Meeting at Infinity (8 page)

Allyn Vage does not sleep in her cocoon. There are no fatigue products in her bloodstream—they would hinder the
never-stopping process of regenerating her body. Only, her energy is somewhat debased, artificially, to conserve the subtle unconscious rhythm of night and day; this is necessary from a psychological point of view, to assure a further link with reality in the isolation of her mind.

Beneath her seat, the perceptor supplies her with news. She has often found it impossible to describe to Knard the sensation of using the perceptor. The closest she has been able to come is to say that she experiences a series of white or colored threads, having personal associations and extending through a grey medium as dense and resistant as deep water. Somehow the threads parallel reality, or reality parallels them.

But the inability to describe what she experiences troubles her not at all.
She
knows about it, and that is enough.

And it is possible, she has found, to play on these threads as on the taut strings of a musical instrument. Twang one here, and the vibration continues along it. Other threads with which it comes in contact resonate in sympathy, more or less. A great deal of control is possible. She has not said anything to Knard about that.

Luis Nevada faces, shaking and cursing, a new world, into which he bought admittance without knowing what he was doing.

Curdy Wence faces the same world, chewing on another pad of tranks, as measured as time in spite of the situation he has got into. He feels exceptionally proud of himself. He doesn’t waste time hoping, or worrying. He plans.

Kingsley Athlone sweats in his police cruiser, his jacket unbuttoned and his face grooved with a giant scowl, which is so deep it seems it will be permanent. The radio crackles with news of the violence abroad in the city, and he barks orders and sweats anew. He thinks less of the forces under his command than of the man he has hunted for weeks and
months and who is now laughing at him from beyond the Tacket portals—immune to revenge, immune to anything.

His search of Nevada’s lodging was fruitless, he recalls, and damns Clostrides. He damns the call which fetched him off Nevada’s track with news of the rioting. He damns his own self-preserving desire to interfere, which led him to order his policemen to hinder the ’cruiters instead of the cultists. Even that far his need for vengeance was driving him! Even to such an overt act against Lyken who had snatched Nevada away!

Of course, if Lyken lost out, no doubt Clostrides would be grateful for the assistance. But what difference would that make, if Nevada did not survive?

And by now it must be known to hundreds, if not thousands, of people, that the police had orders to concentrate on the ’cruiters and let the cultists be when possible. That alone made this extended rioting possible.

Athlone shivers in spite of sweating so much. There will be complaints, inquiries, investigations. All he can do now is clear up the mess he permitted the rioters to create.

He barks further orders, and the fire of the fury begins to flicker out.

Jockey Hole knows about the police’s orders. He has known for hours. He thinks that Clostrides probably gave the orders to Athlone at their interview. Anyone else would have assumed that automatically. Jockey only entertains it as a possibility.

From his nighttime headquarters at the Octopus Bar on Holy Alley, he reaches out and feels the city’s feverish pulse. His eyes and ears are everywhere in the Quarter. So far the all-important string has not fallen into his grasp.

High in the white tower of The Market, the Directors meet for the last time before the invasion. Two things trouble them particularly. By blowing up his base, Lyken has cut himself
off from the world, and that is unprecedented. Other concessionaries in the past have fought to hold what they had; all of them have fought on both fronts, and some of them have held out for the necessary length of time.

And Hal Lanchery—always brash, always eager and defiant—tonight is glum and speaks only in harsh monosyllables.

The Directors are very rich, probably as rich as any man has been in history. Yet they know they are not
sure
of defeating Lyken. Their wealth lies in a slender margin of profit on a truly gigantic investment. They can afford to fight Ahmed Lyken only until the drain on their resources is greater than the continued profit. Therefore, the victory must come swiftly, or it will be pointless. Likewise, there must be something to show for it: there must be Lyken’s franchise in operating order, or else they will have wasted their man power and money to gain something no better than a raw, undeveloped franchise for which they could have bought the rights cheaply.

