The Altar at Asconel (3 page)

O
UT IN THE
corridor, Spartak barely paused as he snapped his fingers at a passing novice. It was the same one, by coincidence, that Brother Ulwyn had sent with the panicky message about Vix’s arrival; he was having a bad day’s general duties. Sighing, but obedient enough, he came trailing Spartak and listening to the curt instruction:
Inform Father Erton I wish to see him, collect my belongings and pack them in my cases, have the kitchener prepare two travel packs of food.…

Their paths diverged just after the last order had been
issued, the novice turning right towards the block of cells in which Spartak had lived since being accepted into the order, Spartak himself continuing straight ahead towards the library.

He entered the enormous hall with sufficient lack of the proper ceremony to draw a reproving glare from the Head Librarian, Brother Carl, in his high pulpit overlooking the entire array of more than five hundred low-walled cubicles. But he barely noticed that; he was concerned only to spot a vacant cubicle on the master plan-board and make his way to it as quickly as possible.

There was a place unoccupied at Aisle II, Rank Five. He almost broke into a run as he approached it. Without bothering to close the door behind him he dropped into the single chair and punched a rapid succession of buttons on the panel which formed the only other feature of the tiny booth. One finger poised to stab the PRESENTATION button, he hesitated; then he decided it was best to have a permanent record, and run the risk of the knowledgeable library computers swamping him with a flood of literature. He punched for a print-out instead of spoken or screened data.

Then he took a deep breath. “Brinze,” he said. “Planet, presumed habitable, location unknown.”

He waited in a mood of grim expectancy. It was all very well for Port Controller Grydnik, out on Asconel—which was, after all, rather an isolated world—to state that Brinze didn’t exist because there was no Imperial record of it. But the records on Annanworld weren’t so parochial.

The library disgorged a small plain card, no larger than the palm of his hand, from the slot at the base of the panel. Dismayed, Spartak picked it up and read it. It ran:

“BRINZE, planet presumed habitable, location unknown. No data. Request verify basis for question.”

He tore the card across and threw it away. “Belizuek,” he said. “Religious cult or feature of cult.”

The answering card was slightly larger, but not much. On it were the words: “BELIZUEK, title and object of veneration of religious cult introduced to former Imperial space at ASCONEL (q.v.) approximately four years ago. No data on origins. No data on ritual. Unconfirmed reports of human sacrifice posted as IMPROBABLE.”

“Bucyon,” Spartak said. “Personal name. Lydis, personal name.” Deliberately he refrained from cross-referencing to Asconel. The fact that the library contained information even as meager as what it had given him on this mysterious Belizuek cult had taken him aback; he had imagined that in his ten-year research for his projected history of his home planet he had exhausted every single reference in the entire store.

“BUCYON,” the third card said. “Present Warden of Asconel. LYDIS, present consort of Bucyon. Unconfirmed reports of usurpation by violence posted as—”

He didn’t bother to see under what delicate category the memory of the library had entered those reports. He crumpled the card and tossed it aside in fury.

“I’m an idiot,” he growled. “All kinds of an idiot!”

This material the library was supplying to him was nothing more than the siftings of the story Vix himself had just told in the refectory anteroom. Brother Ulwyn, in the gatehouse, must have informed the library as a matter of routine that a visitor from Asconel by way of who-knows-where had arrived, and the library, finding it lacked recent news of that planet, had automatically eavesdropped on this much traveled stranger. Techniques like these—some of them scarcely ever used—had been partially responsible for making Annanworld into the most notable of all the Empire’s information centers.

For some minutes after that, he just sat. He had hoped to present a whole stack of data about Brinze and Belizuek to Vix, as some sort of justification for having hidden away in this placid backwater—Vix’s gibe was half-true, he had to admit. And it turned out there was nothing in the library but the same rumors, now rendered third-hand.

