Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 (36 page)

climbed a nearby tree and was able to aim one of them at the top of the wall itself.

He had expected some kind of alarm system; and sure enough, there it was. The mortar between the stones at the very top of the fence was sensitized.

There was an answer to this type of situation. Bleys' instructors in this type of activity had taught him what to do; and made access for him to the equipment he needed. From a hip pocket of the suit he was wearing he took something that looked no larger than a folded handkerchief; but when unfolded appeared to be a very thin sheet of black plastic, perhaps five feet long and four feet across.

He went up close to the wall and quickly threw this blanket with one move over the top of the wall.

It was what was known as a mirror-image transmitter. Now it blanketed out the mortar that had been sensitized to transmit a picture of anything crossing it, for the distance of the covering itself. But what it showed to the sensors reading the length of mortar it had covered, was an image of the sky-scene the mortar had been transmitting just before it was covered. Bleys could, and did now, climb over it while beneath him the mortar continued to transmit a picture of the night's emerging stars.

His sensing equipment, operated from the top of the wall, reported that the ground on the inside of the wall was in no way equipped with man-traps of any kind. He dropped down lightly from the top of the wall onto the ground and looked about. Before him were more trees, although these were carefully planted, trimmed and tended trees, with an almost lawn-like ground inside them.

Dimly beyond the trees he could see illumination of some kind, as it might be the windows of a building further on.

He went toward the light. After several minutes one of the sensors on the belt around his waist began to beep, and he lifted up a small dial-faced instrument to see an arrow pointing slightly off to his right. Below this was a reading of two hundred. As he looked at it, it clicked down to one-ninety. Guard dogs, to be coming at that speed and in that silence.

They would be less than a couple of hundred feet from him by now. To the right of the number a small dot of red light had been lit. To check, he picked up another of the sensing instruments from his belt and punched for an identification read-out. The words appearing on the back-lighted screen were
"dogs 2."

That last bit of information was all he needed for the moment. He found and unstoppered the vial. The stopper ended in a small device which sprayed a narrow band of almost invisible droplets. In fact the droplets were so fine that it was essentially a mist. But its effect was to lay down a strip on the ground that gave off certain odors.

He waited. Dogs like this were an expensive investment.

He could just begin to see them now with the night vision of his lenses—two large black dogs running side by side silently and eagerly. They looked like dobermans. To get such animals, it was necessary to buy frozen embryos shipped in from Earth and rear them under special laboratory conditions to the birth stage; and thereafter continue to handle them carefully until they were grown.

Bleys waited.

So far the dogs seemed to be paying no attention to the scent barrier. But their noses might already have caught it. For a moment, Bleys was afraid that after all the stuff did not work. He took the knife from his boot in one hand and the knife from his back sling in the other-and stood ready in case the dogs reached him.

But now, suddenly, they were slowing as they approached the barrier. At about six meters out they came almost to a halt, their noses sniffing eagerly before them. Their heads dropped almost to the ground and they moved forward gradually, increasing a little in speed until they came actually to the scent strip, where they stopped to sniff directly at the spray on the ground.

The odor in this case was an
artificial copy of the phero
mones from the urine of a female dog in heat, with a methyl-ester drug added that would trigger off a nerve collapse when sniffed at closely, as the two dogs were doing now.

Abruptly, it worked. Both animals collapsed, twitching, completely conscious but having lost all nervous control of their bodies. Bleys walked out to where they lay and gave each a spray-injection that would render them completely unconscious for th
e next three hours. By the time
they came to, all trace of the other chemicals he had sprayed on the ground would have evaporated.

He went on toward the lights in the distance.

As he came out of the trees and got closer to the building which was now fully visible with most of its lights lit, he was able to clearly see areas for outdoor exercise and training. He passed a running track, an exercise maze, and patches of ground that looked as if they were laid out for types of exercise which could be anything from fencing to martial arts.

He got close to the building and these gave way to lawn. He came up against the building and began to circle it, examining for ways of entry.

He came finally to a ground-level door, black against the shingle wall of the house, the color of which his lenses were not capable of aiding him to make out. He stopped and held one of the sensing devices against it. It whirred for a second and then clicked. He stood back, tilted it up from its connection to his belt and looked at its face.

Zero
4.
No other,
he read on the face.

"No other" would mean that there was nothing required other than one of the versions of ordinary keys to open the door. This was remarkably light security, but on the other hand, Dahno had been probably counting on its isolated position to protect it, more than anything else.

From a ring of key blanks Bleys selected a number 4 key blank, and slid it into a slot on one side of the sensor itself—which was barely large enough to take it. There was a moment's wait; and then the former blank came out a slot on the far side of the sensor, cut into key shape.

He took it. It was a little warm in his fingers but not uncomfortably so. He found the lock slot of the door, pressed the key and turned the handle below it. The door swung silently open. He withdrew the key and stepped inside, closing the door as silently behind him.

Within there was nothing much more than a night light, but with his lenses this made it as bright as he could wish. He seemed to have stepped into a place of lockers and shower rooms. He went through them, found some stairs and mounted them, setting his sensors as he went for any information on people nearby or approaching.

It was, however, remarkably quiet. He climbed several levels and explored several corridors, looking into lounges, recreation rooms, one practice firing range, an indoor swimming pool; and then up to another story where the rooms were obviously bedrooms. It was exactly the sort of place in which a group such as he believed Dahno to have would be set up, with all that was needed to train and keep them; but there was a remarkable emptiness to the place. No one seemed to be around.

