“That gets rid of two of our problems,” the doctor said without emotion. “Call up the rest of the scientific staff, Rureth. I’ll try and get some drugs here before the word reaches Dorsek. Hego is merely a fool, but from the way he’s been behaving since the disaster, I’m inclined to think Dorsek is insane.”
XIX
“Summary of human existence,” the doctor said with a twisted smile, looking round the office.
“What?” Rureth said, glancing up, eerie in the fading glow of an over-used hand light.
“Look around you,” the doctor said. “I feel there’s something—I don’t know—epic? That’s not the word.” He snapped his fingers. “Archetypal is what I mean. About situations like this. The contrast.”
“Don’t understand you,” Rureth said curtly. He wiped his face. It was getting stuffy.
The offices were in a state of siege. They had called up on the surviving communicator channels all the personnel who could be spared from such essential duties as power maintenance or nursing, and there were now fifty-odd people in the office and the anterooms. Most of them were the uninjured members of the Marduk staff. Hego and Snutch, who would be unconscious for some time yet, were roughly piled on the floor in the corner.
The doctor said, “I’m a romantic, I guess. But hasn’t it generally been like this in history? A permanent crisis between ignorance and fear on one hand, and desperate attempts to get at the facts on the other?”
“Could be,” Rureth said, not seeming very interested.
“I’d like to talk with you, Kazan,” the doctor said, turning. “If we get out of here alive, that is. Those workers out there, from Berak, who seem to have decided that you’re purely a bad influence and they’d solve everything by getting rid of you. I can understand their situation, I think. It’s got precedents. Primitive history is full of them. Like—what were the great prespace empires?”
Kazan, sitting passively beside Clary at the side of the room, seemed to spark alert. He said, “I didn’t think of it like that. The—the Romans, I read about.”
“That’s right,” the doctor said. He picked up some surgical cleansing cloths from a pile on Snutch’s desk and wiped his exposed skin. “They came, and they built their surprisingly advanced houses with underfloor hot-air heating systems, and their metaled roads that lasted for centuries, and the serfs all around kept on grubbing in the dirt and worshipping their nature spirits. And later on, when the Age of Technology got started, some people were traveling in airliners and rockets and enjoying quite an advanced standard of living, while a lot more people were still at the nature-spirit and manual agriculture stage. And, as I picture it, the situation where you come from was similar again. Your home world was colonized, and because it was hospitable the population increased rapidly, and then because it did increase so fast and there wasn’t a solid foundation of production to feed and clothe and house so many people you got this unlikely return to basics—staying alive and fed. And political divisions, and contrast between wealthier and poorer areas on the same planet. Isn’t that the picture?”
“I guess so,” Kazan said. It felt strange to be making this academic analysis in the shadow of death, but it also felt calming, because it was exercising his rational faculties, and he needed to be reminded that he possessed some. “I don’t know the whole story. But as I piece it together, when the main wave of expansion caught up with the trail-blazers and the pioneers, Berak was an isolated backwater. When I was a kid—Luth’s father was the ruler then—there wasn’t a spaceport on the continent. Luth had one built, but it wasn’t until he was kicked out that much use was made of it. And even then it didn’t make much difference to most people.”
“Right.” The doctor eyed him speculatively. “But your background is the same as that of most of those howling idiots out there, and you’ve managed to escape your circumstances. I want to find out how. Afterwards.”
One of the young men from Marduk who had been keeping watch outside thrust his head through the half-open door of the office. He said, “Group of Berak workers coming this way. Some sort of trouble—I couldn’t see what.”
“Any sign of those supplies they were supposed to be bringing up from the hospital?” the doctor rapped.
“That seems to be what the trouble’s about. There’s one of your staff with them, being frog-marched along.”
There was a clanging hammering noise from outside. The doctor looked at Rureth.
“Any use reasoning with them?” Rureth said hopelessly.
“Probably not,” the doctor said. “But we’ll have to try.”