Wearily, he wondered whether his ostensible reason for compiling a history of Asconel was sound. Was there going to be a renaissance of galactic civilization, based this time on human achievement instead of a borrowed technique of star-flight? Or was he simply whistling against the dark? Once, news had come from a million worlds within the year, so swift and reliable was the Imperial communications net. How much had changed! He had told himself Asconel was among the few worlds where anything significant was likely
to happen—yet prior to Vix’s arrival, his last news had come to him two years ago, and was already three years stale, so that the vaunted library was forced to gobble crumbs of unverified data to bring its stock up to date.…

The door of the cubicle was pushed aside, and a startled off-world student was there, carrying a recorder. “Oh! Excuse me, Brother, but this cubicle was shown vacant on—”

“That’s all right,” Spartak said, rising with limbs that seemed to have stiffened from the passage of a lifetime. “I forgot to shut the door and close the circuit. But I’ve done what I came to do, anyway.”

“You’ll forgive me,” Father Erton said in his wheezy, ancient voice. He was very old; rumor placed him at well past the century mark. “I should perhaps not say this. We are a center for study and distribution of information, and it’s only a courtesy obligation that we place on those who make such extensive use of our facilities as you have done, to recompense us with some original work before leaving.” But he loaded the words with a glare, and Spartak, who had always regarded the Master of his order with great respect, felt impelled to excuse himself against the implied charge.

“I have no intention of departing permanently, Father,” he said. “It is simply that this news—”

“Moreover,” Father Erton continued, totally ignoring the interruption, “Brother Ulwyn gives us most unfavorable reports of this half-brother of yours who comes to drag you away. Says he is violent in the extreme. Heavily armed. Scarred from fighting!”

“But Asconel is one of the few—”

“You may have no intention of departing permanently,” Father Erton proceeded, as though his ears and mouth were keeping different time-scales, the gap between them amounting to several seconds. “But someone else—for example, the alleged usurper on Asconel—may take no notice of what you plan, and your chance to return will be …
pffft!”

“I’m sorry, my mind is made—”

“And it would be a shame to waste a mind of your caliber on some desperate single-handed attempt to stand against the general tide of galactic decadence. I grant you, Asconel
was a great name in Imperial days—but so was Delcadoré, so was Praxulum, so was Norge!”

“Delcadoré still functions as one of the Imperial—”

“Most crucial of all is my final point. If you leave here and while absent infringe the vow you took to renounce all forms of violence, you cannot be re-admitted.” Father Erton leaned back with an effort and stared at Spartak.

“I am not by temperament a violent person,” Spartak forced out, acutely conscious that Father Erton’s refusal to listen to a word he had to say had made him long to employ a great deal of violence on his sparse gray pate. “My intention is merely to—”

“Your intention is to throw away ten years of valuable study on a heroic gesture. You may well not return alive, and even if you do you stand the same chance of turning back the calendar as I would have of combating a tidal wave. I understand your attachment to Asconel—why, I myself, after seventy years, still occasionally find myself nostalgic for my own birth-world! And that the appeal comes from your half-brother makes it even more understandable that you should be tempted. Nonetheless, I urge prudence, a night’s sleep before your final decision, and—best of all—a reconsideration.”

Spartak got to his feet, a cold rage filling his breast. “Now listen to me,” he said between his teeth. “You know what’s going to happen here? One of these days someone who doesn’t give a yard of a comet’s tail for some hypothetical Second Galactic Empire is going to remember Annanworld, and he’ll whistle up a few score jollyboys with armed starships and knock this pretty study down around your ears. Then he’ll pick over the survivors and choose out the girls for raping and some of the novices for general drudgery, and loot the wreckage for enough to last him out a lifetime of luxury. And if this doesn’t happen, it’s going to be because a few places like Asconel and Loudor and Delcadoré held to the old-fashioned ways, stood up for justice and order and the rule of law and did their best to keep the pirates and the slavers and the privateers from off your neck!”

Father Erton gazed up at him unblinkingly. He said,
“It’s taken you ten years, has it, to come around to this way of thinking?”

