***
Ran-Del lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. After several minutes, he shut his eyes and tried again to achieve samad state, but he couldn’t. He opened his eyes, then shut them again, trying not to let his misery grow worse. He had been through all the Disciplines, one after the other, and none of them worked.
Never had Ran-Del felt so alone and so helpless. He paid no attention to his surroundings, even when the lights came on in the room. He had never seen artificial lights before, but his curiosity wasn’t strong enough to overpower his anguish.
The door from the sitting room slid open with a quiet whoosh. Ran-Del opened his eyes once more to find Stefan Hayden standing there looking down at him nonchalantly, one hand in his pocket. Ran-Del neither rose nor acknowledged the other man’s presence.
“Hello, Ran-Del,” Stefan said. “How do you feel?”
Instead of answering, Ran-Del debated about taking advantage of Baron Hayden’s singular state to attack him. Probably the pocket in which he held his hand so casually contained another pain-inducing, non-lethal weapon. Besides, Ran-Del was too despondent to work himself up into the necessary rage.
“I expect you’re still suffering from the effect of the empranimine,” Stefan said. “A dose that strong takes a while to wear off.”
Still Ran-Del kept silent.
“It occurs to me that I should give you some information,” Stefan said, maintaining his pleasant tone. “After all, I’ve brought you here against your will. I have every intention of keeping you here—for quite a while, anyway—so I should give you some background on the situation here in Shangri-La.”
Ran-Del shut his eyes, but Stefan kept talking.
“I know that ordinarily, you could block the sound of my voice quite successfully, but right now, you can’t do that, so this is a good time to talk to you.”
“Go away!” Ran-Del burst out, opening his eyes. “Leave me alone.”
Stefan’s smile grew wider. “Now, Ran-Del, think about it. Would I have brought you all this way merely to leave you alone?”
Ran-Del sat up abruptly. “Why did you bring me here, then? What is it you mean to do with me?”
“That depends on you,” Stefan said smoothly. “Meanwhile, I’m going to give you a little history lesson. Do you know anything at all about how we came to be on this world?”
Ran-Del gave him a look of contempt. Did the man think he was stupid? “We all enter the world in the same way—through our mother’s bodies. I doubt you were an exception. I know I wasn’t.”
Stefan’s laugh held genuine amusement. “Actually, I was speaking of humanity as a whole. Do you know how people came to live here on Haven?”
Ran-Del gave him another weary look. “Every child knows the story of how the First People endured many hardships in the World Before. They boarded great silver sky ships seeking a haven from adversity, and sailed many times around the sun and the moons, and finally they came to rest upon the land. From out of the ships came all the peoples of the world—the Sansoussy of the forest, the Horde of the mountains, and the city dwellers.”
Stefan nodded. “That’s not too far off, surprisingly. People didn’t originate on this planet—this world. They evolved on a world called Terra that’s so far away from here—many, many times farther away than the sun and the moons—that it would have taken several lifetimes for them to travel here. So the Terrans built ships that could sail by themselves, and in them rode people who were sleeping a kind of frozen sleep.”
Ran-Del listened, intrigued in spite of himself. The legends spoke mostly about his ancestors’ reasons for their journey but said very little about the journey itself.
The Baron continued his narrative. “They were hoping to find a world that could support human life without having its own intelligent species, and in Haven they struck lucky. The only real accommodation they had to make was to get used to a different time frame. Our day was very close to a Terran day, but our year is more than four times as long. My people compensated for that by creating hybrid crops that could grow in Haven’s seasons. Yours learned to live off the native vegetation, to preserve food, and to hunt through the long winters. All of us count in seasons instead of years, just because it’s easier.”
The Baron’s account used so many unfamiliar words and concepts, Ran-Del could no longer make sense of it. He grew bored and yawned to let the Baron know he had lost interest.
Unperturbed, Baron Hayden went on. “Once they got here, the machines in the ships woke them, and they settled here and formed a colony. And that is how we—the people of all three cities, the Horde, and the Sansoussy—all got here.
Ran-Del assessed the other man. Stefan believed what he was saying. “Our legends teach us our ways. You have your own ways and your own legends.”
“But do your legends tell you why your ancestors came here?” Stefan asked, sitting down in a chair. Ran-Del noted that he still kept his hand in his pocket and concluded that the man did indeed have a weapon.
Ran-Del leaned back against the headboard of the bed. “They were oppressed and wished to find peace in their minds—to live without care or strife. There were others who wouldn’t allow this, so our people came in the silver ships and moved to the forest, to teach the Disciplines to their children.”
