From Fer Verrilah to Kaka Verrilah, Kaka Verrilah to Kaka N (or Kakan): following on this last step part of the famous route of the great rho exodus by the ‘Guild which lost its name’ over three thousand standard years ago. The first hint of trouble came just after the simultok. The manoeuvre itself had been executed perfectly.
From her cruising pseudo velocity of 0.85 Dopplers an hour, Souveroon had ‘slowed’ Kalindy XII right down to an idling translation rate only one tenth as great well before they approached the critical zone. The captain watched with interest and pleasure as her second in command used the faster flow of information to skilfully calibrate the navigation computers and adjust the ship’s position. He was aiming for an almost perfect right angled bisection of the line between a certain blue supergiant and the ruddy fires of La Verrilah, a passing spark to starboard. The calculations depended on observations of very fine stellar angular positions, compensations for real motion and extremely accurate time keeping because to achieve a satisfactory simultok, the error in a shifting locus could be no greater than a light hour and only one way..... Happy at last, Souveroon had disengaged the Strip Engine. Now it was Le Grant’s turn. The chief steward had the task of turning this little rendezvous with history into a piece of theatre which the passengers would enjoy. He was supported by all the technology at the ship’s command, which he conducted from Central Hall. Once they were safely in Einstein Lorentz space, Quella left the Reference Bridge and went to join him.
The interior of Kalindy XII was dark. A slight adjustment to one of the programs in the Environmental Central computers had brought a fractional speeding up of the previous day. It was easier to descend into the all encompassing landscape when vision would not support vertigo so insistently. Only a few yellow and green lights scattered in the residences of the passengers and near Lake Neriad pointed out the odd perspective as the captain felt the first touches of ‘gravity’ begin to pull her down the stairs. She had not quite reached 0.1 g when under the aegis of Le Grant’s systems seven these lights faded into invisible local glimmers and the aft dish of the great cylinder, a perfect mat black mat shield against the bulk of the fusers, lit up with a live projection of the sky from rotation normalised external cameras. It was an impressive sight and a more impressive feat to co-ordinate a scattered ring of lasers round the cylinder and on the central axis with the parallel river of digital input signals from outside to produce what was surely the largest live planetarium in the Confederacy. In a few seconds it had brightened to diamond hardness, the impression of stars in a vacuum becoming extremely realistic, and Quella, who had stopped involuntarily, continued her descent.
She found Le Grant at his master desk in Environment Control No. 1 room, a large domed space dominating one wing of the Governing Bridge. There were two other officers present; the young woman who had been one of the twenty seven at her trial and an older grey haired man. The over head lights were off. Both of them bathed in green pools of illumination; lounging before ‘intense terminals’ and paradoxically isolated by the neurosets over their heads that kept them in constant contact with their colleagues throughout the ship. A casual mess of work lay scattered over the other dim desks and the three occupants of the room seemed to have been (at least initially) spread as casually, coming to rest as far apart as possible so that (on further reflection) it was as though they unconsciously monitored and defended physical territories as distinct as their mental duties. Before he was even aware of his captain’s presence Le Grant removed his communication equipment and lent back with his arms behind his head, putting his feat up on the only clear spot on his desk. He did nothing to alter his relaxed posture when he heard her, merely smiling up in acknowledgement.
From the master desk the front window of number one room cut forward at about forty five degrees from the floor to create an overhanging expanse of glass which looked down on the ‘cross roads’ plaza below Central, giving a perfect view during the day of the busiest thoroughfare and meeting place for crew in the whole ship. It pointed aft like a finger towards the projection Environment Control were now administering ,and although that ‘sky’ was almost ten kilometres away they had as good a view from here as from anywhere.
A GalCon generator to their left glowed rhythmically. “The commentary,” Le Grant muttered. “Do you want to hear the English version?” Without waiting for an answer he threw a switch and his recorded voice came up in low tones.
“...the results of the study came too late. The blue white star did not follow the pattern which those lambda authorities had expected. Instead the unimaginably hot core temperature changes should have signalled the changing reaction pattern that had set in so early in its life. It is believed that a sudden shift in magnetic flux cooled a very large volume of plasma where the local ratio of helium fusion to hydrogen fusion was already abnormally high because convection currents had lowered the free proton density. A concentrated sun spot ‘fall in’ probably occurred of the type well known in spectral class K and M stars. But here the equilibrium between energy pressure and gravitational squeeze had been disturbed once too often. Only one outcome was possible.... Ladies and Gentlemen, the bright blue star you see at the centre of the sky is that same sun; the infamous Confederacy legend of Gaftiz.”
There was a dramatic pause.
“Very shortly you will see the cataclysm as it actually happens. The Kalindy XII, Ladies and Gentlemen is poised on the edge of history. Imagine that.....”
Le Grant turned down the sound. “We’re putting out four simultaneous translations to three hundred receivers right now,” he said.
“So when’s the big show?”
