Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (11 page)

The High Leader gasped.

The Machine Master remarked, “As I said, work would have to be postponed on this and other projects in order for the Irregulator—”

“No!” the High Leader said, finding his voice. “This must be finished first!” In wonder, he approached the object under construction, a half-sized replica of himself, and reached out to delicately touch the gleaming purple-green metallic head, which was open at the crown to reveal an empty brain pan within.

“Be careful,” the Machine Master warned. “There are delicate parts everywhere.”

The High Leader withdrew his finger and swiveled his head to regard Sam-Sei. “How long before…”

“It could be completed in six weeks, provided all my attention went to it. However, work on the Irregulator would suffer—”

“Finish this first!” the High Leader ordered. His head revolved to face the replica again.

“As I’ve told you,” Sam-Sei said, “work on the Irregulator—”

“And I said do them both! But this first! Soon you will have help …” Giving a sigh of admiration at the handiwork, the High Leader rotated his entire body to face the Machine Master. “As I’ve said, it’s your great value to me that has sustained your life. Did you think I would be unaware that you had not disposed of the Venusian girl as I ordered?”

The Machine Master blinked, causing the High Leader to nearly laugh.

“She’s been found, on Venus, where you sent her!”

“Has Visid been harmed—”

“I said she has been found, but not yet captured! But don’t worry, she will be! And when she is …”

 Before the Machine Master could say anything, the High Leader added, “… she will be returned here, to work with you.”

“You must guarantee her safety—”

“I guarantee nothing!” The High Leader’s voice rose, and he continued to speak as he made his way back, cursing the narrowness of the space he traversed, to the main area of the chambers. “She will live as long as she is useful to me. This is all anyone has a right to expect.”

Stopping at the chamber’s door, the High Leader said, “And now I will leave, and my Red Police will search your dungeon. As I said, I will tell them to be careful.”

With implication, the Machine Master said, “I would hate for them to damage anything of value to you.”

In a flash, the High Leader had crossed the space between them and held the Machine Master’s throat in his foremost right hand. His impossibly long metal fingers curled completely around Sam-Sei’s throat, lifting him so that his feet barely touched the floor while drawing the Machine Master close to his praying mantis-like face.

“If anything were to happen to any object of interest to me, I would hold you responsible. But if something were to happen to one object in particular, I would snap you in two like a twig, regardless of your value to me.”

The Machine Master fought for breath, and the High Leader abruptly let him down gently and released him.

“You are, of course, quite valuable to me at the moment,” Prime Cornelian said.

The High Leader turned abruptly and left, letting in a contingent of Red Police who had been waiting behind the door and who now fanned out into the far corners of the subterranean room as Sam-Sei, Machine Master of Mars, went back to the project he had been working on, lifted his pencil-thin tool, and used it, its violet beam of light now trembling.

Chapter 14

“L
ook at it!”

Trel Clan, ignoring Jamal Clan’s ardor, stared down dispassionately at the sulfurous, burned, ugly yellow globe of Jo. Though it now filled the view in the deck’s porthole, blotting out huge Jupiter behind it, there was still nothing to recommend it. Black and red boils, like sores welling up from the moon’s interior, marked recent internal eruptions, and, directly below their orbit, the horrid volcano Prometheus was in the process of belching putrid gases into space; a fresh lava flow oozed sickly from the squat caldera and barely touched the plains below.

“I said look at it!” Jamal enthused, grabbing Trel’s leg with his one good hand and squeezing it for emphasis. The king looked like some sort of reptile prone on his belly, face pressed to the quartz of the porthole.

“That’s home! That’s Titan!”

“It’s Jo, and anything but home,” Trel Clan replied.

The king looked up at him disapprovingly. Trel Clan could not tell what proportion of madness and cunning sanity he was witnessing. “Was Jo! Now it’s Titan!”

At the King’s urging, they were locked in a tight orbit around the moon, until, as the king had said in a whisper, “The right time.” What time that might be Trel Clan had no idea; but, after sixteen orbits, he had begun to admit to himself that the balance of madness against clarity in King Jamal Clan might have been greatly tilted toward the former from the beginning, and they were doomed either to circle this sulfur ball forever or to be picked up by one of Prime Cornelian’s patrols. Two of the Martian dictator’s freighters had already registered on their Screens, but luckily had been on the way to more pressing business and left them safely behind.

