Warlord of Kor

  THREE

  Rynason continued to smile at her for several seconds, until her wordspenetrated. Then he abruptly sat up and steadied himself with one handagainst the edge of the table.

  "Can you get one for me?"

  She gave a reluctant shrug. "If you insist, and if Manning okays it. Butis it a good idea? Direct contact with a mind so alien?"

  As a matter of fact, now that he was faced with the actual possibilityof it, he wasn't so sure. But he said, "We'll only know once we've triedit."

  Mara dropped her eyes and swirled her drink, watching the tiny red spotsform inside the glass and rise to the surface. There was a brief silencebetween them.

  "_Repent_, Lee Rynason!" The words burst upon his ears over the waves ofsound that filled the room. He turned, half-rising, to find ReneMalhomme hovering over him, his wide grin showing a tooth missing in thebottom row.

  Rynason settled back into his chair. "Don't shout. I'm going to have aheadache soon enough."

  Malhomme took the chair which Manning had vacated and sat in it heavily.He set his hand-lettered placard against the edge of the table andleaned forward, waving a thick finger.

  "You consort with men who would enslave the pure in heart!" he rumbled,but Rynason didn't miss the laughter in his eye.

  "Manning?" he nodded. "He'd enslave every pure heart on this planet, ifhe could find one. As a matter of fact, I think he's already working onMara here."

  Malhomme turned to her and sat back, appraising her boldly. Mara met hisgaze calmly, raising her eyebrows slightly as she waited for hisverdict.

  Malhomme shook his head. "If she's pure, then it's a sin," he said. "Athrice-damned sin, Lee. Have I ever expostulated to you upon theJanus-coin that is good and evil?"

  "Often," Rynason said.

  Malhomme shrugged and turned again to the girl. "Nevertheless," he said,"I greet you with pleasure."

  "Mara, this is Rene Malhomme," Rynason said wearily. "He imagines thatwe're friends, and I'm afraid he's right."

  Malhomme dipped his shaggy head. "The name is from the Old French ofEarth--badman. I have a long and dishonorable family history, but theearliest of my ancestors whom I've been able to trace had the same name.Apparently there were too many Smiths, Carpenters, Bakers and Priests onthat world--the time was ripe for a Malhomme. My first name would havebeen pronounced Reh-_nay_ before the language reform dropped all accentmarks from Earth tongues."

  "Considering your background," Mara smiled, "you're in good company outhere."

  "Good company!" Malhomme cried. "I'm not looking for good company! Mywork, my mission calls me to where men's hearts are the blackest, whererepentance and redemption are needed--and so I come to the Edge."

  "You're religious?" she asked.

  "Who _is_ religious in these days?" Malhomme asked, shrugging. "Religionis of the past; it is dead. It is nearly forgotten, and one hears God'sname spoken now in anger. God damn you, cry the masses! _That_ is ourmodern religion!"

  "Rene wanders around shouting about sin," Rynason explained, "so that hecan take up collections to buy himself more to drink."

  Malhomme chuckled. "Ah, Lee, you're shortsighted. I'm an unbeliever, anda black rogue, but at least I have a mission. Our scientific advance hasdestroyed religion; we've penetrated to the heavens, and found no God.But science has not _dis_proved Him, either, and people forget that. Ispeak with the voice of the forgotten; I remind people of God, to eventhe scales." He stopped talking long enough to grab the arm of a passingwaiter and order a drink. Then he turned back to them. "Nothing says Ihave to _believe_ in religion. If that were necessary, no one wouldpreach it."

  "Have you been preaching to the Hirlaji?" Rynason asked.

  "An admirable idea!" Malhomme said. "Do they have souls?"

  "They have a god, at least. Or used to, anyway. Fellow named Kor, whowas god, essence, knowledge, and several other things all rolled intoone."

  "Return to Kor!" Malhomme said. "Perhaps it will be my next mission."

  "What's your mission now?" Mara asked, smiling in spite of herself."Besides your apparently lifelong study and participation in sin, Imean."

