Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 (22 page)

 
          
The
mainly male invaders had, it was clear, come aboard with the intention of
making free with the flagship's women. Initially they had been disappointed.
All but a handful of the nubile human females followed the fad of facial
senility, which the Escorians were unsophisticated enough to find repulsive.
When things settled down a little, however, the Priapus' People troupe,
including the young girl trainees, had been more than willing to accommodate
them.

 
          
"I
know what I saw," Hesper insisted. "You probably don't understand
these things. You people from Diadem are so innocent in some ways. Sex isn't
really a part of your lives at all, is it?"

 
          
"Well,
I wouldn't say . . ."

 
          
She
was thoughtful, not hearing him. "Isn't there any way to regain control? I
mean, I don't want to see the fleet handed back to you, to the Imperials. But I
would like to see it in
responsible
Escorian
hands. If we had Ten-Fleet we could defend Escoria as a sovereign state,
without doing crazy criminal things like rampaging around Diadem." She
reflected. "What happened to all the prisoners you took?"

 
          
"They're
still on the prison ship. Ragshok didn't release them . . . he's ahead of
you."

 
          
"So?
How would
we
go about releasing
them?"

 
          
Archier
found he liked the Escorian girl. He admired her guts. But he shook his head.
"There's no way to get to them. The intermats are under guard. The only
other way would be to steal a gig, but what with the way Ragshok lets people
like me wander around he must be pretty confident that's not possible
either."

 
          
In
fact Archier had been in the Command Centre since the take-over. Ragshok had
wanted him to explain how to mesh feetol bubbles and fly the fleet in
formation. Although in fear of his life, Archier had refused; but it had made
no difference. Handling the fleet was fairly easy, and Ragshok's men had soon
got the hang of it. Ten-Fleet was now heading for Diadem at top speed.

 
          
He
ushered Hesper down a narrow passage that ran just behind the cafe.
"Apparently you've been taught certain ideas regarding our attitude to
sexuality," he said. "I'd like to show you that those ideas are a
misconception. Actually many people in Diadem think provincials can't separate
sex from reproduction. You are described as erotically uneducated. But perhaps
that's not true either."

 
          
The
corridor contained several arched doors. One opened as Archier placed his palm
on it. Inside there was only a vague diffused light, until Archier slid the
door shut behind them and touched a contact.

 
          
At
once the room had defined limits. They were surrounded by—themselves; their own
images thrown back at them in multiple, from every possible angle, at every
stage of enlargement.

 
          
He
smiled at her as he hit a second contact, flooding the room with aphrodisiac.
"In here is our own universe, consisting only of ourselves."

 
          
Quickly
he stripped off, throwing his garments in a corner and moving towards the
shell-shaped couch that, reflecting imagery as completely as the walls, floor
and ceiling, was almost invisible. His images moved as he moved, piling flesh
tone on flesh tone, totally submerging Hesper's vision.

 
          
"Why,
this is
perverted," she said delightedly.
She was grinning, and the gas was getting to her. Trying to keep her eye on the
real Archier amid the image flood, she unpeeled her uniform and stepped from
it.

 
          
'
7
wanted to thank you for saving my life,''
Archier said.

 
          
The endless mural of writhing limbs and
organs engulfed them as they came together.

 
          
The
natural colour of this planet's sky was a blue
so
pale
as to be almost white. The sun was large and alum-pale, glaring behind that sky
like a ghost of a sun, shimmering, casting a moderate heat.

 
          
Hako
Ikematsu was interested in neither sky nor sun, but he frequently peered
overhead nevertheless. The processes that took place in the sky, in the air,
sometimes reaching down to the ground, were interesting indeed.

 
          
They
were, of course, the same as had appeared on board ICS
Standard Bearer,
but here the range of their operations was easier
to view. It was rather as if the space near the planet had been engulfed in a
sort of linear cobweb which entered the atmosphere occasionally, blown by a
cosmic wind.
Long glistening threads, always dead straight,
always parallel.
He had, of course, guessed the nature of those threads,
ever since being transposed, in the twinkling of an eye, from the corridor in
the flagship to the surface of this world.

