The Dark Design (2 page)

Fog, gray and swirling, formed the stage and the backdrop. Burton stood in the pit like an Elizabethan too poor to afford a seat. Above him were thirteen figures, all in chairs which floated in the mist. One of them faced the others, who were arranged in a semicircle. That man was the protagonist—himself.

There was a fourteenth person there, though it stood in the wings and could be seen only by the Burton in the pit. It was a black, menacing shape which, now and then, chuckled hollowly.

A not quite similar scene had happened before, once in reality and many times in dreams, though who could be sure which was which? There he was, the man who’d died seven hundred and seventy times in a vain effort to elude his pursuers. And there sat the twelve who called themselves the Ethicals.

Six were men; six, women. Except for two, all had deeply tanned or heavily pigmented skins and black or dark brown hair. The eyes of two men and a woman had slight epicanthic folds, which made him think that they were Eurasians. That is, they were if they had originated on Earth.

Only two of the twelve had been named during the brief inquisition—Loga and Thanabur. Neither name seemed to be of any language he knew, and he knew at least a hundred. However, languages change, and it was possible that they might be from the fifty-second century
A.D.
One of their agents had told them that he came from that time. But Spruce had been under threat of torture and might have been lying.

Loga was one of the few with comparatively pale skins. Since he was sitting and there was (and had been) nothing material to measure him against, he could be short or tall. His body was thick and muscular, and his chest was matted with red hair. The hair on his head was fox-red. He had irregular and strong features: a prominent, deeply clefted chin; a massive jaw; a large and aquiline nose; thick pale-yellow eyebrows; wide, full lips; and dark green eyes.

The other light-skinned man, Thanabur, was obviously the leader. His physique and face were so much like Loga’s that they could be brothers. His hair, however, was dark brown. One eye was green, though a rare leaf-green.

The other eye had startled Burton when Thanabur had first turned his face toward him. Instead of the green mate he had expected, he saw a jewel. It looked like an enormous blue diamond, a flashing, multifaceted precious stone set in his eye socket.

He felt uneasy whenever that jewel was turned on him. What was its purpose? What did it see in him that a living eye could not see?

Of the twelve, only three had spoken: Loga, Thanabur, and a slim but full-breasted blonde with large blue eyes. From the manner in which she and Loga spoke to each other, Burton thought that they could be husband and wife.

Watching them offstage, Burton noted again that just above the heads of each, his other self included, was a globe. They whirled, were of many changing colors, and extended six-sided arms, green, blue, black, and white. Then the arms would shrink into the globe, only to be replaced by others.

Burton tried to correlate the rotating spheres and the mutation in the arms with the personalities of the three and of himself, with their physical appearances, with the tones of their voices, with the meanings of their words, with their emotional attitudes. He failed to find any significant linkages.

When the first, the real, scene had taken place, he had not seen his own aura.

The spoken lines were not quite the same as during the actual event. It was as if the Dream-Maker had rewritten the scene.

Loga, the red-haired man, said, “We had a number of agents looking for you. They were a pitifully small number, considering the thirty-six billion, six million, nine thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven candidates that are living along The River.”

“Candidates for what?” the Burton on the stage said.

In the first performance, he had not uttered that line.

“That’s for us to know and you to find out,” Loga said.

Loga flashed teeth that seemed inhumanly white. He said, “We had no idea that you were escaping us by suicide. The years went by. There were other things for us to do, so we pulled all agents from the Burton Case, as we called it, except for some stationed at both ends of The River. Somehow, you had knowledge of the polar tower. We found out how later.”

Burton, the watcher, thought,
But you didn’t find out from X.

He tried to get nearer to the actors so he could look at them more closely. Which one was the Ethical who had awakened him in the preresurrection place? Which one had visited him during the stormy, lightning-racked night? Who was it that had told him that he must help him? Who was the renegade whom Burton knew only as X?

He struggled against the wet, cold mists, as ethereal yet as strong as the magic chains which had bound the monster wolf Fenrir until Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.

Loga said, “We would have caught you, anyway. You see, every space in the restoration bubble—the place where you unaccountably awakened during the preresurrection phase—has an automatic counter. Any candidate who has a higher than average number of deaths is a subject for study sooner or later. Usually later, since we’re short-handed.

“We had no idea it was you who had racked up the staggering number of seven hundred and seventy-seven deaths. Your space in the PR bubble was empty when we looked at it during our statistical investigation. The two technicians who had seen you when you woke up in the PR chamber identified you by your… photograph.

“We set the resurrector so that the next time your body was to be recreated, an alarm would notify us, and we would bring you here to this place.”

But Burton had not died again. Somehow, they had located him while he was alive. Though he had run away again, he had been caught. Or had he? Perhaps, as he ran through the night, he had been killed by lightning. And they were waiting for him in the PR bubble. That vast chamber which he supposed was somewhere deep under the surface of this planet or in the tower of the polar sea.

Loga said, “We’ve made a thorough search of your body. We have also screened every component of your… psychomorph. Or aura, whichever word you prefer.”

He pointed at the flashing, whirling globe above the Burton who sat in the chair facing him.

Then the Ethical did a strange thing.

He turned and looked out into the mists and pointed at Burton, the watcher.

“We found no clues whatsoever.”

The dark figure in the wings chuckled.

The Burton in the pit called out, “You think there are only twelve of you! There are thirteen! An unlucky number!”

