“Sit down and have some beer,” Braithwin grunted. Talibrand complied, accepted a mug and held it while it was filled. He raised it in a ritual gesture.
“Lars Talibrand! Though he has departed may his honor remain!”
Horn seized his own mug, found it half-full, and drained it in the same toast, receiving a cordial nod from Braithwin. But there was something perfunctory about the sip which Talibrand took, and he immediately set his mug aside.
“Tell me how it happened, Mr. Horn!”
Horn complied, giving a much balder recital of the facts than he had given Braithwin, and at the end Talibrand shook his head and sighed.
“I warned him, over and over! Had he only listened to me he might have been alive and happy on our own estate—”
“Alive perhaps,” Braithwin cut in with an edge of sarcasm. Horn had the distinct impression that he didn’t like Jan Talibrand much. “But happy, no. He was only happy when searching out this evil he had stumbled on.”
Talibrand didn’t answer. Horn, studying his long pale face in an attempt to discern his real feelings, reflected that it must be embarrassing to be the brother of a citizen of the galaxy.
“Mr. Talibrand—” he began, and got no further.
“I beg your pardon,” Talibrand said frostily. “My correct styling is not ‘mister’—it is councillor. Hereditary Councillor.”
Horn flushed and muttered something inaudible. A further point occurred to him. If primogeniture was the rule here, then presumably Lars Talibrand had been Jan’s younger brother, an additional cause for resentment. Before he could say anything else, Talibrand was speaking again.
“Well, tomorrow I must hold the proper obsequies for my late brother. You are obviously unfamiliar with our customs, Mr. Horn”—he stressed the title heavily and scowled—“so I should explain that it is usual to hold a feast to honor the memory of the departed, at which only the family and those friends whom the deceased personally selected are ordinarily present. My brother of course left no directions more recent than his last departure from Creew ’n Dith, but I am sure he would have wished you to be added to the company had he been able to know of your existence.” His dark eyes smoldered distantly.
Horn glanced at Braithwin, who gave him no clue. Well, it would be churlish to refuse, he supposed. He got to his feet and gave a half-bow.
“It will be an honor.” he declared, and caught a tiny nod of approval from Braithwin at the corner of his eye.
“My home is at your disposal tonight and as long as you care to remain,” Jan Talibrand had said, and taken his guest’s consent for granted. He had ordered two of his retainers to bring Horn’s belongings from the inn where he had been staying and load them into his lavishly appointed groundcar. It was a model that had been popular on Earth not more than two years before; Horn had seen nothing else to compare with it on Creew ’n Dith, and the cost of shipping it by interstellar freight must have been astronomical.
He had seized the moment when Talibrand was instructing his servants abut the baggage to take his leave of Braithwin and put a question relevant to that groundcar. “I take it Councillor Talibrand is not poor?” he had suggested, and a twinkle in Braithwin’s eye had greeted the stress on the honorific.
“He has not perhaps the largest estate on Creew ’n Dith,” was the reply. “But his great-grandfather had the foresight to inaugurate a well-appointed spaceport on his grounds and to leave much room for expansion. Consequently, though not richest in land, this family is the wealthiest in terms of currency.”
That accounted for a great deal.
The groundcar ran smoothly humming through the streets of the town—though it was one of the most populous on the planet, Horn could hardly bring himself to term it a city. They skirted the spaceport, where a consignment of androids was being discharged from a newly arrived vessel bearing an Arthworld registration. Watching them march across the port in groups of twenty on their way to confinement in a pen similar to the ones he had seen on Newholme, Horn wondered how many of them might be human beings disguised.
The idea revolted him. No wonder Lars Talibrand had been nominated to his high distinction for uncovering the ghastly secret!
“I gather, Councillor, that the port is part of your family estate?” he ventured. Talibrand, beside him on the soft long back seat of the car, nodded.
“This is the furthest corner of it from my residence. It does not disturb our peace and comfort.”