 
          
It
was surprising he was still in one piece. He suspected he would not be so for
long if those threads should touch him again. In the days that the weaponless
kosho
had been searching for his nephew
he had come upon the remains of numbers of people, beasts, buildings and
artifacts. In every case they had been dismantled; not clumsily, as a butcher
or a demolitioner would do it, but with extraordinary finesse. In the case of
the organic remnants there was often remarkably little blood. Separations were
apt to be along natural lines of division: membranes, sinews, systemic
functions. Nerves were left dangling, sometimes pulled out of their ensheathing
flesh to a length of several feet, or with receptor organs still attached. How
such careful dissection had been accomplished, by beings
who
did not even seem to be beings, and who lacked any apparent means of
manipulation, was a mystery.

 
          
Neither
did the disassemblers seem to be able to differentiate between what was organic
and what was not. Besides separated limbs and organs, Ikematsu had seen bits of
machinery carefully laid out as if ready for assembly, and whole buildings
unfolded like packing cases and laid flat. Even stretches of landscape had been
pulled apart and rearranged, leaving weird patterns in soil, vegetation and
concrete.

 
          
The
agents of these mutilations were not hard to identify. Ikematsu paused, his
shrewd brown eyes intent, as they came down again, the limitlessly lengthening lines
slanting down like hawsers of steel sunlight. The cluster stroked the
landscape midway to the horizon. It was moving sidewise, progressing towards
him.

 
          
Uncharacteristically
Ikematsu tensed. But the lines vanished, as quickly as they had come.

 
          
He
continued on his way. This region appeared to have been thinly populated. So
far he had found no one left alive apart from himself. But he would not rest
until he knew what had happened to Sinbiane, even though there was no
guarantee that the boy had materialised anywhere near him—or,' indeed, that he
had rematerialised at all.

 
          
A
road ran from planetary west to east through meadows of bluish grass. A mile
away to the west he saw a solitary house—the first standing building he had see
for some time.

 
          
He
reached it in half an hour, approaching slowly and cautiously, to find that it
was no more than a cottage. In
a neatly
tended garden
furniture had been tumbled, mixed amid flowers and miniature trees.

 
          
Ikematsu
knocked on a door panel, finding no call plate. When there was no answer he
attempted to slide the panel aside; it failed to yield. He pushed it; it swung
inward upon hinges.

 
          
He
stepped directly into an empty room illuminated by a wide one-way window. The
kosho
halted. So as to be able to take in
the nature of this room, he suspended all emotional reaction.

 
          
A
blue eye, distinctly human, stared at him from the surface of the wall
opposite. In the wall to his right two equally human brown eyes were similarly
embedded, but separated by a distance of about ten feet, one near the ceiling,
the other, placed vertically, in the corner near the floor.

 
          
The
match to the blue eye Ikematsu found near the door jamb.

 
          
But not until he had seen much else.
There were human fragments
fused throughout the walls, floor and ceiling. Ears, toes, fingers and young
male genitals sprouted like pale fruits. Here and there the surfaces bulged, in
shapes resembling a heart, a liver, or a pelvic bone.

 
          
And
running throughout walls, floor and ceiling, like an embossed design, were tiny
pipelike protrusions: arteries and veins. Ikematsu stepped closer, inspecting
the glistening surface. He saw a faint tracery, spreading over the wall like
fronds.

 
          
Nerves.

 
          
Suddenly
a whispering, muffled voice came from somewhere.
"Uncle!
This is me, Sinbiane! I am alive!"

 
          
"Sinbiane!"

 
          
"Yes,
uncle, I am here.
And Trixa too."

 
          
"You
can see me?'*

 
          
"Yes."

 
          
Ikematsu
took up a position in the centre of the room and stared straight into the blue
eye, paradoxically aware that Sinbiane must thereby have a double view of him,
both front and back. "Tell me what you understand of your situation,"
he ordered.

 
          
"I
know what has happened, uncle," the hidden voice said. "Our bodies have
been dispersed throughout the walls of this cottage. It is a strange
experience. I am wrapped right round you. With each eye I look at the other
eye."

 
          
"Is
there any pain?"

 
          
"No, not even hunger."

 
          
"What
of your mental condition?"

 
          
"I
am all right, uncle. I have stayed collected. But if we get out of here my
friend will need considerable psychological help. He is in a state of total
shock."

 
          
"That
is because he lacks mental training."

