The Parallel Man (12 page)
Star traveling is no great matter if you travel, as I traveled to Carpathia, as a passenger on a gigantic passenger and cargo ship. The physical and emotional effects of “flitting” had been carefully explained to me by Justinian Droste and I exercised my body strenuously in the place provided on the starship. It was little used, and most of my fellow passengers seemed to spend their time inactive in their cabins. There was a View in my cabin with a variety of stories in pictures; by watching those intended for children I increased considerably my knowledge of the age I found myself in.
Droste had warned me what to expect, and when we were landing and the View showed me the sprawling city which surrounds Castle Crag and the unchanged Castle Thorn, I was in emotional freeze. I had been instructed by Droste that most “emotional therapists” who visited starships on landing were worse than useless, but if by any chance there was a Caphellan among them it could probably free me from the emotional freeze immediately, especially if I had been physically active on the voyage. It turned out that one did come aboard and I secured its services.
The very sight of the creature was almost enough to release my emotions though I had seen nonhuman sapients on the View. It was like a skeleton loosely draped in motheaten fur. From its round head three pale blue eyes looked at me with what seemed to me to be insolence and I growled at the creature, “Well, do what you’re paid for—if you can!” Suddenly I realized that I was
feeling
. Boredom and impatience flooded through me; the first emotion I had felt since we had entered quasi-space.
The creature blinked. I felt surprised and then realized I was feeling its surprise. Then waves of tranquil happiness engulfed me. “I beg your pardon,” said the Caphellan. “You are extremely sensitive to emotion, for a human. I did not realize that you would pick up my impatience with a task I perform only to earn credit to support my studies at the Academy of Life Sciences here. Are you by any chance a human from Chrysenomia?”
“No,” I replied with a smile. “I am of Carpathian stock. Tell me a little about the Academy.”
The creature blinked and was silent for a moment, then it began to scuttle backwards out of the cabin. “You’ are sending out a very strong emotional binding,” it said. “I do not choose to be subjected to it. Seek your information elsewhere.” It was gone before I could say a word, and it had not collected its very substantial fee. I would gladly have paid twice the fee for the very valuable information it had given me; the Jagellon Gift could affect nonhumans too. Justinian Droste had told me that the Caphellans were what he called “empaths”: they could sense the emotions of others and make others share their own emotions. It was not surprising that such a creature sensed the operation of the Jagellon Gift but the most significant thing was that it seemed to have no defense against it but retreat. Mortifer, though, seemed immune to the Gift, so others might well be; I had better not be overconfident.
Helped considerably by having watched a View sequence for children on “Your First Starflit,” I got my gear from the purser and carried it to the starport transient hostel where I secured a room. Here the procedure was somewhat different than when Droste had helped me secure a room at the transient hostel on the planet I was beginning to think of as Home. Comparatively few people were able to travel from star to star, and the colored patches worked only on the planet on which you were registered. For a stiff fee you could transfer registration but most starflitters carried small golden circlets called ecus which were an interstellar medium of exchange. When I pressed one of these ecus to the plate beside the door of the hostel room its gold color faded and it became worthless. For the three days I had paid for I was the master of the room; it would open only to the touch of my thumb on the plate. Food and drink came with the room at no extra fee, but if I did not choose to use them I would receive no credit. The View sequence for children had explained all this at somewhat tedious length, but in emotional freeze I had felt no boredom, and I was glad for the information now.
Mortifer’s quarters and “laboratory” had been at the Academy of Life Sciences, not an easy place for a layman to enter, from what Droste had told me. For that reason I had jumped at the chance that the Caphellan seemed to offer for an entrée. But that scheme had failed. My only other point of reference was Castle Thorn itself; I might as well start there. It was easy enough to get there; free tours ran from the hostel to the castle, using discs which skimmed the ground rather than flying through the air. Whether they could fly at need was one of the many things I needed to know more of.
