Watchers of the Dark (25 page)

“Strange,” Rhinzl mused. “If Supreme is so well protected, why are we to guard it?”

“There’ll be natives who have Supreme’s permission to come and go. When the mania of the Dark comes upon them they’ll still have that permission.”

“I understand. We are to prevent them from entering.”

“You’re to prevent anyone from entering, and you must take care to impress upon your troops that they aren’t to enter, either.”

“No one shall enter,” Rhinzl said confidently. “I’ll post a strong guard at the top of the tunnel, and another at the bottom.”

“You won’t need two companies for that. Your other nocturnals can start looking for more air vents. At dawn the rest of the army will take over.”

“Except in the tunnel?” Rhinzl suggested.

“Yes. You should organize shifts of nocturnals to guard the tunnel.”

“There may be many such vents.”

“I’m afraid so. I’d hoped that we could reach all of them from here, but obviously we can’t. There are also the transmitter connections with Supreme, and Supreme alone knows how many of those there may be. This is a hopeless task, but we’re bound to do the best we can.”

“We are bound to,” Rhinzl agreed. He posted guards and led the other nocturnals into the darkness to search for air vents.

At dawn Darzek received a staggering piece of news. Gul Meszk, who had taken Darzek’s admonition to look everywhere literally, reported in from the opposite side of the planet. In Primores’s second city he had discovered another air vent. Darzek inspected it, found the same type of slanting tunnel terminating in a drop-off. Thoughtfully he posted a guard.

“I thought Supreme would be large,” he told Miss Schlupe, “but this is preposterous.”

“Supreme has a good many different functions. They may be located in different places.”

“Obviously. One under every populated area, I suppose. Or perhaps the populated area grew up wherever Supreme was located. This leaves me with the same problem I had in the beginning: How can I guard a planet?”

“There’s one slight difference. Time has run out on you. Have you seen the parks today?”

Darzek shook his head.

“This is the day. If your army fights better when it has lines of retreat, this may be your last chance to make the arrangements.”

“I’ve already asked Gud Baxak to put every available ship in orbit,” Darzek said.

With
urs
Dwad he began a circuit of the parks.

The agitators were out in full cry and overwhelming numbers, but Darzek had eyes only for the spectators. There were few of them, and they listened with the same stoic calm he’d been observing for so many days. The only emotion they betrayed was one of quiet puzzlement. They paused, listened indifferently, strolled on.

“Look!”
urs
Dwad exclaimed.

It was a foreigner, of a type Darzek had never seen before. Darzek watched dumbfounded as he waved spidery arms and added his chirping harangue to those of the native agitators.

“Why would they send foreigners to tell us to rise against foreigners?”
urs
Dwad demanded.

“It’s the climax. Either that, or—” He turned to stare at URsDwad. “Come on!” he snapped.

He led him on a reckless chase through park after park, searching for foreign agitators. They found hundreds of them, the pathetic accretion of the Dark’s trek across the galaxy, all spewing their strange languages into the clamorous malestrom of hate that swirled under the park domes. Most were unfamiliar types, but Darzek saw several Yorlqers and two of the ungainly, stalklike Quarmers, who seemed to turn up in sinister fashion whenever he contested with the Dark.

Finally they returned to Darzek’s apartment. Miss Schlupe was there, talking quietly with Gul Meszk and Gul Kaln. URsGwalus hovered patiently in the background, ready to resume his haunting the moment Darzek appeared.

“It’s all over,” Darzek announced. “The Dark has lost. All of its foreign agents have been turned out in a last, desperate attempt to move the natives, and the natives aren’t having any of it. Supreme was right. Primores is not in danger. Supreme knows something that we don’t know.”

“Are you sober?” Miss Schlupe demanded.

“The Dark has only one move left,” Darzek told Gul Meszk. “It can arm its agitators and foreign agents with the best weapons available and try to take control of Primores. We’d better start picking them up, and fast. I want you to seal off the parks, three or four at a time. Send the innocent natives home, and tell them to stay there. Take portable transmitters with you, and pack all of the agitators off to the ships. Put as many as you can into each passenger compartment, and then disconnect the compartment’s transmitter. If they’re feeling violent they can take it out on each other, and we’ll sort through the pieces after they’ve quieted down.”

