The Ladder in the Sky (8 page)

XIV

He found Clary that evening in the leisure hall, the huge domed structure on the edge of the dwelling area where most of the staff passed part of their free time. Its mechanism allowed it to serve many purposes; tonight it was a place of pale blue and red mists, with half-glimpsed panoramas of landscapes on other worlds showing occasionally in its walls and small temporary rooms set off at random on its vast floor for music, dancing, drinking and conversation.

Some time, Kazan thought, he must find out about the way it worked.

The mists were intangible—tricks played with light—and upset perspective in curious ways. Some of the young workers were playing hide-and-go-seek with screams of laughter, taking advantage of the visual effects which could make another person seem at one moment close at hand, the next infinitely far away.

Clary sat by herself, despondent, in a place where the mist was so strongly distorting that even people sitting next to one another, if they relied on their eyes, felt that they were swinging through vast unrelated orbits. Kazan loomed up to her; she caught sight of his face, saw it change as with recognition, and in the next instant had to wonder whether she had imagined it, for he seemed unreachably distant. Out of wisps of pale blue mist his hand shot up to touch her, its speed and trajectory magnified past possibility by the same wrong-end-of-telesceope effect which made him appear remote.

Then he was standing before her, and with the additional information from the arm his hand was touching she knew he was really there. In a dull voice she greeted him.

“Here!” he said smiling, his head receding, his legs becoming treetop-tall, and all being twisted at once as he made to turn and sit beside her while taking a piece of paper from his front pocket. When he held the paper out to her the words twisted and writhed unreadably.

“What do you think of that?” he said after a pause.

“I can’t read it,” she said.

“Try again.”

She frowned and forced her eyes to follow the wavering of the words; then she caught a clear glimpse of what it said, all the way down to the signature of Snutch at the bottom, and felt her heart turn over.

“Glad?” Kazan said. She considered that for a moment, and finally sighed and shrugged.

She said, “You’re very clever indeed, Kazan. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Looming, his face showed puzzlement.

“For thinking you didn’t want that, I guess. I might have known that if you did you’d fix it when the time was right.” She found it an effort to speak to him; it was easier if she shut her eyes and abolished the swinging cycle of looming up and receding which dizzied her. The piece of paper was lifted gently from between her fingers, and she felt his hand brush her skin.

Convulsively, the instant following, she clasped at his wrist and held it tight, feeling by chance the pulse under her fingertips. She said, “Kazan, it’s—well, it seems like a long time. I keep wanting to ask you as though you’d been off on a long trip—how are you, what’s happened to you?”

She opened her eyes briefly, but he seemed terribly far away.

“I know,” he said.

“Are you frightened any more?” That wasn’t how she had meant to say it, but it was the thing she needed most to know.

After a small eternity he answered, “Yes. More than ever. But I don’t think I would tell anyone else.”

“The same thing?”

“The same thing? Oh, yes.”

She turned to look at him, trying to fix him steady with her gaze by a sheer act of will. “But why, Kazan? I keep hearing that everything is wonderful for you, whatever you do turns to gold. Isn’t that true?”

“I guess. But that’s half the trouble, you see.” He had his own eyes focused somewhere beyond her, looking at space. “Do you remember in the Dyasthala how if the day was gray and misty the ugliest things were veiled? Then, when the sun came out, and everything was harshly lit, you couldn’t pretend any more. All the dirt showed for what it was. All the sick and twisted people could be seen. In my mind the sun has come out, Clary. I can’t hide things from myself any more.”

“What could you need to hide?” she demanded.

“I was thinking—and hoping—that I would come to terms with my memory. I hoped that as I learned more about myself and the way the mind works I would find that what troubled me was an illusion. Instead, it’s become clearer, more solid, like a black rock. I did rescue Luth. Something that was not Kazan gave Kazan miraculous powers for a few short hours, and then—well, it named its price.”

“But what has it cost you?” Clary cried. “When everyone’s talking about how they envy you! Is there any single drawback from it—if it’s true?”

