“The two of you,” Elys said wearily, “can doubtless continue to argue for days. I, for one, have no wish to waste time sitting here listening to you. To my mind, Naul has no advantage over this Inyanga as far as I am concerned, and perhaps that is also true for Chief Councilor Grasty and Lord Yolyos, as well as Veep Turpyn. After all, on my own world I had never heard of either, which means I may have half the galaxy to cover before I reach home. Since we cannot guess where we are at present or in what relation we lie to either of your two worlds, it will be largely a matter of chance as it is.”
“Naul!”
“Inyanga!”
Almost in one voice Andas and Tsiwon answered.
Yolyos made a sound not far from a growl. “The lady is right. We have two tapes and six of us who may be bound in directly opposite directions. Neither of the ports you urge upon us has any great appeal as far as we are concerned. Therefore, let us let chance decide. Here—” He picked up one of the lidded basins in which their last meal had been delivered. Taking up the cloth that had served as a napkin, he wiped the basin out thoroughly.
“Now”—he offered it to Tsiwon, who held to the Naul tape as tightly as Andas did his—“drop it in, Arch Chief. You, too, Prince. We shall have a drawing—”
“And who shall do the drawing?” Tsiwon demanded before Andas could. “The lady has been with you, and you—you have been his constant companion.” He stabbed a finger at the Salariki and then at Andas.
“True enough.” Yolyos put the lid back on the basin. “Turpyn, can that robot doing the repairs be activated enough to pick up one of these? We cannot accuse it of any favoritism.”
“Yes, it can.” The Veep sounded almost eager, as if he had despaired of their ever coming to a decision. “Come—”
With all of them watching, Yolyos placed the basin, uncovered once more, where the robot stood. Andas and Tsiwon dropped in the tapes. One of the tentacle arms that had been so long raised in the air dropped the small tool it held and descended to the basin after Turpyn had made the adjustments he thought necessary. It raised jerkily again, one of the tapes gripped fast. The Veep hastened to kill the power, and Yolyos pried the selection loose.
“Inyanga,” he informed them.
Tsiwon could not say that the choice had not been fair. But his expression was sour, and he took the rejected tape, holding it as if with it in his possession he might still have a chance to use it.
They had no luggage, but they raided the food room, bringing with them all that was container-stored. The harsh dawn was breaking when they finally climbed the ramp into the ship and somehow fitted themselves into the life section. There was some relief from the crowding when Turpyn, Yolyos, and Andas went to the control cabin. Though he was no astrogator, the tall Salariki settled in that seat, while Andas took the stand-by officer’s seat just behind. Turpyn was in the pilot’s place. The prince watched the Veep slip in the tape and set the auto-pilot to take off.
The warning sounded, and they strapped in, ready for the force of the blast. When that came, Andas found the strain to be far worse than he expected. There was less cushioning that eased the passengers through this ordeal than on the usual flight.
He aroused groggily only to discover another difference between this and the transportation he had been used to. There was no artificial gravity in the drone, and he had to adjust to weightlessness. The ensuing period of time was a new form of torment.
Among the others, Yolyos, though he admitted he had not met this before, was the first to learn to handle himself in space. Tsiwon, Grasty, and Elys felt it the most. They had no drugs such as were normally issued, nor voyage-sleep, which was the final refuge of those who could not stand the physical discomfort.
The monotony itself was hard. Elys and Tsiwon stayed mostly in their bunks. The other four, though Grasty grunted and groaned and was as uncooperative as he dared be, took turns sharing the other two sleeping places. Time had no meaning. There was no ship’s timer to cut the crawling period into night and day. There was sleep, but one could only do so much of that, and Andas found it harder and harder.
Grasty’s eternal grumbling was so much a source of tension that at times Andas found himself having to use all his control not to turn on the man with a blow across his whining mouth. Turpyn, once he had taken them into space, said little or nothing. If he had the use of a bunk, he slept; if not, he slouched in one of the webbed seats of the control cabin, his eyes still closed for most of the time. Andas suspected that the Veep was engaged in thoughts he had no intentions of sharing with his ill-assorted companions.
There remained Yolyos, though the Salariki had his periods of deep silence also, and Andas respected them. But when he was willing to talk, he described a new way of life with barbed humor. Andas found himself babbling away on the state of an Imperial prince, with a tongue loose enough to shame him now and then. He had never believed that talkativeness was one of his faults, but now it seemed a major one.
“Have you thought”—the Salariki advanced a thorny question—“of what might have occurred during your absence, always supposing that our time differences are true?”
Andas had, though he did not want to. Suppose he had just vanished? Then they would have selected one of the other princes as heir. But what if there had been an android in his place—then he must prove substitution. There was a way. He glanced around, for they were in the control cabin. Neither Turpyn nor Grasty was present. He could not conceive of the Chief Councilor ever successfully playing eavesdropper. His wheezing at the slightest movement in free fall heralded his presence in a way that could not be concealed. Turpyn was another matter, but by swinging his web seat around a little, Andas could be sure that the Veep could not come swimming into the cabin without his knowledge.