“Right!” Meszk said happily. He and Gul Kaln hurried away.

“Are you sober?” Miss Schlupe asked again.

“I’m enjoying the heady intoxication of a momentous discovery, even though I can’t begin to understand it. On every world where the Dark has been active, it induced madness in the natives and incited them against the foreigners. Why are the natives of Primores indifferent to it?”

urs
Gwalus said apologetically, “If you will pardon me—”

“What is it now?”

“If you will pardon me, I venture to point out that Primores has no natives.”

Darzek snorted. “What are they, then? Ghosts? They look substantial enough to me.
urs
Dwad, are you a ghost?”

“No, Sire.”

“Aren’t you a native of Primores?”

urs
Dwad hesitated.

“Primores O has no natives,”
urs
Gwalus said, “because Primores O is an artificial world! Why else would it bear the designation ‘O’? It was built after the other Primores worlds had been numbered.”

Darzek said blankly, “Primores O is
artificial?”

“Primores O is Supreme, and Supreme is a world. Of course. No world would be large enough to contain it. It is so large that it must
be
a world.”

“That can’t be the whole answer,” Darzek protested. “What about the other Primores worlds? Surely one of them has a native population.”

“Primores II is the original home of those who populate this system.”

“Then why didn’t the natives of Primores II revolt? And those who live and work on Primores O must have been here long enough to consider themselves natives, artificial world or no. Why didn’t they revolt?”

urs
Gwalus made no answer.

“And what about the agitators?” Darzek went on. “Most of them have been Primorians.”

“Their conduct is beyond my comprehension,” URsGwalus admitted. “It is beyond the comprehension of any of us. We Primorians dedicate our lives to the service of foreigners. They call us servants of Supreme, but we are not. We are servants of the galaxy. So is Supreme a servant of the galaxy. Why should we force the foreigners to leave? We welcome them. They are the reason for our existence.”

“Yes,” Darzek said slowly. “That might account for the Dark’s failure to take Primores. It
must
account for it. And yet—”

“There were an awful lot of Primorian agitators,” Miss Schlupe remarked.

Darzek nodded. “Any life form could be expected to have its fair share of paranoids and idiots, though. The question is why whole populations went paranoid on other worlds, but not on Primores. Could a mere sense of loyalty and duty be stronger than the Dark’s weapon?”

Gul Meszk burst from the transmitter. “Gul Darr!” he gasped. “The
efa
—” He panted helplessly.

“Take your time,” Darzek told him. “What about the
efa?”

“Their command has gone mad. It is attacking Supreme.”

They overtook the
efa’s
companies in the park near the air vent. The troops were shouting, shoving, swinging their pipe weapons wildly, fighting to be the next through the door. Brokefa circled them at a safe distance, pleading pathetically, and they laughed at him. Linhefa lay crumpled upon the grass, the victim of a swinging pipe.

Darzek drew his automatic. He fired over their heads, and so great was the din that he hardly heard the shot. He tried to force his way through them, and narrowly missed being felled himself. He could only holster his gun, and watch helplessly.

Then Gul Kaln arrived with reinforcements. Darzek formed them up, and they cleared the
efa’s
troops away from the door with one determined rush.

Darzek leaped through. Perhaps fifty had already reached the tunnel, and they paused there, with their leaders looking down into the darkness, while from somewhere inside Rhinzl pleaded with them. His voice reached Darzek faintly, and was buried in a sudden, crashing shout as the troops charged into the tunnel.

Darzek, following closely, stumbled over Rhinzl. He had been knocked down and trampled. He got slowly to his feet, moaning with pain. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” he gasped. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Meszk had caught up with him, with a company of loyal troops on his heels. Darzek dashed on ahead, plunging blindly into the darkness, and the limping Rhinzl kept pace with him, whimpering as he ran. From the bottom of the tunnel came the clash of battle as the nocturnal guards put up a valiant but vain resistance. They were overwhelmed before Darzek could reach them, and the
efa’s
troops fumbled their way past the door and into the passageway beyond, and with a shout of triumph rushed into the red-lit tunnel that led to Supreme.