“It makes me suffer,” Kazan said after a pause.

“How, for the love of life?”

“This way.” Kazan deliberated for a moment, as though lining up his words precisely. “The Kazan that was could have disregarded it. He could have fooled himself into thinking it really was an illusion, and if he could not have forgotten it he could at least have learned to live with it.”

There was something almost eerie about the way he spoke of his former self in the third person, as though about someone altogether different. Clary shivered.

“But the Kazan that is,” he went on, “can’t fool himself. As my insight into my thinking grows clearer, I realize more and more that I’m not as I used to be. There is something in me which is different. True enough, I’ve learned how to absorb facts spongewise; my mind is keener—but for that very same reason the pain of knowing I am not
I
is keener too.”

He broke off. While she was still hunting for a way to answer him, a change came over him. He gave a quick bitter laugh and shook his head.

“Still, I won’t be past hope till the year and a day is up. A Vashti year? A Berak year? Or the year of some other unimaginable planet where the black thing comes from? I wonder. And at least Snutch has done me a great favor.”

“That?” She gestured hopefully at the paper in his hand, and her own arm seemed to her to be swinging through an arc of many miles as the distorting mirage effect took hold of it.

“So long as I can find new things to distract me,” Kazan said, not appearing to notice, “it won’t be unendurable. He’s moving me to refinery work; I guess after that he can be persuaded to shift me again, and again, so I hope I won’t have time to think too much. I haven’t told anyone else about this, Clary. I’m too exposed.”

“I don’t understand,” she said in a dead voice.

“I can’t help myself now, I must do everything as well as I possibly can, and too many things I find I can do so well I terrify myself. So far I’ve been lucky. People have taken a reflected pride in it. But I could make one wrong step, and they’d be jealous. Some of them might remember what Hego said on the ship. And I could be destroyed.”

“Nonsense,” she said automatically.

“You know it’s not. If I frighten myself, how can I keep from frightening others?”

“You don’t frighten me,” Clary said. “I think you must be going through hell.”

“I know that,” Kazan replied. “I—you know something? I never thought I’d be so grateful just to have someone who was not afraid of me. I don’t like it! I
hate
it! And that’s another way I’ve changed—Kazan that was knew that Bryda was afraid of him, Hego was afraid of him, perhaps in the end even Yarco and Luth as well, and that made him proud. But now, to see the fear in Snutch’s eyes—that’s horrible.”

“Snutch?” she said.

At that moment there was a twisting of the mist and a sudden clear patch appeared. In the middle of it, only an arm’s reach away from where they were sitting, they saw two of the young people who were playing their seeking game among the mirages—a husky youth with a laughing face and a tawny-skinned girl with eyes like a startled deer. He had just caught her by the arm and was swinging her round to kiss her when the mist lifted. Together they turned, startled, on seeing Clary and Kazan, and were about to speak when a sort of intangible tunnel gathered about them and without moving they were whisked away into distant isolation.

“Yes,” Kazan said.

At first she thought it couldn’t be like that; then she began to learn how true Kazan’s gloomy analysis had been. As he was shifted like a chess piece across the board of the mining settlement, she saw the aura of disturbance follow him. This man—it equated to in words—this man is a strange phenomenon. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

The settlement was not small enough to be a microcosm of frictions, and it was organized on a highly efficient basis. But that organization depended on predictability; Kazan was a wild factor now. Not all his immediate superiors reacted to him as Rureth had done. Some shared Snutch’s emotional response, and tried to pin him down, but that was like trying to dam a river with spadefuls of soil; behind the obstacle the water still flowed, and sooner or later dug itself another channel.

Aside from Clary herself, there were very few people in the settlement who were at all close to Kazan. Rureth was one; he took a diffuse paternal interest in Kazan’s progress because he had been the first to diagnose his probable development. Another was Jeldine, the rather gloomy, withdrawn woman who acted as educational supervisor for the workers and incidentally as librarian; a spark caught from Kazan’s blazing need for knowledge started a fitful glare in her mind also, and she helped him in several small ways.