Hats were little worn in these days, for most garments had hoods which could be unfolded from their collars at need. But some men and women wore hats for show if not for necessity, and when Justinian Droste had helped me to buy clothing I had selected a wide-brimmed affair which shaded my face and hid my hair. Anyone who looked closely at my face would identify me with the other Casmir, but I was safe from a casual glance. I had a healthy respect for Mortifer; whether or not he was himself lurking somewhere on Carpathia he would have spies on the lookout for me, I was sure. If I had been in Mortifer’s position I would have given serious thought to ordering my spies to kill on sight anyone who looked like Casmir the Tenth. The hat was some slender protection against being cut down from a distance before I could recognize the danger.
Nevertheless, my nerves were on the stretch as I stepped off of the transport disc beneath the walls of Castle Thorn. Mortifer knew that I existed and must have guessed that his enemies would find me and that I would be on his trail. It would be natural for him to set traps wherever I was likely to appear, and this place was one of the likeliest. Personal weapons were banned by law in this society; that would not stop Mortifer or his minions but it made it hard for me to defend myself. Fortunately knives and clubs were too primitive to be thought of as weapons by these people; I had a hunter’s knife at my belt and carried a stout walking stick.
I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye and whirled, shifting my grip on the stick as a man ran toward me. But the face above the shabby robe was beaming with friendship. I relaxed; this could only be the young scholar whom the other Casmir had bound to him with the Gift. “Good ser,” he panted, trying to catch his breath. “I knew that you’d return! They made me put the sword back eventually, but all Carpathia knows that you drew it from the stone. Everyone is singing the old songs and the membership of the Old Carpathian Society has tripled!”
I grinned at his enthusiasm and gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze; it felt thin and bony under the worn robe. “I hear that you raised a hue and cry to rescue me from Mortifer, ser scholar,” I said.
He smiled bashfully. “Perhaps there was no need, ser, but when I saw the monitor’s platform fly you straight across the valley to Mortifer’s quarters I was sure that he meant you some harm. When we broke down the doors and found the destruction I thought sure that you’d been killed, but the scanners found no organic material at all, so I dared to hope. How in the name of the Mercy did you escape, ser?”
“It’s a long tale,” I said, wishing that I knew it myself. “What would happen if I drew that sword out again?”
The young scholar’s face was bright with eagerness. “If only you would, ser,” he cried. “The Old Carpathians have been making plans; they have the petition all ready to call a special election for Tribune of the People. If you carried that sword around the Old Town news would spread like a mountain fire and you’d be elected Tribune by acclamation. As Tribune you could call for a vote of the people on any matter before the Council, and people would respond, not ignore the elections as they’ve been doing when Mortifer’s gang was manipulating things.”
It was a mad proposal; what had I to do with the affairs of this strange new Carpathia? Still the thought of spoiling some schemes of Mortifer’s was tempting; that might bring the fox out of his lair. And a position of power might help me to deal with Mortifer when I found him. But what responsibilities would this office of Tribune involve? What would I do if I had to pursue Mortifer somewhere away from Carpathia? In the end, it was the unquestioning devotion in the young scholar’s face which decided me. “You’re a mad folk to choose a man for office because of an old face and an old sword,” I said, “but it suits me well to spoil Mortifer’s schemes. Mad as it is, I’ll do it.”
“Come then, before anyone can interfere,” said the scholar. “My name, ser, which I never had a chance to tell you, is Paul Sobeski. The Castle guides are on our side and I’ll get one to send word to Society headquarters as soon as we have the sword.”
“If the Castle guides are on our side, who might interfere?” I asked him.
Paul Sobeski gave me a sidelong look. “Well, ser, we found some strange things in Mortifer’s quarters but we didn’t find his body. What we did find was a repeating android, or the remains of one and they can’t be controlled from too far away. So Mortifer must have been on Carpathia and probably even in Thorn when you were taken to his quarters. He’s lain low since, because the people were howling for his blood after that incident. But even if he’s not in Thorn some of his agents are. Some of them are in official positions; the woman who took you to him was a real monitor. I don’t know how far Mortifer’s party will go but they’ll certainly try to put legal difficulties in your way about the sword. In theory I suppose that it’s government property and if the Castle guards weren’t a law unto themselves the government people would have insisted on locking it away or putting a guard over it.”
