Gordon R. Dickson (18 page)

Slothiel touched the Emperor lightly on the arm.

“Oran …” he said gently.

For a moment the Emperor did not move. Then, slowly, he straightened and turned about, breaking into a warm smile as he did so.

“Slothiel!” he said. “Good of you to come so quickly. Did you know that I can’t find Vhotan anywhere? He was here just a few minutes ago, and I could swear he hadn’t left the room, but he’s vanished completely.”

The Emperor looked down the long length of the polished floor, around the draperied walls, back up and around the lounge, at the carpet, and at the ceiling, over which the colored shapes still played. He looked everywhere but at the still shape down at his feet.

“You know, I had a dream, Slothiel,” the Emperor went on, wistfully looking back at the other Highborn. “It was just last night—or at least, it was some time recently. I dreamed that Vhotan was dead, Galyan was dead, and all my Starkiens were dead. And when I went looking around the palace and the Throne World to find the other Highborn to tell them about this, there was no one—not in the palace, not on the whole world. I was all alone. You don’t think I would ever be left alone like that, do you, Slothiel?”

“Not while I’m alive, Oran,” said Slothiel.

“Thank you, Slothiel,” said the Emperor. He looked around the room again, however, and his voice became a little fretful. “But I wish I knew what happened to Vhotan. Why isn’t he here?”

“He had to go away for a while, Oran,” said Slothiel. “He told me to stay with you until he gets back.”

The Emperor’s face lit up once more with his warm smile.

“Well, then, everything’s all right!” he said happily. He threw an arm around Slothiel’s shoulders and looked around the room. “Why, there’s Afuan—and little Ro and our little Wolfling. Ex-Wolfling, I should say.”

He gazed at Jim, and his smile slowly faded into a solemn, rather sad expression.

“You’re going away, aren’t you—Jim?” he said, plainly dredging up the name from some hidden corner of his memory. “I thought I heard you say something about that just now.”

“Yes, Oran,” said Jim. “I have to go now.”

The Emperor nodded, his face still sadly solemn.

“Yes, I heard it, all right,” he said, half to himself. His eyes fastened on Jim. “I hear things sometimes, you know, even when I’m not really listening. And I understand things, too; sometimes I understand them better than any of the other Highborn. It’s a good thing you’re going back to your own world, Jim.”

The Emperor’s hand slipped from Slothiel’s shoulder. He took a step forward and stood looking down at Jim.

“You’re full of young energy out there, Jim,” he said. “And we’re tired here. Very tired, sometimes. It’s going to be all right for you and your Wolflings, Jim. I can see it, you know—very often I see things like that, quite clearly… .”

His lemon-yellow eyes seemed to cloud, going a little out of focus, so that he stared through Jim rather than at him.

“I’ve seen you doing well, Jim,” he said. “You and the other Wolflings. And what’s well for you is well for all—all of us.” His eyes unclouded, and once more he was focused on Jim again. “Something tells me you’ve done me a signal service, Jim. I think before you go, I’d like to finish your adoption. Yes, from now on I declare you to be a Highborn, Jim Keil.” He laughed, a little, suddenly. ” … I’m not giving you anything you don’t already have.”

He straightened up and turned back to Slothiel.

“What should I do now?” he asked Slothiel.

“I think you should send Afuan back to her quarters now,” said Slothiel, “and tell her that she’s to stay there until she hears something more from you.”

“Yes.” The Emperor’s glance swung around to fasten on Afuan, but she met it for only a moment, before turning furiously upon Jim and Ro, who stood beside him.

“Mud-face! Wild man!” she spat. “Crawl off into the bushes and mate!”

Jim stiffened, but Ro caught hold of his left arm.

“No!” she said, almost proudly. “You don’t need to. Don’t you see—she’s jealous! Jealous of me!”

Still holding strongly to his arm, she looked up into his face.

“I’m going with you, Jim,” she said. “Back to this world of yours.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor unexpectedly but thoughtfully, “that’s right. I saw it that way. Yes, little Ro should go with him… .”

“Afuan!” said Slothiel sharply.

The Princess threw him a glance as full of hatred as the one she had directed at Ro and Jim. She disappeared.

Jim’s head swam suddenly. He took a strong grip on himself internally, and the room steadied about him.