He shrugged. “That’s up to the boy on the bridge,” then he winked mischievously, “or as you and I well know, my fall back in,” he consulted a counter, “five minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“You know captain, I sometimes wonder why we are going to all this trouble. There are far too many individuals of all races (though I sometimes think that we regulars are the worst) who have far too much of a hang up on simultaneity. What’s so significant about hanging around in the middle of an awfully long lot of nowhere just because the light from the explosion is going to reach here now? It’s not even as if we’re really looking at the live stuff anyway (whatever that might mean). An artificial sky through instrument interpretation is the best we can get after all the trouble of carrying out a simultok. Now if it was up to me in future, we’d use this every time.”
He tapped a cynical white crystal brought to them by special courier from Kakan to Inskerelleryon and resting in the photon read matrix of the LogiLux IV unit which was maintaining the show. It contained a recording of the Gaftiz supernova taken less than a light week away - sufficiently close to enable the machine to phase the live pictures out in favour of the recording without noticeable changes in the star pattern.
“I’m a show man, not a mystic,” Le Grant said. Unlike many of the navigation officers (Souveroon included) he wore no icons of St. Einstein-Lorentz or his ilk.
“If I use the crystal I get a good show because it synchronises with the commentary for a perfect climax.”
Quella was about to reply when the blue star went; dropping in magnitude - brighter and brighter.
“Damn it, the boy’s done it!” Le Grant said, half in admiration and half annoyed. The simultok was accurate to within five light minutes.
Over the next few moments they watched the light grow, its image matching the intensity of the photons washing over Kalindy’s hull. As she rolled into the wavefront of the exploding star’s tsunami, the supernova rose to dominate the sky, shining like the soul of some tortured sun god suddenly liberated and returning from exile in a triumphant pale new incarnation. The ship might well have been about to enter a new system only a few light hours away instead of the six hundred and fifty odd light years Quella knew lay between them and the legacy of Gaftiz. Soon the brilliant dot was bright enough to read by, casting a ghostly blue glow over the whole interior of Kalindy’s inhabited cylinder and completely drowning the other ‘stars’. By now the illusion of a real sky was somewhat diminished as scattered reflections brought back a faint hint of flat gun metal grey from the bulkhead, but strangely enough, for Quella this only increased her awareness of the power of the star in its death agony; and her awe. If she hadn’t known that the wavelengths of the lasers were so carefully tuned and that the surface was highly reflective to the radiation directed at it, the captain might have feared it would burn clear through to the fusers.
After a while Le Grant interrupted. “That’s as good as it’s going to get. It’ll stay like that for a few days before it begins to fade but then there’s the nebula development to look out for in a few years.”
“If that’s a hint, consider it taken. You’re ready to travel into the future?”
“The show’s over.”
Quella sat down behind Le Grant and punched in to the nearby keyboard. Taking the neuroset she got the connection with the Reference Bridge and spoke to Souveroon.
“We’re finished here. Well done. Let’s get rolling, but keep in touch with Environment Control and leave the external monitors open. We’ll hold the image.”
The Strip Engine was engaged and as they ate up the light days and weeks, Gaftiz faded into an accelerated decline, its glory the more rapidly obscured as they ghosted through the expanding shell of light that marked its bold frontier. But Quella knew that that was not the end of the story. They would keep the planetarium active for the real moments in ship night and as they drew closer to the scene of the catastrophe an exotic new flower would blossom over the grave. Excited by the violent storms of assorted atomic and subatomic particles thrown out of Gaftiz in the trailing and much more deadly squalls of radiation which followed in the wake of the electromagnetic waves, the surrounding interstellar gases were being ionised and as they relaxed from this stimulated state, gave off various colours of secondary radiation. Shock waves of new material thrown into the void were engaged in turbulent dances, caught in mad vortices and in swift moving crests of high density flux that swept all before them. Irregular dust clouds darkened certain quarters, or by reflection illuminated certain others. By the time the secondary light reached Kakan, although the distance/time reduction was too small to hasten it into anything more than eight or so light years across, it’s bright little confusion would already display a distinct if chaotic pattern to the naked eye. In reality, despite a considerable slowing of it’s growth the Gaftiz nebula was now some eighty light years across.
Another officer entered the room and signalled to his chief. “Pretty successful sir, I’d say. Things are getting back to normal now.”
“Good. Can you take over now Robert?” Le Grant rose and indicated that the new arrival should take his seat. “I’d like a brief word with you in private, if I may captain. In my office?”
A low set of steps out of number one room led to the chief steward’s inner sanctum. Behind the dark burnished copper desk, a large high quality moviegram looped endlessly from a viewpoint just above a silvered stream which bubbled down a series of long pools and tiny falls lit by a glancing northern light into a blue lake. Since it was behind his head, Colin had obviously installed it to ease visitors - a thoughtful psychology. The other decorations were stills on the walls. They were shots of Soor, his homeworld; conventional landscapes of the Pathing Hills, Twin Towns Highway, Ussow Bay, Gyra and Gyre, plus one featuring a woman Quella guessed to be his former wife - a tall and stately blue hair standing in front of the convoluted metal of Supra Light’s offices in Gyra and gazing straight into this office from above the door.
“This will probably all turn out to be a fuss over nothing but I’d rather you knew,” he began. “There are rumours throughout the ship that something is amiss between two of the passengers. We have a pretty good idea that Vega and Dol have some sort of wager, combat or game arranged between them. We don’t know where or when. The annoying thing is that although my staff can only pick up hints of the nature of this event the news seems to be well spread amongst the other passengers. It’s as though they are deliberately trying to keep it from us - almost an implicit conspiracy of Fellows and companions.”
