That night he departed for Meld XVII where he sought out the surgeon who had altered his features after his flight from sacked Zonnigog. He requested certain internal modifications. The surgeon was reluctant, saying the operation was a risky one, very difficult, and entailed a fifty percent chance of total failure, but Herndon was stubborn.
It cost him twenty-five thousand stellors, nearly all the money he had, but he considered the investment a worthy one. He returned to Borlaam the next day. A week had elapsed since his departure.
He presented himself at Moaris Keep, resumed his duties, and once again spent the night with the Lady Moaris. She told him that she had wangled a promise from her husband and that he was soon to be invited to court. Moaris had not questioned her motives, and she said the invitation was a certainty.
Some days later a message was delivered to Barr Herndon of Zonnigog. It was in the hand of the private secretary to Moaris, and it said that the Lord Moaris had chosen to exert his patronage in favor of Barr Herndon and that Herndon would be expected to pay his respects to the Seigneur Krellig.
The invitation from the Seigneur came later in the day, borne by a resplendent Toppidan footman, commanding him to present himself at the court reception the following evening on pain of displeasing the Seigneur. Herndon exulted. Now he had attained the pinnacle of Borlaamese success; he was to be allowed into the presence of the sovereign. This was the culmination of all his planning.
He dressed in the court robes that he had purchased weeks before for just such an event—robes that had cost him more than a thousand stellors, sumptuous with inlaid precious gems and rare metals. He visited a tonsorial parlor and had an artificial beard affixed in the fashion of many courtiers who disliked growing beards but who desired to wear them at ceremonial state functions. He was bathed and combed, perfumed, and otherwise prepared for his debut at court. He also made certain that the surgical modifications performed on him by the Meldian doctor would be effective when the time came.
The shadows of evening dropped. The moons of Borlaam rose, dancing brightly across the sky. The evening fireworks display cast brilliant light through the winter sky, signifying that this was the birth month of Borlaam’s Seigneur.
Herndon sent for the carriage he had hired. It arrived, a magnificent four-tube model bright with gilt paint, and he left his shabby dwelling place. The carriage soared into the night sky; twelve minutes later it descended in the courtyard of the Grand Palace of Borlaam, that monstrous heap of masonry that glowered down at the capital city from the impregnable vantage point of the Hill of Fire.
Floodlights illuminated the Grand Palace. Another man might have been stirred by the imposing sight; Herndon merely felt an upwelling of anger. Once his family had lived in a palace, too—not of this size, to be sure, for the people of Zonnigog were modest and unpretentious in their desires. But it had been a palace all the same until the armies of Krellig razed it.
He dismounted from his carriage and presented his invitation to the haughty Seigneurial guards on duty. They admitted him after checking to see that he carried no concealed weapons, and he was conducted to an antechamber in which he found the Lord Moaris.
“So you’re Herndon,” Moaris said speculatively. He squinted and tugged at his beard.
Herndon compelled himself to kneel. “I thank you for the honor your Grace bestows upon me this night.”
“You needn’t thank me,” Moaris grunted. “My wife asked for your name to be put on my invitation list. But I suppose you know all that. You look familiar, Herndon. Where have I seen you before?”
Presumably Moaris knew that Herndon had been employed in his own service. But he merely said, “I once had the honor of bidding against you for a captive proteus in the slave market, milord.”
A flicker of recognition crossed Moaris’s seamed face, and he smiled coldly. “I seem to remember,” he said.
A gong sounded.
“We mustn’t keep the Seigneur waiting,” said Moaris. “Come.”
Together they went forward to the Grand Chamber of the Seigneur of Borlaam.
Moaris entered first, as befitted his rank, and took his place to the left of the monarch, who sat on a raised throne decked with violet and gold. Herndon knew protocol; he knelt immediately.
“Rise,” the Seigneur commanded. His voice was a dry whisper, feathery-sounding, barely audible and yet commanding all the same. Herndon rose and stared levelly at Krellig.
