Her hand gripped his, tightened. "Earl. What would you say if I told you—" She broke off.

  Dumarest frowned. "You're trying to tell me something," he said. "Something important. Is it to do with the future?"

  "I know what is going to happen," she said dully. "But that isn't important. Earl, what would you say if I told you that I'd lied? That my real name isn't Kalin? That—"

  She fell silent as he rested his fingers on her lips. "Listen," he said. "The past is dead. Forget it."

  "But—"

  "There are no 'buts,' " he interrupted. "Don't tell me something you may later regret. Something I may not want to hear. I don't care what happened before I met you. As far as I'm concerned your past doesn't exist. I simply want you now, as you are, for always."

  "Thank you, Earl," she said quietly. "I wish—God how I wish that!"

  "Please." He lifted his hand and touched her cheek. It was wet with tears. "Please, darling, don't upset yourself. Don't do that."

  "Earl," she said. "I love you. I love you, but I know I'm going to lose you. I—"

  The flier banked, began to drop in a wide turn. The driver spoke without turning his head. "Klieg, my lady. Directly below."

  * * *

  Komis met them, helping the girl from the cabin, paying the driver, examining Dumarest with a single glance of his eyes. Green eyes like those of the girl, the driver, everyone else on the planet who had been reared from the pure strain. Eyes and hair and translucent skin. Peas from the same genetic pod.

  "You are welcome," said Komis and extended his hand. "May Klieg protect you during your stay."

  Dumarest gripped the proffered hand. "As I shall protect Klieg should the need arise."

  Komis widened his eyes in pleasure at the unexpected response. "You accept your obligations," he said. "I had not thought you to be aware of our customs."

  "I'm not," said Dumarest evenly. "But I have stayed in similar houses before." Stayed and fought when the need arose, and though here there was no need, the implication remained. A guest should be willing to aid those who gave him hospitality.

  "I'll have someone show you to your room," said Komis. "You probably wish to bathe and rest before the evening meal." He turned to the girl. "And now, my dear, we have much to discuss. I am sure that your friend will excuse us."

  She turned to Dumarest. "Earl. I—"

  "You have to go," he interrupted. "I understand. But remember that you don't have to worry. Not about anything." He smiled and kissed her and watched as she followed the Master of Klieg. Gold and white and flaming red. Bright and wonderful against the wood and stone of the house, the gray cobbles set in the ground of the yard. Then she vanished through a door and he turned to follow his guide.

  The water was hot, the soap plentiful, the bathroom a place of planked walls and plastic fittings with unguents and lotions in crystal jars. Dumarest bathed, sponged down his clothing and went to examine the house. To the landward side the yard held the hint of a stable-smell. Closer he caught the scent of baking bread, of smoke and leather and stored grain. Inside the dwelling he paused in the hall and examined the weapons hanging under the great beams of the roof. Spears and bows, axes and partisans, cross-hiked swords and curved daggers. Over the fireplace someone had set the crossed bills of dead threns. The table was marked and gouged with egotism and time, the wood glowing with wax, the names and insignia shadows flickering in the fading light of day.

  Home, he thought, Kalin was born here, ran through this very hall, perhaps, playing with her toys. Home.

  He turned and saw a dusty flame of scarlet, the pale face beneath the shadowing cowl. Light caught the seal emblazoned on the breast and turned it to glittering brilliance.

  Mede saw Dumarest and paused, watching. Dumarest frowned. A cyber? Here?

  Such men were usually to be found at the heart of things, the courts and centers of business where their influence would be the greatest, their services in most demand. Klieg was nothing more than a fortified manor. An overgrown farmhouse fitted with modern devices and housing a family together with servants and retainers. There was nothing really important or grand about the place. Certainly they couldn't afford the services of a cyber to advise them as to which crops to plant, what to sell and when.

  Dumarest stepped close to Mede, feeling his nerves tense, his hatred for the man and what he stood for rise in a surging wash of red. The Cyclan had cost him too much for him to easily forget.

  "An unusual place to find you, cyber," he said, masking his feelings. "Is there much to interest you on Solis?"

