Anywhen (4 page)

"True, but they'll observe them only so long as they believe me; that's standard, too."

Simon shrugged. "Be convincing, then," he said. "I have already said that this project will be dangerous; presumably, you didn't become a traitor solely for sweet safety's sake."

"No, but not for suicide's, either. But I'll abide the course. Where are the documents?"

"Give me access to your Prince's toposcope-scriber and I'll produce them. But first—twenty riyals, please."

"Minus two riyals for the use of the Prince's property. Bribes, you know."

"Your sister was wrong. You do have style, in a myopic sort of way. All right, eighteen riyals—and then let's get on to real business. My time is not my own—not by a century."

"But how do I reach you thereafter?"

"That information," Simon said blandly, "will cost you those other two riyals, and cheap at the price."

CHAPTER FIVE

The Rood-Prince's brain-dictation laboratory was very far from being up to Guild standards, let alone High Earth's, but Simon was satisfied that the documents he generated there would pass muster. They were utterly authentic, and every experienced traitor had a feeling for that quality, regardless of such technical deficiencies as blurry image registration or irrelevant emotional overtones.

That done, he set himself in earnest to the task he had already been playing at, that of cataloguing the Rood-Prince's library. He could hardly run out on this without compromising Da-Ud, as well as drawing unwanted attention to himself. Happily, the chore was pleasant enough; in addition to the usual pornography, the Prince owned a number of books Simon had long wanted to see, including the complete text of Vilar's
The Apples of Idun,
and all two hundred cantos of Mordecai Drover's
The Drum Major and the Mask,
with the fabulous tipped-in Brock woodcuts, all hand-tinted. There were sculptures by Labuerre and Halvorsen; and among the music, there was the last sonata of Andrew Carr . . . all of this embedded, as was inevitable, in vast masses of junk; but of what library, large or small, might that
not
be said? Whether or not the Rood-Prince had taste, he certainly had money, and some of it, under some past librarian, had been well-spent.

In the midst of all this, Simon had also to consider how he would meet Da-Ud when the game had that much furthered itself. The arrangement he had made with the playwoman's half-brother had of course been a blind, indeed a double blind; but it had to have the virtues of its imperfections—that is, to look as though it had been intended to work, and to work in fact up to a certain point—or nothing would be accomplished. And it would then have to be bailed out of its in-built fatalities. So—

But Simon was now beginning to find it hard to think. The transduction serum was increasingly taking hold, and there were treasons taking place inside his skull which had nothing at all to do with Da-Ud, the Rood-Prince, Druidsfall, Boadacea, the Green Exarch, or High Earth. Worse: They seemed to have nothing to do with Simon de Kuyl, either, but instead muttered away about
silly little provincial intrigues nothing could have brought him to care about—yet which made him feel irritated, angry, even ill, like a man in the throes of jealousy toward some predecessor and unable to reason them away. Knowing their source, he fought them studiously, but he knew they would get steadily worse, however resolute he was; they were coming out of his genes and his blood stream, not his once finely honed, now dimming consciousness.

Under the circumstances, he was not going to be able to trust himself to see through very many highly elaborate schemes, so that it would be best to eliminate all but the most necessary. Hence it seemed better, after all, to meet Da-Ud in the Principate as arranged, and save the double dealing for more urgent occasions.

On the other hand, it would be foolish to hang around the Principate, waiting and risking some miscarriage—such as betrayal through a possible interrogation of Da-Ud—when there were things he might be accomplishing elsewhere. Besides, the unvarying foggy warmth and the fragmented, garish religiousness of the Principate both annoyed him and exercised pulls of conflicting enthusiasms and loyalties on several of his mask personalities, who had apparently been as unstable even when whole as their bits and pieces had now made him. He was particularly out of sympathy with the motto graven on the lintel of the Rood-Prince's palace: JVSTICE Is LOVE. The sentiment, obviously descended from some colonial Islamic sect, was excellent doctrine for a culture knit together by treason, for it allowed the prosecution of almost any kind of betrayal on the grounds that justice ( disguised as that kind of love which says, "I'm doing this for your own good; it hurts me more than it does you") was being pursued. But Simon, whose dimly remembered parents had betrayed him often on just those grounds,
found it entirely too pat. Besides, he was suspicious of all abstractions which took the form "A is B." In his opinion, neither justice nor mercy were very closely related to love, let alone being identical with it—otherwise, why have three words instead of one? A metaphor is not a tautology.