“No. More like ten minutes. I suddenly started to wonder where our resurgent Galactic Empire is coming from if our Asconels are allowed to go down into barbarism.”

“And this was sparked by talking to your brother?”

“Yes.”

“You should perhaps have questioned him more closely,” Father Erton said. His old neck was getting stiff with gazing up at Spartak far above; he let his eyes drop to the desk at which he sat. “According to what he told Brother Ulwyn when he was trying to threaten his way past the gate, he’s been serving with the Order of Argus, which was the rump of the old Imperial Tenth Fleet. They hired out to Mercator for its conquest of those two neighbor worlds it now rules; they sacked three cities on Poowadya in search of—ah—
provisions,
I believe they said; they exterminated the remains of the former Twenty-Seventh Imperial Fleet because the latter had the same aims and objectives as themselves and was making slightly better progress.…Rather a poor record, on the whole, for one who wants to save Asconel as a nucleus of a resurgent civilization!”

“I doubt if Vix cares one way or the other, just so long as Asconel is decently governed and prospers by modern standards. I was giving you my reasons, not his.”

“Then go,” Father Erton sighed. “But remember! If you commit yourself to violence, save the expense of coming back!”

Vix was waiting at the gate, with the novice who had brought Spartak’s belongings, Brother Ulwyn hovering nervously in the background. There were three large bags piled on the path.

He hailed Spartak accusingly as the younger man came in view, face dark as a storm cloud. “Hey! I warned you, I travel light! If you expect me to carry this lot for you—”

Spartak shook his head. He had never been strong as a child, and doubtless Vix still thought of him as a weakling; now, though, was hardly the time to explain about the scientific dietary used on Annanworld, which enabled each
individual to realize the maximum strength of his muscles by providing the optimum available energy from his food. He merely gathered the three big bags and slung them together over his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he muttered.

Vix gave him a puzzled look. “Listen, if you have any doubts about what you’re letting yourself in for, stay put! I’d rather not be trammeled with a reluctant passenger—”

“Don’t worry,” Spartak cut in wearily. “I’m having second thoughts about staying here these past ten years, not about leaving. Are we going, or not?”

“Why—why, of course. At once!” And the astonished Vix swung around to claim his weapons from the perspiring Brother Ulwyn.

T
HEY WENT A
considerable distance in silence, with no one else in sight except some children playing on a hill top. The group of villagers who had been in evidence earlier must have followed Vix up the hill out of mere curiosity.

Spartak was engaged with his own bitter thoughts, and was anyway used to long hours of private study and contemplation, but it occurred to him when they were almost halfway to the village that it was unlike Vix to hold his tongue so long. He was in the act of turning his head when the older man erupted.

“And this is supposed to be the great place for knowledge and science and everything! Here we are, going on foot in blistering sunshine, dust kicking up fit to make you choke—not a skyboat to be had in that primitive town there!”

“It was—uh—deliberate policy,” Spartak sighed. “You might not think it, but it’s possible to get from any point on Annanworld to anywhere else within one full day, elapsed time. And there are spaceports at the corners of an imaginary dodecahedron, providing twelve equally-spaced points from which you can go off-world. That was deemed to be fast enough for a planet whose chief concern is the accumulation of knowledge.”

“Yes, but—” Vix shrugged. “Galaxy, what am I doing raising complaints? I got started late enough on this whole business; the fact that I have to walk to the nearest transport terminus is just an extra irritation. I have this feeling that I ought to be doing everything at maximum speed.”

Spartak didn’t answer, and they trudged some half-mile or so further before he did speak again.

“How—uh—how did you come here? By the regular spacelines?”

“Blazes, no. In this corner of the galaxy, shipping schedules are down to monthly, sometimes bi-monthly frequencies. I should sit on my butt while they get around to organizing a crew and lifting their creaky old tubs? No, I have my own ship now.”

“Your own ship?” Spartak echoed in surprise. “You’ve done well. I’ve not heard of a privately-owned starship before.”

