“You haven’t looked under this covering?” he suggested.
Vineta nodded. “She’s clothed in some thick garment—I couldn’t see how it fastened, so I left it.”
Spartak drew the blanket aside. The girl’s body was revealed completely enclosed in a suit that glistened as if wet. A bulging hump showed across her bosom; another made her belly rise as though she were pregnant.
“Yes, I’ve seen that technique before,” he said—more to himself than Vineta. “Turn her head on the side, please. I shall have to put the antidote into the neck arteries; if I take the suit off she’ll suffocate before I save her.”
If Tiorins ghastly suspicion is correct, she’ll die anyway.…But he drove down that thought and administered the antidote with deft fingers.
Seconds dragged away like hours—and she moved. Spartak realized he had been holding his breath; he exhaled gustily. “Now we must get the suit off, quickly. See, it fastens on the shoulders and at the hips. Open that side.”
With a sucking noise the wet-looking material let go. The skin revealed was pallid and unhealthy, somewhat swollen with accumulated fluids and here and there wrinkled up into ugly white ridges.
“That’s how she breathed—see?” he explained, as the mound on her bosom was exposed, and proved to be a machine in a metal casing. “That drives air in and out and acts as a pacemaker for her heart. And this”—the similar device on her belly—“takes care of bodily wastes, but not very well.”
Now the mutant girl had sufficiently recovered for an expression to come to her face, and at the sight of it Vineta could not stifle an exclamation of horror. It was the worst look of pain Spartak had ever seen.
“Can you do massage?” he demanded, stacking the prosthetic machines anyhow on a handy shelf. “Space knows how long she’s been kept from moving—the return of normal sensation will be pure torture!”
Vineta’s hands flew to the pale stiff limbs and began to rub.
“Thank you.” The words came on breath alone, barely audible. “Thank you. You can stop now. The pain’s gone.”
Spartak sat back, exhausted, and stared at the girl. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.” A small tongue slipped out to moisten her lips, which were chapped. “You are Spartak, yes? And you are Vineta?”
Spartak’s eyebrows drew together. So far as he could recall, he hadn’t addressed Vineta by name, nor been addressed, since entering the cabin. He said, “Did you read names from our minds?”
A smile came and went on the mutant girl’s face. She said, a trifle louder as her vocal cords came under control, “Yes. And it feels very good. I have felt so much fear in people who knew what I am, but in your mind I feel—what to call it? Curiosity, I think. And in hers, much kindness. I am so glad to be here.”
“Then you also know what’s going to happen to you?” Spartak suggested.
“Yes. And I see why you ask. Frankly, I don’t care where I go so long as it’s away from—from the past.” The small sharp-featured face clouded.
“I’ll let you rest now,” Spartak said. “Vineta, perhaps you should bring her some of that broth you made for me—it seems to have brought about my recovery from shock very quickly.” A thought struck him, and went unvoiced by deliberate decision as his eyes returned to the mutant girl.
She gave a thin chuckle. “My name’s Eunora,” she said. “You have a clear mind, Spartak—it’s like looking into a deep transparent pool of pure water, and I can see all the way to the rocks at the bottom except in one place. And that’s where you’ve been conditioned to take me to Nylock.”
“I imagine,” Spartak said with difficulty, “that you can make allowances for my brothers. I don’t think they feel as I do about—about people like you.”
“No, I can sense them—just barely.” Eunora shut her eyes and seemed to be listening to distant noises. “They are both full of resentment; the conditioning lies on all their thoughts like dense fog, and one of them can’t help thinking that I’m responsible for the delay in your mission.”
After that, silence. Spartak caught Vineta’s eye and nodded her out of the cabin. Then he went, heavy-hearted, to rejoin his brothers.
XII
THE TWO others had gone up to the control room again. As he approached the door, he heard Vix’s voice raised.
“Well, I know Spartak’s views on this, because he told me.”
“And they are—?” Tiorin prompted.
“That we might have spent months hunting you, maybe going clear to Argus on the false trail you laid, so we should be glad our only delay is this little side trip to Nylock.”