He was leading me past a statue by the main gate and as I glanced up at it I saw that it had a face that might have been my father’s face as he was when I was a boy. A moment later I realized that it was also the face that I saw in the mirror, my own face.
“By the Mercy, it gave me a turn when I first saw you standing and looking at that statue,” said Sobeski. “I thought then that you were a Jagellon descendant through some illegitimate line. But when you pulled the sword from the stone . . .”
“I am a clone, taken from the cells of Casmir the Tenth,” I told him. “I have many of his memories and perhaps a few of his gifts.”
“By the Mercy!” said Paul Sobeski eagerly. “Then Casmir really has come again! A few of the Old Carpathians are so traditional that they won’t like the clone part, but for most of us it will make it even better. It’s good to have a leader who’s the descendant of a great king, but to have a man identical with that king is glorious!” I thought to myself that though young Paul thought of me as “leader” probably the other Old Carpathian leaders were thinking “figurehead”—let them think so until it suited me to change their minds; it is always easier to use folk when they think they are using you.
We entered a small gate, passed through a little shop that sold models of the Castle and figurines intended to be Knights of Thorn, and came out into a familiar courtyard. “We’d best go straight to the Hall of Kings, ser,” said Sobeski, leading me up to the battlements and along them to where a graceful wooden bridge spanned a dizzying gap over to a rocky crag crowned with a little chapel. That crag had always worried me; too close to the castle walls and a determined enemy could climb it and shoot arrows over the battlements. The chapel they had built on it made it worse, if anything; it could be seized and used to shelter the enemy. Then I reminded myself that my prototype had united Carpathia; no need since then to worry about Carpathian enemies attacking Castle Thorn, and the flying platforms of these days made a joke of walls and battlements.
We crossed the bridge and entered the chapel they called the Hall of Kings. It was, I saw, a mausoleum, with tombs of many kings and memorials to those whose bodies could not be brought here for burial. From the quarterings on the shields we passed I saw that the descendants of Casmir the Tenth had cannily intermarried with all of the old royal families of the former independent kingdoms. It was wise policy, but I wondered if the later kings had been very pleased with those wives as wives. Perhaps there was some reason for Paul Sobeski thinking that the later kings might have left illegitimate descendants.
We came to the tomb of my prototype, Casmir the Tenth. The sword stuck in the stone on its surface was not the workaday sword whose duplicate was with my gear at the transient hostel, but a magnificent ceremonial thing, the Coronation Sword. I recognized too the slab in which it was set. When my father had shown me its trick I had thought it a piece of sorcery; now I knew it for a device familiar in these days, a lock field. It looked like a block of dark stone, but to the person “keyed” to it the stone became as permeable as water. Any non-living object could be placed in the field and seem to sink into the “stone” and be sealed there. I wondered what had made my prototype leave the Coronation Sword half in and half out of the field, and why it had not been re-keyed to his son and his son’s sons.
I touched the “stone” with one hand, as the other Casmir must instinctively have done, and then pulled the sword out of it. A great bell tolled twice somewhere above us. Paul Sobeski’s face was puzzled. “It tolled once when you pulled it out before,” he said, “and no one could discover what bell had rung or how it was operated.”
I shrugged; some device of my prototype perhaps. Looking around me I saw a little knot of spectators at the bridge, mainly dignified looking men in garments that looked like the ceremonial dress of the Knights of Thorn. Each wore a medallion round his neck. “The Castle Guides, ser,” said Paul. “They keep the tradition of the Knights of Thorn and they’ll follow you unquestioningly once they learn who you are.” I gave them the Knight’s Salute with the great sword and walked toward them. They respectfully stepped back, leaving the bridge clear for me. As well they did, for as I came to the center of the bridge a purple light flashed from the back of the crowd. Paul Sobeski crumpled unconscious at my side and would have gone over the edge if I had not caught him. Before I could do anything more there was an even brighter flash and the roar of flames. The wooden bridge was on fire beneath me and a wall of flames flared between me and the safety of the battlements!