Camelot in Orbit Read online

  The metal felt strangely warm. As a precaution I switched off “null” to check it. The heat continued, inexplicably. I returned us to “null” again.

  Markets teemed in the city’s outer regions; the areas closest to the four gates.

  Foodstuffs abounded, and artifacts, precious stones, and clothing. There was even a dottle corral, with a half-hundred or so of the beasts for sale. They looked quite sad-and I had never seen a saddened dottle.

  The clouds, fast gathering over Hish, now damped our clothes with large sporadic raindrops. Toward the west the clouded sky was red, denoting Fomalhaut’s sinking toward the sea. I figured we had two hours still of daylight. “Find us,” I said to our Omnian tag-along,

  “suitable quarters appropriate to our needs and station. We’ll pay in gold.”

  “Of Selig?” He beamed mercurially, his fears al1 banished. “I’ve never seen a Selig gold piece.”

  “And you won’t now,” Rawl told him. “We’re pirates, sir. We’ve no use for the myriad captured pieces from this land or that. We melt ‘em down. The ‘pieces’ of Selig, my Omnian friend, are but different weights of purest gold…”

  “By Hoom Tet!” Sernas exclaimed, “You do know how to live.”

  Hish as a city was an admixture of a Terran “Arabian Nights,” the mythical “Aztlan,” and of the great stone hulk of forbidden “Gabtsvllle” on Procyon-4, with its ten thousand secret towers. It was in no way an ugly city. But it was a foreboding place. The very atmosphere held within it an almost palpable touch of fear…. It was a round city. Its streets, concentric circles from the center, with others from hub to rim, as spokes upon a wheel. We rode through pedestrian crowds and all manner of carts and palanquins down the broad avenue from the west gate to the great central plaza. In its precise center was the Dark One’s temple. It was-a pyramid! Its size was equal to that of the Terran Cheops. All ‘round the glistening, polished, black-marble overlay of its four triangled sides, and at a distance of perhaps five hundred feet were the temples of other Gods, each placed in servile balance to the center-as night flowers to the moon.

  We sat our dottles like gaping farmers, in awe of what we saw. Worshipers thronged to every temple. A small line of supplicants dared even the Yorn guards before the single entrance to the pyramid. I asked of Sernas, “Which one of these doth serve your Hoom Tet?”

  He hung his head and pointed. And, lo! ‘twas the smallest of the lot.

  I said, “Take us to it. We would see what you have to offer.” This, over Murie’s and Caroween’s darksome mutterings.

  It was as seedy inside as it was unkempt and dirty outside. The carvers, sculpted god himself-mounted in the courtyard-was an obscenely fat, naked, lewdly grinning gargoyle of a Bacchus-Dionysian type. He had bulging red eyes, a fantastic belly, and a great phallus which seemed-by Muhammad-Og, yes!-directed right through the doors toward the very entrance of the Dark One’s pyramid. Though the Kaleen himself was bereft of humor, such, apparently, was not true of the wags who’d “invented” Hoom Tet.

  The courtyard before the inner temple was a welter of tangled weeds, cracked flagstones, and bits of debris thrown all about. Lors Sernas chose not to take us inside the temple. He fell to his knees instead before the facsimile of his “Lord.” My disgusted entourage simply stood and stared, whilst I, with a robber-baron’s haughty gesture, gave a few pieces of purest gold to young priest-attendants in threadbare, wine-stained robes.

  Their eyes glittered. Their paeans of praise were loud, for both Hoom Tet and myself.

  There’d be an orgy that night, for sure, and mayhap for many more to Come.

  We collected our praying Omnian and returned to the plaza. I said in an aside to Rawl, “Remember this moment, swordsman. Where one cannot light a candle, ‘tis still possible to plant a seed.”

  I doubt he understood me.

  Lors Sernas then guided us through masses of citizenry and the ever-watchful hundreds of warriors and fierce Yorns, to quarters in the eastern section. These were in the wing of a palace devoted to visiting lords, who occasionally came to revel in the delights of the city which, I found from our Omnian, could on occasion rival Terra’s “Sodom”; indeed, could be all that Hoom Tet himself could wish for.