But it was on Clary that the burden mainly fell. She had not foreseen that it was going to be a burden; when she made the discovery, it was too late to do anything about it. Helpless, she was trailed along behind Kazan, fascinated by the firework sparkle of his mind, the paradoxical contrast between his much-envied gifts and the torturing pain of the self-knowledge they had brought him.

For days or weeks together he could lose himself, either in new work or a new problem of a philosophical kind; then the darkness would close again, and he would question her fiercely—sometimes all through one night—about the way she remembered her own past, about her reactions and attitudes which he needed to compare with his own.

It became still worse as the year and a day period which he so greatly feared drew to its close. Then the black devil in his past seemed to become more and more real to him; once he spent many horns trying to recreate from memory the face of the half-noticed conjurer, the black-clad man with the black skullcap who had been hired by Bryda. Also the various kinds of work to which he was successively transferred seemed to involve him less and less. His need to know narrowed down to a single focus, and when he was not consulting all the available literature he was sitting in isolated corners away from interruption, his eyes closed and sometimes with sweat on his face, as he struggled to bring up from memory the one thing from the short but crucial period of his life when he was involved with Bryda which remained unclear to him: the way in which he had molded air into solidity with a few passes of his hands.

“If I could only do it again, I’d know!” he would say to Clary.

To which she could only reply, “But since you can’t, why doesn’t that prove the contrary?”

He would shake his head.

“If it would make me do something extraordinary! So that I knew I was ‘serving’ it! But I can’t tell if I’m serving it, or if I’m being myself; I only know I’ve changed, and the uncertainly is intolerable!”

It was torment. Clary knew that merely from seeing the haunted expression in his eyes. But it was of such unimaginable subtlety that she could not reach out to him, there where it hurt him, and give him comfort. She wondered how long she could endure this, and what would happen to Kazan when the time finally ran out.

Wondering about what would happen to him was the worst of all.

XV

The equable climatic curve of Vashti’s long year dipped by degrees towards its winter. The morning of the day when Kazan was transferred yet again—to the outward shipping complex—was gray and overcast, with occasional spitting rain and a cool fitful wind. He was to work under Rureth again; the former manager of the shipping complex had worked out his contract, and Rureth had been transferred and upgraded about two months before.

Kazan walked slowly in the direction of his office. There was always a slight smell of sulfur in the air hereabouts, and the peculiar baked tang of red-hot metal cooling. This was the key point of all the mining settlement’s industry, lying between the refining complex and the spaceship landing ground. On one side metal came in, some piped as white-hot liquid, but mostly as a suspension of fine particles in a wet flurry, or dancing on a stream of air. The metal was sintered, or cast and stamped, and from it were formed the ribs and plates of the squat ships nicknamed ore tubs. The assembly line for these was the biggest single unit of the complex.

The normal output was a ship every four to six days, depending on whether it was to carry a cargo of crude metal, in which case it needed only to be approximately hull-tight and strong enough to stand the strain of lifting to orbit on its own, prefabricated power unit—or whether it was to carry semiconductor material, in which case it required somewhat more elaborate preparation. There were huge parabolic-roofed loading bays beyond the assembly shops, down which the ovoid bulk of the hull slid on rails; finally, complete with cargo and preprogramed electronic controls, it emerged into the open and was fired to space.

After that it ceased to concern the staff of the mining settlement; masterships came from Marduk, gathered together anything up to eight of the crude ore tubs, and flew them back to the parent world. While orbiting, the power units of the tubs stored solar energy; consequently the cost of shipment was comparatively small. It was a very ingenious system, and Kazan had made all the inquiries about it that he wanted to some time ago.

Because the slightest hitch in the shipping complex could make the operation of the entire mining settlement uneconomic, it was here that automation had progressed furthest. Kazan paused at a point from which he could look right down the loading bays into the assembly shop beyond, to watch for a moment as the current ship rode up the electric monopole rails for final inspection.