  "All things are of interest, my lord." Mede was smooth, politely emotionless as his eyes searched Dumarest's face. "Are you a member of this house?"

  "A guest." Dumarest was curt. The hall was no longer a place of comfort and imagining. The cyber had contaminated it by his presence. He walked past the immobile figure in the scarlet robe and down a short passage. It led to Komis' study. The door opened and Kalin stepped through.

  "Earl!"

  "Is something wrong?" She looked distraught. "Kalin. Tell me."

  "Nothing is wrong." Komis stood behind her, his eyes incredulous. "She is unharmed and will continue to be so. There will be no punishment for her desertion."

  "Punishment?" Dumarest stepped forward and faced the other man. "There will be no punishment," he said softly. "You are correct in that. It would not be wise to hurt the girl in any way."

  "Please, Earl!" She stepped before him, small hands hard against his chest. "You don't understand. There's no need to threaten. Komis wouldn't hurt me."

  "I do not think your friend was making threats," said the Master of Klieg. "I took it more in the nature of a prophecy. But she is right," he said to Dumarest. "You do not understand. You couldn't. Even I still have doubt and—" He broke off, looking baffled. "A man must believe the evidence of his senses. There is no way this girl could have known of the things she told me unless what she claims is true. Therefore I must believe her. Believe what she claims."

  Dumarest was curt. "And that is?"

  "That her name is Mallini Frenchi of Sard. That she came here five years ago, running away from her home and family to take up service with my house. That two years ago she deserted her post."

  "Is that all?" Dumarest smiled. "A name," he said. "What is in a name?"

  "Please, Earl," she whispered. "There is more."

  "I don't want to hear it."

  Komis stepped forward, face hard beneath the white skin, lips thinned so that he looked suddenly hard and cruel. "You must," he repeated. "Because this affects the house, the family of Klieg. The girl is not what you think. Her body is that of Mallini Frenchi but not her mind. That belongs to my sister, the Lady Keelan of Klieg. My sister who has not left her bed for more than seven years!"

  Chapter Thirteen

  DIMNESS WHICH BLURRED outline, a suspicion of a shape lying in the suspicion of a bed. Pipes and metering devices and a single green lamp which shone like a living emerald and told that life still lasted, the heart still beat, the body still functioned.

  After a fashion, of course. In its own, peculiar way.

  "Earl!"

  The voice was a rasping whisper without depth or emotion, a strained vibration which hung on the air like the gossamer web of a spider, light and frail, a quiver among the shadows, a ghost voice whispering ghost words.

  Dumarest leaned forward, eyes narrowed as he tried to penetrate the dark. "Yes?"

  "Earl! Please! They told you. I told you. You know that I am Kalin. The girl you said you loved."

  He hesitated. The girl was outside with Komis sitting on the stone bench facing the sea.

  "Remember Logis? Remember how we fled the ship and drifted in the sac? Remember how you bought our freedom from the slaver and how, for three days, we tasted Heaven. Three days and more. Earl. Much more. My darling, my dearest, my beloved! I love you. I love you. God help me, I love you!"

  A rail stood at the foot of the shadowed bed. Dumarest grasped it and felt the sweat bead his forehead as the ghost voice, rasping, horrible, stirred the air with things only Kalin could possibly know. Intimate things. Words and deeds which had sealed one to the other. He remembered the look of incredulity on Komis' face, the stunned acceptance of belief.

  "Seven years ago I was the beauty of Solis," whispered the voice. "I married a brilliant man. Brasque was a biochemist and life-technician, the best on Solis. On our honeymoon in the Soaring Hills our camp was attacked by some thren. We beat them off but in the flurry I was scratched. A minor wound, we thought, nothing to worry about. But a week later my arm began to swell. In another five days I couldn't walk. I have never walked since."

  "An infection," said Dumarest. "But surely antibiotics would have cured such a thing?"