  We were given separate rooms, baths, and a center salon for dining. Darkness being fast upon us, I sent Sir Sernas to see that a feast was properly prepared-and gave him solid gold to do the job. In the streets, as viewed from our balcony, the crowds-they had been to some sort of murderous event wherein men had fought to the death-were just beginning to thin.

  I briefed our company, told them I would enter the pyramid on the morrow. If I failed to emerge within four hours, they were to return to the scoutship, cutting their way if need be.

  Oral numbers (galactic pronunciation), were given to Murie and Rawl along with instructions as to how to contact the Starship. One man of their choice would stay and watch. If I failed to return within twenty-four hours, they were to make that contact.

  All this was accepted without comment.

  We bathed and napped, and awoke to feast on Omnian delicacies. Later we drank and told more tales of battles on land and sea; these to Lors Sernas and three young friends he’d found to share his “luck”-all Hoom Tet men, of course. Each man of mine outdid himself in lies of butchery and derring-do. Our Omnians were pop-eyed.

  Still, through it all a discerning eye would note that we remained quite sober, and at no time were our sword hafts but inches from our palms.

  With Griswall setting a guard for the night, we retired, Murie and me to an inner chamber. Hooli slipped as usual into a dream that had no meaning. When he visited, he did it his way; with a display of painfully archaic scenes, dress, idiom, and an infantile attempt at humor which he insisted was mine, and best understood by me! He came a’strolling with top hat, cane, and incongruous red galoshes. He paused beneath a Victorian gas light to lean upon the cane, shake a stubby digit at me and announce, with my voice: “Well! We’ve screwed up again. We’ve sent a boy to do a man’s job….”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed, my lids still closed. I said, “You’re late, Jack. And just who are you to criticize? Should I remind you of Dunguring’s two hundred thousand dead-all down the drain? Do you understand me, you little chrysanthemum-headed son-of-a-bitch?”

  He pointed his cane at me, said, “BOOM!” and wriggled his cupcake ears.

  I said, “I’d love to see what you really look like.”

  “You wouldn’t survive it, banana-nose.”

  “You let the Dark One take over poor Fairwyn, and then Gen-Rondin and the Royal House of Marack-why?”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “I am.”

  “Well blame yourself, Buby. You could have stopped it too, you know.”

  “How?”

  “How? How? you have ‘null’ power. You could have kept close to him and guarded him as long as necessary.”

  “He’s not possessed. And anyhow, how long would that be?”

  “Forever.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Quite right. It’s as meaningless as your accusation. You’re an Adjuster. Tell me, what exactly have you ‘adjusted’ these past six months?”

  “Nothing! Not a damn thing! I’ve just boozed it up, hunted gerds, played at ‘flat’s, jousted, and sat around wondering what in the hell ever happened to you!”

  He peered at me from between his legs. “Were I your superior, I’d nail your ass….”

  “Well, where were you?”

  “Where else?-keeping an eye on the store.”

  “Why did you first interfere with Foundation contact-then give it back without my knowledge?”

  He said seriously: “To the first question, no answer. To the second: so that your instant tapes could get through. I figured it was about time your Starship knew the score.”

  “Why now?”

  “Cause in the vernacular of your past, Buby, ‘It’s all coming down’! And they
have a job as well as you.”

  “You’re aware, of course, that they can blow Camelot-Fregis right out of the Fomaihaut system?”

  “The Dark One, too, will shortly have that capability. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Hit me again?”

  “That’s why you’re here-in the lair of the beast; to prevent him from doing it.”

  “Why the hell would he do it?”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t, intentionally. But one way or the other, you’re here to stop him.”

  “At least we agree on something.”

  “Not quite. You see, if I’d saved the king and the privy council-or if you had; was still involved in precisely that, where would we be?”

  “In Marack-In ‘Fortress Glagmaron.’”

