“And we fight barefoot, stripped to the waist, and without any parrying weapon in the left hand,” Verkan Vall stipulated.
The beefy Marnark fairly licked his chops in anticipation. He outweighed Verkan Vall by forty pounds; he saw an easy victory ahead. Verkan Vall’s own confidence increased at these signs of his opponent’s assurance.
“And as for Honorable Sirzob and Honorable Yirzol, I chose pistols,” he added.
Sirzob and Yirzol held a hasty whispered conference.
“Speaking both for Honorable Yirzol and for myself,” Sirzob announced, “we stipulate that the distance shall be twenty meters, that the pistols shall be fully loaded, and that fire shall be at will after the command.”
“Twenty rounds, fire at will, at twenty meters!” Olirzon hooted. “You must think our principal’s as bad a shot as you are!”
The four Assassins stepped aside and held a long discussion about something, with considerable argument and gesticulation. Klarnood, observing Verkan Vall’s impatience, leaned close to him and whispered:
“This is highly irregular; we must pretend ignorance and be patient. They’re laying bets on the outcome. You must do your best, Lord Virzal; you don’t want your supporters to lose money.”
He said it quite seriously, as though the outcome were otherwise a matter of indifference to Verkan Vall.
Marnark wanted to discuss time and place, and proposed that all three duels be fought at dawn, on the fourth landing stage of Darsh Central Hospital; that was closest to the maternity wards, and statistics showed that most births occurred just before that hour.
“Certainly not,” Verkan Vall vetoed. “We’ll fight here and now; I don’t propose going a couple of hundred miles to meet you at any such unholy hour. We’ll fight in the nearest hallway that provides twenty meters’ shooting distance.”
Marnark, Sirzob and Yirzol all clamored in protest. Verkan Vall shouted them down, drawing on his hypnotically acquired knowledge of Akor-Neb duelling customs. “The code explicitly states that satisfaction shall be rendered as promptly as possible, and I insist on a literal interpretation. I’m not going to inconvenience myself and Assassin-President Klarnood and these four Gentlemen-Assassins just to humor Statisticalist superstitions.”
The manager of the hotel, drawn to the Martian Room by the uproar, offered a hallway connecting the kitchens with the refrigerator rooms; it was fifty meters long by five in width, was well-lighted and soundproof, and had a bay in which the seconds and other could stand during the firing.
They repaired thither in a body, Klarnood gathering up several hotel servants on the way through the kitchen. Verkan Vall stripped to the waist, pulled off his ankle boots, and examined Olirzon’s knife. Its tapering eight-inch blade was double-edged at the point, and its handle was covered with black velvet to afford a good grip, and wound with gold wire. He nodded approvingly, gripped it with his index finger crooked around the cross-guard, and advanced to meet Marnark of Bashad.
As he had expected, the burly politician was depending upon his greater brawn to overpower his antagonist. He advanced with a sidling, spread-legged gait, his knife hand against his right hip and his left hand extended in front. Verkan Vall nodded with pleased satisfaction; a wrist-grabber. Then he blinked. Why, the fellow was actually holding his knife reversed, his little finger to the guard and his thumb on the pommel!
Verkan Vall went briskly to meet him, made a feint at his knife hand with his own left, and then side-stepped quickly to the right. As Marnark’s left hand grabbed at his right wrist, his left hand brushed against it and closed into a fist, with Marnark’s left thumb inside of it, He gave a quick downward twist with his wrist, pulling Marnark off balance.
Caught by surprise, Marnark stumbled, his knife flailing wildly away from Verkan Vall. As he stumbled forward, Verkan Vall pivoted on his left heel and drove the point of his knife into the back of Marnark’s neck, twisting it as he jerked it free. At the same time, he released Marnark’s thumb. The politician continued his stumble and fell forward on his face, blood spurting from his neck. He gave a twitch or so, and was still.
Verkan Vall stooped and wiped the knife on the dead man’s clothes—another Khanga pirate gesture—and then returned it to Olirzon.
“Nice weapon, Olirzon,” he said. “It fitted my hand as though I’d been born holding it.”
“You used it as though you had, Lord Virzal,” the Assassin replied. “Only eight seconds from the time you closed with him.”
The function of the hotel servants whom Klarnood had gathered up now became apparent; they advanced, took the body of Marnark by the heels, and dragged it out of the way. The others watched this removal with mixed emotions. The two remaining principals were impassive and frozen-faced. Their two Assassins, who had probably bet heavily on Marnark, were chagrined. And Klarnood was looking at Verkan Vall with a considerable accretion of respect. Verkan Vall pulled on his boots and resumed his clothing.
There followed some argument about the pistols; it was finally decided that each combatant should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried twenty rounds in the magazine.
Verkan Vall and Sirzob of Abo took their places, their pistols lowered at their sides, facing each other across a measured twenty meters.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood asked. “You will not raise your pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at will after it. Ready.Fire!”
Both pistols swung up to level. Verkan Vall found Sirzob’s head in his sights and squeezed; the pistol kicked back in his hand, and he saw a lance of blue flame jump from the muzzle of Sirzob’s. Both weapons barked together, and with the double report came the whip-cracking sound of Sirzob’s bullet passing Verkan Vall’s head. Then Sirzob’s face altered its appearance unpleasantly, and he pitched forward. Verkan Vall thumbed on his safety and stood motionless, while the servants advanced, took Sirzob’s body by the heels, and dragged it over beside Marnark’s.
“All right; Honorable Yirzol, you’re next,” Verkan Vall called out.
“The Lord Virzal has fired one shot,” one of the opposing seconds objected, “and Honorable Yirzol has a full magazine. The Lord Virzal should put in another magazine.”
“I grant him the advantage; let’s get on with it,” Verkan Vall said.
Yirzol of Narva advanced to the firing point. He was not afraid of death—none of the Akor-Neb people were; their language contained no word to express the concept of total and final extinction—and discarnation by gunshot was almost entirely painless. But he was beginning to suspect that he had made a fool of himself by getting into this affair, he had work in his present reincarnation which he wanted to finish, and his political party would suffer loss, both of his services and of prestige.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood intoned ritualistically. “You will not raise your pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at will after it. Ready,Fire!”
