E.C Tubb - Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

From the ulterior gloom Remille said, "Take one step over the edge and I'll burn you down."

"Captain?"

"You heard what I said, Earl. I mean it." The voice was thick over the rustle of heavy movement, the captain moving in his chair. "Just stay away from me."

"I must know-are you sick?"

"What the hell could you do about it if I am?"

"Are you?"

"What the hell do you think?" Remille's voice was bitter. "My ship rotten with disease, my crew dead or insane, passengers evicted-yes, I'm sick. Sick of the years of struggle I've spent and all for what? Quarantine and penalties and my ship lost and that's if I'm lucky. And if I'm not-"

"You'll die," said Dumarest. "Is that what you want?" Remille made no answer, breathing heavily. A point of light shifted as he moved, a momentary brilliance which vanished to reappear again as he blinked an eye. A sudden flurry of activity from the tell-tales and Dumarest saw his face, strained and tense, the lifted hand and the laser it held, the finger hard against the trigger.

"I'm not coming in," he said quickly. "I just want to talk." His knife was in his hand, a throw and the captain would be dead. But he was limned against the light and no man, no matter how fast his reflexes, could lift a blade, aim it, throw it with accuracy in less time than it took for another to move his finger. The captain might die, but Dumarest knew that he would die with him. And he had no intention of killing.

"To talk," he said again. "You know the situation. Mayna's gone insane."

"I know."

"Then what about the course? Did he set it and feed it into the computer or was he running it from his head?"

"You're asking do I need him anymore," said Remille. "The answer is no. I don't need him, but you need me. If you've any fancy ideas about taking over the Varden, forget them. It's my ship. If it goes then I go with it."

"And if you go?" Dumarest waited; then, when he received no answer said, "I've saved some of the drugs, Captain. Enough to put you into a casket. You could ride Low until we reach our destination. A time-trigger could be set and-"

"No."

"You'd wake and be able to make a landing. It would give you a chance. Even if you have the disease they might be able to cure you. Life, Captain. Think of it."

"Is that what you came here to talk about?"

"Yes."

"Then you've wasted your time. I'm not leaving the control room. If you want to freeze yourself then go ahead, but you're not going to freeze me."

"But-"

"Get out! I mean it, Earl, get the hell away from me. I'd rather not shoot but I will if I have to." The heavy voice broke, the sound of breathing harsh in the gloom. "Leave me, damn you! Leave me-and don't come back!"

The corridor spun as Dumarest stepped back from the control room. He turned, almost falling against the bulkhead, feeling the hard metal beneath his hands. He rested his forehead on it, leaning forward as sweat ran from his face to drip on the deck. A sudden flood, of perspiration born of the tide of pain which rose to engulf him, a searing, acid-like fire which turned every nerve into a channel of torment.

Dimly he heard the slam of a panel, smelt the scent of burning metal. The laser welding shut the control room door. If he was to die Remille intended to die alone.

Dumarest drew air into his lungs and slowly straightened. His head ached and he felt a little dizzy but the pain had lessened a little as if the very fury of its onslaught had numbed feeling. He took three steps down the passage, cannoned into a wall, took three more and almost fell. Grimly he regained his balance. As if from a far distance he heard Mayna scream. Another echoed it, closer to hand.

"Earl! My God, Earl!"

Dephine! He waved her back as she came running towards him, her figure seeming to expand and diminish in his sight.

"No! Don't touch me!"

She said, angrily, "Earl, you fool, you're not thinking straight. What are you going to do? Join Mayna? Lie on the deck here and die? Stop being so damned noble and get some sense. Now lean on me and let's get you to a bunk. Damn you, Earl! Do as I say!"

It was easier to obey than argue and the return of pain made it impossible to resist the arm she threw around him, the pull which drew his own over her shoulder. Twice she had to halt as he doubled, retching, blood running down his chin from bitten lips. Blood which dripped on a hand and made tiny flecks of red among the ebon blotches which mottled his skin.

"You've got it," she whispered. "Earl, you've got the disease. God help me now!"

* * * * *

Once, as a young boy, Dumarest had torn the nail from a toe during a chase after game and, alone, had had to hobble for miles over rough and stoney ground. The pain then had been something he had imagined would never be equaled, but now the memory of it was a pleasantry against the agony which suffused every cell of his being.

Pain which seemed to escalate, wave after wave each more intense than the last, a ladder of agony on which his diminishing consciousness rode like a cork on water, bobbing, turning, writhing as he desperately tried to escape. A wound would have brought blood loss and the attendant shock with its mercy of oblivion, but the thing which had turned each nerve into a hyper-sensitive conductor of pain had, as yet, done no irreparable damage to his physique. And, alone, pain does not kill.

"Earl!" A faint voice echoing from across unimaginable distances. "Earl!"

A touch and a lessening of anguish, a chance to breathe without searing torment afflicting the lungs, to move without the muscle-tearing agony of cramps. To look upward and see, haloed in a nimbus of light, a mass of red hair.

Hair which shifted and shimmered and moved as if with a life of its own.

Hair which turned to the color of flame. "Kalin!"

