “I only know what a scientist from my department told me. Perhaps he was—if you’ll excuse me. There is no important business left to consider, is there? I have many—my own work, you know, those of you who have no administrative responsibilities can’t be aware of how much—”

He turned uncertainly and walked away.

That, also, was unheard of.

There was a shuffle of feet, a twisting of torsos, a purring of motors as the councilors turned themselves or their chairs to look after him. E-Wusk struggled to an upright position and then sank back in astonishment. Darzek’s eyes were on FIVE, who was watching the departing councilor with obvious concern.

FIVE said, “I’ll call on him later today.”

“And I’ll see him tomorrow,” Darzek said. He turned to the others. “At your conveniencies, I want each of you to pay him a courtesy call before you leave Primores.”

“But why?” THREE demanded. “If the Eighth Councilor has lost his mental balance, Supreme should be informed. But surely there is no need for we seven to inconvenience ourselves.”

Darzek silenced a babble of talk with a wave of his hand. “The Eighth Councilor has not lost his mental balance,” he said. “We all know how he persists in seeing dangers where there are none, but we also know that he faces any danger with gusto.”

“That is true,” FIVE agreed.

“So I think all of us should call on him,” Darzek went on. “Try to learn what is bothering him and let me know what you find out. As you are aware, I have shared many real dangers with the Eighth Councilor. This is the only time I have ever seen him frightened.”

* * * *

FIVE reported to Darzek later that day. She had visited Rok Wllon and asked if he had more poetry from the world of Kamm. He had promised to send her some. He seemed as rational and as stodgy as ever—which meant that he had returned to normal.

Darzek thanked her.

He went himself the following morning, but the Eighth Councilor was not at home. He returned that afternoon, and Rok Wllon received him in the vast study that ornamented his official councilor’s residence.

In response to Darzek’s questions, he activated a projection that filled the room: a shallow slice of the galaxy reproduced three dimensionally just above their heads. Darzek consulted the key and orientated himself; and then Rok Wllon touched a control and set one of the suns flashing on and off: Gwanor, whose only habitable planet was named Kamm.

“What’s the problem with Kamm?” Darzek wanted to know.

“There’s a Death Religion,” Rok Wllon whispered.

“Surely there’s nothing unique about that,” Darzek said.

Rok Wllon hesitated. He whispered again. “I can’t say more than that. Not yet. Not here.”

Darzek studied him thoughtfully. This was the same frightened Rok Wllon he had seen at the council meeting. “When can you say more?” Darzek asked. “And where?”

“Perhaps tomorrow.” Rok Wllon leaped to his feet and paced the floor excitedly, disrupting the pinpricks of light that wheeled about the room’s axis. “Yes. Tomorrow would be better.”

The following morning, when Darzek called again, Rok Wllon was not at home. Darzek went at once to the Department of Uncertified Worlds.

This was the anonymous service of the Galactic Synthesis. It attracted people with the peculiar temperament that was especially suited for world watching—a turn of mind and personality that enabled them to fit into an alien society and play a role there through their entire lives and simply observe.

The Uncertified Worlds were those planets that were, for one or more of a multitude of reasons, ineligible to join the Galactic Synthesis. Requirements for membership were based more upon the character of a world’s inhabitants than upon their achievements, and the Synthesis demonstrated no official interest in whether any world attained membership or not. Non-member worlds were ignored unless their activities posed a threat to Synthesis members or seemed likely to.

As Director of the Department of Uncertified Worlds, Rok Wllon placed observation teams on such planets wherever or whenever he thought they were needed. These teams supplied voluminous and continuing reports on the worlds, and if through some evolutionary coincidence a world achieved eligibility by way of its own self-improvement, the department recommended it for membership. Rok Wllon performed a highly responsible and thankless job, and he did it superbly. For all of his petty idiosyncrasies, he was the government’s best top level administrator.

