The Parallel Man (2 page)

Droste inclined his head to me in his curiously formal way. “You must have many questions,” he said. “Be patient. They will all be answered.” He turned to go.

“There’s one question I’d like answered now,” I said. “Before I . . . woke up here . . . there was a woman with me; she may have been injured. Is she in this place too?”

Droste looked at me with an expression I could not read and said with curious gentleness, “No . . . no. We did not bring a woman from where we brought you, Casmir of Thorn.” He must have seen from my expression that I was not satisfied and he went on after a slight pause. “There was no woman with you when we found you. No woman at all.” Then he turned and left the room, followed by the woman and the man in brown. The doorway filled with white light which faded to show an apparently unbroken wall, as blank as the gaze of the blue-capped serf who stood against it.

My first impulse was to get free of the clinging coverlet, overpower the serf and ransack this place for any sign of Delora. But I forced myself to be patient. My earlier struggle with what the woman had called the clingsheet had caused the woman’s face to appear on the wall: the enchantment that made the thing confine me must also give some warning of attempts to escape it. Nor did I know the spell to make the door appear in the wall, and it was not likely that the serf did either. If I could get the woman in here alone. . . . Best wait awhile until the men had gone about their affairs. And I was inexplicably weary. Better rest a little and gain strength. I lay back and the bed subsided to a level position again. . . .

When I awoke the room was nearly dark, and someone was moving about behind me. I lunged upward and again the bed folded up to support my back. The light became bright again and the person behind me came into view; a woman in a white garment like that the other woman had worn. But this woman’s face and hands were a rich dark brown. Perhaps she had painted herself like some of the barbarians, or had some disease? But the skin looked healthy and normal.

The woman gave a smile which despite her strange appearance had a good deal more warmth in it than the smile of the other woman in white. “Feeling more rested?” she asked. “I’m Molly, your night nurse.”

I smiled back at her. “I had thought that I was beyond the age for a nurse, Lady. I am Casmir, a man of Thorn.”

She laughed with a flash of white teeth. “Perhaps they don’t call us nurses on Thorn. Sisters perhaps, or medics? I’m a prentice Healer, I care for people who are sick as part of my training. Is there anything I can do for you?”

She looked friendly and it was worth trying. I plucked at the clinging coverlet. “This grows irksome.” She walked to the foot of the bed, touched it with a glittering object she took from her belt. She looked intently at something I could not see for a moment then nodded.

“Yes, I think we can take you out of the clingsheet now, Casmir. Move carefully at first; you had some broken bones and some second-degree burns and your body is still finishing its job of healing.” She touched my coverlet with another glittering object and I was able to push it away and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My legs were bare but I was covered well enough for decency in some sort of short tunic of fine white cloth.

I slid cautiously to the floor; I was weak, but I have been weaker after an attack of the Falling Sickness. The dark-skinned woman named Molly watched me carefully but did not interfere as I took a few tentative steps, stretched and touched my toes. “Any dizziness?” she asked.

“Less than usual,” I said. Molly looked at me with brilliant dark eyes, but said nothing. I went on slowly, moved by an impulse I did not fully understand. “Since I was a child I’ve had what we call the Falling Sickness. I . . . lose consciousness . . . especially at moments of stress. I’ve injured myself before when I’ve had an attack while riding or climbing. I’m no stranger to Healers.”

The dark-faced woman frowned in a puzzled way. “There’s nothing on your chart to indicate epilepsy,” she said. “Let me look at your admission records.” She went to the foot of the bed and touched it again with one of the objects from her belt. Glowing letters and numbers appeared in a square near the center of the footstand, as if some invisible scribe were writing them there. They disappeared and intricate and mysterious traceries of lines took their place. “No, there’s nothing organically wrong,” she said. “But there’s scarring on the nerve paths. The last time I saw scarring like that was on the chart of a criminal who’d had repeated run-ins with the monitors. Someone has used a neural interrupter on you, often enough to leave nerve scars.”

I looked at her without comprehension. “A neural . . . ?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, there are nicknames for them: ‘stunsticks,’ ‘rupters,’ but that’s the standard name. Monitors use them—police, peace officers. They’ll render a person unconscious for a varying period of time, depending on distance and intensity. Normally they don’t do you much harm, but then most people are never exposed to them even once. But repeated exposure can cause confusion and memory loss due to scarring. I see that they have you on Lysergol to repair the scarring.”