“It’s quality, not quantity, that matters,” the thing offstage said.

“You won’t remember a thing that occurs down here after we send you back to the Rivervalley,” Loga said.

The Burton in the chair said something that he had not said in the original inquisition.

“How can you make me forget?”

“We have run off your memory as if it were a tape recording,” Thanabur said. He talked as if he were lecturing. Or was he warning Burton because he was X?

“Of course, it took a long time to run your memory track for the seven years since you’ve been here. And it required an enormous amount of energy and materials. But the computer Loga monitored was set to run your memory at high speed and stop only when you were visited by that filthy renegade. So, we know what happened then exactly as you knew what happened. We saw what you saw, heard what you heard, felt what you touched, what you smelled. We even experienced your emotions.

“Unfortunately, you were visited at night, and the traitor was effectively disguised. Even his voice was filtered through a distorter which prevented the computer from analyzing his—or her—voiceprints. I say his or her because all you saw was a pale thing without identifiable features, sexual or otherwise. The voice seemed to be masculine, but a female could have used a transmitter to make it seem a man’s.

“The body odor was also false. The computer analyzed it, and it’s obvious that a chemical complex altered that.

“In short, Burton, we have no idea which of us is the renegade, nor do we have any idea why he or she would be working against us. It is almost inconceivable that anyone who knew the truth would try to betray us. The only explanation is that the person is insane. And that, too, is inconceivable.”

The Burton in the pit knew, somehow, that Thanabur had not spoken those words during the first performance, the real drama. He also knew that he was dreaming, that he was sometimes putting words in Thanabur’s mouth. The man’s speech was made up of Burton’s own thoughts, speculations, and fantasies which were afterthoughts.

The Burton in the chair voiced some of these.

“If you can read a person’s mind—tape it, as it were—why don’t you read your own minds? Surely you have done that? And just as surely, you would have found your traitor.”

Loga, looking uncomfortable, said, “We submitted to a reading, of course. But…”

He raised his shoulders and spread out his palms upward.

Thanabur said, “So, the person you call X must have been lying to you. He is not one of us but one of the second-order, an agent. We are calling them in for memory scanning. That takes time, however. We have plenty of that. The renegade will be caught.”

The Burton in the chair said, “And what if
none
of the agents is guilty?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Loga said. “In any event your memory of awakening in the preresurrection bubble will be erased. Also, your memory of the renegade’s visit and all events from that time on will be a blank space. We are truly sorry to have to do this violent act. But it is necessary, and the time will come, we hope, when we can make amends.”

The Burton in the chair said, “But… I will have many recollections of the preresurrection place. You forget that I often thought of that between the time I awoke on the banks and X’s visit. Also, I told many people about it.”

Thanabur said, “Ah, but do they really believe you? And if they do, what can they do about it? No, we do not want to remove your entire memory of your life here. It would cause you great distress; it would remove you from your friends. And”—here Thanabur paused—“it might slow down your progress.”

“Progress?”

“There is time for you to find out what that means. The insane person who claims to be aiding you was using you for his own purposes. He did not tell you that you were throwing away your opportunity for eternal life by carrying out his designs. He or she, whoever the traitor is, is evil. Evil, evil!”

“Now, now,” Loga said. “We all feel strongly about this but we must not forget. The… unknown is sick.”

The jewel-eyed man said, “To be sick is, in a sense, to be evil.”

The Burton in the chair threw back his head and laughed loudly and long.

“So you bastards don’t know everything?”

He stood up, the gray fog supporting him as if it were solid, and he shouted, “You don’t want me to get to the headwaters of The River! Why? Why?”

Loga said, “
Au revoir.
Forgive us for this violence.”

A woman pointed a short, slim blue cylinder at the Burton on the stage, and he crumpled. Two men, wearing only white kilts, emerged from the fog. They picked up the senseless body and carried it into the mists.

Burton tried again to get at the people on the stage. Failing, he shook his fist at them, and he cried, “You’ll never get me, you monsters!”

The dark figure in the wings applauded, but his hands made no noise.

Burton had expected to be placed in the area where he had been picked up by the Ethicals. Instead, he awoke in Theleme, the little state which he had founded.

Even more unexpected was that he had not been deprived of his memory. He remembered everything, even the inquisition with the twelve Ethicals.

Somehow, X had managed to fool the others.

Later, he got to wondering if they had lied to him and had not intended to tamper with his memory. That made no sense, but then he did not know what their intentions were.

At one time, Burton had been able to play two games of chess at the same time while blindfolded. That, however, only required skill, a knowledge of the rules, and familiarity with the board and the pieces. He did not know the rules of this game, nor did he know the powers of all the chessmen.

The dark design had no pattern.

Groaning, Burton half-awoke.

For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Darkness surrounded him, darkness as thick as that which he felt filled him.

Familiar sounds reassured him. The ship was rubbing up against the dock, and water lapped against the hull. Alice was breathing softly by him. He touched her soft, warm back. Light footsteps came from above, Peter Frigate on night watch. Perhaps he was getting ready to wake up his captain. Burton had no idea what time it was.

There were other well-known sounds. Through the wooden partition the snores of Kazz and his woman, Besst, gurgled. And then, from the compartment behind theirs, the voice of Monat issued. He spoke in his native language, but Burton could not distinguish the words.

Doubtless, Monat was dreaming of far-off Athaklu. Of that planet with its “wild, weird clime” which circled the giant orange star, Arcturus.