The monarch was a tiny man, dried and fleshless; he seemed almost to be a humpback. Two beady, terrifying eyes glittered from a wrinkled, world-weary face. Krellig’s lips were thin and bloodless, his nose a savage slash, his chin wedge-shaped.
Herndon let his eyes rove. The hall was huge, as he had expected; vast pillars supported the ceiling, and rows of courtiers flanked the walls. There were women, dozens of them: the Seigneur’s mistresses, no doubt.
In the middle of the hall hung suspended something that looked to be a giant cage completely cloaked in thick draperies of red velvet. Some pet of the Seigneur’s probably lurked within: a vicious pet, Herndon theorized, possibly a Villidonian gyrfalcon with honed talons.
“Welcome to the court,” the Seigneur murmured.
“You are the guest of my friend Moaris, eh?”
“I am, sire,” Herndon said. In the quietness of the hall his voice echoed cracklingly.
“Moaris is to provide us all with some amusement this evening,” remarked the monarch. The little man chuckled in anticipatory glee. “We are very grateful to your sponsor, the Lord Moaris, for the pleasure he is to bring to us this night.”
Herndon frowned. He wondered obscurely whether he was to be the source of amusement. He stood his ground unafraid; before the evening had ended, he himself would be amused at the expense of the others.
“Raise the curtain,” Krellig commanded.
Instantly two Toppidan slaves emerged from the corners of the throne room and jerked simultaneously on heavy cords that controlled the curtain over the cage. Slowly the thick folds of velvet lifted, revealing, as Herndon had suspected, a cage.
There was a girl in the cage.
She hung suspended by her wrists from a bar mounted at the roof of the cage. She was naked; the bar revolved, turning her like an animal trussed to a spit. Herndon froze, not daring to move, staring in sudden astonishment at the slim, bare body dangling there.
It was a body he knew well.
The girl in the cage was the Lady Moaris.
Seigneur Krellig smiled benignly; he murmured in a gentle voice, “Moaris, the show is yours, and the audience awaits. Don’t keep us waiting.”
Moaris slowly moved toward the center of the ballroom floor. The marble under his feet was brightly polished and reflected him; his boots thundered as he walked.
He turned, facing Krellig, and said in a calm, controlled tone, “Ladies and gentlemen of the Seigneur’s court, I beg leave to transact a little of my domestic business before your eyes. The lady in the cage, as most of you, I believe, are aware, is my wife.”
A ripple of hastily hushed comment was emitted by the men and women of the court. Moaris gestured, and a spotlight flashed upward, illuminating the woman in the cage.
Herndon saw that her wrists were cruelly pinioned and that the blue veins stood out in sharp relief against her pale arms. She swung in a small circle as the bar above her turned in its endless rotation. Beads of sweat trickled down her back and stomach, and the harsh, sobbing intake of her breath was audible in the silence.
Moaris said casually, “My wife has been unfaithful to me. A trusted servant informed me of this not long ago: she has cheated me several times with no less a personage than an obscure member of our household, a groom or a lackey or some other person. When I questioned her, she did not deny this accusation. The Seigneur”—Moaris bowed in a t
hroneward direction—“has granted me permission to chastise her here, to provide me with greater satisfaction and you with a moment of amusement.”
Herndon did not move. He watched as Moaris drew from his sash a glittering little heat gun. Calmly the nobleman adjusted the aperture to minimum. He gestured; a side of the cage slid upward, giving him free target.
He lifted the heat gun.
Flick!
A bright tongue of flame licked out, and the girl in the cage uttered a little moan as a pencil-thin line was seared across her flanks.
Flick!
Again the beam played across her body. Flick! Again. Lines of pain were traced across her breasts, her throat, her knees, her back. She revolved helplessly as Moaris amused himself, carving line after line along her body with the heat ray. It was only with an effort that Herndon held still. The members of the court chuckled as the Lady Moaris writhed and danced in an effort to escape the inexorable lash of the beam.
Moaris was an expert. He sketched patterns on her body, always taking care that the heat never penetrated below the upper surface of the flesh. It was a form of torture that might endure for hours, until the blood bubbled in her veins and she died.