  Malhomme sighed and sat back as his drink arrived. He dug into the pouchstrung from his waist and flipped a coin to the waiter. "Believe it ornot, I have one," he said, and his voice was now low and serious. "I'mnot just a lounger, a drifter."

  "What are you?"

  "I am a spy," he said, and raised his glass to drain half of it with oneswallow.

  Mara smiled again, but he didn't return it. He sat forward and turned toRynason. "Manning has been busily wrapping up the appointment for thegovernorship here," he said. "You probably know that."

  Rynason nodded. The headache he had been expecting was already starting.

  "Did you also know that he's been buying men here to stand with him incase someone else is appointed?" He glanced at Mara. "I go among the menevery day, talking, and I hear a lot. Manning will end up in controlhere, one way or another, unless he's stopped."

  "Buying men is nothing new," Rynason said. "In any case, is there abetter man on the planet?"

  Malhomme shook his head. "I don't know; sometimes I give up on the humanrace. Manning at least has a little culture in him--but he's morevicious than he seems, nevertheless. If he gets control here...."

  "It will be no worse than any of the other planets out here," Rynasonconcluded for him.

  "Except for one thing, perhaps--the Hirlaji. I don't have much againstmen killing each other ... that's their own business. But unless we getsomebody better than Manning governing here, the Hirlaji will be wipedout. The men here are already talking ... they're afraid of them."

  "Why? The Hirlaji are harmless."

  "Because of their size, and because we don't know anything about them.Because they're intelligent--any uneducated man is afraid ofintelligence, and when it's an alien...." He shook his head. "Manningisn't helping the situation."

  "What do you mean by that?" Mara asked.

  Malhomme's frown deepened, creasing the dark lines of his forehead intofurrows. "He's using the Hirlaji as bogey-men. Says he's the only man onthe planet who knows how to deal with them safely. Oh, you should hearhim when he moves among his people.... I envy his ability to controlthem with words. A little backslapping, a joke or two--most of them Iwas telling last year--and he talks to them man to man, very friendly."He shook his head again. "Manning is so friendly with this scum that hisattitude is nothing short of patronizing."

  Rynason smiled wearily at Malhomme; for all the man's wildness, hecouldn't help liking him. It had been like this every time he had runinto him, on a dozen of the Edge-worlds. Malhomme, dirty and cynical,moved among the dregs of the stars preaching religion and fighting thecorporations, the opportunists, the phony rebels who wanted nothing foranyone but themselves. He had been known to break heads together withhis huge fists, and he had no qualms about stealing or even killing whenhis anger was aroused. Yet there was a peculiar honesty about him.

  "You always have to have a cause, don't you, Rene?"

  The greying giant shrugged. "It makes life interesting, and it makes mefeel good sometimes. But I don't overestimate myself: I'm scum, like therest of them. The only difference is that I know it; I'm just one man,with no more rights than anyone else, except those I can take." He heldup his large knuckled hands and turned them in front of his face. "I'vegot broken bones in both of them. I wonder if the Buddha or the Christever hit a man. The books on religion that are left in the repositoriesdon't say."

  "Would it make any difference if they hadn't?" Rynason asked.

  "Hell, no! I'm just curious." Malhomme stood up, hefting his repentancesign in the crook of one big arm. His face again took on its arched lookas he said, "My duty calls me elsewhere. But I leave you with a messagefrom the scriptures, and it has been my guiding light. 'Resist notevil,' my children. Resist not evil."

  "Who said that?" Rynason asked.

  Malhomme shook his head. "Damned if I know," he muttered
, and went away.

  After a moment Rynason turned back to the girl; she was still watchingMalhomme thread his way through the men on his way to the door.

  "So now you've met my spiritual father," he said.

  Her deep brown eyes flickered back to his. "I wish I could use atelepather on him. I'd like to know how he really thinks."

  "He thinks exactly as he speaks," Rynason said. "At least, at the momenthe says something, he believes in it."

  She smiled. "I suppose that's the only possible explanation for him."She was silent for a moment, her face thoughtful. Then she said, "Hedidn't finish his drink."