On rotating quadrants sonar probes and low-intensity radiation sources scanned the hull for flaws; when one was found, as now happened, a gentle alarm bell rang and a splash of paint was applied automatically to the weak seam. From galleries under the arching roof men rode down on jointed pillars; each was strapped to a chairlike cradle and wore an airmask and goggles of dark pressure-glass. With deft movements they touched their welders to the flaws and pressurized liquid metal sealed them up.

Looking carefully to one side of the brilliant beads of light from the welders, Kazan went forward. One of the men nearest him glanced up, blind for a moment because of his goggles, and then pushed the goggles aside.

It was a few seconds before Kazan recognized the upper part of the face so exposed, with the air mask still hiding the nose and mouth. It was Hego.

He had not seen Hego for a long time except from a distance; he did not know if this was because Hego still kept his superstitious fear of him, or whether he merely felt that he had made himself ridiculous by his behavior aboard the ship which had brought them. He would have thought the second the more likely—except that Hego hardly seemed intelligent enough to worry about fine points of embarrassment. Because he knew that among the other workers from Berak there was little trace remaining of their original fear. The passage of months, combined with the comparative security and freedom from worry which they now enjoyed, had dimmed their first startled reaction; moreover they had come into contact with people from other worlds whose skepticism about devils and men back from the dead had proved contagious.

Kazan gave a wary nod and would have passed by, but Hego, after a brief hesitation, jerked the controls of his cradle and swung through the air on the jointed pillar bearing it. He brought himself to a point directly in front of Kazan, and poised in the air where he could look down on him. With a jerky movement he dropped his air mask on his chest, then hung his welder on its hook beside the cradle he sat in.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said thickly.

“I work here,” Kazan said. “As of today.”

“So we heard,” Hego agreed. “And we decided we didn’t want you. Do you understand me?”

“I’ll take my instructions from Supervisor Rureth,” Kazan returned peaceably. “Not from you.”

“You talk big,” Hego said. He
was
afraid; it showed in the way he could not quite make his eyes stay still when he looked at Kazan. “I been wanting for a long time to find out if you really can’t be killed—understand me? So have a lot of others here in this shop. Maybe you want to find it out too. Okay! Come right in! You’ll get your chance—or you’ll turn around smart and go beg Snutch to shift you somewhere else.”

Beside them now the other workers were pulling back on their jointed pillars, and the hull was beginning to slide towards the loading bay. From up near the arching roof a voice boomed, immensely amplified.

“Hego! What are you playing at?”

They glanced up together and saw the tubby figure of Rureth on the under-roof gallery, a microphone on an extension arm held to his face. Hego spat sidelong.

“Come to give you your instructions!” he said. “Or to take some from you, maybe. We heard how you move in wherever you go and start pretending to run things. Well, we don’t want it here, get me? You sold out to a devil—it’s bad enough having you on the same planet, but by the wyrds we won’t have you under the same roof!”

“Oh, for the love of life!” Kazan said wearily, and made to walk by. With a quick twitch on the controls of his cradle, Hego was in front of him again. He put one hand to his welder and made to lift it from its hook.

“The devil pulled you out of the lake of monsters,” he said. “Want to see if he can pull you out from under me?”

He snatched the welder up and jammed the power-switch to maximum, slapping his goggles back over his eyes. Kazan had to cry out with the shock as “ the full power glare of the tool—almost as bright as the naked sun—seared into his eyes.

For a moment he thought Hego had gone totally insane, and was going to spear him with the welder’s arc; he could see nothing beyond the dazzling afterimage. Then he realized that it was only the afterimage now—the welder had been shut off—and out of the side of his eyes he could see what had saved him. Rureth had clambered into a vacant cradle and swung down from the gallery, just in time to break Hego’s power supply by opening the main switch mounted behind him where the welder lead was attached to the cradle.

The fire of fury in Rureth’s eyes was nearly as bright as the extinguished arc as he confronted Hego. His voice crackled with the same blistering anger.