Verkan Vall shot Yirzol of Narva through the head before the latter had his pistol half raised. Yirzol fell forward on the splash of blood Sirzob had made, and the servants came forward and dragged his body over with the others. It reminded Verkan Vail of some sort of industrial assembly-line operation. He replaced the two expended rounds in his magazine with fresh ones and slid the pistol back into its holster. The two Assassins whose principals had been so expeditiously massacred were beginning to count up their losses and pay off the winners.
Klarnood, the President-General of the Society of Assassins, came over, hooking fingers and clapping shoulders with Verkan Vall.
“Lord Virzal, I’ve seen quite a few duels, but nothing quite like that,” he said. “You should have been an Assassin!”
That was a considerable compliment. Verkan Vall thanked him modestly.
“I’d like to talk to you privately,” the Assassin-President continued. “I think it’ll be worth your while if we have a few words together.”
Verkan Vall nodded. “My suite is on the fifteenth floor above; will that be all right?” He waited until the losers had finished settling their bets, then motioned to his own pair of Assassins.
As they emerged into the Martian Room again, the manager was waiting; he looked as though he were about to demand that Verkan Vall vacate his suite. However, when he saw the arm of the President-General of the Society of Assassins draped amicably over his guest’s shoulder, he came forward bowing and smiling.
“Larnorm, I want you to put five of your best Assassins to guarding the approaches to the Lord Virzal’s suite,” Klarnood told him. “I’ll send five more from Assassins’ Hall to replace them at their ordinary duties. And I’ll hold you responsible with your carnate existence for the Lord Virzal’s safety in this hotel. Understand?”
“Oh, yes, Honorable Assassin-President; you may trust me. The Lord Virzal will be perfectly safe.”
In Verkan Vall’s suite, above, Klarnood sat down and got out his pipe, filling it with tobacco lightly mixed withzerfa. To his surprise, he saw his host light a plain tobacco cigarette.
“Don’t you usezerfa?” he asked.
“Very little,” Verkan Vall replied. “I grow it. If you’d see the bums who hang around our drying sheds, on Venus, cadging rejected leaves and smoking themselves into a stupor, you’d be frugal in using it, too.”
Klarnood nodded. “You know, most men would want a pipe of fifty percent, or a straightzerfacigarette, after what you’ve been through,” he said.
“I’d need something like that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one to deaden,” Verkan Vall said. “As it is, I feel like a murderer of babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn’t handle a pistol at all. I suppose the old fellow, Sirzob, was a fair shot, but dropping him wasn’t any great feat of arms, either.”
Klarnood looked at him curiously for a moment. “You know,” he said, at length, “I believe you actually mean that. Well, until he met you, Marnark of Bashad was rated as the best knife-fighter in Darsh. Sirzob had ten dueling victories to his credit, and young Yirzol four.” He puffed slowly on his pipe. “I like you, Lord Virzal; a great Assassin was lost when you decided to reincarnate as a Venusian land-owner. I’d hate to see you discarnated without proper warning. I take it you’re ignorant of the intricacies of Terran politics?”
“To a large extent, yes.”
“Well, do you know who those three men were?” When Verkan Vall shook his head, Klarnood continued: “Marnark was the son and right-hand associate of old Mirzark of Bashad, the Statisticalist Party leader. Sirzob of Abo was their propaganda director. And Yirzol of Narva was their leading socio-economic theorist, and their candidate for Executive Chairman. In six minutes, with one knife thrust and two shots, you did the Statisticalist Party an injury second only to that done them by the young lady in whose name you were fighting. In two weeks, there will be a planet-wide general election. As it stands, the Statisticalists have a majority of the seats in Parliament and on the Executive Council. As a result of your work and the Lady Dallona’s, they’ll lose that majority, and more, when the votes are tallied.”
“Is that another reason why you like me?” Verkan Vall asked.
“Unofficially, yes. As President-General of the Society of Assassins, I must be nonpolitical. The Society is rigidly so; if we let ourselves become involved, as an organization, in politics, we could control the System Government inside of five years, and we’d be wiped out of existence in fifty years by the very forces we sought to control,” Klarnood said. “But personally, I would like to see the Statisticalist Party destroyed. If they succeed in their program of socialization, the Society would be finished. A socialist state is, in its final development, an absolute, total, state; no total state can tolerate extra-legal and para-governmental organizations. So we have adopted the policy of giving a little inconspicuous aid, here and there, to people who are dangerous to the Statisticalists. The Lady Dallona of Hadron, and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh, are such persons. You appear to be another. That’s why I ordered that fellow, Larnorm, to make sure you were safe in his hotel.”
“Where is the Lady Dallona?” Verkan Vall asked. “From your use of the present tense, I assume you believe her to be still carnate.”
Klarnood looked at Verkan Vall keenly. “That’s a pretty blunt question, Lord Virzal,” he said. “I wish I knew a little more about you. When you and your Assassins started inquiring about the Lady Dallona, I tried to check up on you. I found out that you had come to Darsh from Ghamma on a ship of the family of Zorda, accompanied by Brarnend of Zorda himself. And that’s all I could find out. You claim to be a Venusian planter, and you might be. Any Terran who can handle weapons as you can would have come to my notice long ago. But you have no more ascertainable history than if you’d stepped out of another dimension.”
That was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. In fact, itwasthe truth. Verkan Vall laughed.
“Well, confidentially,” he said, “I’m from the Arcturus System. I followed the Lady Dallona here from our home planet, and when I have rescued her from among you Solarians, I shall, according to our customs, receive her hand in marriage. As she is the daughter of the Emperor of Arcturus, that’ll be quite a good thing for me.”