Lyken’s strange action, and Lanchery’s gloom, make the Directors feel that the balance is swinging the wrong way.

Ahmed Lyken has made his choice. There is no longer any point in wondering if he is correct to place so much trust in the secret of Akkilmar, or indeed whether Akkilmar is still a secret. There is no stopping things now.

C
URDY WAS
running low on tranks; he felt the raw saw-edge of nervousness cutting through his armored mind, bit by bit, but he didn’t know how long his supply would have to last,
so he dared not chew another pad yet. About the time the group of captives he was with was driven through the Tacket portal into the franchise beyond, Nevada’s moaning had got on his nerves much too much, and he had slipped the hysterical man a couple of pads. They had worked, all right. Now he sat in the pew-like seat beside Curdy, his face long and blank, his fingers toying nervously with the chain that was still ringed to his wrist, but not crying any longer.

What they had been through, it occurred to Curdy, had a lot in common with being processed in a factory. A
lot
in common!

Obviously, Lyken had a system set up and well drilled to cope with such a situation. It started with the kidnapping of people off the streets; it went on with the near-automated precision of the chaining up and the conveyer belt delivery of the chained groups to the Tacket portals. It was at that stage—in the hall where the portals stood—that most of the captives who were going to break down, did. Curdy had decided he wasn’t going to, but with Nevada howling close behind him and a bunch of other hysterics a few yards ahead, he had had a tough time. The tranks he had slipped to Nevada were a sort of insurance against next time.

He kept himself calm partly with tranks, partly by thinking of problems Lyken must be facing. That was useful; he might exploit one of the problems and get away. Curdy was determined not to yield easily. He’d almost got away from the pug who woke him in the paddy wagon on delivery at Lyken’s base; only the officer with the energy gun had stopped him. There would be another chance, for sure—even if it was the other side of the portal. He wasn’t sure about the technique of dispossession of a concessionary, but if that was what was going on, it seemed fairly sure that he’d get an opportunity to desert to the invaders.

There was one of the problems he was turning over in his mind. He’d heard cries and curses from ahead of him in the
chained line of captives which suggested that one or two cultists had been brought in among the rest. How did Lyken expect to keep cultists loyal, especially under these circumstances? What earthly good would they be, hysterical with fear at having been taken into one of the abominable Tacket worlds?

But that problem didn’t last very long. He found out its answer directly after passing through the portal.

That was an experience he’d expected to find shattering. In spite of everything, his heart had pounded and his breath had come and gone in gasps as his chained wrist led him towards the portal, which shimmered slightly like a vast soap bubble stretched on a wire frame. Yet when he passed through, with Nevada hanging back frantically behind him and screaming, he felt nothing at all. The temperature dropped a couple of degrees; the sounds he could hear changed and became less shrill; there was a vaguely alien smell in the air. Otherwise he might still have been where he was before.

On this side, Lyken’s men were tired and too busy to be irritable. The mechanical nature of the processing got more and more marked. The chained groups were drawn through another room, past pugs who grabbed each captive in turn and presented him to a man in white wielding a high-pressure injector. A blast from the instrument stung the captive’s back. That was all. When Curdy got his dose, he judged that he had been given a wake-up shot and maybe some intravenous nourishment, because he felt suddenly more alert and vigorous. Probably there was a tranquilizer in the mixture as well—at any rate, the hysterical cries dropped off rapidly once the captives passed the injector.

In another room, next door, they were presented to a second operator, and this one made them gape with astonishment, almost forgetting their plight. Curdy had never seen anyone like the woman presiding here. She was barely half-dressed,
but not to show off her beauty, because she was middle-aged and skinny. She wore a kind of short wrap and a large number of bangles, necklaces and girdles of beaten copper and silver. Her hair was graying.