Gloom lay over the settlement like a pall. It was like being inside a tomb to emerge into what should have been open air and instead was the hollow semidarkness over which the impossible roof arched. There were perhaps forty or fifty people approaching in purposeful silence, with Dorsek at their head.
Seeing that someone had come out to meet them, Dorsek gave a brusque command to his companions and walked forward the last few paces alone.
“You got him in there?” he said.
Rureth stared at him stonily. “Do you mean Kazan?” he said.
“You know who I mean. The man who condemned us to death like this.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Rureth snapped. “Kazan is there. And that man you’re holding captive”—he pointed at the medical aide who had gone to fetch the necessary drugs from the half-ruined hospital—“has drugs which the doctor wants.”
“Kazan’s in need of no drugs,” Dorsek said. “He wasn’t even scratched till I got my hands on him. And I was pulled off before I’d done more than bruise him.”
“I need them to get at facts he can’t remember,” the doctor said. “To learn how to get us out of here.”
Dorsek drew his lips back from his teeth. He said, “He’s got you fooled too, hasn’t he? But he doesn’t fool us. He caused this. He’s got to be punished for it.”
There was a grumble of agreement from those behind him.
“What are you expecting to happen if you get your hands on him?” Rureth demanded. “You expect to kill him and find the dome, whatever it is, vanish? So you can get out?”
“We’ll make him let us out,” Dorsek said.
“You’re out of your mind!” Rureth said after a moment of astonished hesitation. “You can’t—”
“Hold it,” the doctor cut in quietly. “Explain, Dorsek.”
“What is there to explain?” Dorsek countered stubbornly. “He put us here, he gets us out, or we square accounts with him before we all die.”
“Where is he?” someone shouted from behind. “Get him out to us!”
“You heard that,” Dorsek said. “Send him out. Unless you want us to smoke you all out.”
“You want to suffocate yourselves?” the doctor said evenly. “You’re not such a damned fool that you can’t smell how thick the air is getting, even though we managed to knock away some of the crust overhead. Smoke us out? You’d stifle first.”
Dorsek hesitated. The doctor seized the opening.
“I want twelve hours,” he said. “If he can undo the—well, whatever it was that made the force field over us—if he can, it’ll have to be done in that time.”
Dorsek shook his head. “Twelve hours is too long,” he snapped.
“I want to get out of here as much as you do,” the doctor retorted. “More, apparently!” He raised his voice to make sure his words would carry to Dorsek’s companions. “You’re talking about smoking him out, and all that would do would be to kill the lot of us quicker than jump! You don’t want to get out of here alive, apparently—but I’ll bet that the rest of you do! In twelve hours we can find out if there’s a way.”
“And if there isn’t?” Dorsek said.
“How can we be any worse off than we are right now?” the doctor demanded.
“Six hours,” Dorsek said suddenly. “That’s all. Then we come in after you—clear? If you don’t send him out to us.”
The doctor blanched. He said, “I’ll need—”
“You get nothing!” Dorsek cut in. “Except time. And six hours is a hell of a long time. Count yourself lucky. And I warn you, if you’re lying, we’ll settle accounts with you as well as with Kazan, understood?”
“I’ll need the drugs that man was bringing me,” the doctor said firmly.
“They got spilled,” Dorsek said. “You can go sort them out of the dirt on the ground, if you like, He oughtn’t to have struggled.”
The doctor seemed to go limp. He said nothing, but turned and went back into the building with his head bowed. With a final glare at Dorsek, Rureth followed him.
“What are you going to do now?” he demanded when he and the doctor were inside again. All those waiting for the outcome of the argument with Dorsek tensed to hear the answer.
“I’m not beaten yet, by the wyrds!” the doctor said. “The smug gasbrained fool!” He drew himself up and looked at Kazan. “I’ll have to use the oldest and most primitive technique still in the medical repertory, and will it to work.”
