After some hours he found a wood. Because it was easier going downhill, he went downhill through the wood, and after a while there was a trodden path. He followed the path and came to a hut, perched below some rocks beside a river flowing in a small chasm. The hut was old, but well made and quite deserted. However, there were clay pots and leather bags inside containing crudely preserved food – dry tasteless stuff, but it would keep a person alive.
Why not? thought Five. This was as good a place as any.
“I think Five’s come to grief too,” Reigner Three said, standing with both hands planted on the glassy table. “Though it’s hard to tell. All his instruments cut out the moment he went through the Albion portal.”
“The strongest possible instruments too, you can be sure,” Reigner One remarked. “It’s certain that Five keeps stuff for himself that he never lets the rest of us see. Dear me. Either I’d forgotten how strong that bannus field is, or it’s found some way of augmenting itself. I wonder how.”
“Yes, but Five’s had his two days,” Reigner Three said impatiently, “and he’s not been in touch. What are we going to do?”
Reigner One put his hands on the arms of his chair and slowly heaved himself up. “Nothing for it, my dear. We two have to go ourselves.”
Reigner Three’s large and beautiful eyes narrowed as she watched him get up. “You really mean that, don’t you? There must be quite some danger if you bestir yourself”
“There is quite some danger,” said Reigner One. He wheezed a bit with the effort of standing. “I’ve suspected for some time that the bannus is challenging me – personally. By its own ridiculous standards, it’s quite right to do so of course – though I thought I’d put a stop to its silly games centuries ago. Drat the thing! I shall have to get a massage and some more youth-serum before we can get going.”
“But what is the danger?” demanded Reigner Three.
“The confidence of the thing mostly,” wheezed Reigner One. “It’s not any kind of idiot machine, you know. They used half-life techniques making that bannus that I’d give my ears to understand. You can take it from me that it’s very smart indeed. If it thinks it can challenge me and win, then you and I had better get there before it spreads its field any wider. Two touched on the other real danger. I haven’t dared think of that yet. You run along now and get some suitable clothes and a course of Earth-talk. I shall be ready by this evening.”
“What happens to Homeworld if we both leave?” Reigner Three asked, thinking of the other great mercantile Houses. All of them had a smattering of Reigner blood and some were known to be prepared to move against the House of Balance at the slightest sign of weakness. “Hadn’t I better stay here? There’s no point in destroying the bannus and then coming home to find we’ve been taken over.”
Reigner One chuckled. “Nice try, my dear. But I’m afraid there’s no help for you – you’ll have to go slumming on Earth. I need you there. I’ll make sure the hostile Houses can’t give any trouble while we’re gone, never fear. Now you run along.”
Reigner One had this way of giving out information only by driblets, Reigner Three thought angrily, stepping into the pearly blue haze of the gravity shaft. “The basement,” she ordered it. “Clothing for subject worlds.”
Cunning old Orm Pender, Reigner One, had kept power for centuries by not telling anyone quite enough. He obviously knew far more about this bannus than he had ever told anyone. If he had told Two, Four or Five a bit more, the crisis would probably be over by now – but Reigner Three had a shrewd suspicion he had not told them on purpose. It was quite likely he had seized the opportunity to get rid of all three. Secretive old—! Reigner Three was not to be got rid of so lightly. In fact, she would have arranged to do without Orm Pender long ago, if she had not been fairly sure that she and the other three would cease to be Reigners the moment anything happened to Reigner One. He had arranged it like that on purpose. Reigner Three, who had once loved Reigner One, had been sick of him for several lifetimes now.
The gravity shaft set her gently down in the basement. She stepped out into dingy caves of dark foundation-crete. How dreary! she thought.
Vierran looked up from a gripping book-cube about marriage customs on Iony, and was astonished to see the tall dark lady picking her way among the racks of hanging clothes. Reigner Three, of all people! Vierran jumped up in a hurry. “How can I help you, ma’am?”
“Who are you?” asked Reigner Three. This bannus crisis had made things so hectic in the House of Balance that she had clean forgotten the clothes store would be manned by a human.