Klarnood chuckled. “You know, you’d only have to tell me that about three or four times and I’d start believing it,” he said. “And Dr. Harnosh of Hosh would believe it the first time; he’s been talking to himself ever since the Lady Dallona started her experimental work here. Lord Virzal, I’m going to take a chance on you. The Lady Dallona is still carnate, or was four days ago, and the same for Dirzed. They both went into hiding after the discarnation feast of Garnon of Roxor, to escape the enmity of the Statisticalists. Two days after they disappeared, Dirzed called Assassins’ Hall and reported this, but told us nothing more. I suppose, in about three or four days, I could re-establish contact with him. We want the public to think that the Statisticalists made away with the Lady Dallona, at least until the election’s over.”
Verkan Vall nodded. “I was pretty sure that was the situation,” he said. “It may be that they will get in touch with me; if they don’t, I’ll need your help in reaching them.”
“Why do you think the Lady Dallona will try to reach you?”
“She needs all the help she can get. She knows she can get plenty from me. Why do you think I interrupted my search for her, and risked my carnate existence, to fight those people over a matter of verbalisms and political propaganda?” Verkan Vall went to the newscast visiplate and snapped it on. “We’ll see if I’m getting results, yet.”
The plate lighted, and a handsome young man in a gold-laced green suit was speaking out of it:
“... where he is heavily guarded by Assassins. However, in an exclusive interview with representatives of this service, the Assassin Hirzif, one of the two who seconded the men the Lord Virzal fought, said that in his opinion all of the three were so outclassed as to have had no chance whatever, and that he had already refused an offer of ten thousand System Monetary Units to discarnate the Lord Virzal for the Statisticalist Party. ‘When I want to discarnate,’ Hirzif the Assassin said, ‘I’ll invite in my friends and do it properly; until I do, I wouldn’t go up against the Lord Virzal of Verkan for ten million S.M.U.’”
Verkan Vall snapped off the visiplate. “See what I mean?” he asked. “I fought those politicians just for the advertising. If Dallona and Dirzed are anywhere near a visiplate, they’ll know how to reach me.”
“Hirzif shouldn’t have talked about refusing that retainer,” Klarnood frowned. “That isn’t good Assassin ethics. Why, yes, Lord Virzal; that was cleverly planned. It ought to get results. But I wish you’d get the Lady Dallona out of Darsh, and preferably off Terra, as soon as you can. We’ve benefited by this, so far, but I shouldn’t like to see things go much further. A real civil war could develop out of this situation, and I don’t want that. Call on me for help; I’ll give you a code word to use at Assassins’ Hall.”
A real civil war was developing even as Klarnood spoke; by mid-morning of the next day, the fighting that had been partially suppressed by the Constabulary had broken out anew. The Assassins employed by the Solar Hotel—heavily re-enforced during the night—had fought a pitched battle with Statisticalist partisans on the landing stage above Verkan Vall’s suite, and now several Constabulary airboats were patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo.
Just how successful in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other parts of the towering city unit. There hadn’t been a civil war on the Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year. If anything, he was surprised that the explosion had taken so long to occur.
One of the servants furnished to him by the hotel management approached him in the drawing room, holding a four-inch-square wafer of white plastic.
“Lord Virzal, there is a masked Assassin in the hallway who brought this under Assassins’ Truce,” he said.
Verkan Vall took the wafer and pared off three of the four edges, which showed black where they had been fused. Unfolding it, he found, as he had expected, that the pyrographed message within was in the alphabet and language of the First Paratime Level:
Vall, darling:Am I glad you got here; this time I reallyamin the middle, but good! The Assassin, Dirzed, who brings this, is in my service. You can trust him implicitly; he’s about the only person in Darsh you can trust. He’ll bring you to where I am.DallaP.S. I hope you’re not still angry about that musician. I told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with an experiment in telepathy.D.
Vall, darling:
Am I glad you got here; this time I reallyamin the middle, but good! The Assassin, Dirzed, who brings this, is in my service. You can trust him implicitly; he’s about the only person in Darsh you can trust. He’ll bring you to where I am.
Dalla
P.S. I hope you’re not still angry about that musician. I told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with an experiment in telepathy.
D.
Verkan Vall grinned at the postscript. That had been twenty years ago, when he’d been eighty and she’d been seventy. He supposed she’d expect him to take up his old relationship with her again. It probably wouldn’t last any longer than it had, the other time; he recalled a Fourth Level proverb about the leopard and his spots. It certainly wouldn’t be boring, though.
“Tell the Assassin to come in,” he directed. Then he tossed the message down on a table. Outside of himself, nobody in Darsh could read it but the woman who had sent it; if, as he thought highly probable, the Statisticalists had spies among the hotel staff, it might serve to reduce some cryptanalyst to gibbering insanity.
The Assassin entered, drawing off a cowl-like mask. He was the man whose arm Dalla had been holding in the visiplate picture; Verkan Vall even recognized the extremely ornate pistol and knife on his belt.
“Dirzed the Assassin,” he named himself. “If you wish, we can visiphone Assassins’ Hall for verification of my identity.”
“Lord Virzal of Verkan. And my Assassins, Marnik and Olirzon.” They all hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with the newcomer. “That won’t be needed,” Verkan Vall told Dirzed. “I know you from seeing you with the Lady Dallona, on the visiplate; you’re ‘Dirzed, her faithful Assassin.’”
Dirzed’s face, normally the color of a good walnut gunstock, turned almost black. He used shockingly bad language.
“And that’s why I have to wear this abomination,” he finished, displaying the mask. “The Lady Dallona and I can’t show our faces anywhere; if we did, every Statisticalist and his six-year-old brat would know us, and we’d be fighting off an army of them in five minutes.”
“Where’s the Lady Dallona, now?”
“In hiding, Lord Virzal, at a private dwelling dome in the forest; she’s most anxious to see you. I’m to take you to her, and I would strongly advise that you bring your Assassins along. There are other people at this dome, and they are not personally loyal to the Lady Dallona. I’ve no reason to suspect them of secret enmity, but their friendship is based entirely on political expediency.”
“And political expediency is subject to change without notice,” Verkan Vall finished for him. “Have you an airboat?”
“On the landing stage below. Shall we go now, Lord Virzal?”