"Kalin? No, Earl, it is I, Dephine." A mumble, echoes vastly magnified, words which boomed and rolled and became thunder. And then became words again. "What can I do? More drugs? Dear God, guide me, what can I do?"

Words which turned into a susurration, a thin whisper, the scrape of a nail on slate, a pain in itself so that he rolled and tried to close his ears and saw painted on the inside of his eyelids, images which spun and turned and lunged towards him to stand and become familiar.

A face, gibbering, falling back with the hilt of a knife protruding like a growth from the orbit of an eye. An old woman nodded, her eyes like insects, smoke rising to veil the space between them. A burst of gargantuan laughter. "Earth? Earth? Where is Earth?"

A scream which continued, a rawness of the throat, an ache in the lungs. Light and flashing fire and, again, the halo of red hair limned against a blur of white. Delirium.

Dumarest sank like a stone into the escape of hallucinations, illusions; the over-strained fabric of his mind running from the intolerable prison of his flesh. Pain alone does not kill. He could not find the surcease of death. He could no longer bear the relentless agony.

Only madness was left.

Madness and memory.

He was in a place of shifting patterns of light with strange shapes moving in wild abandon, cones and spheres, polyhedrons and cubes, constructs of lace and squat forms which teased the eye with varying contours. A medley of jumbled impressions; sensory stimuli received and registered by a brain which had lost the ability to distinguish illusion from reality. Pictures drawn from the storehouse of memory and thrown against his consciousness as slides projected against a screen.

Death was there, waiting as it had waited all his life; closer now, more avid to clutch and claim him for its own. A black edging to the picture and one which dulled the bright colors of happy anticipation. An edging which turned scarlet, which congested into a profusion of lines, took on a hatedly familiar aspect.

Became the Seal of the Cyclan.

Faces wreathed in scarlet hoods, all alike in their skeletal aspect, skin taut over bone, heads shaven, eyes deep-set, mouths lipless; only the burning intelligence in the sockets of the skulls giving evidence of life and dedication. Cybers, men dedicated to the organization to which they belonged. Living robots of flesh and blood, incapable of feeling emotion, knowing only the mental pleasure of intellectual achievement.

Hunters!

And he was their quarry. Chased from world to world, always having to anticipate where they would be next, how they would strike. Not to kill-had that been their aim he would have long since been dead, but to take. To hold. To question. To wring from him the secret he carried. The gift of Kalin.

Kalin with the hair like flame!

"Earl! My hands! Let go!"

A well of darkness into which he sank, stars flashing, dying, replaced by others burning with transient glory, a scatter of gems lying on the black velvet of a cosmic jeweler. Stars which formed patterns each the symbol of a biological unit. Fifteen units which, correctly assembled, would form the affinity twin. The artificial biological construct which could be either dominant or submissive according to the reversal of one of the units forming the chain. Injected into the bloodstream the symbiote would nestle in the cortex and intermesh with the central nervous system. The ego of a host would be diminished, reduced to a sleeping node while that of the dominant partner would take its place. The effect was to provide a new body for the master-half of the twin. A surrogate which became an actual extension of the ego. By its use an old man could become young in an alternate body, an old woman regain her beauty. A bribe none could resist.

"Earl! Tell me about Kalin. Kalin, Earl, tell me about her."

A voice like the wind, formless, disembodied, a thing to be ignored in the pursuit of bitter memory and yet enough to guide the direction of thought.

Kalin who had succumbed to temptation. And who, in the end, had given him the formula stolen from a secret laboratory of the Cyclan.

A secret they had to regain.

A thing which would accelerate their domination of the galaxy, their aim and ambition. Once they had it every ruler and person of influence would become an extension of their organization, the mind of the cyber residing in a new body, moving it as a puppet, making it their own.

Incredible power, and the Cyclan would move worlds to regain what they had lost: the secret sequence of the units forming the chain.

"Earl?"

Dumarest moved, fretful, images dissolving and being replaced by new. A horde of men busy at work, an entire planet devoted to a single aim. Workers of the Cyclan busy trying to resolve the combination, but mathematics was against them. The total of all possible combinations of fifteen units was high. Even if they could make and test one every second it would take them four thousand years to cover them all.

"Earl! For God's sake answer me! Earl!"

The voice again, louder, demanding, imperious. A thunder in his ears. Dumarest forced open his eyes, they were matted with dried pus, the lids heavy, the light streaming through them a red-hot sword plunging into his brain.

"Wa-" He tried again, mouth and lips refusing to respond, his tongue a puffed and cracked mass of raw tissue. "Water… give me water."

It flooded over his lips and chin, made wetness on his naked chest. With the liquid gurgling came the voice, rising, breaking.

"Thank God, Earl! Oh, thank God! I was so afraid. Earl! Keep living, my darling. Keep living!"

"How… long…"

"Days. Days and days. Don't go away again. Stay with me, Earl. Don't get delirious again. Stay sane, damn you! I need you! Stay sane!"

A voice like a whip, the lash cutting through the fog, the terror he heard in it, the fear a stimulus to exert his strength. It was barely enough for him to keep his eyes open, to form words.