Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (44 page)

“Back pay?” he ventured.

“That's a crossover. Paid for your treatment.”

It figured. He pushed the infopak back at Rathe. “Pick out some very small houses for us to look at.”

“I'll suggest several.”

Rathe pointed out two in the hills behind Sybernal, and one south of the town/city.

Martel didn't even leave the flitter for an inside view of the first two.

In the end, he settled on the hillside guesthouse with the view of the sea. He liked the idea that by walking fifty meters up the hillside he could look down the other side at a sheltered bay.

The landlady, a gray-haired woman of indeterminate age, Mrs. Alderson, offered no objection to Martel's immediate occupancy, and even supplied linens … for a deferred payment.

Rathe Firien pointed out the slight differences in the appliances, then sat on the bed as he unpacked his single bag.

“Don't know why I bother,” Martel mutters as he hangs up the gold-and-white tunics and trousers that have been furnished for him.

“The colors, you mean?”

“Um-hmmm. Not mine.”

“Yours is black.”

“How did you know?”

“You said so.”

“When?”

“When you were under treatment.”

“What else did I say?”

“Who's Kryn?'

“The girl I loved. The one I thought I loved.”

“She love you?”

“No.” Martel folds the collapsible savagely, jams it to the back of the high shelf at the back of the built-in wardrobe. “Don't ask me!” he growls, afraid Rathe will ask more.

Don't ask me! Don't ask me!
He cannot block the thoughts.

“I'd like to help.” Her voice is low.

… have to help …
The thought fragment is clear.

Martel turns toward Rathe, watches as she unbuttons her blouse, watches as she shrugs out of the tight trousers and stands, breasts firm, nipples erect, arms half outstretched, almost pleading.

… please … have to … gods are just … be merciful …

Her eyes do not meet his, and he wants to turn away, to bury himself in the memory of Kryn, in cool blue, even she who held a hot stunner. Instead, he lets his thoughts enfold the red-haired woman, who knows him while he scarcely knows her, lets his mind fall around hers, trying to understand.

As he takes a step toward her the pictures flood him, first one at a time, then in a tidal wave.

A red-haired young woman, a girl, swimming with a friend, sunning themselves on a deserted beach with even waves, the friend of a young man. Blond, handsome. An insistent young man, with insistent hands, hands knowing of her desires and her resistance, trying to trigger the former and brush by the latter. Kissing, leading to touching, and her breaking away, out into the water, half laughing, half crying, half wanting, and half turning away. The man's reluctant acceptance.

More pictures, blurring.

Another scene, high above the sea, on a ledge over white cliffs, secluded. More kissing, more touching, and again the girl breaks away. This time the man grabs for her, tries to force her back into his arms. She half turns, falls. He falls onto her, breathing hard, and she kicks at him. His feet go out from under him, skitter on the white gravel, and he loses his balance, bounces, and falls. Falls out over the hard rocks and down, down onto the jagged edges and foam hundreds of meters below … his scream … her tears … barely started before the thunderbolt, the god appearing, sunhair so brilliant his features obscured … his judgment … seared into her thoughts …

Martel tries to break out of Rathe's thoughts, tries not to, all at the same time, understanding at first/second hand what she alluded to in mere words.

Let the punishment fit the crime. Because she led on one who wanted her, who loved her in his own way, killed him, even accidentally, she had to pay, and pay, and pay, by easing the hurts of those who are lost, the Martels and who knew how many others, forever and ever and ever … world without end.

He stands there, his body nearly next to hers, but not touching her naked skin, with his own tears and hers streaming down his cheeks, shaking, wanting to touch her, wanting her to hold him, and unable to bring about either. He touches her hands, finally takes them in his, holds her, and she presses against him, gently, undemandingly, and their cheeks touch, their tears meet.

After a time he cannot measure, he lays her upon the low bed and holds her more tightly. Lips brush, and more, and they fold and enfold each other.

After the instants, after the quiet, in the silence that is no longer empty, sleep finds them, finds her.

In the day-lit time that seems like night, she tries to pull away, but asleep and awake all at once he will not let her go, strokes her short red-silk hair, touches her thoughts, touches the line of judgment within her soul and finds he cannot remove it, finds he can add something, a small something, restore a small sense of pride, and does. Holds her through the day that is morning.

And sleeps.

When he wakes, she is there, dressed, sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Leaving?”

She nods. Touches her fingertips to her lips, then to his forehead. She stands and leaves without a sound, having given, having received.

Martel wants to cry, cannot, will not, and feels the shadow within him grow.

After instants that feel like hours, he rolls over, stares at the open doorway.

More time passes before he sits on the edge of the bed, head down and resting in his palms.

Should he have let her walk out?

Martel stands and surveys the room, the empty shelves, the wardrobe where three outfits hang, the window that opens on the grassy hillside with its scattered pines and a single quince.

Tell me now, and if you can,

What is human, what is man?

The lines of the old song seem singularly appropriate, though he knows not why.

He pulls on trousers, tunic, boots.

The portal, which is really an old-fashioned doorway, beckons, and Martel follows it.

On his right, as he goes out of his bedroom, is an even more expansive window that frames the hillside running down toward the coast road and the sea beyond. To the left is a set of louvered panels that screen off the small kitchen. Straight ahead are a settee, a low table, and two stretched-fabric chairs. Behind the arrangement of furniture is a dining area with another, higher table and four chairs.

Walking around one of the fabric chairs, Martel stops in front of the window.

“A long day…”

A long day …

He rubs his forehead. The control is not automatic yet, not on this, his first day of return to the land of the living. From five months of drugged existence to a friendly face, a warm person, who greets you in the most intimate way possible, and then feels she must walk out?