  “Exactly, Buby. A dead end. So we moved king’s knight to opponent’s‘ ‘castle-check.’

  You’re now in Hish, hog-brain, and you’re nowhere else to go…”

  “Are you suggesting that you programmed my head? I’m getting pretty damn mad at you, Hooli.”

  “Nyet. No programming. It was your own idea-except we set the stage for your quite logical deduction. Whatever. As Great Ap the Vuun would say, ‘Cheer up. You still have your mating animal.” The top hat did a series of flips along the length of his stubby arm. He caught it neatly and broke into a heel-clicking shuffle. “From here on in,” he burst into song,

  “the going gets rougher…”

  I sighed. “Does the Kaleen know I’m here?”

  “Nope. He’s spread too thin. You’re safe until you begin to cause trouble.”

  “What can I expect?”

  ‘Well, he can send Yorns against you, zap you with lightning, throw rocks, make it rain on you and the like. But mind-control is his greatest weapon-and against it you’ve got ‘null.’ . .

  . It’s his potential we’ve got to worry about. He’s finally organized Fregis’ mag-fleld so that he can manipulate for a ‘warp.’ He’s out to make a new ‘gateway,’ which he’ll hold open while retaining the field! This gives him access to his erstwhile buddies-and unlimited power! Your friends and mine, my ‘beamish boy’ are marked for hosts to all the baddies.”

  “That’s bloody dangerous-a warp within a mag-field.”

  “That’s only part of it. Remember your deBroglie-Dirac and such?”

  “School-book stuff: Total reversals in electro-mag coinplexes result in matter which cannot exist in its original universe. Ergo: the act of reversal creates an instantaneous ‘hole punch’ to another, parallel, accepting-universe—our key to instantaneous inter-galactic travel.”

  “And?”

  “And what? How does this affect our problem?”

  “It doesn’t, really, except as before, just like on Alpha, he’ll punch a ‘warp,’ not a ‘hole.’

  And to hold such a warp open within a planet’s mag-fleld demands tremendous energies….

  He’ll need a sun, Buby.”

  “And?”

  “Well, Collin-Kyrie, if even a pinpoint warp is made in the proximity of a sun-star, a very rugged translation device is needed. Without it the star-magma, or flux, due to the potential or pressure gradient, will flow in at a rate to instantly destroy the device creating the warp. Do you read me, Poopchik?”

  “Loud enough.”

  “If the device is on the surface of a planet, the planet too is destroyed.”

  “And that’s what he’s doing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, how did Alpha survive?”

  “They had a rugged translation device.”

  ‘Well, the Dark One should have that knowledge.”

  “Nope. He never knew the secret. And he’s no Edison. The one he’s built will fail!”

  “And his friends? What about them?”

  “We doubt they even know he exists. To them he was swept away in the holocaust five thousand years ago.”

  “Sheeee!” Then I stared hard at him with my tight-shut eyes. The little bastard!

  Despite the life-and-death seriousness of the problem he was sitting on his reversed topper and paring his toenails with a penknife-no doubt to get his booties on easier.

  I asked bluntly: “Do you know the answer to all this?”

  “No way. What are you going to do?”

  “Simple. I’m going to get Great Ap, the Vuun-if he and his cohorts will do it-to fly in Marack’s army. When I decide what to do with them, the deus ex-machina will strike again!”

  At that he ran his penknife into his big toe and actually yowled, mentally, inside my head. He literally exploded. “Bleeding, bloody bojangles-and you’re a galactic Adjuster?”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “In the words of your Clemenceau: “Merde!”

  “And the Dark One’s got opposition on his own turf, too.”

  “Really?” The little round head thrust forward so that the wet button nose touched mine-“And just why do you think you put down next to that particular castle?”

  I asked lamely, “You know about the meeting tonight?”

  “Tomorrow, meatball. Don’t muff it.”

  I sighed, frowned. “Maybe I can spring a Magna Carta on ‘em.”

  “Do it. Neutralize ‘em; divide and rule-unless you want the whole Omnian potential to come down on your Marackian army; that is, if Great Ap goes along with your crazy scheme.”

