The Warlock of Rhada (19 page)

Many of the paintings along the fifty-meter walls were of strange abstractions: patterns of light and color that seemed to suggest the shape of many things and yet could not be pinned down to represent anything familiar. Like many a barbarian before him, Glamiss felt curiously unsettled by these works. They created a disturbing craving for a sophistication he did not possess and he looked away from them to the end of the gallery, where Emeric sat gingerly on the edge of a chair--one of a half dozen forming a semicircle within a translucent shell shaped like half of a huge egg.

The Navigator was studying a narrow panel of toggles and broad, shallow buttons that glowed like jewels, lit from within by some mysterious source. As Glamiss approached him, he looked up, his face alight with excitement.

“Come look, Glamiss Warleader! I’ll show you wonders!”

Glamiss touched the smooth, milky substance of the half-egg curiously. Though he had seen very few artifacts made of plastics, he knew in a general way, what the material was. The men of the Empire had made use of it in many ways, and since it was almost indestructible, it had survived the Dark Age in many places. But here it was perfectly preserved, unstained and unmarked. Glamiss wondered how strong it really was. He was tempted to try his sword against it.

Emeric, he could see, was filled with a barely controlled enthusiasm for whatever it was he had found. There were times, Glamiss thought, when he envied the priest his ecclesiastical education. Whatever there was of science (forbidden word!) remaining in the Great Sky was centered in the teaching universities of the Navigators in the Algol system. But it was not Glamiss’s nature to allow another’s enthusiasm to control his own. “Peace, Nav,” he said. “First things first. Where is the Warlock?”

Emeric made an impatient gesture. “Asa found his rooms and has taken him there. At first the troopers balked at carrying the old man, but you know how Asa can persuade.”

“Better than most,” Glamiss said thoughtfully.

“Now, please, look at this. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Glamiss stepped into the shelter of the half-egg and sat down in one of the chairs beside the Navigator. The contours seemed to enfold him, accommodating themselves to his body. It startled him, but his face remained impassive. He removed his helmet and ran a hand over his rumpled hair. He felt suddenly very tired. He thought of the forces gathered outside the mountain against him. A thousand men or more. A starship. Priests who outranked his own young chaplain. And somehow he felt that he was being maneuvered,
manipulated.
He knew that the idea of revolt against his bond-lord Ulm had been in his mind for a long while. But was
this
the proper time to move? He didn’t know--he could not even be certain that the choice had been made in his own mind. It could have been made for him. He could be, he thought, as much captive of unknown forces as those shadowy warriors they had encountered in the marketplace of Trama--

“--that I should actually see something like this!” Emeric was saying excitedly. “I never would have believed it.”

“What is it?” Glamiss asked wearily. “What is this thing?”

“You haven’t been listening,” the Navigator said reproachfully.

“I’m sorry. Tell me about your wonders.”

“It’s a
computer
terminal. At least, I
think
it is. It’s not exactly like the--” He broke off, reluctant to speak of the machine in Algol. But, then, he thought, I am already damned if what I have agreed to do is displeasing to the Star. He said, “There is a device similar to this one in Algol. The Order uses it as--well, as an oracle of sorts. It answers questions, solves problems.”

Glamiss felt a stirring of interest. He knew that he should move along, inspect the guard at the tunnel mouth, see the foraging party of villagers off. There were many things that needed doing, but this room and what it might contain could be far more important. “A witch device? Built by the Adversaries?”

The Navigator shook his head impatiently, wishing that his Order’s prohibitions against scientific inquiry had not resulted in such widespread ignorance and superstition. “Built by men, Glamiss. Imperials.”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know,” the Navigator said. “No one does.”

Glamiss’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “It answers questions?”

“I think it does much more. But it does give answers--”

“To those who know how to ask, is that it?” Glamiss was studying the lightened panel before them. “You say there is a thing like this in the Cloister?”

“Something like it.”

“Did you ever speak to it?”

“I’m only a priest-Nav, a starship pilot. No one below the rank of Bishop ever got near the thing.”

“But you know the
theory
?”

“All Navigators do. It’s part of the third year’s teaching of the Way.”

“Then ask it how old it is,” Glamiss said.

The Rhadan flexed his fingers and looked hard at the panel. Below the lighted buttons was a keyboard. The symbols were Imperial Anglic--the holy language. If God in the Star had not wanted a Navigator to deal with this device, surely he would not have written the keyboard in the holy script?

He pressed the query key.

Nothing happened.

“What’s the matter?” Glamiss asked.

Emeric shook his head impatiently. “Let me think.” He studied the panel again, more carefully.
At
the head of the column of keys were two oddly shaped rocker switches. They were marked
Standby
and
Activate.
The standby rocker was depressed. He touched the mate and the standby switch popped to the neutral position.
A
series of lights appeared across the border of the panel and a section of the wall in front of the egg retracted, exposing a blue-lighted screen. Emeric’s mouth felt dry. The screen was like the dead screens in the bridge of a starship.

Again he pressed the query button and this time a light stylus seemed to write across the screen. The word was simply:
Ready.