“We have to go quickly, then,” he said. “I’ll send you those Starkiens from my ship, Slothiel. You can keep them close to the Emperor until you’re able to get back as many as possible of the other units who’ve been sent out to the Colony Worlds. If you order them back quickly, you shouldn’t lose too many of them to Galyan’s antimatter traps.”

“I’ll do that. Good-bye, Jim,” said Slothiel. “And thank you.”

“Good-bye, Jim,” said the Emperor. He stepped forward, offering his hand. Jim freed his left arm from Ro’s grasp and took the long fingers awkwardly with his own left hand.

“Adok,” said the Emperor, without letting go of Jim’s hand, but glancing over at the Starkien, “do you have a family?”

“No more, Oran,” answered Adok in his usual flat tone. “My son is grown, and my wife has gone back to the women’s compound.”

“Would you like to go with Jim?” asked the Emperor.

“I—” For the first time since Jim had known him, the Starkien seemed at a loss for words. “I am not experienced in liking or not liking, Oran.”

“If I order you to go with Jim and Ro, and stay with them for the rest of your life,” said the Emperor, “will you go willingly?”

“Yes, Oran. Willingly,” said Adok.

The Emperor let go of Jim’s hand.

“You’ll need Adok,” he said to Jim.

“Thank you, Oran,” said Jim.

Ro’s grip tightened on his arm once more.

“Good-bye, Oran. Good-bye, Slothiel,” said Ro. And at once they were no longer in the palace room, but at the docking berth where Jim had left the ship containing his Ten-units of Starkiens.

Harn was standing just outside the ship, like a man on watch, when they appeared. He turned quickly to face Jim.

“It’s good to see you, sir,” he said.

Jim unexpectedly felt ship and berthing dock waver and slip around him once more. He pulled himself back to clearheadedness again just in time to hear Adok speaking to Harn.

“The Highborn Vhotan and the Prince Galyan are dead,” Adok was saying quickly, “and three Starkiens have been killed. The Highborn Slothiel has taken Vhotan’s place. You and your men are to go to the Emperor.”

“Yes,” Jim managed to say.

“Sir!” acknowledged Harn, and vanished.

Abruptly they were inside the ship, Jim, Ro, and Adok. Another wave of disorientation passed through Jim, and he felt Ro helping him down gently onto the level surface of a hassocklike bed.

“What is it—Adok!” He heard her voice, but distantly, as if at the far end of a tilted corridor, down which he was sliding, ever faster, ever farther away from her. He made a great effort, and visualized in his mind, first, the spaceport at Alpha Centauri III, and then, from there, the spaceport back on Earth from which he had taken off. It was his last effort—from now on it would be up to the ship. But from what he had read out of the Files of the Throne World’s learning centers, he had no doubt the ship would be able to locate Earth from the directions he had just given it.

He let go, and went back to sliding away down the tilted corridor. But there was one thing more yet he had to do. He fought his way back to consciousness and Ro for a second.

“Galyan burned my side as he died,” he muttered to her. “Now I’m dying. So you’ll have to tell them for me, Ro. On Earth. Tell them … everything… .”

“But you won’t die!” Ro was crying, holding him fiercely with both her arms about him. “You won’t die … you won’t… .”

But even as she held him, he slipped out of her grasp and went sliding—this time with no further check or hope of return—down that long tilted corridor into the utter darkness.

When Jim opened his eyes at last to light after that long slide into darkness, it took him a long time with the help of the light to recognize the shapes of things around him. He felt as if he had been dead for years. Gradually, however, vision sharpened. Perception returned. He became aware that he lay on his back on a surface harder than any hassock; and the ceiling he stared up at was white, but oddly grainy and close above him.

With a great effort he managed to turn his head, and saw shapes that he gradually made out to be a small bedside table, several chairs, and a white screen of the sort used in hospitals. In all, a single room, with a window at the far end that let in a yellow, summer sunlight he had not seen for quite a while. Through the window he could see only sky, blue sky, with a few isolated puffs of white clouds scattered about it. He lay staring at the sky, slowly trying to put things together.