  “Where will you be?” I asked angrily.

  “With my learned compatriots, eating leaves. If I joined you, tiger, we’d all last fifteen minutes. . ,

  “I doubt that,” I said huffily. “By the way, what about this bubble, this damned fog over the city? How do you account for it? What is it?”

  “What fog?” Hooli asked sweetly. He began to pirouette off into the recesses of my mind. “There’s no fog, Buby. It’s all in your head. Bye!” He waved a tiny hand that sparkled in my mind’s blackness, and disappeared.

  He’d done it again-managed to tell me absolutely nothing except to suggest that I should visit the Sernas castle tomorrow night. But he was right. For other than my blowing the Dark One through his own potential gateway, an unlikely prospect at best, I would need allies. Therefore, though I’d go to the pyramid tomorrow, I’d take no risks; for tomorrow night I had to be at the castle. The idea of the Dark One being confronted by an irate mob of robber barons waving a facsimile of the Magna Carta tickled my fancy. But I had no illusions.

  The Lords of Om would need a lot more than a rambling sheet of vellum to set their blood to boiling. They’d first of all need a “happening” to given them courage-something to show them that there actually was a limit to the Dark One’s power; that he could be fought.

  And suddenly I had the answer to that, too. A feeling of almost euphoric elation raced through each vein and artery. I, Kyrie Fern was back in the game again. Hooli’s reappearance notwithstanding, the situation remained what it was and had been. And central to the whole charade was the fact that without me the Fomalhaut system hadn’t the chance of a puff-ball in a hall-storm.

  I would begin it now! Indeed, each second wasted could imperil us the more did I not do it now!

  Rain lashed the gardens outside our windows and the streets of the darksome city beyond. I got up and walked to the balcony, looking instinctively toward the north and east where lay the Iltian range, the home of the greatest of all Fregisian creatures, the Vuuns!

  At the time of Dunguring, I had established some rapport with them. Later, in terms of a mutual need against the threat of the Dark One, we had agreed on a single thought for emergency contact. I had given them a mind picture of the Andromeda nebulae (M 31), whereon the Vuuns could gaze for days on end and never sate their thirst for beauty, mystery, and knowledge.

  As with the Boos, there would be no danger. For the telepathy of sentients, especially humanoids, compares in no way to the power use of a magnetic field. Indeed, to this day telepathy alone can bridge the gap ‘twixt a sea’s surface and an errant ship below, or direct itself to th
e far side of a moon or planet And so it was taught as a part of Foundation curricula, and I, perforce, had developed a certain median skill in the art of it.

  As for the Vuuns, well, they were as great in intellect as they were in size. Their life span was a thousand years or more, so that by meditation, converse, and pure reason, they had long since acquainted themselves with the mysteries of the universe. Regarding their physical size, suffice it to say, had they been carnivorous all life would long since have disappeared on Camelot-Fregis.

  I seated myself cross-legged on a cushion ‘neath the balcony’s awning. In both the near and far distance a pervasive clink of steel and harness and the thud of marching feet was audible. What had Lors Sernas told me?-that the garrison in Hish alone was twenty thousand? and that twice again that number could easily be drawn from a twenty-mile radius of countryside?

  Uneasy indeed was the crown of Hish’s ruler.

  Slowly, slowly, I created an image within my head-Andromeda the beautiful, with its striated gasses and its myriad suns in a gem-like kaleidoscope of color. I held it, sharp, projecting, hypnotized somewhat with my own illusion.

  And then, after what seemed an eon of time, a like impression formed to match my own; to superimpose itself upon my own..

  “I see you, Collin!” The words of Great Ap, first among Vuuns, if such could be, came strongly. There followed a rushing inside my head as of some great maelstrom of raging waters, and then-I seemed encapsuled, suspended womb-like before the many mouths of the cave world of Ilt, deepset within the great volcanic mountains. All was snow and ice, with tiny trees, barely visible at the bottom of great chasms and precipices.