“Yes.” Verkan Vall made a two-handed gesture to his Assassins, as though gripping a submachine-gun; they nodded, went into another room, and returned carrying light automatic weapons in their hands and pouches of spare drums slung over their shoulders. “And may I suggest, Dirzed, that one of my Assassins drives the airboat? I want you on the back seat with me, to explain the situation as we go.”
Dirzed’s teeth flashed white against his brown skin as he gave Verkan Vall a quick smile.
“By all means, Lord Virzal; I would much rather be distrusted than to find that my client’s friends were not discreet.”
There were a couple of hotel Assassins guarding Dirzed’s airboat, on the landing stage. Marnik climbed in under the controls, with Olirzon beside him; Verkan Vall and Dirzed entered the rear seat. Dirzed gave Marnik the co-ordinate reference for their destination.
“Now, what sort of a place is this, where we’re going?” Verkan Vall asked. “And who’s there whom we may or may not trust?”
“Well, it’s a dome house belonging to the family of Starpha; they own a five-mile radius around it, oak and beech forest and underbrush, stocked with deer and boar. A hunting lodge. Prince Jirzyn of Starpha, Lord Girzon of Roxor, and a few other top-level Volitionalists, know that the Lady Dallona’s hiding there. They’re keeping her out of sight till after the election, for propaganda purposes. We’ve been hiding there since immediately after the discarnation feast of the Lord Garnon of Roxor.”
“What happened, after the feast?” Verkan Vall wanted to know.
“Well, you know how the Lady Dallona and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh had this telepathic-sensitive there, in a trance and drugged with azerfa-derivative alkaloid the Lady Dallona had developed. I was Lord Garnon’s Assassin; I discarnated him, myself. Why, I hadn’t even put my pistol away before he was in control of this sensitive, in a room five stories above the banquet hall; he began communicating at once. We had visiplates to show us what was going on.
“Right away, Nirzav of Shonna, one of the Statisticalist leaders who was a personal friend of Lord Garnon’s in spite of his politics, renounced Statisticalism and went over to the Volitionalists, on the strength of this communication. Prince Jirzyn, and Lord Girzon, the new family-head of Roxor, decided that there would be trouble in the next few days, so they advised the Lady Dallona to come to this hunting lodge for safety. She and I came here in her airboat, directly from the feast. A good thing we did, too; if we’d gone to her apartment, we’d have walked in before that lethal gas had time to clear.
“There are four Assassins of the family of Starpha, and six menservants, and an upper-servant named Tarnod, the gamekeeper. The Starpha Assassins and I have been keeping the rest under observation. I left one of the Starpha Assassins guarding the Lady Dallona when I came for you, under brotherly oath to protect her in my name till I returned.”
The airboat was skimming rapidly above the treetops, toward the northern part of the city.
“What’s known about that package bomb?” Verkan Vall asked. “Who sent it?”
Dirzed shrugged. “The Statisticalists, of course. The wrapper was stolen from the Reincarnation Research Institute; so was the case. The Constabulary are working on it.” Dirzed shrugged again.
The dome, about a hundred and fifty feet in width and some fifty in height, stood among the trees ahead. It was almost invisible from any distance; the concrete dome was of mottled green and gray concrete, trees grew so close as to brush it with their branches, and the little pavilion on the flattened top was roofed with translucent green plastic. As the airboat came in, a couple of men in Assassins’ garb emerged from the pavilion to meet them.
“Marnik, stay at the controls,” Verkan Vall directed. “I’ll send Olirzon up for you if I want you. If there’s any trouble, take off for Assassins’ Hall and give the code word, then come back with twice as many men as you think you’ll need.”
Dirzed raised his eyebrows over this. “I hadn’t known the Assassin-President had given you a code word, Lord Virzal,” he commented. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
“The Assassin-President has honored me with his friendship,” Verkan Vall replied noncommittally, as he, Dirzed and Olirzon climbed out of the airboat. Marnik was holding it an unobtrusive inch or so above the flat top of the dome, away from the edge of the pavilion roof.
The two Assassins greeted him, and a man in upper-servants’ garb and wearing a hunting knife and a long hunting pistol approached.
“Lord Virzal of Verkan? Welcome to Starpha Dome. The Lady Dallona awaits you below.”
Verkan Vall had never been in an Akor-Neb dwelling dome, but a description of such structures had been included in his hypno-mech indoctrination. Originally, they had been the standard structure for all purposes; about two thousand elapsed years ago, when nationalism had still existed on the Akor-Neb Sector, the cities had been almost entirely under ground, as protection from air attack. Even now, the design had been retained by those who wished to live apart from the towering city units, to preserve the natural appearance of the landscape. The Starpha hunting lodge was typical of such domes. Under it was a circular well, eighty feet in depth and fifty in width, with a fountain and a shallow circular pool at the bottom. The storerooms, kitchens and servants’ quarters were at the top, the living quarters at the bottom, in segments of a wide circle around the well, back of balconies.
“Tarnod, the gamekeeper,” Dirzed performed the introductions. “And Erarno and Kirzol, Assassins.”
Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them. Tarnod accompanied them to the lifter tubes—two percent positive gravitation for descent and two percent negative for ascent—and they all floated down the former, like air-filled balloons, to the bottom level.
“The Lady Dallona is in the gun room,” Tarnod informed Verkan Vall, making as though to guide him.
“Thanks, Tarnod; we know the way,” Dirzed told him shortly, turning his back on the upper-servant and walking toward a closed door on the other side of the fountain. Verkan Vall and Olirzon followed; for a moment, Tarnod stood looking after them, then he followed the other two Assassins into the ascent tube.
“I don’t relish that fellow,” Dirzed explained. “The family of Starpha use him for work they couldn’t hire an Assassin to do at any price. I’ve been here often, when I was with the Lord Garnon; I’ve always thought he had something on Prince Jirzyn.”
He knocked sharply on the closed door with the butt of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young Assassin with a narrow mustache and a tuft of chin beard looked out.
“Ah, Dirzed.” He stepped outside. “The Lady Dallona is within; I return her to your care.”