“Vierran, ma’am, House of Guaranty,” Vierran answered sedately. You did not get on the wrong side of Reigner Three if you could help it – particularly not if you were female.
Yes, of course. Reigner Three remembered now. The one with the unwise sense of humour, that Four had called a nasty bit of work. The girl looked too clever by half – well, she was from a brainy House, of course. Pity she hadn’t inherited the usual Guaranty good looks. Those prominent cheekbones and that wriggly hair made her look quite a little freak. Vierran barely came up to Three’s shoulder, and she was not slender. Must get her looks from whoever the mother is, Three supposed. Not a beauty.
“I want some Earth clothing, Vierran.”
Vierran, with considerable effort, managed to stop her surprise from showing on her face. Reigner Three going to Earth now! What was going on in that back alley of the universe that required the personal attention of all the Reigner Heads? Whatever it was, Vierran was beginning to suspect it had done for the Servant, or he would have been back by now to return that camel coat and chat to her again. Vierran’s lips were pressed together hard as she turned to the control panel and directed it to swing the Earth section out of theta-space. Again. For the fourth time in ten days.
“This way, ma’am.” She led the way to the correct vault, wondering which – if any – of the clothes stored there could possibly be worn by someone as stylish as Reigner Three.
Reigner Three swayed elegantly after Vierran, considering her. Didn’t she ever get her robot to style that hair of hers? But—But. Reigner Three recalled that this girl was said to be the only person in the House of Balance that the Servant ever talked to. Hard to believe. Three herself kept out of the Servant’s way like everyone else, unless she had to give him orders. That death’s-head face of his gave her the creeps. But it might be worth finding out what Vierran could tell her about him.
“You must see our Servant fairly often,” she said to Vierran’s back.
“Mordion Agenos,” said Vierran.
“Who?” said Reigner Three.
“Mordion Agenos,” said Vierran, “is the Servant’s name. Yes. He comes down here for clothes whenever he’s sent to a subject world, ma’ am.”
She went into the vault and swung out the nearest rack of ladies’ clothes. No, they were not ladies’ clothes – females’ clothes, women’s clothes, wives’ clothes, working girls’ clothes maybe, but nothing for a great lady like Reigner Three, she thought, pushing them along the rack rather desperately. But she would really have loved to hand Reigner Three the rayon pinafore dress printed with shrill green and red apples, or the electric-blue leotard, and assure Reigner Three with a perfectly straight face that these were the very latest of Earth fashions.
Unfortunately, one did not play jokes on Reigner Three, not if one did not want to be terminated. She was said to have no sense of humour at all. And she also had a name for hating women. Vierran had it on good authority – her father’s spy network, in fact – that it was because of Reigner Three that the Reigner Organisation did not employ a single woman in any of its offices, even on the inner worlds. A very formidable lady, Reigner Three.
“Hm,” said Reigner Three, surveying the pinafore dress, the leotard and the other clothes on the rack. “So the Servant talks to you when he comes here for clothes?”
Vierran looked at Reigner Three looking at the leotard and hurriedly pu
lled forward another rack. “Only when I talk to him, ma’am. I’ve never known Mordion Agenos start a conversation himself, ma’am. These clothes on this rack are slightly better quality, ma’am.”
Reigner Three surveyed tweeds and moth-eaten furs and her lovely face was stony. “How are these clothes obtained, Vierran?”
“The House of Balance has an arrangement with various charitable organisations on Earth, ma’am,” Vierran explained. “They send us all the donated clothing they can’t dispose of – Oxfam, the Salvation Army, Save the—”
“I see,” said Reigner Three. “Why does the Servant never start a conversation?”
“I thought at first, ma’am,” Vierran replied, “that his training forbade it, but I’ve come to think that it’s because he is sure that everyone hates him.”
“These clothes are all hideous,” said Reigner Three. “You must revise your method of obtaining them. But everyone does hate the Servant, Vierran. Have you any idea what his job is?”
“I was told,” said Vierran, with her face as stony as Reigner Three’s, “that he kills people on Reigners’ orders, ma’am.”