“Don’t picture any ship of the line,” Vix grunted. “I have an Imperial scout, probably one of the original ships they tell me we found when we came out into space the very first time. I’ve never dared compute how old she must be.”

“Twenty thousand years,” Spartak said positively.

“Twenty—?” It was Vix’s turn to be astonished. “Oh, never!”

“If it’s one of the original Imperial vessels, it must be. According to what events you take as marking the establishment and the collapse of the Empire, it lasted something between eight and a half and nine and a half thousand years. By the time we came out to collect them, the various artifacts our predecessors left behind were already at least as old as the whole lifespan of the Empire.”

“This is something I’ve never got straight in my mind,” Vix said slowly. He seemed to be groping for some subject of conversation which would be sufficiently neutral to let him get to know this stranger-brother of his, who had adopted a way of life so alien to his temperament and yet now had to be his companion and confidant. “I guess you must have put in a deal of study on it—hm?”

“I did when I first came to Annanworld,” Spartak agreed. “I had this over-ambitious idea that I was going to find out how the Empire originally arose. But the records simply don’t exist; no one had much time for documentation when
we first stormed through the galaxy, and later on, what little had been recorded was either destroyed or simply rotted away. We’ve never had the skills required to build something to last ten thousand years. Even an Empire!”

“But—well, at least you can tell me how it is we’re still flying ships supposed to be as old as you just said?”

“We’ve made some intelligent guesses, The best and most likely is that at some time late in their own history the people who left the ships behind lost interest in physical activity, and built sufficient ships and some few other items to last out their—well, maybe their life span. Or else they went to another galaxy because they’d studied this one from rim to rim and exhausted it and themselves. But they’d built well, and it took us ten thousand years to use up What they left behind.”

“It’s not used up yet, not by a long way,” Vix countered.

“Yes, but what time couldn’t do to those ships, we’ve done deliberately. It costs to buy a ship, but it doesn’t cost anything to run one, for they’re self-fueling and almost indestructible. The Argian fleet numbered one hundred million vessels at the height of Imperial power, and there must have been almost one thousand times as many as that in service throughout the galaxy. Yet now—as you just said—there are so few ships you may wait a month for passage on what used to be a flourishing Imperial star-lane.”

“We’re building some ships of our own, though—”

“Where? Not in Imperial space, Vix. Out on the Rim, where the Imperial writ never ran. I sometimes think I’d like to go out there, to see what human endeavor can do by itself, without accidental help from a vanished race.”

“A long trip without much prospect of reward,” Vix said. “Me, I’ll stick around the hub. Numbers like a hundred million can’t mean much to a man unless he’s prepared to think of planets as grains of dust and human beings as less than bacteria. And no one raised on a world as sweet as Asconel could do that.”

Spartak shifted his heavy load to the opposite shoulder. He was a little relieved at what Vix had just said. In the years since they last met, this fiery older brother of his had clearly matured as Tiorin had done, and there was a
good chance, he reasoned, of their becoming friends at last.

“Want me to take over one of those bags?” Vix offered now, forgetting his downright refusal to help in carrying them.

“Hm? Oh—no thanks. They’re not as heavy as they look. If I do get tired, I’ll tell you.”

But Vix hadn’t lost all his former touchiness; at the declining of his help, he put on a scowl and left it there for the next several minutes.

“How did you—how did you come by your ship?” Spartak asked eventually, after casting around for some way of keeping the talk moving.

“Took it as my pay after we put down the rebellion of the old Twenty-Seventh Fleet.”

Spartak remembered Father Erton’s accusation against the fighting order to which Vix had pledged himself; he swallowed dryness and was glad when the other left the subject where it lay.

“That’s not all I’ve picked up, by any means, though most of what I’ve had I’ve spent as fast as I got it. Matter of fact, I guess there may be some problems if you’ve fallen into the ways of these sexless monks you’ve kept so much company with.”