Verkan Vall entered, followed by Dirzed and Olirzon. The big room was fitted with reclining chairs and couches and low tables; its walls were hung with the heads of deer and boar and wolves, and with racks holding rifles and hunting pistols and fowling pieces. It was filled with the soft glow of indirect cold light. At the far side of the room, a young woman was seated at a desk, speaking softly into a sound transcriber. As they entered, she snapped it off and rose.
Hadron Dalla wore the same costume Verkan Vall had seen on the visiplate: he recognized her instantly. It took her a second or two to perceive Verkan Vall under the brown skin and black hair of the Lord Virzal of Verkan. Then her face lighted with a happy smile.
“Why, Va-a-a-ll!” she whooped, running across the room and tossing herself into his not particularly reluctant arms. After all, it had been twenty years—“I didn’t know you, at first!”
“You mean, in these clothes?” he asked, seeing that she had forgotten, for the moment, the presence of the two Assassins. She had even called him by his First Level name, but that was unimportant—the Akor-Neb affectionate diminutive was formed by omitting the -irz- or -arn-. “Well, they’re not exactly what I generally wear on the plantation.” He kissed her again, then turned to his companions. “Your pardon, Gentlemen-Assassins; it’s been something over a year since we’ve seen each other.”
Olirzon was smiling at the affectionate reunion; Dirzed wore a look of amused resignation, as though he might have expected something like this to happen. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat down on a couch near the desk.
“That was really sweet of you, Vall, fighting those men for talking about me,” she began. “You took an awful chance, though. But if you hadn’t, I’d never have known you were in Darsh—Oh-oh! That was why you did it, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I had to do something. Everybody either didn’t know or weren’t saying where you were. I assumed, from the circumstances, that you were hiding somewhere. Tell me, Dalla; do you really have scientific proof of reincarnation? I mean, as an established fact?”
“Oh, yes; these people on this sector have had that for over ten centuries. They have hypnotic techniques for getting back into a part of the subconscious mind that we’ve never been able to reach. And after I found out how they did it, I was able to adapt some of our hypno-epistemological techniques to it, and—”
“All right; that’s what I wanted to know,” he cut her off. “We’re getting out of here, right away.”
“But where?”
“Ghamma, in an airboat I have outside, and then back to the First Level. Unless there’s a paratime-transposition conveyor somewhere nearer.”
“But why, Vall? I’m not ready to go back; I have a lot of work to do here, yet. They’re getting ready to set up a series of control-experiments at the Institute, and then, I’m in the middle of an experiment, a two-hundred-subject memory-recall experiment. See, I distributed two hundred sets of equipment for my new technique—injection-ampoules of thiszerfa-derivative drug, and sound records of the hypnotic suggestion formula, which can be played on an ordinary reproducer. It’s just a crude variant of our hypno-mech process, except that instead of implanting information in the subconscious mind, to be brought at will to the level of consciousness, it works the other way, and draws into conscious knowledge information already in the subconscious mind. The way these people have always done has been to put the subject in an hypnotic trance and then record verbal statements made in the trance-state; when the subject comes out of the trance, the record is all there is, because the memories of past reincarnations have never been in the conscious mind. But with my process, the subject can consciously remember everything about his last reincarnation, and as many reincarnations before that as he wishes to. I haven’t heard from any of the people who received these auto-recall kits, and I really must—”
“Dalla, I don’t want to have to pull Paratime Police authority on you, but, so help me, if you don’t come back voluntarily with me, I will. Security of the secret of paratime transposition.”
“Oh, my eye!” Dalla exclaimed. “Don’t give me that, Vall!”
“Look, Dalla. Suppose you get discarnated here,” Verkan Vall said. “You say reincarnation is a scientific fact. Well, you’d reincarnate on this sector, and then you’d take a memory-recall, under hypnosis. And when you did, the paratime secret wouldn’t be a secret any more.”
“Oh!” Dalla’s hand went to her mouth in consternation. Like every paratimer, she was conditioned to shrink with all her being from the mere thought of revealing to any out-time dweller the secret ability of her race to pass to other time-lines, or even the existence of alternate lines of probability. “And if I took one of the old-fashioned trance-recalls, I’d blat out everything; I wouldn’t be able to keep a thing back. And I even know the principles of transposition!” She looked at him, aghast.
“When I get back, I’m going to put a recommendation through department channels that this whole sector be declared out of bounds for all paratime transposition, until you people at Rhogom Foundation work out the problem of discarnate return to the First Level,” he told her. “Now, have you any notes or anything you want to take back with you?”
She rose. “Yes; just what’s on the desk. Find me something to put the tape spools and notebooks in, while I’m getting them in order.”
He secured a large game bag from under a rack of fowling pieces, and held it while she sorted the material rapidly, stuffing spools of record tape and notebooks into it. They had barely begun when the door slid open and Olirzon, who had gone outside, sprang into the room, his pistol drawn, swearing vilely.
“They’ve double-crossed us!” he cried. “The servants of Starpha have turned on us.” He holstered his pistol and snatched up his submachine-gun, taking cover behind the edge of the door and letting go with a burst in the direction of the lifter tubes. “Got that one!” he grunted.
“What happened, Olirzon?” Verkan Vall asked, dropping the game bag on the table and hurrying across the room.
“I went up to see how Marnik was making out. As I came out of the lifter tube, one of the obscenities took a shot at me with a hunting pistol. He missed me; I didn’t miss him. Then a couple more of them were coming up, with fowling pieces; I shot one of them before they could fire, and jumped into the descent tube and came down heels over ears. I don’t know what’s happened to Marnik.” He fired another burst, and swore. “Missed him!”
“Assassins’ Truce! Assassins’ Truce!” a voice howled out of the descent tube. “Hold your fire, we want to parley.”
“Who is it?” Dirzed shouted, over Olirzon’s shoulder. “You, Sarnax? Come on out; we won’t shoot.”
The young Assassin with the mustache and chin beard emerged from the descent tube, his weapons sheathed and his clasped hands extended in front of him in a peculiarly ecclesiastical-looking manner. Dirzed and Olirzon stepped out of the gun room, followed by Verkan Vall and Hadron Dalla. Olirzon had left his submachine-gun behind. They met the other Assassin by the rim of the fountain pool.