 
          
Taking
care where he trod, Ikematsu moved to the window and looked out. The sky was
clear of alien rods.

 
          
Briefly
he reflected. Apparently the intruders from the other facet were not content
with simple analysis; they were trying to manipulate the world more positively.

 
          
It
was remarkable that they were able to disperse the boys' bodies while still
maintaining the integrity of all the somatic systems, particularly the vascular
and nervous systems. It said much for
their own
mode
of perception.

 
          
"Uncle,"
Sinbiane.said,
"can
we be
restored to what we were before?"

 
          
"Yes,
you can," Ikematsu told him. "The surgeons on theImperial fleet would
be able to put you back together again. But that will depend on their
recovering this planet. At the moment when the aliens snatched us away, the
flagship was under attack and had been boarded. If others have taken control of
the fleet they will have moved it out of the danger area by now."

 
          
To
that, Sinbiane was silent. "I have no intention of lying to you,"
Ikematsu said. "Meantime you have a rare opportunity to practise mental
flexibility. It should stand you in good stead when you train to become a
kosho."

 
          
"I
never imagined anything like this happening, uncle."

 
          
"I
hope you do not expect the world to be limited by your imagination,
nephew."

 
          
Ikematsu
paused again, still thinking. "Is there anything you can tell me about the
beings
who
did this, or how they did it?" he
asked Sinbiane.

 
          
"It
happened so quickly, uncle. It was all over in a moment. But I seemed to gain a
mental impression of them. They are very confused. They don't understand our
world, but they are trying to understand it. That is why they did this. They
don't realize they are meddling with living beings."

 
          
"They
have no conception of discrete objects," Ikematsu
 
agreed. "That is deducible from
their own
manifestations." In fact, he told himself, an
act of this kind was probably not even possible in 'normal' space. They had
brought their own kind of space with them. That was what appeared as the extending
lines or threads.

 
          
"Did
you see the
animal.
Pout?" Sinbiariie asked.

 
          
"No,"
Ikematsu replied quickly, immediately interested. "Why do you ask?"

 
          
"He
was here too. He cannot be far away."

 
          
"Was
the same thing done to him?"

 
          
"I
do not know. But I don't think he is here in the house."

 
          
"I
am leaving now to find the chimera," Ikematsu said. "I will return
when I am able. Meantime, do not shame my abilities as an instructor by losing
courage."

 
          
Sinbiane
did not reply as he strode from the room.

 
          
It
did not take long to locate Pout. The chimera was but a few yards farther down
the road, partly hidden in a thicket of coarse long-stemmed plants.

 
          
He
was, in fact, incorporated into one of the plants, or vice versa. He was jammed
in a squatting position, while the steins, entering at his buttocks, merged
with his legs, his arms and his torso, emerging at knees, elbows, and through
his abdomen and thorax. A large, yellow-petalled flower seemed to frame his
face.

 
          
His face.
It was his face that rivetted Ikematsu's
attention, while the chimera squirmed in dumb distress, glaring with huge
piteous eyes. For in that face, set into it as if set in blancmange, was the
zen
gun. The gun
was
his
face, or a part of it. The barrel jutted straight out in place of a nose,
waving and poking towards Ikematsu, making the whole visage hatchet-shaped. The
stock merged with and disappeared into Pout's pendulous mouth.

 
          
After
studying the spectacle Ikematsu leaned towards the chimera, hands on hips. "How
you loved your toy! Now it is truly yours. But do you still want it?"

 
          
-
Pout waved his head vigorously from side to side, making the yellow petals
shake as if in a storm. A howling wave of rejection emanated from his crazed
brain.

 
          
"NO GUN! NO GUN!"

 
          
"If
I succeed in relieving you of it, will you concede that the gun becomes mine?
You must grant it to me willingly. Otherwise it stays attuned to you."

 
          
The
effort of communicating to Ikematsu seemed to have exhausted Pout. He sagged,
sucking air into his throat round the intruding stock that nearly blocked his
mouth. Slowly, his head nodded.

 
          
"Good
. . ." Ikematsu mused. "But how is it to be done . . .?"

 
          
Tentatively
he reached out a hand, touching the wooden barrel. Seizing it between thumb and
finger, he tugged experimentally.