Obviously he was on Earth. That meant that at least five days must have passed while he was unconscious. But if he was on Earth, what was he doing here? Where was here? And where were Ro and Adok, to say nothing of the ship? All this, leaving aside the fact that he seemed to be alive, when he had certainly seemed to have had no right to be so.

He lay still, thinking. After a little while, absently, he felt the side where the flame of Galyan’s torch had penetrated as the Highborn had died. But his side felt smooth and well. Interested, he pulled down the covers, pulled up the blue pajama top he seemed to be wearing, and examined that side. As far as he could see, it looked as if he had never been wounded at all.

He pulled the covers up again and lay back. He felt well, if a little heavy-bodied, as if the lassitude of a long sleep were still clinging to him. He turned his head and looked at the small table by his bedside. It held an insulating plastic pitcher, a glass with some remnants of ice floating at the top of the water within it, and a small box of paper handkerchiefs. The signs were overwhelming that he was in a hospital. This would not be surprising if he still had the deep wound in his side that Galyan’s rod had made. But there was no wound.

He investigated further. Below the top level of the table by his bed was a vertical surface with a telephone handset clinging magnetically to it. He picked up the handset and listened, but there was no dial tone. Experimentally he tried dialing some numbers on the dial set in the center of the inner face of the handset. But the phone remained dead. He put it back, and in the process of doing so, discovered a button on the vertical surface.

He pressed the button.

Nothing happened. After about five minutes of waiting, he pressed it again.

This time, it was only a matter of seconds before the door swung open. A man entered—a heavy-bodied young man not much shorter than himself, with a thick, powerful-looking body dressed in white slacks and white jacket. He came up to the bed, looked down at Jim without a word, and reached to the bed to take Jim’s left wrist. Lifting the wrist, he counted the pulse, gazing at his wristwatch as he did so.

“Yes, I’m alive,” Jim told him. “What hospital is this?”

The male nurse, as he seemed to be, made a noncommittal sound in his throat. Finished counting, he dropped Jim’s wrist back onto the bed and turned toward the door.

“Hold on!” said Jim, sitting up suddenly.

“Just lie there!” said the man in a deep, gruff voice. Hastily he opened the door and went out, slamming it slightly behind him.

Jim threw back the covers and jumped out of bed in the same quick motion. He took three steps to the door and grasped its handle. But his fingers slipped around the smooth, immovable metal as he tried to turn it. It was locked.

He shook the handle once and then stepped back. His first impulse—quenched almost as soon as it was born by the immediate caution of his now thoroughly awakened mind—was to pound on the door until someone came. Now, instead, he stood gazing at it thoughtfully.

This place was beginning to look less like a hospital and more like a place of care for the violently insane. He spun about quickly and went to the window. What he saw confirmed the growing suspicion in him of his surroundings. Invisible from his bed, a mesh of fine wire covered the window opening completely, some four inches beyond the window itself. The wire looked relatively thin, but it was undoubtedly strong enough to be escape-proof for anyone lacking tools.

Jim looked out the window and down, but what he saw gave him little information—merely a width of green lawn bordered on all sides by tall pine trees. The trees were tall enough to cut off the view of whatever lay beyond them.

Jim turned around and thoughtfully went back to sit down on the edge of his bed. After a moment he lay down and pulled the covers up over him again.

With the patience that was so much an innate part of him, he waited.

At least a couple of hours must have gone by before anything more happened. Then, without any advance notice, the door to his room opened and the male nurse came back in, followed by a slight man in his late forties or early fifties with a balding head and narrow face, wearing a white physician’s coat. They came up to the head of the bed together, and the slight man in the white physician’s coat met Jim’s eyes.

“Well, all right,” he said, turning his head slightly toward the male nurse. “I won’t need you.”

The male nurse went out, clicking the door shut behind him. The physician, for such he certainly must be, reached out for Jim’s wrist and took his pulse as the other man had done earlier.

“Yes,” he said, as if to himself, after a moment. He dropped the wrist, pulled back the covers, lifted the pajama coat, and examined Jim’s side—the one that had been wounded. His fingers probed here and there. Abruptly Jim stiffened.

“Sore?” the physician asked.

“Yes,” said Jim flatly.

“Well, that’s interesting,” said the doctor. “—if true.”

“Doctor,” said Jim quietly. “Is there something wrong with you? Or with me?”