  * * * * *

  "You're all hooked up," the girl said. "Nod or something when you'reready." She was bent over the telepather, double checking theconnectives and the blinking meters. Rynason and Horng sat opposite eachother, the huge dark mound of the alien looming silently over theEarthman.

  He never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at him. Except forthat one time when they'd run into the stone wall of the block onTebron, Horng had displayed a completely even temperament--unruffled,calm, almost disinterested. But of course if the aliens had beencompletely uninterested in the Earthmen's probings at their history theywould never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals tobe ordered about by the Earthmen. Probably the codification of theirhistory would prove useful to the aliens too; they had never arrangedthe race memory into a very coherent order themselves.

  Not that that was surprising, Rynason decided. The Hirlaji had nowritten language--their telepathic abilities had made thatunnecessary--and organization of material into neatly outlined form wasa characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality.Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not nowin the twilight of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimlythrough these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past ... andtheir way was not the Earthmen's.

  So if they cooperated with the survey team on codifying and recordingtheir history, who was the servant?

  Well, with the direct linkage of minds the work should go faster.Rynason looked up at Mara and nodded, and she flicked the connection onthe telepather.

  Suddenly, like being overwhelmed by a breaking wave of seawater, Rynasonfelt Horng's mind envelope him. A torrent of thoughts, memories,pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensorysensations of the alien came to him sharply, and memories that werestrange, ideas that were incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon hismind. He fought down the fear that had leapt in him, gritted his teethand waited for the wave to subside.

  It did not subside; it settled. As the two minds, Earthman and Hirlaji,met in direct linkage they became almost one. Gradually Rynason couldbegin to see some pattern to the impressions of the alien. The pictureof himself came first: he was small and angular, sitting several feetbelow Horng's--or his own--eyes; but more than that, he was not merelylight, but pallid, not merely small, but fragile. The alien's view ofreality, even through his direct sensations, was not merely visual ortactile but interpreted automatically in his own terms.

  The odor of the hall in which they sat was different, the verytemperature warmer. Rynason could see himself reeling on the stone benchwhere he sat, and Mara, strangely distorted, put out a hand to steadyhim. At the same time he was seeing through his own eyes, feeling herhand on his shoulder. But the alien sensations were stronger; their verystrangeness commanded the attention of his mind.

  He righted himself, physically and mentally, and began to probetentatively in this new part of his mind. He could feel Horng tooreaching slowly for contact; his presence was comfortable, mild,confused but unworried. As his thoughts blended with Horng's the presentfaded perceptibly; this confusion was merely a moment in centuries, andsoon too it would pass. Rynason could feel himself relaxing.

  Now he could reach out and touch the strange areas of this mind: theconcepts and attitudes of an alien race and culture and experience.Everything became dim and dream-like: the Earthmen possibly didn'texist, the dry wastes of Hirlaj had always been here or perhaps oncethey had been green but through four generations the Large Hall hadstood thus and the animals changed by the day too fast to distinguishthem even under Kor if he should be reached ... why? there was noreason. There was no purpose, no goal, no necessity, no wishing,questing, hoping ... no curiosity. All would pass. All was passing evennow; perhaps already it was gone.

  Rynason shifted where he sat, reaching for the feeling of the stonebench beneath him for equilibrium, pulling out of Horng's thoughts andgoing back in almost immediately.

  A chaos of mind enveloped him, but he was beginning to familiarizehimself with it now. He probed slowly for the memories, down throughHorng's own personal memories of three centuries, dry feet on the dustand low winds, down to the racial pool. And he found it.

  Even knowing the outlines of the race's history did not help Rynason toplace and correlate those impressions which came to him one on top ofanother, overlapping, merging, blending. He saw buildings which toweredover him, masses of his people moving quietly around him, and thoughtscame to him from their minds. He was Norhib, artisan, working slowly dayby ... he was Rashanah, approaching the Gate of the Wall and looking ...he was Lohreen discussing the site where ... he was digging the ground,pushing the heavy cart, lying on the pelt of animals, demolishing thebuilding which would soon fall, instructing a child in balance.

