Gordon R. Dickson (6 page)

They carried through the whole business to the moment of the kill. When Jim’s sword went in, the mechanical creature obediently collapsed, exactly as the real one had done back on Alpha Centauri III. Jim looked around at his pupils, wondering if it was time to stop; but they seemed quite rested and evidently were expecting to continue.

It was the second time through the whole pantomime that Jim began to spare attention from his own work with the imitation animal to study the actions of the men he was training. For the first time, he noticed that although they moved with a great deal of sureness, there was a certain amount of clumsiness in their efforts. It was not a clumsiness of the mind as much as the muscles. These men were doing what they had been programmed or instructed to do—doing it promptly and well. But the instinctive responses of their bodies were not yet there.

Jim ran through the complete performance two more times before calling it a day. By that time, although his own responses to the artificial animal had become automatic and without tension, he himself was thoroughly tired. Still, on the succeeding four days he continued to run through the bullfight as it had happened on Alpha Centauri III, until the responses of the small men with the long hair began to be not so much a matter of programming as of experience and natural reflex.

It was somewhere along in this period that he discovered that he could vary the actions of the bull by the same sort of deliberate mental imagery that Ro had taught him to use aboard the ship. Somewhere aboard the Throne World there was a master power source performing the same function for him with regard to the bullring that its counterpart had provided aboard the ship. Therefore, on the sixth day, he introduced his new cuadrilla to a different version of a bullfight.

The truth of the matter was, each of the bulls in cryogenic storage that he had brought with him had been programmed differently—just in case it should be suspected that they had been programmed at all. Jim himself had rehearsed each set of programming. Now he put his new assistants to work in the pattern they would encounter with the last bull in cryogenic storage. He used the last bull advisedly, hoping either that he would never have to use it in actuality or that his makeshift cuadrilla would have forgotten its specific and unvarying actions if he did have to use it.

During all these days he had discovered that he had what appeared to be a suite of rooms in some endless, one-story structure. Unlike the rooms aboard ship, the rooms here on the Throne World had doors and corridors; moreover, he seemed free to wander about at will, which he did. But though he explored outward from his rooms through a number of other parts of the building, across an open courtyard and through gardens, he encountered no Highborn and only a few other men and women of what were clearly the lesser races—obviously servants here on the Throne World.

Ro had not come near him. On the other hand, Afuan had appeared several times, inquired briefly as to how the training sessions were coming along, and disappeared again. She showed neither pleasure nor impatience with the time he was taking; but when the day finally came that he told her he judged his trainees were ready, her reaction was prompt.

“Excellent!” she said. “You’ll put on a show for the Emperor, then—within the next day or two.”

She disappeared, to return briefly the following morning and announce that the bullfight would take place in the arena within a certain span of the Imperial time scale roughly equivalent to about forty minutes.

“I can’t get one of my bulls thawed and revived that quickly,” Jim said.

“That’s already been taken care of,” Afuan answered, and disappeared again. Jim began rather hastily to get into his suit of lights. Theoretically, he should have had an assistant help him to dress; but there was no chance for it. He had managed to struggle into about half the costume when the humor of it struck him. He laughed out loud.

“Where are you when I need you, Ro?” he asked the bare white walls of his room humorously. To his utter astonishment, Ro suddenly materialized before him as if she had been a genie summoned from a bottle.

“What do you want me to do?” she demanded.

He stared at her for a second, then laughed again.

“Don’t tell me you heard what I said?” he asked her.

“Why, yes,” she answered, looking a little surprised. “I set up a notice to let me know if you ever called for me. But you never did.”

He laughed again. “I’d have called you before this,” he said, “if I knew that was all I had to do to get hold of you.”

He was treated to the sight of one of her astonishing blushes.

“But I want to help you!” she said. “Only—you didn’t seem to be needing any help.”

At that he sobered.

“I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of asking for it, usually,” he said

“Well, never mind now!” she said energetically. “What do you want me to do?”