“The thing recognizes you,” Glamiss said, hiding his own rising excitement behind ironic words.

Emeric, pecking slowly at the keyboard, posed a question: “When were you built?”

Instantly the reply appeared on the screen, and simultaneously on a strip of plastic tape that extruded from a slit in the panel like a white tongue. A date:
2920 GE.
A pause, then two more dates appeared below the original light inscription:
9520 AD
and
611 P.

The two young men stared at the glowing numbers. The Galactic Era had begun with the foundation of the Empire. This machine had been built 2,920 years later, when the Empire was already in decline. The thought was awesome. The accepted date used now for the current year, Emeric thought, was
3946 GE.
But there was no one who could say with certainty that it was a
correct
date, relative to the founding of the Empire, because no one was certain how long the time of troubles and the Dark Age had lasted. Navigator astronomers were prohibited from making the necessary observations by the Inquisition.

“What are the other dates?” Glamiss asked.

“The AD stands for Anno Domini--The Year of Our Lord. Dawn Age dating. No one is absolutely certain who Our Lord was, but we assume he was a religious figure. The P date is years from the official date of the first colony founded on the planet. Local dating.”

“This place is a thousand years old?” Glamiss asked in disbelief. “And it still functions?”

“So it would seem, Glamiss Warleader,” the priest said, half disbelieving it himself.

“Ask it, to be certain,” Glamiss demanded. “ ‘How old are you--in standard years.’ Ask it that.”

Before Emeric could type out the question, the lights winked swiftly and on the screen there appeared the figure
4,117 SY.

“Four thousand years? That’s impossible. It misunderstood me.” Glamiss said.

The Navigator stared thoughtfully at the numbers and presently he shook his head. “It didn’t misunderstand you, Glamiss. Computers don’t. Our history is wrong. The dark years have lasted longer than anyone imagines. Our dates are all incorrect; the Civil Wars were so horrible men even lost track of the time they spent in barbarism.” He studied his friend in a new, bleaker light. If Glamiss’s dreams should become reality, if they took the form of a holy war of reconquest, didn’t men run the risk of another bloodbath followed by an even darker night?

Glamiss, unmindful of his friend’s scrutiny, was characteristically plunging on, exploiting this new and miraculous source of information.

“What is this place?”

“Medical records library,” the screen flashed promptly.

“No, I mean
all
this place. The mountain. Everything.”

“You are in the Imperial Cryonics Hospital, Aldrin,” the computer replied.

“Aldrin?”

“That is the Imperial name for this planet, Glamiss,” Emeric murmured. “The old man--the Warlock--he used it, remember?”

“Let’s find out about
him,”
Glamiss said. “List what you know about--” He turned to Emeric. “what was the name the Voice used?”

“Ophir,” the Navigator said.

Lines of print appeared swiftly on the screen. Glamiss said, “Read it out, Emeric. My Anglic isn’t good enough.”

The Navigator translated the symbols on the screen with a growing sense of wonder.

“The Right Honorable Ophir ben Rigell ibn Sol alt Messier. Cryonic patient Number A7-1998-65008 Special Category. Entered ICH Aldrin 10-3-3550, Cryonized 10-26-3550. Diagnosis: Trilaudid addiction with associated blindness, psychedelic disturbances, hypertension, cellular edema and schizo-paranoia. More detailed information can be obtained from Special Category File on presentation of Need-To-Know security credentials relating to Imperial Family.”

Glamiss’s mind rocked with the inevitable implications of what the devil machine was telling them. The old Warlock
was
a man of the Golden Age. And he was not just
any
man, but an alt Messier Rigellian, closely related to the last Galacton of the Empire, Rigell XXVIII!

“What is this
cryonization,
Emeric,” Glamiss asked in a hoarse whisper, as though fearful the machine would overhear.

“It is a term that appears in the legends of the Golden Age, Glamiss,” the priest whispered back as hoarsely. “It is an abomination of Sin and Cyb. Living men were frozen, preserved in an icy hell for all eternity.”

“Stop it, man,” Glamiss said sharply. “It must have been a thing men did either to punish other men--or--” He had a sudden insight into the nature of this place now. It was, the computer had said, a
hospital.
People were sent here to be cured, or cared for. Not to be damned and tortured. And if that unbelievable old man was, indeed, who the machine said he was, he would have had the finest medical care available in that time of miracles.

“Explain cryonization,” he demanded of the computer.

There followed a torrent of incomprehensible symbols and formulae. Useless. “Stop!” Glamiss ordered. He rephrased his question. “Why are people cryonized?”

“Patients are cryonized in the hope that they can be preserved in a medically inert state until research discovers specific treatments for their complaints.” Pause. “However, there is a limit to the time a human body can be preserved with extreme cold. This limit varies with individuals, but is generally believed to be between 3,000 and 4,000 standard years depending on age, weight, heredity, and other factors. When the limit time is in danger of being exceeded, the cryonized patient is revived regardless of the state of the art relative to his disease. This is Imperial medical policy.”