  A dirt-caked street stretched before him by night, the stonesindividually cut and smooth with the passage of heavy feet. "Tomorrow wewill set out for the Region of Chalk while there is still time." Amind-voice from a Hirlaji hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, deadbut alive in the race-memory. Rynason could feel the whole personalitythere, in the memories, but he passed on.

  "Murba has said that the priests will take him."

  "There is no need for planting this year ... the soil is dry. There isno purpose."

  "The child's mind is ready for war."

  He felt Horng himself watching him, beside him or behind him ... nearby,anyway. The alien heard and saw with him, and stayed with him like aprotector. Rynason felt his presence warmly: the calm of the aliencontinued to relax him. Old leather mother-hen, he thought, and Horngbeside him seemed almost amused.

  Suddenly he was Tebron.

  Tebron Marl, prince in the Region of Mines, young and strong andambitious. Rynason caught and held those impressions; he felt themuscles ripple strangely through his body as Tebron stretched, felt thecold wind of the flat cut through his loose garment. It was night, andhe stood on the parapet of a heavy stone structure looking down acrossthe immense stretch of the Flat, spotted here and there by lights. Hecontrolled all this land, and would control more....

  He was Tebron again, marching across the Flat at the head of an army.Metal weapons hung at the sides of his men, crudely fashioned bludgeonsand jagged-edged swords, all quickly forged in the workshops of theRegion of Mines. The babble of mind voices swelled around him, fear andanger and boredom, dull resentment, and other emotions Rynason could notidentify. They were marching on the City of the Temple....

  He slipped sideways in Tebron's mind, and suddenly he was in the middleof the battle. There was dust all around, kicked up by the scufflingfeet of the huge warriors, and his breath came in gasps. Mind-voicesshouted and screamed but he paid no attention; he swung his bludgeonover his head with a ferocity that made it whistle with a low sound inthe wind. One of the defenders broke through the line around him, and hebrought the bludgeon smashing down at him before he could thrust withhis sword; the warrior fell to one side at the last moment and took theblow along one arm. He could feel the pain in his own mind, but heignored it. Before the warrior could bring up his sword again Tebroncrushed his head with the bludgeon, and the scream of pain in his ownhead disappeared. He heard the grunting and gasps of his own warriorsand the clash of bodies and weapons around him....

  The Hirlaji could not really be moving so quickly, Rynason t
hought; itmust be that to Tebron it seemed so. They were quiet, slow-movingcreatures. Or had they degenerated physically through the centuries?Still smelling the sweat of battle, he found Tebron's mind again.

  There was still fighting in the city, but it was far away now; he heardit with the back of his mind as he mounted the steps of the Temple.Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of the last of thepriest-king forces; he was not needed there. He had, to all intents,controlled the city since the night before, and had slept in the palaceitself. Now it was time for the Temple.

  He mounted the heavy, steep steps slowly, three guards at his back andthree in front of him. The priests would be gone from the Temple, butthere might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they wouldbe armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beamsthat could disintegrate anything in their path. They would be dangerous.Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own mencould remain outside to take care of them while he went in.

  He stopped halfway up the steps and lifted his head to gaze up at theTemple walls rising above him. They were solid stone, built in thefashion of the Old Ones ... smooth-faced except for the carvings abovethe entrance itself. They too were in the traditional style, copiedexactly from the older buildings which had been built thousands of yearsago, before the Hirlaji had even developed telepathy. The symbols of Kor... so now at last he saw them.

  Tomorrow he would effect a mass-linkage of minds and broadcast hisorders for reconstruction. That would mean staying up all nightpreparing the communication, for it was impossible to maintain completeplanet-wide linkage for too long and Tebron had many plans. Perhaps itwould be possible to find a way to extend the duration of mass-linkagesif the science quest could be pushed forward fast enough.