“Precisely.” Reigner Three slammed the dowdy clothes along the rail. “He’s a sort of human robot, designed to obey our orders. I’m surprised he has anything to say for himself. Those years of training were supposed to have left him without any personality at all. But I imagine you’ve no idea – a child like you – what it takes to train a Servant.”
A slight pinkness made its way into Vierran’s expressionless face. “I’m twenty-one, ma’am. I’ve heard a little about the training, ma’am. They say there were six children in training and Mordion Agenos was the only one who survived it.”
This was news to Reigner Three. Here was Reigner One being secretive again! She slammed the tweeds along the rail the other way. “I believe so. Haven’t you a solido or cube of Earth fashions I can look at? None of these things will do.”
“Well—”Vierran said doubtfully, “cube vision hasn’t got out to Earth yet, ma’am. They only have two-d on tape and films so far.”
“Are you sure?” Oh what a barbarous place! Reigner Three thought.
“Yes, ma’am. I always make a close study of any world I have clothes for.” And so did the Servant, Vierran thought. This was what they mostly talked about. The customs of other worlds were so odd. Last time the Servant had lounged in, with that confident, strolling walk that was really so hesitant if you watched it closely, they had talked of Paris, New York, Africa, handshakes, fossil fuel, flint – and of course camels.
Vierran tried not to let her face show the grin growing inside it at the memory. Mordion Agenos stood with a bundle of inner clothing over one arm, staining the shadows of the vault scarlet with his blood-red uniform, surveying a row of overcoats. “What is a camel?” he had asked. And Vierran had answered, “A horse designed by a committee.” Mordion had thought, and then asked, “Do you think of me as a camel then?” Vierran had been both embarrassed and confused. Mordion was so sharp. He had indeed been designed by a committee of Reigners, and Vierran did somehow equate him with a horse. But she saw it was a joke – she hoped. “Choose the camel coat, then,” she had dared him. And he had.
“Have you got any kind of Earth pictures?” Reigner Three demanded.
“Er – only this, ma’am.” Vierran rummaged in an alcove and found her a slightly tattered copy of – no, Teenage Fashion wouldn’t do, nor would New Woman – ah! here we are! – Vogue.
Reigner Three slipped the jade nailshields off her thumb and forefinger and quickly turned the pages. “This is slightly better. Some of these queer outfits are almost elegant. But about our Servant. Perhaps you wouldn’t talk to him either if you knew just how many people he’s killed.”
“Not at all, ma’am,” Vierran answered. Her voice did not exactly change, but there was emotion at the back of it – which she tried to suppress and annoyingly couldn’t – as she said, “I’ve made a complete list of every termination.”
“Dear, dear!” said Reigner Three, detecting the emotion. “There’s no accounting for tastes, is there? I always think those terminations account for this Servant’s singularly horrible smile. Don’t you?”
“It could do,” said Vierran. She watched Reigner Three go back to Vogue and tried not to clench her fists. The high point of her every conversation with Mordion came when she had induced him to give that smile of his. Usually the smile came quite naturally. But this time Mordion had been grave. Something about this particular mission worried him. A precognition, perhaps. People always said the Servants had near-Reigner powers and foresight was one of those.
In the end, Vierran was reduced to saying to him, “Smile!” Suddenly. Just like that. Mordion had blinked at her, taken aback, and only produced the slightest vestige of his usual smile. She could see him thinking he had annoyed or depressed her by calling himself a camel. “No, no!” Vierran had told him. “It’s got nothing to do with camels! Smile properly!” At that, Mordion’s eyebrow lifted and he did smile, quite amazingly, full of amusement. And it had enchanted Vierran, just as it always did.
“Right,” said Reigner Three, handing back the Vogue. “Now, I’m going to look through all these racks myself. Pull all the racks out.”
Vierran did so, quietly and efficiently, and a little like a robot. Reigner Three, with equal efficiency, began a swift collection of garments, dumping each one in Vierran’s arms as she chose it. You had to hand it to Reigner Three, Vierran thought, looking down at the growing pile. She did have a flair for clothes. Every one of these was right.