“Suitably philosophical, I guess,” Tiorin replied as Spartak paused outside the door, “for someone who took vows to an order on Annanworld. It’s a hotbed of philosophy, I’m told. For my part, I agree with you—if luck runs your way you ought to grab its tail and hang on tight! Is there no means whereby we could get around the conditioning imposed on you? I’m not conditioned—could you give me a course of instruction and let me fly the ship to Asconel?”
“No, for two reasons.” Spartak slid the door aside and stepped into their view. “First, conditioning of this order of efficiency turns your own mind against your wishes—if Vix were to try and teach you how to pilot the ship, he’d so instruct you as to insure that you set course for where we’re commanded to go. Or, if by some miracle he avoided that trap, he and I and probably Vineta would conspire to take the controls away from you again. And secondly, even if you did succeed in getting us to Asconel, we’d arrive there in the sort of state I was in when they finally brought the antidote for Eunora. Only worse. The strain might literally kill us; I’d certainly expect us to be incurably insane.”
“The girl!” Reminded of his other omnipresent anxiety, Vix tensed. “Did you—uh—cure her?”
“And what was the name you used?” Tiorin added.
“Eunora.” Spartak combed at his beard with agitated fingers. “I guess you could say she’s cured—she’s released from the paralysis, at least. But I’m astonished at how normal and level-headed she seems. It’s not what you’d expect from someone of her age—still very young—treated in such an abominable fashion.” He paused and frowned. “Oh—maybe I’m being overly suspicious. Maybe she’s just so glad to get free of the Imperials and the people who were apt to stone her…”
“Is that what they were going to do?” Tiorin exclaimed.
“So we were told by that fat old fool at the spaceport on Delcadoré,” Vix confirmed. “Well, we have to make the most of our chances such as they are. Spartak, when you came in we were discussing how to tackle the problem. Tiorin has unconfirmed reports of a center of resistance established by Tigrid Zen on Gwo.”
“How old are these reports?” Spartak asked sourly. “Gwo is too close and too obvious for Bucyon to overlook it.” He had been taken to Gwo once, and never forgotten the impression it made on him; marginally habitable, it served Asconel and five or six neighboring systems as, a source of raw materials, the far greater distance for transport as compared with asteroids in their own systems being counterbalanced by the extra convenience of working with breathable atmosphere. It was a bleak, oppressive world, its vegetation drab olive and gray, its climate wet and windy, its oceans perpetually tossed by storms.
The point apparently hadn’t occurred to Vix. He glanced at Tiorin. “Is this something you had from Bucyon’s assassin?”
Tiorin nodded. “But I did confirm the story by checking with the crews of ships that had recently passed within—well—earshot, so to speak, of Asconel. There’s a spaceman’s slang term for that; what is it?”
“Rumor-range,” Spartak answered shortly. “Four kinds of news: standing there, landing there, rumor-range and rubbish.”
Vix gave a humorless chuckle. “I’m surprised at you knowing that, not ever having been a spaceman yourself.”
Spartak made a gesture of dismissal, dropping into a seat “Speaking of Bucyon’s assassin reminded me
. Your tracks may be fairly well covered on Delcadoré, Tiorin—though after meeting Rochard, I’m not so sure of that. Ours certainly are not; the most casual inquiry on Annanworld would give a lead to Vix and me. And Bucyon is hardly likely to rest content with the triple frustration of his attempts at wiping us out. Indeed, I’m amazed he relied on lone agents—in his position, I’d stop at nothing to get rid of all of us.”
Tiorin nodded, his face grave. “The impression I had from the interrogation of the man sent to kill me was that fanatics deluded by the cult of Belizuek acquire the illusion of being invincible, capable of undertaking any mission single-handed. But I grant that this isn’t an impression apt to survive a succession of setbacks like the ones luck has brought us up to now.”
“Fanatics are tricky to handle,” Spartak muttered. “If you catch them on their blind side—say by doing something they define as impossible—you can cope with them easily. If you stand in their way as we must stand in Bucyon’s … Or do we?”