The unusual makes anyone wary; and in this case Bleys was doubly so. He continued his explorations and accumulated evidence that proved this was the home of a corps of anywhere from thirty to a hundred men devoted to physical training and training in combat, with or without arms. He ran into no sign of life, however, until he approached one end of the building and his sensor alerted him to a large gathering of people up ahead.

He went more slowly and carefully. After a while, he could hear chanting. A little farther and he was able to understand it. It was simply two words repeated in unison over and over again.

"Dahno Ahrens, Dahno Ahrens, Dahno Ahrens
..."

The chanting was from the floor below, he realized, now that he was almost on top of it. Instead of going down there, he searched around the floor he was on for some entry that might let him into a higher level of the room in which all these people were gathered and chanting where he could observe without being observed.

He found it with remarkably little difficulty. It was a door without even a lock on it, and it let him into a small gallery—the kind of a gallery that might have held a choir at a religious service.

In fact, the choir stalls image was a good one, he decided. He moved forward past several rows of fixed wooden seats to a balcony from which he could look down on a floor where a good fifty individuals, robed in black, were apparently squatting on their knees and chanting in unison; with one individual up on a slight stage at the far end of the room, who also squatted in his black robe, facing them. Behind the single individual was a wall with a large, three-dimensional image of Dahno—ordinarily dressed, but seated like Buddha—smiling down on them.

The walls, the arched ceiling of the room and the floor, as far as Bleys could make out, were of highly polished wood, and the acoustics were excellent. He could almost make out individual voices from those who chanted.

Observing them, he came to the conclusion they were in something like a hysteric trance. The room itself was like nothing so much as a chapel, except that there were no signs of what type of worship was involved, unless it was worship of Dahno himself—which to a great extent it resembled.

Bleys went quietly out again and set about finding his way back outside. On the way he stumbled across a door which opened into what was obviously their armory. Not only void pistols but needle guns, power pistols and—surprisingly, for they were effective only under very specialized conditions— power rifles. Like the pistols, they were devastating, but then-range was relatively short. Still, they had a tremendous potential for destruction at short range.

Bleys finally found a way out. Once he had gotten outside he discovered his exit had been through the main entrance to the building. Over the wide double doors were carved the words:

lsonian Prayer and Retreat Center

The word "Isonian" rang with no familiarity in Bleys' mind, and he knew his own vocabulary to be extremely extensive. He suspected it of being a made-up word.

Certainly, what was inside was not a prayer and retreat establishment. He went down the steps and around the building again until he came to the small door by which he had entered originally; and, following the directions of his sensors, retraced his steps.

He passed the dogs, which were just beginning to come out of their bewilderment and lift their heads from the grass, but were still in no condition to be a threat to anyone. He continued to the wall, then up and over it where the mirror-blanket waited for him; took the blanket off from the far side, returned to his hovercar, and drove to the airport.

On the very verge of flying back to Ecumeny that night, Bleys changed his mind. He made some inquiries at the all-night desk of the terminal, and followed the directions he was given to a very good hotel in Moseville—one that could have held its head up with the better hotels of Ecumeny.

The next morning he went out after breakfast, stopped in front of the gates, pressed the annunciator button and spoke to the face that appeared on the screen.

"I'm Bleys Ahrens," he said, "Dahno's brother and second in command. Let me in."

He had guessed they would react more promptly and compliantly to something that was almost a command, man to any kind of a polite request. It was so. Within seconds the-gates swung open for him and he drove up the winding driveway to park in front of the doorway by which he had left the building the night before.

The two doors, of what he now saw to be a dark wood, highly polished to bring out its grain, were opened for him as he walked up the steps. Inside, on each door, was a young man wearing the same black robes he had seen on those in the chapel the night before.

Bleys was wearing his ordinary, everyday business clothing. As he stepped inside, the man on the right-hand door bowed slightly, with his head only and spoke.

"The Kennel-Master," he said, "will be honored to see you in his office, Bleys Ahrens."

They were in small, dark wood-paneled lobby. The man who had just spoken crossed it in front of Bleys and opened another black door to his left. Bleys walked past him and inside the room beyond. The door softly closed behind him.

A man in his late thirties or early forties with a lean, brown-eyed face that spoke of high physical conditioning, and wearing a robe like those of the two who had greeted Bleys at the door, came out from behind his desk. He inclined his head slightly in a bow to Bleys.

"Honored to meet you, Bleys Ahrens," he said. "Shall we sit down?"

His arm indicated a couple of over-stuffed chairs half-facing each other and half-facing a fireplace in which some aromatic logs were burning. "My name is Ahram Moro."

"Thank you, Ahram Moro," said Bleys. He took one of the chairs and Ahram took the other.

"I assume you've been fully briefed on what my appearance here means?" Bleys said.

Once more Ahram inclined his head slightly.

"We received instructions early from Dahno Ahrens that if you appeared, you would be for the moment in authority over us, as Dahno would be. We were not to inquire as to the reasons for this, or anything else about it, but simply accept you as our leader. We are proud to do so. What can I do for you, Bleys Ahrens? Would you like a drink? Something to eat?"

"Neither," said Bleys, "my time here is necessarily short. I want to see your files."