Even if the Talibrand estate was not the largest here, it was impressive enough; the Horn family’s estate, back on Earth, was a pocket handkerchief by comparison. They ran for miles over rough roads that tried the suspension of their vehicle, through woods, between fields in which tenant farmers labored behind draft animals for their own benefit—Horn had already found out about this system—while in others expensive robot farming machinery prepared the grounds for Talibrand’s own crops.
Dusk was falling as they approached the house, or, as the local usage preferred, the hall: a long rambling structure of stone roofed with timber, like Braithwin’s in the town they had left behind. There were gardens before it, lawns of a soft green native moss, arbors, statues and fountains.
“We dine an hour past dark,” Talibrand told him as they parted at the entrance of the house. “My retainers will escort you to your lodging. Anything you find in your room is at your disposal.”
Horn found a great deal in his room, which was far more lavishly appointed than he would have expected from the outside appearance of the house or the long chilly echoing passages down which he had been led to it. Among other things there was a range of Creewndithian clothing in various sizes, and he gladly changed into the suit which fitted him best, recalling Dize’s remark about an Earthman in the outworlds attracting as much attention as a parade band. He had just finished dressing when there was a timid tap at the door.
Assuming that one of the servants must be coming to call him to dinner, he drew back the bolt. A woman—no, a mere girl—slipped through the opening, shut the door promptly and leaned back against it, breathing hard as though recovering from tremendous effort. She was slim but shapely, as the belting of her white gown revealed; her long brown hair was caught up on her head by a gold clasp.
Horn was too surprised to speak, but in a moment she had mastered herself.
“Please forgive my intrusion!” she said in Anglic, her words fluent but strongly accented. “I will not detain you long—I dare not, for if Jan learns that I have shown myself to a stranger before putting on mourning garb …! I am Moda Talibrand. Quickly, please, the truth: is Lars indeed dead?”
Horn swallowed hard. “I—I’m afraid so. I found him on Earth with a knife in his heart.”
She closed her eyes and swayed. Prepared to catch her should she faint, Horn went on randomly, “Ah … Moda Talibrand? Are you his sister, then?”
“No!” Her eyes snapped open. “I’m—” Her voice broke. “I’m his widow!”
She spun on her heel and ran from the room, Horn stretching out a vain hand to stop her.
He did not see her again until the following day; she was absent from dinner the same evening. But at the feast which was held at noon of the morrow she presided from one end of the immensely long table in the Great Hall, wearing a black gown with her hair in a tight black snood, toying with her food and every now and then raising her eyes to stare at the chair which stood empty at the other end with a black wreath on it framing a broken sword.
Horn barely had more appetite than she; stuffing one’s belly and swilling gallons of the sour Creewndithian beer hardly struck him as an appropriate way to honor the memory of a dead hero. Granted, Jan Talibrand had opened the proceedings with a speech extolling his late brother’s virtues, but it had the ring of something learned by rote and repeated parrot-fashion rather than a tribute from the heart. Later, Braithwin had also spoken, but at too great length for his audience, who grew restless and fidgeted. They consisted mainly of brawny men of
young to middle age, a few elderly folk, and a great many matronly women in widows’ weeds who sobbed loudly at intervals and then sought consolation in the beer-jugs.
Without warning, the youth whom Braithwin had pointed out to Horn as the adopted son of the paralyzed man they had spoken of the day before—presumably personally chosen by Lars Talibrand to attend his funeral feast—whose face had been growing darker and darker as the meal progressed, leapt to his feet and swept a space of ten feet clear of dishes, mugs and cutlery with a scabbarded sword before clambering on to the table and stamping towards the empty chair at its head.
“Lars Talibrand!” he roared. “If no one else will speak better of you than these drunken sots, then I must in the place of my crippled father whom you helped! Here they sit guzzling your beer and chomping joints of your meat, and they’re forgetting what they came here for!”