Beside her, on a long bench, were arranged a number of boxes with handles on top, made of black wood. She held one of the boxes by its handle; when the responsible pugs grabbed a captive passing before her, she banged this box hard; the impact made Curdy’s head swim. When the last of a given group had been treated in this way, she handed the box to the pug in charge and took up another one for the next group. There were hundreds of boxes. Curdy tried to estimate how big a force Lyken was going to have while thinking to work out what the boxes were for. With the second problem, he got nowhere; with the first, he arrived at a number somewhere over ten thousand and had to whistle silently.

But so much the better. The more kidnapped victims Lyken had to cope with, the better the chance that an individual might slip away without being noticed.

After that, the rush stopped for a while, and the chained captives were led into a room lined with pew-like benches, each just long enough to hold one group on a chain if they squeezed up close. There were fifty or sixty benches altogether; all but a few were full. Around the walls, pugs carrying black boxes lounged and chatted, sometimes turning the boxes over idly in their hands.

Suddenly, there was a commotion, and a man dressed in a fashion similar to the woman issuing the black boxes appeared in the center of the square of pews. Curdy hadn’t seen him enter the room. A gasp of astonishment to which he didn’t contribute implied that maybe other people hadn’t, either.

The man held up an arm that jingled with a heavy load of metal ornaments, and spoke in a ringing voice.

“You’ll have your chains taken off in a moment! You’ll be
taken to the magazine and issued with energy guns, gas guns, or other weapons. And you’ll be taken outside and given a post to defend—maybe here in the neighborhood, maybe five or ten or twenty miles away.”

Curdy began to sit up and take notice. This was better than he had hoped for.

“But you’re still going to be chained!” said the speaker. He signaled to one of the pugs carrying a black box; his choice at random happened to be the one in charge of Curdy’s group. “You’ve seen these boxes. You’ve wondered what they are for. I’ll show you.”

He took the box by its handle, and stared at it fixedly. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Curdy was jolted to his feet by a sudden voiceless order that seemed to explode inside his skull.

Turn to the right.
A second explosion. Curdy turned, not wanting to, not knowing why he obeyed. He saw that his companions were doing the same.

Turn to the front. Walk on the spot. Stop. Sit down.

It was over, and his head was still ringing with the echo.

“Try it.” The man in the center of the room handed back the box to the pug in charge, who grinned delightedly. In a moment, there were more explosions, this time shattering and dizzying.

Stand up. Wave your arms. Stop. Hit the guy next to you. Sit down.

The orders were coarse, violent, brutal, direct. They were the way the pug looked to be.

“Enough,” said the man in the center. Curdy slumped into his seat again.

“You’re chained,” the words hammered at his skull. “You will obey your orders because you have no choice. Go and collect your weapons now. And remember that you can use them only as you are ordered. Don’t even think of mutiny—it isn’t possible.”

He folded his arms and stared around as though seeking a challenge from his audience. None came. Curdy felt a wave of sick dismay batter down the defenses raised by his tranks, and saw the hope of escape and desertion float away on top of that wave.

In the chamber, hollowed from the heart of the pillar of rock on which he had placed his eyrie, where he had set up his operations room, Lyken sat with the fat, bald, jolly-voiced sage from Akkilmar who had been the first to come to the trading post and bring news of what Akkilmar was going to do to aid the defenders.

Opposite them, feeling out of place because his responsibility—looking after the home base—was gone, Shane Malco sat scowling. Lyken cast a quizzical glance at him.

“You don’t look happy, Shane.”

“I’m not. I’m worried.”

“You haven’t any reason to be.”

Malco gave a distrustful look at the sage from Akkilmar, tossed a mental coin, and decided to speak regardless. He said, “I think you’re gambling recklessly, Ahmed. I don’t know what’s come over you.”

The sage drew his eyebrows a little closer together, but said nothing. As Malco had done, Lyken glanced at him before speaking.

He said, “You’ve never been through into the franchise before, have you, Shane?”

“A few times, to look at merchandise and to attend conferences. That’s all.”

“All right. Therefore it’s understandable that you should have doubted my faith in Akkilmar until now. Why do you still doubt it, when you’ve seen what these people can do?”