“Not Mr. Big Eye, surely?” Quella remarked dryly.
Le Grant coughed as much to say he found the interruption irritating. “It’s all we have to go on so far but obviously if I find out more I’ll let you know,” he said.
So that was the first hint of trouble. There was no real second stage until they had left Kaka Verrilah and were well on their way to Kakan. Although she’d probed him subtly in a second social call, something had prevented Quella from confronting Vega with an outright demand that he tell her what was going on. She half suspected the passengers were engaged in a subtle rebellion against the observation systems of the crew and were being deliberately evasive over nothing. In that case she had to play a waiting game and not fall into their trap. Eventually, though, she learned enough to feel certain that there was to be a contest and that it had arisen out of some altercation between the artist and the farmer on Fer Verrilah. Vega was remote and cool. Quella could not quite believe he was the same man who had rescued her from Falym’s thugs. That first visit to his pyramidal home with its cathartic and ecstatic outcome now felt like nothing more than a brief fantasy which the sleeping mind may momentarily confuse with memory. There was a peculiar trace of emotion, yes, lingering like the strong aftertaste of salt, but it was nothing that Quella could understand; too insubstantial to give her any insight before she left him, disturbed on more than one level. For any direct information, Kaal Dol was worse. If he had opened up to Quella before, to try to bridge the inter species gap, now he seemed to be deliberately emphasising their differences. His talk was esoteric and alien in the extreme, until the captain gave up an retired to the Reference Bridge in disgust.
In retrospect, Quella realised, she might have done better querying the other passengers, but it was the two principal protagonists whom she had felt that she knew best and she had let it cloud her judgement. Falym she disliked, the others she simply didn’t bother with until it was all over, but as the chief steward had surmised it later transpired that both Falym and Zaralova Justa certainly knew what was happening all along. The Kalindy XII was a big ship. Quella had plenty of tasks capable of demanding her full attention. It looked as if there would be no immediate developments and so she left it and gradually began to forget until that disastrous morning...
Karallel House on the shores of Lake Neriad was one of the more interesting little structures aboard the Kalindy. The fantasy of a truly creative architect, its wave like form was supported by a series of delicate struts which seemed no more than thin strings, so that its leading surface could curve away from the very edge of the water and then arch back again as it to break well over the lake. The design specifications had stressed that the building must be spectacular, and it was. Such elegance made its own demands however and one was that the house be subjected to no force exceeding 0.8 g. It was this fact which limited any transfer of spin which the captain might order from the gyrobatteries, although they were otherwise capable of delivering up to 1.2 g. For most of the voyage, consideration for the comfort of the thetan passengers would keep the ship at 0.2 g standard, but on the day Quella was visiting Karallel House, Kalindy was running an angular velocity that brought the building close to the engineering safety tolerance limits. It was part of the schedule.
At Kakan the tour promised the participation sports for which parts of the world were so suited an passengers who intended to take advantage needed practice. Once in the system they would be visiting the highest quality spar resorts in the Emquav region, ‘where hot springs fountain forth in secluded pools to overflow into steaming waterfalls that mingle with the icy torrents of crystal pure streams from clear blue secret corries’.
Kakan was a colonised regressive planet, about fifty percent human and fifty percent rho, locally quite important in the Confederacy not least as a tourist world for those who liked the rugged untamed outdoors; the spectacular Zoramyral mountains of the Emquav region and the Torrentine ocean surf cities. The equilibrium technology was Emergent middle level at just that point where the light metal sports could become really practical (hang gliding, canoeing, mountaineering, deep sea diving, skiing and the like) with the mass production of strong and easy to carry rust proof alloys. Kalindy would be arriving in the southern hemisphere winter at the perfect height of the elite snow sports season. By then, the travellers muscles, brains and eyes must be at least partially familiarised (or refamiliarised) with the stronger gravity of a little over 0.7 g which they would find on the magnificent slopes of Kakan.
To reproduce the temperatures they would encounter on the surface of the planet a monodal culture blanket had been thrown over the area immediately round Lake Neriad. Inside it’s insulating bubble the air was several chilly degrees below zero and the surface of the lake was frozen quite hard. Quella was sipping a blue frog cocktail in the company of Le Grant on the top floor of Karallel House. They looked out onto a confused scene of frantic activity as inexpert and experienced human and alien skaters, hissed over the ice. In the distance, the Iron Suns men were monopolising the low hill that the stewards had carefully sprayed with a snow surrogate, skiing between the slalom posts in vigorous delight. The Nu were using a toboggan run that made the most of the low gradient it was forced to employ by twisting half way around the shore line. Waves of colour passed through the sky where the transparent layer of monomolecular plastic warped through thicker and thinner isomerisms and tautomerisms in response to the changing temperature and pressure beneath it, and thus refracted the principal ship light at different frequencies. The air shimmered slightly at the boundary of heat an cold, making the opposite side of Kalindy’s cylinder seem unusually distant.