“You have a girl with you?” Spartak suggested.

“That’s right.”

“A slave?”

“I don’t like the tone of your voice,” Vix said sharply. “I don’t pay her regular wages, if that’s what you mean, but I keep her, feed her, clothe her—and she does the chores for me that a woman usually does for a man. But there are other reasons why a girl keeps company with a man without being enslaved. Have you forgotten, cooped up in your hermitage here?”

“Have you been together long?” Spartak inquired peaceably. He was tempted to correct Vix’s mistaken idea of the life led by his order, but after the row with Father Erton he felt he no longer held a brief to defend it.

“About five years altogether.” Vix brightened a little; they were in full sight of the transport terminus in the village. “Ah! From here we can get to the spaceport in under the hour.”

“There she is,” he exclaimed, throwing up a proud arm to point. “The smallest vessel in sight, but mine. Go over and stow your bags. I have to pay port dues and get clearance—they still observe all sorts of old-fashioned rules and regulations here.”

“Ah—this girl of yours,” Spartak ventured. “What’s her name, for when I meet her?”

“Vineta. Don’t worry—she knows it’s you coming back with me if anyone off this world does.”

Spartak shrugged and made off across the hard gray surface of the port. A great deal must have changed in the last few years, he reflected, for his brother to have secured a ship of his own. Governments of planets, great trading enterprises, and other corporate organizations had owned ships under the Empire; if these bodies were letting go of the items most indispensable to the continuance of galactic trade and communication, decay must have spread far and fast.

There was one exception to the list of ship-owners he’d mentally made: pirates sometimes claimed to own their ships absolutely. But he preferred not to linger on that idea.

He came close to the ship now. The access ladder was down; awkwardly he clambered to the top, his bags swinging. He rapped on the door of the lock, thinking:
twenty thousand years! It is incredible!

When no one opened to him, he tested the manual lock release. It opened the door for him.

He frowned. It was unlike Vix to risk leaving the ship thus. But if he’d done it, perhaps it was to comply with some regulations such as he’d mentioned—or else this girl of his felt safe on her own. He climbed inside and called aloud. “Ah—Vineta? Are you there?”

But there was no one in any of the accessible compartments of the vessel: control cabin, living quarters, sleeping quarters, even the sanitary facilities were all empty.

He was standing, puzzled, in the control room when Vix came stamping aboard, and forestalled the redhead’s questions with a curt sentence.

“She wasn’t here when I arrived.”

“What? Vineta!
Vineta!”

The harsh sound reverberated in the hollow hull. No answer came. Vix set to searching, as Spartak had just done, and came back moments later with his face a mask of fury.

“Gone!” he roared. “After all I’ve done for her, to walk out like this—take to her heels without even clearing out her gear! The little baggage! The little radiation-spawned sweet-tongued—”

“Vix,” Spartak said very softly, “are you altogether surprised?”

“What do you mean by that?” the redhead blasted.

“I remember from—from back home. The way you used to treat your women sooner or later turned them against you. And the life you’ve been leading isn’t the sort which would make you any more gentle.”

“So you think she just waited till my back was turned and ran for it?”

“Not exactly. But Annanworld had quite a reputation. Isn’t it possible that she decided she was tired of a roving life? She’ll never have been to Asconel, probably never stopped on any single world with you for more than a short stay—”

“What are you talking like this for? You never even saw the girl!” Vix wiped away sweat that has started on his forehead. “Ach! Go stow your gear in the lower cabin—that was hers, and some of her things are still there. I’m going to ask the port authorities what became of her, and fetch her back by her hair if I have to!”

He gave his half-brother a final withering glare. “Well, move. Or would you rather I left her behind, because it might embarrass you to have my mistress here in such a confined space? Is that why you’re trying to talk me into thinking it’s my fault? If she was going to run off she could have done it on a dozen other worlds without waiting for this previous favorite of yours!”

Spartak said nothing, but picked up his bags and made his way to the lower cabin as directed.