As though to himself, he added, “You’re intelligent, you ought to be a good subject. But I wish I had the right drugs to help you along.”
“You mean me?” Kazan said.
“Yes.” The doctor indicated a vacant chair which had been shoved into the middle of the room in front of Snutch’s desk. “Sit there. Lean back. Close your eyes and relax completely. The rest of you, shut up. I don’t want a sound to be heard.”
Kazan obeyed. Clary rose from where she had been sitting and peered anxiously forward, her hands clasping and unclasing.
“Make yourself comfortable,” the doctor said. “That’s right. Have you ever been hypnotized before by voice alone?”
Kazan shook his head, looking startled; his surprise was shared by all the others present.
“That makes us even,” the doctor said with an attempt at gallows humor. “Relax, close your eyes—that’s right. You feel comfortable, you’re quite relaxed, you feel sleepy, you feel your eyelids getting heavy, now they’re shut, you can’t open them again, you feel sleepy, you feel relaxed and comfortable, relaxed and comfortable, your eyelids are very heavy and your body is getting heavy because it’s relaxed and you feel sleepy.”
He reached out, continuing his droning flow of instructions, and took Kazan by the wrist. He raised the arm to shoulder-height and abruptly stroked it for its full length.
“It’s rigid!” he said. “You can’t lower it, no matter how you try. Your arm is rigid!”
He let go. The arm trembled, and stayed where it was. A sudden bead of sweat trickled down into the doctor’s eye, and he wiped it away mechanically.
“Fantastic,” he said in a low tone. “It works.”
“Four hours!” Rureth said. “And nothing! Nothing!”
The doctor fell wearily back into a chair, staring at Kazan. He said, “It’s like a wall. It’s as if he himself wasn’t responsible for creating the force field—and yet he did! The memory of how he did it simply isn’t there!”
“They’re getting restive outside,” Rureth said. “I went out to see a few minutes ago. Can’t you do anything else?”
Wringing her hands, Clary said desperately, “There’s got to be something! There’s—Doctor! You just said maybe he himself wasn’t responsible for the force field!”
A wild hope lit her face. The doctor glanced at her.
“The—the thing he always talks about!” Clary said. “The devil that appeared in the conjurer’s ring! You haven’t taken that seriously, but suppose it was real?”
“What do we do?” the doctor countered. “Even if it was!”
“Well—” She cast around. “Well, maybe he remembers what the ring was like, what the conjurer did.” Her voice trailed away, and she added defensively, “We haven’t got much time, you know!”
“I’ll try,” the doctor said. He forced himself to his feet. “Kazan! Remember again, remember clearly. Go back in your mind. Go back to the time when the black devil appeared in the ring!”
Kazan’s body was racked by a vast shudder. He said, “I—I remember.”
“What was the ring like? What did the conjurer do?”
“He—I don’t know. It was dark in the room. I didn’t see.”
“Remember!” the doctor insisted.
There was a sudden noise behind him, and he glanced round angrily, words forming on his lips to rebuke the person who was interrupting. He never uttered them. The noise was from Hego, still half unconscious in the corner, who was struggling to speak.
“What’s happened?” Rureth said in a low voice.
“He’s probably in a susceptible state,” the doctor answered equally softly. “It often happens. I knocked him out with a heavy dose of the same drug I would have used to help Kazan go into trance if I’d had any more of it.” He turned back to Kazan.
“You saw the ring!” he insisted. “You remember it, you remember what the conjurer did!”
“Yes,” a thick voice said. “I saw the ring.”
The doctor looked at Rureth with an expression almost of fright. Together they turned to look at Hego again.
The bully was struggling to get to his feet, and failing because his muscles were limp with the aftereffects of the drug he had been given. He could speak, though, and he was speaking, mumbling incoherently.
“The ring—I saw when the conjurer showed it to Bryda. Ring of copper and gold sliding like this.” He made an indeterminate gesture. “Pictures on it. Carved on it. Pictures of things. I remember. I see it now.”