“A bit of a rush job, but not bad,” Le Grant said, allowing himself a moment of self congratulation. “It’s not going to spoil them for Kakan but they seem to be enjoying it. Have you seen Dol lately?”
“Isn’t he safely floating in his fluid bath by now?” Quella answered. The thetans weren’t interested in visiting Kakan, largely because the gravitational strain on their bodies would be even worse than that which they had endured on Fer Verrilah. They had always known and accepted, however, that Kalindy would be ‘spin gripped’ for a short time for the benefit of the other passengers. To ease them over the projected two ship days of discomfort, thoughtful Vital Void planners had provided individual aromatic fluid baths for the benefit of each thetan as an alternative to exile at the axis. Within their personal wells, they could access the ship’s computer for news and entertainment, ‘take the light’, converse, eat and sleep and (to a limited extent) exercise.
"Um," Le Grant muttered. “I certainly hope so.”
“What do you mean?” his captain asked.
“Well... My spies tell me he’s up to something. Speaking of which... excuse me?”
She shrugged. He smiled in apology and patched in to the ship communication network from the terminal at the end of their table which was flickering an attention signal. Fastening on the headgear he punched in the neuroset authorisation code which switched it into interactive mode. Quella saw him frown and almost at once break off.
“I don’t like that. My stewards always keep a close watch on every passenger but I’ve out special shadow orders on since we left Kaka Verrilah; told them to make it unobtrusive of course but just in case...”
“Should have thought to order it myself”, Quella complemented her officer. “What’s the matter?”
“Seems like the paying customers have used their fellows to cover for them and they’ve outsmarted us. In the crowds down there, they’ve slipped away over more than just the ice. They’ll be trouble for those I’ve put on this watch.” His face darkened, removing completely any impression of his usual somewhat foppish features.
“Never mind brooding about that now,” the captain snapped. “We’d better find them again”. She reached over and rattled off a string of commands to the central computer.
“A little optimised search program I’ve had security code,” she explained. “A pity they don’t use bracelets but it shouldn’t take the pattern long to find them even so. Now I shall be at the Reference Bridge. Put out a general call to all staff and let me know the moment you hear anything.”
She rose to leave but before she could reach the door a miserably pressed thetan forced his way in. His heavy footsteps were titanic labours as he made straight for the captain. It was Annaba.
“Come quickly! Dol’s using the duelling machine!” he flickered in urgent GalCon B. Quella had no idea what a duelling machine might be but this was obviously no time for the usual caution of interaction. Before the two crew members had helped their struggling passenger into the lift and the transparent egg shaped capsule had swung them out over the sub parabolic curve that was Karallel House’s landward wall to deposit them near Annaba’s EnvironWagon, spin relaxation warnings were being broadcast throughout the ship. The sky had been momentarily dulled to clarify the effect of two massive GalCon projectors at either end of the ship’s axis and sets of concealed speakers cycled through the provincial languages. They climbed into the open buggy just as the English version announced.
‘Care. Spin relaxation in thirty seconds. Restoration to 0.2g normal over ten seconds - repeat ten seconds. Mark.’
The quick release virus from the main biocylinder library had already consumed most of the monodal culture blanket to leave only a few twists of plastic tumbling in the sudden convection currents. A blast of cold air cursed them on their way. It was a pity, the captain had a couple of seconds to reflect, that there’d been no time to equalise the temperature before degrading the monodal. Some sensitive plants near the edges of the temporary dome would suffer from its unplanned spectacular demise at the hands of the quick little micro storm that had been whipped up. The rapid spin change would do the ecosystem no good either, but Quella was taking no chances. She wanted to get to the source of any possible trouble as quickly as she could and apologise to the ship afterwards. Stomachs lurched as though the world had lost its bottom. Gyrobatteries swallowed more and more of the ship’s angular momentum. They were at 0.2g and already Lake Neriad was melting behind them.
Annaba was clearly feeling better. “It’s madness,” he was flashing, but through calmer fingers on the generator. “They’ve conspired in a dangerous charade that proves nothing and satisfies no one!”
“More slowly please,” Quella said as they traversed a Zen rock garden, the balloon tyres leaving delicate orange lichen undamaged beneath their soft tread. “You can begin by explaining what a duelling machine is.”
So Annaba filled in the missing details Le Grant and Quella had been ominously unaware of: details the artist’s agent had only discovered himself less than an hour ago. Rather than begin with the duelling machine though, he went back to Fer Verrilah.
During the trip to the painted desert, Vega and Dol had conceived a mutual dislike, nurtured later to enmity and allowed now to blossom into the extravagant flower of a fully grown feud. Initially it seemed, Vega had made an unfortunate chance remark which had historically insulting connotations for the famous clone. Dol, practising his English, had made a reply in somewhat stronger terms than he perhaps intended and not aware of how he had offended the thetan the farmer had been stung into a tirade against transient art in general and the profligacy of Dol as a practitioner in particular. The regular denounced the whole concept as parasitic, the wasteful froth of Confederacy promises that could have enriched the lives of millions instead of indulging a lucky few. That very day the thetan proposed a duel and Vega, seemingly in the heat of the moment (literally as well as metaphorically) had accepted. Somehow the word had spread to the other passengers and aroused great interest in the outcome. Unsure of how the captain would react it had been kept secret until today when Annaba had realised what Dol was doing.