These bagatelles aside, it seemed likely to Simon that something might be gained by returning for a while to Druidsfall and haunting the vicinity of the Guildhall. At the worst, his address would then be unknown to Da-Ud, and his anonymity more complete in the larger city, the Guild less likely to identify him even were it to suspect him—as of course it would—of such boldness. At best, he might pick up some bit of useful information, particularly if Da-Ud's embassy were to create any unusual stir.

Very well. Presenting the Rood-Prince with a vast stack of punched cards and a promise to return, Simon took the flyer to Druidsfall, where he was careful to stay many miles away from The Skopolamander.

For a while he saw nothing unusual, which was in itself fractionally reassuring. Either the Guild was not alarmed by Da-Ud's clumsy proposals, or was not letting it show. On several days in succession, Simon saw the Boadacean Traitor-in-Chief enter and leave, sometimes with an entourage, more often with only a single slave. Everything seemed normal, although it gave Simon a small, ambiguous
frisson
which was all the more disturbing because he was unsure which of his
personae
he should assign it to. Certainly not to his fundamental self, for although Valkol was here the predestined enemy, he was no more formidable than others Simon had defeated (while, it was true, being in his whole and right mind).

Then Simon recognized the "slave"; and this time he did run. It was the vombis, the same one who had been travelling as a diplomat aboard the
Karas.
The creature had not even bothered to change its face to fit its new role.

This time he could have killed the creature easily from his point of vantage, and probably gotten away clean, but again, there were compelling reasons for not doing so. Just ridding the universe of one of the protean entities (if it did any good at all, for nobody knew how they reproduced) would be insufficient advantage for the hue and cry that would result. Besides, the presence of an agent of the Exarchy so close to the heart of this imbroglio was suggestive, and might be put to some use.

Of course, the vombis might be in Druidsfall on some other business entirely, or simply paying a courtesy call on its way back from "deeper into the cluster"; but Simon would be in no hurry to make so dangerous an assumption. No, it was altogether more likely that the Exarch, who could hardly have heard yet of Simon's arrival and disgrace, was simply aware in general of how crucial Boadacea would be to any scheme of High Earth's—he was above all an efficient tyrant—and had placed his creature here to keep an eye on things.

Yes, that situation might be used, if Simon could just keep his disquietingly percolating brains under control. Among his present advantages was the fact that his disguise was better than that of the vombis, a fact the creature had probably been made constitutionally incapable of suspecting by the whole thrust of its evolution.

With a grim chuckle which he hoped he would not later be forced to swallow, Simon flew back to the Gulf of the Rood.

CHAPTER SIX

Da-Ud met Simon in the Singing Gardens, a huge formal maze not much frequented of late even by lovers, because the Rood-Prince in the throes of some new religious crotchet had let it run wild, so that one had constantly to be fending off the ardor of the flowers. At best, this made even simple conversations difficult, and it was rumored that deep in the heart of the maze the floral attentions to visitors were of a more sinister sort.

Da-Ud was exultant, indeed almost manic in his enthusiasm, which did not advance comprehension either, but Simon listened patiently.

"They bought it like lambs," Da-Ud said, naming a sacrificial animal of High Earth so casually as to make one of Simon's
personae
shudder inside him. "I had a little difficulty with the underlings, but not as much as I'd expected, and I got it all the way up to Valkol himself."

"No sign of any outside interest?"