“Lady Dallona of Hadron,” the Starpha Assassin began. “I and my colleagues, in the employ of the family of Starpha, have received orders from our clients to withdraw our protection from you, and to discarnate you, and all with you who undertake to protect or support you.” That much sounded like a recitation of some established formula; then his voice became more conversational. “I and my colleagues, Erarno and Kirzol and Harnif, offer our apologies for the barbarity of the servants of the family of Starpha, in attacking without declaration of cessation of friendship. Was anybody hurt or discarnated?”
“None of us,” Olirzon said. “How about Marnik?”
“He was warned before hostilities were begun against him,” Sarnax replied. “We will allow five minutes until—”
Olirzon, who had been looking up the well, suddenly sprang at Dalla, knocking her flat, and at the same time jerking out his pistol. Before he could raise it, a shot banged from above and he fell on his face. Dirzed, Verkan Vall, and Sarnax, all drew their pistols, but whoever had fired the shot had vanished. There was an outburst of shouting above.
“Get to cover,” Sarnax told the others. “We’ll let you know when we’re ready to attack; we’ll have to deal with whoever fired that shot, first.” He looked at the dead body on the floor, exclaimed angrily, and hurried to the ascent tube, springing upward.
Verkan Vall replaced the small pistol in his shoulder holster and took Olirzon’s belt, with his knife and heavier pistol.
“Well, there you see,” Dirzed said, as they went back to the gun room. “So much for political expediency.”
“I think I understand why your picture and the Lady Dallona’s were exhibited so widely,” Verkan Vall said. “Now, anybody would recognize your bodies, and blame the Statisticalists for discarnating you.”
“That thought had occurred to me, Lord Virzal,” Dirzed said. “I suppose our bodies will be atrociously but not unidentifiably mutilated, to further enrage the public,” he added placidly. “If I get out of this carnate, I’m going to pay somebody off for it.”
After a few minutes, there was more shouting of: “Assassins’ Truce!” from the descent tube. The two Assassins, Erarno and Kirzol, emerged, dragging the gamekeeper, Tarnod, between them. The upper-servant’s face was bloody, and his jaw seemed to be broken. Sarnax followed, carrying a long hunting pistol in his hand.
“Here he is!” he announced. “He fired during Assassins’ Truce; he’s subject to Assassins’ Justice!”
He nodded to the others. They threw the gamekeeper forward on the floor, and Sarnax shot him through the head, then tossed the pistol down beside him. “Any more of these people who violate the decencies will be treated similarly,” he promised.
“Thank you, Sarnax,” Dirzed spoke up. “But we lost an Assassin: discarnating this lackey won’t equalize that. We think you should retire one of your number.”
“That at least, Dirzed; wait a moment.”
The three Assassins conferred at some length. Then Sarnax hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with his companions.
“See you in the next reincarnation, brothers,” he told them, walking toward the gun-room door, where Verkan Vall, Dalla and Dirzed stood. “I’m joining you people. You had two Assassins when the parley began, you’ll have two when the shooting starts.”
Verkan Vall looked at Dirzed in some surprise. Hadron Dalla’s Assassin nodded.
“He’s entitled to do that, Lord Virzal; the Assassins’ code provides for such changes of allegiance.”
“Welcome, Sarnax,” Verkan Vall said, hooking fingers with him. “I hope we’ll all be together when this is over.”
“We will be,” Sarnax assured him cheerfully. “Discarnate. We won’t get out of this in the body, Lord Virzal.”
A submachine-gun hammered from above, the bullets lashing the fountain pool; the water actually steamed, so great was their velocity.
“All right!” a voice called down. “Assassins’ Truce is over!”
Another burst of automatic fire smashed out the lights at the bottom of the ascent tube. Dirzed and Dalla struggled across the room, pushing a heavy steel cabinet between them; Verkan Vall, who was holding Olirzon’s submachine-gun, moved aside to allow them to drop it on edge in the open doorway, then wedged the door half-shut against it. Sarnax came over, bringing rifles, hunting pistols, and ammunition.
“What’s the situation, up there?” Verkan Vall asked him. “What force have they, and why did they turn against us?”
“Lord Virzal!” Dirzed objected, scandalized. “You have no right to ask Sarnax to betray confidences!”
Sarnax spat against the door. “In the face of Jirzyn of Starpha!” he said. “And in the face of hiszortanmother, and of his father, whoever he was! Dirzed, do not talk foolishly; one does not speak of betraying betrayers.” He turned to Verkan Vall. “They have three menservants of the family of Starpha; your Assassin, Olirzon, discarnated the other three. There is one of Prince Jirzyn’s poor relations, named Girzad. There are three other men, Volitionalist precinct workers, who came with Girzad, and four Assassins, the three who were here, and one who came with Girzad. Eleven, against the three of us.”
“The four of us, Sarnax,” Dalla corrected. She had buckled on a hunting pistol, and had a light deer rifle under her arm.
Something moved at the bottom of the descent tube. Verkan Vall gave it a short burst, though it was probably only a dummy, dropped to draw fire.
“The four of us, Lady Dallona,” Sarnax agreed. “As to your other Assassin, the one who stayed in the airboat, I don’t know how he fared. You see, about twenty minutes ago, this Girzad arrived in an airboat, with an Assassin and these three Volitionalist workers. Erarno and I were at the top of the dome when he came in. He told us that he had orders from Prince Jirzyn to discarnate the Lady Dallona and Dirzed at once. Tarnod, the gamekeeper”—Sarnax spat ceremoniously against the door again—“told him you were here, and that Marnik was one of your men. He was going to shoot Marnik at once, but Erarno and I and his Assassin stopped him. We warned Marnik about the change in the situation, according to the code, expecting Marnik to go down here and join you. Instead, he lifted the airboat, zoomed over Girzad’s boat, and let go a rocket blast, setting Girzad’s boat on fire. Well, that was a hostile act, so we all fired after him. We must have hit something, because the boat went down, trailing smoke, about ten miles away. Girzad got another airboat out of the hangar and he and his Assassin started after your man. About that time, your Assassin, Olirzon—happy reincarnation to him—came up, and the Starpha servants fired at him, and he fired back and discarnated two of them, and then jumped down the descent tube. One of the servants jumped after him; I found his body at the bottom when I came down to warn you formally. You know what happened after that.”
