MacRoscope (59 page)

Beatryx, always ameliorative. Unimportant flashes — yet so poignant now, as Afra realized how important the quiet presence and support of the older woman had been to her.

Older? Beatryx had never looked so young as she did at this moment…

Still she did not breathe — and there was no heartbeat.

Beatryx, tending her garden on Triton. Beatryx, waxing hysterical in Afra’s defense, during that mock, not-so-mock trial.

“Tryx, Tryx!” she cried. “You were the only one who understood—”

It was no use. Beatryx was dead.

Afra wrenched away and launched herself at Harold. She took hold of his shoulders and shook, rocking herself more violently than him. “Wake up! Wake up!”

Harold did not respond.

“Harold —
your wife is dead
!” she cried in his ear, slapping him.

Now he began to react. “But—”

“She just died and I can’t — I can’t — you’ve got to do something! Wake up!”

He looked stunned. “How — when — ?”

Hastily Afra explained, continuing to shake him so that he could not relapse.

His eyes widened. “I must go back to her!”

Then, gradually, he went limp, and nothing she could do revived him. The dream had reclaimed him.

Afra looked around in a fever of desperation — and saw Ivo, still playing. It was time for the music to end.

She went to Ivo and yanked the instrument from his grasp.

The orchestra stopped, the sound dying away from all the misty reaches of the hall.

The floor reappeared beneath them, and walls around them, much closer than she had supposed, and doors in front and back. Weight returned.

She watched Ivo, waiting for his awareness. He sat for a moment, eyes unfocused. Then he raised his head with a sharpness of decision that was not typical and looked directly at her.

“Thanks, doll,” he said.

“Ivo — something terrible has happened. Beatryx—” He stood up smoothly, flexing his fingers as though they were stiff. “I know. A black shot her with a speargun. Silly woman.”

Afra stared at him.

“And your engineer — he’s in stasis on the way to deep space. He’s beyond the reach of this toy, now. It’ll be years before he comes out of it, if he ever does. That cuts it down to two, baby.”

She backed away. “You’re not Ivo! You’re—” He picked up the orchestral instrument. “Ivo — Ivon — Ivan — Johan — John — Sean — Shane — Schön! You broke the chain, blue-eyes. You interfered — again! — and Ivo-at-the-idiot-end lost out, just as Brad did. You do have a talent for that. Now—”

A memory — something important — nudged the surface of her awareness, but she had no time for it now. Afra raced toward the door, not pausing to consider where she might be going or why.

“Not so hasty, dish,” Schön called after her. “I am not finished with you.” He lifted the musical device and held it dramatically before him. “In fact, I have not yet begun to fight.”

She had almost reached the door, and could see a lighted hall beyond. It was not the one they had entered by. She reached toward it—

And rebounded from a pliant rail.

The recoil threw her to the floor. She landed on her fanny, facing back toward the center of the room.

It was not a room any more. It was a stadium, filled by faces peering up, none distinguishable, and by crowd noises that remained in the background. She perched on a raised platform enclosed by resilient cord. It was a square: the type of arrangement known as a boxing or wrestling ring.

Schön was entering at the far corner, dressed in fighting trunks and laced footwear. His muscular torso shone brown in the glare of the overhead light, and his eyes and teeth were brilliant.

Her glance caught him in that pose: a pugilist entering the ring. It was, as she saw it, the moment of supreme power for him; he dominated. There was nothing she could do to stop him or even inhibit him, whatever he intended.

As though recognizing the strength of the image, he paused, head inside the ring, one foot outside, the rope held up by one hand. “You don’t understand, do you, stupid,” he said. “You don’t know what any of this means. Hell, you purebred clod, you can’t even face your
own
symbol.”

She pulled herself up, but hesitated to climb out of the rope enclosure until she knew what Schön was planning, and what other barriers he was able to conjure. It just might be safer
in
the ring than
out
.

He did not move immediately, and in that interim of tension she assessed herself. She was dressed as she had been: culottes halted above the knee, snap-slippers designed to fit within the large space-suit shoes, elastic blouse, ribbon tie-down for her hair. The outfit was brief, for the sake of mobility and air-circulation within the space suit, and attractive, for the sake of appearances outside. She cared about those appearances and didn’t mind admitting it, and she had had special reason to be presentable at this time.

Now Beatryx was dead and Harold gone, and Ivo had given way grotesquely to Schön. Beatryx, looking raptly at alien pictures. Harold, fascinated by strange machines. Ivo—

Her aspirations of yesterday were meaningless. She could not even spare attention for proper grief, though that would come the moment this chase abated.

Her assessment was now in terms of physical fitness: the clothing she wore would not encumber her in any way, and she had the health to move quickly and with stamina. She knew from fairly intimate observation that the Ivo/Schön physique was not particularly impressive. The apparent musculature of his present body was a function of the illusion, the waking vision he had somehow simulated for them both. She had no doubt that Schön, with his multiple and devastating skills, could overcome her readily if he once caught her — but he might not be
able
to catch her.

She confined her assessment to those physical terms. She did not question his mental superiority. Emotionally he might be a child, or at best an adolescent; intellectually he was the leading genius mankind had produced.

He had been talking while she considered these things. He seemed to be showing off his knowledge: bragging, now that he had the opportunity.

“No, you don’t comprehend at all.” Schön repeated. “So I’ll have to lecture you on the fine points, or you won’t appreciate any of it. Too bad you’re such a puny audience, but you’re the only part of it that’s real.”