Herndon realized the Seigneur was peering at him. “Do you find this courtly amusement to your taste, Herndon?” Krellig asked.
“Not quite, sire.” A hum of surprise rose that such a newcomer to the court should dare to contradict the Seigneur. “I would prefer a quicker death for the lady.”
“And rob us of our sport?” Krellig asked.
“I would indeed do that,” said Herndon. Suddenly he thrust open his jeweled cloak; the Seigneur cowered back as if he expected a weapon to come forth, but Herndon merely touched a plate in his chest, activating the device that the Meldian had implanted in his body. The neuronic mesh functioned in reverse; gathering a charge of deadly force, it sent the bolt surging along Herndon’s hand. A bright arc of fire leaped from Herndon’s pointing finger and surrounded the girl in the cage.
“Barr!” she screamed, breaking her silence at last, and died.
Again Herndon discharged the neuronic force, and Moaris, his hands singed, dropped his heat gun.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” Herndon said as Krellig stared white-faced at him and the nobles of the court huddled together in fright. “I am Barr Herndon, son of the First Earl of Zonnigog. Somewhat over a year ago a courtier’s jest roused you to lay waste to your fief of Zonnigog and put my family to the sword. I have not forgotten that day.”
“Seize him!” Krellig shrieked.
“Anyone who touches me will be blasted with the fire,” Herndon said. “Any weapon directed at me will recoil upon its owner. Hold your peace and let me finish.
“I am also Barr Herndon, Second Steward to Lord Moaris, and the lover of the woman who died before you. It must comfort you, Moaris, to know that the man who cuckolded you was no mere groom but a noble of Zonnigog.
“I am also,” Herndon went on in the dead silence, “Barr Herndon the spacerogue, driven to take up a mercenary’s trade by the destruction of my household. In that capacity I became a smuggler of starstones, and”—he bowed—“through an ironic twist, found myself owing a debt of fealty to none other than you, Seigneur.
“I hereby revoke that oath of fealty, Krellig—and for the crime of breaking an oath to my monarch, I sentence myself to death. But also, Krellig, I order a sentence of death upon your head for the wanton attack upon my homeland. And you, Moaris—for your cruel and barbaric treatment of this woman whom you never loved, you must die, too.
“And all of you—you onlookers and sycophants, you courtiers and parasites, you, too, must die. And you, the court clowns, the dancing bears and captive lifeforms of far worlds, I will kill you, too, as once I killed a slave proteus—not out of hatred but simply to spare you from further torment.”
He paused. The hall was terribly silent; then someone to the right of the throne shouted, “He’s crazy! Let’s get out of here!”
He dashed for the great doors, which had been closed. Herndon let him get within ten feet of safety, then blasted him down with a discharge of life force. The mechanism within his body recharged itself, drawing its power from the hatred within him and discharging through his fingertips.
Herndon smiled at Lord Moaris, pale now. He said, “I’ll be more generous to you than you to your Lady. A quick death for you.”
He hurled a bolt of force at the nobleman. Moaris recoiled, but there was no hiding possible; he stood bathed in light for a moment, and then the charred husk dropped to the ground.
A second bolt raked the crowd of courtiers. A third Herndon aimed at the throne; the costly hangings of the throne area caught first, and Krellig half-rose before the bolt of force caught him and hurled him back dead.
Herndon stood alone in the middle of the floor. His quest was at its end; he had achieved his vengeance. All but the last: on himself, for having broken the oath he had involuntarily sworn to the Seigneur.
Life held no further meaning for him. It was odious to consider returning to a spacerogue’s career, and only death offered absolution from his oaths.
He directed a blazing beam of force at one of the great pillars that supported the throne room’s ceiling. It blackened, then buckled. He blasted apart another of the pillars, and the third.
The roof groaned; after hundreds of years the tons of masonry were suddenly without support. Herndon waited, then smiled in triumph as the ceiling hurtled down at him.
THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN
Originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, November 1958.
Since I was raised from earliest infancy to undertake the historian’s calling, and since it is now certain that I shall never claim that profession as my own, it seems fitting that I perform my first and last act as a historian.
I shall write the history of that strange and unique woman, the mother of my thirty brothers and myself, Miss Donna Mitchell.
She was a person of extraordinary strength and vision, our mother. I remember her vividly, seeing her with all her sons gathered round her in our secluded Wisconsin farmhouse on the first night of summer, after we had returned to her from every part of the country for our summer’s vacation. One-and-thirty strapping sons, each one of us six feet one inch tall, with a shock of unruly yellow hair and keen, clear blue eyes, each one of us healthy, strong, well nourished, each one of us twenty-one years and fourteen days old—one-and-thirty identical brothers.
Oh, there were differences between us, but only we and she could perceive them. To outsiders, we were identical; which was why, to outsiders, we took care never to appear together in groups. We ourselves knew the differences, for we had lived with them so long.
I knew my brother Leonard’s cheekmole—the right cheek it was, setting him off from Jonas, whose left cheek was marked with a flyspeck. I knew the faint tilt of Peter’s chin, the slight oversharpness of Dewey’s nose, the florid tint of Donald’s skin. I recognized Paul by his pendulous earlobes, Charles by his squint, Noel by the puckering of his lower lip. David had a blue-stubbled face, Mark flaring nostrils, Claude thick brows.
Yes, there were differences. We rarely confused one with another. It was second nature for me to distinguish Edward from Albert, George from Philip, Frederick from Stephen. And Mother never confused us.
She was a regal woman, nearly six feet in height, who even in middle age had retained straightness of posture and majesty of bearing. Her eyes, like ours, were blue; her hair, she told us, had once been golden like ours. Her voice was a deep, mellow contralto; rich, firm, commanding, the voice of a strong woman. She had been professor of biochemistry at some Eastern university (she never told us which one, hating its name so) and we all knew by heart the story of her bitter life and of our own strange birth.
“I had a the
ory,” she would say. “It wasn’t an orthodox theory, and it made people angry to think about it, so of course they threw me out. But I didn’t care. In many ways that was the most fortunate day of my life.”
“Tell us about it, Mother,” Philip would invariably ask. He was destined to be a playwright; he enjoyed the repetition of the story whenever we were together.
She said:
“I had a theory. I believed that environment controlled personality, that given the same set of healthy genes any number of different adults could be shaped from the raw material. I had a plan for testing it—but when I told them, they discharged me. Luckily, I had married a wealthy if superficial-minded executive, who had suffered a fatal coronary attack the year before. I was independently wealthy, thanks to him, and free to pursue independent research, thanks to my university discharge. So I came to Wisconsin and began my great project.”
We knew the rest of the story by heart, as a sort of litany.
We knew how she had bought a huge, rambling farm in the flat green country of central Wisconsin, a farm far from prying eyes. Then, how on a hot summer afternoon she had gone forth to the farm land nearby, and found a field hand, tall and brawny, and to his great surprise seduced him in the field where he worked.
And then the story of that single miraculous zygote, which our mother had extracted from her body and carefully nurtured in special nutrient tanks, irradiating it and freezing it and irritating it and dosing it with hormones until, exasperated, it subdivided into thirty-two, each one of which developed independently into a complete embryo.
Embryo grew into foetus, and foetus into child, in Mother’s ingenious artificial wombs. One of the thirty-two died before birth of accidental narcosis; the remainder survived, thirty-one identical males sprung from the same egg, to become us.
With the formidable energy that typified her, Mother singlehandedly nursed thirty-one baby boys; we thrived, we grew. And then the most crucial stage of the experiment began. We were differentiated at the age of eighteen months, each given his own room, his own particular toys, his own special books later on. Each of us was slated for a different profession. It was the ultimate proof of her theory. Genetically identical, physically identical except for the minor changes time had worked on our individual bodies, we would nevertheless seek out different fields of employment.