"No, nothing. I didn't let out any more than I had to until I reached His Politeness, and after that he put the blue seal on everything—wouldn't discuss anything but the weather while anyone else was around. Listen, Simon, I don't want to seem to be telling you your business, but I think I may know the Guild better than you do, and it seems to me that you're underplaying your hand. This thing is worth
money."

"I said it was."

"Yes, but I don't think you've any conception how much. Old Valkol took my asking price without a murmur—in fact, so fast that I wish I'd asked for twice as much. Just to show you I'm convinced of all this, I'm going to give it all to you."

"Don't want it," Simon said. "Money is of no use to me unless I can complete the mission. All I need now is operating expenses, and I've got enough for that."

This clearly had been what Da-Ud had hoped he would say, but Simon suspected that had matters gone otherwise, the younger man might indeed have given over as much as half the money. His enthusiasm mounted.

"All right, but that doesn't change the fact that we could be letting a fortune slip here."

"How much?"

"Oh, at least a couple of megariyals—and I mean
apiece,"
Da-Ud said grandly. "I can't imagine an opportunity like that comes around very often, even in the circles you're used to."

"What would we have to do to earn it?" Simon said, with carefully calculated doubt.

"Play straight with the Guild. They want the material badly, and if we don't trick them we'll be protected by their own rules. And with that much money, there are a hundred places in the galaxy where you'd be safe from High Earth for the rest of your life."

"And what about your half-sister?"

"Well, I'd be sorry to lose that chance, but cheating the Guild wouldn't bring her back, would it? And in a way, wouldn't it be
aesthetically
more satisfying to pay them back for Jillith by being scrupulously fair with them? 'Justice is Love,' you know, and all that."

"I don't know," Simon said fretfully. "The difficulty lies in defining justice, I suppose—you know as well as I do that it can excuse the most complicated treasons. And `What do you mean by love?' isn't easily answerable either. In the end, one has to shuck it off as a woman's question, too private to be meaningful in a man's world —let alone in matters of polity. Hmmmm."

This maundering served no purpose but to suggest that Simon was still trying to make up his mind; actually, he had reached a decision several minutes ago. Da-Ud had broken; he would have to be disposed of.

Da-Ud listened with an expression of polite bafflement which did not quite completely conceal a gleam of incipient triumph. Ducking a trumpet vine which appeared to be trying to crown him with thorns, Simon added at last: "You may well be right—but we'll have to be mortally careful. There may, after all, be another agent from High Earth here; in matters of this importance they wouldn't be likely to rest with only one charge in the chamber. That means you'll have to follow my instructions to the letter, or we'll never live to spend a riyal of the proceeds."

"You can count on me," Da-Ud said, tossing his hair out of his eyes. "I've handled everything well enough this time, haven't I? And, after all, it was my idea."

"Certainly. An expert production. Very well. What I want you to do now is go back to Valkol and tell him that I've betrayed you; and sold the other half of the secret to the Rood-Prince."

"Surely you wouldn't actually
do
such a thing!"

"Oh, but I
would,
and I
shall—the
deed will be done by the time you get back to Druidsfall, and for the same twenty riyals that you paid for your half."

"But the purpose—?"

"Simple. I cannot come to Druidsfall with my remaining half—if there's another Earthman there, I'd be shot before I got halfway up the steps of the Hall. I want the Guild to consolidate the two halves by what seems to be an unrelated act of aggression between local parties. You make this clear to them by telling them that I won't actually make the sale to the Rood-Prince until I hear from you that you have the rest of the money. To get the point across at once, when you tell His Politeness that I've 'betrayed' you—wink."

"And how do I get word to you this time?"

"You wear this ring. It communicates with a receiver in my clasp. I'll take matters from there."

The ring—which was actually
only
a ring, which would never communicate anything to anybody—changed hands. Then Da-Ud saluted Simon with solemn glee, and went away to whatever niche in history—and in the walls of the Guildhall of Boadacea—is reserved for traitors without style; and Simon, breaking the stalk of a lyre bush which had sprung up between his feet, went off to hold his muttering, nattering skull and do nothing at all.