Watchers of the Dark (8 page)

A tiny crescent of blackness appeared at the edge of the glowing disk. Suddenly it widened and plunged inward to form a sinister finger that lay across the galaxy’s remote perimeter, pointed unerringly at its heart.

It continued to grow. It bulged unevenly, filled in hollows, bulged again. Its base oozed outward, and it began to lengthen. Then the tip darted forward, leaving a widening emptiness in its wake, and when the movement finally stopped the finger had become a muscular arm with incongruous bulges and indentations, a vast corridor of cancerous Dark.

No stars shone there. No lines of commerce or communication crossed it. Stars there had been, and habitable worlds with prosperous societies and intricate networks of trade and travel, but the Dark had consumed them.

“So that’s the Dark,” Darzek mused. “But what happened to the suns that were there? Are they just—
gone?”

“Gone,” EIGHT agreed.

“How could a sun vanish?” Darzek demanded.

“Vanish?” EIGHT repeated, puzzled. “They are there, but they are lost to us, to the galaxy. The Dark has taken them. The native populations have been afflicted with madness—the madness of the Dark. They have evicted all foreigners and confiscated their property. They have terminated all trade and communication with the rest of the galaxy. What the Dark does with them we do not know.”

“Then it’s some kind of revolution,” Darzek mused. “The Dark doesn’t literally consume the worlds. It merely enslaves them—which could be worse. All right. I understand that much. Now tell me what is known about the Dark. Everything.”

EIGHT darkened the ceiling screen, and Darzek and Miss Schlupe composed themselves to listen attentively.

Darzek’s certified pass looked like a blank strip of plastic. It first admitted him to a special transmitter built into a room-sized closet just off EIGHT’S reception room. He emerged in a narrow corridor, and EIGHT, stepping out of the transmitter behind him, remarked, “This is the Hall of Deliberations.”

Darzek looked about him and announced, “There doesn’t seem to be room for much deliberation.”

“That is merely what it is called. The Council does not meet here.”

They walked past other transmitters. Darzek counted eight and asked, “One for each member of the Council?”

“Yes. These connect only with the official residences.”

They turned abruptly into a large room, or what had been a large room. The arching ceiling could just be glimpsed above the enormous structure that filled it. Darzek squinted uncertainly into the dim red light of a tunnel that opened before him.

“You must enter here,” EIGHT said. “Walk slowly, and do not be alarmed at anything you hear—or feel. Supreme has been notified that you are coming. It will simply verify your pass and confirm that you are yourself.”

“Where do I show the pass?”

“Hold it flat on your hand. There. Now walk slowly.”

Darzek took a firm grip on his suitcase and held his other hand out in front of him, palm upward. He had the foolish illusion of being a small boy entering a House of Horrors in an amusement park. He took a step forward. And another.

A blast of warm air whipped past him, and incongruously he felt cold. His skin began to prickle, as if gently probed by icy needles. Already he regretted the suitcase. He had left his arsenal with Miss Schlupe and brought little more than a change of clothing against the possible several days that the conference might last; but after a few steps the almost-empty suitcase became staggeringly heavy, and he had the sensation of a tremendous weight crushing down on him. Each footstep commenced with an agonizing struggle against gravity and ended with intense relief and a reluctance to take another. His limps became numb, and dizziness swept over him. He had a sudden apprehension about his automatic. Would Supreme admit an
armed
visitor to a meeting of the Council of Supreme? He should have asked.

Perspiration was streaking his face and burning his eyes. Behind him, EIGHT called out something. He stopped and looked back, and EIGHT called again, “Keep going!” He staggered forward. A few feet ahead of him he could make out the blank end of the tunnel.

A high-pitched vibration had been with him from the beginning, like a dull ache just above the threshold of pain. Suddenly it crescendoed to a piercing shriek that ended in a whir and a loud click. His weight was normal. He opened his eyes, found himself in a circular alcove off a curving corridor. His skin continued to tingle painfully.

EIGHT stood beside him. Darzek glanced down at the pass that still lay on his perspiring hand. It was shriveled and blackened.

“Great!” he exclaimed. “Now how do I get out of here?”

“No pass is necessary to leave a meeting of the Council, but once you leave you cannot return without another pass. Now I’ll show you to your accommodation.”