“What do you mean?” Vix snapped. Then a light seemed to dawn on him. “Oh! Do you mean that this errand to dump the mutant girl is something of Bucyon’s doing?”
“A means of getting us out of the way? I doubt it. Even Bucyon could hardly organize a chain of coincidences like that. No, what I mean is this: if he’s managed to inspire dupes like Korisu and the man sent to kill Tiorin, if he’s reduced the citizens to a state of blind adoration, he may feel secure without disposing of us. He may wait for us to come home, frantic with rage, and then pick us off at his own convenience.”
Vix’s face darkened. “By the moons of Argus, I’d like to test that idea! I’d like to set course now for Asconel and pitch Bucyon and his woman Lydis from the top of the Dragon’s Fangs—ach!”
The last sound was not a word, but a gasp of agony, and he doubled over. Alarmed, Spartak jolted up from his seat, but Vix waved him back.
“Second time that’s happened,” the redhead wheezed. “If I so much as think about going straight to Asconel, I get a gripping in the guts, but if I speak it out loud, it’s like molten metal being poured into my belly.”
“It’s the conditioning,” Tiorin said. “It must be.”
Spartak nodded. “Think about Nylock,” he urged Vix. “Think about going to Asconel after we’ve left the mutant girl behind. It’ll calm you and you’ll be eased.
“Go on talking on those lines,” Vix whispered. The whole of his face had paled to the whiteness of his long scar.
“Uh—yes.” Spartak turned to Tiorin. “Well, the simple plan is to link up with Tigrid Zen. By the way, though: who is he? Vix assumed that I’d know him, but I don’t recall the name.”
“He was Vix’s senior aide when they were putting down the revolt in the northern islands,” Tiorin said. “A former sea-sailor who entered government service because of the rebellion.”
Spartak nodded. He remembered very vaguely a man with a bushy black moustache and a roaring voice—that would be Tigrid Zen.
“But he’s been closer than we have, he’s had a long time—and we don’t hear news of any progress towards victory.” Tiorin scowled. “We have the mystique of our blood to draw support, descended as we are from the Warden who steered Asconel through the storms which followed the collapse of Argian influence in our sector of the galaxy. That might tip the scales in our favor. But after ourselves, I know no one more likely to rally resistance to Bucyon than Tigrid Zen, and if he’s failed…” He shrugged despondently.
“We’re guessing,” Spartak said angrily. “What we need to do is make straight for Asconel—contact Tigrid Zen if we can, but not chasing him if he’s gone hunting support in some other system. Then on Asconel, perhaps disguised, we ought to—”
He broke off. Tiorin was gazing at him queerly.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“You just said ‘make straight for Asconel’,” Tiorin exclaimed. “And nothing happened to you! When Vix said the same thing, more or less, he doubled up in pain.”
Blank, Spartak tried it again. “We should make straight for Asconel. I want to go straight there now. I intend to go straight there now.” He jumped to his feet. “By the moons of Argus, you’re right! Vix, try it!” Excitedly, he rounded on the redhead.
“I—!” Vix moistened his lips and gathered his courage, fearing another blast of the torture which had overcome him moments earlier. “I want to go to Asconel. Now.”
And slowly a smile replaced his look of anxiety.
“The conditioning’s failed!” Tiorin exploded. “It must have been badly implanted—”
“No!” Spartak rapped. “I felt it, and believe me, I know. The psychologists who treated us knew their job. Either we’re suffering from a delusion, implanted as a second line of defense against the breakdown of the main commands, or—No, that can’t be right. We have you as a control, Tiorin; you’re not conditioned, and you’d observe that. Then that leaves one single possibility, and I think I know what it is.”
“Tell us!” cried Vix, almost beside himself with joy at being unexpectedly released from his invisible bonds.
“Eunora,” Spartak said.
“What? The—the mind-reading girl?” Vix took half a pace back as though recoiling from a physical shock. “But—how?”