As for Yolyos, somehow, with the alien Andas had not the least fear of being frank. The Salariki had no ties with the empire, and the more Andas saw of him, the more he found him the most congenial of this company. Also there was some pressure in Andas himself driving him to talk, as if by discussing a few concrete plans aloud, he could ensure their success.
“There is more to the Triple Towers than most of those who live within their walls know. Building has spread far beyond the original towers—like throwing a stone in a pool and watching the ripples run out. Only those ripples are walls, pavilions, gardens, halls, audience chambers beyond number. No one, I am certain, knows them in entirety. There would be surprises even for the Emperor. Parts have been closed from use for generations. There have been ill doings in the past, and portions have been shunned because of the tales of slayings and worse, for the royal clans have warred among themselves for generations. Some parts of our history have been deliberately suppressed or altered, so the truth is lost.
“But fragments are rediscovered. We do not inherit from father to son as in some monarchies, which is the simpler and more direct fashion. The son of an emperor’s sister, always providing that her marriage has been within a defined circle of the royal clans, may have first consideration. However, the sister of the present emperor has no sons, so the choice has reverted to the second line of sons. But it is the Emperor’s duty to select his heir in good time and see him crowned as throne-son before the families of the Hundred Names. Once that is done, to dispute his right is treason.
“I am one of three—four if you count Anakue, even though his line is illegitimate. It was a surprise to all when Akrama the Light-Holder summoned me. The Emperor waited a long time before he announced he would name his heir. There have been many urging a need on him—especially with Anakue leading what is close to rebel forces. Three years ago there was an uprising in Anakue’s name on Benin. It took four regiments of the Inner Guard to put that down. But he denied all knowledge of it, and there was no one, even among the Eyes and the Ears, to tie him to it.
“If I just disappeared, then it may be that Jassar or Yuor is now the Imperial Prince. That I must discover before I make myself known. Which means I shall
make use of the secret ways to learn what has happened.”
“Secret ways? You know such?”
“By luck I do. It is almost as if I have been prepared by fortune for what has happened. My father was a recluse. Shortly after my birth, within two years of his marriage to his cousin, the Princess Anneta, the daughter of a former emperor, he was injured in an explosion of his private flitter. He was one of the unfortunate few who cannot tolerate plasta-flesh transplants, and his face was terribly scarred without hope of recovery. My mother was very young and of such a nature that she had accepted her marriage as a duty that she took no joy in. Also she found disfigurement in others made her ill. Realizing this, my father forswore her with honor and withdrew to one of the remote and half-forgotten portions of the palace, such as I mentioned.
“His one pleasure in life became history, first of the empire, and then of the Triple Towers and the intrigues and secrets of the royal clans. Since he was second son to the Emperor, his position was secure, and he lived undisturbed.
“In fact, he was largely forgotten as the years passed, keeping his own small court apart from the general life of the Triple Towers. And I lived in that solitude, with nurses and then with tutors he selected, until I was of an age to be sent to Pav for warrior training. I never saw my father without a mask fashioned by one of the great artists of the court, which gave him a semblance of the handsome face he had once had. But I learned to know him as well as he would allow anyone to penetrate to his private world.
“Part of his training for me was the rediscovery of palace secrets. There were hidden ways within the walls, spy holes through which one might watch, even chambers with secret doors in which were stacked weapons of another time, or treasure. And he made me memorize each new one he discovered. I do not know how his passion for the strange research developed, but he was certain that such knowledge would be of benefit to him who knew it. And it finally brought about his own death.”
Andas no longer saw the Salariki’s face, the searching brilliant eyes. His attention was for a mind picture that had mercifully begun to dull a little now, but that he would never forget.
“How?” Yolyos asked. “Or is that something you do not wish to speak of?”
“For a time I could not. I know it, and one other—Hamnaki, who was my father’s personal servant. We—I had come back on leave from Pav—missed him all through one day. So at last we took torches and started hunting the ways. We found him in a newly discovered section, but it had been designed by some builder who was more suspicious of mind or had a greater and darker secret to hide, for there was a man trap set within. There was only the belief that he died instantly to comfort us. We got him out and said that he had died of a fever. Since no one any longer cared or remembered him much, was no question. They gave him a funeral of state as was his right and a lesser name-carving in the temple. Do you know, until I saw that in place, I had not even known my father had the right to wear the two plumes. He had won that during the pirate invasion of Darfur—but no one had ever told me.
“What he gave me—and he was right that it may be of the greatest importance now—was his knowledge of the ways. Let me get to Inyanga, to even the outermost wall of the Triple Towers, and I shall be able to discover what has happened.”
“And if Turpyn’s suspicions are true and an android is acting out your role?”
“Then I will learn enough to be able to present the Emperor with the truth.”
“Let us hope so.”
There sounded a sharp signal they could not mistake. The ship was about to pass out of hyper. They were that near to their journey’s end. Andas’s hands shook a little as he made fast his safety belt. Inyanga—they were home!
4
They landed. Andas aroused from the effects of a hard fin-in to see the visa-screen providing a view of what lay beyond the ship walls. But—
Not Inyanga!