“But why did Prince Jirzyn order our discarnation?” Dalla wanted to know. “Was it to blame the Statisticalists with it?”
Sarnax, about to answer, broke off suddenly and began firing at the opening of the ascent tube with a hunting pistol.
“I got him,” he said, in a pleased tone. “That was Erarno; he was always playing tricks with the tubes, climbing down against negative gravity and up against positive gravity. His body will float up to the top—Why, Lady Dallona, that was only part of it. You didn’t hear about the big scandal, on the newscast, then?”
“We didn’t have it on. What scandal?”
Sarnax laughed. “Oh, the very father and family-head of all scandals! You ought to know about it, because you started it; that’s why Prince Jirzyn wants you out of the body—You devised a process by which people could give themselves memory-recalls of previous reincarnations, didn’t you? And distributed apparatus to do it with? And gave one set to young Tarnov, the son of Lord Tirzov of Fastor?”
Dalla nodded. Sarnax continued:
“Well, last evening, Tarnov of Fastor used his recall outfit, and what do you think? It seems that thirty years ago, in his last reincarnation, he was Jirzid of Starpha, Jirzyn’s older brother. Jirzid was betrothed to the Lady Annitra of Zabna. Well, his younger brother was carrying on a clandestine affair with the Lady Annitra, and he also wanted the title of Prince and family-head of Starpha. So he bribed this fellow Tarnod, whom I had the pleasure of discarnating, and who was an underservant here at the hunting lodge. Between them, they shot Jirzid during a boar hunt. An accident, of course. So Jirzyn married the Lady Annitra, and when old Prince Jarnid, his father, discarnated a year later, he succeeded to the title. And immediately, Tarnod was made head gamekeeper here.”
“What did I tell you, Lord Virzal? I knew that son of azortanhad something on Jirzyn of Starpha!” Dirzed exclaimed. “A nice family, this of Starpha!”
“Well, that’s not the end of it,” Sarnax continued. “This morning, Tarnov of Fastor, late Jirzid of Starpha, went before the High Court of Estates and entered suit to change his name to Jirzid of Starpha and laid claim to the title of Starpha family-head. The case has just been entered, so there’s been no hearing, but there’s the blazes of an argument among all the nobles about it—some are claiming that the individuality doesn’t change from one reincarnation to the next, and others claiming that property and titles should pass along the line of physical descent, no matter what individuality has reincarnated into what body. They’re the ones who want the Lady Dallona discarnated and her discoveries suppressed. And there’s talk about revising the entire system of estate-ownership and estate-inheritance. Oh, it’s an utter obscenity of a business!”
“This,” Verkan Vall told Dalla, “is something we will not emphasize when we get home.” That was as close as he dared come to it, but she caught his meaning. The working of major changes in out-time social structures was not viewed with approval by the Paratime Commission on the First Level. “Ifwe get home,” he added. Then an idea occurred to him.
“Dirzed, Sarnax; this place must have been used by the leaders of the Volitionalists for top-level conferences. Is there a secret passage anywhere?”
Sarnax shook his head. “Not from here. There is one, on the floor above, but they control it. And even if there were one down here, they would be guarding the outlet.”
“That’s what I was counting on. I’d hoped to simulate an escape that way, and then make a rush up the regular tubes.” Verkan Vall shrugged. “I suppose Marnik’s our only chance. I hope he got away safely.”
“He was going for help? I was surprised that an Assassin would desert his client; I should have thought of that,” Sarnax said. “Well, even if he got down carnate, and if Girzad didn’t catch him, he’d still be afoot ten miles from the nearest city unit. That gives us a little chance—about one in a thousand.”
“Is there any way they can get at us, except by those tubes?” Dalla asked.
“They could cut a hole in the floor, or burn one through,” Sarnax replied. “They have plenty of thermite. They could detonate a charge of explosives over our heads, or clear out of the dome and drop one down the well. They could use lethal gas or radio-dust, but their Assassins wouldn’t permit such illegal methods. Or they could shoot sleep-gas down at us, and then come down and cut our throats at their leisure.”
“We’ll have to get out of this room, then,” Verkan Vall decided. “They know we’ve barricaded ourselves in here; this is where they’ll attack. So we’ll patrol the perimeter of the well; we’ll be out of danger from above if we keep close to the wall. And we’ll inspect all the rooms on this floor for evidence of cutting through from above.”
Sarnax nodded. “That’s sense, Lord Virzal. How about the lifter tubes?”
“We’ll have to barricade them. Sarnax, you and Dirzed know the layout of this place better than the Lady Dallona or I; suppose you two check the rooms, while we cover the tubes and the well,” Verkan Vall directed. “Come on, now.”
They pushed the door wide-open and went out past the cabinet. Hugging the wall, they began a slow circuit of the well, Verkan Vall in the lead with the submachine-gun, then Sarnax and Dirzed, the former with a heavy boar-rifle and the latter with a hunting pistol in each hand, and Hadron Dalla brought up in the rear with her rifle. It was she who noticed a movement along the rim of the balcony above and snapped a shot at it; there was a crash above, and a shower of glass and plastic and metal fragments rattled on the pavement of the court. Somebody had been trying to lower a scanner or a visiplate-pickup, or something of the sort; the exact nature of the instrument was not evident from the wreckage Dalla’s bullet had made of it.
The rooms Dirzed and Sarnax entered were all quiet; nobody seemed to be attempting to cut through the ceiling, fifteen feet above. They dragged furniture from a couple of rooms, blocking the openings of the lifter tubes, and continued around the well until they had reached the gun room again.