Horn, whose ear was barely as yet attuned to the Creewndithian speech, turned to Braithwin in the next chair, who told him in low tones what the youth was saying. Meantime, Jan Talibrand thrust back his chair, his brow like thunder.
“Whose beer?” he snapped. “Whose meat? Whose house and hospitality are you abusing?”
Horn needed no translation of that—the meaning was all too obvious.
“I’d get out of here if I were you,” Braithwin said very softly. “There’s going to be a fight, and—and I feel ashamed for my kinfolk!”
Indeed, Talibrand was shouting at his retainers, and one of them was running to fetch a sword. Some of the company, their food forgotten, were cheering and laughing drunkenly, while Moda Talibrand was leaning forward and her parted lips were moving, as though expressing a silent wish that all this could be a dream.
Braithwin thrust back his chair and rose, framing a scornful condemnation of such behavior, but it was too late. With a cry of fury, the youth had leapt from the table and confronted Talibrand, and up and down the table there was an unholy racket, as women rose and headed for the door and men argued unsoberly about the rights and wrongs of the contestants. When he saw that other swords had been drawn, Horn decided that Braithwin’s advice was correct and slipped away, shaking from head to foot. The noise of the growing brawl followed him down the corridors to his room.
“Lars Talibrand!” he whispered to the air. “Whoever’s fit to follow in your footsteps, it doesn’t seem to be one of your own family!”
He thrust open his door and checked in mid-stride, thinking he must have made a mistake, for the room was not empty. A bent figure in a drab gown was sitting on the edge of one of the chairs. He apologized and made to withdraw.
“I beg forgiveness, Mr. Horn!” the stranger wheezed—an old woman. Very, very old! Horn halted, marveling; he had never seen anyone on Earth so bent and fragile. “But I had to speak to you about my son Lars—Lars who I’m told is dead!”
She struggled to stand up and finally succeeded. For the first time the light fell on her face, and with shattering amazement Horn saw that the face of Lars Talibrand’s mother—was blue.
CHAPTER XV
“PLEASE!” said the old woman in supplication. “Please! I am very old, but I am not mad!”
Horn approached slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed facing her as she lowered her aged bones once more into the chair, closing her eyes as she did so. “I didn’t say anything, granny,” he murmured. “Please explain.”
Rapidly, confusedly, with many repetitions but obvious overwhelming sincerity, she told him the story of the Talibrands.
Barg Talibrand, father of Jan and Lars, had been a simpler man than either of his sons; that was her actual term, but Horn glossed it as meaning less intelligent. When his wife had become too ill to endure his violent love-making after bearing him the elder son, Jan, he had gone down to the spaceport one day and picked out a female android to satisfy him instead—one who, as well as being buxom and comely, was relatively well educated, could cook, make clothes, sing and speak passable Anglic: all in all, not unfit to be a concubine in one of the noblest families on Creew ’n Dith.
Horn had never heard of a female android before. As the tale progressed, a possible reason why they were no longer shipped onward via here to Earth emerged.
When this female android—allegedly as sterile as the males, an obvious advantage in a society where rights of succession were jealously guarded—conceived a child, Barg Talibrand had at first boasted of his unprecedented virility; he joked about fathering a baby on a woman who couldn’t have one. Then the strangeness of the event began to prey on his mind, and some member of a cadet branch of the family, seeing a chance to get the thick-witted Barg under his thumb, fed him a superstitious explanation and preached impending doom.
Raging, Barg banned the transit of female androids through his spaceport. Bit by bit, he came to accept that instead of being blessed with incredible powers of generation he was cursed, and at last he died in a haze of insanity.
The whole affair was hushed up, and as soon as he was old enough to run the estate, Jan cleared out the parasites who had sponged on his father during the years of decline. He would have liked to remove the last vestige of the tragedy by doing away with the android woman. By then, though, Lars had developed into the kind of forceful personality Horn had imagined, capable of outfacing anyone else in the family, and defiantly accepting his improbable ancestry had sworn to have the life of anyone who harmed his mother.