The duelling machines were part of a long tradition on Vapastatia, long since made illegal by the ruling thetan oligarchy, though there were said to be a few still in working order on Werewon and Eal, the neighbouring systems dominated by first generation colonists. The tradition was at its height when the first Kaal Dol was martyred and thetans had yet to Emerge from Vapastatia. In those days the ruling families had all possessed a machine and it was considered a matter of pride to have an intricately tailored device crafted by a master engineer. Unit living, as expounded by the personality behind the transient artist’s original cells, was vehemently opposed to duelling machines (amongst many other things) and in 793 LLT Dol had lead a crusade against the ‘circuit house’ to interrupt a famous duel. The clash between the mental mechanists, the supporting spectators and Dol’s fanatics was a celebrated, if minor, part of thetan history.
It was in conscious opposition to Kaal Dol I that Kaal Dol II had developed an interest in duelling machines and ten standard years ago he had begun to collect them as a hobby. Annaba explained that he now owned twenty three models which he kept at his retreat on Thegraliss outside the main arenas of thetan jurisdiction. They ranged from a rare example of the primitive pattern free prototypes to the beautifully sculptured ‘trinity set’ once owned by the Hoona family and kept perfectly tuned today. They included one of the infamous ‘black brain’ models, outlawed even during the Cauldron Years, a quirky ‘medical’ model used by the short lived Healer branch of the mental mechanists, a multipartite prototype which never caught on and one of the ‘later day illicits’ from Eal with their built in camouflage units. He enjoyed tinkering with the machines and had brought one along which he was in the process of restoring. With Cothyll’s help and Vega’s active co-operation it had been adapted to function for a human thetan duel.
As Annaba finished they reached the top of the low rise which overlooked Dol’s mansion. A small crowd were already gathered on the hill side staring across a rapid brook that was a short tributary of the Bandusia in its upper reaches above Lake Neriad. Dol’s mansion loomed large, dark and gothic on a matching rise opposite. A heavy stone bridge spanned the stream, just wide enough for one person to cross at a time and in the middle of the bridge stood Cothyll, wrapped in a flowing orange silk robe of extraordinary design. He was turning back a group of three Iron Sun’s men and two thetans with elaborate formal gestures. Behind him, two thetans stood at either side of the bridge in the clear role of guards. They carried the traditional thin wire war yo yos which if skilfully wielded could easily equalise any conflict between the physically weaker race and the other passengers. It was doubtful if these Fellows were skilful in the use of the yo yos but no one seemed to want to challenge them anyway. Quella frowned. The group turned back at the bridge were making their way up the hillside to find a comfortable place to sit. There was an unsettling air of excitement and expectation.
Abandoning the EnvironWagon, Annaba, Quella and Le Grant headed down the slope, threading through a mixed set of regulars, thetans and Nu towards the centre of a tight knot clustered about half way between the ridge and the bridge. Sure enough, Zaralova Justa and Prince Falym were right in the middle of it. They were engaged in a fierce debate conducted between three interpreters in a mixture of pigeon GalCon B, English and Suroneese. A Nu clerk was recording the stakes and terms for bets on the outcome of the contest amounting to thousands of promises. Zaralova Justa was hot and sweaty, her black hair plastered against her skin in ugly wet mats so that she reeked of those sickly alien scents that brought back memories of Mavavak for the captain. She was wearing the blue star above heavy breasts that marked her out as one of the twenty seven and reminded Quella that she had genuine business at their final port of call. The start of the coming Confederacy Conclave on Old Earth would coincide with the arrival of Kalindy XII at the end of her tour; the dominant home world. The Conclave would be Zaralova Justa’s last political act in the Alta-Tsey because Nu custom demanded that breeding age females spend a prescribed three year (four standard years) period in the ‘forests of racial renewal’ on their home world. No exceptions were allowed and though several powerful individuals in Nu society were trying to change ideas, it would be dangerous for any racial representative to ignore the custom in the current climate of opinion. Zaralova Justa was known to resent this strongly. Her chances of making a successful return to high office after such a break were low and the Nu might not even get a replacement on the Twenty Seven, so it was not surprising she was angry. Quella sympathised. She didn’t sympathise with this little display of gambling.
“Enjoying yourselves?” she broke in sweetly.
“Most exciting!” Rulla giggled.
Quella hadn’t noticed her before but now she raised her eyes she could see that every single one of the news hounds were lined up on the hill and one of the bolder ones was at that very moment attempting to interview Cothyll at the bridge. Jardeen, the Big News representative had even started a full photonic recording.
“Am I the only one on this ship who didn’t know what was going on?” the captain wondered aloud. In the same vein she continued. “You know of course that this little circus could result in the death of Theodore Vega. I should have thought you two were too sophisticated for such plebeian pleasures.”
“Just goes to show how much you know,” Falym grinned back, as irritatingly impervious to the insult as he intended. “Hope you’re wrong ‘cos I’ve backed Vega to win. He’s upholding the honour of the human race. I’d trust real meat against one of those bags of bones any day.”