The sage smiled like a sunrise, exposing perfect and very white teeth.

“I don’t doubt that they can do it,” said Malco slowly. “I’ve
seen these black boxes and how they can give control over even the most recalcitrant cultist, turning him into a useful amateur soldier. I’ve seen what can be done with the rho function field perceptor by people who properly understand its workings and don’t just relegate it to a sort of prosthetic for incapacitated cripples. No, I don’t doubt what the people of Akkilmar can do. I want to know why they’re doing it, that’s all.”

The sage spoke for the first time. He said, “Are you suspicious of us?”

“Frankly, yes,” said Malco with a weary sigh.

“Your leader is not; why should you be? Malco, your leader has treated us well. He has not disturbed our traditional way of life, nor tried to rob us, but has always dealt with us courteously and kindly. If there are men who wish to take away his legal rights, they must by contrast be his opposite. And we do not want them in this world of ours.”

“I want to know much more than that,” Malco answered. “You’ve got powers which I have to confess are amazing. You’ve got techniques we ourselves can only use, not understand properly. But up till now, you’ve kept them to yourselves. You’ve had no interest, or so you gave us to think, in anything except your ‘traditional culture’. You seem perfectly capable of defending it against anyone who comes—whether Lyken or Yorell or Lanchery or whoever of the Directors steals the franchise.”

The smile on the sage’s face melted into a frown, and he got to his feet. “My people do not like to have their sincerity questioned,” he said boomingly. “If you wish, we will return to Akkilmar and leave you in peace. We attempt to aid you, and we are scorned. So be it!”

Lyken got hastily up. “No, no!” he said in a voice that made Malco turn startled eyes on him, it was so uncharacteristically pleading and dependent. “Malco does not speak with authority.
I will reprimand him and he won’t say anything of the sort again!”

The sage appeared to relent; he shrugged, and sat down again with a quick nod.

“Shane, are you out of your mind?” Lyken demanded, swinging around. “I think you’d better apologize, right now!”

Malco hesitated. “If I’m wrong, I apologize with all my heart,” he said eventually. “But—Ahmed, listen to me. I grant you that Akkilmar has turned out to be all you expected, with its mysterious powers and techniques, and I grant you that they’ve turned out to help us in force. Can I just remind you, though, that you were saying before that Akkilmar was a secret of this franchise, and that you assumed the secret to be well kept when you made your gamble?

“Well, we don’t know if it’s been well kept, do we? Nevada knew about Akkilmar, because Erlking told him. And you didn’t catch up with Erlking before we blew up the base! The base gone, we haven’t a hope of getting at him now—and anyone else might!”

“Your beloved home base—” began Lyken.

“I know it had to go, in case someone found out that the portals were on the upper floors and guessed that the terrain in this franchise is mountainous.” Malco spoke wearily.

“Damn it, then! I left instructions with the agents looking for Erlking to kill him if they found him too late to bring him through to the franchise. I couldn’t do more. And anyway, now that I’ve seen what our friends from Akkilmar can
really
do, I’m not at all sure that it makes any difference whether Akkilmar is a secret or not. They’re too powerful.”

“That’s
exactly
what troubles me!” snapped Malco, and got up and walked away.

The sage watched him go, his round face in a serious expression. He said after a pause, “I think your aide might well be subject to a black box?” And turned to Lyken with one eyebrow raised interrogatively.

“No,” said Lyken curtly. “Malco’s a good and reliable man. He just worries more about me than he does about himself. He’s perfectly loyal, and the last person I’d want to be ‘black-boxed.’ ”

“As you wish,” shrugged the sage, and managed to convey in the three words his opinion that Lyken was a foolhardy incompetent, unable to recognize danger when it stared him in the face. There was also a subtle suggestion that if it had not been for the aid he was getting from Akkilmar, he would have gone under long ago.

That last suggestion left Lyken uncomfortable—because he himself was almost beginning to suspect it might be true.