Dirzed suggested that they move some of the weapons and ammunition stored there to Prince Jirzyn’s private apartment, halfway around to the lifter tubes, so that another place of refuge would be stocked with munitions in event of their being driven from the gun room.
Leaving him on guard outside, Verkan Vall, Dalla and Sarnax entered the gun room and began gathering weapons and boxes of ammunition. Dalla finished packing her game bag with the recorded data and notes of her experiments. Verkan Vall selected four more of the heavy hunting pistols, more accurate than his shoulder-holster weapon or the dead Olirzon’s belt arm, and capable of either full or semi-automatic fire. Sarnax chose a couple more boar rifles. Dalla slung her bag of recorded notes, and another bag of ammunition, and secured another deer rifle. They carried this accumulation of munitions to the private apartments of Prince Jirzyn, dumping everything in the middle of the drawing room, except the bag of notes, from which Dalla refused to separate herself.
“Maybe we’d better put some stuff over in one of the rooms on the other side of the well,” Dirzed suggested. “They haven’t really begun to come after us; when they do, we’ll probably be attacked from two or three directions at once.”
They returned to the gun room, casting anxious glances at the edge of the balcony above and at the barricade they had erected across the openings to the lifter tubes. Verkan Vall was not satisfied with this last; it looked to him as though they had provided a breastwork for somebody to fire on them from, more than anything else.
He was about to step around the cabinet which partially blocked the gun-room door when he glanced up, and saw a six-foot circle on the ceiling turning slowly brown. There was a smell of scorched plastic. He grabbed Sarnax by the arm and pointed.
“Thermite,” the Assassin whispered. “The ceiling’s got six inches of spaceship-insulation between it and the floor above; it’ll take them a few minutes to burn through it.” He stooped and pushed on the barricade, shoving it into the room. “Keep back; they’ll probably drop a grenade or so through, first, before they jump down. If we’re quick, we can get a couple of them.”
Dirzed and Sarnax crouched, one at either side of the door, with weapons ready. Verkan Vall and Dalla had been ordered, rather peremptorily, to stay behind them; in a place of danger, an Assassin was obliged to shield his client. Verkan Vall, unable to see what was going on inside the room, kept his eyes and his gun muzzle on the barricade across the openings to the lifter tubes, the erection of which he was now regretting as a major tactical error.
Inside the gun room, there was a sudden crash, as the circle of thermite burned through and a section of ceiling dropped out and hit the floor. Instantly, Dirzed flung himself back against Verkan Vall, and there was a tremendous explosion inside, followed by another and another. A second or so passed, then Dirzed, leaning around the corner of the door, began firing rapidly into the room. From the other side of the door, Sarnax began blazing away with his rifle. Verkan Vall kept his position, covering the lifter tubes.
Suddenly, from behind the barricade, a blue-white gun flash leaped into being, and a pistol banged. He sprayed the opening between a couch and a section of bookcase from whence it had come, releasing his trigger as the gun rose with the recoil, squeezing and releasing and squeezing again. Then he jumped to his feet.
“Come on, the other place; hurry!” he ordered.
Sarnax swore in exasperation. “Help me with her, Dirzed!” he implored.
Verkan Vall turned his head, to see the two Assassins drag Dalla to her feet and hustle her away from the gun room; she was quite senseless, and they had to drag her between them. Verkan Vall gave a quick glance into the gun room; two of the Starpha servants and a man in rather flashy civil dress were lying on the floor, where they had been shot as they had jumped down from above. He saw a movement at the edge of the irregular, smoking, hole in the ceiling, and gave it a short burst, then fired another at the exit from the descent tube. Then he took to his heels and followed the Assassins and Hadron Dalla into Prince Jirzyn’s apartment.
As he ran through the open door, the Assassins were letting Dalla down into a chair; they instantly threw themselves into the work of barricading the doorway so as to provide cover and at the same time allow them to fire out into the central well.
For an instant, as he bent over her, he thought Dalla had been killed, an assumption justified by his knowledge of the deadliness of Akor-Neb bullets. Then he saw her eye-lids flicker. A moment later, he had the explanation of her escape. The bullet had hit the game bag at her side; it was full of spools of metal tape, in metal cases, and notes in written form, pyrographed upon sheets of plastic ring fastened into metal binders. Because of their extreme velocity, Akor-Neb bullets were sure killers when they struck animal tissue, but for the same reason, they had very poor penetration on hard objects. The alloy-steel tape, and the steel spools and spool cases, and the notebook binders, had been enough to shatter the little bullet into splinters of magnesium-nickel alloy, and the stout leather back of the game bag had stopped all of these. But the impact, even distributed as it had been through the contents of the bag, had been enough to knock the girl unconscious.
He found a bottle of some sort of brandy and a glass on a serving table nearby and poured her a drink, holding it to her lips. She spluttered over the first mouthful, then took the glass from him and sipped the rest.
“What happened?” she asked. “I thought those bullets were sure death.”
“Your notes. The bullet hit the bag. Are you all right, now?”
She finished the brandy. “I think so.” She put a hand into the game bag and brought out a snarled and tangled mess of steel tape. “Oh,blast! That stuff was important; all the records on the preliminary auto-recall experiments.” She shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t have been worth much more if I’d stopped that bullet, myself.” She slipped the strap over her shoulder and started to rise.
As she did, a bedlam of firing broke out, both from the two Assassins at the door and from outside. They both hit the floor and crawled out of line of the partly-open door; Verkan Vall recovered his submachine-gun, which he had set down beside Dalla’s chair. Sarnax was firing with his rifle at some target in the direction of the lifter tubes; Dirzed lay slumped over the barricade, and one glance at his crumpled figure was enough to tell Verkan Vall that he was dead.
“You fill magazines for us,” he told Dalla, then crawled to Dirzed’s place at the door. “What happened, Sarnax?”
“They shoved over the barricade at the lifter tubes and came out into the well. I got a couple, they got Dirzed, and now they’re holed up in rooms all around the circle. They—Aah!” He fired three shots, quickly, around the edge of the door. “That stopped that.” The Assassin crouched to insert a fresh magazine into his rifle.