“Help me into these clothes,” he said. Unexpectedly, she giggled; and he stared at her in puzzlement.

“No, no. It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just that that’s the sort of thing a servant, a human of one of the lesser races, is supposed to do for a Highborn. Not the other way around.”

She picked up his hat.

“Where does this go?” she asked

“It doesn’t go—not yet. That’s the last item,” he told her. Obediently she put it down, and under his instructions began to help him into the rest of the costume.

When he was fully dressed, she looked at him with interest.

“You look strange—but good,” she said.

“Didn’t you see me in the arena at Alpha Centauri III?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I was busy on the ship—and I really didn’t expect it to be too interesting.” She stared at him with interest as he took his two capes and sword from the larger luggage case. “What’re those for?”

“The pieces of cloth,” he said, “are to attract the attention of the bull. The sword”—he pulled it a little way out of its scabbard to show her its blade—“is to kill him, at the end.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. She paled and stepped backward. Her eyes were enormous.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She tried to say something, but the only sound that came from her throat was more of a little cry than an understandable word. He frowned sharply.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t tell me …” The words came out of her, finally, in a sort of wail. “You didn’t tell me you were going to kill him!”

She choked, whirled about, and disappeared. He stood staring at the space where she had been. Behind him a woman’s voice spoke unexpectedly.

“Yes,” it said. It was the voice of Princess Afuan, and he himself turned sharply, to find her standing there looking at him. “It seems that even a Wolfling like you can make mistakes. I’d have thought you’d have learned by this time that Ro has a soft spot in her for all animals.”

He looked at her coldly.

“You’re right,” he said flatly, “I should’ve remembered that.”

“Unless,” she said, then paused, watching him with her lemon-yellow eyes, “that is, you had some reason for deliberately wanting to upset her. You’ve made quite a marked impression for a Wolfling, in such a short time. You not only made a friend of little Ro, but you made an enemy of Mekon, and interested not only Slothiel, but Galyan himself.”

She considered him for a second with a close gaze that seemed to have something hidden in it

“Do you see me?”

“Of course,” he said. And then he stiffened internally, although he was careful to keep his face and body noncommittal.

For, before his eyes Afuan suddenly changed. It was a strange changing, because no single thing about her that he could see altered in any way. Even the expression on her face was the same. But suddenly she was entirely different.

Suddenly, tall, onyx-skinned, yellow-eyed, white-haired as she was, she became attractive. No—not merely attractive—voluptuous to an almost overwhelming degree. It was more than merely a sensual attraction she projected. Her demand upon his capability of desire was almost hypnotic.

Only the long, solitary years of internal isolation and growth allowed him to resist the fascination Afuan was now exerting upon him. Only the fact that he realized the lust she was trying to awaken in him meant an abandonment of all that he had searched for and won by lonely journeys of the mind and soul, where the mind and soul of man had never searched before—only this allowed him to stand still, relaxed and calm, unresponsive.

Abruptly, again without any physical sign of change, Afuan was back as she had always been. Cold and remote in appearance, striking, but not necessarily attractive by the human standards of Earth.

“Amazing,” she said a little softly, gazing at him through eyes which—though they were not slitted—gave the impression of being slitted. “Totally amazing, particularly for a Wolfling. But I think I understand you now, wild man. Something in you, at some time, has made you ambitious with an ambition larger than the universe.”

After a second Jim performed the mental exercise that transferred him to the arena.

When he appeared there, the stands were already full of the white-clothed Highborn. Not only that, but within the red-bordered area that was plainly the Imperial box was a party of six men and four women. The music had already begun, and Jim formed up with his cuadrilla for the walk across the white sand toward the Imperial box. As he got close, he saw that Afuan was one of the people in the box, seated to the left of someone who seemed to be Galyan, who was occupying the center seat, with an unusually broad-bodied, older-looking Highborn man to his right, who had slightly yellowed eyebrows.