“How much longer—” Trel Clan began.

“Look! Look! The limb!”

At the shadowed edge of the moon where sunlight met shadow, Trel Clan now saw something unusual—a bump topped by a flash of light that was neither volcano nor crater edge. It persisted for a few moments, growing even brighter, and then winked out as Jo’s night overcame it.

“The spire!” the king jabbered. “Soon we can descend!”

“What spire?” Trel Clan inquired.

“The Temple of Faran Clan!”

“What!”

All at once, Trel Clan was assured of the king’s madness and delusion. He had risked everything, his future, his plans, his life, on what turned out, in the end, to be…

“That fairy tale?” he exploded, using all of his control to prevent himself from kicking the king’s grinning face. “That story they told us in the crib, about the great Mecca, the greatest of all temples of Moral Guidance, hidden in space, greater even than the Great Temple on Titan … .” He spoke in rote, from childish memory.

“It exists! It’s here!”

Trel Clan stared down at the darkened limb of the planet; but where the flash of light had been was only shadow now.

“It was just a story” he said with disgust.

“Watch!”

The king turned his grin from Trel Clan to the view in the porthole; there came a sudden flash of light in the darkened area, three brief equidistant beams that flew out of a central point.

“A signal, from within the spire! We can land!”

Staring in wonder, Trel Clan nevertheless began to doubt what he had seen—when it was repeated. “But…”

“Quickly!” the king urged. “Activate the acknowledge message on the pilot’s Screen! On the next orbit they’ll guide us down!”

Trel Clan did so, then returned to the deck port to stare at Jo circling below him.

Jamal Clan rolled over onto his back and began to laugh. “Ha ha! In two hours you’ll see for yourself! I’ve been there! It’s underground, and beautiful! Three times the size of Titan’s temple, and the walls are of forest wood, the floor of polished ebony marble, the pews hand-carved, the smell of sulfur, glorious sulfur, everywhere! It’s cool within, and huge enough for an echo! Only the kings and queens of Titan knew! Pen Clan himself undertook the project in the early days on Titan, when it looked like we might be driven from there as we’d been driven from Mars—and no one ever knew!” Laughing, he clutched at Trel Clan’s leg again and gripped hard. “Only the apex pokes through Jo’s surface!”

Face filled with dawning wonder, Trel Clan whispered, “And who signaled us?”

“Our people! The chosen ones spirited off Titan to Jo before the war with Mars! It was always the plan Wrath-Pei conceived it.” He let go of Trel Clan’s leg and arched his back as he covered his face with his single hand, howling laughter. “My subjects wait for me below!”

Not hesitating, Trel Clan drew back his foot and drove it with all his might into the king’s unprotected side. Jamal grunted with pain, but already Trel was kicking him again, a more direct blow to the side of the head. The king jabbered and began to drool, then shook his head, trying to clear it; he choked out a strange laugh as Trel struck him a third time, again to the head.

“Mother! Bring Quog!” the king shrieked, staring as if he were blind; his strong hand lashed out, trying to find Trel Clan and almost seizing him.

Trel Clan stepped back, searching frantically for a weapon; as his gaze fell on a mounted bulkhead wedge, an emergency tool for prying open a sealed lock, the king suddenly cried out, a thin line of blood running from his nose, trembled, and was still.

Still not hesitating, Trel Clan retrieved the bulkhead wedge, grunting at its weight; as he turned, lifting it in both hands, he felt the king’s grip on his arm and the weapon was thrown to the floor.

“Get Quog! Quickly!” The king laughed, falling from Trel Clan and pulling himself away; his head turned from side to side and he began to sing.

Grunting with effort, Trel Clan picked up the bulkhead wedge, brought it down once and then twice again on the king.

Jamal Clan lay still.

Trel Clan pushed the lifeless body immediately to the airlock and into it. He sealed the inner door. Within the airlock, as Trel Clan opened the outer door, Jamal Clan came alive with a shriek of laughter. “Tell … Tabrel Kris … I … loved her!” His single open hand seeming to wave, the still face frozen in bright madness.

