Watchers of the Dark (16 page)

Gula Azfel, daughters in tow, inspected the building ecstatically. A dwelling of this size could only mean that Gul Darr was at last contemplating marriage, and she monopolized him for an hour, waiting alertly for an unguarded remark that might be construed as a proposal. He finally made his escape, still safely single, and hurried off to look after his other guests.

They were as delighted as children at their first party. The aquaroom enthralled them because the foot floats gave off dyes that had already converted the surface of the pool into a shimmering swirl of color. The arena, however, where instead of the customary pair of battling
dmo
plants Gud Baxak was operating a bingo game, was all but deserted. Darzek had imported a choice assortment of prizes, but the game’s few players were finding it puzzling. The guests preferred to wander about squeezing the feet of the Gul Darr figurines and throwing confetti at each other, or to watch Gul Meszk, who was delighting bystanders by leaping into the air and popping balloons with his horns.

The refreshments had taxed Miss Schlupe’s investigative and culinary ingenuity to the utmost, but she seemed to have provided an acceptable morsel for everyone, from Gul Kaln’s pickled insects to the prickly pastries that Gul Isc was fond of munching.

“An overwhelming success,” Darzek announced when he finally located her. “Congratulations.”

She shrugged. “It was nothing. Any parent who’s ever given his child a birthday party has had to cope with the same problem—how to entertain a houseful of monsters.”

“There does seem to be something childlike about them,” Darzek agreed. “Everything is going nicely, though.” He winced as an undertrader floated a tray of food past his nose. “That’s the strangest looking salad I’ve ever seen. I hope you didn’t put one of the guests into it.”

“Tsk. Have you made the rounds lately?”

“No. I’ve been looking for you.”

“The guests seem to be disappearing. Haven’t you noticed how quiet it’s become? I haven’t heard anyone blowing a horn for at least twenty minutes. They wouldn’t go home without the formal leave-taking, would they?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll have a look.”

The guests had thinned out alarmingly. Darzek went quickly from room to room, finally glanced into the aquaroom and saw to his amazement that even the water dancers were gone.

On the far side of the aquaroom a crowd had formed around the entrance to the arena. Somewhere inside Gud Baxak could be heard chirping numbers in a high-pitched tremolo. Darzek pushed his way through the crowd. At the first table inside the door Gul Ceyh, who had eleven arms, each equipped with an eye, was playing twenty-two bingo cards with ease, and others were doing almost as well. Every place was taken at the tables; players filled the open spaces on the floor and ramps. Spectators had crowded in among them, watching avidly and waiting for an opening to play.

Darzek managed a half-circuit of the room, wedging his way through the spectators and gingerly stepping over the players on the floor. A few glanced up as he passed, but all were concentrating too fiercely to be bothered with paying respects to their host. Outside the opposite entrance he found a group of his undertraders watching idly. They were finding few customers for their trays of food and fewer conversations to eavesdrop on. Even such versatile animates as Darzek’s guests had no free hands for eating and neither the time nor the mental agility for serious talk when playing a sheaf of bingo cards.

Darzek resignedly sent word to Miss Schlupe that bingo had caught on with a vengeance and more cards were needed.

The exodus to the arena had left old E-Wusk without his usual following of young undertraders. He did not seem to mind. He sat huddled in a corner of the aquaroom, gazing morosely at the patterned water.

Darzek stopped to talk with him. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked. “I haven’t heard you laugh all evening.”

E-Wusk’s body heaved with an enormous sigh. “I see little cause for laughter, Gul Darr. I can only think that this excellent society is soon to pass forever.”

“If this is true I share your sorrow.”

“It is true,” E-Wusk said, and sighed again. “Had I known you contemplated acquiring a dwelling, I should have given you mine. I shall leave Yorlq before the end of the term.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Darzek said, and meant it. “But why this sudden decision? Have you given up defying the Dark?”

“I have seen it come four times. I have been caught by it four times. Suddenly I find that I am not eager for it to happen again.”

“Where are you going?”

“There is no place to go,” E-Wusk said gloomily. He heaved himself to his feet. “If you care to come to my office, Gul Darr, I should like to show you something.”

Darzek hesitated, uncertain of the propriety of the host running out on a symposium. “You will be back before anyone has missed you,” E-Wusk assured him. “They are all obsessed with this Gobing.”