“All our ancestors were seeking a haven, of one sort or another,” Stefan said. “Your ancestors were part of a cult that believed in the power of the human mind—that prayer and meditation coupled with isolation could make the mind more powerful. Back on Terra they were considered kooks—gullible people who followed a leader who had created her own religion. But after a few centuries in suspended animation, your ancestors arrived here, had children, started a new culture, and lo and behold, they turned out to be right.”
“Of course,” Ran-Del said.
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it.” Stefan sounded annoyed. “On Terra, your philosophy was just bits and pieces of old religions cobbled together to make something new and shiny. It was only after our ancestors arrived here that people developed psy powers. I often wonder whether that’s true on other colony worlds, too, assuming there are any.”
Ran-Del stared at him. The Baron spoke in riddles. What was suspended animation, and what was a colony world?
Stefan waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind, I’m digressing too much. To get back to my point, unlike yours, my ancestors had no interest in spirituality. Some of them came out of greed, while others were interested only in power. An isolated outpost of eager colonists offered more possibilities to these entrepreneurs and adventurers than overcrowded Terra, rife with regulations, population controls, and too much competition. As soon as the ships landed, some of my ancestors set about putting themselves in control. The cities were never run as democracies, you know. There was no such thing as one person, one vote. There was a mad scramble for control of resources—land, minerals, water. Each of the early leaders made himself or herself the head of a Great House, a family-run business, if you like, that was usually backed by land, and in some cases, an industry, such as mines and even factories.”
Ran-Del seethed with impatience. The Baron seemed enchanted with his own story, but Ran-Del only understood parts of it. What was a democracy?
“These Houses still exist today,” Stefan said, “almost a hundred and twenty solar years later—four hundred and seventy-eight seasons, if you prefer. Recently the trend has been to consolidate the Great Houses into cartels made up of two or more houses. Usually, one house predominates over the others. I don’t intend to let my house be swallowed up like that. I intend for you to help me to stop it.”
Ran-Del could see a ray of understanding. This Baron wanted to keep his clan free of control by outsiders. How the Baron thought Ran-Del could help him was the mystery. “What makes you think that I’ll do what you want?”
Stefan gave him another enigmatic smile. “I don’t know for certain that you will, but I have hopes.”
Ran-De
l’s psy sense confirmed Stefan's sincerity but gave Ran-Del no useful information. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to know it to make sense of what will come later,” Stefan said promptly.
A trill of musical notes, like someone playing a flute, brought Ran-Del alert. He glanced around to see what had made the noise.
Stefan smiled at his confusion. “It’s someone at the door,” he said, stepping into the doorway to the sitting room. “Come!”
Ran-Del stood up. Through the bedroom doorway he could see the man called Toth enter the sitting room. The one called Merced was with him. Both of them were armed as they had been earlier that day, although neither had his weapon drawn.
“You asked me to bring this as soon as it was ready, Baron.” Toth held out something round and shiny, rather like a wide bracelet except that it was too big a circle.
Stefan took it and inspected it carefully. “It looks right. Is it loaded with empranimine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then,” Stefan said briskly, turning back to the bedroom door. “Give me your right arm, please, Ran-Del.”
“Why?” Instinctively, Ran-Del backed up, stopping only when he ran into the bed.
“I need to put this on your arm,” Stefan said. “It won’t hurt you—in fact it’s to protect you. Now, give me your hand.”
Ran-Del moved into the open space in the middle of the bedroom. If they killed him trying to put the thing on him, so much the better. “No.”
Stefan signaled Toth and Merced, who followed him into the bedroom and stood on either side of him, blocking Ran-Del’s access to the door.
“Come on, Ran-Del,” Stefan said. “You’re just being stubborn. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. It’s up to you.”
Ran-Del glared at him. “Your mother was a crested viper, and your father was a vulture cat!”
Stefan didn’t look offended. “Take it easy on him, Merced. Try to just clip him a little.”
Ran-Del lunged forward before Merced could move, and kicked the man’s wrist just as the guard put his hand on the butt of his gun.
Without a pause, Ran-Del whirled and attacked Toth, who had drawn and leveled his pistol. The Sansoussy kept his momentum going and threw all the force of his rapidly moving body at the other man, knocking him to the ground.
Ran-Del picked himself up and turned back to Merced, who had managed to stay on his feet but held his arm as if it pained him. Ran-Del finished him off with another quick, brutal kick, this one to the groin. Merced dropped to the floor groaning in anguish, and rolled back and forth next to the barely-moving Toth.