Reigner Three had a flair for finding what she wanted in other matters too. As she moved along the racks, she considered what Vierran had said and, more importantly, the way Vierran had said it. She knew they did badly need some extra, unexpected weapon against the Servant – something to cut down the danger from him at least and leave them room to manoeuvre against the bannus. There was danger from the Servant, and it was probably acute. Reigner One never used words like that unless he meant them. And Vierran might just be what they needed to keep the Servant docile long enough to be stassed.
She went back to Vierran. “I’ll send a robot down for these clothes and get them copied in wearable materials,” she said. “What do Earth people use to carry clothes? Do they have grav-hoists?”
“Suitcases, ma’am,” Vierran told her. “Earth hasn’t discovered anti-gravity yet.”
Reigner Three turned her eyes up. “Great Balance! What a hole! Show me suitcases.”
Vierran put the heap of clothes down on a work surface and fetched out suitcases. Reigner Three disparaged each one as it appeared as inelegant, or clumsy, or too small. At length, with a sigh, she chose the largest. “I’ll have that copied in some colour I can bear. Give it all to my robot. Then find yourself Earth clothes too. I shall need you to come with me as my maid.”
Vierran was astounded – and scared. “But – but what about my job here, ma’am?”
“I’ll tell the housekeeper to put in a robot, temporarily,” said Three. “Pull yourself together, girl. You’ll have time to take a language course while they’re making my clothes, but only if you don’t stand around gaping. I want you to meet me at the portal this evening as soon as I page you. Don’t dawdle. Neither Reigner One nor I like to be kept waiting.”
Reigner One going too! As Three went up in the gravity shaft, Vierran sank down on a pile of unsorted clothing, trying to adjust to this sudden change. From being a menial to being a pawn, in one giddy step, she told herself. There was no doubt that something very big was going on. Vierran did not fool herself that Reigner Three had ordered her to Earth just for the colour of her eyes. No, she was to be a pawn in something – the Great Balance alone knew what. But Vierran found she was more scared than ever, and worried on her own account now, as well as on the Servant’s.
As soon as Three’s robot had been and gone, Vierran rushed to the basement communicator and requested an outside line. Whe
n she had it, she pressed the symbols for her cousin Siri with fierce speed. Siri was probably at work – Vierran hoped – but she kept her finger on the please trace pad just in case.
To her relief, Siri looked up wearily from a pile of solidos, and grinned when she saw it was Vierran calling. “I was afraid it was your father, coming on the line to blast me,” Siri said. “We’ve a right mess going. None of the Earth flint consignments came through and almost every House is screaming for a bridging loan. I’ve got us almost as overextended as they are, just trying to cover the urgent ones.”
Vierran might have been sitting at that desk, coping with that selfsame mess, had she not been ordered to the House of Balance to do menial work for the biggest firm of all. Not that she grudged Siri. Working for Father was not a bed of roses, and it could equally well have been Siri who had to work in the House of Balance. Neither of them had brothers or sisters. They had known from their childhood that one of them was going to have to serve the Reigners.
“Never mind,” Vierran’s father had said, when the request came for Vierran and not Siri. “House of Guaranty can use a source of inside information. Think of it as doing your bit against the Reigners – and I’ll get you out of it as soon as I can.”
Vierran was glad to do her bit, as Father put it. She had for a long time known – without being actually told – that her father was high up among those working secretly to overthrow the House of Balance. And the sooner they did it the better, in Vierran’s opinion. She had felt quite honoured and almost excited to be trusted this much – particularly when her father insisted on making certain plans for emergencies. But as the only way she could legally remove from the House of Balance was by contracting a marriage with someone outside the Reigner Organisation, she could not see her father getting her out of it quickly. She had been resigned to dreary years in the basement. Now suddenly everything was changed and it was time to call on the emergency arrangement.
She tried to keep the shake out of her voice as she said to Siri, “Just listen to this – I’ve been ordered to go to Earth!” She watched Siri’s face sharpen as Siri connected this news with the flint crisis. “Three and One are going there now. I’m going as Three’s maid.”