I frowned at her, trying to untangle her meaning from the unfamiliar words she was using. “You are saying that I have no sickness, that I will not lose consciousness as I have done in the past . . . ?”

She smiled reassuringly. “Not unless someone uses a neural interrupter on you again. In fact, right now, even that wouldn’t do it because the Lysergol prevents the . . .” Her voice trailed away and her eyes looked over my shoulder to where the serf still stood by the wall. I kept my face impassive, but my heart leaped. If I understood her aright, some enchantment they were practicing on me prevented the action of the spell that would make me unconscious. That was why they had the serf standing by, to overpower me in case of need. They would learn their mistake in time, but I still needed to know more before I acted. Nor, if I could avoid it, did I want to injure this woman in my escape. At the moment it would be best to distract her, if I could.

“1 thank you, Lady,” I said. “You are kind, though your face is strange to me. In my land there are none who have skin the color of yours. It is. . . ?” I paused and she laughed.

“Yes, all over,” she said in reply to my unspoken question. “I’m from Thopia; we were settled by people from a place here at Home they call Africa, where the people are mostly my color. Are all of your people big and blond like you?”

I smiled at her. “Many more are fair than dark, and none dark of skin,” I told her. “Dark women are much admired, for they are rare.”

She laughed. “I’ll have to visit your planet,” she said. “Is Thorn the . . .” Just then one of the glittering things at her belt gave a small musical sound. “Damn, I have to go,” she said. “The convenience is in the corner there, and if you don’t know how to key anything you need, ask the andro to do it. Don’t overtire yourself. I’ll look in again when I can, but it may not be until tomorrow.” With another flashing grin, she walked to the wall and touched it at a place where there was a small circle outlined with a gray line. There was first the rectangle of light, then an opening which she walked out of. The corridor beyond the door seemed featureless in the glimpse I got of it before the opening became a rectangle of light and vanished.

In the direction Molly had gestured when she mentioned the “convenience” there was another gray circle on a blank wall. I touched it and though it did not yield or seem to change, a white rectangle appeared next to it and in an instant became an opening. Beyond it was a small square room with a basin and a covered garderobe. When I pressed circles of various colors at random, water came from some remarkable places and in a variety of temperatures and I emerged from the “convenience” feeling considerably refreshed but somewhat bemused. That I was in a nest of enchanters was evident, but I had not known that enchanters lived so luxuriously.

I was now feeling hungry and decided to see what orders the serf would obey. “Bring food,” I told him. He gave me a vacant stare but moved over to another part of the wall and pressed yet another circle. One of the now-familiar white rectangles appeared and became an opening into a niche in the wall which contained a covered tray. The serf brought it out and walked over to a place near the bed. He touched a circle on the bed itself and a table and chair rose from the floor. He lifted the cover from the tray and stood back.

The beverage in the cup was bitter but hot and the food was good enough, though without much taste to it. When I had finished, I went about the room looking for circles to press. There were not too many more; one turned on some sort of chute for disposal of trash and another opened a cupboard with fresh tunics like the one I wore. I took the opportunity to change my garment, but when I tossed the soiled one to the serf he sent it down the disposal chute. I shrugged; it was a waste of gear, but the gear was not mine.

There were no more circles on the wall, but there were several on the headboard of the bed. One pair of circles increased or decreased the light from the glowing wall when you kept your finger on them. Another seemed to have no effect at first but I glanced up and saw that the colors swirling in the oval on one wall had changed. I almost lifted my finger from the circle, but suddenly the swirling colors gave way to what seemed to be a window. I saw blue sky with clouds and a curiously shaped range of mountains. I lifted my finger from the circle and went closer to the oval; but when I touched it the surface of the wall still seemed to be there. Suddenly a movement in the scene revealed through the oval caught my eye; what looked like a tiny human figure moving at the base of one of the mountains. Suddenly my eyes made sense of scale and proportion; those were not mountains, but monstrous buildings, each larger than Castle Thorn, ranged in rows beside broad roads. On the roads moved curiously shaped objects and an occasional walking human figure, but no horses or other beasts. I seemed to be looking at the scene from a great height. Was this a window or some illusory scene produced by enchantment?