  "Do you think Brasque didn't try? The disease was unique. A relatively minor infection was caused by bacteria carried by the thren. So much we discovered. But, here on Solis, we are the victims of ancestors who held a paranoids dream. Red hair was a sign of superiority, they claimed. And so they bred for the true color. Bred and inbred and inbred until we developed unsuspected weaknesses. The infection, harmless to you, to the majority on this planet, triggered off a terrible reaction. I say 'terrible,' because to me, that is what it was. I became—different. More than that. I became a thing of horror, a burden, a disgusting…"

  "Stop it!" Dumarest's hands clamped on the rail as he leaned forward. "Stop it!"

  A wet slobbering, a shifting, a waft of repellent odor. A mechanism clicked as it fed a tranquilizing solution into the blood. Another metered sedative. The rasping whisper blurred a little.

  "Brasque came back. Helped me. And, Earl, suddenly I was fit again. I could walk and talk and dance! I could see desire in the eyes of men. I could travel and taste the delights of the galaxy. What did it matter if I starved or begged or traveled Low? I was alive and free and every single second was paradise." The voice choked in a liquid gurgling. "Can you guess, my darling, how I felt? Can you ever guess?"

  Sitting blinded as men discussed his fate. Traveling in a hell of pain. Wondering what life had to offer and then, miraculously, he could see again!

  "Yes," said Dumarest tightly. "I can guess how you felt."

  "And love," she said. "Real love. Warm love. Your love, my dearest. You remember what you said? That it wouldn't matter how I looked, you would still love me? You remember that?"

  "I remember."

  "Then turn on the light," whispered the rasping gurgle. "Turn on the light—and see the real me."

  Triggered by the sonic command the room began to brighten with a pearly luster. Plates glowed in roof and walls, truglow plates which showed things as they really were, devoid of artifice and optical trickery. Dumarest looked at the thing on the bed.

  There was a head, bald, shining, creased like a mass of crumpled crepe, swollen to twice normal size. The eyes were thin glittering slits, the mouth a lipless gash and the chin was a part of the composite whole which was the neck.

  A sheet covered the body with its strange and alien protuberances. Pipes ran from beneath it and connected to quietly humming machines. Tanks and instruments completed the life-support installation.

  "Nice, isn't it?" The lips didn't move as the voice drifted weakly past them. "A metabolism run wild. Carcinoma barely controlled by extensive surgery and continuous medication. Seven years, Earl. Five of them utter hell."

  The metal of the rail bent beneath his hands. "Kalin!"

  "Yes, Earl, the woman you swore you loved. Not the eyes and skin and mane of hair but the real woman. The mind and soul and personality. The things which loved you, Earl, those things are here. The rest is a pretty shell. Which did you love, Earl? The brain or the body? Me or that beautiful shell? Which, Earl? Which?"

  He took a deep breath, remembering. This woman had saved his life, given back his eyes, given him her love. He released the rail and stepped toward the head of the bed.

  "Kalin," he said. "I shall always love you."

  And kissed the slitted lips.

  * * *

  "You were kind," said Komis. "I shall always remember that."

  Dumarest stared at the stone, the beams, the hanging weapons. Firelight threw shadows across his face. Komis reached out and poured wine, pushed a goblet across the table.

  "Drink," he ordered. "I know how you must feel. When the girl told me who she really was it was as if the world had turned upside down." He drank, setting an example. "They are together now."

  Dumarest emptied his goblet. "Why?" he demanded.

  "They are talking, doing something. I don't know what."

  "I don't mean why are they together. But why tell me? Why make me see Kalin as she really is?"

  Komis poured more wine. "Keelan," he said. "Her name is Keelan."

  "Keelan, Kalin, they are like enough." To Dumarest the wine was like water. "She wanted to prove something," he said. "Wanted to know if I loved her or a pretty face. But I love the whole woman. Not an empty shell. Not a diseased woman lying helpless on a bed. I want someone who—"

  "I know what you want, Earl." She came forward as they rose, smiling, a large ring weighing one finger. "I am whole again," she said. "As I was when we made love on the slaver's ship, gambled in Pete's Bar on Chron. Your woman, Earl. Not half but complete again—for now and perhaps for always."

  Komis frowned. "You speak in riddles, sister. There is much I do not understand."