“More fool you,” Zaralova Justa flashed. “Dol hasn’t been repairing these machines for years without learning a few tricks. Even if he’s never duelled as you so pointedly reminded me, the idea is one he’s been born to. What does Vega know? Nothing! All the advantage lies with Dol and I look forward with pleasure to taking your promises after the inevitable conclusion.” She began to chew a fresh wad of upher root.
“It’s most probable, of course,” Annaba confirmed. “It’s Mr. Vega I want to protect.”
The prince, who had got all this in second hand English (his GalCon B was astonishingly bad for such a high ranking statesman), shrugged. “I’ll take the risk. It’s worth throwing away a few promises just on the off chance of celebrating a nasty shock for that scrawny intellectual creep.” He said the word intellectual as though it were a curse. “Pseud of the Galaxy! Have you ever smelt such a stinking load of manure as that con trick they call transient art? And if I lose? Well its only some waterweed farmer gets it. Not as if Vega mattered to anyone is it, eh, captain?” Quella didn’t know if Falym knew about her raw relationship with the man from Cascoll, or if he was simply being generally provocative. She tightened her lips.
“Too bad neither of you will find out whose right then,” she managed, though her words didn’t sound quite as cool and measured as she would have wished. “Come on!”
But before the three recent arrivals from Karallel House got more than four or five metres closer to the bridge there was a dramatic fanfare of trumpets from the mansion which turned everyone’s head. Two thetans wrapped in drab black cloaks appeared on a wide balcony high up against the eves of the mansion. They were wheeling out a giant but thin silver metallic screen fully ten metres tall and fifteen wide, from either side of which grew two strange asymmetrical control centres branching up and out like large bronze leaves, hearts, spades, palmates and fronds. Releasing catches at either side of the railings that had twisted up in an ornate row across the front of the balcony, they let them swing down to give an uninterrupted view of the stage before discretely retiring through a set of bowed double doors. Without further ado, Dol came out from another smaller entrance at the far end of the balcony and not six instants behind, Vega emerged through a parallel door at the opposite end. The regular looked somewhat bewildered in a thin brown robe. His hair had been shaved off to leave his skull completely bald and the head then painted in a lurid swirling pattern of blue and red pigment. Quella could only think how helpless he seemed, in complete contrast to the controlled assurance he had demonstrated when he saved her life. The thetan was wearing a bright crimson robe. He strode out like a grand operatic vision of death, his own head also painted in the traditional blue and red, with gold rings flashing on his fingers.
“Captain!” he announced, immediately identifying Quella in the crowd. “May I thank you for your kindness in relaxing the spin in time for our little contest. I hope it hasn’t ruined anyone else’s entertainment but speaking for my own fellows I can only say we are most grateful for this unlooked for respite that will make the forthcoming duel much more comfortable.”
He was hooked in to his own sound broadcasting system which made his voice instantly accessible and dominant over a kilometre wide circle around his mansion. Even more astonishing he was speaking English in parallel with GalCon, and speaking it well. If Cothyll and Annaba spoke the truth he had certainly learned a lot since Fer Verrilah. It would have been futile and slightly comic for Quella to have answered - a pixie speaking to a giant. Refusing to fall into the trap of such an unequal contest which could only lower her dignity, she ignored the rest of the frozen crowd and undeterred by their passive resistance shouldered her way towards the stream. A little while later, Le Grant and Annaba came running after her as over their heads the commanding presence of Kaal Dol held everyone else spellbound.
“Citizens of the Confederacy, may I present to you the famous Carawine Duelling Master. The machine which you see before you is none other than the ‘Fatal Friend’ which is so celebrated in story and song. Between 689 LLT and 712 LLT, Carawine, with the help of his ‘Fatal Friend’, rose from obscurity as a minor mechanic in a little village north of Rolweer to become arguably the best Duel Master in the history of Vapastatia and certainly the most deadly. With this machine alone he killed forty seven challengers. He was no aristocratic amateur. He was a professional, and in his later days he thinned the family trees of the Zak, Paralot, Hoona and Tartain dynasties, radically altering the course of succession in the Southern hemisphere ruling lines. So great did the fear of him become that in 709 LLT the Paralot House Master forbade his sons from entering Chascurotoo City for the whole of the week Carawine was visiting. The eldest was still foolish enough to challenge the Duel Master for restricting his freedom in a letter which included a secret invitation to the Paralot House. The son was killed. Carawine’s most famous victim, however, was the Alasta House Master who had himself risen to power through an effective use of the duelling machine, killing twenty and seizing the House in a well organised gambling raid. Only after 23 Vapastatian years of complete success did Carawine make his last mistake. He was goaded by one of his many enemies into challenging SeevaTa, a newcomer from the Bykta dynasty who was making a name as a professional. It is believed that Carawine’s last duel took place on a ‘black brain’ model of SeevaTa’s own manufacture somewhere in Rolweer. SeevaTa was publicly executed for the use of such a machine, but that was in 717 LLT.
"With his ‘Fatal Friend’, the Carawine Duelling Master, Carawine never lost (not even a single friendly bout).
"My friends and I have adapted this duelling machine to allow for a human challenger. With it’s aid I shall now teach Mr. Vega a lesson he won’t forget. I will correct him in his opinion of transient art and the right’s of thetan travellers!