  But that was tomorrow's problem--today, right now, it was right that heenter the Temple. It was not only symbolic of his assumption of power,but necessary religiously: every new ruler leader within the memory ofthe race had received sanction from Kor first.

  A momentary echo-whisper of another mind touched his, and he whirled tohis right to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had beenunable to successfully shield his thoughts. Tebron dropped to the groundand sent a quick, cool order to his own guards: "Kill him." The heavy,dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to shrink back furtherinto the shadows. He was trapped.

  But not unarmed. As he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to oneside Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass overhis shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And thenthe guards were on the warrior in the shadows.

  They had brought down several of the temple-guards the night before, andcommandeered their weapons. In a matter of moments this one fell too,his head and most of his trunk gone. One of the warriors shoved thehalf-carcass down the stairs, and bent forward at the knees to pick uphis fallen weapon.

  So now they had all fourteen of them; if any more of the temple-guardsremained they could be dealt with easily. Tebron rose from the steps andwished momentarily that those weapons could be duplicated; if his wholearmy could be equipped with them.... But after today that would probablybe unnecessary; the entire planet was his now.

  He walked up the last few steps and stepped into the shadows of theTemple of Kor....

  The walls melted around him and Rynason felt his mind wrenchedpainfully. There was a screaming all through him, thin and high,blotting out the contact he had held with Tebron's mind. It was Horng'sscream, beside him, overpowering. Terror washed over him; he tried tofight it but he couldn't. The shadows of the walls twisted and faded,Tebron's thoughts disappeared, and all that remained was the screamingand the fear, like a mouth open wide against his ear and hot breathshouting into him. He felt his stomach turn and nausea and vertigo threwhim panting out of Tebron's mind.

  Yet Horng was still beside him in the darkness, and as the echoes fadedhe felt him there ... alien, but calm. There had been fear in this hugealien mind, but it had disappeared almost immediately with the breakingof the connection with Tebron. All that remained in Horng's mind now wasa dull quietness.

  Rynason felt a rueful grin on his face, and he said, perhaps aloud andperhaps not, "You haven't forgotten what happened here, old leather. Thememories are there, all right."

  From Horng's mind came a slow rebuilding of the fear that he had justexperienced, but it subsided. And as it did Rynason probed again intohis mind, searching quickly for that contact he had just lost. He couldalmost feel Tebron's mind, began to see the darkness forming thewall-shadows, when again there was a blast of the terror and he felt hismind reeling back from those memories. The screaming filled his mind andbody and this time he felt Horng himself blocking him, pushing him back.

  But there was no need for that; the fear was not Horng's alone. Rynasonfelt it too, and he retreated before its onslaught with an overpoweringneed to preserve his own sanity.

  When the darkness subsided Rynason became aware of himself still sittingon the stone bench, sweat drenching his body. Horng sat before him inthe same position he had been in when they had started; it was as ifnothing had happened at all. Rynason wearily raised one hand andmotioned to Mara to break the linkage.

  She switched off the telepather and gingerly removed the wires from hishead, frowning worriedly at him. But she waited for him to speak.

  He grinned at her after a moment and said, "It was a bit rough in there.We couldn't break through."

  She was removing the wires from Horng, who sat unmoving, staring dullyover Rynason's shoulder at the wall behind him. "You should have seenyourself when you were under," she said. "I wanted to break theconnection before, but I wasn't sure...."

  Rynason sat forward and flexed the muscles of his shoulders and back.They ached as though they had been tense for an hour, and his stomachwas still knotted tight.

  "There's a real block there," he said. "It's like a thousand screamingbirds flapping in your face. When you get that far into his mind, youfeel it too." He sat staring down at his feet, exhausted mentally andphysically.

  She sat on the bench and looked closely at him. "Anything else?"

  "Yes--Horng. At the end, the second time I went in, I could feel him,not only fighting me, but ... hating me." He looked up at her. "Can youimagine actually feeling him, right next to you in your mind like youwere one person, hating you?"

  Across from them, the huge figure of the alien slowly stood up andlooked at them for several long seconds, then turned and left thebuilding.