  "You will," she promised. "And now, brother, if you will excuse us? I must talk with Earl alone." She sat as he left and helped herself to wine. Teeth gleamed as she lifted the goblet and her eyes held a sparkling green fire. "To love, Earl," she said. "To love and to us!"

  The goblets made empty rapping sounds on the table.

  "I was unfair, Earl, to make you prove your love for me the way I did. But the ego is a peculiar thing. Always it must be reassured and rejection is tantamount to death." She looked at the ring on her finger. "Death," she repeated, and shuddered.

  Silently he poured them both more wine.

  "Brasque was an unusual man," she said. "Clever, intelligent, dedicated. When it became obvious that I would never be well again he left Solis. For years I heard nothing and then, one night, he returned. It was a time of storm. The air was full of sleet and it was very late. No one saw him but my attendant and myself. And he was dying, Earl. Dying."

  She took a sip of wine. "All the time he'd been away he'd been searching for some means to help me. Incredibly he found it. Somehow he'd managed to get himself employed on a special project in an unusual laboratory which dealt in the life-sciences. Not too difficult, really, for he was very clever. He found what he was looking for. He called it an affinity-twin. A life-form based on a molecular chain of fifteen units and the reversal of one unit would make it either dominant or subject. He stole it, Earl. I think he killed to get it. I know that he thought he was being followed."

  "He was wounded, terribly, his body filled with poisons, but he would not stop until he had done what he had come to do. The life-form was an artificially created symbiote. It nestles in the rear of the cortex, meshes with the thalamus and takes control of the central nervous system. So Brasque told me, Earl. But he was dying and there was little time for explanations. He injected something into my skull—something into the skull of my attendant. I felt dizzy for a moment and then, suddenly, I was Mallini."

  "Can you imagine it, Earl? After years as a diseased and decaying woman I was suddenly alive again. Young and beautiful and wonderfully active. In another person's body, true, but what did that matter? It felt like my body. It was my body. I could walk and dance and lift my head to look at the sky. Life, Earl! Life!"

  He sat, thinking, looking at his goblet of wine.

  "This girl whose body you took over," he said quietly. "What happened to her?"

  "Mallini?" She shrugged. "I don't know. Brasque wasn't sure or didn't tell me. I think that her mind became a part of my own, that we shared all the things I did and enjoyed doing." Her hand reached out and touched his. "Enjoyed doing so very much, Earl. So very, very much."

  Dumarest remained serious. "And if she… you… her… should die, what then?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Earl, that is what frightens me. I look ahead and things are confused. I—the me that you see lives, but is it really me? The body lives but am I in it? I want to be in it. I think that if it were done carefully I would stay as I am even though that diseased thing upstairs should die—cease functioning. I want to be free of it, Earl. Wholly free. Sometimes, as if in a dream, I come back and… and…"

  Her face changed, contorted. "Earl!"

  "Kalin! What is it?"

  "No!" Her mouth opened, breath rasping in her throat. "No I won't come back. No! No! No! Stop it!" she screamed. "Earl! Help me!"

  And, suddenly, her face went blank. The eyes were still green, still open but they were empty as the windows of a deserted house. The lips moved, still red, still soft, but the smile was the loose grimace of an idiot.

  "Kalin!"

  Dumarest sprang to his feet, ran down the passage, up the stairs, through the room and out onto the patio where sea-sound filled the air and sea-scent blew through the pillars.

  The door to the antechamber was open. He ran through it and into the place of shadows. The shadows had gone, dissolved in a flood of light from the truglow tubes. Metal and crystal sparkled from the life-support apparatus. At the head of the bed the scarlet robe of the cyber glowed like fresh-spilled blood.

  "No!" The voice from the creature on the bed was a pain-filled gasp of protest. "No!"

  "Where is your husband?" Mede's voice held no hate, no urgency, but the level monotone was all the more inhuman because of that. A hum came from something in his hands. "Where is your husband?"

  "He's dead!" The croak was more terrible than a scream. "Dead! Dead! Dead!" And then, horribly, "Earl, my darling! Earl!"