At first he could not believe what he saw pictured there. They had not set down in any port. As the screen slowly changed to give them bit by bit a view of the surrounding land, he saw that there were the scars of deter rockets, yes, but old—no recent burns to show a recent visit.
The vegetation, which appeared a massively thick wall beyond the edge of the open land, differed in shade from that he knew. It was a lighter green, broken here and there with splotches of a pallid yellow.
Not Inyanga! Then the tape—why had the tape been listed wrongly? Andas had the same disoriented feeling he had had when he first came to his senses in that unknown prison.
“I can guess that this is not what you expected.” Yolyos’s voice broke through his bemusement.
“Yes. I—I never saw this before.”
“Instructive,” was the Salariki’s comment.
Instructive of what, wondered Andas. He could not have been mistaken—it had been the tape marked with the symbol of his home world that had landed them here. Perhaps—perhaps those had been purposely mislabeled to prevent the possibility of just such an escape as the storm had made possible for them! Perhaps it had landed them in an unknown port where they could be easily recaptured.
“Bait in a trap—” Either Yolyos had read his thoughts from some change in his expression, or the Salariki’s suspicions matched his. “If so, the one for Naul might also have delivered us here. But it would be of some value to know where ‘here’ is.”
He worked an arm out of the protective belting of his pilot’s seat and thumbed a button on the control board. Moments later the unaccented reply of the vocalizer reported atmosphere and gravity near to normal for at least two of them.
“We can survive. And we aren’t going to take off again until we know more about where our choices will land us.”
“They could all be for here—those tapes.” Andas voiced his suspicion.
“Ingenious.” Yolyos unlatched the protect-straps. “Worthy of a master of trade.” There was honest admiration in his voice. “If that is true, we can look forward to being collected—by someone—sometime. I would suggest we make that collection as difficult as possible. Have you noticed one thing—”
“That there are no recent ship-burns? No one has been here—for years maybe.”
“But at one time this field had been steadily visited. Yet”—Yolyos’s extended claw indicated the visa-screen—“if this was a regular port, where are the buildings? Beyond the burns, that looks like deep vegetation which has never been penetrated.”
“Fast growing, maybe.” But even fast-growing vegetation would have taken some years to swallow up all port buildings. In the first place, even at a small way station, the buildings were generally made of resistant-to-vegetation materials. Such a precaution was standard when they had to have buildings that could be erected with a minimum of effort on worlds differing greatly. Either the time since this port had been in use was so far in the past that the vegetation had finally conquered or there had never been any standard equipment here to begin with.
A semi-secret landing place—only one type of ship would use that. Jacks!
He said that and heard an answering rumble from Yolyos.
“And”—the Salariki put the finishing touch on danger—“the Guild has been known to make common cause with the Jacks.”
Normally the Jacks were the “peasants” of the crime confederation. They raided frontier worlds, selling the best of their loot to Guild fences. Now and then they were used by some Veep of the Guild for a project in which he needed easily discarded help.
“A Veep of the Guild!” Again Yolyos’s thoughts matched his. “Turpyn” growled the Salariki.
“Then he knew—about the tapes!”
They could handle Turpyn among them. Why, Andas could take him alone probably. Somehow they must choke some information out of him. Andas got to his feet, ready to seek out the Veep and begin the job at once. His furious disappointment was chilling to that cold rage notorious in the House of Kastor.
“The tapes—” As if unconsciously, the Salariki mo
ved between Andas and the ladder that would lead to his prey. “I am wondering about those tapes, Prince. A Veep of the Guild is a master at his craft. And I have seen Guild men who could lift a jeweled ring from a man’s thumb without his knowing it. It could be that your Inyanga tape landed somewhere else than in the autopilot—that Turpyn was able to substitute another.”
“He couldn’t have! I was watching while he did it.”
“As was I,” Yolyos agreed, “but I do not say that I can better any master in his own trade. And how many encounters with Guild experts have you had in the past, Prince?”
“None. But if he could do that—” Andas drew a deep breath. If Turpyn could so cheat while they watched him!
All those tales about the legendary exploits of the Guild! It was said that they bought up, or took by darker means, new inventions that even the Patrol could not counter. But Turpyn had been a prisoner, possessing nothing but his garments. He could not have worked any hallucinatory tricks on them—or could he? At that moment Andas’s belief in his own sense of sight, his own ability to outthink an opponent, was badly shaken.
“So we have two answers,” Yolyos continued. “Either those tapes were left as bait, perhaps all of them, in spite of their markings, set to deliver us here. Or else Turpyn, for reasons of his own, made the switch. He took no part in our debate over Naul and Inyanga. Perhaps he did not need to, seeing that he could have his own choice after all.”
There was a sharp ping of warning. Above the visa-screen flashed a signal.
“The ramp!” Andas jumped for the ladder. Someone was leaving the ship, had been ready to depart almost as soon as they completed fin-down. And he had no trouble in guessing who that was. They must prevent Turpyn from reaching whomever he had come to meet, get him first and learn what danger lay ahead.
Andas swung down at top speed, Yolyos so close behind that once or twice the Salariki’s heels almost bruised his fingers.