Darzek summoned an undertrader, and while E-Wusk methodically absorbed the contents of his tray, showing an amazing catholicity of taste, Darzek whispered a message for Miss Schlupe.

“Splendid idea,” E-Wusk enthused, drawing the broad ribbon of an arm across his mouth. “I’m truly sorry that I must leave. Social life on Yorlq should be much more interesting with you giving symposiums. But there is so little time left—”

“How much time?” Darzek asked, as they moved toward the transmitter.

“So little that I do not dare remain to the end of the term. Only the Dark knows precisely how much.”

They stepped through to E-Wusk’s office. Darzek seated himself, and E-Wusk bent over his desk and activated the ceiling screen. “This is what the Dark has taken,” he announced.

Darzek nodded. He could have drawn that sinister black corridor from memory.

“And this is what it will take.”

The blackness leaped forward. It thickened hardly at all, but sent its awesome emptiness far into the galaxy. Darzek said incredulously, “So much?”

“I, E-Wusk, predict it. I guarantee it.”

“How do you know?”

“I have my factors,” E-Wusk said simply. “I have told them what to look for, and they have told me when they found it.”

“I, too, have factors,” Darzek protested. “They have told me nothing.”

“They do not comprehend what they see. Your factors are like everyone else, saying, ‘The winds blow as always, the factories produce, the people eat, the traders trade. All is well.’ But all is not well. The Dark is already here. One only need know where to look to see the marks of its presence, just as one sees the passing of the wind in the eddies it creates.”

“The Dark is already here,” Darzek mused.
“Here
—on Yorlq?”

“True.”

“And yet I have seen no mark of its presence, not so much as a single eddy.”

“I, E-Wusk, say it is here. I have seen the marks.”

“I heard that you foretold when the Dark came to Quarm.”

“Then hear well when I make this new foretelling.”

“The Dark seems to take in area in a regularly accelerating progression,” Darzek said. “In your predicted move the width hardly changes, which is why it moves so far. Did you work it out mathematically?”

“Not I. I merely recorded the reports that I received. Of course I do not have information from all of these worlds— that would be impossible—but I have enough, and I made a special effort to predict the new boundaries. And with those new boundaries the Dark will be poised—you did not say it, but I know you thought it—the Dark will be poised only one move from Primores, and from Supreme itself. Do you not see what that means?
Supreme!
When the Dark takes Supreme it will capture all the secrets of the galaxy and destroy every vestige of galactic organization. The galaxy as we know it cannot exist without Supreme and its Council. The galaxy is doomed!”

Darzek wrested his gaze away from the ceiling, started to speak, and thought better of it. “Where will you go?” he asked finally.

“I do not know. I hope to find myself a peaceful world on the remote perimeter, a world where there is little that the Dark could want. Perhaps I will be able to pass the remainder of my life there unmolested. And you—what will you do?”

“I’ll fight,” Darzek said with a smile.

“It would be well to prepare for every eventuality. I hear that the
efa
have purchased a ship. This is something you should consider. While I was waiting on Quarm for those clods to release me, I spent much time in wishing that I’d had a ship in point connection when they came for me.”

“Thank you for the suggestion. By the way—are there any Quarmers here on Yorlq?”

“I don’t know of any. Please convey my apologies to Gula Schlu. Delightful as it was, I’d rather not return to your symposium.”

“I hope to see you again before you leave.”

“Come any time,” E-Wusk said. “But come soon!”

The symposium had degenerated into a crowd of fiercely concentrating bingo players. Darzek turned his back on them and went looking for Miss Schlupe, whom he found in the dark room talking with Rhinzl.

“What was on E-Wusk’s mind?” she asked.

“The Dark,” Darzek said bluntly. “He thinks the Dark is coming soon. He’s making plans to leave Yorlq before it gets here.”

“That would seem to refute your previous conclusions about E-Wusk,” Rhinzl said politely.

“What conclusions?”

“That he has been trading with the Dark. If that were so, why would he want to run away from it?”

“A trader might do business with the Dark, and still not want to live with it,” Darzek said dryly. “There is also the question of why he is so certain that the Dark is coming. Have
you
seen any portents that point to its imminent arrival?”

“No,” Rhinzl said after a brief silence. “What sort of portents would one look for?”

“E-Wusk knows, or thinks he does.”

“E-Wusk is an astute trader, and a student of the customs of many worlds. I would not disparage his conclusions. And yet—I have seen no portents.”