Of course, directly he learned the truth about the kidnapped children who were being disguised as androids, he realized his mother too must have been human and stolen away in similar fashion. And there lay the motive which had driven him from world to world, hounding the android traders who had grown fat on the profit from such crimes.
No wonder Jan was jealous! To be surpassed by a brother who was not only younger, but a bastard to boot …!
The door of the room slammed open, and Horn leapt up in alarm. Jan Talibrand stood before him, panting, with blood trickling out of his left sleeve. There was more blood on the naked sword he held. He barked in Creewndithian at the ancient crone, who covered her face and rocked back and forth in rhythm with an outburst of sobs.
He shouted at her again, and she made a tearful answer. Talibrand spat on the floor and rounded on Horn.
“So, you lickspittle Earthling! You abuse my hospitality by eavesdropping, skulking in corners, bribing my retinue to unearth scandalous lies—is that how it is?”
The old woman cried that she had not been bribed, that she had come voluntarily to Horn, and his face distorted with animal rage.
“In that case I’m finished with you!” he snarled. “You’ve been a mark of my father’s shame for far too long. And now Lars can’t protect you any more—!”
He choked and strode forward. His sword crashed down with lunatic violence, and it split the old woman’s skull from crown to nape.
Appalled by the futile savagery of the deed, Horn was for a moment too overcome to react. At last he forced out, “Your father’s shame is nothing to the shame of that, Jan Talibrand!”
“Shame? How dare you?” Talibrand roared. “There’s no shame in disposing of an old and worn-out android—only common sense.”
“But she wasn’t an android!” Fury drove Horn plunging on. “She can’t have been—not if she bore a child!”
“I say she was,” Talibrand gritted, and raised his sword to the level of Horn’s heart. “And it is not seemly for a guest to insult his host by calling him a liar.”
“I don’t believe I care to enjoy the hospitality of one who kills old defenseless women and threatens unarmed men, made brave only by possession of a sword!” Horn made each successive word crack like a whip, and Talibrand’s face went perfectly white.
“Come then!” he said softly. “They tell me you’re clever with a blade—that lately you killed your challenger in a duel. But Coolin was a decadent Earthling like yourself. Let’s find out how you compare with a man of Creew’n Dith!”
In that instant Horn was fi
nally certain of something he had barely dared to suspect before. Since his arrival on Creew ’n Dith, he had told no one but Braithwin the full story of his departure from home. Certainly, in the bald account he had given Jan Talibrand of the circumstances surrounding Lars’s death, he had never spoken Coolin’s name.
So while Lars Talibrand hunted evil men from world to world, his brother was hand-in-glove with his mortal enemies.
But there was no time for thought now. At sword-point he was being chivvied along the passages that led to the great hall. There had indeed been fighting here, more than he would have imagined: there a door showed splinters of bright white wood, here someone had had to spill sand on a patch of blood. From outside came the occasional snap of a projectile weapon, and there were no servants in sight. Horn guessed that the last of the guests were having to be driven forcibly off the premises.
“There’s a sword!” Talibrand halted opposite the door to the vestibule which connected the great hall and the outside air. The hall itself was a chaos of overset chairs and smashed crockery, which no one had yet started to clear away. Not a little nervous, for the walk from his room had given him a chance to overcome his first uncontrollable rage at Talibrand’s murder of the old woman, Horn hesitated. It would be better to stand his ground in the vestibule, he decided; it was adequately large, perhaps twenty feet square, and he could avoid the risk of losing his footing on the debris with which the hall was littered.
As unhurriedly as he could, he advanced to pick up the weapon Talibrand had indicated, and went still a pace or two further before turning. He needed a moment to get the feel of the sword. Dismayed, he discovered it was heavy and cumbersome compared with the ones he was accustomed to on Earth, but here there were no such niceties as the chance to balance a strange blade with a convenient grindstone.