A shriek of hideous pain brought Darzek up short and left him cringing. Scream followed upon scream as strange sounds echoed through the tunnel and weirdly reflected flames bathed it in flickering light and grotesque shadow. Darzek was startled to find Miss Schlupe at his side, her head bowed, her hands clapped to her ears.
urs
Dwad cowered nearby, and Rhinzl was huddled in a convulsive, unrecognizable mass. Darzek looked again, saw Rhinzl heave himself into a familiar shape, saw Meszk looking strangely pale in the red reflection, saw the looming shadows that came and went on the wall behind them.

The sounds died away, but the flickering light lingered. Darzek drew his automatic and announced to no one in particular, “It’s the only way.”

And shot Rhinzl.

He pulled the trigger again and again, oblivious to Miss Schlupe’s scream and Meszk’s baffled cry, until Rhinzl’s body collapsed shapelessly in a sticky splash and slowly spread long filaments of ooze over the tunnel floor.

Then the light died away, and they were in darkness.

E-Wusk stirred from a meditative tangle of arms and legs and remarked, “These are bitter times, my friend, and my mind is confused. The
thing
that you showed to me was not the Rhinzl that I knew.”

“Supreme has confirmed that no such life form is known to this galaxy,” Darzek said.

“I am sure that you acted wisely, but I cannot help regretting that you killed him. There is much that he could have told us.”

“And nothing that he would have told us. I’m not so sure that what I did was wise, but it was necessary. I didn’t know what weapons that tangle of living tissue concealed.”

“Or what
powers?”
E-Wusk suggested. “Of course he had the power to make us see him differently from what he was.”

“Yes. His true shape was so gruesome that even in a galaxy of gruesome shapes he would have been a thing apart, and therefore instantly suspect.”

“And yet the Dark’s mental weapon must be a different kind of power.”

“Entirely different,” Darzek agreed. “Primores may be safe for the moment, but unless we identify that power and learn how to contain it, the Dark will engulf the rest of the galaxy.”

Miss Schlupe stumbled from the transmitter, and liquid sloshed over the brim of the goblet she was carrying and slowly settled to the deck. “Dratted transmitters!” she muttered.

Darzek took the goblet, tasted, licked his lips thoughtfully. “It’s almost too good. I don’t suppose you could make some that would be tasteless.”

“I’m afraid not. How much do you need?”

“That depends on how susceptive the Primorians are to mass psychology. Make the stuff as fast as you can, and let’s hope there’ll be enough. Any news of my friends the proctors?”

“They’re hueing and crying all over the planet. Five of them are still camped in our apartment. I told them I thought you’d done away with yourself in a fit of remorse, and they politely asked me where the body was.”

E-Wusk said bewilderedly, “The proctors are searching for
you?”

“Why did you think I was hiding out in space when there’s so much work to be done? I got tired thinking up new identities for myself. ‘Pardon, Sire, but I was wondering if you were the elusive Gul Darr, whom you most strongly resemble.’ Certainly not.
My name is John Wellington Wells, I’m a dealer in magic and spells.
Bah! Every transmitting exchange, every park and public building is infested with proctors looking for me.”

“But why?”

“I committed a dastardly crime: to wit, I caused the death of that eminent and widely respected trader, Gul Rhinzl. The proctors have also linked me with some Quarmers who were found dead under highly suspicious circumstances a long time back. They can be surprisingly efficient when they put their minds to it.”

“But if you’re really an agent of Supreme—”

“Don’t mention Supreme to me. If I knew how, I’d blank out all of its memory circuits and make it start over,
cum tabula rasa.
No sooner did I report that I had disposed of Rhinzl, who was undeniably an agent of the Dark if not the Dark itself, when some remote transistor figuratively ran up a red flag and every proctor on the planet wanted me for that most horrible and rare of crimes, inflicting death,
urs
Gwalus has been trying every way he can think of to convince Supreme that I acted in the line of duty, and Supreme absolves me of responsibility at the same time that it deputizes another army of proctors to track me down. Supreme needs someone to tell it what to do. That’s why I wanted to see you.”