His face was streaming with perspiration, and when he broke off his teeth started to chatter with terror.
The doctor closed his eyes for a moment, seeming to gather his strength. Then he said in a calm voice, “Can you remember it so clearly that we could make one, Hego?”
“I see it now!” Hego insisted. “I see it right in front of me. Like there!”
He was staring now at a place on the floor in front of Kazan where there was nothing anyone else could see. Shaking, he raised his arm and pointed for a moment. Then he gave a tremulous groan and fell forward on his own knees.
“I think,” the doctor said with much effort, “that something is happening. Here in this room. Do you feel it, Rureth?”
The tubby man nodded. Together and in silence, with those watching, they waited for whatever it was to be fulfilled.
XX
Weary beyond endurance, weakened by lack of sleep and food-and the pounding of the doctor at his mind, Kazan was yet almost unbearably aware. His consciousness burned like a white-hot star in the dark cloud of his body.
Under the doctor’s commands, ever since he entered trance he had moved back in memory, out of the present and into the past, so that now his knowledge of time was tenuous and diffuse; then and now were arbitrary to him, and he had lost track of how long had elasped since he was hypnotized.
Since the ship’s doctor had jolted him out of his lost apathy en route to Vashti, his memory had widened vastly in scope. The events over which the doctor now commanded him to return were close to reality in their vividness, and the sense of helplessness which possessed him when he struggled to remember how he had acted to save the ship crashing into the center of the settlement had the quality of waking nightmare.
And yet, little by little, the frustration was fading.
More than once he had almost shrieked at the doctor, the incessant questioning fraying his nerves to the breaking point. Somehow he had held on. Perhaps it was the conscious knowledge that the penalty of yielding was certain death which drove him so far. He had no energy to spare with which to wonder.
Now something had happened. As if a limit had been reached, beyond which the gap in his memory—made? willed?—must somehow be filled. He knew the shape of the gap, as it were; his fevered mind was hunting through everything he had ever learned for facts with which to fill it, and now he was finding them. Ghostly, they seemed to loom out
of nowhere, irrelevant and yet meaningful. A physical law, barely noted, and a theoretical equation derived from a tenuous chain of logic rooted in that law. A table of figures, concerned with the properties of gases. Two seemingly unrelated statements about the nature of motion in a gravitational field.
That was—and it had gone again. Almost! Almost! And now he was lost from what he had been concentrating on before and there was mention of a ring and the black thing appearing in it and the vivid intensity with which he could now recall the past brought back the dark room, the blue-glowing circle, the thing in the middle with ember eyes, the voice like a gale piping on an organ of mountains.
Soon, the voice said. Not yet. Not at once.
There was a strangeness in Kazan’s mind. A weighing sensation. As if he were being evaluated. And beyond that, the most world-shaking knowledge.
The black thing—the devil, if it was a devil—was as clear to him as though it were physically present. He doubted whether it was. He doubted if it had been before, if it was ever present anywhere as a solid form. He could ask it his questions. Or he could answer his questions for himself, using knowledge that he had just acquired. It didn’t matter which. The effect was the same.
I have not been possessed? I have always been Kazan?
Kazan magnified. But Kazan.
But the year and a day of service?
When Kazan is ready. When Kazan-optimus is realized.
Why? What? How? Who? Who? Who?
The field in the ring, the web of forces (diagram, as it were: so and so and so my—this consciousness there—then) and effective identity. Intense, directed forces. (Nervous system.) Pass through the ring. (Nervous system resonating with the web of forces, glowing like lightning strikes, optimized, freed: brain, memory, reflexes, subconscious processes, the physical totality of human existence.) Consequence: perfect memory, immeasurable intelligence, reactions under stress beyond the human. Slowly developed. Made ready. Beneficial. (These concepts blended simultaneously in a flash of illuminating comprehension.)