"Citizens, do not be alarmed! We are not fighting to the death. The machine is set to spar so that we might lock our minds and see who thinks what when we finish! Witness the manifest art of persuasion. Transient art at its greatest as I improvise it here. Let the game begin!”
At that the human and the thetan cast aside their robes and took up their positions at the ends of the screen, sitting naked with legs to either side on black cast iron three legged stools. It was impossible to see how the machine was activated but almost immediately the metal foliage became wildly agitated, responding to the presence of the duellists by flexing and thrashing about in a quasi organic way that looked like a cross between a storm tossed tree and a rapacious sea anemone. In thirty seconds the broader leaves had wrapped themselves about arms, legs and chests so that it would have been quite impossible for Vega or Dol to rise. By the end of a minute, both were so completely encased that they seemed more like aggressive bronze statues than living entities. There were the fighting icons. Only their heads were free and over the top of each red and blue skull the light feathery fronds of the egometric stem fluttered and played rapidly and unevenly, like some neurotic caressing the secret object of a perverted pleasure. The myriad tendrils of this network converged into a single metal cable - the interface between each duellist and the screen. The screen began to glow with a pearly and diffuse light. Quella reached Cothyll.
The thetan on the bridge smiled but he politely declined the captain’s request to stop the duel, signalling to his two allies with their yo yos. “It’s not your job to order what we do. Hasn’t Dol supplied Vital Void with enough promises to ensure his freedom of action? I don’t think you understand the nature of your relationship with the tourists. You mustn’t interfere.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Quella replied. She pointed over Cothyll’s shoulder. Four men from security had come through the sessile oak wood behind Dol’s mansion and were even now levelling needle guns at the thetan and his fellows blocking their captain’s passage. “You see?”
“Let me put it this way. I perceive a danger to passengers who are under my trust. As captain, everyone on Kalindy XII is under my trust. If life is threatened I have a duty (not a right) to intervene. Ship Law is quite clear on this subject and has been since time immemorial so you wouldn’t want to go against that, would you? Even Vital Void would loose if they opposed that in court so don’t threaten me with my superiors.
"Now I’ll ask again. Will you stop the duel?”
“Too late, I’m afraid," Cothyll answered and if his GalCon B couldn’t convey emotions Quella didn’t need it to detect an attitude that was almost gleeful. “Once the duellists are engaged by the machine it is extremely hazardous to cancel the contest, short of a formal resolution. The enfolding mechanism resists any escape attempt, even an externally organised one, by administering neural shock to the combatant which could be fatal. Only at ‘balance states’ will the machine release the subjects. That is when the mental forces reach one of the twelve traditional metastable equilibria or sustain isomorphic lock for longer that three split rate interpulse phases (that can be a way to end the duel by mutual consent).”
“Is this true?” Quella asked Annaba.
“We’re too late,” the thetan confirmed sadly. “Might as well enjoy it now I suppose.”
“Don’t worry captain," Cothyll broke in as if anxious to soften his position now that a fait accomplit had been achieved. “Didn’t Dol say that the machine was set to spar? I can vouch for that. No permanent harm will come to Mr. Vega. Resign yourself. I’ll explain what’s happening.”
Quella succeeded in suppressing an impulse to bite her lip but inwardly she winced. This public loss of face was extremely damaging, threatening as it did to let the passengers achieve an unhealthy psychological dominance which subverted her own role. Still, she had no choice. It was surely better to acknowledge defeat now than to go on and risk being responsible for the death of Vega or Dol herself in a misguided attempt to stop their battle of wills. A few classic oaths died in her mind.
On the screen the universally bland pearl radiance was beginning to acquire a pattern of other hues. More or less circular blobs of red and blue encased in thin green rings started to solidify and between these amorphous regions, bands bordered in yellow appeared. As the picture stabilised, a further development became apparent. Red and blue colour was transmitting itself down the bands, emptying some zones and filling others. To stop this flow, sharp little black lines cut into the links and where they succeeded in rupturing the routes caused, the blue or red zone to dissipate into the white background. Seeding centres established new colonies as the pattern grew richer. Lakes of red and blue immiscible states were churned into fine droplets by the action of spiral whips of black vortices. It was completely unclear to the human observers.
“What you can see is a symbolic representation of the mental conflict which is being carried out through the courses of the egometric stems and neural cables. The different colours signify different attributes within the psyche, the constituent ‘energies’ which the mental mechanists postulated in their theory of mind. As a matter of fact the extent to which these ‘energies’ are ‘true’ qualities is a philosophical question which exercised the best thinkers of Vapastatia during the period when we thetans Emerged into the Confederacy. Today’s hyperrealists take the view, enlightened by the diversity of galactic consciousness, that there is actually very little relationship between the visible interpretation and the logical pattern of the conflict happening within the machine. They believe that adherence to the doctrine of the ‘energies’ held back the study of mind in the seventh and eighth centuries LLT, with this visible manifestation in the duelling machines making the theory psychologically harder to discard for no good scientific reason. No matter. Let us assume for the sake of the contest that the internal ‘energies’ are a valid way of perceiving the duel.