On one side of the corridor regularly spaced arches led into a large, circular room. Opposite each arch was a door. They passed four doors, and EIGHT rippled open the fifth and led him into a suite of rooms. There were elliptical glass-less windows in a curving outer wall, and an open arch that led out onto an attractive terrace.

Darzek dropped his suitcase, made himself comfortable on a chair, and remarked companionably to EIGHT, “The Dark isn’t the first crisis that’s threatened the Council.”

“Why do you say that?”

“These security arrangements weren’t devised for the fun of it. Obviously the Council once met in the Hall of Deliberations. Either its secrets were vulnerable there, or it feared for its physical safety, or both. That room was converted into a massive transmitter, tamper-proof to the n
th
degree, and made a security check on the route to the real meeting place, whose location is probably the best-kept secret in the galaxy. Exactly where are we?”

“It has no name,” EIGHT said.

“But
where
is it? Where in relation to the Hall of Deliberations?”

“I do not know,” Eight confessed.

“You see? So secret that not even the members of the Council know where they meet. It would have required a crisis of monumental proportions to inspire such elaborate precautions.”

“And yet I have never heard of such a crisis,” EIGHT said politely.

“It happened before your time. The architecture of this building is proof of that. I recommend that you read up on it. It should be consoling to know that Supreme has already weathered one severe threat.”

EIGHT gaped at him bewilderedly. “I’ll tell the others that you have arrived,” he said.

As soon as he was alone Darzek went to look at the terrace. It was flooded with sunlight. Spacious lawns stretched to a shallow horizon. Exotic flowers lined the walks and ringed the terrace. Curious, he touched one of them, touched it again, bent over it. It was artificial. The horizon was artificial. The sun was artificial, and so was the sky.

“All of it under a dome,” Darzek told himself. “At a guess, a bombproof dome. Any kind of bomb. That really was a first-rate crisis, and if I were a member of the Council I’d be grateful. The Dark won’t be breaking in here very soon.”

He examined the circular building and quickly confirmed that the crisis was, indeed, ancient history. The meeting place of the Council of Supreme was built of—wood!

“There must have been better materials available,” he mused. “Probably this was an architectural fad at the time. With the temperature and humidity controlled, and with no exposure to the elements, I suppose wood will last forever. The whole setup seems ancient. A meeting place built of wood, the eight transmitters for eight Councilors—now they would design one that could do the same job—and that chamber of horrors, which probably is something out of their equivalent of the Middle Ages. It must have happened millenniums ago.”

EIGHT returned and joined him on the terrace. “The others have arrived,” he said. “The Council awaits you.”

They sat around the huge cylindrical table in numerical order: eight monsters and, located between ONE and EIGHT, Jan Darzek. After his initial shock Darzek did not look at them directly. His mind refused to assimilate the details that his senses provided. He saw them as eight grotesque blurs, each with a characteristic or two that overlapped into stark reality: the long, tapering tentacles that bristled out of the SIX blur; the three protruding antennae of TWO that blossomed into large eyes at their tips; the two faceless heads of THREE. SEVEN was a bundle of sticks behind a tinted, vaguely transparent light shield, and his stringy body pulsated with ceaseless internal grindings. FOUR was a detached voice emitted by a box that he placed on the table in front of him. FIVE was a collapsed ball, almost indistinguishable from the hassock it perched upon. Chameleon-like, his leathery body had assumed the hassock’s dull-brown color as soon as he landed upon it with a dull
plop.
ONE was a double row of appendages, each equipped with suckerlike discs.

They were eight animates, of contrasting and contradictory form and tissue, and their origins were eight widely separated, contrasting and contradictory worlds. They held in common only their galaxy, their Councillorships, their presence around the Council table, their fluency in
large-talk,
and, in relative degree, their consternation. Darzek hesitated to call them frightened—he would more readily have assigned emotions to the chair he sat on—but as the meeting progressed all showed signs of agitation.

They were severely divided upon the subject of the Dark and what should be done about it. More specifically, they had sharply conflicting opinions as to the role to be played by Jan Darzek.

SIX waved his tentacles despairingly. “I disapproved of this when it was proposed. I still disapprove. How can one uncertified creature thwart the Dark?”

“Supreme knows,” EIGHT intoned.

“Supreme knows!” SIX hissed scornfully. “Supreme knows nothing about the Dark! It admits that!”