Afra waited with one hand on the rope, ready to dive out of the ring the moment he entered. She knew she was in trouble, but she was also aware that unreasoned flight would get her nowhere she wanted to go. That had already been demonstrated. Somehow Schön had the power to form a setting that physically inhibited her — and she would be well advised to discover exactly how he did it. This time it had been a square formed of rope; next time it might be worse.

“The key,” Schön said, “is this tool of the galactics.” He held the instrument aloft, the one Ivo had played, and she realized that it must have been in his hand all the time. She had not noticed it before, since the ring. “And ‘key’ is exactly what I mean. The key to the inner sanctum; the key to history; the key to personality. Call it the symbolizer. SYMBOLIC = SYMBOL PRIME = S′. It transmutes reality to symbols and vice versa, and thereby makes plain the truth. I recognized it for what it was immediately, of course.” He snickered. “Ivo thought it was a flute! He tried to play Sidney Lanier on it!”

And succeeded
, she thought, knowing better than to interrupt now. She was recovering confidence in herself; if she maintained the proper spirit, she would be supreme over this situation, somehow. Schön had been overrated.

“Actually, it is a teaching device,” he continued. “By bringing to life the symbolic essence of a situation or personality, it instructs the participant and viewer. Of course it is necessary to interpret the symbols correctly, but anyone with a smattering of — yet you lack even that, naturally.”

“Lack what?” she asked, wiling to cooperate in order to keep the dialogue going. He was teasing her, childishly; she knew that, but already she had a valuable hint. If she could get the galactic instrument — S prime — away from him—

“Astrology,” he said. “You have closed your mind to it, and that makes it ideal for my purpose. So the symbolic ascendant means nothing to you.”

She waited, refusing this time to rise to the bait. Schön, obviously, had dipped into Ivo’s memory and picked up her continuing debate with Harold. He was trying to annoy her — and that could mean that his power would be diminished if she refused to react. The sophisticated response to his exertions was best.

“The ascendant is the overall indication of personality; the rising sign for each individual. My own ascendant falls at Aries 21, and the symbol for that position is A PUGILIST ENTERING THE RING, as you can readily perceive if you concentrate. This indicates full confidence in my own powers — justified, of course — and a complete lack of personal sensitiveness. Thus the galactic machine has dramatized my basic personality and graphically illustrated the power inherent in me.”

“That isn’t the way Harold described astrology,” Afra murmured, wishing this time that she had taken the trouble to learn more about it, whether she believed in it or not. Its rules were evidently governing this game.

“Harold was an engineer, not an astrologer. His approach was too conventional and conservative, though last I saw of him he was getting disabused in a hurry. Those old galactics really had their sciences worked out.”

He was still toying with her. If she tried to defend Harold, she would be defending his hobby as well, and so be on exceedingly tenuous ground. “What about Ivo?”

Schön gazed at her speculatively across the ring, but did not challenge the shift in topic. “Ah yes, Ivo. There’s someone
really
confused, for all that I invented him. He oriented on something from each of you, not really knowing the proper use of S-prime, and came up with a mélange that must have made the galactic creators wince. Harold Groton’s astrology, Sidney Lanier’s poetry, darlin’ Afra Glynn’s supposed intellectual discrimination and Tryx Groton’s suicidal sympathy — all tied in with a galactic history text that the instrument put out as a kind of sideshow attraction. Fascinating juxtaposition, I admit. I was a fiery ram, ‘Aspiration’ astrologically, ‘Trade’ poetically, and the strings musically. I engaged in First Siege internecine power politics. I had a good thing going, too — until you torpedoed Ivo for me.”

Suddenly the goat image made sense to her, and the evocative music of the bassoon. These had been
her
symbols, in the combined context. And love — where the poem had specified Trade for him, it had specified Love for her. And she had felt it—

“What is my symbol?” she inquired, genuinely curious now. “My — ascendant.”

“You don’t want to know it, cutie. You are afraid of it, neurotic that you are.”

“
Am
I? Or is it that you are afraid to animate
my
symbol, instead of yours? Would that give me dominance?”

“Lady, I’ll gladly match symbols with you planet by planet. That would put us on an even footing, in spite of my inordinate superiority in overt life. But you would achieve parity only if you are able to face your own nature when you see it objectively — and you aren’t. Your ascendant controls you, and probably your planets do too. It is a contest you would lose by your own prejudice.”

“I’ll take that chance — if
you
will. I don’t think you know
how
to compete, on an even basis.”

He smiled, the vicious grin of the warrior tasting blood. “Calling my bluff, Glynn?”

She smiled back, as maliciously as he, though she was afraid of him. “Yes, prettyboy. And if you cheat, you lose.” She wasn’t sure what to expect, or whether Schön would really bind himself to the outcome of a fair competition, but if it nullified the advantage of his intellect…

“Take it, child,” he said, touching the instrument. “Your ascendant is Taurus 15 — A MAN MUFFLED UP, WITH A RAKISH SILK HAT.”

And she was back in the supermarket, the same one she had fled, and she was facing the man beside the checkout counter. She had asked for it — and she was terrified.

Something obscure happened. People backed away from the cash register. The muffled man looked up, around, pausing a moment as though considering. It seemed that he was looming over Afra, and she was very small, very fragile. Something remarkable was about to happen—

The large man moved.

There was the sound of a gun being fired.