Rathe Firien, Kryn or no Kryn, memories or not, will be part of his life. For now, for who knows how long. And who knows how long for anything?

Martel holds two images up in his mind, compares.

Kryn: long dark hair, light complexion, high-breasted, slender, blue girl. Mind and thoughts like a knife ready to cut. Fragile and strong as plasteel, uncertain, yet ambitious and ready and willing to stab for hers. Cold, and passionate.

Set the record straight, Martel. You think she's passionate.
He makes the mental correction with a half-smile.

Rathe: short red hair, narrow-waisted and full-breasted, friendly, open, and vulnerable. Strong … he didn't know, but her mind said she was. Ambitious—no. How could anyone be ambitious with a compulsion like that laid across her soul? Passionate … yes, with reservations.

He shakes his head.

Are the gods really gods? Or men and women with larger-than-life powers playing god over a planet that wasn't really a planet? Playing with Martels and Rathes of Aurore, like toys in an endless game?

Does he, Martel, really want to find out? And risk the outcome for himself, for Rathe, for Kryn?

Does he have any choice?

And what about Kryn? Is she real or an inflated memory? Will she be part of the future? And Rathe? How long? How?

He turns from the window.

 

viii

Reason would indicate that death either represents no state or a changed state, nothingness or somethingness, if you will.

Humanoid cultures, almost universally, represent death as a dark and grasping figure, which does not follow logically. Is there something about the source of this representation of which we are unaware?

—
The Dark Side

Sidney Derline

 

ix

A glittermote lands on his left arm, the one sprawled out on the sand next to his head.

Without looking up, he knows it is black. The black ones feel different, more attuned to him than the normal white or gold motes that seem to be everywhere.

He leaves his head on the sand, eyes closed, lets the diffused warmth soak into his bare back. For whatever reason, he can get a light tan at any time of day or night. Logically, whether or not the field diffused light, the tanning effect should have been limited to the technical “day.” As with many things on Aurore, though, logic is wrong.

Martel corrects himself: Apparently sound logic is wrong.

Crunching sounds, footsteps, intrude.

He lifts his head, rolls over and into a sitting position.

A tall man, blocky, black-haired and dark-skinned, dripping ocean, walks from the foam at the water's edge straight up the beach toward him.

The black glittermote stays perched on Martel's arm. A second mote appears next to the first.

Martel half smiles … the first time he had seen two together. Black ones, that is.

So you're the one.

Martel blocks the thoughts and answers, “The one what?'

“If you want to handle it this way, it's your choice.” The stranger stares at Martel, the sharpness of his study disconcerting.

Martel stands and wishes he hadn't, as the other towers a full two heads taller.

“Black glittermotes? Never seen any before. Must be something new, not that there hasn't been time for that.”

Martel gathers his defenses, mental and physical. Will some sort of assault follow the verbal onslaught?

“Who are you?”

“Just a curious bit player. You can call me Gil Nash, if you want. It's close enough.”

To what?
thinks Martel, simultaneously blocking it from the other while drawing energy from somewhere, somehow.

A small cloud of black glittermotes appears from nowhere, circles Martel, and a handful array themselves across his shoulders, their feather touch electric.

“Don't draw any conclusions!” counters the tall man, backing up several steps. “I'm just watching.”

Martel shakes his head to clear his sight from the momentary disorientation, focuses on the other's face as a stabilizer, finds himself reaching, evading the other man's sievelike screens, and picking up fragments, mostly images.

A tall ice-pointed peak … Apollo the sun-god … oceans and brass chains with links to dwarf a man … a sword that flames when drawn … a dark cloud that is a bull and a man and a god …

Martel retreats from Nash's thoughts, finds he can see the energy of the man, his ties to the field. Those are what the lines of energy have to be.

Nash retreats another step, far enough down the sloping beach that he and Martel are almost at equal eye level.

“Take your time, Martel. You have forever, and they don't.”

“What about you?”

“Another century of causing tidal waves won't hurt, and that's what I'll get.”

“What? And who are ‘they'?”

“It's a long story. But since the thunderbolts haven't hit yet, how about a drink?”

Martel shrugs.

None of what the crazy giant says makes sense, but maybe it would. What seems logical isn't. So what isn't might be.

“My place is up the hill. All I've got is some local beer and Springfire.” He turns and digs his toes into the sand as he starts upward, mentally reaching out and letting the towel sweep itself off the sand and over his arm.

“I'll take the beer. Springfire's the last thing I need at the moment.” Nash does not comment on the acrobatics of the towel, as if they were only expected.

Either an esper or familiar with them, reflects Martel, letting his extended perceptions track the bigger man as he follows Martel out of the sand and onto the grassy hillside.

The two chairs and table on the covered deck wait for them, as well as a beaker of Springfire and a frosted mug of beer.

Martel gestures to one chair and seats himself in the other, the one closer to the door into the cottage. The nearly dry Nash, wearing only what seems a metallic loincloth, sinks into the chair, which bends, but does not give. Martel revises his estimate of the man's weight and strength up another notch.

The other downs nearly a full liter in one gulp.

“Not the best, but damned fine after all that salt water.”

“Could you explain?” asks Martel. “None of this makes any sense. Black glittermotes, bit players, thunderbolts, chains, and drinking salt water.”

“Young one, when you've been around as long as me, you take things for granted. It all seems so simple. Some things I won't tell you, because you won't believe them, and my telling will make it even harder. That'd hurt me. So I won't tell. Some things you're about to learn and half believe, and those I will tell you. And some things you won't understand.”

Martel waits, but the tall man, who physically does not appear more than a handful of years older than Martel, drains the rest of the mug. Martel refills it without leaving his chair. He does not like using so much esping, but has the feeling that the stranger might disappear if he takes his eyes off him.