The signal lamp changed from green to red.

  Dumarest sprang forward as the cyber rose. He saw the movement of the hand from the wide sleeve, the flash, felt the burn. He gripped the wrist as Mede fired again, the laser searing plastic and metal and flesh before it fell from the broken hand.

  "You killed her! Tortured her to death!"

  Mede stabbed the fingers of his left hand toward Dumarest's eyes. He fought with a cold detachment as he jerked his knee toward the groin, swung his elbow toward the face. Dumarest blocked the attack, struck once and gripped the robe as Mede sagged. Strength blossomed from his fury. This man had killed Kalin! This thing had again robbed him of happiness!

  He heaved the scarlet figure into the air, ran from the room to the patio, to where the pillars looked down onto the sea and rocks below. For a moment he stood poised, the weight of the cyber struggling in his hands, then he stepped forward and threw the scarlet figure over the edge.

  And watched as the sea cleaned the red of blood and fabric from the granite teeth studding the shore.

  * * *

  Brother Jerome folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe and glanced at the shining majesty of Arsini's statue. "Tell me," he said to Dumarest. "Do you also believe that all men originated on one small world?"

  Dumarest remained silent. He was thinking of a girl and the long journey to Hope and in him the sense of loss was an aching wound. Kalin was dead. The cyber had killed her with his questioning, but the body he remembered still lived. It was as lovely, the skin as white, the hair as red as before, but something had gone from the eyes. Kalin had loved him but Mallini did not and he could find nothing to love in Mallini. The package was the same but the contents were not.

  "Brasque, of course, must have worked in one of the laboratories somehow connected with the Cyclan," said the Head Monk, casually. He smiled at Dumarest's expression. "We know about it,", he explained. "More, perhaps, than you guess. The ring you are wearing, for example. Komis gave it to you. It was the last gift Brasque gave his wife and she wanted you to have it in case something happened as, of course, she knew it would."

  "She knew but she could do nothing about it," said Dumarest tiredly. "She didn't even try."

  "Some things cannot be avoided," said Brother Jerome quietly. "Call it fate if you wish. And her ability was strange to her. A side-effect of the symbiote she carried in her brain." He led the way down a winding path. "That is what Mede was after. Brasque must have stolen the secret and been wounded making his escape. He landed at Klieg on a stormy night. He did what he had to do and then, to hide his trail, threw himself from the patio into the sea. The woman, call her Kalin, took his flier and began her travels. As far as Komis was concerned the girl had simply deserted."

  "But the Cyclan wanted what Brasque had stolen. They sent men to search and Mede was the one who found the logical place. But he did not know that Brasque was dead."

  Dumarest kicked at a stone. "If they developed it, then why couldn't they repeat it? The Cyclan do not lack for experts."

  "I think it had to do with luck," said the High Monk carefully. "Or, perhaps, the workings of destiny. I think it safe to assume that Brasque stumbled on the correct sequence by chance. Fifteen units on a molecular chain. Even if you knew which units to work with, can you guess how long it would take to cover every possible combination? Over four thousand years," he said. "That is trying one new combination each second. How much longer would it take if each combination required a day? No, brother, the cyber was desperate to learn where Brasque could be found. The Cyclan does not like failure."

  Dumarest looked at the ring on his finger. A flat, polished stone set in a heavy band of gold. It was a man's ring; on Kalin it had looked enormous.

  "And the girl?" he asked. "What happens to her?"

  "She will stay here until her father comes to take her back to Sard," said Jerome. "I was wrong about that man," he admitted. "Centon Frenchi is just what he claims to be. Now, perhaps, he can bring himself to love his daughter."

  "Is that so hard?"

  "It is when you are proud and your daughter is an atavist. The coloring was bad enough but she was more. A little simple," said the monk softly. "Easily hurt and easily frightened. Unwanted by the others of her family. She ran away, to the planet from which her grandmother had originated, and there she took service with the Master of Klieg."

  Dumarest followed the monk down the path and along a diverging track. "How is she? I mean, does she remember very much of what happened?"

  "No. To her it is all a vague dream. The symbiote was extremely effective." He halted before a flowering shrub. "Can you imagine the power of a thing like that? Not immortality but something so attractive to the old, the crippled, the diseased that they would pay anything to obtain it. A new body. Literally new. A body to use and abuse, to kill with and be killed in. Something which would give a true proxy life. A thing which—" He broke off. "Fifteen units," he said after a moment. "I pray that they may never again be united in a correct sequence. That the secret died with the man who stole it."

  He took a deep breath, savoring the scent of the flowers. "We grow morbid, brother. A bad emotion for such a day. You have plans?"

  "To travel," mused Dumarest. "To travel. What else?"

  "To travel," mused Jerome. "To search. To look for something you may never find." He looked at the hard face, the eyes with their fading scars. Dedication sometimes took strange forms. "You are welcome to stay as my guest for as long as you wish. I would advise, however, that you do not see the girl again. A man should not torment himself," he explained gently. "She is not as you remember her."

  "I know," said Dumarest. Would he ever find someone like Kalin again?

  "I will instruct Brother Fran to give you a warrant for a High passage on any ship leaving this planet," continued the High Monk. "You may use it when you wish. And there is more," he added. "Centon Frenchi has been most generous. You will not leave as a pauper."

  "Thank you, Brother," said Dumarest. "You are gracious."

  The High Monk bowed and walked away.

  Alone, Dumarest wandered the gardens before sitting on a bench. There were things to do, plans to make. Here, on Hope, were records which could be of interest. The archives of the Church of the Universal Brotherhood would contain, perhaps, the coordinates of Earth. Forgotten, discarded, a fragment in the mass of information.

  He sat, hands beside him, the stone of the ring on his finger glowing in the light of the sun.

  Glowing brighter as the statue began to sing. Shining as the sonic impulse triggered the buried "memory" of the lustrous material. Dumarest didn't see it. He concentrated on the statue, the impressive figure straining up and away from the flaming orb. On his finger the glow concentrated into fifteen spots of brilliance, each descriptive of a molecular unit.

  Brasque's secret.

  Unnoticed in Dumarest's dream of Earth.

 

 

  E. C. Tubb, Kalin

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends