Direct Descent (7 page)

David brought up the rear and closed the door.

Sil-Chan stared at the room—long with a ceiling which reached away to dim rafters. Windows looked out onto the landing field and the wrecked jetter … more windows peered into shadowy woods … gigantic rock fireplace at one end, smoke-blackened. There was a smell of smoke in the room. Odd projections on the walls. Sil-Chan peered at them, realized they were the mounted heads of horned animals. There was a small fire in the fireplace. David crossed to it, stirred up the flame and added more logs.

Hepzebah touched Sil-Chan’s arm, said: “Come over by the fire and let me look at your shoulder. David, get a refresher, a good stiff one.”

“Right.” David walked off toward a door opposite the fireplace.

Sil-Chan’s mind reeled. This entrancing woman was not wed! David was Aitch Aye. What was that? Sil-Chan felt that he had read of such a relationship somewhere in the Library.
Heir Apparent! Yes, of course.
And Hepzebah was ‘of the same line.’ Gods of the universe! This pair was royalty!

“Come along,” Hepzebah said.

Sil-Chan allowed himself to be led to a low-backed divan beside the fireplace. Flames murmured in the logs. The smell of smoke was stronger here. He stumbled over something that rang musically.

“One of the children left a toy,” Hepzebah said. “David’s so easy with them.” She indicated the divan. “Sit down and take off your jacket. I’ll …”

“No, really. It’s all right,” Sil-Chan said. Again, he found himself trapped in her eyes—the soft look of them here in the shadowed room … like some forest animal.
She’s not wedded. She’s not wedded.

“I’ll have a look all the same,” she said. She put a light pressure on his shoulder and he sank to the divan. It was soft, absorbing and smelled of animal.

Hepzebah bent over him, and Sil-Chan inhaled a mind-rolling musk of perfumed hair. He allowed her to help him out of his jacket and shirt. The jacket was torn at the elbow and he had not even noticed. His flesh tingled where Hepzebah touched him.

“Bad bruise on your shoulder and a scratch above your left elbow,” she said. She went to a door beside the fireplace, returned in a moment with a cloth which smelled of unguent. The cloth felt cool and soothing where she pressed it to his shoulder.

“What’s a trothing?” Sil-Chan asked.

“The trothers are the clan elders. They decide if a joining will be good for the clan.”

He swallowed. “Do you ever … wed outside your clan?”

She lowered her eyes. “Sometimes.”

Sil-Chan studied the soft oval of her face, imagined that face pillowed beside him. His mission, the Archive’s problems, Tchung—all melted into the distance … another planet.

“Drink this.”

It was David suddenly standing behind him, proffering an earthen mug that swirled with pungent brown liquid and a biting aroma. Sil-Chan tasted it: hot, tangy and sharp on the tongue. He downed the drink. Warmth filled him. He re-experienced the inner release he had felt after crashing the jetter—another person. He stood up.

“How does one arrange a troth?” he asked.

She peered up at him, a smile touching her lips. Something smoky and wondering drifted in her eyes. “We have several ways. The PN’s K-cousins can take the initiative if the couple ask it.”

“What’s all this talk of trothing?” David asked. He came around the divan and stood with his back to the fire.

Hepzebah waved a hand in front of Sil-Chan’s eyes, leaned close to stare at him.

Sil-Chan said: “What’re you …”

“I have the inward eye,” she said. “You go very deep. It’s warm and nice in there.”

David said: “I asked you …”

“If he’ll have me, David, I’m going to open the troth,” she said.

David looked at Sil-Chan, at Hepzebah. “I haven’t been out of the room
that
long, have I? I just went for a drink.”

She touched Sil-Chan tentatively on the wrist. Again, he felt his flesh tingle.

“This is nonsense,” David said.

Her hand stole into Sil-Chan’s. He felt the perfect fit of her there, the perfection of her beside him.

“Will you wed me, Sooma Sil-Chan?” she asked.

“Hep, you stop this!” David said.

“Be quiet, David,” she said, “or I will tell stories about a young man’s secret visits to the mainland.”

“Now, Hep! You …”

“Quiet, I said.”

Sil-Chan felt himself bathed in a warm glow—the drink inside him, Hepzebah’s hand in his.
Wed her?

“I’d go to the ends of the universe to wed you,” he whispered.

“Is that a yes?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

“But you’ve only just met!” David protested.

“The trothers will agree with me,” she said. “But I already know. The inward eye never fails.” She tipped her head, looked up at Sil-Chan from the corners of her eyes. “I find him very attractive.”

David appeared angry. “He’s just different.”

“I’m already certain,” she said. “And you heard the question and you heard his response.”

“This is too much!” David raged. “You’re always doing things like this!”

Sil-Chan experienced a crawling of goose flesh. He felt delirious. All those years of celibacy and devotion to duty and career had melted away.

“He’ll never take the name!” David said. “Just to look at him you can tell. You’d best accept Martin as the trothers …”

“Gun the trothers!” Steel in her voice. “So if he won’t take the name, I’ll go with him … as is right. We’ll cross that river when it cuts our trail.”

“This is much too quick,” David said. “The PN will blast the roof off when he …”

“His sister’s son and your sister’s son—that’s the way of the PN,” she said. “Let us never forget it.”

When he responded, David’s voice was lower. “Still too quick.”

Sil-Chan looked from one to the other. He took strength from the feeling of Hepzebah’s hand in his. There was no need for logic or reason.

“I’ve always been a quick one,” Hepzebah said. “I make decisions the way the ice breaks from the glacier.”

David threw up his hands.

“This is impossible. You’re impossible!”

“When will we wed?” Sil-Chan asked.

“A month,” she said. “That we cannot speed.”

David said: “Hep, if you would just …”

“I warned you, David.”

David turned to Sil-Chan. “Do you have any idea of what you’re starting?”

The question ran a finger of ice down Sil-Chan’s spine. He was here to negotiate with the Paternoster. What happened to that if the PN were alienated at the start?

“I knew it would be a day of turning,” Hepzebah said. “A flight of plover settled in the grass outside my window at dawn. One remained when the others flew on. It called to me before following the flight.”

“The PN will blow down the trees,” David said. “He wants Hep to wed Martin. Joining the two lines will prevent disputes.” He whirled on Hepzebah. “You know that!”

“There are others to do the joining,” she said. “It will be done.”

David flicked a glance at Sil-Chan. “What if this one changes …”

“Have I ever been wrong, David … about such as this?”

“The line of the PN is more important than you or anything else,” David said.

“And I will join what I will join,” she said.

David turned his back on her, stared into the fire. “You!” he muttered.

O O O

Tchung awoke in the black darkness of his bedroom and was several heartbeats orienting himself. The nightmare persisted in his mind. A dream of horrible reality: Ambroso had come into the Director’s office, flourishing deadly weapons and laughing with the laugh of Sooma Sil-Chan. Slowly, the flesh of Ambroso had peeled away, leaving Sil-Chan who continued to laugh and flourish the weapons.

“Now you know me,” the dream Sil-Chan said. “Now I am director. Be gone, old man.”

“Are you awake, Pat?” It was Madame Tchung from the other bed.

Tchung was glad she could not see his perspiring face.

“Yes.”

“Are you troubled, dear?”

“I’m worried about Sooma. Not a word from him.”

“He’ll call when he has news, dear.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Why is that?”

“Ambroso demanded all of my private scrambler codes today.”

“And you gave them to him?”

“What else could I do. I must obey.”

“That stupid rule!”

Tchung sighed.

“Sooma will find a solution,” Madame Tchung said. “Records cannot have made a mistake about him.”

“But he’s … so intense.”

“He’s still young, dear.”

“And so intense.”

“Sooma had to work hard to get where he is, dear. Trust him.”

Tchung sighed. “I’m trying. But it is difficult. When I was his age I was already …”

“You were precocious, dear. Now come over here and let me soothe you.”

O O O

Sil-Chan, too, experienced a nightmare. He had been quartered by David Dornbaker in a small upper room above the fireplace “because it gets cold here at night.” The cot was slender and firm, the blankets rough and smelling of animal fur. There was no pillow, and Sil-Chan’s shoulder throbbed. He rolled up his clothing for a pillow and tried to sleep.

The nightmare invaded his mind.

Paternomer Dornbaker stood over him. The PN was twice the height of a normal man and his fingers ended in claws. The blood of fallow deer dripped from the claws.

“I will hunt you!” the PN raged. Clawed hands came up to threaten Sil-Chan.

Hepzebah darted in front of him. Fangs protruded from her soft mouth. “He is mine,” she said and her voice was the voice of a hunter-cat. “I will drink your blood before I let you harm him.”

Sil-Chan found that his arms were bound, his feet encased in tight sacking. He could not move. His voice would not obey him.

The PN moved to the left. Hepzebah darted to intercept him. The PN moved to the right. Again, Hepzebah blocked his way.

“I will drop this fool down the deepest shaft of the Library,” the PN said. “Who can stop me? The Library is mine … mine … mine … mine.…”

Sil-Chan awoke to find his body encased tightly in the blankets which he had twisted around himself. His shoulder ached. Slowly, Sil-Chan freed himself from the blankets and sat up on the edge of his cot. The floor was cold beneath his bare feet. There was moonglow through a tiny skylight. Shadows from the limbs of giant trees painted images on the floor.

Tomorrow, he and Hepzebah would have a day to themselves. The PN would arrive on the following day.

What can I tell him?

Sil-Chan felt that he had been enchanted, caught in a magic web.
I know it and I don’t care.
What matter the Dornbaker Account? Nothing mattered except the enchantment.

But I can’t abandon the Library. Tchung depends on me.

Why did Tchung depend on him? The question had not occurred to Sil-Chan in quite that form. Why? Well … Tchung would not move without the advice of Records. That was certain. What could Records tell the Director about one Sooma Sil-Chan?

Sil-Chan looked inward at his own past life—a dedicated Library slave, little better than one of the robots. Self-programming, of course. Too single-minded for most people. Few friends. No women friends, although several had indicated more than a casual interest in him. This interest had vanished quickly when they found he was on anti-S.

Well, I’m off it now. They’ve probably never even heard of it on the Free Island.

He thought of Hepzebah then, conjured her face into his mind. Ahhh, with her, all things were possible.

With a sigh, Sil-Chan once more wrapped himself in the blankets and composed himself for sleep. This time, he invited another nightmare: His body was transformed by a witch (who looked remarkably like Hepzebah) and he became a throbbing eye which moved inward, ever deeper inward down a shaft of the Library Planet. The drop seemed endless and when it finally stopped, the eye/himself peered upward as all of the Library’s contents came cascading down the shaft toward him.

“It’ll blind me!” he screamed.

And he awoke to find the pale glow of morning coming through the skylight and mists drifting across the tree branches out there.

A knock sounded on his door. David’s voice: “You awake?”

“Yes.”

“The PN is here.”

Sil-Chan sat upright, stared at the closed door. “But he wasn’t supposed to …”

“He’s here and he wants to see you immediately. You and Hepzebah.”

O O O

The Paternomer Dornbaker was not as tall as his nightmare counterpart, but he towered over Sil-Chan nonetheless. The PN stood more than two meters and his shock of grey hair added another ten centimeters. The PN was also a heavy man, muscular and swift in his movements. The early morning light penetrated the east windows to bathe the room in sharp contrasts. The PN stood out like an ancient figurehead, an older David—skin like cured leather, fan wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, a square chin, sea-blue eyes and a wide mouth with dark lips.

Sil-Chan stood facing him in front of the fireplace. Hepzebah sat on the divan with David standing behind her.

The PN glared at Sil-Chan. “Why do you deliberately disrupt things of which you have no knowledge?”

Sil-Chan glanced at Hepzebah, but she was staring at the floor.

“I did not come to disrupt,” Sil-Chan aid.

“I judge a man by what he does,” the PN said. “How long have you been seeing my niece?”

“I met her for the first time, yesterday.”

“A likely story.”

“Are you calling me a liar, sir?” Sil-Chan kept his voice low and steady. It was a tone that surprised even him. The pre-Dornbaker Sil-Chan would never have used it.

The PN favored him with a peculiar, weighted stare, then: “No-o-o, I am not. But you will admit this is disruptively surprising.”

“Surprising, yes.”

“Why did you come here, then?”

“The Library needs your help.”

“This is how you enlist my help?” He waved at Hepzebah.

She stood and moved to Sil-Chan’s side, put her hand in his. “You almost killed him, Uncle, and you’ve not apologized.”

“You stay out of this.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” she said, “or I and my sisters will ban the seed. How will you find a PN then?”