“Maniac!” he barked. “Moron! Blockhead, clubfooted, ham-handed, blubber-lipped, superstitious
imbecile!
I’ve had enough of your lunatic gabble about devils! You’d have killed Kazan if I hadn’t cut the power in the nick of time—and that’s the finish as far as you’re concerned. I’m sick of you, and everyone on Vashti is sick of you. How are you, Kazan?” he added from the side of his mouth, not moving his eyes.

“Eyes are a bit sore,” Kazan said, breathing heavily. “I guess I have you to thank that I still have eyes at all.”

By now the completed hull had slid all the way into the loading bays, and beyond the inspection shop the ribs of the next in line could be seen waiting for the automatic transporters to fit the hull-plates. Some of the other workers who had swung down from the gallery at the same time as Hego had returned there, but two or three of them had seen Rureth come down and had waited to find out if there was trouble.

To them, Rureth now turned. Strapped in his cradle and with the power turned off where he could not get at it, Hego could only fume and snarl.

“Get this savage up on the gallery!” Rureth: ordered. “Manager Snutch is due here in a few minutes’ time. I’m going to have him put Hego in for psychiatric reorientation. If I hadn’t managed to cut his power he’d have binned this guy alive with his welder. Did you see it, you?”

He flung his arm out commandingly at the nearest of the other workers. Out of memory Kazan conjured the fact that he had seen this man before aboard Ogric’s ship. He had been one of the previous occupants of the cabin where Kazan was assigned, and had been among the first to join the rush to get out.

The man exchanged glances with his companions, and then shot a hating glare at Kazan. It lasted only a second; then he was smiling easily.

“Why, no, supervisor!” he said. “I didn’t see a thing. Nor did either of these others—
did you?
” he finished.

Together they shook their heads. For a moment Rureth was taken aback.

“Now see here, Dorsek!” he began.

The worker cut him short with a gesture of phony meekness. He said, “We had our dark goggles down, Supervisor!”

Rureth drew a deep breath, held it, let it out under control to calm himself. In a disgusted tone he said, “I get.
I
get. But you can see well enough now, and I’m ordering you to get Hego back on the gallery. Ride him up there with your own cradles, and anyone who turns the power back on for him goes under managerial detention and forfeits his contract. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear,” Dorsek said with irony, and waved to his companions to close in on Hego and pull his cradle back up to the gallery. The dead power-joints of the pillar on which it rode hissed and sucked complainingly.

“Climb on the back of my cradle,” Rureth said to Kazan when he was sure Dorsek was obeying him. “I’ll lift you up the top. Did Hego start it? I guess I’d better settle that before Snutch hears the facts.”

Awkwardly, having to move more by touch than by sight, Kazan clambered on the flat footrests behind Rureth’s cradle. He said, “He just told me that they—whoever that might be—didn’t want me under the same roof. Does he give you much trouble?”

“Pretty often,” Rureth said, activating his controls. The floor of the inspection shop fled dizzily away beneath them. “He’s so stupid he can barely count; welding is the most complicated job you can trust him with, and that’s three-quarters automatic. All he needs to know is which button to press on his welder, and the rest is done for him. There’s a sort of gang of them, though, with him and Dorsek at the head—guys from Berak who got the thin end of this prince’s revolution which I gather you were tied up in somehow.”

“Is that what’s behind it?” Kazan said. “Or do they believe what Hego says about devils?”

The cradle rocked and hovered as Rureth brought it tidily up to the edge of the gallery.

“Is anybody that stupid, to really believe in devils?” Rureth said.

There was a short pause. Then, sounding as though he was a long, long way away, Kazan said, “I guess some people must be. I have to.”

As he scrambled out of his seat, Rureth stared at Kazan.

“Are you as crazy as he is?” he demanded.

“Could be,” Kazan said. “The year and a day runs out on me any time now, so I’m just about due to find out.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kazan said. “Give me a hand onto the gallery, will you? I can still barely see.”

When Rureth seized him by the arm to guide him over the narrow gap between the cradle and the gallery, he was astonished to find that he was shaking violently.