"Then according to the mental mechanists the red areas correspond to ‘latent’ or ‘non directed’ powers (what you might call the unconscious) whilst the blue areas are ‘active’ or ‘directed‘ areas (roughly equivalent to the idea in dominant culture which St. Freud called the super ego).”
“And the yellow and green?” Quella asked.
“Enabling “energies”. The communication mechanisms which liberate the other energies allowing transmission and discharge. They are the visual and symbolic languages of the mind which constrain, limit, channel and define the other powers.”, Cothyll said.
“The black?”
“Also a form of latent but directed power. The racial instinct to survive, I suppose you would call it, or the genetic memory. The mental mechanists thought of it as a semi automatic nervous response in reply to patterns of thought which evolution had ruled to be dangerous - mental antibodies if you like. For example, you dominants can’t consciously hold your breath until you die - the ‘black’ energy would break up any such pattern of control. For we thetans, the prohibitions go further making certain kinds of suicide which might otherwise have tempted our ancestors (I won’t say why) quite impossible.”
“But I still can’t see whose winning,” Le Grant complained.
“Ah, so much for ‘science’,” Cothyll replied, “the rest is art.”
They watched without communicating for a while, the thetan then resuming. “The aim is to impose an alien viewpoint on the opponent. It has the effect of ‘rewiring’ the brain when successful, rather in the way you would on winning a closely fought argument and peacefully influencing the loser in your favour. In full duel mode (by contrast with this sparing mode) the aim is to impose self destruction - to override those black defensive energies and encourage personality disintegration and death. Inter neural connections are severed and high level brain death results from the disruption of the network. Traditionally the victor in mercy, goes on to inflict physical death on the loser. Sometimes the victory is so complete (as it was in several of Carawine’s duels) that this coup de grace isn’t necessary; low level brain death has already stopped the physical functions of the body.”
It was Annaba who interrupted.
“There’s something odd about this pattern. A strange mental construct, isn’t it, that form of attack? As if I know much,” he apologised.
A thin blue line was advancing towards Kaal Dol’s egometric stem from Vega’s end of the machine and despite fierce resistance the thetan seemed completely unable to halt its inexorable progress. The thin metal wires were dancing on both heads like the whip wind rain on Fourse. Even at this distance the crowd could see a quick little spasm pass through the tall angular metal that encased Dol and the tremor communicated itself in a wave of excitement across the hillside.
“Naturally, you would expect to see some differences in the human-thetan interaction,” Cothyll was saying but Quella knew that he was reassuring himself as much as anybody else. “Even so I must confess this looks almost as if the ‘Fatal Friend’ were in full duelling mode.”
The machine hissed. A sigh passed round the crowd as a river of red exploded from the top left had corner of the screen to be neatly channelled into a deadly black hole by Vega’s cleverly positioned green web. It was obvious who was winning.
“I think I’d better go to...”, Cothyll began.
But that was the instant when the invading blue line reached its destination. In a final frenzy of energy the “energy” was discharged through the neural cables to spark into Kaal Dol’s brain.
A balance state had been reached. The ‘Fatal Friend’ must release its captives. With astonishing speed the metal leaves rustled open like the rising wings of ten million robot locusts; violent and voracious. So quick was the action that the duellists were hurled from the machine before its bronze foliage froze once more into a new pattern of captivating immobility. Vega looked stunned and bemused but it was Kaal Dol who caught the attention of the crowd. He was reeling about the balcony as though intoxicated. His grey skin was blotched and agitated on the stretched bones that angled from misallocate arms. He held his hands to his ears, a picture of agony as the single sound like a keening word on the edge of understanding (neither English nor any thetan tongue) burst out to freedom through the roof of his mouth; a final victory cry over consciousness carrying its ghost prisoner with it. It was the last sound that would ever escape from his lips, for immediately following it, his brain escaped his head. Red cells flowed out between thin fingers like a scarlet indictment of the captain who had failed to save him. Transfixed, Quella watched the living paste borne on the crimson streams of the thetan’s oxygen rich blood, until it began to drop in a morass of death at the feet of that icon of death. It was as though it were shocked and disgusted with the reality of the external universe it now experienced directly outside Dol’s skull. For a dreadful moment he teetered on the brink of the balcony. Then he toppled and in the 0.2g the fall had all the terror of a slow nightmare before it spread him at the foot of that awful gothic mansion. Thus perished Kaal Dol, the galaxy’s greatest transient artist, one of the Confederacy’s richest citizens and one of its finest minds.
Behind her, Quella heard the crowd stir. A loud ululation arose from the throats of the Nu, led by Zaralova Justa. That Nu had lost her bet, but her fellows were responding instinctively now to a hard tradition of their own. Surging forwards down the hill, their heavily furred bodies forced all others aside. Without opposition they forded the stream, sweeping through any numbed thetan who wandered aimlessly and accidentally in front of them. Then, bit at a time, they tore into the structure of the mansion, ripping away the spiders legs of supporting buttresses, breaking walls and pulling down ceilings whilst frantic thetans fled. The house had given hospitality to death and as they had done earlier in respect for L’Rrantora, so now in a more immediate fashion they responded, bringing down the relics of death’s memory with a savage joy which their culture demanded; tearing down the houses of death.