When Jim got close to the box, however, he saw that the man who resembled Galyan was not Galyan. Still, the resemblance was striking, and Jim suddenly remembered Galyan’s comment about the Emperor being his first cousin. This, plainly, was the Emperor.

If anything, he was taller than Galyan himself. He lounged in his seat more casually than the other Highborn seated around him, and there was something—for a Highborn—unusually frank and open and intelligent about his gaze. He smiled down at Jim as he gave permission for the bullfight to commence. Afuan’s eyes looked coldly down at Jim meanwhile.

Jim had eliminated the procedure of dedicating the bull to someone in the audience, and he did not revive the practice now. He returned with his cuadrilla across the ring and went directly into the bullfight. His men did well with the different behavior of the bull, which Afuan or someone else among the Highborn had apparently chosen to revive at random from among the six in cryogenic storage. Luckily, each bull was a little different, and Jim recognized the differences, so that he was able to adjust himself to the bull’s pattern of behavior the minute he saw it come charging into the ring.

Still, he had his hands full with it, as he had had his hands full in the arena on Alpha Centauri III. Moreover, what little space for thought he had was taken up with Afuan’s comment about his ambition. Clearly the Princess possessed a sense of perception that was very nearly deadly.

The bullfight continued, and drew eventually to its closing moments. This bull, unlike the one on Alpha Centauri III, remained strong right up to the predicted point in its programming. Jim finally went in over the horns with his sword for the kill, almost directly in front of the Imperial box. Then, withdrawing his sword, he turned and took a few steps to confront the Emperor—as much from his own sense of interest in how the Emperor would respond to the spectacle as for the reason that on the ship Ro had told him that approaching the Emperor afterward would be expected of him. He walked up to the barrier itself and looked upward at a slant into the face of the Emperor, less than a dozen feet away. The Emperor smiled down. His eyes seemed to shine with an unusual brightness—although suddenly Jim noticed there was something almost unfocused about them.

The Emperor’s smile broadened. A small trickle of saliva ran down from one corner of his mouth. He opened his lips and spoke to Jim.

“Waw,” he said, smiling all the while and staring directly through Jim. “Waw… .”

Jim stood still. There was nothing to give him a clue as to how he should react. The rest of the Highborn in the Imperial box—in fact, all the Highborn within view—seemed deliberately to be paying no attention at all to whatever fit or stroke had suddenly taken the Emperor. Plainly, Jim judged that he would be expected to ignore it also. Afuan and all the others in the royal box merely sat as if the Emperor was in fact engaged in a private conversation with Jim. In fact, so persuasive and so massive was the reaction, which was no reaction, that it had something of the same hypnotic compulsion that Afuan had used earlier, except that in this case it seemed determined to convince not only Jim but also themselves that what was happening to the Emperor was not happening.

Then, suddenly, it was all over.

The saliva vanished from the Emperor’s jaw as if an invisible hand had wiped it away. His smile firmed, his eyes focused.

” … Moreover, we are exceedingly interested to know more about you,” the Emperor was suddenly saying, as if continuing a conversation that had been going on for some time. “You are the first Wolfling we have seen in many years here at our court. After you have rested, you must come to see us, and we’ll have a talk.”

The Emperor’s smile was open, frank, and charming. His voice was friendly, his eyes intelligent.

“Thank you, Oran,” replied Jim. He had been instructed by Ro that the Emperor was always referred to as “the Emperor” in every way except direct address; when one was speaking to him directly, one always called him simply by his first name—Oran.

“You’re entirely welcome,” said the Emperor, smiling cheerfully. He vanished, and a second later all the seats in the stands were empty of Highborn.

Jim visualized his own quarters and was instantly back in them. Thoughtfully, he began to remove his costume. He was struggling out of the tight jacket when he suddenly felt himself assisted from behind, and looking around, saw Ro helping him.