“You have experienced the Dark,” Darzek said, peering narrowly at Rhinzl’s dim hulk. “It’s coming here should be no surprise to you.”

“No. But I was not expecting it soon. It rested much longer between its last moves. I must discuss this with E-Wusk.”

“You’d better see him tomorrow, then. I have the impression that day after tomorrow may be too late. Have you ever heard of a world called Quarm?”

“That was my last headquarters. Why do you ask?”

“I have acquired something that is purported to be Quarmer art. I wondered if there were any Quarmers here on Yorlq who could authenticate it.”

“I don’t recall having seen any.”

Darzek excused himself and moved off to play host. All of the bingo prizes had been distributed; many of the guests found the game fascinating enough to play without prizes, but the others drifted away to other diversions. The water dancing had started up again, and Darzek sat down to watch it. A short time later Kxon came to deliver a negative report. The undertraders had overheard nothing of interest.

When Miss Schlupe joined him she added her own succinct appraisal of the evening. “It’s a total flop.”

“Not quite,” Darzek said. “E-Wusk told me something that I find extremely interesting. Fascinating, in fact. But the party is a flop. We can’t work spies into their offices, and when we corner them away from their offices they keep their mouths shut. It’s downright discouraging.”

“If only that Quarmer hadn’t caught the blight,” Miss Schlupe said sadly. “We should have sprayed him.”

“There’s Gul Halvr. Excuse me—I want to see what he thinks of E-Wusk’s prognosticating.”

Gul Halvr thought very little of it and said so. He also knew nothing about Quarmers on Yorlq. Darzek moved on to talk to Gul Kaln, who dismissed E-Wusk’s prediction with a shrug.

“Sitting around worrying about the Dark won’t keep it away. If it’s going to come here it will come. I think all of us have learned, by now, to record our solvency in safe places and keep our inventories low.”

Solvency . . . inventories . . . trade. Darzek listened politely to Gul Kaln’s latest exploit with
rucb
hemp, expressed his regrets that he could not relieve him of an unfortunate surplus in
dlk
sugar, and escaped on the pretext of looking after his other guests. They were enjoying themselves, which meant that they would stay late.

Quietly he slipped away to his garden. Yorlq’s three small moons hung one above the other like saucers in a juggling act. The night was strangely silent—insectlike life on Yorlq was either mute or vocalized beyond the range of human hearing—and laced with pungent odors from plants Miss Schlupe had obtained from Rhinzl on the remote chance that some of them might have Earth-like characteristics.

The garden was restful, and the dwellings that loomed nearby had no windows from which curious or malicious stares could be directed; but Darzek quickly found that he could think no more easily there than he could surrounded by the hubbub of his symposium. Not that thought would be of any use to him; every turning he had taken had been wrong, every opening he had discovered led only into a blind alley. He knew little more about the Dark than he had learned in the one thorough briefing from EIGHT.

“But it seems that the Dark itself is about to advance my education,” he told himself. “All I have to do is wait.”

The door ripped open. Kxon cried shrilly, “Is that you, Gul Darr? Come quickly!”

Darzek sprinted. In the reception room he came upon several guests, Gul Ceyh among them, writhing on the floor and vomiting.

“Get a doctor!” he snapped.

“Gud Baxak has gone for them,” Kxon said.

“Them?”
Darzek whirled and ran toward the aquaroom, fearing the worst.

He found it. His guests had been felled as if by sorcery, and they lay twisting in agony, retching, moaning. Miss Schlupe fluttered about helplessly, wringing her hands, and when Darzek spoke to her she answered with inarticulate babble.

Then Gud Baxak’s corps of doctors marched in, and the crisis passsed as mysteriously as it had arrived. As each guest voided whatever had offended his stomach he got unsteadily to his feet, wounded in dignity, shaken, sometimes disgustingly soiled, but—to Darzek’s amazement—apologetic rather than angry, as though the fault were entirely his own.

The symposium ended abruptly. As soon as a guest could shakily negotiate the distance to the transmitter he went home. The doctors made puzzled rounds, shrugged, and departed, apparently convinced that the sick were in nature’s competent hands. Darzek started up a robot cleaner and sent Kxon to bring others from the Trans-Star office and the investigation headquarters. Obviously there was more cleaning to be done than one could handle in a night.