Trel Clan watched until Jamal Clan was a dot in space.

A
s the shuttle transport passed into limb shadow on its next orbit, there was a repeat of the three-pronged light beam and then a voice summoned Trel Clan to tell his story. He told of the heroic end of Jamal Clan, and of the simultaneous death of the rogue Jerzy who had assassinated the king. He told the voice who he was. After a moment he was told to lock his pilot Screen on automatic and that he would be guided down.

Almost simultaneously, the shuttle transport broke orbit, its spaceshield filled with Joian night growing nearer. From the pilot’s couch, Trel Clan caught a glimpse of light, and then the craft landed in darkness.

He was told to wait; there was the sound of something kissing the ship and then he was told to disembark. He walked out of the airlock into an enviro-tube; at the other end was another airlock, which opened into a lift tube.

He entered and the tube descended. It opened into a wide, bright tunnel, smelling faintly of sulfur.

He was met by a single Titanian dressed in the muted yellow robes of a priest of Moral Guidance, who neither addressed him nor introduced himself. The priest gave a half bow and led the way through other tunnels.

Trel Clan had the feeling of impending revelation; ahead were a set of huge double doors of precious inlaid wood where the tunnel ended. As he approached, the doors were pulled open from within and the priest bowed, letting him pass into the nave of the temple.

He felt dizzy. The smell of sulfur was almost overpowering, and internally the temple was brightly lit by tall lamps. It was as Jamal Clan had described it, only overpowering in its immensity. It climbed outward and upward to the tiny windowed apex above that he had seen from space.

He was led up a wide aisle by two more priests who met him in the nave; his steps echoed hollowly on the wide slabs of black marble. A yellow fog of steam lay over the Cleansing Ritual bath, which had apparently been in use before his arrival. He was led past its sulfurous incense to the temple’s altar, which had been covered with lemon-colored draperies and set with a single item in its center.

The two priests flanked him behind the altar, then bowed themselves away; Trel Clan was left to contemplate the item centered on the altar before him.

Slowly, with steady hands, he lifted it and placed it on his head; its golden circlet, inlaid with jewels, lighter than he had imagined, lay perfectly.

He lowered his hands to the altar and regarded evenly the twenty thousand faces, cream of Titan’s fighting forces and clergy, that looked back at him.

As one they filled Jo’s Temple of Faran Clan, anything but a fairy story, with the ringing shout of their voices: “All hail King Clan!”

Chapter 15

“A
nd you have good news, I hope?” asked the High Leader, clinging to the ceiling above Pynthas Rei.

The Period of Clinging was not half so bad to Pynthas’s eyes as the Period of Bathing or (the absolute worst) the Period of Darkness, but it was still not pleasant to behold. The High Leader, who had crawled like a spider onto the chamber’s ceiling, now hung there, ponderous and heavy and … upside down. It was disconcerting to Pynthas to see the High Leader this way; Pynthas could not obliterate from his mind the vision of that huge metallic carcass falling down. The vision was made worse, of course, by the fact that the High Leader made Pynthas stand directly beneath him while they talked.

A tiny filmy spatter of oil barely missed Pynthas; he tried not to react but had no doubt the High Leader had seen him jump. After all, Cornelian seemed to know everything about him, even before he knew it himself.

“Stand still, you imbecile!” the High Leader chastised. “You know I need to do this periodically to move my lubricants to my upper torso. It’s only oil! Think of it as blood, which you will one day shed for me—perhaps soon, if you do not bring me good news!”

“Y-y-yes, High Leader!”

“Stop stuttering and speak!”

Unable to avoid stuttering, Pynthas found himself mute.

With a bark of impatience, the High Leader flexed his six limbs, which sent a rain of lubricant down on the toady below. Pynthas moaned as he was covered with a thin, pungent sheen of the stuff.

“Now speak, or I’ll have you boiled in it!”

“Y-yes, High Leader!”

“What is wrong with you Pynthas? You seem more … frightened than usual.”

“N-n-nothing, High Leader!”

Pynthas felt his knees weaken and nearly fainted dead away. “It’s j-just the g-general situation, High Leader!”