EIGHT turned on him angrily and half rose from his hassock. “Supreme expects us to make some feeble use of that inert cell tissue we choose to call our brains. The uncertified creature’s mission is not to thwart the Dark, but to learn about it, to identify it, above all to discover what weapon it uses. That was our question: by what means, or through what medium, can we find out these things, and Supreme named this uncertified creature. Why I have no more idea than you. Supreme never explains. Until now no Councillor has ever questioned its judgment.”

“Until now it has never had the Dark to contend with,” SIX muttered.

TWO leaned forward to point his remote eyes at Darzek. “The Dark’s weapon is almost certainly mental. Does the uncertified creature possess a defense against mental weapons?”

“He says that he does not,” EIGHT said.

“Does his kind embrace death eagerly?” SEVEN asked. “Desperate our need is, but we cannot send him to what I consider certain death unless he knows the risk he assumes and goes willingly.”

“He asked for payment according to the standards of his kind, and the certification group responsible for his world has tendered the requested solvency. He knows the risk he assumes, and he goes willingly.”

“We’re wasting time,” SIX rumbled gloomily. “With each movement the Dark digests what it has consumed more quickly. And with each movement it consumes more.”

They fell silent, all of them looking at Darzek—all except FIVE, the eyeless one, who remained collapsed in his headless mound of folded membrane. SIX braided and unbraided his long, sinewy tentacles. TWO—Darzek could not decide whether he wore tightly fitting garments or loosely fitting skin—hunched an enormous, pulsating abdomen over the edge of the table and wheezed mournfully with each jerky breath. THREE parted an absurdly fashioned smock, activated a liquid spray, and inhaled greedily through nostrils located far down on his chest. SEVEN nervously gulped food and masticated with noisy constrictions of his stomach.

“But what can it
do?”
SIX demanded, with eyes fixed on Darzek.

“That is what we are here to decide,” EIGHT said.

“Doomed!” SIX muttered. “The galaxy is doomed. Even if we knew the weapon we could do nothing. What defense is there against a weapon that plunges an entire world into madness?”

SEVEN nervously gulped more food. FOUR’S voice box emitted static. The others said nothing.

“Will the creature report to us, or directly to Supreme?” THREE demanded suddenly.

“That is not yet decided,” EIGHT said.

“If it reports to Supreme, Supreme will reveal only what it wants us to know—and that only if we ask,” THREE grumbled.

“What can it
do
?” SIX demanded again, eyes still fixed on Darzek. “And if such a creature
can
thwart the Dark, might it not possess a dangerous mental weapon of its own? Might we not be replacing one menace with another?”

“I place my trust in Supreme,” EIGHT said simply. “Supreme selected him. Supreme does not err.”

Darzek decided that he had heard enough. The longer he listened, the more puzzled he became. Obviously his business was with Supreme, rather than the Council. There was no real necessity for this meeting, except to satisfy the Councillors’ curiosity. They wanted to see him; they had seen him. They wanted to know his plans, but as yet he had none, and he would have been disposed to keep them to himself if he had.

He got to his feet. Somewhere there was work for him to do, even if he did not know precisely where, or what the work was. It was time that he brought this farce to a close.

But as he faced the Council he had another idea. He said bluntly, “What help can you give me?”

He could only guess that they were startled, for he still could not look at them individually. He repeated his question. “What help can you give me?”

FOUR’S voice box squawked protestingly. “Supreme has already given you unlimited solvency!”

“Am I supposed to
buy
the Dark?” Darzek demanded.

It was disconcerting just to listen to them breathe. They whistled and fluttered and puffed and gargled. One of them rasped horribly with each breath, as though his respiratory system had to tear the air apart with brute force to get at the life-giving oxygen. There were odors, too, but Darzek had stopped breathing through his nose the moment he entered the room.

“Some of you may have specialized knowledge,” he said thoughtfully. “All of you should be able to give me useful information. I’m adjourning this meeting now. I’ll visit each of you in your rooms to find out what you can tell me. Then I’ll call you together again.”

THREE grumbled, “You mean we have to wait here—”

“Not if you are concerned with other matters more urgent than the Dark,” Darzek said sarcastically.

He watched with elation as the Councillors meekly left the room. He was firmly in control, and he might even learn something of value.

He hurried after EIGHT and asked him, “Do you have specialized knowledge?”

“The uncertified worlds,” EIGHT said.

“What about the others?”

“ONE’s is finance, but you already have unlimited solvency. TWO’S is commerce. THREE’S is the perimeter worlds. FOUR’S—”