I gazed for a long time but learned little. From the light it seemed early morning and not much went on outside of the monstrous buildings. I wondered if I was in truth inside one of them, looking out of some window high above the ground. Finally I went back to the circle which had produced this scene and touched it again. Sky and buildings vanished from the oval and I seemed to be looking into an adjoining room, where several people were carrying on a conversation. The room was richly, if oddly, decorated and the men and women in it were dressed in bright and intricate garments which hugged some parts of their bodies, left other parts bare and fell in rich folds in other areas. They were talking in an oddly cadenced way so that their voices wove in and out like a part-song, and though I understood most of the words I could make little sense of what they were saying. I watched in puzzlement for a while then touched the circle again.

The oval showed a rushing mountain stream while sweet strains of music filled the room. I began to see that this was some magical toy; the oddly dressed men and women had been performing some masque or mummery, while this peaceful scene with its accompanying music was another sort of entertainment. I touched the circle again and found myself gazing into another, more quietly decorated room where two women reclined on couches and talked. They were dressed in close-fitting garments, one in blue and the other in brown, and I saw the gleam of one of the little colored circles on one woman’s wrist. I settled on the bed to watch this scene for a while; it seemed to offer some hope of learning something of this place I had found myself in.

Suddenly one woman’s face almost filled the oval, larger than life; you could see tears in her eyes. Then it was as if you were looking through a hole in the wall into the room again, but from a different angle. At first the sudden shifts made me dizzy, but gradually I began to see a sort of sense to the changing images; it was as if you saw through the eyes of someone in the room with the women, who now went closer to them, now stepped away, now changed his position with respect to them.

The women continued to talk, and a serf with the same odd blue skullcap that the serf in my room wore brought them cups of some beverage, then left the room. Gradually their talk began to make some sense to me. They were speaking about a man named John who went away on some sort of journey; they spoke of him as “flitting.” One of the women was John’s wife or lover; she was worried because in John’s absence she had “gone into red.” This seemed somehow connected with the circle of color on her wrist, which was red instead of being green like mine and like the other woman’s. The other woman seemed sure that John would not be angry for a while after he returned. They began to speak of love and I grew weary of them; I touched the circle on the bed again and the oval showed only a swirl of colors again.

I lay back on the bed trying to make; some sense of what I had seen. Enchanters, I knew, could call up visions, indeed my tutor, Mortifer, had called up visions for me as part of my education. But I was no enchanter and I had called up these visions by merely touching a circle drawn on my bed. indeed, even the serf had touched one of the circles to get my food and another to dispose of my soiled tunic. Some of these enchantments seemed to work for anyone, even a serf. Others seemed to need the glittering objects which Molly and the other woman wore at their belts.

I felt that I knew enough to escape from this room and begin my search for Delora, but I would rather do so without raising an alarm. Best go soon before day came and brought more people to deal with. . . .

I cursed as a white rectangle appeared on the wall and became a door. Had I left it too late? But what came through the door was another blue-capped serf; he turned to the one already in the room and said, “Report to Central and wait for orders.”

The serf addressed shook his blue-capped head obstinately. “Orders to stay here,” he said.

The new serf said in a low voice, “Override Argent. Report to Central.” The other serf slouched out the door, which vanished as before. I tensed my muscles; might as well hit this new jailer before he got fully oriented.

He was pulling something from the waist of his gray garment and stepping toward me with strangely unserflike quickness and alertness when I launched myself at him. His hand came up holding something and there was a purple flash, then my shoulder hit him in the midrift, and he went over backwards, his head hitting the floor with a satisfying thunk. I was on top of him in an instant, my hands poised to strike, but there was no mistaking the flaccid sprawl of his limbs; that rap of his head on the floor had knocked him out.

Something about his head was odd; surely I hadn’t cracked his skull? No, it was the blue cap, slightly askew. I pulled it off, a thin cap of metal, curiously flexible. Under the cap was short-cut hair and the face, on closer examination, was not the face of a serf. Whoever this man was, he had been masquerading. What he could do, I could do. I bent over his body, trying to solve the fastenings on his gray garment. These were simple enough; a touch at a circle on the collar and the garment opened down the front and I was able to peel it off of him. The stuff it was made of stretched easily and I was able to draw it onto my body without trouble. Another touch at the circle on the collar and the garment closed itself again.