Ran-Del glanced quickly at Stefan, noting that the older man had stepped back out of the way and stood in the far corner of the room. Ran-Del made a split-second decision to leave the Baron as he was and ran from the bedroom into the sitting room.
He tried the access panel, but the door to the corridor wouldn’t open for him. After one frustrated blow to the door, Ran-Del spun around and headed for the garden. This door slid open in response to his hand upon the panel. Ran-Del ran outside looking frantically for cover. He had expected to be in the dark, but lights came on around the base of the wall as soon as he set foot on the walkway.
Ran-Del recalled Stefan’s description of the height of the force field. He noted the stone bench nearest the wall and ran for it as fast as he could go. He leaped into the air, intending to use the bench as a way to vault over the barrier, but just as his foot touched the stone, a blast of pain hit the middle of his back.
Ran-Del screamed and collapsed onto the ground. The drug in his system was still potent enough to keep him from reaching samad state but did nothing to dull his agony. He writhed uncontrollably, unable to rise, and panting from the effort of not screaming again. He couldn’t filter out the pain or his surroundings.
Stefan ran up to him. “Damn fool! It’s a wonder you haven’t killed yourself this time.”
Toth staggered over and stood beside the Baron. “Merced may take care of that. The bastard broke his arm.”
Stefan frowned. “There will be none of that. I don’t want him harmed any more than necessary. There’s no reason anyone should get hurt.”
“Tell him that,” Toth said, nodding at Ran-Del.
“I’m trying to,” Stefan said grimly, “but he’s not listening very well.”
He dropped down and quickly slid the oversize bracelet over Ran-Del's right hand and then up his arm. Once it was over the elbow, Stefan checked the markings on the front, and then spun a small control on the bottom edge. Ran-Del seethed in anger but his body still suffered uncontrolled spasms, and he couldn’t even formulate a plan of resistance, let alone put it into effect.
“There,” the Baron said with satisfaction. “At least that’s done. Help me get him back into the house.”
The two of them half dragged Ran-Del into the sitting room and deposited him on the bench-like chair that the Baron had called a sofa. Ran-Del groaned and tried to sit up.
“Take it easy,” Stefan said. “A shock pistol is nothing to sneeze at, not when you take it full bore like that. You’ll be all right in a few minutes.”
Ran-Del groaned again. He had no recourse except more insults. “Your ancestors were vermin, and your progeny are degenerate mongrels!”
Stefan laughed. “Better not let Francesca hear you call her a mongrel, let alone degenerate. She doesn’t take kindly to being called names.”
Ran-Del was in too much pain to ask him who Francesca was, but the name registered in his mind nonetheless. Another moan escaped him.
Sympathy oozed from Stefan. “I’m sorry I had to shoot you again, but you would never have made it over the wall.”
Ran-Del didn’t want to listen. He cursed again, raging against his own helplessness.
“If all you’re going to do is hurl epithets at my head, then I’ll leave you alone,” Stefan said, rising to his feet. “I just want to warn you about the thing on your arm.”
Ran-Del became aware of the weight of the device. Another intrusion! He gave an angry exclamation and tugged at it, but he couldn’t pull it off.
“You can forget that,” Stefan said. “It’s locked on. But it won’t hurt you. It’s not a weapon or an instrument of torture.”
“Then what is it?”
“It monitors your heart and your breathing. If you try to will yourself to die again, it’ll give you another shot of empranimine. That’s the stuff I gave you earlier that prevents you from inducing a trance.”
Ran-Del fell back against the cushioned bench in despair. Nothing in this place made sense, and everything worked against him. “It won’t let me achieve samad state?”
“Only if your heart rate slows down too much,” Stefan said. “Otherwise, it won’t care what your brain is doing.”
Ran-Del wasn’t entirely clear what the Baron meant, but he held a glimmer of hope that he would be able to find relief in meditation at some future time.
“I’ll send someone in with your dinner,” Stefan said. “Behave yourself and don’t try to kill whoever brings in the tray.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ran-Del said, through gritted teeth. He felt stronger as the pain receded. “And I don’t want your food.”
Stefan laughed out loud. “You’ll soon starve with that attitude. I’ll send in a tray, and we’ll see how you feel once you smell the food.”
He left Ran-Del staring out into the darkness of the courtyard. The lights had gone out in the garden shortly after the people had left it, and only the light from the windows illuminated the twilight of early evening.
Ran-Del sat for a long time, immersed in his own misery. Eventually, he focused on a white square of the walkway outside the door and walked himself through the steps of the Second Discipline. He was immensely relieved to feel himself sliding into samad state. He still had the Disciplines.