“I don’t pretend to know that,” Spartak said. “I’m just eliminating the things I know to be out of the question, and I find one unknown factor operating. Let’s go see her and find out—”
“That won’t be necessary,” a soft voice said, and the panel of the door slid aside to reveal Eunora herself. Spartak had not realized till this moment how tiny she actually was; she barely came to Vix’s elbow, and he was the shortest of the three men. She had borrowed one of the costumes he had seen in Vineta’s closet when he boarded the ship on Annanworld, and it hung loosely on her as though she were a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes.
“Eunora! Did you take the conditioning off us?” Spartak blurted.
The girl gave a grave nod.
“Then I can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are!”
“That’s right!” Vix confirmed. His face was alight with enthusiasm. “Why, you may have saved a whole planet’s people by saving us that trip to Nylock!”
Eunora didn’t answer at once. She walked into the control room with careful, mincing steps, seeming still to be finding out how her unparalyzed legs should support her. Behind her, a trifle nervous, but looking calm enough, came Vineta, who had presumably tried to dissuade her from leaving her cabin and failed.
“I didn’t know about this—this conditioning,” the mutant girl said at last. “It was only when I felt the pain and twisting in your mind”—nodding to Vix—“that I decided I had to find out about it. It’s… interesting.”
A nameless premonition filled the air.
“It’s difficult being a mutant,” the soft voice went on. “Hardly daring to use the gift—afraid all the time that it will leak out and then there’ll be… killing. But it’s grown without my noticing. I have more talents than I ever realized. I was able to work on your minds like a locksmith picking locks, locating and releasing all the implanted orders.” She gave a little crazy giggle. “And when you see how it’s done, it’s so simple!”
Spartak’s whole body had gone cold as ice. He waited numbly for her to make the point which he foresaw with terror.
“Asconel. That’s where you want to go. But I don’t think I like the idea much. It’s an Imperial world—or was. So they don’t tolerate my kind of people. Also it’s going to be a place of fighting. I can see that in your mind, Vix. You want to go there and fight against these priests and this man called Bucyon, and because you’re so frightened of having your mind probed you’ll probably be glad if something bad happens to me. Spartak perhaps not—I don’t know. But even he…”
She hesitated. Then she giggled again. “Well, I’ve found out about conditioning now. I see how it’s done. I think I can probably make you do what I want. There?
??s only one question that remains: it’s such a big galaxy, so where shall I make you take me?”
She looked around, her petrified audience with mocking eyes. “Go on!” she urged. “Think of the other places I might like to be taken—anywhere but Asconel or back where I came from—and then I’ll get you to pilot the ship there!”
XIII
HORROR-STRUCK visions raced through Spartak’s mind in three successive and distinct stages.
First, there was the appallingly vivid picture of them all condemned to serve the whim of this mentally unstable girl, slaves bound with unseen chains, compelled to take her on a colossal joyride around the wheel of stars which was the galaxy.
Second, there came a flood of memories of Asconel: its seas, its mountains, its forests and open plains, every recollection painful with yearning. He had resigned himself long ago, that day on the royal island of Gard, to a life of exile, but since Vix came to find him he had without realizing conceived an ache and a desire to go home, that now permeated every fibre of his being. The agony of deprivation was almost physical in its intensity, like hunger or—more nearly—like sex.
And third, as he began to bring his whirling thoughts under control, followed the shadow of a question. Could even Eunora, who had certainly released them from the Imperial conditioning, reverse the process with her supernatural talent, imposing fresh commands in place of those she had wiped out? Could she? Surely a mere child would find the range and sweep of adult minds—male minds, moreover—beyond her abilities to master.
Or maybe not. Here there were so many unknown factors, he was almost afraid to believe he dared hope.
But no one said anything. He and his half-brothers simply stared at Eunora, as though her tiny face and body held an infinite fascination for them. Bit by bit, the waiting grew to be a strain on her, and the expression of mocking triumph she wore gave place to a look of uncertainty.
At last she burst out, “Do as I tell you! Do as I tell you!” But the words were tinged with hysteria.