Rok Wllon’s young administrative assistant, a compatriot of his named Kom Rmmon, politely expressed his regrets to Darzek. The director had left that morning with a team of administrators for the world of Slonfus to attend a conference about something or other.

That seemed perfectly normal. The Director of Uncertified Worlds spent more than half of his time traveling.

But he did not normally leave for that kind of conference unexpectedly—especially when he had an appointment with the First Councilor. Darzek’s uneasiness remained, but for the present there was nothing that he could do. He asked to be notified the moment the director returned; but Rok Wllon’s trip proved to be an extended one, and Darzek had his own work to do, and eventually his puzzlement over the Eighth Councilor’s conduct—and Kamm, the Silent Planet—faded.

* * * *

Periodically Supreme divested its computer self of a list of worlds under the heading, “Potential Trouble Sources.” The projected difficulties were sometimes monumental and sometimes unbelievably trivial, and the word
potential
not infrequently meant, as Darzek had discovered in the past, that even a computer’s imagination could be overly active.

But Darzek felt obliged to investigate each world named. In most instances the action needed was obvious and easily taken: to avert a medical crisis due to inept public health measures; to prevent a looming economic catastrophe caused by a failing source of critical metals; to defuse an interworld dispute with timely mediation. Darzek’s practice was to first skim through the columns, picking out those worlds he was familiar with.

On this particular list, his rapid skimming was brought to an abrupt halt by one word: Kamm.

CHAPTER 3

Darzek immediately asked Supreme for a posting on its councilors. Supreme did not know where Rok Wllon was.

Neither did the Department of Uncertified Worlds. The director was traveling, Kom Rmmon informed Darzek politely. Doubtless he would soon supply the department with a new itinerary.

Kom Rmmon had been trained superbly. He radiated efficiency and intelligence; but beneath the imposing veneer of those qualities, it seemed to Darzek that the youngster was as badly frightened as Rok Wllon had been.

As First Councilor, Darzek possessed an impressive portfolio of emergency powers. Although he disciplined himself to use them only in genuine crises, and as a last resort, he had little difficulty in persuading himself that the disappearance of a member of the Council of Supreme had to be investigated at once, with every means available to him.

Darzek went directly to the Eighth Councilor’s official residence and had himself admitted by Supreme. He sat down at the communications panel in Rok Wllon’s study and asked Supreme to show him, one at a time, the last things the Eighth Councilor had viewed before his departure.

A projection filled the room just above Darzek’s head—an enlarged portion of the same shallow slice of the galaxy that Rok Wllon had displayed to him. Darzek picked out the sun Gwanor and its one habitable planet, Kamm; but the pinpoints of light told him nothing.

The star projection faded, and the desk screen came to life. The beautifully drawn calligraphy shown there was Rok Wllon’s own angular script. Darzek moved over to the desk and pondered the three poems that filled the screen.

The night was cloudless

and shimmering with moon shadows

I reached for its beauty

and Death’s talons clutched my hand.

A keeper of secrets

knows my death date

She sculpts my future

with sinewy hands

intertwining happiness and longevity

but while she speaks

the whip is pointed

and I feel unseen vibrations.

Vibrant Death

unwanted

uninvited

scrupulously keeps the appointment

that no one made.

The screen went blank. Darzek searched the residence thoroughly, but he found no clues—not even the evidence of a hasty departure.

He returned to his own residence and filed an official request. A few minutes later he had a visitor: Kom Rmmon, now flustered with excitement because he had just received a direct command from Supreme. To a governmental bureaucrat on Primores, this was the equivalent of a message from God. He faced Darzek with consternation, and his naturally bluish complexion had taken on a purplish tint.

Darzek got him seated. He said sternly, “It is the command of Supreme and of Supreme’s First Councilor, myself, that you answer. Where is the director of your department?”

Kom Rmmon gazed at Darzek woodenly.

“Answer! You cannot refuse a command from Supreme and from Supreme’s First Councilor. Where is the director?”

“Not here,” Kom Rmmon muttered.

“We know that he is not here. Where is he?”